Halcyon Classics Series

THE COLLECTED WESTERNS OF WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE:

21 NOVELS IN ONE VOLUME

by William MacLeod Raine

Contents

Wyoming

Brand Blotters

Ridgway of Montana

A Texas Ranger

Bucky O’Connor

Mavericks

Crooked Trails and Straight

The Vision Splendid

The Pirate of Panama

A Daughter of the Dons

Steve Yeager

The Highgrader

The Yukon Trail

The Sheriff’s Son

A Man Four-Square

Oh You Tex!

The Big Town Round-Up

Gunsight Pass

Tangled Trails

Man Size

The Fighting Edge

Contents

WYOMING

A Story Of The Outdoor West

by William MacLeod Raine

CHAPTER 1

A DESERT MEETING

An automobile shot out from a gash in the hills and slipped swiftly down to the butte. Here it came to a halt on the white, dusty road, while its occupant gazed with eager, unsated eyes on the great panorama that stretched before her. The earth rolled in waves like a mighty sea to the distant horizon line. From a wonderful blue sky poured down upon the land a bath of sunbeat. The air was like wine, pure and strong, and above the desert swam the rare, untempered light of Wyoming. Surely here was a peace primeval, a silence unbroken since the birth of creation.

It was all new to her, and wonderfully exhilarating. The infinite roll of plain, the distant shining mountains, the multitudinous voices of the desert drowned in a sunlit sea of space--they were all details of the situation that ministered to a large serenity.

And while she breathed deeply the satisfaction of it, an exploding rifle echo shattered the stillness. With excited sputtering came the prompt answer of a fusillade. She was new to the West; but some instinct stronger than reason told the girl that here was no playful puncher shooting up the scenery to ventilate his exuberance. Her imagination conceived something more deadly; a sinister picture of men pumping lead in a grim, close-lipped silence; a lusty plainsman, with murder in his heart, crumpling into a lifeless heap, while the thin smoke-spiral curled from his hot rifle.

So the girl imagined the scene as she ran swiftly forward through the pines to the edge of the butte bluff whence she might look down upon the coulee that nestled against it. Nor had she greatly erred, for her first sweeping glance showed her the thing she had dreaded.

In a semicircle, well back from the foot of the butte, half a dozen men crouched in the cover of the sage-brush and a scattered group of cottonwoods. They were perhaps fifty yards apart, and the attention of all of them was focused on a spot directly beneath her. Even as she looked, in that first swift moment of apprehension, a spurt of smoke came from one of the rifles and was flung back from the forked pine at the bottom of the mesa. She saw him then, kneeling behind his insufficient shelter, a trapped man making his last stand.

>From where she stood the girl distinguished him very clearly, and under the field-glasses that she turned on him the details leaped to life. Tall, strong, slender, with the lean, clean build of a greyhound, he seemed as wary and alert as a panther. The broad, soft hat, the scarlet handkerchief loosely knotted about his throat, the gray shirt, spurs and overalls, proclaimed him a stockman, just as his dead horse at the entrance to the coulee told of an accidental meeting in the desert and a hurried run for cover.

That he had no chance was quite plain, but no plainer than the cool vigilance with which he proposed to make them pay. Even in the matter of defense he was worse off than they were, but he knew how to make the most of what he had; knew how to avail himself of every inch of sagebrush that helped to render him indistinct to their eyes.

One of the attackers, eager for a clearer shot, exposed himself a trifle too far in taking aim. Without any loss of time in sighting, swift as a lightning-flash, the rifle behind the forked pine spoke. That the bullet reached its mark she saw with a gasp of dismay. For the man suddenly huddled down and rolled over on his side.

His comrades appeared to take warning by this example. The men at both ends of the crescent fell back, and for a minute the girl's heart leaped with the hope that they were about to abandon the siege. Apparently the man in the scarlet kerchief had no such expectation. He deserted his position behind the pine and ran back, crouching low in the brush, to another little clump of trees closer to the bluff. The reason for this was at first not apparent to her, but she understood presently when the men who had fallen back behind the rolling hillocks appeared again well in to the edge of the bluff. Only by his timely retreat had the man saved himself from being outflanked.

It was very plain that the attackers meant to take their time to finish him in perfect safety. He was surrounded on every side by a cordon of rifles, except where the bare face of the butte hung down behind him. To attempt to scale it would have been to expose himself as a mark for every gun to certain death.

It was now that she heard the man who seemed to be directing the attack call out to another on his right. She was too far to make out the words, but their effect was clear to her. He pointed to the brow of the butte above, and a puncher in white woolen chaps dropped back out of range and swung to the saddle upon one of the ponies bunched in the rear. He cantered round in a wide circle and made for the butte. His purpose was obviously to catch their victim in the unprotected rear, and fire down upon him from above.

The young woman shouted a warning, but her voice failed to carry. For a moment she stood with her hands pressed together in despair, then turned and swiftly scudded to her machine. She sprang in, swept forward, reached the rim of the mesa, and plunged down. Never before had she attempted so precarious a descent in such wild haste. The car fairly leaped into space, and after it struck swayed dizzily as it shot down. The girl hung on, her face white and set, the pulse in her temple beating wildly. She could do nothing, as the machine rocked down, but hope against many chances that instant destruction might be averted.

Utterly beyond her control, the motor-car thundered down, reached the foot of the butte, and swept over a little hill in its wild flight. She rushed by a mounted horseman in the thousandth part of a second. She was still speeding at a tremendous velocity, but a second hill reduced this somewhat. She had not yet recovered control of the machine, but, though her eyes instinctively followed the white road that flashed past, she again had photographed on her brain the scene of the turbid tragedy in which she was intervening.

At the foot of the butte the road circled and dipped into the coulee. She braced herself for the shock, but, though the wheels skidded till her heart was in her throat, the automobile, hanging on the balance of disaster, swept round in safety.

Her horn screamed an instant warning to the trapped man. She could not see him, and for an instant her heart sank with the fear that they had killed him. But she saw then that they were still firing, and she continued her honking invitation as the car leaped forward into the zone of spitting bullets.

By this time she was recovering control of the motor, and she dared not let her attention wander, but out of the corner of her eye she appreciated the situation. Temporarily, out of sheer amaze at this apparition from the blue, the guns ceased their sniping. She became aware that a light curly head, crouched low in the sage-brush, was moving rapidly to meet her at right angles, and in doing so was approaching directly the line of fire. She could see him dodging to and fro as he moved forward, for the rifles were again barking.

She was within two hundred yards of him, still going rapidly, but not with the same headlong rush as before, when the curly head disappeared in the sage-brush. It was up again presently, but she could see that the man came limping, and so uncertainly that twice he pitched forward to the ground. Incautionsly one of his assailants ran forward with a shout the second time his head went down. Crack! The unerring rifle rang out, and the impetuous one dropped in his tracks.

As she approached, the young woman slowed without stopping, and as the car swept past Curly Head flung himself in headlong. He picked himself up from her feet, crept past her to the seat beyond, and almost instantly whipped his rifle to his shoulder in prompt defiance of the fire that was now converged on them.

Yet in a few moments the sound died away, for a voice midway in the crescent had shouted an amazed discovery:

"By God, it's a woman!"

The car skimmed forward over the uneven ground toward the end of the semicircle, and passed within fifty yards of the second man from the end, the one she had picked out as the leader of the party. He was a black, swarthy fellow in plain leather chaps and blue shirt. As they passed he took a long, steady aim.

"Duck!" shouted the man beside her, and dragged her down on the seat so that his body covered hers.

A puff of wind fanned the girl's cheek.

"Near thing," her companion said coolly. He looked back at the swarthy man and laughed softly. "Some day you'll mebbe wish you had sent your pills straighter, Mr. Judd Morgan."

Yet a few wheel-turns and they had dipped forward out of range among the great land waves that seemed to stretch before them forever. The unexpected had happened, and she had achieved a rescue in the face of the impossible.

"Hurt badly?" the girl inquired briefly, her dark-blue eyes meeting his as frankly as those of a boy.

"No need for an undertaker. I reckon I'll survive, ma'am,"

"Where are you hit?"

"I just got a telegram from my ankle saying there was a cargo of lead arrived there unexpected," he drawled easily.

"Hurts a good deal, doesn't it?"

"No more than is needful to keep my memory jogged up. It's a sort of a forget-me-not souvenir. For a good boy; compliments of Mr. Jim Henson," he explained.

Her dark glance swept him searchingly. She disapproved the assurance of his manner even while the youth in her applauded his reckless sufficiency. His gay courage held her unconsenting admiration even while she resented it. He was a trifle too much at his ease for one who had just been snatched from dire peril. Yet even in his insouciance there was something engaging; something almost of distinction.

"What was the trouble?"

Mirth bubbled in his gray eyes. "I gathered, ma'am, that they wanted to collect my scalp."

"Do what?" she frowned.

"Bump me off--send me across the divide."

"Oh, I know that. But why?"

He seemed to reproach himself. "Now how could I be so neglectful? I clean forgot to ask."

"That's ridiculous," was her sharp verdict.

"Yes, ma'am, plumb ridiculous. My only excuse is that they began scattering lead so sudden I didn't have time to ask many 'Whyfors.' I reckon we'll just have to call it a Wyoming difference of opinion," he concluded pleasantly.

"Which means, I suppose, that you are not going to tell me."

"I got so much else to tell y'u that's a heap more important," he laughed. "Y'u see, I'm enjoyin' my first automobile ride. It was certainly thoughful of y'u to ask me to go riding with y'u, Miss Messiter."

"So you know my name. May I ask how?" was her astonished question.

He gave the low laugh that always seemed to suggest a private source of amusement of his own. "I suspicioned that might be your name when I say y'u come a-sailin' down from heaven to gather me up like Enoch."

"Why?"

"Well, ma'am, I happened to drift in to Gimlet Butte two or three days ago, and while I was up at the depot looking for some freight a train sashaid in and side tracked a flat car. There was an automobile on that car addressed to Miss Helen Messiter. Now, automobiles are awful seldom in this country. I don't seem to remember having seen one before."

"I see. You're quite a Sherlock Holmes. Do you know anything more about me?"

"I know y'u have just fallen heir to the Lazy D. They say y'u are a schoolmarm, but I don't believe it."

"Well, I am." Then, "Why don't you believe it?" she added.

He surveyed her with his smile audacious, let his amused eyes wander down from the mobile face with the wild-rose bloom to the slim young figure so long and supple, then serenely met her frown.

" Y'u don't look it."

" No? Are you the owner of a composite photograph of the teachers of the country?"

He enjoyed again his private mirth. "I should like right well to have the pictures of some of them."

She glanced at him sharply, but he was gazing so innocently at the purple Shoshones in the distance that she could not give him the snub she thought he needed.

"You are right. My name is Helen Messiter," she said, by way of stimulating a counter fund of information. For, though she was a young woman not much given to curiosity, she was aware of an interest in this spare, broad-shouldered youth who was such an incarnation of bronzed vigor.

"Glad to meet y'u, Miss Messiter," he responded, and offered his firm brown hand in Western fashion.

But she observed resentfully that he did not mention his own name. It was impossible to suppose that he knew no better, and she was driven to conclude that he was silent of set purpose. Very well! If he did not want to introduce himself she was not going to urge it upon him. In a businesslike manner she gave her attention to eating up the dusty miles.

"Yes, ma'am. I reckon I never was more glad to death to meet a lady than I was to meet up with y'u," he continued, cheerily. "Y'u sure looked good to me as y'u come a-foggin' down the road. I fair had been yearnin' for company but was some discouraged for fear the invitation had miscarried." He broke off his sardonic raillery and let his level gaze possess her for a long moment. "Miss Messiter, I'm certainly under an obligation to y'u I can't repay. Y'u saved my life," he finished gravely.

"Nonsense."

"Fact."

"It isn't a personal matter at all," she assured him, with a touch of impatient hauteur.

"It s a heap personal to me."

In spite of her healthy young resentment she laughed at the way in which he drawled this out, and with a swift sweep her boyish eyes took in again his compelling devil-may-care charm. She was a tenderfoot, but intuition as well as experience taught her that he was unusual enough to be one of ten thousand. No young Greek god's head could have risen more superbly above the brick-tanned column of the neck than this close-cropped curly one. Gray eyes, deep and unwavering and masterful, looked out of a face as brown as Wyoming. He was got up with no thought of effect, but the tigerish litheness, the picturesque competency of him, spake louder than costuming.

"Aren't you really hurt worse than you pretend? I'm sure your ankle ought to be attended to as soon as possible."

"Don't tell me you're a lady doctor, ma'am," he burlesqued his alarm.

"Can you tell me where the nearest ranch house is?" she asked, ignoring his diversion.

"The Lazy D is the nearest, I reckon."

"Which direction?"

"North by east, ma'am."

"Then I'll take the most direct road to it.

"In that case I'll thank y'u for my ride and get out here."

"But--why?"

He waved a jaunty hand toward the recent battlefield. "The Lazy D lies right back of that hill. I expect, mebbe, those wolves might howl again if we went back."

"Where, then, shall I take you?"

"I hate to trouble y'u to go out of your way.

"I dare say, but I'm going just the same," she told him, dryly.

"If you're right determined " He interrupted himself to point to the south. "Do y'u see that camel-back peak over there?"

"The one with the sunshine on its lower edge?"

"That's it, Miss Messiter. They call those two humps the Antelope Peaks. If y'u can drop me somewhere near there I think I'll manage all right."

"I'm not going to leave you till we reach a house," she informed him promptly. "You're not fit to walk fifty yards."

"That's right kind of y'u, but I could not think of asking so much. My friends will find me if y'u leave me where I can work a heliograph."

"Or your enemies," she cut in.

"I hope not. I'd not likely have the luck to get another invitation right then to go riding with a friendly young lady."

She gave him direct, cool, black-blue eyes that met and searched his. "I'm not at all sure she is friendly. I shall want to find out the cause of the trouble you have just had before I make up my mind as to that."

"I judge people by their actions. Y'u didn't wait to find out before bringing the ambulance into action," he laughed.

"I see you do not mean to tell me."

"You're quite a lawyer, ma'am," he evaded.

"I find you a very slippery witness, then."

"Ask anything y'u like and I'll tell you."

"Very well. Who were those men, and why were they trying to kill you?"

"They turned their wolf loose on me because I shot up one of them yesterday."

"Dear me! Is it your business to go around shooting people? That's three I happen to know that you have shot. How many more?"

"No more, ma'am--not recently."

"Well, three is quite enough--recently," she mimicked. "You seem to me a good deal of a desperado."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Don't say 'Yes, ma'am,' like that, as if it didn't matter in the least whether you are or not," she ordered.

"No, ma'am."

"Oh!" She broke off with a gesture of impatience at his burlesque of obedience. "You know what I mean--that you ought to deny it; ought to be furious at me for suggesting it."

"Ought I?"

"Of course you ought."

"There's a heap of ways I ain't up to specifications," he admitted, cheerfully.

"And who are they--the men that were attacking you?"

There was a gleam of irrepressible humor in the bold eyes. "Your cow-punchers, ma'am."

"My cow-punchers?"

"They ce'tainly belong to the Lazy D outfit."

"And you say that you shot one of my men yesterday?" He could see her getting ready for a declaration of war.

"Down by Willow Creek-- Yes, ma'am," he answered, comfortably.

"And why, may I ask?" she flamed

"That's a long story, Miss Messiter. It wouldn't be square for me to get my version in before your boys. Y'u ask them." He permitted himself a genial smile, somewhat ironic. "I shouldn't wonder but what they'll give me a giltedged testimonial as an unhanged horse thief."

"Isn't there such a thing as law in Wyoming?" the girl demanded.

"Lots of it. Y'u can buy just as good law right here as in Kalamazoo."

"I wish I knew where to find it."

"Like to put me in the calaboose?"

"In the penitentiary. Yes, sir!" A moment later the question that was in her thoughts leaped hotly from her lips. "Who are you, sir, that dare to commit murder and boast of it?"

She had flicked him on the raw at last. Something that was near to pain rested for a second in his eyes. "Murder is a hard name, ma'am. And I didn't say he was daid, or any of the three," came his gentle answer.

"You MEANT to kill them, anyhow."

"Did I?" There was the ghost of a sad smile about his eyes.

"The way you act, a person might think you one of Ned Bannister's men," she told him, scornfully.

"I expect you're right."

She repented her a little at a charge so unjust. "If you are not ashamed of your name why are you so loath to part with it?"

"Y'u didn't ask me my name," he said, a dark flush sweeping his face.

"I ask it now."

Like the light from a snuffed candle the boyish recklessness had gone out of his face. His jaws were set like a vise and he looked hard as hammered steel.

"My name is Bannister," he said, coldly.

"Ned Bannister, the outlaw," she let slip, and was aware of a strange sinking of the heart.

It seemed to her that something sinister came to the surface in his handsome face. "I reckon we might as well let it go at that," he returned, with bitter briefness.

CHAPTER 2

. THE KING OF THE BIG HORN COUNTRY

Two months before this time Helen Messiter had been serenely teaching a second grade at Kalamazoo, Michigan, notwithstanding the earnest efforts of several youths of that city to induce her to retire to domesticity "What's the use of being a schoolmarm?" had been the burden of their plaint. "Any spinster can teach kids C-A-T, Cat, but only one in several thousand can be the prettiest bride in Kalamazoo." None of them, however, had been able to drive the point sufficiently home, and it is probable that she would have continued to devote herself to Young America if an uncle she had never seen had not died without a will and left her a ranch in Wyoming yclept the Lazy D.

When her lawyer proposed to put the ranch on the market Miss Helen had a word to say.

"I think not. I'll go out and see it first, anyhow," she said.

"But really, my dear young lady, it isn't at all necessary. Fact is, I've already had an offer of a hundred thousand dollars for it. Now, I should judge that a fair price "

"Very likely," his client interrupted, quietly. "But, you see, I don't care to sell."

"Then what in the world are you going to do with it?"

"Run it."

"But, my dear Miss Messiter, it isn't an automobile or any other kind of toy. You must remember that it takes a business head and a great deal of experience to make such an investment pay. I really think--"

"My school ends on the fourteenth of June. I'll get a substitute for the last two months. I shall start for Wyoming on the eighteenth of April."

The man of law gasped, explained the difficulties again carefully as to a child, found that he was wasting his breath, and wisely gave it up.

Miss Messiter had started on the eighteenth of April, as she had announced. When she reached Gimlet Butte, the nearest railroad point to the Lazy D, she found a group of curious, weatherbeaten individuals gathered round a machine foreign to their experience. It was on a flat car, and the general opinion ran the gamut from a newfangled sewing machine to a thresher. Into this guessing contest came its owner with so brisk and businesslike an energy that inside of two hours she was testing it up and down the wide street of Gimlet Butte, to the wonder and delight of an audience to which each one of the eleven saloons of the city had contributed its admiring quota.

Meanwhile the young woman attended strictly to business. She had disappeared for half an hour with a suit case into the Elk House; and when she returned in a short-skirted corduroy suit, leggings and wide-brimmed gray Stetson hat, all Gimlet Butte took an absorbing interest in the details of this delightful adventure that had happened to the town. The population was out en masse to watch her slip down the road on a trial trip.

Presently "Soapy" Sothern, drifting in on his buckskin from the Hoodoo Peak country, where for private reasons of his own he had been for the past month a sojourner, reported that he had seen the prettiest sight in the State climbing under a gasoline bronc with a monkey-wrench in her hand. Where? Right over the hill on the edge of town. The immediate stampede for the cow ponies was averted by a warning chug-chug that sounded down the road, followed by the appearance of a flashing whir that made the ponies dance on their hind legs.

"The gasoline bronc lady sure makes a hit with me," announced "Texas," gravely. "I allow I'll rustle a job with the Lazy D outfit."

"She ce'tainly rides herd on that machine like a champeen," admitted Soapy. "I reckon I'll drift over to the Lazy D with you to look after yore remains, Tex, when the lightning hits you."

Miss Messiter swung the automobile round in a swift circle, came to an abrupt halt in front of the hotel, and alighted without delay. As she passed in through the half score of admirers she had won, her dark eyes swept smilingly over assembled Cattleland. She had already met most of them at the launching of the machine from the flat car, and had directed their perspiring energies as they labored to follow her orders. Now she nodded a recognition with a little ripple of gay laughter.

"I'm delighted to be able to contribute to the entertainment of Gimlet Butte," she said, as she swept in. For this young woman was possessed of Western adaptation. It gave her no conscientious qualms to exchange conversation fraternal with these genial savages.

The Elk House did not rejoice in a private dining room, and competition strenuous ensued as to who should have the pleasure of sitting beside the guest of honor. To avoid ill feeling, the matter was determined by a game of freeze-out, in which Texas and a mature gentleman named, from his complexion, "Beet" Collins, were the lucky victors. Texas immediately repaired to the general store, where he purchased a new scarlet bandanna for the occasion; also a cake of soap with which to rout the alkali dust that had filtered into every pore of his hands and face from a long ride across the desert.

Came supper and Texas simultaneously, the cow-puncher's face scrubbed to an apple shine. At the last moment Collins defaulted, his nerve completely gone. Since, however, he was a thrifty soul, he sold his place to Soapy for ten dollars, and proceeded to invest the proceeds in an immediate drunk.

During the first ten minutes of supper Miss Messiter did not appear, and the two guardians who flanked her chair solicitously were the object of much badinage.

"She got one glimpse of that red haid of Tex and the pore lady's took to the sage," explained Yorky.

"And him scrubbed so shiny fust time since Christmas before the big blizzard," sighed Doc Rogers.

"Shucks! She ain't scared of no sawed-off, hammered-down runt like Texas, No, siree! Miss Messiter's on the absent list 'cause she's afraid she cayn't resist the blandishments of Soapy. Did yo' ever hear about Soapy and that Caspar hash slinger?"

"Forget it, Slim," advised Soapy, promptly. He had been engaged in lofty and oblivious conversation with Texas, but he did not intend to allow reminiscences to get under way just now.

At this opportune juncture arrived the mistress of the "gasoline bronc," neatly clad in a simple white lawn with blue trimmings. She looked like a gleam of sunshine in her fresh, sweet youth; and not even in her own school room had she ever found herself the focus of a cleaner, more unstinted admiration. For the outdoors West takes off its hat reverently to women worthy of respect, especially when they are young and friendly.

Helen Messiter had come to Wyoming because the call of adventure, the desire for experience outside of rutted convention, were stirring her warm-blooded youth. She had seen enough of life lived in a parlor, and when there came knocking at her door a chance to know the big, untamed outdoors at first hand she had at once embraced it like a lover. She was eager for her new life, and she set out skillfully to make these men tell her what she wanted to know. To them, of course, it was an old story, and whatever of romance it held was unconscious. But since she wanted to talk of the West they were more than ready to please her.

So she listened, and drew them out with adroit questions when it was necessary. She made them talk of life on the open range, of rustlers and those who lived outside the law in the upper Shoshone country, of the deadly war waging between the cattle and sheep industries.

"Are there any sheep near the Lazy D ranch?" she asked, intensely interested in Soapy's tale of how cattle and sheep could no more be got to mix than oil and water.

For an instant nobody answered her question; then Soapy replied, with what seemed elaborate carelessness:

"Ned Bannister runs a bunch of about twelve thousand not more'n fifteen or twenty miles from your place."

"And you say they are spoiling the range?"

"They're ce'tainly spoiling it for cows."

"But can't something be done? If my cows were there first I don't see what right he has to bring his sheep there," the girl frowned.

The assembled company attended strictly to supper. The girl, surprised at the stillness, looked round. "Well?"

"Now you're shouting, ma'am! That's what we say," enthused Texas, spurring to the rescue.

"It doesn't much matter what you say. What do you do?" asked Helen, impatiently. "Do you lie down and let Mr. Bannister and his kind drive their sheep over you?"

"Do we, Soapy?" grinned Texas. Yet it seemed to her his smile was not quite carefree.

"I'm not a cowman myself," explained Soapy to the girl. "Nor do I run sheep. I--"

"Tell Miss Messiter what yore business is, Soapy," advised Yorky from the end of the table, with a mouthful of biscuit swelling his cheeks.

Soapy crushed the irrepressible Yorky with a look, but that young man hit back smilingly.

"Soapy, he sells soap, ma'am. He's a sorter city salesman, I reckon."

"I should never have guessed it. Mr. Sothern does not LOOK like a salesman," said the girl, with a glance at his shrewd, hard, expressionless face.

"Yes, ma'am, he's a first-class seller of soap, is Mr. Sothern," chuckled the cow-puncher, kicking his friends gayly under the table.

"You can see I never sold HIM any, Miss Messiter," came back Soapy, sorrowfully.

All this was Greek to the young lady from Kalamazoo. How was she to know that Mr. Sothern had vended his soap in small cubes on street corners, and that he wrapped bank notes of various denominations in the bars, which same were retailed to eager customers for the small sum of fifty cents, after a guarantee that the soap was good? His customers rarely patronized him twice; and frequently they used bad language because the soap wrapping was not as valuable as they had expected. This was manifestly unfair, for Mr. Sothern, who made no claims to philanthropy, often warned them that the soap should be bought on its merits, and not with an eye single to the premium that might or might not accompany the package.

"I started to tell you, ma'am, when that infant interrupted, that the cowmen don't aim to quit business yet a while. They've drawn a dead-line, Miss Messiter,"

"A dead-line?"

"Yes, ma'am, beyond which no sheep herder is to run his bunch."

"And if he does?" the girl asked, open eyed.

" He don't do it twict, ma'am. Why don't you pass the fritters to Miss Messiter, Slim?"

"And about this Bannister Who is he?"

Her innocent question seemed to ring a bell for silence; seemed to carry with it some hidden portent that stopped idle conversation as a striking clock that marks the hour of an execution.

The smile that had been gay grew grim, and men forgot the subject of their light, casual talk. It was Sothern that answered her, and she observed that his voice was grave, his face studiously without expression.

"Mr. Bannister, ma'am, is a sheepman."

"So I understood, but " Her eyes traveled swiftly round the table, and appraised the sudden sense of responsibility that had fallen on these reckless, careless frontiersmen. "I am wondering what else he is. Really, he seems to be the bogey man of Gimlet Butte."

There was another instant silence, and again it was Soapy that lifted it. "I expaict you'll like Wyoming, Miss Messiter; leastways I hope you will. There's a right smart of country here." His gaze went out of the open door to the vast sea of space that swam in the fine sunset light. "Yes, most folks that ain't plumb spoilt with city ways likes it."

"Sure she'll like it. Y'u want to get a good, easy-riding hawss, Miss Messiter," advised Slim.

"And a rifle," added Texas, promptly.

It occurred to her that they were all working together to drift the conversation back to a safe topic. She followed the lead given her, but she made up her mind to know what it was about her neighbor, Mr. Bannister, the sheep herder, that needed to be handled with such wariness and circumspection of speech.

Her chance came half an hour later, when she stood talking to the landlady on the hotel porch in the mellow twilight that seemed to rest on the land like a moonlit aura. For the moment they were alone.

"What is it about this man Bannister that makes men afraid to speak of him?" she demanded, with swift impulse.

Her landlady's startled eyes went alertly round to see that they were alone. "Hush, child! You mustn't speak of him like that," warned the older woman.

"Why mustn't I? That's what I want to know."

"Is isn't healthy."

"What do you mean?"

Again that anxious look flashed round in the dusk. "The Bannister outfit is the worst in the land. Ned Bannister is king of the whole Big Horn country and beyond that to the Tetons."

"And you mean to tell me that everybody is afraid of him--that men like Mr. Sothern dare not say their soul is their own?" the newcomer asked, contemptuously.

"Not so loud, child. He has spies everywhere That's the trouble. You don't know who is in with him. He's got the whole region terrified."

"Is he so bad?"

"He is a devil. Last year he and his hell riders swept down on Topaz and killed two bartenders just to see them kick, Ned Bannister said. Folks allow they knew too much."

"But the law--the Government? Haven't you a sheriff and officers?"

"Bannister has. He elects the sheriff in this county."

"Aren't there more honest people here than villains?"

"Ten times as many, but the trouble is that the honest folks can't trust each other. You see, if one of them made a mistake and confided in the wrong man--well, some fine day he would go riding herd and would not turn up at night. Next week, or next month, maybe, one of his partners might find a pile of bones in an arroyo.

"Have you ever seen this Bannister?"

"You MUST speak lower when you talk of him, Miss Messiter," the woman insisted. "Yes, I saw him once; at least I think I did. Mighty few folks know for sure that they have seen him. He is a mystery, and he travels under many names and disguises."

"When was it you think you saw him?"

"Two years ago at Ayr. The bank was looted that night and robbed of thirty thousand dollars. They roused the cashier from his bed and made him give the combination. He didn't want to, and Ned Bannister"--her voice sank to a tremulous whisper--"put red-hot running-irons between his fingers till he weakened. It was a moonlight night--much such a night as this--and after it was done I peeped through the blind of my room and saw them ride away. He rode in front of them and sang like an angel--did it out of daredeviltry to mock the people of the town that hadn't nerve enough to shoot him. You see, he knew that nobody would dare hurt him 'count of the revenge of his men."

"What was he like?" the mistress of the Lazy D asked, strangely awed at this recital of transcendent villainy."

"'Course he was masked, and I didn't see his face. But I'd know him anywhere. He's a long, slim fellow, built like a mountain lion. You couldn't look at him and ever forget him. He's one of these graceful, easy men that go so fur with fool women; one of the kind that half shuts his dark, devil eyes and masters them without seeming to try."

"So he's a woman killer, too, is he? Any more outstanding inconsistencies in this versatile Jesse James?"

"He's plumb crazy about music, they say. Has a piano and plays Grigg and Chopping, and all that classical kind of music. He went clear down to Denver last year to hear Mrs. Shoeman sing."

Helen smiled, guessing at Schumann-Heink as the singer in question, and Grieg and Chopin as the composers named. Her interest was incredibly aroused. She had expected the West and its products to exhilarate her, but she had not looked to find so finished a Mephisto among its vaunted "bad men." He was probably overrated; considered a wonder because his accomplishments outstepped those of the range. But Helen Messiter had quite determined on one thing. She was going to meet this redoubtable villain and make up her mind for herself. Already, before she had been in Wyoming six hours, this emancipated young woman had decided on that.

CHAPTER 3

. AN INVITATION GIVEN AND ACCEPTED

And already she had met him. Not only met him, but saved him from the just vengeance about to fall upon him. She had not yet seen her own ranch, had not spoken to a single one of her employees, for it had been a part of her plan to drop in unexpected and examine the situation before her foreman had a chance to put his best foot forward. So she had started alone from Gimlet Butte that morning in her machine, and had come almost in sight of the Lazy D ranch houses when the battle in the coulee invited her to take a hand.

She had acted on generous impulse, and the unforeseen result had been to save this desperado from justice. But the worst of it was that she could not find it in her heart to regret it. Granted that he was a villain, double-dyed and beyond hope, yet he was the home of such courage, such virility, that her unconsenting admiration went out in spite of herself. He was, at any rate, a MAN, square-jawed, resolute, implacable. In the sinuous trail of his life might lie arson, robbery, murder, but he still held to that dynamic spark of self-respect that is akin to the divine. Nor was it possible to believe that those unblinking gray eyes, with the capability of a latent sadness of despair in them, expressed a soul entirely without nobility. He had a certain gallant ease, a certain attractive candor, that did not consist with villainy unadulterated.

It was characteristic even of her impulsiveness that Helen Messiter curbed the swift condemnation that leaped to her lips when she knew that the man sitting beside her was the notorious bandit of the Shoshone fastnesses. She was not in the least afraid. A sure instinct told her he was not the kind of a man of whom a woman need have fear so long as her own anchor held fast. In good time she meant to let him have her unvarnished opinion of him, but she did not mean it to be an unconsidered one. Wherefore she drove the machine forward toward the camelbacked peak he had indicated, her eyes straight before her, a frown corrugating her forehead.

For him, having made his dramatic announcement, he seemed content for the present with silence. He leaned back in the car and appreciated her with a coolness that just missed impudence. Certainly her appearance proclaimed her very much worth while. To dwell on the long lines of her supple young body, the exquisite throat and chin curve, was a pleasure with a thrill to it. As a physical creation, a mere innocent young animal, he thought her perfect; attuned to a fine harmony of grace and color. But it was the animating vitality of her, the lightness of motion, the fire and sparkle of expression that gave her the captivating charm she possessed.

They were two miles nearer the camel-backed peak before he broke the silence.

"Beats a bronco for getting over the ground. Think I'll have to get one," he mused aloud.

"With the money you took from the Ayr bank?" she flashed.

"I might drive off some of your cows and sell them," he countered, promptly. "About how much will they hold me up for a machine like this?"

"This is only a runabout. You can get one for twelve or fourteen hundred dollars of anybody's money."

"Of yours?" he laughed.

"I haven't that much with me. If you'll come over and hold up the ranch perhaps we might raise it among us," she jeered.

His mirth was genuine. "But right now I couldn't get more than how much off y'u?"

"Sixty-three dollars is all I have with me, and I couldn't give you more--NOT EVEN IF YOU PUT RED HOT IRONS BETWEEN MY FINGERS." She gave it to him straight, her blue eyes fixed steadily on him.

Yet she was not prepared for the effect of her words. The last thing she had expected was to see the blood wash out of his bronzed face, to see his sensitive nostrils twitch with pain. He made her feel as if she had insulted him, as if she had been needlessly cruel. And because of it she hardened her heart. Why should she spare him the mention of it? He had not hesitated at the shameless deed itself. Why should she shrink before that wounded look that leaped to his fine eyes in that flash of time before he hardened them to steel?

"You did it--didn't you?" she demanded.

"That's what they say." His gaze met her defiantly.

"And it is true, isn't it?"

"Oh, anything is true of a man that herds sheep," he returned, bitterly.

"If that is true it would not be possible for you to understand how much I despise you."

"Thank you," he retorted, ironically.

"I don't understand at all. I don't see how you can be the man they say you are. Before I met you it was easy to understand. But somehow--I don't know--you don't LOOK like a villain." She found herself strangely voicing the deep hope of her heart. It was surely impossible to look at him and believe him guilty of the things of which, he was accused. And yet he offered no denial, suggested no defense.

Her troubled eyes went over his thin, sunbaked face with its touch, of bitterness, and she did not find it possible to dismiss the subject without giving him a chance to set himself right.

"You can't be as bad as they say. You are not, are you?" she asked, naively.

"What do y'u think?" he responded, coolly.

She flushed angrily at what she accepted as his insolence. "A man of any decency would have jumped at the chance to explain."

"But if there is nothing to explain?"

"You are then guilty."

Their eyes met, and neither of them quailed.

"If I pleaded not guilty would y'u believe me?"

She hesitated. "I don't know. How could I when it is known by everybody? And yet--"

He smiled. "Why should I trouble y'u, then, with explanations? I reckon we'll let it go at guilty."

"Is that all you can say for yourself?"

He seemed to hang in doubt an instant, then shook his head and refused the opening.

"I expect if we changed the subject I could say a good deal for y'u," he drawled. "I never saw anything pluckier than the way y'u flew down from the mesa and conducted the cutting-out expedition. Y'u sure drilled through your punchers like a streak of lightning."

"I didn't know who you were," she explained, proudly.

"Would it have made any difference if y'u had?"

Again the angry flush touched her cheeks. "Not a bit. I would have saved you in order to have you properly hanged later," she cut back promptly.

He shook his head gayly. "I'm ce'tainly going to disappoint y'u some. Your enterprising punchers may collect me yet, but not alive, I reckon."

"I'll give them strict orders to bring you in alive."

"Did you ever want the moon when y'u was a little kid?" he asked.

"We'll see, Mr. Outlaw Bannister."

He laughed softly, in the quiet, indolent fashion that would have been pleasant if it had not been at her. "It's right kind of you to take so much interest in me. I'd most be willing to oblige by letting your boys rope me to renew this acquaintance, ma'am." Then, "I get out here Miss Messiter, he added.

She stopped on the instant. Plainly she could not get rid of him too soon. "Haven't you forgot one thing?" she asked, ironically.

"Yes, ma'am. To thank you proper for what y'u did for me." He limped gingerly down from the car and stood with his hand on one of the tires. "I have been trying to think how to say it right; but I guess I'll have to give it up. All is that if I ever get a chance to even the score--"

She waved his thanks aside impatiently "I didn't mean that. You have forgotten to take my purse.

His gravity was broken on the instant, and his laughter was certainly delightfully fresh. "I clean forgot, but I expect I'll drop over to the ranch for it some day."

"We'll try to make to make you welcome, Mr. Bannister."

"Don't put yourself out at all. I'll take pot-luck when I come."

"How many of you may we expect?" she asked, defiantly.

"Oh, I allow to come alone."

"You'll very likely forget."

"No, ma'am, I don't know so many ladies that I'm liable to such an oversight.

"I have heard a different story. But if you do remember to come, and will let us know when you expect to honor the Lazy D, I'll have messengers sent to meet you."

He perfectly understood her to mean leaden ones, and the humorous gleam in his eye sparkled in appreciation of her spirit. "I don't want all that fuss made over me. I reckon I'll drop in unexpected," he said.

She nodded curtly. "Good-bye. Hope your ankle won't trouble you very much."

"Thank y'u, ma'am. I reckon it won't. Good-bye, Miss Messiter."

Out of the tail of her eye she saw him bowing like an Italian opera singer, as impudently insouciant, as gracefully graceless as any stage villain in her memory. Once again she saw him, when her machine swept round a curve and she could look back without seeming to do so, limping across through the sage brush toward a little hillock near the road. And as she looked the bare, curly head was inclined toward her in another low, mocking bow. He was certainly the gallantest vagabond unhanged.

CHAPTER 4

. AT THE LAZY D RANCH

Helen Messiter was a young woman very much alive, which implies that she was given to emotions; and as her machine skimmed over the ground to the Lazy D she had them to spare. For from the first this young man had taken her eye, and it had come upon her with a distinct shock that he was the notorious scoundrel who was terrorizing the countryside. She told herself almost passionately that she would never have believed it if he had not said so himself. She knew quite well that the coldness that had clutched her heart when he gave his name had had nothing to do with fear. There had been chagrin, disappointment, but nothing in the least like the terror she might have expected. The simple truth was that he had seemed so much a man that it had hurt her to find him also a wild beast.

Deep in her heart she resented the conviction forced upon her. Reckless he undoubtedly was, at odds with the law surely, but it was hard to admit that attractive personality to be the mask of fiendish cruelty and sinister malice. And yet--the facts spoke for themselves. He had not even attempted a denial. Still there was a mystery about him, else how was it possible for two so distinct personalities to dwell together in the same body.

She hated him with all her lusty young will; not only for what he was, but also for what she had been disappointed in not finding him after her first instinctive liking. Yet it was with an odd little thrill that she ran down again into the coulee where her prosaic life had found its first real adventure. He might be all they said, but nothing could wipe out the facts that she had offered her life to save his, and that he had lent her his body as a living shield for one exhilarating moment of danger.

As she reached the hill summit beyond the coulee, Helen Messiter was aware that a rider in ungainly chaps of white wool was rapidly approaching. He dipped down into the next depression without seeing her; and when they came face to face at the top of the rise the result was instantaneous. His pony did an animated two-step not on the programme. It took one glance at the diabolical machine, and went up on its hind legs, preliminary to giving an elaborate exhibition of pitching. The rider indulged in vivid profanity and plied his quirt vigorously. But the bronco, with the fear of this unknown evil on its soul, varied its bucking so effectively that the puncher astride its hurricane deck was forced, in the language of his kind, to "take the dust."

His red head sailed through the air and landed in the white sand at the girl's feet. For a moment he sat in the road and gazed with chagrin after the vanishing heels of his mount. Then his wrathful eyes came round to the owner of the machine that had caused the eruption. His mouth had opened to give adequate expression to his feelings, when he discovered anew the forgotten fact that he was dealing with a woman. His jaw hung open for an instant in amaze; and when he remembered the unedited vocabulary he had turned loose on the world a flood of purple swept his tanned face.

She wanted to laugh, but wisely refrained. "I'm very sorry," was what she said.

He stared in silence as he slowly picked himself from the ground. His red hair rose like the quills of a porcupine above a face that had the appearance of being unfinished. Neither nose nor mouth nor chin seemed to be quite definite enough.

She choked down her gayety and offered renewed apologies.

"I was going for a doc," he explained, by way of opening his share of the conversation.

"Then perhaps you had better jump in with me and ride back to the Lazy D. I suppose that's where you came from?"

He scratched his vivid head helplessly. "Yes, ma'am."

"Then jump in."

"I was going to Bear Creek, ma'am," he added dubiously.

"How far is it?"

"'Bout twenty-five miles, and then some."

"You don't expect to walk, do you?"

"No; I allowed--"

"I'll take you back to the ranch, where you can get another horse."

"I reckon, ma'am, I'd ruther walk."

"Nonsense! Why?"

"I ain't used to them gas wagons."

"It's quite safe. There is nothing to be afraid of."

Reluctantly he got in beside her, as happy as a calf in a branding pen.

"Are you the lady that sashaid off with Ned Bannister?" he asked presently, after he had had time to smother successively some of his fear, wonder and delight at their smooth, swift progress.

"Yes. Why?"

"The boys allow you hadn't oughter have done it." Then, to place the responsibility properly on shoulders broader than his own, he added: "That's what Judd says."

"And who is Judd?"

"Judd, he's the foreman of the Lazy D."

Below them appeared the corrals and houses of a ranch nestling in a little valley flanked by hills.

"This yere's the Lazy D," announced the youth, with pride, and in the spirit of friendliness suggested a caution. "Judd, he's some peppery. You wanter smooth him down some, seeing as he's riled up to-day."

A flicker of steel came into the blue eyes. "Indeed! Well, here we are."

"If it ain't Reddy, AND the lady with the flying machine," murmured a freckled youth named McWilliams, emerging from the bunkhouse with a pan of water which had been used to bathe the wound of one of the punctured combatants.

"What's that?" snapped a voice from within; and immediately its owner appeared in the doorway and bored with narrowed black eyes the young woman in the machine.

"Who are you?" he demanded, brusquely.

"Your target," she answered, quietly. "Would you like to take another shot at me?"

The freckled lad broke out into a gurgle of laughter, at which the black, swarthy man beside him wheeled round in a rage. "What you cacklin' at, Mac?" he demanded, in a low voice.

"Oh, the things I notice," returned that youth jauntily, meeting the other's anger without the flicker of an eyelid.

"It ain't healthy to be so noticin'," insinuated the other.

"Y'u don't say," came the prompt, sarcastic retort. "If you're such a darned good judge of health, y'u better be attending to some of your patients." He jerked a casual thumb over his shoulder toward the bunks on which lay the wounded men.

"I shouldn't wonder but what there might be another patient for me to attend to," snarled the foreman.

"That so? Well, turn your wolf loose when y'u get to feelin' real devilish," jeered the undismayed one, strolling forward to assist Miss Messiter to alight.

The mistress of the Lazy D had been aware of the byplay, but she had caught neither the words nor their import. She took the offered brown hand smilingly, for here again she looked into the frank eyes of the West, unafraid and steady. She judged him not more than twenty-two, but the school where he had learned of life had held open and strenuous session every day since he could remember.

"Glad to meet y'u, ma'am," he assured her, in the current phrase of the semi-arid lands.

"I'm sure I am glad to meet YOU," she answered, heartily. "Can you tell me where is the foreman of the Lazy D?"

He introduced with a smile the swarthy man in the doorway. "This is him ma'am--Mr. Judd Morgan."

Now it happened that Mr. Judd Morgan was simmering with suppressed spleen.

"All I've got to say is that you had no business mixing up in that shootin' affair back there. Perhaps you don't know that the man you saved is Ned Bannister, the outlaw," was his surly greeting.

"Oh, yes, I know that."

"Then what d'ye mean--Who are you, anyway?" His insolent eyes coasted malevolently over her.

"Helen Messiter is my name."

It was ludicrous to see the change that came over the man. He had been prepared to bully her; and with a word she had pricked the bubble of his arrogance. He swallowed his anger and got a mechanical smile in working order.

"Glad to see you here, Miss Messiter," he said, his sinister gaze attempting to meet hers frankly "I been looking for you every day."

"But y'u managed to surprise him, after all ma'am," chuckled Mac.

"Where's yo' hawss, Reddy?" inquired a tall young man, who had appeared silently in the doorway of the bunkhouse.

Reddy pinked violently. "I had an accident, Denver," he explained. "This lady yere she--"

"Scooped y'u right off yore hawss. Y'u don't say," sympathized Mac so breathlessly that even Reddy joined in the chorus of laughter that went up at his expense.

The young woman thought to make it easy for him, and suggested an explanation.

"His horse isn't used to automobiles, and so when it met this one--"

"I got off," interposed Reddy hastily, displaying a complexion like a boiled beet.

"He got off," Mac explained gravely to the increasing audience.

Denver nodded with an imperturbable face. "He got off."

Mac introduced Miss Messiter to such of her employees as were on hand. " Shake hands with Miss Messiter, Missou," was the formula, the name alone varying to suit the embarrassed gentlemen in leathers. Each of them in turn presented a huge hand, in which her little one disappeared for the time, and was sawed up and down in the air like a pump-handle. Yet if she was amused she did not show it; and her pleasure at meeting the simple, elemental products of the plains outweighed a great deal her sense of the ludicrous.

"How are your patients getting along?" she presently asked of her foreman.

"I reckon all right. I sent Reddy for a doc, but--"

"He got off," murmured Mac pensively.

"I'll go rope another hawss," put in the man who had got off.

"Get a jump on you, then. Miss Messiter, would you like to look over the place?"

"Not now. I want to see the men that were hurt. Perhaps I can help them. Once I took a few weeks in nursing."

"Bully for you, ma'am," whooped Mac. "I've a notion those boys are sufferin' for a woman to put the diamond-hitch on them bandages."

"Bring that suit-case in," she commanded Denver, in the gentlest voice he had ever heard, after she had made a hasty inspection of the first wounded man.

From the suit-case she took a little leather medicine-case, the kind that can be bought already prepared for use. It held among other things a roll of medicated cotton, some antiseptic tablets, and a little steel instrument for probing.

"Some warm water, please; and have some boiling on the range," were her next commands.

Mac flew to execute them.

It was a pleasure to see her work, so deftly the skillful hands accomplished what her brain told them. In admiring awe the punchers stood awkwardly around while she washed and dressed the hurts. Two of the bullets had gone through the fleshy part of the arm and left clean wounds. In the case of the third man she had to probe for the lead, but fortunately found it with little difficulty. Meanwhile she soothed the victim with gentle womanly sympathy.

"I know it hurts a good deal. Just a minute and I'll be through."

His hands clutched tightly the edges of his bunk. "That's all right, doc. You attend to roping that pill and I'll endure the grief."

A long sigh of relief went up from the assembled cowboys when she drew the bullet out.

The sinewy hands fastened on the wooden bunk relaxed suddenly.

"'Frisco's daid," gasped the cook, who bore the title of Wun Hop for no reason except that he was an Irishman in a place formerly held by a Chinese.

"He has only fainted," she said quietly, and continued with the antiseptic dressing.

When it was all over, the big, tanned men gathered at the entrance to the calf corral and expanded in admiration of their new boss.

"She's a pure for fair. She grades up any old way yuh take her to the best corn-fed article on the market," pronounced Denver, with enthusiasm.

"I got to ride the boundary," sighed Missou. "I kinder hate to go right now."

"Here, too," acquiesced another. "I got a round-up on Wind Creek to cut out them two-year-olds. If 'twas my say-so, I'd order Mac on that job."

"Right kind of y'u. Seems to me"--Mac's sarcastic eye trailed around to include all those who had been singing her praises--"the new queen of this hacienda won't have no trouble at all picking a prince consort when she gets round to it. Here's Wun Hop, not what y'u might call anxious, but ce'tainly willing. Then Denver's some in the turtle-dove business, according to that hash-slinger in Cheyenne. Missou might be induced to accept if it was offered him proper; and I allow Jim ain't turned the color of Redtop's hair jest for instance. I don't want to leave out 'Frisco and the other boys carrying Bannister's pills--"

"Nor McWilliams. I'd admire to include him," murmured Denver.

That sunburned, nonchalant youth laughed musically. "Sure thing. I'd hate to be left out. The only difference is--"

"Well?"

His roving eye circled blandly round. "I stand about one show in a million. Y'u roughnecks are dead ones already."

With which cold comfort he sauntered away to join Miss Messiter and the foreman, who now appeared together at the door of the ranchhouse, prepared to make a tour of the buildings and the immediate corrals.

"Isn't there a woman on the place?" she was asking Morgan.

"No'm, there ain't. Henderson's daughter would come and stay with y'u a while I reckon."

"Please send for her at once, then, and ask her to come to-day."

"All right. I'll send one of the boys right away."

"How did y'u leave 'Frisco, ma'am?" asked Mac, by way of including himself easily.

"He's resting quietly. Unless blood-poisoning sets in they ought all to do well."

"It's right lucky for them y'u happened along. This is the hawss corral, ma'am," explained the young man just as Morgan opened his thin lips to tell her.

Judd contrived to get rid of him promptly. "Slap on a saddle, Mac, and run up the remuda so Miss Messiter can see the hawsses for herself," he ordered.

"Mebbe she'd rather ride down and look at the bunch," suggested the capable McWilliams.

As it chanced, she did prefer to ride down the pasture and look over the place from on horseback. She was in love with her ranch already. Its spacious distances, the thousands of cattle and the horses, these picturesque retainers who served her even to the shedding of an enemy's blood; they all struck an answering echo in her gallant young heart that nothing in Kalamazoo had been able to stir. She bubbled over with enthusiasm, the while Morgan covertly sneered and McWilliams warmed to the untamed youth in her.

"What about this man Bannister?" she flung out suddenly, after they had cantered back to the house when the remuda had been inspected.

Her abrupt question brought again the short, tense silence she had become used to expect.

"He runs sheep about twenty or thirty miles southwest of here," explained McWilliams, in a carefully casual tone.

"So everybody tells me, but it seems to me he spills a good deal of lead on my men," she answered impatiently. "What's the trouble?"

"Last week he crossed the dead-line with a bunch of five thousand sheep."

"Who draws this dead-line?"

"The cattlemen got together and drew it. Your uncle was one of those that marked it off, ma'am."

"And Bannister crossed it?"

"Yes, ma'am. Yesterday 'Frisco come on him and one of his herders with a big bunch of them less than fifteen miles from here. He didn't know it was Bannister, and took a pot-shot at him. 'Course Bannister came back at him, and he got Frisco in the laig."

"Didn't know it was Bannister? What difference WOULD that make?" she said impatiently.

Mac laughed. "What difference would it make, Judd?"

Morgan scowled, and the young man answered his own question. "We don't any of us go out of our way more'n a mile to cross Bannister's trail," he drawled.

"Do you wear this for an ornament? Are you upholstered with hardware to catch the eyes of some girl?" she asked, touching with the end of her whip the revolver in the holster strapped to his chaps.

His serene, gay smile flashed at her. "Are y'u ordering me to go out and get Ned Bannister's scalp?"

"No, I am not," she explained promptly. "What I am trying to discover is why you all seem to be afraid of one man. He is only a man, isn't he?"

A veil of ice seemed to fall over the boyish face and leave it chiseled marble. His unspeaking eyes rested on the swarthy foreman as he answered:

"I don't know what he is, ma'am. He may be one man, or he may be a hundred. What's more, I ain't particularly suffering to find out. Fact is, I haven't lost any Bannisters."

The girl became aware that her foreman was looking at her with a wary silent vigilance sinister in its intensity.

"In short, you're like the rest of the people in this section. You're afraid."

"Now y'u're shoutin', Miss Messiter. I sure am when it comes to shootin' off my mouth about Bannister."

"And you, Mr. Morgan?"

It struck her that the young puncher waited with a curious interest for the answer of the foreman.

"Did it look like I was afraid this mawnin', ma'am?" he asked, with narrowed eyes.

"No, you all seemed brave enough then, when you had him eight to one."

"I wasn't there," hastily put in McWilliams. "I don't go gunning for my man without giving him a show."

"I do," retorted Morgan cruelly. "I'd go if we was fifty to one. We'd 'a' got him, too, if it hadn't been for Miss Messiter. 'Twas a chance we ain't likely to get again for a year."

"It wasn't your fault you didn't kill him, Mr. Morgan," she said, looking hard at him. "You may be interested to know that your last shot missed him only about six inches, and me about four."

"I didn't know who you were," he sullenly defended.

"I see. You only shoot at women when you don't know who they are." She turned her back on him pointedly and addressed herself to McWilliams. "You can tell the men working on this ranch that I won't have any more such attacks on this man Bannister. I don't care what or who he is. I don't propose to have him murdered by my employees. Let the law take him and hang him. Do you hear?"

"I ce'tainly do, and the boys will get the word straight," he replied.

"I take it since yuh are giving your orders through Mac, yuh don't need me any longer for your foreman," bullied Morgan.

"You take it right, sir," came her crisp reply. "McWilliams will be my foreman from to-day."

The man's face, malignant and wolfish, suddenly lost its mask. That she would so promptly call his bluff was the last thing he had expected. "That's all right. I reckon yuh think yuh know your own business, but I'll put it to yuh straight. Long as yuh live you'll be sorry for this."

And with that he wheeled away.

She turned to her new foreman and found him less radiant than she could have desired. "I'm right sorry y'u did that. I'm afraid y'u'll make trouble for yourself," he said quietly.

"Why?"

"I don't know myself just why." He hesitated before adding: "They say him and Bannister is thicker than they'd ought to be. It's a cinch that he's in cahoots somehow with that Shoshone bunch of bad men."

"But--why, that's ridiculous. Only this morning he was trying to kill Bannister himself."

"That's what I don't just savvy. There's a whole lot about that business I don't get next to. I guess Bannister is at the head of them. Everybody seems agreed about that. But the whole thing is a tangle of contradiction to me. I've milled it over a heap in my mind, too."

"What are some of the contradictions?"

"Well, here's one right off the bat, as we used to say back in the States. Bannister is a great musician, they claim; fine singer, and all that. Now I happen to know he can't sing any more than a bellowing yearling."

"How do you know?" she asked, her eyes shining with interest.

"Because I heard him try it. 'Twas one day last summer when I was out cutting trail of a bunch of strays down by Dead Cow Creek. The day was hot, and I lay down behind a cottonwood and dropped off to sleep. When I awakened it didn't take me longer'n an hour to discover what had woke me. Somebody on the other side of the creek was trying to sing. It was ce'tainly the limit. Pretty soon he come out of the brush and I seen it was Bannister."

"You're sure it was Bannister?"

"If seeing is believing, I'm sure."

"And was his singing really so bad?"

"I'd hate ever to hear worse."

"Was he singing when you saw him?"

"No, he'd just quit. He caught sight of my pony grazing, and hunted cover real prompt."

"Then it might have been another man singing in the thicket."

"It might, but it wasn't. Y'u see, I'd followed him through the bush by his song, and he showed up the moment I expected him."

"Still there might have been another man there singing."

"One chance in a million," he conceded.

A sudden hope flamed up like tow in her heart. Perhaps, after all, Ned Bannister was not the leader of the outlaws. Perhaps somebody else was masquerading in his name, using Bannister's unpopularity as a shield to cover his iniquities. Still, this was an unlikely hypothesis, she had to admit. For why should he allow his good name to be dragged in the dust without any effort to save it? On a sudden impulse the girl confided her doubt to McWilliams.

"You don't suppose there can be any mistake, do you? Somehow I can't think him as bad as they say. He looks awfully reckless, but one feels one could trust his face."

"Same here," agreed the new foreman. "First off when I saw him my think was, 'I'd like to have that man backing my play when I'm sitting in the game with Old Man Hard Luck reaching out for my blue chips.'"

"You don't think faces lie, do you?"

"I've seen them that did, but, gen'rally speaking, tongues are a heap likelier to get tangled with the truth. But I reckon there ain't any doubt about Bannister. He's known over all this Western country."

The young woman sighed. "I'm afraid you're right."

CHAPTER 5

. THE DANCE AT FRASER'S

"Heard tell yet of the dance over to Fraser's?"

He was a young man of a brick red countenance and he wore loosely round his neck the best polka dot silk handkerchief that could be bought in Gimlet Butte, also such gala attire as was usually reserved only for events of importance. Sitting his horse carelessly in the plainsman's indolent fashion, he asked his question of McWilliams in front of the Lazy D bunkhouse.

"Nope. When does the shindig come off?"

"Friday night. Big thing. Y'u want to be there. All y'u lads."

"Mebbe some of us will ride over."

He of the polka dot kerchief did not appear quite satisfied. His glance wandered toward the house, as it had been doing occasionally since the moment of his arrival.

"Y'u bet this dance is ace high, Mac. Fancy costumes and masks. Y'u can rent the costumes over to Slauson's for three per. Texas, he's going to call the dances. Music from Gimlet Butte. Y'u want to get it tucked away in your thinker that this dance ain't on the order of culls. No, sirree, it's cornfed."

"Glad to hear of it. I'll cipher out somehow to be there, Slim."

Slim's glance took in the ranchhouse again. He had ridden twenty-three miles out of his way to catch a glimpse of the newly arrived mistress of the Lazy D, the report of whose good looks and adventures had traveled hand in hand through many canons even to the heart of the Tetons. It had been on Skunk Creek that he had heard of her three days before, and now he had come to verify the tongue of rumor, to see her quite casually, of course, and do his own appraising. It began to look as if he were going to have to ride off without a glimpse of her.

He nodded toward the house, turning a shade more purple than his native choleric hue. "Y'u want to bring your boss with y'u, Mac. We been hearing a right smart lot about her and the boys would admire to have her present. It's going to be strictly according to Hoyle--no rough-house plays go, y'understand."

"I'll speak to her about it." Mac's deep amusement did not reach the surface. He was quite well aware that Slim was playing for time and that he was too bashful to plump out the desire that was in him. "Great the way cows are jumpin', ain't it?"

"Sure. Well, I'll be movin' along to Slauson's. I just drapped in on my way. Thought mebbe y'u hadn't heard tell of the dance."

"Much obliged. Was it for old man Slauson y'u dug up all them togs, Slim? He'll ce'tainly admire to see y'u in that silk tablecloth y'u got round your neck."

Slim's purple deepened again. "Y'u go to grass, Mac. I don't aim to ask y'u to be my valley yet awhile."

"C'rect. I was just wondering do all the Triangle Bar boys ride the range so handsome?"

"Don't y'u worry about the Triangle Bar boys," advised the embarrassed Slim, gathering up his bridle reins.

With one more reluctant glance in the direction of the house he rode away. When he reached the corral he looked back again. His gaze showed him the boyish foreman doubled up with laughter; also the sweep of a white skirt descending from the piazza.

"Now, ain't that hoodooed luck?" the aggrieved rider of the Triangle Bar outfit demanded of himself, "I made my getaway about three shakes too soon, by gum!"

Her foreman was in the throes of mirth when Helen Messiter reached him.

"Include me in the joke," she suggested.

"Oh, I was just thinkin'," he explained inadequately.

"Does it always take you that way?"

"About these boys that drop in so frequent on business these days. Funny how fond they're getting of the Lazy D. There was that stock detective happened in yesterday to show how anxious he was about your cows. Then the two Willow Creek riders that wanted a job punching for y'u, not to mention mention the Shoshone miner and the storekeeper from Gimlet Butte and Soapy Sothern and--"

"Still I don't quite see the joke."

"It ain't any joke with them. Serious business, ma'am."

"What happened to start you on this line?"

"The lad riding down the road on that piebald pinto. He come twenty miles out of his way, plumb dressed for a wedding, all to give me an invite to a dance at Fraser's. Y'u would call that real thoughtful of him, I expect."

She gayly sparkled. "A real ranch dance--the kind you have been telling me about. Are Ida and I invited?"

"Invited? Slim hinted at a lynching if I came without y'u."

She laughed softly, merry eyes flashing swiftly at him. "How gallant you Westerners are, even though you do turn it into burlesque."

His young laugh echoed hers. "Burlesque nothing. My life wouldn't be worth a thing if I went alone. Honest, I wouldn't dare."

"Since the ranch can't afford to lose its foreman Ida and I will go along," she promised. "That is, if it is considered proper here."

"Proper. Good gracious, ma'am! Every lady for thirty miles round will be there, from six months old to eighty odd years. It wouldn't be PROPER to stay at home."

The foreman drove her to Fraser's in a surrey with Ida Henderson and one of the Lazy D punchers on the back seat. The drive was over twenty-five miles, but in that silent starry night every mile was a delight. Part of the way led through a beautiful canon, along the rocky mountain road of which the young man guided the rig with unerring skill. Beyond the gorge the country debouched into a grassy park that fell away from their feet for miles. It was in this basin that the Fraser ranch lay.

The strains of the fiddle and the thumping of feet could be heard as they drove up. Already the rooms seemed to be pretty well filled, as Helen noticed when they entered. Three sets were on the floor for a quadrille and the house shook with the energy of the dancers. On benches against the walls were seated the spectators, and on one of them stood Texas calling the dance.

"Alemane left. Right hand t'yer pardner and grand right and left. Ev-v-rybody swing," chanted the caller.

A dozen rough young fellows were clustered near the front door, apparently afraid to venture farther lest their escape be cut off. Through these McWilliams pushed a way for his charges, the cowboys falling back respectfully at once when they discovered the presence of Miss Messiter.

In the bedroom where she left her wraps the mistress of the Lazy D found a dozen or more infants and several of their mothers. In the kitchen were still other women and babies, some of the former very old and of the latter very young. A few of the babies were asleep, but most of them were still very much alive to this scene of unwonted hilarity in their young lives.

As soon as she emerged into the general publicity of the dancing room her foreman pounced upon Helen and led her to a place in the head set that was making up. The floor was rough, the music jerky and uncertain, the quadrilling an exhibition of joyous and awkward abandon; but its picturesque lack of convention appealed to the girl from Michigan. It rather startled her to be swung so vigorously, but a glance about the room showed that these humorous-eyed Westerners were merely living up to the duty of the hour as they understood it.

At the close of the quadrille Helen found herself being introduced to "Mr. Robins," alias Slim, who drew one of his feet back in an embarrassed bow.

"I enjoy to meet y'u, ma'am," he assured her, and supplemented this with a request for the next dance, after which he fell into silence that was painful in its intensity.

Nearly all the dances were squares, as few of those present understood the intricacies of the waltz and two-step. Hence it happened that the proficient McWilliams secured three round dances with his mistress.

It was during the lunch of sandwiches, cake and coffee that Helen perceived an addition to the company. The affair had been advertised a costume ball, but most of those present had construed this very liberally. She herself, to be sure, had come as Mary Queen of Scots, Mac was arrayed in the scarlet tunic and tight-fitting breeches of the Northwest Mounted Police, and perhaps eight or ten others had made some attempt at representing some one other than they were. She now saw another, apparently a new arrival, standing in the doorway negligently. A glance told her that he was made up for a road agent and that his revolvers and mask were a part of the necessary costuming.

Slowly his gaze circled the room and came round to her. His eyes were hard as diamonds and as flashing, so that the impact of their meeting looks seemed to shock her physically. He was a tall man, swarthy of hue, and he carried himself with a light ease that looked silken strong. Something in the bearing was familiar yet not quite familiar either. It seemed to suggest a resemblance to somebody she knew. And in the next thought she knew that the somebody was Ned Bannister.

The man spoke to Fraser, just then passing with a cup of coffee, and Helen saw the two men approach. The stranger was coming to be formally introduced.

"Shake hands with Mr. Holloway, Miss Messiter. He's from up in the hill country and he rode to our frolic. Y'u've got three guesses to figure out what he's made up as."

"One will be quite enough, I think," she answered coldly.

Fraser departed on his destination with the coffee and the newcomer sat down on the bench beside her.

"One's enough, is it?" he drawled smilingly.

"Quite, but I'm surprised so few came in costume. Why didn't you? But I suppose you had your reasons."

"Didn't I? I'm supposed to be a bad man from the hills."

She swept him casually with an indifferent glance. "And isn't that what you are in real life?"

His sharp scrutiny chiseled into her. "What's that?"

"You won't mind if I forget and call you Mr. Bannister instead of Mr. Holloway?"

She thought his counterfeit astonishment perfect.

"So I'm Ned Bannister, am I?"

Their eyes clashed.

"Aren't you?"

She felt sure of it, and yet there was a lurking doubt. For there was in his manner something indescribably more sinister than she had felt in him on that occasion when she had saved his life. Then a debonair recklessness had been the outstanding note, but now there was something ribald and wicked in him.

"Since y'u put it as a question, common politeness demands an answer. Ned Bannister is my name."

"You are the terror of this country?"

"I shan't be a terror to y'u, ma'am, if I can help it," he smiled.

"But you are the man they call the king?"

"I have that honor."

"HONOR?"

At the sharp scorn of her accent he laughed.

"Do you mean that you are proud of your villainy?" she demanded.

"Y'u've ce'tainly got the teacher habit of asking questions," he replied with a laugh that was a sneer.

A shadow fell across them and a voice said quietly, "She didn't wait to ask any when she saved your life down in the coulee back of the Lazy D."

The shadow was Jim McWilliams's, and its owner looked down at the man beside the girl with steady, hostile eyes.

"Is this your put in, sir?" the other flashed back.

"Yes, seh, it is. The boys don't quite like seeing your hardware so prominent at a social gathering. In this community guns don't come into the house at a ranch dance. I'm a committee to mention the subject and to collect your thirty-eights if y'u agree with us."

"And if I don't agree with you?"

"There's all outdoors ready to receive y'u, seh. It would be a pity to stay in the one spot where your welcome's wore thin."

"Still I may choose to stay."

"Ce'tainly, but if y'u decide that way y'u better step out on the porch and talk it over with us where there ain't ladies present."

"Isn't this a costume dance? What's the matter with my guns? I'm an outlaw, ain't I?"

"I don't know whether y'u are or not, seh. If y'u say y'u are we're ready to take your word. The guns have to be shucked if y'u stay here. They might go off accidental and scare the ladies. "

The man rose blackly. "I'll remember this. If y'u knew who y'u were getting so gay with--"

"I can guess, Mr. Holloway, the kind of an outfit y'u freight with, and I expect I could put a handle to another name for you."

"By God, if y'u dare to say--"

"I don't dare. especially among so many ladies," came McWilliams's jaunty answer.

The eyes of the two men gripped, after which Holloway swung on his heel and swaggered defiantly out of the house.

Presently there came the sound of a pony's feet galloping down the road. It had not yet died away when Texas announced that the supper intermission was over.

"Pardners for a quadrille. Ladies' choice."

The dance was on again full swing. The fiddlers were tuning up and couples gathering for a quadrille. Denver came to claim Miss Messiter for a partner. Apparently even the existence of the vanished Holloway was forgotten. But Helen remembered it, and pondered over the affair long after daylight had come and brought with it an end to the festivities.

CHAPTER 6

. A PARTY CALL

The mistress of the Lazy D, just through with her morning visit to the hospital in the bunkhouse, stopped to read the gaudy poster tacked to the wall. It was embellished with the drawing of a placid rider astride the embodiment of fury incarnate, under which was the legend: "Stick to Your Saddle."

BIG FOURTH OF JULY CELEBRATION AT GIMLET BUTTE. ROPING AND BRONCO BUSTING CONTESTS FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE WORLD AND BIG PRIZES, Including $1,000 for the Best Rider and the Same for Best Roper. Cow Pony Races, Ladies' Races and Ladies' Riding Contest, Fireworks, AND FREE BARBECUE! ! ! ! EVERYBODY COME AND TURN YOUR WOLF LOOSE.

A sudden thud of pounding hoofs, a snatch of ragtime, and her foreman swept up in a cloud of white dust. His pony came from a gallop to an instant halt, and simultaneously Mac landed beside her, one hand holding the wide-brimmed hat he had snatched off in his descent, the other hitched by a casual thumb to the belt of his chaps.

She laughed. "You really did it very well."

Mac blushed. He was still young enough to take pride in his picturesque regalia, to prefer the dramatic way of doing a commonplace thing. But, though he liked this girl's trick of laughing at him with a perfectly grave face out of those dark, long-lashed eyes, he would have liked it better if sometimes they had given back the applause he thought his little tricks merited.

"Sho! That's foolishness," he deprecated.

"I suppose they got you to sit for this picture;" and she indicated the poster with a wave of her hand.

"That ain't a real picture," he explained, and when she smiled added, "as of course y'u know. No hawss ever pitched that way--and the saddle ain't right. Fact is, it's all wrong."

"How did it come here? It wasn't here last night."

"I reckon Denver brought it from Slauson's. He was ridin' that country yesterday, and as the boys was out of smokin' he come home that way."

"I suppose you'll all go?"

"I reckon."

"And you'll ride?"

"I aim to sit in."

"At the roping, too?"

"No, m'm. I ain't so much with the rope. It takes a Mexican to snake a rope."

"Then I'll be able to borrow only a thousand dollars from you to help buy that bunch of young cows we were speaking about," she mocked.

"Only a thousand," he grinned. "And it ain't a cinch I'll win. There are three or four straightup riders on this range. A fellow come from the Hole-in-the-Wall and won out last year."

"And where were you?"

"Oh, I took second prize," he explained, with obvious indifference.

"Well, you had better get first this year. We'll have to show them the Lazy D hasn't gone to sleep."

"Sure thing," he agreed.

"Has that buyer from Cheyenne turned up yet?" she asked, reverting to business.

"Not yet. Do y'u want I should make the cut soon as he comes?"

"Don't you think his price is a little low--twenty dollars from brand up?"

"It's a scrub bunch. We want to get rid of them, anyway. But you're the doctor," he concluded slangily.

She thought a moment. "We'll let him have them, but don't make the cut till I come back. I'm going to ride over to the Twin Buttes."

His admiring eyes followed her as she went toward the pony that was waiting saddled with the rein thrown to the ground. She carried her slim, lithe figure with a grace, a lightness, that few women could have rivaled. When she had swung to the saddle, she half-turned in her seat to call an order to the foreman.

"I think, Mac, you had better run up those horses from Eagle Creek. Have Denver and Missou look after them."

"Sure, ma'am," he said aloud; and to himself: "She's ce'tainly a thoroughbred. Does everything well she tackles. I never saw anything like it. I'm a Chink if she doesn't run this ranch like she had been at it forty years. Same thing with her gasoline bronc. That pinto, too. He's got a bad eye for fair, but she makes him eat out of her hand. I reckon the pinto is like the rest of us--clean mashed." He put his arms on the corral fence and grew introspective. "Blamed if I know what it is about her. 'Course she's a winner on looks, but that ain't it alone. I guess it's on account of her being such a game little gentleman. When she turns that smile loose on a fellow--well, there's sure sunshine in the air. And game--why, Ned Bannister ain't gamer himself."

McWilliams had climbed lazily to the top board of the fence. He was an energetic youth, but he liked to do his thinking at his ease. Now, as his gaze still followed its lodestar, he suddenly slipped from his seat and ran forward, pulling the revolver from its scabbard as he ran. Into his eyes had crept a tense alertness, the shining watchfulness of the tiger ready for its spring.

The cause of the change in the foreman of the Lazy D was a simple one, and on its face innocent enough. It was merely that a stranger had swung in casually at the gate of the short stable lane, and was due to meet Miss Messiter in about ten seconds. So far good enough. A dozen travelers dropped in every day, but this particular one happened to be Ned Bannister.

From the stable door a shot rang out. Bannister ducked and shouted genially: "Try again."

But Helen Messiter whirled her pony as on a half-dollar, and charged down on the stable.

"Who fired that shot?" she demanded, her eyes blazing.

The horse-wrangler showed embarrassment. He had found time only to lean the rifle against the wall.

"I reckon I did, ma'am. Y'u see--"

"Did you get my orders about this feud?" she interrupted crisply.

"Yes, ma'am, but--"

"Then you may call for your time. When I give my men orders I expect them to obey."

"I wouldn't 'a' shot if I'd knowed y'u was so near him. Y'u was behind that summer kitchen," he explained lamely.

"You only expect to obey orders when I'm in sight. Is that it?" she asked hotly, and without waiting for an answer delivered her ultimatum. "Well, I won't have it. I run this ranch as long as I am its owner. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am. I hadn't ought to have did it, but when I seen Bannister it come over me I owed him a pill for the one he sent me last week down in the coulee. So I up and grabbed the rifle and let him have it."

"Then you may up and grab your trunk for Medicine Hill. Shorty will drive you tomorrow."

When she returned to her unexpected guest, Helen found him in conversation with McWilliams. The latter's gun had found again its holster, but his brown, graceful hand hovered close to its butt.

"Seems like a long time since the Lazy D has been honored by a visit from Mr. Bannister," he was saying, with gentle irony.

"That's right. So I have come to make up for lost time," came Bannister's quiet retort.

Miss Messiter did not know much about Wyoming human nature in the raw, but she had learned enough to be sure that the soft courtesy of these two youths covered a stark courage that might leap to life any moment. Wherefore she interposed.

"We'll be pleased to show you over the place, Mr. Bannister. As it happens, we are close to the hospital. Shall we begin there?"

Her cool, silken defiance earned a smile from the visitor. "All your cases doing well, ma'am?"

"It's very kind of you to ask. I suppose you take an interest because they are YOUR cases, too, in a way of speaking?"

"Mine? Indeed!"

"Yes. If it were not for you I'm afraid our hospital would be empty."

"It must be right pleasant to be nursed by Miss Messiter. I reckon the boys are grateful to me for scattering my lead so promiscuous."

"I heard one say he would like to lam your haid tenderly," murmured McWilliams.

"With a two-by-four, I suppose," laughed Bannister.

"Shouldn't wonder. But, looking y'u over casual, it occurs to me he might get sick of his job befo' he turned y'u loose," McWilliams admitted, with a glance of admiration at the clean power showing in the other's supple lines.

Nor could either the foreman or his mistress deny the tribute of their respect to the bravado of this scamp who sat so jauntily his seat regardless of what the next moment might bring forth. Three wounded men were about the place, all presumably quite willing to get a clean shot at him in the open. One of them had taken his chance already, and missed. Their visitor had no warrant for knowing that a second might not any instant try his luck with better success. Yet he looked every inch the man on horseback, no whit disturbed, not the least conscious of any danger. Tall, spare, broad shouldered, this berry-brown young man, crowned with close-cropped curls, sat at the gates of the enemy very much at his insolent case.

"I came over to pay my party call," he explained.

"It really wasn't necessary. A run in the machine is not a formal function."

"Maybe not in Kalamazoo."

"I thought perhaps you had come to get my purse and the sixty-three dollars," she derided.

"No, ma'am; nor yet to get that bunch of cows I was going to rustle from you to buy an auto. I came to ask you to go riding with me."

The audacity of it took her breath. Of all the outrageous things she had ever heard, this was the cream. An acknowledged outlaw, engaged in feud with her retainers over that deadly question of the run of the range, he had sauntered over to the ranch where lived a dozen of his enemies, three of them still scarred with his bullets, merely to ask her to go riding with him. The magnificence of his bravado almost obliterated its impudence. Of course she would not think of going. The idea! But her eyes glowed with appreciation of his courage, not the less because the consciousness of it was so conspicuously absent from his manner.

"I think not, Mr. Bannister" and her face almost imperceptibly stiffened. "I don't go riding with strangers, nor with men who shoot my boys. And I'll give you a piece of advice, sir. That is, to burn the wind back to your home. Otherwise I won't answer for your life. My punchers don't love you, and I don't know how long I can keep them from you. You're not wanted here any more than you were at the dance the other evening."

McWilliams nodded. "That's right. Y'u better roll your trail, seh; and if y'u take my advice, you'll throw gravel lively. I seen two of the boys cutting acrost that pasture five minutes ago. They looked as if they might be haided to cut y'u off, and I allow it may be their night to howl. Miss Messiter don't want to be responsible for y'u getting lead poisoning."

"Indeed!" Their visitor looked politely interested. "This solicitude for me is very touching. I observe that both of you are carefully blocking me from the bunkhouse in order to prevent another practice-shot. If I can't persuade you to join me in a ride, Miss Messiter, I reckon I'll go while I'm still unpunctured." He bowed, and gathered the reins for departure.

"One moment! Mr. McWilliams and I are going with you," the girl announced.

"Changed your mind? Think you'll take a little pasear, after all?"

"I don't want to be responsible for your killing. We'll see you safe off the place," she answered curtly.

The foreman fell in on one side of Bannister, his mistress on the other. They rode in close formation, to lessen the chance of an ambuscade. Bannister alone chatted at his debonair ease, ignoring the responsibility they felt for his safety.

"I got my ride, after all," he presently chuckled. "To be sure, I wasn't expecting Mr. McWilliams to chaperon us. But that's an added pleasure."

"Would it be an added pleasure to get bumped off to kingdom come?" drawled the foreman, giving a reluctant admiration to his aplomb.

"Thinking of those willing boys of yours again, are you?" laughed Bannister. "They're ce'tainly a heap prevalent with their hardware, but their hunting don't seem to bring home any meat."

"By the way, how IS your ankle, Mr. Bannister? I forgot to ask." This shot from the young woman.

He enjoyed it with internal mirth. "They did happen on the target that time," he admitted. "Oh, it's getting along fine, but I aim to do most of my walking on horseback for a while."

They swept past the first dangerous grove of cottonwoods in safety, and rounded the boundary fence corner.

"They're in that bunch of pines over there," said the foreman, after a single sweep of his eyes in that direction.

"Yes, I see they are. You oughtn't to let your boys wear red bandannas when they go gunning, Miss Messiter. It's an awful careless habit."

Helen herself could see no sign of life in the group of pines, but she knew their keen, trained eyes had found what hers could not. Riding with one or another of her cowboys, she had often noticed how infallibly they could read the country for miles around. A scattered patch on a distant hillside, though it might be a half-hour's ride from them, told them a great deal more than seemed possible. To her the dark spots sifted on that slope meant scrub underbrush, if there was any meaning at all in them. But her riders could tell not only whether they were alive, but could differentiate between sheep and cattle. Indeed, McWilliams could nearly always tell whether they were HER cattle or not. He was unable to explain to her how he did it. By a sort of instinct, she supposed.

The pines were negotiated in safety, and on the part of the men with a carelessness she could not understand. For after they had passed there was a spot between her shoulder-blades that seemed to tingle in expectation of a possible bullet boring its way through. But she would have died rather than let them know how she felt.

Perhaps Bannister understood, however, for he remarked casually: "I wouldn't be ambling past so leisurely if I was riding alone. It makes a heap of difference who your company is, too. Those punchers wouldn't take a chance at me now for a million dollars."

"No, they're some haidstrong, but they ain't plumb locoed," agreed Mac.

Fifteen minutes later Helen drew up at the line corner. "We'll part company here, Mr. Bannister. I don't think there is any more danger from my men."

"Before we part there is something I want to say. I hold that a man has as much right to run sheep on these hills as cows. It's government land, and neither one of us owns it. It's bound to be a case of the survival of the fittest. If sheep are hardier and more adapted to the country, then cows have got to vamos. That's nature, as it looks to me. The buffalo and the antelope have gone, and I guess cows have got to take their turn."

Her scornful eyes burned him. "You came to tell me that, did you? Well, I don't believe a word of it. I'll not yield my rights without a fight. You may depend on that."

"Here, too," nodded her foreman. "I'm with my boss clear down the line. And as soon as she lets me turn loose my six-gun, you'll hear it pop, seh."

"I have not a doubt of it, Mr. McWilliams," returned the sheepman blithely. "In the meantime I was going to say that though most of my interests are in sheep instead of cattle--"

"I thought most of your interests were in other people's property," interrupted the young woman.

"It goes into sheep ultimately," he smiled. "Now, what I am trying to get at is this: I'm in debt to you a heap, Miss Messiter, and since I'm not all yellow cur, I intend to play fair with you. I have ordered my sheep back across the deadline. You can have this range to yourself for your cattle. The fight's off so far as we personally are concerned."

A hint of deeper color touched her cheeks. Her manner had been cavalier at best; for the most part frankly hostile; and all the time the man was on an errand of good-will. Certainly he had scored at her expense, and she was ashamed of herself.

"Y'u mean that you're going to respect the deadline? asked Mac in surprise.

"I didn't say quite that," explained the sheepman. "What I said was that I meant to keep on my side of it so far as the Lazy D cattle are concerned. I'll let your range alone."

"But y'u mean to cross it down below where the Bar Double-E cows run?"

Bannister's gay smile touched the sardonic face. "Do you invite the public to examine your hand when you sit into a game of poker, Mr. McWilliams?"

"You're dead right. It's none of my business what y'u do so long as y'u keep off our range," admitted the foreman. "And next time the conversation happens on Mr. Bannister, I'll put in my little say-so that he ain't all black."

"That's very good of you, sir," was the other's ironical retort.

The girl's gauntleted hand offered itself impulsively. "We can't be friends under existing circumstances, Mr. Bannister. But that does not alter the fact that I owe you an apology. You came as a peace envoy, and one of my men shot at you. Of course, he did not understand the reason why you came, but that does not matter. I did not know your reason myself, and I know I have been very inhospitable."

"Are you shaking hands with Ned Bannister the sheepman or Ned Bannister the outlaw?" asked the owner of that name, with a queer little smile that seemed to mock himself.

"With Ned Bannister the gentleman. If there is another side to him I don't know it personally."

He flushed underneath the tan, but very plainly with pleasure. "Your opinions are right contrary to Hoyle, ma'am. Aren't you aware that a sheepman is the lowest thing that walks? Ask Mr. McWilliams."

"I have known stockmen of that opinion, but--"

The foreman's sentence was never finished. From a clump of bushes a hundred yards away came the crack of a rifle. A bullet sang past, cutting a line that left on one side of it Bannister, on the other Miss Messiter and her foreman. Instantly the two men slid from their horses on the farther side, dragged down the young woman behind the cover of the broncos, and arranged the three ponies so as to give her the greatest protection available. Somehow the weapons that garnished them had leaped to their hands before their feet touched the ground.

"That coyote isn't one of our men. I'll back that opinion high," said McWilliams promptly.

"Who is he?" the girl whispered.

"That's what we're going to find out pretty soon," returned Bannister grimly. "Chances are it's me he is trying to gather. Now, I'm going to make a break for that cottonwood. When I go, you better run up a white handkerchief and move back from the firing-line. Turn Buck loose when you leave. He'll stay around and come when I whistle."

He made a run for it, zigzagging through the sage-brush so swiftly as to offer the least certain mark possible for a sharpshooter. Yet twice the rifle spoke before he reached the cottonwood.

Meanwhile Mac had fastened the handkerchief of his mistress on the end of a switch he had picked up and was edging out of range. His tense, narrowed gaze never left the bush-clump from which the shots were being pumped, and he was careful during their retreat to remain on the danger side of the road, in order to cover Helen.

"I guess Bannister's right. He don't want us, whoever he is."

And even as he murmured it, the wind of a bullet lifted his hat from his head. He picked it up and examined it. The course of the bullet was marked by a hole in the wide brim, and two more in the side and crown.

"He ce'tainly ventilated it proper. I reckon, ma'am, we'll make a run for it. Lie low on the pinto's neck, with your haid on the off side. That's right. Let him out."

A mile and a half farther up the road Mac reined in, and made the Indian peace-sign. Two dejected figures came over the hill and resolved themselves into punchers of the Lazy D. Each of them trailed a rifle by his side.

"You're a fine pair of ring-tailed snorters, ain't y'u?" jeered the foreman. "Got to get gay and go projectin' round on the shoot after y'u got your orders to stay hitched. Anything to say for yo'selves?"

If they had it was said very silently.

"Now, Miss Messiter is going to pass it up this time, but from now on y'u don't go off on any private massacrees while y'u punch at the Lazy D. Git that? This hyer is the last call for supper in the dining-cah. If y'u miss it, y'u'll feed at some other chuckhouse." Suddenly the drawl of his sarcasm vanished. His voice carried the ring of peremptory command. "Jim, y'u go back to the ranch with Miss Messiter, AND KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN. Missou, I need y'u. We're going back. I reckon y'u better hang on to the stirrup, for we got to travel some. Adios, senorita!"

He was off at a slow lope on the road he had just come, the other man running beside the horse. Presently he stopped, as if the arrangement were not satisfactory; and the second man swung behind him on the pony. Later, when she turned in her saddle, she saw that they had left the road and were cutting across the plain, as if to take the sharpshooter in the rear.

Her troubled thoughts stayed with her even after she had reached the ranch. She was nervously excited, keyed up to a high pitch; for she knew that out on the desert, within a mile or two of her, men were stalking each other with life or death in the balance as the price of vigilance, skill and an unflawed steel nerve. While she herself had been in danger, she had been mistress of her fear. But now she could do nothing but wait, after ordering out such reinforcements as she could recruit without delay; and the inaction told upon her swift, impulsive temperament. Once, twice, the wind brought to her a faint sound.

She had been pacing the porch, but she stopped, white as a sheet. Behind those faint explosions might lie a sinister tragedy. Her mind projected itself into a score of imaginary possibilities. She listened, breathless in her tensity, but no further echo of that battlefield reached her. The sun still shone warmly on brown Wyoming. She looked down into a rolling plain that blurred in the distance from knobs and flat spaces into a single stretch that included a thousand rises and depressions. That roll of country teemed with life, but the steady, inexorable sun beat down on what seemed a shining, primeval waste of space. Yet somewhere in that space the tragedy was being determined--unless it had been already enacted.

She wanted to scream. The very stillness mocked her. So, too, did the clicking windmill, with its monotonous regularity. Her pony still stood saddled in the yard. She knew that her place was at home, and she fought down a dozen times the tremendous impulse to mount and fly to the field of combat.

She looked at her watch. How slowly the minutes dragged! It could not be only five minutes since she had looked last time. Again she fell to pacing the long west porch, and interrupted herself a dozen times to stop and listen.

"I can bear it no longer," she told herself at last, and in another moment was in the saddle plying her pinto with the quirt.

But before she reached the first cottonwoods she saw them coming. Her glasses swept the distant group, and with a shiver she made out the dreadful truth. They were coming slowly, carrying something between them. The girl did not need to be told that the object they were bringing home was their dead or wounded.

A figure on horseback detached itself from the huddle of men and galloped towards her. He was coming to break the news. But who was the victim? Bannister or McWilliams she felt sure, by reason of the sinking heart in her; and then it came home that she would be hard hit if it were either.

The approaching rider began to take distinct form through her glasses. As he pounded forward she recognized him. It was the man nicknamed Denver. The wind was blowing strongly from her to him, and while he was still a hundred yards away she hurled her question.

His answer was lost in the wind sweep, but one word of it she caught. That word was "Mac."

CHAPTER 7

. THE MAN FROM THE SHOSHONE FASTNESSES

Though the sharpshooter's rifle cracked twice during his run for the cottonwood, the sheepman reached the tree in safety. He could dodge through the brush as elusively as any man in Wyoming. It was a trick he had learned on the whitewashed football gridiron. For in his buried past this man had been the noted half-back of a famous college, and one of his specialties had been running the ball back after a catch through a broken field of opponents. The lesson that experience had then thumped into him had since saved his life on more than one occasion.

Having reached the tree, Bannister took immediate advantage of the lie of the ground to snake forward unobserved for another hundred feet. There was a dip from the foot of the tree, down which he rolled into the sage below. He wormed his way through the thick scrub brush to the edge of a dry creek, into the bed of which he slid. Then swiftly, his body bent beneath the level of the bank, he ran forward in the sand. He moved noiselessly, eyes and ears alert to aid him, and climbed the bank at a point where a live oak grew.

Warily he peeped out from behind its trunk and swept the plain for his foe. Nothing was to be seen of him. Slowly and patiently his eyes again went over the semi-circle before him, for where death may lurk behind every foot of vegetation, every bump or hillock, the plainsman leaves as little as may be to chance. No faintest movement could escape the sheepman's eyes, no least stir fail to apprise his ears. Yet for many minutes he waited in vain, and the delay told him that he had to do with a trained hunter rather than a mere reckless cow-puncher. For somewhere in the rough country before him his enemy lay motionless, every faculty alive to the least hint of his presence.

It was the whirring flight of a startled dove that told Bannister the whereabouts of his foe. Two hundred yards from him the bird rose, and the direction it took showed that the man must have been trailing forward from the opposite quarter. The sheepman slipped back into the dry creek bed, retraced his steps for about a stone-throw, and again crawled up the bank.

For a long time he lay face down in the grass, his gaze riveted to the spot where he knew his opponent to be hidden. A faint rustle not born of the wind stirred the sage. Still Bannister waited. A less experienced plainsman would have blazed away and exposed his own position. But not this young man with the steel-wire nerves. Silent as the coming of dusk, no breaking twig or displaced brush betrayed his self-contained presence.

Something in the clump he watched wriggled forward and showed indistinctly through an opening in the underscrub. He whipped his rifle into position and fired twice. The huddled brown mass lurched forward and disappeared.

"Wonder if I got him? Seems to me I couldn't have missed clean," thought Bannister.

Silence as before, vast and unbroken.

A scramble of running feet tearing a path through the brush, a crouching body showing darkly for an eyeflash, and then the pounding of a horse's retreating feet.

Bannister leaped up, ran lightly across the intervening space, and with his repeater took a potshot at the galloping horseman.

"Missed!" he muttered, and at once gave a sharp whistle that brought his pony to him on the trot. He vaulted to the saddle and gave chase. It was rough going, but nothing in reason can stop a cow-pony. As sure footed as a mountain goat, as good a climber almost as a cat, Buck followed the flying horseman over perilous rock rims and across deep-cut creek beds. Pantherlike he climbed up the steep creek sides without hesitation, for the round-up had taught him never to falter at stiff going so long as his rider put him at it.

It was while he was clambering out of the sheer sides of a wash that Bannister made a discovery. The man he pursued was wounded. Something in the manner of the fellow's riding had suggested this to him, but a drop of blood splashed on a stone that happened to meet his eye made the surmise a certainty.

He was gaining now--not fast, almost imperceptibly, but none the less surely. He could see the man looking over his shoulder, once, twice, and then again, with that hurried, fearful glance that measures the approach of retribution. Barring accidents, the man was his.

But the unforeseen happened. Buck stepped in the hole of a prairie dog and went down. Over his head flew the rider like a stone from a catapult.

How long Ned Bannister lay unconscious he never knew. But when he came to himself it was none too soon. He sat up dizzily and passed his hand over his head. Something had happened.

What was it? Oh, yes, he had been thrown from his horse. A wave of recollection passed over him, and his mind was clear once more. Presently he got to his feet and moved rather uncertainly toward Buck, for the horse was grazing quietly a few yards from him.

But half way to the pony he stopped. Voices, approaching by way of the bed of Dry Creek, drifted to him.

"He must 'a' turned and gone back. Mebbe he guessed we was there."

And a voice that Bannister knew, one that had a strangely penetrant, cruel ring of power through the drawl, made answer: "Judd said before he fainted he was sure the man was Ned Bannister. I'd ce'tainly like to meet up with my beloved cousin right now and even up a few old scores. By God, I'd make him sick before I finished with him!"

"I'll bet y'u would, Cap," returned the other, admiringly. "Think we'd better deploy here and beat up the scenery a few as we go?"

There are times when the mind works like lightning, flashes its messages on the wings of an electric current. For Bannister this was one of them. The whole situation lighted for him plainly as if it had been explained for an hour.

His cousin had been out with a band of his cut-throats on some errand, and while returning to the fastnesses of the Shoshone Mountains had stopped to noon at a cow spring three or four miles from the Lazy D. Judd Morgan, whom he knew to be a lieutenant of the notorious bandit, had ridden toward the ranch in the hope of getting an opportunity to vent his anger against its mistress or some of her men. While pursuing the renegade Bannister had stumbled into a hornet's nest, and was in imminent danger of being stung to death. Even now the last speaker was scrambling up the bank toward him.

The sheepman had to choose between leaving his rifle and immediate flight. The latter was such a forlorn hope that he gave up Buck for the moment, and ran back to the place where his repeating Winchester had fallen. Without stopping he scooped the rifle up as he passed. In his day he had been a famous sprinter, and he scudded now for dear life. It was no longer a question of secrecy. The sound of men breaking their hurried way through the heavy brush of the creek bank came crisply to him. A voice behind shouted a warning, and from not a hundred yards in front of him came an answering shout. Hemmed in from the fore and the rear, he swung off at a right angle. An open stretch lay before him, but he had to take his desperate chance without cover. Anything was better than to be trapped like a wild beast driven by the beaters to the guns.

Across the bare, brown mesa he plunged; and before he had taken a dozen steps the first rifle had located its prey and was sniping at him. He had perhaps a hundred yards to cover ere the mesa fell away into a hollow, where he might find temporary protection in the scrub pines. And now a second marksman joined himself to the first. But he was going fast, already had covered half the distance, and it is no easy thing to bring down a live, dodging target.

Again the first gun spoke, and scored another miss, whereat a mocking, devilish laugh rang out in the sunshine.

"Y'u boys splash a heap of useless lead around the horizon. I reckon Cousin Ned's my meat. Y'u see, I get him in the flapper without spoiling him complete." And at the word he flung the rifle to his shoulder and fired with no apparent aim.

The running man doubled up like a cottontail, but found his feet again in an instant, though one arm hung limp by his side. He was within a dozen feet of the hilldrop and momentary safety.

"Shall I take him, Cap?" cried one of the men.

"No; he's mine." The rifle smoked once more and again the runner went down. But this time he plunged headlong down the slope and out of sight.

The outlaw chief turned on his heel. "I reckon he'll not run any more to-day. Bring him into camp and we'll take him along with us," he said carelessly, and walked away to his horse in the creek bed.

Two of the men started forward, but they stopped half way, as if rooted to the ground. For a galloping horseman suddenly drew up at the very point for which they were starting. He leaped to the ground and warned them back with his rifle. While he covered them a second man rode up and lifted Bannister to his saddle.

"Ready, Mac," he gave the word, and both horses disappeared with their riders over the brow of the hill. When the surprised desperadoes recovered themselves and reached that point the rescuers had disappeared in the heavy brush.

The alarm was at once given, and their captain, cursing them in a raucous bellow for their blunder, ordered immediate pursuit. It was some little time before the trail of the fugitives was picked up, but once discovered they were over hauled rapidly.

"We're not going to get out without swapping lead," McWilliams admitted anxiously. "I wisht y'u wasn't hampered with that load, but I reckon I'll have to try to stand them off alone."

"We bucked into a slice of luck when I opened on his bronc mavericking around alone. Hadn't been for that we could never have made it," said Missou, who never crossed a bridge until he came to it.

"We haven't made it yet, old hoss, not by a long mile, and two more on top o' that. They're beginning to pump lead already. Huh! Got to drap your pills closer'n that 'fore y'u worry me."

"I believe he's daid, anyway," said Missou presently, peering down into the white face of the unconscious man.

"Got to hang onto the remains, anyhow, for Miss Helen. Those coyotes are too much of the wolf breed to leave him with them."

"Looks like they're gittin' the aim some better," equably remarked the other a minute later, when a spurt of sand flew up in front of him.

"They're ce'tainly crowding us. I expaict I better send them a 'How-de-do?' so as to discourage them a few." He took as careful aim as he could on the galloping horse, but his bullet went wide.

"They're gaining like sixty. It's my offhand opinion we better stop at that bunch of trees and argue some with them. No use buck-jumpin' along to burn the wind while they drill streaks of light through us."

"All right. Take the trees. Y'u'll be able to get into the game some then."

They debouched from the road to the little grove and slipped from their horses.

"Deader'n hell," murmured Missou, as he lifted the limp body from his horse. " But I guess we'll pack what's left back to the little lady at the Lazy D."

The leader of the pursuers halted his men just out of range and came forward alone, holding his right hand up in the usual signal of peace. In appearance he was not unlike Ned Bannister. There was the same long, slim, tiger build, with the flowing muscles rippling easily beneath the loose shirt; the same effect of power and dominance, the same clean, springy stride. The pose of the head, too, even the sweep of salient jaw, bore a marked resemblance. But similarity ceased at the expression. For instead of frankness there lurked here that hint of the devil of strong passion uncontrolled. He was the victim of his own moods, and in the space of an hour one might, perhaps, read in that face cold cunning, cruel malignity, leering ribaldry, as well as the hard-bitten virtues of unflinching courage and implacable purpose.

"I reckon you're near enough," suggested Mac, when the man had approached to within a hundred feet of the tree clump.

"Y'u're drawing the dead-line," the other acknowledged, indolently. "It won't take ten words to tell y'u what I want and mean to have. I'm giving y'u two minutes to hand me over the body of Ned Bannister. If y'u don't see it that way I'll come and make a lead mine of your whole outfit."

"Y'u can't come too quick, seh. We're here a-shootin', and don't y'u forget it," was McWilliams's prompt answer.

The sinister face of the man from the Shoshones darkened. "Y'u've signed your own death warrants," he let out through set teeth, and at the word swung on his heel.

"The ball's about to open. Pardners for a waltz. Have a dust-cutter, Mac, before she grows warm."

The puncher handed over his flask, and the other held it before his eye and appraised the contents in approved fashion. " Don't mind if I do. Here's how!"

"How!" echoed Missou, in turn, and tipped up the bottle till the liquor gurgled down his baked throat.

"He's fanning out his men so as to, get us both at the front and back door. Lucky there ain't but four of them."

"I guess we better lie back to back," proposed Missou. "If our luck's good I reckon they're going to have a gay time rushing this fort."

A few desultory shots had already been dropped among the cottonwoods, and returned by the defendants when Missou let out a yell of triumph.

"Glory Hallelujah! Here comes the boys splittin' down the road hell-for-leather. That lopsided, ring-tailed snorter of a hawss-thief is gathering his wolves for a hike back to the tall timber. Feed me a cigareet, Mac. I plumb want to celebrate."

It was as the cow-puncher had said. Down the road a cloud of dust was sweeping toward them, in the centre of which they made out three hardriding cowboys from the ranch. Farther back, in the distance, was another dust whirl. The outlaw chief's hard, vigilant gaze swept over the reinforcements! and decided instantly that the game had gone against him for the present. He whistled shrilly twice, and began a slow retreat toward the hills. The miscreants flung a few defiant shots at the advancing cowmen, and disappeared, swallowed up in the earth swells.

The homeward march was a slow one, for Bannister had begun to show signs of consciousness and it was necessary to carry him with extreme care. While they were still a mile from the ranch house the pinto and its rider could be seen loping toward them.

"Ride forward, Denver, and tell Miss Helen we're coming. Better have her get everything fixed to doctor him soon as we get there. Give him the best show in the world, and he'll still be sailing awful close to the divide. I'll bet a hundred plunks he'll cash in, anyway."

"DONE!"

The voice came faintly from the improvised litter. Mac turned with a start, for he had not known that Bannister was awake to his surroundings. The man appeared the picture of helplessness, all the lusty power and vigor stricken out of him; but his indomitable spirit still triumphed over the physical collapse, for as the foreman looked a faint smile touched the ashen lips. It seemed to say: "Still in the ring, old man."

CHAPTER 8

. IN THE LAZY D HOSPITAL

Helen's first swift glance showed that the wounded man was Bannister. She turned in crisp command to her foreman.

"Have him taken to my room and put to bed there. We have no time to prepare another. And send one of the boys on your best horse for a doctor."

They carried the limp figure in with rough tenderness and laid him in the bed. McWilliams unbuckled the belt and drew off the chaps; then, with the help of Denver, undressed the wounded man and covered him with quilts. So Helen found him when she came in to attend his wounds, bringing with her such things as she needed for her task. Mrs. Winslow, the housekeeper, assisted her, and the foreman stayed to help, but it was on the mistress of the ranch that the responsibility of saving him fell. Missou was already galloping to Bear Creek for a doctor, but the girl knew that the battle must be fought and the issue decided before he could arrive.

He had fallen again into insensibility and she rinsed and dressed his wounds, working with the quiet impersonal certainty of touch that did not betray the inner turmoil of her soul. But McWilliams, his eyes following her every motion and alert to anticipate her needs, saw that the color had washed from her face and that she was controlling herself only to meet the demands of the occasion.

As she was finishing, the sheepman opened his eyes and looked at her.

"You are not to speak or ask questions. You have been wounded and we are going to take care of you," she ordered.

"That's right good of y'u. I ce'tainly feet mighty trifling." His wide eyes traveled round till they fell on the foreman. "Y'u see I came back to help fill your hospital. Am I there now? Where am I?" His gaze returned to Helen with the sudden irritation of the irresponsible sick.

"You are at the Lazy D, in my room. You are not to worry about anything. Everything's all right."

He took her at her word and his eyes closed; but presently he began to mutter unconnected words and phrases. When his lids lifted again there was a wilder look in his eyes, and she knew that delirium was beginning. At intervals it lasted for long; indeed, until the doctor came next morning in the small hours. He talked of many things Helen Messiter did not understand, of incidents in his past life, some of them jerky with the excitement of a tense moment, others apparently snatches of talk with relatives. It was like the babbling of a child, irrelevant and yet often insistent. He would in one breath give orders connected with the lambing of his sheep, in the next break into football talk, calling out signals and imploring his men to hold them or to break through and get the ball. Once he broke into curses, but his very oaths seemed to come from a clean heart and missed the vulgarity they might have had. Again his talk rambled inconsequently over his youth, and he would urge himself or someone else of the same name to better life.

"Ned, Ned, remember your mother," he would beseech. "She asked me to look after you. Don't go wrong." Or else it would be, "Don't disgrace the general, Ned. You'll break his heart if you blacken the old name." To this theme he recurred repeatedly, and she noticed that when he imagined himself in the East his language was correct and his intonation cultured, though still with a suggestion of a Southern softness.

But when he spoke of her his speech lapsed into the familiar drawl of Cattleland. "I ain't such a sweep as y'u think, girl. Some day I'll sure tell y'u all about it, and how I have loved y'u ever since y'u scooped me up in your car. You're the gamest little lady! To see y'u come a-sailin' down after me, so steady and businesslike, not turning a hair when the bullets hummed--I sure do love y'u, Helen." And then he fell upon her first name and called her by it a hundred times softly to himself.

This happened when she was alone with him, just before the doctor came. She heard it with starry eyes and with a heart that flushed for joy a warmer color into her cheeks. Brushing back the short curls, she kissed his damp forehead. It was in the thick of the battle, before he had weathered that point where the issues of life and death pressed closely, and even in the midst of her great fears it brought her comfort. She was to think often of it later, and always the memory was to be music in her heart. Even when she denied her love for him, assured herself it was impossible she could care for so shameful a villain, even then it was a sweet torture to allow herself the luxury of recalling his broken delirious phrases. At the very worst he could not be as bad as they said; some instinct told her this was impossible. His fearless devil-may-care smile, his jaunty, gallant bearing, these pleaded against the evidence for him. And yet was it conceivable that a man of spirit, a gentleman by training at least, would let himself lie under the odium of such a charge if he were not guilty? Her tangled thoughts fought this profitless conflict for days. Nor could she dismiss it from her mind. Even after he began to mend she was still on the rack. For in some snatch of good talk, when the fine quality of the man seemed to glow in his face, poignant remembrance would stab her with recollection of the difference between what he was and what he seemed to be.

One of the things that had been a continual surprise to Helen was the short time required by these deep-cheated and clean-blooded Westerners to recover from apparently serious wounds. It was scarce more than two weeks since Bannister had filled the bunkhouse with wounded men, and already two of them were back at work and the third almost fit for service. For perhaps three days the sheepman's life hung in the balance, after which his splendid constitution and his outdoor life began to tell. The thermometer showed that the fever had slipped down a notch, and he was now sleeping wholesomely a good part of his time. Altogether, unless for some unseen contingency, the doctor prophesied that the sheepman was going to upset the probabilities and get well.

"Which merely shows, ma'am, what is possible when you give a sound man twenty-four hours a day in our hills for a few years," he added. "Thanks to your nursing he's going to shave through by the narrowest margin possible. I told him to-day that he owed his life to you, Miss Messiter."

"I don't think you need have told him that Doctor," returned that young woman, not a little vexed at him, "especially since you have just been telling me that he owes it to Wyoming air and his own soundness of constitution."

When she returned to the sickroom to give her patient his medicine he wanted to tell her what the doctor had said, but she cut him off ruthlessly and told him not to talk.

"Mayn't I even say 'Thank you?'" he wanted to know.

"No; you talk far too much as it is."

He smiled "All right. Y'u sit there in that chair, where I can see y'u doing that fancywork and I'll not say a word. It'll keep, all right, what I want to say."

"I notice you keep talking," she told him, dryly.

"Yes, ma'am. Y'u had better have let me say what I wanted to, but I'll be good now."

He fell asleep watching her, and when he awoke she was still sitting there, though it was beginning to grow dark. He spoke before she knew he was awake.

"I'm going to get well, the doctor thinks."

"Yes, he told me," she answered.

"Did he tell y'u it was your nursing saved me?"

"Please don't think about that."

"What am I to think about? I owe y'u a heap, and it keeps piling up. I reckon y'u do it all because it's your Christian duty?" he demanded.

"It is my duty, isn't it?"

"I didn't say it wasn't, though I expaict Bighorn County will forget to give y'u a unanimous vote of thanks for doing it. I asked if y'u did it because it was your duty?"

"The reason doesn't matter so that I do it," she answered, steadily.

"Reasons matter some, too, though they ain't as important as actions out in this country. Back in Boston they figure more, and since y'u used to go to school back there y'u hadn't ought to throw down your professor of ethics."

"Don't you think you have talked enough for the present?" she smiled, and added: "If I make you talk whenever I sit beside you I shall have to stay away."

"That's where y'u've ce'tainly got the drop on me, ma'am. I'm a clam till y'u give the word."

Before a week he was able to sit up in a chair for an hour or two, and soon after could limp into the living room with the aid of a walking stick and his hostess. Under the tan he still wore an interesting pallor, but there could be no question that he was on the road to health.

"A man doesn't know what he's missing until he gets shot up and is brought to the Lazy D hospital, so as to let Miss Messiter exercise her Christian duty on him," he drawled, cheerfully, observing the sudden glow on her cheek brought by the reference to his unanswered question.

He made the lounge in the big sunny window his headquarters. From it he could look out on some of the ranch activities when she was not with him, could watch the line riders as they passed to and fro and command a view of one of the corrals. There was always, too, the turquoise sky, out of which poured a flood of light on the roll of hilltops. Sometimes he read to himself, but he was still easily tired, and preferred usually to rest. More often she read aloud to him while he lay back with his leveled eyes gravely on her till the gentle, cool abstraction she affected was disturbed and her perplexed lashes rose to reproach the intensity of his gaze.

She was of those women who have the heavenborn faculty of making home of such fortuitous elements as are to their hands. Except her piano and such knickknacks as she had brought in a single trunk she had had to depend upon the resources of the establishment to which she had come, but it is wonderful how much can be done with some Navajo rugs, a bearskin, a few bits of Indian pottery and woven baskets and a judicious arrangement of scenic photographs. In a few days she would have her pictures from Kalamazoo, pending which her touch had transformed the big living room from a cheerless barn into a spot that was a comfort to the eye and heart. To the wounded man who lay there slowly renewing the blood he had lost the room was the apotheosis of home, less, perhaps, by reason of what it was in itself than because it was the setting for her presence--for her grave, sympathetic eyes, the sound of her clear voice, the light grace of her motion. He rejoiced in the delightful intimacy the circumstances made necessary. To hear snatches of joyous song and gay laughter even from a distance, to watch her as she came in and out on her daily tasks, to contest her opinions of books and life and see how eagerly she defended them; he wondered himself at the strength of the appeal these simple things made to him. Already he was dreading the day when he must mount his horse and ride back into the turbulent life from which she had for a time, snatched him.

"I'll hate to go back to sheepherding," he told her one day at lunch, looking at her across a snow-white tablecloth upon which were a service of shining silver, fragile china teacups and plates stamped Limoges.

He was at the moment buttering a delicious French roll and she was daintily pouring tea from an old family heirloom. The contrast between this and the dust and the grease of a midday meal at the end of a "chuck wagon" lent accent to his smiling lamentation.

"A lot of sheepherding you do," she derided.

"A shepherd has to look after his sheep, y'u know."

"You herd sheep just about as much as I punch cows."

"I have to herd my herders, anyhow, and that keeps me on the move."

"I'm glad there isn't going to be any more trouble between you and the Lazy D. And that reminds me of another thing. I've often wonered who those men could have been that attacked you the day you were hurt."

She had asked the question almost carelessly, without any thought that this might be something he wished to conceal, but she recognized her mistake by the wariness that filmed his eyes instantly.

"Room there for a right interesting guessing contest," he replied.

"You wouldn't need to guess," she charged, on swift impulse.

"Meaning that I know?"

"You do know. You can't deny that you now."

"Well, say that I know?"

"Aren't you going to tell?"

He shook his head. "Not just yet. I've got private reasons for keeping it quiet a while."

"I'm sure they are creditable to you," came her swift ironic retort.

"Sure," he agreed, whimsically. "I must live up to the professional standard. Honor among thieves, y'u know."

CHAPTER 9

. MISS DARLING ARRIVES

Miss Messiter clung to civilization enough, at least, to prefer that her chambermaid should be a woman rather than a Chinese. It did not suit her preconceived idea of the proper thing that Lee Ming should sweep floors, dust bric-a-brac, and make the beds. To see him slosh-sloshing around in his felt slippers made her homesick for Kalamazoo. There were other reasons why the proprieties would be better served by having another woman about the place; reasons that had to do with the chaperone system that even in the uncombed West make its claims upon unmarried young women of respectability. She had with her for the present fourteen-year-old Ida Henderson, but this arrangement was merely temporary.

Wherefore on the morning after her arrival Helen had sent two letters back to "the States." One of these had been to Mrs. Winslow, a widow of fifty-five, inviting her to come out on a business basis as housekeeper of thc Lazy D. The buxom widow had loved Helen since she had been a toddling baby, and her reply was immediate and enthusiastic. Eight days later she had reported in person. The second letter bore the affectionate address of Nora Darling, Detroit, Michigan. This also in time bore fruit at the ranch in a manner worthy of special mention.

It was the fourth day after Ned Bannister had been carried back to the Lazy D that Helen Messiter came out to the porch of the house with a letter in her hand. She found her foreman sitting on the steps waiting for her, but he got up as soon as he heard the fall of her light footsteps behind him.

"You sent for me, ma'am?" he asked, hat in hand.

"Yes; I want you to drive into Gimlet Butte and bring back a person whom you'll find at the Elk House waiting for you. I had rather you would go yourself, because I know you're reliable."

"Thank you, ma'am. How will I know him?"

"It's a woman--a spinster. She's coming to help Mrs. Winslow. Inquire for Miss Darling. She isn't used to jolting two days in a rig, but I know you will be careful of her."

"I'll surely be as careful of the old lady as if she was my own mother."

The mistress of the ranch smothered a desire to laugh.

"I'm sure you will. At her age she may need a good deal of care. Be certain you take rug enough."

"I'll take care of her the best I know how. expect she's likely rheumatic, but I'll wrop her up till she looks like a Cheyenne squaw when tourist is trying to get a free shoot at her with camera."

"Please do. I want her to get a good impression of Wyoming so that she will stay. I don' know about the rheumatism, but you might ask her."

There were pinpoints of merriment behind th guileless innocence of her eyes, but they came to the surface only after the foreman had departed.

McWilliams ordered a team of young horse hitched, and presently set out on his two day; journey to Gimlet Butte. He reached that town in good season, left the team at a corral and walked back to the Elk House. The white dust of the plains was heavy on him, from the bandanna that loosely embraced the brown throat above the flannel shirt to the encrusted boots but through it the good humor of his tanned face smiled fraternally on a young woman he passes at the entrance to the hotel. Her gay smile met his cordially, and she was still in his mind while he ran his eye down the register in search of the name he wanted. There it was--Miss Nora Darling, Detroit, Michigan--in the neatest of little round letters, under date of the previous day's arrivals.

"Is Miss Darling in?" asked McWilliams of the half-grown son of the landlady who served in lieu of clerk and porter.

"Nope! Went out a little while ago. Said to tell anybody to wait that asked for her."

Mac nodded, relieved to find that duty had postponed itself long enough for him to pursue the friendly smile that had not been wasted on him a few seconds before. He strolled out to the porch and decided at once that he needed a cigar more than anything else on earth. He was helped to a realization of his need by seeing the owner of the smile disappear in an adjoining drug store.

She was beginning on a nut sundae when the puncher drifted in. She continued to devote even her eyes to its consumption, while the foreman opened a casual conversation with the drug clerk and lit his cigar.

"How are things coming in Gimlet Butte?" he asked, by way of prolonging his stay rather than out of desire for information.

Yes, she certainly had the longest, softest lashes he had ever seen, and the ripest of cherry lips, behind the smiling depths of which sparkled two rows of tiny pearls. He wished she would look at HIM and smile again. There wasn't any use trying to melt a sundae with it, anyhow.

"Sure, it's a good year on the range and the price of cows jumping," he heard his sub-conscious self make answer to the patronizing inquiries of him of the "boiled" shirt.

Funny how pretty hair of that color was especially when there was so much of it. You might call it a sort of coppery gold where the little curls escaped in tendrils and ran wild. A fellow--"

"Yes, I reckon most of the boys will drop around to the Fourth of July celebration. Got to cut loose once in a while, y'u know."

A shy glance shot him and set him a-tingle with a queer delight. Gracious, what pretty dark velvety lashes she had!

She was rising already, and as she paid for the ice cream that innocent gaze smote him again with the brightest of Irish eyes conceivable. It lingered for just a ponderable sunlit moment or him. She had smiled once more.

After a decent interval Mac pursued his petit charmer to the hotel. She was seated on the porch reading a magazine, and was absorbedly unconscious of him when he passed. For a few awkward moments he hung around the office, then returned to the porch and took the chair most distant from her. He had sat there a long ten minutes before she let her hands and the magazine fall into her lap and demurely gave him his chance.

"Can you tell me how far it is to the Lazy D ranch?"

"Seventy-two miles as the crow flies, ma'am."

"Thank you."

The conversation threatened to die before it was well born. Desperately McWilliams tried to think of something to say to keep it alive without being too bold.

"If y'u were thinking of traveling out that way I could give y'u a lift. I just came in to get another lady--an old lady that has just come to this country."

"Thank you, but I'm expecting a conveyance to meet me here. You didn't happen to pass one on the way, I suppose?"

"No, I didn't. What ranch were y'u going to, ma'am?

"Miss Messiter's--the Lazy D."

A suspicion began to peretrate the foreman's brain. "Y'u ain't Miss Darling?"

"What makes you so sure I'm not?" she asked, tilting her dimpled chin toward him aggressively.

"Y'u're too young," he protested, helplessly.

"I'm no younger than you are," came her quick, indignant retort.

Thus boldly accused of his youth, the foreman blushed. "I didn't mean that. Miss Messiter said she was an old lady--"

"You needn't tell fibs about it. She couldn't have said anything of the kind. Who are you, anyhow?" the girl demanded, with spirit.

"I'm the foreman of the Lazy D, come to get Miss Darling. My name is McWilliams--Jim McWilliams."

"I don't need your first name, Mr. McWilliams," she assured him, sweetly. "And will you please tell me why you have kept me waiting here more than thirty hours?"

"Miss Messiter didn't get your letter in time. Y'u see, we don't get mail every day at the Lazy D," he explained, the while he hopefully wondered just when she was going to need his last name.

"I don't see why you don't go after your mail every day at least, especially when Miss Messiter was expecting me. To leave me waiting here thirty hours--I'll not stand it. When does the next train leave for Detroit?" she asked, imperiously.

The situation seemed to call for diplomacy, and Jim McWilliams moved to a nearer chair. "I'm right sorry it happened, ma'am, and I'll bet Miss Messiter is, too. Y'u see, we been awful busy one way and 'nother, and I plumb neglected to send one of the boys to the post-office."

"Why didn't one of them walk over after supper?" she demanded, geverely.

He curbed the smile that was twitching at his facial muscles.

"Well, o' course it ain't so far,--only forty-three miles--still--"

"Forty-three miles to the post-office?"

"Yes, ma'am, only forty-three. If you'll excuse me this time--"

"Is it really forty-three?"

He saw that her sudden smile had brought out the dimples in the oval face and that her petulance had been swept away by his astounding information.

"Forty-three, sure as shootin', except twict a week when it comes to Slauson's, and that's only twenty miles," he assured her. "Used to be seventy-two, but the Government got busy with its rural free delivery, and now we get it right at our doors."

"You must have big doors," she laughed.

"All out o' doors," he punned. "Y'u see, our house is under our hat, and like as not that's twenty miles from the ranchhouse when night falls."

"Dear me!" She swept his graceful figure sarcastically. "And, of course, twenty miles from a brush, too."

He laughed with deep delight at her thrust, for the warm youth in him did not ask for pointed wit on the part of a young woman so attractive and with a manner so delightfully provoking.

"I expaict I have gathered up some scenery on the journey. I'll go brush it off and get ready for supper. I'd admire to sit beside y'u and pass the butter and the hash if y'u don't object. Y'u see, I don't often meet up with ladies, and I'd ought to improve my table manners when I get a chanct with one so much older than I am and o' course so much more experienced."

"I see you don't intend to pass any honey with the hash," she flashed, with a glimpse of the pearls.

"DIDN'T y'u say y'u was older than me? I believe I've plumb forgot how old y'u said y'u was, Miss Darling."

"Your memory's such a sieve it wouldn't be worth while telling you. After you've been to school a while longer maybe I'll try you again."

"Some ladies like 'em young," he suggested, amiably.

"But full grown," she amended.

"Do y'u judge by my looks or my ways?" he inquired, anxiously.

"By both."

"That's right strange," he mused aloud. "For judging by some of your ways you're the spinster Miss Messiter was telling me about, but judging by your looks y'u're only the prettiest and sassiest twenty-year-old in Wyoming."

And with this shot he fled, to see what transformation he could effect with the aid of a whiskbroom, a tin pan of alkali water and a roller towel.

When she met him at the supper table her first question was, "Did Miss Messiter say I was an old maid?"

"Sho! I wouldn't let that trouble me if I was y'u. A woman ain't any older than she looks. Your age don't show to speak of."

"But did she?"

"I reckon she laid a trap for me and I shoved my paw in. She wanted to give me a pleasant surprise."

"Oh!"

"Don't y'u grow anxious about being an old maid. There ain't any in Wyoming to speak of. If y'u like I'll tell the boys you're worried and some of them will be Johnnie-on-the-Spot. They're awful gallant, cowpunchers are."

"Some of them may be," she differed. "If you want to know I'm just twenty-one."

He sawed industriously at his steak. "Y'u don't say! Just old enough to vote--like this steer was before they massacreed him."

She gave him one look, and thereafter punished him with silence.

They left Gimlet Butte early next morning and reached the Lazy D shortly after noon on the succeeding day. McWilliams understood perfectly that strenuous competition would inevitably ensue as soon as the Lazy D beheld the attraction he had brought into their midst. Nor did he need a phrenologist to tell him that Nora was a born flirt and that her shy slant glances were meant to penetrate tough hides to tender hearts. But this did not discourage him, and he set about making his individual impression while he had her all to himself. He wasn't at all sure how deep this went, but he had the satisfaction of hearing his first name, the one she had told him she had no need of, fall tentatively from her pretty lips before the other boys caught a glimpse of her.

Shortly after his arrival at the ranch Mac went to make his report to his mistress of some business matters connected with the trip.

"I see you got back safely with the old lady," she laughed when she caught sight of him.

His look reproached her. "Y'u said a spinster."

"But it was you that insisted on the rheumatism. By the way, did you ask her about it?"

"We didn't get that far," he parried.

"Oh! How far did you get?" She perched herself on the porch railing and mocked him with her friendly eyes. Her heart was light within her and she was ready for anything in the way of fun, for the doctor had just pronounced her patient out of danger if he took proper care of himself.

"About as fur as I got with y'u, ma'am," he audaciously retorted.

"We might disagree as to how far that is," she flung back gayly with heightened color.

"No, ma'am, I don't think we would."

"But, gracious! You're not a Mormon. You don't want us both, do you?" she demanded, her eyes sparkling with the exhilaration of the tilt.

"Could I get either one of y'u, do y'u reckon? That's what's worrying me."

"I see, and so you intend to keep us both on the string."

His joyous laughter echoed hers. "I expaict y'u would call that presumption or some other dictionary word, wouldn't y'u?"

"In anybody else perhaps, but surely not in Mr. McWilliams."

"I'm awful glad to be trotting in a class by myself."

"And you'll let us know when you have made your mind up which of us it is to be?"

"Well, mine ain't the only mind that has to be made up," he drawled.

She took this up gleefully. "I can't answer for Nora, but I'll jump at the chance-- if you decide to give it to me."

He laughed delightedly into the hat he was momentarily expecting to put on. "I'll mill it over a spell and let y'u know, ma'am."

"Yes, think it over from all points of view. Of course she is prettier, but then I'm not afflicted with rheumatism and probably wouldn't flirt as much afterward. I have a good temper, too, as a rule, but then so has Nora."

"Oh, she's prettier, is she?" With boyish audacity he grinned at her.

"What do you think?"

He shook his head. "I'll have to go to the foot of the class on that, ma'am. Give me an easier one."

"I'll have to choose another subject then. What did you do about that bunch of Circle 66 cows you looked at on your way in?"

They discussed business for a few minutes, after which she went back to her patient and he to his work.

"Ain't she a straight-up little gentleman for fair?" the foreman asked himself in rhetorical and exuberant question, slapping his hat against his leg as he strode toward the corral. "Think of her coming at me like she did, the blamed little thoroughbred. Y'u bet she knows me down to the ground and how sudden I got over any fool notions I might a-started to get in my cocoanut. But the way she came back at me, quick as lightning and then some, pretendin' all that foolishness and knowin' all the time I'd savez the game."

Both McWilliams and his mistress had guessed right in their surmise as to Nora Darling's popularity in the cow country. She made an immediate and pronounced hit. It was astonishing how many errands the men found to take them to "the house," as they called the building where the mistress of the ranch dwelt. Bannister served for a time as an excellent excuse. Judging from the number of the inquiries which the men found it necessary to make as to his progress, Helen would have guessed him exceedingly popular with her riders. Having a sense of humor, she mentioned this to McWilliams one day.

He laughed, and tried to turn it into a compliment to his mistress. But she would have none of it.

"I know better, sir. They don't come here to see me. Nora is the attraction, and I have sense enough to know it. My nose is quite out of joint," she laughed.

Mac looked with gay earnestness at the feature she had mentioned. "There's a heap of difference in noses," he murmured, apparently apropos of nothing.

"That's another way of telling me that Nora's pug is the sweetest thing you ever saw," she charged.

"I ain't half such a bad actor as some of the boys," he deprecated.

"Meaning in what way?"

"The Nora Darling way."

He pronounced her name so much as if it were a caress that his mistress laughed, and he joined in it.

"It's your fickleness that is breaking my heart, though I knew I was lost as soon as I saw your beatific look on the day you got back with Nora. The first week I came none of you could do enough for me. Now it's all Nora, darling." She mimicked gayly his intonation.

"Well, ma'am, it's this way," explained the foreman with a grin. " Y'u're right pleasant and friendly, but the boys have got a savvy way down deep that y'u'd shuck that friendliness awful sudden if any of them dropped around with 'Object, Matrimony' in their manner. Consequence is, they're loaded down to the ground with admiration of their boss, but they ain't presumptuous enough to expaict any more. I had notions, mebbe, I'd cut more ice, me being not afflicted with bashfulness. My notions faded, ma'am, in about a week."

"Then Nora came?" she laughed.

"No, ma'am, they had gone glimmering long before she arrived. I was just convalescent enough to need being cheered up when she drapped in."

"And are you cheered up yet?" his mistress asked.

He took off his dusty hat and scratched his head. "I ain't right certain, yet, ma'am. Soon as I know I'm consoled, I'll be round with an invite to the wedding."

"That is, if you are."

"If I am--yes. Y'u can't most always tell when they have eyes like hers."

"You're quite an authority on the sex considering your years."

"Yes, ma'am." He looked aggrieved, thinking himself a man grown. "How did y'u say Mr. Bannister was?"

"Wait, and I'll send Nora out to tell you," she flashed, and disappeared in the house.

Conversation at the bunkhouse and the chucktent sometimes circled around the young women at the house, but its personality rarely grew pronounced. References to Helen Messiter and the housemaid were usually by way of repartee at each other. For a change had come over the spirit of the Lazy D men, and, though a cheerful profanity still flowed freely when they were alone together, vulgarity was largely banished.

The morning after his conversation with Miss Messiter, McWilliams was washing in the foreman's room when the triangle beat the call for breakfast, and he heard the cook's raucous "Come and get it." There was the usual stampede for the tent, and a minute later Mac flung back the flap and entered. He took the seat at the head of the table, along the benches on both sides of which the punchers were plying busy knives and forks.

"A stack of chips," ordered the foreman; and the cook's "Coming up" was scarcely more prompt than the plate of hot cakes he set before the young man.

"Hen fruit, sunny side up," shouted Reddy, who was further advanced in his meal.

"Tame that fog-horn, son," advised Wun Hop; but presently he slid three fried eggs from a frying-pan into the plate of the hungry one.

"I want y'u boys to finish flankin' that bunch of hill calves to-day," said the foreman, emptying half a jug of syrup over his cakes.

"Redtop, he ain't got no appetite these days," grinned Denver, as the gentleman mentioned cleaned up a second loaded plate of ham, eggs and fried potatoes. "I see him studying a Wind River Bible* yesterday. Curious how in the spring a young man's fancy gits to wandering on house furnishing. Red, he was taking the catalogue alphabetically. Carpets was absorbin' his attention, chairs on deck, and chandeliers in the hole, as we used to say when we was baseball kids."

[*A Wind River Bible in the Northwest ranch country is a catalogue of one of the big Chicago department stores that does a large shipping business in the West.]

"Ain't a word of truth in it," indignantly denied the assailed, his unfinished nose and chin giving him a pathetic, whipped puppy look. "Sho! I was just looking up saddles. Can't a fellow buy a new saddle without asking leave of Denver?"

"Cyarpets used to begin with a C in my spelling-book, but saddles got off right foot fust with a S," suggested Mac amiably.

"He was ce'tainly trying to tree his saddle among the C's. He was looking awful loving at a Turkish rug. Reckon he thought it was a saddle-blanket," derided Denver cheerfully.

"Huh! Y'u're awful smart, Denver," retaliated Reddy, his complexion matching his hair. "Y'u talk a heap with your mouth. Nobody believes a word of what y'u say."

Denver relaxed into a range song by way of repartee:

"I want mighty bad to be married, To have a garden and a home; I ce'tainly aim to git married, And have a gyurl for my own."

"Aw! Y'u fresh guys make me tired. Y'u don't devil me a bit, not a bit. Whyfor should I care what y'u say? I guess this outfit ain't got no surcingle on me." Nevertheless, he made a hurried end of his breakfast and flung out of the tent.

"Y'u boys hadn't ought to wound Reddy's tender feelings, and him so bent on matrimony!" said Denver innocently. "Get a move on them fried spuds and sashay them down this way, if there's any left when y'u fill your plate, Missou."

Nor was Reddy the only young man who had dreams those days at the Lazy D. Cupid must have had his hands full, for his darts punctured more than one honest plainsman's heart. The reputation of the young women at the Lazy D seemed to travel on the wings of the wind, and from far and near Cattleland sent devotees to this shrine of youth and beauty. So casually the victims drifted in, always with a good business excuse warranted to endure raillery and sarcasm, that it was impossible to say they had come of set purpose to sun themselves in feminine smiles.

As for Nora, it is not too much to say that she was having the time of her life. Detroit, Michigan, could offer no such field for her expansive charms as the Bighorn country, Wyoming. Here she might have her pick of a hundred, and every one of them picturesquely begirt with flannel shirt, knotted scarf at neck, an arsenal that bristled, and a sun-tan that could be achieved only in the outdoors of the Rockies. Certainly these knights of the saddle radiated a romance with which even her floorwalker "gentleman friend " could not compete.

CHAPTER 10

. A SHEPHERD OF THE DESERT

It had been Helen Messiter's daily custom either to take a ride on her pony or a spin in her motor car, but since Bannister had been quartered at the Lazy D her time had been so fully occupied that she had given this up for the present. The arrival of Nora Darling, however, took so much work off her hands that she began to continue her rides and drives.

Her patient was by this time so far recovered that he did not need her constant attendance and there were reasons why she decided it best to spend only a minimum of her time with him. These had to do with her increasing interest in the man and the need she felt to discourage it. It had come to a pretty pass, she told herself scornfully, when she found herself inventing excuses to take her into the room where this most picturesque of unhanged scamps was lying. Most good women are at heart puritans, and if Helen was too liberal to judge others narrowly she could be none the less rigid with herself. She might talk to him of her duty, but it was her habit to be frank in thought and she knew that something nearer than that abstraction had moved her efforts in his behalf. She had fought for his life because she loved him. She could deny it no longer. Nor was the shame with which she confessed it unmingled with pride. He was a man to compel love, one of the mood imperative, chain-armored in the outdoor virtues of strength and endurance and stark courage. Her abasement began only where his superlation ended. That a being so godlike in equipment should have been fashioned without a soul, and that she should have given her heart to him. This was the fount of her degradation.

It was of these things she thought as she drove in the late afternoon toward those Antelope Peaks he had first pointed out to her. She swept past the scene of the battle and dipped down into the plains for a run to that western horizon behind the jagged mountain line of which the sun was radiantly setting in a splash of glorious colors. Lost in thought, space slipped under her wheels unnoticed. Not till her car refused the spur and slowed to a despondent halt did she observe that velvet night was falling over the land.

She prowled round the machine after the fashion of the motorist, examining details that might be the cause of the trouble. She discovered soon enough with instant dismay that the gasolene tank was empty. Reddy, always unreliable, must have forgotten to fill it when she told him to.

By the road she must be thirty miles from home if she were a step; across country as the crow flies, perhaps twenty. She was a young woman of resolution, and she wasted no time in tears or regrets. The XIX ranch, owned by a small "nester" named Henderson, could not be more than five or six miles to the southeast. If she struck across the hills she would be sure to run into one of the barblines. At the XIX she could get a horse and reach the Lazy D by midnight. Without any hesitation she struck out. It was unfortunate that she did not have on her heavy laced high boots, but she realized that she must take things as she found them. Things might have been a good deal worse, she reflected philosophically.

And before long they were worse, for the increasing darkness blotted out the landmarks she was using as guides and she was lost among the hill waves that rolled one after another across the range. Still she did not give way, telling herself that it would be better after the moon was up. She could then tell north from south, and so have a line by which to travel. But when at length the stars came out, thousands upon thousands of them, and looked down on a land magically flooded with chill moonlight, the girl found that the transformation of Wyoming into this scence of silvery loveliness had toned the distant mountain line to an indefinite haze that made it impossible for her to distinguish one peak from another.

She wandered for hours, hungry and tired and frightened, though this last she would not confess.

"There's nothing to be afraid of," she told herself over and over. "Even if I have to stay out all night it will do me no harm. There's no need to be a baby about it."

But try to evade it as she would, there was something in the loneliness of this limitless stretch of hilltop that got on her nerves. The very shadows cast by the moonshine seemed too fantastic for reality. Something eerie and unearthly hovered over it all, and before she knew it a sob choked up her throat.

Vague fancies filtered through her mind, weird imaginings born of the night in a mind that had been swept from the moorings of reason. So that with no sensible surprise there came to her in that moonlit sea of desert the sound of a voice a clear sweet tenor swelling bravely in song with the very ecstacy of pathos.

It was the prison song from "Il Trovatore," and the desolation of its lifted appeal went to the heart like water to the roots of flowers.

Ah! I have sigh'd to rest me. Deep in the quiet grave.

The girl's sob caught in her breast, stilled with the awe of that heavenly music. So for an instant she waited before it was borne in on her that the voice was a human one, and that the heaven from which it descended was the hilltop above her.

A wild laugh, followed by an oath, cut the dying echoes of the song. She could hear the swish of a quirt falling again and again, and the sound of trampling hoofs thudding on the hard, sun-cracked ground. Startled, she sprang to her feet, and saw silhouetted against the skyline a horse and his rider fighting for mastery.

The battle was superb while it lasted. The horse had been a famous outlaw, broken to the saddle by its owner out of the sheer passion for victory, but there were times when its savage strength rebelled at abject submission, and this was one of them. It swung itself skyward, and came down like a pile-driver, camel-backed, and without joints in the legs. Swiftly it rose again lunging forward and whirling in the air, then jarred down at an angle. The brute did its malevolent best, a fury incarnate. But the ride, was a match, and more than a match, for it. He sat the saddle like a Centaur, with the perfect: unconscious grace of a born master, swaying in his seat as need was, and spurring the horse to a blinder fury.

Sudden as had been the start, no less sudden was the finish of the battle. The bronco pounded to a stiff-legged standstill, trembled for a long minute like an aspen, and sank to a tame surrender, despite the sharp spurs roweling its bloody sides.

"Ah, my beauty. You've had enough, have you?" demanded the cruel, triumphant voice of the rider. "You would try that game, would you? I'll teach you."

"Stop spurring that horse, you bully."

The man stopped, in sheer amazement at this apparition which had leaped out of the ground almost at his feet. His wary glance circled the hills to make sure she was alone.

"Ce'tainly, ma'am. We're sure delighted to meet up with you. Ain't we, Two-step?"

For himself, he spoke the simple truth. He lived in his sensations, spurring himself to fresh ones as he had but just now been spurring his horse to sate the greed of conquest in him. And this high-spirited, gallant creature--he could feel her vital courage in the very ring of her voice--offered a rare fillip to his jaded appetite. The dusky, long-lashed eyes which always give a woman an effect of beauty, the splendid fling of head, and the piquant, finely cut features, with their unconscious tale of Brahmin caste, the long lines of the supple body, willowy and yet plump as a partridge--they went to his head like strong wine. Here was an adventure from the gods--a stubborn will to bend, the pride of a haughty young beauty to trail in the dust, her untamed heart to break if need be. The lust of the battle was on him already. She was a woman to dream about,

"Sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, Or Cytherea's breath,"

he told himself exultantly as he slid from his horse and stood bowing before her.

And he, for his part, was a taking enough picture of devil-may-care gallantry gone to seed. The touch of jaunty impudence in his humility, not less than the daring admiration of his handsome eyes and the easy, sinuous grace of his flexed muscles, labeled him what he was--a man bold and capable to do what he willed, and a villain every inch of him.

Said she, after that first clash of stormy eyes with bold, admiring ones:

"I am lost--from the Lazy D ranch."

"Why, no, you're found," he corrected, white teeth flashing in a smile.

"My motor ran out of gasolene this afternoon. I've been"--there was a catch in her voice--"wandering ever since."

"You're played out, of course, and y'u've had no supper," he said, his quiet close gaze on her.

"Yes, I'm played out and my nerve's gone." She laughed a little hysterically. "I expect I'm hungry and thirsty, too, though I hadn't noticed it before."

He whirled to his saddle, and had the canteen thongs unloosed in a moment. While she drank he rummaged from his saddle-bags some sandwiches of jerky and a flask of whiskey. She ate the sandwiches, he the while watching her with amused sympathy in his swarthy countenance.

"You ain't half-bad at the chuck-wagon, Miss Messiter," he told her.

She stopped, the sandwich part way to her mouth. "I don't remember your face. I've met so many people since I came to the Lazy D. Still, I think I should remember you."

He immediately relieved of duty her quasi apology. "You haven't seen my face before," he laughed, and, though she puzzled over the double meaning that seemed to lurk behind his words and amuse him, she could not find the key to it.

It was too dark to make out his features at all clearly, but she was sure she had seen him before or somebody that looked very much like him.

"Life on the range ain't just what y'u can call exciting," he continued, "and when a young lady fresh from back East drops among us while sixguns are popping, breaks up a likely feud and mends right neatly all the ventilated feudists it's a corollary to her fun that's she is going to become famous."

What he said was true enough. The unsolicited notoriety her exploit had brought upon her had been its chief penalty. Garbled versions of it had appeared with fake pictures in New York and Chicago Sunday supplements, and all Cattleland had heard and discussed it. No matter into what unfrequented canon she rode, some silent cowpuncher would look at her as they met with admiring eyes behind which she read a knowledge of the story. It was a lonely desolate country, full of the wide deep silences of utter emptiness, yet there could be no footfall but the whisper of it was bruited on the wings of the wind.

"Do you know where the Lazy D ranch is from here?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Can you take me home?"

"I surely can. But not to-night. You're more tired than y'u know. We'll camp here, and in the mo'ning we'll hit the trail bright and early."

This did not suit her at all. "Is it far to the Lazy D?" she inquired anxiously.

"Every inch of forty miles. There's a creek not more than two hundred yards from here. We'll stay there till morning," he made answer in a matter of course voice, leading the way to the place he had mentioned.

She followed, protesting. Yet though it was not in accord with her civilized sense of fitness, she knew that what he proposed was the common sense solution. She was tired and worn out, and she could see that his broncho had traveled far.

Having reached the bank of the creek, he unsaddled, watered his horse and picketed it, and started a fire. Uneasily she watched him.

"I don't like to sleep out. Isn't there a ranchhouse near?"

"Y'u wouldn't call it near by the time we had reached it. What's to hinder your sleeping here? Isn't this room airy enough? And don't y'u like the system of lighting? 'Twas patented I forget how many million years ago. Y'u ain't going to play parlor girl now after getting the reputation y'u've got for gameness, are y'u?"

But he knew well enough that it was no silly schoolgirl fear she had, but some deep instinct in her that distrusted him and warned her to beware. So, lightly he took up the burden of the talk while he gathered cottonwood branches for the fire.

"Now if I'd only thought to bring a load of lumber and some carpenters--and a chaperon," he chided himself in burlesque, his bold eyes closely on the girl's face to gloat on the color that flew to her cheeks at his suggestion.

She hastened to disclaim lightly the feeling he had unmasked in her. "It is a pity, but it can't be helped now. I suppose I am cross and don't seem very grateful. I'm tired out and nervous, but I am sure that I'll enjoy sleeping out. If I don't I shall not be so ungenerous as to blame you."

He soon had a cup of steaming coffee ready for her, and the heat of it made a new woman of her. She sat in the warm fire glow, and began to feel stealing over her a delightful reaction of languor. She told herself severely it was ridiculous to have been so foolishly prim about the inevitable.

"Since you know my name, isn't it fair that I should know yours?" she smilingly asked, more amiably than she had yet spoken to him.

"Well, since I have found the lamb that was lost, y'u may call me a shepherd of the desert."

"Then, Mr. Shepherd, I'm very glad to meet you. I don't remember when I ever was more glad to meet a stranger." And she added with a little laugh: "It's a pity I'm too sleepy to do my duty by you in a social way."

"We'll let that wait till to-morrow. Y'u'll entertain me plenty then. I'll make your bunk up right away."

She was presently lying with her feet to the fire, snugly rolled in his saddle blankets. But though her eyes were heavy, her brain was still too active to permit her to sleep immediately. The excitement of her adventure was too near, the emotions of the day too poignantly vivid, to lose their hold on her at once. For the first time in her life she lay lapped in the illimitable velvet night, countless unwinking stars lighting the blue-black dream in which she floated. The enchantment of the night's loveliness swept through her sensitive pulses and thrilled her with the mystery of the great life of which she was an atom. Awe held her a willing captive.

She thought of many things, of her past life and its incongruity with the present, of the man who lay wounded at the Lazy D, of this other wide-shouldered vagabond who was just now in the shadows beyond the firelight, pacing up and down with long, light even strides as he looked to his horse and fed the fire. She watched him make an end of the things he found to do and then take his place opposite her. Who and what was he, this fascinating scamp who one moment flooded the moonlit desert with inspired snatches from the opera sung in the voice of an angel, and the next lashed at his horse like a devil incarnate? How reconcile the outstanding inconsistencies in him? For his every inflection, every motion, proclaimed the strain of good blood gone wrong and trampled under foot of set, sardonic purpose, indicated him a man of culture in a hell of his own choosing. Lounging on his elbow in the flickering shadows, so carelessly insouciant in every picturesque inch of him, he seemed to radiate the melodrama of the untamed frontier, just as her guest of tarnished reputation now at the ranch seemed to breathe forth its romance.

"Sleep well, little partner. Don't be afraid; nothing can harm you," this man had told her.

Promptly she had answered, "I'm not afraid, thank you, in the least"; and after a mornent had added, not to seem hostile, "Good night, big partner."

But despite her calm assurance she knew she did not feel so entirely safe as if it had been one of her own ranch boys on the other side of the fire, or even that other vagabond who had made so direct an appeal to her heart. If she were not afraid, at least she knew some vague hint of anxiety.

She was still thinking of him when she fell asleep, and when she awakened the first sound that fell on her ears was his tuneful whistle. Indeed she had an indistinct memory of him in the night, wrapping the blankets closer about her when the chill air had half stirred her from her slumber. The day was still very young, but the abundant desert light dismissed sleep summarily. She shook and brushed the wrinkles out of her clothes and went down to the creek to wash her face with the inadequate facilities at hand. After redressing her hair she returned to the fire, upon which a coffee pot was already simmering.

She came up noiselessly behind him, but his trained senses were apprised of her approach.

"Good mo'ning! How did y'u find your bedroom?" he asked, without turning from the bacon he was broiling on the end of a stick.

"Quite up to the specifications. With all Wyoming for a floor and the sky for a ceiling, I never had a room I liked better. But have you eyes in the back of your head?"

He laughed grimly. "I have to be all eyes and ears in my business."

"Is your business of a nature so sensitive?"

"As much so as stocks on Wall Street. And we haven't any ticker to warn us to get under cover. Do you take cream in your coffee, Miss Messiter?"

She looked round in surprise. "Cream?"

"We're in tin-can land, you know, and live on air-tights. I milk my cow with a can-opener. Let me recommend this quail on toast." He handed her a battered tin plate, and prepared to help her from the frying-pan.

"I suppose that is another name for pork?"

"No, really. I happened to bag a couple of hooters before you wakened."

"You're a missionary of the good-foods movement. I shall name your mission St. Sherry's-in-the-Wilderness."

"Ah, Sherry's! That's since my time. I don't suppose I should know my way about in little old New York now."

She found him eager to pick up again the broken strands that had connected him with the big world from which he had once come. It had been long since she had enjoyed a talk more, for he expressed himself with wit and dexterity. But through her enjoyment ran a note of apprehension. He was for the moment a resurrected gentleman. But what would he be next? She had an insistent memory of a heavenly flood of music broken by a horrible discord of raucous oaths.

It was he that lingered over their breakfast, loath to make the first move to bring him back into realities; and it was she that had to suggest the need of setting out. But once on his feet, he saddled and packed swiftly, with a deftness born of experience.

"We'll have to ask Two-step to carry double to-day," he said, as he helped her to a place behind him.

Two-step had evidently made an end of the bronco spree upon which he had been the evening before, for he submitted sedately to his unusual burden. The first hilltop they reached had its surprise to offer the girl. In a little valley below them, scarce a mile away, nestled a ranch with its corrals and buildings.

"Look!" she exclaimed; and then swiftly, "Didn't you know it was there?"

"Yes, that's the Hilke place," he answered with composure. "It hasn't been occupied for years."

"Isn't that some one crossing to the corral now?"

"No. A stray cow, I reckon."

They dropped into a hollow between the hills and left the ranch on their left. She was not satisfied, and yet she had not grounds enough upon which to base a suspicion. For surely the figure she had seen had been that of a man.

CHAPTER 12

. MISTRESS AND MAID

Now that it was safely concluded, Helen thought the adventure almost worthwhile for the spontaneous expressions of good will it had drawn forth from her adherents. Mrs. Winslow and Nora had taken her to their arms and wept and laughed over her in turn, and in their silent undemonstrative way she had felt herself hedged in by unusual solicitude on the part of her riders. It was good--none but she knew how good--to be back among her own, to bask in a friendliness she could not doubt. It was best of all to sit opposite Ned Bannister again with no weight on her heart from the consciousness of his unworthiness.

She could affect to disregard the gray eyes that followed her with such magnetized content about the living room, but beneath her cool self-containment she knew the joyous heart in her was strangely buoyant. He loved her, and she had a right to let herself love him. This was enough for the present.

"They're so plumb glad to see y'u they can't let y'u alone," laughed Bannister at the sound of a knock on the door that was about the fifth in as many minutes.

This time it proved to be Nora, come to find out what her mistress would like for supper. Helen turned to the invalid.

"What would you like, Mr. Bannister?"

"I should like a porterhouse with mushrooms," he announced promptly.

"You can't have it. You know what the doctor said." Very peremptorily she smiled this at him.

"He's an old granny, Miss Messiter."

"You may have an egg on toast."

"Make it two," he pleaded. "Excitement's just like caviar to the appetite, and seeing y'u safe--"

"Very well--two," she conceded.

They ate supper together in a renewal of the pleasant intimacy so delightful to both. He lay on the lounge, propped up with sofa cushions, the while he watched her deft fingers butter the toast and prepare his egg. It was surely worth while to be a convalescent, given so sweet a comrade for a nurse; and after he had moved over to the table he enjoyed immensely the gay firmness with which she denied him what was not good for him.

"I'll bet y'u didn't have supper like this at Robbers' Roost." he told her, enthusiastically.

"It wasn't so bad, considering everything." She was looking directly at him as she spoke. "Your cousin is rather a remarkable man in some ways. He manages to live on the best that can be got in tin-can land."

"Did he tell y'u he was my cousin?" he asked, slowly.

"Yes, and that his name was Ned Bannister, too?"

"Did that explain anything to y'u?"

"It explained a great deal, but it left some things not clear yet."

"For instance?"

"For one thing, the reason why you should bear the odium of his crimes. I suppose you don't care for him, though I can see how you might in a way."

"I don't care for him in the least, though I used to when we were boys. As to letting myself be blamed for his crimes. I did it because I couldn't help myself. We look more or less alike, and he was cunning enough to manufacture evidence against me. We were never seen together, and so very few know that there are two Bannisters. At first I used to protest, but I gave it up. There wasn't the least use. I could only wait for him to be captured or killed. In the meantime it didn't make me any more popular to be a sheepman."

"Weren't you taking a long chance of being killed first? Some one with a grudge against him might have shot you."

"They haven't yet," he smiled.

"You might at least have told me how it was," she reproached.

"I started to tell y'u that first day, but it looked so much of a fairy tale to unload that I passed it up."

"Then you ought not to blame me for thinking you what you were not."

"I don't remember blaming y'u. The fact is I thought it awful white of y'u to do your Christian duty so thorough, me being such a miscreant," he drawled.

"You gave me no chance to think well of you."

"But yet y'u did your duty from A to Z."

"We're not talking about my duty," she flashed back. "My point is that you weren't fair to me. If I thought ill of you how could I help it?"

"I expaict your Kalamazoo conscience is worryin' y'u because y'u misjudged me."

"It isn't," she denied instantly.

"I ain't of a revengeful disposition. I'll forgive y'u for doing your duty and saving my life twice," he said, with a smile of whimsical irony.

"I don't want your forgiveness."

"Well, then for thinking me a 'bad man.'"

"You ought to beg my pardon. I was a friend, at least you say I acted like one--and you didn't care enough to right yourself with me."

"Maybe I cared too much to risk trying it. I knew there would be proof some time, and I decided to lie under the suspicion until I could get it. I see now that wasn't kind or fair to you. I am sorry I didn't tell y'u all about it. May I tell y'u the story now?"

"If you wish."

It was a long story, but the main points can be told in a paragraph. The grandfather of the two cousins, General Edward Bannister, had worn the Confederate gray for four years, and had lost an arm in the service of the flag with the stars and bars. After the war he returned to his home in Virginia to find it in ruins, his slaves freed and his fields mortgaged. He had pulled himself together for another start, and had practiced law in the little town where his family had lived for generations. Of his two sons, one was a ne'er-do-well. He was one of those brilliant fellows of whom much is expected that never develops. He had a taste for low company, married beneath him, and, after a career that was a continual mortification and humiliation to his father, was killed in a drunken brawl under disgraceful circumstances, leaving behind a son named for the general. The second son of General Bannister also died young, but not before he had proved his devotion to his father by an exemplary life. He, too, was married and left an only son, also named for the old soldier. The boys were about of an age and were well matched in physical and mental equipment. But the general, who had taken them both to live with him, soon discovered that their characters were as dissimilar as the poles. One grandson was frank, generous, open as the light; the other was of a nature almost degenerate. In fact, each had inherited the qualities of his father. Tales began to come to the old general's ears that at first he refused to credit. But eventually it was made plain to him that one of the boys was a rake of the most objectionable type.

There were many stormy scenes between the general and his grandson, but the boy continued to go from bad to worse. After a peculiarly flagrant case, involving the character of a respectable young girl, young Ned Bannister was forbidden his ancestral home. It had been by means of his cousin that this last iniquity of his had been unearthed, and the boy had taken it to his grandfather in hot indignation as the last hope of protecting the reputation of the injured girl. From that hour the evil hatred of his cousin, always dormant in the heart, flamed into active heat. The disowned youth swore to be revenged. A short time later the general died, leaving what little property he had entirely to the one grandson. This stirred again the bitter rage of the other. He set fire to the house that had been willed his cousin, and took a train that night for Wyoming. By a strange irony of fate they met again in the West years later, and the enmity between them was renewed, growing every month more bitter on the part of the one who called himself the King of the Bighorn Country.

She broke the silence after his story with a gentle "Thank you. I can understand why you don't like to tell the story."

"I am very glad of the chance to tell it to you," he answered.

"When you were delirious you sometimes begged some one you called Ned not to break his mother's heart. I thought then you might be speaking to yourself as ill people do. Of course I see now it was your cousin that was on your mind."

"When I was out of my head I must have talked a lot of nonsense," he suggested, in the voice of a question. "I expect I had opinions I wouldn't have been scattering around so free if I'd known what I was saying."

He was hardly prepared for the tide of color that swept her cheeks at his words nor for the momentary confusion that shuttered the shy eyes with long lashes cast down.

"Sick folks do talk foolishness, they say," he added, his gaze trained on her suspiciously.

"Do they?"

"Mrs. Winslow says I did. But when I asked her what it was I said she only laughed and told me to ask y'u. Well, I'm askin' now."

She became very busy over the teapot. "You talked about the work at your ranch--sheep dipping and such things."

"Was that all?"

"No, about lots of other things--football and your early life. I don't see what Mrs. Winslow meant. Will you have some more tea?"

"No, thank y'u. I have finished. Yes, that ce'tainly seems harmless. I didn't know but I had been telling secrets." Still his unwavering eyes rested quietly on her.

"Secrets?" She summoned her aplomb to let a question rest lightly in the face she turned toward him, though she was afraid she met his eyes hardly long enough for complete innocence "Why, yes, secrets." He measured looks with her deliberately before he changed the subject, and he knew again the delightful excitement of victory. "Are y'u going to read to me this evening?"

She took his opening so eagerly that he smiled, at which her color mounted again.

"If y'u like. What shall I read?"

"Some more of Barrie's books, if y'u don't mind. When a fellow is weak as a kitten he sorter takes to things that are about kids."

Nora came in and cleared away the supper things. She was just beginning to wash them when McWilliams and Denver dropped into the kitchen by different doors. Each seemed surprised and disappointed at the presence of the other. Nora gave each of them a smile and a dishcloth.

"Reddy, he's shavin' and Frisco's struggling with a biled shirt--I mean with a necktie," Denver hastily amended. "They'll be along right soon, I shouldn't wonder."

"Y'u better go tell the boys Miss Nora don't want her kitchen littered up with so many of them," suggested his rival.

"Y'u're foreman here. I don't aim to butt into your business, Mac," grinned back the other, polishing a tea plate with the towel.

"I want to get some table linen over to Lee Ming to-night," said Nora, presently.

"Denver, he'll be glad to take it for y'u, Miss Nora. He's real obliging," offered Mac, generously.

"I've been in the house all day, so I need a walk. I thought perhaps one of you gentlemen--" Miss Nora looked from one to the other of them with deep innocence.

"Sure, I'll go along and carry it. Just as Mac says, I'll be real pleased to go," said Denver, hastily.

Mac felt he had been a trifle precipitate in his assumption that Nora did not intend to go herself. Lee Ming had established a laundry some half mile from the ranch, and the way thereto lay through most picturesque shadow and moonlight. The foreman had conscientious scruples against letting Denver escort her down such a veritable lovers' lane of romantic scenery.

"I don't know as y'u ought to go out in the night air with that cold, Denver. I'd hate a heap to have y'u catch pneumony. It don't seem to me I'd be justified in allowin' y'u to," said the foreman, anxiously.

"You're THAT thoughtful, Mac. But I expect mebbe a little saunter with Miss Nora will do my throat good. We'll walk real slow, so's not to wear out my strength."

"Big, husky fellows like y'u are awful likely to drop off with pneumony. I been thinkin' I got some awful good medicine that would be the right stuff for y'u. It's in the drawer of my wash-stand. Help yourself liberal and it will surely do y'u good. Y'u'll find it in a bottle."

"I'll bet it's good medicine, Mac. After we get home I'll drop around. In the washstand, y'u said?"

"I hate to have y'u take such a risk," Mac tried again. "There ain't a bit of use in y'u exposing yourself so careless. Y'u take a hot footbath and some of that medicine, Denver, then go right straight to bed, and in the mo'ning y'u'll be good as new. Honest, y'u won't know yourself."

"Y'u got the best heart, Mac." Nora giggled.

"Since I'm foreman I got to be a mother to y'u boys, ain't I?"

"Y'u're liable to be a grandmother to us if y'u keep on," came back the young giant.

"Y'u plumb discourage me, Denver," sighed the foreman.

"No, sir! The way I look at it, a fellow's got to take some risk. Now, y'u cayn't tell some things. I figure I ain't half so likely to catch pneumony as y'u would be to get heart trouble if y'u went walking with Miss Nora," returned Denver.

A perfect gravity sat on both their faces during the progress of most of their repartee.

"If your throat's so bad, Mr. Halliday, I'll put a kerosene rag round it for you when we get back," Nora said, with a sweet little glance of sympathy that the foreman did not enjoy.

Denver, otherwise "Mr. Halliday," beamed. "Y'u're real kind, ma'am. I'll bet that will help it on the outside much as Mac's medicine will inside."

"What'll y'u do for my heart, ma'am, if it gits bad the way Denver figures it will?"

"Y'u might try a mustard plaster," she gurgled, with laughter.

For once the debonair foreman's ready tongue had brought him to defeat. He was about to retire from the field temporarily when Nora herself offered first aid to the wounded.

"We would like to have you come along with us, Mr. McWilliams. I want you to come if you can spare the time."

The soft eyes telegraphed an invitation with such a subtle suggestion of a private understanding that Mac was instantly encouraged to accept.

He knew, of course, that she was playing them against each other and sitting back to enjoy the result, but he was possessed of the hope common to youths in his case that he really was on a better footing with her than the other boys. This opinion, it may be added, was shared by Denver, Frisco and even Reddy as regards themselves. Which is merely another way of putting the regrettable fact that this very charming young woman was given to coquetting with the hearts of her admirers.

"Any time y'u get oneasy about that cough y'u go right on home, Denver. Don't stay jest out of politeness. We'll never miss y'u, anyhow," the foreman assured him.

"Thank y'u, Mac. But y'u see I got to stay to keep Miss Nora from getting bored."

"Was it a phrenologist strung y'u with the notion y'u was a cure for lonesomeness?"

"Shucks! I don't make no such claims. The only thing is it's a comfort when you're bored to have company. Miss Nora, she's so polite. But, y'u see, if I'm along I can take y'u for a walk when y'u get too bad."

They reached the little trail that ran up to Lee Ming's place, and Denver suggested that Mac run in with the bundle so as to save Nora the climb.

"I'd like to, honest I would. But since y'u thought of it first I won't steal the credit of doing Miss Nora a good turn. We'll wait right here for y'u till y'u come back."

"We'll all go up together," decided Nora, and honors were easy.

In the pleasant moonlight they sauntered back, two of them still engaged in lively badinage. while the third played chorus with appreciative little giggles and murmurs of "Oh, Mr. Halliday!" and "You know you're just flattering me, Mr. McWilliams."

If they had not been so absorbed in their gay foolishness the two men might not have walked so innocently into the trap waiting for them at their journey's end. As it was, the first intimation they had of anything unusual was a stern command to surrender.

"Throw up your hands. Quick, you blank fools!"

A masked man covered them, in each hand a six-shooter, and at his summons the arms of the cow-punchers went instantly into the air.

Nora gave an involuntary little scream of dismay.

"Y'u don't need to be afraid, lady. Ain't nobody going to hurt you, I reckon," the masked man growled.

" Sure they won't," Mac reassured her, adding ironically: "This gun-play business is just neighborly frolic. Liable to happen any day in Wyoming."

A second masked man stepped up. He, too was garnished with an arsenal.

"What's all this talking about?" he demanded sharply.

"We just been having a little conversation seh?" returned McWilliams, gently, his vigilant eyes searching through the disguise of the other " Just been telling the lady that your call is in friendly spirit. No objections, I suppose?"

The swarthy newcomer, who seemed to be in command, swore sourly.

"Y'u put a knot in your tongue, Mr. Foreman."

"Ce'tainly, if y'u prefer," returned the indomitable McWilliams.

"Shut up or I'll pump lead into you!"

"I'm padlocked, seh."

Nora Darling interrupted the dialogue by quietly fainting. The foreman caught her as she fell.

"See what y'u done, y'u blamed chump!" he snapped.

CHAPTER 13

. THE TWO COUSINS

The sheepman lay at his ease, the strong supple lines of him stretched lazily on the lounge. Helen was sitting beside him in an easy chair, and he watched the play of her face in the lamplight as she read from "The Little White Bird." She was very good to see, so vitally alive and full of a sweet charm that half revealed and half concealed her personality. The imagination with which she threw herself into a discussion of the child fancies portrayed by the Scotch writer captured his fancy. It delighted him to tempt her into discussions that told him by suggestion something of what she thought and was.

They were in animated debate when the door opened to admit somebody else. He had stepped in so quietly that he stood there a little while without being observed, smiling down at them with triumphant malice behind the mask he wore. Perhaps it was the black visor that was responsible for the Mephisto effect, since it hid all the face but the leering eyes. These, narrowed to slits, swept the room and came back to its occupants. He was a tall man and well-knit, dressed incongruously in up-to-date riding breeches and boots, in combination with the usual gray shirt, knotted kerchief and wide-brimmed felt hat of the horseman of the plains. The dust of the desert lay thick on him, without in the least obscuring a certain ribald elegance, a distinction of wickedness that rested upon him as his due. To this result his debonair manner contributed, though it carried with it no suggestion of weakness. To the girl who looked up and found him there he looked indescribably sinister.

She half rose to her feet, dilated eyes fixed on him.

"Good evenin'. I came to make sure y'u got safe home, Miss Messiter," he said.

The eyes of the two men clashed, the sheepman's stern and unyielding, his cousin's lit with the devil of triumph. But out of the faces of both men looked the inevitable conflict, the declaration of war that never ends till death.

"I've been a heap anxious about y'u--couldn't sleep for worrying. So I saddled up and rode in to find out if y'u were all right and to inquire how Cousin Ned was getting along."

The sheepman, not deigning to move an inch from his position, looked in silence his steady contempt.

"This conversation sounds a whole lot like a monologue up to date," he continued. "Now, maybe y'u don't know y'u have the honor of entertaining the King of the Bighorn." The man's brown hand brushed the mask from his eyes and he bowed with mocking deference. "Miss Messiter, allow me to introduce myself again--Ned Bannister, train robber, rustler, kidnapper and general bad man. But I ain't told y'u the worst yet. I'm cousin to a sheepherder' and that's the lowest thing that walks."

He limped forward a few steps and sat down. "Thank you, I believe I will stay a while since y'u both ask me so urgent. It isn't often I meet with a welcome so hearty and straight from the heart."

It was not hard to see how the likeness between them contributed to the mistake that had been current concerning them. Side by side, no man could have mistaken one for the other. The color of their eyes, the shade of hair, even the cut of their features, were different. But beneath all distinctions in detail ran a family resemblance not to be denied. This man looked like his cousin, the sheepman, as the latter might have done if all his life he had given a free rein to evil passions.

The height, the build, the elastic tread of each, made further contributions to this effect of similarity.

"What are you doing here?" They were the first words spoken by the man on the lounge and they rang with a curt challenge.

"Come to inquire after the health of my dear cousin," came the prompt silken answer.

"You villain!"

"My dear cousin, y'u speak with such conviction that y'u almost persuade me. But of course if I'm a villain I've got to live up to my reputation. Haven't I, Miss Messiter?"

"Wouldn't it be better to live it down?" she asked with a quietness that belied her terror. For there had been in his manner a threat, not against her but against the man whom her heart acknowledged as her lover.

He laughed. "Y'u're still hoping to make a Sunday school superintendent out of me, I see. Y'u haven't forgot all your schoolmarm ways yet, but I'll teach y'u to forget them."

The other cousin watched him with a cool, quiet glance that never wavered. The outlaw was heavily armed, but his weapons were sheathed, and, though there was a wary glitter behind the vindictive exultation in his eyes, his capable hands betrayed no knowledge of the existence of his revolvers. It was, he knew, to be a moral victory, if one at all.

"Hope I'm not disturbing any happy family circle," he remarked, and, taking two limping steps forward, he lifted the book from the girl's unresisting hands. "H'm! Barrie. I don't go much on him. He's too sissy for me. But I could have guessed the other Ned Bannister would be reading something like that," he concluded, a flicker of sneering contempt crossing his face.

"Perhaps y'u'll learn some time to attend to your own business," said the man on the couch quietly.

Hatred gleamed in the narrowed slits from which the soul of the other cousin looked down at him. "I'm a philanthropist, and my business is attending to other people's. They raise sheep, for instance, and I market them."

The girl hastily interrupted. She had not feared for herself, but she knew fear for the indomitable man she had nursed back to life. "Won't you sit down, Mr. Bannister? Since you don't approve our literature, perhaps we can find some other diversion more to your taste." She smiled faintly.

The man turned in smiling divination of her purpose, and sat down to play with her as a cat does with a mouse.

"Thank y'u, Miss Messiter, I believe I will. I called to thank y'u for your kindness to my cousin as well as to inquire about you. The word goes that y'u pulled my dear cousin back when death was reaching mighty strong for him. Of course I feel grateful to y'u. How is he getting along now?"

"He's doing very well, I think."

"That's ce'tainly good hearing," was his ironical response. "How come he to get hurt, did y'u say?"

His sleek smile was a thing hateful to see.

"A hound bit me," explained the sheepman.

"Y'u don't say! I reckon y'u oughtn't to have got in its way. Did y'u kill it?"

"Not yet."

"That was surely a mistake, for it's liable to bite again."

The girl felt a sudden sickness at his honeyed cruelty, but immediately pulled herself together. For whatever fiendish intention might be in his mind she meant to frustrate it.

"I hear you are of a musical turn, Mr. Bannister. Won't you play for us?"

She had by chance found his weak spot. Instantly his eyes lit up. He stepped across to the piano and began to look over the music, though not so intently that he forgot to keep under his eye the man on the lounge.

"H'm! Mozart, Grieg, Chopin, Raff, Beethoven. Y'u ce'tainly have the music here; I wonder if y'u have the musician." He looked her over with a bold, unscrupulous gaze. "It's an old trick to have classical music on the rack and ragtime in your soul. Can y'u play these?"

"You will have to be the judge of that," she said.

He selected two of Grieg's songs and invited her to the piano. He knew instantly that the Norwegian's delicate fancy and lyrical feeling had found in her no inadequate medium of expression. The peculiar emotional quality of the song "I Love Thee" seemed to fill the room as she played. When she swung round on the stool at its conclusion it was to meet a shining-eyed, musical enthusiast instead of the villain she had left five minutes earlier.

"Y'u CAN play," was all he said, but the manner of it spoke volumes.

For nearly an hour he kept her at the piano, and when at last he let her stop playing he seemed a man transformed.

"You have given me a great pleasure, a very great pleasure, Miss Messiter," he thanked her warmly, his Western idiom sloughed with his villainy for the moment. "It has been a good many months since I have heard any decent music. With your permission I shall come again."

Her hesitation was imperceptible. "Surely, if you wish." She felt it would be worse than idle to deny the permission she might not be able to refuse.

With perfect grace he bowed, and as he wheeled away met with a little shock of remembrance the gaze of his cousin. For a long moment their eyes bored into each other. Neither yielded the beat of an eyelid, but it was the outlaw that spoke.

"I had forgotten y'u. That's strange, too because it was for y'u I came. I'm going to take y'u home with me.

"Alive or dead?" asked the other serenely.

"Alive, dear Ned."

"Same old traits cropping out again. There was always something feline about y'u. I remember when y'u were a boy y'u liked to torment wild animals y'u had trapped."

"I play with larger game now--and find it more interesting."

"Just so. Miss Messiter, I shall have to borrow a pony from y'u, unless--" He broke off and turned indifferently to the bandit.

"Yes, I brought a hawss along with me for y'u," replied the other to the unvoiced question. "I thought maybe y'u might want to ride with us."

"But he can't ride. He couldn't possibly. It would kill him," the girl broke out.

"I reckon not." The man from the Shoshones glanced at his victim as he drew on his gauntlets. "He's a heap tougher than y'u think."

"But it will. If he should ride now, why--It would be the same as murder," she gasped. "You wouldn't make him ride now?"

"Didn't y'u hear him order his hawss, ma'am? He's keen on this ride. Of course he don't have to go unless he wants to." The man turned his villainous smile on his cousin, and the latter interpreted it to mean that if he preferred, the point of attack might be shifted to the girl. He might go or he might stay. But if he stayed the mistress of the Lazy D would have to pay for his decision.

"No, I'll ride," he said at once.

Helen Messiter had missed the meaning of that Marconied message that flashed between them. She set her jaw with decision. "Well, you'll not. It's perfectly ridiculous. I won't hear of such a thing."

"Y'u seem right welcome. Hadn't y'u better stay, Ned?" murmured the outlaw, with smiling eyes that mocked.

"Of course he had. He couldn't ride a mile-- not half a mile. The idea is utterly preposterous."

The sheepman got to his feet unsteadily. " I'll do famously."

"I won't have it. Why are you so foolish about going? He said you didn't need to go. You can't ride any more than a baby could chop down that pine in the yard."

"I'm a heap stronger than y'u think."

"Yes, you are!" she derided. "It's nothing but obstinacy. Make him stay," she appealed to the outlaw.

"Am I my cousin's keeper?" he drawled. "I can advise him to stay, but I can't make him."

"Well, I can. I'm his nurse, and I say he sha'n't stir a foot out of this house--not a foot."

The wounded man smiled quietly, admiring the splendid energy of her. "I'm right sorry to leave y'u so unceremoniously."

"You're not going." She wheeled on the outlaw "I don't understand this at all. But if you want him you can find him here when you come again. Put him on parole and leave him here. I'll not be a party to murder by letting him go."

"Y'u think I'm going to murder him?" he smiled.

"I think he cannot stand the riding. It would kill him."

"A haidstrong man is bound to have his way. He seems hell-bent on riding. All the docs say the outside of a hawss is good for the inside of a man. Mebbe it'll be the making of him."

"I won't have it. I'll rouse the whole countryside against you. Why don't you parole him till he is better?"

"All right. We'll leave it that way," announced the man. "I'd hate to hurt your tender feelings after such a pleasant evening. Let him give his parole to come to me whenever I send for him, no matter where he may be, to quit whatever he is doing right that instant, and come on the jump. If he wants to leave it that way, we'll call it a bargain."

Again the rapier-thrust of their eyes crossed. The sheepman was satisfied with what he saw in the face of his foe.

"All right. It's a deal," he agreed, and sank weakly back to the couch.

There are men whose looks are a profanation to any good woman. Ned Bannister, of the Shoshones, was one of them. He looked at his cousin, and his ribald eyes coasted back to bold scrutiny of this young woman's charming, buoyant youth. There was Something in his face that sent a flush of shame coursing through her rich blood. No man had ever looked at her like that before.

"Take awful good care of him," he sneered, with so plain an implication of evil that her clean blood boiled. "But I know y'u will, and don't let him go before he's real strong."

"No," she murmured, hating herself for the flush that bathed her.

He bowed like a Chesterfield, and went out with elastic heels, spurs clicking.

Helen turned fiercely on her guest. "Why did you make me insist on your staying? As if I want you here, as if--" She stopped, choking with anger; presently flamed out, "I hate you," and ran from the room to hide herself alone with her tears and her shame.

CHAPTER 14

. FOR THE WORLD'S CHAMPIONSHIP

The scene on which Helen Messiter's eyes rested that mellow Fourth of July was vivid enough to have interested a far more jaded mind than hers. Nowhere outside of Cattleland could it have been duplicated. Wyoming is sparsely populated, but the riders of the plains think nothing of traveling a hundred miles in the saddle to be present at a "broncobusting" contest. Large delegations, too, had come in by railroad from Caspar, Billings, Sheridan, Cheyenne and a score of other points, so that the amphitheatre that looked down on the arena was filled to its capacity.

All night the little town had rioted with its guests. Everything was wide open at Gimlet Butte. Saloons were doing a land-office business and gambling-houses coining money. Great piles of gold had passed to and fro during the night at the roulette wheel and the faro table. But with the coming of day interest had centered on the rough-riding contest for the world's championship. Saloons and dance halls were deserted, and the universal trend of travel had been toward the big grand stands, from which the sport could be best viewed.

It was afternoon now. The preliminaries had been ridden, and half a dozen of the best riders had been chosen by the judges to ride again for the finals. Helen was wonderfully interested, because in the six who were to ride again were included the two Bannister cousins, her foreman, McWilliams, the young man "Texas," whom she had met the day of her arrival at Gimlet Butte, and Tom Sanford, who had last year won the championship.

She looked down on the arena, and her heart throbbed with the pure joy of life. Already she loved her West and its picturesque, chap-clad population. Their jingling spurs and their colored kerchiefs knotted round sunburned necks, their frank, whole-hearted abandon to the interest of the moment, led her to regard these youths as schoolboys. Yet they were a hard-bitten lot, as one could see, burned to a brick-red by the untempered sun of the Rockies; with muscles knit like steel, and hearts toughened to endure any blizzard they might meet. Only the humorous wrinkles about the corners of their eyes gave them away for the cheerful sons of mirth that they were.

"Bob Austin on Two-Step," announced the megaphone man, and a little stir eddied through the group gathered at the lane between the arena and the corral.

A meek-looking buckskin was driven into the arena. The embodiment of listlessness, it apparently had not ambition enough to flick a fly from its flank with its tail. Suddenly the bronco's ears pricked, its sharp eyes dilated. A man was riding forward, the loop of a lariat circling about his head. The rope fell true, but the wily pony side-stepped, and the loop slithered to the ground. Again the rope shot forward, dropped over the pony's head and tightened. The roper's mustang braced its forefeet, and brought the buckskin up short. Another rope swept over its head. It stood trembling, unable to move without strangling itself.

A picturesque youth in flannel shirt and chaps came forward, dragging blanket, saddle and bridle. At sight of him the horse gave a spasmodic fling, then trembled again violently. A blind was coaxed over its eyes and the bridle slipped on. Quickly and warily, with deft fingers, the young man saddled and cinched. He waved a hand jauntily to the ropers. The lariats were thrown off as the puncher swung to the saddle. For an instant the buckskin stood bewildered, motionless as a statue. There was a sudden leap forward high in air, and Bob Austin, alias "Texas," swung his sombrero with a joyous whoop.

"Fan him! Fan him!" screamed the spectators, and the rider's quirt went up and down like a piston-rod.

Round and round went Two-Step in a vicious circle, "swapping ends" with dizzying rapidity. Suddenly he went forward as from a catapult, and came to sudden halt in about five seconds. But Texas's knees still clung, viselike, to the sides of the pony. A series of quick bucks followed, the buckskin coming down with back humped, all four legs stiff as iron posts. The jar on the rider would have been like a pile-driver falling on his head had he not let himself grow limp. The buckskin plunged forward again in frenzied leaps, ending in an unexpected jump to one side. Alas for Texas! One moment he was jubilantly plying quirt and spurs, the next he found himself pitching sideways. To save himself he caught at the saddle-horn.

"He's hunting leather," shouted a hundred voices.

One of the judges rode out and waved a hand. Texas slipped to the ground disqualified, and made his dejected way back to his deriding comrades. Some of them had endured similar misfortunes earlier in the day. Therefore they found much pleasure in condoling with him.

"If he'd only recollected to saw off the horn of his saddle, then he couldn't 'a' found it when he went to hunt leather," mournfully commented one puncher in a shirt of robin's egg blue.

"'Twould have been most as good as to take the dust, wouldn't it?" retorted Texas gently, and the laugh was on the gentleman in blue, because he had been thrown earlier in the day.

"A fellow's hands sure get in his way sometimes. I reckon if you'd tied your hands, Tex, you'd been riding that rocking-hawss yet," suggested Denver amiably.

"Sometimes it's his foot he puts in it. There was onct a gent disqualified for riding on his spurs," said Texas reminiscently.

At which hit Denver retired, for not three hours before he had been detected digging his spurs into the cinch to help him stick to the saddle.

"Jim McWilliams will ride Dead Easy," came the announcement through the megaphone, and a burst of cheering passed along the grand stand, for the sunny smile of the foreman of the Lazy D made him a general favorite. Helen leaned forward and whispered something gaily to Nora, who sat in the seat in front of her. The Irish girl laughed and blushed, but when her mistress looked up it was her turn to feel the mounting color creep into her cheeks. For Ned Bannister, arrayed in all his riding finery, was making his way along the aisle to her.

She had not seen him since he had ridden away from the Lazy D ten days before, quite sufficiently recovered from his wounds to take up the routine of life again. They had parted not the best of friends, for she had not yet forgiven him for his determination to leave with his cousin on the night that she had been forced to insist on his remaining. He had put her in a false position, and he had never explained to her why. Nor could she guess the reason--for he was not a man to harvest credit for himself by explaining his own chivalry.

Since her heart told her how glad she was he had come to her box to see her, she greeted him with the coolest little nod in the world.

"Good morning, Miss Messiter. May I sit beside y'u?" he asked.

"Oh, certainly!" She swept her skirts aside carelessly and made room for him. "I thought you were going to ride soon."

"No, I ride last except for Sanford, the champion. My cousin rides just before me. He's entered under the name of Jack Holloway."

She was thinking that he had no business to be riding, that his wounds were still too fresh, but she did not intend again to show interest enough in his affairs to interfere even by suggestion. Her heart had been in her mouth every moment of the time this morning while he had been tossed hither and thither on the back of his mount. In his delirium he had said he loved her. If he did, why should he torture her so? It was well enough for sound men to risk their lives, but--

A cheer swelled in the grand stand and died breathlessly away. McWilliams was setting a pace it would take a rare expert to equal. He was a trick rider, and all the spectacular feats that appealed to the onlooker were his. While his horse was wildly pitching, he drank a bottle of pop and tossed the bottle away. With the reins in his teeth he slipped off his coat and vest, and concluded a splendid exhibition of skill by riding with his feet out of the stirrups. He had been smoking a cigar when he mounted. Except while he had been drinking the pop it had been in his mouth from beginning to end, and, after he had vaulted from the pony's back, he deliberately puffed a long smoke-spiral into the air, to show that his cigar was still alight. No previous rider had earned so spontaneous a burst of applause. "He's ce'tainly a pure when it comes to riding," acknowledged Bannister. "I look to see him get either first or second."

"Whom do you think is his most dangerous rival?" Helen asked.

"My cousin is a straight-up rider, too. He's more graceful than Mac, I think, but not quite so good on tricks. It will be nip and tuck."

"How about your cousin's cousin?" she asked, with bold irony.

"He hopes he won't have to take the dust," was his laughing answer.

The next rider suffered defeat irrevocably before he had been thirty seconds in the saddle. His mount was one of the most cunning of the outlaw ponies of the Northwest, and it brought him to grief by jamming his leg hard against the fence. He tried in vain to spur the bronco into the middle of the arena, but after it drove at a post for the third time and ground his limb against it, he gave up to the pain and slipped off.

"That isn't fair, is it?" Helen asked of the young man sitting beside her.

He shrugged his lean, broad shoulders. "He should have known how to keep the horse in the open. Mac would never have been caught that way."

"Jack Holloway on Rocking Horse," the announcer shouted.

It took four men and two lariats to subdue this horse to a condition sufficiently tame to permit of a saddle being slipped on. Even then this could not be accomplished without throwing the bronco first. The result was that all the spirit was taken out of the animal by the preliminary ordeal, so that when the man from the Shoshone country mounted, his steed was too jaded to attempt resistance.

"Thumb him! Thumb him!" the audience cried, referring to the cowboy trick of running the thumbs along a certain place in the shoulder to stir the anger of the bucker.

But the rider slipped off with disgust. "Give me another horse," he demanded, and after a minute's consultation among the judges a second pony was driven out from the corral. This one proved to be a Tartar. It went off in a frenzy of pitching the moment its rider dropped into the saddle.

"Y'u'll go a long way before you see better ridin' than his and Mac's. Notice how he gives to its pitching," said Bannister, as he watched his cousin's perfect ease in the cyclone of which he was the center.

"I expect it depends on the kind of a 'hawss,'" she mocked. "He's riding well, isn't he?"

"I don't know any that ride better."

The horse put up a superb fight, trying everything it knew to unseat this demon clamped to its back. It possessed in combination all the worst vices, was a weaver, a sunfisher and a fence-rower, and never had it tried so desperately to maintain its record of never having been ridden. But the outlaw in the saddle was too much for the outlaw underneath. He was master, just as he was first among the ruffians whom he led, because there was in him a red-hot devil of wickedness that would brook no rival.

The furious bronco surrendered without an instant's warning, and its rider slipped at once to the ground. As he sauntered through the dust toward the grand stand, Helen could not fail to see how his vanity sunned itself in the applause that met his performance. His equipment was perfect to the least detail. The reflection from a lady's looking-glass was no brighter than the silver spurs he jingled on his sprightly heels. Strikingly handsome in a dark, sinister way, one would say at first sight, and later would chafe at the justice of a verdict not to be denied.

Ned Bannister rose from his seat beside Helen. "Wish me luck," he said, with his gay smile.

"I wish you all the luck you deserve," she answered.

"Oh, wish me more than that if y'u want me to win."

"I didn't say I wanted you to win. You take the most unaccountable things for granted."

"I've a good mind to win, then, just to spite y'u," he laughed.

"As if you could," she mocked; but her voice took a softer intonation as she called after him in a low murmur: "Be careful, please."

His white teeth flashed a smile of reassurance at her. "I've never been killed yet."

"Ned Bannister on Steamboat," sang out the megaphone man.

"I'm ce'tainly in luck. Steamboat's the worst hawss on the range," he told himself, as he strode down the grand stand to enter the arena.

The announcement of his name created for the second time that day a stir of unusual interest. Everybody in that large audience had heard of Ned Bannister; knew of his record as a "bad man" and his prowess as the king of the Shoshone country; suspected him of being a train and bank robber as well as a rustler. That he should have the boldness to enter the contest in his own name seemed to show how defiant he was of the public sentiment against him, and how secure he counted himself in flaunting this contempt. As for the sheepman, the notoriety that his cousin's odorous reputation had thrust upon him was extremely distasteful as well as dangerous, but he had done nothing to disgrace his name, and he meant to use it openly. He could almost catch the low whispers that passed from mouth to mouth about him.

"Ain't it a shame that a fellow like that, leader of all the criminals that hide in the mountains, can show himself openly before ten thousand honest folks?" That he knew to be the purport of their whispering, and along with it went a recital of the crimes he had committed. How he was a noted "waddy," or cattle-rustler; how he and his gang had held up three trains in eighteen months; how he had killed Tom Mooney, Bob Carney and several others--these were the sorts of things that were being said about him, and from the bottom of his soul he resented his impotency to clear his name.

There was something in Bannister's riding that caught Helen's fancy at once. It was the unconscious grace of the man, the ease with which he seemed to make himself a very part of the horse. He attempted no tricks, rode without any flourishes. But the perfect poise of his lithe body as it gave with the motions of the horse, proclaimed him a born rider; so finished, indeed, that his very ease seemed to discount the performance. Steamboat had a malevolent red eye that glared hatred at the oppressor man, and to-day it lived up to its reputation of being the most vicious and untamed animal on the frontier. But, though it did its best to unseat the rider and trample him underfoot, there was no moment when the issue seemed in doubt save once. The horse flung itself backward in a somersault, risking its own neck in order to break its master's. But he was equal to the occasion; and when Steamboat staggered again to its feet Bannister was still in the saddle. It was a daring and magnificent piece of horsemanship, and, though he was supposed to be a desperado and a ruffian, his achievement met with a breathless gasp, followed by thunderous applause.

The battle between horse and man was on again, for the animal was as strong almost in courage as the rider. But Steamboat's confidence had been shaken as well as its strength. Its efforts grew less cyclonic. Foam covered its mouth and flecked its sides. The pitches were easy to foresee and meet. Presently they ceased altogether.

Bannister slid from the saddle and swayed unsteadily across the arena. The emergency past, he had scarce an ounce of force left in him. Jim McWilliams ran out and slipped an arm around his shoulders, regardless of what his friends might think of him for it.

"You're all in, old man. Y'u hadn't ought to have ridden, even though y'u did skin us all to a finish."

"Nonsense, Mac. First place goes to y'u or--or Jack Holloway."

"Not unless the judges are blind."

But Bannister's prediction proved true. The champion, Sanford, had been traveling with a Wild West show, and was far too soft to compete with these lusty cowboys, who had kept hard from their daily life on the plains. Before he had ridden three minutes it was apparent that he stood no chance of retaining his title, so that the decision narrowed itself to an issue between the two Bannisters and McWilliams. First place was awarded to the latter, the second prize to Jack Holloway and the third to Ned Bannister.

But nearly everybody in the grand stand knew that Bannister had been discriminated against because of his unpopularity. The judges were not local men, and had nothing to fear from the outlaw. Therefore they penalized him on account of his reputation. It would never do for the Associated Press dispatches to send word all over the East that a murderous desperado was permitted, unmolested, to walk away with the championship belt.

"It ain't a square deal," declared McWilliams promptly.

He was sitting beside Nora, and he turned round to express his opinion to the two sitting behind him in the box.

"We'll not go behind the returns. Y'u won fairly. I congratulate y'u, Mr. Champion-of-the-world," replied the sheepman, shaking hands cordially.

"I told you to bring that belt to the Lazy D," smiled his mistress, as she shook hands.

But in her heart she was crying out that it was an outrage.

CHAPTER 15

. JUDD MORGAN PASSES

Gimlet Butte devoted the night of the Fourth to a high old time. The roping and the other sports were to be on the morrow, and meanwhile the night hours were filled with exuberance. The cowboy's spree comes only once in several months, but when it does come he enters into the occasion with such whole-hearted enthusiasm as to make up swiftly for lost time. A traveling midway had cast its tents in a vacant square in competition with the regular attractions of the town, and everywhere the hard-riding punchers were "night herding" in full regalia.

There was a big masked ball in the street, and another in the Masonic Hall, while here and there flared the lights of the faker with something to sell. Among these last was "Soapy" Sothern, doing a thriving business in selling suckers and bars wrapped with greenbacks. Crowds tramped the streets blowing horns and throwing confetti, and everywhere was a large sprinkling of men in high-heeled boots, swinging along with the awkward, stiff-legged gait of the cowboy. Sometimes a girl was hanging on his arm, and again he was "whooping it up with the boys"; but in either case the range-rider's savings were burning a hole through his pockets with extreme rapidity.

Jim McWilliams and the sheepman Bannister had that day sealed a friendship that was to be as enduring as life. The owner of the sheep ranch was already under heavy obligation to the foreman of the Lazy D, but debt alone is not enough on which to found soul brotherhood. There must be qualities of kinship in the primeval elements of character. Both men had suspected that this kinship existed, but to-day they had proved it in the way that one had lost and the other had won the coveted championship. They had made no vows and no professions. The subject had not even been touched in words; a meeting of the eyes, followed by the handshake with which Bannister had congratulated the winner. That had been all. But it was enough.

With the casual democracy of the frontier they had together escorted Helen Messiter and Nora Darling through a riotous three hours of carnival, taking care to get them back to their hotel before the night really began "to howl."

But after they had left the young women, neither of them cared to sleep yet. They were still in costume, Mac dressed as a monk, and his friend as a Stuart cavalier, and the spirit of frolic was yet strong in them.

"I expaict, mebbe, we better hunt in couples if we're going to help paint the town," smiled Mac, and his friend had immediately agreed.

It must have been well after midnight that they found themselves "bucking the tiger" in a combination saloon and gambling-house, whose patrons were decidedly cosmopolitan in character. Here white and red and yellow men played side by side, the Orient and the Occident and the aboriginal alike intent on the falling cards and the little rolling ball. A good many of them were still in their masks and dominos, though these, for the most part, removed their vizors before playing.

Neither McWilliams nor his friend were betting high, and the luck had been so even that at the end of two hours' play neither of them had at any time either won or lost more than fifteen dollars. In point of fact, they were playing not so much to win as just to keep in touch with the gay, youthful humor of the night.

They were getting tired of the game when two men jingled in for a drink. They were talking loudly together, and it was impossible to miss the subject of their conversation.

McWilliams gave a little jerk of his head toward one of them. "Judd Morgan," his lips framed without making a sound.

Bannister nodded.

"Been tanking up all day," Mac added. "Otherwise his tongue would not be shooting off so reckless."

A silence had fallen over the assembly save for the braggarts at the bar. Men looked at each other, and then furtively at Bannister. For Morgan, ignorant of who was sitting quietly with his back to him at the faro-table, was venting his hate of Bannister and McWilliams.

"Both in the same boat. Did y'u see how Mac ran to help him to-day? Both waddies. Both rustlers. Both train robbers. Sho! I got through putting a padlock on me mouth. Man to man, I'm as good as either of them--damn sight better. I wisht they was here, one or both; I wisht they would step up here and fight it out. Bannister's a false alarm, and that foreman of the Lazy D--" His tongue stumbled over a blur of vilification that ended with a foul mention of Miss Messiter.

Instantly two chairs crashed to the floor. Two pair of gray eyes met quietly.

"My quarrel, Bann," said Jim, in a low, even voice.

The other nodded. "I'll see y'u have a clear field."

The man who was with Morgan suddenly whispered in his ear, and the latter slewed his head in startled fear. Almost instantly a bullet clipped past McWilliams's shoulder. Morgan had fired without waiting for the challenge he felt sure was at hand. Once--twice the foreman's revolver made answer. Morgan staggered, slipped down to the floor, a bullet crashing through the chandelier as he fell. For a moment his body jerked. Then he rolled over and lay still.

The foreman's weapon covered him unwaveringly, but no more steadily than Bannister's gaze the man who had come in with him who lay lifeless on the floor. The man looked at the lifeless thing, shuddered, and backed out of the saloon.

"I call y'u all to witness that my friend killed him in self-defense," said Bannister evenly. "Y'u all saw him fire first. Mac did not even have his gun out."

"That's right," agreed one, and another added: "He got what was coming to him."

"He sure did," was the barkeeper's indorsement. "He came in hunting trouble, but I reckon he didn't want to be accommodated so prompt."

"Y'u'll find us at the Gimlet Butte House if we're wanted for this," said Bannister. "We'll be there till morning."

But once out of the gambling-house McWilliams drew his friend to one side. "Do y'u know who that was I killed?"

"Judd Morgan, foreman before y'u at the Lazy D."

"Yes, but what else?"

"What do y'u mean?"

"I mean that next to your cousin Judd was leader of that Shoshone-Teton bunch."

"How do y'u know?"

"I suspected it a long time, but I knew for sure the day that your cousin held up the ranch. The man that was in charge of the crowd outside was Morgan. I could swear to it. I knew him soon as I clapped eyes to him, but I was awful careful to forget to tell him I recognized him."

"That means we are in more serious trouble than I had supposed."

"Y'u bet it does. We're in a hell of a hole, figure it out any way y'u like. Instead of having shot up a casual idiot, I've killed Ned Bannister's right-hand man. That will be the excuse--shooting Morgan. But the real trouble is that I won the championship belt from your cousin. He already hated y'u like poison, and he don't love me any too hard. He will have us arrested by his sheriff here. Catch the point. Y'U'RE NED BANNISTER, THE OUTLAW, AND I'M HIS RIGHT-BOWER. That's the play he's going to make, and he's going to make it right soon."

"I don't care if he does. We'll fight him on his own ground. We'll prove that he's the miscreant and not us."

"Prove nothing," snarled McWilliams. "Do y'u reckon he'll give us a chance to prove a thing? Not on your life. He'll have us jailed first thing; then he'll stir up a sentiment against us, and before morning there will be a lynchingbee, and y'u and I will wear the neckties. How do y'u like the looks of it?"

"But y'u have a lot of friends. They won't stand for anything like that."

"Not if they had time to stop it. Trouble is, fellow's friends think awful slow. They'll arrive in time to cut us down and be the mourners. No, sir! It's a hike for Jimmie Mac on the back of the first bronc he can slap a saddle on."

Bannister frowned. "I don't like to run before the scurvy scoundrels."

"Do y'u suppose I'm enjoying it? Not to any extent, I allow. But that sweet relative of yours holds every ace in the deck, and he'll play them, too. He owns the law in this man's town, and he owns the lawless. But the best card he holds is that he can get a thousand of the best people here to join him in hanging the 'king' of the Shoshone outlaws. Explanations nothing! Y'u rode under the name of Bannister, didn't y'u? He's Jack Holloway."

"It does make a strong combination," admitted the sheepman.

"Strong! It's invincible. I can see him playing it, laughing up his sleeve all the time at the honest fools he is working. No, sir! I draw out of a game like that. Y'u don't get a run for your money."

"Of course he knows already what has happened," mused Bannister.

"Sure he knows. That fellow with Morgan made a bee-line for him. Just about now he's routing the sheriff out of his bed. We got no time to lose. Thing is, to burn the wind out of this town while we have the chance."

"I see. It won't help us any to be spilling lead into a sheriff's posse. That would ce'tainly put us in the wrong."

"Now y'u're shouting. If we're honest men why don't we surrender peaceable? That's the play the 'king' is going to make in this town. Now if we should spoil a posse and bump off one or two of them, we couldn't pile up evidence enough to get a jury to acquit. No, sir! We can't surrender and we can't fight. Consequence is, we got to roll our tails immediate."

"We have an appointment with Miss Messiter and Nora for to-morrow morning. We'll have to leave word we can't keep it."

"Sure. Denver and Missou are playing the wheel down at the Silver Dollar. I reckon we better make those boys jump and run errands for us while we lie low. I'll drop in casual and give them the word. Meet y'u here in ten minutes. Whatever y'u do, keep that mask on your face."

"Better meet farther from the scene of trouble. Suppose we say the north gate of the grand stand?"

"Good enough. So-long."

The first faint streaks of day were beginning to show on the horizon when Bannister reached the grand stand. He knew that inside of another half-hour the little frontier town would be blinking in the early morning sunlight that falls so brilliantly through the limpid atmosphere. If they were going to leave without fighting their way out there was no time to lose.

Ten minutes slowly ticked away.

He glanced at his watch. "Five minutes after four. I wish I had gone with Mac. He may have been recognized."

But even as the thought flitted through his mind, the semi-darkness opened to let a figure out of it.

"All quiet along the Potomac, seh?" asked the foreman's blithe voice. "Good. I found the boys and got them started." He flung down a Mexican vaquero's gaily trimmed costume.

"Get into these, seh. Denver shucked them for me. That coyote must have noticed what we wore before he slid out. Y'u can bet the orders are to watch for us as we were dressed then."

"What are y u going to do?"

"Me? I'm scheduled to be Aaron Burr, seh. Missou swaps with me when he gets back here. They're going to rustle us some white men's clothes, too, but we cayn't wear them till we get out of town on account of showing our handsome faces."

"What about horses?"

"Denver is rustling some for us. Y'u better be scribbling your billy-doo to the girl y'u leave behind y'u, seh."

"Haven't y'u got one to scribble?" Bannister retorted. "Seems to me y'u better get busy, too."

So it happened that when Missou arrived a few minutes later he found this pair of gentlemen, who were about to flee for their lives, busily inditing what McWilliams had termed facetiously billets-doux. Each of them was trying to make his letter a little warmer than friendship allowed without committing himself to any chance of a rebuff. Mac got as far as Nora Darling, absentmindedly inserted a comma between the words, and there stuck hopelessly. He looked enviously across at Bannister, whose pencil was traveling rapidly down his note-book.

"My, what a swift trail your pencil leaves on that paper. That's going some. Mine's bogged down before it got started. I wisht y'u would start me off."

"Well, if you ain't up and started a business college already. I had ought to have brought a typewriter along with me," murmured Missou ironically.

"How are things stacking? Our friends the enemy getting busy yet?" asked Bannister, folding and addressing his note.

"That's what. Orders gone out to guard every road so as not to let you pass. What's the matter with me rustling up the boys and us holding down a corner of this town ourselves?"

The sheepman shook his head. "We're not going to start a little private war of our own. We couldn't do that without spilling a lot of blood. No, we'll make a run for it."

"That y'u, Denver?" the foreman called softly, as the sound of approaching horses reached him.

"Bet your life. Got your own broncs, too. Sheriff Burns called up Daniels not to let any horses go out from his corral to anybody without his O.K. I happened to be cinching at the time the 'phone message came, so I concluded that order wasn't for me, and lit out kinder unceremonious."

Hastily the fugitives donned the new costumes and dominos, turned their notes over to Denver, and swung to their saddles.

"Good luck!" the punchers called after them, and Denver added an ironical promise that the foreman had no doubt he would keep. "I'll look out for Nora--Darling." There was a drawling pause between the first and second names. "I'll ce'tainly see that she don't have any time to worry about y'u, Mac."

"Y'u go to Halifax," returned Mac genially over his shoulder as he loped away.

"I doubt if we can get out by the roads. Soon as we reach the end of the street we better cut across that hayfield," suggested Ned.

"That's whatever. Then we'll slip past the sentries without being seen. I'd hate to spoil any of them if we can help it. We're liable to get ourselves disliked if our guns spatter too much."

They rode through the main street, still noisy with the shouts of late revelers returning to their quarters. Masked men were yet in evidence occasionally, so that their habits caused neither remark nor suspicion. A good many of the punchers, unable to stay longer, were slipping out of town after having made a night of it. In the general exodus the two friends hoped to escape unobserved.

They dropped into a side street, galloped down it for two hundred yards, and dismounted at a barb-wire fence which ran parallel with the road. The foreman's wire-clippers severed the strands one by one, and they led their horses through the gap. They crossed an alfalfa-field, jumped an irrigation ditch, used the clippers again, and found themselves in a large pasture. It was getting lighter every moment, and while they were still in the pasture a voice hailed them from the road in an unmistakable command to halt.

They bent low over the backs of their ponies and gave them the spur. The shot they had expected rang out, passing harmlessly over them. Another followed, and still another.

"That's right. Shoot up the scenery. Y'u don't hurt us none," the foreman said, apostrophizing the man behind the gun.

The next clipped fence brought them to the open country. For half an hour they rode swiftly without halt. Then McWilliams drew up.

"Where are we making for?"

"How about the Wind River country?"

"Won't do. First off, they'll strike right down that way after us. What's the matter with running up Sweetwater Creek and lying out in the bad lands around the Roubideaux?"

"Good. I have a sheep-camp up that way. I can arrange to have grub sent there for us by a man I can trust."

"All right. The Roubideaux goes."

While they were nooning at a cow-spring, Bannister, lying on his back, with his face to the turquoise sky, became aware that a vagrant impulse had crystallized to a fixed determination. He broached it at once to his companion.

"One thing is a cinch, Mac. Neither y'u nor I will be safe in this country now until we have broken up the gang of desperadoes that is terrorizing this country. If we don't get them they will get us. There isn't any doubt about that. I'm not willing to lie down before these miscreants. What do y'u say?"

"I'm with y'u, old man. But put a name to it. What are y'u proposing?"

"I'm proposing that y'u and I make it our business not to have any other business until we clean out this nest of wolves. Let's go right after them, and see if we can't wipe out the Shoshone-Teton outfit."

"How? They own the law, don't they?"

"They don't own the United States Government. When they held up a mail-train they did a fool thing, for they bucked up against Uncle Sam. What I propose is that we get hold of one of the gang and make him weaken. Then, after we have got hold of some evidence that will convict, we'll go out and run down my namesake Ned Bannister. If people once get the idea that his hold isn't so strong there's a hundred people that will testify against him. We'll have him in a Government prison inside of six months."

"Or else he'll have us in a hole in the ground," added the foreman, dryly.

"One or the other," admitted Bannister. "Are y'u in on this thing?"

"I surely am. Y'u're the best man I've met up with in a month of Sundays, seh. Y'u ain't got but one fault; and that is y'u don't smoke cigareets. Feed yourself about a dozen a day and y'u won't have a blamed trouble left. Match, seh?" The foreman of the Lazy D, already following his own advice, rolled deftly his smoke, moistened it and proceeded to blow away his troubles.

Bannister looked at his debonair insouciance and laughed. "Water off a duck's back," he quoted. "I know some folks that would be sweating fear right now. It's ce'tainly an aggravating situation, that of being an honest man hunted as a villain by a villain. But I expaict my cousin's enjoying it."

"He ain't enjoying it so much as he would if his plans had worked out a little smoother. He's holding the sack right now and cussing right smaht over it being empty, I reckon."

"He did lock the stable door a little too late," chuckled the sheepman. But even as he spoke a shadow fell over his face. "My God! I had forgotten. Y'u don't suppose he would take it out of Miss Messiter."

"Not unless he's tired of living," returned her foreman, darkly. "One thing, this country won't stand for is that. He's got to keep his hands off women or he loses out. He dassent lay a hand on them if they don't want him to. That's the law of the plains, isn't it?"

"That's the unwritten law for the bad man, but I notice it doesn't seem to satisfy y'u, my friend. Y'u and I know that my cousin, Ned Bannister, doesn't acknowledge any law, written or unwritten. He's a devil and he has no fear. Didn't he kidnap her before?"

"He surely would never dare touch those young ladies. But--I don't know. Bann, I guess we better roll along toward the Lazy D country, after all."

"I think so." Ned looked at his friend with smiling drollery. "I thought y'u smoked your troubles away, Jim. This one seems to worry y'u."

McWilliams grinned sheepishly. "There's one trouble won't be smoked away. It kinder dwells. "Then, apparently apropos of nothing, he added, irrelevantly: "Wonder what Denver's doing right now?"

"Probably keeping that appointment y'u ran away from," bantered his friend.

"I'll bet he is. Funny how some men have all the luck," murmured the despondent foreman.

CHAPTER 16

. HUNTING BIG GAME

In point of fact, Denver's occupation at that moment was precisely what they had guessed it to be. He was sitting beside Nora Darling in the grand stand, explaining to her the fine points of "roping." Mr. Bob Austin, commonly known as "Texas," was meanwhile trying to make himself agreeable to Helen Messiter. Truth to tell, both young women listened with divided interest to their admirers. Both of them had heard the story of the night, and each of them had tucked away in her corsage a scribbled note she wanted to get back to her room and read again. That the pursuit was still on everybody knew, and those on the inside were aware that the "King," masquerading under the name of Jack Holloway, was the active power behind the sheriff stimulating the chase.

It was after the roping had begun, and Austin had been called away to take his turn, that the outlaw chief sauntered along the aisle of the grand stand to the box in which was seated the mistress of the Lazy D.

"Beautiful mo'ning, isn't it? Delightfully crisp and clear," he said by way of introduction, stopping at her box.

She understood the subtle jeer in his manner, and her fine courage rose to meet it. There was a daring light in her eye, a buoyant challenge in her voice as she answered:

"It is a splendid morning. I'm not surprised you are enjoying it."

"Did I say I was enjoying it?" He laughed as he lifted the bar, came into her box and took a seat.

"Of course not. How careless of me! I had forgotten you were in mourning for a deceased friend."

His dark eyes flashed. "I'll not mourn for him long. He was a mighty trifling fellow, anyhow. Soon as I catch and hang his murderers I'll quit wearing black."

"You may wear out several suits before then," she hit back.

"Don't y'u believe it; when I want a thing I don't quit till it's done."

She met his gaze, and the impact of eyes seemed to shock her physically. The wickedness in him threatened, gloated, dominated. She shivered in the warm sunlight, and would not have had him know it for worlds.

"Dear me! How confident you talk. Aren't you sometimes disappointed?"

"Temporarily. But when I want a thing I take it in the end."

She knew he was serving notice on her that he meant to win her; and again the little spinal shiver raced over her. She could not look at his sardonic, evil face without fear, and she could not look away without being aware of his eyes possessing her. What was the use of courage against such a creature as this?

"Yes, I understand you take a good deal that isn't yours," she retorted carelessly, her eyes on the arena.

"I make it mine when I take it," he answered coolly, admiring the gameness which she wore as a suit of chain armor against his thrusts.

"Isn't it a little dangerous sometimes?" her even voice countered. "When you take what belongs to others you run a risk, don't you?"

"That's part of the rules. Except for that I shouldn't like it so well. I hunt big game, and the bigger the game the more risk. That's why y'u guessed right when y'u said I was enjoying the mo'ning."

"Meaning--your cousin?"

"Well, no. I wasn't thinking of him, though he's some sizable. But I'm hunting bigger game than he is, and I expect to bag it."

She let her scornful eyes drift slowly over him. "I might pretend to misunderstand you. But I won't. You may have your answer now. I am not afraid of you, for since you are a bully you must be a coward. I saw a rattlesnake last week in the hills. It reminded me of some one I have seen. I'll leave you to guess who."

Her answer drew blood. The black tide raced under the swarthy tan of his face. He leaned forward till his beady eyes were close to her defiant ones. "Y'u have forgotten one thing, Miss Messiter. A rattlesnake can sting. I ask nothing of you. Can't I break your heart without your loving me? You're only a woman--and not the first I have broken, by God--"

His slim, lithe body was leaning forward so that it cut off others, and left them to all intents alone. At a touch of her fingers the handbag in her lap flew open and a little ivory-hilted revolver lay in her hand.

"You may break me, but you'll never bend me an inch."

He looked at the little gun and laughed ironically. "Sho! If y'u should hit me with that and I should find it out I might get mad at y'u."

"Did I say it was for you?" she said coldly; and again the shock of joined eyes ended in drawn battle.

"Have y'u the nerve?" He looked her over, so dainty and so resolute, so silken strong; and he knew he had his answer.

His smoldering eyes burned with desire to snatch her to him and ride away into the hills. For he was a man who lived in his sensations. He had won many women to their hurt, but it was the joy of conflict that made the pursuit worth while to him; and this young woman, who could so delightfully bubble with little laughs ready to spill over and was yet possessed of a spirit so finely superior to the tenderness of her soft, round, maidenly curves, allured him mightily to the attack.

She dropped the revolver back into the bag and shut the clasp with a click, "And now I think, Mr. Bannister, that I'll not detain you any longer. We understand each other sufficiently."

He rose with a laugh that mocked. "I expaict to spend quite a bit of time understanding y'u one of these days. In the meantime this is to our better acquaintance."

Deliberately, without the least haste, he stooped and kissed her before she could rally from the staggering surprise of the intention she read in his eyes too late to elude. Then, with the coolest bravado in the world, he turned on his heel and strolled away.

Angry sapphires gleamed at him from under the long, brown lashes. She was furious, aghast, daunted. By the merest chance she was sitting in a corner of the box, so screened from observation that none could see. But the insolence of him, the reckless defiance of all standards of society, shook her even while it enraged her. He had put forth his claim like a braggart, but he had made good with an audacity superb in its effrontery. How she hated him! How she feared him! The thoughts were woven inseparably in her mind. Mephisto himself could not have impressed himself more imperatively than this strutting, heartless master artist in vice.

She saw him again presently down in the arena, for it was his turn to show his skill at roping. Texas had done well; very well, indeed. He had made the throw and tie in thirty-seven seconds, which was two seconds faster than the record of the previous year. But she knew instinctively, as her fascinated eyes watched the outlaw preparing for the feat, that he was going to win. He would use his success as a weapon against her; as a means of showing her that he always succeeded in whatever he undertook. So she interpreted he look he flung her as he waited at the chute for the wild hill steer to be driven into the arena. It takes a good man physically to make a successful roper. He must be possessed of nerve, skill and endurance far out of the ordinary. He must be quick-eyed, strong-handed, nimble of foot, expert of hand and built like a wildcat. So Denver explained to the two young women in the box, and the one behind him admitted reluctantly that she long, lean, supple Centaur waiting impassively at the gateway fitted the specifications.

Out flashed the rough-coated hill steer, wild and fleet as a hare, thin and leggy, with muscles of whipcord. Down went the flag, and the stopwatches began to tick off the seconds. Like an arrow the outlaw's pony shot forward, a lariat circling round and round the rider's head. At every leap the cow pony lessened the gap as it pounded forward on the heels of the flying steer.

The loop swept forward and dropped over the horns of the animal. The pony, with the perfect craft of long practice, swerved to one side with a rush. The dragging rope swung up against the running steer's legs, grew suddenly taut. Down went the steer's head, and next moment its feet were swept from under it as it went heavily to the ground. Man and horse were perfect in their team work. As the supple rider slid from the back of the pony it ran to the end of the rope and braced itself to keep the animal from rising. Bannister leaped on the steer, tie-rope in hand. Swiftly his deft hands passed to and fro, making the necessary loops and knots. Then his hands went into the air. The steer was hog-tied.

For a few seconds the judges consulted together. "Twenty-nine seconds," announced their spokesman, and at the words a great cheer went up. Bannister had made his tie in record time.

Impudently the scoundrel sauntered up to the grand stand, bowed elaborately to Miss Messiter, and perched himself on the fence, where he might be the observed of all observers. It was curious, she thought, how his vanity walked hand in hand with so much power and force. He was really extraordinarily strong, but no debutante's self-sufficiency could have excelled his. He was so frankly an egotist that it ceased to be a weakness.

Back in her room at the hotel an hour later Helen paced up and down under a nervous strain foreign to her temperament. She was afraid; for the first time in her life definitely afraid. This man pitted against her had deliberately divorced his life from morality. In him lay no appeal to any conscience court of last resort. But the terror of this was not for herself principally, but for her flying lover. With his indubitable power, backed by the unpopularity of the sheepman in this cattle country, the King of the Bighorn could destroy his cousin if he set himself to do so. Of this she was convinced, and her conviction carried a certainty that he had the will as well as the means. If he had lacked anything in motive she herself had supplied one. For she was afraid that this villain had read her heart.

And as her hand went fluttering to her heart she found small comfort in the paper lying next it that only a few hours before had brought her joy. For at any moment a messenger might come in to tell her that the writer of it had been captured and was to be dealt with summarily in frontier fashion. At best her lover and her friend were but fugitives from justice. Against them were arrayed not only the ruffian followers of their enemy, but also the lawfully constituted authorities of the county. Even if they should escape to-day the net would tighten on them, and they would eventually be captured.

For the third time since coming to Wyoming Helen found refuge in tears.

CHAPTER 17

. RUN TO EARTH

When word came to Denver and the other punchers of the Lazy D that Reddy had been pressed into service as a guide for the posse that was pursuing the fugitives they gave vent to their feelings in choice profanity.

"Now, ain't that like him? Had to run around like a locoed calf telling all he knowed and more till Burns ropes him in," commented the disgusted Missou.

"Trouble with Reddy is he sets his mouth to working and then goes away and leaves it," mourned Jim Henson.

"I'd hate to feel as sore as Reddy will when the boys get through playing with him after he gets back to the ranch," Denver contributed, when he had exhausted his vocabulary.

Meanwhile Reddy, unaware of being a cause of offense, was cheerfully happy in the unexpected honor that had been thrust upon him. His will was of putty, molded into the opinion of whomever he happened at the moment to be with. Just now, with the ironic eye of Sheriff Burns upon him, he was strong for law enforcement.

"A feller hadn't ought to be so promiscuous with his hardware. This here thing of shooting up citizens don't do Wyoming no good these days. Capital ain't a-going to come in when such goings-on occur," he sagely opined, unconsciously parroting the sentiment Burns had just been instilling into him.

"That's right, sir. If that ain't horse sense I don't know any. You got a head on you, all right," answered the admiring sheriff.

The flattered Reddy pleaded guilty to being wiser than most men. "Jest because I punch cows ain't any reason why I'm anybody's fool. I'll show them smart boys at the Lazy D I don't have to take the dust of any of the bunch when it comes to using my think tank."

"I would," sympathized Burns. You bet they'll all be almighty jealous when they learn how you was chosen out of the whole outfit on this job."

All day they rode, and that night camped a few miles from the Lazy D. Early next morning they hailed a solitary rider as he passed. The man turned out to be a cowman, with a small ranch not far from the one owned by Miss Messiter.

"Hello, Henderson! y'u seen anything of Jim McWilliams and another fellow riding acrost this way?" asked Reddy.

"Nope," answered the cowman promptly. But immediately he modified his statement to add that he had seen two men riding toward Dry Creek a couple of hours ago. "They was going kinder slow. Looked to me sorter like one of them was hurt and the other was helping him out," he volunteered.

The sheriff looked significantly at one of his men and nodded.

"You didn't recognize the horses, I reckon?"

"Come to think of it, one of the ponies did look like Jim's roan. What's up, boys? Anything doing?"

"Nothing particular. We want to see Jim, that's all. So long."

What Henderson had guessed was the truth. The continuous hard riding had been too much for Bannister and his wound had opened anew. They were at the time only a few miles from a shack on Dry Creek, where the Lazy D punchers sometimes put up. McWilliams had attended the wound as best he could, and after a few hours' rest had headed for the cabin in the hills. They were compelled to travel very slowly, since the motion kept the sheepman's wound continually bleeding. But about noon they reached the refuge they had been seeking and Bannister lay down on the bunk with their saddle blankets under him. He soon fell asleep, and Mac took advantage of this to set out on a foraging expedition to a ranch not far distant. Here he got some bread, bacon, milk and eggs from a man he could trust and returned to his friend.

It was dark by the time he reached the cabin. He dismounted, and with his arms full of provisions pushed into the hut.

"Awake, Bann?" he asked in a low voice.

The answer was unexpected. Something heavy struck his chest and flung him back against the wall. Before he could recover his balance he was pinioned fast. Four men had hurled themselves upon him.

"We've got you, Jim. Not a mite o' use resisting," counseled the sheriff.

"Think I don't savez that? I can take a hint when a whole Methodist church falls on me. Who are y'u, anyhow?"

"Somebody light a lantern," ordered Burns.

By the dim light it cast Mac made them out, and saw Ned Bannister gagged and handcuffed on the bed. He knew a moment of surprise when his eyes fell on Reddy.

"So it was y'u brought them here, Red?" he said quietly.

Contrary to his own expectations, the gentleman named was embarrassed "The sheriff, he summoned me to serve," was his lame defense.

"And so y'u threw down your friends. Good boy!"

"A man's got to back the law up, ain't he?"

Mac turned his shoulder on him rather pointedly. "There isn't any need of keeping that gag in my friend's mouth any longer," he suggested to Burns.

"That's right, too. Take it out, boys. I got to do my duty, but I don't aim to make any gentleman more uncomfortable than I can help. I want everything to be pleasant all round."

"I'm right glad to hear that, Burns, because my friend isn't fit to travel. Y'u can take me back and leave him out here with a guard," the foreman replied quickly.

"Sorry I can't accommodate you, Jim, but I got to take y'u both with me."

"Those are the orders of the King, are they?"

Burns flushed darkly. "It ain't going to do you any good to talk that way. You know mighty well this here man with you is Bannister. I ain't going to take no chances on losing him now I've got my hand on him."

"Y'u ce'tainly deserve a re-election, and I'll bet y'u get it all right. Any man so given over to duty, so plumb loaded down to the hocks with conscience as y'u, will surely come back with a big majority next November."

"I ain't askin' for YOUR vote, Mac."

"Oh, y'u don't need votes. Just get the King to O. K. your nomination and y'u'll win in a walk."

"My friend, y'u better mind your own business. Far as I can make out y'u got troubles enough of your own," retorted the nettled sheriff.

"Y'u don't need to tell me that, Tom Burns' Y'u ain't a man--nothing but a stuffed skin worked by a string. When that miscreant Bannister pulls the string y'u jump. He's jerked it now, so y'u're taking us back to him. I can prove that coyote Morgan shot at me first, but that doesn't cut any ice with you."

"What made you light out so sudden, then?" demanded the aggrieved Burns triumphantly.

"Because I knew you. That's a plenty good reason. I'm not asking anything for myself. All I say is that my friend isn't fit to travel yet. Let him stay here under a guard till he is."

"He was fit enough to get here. By thunder, he's fit to go back!"

"Y'u've said enough, Mac," broke in Bannister. "It's awfully good of y'u to speak for me, but I would rather see it out with you to a finish. I don't want any favors from this yellow dog of my cousin."

The "yellow dog" set his teeth and swore vindictively behind them. He was already imagining an hour when these insolent prisoners of his would sing another tune.

CHAPTER 18

. PLAYING FOR TIME

"They've got 'em. Caught them on Dry Creek, just below Green Forks."

Helen Messiter, just finishing her breakfast at the hotel preparatory to leaving in her machine for the ranch, laid down her knife and fork and looked with dilated eyes at Denver, who had broken in with the news.

"Are you sure?" The color had washed from her face and left her very white, but she fronted the situation quietly without hysterics or fuss of any kind.

"Yes, ma'am. They're bringing them in now to jail. Watch out and y'u'll see them pass here in a few minutes. Seems that Bannister's wound opened up on him and he couldn't go any farther. Course Mac wouldn't leave him. Sheriff Burns and his posse dropped in on them and had them covered before Mac could chirp."

"You are sure this man--this desperado Bannister--will do nothing till night?"

"Not the way I figure it. He'll have the jail watched all day. But he's got to work the town up to a lynching. I expect the bars will be free for all to-day. By night the worst part of this town will be ready for anything. The rest of the citizens are going to sit down and do nothing just because it is Bannister."

"But it isn't Bannister--not the Bannister they think it is."

He shook his head. "No use, ma'am. I've talked till my throat aches, but it don't do a mite of good. Nobody believes a word of what I say. Y'u see, we ain't got any proof."

"Proof! We have enough, God knows! didn't this villain--this outlaw that calls himself Jack Holloway--attack and try to murder him?"

"That's what we believe, but the report out is that one of us punchers shot him up for crossing the dead-line."

"Didn't this fellow hold up the ranch and try to take Ned Bannister away with him?"

"Yes, ma'am. But that doesn't look good to most people. They say he had his friends come to take him away so y'u wouldn't hold him and let us boys get him. This cousin business is a fairy tale the way they size it up. How come this cousin to let him go if he held up the ranch to put the sick man out of business? No, miss. This country has made up its mind that your friend is the original Ned Bannister. My opinion is that nothing on earth can save him."

"I don't want your opinion. I'm going to save him, I tell you; and you are going to help. Are his friends nothing but a bunch of quitters?" she cried, with sparkling eyes.

"I didn't know I was such a great friend of his," answered the cowboy sulkily.

"You're a friend of Jim McWilliams, aren't you? Are you going to sneak away and let these curs hang him?"

Denver flushed. "Y'u're dead right, Miss Helen. I guess I'll see it out with you. What's the orders?"

"I want you to help me organize a defense. Get all Mac's friends stirred up to make a fight for him. Bring as many of them in to see me during the day as you can. If you see any of the rest of the Lazy D boys send them in to me for instructions. Report yourself every hour to me. And make sure that at least three of your friends that you can trust are hanging round the jail all day so as to be ready in case any attempt is made to storm it before dark."

"I'll see to it." Denver hung on his heel a moment before leaving. "It's only square to tell y'u, Miss Helen, that this means war here tonight. These streets are going to run with blood if we try to save them."

"I'm taking that responsibility," she told him curtly; but a moment later she added gently: "I have a plan, my friend, that may stop this outrage yet. But you must do your best for me." She smiled sadly at him. "You're my foreman, to-day, you know."

"I'm going to do my level best, y'u may tie to that," he told her earnestly.

"I know you will." And their fingers touched for an instant.

Through a window the girl could see a crowd pouring down the street toward the hotel. She flew up the stairs and out upon the second-story piazza that looked down upon the road.

From her point of vantage she easily picked them out--the two unarmed men riding with their hands tied behind their backs, encircled by a dozen riders armed to the teeth. Bannister's hat had apparently fallen off farther down the street, for the man beside him was dusting it. The wounded prisoner looked about him without fear, but it was plain he was near the limit of endurance. He was pale as a sheet, and his fair curls clung moistly to his damp forehead.

McWilliams caught sight of her first, and she could see him turn and say a word to his comrade. Bannister looked up, caught sight of her, and smiled. That smile, so pale and wan, went to her heart like a knife. But the message of her eyes was hope. They told the prisoners silently to be of good cheer, that at least they were not deserted to their fate.

"What is it about--the crowd?" Nora asked of her mistress as the latter was returning to the head of the stairs.

In as few words as she could Helen told her, repressing sharply the tears the girl began to shed. "This is not the time to weep--not yet. We must save them. You can do your part. Mr. Bannister is wounded. Get a doctor over the telephone and see that he attends him at the. Don't leave the 'phone until you have got one to promise to go immediately."

"Yes, miss. Is there anything else?"

"Ask the doctor to call you up from the prison and tell you how Mr. Bannister is. Make it plain to him that he is to give up his other practice, if necessary, and is to keep us informed through the day about his patient's condition. I will be responsible for his bill."

Helen herself hurried to the telegraph office at the depot. She wrote out a long dispatch and handed it to the operator. "Send this at once please."

He was one of those supercilious young idiots that make the most of such small power as ever drifts down to them. Taking the message, he tossed it on the table. "I'll send it when I get time."

"You'll send it now."

"What--what's that?"

Her steady eyes caught and held his shifting ones. "I say you are going to send it now--this very minute."

"I guess not. The line's busy," he bluffed.

"If you don't begin sending that message this minute I'll make it my business to see that you lose your position," she told him calmly.

He snatched up the paper from the place where he had tossed it. "Oh, well, if it's so darned important," he-conceded ungraciously.

She stood quietly above him while he sent the telegram, even though he contrived to make every moment of her stay an unvoiced insult. Her wire was to the wife of the Governor of the State. They had been close friends at school, and the latter had been urging Helen to pay a visit to Cheyenne. The message she sent was as follows:

Battle imminent between outlaws and cattlemen here. Bloodshed certain to-night. My foreman last night killed in self-defense a desperado. Bannister's gang, in league with town authorities, mean to lynch him and one of my other friends after dark this evening. Sheriff will do nothing. Can your husband send soldiers immediately? Wire answer.

The operator looked up sullenly after his fingers had finished the last tap. "Well?"

"Just one thing more," Helen told him. "You understand the rules of the company about secrecy. Nobody you knows I am sending this message. If by any chance it should leak out, I shall know through whom. If you want to hold your position, you will keep quiet."

"I know my business," he growled. Nevertheless, she had spoken in season, for he had had it in his mind to give a tip where he knew it would be understood to hasten the jail delivery and accompanying lynching.

When she returned to the hotel? Helen found Missou waiting for her. She immediately sent him back to the office, and told him to wait there until the answer was received. "I'll send one of the boys up to relieve you so that you may come with the telegram as soon as it arrives. I want the operator watched all day. Oh, here's Jim Henson! Denver has explained the situation to you, I presume. I want you to go up to the telegraph office and stay there all day. Go to lunch with the operator when he goes. Don't let him talk privately to anybody, not even for a few seconds. I don't want you to seem to have him under guard before outsiders, but let him know it very plainly. He is not to mention a wire I sent or the answer to it--not to anybody, Jim. Is that plain?"

"Y'u bet! He's a clam, all right, till the order is countermanded." And the young man departed with a cheerful grin that assured Helen she had nothing to fear from official leaks.

Nora, from answering a telephone call, came to report to the general in charge. "The doctor says that he has looked after Mr. Bannister, and there is no immediate danger. If he keeps quiet for a few days he ought to do well. Mr. McWilliams sent a message by him to say that we aren't to worry about him. He said he would--would--rope a heap of cows on the Lazy D yet."

Nora, bursting into tears, flung herself into Helen's arms. "They are going to kill him. I know they are, and--and 'twas only yesterday, ma'am, I told him not to--to get gay, the poor boy. When he tried to--to--" She broke down and sobbed.

Her mistress smiled in spite of herself, though she was bitterly aware that even Nora's grief was only superficially ludicrous.

"We're going to save him, Nora, if we can. There's hope while there's life. You see, Mac himself is full of courage. HE hasn't given up. We must keep up our courage, too."

"Yes, ma'am, but this is the first gentleman friend I ever had hanged, and--" She broke off, sobbing, leaving the rest as a guess.

Helen filled it out aloud. "And you were going to say that you care more for him than any of the others. Well, you must stop coquetting and tell him so when we have saved him."

"Yes, ma'am," agreed Nora, very repentant for the moment of the fact that it was her nature to play with the hearts of those of the male persuasion. Immediately she added: "He was THAT kind, ma'am, tender-hearted."

Helen, whose own heart was breaking, continued to soothe her. "Don't say WAS, child. You are to be brave, and not think of him that way."

"Yes, ma'am. He told me he was going to buy cows with the thousand dollars he won yesterday. I knew he meant--"

"Yes, of course. It's a cowboy's way of saying that he means to start housekeeping. Have you the telegram, Missou?" For that young man was standing in the doorway.

He handed her the yellow slip. She ripped open the envelope and read: Company B en route. Railroad connections uncertain Postpone crisis long as possible. May reach Gimlet Butte by ten-thirty.

Her first thought was of unspeakable relief. The militia was going to take a hand. The boys in khaki would come marching down the street, and everything would be all right. But hard on the heels of her instinctive gladness trod the sober second thought. Ten-thirty at best, and perhaps later! Would they wait that long, or would they do their cowardly work as soon as night fell She must contrive to delay them till the train drew in. She must play for those two lives with all her woman's wit; must match the outlaw's sinister cunning and fool him into delay. She knew he would come if she sent for him. But how long could she keep him? As long as he was amused at her agony, as long as his pleasure in tormenting her was greater than his impatience to be at his ruffianly work. Oh, if she ever needed all her power it would be to-night.

Throughout the day she continued to receive hourly reports from Denver, who always brought with him four or five honest cowpunchers from up-country to listen to the strange tale she unfolded to them. It was, of course, in part, the spell of her sweet personality, of that shy appeal she made to the manhood in them; but of those who came, nearly all believed, for the time at least, and aligned themselves on her side in the struggle that was impending. Some of these were swayed from their allegiance in the course of the day, but a few she knew would remain true.

Meanwhile, all through the day, the enemy was busily at work. As Denver had predicted, free liquor was served to all who would drink. The town and its guests were started on a grand debauch that was to end in violence that might shock their sober intelligence. Everywhere poisoned whispers were being flung broadcast against the two men waiting in the jail for what the night would bring forth.

Dusk fell on a town crazed by bad whiskey and evil report. The deeds of Bannister were hashed and rehashed at every bar, and nobody related them with more ironic gusto than the man who called himself Jack Holloway. There were people in town who knew his real name and character, but of these the majority were either in alliance with him or dared not voice their knowledge. Only Miss Messiter and her punchers told the truth, and their words were blown away like chaff.

From the first moment of darkness Helen had the outlaw leader dogged by two of her men. Since neither of these were her own riders this was done without suspicion. At intervals of every quarter of an hour they reported to her in turn. Bannister was beginning to drink heavily, and she did not want to cut short his dissipation by a single minute. Yet she had to make sure of getting his attention before he went too far.

It was close to nine when she sent him a note, not daring to delay a minute longer. For the reports of her men were all to the same effect, that the crisis would not now be long postponed. Bannister, or Holloway, as he chose to call himself, was at the bar with his lieutenants in evil when the note reached him. He read it with a satisfaction he could not conceal. So! He had brought her already to her knees. Before he was through with her she should grovel in the dust before him.

"I'll be back in a few minutes. Do nothing till I return," he ordered, and went jingling away to the Elk House.

The young woman's anxiety was pitiable, but she repressed it sternly when she went to meet the man she feared; and never had it been more in evidence than in this hour of her greatest torture. Blithely she came forward to meet him, eye challenging eye gayly. No hint of her anguish escaped into her manner. He read there only coquetry, the eternal sex conflict, the winsome defiance of a woman hitherto the virgin mistress of all assaults upon her heart's citadel. It was the last thing he had expected to see, but it was infinitely more piquant, more intoxicating, than desperation. She seemed to give the lie to his impression of her love for his cousin; and that, too, delighted his pride.

"You will sit down?"

Carelessly, almost indolently, she put the question, her raised eyebrows indicating a chair with perfunctory hospitality. He had not meant to sit, had expected only to gloat a few minutes over her despair; but this situation called for more deliberation. He had yet to establish the mastery his vanity demanded. Therefore he took a chair.

"This is ce'tainly an unexpected honor. Did y'u send for me to explain some more about that sufficient understanding between us?" he sneered.

It was a great relief to her to see that, though he had been drinking, as she had heard, he was entirely master of himself. Her efforts might still be directed to Philip sober.

"I sent for you to congratulate you," she answered, with a smile. "You are a bigger man than I thought. You have done what you said you would do, and I presume you can very shortly go out of mourning."

He radiated vanity, seemed to visibly expand "Do y'u go in when I go out?" he asked brutally.

She laughed lightly. "Hardly. But it does seem as if I'm unlucky in my foremen. They all seem to have engagements across the divide."

"I'll get y u another."

"Thank you. I was going to ask as much of you. Can you suggest one now?"

"I'm a right good cattle man myself."

"And--can you stay with me a reasonable time?"

He laughed. "I have no engagements across the Styx, ma'am."

"My other foremen thought they were permanent fixtures here, too."

"We're all liable to mistakes."

"Even you, I suppose."

"I'll sign a lease to give y'u possession of my skill for as long as y'u like."

She settled herself comfortably back in an easy chair, as alluring a picture of buoyant, radiant youth as he had seen in many a day. "But the terms. I am afraid I can't offer you as much as you make at your present occupation."

"I could keep that up as a side-line."

"So you could. But if you use my time for your own profit, you ought to pay me a royalty on your intake."

His eyes lit with laughter. "I reckon that can be arranged. Any percentage you think fair It will all be in the family, anyway."

"I think that is one of the things about which we don't agree," she made answer softly, flashing him the proper look of inviting disdain from under her silken lashes.

He leaned forward, elbow on the chair-arm and chin in hand. "We'll agree about it one of these days."

"Think so?" she returned airily.

"I don't think. I know."

Just an eyebeat her gaze met his, with that hint of shy questioning, of puzzled doubt that showed a growing interest. "I wonder," she murmured, and recovered herself little laugh.

How she hated her task, and him! She was a singularly honest woman, but she must play the siren; must allure this scoundrel to forgetfulness, with a hurried and yet elude the very familiarity her manner invited. She knew her part, the heartless enticing coquette, compounded half of passion and half of selfishness. It was a hateful thing to do, this sacrifice of her personal reticence, of the individual abstraction in which she wrapped herself as a cloak, in order to hint at a possibility of some intimacy of feeling between them. She shrank from it with a repugnance hardly to be overcome, but she held herself with an iron will and consummate art to the role she had undertaken. Two lives hung on her success. She must not forget that. She would not let herself forget that--and one of them that of the man she loved.

So, bravely she played her part, repelling always with a hint of invitation, denying with the promise in her fascinated eyes of ultimate surrender to his ardor. In the zest of the pursuit the minutes slipped away unnoticed. Never had a woman seemed to him more subtly elusive, and never had he felt more sure of himself. Her charm grew on him, stirred his pulses to a faster beat. For it was his favorite sport, and this warm, supple young creature, who was to be the victim of his bow and arrow, showed herself worthy of his mettle.

The clock downstairs struck the half-hour, and Bannister, reminded of what lay before him outside, made a move to go. Her alert eyes had been expecting it, and she forestalled him by a change of tactics. Moved apparently by impulse, she seated herself on the piano-stool, swept the keys for an instant with her fingers, and plunged into the brilliant "Carmen" overture. Susceptible as this man was to the influence of music, he could not fail to be arrested by so perfect an interpretation of his mood. He stood rooted, was carried back again in imagination to a great artiste's rendering of that story of fierce passion and aching desire so brilliantly enacted under the white sunbeat of a country of cloudless skies. Imperceptibly she drifted into other parts of the opera. Was it the wild, gypsy seductiveness of Carmen that he felt, or, rather, this American girl's allurement? From "Love will like a birdling fly" she slipped into the exquisitely graceful snatches of song with which Carmen answers the officer's questions. Their rare buoyancy marched with his mood, and from them she carried him into the song "Over the hill," that is so perfect and romantic an expression of the _wanderlust._

How long she could have held him she will never know, for at that inopportune time came blundering one of his men into the room with a call for his presence to take charge of the situation outside.

"What do y'u want, Bostwick?" he demanded, with curt peremptoriness.

The man whispered in his ear.

"Can't wait any longer, can't they?" snapped his chief. "Y'u tell them they'll wait till I give the word. Understand?"

He almost flung the man out of the room, but Helen noticed that she had lost him. His interest was perfunctory, and, though he remained a little time longer, it was to establish his authority with the men rather than to listen to her. Twice he looked at his watch within five minutes.

He rose to go. "There is a little piece of business I have to put through. So I'll have to ask y'u to excuse me. I have had a delightful hour, and I hate to go." He smiled, and quoted with mock sentimentality:

"The hours I spent with thee, dear heart, Are as a string of pearls to me; I count them over, every one apart, My rosary! My rosary!"

"Dear me! One certainly lives and learns. How could I have guessed that, with your reputation, you could afford to indulge in a rosary?" she mocked.

"Good night." He offered his hand.

"Don't go yet," she coaxed.

He shook his head. "Duty, y'u know."

"Stay only a little longer. Just ten minutes more."

His vanity purred, so softly she stroked it. "Can't. Wish I could. Y'u hear how noisy things are getting. I've got to take charge. So-long."

She stood close, looking up at him with a face of seductive appeal.

"Don't go yet. Please!"

The triumph of victory mounted to his head. "I'll come back when I've done what I've got to do."

"No, no. Stay a little longer just a little."

"Not a minute, sweetheart."

He bent to kiss her, and a little clenched fist struck his face.

"Don't you dare!" she cried.

The outraged woman in her, curbed all evening with an iron bit, escaped from control. Delightedly he laughed. The hot spirit in her pleased him mightily. He took her little hands and held them in one of his while he smiled down at her. "I guess that kiss will keep, my girl, till I come back."

"My God! Are you going to kill your own cousin?"

All her terror, all her detestation and hatred of him, looked haggardly out of her unmasked face. His narrowed eyes searched her heart, and his countenance grew every second more sinister,

"Y'u have been fooling me all evening, then?"

"Yes, and hating you every minute of the time."

"Y'u dared?" His face was black with rage.

"You would like to kill me. Why don't you?"

"Because I know a better revenge. I'm going out to take it now. After your lover is dead, I'll come back and make love to y'u again," he sneered.

"Never!" She stood before him like a queen in her lissom, brave, defiant youth. "And as for your cousin, you may kill him, but you can't destroy his contempt for you. He will die despising you for a coward and a scoundrel."

It was true, and he knew it. In his heart he cursed her, while he vainly sought some weapon that would strike home through her impervious armor.

"Y'u love him. I'll remember that when I see him kick," he taunted.

"I make you a present of the information. I love him, and I despise you. Nothing can change those facts," she retorted whitely.

"Mebbe, but some day y'u'll crawl on your knees to beg my pardon for having told me so."

"There is your overweening vanity again," she commented.

"I'm going to break y'u, my beauty, so that y'u'll come running when I snap my fingers."

"We'll see."

"And in the meantime I'll go hang your lover." He bowed ironically, swung on his jingling heel, and strode out of the room.

She stood there listening to his dying footfalls, then covered her face with her hands, as if to press back the dreadful vision her mind conjured.

CHAPTER 19

. WEST POINT TO THE RESCUE

It was understood that the sheriff should make a perfunctory defense against the mob in order to "square" him with the voters at the election soon to be held. But the word had been quietly passed that the bullets of the prison guards would be fired over the heads of the attackers. This assurance lent an added braggadocio to the Dutch courage of the lynchers. Many of them who would otherwise have hung back distinguished themselves by the enthusiasm which they displayed.

Bannister himself generaled the affair, detailing squads to batter down the outer door, to guard every side of the prison, and to overpower the sheriff's guard. That official, according to programme, appeared at a window and made a little speech, declaring his intention of performing his duty at whatever cost. He was hooted down with jeers and laughter, and immediately the attack commenced.

The yells of the attackers mingled with the sound of the axe-blows and the report of revolvers from inside the building. Among those nearest to the door being battered down were Denver and the few men he had with him. His plan offered merely a forlorn hope. It was that in the first scramble to get in after the way was opened he and his friends might push up the stairs in the van, and hold the corridor for as long as they could against the furious mob.

It took less than a quarter of an hour to batter down the door, and among the first of those who sprang across the threshold were Denver, Missou, Frisco and their allies. While others stopped to overpower the struggling deputies according to the arranged farce, they hurried upstairs and discovered the cell in which their friends were fastened.

Frisco passed a revolver through the grating to McWilliams, and another to Bannister. "Haven't got the keys, so I can't let y'u out, old hoss," he told the foreman. "But mebbe y'u won't feel so lonesome with these little toys to play with."

Meanwhile Denver, a young giant of seventy-six inches, held the head of the stairs, with four stalwart plainsmen back of him. The rush of many feet came up pell-mell, and he flung the leaders back on those behind.

"Hold on there. This isn't a free-lunch counter. Don't you see we're crowded up here already?"

"What's eating you ? Whyfor, can't we come?" growled one of the foremost nursing an injured nose.

"I've just explained to you, son, that it's crowded. Folks are prevalent enough up here right now. Send up that bunch of keys and we'll bring your meat to you fast enough."

"What's that? What's that?" The outlaw chief pushed his way through the dense mob at the door and reached the stairway.

"He won't let us up," growled one of them.

"Who won't?" demanded Bannister sharply, and at once came leaping up the stairs.

"Nothing doing," drawled Frisco, and tossed him over the railing on to the heads of his followers below.

They carried Bannister into the open air, for his head had struck the newel-post in his descent. This gave the defense a few minutes respite.

"They're going to come a-shooting next time," remarked Denver. "Just as soon as he comes back from bye-low land you'll see things hum."

"Y'u bet," agreed Missou. We'll last about three minutes when the stampede begins."

The scream of an engine pierced the night.

Denver's face lit. "Make it five minutes, Missou, and Mac is safe. At least, I'm hoping so awful hard. Miss Helen wired for the militia from Sheridan this nothing. Chances are they're on that train. I couldn't tell you earlier because she made me promise not to. She was afraid it might leak out and get things started sooner. "

Weak but furious, the miscreant from the Shoshones returned to the attack. "Break in the back door and sneak up behind on those fellows. We'll have the men we want inside of fifteen minutes," he promised the mob.

"We'll rush them from both sides, and show those guys on the landing whether they can stop us," added Bostwick.

Suddenly some one raised the cry, "The soldiers!" Bannister looked up the street and swore a vicious oath. Swinging down the road at double time came a company of militia in khaki. He was mad with baffled fury, but he made good his retreat at once and disappeared promptly into the nearest dark alley.

The mob scattered by universal impulse; disintegrated so promptly that within five minutes the soldiers held the ground alone, save for the officials of the prison and Denver's little band.

A boyish lieutenant lately out of the Point, and just come in to a lieutenancy in the militia, was in command. "In time?" he asked anxiously, for this was his first independent expedition.

"Y'u bet," chuckled Denver. "We're right glad to see you, and I'll bet those boys in the cage ain't regretting your arrival any. Fifteen minutes later and you would have been in time to hold the funeral services, I reckon."

"Where is Miss Messiter?" asked the young officer.

"She's at the Elk House, colonel. I expect some of us better drift over there and tell her it's all right. She's the gamest little woman that ever crossed the Wyoming line. Hadn't been for her these boys would have been across the divide hours ago. She's a plumb thoroughbred. Wouldn't give up an inch. All day she has generaled this thing; played a mighty weak hand for a heap more than it was worth. Sand? Seh: she's grit clear through, if anybody asks you." And Denver told the story of the day, making much of her unflinching courage and nothing of her men's readiness to back whatever steps she decided upon.

It was ten minutes past eleven when a smooth young, apple-cheeked lad in khaki presented himself before Helen Messiter with a bow never invented outside of West Point.

"I am Lieutenant Beecher. Governor Raleigh presents his compliments by me, Miss Messiter, and is very glad to be able to put at your service such forces as are needed to quiet the town."

"You were in time?" she breathed.

"With about five minutes to spare. I am having the prisoners brought here for the night if you do not object. In the morning I shall investigate the affair, and take such steps as are necessary. In the meantime you may rest assured that there will be no further disturbance."

"Thank you I am sure that with you in command everything will now be all right, and I am quite of your opinion that the prisoners had better stay here for the night. One of them is wounded, and ought to be given the best attention. But, of course, you will see to that, lieutenant."

The young man blushed. This was the right kind of appreciation. He wished his old classmates at the Point could hear how implicitly this sweet girl relied on him.

"Certainly. And now, Miss Messiter, if there is nothing you wish, I shall retire for the night. You may sleep with perfect confidence."

"I am sure I may, lieutenant." She gave him a broadside of trusting eyes full of admiration. "But perhaps you would like me to see my foreman first, just to relieve my mind. And, as you were about to say, his friend might be brought in, too, since they are together."

The young man promptly assented, though he had not been aware that he was about to say anything of the kind.

They came in together, Bannister supported by McWilliams's arm. The eyes of both mistress and maid brimmed over with tears when they saw them. Helen dragged forward a chair for the sheepman, and he sank into it. From its depths he looked up with his rare, sweet smile.

"I've heard about it," he told her, in a low voice. "I've heard how y'u fought for my life all day. There's nothing I can say. I owed y'u everything already twice, and now I owe it all over again. Give me a lifetime and I couldn't get even."

Helen's swift glance swept over Nora and the foreman. They were in a dark alcove, oblivious of anybody else. Also they were in each other's arms frankly. For some reason wine flowed into the cream of Helen's cheeks.

"Do you have to 'get even'? Among friends is that necessary?" she asked shyly.

"I hope not. If it is, I'm sure bankrupt Even my thanks seem to stay at home. If y'u hadn't done so much for me, perhaps I could tell y'u how much y'u had done But I have no words to say it."

"Then don't," she advised.

"Y'u're the best friend a man ever had. That's all I can say."

"It's enough, since you mean it, even though it isn't true," she answered gently.

Their eyes met, fastened for an instant, and by common consent looked away.

As it chanced they were close to the window, their shadows reflected on the blind. A man, slipping past in the street on horseback, stopped at sight of that lighted window, with the moving shadows, in an uncontrollable white fury. He slid from the saddle, threw the reins over the horse's head to the ground, and slipped his revolver from its holster and back to make sure that he could draw it easily. Then he passed springily across the road to the hotel and up the stairs. He trod lightly, stealthily, and by his very wariness defeated his purpose of eluding observation. For a pair of keen eyes from the hotel office glimpsed the figure stealing past so noiselessly, and promptly followed up the stairway.

"Hope I don't intrude at this happy family gathering."

Helen, who had been pouring a glass of cordial for the spent and wounded sheepman, put the glass down on the table and turned at sound of the silken, sinister voice. After one glance at the vindictive face, from the cold eyes of which hate seemed to smolder, she took an instinctive step toward her lover. The cold wave that drenched her heart accompanied an assurance that the man in the doorway meant trouble.

His sleek smile arrested her. He was standing with his feet apart, his hands clasped lightly behind his back, as natty and as well groomed as was his wont.

"Ah, make the most of what ye yet may spend, Before ye, too, into the Dust descend; Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie, Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!"

he misquoted, with a sneer; and immediately interrupted his irony to give way to one of his sudden blind rages.

With incredible swiftness his right hand moved forward and up, catching revolver from scabbard as it rose. But by a fraction of a second his purpose had been anticipated. A closed fist shot forward to the salient jaw in time to fling the bullets into the ceiling. An arm encircled the outlaw's neck, and flung him backward down the stairs. The railing broke his fall, and on it his body slid downward, the weapon falling from his hand. He pulled himself together at the foot of the stairs, crouched for an upward rush, but changed his mind instantly. The young officer who had flung him down had him covered with his own six-shooter. He could hear footsteps running toward him, and he knew that in a few seconds he would be in the hands of the soldiers. Plunging out of the doorway, the desperado vaulted to the saddle and drove his spurs home. For a minute hoofs pounded on the hard, white road. Then the night swallowed him and the echo of his disappearance.

"That was Bannister of the Shoshones and the Tetons," the girl's white lips pronounced to Lieutenant Beecher.

"And I let him get away from me," the disappointed lad groaned. "Why, I had him right in my hands. I could have throttled him as easy. But how was I to know he would have nerve enough to come rushing into a hotel full of soldiers hunting him?"

"Y'u have a very persistent cousin, Mr. Bannister," said McWilliams, coming forward from the alcove with shining eyes. "And I must say he's game. Did y'u ever hear the like? Come butting in here as cool as if he hadn't a thing to do but sing out orders like he was in his own home. He was that easy."

"It seems to me that a little of the praise is due Lieutenant Beecher. If he hadn't dealt so competently with the situation murder would have been done. Did you learn your boxing at the Academy, Lieutenant?" Helen asked, trying to treat the situation lightly in spite of her hammering heart.

"I was the champion middleweight of our class," Beecher could not help saying boyishly, with another of his blushes.

"I can easily believe it," returned Helen.

"I wish y'u would teach me how to double up a man so prompt and immediate," said the admiring foreman.

"I expect I'm under particular obligations to that straight right to the chin, Lieutenant," chimed in the sheepman. "The fact is that I don't seem to be able to get out anything except thanks these days. I ought to send my cousin a letter thanking him for giving me a chance to owe so much kindness to so many people."

"Your cousin?" repeated the uncomprehending officer.

"This desperado, Bannister, is my cousin," answered the sheepman gravely.

"But if he was your cousin, why should he want--to kill you?"

"That's a long story, Lieutenant. Will y'u hear it now?"

"If you feel strong enough to tell it."

"Oh, I'm strong enough." He glanced at Helen. "Perhaps we had better not tire Miss Messiter with it. If y'u'll come to my room--"

"I should like, above all things, to hear it again," interrupted that young woman promptly.

For the man she loved had just come back to her from the brink of the grave and she was still reluctant to let him out of her sight.

So Ned Bannister told his story once more, and out of the alcove came the happy foreman and Nora to listen to the tale. While he told it his sweetheart's contented eyes were on him. The excitement of the night burnt pleasantly in her veins, for out of the nettle danger she had plucked safety for her sheepman.

CHAPTER 20

. TWO CASES OF DISCIPLINE

The Fourth of July celebration at Gimlet Butte had been a thing of the past for four days and the Lazy D had fallen back into the routine of ranch life. The riders were discussing supper and the continued absence of Reddy when that young man drew back the flap and joined them.

He stood near the doorway and grinned with embarrassed guilt at the assembled company.

"I reckon I got too much Fourth of July at Gimlet Butte, boys. That's how come I to be onpunctual getting back."

There was a long silence, during which those at the table looked at him with an expressionless gravity that did not seem to veil an unduly warm welcome.

"Hello, Mac! Hello, boys! I just got back," he further contributed.

Without comment the Lazy D resumed supper. Apparently it had not missed Reddy or noticed his return. Casual conversation was picked up cheerfully. The return of the prodigal was quite ignored.

"Then that blamed cow gits its back up and makes a bee-line for Rogers. The old man hikes for his pony and--"

"Seems good to git my legs under the old table again," interrupted Reddy with cheerful unease.

"--loses by about half a second," continued Missou. "If Doc hadn't roped its hind laig--"

"Have some cigars, boys. I brought a box back with me." Reddy tossed a handful on the table, where they continued to lie unnoticed.

"--there's no telling what would have happened. As 'twas the old man got off with a--"

"Y'u bet, they're good cigars all right," broke in the propitiatory Reddy.

The interrupted anecdote went on to a finish and the men trooped out and left the prodigal alone with his hash. When that young man reached the bunkhouse Frisco was indulging in a reminiscence. Reddy got only the last of it, but that did not contribute to his serenity.

"Yep! When I was working on the Silver Dollar. Must a-been three years ago, I reckon, when Jerry Miller got that chapping."

"Threw down the outfit in a row they had with the Lafferty crowd, didn't he?" asked Denver.

Frisco nodded.

Mac got up, glanced round, and reached for his hat. "I reckon I'll have to be going," he said, and forthright departed.

Reddy reached for HIS hat and rose. "I got to go and have a talk with Mac," he explained.

Denver got to the door first and his big frame filled it.

"Don't hurry, Reddy. It ain't polite to rush away right after dinner. Besides, Mac will be here all day. He ain't starting for New York."

"Y'u're gittin' blamed particular. Mac he went right out."

"But Mac didn't have a most particular engagement with the boys. There's a difference."

"Why, I ain't got--" Reddy paused and looked around helplessly.

"Gents, I move y'u that it be the horse sense of the Lazy D that our friend Mr. Reddy Reeves be given gratis one chapping immediately if not sooner. The reason for which same being that he played a lowdown trick on the outfit whose bread he was eating."

"Oh, quit your foolin', boys," besought the victim anxiously.

"And that Denver, being some able-bodied and having a good reach, be requested to deliver same to the gent needing it," concluded Missou.

Reddy backed in alarm to the wall. "Y'u boys don't want to get gay with me. Y'u can't monkey with--"

Motion carried unanimously.

Just as Reddy whipped out his revolver Denver's long leg shot out and his foot caught the wrist behind the weapon. When Reddy next took cognizance of his surroundings he was serving as a mattress for the anatomy of three stalwart riders. He was gently deposited face down on his bunk with a one-hundred-eighty-pound live peg at the end of each arm and leg.

"All ready, Denver," announced Frisco from the end of the left foot.

Denver selected a pair of plain leather chaps with care and proceeded to business. What he had to do he did with energy. It is safe to say that at least one of those present can still vividly remember this and testify to his thoroughness.

Mac drifted in after the disciplining. As foreman it was fitting that he should be discreetly ignorant of what had occurred, but he could not help saying:

"That y'u I heard singing, Reddy? Seems to me y'u had ought to take that voice into grand opera. The way y'u straddle them high notes is a caution for fair. What was it y'u was singing? Sounded like 'Would I were far from here, love.'"

"Y'u go to hell," choked Reddy, rushing past him from the bunkhouse.

McWilliams looked round innocently. "I judge some of y'u boys must a-been teasing Reddy from his manner. Seemed like he didn't want to sit down and talk."

"I shouldn't wonder but he'll hold his conversations standing for a day or two," returned Missou gravely.

At the end of the laugh that greeted this Mac replied:

Well, y'u boys want to be gentle with him." "He's so plumb tender now that I reckon he'll get along without any more treatment in that line from us," drawled Frisco.

Mac departed laughing. He had an engagement that recurred daily in the dusk of the evening, and he was always careful to be on time. The other party to the engagement met him at the kitchen door and fell with him into the trail that led to Lee Ming's laundry.

"What made you late?" she asked.

"I'm not late, honey. I seem late because you're so anxious," he explained.

"I'm not," protested Nora indignantly. "If you think you're the only man on the place, Jim McWilliams "

"Sho! Hold your hawsses a minute, Nora, darling. A spinster like y'u--"

"You think you're awful funny--writing in my autograph album that a spinster's best friend is her powder box. I like Mr. Halliday's ways better. He's a perfect gentleman."

"I ain't got a word to say against Denver, even if he did write in your book,

"'Sugar is sweet, The sky is blue, Grass is green And so are you.'

I reckon, being a perfect gentleman, he meant--"

"You know very well you wrote that in yourself and pretended it was Mr. Halliday, signing his name and everything. It wasn't a bit nice of you."

"Now do I look like a forger?" he wanted to know with innocence on his cherubic face.

"Anyway you know it was mean. Mr. Halliday wouldn't do such a thing. You take your arm down and keep it where it belongs, Mr. McWilliams."

"That ain't my name, Nora, darling, and I'd like to know where my arm belongs if it isn't round the prettiest girl in Wyoming. What's the use of being engaged if--"

"I'm not sure I'm going to stay engaged to you," announced the young woman coolly, walking at the opposite edge of the path from him.

"Now that ain't any way to talk "

"You needn't lecture me. I'm not your wife and I don't think I'm going to be," cut in Nora, whose temper was ruffled on account of having had to wait for him as well as for other reasons.

"Y'u surely wouldn't make me sue y'u for breach of promise, would y'u?" he demanded, with a burlesque of anxiety that was the final straw.

Nora turned on her heel and headed for the house.

"Now don't y'u get mad at me, honey. I was only joking," he explained as he pursued her.

"You think you can laugh at me all you please. I'll show you that you can't," she informed him icily.

"Sho! I wasn't laughing at y'u. What tickled me--"

"I'm not interested in your amusement, Mr. McWilliams."

"What's the use of flying out about a little thing like that? Honest, I don't even know what you're mad at me for," the perplexed foreman averred.

"I'm not mad at you, as you call it. I'm simply disgusted."

And with a final "Good night" flung haughtily over her shoulder Miss Nora Darling disappeared into the house.

Mac took off his hat and gazed at the door that had been closed in his face. He scratched his puzzled poll in vain.

"I ce'tainly got mine good and straight just like Reddy got his. But what in time was it all about? And me thinkin' I was a graduate in the study of the ladies. I reckon I never did get jarred up so. It's plumb discouraging."

If he could have caught a glimpse of Nora at that moment, lying on her bed and crying as if her heart would break, Mac might have found the situation less hopeless.

CHAPTER 21

. THE SIGNAL LIGHTS

In a little hill-rift about a mile back of the Lazy D Ranch was a deserted miner's cabin.

The hut sat on the edge of a bluff that commanded a view of the buildings below, while at the same time the pines that surrounded it screened the shack from any casual observation. A thin curl of smoke was rising from the mud chimney, and inside the cabin two men lounged before the open fire.

"It's his move, and he is going to make it soon. Every night I look for him to drop down on the ranch. His hate's kind of volcanic, Mr. Ned Bannister's is, and it's bound to bubble over mighty sudden one of these days," said the younger of the two, rising and stretching himself.

"It did bubble over some when he drove two thousand of my sheep over the bluff and killed the whole outfit," suggested the namesake of the man mentioned.

"Yes, I reckon that's some irritating," agreed McWilliams. "But if I know him, he isn't going to be content with sheep so long as he can take it out of a real live man."

"Or woman," suggested the sheepman.

"Or woman," agreed the other. "Especially when he thinks he can cut y'u deeper by striking at her. If he doesn't raid the Lazy D one of these nights, I'm a blamed poor prophet."

Bannister nodded agreement. "He's near the end of his rope. He could see that if he were blind. When we captured Bostwick and they got a confession out of him, that started the landslide against him. It began to be noised abroad that the government was going to wipe him out. Folks began to lose their terror of him, and after that his whole outfit began to want to turn State's evidence. He isn't sure of one of them now; can't tell when he will be shot in the back by one of his own scoundrels for that two thousand dollars reward."

The foreman strolled negligently to the door. His eyes drifted indolently down into the valley, and immediately sparkled with excitement.

"The signal's out, Bann," he exclaimed. "It's in your window."

The sheepman leaped to his feet and strode to the door. Down in the valley a light was gleaming in a window. Even while he looked another light appeared in a second window.

"She wants us both," cried the foreman, running to the little corral back of the house.

He presently reappeared with two horses, both saddled, and they took the downward trail at once.

"If Miss Helen can keep him in play till we arrive," murmured Mac anxiously.

"She can if he gives her a chance, and I think he will. There's a kind of cat instinct in him to play with his prey."

"Yes, but he missed his kill last time by letting her fool him. That's what I'm afraid of' that he won't wait."

They had reached lower ground now, and could put their ponies at a pounding gallop that ate up the trail fast. As they approached the houses, both men drew rein and looked carefully to their weapons. Then they slid from the saddles and slipped noiselessly forward.

What the foreman had said was exactly true. Helen Messiter did want them both, and she wanted them very much indeed.

After supper she had been dreamily playing over to herself one of Chopin's waltzes, when she became aware, by some instinct, that she was not alone in the room. There had been no least sound, no slightest stir to betray an alien presence. Yet that some one was in the room she knew, and by some subtle sixth sense could even put a name to the intruder.

Without turning she called over her shoulder: "Shall I finish the waltz?" No faintest tremor in the clear, sweet voice betrayed the racing heart.

"Y'u're a cool hand, my friend," came his ready answer. "But I think we'll dispense with the music. I had enough last time to serve me for twice."

She laughed as she swung on the stool, with that musical scorn which both allured and maddened. "I did rather do you that time," she allowed.

"This is the return match. You won then. I win now," he told her, with a look that chilled.

"Indeed! But isn't that rather discounting the future?"

"Only the immediate future. Y'u're mine, my beauty, and I mean to take y'u with me."

Just a disdainful sweep of her eyes she gave him as she rose from the piano-stool and rearranged the lamps. "You mean so much that never comes to pass, Mr. Bannister. The road to the nether regions is paved with good intentions, we are given to understand. Not that yours can by any stretch of imagination be called 'good intentions.'"

"Contrariwise, then, perhaps the road to heaven may be paved with evil intentions. Since y'u travel the road with me, wherever it may lead, it were but gallant to hope so."

He took three sharp steps toward her and stood looking down in her face, her sweet slenderness so close to him that the perfume mounted to his brain. Surely no maiden had ever been more desirable than this one, who held him in such contemptuous estimation that only her steady eyes moved at his approach. These held to his and defied him, while she stood leaning motionless against the table with such strong and supple grace. She knew what he meant to do, hated him for it, and would not give him the satisfaction of flying an inch from him or struggling with him.

"Your eyes are pools of splendor. That's right. Make them flash fire. I love to see such spirit, since it offers a more enticing pleasure in breaking," he told her, with an admiration half ironic but wholly genuine. "Pools of splendor, my beauty! Therefore I salute them."

At the touch of his lips upon her eyelids a shiver ran through her, but still she made no movement, was cold to him as marble. "You coward!" she said softly, with an infinite contempt.

"Your lips," he continued to catalogue, "are ripe as fresh flesh of Southern fruit. No cupid ever possessed so adorable a mouth. A worshiper of Eros I, as now I prove."

This time it was the mouth he kissed, the while her unconquered spirit looked out of the brave eyes, and fain would have murdered him. In turn he kissed her cold cheeks, the tip of one of her little ears, the small, clenched fist with which she longed to strike him.

"Are you quite through?"

"For the present, and now, having put the seal of my ownership on her more obvious charms, I'll take my bride home."

"I would die first."

"Nay, you'll die later, Madam Bannister, but not for many years, I hope," he told her, with a theatrical bow.

"Do you think me so weak a thing as your words imply?"

"Rather so strong that the glory of overcoming y'u fills me with joy. Believe me, madam, though your master I am not less your slave," he mocked.

"You are neither my master nor my slave, but a thing I detest," she said, in a low voice that carried extraordinary intensity.

"And obey," he added, suavely. "Come, madam, to horse, for our honeymoon."

"I tell you I shall not go."

"Then, in faith, we'll re-enact a modern edition of 'The Taming of the Shrew.' Y'u'll find me, sweet, as apt at the part as old Petruchio." He paced complacently up the room and back, and quoted glibly:

"And thus I'll curb her mad and headstrong humor. He that knows better how to tame a shrew, Now let him, speak; 'tis charity to show."

"Would you take me against my will?"

"Y'u have said it. What's your will to me? What I want I take. And I sure want my beautiful shrew." His half-shuttered eyes gloated on her as he rattled off a couple more lines from the play he had mentioned.

"Kate, like the hazel-twig, Is straight and slender, and as brown in hue As hazel-nuts, and sweeter than the kernels."

She let a swift glance travel anxiously to the door. "You are in a very poetical mood to-day."

"As befits a bridegroom, my own." He stepped lightly to the window and tapped twice on the pane. "A signal to bring the horses round. If y'u have any preparations to make, any trousseau to prepare, y'u better set that girl of yours to work."

"I have no preparations to make."

"Coming to me simply as y'u are? Good! We'll lead the simple life."

Nora, as it chanced, knocked and entered at his moment. The sight of her vivid good looks truck him for the first time. At sight of him she stopped, gazing with parted lips, a double row of pearls shining through.

He turned swiftly to the mistress. "Y'u ought not to be alone there among so many men. It wouldn't be proper. We'll take the girl along with us."

"Where?" Nora's parted lips emitted.

"To Arden, my dear." He interrupted himself to look at his watch. "I wonder why that fellow doesn't come with the horses. They should pass this window.

Bannister, standing jauntily with his feet astride as he looked out of the window, heard someone enter the room. "Did y'u bring round the horses?" he snapped, without looking round.

"NO, WE ALLOWED THEY WOULDN'T BE NEEDED."

At sound of the slow drawl the outlaw wheeled like a flash, his hand traveling to the hilt of the revolver that hung on his hip. But he was too late. Already two revolvers covered him, and he knew that both his cousin and McWilliams were dead shots. He flashed one venomous look at the mistress of the ranch.

"Y'u fooled me again. That lamp business was a signal, and I was too thick-haided to see it. My compliments to y'u, Miss Messiter."

"Y'u are under arrest," announced his cousin.

"Y'u don't say." His voice was full of sarcastic admiration. "And you done it with your little gun! My, what a wonder y'u are!"

"Take your hand from the butt of that gun. Y'u better relieve him of it, Mac. He's got such a restless disposition he might commit suicide by reaching for it."

"What do y'u think you're going to do with me now y'u have got me, Cousin Ned?"

"We're going to turn y'u over to the United States Government."

"Guess again. I have a thing, or two to say to that."

"You're going to Gimlet Butte with us, alive or dead."

The outlaw intentionally misunderstood. "If I've got to take y'u, then we'll say y'u go dead rather than alive."

"He was going to take Nora and me with him," Helen explained to her friends.

Instantly the man swung round on her. "But now I've changed my mind, ma'am. I'm going to take my cousin with me instead of y'u ladies."

Helen caught his meaning first, and flashed it whitely to her lover. It dawned on him more slowly.

"I see y'u remember, Miss Messiter," he continued, with a cruel, silken laugh. "He gave me his parole to go with me whenever I said the word. I'm saying it now." He sat down astride a chair, put his chin on the back cross-bar, and grinned malevolently from one to another.

"What's come over this happy family? It don't look so joyous all of a sudden. Y'u don't need to worry, ma'am, I'll send him back to y'u all right--alive or dead. With his shield or on it, y'u know. Ha! ha!"

"You will not go with him?" It was wrung from Helen as a low cry, and struck her lover's heart.

"I must," he answered. "I gave him my word, y'u remember."

"But why keep it? You know what he is, how absolutely devoid of honor."

"That is not quite the question, is it?" he smiled.

"Would he keep his word to you?"

"Not if a lie would do as well. But that isn't the point, either."

"It's quixotic--foolish--worse than that--ridiculous," she implored.

"Perhaps, but the fact remains that I am pledged."

"'I could not love thee, dear, so much Loved I not honor more,'"

murmured the villain in the chair, apparently to the ceiling. "Dear Ned, he always was the soul of honor. I'll have those lines carved on his tombstone."

"You see! He is already bragging that he means to kill you," said the girl.

"I shall go armed," the sheepman answered.

"Yes, but he will take you into the mountain fastnesses, where the men that serve him will do his bidding. What is one man among so many?"

"Two men, ma'am," corrected the foreman.

"What's that?" The outlaw broke off the snatch of opera he was singing to slew his head round at McWilliams.

"I said two. Any objections, seh?"

"Yes. That wasn't in the contract."

"We're giving y'u surplusage, that's all. Y'u wanted one of us, and y'u get two. We don't charge anything for the extra weight," grinned Mac.

"Oh, Mac, will you go with him?" cried Helen, with shining eyes.

"Those are my present intentions, Miss Helen," laughed her foreman.

Whereat Nora emerged from the background and flung herself on him. "Y'u can't go, Jim! I won't have you go!" she cried.

The young man blushed a beautiful pink, and accepted gladly this overt evidence of a reconciliation. "It's all right, honey. Don't y'u think two big, grown-up men are good to handle that scalawag? Sho! Don't y'u worry."

"Miss Nora can come, too, if she likes," suggested he of the Shoshones. "Looks like we would have quite a party. Won't y'u join us, too, Miss Messiter, according to the original plan?" he said, extending an ironical invitation.

"I think we had better cut it down to me alone. We'll not burden your hospitality, sir," said the sheepman.

"No, sir, I'm in on this. Whyfor can't I go?" demanded Jim.

Bannister, the outlaw, eyed him unpleasantly. "Y'u certainly can so far as I am concerned. I owe y'u one, too, Mr. McWilliams. Only if y'u come of your own free will, as y'u are surely welcome to do, don't holler if y'u're not so welcome to leave whenever y'u take a notion."

"I'll try and look out for that. It's settled, then, that we ride together. When do y'u want to start?"

"We can't go any sooner than right now. I hate to take these young men from y'u, lady. but, as I said, I'll send them back in good shape. Adios, senorita. Don't forget to whom y'u belong." He swaggered to the door and turned, leaning against the jamb with one hand again it. "I expect y'u can say those lovey-dov good-byes without my help. I'm going into the yard. If y'u want to y'u can plug me in the back through the window," he suggested, with a sneer.

"As y'u would us under similar circumstances," retorted his cousin.

"Be with y'u in five minutes," said the foreman.

"Don't hurry. It's a long good-bye y'u're saying," returned his enemy placidly.

Nora and the young man who belonged to her followed him from the room, leaving Bannister and his hostess alone.

"Shall I ever see you again?" Helen murmured.

"I think so," the sheepman answered. "The truth is that this opportunity falls pat. Jim and have been wanting to meet those men who are under my cousin's influence and have a talk with them. There is no question but that the gang is disintegrating, and I believe that if we offer to mediate between its members and the Government something might be done to stop the outrages that have been terrorizing this country. My cousin can't be reached, but I believe the rest of them, or, at least a part, can be induced either to surrender or to flee the country. Anyhow, we want to try it."

"But the danger?" she breathed.

"Is less than y'u think. Their leader has not anywhere nearly the absolute power he had a few months ago. They would hardly dare do violence to a peace envoy."

"Your cousin would. I don't believe he has any scruples."

"We shall keep an eye on him. Both of us will not sleep at the same time. Y'u may depend on me to bring your foreman safely back to y'u," he smiled.

"Oh, my foreman!"

"And your foreman's friend," he added. "I have the best of reasons for wanting to return alive. I think y'u know them. They have to do with y'u, Miss Helen."

It had come at last, but, womanlike, she evaded the issue her heart had sought. "Yes, I know. You think it would not be fair to throw away your life in this foolish manner after I have saved it for you--how many times was it you said?" The blue eyes lifted with deceptive frankness to the gray ones.

"No, that isn't my reason. I have a better one than that. I love y'u, girl, more than anything in this world."

"And so you try to prove it to me by running into a trap set for you to take your life. That's a selfish kind of love, isn't it? Or it would be if I loved you."

"Do y'u love me, Helen?"

"Why should I tell you, since you don't love me enough to give up this quixotic madness?"

"Don't y'u see, dear, I can't give it up?"

"I see you won't. You care more for your pride than for me."

"No, it isn't that. I've got to go. It isn't that I want to leave y'u, God knows. But I've given my word, and I must keep it. Do y'u want me to be a quitter, and y'u so game yourself? Do y'u want it to go all over this cattle country that I gave my word and took it back because I lost my nerve?"

"The boy that takes a dare isn't a hero, is he! There's a higher courage that refuses to be drawn into such foolishness, that doesn't give way to the jeers of the empty headed."

"I don't think that is a parallel case. I'm sorry, we can't see this alike, but I've got to go ahead the way that seems to me right."

"You're going to leave me, then, to go with that man?"

"Yes, if that's the way y'u have to put it." He looked at her sorrowfully, and added gently: "I thought you would see it. I thought sure you would."

But she could not bear that he should leave her so, and she cried out after him. "Oh, I see it. I know you must go; but I can't bear it." Her head buried itself in his coat. "It isn't right--it isn't a--a square deal that you should go away now, the very minute you belong to me."

A happy smile shone in his eyes. "I belong to you, do I? That's good hearing, girl o' mine." His arm went round her and he stroked the black head softly. "I'll not be gone long, dear. Don't y'u worry about me. I'll be back with y'u soon; just as soon as I have finished this piece of work I have to do."

"But if you should get--if anything should happen to you?"

"Nothing is going to happen to me. There is a special providence looks after lovers, y'u know."

"Be careful, Ned, of yourself. For my sake, dear."

"I'll dry my socks every time I get my feet wet for fear of taking cold," he laughed.

"But you will, won't you?"

"I'll be very careful, Helen," he promised more gravely.

Even then she could hardly let him go, clinging to him with a reluctance to separate that was a new experience to her independent, vigorous youth. In the end he unloosened her arm, kissed her once, and hurried out of the room. In the hallway he met McWilliams, also hurryin out from a tearful farewell on the part of Nora.

Bannister, the outlaw, already mounted, was waiting for them. "Y'u did get through at last, he drawled insolently. "Well, if y'u'll kindly give orders to your seven-foot dwarf to point the Winchester another way I'll collect my men an we'll be moving."

For, though the outlaw had left his men in command of the ranch when he went into the house, he found the situation reversed on his return. With the arrival of reinforcements, in the persons of McWilliams and his friend, it had been the turn of the raiders to turn over their weapons.

"All right, Denver," nodded the foreman.

The outlaw chief whistled for his men, and with their guests they rode into the silent, desert night.

CHAPTER 22

. EXIT THE "KING"

They bedded that night under the great vault-roof where twinkle a million stars.

There were three of the outlaw's men with him, and both Mcwilliams and his friend noticed that they slept a little apart from their chief. There were other indications among the rustlers of a camp divided against itself. Bannister's orders to them he contrived to make an insult, and their obedience was as surly as possible compatible with safety. For all of the men knew that he would not hesitate to shoot them down in one of his violent rages should they anger him sufficiently.

Throughout the night there was no time that at least two men were not awake in the camp. The foreman and the sheepman took turns keeping vigil; and on the other side of the fire sat one of the rustlers in silent watchfulness. To the man opposite him each of the sentinels were outposts of the enemy, but they fraternized after the manner of army sentries, exchanging tobacco and occasional casual conversation.

The foreman took the first turn, and opposite him sat a one-eyed old scoundrel who had rustle calves from big outfits ever since Wyoming was a territory and long before. Chalkeye Dave, he was called, and sometimes merely Chalkeye. What his real name was no man knew. Nor was his past a subject for conversation in his presence. It was known that he had been in the Nevada penitentiary, and that he had killed a man in Arizona, but these details of an active life were rarely resurrected. For Chalkeye was deadly on the shoot, and was ready for it at the drop of the hat, though he had his good points too. One of these was a remarkable fondness for another member of the party, a mere lad, called by his companions Hughie. Generally surly and morose, to such a degree that even his chief was careful to humor him as a rule, when with Hughie all the softer elements of his character came to the surface. In his rough way he was ever humorous and genial.

Jim McWilliams found him neither, however. He declined to engage in conversation, accepted a proffer of tobacco with a silent, hostile grunt and relapsed into a long silence that lasted till his shift was ended.

"Hate to have y'u leave, old man. Y'u're so darned good company I'll ce'tainly pine for you," the foreman suggested, with sarcasm, when the old man rolled up in his blankets preparatory to falling asleep immediately.

Chalkeye's successor was a blatant youth much impressed with his own importance. He was both foul-mouthed and foul-minded, so that Jim was constrained to interrupt his evil boastings by pretending to fall asleep.

It was nearly two o'clock when the foreman aroused his friend to take his turn. Shortly after this the lad Hughie relieved the bragging, would-be bad man.

Hughie was a flaxen-haired, rather good-looking boy of nineteen. In his small, wistful face was not a line of wickedness, though it was plain that he was weak. He seemed so unfit for the life he was leading that the sheepman's interest was aroused. For on the frontier it takes a strong, competent miscreant to be a bad man and survive. Ineffectives and weaklings are quickly weeded out to their graves or the penitentiaries.

The boy was manifestly under great fear of his chief, but the curly haired young Hermes who kept watch with him had a very winning smile and a charming manner when he cared to exert it. Almost in spite of himself the youngster was led to talk. It seemed that he had but lately joined the Teton-Shoshones outfit of desperadoes, and between the lines Bannister easily read that his cousin's masterful compulsion had coerced the young fellow. All he wanted was an opportunity to withdraw in safety, but he knew he could never do this so long as the "King" was alive and at liberty.

Under the star-roof in the chill, breaking day Ned Bannister talked to him long and gently. It was easy to bring the boy to tears, but it was harder thing to stiffen a will that was of putty and to hearten a soul in mortal fear. But he set himself with all the power in him to combat the influence of his cousin over this boy; and before the camp stirred to life again he knew that he had measurably succeeded.

They ate breakfast in the gray dawn under the stars, and after they had finished their coffee and bacon horses were saddled and the trail taken up again. It led in and out among the foot-hills slopping upward gradually toward the first long blue line of the Shoshones that stretched before them in the distance. Their nooning was at running stream called Smith's Creek, and by nightfall the party was well up in the higher foot hills.

In the course of the day and the second night both the sheepman and his friend made attempt to establish a more cordial relationship with Chalkeye, but so far as any apparent results went their efforts were vain. He refused grimly to meet their overtures half way, even though it was plain from his manner that a break between him and his chief could not long be avoided.

All day by crooked trails they pushed forward, and as the party advanced into the mountains the gloom of the mournful pines and frowning peaks invaded its spirits. Suspicion and distrust went with it, camped at night by the rushing mountain stream, lay down to sleep in the shadows at every man's shoulder. For each man looked with an ominous eye on his neighbor, watchful of every sudden move, of every careless word that might convey a sudden meaning.

Along a narrow rock-rim trail far above a steep canon, whose walls shot precipitously down, they were riding in single file, when the outlaw chief pushed his horse forward between the road wall and his cousin's bronco. The sheepman immediately fell back.

"I reckon this trail isn't wide enough for two--unless y'u take the outside," he explained quietly.

The outlaw, who had been drinking steadily ever since leaving the Lazy D, laughed his low, sinister cackle. "Afraid of me, are y'u? Afraid I'll push y'u off?"

"Not when I'm inside and you don't have chance."

"'Twas a place about like this I drove for thousand of your sheep over last week. With sheep worth what they are I'm afraid it must have cost y'u quite a bit. Not that y'u'll miss it where you are going," he hastened to add.

"It was very like you to revenge yourself on dumb animals."

"Think so?" The "King's" black gaze rested on him. "Y'u'll sing a different song soon Mr. Bannister. It's humans I'll drive next time and don't y'u forget it."

"If you get the chance," amended his cousin gently.

"I'll get the chance. I'm not worrying about that. And about those sheep--any man that hasn't got more sense than to run sheep in a cow country ought to lose them for his pig-headedness.

"Those sheep were on the right side of the dead-line. You had to cross it to reach them." Their owner's steady eyes challenged a denial.

"Is that so? Now how do y'u know that? We didn't leave the herder alive to explain that to y'u, did we?"

"You admit murdering him?" "To y'u, dear cousin. Y'u see, I have a hunch that maybe y'u'll go join your herder right soon. Y'u'll not do much talking."

The sheepman fell back. "I think I'll ride alone."

Rage flared in the other's eye. "Too good for me, are y'u, my mealy-mouthed cousin? Y'u always thought yourself better than me. When y'u were a boy you used to go sneaking to that old hypocrite, your grandfather--"

"You have said enough," interrupted the other sternly. "I'll not hear another word. Keep your foul tongue off him."

Their eyes silently measured strength.

"Y'u'll not hear a word!" sneered the chief of the rustlers. "What will y'u do, dear cousin?

"Stand up and fight like a man and settle this thing once for all."

Still their steely eyes crossed as with the thrust of rapiers. The challenged man crouched tensely with a mighty longing for the test, but he had planned a more elaborate revenge and a surer one than this. Reluctantly he shook his head.

"Why should I? Y'u're mine. We're four to two, and soon we'll be a dozen to two. I'd like a heap to oblige y'u, but I reckon I can't afford to just now. Y'u will have to wait a little for that bumping off that's coming to y'u."

"In that event I'll trouble you not to inflict your society on me any more than is necessary

"That's all right, too. If y'u think I enjoy your conversation y'u have got another guess coming."

So by mutual consent the sheepman fell in behind the blatant youth who had wearied McWilliams so and rode in silence.

It was again getting close to nightfall. The slant sun was throwing its rays on less and less of the trail. They could see the shadows grow and the coolness of night sift into the air. They were pushing on to pass the rim of a great valley basin that lay like a saucer in the mountains in order that they might camp in the valley by a stream all of them knew. Dusk was beginning to fall when they at last reached the saucer edge and only the opposite peaks were still tipped with the sun rays. This, too, disappeared before they had descended far, and the gloom of the great mountains that girt the valley was on all their spirits, even McWilliams being affected by it.

They were tired with travel, and the long night watches did not improve tempers already overstrained with the expectation of a crisis too long dragged out. Rain fell during the night, and continued gently in a misty drizzle after day broke. It was a situation and an atmosphere ripe for tragedy, and it fell on them like a clap of thunder out of a sodden sky.

Hughie was cook for the day, and he came chill and stiff-fingered to his task. Summer as it was, there lay a thin coating of ice round the edges of the stream, for they had camped in an altitude of about nine thousand feet. The "King" had wakened in a vile humor. He had a splitting headache, as was natural under the circumstances and he had not left in his bottle a single drink to tide him over it. He came cursing to the struggling fire, which was making only fitful headway against the rain which beat down upon it.

"Why didn't y'u build your fire on the side of the tree?" he growled at Hughie.

Now, Hughie was a tenderfoot, and in his knowledge of outdoor life he was still an infant. "I didn't know--" he was beginning, when his master cut him short with a furious tongue lashing out of all proportion to the offense.

The lad's face blanched with fear, and his terror was so manifest that the bully, who was threatening him with all manner of evils, began to enjoy himself. Chalkeye, returning from watering the horses, got back in time to hear the intemperate fag-end of the scolding. He glanced at Hughie, whose hands were trembling in spite of him, and then darkly at the brute who was attacking him. But he said not a word.

The meal proceeded in silence except for jeers and taunts of the "King." For nobody cared to venture conversation which might prove a match to a powder magazine. Whatever thoughts might be each man kept them to himself.

"Coffee," snapped the single talker, toward end of breakfast.

Hughie jumped up, filled the cup that was handed him and set the coffee pot back on fire. As he handed the tin cup with the coffee to the outlaw the lad's foot slipped on a piece wet wood, and the hot liquid splashed over his chief's leg. The man jumped to his feet in a rage and struck the boy across the face with his whip once, and then again.

"By God, that'll do for you!" cried Chalkeye from the other side of the fire, springing revolver in hand. "Draw, you coyote! I come a-shooting."

The "King" wheeled, finding his weapon he turned. Two shots rang out almost simultaneously, and Chalkeye pitched forward. The outlaw chief sank to his knees, and, with one hand resting on the ground to steady himself fired two more shots into the twitching body on the other side of the fire. Then he, too, lurched forward and rolled over.

It had come to climax so swiftly that not one of them had moved except the combatants. Bannister rose and walked over to the place where the body of his cousin lay. He knelt down and examined him. When he rose it was with a very grave face.

"He is dead," he said quietly.

McWilliams, who had been bending over Chalkeye, looked up. "Here, too. Any one of the shots would have finished him."

Bannister nodded. "Yes. That first exchange killed them both." He looked down at the limp body of his cousin, but a minute before so full of supple, virile life. "But his hate had to reach out and make sure, even though he was as good as dead himself. He was game." Then sharply to the young braggart, who had risen and was edging away with a face of chalk: "Sit down, y'u! What do y'u take us for? Think this is to be a massacre?"

The man came back with palpable hesitancy. "I was aiming to go and get the boys to bury them. My God, did you ever see anything so quick? They drilled through each other like lightning."

Mac looked him over with dry contempt. "My friend, y'u're too tender for a genuwine A1 bad man. If I was handing y'u a bunch of advice it would be to get back to the prosaic paths of peace right prompt. And while we're on the subject I'll borrow your guns. Y'u're scared stiff and it might get into your fool coconut to plug one of us and light out. I'd hate to see y'u commit suicide right before us, so I'll just natcherally unload y'u."

He was talking to lift the strain, and it was for the same purpose that Bannister moved over to Hughie, who sat with his face in his hands, trying to shut out the horror of what he had seen.

The sheepman dropped a hand on his shoulder gently. "Brace up, boy! Don't you see that the very best thing that could have happened is this. It's best for y'u, best for the rest of the gang and best for the whole cattle country. We'll have peace here at last. Now he's gone, honest men are going to breathe easy. I'll take y'u in hand and set y'u at work on one of my stations, if y'u like. Anyhow, you'll have a chance to begin life again in a better way."

"That's right," agreed the blatant youth. "I'm sick of rustling the mails and other folks' calves. I'm glad he got what was coming to him," he concluded vindictively, with a glance at his dead chief and a sudden raucous oath.

McWilliams's cold blue eye transfixed him "Hadn't you better be a little careful how your mouth goes off? For one thing, he's daid now; and for another, he happens to be Mr. Bannister's cousin."

"But--weren't they enemies?"

"That's how I understand it. But this man's passed over the range. A MAN doesn't unload his hatred on dead folks--and I expect if y'u'll study him, even y'u will be able to figure out that my friend measures up to the size of a real man."

"I don't see why if--"

"No, I don't suppose y'u do," interrupted the foreman, turning on his heel. Then to Bannister, who was looking down at his cousin with a stony face: "I reckon, Bann, we better make arrangements to have the bodies buried right here in the valley," he said gently.

Bannister was thinking of early days, of the time when this miscreant, whose light had just been put out so instantaneously, had played with him day in and day out. They had attended their first school together, had played marbles and prisoners' base a hundred times against each other. He could remember how they used to get up early in the morning to go fishing with each other. And later, when each began, unconsciously, to choose the path he would follow in already beginning to settle into an established fact. He could see now, by looking back on trifles of their childhood, that his cousin had been badly handicapped in his fight with himself against the evil in him. He had inherited depraved instincts and tastes, and with them somewhere in him a strand of weakness that prevented him from slaying the giants he had to oppose in the making of a good character. From bad to worse he had gone, and here he lay with the drizzling rain on his white face, a warning and a lesson to wayward youths just setting their feet in the wrong direction. Surely it was kismet.

Ned Bannister untied the handkerchief from his neck and laid it across the face of his kinsman. A moment longer he looked down, then passed his hands across his eyes and seemed to brush away the memories that thronged him. He stepped forward to the fire and warmed his hands.

"We'll go on, Mac, to the rendezvous he had appointed with his outfit. We ought to reach there by noon, and the boys can send a wagon back to get the bodies."

CHAPTER 23

. JOURNEYS END IN LOVERS' MEETING

It had been six days since the two Ned Bannisters had ridden away together into the mountains, and every waking hour since that time had been for Helen one of harassing anxiety. No word had yet reached her of the issue of that dubious undertaking, and she both longed and dreaded to hear. He had promised to send a messenger as soon as he had anything definite to tell, but she knew it would be like his cousin, too, to send her some triumphant word should he prove the victor in the struggle between them. So that every stranger she glimpsed brought to her a sudden beating of the heart.

But it was not the nature of Helen Messiter to sit down and give herself up a prey to foreboding. Her active nature cried out for work to occupy her and distract her attention. Fortunately this was to be had in abundance just now. For the autumn round-up was on, and since her foreman was away the mistress of the Lazy D found plenty of work ready to her hand.

The meeting place for the round-up riders was at Boom Creek, five miles from the ranch, and Helen rode out there to take charge of her own interests in person. With her were six riders, and for the use of each of them in addition to his present mount three extra ponies were brought in the remuda. For the riding is so hard during the round-up that a horse can stand only one day in four of it. At the appointed rendezvous a score of other cowboys and owners met them. Without any delay they proceeded to business. Mr. Bob Austin, better known as "Texas," was elected boss of the round-up, and he immediately assigned the men to their places and announced that they would work Squaw Creek. They moved camp at once, Helen returning to the ranch.

It was three o'clock in the morning when the men were roused by the cook's triangle calling them to the "chuck wagon" for breakfast. It was still cold and dark as the boys crawled from under their blankets and squatted round the fire to eat jerky, biscuits and gravy, and to drink cupfuls of hot, black coffee. Before sun rose every man was at his post far up on the Squaw Creek ridges ready to begin the drive.

Later in the day Helen rode to the parade grounds, toward which a stream of cattle was pouring down the canyon of the creek. Every gulch tributary to the creek contributed its quota of wild cows and calves. These came romping down the canyon mouth, where four picked men, with a bunch of tame cows in front of them, stopped the rush of flying cattle. Lunch was omitted, and branding began at once. Every calf belonging to a Lazy D cow, after being roped and tied, was flanked with the great D which indicated its ownership by Miss Messiter, and on account of the recumbent position of which letter the ranch had its name.

It was during the branding that a boyish young fellow rode up and handed Helen a note. Her heart pumped rapidly with relief, for one glance told her that it was in the handwriting of the Ned Bannister she loved. She tore it open and glanced swiftly through it.

DEAR FRIEND: Two hours ago my cousin was killed by one of his own men. I am sending back to you a boy who had been led astray by him, and it would be a great service to me if you would give him something to do till I return. His name is Hugh Rogers. I think if you trust him he will prove worthy of it.

Jim and I are going to stay here a few days longer to finish the work that is begun. We hope to meet and talk with as many of the men implicated in my cousin's lawlessness as is possible. What the result will be I cannot say. We do not consider ourselves in any danger whatever, though we are not taking chances. If all goes well we shall be back within a few days.

I hope you are not missing Jim too much at the roundup. Sincerely,

NED BANNISTER

She liked the letter because there was not a hint of the relationship between them to be read in it. He had guarded her against the chance of its falling into the wrong hands and creating talk about them.

She turned to Hughie. "Can you ride?"

"In a way, ma'am. I can't ride like these men." His glance indicated a cow-puncher pounding past after a wild steer that had broken through the cordon of riders and was trying to get away.

"Do you want to learn?"

"I'd like to if I had a chance," he answered wistfully.

"All right. You have your chance. I'll see that Mr. Austin finds something for you to do. From to-day you are in my employ."

She rode back to the ranch in the late afternoon, while the sun was setting in a great splash of crimson. The round-up boss had hinted that if she were nervous about riding alone he could find it convenient to accompany her. But the girl wanted to be alone with her own thoughts, and she had slipped away while he was busy cutting out calves from the herd. It had been a wonderful relief to her to find that HER Ned Bannister was the one that had survived in the conflict, and her heart sang a paean of joy as she rode into the golden glow of the westering sun. He was alive--to love and be loved. The unlived years of her future seemed to unroll before her as a vision. She glowed with a resurgent happiness that was almost an ecstasy. The words of a bit of verse she had once seen--a mere scrap from a magazine that had stuck in an obscure corner of her memory--sang again and again in her heart:

Life and love And a bright sky o'er us, And--God take care Of the way before us!

Ah, the way before them, before her and her romance-radiating hero! It might he rough and hilly, but if they trod it together-- Her tangled thoughts were off again in another glad leap of imagination.

The days passed somehow. She busied herself with the affairs of the ranch, rode out often to the scenes of the cattle drives and watched the round-up, and every twenty-four hours brought her one day nearer to his return, she told herself. Nora, too, was on the lookout under her longlashed, roguish eyelids; and the two young women discussed the subject of their lovers' return in that elusive, elliptical way common to their sex.

No doubt each of these young women had conjectured as to the manner of that homecoming and the meeting that would accompany it; but it is safe to say that neither of them guessed in her day-dreams how it actually was to occur.

Nora had been eager to see something of the round-up, and as she was no horsewoman her mistress took her out one day in her motor. The drive had been that day on Bronco Mesa, and had finished in the natural corral made by Bear Canon, fenced with a cordon of riders at the end opening to the plains below. After watching for two hours the busy scenes of cutting out, roping and branding, Helen wheeled her car and started down the canyon on their return.

Now, a herd of wild cattle is uncertain as an April day's behavior. Under the influence of the tame valley cattle among which they are driven, after a little milling around, the whole bunch may gentle almost immediately, or, on the other hand, it may break through and go crashing away on a wild stampede at a moment's notice. Every experienced cowman knows enough to expect the unexpected.

At Bronco Mesa the round-up had proceeded with unusual facility. Scores of wiry, long-legged steers had drifted down the ridges or gulches that led to the canon; and many a cow, followed by its calf, had stumbled forward to the herd and apparently accepted the inevitable. But before Helen Messiter had well started out of the canyon's mouth the situation changed absolutely.

A big hill steer, which had not seen a man for a year, broke through the human corral with a bellow near a point where Reddy kept guard. The puncher wheeled and gave chase, Before the other men could close the opening a couple of two-year-olds seized the opportunity and followed its lead. A second rider gave chase, and at once, as if some imp of mischief had stirred them, fifty tails went up in wild flight. Another minute and the whole herd was in stampede.

Down the gulch the five hundred cattle thundered toward the motor car, which lay directly in their path. Helen turned, appreciated the danger, and put the machine at its full speed. The road branched for a space of about fifty yards, and in her excitement she made the mistake of choosing the lower, more level, one. Into a deep sand bed they plowed, the wheels sinking at every turn. Slower and slower went the car; finally came to a full stop.

Nora glanced back in affright at the two hundred and fifty tons of beef that was charging wildly toward them. "What shall we do?" she gasped, and clambered to the ground.

"Run!" cried Helen, following her example and scudding for the sides of the canyon, which here sloped down less precipitately than at other points. But before they had run a dozen steps each of them was aware that they could not reach safety in time to escape the hoofs rushing toward them so heavily that the ground quaked.

"Look out!" A resonant cry rang out above the dull thud of the stampeding cattle that were almost upon them. Down the steep sides of the gorge two riders were galloping recklessly. It was a race for life between them and the first of the herd, and they won by scarce more than a length. Across the sand the horses plowed, and as they swept past the two trembling young women each rider bent from the saddle without slackening speed, and snatched one almost from under the very hoofs of the leaders.

The danger was not past. As the horses swerved and went forward with the rush Helen knew that a stumble would fling not only her and the man who had saved her, but also the horse down to death. They must contrive to hold their own in that deadly rush until a way could be found of escaping from the path of the living cyclone that trod at their heels, galloped beside them, in front, behind.

For it came to her that the horse was tiring in that rush through the sand with double weight upon its back.

"Courage!" cried the man behind her as her fearful eyes met his.

As he spoke they reached the end of the canyon and firm ground simultaneously. Helen saw that her rescuer had now a revolver in his hand, and that he was firing in such a way as to deflect the leaders to the left. At first the change in course was hardly perceptible, but presently she noticed that they were getting closer to the outskirts of the herd, working gradually to the extreme right, edging inch by inch, ever so warily, toward safety. Going parallel to their course, running neck and neck with the cow pony, lumbered a great dun steer. Unconsciously it blocked every effort of the horseman to escape. He had one shot left in his revolver, and this time he did not fire into the air. It was a mighty risk, for the animal in falling might stagger against the horse and hunt them all down to death. But the man took it without apparent hesitation. Into the ear of the bullock he sent the lead crashing. The brute stumbled and went down head over heels. Its flying hoofs struck the flanks of the pony, but the bronco stuck to its feet, and next moment staggered out from among the herd stragglers and came to halt.

The man slid from its back and lifted down the half-fainting girl. She clung to him, white a trembling. "Oh, it was horrible, Ned!" She could still look down in imagination upon the sea of dun backs that swayed and surged about them like storm-tossed waves.

"It was a near thing, but we made it, girl. So did Jim. He got out before we did. It's all past now. You can remember it as the most exciting experience of your life."

She shuddered. "I don't want to remember it at all." And so shaken was she that she did not realize that his arm was about her the while she sobbed on his shoulder.

"A cattle stampede is a nasty thing to get in front of. Never mind. It's done with now and everybody's safe."

She drew a long breath. "Yes, everybody's safe and you are back home. Why didn't you come after your cousin was killed?"

"I had to finish my work."

"And DID you finish it?"

"I think we did. There will be no more Shoshone gang. It's members have scatted in all directions."

"I'm glad you stayed, then. We can live at peace now." And presently she added: "I knew you would not come back until you had done what you set out to do. You're very obstinate, sir. Do you know that?"

"Perseverance, I call it," he smiled, glad to see that she was recovering her lightness of tone.

"You don't always insist on putting your actions in the most favorable light. Do you remember the first day I ever saw you?"

"Am I likely ever to forget it?" he smiled fondly.

"I didn't mean THAT. What I was getting at was that you let me go away from you thinking you were 'the king.' I haven't forgiven you entirely for that."

"I expect y'u'll always have to be forgiving me things."

"If you valued my good opinion I don't see how you could let me go without telling me. Was it fair or kind?"

"If y'u come to that, was it so fair and kind to convict me so promptly on suspicion?" he retaliated with a smile.

"No, it wasn't. But--" She flushed with a divine shyness. "But I loved you all the time, even when they said you were a villain."

"Even while y'u believed me one?"

"I didn't. I never would believe you one--not deep in my heart. I wouldn't let myself. I made excuses for you--explained everything to myself."

"Yet your reason told y'u I was guilty "

"Yes, I think my mind hated you and my heart loved you."

He adored her for the frank simplicity of her confession, that out of the greatness of her love she dared to make no secret of it to him. Direct as a boy, she was yet as wholly sweet as the most retiring girl could be.

"Y'u always swamp my vocabulary, sweetheart. I can't ever tell y'u--life wouldn't be long enough--how much I care for you."

"I'm glad," she said simply.

They stood looking at each other, palms pressed to palms in meeting hands, supremely happy in this miracle of love that had befallen them. They were alone--for Nora and Jim had gone into temporary eclipse behind a hill and seemed in no hurry to emerge--alone in the sunshine with this wonder that flowed from one to another by shining eyes, by finger touch, and then by meeting lips. He held her close, knew the sweet delight of contact with the supple, surrendered figure, then released her as she drew away in maidenly reserve.

"When shall we be married, Helen? Is the early part of next week too late?" he asked.

Still blushing, she straightened her hat. "That's ridiculous, sir. I haven't got used to the thought of you yet."

"Plenty of time for that afterward. Then we'll say next week if that suits y'u."

"But it doesn't. Don't you know that it is the lady's privilege to name the day? Besides, I want time to change my mind if I should decide to."

"That's what I'm afraid of," he laughed joyfully. "So I have to insist on an early marriage."

"Insist?" she demurred.

"I've been told on the best of authority that I'm very obstinate," he gayly answered.

"I have a mind of my own myself. If I ever marry you be sure I shall name the day, sir."

"Will y'u marry me the day Nora does Jim?"

"We'll see." The eyes slanted at him under the curved lashes, teased him delightfully. "Did Nora tell you she was going to marry Jim?"

Bannister looked mildly hurt. "My common sense has been telling it to me a month."

"How long has your common sense been telling you about us?"

"I didn't use it when I fell in love with y'u," he boldly laughed.

"Of all things to say!"

Contents

BRAND BLOTTERS

By WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE

PART I

MELISSY OF THE BAR DOUBLE G

CHAPTER I

A CROSSED TRAIL

The tenderfoot rose from the ledge upon which he had been lying and stretched himself stiffly. The chill of the long night had set him shivering. His bones ached from the pressure of his body upon the rock where he had slept and waked and dozed again with troubled dreams. The sharpness of his hunger made him light-headed. Thirst tortured him. His throat was a lime-kiln, his tongue swollen till it filled his mouth.

If the night had been bad, he knew the day would be a hundred times worse. Already a gray light was sifting into the hollow of the sky. The vague misty outlines of the mountains were growing sharper. Soon from a crotch of them would rise a red hot cannon ball to pour its heat into the parched desert.

He was headed for the Sonora line, for the hills where he had heard a man might drop out of sight of the civilization that had once known him. There were reasons why he had started in a hurry, without a horse or food or a canteen, and these same reasons held good why he could not follow beaten tracks. All yesterday he had traveled without sighting a ranch or meeting a human being. But he knew he must get to water soon--if he were to reach it at all.

A light breeze was stirring, and on it there was borne to him a faint rumble as of thunder. Instantly the man came to a rigid alertness. Thunder might mean rain, and rain would be salvation. But the sound did not die away. Instead, it deepened to a steady roar, growing every instant louder. His startled glance swept the cañon that drove like a sword cleft into the hills. Pouring down it, with the rush of a tidal wave, came a wall of cattle, a thousand backs tossing up and down as the swell of a troubled sea. Though he had never seen one before, the man on the lip of the gulch knew that he was watching a cattle stampede. Under the impact of the galloping hoofs the ground upon which he stood quaked.

A cry diverted his attention. From the bed of the sandy wash a man had started up and was running for his life toward the cañon walls. Before he had taken half a dozen steps the avalanche was upon him, had cut him down, swept over him.

The thud of the hoofs died away. Into the open desert the stampede had passed. A huddled mass lay motionless on the sand in the track of the avalanche.

A long ragged breath whistled through the closed lips of the tenderfoot. He ran along the edge of the rock wall till he found a descent less sharp, lowered himself by means of jutting quartz and mesquit cropping out from the crevices, and so came through a little draw to the cañon.

He dropped on a knee beside the sprawling, huddled figure. No second glance was needed to see that the man was dead. Life had been trampled out of him almost instantly and his features battered beyond any possible recognition. Unused to scenes of violence, the stranger stooping over him felt suddenly sick. It made him shudder to remember that if he could have found a way down in the darkness he, too, would have slept in the warm sand of the dry wash. If he had, the fate of this man would have been his.

Under the doubled body was a canteen. The trembling fingers of the tenderfoot unscrewed the cork. Tipping the vessel, he drank avidly. One swallow, a second, then a few trickling drops. The canteen had been almost empty.

Uncovering, he stood bareheaded before the inert body and spoke gently in the low, soft voice one instinctively uses in the presence of the dead.

"Friend, I couldn't save your life, but your water has saved mine, I reckon. Anyhow, it gives me another chance to fight for it. I wish I could do something for you ... carry a message to your folks and tell them how it happened."

He dropped down again beside the dead man and rifled the pockets. In them he found two letters addressed in an illiterate hand to James Diller, Cananea, Sonora, Mexico. An idea flashed into his brain and for a moment held him motionless while he worked it out. Why not? This man was about his size, dressed much like him, and so mutilated that identification was impossible.

From his own pocket he took a leather bill book and a monogrammed cigarcase. With a sharp stone he scarred the former. The metal case he crushed out of shape beneath the heel of his boot. Having first taken one twenty dollar yellowback from the well-padded book, he slipped it and the cigarcase into the inner coat pocket of the dead man. Irregularly in a dozen places he gashed with his knife the derby hat he was wearing, ripped the band half loose, dragged it in the dust, and jumped on it till the hat was flat as a pancake. Finally he kicked it into the sand a dozen yards away.

"The cattle would get it tangled in their hoofs and drag it that far with them," he surmised.

The soft gray hat of the dead man he himself appropriated. Again he spoke to the lifeless body, lowering his voice to a murmur.

"I reckon you wouldn't grudge me this if you knew. I'm up against it. If I get out of these hills alive I'll be lucky. But if I do--well, it won't do you any harm to be mistaken for me, and it will accommodate me mightily. I hate to leave you here alone, but it's what I've got to do to save myself."

He turned away and plodded up the dry creek bed.

* * * * *

The sun was at the meridian when three heavily armed riders drew up at the mouth of the cañon. They fell into the restful, negligent postures of horsemen accustomed to take their ease in the saddle.

"Do you figure maybe he's working up to the headwaters of Dry Sandy?" one suggested.

A squat, bandy-legged man with a face of tanned leather presently answered. "No, Tim, I expect not. The way I size him up Mr. Richard Bellamy wouldn't know Dry Sandy from an irrigation ditch. Mr. R. B. hopes he's hittin' the high spots for Sonora, but he ain't anyways sure. Right about now he's ridin' the grub line, unless he's made a strike somewhere."

The third member of the party, a lean, wide-shouldered, sinewy youth, blue silk kerchief knotted loosely around his neck, broke in with a gesture that swept the sky. "Funny about all them buzzards. What are they doing here, sheriff?"

The squat man opened his mouth to answer, but Tim took the word out of his mouth.

"Look!" His arm had shot straight out toward the cañon. A coyote was disappearing on the lope. "Something lying there in the wash at the bend, Burke."

Sheriff Burke slid his rifle from its scabbard. "We'll not take any chances, boys. Spread out far as you can. Tim, ride close to the left wall. You keep along the right one, Flatray. Me, I'll take the center. That's right."

They rode forward cautiously. Once Flatray spoke.

"By the tracks there has been a lot of cattle down here on the jump recently."

"That's what," Tim agreed.

Flatray swung from his saddle and stooped over the body lying at the bend of the wash.

"Crushed to death in a cattle stampede, looks like," he called to the sheriff.

"Search him, Jack," the sheriff ordered.

The young man gave an exclamation of surprise. He was standing with a cigarcase in one hand and a billbook in the other. "It's the man we're after--it's Bellamy."

Burke left his horse and came forward. "How do you know?"

"Initials on the cigarcase, R. B. Same monogram on the billbook."

The sheriff had stooped to pick up a battered hat as he moved toward the deputy. Now he showed the initials stamped on the sweat band. "R. B. here, too."

"Suit of gray clothes, derby hat, size and weight about medium. We'll never know about the scar on the eyebrow, but I guess Mr. Bellamy is identified without that."

"Must have camped here last night and while he was asleep the cattle stampeded down the cañon," Tim hazarded.

"That guess is as good as any. They ce'tainly stomped the life out of him thorough. Anyhow, Bellamy has met up with his punishment. We'll have to pack the body back to town, boys," the sheriff told them.

Half an hour later the party filed out to the creosote flats and struck across country toward Mesa. Flatray was riding pillion behind Tim. His own horse was being used as a pack saddle.

CHAPTER II

BRAND BLOTTING

The tenderfoot, slithering down a hillside of shale, caught at a greasewood bush and waited. The sound of a rifle shot had drifted across the ridge to him. Friend or foe, it made no difference to him now. He had reached the end of his tether, must get to water soon or give up the fight.

No second shot broke the stillness. A swift zigzagged across the cattle trail he was following. Out of a blue sky the Arizona sun still beat down upon a land parched by æons of drought, a land still making its brave show of greenness against a dun background.

Arrow straight the man made for the hill crest. Weak as a starved puppy, his knees bent under him as he climbed. Down and up again a dozen times, he pushed feverishly forward. All day he had been seeing things. Cool lakes had danced on the horizon line before his tortured vision. Strange fancies had passed in and out of his mind. He wondered if this, too, were a delusion. How long that stiff ascent took him he never knew, but at last he reached the summit and crept over its cactus-covered shoulder.

He looked into a valley dressed in its young spring garb. Of all deserts this is the loveliest when the early rains have given rebirth to the hope that stirs within its bosom once a year. But the tenderfoot saw nothing of its pathetic promise, of its fragile beauty so soon to be blasted. His sunken eyes swept the scene and found at first only a desert waste in which lay death.

"I lose," he said to himself out loud.

With the words he gave up the long struggle and sank to the ground. For hours he had been exhausted to the limit of endurance, but the will to live had kept him going. Now the driving force within had run down. He would die where he lay.

Another instant, and he was on his feet again eager, palpitant, tremulous. For plainly there had come to him the bleating of a calf.

Moving to the left, he saw rising above the hill brow a thin curl of smoke. A dozen staggering steps brought him to the edge of a draw. There in the hollow below, almost within a stone's throw, was a young woman bending over a fire. He tried to call, but his swollen tongue and dry throat refused the service. Instead, he began to run toward her.

Beyond the wash was a dead cow. Not far from it lay a calf on its side, all four feet tied together. From the fire the young woman took a red-hot running iron and moved toward the little bleater.

The crackling of a twig brought her around as a sudden tight rein does a high-strung horse. The man had emerged from the prickly pears and was close upon her. His steps dragged. The sag of his shoulders indicated extreme fatigue. The dark hollows beneath the eyes told of days of torment.

The girl stood before him slender and straight. She was pale to the lips. Her breath came fast and ragged as if she had been running.

Abruptly she shot her challenge at him. "Who are you?"

"Water," he gasped.

One swift, searching look the girl gave him, then "Wait!" she ordered, and was off into the mesquit on the run. Three minutes later the tenderfoot heard her galloping through the brush. With a quick, tight rein she drew up, swung from the saddle expertly as a vaquero, and began to untie a canteen held by buckskin thongs to the side of the saddle.

He drank long, draining the vessel to the last drop.

From her saddle bags she brought two sandwiches wrapped in oiled paper.

"You're hungry, too, I expect," she said, her eyes shining with tender pity.

She observed that he did not wolf his food, voracious though he was. While he ate she returned to the fire with the running iron and heaped live coals around the end of it.

"You've had a pretty tough time of it," she called across to him gently.

"It hasn't been exactly a picnic, but I'm all right now."

The girl liked the way he said it. Whatever else he was--and already faint doubts were beginning to stir in her--he was not a quitter.

"You were about all in," she said, watching him.

"Just about one little kick left in me," he smiled.

"That's what I thought."

She busied herself over the fire inspecting the iron. The man watched her curiously. What could it mean? A cow killed wantonly, a calf bawling with pain and fear, and this girl responsible for it. The tenderfoot could not down the suspicion stirring in his mind. He knew little of the cattle country. But he had read books and had spent a week in Mesa not entirely in vain. The dead cow with the little stain of red down its nose pointed surely to one thing. He was near enough to see a hole in the forehead just above the eyes. Instinctively his gaze passed to the rifle lying in the sand close to his hand. Her back was still turned to him. He leaned over, drew the gun to him, and threw out an empty shell from the barrel.

At the click of the lever the girl swung around upon him.

"What are you doing?" she demanded.

He put the rifle down hurriedly. "Just seeing what make it is."

"And what make is it?" she flashed.

He was trapped. "I hadn't found out yet," he stammered.

"No, but you found out there was an empty shell in it," she retorted quickly.

Their eyes fastened. She was gray as ashes, but she did not flinch. By chance he had stumbled upon the crime of crimes in Cattleland, had caught a rustler redhanded at work. Looking into the fine face, nostrils delicately fashioned, eyes clear and deep, the thing was scarce credible of her. Why, she could not be a day more than twenty, and in every line of her was the look of pride, of good blood.

"Yes, I happened to throw it out," he apologized.

But she would have no evasion, would not let his doubts sleep. There was superb courage in the scornful ferocity with which she retorted.

"Happened! And I suppose you happened to notice that the brand on the cow is a Bar Double G, while that on the calf is different."

"No, I haven't noticed that."

"Plenty of time to see it yet." Then, with a swift blaze of feeling, "What's the use of pretending? I know what you think."

"Then you know more than I do. My thoughts don't go any farther than this, that you have saved my life and I'm grateful for it."

"I know better. You think I'm a rustler. But don't say it. Don't you dare say it."

Brought up in an atmosphere of semi-barbaric traditions, silken-strong, with instincts unwarped by social pressure, she was what the sun and wind and freedom of Arizona had made her, a poetic creation far from commonplace. So he judged her, and in spite of the dastardly thing she had done he sensed an innate refinement strangely at variance with the circumstances.

"All right. I won't," he answered, with a faint smile.

"Now you've got to pay for your sandwiches by making yourself useful. I'm going to finish this job." She said it with an edge of self-scorn. He guessed her furious with self-contempt.

Under her directions he knelt on the calf so as to hold it steady while she plied the hot iron. The odor of burnt hair and flesh was already acrid in his nostrils. Upon the red flank F was written in raw, seared flesh. He judged that the brand she wanted was not yet complete. Probably the iron had got too cold to finish the work, and she had been forced to reheat it.

The little hand that held the running iron was trembling. Looking up, the tenderfoot saw that she was white enough to faint.

"I can't do it. You'll have to let me hold him while you blur the brand," she told him.

They changed places. She set her teeth to it and held the calf steady, but the brander noticed that she had to look away when the red-hot iron came near the flesh of the victim.

"Blur the brand right out. Do it quick, please," she urged.

A sizzle of burning skin, a piteous wail from the tortured animal, an acrid pungent odor, and the thing was done. The girl got to her feet, quivering like an aspen.

"Have you a knife?" she asked faintly.

"Yes."

"Cut the rope."

The calf staggered to all fours, shook itself together, and went bawling to the dead mother.

The girl drew a deep breath. "They say it does not hurt except while it is being done."

His bleak eyes met hers stonily. "And of course it will soon get used to doing without its mother. That is a mere detail."

A shudder went through her.

The whole thing was incomprehensible to him. Why under heaven had she done it? How could one so sensitive have done a wanton cruel thing like this? Her reason he could not fathom. The facts that confronted him were that she had done it, and had meant to carry the crime through. Only detection had changed her purpose.

She turned upon him, plainly sick of the whole business. "Let's get away from here. Where's your horse?"

"I haven't any. I started on foot and got lost."

"From where?"

"From Mammoth."

Sharply her keen eyes fixed him. How could a man have got lost near Mammoth and wandered here? He would have had to cross the range, and even a child would have known enough to turn back into the valley where the town lay.

"How long ago?"

"Day before yesterday." He added after a moment: "I was looking for a job."

She took in the soft hands and the unweathered skin of the dark face. "What sort of a job?"

"Anything I can do."

"But what can you do?"

"I can ride."

She must take him home with her, of course, and feed and rest him. That went without saying. But what after that? He knew too much to be turned adrift with the story of what he had seen. If she could get a hold on him--whether of fear or of gratitude--so as to insure his silence, the truth might yet be kept quiet. At least she could try.

"Did you ever ride the range?"

"No."

"What sort of work have you done?"

After a scarcely noticeable pause, "Clerical work," he answered.

"You're from the East?" she suggested, her eyes narrowing.

"Yes."

"My name is Melissy Lee," she told him, watching him very steadily.

Once more the least of pauses. "Mine is Diller--James Diller."

"That's funny. I know another man of that name. At least, I know him by sight."

The man who had called himself Diller grew wary. "It's a common enough name."

"Yes. If I find you work at my father's ranch would you be too particular about what it is?"

"Try me."

"And your memory--is it inconveniently good?" Her glance swept as by chance over the scene of her recent operations.

"I've got a right good forgettery, too," he assured her.

"You're not in the habit of talking much about the things you see." She put it in the form of a statement, but the rising inflection indicated the interrogative.

His black eyes met hers steadily. "I can padlock my mouth when it is necessary," he answered, the suggestion of a Southern drawl in his intonation.

She wanted an assurance more direct. "When you think it necessary, I suppose."

"That is what I meant to say."

"Come. One good turn deserves another. What about this?" She nodded toward the dead cow.

"I have not seen a thing I ought not to have seen."

"Didn't you see me blot a brand on that calf?"

He shook his head. "Can't recall it at all, Miss Lee."

Swiftly her keen glance raked him again. Judged by his clothes, he was one of the world's ineffectives, flotsam tossed into the desert by the wash of fate; but there was that in the steadiness of his eye, in the set of his shoulders, in the carriage of his lean-loined, slim body that spoke of breeding. He was no booze-fighting grubliner. Disguised though he was in cheap slops, she judged him a man of parts. He would do to trust, especially since she could not help herself.

"We'll be going. You take my horse," she ordered.

"And let you walk?"

"How long since you have eaten?" she asked brusquely.

"About seven minutes," he smiled.

"But before that?"

"Two days."

"Well, then. Anybody can see you're as weak as a kitten. Do as I say."

"Why can't we both ride?"

"We can as soon as we get across the pass. Until then I'll walk."

Erect as a willow sapling, she took the hills with an elastic ease that showed her deep-bosomed in spite of her slenderness. The short corduroy riding skirt and high-laced boots were made for use, not grace, but the man in the saddle found even in her manner of walking the charm of her direct, young courage. Free of limb, as yet unconscious of sex, she had the look of a splendid boy. The descending sun was in her sparkling hair, on the lank, undulating grace of her changing lines.

Active as a cat though it was, the cowpony found the steep pass with its loose rubble hard going. Melissy took the climb much easier. In the way she sped through the mesquit, evading the clutch of the cholla by supple dips to right and left, there was a kind of pantherine litheness.

At the summit she waited for the horse to clamber up the shale after her.

"Get down in your collar, you Buckskin," she urged, and when the pony was again beside her petted the animal with little love pats on the nose.

Carelessly she flung at Diller a question. "From what part of the East did you say?"

He was on the spot promptly this time. "From Keokuk."

"Keokuk, Indiana?"

"Iowa," he smiled.

"Oh, is it Iowa?" He had sidestepped her little trap, but she did not give up. "Just arrived?"

"I've been herding sheep for a month."

"Oh, sheep-herding!" Her disdain implied that if he were fit for nothing better than sheep-herding, the West could find precious little use for him.

"It was all I could get to do."

"Where did you say you wrangled Mary's little lamb?"

"In the Catalinas."

"Whose outfit?"

Question and answer were tossed back and forth lightly, but both were watching warily.

"Outfit?" he repeated, puzzled.

"Yes. Who were you working for?"

"Don't remember his name. He was a Mexican."

"Must have been one of the camps of Antonio Valdez."

"Yes, that's it. That's the name."

"Only he runs his sheep in the Galiuros," she demurred.

"Is it the Galiuros? Those Spanish names! I can't keep them apart in my mind."

She laughed with hard, young cruelty. "It is hard to remember what you never heard, isn't it?"

The man was on the rack. Tiny beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. But he got a lip smile into working order.

"Just what do you mean, Miss Lee?"

"You had better get your story more pat. I've punched a dozen holes in it already. First you tell me you are from the East, and even while you were telling me I knew you were a Southerner from the drawl. No man ever got lost from Mammoth. You gave a false name. You said you had been herding sheep, but you didn't know what an outfit is. You wobbled between the Galiuros and the Catalinas."

"I'm not a native. I told you I couldn't remember Spanish names."

"It wasn't necessary to tell me," she countered quickly. "A man that can't recall even the name of his boss!"

"I'm not in the witness box, Miss Lee," he told her stiffly.

"Not yet, but you're liable to be soon, I reckon."

"In a cattle rustling case, I suppose you mean."

"No, I don't." She went on with her indictment of his story, though his thrust had brought the color to her cheek. "When I offered you Antonio Valdez for an employer you jumped at him. If you want to know, he happens to be our herder. He doesn't own a sheep and never will."

"You know all about it," he said with obvious sarcasm.

"I know you're not who you say you are."

"Perhaps you know who I am then."

"I don't know or care. It's none of my business. But others may think it is theirs. You can't be so reckless with the truth without folks having notions. If I were you I'd get a story that will hang together."

"You're such a good detective. Maybe I could get you to invent one for me," he suggested maliciously.

Her indignation flashed. "I'm no such thing. But I'm not quite a fool. A babe in arms wouldn't swallow that fairy tale."

Awkward as her knowledge might prove, he could not help admiring the resource and shrewdness of the girl. She had virtually served notice that if she had a secret that needed keeping so had he.

They looked down over a desert green with bajadas, prickly pears, and mesquit. To the right, close to a spur of the hills, were the dwarfed houses of a ranch. The fans of a windmill caught the sun and flashed it back to the travelers.

"The Bar Double G. My father owns it," Miss Lee explained.

"Oh! Your father owns it." He reflected a moment while he studied her. "Let's understand each other, Miss Lee. I'm not what I claim to be, you say. We'll put it that you have guessed right. What do you intend to do about it? I'm willing to be made welcome at the Bar Double G, but I don't want to be too welcome."

"I'm not going to do anything."

"So long as I remember not to remember what I've seen."

The blood burned in her cheeks beneath their Arizona tan. She did not look at him. "If you like to put it that way."

He counted it to her credit that she was ashamed of the bargain in every honest fiber of her.

"No matter what they say I've done. You'll keep faith?"

"I don't care what you've done," she flung back bitterly. "It's none of my affair. I told you that before. Men come out here for all sorts of reasons. We don't ask for a bill of particulars."

"Then I'll be right glad to go down to the Bar Double G with you, and say thanks for the chance."

He had dismounted when they first reached the pass. Now she swung to the saddle and he climbed behind her. They reached presently one of the nomadic trails of the cattle country which wander leisurely around hills and over gulches along the line of least resistance. This brought them to a main traveled road leading to the ranch.

They rode in silence until the pasture fence was passed.

"What am I to tell them your name is?" she asked stiffly.

He took his time to answer. "Tom Morse is a good name, don't you think? How would T. L. Morse do?"

She offered no comment, but sat in front of him, unresponsive as the sphinx. The rigor of her flat back told him that, though she might have to keep his shameful secret for the sake of her own, he could not presume upon it the least in the world.

Melissy turned the horse over to a little Mexican boy and they were just mounting the steps of the porch when a young man cantered up to the house. Lean and muscular and sunbaked, he looked out of cool, gray eyes upon a man's world that had often put him through the acid test. The plain, cactus-torn chaps, flannel shirt open at the sinewy throat, dusty, wide-brimmed hat, revolver peeping from its leather pocket on the thigh: every detail contributed to the impression of efficiency he created. Even the one touch of swagger about him, the blue silk kerchief knotted loosely around his neck, lent color to his virile competency.

He dragged his horse to a standstill and leaped off at the same instant. "Evenin', 'Lissie."

She was busy lacing her shoe and did not look up. He guessed that he was being snubbed and into his eyes came a gleam of fun. A day later than he had promised, Jack Flatray was of opinion that he was being punished for tardiness.

Casually he explained. "Couldn't make it any sooner. Burke had a hurry-up job that took us into the hills. Fellow by the name of Bellamy, wanted for murder at Nemo, Arkansas, had been tracked to Mesa. A message came over the wires to arrest him. When Burke sent me to his room he had lit out, taken a swift hike into the hills. Must a-had some warning, for he didn't even wait for a horse."

The dilated eyes of the girl went past the deputy to the man she had rescued. He was leaning against one of the porch posts, tense and rigid, on his face the look of the hunted brought to bay.

"And did you find him?" she asked mechanically of the deputy.

"We found him. He had been trampled to death by a cattle stampede."

Her mind groped blindly for an explanation. Her woman's instinct told her that the man panting on the porch within six feet of the officer was the criminal wanted. There must be a mistake somewhere.

"Did you identify him?"

"I guess there is no doubt about it. His papers and belongings all showed he was our man."

"Oh!" The excitement of his news had for a moment thawed her, but a dignified aloofness showed again in her manner. "If you want to see father you'll find him in the corral, Mr. Flatray."

"Well, I don't know as I'm looking for him awful hard," the blue kerchiefed youth smiled genially. "Anyway, I can wait a few minutes if I have to."

"Yes." She turned away indifferently. "I'll show you your room, Mr. Morse."

The deputy watched them disappear into the house with astonishment printed on his face. He had ridden twenty-seven miles to see Melissy Lee and he had not quite expected this sort of a greeting.

"If that don't beat the Dutch. Looks like I'll do my callin' on the old man after all, maybe," he murmured with a grin.

CHAPTER III

AN ACCUSATION

The rescued man ate, drank, and from sheer fatigue fell asleep within five minutes of the time he was shown his bedroom.

Since he was not of the easily discouraged kind, the deputy stayed to supper on invitation of Lee. He sat opposite the daughter of his host, and that young woman treated him with the most frigid politeness. The owner of the Bar Double G was quite unaware of any change of temperature. Jack and his little girl had always been the best of friends. So now he discoursed on the price of cows, the good rains, the outrages of the rustlers, and kindred topics without suspecting that the attention of the young man was on more personal matters.

Though born in Arizona, Melissy was of the South. Due westward rolls the tide of settlement, and Beauchamp Lee had migrated from Tennessee after the war, following the line of least resistance to the sunburned territory. Later he had married a woman a good deal younger than himself. She had borne him two children, the elder of whom was now a young man. Melissy was the younger, and while she was still a babe in arms the mother had died of typhoid and left her baby girl to grow up as best she might in a land where women were few and far. This tiny pledge of her mother's love Champ Lee had treasured as a gift from Heaven. He had tended her and nursed her through the ailments of childhood with a devotion the most pure of his reckless life. Given to heady gusts of passion, there had never been a moment when his voice had been other than gentle and tender to her.

Inevitably Melissy had become the product of her inheritance and her environment. If she was the heiress of Beauchamp Lee's courage and generosity, his quick indignation against wrong and injustice, so, too, she was of his passionate lawlessness.

After supper Melissy disappeared. She wanted very much to be alone and have a good cry. Wherefore she slipped out of the back door and ran up the Lone Tree trail in the darkness. Jack thought he saw a white skirt fly a traitorous signal, and at leisure he pursued.

But Melissy was not aware of that. She reached Lone Tree rock and slipped down from boulder to boulder until she came to the pine which gave the place its name. For hours she had been forced to repress her emotions, to make necessary small talk, to arrange for breakfast and other household details. Now she was alone, and the floods of her bitterness were unloosed. She broke down and wept passionately, for she was facing her first great disillusionment. She had lost a friend, one in whom she had put great faith.

The first gust of the storm was past when Melissy heard a step on the rocks above. She knew intuitively that Jack Flatray had come in search of her, and he was the last man on earth she wanted to meet just now.

"'Lissie!" she heard him call softly; and again, "'Lissie!"

Noiselessly she got to her feet, waiting to see what he would do. She knew he must be standing on the edge of the great rock, so directly above her that if he had kicked a pebble it would have landed beside her. Presently he began to clamber down.

She tiptoed along the ledge and slipped into the trough at the farther end that led to the top. It was a climb she had taken several times, but never in the dark. The ascent was almost perpendicular, and it had to be made by clinging to projecting rocks and vegetation. Moreover, if she were to escape undetected it had to be done in silence.

She was a daughter of the hills, as surefooted as a mountain goat. Handily she went up, making the most of the footholds that offered. In spite of the best she could do the rustling of bushes betrayed her.

Jack came to the foot of the trough and looked up.

"So you're there, are you?" he asked.

Her foot loosened a stone and sent it rolling down.

"If I were you I wouldn't try that at night, 'Liss," he advised.

She made sure of the steadiness of her voice before she answered. "You don't need to try it."

"I said if I were you, girl."

"But you are not. Don't let me detain you here, Mr. Flatray," she told him in a manner of icy precision.

The deputy began the climb too. "What's the use of being so hostile, little girl?" he drawled. "Me, I came as soon as I could, burning the wind, too."

She set her teeth, determined to reach the top in time to get away before he could join her. In her eagerness she took a chance that proved her undoing. A rock gave beneath her foot and clattered down. Clinging by one hand and foot, she felt her body swing around. From her throat a little cry leaped. She knew herself slipping.

"Jack!"

In time, and just in time, he reached her, braced himself, and gave her his knee for a foot rest.

"All right?" he asked, and "All right!" she answered promptly.

"We'll go back," he told her.

She made no protest. Indeed, she displayed a caution in lowering herself that surprised him. Every foothold she tested carefully with her weight. Once she asked him to place her shoe in the crevice for her. He had never seen her take so much time in making sure or be so fussy about her personal safety.

Safely on the ledge again, she attempted a second time to dismiss him. "Thank you, Mr. Flatray. I won't take any more of your time."

He looked at her steadily before he spoke. "You're mighty high-heeled, 'Lissie. You know my name ain't Mr. Flatray to you. What's it all about? I've told you twice I couldn't get here any sooner."

She flamed out at him in an upblaze of feminine ferocity. "And I tell you, that I don't care if you had never come. I don't want to see you or have anything to do with you."

"Why not?" He asked it quietly, though he began to know that her charge against him was a serious one.

"Because I know what you are now, because you have made us believe in you while all the time you were living a lie."

"Meaning what?"

"I was gathering poppies on the other side of Antelope Pass this afternoon."

"What has that got to do with me being a liar and a scoundrel," he wanted to know.

"Oh, you pretend," she scoffed. "But you know as well as I do."

"I'm afraid I don't. Let's have the indictment."

"If everybody in Papago County had told me I wouldn't have believed it," she cried. "I had to see it with my own eyes before I could have been convinced."

"Yes, well what is it you saw with your eyes?"

"You needn't keep it up. I tell you I saw it all from the time you fired the shot."

He laughed easily, but without mirth. "Kept tab on me, did you?"

She wheeled from him, gave a catch of her breath, and caught at the rock wall to save herself from falling.

He spoke sharply. "You hurt yourself in the trough."

"I sprained my ankle a little, but it doesn't matter."

He understood now why she had made so slow a descent and he suspected that the wrench was more than she admitted. The moon had come out from under a cloud and showed him a pale, tear-stained face, with a row of even, little teeth set firm against the lower lip. She was in pain and her pride was keeping it from him.

"Let me look at your ankle."

"No."

"I say yes. You've hurt it seriously."

"That is my business, I think," she told him with cold finality.

"I'm going to make it mine. Think I don't know you, proud as Lucifer when you get set. You'll lame yourself for life if you're not careful."

"I don't care to discuss it."

"Fiddlesticks! If you've got anything against me we'll hear what it is afterward. Right now we'll give first aid to the injured. Sit down here."

She had not meant to give way, but she did. Perhaps it was because of the faintness that stole over her, or because the pain was sharper than she could well endure. She found herself seated on the rock shelf, letting him cut the lace out of her shoe and slip it off. Ever so gently he worked, but he could tell by the catches of her breath that it was not pleasant to endure. From his neck he untied the silk kerchief and wrapped it tightly around the ankle.

"That will have to do till I get you home."

"I'll not trouble you, sir. If you'll stop and tell my father that is all I'll ask."

"Different here," he retorted cheerfully. "Just so as to avoid any argument, I'll announce right now that Jack Flatray is going to see you home. It's his say-so."

She rose. None knew better than she that he was a dominating man when he chose to be. She herself carried in her slim body a spirit capable of passion and of obstinacy, but to-night she had not the will to force the fighting.

Setting her teeth, she took a step or two forward, her hand against the rock wall to help bear the weight. With narrowed eyes, he watched her closely, noting the catches of pain that shot through her breathing. Half way up the boulder bed he interposed brusquely.

"This is plumb foolishness, girl. You've got no business putting your weight on that foot, and you're not going to do it."

He slipped his arm around her waist in such a way as to support her all he could. With a quick turn of the body she tried to escape.

"No use. I'm going through with this, 'Lissie. Someone has been lying to you about me, and just now you hate the ground I walk on. Good enough. That's got nothing to do with this. You're a woman that needs help, and any old time J. F. meets up with such a one he's on the job. You don't owe me 'Thank you,' but you've got to stand for me till you reach the house."

"You're taking advantage of me because I can't help myself. Why don't you go and bring father," she flung out.

"I'm younger than your father and abler to help. That's why?"

They reached the top of the bluff and he made her sit down to rest. A pale moon suffused the country, and in that stage set to lowered lights her pallor was accented. From the colorless face shadowy, troubled eyes spoke the misery through which she was passing. The man divined that her pain was more than physical, and the knowledge went to him poignantly by the heart route.

"What is it, 'Lissie? What have I done?" he asked gently.

"You know. I don't want to talk about it."

"But I don't know."

"What's the use of keeping it up? I caught you this afternoon."

"Caught me doing what?"

"Caught you rustling, caught you branding a calf just after you had shot the cow."

For an instant her charge struck him dumb. He stared at her as if he thought she had gone suddenly mad.

"What's that? Say it again," he got out at last.

"And the cow had the Bar Double G brand, belonged to my father, your best friend," she added passionately.

He spoke very gently, but there was an edge to his voice that was new to her. "Suppose you tell me all about it."

She threw out a hand in a gesture of despair. "What's the use? Nothing could have made me believe it but my own eyes. You needn't keep up a pretense. I saw you."

"Yes, so you said before. Now begin at the start and tell your story."

She had the odd feeling of being put on the defensive and it angered her. How dared he look at her with those cool, gray eyes that still appeared to bore a hole through treachery? Why did her heart convict her of having deserted a friend, when she knew that the desertion was his?

"While I was gathering poppies I heard a shot. It was so close I walked to the edge of the draw and looked over. There I saw you."

"What was I doing?"

"You were hogtying a calf."

"And then?"

"I didn't understand at first. I thought to slip down and surprise you for fun. But as I got lower I saw the dead cow. Just then you began to brand the calf and I cried out to you."

"What did I do?"

"You know what you did," she answered wearily. "You broke for the brush where your horse was and galloped away."

"Got a right good look at me, did you?"

"Not at your face. But I knew. You were wearing this blue silk handkerchief." Her finger indicated the one bound around her ankle.

"So on that evidence you decide I'm a rustler, and you've only known me thirteen years. You're a good friend, 'Lissie."

Her eyes blazed on him like live coals. "Have you forgotten the calf you left with your brand on it?"

She had startled him at last. "With my brand on it?" he repeated, his voice dangerously low and soft.

"You know as well as I do. You had got the F just about finished when I called. You dropped the running iron and ran."

"Dropped it and ran, did I? And what did you do?"

"I reheated the iron and blurred the brand so that nobody could tell what it had been."

He laughed harshly without mirth. "I see. I'm a waddy and a thief, but you're going to protect me for old times' sake. That's the play, is it? I ought to be much obliged to you and promise to reform, I reckon."

His bitterness stung. She felt a tightening of the throat. "All I ask is that you go away and never come back to me," she cried with a sob.

"Don't worry about that. I ain't likely to come back to a girl that thinks I'm the lowest thing that walks. You're not through with me a bit more than I am with you," he answered harshly.

Her little hand beat upon the rock in her distress. "I never would have believed it. Nobody could have made me believe it. I--I--why, I trusted you like my own father," she lamented. "To think that you would take that way to stock your ranch--and with the cattle of my father, too."

His face was hard as chiseled granite. "Distrust all your friends. That's the best way."

"You haven't even denied it--not that it would do any good," she said miserably.

There was a sound of hard, grim laughter in his throat. "No, and I ain't going to deny it. Are you ready to go yet?"

His repulse of her little tentative advance was like a blow on the face to her.

She made a movement to rise. While she was still on her knees he stooped, put his arms around her, and took her into them. Before she could utter her protest he had started down the trail toward the house.

"How dare you? Let me go," she ordered.

"You're not able to walk, and you'll go the way I say," he told her shortly in a flinty voice.

Her anger was none the less because she realized her helplessness to get what she wanted. Her teeth set fast to keep back useless words. Into his stony eyes her angry ones burned. The quick, irregular rise and fall of her bosom against his heart told him how she was struggling with her passion.

Once he spoke. "Tell me where it was you saw this rustler--the exact place near as you can locate it."

She answered only by a look.

The deputy strode into the living room of the ranch with her in his arms. Lee was reading a newspaper Jack had brought with him from Mesa. At sight of them he started up hurriedly.

"Goddlemighty, what's the matter, Jack?"

"Only a ricked ankle, Champ. Slipped on a stone," Flatray explained as he put Melissy down on the lounge.

In two minutes the whole house was upset. Hop Ling was heating water to bathe the sprain. A rider from the bunkhouse was saddling to go for the doctor. Another was off in the opposite direction to buy some liniment at Mammoth.

In the confusion Flatray ran up his horse from the pasture, slapped on the saddle, and melted into the night.

An hour later Melissy asked her father what had become of him.

"Doggone that boy, I don't know where he went. Reckon he thought he'd be in the way. Mighty funny he didn't give us a chanct to tell him to stay."

"Probably he had business in Mesa," Melissy answered, turning her face to the wall.

"Business nothing," retorted the exasperated rancher. "He figured we couldn't eat and sleep him without extra trouble. Ain't that a fine reputation for him to be giving the Bar Double G? I'll curl his hair for him onct I meet up with him again."

"If you would put out the light, I think I could sleep, dad," she told him in the least of voices.

"Sure, honey. Has the throbbing gone out of the ankle?" he asked anxiously.

"Not entirely, but it's a good deal better. Good-night, dad."

"If Doc comes I'll bring him in," Lee said after he had kissed her.

"Do, please."

But after she was left alone Melissy did not prepare herself for sleep. Her wide open eyes stared into the darkness, while her mind stormily reviewed the day. The man who for years had been her best friend was a scoundrel. She had proved him unworthy of her trust, and on top of that he had insulted her. Hot tears stung her eyes--tears of shame, of wounded self-love, of mortification, and of something more worthy than any of these.

She grieved passionately for that which had gone out of her life, for the comradeship that had been so precious to her. If this man were a waddy, who of all her friends could she trust? She could have forgiven him had he done wrong in the heat of anger. But this premeditated evil was beyond forgiveness. To make it worse, he had come direct from the doing of it to meet her, with a brazen smile on his lips and a lie in his heart. She would never speak to him again--never so long as she lived.

CHAPTER IV

THE MAN WITH THE CHIHUAHUA HAT

A little dust cloud was traveling up the trail toward the Bar Double G, the center of which presently defined itself as a rider moving at a road gait. He wore a Chihuahua hat and with it the picturesque trappings the Southwest borrows on occasion from across the border. Vanity disclosed itself in the gold-laced hat, in the silver conchos of the fringed chaps, in the fine workmanship of the saddle and bit. The man's finery was overdone, carried with it the suggestion of being on exhibition. But one look at the man himself, sleek and graceful, black-haired and white-toothed, exuding an effect of cold wariness in spite of the masked smiling face, would have been enough to give the lie to any charge of weakness. His fopperies could not conceal the silken strength of him. One meeting with the chill, deep-set eyes was certificate enough for most people.

Melissy, sitting on the porch with her foot resting on a second chair, knew a slight quickening of the blood as she watched him approach.

"Good evenin', Miss M'lissy," he cried, sweeping his sombrero as low as the stirrup.

"Buenos tardes, Señor Norris," she flung back gayly.

Sitting at ease in the saddle, he leisurely looked her over with eyes that smoldered behind half-shuttered lids. To most of her world she was in spirit still more boy than woman, but before his bold, possessive gaze her long lashes wavered to the cheeks into which the warm blood was beating. Her long, free lines were still slender with the immaturity of youth, her soul still hesitating reluctantly to cross the border to womanhood toward which Nature was pushing her so relentlessly. From a fund of experience Philip Norris read her shrewdly, knew how to evoke the latent impulses which brought her eagerly to the sex duel.

"Playing off for sick," he scoffed.

"I'm not," she protested. "Never get sick. It's just a sprained ankle."

"Sho! I guess you're Miss Make Believe; just harrowing the feelings of your beaux."

"The way you talk! I haven't got any beaux. The boys are just my friends."

"Oh, just friends! And no beaux. My, my! Not a single sweetheart in all this wide open country. Shall I go rope you one and bring him in, compadre?"

"No!" she exploded. "I don't want any. I'm not old enough yet." Her dancing eyes belied the words.

"Now I wouldn't have guessed it. You look to me most ready to be picked." He rested his weight on the farther stirrup and let his lazy smile mock her. "My estimate would be sixteen. I'll bet you're every day of that."

"I only lack three months of being eighteen," she came back indignantly.

"You don't say! You'll ce'tainly have to be advertising for a husband soon, Miss Three-Quarters-Past-Seventeen. Maybe an ad in the Mesa paper would help. You ain't so awful bad looking."

"I'll let you write it. What would you say?" she demanded, a patch of pink standing out near the curve of the cheek bone.

He swung from the saddle and flung the reins to the ground. With jingling spurs he came up the steps and sat on the top one, his back against a pillar. Boldly his admiring eyes swept her.

"Nina, I couldn't do the subject justice. Honest, I haven't got the vocabulary."

"Oh, you!" Laughter was in the eyes that studied him with a side tilt of the chin. "That's a fine way to get out of it when your bluff is called."

He leaned back against the post comfortably and absorbed the beauty of the western horizon. The sun had just set behind a saddle of the Galiuros in a splash of splendor. All the colors of the rainbow fought for supremacy in a brilliant-tinted sky that blazed above the fire-girt peaks. Soon dusk would slip down over the land and tone the hues to a softer harmony. A purple sea would flow over the hills, to be in turn displaced by a deep, soft violet. Then night, that night of mystery and romance which transforms the desert to a thing of incredible wonder!

"Did your father buy this sunset with the ranch? And has he got a guarantee that it will perform every night?" he asked.

"Did you ever see anything like it?" she cried. "I have looked at them all my life and I never get tired."

He laughed softly, his indolent, sleepy look on her. "Some things I would never get tired of looking at either."

Without speaking she nodded, still absorbing the sunset.

"But it wouldn't be that kind of scenery," he added. "How tall are you, muchacha?"

Her glance came around in surprise. "I don't know. About five foot five, I think. Why?"

"I'm working on that ad. How would this do? 'Miss Three-Quarters-Past-Seventeen wants to meet up with gentleman between eighteen and forty-eight. Object, matrimony. Description of lady: Slim, medium height, brunette, mop of blue-black hair, the prettiest dimple you ever saw----'"

"Now I know you're making fun of me. I'm mad." And the dimple flashed into being.

"'--mostly says the opposite of what she means, has a----'"

"I don't. I don't"

"'--has a spice of the devil in her, which----'"

"Now, I am mad," she interrupted, laughing.

"'--which is excusable, since she has the reddest lips for kissing in Arizona.'"

He had gone too far. Her innocence was in arms. Norris knew it by the swiftness with which the smile vanished from her face, by the flash of anger in the eyes.

"I prefer to talk about something else, Mr. Norris," she said with all the prim stiffness of a schoolgirl.

Her father relieved the tension by striding across from the stable. With him came a bowlegged young fellow in plain leathers. The youngster was Charley Hymer, one of the riders for the Bar Double G.

"You're here at the right time, Norris," Lee said grimly. "Charley has just come down from Antelope Pass. He found one of my cows dead, with a bullet hole through the forehead. The ashes of a fire were there, and in the brush not far away a running iron."

The eyes of Norris narrowed to slits. He was the cattle detective of the association and for a year now the rustlers had outgeneraled him. "I'll have you take me to the spot, Charley. Get a move on you and we'll get there soon as the moon is up."

Melissy gripped the arms of her chair tightly with both hands. She was looking at Norris with a new expression, a kind of breathless fear. She knew him for a man who could not be swerved from the thing he wanted. For all his easy cynicism, he had the reputation of being a bloodhound on the trail. Moreover, she knew that he was no friend to Jack Flatray. Why had she left that running iron as evidence to convict its owner? What folly not to have removed it from the immediate scene of the crime!

The cattle detective and her father had moved a few steps away and were talking in low tones. Melissy became aware of a footfall. The man who called himself Morse came around the corner of the house and stopped at the porch steps.

"May I speak to you a moment, Miss Lee?" he said in a low voice.

"Of course."

The voice of Norris rose to an irritated snarl. "Tell you I've got evidence, Lee. Mebbe it's not enough to convict, but it satisfies me a-plenty that Jack Flatray's the man."

Melissy was frozen to a tense attention. Her whole mind was on what passed between the detective and her father. Otherwise she would have noticed the swift change that transformed the tenderfoot.

The rancher answered with impatient annoyance. "You're 'way off, Norris. I don't care anything about your evidence. The idea is plumb ridiculous. Twenty odd years I've known him. He's the best they make, a pure through and through. Not a crooked hair in his head. I've eat out of the same frying pan too often with that boy not to know what he is. You go bury those suspicions of yours immediate. There's nothing to them."

Norris grumbled objections as they moved toward the stable. Melissy drew a long breath and brought herself back to the tenderfoot.

He stood like a coiled spring, head thrust far forward from the shoulders. The look in his black eyes was something new to her experience. For hate, passion, caution were all mirrored there.

"You know Mr. Norris," she said quickly.

He started. "What did you say his name was?" he asked with an assumption of carelessness.

"Norris--Philip Norris. He is a cattle detective."

"Never heard of Mr. Norris before in my life," he answered, but it was observable that he still breathed deep.

She did not believe him. Some tie in their buried past bound these two men together. They must have known each other in the South years ago, and one of them at least was an enemy of the other. There might come a day when she could use this knowledge to save Jack Flatray from the punishment dogging his heels. Melissy filed it away in her memory for future reference.

"You wanted to speak to me," she suggested.

"I'm going away."

"What for?"

"Because I'm not a hound. I can't blackmail a woman."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean that you've found work here for me because I saw what you did over by Antelope Pass. We made a bargain. Oh, not in words, but a bargain just the same! You were to keep my secret because I knew yours. I release you from your part of it. Give me up if you think it is your duty. I'll not tell what I know."

"That wasn't how you talked the other day."

"No. It's how I talk now. I'm a hunted man, wanted for murder. I make you a present of the information."

"You make me a present of what I already know, Mr. Diller, alias Morse, alias Bellamy."

"You guessed it the first day?"

"Yes."

"And meant to keep quiet about it?"

"Yes, I meant to shelter you from the punishment you deserve." She added with a touch of bitter self-scorn: "I was doing what I had to do."

"You don't have to do it any longer." He looked straight at her with his head up. "And how do you know what I deserve? Who made you a judge about these facts? Grant for the sake of argument I killed him. Do you know I wasn't justified?"

His fierce boldness put her on the defense. "A man sure of his cause does not run away. The paper said this Shep Boone was shot from ambush. Nothing could justify such a thing. When you did that----"

"I didn't. Don't believe it, Miss Lee."

"He was shot from behind, the paper said."

"Do I look like a man who would kill from ambush?"

She admitted to herself that this clear-eyed Southerner did not look like an assassin. Life in the open had made her a judge of such men as she had been accustomed to meet, but for days she had been telling herself she could no longer trust her judgment. Her best friend was a rustler. By a woman's logic it followed that since Jack Flatray was a thief this man might have committed all the crimes in the calendar.

"I don't know." Then, impulsively, "No, you don't, but you may be for all that."

"I'm not asking anything for myself. You may do as you please after I've gone. Send for Mr. Flatray and tell him if you like."

A horse cantered across the plaza toward the store. Bellamy turned quickly to go.

"I'm not going to tell anyone," the girl called after him in a low voice.

Norris swung from the saddle. "Who's our hurried friend?" he asked carelessly.

"Oh, a new rider of ours. Name of Morse." She changed the subject. "Are you--do you think you know who the rustler is?"

His cold, black eyes rested in hers. She read in them something cruel and sinister. It was as if he were walking over the grave of an enemy.

"I'm gathering evidence, a little at a time."

"Do I know him?"

"Maybe you do."

"Tell me."

He shook his head. "Wait till I've got him cinched."

"You told father," she accused.

He laughed in a hard, mirthless fashion. "That cured me. The Lee family is from Missouri. When I talk next time I'll have the goods to show."

"I know who you mean. You're making a mistake." Her voice seemed to plead with him.

"Not on your life, I ain't. But we'll talk about that when the subject is riper. There will be a showdown some day, and don't you forget it. Well, Charley is calling me. So long, Miss Three-Quarters-Past-Seventeen." He went jingling down the steps and swung to the saddle. "I'll not forget the ad, and when I find the right man I'll ce'tainly rope and bring him to you."

"The rustler?" she asked innocently.

"No, not the rustler, the gent between eighteen and forty-eight, object matrimony."

"I don't want to trouble you," she flung at him with her gay smile.

"No trouble at all. Fact is, I've got him in mind already," he assured her promptly.

"Oh!" A pulse of excitement was beating in her throat.

"You don't ask me who he is," suggested Norris boldly, crouched in the saddle with his weight on the far stirrup.

She had brought it upon herself, but now she dodged the issue. "'Most anyone will do, and me going on eighteen."

"You're wrong, girl. Only one out of a thousand will do for your master."

"Master, indeed! If he comes to the Bar Double G he'll find he is at the wrong address. None wanted, thank you."

"Most folks don't want what's best for them, I allow. But if they have luck it sometimes comes to them."

"Luck!" she echoed, her chin in the air.

"You heard me right. What you need is a man that ain't afraid of you, one to ride close herd on you so as to head off them stampede notions of yours. Now this lad is the very one. He is a black-haired guy, and when he says a thing----"

Involuntarily she glanced at his sleek black head. Melissy felt a sudden clamor of the blood, a pounding of the pulses.

"--he most generally means it. I've wrangled around a heap with him and there's no manner of doubt he's up to specifications. In appearance he looks like me. Point of fact, he's a dead ringer for me."

She saw her chance and flashed out. "Now you're flattering him. There can't be two as--as fascinating as Señor Norris," she mocked.

His smoldering eyes had the possessive insolence she resented and yet found so stimulating.

"Did I say there were two?" he drawled.

It was his parting shot. With a touch of the spur he was off, leaving her no time for an adequate answer.

There were no elusions and inferences about Philip Norris when he wanted to be direct. He had fairly taken her breath away. Melissy's instinct told her there was something humiliating about such a wooing. But picturesque and unconventional conduct excuse themselves in a picturesque personality. And this man had that if nothing else.

She told herself she was angry at him, that he took liberties far beyond those of any of the other young men. Yet, somehow, she went into the house smiling. A color born of excitement burned beneath her sparkling eyes. She had entered into her heritage of womanhood and the call of sex was summoning her to the adventure that is old as the garden where Eve met Adam.

CHAPTER V

THE TENDERFOOT TAKES UP A CLAIM

Mr. Diller, alias Morse, alias Bellamy, did not long remain at the Bar Double G as a rider. It developed that he had money, and, tenderfoot though he was, the man showed a shrewd judgment in his investments. He bought sheep and put them on the government forest reserve, much to the annoyance of the cattlemen of the district.

Morse, as he now called himself, was not the first man who had brought sheep into the border country. Far up in the hills were several camps of them. But hitherto these had been there on sufferance, and it had been understood that they were to be kept far from the cattle range. The extension of the government reserves changed the equation. A good slice of the range was cut off and thrown open to sheep. When Morse leased this and put five thousand bleaters upon the feeding ground the sentiment against him grew very bitter.

Lee had been spokesman of a committee appointed to remonstrate with him. Morse had met them pleasantly but firmly. This part of the reserve had been set aside for sheep. If it were not leased by him it would be by somebody else. Therefore, he declined to withdraw his flocks. Champ lost his temper and swore that he for one would never submit to yield the range. Sharp bitter words were passed. Next week masked men drove a small flock belonging to Morse over a precipice.

The tenderfoot retaliated by jumping a mining claim staked out by Lee upon which the assessment work had not been kept up. The cattleman contested this in the courts, lost the decision, and promptly appealed. Meanwhile, he countered by leasing from the forest supervisor part of the run previously held by his opponent and putting sheep of his own upon it.

"I reckon I'll play Mr. Morse's own game and see how he likes it," the angry cattleman told his friends.

But the luck was all with Morse. Before he had been working his new claim a month the Monte Cristo (he had changed the name from its original one of Melissy) proved a bonanza. His men ran into a rich streak of dirt that started a stampede for the vicinity.

Champ indulged in choice profanity. From his point of view he had been robbed, and he announced the fact freely to such acquaintances as dropped into the Bar Double G store.

"Dad gum it, I was aimin' to do that assessment work and couldn't jest lay my hands on the time. I'd been a millionaire three years and didn't know it. Then this damned Morse butts in and euchres me out of the claim. Some day him and me'll have a settlement. If the law don't right me, I reckon I'm most man enough to 'tend to Mr. Morse."

It was his daughter who had hitherto succeeded in keeping the peace. When the news of the relocation had reached Lee he had at once started to settle the matter with a Winchester, but Melissy, getting news of his intention, had caught up a horse and ridden bareback after him in time to avert by her entreaties a tragedy. For six months after this the men had not chanced to meet.

Why the tenderfoot had first come West--to hide what wounds in the great baked desert--no man knew or asked. Melissy had guessed, but she did not breathe to a soul her knowledge. It was a first article of Arizona's creed that a man's past belonged to him alone, was a blotted book if he chose to have it so. No doubt many had private reasons for their untrumpeted migration to that kindly Southwest which buries identity, but no wise citizen busied himself with questions about antecedents. The present served to sift one, and by the way a man met it his neighbors judged him.

And T. L. Morse met it competently. In every emergency with which he had to cope the man "stood the acid." Arizona approved him a man, without according him any popularity. He was too dogmatic to win liking, but he had a genius for success. Everything he touched turned to gold.

The Bar Double G lies half way between Mammoth and Mesa. Its position makes it a central point for ranchers within a radius of fifteen miles. Out of the logical need for it was born the store which Beauchamp Lee ran to supply his neighbors with canned goods, coffee, tobacco, and other indispensables; also the eating house for stage passengers passing to and from the towns. Young as she was, Melissy was the competent manager of both of these.

It was one afternoon during the hour the stage stopped to let the passengers dine that Melissy's wandering eye fell upon Morse seated at one of the tables. Anger mounted within her at the cool impudence of the man. She had half a mind to order him out, but saw he was nearly through dinner and did not want to make a scene. Unfortunately Beauchamp Lee happened to come into the store just as his enemy strolled out from the dining-room.

The ranchman stiffened. "What you been doing in there, seh?" he demanded sharply.

"I've been eating a very good dinner in a public café. Any objections?"

"Plenty of 'em, seh. I don't aim to keep open house for Mr. Morse."

"I understand this is a business proposition. I expect to pay seventy-five cents for my meal."

The eyes of the older man gleamed wrathfully. "As for yo' six bits, if you offer it to me I'll take it as an insult. At the Bar Double G we're not doing friendly business with claim jumpers. Don't you evah set yo' legs under my table again, seh."

Morse shrugged, turned away to the public desk, and addressed an envelope, the while Lee glared at him from under his heavy beetling brows. Melissy saw that her father was still of half a mind to throw out the intruder and she called him to her.

"Dad, José wants you to look at the hoof of one of his wheelers. He asked if you would come as soon as you could."

Beauchamp still frowned at Morse, rasping his unshaven chin with his hand. "Ce'tainly, honey. Glad to look at it."

"Dad! Please."

The ranchman went out, grumbling. Five minutes later Morse took his seat on the stage beside the driver, having first left seventy-five cents on the counter.

The stage had scarce gone when the girl looked up from her bookkeeping to see the man with the Chihuahua hat.

"Buenos tardes, señorita," he gave her with a flash of white teeth.

"Buenos," she nodded coolly.

But the dancing eyes of her could not deny their pleasure at sight of him. They had rested upon men as handsome, but upon none who stirred her blood so much.

He was in the leather chaps of a cowpuncher, gray-shirted, and a polka dot kerchief circled the brown throat. Life rippled gloriously from every motion of him. Hermes himself might have envied the perfect grace of the man.

She supplied his wants while they chatted.

"Jogged off your range quite a bit, haven't you?" she suggested.

"Some. I'll take two bits' worth of that smokin', nina."

She shook her head. "I'm no little girl. Don't you know I'm now half past eighteen?"

"My--my. That ad didn't do a mite of good, did it?"

"Not a bit."

"And you growing older every day."

"Does my age show?" she wanted to know anxiously.

The scarce veiled admiration of his smoldering eyes drew the blood to her dusky cheeks. Something vigilant lay crouched panther-like behind the laughter of his surface badinage.

"You're standing it well, honey."

The color beat into her face, less at the word than at the purring caress in his voice. A year ago she had been a child. But in the Southland flowers ripen fast. Adolescence steals hard upon the heels of infancy, and, though the girl had never wakened to love, Nature was pushing her relentlessly toward a womanhood for which her unschooled impulses but scantily safeguarded her.

She turned toward the shelves. "How many air-tights did you say?"

"I didn't say." He leaned forward across the counter. "What's the hurry, little girl?"

"My name is Melissy Lee," she told him over her shoulder.

"Mine is Phil Norris. Glad to give it to you, Melissy Lee," the man retorted glibly.

"Can't use it, thank you," came her swift saucy answer.

"Or to lend it to you--say, for a week or two."

She flashed a look at him and passed quickly from behind the counter. Her father was just coming into the store.

"Will you wait on Mr. Norris, dad? Hop wants to see me in the kitchen."

Norris swore softly under his breath. The last thing he had wanted was to drive her away. It had been nearly a year since he had seen her last, but the picture of her had been in the coals of many a night camp fire.

The cattle detective stayed to dinner and to supper. He and her father had their heads together for hours, their voices pitched to a murmur. Melissy wondered what business could have brought him, whether it could have anything to do with the renewed rustling that had of late annoyed the neighborhood. This brought her thoughts to Jack Flatray. He, too, had almost dropped from her world, though she heard of him now and again. Not once had he been to see her since the night she had sprained her ankle.

Later, when Melissy was watering the roses beside the porch, she heard the name of Morse mentioned by the stock detective. He seemed to be urging upon her father some course of action at which the latter demurred. The girl knew a vague unrest. Lee did not need his anger against Morse incensed. For months she had been trying to allay rather than increase this. If Philip Norris had come to stir up smoldering fires, she would give him a piece of her mind.

The men were still together when Melissy told her father good-night. If she had known that a whisky bottle passed back and forth a good many times in the course of the evening, the fears of the girl would not have been lightened. She knew that in the somber moods following a drinking bout the lawlessness of Beauchamp Lee was most likely to crop out.

As for the girl, now night had fallen--that wondrous velvet night of Arizona, which blots out garish day with a cloak of violet, purple-edged where the hills rise vaguely in the distance, and softens magically all harsh details beneath the starry vault--she slipped out to the summit of the ridge in the big pasture, climbing lightly, with the springy ease born of the vigor her nineteen outdoor years had stored in the strong young body. She wanted to be alone, to puzzle out what the coming of this man meant to her. Had he intended anything by that last drawling remark of his in the store? Why was it that his careless, half insulting familiarity set the blood leaping through her like wine? He lured her to the sex duel, then trampled down her reserves roughshod. His bold assurance stung her to anger, but there was a something deeper than anger that left her flushed and tingling.

Both men slept late, but Norris was down first. He found Melissy superintending a drive of sheep which old Antonio, the herder, was about to make to the trading-post at Three Pines. She was on her pony near the entrance to the corral, her slender, lithe figure sitting in a boy's saddle with a businesslike air he could not help but admire. The gate bars had been lifted and the dog was winding its way among the bleating gray mass, which began to stir uncertainly at its presence. The sheep dribbled from the corral by ones and twos until the procession swelled to a swollen stream that poured forth in a torrent. Behind them came Antonio in his sombrero and blanket, who smiled at his mistress, shouted an "Adios, señorita," and disappeared into the yellow dust cloud which the herd left in its wake.

"How does Champ like being in the sheep business," Norris said to the girl.

Melissy did not remove her eyes from the vanishing herd, but a slight frown puckered her forehead. She chose to take this as a criticism of her father and to resent it.

"Why shouldn't he be?" she said quietly, answering the spirit of his remark.

"I didn't mean it that way," he protested, with his frank laugh.

"Then if you didn't mean it so, I shan't take it that way;" and her smile met his.

"Here's how I look at this sheep business. Some ranges are better adapted for sheep than cattle, and you can't keep Mary's little lamb away from those places. No use for a man to buck against the thing that's bound to be. Better get into the band-wagon and ride."

"That's what father thought," the girl confessed. "He never would have been the man to bring sheep in, but after they got into the country he saw it was a question of whether he was going to get the government reserve range for his sheep, or another man, some new-comer like Mr. Morse, for his. It was going to be sheep anyhow."

"Well, I'm glad your father took the chance he saw." He added reminiscently: "We got to be right good friends again last night before we parted."

She took the opening directly. "If you're so good a friend of his, you must not excite him about Mr. Morse. You know he's a Southerner, and he is likely to do something rash--something we shall all be sorry for afterward."

"I reckon that will be all right," he said evasively.

Her eyes swept to his. "You won't get father into trouble will you?"

The warm, affectionate smile came back to his face, so that as he looked at her he seemed a sun-god. But again there was something in his gaze that was not the frankness of a comrade, some smoldering fire that strangely stirred her blood and yet left her uneasy.

"I'm not liable to bring trouble to those you love, girl. I stand by my friends."

Her pony began to move toward the house, and he strode beside, as debonair and gallant a figure as ever filled the eye and the heart of a woman. The morning sun glow irradiated him, found its sparkling reflection in the dark curls of his bare head, in the bloom of his tanned cheeks, made a fit setting for the graceful picture of lingering youth his slim, muscular figure and springy stride personified. Small wonder the untaught girl beside him found the merely physical charm of him fascinating. If her instinct sometimes warned her to beware, her generous heart was eager to pay small heed to the monition except so far as concerned her father.

After breakfast he came into the office to see her before he left.

"Good-by for a day or two," he said, offering his hand.

"You're coming back again, are you?" she asked quietly, but not without a deeper dye in her cheeks.

"Yes, I'm coming back. Will you be glad to see me?"

"Why should I be glad? I hardly know you these days."

"You'll know me better before we're through with each other."

She would acknowledge no interest in him, the less because she knew it was there. "I may do that without liking you better."

And suddenly his swift, winning smile flashed upon her. "But you've got to like me. I want you to."

"Do you get everything you want?" she smiled back.

"If I want it enough, I usually do."

"Then since you get so much, you'll be better able to do without my liking."

"I'm going to have it too."

"Don't be too sure." She had a feeling that things were moving too fast, and she hailed the appearance of her father with relief. "Good morning, dad. Did you sleep well? Mr. Norris is just leaving."

"Wait till I git a bite o' breakfast and I'll go with you, Phil," promised Lee. "I got to ride over to Mesa anyhow some time this week."

The girl watched them ride away, taking the road gait so characteristic of the Southwest. As long as they were in sight her gaze followed them, and when she could see nothing but a wide cloud of dust travelling across the mesa she went up to her room and sat down to think it out. Something new had come into her life. What, she did not yet know, but she tried to face the fact with the elemental frankness that still made her more like a boy than a woman. Sitting there before the looking-glass, she played absently with the thick braid of heavy, blue-black hair which hung across her shoulder to the waist. It came to her for the first time to wonder if she was pretty, whether she was going to be one of the women that men desire. Without the least vanity she studied herself, appraised the soft brown cheeks framed with ebon hair, the steady, dark eyes so quick to passion and to gaiety, the bronzed throat full and rounded, the supple, flowing grace of the unrestrained body.

Gradually a wave of color crept into her cheeks as she sat there with her chin on her little doubled hand. It was the charm of this Apollo of the plains that had set free such strange thoughts in her head. Why should she think of him? What did it matter whether she was good-looking? She shook herself resolutely together and went down to the business of the day.

It was not long after midnight the next day that Champ Lee reached the ranch. His daughter came out from her room in her night-dress to meet him.

"What kept you, Daddy?" she asked.

But before he could answer she knew. She read the signs too clearly to doubt that he had been drinking.

CHAPTER VI

"HANDS UP"

Melissy had been up the Cañ del Oro for wild poppies in her runabout and had just reached the ranch. She was disposing of her flowers in ollas when Jim Budd, waiter, chambermaid, and odd jobs man at the Bar Double G, appeared in the hall with a frightened, mysterious face.

"What's the matter, Jim? You and Hop Ling been quarrelling again?" she asked carelessly.

"No'm, that ain't it. It's wusser'n that. I got to tell you-all su'thin' I hearn yore paw say."

The girl looked up quickly at him. "What do you mean, Jim?"

"That Mistah Norris he come back whilst you wus away, and him and yore paw wus in that back room a-talkin' mighty confidential."

"Yes, and you listened. Well?"

Jim swelled with offended dignity. "No'm, I didn't listen neither. I des natcherally hearn, 'count of that hole fer the stovepipe what comes through the floor of my room."

"But what was it you heard?" she interrupted impatiently.

"I wus a-comin' to that. Plum proverdenshul, I draps into my room des as yore paw wus sayin', 'Twenty thousand dollars goin' down to the Fort on the stage to-day?' 'Cose I pricks up my ears then and tuk it all in. This yere Norris had foun' out that Mistah Morse was shippin' gold from his mine to-day on the Fort Allison stage, and he gits yore paw to go in with him an' hold it up. Yore paw cussed and said as how 't wus his gold anyhow by rights."

The girl went white and gave a little broken cry. "Oh, Jim! Are you sure?"

"Yas'm, 'cose I'm suah. Them's his ve'y words. Hope to die if they ain't. They wus drinkin', and when 't wus all fixed up that 't wus to be at the mouth of the Box Cañon they done tore an old black shirt you got for a dust-rag and made masks out of it and then rode away."

"Which way did they go?"

"Tow'ds the Box Cañon Miss M'lissy."

A slender, pallid figure of despair, she leaned against the wall to support the faintness that had so suddenly stolen the strength from her limbs, trying desperately to think of some way to save her father from this madness. She was sure he would bungle it and be caught eventually, and she was equally sure he would never let himself be taken alive. Her helplessness groped for some way out. There must be some road of escape from this horrible situation, and as she sought blindly for it the path opened before her.

"Where is Hop?" she asked quickly.

"A-sleepin' in his room, ma'am."

"Go to the store and tend it till I come back, Jim. I may be an hour, or mebbe two, but don't you move out of it for a moment. And don't ever speak of any of this, not a word, Jim."

"No'm, 'cose I won't."

His loyalty she did not doubt an instant, though she knew his simple wits might easily be led to indiscretion. But she did not stay to say more now, but flew upstairs to the room that had been her brother's before he left home. Scarce five minutes elapsed before she reappeared transformed. It was a slim youth garbed as a cowpuncher that now slipped along the passage to the rear, softly opened the door of the cook's room, noiselessly abstracted the key, closed the door again as gently, and locked it from the outside. She ran into her own room, strapped on her revolver belt, and took her empty rifle from its case. As she ran through the room below the one Jim occupied, she caught sight of a black rag thrown carelessly into the fireplace and stuffed it into her pocket.

"That's just like Dad to leave evidence lying around," she said to herself, for even in the anxiety that was flooding her she kept her quiet commonsense.

After searching the horizon carefully to see that nobody was in sight, she got into the rig and drove round the corral to the irrigating ditch. This was a wide lateral of the main canal, used to supply the whole lower valley with water, and just now it was empty. Melissy drove down into its sandy bed and followed its course as rapidly as she could. If she were only in time! If the stage had not yet passed! That was her only fear, the dread of being too late. Not once did the risk of the thing she intended occur to her. Physical fear had never been part of her. She had done the things her brother Dick had done. She was a reckless rider, a good shot, could tramp the hills or follow the round-up all day without knowing fatigue. If her flesh still held its girlish curves and softness, the muscles underneath were firm and compact. Often for her own amusement and that of her father she had donned her brother's chaps, his spurs, sombrero, and other paraphernalia, to masquerade about the house in them. She had learned to imitate the long roll of the vaquero's stride, the mannerisms common to his class, and even the heavy voice of a man. More than once she had passed muster as a young man in the shapeless garments she was now wearing. She felt confident that the very audacity of the thing would carry it off. There would be a guard for the treasure box, of course, but if all worked well he could be taken by surprise. Her rifle was not loaded, but the chances were a hundred to one that she would not need to use it.

For the first time in his life the roan got the whip from his mistress.

"Git up, Bob. We've got to hurry. It's for dad," she cried, as they raced through the sand and sent it flying from the wheels.

The Fort Allison stage passed within three miles of the Lee ranch on its way to Mesa. Where the road met in intersection with the ditch she had chosen as the point for stopping it, and no veteran at the business could have selected more wisely, for a reason which will hereafter appear. Some fifty yards below this point of intersection the ditch ran through a grove of cottonwoods fringing the bank. Here the banks sloped down more gradually, and Melissy was able to drive up one side, turn her rig so that the horse faced the other way, and draw down into the ditch again in order that the runabout could not be seen from the road. Swiftly and skilfully she obliterated the track she had made in the sandy bank.

She was just finishing this when the sound of wheels came to her. Rifle in hand, she ran back along the ditch, stooping to pass under the bridge, and waited at the farther side in a fringe of bushes for the coming of the stage.

Even now fear had no place in the excitement which burned high in her. The girl's wits were fully alert, and just in time she remembered the need of a mask. Her searching fingers found the torn black shirt in a pocket and a knife in another. Hastily she ripped the linen in half, cut out eyeholes, and tied the mask about her head. With perfectly steady hands she picked up the rifle from the ground and pushed the muzzle of it through the bushes.

Leisurely the stage rolled up-grade toward the crossing. The Mexican driver was half asleep and the "shotgun messenger" was indolently rolling a cigarette, his sawed-off gun between his knees. Alan McKinstra was the name of this last young gentleman. Only yesterday he had gone to work for Morse, and this was the first job that had been given him. The stage never had been held up since the "Monte Cristo" had struck its pay-streak, and there was no reason to suppose it would be. Nevertheless, Morse proposed to err on the side of caution.

"I reckon the man that holds down this job don't earn his salt, José. It's what they call a sinecure," Alan was saying at the very instant the summons came.

"Throw up your hands!"

Sharp and crisp it fell on Alan's ears. He sat for a moment stunned, the half-rolled cigarette still between his fingers. The driver drew up his four horses with a jerk and brought them to a huddled halt.

"Hands up!" came again the stinging imperative.

Now, for the first time, it reached Alan's consciousness that the stage was actually being held up. He saw the sun shining on the barrel of a rifle and through the bushes the masked face of a hidden cowpuncher. His first swift instinct was to give battle, and he reached for the shotgun between his knees. Simultaneously the driver's foot gave it a push and sent the weapon clattering to the ground. José at least knew better than to let him draw the road agent's fire while he sat within a foot of the driver. His hands went into the air, and after his Alan's and those of the two passengers.

"Throw down that box."

Alan lowered his hands and did as directed.

"Now reach for the stars again."

McKinstra's arms went skyward. Without his weapon, he was helpless to do otherwise. The young man had an odd sense of unreality about the affair, a feeling that it was not in earnest. The timbre of the fresh young voice that came from the bushes struck a chord in his memory, though for the life of him he could not place its owner.

"Drive on, José. Burn the wind and keep a-rollin' south."

The Mexican's whip coiled over the head of the leaders and the broncos sprang forward with a jump. It was the summit of a long hill, on the edge of which wound the road. Until the stage reached the foot of it there would be no opportunity to turn back. Round a bend of the road it swung at a gallop, and the instant it disappeared Melissy leaped from the bushes, lifted the heavy box, and carried it to the edge of the ditch. She flew down the sandy bottom to the place where the rig stood, drove swiftly back again, and, though it took the last ounce of strength in her, managed to tumble the box into the trap.

Back to the road she went, and from the place where the box had fallen made long strides back to the bushes where she had been standing at the moment of the hold-up. These tracks she purposely made deep and large, returning in her first ones to the same point, but from the marks where the falling treasure box had struck into the road she carefully obliterated with her hand the foot-marks leading to the irrigation ditch, sifting the sand in carefully so as to leave no impression. This took scarcely a minute. She was soon back in her runabout, driving homeward fast as whip and voice could urge the horse.

She thought she could reason out what McKinstra and the stage-driver would do. Mesa was twenty-five miles distant, the "Monte Cristo" mine seventeen. Nearer than these points there was no telephone station except the one at the Lee ranch. Their first thought would be to communicate with Morse, with the officers at Mammoth, and with the sheriff of Mesa County. To do this as soon as possible they would turn aside and drive to the ranch after they reached the bottom of the hill and could make the turn. It was a long, steep hill, and Melissy estimated that this would give her a start of nearly twenty minutes. She would save about half a mile by following the ditch instead of the road, but at best she knew she was drawing it very fine.

She never afterward liked to think of that drive home. It seemed to her that Bob crawled and that the heavy sand was interminable. Feverishly she plied the whip, and when at length she drew out of the ditch she sent her horse furiously round the big corral. Though she had planned everything to the last detail, she knew that any one of a hundred contingencies might spoil her plan. A cowpuncher lounging about the place would have ruined everything, or at best interfered greatly. But the windmill clicked over sunlit silence, empty of life. No stir or movement showed the presence of any human being.

Melissy drove round to the side door, dumped out the treasure-box, ran into the house, and quickly returned with a hammer and some tacks, then fell swiftly to ripping the oilcloth that covered the box which stood against the wall to serve as a handy wash-stand for use by dusty travellers before dining. The two boxes were of the same size and shape, and she draped the treasure chest with the cloth, tacked it in place, restored to the top of it the tin basin, and tossed the former wash-stand among a pile of old boxes from the store, that were to be used for kindling. After this she ran upstairs, scudded softly along the corridor, and silently unlocked the cook's door, dropping the key on the floor to make it appear as if something had shaken it from the keyhole. Presently she was in her brother's room, doffing his clothes and dressing herself in her own.

A glance out of the window sapped the color from her cheek, for she saw the stage breasting the hill scarce two hundred yards from the house. She hurried downstairs, pinning her belt as she ran, and flashed into the store, where Jim sat munching peanuts.

"The stage is coming, Jim. Remember, you're not to know anything about it at all. If they ask for Dad, say he's out cutting trail of a bunch of hill cows. Tell them I started after the wild flowers about fifteen minutes ago. Don't talk much about it, though. I'll be back inside of an hour."

With that she was gone, back to her trap, which she swung along a trail back of the house till it met the road a quarter of a mile above. Her actions must have surprised steady old Bob, for he certainly never before had seen his mistress in such a desperate hurry as she had been this day and still was. Nearly a mile above, a less well defined track deflected from the main road. Into this she turned, following it until she came to the head-gates of the lateral which ran through their place. The main canal was full of water, and after some effort she succeeded in opening the head-gates so as to let the water go pouring through.

Returning to the runabout, the girl drove across a kind of natural meadow to a hillside not far distant, gathered a double handful of wild flowers, and turned homeward again. The stage was still there when she came in sight of the group of buildings at the ranch.

As she drew up and dismounted with her armful of flowers, Alan McKinstra stepped from the store to the porch and came forward to assist her.

"The Fort Allison stage has been robbed," he blurted out.

"What nonsense! Who would want to rob it?" she retorted.

"Morse had a gold shipment aboard," he explained in a low voice, and added in bitter self-condemnation: "He sent me along to guard it, and I never even fired a shot to save it."

"But--do you mean that somebody held up the stage?" she gasped.

"Yes. But whoever it was can't escape. I've 'phoned to Jack Flatray and to Morse. They'll be right out here. The sheriff of Mesa County has already started with a posse. They'll track him down. That's a cinch. He can't get away with the box without a rig. If he busts the box, he's got to carry it on a horse and a horse leaves tracks."

"But who do you think it was?"

"Don't know. One of the Roaring Fork bunch of bad men, likely. But I don't know."

The young man was plainly very much excited and disturbed. He walked nervously up and down, jerking his sentences out piecemeal as he thought of them.

"Was there only one man? And did you see him?" Melissy asked breathlessly.

He scarcely noticed her excitement, or if he did, it seemed to him only natural under the circumstances.

"I expect there were more, but we saw only one. Didn't see much of him. He was screened by the bushes and wore a black mask. So long as the stage was in sight he never moved from that place; just stood there and kept us covered."

"But how could he rob you if he didn't come out?" she asked in wide-eyed innocence.

"He didn't rob us any. He must 'a' heard of the shipment of gold, and that's what he was after. After he'd got us to rights he made me throw the box down in the road. That's where it was when he ordered us to move on and keep agoing."

"And you went?"

"José handled the lines, but 't would 'a' been the same if I'd held them. That gun of his was a right powerful persuader." He stopped to shake a fist in impotent fury in the air. "I wish to God I could meet up with him some day when he didn't have the drop on me."

"Maybe you will some time," she told him soothingly. "I don't think you're a bit to blame, Alan. Nobody could think so. Ever so many times I've heard Dad say that when a man gets the drop on you there's nothing to do but throw up your hands."

"Do you honest think so, Melissy? Or are you just saying it to take the sting away? Looks like I ought to 'a' done something mor'n sit there like a bump on a log while he walked off with the gold."

His cheerful self-satisfaction was under eclipse. The boyish pride of him was wounded. He had not "made good." All over Cattleland the news would be wafted on the wings of the wind that Alan McKinstra, while acting as shotgun messenger to a gold shipment, had let a road agent hold him up for the treasure he was guarding.

"Very likely they'll catch him and get the gold back," she suggested.

"That won't do me any good," he returned gloomily. "The only thing that can help me now is for me to git the fellow myself, and I might just as well look for a needle in a haystack."

"You can't tell. The robber may be right round here now." Her eyes, shining with excitement, passed the crowd moving in and out of the store, for already the news of the hold-up had brought riders and ranchmen jogging in to learn the truth of the wild tale that had reached them.

"More likely he's twenty miles away. But whoever he is, he knows this county. He made a slip and called José by his name."

Melissy's gaze was turned to the dust whirl that advanced up the road that ran round the corral. "That doesn't prove anything, Alan. Everybody knows José. He's lived all over Arizona--at Tucson and Tombstone and Douglas."

"That's right too," the lad admitted.

The riders in advance of the dust cloud resolved themselves into the persons of her father and Norris. Her incautious admission was already troubling her.

"But I'm sure you're right. No hold-up with any sense would stay around here and wait to be caught. He's probably gone up into the Galiuros to hide."

"Unless he's cached the gold and is trying to throw off suspicion."

The girl had moved forward to the end of the house with Alan to meet her father. At that instant, by the ironic humor of chance, her glance fell upon a certain improvised wash-stand covered with oilcloth. She shook her head decisively. "No, he won't risk waiting to do that. He'll make sure of his escape first."

"I reckon."

"Have you heard, Daddy?" Melissy called out eagerly. She knew she must play the part expected of her, that of a young girl much interested in this adventure which had occurred in the community.

He nodded grimly, swinging from the saddle. She observed with surprise that his eye did not meet hers. This was not like him.

"What do you think?"

His gaze met that of Norris before he answered, and there was in it some hint of a great fear. "Beats me, 'Lissy."

He had told the simple truth, but not the whole truth. The men had waited at the entrance to the Box Cañon for nearly two hours without the arrival of the stage. Deciding that something must have happened, they started back, and presently met a Mexican who stopped to tell them the news. To say that they were dazed is to put it mildly. To expect them to believe that somebody else had heard of the secret shipment and had held up the stage two miles from the place they had chosen, was to ask a credulity too simple. Yet this was the fact that confronted them.

Arrived at the scene of the robbery both men had dismounted and had examined the ground thoroughly. What they saw tended still more to bewilder them. Neither of them was a tenderfoot, and the little table at the summit of the long hill told a very tangled tale to those who had eyes to read. Obvious tracks took them at once to the spot where the bandit had stood in the bushes, but there was something about them that struck both men as suspicious.

"Looks like these are worked out on purpose," commented Lee. "The guy's leaving too easy a trail to follow, and it quits right abrupt in the bushes. Must 'a' took an airship from here, I 'low."

"Does look funny. Hello! What's this?"

Norris had picked up a piece of black cloth and was holding it out. A startled oath slipped from the lips of the Southerner. He caught the rag from the hands of his companion and studied it with a face of growing astonishment.

"What's up?"

Lee dived into his pocket and drew forth the mask he had been wearing. Silently he fitted it to the other. The pieces matched exactly, both in length and in the figure of the pattern.

When the Southerner looked up his hands were shaking and his face ashen.

"For God's sake, Phil, what does this mean?" he cried hoarsely.

"Search me."

"It must have been--looks like the hold-up was somebody--my God, man, we left this rag at the ranch when we started!" the rancher whispered.

"That's right."

"We planned this thing right under the nigger's room. He must 'a' heard and---- But it don't look like Jim Budd to do a thing like that."

Norris had crossed the road again and was standing on the edge of the lateral.

"Hello! This ditch is full of water. When we passed down it was empty," he said.

Lee crossed over and stood by his side, a puzzled frown on his face. "There hadn't ought to be water running hyer now," he said, as if to himself. "I don't see how it could 'a' come hyer, for Bill Weston--he's the ditch rider--went to Mesa this mo'ning, and couldn't 'a' got back to turn it in."

The younger man stooped and examined a foot-print at the edge of the ditch. It was the one Melissy had made just as she stepped into the rig.

"Here's something new, Lee. We haven't seen this gentleman's track before. Looks like a boy's. It's right firm and deep in this soft ground. I'll bet a cooky your nigger never made that track."

The Southerner crouched down beside him, and they looked at it together, head to head.

"No, it ain't Jim's. I don't rightly savez this thing at all," the old man muttered, troubled at this mystery which seemed to point to his household.

"By Moses, I've got it! The guy who did the holding up had his horse down here. He loaded the sack on its back and drove off up the ditch. All we got to do is follow the ditch up or down till we come to the place where he climbed out and struck across country."

"That's right, Phil. He must have had a pardner up at the head-gates. They had some kind of signal arranged, and when Mr. Hold-up was ready down come the water and washed out his tracks. It's a blame' smooth piece of business if you ask me."

"The fellow made two bad breaks, though. That piece of shirt is one. This foot-print is another. They may land him in the pen yet."

"I don't think it," returned the old man with composure, and as he spoke his foot erased the telltale print. "I 'low there won't anybody go to the pen for he'pin himself to Mr. Morse's gold dust. I don't give a cuss who it was."

Norris laughed in his low, easy way. "I'm with you, Mr. Lee. We'll make a thorough job while we're at it and mess up these other tracks. After that we'll follow the ditch up and see if there's anything doing."

They remounted their broncos and rode them across the tracks several times, then followed the lateral up, one on either side of the ditch, their eyes fastened to the ground to see any evidence of a horse having clambered over the bank. They drew in sight of the ranch house without discovering what they were looking for. Lee's heart was in his mouth, for he knew that he would see presently what his eye sought.

"I reckon the fellow went down instead of up," suggested Norris.

"No, he came up."

Lee had stopped and was studying wheel tracks that ran up from the ditch to his ranch house. His face was very white and set. He pointed to them with a shaking finger.

"There's where he went in the ditch, and there's where he came out."

Norris forded the stream, cast a casual eye on the double track, and nodded. He was still in a fog of mystery, but the old man was already fearing the worst.

He gulped out his fears tremblingly. For himself, he was of a flawless nerve, but this touched nearer home than his own danger.

"Them wheel-tracks was made by my little gyurl's runabout, Phil."

"Good heavens!" The younger man drew rein sharply and stared at him. "You don't think----"

He broke off, recalling the sharp, firm little foot-print on the edge of the ditch some miles below.

"I don't reckon I know what to think. If she was in this, she's got some good reason." A wave of passion suddenly swept the father. "By God! I'd like to see the man that dares mix her name up in this."

Norris met this with his friendly smile. "You can't pick a row with me about that, old man. I'm with you till the cows come home. But that ain't quite the way to go at this business. First thing, we've got to wipe out these tracks. How? Why, sheep! There's a bunch of three hundred in that pasture. We'll drive the bunch down to the ditch and water them here. Savez?"

"And wipe out the wheel-marks in the sand. Bully for you, Phil."

"That's the idea. After twelve hundred chisel feet have been over this sand I reckon the wheel-tracks will be missing."

They rode up to the house, and the first thing that met them was the candid question of the girl:

"Have you heard, Daddy?"

And out of his troubled heart he had answered, "Beats me, 'Lissie."

"They've sent for the officers. Jack Flatray is on the way himself. So is Sheriff Burke," volunteered Alan gloomily.

"Getting right busy, ain't they?" Norris sneered.

Again Lee glanced quickly at Norris. "I reckon, Phil, we better drive that bunch of sheep down to water right away. I clean forgot them this mo'ning."

"Sure." The younger man was not so easily shaken. He turned to McKinstra naturally. "How many of the hold-ups were there?"

"I saw only one, and didn't see him very good. He was a slim fellow in a black mask."

"You don't say. Were you the driver?"

Alan felt the color suffuse his face. "No, I was the guard."

"Oh, you were the guard."

Alan felt the suave irony that covered this man's amusement, and he resented it impotently. When Melissy came to his support he was the more grateful.

"And we all think he did just right in using his common sense, Mr. Norris," the girl flashed.

"Oh, certainly."

And with that he was gone after her father to help him water the sheep.

"I don't see why those sheep have to be watered right now," she frowned to Alan. "Dad did water them this morning. I helped him."

Together they went into the store, where José was telling his story for the sixth time to a listening circle of plainsmen.

"And right then he come at you and ree-quested yore whole outfit to poke a hole in the scenery with yore front feet?" old Dave Ellis asked just as Melissy entered.

"Si, Señor."

"One of MacQueen's Roaring Fork gang did it, I'll bet," Alan contributed sourly.

"What kind of a lookin' guy was he?" spoke up a dark young man known as Bob Farnum.

"A big man, señor, and looked a ruffian."

"They're always that way until you run 'em down," grinned Ellis. "Never knew a hold-up wasn't eight foot high and then some--to the fellow at the wrong end of the gun."

"If you mean to say, Dave Ellis, that I lay down to a bluff----" Alan was beginning hotly when the old frontiersman interrupted.

"Keep your shirt on, McKinstra. I don't mean to say it. Nobody but a darn fool makes a gun-play when the cards are stacked that-a-way. Yore bad play was in reaching for the gun at all."

"Well, Jack Flatray will git him. I'll bet a stack of blues on that," contributed a fat ranchman wheezily.

"Unless you mussed up the trail coming back," said Ellis to the stage-driver.

"We didn't. I thought of that, and I had José drive clear round the place. Jack will find it all right unless there's too much travel before he gets here," said Alan.

Farnum laughed malevolently. "Mebbe he'll get him and mebbe he won't. Jack's human, like the rest of us, if he is the best sheriff in Arizona. Here's hoping he don't get him. Any man that waltzes out of the cactus and appropriates twenty thousand dollars belonging to Mr. Morse is welcome to it for all of me. I don't care if he is one of MacQueen's bad men. I wish it had been forty thousand."

Farnum did not need to explain the reasons for his sentiments. Everybody present knew that he was the leader of that bunch of cattlemen who had bunched themselves together to resist the encroachments of sheep upon the range. Among these the feeling against Morse was explosively dangerous. It had found expression in more than one raid upon his sheep. Many of them had been destroyed by one means or another, but Morse, with the obstinacy characteristic of him, had replaced them with others and continually increased his herds. There had been threats against his life, and one of his herders had been wounded. But the mine-owner went his way with quiet fearlessness and paid no attention to the animosity he had stirred up. The general feeling was that the trouble must soon come to a head. Nobody expected the rough and ready vaqueros, reckless and impulsive as they were, to submit to the loss of the range, which meant too the wiping out of their means of livelihood, without a bitter struggle that would be both lawless and bloody.

Wherefore there was silence after Farnum had spoken, broken at length by the amiable voice of the fat ranchman, Baker.

"Well, we'll see what we'll see," he wheezed complacently. "And anyways I got to have some horseshoe plug, Melissy."

The girl laughed nervously as she reached for what he wanted. "You're a safe prophet, Mr. Baker," she said.

"He'd be a safe one if he'd prophesy that Jack Flatray would have Mr. Hold-up in the calaboose inside of three days," put in a half-grown lad in leathers.

"I ain't so sure about that. You'll have to show me, and so will Mr. Deputy Sheriff Flatray," retorted Farnum.

A shadow darkened the doorway.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen all--and Miss Lee," a pleasant voice drawled.

The circle of eyes focused on the new-comer and saw a lean, muscular, young fellow of medium height, cool and alert, with the dust of the desert on every sunbaked inch of him.

"I'm damned if it ain't Jack here already!" gasped Baker.

CHAPTER VII

WATERING SHEEP

The deputy glanced quietly round, nodded here and there at sight of the familiar face of an acquaintance, and spoke to the driver.

"Let's hear you say your little piece again, José."

The Mexican now had it by heart, and he pattered off the thing from beginning to end without a pause. Melissy, behind the counter, leaned her elbows on it and fastened her eyes on the boyish face of the officer. In her heart she was troubled. How much did he know? What could he discover from the evidence she had left? He had the reputation of being the best trailer and the most fearless officer in Arizona. But surely she had covered her tracks safely.

From José the ranger turned to Alan. "We'll hear your account of it now, seh," he said gently.

While Alan talked, Jack's gaze drifted through the window to the flock of sheep that were being driven up from the ditch by Lee and Norris. That little pastoral scene had its significance for him. He had arrived at the locality of the hold-up a few minutes after they had left, and his keen intelligence had taken in some of the points they had observed. A rapid circuit of the spot at the distance of thirty yards had shown him no tracks leading from the place except those which ran up the lateral on either side of it. It was possible that these belonged to the horses of the robbers, but if so the fellows were singularly careless of detection. Moreover, the booty must be accounted for. They had not carried it with them, since no empty box remained to show that they had poured the gold into sacks, and it would have been impossible to take the box as it was on a horse. Nor had they buried it, unless at the bottom of the irrigating ditch, for some signs of their work must have remained.

Balancing probabilities, it had seemed to Flatray that these might be the tracks of ranchmen who had arrived after the hold-up and were following the escaping bandits up the lateral. For unless these were the robber's, there was no way of escape except either up or down the bottom of the ditch. His search had eliminated the possibility of any other but the road, and this was travelled too frequently to admit of even a chance of escape by it without detection. Jack filed away one or two questions in his brain for future reference. The most important of these was to discover whether there had been any water in the ditch at the time of the hold-up.

He had decided to follow the tracks leading up the ditch and found no difficulty in doing so at a fast walk. Without any hesitation they paralleled the edge of the lateral. Nor had the deputy travelled a quarter of a mile before he made a discovery. The rider on the right hand side of the stream had been chewing tobacco, and he had a habit of splashing his mark on boulders he passed in the form of tobacco juice. Half a dozen times before he reached the Lee ranch the ranger saw this signature of identity writ large on smooth rocks shining in the sun. The last place he saw it was at the point where the two riders deflected from the lateral toward the ranch house, following tracks which led up from the bottom of the ditch.

An instant later Flatray had dodged back into the chaparral, for somebody was driving a flock of sheep down to the ditch. He made out that there were two riders behind them, and that they had no dog. For the present his curiosity was satisfied. He thought he knew why they were watering sheep in this odd fashion. Swiftly he had made a circuit, drawn rein in front of the store, and dropped in just in time to hear his name. Now, as with one ear he listened to Alan's account of the hold-up, with his subconscious mind he was with the sheep-herders who were driving the flock back into the pasture.

"Looks like our friend the bad man was onto his job all right," was the deputy's only comment when Alan had finished.

"I'll bet he's making his getaway into the hills mighty immediate," chuckled Baker. "He can't find a bank in the mountainside to deposit that gold any too soon to suit him."

"Sho! I'll bet he ain't worried a mite. He's got his arrangements all made, and likely they'll dovetail to suit him. He's put his brand on that gold to stay," answered Farnum confidently.

Jack's mild blue eyes rested on him amiably. "Think so, Bob?"

"I ain't knockin' you any, Jack. You're all right. But that's how I figure it out, and, by Gad! I'm hopin' it too," Farnum made answer recklessly.

Flatray laughed and strolled from the crowded room to the big piazza. A man had just cantered up and flung himself from his saddle. The ranger, looking at him, thought he had never seen another so strikingly handsome an Apollo. Black eyes looked into his from a sun-tanned face perfectly modelled. The pose of the head and figure would have delighted a sculptor.

There was a vigor, an unspoken hostility, in the gaze of both men.

"Mo'nin", Mr. Deputy Sheriff, one said; and the other, "Same to you, Mr. Norris."

"You're on the job quick," sneered the cattle detective.

"The quicker the sooner, I expect."

"And by night you'll have Mr. Hold-up roped and hog-tied?"

"Not so you could notice it. Are you a sheep-herder these days, Mr. Norris?"

The gentle irony of this was not lost on its object, for in the West a herder of sheep is the next remove from a dumb animal.

"No, I'm riding for the Quarter Circle K Bar outfit. This is the first time I ever took the dust of a sheep in my life. I did it to oblige Mr. Lee."

"Oh! To oblige Mr. Lee?"

"He wanted to water them, and his herder wasn't here."

"Must 'a' been wanting water mighty bad, I reckon," commented Jack amiably.

"You bet! Lee feels better satisfied now he's watered them."

"I don't doubt it."

Norris changed the subject. "You must have burnt the wind getting here. I didn't expect to see you for some hours."

"I happened to be down at Yeager's ranch, and one of the boys got me on the line from Mesa."

"Picked up any clues yet?" asked the other carelessly, yet always with that hint of a sneer; and innocently Flatray answered, "They seem to be right seldom."

"Didn't know but you'd happened on the fellow's trail."

"I guess I'm as much at sea as you are," was the equivocal answer.

Lee came over from the stable, still wearing spurs and gauntlets.

"Howdy, Jack!" he nodded, not quite so much at his ease as usual. "Got hyer on the jump, didn't you?"

"I kept movin'."

"This shorely beats hell, don't it?" Lee glanced around, selected a smooth boulder, and fired his discharge of tobacco juice at it true to the inch. "Reminds me of the old days. You boys ain't old enough to recall them, but stage hold-ups were right numerous then."

Blandly the deputy looked from one to the other. "I don't suppose either of you gentlemen happen to have been down and looked over the ground where the hold-up was? The tracks were right cut up before I got there."

This center shot silenced Lee for an instant, but Norris was on the spot with smiling ease.

"No, Mr. Lee and I have been hunting strays on the mesa. We didn't hear about it till a few minutes ago. We're at your service, though, Mr. Sheriff, to join any posses you want to send out."

"Much obliged. I'm going to send one out toward the Galiuros in a few minutes now. I'll be right glad to have you take charge of it, Mr. Norris."

The derisive humor in the newly appointed deputy's eyes did not quite reach the surface.

"Sure. Whenever you want me."

"I'm going to send Alan McKinstra along to guide you. He knows that country like a book. You want to head for the lower pass, swing up Diable Cañon, and work up in the headquarters of the Three Forks."

Within a quarter of an hour the posse was in motion. Flatray watched it disappear in the dust of the road without a smile. He had sent them out merely to distract the attention of the public and to get rid of as many as possible of the crowd. For he was quite as well aware as the leader of the posse that this search in the Galiuros was a wild-goose chase. Somewhere within three hundred yards of the place he stood both the robber and his booty were in all probability to be found.

Flatray was quite right in his surmise, since Melissy Lee, who had come out to see the posse off, was standing at the end of the porch with her dusky eyes fastened on him, the while he stood beside the house with one foot resting negligently on the oilcloth cover of the wash-stand.

She had cast him out of her friendship because of his unworthiness, but there was a tumult in her heart at sight of him. No matter how her judgment condemned him as a villain, some instinct in her denied the possibility of it. She was torn in conflict between her liking for him and her conviction that he deserved only contempt. Somehow it hurt her too that he accepted without protest her verdict, appeared so willing to be a stranger to her.

Now that the actual physical danger of her adventure was past, Melissy was aware too of a chill dread lurking at her heart. She was no longer buoyed up by the swiftness of action which had called for her utmost nerve. There was nothing she could do now but wait, and waiting was of all things the one most foreign to her impulsive temperament. She acknowledged too some fear of this quiet, soft-spoken frontiersman. All Arizona knew not only the daredevil spirit that fired his gentleness, but the competence with which he set about any task he assigned himself. She did not see how he could unravel this mystery. She had left no clues behind her, she felt sure of that, and yet was troubled lest he guessed at her secret behind that mask of innocence he wore. He did not even remotely guess it as yet, but he was far closer to the truth than he pretended. The girl knew she should leave him and go about her work. Her rôle was to appear as inconspicuous as possible, but she could not resist the fascination of trying to probe his thoughts.

"I suppose your posse will come back with the hold-ups in a few hours. Will it be worth while to wait for them?" she asked with amiable derision.

The ranger had been absorbed in thought, his chin in his hand, but he brought his gaze back from the distance to meet hers. What emotion lay behind those cold eyes she could not guess.

"You're more hopeful than I am, Miss Lee."

"What are you sending them out for, then?"

"Oh, well, the boys need to work off some of their energy, and there's always a show they might happen onto the robbers."

"Do you think some of the Roaring Fork gang did it?"

"Can't say."

"I suppose you are staying here in the hope that they will drop in and deliver themselves to you."

He looked at her out of an expressionless face. "That's about it, I reckon. But what I tell the public is that I'm staying so as to be within telephone connection. You see, Sheriff Burke is moving up to cut them off from the Catalinas, Jackson is riding out from Mammoth to haid them off that way, these anxious lads that have just pulled out from here are taking care of the Galiuros. I'm supposed to be sitting with my fingers on the keys as a sort of posse dispatcher."

"Well, I hope you won't catch them," she told him bluntly.

"That seems to be a prevailing sentiment round here. You say it right hearty too; couldn't be more certain of your feelings if it had been your own father."

He said it carelessly, yet with his keen blue eyes fixed on her. Nevertheless, he was totally unprepared for the effect of his words. The color washed from her bronzed cheeks, and she stood staring at him with big, fear-filled eyes.

"What--what do you mean?" she gasped. "How dare you say that?"

"I ain't said anything so terrible. You don't need to take it to heart like that." He gave her a faint smile for an instant. "I'm not really expecting to arrest Mr. Lee for holding up that stage."

The color beat back slowly into her face. She knew she had made a false move in taking so seriously his remark.

"I don't think you ought to joke about a thing like that," she said stiffly.

"All right. I'll not say it next time till I'm in earnest," he promised as he walked away.

"I wonder if he really meant anything," the girl was thinking in terror, and he, "she knows something; now, I would like to know what."

Melissy attended to her duties in the postoffice after the arrival of the stage, and looked after the dining-room as usual, but she was all the time uneasily aware that Jack Flatray had quietly disappeared. Where had he gone? And why? She found no answer to that question, but the ranger dropped in on his bronco in time for supper, imperturbable and self-contained as ever.

"Think I'll stay all night if you have a room for me," he told her after he had eaten.

"We have a room," she said. "What more have you heard about the stage robbery?"

"Nothing, Miss Lee."

"Oh, I thought maybe you had," she murmured tremulously, for his blue eyes were unwaveringly upon her and she could not know how much or how little he might mean.

Later she saw him sitting on the fence, holding genial converse with Jim Budd. The waiter was flashing a double row of white teeth in deep laughter at something the deputy had told him. Evidently they were already friends. When she looked again, a few minutes later, she knew Jack had reached the point where he was pumping Jim and the latter was disseminating misinformation. That the negro was stanch enough, she knew, but she was on the anxious seat lest his sharp-witted inquisitor get what he wanted in spite of him. After he had finished with Budd the ranger drifted around to the kitchen in time to intercept Hop Ling casually as he came out after finishing his evening's work. The girl was satisfied Flatray could not have any suspicion of the truth. Nevertheless, she wished he would let the help alone. He might accidentally stumble on something that would set him on the right track.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BOONE-BELLAMY FEUD IS RENEWED

"Here's six bits on the counter under a seed catalogue. Did you leave it here, daddy?"

Champ Lee, seated on the porch just outside the store door, took the pipe from his mouth and answered:

"Why no, honey, I don't reckon I did, not to my ricollection."

"That's queer. I know I didn't----"

Melissy broke her sentence sharply. There had come into her eyes a spark of excitement, simultaneous with the brain-flash which told her who had left the money. No doubt the quarter and the half dollar had been lying there ever since the day last week when Morse had eaten at the Bar Double G. She addressed an envelope, dropped the money in, sealed the flap, and put the package beside a letter addressed to T. L. Morse.

Lee, full of an unhappy restlessness which he could not control, presently got up and moved away to the stables. He was blaming himself bitterly for the events of the past few days.

It was perhaps half an hour later that Melissy looked up to see the sturdy figure of Morse in the doorway. During the past year he had filled out, grown stronger and more rugged. His deep tan and heavy stride pronounced him an outdoor man no less surely than the corduroy suit and the high laced miners' boots.

He came forward to the postoffice window without any sign of recognition.

"Is Mr. Flatray still here?"

"No!" Without further explanation Melissy took from the box the two letters addressed to Morse and handed them to him.

The girl observed the puzzled look that stole over his face at sight of the silver in one envelope. A glance at the business address printed on the upper left hand corner enlightened him. He laid the money down in the stamp window.

"This isn't mine."

"You heard what my father said?"

"That applies to next time, not to this."

"I think it does apply to this time."

"I can't see how you're going to make me take it back. I'm an obstinate man."

"Just as you like."

A sudden flush of anger swept her. She caught up the silver and flung it through the open window into the dusty road.

His dark eyes met hers steadily and a dull color burned in his tanned cheeks. Without a word he turned away, and instantly she regretted what she had done. She had insulted him deliberately and put herself in the wrong. At bottom she was a tender-hearted child, even though her father and his friends had always spoiled her, and she could not but reproach herself for the hurt look she had brought into his strong, sad face. He was their enemy, of course, but even enemies have rights.

Morse walked out of the office looking straight before him, his strong back teeth gripped so that the muscles stood out on his salient jaw. Impulsively the girl ran around the counter after him.

He looked up from untying his horse to see her straight and supple figure running toward him. Her eager face was full of contrition and the color of pink rose petals came and went in it.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Morse. I oughtn't to have done that. I hurt your feelings," she cried.

At best he was never a handsome man, but now his deep, dark eyes lit with a glow that surprised her.

"Thank you. Thank you very much," he said in a low voice.

"I'm so tempery," she explained in apology, and added: "I suppose a nice girl wouldn't have done it."

"A nice girl did do it," was all he could think to say.

"You needn't take the trouble to say that. I know I've just scrambled up and am not ladylike and proper. Sometimes I don't care. I like to be able to do things like boys. But I suppose it's dreadful."

"I don't think it is at all. None of your friends could think so. Not that I include myself among them," he hastened to disclaim. "I can't be both your friend and your enemy, can I?"

The trace of a sardonic smile was in his eyes. For the moment as she looked at him she thought he might. But she answered:

"I don't quite see how."

"You hate me, I suppose," he blurted out bluntly.

"I suppose so." And more briskly she added, with dimples playing near the corners of her mouth: "Of course I do."

"That's frank. It's worth something to have so decent an enemy. I don't believe you would shoot me in the back."

"Some of the others would. You should be more careful," she cried before she could stop herself.

He shrugged. "I take my fighting chance."

"It isn't much of a one. You'll be shot at from ambush some day."

"It wouldn't be a new experience. I went through it last week."

"Where?" she breathed.

"Down by Willow Wash."

"Who did it?"

He laughed, without amusement. "I didn't have my rifle with me, so I didn't stay to inquire."

"It must have been some of those wild vaqueros."

"That was my guess."

"But you have other enemies, too."

"Miss Lee," he smiled.

"I mean others that are dangerous."

"Your father?" he asked.

"Father would never do that except in a fair fight. I wasn't thinking of him."

"I don't know whom you mean, but a few extras don't make much difference when one is so liberally supplied already," he said cynically.

"I shouldn't make light of them if I were you," she cautioned.

"Who do you mean?"

"I've said all I'm going to, and more than I ought," she told him decisively. "Except this, that it's your own fault. You shouldn't be so stiff. Why don't you compromise? With the cattlemen, for instance. They have a good deal of right on their side. They did have the range first."

"You should tell that to your father, too."

"Dad runs sheep on the range to protect himself. He doesn't drive out other people's cattle and take away their living."

"Well, I might compromise, but not at the end of a gun."

"No, of course not. Here comes dad now," she added hurriedly, aware for the first time that she had been holding an extended conversation with her father's foe.

"We started enemies and we quit enemies. Will you shake hands on that, Miss Lee?" he asked.

She held out her hand, then drew it swiftly back. "No, I can't. I forgot. There's another reason."

"Another reason! You mean the Arkansas charge against me?" he asked quietly.

"No. I can't tell you what it is." She felt herself suffused in a crimson glow. How could she explain that she could not touch hands with him because she had robbed him of twenty thousand dollars?

Lee stopped at the steps, astonished to see his daughter and this man in talk together. Yesterday he would have resented it bitterly, but now the situation was changed. Something of so much greater magnitude had occurred that he was too perturbed to cherish his feud for the present. All night he had carried with him the dreadful secret he suspected. He could not look Melissy in the face, nor could he discuss the robbery with anybody. The one fact that overshadowed all others was that his little girl had gone out and held up a stage, that if she were discovered she would be liable to a term in the penitentiary. Laboriously his slow brain had worked it all out. A talk with Jim Budd had confirmed his conclusions. He knew that she had taken this risk in order to save him. He was bowed down with his unworthiness, with shame that he had dragged her into this horrible tangle. He was convinced that Jack Flatray would get at the truth, and already he was resolved to come forward and claim the whole affair as his work.

"I've been apologizing to Mr. Morse for insulting him, dad," the girl said immediately.

Her father passed a bony hand slowly across his unshaven chin. "That's right, honey. If you done him a meanness, you had ought to say so."

"She has said so very handsomely, Mr. Lee," spoke up Morse.

"I've been warning him, dad, that he ought to be more careful how he rides around alone, with the cattlemen feeling the way they do."

"It's a fact they feel right hot under the collar. You're ce'tainly a temptation to them, Mr. Morse," the girl's father agreed.

The mine owner shifted the subject of conversation. He was not a man of many impulses, but he yielded to one now.

"Can't we straighten out this trouble between us, Mr. Lee? You think I've done you an injury. Perhaps I have. If we both mean what's right, we can get together and fix it up in a few minutes."

The old Southerner stiffened and met him with an eye of jade. "I ain't asking any favors of you, Mr. Morse. We'll settle this matter some day, and settle it right. But you can't buy me off. I'll not take a bean from you."

The miner's eyes hardened. "I'm not trying to buy you off. I made a fair offer of peace. Since you have rejected it, there is nothing more to be said." With that he bowed stiffly and walked away, leading his horse.

Lee's gaze followed him and slowly the eyes under the beetled brows softened.

"Mebbe I done wrong, honey. Mebbe I'd ought to have given in. I'm too proud to compromise when he's got me beat. That's what's ailin' with me. But I reckon I'd better have knuckled under."

The girl slipped her arm through his. "Sometimes I'm just like that too, daddy. I've just got to win before I make up. I don't blame you a mite, but, all the same, we should have let him fix it up."

It was characteristic of them both that neither thought of reversing the decision he had made. It was done now, and they would abide by the results. But already both of them half regretted, though for very different reasons. Lee was thinking that for Melissy's sake he should have made a friend of the man he hated, since it was on the cards that within a few days she might be in his power. The girl's feeling, too, was unselfish. She could not forget the deep hunger for friendship that had shone in the man's eyes. He was alone in the world, a strong man surrounded by enemies who would probably destroy him in the end. There was stirring in her heart a sweet womanly pity and sympathy for the enemy whose proffer of friendship had been so cavalierly rejected.

The sight of a horseman riding down the trail from the Flagstaff mine shook Melissy into alertness.

"Look, dad. It's Mr. Norris," she cried.

Morse, who had not yet recognized him, swung to the saddle, his heart full of bitterness. Every man's hand was against his, and every woman's. What was there in his nature that turned people against him so inevitably? There seemed to be some taint in him that corroded all natural human kindness.

A startled oath brought him from his somber reflections. He looked up, to see the face of a man with whom in the dead years of the past he had been in bitter feud.

Neither of them spoke. Morse looked at him with a face cold as chiselled marble and as hard. The devil's own passion burned in the storm-tossed one of the other.

Norris was the first to break the silence.

"So it was all a lie about your being killed, Dick Bellamy."

The mine owner did not speak, but the rigor of his eyes did not relax.

"Gave it out to throw me off your trail, did you? Knew mighty well I'd cut the heart out of the man who shot poor Shep." The voice of the cattle detective rang out in malignant triumph. "You guessed it c'rect, seh. Right here's where the Boone-Bellamy feud claims another victim."

The men were sitting face to face, so close that their knees almost touched. As Norris jerked out his gun Bellamy caught his wrist. They struggled for an instant, the one to free his arm, the other to retain his grip. Bellamy spurred his horse closer. The more powerful of the two, he slowly twisted around the imprisoned wrist. Inch by inch the revolver swung in a jerky, spasmodic circle. There was a moment when it pointed directly at the mine owner's heart. His enemy's finger crooked on the trigger, eyes passionate with the stark lust to kill. But the pressure on the wrist had numbed the hand. The weapon jumped out of line, went clattering down into the dust from the palsied fingers.

Lee ran forward and pushed between the men.

"Here. Ain't you boys got ary bettah sense than to clinch like wildcats?" he demanded, jerking one of the horses away by the bridle. "No, you don't, Phil. I'll take keer of this gun for the present." It was noticeable that Beauchamp Lee's speech grew more after the manner of the plantations when he became excited.

The cowpuncher, white with anger, glared at his enemy and poured curses at him, the while he nursed his strained wrist. For the moment he was impotent, but he promised himself vengeance in full when they should meet again.

"That'll be enough from you now, Phil," said the old ex-Confederate good-naturedly, leading him toward the house and trying to soothe his malevolent chagrin.

Bellamy turned and rode away. At the corner of the corral he met Jack Flatray riding up.

"Been having a little difference of opinion with our friend, haven't you, seh?" the deputy asked pleasantly.

"Yes." Bellamy gave him only the crisp monosyllable and changed the subject immediately. "What about this stage robbery? Have you been able to make anything of it, Mr. Flatray?"

"Why, yes. I reckon we'll be able to land the miscreant mebbe, if things come our way," drawled the deputy. "Wouldn't it be a good idea to offer a reward, though, to keep things warm?"

"I thought of that. I made it a thousand dollars. The posters ought to be out to-day on the stage."

"Good enough!"

"Whom do you suspect?"

Jack looked at him with amiable imperturbability. "I reckon I better certify my suspicions, seh, before I go to shouting them out."

"All right, sir. Since I'm paying the shot, it ought to entitle me to some confidence. But it's up to you. Get back the twenty thousand dollars, that's all I ask, except that you put the fellow behind the bars of the penitentiary for a few years."

Flatray gave him an odd smile which he did not understand.

"I hope to be able to accommodate you, seh, about this time to-morrow, so far as getting the gold goes. You'll have to wait a week or two before the rest of your expectations get gratified."

"Any reasonable time. I want to see him there eventually. That's all."

Jack laughed again, without giving any reason for his mirth. That ironic smile continued to decorate his face for some time. He seemed to have some inner source of mirth he did not care to disclose.

CHAPTER IX

THE DANGER LINE

Though Champ Lee had business in Mesa next day that would not be denied, he was singularly loath to leave the ranch. He wanted to stay close to Melissy until the dénouement of the hunt for the stage robber. On the other hand, it was well known that his contest with Morse for the Monte Cristo was up for a hearing. To stay at home would have been a confession of his anxiety that he did not want to make. But it was only after repeated charges to his daughter to call him up by telephone immediately if anything happened that he could bring himself to ride away.

He was scarcely out of sight when a Mexican vaquero rode in with the information that old Antonio, on his way to the post at Three Pines with a second drove of sheep, had twisted his ankle badly about fifteen miles from the ranch. After trying in vain to pick up a herder at Mesa by telephone, Melissy was driven to the only feasible course left her, to make the drive herself in place of Antonio. There were fifteen hundred sheep in the bunch, and they must be taken care of at once by somebody competent for the task. She knew she could handle them, for it had amused her to take charge of a herd often for an hour or two at a time. The long stretch over the desert would be wearisome and monotonous, but she had the slim, muscular tenacity of a half-grown boy. It did not matter what she wanted to do. The thing to which she came back always was that the sheep must be taken care of.

She left directions with Jim for taking care of the place, changed to a khaki skirt and jacket, slapped a saddle on her bronco, and disappeared across country among the undulations of the sandhills. A tenderfoot would have been hopelessly lost in the sameness of these hills and washes, but Melissy knew them as a city dweller does his streets. Straight as an arrow she went to her mark. The tinkle of distant sheep-bells greeted her after some hours' travel, and soon the low, ceaseless bleating of the herd.

The girl found Antonio propped against a piñon tree, solacing himself philosophically with cigarettes. He was surprised to see her, but made only a slight objection to her taking his place. His ankle was paining him a good deal, and he was very glad to get the chance to pull himself to her saddle and ride back to the ranch.

A few quick words sent the dog Colin out among the sheep, by now scattered far and wide over the hill. They presently came pouring toward her, diverged westward, and massed at the base of a butte rising from a dry arroyo. The journey had begun, and hour after hour it continued through the hot day, always in a cloud of dust flung up by the sheep, sometimes through the heavy sand of a wash, often over slopes of shale, not seldom through thick cactus beds that shredded her skirt and tore like fierce, sharp fingers at her legging-protected ankles. The great gray desert still stretched before her to the horizon's edge, and still she flung the miles behind her with the long, rhythmic stride that was her birthright from the hills. A strong man, unused to it, would have been staggering with stiff fatigue, but this slender girl held the trail with light grace, her weight still carried springily on her small ankles.

Once she rested for a few minutes, flinging herself down into the sand at length, her head thrown back from the full brown throat so that she could gaze into the unstained sky of blue. Presently the claims of this planet made themselves heard, for she, too, was elemental and a creature of instinct. The earth was awake and palpitating with life, the low, indefatigable life of creeping things and vegetation persisting even in this waste of rock and sand.

But she could not rest long, for Diablo Cañon must be reached before dark. The sheep would be very thirsty by the time they arrived, and she could not risk letting them tear down the precipitous edge among the sharp rocks in the dark. Already over the sand stretches a peculiar liquid glow was flooding, so that the whole desert seemed afire. The burning sun had slipped behind a saddle of the purple peaks, leaving a brilliant horizon of many mingled shades.

It was as she came forward to the cañon's edge in this luminous dusk that Melissy became aware of a distant figure on horseback, silhouetted for a moment against the skyline. One glance was all she got of it, for she was very busy with the sheep, working them leisurely toward the black chasm that seemed to yawn for them. High rock walls girt the cañon, gigantic and bottomless in the gloom. A dizzy trail zigzagged back and forth to the pool below, and along this she and the collie skilfully sent the eager, thirsty animals.

The mass of the sheep were still huddled on the edge of the ravine when there came the thud of horses' hoofs and the crack of revolvers, accompanied by hoarse, triumphant yells and cries. Melissy knew instantly what it was--the attack of cattlemen upon her defenseless flock. They had waited until the sheep were on the edge of the precipice, and now they were going to drive the poor creatures down upon the rocks two hundred feet below. Her heart leaped to her throat, but scarce more quickly than she upon a huge boulder bordering the trail.

"Back! Keep back!" she heard herself crying, and even as she spoke a bullet whistled through the rim of her felt hat.

Standing there boldly, unconscious of danger, the wind draped and defined the long lines of her figure like those of the Winged Victory.

The foremost rider galloped past, waving his sombrero and shooting into the frightened mass in front of him. Within a dozen feet of her he turned his revolver upon the girl, then, with an oath of recognition, dragged his pony back upon its haunches. Another horse slithered into it, and a third.

"It's 'Lissie Lee!" a voice cried in astonishment; and another, with a startled oath, "You're right, Bob!"

The first rider gave his pony the spur, swung it from the trail in a half-circle which brought it back at the very edge of the ravine, and blocked the forward pour of terror-stricken sheep. Twice his revolver rang out. The girl's heart stood still, for the man was Norris, and it seemed for an instant as if he must be swept over the precipice by the stampede. The leaders braced themselves to stop, but were slowly pushed forward toward the edge. One of the other riders had by this time joined the daring cowpuncher, and together they stemmed the tide. The pressure on the trail relaxed and the sheep began to mill around and around.

It was many minutes before they were sufficiently quieted to trust upon the trail again, but at last the men got them safely to the bottom, with the exception of two or three killed in the descent.

Her responsibility for the safety of the sheep gone, the girl began to crawl down the dark trail. She could not see a yard in front of her, and at each step the path seemed to end in a gulf of darkness. She could not be sure she was on the trail at all, and her nerve was shaken by the experience through which she had just passed. Presently she stopped and waited, for the first time in her life definitely and physically afraid. She stood there trembling, a long, long time it seemed to her, surrounded by the impenetrable blackness of night.

Then a voice came to her.

"Melissy!"

She answered, and the voice came slowly nearer.

"You're off the trail," it told her presently, just before a human figure defined itself in the gloom.

"I'm afraid," she sobbed.

A strong hand came from nowhere and caught hers. An arm slipped around her waist.

"Don't be afraid, little girl. I'll see no harm comes to you," the man said to her with a quick, fierce tenderness.

The comfort of his support was unspeakable. It stole into her heart like water to the roots of thirsty plants. To feel her head against his shoulder, to know he held her tight, meant safety and life. He had told her not to be afraid, and she was so no longer.

"You shot at me," she murmured in reproach.

"I didn't know. We thought it was Bellamy's herd. But it's true, God forgive me! I did."

There was in his voice the warm throb of emotion, and in his eyes something she had never seen before in those of any human being. Like stars they were, swimming in light, glowing with the exultation of the triumph he was living. She was a splendid young animal, untaught of life, generous, passionate, tempestuous, and as her pliant, supple body lay against his some sex instinct old as creation stirred potently within her. She had found her mate. It came to her as innocently as the same impulse comes to the doe when the spring freshets are seeking the river, and as innocently her lips met his in their first kiss of surrender. Something irradiated her, softened her, warmed her. Was it love? She did not know, but as yet she was still happy in the glow of it.

Slowly, hand in hand, they worked back to the trail and down it to the bottom of the cañon. The soft velvet night enwrapped them. It shut them from the world and left them one to one. From the meeting palms strange electric currents tingled through the girl and flushed her to an ecstasy of emotion.

A camp fire was already burning cheerfully when they reached the base of the descent. A man came forward to meet them. He glanced curiously at the girl after she came within the circle of light. Her eyes were shining as from some inner glow, and she was warm with a soft color that vitalized her beauty. Then his gaze passed to take in with narrowed lids her companion.

"I see you found her," he said dryly.

"Yes, I found her, Bob."

He answered the spirit of Farnum's words rather than the letter of them, nor could he keep out of his bearing and his handsome face the exultation that betrayed success.

"H'mp!" Farnum turned from him and addressed the girl: "I suppose Norris has explained our mistake and eaten crow for all of us, Miss Lee. I don't see how come we to make such a blame' fool mistake. It was gitting dark, and we took your skirt for a greaser's blanket. It's ce'tainly on us."

"Yes, he has explained."

"Well, there won't any amount of explaining square the thing. We might 'a' done you a terrible injury, Miss Lee. It was gilt-edged luck for us that you thought to jump on that rock and holler."

"I was thinking of the sheep," she said.

"Well, you saved them, and I'm right glad of it. We ain't got any use for Mary's little trotter, but your father's square about his. He keeps them herded up on his own range. We may not like it, but we ce'tainly aren't going to the length of attackin' his herd." Farnum's gaze took in her slender girlishness, and he voiced the question in his mind. "How in time do you happen to be sheep-herding all by your lone a thousand miles from nowhere, Miss Lee?"

She explained the circumstances after she had moved forward to warm herself by the fire. For already night was bringing a chill breeze with it. The man cooking the coffee looked up and nodded pleasantly, continuing his work. Norris dragged up a couple of saddle blankets and spread them on the ground for her to sit upon.

"You don't have to do a thing but boss this outfit," he told her with his gay smile. "You're queen of the range to-night, and we're your herders or your punchers, whichever you want to call us. To-morrow morning two of us are going to drive these sheep on to the trading post for you, and the other one is going to see you safe back home. It's all arranged."

They were as good as his word. She could not move from her place to help herself. It was their pleasure to wait upon her as if she had really been a queen and they her subjects. Melissy was very tired, but she enjoyed their deference greatly. She was still young enough to find delight in the fact that three young and more or less good-looking men were vying with each other to anticipate her needs.

Like them, she ate and drank ravenously of the sandwiches and the strong coffee, though before the meal was over she found herself nodding drowsily. The tactful courtesy of these rough fellows was perfect. They got the best they had for her of their blankets, dragged a piñon root to feed the glowing coals, and with cheerful farewells of "Buenos Noches" retired around a bend in the cañon and lit another fire for themselves.

The girl snuggled down into the warmth of the blankets and stretched her weary limbs in delicious rest. She did not mean to go to sleep for a long time. She had much to think about. So she looked up the black sheer cañon walls to the deep blue, starry sky above, and relived her day in memory.

A strange excitement tingled through her, born of shame and shyness and fear, and of something else she did not understand, something which had lain banked in her nature like a fire since childhood and now threw forth its first flame of heat. What did it mean, that passionate fierceness with which her lips had clung to his? She liked him, of course, but surely liking would not explain the pulse that her first kiss had sent leaping through her blood like wine. Did she love him?

Then why did she distrust him? Why was there fear in her sober second thought of him? Had she done wrong? For the moment all her maiden defenses had been wiped out and he had ridden roughshod over her reserves. But somewhere in her a bell of warning was ringing. The poignant sting of sex appeal had come home to her for the first time. Wherefore in this frank child of the wilderness had been born a shy shame, a vague trembling for herself that marked a change. At sunrise she had been still treading gayly the primrose path of childhood; at sunset she had entered upon her heritage of womanhood.

The sun had climbed high and was peering down the walls of the gulch when she awoke. She did not at once realize where she was, but came presently to a blinking consciousness of her surroundings. The rock wall on one side was still shadowed, while the painted side of the other was warm with the light which poured upon it. The Gothic spires, the Moorish domes, the weird and mysterious caves, which last night had given more than a touch of awe to her majestic bedchamber, now looked a good deal less like the ruins of mediæval castles and the homes of elfin sprites and gnomes.

"Buenos dios, muchacha," a voice called cheerfully to her.

She did not need to turn to know to whom it belonged. Among a thousand she would have recognized its tone of vibrant warmth.

"Buenos," she answered, and, rising hurriedly, she fled to rearrange her hair and dress.

It was nearly a quarter of an hour later that she reappeared, her thick coils of ebon-hued tresses shining in the sun, her skirt smoothed to her satisfaction, and the effects of feminine touches otherwise visible upon her fresh, cool person.

"Breakfast is served," Norris sang out.

"Dinner would be nearer it," she laughed. "Why in the world didn't you boys waken me? What time is it, anyhow?"

"It's not very late--a little past noon maybe. You were all tired out with your tramp yesterday. I didn't see why you shouldn't have your sleep out."

He was pouring a cup of black coffee for her from the smoky pot, and she looked around expectantly for the others. Simultaneously she remembered that she had not heard the bleating of the sheep.

"Where are the others--Mr. Farnum and Sam? And have you the sheep all gagged?" she laughed.

He gave her that odd look of smoldering eyes behind half-shut lids.

"The boys have gone on to finish the drive for you. They started before sun-up this morning. I'm elected to see you back home safely."

"But----"

Her protest died unspoken. She could not very well frame it in words, and before his bold, possessive eyes the girl's long, dark lashes wavered to the cheeks into which the hot blood was beating. Nevertheless, the feeling existed that she wished one of the others had stayed instead of him. It was born, no doubt, partly of the wave of shyness running through her, but partly too of instinctive maidenly resistance to something in his look, in the assurance of his manner, that seemed to claim too much. Last night he had taken her by storm and at advantage. Something of shame stirred in her that he had found her so easy a conquest, something too of a new vague fear of herself. She resented the fact that he could so move her, even though she still felt the charm of his personal presence. She meant to hold herself in abeyance, to make sure of herself and of him before she went further.

But the cowpuncher had no intention of letting her regain so fully control of her emotions. Experience of more than one young woman had taught him that scruples were likely to assert themselves after reflection, and he purposed giving her no time for that to-day.

He did not count in vain upon the intimacy of companionship forced upon them by the circumstances, nor upon the skill with which he knew how to make the most of his manifold attractions. His rôle was that of the comrade, gay with good spirits and warm with friendliness, solicitous of her needs, but not oppressively so. If her glimpse of him at breakfast had given the girl a vague alarm, she laughed her fears away later before his open good humor.

There had been a time when he had been a part of that big world "back in the States," peopled so generously by her unfettered imagination. He knew how to talk, and entertainingly, of books and people, of events and places he had known. She had not knowledge enough of life to doubt his stories, nor did she resent it that he spoke of this her native section with the slighting manner of one who patronized it with his presence. Though she loved passionately her Arizona, she guessed its crudeness, and her fancy magnified the wonders of that southern civilization from which it was so far cut off.

Farnum had left his horse for the girl, and after breakfast the cowpuncher saddled the broncos and brought them up. Melissy had washed the dishes, filled his canteen, and packed the saddle bags. Soon they were off, climbing slowly the trail that led up the cañon wall. She saw the carcass of a dead sheep lying on the rocks half way down the cliff, and had spoken of it before she could stop herself.

"What is that? Isn't it----?"

"Looks to me like a boulder," lied her escort unblushingly. There was no use, he judged, in recalling unpleasant memories.

Nor did she long remember. The dry, exhilarating sunshine and the sting of gentle, wide-swept breezes, the pleasure of swift motion and the ring of that exultingly boyish voice beside her, combined to call the youth in her to rejoice. Firm in the saddle she rode, as graceful a picture of piquant girlhood as could be conceived, thrilling to the silent voices of the desert. They traveled in a sunlit sea of space, under a sky of blue, in which tenuous cloud lakes floated. Once they came on a small bunch of hill cattle which went flying like deer into the covert of a draw. A rattlesnake above a prairie dog's hole slid into the mesquit. A swift watched them from the top of a smooth rock, motionless so long as they could see. She loved it all, this immense, deserted world of space filled with its multitudinous dwellers.

They unsaddled at Dead Cow Creek, hobbled the ponies, and ate supper. Norris seemed in no hurry to resaddle. He lay stretched carelessly at full length, his eyes upon her with veiled admiration. She sat upright, her gaze on the sunset with its splashes of topaz and crimson and saffron, watching the tints soften and mellow as dusk fell. Every minute now brought its swift quota of changing beauty. A violet haze enveloped the purple mountains, and in the crotch of the hills swam a lake of indigo. The raw, untempered glare of the sun was giving place to a limitless pour of silvery moonlight.

Her eyes were full of the soft loveliness of the hour when she turned them upon her companion. He answered promptly her unspoken question.

"You bet it is! A night for the gods--or for lovers."

He said it in a murmur, his eyes full on hers, and his look wrenched her from her mood. The mask of comradeship was gone. He looked at her hungrily, as might a lover to whom all spiritual heights were denied.

Her sooty lashes fell before this sinister spirit she had evoked, but were raised instantly at the sound of him drawing his body toward her. Inevitably there was a good deal of the young animal in her superbly healthy body. She had been close to nature all day, the riotous passion of spring flowing free in her as in the warm earth herself. But the magic of the mystic hills had lifted her beyond the merely personal. Some sense of grossness in him for the first time seared across her brain. She started up, and her face told him she had taken alarm.

"We must be going," she cried.

He got to his feet. "No hurry, sweetheart."

The look in his face startled her. It was new to her in her experience of men. Never before had she met elemental lust.

"You're near enough," she cautioned sharply.

He cursed softly his maladroitness.

"I was nearer last night, honey," he reminded her.

"Last night isn't to-night."

He hesitated. Should he rush her defenses, bury her protests in kisses? Or should he talk her out of this harsh mood? Last night she had been his. There were moments during the day when she had responded to him as a musical instrument does to skilled fingers. But for the moment his power over her was gone. And he was impatient of delay.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked roughly.

"We'll start at once."

"No."

"Yes."

Frightened though she was, her gaze held steadily to his. It was the same instinct in her that makes one look a dangerous wild beast straight in the eye.

"What's got into you?" he demanded sullenly.

"I'm going home."

"After a while."

"Now."

"I reckon not just yet. It's my say-so."

"Don't you dare stop me."

The passion in him warred with prudence. He temporized. "Why, honey! I'm the man that loves you."

She would not see his outstretched hands.

"Then saddle my horse."

"By God, no! You're going to listen to me."

His anger ripped out unexpectedly, even to him. Whatever fear she felt, the girl crushed down. He must not know her heart was drowned in terror.

"I'll listen after we've started."

He cursed her fickleness. "What's ailin' you, girl? I ain't a man to be put off this way."

"Don't forget you're in Arizona," she warned.

He understood what she meant. In the ranch country no man could with impunity insult a woman.

Standing defiantly before him, her pliant form very straight, the underlying blood beating softly under the golden brown of her cheeks, one of the thick braids of her heavy, blue-black hair falling across the breast that rose and fell a little fast, she was no less than a challenge of Nature to him. He looked into a mobile face as daring and as passionate as his own, warm with the life of innocent youth, and the dark blood mantled his face.

"Saddle the horses," she commanded.

"When I get good and ready."

"Now."

"No, ma'am. We're going to have a talk first."

She walked across to the place where her pony grazed, slipped on the bridle, and brought the animal back to the saddle. Norris watched her fitting the blankets and tightening the cinch without a word, his face growing blacker every moment. Before she could start he strode forward and caught the rein.

"I've got something to say to you," he told her rudely. "You're not going now. So that's all about it."

Her lips tightened. "Let go of my horse."

"We'll talk first."

"Do you think you can force me to stay here?"

"You're going to hear what I've got to say."

"You bully!"

"I'll tell what I know--Miss Hold-up."

"Tell it!" she cried.

He laughed harshly, his narrowed eyes watching her closely. "If you throw me down now, I'll ce'tainly tell it. Be reasonable, girl."

"Let go my rein!"

"I've had enough of this. Tumble off that horse, or I'll pull you off."

Her dark eyes flashed scorn of him. "You coward! Do you think I'm afraid of you? Stand back!"

The man looked long at her, his teeth set; then caught at her strong little wrist. With a quick wrench she freed it, her eyes glowing like live coals.

"You dare!" she panted.

Her quirt rose and fell, the lash burning his wrist like a band of fire. With a furious oath he dropped his hand from the rein. Like a flash she was off, had dug her heels home, and was galloping into the moonlight recklessly as fast as she could send forward her pony. Stark terror had her by the throat. The fear of him flooded her whole being. Not till the drumming hoofs had carried her far did other emotions move her.

She was furious with him, and with herself for having been imposed upon by him. His beauty, his grace, his debonair manner--they were all hateful to her now. She had thought him a god among men, and he was of common clay. It was her vanity that was wounded, not her heart. She scourged herself because she had been so easily deceived, because she had let herself become a victim of his good looks and his impudence. For that she had let him kiss her--yes, and had returned his kiss--she was heartily contemptuous of herself. Always she had held herself with an instinctive pride, but in her passion of abandonment the tears confessed now that this pride had been humbled to the dust.

This gusty weather of the spirit, now of chastened pride and now of bitter anger, carried her even through the group of live-oaks which looked down upon the silent houses of the ranch, lying in a sea of splendid moon-beat. She was so much less confident of herself than usual that she made up her mind to tell her father the whole story of the hold-up and of what this man had threatened.

This resolution comforted her, and it was with something approaching calmness that she rode past the corral fence and swung from the saddle in front of the house.

CHAPTER X

JACK GOES TO THE HEAD OF THE CLASS

She trailed the bridle reins, went up the porch steps, and drew off her gauntlets. Her hand was outstretched to open the door when her gaze fell upon a large bill tacked to the wall. Swiftly she read it through, and, having read it, remained in suspended motion. For the first time she fully realized the danger and the penalty that confronted her.

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS Will Be Paid By Thomas L. Morse For the arrest and conviction of each of the men who were implicated in the robbery of the Fort Allison stage on April twenty-seventh last. A further reward of $1000 will be paid for the recovery of the bullion stolen.

This was what she read, and her eye was running over it a second time when she heard the jingle of a spur approaching.

"We're red-hot after them, you see, Miss Lee," a mocking voice drawled. "If you want to round up a thousand plunks, all you've got to do is to tell me who Mr. Hold-up is."

He laughed quietly, as if it were a joke, but the girl answered with a flush. "Is that all?"

"That's all."

"If I knew, do you suppose I would tell for five thousand--or ten thousand?"

For some reason this seemed to give him sardonic amusement. "No, I don't suppose you would."

"You'll have to catch him yourself if you want him. I'm not in that business, Mr. Flatray."

"I am. Sorry you don't like the business, Miss Lee." He added dryly: "But then you always were hard to please. You weren't satisfied when I was a rustler."

Her eyes swept him with a look, whether of reproach or contempt he was not sure. But the hard derision of his gaze did not soften. Mentally as well as physically he was a product of the sun and the wind, as tough and unyielding as a greasewood sapling. For a friend he would go the limit, and he could not forgive her that she had distrusted him.

"But mebbe you'd prefer it if I was rustling stages," he went on, looking straight at her.

"What do you mean?" she asked breathlessly.

"I want to have a talk with you."

"What about?"

"Suppose we step around to the side of the house. We'll be freer from interruption there."

He led the way, taking her consent for granted. With him he carried a chair for her from the porch.

"If you'll be as brief as possible, Mr. Flatray. I've been in the desert two days and want to change my clothes."

"I'll not detain you. It's about this gold robbery."

"Yes."

She could not take her eyes from him. Something told her that he knew her secret, or part of it. Her heart was fluttering like a caged thrush.

"Shall we begin at the beginning?"

"If you like."

"Or in the middle, say."

"If only you'll begin anywhere," she said impatiently.

"How will this do for a beginning, then? 'One thousand dollars will be paid by Thomas L. Morse for the arrest and conviction of each of the men who were implicated in the robbery of the Fort Allison stage on April twenty-seventh last.'"

She was shaken, there was no denying it. He could see the ebb of blood from her cheeks, the sudden stiffening of the slender figure.

She did not speak until she had control of her voice. "Dear me! What has all that to do with me?"

"A good deal, I'm afraid. You know how much, better than I do."

"Perhaps I'm stupid. You'll have to be a great deal clearer before I can understand you."

"I've noticed that it's a lot easier to understand what you want to than what you don't want to."

Sharply a thought smote her. "Have you seen Phil Norris lately?"

"No, I haven't. Do you think it likely that he would confess?"

"Confess?" she faltered.

"I see I'll have to start at the beginning, after all. It's pretty hard to say just where that is. It might be when Morse got hold of your father's claim, or another fellow might say it was when the Boone-Bellamy feud began, and that is a mighty long time ago."

"The Boone-Bellamy feud," echoed the girl.

"Yes. The real name of our friend Norris is Dunc Boone."

"He's no friend of mine." She flamed it out with such intensity that he was surprised.

"Glad to hear it. I can tell you, then, that he's a bad lot. He was driven out of Arkansas after a suspected murder. It was a killing from ambush. They couldn't quite hang it on him, but he lit a shuck to save his skin from lynchers. At that time he was a boy. Couldn't have been more than seventeen."

"Who did he kill?"

"One of the Bellamy faction. The real name of T. L. Morse is----"

"--Richard Bellamy."

"How do you know that?" he asked in surprise.

"I've known it since the first day I met him."

"Known that he was wanted for murder in Arkansas?"

"Yes."

"And you protected him?"

"I had a reason." She did not explain that her reason was Jack Flatray, between whom and the consequences of his rustling she had stood.

He pondered that a moment. "Well, Morse, or Bellamy, told me all about it. Now that Boone has recognized him, the game is up. He's ready to go back and stand trial if he must. I've communicated with the authorities in Arkansas and I'll hear from them in a day or two."

"What has this to do with the hold-up?"

"That's right, the hold-up. Well, this fellow Boone got your father to drinking, and then sprung it on him to rob the stage when the bullion was being shipped. Somehow Boone had got inside information about when this was to be. He had been nosing around up at the mine, and may have overheard something. O' course we know what your father would have done if he hadn't been drinking. He's straight as a string, even if he does go off like powder. But when a man's making a blue blotter of himself, things don't look the same to him. Anyhow he went in."

"He didn't. I can prove he didn't," burst from Melissy's lips.

"Be glad to hear your proof later. He ce'tainly planned the hold-up. Jim Budd overheard him."

"Did Jim tell you that?"

"Don't blame him for that. He didn't mean to tell, but I wound him up so he couldn't get away from it. I'll show you later why he couldn't."

"I'm sure you must have been very busy, spying and everything," she told him bitterly.

"I've kept moving. But to get back to the point. Your father and Boone were on the ground where the stage was robbed either at the time or right after. Their tracks were all over there. Then they got on their horses and rode up the lateral."

"But they couldn't. The ditch was full," broke from the girl.

"You're right it was. You must be some observing to know when that ditch is full and empty to an hour. I reckon you've got an almanac of tides," he said ironically.

She bit her lip with chagrin. "I just happened to notice."

"Some folks are more noticing than others. But you're surely right. They came up the ditch one on each side. Now, why one on each side, do you reckon?"

Melissy hid the dread that was flooding her heart. "I'm sure I don't know. You know everything else. I suppose you do that, too, if they really did."

"They had their reasons, but we won't go into that now. First off when they reach the house they take a bunch of sheep down to the ditch to water them. Now, why?"

"Why, unless because they needed water?"

"We'll let that go into the discard too just now. Let's suppose your father and Boone dumped the gold box down into the creek somewhere after they had robbed the stage. Suppose they had a partner up at the head-gates. When the signal is given down comes the water, and the box is covered by it. Mebbe that night they take it away and bury it somewhere else."

The girl began to breathe again. He knew a good deal, but he was still off the track in the main points.

"And who is this partner up at the canal? Have you got him located too?"

"I might guess."

"Well?"--impatiently.

"A young lady hailing from this hacienda was out gathering flowers all mo'ning. She was in her runabout. The tracks led straight from here to the head-gates. I followed them through the sands. There's a little break in one of the rubber tires. You'll find that break mark every eight feet or so in the sand wash."

"I opened the head-gates, then, did I?"

"It looks that way, doesn't it?"

"At a signal from father?"

"I reckon."

"And that's all the evidence you've got against him and me?" she demanded, still outwardly scornful, but very much afraid at heart.

"Oh, no, that ain't all, Miss Lee. Somebody locked the Chink in during this play. He's still wondering why."

"He dreamed it. Very likely he had been rolling a pill."

"Did I dream this too?" From his coat pocket he drew the piece of black shirting she had used as a mask. "I found it in the room where your father put me up that first night I stayed here. It was your brother Dick's room, and this came from the pocket of a shirt hanging in the closet. Now, who do you reckon put it there?"

For the first time in her life she knew what it was to feel faint. She tried to speak, but the words would not come from her parched throat. How could he be so hard and cruel, this man who had once been her best friend? How could he stand there so like a machine in his relentlessness?

"We--we used to--to play at hold-up when he was a boy," she gasped.

He shook his head. "No, I reckon that won't go. You see, I've found the piece this was torn from, and I found it in your father's coat. I went into his room on tiptoe that same hour. The coat was on the bed. He had gone downstairs for a minute and left it there. Likely he hadn't found a good chance to burn it yet." Taking the two pieces, he fitted them together and held them up. "They match exactly, you see. Did your father used to play with you too when he was a boy?"

He asked this with what seemed to her tortured soul like silken cruelty. She had no answer, none at least that would avail. Desperately she snatched at a straw.

"All this isn't proof. It's mere surmise. Some one's tracks were found by you. How do you know they were father's?"

"I've got that cinched too. I took his boots and measured them."

"Then where's the gold, if he took it? It must be somewhere. Where is it?"

"Now I'm going up to the head of the class, ma'am. The gold--why, that's a dead easy one. Near as I can make out, I'm sitting on it right now."

She gave a startled little cry that died in her throat.

"Yes, it's ce'tainly a valuable wash-stand. Chippendale furniture ain't in it with this kind. I reckon the king of England's is ace high against a straight flush when it bucks up against yours."

Melissy threw up her cards. "How did you find out?" she asked hoarsely.

The deputy forced her to commit herself more definitely. "Find out what?"

"Where I put the box."

"I'll go back and answer some of those other questions first. I might as well own up that I knew all the time your father didn't hold up the stage."

"You did?"

"He's no fool. He wouldn't leave his tracks all over the place where he had just held up a stage. He might jest as well have left a signed note saying he had done it. No, that didn't look like Champ Lee to me. It seemed more likely he'd arrived after the show than before. It wouldn't be like him, either, to go plowing up the side of the ditch, with his partner on the other side, making a trail that a blind man could follow in the night. Soon as I knew Lee and Boone made those tracks, I had it cinched that they were following the lateral to see where the robber was going. They had come to the same conclusion I had, that there wasn't any way of escape except by that empty lateral, assuming it had been empty. The only point was to find out where the hold-up left the lateral. That's why they rode one on each side of it. They weren't missing any bets, you see."

"And that's why they drove the sheep down to water--to hide the wheel-tracks. I couldn't understand that."

"I must 'a' been right on their heels, for they were jest getting the trotters out of the corral when I reached the place where your rig left the water. 'Course I fell back into the brush and circled around so as to hit the store in front."

"But if dad knew all the time, I don't see--surely, he wouldn't have come right after me and made plain the way I escaped."

"That's the point. He didn't know. I reckon he was sort of guessing around in the dark, plumb puzzled; couldn't find the switch at all at first. Then it come to him, and he thought of the sheep to blind the trail. If I'd been half a hour later he would have got away with it too. No, if he had guessed that you were in the hold-up, him and Boone would have hiked right out on a false trail and led us into the Galiuros. Having no notion of it at first, he trails you down."

"And the gold--how did you find that?"

"I knew it was either right around the place or else you had taken it on with you when you went to the head-gates and buried it up there somewhere. Next day I followed your tracks and couldn't find any place where you might have left it. I knew how clever you were by the way you planned your getaway. Struck me as mighty likely that you had left it lying around in plain view somewhere. If you had dumped it out of the box into a sack, the box must be somewhere. You hadn't had time to burn it before the stage got back. I drifted back to your kindling pile, where all the old boxes from the store are lying. I happened to notice a brass tack in one near the end; then the marks of the tack heads where they had pressed against the wood. I figured you might have substituted one box for another, and inside of ten minutes I stumbled against your wash-stand and didn't budge it. Then I didn't have to look any further."

"I've been trying to get a chance to move it and haven't ever found one. You were always coming around the corner on me," she explained.

"Sorry I incommoded you," he laughed. "But it's too heavy for a lady to lift alone, anyhow. I don't see how you managed it this far."

"I'm pretty strong," she said quietly.

She had no hope of escape from the net of evidence in which he had entangled her. It was characteristic of her that she would not stoop to tricks to stir his pity. Deep in her heart she knew now that she had wronged him when she had suspected him of being a rustler. He could not be. It was not in the man's character. But she would ask no mercy of him. All her pride rose to meet his. She would show him how game she could be. What she had sown she would reap. Nor would it have been any use to beseech him to spare her. He was a hard man, she told herself. Not even a fool could have read any weakness in the quiet gray eyes that looked so steadily into hers. In his voice and movements there was a certain deliberation, but this had nothing to do with indecision of character. He would do his duty as he saw it, regardless of whom it might affect.

Melissy stood before him in the unconscious attitude of distinction she often fell into when she was moved, head thrown back so as to bare the rounded throat column, brown little hands folded in front of her, erectly graceful in all her slender lines.

"What are you going to do with me?" she asked.

His stone-cold eyes met hers steadily. "It ain't my say-so. I'm going to put it up to Bellamy. I don't know what he'll do."

But, cold as his manner was, the heart of the man leaped to her courage. He saw her worn out, pathetically fearful, but she could face him with that still little smile of hers. He longed to take her in his arms, to tell her it would be all right--all right.

"There's one thing that troubles me. I don't know how father will take this. You know how quick-tempered he is. I'm afraid he'll shoot somebody or do something rash when he finds out. You must let me be alone with him when I tell him."

He nodded. "I been thinking of that myself. It ain't going to do him any good to make a gun-play. I have a notion mebbe this thing will unravel itself if we give it time. It will only make things worse for him to go off half-cocked."

"How do you mean it may unravel itself?" she asked.

"Bellamy is a whole lot better man than folks give him credit for being. I expect he won't be hard on you when he knows why you did it."

"And why did I do it?" she asked quietly.

"Sho! I know why you did it. Jim Budd told you what he had heard, and you figured you could save your father from doing it. You meant to give the money back, didn't you?"

"Yes, but I can't prove that either in court or to Mr. Bellamy."

"You don't need to prove it to me. If you say so, that's enough," he said in his unenthusiastic voice.

"But you're not judge and jury, and you're certainly not Mr. Bellamy."

"Scrape Arizona with a fine-tooth comb and you couldn't get a jury to convict when it's up against the facts in this case."

At this she brightened. "Thank you, Mr. Flatray." And naïvely she added with a little laugh: "Are you ready to put the handcuffs on me yet?"

He looked with a smile at her outstretched hands. "They wouldn't stay on."

"Don't you carry them in sizes to fit all criminals?"

"I'll have to put you on parole."

"I'll break it and climb out the window. Then I'll run off with this."

She indicated the box of treasure.

"I need that wash-stand in my room. I'm going to take it up there to-night," he said.

"This isn't a very good safety deposit vault," she answered, and, nodding a careless good-night, she walked away in her slow-limbed, graceful Southern fashion.

She had carried it off to the last without breaking down, but, once in her own room, the girl's face showed haggard in the moonlight. It was one thing to jest about it with him; it was another to face the facts as they stood. She was in the power of her father's enemy, the man whose proffer of friendship they had rejected with scorn. Her pride cried out that she could not endure mercy from him even if he wished to extend it. Surely there must be some other way out than the humiliation of begging him not to prosecute. She could see none but one, and that was infinitely worse. Yet she knew it would be her father's first impulsive instinct to seek to fight her out of her trouble, the more because it was through him that it had fallen upon her. At all hazards she must prevent this.

CHAPTER XI

A CONVERSATION

Not five minutes after Melissy had left the deputy sheriff, another rider galloped up the road. Jack, returning from his room, where he had left the box of gold locked up, waited on the porch to see who this might be.

The horseman proved to be the man Norris, or Boone, and in a thoroughly bad temper, as Jack soon found out.

"Have you see anything of 'Lissie Lee?" he demanded immediately.

"Miss Lee has just left me. She has gone to her room," answered Flatray quietly.

"Well, I want to see her," said the other hoarsely.

"I reckon you better postpone it to to-morrow. She's some played out and needs sleep."

"Well, I'm going to see her now."

Jack turned, still all gentleness, and called to Jim Budd, who was in the store.

"Oh, Jim! Run upstairs and knock on Miss Melissy's door and tell her Mr. Norris is down here. Ask if she will see him to-night."

"You're making a heap of formality out of this, Mr. Buttinsky," sneered the cowpuncher.

Jack made no answer, unless it were one to whistle gently and look out into the night as if he were alone.

"No, seh. She doan' wan' tuh see him to-night," announced Jim upon his return.

"That seems to settle it, Mr. Norris," said Jack pleasantly.

"Not by a hell of a sight. I've got something to say to her, and I'm going to say it."

"To-morrow," amended the officer.

"I said to-night."

"But your say doesn't go here against hers. I reckon you'll wait."

"Not so's you could notice it." The cowpuncher took a step forward toward the stairway, but Flatray was there before him.

"Get out of the way, you. I don't stand for any butting-in," the cowboy blustered.

"Don't be a goat, Norris. She's tired, and she says she don't want to see you. That's enough, ain't it?"

Norris leaped back with an oath to draw his gun, but Jack had the quickest draw in Arizona. The puncher found himself looking into the business end of a revolver.

"Better change your mind, seh," suggested the officer amiably. "I take it you've been drinking and you're some excited. If you were in condition to savez the situation, you'd understand that the young lady doesn't care to see you now. Do you need a church to fall on you before you can take a hint?"

"I reckon if you knew all about her, you wouldn't be so anxious to stand up for her," Norris said darkly.

"I expect we cayn't any of us stand the great white light on all our acts; but if any one can, it's that little girl upstairs."

"What would you say if I told you that she's liable to go to Yuma if I lift my hand?"

"I'd say I was from Missouri and needed showing."

"Put up that gun, come outside with me, and if I take a notion I'll show you all right."

Jack laughed as his gun disappeared. "I'd be willing to bet high that there are a good many citizens around here haided straighter for Yuma than Miss Melissy."

Without answering, Norris led the way out and stopped only when his arm rested on the fence of the corral.

"Nobody can hear us now," he said brusquely, and the ranger got a whiff of his hot whisky breath. "You've put it up to me to make good. All right, I'll do it. That little girl in there, as you call her, is the bad man who held up the Fort Allison stage."

The officer laughed tolerantly as he lit a cigarette.

"I hear you say it, Norris."

"I didn't expect you to believe it right away, but it's a fact just the same."

Flatray climbed to the fence and rested his feet on a rail. "Fire ahead. I'm listenin'."

"The first men on the ground after that hold-up were me and Lee. We covered the situation thorough and got hold of some points right away."

"That's right funny too. When I asked you if you'd been down there you both denied it," commented the officer.

"We were protecting the girl. Mind you, we didn't know who had done it then, but we had reasons to think the person had just come from this ranch."

"What reasons?" briefly demanded Flatray.

"We don't need to go into them. We had them, anyhow. Then I lit on a foot-print right on the edge of the ditch that no man ever made. We didn't know what to make of it, but we wiped it out and followed the ditch, one on each side. We'd figured that was the way he had gone. You see, though water was running in the ditch now, it hadn't been half an hour before."

"You don't say!"

"There wasn't a sign of anybody leaving the ditch till we got to the ranch; then we saw tracks going straight to the house."

"So you got a bunch of sheep and drove them down there to muss things up some."

Norris looked sharply at him. "You got there while we were driving them back. Well, that's right. We had to help her out."

"You're helping her out now, ain't you?" Jack asked dryly.

"That's my business. I've got my own reasons, Mr. Deputy. All you got to do is arrest her."

"Just as soon as you give me the evidence, seh."

"Haven't I given it to you? She was seen to drive away from the house in her rig. She left footprints down there. She came back up the ditch and then rode right up to the head-gates and turned on the water. Jim Little saw her cutting across country from the head-gates hell-to-split."

"Far as I can make out, all the evidence you've given me ain't against her, but against you. She was out drivin' when it happened, you say, and you expect me to arrest her for it. It ain't against the law to go driving, seh. And as for that ditch fairy tale, on your own say-so you wiped out all chance to prove the story."

"Then you won't arrest her?"

"If you'll furnish the evidence, seh."

"I tell you we know she did it. Her father knows it."

"Is it worryin' his conscience? Did he ask you to lay an information against her?" asked the officer sarcastically.

"That isn't the point."

"You're right. Here's the point." Not by the faintest motion of the body had the officer's indolence been lifted, but the quiet ring of his voice showed it was gone. "You and Lee were overheard planning that robbery the day after you were seen hanging around the 'Monte Cristo.' You started out to hold up the stage. It was held up. By your own story you were the first men on the ground after the robbery. I tracked you straight from there here along the ditch. I found a black mask in Lee's coat. A dozen people saw you on that fool sheep-drive of yours. And to sum up, I found the stolen gold right here where you must have hidden it."

"You found the gold? Where?"

"That ain't the point either, seh. The point is that I've got you where I want you, Mr. Norris, alias Mr. Boone. You're wound up in a net you cayn't get away from. You're wanted back East, and you're wanted here. I'm onto your little game, sir. Think I don't know you've been trying to manufacture evidence against me as a rustler? Think I ain't wise to your whole record? You're arrested for robbing the Fort Allison stage."

Norris, standing close in front of him, shot his right hand out and knocked the officer backward from the fence. Before the latter could get on his feet again the cowpuncher was scudding through the night. He reached his horse, flung himself on, and galloped away. Harmlessly a bullet or two zipped after him as he disappeared.

The deputy climbed over the fence again and laughed softly to himself. "You did that right well, Jack. He'll always think he did that by his lone, never will know you was a partner in that escape. It's a fact, though, I could have railroaded him through on the evidence, but not without including the old man. No, there wasn't any way for it but that grandstand escape of Mr. Boone's."

Still smiling, he dusted himself, put up his revolver, and returned to the house.

CHAPTER XII

THE TENDERFOOT MAKES A PROPOSITION

Melissy waited in dread expectancy to see what would happen. Of quick, warm sympathies, always ready to bear with courage her own and others' burdens, she had none of that passive endurance which age and experience bring. She was keyed to the heroism of an occasion, but not yet to that which life lays as a daily burden upon many without dramatic emphasis.

All next day nothing took place. On the succeeding one her father returned with the news that the "Monte Cristo" contest had been continued to another term of court. Otherwise nothing unusual occurred. It was after mail time that she stepped to the porch for a breath of fresh air and noticed that the reward placard had been taken down.

"Who did that?" she asked of Alan McKinstra, who was sitting on the steps, reading a newspaper and munching an apple.

"Jack Flatray took it down. He said the offer of a reward had been withdrawn."

"When did he do that?"

"About an hour ago. Just before he rode off."

"Rode off! Where did he go?"

"Heard him say he was going to Mesa. He told your father that when he settled the bill."

"He's gone for good, then?"

"That's the way I took it. Say, Melissy, Farnum says Jack told him the gold had been found and turned back to Morse. Is that right?"

"How should I know?"

"Well, it looks blamed funny they could get the bullion back without getting the hold-up."

"Maybe they'll get him yet," she consoled him.

"I wish I could get a crack at him," the boy murmured vengefully.

"You had one chance at him, didn't you?"

"José spoiled it. Honest, I wasn't going to lie down, 'Lissie."

Again the days followed each other uneventfully. Bellamy himself never came for his mail now, but sent one of the boys from the mine for it. Melissy wondered whether he despised her so much he did not ever want to see her again. Somehow she did not like to think this. Perhaps it might be delicacy on his part. He was going to drop the whole thing magnanimously and did not want to put upon her the obligation of thanking him by presenting himself to her eyes.

But though he never appeared in person, he had never been so much in her mind. She could not rid herself of a growing sympathy and admiration for this man who was holding his own against many. A story which was being whispered about reached her ears and increased this. A bunch of his sheep had been found poisoned on their feeding ground, and certain cattle interests were suspected of having done the dastardly thing.

When she could stand the silence no longer Melissy called up Jack Flatray on the telephone at Mesa.

"You caught me just in time. I'm leaving for Phoenix to-night," he told her. "What can I do for you, Miss Lee?"

"I want to know what's being done about that Fort Allison stage hold-up."

"The money has been recovered."

"I know that, but--what about the--the criminals?"

"They made their getaway all right."

"Aren't you looking for them?"

"No."

"Did Mr. Morse want you to drop it?"

"Yes. He was very urgent about it."

"Does he know who the criminals are?"

"Yes."

"And isn't going to prosecute?"

"So he told me."

"What did Mr. Morse say when you made your report?"

"Said, 'Thank you.'"

"Oh, yes, but--you know what I mean."

"Not being a mind-reader----"

"About the suspect. Did he say anything?"

"Said he had private reasons for not pushing the case. I didn't ask him what they were."

This was all she could get out of him. It was less than she had hoped. Still, it was something. She knew definitely what Bellamy had done. Wherefore she sat down to write him a note of thanks. It took her an hour and eight sheets of paper before she could complete it to her satisfaction. Even then the result was not what she wanted. She wished she knew how he felt about it, so that she could temper it to the right degree of warmth or coolness. Since she did not know, she erred on the side of stiffness and made her message formal.

"Mr. Thomas L. Morse, "Monte Cristo Mine. "Dear Sir:

"Father and I feel that we ought to thank you for your considerate forbearance in a certain matter you know of. Believe me, sir, we are grateful.

"Very respectfully, "Melissy Lee." She could not, however, keep herself from one touch of sympathy, and as a postscript she naïvely added:

"I'm sorry about the sheep."

Before mailing it she carried this letter to her father. Neither of them had ever referred to the other about what each knew of the affair of the robbery. More than once it had been on the tip of Champ Lee's tongue to speak of it, but it was not in his nature to talk out what he felt, and with a sigh he had given it up. Now Melissy came straight to the point.

"I've been writing a letter to Mr. Morse, dad, thanking him for not having me arrested."

Lee shot at her a glance of quick alarm.

"Does he know about it, honey?"

"Yes. Jack Flatray found out the whole thing and told him. He was very insistent on dropping it, Mr. Flatray says."

"You say Jack found out all about it, honey?" repeated Lee in surprise.

He was seated in a big chair on the porch, and she nestled on one arm of it, rumpled his gray hair as she had always done since she had been a little girl, kissed him, and plunged into her story.

He heard her to the end without a word, but she noticed that he gripped the chair hard. When she had finished he swept her into his arms and broke down over her, calling her the pet names of her childhood.

"Honey-bird ... Dad's little honey-bird ... I'm that ashamed of myse'f. 'Twas the whisky did it, lambie. Long as I live I'll nevah touch it again. I'll sweah that befo' God. All week you been packin' the troubles I heaped on you, precious, and afteh you-all saved me from being a criminal...."

So he went on, spending his tempestuous love in endearments and caresses, and so together they afterward talked it out and agreed to send the letter she had written.

But Lee was not satisfied with her atonement. He could not rest to let it go at that, without expressing his own part in it to Bellamy. Next day he rode up to the mine, and found its owner in workman's slops just stepping from the cage. If Bellamy were surprised to see him, no sign of it reached his face.

"If you'll wait a minute till I get these things off, I'll walk up to the cabin with you, Mr. Lee," he said.

"I reckon you got my daughter's letter," said Lee abruptly as he strode up the mountainside with his host.

"Yes, I got it an hour ago."

"I be'n and studied it out, Mr. Morse. I couldn't let it go at that, and so I reckoned I'd jog along up hyer and tell you the whole story."

"That's as you please, Mr. Lee. I'm quite satisfied as it is."

The rancher went on as if he had not heard. "'Course I be'n holding a grudge at you evah since you took up this hyer claim. I expect that rankles with me most of the time, and when I take to drinking seems to me that mine still belongs to me. Well, I heerd tell of that shipment you was making, and I sets out to git it, for it ce'tainly did seem to belong to me. Understand, I wasn't drunk, but had be'n settin' pretty steady to the bottle for several days. Melissy finds it out, no matter how, and undertakes to keep me out of trouble. She's that full of sand, she nevah once thought of the danger or the consequences. Anyhow, she meant to git the bullion back to you afteh the thing had blown over."

"I haven't doubted that a moment since I knew she did it," said Bellamy quietly.

"Glad to hear it. I be'n misjudgin' you, seh, but you're a white man afteh all. Well, you know the rest of the story: how she held up the stage, how Jack drapped in befo' our tracks were covered, how smart he worked the whole thing out, and how my little gyurl confessed to him to save me."

"Yes, I know all that."

"What kind of a figure do I make in this? First off, I act like a durn fool, and she has to step in to save me. Then I let her tote the worry of it around while I ride off to Mesa. When Jack runs me down, she takes the blame again. To finish up with, she writes you a letter of thanks, jes' as if the whole fault was hers."

The old soldier selected a smooth rock and splashed it with tobacco juice before he continued with rising indignation against himself.

"I'm a fine father for a gyurl like that, ain't I? Up to date I always had an idee I was some sort of a man, but dad gum it! I cayn't see it hyer. To think of me lettin' my little gyurl stand the consequences of my meanness. No, Mr. Morse, that's one too much for Champ Lee. He's nevah going to touch another drop of whisky long as he lives."

"Glad to hear it. That's a square amend to make, one she will appreciate."

"So I took a pasear up hyer to explain this, and to thank you for yore kindness. Fac' is, Mr. Morse, it would have jest about killed me if anything had happened to my little 'Lissie. I want to say that if you had a-be'n her brother you couldn't 'a' be'n more decent."

"There was nothing else to do. It happens that I am in her debt. She saved my life once. Besides, I understood the motives for her action when she broke the law, and I honored them with all my heart. Flatray felt just as I did about it. So would any right-thinking man."

"Well, you cayn't keep me from sayin' again that you're a white man, seh," the other said with a laugh behind which the emotion of tears lay near.

"That offer of a compromise is still open, Mr. Lee."

The Southerner shook his grizzled head. "No, I reckon not, Mr. Morse. Understand, I got nothin' against you. The feud is wiped out, and I'll make you no mo' trouble. But it's yore mine, and I don't feel like taking charity. I got enough anyhow."

"It wouldn't be charity. I've always felt as if you had a moral claim on an interest in the 'Monte Cristo.' If you won't take this yourself, why not let me make out the papers to Miss Lee? You would feel then that she was comfortably fixed, no matter what happened to you."

"Well, I'll lay it befo' her. Anyhow, we're much obliged to you, Mr. Morse. I'll tell you what, seh," he added as an after-thought. "You come down and talk it over with 'Lissie. If you can make her see it that way, good enough."

When Champ Lee turned his bronco's head homeward he was more at peace with the world than he had been for a long time. He felt that he would be able to look his little girl in the face again. For the first time in a week he felt at one with creation. He rode into the ranch plaza humming "Dixie."

On the day following that of Lee's call, the mine-owner saddled his mare and took the trail to the half-way house. It was not until after the stage had come and gone that he found the chance for a word with Melissy alone.

"Your father submitted my proposition, did he?" Bellamy said by way of introducing the subject.

"Let's take a walk on it. I haven't been out of the house to-day," she answered with the boyish downrightness sometimes uppermost in her.

Calling Jim, she left him in charge of the store, caught up a Mexican sombrero, and led the way up the trail to a grove of live-oaks perched on a bluff above. Below them stretched the plain, fold on fold to the blue horizon edge. Close at hand clumps of cactus, thickets of mesquit, together with the huddled adobe buildings of the ranch, made up the details of a scene possible only in the sunburnt territory. The palpitating heat quivered above the hot brown sand. No life stirred in the valley except a circling buzzard high in the sky, and the tiny moving speck with its wake of dust each knew to be the stage that had left the station an hour before.

Melissy, unconscious of the charming picture she made, stood upon a rock and looked down on it all.

"I suppose," she said at last slowly, "that most people would think this pretty desolate. But it's a part of me. It's all I know." She broke off and smiled at him. "I had a chance to be civilized. Dad wanted to send me East to school, but I couldn't leave him."

"Where were you thinking of going?"

"To Denver."

Her conception of the East amused him. It was about as accurate as a New Yorker's of the West.

"I'm glad you didn't. It would have spoiled you and sent you back just like every other young lady the schools grind out."

She turned curiously toward him. "Am I not like other girls?"

It was on his tongue tip to tell her that she was gloriously different from most girls he had known, but discretion sealed his lips. Instead, he told her of life in the city and what it means to society women, its emptiness and unsatisfaction.

His condemnation was not proof positive to her. "I'd like to go there for myself some time and see. And anyhow it must be nice to have all the money you want with which to travel," she said.

This gave him his opening. "It makes one independent. I think that's the best thing wealth can give--a sort of spaciousness." He waited perceptibly before he added: "I hope you have decided to be my partner in the mine."

"I've decided not to."

"I'm sorry. But why?"

"It's your mine. It isn't ours."

"That's nonsense. I always in my heart, recognized a moral claim you have. Besides, the case isn't finished yet. Perhaps your father may win his contest. I'm all for settling out of court."

"You know we won't win."

"I don't."

She gave him applause from her dark eyes. "That's very fair of you, but Dad and I can't do it."

"Then you still have a grudge at me," he smiled.

"Not the least little bit of a one."

"I shan't take no for an answer, then. I'll order the papers made out whether you want me to or not." Without giving her a chance to speak, he passed to another topic: "I've decided to go out of the sheep business."

"I'm so glad!" she cried.

"Those aren't my feelings," he answered ruefully. "I hate to quit under fire."

"Of course you do, but your friends will know why you do it."

"Why do I do it?"

"Because you know it's right. The cattlemen had the range first. Their living is tied up in cattle, and your sheep are ruining the feed for them. Yesterday when I was out riding I counted the bones of eight dead cows."

He nodded gravely. "Yes, in this country sheep are death to cows. I hate to be a quitter, but I hate worse to take the bread out of the mouths of a dozen families. Two days ago I had an offer for my whole bunch, and to-morrow I'm going to take the first instalment over the pass and drive them down to the railroad."

"But you'll have to cross the dead line to get over the pass," she said quickly; for all Cattleland knew that a guard had been watching his herds to see they did not cross the pass.

"Yes. I'm going to send Alan with a letter to Farnum. I don't think there will be any opposition to my crossing it when my object is understood," he smiled.

Melissy watched him ride away, strong and rugged and ungraceful, from the head to the heel of him a man. Life had gone hard with him. She wondered whether that were the reason her heart went out to him so warmly.

As she moved about her work that day and the next little snatches of song broke from her, bubbling forth like laughter, born of the quiet happiness within, for which she could give no reason.

After the stage had gone she saddled her pony and rode toward the head of the pass. In an hour or two now the sheep would be pouring across the divide, and she wanted to get a photograph of them as they emerged from the pass. She was following an old cattle trail which ran into the main path just this side of the pass, and she was close to the junction when the sound of voices stopped her. Some instinct made her wait and listen.

The speakers were in a dip of the trail just ahead of her, and the voice of the first she recognized as belonging to the man Boone. The tone of it was jubilantly cruel.

"No, sir. You don't move a step of the way, not a step, Mr. Alan McKinstra. I've got him right where I want him, and I don't care if you talk till the cows come home."

Alan's voice rang out indignantly, "It's murder then--just plain, low-down murder. If you hold me here and let Morse fall into a death trap without warning him, you're as responsible as if you shot him yourself."

"All right. Suits me down to the ground. We'll let it go at that. I'm responsible. If you want the truth flat and plain, I don't mind telling you that I wouldn't be satisfied if I wasn't responsible. I'm evening up some little things with Mr. Morse to-day."

Melissy needed to hear no more to understand the situation, but if she had, the next words of Boone would have cleared it up.

"When I met up with you and happened on the news that you was taking a message to Farnum, and when I got onto the fact that Morse, as you call him, was moving his sheep across the dead line, relying on you having got his letter to the cattlemen to make it safe, it seemed luck too good to be true. All I had to do was to persuade you to stay right here with me, and Mr. Morse would walk into the pass and be wiped out. You get the beauty of it, my friend, don't you? I'm responsible, but it will be Farnum and his friends that will bear the blame. There ain't but one flaw in the whole thing: Morse will never know that it's me that killed him."

"You devil!" cried the boy, with impotent passion.

"I've waited ten years for this day, and it's come at last. Don't you think for a moment I'm going to weaken. No, sir! You'll sit there with my gun poked in your face just as you've sat for six hours. It's my say-so to-day, sir," Boone retorted, malevolence riding triumph in his voice.

Melissy's first impulse was to confront the man, her next to slip away without being discovered and then give the alarm.

"Yes, sir," continued the cowpuncher; "I scored on Mr. Morse two or three nights ago, when I played hell with one of his sheep camps, and to-day I finish up with him. His sheep have been watched for weeks, and at the first move it's all up with him and them. Farnum's vaqueros will pay my debt in full. Just as soon as I'm right sure of it I'll be jogging along to Dead Man's Cache, and you can go order the coffin for your boss."

The venom of the man was something to wonder at. It filled the listening girl with sick apprehension. She had not known that such hatred could live in the world.

Quietly she led her pony back, mounted, and made a wide detour until she struck the trail above. Already she could hear the distant bleat of sheep which told her that the herd was entering the pass. Recklessly she urged her pony forward, galloping into the saddle between the peaks without regard to the roughness of the boulder-strewn path. A voice from above hailed her with a startled shout as she flew past. Again, a shot rang out, the bullet whistling close to her ear. But nothing could stop her till she reached the man she meant to save.

And so it happened that Richard Bellamy, walking at the head of his herd, saw a horse gallop wildly round a bend almost into his bleating flock. The rider dragged the bronco to a halt and slipped to the ground. She stood there ashen-hued, clinging to the saddle-horn and swaying slightly.

"I'm in time.... Thank God!... Thank God!" her parched lips murmured.

"Miss Lee! You here?" he cried.

They looked at each other, the man and the girl, while the wild fear in her heart began to still. The dust of the drive was thick on his boots, his clothes, his face, but the soil of travel could not obscure the power of his carriage, the strong lines of his shoulders, the set of his broad, flat back, any more than it could tarnish her rarity, the sweetness of blood in her that under his gaze beat faintly into her dusky cheeks. The still force of him somehow carried reassurance to her. Such virility of manhood could not be marked for extinction.

She panted out her story, and his eyes never left her.

"You have risked your life to save mine and my herders," he said very quietly.

"You must go back," she replied irrelevantly.

"I can't. The entrance is guarded."

This startled her. "Then--what shall we do?"

"You must ride forward at once. Tell the vaqueros that I am moving my sheep only to take them to the railroad. Explain to them how Alan is detained with the message I sent Farnum. In a few minutes we shall follow with the sheep."

"And if they don't believe that you are going out of the sheep business--what then?"

"I shall have to take my chance of that."

She seemed about to speak, but changed her mind, nodded, swung to the saddle, and rode forward. After a few minutes Bellamy followed slowly. He was unarmed, not having doubted that his letter to the cattleman would make his journey safe. That he should have waited for an answer was now plain, but the contract called for an immediate delivery of the sheep, as he had carefully explained in his note to Farnum.

Presently he heard again the clatter of a horse's hoofs in the loose shale and saw Melissy returning.

"Well?" he asked as she drew up.

"I've told them. I think they believe me, but I'm going through the gorge with you."

He looked up quickly to protest, but did not. He knew that her thought was that her presence beside him would protect him from attack. The rough chivalry of Arizona takes its hat off to a woman, and Melissy Lee was a favorite of the whole countryside.

So together they passed into the gulch, Bellamy walking by the side of her horse. Neither of them spoke. At their heels was the soft rustle of many thousands of padding feet.

Once there came to them the sound of cheering, and they looked up to see a group of vaqueros waving their hats and shouting down. Melissy shook her handkerchief and laughed happily at them. It was a day to be remembered by these riders.

They emerged into a roll of hill-tops upon which the setting sun had cast a weird afterglow of radiance in which the whole world burned. The cactus, the stunted shrubbery, the painted rocks, seemed all afire with some magic light that had touched their commonness to a new wonder.

A sound came to them from below. A man, rifle in hand and leading a horse, was stealthily crossing the trail to disappear among the large boulders beyond.

Melissy did not speak, scarce dared to draw breath, for the man beneath them was Boone. There was something furtive and lupine about him that suggested the wild beast stalking its kill. No doubt he had become impatient to see the end of his foe and had ridden forward. He had almost crossed the path before he looked up and caught sight of them standing together in the fireglow of the sunset.

Abruptly he came to a standstill.

"By God! you slipped through, did you?" he said in a low voice of concentrated bitterness.

Bellamy did not answer, but he separated himself from the girl by a step or two. He knew quite well what was coming, and he looked down quietly with steady eyes upon his foe.

From far below there came the faint sound of a horse breaking its way through brush. Boone paused to listen, but his eye never wandered from the bareheaded, motionless figure silhouetted against the skyline in the ruddy evening glow. He had shifted his rifle so that it lay in both hands, ready for immediate action.

Melissy, horror-stricken, had sat silent, but now she found her voice.

"He is unarmed!" she cried to the cowpuncher.

He made no answer. Another sound in the brush, close at hand, was distracting his attention, though not his gaze.

Just as he whipped up his rifle Melissy sprang forward. She heard the sound of the explosion fill the draw, saw Bellamy clutch at the air and slowly sink to the ground. Before the echoes had died away she had flung herself toward the inert body.

The outlaw took a step or two forward, as if to make sure of his work, but at the sound of running footsteps he changed his mind, swung to the saddle and disappeared among the rocks.

An instant later Bob Farnum burst into view.

"What's up?" he demanded.

Melissy looked up. Her face was perfectly ashen. "Phil Norris ... he shot Mr. Morse."

Farnum stepped forward. "Hurt badly, Mr. Morse?"

The wounded man grinned faintly. "Scared worse, I reckon. He got me in the fleshy part of the left arm."

CHAPTER XIII

OLD ACQUAINTANCES

"You wanted to see me?"

The voice had the soft, slow intonation of the South, and it held some quality that haunted the memory. Or so Melissy thought afterward, but that may have been because of its owner's appeal to sympathy.

"If you are Miss Yarnell."

"Ferne Yarnell is my name."

"Mr. Bellamy asked me to call on you. He sent this letter of introduction."

A faint wave of color beat into the cheek of the stranger. "You know Mr. Bellamy then?"

"Yes. He would have been here to meet you, but he met with an accident yesterday."

"An accident!" There was a quick flash of alarm in the lifted face.

"He told me to tell you that it was not serious. He was shot in the arm."

"Shot. By whom?" She was ashen to the lips.

"By a man called Duncan Boone."

"I know him. He is a dangerous man."

"Yes," Melissy nodded. "I don't think we know how very dangerous he is. We have all been deceived in him till recently."

"Does he live here?"

"Yes. The strange thing is that he and Mr. Bellamy had never met in this country until a few days ago. There used to be some kind of a feud between the families. But you must know more about that than I do."

"Yes. My family is involved in the feud. Mr. Bellamy is a distant cousin of mine."

"So he told me."

"Have you known him long?"

Melissy thought that there was a little more than curiosity in the quick look the young woman flung at her.

"I met him when he first came here. He was lost on the desert and I found him. After that we became very unfriendly. He jumped a mining claim belonging to my father. But we've made it up and agreed to be friends."

"He wrote about the young lady who saved his life."

Melissy smiled. "Did he say that I was a cattle and a stage rustler?"

"He said nothing that was not good."

"I'm much obliged to him," the Western girl answered breezily. "And now do tell me, Miss Yarnell, that you and your people have made up your mind to stay permanently."

"Father is still looking the ground over. He has almost decided to buy a store here. Yet he has been in the town only a day. So you see he must like it."

Outside the open second story window of the hotel Melissy heard a voice that sounded familiar. She moved toward the window alcove, and at the same time a quick step was heard in the hall. Someone opened the door of the parlor and stood on the threshold. It was the man called Boone.

Melissy, from the window, glanced round. Her first impulse was to speak; her second to remain silent. For the Arkansan was not looking at her. His mocking ribald gaze was upon Ferne Yarnell.

That young woman looked up from the letter of introduction she was reading and a startled expression swept into her face.

"Dunc Boone," she cried.

The man doffed his hat with elaborate politeness. "Right glad to meet up with you again, Miss Ferne. You was in short dresses when I saw you last. My, but you've grown pretty. Was it because you heard I was in Arizona that you came here?"

She rose, rejecting in every line of her erect figure his impudent geniality, his insolent pretense of friendliness.

"My brother is in the hotel. If he learns you are here there will be trouble."

A wicked malice lay in his smiling eyes. "Trouble for him or for me?" he inquired silkily.

His lash flicked her on the raw. Hal Yarnell was a boy of nineteen. This man had a long record as a gunfighter to prove him a desperate man. Moreover, he knew how hopelessly heart sick she was of the feud that for many years had taken its toll of blood.

"Haven't you done us enough harm, you and yours? Go away. Leave us alone. That's all I ask of you."

He came in and closed the door. "But you see it ain't all I ask of you, Ferne Yarnell. I always did ask all I could get of a girl as pretty as you."

"Will you leave me, sir?"

"When I'm through."

"Now."

"No, I reckon not," he drawled between half shuttered eyes.

She moved toward the door, but he was there before her. With a turn of his wrist he had locked it.

"This interview quits at my say-so, honey. Think after so many years of absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder you're going to trample over me like I was a kid? Guess again."

"Unlock that door," she ordered.

"When I get good and ready. We'll have our talk out first."

Her eyes blazed. She was white as paper though she faced him steadily. But her heart wavered. She dared not call out for fear her brother might hear and come to her assistance. This she must forestall at all costs.

A heel clicked in the alcove. For the first time Norris, or Boone as the Southern girl had called him, became aware of a third party in the room. Melissy was leaning out of the window. She called down to a man standing on the street.

"Jack, come up here quick. I want you."

Boone took a step forward. "You here, 'Lissie Lee?"

She laughed scornfully. "Yes, I'm here. An unexpected pleasure, isn't it?"

"Do you know Ferne Yarnell?" he asked, for once taken aback.

"It looks as if I do."

His quick furtive eye fell upon an envelope on the floor. He picked it up. Upon it was written, "Miss Ferne Yarnell," and in the corner, "Introducing Miss Lee."

A muscle twitched in his face. When he looked up there was an expression of devilish malignity on it.

"Mr. Bellamy's handwriting, looks like." He turned to the Arizona girl. "Then I didn't put the fellow out of business."

"No, you coward."

The angry color crept to the roots of his hair. "Better luck next time."

The door knob rattled. Someone outside was trying to get in. Those inside the room paid no obvious attention to him. The venomous face of the cattle detective held the women fascinated.

"When Dick Bellamy ambushed Shep he made a hell of a bad play of it. My old mammy used to say that the Boones were born wolves. I can see where she was right. The man that killed my brother gets his one of these days and don't you forget it. You just stick around. We're due to shoot this thing out, him and me," the man continued, his deep-socketed eyes burning from the grim handsome face.

"Open the door," ordered a voice from the hall, shaking the knob violently.

"You don't know he killed your brother. Someone else may have done it. And it may have been done in self defence," the Arkansas girl said to Boone in a voice so low and reluctant that it appeared the words were wrung from her by torture.

"Think I'm a buzzard head? Why for did he run away? Why did he jump for the sandhills soon as the word came to arrest him?" He snapped together his straight, thin-lipped mouth, much as a trap closes on its prey.

A heavy weight hurtled against the door and shook it to the hinges. Melissy had been edging to the right. Now with a twist of her lissom body she had slipped past the furious man and turned the key.

Jack Flatray came into the room. His glance swept the young women and fastened on the man. In the crossed eyes of the two was the thrust of rapiers, the grinding of steel on steel, that deadly searching for weakness in the other that duelists employ.

The deputy spoke in a low soft drawl. "Mornin', Boone. Holding an executive session, are you?"

The lids of the detective narrowed to slits. From the first there had been no pretense of friendship between these two. There are men who have only to look once at each other to know they will be foes. It had been that way with them. Causes of antagonism had arisen quickly enough. Both dominant personalities, they had waged silent unspoken warfare for the leadership of the range. Later over the favor of Melissy Lee this had grown more intense, still without having ever been put into words. Now they were face to face, masks off.

"Why yes, until you butted in, Mr. Sheriff."

"This isn't my busy day. I thought I'd just drop in to the meeting."

"You've made a mistake. We're not holding a cattle rustlers' convention."

"There are so many ladies present I can't hear you, but maybe if you said it outside I could," the deputy suggested gently, a gleam of steely anger in his eyes.

"Say it anywhere to oblige a friend," sneered Boone.

From the moment of meeting neither man had lowered his gaze by the fraction of an inch. Red tragedy was in the air. Melissy knew it. The girl from Arkansas guessed as much. Yet neither of them knew how to avert the calamity that appeared impending. One factor alone saved the situation for the moment. Flatray had not yet heard of the shooting of Bellamy. Had he known he would have arrested Boone on the spot and the latter would have drawn and fought it out.

Into the room sauntered Lee. "Hello, 'Lissie. Been looking for you an hour, honey. Mornin', Norris. Howdy, Jack! Dad burn yore ornery hide, I ain't see you long enough for a good talk in a coon's age."

Melissy seized on her father joyfully as an interposition of Providence. "Father, this is Miss Yarnell, the young lady I told you about."

The ranchman buried her little hand in his big paw. "Right glad to meet up with you, Miss Yarnell. How do you like Arizona by this time? I reckon Melissy has introduced you to her friends. No? Make you acquainted with Mr. Flatray. Shake hands with Mr. Norris, Miss Yarnell. Where are you, Norris?"

The owner of the Bar Double G swung round, to discover for the first time that harmony was not present. Boone stood back with a sullen vindictive expression on his face.

"Why, what's up, boys?" the rancher asked, his glance passing from one to another.

"You ain't in this, Lee," Boone informed him. Then, to Flatray: "See you later."

The deputy nodded carelessly. "Any time you like."

The lank old Confederate took a step forward to call Boone back, but Melissy caught him by the sleeve.

"Let him go," she whispered emphatically.

"I know my boss," returned Lee with a laugh.

"If you're quite through with me, Miss Lee, I'll not intrude longer," Flatray said.

"But I'm not," spoke Melissy quickly.

She did not intend to let him get away to settle his quarrel with Boone.

"I'm rather busy," he suggested.

"Your business will have to wait," she came back decisively.

Lee laughed and clapped Jack on the shoulder. "Might as well know your boss too, boy."

Melissy flushed with a flash of temper. "I'm nothing of the kind, dad."

"Sho! A joke's a joke, girl. That's twice hand-runnin' I get a call-down. You're mighty high-heeled to-day, 'pears like."

Jack smiled grimly. He understood some things that were hidden from Lee.

CHAPTER XIV

CONCERNING THE BOONE-BELLAMY-YARNELL FEUD

The story that Ferne Yarnell told them in the parlor of the hotel had its beginnings far back in the days before the great war. They had been neighbors, these three families, had settled side by side in this new land of Arkansas, had hunted and feasted together in amity. In an hour had arisen the rift between them that was to widen to a chasm into which much blood had since been spilt. It began with a quarrel between hotheaded young men. Forty years later it was still running its blind wasteful course.

Even before the war the Boones had begun to go down hill rapidly. Cad Boone, dissipated and unprincipled, had found even the lax discipline of the Confederate army too rigid and had joined the guerrillas, that band of hangers-on which respected neither flag and developed a cruelty that was appalling. Falling into the hands of Captain Ransom Yarnell, he had been tried by drumhead courtmartial and executed within twenty four hours of his capture.

The boast of the Boones was that they never forgot an injury. They might wait many years for the chance, but in the end they paid their debts. Twenty years after the war Sugden Boone shot down Colonel Yarnell as he was hitching his horse in front of the courthouse at Nemo. Next Christmas eve a brother of the murdered man--Captain Tom, as his old troopers still called him--met old Sugden in the postoffice and a revolver duel followed. From it Captain Tom emerged with a bullet in his arm. Sugden was carried out of the store feet first to a house of mourning.

The Boones took their time. Another decade passed. Old Richard Bellamy, father of the young man, was shot through the uncurtained window of his living rooms while reading the paper one night. Though related to the Yarnells, he had never taken any part in the feud beyond that of expressing his opinion freely. The general opinion was that he had been killed by Dunc Boone, but there was no conclusive evidence to back it. Three weeks later another one of the same faction met his fate. Captain Tom was ambushed while riding from his plantation to town and left dead on the road. Dunc Boone had been seen lurking near the spot, and immediately after the killing he was met by two hunters as he was slipping through the underbrush for the swamps. There was no direct evidence against the young man, but Captain Tom had been the most popular man in the county. Reckless though he was, Duncan Boone had been forced to leave the country by the intensity of the popular feeling against him.

Again the feud had slumbered. It was understood that the Yarnells and the Bellamys were ready to drop it. Only one of the opposite faction remained on the ground, a twin brother of Duncan. Shep Boone was a drunken ne'er-do-well, but since he now stood alone nothing more than empty threats was expected of him. He spent his time idly with a set of gambling loafers, but he lacked the quality of active malice so pronounced in Dunc.

A small part of the old plantation, heavily mortgaged, still belonged to Shep and was rented by him to a tenant, Jess Munro. He announced one day that he was going to collect the rent due him. Having been drinking heavily, he was in an abusive frame of mind. As it chanced he met young Hal Yarnell, just going into the office of his kinsman Dick Bellamy, with whom he was about to arrange the details of a hunting trip they were starting upon. Shep emptied his spleen on the boy, harking back to the old feud and threatening vengeance at their next meeting. The boy was white with rage, but he shut his teeth and passed upstairs without saying a word.

The body of Shep Boone was found next day by Munro among the blackberry bushes at the fence corner of his own place. No less than four witnesses had seen young Yarnell pass that way with a rifle in his hand about the same time that Shep was riding out from town. They had heard a shot, but had thought little of it. Munro had been hoeing cotton in the field and had seen the lad as he passed. Later he had heard excited voices, and presently a shot. Other circumstantial evidence wound a net around the boy. He was arrested. Before the coroner held an inquest a new development startled the community. Dick Bellamy fled on a night train, leaving a note to the coroner exonerating Hal. In it he practically admitted the crime, pleading self defence.

This was the story that Ferne Yarnell told in the parlor of the Palace Hotel to Jack Flatray and the Lees.

Melissy spoke first. "Did Mr. Bellamy kill the man to keep your brother from being killed?"

"I don't know. It must have been that. It's all so horrible."

The deputy's eyes gleamed. "Think of it another way, Miss Yarnell. Bellamy was up against it. Your brother is only a boy. He took his place. A friend couldn't have done more for another."

The color beat into the face of the Arkansas girl as she looked at him. "No. He sacrificed his career for him. He did a thing he must have hated to do."

"He's sure some man," Flatray pronounced.

A young man, slight, quick of step, and erect as a willow sapling, walked into the room. He looked from one to another with clear level eyes. Miss Ferne introduced him as her brother.

A thought crossed the mind of the deputy. Perhaps this boy had killed his enemy after all and Bellamy had shouldered the blame for him. If the mine owner were in love with Ferne Yarnell this was a hypothesis more than possible. In either case he acquitted the slayer of blame. In his pocket was a letter from the sheriff at Nemo, Arkansas, stating that his county was well rid of Shep Boone and that the universal opinion was that neither Bellamy nor young Yarnell had been to blame for the outcome of the difficulty. Unless there came to him an active demand for the return of Bellamy he intended to let sleeping dogs lie.

No such demand came. Within a month the mystery was cleared. The renter Munro delivered himself to the sheriff at Nemo, admitting that he had killed Shep Boone in self defence. The dead man had been drinking and was exceedingly quarrelsome. He had abused his tenant and at last drawn on him. Whereupon Munro had shot him down. At first afraid of what might happen to him, he had stood aside and let the blame be shouldered upon young Yarnell. But later his conscience had forced him to a confession. It is enough here to say that he was later tried and acquitted, thus closing the chapter of the wastrel's tragic death.

The day after the news of Munro's confession reached Arizona Richard Bellamy called upon Flatray to invite him to his wedding. As soon as his name was clear he had asked Ferne Yarnell to marry him.

PART II

DEAD MAN'S CACHE

CHAPTER I

KIDNAPPED

As a lake ripples beneath a summer breeze, so Mesa was stirred from its usual languor by the visit of Simon West. For the little Arizona town was dreaming dreams. Its imagination had been aroused; and it saw itself no longer a sleepy cow camp in the unfeatured desert, but a metropolis, in touch with twentieth-century life.

The great Simon West, pirate of finance, empire builder, molder of the destinies of the mighty Southwestern Pacific system, was to touch the adobe village with his transforming wand and make of it a hive of industry. Rumors flew thick and fast.

Mesa was to be the junction for the new spur that would run to the big Lincoln dam. The town would be a division point; the machine shops of the system would be located there. Its future, if still a trifle vague, was potentially immense. Thus, with cheerful optimism, did local opinion interpret the visit of the great man.

Whatever Simon West may have thought of Mesa and its prospects, he kept behind his thin, close-shut lips. He was a dry, gray little man of fifty-five, with sharp, twinkling eyes that saw everything and told nothing. Certainly he wore none of the visible signs of greatness, yet at his nod Wall Street trembled. He had done more to change the map of industrial America than any other man, alive or dead. Wherefore, big Beauchamp Lee, mayor of Mesa, and the citizens on the reception committee did their very best to impress him with the future of the country, as they motored out to the dam.

"Most promising spot on earth. Beats California a city block on oranges and citrons. Ever see an Arizona peach, Mr. West? It skins the world," the big cattleman ran on easily.

The financier's eye took in the girl sitting beside the chauffeur in the front seat, and he nodded assent.

Melissy Lee bloomed. She was vivid as a wild poppy on the hillsides past which they went flashing. But she had, too, a daintiness, a delicacy of coloring and contour, that suggested the fruit named by her father.

"You bet we raise the best here," that simple gentleman bragged patriotically. "All we need is water, and the Lincoln dam assures us of plenty. Yes, sir! It certainly promises to be an Eden."

West unlocked his lips long enough to say: "Any country can promise. I'm looking for one that will perform."

"You're seeing it right now, seh," the mayor assured him, and launched into fluent statistics.

West heard, saw the thing stripped of its enthusiasm, and made no comment either for or against. He had plenty of imagination, or he could never have accomplished the things he had done. However, before any proposition appealed to him he had to see money in the deal. Whether he saw it in this particular instance, nobody knew; and only one person had the courage to ask him point-blank what his intentions were. This was Melissy.

Luncheon was served in the pleasant filtered sunlight, almost under the shadow of the great dam.

On the way out Melissy had sat as demure and dovelike as it was possible for her to be. But now she showed herself to be another creature.

Two or three young men hovered about her; notable among them was a young fellow of not many words, good-humored, strong, with a look of power about him which the railroad king appreciated. Jack Flatray they called him. He was the newly-elected sheriff of the county.

The great man watched the girl without appearing to do so. He was rather at a loss to account for the exotic, flamelike beauty into which she had suddenly sparkled; but he was inclined to attribute it to the arrival of Flatray.

Melissy sat on a flat rock beside West, swinging her foot occasionally with the sheer active joy of life, the while she munched sandwiches and pickles. The young men bantered her and each other, and she flashed back retorts which gave them alternately deep delight at the discomfiture of some other. Toward the close of luncheon, she turned her tilted chin from Flatray, as punishment for some audacity of his, and beamed upon the railroad magnate.

"It's very good of you to notice me at last," he said, with his dry smile.

"I was afraid of you," she confided cheerfully.

"Am I so awesome?"

"It's your reputation, you know. You're quite a dragon. I'm told you gobble a new railroad every morning for breakfast."

"'Lissie," her father warned.

"Let her alone," the great man laughed. "Miss Lee is going to give me the privilege of hearing the truth about myself."

"But I'm asking. I don't know what the truth is," she protested.

"Well, what you think is the truth."

"It doesn't matter what we think about you. The important thing to know is what you think about us."

"Am I to tell you what I think of you--with all these young men here?" he countered.

She was excited by her own impudence. The pink had spilled over her creamy cheeks. She flashed a look of pretended disdain at her young men. Nevertheless, she made laughing protest.

"It's not me, but Mesa, that counts," she answered ungrammatically. "Tell me that you're going to help us set orchards blossoming in these deserts, and we'll all love you."

"You offer an inducement, Miss Lee. Come--let us walk up to the Point and see this wonderful country of yours."

She clapped her hands. "Oh, let's! I'm tired of boys, anyhow. They know nothing but nonsense." She made a laughing moue at Flatray, and turned to join the railroad builder.

The young sheriff arose and trailed to his pony. "My marching orders, I reckon."

They walked up the hill together, the great man and the untutored girl. He still carried himself with the lightness of the spare, wiry man who has never felt his age. As for her, she moved as one on springs, her slender, willowy figure beautiful in motion.

"You're loyal to Mesa. Born and brought up there?" West asked Melissy.

"No. I was brought up on the Bar Double G ranch. Father sold it not long since. We're interested in the Monte Cristo mine, and it has done so well that we moved to town," she explained.

At the first bend in the mountain road Jack had turned in his saddle to look at her as she climbed the steep. A quarter of a mile farther up there was another curve, which swept the trail within sight of the summit. Here Flatray pulled up and got out his field glasses. Leisurely the man and the maid came into sight from the timber on the shoulder of the hill, and topped the last ascent. Jack could discern Melissy gesturing here and there as she explained the lay of the land.

Something else caught and held his glasses. Four riders had emerged from a little gulch of dense aspens which ran up the Point toward the summit. One of these had with him a led horse.

"Now, I wonder what that means?" the sheriff mused aloud.

He was not left long in doubt. The four men rode swiftly, straight toward the man and the girl above. One of them swung from the saddle and stepped forward. He spoke to West, who appeared to make urgent protest. The dismounted rider answered. Melissy began to run. Very faintly there came to Flatray her startled cry. Simultaneously he caught the flash of the sun on bright steel. The leader of the four had drawn a revolver and was covering West with it. Instantly the girl stopped running. Plainly the life of the railroad president had been threatened unless she stopped.

The man behind the weapon swept a gesture in the direction of the led horse. Reluctantly West moved toward it, still protesting. He swung to the saddle, and four of the horses broke into a canter. Only the man with the drawn revolver remained on the ground with Melissy. He scabbarded his gun, took a step or two toward her, and made explanations. The girl stamped her foot, and half turned from him.

He laughed, stepped still closer to her, and spoke again. Melissy, with tilted chin, seemed to be unaware that he existed. Another step brought him to her side. Once more he spoke. No stone wall could have given him less recognition. Then Jack let out a sudden fierce imprecation, and gave his pony the spur. For the man had bent forward swiftly, had kissed the girl on the lips once--twice--three times, had swept his hat off in a low, mocking bow, and had flung himself on his horse, and galloped off.

Pebbles and shale went flying from the horse's hoofs as the sheriff tore down the trail toward Melissy. He cut off at an angle and dashed through cactus and over rain-washed gullies at breakneck speed, pounding up the stiff slope to the summit. He dragged his pony to a halt, and leaped off at the same instant.

Melissy came to him with flashing eyes. "Why didn't you get here sooner?" she panted, as if she had been running; for the blind rage was strong in her.

His anger burst out to meet hers. "I wish I had!" he cried, with a furious oath.

"He insulted me. He laughed at me, and taunted me--and kissed me!"

Jack nodded. "I saw. If I had only had my rifle with me! Who was he?"

"He wore a mask. But I knew him. It was Dunc Boone."

"With the Roaring Fork gang?"

"I don't know. Is he one of them?"

"I've been thinking so for years."

"They must have known about our picnic. But what do they want with Mr. West?"

"He's one of the world's richest men."

"But he doesn't carry his money with him."

"He carries his life."

"They must mean to hold him for a ransom. Is that it?"

"You've guessed it. That's the play." Jack considered, his eyes on the far-away hills. When he spoke again it was with sharp decision. "Hit the trail back to town with your motor. Don't lose a minute on the way. Send a dispatch to Bucky O'Connor. You'd ought to get him at Douglas. If not, some of his rangers will know where to reach him. Keep the wires hot till you're in touch with him. Better sign my name. I've been writing him about this outfit. This job is cut out for Bucky, and we've got to get him on it."

"And what are you going to do?"

"I can't do much--I'm not armed. First time I've been caught that way since I've been sheriff. Came out to-day for a picnic and left my gun at home. But if they're the Roaring Fork outfit, they'll pass through the Elkhorn Cañon, heading for Dead Man's Cache. I'm going to cut around Old Baldy and try to beat them to it. Maybe I can recognize some of them."

"But if they see you?"

"I ain't aiming to let them see me."

"Still, they may."

His quiet eyes met hers steadily. "Yes, they may."

They were friends again, though he had never fully forgiven her doubt of him. It might be on the cards that some day she would be more to him than a friend. Understanding perfectly the danger of what he proposed, she yet made no protest. The man who would storm her heart must be one who would go the limit, for her standards were those of the outdoor West. She, too, was "game" to the core; and she had never liked him better than she did at this moment. A man must be a man, and take his fighting chance.

"All right, Jack."

Not for years before had she called him by his first name. His heart leaped, but he did not let even his look tell what he was feeling.

"I reckon I'll cut right down from here, Melissy. Better not lose any time getting to town. So-long!" And with that he had swung to the saddle and was off.

Melissy ran swiftly down to the picnic party and cried out her news. It fell upon them like a bolt out of a June sky. Some exclaimed and wondered and deplored; but she was proud to see that her father took instant command, without an unnecessary word.

"They've caught us in swimming, boys! We've got to burn the wind back to town for our guns. Dick, you ride around by the Powder Horn and gather up the boys on the ranch. Get Swain to swing around to the south and comb the lower gulches of the Roaring Fork. Tell him to get in touch with me soon as he can. I'll come through by Elkhorn."

Lee helped his daughter into the machine, and took his place beside her.

"Hit the high spots, Jim. I've got an engagement in the hills that won't wait, prior to which I've got to get back to town immediate," he told the chauffeur cheerfully; for he was beginning to enjoy himself as in the old days, when he had been the hard-riding sheriff of a border county which took the premium for bad men.

The motor car leaped forward, fell into its pace, and began to hum its song of the road as it ate up swiftly the miles that lay between the dam and Mesa.

CHAPTER II

A CAPTURE

Flatray swung around Old Baldy through the sparse timber that edged its roots. He knew this country well; for he had run cattle here, and combed the draws and ridges on the annual spring and fall round-ups.

There was no trail to follow. Often the lay of the land forced him to a detour; for it was rough with washes, with matted cactus, and with a thick growth of netted mesquite and underbrush. But true as the needle of a compass, he turned back always to the direction he was following. He had the instinct for direction, sharpened almost to infallibility by the experience his work had given him.

So, hour after hour, he swung forward, pushing his horse over the ground in a sort of running walk, common to the plains. Sunset found him climbing from the foothills into the mountains beyond. Starlight came upon him in a saddle between the peaks, still plodding up by winding paths to the higher altitudes that make the ridge of the continent's backbone.

The moon was up long before he struck a gulch spur that led to Elkhorn Cañon. Whether he would be in time or not--assuming that he had guessed aright as to the destination of the outlaws--he could not tell. It would be, at best, a near thing. For, though he had come more directly, they had followed a trail which made the going much faster. Fast as the cow pony could pick its way along the rock-strewn gulch, he descended, eye and ear alert to detect the presence of another human being in this waste of boulders, of moonlit, flickering shadows, of dark awesome peaks.

His quick ear caught the faintest of sounds. He slipped from the saddle and stole swiftly forward to the point where the gulch joined the main cañon. Voices drifted to him--the sound of careless laughter, wafted by the light night wind. He had missed the outlaws by scarce a hundred yards. There was nothing for it but to follow cautiously. As he was turning to go back for his horse the moon emerged from behind a cloud and flooded the cañon with a cold, silvery light. It showed Jack a man and a horse standing scarce twenty yards from him. The man had his back to him. He had dismounted, and was tightening the cinches of his saddle.

Flatray experienced a pang of disappointment. He was unarmed. His second thought sent him flying noiselessly back to his horse. Deftly he unloosed the rope which always hung coiled below the saddle horn. On tiptoe he ran back to the gulch mouth, bearing to the right, so as to come directly opposite the man he wanted. As he ran he arranged the lariat to his satisfaction, freeing the loop and making sure that the coil was not bound. Very cautiously he crept forward, taking advantage for cover of a boulder which rose from the bed of the gulch.

The man had finished tightening the girth. His foot rose to the stirrup. He swung up from the ground, and his right leg swept across the flank of the pony. It did not reach the stirrup; for, even as he rose, Jack's lariat snaked forward and dropped over his head to his breast. It tightened sharply and dragged him back, pinioning his arms to his side. Before he could shake one of them free to reach the revolver in his chaps, he was lying on his back, with Flatray astride of him. The cattleman's left hand closed tightly upon his windpipe, while the right searched for and found the weapon in the holster of the prostrate man.

Not until the steel rim of it pressed against the teeth of the man beneath him did Jack's fingers loosen. "Make a sound, and you're a dead man."

The other choked and gurgled. He was not yet able to cry out, even had he any intention of so doing. But defiant eyes glared into those of the man who had unhorsed and captured him.

"Where are your pals bound for?" Flatray demanded.

He got no answer in words, but sullen eyes flung out an obstinate refusal to give away his associates.

"I reckon you're one of the Roaring Fork outfit," Jack suggested.

"You know so darn much I'll leave you to guess the rest," growled the prisoner.

"The first thing I'll guess is that, if anything happens to Simon West, you'll hang for it, my friend."

"You'll have to prove some things first."

Flatray's hand slid into the man's coat pocket, and drew forth a piece of black cloth that had been used as a mask.

"Here's exhibit A, to begin with."

The man on the ground suddenly gave an upward heave, grasped at the weapon, and let out a yell for help that echoed back from the cliff, while the cattleman let the butt of the revolver crash heavily down upon his face. The heavy gun came down three times before the struggling outlaw would subside, and then not before blood streamed from ugly gashes into his eyes.

"I've had enough, damn you!" the fellow muttered sullenly. "What do you want with me?"

"You'll go along with me. Let out another sound, and I'll bump you off. Get a move on you."

Jack got to his feet and dragged up his prisoner. The man was a heavy-set, bowlegged fellow of about forty, hard-faced, and shifty-eyed--a frontier miscreant, unless every line of the tough, leathery countenance told a falsehood. But he had made his experiment and failed. He knew what manner of man his captor was, and he had no mind for another lesson from him. He slouched to his horse, under propulsion of the revolver, and led the animal into the gulch.

Both mounted, Jack keeping the captive covered every moment of the time; and they began to retrace the way by which the young cattleman had just come.

After they had ridden about a quarter of a mile Flatray made a readjustment of the rope. He let the loop lie loosely about the neck of the outlaw, the other end of it being tied to the horn of his own saddle. Also, he tied the hands of the man in such a way that, though they were free to handle the bridle rein, he could not raise them from the saddle as high as his neck.

"If you make any sudden moves, you'll be committing suicide. If you yell out, it will amount to about the same thing. It's up to you to be good, looks like."

The man cursed softly. He knew that the least attempt to escape or to attract the attention of his confederates would mean his undoing. Something about this young man's cold eye and iron jaw told him that he would not hesitate to shoot, if necessary.

Voices came to them from the cañon. Flatray guessed that a reconnaissance of the gulch would be made, and prepared himself for it by deflecting his course from the bed of the arroyo at a point where the walls fell back to form a little valley. A little grove of aspens covered densely the shoulder of a hillock some fifty yards back, and here he took his stand. He dismounted, and made his prisoner do the same.

"Sit down," he ordered crisply.

"What for?"

"To keep me from blowing the top of your head off," answered Jack quietly.

Without further discussion, the man sat down. His captor stood behind him, one hand on the shoulder of his prisoner, his eyes watching the point of the gulch at which the enemy would appear.

Two mounted men showed presently in silhouette. Almost opposite the grove they drew up.

"Mighty queer what has become of Hank," one of them said. "But I don't reckon there's any use looking any farther. You don't figure he's aiming to throw us down--do you, Buck?"

"Nope. He'll stick, Hank will. But it sure looks darned strange. Here's him a-ridin' along with us, and suddenly he's missin'. We hear a yell, and go back to look for him. Nothin' doin'. You don't allow the devil could have come for him sudden--do you, Jeff?"

It was said with a laugh, defiantly, but none the less Jack read uneasiness in the manner of the man. It seemed to him that both were eager to turn back. Giant boulders, carved to grotesque and ghostly shapes by a million years' wind and water, reared themselves aloft and threw shadows in the moonlight. The wind, caught in the gulch, rose and fell in unearthly, sibilant sounds. If ever fiends from below walk the earth, this time and place was a fitting one for them. Jack curved a hand around his mouth, and emitted a strange, mournful, low cry, which might have been the scream of a lost soul.

Jeff clutched at the arm of his companion. "Did you hear that, Buck?"

"What--what do you reckon it was, Jeff?"

Again Jack let his cry curdle the night.

The outlaws took counsel of their terror. They were hardy, desperate men, afraid of nothing mortal under the sun. But the dormant superstition in them rose to their throats. Fearfully they wheeled and gave their horses the spur. Flatray could hear them crashing through the brush.

He listened while the rapid hoofbeats died away, until even the echoes fell silent. "We'll be moving," he announced to his prisoner.

For a couple of hours they followed substantially the same way that Jack had taken, descending gradually toward the foothills and the plains. The stars went out, and the moon slid behind banked clouds, so that the darkness grew with the passing hours. At length Flatray had to call a halt.

"We'll camp here till morning," he announced when they reached a grassy park.

The horses were hobbled, and the men sat down opposite each other in the darkness. Presently the prisoner relaxed and fell asleep. But there was no sleep for his captor. The cattleman leaned against the trunk of a cottonwood and smoked his pipe. The night grew chill, but he dared not light a fire. At last the first streaks of gray dawn lightened the sky. A quarter of an hour later he shook his captive from slumber.

"Time to hit the trail."

The outlaw murmured sleepily, "How's that, Dunc? Twenty-five thousand apiece!"

"Wake up! We've got to vamose out of here."

Slowly the fellow shook the sleep from his brain. He looked at Flatray sullenly, without answering. But he climbed into the saddle which Jack had cinched for him. Dogged and wolfish as he was, the man knew his master, and was cowed.

CHAPTER III

THE TABLES TURNED

From the local eastbound a man swung to the station platform at Mesa. He was a dark, slim, little man, wiry and supple, with restless black eyes which pierced one like bullets.

The depot loungers made him a focus of inquiring looks. But, in spite of his careless ease, a shrewd observer would have read anxiety in his bearing. It was as if behind the veil of his indifference there rested a perpetual vigilance. The wariness of a beast of prey lay close to the surface.

"Mornin', gentlemen," he drawled, sweeping the group with his eyes.

"Mornin'," responded one of the loafers.

"I presume some of you gentlemen can direct me to the house of Mayor Lee."

"The mayor ain't to home," volunteered a lank, unshaven native in butternut jeans and boots.

"I think it was his house I inquired for," suggested the stranger.

"Fust house off the square on the yon side of the postoffice--a big two-story brick, with a gallery and po'ches all round it."

Having thanked his informant, the stranger passed down the street. The curious saw him pass in at the mayor's gate and knock at the door. It opened presently, and disclosed a flash of white, which they knew to be the skirt of a girl.

"I reckon that's Miss 'Lissie," the others were informed by the unshaven one. "She's let him in and shet the door."

Inevitably there followed speculation as to who the arrival might be. That his coming had something to do with the affair of the West kidnapping, all were disposed to agree; but just what it might have to do with it, none of them could do more than guess. If they could have heard what passed between Melissy and the stranger, their curiosity would have been gratified.

"Good mornin', miss. Is Mayor Lee at home?"

"No--he isn't. He hasn't got back yet. Is there anything I can do for you?"

Two rows of even white teeth flashed in a smile. "I thought maybe there was something I could do for you. You are Miss Lee, I take it?"

"Yes. But I don't quite understand--unless you have news."

"I have no news--yet."

"You mean----" Her eager glance swept over him. The brown eyes, which had been full of questioning, flashed to understanding. "You are not Lieutenant O'Connor?"

"Am I not?" he smiled.

"I mean--are you?"

"At your service, Miss Lee."

She had heard for years of this lieutenant of rangers, who was the terror of all Arizona "bad men." Her father, Jack Flatray, the range riders whom she knew--game men all--hailed Bucky O'Connor as a wonder. For coolness under fire, for acumen, for sheer, unflawed nerve, and for his skill in that deadly game he played of hunting down desperadoes, they called him chief ungrudgingly. He was a daredevil, who had taken his life in his hands a hundred times. Yet always he came through smiling, and brought back with him the man he went after. The whisper ran that he bore a charmed life, so many had been his hairbreadth escapes.

"Come in," the girl invited. "Father said, if you came, I was to keep you here until he got back or sent a messenger for you. He's hunting for the criminals in the Roaring Fork country. Of course, he didn't know when you would get here. At the time he left we hadn't been able to catch you on the wire. I signed Mr. Flatray's name at his suggestion, because he was in correspondence with you once about the Roaring Fork outlaws. He is out in the hills, too. He started half an hour after the kidnappers. But he isn't armed. I'm troubled about him."

Again the young man's white-toothed smile flashed. "You'd better be. Anybody that goes hunting Black MacQueen unarmed ought to be right well insured."

She nodded, a shadow in her eyes. "Yes--but he would go. He doesn't mean them to see him, if he can help it."

"Black sees a heap he isn't expected to see. He has got eyes all over the hills, and they see by night as well as by day."

"Yes--I know he has spies everywhere; and he has the hill people terrorized, they say. You think this is his work?"

"It's a big thing--the kind of job he likes to tackle. Who else would dare do such a thing?"

"That's what father thinks. If he had stolen the President of the United States, it wouldn't have stirred up a bigger fuss. Newspaper men and detectives are hurrying here from all directions. They are sure to catch him."

"Are they?"

She noticed a curious, derisive contempt in the man's voice, and laid it to his vanity. "I don't mean that they are. I mean that you are sure to get him," she hastened to add. "Father thinks you are wonderful."

"I'm much obliged to him," said the man, with almost a sneer.

He seemed to have so good an opinion of himself that he was above praise even. Melissy was coming to the decision that she did not like him--which was disappointing, since she had expected to like him immensely.

"I didn't look for you till night. You wired you would be on number seven," she said. "I understood that was the earliest you could get here."

His explanation of the change was brief, and invited no further discussion. "I found I could make an earlier train."

"I'm glad you could. Father says it is always well to start on the trail while it is fresh."

"Have you ever seen this MacQueen, Miss Lee?" he asked.

"Not unless he was there when Mr. West was kidnapped."

"Did you know any of the men?"

She hesitated. "I thought one was Duncan Boone."

"What made you think so?"

"He was the leader, I think, moved the way he does." Her anger flashed for an instant. "And acted like him--detestably."

"Was he violent to West? Injure him?"

"No--he didn't do him any physical injury that I saw. I wasn't thinking about Mr. West."

"Surely he didn't lay hands on you!"

She looked up, in time to see the flicker of amusement sponged from his face. It stirred vague anger in her. "He was insolent and ungentlemanly."

"As how?"

"It doesn't matter how." Her manner specifically declined to particularize.

"Would you recognize him again if you met him? Describe him, if you can."

"Yes. I used to know him well--before he became known as an outlaw," she added after a perceptible hesitation. "There's something ravenous about him."

"You mean that he is fierce and bloodthirsty?"

"No--I don't mean that; though, for that matter, I don't think he would stick at anything. What I mean is that he is pantherine in his movements--more lithe and supple than most men are."

"Is he a big man?"

"No--medium size, and dark."

"There were four of them, you say?"

"Yes. Jack saw them, too, but at a distance."

"He reached you after they were out of sight?"

"They had been gone about five minutes when I saw him--five or ten. I couldn't be sure."

"Boone offered no personal indignity to you?"

"Why are you so sure?" she flashed.

"The story is that he is quite the ladies' man."

Melissy laughed scornfully.

At his request, she went over again the story of the abduction, telling everything save the matter of the ravished kisses. This she kept to herself. She did not quite know why, except that there was something she did not like about this Bucky O'Connor. He had a trick of narrowing his eyes and gloating over her, as a cat gloats over its expected kill.

However, his confidence impressed her. Cocksure he was, and before long she knew him boastful; but competence sat on him, none the less. She thought she could see why he was held to be the most deadly bloodhound on a trail that even Arizona could produce. That he was fearless she did not need to be told, any more than she needed a certificate that on occasion he could be merciless. On the other hand, he fitted very badly with the character of the young lieutenant of rangers, as Jack Flatray had sketched it for her. Her friend's description of his hero had been enthusiastic. She decided that the young cattleman was a bad judge of men--though, of course, he had never actually met O'Connor.

"I reckon I'll not wait for your father's report, Miss Lee. I work independent of other men. That is how I get the wonderful results I do."

His conceit nettled her; also, it stung her filial loyalty. "My father was the best sheriff this county ever had," she said stiffly.

He smiled satirically. "Still, I reckon I'll handle this my own way--unless your father's daughter wants to go partners with me in it."

She gave him a look intended to crush his impudence. "No, thank you."

He ate a breakfast which she had the cook prepare hurriedly for him, and departed on the horse for which she had telephoned to the nearest livery stable. Melissy was a singularly fearless girl; yet she watched him go with a decided relief, for which she could not account. He rode, she observed, like a centaur--flat-backed, firm in the saddle with the easy negligence of a plainsman. He turned as he started, and waved a hand debonairly at her.

"If I have any luck, I'll bring back one of the Roaring Fork bunch with me--a present for a good girl, Miss Melissy."

She turned on her heel and went inside. Anger pulsed fiercely through her. He laughed at her, made fun of her, and yet called her by her first name. How dared he treat her so! Worst of all, she read admiration bold and unveiled in the eyes that mocked her.

Half an hour later Flatray, riding toward town with his prisoner in front of him, heard a sudden sharp summons to throw up his hands. A man had risen from behind a boulder, and held him covered steadily.

Jack looked at the fellow without complying. He needed no second glance to tell him that this man was not one to be trifled with. "Who are you?" he demanded quietly.

"Never mind who I am. Reach for the sky."

The captured outlaw had given a little whoop, and was now loosening the rope from his neck. "You're the goods, Cap! I knew the boys would pull it off for me, but I didn't reckon on it so durn soon."

"Shut up!" ordered the man behind the gun, without moving his eyes from Flatray.

"I'm a clam," retorted the other.

"I'm waiting for those hands to go up; but I'll not wait long, seh."

Jack's hands went up reluctantly. "You've got the call," he admitted.

They led him a couple of hundred yards from the trail and tied him hand and foot. Before they left him the outlaw whom he had captured evened his score. Three times he struck Flatray on the head with the butt of his revolver. He was lying on the ground bleeding and senseless when they rode away toward the hills.

Jack came to himself with a blinding headache. It was some time before he realized what had happened. As soon as he did he set about freeing himself. This was a matter of a few minutes. With the handkerchief that was around his neck he tied up his wounds. Fortunately his hair was very thick and this had saved him from a fractured skull. Dizzily he got to his feet, found his horse, and started toward Mesa.

Not many people were on the streets when the sheriff passed through the suburbs of the little town, for it was about the breakfast hour. One stout old negro mammy stopped to stare in surprise at his bloody head.

"Laws a mussy, Mistah Flatray, what they done be'n a-doin' to you-all?" she asked.

The sheriff hardly saw her. He was chewing the bitter cud of defeat and was absorbed in his thoughts. He was still young enough to have counted on the effect upon Melissy of his return to town with one of the abductors as his prisoner.

It happened that she was on the porch watering her flower boxes when he passed the house.

"Jack!" she cried, and on the heels of her exclamation: "What's the matter with you? Been hurt?"

A gray pallor had pushed through the tan of her cheeks. She knew her heart was beating fast.

"Bumped into a piece of bad luck," he grinned, and told her briefly what had occurred.

She took him into the house and washed his head for him. After she saw how serious the cuts were she insisted on sending for a doctor. When his wounds were dressed she fed him and made him lie down and sleep on her father's bed.

The sun was sliding down the heavens to a crotch in the hills before he joined her again. She was in front of the house clipping her roses.

"Is the invalid better?" she asked him.

"He's a false alarm. But he did have a mighty thumping headache that has gone now."

"I've been wondering why you didn't meet Lieutenant O'Connor. He must have taken the road you came in on."

The young man's eyes lit. "Is Bucky here already?"

"He was. He's gone. I was greatly disappointed in him. He's not half the man you think he is."

"Oh, but he is. Everybody says so."

"I never saw a more conceited man, or a more hateful one. There's something about him--oh, I don't know. But he isn't good. I'm sure of that."

"His reputation isn't of that kind. They say he's devoted to his wife and kids."

"His wife and children." Melissy recalled the smoldering admiration in his bold eyes. She laughed shortly. "That finishes him with me. He's married, is he? Well, I know the kind of husband he is."

Jack flashed a quick look at her. He guessed what she meant. But this did not square at all with what his friends had told him of O'Connor.

"Did he ask for me?"

"No. He said he preferred to play a lone hand. His manner was unpleasant all the time. He knows it all. I could see that."

"Anyhow, he's a crackerjack in his line. Have you heard from your father since he set out?"

"Not yet."

"Well, I'm going to start to-night with a posse for the Cache. If O'Connor comes back, tell him I'll follow the Roaring Fork."

"You'll not go this time without a gun, Jack," she said with a ghost of a smile.

"No. I want to make good this trip."

"You did splendidly before. Not one man in a hundred would have done so well."

"I'm a wonder," he admitted with a grin.

"But you will take care of yourself--not be foolish."

"I don't aim to take up residence in Boot Hill cemetery if I can help it."

"Boone and his men are dangerous characters. They are playing for high stakes. They would snuff your life out as quick as they would wink. Don't forget that."

"You don't want me to lie down before Dunc Boone, do you?"

"No-o. Only don't be reckless. I told father the same."

Her dear concern for him went to Jack's head, but he steadied himself before he answered. "I've got one real good reason for not being reckless. I'll tell you what it is some day."

Her shy, alarmed eyes fled his at once. She began an account of how her father had gathered his posse and where she thought he must have gone.

After dinner Jack went downtown. Melissy did some household tasks and presently moved out to the cool porch. She was just thinking about going back in when a barefoot boy ran past and whistled. From the next house a second youngster emerged.

"That you, Jimmie?"

"Betcherlife. Say, 've you heard about the sheriff?"

"Who? Jack Flatray! Course I have. The Roaring Fork outfit ambushed him, beat him up, and made him hit the trail for town."

"Aw! That ain't news. He's started back after them again. Left jes' a little while ago. I saw him go--him 'n' Farnum 'n' Charley Hymer 'n' Hal Yarnell 'n' Mr. Bellamy."

"Bet they git 'em."

"Bet they don't."

"Aw, course they'll git 'em, Tom."

The other youngster assumed an air of mystery. He swelled his chest and strutted a step or two nearer. Urbane condescension oozed from him.

"Say, Jimmie. C'n you keep a secret?"

"Sure. Course I can."

"Won't ever snitch?"

"Cross my heart."

"Well, then--I'm Black MacQueen, the captain of the Roaring Fork bad men."

"You!" Incredulity stared from Jimmie's bulging eyes.

"You betcher. I'm him, here in disguise as a kid."

The magnificent boldness of this claim stole Jimmie's breath for an instant. He was two years younger than his friend, but he did not quite know whether to applaud or to jeer. Before he could make up his mind a light laugh rippled to them from behind the vines on the Lee porch.

The disguised outlaw and his friend were startled. Both fled swiftly, with all the pretense of desperate necessity young conspirators love to assume.

Melissy went into the house and the laughter died from her lips. She knew that either her father's posse or that of Jack Flatray would come into touch with the outlaws eventually. When the clash came there would be a desperate battle. Men would be killed. She prayed it might not be one of those for whom she cared most.

CHAPTER IV

THE REAL BUCKY AND THE FALSE

Number seven was churning its way furiously through brown Arizona. The day had been hot, with a palpitating heat which shimmered over the desert waste. Defiantly the sun had gone down beyond the horizon, a great ball of fire, leaving behind a brilliant splash of bold colors. Now this, too, had disappeared. Velvet night had transformed the land. Over the distant mountains had settled a smoke-blue film, which left them vague and indefinite.

Only three passengers rode in the Pullman car. One was a commercial traveler, busy making up his weekly statement to the firm. Another was a Boston lady, in gold-rimmed glasses and a costume that helped the general effect of frigidity. The third looked out of the open window at the distant hills. He was a slender young fellow, tanned almost to a coffee brown, with eyes of Irish blue which sometimes bubbled with fun and sometimes were hard as chisel steel. Wide-shouldered and lean-flanked he was, with well-packed muscles, which rippled like those of a tiger.

At Chiquita the train stopped, but took up again almost instantly its chant of the rail. Meanwhile, a man had swung himself to the platform of the smoker. He passed through that car, the two day coaches, and on to the sleeper; his keen, restless eyes inspected every passenger in the course of his transit. Opposite the young man in the Pullman he stopped.

"May I ask if you are Lieutenant O'Connor?"

"My name, seh."

The young man in the seat had slewed his head around sharply, and made answer with a crisp, businesslike directness.

The new-comer smiled. "I'll have to introduce myself, lieutenant. My name is Flatray. I've come to meet you."

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Flatray. I hope that together we can work this thing out right. MacQueen has gathered a bunch that ought to be cleaned out, and I reckon now's the time to do it. I've been reading about him for a year. I've got a notion he's about the ablest thing in bad men this Territory has seen for a good many years."

Flatray sat down on the seat opposite O'Connor. A smile flicked across his face, and vanished. "I'm of that opinion myself, lieutenant."

"Tell me all about this affair of the West kidnapping," the ranger suggested.

The other man told the story while O'Connor listened, alert to catch every point of the narrative.

The face of the lieutenant of rangers was a boyish one--eager, genial, and frank; yet, none the less, strength lay in the close-gripped jaw and in the steady, watchful eye. His lithe, tense body was like a coiled spring; and that, too, though he seemed to be very much at ease.

With every sentence that the other spoke, O'Connor was judging Flatray, appraising him for a fine specimen of a hard-bitten breed--a vigilant frontiersman, competent to the finger tips. Yet he was conscious that, in spite of the man's graceful ease and friendly smile, he did not like Flatray. He would not ask for a better man beside him in a tight pinch; but he could not deny that something sinister which breathed from his sardonic, devil-may-care face.

"So that's how the land lies," the sheriff concluded. "My deputies have got the pass to the south blocked; Lee is closing in through Elkhorn; and Fox, with a strong posse, is combing the hills beyond Dead Man's Cache. There's only one way out for him, and that is over Powderhorn Pass. Word has just reached us that MacQueen is moving in that direction. He is evidently figuring to slip out over the hills during the night. I've arranged for us to be met at Barker's Tank by a couple of the boys, with horses. We'll drop off the train quietly when it slows up to water, so that none of his spies can get word of our movements to him. By hard riding we'd ought to reach Powderhorn in time to head him off."

The ranger asked incisive questions, had the topography of the country explained to him with much detail, and decided at last that Flatray was right. If MacQueen were trying to slip out, they might trap him at the pass; if not, by closing it they would put the cork in the bottle that held him.

"We'll try it, seh. Y'u know this country better than I do, and I'll give y'u a free hand. Unless there's a slip up in your calculations, you'd ought to be right."

"Good enough, lieutenant. I'm betting on those plans myself," the other answered promptly, and added, as he looked out into the night: "By that notch in the hills, we'd ought to be close to the tank now. She's slowing up. I reckon we can slip out to the vestibule, and get off at the far side of the track without being noticed much."

This they found easy enough. Five minutes later number seven was steaming away into the distant desert. Flatray gave a sharp, shrill whistle; and from behind some sand dunes emerged two men and four horses.

"Anything new?" asked the sheriff as they came nearer.

"Not a thing, cap," answered one of them.

"Boys, shake hands with the famous Lieutenant O'Connor," said Flatray, with a sneer hid by the darkness. "Lieutenant, let me make you acquainted with Jeff Jackson and Buck Lane."

"Much obliged to meet you," grinned Buck as he shook hands.

They mounted and rode toward the notch in the hills that had been pointed out to the ranger. The moon was up; and a cold, silvery light flooded the plain. Seen in this setting, the great, painted desert held more of mystery, of beauty, and less of the dead monotony that glared endlessly from arid, barren reaches. The sky of stars stretched infinitely far, and added to the effect of magnitude.

The miles slipped behind them as they moved forward, hour after hour, their horses holding to the running walk that is the peculiar gait of the cow country. They rode in silence, with the loose seat and straight back of the vaquero. Except the ranger, all were dressed for riding--Flatray in corduroys and half-knee laced boots; his men in overalls, chaps, flannel shirts, and the broad-brimmed sombrero of the Southwest. All four were young men; but there was an odd difference in the expressions of their faces.

Jackson and Lane had the hard-lined faces, with something grim and stony in them, of men who ride far and hard with their lives in their hands. The others were of a higher type. Flatray's dark eyes were keen, bold, and restless. One might have guessed him a man of temperament, capable of any extremes of conduct--often the victim of his own ungovernable whims and passions. Just as he looked a picture of all the passions of youth run to seed, so the ranger seemed to show them in flower. There was something fine and strong and gallant in his debonair manner. His warm smile went out to a world that pleased him mightily.

They rode steadily, untired and untiring. The light of dawn began to flicker from one notched summit to another. Out of the sandy waste they came to a water hole, paused for a drink, and passed on. For the delay of half an hour might mean the escape of their prey.

They came into the country of crumbling mesas and painted cliffs, of hillsides where greasewood and giant cactus struggled from the parched earth. This they traversed until they came to plateaus, terminating in foothills, crevassed by gorges deep and narrow. The cañons grew steeper, rock ridges more frequent. Gradually the going became more difficult.

Trails they seldom followed. Washes, with sides like walls, confronted them. The ponies dropped down and clambered up again like mountain goats. Gradually they were ascending into the upper country, which led to the wild stretches where the outlaws lurked. In these watersheds were heavy pine forests, rising from the gulches along the shoulders of the peaks.

A maze of cañons, hopelessly lost in the hill tangle into which they had plunged, led deviously to a twisting pass, through which they defiled, to drop into a vista of rolling waves of forest-clad hills. Among these wound countless hidden gulches, known only to those who rode from out them on nefarious night errands.

The ranger noted every landmark, and catalogued in his mind's map every gorge and peak; from what he saw, he guessed much of which he could not be sure. It would be hard to say when his suspicions first became aroused. But as they rode, without stopping, through what he knew must be Powderhorn Pass, as the men about him quietly grouped themselves so as to cut off any escape he might attempt, as they dropped farther and farther into the meshes of that forest-crowned net which he knew to be the Roaring Fork country, he did not need to be told he was in the power of MacQueen's gang.

Yet he gave no sign of what he knew. As daylight came, so that they could see each other distinctly, his face showed no shadow of doubt. It was his cue to be a simple victim of credulity, and he played it to the finish.

Without warning, through a narrow gulch which might have been sought in vain for ten years by a stranger, they passed into the rim of a bowl-shaped valley. Timber covered it from edge to edge, but over to the left a keen eye could see a thinning of the foliage. Toward this they went, following the sidehill and gradually dipping down through heavy underbrush. Before him the officer of rangers saw daylight, and presently a corral, low roofs, and grazing horses.

"Looks like some one lives here," he remarked amiably.

They were already riding into the open. In front of one of the log cabins the man who had called himself Flatray swung from his saddle.

"Better 'light, lieutenant," he suggested carelessly. "We'll eat breakfast here."

"Don't care if we do. I could eat a leather mail sack, I'm that hungry," the ranger answered, as he, too, descended.

His guide was looking at him with an expression of open, malevolent triumph. He could scarce keep it back long enough to get the effect he wanted.

"Yes, we'll eat breakfast here--and dinner, and supper, and breakfast to-morrow, and then about two more breakfasts."

"I reckon we'll be too busy to sit around here," laughed his prisoner.

The other ignored his comment. "And after that, it ain't likely you'll do much more eating."

"I don't quite get the point of that joke."

"You'll get it soon enough! You'd savez it now, if you weren't a muttonhead. As it is, I'll have to explain it. Do you remember capturing Tony Chaves two years ago, lieutenant?"

The ranger nodded, with surprise in his round, innocent eyes.

"What happened to him?" demanded the other. A child could have seen that he was ridden by a leering, savage triumph.

"Killed trying to escape four days later."

"Who killed him?"

"I did. It was necessary. I regretted it."

A sudden spasm of cruelty swept over the face of the man confronting him. "Tony was my partner."

"Your partner?"

"That's right. I've been wanting to say 'How d'ye do?' ever since, Lieutenant O'Connor. I'm right glad to meet you."

"But--I don't understand." He did, however.

"It'll soak through, by and by. Chew on this: You've got just ninety-six hours to live--exactly as long as Tony lived after you caught him! You'll be killed trying to escape. It will be necessary, just as you say it was with him; but I reckon I'll not do any regretting to speak of."

"You would murder me?"

"Well, I ain't particular about the word I use." MacQueen leaned against the side of his horse, his arm thrown across its neck, and laughed in slow maliciousness. "Execute is the word I use, though--if you want to know."

He had made no motion toward his weapon, nor had O'Connor; but the latter knew without looking that he was covered vigilantly by both of the other men.

"And who are you?" the ranger asked, though he was quite sure of the answer.

"Men call me Black MacQueen," drawled the other.

"MacQueen! But you said----"

"That I was Flatray. Yep--I lied."

O'Connor appeared to grope with this in amazement.

"One has to stretch the truth sometimes in my profession," went on the outlaw smoothly. "It may interest you to know that yesterday I passed as Lieutenant O'Connor. When I was O'Connor I arrested Flatray; and now that I am Flatray I have arrested O'Connor. Turn about is fair play, you know."

"Interesting, if true," O'Connor retorted easily.

"You can bank on its truth, my friend."

"And you're actually going to kill me in cold blood."

The black eyes narrowed. "Just as I would a dog," said the outlaw, with savage emphasis.

"I don't believe it. I've done you no harm."

MacQueen glanced at him contemptuously. The famous Bucky O'Connor looked about as competent as a boy in the pimply age.

"I thought you had better sense. Do you think I would have brought you to Dead Man's Cache if I had intended you to go away alive? I'm afraid, Lieutenant Bucky O'Connor, that you're a much overrated man. Your reputation sure would have blown up, if you had lived. You ought to thank me for preserving it."

"Preserving it--how?"

"By bumping you off before you've lost it."

"Sho! You wouldn't do that," the ranger murmured ineffectively.

"We'll see. Jeff, I put him in your charge. Search him, and take him to Hank's cabin. I hold you responsible for him. Bring me any papers you find on him. When I find time, I'll drop around and see that you're keeping him safe."

Bucky was searched, and his weapons and papers removed. After being handcuffed, he was chained to a heavy staple, which had been driven into one of the log walls. He was left alone, and the door was locked; but he could hear Jeff moving about outside.

With the closing of the door the vacuous look slipped from his face like a mask. The loose-lipped, lost-dog expression was gone. He looked once more alert, competent, fit for the emergency. It had been his cue to let his adversary underestimate him. During the long night ride he had had chances to escape, had he desired to do so. But this had been the last thing he wanted.

The outlaws had chosen to take him to their fastness in the hills. He would back himself to use the knowledge they were thrusting upon him, to bring about their undoing. Only one factor in the case had come upon him as a surprise. He had not reckoned that they would have a personal grudge against him. And this was a factor that might upset all his calculations.

It meant that he was playing against time, with the chances of the game all against him. He had forty-eight hours in which to escape--and he was handcuffed, chained, locked up, and guarded. Truly, the outlook was not radiant.

CHAPTER V

A PHOTOGRAPH

On the third morning Beauchamp Lee returned to Mesa--unshaven, dusty, and fagged with hard riding. He brought with him a handbill which he had picked up in the street. Melissy hung over him and ministered to his needs. While he was eating breakfast he talked.

"No luck yet, honey. He's hiding in some pocket of the hills, I reckon; and likely there he'll stay till the hunt is past. They don't make them any slicker than Dunc, dad gum his ugly hide!"

"What is that paper?" his daughter asked.

Lee curbed a disposition toward bad language, as he viewed it with disgust. "This here is bulletin number one, girl. It's the cheekiest, most impudent thing I ever saw. MacQueen serves notice to all the people of this county to keep out of this fight. Also, he mentions me and Jack Flatray by name--warning us that, if we sit in the game, hell will be popping for us."

"What will you do?"

"Do? I'll get back to my boys fast as horseflesh will get me there, once I've had a talk with that beef buyer from Kansas City I made an appointment to see before this thing broke loose. You don't allow I'm going to let any rustler dictate to me what I'll do and what I won't--do you?"

"Where do you reckon he had this printed?" she asked.

"I don't reckon, I know. Late last night a masked man woke up Jim Snell. You know, he sleeps in a room at the back of the printing office. Well, this fellow made him dress, set up this bill, and run off five hundred copies while he stood over him. I'll swan I never heard of such cheek!"

Melissy told what she had to tell--after which her father shaved, took a bath, and went out to meet the buyer from Kansas City. His business kept him until noon. After dinner Melissy's saddle horse was brought around, and she joined her father to ride back with him for a few miles.

About three o'clock she kissed him good-bye, and turned homeward. After she had passed the point where the Silver Creek trail ran into the road she heard the sound of a galloping horse behind. A rider was coming along the trail toward town. He gained on her rapidly, and presently a voice hailed her gayly:

"The top o' the mornin' to you, Miss 'Lissie."

She drew up to wait for him. "My name is still Miss Lee," she told him mildly, by way of correction.

"I'm glad it is, but we can change it in three minutes at any time, my dear," he laughed.

She had been prepared to be more friendly toward him, but at this she froze again.

"Did you leave Mrs. O'Connor and the children well?" she asked pointedly, looking directly at him.

His smile vanished, and he stared at her in a very strange fashion. She had taken the wind completely out of his sails. It had not occurred to him that O'Connor might be a married man. Nor did he know but that it might be a trick to catch him. He did the only thing he could do--made answer in an ironic fashion, which might mean anything or nothing.

"Very well, thank you."

She saw at once that the topic did not allure him, and pushed home her advantage. "You must miss Mrs. O'Connor when you are away on duty."

"Must I?"

"And the children, too. By the way, what are their names?"

"You're getting up a right smart interest in my family, all of a sudden," he countered.

"One can't talk about the weather all the time."

He boldly decided to slay the illusion of domesticity. "If you want to know, I have neither wife nor children."

"But I've heard about them all," she retorted.

"You have heard of Mrs. O'Connor, no doubt; but she happens to be the wife of a cousin of mine."

The look which she flashed at him held more than doubt.

"You don't believe me?" he continued. "I give you my word that I'm not married."

They had left the road, and were following a short cut which wound down toward Tonti, in and out among the great boulders. The town, dwarfed to microscopic size by distance, looked, in the glare of the sunlight, as if it were made of white chalk. Along the narrow trail they went singly, Melissy leading the way.

She made no answer, but at the first opportunity he forced his horse to a level with hers.

"Well--you heard what I said," he challenged.

"The subject is of no importance to me," she said.

"It's important to me. I'm not going to have you doing me an injustice. I tell you I'm not married. You've got to believe me."

Her mind was again alive with suspicions. Jack had told her Bucky O'Connor was married, and he must have known what he was talking about.

"I don't know whether you are married or not. I am of the opinion that Lieutenant O'Connor has a wife and three children. More than once I have been told so," she answered.

"You seem to know a heap about the gentleman."

"I know what I know."

"More than I do, perhaps," he suggested.

Her eyes dilated. He could see suspicion take hold of her.

"Perhaps," she answered quietly.

"Does that mean you think I'm not Bucky O'Connor?" He had pushed his pony forward so as to cut off her advance, and both had halted for the moment.

She looked at him with level, fearless eyes. "I don't know who you are."

"But you think I'm not Lieutenant O'Connor of the rangers?"

"I don't know whether you are or not."

"There is nothing like making sure. Just look over this letter, please."

She did so. It was from the governor of the Territory to the ranger officer. While he was very complimentary as to past services, the governor made it plain that he thought O'Connor must at all hazards succeed in securing the release of Simon West. This would be necessary for the good name of the Territory. Otherwise, a widespread report would go out that Arizona was a lawless place in which to live.

Melissy folded the letter and handed it back. "I beg your pardon, Lieutenant O'Connor. I see that I was wrong."

"Forget it, my dear. We all make mistakes." He had that curious mocking smile which so often hovered about his lips. She felt as though he were deriding her--as though his words held some hidden irony which she could not understand.

"The governor seems very anxious to have you succeed. It will be a black eye for Arizona if this band of outlaws is not apprehended. You don't think, do you, that they will do Mr. West any harm, if their price is not paid? They would never dare."

He took this up almost as though he resented it. "They would dare anything. I reckon you'll have to get up early in the mornin' to find a gamer man than Black MacQueen."

"I wouldn't call it game to hurt an old man whom he has in his power. But you mustn't let it come to that. You must save him. Are you making any progress? Have you run down any of the band? And while I think of it--have you seen to-day's paper?"

"No--why?"

"The biggest story on the front page is about the West case. It seems that this MacQueen wired to Chicago to Mr. Lucas, president of one of the lines on the Southwestern system, that they would release Mr. West for three hundred thousand dollars in gold. He told him a letter had been mailed to the agent at Mesa, telling under just what conditions the money was to be turned over; and he ended with a threat that, if steps were taken to capture the gang, or if the money were not handed over at the specified time, Mr. West would disappear forever."

"Did the paper say whether the money would be turned over?"

"It said that Mr. Lucas was going to get into touch with the outlaws at once, to effect the release of his chief."

A gleam of triumph flashed in the eyes of the man. "That's sure the best way."

"It won't help your reputation, will it?" she asked. "Won't people say that you failed on this case?"

He laughed softly, as if at some hidden source of mirth. "I shouldn't wonder if they did say that Bucky O'Connor hadn't made good this time. They'll figure he tried to ride herd on a job too big for him."

Her surprised eye brooded over this, too. Here he was defending the outlaw chief, and rejoicing at his own downfall. There seemed to be no end to the contradictions in this man. She was to run across another tangled thread of the puzzle a few minutes later.

She had dismounted to let him tighten the saddle cinch. Owing to the heat, he had been carrying his coat in front of him. He tossed it on a boulder by the side of the trail, in such a way that the inside pocket hung down. From it slid some papers and a photograph. Melissy looked down at the picture, then instantly stooped and picked it up. For it was a photograph of a very charming woman and three children, and across the bottom of it was written a line.

"To Bucky, from his loving wife and children."

The girl handed it to the man without a word, and looked him full in the face.

"Bowled out, by ginger!" he said, with a light laugh.

But as she continued to look at him--a man of promise, who had plainly traveled far on the road to ruin--the conviction grew on her that the sweet-faced woman in the photograph was no loving wife of his. He was a man who might easily take a woman's fancy, but not one to hold her love for years through the stress of life. Moreover, Bucky O'Connor held the respect of all men. She had heard him spoken of, and always with a meed of affection that is given to few men. Whoever this graceless scamp was, he was not the lieutenant of rangers.

The words slipped out before she could stop them: "You're not Lieutenant O'Connor at all."

"Playing on that string again, are you?" he jeered.

"I'm sure of it this time."

"Since you know who I'm not, perhaps you can tell me, too, who I am."

In that instant before she spoke, while her steady eyes rested on him, she put together many things which had puzzled her. All of them pointed to one conclusion. Even now her courage did not fail her. She put it into words quietly:

"You are that villain Black MacQueen."

He stared at her in surprise. "By God, girl--you're right. I'm MacQueen, though I don't know how you guessed it."

"I don't know how I kept from guessing it so long. I can see it, now, as plain as day, in all that you have done."

After that they measured strength silently with their eyes. If the situation had clarified itself, with the added knowledge of the girl had come new problems. Let her return to Mesa, and he could no longer pose as O'Connor; and it was just the audacity of this double play that delighted him. He was the most reckless man on earth; he loved to take chances. He wanted to fool the officers to his heart's content, and then jeer at them afterward. Hitherto everything had come his way.

But if this girl should go home, he could not show his face at Mesa; and the spice of the thing would be gone. He was greatly taken with her beauty, her daring, and the charm of high spirits which radiated from her. Again and again he had found himself drawn back to her. He was not in love with her in any legitimate sense; but he knew now that, if he could see her no more, life would be a savorless thing, at least until his fancy had spent itself. Moreover, her presence at Dead Man's Cache would be a safeguard. With her in his power, Lee and Flatray, the most persistent of his hunters, would not dare to move against the outlaws.

Inclination and interest worked together. He decided to take her back with him to the country of hidden pockets and gulches. There, in time, he would win her love--so his vanity insisted. After that they would slip away from the scene of his crimes, and go back to the world from which he had years since vanished.

The dream grew on him. It got hold of his imagination. For a moment he saw himself as the man he had been meant for--the man he might have been, if he had been able to subdue his evil nature. He saw himself respected, a power in the community, going down to a serene old age, with this woman and their children by his side. Then he laughed derisively, and brushed aside the vision.

"Why didn't the real Lieutenant O'Connor arrive to expose you?" she asked.

"The real Bucky is handcuffed and guarded at Dead Man's Cache. I don't think he's enjoying himself to-day."

"You're getting quite a collection of prisoners. You'll be starting a penitentiary on your own account soon," she told him sharply.

"That's right. And I'm taking another one back with me to-night."

"Who is he?"

"It's a lady this time--Miss Melissy Lee."

His words shook her. An icy hand seemed to clamp upon her heart. The blood ebbed even from her lips, but her brave eyes never faltered from his.

"So you war on women, too!"

He gave her his most ironic bow. "I don't war on you, my dear. You shall have half of my kingdom, if you ask it--and all my heart."

"I can't use either," she told him quietly. "But I'm only a girl. If you have a spark of manliness in you, surely you won't take me a prisoner among those wild, bad men of yours."

"Those wild, bad men of mine are lambs when I give the word. They wouldn't lift a hand against you. And there is a woman there--the mother of one of my boys, who was shot. We'll have you chaperoned for fair."

"And if I say I won't go?"

"You'll go if I strap you to your saddle."

It was characteristic of Melissy that she made no further resistance. The sudden, wolfish gleam in his eyes had told her that he meant what he said. It was like her, too, that she made no outcry; that she did not shed tears or plead with him. A gallant spirit inhabited that slim, girlish body; and she yielded to the inevitable with quiet dignity. This surprised him greatly, and stung his reluctant admiration. At the same time, it set her apart from him and hedged her with spiritual barriers. Her body might ride with him into captivity; she was still captain of her soul.

"You're a game one," he told her, as he helped her to the saddle.

She did not answer, but looked straightforward between her horse's ears, without seeing him, waiting for him to give the word to start.

CHAPTER VI

IN DEAD MAN'S CACHE

Not since the start of their journey had Melissy broken silence, save to answer, in few words as possible, the questions put to her by the outlaw. Yet her silence had not been sullenness. It had been the barrier which she had set up between them--one which he could not break down short of actual roughness.

Of this she could not accuse him. Indeed, he had been thoughtful of her comfort. At sunset they had stopped by a spring, and he had shared with her such food as he had. Moreover, he had insisted that she should rest for a while before they took up the last stretch of the way.

It was midnight now, and they had been traveling for many hours over rough mountain trails. There was more strength than one would look for in so slender a figure, yet Melissy was drooping with fatigue.

"It's not far now. We'll be there in a few minutes," MacQueen promised her.

They were ascending a narrow trail which ran along the sidehill through the timber. Presently they topped the summit, and the ground fell away from their feet to a bowl-shaped valley, over which the silvery moonshine played so that the basin seemed to swim in a magic sea of light.

"Welcome to the Cache," he said to her.

She was surprised out of her silence. "Dead Man's Cache?"

"It has been called that."

"Why?"

She knew, but she wanted to see if he would tell a story which showed so plainly his own ruthlessness.

He hesitated, but only for a moment.

"There was a man named Havens. He had a reputation as a bad man, and I reckon he deserved it--if brand blotting, mail rustling, and shooting citizens are the credentials to win that title. Hard pressed on account of some deviltry, he drifted into this country, and was made welcome by those living here. The best we had was his. He was fed, outfitted, and kept safe from the law that was looking for him.

"You would figure he was under big obligations to the men that did this for him--wouldn't you? But he was born skunk. When his chance came he offered to betray these men to the law, in exchange for a pardon for his own sneaking hide. The letter was found, and it was proved he wrote it. What ought those men to have done to him, Miss 'Lissie?"

"I don't know." She shuddered.

"There's got to be law, even in a place like this. We make our own laws, and the men that stay here have got to abide by them. Our law said this man must die. He died."

She did not ask him how. The story went that the outlaws whom the wretched man had tried to sell let him escape on purpose--that, just as he thought he was free of them, their mocking laughter came to him from the rocks all around. He was completely surrounded. They had merely let him run into a trap. He escaped again, wandered without food for days, and again discovered that they had been watching him all the time. Turn whichever way he would, their rifles warned him back. He stumbled on, growing weaker and weaker. They would neither capture him nor let him go.

For nearly a week the cruel game went on. Frequently he heard their voices in the hills about him. Sometimes he would call out to them pitifully to put him out of his misery. Only their horrible laughter answered. When he had reached the limit of endurance he lay down and died.

And the man who had engineered that heartless revenge was riding beside her. He had been ready to tell her the whole story, if she had asked for it, and equally ready to justify it. Nothing could have shown her more plainly the character of the villain into whose hands she had fallen.

They descended into the valley, winding in and out until they came suddenly upon ranch houses and a corral in a cleared space.

A man came out of the shadows into the moonlight to meet them. Instantly Melissy recognized his walk. It was Boone.

"Oh, it's you," MacQueen said coldly. "Any of the rest of the boys up?"

"No."

Not a dozen words had passed between them, but the girl sensed hostility. She was not surprised. Dunc Boone was not the man to take second place in any company of riff-raff, nor was MacQueen one likely to yield the supremacy he had fought to gain.

The latter swung from the saddle and lifted Melissy from hers. As her feet struck the ground her face for the first time came full into the moonlight.

Boone stifled a startled oath.

"Melissy Lee!" Like a swiftly reined horse he swung around upon his chief. "What devil's work is this?"

"My business, Dunc!" the other retorted in suave insult.

"By God, no! I make it mine. This young lady's a friend of mine--or used to be. Sabe?"

"I sabe you'd better not try to sit in at this game, my friend."

Boone swung abruptly upon Melissy. "How come you here, girl? Tell me!"

And in three sentences she explained.

"What's your play? Whyfor did you bring her?" the Arkansan demanded of MacQueen.

The latter stood balanced on his heels with his feet wide apart. There was a scornful grin on his face, but his eyes were fixed warily on the other man.

"What was I to do with her, Mr. Buttinski? She found out who I was. Could I send her home? If I did how was I to fix it so I could go to Mesa when it's necessary till we get this ransom business arranged?"

"All right. But you understand she's a friend of mine. I'll not have her hurt."

"Oh, go to the devil! I'm not in the habit of hurting young ladies."

MacQueen swung on his heel insolently and knocked on the door of a cabin near.

"Don't forget that I'm here when you need me," Boone told Melissy in a low voice.

"I'll not forget," the girl made answer in a murmur.

The wrinkled face of a Mexican woman appeared presently at a window. MacQueen jabbered a sentence or two in her language. She looked at Melissy and answered.

The girl had not lived in Southern Arizona for twenty years without having a working knowledge of Spanish. Wherefore, she knew that her captor had ordered his own room prepared for her.

While they waited for this to be made ready MacQueen hummed a snatch of a popular song. It happened to be a love ditty. Boone ground his teeth and glared at him, which appeared to amuse the other ruffian immensely.

"Don't stay up on our account," MacQueen suggested presently with a malicious laugh. "We're not needing a chaperone any to speak of."

The Mexican woman announced that the bedroom was ready and MacQueen escorted Melissy to the door of the room. He stood aside with mock gallantry to let her pass.

"Have to lock you in," he apologized airily. "Not that it would do you any good to escape. We'd have you again inside of twenty-four hours. This bit of the hills takes a heap of knowing. But we don't want you running away. You're too tired. So I lock the door and lie down on the porch under your window. Adios, señorita."

Melissy heard the key turn in the lock, and was grateful for the respite given her by the night. She was glad, too, that Boone was here. She knew him for a villain, but she hoped he would stand between her and MacQueen if the latter proved unruly in his attentions. Her guess was that Boone was jealous of the other--of his authority with the gang to which they both belonged, and now of his relationship to her. Out of this division might come hope for her.

So tired was she that, in spite of her alarms, sleep took her almost as soon as her head touched the pillow. When she awakened the sun was shining in at her window above the curtain strung across its lower half.

Some one was knocking at the door. When she asked who was there, in a voice which could not conceal its tremors, the answer came in feminine tones:

"'Tis I--Rosario Chaves."

The Mexican woman was not communicative, nor did she appear to be sympathetic. The plight of this girl might have moved even an unresponsive heart, but Rosario showed a stolid face to her distress. What had to be said, she said. For the rest, she declined conversation absolutely.

Breakfast was served Melissy in her room, after which Rosario led her outdoors. The woman gave her to understand that she might walk about the cleared space, but must not pass into the woods beyond. To point the need of obedience, Rosario seated herself on the porch, and began doing some drawn work upon which she was engaged.

Melissy walked toward the corral, but did not reach it. An old hag was seated in a chair beside one of the log cabins. From the color of her skin the girl judged her to be an Indian squaw. She wore moccasins, a dirty and shapeless one-piece dress, and a big sunbonnet, in which her head was buried.

Sitting on the floor of the porch, about fifteen feet from her, was a hard-faced customer, with stony eyes like those of a snake. He was sewing on a bridle that had given way. Melissy noticed that from the pocket of his chaps the butt of a revolver peeped. She judged it to be the custom in Dead Man's Cache to go garnished with weapons.

Her curiosity led her to deflect toward the old woman. But she had not taken three steps toward the cabin before the man with the jade eyes stopped her.

"That'll be near enough, ma'am," he said, civilly enough. "This old crone has a crazy spell whenever a stranger comes nigh. She's nutty. It ain't safe to come nearer--is it, old Sit-in-the-Sun?"

The squaw grunted. Simultaneously, she looked up, and Miss Lee thought that she had never seen more piercing eyes.

"Is Sit-in-the-Sun her name?" asked the girl curiously.

"That's the English of it. The Navajo word is a jawbreaker."

"Doesn't she understand English?"

"No more'n you do Choctaw, miss."

A quick step crunched the gravel behind Melissy. She did not need to look around to know that here was Black MacQueen.

"What's this--what's this, Hank?" he demanded sharply.

"The young lady started to come up and speak to old Sit-in-the-Sun. I was just explaining to her how crazy the old squaw is," Jeff answered with a grin.

"Oh! Is that all?" MacQueen turned to Melissy.

"She's plumb loony--dangerous, too. I don't want you to go near her."

The girl's eyes flashed. "Very considerate of you. But if you want to protect me from the really dangerous people here, you had better send me home."

"I tell you they do as I say, every man jack of them. I'd flay one alive if he insulted you."

"It's a privilege you don't sublet then," she retorted swiftly.

Admiration gleamed through his amusement. "Gad, you've got a sharp tongue. I'd pity the man you marry--unless he drove with a tight rein."

"That's not what we're discussing, Mr. MacQueen. Are you going to send me home?"

"Not till you've made us a nice long visit, my dear. You're quite safe here. My men are plumb gentle. They'll eat out of your hand. They don't insult ladies. I've taught 'em----"

"Pity you couldn't teach their leader, too."

He acknowledged the hit. "Come again, dearie. But what's your complaint? Haven't I treated you white so far?"

"No. You insulted me grossly when you brought me here by force."

"Did I lay a hand on you?"

"If it had been necessary you would have."

"You're right, I would," he nodded. "I've taken a fancy to you. You're a good-looking and a plucky little devil. I've a notion to fall in love with you."

"Don't!"

"Why not? Say I'm a villain and a bad lot. Wouldn't it be a good thing for me to tie up with a fine, straight-up young lady like you? Me, I like the way your eyes flash. You've got a devil of a temper, haven't you?"

They had been walking toward a pile of rocks some little way from the cluster of cabins. Now he sat down and smiled impudently across at her.

"That's my business," she flung back stormily.

Genially he nodded. "So it is. Mine, too, when we trot in double harness."

Her scornful eyes swept up and down him. "I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on earth."

"No. Well, I'm not partial to that game myself. I didn't mention matrimony, did I?"

The meaning she read in his mocking, half-closed eyes startled the girl. Seeing this, he added with a shrug:

"Just as you say about that. We'll make you Mrs. MacQueen on the level if you like."

The passion in her surged up. "I'd rather lie dead at your feet--I'd rather starve in these hills--I'd rather put a knife in my heart!"

He clapped his hands. "Fine! Fine! That Bernhardt woman hasn't got a thing on you when it comes to acting, my dear. You put that across bully. Never saw it done better."

"You--coward!" Her voice broke and she turned to leave him.

"Stop!" The ring of the word brought her feet to a halt. MacQueen padded across till he faced her. "Don't make any mistake, girl. You're mine. I don't care how. If it suits you to have a priest mumble words over us, good enough. But I'm the man you've got to get ready to love."

"I hate you."

"That's a good start, you little catamount."

"I'd rather die--a thousand times rather."

"Not you, my dear. You think you would right now, but inside of a week you'll be hunting for pet names to give me."

She ran blindly toward the house where her room was. On the way she passed at a little distance Dunc Boone and did not see him. His hungry eyes followed her--a slender creature of white and russet and gold, vivid as a hillside poppy, compact of life and fire and grace. He, too, was a miscreant and a villain, lost to honor and truth, but just now she held his heart in the hollow of her tightly clenched little fist. Good men and bad, at bottom we are all made of the same stuff, once we are down to the primal emotions that go deeper than civilization's veneer.

CHAPTER VII

"TRAPPED!"

Black MacQueen rolled a cigarette and sauntered toward the other outlaw.

"I reckon you better saddle up and take a look over the Flattops, Dunc. The way I figure it Lee's posse must be somewhere over there. Swing around toward the Elkhorns and get back to report by to-morrow evening, say."

Boone looked at him in an ugly manner. "Nothin' doing, MacQueen."

"What's that?"

"I'm no greaser, my friend. Orders don't go with me."

"They don't, eh? Who's major domo of this outfit?"

"I'm going to stay right here in this valley to-night. See?"

"What's eatin' you, man?"

"And every night so long as Melissy Lee stays."

MacQueen watched him with steady, hostile eyes. "So it's the girl, is it? Want to cut in, do you? Oh, no, my friend. Two's company; three's a crowd. She's mine."

"No."

"Yes. And another thing, Mr. Boone. I don't stand for any interference in my plans. Make a break at it and you'll take a hurry up journey to kingdom come."

"Or you will."

"Don't bank on that off chance. The boys are with me. You're alone. If I give the word they'll bump you off. Don't make a mistake, Boone."

The Arkansan hesitated. What MacQueen said was true enough. His overbearing disposition had made him unpopular. He knew the others would side against him and that if it came to a showdown they would snuff out his life as a man does the flame of a candle. The rage died out of his eyes and gave place to a look of cunning.

"It's your say-so, Black. But there will be a day when it ain't. Don't forget that."

"And in the meantime you'll ride the Flattops when I give the word?"

Boone nodded sulkily. "I said you had the call, didn't I?"

"Then ride 'em now, damn you. And don't show up in the Cache till to-morrow night."

MacQueen turned on his heel and strutted away. He was elated at his easy victory. If he had seen the look that followed him he might not have been so quiet in his mind.

But on the surface he had cinched his leadership. Boone saddled and rode out of the Cache without another word to anybody. Sullen and vindictive he might be, but cowed he certainly seemed. MacQueen celebrated by frequent trips to his sleeping quarters, where each time he resorted to a bottle and a glass. No man had ever seen him intoxicated, but there were times when he drank a good deal for a few days at a stretch. His dissipation would be followed by months of total abstinence.

All day the man persecuted Melissy with his attentions. His passion was veiled under a manner of mock deference, of insolent assurance, but as the hours passed the fears of the girl grew upon her. There were moments when she turned sick with waves of dread. In the sunshine, under the open sky, she could hold her own, but under cover of the night's blackness ghastly horrors would creep toward her to destroy.

Nor was there anybody to whom she might turn for help. Lane and Jackson were tools of their leader. The Mexican woman could do nothing even if she would. Boone alone might have helped her, and he had ridden away to save his own skin. So MacQueen told her to emphasize his triumph and her helplessness.

To her fancy dusk fell over the valley like a pall. It brought with it the terrible night, under cover of which unthinkable things might be done. With no appetite, she sat down to supper opposite her captor. To see him gloat over her made her heart sink. Her courage was of no avail against the thing that threatened.

Supper over, he made her sit with him on the porch for an hour to listen to his boasts of former conquests. And when he let her take her way to her room it was not "Good-night" but a mocking "Au revoir" he murmured as he bent to kiss her hand.

Melissy found Rosario waiting for her, crouched in the darkness of the room that had been given the young woman. The Mexican spoke in her own language, softly, with many glances of alarm to make sure they were alone.

"Hist, señorita. Here is a note. Read it. Destroy it. Swear not to betray Rosario."

By the light of a match Melissy read:

"Behind the big rocks. In half an hour.

"A Friend." What could it mean? Who could have sent it? Rosario would answer no questions. She snatched the note, tore it into fragments, chewed them into a pulp. Then, still shaking her head obstinately, hurriedly left the room.

But at least it meant hope. Her mind flew from her father to Jack Flatray, Bellamy, young Yarnell. It might be any of them. Or it might be O'Connor, who, perhaps, had by some miracle escaped.

The minutes were hours to her. Interminably they dragged. The fear rose in her that MacQueen might come in time to cut off her escape. At last, in her stocking feet, carrying her shoes in her hand, she stole into the hall, out to the porch, and from it to the shadows of the cottonwoods.

It was a night of both moon and stars. She had to cross a space washed in silvery light, taking the chance that nobody would see her. But first she stooped in the shadows to slip the shoes upon her feet. Her heart beat against her side as she had once seen that of a frightened mouse do. It seemed impossible for her to cover all that moonlit open unseen. Every moment she expected an alarm to ring out in the silent night. But none came.

Safely she reached the big rocks. A voice called to her softly. She answered, and came face to face with Boone. A drawn revolver was in his hand.

"You made it," he panted, as a man might who had been running hard.

"Yes," she whispered. "But they'll soon know. Let us get away."

"If you hadn't come I was going in to kill him."

She noticed the hard glitter in his eyes as he spoke, the crouched look of the padding tiger ready for its kill. The man was torn with hatred and jealousy.

Already they were moving back through the rocks to a dry wash that ran through the valley. The bed of this they followed for nearly a mile. Deflecting from it they pushed across the valley toward what appeared to be a sheer rock wall. With a twist to the left they swung back of a face of rock, turned sharply to the right, and found themselves in a fissure Melissy had not at all expected. Here ran a little cañon known only to those few who rode up and down it on the nefarious business of their unwholesome lives.

Boone spoke harshly, breaking for the first time in half an hour his moody silence.

"Safe at last. By God, I've evened my score with Black MacQueen."

And from the cliff above came the answer--a laugh full of mocking deviltry and malice.

The Arkansan turned upon Melissy a startled face of agony, in which despair and hate stood out of a yellow pallor.

"Trapped."

It was his last word to her. He swept the girl back against the shelter of the wall and ran crouching toward the entrance.

A bullet zipped--a second--a third. He stumbled, but did not fall. Turning, he came back, dodging like a hunted fox. As he passed her, Melissy saw that his face was ghastly. He ran with a limp.

A second time she heard the cackle of laughter. Guns cracked. Still the doomed man pushed forward. He went down, struck in the body, but dragged himself to his feet and staggered on.

All this time he had seen nobody at whom he could fire. Not a shot had come from his revolver. He sank behind a rock for shelter. The ping of a bullet on the shale beside him brought the tortured man to his feet. He looked wildly about him, the moon shining on his bare head, and plunged up the cañon.

And now it appeared his unseen tormentors were afraid he might escape them. Half a dozen shots came close together. Boone sank to the ground, writhed like a crushed worm, and twisted over so that his face was to the moonlight.

Melissy ran forward and knelt beside him.

"They've got me ... in half a dozen places.... I'm going fast."

"Oh, no ... no," the girl protested.

"Yep.... Surest thing you know.... I did you dirt onct, girl. And I've been a bad lot--a wolf, a killer."

"Never mind that now. You died to save me. Always I'll remember that."

"Onct you 'most loved me.... But it wouldn't have done. I'm a wolf and you're a little white lamb. Is Flatray the man?"

"Yes."

"Thought so. Well, he's square. I rigged it up on him about the rustling. I was the man you liked to 'a' caught that day years ago."

"You!"

"Yep." He broke off abruptly. "I'm going, girl.... It's gittin' black. Hold my hand till--till----"

He gave a shudder and seemed to fall together. He was dead.

Melissy heard the sound of rubble slipping. Some one was lowering himself cautiously down the side of the cañon. A man dropped to the wash and strutted toward her. He kept his eyes fixed on the lifeless form, rifle ready for action at an instant's notice. When he reached his victim he pushed the body with his foot, made sure of no trap, and relaxed his alertness.

"Dead as a hammer."

The man was MacQueen. He turned to Melissy and nodded jauntily.

"Good evening, my dear. Just taking a little stroll?" he asked ironically.

The girl leaned against the cold wall and covered her face with her arm. She was sobbing hysterically.

The outlaw seized her by the shoulders and swung her round. "Cut that out, girl," he ordered roughly.

Melissy caught at her sobs and tried to check them.

"He got what was coming to him, what he's been playing for a long time. I warned him, but the fool wouldn't see it."

"How did you know?" she asked, getting out her question a word at a time.

"Knew it all the time. Rosario brought his note to me. I told her to take it to you and keep her mouth shut."

"You planned his death."

"If you like to put it that way. Now we'll go home and forget this foolishness. Jeff, bring the horses round to the mouth of the gulch."

Melissy felt suddenly very, very tired and old. Her feet dragged like those of an Indian squaw following her master. It was as though heavy irons weighted her ankles.

MacQueen helped her to one of the horses Jackson brought to the lip of the gulch. Weariness rode on her shoulders all the way back. The soul of her was crushed beneath the misfortunes that oppressed her.

Long before they reached the ranch houses Rosario came running to meet them. Plainly she was in great excitement.

"The prisoners have escaped," she cried to MacQueen.

"Escaped. How?" demanded Black.

"Some one must have helped them. I heard a window smash and ran out. The young ranger and another man were coming out of the last cabin with the old man. I could do nothing. They ran."

They had been talking in her own language. MacQueen jabbed another question at her.

"Which way?"

"Toward the Pass."

The outlaw ripped out an oath. "We've got 'em. They can't reach it without horses as quick as we can with them." He whirled upon Melissy. "March into the house, girl. Don't you dare make a move. I'm leaving Buck here to watch you." Sharply he swung to the man Lane. "Buck, if she makes a break to get away, riddle her full of holes. You hear me."

A minute later, from the place where she lay face down on the bed, Melissy heard him and his men gallop away.

CHAPTER VIII

AN ESCAPE AND A CAPTURE

Far up in the mountains, in that section where head the Roaring Fork, One Horse Creek, and the Del Oro, is a vast tract of wild, untraveled country known vaguely as the Bad Lands. Somewhere among the thousand and one cañons which cleft the huddled hills lay hidden Dead Man's Cache. Here Black MacQueen retreated on those rare occasions when the pursuit grew hot on his tracks. So the current report ran.

Whether the abductors of Simon West were to be found in the Cache or at some other nest in the almost inaccessible ridges Jack Flatray had no means of knowing. His plan was to follow the Roaring Fork almost to its headquarters, and there establish a base for his hunt. It might take him a week to flush his game. It might take a month. He clamped his bulldog jaw to see the thing out to a finish.

Jack did not make the mistake of underestimating his job. He had followed the trail of bad men often enough to know that, in a frontier country, no hunt is so desperate as the man-hunt. Such men are never easily taken, even if they do not have all the advantage in the deadly game of hide and seek that is played in the timber and the pockets of the hills.

And here the odds all lay with the hunted. They knew every ravine and gulch. Day by day their scout looked down from mountain ledges to watch the progress of the posse.

Moreover, Flatray could never tell at what moment his covey might be startled from its run. The greatest vigilance was necessary to make sure his own party would not be ambushed. Yet slowly he combed the arroyos and the ridges, drawing always closer to that net of gulches in which he knew Dead Man's Cache must be located.

During the day the sheriff split his party into couples. Bellamy and Alan McKinstra, Farnum and Charlie Hymer, young Yarnell and the sheriff. So Jack had divided his posse, thus leaving at the head of each detail one old and wise head. Each night the parties met at the rendezvous appointed for the wranglers with the pack horses. From sunrise to sunset often no face was seen other than those of their own outfit. Sometimes a solitary sheep herder was discovered at his post. Always the work was hard, discouraging, and apparently futile. But the young sheriff never thought of quitting.

The provisions gave out. Jack sent back Hal Yarnell and Hegler, the wrangler, to bring in a fresh supply. Meanwhile the young sheriff took a big chance and scouted alone. He parted from the young Arkansan at the head of a gulch which twisted snakelike into the mountains; Yarnell and the pack outfit to ride to Mammoth, Flatray to dive still deeper into the mesh of hills. He had the instinct of the scout to stick to the high places as much as he could. Whenever it was possible he followed ridges, so that no spy could look down upon him as he traveled. Sometimes the contour of the country drove him into the open or down into hollows. But in such places he advanced with the swift stealth of an Indian.

It was on one of these occasions, when he had been driven into a dark and narrow cañon, that he came to a sudden halt. He was looking at an empty tomato can. Swinging down from his saddle, he picked it up without dismounting. A little juice dripped from the can to the ground.

Flatray needed no explanation. In Arizona men on the range often carry a can of tomatoes instead of a water canteen. Nothing alleviates thirst like the juice of this acid fruit. Some one had opened this can within two hours. Otherwise the sun would have dried the moisture.

Jack took his rifle from its place beneath his legs and set it across the saddle in front of him. Very carefully he continued on his way, watching every rock and bush ahead of him. Here and there in the sand were printed the signs of a horse going in the same direction as his.

Up and down, in and out of a maze of crooked paths, working by ever so devious a way higher into the chain of mountains, Jack followed his leader. Now he would lose the hoofmarks; now he would pick them up again. And, at the last, they brought him to the rim of a basin, a bowl of wooded ravines, of twisted ridges, of bleak spurs jutting into late pastures almost green. It was now past sunset. Dusk was filtering down from the blue peaks. As he looked a star peeped out low on the horizon.

But was it a star? He glimpsed it between trees. The conviction grew on him that what he saw was the light of a lamp. A tangle of rough country lay between him and that beacon, but there before him lay his destination. At last he had found his way into Dead Man's Cache.

The sheriff lost no time, for he knew that if he should get lost in the darkness on one of these forest slopes he might wander all night. A rough trail led him down into the basin. Now he would lose sight of the light. Half an hour later, pushing to the summit of a hill, he might find it. After a time there twinkled a second beside the first. He was getting close to a settlement of some kind.

Below him in the darkness lay a stretch of open meadow rising to the wooded foothills. Behind these a wall of rugged mountains encircled the valley like a gigantic crooked arm. Already he could make out faintly the outlines of the huddled buildings.

Slipping from his horse, Jack went forward cautiously on foot. He was still a hundred yards from the nearest hut when dogs bayed warning of his approach. He waited, rifle in hand. No sign of human life showed except the two lights shining from as many windows. Flatray counted four other cabins as dark as Egypt.

Very slowly he crept forward, always with one eye to his retreat. Why did nobody answer the barking of the dogs? Was he being watched all the time? But how could he be, since he was completely cloaked in darkness?

So at last he came to the nearest cabin, crept to the window, and looked in. A man lay on a bed. His hands and feet were securely tied and a second rope wound round so as to bind him to the bunk.

Flatray tapped softly on a pane. Instantly the head of the bound man slewed round.

"Friend?"

The prisoner asked it ever so gently, but the sheriff heard.

"Yes."

"The top part of the window is open. You can crawl over, I reckon."

Jack climbed on the sill and from it through the window. Almost before he reached the floor his knife was out and he was slashing at the ropes.

"Better put the light out, pardner," suggested the man he was freeing, and the officer noticed that there was no tremor in the cool, steady voice.

"That's right. We'd make a fine mark through the window."

And the light went out.

"I'm Bucky O'Connor. Who are you?"

"Jack Flatray."

They spoke together in whispers. Though both were keyed to the highest pitch of excitement they were as steady as eight-day clocks. O'Connor stretched his limbs, flexing them this way and that, so that he might have perfect control of them. He worked especially over the forearm and fingers of his right arm.

Flatray handed him a revolver.

"Whenever you're ready, Lieutenant."

"All right. It's the cabin next to this."

They climbed out of the window noiselessly and crept to the next hut. The door was locked, the window closed.

"We've got to smash the window. Nothing else for it," Flatray whispered.

"Looks like it. That means we'll have to shoot our way out."

With the butt of his rifle the sheriff shattered the woodwork of the window, driving the whole frame into the room.

"What is it?" a frightened voice demanded.

"Friends, Mr. West. Just a minute."

It took them scarce longer than that to free him and to get him into the open. A Mexican woman came screaming out of an adjoining cabin.

The young men caught each an arm of the capitalist and hurried him forward.

"Hell'll be popping in a minute," Flatray explained.

But they reached the shelter of the underbrush without a shot having been fired. Nor had a single man appeared to dispute their escape.

"Looks like most of the family is away from home to-night," Bucky hazarded.

"Maybe so, but they're liable to drop in any minute. We'll keep covering ground."

They circled round toward the sheriff's horse. As soon as they reached it West, still stiff from want of circulation in his cramped limbs, was boosted into the saddle.

"It's going to be a good deal of a guess to find our way out of the Cache," Jack explained. "Even in the daytime it would take a 'Pache, but at night--well, here's hoping the luck's good."

They found it not so good as they had hoped. For hours they wandered in mesquit, dragged themselves through cactus, crossed washes, and climbed hills.

"This will never do. We'd better give it up till daylight. We're not getting anywhere," the sheriff suggested.

They did as he advised. As soon as a faint gray sifted into the sky they were on the move again. But whichever way they climbed it was always to come up against steep cliffs too precipitous to be scaled.

The ranger officer pointed to a notch beyond a cowbacked hill. "I wouldn't be sure, but it looks like that was the way they brought me into the Cache. I could tell if I were up there. What's the matter with my going ahead and settling the thing? If I'm right I'll come back and let you know."

Jack looked at West. The railroad man was tired and drawn. He was not used to galloping over the hills all night.

"All right. We'll be here when you come back," Flatray said, and flung himself on the ground.

West followed his example.

It must have been half an hour later that Flatray heard a twig snap under an approaching foot. He had been scanning the valley with his glasses, having given West instructions to keep a lookout in the rear. He swung his head round sharply, and with it his rifle.

"You're covered, you fool," cried the man who was strutting toward them.

"Stop there. Not another step," Flatray called sharply.

The man stopped, his rifle half raised. "We've got you on every side, man." He lifted his voice. "Jeff--Hank--Steve! Let him know you're alive."

Three guns cracked and kicked up the dust close to the sheriff.

"What do you want with us?" Flatray asked, sparring for time.

"Drop your gun. If you don't we'll riddle you both."

West spoke to Jack promptly. "Do as he says. It's MacQueen."

Flatray hesitated. He could kill MacQueen probably, but almost certainly he and West would pay the penalty. He reluctantly put his rifle down. "All right. It's your call."

"Where's O'Connor?"

The sheriff looked straight at him. "Haven't you enough of us for one gather?"

The outlaws were closing in on them cautiously.

"Not without that smart man hunter. Where is he?"

"I don't know."

"The devil you don't."

"We separated early this morning--thought it would give us a better chance for a getaway." Jack gave a sudden exclamation of surprise. "So it was Black MacQueen himself who posed as O'Connor down at Mesa."

"Guessed it right, my friend. And I'll tell you one thing: you've made the mistake of your life butting into Dead Man's Cache. Your missing friend O'Connor was due to hand in his checks to-day. Since you've taken his place it will be you that crosses the divide, Mr. Sheriff. You'd better tell where he is, for if we don't get Mr. Bucky it will be God help J. Flatray."

The dapper little villain exuded a smug, complacent cruelty. It was no use for the sheriff to remind himself that such things weren't done nowadays, that the times of Geronimo and the Apache Kid were past forever. Black MacQueen would go the limit in deviltry if he set his mind to it.

Yet Flatray answered easily, without any perceptible hesitation: "I reckon I'll play my hand and let Bucky play his."

"Suits me if it does you. Jeff, collect that hardware. Now, while you boys beat up the hills for O'Connor, I'll trail back to camp with these two all-night picnickers."

CHAPTER IX

A BARGAIN

Melissy saw the two prisoners brought in, though she could not tell at that distance who they were. Her watch told her that it was four-thirty. She had slept scarcely at all during the night, but now she lay down on the bed in her clothes.

The next she knew, Rosario was calling her to get up for breakfast. The girl dressed and followed Rosario to the adjoining cabin. MacQueen was not there, and Melissy ate alone. She was given to understand that she might walk up and down in front of the houses for a few minutes after breakfast. Naturally she made the most of the little liberty allowed her.

The old squaw Sit-in-the-Sun squatted in front of the last hut, her back against the log wall. The man called Buck sat yawning on a rock a few yards away. What struck Melissy as strange was that the squaw was figuring on the back of an old envelope with the stub of a lead pencil.

The young woman walked leisurely past the cabin for perhaps a dozen yards.

"That'll be about far enough. You don't want to tire yourself, Miss Lee," Buck Lane called, with a grin.

Melissy stopped, stood looking at the mountains for a few minutes, and turned back. Sit-in-the-Sun looked quickly at her, and at the same moment she tore the paper in two and her fingers opened to release one piece of the envelope upon which she had been writing. A puff of wind carried it almost directly in front of the girl. Lane was still yawning sleepily, his gaze directed toward the spot where he presently expected Rosario to step out and call him to breakfast. Melissy dropped her handkerchief, stooped to pick it up, and gathered at the same time in a crumpled heap into her hand the fragment of an envelope. Without another glance at the squaw, the young woman kept on her way, sauntered to the porch, and lingered there as if in doubt.

"I'm tired," she announced to Rosario, and turned to her rooms.

"Si, señorita," answered her attendant quietly.

Once inside, Melissy lay down on her bed, with her back to the window, and smoothed out the torn envelope. On one side were some disjointed memoranda which she did not understand.

K. C. & T. 93 D. & R. B. 87 Float $10,000,000 Cortes for extension.

That was all, but certainly a strange puzzle for a Navajo squaw to set her.

She turned the paper over, to find the other side close-packed with writing.

Miss Lee:

In the last cabin but one is a prisoner, your friend Sheriff Flatray. He is to be shot in an hour. I have offered any sum for his life and been refused. For God's sake save him somehow.

Simon West. Jack Flatray here, and about to be murdered! The thing was incredible. And yet--and yet---- Was it so impossible, after all? Some one had broken into the Cache and released the prisoners. Who more likely than Jack to have done this? And later they had captured him and condemned him for what he had done.

Melissy reconstructed the scene in a flash. The Indian squaw was West. He had been rigged up in that paraphernalia to deceive any chance mountaineer who might drop into the valley by accident.

No doubt, when he first saw Melissy, the railroad magnate had been passing his time in making notes about his plans for the system he controlled. But when he had caught sight of her, he had written the note, under the very eyes of the guard, had torn the envelope as if it were of no importance, and tossed the pieces away. He had taken the thousandth chance that his note might fall into the hands of the person to whom it was directed.

All this she understood without giving it conscious thought. For her whole mind was filled with the horror of what she had learned. Jack Flatray, the man she loved, was to be killed. He was to be shot down in an hour.

With the thought, she was at her door--only to find that it had been quietly locked while she lay on the bed. No doubt they had meant to keep her a close prisoner until the thing they were about to do was finished. She beat upon it, called to Rosario to let her out, wrung her hands in her desperation. Then she remembered the window. It was a cheap and flimsy case, and had been jammed so that her strength was not sufficient to raise it.

Her eye searched the room for a weapon, and found an Indian tom-tom club. With this she smashed the panes and beat down the wooden cross bars of the sash. Agile as a forest fawn, she slipped through the opening she had made and ran toward the far cabin.

A group of men surrounded the door; and, as she drew near, it opened to show three central figures. MacQueen was one, Rosario Chaves a second; but the most conspicuous was a bareheaded young man, with his hands tied behind him. He was going to his death, but a glance was enough to show that he went unconquered and unconquerable. His step did not drag. There was a faint, grave smile on his lips; and in his eye was the dynamic spark that proclaimed him still master of his fate. The woolen shirt had been unbuttoned and pulled back to make way for the rope that lay loosely about his neck, so that she could not miss the well-muscled slope of his fine shoulders, or the gallant set of the small head upon the brown throat.

The man who first caught sight of Melissy spoke in a low voice to his chief. MacQueen turned his head sharply to see her, took a dozen steps toward her, then upbraided the Mexican woman, who had run out after Melissy.

"I told you to lock her door--to make sure of it."

"Si, señor--I did."

"Then how----" He stopped, and looked to Miss Lee for an explanation.

"I broke the window."

The outlaw noticed then that her hand was bleeding. "Broke the window! Why?"

"I had to get out! I had to stop you!"

He attempted no denial of what he was about to do. "How did you know? Did Rosario tell you?" he asked curtly.

"No--no! I found out--just by chance."

"What chance?" He was plainly disconcerted that she had come to interfere, and as plainly eager to punish the person who had disclosed to her this thing, which he would have liked to do quietly, without her knowledge.

"Never mind that. Nobody is to blame. Say I overheard a sentence. Thank God I did, and I am in time."

There was no avoiding it now. He had to fight it out with her. "In time for what?" he wanted to know, his eyes narrowing to vicious pin points.

"To save him."

"No--no! He must die," cried the Mexican woman.

Melissy was amazed at her vehemence, at the passion of hate that trembled in the voice of the old woman.

MacQueen nodded. "It is out of my hands, you see. He has been condemned."

"But why?"

"Tell her, Rosario."

The woman poured her story forth fluently in the native tongue. O'Connor had killed her son--did not deny that he had done it. And just because Tony had tried to escape. This man had freed the ranger. Very well. He should take O'Connor's place. Let him die the death. A life for a life. Was that not fair?

Flatray turned his head and caught sight of Melissy. A startled cry died on his lips.

"Jack!" She held out both hands to him as she ran toward him.

The sheriff took her in his arms to console her. For the girl's face was working in a stress of emotion.

"Oh, I'm in time--I'm in time. Thank God I'm in time."

Jack waited a moment to steady his voice. "How came you here, Melissy?"

"He brought me--Black MacQueen. I hated him for it, but now I'm glad--so glad--because I can save you."

Jack winced. He looked over her shoulder at MacQueen, taking it all in with an air of pleasant politeness. And one look was enough to tell him that there was no hope for him. The outlaw had the complacent manner of a cat which has just got at the cream. That Melissy loved him would be an additional reason for wiping him off the map. And in that instant a fierce joy leaped up in Flatray and surged through him, an emotion stronger than the fear of death. She loved him. MacQueen could not take that away from him.

"It's all a mistake," Melissy went on eagerly. "Of course they can't blame you for what Lieutenant O'Connor did. It is absurd--ridiculous."

"Certainly." MacQueen tugged at his little black mustache and kept his black eyes on her constantly. "That's not what we're blaming him for. The indictment against your friend is that he interfered when it wasn't his business."

"But it was his business. Don't you know he's sheriff? He had to do it." Melissy turned to the outlaw impetuously.

"So. And I have to play my hand out, too. It wipes out Mr. Flatray. Sorry, but business is business."

"But--but----" Melissy grew pale as the icy fear gripped her heart that the man meant to go on with the crime. "Don't you see? He's the sheriff?"

"And I never did love sheriffs," drawled MacQueen.

The girl repeated herself helplessly. "It was his sworn duty. That was how he looked at it."

A ghost of an ironic smile flitted across the face of the outlaw chief. "Rosario's sworn duty is to avenge her son's death. That is how she looks at it. The rest of us swore the oath with her."

"But Lieutenant O'Connor had the law back of him. This is murder!"

"Not at all. It is the law of the valley--a life for a life."

"But---- Oh, no--no--no!"

"Yes."

The finality of it appalled her. She felt as if she were butting her head against a stone wall. She knew that argument and entreaty were of no avail, yet she desperately besought first one and then another of them to save the prisoner. Each in turn shook his head. She could see that none of them, save Rosario, bore him a grudge; yet none would move to break the valley oath. At the last, she was through with her promises and her prayers. She had spent them all, and had come up against the wall of blank despair.

Then Jack's grave smile thanked her. "You've done what you could, Melissy."

She clung to him wildly. "Oh, no--no! I can't let you go, Jack. I can't. I can't."

"I reckon it's got to be, dear," he told her gently.

But her breaking heart could not stand that. There must somehow be a way to save him. She cast about desperately for one, and had not found it when she begged the outlaw chief to see her alone.

"No use." He shook his head.

"But just for five minutes! That can't do any harm, can it?"

"And no good, either."

"Yet I ask it. You might do that much for me," she pleaded.

Her despair had moved him; for he was human, after all. That he was troubled about it annoyed him a good deal. Her arrival on the scene had made things unpleasant for everybody. Ungraciously he assented, as the easiest way out of the difficulty.

The two moved off to the corral. It was perhaps thirty yards distant, and they reached it before either of them spoke. She was the first to break the silence.

[Illustration: "OH, NO--NO! I CAN'T LET YOU GO, JACK. I CAN'T. I CAN'T." Page 294.]

"You won't do this dreadful thing--surely, you won't do it."

"No use saying another word about it. I told you that," he answered doggedly.

"But---- Oh, don't you see? It's one of those things no white man can do. Once it's done, you have put the bars up against decency for the rest of your life."

"I reckon I'll have to risk that--and down in your heart you don't believe it, because you think I've had the bars up for years."

She had come to an impasse already. She tried another turn. "And you said you cared for me! Yet you are willing to make me unhappy for the rest of my life."

"Why, no! I'm willing to make you happy. There's fish in the sea just as good as any that ever were caught," he smirked.

"But it would help you to free him. Don't you see? It's your chance. You can begin again, now. You can make him your friend."

His eyes were hard and grim. "I don't want him for a friend, and you're dead wrong if you think I could make this a lever to square myself with the law. I couldn't. He wouldn't let me, for one thing--he isn't that kind."

"And you said you cared for me!" she repeated helplessly, wringing her hands in her despair. "But at the first chance you fail me."

"Can't you see it isn't a personal matter? I've got nothing against him--nothing to speak of. I'd give him to you, if I could. But it's not my say-so. The thing is out of my hands."

"You could save him, if you set yourself to."

"Sure, I could--if I would pay the price. But I won't pay."

"That's it. You would have to give Rosario something--make some concession," she said eagerly.

"And I'm not willing to pay the price," he told her. "His life's forfeit. Hasn't he been hunting us for a week?"

"Let me pay it," she cried. "I have money in my own right--seven thousand dollars. I'll give it all to save him."

He shook his head. "No use. We've turned down a big offer from West. Your seven thousand isn't a drop in the bucket."

She beat her hands together wildly. "There must be some way to save him."

The outlaw was looking at her with narrowed eyes. He saw a way, and was working it out in his mind. "You're willing to pay, are you?" he asked.

"Yes--yes! All I have."

He put his arms akimbo on the corral fence, and looked long at her. "Suppose the price can't be paid in money, Miss Lee."

"What do you mean?"

"Money isn't the only thing in this world. There are lots of things it won't buy that other things will," he said slowly.

She groped for his meaning, her wide eyes fixed on his, and still did not find it. "Be plainer, please. What can I do to save him?"

"You might marry me."

"Never!"

"Just as you say. You were looking for a way, and I suggested one. Anyhow, you're mine."

"I won't do it!"

"You wanted me to pay the price; but you don't want to pay yourself."

"I couldn't do it. It would be horrible!" But she knew she could and must.

"Why couldn't you? I'm ready to cut loose from this way of living. When I pull off this one big thing, I'll quit. We'll go somewhere and begin life again. You said I could. Well, I will. You'll help me to keep straight. It won't be only his life you are saving. It will be mine, too."

"No--I don't love you! How could a girl marry a man she didn't care for and didn't respect?"

"I'll make you do both before long. I'm the kind of man women love."

"You're the kind I hate," she flashed bitterly.

"I'll risk your hate, my dear," he laughed easily.

She did not look at him. Her eyes were on the horizon line, where sky and pine tops met. He knew that she was fighting it out to a decision, and he did not speak again.

After all, she was only a girl. Right and wrong were inextricably mixed in her mind. It was not right to marry this man. It was not right to let the sheriff die while she could save him. She was generous to the core. But there was something deeper than generosity. Her banked love for Flatray flooded her in a great cry of protest against his death. She loved him. She loved him. Much as she detested this man, revolting as she found the thought of being linked to him, the impulse to sacrifice herself was the stronger feeling of the two. Deep in her heart she knew that she could not let Jack go to his death so long as it was possible to prevent it.

Her grave eyes came back to MacQueen. "I'll have to tell you one thing--I'll hate you worse than ever after this. Don't think I'll ever change my mind about that. I won't."

He twirled his little mustache complacently.

"I'll have to risk that, as I said."

"You'll take me to Mesa to-day. As soon as we get there a justice of the peace will marry us. From his house we'll go directly to father's. You won't lie to me."

"No. I'll play out the game square, if you do."

"And after we're married, what then?"

"You may stay at home until I get this ransom business settled. Then we'll go to Sonora."

"How do you know I'll go?"

"I'll trust you."

"Then it's a bargain."

Without another word, they turned back to rejoin the group by the cabin. Before they had gone a dozen steps she stopped.

"What about Mr. Flatray? You will free him, of course."

"Yes. I'll take him right out due north of here, about four miles. He'll be blindfolded. There we'll leave him, with instructions how to reach Mesa."

"I'll go with you," she announced promptly.

"What for?"

"To make sure that you do let him go--alive."

He shrugged his shoulders. "All right. I told you I was going to play fair. I haven't many good points, but that is one of them. I don't give my word and then break it."

"Still, I'll go."

He laughed angrily. "That's your privilege."

She turned on him passionately. "You've got no right to resent it, though I don't care a jackstraw whether you do or not. I'm not going into this because I want to, but to save this man from the den of wolves into which he has fallen. If you knew how I despise and hate you, how my whole soul loathes you, maybe you wouldn't be so eager to go on with it! You'll get nothing out of this but the pleasure of torturing a girl who can't defend herself."

"We'll see about that," he answered doggedly.

CHAPTER X

THE PRICE

MacQueen lost no time in announcing his new program.

"Boys, the hanging's off. I've decided to accept West's offer for Flatray's life. It's too good to turn down."

"That's what I told you all the time," growled Buck.

"Well, I'm telling you now. The money will be divided equally among you, except that Rosario will get my share as well as hers."

Rosario Chaves broke into fierce protests. Finding these unheeded, she cursed the outlaws furiously and threatened vengeance upon them. She did not want money; she wanted this man's life. The men accepted this as a matter of course, and paid little attention to the ravings of the old woman.

At the first news of his reprieve, Jack saw things through a haze for a moment. But he neither broke down nor showed undue exultation.

His first thought was of relief, of profound comfort; his next of wonder and suspicion. How under heaven had Melissy won his life for him? He looked quickly at her, but the eyes of the girl did not meet his.

"Melissy." Flatray spoke very gently, but something in the way he spoke compelled the young woman to meet his eyes.

Almost instantly the long lashes went down to her pale cheeks again.

MacQueen cut in suavely: "I reckon this is the time for announcements. Boys, Miss Lee has promised to marry me."

Before the stir which this produced had died away, Flatray flashed a question: "In exchange for my life?"

The chief of the outlaws looked at him with insolence smoldering in his black eyes. "Now, I wonder when you ever will learn to mind your own business, sheriff! Nobody invited you to sit into this game."

"This is my business. I make it mine. Give me a straight answer, Melissy. Am I right? Is it for my life?"

"Yes." Her voice was so low he could hardly hear it.

"Then I won't have it! The thing is infamous. I can't hide behind the skirts of a girl, least of all you. I can die, but, by God, I'll keep my self-respect."

"It's all arranged," Melissy answered in a whisper.

Flatray laughed harshly. "I guess not. You can't pay my debts by giving yourself to life-long misery."

"You're right pessimistic, sheriff," sneered MacQueen.

"What do you take me for? I won't have it. I won't have it." The sheriff's voice was rough and hoarse. "I'd rather die fifty times."

"It's not up to you to choose, as it happens," the leader of the outlaws suggested suavely.

"You villain! You damned white-livered coward!" The look of the young sheriff scorched.

"Speaks right out in meeting, don't he?" grinned Lane.

"I know what he is, Jack," Melissy cried. "And he knows I think he's the lowest thing that crawls. But I've got to save you. Don't you see, I've got to do it?"

"No, I don't see it," Flatray answered hotly. "I can take what's coming to me, can't I? But if you save my life that way you make me as low a thing as he is. I say I'll not have it."

Melissy could stand it no longer. She began to sob. "I--I--Oh, Jack, I've got to do it. Don't you see? Don't you see? It won't make any difference with me if I don't. No difference--except that you'll be--dead."

She was in his embrace, her arms around his neck, whispering the horrible truth in his ear brokenly. And as he felt her dear young fragrance of hair in his nostrils, the warm, soft litheness of her body against his, the rage and terror in him flooded his veins. Could such things be? Was it possible a man like that could live? Not if he could help it.

Gently he unfastened her arms from his neck. MacQueen was standing a dozen feet away, his hands behind his back and his legs wide apart. As Flatray swung around the outlaw read a warning in the blazing eyes. Just as Jack tore loose from his guards MacQueen reached for his revolver.

The gun flashed. A red hot blaze scorched through Jack's arm. Next instant MacQueen lay flat on his back, the sheriff's fingers tight around his throat. If he could have had five seconds more the man's neck would have been broken. But they dragged him away, fighting like a wild cat. They flung him down and tied his hands behind him.

Melissy caught a glimpse of his bleeding arm, his torn and dusty face, the appalling ferocity of the men who were hammering him into the ground. She took a step forward blindly. The mountains in front of her tilted into the sky. She moved forward another step, then stumbled and went down. She had fainted.

"Just as well," MacQueen nodded. "Here, Rosario, look after the young lady. Lift Flatray to a horse, boys, after you've blindfolded him. Good enough. Oh, and one thing more, Flatray. You're covered by a rifle. If you lift a hand to slip that handkerchief from your eyes, you're giving the signal for Jeff to turn loose at you. We're going to take you away, but we don't aim to let you out of the Cache for a few days yet."

"What do you mean?"

MacQueen jeered at his prisoner openly. "I mean, Mr. Sheriff, that you'll stay with us till the girl does as she has promised. Understand?"

"I think so, you hellhound. You're going to hold me against her so that she can't change her mind."

"Exactly. So that she can't rue back. You've guessed it."

They rode for hours, but in what direction it was impossible for Flatray to guess. He could tell when they were ascending, when dropping down hill, but in a country so rugged this meant nothing.

When at last he dismounted and the kerchief was taken from his eyes he found himself in a little pocket of the hills in front of an old log cabin. Jeff stayed with him. The others rode away. But not till they had him safely tied to a heavy table leg within the hut.

CHAPTER XI

SQUIRE LATIMER TAKES A HAND

"You're to make ready for a trip to town, señorita."

"When?"

"At once," Rosario answered. "By orders of Señor MacQueen."

"Then he is back?" the girl flashed.

"Just back."

"Tell him I want to see him--immediately."

"I am to take you to him as soon as you are ready to ride."

"Oh, very well."

In a very few minutes the young woman was ready. Rosario led her to the cabin in front of which she had seen the old Indian squaw. In it were seated Simon West and Black MacQueen. Both of them rose at her entrance.

"Please take a chair, Miss Lee. We have some business to talk over," the outlaw suggested.

Melissy looked straight at him, her lips shut tight. "What have you done with Jack Flatray?" she presently demanded.

"Left him to find his way back to his friends."

"You didn't hurt him ... any more?"

"No."

"And you left him alone, wounded as he was."

"We fixed up his wound," lied MacQueen.

"Was it very bad?"

"A scratch. I had to do it."

"You needn't apologize to me."

"I'm not apologizing, you little wild-cat."

"What do you want with me? Why did you send for me?"

"We're going to Mesa to see a parson. But before we start there's some business to fix up. Mr. West and I will need your help to fix up the negotiations for his release."

"My help!" She looked at him in surprise. "How can I help?"

"I've laid my demands before his friends. They'll come through with the money, sure. But I want them to understand the conditions right plainly, so there won't be any mistake. What they have got to get soaked into their heads is that, if they do make any mistakes, they will not see Simon West again alive. You put that up to them strong."

"I'm not going to be your agent in robbing people of their money!" she told him swiftly.

"You don't understand. Mr. West wants you to do it. He wants you to explain the facts to his friends, so they won't act rash and get off wrong foot first."

"Oh! If Mr. West wishes it," she conceded.

"I do wish it," the great man added.

Though his face and hands were still stained with the dye that had been used on them, the railroad builder was now dressed in his own clothes. The girl thought that he looked haggard and anxious, and she was sure that her presence brought him relief. In his own way he was an indomitable fighter, but his experience had not included anything of this nature.

Jack Flatray could look at death level-eyed, and with an even pulse, because for him it was all in the day's work; but the prospect of it shook West's high-strung nerves. Nevertheless, he took command of the explanations, because it had been his custom for years to lead.

MacQueen, his sardonic smile in play, sat back and let West do most of the talking. Both men were working for the same end--to get the ransom paid as soon as possible--and the multimillionaire released; and the outlaw realized that Melissy would coöperate the more heartily if she felt she were working for West and not for himself.

"This is Tuesday, Miss Lee. You will reach Mesa some time to-night. My friends ought to be on the ground already. I want you and your father to get in touch with them right away, and arrange the details along the line laid down by Mr. MacQueen. In case they agree to everything and understand fully, have the Stars and Stripes flying from your house all day to-morrow as a signal. Don't on any account omit this--because, if you do, my captors will have to hold me longer, pending further negotiations. I have written a letter to Mr. Lucas, exonerating you completely, Miss Lee; and I have ordered him to comply with all these demands without parley."

"Our proposition seems to Mr. West very reasonable and fair," grinned MacQueen impishly, paring his finger nails.

"At any rate, I think that my life is worth to this country a good deal more than three hundred thousand dollars," West corrected.

"Besides being worth something to Simon West," the outlaw added carelessly.

West plunged into the details of delivering the money. Once or twice the other man corrected him or amplified some statement. In order that there could be no mistake, a map of Sweetwater Cañon was handed to Melissy to be used by the man who would bring the money to the rendezvous at the Devil's Causeway.

When it came to saying good-bye, the old man could scarce make up his mind to release the girl's hand. It seemed to him that she was the visible sign of his safety, and that with her departure went a safeguard from these desperate men. He could not forget that she had saved the life of the sheriff, even though he did not know what sacrifice she had made so to do.

"I know you'll do your best for me," he said, with tears in his eyes. "Make Lucas see this thing right. Don't let any fool detectives bunco him into refusing to pay the ransom. Put it to him as strongly as you can, that it will be either my life or the money. I have ordered him to pay it, and I want it paid."

Melissy nodded. "I'll tell him how it is, Mr. West. I know it will be all right. By Thursday afternoon we shall have you with us to dinner again. Trust us."

"I do." He lowered his voice and glanced at MacQueen, who had been called aside to speak to one of his men. "And I'm glad you're going away from here. This is no place for you."

"It isn't quite the place for you, either," she answered, with a faint, joyless smile.

They started an hour before midday. Rosario had packed a lunch for both of them in MacQueen's saddlebags, for it was the intention of the latter to avoid ranches and traveled trails on the way down. He believed that the girl would go through with what she had pledged herself to do, but he did not mean to take chances of a rescue.

In the middle of the afternoon they stopped for lunch at Round-up Spring--a water hole which had not dried up in a dozen years. It was a somber meal. Melissy's spirits had been sinking lower and lower with every mile that brought her nearer the destiny into which this man was forcing her. Food choked her, and she ate but little. Occasionally, with staring eyes, she would fall into a reverie, from which his least word would startle her to a shiver of apprehension. This she always controlled after the first instinctive shudder.

"What's the matter with you, girl? I'm not going to hurt you any. I never hit a woman in my life," the man said once roughly.

"Perhaps you may, after you're married. It's usually one's wife one beats. Don't be discouraged. You'll have the experience yet," she retorted, but without much spirit.

"To hear you tell it, I'm a devil through and through! It's that kind of talk that drives a man to drink," he flung out angrily.

"And to wife beating. Of course, I'm not your chattel yet, because the ceremony hasn't been read; but if you would like to anticipate a few hours and beat me, I don't suppose there is any reason you shouldn't."

"Gad! How you hate me!"

Her inveteracy discouraged him. His good looks, his debonair manner, the magnetic charm he knew how to exert--these, which had availed him with other women, did not seem to reach her at all. She really gave him no chance to prove himself. He was ready to be grave or gay--to be a light-hearted boy or a blasé man of the world--to adopt any rôle that would suit her. But how could one play up effectively to a chill silence which took no note of him, to a depression of the soul which would not let itself be lifted? He felt that she was living up to the barest letter of the law in fulfilling their contract, and because of it he steeled himself against her sufferings.

There was one moment of their ride when she stood on the tiptoe of expectation and showed again the sparkle of eager life. MacQueen had resaddled after their luncheon, and they were climbing a long sidehill that looked over a dry valley. With a gesture, the outlaw checked her horse.

"Look!"

Some quarter of a mile from them two men were riding up a wash that ran through the valley. The mesquite and the cactus were thick, and it was for only an occasional moment that they could be seen. Black and the girl were screened from view by a live oak in front of them, so that there was no danger of being observed. The outlaw got out his field glasses and watched the men intently.

Melissy could not contain the question that trembled on her lips: "Do you know them?"

"I reckon not."

"Perhaps----"

"Well!"

"May I look--please?"

He handed her the glasses. She had to wait for the riders to reappear, but when they did she gave a little cry.

"It's Mr. Bellamy!"

"Oh, is it?"

He looked at her steadily, ready to crush in her throat any call she might utter for help. But he soon saw that she had no intention of making her presence known. Her eyes were glued to the glasses. As long as the men were in sight she focused her gaze on them ravenously. At last a bend in the dry river bed hid them from view. She lowered the binoculars with a sigh.

"Lucky they didn't see us," he said, with his easy, sinister laugh. "Lucky for them."

She noticed for the first time that he had uncased his rifle and was holding it across the saddle-tree.

Night slipped silently down from the hills--the soft, cool, velvet night of the Arizona uplands. The girl drooped in the saddle from sheer exhaustion. The past few days had been hard ones, and last night she had lost most of her sleep. She had ridden far on rough trails, had been subjected to a stress of emotion to which her placid maiden life had been unused. But she made no complaint. It was part of the creed she had unconsciously learned from her father to game out whatever had to be endured.

The outlaw, though he saw her fatigue, would not heed it. She had chosen to set herself apart from him. Let her ask him to stop and rest, if she wanted to. It would do her pride good to be humbled. Yet in his heart he admired her the more, because she asked no favors of him and forbore the womanish appeal of tears.

His watch showed eleven o'clock by the moon when the lights of Mesa glimmered in the valley below.

"We'll be in now in half an hour," he said.

She had no comment to make, and silence fell between them again until they reached the outskirts of the town.

"We'll get off here and walk in," he ordered; and, after she had dismounted, he picketed the horses close to the road. "You can send for yours in the mornin'. Mine will be in the livery barn by that time."

The streets were practically deserted in the residential part of the town. Only one man they saw, and at his approach MacQueen drew Melissy behind a large lilac bush.

As the man drew near the outlaw's hand tightened on the shoulder of the girl. For the man was her father--dusty, hollow-eyed, and haggard. The two crouching behind the lilacs knew that this iron man was broken by his fears for his only child, the girl who was the apple of his eye.

Not until he was out of hearing did Melissy open her lips to the stifled cry she had suppressed. Her arms went out to him, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. For herself she had not let herself break down, but for her father's grief her heart was like water.

"All right. Don't break down now. You'll be with him inside of half an hour," the outlaw told her gruffly.

They stopped at a house not much farther down the street, and he rang the bell. It took a second ring to bring a head out of the open window upstairs.

"Well?" a sleepy voice demanded.

"Is this Squire Latimer?"

"Yes."

"Come down. We want to get married."

"Then why can't you come at a reasonable hour?--consarn it!"

"Never mind that. There's a good fee in it. Hurry up!"

Presently the door opened. "Come in. You can wait in the hall till I get a light."

"No--I don't want a light. We'll step into this room, and be married at once," MacQueen told him crisply.

"I don't know about that. I'm not marrying folks that can't be looked at."

"You'll marry us, and at once. I'm Black MacQueen!"

It was ludicrous to see how the justice of the peace fell back in terror before the redoubtable bad man of the hills.

"Well, I don't know as a light is a legal necessity; but we got to have witnesses."

"Have you any in the house?"

"My daughter and a girl friend of hers are sleeping upstairs. I'll call them, Mr. Black--er--I mean Mr. MacQueen."

The outlaw went with the squire to the foot of the stairs, whence Latimer wakened the girls and told them to dress at once, as quickly as possible. A few minutes later they came down--towsled, eyes heavy with sleep, giggling at each other in girlish fashion. But when they knew whose marriage they were witnessing, giggles and sleep fled together.

They were due for another surprise later. MacQueen and his bride were standing in the heavy shadows, so that both bulked vaguely in mere outline. Hitherto, Melissy had not spoken a word. The time came when it was necessary for the justice to know the name of the girl whom he was marrying. Her answer came at once, in a low, scarcely audible voice:

"Melissy Lee."

An electric shock could scarce have startled them more. Of all the girls in Mesa none was so proud as Melissy Lee, none had been so far above criticism, such a queen in the frontier town. She had spent a year in school at Denver; she had always been a social leader. While she had always been friendly to the other girls, they had looked upon her with a touch of awe. She had all the things they craved, from beauty to money. And now she was marrying at midnight, in the dark, the most notorious bad man of Arizona!

Here was a wonder of wonders to tell the other girls to-morrow. The only pity was that they could not see her face--and his. They had heard that he was handsome. No doubt that accounted for it. And what could be more romantic than a love match with such a fascinating villain? Probably he had stormed her heart irresistibly.

The service proceeded. The responses of the man came clearly and triumphantly, those of the girl low but distinctly. It was the custom of the justice to join the hands of the parties he was marrying; but when he moved to do so this girl put both of hers quickly behind her. It was his custom also to kiss the bride after pronouncing them man and wife; but he omitted this, too, on the present occasion. Nor did the groom kiss her.

The voice of the justice died away. They stood before him man and wife. The witnesses craned forward to see the outlaw embrace his bride. Instead, he reached into his pocket and handed Latimer a bill. The denomination of it was one hundred dollars, but the justice did not discover that until later.

"I reckon that squares us," the bad man said unsentimentally. "Now, all of you back to bed."

MacQueen and his bride passed out into the night. The girls noticed that she did not take his arm; that she even drew back, as if to avoid touching him as they crossed the threshold.

Not until they reached the gate of her father's house did MacQueen speak.

"I'm not all coyote, girl. I'll give you the three days I promised you. After that you'll join me wherever I say."

"Yes," she answered without spirit.

"You'll stand pat to our agreement. When they try to talk you out of it you won't give in?"

"No."

She was deadly weary, could scarce hold up her head.

"If you lie to me I'll take it out on your folks. Don't forget that Jack Flatray will have to pay if you double-cross me."

"No."

"He'll have to pay in full."

"You mean you'll capture him again."

"I mean we won't have to do that. We haven't turned him loose yet."

"Then you lied to me?" She stared at him with wide open eyes of horror.

"I had to keep him to make sure of you."

Her groan touched his vanity, or was it perhaps his pity?

"I'm not going to hurt him--if you play fair. I tell you I'm no cur. Help me, girl, and I'll quit this hell raising and live decent."

She laughed without joy, bitterly.

"Oh, I know what you think," he continued. "I can't blame you. But what do you know about my life? What do you know about what I've had to fight against? All my life there has been some devil in me, strangling all the good. There has been nobody to give me a helping hand--none to hold me back. I was a dog with a bad name--good enough for hanging, and nothing else."

He was holding the gate, and perforce she had to hear him out.

"What do I care about that?" she cried, in a fierce gust of passion. "I see you are cur and coward! You lied to me. You didn't keep faith and free Jack Flatray. That is enough."

She was the one person in the world who had power to wound him. Nor did it hurt the less that it was the truth. He drew back as if the lash of a whip had swept across his face.

"No man alive can say that to me and live!" he told her. "Cur I may be; but you're my wife, 'Lissie MacQueen. Don't forget that."

"Go! Go!" she choked. "I hope to God I'll never see your face again!"

She flew along the grass-bordered walk, whipped open the front door, and disappeared within. She turned the key in the lock, and stood trembling in the darkness. She half expected him to follow, to attempt to regain possession of her.

But the creak of his quick step on the porch did not come. Only her hammering heart stirred in the black silence. She drew a long breath of relief, and sank down on the stairs. It was over at last, the horrible nightmare through which she had been living.

Gradually she fought down her fears and took hold of herself. She must find her father and relieve his anxiety. Quietly she opened the door of the hall into the living room.

A man sat at the table, with his back to her, in an attitude of utter dejection. He was leaning forward, with his head buried in his arms. It was her father. She stepped forward, and put her hands on his bowed shoulders.

"Daddy," she said softly.

At her touch the haggard, hopeless, unshaven face was lifted toward her. For a moment Lee looked at her as if she had been a wraith. Then, with a hoarse cry, he arose and caught her in his arms.

Neither of them could speak for emotion. He tried it twice before he could get out:

"Baby! Honey!"

He choked back the sobs in his throat. "Where did you come from? I thought sure MacQueen had you."

"He had. He took me to Dead Man's Cache with him."

"And you escaped. Praise the Lord, honey!"

"No--he brought me back."

"MacQueen did! Goddlemighty--he knows what's best for him!"

"He brought me back to--to----" She broke down, and buried her head in his shoulder.

Long, dry sobs racked her. The father divined with alarm that he did not know the worst.

"Tell me--tell me, 'Lissie! Brought you back to do what, honey?" He held her back from him, his hands on her shoulders.

"To marry me."

"What!"

"To marry me. And he did--fifteen minutes ago, I am Black MacQueen's wife."

"Black MacQueen's wife! My God, girl!" Big Beauchamp Lee stared at her in a horror of incredulity.

She told him the whole story, from beginning to end.

CHAPTER XII

THE TAKING OF THE CACHE

It was understood that in the absence of the sheriff Richard Bellamy should have charge of the posse, and after the disappearance of Flatray he took command.

With the passing years Bellamy had become a larger figure in the community. The Monte Cristo mine had made him independently wealthy, even though he had deeded one-third of it to Melissy Lee. Arizona had forgiven him his experiment at importing sheep and he was being spoken of as a territorial delegate to Congress, a place the mine owner by no means wanted. For his interests were now bound up in the Southwest. His home was there. Already a little toddler's soft fat fist was clinging to the skirt of Ferne.

At first Bellamy, as well as Farnum, McKinstra, young Yarnell and the rest of the posse looked expectantly for the return of the sheriff. It was hard to believe that one so virile, so competent, so much a dominant factor of every situation he confronted, could have fallen a victim to the men he hunted. But as the days passed with no news of him the conviction grew that he had been waylaid and shot. The hunt went on, but the rule now was that no move should be made singly. Not even for an hour did the couples separate.

One evening a woman drifted into camp just as they were getting ready to roll into their blankets. McKinstra was on sentry duty, but she got by him unobserved and startled Farnum into drawing his gun.

Yet all she said was: "Buenos tardes, señor."

The woman was a wrinkled Mexican with a close-shut, bitter mouth and bright, snappy eyes.

Farnum stared at her in surprise. "Who in Arizona are you?"

It was decidedly disturbing to think what might have happened if MacQueen's outfit had dropped in on them, instead of one lone old woman.

"Rosario Chaves."

"Glad to meet you, ma'am. Won't you sit down?"

The others had by this time gathered around.

Rosario spoke in Spanish, and Bob Farnum answered in the same language. "You want to find the way into Dead Man's Cache, señor?"

"Do we? I reckon yes!"

"Let me be your guide."

"You know the way in?"

"I live there."

"Connected with MacQueen's outfit, maybe?"

"I cook for him. My son was one of his men."

"Was?"

"Yes. He was killed--shot by Lieutenant O'Connor, the same man who was a prisoner at the Cache until yesterday morning."

"Killed lately, ma'am?"

"Two years ago. We swore revenge. MacQueen did not keep his oath, the oath we all swore together."

Bellamy began to understand the situation. She wanted to get back at MacQueen, unless she were trying to lead them into a trap.

"Let's get this straight. MacQueen turned O'Connor loose, did he?" Bellamy questioned.

"No. He escaped. This man--what you call him?--the sheriff, helped him and Señor West to break away."

The mine owner's eye met Farnum's. They were being told much news.

"So they all escaped, did they?"

"Si, señor, but MacQueen took West and the sheriff next morning. They could not find their way out of the valley."

"But O'Connor escaped. Is that it?"

Her eyes flashed hatred. "He escaped because the sheriff helped him. His life was forfeit to me. So then was the sheriff's. MacQueen he admit it. But when the girl promise to marry him he speak different."

"What girl?"

"Señorita Lee."

"Not Melissy Lee."

"Si, señor."

"My God! Melissy Lee a prisoner of that infernal villain. How did she come there?"

The Mexican woman was surprised at the sudden change that had come over the men. They had grown tense and alert. Interest had flamed into a passionate eagerness.

Rosario Chaves told the story from beginning to end, so far as she knew it; and every sentence of it wrung the big heart of these men. The pathos of it hit them hard. Their little comrade, the girl they had been fond of for years--the bravest, truest lass in Arizona--had fallen a victim to this intolerable fate! They could have wept with the agony of it if they had known how.

"Are you sure they were married? Maybe the thing slipped up," Alan suggested, the hope father to the thought.

But this hope was denied him; for the woman had brought with her a copy of the Mesa Sentinel, with an account of the marriage and the reason for it. This had been issued on the morning after the event, and MacQueen had brought it back with him to the Cache.

Bellamy arranged with the Mexican woman a plan of attack upon the valley. Camp was struck at once, and she guided them through tortuous ravines and gulches deeper into the Roaring Fork country. She left them in a grove of aspens, just above the lip of the valley, on the side least frequented by the outlaws.

They were to lie low until they should receive from her a signal that most of the gang had left to take West to the place appointed for the exchange. They were then to wait through the day until dusk, slip quietly down, and capture the ranch before the return of the party with the gold. In case anything should occur to delay the attack on the ranch, another signal was to be given by Rosario.

The first signal was to be the hanging of washing upon the line. If this should be removed before nightfall, Bellamy was to wait until he should hear from her again.

Bellamy believed that the Chaves woman was playing square with him, but he preferred to take no chances. As soon as she had left to return to the settlement of the outlaws he moved camp again to a point almost half a mile from the place where she had last seen them. If the whole thing were a "plant," and a night attack had been planned, he wanted to be where he and his men could ambush the ambushers, if necessary.

But the night passed without any alarm. As the morning wore away the scheduled washing appeared on the line. Farnum crept down to the valley lip and trained his glasses on the ranch house. Occasionally he could discern somebody moving about, though there were not enough signs of activity to show the presence of many people. All day the wash hung drying on the line. Dusk came, the blankets still signaling that all was well.

Bellamy led his men forward under cover, following the wooded ridge above the Cache so long as there was light enough by which they might be observed from the valley. With the growing darkness he began the descent into the bowl just behind the corral. A light shone in the larger cabin; and Bellamy knew that, unless Rosario were playing him false, the men would be at supper there. He left his men lying down behind the corral, while he crept forward to the window from which the light was coming.

In the room were two men and the Mexican woman. The men, with elbows far apart, and knives and forks very busy, were giving strict attention to the business in hand. Rosario waited upon them, but with ear and eye guiltily alert to catch the least sound. The mine owner could even overhear fragments of the talk.

"Ought to get back by midnight, don't you reckon? Pass the cow and the sugar, Buck. Keep a-coming with that coffee, Rosario. I ain't a mite afraid but what MacQueen will pull it off all right, you bet."

"Sure, he will. Give that molasses a shove, Tom----"

Bellamy drew his revolver and slipped around to the front door. He came in so quietly that neither of the men heard him. Both had their backs to the door.

"Figure it up, and it makes a right good week's work. I reckon I'll go down to Chihuahua and break the bank at Miguel's," one of them was saying.

"Better go to Yuma and break stones for a spell, Buck," suggested a voice from the doorway.

Both men slewed their heads around as if they had been worked by the same lever. Their mouths opened, and their eyes bulged. A shining revolver covered them competently.

"Now, don't you, Buck--nor you either, Tom!" This advice because of a tentative movement each had made with his right hand. "I'm awful careless about spilling lead, when I get excited. Better reach for the roof; then you won't have any temptations to suicide."

The hard eyes of the outlaws swept swiftly over the cattleman. Had he shown any sign of indecision, they would have taken a chance and shot it out. But he was so easily master of himself that the impulse to "draw" died stillborn.

Bellamy gave a sharp, shrill whistle. Footsteps came pounding across the open, and three armed men showed at the door.

"Darn my skin if the old son of a gun hasn't hogged all the glory!" Bob Farnum complained joyfully. "Won't you introduce us to your friends, Bellamy?"

"This gentleman with the biscuit in his hand is Buck; the one so partial to porterhouse steak is Tom," returned Bellamy gravely.

"Glad to death to meet you, gents. Your hands seem so busy drilling for the ceiling, we won't shake right now. If it would be any kindness to you, I'll unload all this hardware, though. My! You tote enough with you to start a store, boys."

"How did you find your way in?" growled Buck.

"Jest drifted in on our automobiles and airships," Bob told him airily, as he unbuckled the revolver belt and handed it to one of his friends.

The outlaws were bound, after which Rosario cooked the posse a dinner. This was eaten voraciously by all, for camp life had sharpened the appetite for a woman's cooking.

One of the men kept watch to notify them when MacQueen and his gang should enter the valley, while the others played "pitch" to pass the time. In spite of this, the hours dragged. It was a good deal like waiting for a battle to begin. Bellamy and Farnum had no nerves, but the others became nervous and anxious.

"I reckon something is keeping them," suggested Alan, after looking at his watch for the fifth time in half an hour. "Don't you reckon we better go up the trail a bit to meet them?"

"I reckon we better wait here, Alan. Bid three," returned Farnum evenly.

As he spoke, their scout came running in.

"They're here, boys!"

"Good enough! How many of them?"

"Four of 'em, looked like. They were winding down the trail, and I couldn't make out how many."

"All right, boys. Steady, now, till they get down from their horses. Hal, out with the light when I give the word."

It was a minute to shake nerves of steel. They could hear the sound of voices, an echo of jubilant laughter, the sound of iron shoes striking stones in the trail. Then some one shouted:

"Oh, you, Buck!"

The program might have gone through as arranged, but for an unlooked-for factor in the proceedings. Buck let out a shout of warning to his trapped friends. Almost at the same instant the butt of Farnum's revolver smashed down on his head; but the damage was already done.

Bellamy and his friends swarmed out like bees. The outlaws were waiting irresolutely--some mounted, others beside their horses. Among them were two pack horses.

"Hands up!" ordered the mine owner sharply.

The answer was a streak of fire from a rifle. Instantly there followed a fusillade. Flash after flash lit up the darkness. Staccato oaths, cries, a moan of pain, the trampling of frightened horses, filled the night with confusion.

In spite of the shout of warning, the situation had come upon the bandits as a complete surprise. How many were against them, whether or not they were betrayed, the certainty that the law had at last taken them at a disadvantage--these things worked with the darkness for the posse. A man flung himself on his pony, lay low on its back, and galloped wildly into the night. A second wheeled and followed at his heels. Hank Irwin was down, with a bullet from a carbine through his jaw and the back of his head. A wild shot had brought down another. Of the outlaws only MacQueen, standing behind his horse as he fired, remained on the field uninjured.

The cattlemen had scattered as the firing began, and had availed themselves of such cover as was to be had. Now they concentrated their fire on the leader of the outlaws. His horse staggered and went down, badly torn by a rifle bullet. A moment later the special thirty-two carbine he carried was knocked from his hands by another shot.

He crouched and ran to Irwin's horse, flung himself to the saddle, deliberately emptied his revolver at his foes, and put spurs to the broncho. As he vanished into the hills Bob Farnum slowly sank to the ground.

"I've got mine, Bellamy. Blamed if he ain't plumb bust my laig!"

The mine owner covered the two wounded outlaws, while his men disarmed them. Then he walked across to his friend, laid down his rifle, and knelt beside him.

"Did he get you bad, old man?"

"Bad enough so I reckon I'll have a doc look at it one of these days." Bob grinned to keep down the pain.

Once more there came the sound of hoofs beating the trail of decomposed granite. Bellamy looked up and grasped his rifle. A single rider loomed out of the darkness and dragged his horse to a halt, a dozen yards from the mine owner, in such a position that he was directly behind one of the pack horses.

"Up with your hands!" ordered Bellamy on suspicion.

Two hands went swiftly up from beside the saddle. The moonlight gleamed on something bright in the right hand. A flash rent the night. A jagged, red-hot pain tore through the shoulder of Hal Yarnell. He fired wildly, the shock having spoiled his aim.

The attacker laughed exultantly, mockingly, as he swung his horse about.

"A present from Black MacQueen," he jeered.

With that, he was gone again, taking the pack animal with him. He had had the audacity to come back after his loot--and had got some of it, too.

One of the unwounded cowpunchers gave pursuit, but half an hour later he returned ruefully.

"I lost him somehow--darned if I know how. I seen him before me one minute; the next he was gone. Must 'a' known some trail that led off from the road, I reckon."

Bellamy said nothing. He intended to take up the trail in person; but first the wounded had to be looked to, a man dispatched for a doctor, and things made safe against another possible but improbable attack. It was to be a busy night; for he had on hand three wounded men, as well as two prisoners who were sound. An examination showed him that neither of the two wounded outlaws nor Farnum nor Yarnell were fatally shot. All were hardy outdoors men, who had lived in the balsamic air of the hills; if complications did not ensue, they would recover beyond question.

In this extremity Rosario was a first aid to the injured. She had betrayed the bandits without the least compunction, because they had ignored the oath of vengeance against the slayer of her son; but she nursed them all impartially and skillfully until the doctor arrived, late next day.

Meanwhile Bellamy and McKinstra, guided by one of the outlaws, surprised Jeff and released Flatray, who returned with them to camp.

With the doctor had come also four members of the Lee posse. To the deputy in charge Jack turned over his four prisoners and the gold recovered. As soon as the doctor had examined and dressed his wound he mounted and took the trail after MacQueen. With him rode Bellamy.

CHAPTER XIII

MELISSY ENTERTAINS

The notes of Schumann's "Traümerei" died away. Melissy glanced over her music, and presently ran lightly into Chopin's "Valse Au Petit Chien." She was, after all, only a girl; and there were moments when she forgot to remember that she was wedded to the worst of unhanged villains. When she drowned herself fathoms deep in her music, she had the best chance of forgetting.

Chaminade's "The Flatterer" followed. In the midst of this the door opened quietly and closed again. Melissy finished, fingered her music, and became somehow aware that she was not alone. She turned unhurriedly on the seat and met the smiling eyes of her husband.

From his high-heeled boots to his black, glossy hair, Black MacQueen was dusty with travel. Beside him was a gunny sack, tied in the middle and filled at both ends. Picturesque he was and always would be, but his present costume scarce fitted the presence of a lady. Yet of this he gave no sign. He was leaning back in a morris chair, rakish, debonair, and at his ease. Evidently, he had been giving appreciative ear to the music, and more appreciative eye to the musician.

"So it's you," said Melissy, white to the lips.

MacQueen arose, recovered his dusty hat from the floor, and bowed theatrically. "Your long-lost husband, my dear."

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm visiting my wife. The explanation seems a trifle obvious."

"What do you want?"

"Have I said I wanted anything?"

"Then you had better leave. I'll give you up if I get a chance."

He looked at her with lazy derision. "I like you angry. Your eyes snap electricity, sweet."

"Oh!" She gave a gesture of impatience. "Do you know that, if I were to step to that window and call out your name, the whole town would be in arms against you?"

"Why don't you?"

"I shall, if you don't go."

"Are you alone in the house?"

"Why do you ask?" Her heart was beating fast.

"Because you must hide me till night. Is your father here?"

"Not now. He is hunting you--to kill you if he finds you."

"Servants?"

"The cook is out for the afternoon. She will be back in an hour or two."

"Good! Get me food."

She did not rise. "I must know more. What is it? Are they hunting you? What have you done now?" A strong suppressed excitement beat in her pulses.

"It is not what I have done, but what your friends have done. Yesterday I went to exchange West for the ransom money. Most of my men I had to take with me, to guard against foul play. We held the cañon from the flat tops, and everything went all right. The exchange was made. We took the ransom money back to the Cache. I don't know how it was--whether somebody played me false and sold us, or whether your friend Flatray got loose and his posse stumbled in by accident. But there they were in the Cache when we got back."

"Yes?" The keenest agitation was in Melissy's voice.

"They took us by surprise. We fought. Two of my men ran away. Two were shot down. I was alone."

"And then?"

The devil of torment moved in him. "Then I shot up one of your friend's outfit, rode away, changed my mind, and went back, shot your friend, and hiked off into the hills with a pack horse loaded with gold."

Out of all this one thing stood out terribly to her. "You shot Jack Flatray--again!"

He laughed. One lie more or less made no difference. "I sure did."

She had to moisten her lips before she could ask the next question: "You--killed him?"

"No--worse luck!"

"How do you know?"

"He and another man were on the trail after me to-day. I saw them pass up Moose Creek from a ledge on which I was lying. If I had had a rifle, I would have finished the job; but my carbine was gone. It was too far for a six-gun."

"But, if you wounded him last night, how could he be trailing you to-day?"

"I reckon it was a flesh wound. His shoulder was tied up, I noticed." Impatiently he waved Flatray out of the conversation. "I didn't come here to tell you about him. I got to get out on tonight's train. This country has grown too hot for me. You're going with me?"

"No!"

"Yes, by God!"

"I'll never go with you--never--never!" she cried passionately. "I'm free of the bargain. You broke faith. So shall I."

She saw his jaw clamp. "So you're going to throw me down, are you?"

Melissy stood before him, slim and straight, without yielding an inch. She was quite colorless, for he was a man with whose impulses she could not reckon. But one thing she knew. He could never take her away with him and escape. And she knew that he must know it, too.

"If you want to call it that. You tricked me into marrying you. You meant to betray me all the time. Go, while there's still a chance. I don't want your blood on my hands."

It was characteristic of him that he always wanted more what he could not get.

"Don't answer so quick, girl. Listen to me. I've got enough in that sack to start us in the cattle business in Argentina. There's more buried in the hills, if we need it. Girl, I tell you I'm going to run straight from to-day!"

She laughed scornfully. "And in the same breath you tell me how much you have stolen and are taking with you. If you were a Croesus, I wouldn't go with you." She flamed into sudden, fierce passion. "Will you never understand that I hate and detest you?"

"You think you do, but you don't. You love me--only you won't let yourself believe it."

"There's no arguing with such colossal conceit," she retorted, with hard laughter. "It's no use to tell you that I should like to see you dead at my feet."

Swiftly he slid a revolver from its holster, and presented it to her, butt first. "You can have your wish right easy, if you mean it. Go to it. There's no danger. All you've got to give out is that I frightened you. You'll be a heroine, too."

She looked at the weapon and at him, and the very thought of it made her sick. She saw the thing almost as if it were already done--the smoking revolver in her hand, and the man lying motionless before her.

"Take it away," she said, with a shudder.

"You see, you can't do it! You can't even go to the window there and shout out that Black MacQueen is with you in the house. You don't hate me at all, my dear."

"Because I won't kill you with my own hand? You reason logically."

"Then why don't you betray my presence? Why don't you call your friends in to take me?"

"I'm not sure that I won't; but if I don't, it will be for their sakes, and not for yours. They could not take you without loss of life."

"You're right there," he agreed, with a flash of his tigerish ferocity. "They couldn't take me alive at all, and I reckon before I checked in a few of them would."

CHAPTER XIV

BLACK MACQUEEN CASHES HIS CHECKS

It was part of his supreme audacity to trust her. While he was changing his dusty, travel-stained clothes for some that belonged to her brother she prepared a meal for him downstairs. A dozen times the impulse was on her to fly into the street and call out that Black MacQueen was in the house, but always she restrained herself. He was going to leave the country within a few hours. Better let him go without bloodshed.

He came down to his dinner fresh from a bath and a shave, wearing a new tweed suit, which fitted him a trifle loosely, but was not unbecoming to his trim, lithe figure. No commercial traveler at a familiar hotel could have been more jauntily and blithely at home.

"So you didn't run away!" He grinned.

"Not yet. I'm going to later. I owe you a meal, and I wanted to pay it first."

It was his very contempt of fear that had held her. To fool away half an hour in dressing, knowing that it was very likely she might be summoning men to kill him--to come down confident and unperturbed, possibly to meet his death--was such a piece of dare-deviltry as won reluctant admiration, in spite of her detestation of him. Even if she did not give him up, his situation was precarious in the extreme. All the trains were being watched; and in spite of this he had to walk boldly to the station, buy a ticket, and pass himself off for an ordinary traveler.

Both knew that the chances were against him, but he gave no sign of concern or anxiety. Never had Melissy seen him so full of spirits. The situation would have depressed most men; him it merely stimulated. The excitement of it ran like wine through his blood. Driven from his hills, with every man's hand against him, with the avenues of escape apparently closed, he was in his glory. He would play his cards out to the end, without whining, no matter how the game might go.

Melissy washed the dishes, in order that the cook might not know that she had had a guest for luncheon. The two returned to the living room. It was his whim to have her play for him; and she was glad to comply, because it interfered with his wooing. She was no longer greatly afraid of him, for she knew that he was on his good behavior to win her liking.

Fortune favored her. For some time they had heard the cook moving about in the kitchen. Once she had poked her head in to know whether her young mistress would like the cherry pie for dinner.

"I didn't know yez had company, Miss 'Lissie," she had apologized.

"This gentleman will stay to dinner," Melissy had announced.

At luncheon Melissy had not eaten with him; but at dinner it was necessary, on account of the cook, that she sit down, too. The meal had scarce begun when Kate came beaming in.

"Shure, Miss 'Lissie, there's another young gentleman at the door. It's Mr. Bellamy. I tould him to come right in. He's washing his face first."

Melissy rose, white as a sheet. "All right, Kate."

But as soon as the cook had left the room she turned to the outlaw. "What shall I do? What shall I do?"

Little whimsical imps of mischief shone in his eyes. "Have him in and introduce him to your husband, my dear."

"You must go--quick. If I don't get rid of him, you'll be able to slip out the back way and get to the depot. He doesn't know you are here."

MacQueen sat back and gave her his easy, reckless smile. "Guess again. Bellamy can't drive me out."

She caught her hands together. "Oh, go--go! There will be trouble. You wouldn't kill him before my very eyes!"

"Not unless he makes the first play. It's up to him." He laughed with the very delight of it. "I'd as lief settle my account with him right now. He's meddled too much in my affairs."

She broke out in a cry of distress: "You wouldn't! I've treated you fair. I could have betrayed you, and I didn't. Aren't you going to play square with me?"

He nodded. "All right. Show him in. He won't know me except as Lieutenant O'Connor. It was too dark last night to see my face."

Bellamy came into the room.

"How's Jack?" Melissy asked quickly as she caught his hand.

"Good as new. And you?"

"All right."

The outlaw stirred uneasily in his seat. His vanity objected to another man holding the limelight while he was present.

Melissy turned. "I think you have never met Lieutenant O'Connor, Mr. Bellamy. Lieutenant--Mr. Bellamy."

They shook hands. MacQueen smiled. He was enjoying himself.

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Bellamy. You and Flatray have won the honors surely. You beat us all to it, sir. As I rode in this mornin', everybody was telling how you rounded up the outlaws. Have you caught MacQueen himself?"

"Not yet. We have reason to believe that he rode within ten miles of town this morning before he cut across to the railroad. The chances are that he will try to board a train at some water tank in the dark. We're having them all watched. I came in to telephone all stations to look out for him."

"Where's Jack?" Melissy asked.

"He'll be here presently. His arm was troubling him some, so he stopped to see the doctor. Then he has to talk with his deputy."

"You're sure he isn't badly hurt?"

"No, only a scratch, he calls it."

"Did you happen on Dead Man's Cache by accident?" asked MacQueen with well-assumed carelessness.

Bellamy had no intention of giving Rosario away to anybody. "You might call it that," he said evenly. "You know, I had been near there once when I was out hunting."

"Do you expect to catch MacQueen?" the outlaw asked, a faint hint of irony in his amused voice.

"I can't tell. That's what I'm hoping, lieutenant."

"We hope for a heap of things we never get," returned the outlaw, in a gentle voice, his eyes half shuttered behind drooping lids.

Melissy cut into the conversation hurriedly. "Lieutenant O'Connor is going on the seven-five this evening, Mr. Bellamy. He has business that will take him away for a while. It is time we were going. Won't you walk down to the train with us?"

MacQueen swore softly under his breath, but there was nothing he could say in protest. He knew he could not take the girl with him. Now he had been cheated out of his good-byes by her woman's wit in dragging Bellamy to the depot with them. He could not but admire the adroitness with which she had utilized her friend to serve her end.

They walked to the station three abreast, the outlaw carrying as lightly as he could the heavy suitcase that held his plunder. Melissy made small talk while they waited for the train. She was very nervous, and she was trying not to show it.

"Next time you come, lieutenant, we'll have a fine stone depot to show you. Mr. West has promised to make Mesa the junction point, and we're sure to have a boom," she said.

A young Mexican vaquero trailed softly behind them, the inevitable cigarette between his lips. From under his broad, silver-laced sombrero he looked keenly at each of the three as he passed.

A whistle sounded clearly in the distance.

The outlaw turned to the girl beside him. "I'm coming back some day soon. Be sure of that, Mrs. MacQueen."

The audacity of the name used, designed as it was to stab her friend and to remind Melissy how things stood, made the girl gasp. She looked quickly at Bellamy and saw him crush the anger from his face.

The train drew into the station. Presently the conductor's "All aboard!" served notice that it was starting. The outlaw shook hands with Melissy and then with the mine owner.

"Good-bye. Don't forget that I'm coming back," he said, in a perfectly distinct, low tone.

And with that he swung aboard the Pullman car with his heavy suitcase. An instant later the Mexican vaquero pulled himself to the vestibule of the smoking car ahead.

MacQueen looked back from the end of the train at the two figures on the platform. A third figure had joined them. It was Jack Flatray. The girl and the sheriff were looking at each other. With a furious oath, he turned on his heel. For the evidence of his eyes had told him that they were lovers.

MacQueen passed into the coach and flung himself down into his section discontentedly. The savor of his adventure was gone. He had made his escape with a large share of the plunder, in spite of spies and posses. But in his heart he knew that he had lost forever the girl whom he had forced to marry him. He was still thinking about it somberly when a figure appeared in the aisle at the end of the car.

Instantly the outlaw came to alert attention, and his hand slipped to the butt of a revolver. The figure was that of the Mexican vaquero whom he had carelessly noted on the platform of the station. Vigilantly his gaze covered the approaching man. Surely in Arizona there were not two men with that elastic tread or that lithe, supple figure.

His revolver flashed in the air. "Stand back, Bucky O'Connor--or, by God, I'll drill you!"

The vaquero smiled. "Right guess, Black MacQueen. I arrest you in the name of the law."

Black's revolver spat flame twice before the ranger's gun got into action, but the swaying of the train caused him to stagger as he rose to his feet.

The first shot of Bucky's revolver went through the heart of the outlaw; but so relentless was the man that, even after that, his twitching fingers emptied the revolver. O'Connor fired only once. He watched his opponent crumple up, fling wild shots into the upholstery and through the roof, and sink into the silence from which there is no awakening on this side of the grave. Then he went forward and looked down at him.

"I reckon that ends Black MacQueen," he said quietly. "And I reckon Melissy Lee is a widow."

* * * * *

Jack Flatray had met O'Connor at his own office and the two had come down to the station on the off chance that MacQueen might try to make his getaway from Mesa in some disguise. But as soon as he saw Melissy the sheriff had eyes for nobody else except the girl he loved. One sleeve of his coat was empty, and his shoulder was bandaged. He looked very tired and drawn; for he had ridden hard more than sixteen hours with a painful wound. But the moment his gaze met hers she knew that his thoughts were all for her and her trouble.

His free hand went out to meet hers. She forgot MacQueen and all the sorrow he had brought her. Her eyes were dewy with love and his answered eagerly. She knew now that she would love Jack Flatray for better or worse until death should part them. But she knew, too, that the shadow of MacQueen, her husband by law, was between them.

Together they walked back from the depot. In the shadow of the vines on her father's porch they stopped. Jack caught her hands in his and looked down into her tired, haggard face all lit with love. Tears were in the eyes of both.

"You're entitled to the truth, Jack," she told him. "I love you. I think I always have. And I know I always shall. But I'm another man's wife. It will have to be good-bye between us, Jack," she told him wistfully.

He took her in his arms and kissed her. "You're my sweetheart. I'll not give you up. Don't think it."

He spoke with such strength, such assurance, that she knew he would not yield without a struggle.

"I'll never be anything to him--never. But he stands between us. Don't you see he does?"

"No. Your marriage to him is empty words. We'll have it annulled. It will not stand in any court. I've won you and I'm going to keep you. There's no two ways about that."

She broke down and began to sob quietly in a heartbroken fashion, while he tried to comfort her. It was not so easy as he thought. So long as MacQueen lived Flatray would walk in danger if she did as he wanted her to do.

Neither of them knew that Bucky O'Connor's bullet had already annulled the marriage, that happiness was already on the wing to them.

This hour was to be for their grief, the next for their joy.

The End

Contents

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA

by WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

CHAPTER 1.

TWO MEN AND A WOMAN

"Mr. Ridgway, ma'am."

The young woman who was giving the last touches to the very effective picture framed in her long looking-glass nodded almost imperceptibly.

She had come to the parting of the ways, and she knew it, with a shrewd suspicion as to which she would choose. She had asked for a week to decide, and her heart-searching had told her nothing new. It was characteristic of Virginia Balfour that she did not attempt to deceive herself. If she married Waring Ridgway it would be for what she considered good and sufficient reasons, but love would not be one of them. He was going to be a great man, for one thing, and probably a very rich one, which counted, though it would not be a determining factor. This she could find only in the man himself, in the masterful force that made him what he was. The sandstings of life did not disturb his confidence in his victorious star, nor did he let fine-spun moral obligations hamper his predatory career. He had a genius for success in whatever he undertook, pushing his way to his end with a shrewd, direct energy that never faltered. She sometimes wondered whether she, too, like the men he used as tools, was merely a pawn in his game, and her consent an empty formality conceded to convention. Perhaps he would marry her even if she did not want to, she told herself, with the sudden illuminating smile that was one of her chief charms.

But Ridgway's wary eyes, appraising her mood as she came forward to meet him, read none of this doubt in her frank greeting. Anything more sure and exquisite than the cultivation Virginia Balfour breathed he would have been hard put to it to conceive. That her gown and its accessories seemed to him merely the extension of a dainty personality was the highest compliment he could pay her charm, and an entirely unconscious one.

"Have I kept you waiting?" she smiled, giving him her hand.

His answering smile, quite cool and unperturbed, gave the lie to his words. "For a year, though the almanac called it a week."

"You must have suffered," she told him ironically, with a glance at the clear color in his good-looking face.

"Repressed emotion," he explained. "May I hope that my suffering has reached a period?"

They had been sauntering toward a little conservatory at the end of the large room, but she deflected and brought up at a table on which lay some books. One of these she picked up and looked at incuriously for a moment before sweeping them aside. She rested her hands on the table behind her and leaned back against it, her eyes meeting his fairly.

"You're still of the same mind, are you?" she demanded.

"Oh! very much."

She lifted herself to the table, crossing her feet and dangling them irresponsibly. "We might as well be comfy while we talk;" and she indicated, by a nod, a chair.

"Thanks. If you don't mind, I think I'll take it standing."

She did not seem in any hurry to begin, and Ridgway gave evidence of no desire to hasten her. But presently he said, with a little laugh that seemed to offer her inclusion in the joke:

"I'm on the anxious seat, you know--waiting to find out whether I'm to be the happiest man alive."

"You know as much about it as I do." She echoed his laugh ruefully. "I'm still as much at sea as I was last week. I couldn't tell then, and I can't now."

"No news is good news, they say."

"I don't want to marry you a bit, but you're a great catch, as you are very well aware."

"I suppose I am rather a catch," he agreed, the shadow of a smile at the corners of his mouth.

"It isn't only your money; though, of course, that's a temptation," she admitted audaciously.

"I'm glad it's not only my money." He could laugh with her about it because he was shrewd enough to understand that it was not at all his wealth. Her cool frankness might have frightened away another man. It merely served to interest Ridgway. For, with all his strength, he was a vain man, always ready to talk of himself. He spent a good deal of his spare time interpreting himself to attractive and attracted young women.

Her gaze fastened on the tip of her suede toe, apparently studying it attentively. "It would be a gratification to my vanity to parade you as the captive of my bow and spear. You're such a magnificent specimen, such a berserk in broadcloth. Still. I shan't marry you if I can help it--but, then, I'm not sure that I can help it. Of course, I disapprove of you entirely, but you're rather fascinating, you know." Her eye traveled slowly up to his, appraising the masterful lines of his square figure, the dominant strength of his close-shut mouth and resolute eyes. "Perhaps 'fascinating' isn't just the word, but I can't help being interested in you, whether I like you or not. I suppose you always get what you want very badly?" she flung out by way of question.

"That's what I'm trying to discover"--he smiled.

"There are things to be considered both ways," she said, taking him into her confidence. "You trample on others. How do I know you wouldn't tread on me?"

"That would be one of the risks you would take," he agreed impersonally.

"I shouldn't like that at all. If I married you it would be because as your wife I should have so many opportunities. I should expect to do exactly as I please. I shouldn't want you to interfere with me, though I should want to be able to influence you."

"Nothing could be fairer than that," was his amiably ironical comment.

"You see, I don't know you--not really--and they say all sorts of things about you."

"They don't say I am a quitter, do they?"

She leaned forward, chin in hand and elbow on knee. It was a part of the accent of her distinction that as a rebel she was both demure and daring. "I wonder if I might ask you some questions--the intimate kind that people think but don't say--at least, they don't say them to you."

"It would be a pleasure to me to be put on the witness-stand. I should probably pick up some interesting side-lights about myself."

"Very well." Her eyes danced with excitement. "You're what they call a buccaneer of business, aren't you?"

Here were certainly diverting pastimes. "I believe I have been called that; but, then, I've had the hardest names in the dictionary thrown at me so often that I can't be sure."

"I suppose you are perfectly unscrupulous in a business way--stop at nothing to gain your point?"

He took her impudence smilingly.

"'Unscrupulous' isn't the word I use when I explain myself to myself, but as an unflattered description, such as one my enemies might use to describe me, I dare say it is fairly accurate."

"I wonder why. Do you dispense with a conscience entirely?"

"Well, you see, Miss Balfour, if I nursed a New England conscience I could stand up to the attacks of the Consolidated about as long as a dove to a hawk. I meet fire with fire to avoid being wiped off the map of the mining world. I play the game. I can't afford to keep a button on my foil when my opponent doesn't."

She nodded an admission of his point. "And yet there are rules of the game to be observed, aren't there? The Consolidated people claim you steal their ore, I believe." Her slanted eyes studied the effect of her daring.

He laughed grimly. "Do they? I claim they steal mine. It's rather difficult to have an exact regard for mine and thine before the courts decide which is which."

"And meanwhile, in order to forestall an adverse decision, you are working extra shifts to get all the ore out of the disputed veins."

"Precisely, just as they are," he admitted dryly. "Then the side that loses will not be so disappointed, since the value of the veins will be less. Besides, stealing ore openly doesn't count. It is really a moral obligation in a fight like this," he explained.

"A moral obligation?"

"Exactly. You can't hit a trust over the head with the decalogue. Modern business is war. Somebody is bound to get hurt. If I win out it will be because I put up a better fight than the Consolidated, and cripple it enough to make it let me alone. I'm looking out for myself, and I don't pretend to be any better than my neighbors. When you get down to bed-rock honesty, I've never seen it in business. We're all of us as honest as we think we can afford to be. I haven't noticed that there is any premium on it in Mesa. Might makes right. I'll win if I'm strong enough; I'll fail if I'm not. That's the law of life. I didn't make this strenuous little world, and I'm not responsible for it. If I play I have to take the rules the way they are, not the way I should like them to be. I'm not squeamish, and I'm not a hypocrite. Simon Harley isn't squeamish, either, but he happens to be a hypocrite. So there you have the difference between us."

The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company set forth his creed jauntily, without the least consciousness of need for apology for the fact that it happened to be divorced from morality. Its frank disregard of ethical considerations startled Miss Balfour without shocking her. She liked his candor, even though it condemned him. It was really very nice of him to take her impudence so well. He certainly wasn't a prig, anyway.

"And morality," she suggested tentatively.

"--hasn't a thing to do with success, the parsons to the contrary notwithstanding. The battle is to the strong."

"Then the Consolidated will beat you finally."

He smiled. "They would if I'd let them; but brains and resource and finesse all count for power. Granted that they have a hundred dollars to my one. Still, I have elements of strength they can't even estimate. David beat Goliath, you know, even though he didn't do it with a big stick."

"So you think morality is for old women?"

"And young women," he amended, smiling.

"And every man is to be a law unto himself?"

"Not quite. Some men aren't big enough to be. Let them stick to the conventional code. For me, if I make my own laws I don't break them."

"And you're sure that you're on the road to true success?" she asked lightly.

"Now, you have heaven in the back of your mind."

"Not exactly," she laughed. "But I didn't expect you to understand."

"Then I won't disappoint you," he said cheerfully.

She came back to the concrete.

"I should like to know whether it is true that you own the courts of Yuba County and have the decisions of the judges written at your lawyer's offices in cases between you and the Consolidated."

"If I do," he answered easily, "I am doing just what the Consolidated would do in case they had been so fortunate as to have won the last election and seated their judicial candidates. One expects a friendly leaning from the men one put in office."

"Isn't the judiciary supposed to be the final, incorruptible bulwark of the nation?" she pretended to want to know.

"I believe it is supposed to be."

"Isn't it rather--loading the dice, to interfere with the courts?"

"I find the dice already loaded. I merely substitute others of my own."

"You don't seem a bit ashamed of yourself."

"I'm ashamed of the Consolidated"--he smiled.

"That's a comfortable position to be able to take." She fixed him for a moment with her charming frown of interrogation. "You won't mind my asking these questions? I'm trying to decide whether you are too much of a pirate for me. Perhaps when I've made up my mind you won't want me," she added.

"Oh, I'll want you!" Then coolly: "Shall we wait till you make up your mind before announcing the engagement?"

"Don't be too sure," she flashed at him.

"I'm horribly unsure."

"Of course, you're laughing at me, just as you would"--she tilted a sudden sideways glance at him--"if I asked you WHY you wanted to marry me."

"Oh, if you take me that way----"

She interrupted airily. "I'm trying to make up my mind whether to take you at all."

"You certainly have a direct way of getting at things."

He studied appreciatively her piquant, tilted face; the long, graceful lines of her slender, perfect figure. "I take it you don't want the sentimental reason for my wishing to marry you, though I find that amply justified. But if you want another, you must still look to yourself for it. My business leads me to appreciate values correctly. When I desire you to sit at the head of my table, to order my house, my judgment justifies itself. I have a fancy always for the best. When I can't gratify it I do without."

"Thank you." She made him a gay little mock curtsy "I had heard you were no carpet-knight, Mr. Ridgway. But rumor is a lying jade, for I am being told--am I not?--that in case I don't take pity on you, the lone future of a celibate stretches drear before you."

"Oh, certainly."

Having come to the end of that passage, she tried another. "A young man told me yesterday you were a fighter. He said he guessed you would stand the acid. What did he mean?"

Ridgway was an egoist from head to heel. He could voice his own praises by the hour when necessary, but now he side-stepped her little trap to make him praise himself at second-hand.

"Better ask him."

"ARE you a fighter, then?"

Had he known her and her whimsies less well, he might have taken her audacity for innocence.

"One couldn't lie down, you know."

"Of course, you always fight fair," she mocked.

"When a fellow's attacked by a gang of thugs he doesn't pray for boxing-gloves. He lets fly with a coupling-pin if that's what comes handy."

Her eyes, glinting sparks of mischief, marveled at him with mock reverence, but she knew in her heart that her mockery was a fraud. She did admire him; admired him even while she disapproved the magnificent lawlessness of him.

For Waring Ridgway looked every inch the indomitable fighter he was. He stood six feet to the line, straight and strong, carrying just sufficient bulk to temper his restless energy without impairing its power. Nor did the face offer any shock of disappointment to the promise given by the splendid figure. Salient-jawed and forceful, set with cool, flinty, blue-gray eyes, no place for weakness could be found there. One might have read a moral callousness, a colorblindness in points of rectitude, but when the last word had been said, its masterful capability, remained the outstanding impression.

"Am I out of the witness-box?" he presently asked, still leaning against the mantel from which he had been watching her impersonally as an intellectual entertainment.

"I think so."

"And the verdict?"

"You know what it ought to be," she accused.

"Fortunately, kisses go by favor, not by, merit."

"You don't even make a pretense of deserving."

"Give me credit for being an honest rogue, at least."

"But a rogue?" she insisted lightly.

"Oh, a question of definitions. I could make a very good case for myself as an honest man."

"If you thought it worth while?"

"If I didn't happen to want to be square with you"--he smiled.

"You're so fond of me, I suppose, that you couldn't bear to have me think too well of you."

"You know how fond of you I am."

"Yes, it is a pity about you," she scoffed.

"Believe me, yes," he replied cheerfully.

She drummed with her pink finger-tips on her chin, studying him meditatively. To do him justice, she had to admit that he did not even pretend much. He wanted her because she was a step up in the social ladder, and, in his opinion, the most attractive girl he knew. That he was not in love with her relieved the situation, as Miss Balfour admitted to herself in impersonal moods. But there were times when she could have wished he were. She felt it to be really due her attractions that his pulses should quicken for her, and in the interests of experience she would have liked to see how he would make love if he really meant it from the heart and not the will.

"It's really an awful bother," she sighed.

"Referring to the little problem of your future?"

"Yes."

"Can't make up your mind whether I come in?"

"No." She looked up brightly, with an effect of impulsiveness. "I don't suppose you want to give me another week?"

"A reprieve! But why? You're going to marry me."

"I suppose so." She laughed. "I wish I could have my cake, and eat it, too."

"It would be a moral iniquity to encourage such a system of ethics."

"So you won't give me a week?" she sighed. "All sorts of things might have happened in that week. I shall always believe that the fairy prince would have come for me."

"Believe that he HAS come," he claimed.

"Oh, I didn't mean a prince of pirates, though there is a triumph in having tamed a pirate chief to prosaic matrimony. In one way it will be a pity, too. You won't be half so picturesque. You remember how Stevenson puts it: 'that marriage takes from a man the capacity for great things, whether good or bad.'"

"I can stand a good deal of taming."

"Domesticating a pirate ought to be an interesting process," she conceded, her rare smile flashing. "It should prove a cure for ENNUI, but then I'm never a victim of that malady."

"Am I being told that I am to be the happiest pirate alive?"

"I expect you are."

His big hand gripped hers till it tingled. She caught his eye on a roving quest to the door.

"We don't have to do that," she announced hurriedly, with an embarrassed flush.

"I don't do it because I have to," he retorted, kissing her on the lips.

She fell back, protesting. "Under the circumstances--"

The butler, with a card on a tray, interrupted silently. She glanced at the card, devoutly grateful his impassive majesty's entrance had not been a moment earlier.

"Show him in here."

"The fairy prince, five minutes too late?" asked Ridgway, when the man had gone.

For answer she handed him the card, yet he thought the pink that flushed her cheek was something more pronounced than usual. But he was willing to admit there might be a choice of reasons for that.

"Lyndon Hobart" was the name he read.

"I think the Consolidated is going to have its innings. I should like to stay, of course, but I fear I must plead a subsequent engagement and leave the field to the enemy."

Pronouncing "Mr. Hobart" without emphasis, the butler vanished. The newcomer came forward with the quiet assurance of the born aristocrat. He was a slender, well-knit man, dressed fastidiously, with clear-cut, classical features; cool, keen eyes, and a gentle, you-be-damned manner to his inferiors. Beside him Ridgway bulked too large, too florid. His ease seemed a little obvious, his prosperity overemphasized. Even his voice, strong and reliant, lacked the tone of gentle blood that Hobart had inherited with his nice taste.

When Miss Balfour said: "I think you know each other," the manager of the Consolidated bowed with stiff formality, but his rival laughed genially and said: "Oh, yes, I know Mr. Hobart." The geniality was genuine enough, but through it ran a note of contempt. Hobart read in it a veiled taunt. To him it seemed to say

"Yes, I have met him, and beaten him at every turn of the road, though he has been backed by a power with resources a hundred times as great as mine."

In his parting excuses to Miss Balfour, Ridgway's audacity crystallized in words that Hobart could only regard as a shameless challenge. "I regret that an appointment with Judge Purcell necessitates my leaving such good company," he said urbanely.

Purcell was the judge before whom was pending a suit between the Consolidated and the Mesa Ore-producing Company, to determine the ownership of the Never Say Die Mine; and it was current report that Ridgway owned him as absolutely as he did the automobile waiting for him now at the door.

If Ridgway expected his opponent to pay his flippant gibe the honor of repartee, he was disappointed. To be sure, Hobart, admirably erect in his slender grace, was moved to a slight, disdainful smile, but it evidenced scarcely the appreciation that anybody less impervious to criticism than Ridgway would have cared to see.

CHAPTER 2.

THE FREEBOOTER

When next Virginia Balfour saw Waring Ridgway she was driving her trap down one of the hit-or-miss streets of Mesa, where derricks, shaft-houses, and gray slag-dumps shoulder ornate mansions conglomerate of many unharmonious details of architecture. To Miss Balfour these composites and their owners would have been joys unalloyed except for the microbe of society ambition that was infecting the latter, and transforming them from simple, robust, self-reliant Westerners into a class of servile, nondescript newly rich, that resembled their unfettered selves as much as tame bears do the grizzlies of their own Rockies. As she had once complained smilingly to Hobart, she had not come to the West to study ragged edges of the social fringe. She might have done that in New York.

Virginia was still a block or two from the court-house on the hill, when it emptied into the street a concourse of excited men. That this was an occasion of some sort it was easy to guess, and of what sort she began to have an inkling, when Ridgway came out, the center of a circle of congratulating admirers. She was obliged to admit that he accepted their applause without in the least losing his head. Indeed, he took it as imperturbably as did Hobart, against whom a wave of the enthusiasm seemed to be directed in the form of a jeer, when he passed down the steps with Mott, one of the Consolidated lawyers. Miss Balfour timed her approach to meet Hobart at a right angle.

"What is it all about?" she asked, after he had reached her side.

"Judge Purcell has just decided the Never Say Die case in favor of Mr. Ridgway and against the Consolidated."

"Is that a great victory for him?"

"Yes, it's a victory, though, of course, we appeal," admitted Hobart. "But we can't say we didn't expect it," he added cheerfully.

"Mayn't I give you a lift if you are going down-town?" she said quickly, for Ridgway, having detached himself from the group, was working toward her, and she felt an instinctive sympathy for the man who had lost. Furthermore, she had something she wanted to tell him before he heard it on the tongue of rumor.

"Since you are so kind;" and he climbed to the place beside her.

"Congratulate me, Miss Balfour," demanded Ridgway, as he shook hands with her, nodding coolly at her companion. "I'm a million dollars richer than I was an hour ago. I have met the enemy and he is mine."

Virginia, resenting the bad taste of his jeer at the man who sat beside her, misunderstood him promptly. "Did you say you had met the enemy and won his mine?"

He laughed. "You're a good one!"

"Thank you very much for this unsolicited testimonial," she said gravely. "In the meantime, to avoid a congestion of traffic, we'll be moving, if you will kindly give me back my front left wheel."

He did not lift his foot from the spoke on which it rested. "My congratulations," he reminded her.

"I wish you all the joy in your victory that you deserve, and I hope the supreme court will reaffirm the decision of Judge Purcell, if it is a just one," was the form in which she acceded to his demand.

She flicked her whip, and Ridgway fell back, laughing. "You've been subsidized by the Consolidated," he shouted after her.

Hobart watched silently the businesslike directness with which the girl handled the ribbons. She looked every inch the thoroughbred in her well-made covert coat and dainty driving gauntlets. The grace of the alert, slender figure, the perfect poise of the beautiful little tawny head, proclaimed her distinction no less certainly than the fine modeling of the mobile face. It was a distinction that stirred the pulse of his emotion and disarmed his keen, critical sense. Ridgway could study her with an amused, detached interest, but Hobart's admiration had traveled past that point. He found it as impossible to define her charm as to evade it. Her inheritance of blood and her environment should have made her a finished product of civilization, but her salty breeziness, her nerve, vivid as a flame at times, disturbed delightfully the poise that held her when in repose.

When Virginia spoke, it was to ask abruptly: "Is it really his mine?"

"Judge Purcell says so."

"But do YOU think so--down in the bottom of your heart?"

"Wouldn't I naturally be prejudiced?"

"I suppose you would. Everybody in Mesa seems to have taken sides either with Mr. Ridgway or the Consolidated. Still, you have an option. Is he what his friends proclaim him--the generous-hearted independent fighting against trust domination? Or is he merely an audacious ore-thief, as his enemies say? The truth must be somewhere."

"It seems to lie mostly in point of view here the angle of observation being determined by interest," he answered.

"And from your angle of observation?"

"He is the most unusual man I ever saw, the most resourceful and the most competent. He never knows when he is beaten. I suppose that's the reason he never is beaten finally. We have driven him to the wall a score of times. My experience with him is that he's most dangerous when one thinks he must be about hammered out. He always hits back then in the most daring and unexpected way."

"With a coupling-pin," she suggested with a little reminiscent laugh.

"Metaphorically speaking. He reaches for the first effective weapon to his hand."

"You haven't quite answered my question yet," she reminded him. "Is he what his friends or what his enemies think him?"

"If you ask me I can only say that I'm one of his enemies."

"But a fair-minded man," she replied quickly.

"Thank you. Then I'll say that perhaps he is neither just what his friends or his foes think him. One must make allowances for his training and temperament, and for that quality of bigness in him. 'Mediocre men go soberly on the highroads, but saints and scoundrels meet in the jails,'" he smilingly quoted.

"He would make a queer sort of saint," she laughed.

"A typical twentieth century one of a money-mad age."

She liked it in him that he would not use the opportunity she had made to sneer at his adversary, none the less because she knew that Ridgway might not have been so scrupulous in his place. That Lyndon Hobart's fastidious instincts for fair play had stood in the way of his success in the fight to down Ridgway she had repeatedly heard. Of late, rumors had persisted in reporting dissatisfaction with his management of the Consolidated at the great financial center on Broadway which controlled the big copper company. Simon Harley, the dominating factor in the octopus whose tentacles reached out in every direction to monopolize the avenues of wealth, demanded of his subordinates results. Methods were no concern of his, and failure could not be explained to him. He wanted Ridgway crushed, and the pulse of the copper production regulated lay the Consolidated. Instead, he had seen Ridgway rise steadily to power and wealth despite his efforts to wipe him off the slate. Hobart was perfectly aware that his head was likely to fall when Harley heard of Purcell's decision in regard to the Never Say Die.

"He certainly is an amazing man," Virginia mused, her fiancee in mind. "It would be interesting to discover what he can't do--along utilitarian lines, I mean. Is he as good a miner underground as he is in the courts?" she flung out.

"He is the shrewdest investor I know. Time and again he has leased or bought apparently worthless claims, and made them pay inside of a few weeks. Take the Taurus as a case in point. He struck rich ore in a fortnight. Other men had done development work for years and found nothing."

"I'm naturally interested in knowing all about him, because I have just become engaged to him," explained Miss Virginia, as calmly as if her pulse were not fluttering a hundred to the minute

Virginia was essentially a sportsman. She did not flinch from the guns when the firing was heavy. It had been remarked of her even as a child that she liked to get unpleasant things over with as soon as possible, rather than postpone them. Once, aetat eight, she had marched in to her mother like a stoic and announced: "I've come to be whipped, momsie, 'cause I broke that horrid little Nellie Vaile's doll. I did it on purpose, 'cause I was mad at her. I'm glad I broke it, so there!"

Hobart paled slightly beneath his outdoors Western tan, but his eyes met hers very steadily and fairly. "I wish you happiness, Miss Balfour, from the bottom of my heart."

She nodded a brisk "Thank you," and directed her attention again to the horses.

"Take him by and large, Mr. Ridgway is the most capable, energetic, and far-sighted business man I have ever known. He has a bigger grasp of things than almost any financier in the country. I think you'll find he will go far," he said, choosing his words with care to say as much for Waring Ridgway as he honestly could.

"I have always thought so," agreed Virginia.

She had reason for thinking so in that young man's remarkable career. When Waring Ridgway had first come to Mesa he had been a draftsman for the Consolidated at five dollars a day. He was just out of Cornell, and his assets consisted mainly of a supreme confidence in himself and an imposing presence. He was a born leader, and he flung himself into the raw, turbid life of the mining town with a readiness that had not a little to do with his subsequent success.

That success began to take tangible form almost from the first. A small, independent smelter that had for long been working at a loss was about to fall into the hands of the Consolidated when Ridgway bought it on promises to pay, made good by raising money on a flying trip he took to the East. His father died about this time and left him fifty thousand dollars, with which he bought the Taurus, a mine in which several adventurous spirits had dropped small fortunes. He acquired other properties; a lease here, an interest there. It began to be observed that he bought always with judgment. He seemed to have the touch of Midas. Where other men had lost money he made it.

When the officers of the Consolidated woke up to the menace of his presence, one of their lawyers called on him. The agent of the Consolidated smiled at his luxurious offices, which looked more like a woman's boudoir than the business place of a Western miner. But that was merely part of Ridgway's vanity, and did not in the least interfere with his predatory instincts. Many people who walked into that parlor to do business played fly to his spider.

The lawyer had been ready to patronize the upstart who had ventured so boldly into the territory of the great trust, but one glance at the clear-cut resolute face of the young man changed his mind.

"I've come to make you an offer for your smelter, Mr. Ridgway," he began. "We'll take it off your hands at the price it cost you."

"Not for sale, Mr. Bartel."

"Very well. We'll give you ten thousand more than you paid for it."

"You misunderstand me. It is not for sale."

"Oh, come! You bought it to sell to us. What can you do with it?"

"Run it," suggested Ridgway.

"Without ore?"

"You forget that I own a few properties, and have leases on others. When the Taurus begins producing, I'll have enough to keep the smelter going."

"When the Taurus begins producing?"--Bartel smiled skeptically. "Didn't Johnson and Leroy drop fortunes on that expectation?"

"I'll bet five thousand dollars we make a strike within two weeks."

"Chimerical!" pronounced the graybeard as he rose to go, with an air of finality. "Better sell the smelter while you have the chance."

"Think not," disagreed Ridgway.

At the door the lawyer turned. "Oh, there's another matter! It had slipped my mind." He spoke with rather elaborate carelessness. "It seems that there is a little triangle--about ten and four feet across--wedged in between the Mary K, the Diamond King, and the Marcus Daly. For some reason we accidentally omitted to file on it. Our chief engineer finds that you have taken it up, Mr. Ridgway. It is really of no value, but it is in the heart of our properties, and so it ought to belong to us. Of course, it is of no use to you. There isn't any possible room to sink a shaft. We'll take it from you if you like, and even pay you a nominal price. For what will you sell?"

Ridgway lit a cigar before he answered: "One million dollars."

"What?" screamed Bartel.

"Not a cent less. I call it the Trust Buster. Before I'm through, you'll find it is worth that to me."

The lawyer reported him demented to the Consolidated officials, who declared war on him from that day.

They found the young adventurer more than prepared for them. If he had a Napoleonic sense of big vital factors, he had no less a genius for detail. He had already picked up an intimate knowledge of the hundreds of veins and crossveins that traverse the Mesa copper-fields, and he had delved patiently into the tangled history of the litigation that the defective mining laws in pioneer days had made possible. When the Consolidated attempted to harass him by legal process, he countered by instituting a score of suits against the company within the week. These had to do with wills, insanity cases, extra lateral rights, mine titles, and land and water rights. Wherever Ridgway saw room for an entering wedge to dispute the title of the Consolidated, he drove a new suit home. To say the least, the trust found it annoying to be enjoined from working its mines, to be cited for contempt before judges employed in the interests of its opponent, to be served with restraining orders when clearly within its rights. But when these adverse legal decisions began to affect vital issues, the Consolidated looked for reasons why Ridgway should control the courts. It found them in politics.

For Ridgway was already dominating the politics of Yuba County, displaying an amazing acumen and a surprising ability as a stumpspeaker. He posed as a friend of the people, an enemy of the trust. He declared an eight-hour day for his own miners, and called upon the Consolidated to do the same. Hobart refused, acting on orders from Broadway, and fifteen thousand Consolidated miners went to the polls and reelected Ridgway's corrupt judges, in spite of the fight the Consolidated was making against them.

Meanwhile, Ridgway's colossal audacity made the Consolidated's copper pay for the litigation with which he was harassing it. In following his ore-veins, or what he claimed to be his veins, he crossed boldly into the territory of the enemy. By the law of extra lateral rights, a man is entitled to mine within the lines of other property than his own, provided he is following the dip of a vein which has its apex in his claim. Ridgway's experts were prepared to swear that all the best veins in the field apexed in his property. Pending decisions of the courts, they assumed it, tunneling through granite till they tapped the veins of the Consolidated mines, meanwhile enjoining that company from working the very ore of which Ridgway was robbing it.

Many times the great trust back of the Consolidated had him close to ruin, but Ridgway's alert brain and supreme audacity carried him through. From their mines or from his own he always succeeded in extracting enough ore to meet his obligations when they fell due. His powerful enemy, as Hobart had told Miss Balfour, found him most dangerous when it seemed to have him with his back to the wall. Then unexpectedly would fall some crushing blow that put the financial kings of Broadway on the defensive long enough for him to slip out of the corner into which they had driven him. Greatly daring, he had the successful cavalryman's instinct of risking much to gain much. A gambler, his enemies characterized him fitly enough. But it was also true, as Mesa phrased it, that he gambled "with the lid off," playing for large stakes, neither asking nor giving quarter.

At the end of five years of desperate fighting, the freebooter was more strongly entrenched than he had been at any previous time. The railroads, pledged to give rebates to the Consolidated, had been forced by Ridgway, under menace of adverse legislation from the men he controlled at the State-house, to give him secretly a still better rate than the trust. He owned the county courts, he was supported by the people, and had become a political dictator, and the financial outlook for him grew brighter every day.

Such were the conditions when Judge Purcell handed down his Never Say Die decision. Within an hour Hobart was reading a telegram in cipher from the Broadway headquarters. It announced the immediate departure for Mesa of the great leader of the octopus. Simon Harley, the Napoleon of finance, was coming out to attend personally to the destruction of the buccaneer who had dared to fire on the trust flag.

Before night some one of his corps of spies in the employ of the enemy carried the news to Waring Ridgway. He smiled grimly, his bluegray eyes hardening to the temper of steel. Here at last was a foeman worthy of his metal; one as lawless, unscrupulous, daring, and far-seeing as himself, with a hundred times his resources.

CHAPTER 3.

ONE TO ONE

The solitary rider stood for a moment in silhouette against the somber sky-line, his keen eyes searching the lowering clouds.

"Getting its back up for a blizzard," he muttered to himself, as he touched his pony with the spur.

Dark, heavy billows banked in the west, piling over each other as they drove forward. Already the advance-guard had swept the sunlight from the earth, except for a flutter of it that still protested near the horizon. Scattering snowflakes were flying, and even in a few minutes the temperature had fallen many degrees.

The rider knew the signs of old. He recognized the sudden stealthy approach that transformed a sun-drenched, friendly plain into an unknown arctic waste. Not for nothing had he been last year one of a search-party to find the bodies of three miners frozen to death not fifty yards from their own cabin. He understood perfectly what it meant to be caught away from shelter when the driven white pall wiped out distance and direction; made long familiar landmarks strange, and numbed the will to a helpless surrender. The knowledge of it was spur enough to make him ride fast while he still retained the sense of direction.

But silently, steadily, the storm increased, and he was forced to slacken his pace. As the blinding snow grew thick, the sound of the wind deadened, unable to penetrate the dense white wall through which he forced his way. The world narrowed to a space whose boundaries he could touch with his extended hands. In this white mystery that wrapped him, nothing was left but stinging snow, bitter cold, and the silence of the dead.

So he thought one moment, and the next was almost flung by his swerving horse into a vehicle that blocked the road. Its blurred outlines presently resolved themselves into an automobile, crouched in the bottom of which was an inert huddle of humanity.

He shouted, forgetting that no voice could carry through the muffled scream of the storm. When he got no answer, he guided his horse close to the machine and reached down to snatch away the rug already heavy with snow. To his surprise, it was a girl's despairing face that looked up at him. She tried to rise, but fell back, her muscles too numb to serve.

"Don't leave me," she implored, stretching her, arms toward him.

He reached out and lifted her to his horse. "Are you alone?"

"Yes. He went for help when the machine broke down--before the storm," she sobbed. He had to put his ear to her mouth to catch the words.

"Come, keep up your heart." There was that in his voice pealed like a trumpet-call to her courage.

"I'm freezing to death," she moaned.

She was exhausted and benumbed, her lips blue, her flesh gray. It was plain to him that she had reached the limit of endurance, that she was ready to sink into the last torpor. He ripped open his overcoat and shook the snow from it, then gathered her close so that she might get the warmth of his body. The rugs from the automobile he wrapped round them both.

"Courage!" he cried. "There's a miner's cabin near. Don't give up, child."

But his own courage was of the heart and will, not of the head. He had small hope of reaching the hut at the entrance of Dead Man's Gulch or, if he could struggle so far, of finding it in the white swirl that clutched at them. Near and far are words not coined for a blizzard. He might stagger past with safety only a dozen feet from him. He might lie down and die at the very threshold of the door. Or he might wander in an opposite direction and miss the cabin by a mile.

Yet it was not in the man to give up. He must stagger on till he could no longer stand. He must fight so long as life was in him. He must crawl forward, though his forlorn hope had vanished. And he did. When the worn-out horse slipped down and could not be coaxed to its feet again, he picked up the bundle of rugs and plowed forward blindly, soul and body racked, but teeth still set fast with the primal instinct never to give up. The intense cold of the air, thick with gray sifted ice, searched the warmth from his body and sapped his vitality. His numbed legs doubled under him like springs. He was down and up again a dozen times, but always the call of life drove him on, dragging his helpless burden with him.

That he did find the safety of the cabin in the end was due to no wisdom on his part. He had followed unconsciously the dip of the ground that led him into the little draw where it had been built, and by sheer luck stumbled against it. His strength was gone, but the door gave to his weight, and he buckled across the threshold like a man helpless with drink. He dropped to the floor, ready to sink into a stupor, but he shook sleep from him and dragged himself to his feet. Presently his numb fingers found a match, a newspaper, and some wood. As soon as he had control over his hands, he fell to chafing hers. He slipped off her dainty shoes, pathetically inadequate for such an experience, and rubbed her feet back to feeling. She had been torpid, but when the blood began to circulate, she cried out in agony at the pain.

Every inch of her bore the hall-mark of wealth. The ermine-lined motoring-cloak, the broadcloth cut on simple lines of elegance, the quality of her lingerie and of the hosiery which incased the wonderfully small feet, all told of a padded existence from which the cares of life had been excluded. The satin flesh he massaged, to renew the flow of the dammed blood, was soft and tender like a babe's. Quite surely she was an exotic, the last woman in the world fitted for the hardships of this frontier country. She had none of the deep-breasted vitality of those of her sex who have fought with grim nature and won. His experience told him that a very little longer in the storm would have snuffed out the wick of her life.

But he knew, too, that the danger was past. Faint tints of pink were beginning to warm the cheeks that had been so deathly pallid. Already crimson lips were offering a vivid contrast to the still, almost colorless face.

For she was biting the little lips to try and keep back the cries of pain that returning life wrung from her. Big tears coursed down her cheeks, and broken sobs caught her breath. She was helpless as an infant before the searching pain that wracked her

"I can't stand it--I can't stand it," she moaned, and in her distress stretched out her little hand for relief as a baby might to its mother.

The childlike appeal of the flinching violet eyes in the tortured face moved him strangely. He was accounted a hard man, not without reason. His eyes were those of a gambler, cold and vigilant. It was said that he could follow an undeviating course without relenting at the ruin and misery wrought upon others by his operations. But the helpless loveliness of this exquisitely dainty child-woman, the sense of intimacy bred of a common peril endured, of the strangeness of their environment and of her utter dependence upon him, carried the man out of himself and away from conventions.

He stooped and gathered her into his arms, walking the floor with her and cheering her as if she had indeed been the child they both for the moment conceived her.

"You don't know how it hurts," she pleaded between sobs, looking up into the strong face so close to hers.

"I know it must, dear. But soon it will be better. Every twinge is one less, and shows that you are getting well. Be brave for just a few minutes more now."

She smiled wanly through her tears. "But I'm not brave. I'm a little coward--and it does pain so."

"I know--I know. It is dreadful. But just a few minutes now."

"You're good to me," she said presently, simply as a little girl might have said it.

To neither of them did it seem strange that she should be there in his arms, her fair head against his shoulder, nor that she should cling convulsively to him when the fierce pain tingled unbearably. She had reached out for the nearest help, and he gave of his strength and courage abundantly.

Presently the prickling of the flowing blood grew less sharp. She began to grow drowsy with warmth after the fatigue and pain. The big eyes shut, fluttered open, smiled at him, and again closed. She had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion.

He looked down with an odd queer feeling at the small aristocratic face relaxed upon his ann. The long lashes had drooped to the cheeks and shuttered the eyes that had met his with such confident appeal, but they did not hide the dark rings underneath, born of the hardships she had endured. As he walked the floor with her, he lived once more the terrible struggle through which they had passed. He saw Death stretching out icy hands for her, and as his arms unconsciously tightened about the soft rounded body, his square jaw set and the fighting spark leaped to his eyes.

"No, by Heaven," he gave back aloud his defiance.

Troubled dreams pursued her in her sleep. She clung close to him, her arm creeping round his neck for safety. He was a man not given to fine scruples, but all the best in him responded to her unconscious trust.

It was so she found herself when she awakened, stiff from her cramped position. She slipped at once to the floor and sat there drying her lace skirts, the sweet piquancy of her childish face set out by the leaping fire-glow that lit and shadowed her delicate coloring. Outside in the gray darkness raged the death from which he had snatched her by a miracle. Beyond--a million miles away--the world whose claim had loosened on them was going through its routine of lies and love, of hypocrisies and heroisms. But here were just they two, flung back to the primordial type by the fierce battle for existence that had encompassed them--Adam and Eve in the garden, one to one, all else forgot, all other ties and obligations for the moment obliterated. Had they not struggled, heart beating against heart, with the breath of death icing them, and come out alive? Was their world not contracted to a space ten feet by twelve, shut in from every other planet by an illimitable stretch of storm?

"Where should I have been if you had not found me?" she murmured, her haunting eyes fixed on the flames.

"But I should have found you--no matter where you had been, I should have found you."

The words seemed to leap from him of themselves. He was sure he had not meant to speak them, to voice so soon the claim that seemed to him so natural and reasonable.

She considered his words and found delight in acquiescing at once. The unconscious demand for life, for love, of her starved soul had never been gratified. But he had come to her through that fearful valley of death, because he must, because it had always been meant he should.

Her lustrous eyes, big with faith, looked up and met his.

The far, wise voices of the world were storm-deadened. They cried no warning to these drifting hearts. How should they know in that moment when their souls reached toward each other that the wisdom of the ages had decreed their yearning futile?

CHAPTER 4.

TORT SALVATION

She must have fallen asleep there, for when she opened her eyes it was day. Underneath her was a lot of bedding he had found in the cabin, and tucked about her were the automobile rugs. For a moment her brain, still sodden with sleep, struggled helplessly with her surroundings. She looked at the smoky rafters without understanding, and her eyes searched the cabin wonderingly for her maid. When she remembered, her first thought was to look for the man. That he had gone, she saw with instinctive terror.

But not without leaving a message. She found his penciled note, weighted for security by a dollar, at the edge of the hearth.

"Gone on a foraging expedition. Back in an hour, Little Partner," was all it said. The other man also had promised to be back in an hour, and he had not come, but the strong chirography of the note, recalling the resolute strength of this man's face, brought content to her eyes. He had said he would come back. She rested secure in that pledge.

She went to the window and looked out over the great white wastes that rose tier on tier to the dull sky-line. She shuddered at the arctic desolation of the vast snow-fields. The mountains were sheeted with silence and purity. It seemed to the untaught child-woman that she was face to face with the Almighty.

Once during the night she had partially awakened to hear the roaring wind as it buffeted snow-clouds across the range. It had come tearing along the divide with the black storm in its vanguard, and she had heard fearfully the shrieks and screams of the battle as it raged up and down the gulches and sifted into them the deep drifts.

Half-asleep as she was, she had been afraid and had cried out with terror at this strange wakening; and he had been beside her in an instant.

"It's all right, partner. There's nothing to be afraid of," he had said cheerfully, taking her little hand in his big warm one.

Her fears had slipped away at once. Nestling down into her rug, she had smiled sleepily at him and fallen asleep with her cheek on her hand, her other hand still in his.

While she had been asleep the snow-tides had filled the gulch, had risen level with the top of the lower pane of the window. Nothing broke the smoothness of its flow save the one track he had made in breaking a way out. That he should have tried to find his way through such an untracked desolation amazed her. He could never do it. No puny human atom could fight successfully against the barriers nature had dropped so sullenly to fence them. They were set off from the world by a quarantine of God. There was something awful to her in the knowledge. It emphasized their impotence. Yet, this man had set himself to fight the inevitable.

With a little shudder she turned from the window to the cheerless room. The floor was dirty; unwashed dishes were piled upon the table. Here and there were scattered muddy boots and overalls, just as their owner, the prospector, had left them before he had gone to the nearest town to restock his exhausted supply of provisions. Disorder and dirt filled the rough cabin, or so it seemed to her fastidious eye.

The inspiration of the housewife seized her. She would surprise him on his return by opening the door to him upon a house swept and garnished. She would show him that she could be of some use even in such a primitive topsy-turvy world as this into which Fate had thrust her willy-nilly.

First, she carried red live coals on a shovel from the fireplace to the cook-stove, and piled kindling upon them till it lighted. It was a new experience to her. She knew nothing of housework; had never lit a fire in her life, except once when she had been one of a camping party. The smoke choked her before she had the lids back in their places, but despite her awkwardness, the girl went about her unaccustomed tasks with a light heart. It was for her new-found hero that she played at housekeeping. For his commendation she filled the tea-kettle, enveloped herself in a cloud of dust as she wielded the stub of a broom she discovered, and washed the greasy dishes after the water was hot. A childish pleasure suffused her. All her life her least whims had been ministered to; she was reveling in a first attempt at service. As she moved to and fro with an improvised dust-rag, sunshine filled her being. From her lips the joy notes fell in song, shaken from her throat for sheer happiness. This surely was life, that life from which she had so carefully been hedged all the years of her young existence.

As he came down the trail he had broken, with a pack on his back, the man heard her birdlike carol in the clear frosty air. He emptied his chest in a deep shout, and she was instantly at the window, waving him a welcome with her dust-rag.

"I thought you were never coming," she cried from the open door as he came up the path.

Her eyes were starry in their eagerness. Every sensitive feature was alert with interest, so that the man thought he had never seen so mobile and attractive a face.

"Did it seem long?" he asked.

"Oh, weeks and weeks! You must be frozen to an icicle. Come in and get warm."

"I'm as warm as toast," he assured her.

He was glowing with exercise and the sting of the cold, for he had tramped two miles through drifts from three to five feet deep, battling with them every step of the way, and carrying with him on the return trip a box of provisions.

"With all that snow on you and the pack on your back, it's like Santa Claus," she cried, clapping her hands.

"Before we're through with the adventure we may think that box a sure enough gift from Santa," he replied.

After he had put it down, he took off his overcoat on the threshold and shook the snow from it. Then, with much feet stamping and scattering of snow, he came in. She fluttered about him, dragging a chair up to the fire for him, and taking his hat and gloves. It amused and pleased him that she should be so solicitous, and he surrendered himself to her ministrations.

His quick eye noticed the swept floor and the evanishment of disorder. "Hello! What's this clean through a fall house-cleaning? I'm not the only member of the firm that has been working. Dishes washed, floor swept, bed made, kitchen fire lit. You've certainly been going some, unless the fairies helped you. Aren't you afraid of blistering these little hands?" he asked gaily, taking one of them in his and touching the soft palm gently with the tip of his finger.

"I should preserve those blisters in alcohol to show that I've really been of some use," she answered, happy in his approval.

"Sho! People are made for different uses. Some are fit only to shovel and dig. Others are here simply to decorate the world. Hard world. Hard work is for those who can't give society anything else, but beauty is its own excuse for being," he told her breezily.

"Now that's the first compliment you have given me," she pouted prettily. "I can get them in plenty back in the drawing-rooms where I am supposed to belong. We're to be real comrades here, and compliments are barred."

"I wasn't complimenting you," he maintained. "I was merely stating a principle of art."

"Then you mustn't make your principles of art personal, sir. But since you have, I'm going to refute the application of your principle and show how useful I've been. Now, sir, do you know what provisions we have outside of those you have just brought?"

He knew exactly, since he had investigated during the night. That they might possibly have to endure a siege of some weeks, he was quite well aware, and his first thought, after she had gone to sleep before the fire, had been to make inventory of such provisions as the prospector had left in his cabin. A knuckle of ham, part of a sack of flour, some navy beans, and some tea siftings at the bottom of a tin can; these constituted the contents of the larder which the miner had gone to replenish. But though the man knew he assumed ignorance, for he saw that she was bubbling over with the desire to show her forethought.

"Tell me," he begged of her, and after she had done so, he marveled aloud over her wisdom in thinking of it.

"Now tell me about your trip," she commanded, setting herself tailor fashion on the rug to listen.

"There isn't much to tell," he smiled "I should like to make an adventure of it, but I can't. I just went and came back."

"Oh, you just went and came back, did you?" she scoffed. "That won't do at all. I want to know all about it. Did you find the machine all right?"

"I found it where we left it, buried in four feet of snow. You needn't be afraid that anybody will run away with it for a day or two. The pantry was cached pretty deep itself, but I dug it out."

Her shy glance admired the sturdy lines of his powerful frame. "I am afraid it must have been a terrible task to get there through the blizzard."

"Oh, the blizzard is past. You never saw a finer, more bracing morning. It's a day for the gods," he laughed boyishly.

She could have conceived no Olympian more heroic than he, and certainly none with so compelling a vitality. "Such a warm, kind light in them!" she thought of the eyes others had found hard and calculating.

It was lucky that the lunch the automobilists had brought from Avalanche was ample and as yet untouched. The hotel waiter, who had attended to the packing of it, had fortunately been used to reckon with outdoor Montana appetites instead of cloyed New York ones. They unpacked the little hamper with much gaiety. Everything was frozen solid, and the wine had cracked its bottle.

"Shipped right through on our private refrigerator-car. That cold-storage chicken looks the finest that ever happened. What's this rolled up in tissue-paper? Deviled eggs and ham sandwiches AND caviar, not to speak of claret frappe. I'm certainly grateful to the gentleman finished in ebony who helped to provision us for this siege. He'll never know what a tip he missed by not being here to collect."

"Here's jelly, too, and cake," she said, exploring with him.

"Not to mention peaches and pears. Oh, this is luck of a special brand! I was expecting to put up at Starvation Camp. Now we may name it Point Plenty."

"Or Fort Salvation," she suggested shyly. "Because you brought me here to save my life."

She was such a child, in spite of her charming grown-up airs, that he played make-believe with a zest that surprised himself when he came to think of it. She elected him captain of Fort Salvation, with full power of life and death over the garrison, and he appointed her second in command. His first general order was to put the garrison on two meals a day.

She clapped her little hands, eyes sparkling with excitement. "Are we really snow-bound? Must we go on half-rations?"

"It is the part of wisdom, lieutenant," he answered, smiling at her enthusiasm. "We don't know how long this siege is going to last. If it should set in to snow, we may be here several days before the relief-party reaches us." But, though he spoke cheerfully, he was aware of sinister possibilities in the situation. "Several weeks" would have been nearer his real guess.

They ate breakfast at the shelf-table nailed in place underneath the western window. They made a picnic of it, and her spirits skipped upon the hilltops. For the first time she ate from tin plates, drank from a tin cup, and used a tin spoon the worse for rust. What mattered it to her that the teapot was grimy and the fryingpan black with soot! It was all part of the wonderful new vista that had suddenly opened before her gaze. She had awakened into life and already she was dimly realizing that many and varied experiences lay waiting for her in that untrodden path beyond her cloistered world.

A reconnaissance in the shed behind the house showed him no plethora of firewood. But here was ax, shovel, and saw, and he asked no more. First he shoveled out a path along the eaves of the house where she might walk in sentry fashion to take the deep breaths of clear sharp air he insisted upon. He made it wide enough so that her skirt would not sweep against the snow-bank, and trod down the trench till the footing was hard and solid. Then with ax and saw he climbed the hillside back of the house and set himself to get as much fuel as he could. The sky was still heavy with unshed snow, and he knew that with the coming of night the storm would be renewed.

Came noon, mid-afternoon, the early dusk of a mountain winter, and found him still hewing and sawing, still piling load after load in the shed. Now and again she came out and watched him, laughing at the figure he made as he would come plunging through the snow with his armful of fuel.

She did not know, as he did, the vital necessity of filling the lean-to before winter fell upon them in earnest and buried them deep with his frozen blanket, and she was a little piqued that he should spend the whole day away from her in such unsocial fashion.

"Let me help," she begged so often that he trod down a path, made boots for her out of torn gunny-sacks which he tied round her legs, and let her drag wood to the house on a pine branch which served for a sled. She wore her gauntlets to protect her tender hands, and thereafter was happy until, detecting signs of fatigue, he made her go into the house and rest.

As soon as she dared she was back again, making fun of him and the earnestness with which he worked.

"Robinson Crusoe" was one name she fastened upon him, and she was not satisfied till she had made him call her "Friday."

Twilight fell austere and sudden upon them with an immediate fall of temperature that found a thermometer in her blue face.

He recommended the house, but she was of a contrary mood.

"I don't want to," she announced debonairly.

In a stiff military attitude he gave raucous mandate from his throat.

"Commanding officer's orders, lieutenant."

"I think I'm going to mutiny," she informed him, with chin saucily in air.

This would not do at all. The chill wind sweeping down the canon was searching her insufficient clothing already. He picked her up in his arms and ran with her toward the house, setting her down in the trench outside the door. She caught her startled breath and looked at him in shy, dubious amazement.

"Really you " she was beginning when he cut her short.

"Commanding officer's orders, lieutenant," came briskly from lips that showed just a hint of a smile.

At once she clicked her heels together, saluted, and wheeled into the cabin.

From the grimy window she watched his broad-shouldered vigor, waving her hand whenever his face was turned her way. He worked like a Titan, reveling in the joy of physical labor, but it was long past dark before he finished and came striding to the hut.

They made a delightful evening of it, living in the land of Never Was. For one source of her charm lay in the gay, childlike whimsicality o her imagination. She believed in fairies and heroes with all her heart, which with her was an organ not located in her brain. The delicious gurgle of gaiety in her laugh was a new find to him in feminine attractions.

There had been many who thought the career of this pirate of industry beggared fiction, though, few had found his flinty personality a radiaton of romance. But this convent-nurtured child had made a discovery in men, one out of the rut of the tailor-made, convention-bound society youths to whom her experience for the most part had been limited. She delighted in his masterful strength, in the confidence of his careless dominance. She liked to see that look of power in his gray-blue eyes softened to the droll, half-tender, expression with which he played the game of make-believe. There were no to-morrows; to-day marked the limit of time for them. By tacit consent they lived only in the present, shutting out deliberately from their knowledge of each other, that past which was not common to both. Even their names were unknown to each other, and both of them were glad that it was so.

The long winter evening had fallen early, and they dined by candle-light, considering merrily how much they might with safety eat and yet leave enough for the to-morrows that lay before them. Afterward they sat before the fire, in the shadow and shine of the flickering logs, happy and content in each other's presence. She dreamed, and he, watching her, dreamed, too. The wild, sweet wonder of life surged through them, touching their squalid surroundings to the high mystery of things unreal.

The strangeness of it was that he was a man of large and not very creditable experience of women, yet her deep, limpid eyes, her sweet voice, the immature piquancy of her movements that was the expression of her, had stirred his imagination more potently than if he had been the veriest schoolboy nursing a downy lip. He could not keep his eyes from this slender, exquisite girl, so dainty and graceful in her mobile piquancy. Fire and passion were in his heart and soul, restraint and repression in his speech and manner. For the fire and passion in him were pure and clean as the winds that sweep the hills.

But for the girl--she was so little mistress of her heart that she had no prescience of the meaning of this sweet content that filled her. And the voices that should have warned her were silent, busy behind the purple hills with lies and love and laughter and tears.

CHAPTER 5.

ENTER SIMON HARLEY

The prospector's house in which they had found refuge was perched on the mountainside just at one edge of the draw. Rough as the girl had thought it, there was a more pretentious appearance to it than might have been expected. The cabin was of hewn logs mortared with mud, and care had been taken to make it warm. The fireplace was a huge affair that ate fuel voraciously. It was built of stone, which had been gathered from the immediate hillside.

The prospect itself showed evidence of having been worked a good deal, and it was an easy guess for the man who now stood looking into the tunnel that it belonged to some one of the thousands of miners who spend half their time earning a grubstake, and the other half dissipating it upon some hole in the ground which they have duped themselves into believing is a mine.

From the tunnel his eye traveled up the face of the white mountain to the great snow-comb that yawned over the edge of the rock-rim far above. It had snowed again heavily all night, and now showed symptoms of a thaw. Not once nor twice, but a dozen times, the man's anxious gaze had swept up to that great overhanging bank. Snowslides ran every year in this section with heavy loss to life and property. Given a rising temperature and some wind, the comb above would gradually settle lower and lower, at last break off, plunge down the precipitous slope, bringing thousands of tons of rock and snow with it, and, perhaps, bury them in a Titanic grave of ice. There had been a good deal of timber cut from the shoulder of the mountain during the past summer, and this very greatly increased the danger. That there was a real peril the man looking at it did not attempt to deny to himself. It would be enough to deny it to her in case she should ever suspect.

He had hoped for cold weather, a freeze hard enough to crust the surface of the snow. Upon this he might have made shift somehow to get her to Yesler's ranch, eighteen miles away though it was, but he knew this would not be feasible with the snow in its present condition. It was not certain that he could make the ranch alone; encumbered with her, success would be a sheer impossibility. On the other hand, their provisions would not last long. The outlook was not a cheerful one, from whichever point of view he took it; yet there was one phase of it he could not regret. The factors which made the difficulties of the situation made also its delights. Though they were prisoners in this solitary untrodden caynon, the sentence was upon both of them. She could look to none other than he for aid; and, at least, the drifts which kept them in held others out.

Her voice at his shoulder startled him.

"Wherefore this long communion with nature, my captain?" she gaily asked. "Behold, my, lord's hot cakes are ready for the pan and his servant to wait upon him." She gave him a demure smiling little curtsy of mock deference.

Never had her distracting charm been more in evidence. He had not seen her since they parted on the previous night. He had built for himself a cot in the woodshack, and had contrived a curtain that could be drawn in front of her bed in the living-room. Thus he could enter in the morning, light the fires, and start breakfast without disturbing her. She had dressed her hair, now in a different way, so that it fell in low waves back from the forehead and was bunched at the nape of her neck. The light swiftness of her dainty grace, the almost exaggerated carnation of the slightly parted lips, the glad eagerness that sparked her eyes, brought out effectively the picturesqueness of her beauty.

His grave eyes rested on her so long that a soft glow mantled her cheeks. Perhaps her words had been too free, though she had not meant them so. For the first time some thought of the conventions distressed her. Ought she to hold herself more in reserve toward him? Must she restrain her natural impulses to friendliness?

His eyes released her presently, but not before she read in them the feelings that had softened them as they gazed into hers. They mirrored his poignant pleasure at the delight of her sweet slenderness so close to him, his perilous joy at the intimacy fate had thrust upon them. Shyly her lids fell to the flushed cheeks.

"Breakfast is ready," she added self-consciously, her girlish innocence startled like a fawn of the forest at the hunter's approach

For whereas she had been blind now she saw in part. Some flash of clairvoyance had laid bare a glimpse of his heart and her own to her. Without misunderstanding the perfect respect for her which he felt, she knew the turbid banked emotions which this dammed. Her heart seemed to beat in her bosom like an imprisoned dove.

It was his voice, calm and resonant with strength, that brought her to earth again.

"And I am ready for it, lieutenant. Right about face. Forward--march!"

After breakfast they went out and tramped together the little path of hard-trodden snow in front of the house. She broached the prospect of a rescue or the chances of escape.

"We shall soon be out of food, and, anyhow, we can't stay here all winter," she suggested with a tremulous little laugh.

"You are naturally very tired of it already," he hazarded.

"It has been the experience of my life. I shall fence it off from all the days that have passed and all that are to come," she made answer vividly.

Their eyes met, but only for an instant.

"I am glad," he said quietly.

He began, then, to tell her what he must do, but at the first word of it she broke out in protest.

"No--no--no! We shall stay together. If you go I am going, too."

"I wish you could, but it is not possible. You could never get there. The snow is too soft and heavy for wading and not firm enough to bear your weight."

"But you will have to wade."

"I am stronger than you, lieutenant."

"I know, but----" She broke down and confessed her terror. "Would you leave me here-- alone--with all this snow Oh, I couldn't stay--I couldn't."

"It's the only way," he said steadily. Every fiber in him rebelled at leaving her here to face peril alone, but his reason overrode the desire and rebellion that were hot within him. He must think first of her ultimate safety, and this lay in getting her away from here at the first chance.

Tears splashed down from the big eyes. "I didn't think you would leave me here alone. With you I don't mind it, but-- Oh, I should die if I stayed alone."

"Only for twenty-four hours. Perhaps less. I shouldn't think of it if it weren't necessary."

"Take me with you. I am strong. You don't know how strong I am. I promise to keep up with you. Please!"

He shook his head. "I would take you with me if I could. You know that. But it's a man's fight. I shall have to stand up to it hour after hour till I reach Yesler's ranch. I shall get through, but it would not be possible for you to make it."

"And if you don't get through?"

He refused to consider that contingency. -"But I shall. You may look to see me back with help by this time to-morrow morning."

"I'm not afraid with you. But if you go away Oh, I can't stand it. You don't know--you don't know." She buried her face in her hands.

He had to swallow down his sympathy before he went on. "Yes, I know. But you must be brave. You must think of every minute as being one nearer to the time of my return."

"You will think me a dreadful coward, and I am. But I can't help it. I AM afraid to stay alone. There's nothing in the world but mountains of snow. They are horrible--like death-- except when you are here."

Her child eyes coaxed him to stay. The mad longing was in him to kiss the rosy little mouth with the queer alluring droop to its corners. It was a strange thing how, with that arched twist to her eyebrows and with that smile which came and went like sunshine in her eyes, she toppled his lifelong creed. The cardinal tenet of his faith had been a belief in strength. He had first been drawn to Virginia by reason of her pluck and her power. Yet this child's very weakness was her fountain of strength. She cried out with pain, and he counted it an asset of virtue in her. She acknowledged herself a coward, and his heart went out to her because of it. The battle assignments of life were not for the soft curves and shy winsomeness of this dainty lamb.

"You will be brave. I expect you to be brave, lieutenant." Words of love and comfort were crowding to his brain, but he would not let them out.

"How long will you be gone?" she sobbed.

"I may possibly get back before midnight, but you mustn't begin to expect me until to-morrow morning, perhaps not till to-morrow afternoon."

"Oh, I couldn't--I couldn't stay here at night alone. Don't go, please. I'll not get hungry, truly I won't, and to-morrow they will find us."

He rose, his face working. "I MUST go, child. It's the thing to do. I wish to Heaven it weren't. You must think of yourself as quite safe here. You ARE safe. Don't make it hard for me to go, dear."

"I AM a coward. But I can't help it. There is so much snow--and the mountains are so big." She tried valiantly to crush down her sobs. "But go. I'll--I'll not be afraid."

He buried her little hands in his two big ones and looked deep into her eyes. "Every minute of the time I am away from you I shall be with you in spirit. You'll not be alone any minute of the day or night. Whether you are awake or asleep I shall be with you."

"I'll try to remember that," she answered, smiling up at him but with a trembling lip.

She put him up some lunch while he made his simple preparations. To the end of the trench she walked with him, neither of them saying a word. The moment of parting had come.

She looked up at him with a crooked wavering little smile. She wanted to be brave, but she could not trust herself to say a word.

"Remember, dear. I am not leaving you. My body has gone on an errand. That is all."

Just now she found small comfort in this sophistry, but she did not tell him so.

"I--I'll remember." She gulped down a sob and still smiled through the mist that filmed her sight.

In his face she could see how much he was moved at her distress. Always a creature of impulse, one mastered her now, the need to let her weakness rest on his strength. Her arms slipped quickly round his neck and her head lay buried on his shoulder. He held her tight, eyes shining, the desire of her held in leash behind set teeth, the while sobs shook her soft round body in gusts.

"My lamb--my sweet precious lamb," she heard him murmur in anguish.

From some deep sex trait it comforted her that he suffered. With the mother instinct she began to regain control of herself that she might help him.

"It will not be for long," she assured him. "And every step of your way I shall pray for, your safety," she whispered.

He held her at arm's length while his gaze devoured her, then silently he wheeled away and plunged waist deep into the drifts. As long as he was in sight he saw her standing there, waving her handkerchief to him in encouragement. Her slight, dark figure, outlined against the snow, was the last thing his eyes fell upon before he turned a corner of the gulch and dropped downward toward the plains.

But when he was surely gone, after one fearful look at the white sea which encompassed her, the girl fled to the cabin, slammed the door after her, and flung herself on the bed to weep out her lonely terror in an ecstasy of tears. She had spent the first violence of her grief, and was sitting crouched on the rug before the open fire when the sound of a footstep, crunching the snow, startled her. The door opened, to let in the man who had just left her.

"You are back--already," she cried, her tear? stained face lifted toward him.

"Yes," he smiled' from the doorway. "Come here, little partner."

And when she had obediently joined him her eye followed his finger up the mountain-trail to a bend round which men and horses were coming.

"It's a relief-party," he said, and caught up his field-glasses to look them over more certainly. Two men on horseback, leading a third animal, were breaking a way down the trail, black spots against the background of white. "I guess Fort Salvation's about to be relieved," he added grimly, following the party through the glasses.

She touched the back of his hand with a finger. "Are you glad?" she asked softly.

"No, by Heaven!" he cried, lowering his glasses swiftly.

As he looked into her eyes the blood rushed to his brain with a surge. Her face turned to his unconsciously, and their lips met.

"And I don't even know your name," she murmured.

"Waring Ridgway; and yours?"

"Aline Hope," she said absently. Then a hot Rush ran over the girlish face. "No, no, I had forgotten. I was married last week."

The gates of paradise, open for two days, clanged to on Ridgway. He stared out with unseeing eyes into the silent wastes of snow. The roaring in his ears and the mountainsides that churned before his eyes were reflections of the blizzard raging within him.

"I'll never forget--never," he heard her falter, and her voice was a thousand miles away.

From the storm within him he was aroused by a startled cry from the girl at his side. Her fascinated gaze was fixed on the summit of the ridge above them. There was a warning crackle. The overhanging comb snapped, slid slowly down, and broke off. With gathering momentum it descended, sweeping into its heart rocks, trees, and debris. A terrific roar filled the air as the great white cloud came tearing down like an express-train.

Ridgway caught her round the waist and flung the girl against the wall of the cabin, protecting her with his body. The avalanche was upon them, splitting great trees to kindling-wood in the fury of its rush. The concussion of the wind shattered every window to fragments, almost tore the cabin from its foundations. Only the extreme tail of the slide touched them, yet they were buried deep in flying snow.

He found no great difficulty in digging a way out, and when he lifted her to the surface she was conscious. Yet she was pale even to the lips and trembled like an aspen in the summer breeze, clinging to him for support helplessly.

His cheerful voice rang like a bugle to her shocked brain.

"It's all past. We're safe now, dear--quite safe."

The first of the trail-breakers had dismounted and was plowing his way hurriedly to the cabin, but neither of them saw him as he came up the slope.

"Are you sure?" She shuddered, her hands still in his. "Wasn't it awful? I thought--" Her sentence trailed out unfinished.

"Are you unhurt, Aline?" cried the newcomer. And when he saw she was, he added: "Praise ye the Lord. O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good: for His mercy endureth forever. He saved them for His name's sake, that He might make His mighty power to be known."

At sound of the voice they turned and saw the man hurrying toward them. He was tall, gray, and seventy, of massive frame and gaunt, still straight and vigorous, with the hooked nose and piercing eyes of a hawk. At first glance he looked always the bird of prey, but at the next as invariably the wolf, an effect produced by the salient reaching jaw and the glint of white teeth bared for a lip smile. Just now he was touched to a rare emotion. His hands trembled and an expression of shaken thankfulness rested in his face.

Aline, still with Ridgway's strong arms about her, slowly came back to the inexorable facts of life.

"You--here?"

"As soon as we could get through--and thank God in time."

"I would have died, except for--" This brought her immediately to an introduction, and after she had quietly released herself the man who had saved her heard himself being formally presented: "Mr. Ridgway, I want you to meet my husband, Mr. Harley."

Ridgway turned to Simon Harley a face of hammered steel and bowed, putting his hands deliberately behind his back.

"I've been expecting you at Mesa, Mr. Harley," he said rigidly. "I'll be glad to have the pleasure of welcoming you there."

The great financier was wondering where he had heard the man's name before, but he only said gravely: "You have a claim on me I can never forget, Mr. Ridgway."

Scornfully the other disdained this proffer. "Not at all. You owe me nothing, Mr. Harley--absolutely nothing. What I have done I have done for her. It is between her and me."

At this moment the mind of Harley fitted the name Ridgway to its niche in his brain. So this was the audacious filibuster who had dared to fire on the trust flag, the man he had come West to ruin and to humble.

"I think you will have to include me, Mr. Ridgway," he said suavely. "What is done for my wife is done, also, for me."

CHAPTER 6.

0N THE SNOW-TRAIL

Aline had passed into the house, moved by an instinct which shrank from publicity in the inevitable personal meeting between her and her husband. Now, Harley, with the cavalier nod of dismissal, which only a multimillionaire can afford, followed her and closed the door. A passionate rush of blood swept Ridgway's face. He saw red as he stood there with eyes burning into that door which had been shut in his face. The nails of his clenched fingers bit into his palms, and his muscles gathered themselves tensely. He had been cast aside, barred from the woman he loved by this septuagenarian, as carelessly as if he had no claim.

And it came home to him that now he had no claim, none before the law and society. They had walked in Arcadia where shepherds pipe. They had taken life for granted as do the creatures of the woods, forgetful of the edicts of a world that had seemed far and remote. But that world had obtruded itself and shattered their dream. In the person of Simon Harley it had shut the door which was to separate him and her. Hitherto he had taken from life what he had wanted, but already he was grappling with the blind fear of a fate for once too strong for him.

"Well, I'm damned if it isn't Waring Ridgway," called a mellow voice from across the gulch.

The man named turned, and gradually the set lines of his jaw relaxed.

"I didn't notice it was you, Sam. Better bring the horses across this side of that fringe of aspens."

The dismounted horseman followed directions and brought the floundering horses through, and after leaving them in the cleared place where Ridgway had cut his firewood he strolled leisurely forward to meet the mine-owner. He was a youngish man, broad of shoulder and slender of waist, a trifle bowed in the legs from much riding, but with an elastic sufficiency that promised him the man for an emergency, a pledge which his steady steel-blue eyes, with the humorous lines about the corners, served to make more valuable. His apparel suggested the careless efficiency of the cow-man, from the high-heeled boots into which were thrust his corduroys to the broad-brimmed white Stetson set on his sunreddened wavy hair. A man's man, one would vote him at first sight, and subsequent impressions would not contradict the first.

"Didn't know you were down in this neck of woods, Waring," he said pleasantly, as they shook hands.

An onlooker might have noticed that both of them gripped hands heartily and looked each other squarely in the eye.

"I came down on business and got caught in the blizzard on my way back. Came on her freezing in the machine and brought her here along with me. I had my eye on that slide. The snow up there didn't look good to me, and the grub was about out, anyhow, so I was heading for the C B Ranch when I sighted you."

"Golden luck for her. I knew it was a chance in a million that she was still alive, but Harley wanted to take it. Say, that old fellow's made of steel wire. Two of my boys are plugging along a mile or two behind us, but he stayed right with the game to a finish--and him seventy-three, mind you, and a New Yorker at that. The old boy rides like he was born in a saddle," said Sam Yesler with enthusiasm.

"I never said he was a quitter," conceded Ridgway ungraciously.

"You're right he ain't. And say, but he's fond of his wife. Soon as he struck the ranch the old man butted out again into the blizzard to get her--slipped out before we knew it. The boys rounded him up wandering round the big pasture, and none too soon neither. All the time we had to keep herd on him to keep him from taking another whirl at it. He was like a crazy man to tackle it, though he must a-known it was suicide. Funny how a man takes a shine to a woman and thinks the sun rises and sets by her. Far, as I have been able to make out women are much of a sameness, though I ain't setting up for a judge. Like as not this woman don't care a hand's turn for him."

"Why should she? He bought her with his millions, I suppose. What right has an old man like that with one foot in the grave to pick out a child and marry her? I tell you, Sam, there's something ghastly about it."

"Oh, well, I reckon when she sold herself she knew what she was getting. It's about an even thing--six of one and half a dozen of the other. There must be something rotten about a woman who will do a thing of that sort."

"Wait till you've seen her before passing judgment. And after you have you'll apologize if you're a white man for thinking such a thing about her," the miner said hotly.

Yesler looked at his friend in amiable surprise. "I don't reckon we need to quarrel about Simon Harley's matrimonial affairs, do we?" he laughed.

"Not unless you want to say any harm of that lamb."

A glitter of mischief gleamed from the cattleman's eyes. "Meaning Harley, Waring?"

"You know who I mean. I tell you she's an angel from heaven, pure as the driven snow."

"And I tell you that I'll take your word for it without quarreling with you," was the goodhumored retort. "What's up, anyhow? I never saw you so touchy before. You're a regular pepper-box."

The rescuers had brought food with them, and the party ate lunch before starting back. The cow-punchers of the C B had now joined them, both of them, as well as their horses, very tired with the heavy travel.

"This here Marathon race business through three-foot snow ain't for invalids like me and Husky," one of them said cheerfully, with his mouth full of sandwich. "We're also rans, and don't even show for place."

Yet though two of them had, temporarily at least, been rescued from imminent danger, and success beyond their expectations had met the others, it was a silent party. A blanket of depression seemed to rest upon it, which the good stories of Yesler and the genial nonsense of his man, Chinn, were unable to lift. Three of them, at least, were brooding over what the morning had brought forth, and trying to realize what it might mean for them.

"We'd best be going, I expect," said Yesler at last. "We've got a right heavy bit of work cut out for us, and the horses are through feeding. We can't get started any too soon for me."

Ridgway nodded silently. He knew that the stockman was dubious, as he himself was, about being able to make the return trip in safety. The horses were tired; so, too, were the men who had broken the heavy trail for so many miles, with the exception of Sam himself, who seemed built of whipcord and elastic. They would be greatly encumbered by the woman, for she would certainly give out during the journey. The one point in their favor was that they could follow a trail which had already been trodden down.

Simon Harley helped his wife into the boy's saddle on the back of the animal they had led, but his inexperience had to give way to Yesler's skill in fitting the stirrups to the proper length for her feet. To Ridgway, who had held himself aloof during this preparation, the stockman now turned with a wave of his hand toward his horse

"You ride, Waring."

"No, I'm fresh."

"All right. We'll take turns."

Ridgway led the party across the gulch, following the trail that had been swept by the slide. The cowboys followed him, next came Harley, his wife, and in the rear the cattleman. They descended the draw, and presently dipped over rolling ground to the plain beyond. The procession plowed steadily forward mile after mile, the pomes floundering through drifts after the man ahead.

Chinn, who had watched him breasting the soft heavy blanket that lay on the ground so deep and hemmed them in, turned to his companion.

"On the way coming I told you, Husky, we had the best man in Montana at our head. We got that beat now to a fare-you-well. We got the two best in this party, by crickey."

"He's got the guts, all right, but there ain't nothing on two legs can keep it up much longer," replied the other. "If you want to know, I'm about all in myself."

"Here, too," grunted the other. "And so's the bronc."

It was not, however, until dusk was beginning to fall that the leader stopped. Yesler's voice brought him up short in his tracks.

"Hold on, Waring. The lady's down."

Ridgway strode back past the exhausted cowboys and Harley, the latter so beaten with fatigue that he could scarce cling to the pommel of his saddle.

"I saw it coming. She's been done for a long time, but she hung on like a thoroughbred," explained Yesler from the snow-bank where Aline had fallen.

He had her in his arms and was trying to get at a flask of whisky in his hip-pocket.

"All right. I'll take care of her, Sam. You go ahead with your horse and break trail. I don't like the way this wind is rising. It's wiping out the path you made when you broke through. How far's the ranch now?"

"Close to five miles."

Both men had lowered their voices almost to a whisper.

"It's going to be a near thing, Sam. Your men are played out. Harley will never make it without help. From now on every mile will be worse than the last."

Yesler nodded quietly. "Some one has got to go ahead for help. That's the only way."

"It will have to be you, of course. You know the road best and can get back quickest. Better take her pony. It's the fittest."

The owner of the C B hesitated an instant before he answered. He was the last man in the world to desert a comrade that was down, but his common sense told him his friend had spoken wisely. The only chance for the party was to get help to it from the ranch.

"All right. If anybody plays out beside her try to keep him going. If it comes to a showdown leave him for me to pick up. Don't let him stop the whole outfit."

"Sure. Better leave me that bottle of whisky. So-long."

"You're going to ride, I reckon?"

"Yes. I'll have to."

"Get up on my horse and I'll give her to you. That's right Well, I'll see you later."

And with that the stockman was gone. For long they could see him, plunging slowly forward through the drifts, getting always smaller and smaller, till distance and the growing darkness swallowed him.

Presently the girl in Ridgway's arms opened her eyes.

"I heard what you and he said," she told him quietly.

"About what?" he smiled down into the white face that looked up into his.

"You know. About our danger. I'm not afraid, not the least little bit."

"You needn't be. We're coming through, all right. Sam will make it to the ranch. He's a man in a million."

"I don't mean that. I'm not afraid, anyway, whether we do or not."

"Why?" he asked, his heart beating wildly.

"I don't know, but I'm not," she murmured with drowsy content.

But he knew if she did not. Her fear had passed because he was there, holding her in his arms, fighting to the last ounce of power in him for her life. She felt he would never leave her, and that, if it came to the worst, she would pass from life with him close to her. Again he knew that wild exultant beat of blood no woman before this one had ever stirred in him.

Harley was the first to give up. He lurched forward and slipped from the saddle to the snow, and could not be cursed into rising. The man behind dismounted, put down his burden, and dragged the old man to his feet.

"Here! This won't do. You've got to stick it out."

"I can't. I've reached my limit." Then testily: "'Are not my days few? Cease then, and let me alone,'" he added wearily, with his everready tag of Scripture.

The instant the other's hold on him relaxed the old man sank back. Ridgway dragged him up and cuffed him like a troublesome child. He knew this was no time for reasoning.

"Are you going to lie down and quit, you old loafer? I tell you the ranch is only a mile or two. Here, get into the saddle."

By sheer strength the younger man hoisted him into the seat. He was very tired himself, but the vital sap of youth in him still ran strong in his blood. For a few yards farther they pushed on before Harley slid down again and his horse stopped.

Ridgway passed him by, guiding his bronco in a half-circle through the snow.

"I'll send back help for you," he promised.

"It will be too late, but save her--save her," the old man begged.

"I will," called back the other between set teeth.

Chinn was the next to drop out, and after him the one he called Husky. Both their horses had been abandoned a mile or two back, too exhausted to continue. Each of them Ridgway urged to stick to the trail and come on as fast as they could.

He knew the horse he was riding could not much longer keep going with the double weight, and when at length its strength gave out completely he went on afoot, carrying her in his arms as on that eventful night when he had saved her from the blizzard.

It was so the rescue-party found him, still staggering forward with her like a man in a sleep, flesh and blood and muscles all protestant against the cruelty of his indomitable will that urged them on in spite of themselves. In a dream he heard Yesler's cheery voice, gave up his burden to one of the rescuers, and found himself being lifted to a fresh horse. From this dream he awakened to find himself before the great fire of the living-room of the ranch-house, wakened from it only long enough to know that somebody was undressing him and helping him into bed.

Nature, with her instinct for renewing life, saw to it that Ridgway slept round the clock. He arose fit for anything. His body, hard as nails, suffered no reaction from the terrific strain he had put upon it, and he went down to his breakfast with an appetite ravenous for whatever good things Yesler's Chinese cook might have prepared for him.

He found his host already at work on a juicy steak.

"Mornin'," nodded that gentleman. "Hope you feel as good as you look."

"I'm all right, barring a little stiffness in my muscles. I'll feel good as the wheat when I've got outside of the twin steak to that one you have."

Yesler touched a bell, whereupon a soft-footed Oriental appeared, turned almond eyes on his proprietor, took orders and padded silently back to his kingdom--the kitchen. Almost immediately he reappeared with a bowl of oatmeal and a pitcher of cream.

"Go to it, Waring."

His host waved him the freedom of the diningroom, and Ridgway fell to. Never before had food tasted so good. He had been too sleepy to cat last night, but now he made amends. The steak, the muffins, the coffee, were all beyond praise, and when he came to the buckwheat hot cakes, sandwiched with butter and drenched with real maple syrup, his satisfied soul rose up and called Hop Lee blessed. When he had finished, Sam capped the climax by shoving toward him his case of Havanas.

Ridgway's eyes glistened. "I haven't smoked for days," he explained, and after the smoke had begun to rise, he added: "Ask what you will, even to the half of my kingdom, it's yours."

"Or half of the Consolidated's," amended his friend with twinkling eyes.

"Even so, Sam," returned the other equably. "And now, tell me how you managed to round us all up safely."

"You've heard, then, that we got the whole party in time?"

"Yes, I've been talking with one of your enthusiastic riders that went out with you after us. He's been flimflammed into believing you the greatest man in the United States. Tell me how you do it."

"Nick's a good boy, but I reckon he didn't tell you quite all that."

"Didn't he? You should have heard him reel off your praises by the yard. I got the whole story of how you headed the relief-party after you had reached the ranch more dead than alive."

"Then, if you've got it, I don't need to tell you. I WAS a bit worried about the old man. He was pretty far gone when we reached him, but he pulled through all right. He's still sleeping like a top."

"Is he?" His guest's hard gaze came round to meet his. "And the lady? Do you know how she stood it?"

"My sister says she was pretty badly played out, but all she needs is rest. Nell put her in her own bed, and she, too, has been doing nothing but sleep."

Ridgway smoked out his cigar in silence then tossed it into the fireplace as he rose briskly.

"I want to talk to Mesa over the phone, Sam."

"Can't do it. The wires are down. This storm played the deuce with them."

"The devil! I'll have to get through myself then."

"Forget business for a day or two, Waring, and take it easy up here," counseled his host.

"Can't do it. I have to make arrangements to welcome Simon Harley to Mesa. The truth is, Sam, that there are several things that won't wait. I've got to frame them up my way. Can you get me through to the railroad in time to catch the Limited?"

"I think so. The road has been traveled for two or three days. If you really must go. I hate to have you streak off like this."

"I'd like to stay, Sam, but I can't. For one thing, there's that senatorial fight coming on. Now that Harley's on the ground in person, I'll have to look after my fences pretty close. He's a good fighter, and he'll be out to win."

"After what you've done for him. Don't you think that will make a difference, Waring?"

His friend laughed without mirth. "What have I done for him? I left him in the snow to die, and while a good many thousand other people would bless me for it, probably he has a different point of view."

"I was thinking of what you did for his wife."

"You've said it exactly. I did it for her, not for him. I'll accept nothing from Harley on that account. He is outside of the friendship between her and me, and he can't jimmy his way in."

Yesler shrugged his shoulders. " All right. I'll order a rig hitched for you and drive you over myself. I want to talk over this senatorial fight anyhow. The way things look now it's going to be the rottenest session of the legislature we've ever had. Sometimes I'm sick of being mixed up in the thing, but I got myself elected to help straighten out things, and I'm certainly going to try."

"That's right, Sam. With a few good fighters like you we can win out. Anything to beat the Consolidated."

"Anything to keep our politics decent," corrected the other. "I've got nothing against the Consolidated, but I won't lie down and let it or any other private concern hog-tie this State--not if I can help it, anyhow."

Behind wary eyes Ridgway studied him. He was wondering how far this man would go as his tool. Sam Yesler held a unique position in the State. His influence was commanding among the sturdy old-time population represented by the non-mining interests of the smaller towns and open plains. He must be won at all hazards to lend it in the impending fight against Harley. The mine-owner knew that no thought of personal gain would move him. He must be made to feel that it was for the good of the State that the Consolidated be routed. Ridgway resolved to make him see it that way.

CHAPTER 7.

BACK FROM ARCADIA

The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company stepped from the parlor-car of the Limited at the hour when all wise people are taking life easy after a good dinner. He did not, however, drive to his club, but took a cab straight for his rooms, where he had telegraphed Eaton to meet him with the general superintendent of all his properties and his private secretary, Smythe. For nearly a week his finger had been off the pulse of the situation, and he wanted to get in touch again as soon as possible. For in a struggle as tense as the one between him and the trust, a hundred vital things might have happened in that time. He might be coming back to catastrophe and ruin, brought about while he had been a prisoner to love in that snow-bound cabin.

Prisoner to love he had been and still was, but the business men who met him at his rooms, fellow adventurers in the forlorn hope he had hitherto led with such signal success, could have read nothing of this in the marble, chiseled face of their sagacious general, so indomitable of attack and insatiate of success. His steel-hard eyes gave no hint of the Arcadia they had inhabited so eagerly a short twenty-four hours before. The intoxicating madness he had known was chained deep within him. Once more he had a grip on himself; was sheathed in a cannonproof plate armor of selfishness. No more magic nights of starshine, breathing fire and dew; no more lifted moments of exaltation stinging him to a pulsating wonder at life's wild delight. He was again the inexorable driver of men, with no pity for their weaknesses any more than for his own.

The men whom he found waiting for him at his rooms were all young Westerners picked out by him because he thought them courageous, unscrupulous and loyal. Like him, they were privateers in the seas of commerce, and sailed under no flag except the one of insurrection he had floated. But all of them, though they were associated with him and hoped to ride to fortune on the wave that carried him there, recognized themselves as subordinates in the enterprises he undertook. They were merely heads of departments, and they took orders like trusted clerks with whom the owner sometimes unbends and advises.

Now he heard their reports, asked an occasional searching question, and swiftly gave decisions of far-reaching import. It was past midnight before he had finished with them, and instead of retiring for the sleep he might have been expected to need, he spent the rest of the night inspecting the actual workings of the properties he had not seen for six days. Hour after hour he passed examining the developments, sometimes in the breasts of the workings and again consulting with engineers and foremen in charge. Light was breaking in the sky before he stepped from the cage of the Jack Pot and boarded a street-car for his rooms. Cornishmen and Hungarians and Americans, going with their dinner-buckets to work, met him and received each a nod or a word of greeting from this splendidly built young Hermes in miners' slops, who was to many of them, in their fancy, a deliverer from the slavery which the Consolidated was ready to force upon them.

Once at his rooms, Ridgway took a cold bath, dressed carefully, breakfasted, and was ready to plunge into the mass of work which had accumulated during his absence at the mining camp of Alpine and the subsequent period while he was snowbound. These his keen, practical mind grasped and disposed of in crisp sentences. To his private secretary he rapped out order sharply and decisively.

"Phone Ballard and Dalton I want to see them at once. Tell Murphy I won't talk with him. What I said before I left was final. Write Cadwallader we can't do business on the terms he proposes, but add that I'm willing to continue his Mary Kinney lease. Dictate a letter to Riley's lawyer, telling him I can't afford to put a premium on incompetence and negligence; that if his client was injured in the Jack Pot explosion, he has nobody but himself to blame for it. Otherwise, of course, I should be glad to pension him. Let me see the letter before you send it. I don't want anything said that will offend the union. Have two tons of good coal sent up to Riley's house, and notify his grocer that all bills for the next three months may be charged to me. And, Smythe, ask Mr. Eaton to step this way."

Stephen Eaton, an alert, clear-eyed young fellow who served as fidus Achates to Ridgway, and was the secretary and treasurer of the Mesa Ore-producing Company, took the seat Smythe had vacated. He was good-looking, after a boyish, undistinguished fashion, but one disposed to be critical might have voted the chin not quite definite enough. He had been a clerk of the Consolidated, working for one hundred dollars a month, when Ridgway picked him out and set his feet in the way of fortune. He had done this out of personal liking, and, in return, the subordinate was frankly devoted to his chief.

"Steve, my opinion is that Alpine is a false alarm. Unless I guess wrong, it is merely a surface proposition and low-grade at that."

"Miller says--"

"Yes, I know what Miller says. He's wrong. I don't care if he is the biggest copper expert in the country."

"Then you won't invest?"

"I have invested--bought the whole outfit, lock, stock and barrel."

"But why? What do you want with it if the property is no good?" asked Eaton in surprise.

Ridgway laughed shortly. "I don't want it, but the Consolidated does. Two of their experts were up at Alpine last week, and both of them reported favorably. I've let it leak out to their lawyer, O'Malley, that Miller thought well of it; in fact, I arranged to let one of their spies steal a copy of his report to us."

"But when they know you have bought it "

"They won't know till too late. I bought through a dummy. It seemed a pity not to let then have the property since they wanted it so badly, so this morning he sold out for me to the Consolidated at a profit of a hundred and fifty thousand."

Eaton grinned appreciatively. It was in startling finesse of this sort his chief excelled, and Stephen was always ready with applause.

"I notice that Hobart slipped out of town last night. That is where he must have been going. He'll be sick when he learns how you did him."

Ridgway permitted himself an answering smile. "I suppose it will irritate him a trifle, but that can't be helped. I needed that money to get clear on that last payment for the Sherman Bell."

"Yes, I was worried about that. Notes have been piling up against us that must be met. There's the Ransom note, too. It's for a hundred thousand."

"He'll extend it," said the chief confidently.

"He told me he would have to have his money when it came due. I've noticed he has been pretty close to Mott lately. I expect he has an arrangement with the Consolidated to push us."

"I'm watching him, Steve. Don't worry about that. He did arrange to sell the note to Mott, but I stopped that little game."

"How?"

"For a year I've had all the evidence of that big government timber steal of his in a safety-deposit vault. Before he sold, I had a few words with him. He changed his mind and decided he preferred to hold the notes. More, he is willing to let us have another hundred thousand if we have to have it."

Eaton's delight bubbled out of him in boyish laughter. "You're a wonder, Waring. There's nobody like you. Can't any of them touch you--not Harley himself, by Jove."

"We'll have a chance to find that out soon, Steve."

"Yes, they say he's coming out in person to run the fight against you. I hope not."

"It isn't a matter of hoping any longer. He's here," calmly announced his leader.

"Here! On the ground?"

"Yes."

"But--he can't be here without us knowing it."

"I'm telling you that I do know it."

"Have you seen him yourself?" demanded the treasurer incredulously.

"Seen him, talked with him, cursed him and cuffed him," announced Ridgway with a reminiscent gleam in his eye.

"Er--what's that you say?" gasped the astounded Eaton.

"Merely that I have already met Simon Harley."

"But you said--"

"--that I had cursed and cuffed him. That's all right. I have."

The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company leaned back with his thumbs in the armholes of his fancy waistcoat and smiled debonairly at his associate's perplexed amazement.

"Did you say--CUFFED him?"

"That's what I meant to say. I roughed him around quite a bit--manhandled him in general. But all FOR HIS GOOD, you know."

"For his good?" Eaton's dazed brain tried to conceive the situation of a billionaire being mauled for his good, and gave it up in despair. If Steve Eaton worshipped anything, it was wealth. He was a born sycophant, and it was partly because his naive unstinted admiration had contributed to satisfy his chief's vanity that the latter had made of him a confidant. Now he sat dumb before the lese-majeste of laying forcible hands upon the richest man in the world.

"But, of course, you're only joking," he finally decided.

"You haven't been back twelve hours. Where COULD you have seen him?,"

"Nevertheless I have met him and been properly introduced by his wife."

"His wife?"

"Yes, I picked her out of a snow-drift."

"Is this a riddle?"

"If it is, I don't know the answer, Steve. But it is a true one, anyhow, not made to order merely to astonish you."

"True that you picked Simon Harley's wife out of a snow-drift and kicked him around?"

"I didn't say kicked, did I?" inquired the other, judicially. "But I rather think I did knee him some."

"Of course, I read all about his marriage two weeks ago to Miss Aline Hope. Did he bring her out here with him for the honeymoon?"

"If he did, I euchred him out of it. She spent it with me alone in a miner's cabin," the other cried, malevolence riding triumph on his face.

"Whenever you're ready to explain," suggested Eaton helplessly. "You've piled up too many miracles for me even to begin guessing them."

"You know I was snow-bound, but you did not know my only companion was this Aline Hope you speak of. I found her in the blizzard, and took her to an empty cabin near. She and her husband were motoring from Avalanche to Mesa, and the machine had broken down. Harley had gone for help and left her there alone when the blizzard came up. Three days later Sam Yesler and the old man broke trail through from the C B Ranch and rescued us."

It was so strange a story that it came home to Eaton piecemeal.

"Three days--alone with Harley's wife--and he rescued you himself."

"He didn't rescue me any. I could have broken through any time I wanted to leave her. On the way back his strength gave out, and that was when I roughed him. I tried to bullyrag him into keeping on, but it was no go. I left him there, and Sam went back after him with a relief-party."

"You left him! With his wife?"

"No!" cried Ridgway. "Do I look like a man to desert a woman on a snow-trail? I took her with me."

"Oh!" There was a significant silence before Eaton asked the question in his mind. "I've seen her pictures in the papers. Does she look like them?"

His chief knew what was behind the question, and he knew, too, that Eaton might be taken to represent public opinion. The world would cast an eye of review over his varied and discreditable record with women. It would imagine the story of those three days of enforced confinement together, and it would look to the woman in the case for an answer to its suspicions. That she was young, lovely, and yet had sold herself to an old man for his millions, would go far in itself to condemn her; and he was aware that there were many who would accept her very childish innocence as the sophistication of an artist.

Waring Ridgway put his arms akimbo on the table and leaned across with his steady eyes fastened on his friend.

"Steve, I'm going to answer that question. I haven't seen any pictures of her in the papers, but if they show a face as pure and true as the face of God himself then they are like her. You know me. I've got no apologies or explanations to make for the life I've led. That's my business. But you're my friend, and I tell you I would rather be hacked in pieces by Apaches than soil that child's white soul by a single unclean breath. There mustn't be any talk. Do you understand? Keep the story out of the newspapers. Don't let any of our people gossip about it. I have told you because I want you to know the truth. If any one should speak lightly about this thing stop him at once. This is the one point on which Simon Harley and I will pull together.

Any man who joins that child's name with mine loosely will have to leave this camp--and suddenly."

"It won't be the men--it will be the women that will talk."

"Then garble the story. Change that three days to three hours, Steve. Anything to stop their foul-clacking tongues!"

"Oh, well! I dare say the story won't get out at all, but if it does I'll see the gossips get the right version. I suppose Sam Yesler will back it up."

"Of course. He's a white man. And I don't need to tell you that I'll be a whole lot obliged to you, Stevie."

"That's all right. Sometimes I'm a white man, too, Waring," laughed Steve. Ridgway circled the table and put a hand on the younger man's shoulder affectionately. Steve Eaton was the one of all his associates for whom he had the closest personal feeling.

"I don't need to be told that, old pal," he said quietly.

CHAPTER 8.

THE HONORABLE THOMAS B. PELTON

It was next morning that Steve came into Ridgway's offices with a copy of the Rocky Mountain Herald in his hands. As soon as the president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company was through talking with Dalton, the superintendent of the Taurus, about the best means of getting to the cage a quantity of ore he was looting from the Consolidated property adjoining, the treasurer plumped out with his news.

"Seen to-day's paper, Waring? It smokes out Pelton to a finish. They've moled out some facts we can't get away from."

Ridgway glanced rapidly over the paper. "We'll have to drop Pelton and find another candidate for the Senate. Sorry, but it can't be helped. They've got his record down too fine. That affidavit from Quinton puts an end to his chances."

"He'll kick like a bay steer."

"His own fault for not covering his tracks better. This exposure doesn't help us any at best. If we still tried to carry Pelton, we should last about as long as a snowball in hell."

"Shall I send for him?"

"No. He'll be here as quick as he can cover the ground. Have him shown in as soon as he comes. And Steve--did Harley arrive on the eight-thirty this morning?"

"Yes. He is putting up at the Mesa House. He reserved an entire floor by wire, so that he has bed-rooms, dining-rooms, parlors, reception-halls and private offices all together. The place is policed thoroughly, and nobody can get up without an order."

"I haven't been thinking of going up and shooting him, even though it would be a blessing to the country," laughed his chief.

"No, but it is possible somebody else might. This town is full of ignorant foreigners who would hardly think twice of it. If he had asked my advice, it would have been to stay away from Mesa."

"He wouldn't have taken it," returned Ridgway carelessly. "Whatever else is true about him, Simon Harley isn't a coward. He would have told you that not a sparrow falls to the ground without the permission of the distorted God he worships, and he would have come on the next train."

"Well, it isn't my funeral," contributed Steve airily.

"All the same I'm going to pass his police patrols and pay a visit to the third floor of the Mesa House."

"You are going to compromise with him?" cried Eaton swiftly.

"Compromise nothing, I'm going to pay a formal social call on Mrs. Harley, and respectfully hope that she has suffered no ill effects from her exposure to the cold."

Eaton made no comment, unless to whistle gently were one.

"You think it isn't wise "

"Well, is it?" asked Steve.

"I think so. We'll scotch the lying tongue of rumor by a strict observance of the conventions. Madam Grundy is padlocked when we reduce the situation to the absurdity of the common place."

"Perhaps you are right, if it doesn't become too common commonplace."

"I think we may trust Simon Harley to see to that," answered his chief with a grim smile "Obviously our social relations aren't likely to be very intimate. Now it's 'Just before the battle mother,' but once the big guns begin to boor we'll neither of us be in the mood for functions social."

"You've established a sort of claim on him. It wouldn't surprise me if he would meet you halfway in settling the trouble between you," said Eaton thoughtfully.

"I expect he would," agreed Ridgway indifferently as he lit a cigar.

"Well, then?"

"The trouble is that I won't meet him halfway. I can't afford to be reasonable, Steve. Just suppose for an instant that I had been reasonable five years ago when this fight began. They would have bought me out for a miserable pittance of a hundred and fifty thousand or so. That would have been a reasonable figure then. You might put it now at five or six millions, and that would be about right. I don't want their money. I want power, and I'd rather fight for it than not. Besides, I mean to make what I have already wrung from them a lever for getting more. I'm going to show Harley that he has met a man at last he can't either freeze out or bully out. I'm going to let him and his bunch know I'm on earth and here to stay; that I can beat them at their own game to a finish."

"Did it ever occur to you, Waring, that it might pay to make this a limited round contest? You've won on points up to date by a mile, but in a finish fight endurance counts. Money is the same as endurance here, and that's where they are long."

Eaton made this suggestion diffidently, for though he was a stockholder and official of the Mesa Ore-producing Company, he was not used to offering its head unasked advice. The latter, however, took it without a trace of resentment.

"Glad of it, my boy. There's no credit in beating a cripple."

To this jaunty retort Eaton had found no answer when Smythe opened the door to announce the arrival of the Honorable Thomas B. Pelton, very anxious for an immediate interview with Mr. Ridgway.

"Show him in," nodded the president, adding in an aside: "You better stay, Steve."

Pelton was a rotund oracular individual in silk hat and a Prince Albert coat of broadcloth. He regarded himself solemnly as a statesman because he had served two inconspicuous terms in the House at Washington. He was fond of proclaiming himself a Southern gentleman, part of which statement was unnecessary and part untrue. Like many from his section, he had a decided penchant for politics.

"Have you seen the infamous libel in that scurrilous sheet of the gutters the Herald?" he demanded immediately of Ridgway.

"Which libel? They don't usually stop at one, colonel."

"The one, seh, which slanders my honorable name; which has the scoundrelly audacity to charge me with introducing the mining extension bill for venal reasons, seh."

"Oh! Yes, I've seen that. Rather an unfortunate story to come out just now."

"I shall force a retraction, seh, or I shall demand the satisfaction due a Southern gentleman.

"Yes, I would, colonel," replied Ridgway, secretly amused at the vain threats of this bag of wind which had been punctured.

"It's a vile calumny, an audacious and villainous lie."

"What part of it? I've just glanced over it, but the part I read seems to be true. That's the trouble with it. If it were a lie you could explode it."

"I shall deny it over my signature."

"Of course. The trouble will be to get people to believe your denial with Quinton's affidavit staring them in the face. It seems they have got hold of a letter, too, that you wrote. Deny it, of course, then lie low and give the public time to forget it."

"Do you mean that I should withdraw from the senatorial race?"

"That's entirely as you please, colonel, but I'm afraid you'll find your support will slip away from you."

"Do you mean that YOU won't support me, seh?"

Ridgway locked his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. "We've got to face facts, colonel. In the light of this exposure you can't be elected."

"But I tell you, by Gad, seh, that I mean to deny it."

"Certainly. I should in your place," agreed the mine-owner coolly. "The question is, how many people are going to believe you?"

Tiny sweat-beads stood on the forehead of the Arkansan. His manner was becoming more and more threatening. "You pledged me your support. Are you going to throw me down, seh?"

"You have thrown yourself down, Pelton. Is it my fault you bungled the thing and left evidence against you? Am I to blame because you wrote incriminating letters?"

"Whatever I did was done for you," retorted the cornered man desperately.

"I beg your pardon. It was done for what was in it for you. The arrangement between us was purely a business one."

The coolness of his even voice maddened the harassed Pelton.

"So I'm to get burnt drawing your chestnuts out of the fire, am I? You're going to stand back and let my career be sacrificed, are you? By Gad, seh, I'll show you whether I'll be your catspaw," screamed the congressman.

"Use your common sense, Pelton, and don't shriek like a fish-wife," ordered Ridgway sharply. "No sane man floats a leaky ship. Go to drydock and patch up your reputation, and in a few years you'll come out as good as new."

All his unprincipled life Pelton had compromised with honor to gain the coveted goal he now saw slipping from him. A kind of madness of despair surged up in him. He took a step threateningly toward the seated man, his hand slipping back under his coat-tails toward his hip pocket. Acridly his high voice rang out.

"As a Southern gentleman, seh, I refuse to tolerate the imputations you cast upon me. I demand an apology here and now, seh."

Ridgway was on his feet and across the room like a flash.

"Don't try to bully ME, you false alarm. Call yourself a Southern gentleman! You're a shallow scurvy impostor. No more like the real article than a buzzard is like an eagle. Take your hand from under that coat or I'll break every bone in your flabby body."

Flabby was the word, morally no less than physically. Pelton quailed under that gaze which bored into him like a gimlet. The ebbing color in his face showed he could summon no reserve of courage sufficient to meet it. Slowly his empty hand came forth.

"Don't get excited, Mr. Ridgway. You have mistaken my purpose, seh. I had no intention of drawing," he stammered with a pitiable attempt at dignity.

"Liar," retorted his merciless foe, crowding him toward the door.

"I don't care to have anything more to do with you. Our relations are at an end, seh," quavered Pelton as he vanished into the outer once and beat a hasty retreat to the elevator.

Ridgway returned to his chair, laughing ruefully. "I couldn't help it, Steve. He would have it. I suppose I've made one more enemy."

"A nasty one, too. He'll stick at nothing to get even."

"We'll draw his fangs while there is still time. Get a good story in the Sun to the effect that I quarreled with him as soon as I discovered his connection with this mining extension bill graft. Have it in this afternoon's edition, Steve. Better get Brayton to write it."

Steve nodded. "That's a good idea. We may make capital out of it after all. I'll have an editorial in, too. 'We love him for the enemies he has made.' How would that do for a heading?"

"Good. And now we'll have to look around for a candidate to put against Mott. I'm hanged if I know where we'll find one."

Eaton had an inspiration.

"I do?"

"One that will run well, popular enough to catch the public fancy?"

"Yes."

"Who, then?"

"Waring Ridgway."

The owner of the name stared at his lieutenant in astonishment, but slowly the fascination o the idea sank in.

"By Jove! Why not?"

CHAPTER 9.

AN EVENING CALL

"Says you're to come right up, Mr. Ridgway," the bell-hop reported, and after he had pocketed his tip, went sliding off across the polished floor to answer another call.

The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company turned with a good-humored smile to the chief clerk.

"You overwork your boys, Johnson. I wasn't through with that one. I'll have to ask you to send another up to show me the Harley suite."

They passed muster under the eye of the chief detective, and, after the bell-boy had rung, were admitted to the private parlor where Simon Harley lay stretched on a lounge with his wife beside him. She had been reading, evidently aloud and when her visitor was announced rose with her finger still keeping the place in the closed book.

The gaze she turned on him was of surprise, almost of alarm, so that the man on the threshold knew he was not expected.

"You received my card?" he asked quickly.

"No. Did you send one?" Then, with a little gesture of half-laughing irritation: "It must have gone to Mr. Harvey again. He is Mr. Harley's private secretary, and ever since we arrived it has been a comedy of errors. The hotel force refuses to differentiate."

"I must ask you to accept my regrets for an unintentional intrusion, Mrs. Harley. When I was told to come up, I could not guess that my card had gone amiss."

The great financier had got to his feet and now came forward with extended hand.

"Nevertheless we are glad to see you, Mr. Ridgway, and to get the opportunity to express our thanks for all that you have done for us."

The cool fingers of the younger man touched his lightly before they met those of his wife.

"Yes, we are very glad, indeed, to see you, Mr. Ridgway," she added to her husband's welcome.

"I could not feel quite easy in my mind without hearing from your own lips that you are none the worse for the adventures you have suffered," their visitor explained after they had found seats.

"Thanks to you, my wife is quite herself again, Mr. Ridgway," Harley announced from the davenport. "Thanks also to God, who so mercifully shelters us beneath the shadow of His wing."

But her caller preferred to force from Aline's own lips this affidavit of health. Even his audacity could not ignore his host entirely, but it gave him the least consideration possible. To the question which still rested in his eyes the girl-wife answered shyly.

"Indeed, I am perfectly well. I have done nothing but sleep to-day and yesterday. Miss Yesler was very good to me. I do not know how I can repay the great kindness of so many friends," she said with a swift descent of fluttering lashes to the soft cheeks upon which a faint color began to glow.

"Perhaps they find payment for the service in doing it for you," he suggested.

"Yet, I shall take care not to forget it," Harley said pointedly.

"Indeed!" Ridgway put it with polite insolence, the hostility in his face scarcely veiled.

"It has pleased Providence to multiply my portion so abundantly that I can reward those well who serve me."

"At how much do you estimate Mrs. Harley's life?" his rival asked with quiet impudence.

In the course of the past two days Aline had made the discovery that her husband and her rescuer were at swords drawn in a business way. This had greatly distressed her, and in her innocence she had resolved to bring them together. How could her inexperience know that she might as well have tried to induce the lion and the lamb to lie down together peaceably? Now she tried timidly to drift the conversation from the awkwardness into which Harley's suggestion of a reward and his opponent's curt retort had blundered it.

"I hope you did not find upon your return that your business was disarranged so much as you feared it might be by your absence."

"I found my affairs in very good condition," Ridgway smiled. "But I am glad to be back in time to welcome to Mesa you--and Mr. Harley."

"It seems so strange a place," the girl ventured, with a hesitation that showed her anxiety not to offend his local pride. "You see I never before was in a place where there was no grass and nothing green in sight. And to-night, when I looked out of the window and saw streams of red-hot fire running down hills, I thought of Paradise Lost and Dante. I suppose it doesn't seem at all uncanny to you?"

"At night sometimes I still get that feeling, but I have to cultivate it a bit," he confessed. "My sober second thought insists that those molten rivers are merely business, refuse disgorged as lava from the great smelters."

"I looked for the sun to-day through the pall of sulphur smoke that hangs so heavy over the town, but instead I saw a London gas-lamp hanging in the heavens. Is it always so bad?"

"Not when the drift of the wind is right. In fact, a day like this is quite unusual."

"I'm glad of that. I feel more cheerful in the sunshine. I know that's a bit of the child still left in me. Mr. Harley takes all days alike."

The Wall Street operator was in slippers and house-jacket. His wife, too, was dressed comfortably in some soft clinging stuff. Their visitor saw that they had disposed themselves for a quiet uninterrupted evening by the fireside. The domesticity of it all stirred the envy in him. He did not want her to be contented and at peace with his enemy. Something deeper than his vanity cried out in protest against it.

She was still making talk against the gloom of the sulphur fog which seemed to have crept into the spirit of the room.

"We were reading before you came in, Mr. Ridgway. I suppose you read a good deal. Mr. Harley likes to have me read aloud to him when he is tired."

An impulse came upon Ridgway to hear her, some such impulse as makes a man bite on sore tooth even though he knows he must pay later for it.

"Will you not go on with your reading? I should like to hear it. I really should."

She was a little taken aback, but she looked inquiringly at her husband, who bowed silently.

"I was just beginning the fifty-ninth psalm. We have been reading the book through. Mr. Harley finds great comfort in it," she explained.

Her eyes fell to the printed page and her clear, sweet voice took up the ancient tale of vengeance

"Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that rise up against me. Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloody men.

"For, lo, they lie in wait for my soul: the mighty are gathered against me; not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O Lord. They run and prepare themselves without my fault: awake to help me, and behold.

"Thou, therefore, O Lord God of Hosts, the God of Israel, awake to visit all the heathen: be not merciful to any wicked transgressors. Selah."

Ridgway glanced across in surprise at the strong old man lying on the lounge. His hands were locked in front of him, and his gaze rested peacefully on the fair face of the child reading. His foe's mind swept up the insatiable cruel years that lay behind this man, and he marveled that with such a past he could still hold fast to that simple faith of David. He wondered whether this ruthless spoiler went back to the Old Testament for the justification of his life, or whether his credo had given the impulse to his career. One thing he no longer doubted: Simon Harley believed his Bible implicitly and literally, and not only the New Testament.

"For the sin of their mouth and the words of their lips even be taken in their pride: and for cursing and lying which they speak.

"Consume them in wrath, consume them, that they may not be: and let them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth."

The fresh young girlish voice died away into silence. Harley, apparently deep in meditation, gazed at the ceiling. His guest felt a surge of derision at this man who thought he had a compact with God to rule the world for his benefit.

"I am sure Mr. Harley must enjoy the Psalms a great deal," he said ironically, but it was in simple faith the young wife answered eagerly:

"He does. He finds so much in them that is applicable to life."

"I can see how he might," agreed the young man.

"Few people take their religion so closely into their every-day lives as he does," she replied in a low voice, seeing that her husband was lost in thought.

"I am sure you are right."

"He is very greatly misunderstood, Mr. Ridgway. I am sure if people knew how good he is-- But how can they know when the newspapers are so full of falsehoods about him? And the magazines are as bad, he says. It seems to be the fashion to rake up bitter things to say about prominent business men. You must have noticed it."

"Yes. I believe I have noticed that," he answered with a grim little laugh.

"Don't you think it could be explained to these writers? They can't WANT to distort the truth. It must be they don't know."

"You must not take the muckrakers too seriously. They make a living roasting us. A good deal of what they say is true in a way. Personally, I don't object to it much. It's a part of the penalty of being successful. That's how I look at it."

"Do they say bad things about you, too?" she asked in open-eyed surprise.

"Occasionally," he smiled. "When they think I'm important enough."

"I don't see how they can," he heard her murmur to herself.

"Oh, most of what they say is true."

"Then I know it can't be very bad," she made haste to answer.

"You had better read it and see."

"I don't understand business at all," she said

"But--sometimes it almost frightens me. Business isn't really like war, is it?"

"A good deal like it. But that need not frighten you. All life is a battle--sometimes, at least. Success implies fighting."

"And does that in turn imply tragedy--for the loser?"

"Not if one is a good loser. We lose and make another start."

"But if success is a battle, it must be gained at the expense of another."

"Sometimes. But you must look at it in a big way." The secretary of the trust magnate had come in and was in low-toned conversation with him. The visitor led her to the nearest window and drew back the curtains so that they looked down on the lusty life of the turbid young city, at the lights in the distant smelters and mills, at the great hill opposite, with its slagdumps, gallows-frames and shaft-houses black against the dim light, which had yielded its millions and millions of tons of ore for the use of mankind. "All this had to be fought for. It didn't grow of itself. And because men fought for it, the place is what it is. Sixty thousand people live here, fed by the results of the battle. The highest wages in the world are paid the miners here. They live in rough comfort and plenty, whereas in the countries they came from they were underpaid and underfed. Is that not good?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"Life for you and for me must be different, thank God. You are in the world to make for the happiness of those you meet. That is good. But unless I am to run away from my work, what I do must make some unhappy. I can't help that if I am to do big things. When you hear people talking of the harm I do, you will remember what I have told you to-night, and you will think that a man and his work cannot be judged by isolated fragments."

"Yes," she breathed softly, for she knew that this man was saying good-by to her and was making his apologia.

"And you will remember that no matter how bitter the fight may grow between me and Mr. Harley, it has nothing to do with you. We shall still be friends, though we may never meet again."

"I shall remember that, too," he heard her murmur.

"You have been hoping that Mr. Harley and I would be friends. That is impossible. He came out here to crush me. For years his subordinates have tried to do this and failed. I am the only man alive that has ever resisted him successfully. I don't underestimate his power, which is greater than any czar or emperor that ever lived, but I don't think he will succeed. I shall win because I understand the forces against me. He will lose because he scorns those against him."

"I am sorry. Oh, I am so sorry," she wailed, gently as a breath of summer wind. For she saw now that the cleavage between them was too wide for a girl's efforts to bridge.

"That I am going to win?" he smiled gravely.

"That you must be enemies; that he came here to ruin you, since you say he did."

"You need not be too hard on him for that. By his code I am a freebooter and a highwayman. Business offers legitimate ways of robbery, and I transgress them. His ways are not my ways, and mine are not his, but it is only fair to say that his are the accepted ones."

"I don't understand it at all. You are both good men. I know you are. Surely you need not be enemies."

But she knew she could hope for no reassurance from the man beside her.

Presently she led him back across the big room to the fireplace near where her husband lay. His secretary had gone, and he was lying resting on the lounge. He opened his eyes and smiled at her. "Has Mr. Ridgway been pointing out to you the places of interest?" he asked quietly.

"Yes, dear." The last word came hesitantly after the slightest of pauses. "He says he must be going now."

The head of the greatest trust on earth got to his feet and smiled benignantly as he shook hands with the departing guest. "I shall hope to see you very soon and have a talk regarding business, Mr. Ridgway," he said.

"Whenever you like, Mr. Harley." To the girl he said merely, "Good night," and was gone.

The old man put an arm affectionately across his young wife's shoulder.

"Shall we read another psalm, my dear? Or are you tired?"

She repressed the little shiver that ran through her before she answered wearily. "I am a little tired. If you don't mind I would like to retire, please."

He saw her as far as the door of her apartments and left her with her maid after he had kissed the cold cheek she dutifully turned toward him.

CHAPTER 10.

HARLEY MAKES A PROPOSITION

Apparently the head of the great trust intended to lose no time in having that business talk with Ridgway, which he had graciously promised the latter. Eaton and his chief were busy over some applications for leases when Smythe came into the room with a letter

"Messenger-boy brought it; said it was important," he explained.

Ridgway ripped open the envelope, read through the letter swiftly, and tossed it to Eaton. His eyes had grown hard and narrow

"Write to Mr. Hobart that I am sorry I haven't time to call on Mr. Harley at the Consolidated offices, as he suggests. Add that I expect to be in my offices all morning, and shall be glad to make an appointment to talk with Mr. Harley here, if he thinks he has any business with me that needs a personal interview."

Smythe's leathery face had as much expression as a blank wall, but Eaton gasped. The unparalleled audacity of flinging the billionaire's overture back in his face left him for the moment speechless. He knew that Ridgway had tempted Providence a hundred times without coming to disaster, but surely this was going too far. Any reasonable compromise with the great trust builder would be cause for felicitation. He had confidence in his chief to any point in reason, but he could not blind himself to the fact that the wonderful successes he had gained were provisional rather than final. He likened them to Stonewall Jackson's Shenandoah raid, very successful in irritating, disorganizing and startling the enemy, but with no serious bearing on the final inevitable result. In the end Harley would crush his foes if he set in motion the whole machinery of his limitless resources. That was Eaton's private opinion, and he was very much of the feeling that this was an opportune time to get in out of the rain.

"Don't you think we had better consider that answer before we send it, Waring?" he suggested in a low voice.

His chief nodded a dismissal to the secretary before answering.

"I have considered it."

"But--surely it isn't wise to reject his advances before we know what they are."

"I haven't rejected them. I've simply explained that we are doing business on equal terms. Even if I meant to compromise, it would pay me to let him know he doesn't own me."

"He may decide not to offer his proposition."

"It wouldn't worry me if he did."

Eaton knew he must speak now if his protest were to be of any avail. "It would worry me a good deal. He has shown an inclination to be friendly. This answer is like a slap in the face."

"Is it?"

"Doesn't it look like that to you?"

Ridgway leaned back in his chair and looked thoughtfully at his friend. "Want to sell out, Steve?"

"Why--what do you mean?" asked the surprised treasurer.

"If you do, I'll pay anything in reason for your stock." He got up and began to pace the floor with long deliberate strides. "I'm a born gambler, Steve. It clears my head to take big chances. Give me a good fight on my hands with the chances against me, and I'm happy. You've got to take the world by the throat and shake success out of it if you're going to score heavily. That's how Harley made good years ago. Read the story of his life. See the chances he took. He throttled combinations a dozen times as strong as his. Some people say he was an accident. Don't you believe it. Accidents like him don't happen. He won because he was the biggest, brainiest, most daring and unscrupulous operator in the field. That's why I'm going to win--if I do win."

"Yes, if you win."

"Well, that's the chance I take," flung back the other as he swung buoyantly across the room. "But YOU don't need to take it. If you want, you can get out now at the top market price. I feel it in my bones I'm going to win; but if you don't feel it, you'd be a fool to take chances."

Eaton's mercurial temperament responded with a glow.

"No, sir. I'll sit tight. I'm no quitter."

"Good for you, Steve. I knew it. I'll tell you now that I would have hated like hell to see you leave me. You're the only man I can rely on down to the ground, twenty-four hours of every day."

The answer was sent, and Eaton's astonishment at his chief's temerity changed to amazement when the great Harley, pocketing his pride, asked for an appointment, and appeared at the offices of the Mesa Ore-producing Company at the time set. That Ridgway, who was busy with one of his superintendents, should actually keep the most powerful man in the country waiting in an outer office while he finished his business with Dalton seemed to him insolence florescent.

"Whom the gods would destroy," he murmured to himself as the only possible explanation, for the reaction of his enthusiasm was on him.

Nor did his chief's conference with Dalton show any leaning toward compromise. Ridgway had sent for his engineer to outline a program in regard to some ore-veins in the Sherman Bell, that had for months been in litigation between the two big interests at Mesa. Neither party to the suit had waited for the legal decision, but each of them had put a large force at work stoping out the ore. Occasional conflicts had occurred when the men of the opposing factions came in touch, as they frequently did, since crews were at work below and above each other at every level. But none of these as yet had been serious.

"Dalton, I was down last night to see that lease of Heyburn's on the twelfth level of the Taurus. The Consolidated will tap our workings about noon to-day, just below us. I want you to turn on them the air-drill pipe as soon as they break through. Have a lot of loose rock there mixed with a barrel of lime. Let loose the air pressure full on the pile, and give it to their men straight. Follow them up to the end of their own tunnel when they retreat, and hold it against them. Get control of the levels above and below, too. Throw as many men as you can into their workings, and gut them till there is no ore left."

Dalton had the fighting edge. "You'll stand by me, no matter what happens?"

"Nothing will happen. They're not expecting trouble. But if anything does, I'll see you through. Eaton is your witness that I ordered it."

"Then it's as good as done, Mr. Ridgway," said Dalton, turning away.

"There may be bloodshed," suggested Eaton dubiously, in a low voice.

Ridgway's laugh had a touch of affectionate contempt. "Don't cross bridges till you get to them, Steve. Haven't you discovered, man, that the bold course is always the safe one? It's the quitter that loses out every time. The strong man gets there; the weak one falls down. It's as invariable as the law of gravity." He got up and stretched his broad shoulders in a deep breath. "Now for Mr. Harley. Send him in, Eaton.

That morning Simon Harley had done two things for many years foreign to his experience: He had gone to meet another man instead of making the man come to him, and he had waited the other man's pleasure in an outer office. That he had done so implied a strong motive.

Ridgway waved Harley to a chair without rising to meet him. The eyes of the two men fastened, wary and unwavering. They might have been jungle beasts of prey crouching for the attack, so tense was their attention. The man from Broadway was the first to speak.

"I have called, Mr. Ridgway, to arrange, if possible, a compromise. I need hardly say this is not my usual method, but the circumstances are extremely unusual. I rest under so great a personal obligation to you that I am willing to overlook a certain amount of youthful presumption." His teeth glittered behind a lip smile, intended to give the right accent to the paternal reproof. "My personal obligation--"

"What obligation? I left you to die in the snow.',

"You forget what you did for Mrs. Harley."

"You may eliminate that," retorted the younger man curtly. "You are under no obligations whatever to me."

"That is very generous of you, Mr. Ridgway, but--"

Ridgway met his eyes directly, cutting his sentence as with a knife. "'Generous' is the last word to use. It is not a question of generosity at all. What I mean is that the thing I did was done with no reference whatever to you. It is between me and her alone. I refuse to consider it as a service to you, as having anything at all to do with you. I told you that before. I tell you again."

Harley's spirit winced. This bold claim to a bond with his wife that excluded him, the scornful thrust of his enemy--he was already beginning to consider him in that light rather than as a victim--had touched the one point of human weakness in this money-making Juggernaut. He saw himself for the moment without illusions, an old man and an unlovable one, without near kith or kin. He was bitterly aware that the child he had married had been sold to him by her guardian, under fear of imminent ruin, before her ignorance of the world had given her experience to judge for herself. The money and the hidden hunger of sentiment he wasted on her brought him only timid thanks and wan obedience. But for this man, with his hateful, confident youth, he had seen the warm smile touch her lips and the delicate color rose her cheeks. Nay, he had seen more her arms around his neck and her, warm breath on his cheek. They had lived romance, these two, in the days they had been alone together. They had shared danger and the joys of that Bohemia of youth from which he was forever excluded. It was his resolve to wipe out by financial favors--he could ruin the fellow later if need be--any claims of Ridgway upon her gratitude or her foolish imagination. He did not want the man's appeal upon her to carry the similitude of martyrdom as well as heroism.

"Yet, the fact remains that it was a service" --his thin lips smiled. "I must be the best judge of that, I think. I want to be perfectly frank, Mr. Ridgway. The Consolidated is an auxiliary enterprise so far as I am concerned, but I have always made it a rule to look after details when it became necessary. I came to Montana to crush you. I have always regarded you as a menace to our legitimate interests, and I had quite determined to make an end of it. You are a good fighter, and you've been on the ground in person, which counts for a great deal. But you must know that if I give myself to it in earnest, you are a ruined man."

The Westerner laughed hardily. "I hear you say it."

"But you don't believe," added the other quietly. "Many men have heard and not believed. They have KNOWN when it was too late.

"If you don't mind, I'll buy my experience instead of borrowing it," Ridgway flung back flippantly.

"One moment, Mr. Ridgway. I have told you my purpose in coming to Montana. That purpose no longer exists. Circumstances have completely altered my intentions. The finger of God is in it. He has not brought us together thus strangely, except to serve some purpose of His own. I think I see that purpose. 'The stone which the builders refused is become the headstone of the corner. This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes,'" he quoted unctiously. "I am convinced that it is a waste of good material to crush you; therefore I desire to effect a consolidation with you, buy all the other copper interests of any importance in the country, and put you at the head of the resulting combination."

In spite of himself, Ridgway's face betrayed him. It was a magnificent opportunity, the thing he had dreamed of as the culmination of a lifetime of fighting. Nobody knew better than he on how precarious a footing he stood, on how slight a rock his fortunes might be wrecked. Here was his chance to enter that charmed, impregnable inner circle of finance that in effect ruled the nation. That Harley's suave friendliness would bear watching he did not doubt for a moment, but, once inside, so his vital youth told him proudly, he would see to it that the billionaire did not betray him. A week ago he could have asked nothing better than this chance to bloat himself into a some-day colossus. But now the thing stuck in his gorge. He understood the implied obligation. Payment for his service to Aline Harley was to be given, and the ledger balanced. Well, why not? Had he not spent the night in a chaotic agony of renunciation? But to renounce voluntarily was one thing, to be bought off another.

He looked up and met Harley's thin smile, the smile that on Wall Street was a synonym for rapacity and heartlessness, in the memory of which men had committed murder and suicide. On the instant there jumped between him and his ambition the face that had worked magic on him. What a God's pity that such a lamb should be cast to this ravenous wolf! He felt again her arms creeping round his neck, the divine trust of her lovely eyes. He had saved her when this man who called himself her husband had left her to perish in the storm. He had made her happy, as she had never been in all her starved life. Had she not promised never to forget, and was there not a deeper promise in her wistful eyes that the years could not wipe out? She was his by every right of natural law. By God! he would not sell his freedom of choice to this white haired robber!

"I seldom make mistakes in my judgment of men, Mr. Ridgway," the oily voice ran on. "No small share of such success as it has been given me to attain has been due to this instinct for putting my finger on the right man. I am assured that in you I find one competent for the great work lying before you. The opportunity is waiting; I furnish it, and you the untiring energy of youth to make the most of the chance." His wolfish smile bared the tusks for a moment. "I find myself not so young as I was. The great work I have started is well under way. I must trust its completion to younger and stronger hands than mine. I intend to rest, to devote myself to my home, more directly to such philanthropic and educational work as God has committed to my hands."

The Westerner gave him look for look, his eyes burning to get over the impasse of the expressionless mask no man had ever penetrated. He began to see why nobody had ever understood Harley. He knew there would be no rest for that consuming energy this side of the grave. Yet the man talked as if he believed his own glib lies.

"Consolidated is the watchword of the age; it means elimination of ruinous competition, and consequent harmony and reduced expense in management. Mr. Ridgway, may I count you with us? Together we should go far. Do you say peace or war?"

The younger man rose, leaning forward with his strong, sinewy hands gripping the table. His face was pale with the repression of a rage that had been growing intense. "I say war, and without quarter. I don't believe you can beat me. I defy you to the test. And if you should--even then I had rather go down fighting you than win at your side."

Simon Harley had counted acceptance a foregone conclusion, but he never winked a lash at the ringing challenge of his opponent. He met his defiance with an eye cold and steady as jade.

"As you please, Mr. Ridgway. I wash my hands of your ruin, and when you are nothing but a broken gambler, you will remember that I offered you the greatest chance that ever came to a man of your age. You are one of those men, I see, that would rather be first in hell than second in heaven. So be it." He rose and buttoned his overcoat.

"Say, rather, that I choose to go to hell my own master and not as the slave of Simon Harley," retorted the Westerner bitterly.

Ridgway's eyes blazed, but those of the New Yorker were cool and fishy.

"There is no occasion for dramatics," he said, the cruel, passionless smile at his thin lips. "I make you a business proposition and you decline it. That is all. I wish you good day."

The other strode past him and flung the door open. He had never before known such a passion of hatred as raged within him. Throughout his life Simon Harley had left in his wake wreckage and despair. He was the best-hated man of his time, execrated by the working classes, despised by the country at large, and distrusted by his fellow exploiters. Yet, as a business opponent, Ridgway had always taken him impersonally, had counted him for a condition rather than an individual. But with the new influence that had come into his life, reason could not reckon, and when it was dominant with him, Harley stood embodied as the wolf ready to devour his ewe lamb.

For he couldn't get away from her. Wherever he went he carried with him the picture of her sweet, shy smile, her sudden winsome moments, the deep light in her violet eyes; and in the background the sinister bared fangs of the wild beast dogging her patiently, and yet lovingly.

CHAPTER 11.

VIRGINIA INTERVENES

James K. Mott, local chief attorney for the Consolidated, was struggling with a white tie before the glass and crumpling it atrociously.

"This dress-suit habit is the most pernicious I know. It's sapping the liberties of the American people," he grunted at last in humorous despair.

"Let me, dear."

His wife tied it with neatness and dispatch, and returned to the inspection of how her skirt hung.

"Mr. Harley asked me to thank you for calling on his wife. He says she gets lonesome during the day while he is away so much. I was wondering if you couldn't do something for her so that she could meet some of the ladies of Mesa. A luncheon, or something of that sort, you know. Have you seen my hat-brush anywhere?"

"It's on that drawer beside your hat-box. She told me she would rather not. I suggested it. But I'll tell you what I could do: take Virginia Balfour round to see her. She's lively and good company, and knows some of the people Mrs. Harley knows."

"That's a good idea. I want Harley to know that we appreciate his suggestions, and are ready to do our part. He has shown a disposition to consult me on a good many things that ought to lie in Hobart's sphere rather than mine. Something's going to drop. Now, I like Hobart, but I want to show myself in a receptive mood for advancement when his head falls, as it certainly will soon."

* * * * * * * Virginia responded eagerly to Mrs. Mott's suggestion that they call together on Mrs. Harley at the hotel.

"My dear, you have saved my life. I've been dying of curiosity, and I haven't been able to find vestige of an excuse to hang my call on. I couldn't ask Mr. Ridgway to introduce me, could I?"

"No, I don't see that you could," smiled Mrs. Mott, a motherly little woman with pleasant brown eyes. "I suppose Mr. Ridgway isn't exactly on calling terms with Mr. Harley's wife, even if he did save her life."

"Oh, Mr. Ridgway isn't the man to let a little thing like a war a outrance stand in the way of his social duties, especially when those duties happen to be inclinations, too. I understand he DID call the evening of their arrival here."

"He didn't!" screamed Mrs. Mott, who happened to possess a voice of the normal national register. "And what did Mr. Harley say?"

"Ah, that's what one would like to know. My informant deponeth not beyond the fact unadorned. One may guess there must have been undercurrents of embarrassment almost as pronounced as if the President were to invite his Ananias Club to a pink tea. I can imagine Mr. Harley saying: 'Try this cake, Mr. Ridgway; it isn't poisoned;' and Mr. Ridgway answering: 'Thanks! After you, my dear Gaston."'

Miss Balfour's anxiety to meet the young woman her fiance had rescued from the blizzard was not unnatural. Her curiosity was tinged with frank envy, though jealousy did not enter into it at all. Virginia had come West explicitly to take the country as she found it, and she had found it, unfortunately, no more hazardous than little old New York, though certainly a good deal more diverting to a young woman with democratic proclivities that still survived the energetic weeding her training had subjected them to.

She did not quite know what she had expected to find in Mesa. Certainly she knew that Indians were no longer on the map, and cowboys were kicking up their last dust before vanishing, but she had supposed that they had left compensations in their wake. On the principle that adventures are to the adventurous, her life should have been a whirl of hairbreadth escapes.

But what happened? She took all sorts of chances without anything coming of it. Her pirate fiance was the nearest approach to an adventure she had flushed, and this pink-and-white chit of a married schoolgirl had borrowed him for the most splendid bit of excitement that would happen in a hundred years. She had been spinning around the country in motor-cars for months without the sign of a blizzard, but the chit had hit one the first time. It wasn't fair. That was her blizzard by rights. In spirit, at least, she had "spoken for it," as she and her brother used to say when they were children of some coveted treasure not yet available. Virginia was quite sure that if she had seen Waring Ridgway at the inspired moment when he was plowing through the drifts with Mrs. Harley in his arms--only, of course, it would have been she instead of Mrs. Harley, and he would not have been carrying her so long as she could stand and take it--she would have fallen in love with him on the spot. And those two days in the cabin on half-ration they would have put an end forever to her doubts and to that vision of Lyndon Hobart that persisted in her mind. What luck glace' some people did have!

But Virginia discovered the chit to be rather a different personality than she had supposed. In truth, she lost her heart to her at once. She could have stood out against Aline's mere good looks and been the stiffer for them. She was no MAN, to be moved by the dark hair's dusky glory, the charm of soft girlish lines, the effect of shy unsophistication that might be merely the highest art of social experience. But back of the sweet, trembling mouth that seemed to be asking to be kissed, of the pathetic appeal for friendliness from the big, deep violet eyes, was a quality of soul not to be counterfeited. Miss Balfour had furbished up the distant hauteur of the society manner she had at times used effectively, but she found herself instead taking the beautiful, forlorn little creature in her arms.

"Oh, my dear; my dear, how glad I am that dreadful blizzard did not hurt you!"

Aline clung to this gracious young queen as if she had known her a lifetime. "You are so good to me everybody is. You know how Mr. Ridgway saved me. If it had not been for him I should have died. I didn't care--I wanted to die in peace, I think--but he wouldn't let me."

"I should think not."

"If you only knew him--perhaps you do."

"A little," confessed Virginia, with a flash of merry eyes at Mrs. Mott.

"He is the bravest man--and the strongest."

"Yes. He is both," agreed his betrothed, with pride.

"His tenderness, his unselfishness, his consideration for others--did you ever know anybody like him for these things?"

"Never," agreed Virginia, with the mental reservations that usually accompanied her skeptical smile. She was getting at her fiance from a novel point of view.

"And so modest, with all his strength and courage.',

"It's almost a fault in him," she murmured.

"The woman that marries him will be blessed among women."

"I count it a great privilege," said Miss Balfour absently, but she pulled up with a hurried addendum: "To have known him."

"Indeed, yes. If one met more men like him this would be a better world."

"It would certainly be a different world."

It was a relief to Aline to talk, to put into words the external skeleton facts of the surging current that had engulfed her existence since she had turned a corner upon this unexpected consciousness of life running strong and deep. Harley was not a confidant she could have chosen under the most favorable circumstances, and her instinct told her that in this matter he was particularly impossible. But to Virginia Balfour--Mrs. Mott had to leave early to preside over the Mesa Woman's Club, and her friend allowed herself to be persuaded to stay longer--she did not find it at all hard to talk. Indeed, she murmured into the sympathetic ear of this astute young searcher of hearts more than her words alone said, with the result that Virginia guessed what she herself had not yet quite found out, though her heart was hovering tremblingly on the brink of discovery.

But Virginia's sympathy for the trouble fate had in store for this helpless innocent consisted with an alert appreciation of its obvious relation to herself. What she meant to discover was the attitude toward the situation of one neither particularly innocent nor helpless. Was he, too, about to be "caught in the coil of a God's romances," or was he merely playing on the vibrating strings of an untaught heart?

It was in part to satisfy this craving for knowledge that she wrote Ridgway a note as soon as she reached home. It said:

MY DEAR RECREANT LAGGARD: If you are not too busy playing Sir Lancelot to fair dames in distress, or splintering lances with the doughty husbands of these same ladies, I pray you deign to allow your servant to feast her eyes upon her lord's face. Hopefully and gratefully yours, VIRGINIA.

P. S.--Have you forgotten, sir, that I have not seen you since that terrible blizzard and your dreadful imprisonment in Fort Salvation?

P. P. S.--I have seen somebody else, though. She's a dear, and full of your praises. I hardly blame you.

V.

She thought that ought to bring him soon, and it did.

"I've been busy night and day," he apologized

when they met.

Virginia gave him a broadside demurely.

"I suppose your social duties do take up a good deal of your time."

"My social duties? Oh, I see!" He laughed appreciation of her hit. Evidently through her visit she knew a good deal more than he had expected. Since he had nothing to hide from her except his feelings, this did not displease him. "My duties in that line have been confined to one formal call."

She sympathized with him elaborately. "Calls of that sort do bore men so. I'll not forget the first time you called on me."

"Nor I," he came back gallantly.

"I marveled how you came through alive, but I learned then that a man can't be bored to death."

"I came again nevertheless," he smiled. "And again--and again."

"I am still wondering why."

"'Oh, wad some power the giffie gite us To see ourselves as others see us!"'

he quoted with a bow.

"Is that a compliment?" she asked dubiously.

"I have never heard it used so before. Anyhow, it is a little hackneyed for anybody so original as you."

"It was the best I could do offhand."

She changed the subject abruptly. "Has the new campaign of the war begun yet?"

"Well, we're maneuvering for position."

"You've seen him. How does he impress you?"

"The same as he does others. A hard, ruthless fighter. Unless all signs fail, he is an implacable foe."

"But you are not afraid?"

He smiled. "Do I look frightened?"

"No, you remind me of something a burglar once told me--"

"A what?"

"A burglar--a reformed burglar!" She gave him a saucy flash of her dark eyes. "Do you think I don't know any lawbreakers except those I have met in this State? I came across this one in a mission where I used to think I was doing good. He said it was not the remuneration of the profession that had attracted him, but the excitement. It was dreadfully frowned down upon and underpaid. He could earn more at his old trade of a locksmith, but it seemed to him that every impediment to success was a challenge to him. Poor man, he relapsed again, and they put him in Sing Sing. I was so interested in him, too."

"You've had some queer friends in your time," he laughed, but without a trace of disapproval.

"I have some queer ones yet," she thrust back.

"Let's not talk of them," he cried, in pretended alarm.

Her inextinguishable gaiety brought back the smile he liked. "We'll talk of SOME ONE else--some one of interest to us both." |

"I am always ready to talk of Miss Virginia Balfour," he said, misunderstanding promptly.

She smiled her disdain of his obtuseness in an elaborately long survey of him.

"Well?" he wanted to know.

"That's how you look--very well, indeed. I believe the storm was greatly exaggerated," she remarked.

"Isn't that rather a good definition for a blizzard--a greatly exaggerated storm?"

"You don't look the worse for wear--not the wreck I expected to behold."

"Ah, you should have seen me before I saw you."

"Thank you. I have no doubt you find the sight of my dear face as refreshing as your favorite cocktail. I suppose that is why it has taken you three days after your return to reach me and then by special request."

"A pleasure delayed is twice a pleasure anticipation and realization."

Miss Balfour made a different application of his text, her eyes trained on him with apparent indifference. "I've been enjoying a delayed pleasure myself. I went to see her this afternoon."

He did not ask whom, but his eyes brightened.

"She's worth a good deal of seeing, don't you think?"

"Oh, I'm in love with her, but it doesn't follow you ought to be."

"Am I?"--he smiled.

"You are either in love or else you ought to be ashamed of yourself."

"An interesting thing about you is your point of view. Now, anybody else would tell me I ought to be ashamed if I am in love."

"I'm not worried about your morals," she scoffed. "It's that poor child I'm thinking of."

"I think of her a good deal, too."

"Ah! and does she think of you a good deal That's what we must guard against."

"Is it?"

"Yes. You see I'm her confidante." She told it him with sparkling eyes, for the piquancy of it amused her. Not every engaged young woman can hear her lover's praises sung by the woman whose life he has saved with the proper amount of romance.

"Really?"

She nodded, laughing at him. "I didn't get a chance to tell her about me."

"I suppose not."

"I think I'll tell her about you, though--just what a ruthless barbarian you are."

His eyes gleamed "I wish you would. I'd like to find out whether she would believe you. I have tried to tell her myself, but the honest truth is, I funk it."

"You haven't any right to let her know you are interested in her." She interrupted him before he could speak. "Don't trifle with her, Waring. She's not like other girls."

He met her look gravely. "I wouldn't trifle with her for any reason."

Her quick rejoinder overlapped his sentence. "Then you love her!"

"Is that an alternative?"

"With you--yes."

"Faith, my lady, you're frank!"

"I'm not mealy-mouthed. You don't think yourself scrupulous, do you?"

"I'm afraid I am not."

"I don't mind so much your being in love with HER, though it's not flattering to my vanity, but --" She stopped, letting him make the inference.

"Do you think that likely?" he asked, the color flushing his face.

He wondered how much Aline had told this confidante. Certain specific things he knew she had not revealed, but had she let her guess the situation between them?

She compromised with her conscience. "I don't know. She is romantic--and Simon Harley isn't a very fertile field for romance, I suppose."

"You would imply "

"Oh, you have points, and nobody knows them better than Waring Ridgway," she told him jauntily. "But you needn't play that role to the address of Aline Harley. Try ME. I'm immune to romance. Besides, I'm engaged to you," she added, laughing at the inconsequence the fact seemed to have for both of them.

"I'm afraid I can't help the situation, for if I've been playing a part, it has been an unconscious one."

"That's the worst of it. When you star as Waring Ridgway you are most dangerous. What I want is total abstinence."

"You'd rather I didn't see her at all?"

Virginia dimpled, a gleam of reminiscent laughter in her eyes. "When I was in Denver last month a Mrs. Smythe--it was Smith before her husband struck it rich last year--sent out cards for a bridge afternoon. A Mrs. Mahoney had just come to the metropolis from the wilds of Cripple Creek. Her husband had struck a gold-mine, too, and Mr. Smythe was under obligations to him. Anyhow, she was a stranger, and Mrs. Smythe took her in. It was Mrs. Mahoney's introduction to bridge, and she did not know she was playing for keeps. When the afternoon was over, Mrs. Smythe hovered about her with the sweetest sympathy. 'So sorry you had such a horrid run of cards, dear. Better luck next time.' It took Mrs. Mahoney some time to understand that her social afternoon had cost one hundred and twenty dollars, but next day her husband sent a check for one hundred and twenty-two dollars to Mrs. Smythe. The extra two dollars were for the refreshments, he naively explained, adding that since his wife was so poor a gambler as hardly to be able to keep professionals interested, he would not feel offended if Mrs. Smythe omitted her in future from her social functions."

Ridgway took it with a smile. "Simon Harley brought his one hundred and twenty-two dollars in person."

"He didn't! When?"

"This morning. He proposed benevolent assimilation as a solution of our troubles."

"Just how?"

"He offered to consolidate all the copper interests of the country and put me at the head of the resulting combine."

"If you wouldn't play bridge with Mrs. Harley?"

"Exactly."

"And you "

"Declined to pledge myself."

She clapped her hands softly. "Well done, Waring Ridgway! There are times when you are magnificent, when I could put you on a pedestal, you great big, unafraid man. But you mustn't play with her, just the same."

"Why mustn't I?"

"For her sake."

He frowned past her into space, his tight-shut jaw standing out saliently. "You're right, Virginia. I've been thinking so myself. I'll keep off the grass," he said, at last.

"You're a good fellow," slipped out impulsively.

"Well, I know where there's another," he said. "I ought to think myself a lucky dog."

Virginia lifted quizzical eyebrows. "Ought to! That tastes of duty. Don't let it come to that. We'll take it off if you like." She touched the solitaire he had given her.

"Ah, but I don't like"--he smiled.

CHAPTER 12.

ALINE MAKES A DISCOVERY

Aline pulled her horse to a walk. "You know Mr. Ridgway pretty well, don't you?"

Miss Balfour gently flicked her divided skirt with a riding-whip, considering whether she might be said to know him well. "Yes, I think I do," she ventured.

"Mrs. Mott says you and he are great friends, that you seem very fond of each other."

"Goodness me! I hope I don't seem fond of him. I don't think 'fond' is exactly the word, anyway, though we are good friends." Quickly, keenly, her covert glance swept Aline; then, withdrawing her eyes, she flung her little bomb. "I suppose we may be said to appreciate each other. At any rate, we are engaged."

Mrs. Harley's pony came to an abrupt halt. "I thought I had dropped my whip," she explained, in a low voice not quite true.

Virginia, though she executed an elaborate survey of the scenery, could not help noticing that the color had washed from her friend's face. "I love this Western country--its big sweep of plains, of low, rolling hills, with a background of mountains. One can see how it gets into a man's blood so that the East seems insipid ever afterward," discoursed Miss Balfour.

A question trembled on Aline's blanched lips.

"Say it," permitted Virginia.

"Do you mean that you are engaged to him--that you are going to marry Mr. Ridgway--without caring for him?"

"I don't mean that at all. I like him immensely."

"But--do you love him?" It was almost a cry--these low words wrung from the tortured heart.

"No fair," warned her friend smilingly.

Aline rode in silence, her stricken face full of trouble. How could she, from her glass house, throw stones at a loveless marriage? But this was different from her own case! Nobody was worthy to marry her hero without giving the best a woman had to give. If she were a girl--a sudden tide of color swept her face; a wild, delirious tingle of joy flooded her veins--oh, if she were a girl, what a wealth of love could she give him! Clarity of vision had come to her in a blinding flash. Untutored of life, the knowledge of its meaning had struck home of the suddenest. She knew her heart now that it was too late; knew that she could never be indifferent to what concerned Waring Ridgway.

Aline caught at the courage behind her childishness, and accomplished her congratulations "You will be happy, I am sure. He is good."

"Goodness does not impress me as his most outstanding quality," smiled Miss Balfour.

"No, one never feels it emphasized. He is too He is too free of selfishness to make much of his goodness. But one can't help feeling it in everything he does and says."

"Does Mr. Harley agree with you? Does he feel it?"

"I don't think Mr. Harley understands him. I can't help thinking that he is prejudiced." She was becoming mistress of her voice and color again.

"And you are not?"

"Perhaps I am. In my thought of him he would still be good, even if he had done all the bad things his enemies accuse him of."

Virginia gave her up. This idealized interpretation of her betrothed was not the one she had, but for Aline it might be the true one. At least, she could not disparage him very consistently under the circumstances.

"Isn't there a philosophy current that we find in people what we look for in them? Perhaps that is why you and Mr. Harley read in Mr. Ridgway men so diverse as you do. It is not impossible you are both right and both wrong. Heaven knows, I suppose. At least, we poor mortals fog around enough when we sit in judgment." And Virginia shrugged the matter from her careless shoulders.

But Aline seemed to have a difficulty in getting away from the subject. "And you--what do you read?" she asked timidly.

"Sometimes one thing and sometimes another. To-day I see him as a living refutation of all the copy-book rules to success. He shatters the maxims with a touch-and-go manner that is fascinating in its immorality. A gambler, a plunger, an adventurer, he wins when a careful, honest business man would fail to a certainty."

Aline was amazed. "You misjudge him. I am sure you do. But if you think this of him why--"

"Why do I marry him? I have asked myself that a hundred times, my dear. I wish I knew. I have told you what I see in him to-day; but tomorrow--why, to-morrow I shall see him an altogether different man. He will be perhaps a radiating center of altruism, devoted to his friends, a level-headed protector of the working classes, a patron of the arts in his own clearminded, unlettered way. But whatever point of view one gets at him, he spares one dullness. Will you explain to me, my dear, why picturesque rascality is so much more likable than humdrum virtue?"

Mrs. Harley's eyes blazed. "And you can talk this way of the man you are going to marry, a man--" She broke off, her voice choked.

Miss Balfour was cool as a custard. "I can, my dear, and without the least disloyalty. In point of fact, he asked me to tell you the kind of man I think him. I'm trying to oblige him, you see."

"He asked you--to tell me this about him?" Aline pulled in her pony in order to read with her astonished eyes the amused ones of her companion.

"Yes. He was afraid you were making too much of his saving you. He thinks he won't do to set on a pedestal."

"Then I think all the more of him for his modesty."

"Don't invest too heavily on his modesty, my dear. He wouldn't be the man he is if he owned much of that commodity."

"The man he is?"

"Yes, the man born to win, the man certain of himself no matter what the odds against him.

He knows he is a man of destiny; knows quite well that there is something big about him that dwarfs other men. I know it, too. Wherefore I seize my opportunity. It would be a sin to let a man like that get away from one. I could never forgive myself," she concluded airily.

"Don't you see any human, lovable things in him?" Aline's voice was an accusation.

"He is the staunchest friend conceivable. No trouble is too great for him to take for one he likes, and where once he gives his trust he does not take it back. Oh, for all his force, he is intensely human! Take his vanity, my dear. It soars to heaven."

"If I cared for him I couldn't dissect his qualities as you do."

"That's because you are a triumph of the survival of nature and impulse over civilization, in spite of its attempts to sap your freshness. For me, I fear I'm a sophisticated daughter of a critical generation. If I weren't, I should not hold my judgment so safely in my own keeping, but would surrender it and my heart."

"There is something about the way you look at him that shocks me. One ought not to let oneself believe all that seems easy to believe."

"That is your faith, but mine is a different one. You see, I'm a Unitarian," returned Virginia blithely.

"He will make you love him if you marry him," sighed Aline, coming back to her obsession.

Virginia nodded eagerly. "In my secret heart that is what I am hoping for, my dear."

"Unless there is another man," added Aline, as if alone with her thoughts.

Virginia was irritably aware of a flood of color beating into her cheeks. "There isn't any other man," she said impatiently.

Yet she thought of Lyndon Hobart. Curiously enough, whenever she conceived herself as marrying Ridgway, the reflex of her brain carried to her a picture of Hobart, clean-handed, fine of instinct, with the inherited inflections of voice and unconscious pride of caste that come from breeding and not from cultivation. If he were not born to greatness, like his rival, at least he satisfied her critical judgment of what a gentleman should be; and she was quite sure that the potential capacity lay in her to care a good deal more for him than for anybody else she had met. Since it was not on the cards, as Miss Virginia had shuffled the pack, that she should marry primarily for reasons sentimental, this annoyed her in her sophisticated hours.

But in the hours when she was a mere girl when she was not so confidently the heir of all the feminine wisdom of the ages, her annoyance took another form. She had told Lyndon Hobart of her engagement because it was the honest thing to do; because she supposed she ought to discourage any hopes he might be entertaining. But it did not follow that he need have let these hopes be extinguished so summarily. She could have wished his scrupulous regard for the proper thing had not had the effect of taking him so completely out of her external life, while leaving him more insistently than ever the subject of her inner contemplation.

Virginia's conscience was of the twentieth century and American, though she was a good deal more honest with herself than most of her sex in the same social circle. Also she was straightforward with her neighbors so far as she could reasonably be. But she was not a Puritan in the least, though she held herself to a more rigid account than she did her friends. She judged her betrothed as little as she could, but this was not to be entirely avoided, since she expected her life to become merged so largely in his. There were hours when she felt she must escape the blighting influence of his lawlessness. There were others when it seemed to her magnificent.

Except for the occasional jangle of a bit or the ring of a horse's shoe on a stone, there was silence which lasted many minutes. Each was busy with her thoughts, and the narrowness of the trail, which here made them go in single file, served as an excuse against talk.

"Perhaps we had better turn back," suggested Virginia, after the path had descended to a gulch and merged itself in a wagon-road. "We shall have no more than time to get home and dress for dinner."

Aline turned her pony townward, and they rode at a walk side by side.

"Do you know much about the difficulty between Mr. Harley and Mr. Ridgway? I mean about the mines--the Sherman Bell, I think they called it?"

"I know something about the trouble in a general way. Both the Consolidated and Mr. Ridgway's company claim certain veins. That is true of several mines, I have been told."

"I don't know anything about business. Mr. Harley does not tell me anything about his. To day I was sitting in the open window, and two men stopped beneath it. They thought there would be trouble in this mine--that men would be hurt. I could not make it all out, but that was part of it. I sent for Mr. Harley and made him tell me what he knew. It would be dreadful if anything like that happened."

"Don't worry your head about it, my dear. Things are always threatening and never happening. It seems to be a part of the game of business to bluff, as they call it."

"I wish it weren't," sighed the girl-wife.

Virginia observed that she looked both sad and weary. She had started on her ride like a prisoner released from his dungeon, happy in the sunshine, the swift motion, the sting of the wind in her face. There had been a sparkle in her eye and a ring of gaiety in her laugh. Into her cheeks a faint color had glowed, so that the contrast of their clear pallor with the vivid scarlet of the little lips had been less pronounced than usual. But now she was listless and distraite, the girlish abandon all stricken out of her. It needed no clairvoyant to see that her heart was heavy and that she was longing for the moment when she could be alone with her pain.

Her friend had learned what she wanted to know, and the knowledge of it troubled her. She would have given a good deal to have been able to lift this sorrow from the girl riding beside her. For she was aware that Aline Harley might as well have reached for the moon as that toward which her untutored heart yearned. She had come to life late and traveled in it but a little way. Yet the tragedy of it was about to engulf her. No lifeboat was in sight. She must sink or swim alone. Virginia's unspoiled heart went out to her with a rush of pity and sympathy. Almost the very words that Waring Ridgway had used came to her lips.

"You poor lamb! You poor, forsaken lamb!"

But she spoke instead with laughter and lightness, seeing nothing of the girl's distress, at least, until after they separated at the door of the hotel.

CHAPTER 13.

FIRST BLOOD

After Ridgway's cavalier refusal to negotiate a peace treaty, Simon Harley and his body-guard walked back to the offices of the Consolidated, where they arrived at the same time as the news of the enemy's first blow since the declaration of renewed war.

Hobart was at his desk with his ear to the telephone receiver when the great financier came into the inner office of the manager.

"Yes. When? Driven out, you say? Yes--yes. Anybody hurt? Followed our men through into our tunnel? No, don't do anything till you hear from me. Send Rhys up at once. Let me know any further developments that occur."

Hobart hung up the receiver and turned on his swivel-chair toward his chief. "Another outrage, sir, at the hands of Ridgway. It is in regard to those veins in the Copper King that he claims. Dalton, his superintendent of the Taurus, drove a tunnel across our lateral lines and began working them, though their own judge has not yet rendered a decision in their favor.

Of course, I put a large force in them at once. To-day we tapped their workings at the twelfth level. Our foreman, Miles, has just telephoned me that Dalton turned the air pressure on our men, blew out their candles, and flung a mixture of lime and rocks at them. Several of the men are hurt, though none badly. It seems that Dalton has thrown a force into our tunnels and is holding the entrances against us at the point where the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth levels touch the cage. It means that he will work those veins, and probably others that are acknowledged to be ours, unless we drive them out, which would probably be a difficult matter."

Harley listened patiently, eyes glittering and clean-shaven lips pressed tightly against his teeth. "What do you propose to do?"

"I haven't decided yet. If we could get any justice from the courts, an injunction "

"Can't be got from Purcell. Don't waste time considering it. Fight it out yourself. Find his weakest spot, then strike hard and suddenly." Harley's low metallic voice was crisp and commanding.

"His weakest spot?"

"Exactly. Has he no mines upon which we can retaliate?"

"There is the Taurus. It lies against the Copper King end to end. He drove a tunnel into some of our workings last winter. That would give a passageway to send our men through, if we decide to do so. Then there is his New York. Its workings connect with those of the Jim Hill."

"Good! Send as many men through as is necessary to capture and hold both mines. Get control of the entire workings of them both, and begin taking ore out at once. Station armed guards at every point where it is necessary, and as many as are necessary. Use ten thousand men, if you need that many. But don't fail. We'll give Ridgway a dose of his own medicine, and teach him that for every pound of our ore he steals we'll take ten."

"He'll get an injunction from the courts."

"Let him get forty. I'll show him that his robber courts will not save him. Anyhow, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

Hobart, almost swept from his moorings by the fiery energy of his chief, braced himself to withstand the current.

"I shall have to think about that. We can't fight lawlessness with lawlessness except for selfpreservation."

"Think! You do nothing but think, Mr. Hobart. You are here to act," came the scornful retort; "And what is this but self-preservation."

"I am willing to recapture our workings in the Copper King. I'll lead the attack in person, sir. But as to a retaliatory attack--the facts will not justify a capture of his property because he has seized ours."

"Wrong, sir. This is no time for half-way measures. I have resolved to crush this freebooter; since he has purchased your venal courts, then by the only means left us--force."

Hobart rose from his seat, very pale and erect. His eyes met those of the great man unflinchingly. "You realize that this may mean murder, Mr. Harley? That a clash cannot possibly be avoided if you pursue this course?"

"I realize that it is self-preservation," came the cold retort. "There is no law here, none, at least, that gives us justice. We are back to savagery, dragged back by the madness of this ruffian. It is his choice, not mine. Let him abide by it."

"Your intention to follow this course is irrevocable?"

"Absolutely."

"In that case, I must regretfully offer my resignation as manager of the Consolidated."

"It is accepted, Mr. Hobart. I can't have men working under me that are not loyal, body and soul, to the hand that feeds them. No man can serve two masters, Mr. Hobart."

"That is why I resign, Mr. Harley. You give me the devil's work to do. I have done enough of it. By Heaven, I will be a free man hereafter." The disgust and dissatisfaction that had been pent within him for many a month broke forth hot from the lips of this self-repressed man. "It is all wrong on both sides. Two wrongs do not make a right. The system of espionage we employ over everybody both on his side and ours, the tyrannical use we make of our power, the corruption we foster in politics, our secret bargains with railroads, our evasions of law as to taxes, and in every other way that suits us: it is all wrong--all wrong. I'll be a party to it no longer. You see to what it leads--murder and anarchy. I'll be a poor man if I must, but I'll be a free and honest one at least."

"You are talking wickedly and wildly, Mr. Hobart. You are criticizing God when you criticize the business conditions he has put into the world. I did not know that you were a socialist, but what you have just said explains your course," the old man reproved sadly and sanctimonious.

"I am not a socialist, Mr. Harley, but you and your methods have made thousands upon thousands of them in this country during the past ten years."

"We shall not discuss that, Mr. Hobart, nor, indeed, is any discussion necessary. Frankly, I am greatly disappointed in you. I have for some time been dissatisfied with your management, but I did not, of course, know you held these anarchistic views. I want, however, to be perfectly just. You are a very good business man indeed, careful and thorough. That you have not a bold enough grasp of mind for the place you hold is due, perhaps, to these dangerous ideas that have unsettled you. Your salary will be continued for six months. Is that satisfactory?"

"No, sir. I could not be willing to accept it longer than to-day. And when you say bold enough, why not be plain and say unscrupulous enough?" amended the younger man.

"As you like. I don't juggle with words. The point is, you don't succeed. This adventurer, Ridgway, scores continually against you. He has beaten you clear down the line from start to finish. Is that not true?"

"Because he does not hesitate to stoop to anything, because--"

"Precisely. You have given the very reason why he must be fought in the same spirit. Business ethics would be as futile against him as chivalry in dealing with a jungle-tiger."

"You would then have had me stoop to any petty meanness to win, no matter how contemptible?"

The New Yorker waved him aside with a patient, benignant gesture. "I don't care for excuses. I ask of my subordinates success. You do not get it for me. I must find a man who can."

Hobart bowed with fine dignity. The touch of disdain in his slight smile marked his sense of the difference between them. He was again his composed rigid self.

"Can you arrange to allow my resignation to take effect as soon as possible? I should prefer to have my connection with the company severed before any action is taken against these mines."

"At once--to-day. Your resignation may be published in the Herald this afternoon, and you will then be acquitted of whatever may follow."

"Thank you." Hobart hesitated an instant before he said: "There is a point that I have already mentioned to you which, with your permission, I must again advert to. The temper of the miners has been very bitter since you refused to agree to Mr. Ridgway's proposal for an eight-hour day. I would urge upon you to take greater precautions against a personal attack. You have many lawless men among your employees. They are foreigners for the most part, unused to self-restraint. It is only right you should know they execrate your name."

The great man smiled blandly. "Popularity is nothing to me. I have neither sought it nor desired it. Given a great work to do, with the Divine help I have done it, irrespective of public clamor. For many years I have lived in the midst of alarms, Mr. Hobart. I am not foolhardy. What precautions I can reasonably take I do. For the rest, my confidence is in an all-wise Providence. It is written that not even a sparrow falls without His decree. In that promise I put my trust. If I am to be cut off it can only be by His will. 'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' Such, I pray, may be the humble and grateful spirit with which I submit myself to His will."

The retiring manager urged the point no further. "If you have decided upon my successor and he is on the ground I shall be glad to give the afternoon to running over with him the affairs of the office. It would be well for him to retain for a time my private secretary and stenographer."

"Mr. Mott will succeed you. He will no doubt be glad to have your assistance in helping him fall into the routine of the office, Mr. Hobart."

Harley sent for Mott at once and told him of his promotion. The two men were closeted together for hours, while trusted messengers went and came incessantly to and from the mines. Hobart knew, of course, that plans were in progress to arm such of the Consolidated men as could be trusted, and that arrangements were being made to rush the Taurus and the New York. Everything was being done as secretly as possible, but Hobart's experience of Ridgway made it obvious to him that this excessive activity could not pass without notice. His spies, like those of the trust, swarmed everywhere.

It was not till mid-afternoon of the next day that Mott found time to join him and run over with him the details of such unfinished business as the office had taken up. The retiring manager was courtesy itself, nor did he feel any bitterness against his successor. Nevertheless, he came to the end of office hours with great relief. The day had been a very hard one, and it left him with a longing for solitude and the wide silent spaces of the open hills. He struck out in the direction which promised him the quickest opportunity to leave the town behind him. A good walker, he covered the miles rapidly, and under the physical satisfaction of the tramp the brain knots unraveled and smoothed themselves out. It was better so--better to live his own life than the one into which he was being ground by the inexorable facts of his environment. He was a young man and ambitious, but his hopes were not selfish. At bottom he was an idealist, though a practical one. He had had to shut his eyes to many things which he deplored, had been driven to compromises which he despised. Essentially clean-handed, the soul of him had begun to wither at the contact of that which he saw about him and was so large a part of.

"I am not fit for it. That is the truth. Mott has no imagination, and property rights are the most sacred thing on earth to him. He will do better at it than I," he told himself, as he walked forward bareheaded into the great sunset glow that filled the saddle between two purple hills in front of him.

As he swung round a bend in the road a voice, clear and sweet. came to him through the light filtered air.

"Laska!"

young woman on horseback was before him. Her pony stood across the road, and she looked up a trail which ran down into it. The lifted poise of the head brought out its fine lines and the distinction with which it was set upon the well-molded throat column. Apparently she was calling to some companion on the trail who had not yet emerged into view.

At sound of his footsteps the rider's head turned.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Hobart," she said quietly, as coolly as if her heart had not suddenly begun to beat strangely fast.

"Good afternoon, Miss Balfour."

Each of them was acutely conscious of the barrier between them. Since the day when she had told him of her engagement they had not met, even casually, and this their first sight of each other was not without embarrassment.

"We have been to Lone Pine Cone," she said rather hurriedly, to bridge an impending silence.

He met this obvious statement with another as brilliant.

"I walked out from town. My horse is a little lame."

But there was something she wanted to say to him, and the time for saying it, before the arrival of her companion, was short. She would not waste it in commonplaces.

"I don't usually read the papers very closely, but this morning I read both the Herald and the Sun. Did you get my note?"

"Your note? No."

"I sent it by mail. I wanted you to know that your friends are proud of you. We know why you resigned. It is easy to read between the lines."

"Thank you," he said simply. "I knew you would know."

"Even the Sun recognizes that it was because you are too good a man for the place."

"Praise from the Sun has rarely shone my way," he said, with a touch of irony, for that paper was controlled by the Ridgway interest. "In its approval I am happy."

Her impulsive sympathy for this man whom she so greatly liked would not accept the rebuff imposed by this reticence. She stripped the gauntlet from her hand and offered it in congratulation.

He took it in his, a slight flush in his face.

"I have done nothing worthy of praise. One cannot ask less of a man than that he remain independent and honest. I couldn't do that and stay with the Consolidated, or, so it seemed to me. So I resigned. That is all there is to it."

"It is enough. I don't know another man would have done it, would have had the courage to do it after his feet were set so securely in the way of success. The trouble with Americans is that they want too much success. They want it at too big a price."

"I'm not likely ever to have too much of it," he laughed sardonically.

"Success in life and success in living aren't the same thing. It is because you have discovered this that you have sacrificed the less for the greater." She smiled, and added: "I didn't mean that to sound as preachy as it does."

"I'm afraid you make too much of a small thing. My squeamishness has probably made me the laughing-stock of Mesa."

"If so, that is to the discredit of Mesa," she insisted stanchly. "But I don't think so. A great many people who couldn't have done it themselves will think more of you for having done it."

Another pony, which had been slithering down the steep trail in the midst of a small rock slide, now brought its rider safely to a halt in the road. Virginia introduced them, and Hobart, remembered that he had heard Miss Balfour speak of a young woman whom she had met on the way out, a Miss Laska Lowe, who was coming to Mesa to teach domestic science in the public schools. There was something about the young teacher's looks that he liked, though she was of a very different type than Virginia. Not at all pretty in any accepted sense, she yet had a charm born of the vital honesty in her. She looked directly at one out of sincere gray eyes, wide-awake and fearless. As it happened, her friend had been telling her about Hobart, and she was interested in him from the first. For she was of that minority which lives not by bread alone, and she felt a glow of pride in the man who could do what the Sun had given this man credit for editorially.

They talked at haphazard for a few minutes before the young women cantered away. As Hobart trudged homeward he knew that in the eyes of these two women, at least, he had not been a fool.

CHAPTER 14.

A CONSPIRACY

Tucked away in an obscure corner of the same issue of the papers which announced the resignation of Lyndon Hobart as manager of the Consolidated properties, and the appointment of James K. Mott as his temporary successor, were little one-stick paragraphs regarding explosions, which had occurred the night before in tunnels of the Taurus and the New York. The general public paid little attention to these, but those on the inside knew that Ridgway had scored again. His spies had carried the news to him of the projected capture of these two properties by the enemy. Instead of attempting to defend them by force, he had set of charges of giant powder which had brought down the tunnel roofs and effectually blocked the entrances from the Consolidated mines adjoining.

With the indefatigable patience which characterized him, Harley set about having the passages cleared of the rock and timber with which they were filled. Before he had succeeded in doing this his enemy struck another telling blow. From Judge Purcell he secured an injunction against the Consolidated from working its mines, the Diamond King, the Mary K, and the Marcus Daly, on the absurd contention that the principal ore-vein of the Marcus Daly apexed on the tin, triangle wedged in between these three great mines, and called by Ridgway the Trust Buster. Though there was not room enough upon this fragment to sink a shaft, it was large enough to found this claim of a vein widening as it descended until it crossed into the territory of each of these properties. Though Harley could ignore court injunctions which erected only under-ground territory, he was forced to respect this one, since it could not be violated except in the eyes of the whole country. The three mines closed down, and several thousand workmen were thrown out of employment. These were immediately reemployed by Ridgway and set to work both in his own and the Consolidated's territory.

Within a week a dozen new suits were instituted against the Consolidated by its enemy. He harassed it by contempt proceedings, by applications for receiverships, and by other ingenious devices, which greatly tormented the New York operator. For the first time in his life the courts, which Harley had used to much advantage in his battles to maintain and extend the trusts he controlled, could not be used even to get scant justice.

Meanwhile both leaders were turning their attention to the political situation. The legislators were beginning to gather for the coming session, and already the city was full of rumors about corruption. For both the Consolidated and its enemy were making every effort to secure enough votes to win the election of a friendly United States senator. The man chosen would have the distribution of the federal patronage of the State. This meant the control of the most influential local politicians of the party in power at Washington as well as their followers, an almost vital factor for success in a State where political corruption had so interwoven itself into the business life of the community.

The hotel lobbies were filled with politicians gathered from every county in the State. Big bronzed cattlemen brushed shoulders with budding lawyers from country towns and ward bosses from the larger cities. The bars were working overtime, and the steady movement of figures in the corridors lasted all day and most of the night. Here and there were collected groups, laughing and talking about the old frontier days, or commenting in lowered tones on some phase of the feverish excitement that was already beginning to be apparent. Elevators shot up and down, subtracting and adding to the kaleidoscope of human life in the rotundas. Bellboys hurried to and fro with messages and cocktails. The ring of the telephone-bell cut occasionally into the deep hum of many voices. All was confusion, keen interest, expectancy.

For it was known that Simon Harley had sent for $300,000 in cold cash to secure the election of his candidate, Roger D. Warner, a lawyer who had all his life been close to corporate interests. It was known, too, that Waring Ridgway had gathered together every element in the State that opposed the domination of the Consolidated, to fight their man to a finish. Bets for large sums were offered and taken as to the result, heavy odds being given in favor of the big copper trust's candidate. For throughout the State at large the Consolidated influence was very great indeed. It owned forest lands and railroads and mines. It controlled local transportation largely. Nearly one-half the working men in the State were in its employ. Into every town and village the ramifications of its political organization extended. The feeling against it was very bitter, but this was usually expressed in whispers. For it was in a position to ruin almost any business man upon whom it fastened a grudge, and to make wealthy any upon whom it chose to cast its favors.

Nevertheless, there were some not so sure that the Consolidated would succeed in electing its man. Since Ridgway had announced himself as a candidate there had been signs of defection on the part of some of those expected to vote for Warner. He had skillfully wielded together in opposition to the trust all the elements of the State that were hostile to it; and already the word was being passed that he had not come to the campaign without a barrel of his own.

The balloting for United States senator was not to begin until the eighth day of the session, but the opening week was full of a tense and suppressed excitement. It was known that agents of both sides were moving to and fro among the representatives and State senators, offering fabulous prices for their votes and the votes of any others they might be able to control. Men who had come to the capital confident in their strength and integrity now looked at their neighbors furtively and guiltily. Day by day the legislators were being debauched to serve the interest of the factions which were fighting for control of the State. Night after night secret meetings were being held in out-of-the-way places to seduce those who clung desperately to their honesty or held out for a bigger price. Bribery was in the air, rampant, unashamed. Thousand-dollar bills were as common as ten-dollar notes in ordinary times.

Sam Yesler, commenting on the situation to his friend Jack Roper, a fellow member of the legislature who had been a cattleman from the time he had given up driving a stage thirty years before, shook his head dejectedly over his blue points.

"I tell you, Jack, a man has to be bed-rocked in honesty or he's gone. Think of it. A country lawyer comes here who has never seen five thousand dollars in a lump sum, and they shove fifteen thousand at him for his vote. He is poor, ambitious, struggling along from hand to mouth. I reckon we ain't in a position to judge that poor devil of a harassed fellow. Mebbe he's always been on the square, came here to do what was right, we'll say, but he sees corruption all round him. How can he help getting a warped notion of things? He sees his friends and his neighbors falling by the wayside. By God, it's got to the point in this legislature that an honest man's an object of obloquy."

"That's right," agreed Roper. "Easy enough for us to be square. We got good ranches back of us and can spend the winter playing poker at the Mesa Club if we feel like it. But if we stood where Billy George and Garner and Roberts and Munz do, I ain't so damn sure my virtue would stand the strain. Can you reach that salt, Sam?"

"Billy George has got a sick wife, and he's been wanting to send her back to her folks in the East, but he couldn't afford it. The doctors figured she ought to stay a year, and Billy would have to hire a woman to take care of his kids. I said to him: 'Hell, Billy, what's a friend for?' And I shoves a check at him. He wouldn't look at it; said he didn't know whether he could ever pay it, and he had not come down to charity yet."

"Billy's a white man. That's what makes me sick. Right on top of all his bad luck he comes here and sees that everybody is getting a big roll. He thinks of that white-faced wife of his dragging herself round among the kids and dying by inches for lack of what money can buy her. I tell you I don't blame him. It's the fellows putting the temptation up to him that ought to be strung up."

"I see that hound Pelton's mighty active in it. He's got it in for Ridgway since Waring threw him down, and he's plugging night and day for Warner. Stays pretty well tanked up. Hopper tells me he's been making threats to kill Waring on sight."

"I heard that and told Waring. He laughed and said he hoped he would live till Pelton killed him. I like Waring. He's got the guts, as his miners say. But he's away off on this fight. He's using money right and left just as Harley is."

Yesler nodded. "The whole town's corrupted. It takes bribery for granted. Men meet on the street and ask what the price of votes is this morning. Everybody feels prosperous."

"I heard that a chambermaid at the Quartzite Hotel found seven thousand dollars in big bills pinned to the bottom of a mattress in Garner's room yesterday. He didn't dare bank it, of course."

"Poor devil! He's another man that would like to be honest, but with the whole place impregnated with bribery he couldn't stand the pressure. But after this is all over he'll go home to his wife and his neighbors with the canker of this thing at his heart until he dies. I tell you, Jack, I'm for stopping it if we can."

"How?"

"There's one way. I've been approached indirectly by Pelton, to deliver our vote to the Consolidated. Suppose we arrange to do it, get evidence, and make a public exposure."

They were alone in a private dining-room of a restaurant, but Yesler's voice had fallen almost to a whisper. With his steady gray eyes he looked across at the man who had ridden the range with him fifteen years ago when he had not had a sou to bless himself with.

Roper tugged at his long drooping mustache and gazed at his friend. "It's a large order, Sam, a devilish large order. Do you reckon we could deliver?"

"I think so. There are six of us that will stand pat at any cost. If we play our cards right and keep mum the surprise of it is bound to shake votes loose when we spring the bomb. The whole point is whether we can take advantage of that surprise to elect a decent man. I don't say it can be done, but there's a chance of it."

The old stage-driver laughed softly. "We'll be damned good and plenty by both sides."

"Of course. It won't be a pleasant thing to do, but then it isn't exactly pleasant to sit quiet and let these factions use the State as a pawn in their game of grab."

"I'm with you, Sam. Go to it, my boy, and I'll back you to the limit."

"We had better not talk it over here. Come to my room after dinner and bring Landor and James with you. I'll have Reedy and Keller there. I'll mention casually that it's a big game of poker, and I'll have cards and drinks sent up. You want to remember we can't be too careful. If it leaks out we lose."

"I'm a clam, Sam. Do you want I should speak of it to Landor and James?"

"Better wait till we get together."

"What about Ward? He's always been with us."

"He talks too much. We can take him in at the last minute if we like."

"That would be better. I ain't so sure about Reedy, either. He's straight as a string, of course; not a crooked hair in his head. But when he gets to drinking he's likely to let things out."

"You're right. We'll leave him out, too, until the last minute. There's another thing I've thought of. Ridgway can't win. At least I don't see how he can control more than twenty five votes. Suppose at the very last moment we make a deal with him and with the Democrats to pool our votes on some square man. With Waring it's anything to beat the Consolidated. He'll jump at the chance if he's sure he is out of the running himself. Those of the Democrats that Harley can't buy will be glad to beat his man. I don't say it can be done, Jack. All I say is that it is worth a trial."

"You bet."

They met that night in Yesler's rooms round a card-table. The hands were dealt for form's sake, since there were spies everywhere, and it was necessary to ring for cigars and refreshments occasionally to avoid suspicion. They were all cattlemen, large or small, big outdoors sunburned men, who rode the range in the spring and fall with their punchers and asked no odds of any man.

Until long past midnight they talked the details over, and when they separated in the small hours it was with a well-defined plan to save the State from its impending disgrace if the thing could be done.

CHAPTER 15.

LASKA OPENS A DOOR

The first ballots for a United States senator taken by the legislature in joint session failed to disclose the alignment of some of the doubtful members. The Democratic minority of twenty-eight votes were cast for Springer, the senator whose place would be taken by whoever should win in the contest now on. Warner received forty-four, Ridgway twenty-six, eight went to Pascom, a former governor whom the cattlemen were supporting, and the remaining three were scattered. Each day one ballot was taken, and for a week there was a slight sifting down of the complimentary votes until at the end of it the count stood:

Warner 45 Ridgway 28 Springer 28 Pascom 8

Warner still lacked ten votes of an election, but It was pretty thoroughly understood that several of the Democratic minority were waiting only long enough for a colorable excuse to switch to him. All kinds of rumors were in the air as to how many of these there were. The Consolidated leaders boldly claimed that they had only to give the word to force the election of their candidate on any ballot. Yesler did not believe this claim could be justified, since Pelton and Harley were already negotiating with him for the delivery of the votes belonging to the cattlemen's contingent.

He had held off for some time with hints that it would take a lot of money to swing the votes of such men as Roper and Landor, but he had finally come to an agreement that the eight votes should be given to Warner for a consideration of $300,000. This was to be paid to Yesler in the presence of the other seven members on the night before the election, and was to be held in escrow by him and Roper until the pact was fulfilled, the money to be kept in a safety deposit vault with a key in possession of each of the two.

On the third day of the session, before the voting had begun, Stephen Eaton, who was a State senator from Mesa, moved that a committee be appointed to investigate the rumors of bribery that were so common. The motion caught the Consolidated leaders napping, for this was the last man they had expected to propose such a course, and it went through with little opposition, as a similar motion did in the House at the same time. The lieutenant-governor and the speaker of the House were both opposed to Warner, and the joint committee had on it the names of no Consolidated men. The idea of such a committee had originated with Ridgway, and had been merely a bluff to show that he at least was willing that the world should know the whole story of the election. Nor had this committee held even formal meetings before word reached Eaton through Yesler that if it would appoint a conference in some very private place, evidence would be submitted implicating agents of the Warner forces in attempts at bribery.

It was close to eleven o'clock when Sam Yesler stepped quietly from a side door of his hotel and slipped into the street. He understood perfectly that in following the course he did, he was taking his life in his hands. The exposure of the bribery traffic would blast forever the reputations of many men who had hitherto held a high place in the community, and he knew the temper of some of them well enough to be aware that an explosion was probable. Spies had been dogging him ever since the legislature convened. Within an hour one of them would be flying to Pelton with the news that he was at a meeting of the committee, and all the thugs of the other side would be turned loose on his heels. As he walked briskly through the streets toward the place appointed, his hand lay on the hilt of a revolver in the outside pocket of his overcoat. He was a man who would neither seek trouble nor let it overwhelm him. If his life were attempted, he meant to defend it to the last.

He followed side streets purposely, and his footsteps echoed along the deserted road. He knew he was being dogged, for once, when he glanced back, he caught sight of a skulking figure edging along close to a wall. The sight of the spy stirred his blood. Grimly he laughed to himself. They might murder him for what he was doing, but not in time to save the exposure which would be brought to light on the morrow.

The committee met at a road-house near the outskirts of the city, but only long enough to hear Yesler's facts and to appoint another meeting for three hours later at the offices of Eaton. For the committee had come here for secrecy, and they knew that it would be only a short time before Pelton's heelers would be down upon them in force. It was agreed they should divide and slip quietly back to town, wait until everything was quiet and convene again. Meanwhile Eaton would make arrangements to see that his offices would be sufficiently guarded for protection against any attack.

Yesler walked back to town and was within a couple of blocks of his hotel when he glimpsed two figures crouching against the fence of the alley. He stopped in his tracks, watched them intently an instant, and was startled by a whistle from the rear. He knew at once his retreat, too, was cut off, and without hesitation vaulted the fence in front of a big gray stone house he was passing. A revolver flashed from the alley, and he laughed with a strange kind of delight. His thought was to escape round the house, but trellis work barred the way, and he could not open the gate.

"Trapped, by Jove," he told himself coolly as a bullet struck the trellis close to his head.

He turned back, ran up the steps of the porch and found momentary safety in the darkness of its heavy vines. But this he knew could not last. Running figures were converging toward him at a focal point. He could hear oaths and cries. Some one was throwing aimless shots from a revolver at the porch.

He heard a window go up in the second story and a woman's frightened voice ask. "What is it? Who is there?"

"Let me in. I'm ambushed by thugs," he called back.

"There he is--in the doorway," a voice cried out of the night, and it was followed by a spatter of bullets about him.

He fired at a man leaping the fence. The fellow tumbled back with a kind of scream.

"God! I'm hit."

He could hear steps coming down the stairway and fingers fumbling at the key of the door. His attackers were gathering for a rush, and he wondered whether the rescue was to be too late. They came together, the opening door and the forward pour of huddled figures. He stepped back into the hall.

There was a raucous curse, a shot, and Yesler had slammed the door shut. He was alone in the darkness with his rescuer.

"We must get out of here. They're firing through the door," he said, and "Yes" came faintly back to him from across the hall.

"Do you know where the switch is?" he asked, wondering whether she was going to be such an idiot as to faint at this inopportune moment.

His answer came in a flood of light, and showed him a young woman crouched on the hall-rack a dozen feet from the switch. She was very white, and there was a little stain of crimson on the white lace of her sleeve.

A voice from the landing above demanded quickly, "Who are you, sir?" and after he had looked up', cried in surprise, "Mr. Yesler."

"Miss Balfour," he replied. "I'll explain later. I'm afraid the lady has been hit by a bullet."

He was already beside his rescuer. She looked at him with a trace of a tired smile and said:

"In my arm."

After which she fainted. He picked up the young woman, carried her to the stairs, and mounted them.

"This way," said Virginia, leading him into a bedroom, the door of which was open.

He observed with surprise that she, too, was dressed in evening clothes, and rightly surmised that they had just come back from some social function.

"Is it serious?" asked Virginia, when he had laid his burden on the bed.

She was already clipping with a pair of scissors the sleeve from round the wound.

"It ought not to be," he said after he had examined it. "The bullet has scorched along the fleshy part of the forearm. We must telephone for a doctor at once."

She did so, then found water and cotton for bandages, and helped him make a temporary dressing. The patient recovered consciousness under the touch of the cold water, and asked: what was the matter.

"You have been hurt a little, but not badly I think. Don't you remember? You came down and opened the door to let me in."

"They were shooting at you. What for?" she wanted to know.

He smiled. "Don't worry about that. It's all over with. I'm sorry you were hurt in saving me," said Yesler gently.

"Did I save you?" The gray eyes showed a gleam of pleasure.

"You certainly did."

"This is Mr. Yesler, Laska. Mr. Yesler--Miss Lowe. I think you have never met."

"Never before to-night," he said, pinning the bandage in place round the plump arm. "There. That's all just now, ma'am. Did I hurt you very much?"

The young woman felt oddly exhilarated. "Not much. I'll forgive you if you'll tell me all about the affair. Why did they want to hurt you?"

His big heart felt very tender toward this girl who had been wounded for him, but he showed it only by a smiling deference.

"You're right persistent, ma'am. You hadn't ought to be bothering your head about any such thing, but if you feel that way I'll be glad to tell you."

He did. While they sat there and waited for the coming of the doctor, he told her the whole story of his attempt to stop the corruption that was eating like a canker at the life of the State. He was a plain man, not in the least eloquent, and he told his story without any sense that he had played any unusual part. In fact, he was ashamed that he had been forced to assume a role which necessitated a kind of treachery to those who thought they had bought him.

Laska Lowe's eyes shone with the delight his tale inspired in her. She lived largely in the land of ideals, and this fight against wrong moved her mightily. She could feel for him none of the shame which he felt for himself at being mixed up in so bad a business. He was playing a man's part, had chosen it at risk of his life. That was enough. In every fiber of her, she was glad that good fortune had given her the chance to bear a part of the battle. In her inmost heart she was even glad that to the day of her death she must bear the scar that would remind her she had suffered in so good a cause.

Virginia, for once obliterating herself, perceived how greatly taken they were with each other. At bottom, nearly every woman is a match-maker. This one was no exception. She liked both this man and this woman, and her fancy had already begun to follow her hopes. Never before had Laska appeared to show much interest in any of the opposite sex with whom her friend had seen her. Now she was all enthusiasm, had forgotten completely the pain of her wound in the spirit's glow.

"She loved me for the danger I had pass'd, And I loved her that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have us'd.'"

Virginia quoted softly to herself, her eyes on the young woman so finely unconscious of the emotion that thrilled her.

Not until the clock in the hall below struck two did Yesler remember his appointment in the Ridgway Building. The doctor had come and was about to go. He suggested that if Yesler felt it would be safe for him to go, they might walk across to the hotel together.

"And leave us alone." Laska could have bitten her tongue after the words were out.

Virginia explained. "The Leighs are out of the city to-night, and it happens that even the servants are gone. I asked Miss Lowe to stay with me all night, but, of course, she feels feverish and nervous after this excitement. Couldn't you send a man to watch the rest of the night out in the house?"

"Why don't You stay, Mr. Yesler?" the doctor suggested. "You could sleep here, no doubt."

"You might have your meeting here. It is neutral ground. I can phone to Mr. Ridgway," proposed Virginia in a low voice to Yesler.

"Doesn't that seem to imply that I'm afraid to leave?" laughed Yesler.

"It implies that we are afraid to have you. Laska would worry both on your account and our own. I think you owe it to her to stay."

"Oh, if that's the way it strikes you," he agreed. "Fact is, I don't quite like to leave you anyhow. We'll take Leigh's study. I don't think we shall disturb you at all."

"I'm sure you won't--and before you go, you'll let us know what you have decided to do."

"We shall not be through before morning. You'll be asleep by then," he made answer.

"No, I couldn't sleep till I know all about it."

"Nor I," agreed Laska. "I want to know all about everything."

"My dear young lady, you are to take the sleeping-powders and get a good rest," the doctor demurred. "All about everything is too large an order for your good just now."

Virginia nodded in a businesslike way. "Yes, you're to go to sleep, Laska, and when you waken I'll tell you all about it."

"That would be better," smiled Yesler, and Virginia thought it significant that her friend made no further protest.

Gray streaks began to show in the sky before Yesler tapped on the door of Virginia's room. She had discarded the rather elaborate evening gown he had last seen her in, and was wearing some soft fabric which hung from the shoulders in straight lines, and defined the figure while lending the effect of a loose and flowing drapery.

"How is your patient?" he asked.

"She has dropped into a good sleep," the girl whispered. "I am sure we don't need to worry about her at all."

"Nevertheless, it's a luxury I'm going to permit myself for a day or two," he smiled. "I don't have my life saved by a young lady very often."

"I'm sure you will enjoy worrying about her," she laughed.

He got back at her promptly. "There's somebody down-stairs worrying about you. He wants to know if there is anything he can do for you, and suggests inviting himself for breakfast in order to make sure."

"Mr. Ridgway?"

"How did you guess it first crack? Mr. Ridgway it is."

She considered a moment. "Yes, tell him to stay. Molly will be back in time to make breakfast, and I want to talk to him. Now tell me what you did."

"We did Mr. Warner. At least I hope so," he chuckled.

"I'm so glad. And who is to be senator? Is it Waring?"

"No. It wouldn't have been possible to elect him even if we had wanted to."

"And you didn't want to," she flashed.

"No, we didn't," he admitted frankly. "We couldn't afford to have it generally understood that this was merely a partisan fight on the Consolidated, and that we were pulling Waring's chestnuts out of the fire for him."

He did not add, though he might have, that Ridgway was tarred with the same brush as the enemy in this matter.

"Then who is it to be?"

"That's a secret. I can't tell even you that. But we have agreed on a man. Waring is to withdraw and throw his influence for him. The Democratic minority will swing in line for him, and we'll do the rest. That's the plan. It may not go through, however."

"I don't see who it can be that you all unite on. Of course, it isn't Mr. Pelton?"

"I should hope not."

"Or Mr. Samuel Yesler?"

"You've used up all the guesses allowed you. If you want to know, why don't you attend the joint session to-day? It ought to be highly interesting."

"I shall," she announced promptly. "And I'll bring Laska with me."

"She won't be able to come."

"I think she will. It's only a scratch."

"I don't like to think how much worse it might have been."

"Then don't think of it. Tell Waring I'll be down presently."

He went down-stairs again, and Miss Balfour returned to the room.

"Was that Mr. Yesler?" quietly asked a voice from the bed.

"Yes, dear. He has gone back to the hotel. He asked about you, of course."

"He is very kind."

"It was thoughtful, since you only saved his life," admitted the ironical Miss Balfour.

"Wasn't it fortunate that we were up?"

"Very fortunate for him that you were."

Virginia crossed the room to the bed and kissed her friend with some subtle significance too elusive for words. Laska appeared, however to appreciate it. At least, she blushed.

CHAPTER 16.

AN EXPLOSION IN THE TAURUS

The change of the relationship between Ridgway and his betrothed, brought about by the advent of a third person into his life, showed itself in the manner of their greeting. She had always been chary of lovers' demonstrations, but until his return from Alpine he had been wont to exact his privilege in spite of her reluctance. Now he was content with the hand she offered him.

"You've had a strenuous night of it," he said, after a glance at the rather wan face she offered the new day.

"Yes, we have--and for that matter, I suppose you have, too."

Man of iron that he was, he looked fresh as morning dew. With his usual lack of self-consciousness, he had appropriated Leigh's private bath, and was glowing from contact with ice-cold water and a crash towel.

"We've been making history," he agreed. "How's your friend?"

"She has no fever at all. It was only a scratch. She will be down to breakfast in a minute."

"Good. She must be a thoroughbred to come running down into the bullets for a stranger she has never seen."

"She is. You'll like Laska."

"I'm glad she saved Sam from being made a colander. I can't help liking him, though he doesn't approve of me very much."

"I suppose not."

"He is friendly, too." Ridgway laughed as he recalled their battle over who should be the nominee. "But his conscience rules him. It's a free and liberal conscience, generally speaking--nothing Puritan about it, but a distinctive product of the West. Yet, he would not have me for senator at any price."

"Why?"

"Didn't think I was fit to represent the people; said if I went in, it would be to use the office for my personal profit."

"Wasn't he right?"

"More or less. If I were elected, I would build up my machine, of course, but I would see the people got a show, too."

She nodded agreement. "I don't think you would make a bad senator."

"I would be a live wire, anyhow. Sam had other objections to me. He thought I had been using too much money in this campaign."

"And have you?" she asked, curious to see how he would defend himself.

"Yes. I had to if I were going to stand any chance. It wasn't from choice. I didn't really want to be senator. I can't afford to give the time to it, but I couldn't afford to let Harley name the man either. I was between the devil and the deep sea."

"Then, really, Mr. Yesler came to your rescue."

"That's about it, though he didn't intend it that way."

"And who is to be the senator?"

He gave her a cynical smile. "Warner."

"But I thought--why, surely he--" The surprise of his cool announcement took her breath away.

"No, he isn't the man our combination decided on, but the trouble is that our combination is going to fall through. Sam's an optimist, but you'll see I'm right. There are too many conflicting elements of us in one boat. We can't lose three votes and win, and it's a safe bet we lose them. The Consolidated must know by this time what we have been about all night. They're busy now sapping at our weak links. Our only chance is to win on the first vote, and I am very sure we won't be able to do it."

"0h, I hope you are not right." A young woman was standing in the doorway, her arm in a sling. She had come in time to hear his prophesy, and in the disappointment of it had forgotten that he was a stranger.

Virginia remedied this, and they went in to breakfast. Laska was full of interest, and poured out eager questions at Ridgway. It was not for several minutes that Virginia recollected to ask again who was the man they had decided upon.

Her betrothed found some inner source of pleasure that brought out a sardonic smile. "He's a slap in the face at both Harley and me."

"I can't think who--is he honest?"

"As the day."

"And capable?"

"Oh, yes. He's competent enough."

"Presentable?"

"Yes. He'll do the State credit, or rather he would if he were going to be elected."

"Then I give it up."

He was leaning forward to tell, when the sharp buzz of the electric door-bell, continued and sustained, diverted the attention of all of them.

Ridgway put down his napkin. "Probably some one to see me."

He had risen to his feet when the maid opened the door of the dining-room.

"A gentleman to see Mr. Ridgway. He says it is very important."

From the dining-room they could hear the murmur of quick voices, and soon Ridgway returned. He was a transformed man. His eyes were hard as diamonds, and there was the bulldog look of the fighter about his mouth and chin.

"What is it, Waring?" cried Virginia.

"Trouble in the mines. An hour ago Harley's men rushed the Taurus and the New York, and drove my men out. One of my shift-foremen and two of his drillers were killed by an explosion set off by Mike Donleavy, a foreman in the Copper King."

"Did they mean to kill them?" asked the girl whitely.

"I suppose not. But they took the chance. It's murder just the same--by Jove, it's a club with which to beat the legislators into line."

He stopped, his brain busy solving the problem as to how he might best turn this development to his own advantage. Part of his equipment was his ability to decide swiftly and surely issues as they came to him. Now he strode to the telephone and began massing his forces.

"Main 234--Yes--Yes--This the Sun?--

Give me Brayton--Hello, Brayton. Get out a special edition at once charging Harley with murder. Run the word as a red headline clear across the page. Show that Vance Edwards and the other boys were killed while on duty by an attack ordered by Harley. Point out that this is the logical result of his course. Don't mince words. Give it him right from the shoulder. Rush it, and be sure a copy of the paper is on the desk of every legislator before the session opens this morning. Have a reliable man there to see that every man gets one. Scatter the paper broadcast among the miners, too. This is important."

He hung up the receiver, took it down again, and called up Eaton.

"Hello! This you, Steve? Send for Trelawney and Straus right away. Get them to call a mass meeting of the unions for ten o'clock at the courthouse square. Have dodgers printed and distributed announcing it. Shut down all our mines so that the men can come. I want Straus and Trelawney and two or three of the other prominent labor leaders to denounce Harley and lay the responsibility for this thing right at his door. I'll be up there and outline what they had better say."

He turned briskly round to the young women, his eyes shining with a hard bright light. "I'm sorry, but I have got to cut out breakfast this morning. Business is piling up on me too fast. If you'll excuse me, I'll go now."

"What are you going to do?" asked Virginia.

"I haven't time to tell you now. Just watch my smoke," he laughed without mirth.

No sooner did the news of the tragedy reach Simon Harley than he knew the mistake of his subordinates would be a costly one. The foreman, Donleavy, who had directed the attack on the Taurus, had to be brought from the shafthouse under the protection of a score of Pinkerton detectives to safeguard him from the swift vengeance of the miners, who needed but a word to fling themselves against the cordon of police. Harley himself kept his apartments, the hotel being heavily patrolled by guards on the lookout for suspicious characters. The current of public opinion, never in his favor, now ran swiftly against him, and threats were made openly by the infuriated miners to kill him on sight.

The members of the unions came to the massmeeting reading the story of the tragedy as the Sun colored the affair. They stayed sullenly to listen to red-hot speeches against the leader of the trust, and gradually the wrath which was simmering in them began to boil. Ridgway, always with a keen sense of the psychological moment, descended the court-house steps just as this fury was at its height. There were instant cries for a speech from him so persistent that he yielded, though apparently with reluctance. His fine presence and strong deep voice soon gave him the ears of all that dense throng. He was far out of the ordinary as a public speaker, and within a few minutes he had his audience with him. He deprecated any violence; spoke strongly for letting the law take its course; and dropped a suggestion that they send a committee to the State-house to urge that Harley's candidate be defeated for the senatorship.

Like wild-fire this hint spread. Here was something tangible they could do that was still within the law. Harley had set his mind on electing Warner. They would go up there in a body and defeat his plans. Marshals and leaders of companies were appointed. They fell into ranks by fours, nearly ten thousand of them all told. The big clock in the court-house was striking twelve when they began their march to the Statehouse.

CHAPTER 17.

THE ELECTION

At the very moment that the tramp of twenty thousand feet turned toward the State-house, the report of the bribery investigating committee was being read to the legislature met in joint session. The committee reported that it had examined seven witnesses, Yesler, Roper, Landor, James, Reedy, Kellor, and Ward, and that each of then had testified that former Congressman Pelton or others had approached him on behalf of Warner; that an agreement had been made by which the eight votes being cast for Bascom would be give to Warner in consideration of $300,000 in cash, to be held in escrow by Yesler, and that the committee now had the said package, supposed to contain the bills for that amount, in its possession, and was prepared to turn it over to the legislature for examination.

Except for the clerk's voice, as he read the report, a dead silence lay tensely over the crowded hall. Men dared not look at their neighbors, scarce dared breathe, for the terror that hung heavy on their hearts. Scores were there who expected their guilt to be blazoned forth for all the world to read. They waited whitely as the monotonous voice of the clerk went from paragraph to paragraph, and when at last he sat down, having named only the bribers and not the receivers of bribes, a long deep sigh of relief swept the house. Fear still racked them, but for the moment they were safe. Furtively their glances began to go from one to another of their neighbors and ask for how long safety would endure.

One could have heard the rustle of a leaf as the chairman of the committee stepped forward and laid on the desk of the presiding officer the incriminating parcel. It seemed an age while the chief clerk opened it, counted the bills, and announced that one hundred thousand dollars was the sum contained within.

Stephen Eaton then rose in his seat and presented quietly his resolution, that since the evidence submitted was sufficient to convict of bribery, the judge of the district court of the County of Mesa be requested to call a special session of the grand jury to investigate the report. It was not until Sam Yesler rose to speak upon that report that the pent-up storm broke loose.

He stood there in the careless garb of the cattleman, a strong clean-cut figure as one would see in a day's ride, facing with unflinching steel-blue eyes the tempest of human passion he had evoked. The babel of voices rose and fell and rose again before he could find a chance to make himself heard. In the gallery two quietly dressed young, women, one of them with her arm in a sling, leaned forward breathlessly and waited Laska's eyes glowed with deep fire. She was living her hour of hours, and the man who stood with such quiet courage the focus of that roar of rage was the hero of it.

"You call me Judas, and I ask you what Christ I have betrayed. You call me traitor, but traitor to what? Like you, I am under oath to receive no compensation for my services here other than that allowed by law. To that oath I have been true. Have you?

"For many weeks we have been living in a carnival of bribery, in a debauched hysteria of money-madness. The souls of men have been sifted as by fire. We have all been part and parcel of a man-hunt, an eager, furious, persistent hunt that has relaxed neither night nor day. The lure of gold has been before us every waking hour, and has pursued us into our dreams. The temptation has been ever-present. To some it has been irresistible, to some maddening, to others, thank God! it has but proved their strength. Our hopes, our fears, our loves, our hates: these seducers of honor have pandered to them all. Our debts and our business, our families and our friendships, have all been used to hound us. To-day I put the stigma for this shame where it belongs--upon Simon Harley, head of the Consolidated and a score of other trusts, and upon Waring Ridgway, head of the Mesa Ore-producing Company. These are the debauchers of our commonwealth's fair name, and you, alas! the traffickers who hope to live upon its virtue. I call upon you to-day to pass this resolution and to elect a man to the United States senate who shall owe no allegiance to any power except the people, or to receive forever the brand of public condemnation. Are you free men? Or do you wear the collar of the Consolidated, the yoke of Waring Ridgway? The vote which you will cast to-day is an answer that shall go flying to the farthest corner of your world, an answer you can never hope to change so long as you live."

He sat down in a dead silence. Again men drew counsel from their fears. The resolution passed unanimously, for none dared vote against it lest he brand himself as bought and sold.

It was in this moment, while the hearts of the guilty were like water, that there came from the lawn outside the roar of a multitude of voices. Swiftly the word passed that ten thousand miner had come to see that Warner was not elected. That they were in a dangerous frame of mind, all knew. It was a passionate undisciplined mob and to thwart them would have been to invite a riot.

Under these circumstances the joint assembly proceeded to ballot for a senator. The first name called was that of Adams. He was an old cattleman and a Democrat.

"Before voting, I want to resign my plate a few moments to Mr. Landor, of Kit Carson County," he said.

Landor was recognized, a big broad-shouldered plainsman with a leathery face as honest as the sun. He was known and liked by everybody, even by those opposed to him.

"I'm going to make a speech," he announced with the broad smile that showed a flash of white teeth. "I reckon it'll be the first I ever made here, and I promise it will be the last, boys. But I won't keep you long, either. You all know how things have been going; how men have been moving in and out and buying men here like as if they were cattle on the hoof. You've seen it, and I've seen it. But we didn't have the nerve to say it should stop. One man did. He's the biggest man in this big State to-day, and it ain't been five minutes since I heard you hollar your lungs out cursing him. You know who I mean--Sam Yesler."

He waited till the renewed storm of cheers and hisses had died away.

"It don't do him any harm for you to hollar at him, boys--not a mite. I want to say to you that he's a man. He saw our old friends falling by the wayside and some of you poor weaklings selling yourselves for dollars. Because he is an honest, game man, he set out to straighten things up. I want to tell you that my hat's off to Sam Yesler.

"But that ain't what I rose for. I'm going to name for the United States senate a clean man, one who doesn't wear either the Harley or the Ridgway brand. He's as straight as a string, not a crooked hair in his head, and every manjack of you knows it. I'm going to name a man"--he stopped an instant to smile genially around upon the circle of uplifted faces--"who isn't any friend of either one faction or another, a man who has just had independence enough to quit a big job because it wasn't on the square. That man's name is Lyndon Hobart. If you want to do yourselves proud, gentlemen, you'll certainly elect him."

If it was a sensation he had wanted to create, he had it. The Warner forces were taken with dumb surprise. But many of them were already swiftly thinking it would be the best way out of a bad business. He would be conservative, as fair to the Consolidated as to the enemy. More, just now his election would appeal to the angry mob howling outside the building, for they could ask nothing more than the election of the man who had resigned rather than order the attack on the Taurus, which had resulted in the death of some of their number.

Hoyle, of the Democrats, seconded the nomination, as also did Eaton, in a speech wherein he defended the course of Ridgway and withdrew his name.

Within a few minutes of the time that Eaton sat down, the roll had been called and Hobart elected by a vote of seventy-three to twenty-four, the others refusing to cast a ballot.

The two young women, sitting together in the front row of the gallery, were glowing with triumphant happiness. Virginia was still clapping her hands when a voice behind her suggested that the circumstances did not warrant her being so happy over the result. She turned, to see Waring Ridgway smiling down at her.

"But I can't help being pleased. Wasn't Mr. Yesler magnificent?"

"Sam was all right, though he might have eased up a bit when he pitched into me."

"He had to do that to be fair. Everybody knows you and he are friends. I think it was fine of him not to let that make any difference in his telling the truth."

"Oh, I knew it would please you," her betrothed laughed. "What do you say to going out to lunch with me? I'll get Sam, too, if I can."

The young women consulted eyes and agreed very readily. Both of them enjoyed being so near to the heart of things.

"If Mr. Yesler will lunch with the debaucher of the commonwealth, we shall be very happy to join the party," said Virginia demurely.

Ridgway led them down to the floor of the House. Through the dense throng they made their way slowly toward him, Ridgway clearing a path with his broad shoulders.

Suddenly they heard him call sharply, "Look out, Sam."

The explosion of a revolver followed sharply his words. Ridgway dived through the press, tossing men to right and left of him as a steamyacht does the waves. Through the open lane he left in his wake, the young women caught the meaning of the turmoil: the crumpled figure was Yesler swaying into the arms of his friend, Roper, the furious drink-flushed face of Pelton and the menace of the weapon poised for a second shot, the swift impact of Waring's body, and the blow which sent the next bullet crashing into the chandelier overhead. All this they glimpsed momentarily before the press closed in on the tragic scene and cut off their view.

CHAPTER 18.

FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS

While Harley had been in no way responsible for Pelton's murderous attack upon Yesler, public opinion held him to account. The Pinkertons who had, up till this time, been employed at the mines, were now moved to the hotel to be ready for an emergency. A special train was held in readiness to take the New Yorker out of the State in the event that the stockman should die. Meanwhile, the harassing attacks of Ridgway continued. Through another judge than Purcell, the absurd injunction against working the Diamond King, the Mary K, and the Marcus Daly had been dissolved, but even this advantage had been neutralized by the necessity of giving back to the enemy the Taurus and the New York, of which he had just possessed himself. All his life he had kept a wheather-eye upon the impulsive and fickle public. There were times when its feeling could be abused with impunity, and other times when this must be respected. Reluctantly, Harley gave the word for the withdrawal of his men from the territory gained. Ridgway pushed his advantage home and secured an injunction, not only against the working, but against the inspection of the Copper King and the Jim Hill. The result of the Consolidated move had been in effect to turn over, temporarily, its two rich mines to be looted by the pirate, and to make him very much stronger than before with his allies, the unions. By his own imprudence, Harley had made a bad situation worse, and delivered himself, with his hands tied, into the power of the enemy.

In the days of turmoil that followed, Waring Ridgway's telling blows scored once and again. The morning after the explosion, he started a relief fund in his paper, the Sun, for the families of the dead miners, contributing two thousand dollars himself. He also insisted that the Consolidated pay damages to the bereaved families to the extent of twenty thousand dollars for each man killed. The town rang with his praises. Mesa had always been proud of his success; had liked the democratic spirit of him that led him to mix on apparently equal terms with his working men, and had backed him in his opposition to the trust because his plucky and unscrupulous fight had been, in a measure, its fight. But now it idolized him. He was the buffer between it and the trust, fighting the battles of labor against the great octopus of Broadway, and beating it to a standstill. He was the Moses destined to lead the working man out of the Egypt of his discontent. Had he not maintained the standard of wages and forced the Consolidated to do the same? Had he not declared an eight-hour day, and was not the trust almost ready to do this also, forced by the impetus his example had given the unions? So Ridgway's agents whispered, and the union leaders, whom he had bought, took up the burden of their tale and preached it both in private talk and in their speeches.

In an attempt to stem the rising tide of denunciation that was spreading from Mesa to the country at large, Harley announced an eight hour day and an immense banquet to all the Consolidated employees in celebration of the occasion. Ten thousand men sat down to the long tables, but when one of the speakers injudiciously mentioned the name of Ridgway, there was steady cheering for ten minutes. It was quite plain that the miners gave him the credit for having forced the Consolidated to the eight-hour day.

The verdict of the coroner's jury was that Vance Edwards and the other deceased miners had come to their death at the hands of the foreman, Michael Donleavy, at the instigation of Simon Harley. True bills were at once drawn up by the prosecuting attorney of Mesa County, an official elected by Ridgway, charging Harley and Donleavy with conspiracy, resulting in the murder of Vance Edwards. The billionaire furnished bail for himself and foreman, treating the indictments merely as part of the attacks of the enemy.

The tragedy in the Taurus brought to the surface a bitterness that had hitherto not been apparent in the contest between the rival copper interests. The lines of division became more sharply drawn, and every business man in Mesa was forced to declare himself on one side or the other. Harley scattered detectives broadcast and imported five hundred Pinkertons to meet any emergency that might arise. The spies of the Consolidated were everywhere, gathering evidence against the Mesa Ore-producing Company, its conduct of the senatorial campaign, its judges, and its supporters Criminal indictments flew back and forth thick as snowflakes in a Christmas storm.

It began to be noticed that an occasional foreman, superintendent, or mining engineer was slipping from the employ of Ridgway to that of the trust, carrying secrets and evidence that would be invaluable later in the courts. Everywhere the money of the Consolidated, scattered lavishly where it would do the most good, attempted to sap the loyalty of the followers of the other candidates. Even Eaton was approached with the offer of a bribe.

But Ridgway's potent personality had built up an esprit de corps not easily to be broken. The adventurers gathered to his side were, for the most part, bound to him by ties personal in their nature. They were financial fillibusters, pledged to stand or fall together, with an interest in their predatory leader's success that was not entirely measurable in dollars and cents. Nor was that leader the man to allow the organization he had builded with such care to become disintegrated while he slept. His alert eye and cheery smile were everywhere, instilling confidence in such as faltered, and dread in those contemplating defection.

He harassed his rival with an audacity that was almost devilish in its unexpected ingenuity. For the first time in his life Simon Harley, the town back on the defensive by a combination of circumstances engineered by a master brain, knew what it was to be checkmated. He had hot the least doubt of ultimate victory, but the tentative success of the brazen young adventurer, were gall and wormwood to his soul. He had made money his god, had always believed it would buy anything worth while except life, but this Western buccaneer had taught him it could not purchase the love of a woman nor the immediate defeat of a man so well armed as Waring Ridgway. In truth, though Harley stuck at nothing, his success in accomplishing the destruction of this thorn in his side was no more appreciable than had been that of Hobart. The Westerner held his own and more, the while he robbed the great trust of its ore under cover of the courts.

In the flush of success, Ridgway, through his lieutenant, Eaton, came to Judge Purcell asking that a receiver be appointed for the Consolidated Supply Company, a subsidiary branch of the trust, on the ground that its affairs were not being properly administered. The Supply Company had paid dividends ranging from fifteen to twenty-five per cent for many years, but Ridgway exercised his right as a stockholder to ask for a receivership. In point of fact, he owned, in the name of Eaton, only one-tenth of one per cent of the stock, but it was enough to serve. For Purcell was a bigoted old Missourian, as courageous and obstinate as perfect health and ignorance could make him. He was quite innocent of any legal knowledge, his own rule of law being to hit a Consolidated head whenever he saw one. Lawyers might argue themselves black in the face without affecting his serenity or his justice.

Purcell granted the application, as well as a restraining order against the payment of dividends until further notice, and appointed Eaton receiver over the protests of the Consolidated lawyers.

Ridgway and Eaton left the court-room together, jubilant over their success. They dined at a restaurant, and spent the evening at the ore-producing company's offices, discussing ways and means. When they had finished, his chief followed Eaton to the doors, an arm thrown affectionately round his shoulder.

"Steve, we're going to make a big killing. I was never so sure of anything in my life as that we shall beat Simon Harley at his own game. We're bound to win. We've got to win."

"I wish I were as sure as you."

"It's hard pounding does it, my boy. We'll drive him out of the Montana copper-fields yet. We'll show him there is one little corner of the U. S. where Simon Harley's orders don't go as the last word."

"He has a hundred dollars to your one."

"And I have youth and mining experience and the inside track, as well as stancher friends than he ever dreamed of," laughed Ridgway, clapping the other on the back. "Well, good night, Steve. Pleasant dreams, old man."

The boyish secretary shook hands warmly. "You're a MAN, chief. If anybody can pull us through it will be you."

Triumphant confidence rang in the other's answering laugh. "You bet I can, Steve,"

CHAPTER 19.

ONE MILLION DOLLARS

Eaton, standing on the street curb at the corner of the Ridgway Building, lit a cigar while he hesitated between his rooms and the club. He decided for the latter, and was just turning up the hill, when a hand covered his mouth and an arm was flung around his neck in a stranglehold. He felt himself lifted like a child, and presently discovered that he was being whirled along the street in a closed carriage.

"You needn't be alarmed, Mr. Eaton. We're not going to injure you in the least," a low voice explained in his ear. "If you'll give me your word not to cry out, I'll release your throat."

Eaton nodded a promise, and, when he could find his voice, demanded: "Where are you taking me?"

"You'll see in a minute, sir. It's all right."

The carriage turned into an alley and stopped. Eaton was led to a ladder that hung suspended from the fire-escape, and was bidden to mount. He did so, following his guide to the second story, and being in turn followed by the other man. He was taken along a corridor and into the first of a suite of rooms opening into it. He knew he was in the Mesa House, and suspected at once that he was in the apartments of Simon Harley.

His suspicion ripened to conviction when his captors led him through two more rooms, into one fitted as an office. The billionaire sat at a desk, busy over some legal papers he was reading, but he rose at once and came forward with hand extended to meet Eaton. The young man took his hand mechanically.

"Glad to have the pleasure of talking with, you, Mr. Eaton. You must accept my apologies for my methods of securing a meeting. They are rather primitive, but since you declined to call and see me, I can hold only you to blame." An acid smile touched his lips for a moment, though his eyes were expressionless as a wall. "Mr. Eaton, I have brought you here in this way to have a confidential talk with you, in order that it might not in any way reflect upon you in case we do not come to an arrangement satisfactory to both of us. Your friends cannot justly blame you for this conference, since you could not avoid it. Mr. Eaton, take a chair."

The wills of the two men flashed into each other's eyes like rapiers. The weaker man knew that was before him and braced himself to meet it. He would not sit down. He would not discuss anything. So he told himself once and again to hold himself steady against the impulse to give way to those imperious eyes behind which was the impassive, compelling will.

"Sit down, Mr. Eaton."

"I'll stand, Mr. Harley."

"SIT DOWN."

The cold jade eyes were not to be denied. Eaton's gaze fell sullenly, and he slid into a chair.

"I'll discuss no business except in the presence of Mr. Ridgway," he said doggedly, falling back to his second line of defenses.

"To the contrary, my business is with you and not with Mr. Ridgway."

"I know of no business you can have with me."

"Wherefore I have brought you here to acquaint you with it."

The young man lifted his head reluctantly and waited. If he had been willing to confess it to himself, he feared greatly this ruthless spoiler who had built up the greatest fortune in the world from thousands of wrecked lives. He felt himself choking, just as if those skeleton fingers had been at his throat. but he promised himself ever to yield.

The fathomless, dominant gaze caught and held his eyes. "Mr. Eaton, I came here to crush Ridgway. I am going to stay here till I do. I'm going to wipe him from the map of Montana-- ruin him so utterly that he can never recover. It has been my painful duty to do this with a hundred men as strong and as confident as he is. After undertaking such an enterprise, I have never faltered and never relented. The men I have ruined were ruined beyond hope of recovery. None of them have ever struggled to their feet again. I intend to make Waring Ridgway a pauper."

Stephen Eaton could have conceived nothing more merciless than this man's callous pronouncement, than the calm certainty of his unemphasized words. He started to reply, but Harley took the words out of his mouth.

"Don't make a mistake. Don't tie to the paltry successes he has gained. I have not really begun to fight yet."

The young man had nothing to say. His heart was water. He accepted Harley's words as true, for he had told himself the same thing a hundred times. Why had Ridgway rejected the overtures of this colossus of finance? It had been the sheerest folly born of madness to suppose that anybody could stand against him.

"For Ridgway, the die is cast," the iron voice went on. "He is doomed beyond hope. But there is still a chance for you. What do you consider your interest in the Mesa Ore-producing Company worth, Mr. Eaton?"

The sudden question caught Eaton with the force of a surprise. "About three hundred thousand dollars," he heard himself say; and it seemed to him that his voice was speaking the words without his volition.

"I'm going to buy you out for twice that sum. Furthermore, I'm going to take care of your future--going to see that you have a chance to rise."

The waverer's will was in flux, but the loyalty in him still protested. "I can't desert my chief, Mr. Harley."

"Do you call it desertion to leave a raging madman in a sinking boat after you have urged him to seek the safety of another ship?"

"He made me what I am."

"And I will make you ten times what you are. With Ridgway you have no chance to be anything but a subordinate. He is the Mesa Ore-producing Company, and you are merely a cipher. I offer your individuality a chance. I believe in you, and know you to be a strong man." No ironic smile touched Harley's face at this statement. "You need a chance, and I offer it to you. For your own sake take it."

Every grievance Eaton had ever felt against his chief came trooping to his mind. He was domineering. He did ride rough-shod over his allies' opinions and follow the course he had himself mapped out. All the glory of the victory he absorbed as his due. In the popular opinion, Eaton was as a farthing-candle to a great electric search-light in comparison with Ridgway.

"He trusts me," the tempted man urged weakly. He was slipping, and he knew it, even while he assured himself he would never betray his chief.

"He would sell you out to-morrow if it paid him. And what is he but a robber? Every dollar of his holdings is stolen from me. I ask only restitution of you--and I propose to buy at twice, nay at three times, the value of your stolen property. You owe that freebooter no loyalty."

"I can't do it. I can't do it."

"You shall do it." Harley dominated him as bullying schoolmaster does a cringing boy under the lash.

"I can't do it," the young man repeated, all his weak will flung into the denial.

"Would you choose ruin?"

"Perhaps. I don't know," he faltered miserable.

"It's merely a business proposition, young man. The stock you have to sell is valuable to-day. Reject my offer, and a month from now it will be quoted on the market at half its present figure, and go begging at that. It will be absolutely worthless before I finish. You are not selling out Ridgway. He is a ruined man, anyway. But you--I am going to save you in spite of yourself. I am going to shake you from that robber's clutches."

Eaton got to his feet, pallid and limp as a rag. "Don't tempt me," he cried hoarsely. "I tell you I can't do it, sir."

Harley's cold eye did not release him for an instant. "One million dollars and an assured future, or--absolute, utter ruin, complete and final."

"He would murder me--and he ought to," groaned the writhing victim.

"No fear of that. I'll put you where he can't reach you. Just sign your name to this paper, Mr. Eaton."

"I didn't agree. I didn't say I would."

"Sign here. Or, wait one moment, till I get witnesses." Harley touched a bell, and his secretary appeared in the doorway. "Ask Mr. Mott and young Jarvis to step this way."

Harley held out the pen toward Eaton, looking steadily at him. In a strong man the human eye is a sword among weapons. Eaton quailed. The fingers of the unhappy wretch went out mechanically for the pen. He was sweating terror and remorse, but the essential weakness of the man could not stand out unbacked against the masterful force of this man's imperious will. He wrote his name in the places directed, and flung down the pen like a child in a rage.

"Now get me out of Montana before Ridgway knows," he cried brokenly.

"You may leave to-morrow night, Mr. Eaton. You'll only have to appear in court once personally. We'll arrange it quietly for to-morrow afternoon. Ridgway won't know until it is done and you are gone."

CHAPTER 20.

A LITTLE LUNCH AT APHONSE'S

It chanced that Ridgway, through the swinging door of a department store, caught a glimpse of Miss Balfour as he was striding along the street. He bethought him that it was the hour of luncheon, and that she was no end better company than the revamped noon edition of the morning paper. Wherefore he wheeled into the store and interrupted her inspection of gloves.

"I know the bulliest little French restaurant tucked away in a side street just three blocks from here. The happiness disseminated in this world by that chef's salads will some day carry him past St. Peter with no questions asked."

"You believe in salvation by works?" she parried, while she considered his invitation.

"So will you after a trial of Alphonse's salad."

"Am I to understand that I am being invited to a theological discussion of a heavenly salad concocted by Father Alphonse?"

"That is about the specifications."

"Then I accept. For a week my conscience has condemned me for excess of frivolity. You offer me a chance to expiate without discomfort. That is my idea of heaven. I have always believed it a place where one pastures in rich meadows of pleasure, with penalties and consciences all excluded from its domains."

"You should start a church," he laughed. "It would have a great following--especially if you could operate your heaven this side of the Styx."

She found his restaurant all he had claimed, and more. The little corner of old Paris set her eyes shining. The fittings were Parisian to the least detail. Even the waiter spoke no English.

"But I don't see how they make it pay. How did he happen to come here? Are there enough people that appreciate this kind of thing in Mesa to support it?"

He smiled at her enthusiasm. "Hardly. The place has a scarce dozen of regular patrons. Hobart comes here a good deal. So does Eaton. But it doesn't pay financially. You see, I know because I happen to own it. I used to eat at Alphonse's restaurant in Paris. So I sent for him. It doesn't follow that one has to be less a slave to the artificial comforts of a supercivilized world because one lives at Mesa."

"I see it doesn't. You are certainly a wonderful man."

"Name anything you like. I'll warrant Alphonse can make good if it is not outside of his national cuisine," he boasted.

She did not try his capacity to the limit, but the oysters, the salad, the chicken soup were delicious, with the ultimate perfection that comes only out of Gaul.

They made a delightfully gay and intimate hour of it, and were still lingering over their demi-tasse when Yesler's name was mentioned.

"Isn't it splendid that he's doing so well?" cried the girl with enthusiasm. "The doctor says that if the bullet had gone a fraction of an inch lower, he would have died. Most men would have died anyhow, they say. It was his clean outdoor life and magnificent constitution that saved him."

"That's what pulled him through," he nodded. "It would have done his heart good to see how many friends he had. His recovery was a continuous performance ovation. It would have been a poorer world for a lot of people if Sam Yesler had crossed the divide."

"Yes. It would have been a very much poorer one for several I know."

He glanced shrewdly at her. "I've learned to look for a particular application when you wear that particularly sapient air of mystery."

Her laugh admitted his hit. "Well, I was thinking of Laska. I begin to think HER fair prince has come."

"Meaning Yesler?"

"Yes. She hasn't found it out herself yet. She only knows she is tremendously interested."

"He's a prince all right, though he isn't quite a fairy. The woman that gets him will be lucky.

"The man that gets Laska will be more that lucky," she protested loyally.

"I dare say," he agreed carelessly. "But, then, good women are not so rare as good men. There. are still enough of them left to save the world. But when it comes to men like Sam--well, it would take a Diogenes to find another."

"I don't see how even Mr. Pelton, angry as he was, dared shoot him."

"He had been drinking hard for a week. That will explain anything when you add it to his, temperament. I never liked the fellow."

"I suppose that is why you saved his life when the miners took him and were going to lynch him?"

"I would not have lifted a hand for him. That's the bald truth. But I couldn't let the boys spoil the moral effect of their victory by so gross a mistake. It would have been playing right into Harley's hands."

"Can a man get over being drunk in five minutes? I never saw anybody more sober than Mr. Pelton when the mob were crying for vengeance and you were fighting them back."

"A great shock will sober a man. Pelton is an errant coward, and he had pretty good reason to think he had come to the end of the passage. The boys weren't playing. They meant business."

"They would not have listened to another man in the world except you," she told him proudly.

"It was really Sam they listened to--when he sent out the message asking them to let the law have its way."

"No, I think it was the way you handled the message. You're a wizard at a speech, you know."

"Thanks."

He glanced up, for Alphonse was waiting at his elbow.

"You're wanted on the telephone, monsieur."

"You can't get away from business even for an hour, can you?" she rallied. "My heaven ,wouldn't suit you at all, unless I smuggled in a trust for you to fight."

"I expect it is Eaton," he explained. "Steve phoned down to the office that he isn't feeling well to-day. I asked him to have me called up here. If he isn't better, I'm going to drop round and see him."

But when she caught sight of his face as he returned she knew it was serious.

"What's the matter? Is it Mr. Eaton? Is he very ill?" she cried.

His face was set like broken ice refrozen. "Yes, it's Eaton. They say--but it can't be true!"

She had never seen him so moved. "What is it, Waring?"

"The boy has sold me out. He is at the courthouse now, undoing my work--the Judas!"

The angry blood swept imperiously into her cheeks. "Don't waste any more time with me, Waring. Go--go and save yourself from the traitor. Perhaps it is not too late yet."

He flung her a grateful look. "You're true blue, Virginia. Come! I'll leave you at the store as we pass."

The defection of Eaton bit his chief to the quick. The force of the blow itself was heavy--how heavy he could not tell till he could take stock of the situation. He could see that he would be thrown out of court in the matter of the Consolidated Supply Company receivership, since Eaton's stock would now be in the hands of the enemy. But what was of more importance was the fact that Eaton's interest in the Mesa Ore-producing Company now belonged to Harley, who could work any amount of mischief with it as a lever for litigation.

The effect, too, of the man's desertion upon the morale of the M. O. P. forces must be considered and counteracted, if possible. He fancied he could see his subordinates looking shiftyeyed at each other and wondering who would slip away next.

If it had been anybody but Steve! He would as soon have distrusted his right hand as Steve Eaton. Why, he had made the man, had picked him out when he was a mere clerk, and tied him to himself by a hundred favors. Up on the Snake River he had saved Steve's life once when he was drowning. The boy had always been as close to him as a brother. That Steve should turn traitor was not conceivable. He knew all his intimate plans, stood second to himself in the company. Oh, it was a numbing blow! Ridgway's sense of personal loss and outrage almost obliterated for the moment his appreciation of the business loss.

The motion to revoke the receivership of the Supply Company was being argued when Ridgway entered the court-room. Within a few minutes the news had spread like wild-fire that Eaton was lined up with the Consolidated, and already the paltry dozen of loafers in the court-room had swelled into hundreds, all of them eager for any sensation that might develop.

Ridgway's broad shoulders flung aside the crowd and opened a way to the vacant chair waiting for him. One of his lawyers had the floor and was flaying Eaton with a vitriolic tongue, the while men craned forward all over the room to get a glimpse of the traitor's face.

Eaton sat beside Mott, dry-lipped and pallid, his set eyes staring vacantly into space. Once or twice he flung a furtive glance about him. His stripped and naked soul was enduring a foretaste of the Judgment Day. The whip of scorn with which the lawyer lashed him cut into his shrinking sensibilities, and left him a welter of raw and livid wales. Good God! why had he not known it would be like this? He was paying for his treachery and usury, and it was being burnt into him that as the years passed he must continue to pay in self-contempt and the distrust of his fellows.

The case had come to a hearing before Judge Hughes, who was not one of Ridgway's creatures. That on its merits it would be decided in favor of the Consolidated was a foregone conclusion. It was after the judge had rendered the expected decision that the dramatic moment of the day came to gratify the seasoned court frequenters.

Eaton, trying to slip as quietly as possible from the room, came face to face with his former chief. For an interminable instant the man he had betrayed, blocking the way squarely, held the trembling wretch in the blaze of his scorn. Ridgway's contemptuous eyes sifted to the ingrate's soul until it shriveled. Then he stood disdainfully to one side so that the man might not touch him as he passed.

Some one in the back of the room broke the tense silence and hissed: "The damned Judas!" Instantly echoes of "Judas! Judas!" filled the room, and pursued Eaton to his cab. It would be many years before he could recall without scalding shame that moment when the finger of public scorn was pointed at him in execration.

CHAPTER 21.

HARLEY SCORES

What Harley had sought in the subornation of Eaton had been as much the moral effect of his defection as the tangible results themselves. If he could shake the confidence of the city and State in the freebooter's victorious star, he would have done a good day's work. He wanted the impression to spread that Ridgway's success had passed its meridian.

Nor did he fail of his purpose by more than a hair's breadth. The talk of the street saw the beginning of the end. The common voice ran: "It's 'God help Ridgway' now. He's down and out."

But Waring Ridgway was never more dangerous than in apparent defeat. If he were hit hard by Eaton's treachery, no sign of it was apparent in the jaunty insouciance of his manner. Those having business with him expected to find him depressed and worried, but instead met a man the embodiment of vigorous and confident activity. If the subject were broached, he was ready to laugh with them at Eaton's folly in deserting at the hour when victory was assured.

It was fortunate for Ridgway that the county elections came on early in the spring and gave him a chance to show that his power was still intact. He arranged to meet at once the political malcontents of the State who were banded together against the growing influence of the Consolidated. He had a few days before called together representative men from all parts of the State to discuss a program of action against the enemy, and Ridgway gave a dinner for them at the Quartzite, the evening of Eaton's defection.

He was at the critical moment when any obvious irresolution would have been fatal. His allies were ready to concede his defeat if he would let them. But he radiated such an assured atmosphere of power, such an unconquerable current of vigor, that they could not escape his own conviction of unassailability. He was at his genial, indomitable best, the magnetic charm of fellowship putting into eclipse the selfishness of the man. He had been known to boast of his political exploits, of how he had been the Warwick that had made and unmade governors and United States senators; but the fraternal "we" to-night replaced his usual first person singular.

The business interests of the Consolidated were supreme all over the State. That corporation owned forests and mills and railroads and mines. It ran sheep and cattle-ranches as well as stores and manufactories. Most of the newspapers in the State were dominated by it. Of a population of two hundred and fifty thousand, it controlled more than half directly by the simple means of filling dinner-pails. That so powerful a corporation, greedy for power and wealth, should create a strong but scattered hostility in the course of its growth, became inevitable. This enmity Ridgway proposed to consolidate into a political organization, with opposition to the trust as its cohesive principle, that should hold the balance of power in the State.

When he rose to explain his object in calling them together, Ridgway's clear, strong presentment of the situation, backed by his splendid bulk and powerful personality, always bold and dramatic, shocked dormant antagonisms to activity as a live current does sluggish inertia. For he had eminently the gift of moving speech. The issue was a simple one, he pointed out. Reduced to ultimates, the question was whether the State should control the Consolidated or the Consolildated the State. With simple, telling force he faced the insidious growth of the big copper company, showing how every independent in the State was fighting for his business life against its encroachments, and was bound to lose unless the opposition was a united one. Let the independents obtain and keep control of the State politically and the trust might be curbed; not otherwise. In eternal vigilance and in union lay safety.

He sat down in silence more impressive than any applause. But after the silence came a deluge of cheers, the thunder of them sweeping up and down the long table like a summer storm across a lake.

Presently the flood-gates of talk were unloosed, and the conservatives began to be heard. Opposition was futile because it was too late, they claimed. A young Irishman, primed for the occasion, jumped to his feet with an impassioned harangue that pedestaled Ridgway as the Washington of the West. He showed how one man, in coalition with the labor-unions, had succeeded in carrying the State against the big copper company; how he had elected senators and governors, and legislators and judges. If one man could so cripple the octopus, what could the best blood of the State, standing together, not accomplish? He flung Patrick Henry and Robert Emmet and Daniel Webster at their devoted heads, demanding liberty or death with the bridled eloquence of his race.

But Ridgway was not such a tyro at the game of politics as to depend upon speeches for results. His fine hand had been working quietly for months to bring the malcontents into one camp, shaping every passion to which men are heir to serve his purpose. As he looked down the table he could read in the faces before him hatred, revenge, envy, fear, hope, avarice, recklessness, and even love, as the motives which he must fuse to one common end. His vanity stood on tiptoe at his superb skill in playing on men's wills. He knew he could mold these men to work his desire, and the sequel showed he was right.

When the votes were counted at the end of the bitter campaign that followed, Simon Harley's candidates went down to disastrous defeat all over the State, though he had spent money with a lavish hand. In Mesa County, Ridgway had elected every one of his judges and retired to private life those he could not influence.

Harley's grim lips tightened when the news reached him. "Very well," he said to Mott "We'll see if these patriots can't be reached through their stomachs better than their brains. Order every mill and mine and smelter of the Consolidated closed to-night. Our employees have voted for this man Ridgway. Let him feed them or let them starve."

"But the cost to you--won't it be enormous?" asked Mott, startled at his chief's drastic decision.

Harley bared his fangs with a wolfish smile. "We'll make the public pay. Our store-houses are full of copper. Prices will jump when the supply is reduced fifty per cent. We'll sell at an advance, and clean up a few millions out of the shut-down. Meanwhile we'll starve this patriotic State into submission."

It came to pass even as Harley had predicted. With the Consolidated mines closed, copper, jumped up--up--up. The trust could sit still and coin money without turning a hand, while its employees suffered in the long, bitter Northern winter. All the troubles usually pursuant on a long strike began to fall upon the families of the miners.

When a delegation from the miners' union came to discuss the situation with Harley he met them blandly, with many platitudes of sympathy. He regretted--he regretted exceedingly--the necessity that had been forced upon him of closing the mines. He had delayed doing so in the hope that the situation might be relieved. But it had grown worse, until he had been forced to close. No, he was afraid he could not promise to reopen this winter, unless something were done to ameliorate conditions in the court. Work would begin at once, however, if the legislators would pass a bill making it optional with any party to a suit to have the case transferred to another judge in case he believed the bias of the presiding judge would be prejudicial to an impartial hearing.

Ridgway was flung at once upon the defensive. His allies, the working men, demanded of him that his legislature pass the bill wanted by Harley, in order that work might recommence. He evaded their demands by proposing to arbitrate his difficulties with the Consolidated, by offering to pay into the union treasury hall a million dollars to help carry its members through the winter. He argued to the committee that Harley was bluffing, that within a few weeks the mines and smelters would again be running at their full capacity; but when the pressure on the legislators he had elected became so great that he feared they would be swept from their allegiance to him, he was forced to yield to the clamor.

It was a great victory for Harley. Nobody recognized how great a one more accurately than Waring Ridgway. The leader of the octopus had dogged him over the shoulders of the people, had destroyed at a single blow one of his two principal sources of power. He could no longer rely on the courts to support him, regardless of justice.

Very well. If he could not play with cogged dice, he was gambler enough to take the honest chances of the game without flinching. No despair rang in his voice. The look in his eye was still warm and confident. Mesa questioned him with glimpses friendly but critical. They found no fear in his bearing, no hint of doubt in his indomitable assurance.

CHAPTER 22.

"NOT GUILTY"--"GUILTY"

Ridgway's answer to the latest move of Simon Harley was to put him on trial for his life to answer the charge of having plotted and instigated the death of Vance Edwards. Not without reason, the defense had asked for a change of venue, alleging the impossibility of securing a fair trial at Mesa. The courts had granted the request and removed the case to Avalanche.

On the second day of the trial Aline sat beside her husband, a dainty little figure of fear, shrinking from the observation focused upon her from all sides. The sight of her forlorn sensitiveness so touched Ridgway's heart that he telegraphed Virginia Balfour to come and help support her through the ordeal.

Virginia came, and henceforth two women, both of them young and unusually attractive, gave countenance to the man being tried for his life. Not that he needed their support for himself, but for the effect they might have on the jury. Harley had shrewdly guessed that the white-faced child he had married, whose pathetic beauty was of so haunting a type, and whose big eyes were so quick to reflect emotions, would be a valuable asset to set against the black-clad widow of Vance Edwards.

For its effect upon himself, so far as the trial was concerned, Simon Harley cared not a whit. He needed no bolstering. The old wrecker carried an iron face to the ordeal. His leathern heart was as foreign to fear as to pity. The trial was an unpleasant bore to him, but nothing worse. He had, of course, cast an anchor of caution to windward by taking care to have the jury fixed. For even though his array of lawyers was a formidably famous one, he was no such child as to trust his case to a Western jury on its merits while the undercurrent of popular opinion was setting so strongly against him. Nor had he neglected to see that the court-room was packed with detectives to safeguard him in the event that the sympathy of the attending miners should at any time become demonstrative against him.

The most irritating feature of the trial to the defendant was the presence of the little woman in black, whose burning eyes never left for long his face. He feigned to be unconscious of her regard, but nobody in the court-room was more sure of that look of enduring, passionate hatred than its victim. He had made her a widow, and her heart cried for revenge. That was the story the eyes told dumbly.

From first to last the case was bitterly contested, and always with the realization among those present--except for that somber figure in black, whose beady eyes gimleted the defendant--that it was another move in the fight between the rival copper kings. The district attorney had worked up his case very carefully, not with much hope of securing a conviction, but to mass a total of evidence that would condemn the Consolidated leader-before the world.

To this end, the foreman, Donleavy, had been driven by a process of sweating to turn State's evidence against his master. His testimony made things look black for Harley, but when Hobart took the stand, a palpably unwilling witness, and supported his evidence, the Ridgway adherents were openly jubilant. The lawyers for the defense made much of the fact that Hobart had just left the Consolidated service after a disagreement with the defendant and had been elected to the senate by his enemies, but the impression made by his moderation and the fine restraint of his manner, combined with his reputation for scrupulous honesty, was not to be shaken by the subtle innuendos and blunt aspersions of the legal array he faced.

Nor did the young district attorney content himself with Hobart's testimony. He put his successor, Mott, on the stand, and gave him a bad hour while he tried to wring the admission out of him that Harley had personally ordered the attack on the miners of the Taurus. But for the almost constant objections of the opposing counsel, which gave him time to recover himself, the prosecuting attorney would have succeeded.

Ridgway, meeting him by chance after luncheon at the foot of the hotel elevator--for in a town the size of Avalanche, Waring had found it necessary to put up at the same hotel as the enemy or take second best, an alternative not to his fastidious taste--rallied him upon the predicament in which he had found himself.

"It's pretty hard to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, without making indiscreet admissions about one's friends, isn't it?" he asked, with his genial smile.

"Did I make any indiscreet admissions?"

"I don't say you did, though you didn't look as if you were enjoying yourself. I picked up an impression that you had your back to the wall; seemed to me the jury rather sized it up that way, Mott."

"We'll know what the jury thinks in a few days."

"Shall we?" the other laughed aloud. "Now, I'm wondering whether we shall know what they really think."

"If you mean that the jury has been tampered with it is your duty to place your evidence before the court, Mr. Ridgway."

"When I hear the verdict I'll tell you what I think about the jury," returned the president of the Ore-producing Company, with easy impudence as he passed into the elevator.

At the second floor Waring left it and turned toward the ladies' parlor. It had seemed to him that Aline had looked very tired and frail at the morning session, and he wanted to see Virginia about arranging to have them take a long drive into the country that afternoon. He had sent his card up with a penciled note to the effect that he would wait for her in the parlor.

But when he stepped through the double doorway of the ornate room it was to become aware of a prior occupant. She was reclining on a divan at the end of the large public room. Neither lying nor sitting, but propped up among a dozen pillows with head and limbs inert and the long lashes drooped on the white cheeks, Aline looked the pathetic figure of a child fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion after a long strain.

Since he was the man he was, unhampered by any too fine sense of what was fitting, he could no more help approaching than he could help the passionate pulse of pity that stirred in his heart at sight of her forlorn weariness.

Her eyes opened to find his grave compassion looking down at her. She showed no surprise at his presence, though she had not previously known of it. Nor did she move by even so much as the stir of a limb.

"This is wearing you out," he said, after the long silence in which her gaze was lost helplessly in his. "You must go home--away from it all. You must forget it, and if it ever crosses your mind think of it as something with which you have no concern."

"How can I do that--now."

The last word slipped out not of her will, but from an undisciplined heart. It stood for the whole tangled story of her troubles: the unloved marriage which had bereft her of her heritage of youth and joy, the love that had found her too late and was so poignant a fount of distress to her, the web of untoward circumstance in which she was so inextricably entangled.

"How did you ever come to do it?" he asked roughly, out of the bitter impulse of his heart.

She knew that the harshness was not for her, as surely as she knew what he meant by his words.

"I did wrong. I know that now, but I didn't know it then. Though even then I felt troubled about it. But my guardian said it was best, and I knew so little. Oh, so very, very little. Why was I not taught things, what every girl has a right to know--until life teaches me--too late?"

Nothing he could say would comfort her. For the inexorable facts forbade consolation. She had made shipwreck of her life before the frail raft of her destiny had well pushed forth from harbor. He would have given much to have been able to take the sadness out of her great childeyes, but he knew that not even by the greatness of his desire could he take up her burden. She must carry it alone or sink under it.

"You must go away from here back to your people. If not now, then as soon as the trial is over. Make him take you to your friends for a time."

"I have no friends that can help me." She said it in an even little voice of despair.

"You have many friends. You have made some here. Virginia is one." He would not name himself as only a friend, though he had set his iron will to claim no more.

"Yes, Virginia is my friend. She is good to me. But she is going to marry you, and then you will both forget me."

"I shall never forget you." He cried it in a low, tense voice, his clenched hands thrust into the pockets of his sack coat.

Her wan smile thanked him. It was the most he would let himself say. Though her heart craved more, she knew she must make the most of this.

"I came up to see Virginia," he went on, with a change of manner. "I want her to take you driving this afternoon. Forget about that wretched trial if you can. Nothing of importance will take place to-day."

He turned at the sound of footsteps, and saw that Miss Balfour had come into the room.

"I want you to take Mrs. Harley into the fresh sunshine and clear air this afternoon. I have been telling her to forget this trial. It's a farce, anyhow. Nothing will come of it. Take her out to the Homes--take and cheer her up."

"Yes, my lord." Virginia curtseyed obediently.

"It will do you good, too."

She shot a mocking little smile at him. "It's very good of you to think of me."

"Still, I do sometimes."

"Whenever it is convenient," she added.

But with Aline watching them the spirit of badinage in him was overmatched. He gave it up and asked what kind of a rig he should send round. Virginia furnished him the necessary specifications, and he turned to go.

As he left the room Simon Harley entered. They met face to face, and after an instant's pause each drew aside to allow the other to pass. The New Yorker inclined his head silently and moved forward toward his wife. Ridgway passed down the corridor and into the elevator.

As the days of the trial passed excitement grew more tense. The lawyers for the prosecution and the defense made their speeches to a crowded and enthralled court-room. There was a feverish uncertainty in the air. It reached a climax when the jury stayed out for eleven hours before coming to a verdict. From the moment it filed back into the court-room with solemn faces the dramatic tensity began to foreshadow the tragedy about to be enacted. The woman Harley had made a widow sat erect and rigid in the seat where she had been throughout the trial. Her eyes blazed with a hatred that bordered madness. Ridgway had observed that neither Aline Harley nor Virginia was present, and a note from the latter had just reached him to the effect that Aline was ill with the strain of the long trial. Afterward Ridgway could never thank his pagan gods enough that she was absent.

There was a moment of tense waiting before the judge asked:

"Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?"

The foreman rose. "We have, your honor."

A folded note was handed to the judge. He read it slowly, with an inscrutable face.

"Is this your verdict, gentlemen of the jury?"

"It is, your honor."

Silence, full and rigid, held the room after the words "Not guilty" had fallen from the lips of the judge. The stillness was broken by a shock as of an electric bolt from heaven.

The exploding echoes of a pistol-shot reverberated. Men sprang wildly to their feet, gazing at each other in the distrust that fear generates. But one man was beyond being startled by any more earthly sounds. His head fell forward on the table in front of him, and a thin stream of blood flowed from his lips. It was Simon Harley, found guilty, sentenced, and executed by the judge and jury sitting in the outraged, insane heart of the woman he had made a widow.

Mrs. Edwards had shot him through the head with a revolver she had carried in her shoppingbag to exact vengeance in the event of a miscarriage of justice.

CHAPTER 23.

ALINE TURNS A CORNER

Aline might have been completely prostrated by the news of her husband's sudden end, coming as it did as the culmination of a week of strain and horror. That she did not succumb was due, perhaps, to Ridgway's care for her. When Harley's massive gray head had dropped forward to the table, his enemy's first thought had been of her. As soon as he knew that death was sure, he hurried to the hotel.

He sent his card up, and followed it so immediately that he found her scarcely risen from the divan on which she had been lying in the receiving-room of her apartments. The sleep was not yet shaken from her lids, nor was the wrinkled flush smoothed from the soft cheek that had been next the cushion. Even in his trouble for her he found time to be glad that Virginia was not at the moment with her. It gave him the sense of another bond between them that this tragic hour. should belong to him and her alone--this hour of destiny when their lives swung round a corner beyond which lay wonderful vistas of kindly sunbeat and dewy starlight stretching to the horizon's edge of the long adventure.

She checked the rush of glad joy in her heart the sight of him always brought, and came forward slowly. One glance at his face showed that he had brought grave news.

"What is it? Why are you here?" she cried tensely.

"To bring you trouble, Aline."

"Trouble!" Her hand went to her heart quickly.

"It is about--Mr. Harley."

She questioned him with wide, startled eyes, words hesitating on her trembling lips and flying unvoiced.

"Child--little partner--the orders are to be brave." He came forward and took her hands in his, looking down at her with eyes she thought full of infinitely kind pity.

"Is it--have they--do you mean the verdict?"

"Yes, the verdict; but not the verdict of which you are thinking."

She turned a quivering face to his. "Tell me. I shall be brave."

He told her the brutal fact as gently as he could, while he watched the blood ebb from her face. As she swayed he caught her in his arms and carried her to the divan. When, presently, her eyes fluttered open, it was to look into his pitiful ones. He was kneeling beside her, and her head was pillowed on his arm.

"Say it isn't true," she murmured.

"It is true, dear."

She moved her head restlessly, and he took away his arm, rising to draw a chair close to the lounge. She slipped her two hands under her head, letting them lie palm to palm on the sofapillow. The violet eyes looked past him into space. Her tangled thoughts were in a chaos of disorder. Even though she had known but a few months and loved not at all the grim, gray-haired man she had called husband, the sense of wretched bereavement, the nearness of death, was strong on her. He had been kind to her in his way, and the inevitable closeness of their relationship, repugnant as it had been to her, made its claims felt. An hour ago he had been standing here, the strong and virile ruler over thousands. Now he lay stiff and cold, all his power shorn from him without a second's warning. He had kissed her good-by, solicitous for her welfare, and it had been he that had been in need of care rather than she. Two big tears hung on her lids and splashed to her cheeks. She began to sob, and half-turned on the divan, burying her face in her hands.

Ridgway let her weep without interruption for a time, knowing that it would be a relief to her surcharged heart and overwrought nerves. But when her sobs began to abate she became aware of his hand resting on her shoulder. She sat up, wiping her eyes, and turned to him a face sodden with grief.

"You are good to me," she said simply.

"If my goodness were only less futile! Heaven knows what I would give to ward off trouble from you. But I can't, nor can I bear it for you."

"But it is a help to know you would if you could. He--I think he wanted to ward off grief from me, but he could not, either. I was often lonely and sad, even though he was kind to me. And now he has gone. I wish I had told him how much I appreciated his goodness to me."

"Yes, we all feel that when we have lost some one we love. It is natural to wish we had been better to them and showed them how much we cared. Let me tell you about my mother. I was thirteen when she died. It was in summer. She had not been well for a long time. The boys were going fishing that day and she asked me to stay at home. I had set my heart on going, and I thought it was only a fancy of hers. She did not insist on my staying, so I went, but felt uncomfortable all day. When I came back in the evening they told me she was dead. I felt as if some great icy hand were tightening, on my heart. Somehow I couldn't break down and cry it out. I went around with a white, set face and gave no sign. Even at the funeral it was the same. The neighbors called me hard-hearted and pointed me out to their sons as a terrible warning. And all the time I was torn with agony."

"You poor boy."

"And one night she came to me in a dream. She did not look as she had just before she died, but strong and beautiful, with the color in her face she used to have. She smiled at me and kissed me and rumpled my hair as she used to do. I knew, then, it was all right. She understood, and I didn't care whether others did or not. I woke up crying, and after I had had my grief out I was myself again."

"It was so sweet of her to think to come to you. She must have been loving you up in heaven and saw you were troubled, and came down just to comfort you and tell you it was all right," the girl cried with soft sympathy.

"That's how I understood it. Of course, I was only a boy, but somehow I knew it was more than a dream. I'm not a spiritualist. I don't believe such things happen, but I know it happened to me," he finished illogically, with a smile.

She sighed. "He was always so thoughtful of me, too. I do wish I had--could have been--more--"

She broke off without finishing, but he understood.

"You must not blame yourself for that. He would be the first to tell you so. He took you for what you could give him, and these last days were the best he had known for many years."

"He was so good to me. Oh, you don't know how good."

"It was a great pleasure to him to be good to you, the greatest pleasure he knew."

She looked up as he spoke, and saw shining deep in his eyes the spirit that had taught him to read so well the impulse of another lover, and, seeing it, she dropped her eyes quickly in order not to see what was there. With him it had been only an instant's uncontrollable surge of ecstasy. He meant to wait. Every instinct of the decent thing told him not to take advantage of her weakness, her need of love to rest upon in her trouble, her transparent care for him and confidence in him so childlike in its entirety. For convention he did not care a turn of his hand, but he would do nothing that might shock her self-respect when she came to think of it later. Sternly he brought himself back to realities.

"Shall I see Mr. Mott for you and send him here? It would be better that he should make the arrangements than I."

"If you please. I shall not see you again before I go, then?" Her lips trembled as she asked the question.

"I shall come down to the hotel again and see you before you go. And now good-by. Be brave, and don't reproach yourself. Remember that he would not wish it."

The door opened, and Virginia came in, flushed with rapid walking. She had heard the news on the street and had hurried back to the hotel.

Her eyes asked of Ridgway: "Does she know?" and he answered in the affirmative. Straight to Aline she went and wrapped her in her arms, the latent mothering instinct that is in every woman aroused and dormant.

"Oh, my dear, my dear," she cried softly.

Ridgway slipped quietly from the room and left them together.

CHAPTER 24.

A GOOD SAMARITAN

Yesler, still moving slowly with a walking stick by reason of his green wound, left the street-car and made his way up Forest Road to the house which bore the number 792. In the remote past there had been some spasmodic attempt to cultivate grass and raise some shade-trees along the sidewalks, but this had long since been given up as abortive. An air of decay hung over the street, the unmistakable suggestion of better days. This was writ large over the house in front of which Yesler stopped. The gate hung on one hinge, boards were missing from the walk, and a dilapidated shutter, which had once been green, swayed in the breeze.

A woman of about thirty, dark and pretty but poorly dressed, came to the door in answer to his ring. Two little children, a boy and a girl, with their mother's shy long-lashed Southern eyes of brown, clung to her skirts and gazed at the stranger.

"This is where Mr. Pelton lives, is it not?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Is he at home?"

"Yes, sir."

"May I see him?"

"He's sick."

"I'm sorry to hear it. Too sick to be seen? If not, I should like very much to see him. I have business with him."

The young woman looked at him a little defiantly and a little suspiciously. "Are you a reporter?"

Sam smiled. "No, ma'am."

"Does he owe you money" He could see the underlying blood dye her dusky cheeks when she asked the question desperately, as it seemed to him with a kind of brazen shame to which custom had inured her. She had somehow the air of some gentle little creature of the forests defending her young.

"Not a cent, ma'am. I don't want to do him any harm."

"I didn't hear your name."

"I haven't mentioned it," he admitted, with the sunny smile that was a letter of recommendation in itself. "Fact is I'd rather not tell it till he sees me."

From an adjoining room a querulous voice broke into their conversation. "Who is it, Norma?"

"A gentleman to see you, Tom."

"Who is it?" more sharply.

"It is I, Mr. Pelton. I came to have a talk with you." Yesler pushed forward into the dingy sitting-room with the pertinacity of a bookagent. "I heard you were not well, and I came to find out if I can do anything for you."

The stout man lying on the lounge grew pale before the blood reacted in a purple flush. His very bulk emphasized the shabbiness of the stained and almost buttonless Prince Albert coat he wore, the dinginess of the little room he seemed to dwarf.

"Leave my house, seh. You have ruined this family, and you come to gloat on your handiwork. Take a good look, and then go, Mr. Yesler. You see my wife in cotton rags doing her own work. Is it enough, seh?"

The slim little woman stepped across the room and took her place beside her husband. Her eyes flashed fire at the man she held responsible for the fall of her husband. Yesler's generous heart applauded the loyalty which was proof against both disgrace and poverty. For in the past month both of these had fallen heavily upon her. Tom Pelton had always lived well, and during the past few years he had speculated in ventures far beyond his means. Losses had pursued him, and he had looked to the senatorship to recoup himself and to stand off the creditors pressing hard for payment. Instead he had been exposed, disgraced, and finally disbarred for attempted bribery. Like a horde of hungry rats his creditors had pounced upon the discredited man and wrested from him the remnants of his mortgaged property. He had been forced to move into a mere cottage and was a man without a future. For the only profession at which he had skill enough to make a living was the one from which he had been cast as unfit to practise it. The ready sympathy of the cattleman had gone out to the politician who was down and out. He had heard the situation discussed enough to guess pretty close to the facts, and he could not let himself rest until he had made some effort to help the man whom his exposure had ruined, or, rather, had hastened to ruin, for that result had been for years approaching.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Pelton. If I've injured you I want to make it right."

"Make it right!" The former congressman got up with an oath. "Make it right! Can you give me back my reputation, my future? Can you take away the shame that has come upon my wife, and that my children will have to bear in the years to come? Can you give us back our home, our comfort, our peace of mind?"

"No, I can't do this, but I can help you to do it all," the cattleman made answer quietly.

He offered no defense, though he knew perfectly well none was needed. He had no responsibility in the calamity that had befallen this family. Pelton's wrong-doing had come home to those he loved, and he could rightly blame nobody but himself. However much he might arraign those who had been the agents of his fall, he knew in his heart that the fault had been his own.

Norma Pelton, tensely self-repressed, spoke now. "How can you do this, sir?"

"I can't do it so long as you hold me for an enemy, ma'am. I'm ready to cry quits with your husband and try a new deal. If I injured him he tried to even things up. Well, let's say things are squared and start fresh. I've got a business proposition to make if you're willing to listen to it."

"What sort of a proposition?"

"I'm running about twenty-five thousand sheep up in the hills. I've just bought a ranch with a comfortable ranch-house on it for a kind of central point. My winter feeding will all be done from it as a chief place of distribution. Same with the shearing and shipping. I want a good man to put in charge of my sheep as head manager, and I would be willing to pay a proper salary. There ain't any reason why this shouldn't work into a partnership if he makes good. With wool jumping, as it's going to do in the next four years, the right kind of man can make himself independent for life. My idea is to increase my holdings right along, and let my manager in as a partner as soon as he shows he is worth it. Now that ranch-house is a decent place. There's a pretty good school, ma'am, for the children. The folks round that neighborhood may not have any frills, but--"

"Are you offering Tom the place as manager?" she demanded, in amazement.

"That was my idea, ma'am. It's not what you been used to, o' course, but if you're looking for a change I thought I'd speak of it," he said diffidently.

She looked at him in a dumb surprise. She, too, in her heart knew that this man was blameless. He had done his duty, and had nearly lost his life for it at the hands of her husband. Now, he had come to lift them out of the hideous nightmare into which they had fallen. He had come to offer them peace and quiet and plenty in exchange for the future of poverty and shame and despair which menaced them. They were to escape into God's great hills, away from the averted looks and whispering tongues and the temptations to drown his trouble that so constantly beset the father of her children. Despite his faults she still loved Tom Pelton; he was a kind and loving husband and father. Out on the range there still waited a future for him. When she thought of it a lump rose in her throat for very happiness. She, who had been like a rock beside him in his trouble, broke down now and buried her head in her husband's coat.

"Don't you, honey--now, don't you cry." The big man had lost all his pomposity, and was comforting his sweetheart as simply as a boy. "It's all been my fault. I've been doing wrong for years--trying to pull myself out of the mire by my bootstraps. By Gad, you're a man, Sam Yesler, that's what you are. If I don't turn ovah a new leaf I'd ought to be shot. We'll make a fresh start, sweetheart. Dash me, I'm nothing but a dashed baby." And with that the overwrought man broke down, too.

Yesler, moved a good deal himself, maintained the burden of the conversation cheerfully.

"That's all settled, then. Tell you I'm right glad to get a competent man to put in charge. Things have been running at loose ends, because I haven't the time to look after them. This takes a big load off my mind. You better arrange to go up there with me as soon as you have time, Pelton, and look the ground over. You'll want to make some changes if you mean to take your family up there. Better to spend a few hundreds and have things the way you want them for Mrs. Pelton than to move in with things not up to the mark. Of course, I'll put the house in the shape you want it. But we can talk of that after we look it over."

In his embarrassment he looked so much the boy, so much the culprit caught stealing apples and up for sentence, that Norma Pelton's gratitude took courage. She came across to him and held out both hands, the shimmer of tears still in the soft brown eyes.

"You've given us more than life, Mr. Yesler. You can't ever know what you have done for us. Some things are worse than death to some people. I don't mean poverty, but--other things. We can begin again far away from this tainted air that has poisoned us. I know it isn't good form to be saying this. One shouldn't have feelings in public. But I don't care. I think of the children--and Tom. I didn't expect ever to be happy again, but we shall. I feel it."

She broke down again and dabbed at her eyes with her kerchief. Sam, very much embarrassed but not at all displeased at this display of feeling, patted her dark hair and encouraged her to composure.

"There. It's all right, now, ma'am. Sure you'll be happy. Any mother that's got kids like these--"

He caught up the little girl in his arms by way of diverting attention from himself.

This gave a new notion to the impulsive little woman.

"I want you to kiss them both. Come here, Kennie. This is Mr. Yesler, and he is the best man you've ever seen. I want you to remember that he has been our best friend."

"Yes, mama."

"Oh, sho, ma'am!" protested the overwhelmed cattleman, kissing both the children, nevertheless.

Pelton laughed. He felt a trifle hysterical himself. "If she thinks it she'll say it when she feels that way. I'm right surprised she don't kiss you, too."

"I will," announced Norma promptly, with a pretty little tide of color.

She turned toward him, and Yesler, laughing, met the red lips of the new friend he had made.

"Now, you've got just grounds for shooting me," he said gaily, and instantly regretted his infelicitous remark

For both husband and wife fell grave at his words. It was Pelton that answered them.

"I've been taught a lesson, Mr. Yesler. I'm never going to pack a gun again as long as I live, unless I'm hunting or something of that sort, and I'm never going to drink another drop of liquor. It's all right for some men, but it isn't right for me."

"Glad to hear it. I never did believe in the hip-pocket habit. I've lived here twenty years, and I never found it necessary except on special occasions. When it comes to whisky, I reckon we'd all be better without it."

Yesler made his escape at the earliest opportunity and left them alone together. He lunched at the club, attended to some correspondence he had, and about 3:30 drifted down the street toward the post-office. He had expectations of meeting a young woman who often passed about that time on her way home from school duties.

It was, however, another young woman whose bow he met in front of Mesa's largest department store.

"Good afternoon, Miss Balfour."

She nodded greeting and cast eyes of derision on him.

"I've been hearing about you. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

"Yes, ma'am. What for in particular? There are so many things."

"You're a fine Christian, aren't you?" she scoffed.

"I ain't much of a one. That's a fact," he admitted. "What is it this time--poker?"

"No, it isn't poker. Worse than that. You've been setting a deplorable example to the young."

"To young ladies--like Miss Virginia?" he wanted to know.

"No, to young Christians. I don't know what our good deacons will say about it." She illuminated her severity with a flashing smile. "Don't you know that the sins of the fathers are to descend upon their children even to the third and fourth generation? Don't you know that when a man does wrong he must die punished, and his children and his wife, of course, and that the proper thing to do is to stand back and thank Heaven we haven't been vile sinners?"

"Now, don't you begin on that, Miss Virginia," he warned.

"And after the man had disgraced himself and shot you, after all respectable people had given him an extra kick to let him know he must stay down and had then turned their backs upon him. I'm not surprised that you're ashamed."

"Where did you get hold of this fairy-tale?" he plucked up courage to demand.

"From Norma Pelton. She told me everything, the whole story from beginning to end."

"It's right funny you should be calling on her, and you a respectable young lady--unless you went to deliver that extra kick you was mentioning," he grinned.

She dropped her raillery. "It was splendid. I meant to ask Mr. Ridgway to do something for them, but this is so much better. It takes them away from the place of his disgrace and away from temptation. Oh, I don't wonder Norma kissed you."

"She told you that, too, did she?"

"Yes. I should have done it, too, in her place."

He glanced round placidly. "It's a right public place here, but--"

"Don't be afraid. I'm not going to." And before she disappeared within the portals of the department store she gave him one last thrust. "It's not so public up in the library. Perhaps if you happen to be going that way "

She left her communication a fragment, but he thought it worth acting upon. Among the library shelves he found Laska deep in a new volume on domestic science.

"This ain't any kind of day to be fooling away your time on cook-books. Come out into the sun and live," he invited.

They walked past the gallows-frames and the slag-dumps and the shaft-houses into the brown hills beyond the point where green copper streaks showed and spurred the greed of man. It was a day of spring sunshine, the good old earth astir with her annual recreation. The roadside was busy with this serious affair of living. Ants and crawling things moved to and fro about their business. Squirrels raced across the road and stood up at a safe distance to gaze at these intruders. Birds flashed back and forth, hurried little carpenters busy with the specifications for their new nests. Eager palpitating life was the key-note of the universe.

"Virginia told me about the Peltons," Laska said, after a pause.

"It's spreading almost as fast as if it were a secret," he smiled. "I'm expecting to find it in the paper when we get back."

"I'm so glad you did it."

"Well, you're to blame."

"I!" She looked at him in surprise.

"Partly. You told me how things were going with them. That seemed to put it up to me to give Pelton a chance."

"I certainly didn't mean it that way. I had no right to ask you to do anything about it."

"Mebbe it was the facts put it up to me. Anyhow, I felt responsible."

"Mr. Roper once told me that you always feel responsible when you hear anybody is in trouble," the young woman answered.

"Roper's a goat. Nobody ever pays any attention to him."

Presently they diverged from the road and sat down on a great flat rock which dropped out from the hillside like a park seat. For he was still far from strong and needed frequent rests. Their talk was desultory, for they had reached that stage of friendship at which it is not necessary to bridge silence with idle small talk. Here, by some whim of fate, the word was spoken. He knew he loved her, but he had not meant to say it yet.

But when her steady gray eyes came back to his after a long stillness, the meeting brought him a strange feeling that forced his hand.

"I love you, Laska. Will you be my wife?" he asked quietly.

"Yes, Sam," she answered directly. That was all. It was settled with a word. There in the sunshine he kissed her and sealed the compact, and afterward, when the sun was low among the hill spurs, they went back happily to take up again the work that awaited them.

CHAPTER 25.

FRIENDLY ENEMIES

Ridgway had promised Aline that he would see her soon, and when he found himself in New York he called at the big house on Fifth Avenue, which had for so long been identified as the home of Simon Harley. It bore his impress stamped on it. Its austerity suggested the Puritan rather than the classic conception of simplicity. The immense rooms were as chill as dungeons, and the forlorn little figure in black, lost in the loneliness of their bleakness, wandered to and fro among her retinue of servants like a butterfly beating its wings against a pane of glass.

With both hands extended she ran forward to meet her guest.

"I'm so glad, so glad, so glad to see you."

The joy-note in her voice was irrepressible. She had been alone for weeks with the conventional gloom that made an obsession of the shadow of death which enveloped the house. All voices and footsteps had been subdued to harmonize with the grief of the mistress of this mausoleum. Now she heard the sharp tread of this man unafraid, and saw the alert vitality of his confident bearing. It was like a breath of the hills to a parched traveler.

"I told you I would come."

"Yes. I've been looking for you every day. I've checked each one off on my calendar. It's been three weeks and five days since I saw you."

"I thought it was a year," he laughed, and the sound of his uncurbed voice rang strangely in this room given to murmurs.

"Tell me about everything. How is Virginia, and Mrs. Mott, and Mr. Yesler? And is he really engaged to that sweet little school-teacher? And how does Mr. Hobart like being senator?"

"Not more than a dozen questions permitted at a time. Begin again, please."

"First, then, when did you reach the city?"

He consulted his watch. "Just two hours and twenty-seven minutes ago."

"And how long are you going to stay?"

"That depends."

"On what?"

"For one thing, on whether you treat me well," he smiled.

"Oh, I'll treat you well. I never was so glad to see a real live somebody in my life. It's been pretty bad here." She gave a dreary little smile as she glanced around at the funereal air of the place. "Do you know, I don't think we think of death in the right way? Or, maybe, I'm a heathen and haven't the proper feelings."

She had sat down on one of the stiff divans, and Ridgway found a place beside her.

"Suppose you tell me about it," he suggested.

"I know I must be wrong, and you'll be shocked when you hear."

"Very likely."

"I can't help feeling that the living have rights, too," she began dubiously. "If they would let me alone I could be sorry in my own way, but I don't see why I have to make a parade of grief. It seems to--to cheapen one's feelings, you know."

He nodded. "Just as if you had to measure your friendship for the dead with a yardstick of Mother Grundy. It's a hideous imposition laid on us by custom, one of Ibsen's ghosts."

"It's so good to hear you say that. And do you think I may begin to be happy again?"

"I think it would be allowable to start with one smile a day, say, and gradually increase the dose," he jested. "In the course of a week, if it seems to agree with you, try a laugh."

She made the experiment without waiting the week, amused at his whimsical way of putting it. Nevertheless, the sound of her own laughter gave her a little shock.

"You came on business, I suppose?" she said presently.

"Yes. I came to raise a million dollars for some improvements I want to make."

"Let me lend it to you," she proposed eagerly.

"That would be a good one. I'm going to use it to fight the Consolidated. Since you are now its chief stockholder you would be letting me have money with which to fight you."

"I shouldn't care about that. I hope you beat me."

"You're my enemy now. That's not the way to talk." His eyes twinkled merrily.

"Am I your enemy? Let's be friendly enemies, then. And there's something I want to talk to you about. Before he died Mr. Harley told me he had made you an offer. I didn't understand the details, but you were to be in charge of all the copper-mines in the country. Wasn't that it?"

"Something of that sort. I declined the proposition."

"I want you to take it now and manage everything for me. I don't know Mr. Harley's associates, but I can trust you. You can arrange it any way you like, but I want to feel that you have the responsibility."

He saw again that vision of power--all the copper interests of the country pooled, with himself at the head of the combination. He knew it would not be so easy to arrange as she thought, for, though she had inherited Harley's wealth, she had not taken over his prestige and force. There would be other candidates for leadership. But if he managed her campaign Aline's great wealth must turn the scale in their favor.

"You must think this over again. You must talk it over with your advisers before we come to a decision," he said gravely.

"I've told Mr. Jarmyn. He says the idea is utterly impossible. But we'll show him, won't we? It's my money and my stock, not his. I don't see why he should dictate. He's always 'My dear ladying' me. I won't have it," she pouted.

The fighting gleam was in Ridgway's eyes now. "So Mr. Jannyn thinks it is impossible, does he?"

"That's what he said. He thinks you wouldn't do at all."

"If you really mean it we'll show him about that."

She shook hands with him on it.

"You're very good to me," she said, so naively that he could not keep back his smile.

"Most people would say I was very good to myself. What you offer me is a thing I might have fought for all my life and never won."

"Then I'm glad if it pleases you. That's enough about business. Now, we'll talk about something important."

He could think of only one thing more important to him than this, but it appeared she meant plans to see as much as possible of him while he was in the city.

"I suppose you have any number of other friends here that will want you?" she said.

"They can't have me if this friend wants me," he answered, with that deep glow in his eyes she recognized from of old; and before she could summon her reserves of defense he asked: "Do you want me, Aline?"

His meaning came to her with a kind of sweet shame. "No, no, no--not yet," she cried.

"Dear," he answered, taking her little hand in his big one, "only this now: that I can't help wanting to be near you to comfort you, because I love you. For everything else, I am content to wait."

"And I love you," the girl-widow answered, a flush dyeing her cheeks. "But I ought not to tell you yet, ought I?"

There was that in her radiant tear-dewed eyes that stirred the deepest stores of tenderness in the man. His finer instincts, vandal and pagan though he was, responded to it.

"It is right that you should tell me, since it is true, but it is right, too, that we should wait."

"It is sweet to know that you love me. There are so many things I don't understand. You must help me. You are so strong and so sure, and I am so helpless."

"You dear innocent, so strong in your weakness," he murmured to himself.

"You must be a guide to me and a teacher."

"And you a conscience to me," he smiled, not without amusement at the thought.

She took it seriously. "But I'm afraid I can't. You know so much better than I do what is right."

"I'm quite a paragon of virtue," he confessed.

"You're so sure of everything. You took it for granted that I loved you. Why were you so sure?"

"I was just as sure as you were that I cared for you. Confess."

She whispered it. "Yes, I knew it, but when you did not come I thought, perhaps You see, I'm not strong or clever. I can't help you as Virginia could." She stopped, the color washing from her face. "I had forgotten. You have no right to love me--nor I you," she faltered.

"Girl o'mine, we have every right in the world. Love is never wrong unless it is a theft or a robbery. There is nothing between me and Virginia that is not artificial and conventional, no tie that ought not to be broken, none that should ever of right have existed. Love has the right of way before mere convention a hundredfold."

"Ah! If I were sure."

"But I was to be a teacher to you and a judge for you."

"And I was to be a conscience to you."

"But on this I am quite clear. I can be a conscience to myself. However, there is no hurry. Time's a great solvent."

"And we can go on loving each other in the meantime."

He lifted her little pink fingers and kissed them. "Yes, we can do that all the time."

CHAPTER 26.

BREAKS ONE AND MAKES ANOTHER ENGAGEMENT

Miss Balfour's glass made her irritably aware of cheeks unduly flushed and eyes unusually bright. Since she prided herself on being sufficient for the emergencies of life, she cast about in her mind to determine which of the interviews that lay before her was responsible for her excitement. It was, to be sure, an unusual experience for a young woman to be told that her fiance would be unable to marry her, owing to a subsequent engagement, but she looked forward to it with keen anticipation, and would not have missed it for the world. Since she pushed the thought of the other interview into the background of her mind and refused to contemplate it at all, she did not see how that could lend any impetus to her pulse.

But though she was pleasantly excited as she swept into the reception-room, Ridgway was unable to detect the fact in her cool little nod and frank, careless handshake. Indeed, she looked so entirely mistress of herself, so much the perfectly gowned exquisite, that he began to dread anew the task he had set himself. It is not a pleasant thing under the most favorable circumstances to beg off from marrying a young woman one has engaged oneself to, and Ridgway did not find it easier because the young woman looked every inch a queen, and was so manifestly far from suspecting the object of his call. "I haven't had a chance to congratulate you personally yes," she said, after they had drifted to chairs. "I've been immensely proud of you."

"I got your note. It was good of you to write as soon as you heard."

She swept him with one of her smile-lit side glances. "Though, of course, in a way, I was felicitating myself when I congratulated you."

"You mean?"

She laughed with velvet maliciousness. "Oh, well, I'm dragged into the orbit of your greatness, am I not? As the wife of the president of the Greater Consolidated Copper Company--the immense combine that takes in practically all the larger copper properties in the country--I should come in for a share of reflected glory, you know."

Ridgway bit his lip and took a deep breath, but before he had found words she was off again. She had no intention of letting him descent from the rack yet.

"How did you do it? By what magic did you bring it about? Of course, I've read the newspapers' accounts, seen your features and your history butchered in a dozen Sunday horrors, and thanked Heaven no enterprising reporter guessed enough to use me as copy. Every paper I have picked up for weeks has been full of you and the story of how you took Wall Street by the throat. But I suspect they were all guesses, merely superficial rumors except as to the main facts. What I want to know is the inside story--the lever by means of which you pried open the door leading to the inner circle of financial magnates. You have often told me how tightly barred that door is. What was the open-sesame you used as a countersign to make the keeper of the gate unbolt?

He thought he saw his chance. "The countersign was 'Aline Harley,'" he said, and looked her straight in the face. He wished he could find some way of telling her without making him feel so like a cad.

She clapped her hands. "I thought so. She backed you with that uncounted fortune her husband left her. Is that it?"

That is it exactly. She gave me a free hand, and the immense fortune she inherited from Harley put me in a position to force recognition from the leaders. After that it was only a question of time till I had convinced them my plan was good." He threw back his shoulders and tried to take the fence again. "Would you like to know why Mrs. Harley put her fortune at my command?"

"I suppose because she is interested in us and our little affair. Doesn't all the world love a lover?" she asked, with a disarming candor.

"She had a better reason," he said, meeting her eyes gravely.

"You must tell me it--but not just yet. I have something to tell you first." She held out her little clenched hand. "Here is something that belongs to you. Can you open it?"

He straightened her fingers one by one, and took from her palm the engagement-ring he had given her. Instantly he looked up, doubt and relief sweeping his face.

"Am I to understand that you terminate our engagement?"

She nodded.

"May I ask why?"

"I couldn't bring myself to it, Waring. I honestly tried, but I couldn't do it."

"When did you find this out?"

"I began to find it out the first day of our engagement. I couldn't make it seem right. I've been in a process of learning it ever since. It wouldn't be fair to you for me to marry you."

"You're a brick, Virginia!" he cried jubilantly.

"No, I'm not. That is a minor reason. The really important one is that it wouldn't be fair to me."

"No, it would not," he admitted, with an air of candor.

"Because, you see, I happen to care for another man," she purred.

His vanity leaped up fully armed. "Another man! Who?"

"That's my secret," she answered, smiling at his chagrin.

"And his?"

"I said mine. At any rate, if three knew, it wouldn't be a secret," was her quick retort.

"Do you think you have been quite fair to me, Virginia?" he asked, with gloomy dignity.

"I think so," she answered, and touched him with the riposte: "I'm ready now to have you tell me when you expect to marry Aline Harley."

His dignity collapsed like a pricked bladder. "How did you know?" he demanded, in astonishment.

"Oh well, I have eyes."

"But I didn't know--I thought--"

"Oh, you thought! You are a pair of children at the game," this thousand-year-old young woman scoffed. "I have known for months that you worshiped each other."

"If you mean to imply " he began severely.

"Hit somebody of your size, Warry," she interrupted cheerfully, as to an infant. "If you suppose I am so guileless as not to know that you were coming here this afternoon to tell me you were regretfully compelled to give me up on account of a more important engagement, then you conspicuously fail to guess right. I read it in your note."

He gave up attempting to reprove her. It did not seem feasible under the circumstances. Instead, he held out the hand of peace, and she took it with a laugh of gay camaraderie.

"Well," he smiled, "it seems possible that we may both soon be subjects for congratulation. That just shows how things work around right. We never would have suited each other, you know."

"I'm quite sure we shouldn't," agreed Virginia promptly. "But I don't think I'll trouble you to congratulate me till you see me wearing another solitaire."

"We'll hope for the best," he said cheerfully. "If it is the man I think, he is a better man than I am."

"Yes, he is," she nodded, without the least hesitation.

"I hope you will be happy with him."

"I'm likely to be happy without him."

"Not unless he is a fool."

"Or prefers another lady, as you do."

She settled herself back in the low easy chair, with her hands clasped behind her head.

"And now I'd like to know why you prefer her to me," she demanded saucily. "Do you think her handsomer?"

He looked her over from the rippling brown hair to the trim suede shoes. "No," he smiled; "they don't make them handsomer."

"More intellectual?"

"No."

"Of a better disposition?"

"I like yours, too."

"More charming?"

"I find her so, saving your presence." "Please justify yourself in detail." He shook his head, still smiling. "My justification is not to be itemized. It lies deeper--in destiny, or fate, or whatever one calls it."

"I see." She offered Markham's verses as an explanation:

"Perhaps we are led and our loves are fated, And our steps are counted one by one; Perhaps we shall meet and our souls be mated, After the burnt-out sun."

"I like that. Who did you say wrote it?"

The immobile butler, as once before, presented a card for her inspection. Ridgway, with recollections of the previous occasion, ventured to murmur again: "The fairy prince."

Virginia blushed to her hair, and this time did not offer the card for his disapproval.

"Shall I congratulate him?" he wanted to know.

The imperious blood came to her cheeks on the instant. The sudden storm in her eyes warned him better than words.

"I'll be good," he murmured, as Lyndon Hobart came into the room.

His goodness took the form of a speedy departure. She followed him to the door for a parting fling at him.

"In your automobile you may reach a telegraph-office in about five minutes. With luck you may be engaged inside of an hour."

"You have the advantage of me by fifty-five minutes," he flung back.

"You ought to thank me on your knees for having saved you a wretched scene this afternoon," was the best she could say to cover her discomfiture.

"I do. I do. My thanks are taking the form of leaving you with the prince."

"That's very crude, sir--and I'm not sure it isn't impertinent."

Miss Balfour was blushing when she returned to Hobart. He mistook the reason, and she could not very well explain that her blushes were due to the last wordless retort of the retiring "old love," whose hand had gone up in a ridiculous bless-you-my-children attitude just before he left her.

Their conversation started stiffly. He had come, he explained, to say good-by. He was leaving the State to go to Washington prior to the opening of the session.

This gave her a chance to congratulate him upon his election. "I haven't had an opportunity before. You've been so busy, of course, preparing to save the country, that your time must have been very fully occupied."

He did not show his surprise at this interpretation of the fact that he had quietly desisted from his attentions to her, but accepted it as the correct explanation, since she had chosen to offer it.

Miss Balfour expressed regret that he was going, though she did not suppose she would see any less of him than she had during the past two months. He did not take advantage of her little flings to make the talk less formal, and Virginia, provoked at his aloofness, offered no more chances. Things went very badly, indeed, for ten minutes, at the end of which time Hobart rose to go. Virginia was miserably aware of being wretched despite the cool hauteur of her seeming indifference. But he was too good a sportsman to go without letting her know he held no grudge.

"I hope you will be very happy with Mr. Ridgway. Believe me, there is nobody whose happiness I would so rejoice at as yours."

"Thank you," she smiled coolly, and her heart raced. "May I hope that your good wishes still obtain even though I must seek my happiness apart from Mr. Ridgway?"

He held her for an instant's grave, astonished questioning, before which her eyes fell. Her thoughts side-tracked swiftly to long for and to dread what was coming.

"Am I being told--you must pardon me if I have misunderstood your meaning--that you are no longer engaged to Mr. Ridgway?"

She made obvious the absence of the solitaire she had worn.

Before the long scrutiny of his steady gaze: her eyes at last fell.

"If you don't mind, I'll postpone going just yet," he said quietly.

Her racing heart assured her fearfully, delightfully, that she did not mind at all.

"I have no time and no compass to take my bearings. You will pardon me if what I say seems presumptuous?"

Silence, which is not always golden, oppressed her. Why could she not make light talk as she had been wont to do with Waring Ridgway?

"But if I ask too much, I shall not be hurt if you deny me," he continued. "For how long has your engagement with Mr. Ridgway been broken, may I ask?"

"Between fifteen and twenty minutes."

"A lovers' quarrel, perhaps!" he hazarded gently.

"On the contrary, quite final and irrevocable Mr. Ridgway and I have never been lovers. She was not sure whether this last was mean as a confession or a justification.

"Not lovers?" He waited for her to explain Her proud eyes faced him. "We became engaged for other reasons. I thought that did not matter. But I find my other reasons were not sufficient. To-day I terminated the engagement. But it is only fair to say that Mr. Ridgway had come here for that purpose. I merely anticipated him." Her self-contempt would not let her abate one jot of the humiliating truth. She flayed herself with a whip of scorn quite lost on Hobart.

A wave of surging hope was flushing his heart, but he held himself well in hand.

"I must be presumptuous still," he said. "I must find out if you broke the engagement because you care for another man?"

She tried to meet his shining eyes and could not. "You have no right to ask that."

"Perhaps not till I have asked something else. I wonder if I should have any chance if I were to tell you that I love you?"

Her glance swept him shyly with a delicious little laugh. "You never can tell till you try."

Contents

A TEXAS RANGER

By William MacLeod Raine

FOREWORD TO YE GENTLE READER.

Within the memory of those of us still on the sunny side of forty the more remote West has passed from rollicking boyhood to its responsible majority. The frontier has gone to join the good Indian. In place of the ranger who patrolled the border for "bad men" has come the forest ranger, type of the forward lapping tide of civilization. The place where I write this-- Tucson, Arizona-- is now essentially more civilized than New York. Only at the moving picture shows can the old West, melodramatically overpainted, be shown to the manicured sons and daughters of those, still living, who brought law and order to the mesquite.

As Arthur Chapman, the Western poet, has written:

No loopholes now are framing Lean faces, grim and brown; No more keen eyes are aiming To bring the redskin down. The plough team's trappings jingle Across the furrowed field, And sounds domestic mingle Where valor hung its shield. But every wind careering Seems here to breathe a song-- A song of brave frontiering-- A saga of the strong.

Part I

(In Which Steve Plays Second Fiddle)

THE MAN FROM THE PANHANDLE

CHAPTER I

A DESERT MEETING

As she lay crouched in the bear-grass there came to the girl clearly the crunch of wheels over disintegrated granite. The trap had dipped into a draw, but she knew that presently it would reappear on the winding road. The knowledge smote her like a blast of winter, sent chills racing down her spine, and shook her as with an ague. Only the desperation of her plight spurred her flagging courage.

Round the bend came a pair of bays hitched to a single-seated open rig. They were driven by a young man, and as he reached the summit he drew up opposite her and looked down into the valley.

It lay in a golden glow at their feet, a basin of pure light and silence stretching mile on mile to the distant edge of jagged mountain-line which formed its lip. Sunlight strong as wine flooded a clean world, an amber Eden slumbering in an unbroken, hazy dream primeval.

"Don't move!"

At the summons the driver swung his head sharply to a picture he will never forget. A young woman was standing on the bank at the edge of the road covering him with a revolver, having apparently just stepped from behind the trunk of the cottonwood beside her. The color had fled her cheeks even to the edge of the dull red-copper waves of hair, but he could detect in her slim young suppleness no doubt or uncertainty. On the contrary, despite her girlish freshness, she looked very much like business. She was like some young wild creature of the forest cornered and brought to bay, but the very terror in her soul rendered her more dangerous. Of the heart beating like a trip-hammer the gray unwinking eyes that looked into hers read nothing. She had schooled her taut nerves to obedience, and they answered her resolute will steadily despite fluttering pulses.

"Don't move!" she said again.

"What do you want?" he asked harshly.

"I want your team," she panted.

"What for?"

"Never mind. I want it."

The rigor of his gaze slowly softened to a smile compound both of humor and grimness. He was a man to appreciate a piquant situation, none the less because it was at his expense. The spark that gleamed in his bold eye held some spice of the devil.

"All right. This is your hold-up, ma'am. I'll not move," he said, almost genially.

She was uneasily aware that his surrender had been too tame. Strength lay in that close-gripped salient jaw, in every line of the reckless sardonic face, in the set of the lean muscular shoulders. She had nerved herself to meet resistance, and instead he was yielding with complacent good nature.

"Get out!" she commanded.

He stepped from the rig and offered her the reins. As she reached for them his right hand shot out and caught the wrist that held the weapon, his left encircled her waist and drew her to him. She gave a little cry of fear and strained from him, fighting with all her lissom strength to free herself.

For all the impression she made the girdle round her waist might have been of steel. Without moving, he held her as she struggled, his brown muscular fingers slowly tightening round her wrist. Her stifled cry was of pain this time, and before it had died the revolver fell to the ground from her paralyzed grip.

But her exclamation had been involuntary and born of the soft tender flesh. The wild eyes that flamed into his asked for no quarter and received none. He drew her slowly down toward him, inch by inch, till she lay crushed and panting against him, but still unconquered. Though he held the stiff resistant figure motionless she still flashed battle at him.

He looked into the storm and fury of her face, hiding he knew not what of terror, and laughed in insolent delight. Then, very deliberately, he kissed her lips.

"You-- coward!" came instantly her choking defiance.

"Another for that," he laughed, kissing her again.

Her little fist beat against his face and he captured it, but as he looked at her something that had come into the girl's face moved his not very accessible heart. The salt of the adventure was gone, his victory worse than a barren one. For stark fear stared at him, naked and unconcealed, and back of that he glimpsed a subtle something that he dimly recognized for the outraged maidenly modesty he had so ruthlessly trampled upon. His hands fell to his side reluctantly.

She stumbled back against the tree trunk, watching him with fascinated eyes that searched him anxiously. They found their answer, and with a long ragged breath the girl turned and burst into hysterical tears.

The man was amazed. A moment since the fury of a tigress had possessed her. Now she was all weak womanish despair. She leaned against the cottonwood and buried her face in her arm, the while uneven sobs shook her slender body. He frowned resentfully at this change of front, and because his calloused conscience was disturbed he began to justify himself. Why didn't she play it out instead of coming the baby act on him? She had undertaken to hold him up and he had made her pay forfeit. He didn't see that she had any kick coming. If she was this kind of a boarding-school kid she ought not to have monkeyed with the buzz-saw. She was lucky he didn't take her to El Paso with him and have her jailed.

"I reckon we'll listen to explanations now," he said grimly after a minute of silence interrupted only by her sobs.

The little fist that had struck at his face now bruised itself in unconscious blows at the bark of the tree. He waited till the staccato breaths had subsided, then took her by the shoulders and swung her round.

"You have the floor, ma'am. What does this gun-play business mean?"

Through the tears her angry eyes flashed starlike.

"I sha'n't tell you," she flamed. "You had no right to-- How dared you insult me as you have?"

"Did I insult you?" he asked, with suave gentleness. "Then if you feel insulted I expect you lay claim to being a lady. But I reckon that don't fit in with holding up strangers at the end of a gun. If I've insulted you I'll ce'tainly apologize, but you'll have to show me I have. We're in Texas, which is next door but one to Missouri, ma'am."

"I don't want your apologies. I detest and hate you," she cried,

"That's your privilege, ma'am, and it's mine to know whyfor I'm held up with a gun when I'm traveling peaceably along the road," he answered evenly.

"I'll not tell you."

He spoke softly as if to himself. "That's too bad. I kinder hate to take her to jail, but I reckon I must."

She shrank back, aghast and white.

"No, no! You don't understand. I didn't mean to-- I only wanted-- Why, I meant to pay you for the team."

"I'll understand when you tell me," he said placidly.

"I've told you. I needed the team. I was going to let you have one of our horses and seventy-five dollars. It's all I have with me."

"One of your horses, you say? With seventy-five dollars to boot? And you was intending to arrange the trade from behind that gun. I expect you needed a team right bad."

His steady eyes rested on her, searched her, appraised her, while he meditated aloud in a low easy drawl.

"Yes, you ce'tainly must need the team. Now I wonder why? Well, I'd hate to refuse a lady anything she wants as bad as you do that." He swiftly swooped down and caught up her revolver from the ground, tossed it into the air so as to shift his hold from butt to barrel, and handed it to her with a bow. "Allow me to return the pop-gun you dropped, ma'am,"

She snatched it from him and leveled it at him so that it almost touched his forehead. He looked at her and laughed in delighted mockery.

"All serene, ma'am. You've got me dead to rights again."

His very nonchalance disarmed her. What could she do while his low laughter mocked her?

"When you've gone through me complete I think I'll take a little pasear over the hill and have a look at your hawss. Mebbe we might still do business."

As he had anticipated, his suggestion filled her with alarm. She flew to bar the way.

"You can't go. It isn't necessary."

"Sho! Of course it's necessary. Think I'm going to buy a hawss I've never seen?" he asked, with deep innocence.

"I'll bring it here."

"In Texas, ma'am, we wait on the ladies. Still, it's your say-so when you're behind that big gun."

He said it laughing, and she threw the weapon angrily into the seat of the rig.

"Thank you, ma'am. I'll amble down and see what's behind the hill."

By the flinch in her eyes he tested his center shot and knew it true. Her breast was rising and falling tumultuously. A shiver ran through her.

"No-- no. I'm not hiding-- anything," she gasped.

"Then if you're not you can't object to my going there."

She caught her hands together in despair. There was about him something masterful that told her she could not prevent him from investigating; and it was impossible to guess how he would act after he knew. The men she had known had been bound by convention to respect a woman's wishes, but even her ignorance of his type made guess that this steel-eyed, close-knit young Westerner-- or was he a Southerner?-- would be impervious to appeals founded upon the rules of the society to which she had been accustomed. A glance at his stone-wall face, at the lazy confidence of his manner, made her dismally aware that the data gathered by her experience of the masculine gender were insufficient to cover this specimen.

"You can't go."

But her imperative refusal was an appeal. For though she hated him from the depths of her proud, untamed heart for the humiliation he had put upon her, yet for the sake of that ferocious hunted animal she had left lying under a cottonwood she must bend her spirit to win him.

"I'm going to sit in this game and see it out," he said, not unkindly.

"Please!"

Her sweet slenderness barred the way about as electively as a mother quail does the road to her young. He smiled, put his big hands on her elbows, and gently lifted her to one side. Then he strode forward lightly, with the long, easy, tireless stride of a beast of prey, striking direct for his quarry.

A bullet whizzed by his ear, and like a flash of light his weapon was unscabbarded and ready for action. He felt a flame of fire scorch his cheek and knew a second shot had grazed him.

"Hands up! Quick!" ordered the traveler.

Lying on the ground before him was a man with close-cropped hair and a villainous scarred face. A revolver in his hand showed the source of the bullets.

Eye to eye the men measured strength, fighting out to the last ditch the moral battle which was to determine the physical one. Sullenly, at the last, the one on the ground shifted his gaze and dropped his gun with a vile curse.

"Run to earth," he snarled, his lip lifting from the tobacco-stained upper teeth in an ugly fashion.

The girl ran toward the Westerner and caught at his arm. "Don't shoot," she implored

Without moving his eyes from the man on the ground he swept her back.

"This outfit is too prevalent with its hardware," he growled. "Chew out an explanation, my friend, or you're liable to get spoiled."

It was the girl that spoke, in a low voice and very evidently under a tense excitement.

"He is my brother and he has-- hurt himself. He can't ride any farther and we have seventy miles still to travel. We didn't know what to do, and so--"

"You started out to be a road-agent and he took a pot-shot at the first person he saw. I'm surely obliged to you both for taking so much interest in me, or rather in my team. Robbery and murder are quite a family pastime, ain't they?"

The girl went white as snow, seemed to shrink before his sneer as from a deadly weapon; and like a flash of light some divination of the truth pierced the Westerner's brain. They were fugitives from justice, making for the Mexican line. That the man was wounded a single glance had told him. It was plain to be seen that the wear and tear of keeping the saddle had been too much for him.

"I acted on an impulse," the girl explained in the same low tone. "I saw you coming and I didn't know-- hadn't money enough to buy the team-- besides--"

He took the words out of her mouth when she broke down.

"Besides, I might have happened to be a sheriff. I might be, but then I'm not."

The traveler stepped forward and kicked the wounded man's revolver beyond his reach, then swiftly ran a hand over him to make sure he carried no other gun.

The fellow on the ground eyed him furtively. "What are you going to do with me?" he growled.

The other addressed himself to the girl, ignoring him utterly.

"What has this man done?"

"He has-- broken out from-- from prison."

"Where?"

"At Yuma."

"Damn you, you're snitching," interrupted the criminal in a scream that was both wheedling and threatening.

The young man put his foot on the burly neck and calmly ground it into the dust. Otherwise he paid no attention to him, but held the burning eyes of the girl that stared at him from a bloodless face.

"What was he in for?"

"For holding up a train."

She had answered in spite of herself, by reason of something compelling in him that drew the truth from her.

"How long has he been in the penitentiary?"

"Seven years." Then, miserably, she added: "He was weak and fell into bad company. They led him into it."

"When did he escape?"

"Two days ago. Last night he knocked at my window-- at the window of the room where I lodge in Fort Lincoln. I had not heard of his escape, but I took him in. There were horses in the barn. One of them was mine. I saddled, and after I had dressed his wound we started. He couldn't get any farther than this."

"Do you live in Fort Lincoln?"

"I came there to teach school. My home was in Wisconsin before."

"You came out here to be near him?"

"Yes. That is, near as I could get a school. I was to have got in the Tucson schools next year. That's much nearer."

"You visited him at the penitentiary?"

"No. I was going to during the Thanksgiving vacation. Until last night I had not seen him since he left home. I was a child of seven then."

The Texan looked down at the ruffian under his feet.

"Do you know the road to Mexico by the Arivaca cut-off?"

"Yes."

"Then climb into my rig and hit the trail hard-- burn it up till you've crossed the line."

The fellow began to whine thanks, but the man above would have none of them, "I'm giving you this chance for your sister's sake. You won't make anything of it. You're born for meanness and deviltry. I know your kind from El Paso to Dawson. But she's game and she's white clear through, even if she is your sister and a plumb little fool. Can you walk to the road?" he ended abruptly.

"I think so. It's in my ankle. Some hell-hound gave it me while we were getting over the wall," the fellow growled.

"Don't blame him. His intentions were good. He meant to blow out your brains."

The convict cursed vilely, but in the midst of his impotent rage the other stopped and dragged him to his feet.

"That's enough. You padlock that ugly mouth and light a shuck."

The girl came forward and the man leaned heavily on her as he limped to the road. The Texan followed with the buckskin she had been riding and tied it to the back of the road-wagon.

"Give me my purse," the girl said to the convict after they were seated.

She emptied it and handed the roll of bills it contained to the owner of the team. He looked at it and at her, then shook his head.

"You'll need it likely. I reckon I can trust you. Schoolmarms are mostly reliable."

"I had rather pay now," she answered tartly.

"What's the rush?"

"I prefer to settle with you now."

"All right, but I'm in no sweat for my money. My team and the wagon are worth two hundred and fifty dollars. Put this plug at forty and it would be high." He jerked his head toward the brush where the other saddle-horse was. "That leaves me a balance of about two hundred and ten. Is that fair?"

She bit her lip in vexation. "I expect so, but I haven't that much with me. Can't I pay this seventy on account?"

"No, ma'am, you can't. All or none." There was a gleam of humor in his hard eyes. "I reckon you better let me come and collect after you get back to Fort Lincoln."

She took out a note-book and pencil. "If you will give me your name and address please."

He smiled hardily at her. "I've clean forgotten them."

There was a warning flash in her disdainful eye.

"Just as you like. My name is Margaret Kinney. I will leave the money for you at the First National Bank."

She gathered up the rains deftly.

"One moment." He laid a hand on the lines. "I reckon you think I owe you an apology for what happened when we first met."

A flood of spreading color dyed her cheeks. "I don't think anything about it."

"Oh, yes, you do," he contradicted. "And you're going to think a heap more about it. You're going to lay awake nights going over it."

Out of eyes like live coals she gave him one look. "Will you take your hands from these reins please?"

"Presently. Just now I'm talking and you're listening."

"I don't care to hear any apologies, sir," she said stiffly.

"I'm not offering any," he laughed, yet stung by her words.

"You're merely insulting me again, I presume?"

"Some young women need punishing. I expect you're one."

She handed him the horsewhip, a sudden pulse of passion beating fiercely in her throat. "Very well. Make an end of it and let me see the last of you," she challenged.

He cracked the lash expertly so that the horses quivered and would have started if his strong hand had not tightened on the lines.

The Westerner laughed again. "You're game anyhow."

"When you are quite through with me," she suggested, very quietly.

But he noticed the fury of her deep-pupiled eyes, the turbulent rise and fall of her bosom.

"I'll not punish you that way this time." And he gave back the whip.

"If you won't use it I will."

The lash flashed up and down, twined itself savagely round his wrist, and left behind a bracelet of crimson. Startled, the horses leaped forward. The reins slipped free from his numbed fingers. Miss Kinney had made her good-by and was descending swiftly into the valley.

The man watched the rig sweep along that branch of the road which led to the south. Then he looked at his wrist and laughed.

"The plucky little devil! She's a thoroughbred for fair. You bet I'll make her pay for this. But ain't she got sand in her craw? She's surely hating me proper." He laughed again in remembrance of the whole episode, finding in it something that stirred his blood immensely.

After the trap had swept round a curve out of sight he disappeared in the mesquite and bear-grass, presently returning with the roan that had been ridden by the escaped convict.

"Whoever would suppose she was the sister of that scurvy scalawag with jailbird branded all over his hulking hide? He ain't fit to wipe her little feet on. She's as fine as silk. Think of her going through what she is to save that coyote, and him as crooked as a dog's hind leg. There ain't any limit to what a good woman will do for a man when she thinks he's got a claim on her, more especially if he's a ruffian."

With this bit of philosophic observation he rolled a cigarette and lit it.

"Him fall into bad company and be led away?" he added in disgust. "There ain't any worse than him. But he'll work her to the limit before she finds it out."

Leisurely he swung to the saddle and rode down into the valley of the San Xavier, which rolled away from his feet in numberless tawny waves of unfeatured foot-hills and mesas and washes. Almost as far as the eye could see there stretched a sea of hilltops bathed in sun. Only on the west were they bounded, by the irregular saw-toothed edge of the Frenchman Hills, silhouetted against an incomparable blue. For a stretch of many miles the side of the range was painted scarlet by millions of poppies splashed broadcast.

"Nature's gone to flower-gardening for fair on the mountains," murmured the rider. "What with one thing and another I've got a notion I'm going to take a liking to this country."

The man was plainly very tired with rapid travel, and about the middle of the afternoon the young man unsaddled and picketed the animal near a water-hole. He lay down in the shadow of a cottonwood, flat on his back, face upturned to the deep cobalt sky. Presently the drowse of the afternoon crept over him. The slumberous valley grew hazy to his nodding eyes. The reluctant lids ceased to open and he was fast asleep.

CHAPTER II

LIEUTENANT FRASER INTERFERES.

The sun had declined almost to a saddle in the Cuesta del Burro when the sleeper reopened his eyes. Even before he had shaken himself free of sleep he was uneasily aware of something wrong. Hazily the sound of voices drifted to him across an immense space. Blurred figures crossed before his unfocused gaze.

The first thing he saw clearly was the roan, still grazing in the circle of its picket-rope. Beside the bronco were two men looking the animal over critically.

"Been going some," he heard one remark, pointing at the same time to the sweat-stains that streaked the shoulders and flanks.

"If he had me on his back he'd still be burning the wind, me being in his boots," returned the second, with a grating laugh, jerking his head toward the sleeper. "Whatever led the durned fool to stop this side of the line beats me."

"If he was hiking for Chihuahua he's been hitting a mighty crooked trail. I don't savvy it, him knowing the country as well as they say he does," the first speaker made answer.

The traveler's circling eye now discovered two more men, each of them covering him with a rifle. A voice from the rear assured him there was also a fifth member to the party.

"Look out! He's awake," it warned.

The young man's hand inadvertently moved toward his revolver-butt. This drew a sharp imperative order from one of the men in front.

"Throw up your hands, and damn quick!"

"You seem to have the call, gentlemen," he smiled. "Would you mind telling me what it's all about?"

"You know what it's all about as well as we do. Collect his gun, Tom."

"This hold-up business seems to be a habit in this section. Second time to-day I've been the victim of it," said the victim easily.

"It will be the last," retorted one of the men grimly.

"If you're after the mazuma you've struck a poor bank."

"You've got your nerve," cried one of the men in a rage; and another demanded: "Where did you get that hawss?"

"Why, I got it--" The young man stopped in the middle of his sentence. His jaw clamped and his eyes grew hard. "I expect you better explain what right you got to ask that question."

The man laughed without cordiality. "Seeing as I have owned it three years I allow I have some right."

"What's the use of talking? He's the man we want, broke in another impatiently.

"Who is the man you want?" asked their prisoner.

"You're the man we want, Jim Kinney."

"Wrong guess. My name is Larry Neill. I'm from the Panhandle and I've never been in this part of the country till two days ago."

"You may have a dozen names. We don't care what you call yourself. Of course you would deny being the man we're after. But that don't go with us."

"All right. Take me back to Fort Lincoln, or take me to the prison officials. They will tell you whether I am the man."

The leader of the party pounced on his slip. "Who mentioned prison? Who told you we wanted an escaped prisoner?"

"He's give himself away," triumphed the one edged Tom. "I guess that clinches it. He's riding Maloney's hawss. He's wounded; so's the man we want. He answers the description-- gray eyes, tall, slim, muscular. Same gun-- automatic Colt. Tell you there's nothin' to it, Duffield."

"If you're not Kinney, how come you with this hawss? He stole it from a barn in Fort Lincoln last night. That's known," said the leader, Duffield.

The imperilled man thought of the girl bing toward the border with her brother and the remembrance padlocked his tongue.

"Take me to the proper authorities and I'll answer questions. But, I'll not talk here. What's the use? You don't believe a word I say."

"You spoke the truth that time," said one.

"If you ever want to do any explaining now's the hour," added another.

"I'll do mine later, gentlemen."

They looked at each other and one of them spoke.

"It will be too late to explain then."

"Too late?"

Some inkling of the man's hideous meaning seared him and ran like an ice-blast through him.

"You've done all the meanness you'll ever do in this world. Poor Dave Long is the last man you'll ever kill. We're going to do justice right now."

"Dave Long! I never heard of him," the prisoner repeated mechanically. "Good God, do you think I'm a murderer?"

One of the men thrust himself forward. "We know it. Y'u and that hellish partner of yours shot him while he was locking the gate. But y'u made a mistake when y'u come to Fort Lincoln. He lived there before he went to be a guard at the Arizona penitentiary. I'm his brother. These gentlemen are his neighbors. Y'u're not going back to prison. Y'u're going to stay right here under this cottonwood."

If the extraordinary menace of the man appalled Neill he gave no sign of it. His gray eye passed from one to another of them quietly without giving any sign of the impotent tempest raging within him.

"You're going to lynch me then?"

"Y'u've called the turn."

"Without giving me a chance to prove my innocence?"

"Without giving y'u a chance to escape or sneak back to the penitentiary."

The thing was horribly unthinkable. The warm mellow afternoon sunshine wrapped them about. The horses grazed with quiet unconcern. One of these hard-faced frontiersmen was chewing tobacco with machine-like regularity. Another was rolling a cigarette. There was nothing of dramatic effect. Not a man had raised his voice. But Neill knew there was no appeal. He had come to the end of the passage through a horrible mistake. He raged in bitter resentment against his fate, against these men who stood so quietly about him ready to execute it, most of all against the girl who had let him sacrifice himself by concealing the vital fact that her brother had murdered a guard to effect his escape. Fool that he had been, he had stumbled into a trap, and she had let him do it without a word of warning. Wild, chaotic thoughts crowded his brain furiously.

But the voice with which he addressed them was singularly even and colorless.

"I am a stranger to this country. I was born in Tennessee, brought up in the Panhandle. I'm an irrigation engineer by profession. This is my vacation. I'm headed now for the Mal Pais mines. Friends of mine are interested in a property there with me and I have been sent to look the ground over and make a report. I never heard of Kinney till to-day. You've got the wrong man, gentlemen."

"We'll risk it," laughed one brutally. "Bring that riata, Tom."

Neill did not struggle or cry out frantically. He stood motionless while they adjusted the rope round his bronzed throat. They had judged him for a villain; they should at least know him a man. So he stood there straight and lithe, wide-shouldered and lean-flanked, a man in a thousand. Not a twitch of the well-packed muscles, not a quiver of the eyelash nor a swelling of the throat betrayed any fear. His cool eyes were quiet and steady.

"If you want to leave any message for anybody I'll see it's delivered," promised Duffield.

"I'll not trouble you with any."

"Just as you like."

"He didn't give poor Dave any time for messages," cried Tom Long bitterly.

"That's right," assented another with a curse.

It was plain to the victim they were spurring their nerves to hardihood.

"Who's that?" cried one of the men, pointing to a rider galloping toward them.

The newcomer approached rapidly, covered by their weapons, and flung himself from his pony as he dragged it to a halt beside the group.

"Steve Fraser," cried Duffield in surprise, and added, "He's an officer in the rangers."

"Right, gentlemen. Come to claim my prisoner," said the ranger promptly.

"Y'u can't have him, Steve. We took him and he's got to hang."

The lieutenant of rangers shook his dark curly head.

"Won't do, Duffield. Won't do at all," he said decisively. "You'd ought to know law's on top in Texas these days."

Tom Long shouldered his way to the front. "Law! Where was the law when this ruffian Kinney shot down my poor brother Dave? I guess a rope and a cottonwood's good enough law for him. Anyhow, that's what he gits."

Fraser, hard-packed, lithe, and graceful, laid a friendly hand on the other's shoulder and smiled sunnily at him.

"I know how you feel, Tom. We all thought a heap of Dave and you're his brother. But Dave died for the law. Both you boys have always stood for order. He'd be troubled if he knew you were turned enemy to it on his account."

"I'm for justice, Steve. This skunk deserves death and I'm going to see he gits it."

"No, Tom."

"I say yes. Y'u ain't sitting in this game, Steve."

"I reckon I'll have to take a hand then."

The ranger's voice was soft and drawling, but his eyes were indomitably steady. Throughout the Southwest his reputation for fearlessness was established even among a population singularly courageous. The audacity of his daredevil recklessness was become a proverb.

"We got a full table. Better ride away and forget it," said another.

"That ain't what I'm paid for, Jack," returned Fraser good-naturedly. "Better turn him over to me peaceable, boys. He'll get what's coming to him all right."

"He'll get it now, Steve, without any help of yours. We don't aim to allow any butting in."

"Don't you?"

There was a flash of steel as the ranger dived forward. Next instant he and the prisoner stood with their backs to the cottonwood, a revolver having somehow leaped from its scabbard to his hand. His hunting-knife had sheared at a stroke the riata round the engineer's neck.

"Take it easy, boys," urged Fraser, still in his gentle drawl, to the astonished vigilantes whom his sudden sally had robbed of their victim. "Think about it twice. We'll all be a long time dead. No use in hurrying the funerals."

Nevertheless he recognized battle as inevitable. Friends of his though they were, he knew these sturdy plainsmen would never submit to be foiled in their purpose by one man. In the momentary silence before the clash the quiet voice of the prisoner made itself heard.

"Just a moment, gentlemen. I don't want you spilling lead over me. I'm the wrong man, and I can prove it if you'll give me time. Here's the key to my room at the hotel in San Antonio. In my suit-case you'll find letters that prove--"

"We don't need them. I've got proof right here," cut in Fraser, remembering.

He slipped a hand into his coat pocket and drew out two photographs. "Boys, here are the pictures and descriptions of the two men that escaped from Yuma the other day. I hadn't had time to see this gentleman before he spoke, being some busy explaining the situation to you, but a blind jackass could see he don't favor either Kinney or Struve, You're sure barking up the wrong tree."

The self-appointed committee for the execution of justice and the man from the Panhandle looked the prison photographs over blankly. Between the hard, clean-cut face of their prisoner and those that looked at them from the photographs it was impossible to find any resemblance. Duffield handed the prints back with puzzled chagrin.

"I guess you're right, Steve. But I'd like this gentleman to explain how come he to be riding the horse one of these miscreants stole from Maloney's barn last night."

Steve looked at the prisoner. "It's your spiel, friend," he said.

"All right. I'll tell you some facts. Just as I was coming down from the Roskruge range this mo'ning I was held up for my team. One of these fellows-- the one called Kinney-- had started from Fort Lincoln on this roan here, but he was wounded and broke down. There was some gun-play, and he gave me this scratch on the cheek. The end of it was that he took my team and left me with his worn-out bronc. I plugged on all day with the hawss till about three mebbe, then seeing it was all in I unsaddled and picketed. I lay down and dropped asleep. Next I knew the necktie-party was in session."

"What time was it y'u met this fellow Kinney?" asked Long sharply.

"Must have been about nine or nine-thirty I judge."

"And it's five now. That's eight hours' start, and four more before we can cut his trail on Roskruge. By God, we've lost him!"

"Looks like," agreed another ruefully.

"Make straight for the Arivaca cut-off and you ought to stand a show," suggested Fraser.

"That's right. If we ride all night, might beat him to it" Each of the five contributed a word of agreement.

Five minutes later the Texan and the ranger watched a dust-cloud drifting to the south. In it was hidden the posse disappearing over the hilltop.

Steve grinned. "I hate to disappoint the boys. They're so plumb anxious. But I reckon I'll strike the telephone line and send word to Moreno for one of the rangers to cut out after Kinney. Going my way, seh?"

"If you're going mine."

"I reckon I am. And just to pass the time you might tell me the real story of that hold-up while we ride."

"The real story?"

"Well, I don't aim to doubt your word, but I reckon you forgot to tell some of it." He turned on the other his gay smile. "For instance, seh, you ain't asking me to believe that you handed over your rig to Kinney so peaceful and that he went away and clean forgot to unload from you that gun you pack."

The eyes of the two met and looked into each other's as clear and straight as Texas sunshine. Slowly Neill's relaxed into a smile.

"No, I won't ask you to believe that. I owe you something because you saved my life--"

"Forget it," commanded the lieutenant crisply.

"And I can't do less than tell you the whole story."

He told it, yet not the whole of it either; for there was one detail he omitted completely. It had to do with the cause for existence of the little black-and-blue bruise under his right eye and the purple ridge that seamed his wrist. Nor with all his acuteness could Stephen Fraser guess that the one swelling had been made by a gold ring on the clenched fist of an angry girl held tight in Larry Neill's arms, the other by the lash of a horsewhip wielded by the same young woman.

CHAPTER III

A DISCOVERY

The roan, having been much refreshed by a few hours on grass, proved to be a good traveller. The two men took a road-gait and held it steadily till they reached a telephone-line which stretched across the desert and joined two outposts of civilization. Steve strapped on his climbing spurs and went up a post lightly with his test outfit. In a few minutes he had Moreno on the wire and was in touch with one of his rangers.

"Hello! This you, Ferguson? This is Fraser. No, Fraser-- Lieutenant Fraser. Yes. How many of the boys can you get in touch with right away? Two? Good. I want you to cover the Arivaca cut-off. Kinney is headed that way in a rig. His sister is with him. She is not to be injured under any circumstances. Understand? Wire me at the Mal Pais mines to-morrow your news. By the way, Tom Long and some of the boys are headed down that way with notions of lynching Kinney. Dodge them if you can and rush your man up to the Mal Pais. Good-bye."

"Suppose they can't dodge them?" ventured Neill after Steve had rejoined him.

"I reckon they can. If not-- well, my rangers are good boys; I expect they won't give up a prisoner."

"I'm right glad to find you are going to the Mal Pais mines with me, lieutenant. I wasn't expecting company on the way."

"I'll bet a dollar Mex against two plunks gold that you're wondering whyfor I'm going."

Larry laughed. "You're right. I was wondering."

"Well, then, it's this way. What with all these boys on Kinney's trail he's as good as rounded up. Fact is, Kinney's only a weak sister anyhow. He turned State's witness at the trial, and it was his testimony that convicted Struve. I know something about this because I happened to be the man that caught Struve. I had just joined the rangers. It was my first assignment. The other three got away. Two of them escaped and the third was not tried for lack of sufficient evidence. Now, then: Kinney rides the rods from Yuma to Marfa and is now or had ought to be somewhere in this valley between Posa Buena and Taylor's ranch. But where is Struve, the hardier ruffian of the two? He ain't been seen since they broke out. He sure never reached Ft. Lincoln. My notion is that he dropped off the train in the darkness about Casa Grande, then rolled his tail for the Mal Pais country. Your eyes are asking whys mighty loud, my friend; and my answer is that there's a man up there mebbe who has got to hide Struve if he shows up. That's only a guess, but it looks good to me. This man was the brains of the whole outfit, and folks say that he's got cached the whole haul the gang made from that S. P. hold-up. What's more, he scattered gold so liberal that his name wasn't even mentioned at the trial. He's a big man now, a millionaire copper king and into gold-mines up to the hocks. In the Southwest those things happen. It doesn't always do to look too closely at a man's past.

"We'll say Struve drops in on him and threatens to squeak. Mebbe he has got evidence; mebbe he hasn't. Anyhow, our big duck wants to forget the time he was wearing a mask and bending a six-gun for a living. Also and moreover, he's right anxious to have other folks get a chance to forget. From what I can hear he's clean mashed on some girl at Amarillo, or maybe it's Fort Lincoln. See what a twist Strove's got on him if he can slip into the Mal Pais country on the q. t."

"And you're going up there to look out for him?"

"I'm going in to take a casual look around. There's no telling what a man might happen onto accidentally if he travels with his ear to the ground."

The other nodded. He could now understand easily why Fraser was going into the Mal Pais country, but he could not make out why the ranger, naturally a man who lived under his own hat and kept his own counsel, had told him so much as he had. The officer shortly relieved his mind on this point.

"I may need help while I'm there. May I call on you if I do, seh?"

Neill felt his heart warm toward this hard-faced, genial frontiersman, who knew how to judge so well the timbre of a casual acquaintance.

"You sure may, lieutenant."

"Good. I'll count on you then."

So, in these few words, the compact of friendship and alliance was sealed between them. Each of them was strangely taken with the other, but it is not the way of the Anglo-Saxon fighting man to voice his sentiment. Though each of them admired the stark courage and the flawless fortitude he knew to dwell in the other, impassivity sat on their faces like an ice-mask. For this is the hall-mark of the Southwest, that a man must love and hate with the same unchanging face of iron, save only when a woman is in consideration.

They were to camp that night by Cottonwood Spring, and darkness caught them still some miles from their camp. They were on no road, but were travelling across country through washes and over countless hills. The ranger led the way, true as an arrow, even after velvet night had enveloped them.

"It must be right over this mesa among the cottonwoods you see rising from that arroyo," he announced at last.

He had scarcely spoken before they struck a trail that led them direct to the spring. But as they were descending this in a circle Fraser's horse shied.

"Hyer you, Pinto! What's the matter with--"

The ranger cut his sentence in two and slid from the saddle. When his companion reached him and drew rein the ranger was bending over a dark mass stretched across the trail. He looked up quietly.

"Man's body," he said briefly.

"Dead?"

"Yes."

Neill dismounted and came forward. The moon-crescent was up by now and had lit the country with a chill radiance. The figure was dressed in the coarse striped suit of a convict.

"I don't savvy this play," Fraser confessed softly to himself.

"Do you know him?"

"Suppose you look at him and see if you know him."

Neill looked into the white face and shook his head.

"No, I don't know him, but I suppose it is Struve."

From his pocket the ranger produced a photograph and handed it to him.

"Hyer, I'll strike a match and you'll see better."

The match flared up in the slight breeze and presently went out, but not before Neill had seen that it was the face of the man who lay before them.

"Did you see the name under the picture, seh?"

"No."

Another match flared and the man from the Panhandle read a name, but it was not the one he had expected to see. The words printed there were "James Kinney."

"I don't understand. This ain't Kinney. He is a heavy-set man with a villainous face. There's some mistake."

"There ce'tainly is, but not at this end of the line. This is Kinney all right. I've seen him at Yuma. He was heading for the Mal Pais country and he died on the way. See hyer. Look at these soaked bandages. He's been wounded-- shot mebbe-- and the wound broke out on him again so that he bled to death."

"It's all a daze to me. Who is the other man if he isn't Kinney?"

"We're coming to that. I'm beginning to see daylight," said Steve, gently. "Let's run over this thing the way it might be. You've got to keep in mind that this man was weak, one of those spineless fellows that stronger folks lead around by the nose. Well, they make their getaway at Yuma after Struve has killed a guard. That killing of Dave Long shakes Kinney up a lot, he being no desperado but only a poor lost-dog kind of a guy. Struve notices it and remembers that this fellow weakened before. He makes up his mind to take no chances. From that moment he watches for a chance to make an end of his pardner. At Casa Grande they drop off the train they're riding and cut across country toward the Mal Pais. Mebbe they quarrel or mebbe Struve gets his chance and takes it. But after he has shot his man he sees he has made a mistake. Perhaps they were seen travelling in that direction. Anyhow, he is afraid the body will be found since he can't bury it right. He changes his plan and takes a big chance; cuts back to the track, boards a freight, and reaches Fort Lincoln."

"My God!" cried the other, startled for once out of his calm.

The officer nodded. "You're on the trail right enough. I wish we were both wrong, but we ain't."

"But surely she would have known he wasn't her brother, surely--"

The ranger shook his head. "She hadn't seen the black sheep since she was a kid of about seven. How would she know what he looked like? And Struve was primed with all the facts he had heard Kinney blat out time and again. She wasn't suspecting any imposition and he worked her to a fare-you-well."

Larry Neill set his teeth on a wave of icy despair.

"And she's in that devil's power. She would be as safe in a den of rattlers. To think that I had my foot on his neck this mo'ning and didn't break it."

"She's safe so long as she is necessary to him. She's in deadly peril as soon as he finds her one witness too many. If he walks into my boys' trap at the Arivaca cut-off, all right. If not, God help her! I've shut the door to Mexico and safety in his face. He'll strike back for the Mal Pais country. It's his one chance, and he'll want to travel light and fast."

"If he starts back Tom Long's party may get him."

"That's one more chance for her, but it's a slim one. He'll cut straight across country; they're following the trail. No, seh, our best bet is my rangers. They'd ought to land him, too."

"Oh, ought to," derided the other impatiently. "Point is, if they don't. How are we going to save her? You know this country. I don't."

"Don't tear your shirt, amigo," smiled the ranger. "We'll arrive faster if we don't go off half-cocked. Let's picket the broncs, amble down to the spring, and smoke a cigaret. We've got to ride twenty miles for fresh hawsses and these have got to have a little rest."

They unsaddled and picketed, then strolled to the spring.

"I've been thinking that maybe we have made a mistake. Isn't it possible the man with Miss Kinney is not Struve?" asked Neill.

"That's easy proved. You saw him this mo'ning." The lieutenant went down into his pocket once more for a photograph. "Does this favor the man with Miss Kinney?"

Under the blaze of another match, shielded by the ranger s hands, Larry looked into the scowling, villainous face he had seen earlier in the day. There could be no mistaking those leering, cruel eyes nor the ratlike, shifty look of the face, not to mention the long scar across it. His heart sank.

"It's the man."

"Don't you blame yourself for not putting his lights out. How could you tell who he was?"

"I knew he was a ruffian, hide and hair."

"But you thought he was her brother and that's a whole lot different. What do you say to grubbing here? We've got to go to the Halle ranch for hawsses and it's a long jog."

They lit a fire and over their coffee discussed plans. In the midst of these the Southerner picked up idly a piece of wrapping-paper. Upon it was pencilled a wavering scrawl:

Bleeding has broke out again. Can't stop it. Struve shot me and left me for dead ten miles back. I didn't kill the guard or know he meant to. J. KINNEY.

Neill handed the paper to the ranger, who read it through, folded it, and gave it back to the other.

"Keep that paper. We may need it." His grave eyes went up the trail to where the dark figure lay motionless in the cold moonlight. "Well, he's come to the end of the trail-- the only end he could have reached. He wasn't strong enough to survive as a bad man. Poor devil!"

They buried him in a clump of cottonwoods and left a little pile of rocks to mark the spot.

CHAPTER IV

LOST!

After her precipitate leave-taking of the man whose team she had bought or borrowed, Margaret Kinney nursed the fires of her indignation in silence, banking them for future use against the time when she should meet him again in the event that should ever happen. She brought her whip-lash snapping above the backs of the horses, and there was that in the supple motion of the small strong wrist which suggested that nothing would have pleased her more than having this audacious Texan there in place of the innocent animals. For whatever of inherited savagery lay latent in her blood had been flogged to the surface by the circumstances into which she had been thrust. Never in all her placid life had she known the tug of passion any closer than from across the footlights of a theatre.

She had had, to be sure, one stinging shame, but it had been buried in far-away Arizona, quite beyond the ken of the convention-bound people of the little Wisconsin town where she dwelt. But within the past twelve hours Fate had taken hold of her with both hands and thrust her into Life. She sensed for the first time its roughness, its nakedness, its tragedy. She had known the sensations of a hunted wild beast, the flush of shame for her kinship to this coarse ruffian by her side, and the shock of outraged maiden modesty at kisses ravished from her by force. The teacher hardly knew herself for the same young woman who but yesterday was engrossed in multiplication tables and third readers.

A sinister laugh from the man beside her brought the girl back to the present.

She looked at him and then looked quickly away again. There was something absolutely repulsive in the creature-- in the big ears that stood out from the close-cropped head, in the fishy eyes that saw everything without ever looking directly at anything, in the crooked mouth with its irregular rows of stained teeth from which several were missing. She had often wondered about her brother, but never at the worst had she imagined anything so bad as this. The memory would be enough to give one the shudders for years.

"Guess I ain't next to all that happened there in the mesquite," he sneered, with a lift of the ugly lip.

She did not look at him. She did not speak. There seethed in her a loathing and a disgust beyond expression.

"Guess you forgot that a fellow can sometimes hear even when he can't see. Since I'm chaperooning you I'll make out to be there next time you meet a good-looking lady-killer. Funny, the difference it makes, being your brother. You ain't seen me since you was a kid, but you plumb forgot to kiss me."

There was a note in his voice she had not heard before, some hint of leering ribaldry in the thick laugh that for the first time stirred unease in her heart. She did not know that the desperate, wild-animal fear in him, so overpowering that everything else had been pushed to the background, had obscured certain phases of him that made her presence here such a danger as she could not yet conceive. That fear was now lifting, and the peril loomed imminent.

He put his arm along the back of the seat and grinned at her from his loose-lipped mouth.

"But o' course it ain't too late to begin now, my dearie."

Her fearless level eyes met squarely his shifty ones and read there something she could dread without understanding, something that was an undefined sacrilege of her sweet purity. For woman-like her instinct leaped beyond reason.

"Take down your arm," she ordered.

"Oh, I don't know, sis. I reckon your brother--"

"You're no brother of mine," she broke in. "At most it is an accident of birth I disown. I'll have no relationship with you of any sort."

"Is that why you're driving with me to Mexico?" he jeered.

"I made a mistake in trying to save you. If it were to do over again I should not lift a hand."

"You wouldn't, eh?"

There was something almost wolfish in the facial malignity that distorted him.

"Not a finger."

"Perhaps you'd give me up now if you had a chance?"

"I would if I did what was right."

"And you'd sure want to do what was right," he snarled.

"Take down your arm," she ordered again, a dangerous glitter in her eyes.

He thrust his evil face close to hers and showed his teeth in a blind rage that forgot everything else.

"Listen here, you little locoed baby. I got something to tell you that'll make your hair curl. You're right, I ain't your brother. I'm Nick Struve-- Wolf Struve if you like that better. I lied you into believing me your brother, who ain't ever been anything but a skim-milk quitter. He's dead back there in the cactus somewhere, and I killed him!"

Terror flooded her eyes. Her very breathing hung suspended. She gazed at him in a frozen fascination of horror.

"Killed him because he gave me away seven years ago and was gittin' ready to round on me again. Folks don't live long that play Wolf Struve for a lamb. A wolf! That's what I am, a born wolf, and don't you forget it."

The fact itself did not need his words for emphasis. He fairly reeked the beast of prey. She had to nerve herself against faintness. She must not swoon. She dared not.

"Think you can threaten to give me up, do you? 'Fore I'm through with you you'll wish you had never been born. You'll crawl on your knees and beg me to kill you."

Such a devil of wickedness she had never seen in human eyes before. The ruthlessness left no room for appeal. Unless the courage to tame him lay in her she was lost utterly.

He continued his exultant bragging, blatantly, ferociously.

"I didn't tell you about my escape; how a guard tried to stop me and I put the son of a gun out of business. There's a price on my head. D'ye think I'm the man to give you a chance to squeal on me? D'ye think I'll let a pink-and-white chit send me back to be strangled?" he screamed.

The stark courage in her rose to the crisis. Not an hour before she had seen the Texan cow him. He was of the kind would take the whip whiningly could she but wield it. Her scornful eyes fastened on him contemptuously, chiseled into the cur heart of him.

"What will you do?" she demanded, fronting the issue that must sooner or later rise.

The raucous jangle of his laugh failed to disturb the steadiness of her gaze. To reassure himself of his mastery he began to bluster, to threaten, turning loose such a storm of vile abuse as she had never heard. He was plainly working his nerve up to the necessary pitch.

In her first terror she had dropped the reins. Her hands had slipped unconsciously under the lap-robe. Now one of them touched something chilly on the seat beside her. She almost gasped her relief. It was the selfsame revolver with which she had tried to hold up the Texan.

In the midst of Struve's flood of invective the girl's hand leaped quickly from the lap-robe. A cold muzzle pressed against his cheek brought the convict's outburst to an abrupt close.

"If you move I'll fire," she said quietly.

For a long moment their gazes gripped, the deadly clear eyes of the young woman and the furtive ones of the miscreant. Underneath the robe she felt a stealthy movement, and cried out quickly: "Hands up!"

With a curse he threw his arms into the air.

"Jump out! Don't lower your hands!"

"My ankle," he whined.

"Jump!"

His leap cleared the wheel and threw him to the ground. She caught up the whip and slashed wildly at the horses. They sprang forward in a panic, flying wildly across the open plain. Margaret heard a revolver bark twice. After that she was so busy trying to regain control of the team that she could think of nothing else. The horses were young and full of spirit, so that she had all she could do to keep the trap from being upset. It wound in and out among the hills, taking perilous places safely to her surprise, and was at last brought to a stop only by the narrowing of a draw into which the animals had bolted.

They were quiet now beyond any chance of farther runaway, even had it been possible. Margaret dropped the lines on the dashboard and began to sob, at first in slow deep breaths and then in quicker uneven ones. Plucky as she was, the girl had had about all her nerves could stand for one day. The strain of her preparation for flight, the long night drive, and the excitement of the last two hours were telling on her in a hysterical reaction.

She wept herself out, dried her eyes with dabs of her little kerchief, and came back to a calm consideration of her situation. She must get back to Fort Lincoln as soon as possible, and she must do it without encountering the convict. For in the course of the runaway the revolver had been jolted from the trap.

Not quite sure in which direction lay the road, she got out from the trap, topped the hill to her right, and looked around. She saw in all directions nothing but rolling hilltops, merging into each other even to the horizon's edge. In her wild flight among these hills she had lost count of direction. She had not yet learned how to know north from south by the sun, and if she had it would have helped but little since she knew only vaguely the general line of their travel.

She felt sure that from the top of the next rise she could locate the road, but once there she was as uncertain as before. Before giving up she breasted a third hill to the summit. Still no signs of the road. Reluctantly she retraced her steps, and at the foot of the hill was uncertain whether she should turn to right or left. Choosing the left, from the next height she could see nothing of the team. She was not yet alarmed. It was ridiculous to suppose that she was lost. How could she be when she was within three or four hundred yards of the rig? She would cut across the shoulder into the wash and climb the hillock beyond. For behind it the team must certainly be.

But at her journey's end her eyes were gladdened by no sight of the horses. Every draw was like its neighbor, every rolling rise a replica of the next. The truth came home to a sinking heart. She was lost in one of the great deserts of Texas. She would wander for days as others had, and she would die in the end of starvation and thirst. Nobody would know where to look for her, since she had told none where she was going. Only yesterday at her boarding-house she had heard a young man tell how a tenderfoot had been found dead after he had wandered round and round in intersecting circles. She sank down and gave herself up to despair.

But not for long. She was too full of grit to give up without a long fight. How many hours she wandered Margaret Kinney did not know. The sun was high in the heavens when she began. It had given place to flooding moonlight long before her worn feet and aching heart gave up the search for some human landmark. Once at least she must have slept, for she stared up from a spot where she had sunk down to look up into a starry sky that was new to her.

The moon had sailed across the vault and grown chill and faint with dawn before she gave up, completely exhausted, and when her eyes opened again it was upon a young day fresh and sweet. She knew by this time hunger and an acute thirst. As the day increased, this last she knew must be a torment of swollen tongue and lime-kiln throat. Yesterday she had cried for help till her voice had failed. A dumb despair had now driven away her terror.

And then into the awful silence leaped a sound like a messenger of hope. It was a shot, so close that she could see the smoke rise from an arroyo near. She ran forward till she could look down into it and caught sight of a man with a dead bird in his hand. He had his back toward her and was stooping over a fire. Slithering down over the short dry grass, she was upon him almost before she could stop.

"I've been lost all night and all yesterday," she sobbed.

He snatched at the revolver lying beside him and whirled like a flash as if to meet an attack. The girl's pumping heart seemed to stand still. The man snarling at her was the convict Struve.

CHAPTER V

LARRY NEILL TO THE RESCUE

The snarl gave way slowly to a grim more malign than his open hostility.

"So you've been lost! And now you're found-- come safe back to your loving brother. Ain't that luck for you? Hunted all over Texas till you found him, eh? And it's a powerful big State, too."

She caught sight of something that made her forget all else.

"Have you got water in that canteen?" she asked, her parched eyes staring at it.

"Yes, dearie."

"Give it me."

He squatted tailor-fashion on the ground, put the canteen between his knees, and shoved his teeth in a crooked grin.

"Thirsty?"

"I'm dying for a drink"

"You look like a right lively corpse."

"Give it to me."

"Will you take it now or wait till you get it?"

"My throat's baked. I want water," she said hoarsely.

"Most folks want a lot they never get."

She walked toward him with her hand outstretched.

"I tell you I've got to have it."

He laughed evilly. "Water's at a premium right now. Likely there ain't enough here to get us both out of this infernal hole alive. Yes, it's sure at a premium."

He let his eye drift insolently over her and take stock of his prey, in the same feline way of a cat with a mouse, gloating over her distress and the details of her young good looks. His tainted gaze got the faint pure touch of color in her face, the reddish tinge of her wavy brown hair, the desirable sweetness of her rounded maidenhood. If her step dragged, if dusky hollows shadowed her lids, if the native courage had been washed from the hopeless eyes, there was no spring of manliness hid deep within him that rose to refresh her exhaustion. No pity or compunction stirred at her sweet helplessness.

"Do you want my money?" she asked wearily.

"I'll take that to begin with."

She tossed him her purse. "There should be seventy dollars there. May I have a drink now?"

"Not yet, my dear. First you got to come up to me and put your arms round--"

He broke off with a curse, for she was flying toward the little circle of cottonwoods some forty yards away. She had caught a glimpse of the water-hole and was speeding for it.

"Come back here," he called, and in a rage let fly a bullet after her.

She paid no heed, did not stop till she reached the spring and threw herself down full length to drink, to lave her burnt face, to drink again of the alkali brackish water that trickled down her throat like nectar incomparably delicious.

She was just rising to her feet when Struve hobbled up.

"Don't you think you can play with me, missie. When I give the word you stop in your tracks, and when I say 'Jump!' step lively."

She did not answer. Her head was lifted in a listening attitude, as if to catch some sound that came faintly to her from a distance.

"You're mine, my beauty, to do with as I please, and don't you forget it."

She did not hear him. Her ears were attuned to voices floating to her across the desert. Of course she was beginning to wander in her mind. She knew that. There could be no other human beings in this sea of loneliness. They were alone; just they two, the degenerate ruffian and his victim. Still, it was strange. She certainly had imagined the murmur of people talking. It must be the beginning of delirium.

"Do you hear me?" screamed Struve, striking her on the cheek with his fist. "I'm your master and you're my squaw."

She did not cringe as he had expected, nor did she show fight. Indeed the knowledge of the blow seemed scarcely to have penetrated her mental penumbra. She still had that strange waiting aspect, but her eyes were beginning to light with new-born hope. Something in her manner shook the man's confidence; a dawning fear swept away his bluster. He, too, was now listening intently.

Again the low murmur, beyond a possibility of doubt. Both of them caught it. The girl opened her throat in a loud cry for help. An answering shout came back clear and strong. Struve wheeled and started up the arroyo, bending in and out among the cactus till he disappeared over the brow.

Two horsemen burst into sight, galloping down the steep trail at breakneck speed, flinging down a small avalanche of shale with them. One of them caught sight of the girl, drew up so short that his horse slid to its haunches, and leaped from the saddle in a cloud of dust.

He ran toward her, and she to him, hands out to meet her rescuer.

"Why didn't you come sooner? I've waited so long," she cried pathetically, as his arms went about her.

"You poor lamb! Thank God we're in time!" was all he could say.

Then for the first time in her life she fainted.

The other rider lounged forward, a hat in his hand that he had just picked up close to the fire.

"We seem to have stampeded part of this camping party. I'll just take a run up this hill and see if I can't find the missing section and persuade it to stay a while. I don't reckon you need me hyer, do you?" he grinned, with a glance at Neill and his burden.

"All right. You'll find me here when you get back, Fraser," the other answered.

Larry carried the girl to the water-hole and set her down beside it. He sprinkled her face with water, and presently her lids trembled and fluttered open. She lay there with her head on his arm and looked at him quite without surprise.

"How did you find me?"

"Mainly luck. We followed your trail to where we found the rig. After that it was guessing where the needle was in the haystack It just happened we were cutting across country to water when we heard a shot."

"That must have been when he fired at me," she said.

"My God! Did he shoot at you?"

"Yes. Where is he now?" She shuddered.

"Cutting over the hills with Steve after him."

"Steve?"

"My friend, Lieutenant Fraser. He is an officer in the ranger force."

"Oh!" She relapsed into a momentary silence before she said: "He isn't my brother at all. He is a murderer." She gave a sudden little moan of pain as memory pierced her of what he had said. "He bragged to me that he had killed my brother. He meant to kill me, I think."

"Sho! It doesn't matter what the coyote meant. It's all over now. You're with friends."

A warm smile lit his steel-blue eyes, softened the lines of his lean, hard face. Never had shipwrecked mariner come to safer harbor than she. She knew that this slim, sun-bronzed Westerner was a man's man, that strength and nerve inhabited his sinewy frame. He would fight for her because she was a woman as long as he could stand and see.

A touch of color washed back into her cheeks, a glow of courage into her heart. "Yes, it's all over. The weary, weary hours-- and the fear-- and the pain-- and the dreadful thirst-- and worst of all, him!"

She began to cry softly, hiding her face in his coat-sleeve.

"I'm crying because-- it's all over. I'm a little fool, just as-- as you said I was."

"I didn't know you then," he smiled. "I'm right likely to make snap-shot judgments that are 'way off."

"You knew me well enough to--" She broke off in the middle, bathed in a flush of remembrance that brought her coppery head up from his arm instantly.

"Be careful. You're dizzy yet."

"I'm all right now, thank you," she answered, her embarrassed profile haughtily in the air. "But I'm ravenous for something to eat. It's been twenty-four hours since I've had a bite. That's why I'm weepy and faint. I should think you might make a snap-shot judgment that breakfast wouldn't hurt me."

He jumped up contritely. "That's right. What a goat I am!"

His long, clean stride carried him over the distance that separated him from his bronco. Out of the saddle-bags he drew some sandwiches wrapped in a newspaper.

"Here, Miss Margaret! You begin on these. I'll have coffee ready in two shakes of a cow's tail. And what do you say to bacon?"

He understood her to remark from the depths of a sandwich that she said "Amen!" to it, and that she would take everything he had and as soon as he could get it ready. She was as good as her word. He found no cause to complain of her appetite. Bacon and sandwiches and coffee were all consumed in quantities reasonable for a famished girl who had been tramping actively for a day and a night, and, since she was a child of impulse, she turned more friendly eyes on him who had appeased her appetite.

"I suppose you are a cowboy like everybody else in this country?" she ventured amiably after her hunger had become less sharp.

"No, I belong to the government reclamation service."

"Oh!" She had a vague idea she had heard of it before. "Who is it you reclaim? Indians, I suppose."

"We reclaim young ladies when we find them wandering about the desert," he smiled.

"Is that what the government pays you for?"

"Not entirely. Part of the time I examine irrigation projects and report on their feasibility. I have been known to build dams and bore tunnels,"

"And what of the young ladies you reclaim? Do you bore them?" she asked saucily.

"I understand they have hitherto always found me very entertaining," he claimed boldly, his smiling eyes on her.

"Indeed!"

"But young ladies are peculiar. Sometimes we think we're entertaining them when we ain't."

"I'm sure you are right."

"And other times they're interested when they pretend they're not."

"It must be comforting to your vanity to think that," she said coldly. For his words had recalled similar ones spoken by him twenty-four hours earlier, which in turn had recalled his unpardonable sin.

The lieutenant of rangers appeared over the hill and descended into the draw. Miss Kinney went to meet him.

"He got away?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am. I lost him in some of these hollows, or rather I never found him. I'm going to take my hawss and swing round in a circle."

"What are you going to do with me?" she smiled.

"I been thinking that the best thing would be for you to go to the Mal Pais mines with Mr. Neill."

"Who is Mr. Neill?"

"The gentleman over there by the fire."

"Must I go with him? I should feel safer in your company, lieutenant."

"You'll be safe enough in his, Miss Kinney."

"You know me then?" she asked.

"I've seen you at Fort Lincoln. You were pointed out to me once as a new teacher."

"But I don't want to go to the Mal Pais mines. I want to go to Fort Lincoln. As to this gentleman, I have no claims on him and shall not trouble him to burden himself with me."

Steve laughed. "I don't reckon he would think, it a terrible burden, ma'am. And about the Mal Pais-- this is how it is. Fort Lincoln is all of sixty miles from here as the crow flies. The mines are about seventeen. My notion was you could get there and take the stage to-morrow to your town."

"What shall I do for a horse?"

"I expect Mr. Neill will let you ride his. He can walk beside the hawss."

"That won't do at all. Why should I put him to that inconvenience? I'll walk myself."

The ranger flashed his friendly smile at her. He had an instinct that served him with women. "Any way that suits you and him suits me. I'm right sorry that I've got to leave you and take out after that hound Struve, but you may take my word for it that this gentleman will look after you all right and bring you safe to the Mal Pais."

"He is a stranger to me. I've only met him once and on that occasion not pleasantly. I don't like to put myself under an obligation to him. But of course if I must I must."

"That's the right sensible way to look at it. In this little old world we got to do a heap we don't want to do. For instance, I'd rather see you to the Mal Pais than hike over the hills after this fellow," he concluded gallantly.

Neill, who had been packing the coffee-pot and the frying-pan, now sauntered forward with his horse.

"Well, what's the program?" he wanted to know.

"It's you and Miss Kinney for the Mal Pais, me for the trail. I ain't very likely to find Mr. Struve, but you can't always sometimes tell. Anyhow, I'm going to take a shot at it," the ranger answered.

"And at him?" his friend suggested.

"Oh, I reckon not. He may be a sure-enough wolf, but I expect this ain't his day to howl."

Steve whistled to his pony, swung to the saddle when it trotted up, and waved his hat in farewell.

His "Adios!" drifted back to them from the crown of the hill just before he disappeared over its edge.

CHAPTER VI

SOMEBODY'S ACTING MIGHTY FOOLISH.

Larry Neill watched him vanish and then turned smiling to Miss Kinney.

"All aboard for the Mal Pais," he sang out cheerfully.

Too cheerfully perhaps. His assurance that all was well between them chilled her manner. He might forgive himself easily if he was that sort of man; she would at least show him she was no party, to it. He had treated her outrageously, had manhandled her with deliberate intent to insult. She would show him no one alive could treat her so and calmly assume to her that it was all right.

Her cool eyes examined the horse, and him.

"I don't quite see how you expect to arrange it, Mr. Neill. That is your name, isn't it?" she added indifferently.

"That's my name-- Larry Neill. Easiest thing in the world to arrange. We ride pillion if it suits you; if not, I'll walk."

"Neither plan suits me," she announced curtly, her gaze on the far-away hills.

He glanced at her in quick surprise, then made the mistake of letting himself smile at her frosty aloofness instead of being crestfallen by it. She happened to look round and catch that smile before he could extinguish it. Her petulance hardened instantly to a resolution.

"I don't quite know what we're going to do about it-- unless you walk," he proposed, amused at the absurdity of his suggestion.

"That's just what I'm going to do," she retorted promptly.

"What!" He wheeled on her with an astonished smile on his face.

This served merely to irritate her.

"I said I was going to walk."

"Walk seventeen miles?"

"Seventy if I choose."

"Nonsense! Of course you won't."

Her eyebrows lifted in ironic demurrer. "I think you must let me be the judge of that," she said gently.

"Walk!" he reiterated. "Why, you're walked out. You couldn't go a mile. What do you take me for? Think I'm going to let you come that on me."

"I don't quite see how you can help it, Mr. Neill," she answered.

"Help it! Why, it ain't reasonable. Of course you'll ride."

"Of course I won't."

She set off briskly, almost jauntily, despite her tired feet and aching limbs.

"Well, if that don't beat--" He broke off to laugh at the situation. After she had gone twenty steps he called after her in a voice that did not suppress its chuckle: "You ain't going the right direction, Miss Kinney."

She whirled round on him in anger. How dared he laugh at her?

"Which is the right way?" she choked.

"North by west is about it."

She was almost reduced to stamping her foot.

Without condescending to ask more definite instructions she struck off at haphazard, and by chance guessed right. There was nothing for it but to pursue. Wherefore the man pursued. The horse at his heels hampered his stride, but he caught up with her soon.

"Somebody's acting mighty foolish," he said.

She said nothing very eloquently.

"If I need punishing, ma'am, don't punish yourself, but me. You ain't able to walk and that's a fact."

She gave her silent attention strictly to the business of making progress through the cactus and the sand.

"Say I'm all you think I am. You can trample on me proper after we get to the Mal Pais. Don't have to know me at all if you don't want to. Won't you ride, ma'am? Please!"

His distress filled her with a fierce delight. She stumbled defiantly forward.

He pondered a while before he asked quietly:

"Ain't you going to ride, Miss Kinney?"

"No, I'm not. Better go on. Pray don't let me detain you."

"All right. See that peak with the spur to it? Well, you keep that directly in line and make straight for it. I'll say good-by now, ma'am. I got to hurry to be in time for dinner. I'll send some one out from the camp to meet you that ain't such a villain as I am."

He swung to the saddle, put spurs to his pony, and cantered away. She could scarce believe it, even when he rode straight over the hill without a backward glance. He would never leave her. Surely he would not do that. She could never reach the camp, and he knew it. To be left alone in the desert again; the horror of it broke her down, but not immediately. She went proudly forward with her head in the air at first. He might look round. Perhaps he was peeping at her from behind some cholla. She would not gratify him by showing any interest in his whereabouts. But presently she began to lag, to scan draws and mesas anxiously for him, even to call aloud in an ineffective little voice which the empty hills echoed faintly. But from him there came no answer.

She sat down and wept in self-pity. Of course she had told him to go, but he knew well enough she did not mean it. A magnanimous man would have taken a better revenge on an exhausted girl than to leave her alone in such a spot, and after she had endured such a terrible experience as she had. She had read about the chivalry of Western men. Yet these two had ridden away on their horses and left her to live or die as chance willed it.

"Now, don't you feel so bad, Miss Margaret. I wasn't aiming really to leave you, of course," a voice interrupted her sobs to say.

She looked through the laced fingers that covered her face, mightily relieved, but not yet willing to confess it. The engineer had made a circuit and stolen up quietly behind.

"Oh! I thought you had gone," she said as carelessly as she could with a voice not clear of tears.

"Were you crying because you were afraid I hadn't?" he asked.

"I ran a cactus into my foot. And I didn't say anything about crying."

"Then if your foot is hurt you will want to ride. That seventeen miles might be too long a stroll before you get through with it."

"I don't know what I'll do yet," she answered shortly.

"I know what you'll do."

"Yes?"

"You'll quit your foolishness and get on this hawss."

She flushed angrily. "I won't!"

He stooped down, gathered her up in his arms, and lifted her to the saddle.

"That's what you're going to do whether you like it or not," he informed her.

"How are you going to make me stay here, now you have put me here?"

"I'm going to get on behind and hold you if it's necessary."

He was sensible enough of the folly of it all, but he did not see what else he could do. She had chosen to punish him through herself in a way that was impossible. It was a childish thing to do, born of some touch of hysteria her experience had induced, and he could only treat her as a child till she was safely back in civilization.

Their wills met in their eyes, and the man's, masculine and dominant, won the battle. The long fringe of hers fell to the soft cheeks.

"It won't be at all necessary," she promised.

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure."

"That's the way to talk."

"If you care to know," she boiled over, "I think you the most hateful man I ever met."

"That's all right," he grinned ruefully. "You're the most contrairy woman I ever bumped into, so I reckon honors are easy."

He strode along beside the horse, mile after mile, in a silence which neither of them cared to break. The sap of youth flowed free in him, was in his elastic tread, in the set of his broad shoulders, in the carriage of his small, well-shaped head. He was as lean-loined and lithe as a panther, and his stride ate up the miles as easily.

They nooned at a spring in the dry wash of Bronco Creek. After he had unsaddled and picketed he condescended to explain to her.

"We'll stay here three hours or mebbe four through the heat of the day."

"Is it far now?" she asked wearily.

"Not more than seven miles I should judge. Are you about all in?"

"Oh, no! I'm all right, thank you," she said, with forced sprightliness.

His shrewd, hard gaze went over her and knew better.

"You lie down under those live-oaks and I'll get some grub ready."

"I'll cook lunch while you lie down. You must be tired walking so far through the sun," said Miss Kinney.

"Have I got to pick you up again and carry you there?"

"No, you haven't. You keep your hands off me," she flashed.

But nevertheless she betook herself to the shade of the live-oaks and lay down. When he went to call her for lunch he found her fast asleep with her head pillowed on her arm. She looked so haggard that he had not the heart to rouse her.

"Let her sleep. It will be the making of her. She's fair done. But ain't she plucky? And that spirited! Ready to fight so long as she can drag a foot. And her so sorter slim and delicate. Funny how she hangs onto her grudge against me. Sho! I hadn't ought to have kissed her, but I'll never tell her so."

He went back to his coffee and bacon, dined, and lay down for a siesta beneath a cottonwood some distance removed from the live-oaks where Miss Kinney reposed. For two or three hours he slept soundly, having been in the saddle all night. It was mid-afternoon when he awoke, and the sun was sliding down the blue vault toward the sawtoothed range to the west. He found the girl still lost to the world in deep slumber.

The man from the Panhandle looked across the desert that palpitated with heat, and saw through the marvelous atmosphere the smoke of the ore-mills curling upward. He was no tenderfoot, to suppose that ten minutes' brisk walking would take him to them. He guessed the distance at about two and a half hour's travel.

"This is ce'tainly a hot evening. I expect we better wait till sundown before moving," he said aloud.

Having made up his mind, it was characteristic of him that he was asleep again in five minutes. This time she wakened before him, to look into a wonderful sea of gold that filled the crotches of the hills between the purple teeth. No sun was to be seen-- it had sunk behind the peaks-- but the trail of its declension was marked by that great pool of glory into which she gazed.

Margaret crossed the wash to the cottonwood under which her escort was lying. He was fast asleep on his back, his gray shirt open at the bronzed, sinewy neck. The supple, graceful lines of him were relaxed, but even her inexperience appreciated the splendid shoulders and the long rippling muscles. The maidenly instinct in her would allow but one glance at him, and she was turning away when his eyes opened.

Her face, judging from its tint, might have absorbed some of the sun-glow into which she had been gazing.

"I came to see if you were awake," she explained.

"Yes, ma'am, I am," he smiled.

"I was thinking that we ought to be going. It will be dark before we reach Mal Pais."

He leaped to his feet and faced her.

"C'rect."

"Are you hungry?"

"Yes."

He relit the fire and put on the coffee-pot before he saddled the horse. She ate and drank hurriedly, soon announcing herself ready for the start.

She mounted from his hand; then without asking any questions he swung to a place behind her.

"We'll both ride," he said.

The stars were out before they reached the outskirts of the mining-camp. At the first house of the rambling suburbs Neill slipped to the ground and walked beside her toward the old adobe plaza of the Mexican town

People passed them on the run, paying no attention to them, and others dribbled singly or in small groups from the houses and saloons. All of them were converging excitedly to the plaza.

"Must be something doing here," said her guide. "Now I wonder what!"

Round the next turn he found his answer. There must have been present two or three hundred men, mostly miners, and their gazes all focussed on two figures which stood against a door at the top of five or six steps. One of the forms was crouched on its knees, abject, cringing terror stamped on the white villainous face upturned to the electric light above. But the other was on its feet, a revolver in each hand, a smile of reckless daring on the boyish countenance that just now stood for law and order in Mal Pais.

The man beside the girl read the situation at a glance. The handcuffed figure groveling on the steps belonged to the murderer Struve, and over him stood lightly the young ranger Steve Fraser. He was standing off a mob that had gathered to lynch his prisoner, and one glance at him was enough to explain how he had won his reputation as the most dashing and fearless member of a singularly efficient force. For plain to be read as the danger that confronted him was the fact that peril was as the breath of life to his nostrils.

CHAPTER VII

ENTER MR. DUNKE

"He's my prisoner and you can't have him," the girl heard the ranger say.

The answer came in a roar of rage. "By God, we'll show you!"

"If you want him, take him. But don't come unless you are ready to pay the price!" warned the officer.

He was bareheaded and his dark-brown curly hair crisped round his forehead engagingly. Round his right hand was tied a blood-stained handkerchief. A boy he looked, but his record was a man's, and so the mob that swayed uncertainly below him knew. His gray eyes were steady as steel despite the fire that glowed in them. He stood at ease, with nerve unshaken, the curious lifted look of a great moment about the poise of his graceful figure.

"It is Lieutenant Fraser," cried Margaret, but as she looked down she missed her escort.

An instant, and she saw him. He was circling the outskirts of the crowd at a run. For just a heart-beat she wondered what he was about, but her brain told her before her eye. He swung in toward the steps, shoulders down, and bored a way through the stragglers straight to the heart of the turmoil. Taking the steps in two jumps, he stood beside the ranger.

"Hello, Tennessee," grinned that young man. "Come to be a pall-bearer?"

"Hello, Texas! Can't say, I'm sure. Just dropped in to see what's doing."

Steve's admiring gaze approved him a man from the ground up. But the ranger only laughed and said: "The band's going to play a right lively tune, looks like."

The man from the Panhandle had his revolvers out already. "Yes, there will be a hot time in the old town to-night, I shouldn't wonder."

But for the moment the attackers were inclined to parley. Their leader stepped out and held up a hand for a suspension of hostilities. He was a large man, heavily built, and powerful as a bear. There was about him an air of authority, as of one used to being obeyed. He was dressed roughly enough in corduroy and miner's half-leg boots, but these were of the most expensive material and cut. His cold gray eye and thin lips denied the manner of superficial heartiness he habitually carried. If one scratched the veneer of good nature it was to find a hard selfishness that went to his core.

"It's Mr. Dunke!" the young school-teacher cried aloud in surprise.

"I've got something to say to you, Mr. Lieutenant Ranger," he announced, with importance.

"Uncork it," was Fraser's advice.

"We don't want to have any trouble with you, but we're here for business. This man is a cold-blooded murderer and we mean to do justice on him."

Steve laughed insolently. "If all them that hollers for justice the loudest got it done to them, Mr. Dunke, there'd be a right smart shrinkage in the census returns."

Dunke's eye gleamed with anger. "We're not here to listen to any smart guys, sir. Will you give up Struve to us or will you not?"

"That's easy. I will not."

The mob leader turned to the Tennessean. "Young man, I don't know who you are, but if you mean to butt into a quarrel that ain't yours all I've got to say is that you're hunting an early grave."

"We'll know about that later, seh."

"You stand pat, do you?"

"Well, seh, I draw to a pair that opens the pot anyhow," answered Larry, with a slight motion of his weapons.

Dunke fell back into the mob, a shot rang out into the night, and the crowd swayed forward. But at that instant the door behind Fraser swung open. A frightened voice sounded in his ear.

"Quick, Steve!"

The ranger slewed his head, gave an exclamation of surprise, and hurriedly threw his prisoner into the open passage.

"Back, Larry! Lively, my boy!" he ordered.

Neill leaped back in a spatter of bullets that rained round him. Next moment the door was swung shut again.

"You all right, Nell?" asked Fraser quickly of the young woman who had opened the door, and upon her affirmative reply he added: "Everybody alive and kicking? Nobody get a pill?"

"I'm all right for one," returned Larry. "But we had better get out of this passage. I notice our friends the enemy are sending their cards through the door after us right anxious."

As he spoke a bullet tore a jagged splinter from a panel and buried itself in the ceiling. A second and a third followed.

"That's c'rect. We'd better be 'Not at home' when they call. Eh, Nell?"

Steve put an arm affectionately round the waist of the young woman who had come in such timely fashion to their aid and ran through the passage with her to the room beyond, Neill following with the prisoner.

"You're wounded, Steve," the young woman cried.

He shrugged. "Scratch in the hand. Got it when I arrested him. Had to shoot his trigger finger off."

"But I must see to it."

"Not now; wait till we're out of the woods." He turned to his friend: "Nell, let me introduce to you Mr. Neill, from the Panhandle. Mr. Neill, this is my sister. I don't know how come she to drop down behind us like an angel from heaven, but that's a story will wait. The thing we got to do right now is to light a shuck out of here."

His friend nodded, listening to the sound of blows battering the outer door. "They'll have it down in another minute. We've got to burn the wind seven ways for Sunday."

"What I'd like to know is whether there are two entrances to this rat-trap. Do you happen to know, Nell?" asked Fraser of his sister.

"Three," she answered promptly. "There's a back door into the court and a trap-door to the roof. That's the way I came."

"And it's the way we'll go. I might a-known you'd know all about it give you a quarter of a chance," her brother said admiringly. "We'll duck through the roof and let Mr. Dunke hold the sack. Lead the way, sis."

She guided them along another passageway and up some stairs to the second story. The trap-door that opened to the flat roof was above the bed about six feet. Neill caught the edges of the narrow opening, drew himself up, and wriggled through. Fraser lifted his sister by the waist high enough for Larry to catch her hands and draw her up.

"Hurry, Steve," she urged. "They've broken in. Hurry, dear."

The ranger unlocked his prisoner's handcuffs and tossed them up to the Tennessean.

"Get a move on you, Mr. Struve, unless you want to figure in a necktie party," he advised.

But the convict's flabby muscles were unequal to the task of getting him through the opening. Besides which, his wounded hand, tied up with a blood-soaked rag, impeded him. He had to be pulled from above and boosted from behind. Fraser, fit to handle his weight in wildcats, as an admirer had once put it, found no trouble in following. Steps were already heard on the stairs below when Larry slipped the cover to its place and put upon it a large flat stone which he found on the roof for that purpose. The fugitives crawled along the roof on their hands and knees so as to escape the observation of the howling mob outside the house. Presently they came into the shadows, and Nell rose, ran forward to a little ladder which led to a higher roof, and swiftly ascended. Neill, who was at her heels, could not fail to note the light supple grace with which she moved. He thought he had never seen a more charming woman in appearance. She still somehow retained the slim figure and taking ways of a girl, in conjunction with the soft rounded curves of a present-day Madonna.

Two more roofs were crossed before they came to another open trap-door. A lamp in the room below showed it to be a bedroom with two cots in it. Two children, one of them a baby, were asleep in these. A sweet-faced woman past middle age looked anxiously up with hands clasped together as in prayer.

"Is it you, Nellie?" she asked.

"Yes, mother, and Steve, and his friend. We're all right."

Fraser dropped through, and his sister let herself down into his arms. Struve followed, and was immediately handcuffed. Larry put back the trap and fastened it from within before he dropped down.

"We shall have to leave at once, mother, without waiting to dress the children," explained Fraser. "Wrap them in blankets and take some clothes along. I'll drop you at the hotel and slip my prisoner into the jail the back way if I can; that is, if another plan I have doesn't work."

The oldest child awoke and caught sight of Fraser. He reached out his hands in excitement and began to call: "Uncle Steve! Uncle Steve back again."

Fraser picked up the youngster. "Yes, Uncle Steve is back. But we're going to play a game that Indians are after us. Webb must be good and keep very, very still. He mustn't say a word till uncle tells him he may."

The little fellow clapped his hands. "Goody, goody! Shall we begin now?"

"Right this minute, son. Better take your money with you, mother. Is father here?"

"No, he is at the ranch. He went down in the stage to-day."

"All right, friends. We'll take the back way. Tennessee, will you look out for Mr. Struve? Sis will want to carry the baby."

They passed quietly down-stairs and out the back door. The starry night enveloped them coldly, and the moon looked down through rifted clouds. Nature was peaceful as her own silent hills, but the raucous jangle of cursing voices from a distance made discord of the harmony. They slipped along through the shadows, meeting none except occasional figures hurrying to the plaza. At the hotel door the two men separated from the rest of the party, and took with them their prisoner.

"I'm going to put him for safe-keeping down the shaft of a mine my father and I own," explained Steve. "He wouldn't be safe in the jail, because Dunke, for private reasons, has made up his mind to put out his lights."

"Private reasons?" echoed the engineer.

"Mighty good ones, too. Ain't that right?" demanded the ranger of Struve.

The convict cursed, though his teeth still chattered with fright from the narrow escape he had had, but through his prison jargon ran a hint of some power he had over the man Dunke. It was plain he thought the latter had incited the lynching in order to shut the convict's mouth forever.

"Where is this shaft?" asked Neill.

"Up a gulch about half a mile from here."

Fraser's eyes fixed themselves on a young man who passed on the run. He suddenly put his fingers to his lips and gave a low whistle. The running man stopped instantly, his head alert to catch the direction from which the sound had come. Steve whistled again and the stranger turned toward them.

"It's Brown, one of my rangers," explained the lieutenant.

Brown, it appeared, had just reached town and stabled his horse when word came to him that there was trouble on the plaza. He had been making for it when his officer's whistle stopped him.

"It's all over except getting this man to safety. I'm going to put him down an abandoned shaft of the Jackrabbit. He'll be safe there, and nobody will think to look for him in any such place," said Fraser.

The man from the Panhandle drew his friend to one side. "Do you need me any longer? I left Miss Kinney right on the edge of that mob, and I expect I better look around and see where she is now."

"All right. No, we don't need you. Take care you don't let any of these miners recognize you. They might make you trouble while they're still hot. Well, so-long. See you to-morrow at the hotel."

The Tennessean looked to his guns to make sure they hung loose in the scabbards, then stepped briskly back toward the plaza.

CHAPTER VIII

WOULD YOU WORRY ABOUT ME?

Margaret Kinney's heart ceased beating in that breathless instant after the two dauntless friends had flung defiance to two hundred. There was a sudden tightening of her throat, a fixing of dilated eyes on what would have been a thrilling spectacle had it not meant so much more to her. For as she leaned forward in the saddle with parted lips she knew a passionate surge of fear for one of the apparently doomed men that went through her like swift poison, that left her dizzy with the shock of it.

The thought of action came to her too late. As Dunke stepped back to give the signal for attack she cried out his name, but her voice was drowned in the yell of rage that filled the street. She tried to spur her horse into the crowd, to force a way to the men standing with such splendid fearlessness above this thirsty pack of wolves. But the denseness of the throng held her fixed even while revolvers flashed.

And then the miracle happened. She saw the door open and limned in a penumbra of darkness the white comely face of a woman. She saw the beleaguered men sway back and the door close in the faces of the horde. She saw bullets go crashing into the door, heard screams of baffled fury, and presently the crash of axes into the panels of the barrier that held them back. It seemed to fade away before her gaze, and instead of it she saw a doorway full of furious crowding miners.

Then presently her heart stood still again. From her higher place in the saddle, well back in the outskirts of the throng, in the dim light she made out a figure crouching on the roof; then another, and another, and a fourth. She suffered an agony of fear in the few heart-beats before they began to slip away. Her eyes swept the faces near her. One and all they were turned upon the struggling mass of humanity at the entrance to the passage. When she dared look again to the roof the fugitives were gone. She thought she perceived them swarming up a ladder to the higher roof, but in the surrounding grayness she could not be sure of this.

The stamping of feet inside the house continued. Once there was the sound of an exploding revolver. After a long time a heavy figure struggled into view through the roof-trap. It was Dunke himself. He caught sight of the ladder, gave a shout of triumph, and was off in pursuit of his flying prey. As others appeared on the roof they, too, took up the chase, a long line of indistinct running figures.

There were other women on the street now, most of them Mexicans, so that Margaret attracted little attention. She moved up opposite the house that had become the scene of action, expecting every moment to hear the shots that would determine the fate of the victims.

But no shots came. Lights flashed from room to room, and presently one light began to fill a room so brilliantly that she knew a lamp must have been overturned and set the house on fire. Dunke burst from the front door, scarce a dozen paces from her. There was a kind of lurid fury in his eyes. He was as ravenously fierce as a wolf balked of its kill. She chose that moment to call him.

"Mr. Dunke!"

Her voice struck him into a sort of listening alertness, and again she pronounced his name.

"You, Miss Kinney-- here?" he asked in amazement.

"Yes-- Miss Kinney."

"But-- What are you doing here? I thought you were at Fort Lincoln."

"I was, but I'm here now."

"Why? This is no place for you to-night. Hell's broke loose."

"So it seems," she answered, with shining eyes.

"There's trouble afoot, Miss Margaret. No girl should be out, let alone an unprotected one."

"I did not come here unprotected. There was a man with me. The one, Mr. Dunke, that you are now looking for to murder!"

She gave it to him straight from the shoulder, her eyes holding his steadily.

"Struve?" he gasped, taken completely aback.

"No, not Struve. The man who stood beside Lieutenant Fraser, the one you threatened to kill because he backed the law."

"I guess you don't know all the facts, Miss Kinney." He came close and met her gaze while he spoke in a low voice. "There ain't many know what I know. Mebbe there ain't any beside you now. But I know you're Jim Kinney's sister."

"You are welcome to the knowledge. It is no secret. Lieutenant Fraser knows it. So does his friend. I'm not trying to hide it. What of it?"

Her quiet scorn drew the blood to his face.

"That's all right. If you do want to keep it quiet I'm with you. But there's something more. Your brother escaped from Yuma with this fellow Struve. Word came over the wire an hour or two ago that Struve had been captured and that it was certain he had killed his pal, your brother. That's why I mean to see him hanged before mo'ning."

"He did kill my brother. He told me so himself." Her voice carried a sob for an instant, but she went on resolutely. "What has that to do with it? Isn't there any law in Texas? Hasn't he been captured? And isn't he being taken back to his punishment?"

"He told you so himself!" the man echoed. "When did he tell you? When did you see him?"

"I was alone with him for twelve hours in the desert."

"Alone with you?" His puzzled face showed how he was trying to take this in, "I don't understand. How could he be alone with you?"

"I thought he was my brother and I was helping him to escape from Fort Lincoln."

"Helping him to escape! Helping Wolf Struve to escape! Well, I'm darned if that don't beat my time. How come you to think him your brother?" the man asked suspiciously.

"It doesn't matter how or why. I thought so. That's enough."

"And you were alone with him-- why, you must have been alone with him all night," cried Dunke, coming to a fresh discovery.

"I was," she admitted very quietly.

A new suspicion edged itself into his mind. "What did you talk about? Did he say anything about-- Did he-- He always was a terrible liar. Nobody ever believed Wolf Struve."

Without understanding the reason for it, she could see that he was uneasy, that he was trying to discount the value of anything the convict might have told her. Yet what could Struve the convict, No. 9,432, have to do with the millionaire mine-owner, Thomas J. Dunke? What could there be in common between them? Why should the latter fear what the other had to tell? The thing was preposterous on the face of it, but the girl knew by some woman's instinct that she was on the edge of a secret Dunke held hidden deep in his heart from all the world. Only this much she guessed; that Struve was a sharer of his secret, and therefore he was set on lynching the man before he had time to tell it.

"They got away, didn't they?" she asked.

"They got away-- for the present," he answered grimly. "But we're still hunting them."

"Can't you let the law take its course, Mr. Danke? Is it necessary to do this terrible thing?"

"Don't you worry any about it, Miss Kinney. This ain't a woman's job. I'll attend to it."

"But my friends," she reminded him.

"We ain't intending to hurt them any. Come, I'll see you home. You staying at the hotel?"

"I don't know. I haven't made any arrangements yet."

"Well, we'll go make them now."

But she did not move. "I'm not going in till I know how this comes out."

He was a man used to having his own brutal way, one strong by nature, with strength increased by the money upon which he rode rough-shod to success.

He laughed as he caught hold of the rein. "That's ridiculous!"

"But my business, I think," the girl answered sharply, jerking the bridle from his fingers.

Dunke stared at her. It was his night of surprises. He failed to recognize the conventional teacher he knew in this bright-eyed, full-throated young woman who fronted him so sure of herself. She seemed to him to swim brilliantly in a tide of flushed beauty, in spite of the dust and the stains of travel. She was in a shapeless khaki riding-suit and a plain, gray, broad-brimmed Stetson. But the one could not hide the flexible curves that made so frankly for grace, nor the other the coppery tendrils that escaped in fascinating disorder from under its brim.

"You hadn't ought to be out here. It ain't right."

"I don't remember asking you to act as a standard of right and wrong for me."

He laughed awkwardly. "We ain't quarreling, are we, Miss Margaret?"

"Certainly I am not. I don't quarrel with anybody but my friends."

"Well, I didn't aim to offend you anyway. You know me better than that." He let his voice fall into a caressing modulation and put a propitiatory hand on her skirt, but under the uncompromising hardness of her gaze the hand fell away to his side. "I'm your friend-- leastways I want to be."

"My friends don't lynch men."

"But after what he did to your brother."

"The law will take care of that. If you want to please me call off your men before it is too late."

It was his cue to please her, for so far as it was in him the man loved her. He had set his strong will to trample on his past, to rise to a place where no man could shake his security with proof of his former misdeeds. He meant to marry her and to place her out of reach of those evil days of his. Only Struve was left of the old gang, and he knew the Wolf well enough to be sure that the fellow would delight in blackmailing him. The convict's mouth must be closed. But just now he must promise t she wanted, and he did.

The promise was still on his lips when a third person strode into their conversation.

"Sorry I had to leave you so hastily, Miss Kinney. I'm ready to take you to the hotel now if it suits you."

Both of them turned quickly, to see the man from the Panhandle sauntering forth from the darkness. There was a slight smile on his face, which did not abate when he nodded to Dunke amiably.

"You?" exclaimed the mine-owner angrily.

"Why, yes-- me. Hope we didn't inconvenience you, seh, by postponing the coyote's journey to Kingdom Come. My friend had to take a hand because he is a ranger, and I sat in to oblige him. No hard feelings, I hope."

"Did you-- Are you all safe?" Margaret asked.

"Yes, ma'am. Got away slick and clean."

"Where?" barked Dunke.

"Where what, my friend?"

"Where did you take him?"

Larry laughed in slow deep enjoyment. "I hate to disappoint you, but if I told that would be telling. No, I reckon I won't table my cards yet a while. If you're playing in this game of Hi-Spy go to it and hunt."

"Perhaps you don't know that I am T. J. Dunke."

"You don't say! And I'm General Grant. This lady hyer is Florence Nightingale or Martha Washington, I disremember which."

Miss Kinney laughed. "Whichever she is she's very very tired," she said. "I think I'll accept your offer to see me to the hotel, Mr. Neill."

She nodded a careless good night to the mine-owner, and touched the horse with her heel. At the porch of the rather primitive hotel she descended stiffly from the saddle.

Before she left the Southerner-- or the Westerner, for sometimes she classified him as one, sometimes as the other-- she asked him one hesitant question.

"Were you thinking of going out again tonight?"

"I did think of taking a turn out to see if I could find Fraser. Anything I can do for you?"

"Yes. Please don't go. I don't want to have to worry about you. I have had enough trouble for the present."

"Would you worry about me?" he asked quietly, his eyes steadily on her.

"I lie awake about the most unaccountable things sometimes."

He smiled in his slow Southern fashion. "Very well. I'll stay indoors. I reckon Steve ain't lost, anyhow. You're too tired to have to lie awake about me to-night. There's going to be lots of other nights for you to think of me."

She glanced at him with a quick curiosity. "Well, of all the conceit I ever heard!"

"I'm the limit, ain't I?" he grinned as he took himself off.

CHAPTER IX

DOWN THE JACKRABBIT SHAFT.

Next morning Larry got up so late that he had to Order a special breakfast for himself, the dining-room being closed. He found one guest there, however, just beginning her oatmeal, and he invited himself to eat at her table.

"Good mawnin', Miss Kinney. You don't look like you had been lying awake worrying about me," he began by way of opening the conversation.

Nor did she. Youth recuperates quickly, and after a night's sound sleep she was glowing with health and sweet vitality. He could see a flush beat into the fresh softness of her flesh, but she lifted her dark lashes promptly to meet him, and came to the sex duel gaily.

"I suppose you think I had to take a sleeping-powder to keep me from it?" she flashed back.

"Oh, well, a person can dream," he suggested.

"How did you know? But you are right. I did dream of you."

To the waiter he gave his order before answering her. "Some oatmeal and bacon and eggs. Yes, coffee. And some hot cakes, Charlie. Did you honest dream about me?" This last not to the Chinese waiter who had padded soft-footed to the kitchen.

"Yes."

She smiled shyly at him with sweet innocence, and he drew his chair a trifle closer

"Tell me."

"I don't like to."

"But you must. Go on."

"Well," very reluctantly. "I dreamed I was visiting the penitentiary and you were there in stripes. You were in for stealing a sheep, I think. Yes, that was it, for stealing a sheep."

"Couldn't you make it something more classy if you're bound to have me in?" he begged, enjoying immensely the rise she was taking out of him.

"I have to tell it the way it was," she insisted, her eyes bubbling with fun. "And it seems you were the prison cook. First thing I knew you were standing in front of a wall and two hundred of the prisoners were shooting at you. They were using your biscuits as bullets."

"That was a terrible revenge to take on me for baking them."

"It seems you had your sheep with you-- the one you stole, and you and it were being pelted all over."

"Did you see a lady hold-up among those shooting at me?" he inquired anxiously.

She shook her head. "And just when the biscuits were flying thickest the wall opened and Mr. Fraser appeared. He caught you and the sheep by the back of your necks, and flung you in. Then the wall closed, and I awoke."

"That's about as near the facts as dreams usually get."

He was very much pleased, for it would have been a great disappointment to him if she had admitted dreaming about him for any reason except to make fun of him. The thing about her that touched his imagination most was something wild and untamed, some quality of silken strength in her slim supple youth that scoffed at all men and knew none as master. He meant to wrest from her if he could an interest that would set him apart in her mind from all others, but he wanted the price of victory to cost him something. Thus the value of it would be enhanced.

"But tell me about your escape-- all about it and what became of Lieutenant Fraser. And first of all, who the lady was that opened the door for you," she demanded.

"She was his sister."

"Oh! His sister." Her voice was colorless. She observed him without appearing to do so. "Very pretty, I thought her. Didn't you?"

"Right nice looking. Had a sort of an expression made a man want to look at her again."

"Yes."

Innocently unaware that he was being pumped, he contributed more information. "And that game."

"She was splendid. I can see her now opening the door in the face of the bullets."

"Never a scream out of her either. Just as cool."

"That is the quality men admire most, isn't it-- courage?"

"I don't reckon that would come first. Course it wouldn't make a hit with a man to have a woman puling around all the time."

"My kind, you mean."

Though she was smiling at him with her lips, it came to him that his words were being warped to a wrong meaning.

"No, I don't," he retorted bluntly.

"As I remember it, I was bawling every chance I got yesterday and the day before," she recalled, with fine contempt of herself.

"Oh, well! You had reason a-plenty. And sometimes a woman cries just like a man cusses. It don't mean anything. I once knew a woman wet her handkerchief to a sop crying because her husband forgot one mo'ning to kiss her good-by. She quit irrigating to run into a burning house after a neighbor's kids."

"I accept your apology for my behavior if you'll promise I won't do it again," she laughed. "But tell me more about Miss Fraser. Does she live here?"

For a moment he was puzzled. "Miss Fraser! Oh! She gave up that name several years ago. Mrs. Collins they call her. And say, you ought to see her kiddies. You'd fall in love with them sure."

The girl covered her mistake promptly with a little laugh. It would never do for him to know she had been yielding to incipient jealousy. "Why can't I know them? I want to meet her too."

The door opened and a curly head was thrust in. "Dining-room closes for breakfast at nine. My clock says it's ten-thirty now. Pretty near work to keep eating that long, ain't it? And this Sunday, too! I'll have you put in the calaboose for breaking the Sabbath."

"We're only bending it," grinned Neill. "Good mo'ning, Lieutenant. How is Mrs. Collins, and the pickaninnies?"

"First rate. Waiting in the parlor to be introduced to Miss Kinney."

"We're through," announced Margaret, rising.

"You too, Tennessee? The proprietor will be grateful."

The young women took to each other at once. Margaret was very fond of children, and the little boy won her heart immediately. Both he and his baby sister were well-trained, healthy, and lovable little folks, and they adopted "Aunt Peggy" enthusiastically.

Presently the ranger proposed to Neill an adjournment.

"I got to take some breakfast down the Jackrabbit shaft to my prisoner. Wanter take a stroll that way?" he asked.

"If the ladies will excuse us."

"Glad to get rid of you," Miss Kinney assured him promptly, but with a bright smile that neutralized the effect of her sauciness. "Mrs. Collins and I want to have a talk."

The way to the Jackrabbit lay up a gulch behind the town. Up one incline was a shaft-house with a great gray dump at the foot of it. This they left behind them, climbing the hill till they came to the summit.

The ranger pointed to another shaft-house and dump on the next hillside.

"That's the Mal Pais, from which the district is named. Dunke owns it and most of the others round here. His workings and ours come together in several places, but we have boarded up the tunnels at those points and locked the doors we put in. Wonder where Brown is? I told him to meet me here to let us down."

At this moment they caught sight of him coming up a timbered draw. He lowered them into the shaft, which was about six hundred feet deep. From the foot of the shaft went a tunnel into the heart of the mountain. Steve led the way, flashing an electric searchlight as he went.

"We aren't working this part of the mine any more," he explained. "It connects with the newer workings by a tunnel. We'll go back that way to the shaft."

"You've got quite a safe prison," commented the other.

"It's commodious, anyhow; and I reckon it's safe. If a man was to get loose he couldn't reach the surface without taking somebody into partner-ship with him. There ain't but three ways to daylight; one by the shaft we came down, another by way of our shaft-house, and the third by Dunke's, assuming he could break through into the Mal Pais. He'd better not break loose and go to wandering around. There are seventeen miles of workings down here in the Jackrabbit, let alone the Mal Pais. He might easily get lost and starve to death. Here he is at the end of this tunnel."

Steve flashed the light twice before he could believe his eyes. There was no sign of Struve except the handcuffs depending from an iron chain connected by a heavy staple with the granite wall. Apparently he had somehow managed to slip from the gyves by working at them constantly.

The officer turned to his friend and laughed. "I reckon I'm holding the sack this time. See. There's blood on these cuffs. He rasped his hands some before he got them out."

"Well, you've still got him safe down here somewhere."

"Yes, I have or Dunke has. The trouble is both the mines are shut down just now. He's got about forty miles of tunnel to play hide-and-go-seek in. He's in luck if he doesn't starve to death."

"What are you going to do about it?"

"I'll have to get some of my men out on search-parties-- just tell them there's a man lost down here without telling them who. I reckon we better say nothing about it to the ladies. You know how tender-hearted they are. Nellie wouldn't sleep a wink to-night for worrying."

"All right. We'd better get to it at once then."

Fraser nodded. "We'll go up and rustle a few of the boys that know the mine well. I expect before we find him Mr. Wolf Struve will be a lamb and right anxious for the shepherd to arrive."

All day the search proceeded without results, and all of the next day. The evening of this second day found Struve still not accounted for.

CHAPTER X

IN A TUNNEL OF THE MAL PAIS

Although Miss Kinney had assured Neill that she was glad to be rid of him it occurred to her more than once in the course of the day that he was taking her a little too literally. On Sunday she did not see a glimpse of him after he left. At lunch he did not appear, nor was he in evidence at dinner. Next morning she learned that he had been to breakfast and had gone before she got down. She withheld judgment till lunch, being almost certain that he would be on hand to that meal. His absence roused her resentment and her independence. If he didn't care to see her she certainly did not want to see him. She was not going to sit around and wait for him to take her down into the mine he had promised she should see. Let him forget his appointment if he liked. He would wait a long time before she made any more engagements with him.

About this time Dunke began to flatter himself that he had made an impression. Miss Kinney was all smiles. She was graciously pleased to take a horseback ride over the camp with him, nor did he know that her roving eye was constantly on the lookout for a certain spare, clean-built figure she could recognize at a considerable distance by the easy, elastic tread. Monday evening the mine-owner called upon her and Mrs. Collins, whose brother also was among the missing, and she was delighted to accept his invitation to go through the Mal Pais workings with him.

"That is, if Mrs. Collins will go, too," she added as an afterthought.

That young woman hesitated. Though this man had led his miners against her brother, she was ready to believe the attack not caused by personal enmity. The best of feeling did not exist between the owners of the Jackrabbit and those of the Mal Pais. Dunke was suspected of boldly crossing into the territory of his neighbor where his veins did not lead. But there had been no open rupture. For the very reason that an undertow of feeling existed Nellie consented to join the party. She did not want by a refusal to put into words a hostility tha e had always carefully veiled. She was in the position of not wanting to go at all, yet wanting still less to decline to do so.

"I shall be glad to go," she said.

"Fine. We'll start about nine, or nine-thirty say. I'll drive up in a surrey."

"And we'll have lunch for the party put up at the hotel here. I'll get some fruit to take along," said Margaret.

"We'll make a regular picnic of it," added Dunke heartily. "You'll enjoy eating out of a dinner-pail for once just like one of my miners, Miss Kinney,"

After he had gone Margaret mentioned to Mrs. Collins her feeling concerning him. "I don't really like him. Or rather I don't give him my full confidence. He seems pleasant enough, too." She laughed a little as she added: "You know he does me the honor to admire me."

"Yes, I know that. I was wondering how you felt about it."

"How ought one to feel about one of the great mining kings of the West?"

"Has that anything to do with it, my dear? I mean his being a mining king?" asked Mrs. Collins gently.

Margaret went up to her and kissed her. "You're a romantic little thing. That's because you probably married a heaven-sent man. We can't all be fortunate."

"We none of us need to marry where we don't love."

"Goodness me! I'm not thinking of marrying Mr. Dunke's millions. The only thing is that I don't have a Croesus to exhibit every day at my chariot wheels. It's horrid of course, but I have a natural feminine reluctance to surrendering him all at once. I don't object in the least to trampling on him, but somehow I don't feel ready for his declaration of independence."

"Oh, if that's all!" her friend smiled.

"That's quite all."

"Perhaps you prefer Texans who come from the Panhandle."

Mrs. Collins happened to be looking straight at her out of her big brown eyes. Wherefore she could not help observing the pink glow that deepened in the soft cheeks.

"He hasn't preferred me much lately."

Nellie knitted her brow in perplexity. "I don't understand. Steve's been away, too, nearly all the time. Something is going on that we don't know about."

"Not that I care. Mr. Neill is welcome to stay away."

Her new friend shot a swift slant look at her. "I don't suppose you trample on him much."

Margaret flushed. "No, I don't. It's the other way. I never saw anybody so rude. He does not seem to have any saving sense of the proper thing."

"He's a man, dearie, and a good one. He may be untrammeled by convention, but he is clean and brave. He has eyes that look through cowardice and treachery, fine strong eyes that are honest and unafraid."

"Dear me, you must have studied them a good deal to see all that in them," said Miss Peggy lightly, yet pleased withal.

"My dear," reproached her friend, so seriously that Peggy repented.

"I didn't really mean it," she laughed. "I've heard already on good authority that you see no man's eyes except the handsome ones in the face of Mr. Tim Collins."

"I do think Tim has fine eyes," blushed the accused.

"No doubt of it. Since you have been admiring my young man I must praise yours," teased Miss Kinney.

"Am I to wish you joy? I didn't know he was your young man," flashed back the other.

"I understand that you have been trying to put him off on me."

"You'll find he does not need any 'putting off' on anybody."

"At least, he has a good friend in you. I think I'll tell him, so that when he does condescend to become interested in a young woman he may refer her to you for a recommendation."

The young wife borrowed for the occasion some of Miss Peggy's audacity. "I'm recommending him to that young woman now, my dear," she made answer.

Dunke's party left for the mine on schedule time, Water-proof coats and high lace-boots had been borrowed for the ladies as a protection against the moisture they were sure to meet in the tunnels one thousand feet below the ground. The mine-owner had had the hoisting-engine started for the occasion, and the cage took them down as swiftly and as smoothly as a metropolitan elevator. Nevertheless Margaret clung tightly to her friend, for if was her first experience of the kind. She had never before dropped nearly a quarter of a mile straight down into the heart of the earth and she felt a smothered sensation, a sense of danger induced by her unaccustomed surroundings. It is the unknown that awes, and when she first stepped from the cage and peered down the long, low tunnel through which a tramway ran she caught her breath rather quickly. She had an active imagination, and she conjured cave-ins, explosions, and all the other mine horrors she had read about.

Their host had spared no expense to make the occasion a gala one. Electric lights were twinkling at intervals down the tunnel, and an electric ore-car with a man in charge was waiting to run them into the workings nearly a mile distant. Dunke dealt out candles and assisted his guests into the car, which presently carried them deep into the mine. Margaret observed that the timbered sides of the tunnel leaned inward slightly and that the roof was heavily cross-timbered.

"It looks safe," she thought aloud.

"It's safe enough," returned Dunke carelessly. "The place for cave-ins is at the head of the workings, before we get drifts timbered."

"Are we going into any of those places?"

"I wouldn't take you into any place that wasn't safe, Miss Margaret."

"Is it always so dreadfully warm down here?" she asked.

"You must remember we're somewhere around a thousand feet in the heart of the earth. Yes, it's always warm."

"I don't see how the men stand it and work."

"Oh, they get used to it."

They left the car and followed a drift which took them into a region of perpetual darkness, into which the electric lights did not penetrate. Margaret noticed that her host carried his candle with ease, holding it at an angle that gave the best light and most resistance to the air, while she on her part had much ado to keep hers from going out. Frequently she had to stop and let the tiny flame renew its hold on the base of supplies. So, without his knowing it, she fell behind gradually, and his explanations of stopes, drifts, air-drills, and pay-streaks fell only upon the already enlightened ears of Mrs. Collins.

The girl had been picking her way through some puddles of water that had settled on the floor, and when she looked up the lights of those ahead had disappeared. She called to them faintly and hurried on, appalled at the thought of possibly losing them in these dreadful underground catacombs where Stygian night forever reigned. But her very hurry delayed her, for in her haste the gust of her motion swept out the flame. She felt her way forward along the wall, in a darkness such as she had never conceived before. Nor could she know that by chance she was following the wrong wall. Had she chosen the other her hand must have come to a break in it which showed that a passage at that point deflected from the drift toward the left. Unconsciously she passed this, already frightened but resolutely repressing her fear.

"I'll not let them know what an idiot I am. I'll not! I'll not!" she told herself.

Therefore she did not call yet, thinking she must come on them at any moment, unaware that every step was taking her farther from the gallery into which they had turned. When at last she cried out it was too late. The walls hemmed in her cry and flung it back tauntingly to her-- the damp walls against which she crouched in terror of the subterranean vault in which she was buried. She was alone with the powers of darkness, with the imprisoned spirits of the underworld that fought inarticulately against the audacity of the puny humans who dared venture here. So her vivid imagination conceived it, terrorizing her against both will and reason.

How long she wandered, a prey to terror, calling helplessly in the blackness, she did not know. It seemed to her that she must always wander so, a perpetual prisoner condemned to this living grave. So that it was with a distinct shock of glad surprise she heard a voice answer faintly her calls. Calling and listening alternately, she groped her way in the direction of the sounds, and so at last came plump against the figure of the approaching rescuer.

"Who is it?" a hoarse voice demanded.

But before she could answer a match flared and was held close to her face. The same light that revealed her to him told the girl who this man was that had met her alone a million miles from human aid. The haggard, drawn countenance with the lifted upper lip and the sunken eyes that glared into hers belonged to the convict Nick Struve.

The match went out before either of them spoke.

"You-- you here!" she exclaimed, and was oddly conscious that her relief at meeting even him had wiped out for the present her fear of the man.

"For God's sake, have you got anything to eat?" he breathed thickly.

It had been part of the play that each member of their little party should carry a dinner-pail just like an ordinary miner. Wherefore she had hers still in her hand.

"Yes, and I have a candle here. Have you another match?"

He lit the candle with a shaking hand.

"Gimme that bucket," he ordered gruffly, and began to devour ravenously the food he found in it, tearing at sandwiches and gulping them down like a hungry dog.

"What day is this?" he stopped to ask after he had stayed the first pangs.

She told him Tuesday.

"I ain't eaten since Saturday," he told her. "I figured it was a week. There ain't any days in this place-- nothin' but night. Can't tell one from another."

"It's terrible," she agreed.

His appetite was wolfish. She could see that he was spent, so weak with hunger that he had reeled against the wall as she handed him the dinner-pail. Pallor was on the sunken face, and exhaustion in the trembling hands and unsteady gait.

"I'm about all in, what with hunger and all I been through. I thought I was out of my head when I heard you holler." He snatched up the candle from the place where he had set it and searched her face by its flame. "How come you down here? You didn't come alone. What you doin' here?" he demanded suspiciously.

"I came down with Mr. Dunke and a, friend to look over his mine. I had never been in one before."

"Dunke!" A spasm of rage swept the man's face. "You're a friend of his, are you? Where is he? If you came with him how come you to be roaming around alone?"

"I got lost. Then my light went out."

"So you're a friend of Dunke, that damned double-crosser! He's a millionaire, you think, a big man in this Western country. That's what he claims, eh?" Struve shook a fist into the air in a mad burst of passion. "Just watch me blow him higher'n a kite. I know what he is, and I got proof. The Judas! I keep my mug shut and do time while he gets off scot-free and makes his pile. But you listen to me, ma'am. Your friend ain't nothin' but an outlaw. If he got his like I got mine he'd be at Yuma to-day. Your brother could a-told you. Dunke was at the head of the gang that held up that train. We got nabbed, me and Jim. Burch got shot in the Catalinas by one of the rangers, and Smith died of fever in Sonora. But Dunke, curse him, he sneaks out and buys the officers off with our plunder. That's what he done-- let his partners get railroaded through while he sails out slick and easy. But he made one mistake, Mr. Dunke did. He wrote me a letter and told me to keep mum and he would fix it for me to get out in a few months. I believed him, kept my mouth padlocked, and served seven years without him lifting a hand for me. Then, when I make my getaway he tries first off to shut my mouth by putting me out of business. That's what your friend done, ma'am."

"Is this true?" asked the girl whitely.

"So help me God, every word of it."

"He let my brother go to prison without trying to help him?"

"Worse than that. He sent him to prison. Jim was all right when he first met up with Dunke. It was Dunke that got him into his wild ways and led him into trouble. It was Dunke took him into the hold-up business. Hadn't been for him Jim never would have gone wrong."

She made no answer. Her mind was busy piecing out the facts of her brother's misspent life. As a little girl she remembered her big brother before he went away, good-natured, friendly, always ready to play with her. She was sure he had not been bad, only fatally weak. Even this man who had slain him was ready to testify to that.

She came back from her absorption to find Struve outlining what he meant to do.

"We'll go back this passage along the way you came. I want to find Mr. Dunke. I allow I've got something to tell him he will be right interested in hearing."

He picked up the candle and led the way along the tunnel. Margaret followed him in silence.

CHAPTER XI

THE SOUTHERNER TAKES A RISK

The convict shambled forward through the tunnel till he came to a drift which ran into it at a right angle.

"Which way now?" he demanded.

"I don't know."

"Don't know," he screamed. "Didn't you just come along here? Do you want me to get lost again in this hell-hole?"

The stricken fear leaped into his face. He had forgotten her danger, forgotten everything but the craven terror that engulfed him. Looking at him, she was struck for the first time with the thought that he might be on the verge of madness.

His cry still rang through the tunnel when Margaret saw a gleam of distant light. She pointed it out to Struve, who wheeled and fastened his eyes upon it. Slowly the faint yellow candle-rays wavered toward them. A man was approaching through the gloom, a large man whom she presently recognized as Dunke. A quick gasp from the one beside her showed that he too knew the man. He took a dozen running steps forward, so that in his haste the candle flickered out.

"That you, Miss Margaret?" the mine-owner called.

Neither she nor Struve answered. The latter had stopped and was waiting tensely his enemy's approach. When he was within a few yards of the other Dunke raised his candle and peered into the blackness ahead of him.

"What's the matter? Isn't it you, Miss Peggy?"

"No, it ain't. It's your old pal, Nick Struve. Ain't you glad to see him, Joe?"

Dunke looked him over without a word. His thin lips set and his gaze grew wall-eyed. The candle passed from right to left hand.

Struve laughed evilly. "No, I'm not going to pay you that way-- not yet; nor you ain't going to rid yourself of me either. Want to know why, Mr. Millionaire Dunke, what used to be my old pal? Want to know why it ain't going to do you any good to drop that right hand any closeter to your hip pocket?"

Still Dunke said nothing, but the candle-glow that lit his face showed an ugly expression.

"Don't you whip that gun out, Joe Dunke. Don't you! 'Cause why? If you do you're a goner."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I kept the letter you wrote me seven years ago, and have put it where it will do you no good if anything happens to me. That's why you won't draw that gun, Joe Dunke. If you do it will send you to Yuma. Millionaire you may be, but that won't keep you from wearing stripes."

Struve's voice rang exultantly. From the look in the face of his old comrade in crime who had prospered at his expense, as he chose to think, he saw that for the time being he had got the whip-hand.

There was a long silence before Dunke asked hoarsely:

"What do you want?"

"I want you to hide me. I want you to get me out of this country. I want you to divvy up with me. Didn't we grub-stake you with the haul from the Overland? Don't we go share and share alike, the two of us that's left? Ain't that fair and square? You wouldn't want to do less than right by an old pal, cap, you that are so respectable and proper now. You ain't forgot the man that lay in the ditch with you the night we held up the flyer, the man that rode beside you when you shot--"

"For God's sake don't rake up forgotten scrapes. We were all young together then. I'll do what's right by you, but you got to keep your mouth shut and let me manage this."

"The way you managed it before when you let me rot at Yuma seven years," jeered Struve.

"I couldn't help it. They were on my trail and I had to lie low. I tell you I'll pull you through if you do as I say."

"And I tell you I don't believe a word you say. You double-crossed me before and you will again if you get a chance. I'll not let you out of my sight."

"Don't be a fool, Nick. How can I help you if I can't move around to make the arrangements for running you across the line?"

"And what guarantee have I got you ain't making arrangements to have me scragged? Think I'm forgetting Saturday night?"

The girl in the blackness without the candle-shine moved slightly.

"What's that?" asked Dunke, startled.

"What's what?"

"That noise. Some one moved."

Dunke's revolver came swiftly from his pocket.

"I reckon it must a-been the girl."

"What girl? Miss Kinney?"

Dunke's hard eyes fastened on the other like steel augers.

Margaret came forward and took wraithlike shape.

"I want you to take me to Mrs. Collins, Mr. Dunke," she said.

The steel probes shifted from Struve to her.

"What did you hear, Miss Kinney? This man is a storehouse of lies. I let him run on to see how far he would go."

Struve's harsh laugh filled the tunnel.

"Take me to Mrs. Collins," she reiterated wearily.

"Not till I know what you heard," answered Dunke doggedly.

"I heard everything," she avowed boldly. "The whole wretched, miserable truth."

She would have pushed past him, but he caught her arm.

"Let me go!"

"I tell you it's all a mistake. I can explain it. Give me time."

"I won't listen, I want never to see either of you again. What have I ever done that I should be mixed up with such men?" she cried, with bitter despair.

"Don't go off half-cocked. 'Course I'll take you to Mrs. Collins if you like. But you got to listen to what I say."

Another candle glimmered dimly in the tunnel and came toward them. It presently stopped, and a voice rolled along the vault.

"Hello, there!"

Margaret would have known that voice anywhere among a thousand. Now it came to her sweet as water after a drought. She slipped past Dunke and ran stumbling through the darkness to its source.

"Mr. Neill! Mr. Neill!"

The pitiful note in her voice, which he recognized instantly, stirred him to the core. Astonished that she should be in the mine and in trouble, he dashed forward, and his candle went out in the rush. Groping in the darkness her hands encountered his. His arms closed round her, and in her need of protection that brushed aside conventions and non-essentials, the need that had spoken in her cry of relief, in her hurried flight to him, she lay panting and trembling in his arms. He held her tight, as one who would keep his own against the world.

"How did you get here-- what has happened?" he demanded.

Hurriedly she explained.

"Oh, take me away, take me away!" she concluded, nestling to him with no thought now of seeking to disguise her helpless dependence upon him, of hiding from herself the realization that he was the man into whose keeping destiny had ordained that she was to give her heart.

"All right, honey. You're sure all safe now," he said tenderly, and in the blackness his lips sought and met hers in a kiss that sealed the understanding their souls had reached.

At the sound of Neill's voice Dunke had extinguished the candle and vanished in the darkness with Struve, the latter holding him by the arm in a despairing grip. Neill shouted again and again, as he relighted his candle, but there came no answer to his calls.

"We had better make for the shaft," he said.

They set out on the long walk to the opening that led up to the light and the pure air. For a while they walked on in silence. At last he took her hand and guided her fingers across the seam on his wrist.

"It don't seem only four days since you did that, honey," he murmured.

"Did I do that?" Her voice was full of self-reproach, and before he could stop her she lifted his hand and kissed the welt.

"Don't, sweet. I deserved what I got and more. I'm ready with that apology you didn't want then, Peggy."

"But I don't want it now, either. I won't have it. Didn't I tell you I wouldn't? Besides," she added, with a little leap of laughter in her voice, "why should you ask pardon for kissing the girl you were meant to-- to----"

He finished it for her.

"To marry, Peggy. I didn't know it then, but I knew it before you said good-by with your whip."

"And I didn't know it till next morning," she said.

"Did you know it then, when you were so mean to me?"

"That was why I was so mean to you. I had to punish myself and you because I-- liked you so well."

She buried her face shyly in his coat to cover this confession.

It seemed easy for both of them to laugh over nothing in the exuberance of their common happiness. His joy pealed now delightedly.

"I can't believe it-- that four days ago you wasn't on the earth for me. Seems like you always belonged; seems like I always enjoyed your sassy ways."

"That's just the way I feel about you. It's really scandalous that in less than a week-- just a little more than half a week-- we should be engaged. We are engaged, aren't we?"

"Very much."

"Well, then-- it sounds improper, but it isn't the least bit. It's right. Isn't it?"

"It ce'tainly is."

"But you know I've always thought that people who got engaged so soon are the same kind of people that correspond through matrimonial papers. I didn't suppose it would ever happen to me."

"Some right strange things happen while a person is alive, Peggy."

"And I don't really know anything at all about you except that you say your name is Larry Neill. Maybe you are married already."

She paused, startled at the impossible thought.

"It must have happened before I can remember, then," he laughed.

"Or engaged. Very likely you have been engaged a dozen times. Southern people do, they say."

"Then I'm an exception."

"And me-- you don't know anything about me."

"A fellow has to take some risk or quit living," he told her gaily.

"When you think of my temper doesn't it make you afraid?"

"The samples I've had were surely right exhilarating," he conceded. "I'm expecting enough difference of opinion to keep life interesting."

"Well, then, if you won't be warned you'll just have to take me and risk it."

And she slipped her arm into his and held up her lips for the kiss awaiting her.

CHAPTER XII

EXIT DUNKE

Dunke plowed back through the tunnel in a blind whirl of passion. Rage, chagrin, offended vanity, acute disappointment, all blended with a dull heartache to which he was a stranger. He was a dangerous man in a dangerous mood, and so Wolf Struve was likely to discover. But the convict was not an observant man. His loose upper lip lifted in the ugly sneer to which it was accustomed.

"Got onto you, didn't she?"

Dunke stuck his candle in a niche of the ragged granite wall, strode across to his former partner in crime, and took the man by the throat.

"I'll learn you to keep that vile tongue of yours still," he said between set teeth, and shook the hapless man till he was black in the face.

Struve hung, sputtering and coughing, against the wall where he had been thrown. It was long before he could do more than gasp.

"What-- what did you do-- that for?" His furtive ratlike face looked venomous in its impotent anger. "I'll pay you for this-- and don't you-- forget it, Joe Dunke!"

"You'd shoot me in the back the way you did Jim Kinney if you got a chance. I know that; but you see you won't get a chance."

"I ain't looking for no such chance. I--"

"That's enough. I don't have to stand for your talk even if I do have to take care of you. Light your candle and move along this tunnel lively."

Something in Dunke's eye quelled the rebellion the other contemplated. He shuffled along, whining as he went that he would never have looked for his old pal to treat him so. They climbed ladders to the next level, passed through an empty stope, and stopped at the end of a drift.

"I'll arrange to get you out of here to-night and have you run across the line. I'm going to give you three hundred dollars. That's the last cent you'll ever get out of me. If you ever come back to this country I'll see that you're hanged as you deserve."

With that Dunke turned on his heel and was gone. But his contempt for the ruffian he had cowed was too fearless. He would have thought so if he could have known of the shadow that dogged his heels through the tunnel, if he could have seen the bare fangs that had gained Struve his name of "Wolf," if he could have caught the flash of the knife that trembled in the eager hand. He did not know that, as he shot up in the cage to the sunlight, the other was filling the tunnel with imprecations and wild threats, that he was hugging himself with the promise of a revenge that should be sure and final.

Dunke went about the task of making the necessary arrangements personally. He had his surrey packed with food, and about eleven o'clock drove up to the mine and was lowered to the ninth level. An hour later he stepped out of the cage with a prisoner whom he kept covered with a revolver.

"It's that fellow Struve," he explained to the astonished engineer in the shaft-house. "I found him down below. It seems that Fraser took him down the Jackrabbit and he broke loose and worked through to our ground."

"Do you want any help in taking him downtown, sir? Shall I phone for the marshal?"

His boss laughed scornfully.

"When I can't handle one man after I've got him covered I'll let you know, Johnson."

The two men went out into the starlit night and got into the surrey. The play with the revolver had hitherto been for the benefit of Johnson, but it now became very real. Dunke jammed the rim close to the other's temple.

"I want that letter I wrote you. Quick, by Heaven! No fairy-tales, but the letter!"

"I swear, Joe--"

"The letter, you villain! I know you never let it go out of your possession. Give it up! Quick!"

Struve's hand stole to his breast, came out slowly to the edge of his coat, then leaped with a flash of something bright toward the other's throat. Simultaneously the revolver rang out. A curse, the sound of a falling body, and the frightened horses leaped forward. The wheels slipped over the edge of the narrow mountain road, and surrey, horses, and driver plunged a hundred feet down to the sharp, broken rocks below.

Johnson, hearing the shot, ran out and stumbled over a body lying in the road. By the bright moonlight he could see that it was that of his employer. The surrey was nowhere in sight, but he could easily make out where it had slipped over the precipice. He ran back into the shaft-house and began telephoning wildly to town.

CHAPTER XIII

STEVE OFFERS CONGRATULATIONS

When Fraser reached the dining-room for breakfast his immediate family had finished and departed. He had been up till four o'clock and his mother had let him sleep as long as he would. Now, at nine, he was up again and fresh as a daisy after a morning bath.

He found at the next table two other late breakfasters.

"Mo'ning, Miss Kinney. How are you, Tennessee?" he said amiably.

Both Larry and the young woman admitted good health, the latter so blushingly that Steve's keen eyes suggested to him that he might not be the only one with news to tell this morning.

"What's that I hear about Struve and Dunke?" asked Neill at once.

"Oh, you've heard it. Well, it's true. I judge Dunke was arranging to get him out of the country. Anyhow, Johnson says he took the fellow out to his surrey from the shaft-house of the Mal Pais under his gun. A moment later the engineer heard a shot and ran out. Dunke lay in the road dead, with a knife through his heart. We found the surrey down in the canyon. It had gone over the edge of the road. Both the hawsses were dead, and Struve had disappeared. How the thing happened I reckon never will be known unless the convict tells it. My guess would be that Dunke attacked him and the convict was just a little bit more than ready for him."

"Have you any idea where Struve is?"

"The obvious guess would be that he is heading for Mexico. But I've got another notion. He knows that's where we will be looking for him. His record shows that he used to trail with a bunch of outlaws up in Wyoming. That was most twenty years ago. His old pals have disappeared long since. But he knows that country up there. He'll figure that down here he's sure to be caught and hanged sooner or later. Up there he'll have a chance to hide under another name."

Neill nodded. "That's a big country up there and the mountains are full of pockets. If he can reach there he will be safe."

"Maybe," the ranger amended quietly.

"Would you follow him?"

The officer's opaque gaze met the eyes of his friend. "We don't aim to let a prisoner make his getaway once we get our hands on him. Wyoming ain't so blamed far to travel after him-- if I learn he is there."

For a moment all of them were silent. Each of them was thinking of the fellow and the horrible trail of blood he had left behind him in one short week. Margaret looked at her lover and shuddered. She had not the least doubt that this man sitting opposite them would bring the criminal back to his punishment, but the sinister grotesque shadow of the convict seemed to fall between her and her happiness.

Larry caught her hand under the table and gave it a little pressure of reassurance. He spoke in a low voice. "This hasn't a thing to do with us, Peggy-- not a thing. They were already both out of your life."

"Yes, I know, but--"

"There aren't any buts." He smiled warmly, and his smile took the other man into their confidence. "You've been having a nightmare. That's past. See the sunshine on those hills. It's bright mo'ning, girl. A new day for you and for me."

Steve grinned. "This is awful sudden, Tennessee. You must a-been sawing wood right industrious on the hawssback ride and down in the tunnel. I expect there wasn't any sunshine down there, was there?"

"You go to grass, Steve."

"No, Tennessee is ce'tainly no two-bit man. Lemme see. One-- two-- three-- four days. That's surely going some," the ranger soliloquized.

"Mr. Fraser," the young woman reproved with a blush.

"Don't mind him, Peggy. He's merely jealous," came back Larry.

"Course I'm jealous. Whyfor not? What license have these Panhandle guys to come in and tote off our girls? But don't mind me. I'll pay strict attention to my ham and eggs and not see a thing that's going on."

"Lieutenant!" Miss Margaret was both embarrassed and shocked.

"Want me to shut my eyes, Tennessee?"

"Next time we get engaged you'll not be let in on the ground floor," Neill predicted.

"Four days! My, my! If that ain't rapid transit for fair!"

"You're a man of one idea, Steve. Cayn't you see that the fact's the main thing, not the time it took to make it one?"

"And counting out Sunday and Monday, it only leaves two days."

"Don't let that interfere with your breakfast. You haven't been elected timekeeper for this outfit, you know!"

Fraser recovered from his daze and duly offered congratulations to the one and hopes for unalloyed joy to the other party to the engagement.

"But four days!" he added in his pleasant drawl. "That's sure some precipitous. Just to look at him, ma'am"-- this innocently to Peggy-- "a man wouldn't think he had it in him to locate, stake out, and do the necessary assessment work on such a rich claim as the Margaret Kinney all in four days. Mostly a fellow don't strike such high-grade ore without a lot of--"

"That will do for you, lieutenant," interrupted Miss Kinney, with merry, sparkling eyes. "You needn't think we're going to let you trail this off into a compliment now. I'm going to leave you and see what Mrs. Collins says. She won't sit there and parrot 'Four days' for the rest of her life."

With which Mistress Peggy sailed from the room in mock hauteur.

When Larry came back from closing the door after her, his friend fell upon him with vigorous. hands to the amazement of Wun Hop, the waiter.

"You blamed lucky son of a gun," he cried exuberantly between punches. "You've ce'tainly struck pure gold, Tennessee. Looks like Old Man Good Luck has come home to roost with you, son."

The other, smiling, shook hands with him. "I'm of that opinion myself, Steve," he said.

Part II

THE GIRL OF LOST VALLEY

CHAPTER I

IN THE FIRE ZONE

"Say, you Teddy hawss, I'm plumb fed up with sagebrush and scenery. I kinder yearn for co'n bread and ham. I sure would give six bits for a drink of real wet water. Yore sentiments are similar, I reckon, Teddy."

The Texan patted the neck of his cow pony, which reached round playfully and pretended to nip his leg. They understood each other, and were now making the best of a very unpleasant situation. Since morning they had been lost on the desert. The heat of midday had found them plowing over sandy wastes. The declining sun had left them among the foothills, wandering from one to another, in the vain hope that each summit might show the silvery gleam of a windmill, or even that outpost of civilization, the barb-wire fence. And now the stars looked down indifferently, myriads of them, upon the travelers still plodding wearily through a land magically transformed by moonlight to a silvery loveliness that blotted out all the garish details of day.

The Texan drew rein. "We all been discovering that Wyoming is a powerful big state. Going to feed me a cigarette, Teddy. Too bad a hawss cayn't smoke his troubles away," he drawled, and proceeded to roll a cigarette, lighting it with one sweeping motion of his arm, that passed down the leg of his chaps and ended in the upward curve at his lips.

The flame had not yet died, when faintly through the illimitable velvet night there drifted to him a sound.

"Did you hear that, pardner?" the man demanded softly, listening intently for a repetition of it.

It came presently, from away over to the left, and, after it, what might have been taken for the popping of a distant bunch of firecrackers.

"Celebrating the Fourth some premature, looks like. What? Think not, Teddy! Some one getting shot up? Sho! You are romancin', old hawss."

Nevertheless he swung the pony round and started rapidly in the direction of the shots. From time to time there came a renewal of them, though the intervals grew longer and the explosions were now individual ones. He took the precaution to draw his revolver from the holster and to examine it carefully.

"Nothing like being sure. It's a heap better than being sorry afterward," he explained to the cow pony.

For the first time in twelve hours, he struck a road. Following this as it wound up to the summit of a hill, he discovered that the area of disturbance was in the valley below. For, as he began his descent, there was a flash from a clump of cotton-woods almost at his feet.

"Did yo' git him?" a voice demanded anxiously.

"Don't know, dad," the answer came, young, warm, and tremulous.

"Hello! There's a kid there," the Texan decided. Aloud, he asked quietly: "What's the row, gentlemen?"

One of the figures whirled-- it was the boyish one, crouched behind a dead horse-- and fired at him.

"Hold on, sonny! I'm a stranger. Don't make any more mistakes like that."

"Who are you?"

"Steve Fraser they call me. I just arrived from Texas. Wait a jiff, and I'll come down and explain."

He stayed for no permission, but swung from the saddle, trailed the reins, and started down the slope. He could hear a low-voiced colloquy between the two dark figures, and one of them called roughly:

"Hands up, friend! We'll take no chances on yo'."

The Texan's hands went up promptly, just as a bullet flattened itself against a rock behind him. It had been fired from the bank of the dry wash, some hundred and fifty yards away.

"That's no fair! Both sides oughtn't to plug at me," he protested, grinning.

The darkness which blurred detail melted as Fraser approached, and the moonlight showed him a tall, lank, unshaven old mountaineer, standing behind a horse, his shotgun thrown across the saddle.

"That's near enough, Mr. Fraser from Texas," said the old man, in a slow voice that carried the Southern intonation. "This old gun is loaded with buckshot, and she scatters like hell. Speak yore little piece. How came yo' here, right now?"

"I got lost in the Wind River bad lands this mo'ning, and I been playing hide and go seek with myself ever since."

"Where yo' haided for?"

"Gimlet Butte."

"Huh! That's right funny, too."

"Why?"

"Because all yo' got to do to reach the butte is to follow this road and yore nose for about three miles."

A bullet flung up a spurt of sand beside the horse.

The young fellow behind the dead horse broke in, with impatient alarm: "He's all right, dad. Can't you tell by his way of talking that he's from the South? Make him lie down."

Something sweet and vibrant in the voice lingered afterward in the Texan's mind almost like a caress, but at the time he was too busy to think of this. He dropped behind a cottonwood, and drew his revolver.

"How many of them are there?" he asked of the lad, in a whisper.

"About six, I think. I'm sorry I shot at you."

"What's the row?"

"They followed us out of Gimlet Butte. They've been drinking. Isn't that some one climbing up the side of the ridge?"

"I believe it is. Let me have your rifle, kid."

"What for?" The youngster took careful aim, and fired.

A scream from the sagebrush-- just one, and then no more.

"Bully for you', Arlie," the old man said.

None of them spoke for some minutes, then Fraser heard a sob-- a stifled one, but unmistakable none the less.

"Don't be afraid, kid. We'll stand 'em off," the Texan encouraged.

"I ain't afraid, but I-- I---- Oh, God, I've killed a man."

The Texan stared at him, where he lay in the heavy shadows, shaken with his remorse. "Holy smoke! Wasn't he aiming to kill you? He likely isn't dead, anyhow. You got real troubles to worry about, without making up any."

He could see the youngster shaking with the horror of it, and could hear the staccato sobs forcing themselves through the closed teeth. Something about it, some touch of pathos he could not account for, moved his not very accessible heart. After all, he was a slim little kid to be engaged in such a desperate encounter Fraser remembered his own boyhood and the first time he had ever seen bloodshed, and, recalling it, he slipped across in the darkness and laid an arm across the slight shoulder.

"Don't you worry, kid. It's all right. You didn't mean--"

He broke off in swift, unspeakable amazement. His eye traveled up the slender figure from the telltale skirt. This was no boy at all, but a girl. As he took in the mass of blue-black hair and the soft but clean-cut modeling from ear to chin, his hand fell from her shoulder. What an idiot he had been not to know from the first that such a voice could have come only from a woman! He had been deceived by the darkness and by the slouch hat she wore. He wanted to laugh in sardonic scorn of his perception.

But on the heel of that came a realization of her danger. He must get her out of there at once, for he knew that the enemy must be circling round, to take them on the flank too. It was not a question of whether they could hold off the attackers. They might do that, and yet she might be killed while they were doing it. A man used to coping with emergencies, his brain now swiftly worked out a way of escape.

"Yore father and I will take care of these coyotes. You slip along those shadows up the hill to where my Teddy hawss is, and burn the wind out of here," he told her.

"I'll not leave dad," she said quickly.

The old mountaineer behind the horse laughed apologetically. "I been trying to git her to go, but she won't stir. With the pinto daid, o' course we couldn't both make it."

"That's plumb foolishness," the Texan commented irritably.

"Mebbe," admitted the girl; "but I reckon I'll stay long as dad does."

"No use being pigheaded about it."

Her dark eyes flashed. "Is this your say-so, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is?" she asked sharply, less because she resented what he said than because she was strung to a wire edge.

His troubled gaze took in again her slim girlishness. The frequency of danger had made him proof against fear for himself, but just now he was very much afraid for her. Hard man as he was, he had the Southerner's instinctive chivalry toward woman.

"You better go, Arlie," her father counseled weakly.

"Well, I won't," she retorted emphatically.

The old man looked whimsically at the Texan. "Yo' see yo'self how it is, stranger."

Fraser saw, and the girl's stanchness stirred his admiration even while it irritated him. He made his decision immediately.

"All right. Both of you go."

"But we have only one horse," the girl objected. "They would catch us."

"Take my Teddy."

"And leave you here?" The dark eyes were full on him again, this time in a wide-open surprise.

"Oh, I'll get out once you're gone. No trouble about that."

"How?"

"We couldn't light out, and leave yo' here," the father interrupted.

"Of course we couldn't," the girl added quickly. "It isn't your quarrel, anyhow."

"What good can you do staying here?" argued Fraser. "They want you, not me. With you gone, I'll slip away or come to terms with them. They haven't a thing against me."

"That's right," agreed the older man, rubbing his stubbly beard with his hand. "That's sho'ly right."

"But they might get you before they understood," Arlie urged.

"Oh, I'll keep under cover, and when it's time, I'll sing out and let them know. Better leave me that rifle, though." He went right on, taking it for granted that she had consented to go: "Slip through those shadows up that draw. You'll have no trouble with Teddy. Whistle when you're ready, and your father will make a break up the hill on his hawss. So-long. See you later some time, mebbe."

She went reluctantly, not convinced, but overborne by the quality of cheerful compulsion that lay in him. He was not a large man, though the pack and symmetry of his muscles promised unusual strength. But the close-gripped jaw, the cool serenity of the gray eyes that looked without excitement upon whatever they saw, the perfect poise of his carriage-- all contributed to a personality plainly that of a leader of men.

It was scarce a minute later that the whistle came from the hilltop. The mountaineer instantly swung to the saddle and set his pony to a canter up the draw. Fraser could see him join his daughter in the dim light, for the moon had momentarily gone behind a cloud, but almost at once the darkness swallowed them.

Some one in the sagebrush called to a companion, and the Texan knew that the attackers had heard the sound of the galloping horses. Without waiting an instant, he fired twice in rapid succession.

"That'll hold them for a minute or two," he told himself. "They won't understand it, and they'll get together and have a powwow."

He crouched behind the dead horse, his gaze sweeping the wash, the sagebrush, and the distant group of cottonwoods from which he had seen a shot fired. Though he lay absolutely still, without the least visible excitement, he was alert and tense to the finger tips. Not the slightest sound, not the smallest motion of the moonlit underbrush, escaped his unwavering scrutiny.

The problem before him was to hold the attackers long enough for Arlie and her father to make their escape, without killing any of them or getting killed himself. He knew that, once out of the immediate vicinity, the fugitives would leave the road and take to some of the canyons that ran from the foothills into the mountains. If he could secure them a start of fifteen minutes that ought to be enough.

A voice from the wash presently hailed him:

"See here! We're going to take you back with us, old man. That's a cinch. We want you for that Squaw Creek raid, and we're going to have you. You done enough damage. Better surrender peaceable, and we'll promise to take you back to jail. What say?"

"Gimme five minutes to think it over," demanded the Texan.

"All right, five minutes. But you want to remember that it's all off with you if you don't give up. Billy Faulkner's dead, and we'll sure come a-shooting."

Fraser waited till his five minutes was nearly up, then plunged across the road into the sagebrush growing thick there. A shot or two rang out, without stopping him. Suddenly a man rose out of the sage in front of him, a revolver in his hand.

For a fraction of a second, the two men faced each other before either spoke.

"Who are you?"

Fraser's answer was to dive for the man's knees, just as a football tackle does. They went down together, but it was the Texan got up first. A second man was running toward him.

"Hands up, there!" the newcomer ordered.

Fraser's hand went up, but with his forty-five in it. The man pitched forward into the sage. The Southerner twisted forward again, slid down into the dry creek, and ran along its winding bed for a hundred yards. Then he left it, cutting back toward the spot where he had lain behind the dead horse. Hiding in the sage, he heard the pursuit pouring down the creek, waited till it was past, and quickly recrossed the road. Here, among the cow-backed hills, he knew he was as safe as a needle in a haystack.

"I had to get that anxious guy, but it might have been a whole lot worse. I only plugged his laig for him," he reflected comfortably. "Wonder why they wanted to collect the old man's scalp, anyhow? The little girl sure was game. Just like a woman, though, the way she broke down because she hit that fellow."

Within five minutes he was lost again among the thousand hills that rose like waves of the sea, one after another. It was not till nearly morning that he again struck a road.

He was halted abruptly by a crisp command from behind a bowlder:

"Up with your hands-- quick!"

"Who are you, my friend?" the Texan asked mildly.

"Deputy sheriff," was the prompt response. "Now, reach for the sky, and prompt, too."

"Just as you say. You've ce'tainly got the crawl on me."

The deputy disarmed his captive, and drove him into town before him. When morning dawned, Fraser found himself behind the bars. He was arrested for the murder of Faulkner.

CHAPTER II

A COMPACT

After the jailer had brought his breakfast, Fraser was honored by a visit from the sheriff, a big, rawboned Westerner, with the creases of fifty outdoor years stamped on his brown, leathery face.

He greeted his prisoner pleasantly enough, and sat down on the bed.

"Treating you right, are they?" he asked, glancing around. "Breakfast up to the mark?"

"I've got no kick coming, thank you," said Fraser.

"Good!"

The sheriff relapsed into sombre silence. There was a troubled look in the keen eyes that the Texan did not understand. Fraser waited for the officer to develop the object of his visit, and it was set down to his credit. A weaker man would have rushed at once into excuses and explanations. But in the prisoner's quiet, steely eyes, in the close-shut mouth and salient jaw, in the set of his well-knit figure, Sheriff Brandt found small room for weakness. Whoever he was, this man was one who could hold his own in the strenuous game of life.

"My friend," said the sheriff abruptly, "you and I are up against it. There is going to be trouble in town to-night."

The level, gray eyes looked questioningly at the sheriff.

"You butted into grief a-plenty when you lined up with the cattlemen in this sheep war. Who do you ride for?"

"I'm not riding for anybody," responded Fraser. "I just arrived from Texas. Didn't even know there was a feud on."

Brandt laughed incredulously. "That will sound good to a jury, if your case ever comes to that stage. How do you expect to explain Billy Faulkner's death?"

"Is there any proof I killed him?"

"Some. You were recognized by two men last night while you were trying to escape. You carried a rifle that uses the same weight bullet as the one we dug out of Billy. When you attacked Tom Peake you dropped that rifle, and in your getaway hadn't time to pick it up again. That is evidence enough for a Wyoming jury, in the present state of public opinion."

"What do you mean by 'in the present state of public opinion'?"

"I mean that this whole country is pretty nearly solid against the Cedar Mountain cattlemen, since they killed Campeau and Jennings in that raid on their camp. You know what I mean as well as I do."

Fraser did not argue the point. He remembered now having seen an account of the Squaw Creek raid on a sheep camp, ending in a battle that had resulted in the death of two men and the wounding of three others. He had been sitting in a hotel at San Antonio, Texas, when he had read the story over his after-dinner cigar. The item had not seemed even remotely connected with himself. Now he was in prison at Gimlet Butte, charged with murder, and unless he was very much mistaken the sheriff was hinting at a lynching. The Squaw Creek raid had come very near to him, for he knew the fight he had interrupted last night had grown out of it,

"What do you mean by trouble to-night?" he asked, in an even, conversational tone.

The sheriff looked directly at him. "You're a man, I reckon. That calls for the truth. Men are riding up and down this country to-day, stirring up sentiment against your outfit. To-night the people will gather in town, and the jail will be attacked."

"And you?"

"I'll uphold the law as long as I can."

Fraser nodded. He knew Brandt spoke the simple truth. What he had sworn to do he would do to the best of his ability. But the Texan knew, too, that the ramshackle jail would be torn to pieces and the sheriff overpowered.

From his coat pocket he drew a letter, and presented it to the other. "I didn't expect to give this to you under these circumstances, Mr. Brandt, but I'd like you to know that I'm on the level when I say I don't know any of the Squaw Creek cattlemen and have never ridden for any outfit in this State."

Brandt tore open the letter, and glanced hurriedly through it. "Why, it's from old Sam Slauson! We used to ride herd together when we were boys." And he real aloud:

"Introducing Steve Fraser, lieutenant in the Texas Rangers."

He glanced up quickly. "You're not the Fraser that ran down Chacon and his gang of murderers?"

"Yes, I was on that job."

Brandt shook hands heartily. "They say it was a dandy piece of work. I read that story in a magazine. You delivered the goods proper."

The ranger was embarrassed. "Oh, it wasn't much of a job. The man that wrote it put in the fancy touches, to make his story sell, I expect."

"Yes, he did! I know all about that!" the sheriff derided. "I've got to get you out of this hole somehow. Do you mind if I send for Hilliard, the prosecuting attorney? He's a bright young fellow, loaded to the guards with ideas. What I want is to get at a legal way of fixing this thing up, you understand. I'll call him up on the phone, and have him run over."

Hilliard was shortly on the spot-- a short, fat little fellow with eyeglasses. He did not at first show any enthusiasm in the prisoner's behalf.

"I don't doubt for a moment that you are the man this letter says you are, Mr. Fraser," he said suavely. "But facts are stubborn things. You were seen carrying the gun that killed Faulkner. We can't get away from that just because you happen to have a letter of introduction to Mr. Brandt."

"I don't want to get away from it," retorted. Fraser. "I have explained how I got into the fight. A man doesn't stand back and see two people, and one of them a girl, slaughtered by seven or eight."

The lawyer's fat forefinger sawed the air. "That's how you put it. Mind, I don't for a moment say it isn't the right way. But what the public wants is proof. Can you give evidence to show that Faulkner and his friends attacked Dillon and his daughter? Have you even got them on hand here to support your statement? Have you got a grain of evidence, apart from your bare word?"

"That letter shows--"

"It shows nothing. You might have written it yourself last night. Anyhow, a letter of introduction isn't quite an excuse for murder."

"It wasn't murder."

"That's what you say. I'll be glad to have you prove it."

"They followed Dillon-- if that is his name-- out of town."

"They put it that they were on their way home, when they were attacked."

"By an old man and his daughter," the Texan added significantly.

"There again we have only your statement for it. Half a dozen men had been in town during the day from the Cedar Mountain district. These men were witnesses in the suit that rose over a sheep raid. They may all have been on the spot, to ambush Faulkner's crowd."

Brandt broke in: "Are you personally convinced that this gentleman is Lieutenant Fraser of the Rangers?"

"Personally, I am of opinion that he is, but--"

"Hold your horses, Dave. Believing that, do you think that we ought to leave him here to be lynched to-night by Peake's outfit?"

"That isn't my responsibility, but speaking merely as a private citizen, I should say, No."

"What would you do with him then?"

"Why not take him up to your house?"

"Wouldn't be safe a minute, or in any other house in town."

"Then get out of town with him."

"It can't be done. I'm watched."

Hilliard shrugged.

The ranger's keen eyes went from one to another. He saw that what the lawyer needed was some personal interest to convert him into a partisan. From his pocket he drew another letter and some papers.

"If you doubt that I am Lieutenant Fraser you can wire my captain at Dallas. This is a letter of congratulation to me from the Governor of Texas for my work in the Chacon case. Here's my railroad ticket, and my lodge receipt. You gentlemen are the officers in charge. I hold you personally responsible for my safety-- for the safety of a man whose name, by chance, is now known all over this country."

This was a new phase of the situation, and it went home to the lawyer's mind at once. He had been brought into the case willy nilly, and he would be blamed for anything that happened to this young Texan, whose deeds had recently been exploited broadcast in the papers. He stood for an instant in frowning thought, and as he did so a clause in the letter from the Governor of Texas caught and held his eye.

which I regard as the ablest, most daring, and, at the same time, the most difficult and most successful piece of secret service that has come to my knowledge....

Suddenly, Hilliard saw the way out-- a way that appealed to him none the less because it would also serve his own ambitions.

"Neither you nor I have any right to help this gentleman to escape, sheriff. The law is plain. He is charged with murder. We haven't any right to let our private sympathies run away with us. But there is one thing we can do."

"What is that?" the sheriff asked.

"Let him earn his freedom."

"Earn it! How?"

"By serving the State in this very matter of the Squaw Creek raid. As prosecuting attorney, it is in my discretion to accept the service of an accomplice to a crime in fixing the guilt upon the principals. Before the law, Lieutenant Fraser stands accused of complicity. We believe him not guilty, but that does not affect the situation. Let him go up into the Cedar Mountain country and find out the guilty parties in the Squaw Creek raid."

"And admit my guilt by compromising with you?" the Texan scoffed.

"Not at all. You need not go publicly. In point of fact, you couldn't get out of town alive if it were known. No, we'll arrange to let you break jail on condition that you go up into the Lost Canyon district, and run down the murderers of Campeau and Jennings, That gives us an excuse for letting you go. You see the point-- don't you?"

The Texan grinned. "That isn't quite the point, is it?" he drawled. "If I should be successful, you will achieve a reputation, without any cost to yourself. That's worth mentioning,"

Hilliard showed a momentary embarrassment.

"That's incidental. Besides, it will help your reputation more than mine "

Brandt got busy at once with the details of the escape. "We'll loosen up the mortar round the bars in the south room. They are so rickety anyhow I haven't kept any prisoners there for years. After you have squeezed through you will find a horse saddled in the draw, back here. You'll want a gun of course."

"Always providing Lieutenant Fraser consents to the arrangement," the lawyer added smoothly.

"Oh, I'll consent," laughed Fraser wryly. "I have no option. Of course, if I win I get the reward-- whatever it is."

"Oh, of course."

"Then I'm at your service, gentlemen, to escape whenever you say the word."

"The best time would be right after lunch. That would give you five hours before Nichols was in here again," the sheriff suggested.

"Suppose you draw a map, showing the route I'm to follow to reach Cedar Mountain. I reckon I had better not trouble folks to ask them the way." And the Texan grinned.

"That's right. I'll fix you up, and tell you later just where you'll find the horse," Brandt answered.

"You're an officer yourself, lieutenant," said the lawyer. "You know just how much evidence it takes to convict. Well, that's just how much we want. If you have to communicate with us, address 'T. L. Meredith, Box 117.' Better send your letter in cipher. Here's a little code I worked out that we sometimes use. Well, so-long. Good hunting, lieutenant."

Fraser nodded farewell, but did not offer to shake hands.

Brandt lingered for an instant. "Don't make any mistake, Fraser, about this job you've bit off. It's a big one, and don't you forget it. People are sore on me because I have fallen down on it. I can't help it. I just can't get the evidence. If you tackle it, you'll be in danger from start to finish. There are some bad men in this country, and the worst of them are lying low in Lost Valley."

The ranger smiled amiably. "Where is this Lost Valley?"

"Somewhere up in the Cedar Mountain district. I've never been there. Few men have, for it is not easy to find; and even if it were strangers are not invited."

"Well, I'll have to invite myself."

"That's all right. But remember this. There are men up there who would drill holes in a dying man. I guess Lost Valley is the country God forgot."

"Sounds right interesting."

"You'll find it all that, and don't forget that if they find out what you are doing there, it will be God help Steve Fraser!"

The ranger's eyes gleamed. "I'll try to remember it."

CHAPTER III

INTO LOST VALLEY

It was one-twenty when Fraser slipped the iron bar from the masonry into which it had been fixed and began to lower himself from the window. The back of the jail faced on the bank of a creek; and into the aspens, which ran along it at this point in a little grove, the fugitive pushed his way. He descended to the creek edge and crossed the mountain stream on bowlders which filled its bed. From here he followed the trail for a hundred yards that led up the little river. On the way he passed a boy fishing and nodded a greeting to him.

"What time is it, mister?" the youngster asked.

A glance at his watch showed the Texan that it was one-twenty-five.

"The fish have quit biting. Blame it all, I'm going home. Say, mister, Jimmie Spence says they're going to lynch that fellow who killed Billy Faulkner-- going to hang him to-night, Jimmie says. Do you reckon they will?"

"No, I reckon not."

"Tha's what I told him, but Jimmie says he heard Tom Peake say so. Jimmie says this town will be full o' folks by night."

Without waiting to hear any more of Jimmie's prophecies, Fraser followed the trail till it reached a waterfall Brandt bad mentioned, then struck sharply to the right. In a little bunch of scrub oaks he found a saddled horse tied to a sapling. His instructions were to cross the road, which ran parallel with the stream, and follow the gulch that led to the river. Half an hour's travel brought him to another road. Into this he turned, and followed it.

In a desperate hurry though he was, Steve dared not show it. He held his piebald broncho to the ambling trot a cowpony naturally drops into. From his coat pocket he flashed a mouthharp for use in emergency.

Presently he met three men riding into town. They nodded at him, in the friendly, casual way of the outdoors West. The gait of the pony was a leisurely walk, and its rider was industriously executing, "I Met My Love In the Alamo."

"Going the wrong way, aren't you?" one of the three suggested.

"Don't you worry, I'll be there when y'u hang that guy they caught last night," he told them with a grin.

From time to time he met others. All travel seemed to be headed townward. There was excitement in the air. In the clear atmosphere voices carried a long way, and all the conversation that came to him was on the subjects of the war for the range, the battle of the previous evening, and the lynching scheduled to take place in a few hours. He realized that he had escaped none too soon, for it was certain that as the crowd in town multiplied, they would set a watch on the jail to prevent Brandt from slipping out with his prisoner.

About four miles from town he cut the telephone wires, for he knew that as soon as his escape became known to the jailer, the sheriff would be notified, and he would telephone in every direction the escape of his prisoner, just the same as if there had been no arrangement between them. It was certain, too, that all the roads leading from Gimlet Butte would be followed and patrolled immediately. For which reason he left the road after cutting the wires, and took to the hill trail marked out for him in the map furnished by Brandt.

By night, he was far up in the foothills. Close to a running stream, he camped in a little, grassy park, where his pony could find forage. Brandt had stuffed his saddlebags with food, and had tied behind a sack, with a feed or two of oats for his horse. Fraser had ridden the range too many years to risk lighting a fire, even though he had put thirty-five miles between him and Gimlet Butte. The night was chill, as it always is in that altitude, but he rolled up in his blanket, got what sleep he could, and was off again by daybreak.

Before noon he was high in the mountain passes, from which he could sometimes look down into the green parks where nested the little ranches of small cattlemen. He knew now that he was beyond the danger of the first hurried pursuit, and that it was more than likely that any of these mountaineers would hide him rather than give him up. Nevertheless, he had no immediate intention of putting them to the test.

The second night came down on him far up on Dutchman Creek, in the Cedar Mountain district. He made a bed, where his horse found a meal, in a haystack of a small ranch, the buildings of which were strung along the creek. He was weary, and he slept deep. When he awakened next morning, it was to hear the sound of men's voices. They drifted to him from the road in front of the house.

Carefully he looked down from the top of his stack upon three horsemen talking to the bare-headed ranchman whom they had called out from his breakfast.

"No, I ain't seen a thing of him. Shot Billy Faulkner, you say? What in time for?" the rancher was innocently asking.

"You know what for, Hank Speed," the leader of the posse made sullen answer. "Well, boys, we better be pushing on, I expect."

Fraser breathed freer when they rode out of sight. He had overslept, and had had a narrow shave; for his pony was grazing in the alfalfa field within a hundred yards of them at that moment. No sooner had the posse gone than Hank Speed stepped across the field without an instant's hesitation and looked the animal over, after which he returned to the house and came out again with a rifle in his hands.

The ranger slid down the farther side of the stack and slipped his revolver from its holster. He watched the ranchman make a tour of the out-buildings very carefully and cautiously, then make a circuit of the haystack at a safe distance. Soon the rancher caught sight of the man crouching against it.

"Oh, you're there, are you? Put up that gun. I ain't going to do you any harm."

"What's the matter with you putting yours up first?" asked the Texan amiably.

"I tell you I ain't going to hurt you. Soon as I stepped out of the house I seen your horse. All I had to do was to say so, and they would have had you slick."

"What did you get your gun for, then?"

"I ain't taking any chances till folks' intentions has been declared. You might have let drive at me before I got a show to talk to you."

"All right. I'll trust you." Fraser dropped his revolver, and the other came across to him.

"Up in this country we ain't in mourning for Billy Faulkner. Old man Dillon told me what you done for him. I reckon we can find cover for you till things quiet down. My name is Speed."

"Call me Fraser."

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Fraser. I reckon we better move you back into the timber a bit. Deputy sheriffs are some thick around here right now. If you have to lie hid up in this country for a spell, we'll make an arrangement to have you taken care of."

"I'll have to lie hid. There's no doubt about that. I made my jail break just in time to keep from being invited as chief guest to a necktie party."

"Well, we'll put you where the whole United States Army couldn't find you."

They had been walking across the field and now crawled between the strands of fence wire.

"I left my saddle on top of the stack," the ranger explained.

"I'll take care of it. You better take cover on top of this ridge till I get word to Dillon you're here. My wife will fix you up some breakfast, and I'll bring it out."

"I've ce'tainly struck the good Samaritan," the Texan smiled.

"Sho! There ain't a man in the hills wouldn't do that much for a friend."

"I'm glad I have so many friends I never saw."

"Friends? The hills are full of them. You took a hand when old man Dillon and his girl were sure up against it. Cedar Mountain stands together these days. What you did for them was done for us all," Speed explained simply.

Fraser waited on the ridge till his host brought breakfast of bacon, biscuits, hard-boiled eggs, and coffee. While he ate, Speed sat down on a bowlder beside him and talked.

"I sent my boy with a note to Dillon. It's a good thirty miles from here, and the old man won't make it back till some time to-morrow. Course, you're welcome at the house, but I judge it wouldn't be best for you to be seen there. No knowing when some of Brandt's deputies might butt in with a warrant. You can slip down again after dark and burrow in the haystack. Eh? What think?"

"I'm in your hands, but I don't want to put you and your friends to so much trouble. Isn't there some mountain trail off the beaten road that I could take to Dillon's ranch, and so save him from the trip after me?"

Speed grinned. "Not in a thousand years, my friend. Dillon's ranch ain't to be found, except by them that know every pocket of these hills like their own back yard. I'll guarantee you couldn't find it in a month, unless you had a map locating it."

"Must be in that Lost Valley, which some folks say is a fairy tale," the ranger said carelessly, but with his eyes on the other.

The cattleman made no comment. It occurred to Fraser that his remark had stirred some suspicion of him. At least, it suggested caution.

"If you're through with your breakfast, I'll take back the dishes," Speed said dryly.

The day wore to sunset. After dark had fallen the Texan slipped through the alfalfa field again and bedded in the stack. Before the morning was more than gray he returned to the underbrush of the ridge. His breakfast finished, and Speed gone, he lay down on a great flat, sun-dappled rock, and looked into the unflecked blue sky. The season was spring, and the earth seemed fairly palpitating with young life. The low, tireless hum of insects went on all about him. The air was vocal with the notes of nesting birds. Away across the valley he could see a mountain slope, with snow gulches glowing pink in the dawn. Little checkerboard squares along the river showed irrigated patches. In the pleasant warmth he grew drowsy. His eyes closed, opened, closed again.

He was conscious of no sound that awakened him, yet he was aware of a presence that drew him from drowsiness to an alert attention. Instinctively, his hand crept to his scabbarded weapon.

"Don't shoot me," a voice implored with laughter-- a warm, vivid voice, that struck pleasantly on his memory.

The Texan turned lazily, and leaned on his elbow. She came smiling out of the brush, light as a roe, and with much of its slim, supple grace. Before, he had seen her veiled by night; the day disclosed her a dark, spirited young creature. The mass of blue-black hair coiled at the nape of the brown neck, the flash of dark eyes beneath straight, dark eyebrows, together with a certain deliberation of movement that was not languor, made it impossible to doubt that she was a Southerner by inheritance, if not by birth.

"I don't reckon I will," he greeted, smiling. "Down in Texas it ain't counted right good manners to shoot up young ladies."

"And in Wyoming you think it is."

"I judge by appearances, ma'am."

"Then you judge wrong. Those men did not know I was with dad that night. They thought I was another man. You see, they had just lost their suit for damages against dad and some more for the loss of six hundred sheep in a raid last year. They couldn't prove who did it." She flamed into a sudden passion of resentment. "I don't defend them any. They are a lot of coyotes, or they wouldn't have attacked two men, riding alone."

He ventured a rapier thrust. "How about the Squaw Creek raid? Don't your friends sometimes forget to fight fair, too?"

He had stamped the fire out of her in an instant. She drooped visibly. "Yes-- yes, they do," she faltered. "I don't defend them, either. Dad had nothing to do with that. He doesn't shoot in the back."

"I'm glad to hear it," he retorted cheerfully. "And I'm glad to hear that your friends the enemy didn't know it was a girl they were attacking. Fact is, I thought you were a boy myself when first I happened in and you fanned me with your welcome."

"I didn't know. I hadn't time to think. So I let fly. But I was so excited I likely missed you a mile."

He took off his felt hat and examined with interest a bullet hole through the rim. "If it was a mile, I'd hate to have you miss me a hundred yards," he commented, with a little ripple of laughter.

"I didn't! Did I? As near as that?" She caught her hands together in a sudden anguish for what might have been.

"Don't you care, ma'am. A miss is as good as a mile. It ain't the first time I've had my hat ventilated. I mentioned it, so you wouldn't get discouraged at your shooting. It's plenty good. Good enough to suit me. I wouldn't want it any better."

"What about the man I wounded." she asked apprehensively. "Is he-- is it all right?"

"Haven't you heard?"

"Heard what?" He could see the terror in her eyes.

"How it all came out?"

He could not tell why he did it, any more than he could tell why he had attempted no denial to the sheriff of responsibility for the death of Faulkner, but as he looked at this girl he shifted the burden from her shoulders to his. "You got your man in the ankle. I had worse luck after you left. They buried mine."

"Oh!" From her lips a little cry of pain forced itself. "It wasn't your fault. It was for us you did it. Oh, why did they attack us?"

"I did what I had to do. There is no blame due either you or me for it," he said, with quiet conviction.

"I know. But it seems so dreadful. And then they put you in jail-- and you broke out! Wasn't that it?"

"That was the way of it, Miss Arlie. How did you know?"

"Henry Speed's note to father said you had broken jail. Dad wasn't at home. You know, the round-up is on now and he has to be there. So I saddled, and came right away."

"That was right good of you."

"Wasn't it?" There was a softened, almost tender, jeer in her voice. "Since you only saved our lives!"

"I ain't claiming all that, Miss Arlie."

"Then I'll claim it for you. I suppose you gave yourself up to them and explained how it was after we left."

"Not exactly that. I managed to slip away, through the sage. It was mo'ning before I found the road again. Soon as I did, a deputy tagged me, and said, 'You're mine.' He spoke for me so prompt and seemed so sure about what he was saying, I didn't argue the matter with him." He laughed gayly.

"And then?"

"Then he herded me to town, and I was invited to be the county's guest. Not liking the accommodations, I took the first chance and flew the coop. They missed a knife in my pocket when they searched me, and I chipped the cement away from the window bars, let myself down by the bed linen, and borrowed a cow-pony I found saddled at the edge of town. So, you see, I'm a hawss thief too, ma'am."

She could not take it so lightly as he did, even though she did not know that he had barely escaped with his life. Something about his debonair, smiling hardihood touched her imagination, as did also the virile competence of the man. If the cool eyes in his weatherbeaten face could be hard as agates, they could also light up with sparkling imps of mischief. Certainly he was no boy, but the close-cut waves of crisp, reddish hair and the ready smile contributed to an impression of youth that came and went.

"Willie Speed is saddling you a horse. The one you came on has been turned loose to go back when it wants to. I'm going to take you home with me," she told him.

"Well, I'm willing to be kidnapped."

"I brought your horse Teddy. If you like, you may ride that, and I'll take the other."

"Yore a gentleman, ma'am. I sure would."

When Arlie saw with what pleasure the friends met, how Teddy nickered and rubbed his nose up and down his master's coat and how the Texan put him through his little repertoire of tricks and fed him a lump of sugar from his coat pocket, she was glad she had ridden Teddy instead of her own pony to the meeting.

They took the road without loss of time. Arlie Dillon knew exactly how to cross this difficult region. She knew the Cedar Mountain district as a grade teacher knows her arithmetic. In daylight or in darkness, with or without a trail, she could have traveled almost a bee line to the point she wanted. Her life had been spent largely in the saddle-- at least that part of it which had been lived outdoors. Wherefore she was able to lead her guest by secret trails that wound in and out among the passes and through unsuspected gorges to hazardous descents possible only to goats and cow ponies. No stranger finding his way in would have stood a chance of getting out again unaided.

Among these peaks lay hidden pockets and caches by hundreds, rock fissures which made the country a very maze to the uninitiated. The ranger, himself one of the best trailers in Texas, doubted whether he could retrace his steps to the Speed place.

After several hours of travel, they emerged from a gulch to a little valley known as Beaver Dam Park. The girl pointed out to her companion a narrow brown ribbon that wound through the park.

"There's the road again. That's the last we shall see of it-- or it will be when we have crossed it. Once we reach the Twin Buttes that are the gateway to French Cañon you are perfectly safe. You can see the buttes from here. No, farther to the right."

"I thought I'd ridden some tough trails in my time, but this country ce'tainly takes the cake," Fraser said admiringly, as his gaze swept the horizon. "It puts it over anything I ever met up with. Ain't that right, Teddy hawss?"

The girl flushed with pleasure at his praise. She was mountain bred, and she loved the country of the great peaks.

They descended the valley, crossed the road, and in an open grassy spot just beyond, came plump upon four men who had unsaddled to eat lunch.

The meeting came too abruptly for Arlie to avoid it. One glance told her that they were deputies from Gimlet Butte. Without the least hesitation she rode forward and gave them the casual greeting of cattleland. Fraser, riding beside her, nodded coolly, drew to a halt, and lit a cigarette.

"Found him yet, gentlemen?" he asked.

"No, nor we ain't likely to, if he's reached this far," one of the men answered.

"It would be some difficult to collect him here," the Texan admitted impartially.

"Among his friends," one of the deputies put in, with a snarl.

Fraser laughed easily. "Oh, well, we ain't his enemies, though he ain't very well known in the Cedar Mountain country. What might he be like, pardner?"

"Hasn't he lived up here long?" asked one of the men, busy with some bacon over a fire.

"They say not."

"He's a heavy-set fellow, with reddish hair; not so tall as you, I reckon, and some heavier. Was wearing chaps and gauntlets when he made his getaway. From the description, he looks something like you, I shouldn't wonder."

Fraser congratulated himself that he had had the foresight to discard as many as possible of these helps to identification before he was three miles from Gimlet Butte. Now he laughed pleasantly.

"Sure he's heavier than me, and not so tall."

"It would be a good joke, Bud, if they took you back to town for this man," cut in Arlie, troubled at the direction the conversation was taking, but not obviously so.

"I ain't objecting any, sis. About three days of the joys of town would sure agree with my run-down system," the Texan answered joyously.

"When you cowpunchers do get in, you surely make Rome howl," one of the deputies agreed, with a grin. "Been in to the Butte lately?"

The Texan met his grin. "It ain't been so long."

"Well, you ain't liable to get in again for a while," Arlie said emphatically. "Come on, Bud, we've got to be moving."

"Which way is Dead Cow Creek?" one of the men called after them.

Fraser pointed in the direction from which he had just come.

After they had ridden a hundred yards, the girl laughed aloud her relief at their escape. "If they go the way you pointed for Dead Cow Creek, they will have to go clear round the world to get to it. We're headed for the creek now."

"A fellow can't always guess right," pleaded the Texan. "If he could, what a fiend he would be at playing the wheel! Shall I go back and tell him I misremembered for a moment where the creek is?"

"No, sir. You had me scared badly enough when you drew their attention to yourself. Why did you do it?"

"It was the surest way to disarm any suspicion they might have had. One of them had just said the man they wanted was like me. Presently, one would have been guessing that it was me." He looked at her drolly, and added: "You played up to me fine, sis."

A touch of deeper color beat into her dusky cheeks. "We'll drop the relationship right now, if you please. I said only what you made me say," she told him, a little stiffly.

But presently she relaxed to the note of friendliness, even of comradeship, habitual to her. She was a singularly frank creature, having been brought up in a country where women were few and far, and where conventions were of the simplest. Otherwise, she would not have confessed to him with unconscious näiveté, as she now did, how greatly she had been troubled for him before she received the note from Speed.

"It worried me all the time, and it troubled dad, too. I could see that. We had hardly left you before I knew we had done wrong. Dad did it for me, of course; but he felt mighty bad about it. Somehow, I couldn't think of anything but you there, with all those men shooting at you. Suppose you had waited too long before surrendering! Suppose you had been killed for us!" She looked at him, and felt a shiver run over her in the warm sunlight. "Night before last I was worn out. I slept some, but I kept dreaming they were killing you. Oh, you don't know bow glad I was to get word from Speed that you were alive." Her soft voice had the gift of expressing feeling, and it was resonant with it now.

"I'm glad you were glad," he said quietly.

Across Dead Cow Creek they rode, following the stream up French Cañon to what was known as the Narrows. Here the great rock walls, nearly two thousand feet high, came so close together as to leave barely room for a footpath beside the creek which boiled down over great bowlders. Unexpectedly, there opened in the wall a rock fissure, and through this Arlie guided her horse.

The Texan wondered where she could be taking him, for the fissure terminated in a great rock slide some two hundred yards ahead of them. Before reaching this she turned sharply to the left, and began winding in and out among the big bowlders which had fallen from the summit far above.

Presently Fraser observed with astonishment that they were following a path that crept up the very face of the bluff. Up-- up-- up they went until they reached a rift in the wall, and into this the trail went precipitously. Stones clattered down from the hoofs of the horses as they clambered up like mountain goats. Once the Texan had to throw himself to the ground to keep Teddy from falling backward.

Arlie, working her pony forward with voice and body and knees, so that from her seat in the saddle she seemed literally to lift him up, reached the summit and looked back.

"All right back there?" she asked quietly.

"All right," came the cheerful answer. "Teddy isn't used to climbing up a wall, but he'll make it or know why."

A minute later, man and horse were beside her.

"Good for Teddy," she said, fondling his nose.

"Look out! He doesn't like strangers to handle him."

"We're not strangers. We're tillicums. Aren't we, Teddy?"

Teddy said "Yes" after the manner of a horse, as plain as words could say it.

From their feet the trail dropped again to another gorge, beyond which the ranger could make out a stretch of valley through which ran the gleam of a silvery thread.

"We're going down now into Mantrap Gulch. The patch of green you see beyond is Lost Valley," she told him,

"Lost Valley," he repeated, in amazement. "Are we going to Lost Valley?"

"You've named our destination."

"But-- you don't live in Lost Valley."

"Don't I?"

"Do you?"

"Yes," she answered, amused at his consternation, if it were that.

"I wish I had known," he said, as if to himself.

"You know now. Isn't that soon enough? Are you afraid of the place, because people make a mystery of it?" she demanded impatiently.

"No. It isn't that." He looked across at the valley again, and asked abruptly: "Is this the only way in?"

"No. There is another, but this is the quickest."

"Is the other as difficult as this?"

"In a way, yes. It is very much more round-about. It isn't known much by the public. Not many outsiders have business in the valley."

She volunteered no explanation in detail, and the man beside her said, with a grim laugh:

"There isn't any general admission to the public this way, is there?"

"No. Oh, folks can come if they want to."

He looked full in her face, and said significantly: "I thought the way to Lost Valley was a sort of a secret-- one that those who know are not expected to tell."

"Oh, that's just talk. Not many come in but our friends. We've had to be careful lately. But you can't call a secret what a thousand folks know."

It was like a blow in the face to him. Not many but their friends! And she was taking him in confidently because he was her friend. What sort of a friend was he? he asked himself. He could not perform the task to which he was pledged without striking home at her. If he succeeded in ferreting out the Squaw Creek raiders he must send to the penitentiary, perhaps to death, her neighbors, and possibly her relatives. She had told him her father was not implicated, but a daughter's faith in her parent was not convincing proof of his innocence. If not her father, a brother might be involved. And she was innocently making it easy for him to meet on a friendly footing these hospitable, unsuspecting savages, who had shed human blood because of the unleashed passions in them!

In that moment, while he looked away toward Lost Valley, he sickened of the task that lay before him. What would she think of him if she knew?

Arlie, too, had been looking down the gulch toward the valley. Now her gaze came slowly round to him and caught the expression of his face.

"What's the matter?" she cried.

"Nothing. Nothing at all. An old heart pain that caught me suddenly."

"I'm sorry. We'll soon be home now. We'll travel slowly."

Her voice was tender with sympathy; so, too, were her eyes when he met them.

He looked away again and groaned in his heart.

CHAPTER IV

THE WARNING OF MANTRAP GULCH

They followed the trail down into the cañon. As the ponies slowly picked their footing on the steep narrow path, he asked:

"Why do they call it Mantrap Gulch?"

"It got its name before my time in the days when outlaws hid here. A hunted man came to Lost Cañon, a murderer wanted by the law for more crimes than one. He was well treated by the settlers. They gave him shelter and work. He was safe, and he knew it. But he tried to make his peace with the law outside by breaking the law of the valley. He knew that two men were lying hid in a pocket gulch, opening from the valley-- men who were wanted for train robbery. He wrote to the company offering to betray these men if they would pay him the reward and see that he was not punished for his crimes.

"It seems he was suspected. His letter was opened, and the exits from the valley were both guarded. Knowing he was discovered, he tried to slip out by the river way. He failed, sneaked through the settlement at night, and slipped into the cañon here. At this end of it he found armed men on guard. He ran back and found the entrance closed. He was in a trap. He tried to climb one of the walls. Do you see that point where the rock juts out?"

"About five hundred feet up? Yes."

"He managed to climb that high. Nobody ever knows how he did it, but when morning broke there he was, like a fly on a wall. His hunters came and saw him. I suppose he could hear them laughing as their voices came echoing up to him. They shot above him, below him, on either side of him. He knew they were playing with him, and that they would finish him when they got ready. He must have been half crazy with fear. Anyhow, he lost his hold and fell. He was dead before they reached him. From that day this has been called Mantrap Gulch."

The ranger looked up at the frowning walls which shut out the sunlight. His imagination pictured the drama-- the hunted man's wild flight up the gulch; his dreadful discovery that it was closed; his desperate attempt to climb by moonlight the impossible cliff, and the tragedy that overtook him.

The girl spoke again softly, almost as if she were in the presence of that far-off Nemesis. "I suppose he deserved,it. It's an awful thing to be a traitor; to sell the people who have befriended you. We can't put ourselves in his place and know why he did it. All we can say is that we're glad-- glad that we have never known men who do such things. Do you think people always felt a sort of shrinking when they were near him, or did he seem just like other men?"

Glancing at the man who rode beside her, she cried out at the stricken look on his face. "It's your heart again. You're worn out with anxiety and privations. I should have remembered and come slower," she reproached herself.

"I'm all right-- now. It passes in a moment," he said hoarsely.

But she had already slipped from the saddle and was at his bridle rein. "No-- no. You must get down. We have plenty of time. We'll rest here till you are better."

There was nothing for it but to obey. He dismounted, feeling himself a humbug and a scoundrel. He sat down on a mossy rock, his back against another, while she trailed the reins and joined him.

"You are better now, aren't you?" she asked, as she seated herself on an adjacent bowlder.

Gruffly he answered: "I'm all right."

She thought she understood. Men do not like to be coddled. She began to talk cheerfully of the first thing that came into her head. He made the necessary monosyllabic responses when her speech put it up to him, but she saw that his mind was brooding over something else. Once she saw his gaze go up to the point on the cliff reached by the fugitive.

But it was not until they were again in the saddle that he spoke.

"Yes, he got what was coming to him. He had no right to complain."

"That's what my father says. I don't deny the justice of it, but whenever I think of it, I feel sorry for him."

"Why?"

Despite the quietness of the monosyllable, she divined an eager interest back of his question.

"He must have suffered so. He wasn't a brave man, they say. And he was one against many. They didn't hunt him. They just closed the trap and let him wear himself out trying to get through. Think of that awful week of hunger and exposure in the hills before the end!"

"It must have been pretty bad, especially if he wasn't a game man. But he had no legitimate kick coming. He took his chance and lost. It was up to him to pay."

"His name was David Burke. When he was a little boy I suppose his mother used to call him Davy. He wasn't bad then; just a little boy to be cuddled and petted. Perhaps he was married. Perhaps he had a sweetheart waiting for him outside, and praying for him. And they snuffed his life out as if he had been a rattlesnake."

"Because he was a miscreant and it was best he shouldn't live. Yes, they did right. I would have helped do it in their place."

"My father did," she sighed.

They did not speak again until they had passed from between the chill walls to the warm sunshine of the valley beyond. Among the rocks above the trail, she glimpsed some early anemones blossoming bravely.

She drew up with a little cry of pleasure. "They're the first I have seen. I must have them."

Fraser swung from the saddle, but he was not quick enough. She reached them before he did, and after they had gathered them she insisted upon sitting down again.

He had his suspicions, and voiced them. "I believe you got me off just to make me sit down."

She laughed with deep delight. "I didn't, but since we are here we shall." And she ended debate by sitting down tailor-fashion, and beginning to arrange her little bouquet.

A meadow lark, troubadour of spring, trilled joyously somewhere in the pines above. The man looked up, then down at the vivid creature busy with her flowers at his feet. There was kinship between the two. She, too, was athrob with the joy note of spring.

"You're to sit down," she ordered, without looking up from the sheaf of anemone blossoms she was arranging.

He sank down beside her, aware vaguely of something new and poignant in his life.

CHAPTER V

JED BRISCOE TAKES A HAND

Suddenly a footfall, and a voice:

"Hello, Arlie! I been looking for you everywhere."

The Texan's gaze took in a slim dark man, goodlooking after a fashion, but with dissipation written on the rather sullen face.

"Well, you've found me," the girl answered coolly.

"Yes, I've found you," the man answered, with a steady, watchful eye on the Texan.

Miss Dillon was embarrassed at this plain hostility, but indignation too sparkled in her eye. "Anything in particular you want?"

The newcomer ignored her question. His hard gaze challenged the Southerner; did more than challenge-- weighed and condemned.

But this young woman was not used to being ignored. Her voice took on an edge of sharpness.

"What can I do for you, Jed?"

"Who's your friend?" the man demanded bluntly, insolently.

Arlie's flush showed the swift, upblazing resentment she immediately controlled. "Mr. Fraser-- just arrived from Texas. Mr. Fraser, let me introduce to you Mr. Briscoe."

The Texan stepped forward to offer his hand, but Briscoe deliberately put both of his behind him.

"Might I ask what Mr. Fraser, just arrived from Texas, is doing here?" the young man drawled, contriving to make an insult of every syllable.

The girl's eyes flashed dangerously. "He is here as my guest."

"Oh, as your guest!"

"Doesn't it please you, Jed?"

"Have I said it didn't please me?" he retorted smoothly.

"Your looks say it."

He let out a sudden furious oath. "Then my looks don't lie any."

Fraser was stepping forward, but with a gesture Arlie held him back. This was her battle, not his.

"What have you got to say about it?" she demanded.

"You had no right to bring him here. Who is he anyhow?"

"I think that is his business, and mine."

"I make it mine," he declared hotly. "I've heard about this fellow from your father. You met up with him on the trail. He says his name is Fraser. You don't even know whether that is true. He may be a spy. How do you know he ain't?"

"How do I know you aren't?" she countered swiftly.

"You've known me all my life. Did you ever see him before?"

"Never."

"Well, then!"

"He risked his life to save ours."

"Risked nothing! It was a trick, I tell you."

"It makes no difference to me what you tell me. Your opinion can't affect mine."

"You know the feeling of the valley just now about strangers," said Briscoe sullenly.

"It depends on who the stranger is."

"Well, I object to this one."

"So it seems; but I don't know any law that makes me do whatever you want me to." Her voice, low and clear, cut like a whiplash.

Beneath the dust of travel the young man's face burned with anger. "We're not discussing that just now. What I say is that you had no right to bring him here-- not now, especially. You know why," he added, almost in a whisper.

"If you had waited and not attempted to brow-beat me, I would have shown you that that is the very reason I had to bring him."

"How do you mean?"

"Never mind what I mean. You have insulted my friend, and through him, me. That is enough for one day." She turned from him haughtily and spoke to the Texan. "If you are ready, Mr. Fraser, we'll be going now."

The ranger, whose fingers had been itching to get at the throat of this insolent young man, turned without a word and obediently brought the girl's pony, then helped her to mount. Briscoe glared, in a silent tempest of passion.

"I think I have left a glove and my anemones where we were sitting," the girl said sweetly to the Texan.

Fraser found them, tightened the saddle girth, and mounted Teddy. As they cantered away, Arlie called to him to look at the sunset behind the mountains.

From the moment of her dismissal of Briscoe the girl had apparently put him out of her thoughts. No fine lady of the courts could have done it with more disdainful ease. And the Texan, following her lead, played his part in the little comedy, ignoring the other man as completely as she did.

The young cattleman, furious, his teeth set in impotent rage, watched it all with the lust to kill in his heart. When they had gone, he flung himself into the saddle and rode away in a tumultuous fury.

Before they had covered two hundred yards Arlie turned to her companion, all contrition. "There! I've done it again. My fits of passion are always getting me into trouble. This time one of them has given you an enemy, and a bad one, too."

"No. He would have been my enemy no rnatter what you said. Soon as he put his eyes on me, I knew it."

"Because I brought you here, you mean?"

"I don't mean only that. Some folks are born to be enemies, just as some are born to be friends. They've only got to look in each other's eyes once to know it."

"That's strange. I never heard anybody else say that. Do you really mean it?"

"Yes."

"And did you ever have such an enemy before? Don't answer me if I oughtn't to ask that," she added quickly.

"Yes."

"Where?"

"In Texas. Why, here we are at a ranch!"

"Yes. It's ours, and yours as long as you want to stay. Did you feel that you were enemies the moment you saw this man in Texas?"

"I knew we were going to have trouble as soon as we looked at each other. I had no feeling toward him, but he had toward me."

"And did you have trouble?"

"Some, before I landed him. The way it turned out he had most of it."

She glanced quickly at him. "What do you mean by 'landed'?"

"I am an officer in the Texas Rangers."

"What are they? Something like our forest rangers?"

"No. The duty of a Texas Ranger is to enforce the law against desperadoes. We prevent crime if we can. When we can't do that, we hunt down the criminals."

Arlie looked at him in a startled silence.

"You are an officer of the law-- a sort of sheriff?" she said, at last.

"Yes, in Texas. This is Wyoming." He made his distinction, knowing it was a false one. Somehow he had the feeling of a whipped cur.

"I wish I had known. If you had only told me earlier," she said, so low as to be almost a whisper.

"I'm sorry. If you like, I'll go away again," he offered.

"No, no. I'm only thinking that it gives Jed a hold, gives him something to stir up his friends with, you know. That is, it would if he knew. He mustn't find out."

"Be frank. Don't make any secret of it. That's the best way," he advised.

She shook her head. "You don't know Jed's crowd. They'd be suspicious of any officer, no matter where he came from."

"Far as I can make out, that young man is going to be loaded with suspicions of me anyhow," he laughed.

"It isn't anything to laugh at. You don't know him," she told him gravely.

"And can't say I'm suffering to," he drawled.

She looked at him a little impatiently, as if he were a child playing with gunpowder and unaware of its potentialities.

"Can't you understand? You're not in Texas with your friends all around you. This is Lost Valley-- and Lost Valley isn't on the map. Men make their own law here. That is, some of them do. I wouldn't give a snap of my fingers for your life if the impression spread that you are a spy. It doesn't matter that I know you're not. Others must feel it, too."

"I see. And Mr. Briscoe will be a molder of public opinion?"

"So far as he can he will. We must forestall him."

"Beat him to it, and give me a clean bill of moral health, eh?"

She frowned. "This is serious business, my friend."

"I'm taking it that way," he said smilingly.

"I shouldn't have guessed it."

Yet for all his debonair ease the man had an air of quiet competence. His strong, bronzed face and neck, the set of his shoulders, the light poise of him in the saddle, the steady confidence of the gray eyes, all told her as much. She was aware of a curiosity about what was hidden behind that stone-wall face of his.

"You didn't finish telling me about that enemy in Texas," she suggested suddenly.

"Oh, there ain't much to tell. He broke out from the pen, where I had put him when I was a kid. He was a desperado wanted by the authorities, so I arrested him again."

"Sounds easy."

"He made some trouble, shot up two or three men first." Fraser lifted his hand absently.

"Is that scar on your hand where he shot you?" Arlie asked.

He looked up in quick surprise. "Now, how did you know that?"

"You were talking of the trouble he made and you looked at your hand," she explained. "Where is he now? In the penitentiary?"

"No. He broke away before I got him there."

She had another flash of inspiration. "And you came to Wyoming to get him again."

"Good gracious, ma'am, but you're ce'tainly a wizard! That's why I came, though it's a secret."

"What is he wanted for?"

"Robbing a train, three murders and a few other things."

As she swung from her pony in front of the old-fashioned Southern log house, Artie laughed at him over her shoulder.

"You're a fine officer! Tell all you know to the first girl you meet!"

"Well, you see, the girl happened to be-- you!"

After the manner of the old-fashioned Southern house a wide "gallery" bisected it from porch to rear. Saddles hung from pegs in the gallery. Horse blankets and bridles, spurs and saddlebags, lay here and there in disarray. A disjointed rifle which some one had started to clean was on the porch. Swiftly Arlie stripped saddle, bridle, and blanket from her pony and flung them down as a contribution to the general disorder, and at her suggestion Fraser did the same. A half-grown lad came running to herd the horses into a corral close at hand.

"I want you when you've finished feeding, Bobbie," Arlie told the lad. Then briefly to her guest: "This way, please."

She led him into a large, cheerful living room, into which, through big casement windows, the light streamed. It was a pleasant room, despite its barbaric touch. There was a grizzly bear skin before the great open, stone fireplace, and Navajo rugs covered the floor and hung on the walls. The skin of a silver-tip bear was stretched beneath a writing desk, a trophy of Arlie's rifle, which hung in a rack above. Civilization had furnished its quota to the room in a piano, some books, and a few photographs.

The Texan observed that order reigned here, even though it did not interfere with the large effect of comfort.

The girl left him, to return presently with her aunt, to whom she introduced him. Miss Ruth Dillon was a little, bright-eyed old lady, whose hair was still black, and her step light. Evidently she had her instructions, for she greeted their guest with charming cordiality, and thanked him for the service he had rendered her brother and her niece.

Presently the boy Bobbie arrived for further orders. Arlie went to her desk and wrote hurriedly.

"You're to give this note to my father," she directed. "Be sure he gets it himself. You ought to find him down in Jackson's Pocket, if the drive is from Round Top to-day. But you can ask about that along the road."

When the boy had gone, Arlie turned to Fraser.

"I want to tell father you're here before Jed gets to him with his story," she explained. "I've asked him to ride down right away. He'll probably come in a few hours and spend the night here."

After they had eaten supper they returned to the living room, where a great fire, built by Jim the negro horse wrangler, was roaring up the chimney.

It was almost eleven o'clock when horses galloped up and Dillon came into the house, followed by Jed Briscoe. The latter looked triumphant, the former embarrassed as he disgorged letters and newspapers from his pocket.

"I stopped at the office to get the mail as I came down. Here's yore paper, Ruth."

Miss Dillon pounced eagerly upon the Gimlet Butte Avalanche, and disappeared with it to her bedroom. She had formerly lived in Gimlet Butte, and was still keenly interested in the gossip of the town.

Briscoe had scored one against Arlie by meeting her father, telling his side of the story, and returning with him to the house. Nevertheless Arlie, after giving him the slightest nod her duty as hostess would permit, made her frontal attack without hesitation.

"You'll be glad to know, dad, that Mr. Fraser is our guest. He has had rather a stormy time since we saw him last, and he has consented to stay with us a few days till things blow over."

Dillon, very ill at ease, shook hands with the Texan, and was understood to say that he was glad to see him.

"Then you don't look it, dad," Arlie told him, with a gleam of vexed laughter.

Her father turned reproachfully upon her. "Now, honey, yo' done wrong to say that. Yo' know Mr. Fraser is welcome to stay in my house long as he wants. I'm proud to have him stay. Do you think I forgot already what he done for us?"

"Of course not. Then it's all settled," Arlie cut in, and rushed on to another subject. "How's the round-up coming, dad?"

"We'll talk about the round-up later. What I'm saying is that Mr, Fraser has only got to say the word, and I'm there to he'p him till the cows come home."

"That's just what I told him, dad."

"Hold yore hawsses, will yo', honey? But, notwithstanding which, and not backing water on that proposition none, we come to another p'int."

"Which Jed made to you carefully on the way down," his daughter interrupted scornfully.

"It don't matter who made it. The p'int is that there are reasons why strangers ain't exactly welcome in this valley right now, Mr. Fraser. This country is full o' suspicion. Whilst it's onjust, charges are being made against us on the outside. Right now the settlers here have got to guard against furriners. Now I know yo're all right, Mr. Fraser. But my neighbors don't know it."

"It was our lives he saved, not our neighbors'," scoffed Arlie.

"K'rect. So I say, Mr. Fraser, if yo' are out o' funds, I'll finance you. Wherever you want to go I'll see you git there, but I hain't got the right to invite you to stay in Lost Valley."

"Better send him to Gimlet Butte, dad! He killed a man in helping us to escape, and he 's wanted bad! He broke jail to get here! Pay his expenses back to the Butte! Then if there's a reward, you and Jed can divide it!" his daughter jeered.

"What's that? Killed a man, yo' say?"

"Yes. To save us. Shall we send him back under a rifle guard? Or shall we have Sheriff Brandt come and get him?"

"Gracious goodness, gyurl, shet up whilst I think. Killed a man, eh? This valley has always been open to fugitives. Ain't that right, Jed?"

"To fugitives, yes," said Jed significantly. "But that fact ain't proved."

"Jed's getting right important. We'll soon be asking him whether we can stay here," said Arlie, with a scornful laugh. "And I say it is proved. We met the deputies the yon side of the big cañon."

Briscoe looked at her out of dogged, half-shuttered eyes. He said nothing, but he looked the picture of malice.

Dillon rasped his stubbly chin and looked at the Texan. Far from an alert-minded man, he came to conclusions slowly. Now he arrived at one.

"Dad burn it, we'll take the 'fugitive' for granted. Yo' kin lie up here long as yo' like, friend. I'll guarantee yo' to my neighbors. I reckon if they don't like it they kin lump it. I ain't a-going to give up the man that saved my gyurl's life."

The door opened and let in Miss Ruth Dillon. The little old lady had the newspaper in her hand, and her beady eyes were shining with excitement.

"It's all in here, Mr. Fraser-- about your capture and escape. But you didn't tell us all of it. Perhaps you didn't know, though, that they had plans to storm the jail and hang you?"

"Yes, I knew that," the Texan answered coolly. "The jailer told me what was coming to me. I decided not to wait and see whether he was lying. I wrenched a bar from the window, lowered myself by my bedding, flew the coop, and borrowed a horse. That's the whole story, ma'am, except that Miss Arlie brought me here to hide me."

"Read aloud what the paper says," Dillon ordered.

His sister handed the Avalanche to her niece. Arlie found the article and began to read:

"A dastardly outrage occurred three miles from Gimlet Butte last night. While on their way home from the trial of the well-known Three Pines sheep raid case, a small party of citizens were attacked by miscreants presumed to be from the Cedar Mountain country. How many of these there were we have no means of knowing, as the culprits disappeared in the mountains after murdering William Faulkner, a well-known sheep man, and wounding Tom Long."

There followed a lurid account of the battle, written from the point of view of the other side. After which the editor paid his respects to Fraser, though not by name.

"One of the ruffians, for some unknown reason-- perhaps in the hope of getting a chance to slay another victim-- remained too long near the scene of the atrocity and was apprehended early this morning by that fearless deputy, James Schilling. He refused to give his name or any other information about himself. While the man is a stranger to Gimlet Butte, there can be no doubt that he is one of the Lost Valley desperadoes implicated in the Squaw Creek raid some months ago. Since the bullet that killed Faulkner was probably fired from the rifle carried by this man, it is safe to assume that the actual murderer was apprehended. The man is above medium height, well built and muscular, and carries all the earmarks of a desperate character."

Arlie glanced up from her reading to smile at Fraser. "Dad and I are miscreants, and you are a ruffian and a desperate character," she told him gayly.

"Go on, honey," her father urged.

The account told how the prisoner had been confined in the jail, and how the citizens, wrought up by the continued lawlessness of the Lost Valley district, had quietly gathered to make an example of the captured man. While condemning lynching in general, the Avalanche wanted to go on record as saying that if ever it was justifiable this was the occasion. Unfortunately, the prisoner, giving thus further evidence of his desperate nature, had cut his way out of prison with a pocketknife and escaped from town by means of a horse he found saddled and did not hesitate to steal. At the time of going to press he had not yet been recaptured, though Sheriff Brandt had several posses on his trail. The outlaw had cut the telephone wires, but it was confidently believed he would be captured before he reached his friends in the mountains.

Arlie's eyes were shining. She looked at Briscoe and handed him the paper triumphantly. This was her vindication for bringing the hunted man to Lost Valley. He had been fighting their battles and had almost lost his life in doing it. Jed might say what he liked while she had this to refute him.

"I guess that editor doesn't believe so confidently as he pretends," she said. "Anyhow, he has guessed wrong. Mr. Fraser has reached his friends, and they'll look out for him."

Her father came to her support radiantly. "You bet yore boots they will, honey. Shake hands on it, Mr. Fraser. I reckon yore satisfied too, Jed. Eh, boy?"

Briscoe viewed the scene with cynical malice. "Quite a hero, ain't he? If you want to know, I stand pat. Mr. Fraser from Texas don't draw the wool over my eyes none. Right now I serve notice to that effect. Meantime, since I don't aim to join the happy circle of his admirers, I reckon I'll duck."

He nodded impudently at Arlie, turned on his heel, and went trailing off with jingling spur. They heard him cursing at his horse as he mounted. The cruel swish of a quirt came to them, after which the swift pounding of a horse's hoofs. The cow pony had found its gallop in a stride.

The Texan laughed lightly. "Exit Mr. Briscoe, some disappointed," he murmured.

He noticed that none of the others shared his mirth.

CHAPTER VI

A SURE ENOUGH WOLF

Briscoe did not return at once to the scene of the round-up. He followed the trail toward Jackson's Pocket, but diverged after he had gone a few miles and turned into one of the hundred blind gulches that ran out from the valley to the impassable mountain wall behind. It was known as Jack Rabbit Run, because its labyrinthine trails offered a retreat into which hunted men might always dive for safety. Nobody knew its recesses better than Jed Briscoe, who was acknowledged to be the leader of that faction in the valley which had brought it the bad name it held.

Long before Jed's time there had been such a faction, then the dominant one of the place, now steadily losing ground as civilization seeped in, but still strong because bound by ties of kindred and of interest to the honest law-abiding majority. Of it were the outlaws who came periodically to find shelter here, the hasty men who had struck in heat and found it necessary to get beyond the law's reach for a time, and reckless cowpunchers, who foregathered with these, because they were birds of a feather. To all such, Jack Rabbit Run was a haven of rest.

By devious paths the cattleman guided his horse until he came to a kind of pouch, guarded by a thick growth of aspens. The front of these he skirted, plunged into them at the farther edge, and followed a narrow trail which wound among them till the grove opened upon a saucer-shaped valley in which nestled a little log cabin. Lights gleamed from the windows hospitably and suggested the comfortable warmth of a log fire and good-fellowship. So many a hunted man had thought as he emerged from that grove to look down upon the valley nestling at his feet.

Jed turned his horse into a corral back of the house, let out the hoot of an owl as he fed and watered, and returning to the cabin, gave the four knocks that were the signal for admission.

Bolts were promptly withdrawn and the door thrown open by a slender, fair-haired fellow, whose features looked as if they had been roughed out and not finished. He grinned amiably at the newcomer and greeted him with: "Hello, Jed."

"Hello, Tommie," returned Briscoe, carelessly, and let his glance pass to the three men seated at the table with cards and poker chips in front of them, The man facing Briscoe was a big, heavy-set, unmistakable ruffian with long, drooping, red mustache, and villainous, fishy eyes. It was observable that the trigger finger of his right hand was missing. Also, there was a nasty scar on his right cheek running from the bridge of the nose halfway to the ear. This gave surplusage to the sinister appearance he already had. To him Briscoe spoke first, attempting a geniality he did not feel.

"How're they coming, Texas?"

"You ain't heard me kicking any, have you?" the man made sullen answer.

"Not out loud," said Briscoe significantly, his eyes narrowing after a trick they had when he was most on his guard.

"I reckon my remarks will be plumb audible when I've got any kick to register, seh."

"I hope not, Mr. Johnson. In this neck of woods a man is liable to get himself disliked if he shoots off his mouth too prevalent. Folks that don't like our ways can usually find a door open out of Lost Valley-- -if they don't wait too long!"

"I'm some haidstrong. I reckon I'll stay." He scowled at Jed with disfavor, meeting him eye to eye. But presently the rigor of his gaze relaxed. Me remembered that he was a fugitive from justice, and at the mercy of this man who had so far guessed his secret. Putting a temporary curb on his bilious jealousy, he sulkily added: "Leastways, if there's no objection, Mr. Briscoe. I ain't looking for trouble with anybody."

"A man who's looking for it usually finds it, Mr. Johnson. A man that ain't, lives longer and more peaceable." At this point Jed pulled himself together and bottled his arrogance, remembering that he had come to make an alliance with this man. "But that's no way for friends to talk. I got a piece of news for you. We'll talk it over in the other room and not disturb these gentlemen."

One of the "gentlemen" grinned. He was a round-bodied, bullet-headed cowpuncher, with a face like burnt leather. He was in chaps, flannel shirt, and broad-brimmed hat. From a pocket in his chaps a revolver protruded. "That's right, Jed. Wrap it up proper. You'd hate to disturb us, wouldn't you?"

"I'll not interrupt you from losing your money more than five minutes, Yorky," answered Briscoe promptly.

The third man at the table laughed suddenly. "Ay bane laik to know how yuh feel now, Yorky?" he taunted.

"It ain't you that's taking my spondulix in, you big, overgrown Swede!" returned Yorky amiably. "It's the gent from Texas. How can a fellow buck against luck that fills from a pair to a full house on the draw?"

The blond giant, Siegfried-- who was not a Swede, but a Norwegian-- announced that he was seventeen dollars in the game himself.

Tommie, already broke, and an onlooker, reported sadly.

"Sixty-one for me, durn it!"

Jed picked up a lamp, led the way to the other room, and closed the door behind them.

"I thought it might interest you to know that there's a new arrival in the valley, Mr. Struve," he said smoothly.

"Who says my name's Struve?" demanded the man who called himself Johnson, with fierce suspicion.

Briscoe laughed softly. "I say it-- Wolf Struve. Up till last month your address for two years has been number nine thousand four hundred and thirty-two, care of Penitentiary Warden, Yuma, Arizona."

"Prove it. Prove it," blustered the accused man.

"Sure." From his inside coat pocket Jed took out a printed notice offering a reward for the capture of Nick Struve, alias "Wolf" Struve, convict, who had broken prison on the night of February seventh, and escaped, after murdering one of the guards. A description and a photograph of the man wanted was appended.

"Looks some like you. Don't it, Mr.-- shall I say Johnson or Struve?"

"Say Johnson!" roared the Texan. "That ain't me. I'm no jailbird."

"Glad to know it." Briscoe laughed in suave triumph. "I thought you might be. This description sounds some familiar. I'll not read it all. But listen: 'Scar on right cheek, running from bridge of nose toward ear. Trigger finger missing; shot away when last arrested. Weight, about one hundred and ninety.' By the way, just out of curiosity, how heavy are you, Mr. Johnson? 'Height, five feet nine inches. Protuberant, fishy eyes. Long, drooping, reddish mustache.' I'd shave that mustache if I were you, Mr.-- er-- Johnson. Some one might mistake you for Nick Struve."

The man who called himself Johnson recognized denial as futile. He flung up the sponge with a blasphemous oath. "What do you want? What's your game? Do you want to sell me for the reward? By thunder, you'd better not!"

Briscoe gave way to one of the swift bursts of passion to which he was subject. "Don't threaten me, you prison scum! Don't come here and try to dictate what I'm to do, and what I'm not to do. I'll sell you if I want to. I'll send you back to be hanged like a dog. Say the word, and I'll have you dragged out of here inside of forty-eight hours."

Struve reached for his gun, but the other, wary as a panther, had him covered while the convict's revolver was still in his pocket.

"Reach for the roof! Quick-- or I'll drill a hole in you! That's the idea. I reckon I'll collect your hardware while I'm at it. That's a heap better."

Struve glared at him, speechless.

"You're too slow on the draw for this part of the country, my friend," jeered Briscoe. "Or perhaps, while you were at Yuma, you got out of practice. It's like stealing candy from a kid to beat you to it. Don't ever try to draw a gun again in Lost Valley while you're asleep. You might never waken."

Jed was in high good humor with himself. His victim looked silent murder at him.

"One more thing, while you're in a teachable frame of mind," continued Briscoe. "I run Lost Valley. What I say, goes here. Get that soaked into your think-tank, my friend. Ever since you came, you've been disputing that in your mind. You've been stirring up the boys against me. Think I haven't noticed it? Guess again, Mr. Struve. You'd like to be boss yourself, wouldn't you? Forget it. Down in Texas you may be a bad, bad man, a sure enough wolf, but in Wyoming you only stack up to coyote size. Let this slip your mind, and I'll be running Lost Valley after your bones are picked white by the buzzards."

"I ain't a-goin' to make you any trouble. Didn't I tell you that before?" growled Struve reluctantly.

"See you don't, then. Now I'll come again to my news. I was telling you that there's another stranger in this valley, Mr. Struve. Hails from Texas, too. Name of Fraser. Ever hear of him?"

Briscoe was hardly prepared for the change which came over the Texan at mention of that name. The prominent eyes stared, and a deep, apoplectic flush ran over the scarred face. The hand that caught at the wall trembled with excitement.

"You mean Steve Fraser-- Fraser of the Rangers!" he gasped.

"That's what I'm not sure of. I got to milling it over after I left him, and it come to me I'd seen him or his picture before. You still got that magazine with the article about him?"

"Yes,"

"I looked it over hurriedly. Let me see his picture again, and I'll tell you if it's the same man."

"It's in the other room."

"Get it."

Struve presently returned with the magazine, and, opening it, pointed to a photograph of a young officer in uniform, with the caption underneath:

LIEUTENANT STEPHEN FRASER OF THE TEXAS RANGERS Who, single-handed, ran down and brought to justice the worst gang of outlaws known in recent years.

"It's the same man," Briscoe announced.

The escaped convict's mouth set in a cruel line.

"One of us, either him or me, never leaves this valley alive," he announced.

Jed laughed softly and handed back the revolver. "That's the way to talk. My friend, if you mean that, you'll need your gun. Here's hoping you beat him to it."

"It won't be an even break this time if I can help it."

"I gather that it was, last time."

"Yep. We drew together." Struve interlarded his explanation with oaths. "He's a devil with a gun. See that?" He held up his right band.

"I see you're shy your most useful finger, if that's what you mean."

"Fraser took it off clean at twenty yards. I got him in the hand, too, but right or left he's a dead shot. He might 'a' killed me if he hadn't wanted to take me alive. Before I'm through with him he'll wish he had."

"Well, you don't want to make any mistake next time. Get him right."

"I sure will." Hitherto Struve had been absorbed in his own turbid emotions, but he came back from them now with a new-born suspicion in his eyes. "Where do you come in, Mr. Briscoe? Why are you so plumb anxious I should load him up with lead? If it's a showdown, I'd some like to see your cards too."

Jed shrugged. "My reasons ain't urgent like yours. I don't favor spies poking their noses in here. That's all there's to it."

Jed had worked out a plot as he rode through the night from the Dillon ranch-- one so safe and certain that it pointed to sure success. Jed was no coward, but he had a spider-like cunning that wove others as dupes into the web of his plans.

The only weakness in his position lay in himself, in that sudden boiling up of passion in him that was likely to tear through his own web and destroy it. Three months ago he had given way to one of these outbursts, and he knew that any one of four or five men could put a noose around his neck. That was another reason why such a man as this Texas ranger must not be allowed to meet and mix with them.

It was his cue to know as much as he could of every man that came into the valley. Wherefore he had run down the record of Struve from the reward placard which a detective agency furnished him of hundreds of criminals who were wanted. What could be more simple than to stir up the convict, in order to save himself, to destroy the ranger who had run him down before? There would be a demand so insistent for the punishment of the murderer that it could not be ignored. He would find some pretext to lure Struve from the valley for a day or two, and would arrange it so that he would be arrested while he was away. Thus he would be rid of both these troublesome intruders without making a move that could be seen.

It was all as simple as A B C. Already Struve had walked into the trap. As Jed sat down to take a hand in the poker game that was in progress, he chuckled quietly to himself. He was quite sure that he was already practically master of the situation.

CHAPTER VII

THE ROUND-UP

"Would you like to take in the round-up to-day?"

Arlie flung the question at Fraser with a frank directness of sloe-black eyes that had never known coquetry. She was washing handkerchiefs, and her sleeves were rolled to the elbows of the slender, but muscular, coffee-brown arms.

"I would."

"If you like you may ride out with me to Willow Spring. I have some letters to take to dad."

"Suits me down to the ground, ma'am."

It was a morning beautiful even for Wyoming. The spring called potently to the youth in them. The fine untempered air was like wine, and out of a blue sky the sun beat pleasantly down through a crystal-clear atmosphere known only to the region of the Rockies. Nature was preaching a wordless sermon on the duty of happiness to two buoyant hearts that scarce needed it.

Long before they reached the scene of the round-up they could hear the almost continual bawl of worried cattle, and could even see the cloud of dust they stirred. They passed the remuda, in charge of two lads lounging sleepily in their saddles with only an occasional glance at the bunch of grazing horses they were watching. Presently they looked down from a high ridge at the busy scene below.

Out of Lost Valley ran a hundred rough and wooded gulches to the impassable cliff wall which bounded it. Into one of these they now descended slowly, letting their ponies pick a way among the loose stones and shale which covered the steep hillside.

What their eyes fell upon was cattle-land at its busiest. Several hundred wild hill cattle were gathered in the green draw, and around them was a cordon of riders holding the gather steady. Now and again one of the cows would make a dash to escape, and instantly the nearest rider would wheel, as on a batter's plate, give chase, and herd the animal back after a more or less lengthy pursuit.

Several of the riders were cutting out from the main herd cows with unmarked calves, which last were immediately roped and thrown. Usually it took only an instant to determine with whose cow the calf had been, and a few seconds to drive home the correct brand upon the sizzling flank. Occasionally the discussion was more protracted, in order to solve a doubt as to the ownership, and once a calf was released that it might again seek its mother to prove identity.

Arlie observed that Fraser's eyes were shining.

"I used to be a puncher myse'f," he explained. "I tell you it feels good to grip a saddle between your knees, and to swallow the dust and hear the bellow of the cows. I used to live in them days. I sure did."

A boyish puncher galloped past with a whoop and waved his hat to Arlie. For two weeks he had been in the saddle for fourteen hours out of the twenty-four. He was grimy with dust, and hollow-eyed from want of sleep. A stubbly beard covered his brick-baked face. But the unquenchable gayety of the youthful West could not be extinguished. Though his flannel shirt gaped where the thorns had torn it, and the polka-dot bandanna round his throat was discolored with sweat, he was as blithely debonair as ever.

"That's Dick France. He's a great friend of mine," Arlie explained.

"Dick's in luck," Fraser commented, but whether because he was enjoying himself so thoroughly or because he was her friend the ranger did not explain.

They stayed through the day, and ate dinner at the tail of the chuck wagon with the cattlemen. The light of the camp fires, already blazing in the nipping night air, shone brightly. The ranger rode back with her to the ranch, but next morning he asked Arlie if she could lend him an old pair of chaps discarded by her father.

She found a pair for him.

"If you don't mind, I'll ride out to the round-up and stay with the boys a few days," he suggested.

"You're going to ride with them," she accused.

"I thought I would. I'm not going to saddle myse'f on you two ladies forever."

"You know we're glad to have you. But that isn't it. What about your heart? You know you can't ride the range."

He flushed, and knew again that feeling of contempt for himself, or, to be more exact, for his position.

"I'll be awful careful, Miss Arlie," was all he found to say.

She could not urge him further, lest he misunderstand her.

"Of course, you know best," she said, with a touch of coldness.

He saddled Teddy and rode back. The drive for the day was already on, but he fell in beside young France and did his part. Before two days had passed he was accepted as one of these hard-riding punchers, for he was a competent vaquero and stood the grueling work as one born to it. He was, moreover, well liked, both because he could tell a good story and because these sons of Anak recognized in him that dynamic quality of manhood they could not choose but respect. In this a fortunate accident aided him.

They were working Lost Creek, a deep and rapid stream at the point where the drive ended. The big Norwegian, Siegfried, trying to head off a wild cow racing along the bank with tail up, got too near the edge. The bank caved beneath the feet of his pony, and man and horse went head first into the turbid waters. Fraser galloped up at once, flung himself from his saddle, and took in at a glance the fact that the big blond Hercules could not swim.

The Texan dived for him as he was going down, got hold of him by the hair, and after a struggle managed somehow to reach the farther shore. As they both lay there, one exhausted, and the other fighting for the breath he had nearly lost forever, Dillon reached the bank.

"Is it all right, Steve?" he called anxiously.

"All right," grinned the ranger weakly. "He'll go on many a spree yet. Eh, Siegfried?"

The Norwegian nodded. He was still frightened and half drowned. It was not till they were riding up the creek to find a shallow place they could ford that he spoke his mind.

"Ay bane all in ven you got me, pardner."

"Oh, you were still kicking."

"Ay bane t'ink Ay had van chance not to get out. But Ay bane not forget dees. Eef you ever get in a tight place, send vor Sig Siegfried."

"That's all right, Sig."

Nobody wasted any compliments on him. After the fashion of their kind, they guyed the Norwegian about the bath he had taken. Nevertheless, Fraser knew that he had won the liking of these men, as well as their deep respect. They began to call him by his first name, which hitherto only Dillon had done, and they included him in the rough, practical jokes they played on each other.

One night they initiated him-- an experience to be both dreaded and desired. To be desired because it implies the conferring of the thirty-second degree of the freemasonry of Cattleland's approval; to be dreaded because hazing is mild compared with some features of the exercises.

Fraser was dragged from sweet slumber, pegged face down on his blankets, with a large-sized man at the extremity of each arm and leg, and introduced to a chapping. Dick France wielded the chaps vigorously upon the portions of his anatomy where they would do the most execution. The Texan did not enjoy it, but he refrained from saying so. When he was freed, he sat down painfully on a saddle and remarked amiably:

"You're a beautiful bunch, ain't you? Anybody got any smoking?"

This proper acceptance of their attentions so delighted these overgrown children that they dug up three bottles of whisky that were kept in camp for rattlesnake bites, and made Rome howl. They had ridden all day, and for many weary days before that; but they were started toward making a night of it when Dillon appeared.

Dillon was boss of the round-up-- he had been elected by general consent, and his word was law. He looked round upon them with a twinkling eye, and wanted to know how long it was going to last. But the way he put his question was:

"How much whisky is there left?"

Finding there was none, he ordered them all back to their blankets. After a little skylarking, they obeyed. Next day Fraser rode the hills, a sore, sore man. But nobody who did not know could have guessed it. He would have died before admitting it to any of his companions. Thus he won the accolade of his peers as a worthy horse-man of the hills.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BRONCHO BUSTERS

Jed Briscoe rejoined the round-up the day following Fraser's initiation. He took silent note of the Texan's popularity, of how the boys all called him "Steve" because he had become one of them, and were ready either to lark with him or work with him. He noticed, too, that the ranger did his share of work without a whimper, apparently enjoying the long, hard hours in the saddle. The hill riding was of the roughest, and the cattle were wild as deers and as agile. But there was no break-neck incline too steep for Steve Fraser to follow.

Once Jed chanced upon Steve stripped for a bath beside the creek, and he understood the physical reason for his perfect poise. The wiry, sinuous muscles, packed compactly without obtrusion, played beneath the skin like those of a panther. He walked as softly and as easily as one, with something of the rippling, unconscious grace of that jungle lord. It was this certainty of himself that vivified the steel-gray eyes which looked forth unafraid, and yet amiably, upon a world primitive enough to demand proof of every man who would hold the respect of his fellows.

Meanwhile, Briscoe waited for Struve and his enemy to become entangled in the net he was spinning. He made no pretense of fellowship with Fraser; nor, on the other hand, did he actively set himself against him with the men. He was ready enough to sneer when Dick France grew enthusiastic about his new friend, but this was to be expected from one of his jaundiced temper.

"Who is this all-round crackerjack you're touting, Dick?" he asked significantly.

France was puzzled. "Who is he? Why, he's Steve Fraser."

"I ain't asking you what his name is. I'm asking who he is. What does he do for a living? Who recommended him so strong to the boys that they take up with him so sudden?"

"I don't care what he does for a living. Likely, he rides the range in Texas. When it comes to recommendations, he's got one mighty good one written on his face,"

"You think so, do you?"

"That's what I think, Jed. He's the goods-- best of company, a straight-up rider, and a first-rate puncher. Ask any of the boys."

"I'm using my eyes, Dick. They tell me all I need to know."

"Well, use them to-morrow. He's going to take a whirl at riding Dead Easy. Next day he's going to take on Rocking Horse. If he makes good on them, you'll admit he can ride."

"I ain't saying he can't ride. So can you. If it's plumb gentle, I can make out to stick on a pony myself."

"Course you can ride. Everybody knows that. You're the best ever. Any man that can win the championship of Wyoming---- But you'll say yourself them strawberry roans are wicked devils."

"He hasn't ridden them yet, Dick."

"He's going to."

"We'll be there to see it. Mebbe he will. Mebbe he won't. I've known men before who thought they were going to."

It was in no moment of good-natured weakness that Fraser had consented to try riding the outlaw horses. Nor had his vanity anything to do with it. He knew a time might be coming when he would need all the prestige and all the friendship he could earn to tide him over the crisis. Jed Briscoe had won his leadership, partly because he could shoot quicker and straighter, ride harder, throw a rope more accurately, and play poker better than his companions,

Steve had a mind to show that he, too, could do some of these things passing well. Wherefore, he had let himself be badgered good-naturedly into trying a fall with these famous buckers. As the heavy work of the round-up was almost over, Dillon was glad to relax discipline enough to give the boys a little fun.

The remuda was driven up while the outfit was at breakfast. His friends guyed Steve with pleasant prophecy.

"He'll be hunting leather about the fourth buck!"

"If he ain't trying to make of himse'f one of them there Darius Green machines!" suggested another.

"Got any last words, Steve? Dead Easy most generally eats 'em alive," Dick derided.

"Sho! Cayn't you see he's so plumb scared he cayn't talk?"

Fraser grinned and continued to eat. When he had finished he got his lariat from the saddle, swung to Siegfried's pony, and rode unobtrusively forward to the remuda. The horses were circling round and round, so that it was several minutes before he found a chance. When he did, the rope snaked forward and dropped over the head of the strawberry roan. The horse stood trembling, making not the least resistance, even while the ranger saddled and cinched.

But before the man settled to the saddle, the outlaw was off on its furious resistance. It went forward and up into the air with a plunging leap. The rider swung his hat and gave a joyous whoop. Next instant there was a scatter of laughing men as the horse came toward them in a series of short, stiff-legged bucks which would have jarred its rider like a pile driver falling on his head had he not let himself grow limp to meet the shock.

All the tricks of its kind this unbroken five-year-old knew. Weaving, pitching, sunfishing, it fought superbly, the while Steve rode with the consummate ease of a master. His sinuous form swayed instinctively to every changing motion of his mount. Even when it flung itself back in blind fury, he dropped lightly from the saddle and into it again as the animal struggled to its feet.

The cook waved a frying pan in frantic glee. "Hurra-ay! You're the goods, all right, all right."

"You bet. Watch Steve fan him. And he ain't pulled leather yet. Not once."

An unseen spectator was taking it in from the brow of a little hill crowned with a group of firs. She had reached this point just as the Texan had swung to the saddle, and she watched the battle between horse and man intently. If any had been there to see, he might have observed a strange fire smouldering in her eyes. For the first time there was filtering through her a vague suspicion of this man who claimed to have heart trouble, and had deliberately subjected himself to the terrific strain of such a test. She had seen broncho busters get off bleeding at mouth and nose and ears after a hard fight, and she had never seen a contest more superbly fought than this one. But full of courage as the horse was, it had met its master and began to know it.

The ranger's quirt was going up and down, stinging Dead Easy to more violent exertions, if possible. But the outlaw had shot its bolt. The plunges grew less vicious, the bucks more feeble. It still pitched, because of the unbroken gameness that defied defeat, but so mechanically that the motions could be forecasted.

Then Steve began to soothe the brute. Somehow the wild creatu ecame aware that this man who was his master was also disposed to be friendly. Presently it gave up the battle, quivering in every limb. Fraser slipped from the saddle, and putting his arm across its neck began to gentle the outlaw. The animal had always looked the incarnation of wickedness. The red eyes in its ill-shaped head were enough to give one bad dreams. A quarter of an hour before, it had bit savagely at him. Now it stood breathing deep, and trembling while its master let his hand pass gently over the nose and neck with soft words that slowly won the pony back from the terror into which it had worked itself.

"You did well, Mr. Fraser from Texas," Jed complimented him, with a smile that thinly hid his malice. "But it won't do to have you going back to Texas with the word that Wyoming is shy of riders. I ain't any great shakes, but I reckon I'll have to take a whirl at Rocking Horse." He had decided to ride for two reasons. One was that he had glimpsed the girl among the firs; the other was to dissipate the admiration his rival had created among the men.

Briscoe lounged toward the remuda, rope in hand. It was his cue to get himself up picturesquely in all the paraphernalia of the cowboy. Black-haired and white-toothed, lithe as a wolf, and endowed with a grace almost feline, it was easy to understand how this man appealed to the imagination of the reckless young fellows of this primeval valley. Everything he did was done well. Furthermore, he looked and acted the part of leader which he assumed.

Rocking Horse was in a different mood from its brother. It was hard to rope, and when Jed's raw-hide had fallen over its head it was necessary to reënforce the lariat with two others. Finally the pony had to be flung down before a saddle could be put on. When Siegfried, who had been kneeling on its head, stepped back, the outlaw staggered to its feet, already badly shaken, to find an incubus clamped to the saddle.

No matter how it pitched, the human clothespin stuck to his seat, and apparently with as little concern as if he had been in a rowboat gently moved to and fro by the waves. Jed rode like a centaur, every motion attuned to those of the animal as much as if he were a part of it. No matter how it pounded or tossed, he stuck securely to the hurricane deck of the broncho.

Once only he was in danger, and that because Rocking Horse flung furiously against the wheel of a wagon and ground the rider's leg till he grew dizzy with the pain. For an instant he caught at the saddle horn to steady himself as the roan bucked into the open again.

"He's pulling leather!" some one shouted.

"Shut up, you goat!" advised the Texan good-naturedly. "Can't you see his laig got jammed till he's groggy? Wonder is, he didn't take the dust! They don't raise better riders than he is."

"By hockey! He's all in. Look out! Jed's falling," France cried, running forward.

It looked so for a moment, then Jed swam back to clear consciousness again, and waved them back. He began to use his quirt without mercy.

"Might know he'd game it out," remarked Yorky.

He did. It was a long fight, and the horse was flecked with bloody foam before its spirit and strength failed. But the man in the saddle kept his seat till the victory was won.

Steve was on the spot to join heartily the murmur of applause, for he was too good a sportsman to grudge admiration even to his enemy.

"You're the one best bet in riders, Mr. Briscoe. It's a pleasure to watch you," he said frankly.

Jed's narrowed eyes drifted to him. "Oh, hell!" he drawled with insolent contempt, and turned on his heel.

From the clump of firs a young woman was descending, and Jed went to meet her.

"You rode splendidly," she told him with vivid eyes. "Were you hurt when you were jammed again the wagon? I mean, does it still hurt?" For she noticed that he walked with a limp.

"I reckon I can stand the grief without an amputation. Arlie, I got something to tell you."

She looked at him in her direct fashion and waited.

"It's about your new friend." He drew from a pocket some leaves torn out of a magazine. His finger indicated a picture. "Ever see that gentleman before?"

The girl looked at it coolly. "It seems to be Mr. Fraser taken in his uniform; Lieutenant Fraser, I should say."

The cattleman's face fell. "You know, then, who he is, and what he's doing here."

Without evasion, her gaze met his. "I understood him to say he was an officer in the Texas Rangers. You know why he is here."

"You're right, I do. But do you?"

"Well, what is it you mean? Out with it, Jed," she demanded impatiently.

"He is here to get a man wanted in Texas, a man hiding in this valley right now."

"I don't believe it," she returned quickly. "And if he is, that's not your business or mine. It's his duty, isn't it?"

"I ain't discussing that. You know the law of the valley, Arlie."

"I don't accept that as binding, Jed. Lots of people here don't. Because Lost Valley used to be a nest of miscreants, it needn't always be. I don't see what right we've got to set ourselves above the law."

"This valley has always stood by hunted men when they reached it. That's our custom, and I mean to stick to it."

"Very well. I hold you to that," she answered quickly. "This man Fraser is a hunted man. He's hunted because of what he did for me and dad. I claim the protection of the valley for him."

"He can have it-- if he's what he says he is. But why ain't he been square with us? Why didn't he tell who he was?"

"He told me."

"That ain't enough, Arlie. If he did, you kept it quiet. We all had a right to know."

"If you had asked him, he would have told you."

"I ain't so sure he would. Anyhow, I don't like it. I believe he is here to get the man I told you of. Mebbe that ain't all."

"What more?" she scoffed.

"This fellow is the best range detective in the country. My notion is he's spying around about that Squaw Creek raid."

Under the dusky skin she flushed angrily. "My notion is you're daffy, Jed. Talk sense, and I'll listen to you. You haven't a grain of proof."

"I may get some yet," he told her sulkily.

She laughed her disbelief. "When you do, let me know,"

And with that she gave her pony the signal to more forward.

Nevertheless, she met the ranger at the foot of the little hill with distinct coldness. When he came up to shake hands, she was too busy dismounting to notice.

"Your heart must be a good deal better. I suppose Lost Valley agrees with you." She had swung down on the other side of the horse, and her glance at him across the saddle seat was like a rapier thrust.

He was aware at once of being in disgrace with her, and it chafed him that he had no adequate answer to her implied charge.

"My heart's all right," he said a little gruffly.

"Yes, it seems to be, lieutenant."

She trailed the reins and turned away at once to find her father. The girl was disappointed in him. He had, in effect, lied to her. That was bad enough; but she felt that his lie had concealed something, how much she scarce dared say. Her tangled thoughts were in chaos. One moment she was ready to believe the worst; the next, it was impossible to conceive such a man so vile a spy as to reward hospitality with treachery.

Yet she remembered now that it had been while she was telling of the fate of the traitor Burke that she had driven him to his lie. Or had he not told it first when she pointed out Lost Valley at his feet? Yes, it was at that moment she had noticed his pallor. He had, at least, conscience enough to be ashamed of what he was doing. But she recognized a wide margin of difference between the possibilities of his guilt. It was one thing to come to the valley for an escaped murderer; it was quite another to use the hospitality of his host as a means to betray the friends of that host. Deep in her heart she could not find it possible to convict him of the latter alternative. He was too much a man, too vitally dynamic. No; whatever else he was, she felt sure he was not so hopelessly lost to decency. He had that electric spark of self-respect which may coexist with many faults, but not with treachery.

CHAPTER IX

A SHOT FROM BALD KNOB

A bunch of young steers which had strayed from their range were to be driven to the Dillon ranch, and the boss of the rodeo appointed France and Fraser to the task.

"Yo'll have company home, honey," he told his daughter, "and yo'll be able to give the boys a hand if they need it. These hill cattle are still some wild, though we've been working them a week. Yo're a heap better cowboy than some that works more steady at the business."

Briscoe nodded. "You bet! I ain't forgot that day Arlie rode Big Timber with me two years ago. She wasn't sixteen then, but she herded them hill steers like they belonged to a milk bunch."

He spoke his compliment patly enough, but somehow the girl had an impression that he was thinking of something else. She was right, for as he helped gather the drive his mind was busy with a problem. Presently he dismounted to tighten a cinch, and made a signal to a young fellow known as Slim Leroy. The latter was a new and tender recruit to Jed's band of miscreants. He drew up beside his leader and examined one of the fore hoofs of his pony.

"Slim, I'm going to have Dillon send you for the mail to-day. When he tells you, that's the first you know about it. Understand? You'll have to take the hill cut to Jack Rabbit Run on your way in. At the cabin back of the aspens, inquire for a man that calls himself Johnson. If he's there, give him this message: 'This afternoon from Bald Knob.' Remember! Just those words, and nothing more. If he isn't there, forget the message. You'll know the man you want because he is shy his trigger finger and has a ragged scar across his right cheek. Make no mistake about this, Slim."

"Sure I won't."

Briscoe, having finished cinching, swung to his saddle and rode up to say good-by to Arlie.

"Hope you'll have no trouble with this bunch. If you push right along you'd ought to get home by night," he told her.

Arlie agreed carelessly. "I don't expect any trouble with them. So-long, Jed."

It would not have been her choice to ride home with the lieutenant of rangers, but since her father had made the appointment publicly she did not care to make objection. Yet she took care to let Fraser see that he was in her black books. The men rode toward the rear of the herd, one on each side, and Arlie fell in beside her old playmate, Dick. She laughed and talked with him about a hundred things in which Steve could have had no part, even if he had been close enough to catch more than one word out of twenty. Not once did she even look his way. Quite plainly she had taken pains to forget his existence.

"It was Briscoe's turn the other day," mused the Texan. "It's mine now. I wonder when it will be Dick's to get put out in the cold!"

Nevertheless, though he tried to act the philosopher, it cut him that the high-spirited girl had condemned him. He felt himself in a false position from which he could not easily extricate himself. The worst of it was that if it came to a showdown he could not expect the simple truth to exonerate him.

From where they rode there drifted to him occasionally the sound of the gay voices of the young people. It struck him for the first time that he was getting old. Arlie could not be over eighteen, and Dick perhaps twenty-one. Maybe young people like that thought a fellow of twenty-seven a Methusaleh.

After a time the thirsty cattle smelt water and hit a bee line so steadily for it that they needed no watching. Every minute or two one of the leaders stretched out its neck and let out a bellow without slackening its pace.

Steve lazed on his pony, shifting his position to ease his cramped limbs after the manner of the range rider. In spite of himself, his eyes would drift toward the jaunty little figure on the pinto. The masculine in him approved mightily her lissom grace and the proud lilt of her dark head, with its sun-kissed face set in profile to him. He thought her serviceable costume very becoming, from the pinched felt hat pinned to the dark mass of hair, and the red silk kerchief knotted loosely round the pretty throat, to the leggings beneath the corduroy skirt and the flannel waist with sleeves rolled up in summer-girl fashion to leave the tanned arms bare to the dimpled elbows.

The trail, winding through a narrow defile, brought them side by side again.

"Ever notice what a persistent color buckskin is, Steve?" inquired France, by way of bringing him into the conversation. "It's strong in every one of these cattle, though the old man has been trying to get rid of it for ten years."

"You mustn't talk to me, Dick," responded his friend gravely. "Little Willie told a lie, and he's being stood in a corner."

Arlie flushed angrily, opened her mouth to speak, and, changing her mind, looked at him witheringly. He didn't wither, however. Instead, he smiled broadly, got out his mouth organ, and cheerfully entertained them with his favorite, "I Met My Love In the Alamo."

The hot blood under dusky skin held its own in her cheeks. She was furious with him, and dared not trust herself to speak. As soon as they had passed through the defile she spurred forward, as if to turn the leaders. France turned to his friend and laughed ruefully.

"She's full of pepper, Steve."

The ranger nodded. "She's all right, Dick. If you want to know, she's got a right to make a doormat of me. I lied to her. I was up against it, and I kinder had to. You ride along and join her. If you want to get right solid, tell her how many kinds of a skunk I am. Worst of it is, I ain't any too sure I'm not."

"I'm sure for you then, Steve," the lad called back, as he loped forward after the girl.

He was so sure, that he began to praise his friend to Arlie, to tell her of what a competent cowman he was, how none of them could make a cut or rope a wild steer like him. She presently wanted to know whether Dick could not find something more interesting to talk about.

He could not help smiling at her downright manner. "You've surely got it in for him, Arlie. I thought you liked him."

She pulled up her horse, and looked at him. "What made you think that? Did he tell you so?"

Dick fairly shouted. "You do rub it in, girl, when you've got a down on a fellow. No, he didn't tell me. You did."

"Me?" she protested indignantly. "I never did."

"Oh, you didn't say so, but I don't need a church to fall on me before I can take a hint. You acted as though you liked him that day you and him came riding into camp."

"I didn't do any such thing, Dick France. I don't like him at all," very decidedly.

"All the boys do-- all but Jed. I don't reckon he does."

"Do I have to like him because the boys do?" she demanded.

"O' course not." Dick stopped, trying to puzzle it out. "He says you ain't to blame, that he lied to you. That seems right strange, too. It ain't like Steve to lie."

"How do you know so much about him? You haven't known him a week."

"That's what Jed says. I say it ain't a question of time. Some men I've knew ten years I ain't half so sure of. He's a man from the ground up. Any one could tell that, before they had seen him five minutes "

Secretly, the girl was greatly pleased. She so wanted to believe that Dick was right. It was what she herself had thought.

"I wish you'd seen him the day he pulled Siegfried out of Lost Creek. Tell you, I thought they were both goners," Dick continued.

"I expect it was most ankle-deep," she scoffed. "Hello, we're past Bald Knob!"

"They both came mighty nigh handing in their checks."

"I didn't know that, though I knew, of course, he was fearless," Arlie said.

"What's that?" Dick drew in his horse sharply, and looked back.

The sound of a rifle shot echoed from hillside to hillside. Like a streak of light, the girl's pinto flashed past him. He heard her give a sobbing cry of anguish. Then he saw that Steve was slipping very slowly from his saddle.

A second shot rang out. The light was beginning to fail, but he made out a man's figure crouched among the small pines on the shoulder of Bald Knob. Dick jerked out his revolver as he rode back, and fired twice. He was quite out of pistol range, but he wanted the man in ambush to see that help was at hand. He saw Arlie fling herself from her pony in time to support the Texan just as he sank to the ground.

"She'll take care of Steve. It's me for that murderer," the young man thought.

Acting upon that impulse, he slid from his horse and slipped into the sagebrush of the hillside. By good fortune he was wearing a gray shirt of a shade which melted into that of the underbrush. Night falls swiftly in the mountains, and already dusk was softly spreading itself over the hills.

Dick went up a draw, where young pines huddled together in the trough; and from the upper end of this he emerged upon a steep ridge, eyes and ears alert for the least sign of human presence. A third shot had rung out while he was in the dense mass of foliage of the evergreens, but now silence lay heavy all about him. The gathering darkness blurred detail, so that any one of a dozen bowlders might be a shield for a crouching man.

Once, nerves at a wire edge from the strain on him, he thought he saw a moving figure. Throwing up his gun, he fired quickly. But he must have been mistaken, for, shortly afterward, he heard some one crashing through dead brush at a distance.

"He's on the run, whoever he is. Guess I'll get back to Steve," decided France wisely.

He found his friend stretched on the ground, with his head in Arlie's lap.

"Is it very bad?" he asked the girl.

"I don't know. There's no light. Whatever shall we do?" she moaned.

"I'm a right smart of a nuisance, ain't I?" drawled the wounded man unexpectedly.

She leaned forward quickly. "Where are you hit?"

"In the shoulder, ma'am."

"Can you ride, Steve? Do you reckon you could make out the five miles?" Dick asked.

Arlie answered for him. She had felt the inert weight of his heavy body and knew that he was beyond helping himself. "No. Is there no house near? There's Alec Howard's cabin."

"He's at the round-up, but I guess we had better take Steve there-- if we could make out to get him that far."

The girl took command quietly. "Unsaddle Teddy."

She had unloosened his shirt and was tying her silk kerchief over the wound, from which blood was coming in little jets.

"We can't carry him," she decided. "It's too far. We'll have to lift him to the back of the horse, and let him lie there. Steady, Dick. That's right. You must hold him on, while I lead the horse."

Heavy as he was, they somehow hoisted him, and started. He had fainted again, and hung limply, with his face buried in the mane of the pony. It seemed an age before the cabin loomed, shadow-like, out of the darkness. They found the door unlocked, as usual, and carried him in to the bed.

"Give me your knife, Dick," Arlie ordered quietly. "And I want water. If that's a towel over there, bring it."

"Just a moment. I'll strike a light, and we'll see where we're at."

"No. We'll have to work in the dark. A light might bring them down on us." She had been cutting the band of the shirt, and now ripped it so as to expose the wounded shoulder.

Dick took a bucket to the creek, and presently returned with it. In his right hand he carried his revolver. When he reached the cabin he gave an audible sigh of relief and quickly locked the door.

"Of course you'll have to go for help, Dick. Bring old Doc Lee."

"Why, Arlie, I can't leave you here alone. What are you talking about?"

"You'll have to. It's the only thing to do. You'll have to give me your revolver. And, oh, Dick, don't lose a moment on the way."

He was plainly troubled. "I just can't leave you here alone, girl. What would your father say if anything happened? I don't reckon anything will, but we can't tell. No, I'll stay here, too. Steve must take his chance."

"You'll not stay." She flamed round upon him, with the fierce passion of a tigress fighting for her young. "You'll go this minute-- this very minute!"

"But don't you see I oughtn't to leave you? Anybody would tell you that," he pleaded.

"And you call yourself his friend," she cried, in a low, bitter voice.

"I call myself yours, too," he made answer doggedly.

"Then go. Go this instant. You'll go, anyway; but if you're my friend, you'll go gladly, and bring help to save us both."

"I wisht I knew what to do," he groaned.

Her palms fastened on his shoulders. She was a creature transformed. Such bravery, such feminine ferocity, such a burning passion of the spirit, was altogether outside of his experience of her or any other woman. He could no more resist her than he could fly to the top of Bald Knob.

"I'll go, Arlie."

"And bring help soon. Get Doc Lee here soon as you can. Leave word for armed men to follow. Don't wait for them."

"No."

"Take his Teddy horse. It can cover ground faster than yours,"

"Yes."

With plain misgivings, he left her, and presently she heard the sound of his galloping horse. It seemed to her for a moment as if she must call him back, but she strangled the cry in her throat. She locked the door and bolted it, then turned back to the bed, upon which the wounded man was beginning to moan in his delirium.

CHAPTER X

DOC LEE

Arlie knew nothing of wounds or their treatment. All she could do was to wash the shoulder in cold water and bind it with strips torn from her white underskirt. When his face and hands grew hot with the fever, she bathed them with a wet towel. How badly he was hurt-- whether he might not even die before Dick's return-- she had no way of telling. His inconsequent babble at first frightened her, for she had never before seen a person in delirium, nor heard of the insistence with which one harps upon some fantasy seized upon by a diseased mind.

"She thinks you're a skunk, Steve. So you are. She's dead right-- dead right-- dead right. You lied to her, you coyote! Stand up in the corner, you liar, while she whangs at you with a six-gun! You're a skunk-- dead right."

So he would run on in a variation of monotony, the strong, supple, masterful man as helpless as a child, all the splendid virility stricken from him by the pressure of an enemy's finger. The eyes that she had known so full of expression, now like half-scabbarded steel, and now again bubbling from the inner mirth of him, were glazed and unmeaning. The girl had felt in him a capacity for silent self-containment; and here he was, picking at the coverlet with restless fingers, prattling foolishly, like an infant.

She was a child of impulse, sensitive and plastic. Because she had been hard on him before he was struck down, her spirit ran open-armed to make amends. What manner of man he was she did not know. But what availed that to keep her, a creature of fire and dew, from the clutch of emotions strange and poignant? He had called himself a liar and a coyote, yet she knew it was not true, or at worst, true in some qualified sense. He might be hard, reckless, even wicked in some ways. But, vaguely, she felt that if he were a sinner he sinned with self-respect. He was in no moral collapse, at least. It was impossible to fit him to her conception of a spy. No, no! Anything but that!

So she sat there, her fingers laced about her knee, as she leaned forward to wait upon the needs she could imagine for him, the dumb tragedy of despair in her childish face.

The situation was one that made for terror. To be alone with a wounded man, his hurt undressed, to hear his delirium and not to know whether he might not die any minute-- this would have been enough to cause apprehension. Add to it the darkness, her deep interest in him, the struggle of her soul, and the dread of unseen murder stalking in the silent night.

Though her thought was of him, it was not wholly upon him. She sat where she could watch the window, Dick's revolver in another chair beside her. It was a still, starry night, and faintly she could see the hazy purple, mountain line. Somewhere beneath those uncaring stars was the man who had done this awful thing. Was he far, or was he near? Would he come to make sure he had not failed? Her fearful heart told her that he would come.

She must have fought her fears nearly an hour before she heard the faintest of sounds outside. Her hand leaped to the revolver. She sat motionless, listening, with nerves taut. It came again presently, a deadened footfall, close to the door. Then, after an eternity, the latch clicked softly. Some one, with infinite care, was trying to discover whether the door was locked.

His next move she anticipated. Her eyes fastened on the window, while she waited breathlessly. Her heart was stammering furiously. Moments passed, in which she had to set her teeth to keep from screaming aloud. The revolver was shaking so that she had to steady the barrel with her left hand. A shadow crossed one pane, the shadow of a head in profile, and pushed itself forward till shoulders, arm, and poised revolver covered the lower sash. Very, very slowly the head itself crept into sight.

Arlie fired and screamed simultaneously. The thud of a fall, the scuffle of a man gathering himself to his feet again, the rush of retreating steps, all merged themselves in one single impression of fierce, exultant triumph.

Her only regret was that she had not killed him. She was not even sure that she had hit him, for her bullet had gone through the glass within an inch of the inner woodwork. Nevertheless, she knew that he had had a shock that would carry him far. Unless he had accomplices with him-- and of that there had been no evidence at the time of the attack from Bald Knob-- he would not venture another attempt. Of one thing she was sure. The face that had looked in at the window was one she had never seen before, In this, too, she found relief-- for she knew now that the face she had expected to see follow the shadow over the pane had been that of Jed Briscoe; and Jed had too much of the courage of Lucifer incarnate in him to give up because an unexpected revolver had been fired in his face.

Time crept slowly, but it could hardly have been a quarter of an hour later that she heard the galloping of horses.

"It is Dick!" she cried joyfully, and, running to the door, she unbolted and unlocked it just as France dragged Teddy to a halt and flung himself to the ground.

The young man gave a shout of gladness at sight of her.

"Is it all right, Arlie?"

"Yes. That is-- I don't know. He is delirious. A man came to the window, and I shot at him. Oh, Dick, I'm so glad you're back."

In her great joy, she put her arms round his neck and kissed him. Old Doctor Lee, dismounting more leisurely, drawled his protest.

"Look-a-here, Arlie. I'm the doctor. Where do I come in?"

"I'll kiss you, too, when you tell me he'll get well." The half-hysterical laugh died out of her voice, and she caught him fiercely by the arm. "Doc, doc, don't let him die," she begged.

He had known her all her life, had been by the bedside when she came into the world, and he put his arm round her shoulders and gave her a little hug as they passed into the room.

"We'll do our level best, little girl."

She lit a lamp, and drew the window curtain, so that none could see from the outside. While the old doctor arranged his instruments and bandages on chairs, she waited on him. He noticed how white she was, for he said, not unkindly:

"I don't want two patients right now, Arlie. If you're going to keel over in a faint right in the middle of it, I'll have Dick help."

"No, no, I won't, doc. Truly, I won't," she promised.

"All right, little girl. We'll see how game you are. Dick, hold the light. Hold it right there. See?"

The Texan had ceased talking, and was silent, except for a low moan, repeated at regular intervals. The doctor showed Arlie how to administer the anaesthetic after he had washed the wound. While he was searching for the bullet with his probe she flinched as if he had touched a bare nerve, but she stuck to her work regardless of her feelings, until the lead was found and extracted and the wound dressed.

Afterward, Dick found her seated on a rock outside crying hysterically. He did not attempt to cope with the situation, but returned to the house and told Lee.

"Best thing for her. Her nerves are overwrought and unstrung. She'll be all right, once she has her cry out. I'll drift around, and jolly her along."

The doctor presently came up and took a seat beside her.

"Wha-- what do you think, doctor?" she sobbed.

"Well, I think it's tarnation hot operating with a big kerosene lamp six inches from your haid," he said, as he mopped his forehead.

"I mean-- will he-- get well?"

Lee snorted. "Well, I'd be ashamed of him if he didn't. If he lets a nice, clean, flesh wound put him out of business he don't deserve to live. Don't worry any about him, young lady. Say, I wish I had zwei beer right now, Arlie."

"You mean it? You're not just saying it to please me?"

"Of course, I mean it," he protested indignantly. "I wish I had three."

"I mean, are you sure he'll get well?" she explained, a faint smile touching her wan face.

"Yes, I mean that, too, but right now I mean the beer most. Now, honest, haven't I earned a beer?"

"You've earned a hundred thousand, doc. You're the kindest and dearest man that ever lived," she cried.

"Ain't that rather a large order, my dear?" he protested mildly. "I couldn't really use a hundred thousand. And I'd hate to be better than Job and Moses and Pharaoh and them Bible characters. Wouldn't I have to give up chewing? Somehow, a halo don't seem to fit my haid. It's most too bald to carry one graceful.... You may do that again if you want to." This last, apropos of the promised reward which had just been paid in full.

Arlie found she could manage a little laugh by this time.

"Well, if you ain't going to, we might as well go in and have a look at that false-alarm patient of ours," he continued. "We'll have to sit up all night with him. I was sixty-three yesterday. I'm going to quit this doctor game. I'm too old to go racing round the country nights just because you young folks enjoy shooting each other up. Yes, ma'am, I'm going to quit. I serve notice right here. What's the use of having a good ranch and some cattle if you can't enjoy them?"

As the doctor had been serving notice of his intention to quit doctoring for over ten years, Arlie did not take him too seriously. She knew him for what he was-- a whimsical old fellow, who would drop in the saddle before he would let a patient suffer; one of the old school, who loved his work but liked to grumble over it.

"Maybe you'll be able to take a rest soon. You know that young doctor from Denver, who was talking about settling here----"

This, as she knew, was a sore point with him. "So you're tired of me, are you? Want a new-fangled appendix cutter from Denver, do you? Time to shove old Doc Lee aside, eh?"

"I didn't say that, doc," she repented.

"Huh! You meant it. Wonder how many times he'd get up at midnight and plow through three-foot snow for six miles to see the most ungrateful, squalling little brat----"

"Was it me, doc?" she ungrammatically demanded.

"It was you, Miss Impudence."

They had reached the door, but she held him there a moment, while she laughed delightedly and hugged him. "I knew it was me. As if we'd let our old doc go, or have anything to do with a young ignoramus from Denver! Didn't you know I was joking? Of course you did."

He still pretended severity. "Oh, I know you. When it comes to wheedling an old fool, you've got the rest of the girls in this valley beat to a fare-you-well."

"Is that why you always loved me?" she asked, with a sparkle of mischief in her eye.

"I didn't love you. I never did. The idea!" he snorted. "I don't know what you young giddy pates are coming to. Huh! Love you!"

"I'll forgive you, even if you did," she told him sweetly.

"That's it! That's it!" he barked. "You forgive all the young idiots when they do. And they all do-- every last one of them. But I'm too old for you, young lady. Sixty-three yesterday. Huh!"

"I like you better than the younger ones."

"Want us all, do you? Young and old alike. Well, count me out."

He broke away, and went into the house. But there was an unconquerably youthful smile dancing in his eyes. This young lady and he had made love to each other in some such fashion ever since she had been a year old. He was a mellow and confirmed old bachelor, but he proposed to continue their innocent coquetry until he was laid away, no matter which of the young bucks of the valley had the good fortune to win her for a wife.

CHAPTER XI

THE FAT IN THE FIRE

For two days Fraser remained in the cabin of the stockman Howard, France making it his business to see that the place was never left unguarded for a moment. At the end of that time the fever had greatly abated, and he was doing so well that Doctor Lee decided it would be better to move him to the Dillon ranch for the convenience of all parties.

This was done, and the patient continued steadily to improve. His vigorous constitution, helped by the healthy, clean, outdoor life he had led, stood him in good stead. Day by day he renewed the blood he had lost. Soon he was eating prodigious dinners, and between meals was drinking milk with an egg beaten in it.

On a sunny forenoon, when he lay in the big window of the living room, reading a magazine, Arlie entered, a newspaper in her hand. Her eyes were strangely bright, even for her, and she had a manner of repressed excitement, Her face was almost colorless.

"Here's some more in the Avalanche about our adventure near Gimlet Butte," she told him, waving the paper.

"Nothing like keeping in the public eye," said Steve, grinning. "I don't reckon our little picnic at Bald Knob is likely to get in the Avalanche, though. It probably hasn't any correspondent at Lost Valley. Anyhow, I'm hoping not."

"Mr. Fraser, there is something in this paper I want you to explain. But tell me first when it was you shot this man Faulkner. I mean at just what time in the fight."

"Why, I reckon it must have been just before I ducked."

"That's funny, too." She fixed her direct, fearless gaze on him. "The evidence at the coroner's jury shows that it was in the early part of the fight he was shot, before father and I left you."

"No, that couldn't have been, Miss Arlie, because----"

"Because----" she prompted, smiling at him in a peculiar manner.

He flushed, and could only say that the newspapers were always getting things wrong.

"But this is the evidence at the coroner's inquest," she said, falling grave again on the instant. "I understand one thing now, very clearly, and that is that Faulkner was killed early in the fight, and the other man was wounded in the ankle near the finish."

He shook his head obstinately. "No, I reckon not."

"Yet it is true. What's more, you knew it all the time."

"You ce'tainly jump to conclusions, Miss Arlie."

"And you let them arrest you, without telling them the truth! And they came near lynching you! And there's a warrant out now for your arrest for the murder of Faulkner, while all the time I killed him, and you knew it!"

He gathered together his lame defense. "You run ahaid too fast for me, ma'am. Supposing he was hit while we were all there together, how was I to know who did it?"

"You knew it couldn't have been you, for he wasn't struck with a revolver. It couldn't have been dad, since he had his shotgun loaded with buckshot."

"What difference did it make?" he wanted to know impatiently. "Say I'd have explained till kingdom come that I borrowed the rifle from a friend five minutes after Faulkner was hit-- would anybody have believed me? Would it have made a bit of difference?"

Her shining eyes were more eloquent than a thousand tongues. "I don't say it would, but there was always the chance. You didn't take it. You would have let them hang you, without speaking the word that brought me into it. Why?"

"I'm awful obstinate when I get my back up," he smiled.

"That wasn't it. You did it to save a girl you had never seen but once. I want to know why."

"All right. Have it your own way. But don't ask me to explain the whyfors. I'm no Harvard professor."

"I know," she said softly. She was not looking at him, but out of the window, and there were tears in her voice.

"Sho! Don't make too much of it. We'll let it go that I ain't all coyote, after all. But that don't entitle me to any reward of merit. Now, don't you cry, Miss Arlie. Don't you."

She choked back the tears, and spoke in deep self-scorn. "No! You don't deserve anything except what you've been getting from me-- suspicion and distrust and hard words! You haven't done anything worth speaking of-- just broke into a quarrel that wasn't yours, at the risk of your life; then took it on your shoulders to let us escape; and, afterward, when you were captured, refused to drag me in, because I happen to be a girl! But it's not worth mentioning that you did all this for strangers, and that later you did not tell even me, because you knew it would trouble me that I had killed him, though in self-defense. And to think that all the time I've been full of hateful suspicions about you! Oh, you don't know how I despise myself!"

She let her head fall upon her arm on the table, and sobbed.

Fraser, greatly disturbed, patted gently the heavy coil of blue-black hair.

"Now, don't you, Arlie; don't you. I ain't worth it. Honest, I ain't. I did what it was up to me to do. Not a thing more. Dick would have done it. Any of the boys would. Now, let's look at what you've done for me."

From under the arm a muffled voice insisted she had done nothing but suspect him.

"Hold on, girl. Play fair. First off you ride sixty miles to help me when I'm hunted right hard. You bring me to your home in this valley where strangers ain't over and above welcome just now. You learn I'm an officer and still you look out for me and fight for me, till you make friends for me. It's through you I get started right with the boys. On your say-so they give me the glad hand. You learn I've lied to you, and two or three hours later you save my life. You sit there steady, with my haid in your lap, while some one is plugging away at us. You get me to a house, take care of my wounds, and hold the fort alone in the night till help comes. Not only that, but you drive my enemy away. Later, you bring me home, and nurse me like I was a long-lost brother. What I did for you ain't in the same class with what you've done for me."

"But I was suspicious of you all the time."

"So you had a right to be. That ain't the point, which is that a girl did all that for a man she thought might be an enemy and a low-down spy. Men are expected to take chances like I did, but girls ain't. You took 'em. If I lived a thousand years, I couldn't tell you all the thanks I feel."

"Ah! It makes it worse that you're that kind of a man. But I'm going to show you whether I trust you." Her eyes were filled with the glad light of her resolve. She spoke with a sort of proud humility. "Do you know, there was a time when I thought you might have-- I didn't really believe it, but I thought it just possible-- that you might have come here to get evidence against the Squaw Creek raiders? You'll despise me, but it's the truth."

His face lost color. "And now?" he asked quietly.

"Now? I would as soon suspect my father-- or myself! I'll show you what I think. The men in it were Jed Briscoe and Yorky and Dick France "Stop," he cried hoarsely.

"Is it your wound?" she said quickly.

"No. That's all right. But you musn't tell----"

"I'm telling, to show whether I trust you. Jed and Yorky and Dick and Slim----"

She stopped to listen. Her father's voice was calling her. She rose from her seat.

"Wait a moment. There's something I've got to tell you," the Texan groaned.

"I'll be back in a moment. Dad wants to see me about some letters."

And with that she was gone. Whatever the business was, it detained her longer than she expected. The minutes slipped away, and still she did not return. A step sounded in the hall, a door opened, and Jed Briscoe stood before him.

"You're here, are you?" he said.

The Texan measured looks with him. "Yes, I'm here."

"Grand-standing still, I reckon."

"If you could only learn to mind your own affairs," the Texan suggested evenly.

"You'll wish I could before I'm through with you."

"Am I to thank you for that little courtesy from Bald Knob the other evening?"

"Not directly. At three hundred yards, I could have shot a heap straighter than that. The fool must have been drunk."

"You'll have to excuse him. It was beginning to get dark. His intentions were good."

There was a quick light step behind him, and Arlie came into the room. She glanced quickly from one to the other, and there was apprehension in her look.

"I've come to see Lieutenant Fraser on business," Briscoe explained, with an air patently triumphant.

Arlie made no offer to leave the room. "He's hardly up to business yet, is he?" she asked, as carelessly as she could.

"Then we'll give it another name. I'm making a neighborly call to ask how he is, and to return some things he lost."

Jed's hand went into his pocket and drew forth leisurely a photograph. This he handed to Arlie right side up, smiling the while, with a kind of masked deviltry.

"Found it in Alec Howard's cabin. Seems your coat was hanging over the back of a chair, lieutenant, and this and a paper fell out. One of the boys must have kicked it to one side, and it was overlooked. Later, I ran across it. So I'm bringing it back to you."

In spite of herself Arlie's eyes fell to the photograph. It was a snapshot of the ranger and a very attractive young woman. They were smiling into each other's eyes with a manner of perfect and friendly understanding. To see it gave Arlie a pang. Flushing at her mistake, she turned the card over and handed it to the owner.

"Sorry. I looked without thinking," she said in a low voice.

Fraser nodded his acceptance of her apology, but his words and his eyes were for his enemy. "You mentioned something else you had found, seems to me."

Behind drooping eyelids Jed was malevolently feline. "Seems to me I did."

From his pocket came slowly a folded paper. He opened and looked it over at leisure before his mocking eyes lifted again to the wounded man. "This belongs to you, too, but I know you'll excuse me if I keep it to show to the boys before returning it."

"So you've read it," Arlie broke in scornfully.

He grinned at her, and nodded. "Yes, I've read it, my dear. I had to read it, to find out whose it was. Taken by and large, it's a right interesting document, too."

He smiled at the ranger maliciously, yet with a certain catlike pleasure in tormenting his victim. Arlie began to feel a tightening of her throat, a sinking of the heart. But Fraser looked at the man with a quiet, scornful steadfastness. He knew what was coming, and had decided upon his course.

"Seems to be a kind of map, lieutenant. Here's Gimlet Butte and the Half Way House and Sweetwater Dam and the blasted pine. Looks like it might be a map from the Butte to this part of the country. Eh, Mr. Fraser from Texas?"

"And if it is?"

"Then I should have to ask you how you come by it, seeing as the map is drawn on Sheriff Brandt's official stationery," Jed rasped swiftly.

"I got it from Sheriff Brandt, Mr. Briscoe, since you want to know. You're not entitled to the information, but I'll make you a gift of it. He gave it to me to guide me here."

Even Briscoe was taken aback. He had expected evasion, denial, anything but a bold acceptance of his challenge. His foe watched the wariness settle upon him by the narrowing of his eyes.

"So the sheriff knew you were coming?"

"Yes."

"I thought you broke jail. That was the story I had dished up to me."

"I did, with the help of the sheriff."

"Oh, with the help of the sheriff? Come to think of it, that sounds right funny-- a sheriff helping his prisoner to escape."

"Yet it is true, as it happens."

"I don't doubt it, lieutenant. Fact is, I had some such notion all the time. Now, I wonder why-for he took so friendly an interest in you."

"I had a letter of introduction to him from a friend in Texas. When he knew who I was, he decided he couldn't afford to have me lynched without trying to save me."

"I see. And the map?"

"This was the only part of the country in which I would be safe from capture. He knew I had a claim on some of the Cedar Mountain people, because it was to help them I had got into trouble."

"Yes, I can see that." Arlie nodded quickly. "Of course, that is just what the sheriff would think."

"Folks can always see what they want to, Arlie," Jed commented. "Now, I can't see all that, by a lot."

"It isn't necessary you should, Mr. Briscoe," Fraser retorted.

"Or else I see a good deal more, lieutenant," Jed returned, with his smooth smile. "Mebbe the sheriff helped you on your way because you're such a good detective. He's got ambitions, Brandt has. So has Hilliard, the prosecuting attorney. Happen to see him, by the way?"

"Yes."

Jed nodded. "I figured you had. Yes, it would be Hilliard worked the scheme out, I expect."

"You're a good deal of a detective yourself, Mr. Briscoe," the Texan laughed hardily. "Perhaps I could get you a job in the rangers."

"There may be a vacancy there soon," Jed agreed.

"What's the use of talking that way, Jed? Are you threatening Mr. Fraser? If anything happens to him, I'll remember this," Arlie told him.

"Have I mentioned any threats, Arlie? It is well known that Lieutenant Fraser has enemies here. It don't take a prophet to tell that, after what happened the other night."

"Any more than it takes a prophet to tell that you are one of them."

"I play my own hand. I don't lie down before him, or any other man. He'd better not get in my way, unless he's sure he's a better man than I am."

"But he isn't in your way," Arlie insisted. "He has told a plain story. I believe every word of it."

"I notice he didn't tell any of his plain story until we proved it on him. He comes through with his story after he's caught with the goods. Don't you know that every criminal that is caught has a smooth explanation?"

"I haven't any doubt Mr. Briscoe will have one when his turn comes," the ranger remarked.

Jed wheeled on him. His eyes glittered menace. "You've said one word too much. I'll give you forty-eight hours to get out of this valley."

"How dare you, Jed-- and in my house!" Arlie cried. "I won't have it. I won't have blood shed between you."

"It's up to him," answered the cattleman, his jaw set like a vise. "Persuade him to git out, and there'll be no blood shed."

"You have no right to ask it of him. You ought not----" She stopped, aware of the futility of urging a moral consideration upon the man, and fell back upon the practical. "He couldn't travel that soon, even if he wanted to. He's not strong enough. You know that."

"All right. We'll call it a week. If he's still here a week from to-day, there will be trouble."

With that, he turned on his heel and left the room. They heard his spurs trailing across the porch and jingling down the steps, after which they caught a momentary vision of him, dark and sinister, as his horse flashed past the window.

The ranger smiled, but rather seriously. "The fat's in the fire now, sure enough, ma'am."

She turned anxiously upon him. "Why did you tell him all that? Why did you let him go away, believing you were here as a spy to trap him and his friends?"

"I let him have the truth. Anyhow, I couldn't have made good with a denial. He had the evidence. I can't keep him from believing what he wants to."

"He'll tell all his friends. He'll exaggerate the facts and stir up sentiment against you. He'll say you came here as a detective, to get evidence against the Squaw Creek raiders." "Then he'll tell the truth!"

She took it in slowly, with a gathering horror. "The truth!" she repeated, almost under her breath. "You don't mean---- You can't mean---- Are you here as a spy upon my friends?"

"I didn't know they were your friends when I took the job. If you'll listen, I'll explain."

Words burst from her in gathering bitterness.

"What is there to explain, sir? The facts cry to heaven. I brought you into this valley, gave you the freedom of our home against my father's first instinct. I introduced you to my friends, and no doubt they told you much you wanted to know. They are simple, honest folks, who don't know a spy when they see one. And I-- fool that I am-- I vouched for you. More, I stood between you and the fate you deserved. And, lastly, in my blind conceit, I have told you the names of the men in the Squaw Creek trouble. If I had only known-- and I had all the evidence, but I was so blind I would not see you were a snake in the grass."

He put out a hand to stop her, and she drew back as if his touch were pollution. From the other side of the room, she looked across at him in bitter scorn.

"I shall make arrangements to have you taken out of the valley at once, sir."

"You needn't take the trouble, Miss Arlie. I'm not going out of the valley. If you'll have me taken to Alec Howard's shack, which is where you brought me from, I'll be under obligations to you."

"Whatever you are, I'm not going to have your blood on my hands. You've got to leave the valley."

"I have to thank you for all your kindness to me. If you'd extend it a trifle further and listen to what I've got to say, I'd be grateful."

"I don't care to hear your excuses. Go quickly, sir, before you meet the end you deserve, and give up the poor men I have betrayed to you." She spoke in a choked voice, as if she could scarce breathe.

"If you'd only listen before you----"

"I've listened to you too long. I was so sure I knew more than my father, than my friends. I'll listen no more."

The Texan gave it up. "All right, ma'am. Just as you say. If you'll order some kind of a rig for me, I'll not trouble you longer. I'm sorry that it's got to be this way. Maybe some time you'll see it different."

"Never," she flashed passionately, and fled from the room.

He did not see her again before he left. Bobbie came to get him in a light road trap they had. The boy looked at him askance, as if he knew something was wrong. Presently they turned a corner and left the ranch shut from sight in a fold of the hills.

At the first division of the road Fraser came to a difference of opinion with Bobbie.

"Arlie said you was going to leave the valley. She told me I was to take you to Speed's place."

"She misunderstood. I am going to Alec Howard's."

"But that ain't what she told me."

Steve took the reins from him, and turned into the trail that led to Howard's place. "You can explain to her, Bobbie, that you couldn't make me see it that way."

An hour later, he descended upon Howard-- a big, rawboned ranchman, who had succumbed quickly to a deep friendship for this "Admirable Crichton" of the plains.

"Hello, Steve! Glad to death to see you. Hope you've come to stay, you old pie eater," he cried joyously, at sight of the Texan.

Fraser got down. "Wait here a moment, Bobbie. I want to have a talk with Alec. I may go on with you."

They went into the cabin, and Fraser sat down. He was still far from strong.

"What's up, Steve?" the rancher asked.

"You asked me to stay, Alec. Before I say whether I will or not, I've got a story to tell you. After I've told it, you can ask me again if you want me to stop with you. If you don't ask me, I'll ride off with the boy."

"All right. Fire ahead, old hoss. I'll ask you fast enough."

The Texan told his story from the beginning. Only one thing he omitted-- that Arlie had told him the name of the Squaw Creek raiders.

"There are the facts, Alec. You've got them from beginning to end. It's up to you. Do you want me here?"

"Before I answer that, I'll have to put a question myse'f, Steve. Why do you want to stay? Why not leave the valley while you're still able to?"

"Because Jed Briscoe put it up to me that I'd got to leave within a week. I'll go when I'm good and ready."

Alec nodded his appreciation of the point. "Sure. You don't want to sneak out, with yore tail betwixt yore laigs. That brings up another question, Steve. What about the Squaw Creek sheep raiders? Just for argument, we'll put it that some of them are my friends. You understand-- just for argument. Are you still aiming to run them down?"

Fraser met his frank question frankly. "No, Alec, I've had to give up that notion long since-- soon as I began to guess they were friends of Miss Arlie. I'm going back to tell Hilliard so. But I ain't going to be run out by Briscoe."

"Good enough. Put her there, son. This shack's yore home till hell freezes over, Steve."

"You haven't any doubts about me, Alec. If you have, better say so now."

"Doubts? I reckon not. Don't I know a man when I see one? I'm plumb surprised at Arlie." He strode to the door, and called to Bobbie: "Roll along home, son. Yore passenger is going to stay a spell with me."

"Of course, I understand what this means, Alec. Jed and his crowd aren't going to be any too well pleased when they learn you have taken me in. They may make you trouble," the ranger said.

The big cow man laughed. "Oh, cut it out, Steve. Jed don't have to O. K. my guest list. Not on yore life. I'm about ready for a ruction with that young man, anyway. He's too blamed bossy. I ain't wearing his brand. Fact is, I been having notions this valley has been suffering from too much Briscoe. Others are sharing that opinion with me. Ask Dick France. Ask Arlie, for that matter."

"I'm afraid I'm off that young lady's list of friends."

"Sho! She'll come round. She's some hot-haided. It always was her way to get mad first, and find out why afterward. But don't make any mistake about her, Steve. She's the salt of the earth, Arlie Dillon is. She figured it out you wasn't playing it quite on the square with her. Onct she's milled it around a spell, she'll see things different. I've knowed her since she was knee-high, and I tell you she's a game little thoroughbred."

The Texan looked at him a moment, then stared out of the window.

"We won't quarrel about that any, Alec. I'll indorse those sentiments, and then some, even if she did call me a snake in the grass."

CHAPTER XII

THE DANCE

The day after Fraser changed his quarters, Dick France rode up to the Howard ranch. Without alighting, he nodded casually to Alec, and then to his guest.

"Hello, Steve! How's the shoulder?"

"Fine and dandy."

"You moved, I see." The puncher grinned.

"If you see it for yourself, I'll not attempt to deny it."

"Being stood in the corner some more, looks like! Little Willie been telling some more lies?"

"Come in, Dick, and I'll put you wise."

Steve went over the story again. When he mentioned the Squaw Creek raid, he observed that his two friends looked quickly at each other and then away. He saw, however, that Dick took his pledge in regard to the raiders at face value, without the least question of doubt. He made only one comment on the situation.

"If Jed has served notice that he's going after you, Steve, he'll ce'tainly back the play. What's more, he won't be any too particular how he gets you, just so he gets you. He may come a-shooting in the open. Then, again, he may not. All according to how the notion strikes him."

"That's about it," agreed Howard.

"While it's fresh on my mind, I'll unload some more comfort. You've got an enemy in this valley you don't know about."

"The one that shot me?"

"I ain't been told that. I was to say, 'One enemy more than he knows of.' "

"Who told you to say it?"

"I was to forget to tell you that, Steve."

"Then I must have a friend more than I know of, too."

"I ain't so sure about that. You might call her a hostile friend."

"It's a lady, then. I can guess who."

"Honest, I didn't mean to tell you, Steve. It slipped out."

"I won't hold it against you."

"She sent for me last night, and this morning I dropped round. Now, what do you reckon she wanted with me?"

"Give it up."

"I'm to take a day off and ride around among the boys, so as to see them before Jed does. I'm to load 'em up with misrepresentations about how you and the sheriff happen to be working in cahoots. I gathered that the lady is through with you, but she don't want your scalp collected by the boys."

"I'm learning to be thankful for small favors," Fraser said dryly. "She figures me up a skunk, but hates to have me massacreed in her back yard. Ain't that about it, Dick?"

"Somewheres betwixt and between," France nodded. "Say, you lads going to the dance at Millikan's?"

"Didn't know there was one."

"Sure. Big doings. Monday night. Always have a dance after the spring round-up. Jed and his friends will be there-- that ought to fetch you!" Dick grinned.

"I haven't noticed any pressing invitation to my address yet," said Steve.

"I'm extending it right now. Millikan told me to pass the word among the boys. Everybody and his neighbor invited." Dick lit a cigar, and gathered up his reins. "So-long, boys. I got to be going." Over his shoulder he fired another joyous shot as he cantered away. "I reckon that hostile friend will be there, too, Steve, if that's any inducement."

Whether it was an inducement is not a matter of record, but certain it is that the Texan found it easy to decide to go. Everybody in the valley would be there, and absence on his part would be construed as weakness, even as a confession of guilt. He had often observed that a man's friends are strong for him only when he is strong for himself.

Howard and his guest drove to Millikan's Draw, for the wound of the latter was still too new to stand so long a horseback ride. They arrived late, and the dance was already in full swing. As they stabled and fed the team, they could hear the high notes of the fiddles and the singsong chant of the caller.

"Alemane left. Right han' t'yer pardner, an' gran' right and left. Ev-v-rybody swing."

The ranch house was a large one, the most pretentious in the valley. A large hall opened into a living room and a dining room, by means of large double doors, which had been drawn back, so as to make one room of them.

As they pushed their way through the crowd of rough young fellows who clustered round the door, as if afraid their escape might be cut off, Fraser observed that the floor was already crowded with dancers.

The quadrille came to an end as he arrived, and, after they had seated their partners, red-faced perspiring young punchers swelled the knot around the door.

Alec stayed to chaff with them, while the Texan sauntered across the floor and took a seat on one of the benches which lined the walls. As he did so, a man and his partner, so busy in talk with each other that they had not observed who he was, sat down beside him in such position that the young woman was next him. Without having looked directly at either of them, Fraser knew that the girl was Arlie Dillon, and her escort Jed Briscoe. She had her back half turned toward him, so that, even after she was seated she did not recognize her neighbor.

Steve smiled pleasantly, and became absorbed in a rather noisy bout of repartee going on between one swain and his lass, not so absorbed, however, as not to notice that he and his unconscious neighbors were becoming a covert focus of attention. He had already noticed a shade of self-consciousness in the greeting of those whom he met, a hint of a suggestion that he was on trial. Among some this feeling was evidently more pronounced. He met more than one pair of eyes that gave back to his genial nod cold hostility.

At such an affair as this, Jed Briscoe was always at his best. He was one of the few men in the valley who knew how to waltz well, and music and rhythm always brought out in him a gay charm women liked. His lithe grace, his assurance, his ease of manner and speech, always differentiated him from the other ranchmen.

No wonder rumor had coupled his name with that of Arlie as her future husband. He knew how to make light love by implication, to skate around the subject skilfully and boldly with innuendo and suggestion.

Arlie knew him for what he was-- a man passionate and revengeful, the leader of that side of the valley's life which she deplored. She did not trust him. Nevertheless, she felt his fascination. He made that appeal to her which a graceless young villain often does to a good woman who lets herself become interested in trying to understand the sinner and his sins. There was another reason why just now she showed him special favor. She wanted to blunt the edge of his anger against the Texan ranger, though her reason for this she did not admit even to herself.

She had-- oh, she was quite sure of this-- no longer any interest in Fraser except the impersonal desire to save his life. Having thought it all over, she was convinced that her friends had nothing to fear from him as a spy. That was what he had tried to tell her when she would not listen.

Deep in her heart she knew why she had not listened. It had to do with that picture of a pretty girl smiling up happily into his eyes-- a thing she had not forgotten for one waking moment since. Like a knife the certainty had stabbed her heart that they were lovers. Her experience had been limited. Kodaks had not yet reached Lost Valley as common possessions. In the mountains no girl had her photograph taken beside a man unless they had a special interest in each other. And the manner of these two had implied the possession of a secret not known to the world.

So Arlie froze her heart toward the Texan, all the more because he had touched her girlish imagination to sweet hidden dreams of which her innocence had been unnecessarily ashamed. He had spoken no love to her, nor had he implied it exactly. There had been times she had thought something more than friendship lay under his warm smile. But now she scourged herself for her folly, believed she had been unmaidenly, and set her heart to be like flint against him. She had been ready to give him what he had not wanted. Before she would let him guess it she would rather die, a thousand times rather, she told herself passionately.

She presently became aware that attention was being directed toward her and Jed and somebody who sat on the other side of her. Without looking round, she mentioned the fact in a low voice to her partner of the dance just finished. Jed looked up, and for the first time observed the man behind her. Instantly the gayety was sponged from his face.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"That man from Texas."

Arlie felt the blood sting her cheeks. The musicians were just starting a waltz. She leaned slightly toward Jed, and said, in a low voice:

"Did you ask me to dance this with you?"

He had not, but he did now. He got to his feet, with shining eyes, and whirled her off. The girl did not look toward the Texan. Nevertheless, as they circled the room, she was constantly aware of him. Sitting there, with a smile on his strong face, apparently unperturbed, he gave no hint of the stern fact that he was circled by enemies, any one of whom might carry his death in a hip pocket. His gaze was serene, unabashed, even amused.

The young woman was irritably suspicious that he found her anger amusing, just as he seemed to find the dangerous position in which he was placed. Yet her resentment coexisted with a sympathy for him that would not down. She believed he was marked for death by a coterie of those present, chief of whom was the man smiling down into her face from half-shut, smouldering eyes.

Her heart was a flame of protest against their decree, all the more so because she held herself partly responsible for it. In a panic of repentance, she had told Dick of her confession to the ranger of the names of the Squaw Creek raiders, and France had warned his confederates. He had done this, not because he distrusted Fraser, but because he felt it was their due to get a chance to escape if they wanted to do so.

Always a creature of impulse, Arlie had repented her repentance when too late. Now she would have fought to save the Texan, but the horror of it was that she could not guess how the blow would fall. She tried to believe he was safe, at least until the week was up.

When Dick strolled across the floor, sat down beside Steve, and began casually to chat with him, she could have thanked the boy with tears. It was equivalent to a public declaration of his intentions. At least, the ranger was not friendless. One of the raiders was going to stand by him. Besides Dick, he might count on Howard; perhaps on others.

Jed was in high good humor. All along the line he seemed to be winning. Arlie had discarded this intruder from Texas and was showing herself very friendly to the cattleman. The suspicion of Fraser which he had disseminated was bearing fruit; and so, more potently, was the word the girl had dropped incautiously. He had only to wait in order to see his rival wiped out. So that, when Arlie put in her little plea, he felt it would not cost him anything to affect a large generosity.

"Let him go, Jed. He is discredited. Folks are all on their guard before him now. He can't do any harm here. Dick says he is only waiting out his week because of your threat. Don't make trouble. Let him sneak back home, like a whipped cur," she begged.

"I don't want any trouble with him, girl. All I ask is that he leave the valley. Let Dick arrange that, and I'll give him a chance."

She thanked him, with a look that said more than words.

It was two hours later, when she was waltzing with Jed again, that Arlie caught sight of a face that disturbed her greatly. It was a countenance disfigured by a ragged scar, running from the bridge of the nose. She had last seen it gazing into the window of Alec Howard's cabin on a certain never-to-be-forgotten night.

"Who is that man-- the one leaning against the door jamb, just behind Slim Leroy?" she asked.

"He's a fellow that calls himself Johnson. His real name is Struve," Jed answered carelessly.

"He's the man that shot the Texas lieutenant," she said.

"I dare say. He's got a good reason for shooting him. The man broke out of the Arizona penitentiary, and Fraser came north to rearrest him. At least, that's my guess. He wouldn't have been here to-night if he hadn't figured Fraser too sick to come. Watch him duck when he learns the ranger's here."

At the first opportunity Arlie signaled to Dick that she wanted to see him. Fraser, she observed, was no longer in the dancing rooms. Dick took her out from the hot room to the porch.

"Let's walk a little, Dick. I want to tell you something."

They sauntered toward the fine grove of pines that ran up the hillside back of the house.

"Did you notice that man with the scar, Dick?" she presently asked.

"Yes. I ain't seen him before. Must be one of the Rabbit Run guys, I take it."

"I've seen him. He's the man that shot your friend. He was the man I shot at when he looked in the window,"

"Sure, Arlie?"

"Dead sure, Dick. He's an escaped convict, and he has a grudge at your friend. He is afraid of him, too. Look out for Lieutenant Fraser to-night. Don't let him wander around outside. If he does, there may be murder done."

Even as she spoke, there came a sound from the wooded hillside-- the sound of a stifled cry, followed by an imprecation and the heavy shuffling of feet.

"Listen, Dick!"

For an instant he listened. Then: "There's trouble in the grove, and I'm not armed," he cried.

"Never mind! Go-- go!" she shrieked, pushing him forward.

For herself, she turned, and ran like a deer for the house.

Siegfried was sitting on the porch, whittling a stick.

"They-- they're killing Steve-- in the grove," she panted.

Without a word he rolled off, like a buffalo cow, toward the scene of action.

Arlie pushed into the house and called for Jed.

CHAPTER XIII

THE WOLF HOWLS

As Steve strolled out into the moonlight, he left behind him the monotonous thumping of heavy feet and the singsong voice of the caller.

"Birdie fly out, Crow hop in, Join all hands And circle ag'in."

came to him, in the high, strident voice of Lute Perkins. He took a deep breath of fresh, clean air, and looked about him. After the hot, dusty room, the grove, with its green foliage, through which the moonlight filtered, looked invitingly cool. He sauntered forward, climbed the hill up which the wooded patch straggled, and sat down, with his back to a pine.

Behind the valley rampart, he could see the dim, saw-toothed Teton peaks, looking like ghostly shapes in the moonlight. The night was peaceful. Faint and mellow came the sound of jovial romping from the house; otherwise, beneath the distant stars, a perfect stillness held.

How long he sat there, letting thoughts happen dreamily rather than producing them of gray matter, he did not know. A slight sound, the snapping of a twig, brought his mind to alertness without causing the slightest movement of his body.

His first thought was that, in accordance with dance etiquette in the ranch country, his revolver was in its holster under the seat of the trap in which they had driven over. Since his week was not up, he had expected no attack from Jed and his friends. As for the enemy, of whom Arlie had advised him, surely a public dance was the last place to tempt one who apparently preferred to attack from cover. But his instinct was certain. He did not need to look round to know he was trapped.

"I'm unarmed. You'd better come round and shoot me from in front. It will look better at the inquest," he said quietly.

"Don't move. You're surrounded," a voice answered.

A rope snaked forward and descended over the ranger's head, to be jerked tight, with a suddenness that sent a pain like a knife thrust through the wounded shoulder. The instinct for self-preservation was already at work in him. He fought his left arm free from the rope that pressed it to his side, and dived toward the figure at the end of the rope. Even as he plunged, he found time to be surprised that no revolver shot echoed through the night, and to know that the reason was because his enemies preferred to do their work in silence.

The man upon whom he leaped gave a startled oath and stumbled backward over a root.

Fraser, his hand already upon the man's throat, went down too. Upon him charged men from all directions. In the shadows, they must have hampered each other, for the ranger, despite his wound-- his shoulder was screaming with pain-- got to his knees, and slowly from his knees to his feet, shaking the clinging bodies from him.

Wrenching his other hand from under the rope, he fought them back as a hurt grizzly does the wolf pack gathered for the kill. None but a very powerful man could ever have reached his feet. None less agile and sinewy than a panther could have beaten them back as at first he did. They fought in grim silence, yet the grove was full of the sounds of battle. The heavy breathing, the beat of shifting feet, the soft impact of flesh striking flesh, the thud of falling bodies-- of these the air was vocal. Yet, save for the gasps of sudden pain, no man broke silence save once.

"The snake'll get away yet!" a hoarse voice cried, not loudly, but with an emphasis that indicated strong conviction.

Impossible as it seemed, the ranger might have done it but for an accident. In the struggle, the rope had slipped to a point just below his knees. Fighting his way down the hill, foot by foot, the Texan felt the rope tighten. One of his attackers flung himself against his chest and he was tripped. The pack was on him again. Here there was more light, and though for a time the mass swayed back and forth, at last they hammered him down by main strength. He was bound hand and foot, and dragged back to the grove.

They faced their victim, panting deeply from their exertions. Fraser looked round upon the circle of distorted faces, and stopped at one. Seen now, with the fury and malignancy of its triumph painted upon it, the face was one to bring bad dreams.

The lieutenant, his chest still laboring heavily, racked with the torture of his torn shoulder, looked into that face out of the only calm eyes in the group.

"So it's you, Struve?"

"Yes, it's me-- me and my friends."

"I've been looking for you high and low."

"Well, you've found me," came the immediate exultant answer.

"I reckon I'm indebted to you for this." Fraser moved his shoulder slightly.

"You'll owe me a heap more than that before the night's over."

"Your intentions were good then, I expect. Being shy a trigger finger spoils a man's aim."

"Not always."

"Didn't like to risk another shot from Bald Knob, eh? Must be some discouraging to hit only once out of three times at three hundred yards, and a scratch at that."

The convict swore. "I'll not miss this time, Mr. Lieutenant."

"You'd better not, or I'll take you back to the penitentiary where I put you before."

"You'll never put another man there, you meddling spy," Struve cried furiously.

"I'm not so sure of that. I know what you've got against me, but I should like to know what kick your friends have coming," the ranger retorted.

"You may have mine, right off the reel, Mr. Fraser, or whatever you call yourself. You came into this valley with a lie on your lips. We played you for a friend, and you played us for suckers. All the time you was in a deal with the sheriff for you know what. I hate a spy like I do a rattlesnake."

It was the man Yorky that spoke. Steve's eyes met his.

"So I'm a spy, am I?"

"You know best."

"Anyhow, you're going to shoot me first, and find out afterward?"

"Wrong guess. We're going to hang you." Struve, unable to keep back longer his bitter spleen, hissed this at him.

"Yes, that's about your size, Struve. You can crow loud now, when the odds are six to one, with the one unarmed and tied at that. But what I want to know is-- are you playing fair with your friends? Have you told them that every man in to-night's business will hang, sure as fate? Have you told them of those cowardly murders you did in Arizona and Texas? Have you told them that your life is forfeit, anyway? Do they know you're trying to drag them into your troubles? No? You didn't tell them that. I'm surprised at you, Struve."

"My name's Johnson."

"Not in Arizona, it isn't. Wolf Struve it is there, wanted for murder and other sundries." He turned swiftly from him to his confederates. "You fools, you're putting your heads into a noose. He's in already, and wants you in, too. Test him. Throw the end of that rope over the limb, and stand back, while he pulls me up alone. He daren't-- not for his life, he daren't. He knows that whoever pulls on that rope hangs himself as surely as he hangs me."

The men looked at each other, and at Struve. Were they being led into trouble to pay this man's scores off for him? Suspicion stirred uneasily in them.

"That's right, too. Let Johnson pull him up," Slim Leroy said sullenly.

"Sure. You've got more at stake than we have. It's up to you, Johnson," Yorky agreed.

"That's right," a third chipped in.

"We'll all pull together, boys," Struve insinuated. "It's only a bluff of his. Don't let him scare you off."

"He ain't scaring me off any," declared Yorky. "He's a spy, and he's getting what is coming to him. But you're a stranger too, Johnson. I don't trust you any-- not any farther than I can see you, my friend. I'll stand for being an aider and abettor, but I reckon if there's any hanging to be done you'll have to be the sheriff," replied Yorky stiffly.

Struve turned his sinister face on one and another of them. His lips were drawn back, so that the wolfish teeth gleamed in the moonlight. He felt himself being driven into a trap, from which there was no escape. He dared not let Fraser go with his life, for he knew that, sooner or later, the ranger would run him to earth, and drag him back to the punishment that was awaiting him in the South. Nor did he want to shoulder the responsibility of murdering this man before five witnesses.

Came the sound of running footsteps.

"What's that?" asked Slim nervously.

"Where are you, Steve?" called a voice.

"Here," the ranger shouted back.

A moment later Dick France burst into the group. "What's doing?" he panted.

The ranger laughed hardily. "Nothing, Dick. Nothing at all. Some of the boys had notions of a necktie party, but they're a little shy of sand. Have you met Mr. Struve, Dick? I know you're acquainted with the others, Mr. Struve is from Yuma. An old friend of mine. Fact is, I induced him to locate at Yuma."

Dick caught at the rope, but Yorky flung him roughly back.

"This ain't your put in, France," he said. "It's up to Johnson." And to the latter: "Get busy, if you're going to."

"He's a spy on you-all, just the same as he is on me," blurted the convict.

"That's a lie, Struve," pronounced the lieutenant evenly. "I'm going to take you back with me, but I've got nothing against these men. I want to announce right now, no matter who tells a different story, that I haven't lost any Squaw Creek raiders and I'm not hunting any."

"You hear? He came into this valley after me."

"Wrong again, Struve. I didn't know you were here. But I know now, and I serve notice that I'm going to take you back with me, dead or alive. That's what I'm paid for, and that's what I'm going to do."

It was amazing to hear this man, with a rope round his neck, announce calmly what he was going to do to the man who had only to pull that rope to send him into eternity. The very audacity of it had its effect.

Slim spoke up. "I don't reckon we better go any farther with this thing, Yorky."

"No, I don't reckon you had," cut in Dick sharply. "I'll not stand for it."

Again the footsteps of a running man reached them. It was Siegfried. He plunged into the group like a wild bull, shook the hair out of his eyes, and planted himself beside Fraser. With one backward buffet of his great arm he sent Johnson heels over head. He caught Yorky by the shoulders, strong man though the latter was, and shook him till his teeth rattled, after which he flung him reeling a dozen yards to the ground. The Norwegian was reaching for Dick when Fraser stopped him.

"That's enough of a clean-up right now, Sig. Dick butted in like you to help me," he explained.

"The durned coyotes!" roared the big Norseman furiously, leaping at Leroy and tossing him over his head as an enraged bull does. He turned upon the other three, shaking his tangled mane, but they were already in flight.

"I'll show them. I'll show them," he kept saying as he came back to the man he had rescued.

"You've showed them plenty, Sig. Cut out the rough house before you maim some of these gents who didn't invite you to their party."

The ranger felt the earth sway beneath him as he spoke. His wound had been torn loose in the fight, and was bleeding. Limply he leaned against the tree for support.

It was at this moment he caught sight of Arlie and Briscoe as they ran up. Involuntarily he straightened almost jauntily. The girl looked at him with that deep, eager look of fear he had seen before, and met that unconquerable smile of his.

The rope was still round his neck and the coat was stripped from his back. He was white to the lips, and she could see he could scarce stand, even with the support of the pine trunk. His face was bruised and battered. His hat was gone; and hidden somewhere in his crisp short hair was a cut from which blood dripped to the forehead. The bound arm had been torn from its bandages in the unequal battle he had fought. But for all his desperate plight he still carried the invincible look that nothing less than death can rob some men of.

The fretted moonlight, shifting with the gentle motion of the foliage above, fell full upon him now and showed a wet, red stain against the white shirt. Simultaneously outraged nature collapsed, and he began to sink to the ground.

Arlie gave a little cry and ran forward. Before he reached the ground he had fainted; yet scarcely before she was on her knees beside him with his head in her arms.

"Bring water, Dick, and tell Doc Lee to come at once. He'll be in the back room smoking. Hurry!" She looked fiercely round upon the men assembled. "I think they have killed him. Who did this? Was it you, Yorky? Was it you that murdered him?"

"I bane t'ink it take von hoondred of them to do it," said Siegfried. "Dat fallar, Johnson, he bane at the bottom of it."

"Then why didn't you kill him? Aren't you Steve's friend? Didn't he save your life?" she panted, passion burning in her beautiful eyes.

Siegfried nodded. "I bane Steve's friend, yah! And Ay bane kill Johnson eef Steve dies."

Briscoe, furious at this turn of the tide which had swept Arlie's sympathies back to his enemy, followed Struve as he sneaked deeper into the shadow of the trees. The convict was nursing a sprained wrist when Jed reached him.

"What do you think you've been trying to do, you sap-headed idiot?" Jed demanded. "Haven't you sense enough to choose a better time than one when the whole settlement is gathered to help him? And can't you ever make a clean job of it, you chuckle-minded son of a greaser?"

Struve turned, snarling, on him. "That'll be enough from you, Briscoe. I've stood about all I'm going to stand just now."

"You'll stand for whatever I say," retorted Jed. "You've cooked your goose in this valley by to-night's fool play. I'm the only man that can pull you through. Bite on that fact, Mr. Struve, before you unload your bile on me."

The convict's heart sank. He felt it to be the truth. The last thing he had heard was Siegfried's threat to kill him.

Whether Fraser lived or died he was in a precarious position and he knew it.

"I know you're my friend, Jed," he whined. "I'll do what you say. Stand by me and I'll sure work with you."

"Then if you take my advice you'll sneak down to the corral, get your horse, and light out for the run. Lie there till I see you."

"And Siegfried?"

"The Swede won't trouble you unless this Texan dies. I'll send you word in time if he does."

Later a skulking shadow sneaked into the corral and out again. Once out of hearing, it leaped to the back of the horse and galloped wildly into the night.

CHAPTER XIV

HOWARD EXPLAINS

Two horsemen rode into Millikan's Draw and drew up in front of the big ranch house. To the girl who stepped to the porch to meet them they gave friendly greeting. One of them asked:

"How're things coming, Arlie?"

"Better and better every day, Dick. Yesterday the doctor said he was out of danger."

"It's been a tough fight for Steve," the other broke in. "Proper nursing is what pulled him through. Doc says so."

"Did he say that, Alec? I'll always think it was doc. He fought for that life mighty hard, boys."

Alec Howard nodded: "Doc Lee's the stuff. Here he comes now, talking of angels."

Doctor Lee dismounted and grinned. "Which of you lads is she making love to now?"

Arlie laughed. "He can't understand that I don't make love to anybody but him," she explained to the younger men.

"She never did to me, doc," Dick said regretfully.

"No, we were just talking about you, doc."

"Fire ahead, young woman," said the doctor, with assumed severity. "I'm here to defend myself now."

"Alec was calling you an angel, and I was laughing at him," said the girl demurely.

"An angel-- huh!" he snorted.

"I never knew an angel that chewed tobacco, or one that could swear the way you do when you're mad," continued Arlie.

"I don't reckon your acquaintance with angels is much greater than mine, Miss Arlie Dillon. How's the patient?"

"He's always wanting something to eat, and he's cross as a bear."

"Good for him! Give him two weeks now and he'll be ready to whip his weight in wild cats."

The doctor disappeared within, and presently they could hear his loud, cheerful voice pretending to berate the patient.

Arlie sat down on the top step of the porch.

"Boys, I don't know what I would have done if he had died. It would have been all my fault. I had no business to tell him the names of you boys that rode in the raid, and afterward to tell you that I told him," she accused herself.

"No, you had no business to tell him, though it happens he's safe as a bank vault," Howard commented.

"I don't know how I came to do it," the girl continued. "Jed had made me suspicious of him, and then I found out something fine he had done for me. I wanted him to know I trusted him. That was the first thing I thought of, and I told it. He tried to stop me, but I'm such an impulsive little fool."

"We all make breaks, Arlie. You'll not do it again, anyhow," France comforted.

Doctor Lee presently came out and pronounced that the wounded man was doing well. "Wants to see you boys. Don't stay more than half an hour. If they get in your way, sweep 'em out, Arlie."

The cowpunchers entered the sick room with the subdued, gingerly tread of professional undertakers.

"I ain't so had as that yet, boys," the patient laughed. "You're allowed to speak above a whisper. Doc thinks I'll last till night, mebbe, if I'm careful."

They told him all the gossip of the range-- how young Ford had run off with Sallie Laundon and got married to her down at the Butte; how Siegfried had gone up and down the valley swearing he would clean out Jack Rabbit Run if Steve died; how Johnson had had another row with Jed and had chosen to take water rather than draw. Both of his visitors, however, had something on their minds they found some difficulty in expressing.

Alec Howard finally broached it.

"Arlie told you the names of some of the boys that were in the Squaw Creek sheep raid. She made a mistake in telling you anything, but we'll let that go in the discard. It ain't necessary that you should know the names of the others, but I'm going to tell you one of them, Steve."

"No, I don't want to know."

"This is my say-so. His name is Alec Howard."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Alec. I don't know why you have told me."

"Because I want you to know the facts of that raid, Steve. No killing was on the program. That came about in a way none of us could foresee."

"This is how it was, Steve," explained Dick. "Word came that Campeau was going to move his sheep into the Squaw Creek district. Sheep never had run there. It was understood the range there was for our cattle. We had set a dead line, and warned them not to cross it. Naturally, it made us sore when we heard about Campeau.

"So some of us gathered together hastily and rode over. Our intentions were declared. We meant to drive the sheep back and patrol the dead line. It was solemnly agreed that there was to be no shooting, not even of sheep."

The story halted here for a moment before Howard took it up again. "Things don't always come out the way you figure them. We didn't anticipate any trouble. We outnumbered them two to one. We had the advantage of the surprise. You couldn't guess that for anything but a cinch, could you?"

"And it turned out different?"

"One of us stumbled over a rock as we were creeping forward. Campeau heard us and drew. The first shot came from them. Now, I'm going to tell you something you're to keep under your own hat. It will surprise you a heap when I tell you that one man on our side did all the damage. He was at the haid of the line, and it happens he is a dead shot. He is liable to rages, when he acts like a crazy man. He got one now. Before we could put a stopper on him, he had killed Campeau and Jennings, and wounded the herders. The whole thing was done before you could wink an eye six times. For just about that long we stood there like roped calves. Then we downed the man in his tracks, slammed him with the butt of a revolver."

Howard stopped and looked at the ranger before he spoke again. His voice was rough and hoarse.

"Steve, I've seen men killed before, but I never saw anything so awful as that. It was just like they had been struck by lightning for suddenness. There was that devil scattering death among them and the poor fellows crumpling up like rabbits. I tell you every time I think of it the thing makes me sick."

The ranger nodded. He understood. The picture rose before him of a man in a Berserk rage, stark mad for the moment, playing Destiny on that lonely, moonlit hill. The face his instinct fitted to the irresponsible murderer was that of Jed Briscoe. Somehow he was sure of that, beyond the shadow of a doubt. His imagination conceived that long ride back across the hills, the deep agonies of silence, the fierce moments of vindictive accusation. No doubt for long the tug of conscience was with them in all their waking hours, for these men were mostly simple-minded cattlemen caught in the web of evil chance.

"That's how it was, Steve. In as long as it takes to empty a Winchester, we were every one of us guilty of a murder we'd each have given a laig to have stopped. We were all in it, all tied together, because we had broke the law to go raiding in the first place. Technically, the man that emptied that rifle wasn't any more guilty than us poor wretches that stood frozen there while he did it. Put it that we might shave the gallows, even then the penitentiary would bury us. There was only one thing to do. We agreed to stand together, and keep mum."

"Is that why you're telling me, Alec?" Fraser smiled.

"We ain't telling you, not legally," the cow-puncher answered coolly. "If you was ever to say we had, Dick and me would deny it. But we ain't worrying any about you telling it. You're a clam, and we know it. No, we're telling you, son, because we want you to know about how it was. The boys didn't ride out to do murder. They rode out simply to drive the sheep off their range."

The Texan nodded. "That's about how I figured it. I'm glad you told me, boys. I reckon I don't need to tell you I'm padlocked in regard to this."

Arlie came to the door and looked in. "It's time you boys were going. Doc said a half hour"

"All right, Arlie," responded Dick. "So-long, Steve. Be good, you old pie eater."

After they had gone, the Texan lay silent for a long time. He understood perfectly their motive in telling him the story. They had not compromised themselves legally, since a denial would have given them two to one in the matter of witnesses. But they wished him to see that, morally, every man but one who rode on that raid was guiltless of the Squaw Creek murders.

Arlie came in presently, and sat down near the window with some embroidery.

"Did the boys tire you?" she asked, noting his unusual silence.

"No. I was thinking about what they told me. They were giving me the inside facts of the Squaw Creek raid."

She looked up in surprise. "They were?" A little smile began to dimple the corners of her mouth. "That's funny, because they had just got through forgiving me for what I told you."

"What they told me was how the shooting occurred."

"I don't know anything about that. When I told you their names I was only telling what I had heard people whisper. That's all I knew."

"You've been troubled because your friends were in this, haven't you? You hated to think it of them, didn't you?" he asked.

"Yes. It has troubled me a lot."

"Don't let it trouble you any more. One man was responsible for all the bloodshed. He went mad and saw red for half a minute. Before the rest could stop him, the slaughter was done. The other boys aren't guilty of that, any more than you or I."

"Oh, I'm glad-- I'm glad," she cried softly. Then, looking up quickly to him: "Who was the man?" she asked.

"I don't know. It is better that neither of us should know that."

"I'm glad the boys told you. It shows they trust you."

"They figure me out a white man," he answered carelessly.

"Ah! That's where I made my mistake." She looked at him bravely, though the color began to beat into her cheeks beneath the dusky tan. "Yet I knew it all the time-- in my heart. At least, after I had given myself time to think it over. I knew you couldn't be that. If I had given you time to explain-- but I always think too late."

His eyes, usually so clear and steely, softened at her words. "I'm satisfied if you knew-- in your heart."

"I meant----" she began, with a flush.

"Now, don't spoil it, please," he begged.

Under his steady, half-smiling gaze, her eyes fell. Two weeks ago she had been a splendid young creature, as untaught of life as one of the wild forest animals and as unconsciously eager for it. But there had come a change over her, a birth of womanhood from that night when she had stood between Stephen Fraser and death. No doubt she would often regret it, but she had begun to live more deeply. She could never go back to the care-free days when she could look all men in the face with candid, girlish eyes. The time had come to her, as it must to all sensitive of life, when she must drink of it, whether she would or no.

"Because I'd rather you would know it in your heart than in your mind," he said.

Something sweet and terrifying, with the tingle and warmth of rare wine in it, began to glow in her veins. Eyes shy, eager, frightened, met his for an instant. Then she remembered the other girl. Something hard as steel ran through her. She turned on her heel and left the room.

CHAPTER XV

THE TEXAN PAYS A VISIT

From that day Fraser had a new nurse. Arlie disappeared, and her aunt replaced her a few hours later and took charge of the patient. Steve took her desertion as an irritable convalescent does, but he did not let his disappointment make him unpleasant to Miss Ruth Dillon.

"I'm a chump," he told himself, with deep disgust. "Hadn't any more sense than to go scaring off the little girl by handing out a line of talk she ain't used to. I reckon now she's done with me proper."

He continued to improve so rapidly that within the prescribed two weeks he was on horseback again, though still a little weak and washed out. His first ride of any length was to the Dillon ranch. Siegfried accompanied him, and across the Norwegian's saddle lay a very business-like rifle.

As they were passing the mouth of a cañon, the ranger put a casual question: "This Jack Rabbit Run, Sig?"

"Yah. More men wanted bane lost in that gulch than any place Ay knows of."

"That so? I'm going in there to-morrow to find that man Struve," his friend announced carelessly.

The big blonde giant looked at him. "Yuh bain't, Steve? Why, yuh bain't fit to tackle a den uh wild cats." An admiring grin lit the Norwegian's face. "Durn my hide, yuh've got 'em all skinned for grit, Steve. Uh course, Ay bane goin' with yuh."

"If it won't get you in bad with your friends I'll be glad to have you, Sig."

"They bain't my friends. Ay bane shook them, an' served notice to that effect."

"Glad of it."

"Yuh bane goin' in after Struve only?"

"Yes. He's the only man I want."

"Then Ay bane go in, and bring heem out to yuh."

Fraser shook his head. "No, old man, I've got to play my own hand."

"Ay t'ink it be a lot safer f'r me to happen in an' get heem," remonstrated Siegfried.

"Safer for me," corrected the lieutenant, smiling. "No, I can't work that way. I've got to take my own chances. You can go along, though, on one condition. You're not to interfere between me and Struve. If some one else butts in, you may ask him why, if you like.

"Ay bane t'ink yuh von fool, Steve. But Ay bane no boss. Vat yuh says goes."

They found Arlie watering geraniums in front of the house. Siegfried merely nodded to her and passed on to the stables with the horses. Fraser dismounted, offering her his hand and his warm smile.

He had caught her without warning, and she was a little shy of him. Not only was she embarrassed, but she saw that he knew it. He sat down on the step, while she continued to water her flowers.

"You see your bad penny turned up again, Miss Arlie," he said.

"I didn't know you were able to ride yet, Lieutenant Fraser."

"This is my first try at it. Thought I'd run over and say 'Thank you' to my nurse."

"I'll call auntie," she said quickly.

He shook his head. "Not necessary, Miss Arlie. I settled up with her. I was thinking of the nurse that ran off and left me."

She was beginning to recover herself. "You want to thank her for leaving while there was still hope," she said, with a quick little smile.

"Why did you do it? I've been mighty lonesome the past two weeks," he said quietly.

"You would be, of course. You are used to an active outdoor life, and I suppose the boys couldn't get round to see you very often."

"I wasn't thinking of the boys," he meditated aloud.

Arlie blushed; and to hide her embarrassment she called to Jimmie, who was passing: "Bring up Lieutenant Fraser's Teddy. I want him to see how well we're caring for his horse."

As a diversion, Teddy served very well. Horse and owner were both mightily pleased to see each other. While the animal rubbed its nose against his coat, the ranger teased and petted it.

"Hello, you old Teddy hawss. How air things a-comin', pardner?" he drawled, with a reversion to his Texas speech. "Plumb tickled to death to meet up with yore old master, ain't you? How come it you ain't fallen in love with this young lady and forgot Steve?"

"He thinks a lot of me, too," Arlie claimed promptly.

"Don't blame you a bit, Teddy. I'll ce'tainly shake hands with you on that. But life's jest meetin' and partin', old hawss. I got to take you away for good, day after to-morrow."

"Where are you going?" the girl asked quickly. Then, to cover the swift interest of her question: "But, of course, it is time you were going back to your business."

"No, ma'am, that is just it. Seems to me either too soon or too late to be going."

She had her face turned from him, and was busy over her plants, to hide the tremulous dismay that had shaken her at his news.

She did not ask him what he meant, nor did she ask again where he was going. For the moment, she could not trust her voice to say more.

"Too late, because I've seen in this valley some one I'll never forget, and too soon because that some one will forget me, sure as a gun," he told her.

"Not if you write to him."

"It isn't a him. It's my little nurse."

"I'll tell auntie how you feel about it, and I'm sure she won't forget you."

"You know mighty well I ain't talking about auntie."

"Then I suppose you must mean me."

"That's who I'm meaning."

"I think I'll be able to remember you if I try-- by Teddy," she answered, without looking at him, and devoted herself to petting the horse.

"Is it-- would it be any use to say any more, Arlie?" he asked, in a low voice, as he stood beside her, with Teddy's nose in his hands.

"I-- I don't know what you mean, sir. Please don't say anything more about it." Then again memory of the other girl flamed through her. "No, it wouldn't-- not a bit of use, not a bit," she broke out fiercely.

"You mean you couldn't----"

The flame in her face, the eyes that met his, as if drawn by a magnet, still held their anger, but mingled with it was a piteous plea for mercy. "I-- I'm only a girl. Why don't you let me alone?" she cried bitterly, and hard upon her own words turned and ran from the room.

Steve looked after her in amazed surprise. "Now don't it beat the band the way a woman takes a thing."

Dubiously he took himself to the stable and said good-by to Dillon.

An hour later she went down to dinner still flushed and excited. Before she had been in the room two minutes her father gave her a piece of startling news.

"I been talking to Steve. Gracious, gyurl, what do you reckon that boy's a-goin' to do?"

Arlie felt the color leap into her cheeks.

"What, dad?"

"He's a'goin' back to Gimlet Butte, to give himself up to Brandt, day after to-morrow."

"But-- what for?" she gasped.

"Durned if I know! He's got some fool notion about playin' fair. Seems he came into the Cedar Mountain country to catch the Squaw Creek raiders. Brandt let him escape on that pledge. Well, he's give up that notion, and now he thinks, dad gum it, that it's up to him to surrender to Brandt again."

The girl's eyes were like stars. "And he's going to go back there and give himself up, to be tried for killing Faulkner."

Dillon scratched his head. "By gum, gyurl, I didn't think of that. We cayn't let him go."

"Yes, we can."

"Why, honey, he didn't kill Faulkner, looks like. We cayn't let him go back there and take our medicine for us. Mebbe he would be lynched. It's a sure thing he'd be convicted."

"Never mind. Let him go. I've got a plan, dad." Her vivid face was alive with the emotion which spoke in it. "When did he say he was going?" she asked buoyantly.

"Day after to-morrow. Seems he's got business that keeps him hyer to-morrow. What's yore idee, honey?"

She got up, and whispered it in his ear. His jaw dropped, and he stared at her in amazement.

CHAPTER XVI

THE WOLF BITES

Steve came drowsily to consciousness from confused dreams of a cattle stampede and the click of rifles in the hands of enemies who had the drop on him. The rare, untempered sunshine of the Rockies poured into his window from a world outside, wonderful as the early morning of creation. The hillside opposite was bathed miraculously in a flood of light, in which grasshoppers fiddled triumphantly their joy in life. The sources of his dreams discovered themselves in the bawl of thirsty cattle and the regular clicking of a windmill.

A glance at his watch told him that it was six o'clock.

"Time to get up, Steve," he told himself, and forthwith did.

He chose a rough crash towel, slipped on a pair of Howard's moccasins, and went down to the river through an ambient that had the sparkle and exhilaration of champagne. The mountain air was still finely crisp with the frost, in spite of the sun warmth that was beginning to mellow it. Flinging aside the Indian blanket he had caught up before leaving the cabin, he stood for an instant on the bank, a human being with the physical poise, compactness, and lithe-muscled smoothness of a tiger.

Even as he plunged a rifle cracked. While he dived through the air, before the shock of the icy water tingled through him, he was planning his escape. The opposite bank rose ten feet above the stream. He kept under the water until he came close to this, then swam swiftly along it with only his head showing, so as to keep him out of sight as much as possible.

Half a stone's throw farther the bank fell again to the water's edge, the river having broadened and grown shallow, as mountain creeks do. The ranger ran, stooping, along the bank, till it afforded him no more protection, then dashed across the stony-bottomed stream to the shelter of the thick aspens beyond.

Just as he expected, a shot rang from far up the mountainside. In another instant he was safe in the foliage of the young aspens.

In the sheer exhilaration of his escape he laughed aloud.

"Last show to score gone, Mr. Struve. I figured it just right. He waited too long for his first shot. Then the bank hid me. He wasn't expecting to see me away down the stream, so he hadn't time to sight his second one."

Steve wound his way in and out among the aspens, working toward the tail of them, which ran up the hill a little way and dropped down almost to the back door of the cabin. Upon this he was presently pounding.

Howard let him in. He had a revolver in his hand, the first weapon he could snatch up.

"You durned old idiot! It's a wonder you ain't dead three ways for Sunday," he shouted joyfully at sight of him. "Ain't I told you 'steen times to do what bathin' you got to do, right here in the shack?"

The Texan laughed again. Naked as that of Father Adam, his splendid body was glowing with the bath and the exercise.

"He's ce'tainly the worst chump ever, Alec. Had me in sight all the way down to the creek, but waited till I wasn't moving. Reckon he was nervous. Anyhow, he waited just one-tenth of a second too late. Shot just as I leaned forward for my dive. He gave me a free hair-cut though."

A swath showed where the bullet had mowed a furrow of hair so close that in one place it had slightly torn the scalp.

"He shot again, didn't he?"

"Yep. I swam along the far bank, so that he couldn't get at me, and crossed into the aspens. He got another chance as I was crossing, but he had to take it on the fly, and missed."

The cattleman surveyed the hillside cautiously through the front window. "I reckon he's pulled his freight, most likely. But we'll stay cooped for a while, on the chance. You're the luckiest cuss I ever did see. More lives than a cat."

Howard laid his revolver down within reach, and proceeded to light a fire in the stove, from which rose presently the pleasant odors of aromatic coffee and fried ham and eggs.

"Come and get it, Steve," said Howard, by way of announcing breakfast. "No, you don't. I'll take the window seat, and at that we'll have the curtain drawn."

They were just finishing breakfast when Siegfried cantered up.

"You bane ready, Steve?" he called in.

Howard appeared in the doorway. "Say, Sig, go down to the corral and saddle up Teddy for Steve, will you? Some of his friends have been potshotting at him again. No damage done, except to my feelings, but there's nothing like being careful."

Siegfried's face darkened. "Ay bane like for know who it vas?"

Howard laughed. "Now, if you'll tell Steve that he'll give you as much as six bits, Sig. He's got notions, but they ain't worth any more than yours or mine. Say, where you boys going to-day? I've a notion to go along."

"Oh, just out for a little pasear," Steve answered casually. "Thought you were going to work on your south fence to-day."

"Well, I reckon I better. It sure needs fixing. You lads take good care of yourselves. I don't need to tell you not to pass anywhere near the run, Sig," he grinned, with the manner of one giving a superfluous warning.

Fraser looked at Siegfried, with a smile in his eyes. "No, we'll not pass the run to-day, Alec."

A quarter of an hour later they were in the saddle and away. Siegfried did not lead his friend directly up the cañon that opened into Jack Rabbit Run, but across the hills to a pass, which had to be taken on foot. They left the horses picketed on a grassy slope, and climbed the faint trail that went steeply up the bowlder-strewn mountain.

The ascent was so steep that the last bit had to be done on all fours. It was a rock face, though by no means an impossible one, since projecting ledges and knobs offered a foothold all the way. From the summit, the trail edged its way down so precipitously that twice fallen pines had to be used as ladders for the descent.

As soon as they were off the rocks, the big blonde gave the signal for silence. "Ay bane t'ink we might meet up weeth some one," he whispered, and urged Steve to follow him as closely as possible.

It was half an hour later that Sig pointed out a small clearing ahead of them. "Cabin's right oop on the edge of the aspens. See it?"

The ranger nodded assent.

"Ay bane go down first an' see how t'ings look."

When the Norwegian entered the cabin, he saw two men seated at a table, playing seven up. The one facing him was Tommie, the cook; the other was an awkward heavy-set fellow, whom he knew for the man he wanted, even before the scarred, villainous face was twisted toward him.

Struve leaped instantly to his feet, overturning his chair in his haste. He had not met the big Norseman since the night he had attempted to hang Fraser.

"Ay bane not shoot yuh now," Siegfried told him.

"Right sure of that, are you?" the convict snarled, his hand on his weapon. "If you've got any doubts, now's the time to air them, and we'll settle this thing right now."

"Ay bane not shoot, Ay tell you."

Tommie, who had ducked beneath the table at the prospect of trouble, now cautiously emerged.

"I ain't lost any pills from either of your guns, gents," he explained, with a face so laughably and frankly frightened that both of the others smiled.

"Have a drink, Siegfried," suggested Struve, by way of sealing the treaty. "Tommie, get out that bottle."

"Ay bane t'ink Ay look to my horse first," the Norwegian answered, and immediately left by way of the back door not three minutes before Jed Briscoe entered by the front one.

Jed shut the door behind him and looked at the convict.

"Well?" he demanded.

Struve faced him sullenly, without answering.

"Tommie, vamos," hinted Briscoe gently, and as soon as the cook had disappeared, he repeated his monosyllable: "Well?"

"It didn't come off," muttered the other sulkily.

"Just what I expected. Why not?"

Struve broke into a string of furious oaths. "Because I missed him-- missed him twice, when he was standing there naked before me. He was coming down to the creek to take a bath, and I waited till he was close. I had a sure bead on him, and he dived just as I fired. I got another chance, when he was running across, farther down, and, by thunder, I missed again."

Jed laughed, and the sound of it was sinister.

"Couldn't hit the side of a house, could you? You're nothing but a cheap skate, a tin-horn gambler, run down at the heels. All right. I'm through with you. Lieutenant Fraser, from Texas, can come along and collect whenever he likes. I'll not protect a false alarm like you any longer."

Struve looked at him, as a cornered wolf might have done. "What will you do?"

"I'll give you up to him. I'll tell him to come in and get you. I'll show him the way in, you white-livered cur!" bullied the cattleman, giving way to one of his rages.

"You'd better not," snarled the convict. "Not if you want to live."

As they stood facing each other in a panting fury the door opened, to let in Siegfried and the ranger.

Jed's rage against Struve died on the spot. He saw his enemy, the ranger, before him, and leaped to the conclusion that he had come to this hidden retreat to run him down for the Squaw Creek murders. Instantly, his hand swept to the hilt of his revolver.

That motion sealed his doom. For Struve knew that Siegfried had brought the ranger to capture him, and suspected in the same flash that Briscoe was in on the betrayal. Had not the man as good as told him so, not thirty seconds before? He supposed that Jed was drawing to kill or cover him, and, like a flash of lightning, unscabbarded and fired.

"You infernal Judas, I'll get you anyhow," he cried.

Jed dropped his weapon, and reeled back against the wall, where he hung for a moment, while the convict pumped a second and a third bullet into his body. Briscoe was dead before Fraser could leap forward and throw his arms round the man who had killed him.

Between them, they flung Struve to the ground, and disarmed him. The convict's head had struck as he went down, and it was not for some little time that he recovered fully from his daze. When he did his hands were tied behind him.

"I didn't go for to kill him," he whimpered, now thoroughly frightened at what he had done. "You both saw it, gentlemen. You did, lieutenant. So did you, Sig. It was self-defense. He drew on me. I didn't go to do it."

Fraser was examining the dead man's wounds. He looked up, and said to his friend: "Nothing to do for him, Sig. He's gone."

"I tell you, I didn't mean to do it," pleaded Struve. "Why, lieutenant, that man has been trying to get me to ambush you for weeks. I'll swear it." The convict was in a panic of terror, ready to curry favor with the man whom he held his deadliest enemy. "Yes, lieutenant, ever since you came here. He's been egging me on to kill you."

"And you tried it three times?"

"No, sir." He pointed vindictively at the dead man, lying face up on the floor. "It was him that ambushed you this morning. I hadn't a thing to do with it."

"Don't lie, you coward."

They carried the body to the next room and put it on a bed. Tommie was dispatched on a fast horse for help.

Late in the afternoon he brought back with him Doctor Lee, and half an hour after sunset Yorky and Slim galloped up. They were for settling the matter out of hand by stringing the convict Struve up to the nearest pine, but they found the ranger so very much on the spot that they reconsidered.

"He's my prisoner, gentlemen. I came in here and took him-- that is, with the help of my friend Siegfried. I reckon if you mill it over a spell, you'll find you don't want him half as bad as we do," he said mildly.

"What's the matter with all of us going in on this thing, lieutenant?" proposed Yorky.

"I never did see such a fellow for necktie parties as you are, Yorky. Not three weeks ago, you was invitin' me to be chief mourner at one of your little affairs, and your friend Johnson was to be master of ceremonies. Now you've got the parts reversed. No, I reckon we'll have to disappoint you this trip."

"What are you going to do with him?" asked Yorky, with plain dissatisfaction.

"I'm going to take him down to Gimlet Butte. Arizona and Wyoming and Texas will have to scrap it out for him there." "When, you get him there," Yorky said significantly.

"Yes, when I get him there," answered the Texan blandly, carefully oblivious of the other's implication.

The moon was beginning to show itself over a hill before the Texan and Siegfried took the road with their captive. Fraser had carelessly let drop a remark to the effect that they would spend the night at the Dillon ranch.

His watch showed eleven o'clock before they reached the ranch, but he pushed on without turning in and did not stop until they came to the Howard place.

They roused Alec from sleep, and he cooked them a post-midnight supper, after which he saddled his cow pony, buckled on his belt, and took down his old rifle from the rack.

"I'll jog along with you lads and see the fun," he said.

Their prisoner had not eaten. The best he could do was to gulp down some coffee, for he was in a nervous chill of apprehension. Every gust of wind seemed to carry to him the patter of pursuit. The hooting of an owl sent a tremor through him.

"Don't you reckon we had better hurry?" he had asked with dry lips more than once, while the others were eating.

He asked it again as they were setting off.

Howard looked him over with rising disgust, without answering. Presently, he remarked, apropos of nothing: "Are all your Texas wolves coyotes, Steve?"

He would have liked to know at least that it was a man whose life he was protecting, even though the fellow was also a villain. But this crumb of satisfaction was denied him.

CHAPTER XVII

ON THE ROAD TO GIMLET BUTTE

"We'll go out by the river way," said Howard tentatively. "Eh, what think, Sig? It's longer, but Yorky will be expecting us to take the short cut over the pass."

The Norwegian agreed. "It bane von chance, anyhow."

By unfrequented trails they traversed the valley till they reached the cañon down which poured Squaw Creek on its way to the outside world. A road ran alongside this for a mile or two, but disappeared into the stream when the gulch narrowed. The first faint streaks of gray dawn were lightening the sky enough for Fraser to see this. He was riding in advance, and commented upon it to Siegfried, who rode with him.

The Norwegian laughed. "Ay bane t'ink we do some wadin'."

They swung off to the right, and a little later splashed through the water for a few minutes and came out into a spreading valley beyond the sheer walls of the retreat they had left. Taking the road again, they traveled faster than they had been able to do before.

"Who left the valley yesterday for Gimlet Butte, Sig?" Howard asked, after it was light enough to see. "I notice tracks of two horses."

"Ay bane vondering. Ay t'ink mebbe West over----"

"I reckon not. This ain't the track of his big bay. Must 'a' been yesterday, too, because it rained the night before."

For some hours they could see occasionally the tracks of the two horses, but eventually lost them where two trails forked.

"Taking the Sweetwater cutout to the Butte, I reckon," Howard surmised.

They traveled all day, except for a stop about ten o'clock for breakfast, and another late in the afternoon, to rest the horses. At night, they put up at a ranch house, and were in the saddle again early in the morning. Before noon, they struck a telephone line, and Fraser called up Brandt at a ranch.

"Hello! This Sheriff Brandt? Lieutenant Fraser, of the Texas Rangers, is talking. I'm on my way to town with a prisoner. We're at Christy's, now. There will, perhaps, be an attempt to take him from us. I'll explain the circumstances later. ... Yes.... Yes.... We can hold him, I think, but there may be trouble.... Yes, that's it. We have no legal right to detain him, I suppose.... That's what I was going to suggest. Better send about four men to meet us. We'll come in on the Blasted Pine road. About nine to-night, I should think."

As they rode easily along the dusty road, the Texan explained his plan to his friends.

"We don't want any trouble with Yorky's crowd. We ain't any of us deputies, and my commission doesn't run in Wyoming, of course. My notion is to lie low in the hills two or three hours this afternoon, and give Brandt a chance to send his men out to meet us. The responsibility will be on them, and we can be sworn in as deputies, too,"

They rested in a grassy draw, about fifteen miles from town, and took the trail again shortly after dark. It was an hour later that Fraser, who had an extraordinary quick ear, heard the sound of men riding toward them. He drew his party quickly into the shadows of the hills, a little distance from the road.

They could hear voices of the advancing party, and presently could make out words.

"I tell you, they've got to come in on this road, Slim," one of the men was saying dogmatically. "We're bound to meet up with them. That's all there is to it."

"Yorky," whispered Howard, in the ranger's ear.

They rode past in pairs, six of them in all. As chance would have it, Siegfried's pony, perhaps recognizing a friend among those passing, nickered shrilly its greeting. Instantly, the riders drew up.

"Where did that come from?" Yorky asked, in a low voice.

"From over to the right. I see men there now See! Up against that hill." Slim pointed toward the group in the shadow.

Yorky hailed them. "That you, Sig?"

"Yuh bane von good guesser," answered the Norwegian.

"How many of you are there?"

"Four, Yorky," Fraser replied.

"There are six of us. We've got you outnumbered, boys."

Very faintly there came to the lieutenant the beat of horses' feet. He sparred for time.

"What do you want, Yorky?"

"You know what we want. That murderer you've got there-- that's what we want."

"We're taking him in to be tried, Yorky. Justice will be done to him."

"Not at Gimlet Butte it won't. No jury will convict him for killing Jed Briscoe, from Lost Valley. We're going to hang him, right now."

"You'll have to fight for him, my friend, and before you do that I want you to understand the facts."

"We understand all the facts we need to, right now."

The lieutenant rode forward alone. He knew that soon they too would hear the rhythmic beat of the advancing posse.

"We've got all night to settle this, boys. Let's do what is fair and square. That's all I ask."

"Now you're shouting, lieutenant. That's all we ask."

"It depends on what you mean by fair and square," another one spoke up.

The ranger nodded amiably at him. "That you, Harris? Well, let's look at the facts right. Here's Lost Valley, that's had a bad name ever since it was inhabited. Far as I can make out its settlers are honest men, regarded outside as miscreants. Just as folks were beginning to forget it, comes the Squaw Creek raid. Now, I'm not going into that, and I'm not going to say a word against the man that lies dead up in the hills. But I'll say this: His death solves a problem for a good many of the boys up there. I'm going to make it my business to see that the facts are known right down in Gimlet Butte. I'm going to lift the blame from the boys that were present, and couldn't help what happened."

Yorky was impressed, but suspicion was not yet banished from his mind. "You seem to know a lot about it, lieutenant."

"No use discussing that, Yorky. I know what I know. Here's the great big point: If you lynch the man that shot Jed, the word will go out that the valley is still a nest of lawless outlaws. The story will be that the Squaw Creek raiders and their friends did it. Just as the situation is clearing up nicely, you'll make it a hundred times worse by seeming to indorse what Jed did on Squaw Creek."

"By thunder, that's right," Harris blurted.

Fraser spoke again. "Listen, boys. Do you hear horses galloping? That is Sheriff Brandt's deputies, coming to our assistance. You've lost the game, but you can save your faces yet. Join us, and kelp escort the prisoner to town. Nobody need know why you came out. We'll put it that it was to guard against a lynching."

The men looked at each other sheepishly. They had been outwitted, and in their hearts were glad of it. Harris turned to the ranger with a laugh. "You're a good one, Fraser. Kept us here talking, while your reënforcements came up. Well, boys, I reckon we better join the Sunday-school class."

So it happened that when Sheriff Brandt and his men came up they found the mountain folk united. He was surprised at the size of the force with the Texan.

"You're certainly of a cautious disposition, lieutenant. With eight men to help you, I shouldn't have figured you needed my posse," he remarked.

"It gives you the credit of bringing in the prisoner, sheriff," Steve told him unblushingly, voicing the first explanation that came to his mind.

CHAPTER XVIII

A WITNESS IN REBUTTAL

Two hours later, Lieutenant Fraser was closeted with Brandt and Hilliard. He told them his story-- or as much of it as he deemed necessary. The prosecuting attorney heard him to an end before he gave a short, skeptical laugh.

"It doesn't seem to me you've quite lived up to your reputation, lieutenant," he commented.

"I wasn't trying to," retorted Steve.

"What do you mean by that?"

"I have told you how I got into the valley. I couldn't go in there and betray my friends."

Hilliard wagged his fat forefinger. "How about betraying our trust? How about throwing us down? We let you escape, after you had given us your word to do this job, didn't we?"

"Yes. I had to throw you down. There wasn't any other way."

"You tell a pretty fishy story, lieutenant. It doesn't stand to reason that one man did all the mischief on that Squaw Creek raid."

"It is true. Not a shadow of a doubt of it. I'll bring you three witnesses, if you'll agree to hold them guiltless."

"And I suppose I'm to agree to hold you guiltless of Faulkner's death, too?" the lawyer demanded.

"I didn't say that. I'm here, Mr. Hilliard, to deliver my person, because I can't stand by the terms of our agreement. I think I've been fair with you."

Hilliard looked at Brandt, with twinkling eyes. It struck Fraser that they had between them some joke in which he was not a sharer.

"You're willing to assume full responsibility for the death of Faulkner, are you? Ready to plead guilty, eh?"

Fraser laughed. "Just a moment. I didn't say that. What I said was that I'm here to stand my trial. It's up to you to prove me guilty."

"But, in point of fact, you practically admit it."

"In point of fact, I would prefer not to say so. Prove it, if you can."

"I have witnesses here, ready to swear to the truth, lieutenant."

"Aren't your witnesses prejudiced a little?"

"Maybe." The smile on Hilliard's fat face broadened. "Two of them are right here. Suppose we find out."

He stepped to the door of the inner office, and opened it. From the room emerged Dillon and his daughter. The Texan looked at Arlie in blank amazement.

"This young lady says she was present, lieutenant, and knows who fired the shot that killed Faulkner."

The ranger saw only Arlie. His gaze was full of deep reproach. "You came down here to save me," he said, in the manner of one stating a fact.

"Why shouldn't I? Ought I to have let you suffer for me? Did you think I was so base?"

"You oughtn't to have done it. You have brought trouble on yourself."

Her eyes glowed with deep fires. "I don't care. I have done what was right. Did you think dad and I would sit still and let you pay forfeit for us?"

The lieutenant's spirits rejoiced at the thing she had done, but his mind could not forget what she must go through.

"I'm glad and I'm sorry," he said simply.

Hilliard came, smiling, to relieve the situation. "I've got a piece of good news for both of you. Two of the boys that were in that shooting scrap three miles from town came to my office the other day and admitted that they attacked you. It got noised around that there was a girl in it, and they were anxious to have the thing dropped. I don't think either of you need worry about it any more."

Dillon gave a shout. "Glory, hallelujah!" He had been much troubled, and his relief shone on his face. "I say, gentlemen, that's the best news I've heard in twenty years. Let's go celebrate it with just one."

Brandt and Hilliard joined him, but the Texan lingered.

"I reckon I'll join you later, gentlemen," he said.

While their footsteps died away he looked steadily at Arlie. Her eyes met his and held fast. Beneath the olive of her cheeks, a color began to glow.

He held out both his hands. The light in his eyes softened, transfigured his hard face. "You can't help it, honey. It may not be what you would have chosen, but it has got to be. You're mine."

Almost beneath her breath she spoke. "You forgot-- the other girl."

"What other girl? There is none-- never was one."

"The girl in the picture."

His eyes opened wide. "Good gracious! She's been married three months to a friend of mine. Larry Neill his name is."

"And she isn't your sweetheart at all? Never was?"

"I don't reckon she ever was. Neill took that picture himself. We were laughing, because I had just been guying them about how quick they got engaged. She was saying I'd be engaged myself before six months. And I am. Ain't I?"

She came to him slowly-- first, the little outstretched hands, and then the soft, supple, resilient body. Slowly, too, her sweet reluctant lips came round to meet his.

"Yes, Steve, I'm yours. I think I always have been, even before I knew you."

"Even when you hated me?" he asked presently.

"Most of all, when I hated you," She laughed happily. "That was just another way of love."

"We'll have fifty years to find out all the different ways," the man promised.

"Fifty years. Oh, Steve!"

She gave a happy little sigh, and nestled closer.

Contents

BUCKY O'CONNOR

A Tale of the Unfenced Border

by William MacLeod Raine

MY DEAR WANDERER:

I write your name on this page that you may know we hold you not less in our thoughts because you have heard and answered again the call of the frozen North, have for the time disappeared, swallowed in some of its untrodden wilds. As in those old days of 59 Below On Bonanza, the long Winter night will be of interminable length. Armed with this note of introduction then, Bucky O'Connor offers himself, with the best bow of one Adventurer to another, as a companion to while away some few of those lonely hours.

March, 1910, Denver.

CHAPTER 1.

ENTER "BEAR-TRAP" COLLINS

She had been aware of him from the moment of his spectacular entrance, though no slightest sign of interest manifested itself in her indolent, incurious eyes. Indeed, his abundant and picturesque area was so vivid that it would have been difficult not to feel his presence anywhere, let alone on a journey so monotonous as this was proving to be.

It had been at a water-tank, near Socorro, that the Limited, churning furiously through brown Arizona in pursuit of a lost half-hour, jarred to a sudden halt that shook sleep from the drowsy eyes of bored passengers. Through the window of her Pullman the young woman in Section 3 had glimpsed a bevy of angry train officials eddying around a sturdy figure in the center, whose strong, lean head rose confidently above the press. There was the momentary whirl of a scuffle, out of the tangle of which shot a brakeman as if propelled from a catapult. The circle parted, brushed aside by a pair of lean shoulders, muscular and broad. Yet a few moments and the owner of the shoulders led down the aisle to the vacant section opposite her a procession whose tail was composed of protesting trainmen.

"You had no right to flag the train, Sheriff Collins, and you'll have to get off; that's all there is to it," the conductor was explaining testily.

"Oh, that's all right," returned the offender with easy good nature, making himself at home in Section 4. "Tell the company to send in its bill. No use jawing about it."

"You'll have to get off, sir."

"That's right--at Tucson."

"No, sir. You'll have to get off here. I have no authority to let you ride."

"Didn't I hear you say the train was late? Don't you think you'd arrive earlier at the end of your run if your choo-choo got to puffing?"

"You'll have to get off, sir."

"I hate to disoblige," murmured the owner of the jingling spurs, the dusty corduroys, and the big, gray hat, putting his feet leisurely on the cushion in front of him. "But doesn't it occur to you that you are a man of one idea?"

"This is the Coast Limited. It doesn't stop for anybody--not even for the president of the road."

"You don't say! Well, I ce'tainly appreciate the honor you did me in stopping to take me on." His slight drawl was quite devoid of concern.

"But you had no right to flag the train. Can't you understand ANYTHING?" groaned the conductor.

"You explain it again to me, sonny. I'm surely thick in the haid," soothed the intruder, and listened with bland good-humor to the official's flow of protest.

"Well--well! Disrupted the whole transcontinental traffic, didn't I? And me so innocent, too. Now, this is how I figured it out. Here's me in a hurry to get to Tucson. Here comes your train a-foggin'--also and likewise hittin' the high spots for Tucson. Seemed like we ought to travel in company, and I was some dubious she'd forget to stop unless I flagged her. Wherefore, I aired my bandanna in the summer breeze."

"But you don't understand." The conductor began to explain anew as to a dull child. "It's against the law. You'll get into trouble."

"Put me in the calaboose, will they?"

"It's no joke."

"Well, it does seem to be worrying you," Mr. Collins conceded. "Don't mind me. Free your mind proper."

The conductor, glancing about nervously, noticed that passengers were smiling broadly. His official dignity was being chopped to mince-meat. Back came his harassed gaze to the imperturbable Collins with the brown, sun-baked face and the eyes blue and untroubled as an Arizona sky. Out of a holster attached to the sagging belt that circled the corduroy trousers above his hips gleamed the butt of a revolver. But in the last analysis the weapon of the occasion was purely a moral one. The situation was one not covered in the company's rule book, and in the absence of explicit orders the trainman felt himself unequal to that unwavering gaze and careless poise. Wherefore, he retreated, muttering threats of what the company would do.

"Now, if I had only known it was against the law. My thick haid's always roping trouble for me," the plainsman confided to the Pullman conductor, with twinkling eyes.

That official unbent. "Talking about thick heads, I'm glad my porter has one. If it weren't iron-plated and copper-riveted he'd be needing a doctor now, the way you stood him on it."

"No, did I? Ce'tainly an accident. The nigger must have been in my way as I climbed into the car. Took the kink out of his hair, you say? Here, Sam!" He tossed a bill to the porter, who was rolling affronted eyes at him. "Do you reckon this is big enough to plaster your injured feelings, boy?"

The white smile flashed at him by the porter was a receipt for indemnity paid in full.

Sheriff Collins' perception of his neighbor across the aisle was more frank in its interest than the girl's had been of him. The level, fearless gaze of the outdoors West looked at her unabashed, appreciating swiftly her points as they impinged themselves upon his admiration. The long, lithe lines of the slim, supple body, the languid grace missing hauteur only because that seemed scarce worth while, the unconscious pride of self that fails to be offensive only in a young woman so well equipped with good looks as this one indubitably was the rider of the plains had appraised them all before his eyes dismissed her from his consideration and began a casual inspection of the other passengers.

Inside of half an hour he had made himself persona grata to everybody in the car except his dark-eyed neighbor across the way. That this dispenser of smiles and cigars decided to leave her out in the distribution of his attentions perhaps spoke well for his discernment. Certainly responsiveness to the geniality of casual fellow passengers did not impress Mr. Collins as likely to be an outstanding, quality in her. But with the drummer from Chicago, the young mining engineer going to Sonora, the two shy little English children just in front of him traveling to meet their father in California, he found intuitively common ground of interest. Even Major Mackenzie, the engineer in charge of the large irrigation project being built by a company in southern Arizona, relaxed at one of the plainsman's humorous tales.

It was after Collins had half-depopulated the car by leading the more jovial spirits back in search of liquid refreshments that an urbane clergyman, now of Boston but formerly of Pekin, Illinois, professedly much interested in the sheriff's touch-and-go manner as presumably quite characteristic of the West, dropped into the vacant seat beside Major Mackenzie.

"And who might our energetic friend be?" he asked, with an ingratiating smile.

The young woman in front of them turned her head ever so slightly to listen.

"Val Collins is his name," said the major. "Sometimes called 'Bear-trap Collins.' He has always lived on the frontier. At least, I met him twelve years ago when he was riding mail between Aravaipa and Mesa. He was a boy then, certainly not over eighteen, but in a desperate fight he had killed two men who tried to hold up the mail. Cow-puncher, stage-driver, miner, trapper, sheriff, rough rider, politician--he's past master at them all."

"And why the appellation of 'Bear-trap,' may I ask?" The smack of pulpit oratory was not often missing in the edifying discourse of the Reverend Peter Melancthon Brooks.

"Well, sir, that's a story. He was trapping in the Tetons about five years ago thirty miles from the nearest ranch-house. One day, while he was setting a bear-trap, a slide of snow plunged down from the tree branches above and freed the spring, catching his hand between its jaws. With his feet and his other hand he tried to open that trap for four hours, without the slightest success. There was not one chance in a million of help from outside. In point of fact, Collins had not seen a human being for a month. There was only one thing to do, and he did it."

"And that was?"

"You probably noticed that he wears a glove over his left hand. The reason, sir, is that he has an artificial hand."

"You mean--" The Reverend Peter paused to lengthen his delicious thrill of horror.

"Yes, sir. That's just what I mean. He hacked his hand off at the wrist with his hunting-knife."

"Why, the man's a hero!" cried the clergyman, with unction.

Mackenzie flung him a disgusted look. "We don't go much on heroes out here. He's game, if that's what you mean. And able, too. Bucky O'Connor himself isn't any smarter at following a trail."

"And who is Bucky O'Connor?"

"He's the man that just ran down Fernendez. Think I'll have a smoke, sir. Care to join me?"

But the Pekin-Bostonian preferred to stay and jot down in his note-book the story of the beartrap, to be used later as a sermon illustration. This may have been the reason he did not catch the quick look that passed without the slightest flicker of the eyelids between Major Mackenzie and the young woman in Section 3. It was as if the old officer had wired her a message in some code the cipher of which was known only to them.

But the sheriff, returning at the head of his cohorts, caught it, and wondered what meaning might lie back of that swift glance. Major Mackenzie and this dark-eyed beauty posed before others as strangers, yet between them lay some freemasonry of understanding to which he had not the key.

Collins did not know that the aloofness in the eyes of Miss Wainwright--he had seen the name on her suit-case--gave way to horror when her glance fell on his gloved hand. She had a swift, shuddering vision of a grim-faced man, jaws set like a vise, hacking at his wrist with a hunting-knife. But the engaging impudence of his eye, the rollicking laughter in his voice, shut out the picture instantly.

The young man resumed his seat, and Miss Wainwright her listless inspection of the flying stretches of brown desert. Dusk was beginning to fall, and the porter presently lit the lamps. Collins bought a magazine from the newsboy and relapsed into it, but before he was well adjusted to reading the Limited pounded to a second unscheduled halt.

Instantly the magazine was thrown aside and Collins' curly head thrust out of the window. Presently the head reappeared, simultaneously with the crack of a revolver, the first of a detonating fusillade.

"Another of your impatient citizens eager to utilize the unspeakable convenience of rapid transit," suggested the clergyman, with ponderous jocosity.

"No, sir; nothing so illegal," smiled the cattleman, a whimsical light in his daredevil eyes. He leaned forward and whispered a word to the little girl in front of him, who at once led her younger brother back to his section.

"I had hoped it would prove to be more diverting experience for a tenderfoot," condescended the gentleman of the cloth.

"It's ce'tainly a pleasure to be able to gratify you, sir. You'll be right pleased to know that it is a train hold-up." He waved his hand toward the door, and at the word, as if waiting for his cue, a masked man appeared at the end of the passage with a revolver in each hand.

CHAPTER 2.

TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION

"Hands up!"

There was a ring of crisp menace in the sinister voice that was a spur to obedience. The unanimous show of hands voted "Aye" with a hasty precision that no amount of drill could have compassed.

It was a situation that might have made for laughter had there been spectators to appreciate. But of whatever amusement was to be had one of the victims seemed to hold a monopoly. Collins, his arm around the English children by way of comfort, offered a sardonic smile at the consternation his announcement and its fulfillment had created, but none of his fellow passengers were in the humor to respond.

The shock of an earthquake could not have blanched ruddy faces more surely. The Chicago drummer, fat and florid, had disappeared completely behind a buttress of the company's upholstery.

"God bless my soul!" gasped the Pekin-Bostonian, dropping his eyeglass and his accent at the same moment. The dismay in his face found a reflection all over the car. Miss Wainwright's hand clutched at her breast for an instant, and her color ebbed till her lips were ashen, but her neighbor across the aisle noticed that her eyes were steady and her figure tense.

"Scared stiff, but game," was his mental comment.

"Gents to the right and ladies to the left; line up against the walls; everybody waltz." called the man behind the guns, with grim humor.

The passengers fell into line as directed, Collins with the rest.

"You're calling this dance, son; it's your say-so, I guess," he conceded.

"Keep still, or I'll shoot you full of holes," growled the autocrat of the artillery.

"Why, sure! Ain't you the real thing in Jesse Jameses?" soothed the sheriff.

At the sound of Collins' voice, the masked man had started perceptibly, and his right hand had jumped forward an inch or two to cover the speaker more definitely. Thereafter, no matter what else engaged his attention, the gleaming eyes behind the red bandanna never wandered for a moment from the big plainsman. He was taking no risks, for he remembered the saying current in Arizona, that after Collins' hardware got into action there was nothing left to do but plant the deceased and collect the insurance. He had personal reasons to know the fundamental accuracy of the colloquialism.

The train-conductor fussed up to the masked outlaw with a ludicrous attempt at authority. "You can't rob the passengers on this train. I'm not responsible for the express-car, but the coaches--"

A bullet almost grazed his ear and shattered a window on its way to the desert.

"Drift, you red-haired son of a Mexican?" ordered the man behind the red bandanna. "Git back to that seat real prompt. This here's taxation without representation."

The conductor drifted as per suggestion.

The minutes ticked themselves away in a tense strain marked by pounding hearts. The outlaw stood at the end of the aisle, watching the sheriff alertly.

"Why doesn't the music begin?" volunteered Collins, by way of conversation, and quoted: "On with the dance. Let joy be unconfined."

A dull explosion answered his question. The bandits were blowing open the safe in the express-car with dynamite, pending which the looting of the passengers was at a standstill.

A second masked figure joined his companion at the end of the passage and held a hurried conversation with him. Fragments of their low-voiced talk came to Collins.

"Only thirty thousand in the express-car. Not a red cent on the old man himself."

"Where's the rest?" The irritation in the newcomer's voice was pronounced.

Collins slewed his head and raked him with keen eyes that missed not a detail. He was certain that he had never seen the man before, yet he knew at once that the trim, wiry figure, so clean of build and so gallant of bearing, could belong only to Wolf Leroy, the most ruthless outlaw of the Southwest. It was written in his jaunty insolence, in the flashing eyes. He was a handsome fellow, white-toothed, black-haired, lithely tigerish, with masterful mouth and eyes of steel, so far as one might judge behind the white mask he wore. Alert, cruel, fearless from the head to the heel of him, he looked the very devil to lead an enterprise so lawless and so desperate as this. His vigilant eyes swept contemptuously up and down the car, rested for a moment on the young woman in Section 3, and came back to his partner.

"Bah! A flock of sheep--tamest bunch of spring lambs we ever struck. I'll send Scott in to go through them. If anybody gets gay, drop him." And the outlaw turned on his heel.

Another of the highwaymen took his place, a stout, squat figure in the flannel shirt, spurs, and chaps of a cow-puncher. It took no second glance to tell Collins this bandy-legged fellow had been a rider of the range.

"Come, gentlemen, get a move on you," Collins implored. "This train's due at Tucson by eight o'clock. We're more than an hour late now. I'm holding down the job of sheriff in that same town, and I'm awful anxious to get a posse out after a bunch of train-robbers. So burn the wind, and go through the car on the jump. Help yourself to anything you find. Who steals my purse takes trash. 'Tis something, nothing. 'Twas mine; 'tis his. That's right, you'll find my roll in that left-hand pocket. I hate to have you take that gun, though. I meant to run you down with that same old Colt's reliable. Oh, well, just as you say. No, those kids get a free pass. They're going out to meet papa at Los Angeles, boys. See?"

Collins' running fire of comment had at least the effect of restoring the color to some cheeks that had been washed white and of snatching from the outlaws some portion of their sense of dominating the situation. But there was a veiled vigilance in his eyes that belied his easy impudence.

"That lady across the aisle gets a pass, too, boys," continued the sheriff. "She's scared stiff now, and you won't bother her, if you're white men. Her watch and purse are on the seat. Take them, if you want them, and let it go at that."

Miss Wainwright listened to this dialogue silently. She stood before them cool and imperious and unwavering, but her face was bloodless and the pulse in her beautiful soft throat fluttered like a caged bird.

"Who's doing this job?" demanded one of the hold-ups, wheeling savagely on the impassive officer "Did I say we were going to bother the lady? Who's doing this job, Mr. Sheriff?"

"You are. I'd hate to be messing the job like you--holding up the wrong train by mistake." This was a shot in the dark, and it did not quite hit the bull's-eye. "I wouldn't trust you boys to rob a hen-roost, the amateur way you go at it. When you get through, you'll all go to drinking like blue blotters. I know your kind--hell-bent to spend what you cash in, and every mother's son of you in the pen or with his toes turned up inside of a month."

"Who'll put us there?" gruffly demanded the bowlegged one.

Collins smiled at him with confidence superb "Mebbe I will--and if I don't Bucky O'Connor will--those of you that are left alive when you go through shooting each other in the back. Oh, I see your finish to a fare-you-well."

"Cheese it, or I'll bump you off." The first out law drove his gun into the sheriff's ribs.

"That's all right. You don't need to punctuate that remark. I line up with the sky-pilot and chew the cud of silence. I merely wanted to frame up to you how this thing's going to turn out. Don't come back at me and say I didn't warn you, sonnie."

"You make my head ache," snarled the bandy-legged outlaw sourly, as he passed down with his sack, accumulating tribute as he passed down the aisle with his sack, accumulating tribute as he went.

The red-kerchiefed robber whooped when they came to the car conductor. "Dig up, Mr. Pullman. Go way down into your jeans. It's a right smart pleasure to divert the plunder of your bloated corporation back to the people. What! Only fifty-seven dollars. Oh, dig deeper, Mr. Pullman."

The drummer contributed to the sack eighty-four dollars, a diamond ring, and a gold watch. His hands were trembling so that they played a tattoo on the sloping ceiling above him.

"What's the matter, Fatty? Got a chill?" inquired one of the robbers, as he deftly swept the plunder into the sack.

"For--God's sake--don't shoot. I have--a wife--and five children," he stammered, with chattering teeth.

"No race suicide for Fatty. But whyfor do they let a sick man like you travel all by his lone?"

"I don't know--I--Please turn that weapon another way."

"Plumb chuck full of malaria," soliloquized the owner of the weapon, playfully running its business end over the Chicago man's anatomy. "Shakes worse'n a pair of dice. Here, Fatty. Load up with quinine and whisky. It's sure good for chills." The man behind the bandanna gravely handed his victim back a dollar. "Write me if it cures you. Now for the sky-pilot. No white chips on this plate, parson. It's a contribution to the needy heathen. You want to be generous. How much do you say?

The man of the cloth reluctantly said thirty dollars, a Lincoln penny, and a silver-plated watch inherited from his fathers. The watch was declined with thanks, the money accepted without.

The Pullman porter came into the car under compulsion of a revolver in the hand of a fourth outlaw, one in a black mask. His trembling finger pointed out the satchel and suit-case of Major Mackenzie, and under orders he carried out the baggage belonging to the irrigation engineer. Collin observed that the bandit in the black mask was so nervous that the revolver in his hand quivered like an aspen in the wind. He was slenderer and much shorter than the Mexican, so that the sheriff decided he was a mere boy.

It was just after he had left that three shots in rapid succession rang out in the still night air.

The red-bandannaed one and his companion, who had apparently been waiting for the signal, retreated backward to the end of the car, still keeping the passengers covered. They flung rapidly two or three bullets through the roof, and under cover of the smoke slipped out into the night. A moment later came the thud of galloping horses, more shots, and, when the patter of hoofs had died away--silence.

The sheriff was the first to break it. He thrust his brown hands deep into his pockets and laughed--laughed with the joyous, rollicking abandon of a tickled schoolboy.

"Hysterics?" ventured the mining engineer sympathetically.

Collins wiped his eyes. "Call 'em anything you like. What pleases me is that the reverend gentleman should have had this diverting experience so prompt after he was wishing for it." He turned, with concern, to the clergyman. "Satisfied, sir? Did our little entertainment please, or wasn't it up to the mark?"

But the transported native of Pekin was game. "I'm quite satisfied, if you are. I think the affair cost you a hundred dollars or so more than it did me."

"That's right," agreed the sheriff heartily. "But I don't grudge it--not a cent of it. The show was worth the price of admission."

The car conductor had a broadside ready for him. "Seems to me you shot off your mouth more than you did that big gun of yours, Mr. Sheriff."

Collins laughed, and clapped him on the back. "That's right. I'm a regular phonograph, when you wind me up." He did not think it necessary to explain that he had talked to make the outlaws talk, and that he had noted the quality of their voices so carefully that he would know them again among a thousand. Also he had observed--other things--the garb of each of the men he had seen, their weapons, their manner, and their individual peculiarities.

The clanking car took up the rhythm of the rails as the delayed train plunged forward once more into the night. Again the clack of tongues, set free from fear, buzzed eagerly. The glow of the afterclap of danger was on them, and in the warm excitement each forgot the paralyzing fear that had but now padlocked his lips. Courage came flowing back into flabby cheeks and red blood into hearts of water.

At the next station the Limited stopped, and the conductor swung from a car before the wheels had ceased rolling and went running into the telegraph office.

"Fire a message through for me, Pat. The Limited has been held up," he announced.

"Held up?" gasped the operator.

"That's right. Get this message right through to Sabin. I'm not going to wait for an answer. Tell him I'll stop at Apache for further instructions."

With which the conductor was out again waving his lantern as a signal for the train to start. Sheriff Collins and Major Mackenzie had entered the office at his heels. They too had messages to send, but it was not until the train was already plunging into the night that the station agent read the yellow slips they had left and observed that both of them went to the same person.

"Lieutenant Bucky O'Connor, Douglas, Arizona," was the address he read at the top of each. His comment serves to show the opinion generally in the sunburned territory respecting one of its citizens.

"You're wise guys, gents, both of yez. This is shure a case for the leftenant. It's send for Bucky quick when the band begins to play," he grinned.

Sitting down, he gave the call for Tucson, preparatory to transmitting the conductor's message to the division superintendent. His fingers were just striking the first tap when a silken voice startled him.

"One moment, friend. No use being in a hurry."

The agent looked up and nearly fell from his stool. He was gazing into the end of a revolver held carelessly in the hand of a masked man leaning indolently on the counter.

"Whe--where did you come from?" the operator gasped.

"Kaintucky, but I been here a right smart spell. Why? You takin' the census?" came the drawling answer.

"I didn't hear youse come in."

"I didn't hear you come in, either," the man behind the mask mocked. But even as he spoke his manner changed, and crisp menace rang in his voice. "Have you sent those messages yet?"

"Wha--what messages?"

"Those lying on your desk. I say, have you sent them?"

"Not yet."

"Hand them over here."

The operator passed them across the counter without demur.

"Now reach for the roof."

Up shot the station agent's hands. The bandit glanced over the written sheets and commented aloud:

"Huh! One from the conductor and one from Mackenzie. I expected those. But this one from Collins is ce'tainly a surprise party. I didn't know he was on the train. Lucky for him I didn't, or mebbe I'd a-put his light for good and all. Friend, I reckon we'll suppress these messages. Military necessity, you understand." And with that he lightly tore up the yellow sheets and tossed them away.

"The conductor will wire when he reaches Apache," the operator suggested, not very boldly.

The outlaw rolled a cigarette deftly and borrowed a match. "He most surely will. But Apache is seventy miles from here. That gives us an extra hour and a half, and with us right now time is a heap more valuable than money. You may tell Bucky O'Connor when you see him that that extra hour and a half cinches our escape, and we weren't on the anxious seat any without it."

It may have been true, as the train robber had just said, that time was more valuable to him then than money, but if so he must have held the latter of singularly little value. For he sat him down on the counter with his back against the wall and his legs stretched full length in front of him and glanced over the Tucson Star in leisurely fashion, while Pat's arms still projected roofward.

The operator, beginning to get over his natural fright, could not withhold a reluctant admiration of this man's aplomb. There was a certain pantherish lightness about the outlaw's movements, a trim grace of figure which yet suggested rippling muscles perfectly under control, and a quiet wariness of eye more potent than words at repressing insurgent impulses. Certainly if ever there was a cool customer and one perfectly sure of himself, this was he.

"Not a thing in the Star to-day," Pat's visitor commented, as he flung it away with a yawn. "I'll let a thousand dollars of the express company's money that there will be something more interesting in it to-morrow."

"That's right," agreed the agent.

"But I won't be here to read it. My engagements take me south. I'll make a present to the great Lieutenant O'Connor of the information. We're headed south, tell him. And tell Mr. Sheriff Collins, too--happy to entertain him if he happens our way. If it would rest your hands any there's no law against putting them in your trousers pockets, my friend."

From outside there came a short sharp whistle. The man on the counter answered it, and slipped at once to the floor. The door opened, to let in another masked form, but one how different from the first! Here was no confidence almost insolent in its nonchalance. The figure was slight and boyish, the manner deprecating, the brown eyes shy and shrinking He was so obviously a novice at outlawry that fear sat heavy upon his shoulders. When he spoke, almost in a whisper, his teeth chattered.

"All ready, sir."

"The wires are cut?" demanded his leader crisply.

"Yes, sir."

"On both sides?"

"On both sides."

His chief relieved the operator of the revolver in his desk, broke it, emptied out the shells, and flung them through the window, then tossed the weapon back to its owner.

"You'll not shoot yourself by accident now," he explained, and with that he had followed his companion into the night.

There came to the station agent the sound of galloping horses, growing fainter, until a heavy silence seemed to fill the night. He stole to the door and locked it, pulled down the window blinds, and then reloaded his revolver with feverish haste. This done, he sat down before his keys with the weapon close at hand and frantically called for Tucson over and over again. No answer came to him, nor from the other direction when he tried that. The young bandit had told the truth. His companions had cut the wires and so isolated from the world for the time the scene of the hold-up. The agent understood now why the leader of the outlaws had honored him with so much of his valuable time. He had stayed to hold back the telegrams until he knew the wires were cut.

CHAPTER 3.

THE SHERIFF INTRODUCES HIMSELF

Bear-trap Collins, presuming on the new intimacy born of an exciting experience shared in common, stepped across the aisle, flung aside Miss Wainwright's impedimenta, and calmly seated himself beside her. She was a young woman capable of a hauteur chillier than ice to undue familiarity, but she did not choose at this moment to resent his assumption of a footing that had not existed an hour ago. Picturesque and unconventional conduct excuses itself when it is garbed in picturesque and engaging manners. She had, besides, other reasons for wanting to meet him, and they had to do with a sudden suspicion that flamed like tow in her brain. She had something for which to thank him--much more than he would be likely to guess, she thought--and she was wondering, with a surge of triumph, whether the irony of fate had not made his pretended consideration for her the means of his undoing.

"I am sorry you lost so much, Miss Wainwright," he told her.

"But, after all, I did not lose so much as you. Her dark, deep-pupiled eyes, long-lashed as Diana's, swept round to meet his coolly.

"That's a true word. My reputation has gone glimmering for fair, I guess." He laughed ruefully. "I shouldn't wonder, ma'am, when election time comes round, if the boys ain't likely to elect to private life the sheriff that lay down before a bunch of miscreants."

"Why did you do it?"

His humorous glance roamed round the car. "Now, I couldn't think it proper for me to shoot up this sumptuous palace on wheels. And wouldn't some casual passenger be likely to get his lights put out when the band began to play? Would you want that Boston church to be shy a preacher, ma'am?"

Her lips parted slightly in a curve of scorn. "I suppose you had your reasons for not interfering."

"Surely, ma'am. I hated to have them make a sieve of me."

"Were you afraid?"

"Most men are when Wolf Leroy's gang is on the war path."

"Wolf Leroy?"

"That was Wolf who came in to see they were doing the job right. He's the worst desperado on the border--a sure enough bad proposition, I reckon. They say he's part Spanish and part Indian, but all pisen. Others say he's a college man of good family. I don't know about that, for nobody knows who he really is. But the name is a byword in the country. People lower their voices when they speak of him and his night-riders."

"I see. And you were afraid of him?"

"Very much."

Her narrowed eyes looked over the strong lines of his lean face and were unconvinced. "I expect you found a better reason than that for not opposing them."

He turned to her with frank curiosity. "I'd like real well to have you put a name to it."

But he was instantly aware that her interest had been side tracked. Major Mackenzie had entered the car and was coming down the aisle. Plainer than words his eyes asked a question, and hers answered it.

The sheriff stopped him with a smiling query: "Hit hard, major?"

Mackenzie frowned. "The scoundrels took thirty thousand from the express car, I understand. Twenty thousand of it belonged to our company. I was expecting to pay off the men next Tuesday."

"Hope we'll be able to run them down for you," returned Collins cheerfully. "I suppose you lay it to Wolf Leroy's gang?"

"Of course. The work was too well done to leave any doubt of that." The major resumed his seat behind Miss Wainwright.

To that young woman the sheriff repeated his unanswered question in the form of a statement. "I'm waiting to learn that better reason, ma'am."

She was possessed of that spice of effrontery more to be desired than beauty. "Shall we say that you had no wish to injure your friends?"

"My friends?"

Her untender eyes mocked his astonishment. "Do I choose the wrong word?" she asked, with an audacity of a courage that delighted him. "Perhaps they are not your friends--these train robbers? Perhaps they are mere casual acquaintances?"

His bold eyes studied with a new interest her superb, confident youth--the rolling waves of splendid Titian hair, the lovely, subtle eyes with the depths of shadowy pools in them, the alluring lines of long and supple loveliness. Certainly here was no sweet, ingenuous youth all prone to blushes, but the complex heir of that world-old wisdom the weaker sex has shaped to serve as a weapon against the strength that must be met with the wit of Mother Eve.

"You ce'tainly have a right vivid imagination, ma'am," he said dryly.

"You are quite sure you have never seen them before?" her velvet voice asked.

He laughed. "Well, no--I can't say I am."

"Aren't you quite sure you have seen them?'

Her eyes rested on him very steadily.

"You're smart as a whip, Miss Wainwright. I take off my hat to a young lady so clever. I guess you're right. About the identity of one of those masked gentlemen I'm pretty well satisfied."

She drew a long breath. "I thought so."

"Yes," he went on evenly, "I once earmarked him so that I'd know him again in case we met."

"I beg pardon. You--what?"

"Earmarked him. Figure of speech, ma'am. You may not have observed that the curly-headed person behind the guns was shy the forefinger of his right hand. We had a little difficulty once when he was resisting arrest, and it just happened that my gun fanned away his trigger finger." He added reminiscently:

"A good boy, too, Neil was once. We used to punch together on the Hashknife. A straight-up rider, the kind a fellow wants when Old Man Trouble comes knocking at the door. Well, I reckon he's a miscreant now, all right."

"They knew YOU--at least two of them did."

"I've been pirootin' around this country, boy and man, for fifteen years. I ain't responsible for every yellow dog that knows me," he drawled.

"And I noticed that when you told them not to rob the children and not to touch me they did as you said."

"Hypnotism," he suggested, with a smile.

"So, not being a child, I put two and two together and draw an inference."

He seemed to be struggling with his mirth. "I see you do. Well, ma'am, I've been most everything since I hit the West, but this is the first time I've been taken for a train robber."

"I didn't say that," she cried quickly.

"I think you mentioned an inference." The low laugh welled out of him and broke in his face. "I've been busy on one, too. It's a heap nearer the truth than yours, Miss Mackenzie."

Her startled eyes and the swift movement of her hand toward her heart showed him how nearly he had struck home, how certainly he had shattered her cool indifference of manner.

He leaned forward, so close that even in the roar of the train his low whisper reached her. "Shall I tell you why the hold-ups didn't find more money on your father or in the express car, Miss Mackenzie?"

She was shaken, so much so that her agitation trembled on her lips.

"Shall I tell you why your hand went to your breast when I first mentioned that the train was going to be held up, and again when your father's eyes were firing a mighty pointed question at you?"

"I don't know what you mean," she retorted, again mistress of herself.

Her gallant bearing compelled his admiration. The scornful eyes, the satirical lift of the nostrils, the erect, graceful figure, all flung a challenge at him. He called himself hard names for putting her on the rack, but the necessity to make her believe in him was strong within him.

"I noticed you went right chalky when I announced the hold-up, and I thought it was because you were scared. That was where I did you an injustice, ma'am, and you can call this an apology. You've got sand. If it hadn't been for what you carry in the chamois skin hanging on the chain round your neck you would have enjoyed every minute of the little entertainment. You're as game as they make them."

"May I ask how you arrived at this melodramatic conclusion?" she asked, her disdainful lip curling.

"By using my eyes and my ears, ma'am. I shouldn't have noticed your likeness to Major Mackenzie, perhaps, if I hadn't observed that there was a secret understanding between you. Now, whyfor should you be passing as strangers? I could guess one reason, and only one. There have twice been attempted hold-ups of the paymaster of the Yuba reservoir. It was to avoid any more of these that Major Mackenzie took charge personally of paying the men. He has made good up till now. But there have been rumors for months that he would be held up either before leaving the train or while he was crossing the desert. He didn't want to be seen taking the boodle from the express company at Tucson. He would rather have the impression get out that this was just a casual visit. It occurred to him to bring along some unsuspected party to help him out. The robbers would never expect to find the money on a woman. That's why the major brought his daughter with him. Doesn't it make you some uneasy to be carrying fifty thousand in small bills sewed in your clothes and hung round your neck?"

She broke into musical laughter, natural and easy. "I don't happen to have fifty thousand with me."

"Oh, well, say forty thousand. I'm no wizard to guess the exact figure."

Her swift glance at him was almost timid.

"Nor forty thousand," she murmured.

"I should think, ma'am, you'd crinkle more than a silk-lined lady sailing down a church aisle on Sunday."

A picture in the magazine she was toying with seemed to interest her.

"I expect that's the signal for 'Exit Collins.' I'll say good-by till next time, Miss Mackenzie."

"Oh, is there going to be a next time?" she asked, with elaborate carelessness.

"Several of them."

"Indeed!"

He took a notebook from his pocket and wrote.

"I ain't the son of a prophet, but I'm venturing a prediction," he explained.

She had nothing to say, and she said it competently.

"Concerning an investment in futurities I'm making," he continued.

Her magazine article seemed to be beginning, well.

"It's a little guess about how this train robbery is coming out. If you don't mind, I'll leave it with you." He tore the page out, put it in an empty envelope, sealed the flap, and handed it to her.

"Open it in a month, and see whether my guess is a good one."

The dusky lashes swept round indolently. "Suppose I were to open it to-night."

"I'll risk it," smiled the blue eyes.

"On honor, am I?"

"That's it." He held out a big, brown hand.

"You're going to try to capture the robbers, are you?"

"I've been thinking that way--with the help of Lieutenant Bucky O'Connor, I mean."

"And I suppose you've promised yourself success."

"It's on the knees of chance, ma'am. We may get them. They may get us."

"But this prediction of yours?" She held up the sealed envelope.

"That's about another matter."

"But I don't understand. You said--" She gave him a chance to explain.

"It ain't meant you should. You'll understand plenty at the proper time."

He offered her his hand again. "We're slowing down for Apache. Good-by--till next time."

The suede glove came forward, and was buried in his handshake.

He understood it to be an unvoiced apology of its owner for her suspicions, and his instinct was correct. For how could her doubts hold their ground when he had showed himself a sharer in her secret and a guardian of it? And how could anything sinister lie behind those frank, unwavering eyes or consist with that long, clean stride that was carrying him so forcefully to the vestibule?

At Apache no telegrams were found waiting for those who had been expecting them. Communication with the division superintendent at Tucson uncovered the fact that no message of the hold-up had yet reached him. It was an easy guess for Collins to find the reason.

"We're in the infant class, major," he told Mackenzie, with a sardonic laugh. "Leroy must have galloped down the line direct to the station after the hold-up. Likely enough he went into the depot just as we went out. That gives him the other hour or two he needs to make his getaway with the loot. Well, it can't be helped now. If I can only reach Bucky there's one chance in fifty he can head them off from crossing into Sonora. Soon as I can get together a posse I'll take up the trail from the point of the hold-up. But they'll have a whole night's start on me. That's a big handicap."

From Apache Collins sent three dispatches. One was to his deputy, Dillon, at Tucson. It read:

"Get together at once posse of four and outfit same for four days."

Another went to Sabin, the division superintendent:

"Order special to carry posse with horses from Tucson to Big Gap. Must leave by midnight. Have track clear."

The third was a notification to Lieutenant O'Connor, of the Arizona Rangers, of the hold-up, specifying time and place of the occurrence. The sheriff knew it was not necessary to add that the bandits were probably heading south to get into Sonora. Bucky would take that for granted and do his best to cover the likely spots of the frontier.

It was nearly eleven when the Limited drew in to Tucson. Sabin was on the platform anxiously awaiting their arrival. Collins reached him even before the conductor.

"Ordered the special, Mr. Sabin?" he asked, in a low voice.

The railroad man was chewing nervously on an unlit cigar. "Yes, sheriff. You want only an engine and one car, I suppose."

"That will be enough. I've got to go uptown now and meet Dillon. Midnight sharp, please."

"Do you know how much they got?" Sabin whispered.

"Thirty thousand, I hear, besides what they took from the passengers. The conductor will tell you all about it. I've got to jump to be ready."

A disappointment awaited him in the telegrapher's room at the depot. He found a wire, but not from the person he expected. The ranger in charge at Douglas said that Lieutenant O'Connor was at Flag staff, but pending that officer's return he would put himself under the orders of Sheriff Collins and wait for instructions.

The sheriff whistled softly to himself and scratched his head. Bucky would not have waited for instructions. By this time that live wire would have finished telephoning all over Southern Arizona and would himself have been in the saddle. But Bucky in Flagstaff, nearly three hundred miles from the battlefield, so far as the present emergency went, might just as well be in Calcutta. Collins wired instructions to the ranger and sent a third message to the lieutenant.

"I expect I'll hear this time he's skipped over to Winslow," he told himself, with a rueful grin.

The special with the posse on board drew out at midnight sharp. It reached the scene of the holdup before daybreak. The loading board was lowered and the horses led from the car and picketed. Meanwhile two of the men lit a fire and made breakfast while the others unloaded the outfit and packed for the trail. The first faint streaks of gray dawn were beginning to fleck the sky when Collins and Dillon, with a lantern, moved along the railroad bed to the little clump of cottonwoods where the outlaws had probably lain while they waited for the express. They scanned this ground inch by inch. The coals where their camp-fire had been were still alive. Broken bits of food lay scattered about. Half-trampled into the ground the sheriff picked up a narrow gold chain and locket. This last he opened, and found it to contain a tiny photograph of a young mother and babe, both laughing happily. A close search failed to disclose anything else of interest.

They returned to their companions, ate breakfast, and saddled. It was by this time light enough to be moving. The trail was easy as a printed map, for the object of the outlaws had been haste rather than secrecy. The posse covered it swiftly and without hesitation.

"Now, I wonder why this trail don't run straight south instead of bearing to the left into the hills. Looks like they're going to cache their stolen gold up in the mountains before they risk crossing into Sonora. They figure Bucky'll be on the lookout for them," the sheriff said to his deputy.

"I believe you've guessed it, Val. Stands to reason they'll want to get rid of the loot soon as they can. Oh, hell!"

Dillon's disgust proved justifiable, for the trail had lost itself in a mountain stream, up or down which the outlaws must have filed. A month later and the creek would have been dry. But it was still spring. The mountain rains had not ceased feeding the brook, and of this the outlaws had taken advantage to wipe out their trail.

The sheriff looked anxiously at the sky. "It's fixin' to rain, Jim. Don't that beat the Dutch? If it does, that lets us out plenty."

The men they were after might have gone either upstream or down. It was impossible to know definitely which, nor was there time to follow both. Already big drops of rain were splashing down.

"We'll take a chance, and go up. They're probably up in the hills somewhere right now," said Collins, with characteristic decision.

He had guessed right. A mile farther upstream horses had clambered to the bank and struck deeper into the hills. But already rain was falling in a brisk shower. The posse had not gone another quarter of a mile before the trail was washed out. They were now in a rough and rocky country getting every minute steeper.

"It's going to be like lookin' for a needle in a haystack, Val," Dillon growled.

Collins nodded. "We ain't got one chance in a hundred, Jim, but I reckon we'll take that chance."

For three days they blundered around in the hills before they gave it up. The first night, about dusk, the pursuers were without knowing it so warm that one of the bandits lay with his rifle on a rock rim not a stone's throw above them as they wound through a little ravine. But Collins got no glimpse of the robbers. At last he reluctantly gave the word to turn back. Probably the men he wanted had already slipped down to the plains and across to Mexico. If not, they might play hide and seek with him a month in the recesses of these unknown mountains.

Next morning the sheriff struck a telephone wire, tapped it, got Sabin on the line, told him of his failure and that he was returning to Tucson. About the middle of the afternoon the dispirited posse reached its sidetracked special.

A young man lay stretched full length on the loading board, with a broad-brimmed felt hat over his eyes. He wore a gray flannel shirt and corduroy trousers thrust into half-leg laced boots. At the sound of voices he turned lazily on his side and watched the members of the posse swing wearily from their saddles. An amiable smile, not wholly free of friendly derision, lit his good-looking face.

"Oh, you sheriff," he drawled.

Collins swung round, as if he had been pricked with a knife point. He stared an instant before he let out a shout of welcome and fell upon the youth.

"Bucky, by thunder!"

The latter got up nimbly in time to be hospitably thumped and punched. He was a lithe, slender young fellow, of medium height, and he carried himself lightly with that manner of sunburned competency given only by the rough-and-tumble life of the outdoors West.

While the men reloaded the car he and the sheriff stood apart and talked in low tones. Collins told what he knew, both what he had seen and inferred, and Bucky heard him to the end.

"Yes, it ce'tainly looks like one of Wolf Leroy's jobs," he agreed. "Nobody else but Leroy would have had the nerve to follow you right up to the depot and put the kibosh on sending those wires. He's surely game from the toes up. Think of him sittin' there reading the newspaper half an hour after he held up the Limited!"

"Did he do that, Bucky?" The sheriff's tone conceded admiration.

"He did. He's the only train robber ever in the business that could have done it. Oh, the Wolf's tracks are all over this job."

"No doubt about that. I told you I recognized York Neil by him being shy that trigger finger I fanned off down at Tombstone. Well, they say he's one of the Wolf's standbys."

"Yes. I warned him two months ago that if he didn't break away he'd die sudden. Somehow I couldn't persuade him he was an awful sick man right then. You saw four of these hold-ups in all, didn't you, Val?"

"Four's right. First off Neil, then the fellow I took to be the Wolf. After he went out a bowlegged fellow came in, and last a slim little kid that was a sure enough amateur, the way his gun shook."

"Any notion how many more there were?"

"I figured out two more. A big gazabo in a red wig held up Frost, the engineer. He knew it was a wig because he saw long black hair peeping out around his neck. Then there must 'a' been another in charge of blowing up the express car, a Mexican, from the description the messenger gives of him."

Bucky nodded. "Looks like you got it figured about right, Val. The Mexican is easy to account for. The Wolf spends about half his time down in Chihuahua and trains with some high-class greasers down there. Well, we'll see what we'll see. I'll set my rangers at rounding up the border towns a bit, and if I don't start anything there I'll hike down into Mexico and see what's doing. I'll count on you to run the Arizona end of it while I'm away, Val. The Wolf's outfit is a pretty wild one, and it won't be long till something begins to howl. We'll keep an eye on the gambling halls and see who is burning up money. Oh, they'll leave plenty of smoke behind them," the ranger concluded cheerfully.

"There will be plenty of smoke if we ever do round 'em up, not to mention a heap of good lead that will be spilled," the sheriff agreed placidly. "Well, all I got to say is the sooner the quicker. The bunch borrowed a mighty good .45 of mine I need in my biz. I kinder hanker to get it back muy pronto."

"Here's hoping," Bucky nodded gayly. "I bet there will be a right lively wolf hunt. Hello! The car's loaded. All aboard for Tucson."

The special drew out from the side track and gathered speed. Soon the rhythmic chant of the rails sounded monotonously, and the plains on either side of the track swam swiftly to the rear.

CHAPTER 4.

A BLUFF IS CALLED

Torpid lay Aravaipa in a coma of sunheat. Its adobe-lined streets basked in the white glare of an Arizona spring at midday. One or two Papago Indians, with their pottery wares, squatted in the shade of the buildings, but otherwise the plaza was deserted. Not even a moving dog or a lounging peon lent life to the drowsy square. Silence profound and peace eternal seemed to brood over the land.

Such was the impression borne in upon the young man riding townward on a wiry buckskin that had just topped the rise which commanded the valley below. The rider presented a striking enough appearance to take and hold the roving eye of any young woman in search of romance. He was a slender, lithe young Adonis of medium height. His hair and eyebrows left one doubtful whether to pronounce them black or brown, but the eyes called for an immediate verdict of Irish blue. Every inch of him spoke of competency--promised mastership of any situation likely to arise. But when the last word is said it was the eyes that dominated the personality. They could run the whole gamut of emotions, or they could be impervious as a stone wall. Now they were deep and innocent as a girl's, now they rollicked with the buoyant youth in them. Comrades might see them bubbling with fun, and the next moment enemies find them opague as a leaden sky. Not the least wonder of them was that they looked out from under long lashes, soft enough for any maiden, at a world they appraised with the shrewdness of a veteran.

The young man drew rein above the valley, sitting his horse in the easy, negligent fashion of one that lives in the saddle. A thumb was hitched carelessly in the front pocket of his chaps, which pocket served also as a holster for the .45 that protruded.

Even in the moment that he sat there a change came over Aravaipa. As a summer shower sweeps across a lake so something had ruffled the town to sudden life. From stores and saloons men dribbled, converging toward a common centre hurriedly.

"I reckon, Bucky, the band has begun to play," the rider told himself aloud. "Mebbe we better move on down in time for the music."

But no half-expected revolver shots shattered the stillness, even though interest did not abate.

"There's ce'tainly something doing at the Silver Dollar this glad mo'ning. Chinks, greasers, and several other kinds of citizens driftin' that way, not to mention white men. I expect there will be room for you, Bucky, if you hurry before the seats are all sold out."

He cantered down the plaza, swung from the saddle, threw the rein over the pony's head to the ground, and jingled across the sidewalk into the gambling house. It was filled with a motley crowd of miners, vaqueros, tourists, cattlemen, Mexicans, Chinese, and a sample of the rest of the heterogeneous population of the Southwest. Behind this assemblage the newcomer tiptoed in vain to catch a glimpse of the cause of the excitement. Wherefore, he calmly removed an almond-eyed Oriental from a chair on which he was standing, tipped the ex-Cantonese a half dollar, and appropriated the point of vantage himself.

There was a cleared space in the corner by the roulette table, and here, his chair tipped back against the wall and a glass of whisky in front of him, sat a sufficiently strange specimen of humanity. He was a man of about fifty years, large boned and gaunt. Dressed in fringed buckskin trousers and a silver-laced Mexican sombrero, he affected the long hair, the sweeping mustache, and the ferocious aspect that are the custom of the pseudo-Westerners who do business in the East with fake medical remedies. Around his waist was a belt garnished with knives by the dozen. These were long and pointed, sharpened to a razor edge. One of them was in his hand poised for a throw at the instant Bucky mounted the chair and looked over the densely packed mass of heads in front of him.

The ranger's keen glance swept to the wall and took in the target. A slim lad of about fifteen stood against it with his arms outstretched. Above and below each hand and on either side of the swelling throat knives quivered in the frame wall. There was a flash of steel, and the seventh knife sank into the wood so close to the crisp curls that a lock hung by a hair, almost completely severed by the blade. The boy choked back a scream, his big brown eyes dilating with terror.

The bully sipped at his highball and deliberately selected another knife. To Bucky's swift inspection it was plain he had drunk too much and that a very little slip might make an end of the boy. The fascinated horror in the lad's gaze showed that he realized his danger.

"Now, f'ler cit'zens, I will continue for your 'musement by puttin' next two knives on right and lef' sides of his cheek. Observe, pleash, that these will land less than an inch from hish eyes. As the champion knife thrower in the universe I claim--"

What he claimed his audience had to guess, for at this instant another person took a part in the act. Bucky had stepped lightly across the intervening space on the shoulders of the tightly packed crowd and had dropped as lightly to the ground in front of the astonished champion of the universe.

"I reckon you've about wore out that target. What's the matter with trying a brand new one drawled the ranger, his quiet, unwavering eye fixed on the bloated, mottled face of the imitation "bad man."

The bully, half seas over, leaned forward and gripped his knife. He was sober enough to catch the jeer running through the other's words without being sufficiently master of himself to appreciate the menace that underlay them.

"Wha's that? Say that again!" he burst out, purple to the collar line. He was not used to having beardless boys with long, soft eyelashes interfering with his amusements, and a blind rage flooded his heart.

"I allowed that a change of targets would vary the entertainment, if you haven't any objections, seh," the blue-eyed stranger explained mildly.

"Who is this kid?" demanded the bully, with a sweep of his arm toward the intruder.

Nobody seemed to know, wherefore the ranger himself gave the information mildly:

"Bucky O'Connor they call me."

A faint murmur of surprise soughed through the crowd, for Bucky O'Connor of the Arizona Rangers was by way of being a public hero just now on account of his capture of Fernendez, the stage robber. But the knife thrower had but lately arrived in the country. The youth carried with him none of the earmarks of his trade, unless it might be that quiet, steady gaze that seemed to search the soul. His voice was soft and drawling, his manner almost apologetic. In the smile that came and went was something sweet and sunny, in his bearing a gay charm that did not advertise the recklessness that bubbled from his daredevil spirit. Surely here was an easy victim upon whom to vent his spleen, thought the other in his growing passion.

"You want to be my target, do you?" he demanded, tugging ferociously at his long mustache.

"If you please, seh."

The fellow swore a vile oath. "Just as you say. Line up beside the other kid."

With three strides Bucky reached the wall, and turned.

"Let 'er go," his gentle voice murmured.

He was leaning back easily against the wall, his thumb hitched carelessly in the revolver pocket of his worn leather chaps. He looked at ease, every jaunty inch of him, but a big bronzed cattleman who had just pushed his way in noticed that the frosty blue eyes never released for an instant those of the enemy.

The bully at the table passed an uncertain hand over his face to clear his blurred vision, poised the cruel blade in his hand, and sent it flashing forward with incredible swiftness. The steel buried itself two inches deep in the soft pine beside Bucky's head. So close had it shaved him that a drop of blood gathered and dropped from his ear to the floor.

"Good shot," commented the ranger quietly, and on the instant his revolver seemed to leap from its holster to his hand. Without raising or moving his arm in the least, Bucky fired.

Again a murmur eddied through the crowd. The bullet had neatly bored the bully's ear. He raised his hand in dazed fashion and brought it away covered with blood. With staring eyes he looked at his moist red fingers, then at his latest victim, who was proving such an unexpected surprise.

The big cattleman, who by this time had pushed a way with his broad shoulders to the front, observed the two men attentively with a derisive smile on his frank face. He was seeing a bluff called, and he enjoyed it.

"You'll be able to wear earrings, Mr. Champion of the Universe, after I have ventilated the other," suggested the ranger affably. "Come again, seh."

But his opponent had had enough, and more than enough. It was one thing to browbeat a harmless boy, quite another to measure courage with a young gamecock like this. He had all the advantage of the first move. He was an expert and could drive his first throw into the youth's heart. But at bottom he was a coward and lacked the nerve, if not the inclination, to kill. If he took up that devil-may-care challenge he must fight it out alone. Moreover, as his furtive glance went round the ring of faces, he doubted whether a rope and the nearest telegraph pole might not be his fate if he went the limit. Sourly he accepted defeat, raging in his craven spirit at the necessity.

"Hell! I don't fight with boys," he snarled,

"So?"

Bucky moved forward with the curious lightness of a man spring-footed. His gaze held the other's shifting eyes as he plucked the knife from his opponent's hand.

"Unbuckle that belt," he ordered.

All said, the eye is a prince of weapons. It is a moral force more potent than the physical, and by it men may measure strength to a certainty. So now these two clinched and battled with it till the best man won. The showman's look gave way before the stark courage of the other. His was no match for the inscrutable, unwavering eye that commanded him. His fingers began to twitch, edged slowly toward his waist. For an instant they fumbled at the buckle of the belt, which presently fell with a rattle to the floor.

"Now, roll yore trail to the wall. Face this way! Arms out! That's good! You rest there comfortable while I take these pins down and let the kid out."

He removed the knives that hemmed in the boy and supported the half-fainting figure to a chair beside the roulette table. But always he remained in such a position as to keep the big bully he was baiting in view. The boy dropped into the chair and covered his face with his hands, sobbing with deep, broken breaths. The ranger touched caressingly the crisp, fair hair that covered the head in short curls.

"Don't you worry, bub. Now, don't you. It's all over with now. That coyote won't pester you any more. Will you, Mr. False Alarm Bad Man?"

At the last words he wheeled suddenly to the showman. "You're right sorry already you got so gay, ain't you? Come! Speak yore little piece, please."

He waited for an answer, and his gaze held fast to the bloated face that cringed before his attack.

"What's your name?"

"Jay Hardman," quavered the now thoroughly sobered bad man.

"Dead easy jay, I reckon you mean. Now, chirp, up and tell the boy how sorry you are you got fresh with your hardware."

"He's my boy. I guess I can do what I like with him," the man burst out angrily. "I wasn't hurting him any, either. That's part of our show, to--"

Bucky fondled suggestively the revolver in his hand. A metallic click came to his victim.

"Don't you shoot at me again," the man broke off to scream.

The Colt clipped the sentence and the man's other ear.

"You can put in your order now for them earrings we were mentionin', Mr. Deadeasy. You see, I had to puncture this one so folks would know they were mates."

"I'll put you in the pen for this," the fellow whined, in terror.

"Funny how you will get off the subject. We were discussin' an apology when you got to wandering in yore haid."

The mottled face showed white in patches. Beads of perspiration stood out on the forehead of Hardman. "I didn't aim to hurt him any. I'll be right glad to explain to you "

A bullet plowed a path through the long hair that fell to the showman's shoulders and snipped a lock from it.

"You don't need to explain a thing to me, seh. I'm sure resting easy in my mind. But as you were about to re-mark you're fair honin' for a chance to ask the kid's pardon. Now, ain't I a mind reader, seh?"

A trembling voice stammered huskily an apology.

"Better late than too late. Now, I've a good mind to take a vote whether I'd better unload the rest of the pills in this old reliable medicine box at you. Mebbe I ought to pump one into that coyote heart of yours."

The fellow went livid. "My God, you wouldn't kill an unarmed man, would you?"

For answer the ranger tossed the weapon on the table with a scornful laugh and strode up to the other. The would-be bad man towered six inches above him, and weighed half as much again. But O'Connor whirled him round, propelled him forward to the door, and kicked him into the street.

"I'd hate to waste a funeral on him," he said, as he sauntered back to the boy at the table.

The lad was beginning to recover, though his breath still came with a catch. His rag of a handkerchief was dabbing tears out of his eyes. O'Connor noticed how soft his hands and how delicate his features.

"This kid ain't got any more business than a rabbit going around in the show line with that big scoundrel. He's one of these gentle, rock-me-to-sleep-mother kids that ought to stay in the home nest and not go buttin' into this hard world. I'll bet a doughnut he's an orphan, though."

Bucky had been brought up in the school of experience, where every student keeps his own head or goes to the wall. All his short life he had played a lone hand, as he would have phrased it. He had campaigned in Cuba as a mere boy. He had ridden the range and held his own on the hurricane deck of a bucking broncho. From cowpunching he had graduated into the tough little body of territorial rangers at the head of which was "Hurry Up" Millikan. This had brought him a large and turbulent experience in the knack of taking care of himself under all circumstances. Naturally, a man of this type, born and bred to the code of the outdoors West, could not fail of a certain contempt for a boy that broke down and cried when the game was going against him.

But Bucky's contempt was tolerant, after all. He could not deny his sympathy to a youngster in trouble. Again he touched gently the lad's crisp curls of burnished gold.

"Brace up, bub. The worst is yet to come," he laughed awkwardly. "I reckon there's no use spillin' any more emotion over it. He ain't your dad, is he?"

The lad's big brown eyes looked up into the serene blue ones and found comfort in their strength. "No, he's my uncle--and my master."

"This is a free country, son. We don't have masters if we're good Americans, though we all have to take orders from our superior officers. You don't need to serve this fellow unless you want to. That's a cinch."

The boy's troubled eyes were filmed with reminiscent terror. "You don't know him. He is terrible when he is angry," he murmured.

"I don't think it," returned Bucky contemptuously. "He's the worst blowhard ever. Say the word and I'll run the piker out of town for you."

The boy whipped up the sleeve of the fancy Mexican jacket he wore and showed a long scar on his arm. "He did that one day when he was angry at me. He pretended to others that it was an accident, but I knew better. This morning I begged him to let me leave him. He beat me, but he was still mad; and when he took to drinking I was afraid he would work himself up to stick me again with one of his knives."

Bucky looked at the scar in the soft, rounded arm and swept the boy with a sudden puzzled glance that was not suspicion but wonder.

"How long have you been with him, kid?"

"Oh, for years. Ever since I was a little fellow. He took me after my father and mother died of yellow fever in New Orleans. His wife hates me too, but they have to have me in the show."

"Then I guess you had better quit their company. What's your name?"

"Frank Hardman. On the show bills I have all sorts of names."

"Well, Frank, how would you like to go to live on a ranch?"

"Where he wouldn't know I was?" whispered the boy eagerly.

"If you like. I know a ranch where you'd be right welcome."

"I would work. I would do anything I could. Really, I would try to pay my way, and I don't eat much," Frank cried, his eyes as appealing as a homeless puppy's.

Bucky smiled. "I expect they can stand all you eat without going to the poorhouse. It's a bargain then. I'll take you out there to-morrow."

"You're so good to me. I never had anybody be so good before." Tears stood in the big eyes and splashed over.

"Cut out the water works, kid. You want to take a brace and act like a man," advised his new friend brusquely.

"I know. I know. If you knew what I have done maybe you wouldn't ask me to go with you. I--I can't tell you anything more than that," the youngster sobbed.

"Oh, well. What's the diff? You're making a new start to-day. Ain't that right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Call me Bucky."

"Yes, sir. Bucky, I mean."

A hand fell on the ranger's shoulder and a voice in his ear. "Young man, I want you."

The lieutenant whirled like a streak of lightning, finger on trigger already. "I'll trouble you for yore warrant, seh," he retorted.

The man confronting him was the big cattleman who had entered the Silver Dollar in time to see O'Connor's victory over the showman. Now he stood serenely under Bucky's gun and laughed.

"Put up your .45, my friend. It's a peaceable conference I want with you."

The level eyes of the young man fastened on those of the cattleman, and, before he spoke again, were satisfied. For both of these men belonged to the old West whose word is as good as its bond, that West which will go the limit for a cause once under taken without any thought of retreat, regardless of the odds or the letter of the law. Though they had never met before, each knew at a glance the manner of man the other was.

"All right, seh. If you want me I reckon I'm here large as life," the ranger said,

"We'll adjourn to the poker room upstairs then, Mr. O'Connor"

Bucky laid a hand on the shoulder of the boy. "This kid goes with me. I'm keeping an eye on him for the present."

"My business is private, but I expect that can be arranged. We'll take the inner room and let him have the outer."

"Good enough. Break trail, seh. Come along, Frank."

Having reached the poker room upstairs, that same private room which had seen many a big game in its day between the big cattle kings and mining men of the Southwest, Bucky's host ordered refreshments and then unfolded his business.

"You don't know me, lieutenant, do you?"

"I haven't that pleasure, seh."

"I am Major Mackenzie's brother."

"Webb Mackenzie, who came from Texas last year and bought the Rocking Chair Ranch?"

"The same."

"I'm right glad to meet you, seh."

"And I can say the same."

Webb Mackenzie was so distinctively a product of the West that no other segment of the globe could have produced him. Big, raw-boned, tanned to a leathery brick-brown, he was as much of the frontier as the ten thousand cows he owned that ran the range on half as many hills and draws. He stood six feet two and tipped the beam at two hundred twelve pounds, not an ounce of which was superfluous flesh. Temperamentally, he was frank, imperious, free-hearted, what men call a prince. He wore a loose tailor-made suit of brown stuff and a broad-brimmed light-gray Stetson. For the rest, you may see a hundred like him at the yearly stock convention held in Denver, but you will never meet a man even among them with a sounder heart or better disposition.

"I've got a story to tell you, Lieutenant O'Connor," he began. "I've been meaning to see you and tell it ever since you made good in that Fernendez matter. It wasn't your gameness. Anybody can be game. But it looked to me like you were using the brains in the top of your head, and that happens so seldom among law officers I wanted to have a talk with you. Since yesterday I've been more anxious. For why? I got a letter from my brother telling me Sheriff Collins showed him a locket he found at the place of the T. P. Limited hold-up. That locket has in it a photograph of my wife and little girl. For fifteen years I haven't seen that picture. When I saw it last 'twas round my little baby's neck. What's more, I haven't seen her in that time, either."

Mackenzie stopped, swallowed hard, and took a drink of water.

"You haven't seen your little girl in fifteen years," exclaimed Bucky.

"Haven't seen or heard of her. So far as I know she may not be alive now. This locket is the first hint I have had since she was taken away, the very first news of her that has reached me, and I don't know what to make of that. One of the robbers must have been wearing it, the way I figure it out. Where did he get it? That's what I want to know."

"Suppose you tell me the story, seh," suggested the ranger gently.

The cattleman offered O'Connor a cigar and lit one himself. For a minute he puffed slowly at his Havana, leaning far back in his chair with eyes reminiscent and half shut. Then he shook himself back into the present and began his tale.

"I don't reckon you ever heard tell of Dave Henderson. It was back in Texas I knew him, and he's been missing sixteen years come the eleventh of next August. For fifteen years I haven't mentioned his name, because Dave did me the dirtiest wrong that one man ever did another. Back in the old days he and I used to trail together. We was awful thick, and mostly hunted in couples. We began riding the same season back on the old Kittredge Ranch, and we went in together for all the kinds of spreeing that young fellows who are footloose are likely to do. Fact is, we suited each other from the ground up. We frolicked round a-plenty, like young colts will, and there was nothing on this green earth Dave could have asked from me that I wouldn't have done for him. Nothing except one, I reckon, and Dave never asked that of me."

Mackenzie puffed at his cigar a silent moment before resuming. "It happened we both fell in love with the same girl, little Frances Clark, of the Double T Ranch. Dave was a better looker than me and a more taking fellow, but somehow Frances favored me from the start. Dave stayed till the finish, and when he seen he had lost he stood up with me at the wedding. We had agreed, you see, that whoever won it wasn't to break up our friendship.

"Well, Frankie and I were married, and in course of time we had two children. My boy, Tom, is the older. The other was a little girl, named after her mother." The cattleman waited a moment to steady his voice, and spoke through teeth set deep in his Havana. "I haven't seen her, as I said, since she was two years and ten months old--not since the night Dave disappeared."

Bucky looked up quickly with a question on his lips, but he did not need to word it.

Mackenzie nodded. "Yes, Dave took her with him when he lit out across the line for Mexico"

But I'll have to go back to something that happened earlier. About three months before this time Dave and me were riding through a cut in the Sierra Diablo Mountains, when we came on a Mexican who had been wounded by the Apaches. I reckon we had come along just in time to scare them off before they finished him. We did our best for him, but he died in about two hours. Before dying, he made us a present of a map we found in his breast pocket. It showed the location of a very rich mine he had found, and as he had no near kin he turned it over to us to do with as we pleased.

"Just then the round-up came on, and we were too busy to pay much attention to the mine. Each of us would have trusted the other with his life, or so I thought. But we cut the paper in half, each of us keeping one part, in order that nobody else could steal the secret from the one that held the paper. The last time I had been in El Paso I had bought my little girl a gold chain with two lockets pendent. These lockets opened by a secret spring, and in one of them I put my half of the map. It seemed as safe a place as I could devise, for the chain never left the child's neck, and nobody except her mother, Dave, and I knew that it was placed there. Dave hid his half under a rock that was known to both of us. The strange thing about the story is that my false friend, in the hurry of his flight, forgot to take his section of the map with him. I found it under the rock next day, so that his vile treachery availed him nothing from a mercenary point of view."

"Didn't take his half of the map with him. That's right funny," Bucky mused aloud.

"We never could understand why he didn't."

"Mebbe if you understood that a heap of things might be clear that are dark now."

"Mebbe. Knowing Dave Henderson as I did, or, rather, as I thought I did, such treachery as his was almost unbelievable. He was the sweetest, sunniest soul I ever knew, and no two brothers could have been as fond of each other as we seemed to be. But there was no chance of mistake. He had gone, and taken our child with him, likely in accordance with a plan of revenge long cherished by him. We never heard of him or the child again. They disappeared as completely as if the earth had swallowed them up. Our cook, too, left with him that evil night."

"Your cook?" It was the second comment Bucky had ventured, and it came incisively. "What manner of man was he?"

"A huge, lumbering braggart. I could never understand why Dave took the man with him."

"If he did."

"But I tell you he did. They disappeared the same night, and the trail showed they went the same road. We followed them for about an hour next day, but a heavy rain came up and blotted out the tracks."

"What was the cook's name?"

"Jeff Anderson."

"Have you a picture of him, or one of your friend?"

"Back at the ranch I had pictures of Dave, but I burned them after he left. Yes, I reckon we have one of Anderson, standing in front of the chuck wagon."

"Send it to me, please."

"All right."

The ranger asked a few questions that made clearer the situation on the day of the kidnapping, and some more concerning Anderson, then fell again into the role of a listener while Mackenzie concluded his story.

"All these years I have kept my eyes open, confident that at last I would discover something that would help me to discover the whereabouts of my child, or, at least, give me a chance to punish the scoundrel who betrayed my confidence. Yesterday my brother's letter gave the first clue we have had. I want that lead worked. Ferret this thing out to the bottom, lieutenant. Get me something definite to go on. That's what I want you to do. Run the thing to earth, get at the facts, and find my child for me. I'll give you carte blanche up to a hundred thousand dollars. All I ask of you is to make good. Find the little girl, or else bring me face to face with that villain Henderson. Can you do it?"

O'Connor was strangely interested in this story of treachery and mystery. He rose with shining eyes and held out his hand. "I don't know, seh. but I'll try damned hard to do three things: find out what has become of the little girl, of Dave Henderson, and of the scoundrel who stole your baby because he thought the map was in the pocket."

"You mean that you don't think Dave--"

"That is exactly what I mean. Your cook, Anderson, kidnapped the child, looks like to me. I saw that locket Collins found. My guess was that the marks on the end of the chain were deep teeth marks. The man that stole your baby tried first to cut the chain with his teeth so as to steal the chain. You see, he could not find the clasp in the dark. Then the child wakened and began to cry. He clapped a hand over its mouth and carried the little girl out of the room. Then he heard somebody moving about, lost his nerve, and jumped on the horse that was waiting, saddled, at the door. He took the child along simply because he had to in order to get the chain and the secret he thought it held."

"Perhaps; but that does not prove it was not Dave."

"It's contributory evidence, seh. Your friend could have slipped the chain from her neck any day, or he could have opened the locket and taken the map. No need for him to steal in at night. Do you happen to remember whether your little girl had any particular aversion to the cook?"

The cattleman's forehead frowned in thought. "I do remember, now, that she was afraid of him. She always ran screaming to her mother when he tried to be friendly with her. He was a sour sort of fellow."

"That helps out the case a heap, for it shows that he wanted to make friends with her and she refused. He was thus forced to take the chain when she was asleep instead of playing with her till he had discovered the spring and could simply take the map."

"But he didn't know anything about the map. He was not in our confidence."

"You and your friend talked it over evenings when he was at the ranch, and other places, too, I expect."

"Yes, our talk kind of gravitated that way whenever we got together."

"Well, this fellow overheard you. That's probable, at least."

"But you're ignoring the important fact. Dave disappeared too that night, with my little girl."

Bucky cut in sharply with a question. "Did he? How do you know he disappeared WITH her? Why not AFTER? That's the theory my mind is groping on just now."

"That's a blind trail to me. Why AFTER? And what difference does it make?"

"All the difference in the world. If he left after the cook, you have been doing him an injustice for fifteen years, seh."

Mackenzie leaned forward, excitement burning in his eyes. "Prove that, young man, and I'll thank you to the last day of my life. It's for my wife's sake more than my own I want my little girl back. She jes' pines for her every day of her life. But for my friend--if you can give me back the clean memory of Dave you'll have done a big thing for me, Mr. O'Connor."

"It's only a working theory, but this is what I'm getting at. You and Henderson had arranged to take an early start on a two days' deer hunt next mo'ning. That's what you told me, isn't it?"

"We were to start about four. Yes, sir."

"Well, let's suppose a case. Along comes Dave before daybreak, when the first hooters were beginning to call. Just as he reaches your ranch he notices a horse slipping away in the darkness. Perhaps he hears the little girl cry out. Anyhow, instead of turning in at the gate, he decides to follow. Probably he isn't sure there's anything wrong, but when he finds out how the horse he's after is burning the wind his suspicions grow stronger. He settles down to a long chase. In the darkness, we'll say, he loses his man, but when it gets lighter he picks up the trail again. The tracks lead south, across the line into Mexico. Still he keeps plodding on. The man in front sees him behind and gets scared because he can't shake him off. Very likely he thinks it is you on his track. Anyhow, while the child is asleep he waits in ambush, and when Henderson rides up he shoots him down. Then he pushes on deeper into Chihuahua, and proceeds to lose himself there by changing his name."

"You think he murdered Dave?" The cattleman got up and began to pace up and down the floor.

"I think it possible."

Webb Mackenzie's face was pallid, but there was a new light of hope in it. "I believe you're right. God knows I hope so. That may sound a horrible thing to say of my best friend, but if it has got to be one or the other--if it is certain that my old bunkie came to his death foully in Chihuahua while trying to save my baby, or is alive to-day, a skulking coward and villain--with all my heart I hope he is dead." He spoke with a passionate intensity which showed how much he had cared for his early friend, and how much the latter's apparent treachery had cut him. "I hope you'll never have a friend go back on you, Mr. O'Connor, the one friend you would have banked on to a finish. Why, Dave Henderson saved my life from a bunch of Apaches once when it was dollars to doughnuts he would lose his own if he tried it. We were prospecting in the Galiuros together, and one mo'ning when he went down to the creek to water the hawsses he sighted three of the red devils edging up toward the cabin. There might have been fifty of them there for all he knew, and he had a clear run to the plains if he wanted to back one of the ponies and take it. Most any man would have saved his own skin, but not Dave. He hoofed it back to the cabin, under fire every foot of the way, and together we made it so hot for them that they finally gave up getting us. We were in the Texas Rangers together, and pulled each other through a lot of close places. And then at the end-- Why, it hurt me more than it did losing my own little girl."

Bucky nodded. Since he was a man and not a father, he could understand how the hurt would rankle year after year at the defalcation of his comrade.

"That's another kink we have got to unravel in this tangle. First off, there's your little girl, to find if she is still alive. Second, we must locate Dave Henderson or his grave. Third, there's something due the scoundrel who is responsible for this. Fourthly, brethren, there's that map section to find. And lastly, we've got to find just how this story you've told me got mixed with the story of the holdup of the Limited. For it ce'tainly looks as if the two hang together. I take it that the thing to do is to run down the gang that held up the Limited. Once we do that, we ought to find the key to the mystery of your little girl's disappearance. Or, at least, there is a chance we shall. And it's chances we've got to gamble on in this thing."

"Good enough. I like the way you go at this. Already I feel a heap better than I did."

"If the cards fall our way you're going to get this thing settled once for all. I can't promise my news will be good news when I get it, but anything will be better than the uncertainty you've been in, I take it," said Bucky, rising from his chair.

"You're right there. But, wait a moment. Let's drink to your success."

"I'm not much of a sport," Bucky smiled. "Fact is, I never drink, seh."

"Of course. I remember, now. You're the good bad man of the West," Mackenzie answered amiably. "Well, I drink to you. Here's good hunting, lieutenant."

"Thank you."

"I suppose you'll get right at this thing?"

"I've got to take that kid in the next room out to my ranch first. I won't stand for that knife thrower making a slave of him."

"What's the matter with me taking the boy out to the Rocking Chair with me? My wife and I will see he's looked after till you return."

"That would be the best plan, if it won't trouble you too much. We'd better keep his whereabouts quiet till this fellow Hardman is out of the country."

"Yes, though I hardly think he'd be fool enough to show up at the Rocking Chair. If my vaqueros met up with him prowling around they might show him as warm a welcome as you did half an hour ago."

"A chapping would sure do him a heap of good," grinned Bucky, and so dismissed the Champion of the World from his mind.

CHAPTER 5.

BUCKY ENTERTAINS

Bucky began at once to tap the underground wires his official position made accessible to him. These ran over Southern Arizona, Sonora, and Chihuahua. All the places to which criminals or frontiersmen with money were wont to resort were reported upon. For the ranger's experience had taught him that since the men he wanted had money in their pockets to burn gregarious impulse would drive them from the far silent places of the desert to the roulette and faro tables where the wolf and the lamb disport themselves together.

The photograph from Webb Mackenzie of the cook Anderson reached him at Tucson the third day after his interview with that gentleman, at the same time that Collins dropped in on him to inquire what progress he was making.

O'Connor told him of the Aravaipa episode, and tossed across the table to him the photograph he had just received.

"If we could discover the gent that sat for this photo it might help us. You don't by any chance know him, do you, Val?"

The sheriff shook his head. "Not in my rogues' gallery, Bucky."

The ranger again examined the faded picture. A resemblance in it to somebody he had met recently haunted vaguely his memory. As he looked the indefinite suggestion grew sharp and clear. It was a photograph of the showman who had called himself Hardman. All the trimmings were lacking, to be sure--the fierce mustache, the long hair, the buckskin trappings, none of them were here. But beyond a doubt it was the same shifty-eyed villain. Nor did it shake Bucky's confidence that Mackenzie had seen him and failed to recognize the man as his old cook. The fellow was thoroughly disguised, but the camera had happened to catch that curious furtive glance of his. But for that O'Connor would never have known the two to be the same.

Bucky was at the telephone half an hour. In the middle of the next afternoon his reward came in the form of a Western Union billet. It read:

"Eastern man says you don't want what is salable here."

The lieutenant cut out every other word and garnered the wheat of the message:

"Man you want is here."

The telegram was marked from Epitaph, and for that town the ranger and the sheriff entrained immediately.

Bucky's eye searched in vain the platform of the Epitaph depot for Malloy, of the Rangers, whose wire had brought him here. The cause of the latter's absence was soon made clear to him in a note he found waiting for him at the hotel:

"The old man has just sent me out on hurry-up orders. Don't know when I'll get back. Suggest you take in the show at the opera house to-night to pass the time."

It was the last sentence that caught Bucky's attention. Jim Malloy had not written it except for a reason. Wherefore the lieutenant purchased two tickets for the performance far back in the house. From the local newspaper he gathered that the showman was henceforth to be a resident of Epitaph. Mr. Jay Hardman, or Signor Raffaello Cavellado, as he was known the world over by countless thousands whom he had entertained, had purchased a corral and livery stable at the corner of Main and Boothill Streets and solicited the patronage of the citizens of Hualpai County. That was the purport of the announcement which Bucky ringed with a pencil and handed to his friend.

That evening Signor Raffaello Cavellado made a great hit with his audience. He swaggered through his act magnificently, and held his spectators breathless. Bucky took care to see that a post and the sheriff's big body obscured him from view during the performance.

After it was over O'Connor and the sheriff returned to the hotel, where also Hardman was for the present staying, and sent word up to his room that one of the audience who had admired very much the artistic performance would like the pleasure of drinking a glass of wine with Signor Cavellado if the latter would favor him with his company in room seven. The Signor was graciously pleased to accept, and followed his message of acceptance in person a few minutes later.

Bucky remained quietly in the corner of the room back of the door until the showman had entered, and while the latter was meeting Collins he silently locked the door and pocketed the key.

The sheriff acknowledged Hardman's condescension brusquely and without shaking hands. "Glad to meet you, seh. But you're mistaken in one thing. I'm not your host. This gentleman behind you is."

The man turned and saw Bucky, who was standing with his back against the door, a bland smile on his face.

"Yes, seh. I'm your host to-night. Sheriff Collins, hyer, is another guest. I'm glad to have the pleasure of entertaining you, Signor Raffaello Cavellado," Bucky assured him, in his slow, gentle drawl, without reassuring him at all.

For the fellow was plainly disconcerted at recognition of his host. He turned with a show of firmness to Collins. "If you're a sheriff, I demand to have that door opened at once," he blustered.

Val put his hands in his pockets and tipped back his chair. "I ain't sheriff of Hualpai County. My jurisdiction don't extend here," he said calmly.

"I'm an unarmed man," pleaded Cavellado.

"Come to think of it, so am I."

"I reckon I'm holding all the aces, Signor Cavellado," explained the ranger affably. "Or do you prefer in private life to be addressed as Hardman--or, say, Anderson?"

The showman moistened his lips and offered his tormentor a blanched face.

"Anderson--a good plain name. I wonder, now, why you changed it?" Bucky's innocent eyes questioned him blandly as he drew from his pocket a little box and tossed it on the table. "Open that box for me, Mr. Anderson. Who knows? It might explain a heap of things to us."

With trembling fingers the big coward fumbled at the string. With all his fluent will he longed to resist, but the compelling eyes that met his so steadily were not to be resisted. Slowly he unwrapped the paper and took the lid from the little box, inside of which was coiled up a thin gold chain with locket pendant.

"Be seated," ordered Bucky sternly, and after the man had found a chair the ranger sat down opposite him.

From its holster he drew a revolver and from a pocket his watch. He laid them on the table side by side and looked across at the white-lipped trembler whom he faced.

"We had better understand each other, Mr. Anderson. I've come here to get from you the story of that chain, so far as you know it. If you don't care to tell it I shall have to mess this floor up with your remains. Get one proposition into your cocoanut right now. You don't get out of this room alive with your secret. It's up to you to choose."

Quite without dramatics, as placidly as if he were discussing railroad rebates, the ranger delivered his ultimatum. It seemed plain that he considered the issue no responsibility of his.

Anderson stared at him in silent horror, moistening his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. Once his gaze shifted to the sheriff but found small comfort there. Collins had picked up a newspaper and was absorbed in it.

"Are you going to let him kill me?" the man asked him hoarsely.

He looked up from his newspaper in mild protest at such unreason. "Me? I ain't sittin' in this game. Seems like I mentioned that already."

"Better not waste your time, signor, on side issues," advised the man behind the gun. "For I plumb forgot to tell you I'm allowing only three minutes to begin your story, half of which three has already slipped away to yesterday's seven thousand years. Without wantin' to hurry you, I suggest the wisdom of a prompt decision."

"Would he do it?" gasped the victim, with a last appeal to Collins.

"Would he what? Oh, shoot you up. Cayn't tell till I see. If he says he will he's liable to. He always was that haidstrong."

"But--why--why--"

"Yes, it's sure a heap against the law, but then Bucky ain't a lawyer. I don't reckon he cares sour grapes for the law--as law. It's a right interesting guess as to whether he will or won't."

"There's a heap of cases the law don't reach prompt. This is one of them," contributed the ranger cheerfully. He pocketed his watch and picked up the .45. "Any last message or anything of that sort, signor? I don't want to be unpleasant about this, you understand."

The whilom bad man's teeth chattered. "I'll tell you anything you want to know."

"Now, that's right sensible. I hate to come into another man's house and clutter it up. Reel off your yarn."

"I don't know--what you want."

"I want the whole story of your kidnapping of the Mackenzie child, how came you to do it, what happened to Dave Henderson, and full directions where I may locate Frances Mackenzie. Begin at the beginning, and I'll fire questions at you when you don't make any point clear to me. Turn loose your yarn at me hot off the bat."

The man told his story sullenly. While he was on the round-up as cook for the riders he had heard Mackenzie and Henderson discussing together the story of their adventure with the dying Spaniard and their hopes of riches from the mine he had left them. From that night he had set himself to discover the secret of its location, had listened at windows and at keyholes, and had once intercepted a letter from one to the other. By chance he had discovered that the baby was carrying the secret in her locket, and he had set himself to get it from her.

But his chance did not come. He could not make friends with her, and at last, in despair of finding a better opportunity, he had slipped into her room one night in the small hours to steal the chain. But it was wound round her neck in such a way that he could not slip it over her head. She had awakened while he was fumbling with the clasp and had begun to cry. Hearing her mother moving about in the next room, he had hastily carried the child with him, mounted the horse waiting in the yard, and ridden away.

In the road he became aware, some time later, that he was being pursued. This gave him a dreadful fright, for, as Bucky had surmised, he thought his pursuer was Mackenzie. All night he rode southward wildly, but still his follower kept on his trail till near morning, when he eluded him. He crossed the border, but late that afternoon got another fright. For it was plain he was still being followed. In the endless stretch of rolling hills he twice caught sight of a rider picking his way toward him. The heart of the guilty man was like water. He could not face the outraged father, nor was it possible to escape so dogged a foe by flight. An alternative suggested itself, and he accepted it with sinking courage. The child was asleep in his arms now, and he hastily dismounted, picketed his horse, and stole back a quarter of a mile, so that the neighing of his bronco might not betray his presence. Then he lay down in a dense mesquit thicket and waited for his foe. It seemed an eternity till the man appeared at the top of a rise fifty yards away. Hastily Anderson fired, and again. The man toppled from his horse, dead before he struck the ground. But when the cook reached him he was horrified to see that the man he had killed was a member of the Rurales, or Mexican border police. In his guilty terror he had shot the wrong man.

He fled at once, pursued by a thousand fears. Late the next night he reached a Chihuahua village, after having been lost for many hours. The child he still carried with him, simply because he had not the heart to leave it to die in the desert alone. A few weeks later he married an American woman he met in Sonora. They adopted the child, but it died within the year of fever.

Meanwhile, he was horrified to learn that Dave Henderson, following hard on his trail, had been found bending over the spot where the dead soldier lay, had been arrested by a body of Rurales, tried hurriedly, and convicted to life imprisonment. The evidence had been purely circumstantial. The bullet found in the dead body of the trooper was one that might have come from his rifle, the barrel of which was empty and had been recently fired. For the rest, he was a hated Americano, and, as a matter of course, guilty. His judges took pains to see that no message from him reached his friends in the States before he was buried alive in the prison. In that horrible hole an innocent man had been confined for fifteen years, unless he had died during that time.

That, in substance, was the story told by the showman, and Bucky's incisive questions were unable to shake any portion of it. As to the missing locket, the man explained that it had been broken off by accident and lost. When he discovered that only half the secret was contained on the map section he had returned the paper to the locket and let the child continue to carry it. Some years after the death of the child, Frances, his wife had lost the locket with the map.

"And this chain and locket--when did you lose them?" demanded Bucky sharply.

"It must have been about two months ago, down at Nogales, that I sold it to a fellow. I was playing faro and losing. He gave me five dollars for it."

And to that he stuck stoutly, nor could he be shaken from it. Both O'Connor and the sheriff believed he was lying, for they were convinced that he was the bandit with the red wig who had covered the engineer while his companions robbed the train. But of this they had no proof. Nor did Bucky even mention his suspicion to Hardman, for it was his intention to turn him loose and have him watched. Thus, perhaps, he would be caught corresponding or fraternizing with some of the other outlaws. Collins left the room before the showman, and when the latter came from the hotel he followed him into the night.

Meanwhile, Bucky went out and tapped another of his underground wires. This ran directly to the Mexican consul at Tucson, to whom Bucky had once done a favor of some importance, and from him to Sonora and Chihuahua. It led to musty old official files, to records already yellowed with age, to court reports and prison registers. In the end it flashed back to Bucky great news. Dave Henderson, arrested for the murder of the Rurales policeman, was still serving time in a Mexican prison for another man's crime. There in Chihuahua for fifteen years he had been lost to the world in that underground hole, blotted out from life so effectually that few now remembered there had been such a person. It was horrible, unthinkable, but none the less true.

CHAPTER 6.

BUCKY MAKES A DISCOVERY

For a week Bucky had been in the little border town of Noches, called there by threats of a race war between the whites and the Mexicans. Having put the quietus on this, he was returning to Epitaph by way of the Huachuca Mountains. There are still places in Arizona where rapid transit can be achieved more expeditiously on the back of a bronco than by means of the railroad, even when the latter is available. So now Bucky was taking a short cut across country instead of making the two train changes, with the consequent inevitable delays that would have been necessary to travel by rail.

He traveled at night and in the early morning, to avoid the heat of the midday sun, and it was in the evening of the second and last day that the skirts of happy chance led him to an adventure that was to affect his whole future life. He knew a waterhole on the Del Oro, where cows were wont to frequent even in the summer drought, and toward this he was making in the fag-end of the sultry day. While still some hundred yards distant he observed a spiral of smoke rising from a camp-fire at the spring, and he at once made a more circumspect approach. For it might be any one of a score of border ruffians who owed him a grudge and would be glad to pay it in the silent desert that tells no tales and betrays no secrets to the inquisitive.

He flung the bridle-rein over his pony's neck and crept forward on foot, warily and noiselessly. While still some little way from the water-hole he was arrested by a sound that startled him. He could make out a raucous voice in anger and a pianissimo accompaniment of womanish sobs.

"You're mine to do with as I like. I'm your uncle. I've raised you from a kid, and, by the great mogul! you can't sneak off with the first good-for nothing scoundrel that makes eyes at you. Thought you had slipped away from me, you white-faced, sniveling little idiot, but I'll show you who is master."

The lash of a whip rose and fell twice on quivering flesh before Bucky leaped into the fireglow and wrested the riding-whip from the hands of the angry man who was plying it.

"Dare to touch a woman, would you?" cried the ranger, swinging the whip vigorously across the broad shoulders of the man. "Take that--and that--and that, you brute!"

But when Bucky had finished with the fellow and flung him a limp, writhing huddle of welts to the ground, three surprises awaited him. The first was that it was not a woman he had rescued at all, but a boy, and, as the flickering firelight played on his face, the ranger came to an unexpected recognition. The slim lad facing him was no other than Frank Hardman, whom he had left a few days before at the Rocking Chair under the care of motherly Mrs. Mackenzie. The young man's eyes went back with instant suspicion to the fellow he had just punished, and his suspicions were verified when the leaping light revealed the face of the showman Anderson.

Bucky laughed. "I ce'tainly seem to be interfering in your affairs a good deal, Mr. Anderson. You may take my word for it that you was the last person in the world I expected to meet here, unless it might be this boy. I left him safe at a ranch fifty miles from here, and I left you a staid business man of Epitaph. But it seems neither of you stayed hitched. Why for this yearning to travel?"

"He found me where I was staying. I was out riding alone on an errand for Mrs. Mackenzie when he met me and made me go with him. He has arranged to have me meet his wife in Mexico. The show wouldn't draw well without me. You know I do legerdemain," Frank explained, in his low, sweet voice.

"So you had plans of your own, Mr. Anderson. Now, that was right ambitious of you. But I reckon I'll have to interfere with them again. Go through him, kid, and relieve him of any guns he happens to be garnished with. Might as well help yourself to his knives, too. He's so fond of letting them fly around promiscuous he might hurt himself. Good.

Now we can sit down and have a friendly talk. Where did you say you was intending to spend the next few weeks before I interrupted so unthinking and disarranged your plans? I'm talking to you, Mr. Anderson."

"I was heading for Sonora," the man whined.

What Bucky thought was: "Right strange direction to be taking for Sonora. I'll bet my pile you were going up into the hills to meet some of Wolf Leroy's gang. But why you were taking the kid along beats me, unless it was just cussedness." What he said was:

"Oh, you'll like Epitaph a heap better. I allow you ought to stay at that old town. It's a real interesting place. Finished in the adobe style and that sort of thing. The jail's real comfy, too."

"Would you like something to eat, sir?" presently asked Frank timidly.

"Would I? Why, I'm hungry enough to eat a leather mail-sack. Trot on your grub, young man, and watch my smoke."

Bucky did ample justice to the sandwiches and lemonade the lad set in front of him, but he ate with a wary eye on a possible insurrection on the part of his prisoner.

"I'm a new man," he announced briskly, when he had finished. "That veal loaf sandwich went sure to the right spot. If you had been a young lady instead of a boy you couldn't fix things up more appetizing."

The lad's face flushed with embarrassment, apparently at the ranger's compliment, and the latter, noticed how delicate the small face was. It made an instinctive, wistful appeal for protection, and Bucky felt an odd little stirring at his tender Irish heart.

"Might think I was the kid's father to see what an interest I take in him," the young man told himself reprovingly. "It's all tommyrot, too. A boy had ought to have more grit. I expect he needed that licking all right I saved him from."

When Bucky had eaten, the camp things were repacked for travel. Epitaph was only twenty-three miles away, and the ranger preferred to ride in the cool of the night rather than sit up till daybreak with his prisoner. Besides, he could then catch the morning train from that town and save almost a day.

So hour after hour they plodded on, the prisoner in front, O'Connor in the center, and Frank Hardman bringing up the rear. It was an Arizona night of countless stars, with that peculiar soft, velvety atmosphere that belongs to no other land or time. In the distance the jagged, violet line of mountains rose in silhouette against a sky not many shades lighter, while nearer the cool moonlight flooded a land grown magical under its divine touch.

The ranger rode with a limp ease that made for rest, his body shifting now and again in the saddle, so as to change the weight and avoid stiffness.

It must have been well past midnight that he caught the long breath of a sigh behind him. The trail had broadened at that point, for they were now down in the rolling plain, so that two could ride abreast in the road. Bucky fell back and put a sympathetic hand on the shoulder of the boy.

"Plumb fagged out, kid?" he asked.

"I am tired. Is it far?"

"About four miles. Stick it out, and we'll be there in no time."

"Yes, sir."

"Don't call me sir. Call me Bucky."

"Yes, sir."

Bucky laughed. "You're ce'tainly the queerest kid I've run up against. I guess you didn't scramble up in this rough-and-tumble West like I did. You're too soft for this country." He let his firm brown fingers travel over the lad's curly hair and down the smooth cheek. "There it is again. Shrinking away as if I was going to hurt you. I'll bet a biscuit you never licked the stuffing out of another fellow in your life."

"No, sir," murmured the youth, and Bucky almost thought he detected a little, chuckling laugh.

"Well, you ought to be ashamed of it. When come back from old Mexico I'm going to teach you how to put up your dukes. You're going to ride the range with me, son, and learn to stick to your saddle when the bronc and you disagrees. Oh, I'll bet all you need is training. I'll make a man out of you yet," the ranger assured his charge cheerfully. "Will you?" came the innocent reply, but Bucky for a moment had the sense of being laughed at.

"Yes, I 'will you,' sissy," he retorted, without the least exasperation. "Don't think you know it all. Right now you're riding like a wooden man. You want to take it easy in the saddle. There's about a dozen different positions you can take to rest yourself." And Bucky put him through a course of sprouts. "Don't sit there laughing at folks that knows a heap more than you ever will get in your noodle, and perhaps you won't be so done up at the end of a little jaunt like this," he concluded. And to his conclusion he presently added a postscript: "Why, I know kids your age can ride day and night for a week on the round-up without being all in. How old are you, son?"

"Eighteen."

"That's a lie," retorted the ranger, with immediate frankness. "You're not a day over fifteen, I'll bet."

"I meant to say fifteen," meekly corrected the youth.

"That's another of them. You meant to say eighteen, but you found I wouldn't swallow it. Now, Master Frank, you want to learn one thing prompt if you and I are to travel together. I can't stand a liar. You tell the truth, or I'll give you the best licking you ever had in your life."

"You're as bad a bully as he is," the boy burst out, flushing angrily.

"Oh, no, I'm not," came the ranger's prompt unmoved answer. "But just because you're such a weak little kid that I could break you in two isn't any reason why I should put up with any foolishness from you. I mean to see that you act proper, the way an honest kid ought to do. Savvy?"

"I'd like to know who made you my master?" demanded the boy hotly.

"You've ce'tainly been good and spoiled, but you needn't ride your high hawss with me. Here's the long and the short of it. To tell lies ain't square. If I ask you anything you don't want to answer tell me to go to hell, but don't lie to me. If you do I'll punish you the same as if you were my brother, so long as you trail with me. If you don't like it, cut loose and hit the pike for yourself."

"I've a good mind to go."

Bucky waved a hand easily into space. "That's all right, too, son. There's a heap of directions you can hit from here. Take any one you like. But if I was as beat as you are, I think I'd keep on the Epitaph road." He laughed his warm, friendly laugh, before the geniality of which discord seemed to melt, and again his arm went round the other's weary shoulders with a caressing gesture that was infinitely protecting.

The boy laughed tremulously. "You're awfully good to me. I know I'm a cry-baby, sissy boy, but if you'll be patient with me I'll try to be gamer."

It certainly was strange the way Bucky's pulse quickened and his blood tingled when he touched the little fellow and heard that velvet voice's soft murmur. Yes, it surely was strange, but perhaps the young Irishman's explanation was not the correct one, after all. The cause he offered to himself for this odd joy and tender excitement was perfectly simple.

"I'm surely plumb locoed, or else gone soft in the haid," he told himself grimly.

But the reason for those queer little electric shocks that pulsed through him was probably a more elemental and primeval one than even madness.

Arrived at Epitaph, Bucky turned loose his prisoner with a caution and made his preparations to leave immediately for Chihuahua. Collins had returned to Tucson, but was in touch with the situation and ready to set out for any point where he was needed.

Bucky, having packed, was confronted with a difficulty. He looked at it, and voiced his perplexity.

"Now, what am I going to do with you, Curly Haid? I expect I had better ship you back to the Rocking Chair."

"I don't want to go back there. He'll come out again and find me after you leave."

"Where do you want to go, then? If you were a girl I could put you in the convent school here," he reflected aloud.

Again that swift, deep blush irradiated the youth's cheeks. "Why can't I go with you?" he asked shyly.

The ranger laughed. "Mebbe you think I'm going on a picnic. Why, I'm starting out to knock the chip off Old Man Trouble's shoulder. Like as not some greaser will collect Mr. Bucky's scalp down in manyana land. No, sir, this doesn't threaten to be a Y. P. S. C. E. excursion."

"If it is so dangerous as that, you will need help. I'm awful good at making up, and I can speak Spanish like a native."

"Sho! You don't want to go running your neck into a noose. It's a jail-break I'm planning, son. There may be guns a-popping before we get back to God's country--if we ever do. Add to that, trouble and then some, for there's a revolution scheduled for old Chihuahua just now, as your uncle happens to know from reliable information."

"Two can always work better than one. Try me, Bucky," pleaded the boy, the last word slipping out with a trailing upward inflection that was irresistible.

"Sure you won't faint if we get in a tight pinch, Curly?" scoffed O'Connor, even though in his mind he was debating a surrender. For he was extraordinarily taken with the lad, and his judgment justified what the boy had said.

"I shall not be afraid if you are with me."

"But I may not be with you. That's the trouble. Supposing I should be caught, what would you do?"

"Follow any orders you had given me before that time. If you had not given any, I would use my best judgment."

"I'll give them now," smiled Bucky. "If I'm lagged, make straight for Arizona and tell Webb Mackenzie or Val Collins."

"Then you will take me?" cried the boy eagerly.

"Only on condition that you obey orders explicitly. I'm running this cutting-out expedition."

"I wouldn't think of disobeying."

"And I don't want you to tell me any lies."

"No."

Bucky's big brown fist caught the little one and squeezed it. "Then it's a deal, kid. I only hope I'm doing right to take you."

"Of course you are. Haven't you promised to make a man of me?" And again Bucky caught that note of stifled laughter in the voice, though the big brown eyes met his quite seriously.

They took the train that night for El Paso, Bucky in the lower berth and his friend in the upper of section six of one of the Limited's Pullman cars. The ranger was awake and up with the day. For a couple of hours he sat in the smoking section and discussed politics with a Chicago drummer. He knew that Frank was very tired, and he let him sleep till the diner was taken on at Lordsburg. Then he excused himself to the traveling man.

"I reckon I better go and wake up my pardner. I see the chuck-wagon is toddling along behind us."

Bucky drew aside the curtains and shook the boy gently by the shoulder. Frank's eyes opened and looked at the ranger with that lack of comprehension peculiar to one roused suddenly from deep sleep.

"Time to get up, Curly. The nigger just gave the first call for the chuck-wagon."

An understanding of the situation flamed over the boy's face. He snatched the curtains from the Arizonian and gathered them tightly together. "I'll thank you not to be so familiar," he said shortly from behind the closed curtains.

"I beg your pahdon, your royal highness. I should have had myself announced and craved an audience, I reckon," was Bucky's ironic retort; and swiftly on the heels of it he added. "You make me tired, kid."

O'Connor was destined to be "made tired" a good many times in the course of the next few days. In all the little personal intimacies Frank possessed a delicate fastidiousness outside the experience of the ranger. He was a scrupulously clean man himself, and rather nice as to his personal habits, but it did not throw him into a flame of embarrassment to brush his teeth before his fellow passengers. Nor did it send him into a fit if a friend happened to drop into his room while he was finishing his dressing. Bucky agreed with himself that this excess of shyness was foolishness, and that to indulge the boy was merely to lay up future trouble for him. A dozen times he was on the point of speaking his mind on the subject, but some unusual quality of innocence in the lad tied his tongue.

"Blame it all, I'm getting to be a regular old granny. What Master Frank needs is a first-class dressing-down, and here the little cuss has got me bluffed to a fare-you-well so that I'm mum as a hooter on the nest," he admitted to himself ruefully. "Just when something comes up that needs a good round damn I catch that big brown Sunday school eye of his, and it's Bucky back to Webster's unabridged. I've got to quit trailing with him, or I'll be joining the church first thing I know. He makes me feel like I want to be good, confound the little swindle."

Notwithstanding the ranger's occasional moments of exasperation, the two got along swimmingly. Each of them found a continued pleasure in delving into the other's unexplored mental recesses. They drifted into one of those quick, spontaneous likings that are rare between man and man. Some subtle quality of affection bubbled up like a spring in the hearts of each for the other. Young Hardman could perhaps have explained what lay at the roots of it, but O'Connor admitted that he was "buffaloed" when he attempted an analysis of his unusual feeling.

From El Paso a leisurely run on the Mexican Central Pacific took them to Chihuahua, a quaint old city something about the size of El Paso. Both Bucky and his friend were familiar with the manners of the country, so that they felt at home among the narrow adobe streets, the lounging, good-natured peons, and the imitation Moorish architecture. They found rooms at a quiet, inconspicuous hotel, and began making their plans for an immediate departure in the event that they succeeded in their object.

At a distance it had seemed an easy thing to plan the escape of David Henderson and to accomplish it by craft, but a sight of the heavy stone walls that encircled the prison and of the numerous armed guards who paced to and fro on the walls, put a more chilling aspect on their chances.

"It isn't a very gay outlook," Bucky admitted cheerfully to his companion, "but I expect we can pull it off somehow. If these Mexican officials weren't slower than molasses in January it might have been better to wait and have him released by process of law on account of Hardman's confession. But it would take them two or three years to come to a decision. They sure do hate to turn loose a gringo when they have got the hog-tie on him. Like as not they would decide against him at the last, then. Course I've got the law machinery grinding, too, but I'm not banking on it real heavy. We'll get him out first any old way, then get the government to O. K. the thing."

"How were you thinking of proceeding?"

"I expect it's time to let you in on the ground floor, son. I reckon you happen to know that down in these Spanish countries there's usually a revolution hatching. There s two parties among the aristocrats, those for the government and those ferninst. The 'ins' stand pat, but the 'outs' have always got a revolution up their sleeves. Now, there's mostly a white man mixed up in the affair. They have to have him to run it and to shoot afterward when the government wins. You see, somebody has to be shot, and it's always so much to the good if they can line up gringoes instead of natives. Nine times out of ten it's an Irish-American lad that is engineering the scheme. This time it happens to be Mickey O'Halloran, an old friend of mine. I'm going to put it up to Mick to find a way."

"But it isn't any affair of his. He won't do it, will he?"

"Oh, I thought I told you he was Irish."

"Well?"

"And spoiling for trouble, of course. Is it likely he could keep his fist out of the hive when there's such a gem of a chance to get stung?"

It had been Frank's suggestion that they choose rooms at a hotel which open into each other and also connect with an adjoining pair. The reason for this had not at first been apparent to the ranger, but as soon as they were alone Frank explained.

"It is very likely that we shall be under surveillance after a day or two, especially if we are seen around the prison a good deal. Well, we'll slip out the back way to-night, disguised in some other rig, come boldly in by the front door, and rent the rooms next ours. Then we shall be able to go and come, either as ourselves or as our neighbors. It will give us a great deal more liberty."

"Unless we should get caught. Then we would have a great deal less. What's your notion of a rig-up to disguise us, kid?"

"We might have several, in case of emergencies. For one thing, we could easily be street showmen. You can do fancy shooting and I can do sleight-of-hand tricks or tell fortunes."

"You would be a gipsy lad?"

The youngster blushed. "A gipsy girl, and you might be my husband."

"I'm no play actor, even if you are," said Bucky. "I don't want to be your husband, thank you."

"All you would have to do is to be sullen and rough. It is easy enough."

"And you think you could pass for a girl? You're slim and soft enough, but I'll bet you would give it away inside of an hour."

The boy laughed, and shot a swift glance at O'Connor under his long lashes. "I appeared as a girl in one of the acts of the show for years. Nobody ever suspected that I wasn't."

"We might try it, but we have no clothes for the part."

"Leave that to me. I'll buy some to-day while you are looking the ground over for our first assault an the impregnable fortress."

"I don't know. It seems to me pretty risky. But you might buy the things, and we'll see how you look in them. Better not get all the things at the same store. Sort of scatter your purchases around."

They separated at the door of the hotel, Frank to choose the materials he needed, and O'Connor to look up O'Halloran and get a permit to visit the prison from the proper authorities. When the latter returned triumphantly with his permit he found the boy busy with a needle and thread and surrounded by a litter of dress-making material.

"I'm altering this to fit me and fixing it up," he explained.

"Holy smoke! Who taught you to sew?" asked Bucky, in surprise.

"My aunt, Mrs. Hardman. I used to do all the plain sewing on my costumes. Did you see your friend and get your permit?"

"You bet I did, and didn't. Mickey was out, but I left him a note. The other thing I pulled off all right. I'm to be allowed to visit the prison and make a careful inspection of it at my leisure There's nothing like a pull, son."

"Does the permit say you are to be allowed to steal any one of the prisoners you take a fancy to? asked Frank, with a smile.

"No, it forgot to say that. When do you expect to have that toggery made?"

"A good deal of it is already made, as you see. I'm just making a few changes. Do you want to try on your suit?"

"Is THIS mine?" asked the ranger, picking up with smiling contempt the rather gaudy blouse that lay on a chair.

"Yes, sir, that is yours. Go and put it on and we'll see how it fits."

Bucky returned a few minutes later in his gipsy uniform, with a deprecating grin.

"I'll have to stain your face. Then you'll do very well," said Frank, patting and pulling at the clothes here and there. "It's a good fit, if I do say it that chose it. The first thing you want to do when you get out in it is to roll in the dust and get it soiled. No respectable gipsy wears new clothes. Better have a tear or two in it, too."

"You ce'tainly should have been a girl, the way you take to clothes, Curly."

"Making up was my business for a good many years, you know," returned the lad quietly. "If you'll step into the other room for about fifteen minutes I'll show you how well I can do it."

It was a long half-hour later that Bucky thumped on the door between the rooms. "Pretty nearly ready, kid? Seems to me it is taking you a thundering long time to get that outfit on."

"How long do you think it ought to take a lady to dress?"

"Ten minutes is long enough, and fifteen, say, if she is going to a dance. You've been thirty-five by my Waterbury."

"It's plain you never were married, Mr. Innocent. Why, a girl can't fix her hair in less than half an hour."

"Well, you got a wig there, ain't you? It doesn't take but about five seconds to stick that on. Hurry up, gringo! I'm clean through this old newspaper."

"Read the advertisements," came saucily through the door.

"I've read the durned things twice."

"Learn them by heart," the sweet voice advised.

"Oh, you go to Halifax!"

Nevertheless, Mr. Bucky had to wait his comrade's pleasure. But when he got a vision of the result, it was so little what he had expected that it left him staring in amazement, his jaw fallen and his eyes incredulous.

The vision swept him a low bow. "How do you like Bonita?" it demanded gaily.

Bucky's eyes circled the room, to make sure that the boy was not hidden somewhere, and came back to rest on his surprise with a look that was almost consternation. Was this vivid, dazzling creature the boy he had been patronizing, lecturing, promising to thrash any time during the past four days? The thing was unbelievable, not yet to be credited by his jarred brain. How incredibly blind he had been! What an idiot of sorts! Why, the marks of sex sat on her beyond any possibility of doubt. Every line of the slim, lissom figure, every curve of the soft, undulating body, the sweep of rounded arm, of tapering waist-line, of well-turned ankle, contributed evidence of what it were folly to ask further proof. How could he have ever seen those lovely, soft-lashed eyes and the delicate little hands without conviction coming home to him? And how could he have heard the low murmur of her voice, the catch of her sobs, without knowing that they were a denial of masculinity?

She was dressed like a Spanish dancing girl, in short kilts, red sash, and jaunty little cap placed sidewise on her head. She wore a wig of black hair, and her face was stained to a dusky, gipsy hue. Over her thumb hung castanets and in her hand was a tambourine. Roguishly she began to sway into a slow, rhythmic dance, beating time with her instruments as she moved. Gradually the speed quickened to a faster time. She swung gracefully to and fro with all the lithe agility of the race she personified. No part could have been better conceived or executed. Even physically she displayed the large, brilliant eyes, the ringleted, coal-black hair, the tawny skin, and the flashing smile that showed small teeth of dazzling ivory, characteristic of the Romanies he had met. It was a daring part to play, but the young man watching realized that she had the free grace to carry it out successfully. She danced the fandango to a finish, swept him another low bow, and presented laughingly to him the tambourine for his donation. Then, suddenly flinging aside the instrument, she curtsied and caught at his hand.

"Will the senor have his fortune told?"

Bucky drew a handful of change from his pocket and selected a gold eagle. "I suppose I must cross your palm with gold," he said, even while his subconscious mind was running on the new complication presented to him by this discovery.

He was very clear about one thing. He must not let her know that he knew her for a girl. To him she must still be a boy, or their relation would become impossible. She had trusted in her power to keep her secret from him. On no other terms would she have come with him; of so much he was sure, even while his mind groped for a sufficient reason to account for an impulse that might have impelled her. If she found out that he knew, the knowledge would certainly drive her at once from him. For he knew that not the least charm of the extraordinary fascination she had for him lay in her sweet innocence of heart, a fresh innocence that consisted with this gay Romany abandon, and even with a mental experience of the sordid, seamy side of life as comprehensive as that of many a woman twice her age. She had been defrauded out of her childish inheritance of innocence, but, somehow, even in her foul environment the seeds of a rare personal purity had persistently sprung up and flourished. Some flowers are of such native freshness that no nauseous surroundings can kill their fragrance. And this was one of them.

Meanwhile, her voice ran on with the patter of her craft. There was the usual dark woman to be circumvented and the light one to be rewarded. Jealousies and rivalries played their part in the nonsense she glibly recited, and somewhere in the future lay, of course, great riches and happiness for him.

With a queer little tug at his heart he watched the dainty finger that ran so lightly over his open palm, watched, too, the bent head so gracefully fine of outline and the face so mobile of expression when the deep eyes lifted to his in question of the correctness of her reading. He would miss the little partner that had wound himself so tightly round his heart. He wondered if he would find compensating joy in this exquisite creature whom a few moments had taken worlds distant from him.

Suddenly tiring of her diversion, she dropped his hand. "You don't say I do it well," she charged, aware suspiciously, at last, of his grave silence.

"You do it very well indeed. I didn't think you had it in you, kid. What's worrying me is that I can never live up to such a sure enough gipsy as you."

"All you have to do is to look sour and frown if anybody gets too familiar with me. You can do that, can't you?"

"You bet I can," he answered promptly, with unnecessary emphasis.

"And look handsome," she teased.

"Oh, that will be easy for me--since you are going to make me up. As a simple child of nature I'm no ornament to the scenery, but art's a heap improving sometimes."

She thought, but did not say, that art would go a long way before it could show anything more pleasing than this rider of the plains. It was not alone his face, with the likable blue eyes that could say so many things in a minute, but the gallant ease of his bearing. Such a springy lightness, such sinewy grace of undulating muscle, were rare even on the frontier. She had once heard Webb Mackenzie say of him that he could whip his weight in wildcats, and it was easy of belief after seeing how surely he was master of the dynamic power in him. It is the emergency that sifts men, and she had seen him rise to several with a readiness that showed the stuff in him.

That evening they slipped out unobserved in the dusk, and a few minutes later a young gipsy and his bride presented themselves at the inn to be put up. The scowling young Romany was particular, considering that he spent most nights in the open, with a sky for a roof. So the master of the inn thought when he rejected on one pretense or another the first two rooms that were shown him. He wanted two rooms, and they must connect. Had the innkeeper such apartments? The innkeeper had, but he would very much like to see the price in advance if he was going to turn over to guests of such light baggage the best accommodations in the house. This being satisfactorily arranged, the young gipsies were left to themselves in the room they had rented.

The first thing that the man did when they were alone was to roll a cigarette, which operation he finished deftly with one hand, while the other swept a match in a circular motion along his trousers leg. In very fair English the Spanish gipsy said: "You ce'tainly ought to learn to smoke, kid. Honest, it's more comfort than a wife."

"How do you know, since you are not married?" she asked archly.

"I been noticing some of my poor unfortunate friends," he grinned.

CHAPTER 7.

IN THE LAND OF REVOLUTIONS

The knock that sounded on the door was neither gentle nor apologetic. It sounded as if somebody had flung a baseball bat at it.

O'Connor smiled, remembering that soft tap of yore. "I reckon--" he was beginning, when the door opened to admit a visitor.

This proved to be a huge, red-haired Irishman, with a face that served just now merely as a setting for an irresistible smile. The owner of the flaming head looked round in surprise on the pair of Romanies and began an immediate apology to which a sudden blush served as accompaniment.

"Beg pardon. I didn't know The damned dago told me " He stopped in confusion, with a scrape and a bow to the lady.

"Sir, I demand an explanation of this most unwarrantable intrusion," spoke the ranger haughtily, in his best Spanish.

A patter of soft foreign vowels flowed from the stranger's embarrassment.

"You durned old hawss-stealing greaser, cayn't you talk English?" drawled the gipsy, with a grin.

The other's mouth fell open with astonishment He stared at the slim, dusky young Spaniard for an instant before he fell upon him and began to pound his body with jovial fists.

"You would, would you, you old pie-eating fraud! Try to fool your Uncle Mick and make him think you a greaser, would you? I'll learn yez to play horse with a fullgrown, able-bodied white man." He punctuated his points with short-arm jolts that Bucky laughingly parried.

"Before ladies, Mick! Haven't you forgot your manners, Red-haid?"

Swiftly Mr. O'Halloran came to flushed rigidity. "Madam, I must still be apologizing. The surprise of meeting me friend went to me head, I shouldn't wonder."

Bucky doubled up with apparent mirth. "Get into the other room, Curly, and get your other togs on," he ordered. "Can't you see that Mick is going to fall in love with you if he sees you a minute longer, you young rascal? Hike!"

"Don't you talk that way to a lady, Bucky," warned O'Halloran, again blushing vividly, after she had disappeared into the next room. "And I want to let yez have it right off the bat that if you've been leading that little Mexican senorita into trouble you've got a quarrel on with Mike O'Halloran."

"Keep your shirt on, old fire-eater. Who told you I was wronging her any?"

"Are you married to her?"

"You bet I ain't. You see, Mick, that handsome lady you're going to lick the stuffing out of me about is only a plumb ornery sassy young boy, after all."

"No!" denied Mick, his eyes two excited interrogation-points. "You can't stuff me with any such fairy-tale, me lad."

"All right. Wait and see," suggested the ranger easily. "Have a smoke while you're falling out of love."

"You young limb, I want you to tell me all about it this very minute, before I punch holes in yez."

Bucky lit his cigar, leaned back, and began to tell the story of Frank Hardman and the knife-thrower. Only one thing he omitted to tell, and that was the conviction that had come home to him a few moments ago that his little comrade was no boy, but a woman. O'Halloran was a chivalrous Irishman, a daredevil of an adventurer, with a pure love of freedom that might very likely in the end bring him to face a row of loaded carbines with his back to a wall, but Bucky had his reticencies that even loyal friendship could not break down. This girl's secret he meant to guard until such time as she chose of her own free will to tell it.

Frank returned just as he finished the tale of the knife episode, and Mick's frank open eyes accused him of idiocy for ever having supposed that this lad was a woman. Why, he was a little fellow not over fifteen--not a day past fifteen, he would swear to that. He was, to be sure, a slender, girlish young fellow, a good deal of a sissy by the look of him, but none the less a sure enough boy. Convinced of this, the big Irishman dismissed him promptly from his thoughts and devoted himself to Bucky.

"And what are yez doing down in greaser land? Thought you was rustling cows for a living somewheres in sunburnt Arizona," he grinned amiably.

"Me? Oh, I came down on business. We'll talk about that presently. How's your one-hawss revolution getting along, Reddy? I hope it's right peart and healthy."

O'Halloran's eyes flashed a warning, with the slightest nod in the world toward the boy.

"Don't worry about him. He's straight as a string and knows how to keep his mouth shut. You can tell him anything you would me." He turned to the boy sitting quietly in an inconspicuous corner. "Mum's the word, Frank. You understand that, of course?"

The boy nodded. "I'll go into the next room, if you like."

"It isn't necessary. Fire ahead, Mike."

The latter got up, tiptoed to each door in turn, flung it suddenly open to see that nobody was spying behind it, and then turned the lock. "I have use for me head for another year or two, and it's just as well to see that nobody is spying. You understand, Bucky, that I'm risking me life in telling you what I'm going to. If you have any doubts about this lad--" He stopped, keen eyes fixed on Frank.

"He's as safe as I am, Mike. Is it likely I would take any risks about a thing of that sort with my old bunkie's tough neck inviting the hangman?" asked O'Connor quietly.

"Good enough. The kid looks stanch, and, anyhow, if you guarantee him that's enough for me." He accepted another of the ranger's cigars, puffed it to a red glow, and leaned back to smile at his friend. "Glory, but it's good to see ye, Bucky, me bye. You'll never know how a man's eyes ache to see a straight-up white man in this land of greasers. It's the God's truth I'm telling ye when I say that I haven't had a scrimmage with me hands since I came here. The only idea this forsaken country has of exchanging compliments is with a knife in the dark." He shook his flaming head regretfully at the deplorably lost condition of a country where the shillalah was unknown as a social institution.

"If I wasn't tied up with this Valdez bunch I'd get out to-morrow, and sometimes I have half a mind to pull out anyhow. If you've never been associated, me lad, with half a dozen most divilishly polite senors, each one of them watching the others out of the corner of his slant eyes for fear they are going to betray him or assassinate him first, you'll never know the joys of life in this peaceful and contented land of indolence. Life's loaded to the guards with uncertainties, so eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow you hang, or your friend will carve ye in the back with a knife, me old priest used to say, or something like it. 'Tis certain he must have had in mind the Spanish-American, my son."

"Which is why you're here, you old fraud," smiled Bucky. "You've got to grumble, of course, but you couldn't be dragged away while there's a chance of a row. Don't I know you of old, Reddy?"

"Anyway, here I am, with me neck so near to the rope it fairly aches sometimes. If you have any inclinations toward suicide, I'll be glad to introduce ye to me revolutionary friends."

"Thank you, no. The fact is that we have a little private war of our own on hand, Mike. I was thinking maybe you'd like to enlist, old filibuster."

"Is the pay good?"

"Nothing a day and find yourself," answered Bucky promptly.

"No reasonable man could ask fairer than that," agreed O'Halloran, his grin expanding. "Well, then, what's the row? Would ye like to be dictator of Chihuahua or Emperor of Mexico?"

"There's an American in the government prison here under a life sentence. He is not guilty, and he has already served fifteen years."

"He is like to serve fifteen more, if he lives that long."

"Wrong guess. I mean to get him out."

"And I'm meaning to go to Paradise some day, but will I?"

"You're going to help me get him out, Mike."

"Who told ye that, me optimistic young friend?"

"I didn't need to be told."

"Well, I'll not lift a finger, Bucky--not a finger."

"I knew you wouldn't stand to see a man like Henderson rot in a dungeon. No Irishman would."

"You needn't blarney me. I'm too old a bird to be caught with chaff. It's a dirty shame, of course, about this man Henderson, but I'm not running the criminal jurisprudence of Mexico meself."

"And I said to Webb Mackenzie: 'Mickey O'Halloran is the man to see; he'll know the best way to do it as nobody else would.' I knew I could depend on you."

"You've certainly kissed the blarney stone, Mr. O'Connor," returned the revolutionist dryly. "Well, then, what do you want me to do?"

"Nothing much. Get Henderson out and help us to get safely from the country whose reputation you black-eye so cheerfully."

"Mercy of Hiven! Bring me the moon and a handful of stars, says he, as cool as you please."

The ranger told the story of Henderson and Mackenzie's lost child in such a way that it lost nothing in the telling. O'Halloran was moved. "'Tis a damned shame about this man Henderson," he blurted out.

Bucky leaned back comfortably and waved airily his brown hand. "It's up to you," his gay, impudent eyes seemed to say.

"I don't say I won't be able to help you," conceded O'Halloran. "It happens, me bye, that you've dropped in on me just before the band begins to play." He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. "There's a shipment of pianos being brought down the line this week. The night after they arrive I'm looking for music."

"I see. The piano boxes are filled with rifles and ammunition. "

"You have a mind like a tack, Bucky. Rifles is the alias of them pianos. They'll make merry music once we get them through."

"That's all very well, but have you reckoned with the government at Mexico? Chihuahua isn't the whole country, Mickey. Suppose President Diaz takes a hand in the game and sends troops in on you?"

"He won't," answered the other, with a wink. "He's been seen. The president isn't any too friendly to that old tyrant Megales, who is now governor here. There's an election next week. The man that gets most votes will be elected, and I'm thinking, Bucky, that the man with most rifles will the most votes. Now, says Diaz, in effect, with an official wave of his hand, 'Settle your own rows, gintlemen. I don't give a damn whether Megales or Valdez is governor of Chihuahua, subject, of coorse, to the will of the people.' Then he winks at Valdez wid his off eye as much as to say: 'Go in an' win, me boy; me prayers are supporting ye. But be sure ye do nothing too illegal.' So there ye are, Bucky. If ould Megales was to wake up election morning and find that the polling-places was in our hands, his soldiers disarmed or bought over, and everything contributing smoothly to express the will of the people in electing him to take a swift hike out of Chihuahua, it is likely that he might accept the inevitable as the will of fate and make a strategic retreat to climes more healthy."

"And if in the meantime he should discover those rifles, or one of those slant-eyed senors should turn out a Benedict Arnold, what then, my friend?"

"Don't talk in that cruel way. You make me neck ache in anticipation," returned O'Halloran blithely.

"I think we'll not travel with you in public till after the election, Mr. O'Halloran," reflected Bucky aloud.

"'Twould be just as well, me son. My friends won't be overpopular with Megales if the cards fall his way."

"If you win, I suppose we may count Henderson as good as a free man?"

"It would be a pity if me pull wouldn't do a little thing like that," scoffed the conspirator genially.

"But, win or lose, I may be able to help you. We need musicians to play those pianos we're bringing in. Well, the most dependable men we can set to play some of them are the prisoners in the fortress. There's likely to be a wholesale jail delivery the night before the election. Now, it's just probable that the lads we free will fight to keep their freedom. That's why we use them. They HAVE to be true to us because, if they don't, WHICHEVER SIDE WINS back they go to jail."

"Of course. I wish I could take a hand myself. But I can't, because I'm a soldier of a friendly power. We'll get Henderson out the night before the election and leave on the late train. You'll have to arrange the program in time for us to catch that train. "

O'Halloran looked drolly at him. "I'm liking your nerve, young man. I pull the chestnuts out of the fire for yez and, likely enough, get burned. You walk off with your chestnut, and never a 'Thank ye' for poor Mickey the catspaw."

"It doesn't look like quite a square deal, does it?" laughed the ranger. "Well, we might vary the program a bit. Bucky O'Connor, Arizona ranger, can't stop and take a hand in such a game, but I don't know anything to prevent a young gipsy from Spain staying over a few days."

"If you stay, I shall," announced the boy Frank.

"You'll do nothing of the kind, seh. You'll do just as I say, according to the agreement you made with me when I let you come," was Bucky's curt answer. "We're not playing this game to please you, Master Frank."

Yet though the ranger spoke curtly, though he still tried to hold toward his comrade precisely the same attitude as he had before discovering her sex, he could not put into his words the same peremptory sting that, he had done before when he found that occasionally necessary. For no matter how severely he must seem to deal with her to avoid her own suspicions as to what he knew, as well as to keep from arousing those of others, his heart was telling a very different story all the time. He could see again the dainty grace with which she had danced for him, heard again that low voice breaking into a merry piping lilt, warmed once more to the living, elusive smile, at once so tender and mocking. He might set his will to preserve an even front to her gay charm, but it was beyond him to control the thrills that shot his pulses.

CHAPTER 8.

FIRST BLOOD!

Occasionally Alice Mackenzie met Collins on the streets of Tucson. Once she saw him at the hotel where she was staying, deep in a discussion with her father of ways and means of running down the robbers of the Limited. He did not, however, make the least attempt to push their train acquaintanceship beyond the give and take of casual greeting. Without showing himself unfriendly, he gave her no opportunity to determine how far they would go with each other. This rather piqued her, though she would probably have rebuffed him if he had presumed far. Of which probability Val Collins was very well aware.

They met one morning in front of a drug store downtown. She carried a parasol that was lilac-trimmed, which shade was also the outstanding note of her dress. She was looking her very best, and no doubt knew it. To Val her dainty freshness seemed to breathe the sweetness of spring violets.

"Good morning, Miss Mackenzie. Weather like this I'm awful glad I ain't a mummy," he told her. "The world's mighty full of beautiful things this glad day."

"Essay on the Appreciation of Nature, by Professor Collins," she smiled.

"To be continued in our next," he amended. "Won't you come in and have a sundae? You look as if you didn't know it, but the rest of us have discovered it's a right warm morning."

Looking across the little table at him over her sundae, she questioned him with innocent impudence. "I saw you and dad deep in plans Tuesday. I suppose by now you have all the train robbers safely tucked away in the penitentiary?"

"Not yet," he answered cheerfully.

"Not yet!" Her lifted eyebrows and the derisive flash beneath mocked politely his confidence. "By this time I should think they might be hunting big game in deepest Africa."

"They might be, but they're not."

"What about that investment in futurities you made on the train? The month is more than half up. Do you see any chance of realizing?"

"It looks now as if I might be a false prophet, but I feel way down deep that I won't. In this prophet's business confidence is half the stock in trade."

"Really. I'm very curious to know what it is you predicted. Was it something good?"

"Good for me," he nodded.

"Then I think you'll get it," she laughed. "I have noticed that it is the people that expect things--and then go out and take them--that inherit the earth these days. The meek have been dispossessed."

"I'm glad I have your good wishes."

"I didn't say you had, but you'll get along just as well without them,'' she answered with a cool little laugh as she rose.

"I'd like to discuss that proposition with you more at length. May I call on you some evening this week, Miss Mackenzie?"

There was a sparkle of hidden malice in her answer. "You're too late, Mr. Collins. We'll have to leave it undiscussed. I'm going to leave to-day for my uncle s ranch, the Rocking Chair."

He was distinctly disappointed, though he took care not to show it. Nevertheless, the town felt empty after her train had gone. He was glad when later in the day a message came calling him to Epitaph. It took him at least seventy-five miles nearer her.

Before he had been an hour at Epitaph the sheriff knew he had struck gold this time. Men were in town spending money lavishly, and at a rough description they answered to the ones he wanted. Into the Gold Nugget Saloon that evening dropped Val Collins, big, blond, and jaunty. He looked far less the vigorous sheriff out for business than the gregarious cowpuncher on a search for amusement.

Del Hawkes, an old-time friend of his staging days, pounced on him and dragged him to the bar, whence his glance fell genially on the roulette wheel and its devotees, wandered casually across the impassive poker and Mexican monte players, took in the enthroned musicians, who were industriously murdering "La Paloma," and came to rest for barely an instant at a distant faro table. In the curly-haired good-looking young fellow facing the dealer he saw one of the men he had come seeking. Nor did he need to look for the hand with the missing trigger finger to be sure it was York Neil--that same gay, merry-hearted York with whom he used to ride the range, changed now to a miscreant who had elected to take the short cut to wealth.

But the man beside Neil, the dark-haired, pallid fellow from whose presence something at once formidable and sinister and yet gallant seemed to breathe--the very sight of him set the mind of Collins at work busily upon a wild guess. Surely here was a worthy figure upon whom to set the name and reputation of the notorious Wolf Leroy.

Yet the sheriff's eyes rested scarce an instant before they went traveling again, for he wanted to show as yet no special interest in the object of his suspicions. The gathering was a motley one, picturesque in its diversity. For here had drifted not only the stranded derelicts of a frontier civilization, but selected types of all the turbid elements that go to make up its success. Mexican, millionaire, and miner brushed shoulders at the roulette-wheel. Chinaman and cow-puncher, Papago and plainsman, tourist and tailor, bucked the tiger side by side with a democracy found nowhere else in the world. The click of the wheel, the monotonous call of the croupier, the murmur of many voices in alien tongues, and the high-pitched jarring note of boisterous laughter, were all merged in a medley of confusion as picturesque as the scene itself.

"Business not anyways slack at the Nugget," ventured Collins, to the bartender.

"No, I don't know as 'tis. Nearly always somethin' doing in little old Epitaph," answered the public quencher of thirsts, polishing the glass top of the bar with a cloth.

"Playing with the lid off back there, ain't they?" The sheriff's nod indicated the distant faro-table.

"That's right, I guess. Only blue chips go."

"It's Wolf Leroy--that Mexican-looking fellow there," Hawkes explained in a whisper. "A bad man with the gun, they say, too. Well, him and York Neil and Scott Dailey blew in last night from their mine, up at Saguache. Gave it out he was going to break the bank, Leroy did. Backing that opinion usually comes high, but Leroy is about two thousand to the good, they say."

"Scott Dailey? Don't think I know him."

"That shorthorn in chaps and a yellow bandanna is the gentleman; him that's playing the wheel so constant. You don't miss no world-beater when you don't know Scott. He's Leroy's Man Friday. Understand they've struck it rich. Anyway, they're hitting high places while the mazuma lasts."

"I can't seem to locate their mine. What's its brand?"

"The Dalriada. Some other guy is in with them; fellow by the name of Hardman, if I recollect; just bought out a livery barn in town here."

"Queer thing, luck; strikes about as unexpected as lightning. Have another, Del?"

"Don't care if I do, Val. It always makes me thirsty to see people I like. Anything new up Tucson way?"

The band had fallen on "Manzanilla," and was rending it with variations when Collins circled round to the wheel and began playing the red. He took a place beside the bow-legged vaquero with the yellow bandanna knotted loosely round his throat. For five minutes the cow-puncher attended strictly to his bets. Then he cursed softly, and asked Collins to exchange places with him.

"This place is my hoodoo. I can't win--" The sentence died in the man's throat, became an inarticulate gurgle of dismay.

He had looked up and met the steady eyes of the sheriff, and the surprise of it had driven the blood from his heart. A revolver thrust into his face could not have shaken him more than that serene smile.

Collins took him by the arm with a jovial laugh meant to cover their retreat, and led him into one of the curtained alcove rooms. As they entered he noticed out of the corner of his eye that Leroy and Neil were still intent on their game. Not for a moment, not even while the barkeeper was answering their call for liquor, did the sheriff release Scott from the rigor of his eyes, and when the attendant drew the curtain behind him the officer let his smile take on a new meaning.

"What did I tell you, Scott?"

"Prove it," defied Scott. "Prove it--you can't prove it."

"What can't I prove?"

"Why, that I was in that " Scott stopped abruptly, and watched the smile broaden on the strong face opposite him. His dull brain had come to his rescue none too soon.

"Now, ain't it funny how people's thoughts get to running on the same thing? Last time I met up with you there you was collecting a hundred dollars and keep-the-change cents from me, and now here you are spending it. It's ce'tinly curious how both of us are remembering that little seance in the Pullman car."

Scott took refuge in a dogged silence. He was sweating fear.

"Yes, sir. It comes up right vivid before me. There was you a-trainin' your guns on me--"

"I wasn't," broke in Scott, falling into the trap.

"That's right. How come I to make such a mistake? Of cou'se you carried the sack and York Neil held the guns."

The man cursed quietly, and relapsed into silence.

"Always buy your clothes in pairs?"

The sheriff's voice showed only a pleasant interest, but the outlaw's frightened eyes were puzzled at this sudden turn.

"Wearing a bandanna same color and pattern as you did the night of our jamboree on the Limited, I see. That's mightily careless of you, ain't it?"

Instinctively a shaking hand clutched at the kerchief. "It don't cut any ice because a hold-up wears a mask made out of stuff like this "

"Did I say it was a mask he wore?" the gentle voice quizzed.

Scott, beads of perspiration on his forehead, collapsed as to his defense. He fell back sullenly to his first position: "You can't prove anything."

"Can't I?" The sheriff's smile went out like a snuffed candle. Eyes and mouth were cold and hard as chiseled marble. He leaned forward far across the table, a confident, dominating assurance painted on his face. "Can't I? Don't you bank on that. I can prove all I need to, and your friends will prove the rest. They'll be falling all over themselves to tell what they know--and Mr.Dailey will be holding the sack again, while Leroy and the rest are slipping out."

The outlaw sprang to his feet, white to the lips.

"It's a damned lie. Leroy would never--" He stopped, again just in time to bite back the confession hovering on his lips. But he had told what Collins wanted to know.

The curtain parted, and a figure darkened the doorway--a slender, lithe figure that moved on springs. Out of its sardonic, devil-may-care face gleamed malevolent eyes which rested for a moment on Dailey, before they came home to the sheriff.

"And what is it Leroy would never do?" a gibing voice demanded silkily.

Scott pulled himself together and tried to bluff, but at the look on his chief's face the words died in his throat.

Collins did not lift a finger or move an eyelash, but with the first word a wary alertness ran through him and starched his figure to rigidity. He gathered himself together for what might come.

"Well, I am waiting. What it is Leroy would never do?" The voice carried a scoff with it, the implication that his very presence had stricken conspirators dumb.

Collins offered the explanation.

"Mr. Dailey was beginning a testimonial of your virtues just as you right happily arrived in time to hear it. Perhaps he will now proceed."

But Dailey had never a word left. His blunders had been crying ones, and his chief's menacing look had warned him what to expect. The courage oozed out of his heart, for he counted himself already a dead man.

"And who are you, my friend, that make so free with Wolf Leroy's name?" It was odd how every word of the drawling sentence contrived to carry a taunt and a threat with it, strange what a deadly menace the glittering eyes shot forth.

"My name is Collins."

"Sheriff of Pica County?"

"Yes."

The eyes of the men met like rapiers, as steady and as searching as cold steel. Each of them was appraising the rare quality of his opponent in this duel to the death that was before him.

"What are you doing here? Ain't Pica County your range?"

"I've been discussing with your friend the late hold-up on the Transcontinental Pacific."

"Ah!" Leroy knew that the sheriff was serving notice on them of his purpose to run down the bandits. Swiftly his mind swept up the factors of the situation. Should he draw now and chance the result, or wait for a more certain ending? He decided to wait, moved by the consideration that even if he were victorious the lawyers were sure to draw out of the fat-brained Scott the cause of the quarrel.

"Well, that don't interest me any, though I suppose you have to explain a heap how come they to hold you up and take your gun. I'll leave you and your jelly-fish Scott to your gabfest. Then you better run back home to Tucson. We don't go much on visiting sheriffs here." He turned on his heel with an insolent laugh, and left the sheriff alone with Dailey.

The superb contempt of the man, his readiness to give the sheriff a chance to pump out of Dailey all he knew, served to warn Collins that his life was in imminent danger. On no hypothesis save one--that Leroy had already condemned them both to death in his mind--could he account for such rashness. And that the blow would fall soon, before he had time to confer with other officers, was a corollary to the first proposition.

"He'll surely kill me on sight," Scott burst out.

"Yes, he'll kill you," agreed the sheriff, "unless you move first."

"Move how?"

"Against him. Protect yourself by lining up with me. It's your only show on earth."

Dailey's eyes flashed. "Then, by thunder, I ain't taking it! I'm no coyote, to round on my pardners."

"I give it to you straight. He means murder."

Perspiration poured from the man's face. "I'll light out of the country."

The sheriff shook his head. "You'd never get away alive. Besides, I want you for holding up the Limited. The safest place for you is in jail, and that's where I'm going to put you. Drop that gun! Quick! That's right. Now, you and I are going out of this saloon by the back door. I'm going to walk beside you, and we're going to laugh and talk as if we were the best of friends, but my hand ain't straying any from the end of my gun. Get that, amigo? All right. Then we'll take a little pasear."

As Collins and his prisoner reappeared in the main lobby of the Gold Nugget, a Mexican slipped out of the back door of the gambling-house. The sheriff called Hawkes aside.

"I want you to call a hack for me, Del. Bring it round to the back door, and arrange with the driver to whip up for the depot as soon as we get in. We ought to catch that 12:20 up-train. When the hack gets here just show up in the door. If you see Leroy or Neil hanging around the door, put your hand up to your tie. If the coast is clear, just move off to the bar and order something."

"Sure," said Hawkes, and was off at once, though just a thought unsteady from his frequent libations.

Both hands of the big clock on the wall pointed to twelve when Hawkes appeared again in the doorway at the rear of the Gold Nugget. With a wink at Collins, he made straight for the cocktail he thought he needed.

"Now," said the sheriff, and immediately he and Dailey passed through the back door.

Instantly two shots rang out. Collins lurched forward to the ground, drawing his revolver as he fell. Scott, twisting from his grasp, ran in a crouch toward the alley along the shadow of the buildings. Shots spattered against the wall as his pursuers gave chase. When the Gold Nugget vomited from its rear door a rush of humanity eager to see the trouble, the noise of their footsteps was already dying in the distance.

Hawkes found his friend leaning against the back of the hack, his revolver smoking in his hand.

"For God's sake, Val!" screamed Hawkes. "Did they get you?"

"Punctured my leg. That's all. But I expect they'll get Dailey."

"How come you to go out when I signaled you to stay?"

"Signaled me to stay, why--"

Collins stopped, unwilling to blame his friend. He knew now that Hawkes, having mixed his drinks earlier in the evening, had mixed his signals later.

"Get me a horse, Del, and round up two or three of the boys. I've got to get after those fellows. They are the ones that held up the Limited last week. Find out for me what hotel they put up at here. I want their rooms searched. Send somebody round to the corrals, and let me know where they stabled their horses. If they left any papers or saddle-bags, get them for me."

Fifteen minutes later Collins was in the saddle ready for the chase, and only waiting for his volunteer posse to join him. They were just starting when a frightened Chinaman ran into the plaza with the news that there had been shooting just back of his laundry on the edge of town and that a man had been killed.

When the sheriff reached the spot, he lowered himself from the saddle and limped over to the black mass huddled against the wall in the bright moonlight. He turned the riddled body over and looked down into the face of the dead man. I was that of the outlaw, Scott Dailey. That the body had been thoroughly searched was evident, for all around him were scattered his belongings. Here an old letter and a sack of tobacco, its contents emptied on the ground; there his coat and vest, the linings of each of them ripped out and the pockets emptied. Even the boots and socks of the man had been removed, so thorough had been the search. Whatever the murderers had been looking for it was not money, since his purse, still fairly well lined with greenbacks, was found behind a cactus bush a few yards away.

"What in time were they after?" frowned Collins. "If it wasn't his money--and it sure wasn't--what was it? I ce'tainly would like to know what the Wolf wanted so blamed bad. Guess I'll not follow Mr. Leroy just now till my leg is in better shape. Maybe I had better investigate a little bit round town first."

The body was taken back to the Gold Nugget and placed on a table, pending the arrival of the undertaker. It chanced that Collins, looking absently over the crowd, glimpsed a gray felt hat that looked familiar by reason of a frayed silver band found it. Underneath the hat was a Mexican, and him the sheriff ordered to step forward.

"Where did you get that hat, Manuel?"

"My name is Jose--Jose Archuleta," corrected the olive-hued one.

"I ain't worrying about your name, son. What I want to know is where you found that hat."

"In the alley off the plaza, senor."

"All right. Chuck it up here."

"Muy bien, senor." And the dusty hat was passed from hand to hand till it reached the sheriff.

Collins ripped off the silver band and tore out the sweat-pad. It was an off chance--one in a thousand--but worth trying none the less. And a moment later he knew it was the chance that won. For sewed to the inside of the discolored sweat-pad was a little strip of silk. With his knife he carefully removed the strip, and found between it and the leather a folded fragment of paper closely covered with writing. He carried this to the light, and made it out to be a memorandum of direction of some sort. Slowly he spelled out the poorly written words:

From Y. N. took Unowhat. Went twenty yards strate for big rock. Eight feet direckly west. Fifty yards in direcksion of suthern Antelope Peke. Then eighteen to nerest cotonwood. J. H. begins hear.

Collins read the scrawl twice before an inkling of its meaning came home to him. Then in a flash his brain was lighted. It was a memorandum of the place where Dailey's share of the plunder was buried.

His confederates had known that he had it, and had risked capture to make a thorough search for the paper. That they had not found it was due only to the fact that the murdered man had lost his hat as he scurried down the streets before them.

The doctor, having arrived, examined the wound and suggested an anaesthetic. Collins laughed.

"I reckon not, doc. You round up that lead pill and I'll endure the grief without knockout drops."

While the doctor was probing for the bullet lodged in his leg, the sheriff studied the memorandum found in Dailey's hat. He found it blind, disappointing work, for there was no clearly indicated starting-point. Bit by bit he took it:

From Y. N. took Unowhat.

This was clear enough, so far as it went. It could only mean that from York Neil the writer had taken the plunder to hide. But--WHERE did he take it? From what point? A starting-point must be found somewhere, or the memorandum was of no use. Probably only Neil could supply the needed information, now that Dailey was dead.

Went twenty yards strate for big rock. Eight feet direckly west. Fifty yards in direcksion of suthern Antelope Peke. Then eighteen to nerest cotonwood.

All this was plain enough, but the last sentence was the puzzler.

J. H. begins hear.

Was J. H. a person? If so, what did he begin. If Dailey had buried his plunder, what had J. H. left to do?

But had he buried it? Collins smiled. It was not likely he had handed it over to anybody else to hide for him. And yet--

He clapped his hand down on his knee. "By the jumping California frog, I've got it!" he told himself. "They hid the bulk of what they got from the Limited all together. Went out in a bunch to hide it. Blind-folded each other, and took turn about blinding up the trail. No one of them can go get the loot without the rest. When they want it, every one of these memoranda must be Johnny-on-the-spot before they can dig up the mazuma. No wonder Wolf Leroy searched so thorough for this bit of paper. I'll bet a stack of blue chips against Wolf's chance of heaven that he's the sorest train-robber right this moment that ever punctured a car-window."

Collins laughed softly, nor had the smile died out of his eyes when Hawkes came into the room with information to the point. He had made a round of the corrals, and discovered that the outlaws' horses had been put up at Jay Hardman's place, a tumble-down feed-station on the edge of town.

"Jay didn't take kindly to my questions," Hawkes explained, "but after a little rock-me-to-sleep-mother talk I soothed him down some, and cut the trail of Wolf Leroy and his partners. The old man give me several specimens of langwidge unwashed and uncombed when I told him Wolf and York was outlaws and train-robbers. Didn't believe a word of it, he said. 'Twas just like the fool officers to jump an innocent party. I told Jay to keep his shirt on--he could turn his wolf lose when they framed up that he was in it. Well, sir! I plumb thought for a moment he was going to draw on me when I said that. Say he must be the fellow that's in on that mine, with Leroy and York Neil. He's a big, long-haired guy."

Collins' eyes narrowed to slits, as they always did when he was thinking intensely. Were their suspicions of the showman about to be justified? Did Jay Hardman's interest in Leroy have its source merely in their being birds of a feather, or was there a more direct community of lawlessness between them? Was he a member of Wolf Leroy's murderous gang? Three men had joined in the chase of Dailey, but the tracks had told him that only two horses had galloped from the scene of the murder into the night. The inference left to draw was that a local accomplice had joined them in the chase of Scott, and had slipped back home after the deed had been finished.

What more likely than that Hardman had been this accomplice? Hawkes said he was a big long-haired fellow. So was the man that had held up the engineer of the Limited. He was--"J. H. begins hear." Like a flash the ill-written scrawl jumped to his sight. "J. H." was Jay Hardman. What luck!

The doctor finished his work, and Collins tested his leg gingerly. "Del, I'm going over to have a little talk with the old man. Want to go along?"

"You bet I do, Val"--from Del Hawkes.

"You mustn't walk on that leg for a week or two yet, Mr. Collins," the doctor explained, shaking his head.

"That so, doctor? And it nothing but a nice clean flesh-wound! Sho! I've a deal more confidence in you than that. Ready, Del?"

"It's at your risk then, Mr. Collins."

"Sure." The sheriff smiled. "I'm living at my own risk, doctor. But I'd a heap rather be alive than daid, and take all the risk that's coming, too. But since you make a point of it, I'll do most of my walking on a bronco's back."

They found Mr. Hardman just emerging from the stable with a saddle-pony when they rode into the corral. At a word from Collins, Hawkes took the precaution to close the corral gate.

The fellow held a wary position on the farther side of his horse, the while he ripped out a raucous string of invectives.

"Real fluent, ain't he?" murmured Hawkes, as he began to circle round to flank the enemy.

"Stay right there, Del Hawkes. Move, you redhaided son of a brand blotter, and I'll pump holes in you!" A rifle leveled across the saddle emphasized his sentiments.

"Plumb hospitable," grinned Hawkes, coming promptly to a halt.

Collins rode slowly forward, his hand on the butt of the revolver that still lay in its scabbard. The Winchester covered every step of his progress, but he neither hastened nor faltered, though he knew his life hung in the balance. If his steely blue eyes had released for one moment the wolfish ones of the villain, if he had hesitated or hurried, he would have been shot through the head.

But the eyes of a brave man are the king of weapons. Hardman's fingers itched at the trigger he had not the courage to pull. For such an unflawed nerve he knew himself no match.

"Keep back," he screamed. "Damn it, another step and I'll fire!"

But he did not fire, though Collins rode up to him, dismounted, and threw the end of the rifle carelessly from him.

"Don't be rash, Hardman. I've come here to put you under arrest for robbing the T. P. Limited, and I'm going to do it."

The indolent, contemptuous drawl, so free of even a suggestion of the strain the sheriff must have been under, completed his victory. The fellow lowered his rifle with a peevish oath.

"You're barkin' up the wrong tree, Mr. Collins."

"I guess not," retorted the sheriff easily. "Del, you better relieve Mr. Hardman of his ballast. He ain't really fit to be trusted with a weapon, and him so excitable. That Winchester came awful near going off, friend. You don't want to be so careless when you're playing with firearms. It's a habit that's liable to get you into trouble."

Collins had not shaved death so closely without feeling a reaction of boyish gaiety at his adventure. It bubbled up in his talk like effervescing soda.

"Now we'll go into a committee of the whole, gentlemen, adjourn to the stable, and have a little game of 'Button, button, who's got the button?' You first, Mr. Hardman. If you'll kindly shuck your coat and vest, we'll begin button-hunting."

They diligently searched the miscreant without hiding anything pertaining to "J. H. begins hear."

"He's bound to have it somewhere," asseverated Collins. "It don't stand to reason he was making his getaway without that paper. We got to be more thorough, Del."

Hawkes, under the direction of his friend, ripped up linings and tore away pockets from clothing. The saddle on the bronco and the saddle-blankets were also torn to pieces in vain.

Finally Hawkes scratched his poll and looked down on the wreckage. "I hate to admit it, Val, but the old fox has got us beat; it ain't on his person."

"Not unless he's got it under his skin," agreed Collins, with a grin.

"Maybe he ate it. Think we better operate and find out?"

An idea hit the sheriff. He walked up to Hardman and ordered him to open his mouth.

The jaws set like a vise.

Collins poked his revolver against the closed mouth. "Swear for us, old bird. Get a move on you."

The mouth opened, and Collins inserted two fingers. When he withdrew them they brought a set of false teeth. Under the plate was a tiny rubber bag that stuck to it. Inside the bag was a paper. And on it was written four lines in Spanish. Those lines told what he wanted to know. They, too, were part of a direction for finding hidden treasure.

The sheriff wired at once to Bucky, in Chihuahua. Translated into plain English, his cipher dispatch meant: "Come home at once. Trail getting red hot."

But Bucky did not come. As it happened, that young man had other fish to fry.

CHAPTER 9.

"ADORE HAS ONLY ONE D."

After all, adventures are to the adventurous. In this prosaic twentieth century the Land of Romance still beckons to eager eyes and gallant hearts. The rutted money-grabber may deny till he is a nerve-racked counting-machine, but youth, even to the end of time, will laugh to scorn his pessimism and venture with elastic heel where danger and mystery offer their dubious hazards.

So it was that Bucky and his little comrade found nothing of dulness in the mission to which they had devoted themselves. In their task of winning freedom for the American immured in the Chihuahua dungeon they already found themselves in the heart of a web of intrigue, the stakes of which were so high as to carry life and death with them in the balance. But for them the sun shone brightly. It was enough that they played the game and shared the risks together. The jocund morning was in their hearts, and brought with it an augury of success based on nothing so humdrum or tangible as reason.

O'Connor carried with him to the grim fortress not only his permit for an inspection, but also a note from O'Halloran that was even more potent in effect. For Colonel Ferdinand Gabilonda, warden of the prison, had a shrewd suspicion that a plot was under way to overthrow the unpopular administration of Megales, and though he was an office-holder under the present government he had no objection to ingratiating himself with the opposition, providing it could be done without compromising himself openly. In other words, the warden was sitting on the fence waiting to see which way the cat would jump. If the insurgents proved the stronger party, he meant to throw up his hat and shout "Viva Valdez." On the other hand, if the government party crushed them he would show himself fussily active in behalf of Megales. Just now he was exerting all his diplomacy to maintain a pleasant relationship with both. Since it was entirely possible that the big Irishman O'Halloran might be the man on horseback within a very few days, the colonel was all suave words and honeyed smiles to his friend the ranger.

Indeed he did him the unusual honor of a personally conducted inspection. Gabilonda was a fat little man, with a soft, purring voice and a pompous manner. He gushed with the courteous volubility of his nation, explaining with great gusto this and that detail of the work. Bucky gave him outwardly a deferent ear, but his alert mind and eyes were scanning the prisoners they saw. The ranger was trying to find in one of these scowling, defiant faces some resemblance to the picture his mind had made of Henderson.

But Bucky looked in vain. If the man he wanted was among these he had changed beyond recognition. In the end he was forced to ask Gabilonda plainly if he would not take him to see David Henderson, as he knew a man in Arizona who was an old friend of his, and he would like to be able to tell him that he had seen his friend.

Henderson was breaking stone when O'Connor got his first glimpse of him. He continued to swing his hammer listlessly, without looking up, when the door opened to let in the warden and his guests. But something in the ranger's steady gaze drew his eyes. They were dull eyes, and sullen, but when he saw that Bucky was an American, the fire of intelligence flashed into them.

"May I speak to him?" asked O'Connor.

"It is against the rules, senor, but if you will be brief--" The colonel shrugged, and turned his back to them, in order not to see. It must be said for Gabilonda that his capacity for blinking what he did not think it judicious to see was enormous.

"You are David Henderson, are you not?" The ranger asked, in a low voice.

Surprise filtered into the dull eyes. "That was my name," the man answered bitterly. "I have a number now."

"I come from Webb Mackenzie to get you out of this," the ranger said.

The man's eyes were no longer dull now, but flaming with hatred. "Curse him, I'll take nothing from his hands. For fifteen years he has let me rot in hell without lifting a hand for me."

"He thought you dead. It can all be explained. It was only last week that the mystery of your disappearance was solved."

"Then why didn't he come himself? It was to save his little girl I got myself into this place. If I had been in his shoes I would have come if I'd had to crawl on my hands and knees."

"He doesn't know yet you are here. I wrote him simply that I knew where you were, and then I came at once." Bucky glanced round warily at the fat colonel gazing placidly out of the barred window. "I mean to rescue you, and I knew if he were here his impulsiveness would ruin everything."

"Do you mean it? For God's sake! don't lie to me. If there's no hope for me, don't say there is." The prisoner's voice shook and his hands trembled. He was only the husk of the man he had been, but it did Bucky's heart good to see that the germ of life was still in him. Back in Arizona, on the Rocking Chair Ranch, with the free winds of the plains beating on his face, he would pick up again the old strands of his broken life, would again learn to love the lowing of cattle and the early morning call of the hooter to his mate.

"I mean it. As sure as I stand here I'll get you out, or, if I don't, Webb Mackenzie will. We're calling the matter to the attention of the United States Government, but we are not going to wait till that time to free you. Keep up your courage, man. It is only for a little time now."

Tears leaped to the prisoner's eyes. He had been a game man in the dead years that were past, none gamer in Texas, and he could still face his jailers with an impassive face; but this first kindly word from his native land in fifteen years to the man buried alive touched the fount of his emotions. He turned away and leaned against the grating of his cell, his head resting on his forearm. "My God! man, you don't know what it means to me. Sometimes I think I shall go mad and rave. After all these years But I know you'll fail--It's too good to be true," he finished quietly.

"I'll not fail, though I may be delayed. But I can't say more. Gabilonda is coming back. Next time I see you it will be to take you out to freedom. Think of that always, and believe it."

Gabilonda bowed urbanely. "If the senor has seen all he cares to of this department we will return to the office," he suggested suavely.

"Certainly, colonel. I can't appreciate too much your kindness in allowing me to study your system so carefully."

"Any friend of my friend the Senor O'Halloran is cherished deeply in my heart," came back the smiling colonel, with a wave of his plump, soft hand.

"I am honored, sir, to receive such consideration at the hands of so distinguished a soldier as Colonel Gabilonda," bowed Bucky gravely, in his turn, with the most flowery Spanish he could muster.

There was another half-hour of the mutual exchange of compliments before O'Connor could get away. Alphonse and Gaston were fairly outdone, for the Arizonian, with a smile hidden deep behind the solemnity of his blue eyes, gave as good as he got. When he was at last fairly in the safety of his own rooms he gave way to limp laughter while describing to his little friend that most ceremonious parting.

"He pressed me to his manly bay window, Curly, and allowed he was plumb tickled to death to have met me. Says I, coming back equal strong, 'twas the most glorious day of my life."

"Oh, I know YOU," answered young Hardman, with a smile.

"A friend of his friend O'Halloran--"

"Mr. O'Halloran was here while you were away. He seemed very anxious to see you; said he would call again in an hour. I think it must be important."

Came at that instant O'Halloran's ungentle knock, on the heels of which his red head came through the open door.

"You're the very lad I'm wanting to see, Bucky," he announced, and followed this declaration by locking all the doors and beckoning him to the center of the room.

"Is that tough neck of yours aching again, Reddy?" inquired his friend whimsically.

"It is that, me bye. There's the very divil to pay," he whispered.

"Cough it out, Mike."

"That tyrant Megales is onto our game. Somebody's leaked, or else he has a spy in our councils--as we have in his, the ould scoundrel."

"I see. Your spy has told you that his spy has reported to him--"

"That the guns are to be brought in to-night. He has sent out a guard to bring them in safely to him. If he gets them, our game is up, me son, and you can bet your last nickle on that."

"If he gets them! Is there a chance for us?"

"Glory be! there is. You see, he doesn't know that we know what he has done. For that reason he sent out only a guard of forty men. If he sent more we would suspect what he was doing, ye see. That is the way the old fox reasoned. But forty--they were able to slip out of the city on last night's train in civilian's clothes and their arms in a couple of coffins."

"Why didn't he send a couple of hundred men openly, and at the same time arrest you all?"

"That doesn't suit his book at all. For one thing, he probably doesn't know all of us, and he doesn't want to bag half of us and throw the rest into immediate rebellion. It's his play not to force the issue until after the election, Bucky. He controls all the election machinery and will have himself declared reelected, the old scamp, notwithstanding that he's the most unpopular man in the State. To precipitate trouble now would be just foolishness, he argues. So he'll just capture our arms, and after the election give me and my friends quiet hell. Nothing public, you know--just unfortunate assassinations that he will regret exceedingly, me bye. But I have never yit been assassinated, and, on principle, I object to being trated so. It's very destructive to a man's future usefulness."

"And so?" laughed the ranger.

"And so we've arranged to take a few lads up the line and have a train hold-up. I'm the robber-in-chief. Would ye like to be second in command of the lawless ruffians, me son?"

Bucky met his twinkling eye gaily. "Mr. O'Connor is debarred from taking part in such an outrageous affair by international etiquette, but he knows a gypsy lad would be right glad to join, I reckon."

"Bully for him. If you'll kindly have him here I'll come around and collect him this evening at eight-thirty sharp."

"I hope you'll provide a pleasant entertainment for him."

"We'll do our best," grinned the revolutionist. "Music provided by Megales' crack military band. A lively and enjoyable occasion guaranteed to all who attend. Your friend will meet some of the smartest officers in the State. It promises to be a most sumptuous affair."

"Then my friend accepts with pleasure."

After the conspirator had gone, Frank spoke up. "You wouldn't go away with him and leave me here alone, would you?"

"I ce'tainly shouldn't take you with me, kid. I don't want my little friend all shot up by greasers."

"If you're going, I want to go, too. Supposing-- if anything were to happen to you, what could I do?"

"Leave the country by the next train. Those are the orders."

"You're always talking about a square deal. Do you think that is one? I might say that I don't want YOU shot. You don't care anything about my feelings." The soft voice had a little break in it that Bucky loved.

He walked across to his partner, that rare, tender smile of his in his eyes. "If I'm always talking about a square deal I reckon I have got to give you one. Now, what would you think a square deal, Curly? Would it be square for me to let my friend O'Halloran stand all the risk of this and then me take the reward when Henderson has been freed by him? Would that be your notion of the right telling?"

"I didn't say that, though I don't see why you have to mix yourself up in his troubles. Why should you go out and kill these soldiers that haven't injured you?"

"I'm not going to kill any of them," he smiled "Besides, that isn't the way I look at it. This fellow Megales is a despot. He has made out to steal the liberty of the people from them. President Diaz can't interfere because the old rascal governor does everything with that smooth, oily way of his under cover of law. It's up to some of the people to put up a good strong kick for themselves. I ain't a bit sorry to give them the loan of my foot while they are doing it."

"Then can't I go, too? I don't want to be left alone here and you away fighting."

Bucky's eyes gleamed. He dared an experiment in an indifferent drawl. "Whyfor don't you want to stay alone, kid? Are you afraid for yourself or for me?"

His partner's cheeks were patched with roses. Shyly the long, thick lashes lifted and let the big brown eyes meet his blue ones. "Maybe I'm afraid for both of us."

"Would you care if one of their pills happened along in the scrimmage and put me out of business? Honest, would you?"

"You haven't any right to talk that way. It's cruel," was the reply that burst from the pretty lips, and he noticed that at his suggestion the roses had died from soft cheeks.

"Well, I won't talk that way any more, little partner," he answered gaily, taking the small hand in his. "For reasons good. I'm fire-proof. The Mexican bullet hasn't been cast yet that can find Bucky O'Connor's heart."

"But you mustn't think that, either, and be reckless," was the next injunction. The shy laugh rang like music. "That's why I want to go along, to see that you behave yourself properly."

"Oh, I'll behave," he laughed; for the young man found it very easy to be happy when those sweet eyes were showing concern for him. "I've got several good reasons why I don't aim to get bumped off just yet. Heaps of first-rate reasons. I'll tell you what some of them are one of these days," he dared to add.

"You had better tell me now." The gaze that fell before his steady eyes was both shy and eager.

"No, I reckon I'll wait, Curly," he answered, turning away with a long breath. "Well, we better go out and get some grub, tortillas and frijoles, don't you think?"

"Just as you like." The lad's breath was coming a little fast. They had been on the edge of some moment of intimacy that Bucky's partner both longed for and dreaded. "But you have not told me yet whether I can go with you."

"You can't. I'm sorry. I'd like first-rate to take you, if you want to go, but I can't do it. I hate to disappoint you if you're set on it, but I've got to, kid. Anything else you want I'll be glad to do."

He added this last because Frank looked so broken. hearted about it.

"Very well." Swift as a flash came the demand: "Tell me these heaps of first-rate reasons you were mentioning just now."

Under the sun-tan he flushed. "I reckon I'll have to make another exception, Curly. Those reasons ain't ripe yet for telling."

"Then if you are--if anything happens--I'll never know them. And you promised you would tell me--you, who pretend to hate a liar so," she scoffed.

"Would it do if I wrote those reasons and left them in a sealed envelope? Then in case anything happened you could open it and satisfy that robust curiosity of yours." He recognized that he had trapped himself, and he was making the best bargain left him.

"You may write them, if you like. But I'm going to open the letter, anyway. The reasons belong to me now. You promised."

"I'll make a new deal with you, then," he smiled. "I'll take awful good care of myself to-night if you'll promise not to open the envelope for two weeks unless--well, unless that something happens that we ain't expecting."

"Call it a week, and it's a bargain."

"Better say when we're back across the line again. That may be inside of three days, if everything goes well," he threw in as a bait.

"Done. I'm to open the letter when we cross the line into Texas."

Bucky shook the little hand that was offered him and wished mightily that he had the right to celebrate with more fervent demonstrations.

That afternoon the ranger wrote with a good deal of labor the letter he had promised. It appeared to be a difficult thing for him to deliver himself even on paper of those good and sufficient reasons. He made and destroyed no less than half a dozen openings before at last he was fairly off. Meanwhile, Master Frank, busy over some alterations in Bucky's gypsy suit, took pleasure in deriding with that sweet voice the harassed correspondent.

"It might be a love letter from the pains you take with it. Would you like me to come and help you with it?" the sewer railed merrily.

"I ain't used to letter writing much," apologized the scribe, wiping his bedewed brow, which had suddenly gone a shade more flushed.

"Apparently not. I expect, from the time you give it, the result will be a literary classic."

"Don't you disturb me, Curly, or I'll never get done," implored the tortured ranger.

"You're doing well. You've only been an hour and a half on six lines," the tormentor mocked.

Womanlike, she was quite at her ease, since he was very far indeed from being at his. Yet she had a problem of her own she was trying to decide.

Had he discovered, after all, that she was not a boy, and had his reasons--the ones he was trying to tell in that disturbing letter--anything to do with that discovery? Such a theory accounted for several things she had noticed in him of late. There was an added respect in his manner for her. He never now invaded the room recognized as hers without a specific invitation, nor did he seem any longer to chafe at the little personal marks of fastidiousness that had at first appeared to annoy him. To be sure, he ordered her about, just as he had been in the habit of doing at first. But it was conceivable that this might be a generous blind to cover up his knowledge of her sex.

"How do you spell guessed--one s or two?" he presently asked, out of the throes of composition.

She spelled it, and added demurely: "Adore has only one d"

Bucky laid down his pen and pretended to glare at him. "You young rascal, what do you mean by bothering me like that? Act like that, you young imp, and you'll never grow up to be a gentleman."

Their glances caught and held, the minds of each of them busy over that last prediction of his. For one long instant masks were off and both were trying to find an answer to a question in the eyes opposite. Then voluntarily each gaze released the other in a confusion of sweet shame. For the beating of a lash, soul had looked into naked soul, all disguise stripped from them. She knew that he knew. Yet in that instant when his secret was surprised from him another secret, sweeter than the morning song of birds, sang its way into both their hearts.

CHAPTER 10.

THE HOLD-UP OF THE M. C. P. FLYER

Agua Negra is twelve miles from Chihuahua as the crow flies, but if one goes by rail one twists round thirty sinuous miles of rough mountainous country in the descent from the pass to the capital of the State. The ten men who slipped singly or by twos out of the city in the darkness that evening and met at the rendezvous of the Santa Dolorosa mission did not travel by rail to the pass, but followed a horseback trail which was not more than half the distance.

At the mission O'Halloran and his friend found gathered half a dozen Mexicans, one or two of them tough old campaigners, the rest young fellows eager for the excitement of their first active service.

"Is Juan Valdez here yet?" asked O'Halloran, peering around in the gloom.

"Not yet; nor Manuel Garcia," answered a young fellow.

Bucky was introduced to those present under the name of Alessandro Perdoza, and presently also to the two missing members of the party who arrived together a few moments later. Juan Valdez was the son of the candidate who was opposing the reelection of Megales, and Manuel Garcia was his bosom friend, and the young man to whom his sister was engaged. They were both excellent types of the honorable aristocratic young Mexican. They were lightly built, swarthy your men, possessed of that perfect grace and courtesy which can be found at its best in the Spanish races. Gay, handsome young cavaliers as they were, filled with the pride of family, Bucky thought them almost ideal companions for such a harebrained adventure as this. The ranger was a social democrat to the marrow. He had breathed in with the Southwest breezes the conviction that every man must stand on his own bottom, regardless of adventitious circumstance, but he was not fool enough to think all men equal. It had been his experience that some men, by grace of the strength in them, were born to be masters and others by their weakness to be servants. He knew that the best any civilization can offer a man is a chance. Given that, it is up to every man to find his own niche.

But though he had no sense of deference to what is known as good blood, Bucky had too much horse sense to resent the careless, half-indifferent greeting which these two young sprouts of aristocracy bestowed on the rest of the party. He understood that it was the natural product of their education and of that of the others.

"Are we all here?" asked Garcia.

"All here," returned O'Halloran briskly. "Rodrigo will guide the party. I ride next with Senor Garcia. Perdoza and Senor Valdez will bring up the rear. Forward, gentlemen, and may the Holy Virgin bring a happy termination to our adventure." He spoke in Mexican, as they all did, though for the next two hours conversation was largely suspended, owing to the difficulty of the precipitous trail they were following.

Coming to a bit of the road where they were able to ride two abreast, O'Connor made comment on the smallness of their number. "O'Halloran must have a good deal of confidence in his men. Forty to ten is rather heavy odds, is it not, senor?"

"There are six more to join us at the pass. The wagons have gone round by the road and the drivers will assist in the attack."

"Of course it is all in the surprise. I have seen three men hold up a train with five hundred people on it. Once I knew a gang to stick up a treasure train with three heavily armed guards protecting the gold. They got them right, with the drop on them, and it was good-by to the mazuma."

"Yes, if they have had any warning or if our plans slip a cog anywhere we shall be repulsed to a certainty."

By the light of a moon struggling out from behind rolling clouds Bucky read eleven-thirty on his watch when the party reached Agua Negra. It was still thirty minutes before the Flyer was due, and O'Halloran disposed his forces with explicit directions as to the course to be followed by each detail. Very rapidly he sketched his orders as to the present disposition of the wagons and the groups of attackers. When the train slowed down to remove the obstacles they placed on the track, Garcia and another young man were to command parties covering the train from both sides, while Rodrigo and one of the drivers were to cover the engineer and the fireman.

O'Halloran himself, with Bucky and young Valdez, rode rapidly in the direction of the approaching train. At Concho the engine would take on water for the last stiff climb of the ascent, and here he meant to board the train unnoticed, just as it was pulling out, in order to emphasize the surprise at the proper moment and render resistance useless. If the troopers were all together in the car next the one with the boxes of rifles, he calculated that they might perhaps be taken unawares so sharply as to render bloodshed unnecessary.

Concho was two miles from the summit, and when the three men galloped down to the little station the headlight of the approaching engine was already visible. They tied their horses in the mesquit and lurked in the thick brush until the engine had taken water and the signal for the start was given Then O'Halloran and Bucky slipped across in the darkness to the train and swung themselves to the platform of the last car. To Valdez, very much against his will, had fallen the task of taking the horses back to Agua Negra Since the track wound round the side of the mountain in such a way as to cover five miles in making the summit from Concho, the young Mexican had ample time to get back to the scene of action before the train arrived.

The big Irishman and Bucky rested quietly in the shadows of the back platform for some time. Then they entered the last car, passed through it, and on to the next. In the sleeper they met the conductor, but O'Halloran quietly paid their fares and passed forward. As they had hoped, the whole detail of forty men were in a special car next to the one containing the arms consigned to Michael O'Halloran, importer of pianos.

Lieutenant Chaves, in charge of the detail sent out to see that the rifles reached Governor Megales instead of the men who had paid for them, was finding his assignment exceedingly uninteresting. There was at Chihuahua a certain black-eyed dona with whom he had expected to enjoy a pleasant evening's flirtation. It was confounded luck that it had fallen to him to take charge of the escort for the guns. He had endured in consequence an unpleasant day of dusty travel and many hours of boredom through the evening. Now he was cross and sleepy, which latter might also be said of the soldiers in general.

He was connected with a certain Arizona outfit which of late had been making money very rapidly. If one more coup like the last could be pulled off safely by his friend Wolf Leroy he would resign from the army and settle down. It would then no longer be necessary to bore himself with such details as this.

There was, of course, no necessity for alertness in his present assignment. The opposition was scarcely mad enough to attempt taking the guns from forty armed men. Chaves devoutly hoped they would, in order that he might get a little glory, at least, out of the affair. But of course such an expectation would be ridiculous. No, the journey would continue to be humdrum to the end, he was wearily assured of that, and consequently attempted to steal a half hour's sleep while propped against a window with his feet in the seat opposite.

The gallant lieutenant was awakened by a cessation of the drumming of the wheels. Opening his eyes, he saw that the train was no longer in motion. He also saw--and his consciousness of that fact was much more acute--the rim of a revolver about six inches from his forehead. Behind the revolver was a man, a young Spanish gypsy, and he was offering the officer very good advice.

"Don't move, sir. No cause for being uneasy. Just sit quiet and everything will be serene. No, I wouldn't reach for that revolver, if I were you."

Chaves cast a hurried eye down the car, and at the end of it beheld the huge Irishman, O'Halloran, dominating the situation with a pair of revolvers. Chaves' lambs were ranged on either side of the car, their hands in the air. Back came the lieutenant's gaze to the impassive face in front of him. Taken by and large, it did not seem an auspicious moment for garnering glory. He decided to take the advice bestowed on him.

"Better put your hands up and vote with your men. Then you won't be tempted to play with your gun and commit suicide. That's right, sir. I'll relieve you of it if you don't object."

Since the lieutenant had no objections to offer, the smiling gypsy possessed himself of the revolver. At the same instant two more men appeared at the end of the car. One of them was Juan Valdez and another one of the mule-skinners. Simultaneously with their entrance rang out a most disconcerting fusillade of small arms in the darkness without. Megales' military band, as O'Halloran had facetiously dubbed them to the ranger, arrived at the impression that there were about a thousand insurgents encompassing the train. Chaves choked with rage, but the rest of the command yielded to the situation very tranquilly, with no desire to offer themselves as targets to this crackling explosion of Colts. Muy bien! After all, Valdez was a better man to serve than the fox Megales.

Swiftly Valdez and the wagon driver passed down the car and gathered the weapons from the seats of the troopers. Raising a window, they passed them out to their friends outside. Meanwhile, the sound of an axe could be heard battering at the door of the next car, and presently the crash of splintering wood announced that an entrance had been forced.

"Breaking furniture, I reckon," drawled Bucky, in English, for the moment forgetful of the part he was playing. "I hope they'll be all right careful of them pianos and not mishandle them so they'll get out of tune."

"So, senor, you are American," said Chaves, in English, with a sinister smile.

O'Connor shrugged, answering in Spanish: "I am Romany. Who shall say, whether American, or Spanish, or Bohemian? All nations call to me, but none claim me, senor."

The lieutenant continued to smile his meaning grin. "Yet you are American," he persisted.

"Oh, as you please. I am what you will, lieutenant."

"You speak the English like a native."

"You are complimentary."

Chaves lifted his eyebrows. "For believing that you are in costume, that you are wearing a disguise, Mr. American?"

Bucky laughed outright, and offered a gay retort. "Believe me, lieutenant, I am no more disguised as a gypsy than you are as a soldier."

The Mexican officer flushed with anger at the suggestion of contempt in the careless voice. His generalship was discredited. He had been outwitted and made to yield without a blow. But to have it flung in his teeth with such a debonair insolence threw him into a fury.

"If you and I ever meet on equal terms, senor, God pity you," he ground out between his set jaws.

Bucky bowed, answering the furious anger in the man's face as much as his words. "I shall try to be careful not to offer myself a sheath for a knife some dark night," he scoffed.

A whistle blew, and then again. The revolver of Bucky rang out almost on the same instant as those of O'Halloran. Under cover of the smoke they slipped out of the car just as Rodrigo leaped down from the cab of the engine. Slowly the train began to back down the incline in the same direction from which it had come. The orders given the engineer were to move back at a snail's pace until he reached Concho again. There he was to remain for two hours. That Chaves would submit to this O'Halloran did not for a moment suspect.

But the track would be kept obstructed till six o'clock in the morning, and a sufficient guard would wait in the underbrush to see that the right of way was not cleared. In the meantime the wagons would be pushing toward Chihuahua as fast as they could be hurried, and the rest of the riders would guard them till they separated on the outskirts of the town and slipped quietly in. In order to forestall any telegraphic communication between Lieutenant Chaves and his superiors in the city, the wires had been cut. On the face of it, the guns seemed to be safe. Only one thing had O'Halloran forgotten. Eight miles across the hills from Concho ran the line of the Chihuahua Northern.

CHAPTER 11.

"STONE WALLS DO NOT A PRISON MAKE."

The two young Spanish aristocrats rode in advance of the convoy on the return trip, while O'Halloran and Bucky brought up the rear. The roads were too rough to permit of rapid travel, but the teams were pushed as fast as it could safely be done in the dark. It was necessary to get into the city before daybreak, and also before word reached Megales of the coup his enemies had made. O'Halloran calculated that this could be done, but he did not want to run his margin of time too fine.

"When the governor finds we have recaptured the arms, will he not have all your leaders arrested today and thrown into the prison?" asked the ranger.

"He will--if he can lay hands on them. But he had better catch his hare before he cooks it. I'm thinking that none of us will be at home to-day when his men come with a polite invitation to go along with them."

"Then he'll spend all day strengthening his position. With this warning he will be a fool if he can't make himself secure before night, when the army is on his side."

"Oh, the army is on his side, is it? Now, what would you say if most of the officers were ready to come over to us as soon as we declare ourselves? And ye speak of strengthening his position. The beauty of his position, me lad, from our point of view, is that he doesn't know his weak places. He'll be the most undeceived man in the State when the test comes--unless something goes wrong."

"When do you propose to attack the prison?"

"To-night. To-morrow is election day, and we want all the byes we can on hand to help us out."

"Do you expect to throw the prison doors wide open--let every scoundrel in Chihuahua loose on the public."

"We couldn't do that, since half of them are loose already," retorted O'Halloran dryly. "And as for the rest--we expect to make a selection, me son, to weed out a few choice ruffians and keep them behind the bars. But if ye know anything about the prisons of this country, you're informed, sir, that half the poor fellows behind bars don't belong there so much as the folk that put them there. I'm Irish, as ye are yourself, and it's me instinct to fight for the under dog. Why shouldn't the lads rotting behind those walls have another chance at the game? By the mother of Moses! they shall, if Mike O'Halloran has anything to say about it."

"You ce'tainly conduct your lawful elections in a beautifully lawless way," grinned the ranger.

"And why not? Isn't the law made for man?"

"For which man--Megales?"

"In order to give the greatest liberty to each individual man. But here comes young Valdez riding back as if he were in a bit of a hurry."

The filibuster rode forward and talked with the young man for a few minutes in a low voice. When he rejoined Bucky he nodded his head toward the young man, who was again headed for the front of the column. "There's the best lad in the State of Chihuahua. He's a Mexican, all right, but he has as much sense as a white man. He doesn't mix issues. Now, the lad's in love with Carmencita Megales, the prettiest black-eyed lass in Mexico, and, by the same token, so is our friend Chaves, who just gave us the guns a little while ago. But Valdez is a man from the heel of him to the head. Miss Carmencita has her nose in the air because Juan doesn't snuggle up to ould Megales and flatter him the same way young Chaves does. So the lad is persona non grata at court with the lady, and that tin soldier who gave up the guns without a blow gets the lady's smiles. But it's my opinion that, for all her haughty ways, miss would rather have our honest fighting lad than a roomful of the imitation toy kind."

A couple of miles from the outskirts of the city the wagons separated, and each was driven to the assigned place for the hiding of the rifles till night. At the edge of the town Bucky made arrangements to join his friend again at the monument in the centre of the plaza within fifteen minutes. He was to bring his little partner with him, and O'Halloran was to take them to a place where they might lie in hiding till the time set for the rising.

"I would go with ye, but I want to take charge of the unloading. Don't lose any time, lad, for as soon as Megales learns of what has happened his fellows will scour the town for every mother's son of us. Of course you have been under surveillance, and it's likely he'll try to bag you with the rest of us. It was a great piece of foolishness me forgetting about the line of the Chihuahua Northern and its telegraph. But there's a chance Chaves has forgot, too. Anyway, get back as soon as you can; after we're hidden, it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack to put his fat finger on us."

Bucky went singing up the stairway of the hotel to his room. He was keen to get back to his little friend after the hazards of the night, eager to see the brown eyes light up with joy at sight of him and to hear the soft voice with the trailing inflection drawl out its shy questions. So he took the stairs three at a time, with a song on his lips and in his heart.

"'Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone My dark Rosaleen! My own Rosaleen! 'Tis you shall have the golden throne, 'Tis you shall reign, and reign alone My dark Rosaleen!"

O'Connor, somewhat out of breath, was humming the last line when he passed through the gypsy apartments and opened his own door, to meet one of the surprises of his life. Yet he finished the verse, though he was looking down the barrels of two revolvers in the hands of a pair of troopers, and though Lieutenant Chaves, very much at his ease, sat on the table dangling his feet.

Bucky's sardonic laughter rang out gayly. "I ce'tainly didn't expect to meet you here, lieutenant. May I ask if you have wings?"

"Not exactly, senor. But it is quite possible you may have before twenty-four hours," came the swift retort.

"Interesting, if true," remarked the ranger carelessly, tossing his gloves on the bed. "And may I ask to what I am indebted for the pleasure of a visit from you?"

"I am returning your call, sir, and at the very earliest opportunity. I assure you that I have been in the city less than ten minutes, Senor whatever-you-choose-to-call-yourself. My promptness I leave you to admire."

"Oh, you're prompt enough, lieutenant. I noticed that when you handed over your gun to me so lamblike." He laughed it out flippantly, buoyantly, though it was on his mind to wonder whether the choleric little officer might not kill him out of hand for it.

But Chaves merely folded his arms and looked sternly at the American with a manner very theatrical. "Miguel, disarm the prisoner," he ordered.

"So I'm a prisoner," mused Bucky aloud. "And whyfor, lieutenant?"

"Stirring up insurrection against the government. The prisoner will not talk," decreed his captor, a frowning gaze attempting to quell him.

But here the popinjay officer reckoned without his host, for that gentleman had the most indomitable eyes in Arizona. It was not necessary for him to stiffen his will to meet the other's attack. His manner was still lazy, his gaze almost insolent in its indolence, but somewhere in the blue eyes was that which told Chaves he was his master. The Mexican might impotently rebel--and did; he might feed his vanity with the swiftness of his revenge, but in his heart he knew that the moment was not his, after all, or that it was his at least with no pleasure unalloyed.

"The prisoner will not talk," repeated Bucky, with drawling mockery. "Sure he will, general. There's several things he's awful curious to know. One of them is how you happen to be Johnnie-on-the-spot so opportune."

The lieutenant's dignity melted before his vanity. Having so excellent a chance to sun the latter, he delivered himself of an oration. After all, silent contempt did not appear to be the best weapon to employ with this impudent fellow.

"Senor, no Chaves ever forgets an insult. Last night you, a common American, insulted me grossly--me, Lieutenant Ferdinand Chaves, me, of the bluest Castilian blood." He struck himself dramatically on the breast. "I submit, senor, but I vow revenge. I promised myself to spit on you, to spit on your Stars and Stripes, the flag of a nation of dirty traders. Ha! I do so now in spirit. The hour I have longed for is come."

Bucky took one step forward. His eyes had grown opaque and flinty. "Take care, you cur."

Swiftly Chaves hurried on without pressing the point. He had a prophetic vision of his neck in the vise grip of those brown, sinewy hands, and, though his men would afterward kill the man, small good would he get from that if the life were already squeezed out of him.

"And so what do I do? I think, and having thought I act with the swiftness of a Chaves. How? I ride across country. I seize a hand car. My men pump me to town on the roadbed of the Northern. I telephone to the hotels and find where Americans are staying. Then I come here like the wind, arrest your friend, and send him to prison, arrest you also and send you to the gallows."

"That's real kind of you, general," replied Bucky, in irony sportive. "But you really are putting yourself out too much for me. I reckon I'll not trouble you to go so far. By the way, did I understand you to say you had arrested a friend of mine?"

Indifferently he flung out the question, if his voice were index of his feeling, but his heart was pumping faster than it normally ought.

"He is in prison, where you will shortly join him. Soldiers, to the commandant with your captive."

If Bucky had had any idea of attempting escape, he now abandoned it at once. The place of all places where he most ardently desired to be at that moment was in the prison with his little comrade. His desire marched with that of Chaves so far, and the latter could not hurry him there too fast to suit him.

One feature of the situation made him chuckle, and that was this: The fiery lieutenant, intent first of all on his revenge, had given first thought to the capture of the man who had made mincemeat of his vanity and rendered him a possible subject of ridicule to his fellow officers. So eager had he been to accomplish this that he had failed as yet to notify his superiors of what had happened, with the result that the captured guns had been safely smuggled in and hidden. Bucky thought he could trust O'Halloran to see that he did not stay long behind bars and bolts, unless indeed the game went against that sanguine and most cheerful plotter. In which event--well, that was a contingency that would certainly prove embarrassing to the ranger. It might indeed turn out to be a good deal more than embarrassing in the end. The thing that he had done would bear a plain name if the Megales faction won the day--and the punishment for it would be easy to guess. But it was not of himself that O'Connor was thinking. He had been in tight places before and squeezed safely out. But his little friend, the one he loved better than his life, must somehow be extricated, no matter how the cards fell.

The ranger was taken at once before General Carlo, the ranking army officer at Chihuahua, and, after a sharp preliminary examination, was committed to prison. The impression that O'Connor got of Carlo was not a reassuring one. The man was a military despot, apparently, and a stickler for discipline. He had a hanging face, and, in the Yaqui war, had won the nickname of "the butcher' for his merciless treatment of captured natives. If Bucky were to get the same short shrift as they did--and he began to suspect as much when his trial was set for the same day before a military tribunal--it was time for him to be setting what few worldly affairs he had in order. Technically, Megales had a legal right to have him put to death and the impression lingered with Bucky that the sly old governor would be likely to do that very thing and later be full of profuse regrets to the United States Government that inadvertently a citizen of the great republic had been punished by mistake.

Bucky was registered and receipted for at the prison office, after which he was conducted to his cell. The corridors dripped as he followed under ground the guide who led the way with a flickering lantern. It was a gruesome place to contemplate as a permanent abode. But the young American knew that his stay here would be short, whether the termination of it were liberty or the gallows.

Reaching the end of a narrow, crooked corridor that sloped downward, the turnkey unlocked a ponderous iron door with a huge key, and one of the guards following at Bucky's heels, pushed him forward. He fell down two or three steps and came to a sprawling heap on the floor of the cell.

From the top of the steps came a derisive laugh as the door swung to and left him in utter darkness.

Stiffly the ranger got to his knees and was about to rise when a sound stopped him. Something was panting in deep breaths at the other side of the cell. A shiver of terror went goose-quilling down O'Connor's back. Had they locked him up with some wild beast, to be torn to pieces? Or was this the ghost of some previous occupant? In such blackness of gloom it was easy to believe, or, at least, to imagine impossible conceptions that the light of day would have scattered in an instant. He was afraid--afraid to the marrow.

And then out of the darkness came a small, trembling voice: "Are you a prisoner, too, sir?"

Bucky wanted to shout aloud his relief--and his delight. The sheer joy of his laughter told him how badly he had been frightened. That voice--were he sunk in twice as deep and dark an inferno--he would know it among a thousand. He groped his way forward toward it.

"Oh, little pardner, I'm plumb tickled to death you ain't a ghost," he laughed.

"It is--Bucky?" The question joyfully answered itself.

"Right guess. Bucky it is."

He had hold of her hands by this time, was trying to peer down into the happy-brown eyes he knew were scanning him. "I can't see you yet, Curly Haid, but it's sure you, I reckon. I'll have to pass my hand over your face the way a blind man does," he laughed, and, greatly daring, he followed his own suggestion, and let his fingers wander across her crisp, thick hair, down her soft, warm cheeks, and over the saucy nose and laughing mouth he had often longed to kiss.

Presently she drew away shyly, but the lilt of happiness in her voice told him she was not offended. "I can see you, Bucky." The last word came as usual, with that sweet, hesitating, upward inflection that made her familiarity wholly intoxicating, even while the comradeship of it left room for an interpretation either of gay mockery or something deeper. "Yes, I can see you. That's because I have been here longer and am more used to the darkness. I think I've been here about a year." He felt her shudder. "You don't know how glad I am to see you."

"No gladder than I am to feel you," he answered gayly. "It's worth the price of admission to find you here, girl o'mine."

He had forgotten the pretense that still lay between them, so far as words went when they had last parted. Nor did it yet occur to him that he had swept aside the convention of her being a boy. But she was vividly aware of it, and aware, too, of the demand his last words had made for a recognition of the relationship that existed in feeling between them.

"I knew you knew I was a girl," she murmured.

"You knew more than that," he challenged joyfully.

But, in woman's way, she ignored his frontal attack. He was going at too impetuous a speed for her reluctance. "How long have you known that I wasn't a boy--not from the first, surely?"

"I don't know why I didn't, but I didn't. I was sure locoed," he confessed. "It was when you came out dressed as a gypsy that I knew. That explained to me a heap of things I never had understood before about you."

"It explained, I suppose, why I never had licked the stuffing out of any other kid, and why you did not get very far in making a man out of me as you promised," she mocked.

"Yes, and it explained how you happened to say you were eighteen. By mistake you let the truth slip out. Course I wouldn't believe it."

"I remember you didn't. I think you conveyed the impression to me diplomatically that you had doubts."

"I said it was a lie," he laughed. "I sure do owe you a heap of apologies for being so plumb dogmatic when you knew best. You'll have to sit down on me hard once in a while, or there won't be any living with me."

Blushingly she did some more ignoring. "That was the first time you threatened to give me a whipping," she recalled aloud.

"My goodness! Did I ever talk so foolish?"

"You did, and meant it."

"But somehow I never did it. I wonder why I didn't."

"Perhaps I was so frail you were afraid you would break me."

"No, that wasn't it. In the back of my haid somewhere there was an instinct that said: 'Bucky, you chump, if you don't keep your hands off this kid you'll be right sorry all your life.' Not being given to many ideas, I paid a heap of respect to that one."

"Well, it's too bad, for I probably needed that whipping, and now you'll never be able to give it to me."

"I shan't ever want to now."

Saucily her merry eyes shot him from under the long lashes. "I'm not so sure of that. Girls can be mighty aggravating."

"That's the way girls are meant to be, I expect," he laughed. "But fifteen-year-old boys have to be herded back into line. There's a difference."

She rescued her hands from him and led the way to a bench that served for a seat. "Sit down here, sir. There are one or two things that I have to explain." She sat down beside him at the farther end of the bench.

"This light is so dim, I can't see you away over there," he pleaded, moving closer.

"You don't need to see me. You can hear me, can't you?"

"I reckon."

She seemed to find a difficulty in beginning, even though the darkness helped her by making it impossible for him to see her embarrassment. Presently he chuckled softly. "No, ma'am, I can't even hear you. If you're talking, I'll have to come closer."

"If you do, I'll get up. I want you to be really earnest."

"I never was more earnest in my life, Curly."

"Please, Bucky? It isn't easy to say it, and you mustn't make it harder."

"Do you have to say it, pardner?" he asked, more seriously.

"Yes, I have to say it." And swiftly she blurted it out. "Why do you suppose I came with you to Mexico?"

"I don't know." He grappled with her suggestion for a moment. "I suppose--you said it was because you were afraid of Hardman."

"Well, I wasn't. At least, I wasn't afraid that much. I knew that I would have been quite safe next time with the Mackenzies at the ranch."

"Then why was it?"

"You can't think of any reason?" She leaned forward and looked directly into his eyes--eyes as honest and as blue as an Arizona sky.

But he stood unconvicted--nay, acquitted. The one reason she had dreaded he might offer to himself had evidently never entered his head. Whatever guesses he might have made on the subject, he was plainly guiltless of thinking she might have come with him because she was in love with him.

"No, I can't think of any other reason, if the one you gave isn't the right one."

"Quite sure?"

"Quite sure, pardner."

"Think! Why did you come to Chihuahua?"

"To run down Wolf Leroy's gang and to get Dave Henderson out of prison."

"Perhaps there is a reason why I should want him out of prison, a better reason than you could possibly have."

"I don't savvy it. How can there be? You don't know him, do you? He's been in prison almost ever since you were born." And on top of his last statement Bucky's eyes began to open with a new light. "Good heavens! It can't be possible. You're not Webb Mackenzie's little girl, are you?"

She did not answer him in words, but from her neck she slipped a chain and handed it to him. On the chain hung a locket.

The ranger struck a match and examined the trinket. "It's the very missing locket. See! Here's the other one. Compare them together." He touched the spring and it opened, but the match was burned out and he had to light another. "Here's the mine map that has been lost all these years. How did you get this? Have you always had it? And how long have you known that you were Frances Mackenzie?"

His questions tumbled out one upon another in his excitement.

She laughed, answering him categorically. "I don't know, for sure. Yes, at least a great many years. Less than a week."

"But--I don't understand--"

"And won't until you give me a chance to do some of the talking," she interrupted dryly.

"That's right. I reckon I am getting off left foot first. It's your powwow now," he conceded.

"So long as I can remember exactly I have always lived with the man Hardman and his wife. But before that I can vaguely recall something different. It has always seemed like a kind of fairyland, for I was a very little tot then. But one of the things I seem to remember was a sweet, kind-eyed mother and a big, laughing father. Then, too, there were horses and lots of cows. That is about all, except that the chain around my neck seemed to have some connection with my early life. That's why I always kept it very carefully, and, after one of the lockets broke, I still kept it and the funny-looking paper inside of it."

"I don't understand why Hardman didn't take the paper," he interrupted.

"I suppose he did, and when he discovered that it held only half the secret of the mine he probably put it back in the locket. I see you have the other part."

"It was lost at the place where the robbers waited to hold up the T. P. Limited. Probably you lost it first and one of the robbers found it."

"Probably," she said, in a queer voice.

"What was the first clue your father had had for many years about his little girl. He happened to be at Aravaipa the day you and I first met. I guess he took a fancy to me, for he asked me to take this case up for him and see if I couldn't locate you. I ran Hardman down and made him tell me the whole story. But he lied about some of it, for he told me you were dead."

"He is a born liar," the girl commented. "Well, to get on with my story. Anderson, or Hardman, as he now calls himself, except when he uses his stage name of Cavallado, went into the show business and took me with him. When I was a little bit of a girl he used to use me for all sorts of things, such as a target for his knife throwing and to sell medicine to the audience. Lots of people would buy because I was such a morsel of a creature, and I suppose he found me a drawing card. We moved all over the country for years. I hated the life. But what could I do?"

"You poor little lamb," murmured the man. "And when did you find out who you were?"

"I heard you talking to him the night you took him back to Epitaph, and then I began to piece things together. You remember you went over the whole story with him again just before we reached the town."

"And you knew it was you I was talking about?"

"I didn't know. But when you mentioned the locket and the map, I knew. Then it seemed to me that since this man Henderson had lost so many years of his life trying to save me I must do something for him. So I asked you to take me with you. I had been a boy so long I didn't think you would know the difference, and you did not. If I hadn't dressed as a girl that time you would not know yet."

"Maybe, and maybe not," he smiled. "Point is, I do know, and it makes a heap of difference to me."

"Yes, I know," she said hurriedly. "I'm more trouble now."

"That ain't it," he was beginning, when a thought brought him up short. As the daughter of Webb Mackenzie this girl was no longer a penniless outcast, but the heiress of one-half interest in the big Rocking Chair Ranch, with its fifteen thousand head of cattle. As the first he had a perfect right to love her and to ask her to marry him, but as the latter--well, that was quite a different affair. He had not a cent to bless himself with outside of his little ranch and his salary, and, though he might not question his own motives under such circumstances, there would be plenty who would question them for him. He was an independent young man as one could find in a long day's ride, and his pride rose up to padlock his lips.

She looked across at him in shy surprise, for all the eagerness had in an instant been sponged from his face. With a hard, impassive countenance he dropped the hand he had seized and turned away.

"You were saying--" she suggested.

"I reckon I've forgot what it was. It doesn't matter, anyhow."

She was hurt, and deeply. It was all very well for her to try her little wiles to delay him, but in her heart she longed to hear the words he had been about to say. It had been very sweet to know that this brown, handsome son of Arizona loved her, very restful to know that for the first time in her life she could trustfully let her weakness lean on the strength of another. And, more than either, though she sometimes smilingly pretended to deny it to herself, was the ultimate fact that she loved him. His voice was music to her, his presence joy. He brought with him sunshine, and peace, and happiness.

He was always so reliable, so little the victim of his moods. What could have come over him now to change him in that swift instant? Was she to blame? Had she unknowingly been at fault? Or was there something in her story that had chilled him? It was characteristic of her that it was herself she doubted and not him; that it never occurred to her that her hero had feet of clay like other men.

She felt her heart begin to swell, and choked back a sob. It wrung him to hear the little breath catch, but he was a man, strong-willed and resolute. Though he dug his finger nails into his palms till the flesh was cut he would not give way to his desire.

"You're not angry at me--Bucky?" she asked softly.

"No, I'm not angry at you." His voice was cold because he dared not trust himself to let his tenderness creep into it.

"I haven't done anything that I ought not to? Perhaps you think it wasn't--wasn't nice to--to come here with you."

"I don't think anything of the kind," his hard voice answered. "I think you're a prince, if you want to know."

She smiled a little wanly, trying to coax him back into friendliness. "Then if I'm a prince you must be a princess," she teased.

"I meant a prince of good fellows" "Oh!" She could be stiff, too, if it came to that.

And at this inopportune moment the key turned harshly and the door swung open.

CHAPTER 12.

A CLEAN WHITE MAN'S OPTION

The light of a lantern coming down the steps blinded them for a moment. Behind the lantern peered the yellow face of the turnkey. "Ho, there, Americano! They want you up above," the man said. "The generals, and the colonels, and the captains want a little talk with you before they hang you, senor."

The two soldiers behind the fellow cackled merrily at his wit, and the encouraged turnkey tried again.

"We shall trouble you but a little time. Only a few questions, senor, an order, and then poco tiempo, after a short walk to the gallows--paradise."

"What--what do you mean?" gasped the girl whitely.

"Never mind, muchacho. This is no affair of yours. Your turn will come later. Have no fear of that," nodded the wrinkled old parchment face.

"But--but he hasn't done anything wrong."

"Ho, ho! Let him explain that to the generals and the colonels," croaked the old fellow. "And that you may explain the sooner, senor, hurry--let your feet fly!"

Bucky walked across to the girl he loved and took her hands in his.

"If I don't come back before three hours read the letter that I wrote you yesterday, dear. I have left matches on that bench so that you may have a light. Be brave, pardner. Don't lose your nerve, whatever you do. We'll both get out of this all right yet."

He spoke in a low voice, so that the guards might not hear, and it was in kind that she answered.

"I'm afraid, Bucky; afraid away down deep. You don't half believe yourself what you say. I can't stand it to be here alone and not know what's going on. They might be--be doing what that man said, and I not know anything about it till afterward." She broke down and began to sob. "Oh, I know I'm a dreadful little coward, but I can't be like you--and you heard what he said."

"Sho! What he says is nothing. I'm an American citizen, and I reckon that will carry us through all right. Uncle Sam has awful long arms, and these greasers know it. I'm expecting to come back here again, little pardner. But if I don't make it, I want you, just as soon as they turn you loose, to go straight to your father's ranch."

"Come! This won't do. Look alive, senor," the turnkey ordered, and to emphasize his words reached a hand forward to pluck away the sobbing lad. Bucky caught his wrist and tightened on it like a vise. "Hands off, here!" he commanded quietly.

The man gave a howl of pain and nursed his hand gingerly after it was released.

"Oh, Bucky, make him let me go, too," the girl wailed, clinging to his coat.

Gently he unfastened her fingers. "You know I would if I could, Curly; but it isn't my say-so."

And with that he was gone. Ashen-faced she watched him go, and as soon as the door had closed groped her way to the bench and sank down on it, her face covered with her hands. He was going to his death. Her lover was going to his death. Why had she let him go? Why had she not done something--thought of some way to save him?

The ranger's guards led him to the military headquarters in the next street from the prison. He observed that nearly a whole company of Rurales formed the escort, and this led him to conclude that the government party was very uneasy as to the situation and had taken precautions against a possible attempt at rescue. But no such attempt was made. The sunny streets were pretty well deserted, except for a few lounging peons hardly interested enough to be curious. The air of peace, of order, sat so incongruously over the plaza that Bucky's heart fell. Surely this was the last place on earth for a revolution to make any headway of consequence. His friends were hidden away in holes and cellars, while Megales dominated the situation with his troops. To expect a reversal of the situation was surely madness.

Yet even while the thought was in his mind he caught a glimpse in a doorway of a man he recognized. It was Rodrigo, one of his allies of the previous night's escapade, and it seemed to him that the man was trying to tell him something with his eyes. If so, the meaning of his message failed to carry home, for after the ranger had passed he dared not look back again.

So far as the trial itself went, O'Connor hoped for nothing and was the less disappointed. One glance at his judges was enough to convince him of the futility of expectation. He was tried by a court-martial presided over by General Carlo. Beside him sat a Colonel Onate and Lieutenant Chaves. In none of the three did he find any room for hope. Carlo was a hater of Americans and a butcher by temperament and choice, Chaves a personal enemy of the prisoner, and Onate looked as grim an old scoundrel as Jeffreys the hanging judge of James Stuart. Governor Megales, though not technically a member of the court, was present, and took an active part in the prosecution. He was a stout, swarthy little man, with black, beady eyes that snapped restlessly to and fro, and from his manner to the officers in charge of the trial it was plain that he was a despot even in his own official family.

The court did not trouble itself with forms of law. Chaves was both principal witness and judge, notwithstanding the protest of the prisoner. Yet what the lieutenant had to offer in the way of testimony was so tinctured with bitterness that it must have been plain to the veriest novice he was no fit judge of the case.

But Bucky knew as well as the judges that his trial was a merely perfunctory formality. The verdict was decided ere it began, and, indeed, so eager was Megales to get the farce over with that several times he interrupted the proceedings to urge haste.

It took them just fifteen minutes from the time the young American was brought into the room to find him guilty of treason and to decide upon immediate execution as the fitting punishment.

General Carlo turned to the prisoner. "Have you anything to say before I pronounce sentence of death upon you?"

"I have," answered Bucky, looking him straight in the eyes. "I am an American, and I demand the rights of a citizen of the United States."

"An American?" Incredulously Megales lifted his eyebrows. "You are a Spanish gypsy, my friend."

The ranger was fairly caught in his own trap. He had donned the gypsy masquerade because he did not want to be taken for what he was, and he had succeeded only too well. He had played into their hands. They would, of course, claim, in the event of trouble with the United States, that they had supposed him to be what his costume proclaimed him, and they would be able to make good their pretense with a very decent appearance of candor. What an idiot of sorts he had been!

"We understand each other perfectly, governor. I know and you know that I am an American. As a citizen of the United States I claim the protection of that flag. I demand that you will send immediately for the United States consul to this city."

Megales leaned forward with a thin, cruel smile on his face. "Very well, senor. Let it be as you say. Your friend, Senor O'Halloran, is the United States consul. I shall be very glad to send for him if you can tell me where to find him. Having business with him to-day, I have despatched messengers who have been unable to find him at home. But since you know where he is, and are in need of him, perhaps you can assist me with information of value."

Again Bucky was fairly caught. He had no reason to doubt that the governor spoke truth in saying that O'Halloran was the United States consul. There were in the city as permanent residents not more than three or four citizens of the United States. With the political instinct of the Irish, it would be very characteristic of O'Halloran to work his "pull" to secure for himself the appointment. That he had not happened to mention the fact to his friend could be accounted for by reason of the fact that the duties of the office at that place were few and unimportant.

"We are waiting, senor. If you will tell us where we may send?" hinted Megales.

"I do not know any more than you do, if he is not at home."

The governor's eyes glittered. "Take care, senor. Better sharpen your memory."

"It's pretty hard to remember what one never knew," retorted the prisoner.

The Mexican tyrant brought his clinched fist slowly down on the table in front of him. "It is necessary to remember, sir. It is necessary to answer a few questions. If you answer them to our satisfaction you may yet save your life."

"Indeed!" Bucky swept his fat bulk scornfully from head to foot. "If I were what you think me, do you suppose I would betray my friends?"

"You have no option, sir. Answer my questions, or die like a dog."

"You mean that you would not think you had any option if you were in my place, but since I'm a clean white man there's an option. By God! sir, it doesn't take me a whole lot of time to make it, either. I'll see you rot in hell before I'll play Judas."

The words rang like a bell through the room, not loud, but clear and vibrant. There was a long instant's silence after the American finished speaking, and as his eyes swept from one to another of the enemy Bucky met with a surprise. On Colonel Onate's face was a haggard look of fear--surely it was fear--that lifted in relief at the young man's brave challenge. He had been dreading something, and the dread was lifted. Onate! Onate! The ranger's memory searched the past few days to locate the name. Had O'Halloran mentioned it? Was this man one of the officers expected to join the opposition when it declared itself against Megales? He had a vague recollection of the name, and he could have heard it only through his friend.

"Was Juan Valdez a member of the party that took the rifles from Lieutenant Chaves and his escort?"

Bucky laughed out his contempt.

"Speak, sir," broke in Chaves. "Answer the governor, you dog."

"If I speak, it will be to tell you what a cur I think you."

Chaves flushed angrily and laid a hand on his revolver. "Who are you that play dice with death, like a fool?"

"My name, seh, is Bucky O'Connor."

At the words a certain fear, followed by a look of triumph, passed over the face of Chaves. It was as if he had had an unpleasant shock that had instantly proved groundless. Bucky did not at the time understand it.

"Why don't you shoot? It's about your size, you pinhead, to kill an unarmed man."

"Tell all you know and I promise you your life." It was Megales who spoke.

"I'll tell you nothing, except that I'm Bucky O'Connor, of the Arizona Rangers. Chew on that a while, governor, and see how it tastes. Kill me, and Uncle Sam is liable to ask mighty loud whyfor; not because I'm such a mighty big toad in the puddle, but because any man that stands under that flag has back of him the biggest, best, and gamest country on God's green footstool." Bucky spoke in English this time, straight as he could send it.

"In that case, I think sentence may now be pronounced, general."

"I warn you that the United States will exact vengeance for my death."

"Indeed!" Politely the governor smiled at him with a malice almost devilish. "If so, it will be after you are dead, Senor Bucky O'Connor, of the Arizona Rangers."

Colonel Onate leaned forward and whispered something to General Carlo, who shook his head and frowned. Presently the black head of Chaves joined them, and the three were in excited discussion. Arms waved like signals, as is usual among the Latin races who talk with their hands and expressive shrugs of the shoulders. Outvoted by two to one, Onate appealed to the governor, who came up and listened, frowning, to both sides of the debate. In their excitement the voices raised, and to Bucky came snatches of phrases that told him his life hung in the balance. Carlo and Chaves were for having him executed out of hand, at latest, by sunset. The latter was especially vindictive. Indeed, it seemed to the ranger that ever since he had mentioned his name this man had set himself more malevolently to compass his death. Onate maintained, on the other hand, that their prisoner was worth more to them alive than dead. There was a chance that he might weaken before morning and tell secrets. At worst they would still have his life as a card to hold in case of need over the head of the rebels. If it should turn out that this was not needed, he could be executed in the morning as well as to-night.

It may be conceived with what anxiety Bucky listened to the whispered conversation and waited for the decision of the governor. He was a game man, noted even in a country famous for its courageous citizens, but he felt strangely weak now as he waited with that leather-crusted face of his bereft of all expression.

"Give him till morning to weaken. If he still stays obstinate, hang him in the dawn," decided the governor, his beady eyes fixed on the prisoner.

Not a flicker of the eyelid betrayed the Arizonian's emotion, but for an instant the world swam dizzily before him. Safe till morning! Before then a hundred chances might change the current of the game in his favor. How brightly the sunshine flooded the room! What a glorious world it was, after all! Through the open window poured the rich, full-throated song of a meadow lark, and the burden of its blithe song was, "How good is this life the mere living."

CHAPTER 13.

BUCKY'S FIRST-RATE REASONS

How long Frances Mackenzie gave herself up to despair she never knew, but when at last she resolutely took herself in hand it seemed hours later. "Bucky told me to be brave, he told me not to lose my nerve," she repeated to herself over and over again, drawing comfort from the memory of his warm, vibrant voice. "He said he would come back, and he hates a liar. So, of course, he will come." With such argument she tried to allay her wild fears.

But on top of all her reassurances would come a swift, blinding vision of gallant Bucky being led to his death that crumpled her courage as a hammer might an empty egg shell. What was the use of her pretending all was well when at that very moment they might be murdering him? Then in her agony she would pace up and down, wringing her hands, or would beat them on the stone walls till the soft flesh was bruised and bleeding.

It was in the reaction, after one of these paroxysms of despair, that in her groping for an anchor to make fast her courage she thought of his letter.

"He said in three hours I was to read it if he didn't come back. It must be more than three hours now," she said aloud to herself, and knew a fresh dread at his prolonged absence beyond the limit he had set.

In point of fact, he had been gone less than three-quarters of an hour, but in each one of them she had lived a lifetime of pain and died many deaths.

By snatches she read her letter, a sentence or a fragment of a sentence at a time as the light served. Luckily he had left a case nearly full of matches, and one after another of them dropped, charred and burned out, before she had finished reading. After she had read it, her first love letter, she must needs go over it again, to learn by heart the sweet phrases in which he had wooed her. It was a commonplace note enough, far more neutral than the strong, virile writer who had lacked the cunning to transmit his feeling to ink and paper. But, after all, it was from him, and it told the divine message, however haltingly. No wonder she burned her little finger tips from the flame of the matches creeping nearer unheeded. No wonder she pressed it to her lips in the darkness and dreamed her happy dream in those few moments when she was lost in her love before cruel realities pressed home on her again.

"I told you, Little Curly Haid, that I had first-rate reasons for not wanting to be killed by these Mexicans. So I have, the best reasons going. But they are not ripe to tell you, and so I write them.

"I guessed your secret, little pardner, right away when I seen you in a girl's outfit. If I hadn't been blind as a bat I would have guessed it long since, for all the time my feelings were telling me mighty loud that you were the lovingest little kid Bucky had ever come across.

"I'll not leave you to guess my secret the way you did me yours, dear Curly, but right prompt I'll set down adore (with one D) and say you hit the bull's-eye that time without expecting to. But if I was saying it I would not use any French words sweetheart, but plain American. And the word would be l-o-v-e, without any D's. Now you have got the straight of it, my dear. I love you--love you--love you, from the crown of that curly hear to the soles of your little feet. What's more, you have got to love me, too, since I am,

"Your future husband,

"BUCKY O CONNOR.

"P. S.--And now, Curly, you know my first-rate reasons for not meaning to get shot up by any of these Mexican fellows."

So the letter ran, and it went to her heart directly as rain to the thirsty roots of flowers. He loved her. Whatever happened, she would always have that comfort. They might kill him, but they could not take away that. The words of an old Scotch song that Mrs. Mackenzie sang came back to her:

"The span o' life's nae large eneugh, Nor deep enough the sea, Nor braid eneugh this weary warld, To part my love frae me."

No, they could not part their hearts in this world or the next, and with this sad comfort she flung herself on the rough bed and sobbed. She would grieve still, but the wildness of her grief and despair was gone, scattered by the knowledge that however their troubles eventuated they were now one in heart.

She was roused after a long time by the sound of the huge key grating in the lock. Through the opened door a figure descended, and by an illuminating swing of the turnkey's lantern she saw that it was Bucky. Next moment the door had closed and they were in each other's arms. Bucky's stubborn pride, the remembrance of the riches which of a sudden had transformed his little partner into an heiress and set a high wall of separation between them, these were swept clean away on a great wave of love which took Bucky off his feet and left him breathless.

"I had almost given you up," she cried joyfully.

Again he passed his hand across her face. "You've been crying, little pardner. Were you crying on account of me?"

"On account of myself, because I was afraid I had lost you. Oh, Bucky, isn't it too good to be true?"

The ranger smiled, remembering that he had about fourteen hours to live, if the Megales faction triumphed. "Good! I should think it is. Bully! I've been famished to see Curly Haid again."

"And to know that everything is going to come out all right and that we love each other."

"That's right good hearing and most ce'tainly true on my side of it. But how do you happen to know it so sure?" he laughed gayly.

"Why, your letter, Bucky. It was the dearest letter. I love it."

"But you weren't to read it for three hours," he pretended to reprove, holding her at arm's length to laugh at her.

"Wasn't it three hours? It seemed ever so much longer."

"You little rogue, you didn't play fair." And to punish her he drew her soft, supple body to him in a close embrace, and for the first time kissed the sweet mouth that yielded itself to him.

"Tell me all about what happened to you," she bade him playfully, after speech was again in order.

"Sure." He caught her hand to lead her to the bench and she winced involuntarily.

"I burned it," she explained, adding, with a ripple of shy laughter: "When I was reading your letter. It doesn't really hurt, though."

But he had to see for himself and make much over the little blister that the flame of a match revealed to him. For they were both very much in love, and, in consequence, bubbling over with the foolishness that is the greatest inherited wisdom of the ages.

But though her lover had acquiesced so promptly to her demand for a full account of his adventures since leaving her, that young man had no intention of offering an unexpurged edition of them. It was his hope that O'Halloran would storm the prison during the night and effect a rescue. If so, good; if not, there was no need of her knowing that for them the new day would usher in fresh sorrow. So he gave her an account of his trial and its details, told her how he had been convicted, and how Colonel Onate had fought warily to get the sentence of execution postponed in order to give their friends a chance to rescue them.

"When Megales remanded me to prison I wanted to let out an Arizona yell, Curly. It sure seemed too good to be true."

"But he may want the sentence carried out some time, if he changes his mind. Maybe in a week or two he may take a notion that " She stopped, plainly sobered by the fear that the good news of his return might not be final.

"We won't cross that bridge till we come to it. You don't suppose our friends are going to sit down and fold their hands, do you? Not if I've got Mike O'Halloran and young Valdez sized up right. Fur is going to begin to fly pretty soon in this man's country. But it's up to us to help all we can, and I reckon we'll begin by taking a preliminary survey of this wickiup."

Wickiup was distinctly good, since the word is used to apply to a frail Indian hut, and this cell was nothing less than a tomb built in the solid rock by blowing out a chamber with dynamite and covering the front with a solid sheet of iron, into which a door fitted. It did not take a very long investigation to prove to Bucky that escape was impossible by any exit except the door, which meant the same thing as impossible at all under present conditions. Yet he did not yield to this opinion without going over every inch of the walls many times to make sure that no secret panel opened into a tunnel from the room.

"I reckon they want to keep us, Curly. Mr. Megales has sure got us real safe this time. I'd be plumb discouraged about breaking jail out of this cage. It's ce'tainly us to stay hitched a while."

About dark tortillas and frijoles were brought down to them by the facetious turnkey, who was accompanied as usual by two guards.

"Why don't my little birdies sing?" he asked, with a wink at the soldiers. "One of them will not do any singing after daybreak to-morrow. Ho, ho, my larks! Tune up, tune up!"

"What do you mean about one not singing after daybreak?" asked the girl, with eyes dilating.

"What! Hasn't he told you? Senor the ranger is to be hanged at the dawn unless he finds his tongue for Governor Megales. Ho, ho! Our birdie must speak even if he doesn't sing." And with that as a parting shot the man clanged the door to after him and locked it.

"You never told me, Bucky. You have been trying to deceive me," she groaned.

He shrugged his shoulders. "What was the use, girlie? I knew it would worry you, and do no good. Better let you sleep in peace, I thought."

"While you kept watch alone and waited through the long night. Oh, Bucky!" She crept close to him and put her arms around his neck, holding him tight, as if in the hope that she could keep him against the untoward fate that was reaching for him. "Oh, Bucky, if I could only die for you!"

"Don't give up, little friend. I don't. Somehow I'll slip out, and then you'll have to live for me and not die for me."

"What is it that the governor wants you to say that you won't?"

"Oh, he wants me to sell our friends. I told him to go climb a giant cactus."

"Of course you couldn't do that," she sighed regretfully.

He laughed. "Well, hardly, and call myself a white man."

"But--" She blanched at the alternative. "Oh, Bucky, we must do something. We must-- we must."

"It ain't so bad as it looks, honey. You want to remember that Mike O'Halloran is on deck. What's the matter with him knocking out a home run and bringing us both in. I put a heap of confidence in that red-haided Irishman," he answered cheerfully.

"You say that just to--to give me courage. You don't really think he can do anything," she said wanly.

"That's just what I think, Curly. Some men have a way of getting things done. When you look at O'Halloran you feel this, the same as you do when you look at Val Collins. Oh, he'll get us out all right. I've been in several tighter holes than this one." His mention of Collins suggested a diversion, and he took up a less distressing theme lightly. "Wonder what Val is doing at this precise moment. I'll bet he's beginning to make things warm for Wolf Leroy's bunch of miscreants. We'll have the robbers of the Limited behind the bars within two weeks now, or I miss my guess."

He had succeeded in diverting her attention better than he had dared to hope. Her big eyes fixed on his much as if he had raised for her some forgotten spectre.

"That's another thing I must tell you. I didn't think to before. But I want you to know all about me now. Don't think me bad, Bucky. I'm only a girl. I couldn't help myself," she pleaded.

"What is it you have done that is so awful?" he smiled, and went to gather her into his arms.

She stayed him with a gesture of her hand. "No, not yet. Mebbe after you know you won't want to. I was one of the robbers of the Limited."

"You--what!" he exclaimed, for once struck dumb with sheer amazement.

"Yes, Bucky. I expect you'll hate me now. What is it you called me--a miscreant? Well, that's what I am."

His arms slipped round her as she began to sob, and he gentled her till she could again speak. "Tell me all about it, little Curly." he said.

"I didn't go into it because I wanted to. My master made me. I don't know much about the others, except that I heard the names they called each other."

"Would you know them again if you saw them? But of course you would."

"Yes. But that's it, Bucky. I hated them all, and I was in mortal fear all the time. Still--I can't betray them. They thought I went in freely with them--all but Hardman. It wouldn't be right for me to tell what I know. I've got to make you see that, dear."

"You'll not need to argue that with me, honey. I see it. You must keep quiet. Don't tell anybody else what you've told me."

"And will they put me in the penitentiary when the rest go there?"

"Not while Bucky O'Connor is alive and kicking," he told her confidently.

But the form in which he had expressed his feeling was unfortunate. It brought them back to the menace of their situation. Neither of them could tell how long he would be alive and kicking. She flung herself into his arms and wept till she could weep no more.

CHAPTER 14.

LE ROI EST MORT; VIVE LE ROI

When the news reached O'Halloran that Megales had scored on the opposition by arresting Bucky O'Connor, the Irishman swore fluently at himself for his oversight in forgetting the Northern Chihuahua. So far as the success of the insurgents went, the loss of the ranger was a matter of no importance, since O'Halloran knew well that nothing in the way of useful information could be cajoled or threatened out of him. But, personally, it was a blow to the filibuster, because he knew that the governor would not hesitate to execute his friend if his fancy or his fears ran that way, and the big, red-headed Celt would not have let Bucky go to death for a dozen teapot revolutions if he could help it.

"And do you think you're fit to run even a donation party, you great, blundering gumph?" Mike asked himself, in disgust. "You a conspirator! You a leader of a revolution! By the ghost of Brian Boru, you had better run along back to the kindergarten class."

But he was not the man to let grass grow under his feet while he hesitated how to remedy his mistake. Immediately he got in touch with Valdez and a few of his party, and decided on a bold counterstroke that, if successful, would oppose a checkmate to the governor's check and would also make unnecessary the unloosing of the State prisoners on the devoted heads of the people.

"But mind, gentlemen," said Juan Valdez plainly, "the governor must not be injured personally. I shall not consent to any violence, no matter what the issue. Furthermore, I should like to be given charge of the palace, in order to see that his wants are properly provided for. We cannot afford to have our movement discredited at the outset by unnecessary bloodshed or by any wanton outrages."

O'Halloran smothered a smile. "Quite right, senor. Success at all hazards, but, if possible, success with peace. And, faith, subject to the approval of the rest of those present, I do hereby appoint you keeper of the governor's person and his palace, as well as all that do dwell therein, including his man servants, his maid servants, and his daughter. We hold you personally responsible for their safe keeping. See that none of them cherish the enemy or give aid and comfort to them." The Irishman finished, with a broad smile that seemed to say: "Begad, there's a clear field. Go in and win, me bye."

Nothing could be done in broad daylight, while the troops of the government party patrolled the streets and were prepared to pounce on the first suspects that poked their noses out of the holes where they were hidden. Nevertheless, their spies were busy all day, reporting to the opposition leaders everything that happened of interest. In the course of the day General Valdez, the father of Juan, was arrested on suspicion of complicity and thrown into prison, as were a score of others thought to be in touch with the Valdez faction. All day the troops of the governor were fussily busy, but none of the real leaders of the insurgents was taken. For General Valdez, though he had been selected on account of his integrity and great popularity to succeed Megales, was unaware of the plot on foot to retire the dictator from power.

It was just after nightfall that a farmer drove into Chihuahua with a wagonload of alfalfa. He was halted once or twice by guards on the streets, but, after a very cursory inspection, was allowed to pass. His route took him past the back of the governor's palace, an impressive stone affair surrounded by beautiful grounds. Here he stopped, as if to fasten a tug. Out of the hay tumbled fifteen men armed with rifles and revolvers, all of them being careful to leave the wagon on the side farthest from the palace.

"Now, me lads, we're all heroes by our talk. It's up to us to make good. I can promise one thing: by this time to-morrow we'll all be live patriots or dead traitors. Which shall it be?"

O'Halloran's concluding question was a merely rhetorical one, for without waiting for an answer he started at the double toward the palace, taking advantage of the dense shrubbery that offered cover up to the last twenty yards. This last was covered with a rush so rapid that the guard was surprised into a surrender without a protest.

Double guard was on duty on account of the strained situation, but the officer in charge, having been won over to the Valdez side, had taken care to pick them with much pains. As a consequence, the insurgents met friends in place of enemies, and within three minutes controlled fully the palace. Every entrance was at once closed and guarded, so that no news of the reversal could reach the military barracks.

So silently had the palace been taken that, except the guards and one or two servants held as prisoners, not even those living within it were aware of anything unusual.

"Senor Valdez, you are appointed to notify the senorita that she need not be alarmed at what has occurred. Senor Garcia will act as captain of the day, and allow nobody to leave the building under any pretext whatever. I shall personally put the tyrant under arrest. Rodrigo and Jose will accompany me."

O'Halloran left his subordinates at the door when he entered the apartments of the governor. The outer room was empty, and the Irishman passed through it to the inner one, where Megales was accustomed to take his after-dinner siesta.

To-night, however, that gentleman was in no mood for peaceful reflection followed by slumber. He was on the edge of a volcano, and he knew it. The question was whether he could hold the lid on without an eruption. General Valdez he dared not openly kill, on account of his fame and his popularity, but that pestilent Irishman O'Halloran could be assassinated and so could several of his allies--if they only gave him time. That was the rub. The general dissatisfaction at his rule had been no secret, of course, but the activity of the faction opposing him, the boldness and daring with which it had risked all to overthrow him, had come as so complete a surprise that he had been unprepared to meet it. Everywhere to-night his guards covered the city, ready to crush rebellion as soon as it showed its head. Carlo was in personal charge of the troops, and would remain so until after the election to-morrow, at which he would be declared formally reelected. If he could keep his hands on the reins for twenty-four hours more the worst would be past. He would give a good deal to know what that mad Irishman, O'Halloran, was doing just now. If he could once get hold of him, the opposition would collapse like a house of cards.

At that precise moment in walked the mad Irishman pat to the Mexican's thought of him.

"Buenos noches, excellency. I understand yon have been looking for me. I am, senor, yours to command." The big Irishman brought his heels together and gave a mocking military salute.

The governor's first thought was that he was a victim of treachery, his second that he was a dead man, his third that he would die as a Spanish gentleman ought. He was pale to the eyes, but he lost no whit of his dignity.

"You have, I suppose, taken the palace," he said quietly.

"As a loan, excellency, merely as a loan. After to-morrow it will be returned you in the event you still need it," replied O'Halloran blandly.

"You expect to murder me, of course?"

The big Celt looked shocked. "Not at all! The bulletins may perhaps have to report you accidentally killed or a victim of suicide. Personally I hope not."

"I understand; but before this lamentable accident happens I beg leave to assure myself that the palace really is in your hands, senor. A mere formality, of course." The governor smiled his thin-lipped smile and touched a bell beside him.

Twice Megales pressed the electric bell, but no orderly appeared in answer to it. He bowed to the inevitable.

"I grant you victor, Senor O'Halloran. Would it render your victory less embarrassing if I were to give you material immediately for that bulletin on suicide?" He asked the question quite without emotion, as courteously as if he were proposing a stroll through the gardens.

O'Halloran had never liked the man. The Irish in him had always boiled at his tyranny. But he had never disliked him so little as at this moment. The fellow had pluck, and that was one certain passport to the revolutionist's favor.

"On the contrary, it would distress me exceedingly. Let us reserve that bulletin as a regrettable possibility in the event that less drastic measures fail."

"Which means, I infer, that you have need of me before I pass by the Socratic method," he suggested, still with that pale smile set in granite "I shall depend on you to let me know at what precise hour you would like to order an epitaph written for me. Say the word at your convenience, and within five minutes your bulletin concerning the late governor will have the merit of truth."

"Begad, excellency, I like your spirit. If it's my say-so, you will live to be a hundred. Come the cards are against you. Some other day they may fall more pat for you. But the jig's up now."

"I am very much of your opinion, sir," agreed Megales.

"Then why not make terms?"

"Such as--"

"Your life and your friends' lives against a graceful capitulation."

"Our lives as prisoners or as free men?"

"The utmost freedom compatible with the circumstances. Your friends may either leave or remain and accept the new order of things. I'm afraid it will be necessary for you and General Carlo to leave the state for your own safety. You have both many enemies."

"With our personal possessions?"

"Of course. Such property as you cannot well take may be left in the hands of an agent and disposed of later."

Megales eyed him narrowly. "Is it your opinion, on honor, that the general and I would reach the boundaries of the State without being assassinated?"

"I pledge you my honor and that of Juan Valdez that you will be safely escorted out of the country if you will consent to a disguise. It is only fair to him to say that he stands strong for your life."

"Then, sir, I accept your terms if you can make it plain to me that you are strong enough to take the city against General Carlo."

From his pocket O'Halloran drew a typewritten list and handed it to the governor, who glanced it over with interest.

"These army officers are all with you?"

"As soon as the word is given."

"You will pardon me if I ask for proof?"

"Certainly. Choose the name of any one of them you like and send for him. You are at liberty to ask him whether he is pledged to us."

The governor drew a pencil-mark through a name. O'Halloran clapped his hands and Rodrigo came into the room.

"Rodrigo, the governor desires you to carry a message to Colonel Onate. He is writing it now. You will give Colonel Onate my compliments and ask him to make as much haste as is convenient."

Megales signed and sealed the note he was writing and handed it to O'Halloran, who in turn passed it to Rodrigo.

"Colonel Onate should be here in fifteen minutes at the farthest. May I in the meantime offer you a glass of wine, Dictator O'Halloran?" At the Irishman's smile, the Mexican governor hastened to add, misunderstanding him purposely: "Perhaps I assume too much in taking the part of host here. May I ask whether you will be governor in person or by deputy, senor?"

"You do me too much honor, excellency. Neither in person nor by deputy, I fear. And, as for the glass of wine--with all my heart. Good liquor is always in order, whether for a funeral or a marriage."

"Or an abdication, you might add. I drink to a successful reign, Senor Dictator: Le roi est mort; vive le roi!"

The Irishman filled a second glass. "And I drink to Governor Megales, a brave man. May the cards fall better for him next time he plays."

The governor bowed ironically. "A brave man certainly, and you might add: 'Who loses his stake without striking one honest blow for it.' "

"We play with stacked cards, excellency. Who can forestall the treachery of trusted associates?"

"Sir, your apology for me is very generous, no less so than the terms you offer," returned Megales sardonically.

O'Halloran laughed. "Well, if you don't like my explanations I shall have to let you make your own. And, by the way, may I venture on a delicate personal matter, your excellency?"

"I can deny you nothing to-night, senor," answered Megales, mocking at himself.

"Young Valdez is in love with your daughter. I am sure that she is fond of him, but she is very loyal to you and flouts the lad. I was thinking, sir, that--"

The Spaniard's eye flashed, but his answer came suavely as he interrupted: "Don't you think you had better leave Senor Valdez and me to arrange our own family affairs? We could not think of troubling you to attend to them."

"He is a good lad and a brave."

Megales bowed. "Your recommendation goes a long way with me, senor, and, in truth, I have known him only a small matter of twenty years longer than you."

"Never a more loyal youngster in the land."

"You think so? A matter of definitions, one may suppose. Loyal to the authorized government of his country, or to the rebels who would illegally overthrow it?"

"Egad, you have me there, excellency. 'Tis a question of point of view, I'm thinking. But you'll never tell me the lad pretended one thing and did another. I'll never believe you like that milksop Chaves better."

"Must I choose either a fool or a knave?"

"I doubt it will be no choice of yours. Juan Valdez is an ill man to deny what he sets his heart on. If the lady is willing--"

"I shall give her to the knave and wash my hands of her. Since treason thrives she may at last come back to the palace as its mistress. Quien sabe?"

"Less likely things have happened. What news, Rodrigo?" This last to the messenger, who at that moment appeared at the door.

"Colonel Onate attends, senor."

"Show him in."

Onate was plainly puzzled at the summons to attend the governor, and mixed with his perplexity was a very evident anxiety. He glanced quickly at O'Halloran as he entered, as if asking for guidance, and then as questioningly at Megales. Had the Irishman played Judas and betrayed them all? Or was the coup already played with success?

"Colonel Onate, I have sent for you at the request of Governor Megales to set his mind at rest on a disturbing point. His health is failing and he considers the advisability of retiring from the active cares of state. I have assured him that you, among others, would, under such circumstances, be in a friendly relation to the next administration. Am I correct in so assuring him?"

Megales pierced him with his beady eyes. "In other words, Colonel Onate, are you one of the traitors involved in this rebellion?"

"I prefer the word patriot, senor," returned Onate, flushing.

"Indeed I have no doubt you do. I am answered," he exclaimed scornfully. "And what is the price of patriotism these days, colonel?"

"Sir!" The colonel laid his hand on his sword.

"I was merely curious to know what position you would hold under the new administration."

O'Halloran choked a laugh, for by chance the governor had hit the nail on the head. Onate was to be Secretary of State under Valdez, and this was the bait that had been dangled temptingly under his nose to induce a desertion of Megales.

"If you mean to reflect upon my honor I can assure you that my conscience is clear," answered Onate blackly.

"Indeed, colonel, I do not doubt it. I have always admired your conscience and its adaptability." The governor turned to O'Halloran. "I am satisfied, Senior Dictator. If you will permit me--"

He walked to his desk, unlocked a drawer, and drew forth a parchment, which he tossed across to the Irishman. "It is my commission as governor. Allow me to place it in your hands and put myself at the service of the new administration."

"If you will kindly write notes, I will send a messenger to General Carlo and another to Colonel Gabilonda requesting their attendance. I think affairs may be quickly arranged."

"You are irresistible, senor. I hasten to obey."

Megales sat down and wrote two notes, which he turned over to O'Halloran. The latter read them, saw them officially sealed, and dispatched them to their destinations.

When Gabilonda was announced, General Carlo followed almost at his heels. The latter glanced in surprise at O'Halloran.

"Where did you catch him, excellency?" he asked.

"I did not catch him. He has caught me, and, incidentally, you, general," answered the sardonic Megales.

"In short, general," laughed the big Irishman, "the game is up. "

"But the army--You haven't surrendered without a fight?"

"That is precisely what I have done. Cast your eye over that paper, general, and then tell me of what use the army would be to us. Half the officers are with the enemy, among them the patriotic Colonel Onate, whom you see present. A resistance would be futile, and would only result in useless bloodshed."

"I don't believe it," returned Carlo bluntly.

"Seeing is believing, general," returned O'Halloran, and he gave a little nod to Onate.

The colonel left the room, and two or three minutes later a bell began to toll.

"What does that mean?" asked Carlo.

"The call to arms, general. It means that the old regime is at an end in Chihuahua. VIVA VALDEZ."

"Not without a struggle," cried the general, rushing out of the room.

O'Halloran laughed. "I'm afraid he will not be able to give the countersign to Garcia. In the meantime, excellency, pending his return, I would suggest that you notify Colonel Gabilonda to turn over the prison to us without resistance."

"You hear your new dictator, colonel," said Megales.

"Pardon me, your excellency, but a written order--"

"Would relieve you of responsibility. So it would. I write once more."

He was interrupted as he wrote by a great shout from the plaza. "VIVA VALDEZ!" came clearly across the night air, and presently another that stole the color from the cheek of Megales.

"Death to the tyrant! Death to Megales!" repeated the governor, after the shouts reached them.

"I fear, Senor Dictator, that your pledge to see me across the frontier will not avail against that mad-dog mob." He smiled, waving an airy hand toward the window.

The Irishman set his bulldog jaw. "I'll get you out safely or, begad! I'll go down fighting with you."

"I think we are likely to have interesting times, my dear dictator. Be sure I shall watch your doings with interest so long as your friends allow me to watch anything in this present world." The governor turned to his desk and continued the letter with a firm hand. "I think this should relieve you of responsibility, colonel."

By this time General Carlo had reentered the room, with a crestfallen face.

O'Halloran had been thinking rapidly. "Governor, I think the safest place for you and General Carlo, for a day or two, will be in the prison. I intend to put my friend O'Connor in charge of its defense, with a trustworthy command. There is no need of word reaching the mob as to where you are hidden. I confess the quarters will be narrows but--"

"No narrower than those we shall occupy very soon if we do not accept your suggestion," smiled Megales. "Buertos! Anything to escape the pressing attentions of your friends outside. I ask only one favor, the loan of a revolver, in order that we may disappoint the mad dogs if they overpower the guard of Senor O'Connor."

Hastily O'Halloran rapped out orders, gathered together a little force of five men, and prepared to start. Both Carlo and Megales he furnished with revolvers, that they might put an end to their lives in case the worst happened. But before they had started Juan Valdez and Carmencita Megales came running toward them.

"Where are you going? It is too late. The palace is surrounded!" cried the young man. "Look!" He swept an excited arm toward the window. "There are thousands and thousands of frenzied people calling for the lives of the governor and General Carlo."

Carlo shook like a leaf, but Megales only smiled at O'Halloran his wintry smile. "That is the trouble in keeping a mad dog, senor. One never knows when it may get out of leash and bite perhaps even the hand that feeds it."

Carmencita flung herself, sobbing, into the arms of her father and filled the palace with her screams. Megales handed her over promptly to her lover.

"To my private office," he ordered briskly. "Come, general, there is still a chance."

O'Halloran failed to see it, but he joined the little group that hurried to the private office. Megales dragged his desk from the corner where it set and touched a spring that opened a panel in the wall. Carlo, blanched with fear at the threats and curses that filled the night, sprang toward the passageway that appeared.

Megales plucked him back. "One moment, general. Ladies first. Carmencita, enter."

Carlo followed her, after him the governor, and lastly Gabilonda, tearing himself from a whispered conversation with O'Halloran. The panel swung closed again, and Valdez and O'Halloran lifted back the desk just as Garcia came running in to say that the mob would not be denied. Immediately O'Halloran threw open a French window and stepped out to the little railed porch upon which it opened. He had the chance of his life to make a speech, and that is the one thing that no Irishman can resist. He flung out from his revolver three shots in rapid succession to draw the attention of the mob to him. In this he succeeded beyond his hopes. The word ran like wildfire that the mad Irishman, O'Halloran, was about to deliver a message to them, and from all sides of the building they poured to hear it. He spoke in Mexican, rapidly, his great bull voice reaching to the utmost confines of the crowd.

"Fellow lovers of liberty, the hour has struck that we have worked and prayed for. The glorious redemption of our State has been accomplished by your patriotic hands. An hour ago the tyrants, Megales and Carlo, slipped out of the palace, mounted swift horses, and are galloping toward the frontier."

A roar of rage, such as a tiger disappointed of its kill might give, rose into the night. Such a terrible cry no man made of flesh and blood could hear directed at him and not tremble.

"But the pursuit is already on. Swift riders are in chase, with orders not to spare their horses so only they capture the fleeing despots. We expect confidently that before morning the tyrants will be in our hands. In the meantime, let us show ourselves worthy of the liberty we have won. Let us neither sack nor pillage, but show our great president in the City of Mexico that not ruffians but an outraged people have driven out the oppressors."

The huge Celt was swimming into his periods beautifully, but it was very apparent to him that the mob must have a vent for its stored excitement. An inspiration seized him.

"But one sacred duty calls to us from heaven, my fellow citizens. Already I see in your glorious faces that you behold the duty. Then forward, patriots! To the plaza, and let us tear down, let us destroy by fire, let us annihilate the statue of the dastard Megales which defaces our fair city. Citizens, to your patriotic duty!"

Another wild yell rang skyward, and at once the fringes of the crowd began to vanish plazaward, its centre began to heave, its flanks to stir. Three minutes later the grounds of the palace were again dark and empty. The Irishman's oratory had won the day.

CHAPTER 15.

IN THE SECRET CHAMBER

The escaping party groped its way along the passage in the wall, down a rough, narrow flight of stone steps to a second tunnel, and along this underground way for several hundred yards. Since he was the only one familiar with the path they were traversing, the governor took the lead and guided the others. At a distance of perhaps an eighth of a mile from the palace the tunnel forked. Without hesitation, Megales kept to the right. A stone's throw beyond this point of divergence there began to be apparent a perceptible descent which terminated in a stone wall that blocked completely the way.

Megales reached up and put his weight on a rope suspended from the roof. Slowly the solid masonry swung on a pivot, leaving room on either side for a person to squeeze through. The governor found it a tight fit, as did also Gabilonda.

"I was more slender last time I passed through there. It has been several years since then," said the governor, giving his daughter a hand to assist her through.

They found themselves in a small chamber fitted up as a living room in a simple way. There were three plain chairs, a bed, a table, and a dresser, as well as a cooking stove.

"This must be close to the prison. We have been coming in that direction all the time. It is strange that it could be so near and I not know of it," said the warden, looking around curiously.

Megales smiled. "I am the only person alive that knew of the existence of this room or of the secret passage until half an hour ago. I had it built a few years since by Yaquis when I was warden of the prison. The other end, the one opening from the palace, I had finished after I became governor."

"But surely the men who built it know of its existence."

Again Megales smiled. "I thought you knew me better, Carlo. The Yaquis who built this were condemned raiders. I postponed their execution a few months while they were working on this. It was a convenience both to them and to me."

"And is also a convenience to me," smiled Carlo, who was beginning to recover from his terror.

"But I don't quite understand yet how we are to get out of here except by going back the way we came," said Gabilonda.

"Which for some of us might prove a dangerously unhealthy journey. True, colonel, and therefore one to be avoided." Megales stepped to the wall, spanned with his fingers a space from the floor above a joint in the masonry, and pressed against the concrete. Inch by inch the wall fell back and opened into a lower corridor of the prison, the very one indeed which led to the cell in which Bucky and his love were imprisoned. Cautiously the Spaniard's glance traveled down the passage to see it was empty before he opened the panel door more than enough to look through. Then he beckoned to Gabilonda. "Behold, doubting Thomas!"

The warden gasped. "And I never knew it, never had a suspicion of it."

"But this only brings us from one prison to another," objected the general. "We might be penned in here as well as at the castle."

"Even that contingency has been provided for. You noticed, perhaps, where the tunnel forked. The left branch runs down to the river-wash, and by ten minutes' digging with the tools lying there one can force an exit."

"Your excellency is certainly a wonder, and all this done without arousing the least suspicion of anybody," admired the warden.

"The wise man, my dear colonel, prepares for emergencies; the fool trusts to his luck," replied the governor dryly.

"Are we to stay here for the present, colonel?" broke in the governor's daughter. "And can you furnish accommodations for the rest of us if we stay all night, as I expect we must?"

"My dear senorita, I have accommodations and to spare. But the trouble is that your presence would become known. I should be the happiest' man alive to put my all at the accommodation of Chihuahua's fairest daughter. But if it should get out that you are here--" Gabilonda stopped to shrug his fat shoulders at the prospect.

"We shall have to stay here, or, at least, in the lower tier of cells. I'm sorry, Carmencita, but there is no other course compatible with safety," decided Megales promptly.

The warden's face cleared. "That is really not a point for me to decide, governor. This young American, O'Connor, is now in charge of the prison. I must release him at once, and shall then bring him here to confer with you as to means of safety."

Bucky's eyes opened wide when Gabilonda and Megales came alone and without a lantern to his cell. In the darkness it was impossible to recognize them, but once within the closed cell the warden produced a dark lantern from under his coat.

"Circumstances have arisen that make the utmost vigilance necessary," explained the warden. "I may begin my explanations by congratulating you and your young friend. Let me offer a thousand felicitations. Neither of you are any longer prisoners."

If he expected either of them to fall on his neck and weep tears of gratitude at his pompous announcement, the colonel was disappointed. From the darkness where the ranger's little partner sat on the bed came a deep sigh of relief, but O'Connor did not wink an eyelash.

"I may conclude, then, that Mike O'Halloran has been getting in his work?" was his cool reply.

"Exactly, senor. He is the man on horseback and I travel afoot," smiled Megales.

Bucky looked him over coolly from head to foot. "Still I can't quite understand why your ex-excellency does me the honor of a personal visit."

"Because, senor, in the course of human events Providence has seen fit to reverse our positions. I am now your prisoner and you my jailer," explained Megales, and urbanely added a whimsical question. "Shall you have me hanged at dawn?"

"It would be a pleasure, and, I reckon, a duty too. But I can't promise till I've seen Mike. Do some more explaining, colonel. I want to know all about the round-up O'Halloran is boss of. Did he make a right good gather?"

The subtleties of American humor baffled the little Mexican, but he appreciated the main drift of the ranger's query, and narrated with much gesticulation the story of the coup that O'Halloran had pulled off in capturing the government leaders.

"It was an exceedingly neat piece of strategy," its victim admitted. "I would give a good deal to have the privilege of hanging your red-headed friend, but since that is denied me, I must be grateful he does not take a fancy to hang me."

"In case he doesn't, your excellency," was Bucky's addendum.

"I understand he has decided to deport me," retorted Megales lightly. "It is perhaps better politics, on the whole, better even than a knife in the back."

"Unless rumor is a lying jade, you should be a good judge of that, governor," said the American, eyeing him sternly.

Megales shrugged. "One of the penalties of fame is that one gets credit for much he does not deserve. There was your immortal General Lincoln, a wit so famous in your country that every good story is fathered upon him, I understand. So with your humble servant. Let a man accomplish his vendetta upon the body of an enemy, and behold! the world cries: 'A victim of Megales.'"

"Still, if you deserve your reputation as much as our immortal General Lincoln deserves his, the world may be pardoned for an occasional error." O'Connor turned to the warden. "What does he mean by saying that he is my prisoner? Have you a message for me from O'Halloran, colonel?"

"It is his desire, senor, that, pending the present uncertain state of public opinion, you accept the command of the prison and hold safe all persons detained here, including his excellency and General Carlo. He desired me to assure you that as soon as is possible he will arrive to confer with you in person."

"Good enough, and are you a prisoner, too, colonel?"

"I did not so understand Senor O'Halloran."

"If you're not you have to earn your grub and lodgings. I'll appoint you my deputy, colonel. And, first off, my orders are to lock up his excellency and General Carlo in this cell till morning."

"The cell, Senor O'Connor, is damp and badly ventilated," protested Gabilonda.

"I know that a heap better than you do, colonel," said Bucky dryly. "But if it was good enough for me and my pardner, here, I reckon it's good enough for them. Anyhow, we'll let them try it, won't we, Frank;"

"If you think best, Bucky."

"You bet I do."

"And what about the governor's daughter?" asked Gabilonda.

"You don't say! Is she a guest of this tavern?"

The colonel explained how they had reached the prison and the circumstances that had led to their hurried flight, while the ranger whistled the air of a cowboy song, his mind busy with this new phase of the case.

"She's one of these here Spanish blue-blooded senoritas used to guitar serenades under her window. Now, what would you do with her in a jail, Bucky?" he asked himself, in humorous dismay; but even as he reflected on it his roving eye fell on his friend. "The very thing. I'll take Curly Haid in to her and let them fall in love with each other. You're liable to be some busy, Bucky, and shy on leisure to entertain a lady, let alone two."

And so he arranged it. Leaving the former governor and General Carlo in the cell just vacated by them, Frances and he accompanied Gabilonda to the secret room behind the corridor wall.

All three parties to the introduction that followed acknowledged secretly to a surprise. Miss Carmencita had expected the friend of big, rough, homely O'Halloran to resemble him in kind, at least. Instead, she looked on a bronzed young Apollo of the saddle with something of that same lithe grace she knew and loved in Juan Valdez. And the shy boy beside him--why, the darling was sweet enough to kiss. The big, brown, helpless eyes, the blushing, soft cheeks, the crop of thick, light curls were details of an extraordinarily taking picture. Really, if these two were fair specimens, Americans were not so bad, after all. Which conclusion Juan Valdez's fondness for that race may have helped in part to form.

But if the young Spanish girl found a little current of pleasure in her surprise, Bucky and his friend were aware of the same sensation. All the charm of her race seemed summed up in Carmencita Megales. She was of blue blood, every feature and motion told that. The fine, easy set of her head, the fire in the dark, heavy-lashed eyes, the sweep of dusky chin and cheek and throat certified the same story. She had, too, that coquettish hint of uncertainty, that charm of mystery so fatal in its lure to questing man. Even physically the contradiction of sex attracted. Slender and lissom as a fawn, she was yet a creature of exquisitely rounded curves. Were her eyes brown or black or--in the sunlight--touched with a gleam of copper? There was always uncertainty. But much more was there fire, a quality that seemed to flash out from her inner self. She was a child of whims, a victim of her moods. Yet in her, too, was a passionate loyalty that made fickleness impossible. She knew how to love and how to hate, and, despite her impulses, was capable of surrender complete and irrevocable.

All of this Bucky did not read in that first moment of meeting, but the shrewd judgment behind the level blue eyes came to an appraisal roughly just. Before she had spoken three sentences he knew she had all her sex's reputed capacity for injustice as well as its characteristic flashes of generosity.

"Are you one of the men who have rebelled against my father and attempted to murder him?" she flashed.

"I'm the man he condemned to be hanged tomorrow morning at dawn for helping Juan Valdez take the guns," retorted Bucky, with a laugh.

"You are his enemy, and, therefore, mine."

"I'm a friend of Michael O'Halloran, who stood between him and the mob that wanted to kill him."

"Who first plotted against him and seduced his officers to betray him," she quickly replied.

"I reckon, ma'am, we better agree to disagree on politics," said Bucky good-naturedly. "We're sure liable to see things different from each other. Castile and Arizona don't look at things with the same eyes."

She looked at him just then with very beautiful and scornful ones, at any rate. "I should hope not."

"You see, we're living in the twentieth century up in the sunburned State," said Bucky, with smiling aplomb.

"Indeed! And we poor Chihuahuans?"

"When I see the ladies I think you're ce'tainly in the golden age, but when I break into your politics, I'm some reminded of that Richard Third fellow in the Shakespeare play."

"Referring, I presume, to my father?" she demanded haughtily.

"In a general way, but eliminating the most objectionable points of the king fellow."

"You're very kind." She interrupted her scorn to ask him where he meant her to sleep.

He glanced over the room. "This might do right here, if we had that bed aired."

"Do you expect to put me in irons?"

"Not right away. Colonel, I'll ask you to go to the office and notify me as soon as Senor O'Halloran arrives." He waited till the colonel had gone before adding: "I'm going to leave this boy with you, senorita, for a while. He'll explain some things to you that I can't. In about an hour I'll be back, perhaps sooner. So long, Curly. Tell the lady your secret." And with that Bucky was out of the room.

"Your secret, child! What does he mean?"

The flame of color that swept into the cheeks of Frances, the appeal in the shamed eyes, held Carmencita's surprised gaze. Then coolly it traveled over the girl and came back to her burning face.

"So that's it, is it?"

But the scorn in her voice was too much for Frances. She had been judged and condemned in that cool stare, and all the woman in her protested at its injustice.

"No, no, no!" she cried, running forward and catching at the other's hand. "I'm not that. You don't understand."

Coldly Carmencita disengaged her hand and wiped it with her kerchief. "I understand enough. Please do not touch me."

"May I not tell you my story?"

"I'll not trouble you. It does not interest me."

"But you will listen?" implored the other.

"I must ask to be excused."

"Then you are a heartless, cruel woman," flamed Frances. "I'm good--as good as you are." The color patched her cheek and ebbed again. "I wouldn't treat a dog as you do me. Oh, cruel, cruel!"

The surprising extravagance of her protest, the despair that rang in the fresh young voice, caught the interest of the Mexican girl. Surely such a heart-broken cry did not consist with guilt. But the facts--when a young and pretty girl masquerades through the country in the garb of a boy with a handsome young man, not much room for doubt is left.

Frances was quick to see that the issue was reopened. "Oh, senorita, it isn't as you think. Do I look like--" She broke off to cover with her hands a face in which the pink and white warred with alternate success. "I ought not to have come. I ought never to have come. I see that now. But I didn't think he would know. You see, I had always passed as a boy when I wanted to."

"A remarkably pretty one, child," said Miss Carmencita, a smile dimpling her cheeks. "But how do you mean that you had passed as a boy?"

Frances explained, giving a rapid sketch of her life with the Hardmans during which she had appeared every night on the stage as a boy without the deception being suspected. She had cultivated the tricks and ways of boys, had tried to dress to carry out the impression, and had always succeeded until she had made the mistake of putting on a gypsy girl's dress a couple of days before.

Carmencita heard her out, but not as a judge. Very early in the story her doubts fled and she succumbed to the mothering instinct in her. She took the American girl in her arms and laughed and cried with her; for her imagination seized on the romance of the story and delighted in its fresh unconventionality. Since she had been born Carmencita's life had been ordered for her with precision by the laws of caste. Her environment wrapped her in so that she must follow a set and beaten path. It was, to be sure, a flower-strewn one, but often she impotently rebelled against its very orderliness. And here in her arms was a victim of that adventurous romance she had always longed so passionately to know. Was it wonder she found it in her heart to both love and envy the subject of it?

"And this young cavalier--the Senor Bucky, is it you call him?--surely you love him, my dear."

"Oh, senorita!" The blushing face was buried on her new friend's shoulder. "You don't know how good he is."

"Then tell me," smiled the other. "And call me Carmencita."

"He is so brave, and patient, and good. I know there was never a man like him."

Miss Carmencita thought of one and demurred silently. "I'm sure this paragon of lovers is at least part of what you say. Does he love you? But I am sure he couldn't help it."

"Sometimes I think he does, but once--" Frances broke off to ask, in a pink flame: "How does a lover act?"

Miss Carmencita's laughter rippled up. "Gracious me, have you never had one before."

"Never."

"Well, he should make verses to you and pretty speeches. He should sing serenades about undying love under your window. Bonbons should bombard you, roses make your rooms a bower. He should be ardent as Romeo, devoted as a knight of old. These be the signs of a true love," she laughed.

Frances' face fell. If these were the tokens of true love, her ranger was none. For not one of the symptoms could fairly be said to fit him. Perhaps, after all, she had given him what he did not want.

"Must he do all that? Must he make verses?" she asked blankly, not being able to associate Bucky with poetasting.

"He must," teased her tormentor, running a saucy eye over her boyish garb. "And why not with so fair a Rosalind for a subject?" She broke off to quote in her pretty, uncertain English, acquired at a convent in the United States, where she had attended school:

"From the east to western Ind, No jewel is like Rosalind. Her worth being mounted on the wind, Through all the world bears Rosalind.

All the pictures, fairest lin'd, Are but black to Rosalind. Let no face be kept in mind But the fair of Rosalind."

So your Shakespeare has it, does he not?" she asked, reverting again to the Spanish language, in which they had been talking. But swift on the heels of her raillery came repentance. She caught the dispirited girl to her embrace laughingly. "No, no, child! Nonsense ripples from my tongue. These follies are but for a carpet lover. You shall tell me more of your Senor Bucky and I shall make no sport of it."

When Bucky returned at the expiration of the time he had set himself, he found them with their arms twined about each other's waists, whispering the confidences that every girl on the threshold of womanhood has to tell her dearest friend.

"I reckon you like my pardner better than you do me," smiled Bucky to Miss Carmencita.

"A great deal better, sir, but then I know him better."

Bucky's eyes rested for a moment almost tenderly on Frances. "I reckon he is better worth knowing," he said.

"Indeed! And you so brave, and patient, and good?" she mocked.

"Oh! Am I all that?" asked Bucky easily.

"So I have been given to understand."

Out of the corner of his eye O'Connor caught the embarrassed, reproachful look that Frances gave her audacious friend, and he found it easy to fit quotation marks round the admirable qualities that had just been ascribed to him. He guessed himself blushing a deux with his little friend, and also divined Miss Carmencita's roguish merriment at their confusion.

"I AM all those things you mentioned and a heap more you forgot to say," claimed the ranger boldly, to relieve the situation. "Only I didn't know for sure that folks had found it out. My mind's a heap easier to know I'm being appreciated proper at last."

Under her long, dark lashes Miss Carmencita looked at him in gentle derision. "I'm of opinion, sir, that you get all the appreciation that is good for you."

Bucky carried the war into the enemy's country. "Which same, I expect, might be said of Chihuahua's most beautiful belle. And, talking of Senor ,Valdez reminds me that I owe a duty to his father, who is confined here. I'll be saying good night ladies."

"It's high time," agreed Miss Megales. "Talking of Senor Valdez, indeed!"

"Good night, Curly Haid."

"Good night, Bucky."

To which, in mocking travesty, added, in English, Miss Carmencita, who seemed to have an acute attack of Shakespeare:

"Good night, good night; parting is such sweet sorrow That I shall say good night till It be morrow."

CHAPTER 16.

JUAN VALDEZ SCORES

The first thing Bucky did after leaving the two young women was to go down in person with one of the guards to the cell of David Henderson. The occupant of the cell was asleep, but he woke up when the two men entered.

"Who is it?" he demanded.

"Webb Mackenzie's man come to release you," answered Bucky.

The prisoner fell to trembling like an aspen. "God, man, do you mean it?" he begged. "You wouldn't deceive an old man who has lived fifteen years in hell?"

"It's true, friend, every word of it. You'll live to ride the range again and count your cattle on the free hillside. Come with me up to the office and we'll talk more of it."

"But may I? Will they let me?" trembled Henderson, fearful lest his cup of joy be dashed from him. "I'm not dreaming, am I? I'll not wake the way I often do and find that it is all a dream, will I?" He caught at the lapel of O'Connor's coat and searched his face.

"No, your dreams are true at last, Dave Henderson. Come, old friend, take a drink of this to steady you. It's all coming out right now."

Tears streamed down the face of the man rescued from a living grave. He dashed them away impatiently with a shaking hand. "I used to be as game as other men, young man, and now you see what a weakling I am. Don't judge me too hard. Happiness is a harder thing to stand than pain or grief. They've tried to break my spirit many a time and they couldn't, but you've done it now with a word."

"You'll be all right as soon as you are able to realize it. I don't wonder the shock unnerves you. Have you anything you want to take out of here with you before you leave forever?"

Pathetically the prisoner looked round on his few belongings. Some of them had become endeared to him by years of use and association, but they had served their time. "No, I want to forget it all. I came in with nothing. I'll take out nothing. I want to blot it all out like a hideous nightmare."

Bucky ordered Colonel Gabilonda to bring up from his cell General Valdez and the other arrested suspects. They reached the office at the same time as Mike O'Halloran, who greeted them with the good news that the day was won. The Megales faction had melted into mist, and all over the city a happy people was shouting for Valdez.

"I congratulate you, general. We have just telegraphed the news over the State that Megales has resigned and fled. There can be no doubt that you will be elected governor to-morrow and that the people's party will win the day with an unprecedented vote. Glory be, Chihuahua is at last free from the heel of tyranny. Viva Valdez! Viva Chihuahua libra!"

Bucky at once introduced to General Valdez the American prisoner who had suffered so long and unjustly. He recited the story of the abduction of the child, of Henderson's pursuit, of the killing of the trooper, and of the circumstantial evidence that implicated the Texan and upon which he was convicted. He then drew from his pocket a signed and attested copy of the confession of the knife thrower and handed it to the general.

Valdez looked it over, asked an incisive question or two of Bucky, heard from Henderson his story, and, after a few moments' discussion of the matter with O'Halloran, promised a free pardon as his first official act after being elected to the governorship, in case he should be chosen.

The vote next day amply justified the hopes of O'Halloran and his friends. The whole ticket, sent out by telegraph and messengers throughout the State, was triumphantly elected by large majorities. Only in one or two out-of-the-way places, where the news of the fall of Megales did not arrive in time to affect the voting, did the old government party make any showing worthy of consideration.

It was after Valdez's election had been made certain by the returns that O'Halloran and Juan Valdez posted to the prison and visited father and daughter. They separated in the lower corridor, one to visit the defeated governor, the other Miss Carmencita. The problem before Juan Valdez was to induce that young woman to remain in Chihuahua instead of accompanying her father in his flight. He was a good fighter, and he meant to win, if it were a possibility. She had tacitly admitted that she loved him, but he knew that she felt that loyalty demanded she stay by her father in his flight.

When O'Halloran was admitted to the cell where the governor and the general were staying he laughed aloud.

"Faith, gentlemen, is this the best accommodation Governor Valdez can furnish his guests? We must petition him to improve the sanitation of his hotel."

"We are being told, one may suppose, that General Valdez is the newly elected governor?"

"Right, your excellency, elected by a large majority to succeed the late Governor Megales."

"Late!" The former governor lifted his eyebrows. "Am I also being told that necessity demands the posting of the suicide bulletin, after all?"

"Not at all. Sure, I gave you me word, excellency. And that is one of the reasons why I am here. We have arranged to run a special down the line to-night, in order to avoid the risk of the news leaking out that you are still here. Can you make your arrangements to take that train, or will it hurry your packing too much?"

Megales laughed. "I have nothing to take with me except my daughter. The rest of my possessions may be forwarded later."

"Oh, your daughter! Well, that's pat, too. What about the lad, Valdez?"

"Are you his representative, senor?"

"Oh, he can talk for himself. " O'Halloran grinned. "He's doing it right now, by the same token. Shall we interrupt a tete-a-tete and go pay our compliments to Miss Carmencita? You will want to find out whether she goes with you or stays here."

"Assuredly. Anything to escape this cave."

Miss Carmencita was at that moment reiterating her everlasting determination to go wherever her father went. "If you think, sir, that your faithlessness to him is a recommendation of your promised faithfulness to me, I can only wish you more light on the feelings of a daughter," she was informing Valdez, when her father slipped through the panel door and stood before her.

"Brava, senorita!" he applauded, with subtle irony, clapping his hands. "Brava, brava!"

That young woman swam blushingly toward him and let her face disappear in an embrace.

"You see, one can't have everything, Senor Valdez," continued Megales lightly. "For me, I cannot have both Chihuahua and my life; you, it seems, cannot have both your successful revolution and my daughter. "

"Your excellency, she loves me. Of that I am assured. It rests with you to say whether her life will be spoiled or not. You know what I can offer her in addition to a heart full of devotion. It is enough. Shall she be sacrificed to her loyalty to you?" the young man demanded, with all the ardor of his warm-blooded race.

"It is no sacrifice to love and obey my father," came a low murmur from the former governor's shoulder.

"Since the world began it has been the law of life that the young should leave their parents for a home of their own," Juan protested.

"So the Scripture says," agreed Megales sardonically. "It further counsels to love one's enemies, but, I think, omits mention of the enemies of one's father."

"Sir, I am not your enemy. Political exigencies have thrown us into different camps, but we are not so small as to let such incidentals come between us as a vital objection in such a matter."

"You argue like a lawyer," smiled the governor. "You forget that I am neither judge nor jury. Tyrant I may have been to a fickle people that needed a firm hand to rule them, but tyrant I am not to my only daughter."

"Then you consent, your excellency?" cried Valdez joyously.

"I neither consent nor refuse. You must go to a more final authority than mine for an answer, young man."

"But you are willing she should follow where her heart leads?"

"But certainly."

"Then she is mine," cried Valdez.

"I am not," replied the girl indignantly over her shoulder.

Megales turned her till her unconsenting eyes met his. "Do you want to marry this young man, Carmencita?"

"I never told him anything of the sort," she flamed.

"I didn't quite ask what you had told him. The question is whether you love him."

"But no; I love you," she blushed.

"I hope so," smiled her father. "But do you love him? An honest answer, if you please."

"Could I love a rebel?"

"No Yankee answers, muchacha. Do you love Juan Valdez?"

It was Valdez that broke triumphantly the moment's silence that followed. "She does. She does. I claim the consent of silence."

But victory spoke too prematurely in his voice. Cried the proud Spanish girl passionately: "I hate him!"

Megales understood the quality of her hate, and beckoned to his future son-in-law. "I have some arrangements to make for our journey to-night. Would it distress you, senor, if I were to leave you for a while?"

He slipped out and left them alone.

"Well?" asked O'Halloran, who had remained in the corridor.

"I think, Senor Dictator, I shall have to make the trip with only General Carlo for a companion," answered the Spaniard.

The Irishman swung his hat. "Hip, hip, hurrah! You're a gentleman I could find it in me heart to both love and hate, governor."

"And you're a gentleman," returned the governor, with a bow, "I could find it in my heart to hang high as Haman without love or hate."

Michael linked his arm in that of his excellency.

"Sure, you're a broth of a lad, Senor Megales," he said irreverently, in good, broad Irish brogue. "Here, me bye, where are you hurrying?" he added, catching at the sleeve of Frances Mackenzie, who was slipping quietly past.

"Please, Mr. O'Halloran, I've been up to the office after water. I'm taking it to Senorita Carmencita."

"She doesn't want water just now. You go back to the office, son, and stay there thirty minutes. Then you take her that water," ordered O'Halloran.

"But she wanted it as soon as I could get it, sir."

"Forget it, kid, just as she has. Water! Why, she's drinking nectar of the gods. Just you do as I tell ye."

Frances was puzzled, but she obeyed, even though she could not understand his meaning. She understood better when she slid back the panel at the expiration of the allotted time and caught a glimpse of Carmencita Megales in the arms of Juan Valdez.

CHAPTER 17.

HIDDEN VALLEY

Across the desert into the hills, where the sun was setting in a great splash of crimson in the saddle between two distant peaks, a bunch of cows trailed heavily. Their tongues hung out and they panted for water, stretching their necks piteously to low now and again. For the heat of an Arizona summer was on the baked land and in the air that palpitated above it.

But the end of the journey was at hand and the cowpuncher in charge of the drive relaxed in the saddle after the easy fashion of the vaquero when he is under no tension. He did not any longer cast swift, anxious glances behind him to make sure no pursuit was in sight. For he had reached safety. He knew the 'Open sesame' to that rock wall which rose sheer in front of him. Straight for it he and his companion took their gather, swinging the cattle adroitly round a great slab which concealed a gateway to the secret canon. Half a mile up this defile lay what was called Hidden Valley, an inaccessible retreat known only to those who frequented it for nefarious purposes.

It was as the man in charge circled round to head the lead cows in that a faint voice carried to him. He stopped, listening. It came again, a dry, parched call for help that had no hope in it. He wheeled his pony as on a half dollar, and two minutes later caught sight of an exhausted figure leaning against a cottonwood. He needed no second guess to surmise that she was lost and had been wandering over the sandy desert through the hot day. With a shout, he loped toward her, and had his water bottle at her lips before she had recovered from her glad surprise at sight of him.

"You'll feel better now," he soothed. "How long you been lost, ma'am?"

"Since ten this morning. I came with my aunt to gather poppies, and somehow I got separated from her and the rig. These hills look so alike. I must have got turned round and mistaken one for another."

"You have to be awful careful here. Some one ought to have told you," he said indignantly.

"Oh, they told me, but of course I knew best," she replied, with quick scorn of her own self-sufficiency.

"Well, it's all right now," the cowpuncher told her cheerfully. He would not for a thousand dollars have told her how near it had come to being all wrong, how her life had probably depended upon that faint wafted call of hers.

He put her on his horse and led it forward to the spot where the cattle waited at the gateway. Not until they came full upon them did he remember that it was dangerous for strange young women to see him with those cattle and at the gateway to the Hidden canon.

"They are my uncle's cattle. I could tell the brand anywhere. Are you one of his riders? Are we close to the Rocking Chair Ranch?" she cried.

He flung a quick glance at her. "Not very close. Are you from the Rocking Chair?"

"Yes. I'm Mr. Mackenzie's niece."

"Major Mackenzie's daughter?" demanded the man quickly.

"Yes." She said it with a touch of annoyance, for he looked at her as a man does who has heard of her before. She knew that the story had been bruited far and wide of how she had passed through the hands of the train robbers carrying thirty thousand dollars on her person. She had no doubt that it was in this connection her rescuer had heard of her.

He drew off to one side and called his companion to him.

"Hardman, you ride up to the ranch and tell Leroy I've just found Miss Mackenzie wandering around on the desert, lost. Ask him whether I'm to bring her up. She's played out and can't travel far, tell him."

The showman rode on his errand and the other returned to Helen.

"You better light, ma'am. We'll have to wait here a few minutes," he explained.

He helped her dismount. She did not understand why it was necessary to wait, but that was his business and not hers. Her roving eyes fell upon the cattle again.

"They ARE my uncle's, aren't they?"

"They were," he corrected. "Cattle change hands a good deal in this country," he added dryly.

"Then you're not one of his riders?" Her stark eyes passed over him swiftly.

"No, ma'am."

"Are we far from the Rocking Chair?"

"A right smart distance. You've been traveling, you see, for eight or nine hours."

It occurred to her that there was something elusive, something not quite frank, about the replies of this young man. Her glance raked him again and swept up the details of his person. One of them that impressed itself upon her mind was the absence of a finger on his right hand. Another was that he was a walking arsenal. This startled her, though she was not yet afraid. She relapsed into silence, to which he seemed willing to consent. Once and again her glance swept him. He looked a tough, weather-beaten Westerner, certainly not a man whom a woman need be afraid to meet alone on the plains, but the oftener she looked the more certain she became that he was not a casual puncher busy at the legitimate work of his craft.

"Do you--live near here?" she asked presently.

"I live under my hat, ma'am," he told her.

"Sometimes near here, sometimes not so near."

This told her exactly nothing.

"How far did you say it was to the Rocking Chair?"

"I didn't say."

At the sound of a horses footfall she turned, and she saw that whereas they had been two, now they were three. The newcomer was a slender, graceful man, dark and lithe, with quick, piercing eyes, set deep in the most reckless, sardonic face she had ever seen.

The man bowed, with a sweep of his hat almost derisive. "Miss Mackenzie, I believe."

She met him with level eyes that confessed no fear.

"Who are you, sir?"

"They call me Wolf Leroy."

Her heart sank. "You and he are the men that held up the Limited.''

"If we are, you are the young lady that beat us out of thirty thousand dollars. We'll collect now," he told her, with a silky smile and a glitter of white, even teeth.

"What do you mean? Do you think I carry money about with me?"

"I didn't say that. We'll put it up to your father."

"My father?"

"He'll have to raise thirty thousand dollars to redeem his daughter." He let his bold eyes show their admiration. "And she's worth every cent of it."

"Do you mean--" She read the flash of triumph in his ribald eyes and broke off. There was no need to ask him what he meant.

"That's what I mean exactly, ma'am. You're welcome to the hospitality of Hidden Valley. What's ours is yours. You're welcome to stay as long as you like, but I reckon YOU'RE NOT WELCOME TO GO WHENEVER YOU WANT TO--not till we get that thirty thousand."

"You talk as if he were a millionaire," she told him scornfully.

"The major's got friends that are. If it's a showdown he'll dig the dough up. I ain't a bit worried about that. His brother, Webb, will come through."

"Why should he?" She stood as straight and unbending as a young pine, courage regnant in the very poise of the fine head. "You daren't harm a hair of my head, and he knows it. For your life, you daren't."

His eyes glittered. Wolf Leroy was never a safe man to fling a challenge at. "Don't you be too sure of that, my dear. There ain't one thing on this green earth I daren't do if I set my mind to it. And your friends know it."

The other man broke in, easy and unmoved. "Hold yore hawses, cap. We got no call to be threatening this young lady. We keep her for a ransom because that's business. But she's as safe here as she would be at the Rocking Chair. She's got York Neil's word for that."

The Wolf snarled. "The word of a miscreant. That'll comfort her a heap. And York Neil's word don't always go up here."

The cowpuncher's steady eyes met him. "It'll go this time."

The girl gave her champion a quiet little nod and a low "Thank you." It was not much, but enough. For on the frontier "white men" do not war on women. Her instinct gave just the right manner of treating his help. It assumed that since he was what he was he could do no less. Moreover, it had the unexpected effect of spurring the Wolf's vanity, or something better than his vanity. She could see the battle in his face, and the passing of its evil, sinister expression.

"Beg your pardon, Miss Mackenzie. York's right. I'll add my word to his about your safety. I'm a wolf, they'll tell you. But when I give my word I keep it."

They turned and followed through the gateway the cattle which Hardman and another rider were driving up the canon. Presently the walls fell back, the gulch opened to a saucer-shaped valley in which nestled a little ranch.

Leroy indicated it with a wave of his hand. "Welcome to Hidden Valley, Miss Mackenzie," he said cynically.

"Afraid I'm likely to wear my welcome out if you keep me here until my father raises thirty thousand dollars," she said lightly.

"Don't you worry any about that. We need the refining influences of ladies' society here. I can see York's a heap improved already. Just to teach us manners you're worth your board and keep." Then hardily, with a sweeping gesture toward the weary cattle: "Besides, your uncle has sent up a contribution to help keep you while you visit with us."

York laughed. "He sent it, but he didn't know he was sending it."

Leroy surrendered his room to Miss Mackenzie and put at her service the old Mexican woman who cooked for him. She was a silent, taciturn creature, as wrinkled as leather parchment and about as handsome, but Alice found safety in the very knowledge of the presence of another woman in the valley. She was among robbers and cutthroats, but old Juanita lent at least a touch of domesticity to a situation that would otherwise have been impossible. The girl was very uneasy in her mind. A cold dread filled her heart, a fear that was a good deal less than panic-terror, however. For she trusted the man Neil even as she distrusted his captain. Miscreant he had let himself be called, and doubtless was, but she knew no harm could befall her from his companions while he was alive to prevent it. A reassurance of this came to her that evening in the fragment of a conversation she overheard. They were passing her window which she had raised on account of the heat when the low voices of two men came to her.

"I tell you I'm not going, Leroy. Send Hardman," one said.

"Are you running this outfit, or am I, Neil?"

"You are. But I gave her my word. That's all there's to it."

Alice was aware that they had stopped and were facing each other tensely.

"Go slow, York. I gave her my word, too. Do you think I'm allowing to break it while you're away?"

"No, I don't. Look here, Phil. I'm not looking for trouble. You're major-domo of this outfit What you say goes--except about this girl. I'm a white man, if I'm a scoundrel."

"And I'm not?"

"I tell you I'm not sayin' that," the other answered doggedly.

"You're hinting it awful loud. I stand for it this time, York, but never again. You butt in once more and you better reach for your hardware simultaneous. Stick a pin in that."

They had moved on again, and she did not hear Neil's answer. Nevertheless, she was comforted to know she had one friend among these desperate outlaws, and that comfort gave her at least an hour or two of broken, nappy sleep.

In the morning when she had dressed she found her room door unlocked, and she stepped outside into the sunshine. York Neil was sitting on the porch at work on a broken spur strap. Looking up, he nodded a casual good morning. But she knew why he was there, and gratitude welled up in her heart. Not a young woman who gave way to every impulse, she yielded to one now, and shook hands with him. Their eyes met for a moment and he knew she was thanking him.

An eye derisive witnessed the handshake. "An alliance against the teeth of the wolf, I'll bet. Good mo'ning, Miss Mackenzie," drawled Leroy.

"Good morning," she answered quietly, her hands behind her.

"Sleep well?"

"Would you expect me to?"

"Why not, with York here doing the virgin-knight act outside your door?"

Her puzzled eyes discovered that Neil's face was one blush of embarrassment.

"He slept here on the po'ch," explained Leroy, amused. "It's a great fad, this outdoor sleeping. The doctors recommend it strong for sick people. You wouldn't think to look at him York was sick. He looks plumb husky. But looks are right deceptive. It's a fact, Miss Mackenzie, that he was so sick last night I wasn't dead sure he'd live till mo'ning."

The eyes of the men met like rapiers. Neil said nothing, and Leroy dropped him from his mind as if he were a trifle and devoted his attention to Alice.

"Breakfast is ready, Miss Mackenzie. This way, please."

The outlaw led her to the dining room, where the young woman met a fresh surprise. The table was white with immaculate linen and shone with silver. She sat down to breakfast food with cream, followed by quail on toast, bacon and eggs, and really good coffee. Moreover, she discovered that this terror of the border knew how to handle his knife and fork, was not deficient in the little niceties of table decorum. He talked, and talked well, ignoring, like a perfect host, the relation that existed between them. They sat opposite each other and ate alone, waited upon by the Mexican woman. Alice wondered if he kept solitary state when she was not there or ate with the other men.

It was evening before Hardman returned from the mission upon which he had been sent in place of the obstinate Neil. He reported at once to Leroy, who came smilingly to the place where she was sitting on the porch to tell her his news.

"Webb Mackenzie's going to raise that thirty thousand, all right. He's promised to raise it inside of three days," he told her triumphantly.

"And shall I have to stay here three whole days?"

He looked with half-shut, smoldering eyes at her slender exquisiteness, compact of a strange charm that was both well-bred and gypsyish. There was a scarce-veiled passion in his gaze that troubled her. More than once that day she had caught it.

"Three days ain't so long. I could stand three months of you and wish for more," he told her.

Lightly she turned the subject, but not without a chill of fear. Three days was a long time. Much might happen if this wolf slipped the leash of his civilization.

It was next day that an incident occurred which was to affect the course of events more than she could guess at the time. A bunch of wild hill steers had been driven down by Hardman, Reilly, and Neil in the afternoon and were inclosed in the corral with the cows from the Rocking Chair Ranch. Just before sunset Leroy, who had been away all day, returned and sauntered over from the stable to join Alice. It struck the girl from his flushed appearance that he had been drinking. In his eye she found a wild devil of lawlessness that set her heart pounding. If Neil and he clashed now there would be murder done. Of that she felt sure.

That she set herself to humor the Wolf's whims was no more for her own safety than for that of the man who had been her friend. She curbed her fears, clamped down her startled maiden modesty, parried his advances with light words and gay smiles. Once Neil passed, and his eyes asked a question. She shook her head, unnoticed by Leroy. She would fight her own battle as long as she could. It was to divert him that she proposed they go down to the corral and look at the wild cattle the men had driven down. She told him she had heard a great deal about them, but had never seen any. If he would go with her she would like to look at them.

The outlaw was instantly at her service, and they sauntered across. In her hand the girl carried a closed umbrella she had been using to keep off the sun.

They stood at the gate of the corral looking at the long-legged, shaggy creatures, as wild and as active almost as hill deer. On horseback one could pass to and fro among them without danger, but in a closed corral a man on foot would have taken a chance. Nobody knew this better than Leroy. But the liquor was still in his head, and even when sober he was reckless beyond other men.

"They need water," he said, and with that opened the gate and started for the windmill.

He sauntered carelessly across, with never a glance at the dangerous animals among which he was venturing. A great bull pawed the ground lowered its head, and made a rush at the unconscious man. Alice called to him to look out, then whipped open the gate and ran after him. Leroy turned, and, in a flash, saw that which for an instant filled him with a deadly paralysis. Between him and the bull, directly in the path of its rush, stood this slender girl, defenseless.

Even as his revolver flashed out from the scabbard the outlaw knew he was too late to save her, for she stood in such a position that he could not hit a vital spot. Suddenly her umbrella opened in the face of the animal. frightened, it set its feet wide and slithered to a halt so close to her that its chorus pierced the silk of the umbrella. With one hand Leroy swept the girl behind him; with the other he pumped three bullets into the forehead of the bull. Without a groan it keeled over, dead before it reached the ground.

Alice leaned against the iron support of the windmill. She was so white that the man expected her to sink down. One glance showed him other cattle pawing the ground angrily.

"Come!" he ordered, and, putting an arm round her waist, he ran with her to the gate. Yet a moment, and they were through in safety.

She leaned against him helpless for an instant before she had strength to disengage herself. "Thank you. I'm all right now."

"I thought you were going to faint," he explained.

She nodded. "I nearly did."

His face was colorless. "You saved my life."

"Then we're quits, for you saved mine," she answered, with a shaken attempt at a smile.

He shook his head. "That's not the same at all. I had to do that, and there was no risk to it. But you chose to save me, to risk your life for mine."

She saw that he was greatly moved, and that his emotion had swept away the effects of the liquid as a fresh breeze does a fog.

"I didn't know I was risking my life. I saw you didn't see."

"I didn't think there was a woman alive had the pluck to do it--and for me, your enemy. That what you count me, isn't it--an enemy?"

"I don't know. I can't quite think of you as friend, can I?"

"And yet I would have protected you from any danger at any cost."

"Except the danger of yourself," she said, in low voice, meeting him eye to eye.

He accepted her correction with a groan, an wheeled away, leaning his arms on the corral fence and looking away to that saddle between the peak which still glowed with sunset light.

"I haven't met a woman of your kind before in ten years," he said presently. "I've lived on you looks, your motions, the inflections of your voice. I suppose I've been starved for that sort of thing and didn't know it till you came. It's been like a glimpse of heaven to me." He laughed bitterly: and went on: "Of course, I had to take to drinking and let you see the devil I am. When I'm sober you would be as safe with me as with York. But the excitement of meeting you-- I have to ride my emotions to death so as to drain them to the uttermost. Drink stimulates the imagination, and I drank."

"I'm sorry."

Her voice said more than the words. He looked at her curiously. "You're only a girl. What do you know about men of my sort? You have been wrappered and sheltered all your life. And yet you understand me better than any of the people I meet. All my life I have fought with myself. I might have been a gentleman and I'm only a wolf. My appetites and passions, stronger than myself dragged me down. It was Kismet, the destiny ordained for me from my birth."

"Isn't there always hope for a man who knows his weaknesses and fights against them?" she asked timidly.

"No, there is not," came the harsh answer. "Besides, I don't fight. I yield to mine. Enough of that. It is you we have to consider, not me. You have saved my life, and I have got to pay the debt."

"I didn't think who you were," her honesty compelled her to say.

"That doesn't matter. you did it. I'm going to take you back to your father and straight as I can."

Her eyes lit. "Without a ransom?"

"Yes."

"You pay your debts like a gentleman, sir."

"I'm not coyote all through."

She could only ignore the hunger that stared out of his eyes for her. "What about your friends? Will they let me go?"

"They'll do as I say. What kicking they do will be done mostly in private, and when they're away from me."

"I don't want to make trouble for you."

"You won't make trouble for me. If there's any trouble it Will be for them," he said grimly.

Neither of them made any motion toward the house. The girl felt a strange impulse of tenderness toward this man who had traveled so fast the road to destruction. She had seen before that deep hunger of the eyes, for she was of the type of woman that holds a strong attraction for men. It told her that he had looked in the face of his happiness too late--too late by the many years of a misspent life that had decreed inexorably the character he could no longer change.

"I am sorry," she said again. "I didn't see that in you at first. I misjudged you. One can't label men just good or bad, as the novelists used to. You have taught me that--you and Mr. Neil."

His low, sardonic laughter rippled out. "I'm bad enough. Don't make any mistake about that, Miss Mackenzie. York's different. He's just a good man gone wrong. But I'm plain miscreant."

"Oh, no," she protested.

"As bad as they make them, but not wolf clear through," he said again. "Something's happened to me to-day. It won't change me. I've gone too far for that. But some morning when you read in the papers that Wolf Leroy died with his boots on and everybody in sight registers his opinion of the deceased you'll remember one thing. He wasn't a wolf to you--not at the last."

"I'll not forget," she said, and the quick tears were in her eyes.

York Neil came toward them from the house. It was plain from his manner he had a joke up his sleeve.

"You're wanted, Phil," he announced.

"Wanted where?"

"You got a visitor in there," Neil said, with a grin and a jerk of his thumb toward the house. "Came blundering into the draw sorter accidental-like, but some curious. So I asked him if he wouldn't light and stay a while. He thought it over, and figured he would."

"Who is it?" asked Leroy.

"You go and see. I ain't giving away what your Christmas presents are. I aim to let Santa surprise you a few.

Miss Mackenzie followed the outlaw chief into the house, and over his shoulder glimpsed two men. One of them was the Irishman, Cork Reilly, and he sat with a Winchester across his knees. The other had his back toward them, but he turned as they entered, and nodded casually to the outlaw. Helen's heart jumped to her throat when she saw it was Val Collins.

The two men looked at each other steadily in a long silence. Wolf Leroy was the first to speak.

"You damn fool!" The swarthy face creased to an evil smile of derision.

"I ce'tainly do seem to butt in considerable, Mr. Leroy," admitted Collins, with an answering smile.

Leroy's square jaw set like a vise. "It won't happen again, Mr. Sheriff."

"I'd hate to gamble on that heavy," returned Collins easily. Then he caught sight of the girl's white face, and rose to his feet with outstretched hand.

"Sit down," snapped out Reilly.

"Oh, that's all right I'm shaking hands with the lady. Did you think I was inviting you to drill a hole in me, Mr. Reilly?"

CHAPTER 18.

A DINNER FOR THREE

"I thought we bumped you off down at Epitaph," Leroy said.

"Along with Scott? Well, no. You see, I'm a regular cat to kill, Mr. Leroy, and I couldn't conscientiously join the angels with so lame a story as a game laig to explain my coming," said Collins cheerfully.

"In that case--"

"Yes, I understand. You'd be willing to accommodate with a hole in the haid instead of one in the laig. But I'll not trouble you."

"What are you doing here? Didn't I warn you to attend to your own business and leave me alone?"

"Seems to me you did load me up with some good advice, but I plumb forgot to follow it."

The Wolf cursed under his breath. "You came here at your own risk, then?"

"Well, I did and I didn't," corrected the sheriff easily. "I've got a five-thousand policy in the Southeastern Life Insurance Company, so I reckon it's some risk to them. And, by the way, it's a company I can recommend."

"Does it insure against suicide?" asked Leroy, his masked, smiling face veiling thinly a ruthless purpose.

"And against hanging. Let me strongly urge you to take out a policy at once," came the prompt retort.

"You think it necessary?"

"Quite. When you and York Neil and Hardman made an end of Scott you threw ropes round your own necks. Any locoed tenderfoot would know that."

The sheriff's unflinching look met the outlaw's black frown serene and clear-eyed.

"And would he know that you had committed suicide when you ran this place down and came here?" asked Leroy, with silken cruelty.

"Well, he ought to know it. The fact is, Mr. Leroy, that it hadn't penetrated my think-tank that this was your hacienda when I came mavericking in."

"Just out riding for your health?"

"Not exactly. I was looking for Miss Mackenzie. I cut her trail about six miles from the Rocking Chair and followed it where she wandered around. The trail led directly away from the ranch toward the mountains. That didn't make me any easy in my mind. So I just jogged along and elected myself an investigating committee. I arrived some late, but here I am, right side up--and so hearty welcome that my friend Cork won't hear of my leaving at all. He don't do a thing but entertain me--never lets his attention wander. Oh, I'm the welcome guest, all right. No doubt about that."

Wolf Leroy turned to Alice. "I think you had better go to your room," he said gently.

"Oh, no, no; let me stay," she implored. "You would never--you would never--" The words died on her white lips, but the horror in her eyes finished the question.

He met her gaze fully, and answered her doggedly. "You're not in this, Miss Mackenzie. It's between him and me. I shan't allow even you to interfere."

"But--oh, it is horrible! for two minutes."

He shook his head.

"You must! Please."

"What use?"

Let me see you alone

Her troubled gaze shifted to the strong, brown, sun-baked face of the man who had put himself in this deadly peril to save her. His keen, blue-gray eyes, very searching and steady, met hers with a courage she thought splendid, and her heart cried out passionately against the sacrifice.

"You shall not do it. Oh, please let me talk it over with you."

"No."

"Have you forgotten already?--and you said you would always remember." She almost whispered it.

She had stung his consent at last. "Very well," he said, and opened the door to let her pass into the inner room.

But she noticed that his eyes were hard as jade.

"Don't you see that he came here to save me?" she cried, when they were alone. "Don't you see it was for me? He didn't come to spy out your place of hiding."

"I see that he has found it. If I let him go, he will bring back a posse to take us."

"You could ride across the line into Mexico."

"I could, but I won't."

"But why?"

"Because, Miss Mackenzie, the money we took from the express car of the Limited is hidden here, and I don't know where it is; because the sun won't ever rise on a day when Val Collins will drive me out of Arizona."

"I don't know what you mean about the money, but you must let him go. You spoke of a service I had done you. This is my pay."

"To turn him loose to hunt us down?"

"He'll not trouble you if you let him go."

A sardonic smile touched his face. "A lot you know of him. He thinks it his duty to rid the earth of vermin like us. He'd never let up till he got us or we got him. Well, we've got him now, good and plenty. He took his chances, didn't he? It isn't as if he didn't know what he was up against. He'll tell you himself it's a square deal. He's game, and he won't squeal because we win and he has to pay forfeit."

The girl wrung her hands despairingly.

"It's his life or mine--and not only mine, but my men's," continued the outlaw. "Would you turn a wolf loose from your sheep pen to lead the pack to the kill?"

"But if he were to promise "

"We're not talking about the ordinary man--he'd promise anything and lie to-morrow. But Sheriff Collins won't do it. If you think you can twist a promise out of him not to take advantage of what he has found out you're guessing wrong. When you think he's a quitter, just look at that cork hand of his, and remember how come he to get it. He'll take his medicine proper, but he'll never crawl."

"There must be some way," she cried desperately,

"Since you make a point of it, I'll give him his chance."

"You'll let him go?" The joy in her voice was tremulously plain.

He laughed, leaning carelessly against the mantelshelf. But his narrowed eyes watched her vigilantly. "I didn't say I would let him go. What I said was that I'd give him a chance."

"How?"

"They say he's a dead shot. I'm a few with a gun myself. We'll ride down to the plains together, and find a good lonely spot suitable for a graveyard. Then one of us will ride away, and the other will stay, or perhaps both of us will stay."

She shuddered. "No--no--no. I won't have it."

"Afraid something might happen to me, ma'am?" he asked, with a queer laugh,

"I won't have it."

"Afraid, perhaps, he might be the one left for the coyotes and the buzzards?"

She was white to the lips, but at his next word the blood came flaming back to her cheeks.

"Why don't you tell the truth? Why don't you; say you love him, and be done with it? Say it and I'll take him back to Tucson with you safe as if he were a baby."

She covered her face with her hands, but with two steps he had reached her and captured he hands.

"The truth," he demanded, and his eyes compelled.

"It is to save his life?"

He laughed harshly. "Here's melodrama for you! Yes--to save your lover's life."

She lifted her eyes to his bravely. "What you say is true. I love him."

Leroy bowed ironically. "I congratulate Mr. Collins, who is now quite safe, so far as I am concerned. Meanwhile, lest he be jealous of your absense, shall we return now?"

Some word of sympathy for the reckless scamp trembled on her lips, but her instinct told her would hold it insult added to injury, and she left her pity unvoiced.

"If you please."

But as he heeled away she laid a timid hand on his arm. He turned and looked grimly down at the working face, at the sweet, soft, pitiful eyes brimming with tears. She was pure woman now, all the caste pride dissolved in yearning pity.

"Oh, you lamb--you precious lamb," he groaned, and clicked his teeth shut on the poignant pain of his loss.

"I think you're splendid," she told him. "Oh, I know what you've done--that you are not good. I know you've wasted your life and lived with your hand against every man's. But I can't help all that. I look for the good in you, and I find it. Even in your sins you are not petty. You know how to rise to an opportunity."

This man of contradictions, forever the creature of his impulses, gave the lie to her last words by signally failing to rise to this one. He snatched her to him, and looked down hungry-eyed at her sweet beauty, as fresh and fragrant as the wild rose in the copse.

"Please," she cried, straining from him with shy, frightened eyes.

For answer he kissed her fiercely on the cheeks, and eyes, and mouth.

"The rest are his, but these are mine," he laughed mirthlessly.

Then, flinging her from him, he led the way into the next room. Flushed and disheveled, she followed. He had outraged her maiden instincts and trampled down her traditions of caste, but she had no time to think of this now.

"If you're through explaining the mechanism of that Winchester to Sheriff Collins we'll reluctantly dispense with your presence, Mr. Reilly. We have arranged a temporary treaty of peace," the chief outlaw said.

Reilly, a huge lout of a fellow with a lowering countenance, ventured to expostulate. "Ye want to be careful of him. He's quicker'n chain lightning."

His chief exploded with low-voiced fury. "When I ask your advice, give it, you fat-brained son of a brand blotter. Until then padlock that mouth of yours. Vamos."

Reilly vanished, his face a picture of impotent malice, and Leroy continued:

"We're going to the Rocking Chair in the morning, Mr. Collins--at least, you and Miss Mackenzie are going there. I'm going part way. We've arranged a little deal all by our lones, subject to your approval. You get away without that hole in your head. Miss Mackenzie goes with you, and I get in return the papers you took off Scott and Webster."

"You mean I am to give up the hunt?" asked Collins.

"Not at all. I'll be glad to death to see you blundering in again when Miss Mackenzie isn't here to beg you off. The point is that in exchange for your freedom and Miss Mackenzie's I get those papers you left in a safety-deposit vault in Epitaph. It'll save me the trouble of sticking up the First National and winging a few indiscreet citizens of that burgh. Savvy?"

"That's all you ask?" demanded the surprised sheriff.

"All I ask is to get those papers in my hand and a four-hour start before you begin the hunt. Is it a deal?"

"It's a deal, but I give it to you straight that I'll be after you as soon as the four hours are up," returned Collins promptly. "I don't know what magic Miss Mackenzie used. Still, I must compliment her on getting us out mighty easy."

But though the sheriff looked smilingly at Alice, that young woman, usually mistress of herself in all emergencies, did not lift her eyes to meet his. Indeed, he thought her strangely embarrassed. She was as flushed and tongue-tied as a country girl in unaccustomed company. She seemed another woman than the self-possessed young beauty he had met a month before on the Limited, but he found her shy abashment charming.

"I guess you thought you had come to the end of the passage, Mr. Collins," suggested the outlaw, with listless curiosity.

"I didn't know whether to order the flowers or not, but 'way down in my heart I was backing my luck," Collins told him.

"Of course it's understood that you are on parole until we separate," said Leroy curtly.

"Of course."

"Then we'll have supper at once, for we'll have to be on the road early." He clapped his hands together, and the Mexican woman appeared. Her master flung out a command or two in her own language.

"--poco tiempo,--" she answered, and disappeared.

In a surprisingly short time the meal was ready, set out on a table white with Irish linen and winking with cut glass and silver.

"Mr. Leroy does not believe at all in doing when in Rome as the Romans do," Alice explained to Collins, in answer to his start of amazement. "He's a regular Aladdin. I shouldn't be a bit surprised to see electric lights come on next."

"One has to attempt sometimes to blot out the forsaken desert," said Leroy. "Try this cut of slow elk, Miss Mackenzie. I think you'll like it."

"Slow elk! What is that?" asked the girl, to make talk.

"Mr. Collins will tell you," smiled Leroy.

She turned to the sheriff, who first apologized, with a smile, to his host. "Slow elk, Miss Mackenzie, is veal that has been rustled. I expect Mr. Leroy has pressed a stray calf into our Service "

"I see," she flashed. "Pressed veal."

The outlaw smiled at her ready wit, and took on himself the burden of further explanation. "And this particular slow elk comes from a ranch on the Aravaipa owned by Mr. Collins. York shot it up in the hills a day or two ago."

"Shouldn't have been straying so far from its range," suggested Collins, with a laugh. "But it's good veal, even if I say it that shouldn't."

"Thank you," burlesqued the bandit gravely, with such an ironic touch of convention that Alice smiled.

After dinner Leroy produced cigars, and with the permission of Miss Mackenzie the two men smoked while the conversation ran on a topic as impersonal as literature. A criticism of novels and plays written to illustrate the frontier was the line into which the discussion fell, and the girl from the city, listening with a vivid interest, was pleased to find that these two real men talked with point and a sense of dexterous turns. She felt a sort of proud proprietorship in their power, and wished that some of the tailors' models she had met in society, who held so good a conceit of themselves, might come under the spell of their strong, tolerant virility. Whatever the difference between them, it might be truly said of both that they had lived at first hand and come in touch closely with all the elemental realities. One of them was a romantic villain and the other an unromantic hero, but her pulsing emotions morally condemned one no more than the other.

This was the sheer delight of her esthetic sense of fitness, that strong men engaged in a finish fight could rise to so perfect a courtesy that an outsider could not have guessed the antagonism that ran between them, enduring as life.

Leroy gave the signal for breaking up by looking at his watch. "Afraid I must say 'Lights out.' It's past eleven. We'll have to be up and on our way with the hooters. Sleep well, Miss Mackenzie. You don't need to worry about waking. I'll have you called in good time. Buenos noches."

He held the door for her as she passed out; and, in passing, her eyes rose to meet his.

"--Buenos noches, senor;--I'm sure I shall sleep well to-night," she said.

It had been the day of Alice Mackenzie' life. Emotions and sensations, surging through her, had trodden on each other's heels. Woman-like, she welcomed the darkness to analyze and classify the turbid chaos of her mind. She had been swept into sympathy with an outlaw, to give him no worse name. She had felt herself nearer to him than to some honest men she could name who had offered her their love.

Surely, that had been bad enough, but worse was to follow. This discerning scamp had torn aside her veils of maiden reserve and exposed the secret fancy of her heart, unknown before even to herself. She had confessed love for this big-hearted sheriff and frontiersman. Here she could plead an ulterior motive. To save his life any deception was permissible. Yes, but where lay the truth? With that insistent demand of the outlaw had rushed over her a sudden wave of joy. What could it mean unless it meant what she would not admit that it could mean? Why, the man was impossible. He was not of her class. She had scarce seen him a half-dozen times. Her first meeting with him had been only a month ago. One month ago--

A remembrance flashed through her that brought her from the bed in a barefoot search for matches. When the candle was relit he slipped a chamoisskin pouch from her neck and from it took a sealed envelope. It was the note in which the sheriff on the night of the train robbery had written his prediction of how the matter would come out. She was to open the envelope in a month, and the month was up to-night.

As she tore open the flap it came to her with one of her little flashing smiles that she could never have guessed under what circumstances she would read it. By the dim flame of a guttering candle, in a cotton nightgown borrowed from a Mexican menial, a prisoner of the very man who had robbed her and the recipient of a practical confession of love from him not three hours earlier! Surely here was a situation to beggar romance. But before she had finished reading the reality was still more unbelievable.

I have just met for the first time the woman I am going to marry if God is good to one. I am writing this because I want her to know it as soon as I decently can. Of course, I am not worthy of her, but then I don't know any man that is.

So the fact goes--I'm bound to marry her if there's nobody else in the way. This isn't conceit. It is a deep-seated certainty I can't get away from, and don't want to. When she reads this, she will think it a piece of foolish presumption. My hope is she will not always think so. Her Lover,

VAL COLLINS.

Her swift-pulsing heart was behaving very queerly. It seemed to hang delightfully still, and then jump forward with odd little beats of joy. She caught a glimpse of her happy face, and blew out the light for shame, groping her way back to bed with the letter carefully guarded against crumpling by her hand.

Foolish presumption indeed. Why, he had only seen her once, and he said he would marry her with never a by-your-leave! Wasn't that what he had said? She had to strike another match to learn the lines that had not stuck word for word in her mind, and after that another match to get a picture of the scrawl to visualize in the dark.

How dared he take her for granted? But what a masterly way of wooing for the right man! What idiotic folly if he had been the wrong one! Was he, then, the right one? She questioned herself closely, but came to no more definite answer than this--that her heart went glad with a sweet joy to know he wanted to marry her.

She resolved to put him from her mind, and in this resolve she fell at last into smiling sleep.

CHAPTER 19.

A VILLON OF THE DESERT

When Alice Mackenzie looked back in after years upon the incidents connected with that ride to the Rocking Chair, it was always with a kind of glorified pride in her villain-hero. He had his moments, had this twentieth-century Villon, when he represented not unworthily the divinity in man; and this day held more than one of them. Since he was what he was, it also held as many of his black moods.

The start was delayed, owing to a cause Leroy had not foreseen. When York went, sleepy-eyed, to the corral to saddle the ponies, he found the bars into the pasture let clown, and the whole remunda kicking up its heels in a paddock large as a goodsized city. The result was that it took two hours to run up the bunch of ponies and another half-hour to cut out, rope, and saddle the three that were wanted. Throughout the process Reilly sat on the fence and scowled.

Leroy, making an end of slapping on and cinching the last saddle, wheeled suddenly on the Irishman. "What's the matter, Reilly?"

"Was I saying anything was the matter?"

"You've been looking it right hard. Ain't you man enough to say it instead of playing dirty little three-for-a-cent tricks--like letting down the corral-bars?"

Reilly flung a look at Neil that plainly demanded support, and then descended with truculent defiance from the fence.

"Who says I let down the bars? You bet I am man enough to say what I think; and if ye think I ain't got the nerve--"

His master encouraged him with ironic derision. "That's right, Reilly. Who's afraid? Cough it up and show York you're game."

"By thunder, I AM game. I've got a kick coming, sorr."

"Yes?" Leroy rolled and lit a cigarette, his black eyes fixed intently on the malcontent. "Well, register it on the jump. I've got to be off."

"That's the point." The curly-headed Neil had lounged up to his comrade's support. "Why have you got to be off? We don't savvy your game, cap."

"Perhaps you would like to be major-domo of this outfit, Neil?" scoffed his chief, eying him scornfully.

"No, sir. I ain't aimin' for no such thing. But we don't like the way things are shaping. What does all this here funny business mean, anyhow?" His thumb jerked toward Collins, already mounted and waiting for Leroy to join him. "Two days ago this world wasn't big enough to hold him and you. Well, I git the drop on him, and then you begin to cotton up to him right away. Big dinner last night--champagne corks popping, I hear. What I want to know is what it means. And here's this Miss Mackenzie. She's good for a big ransom, but I don't see it ambling our way. It looks darned funny."

"That's the ticket, York," derided Leroy. "Come again. Turn your wolf loose."

"Oh! I ain't afraid to say what I think."

"I see you're not. You should try stump-speaking, my friend. There's a field fox you there."

"I'm asking you a question, Mr. Leroy."

"That's whatever," chipped in Reilly.

"Put a name to it."

"Well, I want to know what's the game, and where we come in."

"Think you're getting the double-cross?" asked Leroy pleasantly, his vigilant eyes covering them like a weapon.

"Now you're shouting. That's what I'd like right well to know. There he sits"--with another thumbjerk at Collins--"and I'm a Chink if he ain't carryin' them same two guns I took offen him, one on the train and one here the other day. I ain't sayin' it ain't all right, cap. But what I do say is--how about it?"

Leroy did some thinking out loud. "Of course I might tell you boys to go to the devil. That's my right, because you chose me to run this outfit without any advice from the rest of you. But you're such infants, I reckon I had better explain. You're always worrying those fat brains of yours with suspicions. After we stuck up the Limited you couldn't trust me to take care of the swag. Reilly here had to cook up a fool scheme for us all to hide it blindfold together. I told you straight what would happen, and it did. When Scott crossed the divide we were in a Jim Dandy of a hole. We had to have that paper of his to find the boodle. Then Hardman gets caught, and coughs up his little recipe for helping to find hidden treasure. Who gets them both? Mr. Sheriff Collins, of course. Then he comes visiting us. Not being a fool, he leaves the documents behind in a safety-deposit vault. Unless I can fix up a deal with him, Mr. Reilly's wise play buncoes us and himself out of thirty thousand dollars."

"Why don't you let him send for the papers first?"

"Because he won't do it. Threaten nothing! Collins ain't that kind of a hairpin. He'd tell us to shoot and be damned."

"So you've got it fixed with him?" demanded Neil.

"You've a head like a sheep, York," admired Leroy. "YOU don't need any brick-wall hints to hit you. As your think-tank has guessed, I have come to an understanding with Collins."

"But the gyurl--I allow the old major would come down with a right smart ransom."

"Wrong guess, York. I allow he would come down with a right smart posse and wipe us off the face of the earth. Collins tells me the major has sent for a couple of Apache trailers from the reservation. That means it's up to us to hike for Sonora. The only point is whether we take that buried money with us or leave it here. If I make a deal with Collins, we get it. If I don't, it's somebody else's gold-mine. Anything more the committee of investigation would like to know?" concluded Leroy, as his cold eyes raked them scornfully and came to rest on Reilly.

"Not for mine," said Neil, with an apologetic laugh. "I'm satisfied. I just wanted to know. And I guess Cork corroborates."

Reilly growled something under his breath, and turned to hulk away.

"One moment. You'll listen to me, now. You have taken the liberty to assume I was going to sell you out. I'll not stand that from any man alive. To-morrow night I'll get back from Tucson. We'll dig up the loot and divide it. And right then we quit company. You go your way and I go mine." And with that as a parting shot, Leroy turned on his heel and went direct to his horse.

Alice Mackenzie might have searched the West with a fine-tooth comb and not found elsewhere two such riders for an escort as fenced her that day. Physically they were a pair of superb animals, each perfect after his fashion. If the fair-haired giant, with his lean, broad shoulders and rippling flow of muscles, bulked more strikingly in a display of sheer strength, the sinewy, tigerish grace of the dark Apollo left nothing to be desired to the eye. Both of them had been brought up in the saddle, and each was fit to the minute for any emergency likely to appear.

But on this pleasant morning no test of their power seemed likely to arise, and she could study them at her ease without hindrance. She had never seen Leroy look more the vagabond enthroned. For dress, he wore the common equipment of Cattleland--jingling spurs, fringed chaps, leather cuffs, gray shirt, with kerchief knotted loosely at the neck, and revolver ready to his hand. But he carried them with an air, an inimitable grace, that marked him for a prince among his fellows. Something of the kind she hinted to him in jesting paradoxical fashion, making an attempt to win from his sardonic gloom one of his quick, flashing smiles.

He countered by telling her what he had heard York say to Reilly of her. "She's a princess, Cork," York had said. "Makes my Epitaph gyurl look like a chromo beside her. Somehow, when she looks at a fellow, he feels like a whitewashed nigger."

All of them laughed at that, but both Leroy and the sheriff tried to banter her by insisting that they knew exactly what York meant.

"You can be very splendid when you want to give a man that whitewashed feeling; he isn't right sure whether he's on the map or not," reproached the train-robber.

She laughed in the slow, indolent way she had, taking the straw hat from her dark head to catch better the faint breath of wind that was soughing across the plains.

"I didn't know I was so terrible. I don't think yon ever had any awe of anybody, Mr. Leroy." Her soft cheek flushed in unexpected memory of that moment when he had brushed aside all her maiden reserves and ravished mad kisses from her. "And Mr. Collins is big enough to take care of himself," she added hastily, to banish the unwelcome recollection.

Collins, with his eyes on the light-shot waves that crowned her vivid face, wondered whether he was or not. If she had been a woman to desire in the queenly, half-insolent indifference of manner with which she had first met him, how much more of charm lay in this piquant gaiety, in the warm sweetness of her softer and more pliant mood! It seemed to him she had the gift of comradeship to perfection.

They unsaddled and ate lunch in the shade of the live-oaks at El Dorado Springs, which used to be a much-frequented watering-hole in the days when Camp Grant thrived and mule-skinners freighted supplies in to feed Uncle Sam's pets. Two hours later they stopped again at the edge of the Santa Cruz wash, two miles from the Rocking Chair Ranch.

It was while they were resaddling that Collins caught sight of a cloud of dust a mile or two away. He unslung his field-glasses, and looked long at the approaching dust-swirl. Presently he handed the binoculars to Leroy.

"Five of them; and that round-bellied Papago pony in front belongs to Sheriff Forbes, or I'm away wrong."

Leroy lowered the glasses, after a long, unflurried inspection. "Looks that way to me. Expect I'd better be burning the wind."

In a few sentences he and Collins arranged a meeting for next day up in the hills. He trailed his spurs through the dust toward Alice Mackenzie, and offered her his brown hand and wistful smile irresistible. "Good-by. This is where you get quit of me for good."

"Oh, I hope not," she told him impulsively. "We must always be friends."

He laughed ruefully. "Your father wouldn't indorse those unwise sentiments, I reckon--and I'd hate to bet your husband would," he added audaciously, with a glance at Collins. "But I love to hear you say it, even though we never could be. You're a right game, stanch little pardner. I'll back that opinion with the lid off."

"You should be a good judge of those qualities. I'm only sorry you don't always use them in a good cause."

He swung himself to his saddle. "Good-by."

"Good-by--till we meet again."

"And that will be never. So-long, sheriff. Tell Forbes I've got a particular engagement in the hills, but I'll be right glad to meet him when he comes."

He rode up the draw and disappeared over the brow of the hillock. She caught another glimpse of him a minute later on the summit of the hill beyond. He waved a hand at her, half-turning in his saddle as he rode.

Presently she lost him, but faintly the wind swept back to her a haunting snatch of uncouth song:

"Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee, In my narrow grave just six by three,"

Were the words drifted to her by the wind. She thought it pathetically likely he might get the wish of his song.

To Sheriff Forbes, dropping into the draw a few minutes later with his posse, Collins was a well of misinformation literally true. Yes, he had followed Miss Mackenzie's trail into the hills and found her at a mountain ranch-house. She had been there a couple of days, and was about to set out for the Rocking Chair with the owner of the place, when he arrived and volunteered to see her as far as her uncle's ranch.

"I reckon there ain't any use asking you if you seen anything of Wolf Leroy's outfit," said Forbes, a weather-beaten Westerner with a shrewd, wrinkled face.

"No, I reckon there's no use asking me that," returned Collins, with a laugh that deceptively seemed to include the older man in the joke.

"We're after them for rustling a bunch of Circle 33 cows. Well, I'll be moving. Glad you found the lady, Val. She don't look none played out from her little trek across the desert. Funny, ain't it, how she could have wandered that far and her afoot?"

The Arizona sun was setting in its accustomed blaze of splendor, when Val Collins and Alice Mackenzie put their horses again toward the ranch and the rainbow-hued west. In his contented eyes were reflected the sunshine and a serenity born of life in the wide, open spaces. They rode in silence for long, the gentle evening breeze blowing in soughs.

"Did you ever meet a man of such promises gone wrong so utterly? He might have been anything--and it has come to this, that he is hunted like a wild beast. I never saw anything so pitiful. I would give anything to save him."

He had no need to ask to whom she was referring. "Can't be done. Good qualities bulge out all over him, but they don't count for anything. 'Unstable as water.' That's what's the matter with him. He is the slave of his own whims. Hence he is only the splendid wreck of a man, full of all kinds of rich outcropping pay-ore that pinch out when you try to work them. They don't raise men gamer, but that only makes him a more dangerous foe to society. Same with his loyalty and his brilliancy. He's got a haid on him that works like they say old J. E. B. Stuart's did. He would run into a hundred traps, but somehow he always worked his men out of them. That's Leroy, too. If he had been an ordinary criminal he would have been rounded up years ago. It's his audacity, his iron nerve, his ,good horse-sense judgment that saves his skin. But he's ce'tainly up against it at last."

"You think Sheriff Forbes will capture him?"

He laughed. "I think it more likely he'll capture Forbes. But we know now where he hangs out, and who he is. He has always been a mystery till now. The mystery is solved, and unless he strikes out for Sonora, Leroy is as good as a dead man."

"A dead man?"

"Does he strike you as a man likely to be taken alive? I look to see a dramatic exit to the sound of cracking Winchesters."

"Yes, that would be like him," she confessed with shudder. "I think he was made to lead a forlorn hope. Pity it won't be one worthy of the best in him."

"I guess he does have more moments set to music than most of us, and I'll bet, too, he has hidden way in him a list of 'Thou shalt nots.' I read a book once by a man named Stevenson that was sure virgin gold. He showed how every man, no matter how low he falls, has somewhere in him a light that burns, some rag of honor for which he is still fighting I'd hate to have to judge Leroy. Some men, I reckon, have to buck against so much in themselves that even failure is a kind of success for them."

"Yet you will go out to hunt him down?" she' said, marveling at the broad sympathy of the man.

"Sure I will. My official duty is to look out for society. If something in the machine breaks loose and goes to ripping things to pieces, the engineer has to stop the damage, even if he has to smash the rod that's causing the trouble."

The ponies dropped down again into the bed of the wash, and plowed across through the heavy sand. After they had reached the solid road, Collins resumed conversation at a new point.

"It's a month and a day since I first met you Miss Mackenzie," he said, apparently apropos of nothing.

She felt her blood begin to choke. "Indeed!"

"I gave you a letter to read when I was on the train."

"A letter!" she exclaimed, in well-affected surprise.

"Did you think it was a book of poems? No, ma'am, it was a letter. You were to read it in a month. Time was up last night. I reckon you read it."

"Could I read a letter I left at Tucson, when it was a hundred miles away?" she smiled with sweet patronage.

"Not if you left it at Tucson," he assented, with an answering smile.

"Maybe I DID lose it." She frowned, trying to remember.

"Then I'll have to tell you what was in it."

"Any time will do. I dare say it wasn't important."

"Then we'll say THIS time."

"Don't be stupid, Mr. Collins. I want to talk about our desert Villon."

"I said in that letter--"

She put her pony to a canter, and they galloped side by side in silence for half a mile. After she had slowed down to a walk, he continued placidly, as if oblivious of an interruption:

"I said in that letter that I had just met the young lady I was expecting to marry."

"Dear me, how interesting! Was she in the smoker?"

"No, she was in Section 3 of the Pullman."

"I wish I had happened to go into the other Pullman, but, of course, I couldn't know the young lady you were interested in was riding there."

"She wasn't."

"But you've just told me "

"That I said in the letter you took so much trouble to lose that I expected to marry the young woman passing under the name of Miss Wainwright."

"Sir!"

"That I expected--"

"Really, I am not deaf, Mr. Collins."

"--expected to marry her, just as soon as she was willing."

"Oh, she is to be given a voice in the matter, is she?"

"Ce'tainly, ma'am."

"And when?"

"Well, I had been thinking now was a right good time."

"It can't be too soon for me," she flashed back, sweeping him with proud, indignant eyes.

"But I ain't so sure. I rather think I'd better wait."

"No, no! Let us have it done with once and for all."

He relapsed into a serene, abstracted silence.

"Aren't you going to speak?" she flamed.

"I've decided to wait."

"Well, I haven't. Ask me this minute, sir, to marry you."

"Ce'tainly, if you cayn't wait. Miss Mackenzie, will you--"

"No, sir, I won't--not if you were the last man on earth," she interrupted hotly, whipping herself into a genuine rage. "I never was so insulted in my life. It would be ridiculous if it weren't so--so outrageous. You EXPECT, do you? And it isn't conceit, but a deep-seated certainty you can't get away from."

He had her fairly. "Then you DID read the letter."

"Yes, sir, I read it--and for sheer, unmatched impudence I have never seen its like."

"Now, I wish you would tell me what you REALLY think," he drawled.

Not being able, for reasons equestrian, to stamp her foot, she gave her bronco the spur.

When Collins again found conversation practicable, the Rocking Chair, a white adobe huddle in the moonlight, lay peacefully beneath them in the alley.

"It's a right quaint old ranch, and it's seen a heap of rough-and-tumble life in its day. If those old adobe bricks could tell stories, I expect they could put some of these romances out of business." Miss Mackenzie's covert glance questioned suspiciously what this diversion might mean.

"All this country's interesting. Take Tucson now that burg is loaded to the roofs with live stories. It's an all-right business town, too--the best in the territory," he continued patriotically. "She ain't so great as Douglas on ore or as Phoenix on lungers, but when it comes, to the git-up-and-git hustle, she's there rounding up the trade from early morn till dine."

He was still expatiating in a monologue with grave enthusiasm on the town of his choice, when they came to the pasture fence of the ranch.

"Some folks don't like it--call it adobe-town, and say it's full of greasers. Everybody to his taste, I say. Little old Tucson is good enough for me."

She gave a queer little laugh as he talked. She had put a taboo on his love story herself, but she resented the perfectly unmoved good humor with which he seemed to be accepting her verdict. She made up her mind to punish him, but he gave her no chance. As he helped her to dismount, he said:

"I'll take the horses round to the stable, Miss Mackenzie. Probably I won't see you again before I leave, but I'm hoping to meet you again in Tucson one of these days. Good-by."

She nodded a curt good-by and passed into the house. She was vexed and indignant, but had too strong a sense of humor not to enjoy a joke even when it was against herself.

"I forgot to ask him whether he loves me or Tucson more, and as one of the subjects seems to be closed I'll probably never find out," she told herself, but with a queer little tug of pain in her laughter.

Next moment she was in the arms of her father.

CHAPTER 20.

BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY

To minimize the risk, Megales and Carlo left the prison by the secret passage, following the fork to the river bank and digging at the piled-up sand till they had forced an exit. O'Halloran met them here with horses, and the three men followed the riverwash beyond the limits of the town and cut across by a trail to a siding on the Central Mexican Pacific tracks. The Irishman was careful to take no chances, and kept his party in the mesquit till the headlight of an approaching train was visible.

It drew up at the siding, and the three men boarded one of the two cars which composed it. The coach next the engine was occupied by a dozen trusted soldiers, who had formerly belonged to the bodyguard of Megales. The last car was a private one, and in it the three found Henderson, Bucky O'Connor, and his little friend, the latter still garbed as a boy.

Frances was exceedingly eager to don again the clothes proper to her sex, and she had promised herself that, once habited as she desired, nothing could induce her ever to masquerade again. Until she met and fell in love with the ranger she had thought nothing of it, since it had been merely a matter of professional business to which she had been forced. Indeed, she had sometimes enjoyed the humor of the deception. It had lent a spice o enjoyment to a life not crowded with it. But after she met Bucky there had grown up in her a new sensitiveness. She wanted to be womanly, to forget her turbid past and the shifts to which she had sometimes been put. She had been a child; she was now a woman. She wanted to be one of whom he need be in no way ashamed.

When their train began to pull out of the depot at Chihuahua she drew a deep sigh of relief.

"It's good to get away from here back to the States. I'm tired of plots and counterplots. For the rest of my life I want to be just a woman," she said to Bucky.

The young man smiled. "I reckon I must quit trying to make you a gentleman. Fact is, I don't want you to be one any more."

She slanted a look at him to see what that might mean and another up the car to make sure that Henderson was out of hearing.

"It was rather hopeless, wasn't it?" she smiled. "We'll do pretty well if we succeed in making me a lady in course of time. I've a lot to learn, you know."

"Well, you got lots of time to learn it," he replied cheerfully. "And I've got a notion tucked away in the back of my haid that you haven't got such a heap to study up. Mrs. Mackenzie will put you next to the etiquette wrinkles where you are shy."

A shadow fell on the piquant, eager face beside him. "Do you think she will love me?"

"I don't think. I know. She can't help it."

"Because she is my mother? Oh, I hope that is true."

"No, not only because she is your mother."

She decided to ask for no more reasons. Henderson, pleased at the wide stretch of plain as only one who had missed the open air for many years could be, was on the observation platform in the rear of the car, one glance at his empty seat showed her. There was no safety for her shyness in the presence of that proverbial three which makes a crowd, and she began to feel her heart again in panic as once before. She took at once the opening she had given.

"I do need a mother so much, after growing up like Topsy all these years. And mine is the dearest woman in the world. I fell in love with her before, and I did not know who she was when I was at he ranch."

"I'll agree to the second dearest in the world, but I reckon you shoot too high when you say the plumb dearest."

"She is. We'll quarrel if you don't agree," trying desperately to divert him from the topic she knew he meant to pursue. For in the past two days he had been so busy helping O'Halloran that he had not even had a glimpse of her. As a consequence of which each felt half-dubious of the other's love, and Frances felt wholly shy about expressing her own or even listening to his.

"Well, we're due for a quarrel, I reckon. But we'll postpone it till we got more time to give it. He drew a watch from his pocket and glanced at it "In less than fifteen minutes Mike and our two friends who are making their getaway will come in that door Henderson just went out of. That means we won't get a chance to be alone together, for about two days. I've got something to say to you, Curly Haid, that won't keep that long with out running my temperature clear up. So I'm allowing to say it right now immediate. No, you don't need to turn them brown appealers on me. It won't do a mite of good. It's Bucky to the bat and he's bound to make a hit or strike out."

"I think I hear Mr. Henderson coming," murmured Frances, for lack of something more effective to say.

"Not him. He's hogtied to the scenery long enough to do my business. Now, it won't take me long if I get off right foot first. You read my letter, you said?"

"Which letter?" She was examining attentively the fringe of the sash she wore.

"Why, honey, that love-letter I wrote you. If there was more than one it must have been wrote in my sleep, for I ce'tainly disremember it."

He could just hear her confused answer: "Oh, yes, I read that. I told you that before."

"What did you think? Tell me again."

"I thought you misspelled feelings."

"You don't say. Now, ain't that too bad? But, girl o' mine, I expect you were able to make it out, even if I did get the letters to milling around wrong. I meant them feelings all right. Outside of the spelling, did you have any objections to them,

"How can I remember what you wrote in that letter several days ago?"

"I'll bet you know it by heart, honey, and, if you don't, you'll find it in your inside vest pocket, tucked away right close to your heart."

"It isn't," she denied, with a blush.

"Sho! Pinned to your shirt then, little pardner. I ain't particular which. Point is, if you need to refresh that ailin' memory of yours, the document is--right handy. But you don't need to. It just says one little sentence over and over again. All you have got to do is to say one little word, and you don't have to say it but once."

"I don't understand you," her lips voiced.

"You understand me all right. What my letter said was 'I love you,' and what you have got to say is: 'Yes'"

"But that doesn't mean anything."

"I'll make out the meaning when you say it."

"Do I have to say it?"

"You have to if you feel it."

Slowly the big brown eyes came up to meet his bravely. "Yes, Bucky."

He caught her hands and looked down into her pure, sweet soul.

"I'm in luck," he breathed deeply. "In golden luck to have you look at me twice. Are you sure?"

"Sure. I loved you that first day I met you. I've loved you every day since," she confessed simply.

Full on the lips he kissed her.

"Then we'll be married as soon as we reach the Rocking Chair."

"But you once said you didn't want to be my husband," she taunted sweetly. "Don't you remember? In the days when we were gipsies."

"I've changed my mind. I want to, and I'm in a hurry."

She shook her head. "No, dear. We shall have to wait. It wouldn't be fair to my mother to lose me just as soon as she finds me. It is her right to get acquainted with me just as if I belonged to her alone. You understand what I mean, Bucky. She must not feel as if she never had found me, as if she never had been first with me. We can love each other more simply if she doesn't know about you. We'll have it for a secret for a month or two."

She put her little hand on his arm appealingly to win his consent. His eyes rested on it curiously, Then he took it in his big brown one and turned it palm up. Its delicacy and perfect finish moved him, for it seemed to him that in the contrast between the two hands he saw in miniature the difference of sex. His showed strength and competency and the roughness that comes of the struggle of life. But hers was strangely tender and confiding, compact of the qualities that go to make up the strength of the weak. Surely he deserved the worst if he was not good to her, a shield and buckler against the storms that must beat against them in the great adventure they were soon to begin together.

Reverently he raised the little hand and kissed its palm.

"Sure, sweetheart I had forgotten about your mother's claim. We can wait, I reckon," he added with a smile. "You must always set me straight when I lose the trail of what's right, Curly Haid. You are to be a guiding-star to me."

"And you to me. Oh, Bucky, isn't it good?"

He kissed her again hurriedly, for the train was jarring to a halt. Before he could answer in words, O'Halloran burst into the coach, at the head of his little company.

"All serene, Bucky. This is the last scene, and the show went without a hitch in the performance anywhere. "

Bucky smiled at Frances as he answered his enthusiastic friend:

"That's right. Not a hitch anywhere."

"And say, Bucky, who do you think is in the other coach dressed as one of the guards?"

"Colonel Roosevelt," the ranger guessed promptly.

"Our friend Chaves. He's escaping because he thinks we'll have him assassinated in revenge," the big Irishman returned gleefully. "You should have seen his color, me bye, when he caught sight of me. I asked him if he'd been reduced to the ranks, and he begged me not to tell you he was here. Go in and devil him."

Bucky glanced at his lover. "No, I'm so plumb contented I haven't the heart."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

At the Rocking Chair Ranch there was bustle and excitement. Mexicans scrubbed and scoured under the direction of Alice and Mrs. Mackenzie, and vaqueros rode hither and thither on bootless errands devised by their nervous master. For late that morning a telephone call from Aravaipa had brought Webb to the receiver to listen to a telegram. The message was from Bucky, then on the train on his way home.

"The best of news. Reach the Rocking Chair tonight."

That was the message which had disturbed the serenity of big Webb Mackenzie and had given to the motherly heart of his wife an unusual flutter. The best of news it could not be, for the ranger had already written them of the confession of Anderson, which included the statement of the death of their little daughter. But at least he might bring the next best news, information that David Henderson was free at last and his long martyrdom ended.

So all day hurried preparations were being made to receive the honored guests with a fitting welcome. The Rocking Chair was a big ranch, and its hospitality was famous all over the Southwest. It was quite unnecessary to make special efforts to entertain, but Webb and his wife took that means of relieving the strain on them till night.

Higher crept the hot sun of baked Arizona. It passed the zenith and began to descend toward the purple hills in the west, went behind them with a great rainbow splash of brilliancy peculiar to that country Dusk came, and died away in the midst of a love-concert of quails. Velvet night, with its myriad stars, entranced the land and made magic of its hills and valleys.

For the fiftieth time Webb dragged out his watch and consulted it.

"I wish that young man had let us know which way he was coming, so I could go and meet them. If they come by the river they should be in the Box canyon by this time. But if I was to ride out, like as not they would come by the mesa," he sputtered.

"What time is it, Webb?" asked his wife. scarcely less excited.

He had to look again, so absent-minded had been his last glance at the watch. "Nine-fifteen. Why didn't I telephone to Rogers and ask him to find out which way they were coming? Sometimes I'm mighty thick-headed."

As Mackenzie had guessed, the party was winding its way through the Box Canyon at that time of speaking. Bucky and Frances led the way, followed by Henderson and the vaquero whom Mackenzie had telephoned to guide them from Aravaipa.

"I reckon this night was made for us, Curly Haid. Even good old Arizona never turned out such a one before. I expect it was ordered for us ever since it was decided we belonged to each other. That may have been thousands of years ago." Bucky laughed, to relieve the tension, and looked up at the milky way above. "We're like those stars, honey. All our lives we have been drifting around, but all the time it had been decided by the God-of-things-as-they-are that our orbits were going to run together and gravitate into the same one when the right time came. It has come now."

"Yes, Bucky," she answered softly. "We belong, dear."

"Hello, here's the end of the canon. The ranch lies right behind that spur."

"Does it?" Presently she added: "I'm all a-tremble, Bucky. To think I'm going to meet my father and my mother for the first time really, for I don't count that other time when we didn't know. Suppose they shouldn't like me."

"Impossible. Suppose something reasonable," her lover replied.

"But they might not. You think, you silly boy, that because you do everybody must. But I'm so glad I'm clothed and in my right mind again. I couldn't have borne to meet my mother with that boys suit on. Do you think I look nice in this? I had to take what I could find ready-made, you know."

Unless his eyes were blinded by the glamour of love, he saw the sweetest vision of loveliness he had known. Such a surpassing miracle of soft, dainty curves, such surplusage of beauty in bare throat, speaking eye, sweet mouth, and dimpled cheeks! But Bucky was a lover, and perhaps no fair judge, for in that touch of vagueness, of fairy-land, lent by the moonlight, he found the world almost too beautiful to believe. Did she look NICE? How beggarly words were to express feelings, after all.

The vaquero with them rode forward and pointed to the valley below, where the ranch-house huddled in a pellucid sea of moonlight.

"That's the Rocking Chair, sir."

Presently there came a shout from the ranch, and a man galloped toward them. He passed Bucky with a wave of his hand and made directly for Henderson.

"Dave! Dave, old partner," he cried, leaping from his horse and catching the other's hand. "After all these years you've risen from the dead and come back to me." His voice was broken with emotion.

"Come! Let's canter forward to the ranch," said Bucky to Frances and the vaquero, thinking it best to leave the two old comrades together for a while.

Mrs. Mackenzie and Alice met them at the gate. "Did you bring him? Did you bring Dave?" the older lady asked eagerly.

"Yes, we brought him," answered Bucky, helping Frances to dismount.

He led the girl to her mother. "Mrs. Mackenzie, can you stand good news?"

She caught at the gate. "What news? Who is this lady?"

"Her name is Frances."

"Frances what?"

"Frances Mackenzie. She is your daughter, returned, after all these years, to love and be loved."

The mother gave a little throat cry, steadied herself, and fell into the arms of her daughter. "Oh, my baby! My baby! Found at last."

Quietly Bucky slipped away to the stables with the ponies. As quietly Alice disappeared into the house. This was sacred ground, and not even their feet should rest on it just now.

When Bucky returned to the house, he found his sweetheart sitting between her father and mother, each of whom was holding one of her hands. Henderson had retired to clean himself up. Happy tears were coursing down the cheeks of the mother, and Webb found it necessary to blow his nose frequently. He jumped up at sight of the ranger.

"Young man, you're to blame for this. You've found my friend and you've found my daughter. Brought them both back to us on the same day. What do you want? Name it, and it's yours, if I can give it."

Bucky looked at Frances with a smile in his eyes. He knew very well what he wanted, but he was under bonds not to name it yet.

"I'll set you up in the cattle business, sir. I'll buy you sheep, if you prefer. I'll get you an interest in a mine. Put a name to what you want."

"I'm no robber. You paid the expenses of my trip. That's all I want right now."

"It's not all you'll get. Do you think I'm a cheap piker? No, sir. You've got to let me grub-stake you." Mackenzie thumped a clinched fist down on the table.

"All right, seh. You're the doctor. Give me an interest in that map and I'll prospect the mine this summer, if I can locate it."

"Good enough, and I'll finance the proposition. You and Dave can take half-shares in the property. In the meantime, are you open to an engagement?"

"Depends what it is," replied Bucky cautiously.

"My foreman's quit on me. Gone into business for himself. I'm looking for a good man. Will you be my major-domo?"

Bucky's heart leaped. He had been thinking of how he must report almost immediately to HurryUp Millikan, of the rangers. Now, he could resign from that body and stay near his love. Certainly things were coming his way.

"I'd like to try it, seh," he answered. "I may not make good, but I sure would like to have a chance at it."

"Make good! Of course you'll make good. You're the best man in Arizona, sir," cried Webb extravagantly. He wheeled on his new-found daughter. "Don't you think so, Frankie?"

Frances blushed, but answered bravely: "Yes, sir. He makes everything right when he takes hold of it."

"Good. We're not going to let him get away from us after making us so happy, are we, mother? This young man is going to stay right here. We never had but one son, and we are going to treat him as much like one as we can. Eh, mother?"

"If he will consent, Webb." She went up to the ranger and kissed his tanned cheek. "You must pardon an old woman whom you've made very happy."

Again Bucky's laughing blue eyes met the brown ones of his sweetheart.

"Oh, I'll consent, all right, and I reckon, ma'am, it's mighty good of you to treat me so white. I'll sure try to please you."

Webb thumped him on the back. "Now, you're shouting. We want you to be one of us, young man."

Once more that happy, wireless message of eyes followed by O'Connor's assent. "That's what I want myself, seh."

Bucky found a surprise waiting for him at the stables. A heavy hand descended upon his shoulder. He whirled, and looked up into the face of Sheriff Collins.

"You here, Val?" he cried in surprise.

"That's what. Any luck, Bucky?"

They went out and sat down on the big rocks back of the corral. Here each told the other his story, with certain reservations. Collins had just got back from Epitaph, where he had been to get the fragments of paper which told the secret of the buried treasure. He was expecting to set out in the early morning to meet Leroy.

"I'll go with you," said Bucky immediately.

Val shook his head. "No, I'm to go alone. That's the agreement."

"Of course if that's the agreement." Nevertheless, the ranger formed a private intention not to be far from the scene of action.

CHAPTER 21.

THE WOLF PACK

"Good evening, gentlemen. Hope I don't intrude on the festivities."

Leroy smiled down ironically on the four flushed, startled faces that looked up at him. Suspicion was alive in every rustle of the men's clothes. It breathed from the lowering countenances. It itched at the fingers longing for the trigger. The unending terror of a bandit's life is that no man trusts his fellow. Hence one betrays another for fear of betrayal, or stabs him in the back to avoid it.

The outlaw chief had slipped into the room so silently that the first inkling they had of his presence was that gentle, insulting voice. Now, as he lounged easily before them, leg thrown over the back of a chair and thumbs sagging from his trouser pockets, they looked the picture of schoolboys caught by their master in a conspiracy. How long had he been there? How much had he heard? Full of suspicion and bad whisky as they were, his confident contempt still cowed the very men who were planning his destruction. A minute before they had been full of loud threats and boastings; now they could only search each other's faces sullenly for a cue.

"Celebrating Chaves' return from manana land, I reckon. That's the proper ticket. I wonder if we couldn't afford to kill another of Collins' fatted calves."

Mr. Hardman, not enjoying the derisive raillery, took a hand in the game. "I expect the boys hadn't better touch the sheriff's calves, now you and him are so thick."

"We're thick, are we?" Leroy's indolent eyes narrowed slightly as they rested on him.

"Ain't you? It sure seemed that way to me when I looked out of that mesquit wash just above Eldorado Springs and seen you and him eating together like brothers and laughing to beat the band. You was so clost to him I couldn't draw a bead on him without risking its hitting you."

"Spying, eh?"

"If that's the word you want to use, cap. And you were enjoying yourselves proper."

"Laughing, were we? That must have been when he told me how funny you looked in the 'altogether' shedding false teeth and information about hidden treasure."

"Told you that, did he?" Mr. Hardman incontinently dropped repartee as a weapon too subtle, and fell back on profanity.

"That's right pat to the minute, cap, what you say about the information he leaks," put in Neil. "How about that information? I'll be plumb tickled to death to know you're carrying it in you vest pocket."

"And if I'm not?"

"Then ye are a bigger fool than I had expected sorr, to come back here at all," said the Irishman truculently.

"I begin to think so myself, Mr. Reilly. Why keep faith with a set of swine like you?"

"Are you giving it to us that you haven't got those papers?"

Leroy nodded, watching them with steady, alert eyes. He knew he stood on the edge of a volcano that might explode at any moment.

"What did I tell yez?" Reilly turned savagely to the other disaffected members of the gang. "Didn't I tell yez he was selling us out?"

Somehow Leroy's revolver seemed to jump to his hand without a motion on his part. It lay loosely in his limp fingers, unaimed and undirected.

"SAY THAT AGAIN, PLEASE."

Beneath the velvet of Leroy's voice ran a note more deadly than any threat could have been. It rang a bell for a silence in which the clock of death seemed to tick. But as the seconds fled Reilly's courage oozed away. He dared not accept the invitation to reach for his weapon and try conclusions with this debonair young daredevil. He mumbled a retraction, and flung, with a curse, out of the room.

Leroy slipped the revolver back in his holster and quoted, with a laugh:

"To every coward safety, And afterward his evil hour."

"What's that?" demanded Neil. "I ain't no coward, even if Jay is. I don't knuckle under to any man. You got a right to ante up with some information. I want to know why you ain't got them papers you promised to bring back with you."

"And I, too, senor. I desire to know what it means," added Chaves, his eyes glittering.

"That's the way to chirp, gentlemen. I haven't got them because Forbes blundered on us, and I had to take a pasear awful sudden. But I made an appointment to meet Collins to-morrow."

"And you think he'll keep it?" scoffed Neil.

"I know he will."

"You seem to know a heap about him," was the significant retort.

"Take care, York."

"I'm not Hardman, cap. I say what I think.

"And you think?" suggested Leroy gently.

"I don't know what to think yet. You're either a fool or a traitor. I ain't quite made up my mind. When I find out you'll ce'tainly hear from me straight. Come on, boys." And Neil vanished through the door.

An hour later there came a knock at Leroy's door. Neil answered his permission to enter, followed by the other trio of flushed beauties. To the outlaw chief it was at once apparent with what Dutch courage they had been fortifying themselves to some resolve. It was characteristic of him, though he knew on how precarious a thread his life was hanging, that disgust at the foul breaths with which they were polluting the atmosphere was his first dominant emotion.

"I wish, Lieutenant Chaves, next time you emigrate you'd bring another brand of poison out to the boys. I can't go this stuff. Just remember that, will you?"

The outlaw chief's hard eye ran over the rebels and read them like a primer They had come to depose him certainly, to kill him perhaps. Though this last he doubted. It wouldn't be like Neil to plan his murder, and it wouldn't be like the others to give him warning and meet him in the open. Warily he stood behind the table, watching their awkward embarrassment with easy assurance. Carefully he placed face downward on the table the Villon he had been reading, but he did it without lifting his eyes from them.

"You have business with me, I presume."

"That's what we have," cried Reilly valiantly, from the rear.

"Then suppose we come to it and get the room aired as soon as possible," Leroy said tartly.

"You're such a slap-up dude you'd ought to be a hotel clerk, cap. You're sure wasted out here.

So we boys got together and held a little election. Consequence is, we--fact is, we--"

Neil stuck, but Reilly came to his rescue.

"We elected York captain of this outfit."

"To fill the vacancy created by my resignation. Poor York! You're the sacrifice, are you? On the whole, I think you fellows have made a wise choice. York's game, and he won't squeal on you, which is more than I could say of Reilly, or the play actor, or the gentlemen from Chihuahua. But you want to watch out for a knife in the dark, York. 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,' you know."

"We didn't come here to listen to a speech, cap, but to notify you we was dissatisfied, and wouldn't have you run the outfit any longer," explained Neil.

"In that event, having heard the report of the committee, if there's no further new business, I declare this meeting adjourned sine die. Kindly remove the perfume tubs, Captain Neil, at your earliest convenience."

The quartette retreated ignominiously. They had come prepared to gloat over Leroy's discomfiture, and he had mocked them with that insolent ease of his that set their teeth in helpless rage.

But the deposed chief knew they had not struck their last blow. Throughout the night he could hear the low-voiced murmur of their plottings, and he knew that if the liquor held out long enough there would be sudden death at Hidden Valley before twenty-four hours were up. He looked carefully to his rifle and his revolvers, testing several shells to make sure they had not been tampered with in his absence. After he had made all necessary preparations, he drew the blinds of his window and moved his easy-chair from its customary place beside the fire. Also he was careful not to sit where an shadow would betray his position. Then back he went to his Villon, a revolver lying on the table within reach.

But the night passed without mishap, and with morning he ventured forth to his meeting with the sheriff. He might have slipped out from the back door of his cabin and gained the canyon, by circling unobserved, up the draw and over the hogback, but he would not show by these precautions any fear of the cutthroats with whom he had to deal. As was his scrupulous custom, he shaved and took his morning bath before appearing outdoors. In all Arizona no trimmer, more graceful figure of jaunty recklessness could be seen than this one stepping lightly forth to knock at the bunk-house door behind which he suspected were at least two men determined on his death by treachery.

Neil came to the door in answer to his knock and within he could see the villainous faces at bloodshot eyes of two of the others peering at him.

"Good mo'ning, Captain Neil. I'm on my way to keep that appointment I mentioned last night I'd ce'tainly be glad to have you go along. Nothing like being on the spot to prevent double-crossing."

"I'm with you in the fling of a cow's tail. Come on, boys."

"I think not. You and I will go alone."

"Just as you say. Reilly, I guess you better saddle Two-step and the Lazy B roan."

"I ain't saddling ponies for Mr. Leroy," returned Reilly, with thick defiance.

Neil was across the room in two strides. "When I tell you to do a thing, jump! Get a move on and saddle those broncs."

"I don't know as--"

"Vamos!"

Reilly sullenly slouched out.

"I see you made them jump," commented the former captain audibly, seating himself comfortably on a rock. "It's the only way you'll get along with them. See that they come to time or pump lead into them. You'll find there's no middle way."

Neil and Leroy had hardly passed beyond the rock-slide before the others, suspicion awake in their sodden brains, dodged after them on foot. For three miles they followed the broncos as the latter picked their way up the steep trail that led to the Dalriada Mine.

"If Mr. Collins is here, he's lying almighty low," exclaimed Neil, as he swung from his pony at the foot of the bluff from the brow of which the gray dump of the mine straggled down like a Titan's beard.

"Right you are, Mr. Neil."

York whirled, revolver in hand, but the man who had risen from behind the big boulder beside the trail was resting both hands on the rock before him.

"You're alone, are you?" demanded York.

"I am."

Neil's revolver slid back into its holster. "Mornin', Val. What's new down at Tucson?" he said amiably.

"I understood I was to meet you alone, Mr. Leroy," said the sheriff quickly, his blue-gray eyes on the former chief.

"That was the agreement, Mr. Collins, but it seems the boys are on the anxious seat about these little socials of ours. They've embraced the notion that I'm selling them. I hated to have them harassed with doubts, so I invited the new majordomo of the ranch to come with me. Of cou'se, if you object--"

"I don't object in the least, but I want him to understand the agreement. I've got a posse waiting at Eldorado Springs, and as soon as I get back there we take the trail after you. Bucky O'Connor is at the head of the posse."

York grinned. "We'll be in Sonora then, Val. Think I'm going to wait and let you shoot off my other fingers?"

Collins fished from his vest pocket the papers he had taken from Scott hat and from Webster. "I think I'll be jogging along back to the springs. I reckon these are what you want."

Leroy took them from him and handed them to Neil. "Don't let us detain you any longer, Mr. Collins. I know you're awful busy these days."

The sheriff nodded a good day, cut down the hill on the slant, and disappeared in a mesquit thicket, from the other side of which he presently emerged astride a bay horse.

The two outlaws retraced their way to the foot of the hill and remounted their broncos.

"I want to say, cap, that I'm eating humble-pie in big chunks right this minute," said Neil shamefacedly, scratching his curly poll and looking apologetically at his former chief. "I might 'a' knowed you was straight as a string, all I've seen of you these last two years. If those coyotes say another word, cap--"

An exploding echo seemed to shake the mountain, and then another. Leroy swayed in the saddle, clutching at his side. He pitched forward, his arms round the horse's neck, and slid slowly to the ground.

Neil was off his horse in an instant, kneeling beside him. He lifted him in his arms and carried him behind a great outcropping boulder.

"It's that hound Collins," he muttered, as he propped the wounded man's head on his arm. "By God, I didn't think it of Val."

Leroy opened his eyes and smiled faintly. "Guess again, York."

"You don't mean "

He nodded. "Right this time--Hardman and Chaves and Reilly. They shot to get us both. With us out of the way they could divide the treasure between them."

Neil choked. "You ain't bad hurt, old man. Say you ain't bad hurt, Phil."

"More than I can carry, York; shot through and through. I've been doubtful of Reilly for a long time;"

"By the Lord, if I don't get the rattlesnake for this!" swore Neil between his teeth. "Ain't there nothin' I can do for you, old pardner?"

In sharp succession four shots rang out. Neil grasped his rifle, leaning forward and crouching for cover. He turned a puzzled face toward Leroy. "I don't savvy. They ain't shooting at us."

"The sheriff," explained Leroy. "They forgot him, and he doubled back on them."

"I'll bet Val got one of them," cried Neil, his face lighting.

"He's got one--or he's quit living. That's a sure thing. Why don't you circle up on them from behind, York?"

"I hate to leave you, cap--and you so bad. Can't I do a thing for you?"

Leroy smiled faintly. "Not a thing. I'll be right here when you get back, York."

The curly-headed young puncher took Leroy's hand in his, gulping down a boyish sob. "I ain't been square with you, cap. I reckon after this-- when you git well--I'll not be such a coyote any more."

The dying man's eyes were lit with a beautiful tenderness. "There's one thing you can do for me, York. . . . I'm out of the game, but I want you to make a new start. . . . I got you into this life, boy. Quit it, and live straight. There's nothing to it, York."

The cowboy-bandit choked. "Don't you worry about me, cap. I'm all right. I'd just as lief quit this deviltry, anyhow."

"I want you to promise, boy." A whimsical, half-cynical smile touched Leroy's eyes. "You see, after living like a devil for thirty years, I want to die like a Christian. Now, go, York."

After Neil had left him, Leroy's eyes closed. Faintly he heard two more shots echoing down the valley, but the meaning of them was already lost to his wandering mind.

Neil dodged rapidly round the foot of the mountain with intent to cut off the bandits as they retreated. He found the sheriff crouching behind a rock scarce two hundred yards from the scene of the murder. At the same moment another shot echoed from well over to the left.

"Who can that be?" Neil asked, very much puzzled.

"That's what's worrying me, York," the sheriff returned.

Together they zigzagged up the side of the mountain. Twice from above there came sounds of rifle shots. Neil was the first to strike the trail to the mine. None too soon for as he stepped upon it, breathing heavily from his climb, Reilly swung round a curve and whipped his weapon to his shoulder. The man fired before York could interfere and stood watching tensely the result of his shot. He was silhouetted against the skyline, a beautiful mark, but Neil did not cover him. Instead, he spoke quietly to the other.

"Was it you that killed Phil, Reilly?"

The man whirled and saw Neil for the first time. His answer was instant. Flinging up his rifle, he pumped a shot at York.

Neil's retort came in a flash. Reilly clutched at his heart and toppled backward from the precipice upon which he stood. Collins joined the cowpuncher and together they stepped forward to the point from which Reilly had plunged down two hundred feet to the jagged rocks below.

At the curve they came face to face with Bucky O'Connor. Three weapons went up quicker than the beating of an eyelash. More slowly each went down again

"What are you doing here, Bucky?" the sheriff asked.

"Just pirootin' around, Val. It occurred to me Leroy might not mean to play fair with you, so I kinder invited myself to the party. When I heard shooting I thought it was you they had bushwhacked, so I sat in to the game "

"You guessed wrong, Bucky. Reilly and the others rounded on Leroy. While they were at it they figured to make a clean job and bump off York, too. From what York says Leroy has got his.

The ranger turned a jade eye on the outlaw. Has Mr. Neil turned honest man, Val? Taken him into your posse, have you?" he asked, with an edge of irony in his voice.

The sheriff laid a hand on the shoulder of the man who had been his friend before he turned miscreant.

"Don't you worry about Neil, Bucky," he advised gently. "It was York shot Reilly, after York had cut loose at him, and I shouldn't wonder if that didn't save your life. Neil has got to stand the gaff for what he's done, but I'll pull wires to get his punishment made light."

"Killed Reilly, did he?" repeated O'Connor. "I got Anderson back there."

"That makes only one left to account for. I wonder who he is?" Collins turned absent-mindedly to Neil. The latter looked at him out of an expressionless face. Even though his confederate had proved traitor he would not betray him.

"I wonder," he said.

Bucky laughed. "Made a mistake that time, Val."

"I plumb forgot the situation for a moment," the sheriff grinned. "Anyhow, we better be hittin' his trail."

"How about Phil?" Neil suggested.

"That's right. One of us has ce'tainly got to go back and attend to him."

"You and Neil go back. I'll follow up this gentleman who is escaping," the ranger said.

And so it was arranged. The two men returned from their grim work of justice to the place where the outlaw chief had been left. His eyes lit feebly at sight of them.

"What news, York?" he asked.

"Reilly and Hardman are killed. How are you feelin', cap?" The cow-puncher knelt beside the dying outlaw and put an arm under his head.

"Shot all to pieces, boy. No, I got no time to have you play doctor with me." He turned to Collins with a gleam of his unconquerable spirit. "You came pretty near making a clean round-up, sheriff. I'm the fourth to be put out of business. You'd ought to be content with that. Let York here go."

"I can't do that, but I'll do my best to see he gets off light."

"I got him into this, sheriff. He was all right before he knew me. I want him to get a chance now. "

"I wish I could give him a pardon, but I can't do it. I'll see the governor for him though."

The wounded man spoke to Collins alone for a few minutes, then began to wander in his mind He babbled feebly of childhood days back in his Kentucky home. The word most often on his lips was "Mother." So, with his head resting on Neil's arm and his hand in that of his friend, he slipped away to the Great Beyond.

CHAPTER 22.

FOR A GOOD REASON

The young ladies, following the custom of Arizona in summer, were riding by the light of the stars to avoid the heat of the day. They rode leisurely, chatting as their ponies paced side by side. For though they were cousins they were getting acquainted with each other for the first time. Both of them found this a delightful process, not the less so because they were temperamentally very different. Each of them knew already that they were going to be great friends. They had exchanged the histories of their lives, lying awake girl fashion to talk into the small hours, each omitting certain passages, however, that had to do with two men who were at that moment approaching nearer every minute to them.

Bucky O'Connor and Sheriff Collins were returning to the Rocking Chair Ranch from Epitaph, where they had just been to deposit twenty-seven thousand dollars and a prisoner by the name of Chaves. Just at the point where the road climbed from the plains and reached the summit of the first stiff hill the two parties met and passed. The ranger and the sheriff reined in simultaneously. Yet a moment and all four of them were talking at once.

They turned toward the ranch, Bucky and Frances leading the way. Alice, riding beside her lover in the darkness, found the defenses upon which she had relied begin to fail her. Nevertheless, she summoned them to her support and met him full armed with the evasions and complexities of her sex.

"This is a surprise, Mr. Collins," he was informed in her best society voice.

"And a pleasure?"

"Of course. But I'm sorry that father has been called to Phoenix. I suppose you came to tell him about your success."

"To brag about it," he corrected. "But not to your father--to his daughter."

"That's very thoughtful of you. Will you begin now?"

"Not yet. There is something I have to tell you, Miss Mackenzie."

At the gravity in his voice the lightness slipped from her like a cloak.

"Yes. Tell me your news. Over the telephone all sorts of rumors have come to us. But even these were hearsay."

"I thought of telephoning you the facts. Then I decided to ride out and tell you at once. I knew you would want to hear the story at first hand."

Her patrician manner was gone. Her eyes looked their thanks at him. "That was good of you. I have been very anxious to get the facts.

One rumor was that you have captured Sir. Leroy. Is it true?"

It seemed to her that his look was one of grave tenderness. "No, that is not true. You remember what we said of him--of how he might die?"

"He is dead--you killed him," she cried, all the color washed from her face.

"He is dead, but I did not kill him."

"Tell me," she commanded.

He told her, beginning at the moment of his meeting with the outlaws at the Dalriada dump and continuing to the last scene of the tragedy. It touched her so nearly that she could not hear him through dry-eyed.

"And he spoke of me?" She said it in a low voice, to herself rather than to him.

"It was just before his mind began to wander--almost his last conscious thought. He said that when you heard the news you would remember. What you were to remember he didn't say. I took it you would know."

"Yes. I was to remember that he was not all wolf to me." She told it with a little break of tears in her voice.

"Then he told me to tell you that it was the best way out for him. He had come to the end of the road, and it would not have been possible for him to go back." Presently Collins added gently: "If you don't mind my saying so, I think he was right. He was content to go, quite game and steady in his easy way. If he had lived, there could have been no going back for him. It was his nature to go the limit. The tragedy is in his life, not in his death."

"Yes, I know that, but it hurts one to think it had to be--that all his splendid gifts and capabilities should end like this, and that we are forced to see it is best. He might have done so much."

"And instead he became a miscreant. I reckon there was a lack in him somewhere."

"Yes, there was a great lack in him somewhere."

They were silent for a time. She broke it to ask about York Neil.

"You wouldn't send him to prison after doing what he did, would you?"

"Meaning what?"

"You say yourself he helped you against the other outlaws. Then he showed you where to start in finding the buried money. He isn't a bad man. You know how he stood by me when I was a prisoner," she pleaded.

He nodded. "That goes a long way with me, Miss Mackenzie. The governor is a right good friend of mine. I meant to ask him for a pardon. I reckon Neil means to live straight from now on. He promised Leroy he would. He's only a wild cow-puncher gone wrong, and now he's haided right he'll pull up and walk the narrow trail."

"But can you save him from the penitentiary?"

Collins smiled. "He saved me the trouble. Coming through the Canon Del Oro in the night, he ducked. I reckon he's in Mexico now."

"I'm glad."

"Well, I ain't sorry myself, though I helped Bucky hunt real thorough for him."

"Father will be pleased to know you got the treasure back," Alice said presently, after they had ridden a bit in silence.

"And your father's daughter, Miss Alice--is she pleased?"

"What pleases father pleases me." Her voice, cool as the plash of ice water, might have daunted a less resolute man. But this one had long since determined the manner of his wooing and was not to be driven from it.

"I'm glad of that. Your father's right friendly to me," he announced, with composure.

"Indeed!"

"Sho! I ain't going to run away and hide because you look like you don't know I'm in Arizona. What kind of a lover would I be if I broke for cover every time you flashed those dark eyes at me?"

"Mr. Collins!"

"My friends call me Val," he suggested, smiling.

"I was going to ask, Mr. Collins, if you think you can bully me."

"It might be a first rate thing for you if I did, Miss Mackenzie. All your life you haven't done anything but trample on sissy boys. Now, I expect I'm not a sissy boy, but a fair imitation of a man, and I shouldn't wonder but you'd find me some too restless for a door-mat." His maimed hand happened to be resting on the saddle horn as he spoke, and the story of the maiming emphasized potently the truth of his claim.

"Don't you assume a good deal, Mr. Collins, when you imply that I have any desire to master you?"

"Not a bit," he assured her cheerfully. "Every woman wants to boss the man she's going to marry, but if she finds she can't she's glad of it, because then she knows she's got a man."

"You are quite sure I am going to marry you?" she asked gently--too gently, he thought.

"I'm only reasonably sure," he informed her. "You see, I can't tell for certain whether your pride or your good sense is the stronger."

She caught a detached glimpse of the situation, and it made for laughter.

"That's right, I want you should enjoy it," he said placidly.

"I do. It's the most absurd proposal--I suppose you call it a proposal--that ever I heard."

"I expect you've heard a good many in your time.

"We'll not discuss that, if you please."

"I AM more interested in this one," he agreed.

"Isn't it about time to begin on Tucson?"

"Not to-day, ma'am. There are going to be a lot of to-morrows for you and me, and Tucson will have to wait till then."

"Didn't I give you an answer last week?"

"You did, but I didn't take it. Now I'm ready for your sure-enough answer."

She flashed a look at him that mocked his confidence. "I've heard about the vanity of girls, but never in my experience have I met any so colossal as this masculine vanity now on exhibit. Do you really think, Mr. Collins, that all you have to do to win a woman is to look impressive and tell her that you have decided to marry her?"

"Do I look as if I thought that?" he asked her.

"It is perfectly ridiculous--your absurd attitude of taking everything for granted. Well, it may be the Tucson custom, but where I come from it is not in vogue."

"No, I reckon not. Back there a boy persuades girl he loves her by ruining her digestion with candy and all sorts of ice arrangements from soda-fountain. But I'm uncivilized enough to assume you're a woman of sense and not a spoiled schoolgirl."

The velvet night was attuned to the rhythm of her love. She felt herself, in this sea of moon romance, being swept from her moorings. Star-eyed, she gazed at him while she still fought again his dominance.

"You ARE uncivilized. Would you beat me when I didn't obey?" she asked tremulously.

He laughed in slow contentment. "Perhaps; but I'd love you while I did it."

"Oh, you would love me." She looked across under her long lashes, not as boldly as she would have liked, and her gaze fell before his. "I haven t heard before that that was in the compact you proposed. I don't think you have remembered to mention it."

He swung from the saddle and put a hand to her bridle rein.

"Get down," he ordered.

"Why?"

"Because I say so. Get down."

She looked down at him, a man out of a thousand and for her one out of a hundred million. Before she was conscious of willing it she stood beside him. He trailed the reins of the ponies, and in two strides came back to her.

"What--do you--want?"

"I want you. girl." His arm swept round her, and he held her while he looked down into her shining eyes. "So I haven't told you that I love you. Did you need to be told?"

"We must go on," she murmured weakly. "Frances and Lieutenant O'Connor--"

"--Have their own love-affairs to attend to.

"We'll manage ours and not intrude."

"They might think--"

He laughed in deep delight. "--that we love each other. They're welcome to the thought. I haven't told you that I love you, eh? I tell you now. It's my last trump, and right here I table it. I'm no desert poet, but I love you from that dark crown of yours to those little feet that tap the floor so impatient sometimes. I love you all the time, no matter what mood you're in--when you flash dark angry eyes at me and when you laugh in that slow, understanding way nobody else in God's world has the trick of. Makes no difference to me whether you're glad or mad, I want you just the same. That's the reason why I'm going to make you love me."

"You can't do it." Her voice was very low and not quite steady.

"Why not--I'll show you."

"But you can't--for a good reason."

"Put a name to it."

"Because. Oh, you big blind man--because I love you already." She burlesqued his drawl with a little joyous laugh: "I reckon if you're right set on it I'll have to marry you, Val Collins."

His arm tightened about her as if he would hold her against the whole world. His ardent eyes possessed hers. She felt herself grow faint with a poignant delight. Her lips met his slowly in their first kiss.

Contents

MAVERICKS

BY WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

CHAPTER I

PHYLLIS

Phyllis leaned against the door-jamb and looked down the long road which wound up from the valley and lost itself now and again in the land waves. Miles away she could see a little cloud of dust travelling behind the microscopic stage, which moved toward her almost as imperceptibly as the minute-hand of a clock. A bronco was descending the hill trail from the Flagstaff mine, and its rider announced his coming with song in a voice young and glad.

"My love has breath o' roses, O' roses, o' roses, And cheeks like summer posies All fresh with morning dew,"

floated the words to her across the sunlit open.

If the girl heard, she heeded not. One might have guessed her a sullen, silent lass, and would have done her less than justice. For the storm in her eyes and the curl of the lip were born of a mood and not of habit. They had to do with the gay vocalist who drew his horse up in front of her and relaxed into the easy droop of the experienced rider at rest.

"Don't see me, do you?" he asked, smiling.

Her dark, level gaze came round and met his sunniness without response.

"Yes, I see you, Tom Dixon."

"And you don't think you see much then?" he suggested lightly.

She gave him no other answer than the one he found in the rigor of her straight figure and the flash of her dark eyes.

"Mad at me, Phyl?" Crossing his arms on the pommel of the saddle he leaned toward her, half coaxing, half teasing.

The girl chose to ignore him and withdrew her gaze to the stage, still creeping antlike toward the hills.

"My love has breath o' roses, O' roses, o' roses,"

he hummed audaciously, ready to catch her smile when it came.

It did not come. He thought he had never seen her carry her dusky good looks more scornfully. With a movement of impatience she brushed back a rebellious lock of blue-black hair from her temple.

"Somebody's acting right foolish," he continued jauntily. "It was all in fun, and in a game at that."

"I wasn't playing," he heard, though the profile did not turn in the least toward him.

"Well, I hated to let you stay a wall-flower."

"I don't play kissing games any more," she informed him with dignity.

"Sho, Phyl! I told you 'twas only in fun," he justified himself. "A kiss ain't anything to make so much fuss over. You ain't the first girl that ever was kissed."

She glanced quickly at him, recalling stories she had heard of his boldness with girls. He had taken off his hat and the golden locks of the boy gleamed in the sunlight. Handsome he surely was, though a critic might have found weakness in the lower part of the face. Chin and mouth lacked firmness.

"So I've been told," she answered tartly.

"Jealous?"

"No," she exploded.

Slipping to the ground, he trailed his rein.

"You don't need to depend on hearing," he said, moving toward her.

"What do you mean?" she flared.

"You remember well enough--at the social down to Peterson's."

"We were children then--or I was."

"And you're not a kid now?"

"No, I'm not."

"Here's congratulations, Miss Sanderson. You've put away childish things and now you have become a woman."

Angrily the girl struck down his outstretched hand.

"After this, if a fellow should kiss you, it would be a crime, wouldn't it?" he bantered.

"Don't you dare try it, Tom Dixon," she flashed fiercely.

Hitherto he had usually thought of her as a school girl, even though she was teaching in the Willow's district. Now it came to him with what dignity and unconscious pride her head was poised, how little the home-made print could conceal the long, free lines of her figure, still slender with the immaturity of youth. Soon now the woman in her would awaken and would blossom abundantly as the spring poppies were doing on the mountain side. Her sullen sweetness was very close to him. The rapid rise and fall of her bosom, the underlying flush in her dusky cheeks, the childish pout of the full lips, all joined in the challenge of her words. Mostly it was pure boyishness, the impish desire to tease, that struck the audacious sparkle to his eyes, but there was, too, a masculine impulse he did not analyse.

"So you won't be friends?"

If he had gone about it the right way he might have found forgiveness easily enough. But this did not happen to be the right way.

"No, I won't." And she gave him her profile again.

"Then we might as well have something worth while to quarrel about," he said, and slipping his arm round her neck, he tilted her face toward him.

With a low cry she twisted free, pushing him from her.

Beneath the fierce glow of her eyes his laughter was dashed. He forgot his expected trivial triumph, for they flashed at him now no childish petulance, but the scorn of a woman, a scorn in the heat of which his vanity withered and the thing he had tried to do stood forth a bare insult.

"How dare you!" she gasped.

Straight up the stairs to her room she ran, turned the lock, and threw herself passionately on the bed. She hated him...hated him...hated him. Over and over again she told herself this, crying it into the pillows where she had hidden her hot cheeks. She would make him pay for this insult some day. She would find a way to trample on him, to make him eat dirt for this. Of course she would never speak to him again--never so long as she lived. He had insulted her grossly. Her turbulent Southern blood boiled with wrath. It was characteristic of the girl that she did not once think of taking her grievance to her hot-headed father or to her brother. She could pay her own debts without involving them. And it was in character, too, that she did not let the inner tumult interfere with her external duties.

As soon as she heard the stage breasting the hill, she was up from the bed as swift as a panther and at her dressing-table dabbing with a kerchief at the telltale eyes and cheeks. Before the passengers began streaming into the house for dinner she was her competent self, had already cast a supervising eye over Becky the cook and Manuel the waiter, to see that everything was in readiness, and behind the official cage had fallen to arranging the mail that had just come up from Noches on the stage.

From this point of vantage she could cast an occasional look into the dining-room to see that all was going well there. Once, glancing through the window, she saw Tom Dixon in conversation with a half-grown youngster in leathers, gauntlets, and spurs. A coin was changing hands from the older boy to the younger, and as soon as the delivery window was raised little Bud Tryon shuffled in to get the family mail and that of Tom. Also he pushed through the opening a folded paper evidently torn from a notebook.

"This here is for you, Phyl," he explained.

She pushed it back. "I'm too busy to read it."

"It's from Tom," he further volunteered.

"Is it?"

She took the paper quietly but with a swift, repressed passion, tore it across, folded the pieces together, rent them again, and tossed the fragments through the window to the floor.

"Do you want the mail for the Gordons, too, Mr. Purdy?" she coolly asked the next in line over the tow head of Bud.

The boy grinned and ducked from his place through the door. Through the open window there drifted to her presently the sound of a smothered curse, followed by the rapid thud of a horse's hoofs. Phyllis did not look, but a wicked gleam came into her black eyes. As well as if she had seen him she beheld a picture of a sulky youth spurring home in dudgeon, a scowl of discontent on his handsome, boyish face. He had come down the mountain trail singing, but no music travelled with him on his return journey. Nor had she alone known this. Without deigning to notice it, she caught a wink and a nod from one vaquero to another. It was certain they would not forget to "rub it in" when next they met Master Tom. She promised herself, as she handed out newspapers and letters to the cowmen, sheep-herders, and miners who had ridden in to the stage station for their mail, to teach that young man his place.

"I'll take a dollar's worth of two's."

Phyllis turned her head in the slow, disdainful fashion she had inherited from her Southern ancestors and without a word pushed the sheet of stamps through the window. That voice, with its hint of sardonic amusement, was like a trumpet call to battle.

"Any mail for Buck Weaver?"

"No," she answered promptly without looking.

"Sure?"

"Yes."

"Couldn't be overlooking any, could you?"

Her eyes met his with the rapier steel of hostility. He was mocking her, for his mail all came to Saguaro. The man was her father's enemy. He had no business here. His coming was of a piece with all the rest of his insolence. Phyllis hated him with the lusty healthy hatred of youth. She had her father's generosity and courage, his quick indignation against wrong and injustice, and banked within her much of his passionate lawlessness.

"I know my business, sir."

Weaver turned from the window and came front to front with old Jim Sanderson. The burning black eyes of the Southerner, set in sockets of extraordinary depths, blazed from a grim, hostile face. Always when he felt ugliest Sanderson's drawl became more pronounced. His daughter, hearing now the slow, gentle voice, ran quickly round the counter and slipped an arm into that of her father.

"This hyer is an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Weaver," he was saying. "It's been quite some time since I've seen you all in my house before, makin' you'self at home so pleasantly. It's ce'tainly an honor, seh."

"Don't get buck ague, Sanderson. I'm here because I'm here. That's reason a-plenty for me," Weaver told him contemptuously.

"But not for me, seh. When you come into my house----"

"I didn't come into your house."

"Why--why----"

"Father!" implored the girl. "It's a government post-office. He has a right here as long as he behaves."

"H'm!" the old fire-eater snorted. "I'd be obliged just the same, Mr. Weaver, if you'd transact your business and then light a shuck."

"Dad!" the girl begged.

He patted her head awkwardly as it lay on his arm. "Now don't you worry, honey. There ain't going to be any trouble--leastways none of my making. I ain't a-forgettin' my promise to you-all. But I ain't sittin' down whilst anybody tromples on me neither."

"He wouldn't try to do that here," Phyllis reminded him.

Weaver laughed in grim irony. "I'm surely much obliged to you for protecting me." And to the father he added carelessly: "Keep your shirt on, Sanderson. I'm not trying to break into society. And when I do I reckon it won't be with a sheep outfit I'll trail."

With which parting shot he turned on his heel, arrogant and imperious to the last virile inch of him.

CHAPTER II

THE NESTER

With the jingle of trailing spur Buck Weaver passed from the post-office to the porch, where public opinion was wont to formulate itself while waiting for the mail to be distributed. Here twice a week it had sat for many years, had heard evidence, passed judgment, condemned or acquitted. For at this store the Malpais country bought its ammunition, its tobacco, and its canned goods; and on this porch its opinions had sifted down to convictions. From this common meeting ground the gossip of Cattleland was scattered far and wide.

Weaver filled the doorway while he drew on his gauntlets. He was the owner of the Twin Star outfit, the biggest cattle company in that country. Nearly twenty years ago, while still a boy of eighteen, he had begun in a small way. The Malpais had been a wild and lawless place then, but in all the turbid days that followed Buck Weaver had held his own ruthlessly by adroit manipulation, shrewd sense, and implacable daring. Some outfits he had bought out; others he had driven away. Those that survived were at a respectable distance from him. Only the settlers in the hills remained to trouble him. He had come to be the big man of the district, dominating its social, business, and political activities.

"What's this I hear about another settler up on Bear Creek?" he asked curtly after he had gathered up his bridle and swung to the saddle.

"That's the way Jim Budd's telling it, Mr. Weaver. Another nester homesteaded there," old Joe Yeager answered casually, chewing tobacco with a noncommittal air.

"Fine! There'll soon be a right smart settlement up near the headwaters of the creeks, I shouldn't wonder. The cow business is getting to be a mighty profitable one when you don't own any," Buck said dryly.

The others laughed, but with small merriment. They were either small cattle owners themselves or range riders whose living depended on the business, and during the past two years a band of rustlers had operated so boldly as to have wiped out the profits of some of the ranchers. Most of them disliked Buck extremely for his overbearing ways. But they did not usually tell him so. On this particular subject, too, they joined hand with him.

"You're dead right, Mr. Weaver. It ce'tainly must be stopped."

The man who spoke rolled a cigarette and lit it. Like the rest he was in the common garb of the plains. The broad-brimmed felt hat, the shiny leather chaps, the loosely knotted bandanna, were as much a matter of course as the hard-eyed, weather-beaten look that comes of life under an untempered sun. But Brill Healy claimed a distinction above his fellows. He was a black-haired, picturesque fellow, as supple as a panther, reckless and yet wary.

"We'll have rustling as long as we have nesters, Brill," Buck told him.

"If that's the case we'll serve notice on the nesters to get out," Healy replied.

Buck grinned. Indomitable fighter though he was, he had been unable to roll back the advancing tide of settlement. Here and there homesteaders had taken up land and had brought in small bunches of cattle. Most of these were honest men, others suspected rustlers. But Buck's fiat had not sufficed to keep them out. They had held stoutly to their own and--he suspected--a good deal more than their own. Calves had been branded secretly and cows killed or driven away.

"Go to it, Brill," Weaver jeered. "I'm wishing you all the luck in the world."

He touched his pony with the spur and swept up the road in a cloud of white dust.

Not till he had disappeared did conversation renew itself languidly, for Seven Mile Ranch was lying under the lethargy of a summery sun.

"I expect Buck's got the right of it," volunteered a brawny youth known as Slim. "All you got to do is to take up a claim near a couple of big outfits with easy brands, then keep your iron hot and industrious. There's sure money in being a nester."

Despite the soft drawl of his voice, he spoke with bitterness, as did the others. Every day the feeling was growing stronger that the rustling must be stopped if they were going to continue to run cattle. The thieves had operated with a boldness and a shrewdness that fairly outwitted the ranchers. Enough horses and cattle had been driven across the line to stock a respectable ranch. Not one of the established ranches had escaped heavy losses; so heavy, indeed, that the owners faced the option of going broke or of exterminating the rustlers. Once or twice the thieves had nearly been caught red-handed, but the leader of the outlaws had saved the men by the most daring strategy.

Healy, until lately foreman of the Twin Star outfit, had organized the ranchmen as a protective association. In this he had represented Weaver, himself not popular enough to coöperate with the other ranchmen. Once Brill had led the pursuit of the rustlers and had come back furious from a long futile chase. For among the cattle being driven across to Sonora were five belonging to him.

Other charges also lay against the hill outlaws. A stage had been robbed with a gold shipment from the Diamond Nugget mine. A cattleman had been held up and relieved of two thousand dollars, just taken as part payment for a sale of beef steers. The sheriff of Noches County, while trying to arrest a rustler, had been shot dead in his tracks.

Brill Healy leaned forward, gathered the eyes of those present, and lowered his voice to a whisper. "Boys, this thing has got to stop. I've sent for Bucky O'Connor. If anybody can run the coyotes to earth he can. Anyhow, that's the reputation he's got."

Yeager nodded. "Good for you, Brill. He's ce'tainly got an A-one rep. as a cattle detective, and likewise as a man hunter. When is he coming?"

"He writes that he's got a job on hand that will keep him busy a couple of weeks, anyhow. After that we'll hear from him. I'm going to drop everything else, if necessary, and stay right with him on this job till he finishes it right," Healy promised.

"Now you're shoutin', Brill. Here, too. It's money in our pocket to stop this thing right now, even if we pay big for it. No use jest sittin' around till we're stole blind," assented Slim.

"It won't cost us anything. Buck, he pays the freight. The waddies have been hitting him right hard lately and he figures it will be up to him to clean them out. Course we expect help from you boys when we call on you."

"Sure. We'll all be with you till the cows come home, Brill," nodded one little fellow called Purdy. He was looking at a dust patch rising from the Bear Creek trail, and slowly moving toward them. "What's the name of this new nester, Jim?"

Budd, by way of being a curiosity on the range, was a fat man with a big double chin. He was large as well as fat, and, by queer contrast, the voice that came from that mountain of flesh was a small falsetto scarce above a whisper.

"Didn't hear his name. Had no talk with him. Hear he is called Keller," he said.

"What's he look like?"

"You-all can see for yourself. This here's the gent rolling a tail this way."

The little cloud of dust had come nearer and disclosed as its source a rider on a rangy roan with four white-stockinged feet. Drawing up in front of the porch, the man swung himself easily from the saddle and glanced around.

"Evening, gentlemen," he said pleasantly.

Some nodded grimly, some growled an acknowledgment of his greeting. But the lack of cordiality, the presence of hostility, could not be doubted. The young man stood at supple ease before them, one hand resting on his hip and the other on the saddle. He let his unabashed gaze travel from one to another, understood perfectly what those expressionless eyes of stone were telling him, and, with a little laugh of light derision, trailed debonairly into the store.

"Any mail for Larrabie Keller?" he inquired of the postmistress.

The girl at the window glanced incuriously at him and turned to look. When she pushed his letter through the grating he met for an instant a flash of dark eyes from a mobile face which the sun and superb health had painted to a harmony of gold and russet, with the soft glow of pink pushing through the tan. The unexpectedness of the picture magnetized his gaze. Admiration, frank and human, shone from the steel-gray eyes that had till now been only a mask. Beneath his steady look she flushed indignantly and withdrew from the window.

Convicted of rudeness, the last thing he had meant, Keller returned to the porch and leaned against the door jamb while he opened his letter. His appearance immediately sandbagged conversation. Stony eyes were focused upon him incuriously, with expressionless hostility.

He noted, however, an exception. Another had been added to the group, a lad of about eighteen, slim and swarthy, with the same dark look of pride he had seen on the face at the stamp window. It was easy to guess that they were brother and sister, very likely twins, though he found in the boy's expression a sulky impatience lacking in hers. Perhaps the lad needed the discipline that life hammers into those who want to be a law unto themselves.

With an insolence extremely boyish, the lad turned to Healy. "I'm for running out a few of these nesters. We've got more than we can use, I reckon. The range is overstocked now--both with them and cows. Come a bad year and half of our cattle will starve."

There was a moment of surcharged silence. Phil Sanderson had voiced the growing feeling of them all, but he had flung it out as a stark challenge before the time was ripe. It was one thing to resent the coming of settlers; it was quite another to set themselves openly against the law that allowed these men to homestead the natural parks in the hills.

Brill Healy laughed. "The fat's in the fire now, sure enough. Just the same, I back your play, Phil."

He turned recklessly to the man in the doorway. "You may tell your friends up on Bear Creek that we own this range and mean to hold it. We don't aim to let our cattle be starved, and we don't aim to lie down before rustlers. Understand?"

The nester smiled, but there was no gayety in his eyes. They met those of the cattleman with a grip of steel, and measured strength with him. Each knew the other would go the limit before Keller made quiet answer:

"I think so."

And with that he dismissed the subject and his unfriendly audience. With perfect ease, he read his letter, pocketed it, and whistled softly as he impassively took stock of the scenery. Apparently he had wiped Public Opinion from his map, and was interested only in the panorama before him.

Seven Mile Ranch lay rooted at the desert terminus among the foothills, a gateway between the mountains and the Malpais Plain. Below was a shimmering stretch of sand and cactus tortured beneath a blazing sun. Into that caldron with its furnace-cracked floor the sun had poured itself torridly for countless eons. It was a Sahara of mirage and desolation and death.

To the left was a flat-topped mesa eroded to fantastic mockery of some bastioned fort. In the round-topped hills behind it was Noches, fifty miles away. Beyond lay the tangle of hills, rising to the saw-toothed range now painted with orange and mauve and a hint of deepening purple. For dusk was already slipping down over the peaks.

"Mail's been open half an hour, boys," Phyllis announced through the open window.

They dropped in to the store, as noisy as schoolboys, but withal deferential. It was clear the young postmistress reigned a queen among the younger ones, but a queen that deigned to friendship with her subjects. Some of them called her Miss Sanderson, one or two of them Phyllie.

Among these last was Healy, who appeared on very good terms with her indeed. He appointed himself a sort of master of ceremonies, and handed to each man his mail with appropriate jocular comments designed to embarrass the recipient. He knew them all, and his hits were greeted with gay laughter. To the man standing in the doorway with his back to them, they seemed all one happy family--and himself a rank outsider. He trailed down the steps and swung himself to the saddle. As he loped away the sound of her warm, clear laughter floated after him.

CHAPTER III

CAUGHT RED-HANDED

From a cleft in the hills two riders emerged, following a little gulch to the point where it widened into a draw. The alkali dust of Arizona lay thick upon their broad-brimmed Stetsons and every inch of exposed surface, but through the gray coating bloomed the freshness of youth. It rang from their voices, was apparent in the modelling and carriage of their figures. The young man was sinewy and hard as nails, the girl supple and wiry, of a slender grace, straight-backed as an Indian in the saddle.

Just where the draw dipped down into the grassy park they drew rein an instant. Faint and far a sound drifted to them. Somebody down in the park had fired a rifle.

"I don't agree with you, Phil," the girl said, picking up the thread of their conversation where they had dropped it some minutes earlier. "The nesters have as much right here as we have. They come here to settle, and they take up government land. Why shouldn't they?"

"Because we got here first," he retorted impatiently. "Because our cattle and sheep have been feeding on the land they are fencing. Because they close the water holes and the creeks and claim they are theirs. It means the end of the open range. That's what it means."

"Of course that's what it means. We'll have to adapt ourselves to it. You talk foolishness when you make threats to drive out the nesters. That is the sort of thing Buck Weaver has been trying to do. It's absurd. The law is back of them. You would only come to trouble, and if you did succeed others would take their places."

"And rustle our cattle," he added sullenly.

"It isn't proved they are the rustlers. You haven't a shred of evidence. Perhaps they are, but you should prove it before you make the charge."

"If they aren't, who is?" he flared up.

"I don't know. But whoever it is will be caught and punished some day. There is no doubt at all about that."

"You talk a heap of foolishness, Phyl," he answered resentfully. "My notion is they never will be caught. What makes you so sure they will?"

They had been riding down the draw, and at this moment Phyllis looked up, to see a rider silhouetted against the sky line on the ridge above.

"Oh, you Brill!" she cried, with a wave of her quirt.

The man turned, saw them, and rode slowly down. He nodded, after the fashion of the range, first to the girl, and then to her brother.

"Morning," he nodded. "Headed for Mesa? Here, too."

He fell in with them and rode beside the girl. Presently they topped a little hillock, and looked down into the park. It had about the area of a mile, and was perhaps twice as long as broad. Wooded spurs ran down from the hills into it here and there, and through the meadow leaped a silvery stream.

"Hello! Wonder where that smoke comes from?"

It was Healy that spoke. He pointed to a faint cloud rising from a distance. Even before he began to speak, however, Phyllis had her field glasses out, and was adjusting them to her eyes.

"There's a fire there and a man standing over it," she presently announced. "There's something else there, too. I can't make it out--something lying down."

The men glanced at each other, and in the meeting of their eyes some intelligence passed between them. It was as if the younger accused and the older sullenly denied.

"Lemme have the glasses," Phil said to his sister almost roughly.

Healy glanced at Phil swiftly, covertly, as the latter adjusted the glasses. "She's right about the fire and the man. I can see as much with my naked eyes," he cut in.

The boy looked long, lowered the glasses, and met his friend's eye with a kind of shamefaced hesitation. But apparently he gathered reassurance from the quiet steadiness with which the other's gaze met him. He handed the glasses to Healy. When the latter lowered them his face was grave. "There's a man and a fire and a cow and a calf. When these four things meet up together, what does it mean?"

"Branding!" cried the girl.

"That's right--branding. And when the cow is dead what does it mean?" Brill asked, his eyes full on Phil.

"Rustling!" she breathed again.

"You've said it, Phyl. We've got one of them at last," he cried jubilantly.

Phil, hanging between doubt and suspicion and shame, brightened at the enthusiasm of the other.

"Right you are, Brill. We'll solve this mystery once for all."

Healy, unstrapping the case in which lay his rifle, shot a question at the boy. "Armed, Phil?"

The lad nodded. "I brought my six-gun for rattlesnakes."

"Are you going to--to----" cried Phyllis, the color gone from her face.

"We're going to capture him alive if we can, Phyl. You're to wait right here till we come back. You may hear shooting. Don't let that worry you. We've got the drop on him, or will have. Nobody is going to get hurt if he acts sensible," Healy reassured.

"Don't you move from here. You stay right where you are," her brother ordered sharply.

"Yes," she said, and was aware that her throat was suddenly parched. "You'll be careful, won't you, Phil?"

"Sure," he called back, as he put his horse at a canter to follow his friend up the draw.

The sound of the hoofs died away, and she was alone. That they were going to circle in and out among the tangle of hills until they were opposite the miscreant, she knew, but in spite of Brill's promise she had a heart of water. With trembling fingers she raised the glasses again, and focused them on that point which was to be the centre of the drama.

The man was moving about now, quite unconscious of the danger that menaced him. What she looked at was the great crime of Cattleland. All her life she had been taught to hold it in horror. But now something human in her was deeper than her detestation of the cowardly and awful thing this man had just done. She wanted to cry out to him a warning, and did in a faint, ineffective voice that carried not a tenth of the distance between them.

She had promised to remain where she was, but her tense interest in what was doing drew her forward in spite of herself. She rode along the ridge that bordered the park, at first slowly and then quicker as the impulse grew in her to be in at the finish.

The climax came. She saw him look round quickly, and in an instant his pony was at the gallop and he was lying low on its neck. A shot rang out, and another, but without checking his flight. He turned in the saddle and waved a derisive hand at the shooters, then plunged into a wash and disappeared.

What inspired her she could never tell. Perhaps it was her indignation at the thing he had done, perhaps her anger at that mocking wave of the hand with which he had vanished. She wheeled her horse, and put it at a canter down the nearest draw so as to try to intercept him at right angles. Her heart beat fast with excitement, but she was conscious of no fear.

Before she had covered half the distance, she knew she was going to be too late to cut off his retreat. Faintly, she heard the rhythm of hoofs striking the rocky bottom of the draw. Abruptly they ceased. Wondering what that could mean, she found her answer presently. For the pounding of the galloping broncho had renewed itself, and closer. The man was riding up the gulch toward her. He had turned into its mesquite-laced entrance for a hiding place. Phyllis drew rein, and waited quietly to confront him, but with a pulse that hammered the moments for her.

A white-stockinged roan, plowing a way through heavy sand, labored into view round the bend, its rider slewed in the saddle with his whole attention upon the possible pursuit. Not until he was almost upon her did the man turn. With a startled exclamation at sight of the motionless figure, he pulled up sharply. It was the nester, Keller.

"You," she cried.

"Happy to meet you, Miss Sanderson," he told her jauntily.

His revolver slid into its holster, and his hat came off in a low bow. White, even teeth gleamed in a sardonic smile.

"So you are a--rustler," she told him scornfully.

"I hate to contradict a lady," he came back, with a kind of bitter irony.

She saw something else, a deepening stain that soaked slowly down his shirt sleeve.

"You are wounded."

"Am I?"

"Aren't you?"

"Come to think of it, I believe I am," he laughed shortly.

"Badly?"

"I haven't got the doctor's report yet." There was a gleam of whimsical gayety in his eyes as he added: "I was going to find him when I had the good luck to meet up with you."

He was a hunted miscreant, wounded, riding for his life as a hurt wolf dodges to shake off the pursuit, but strangely enough her gallant heart thrilled to the indomitable pluck of him. Never had she seen a man who looked more the vagabond enthroned. His crisp bronze curls and his superb shoulders were bathed in the sunpour. Not once, since his eyes had fallen on her, had he looked back to see if his hunters had picked up the lost trail. He was as much at ease as if his whole thought at meeting her were the pleasure of the encounter.

"Can you ride?" she demanded.

"I can stick on a hawss if it's plumb gentle. Leastways I've been trying to for twenty years," he drawled.

Her impatient gesture waved his flippancy aside. "I mean, are you too much hurt to ride? I'm not going to leave you here like a wounded coyote. Can you follow me if I lead the way?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She turned. He followed her obediently, but with a ghost of a smile still flickering on his face.

"Am I your prisoner, Miss Sanderson?" he presently wanted to know.

"I'm not thinking of prisoners just now," she answered shortly, with an anxious backward glance.

Presently she pulled up and wheeled her horse, so that when he halted they sat facing each other.

"Let me see your arm," she ordered.

Obediently he held out to her the one that happened to be nearest. It was the unwounded one. An angry spark gleamed in her eye.

"This is no time to be fresh. Give me the other."

"Yes, ma'am." he answered, with deceptive meekness.

Without comment, she turned back the sleeve which came to the wrist gauntlet, and discovered a furrow ridged by a rifle bullet. It was a clean flesh wound, neither deep nor long enough to cause him trouble except for the immediate loss of blood. To her inexperience it looked pretty bad.

"A plumb scratch," he explained.

She took the kerchief from her neck, and tied it about the hurt, then pulled down the sleeve and buttoned it over the brown forearm. All this she did quite impersonally, her face free of the least sympathy.

"Thank you, ma'am. You're a right friendly enemy."

"It isn't a matter of friendship at all. One couldn't leave a wounded jack rabbit in pain," she retorted coldly, taking up the trail again.

There was room for two abreast, and he chose to ride beside her. "So you tied me up because it was your Christian duty," he soliloquized aloud. "Just the same as if I had been a mangy coyote that was suffering."

"Exactly."

He let his cool eyes rest on her with a hint of amusement. "And what were you thinking of doing with me now, ma'am?"

"I'm going to take you up to Jim Yeager's mine. He is doing his assessment work now, and he'll look out for you for a day or two."

"Look out for me in a locked room?" he wanted to know casually.

"I didn't say so. It isn't my business to arrest criminals," she told him icily.

His eyes gleamed mischief. "Is it your business to help them to escape?"

"I'm not helping you to escape. I'll not risk your dying in the hills alone. That is all."

"Jim Yeager is your friend?"

"Yes."

"And you guarantee he'll keep his mouth padlocked and not betray me?"

"He'll do as he pleases about that," she said indifferently.

"Then I don't reckon I'll trouble his hospitality. Good-by, Miss Sanderson. I've enjoyed meeting you very much."

He checked his pony and bowed.

"Where are you going?" the girl exclaimed.

"Up Bear Creek."

"It's twenty miles. You can't do it."

"Sure I can. Thanks for your kindness, Miss Sanderson. I'll return the handkerchief some day," and with a touch swung round his pony.

"You're not going. I won't have it, and you wounded!"

He turned in the saddle, smiling at her with jaunty insouciance.

"I'll answer for Jim. He won't betray you," she promised, subduing her pride.

"Thanks. I'll take your word for it, but I won't trouble your friend. I've had all the Christian charity that's good for me this mo'ning," he drawled.

At that she flamed out passionately: "Do you want me to tell you that I like you, knowing what you are? Do you want me to pretend that I feel friendly when I hate you?"

"Do you want me to be under obligations to folks that hate me?" he came back with his easy smile.

"You have lost a lot of blood. Your arm is still bleeding. You know I can't let you go alone."

"You're ce'tainly aching for a chance to be a Good Samaritan, Miss Sanderson."

With this he left her. But he had not gone a hundred yards before he heard her pony cantering after his. One glance told him she was furious, both at him and at herself.

"Did you come after your handkerchief, ma'am? I'm not through with it yet," he said innocently.

"I'm going with you. I'm not going to leave you till we meet some one that will take charge of you," she choked.

"It isn't necessary. I'm much obliged, ma'am, but you're overestimating the effect of this pill your friend injected into me."

"Still, I'm going. I won't have your death on my hands," she told him defiantly.

"Sho! I ain't aimin' to pass over the divide on account of a scratch like this. There's no danger but what I can look out for myself."

She waited in silence for him to start, looking straight ahead of her.

He tried in vain to argue her out of it. She had nothing to say, and he saw she was obstinately determined to carry her point.

Finally, with a little chuckle at her stubbornness, he gave in and turned round.

"All right. Yeager's it is. We're acting like a pair of kids, seems to me." This last with a propitiatory little smile toward her which she disdained to answer.

Yeager saw them from afar, and recognized the girl.

"Hello, Phyllis!" he shouted down. "With you in a minute."

The girl slipped to the ground, and climbed the steep trail to meet him. Her crisp "Wait here," flung over her shoulder with the slightest turn of the head, kept Keller in the saddle.

Halfway up she and the man met. The one waiting below could not hear what they said, but he could tell she was explaining the situation to Yeager. The latter nodded from time to time, protested, was vehemently overruled, and seemed to leave the matter with her. Together they retraced their way. Young Yeager, in flannel shirt and half-leg miner's boots, was a splendid specimen of bronzed Arizona. His level gaze judged the man on horseback, approved him, and met him eye to eye.

"Better light, Mr. Keller. If you come in we'll have a look at your arm. An accident like that is a mighty awkward thing to happen to a man on the trail. It's right fortunate Miss Sanderson found you so soon after it happened."

The nester knew a surge of triumph in his blood, but it did not show in the impassive face which he turned upon his host.

"It was right fortunate for me," he said, swinging from the saddle. Incidentally he was wondering what story had been narrated to Yeager, but he took a chance without hesitation. "A fellow oughtn't to be so careless when he's got a gun in his hand."

"You're right, seh. In this country of heavy underbrush a man's gun is liable to go off and hit somebody any time if he ain't careful. You're in big luck you didn't shoot yourself up a heap worse."

Yeager led the way to his cabin, and offered Phyllis the single chair he boasted, and the nester a seat on the bed. Sitting beside him, he examined the wound and washed it.

"Comes to being an invalid I'm a false alarm," Keller said apologetically. "I didn't want to come, but Miss Sanderson would bring me."

"She was dead right, too. Time you had ridden twenty miles through the hot sun with that wound you would have been in a raging fever."

"One way and another I'm quite in her debt."

"That's so," agreed Yeager, intent on his work.

She refused to meet the nester's smile. "Fiddlesticks! You talk mighty foolish, Jim. I wouldn't go away and leave a wounded dog if I could help it."

"Suppose the dog were a sheep-killer?" Keller asked with his engaging, impudent smile.

A dust cloud rose from her skirt under a stroke of the restless quirt. "I'd do my best for it and let it settle with the law afterward."

"Even if it were a wolf caught in a trap?"

"I should put it out of its pain. No matter how much I detested it, I wouldn't leave it there to suffer."

"I'm quite sure you wouldn't," the wounded man agreed.

Yeager looked from one to the other, not quite catching the drift of the underlying meaning. Another thing puzzled him, too. But, like most men of the unfenced Southwest, Yeager had a large capacity for silence. Now he attended strictly to his business, without mentioning what he had noticed.

The wound dressed, Phyllis rose to leave. "You'll be down for your mail to-morrow, Jim," she suggested, as she sauntered toward the door.

"Sure. I'll let you know how our patient is getting along."

"Oh, he's yours. I don't want any of the credit," she returned carelessly.

Then, the words scarce off her lips, she gave a little cry of alarm, and stepped quickly back into the room. What she had seen had sapped the color from her face. Yeager started forward, but she waved him back.

"It's Phil and Brill Healy. You've got to hide us, Jim," she told him tensely.

The nester began to grin. He always did when he faced a difficulty apparently insurmountable. Also his fingers slid toward the butt of his revolver.

CHAPTER IV

"I'M A RUSTLER AND A THIEF, AM I?"

Jim swept the cabin with a gesture. "Where can I hide you? Anyhow, there are the horses in plain sight."

Phyllis took imperious control. "Get a coat on him, Jim," she ordered.

At the same time she caught up the basin of bloodstained water and flung its contents through the open window. The torn linen and the stained handkerchief she tossed into a corner and covered with a gunny sack.

"Not a word about the wound, Jim. Mr. Keller is here to help you do your assessment work, remember. And whatever I say, don't give me away."

Yeager nodded. He had manoeuvred the wounded arm through the coat sleeve and was straightening out the shoulders. The nester's eyes were shining with excitement. Alone of the three, he was enjoying himself.

"Remember now. Don't talk too much. Let me run this," the girl cautioned, and with that she stepped to the door, caught sight of her brother with a glad little cry of apparent relief, and ran swiftly to him.

"Oh, Phil!" she almost sobbed, and the stress of her emotion was genuine enough, even if she dissembled as to the cause.

The boy patted her dark hair gently. They were twins, without other near relatives except their father, and the tie between them was close.

"What is it, Phyllie? Why didn't you stay where we left you?"

"I was afraid for you. And I rode a little nearer. Then he came straight toward me--and I rode away. I could hear him crashing through the mesquite. When I reached the trail of Jim's mine, I followed it, for I knew he would be here."

"Sure. Course she was scared. What woman wouldn't be? We oughtn't both to have left her. But there wasn't one chance in a thousand of his stumbling on the very spot where she was," said Healy.

Phil gentled her with a caressing hand. "It's all right now, sis. Did you happen to see the fellow at all?"

"Yes. At a distance."

"I don't suppose you would know him," Healy said.

She gave a strained little laugh. "I didn't wait to get a description of him. Didn't you boys recognize him?"

After Phil's answer she breathed freer. "We did not get near enough, though Brill got two shots at him as he pulled out. He was going hell-for-leather and Brill missed both times." He lowered his voice and asked angrily: "What's he doing here?"

For Keller had followed Yeager from the cabin and was standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. He wore no hat, and had the manner of one very much at home.

"He's helping Jim with his assessment work," she answered in the same low tone. "It's too bad you lost the rustler. He must have broken for the hills."

Healy's eyes had narrowed to slits. Now he murmured a question: "What about this man Keller? Was he here when you came, Phyl?"

The girl turned to Yeager, who had sauntered up. "Didn't you say he came this morning, Jim?"

Yeager's eyes were like a stone wall. "Yep. This mo'ning. I needed some husky guy to help me, so I got him."

"Funny you had to get a fellow from Bear Creek to help you, Jim."

"Are you looking for a job, Brill?"

"No. Why?"

"Because I ain't noticed any stampede this way among the boys to preempt this job. I take a man where I can find him, Brill, and I don't ask you to O.K. him."

"I see you don't, Jim. The boys aren't going to like it very well, though."

"Then they know what they can do about it," Yeager answered evenly, level eyes steadily on those of his critic.

"What time did this nester get here, Jim?" broke in Phil.

Yeager's opaque eyes passed from Healy to Sanderson. "It might have been about eight."

"Then he couldn't be the man," the boy said to Healy, almost in a whisper.

"What man?" Jim asked.

"We ran on a rustler branding a C.O. calf. We got close enough to take a shot at him. Then he slid into some arroyo, and we lost him," Phil exclaimed.

"How long ago was this?" asked Yeager.

"About an hour since we first saw him. Beats all how he ever made his getaway. We were right after him when he gave us the slip."

"Oh, he gave you the slip, did he?"

"Dropped into some hole and pulled it in after him. These hills are built for hide and seek, looks like."

"Notice the color of his horse?"

"It was a roan, Jim. Something like that nester's." Phil nodded toward the animal Keller had ridden.

All eyes focused hard on the horse with the white stockings.

"What brand was he putting on the calf? That'll tell you who the man was."

Phil and Healy looked at each other, and the latter laughed. "That's one on us. We didn't stay to look, but got right out for Mr. Rustler."

"Did he kill the cow?"

Phil nodded.

"Then you'll find the calf still hanging around there unless he had a pal to drive it away."

"That's right. We'll go back now and look. Ready, Phyl?"

"Yes." She stepped to her horse, and swung to the saddle.

Meanwhile Healy rode forward to the cabin. Through narrowed lids he looked down at the man standing in the doorway. "Give that message to your friends?" he demanded insolently.

There are men who have to look at each other only once to know that there is born between them a perpetual hostility. Each of these men had felt it at the first shock of meeting eyes. They would feel it again as often as they looked at each other.

"No," the nester answered.

"Why not?"

"I didn't care to. You may carry your own messages."

"When I do I'll carry them with a gun."

"Interesting if true." Keller's gaze passed derisively over him and dismissed the man.

"And I hope when I come I'll meet Mr. Keller first."

The nester's attention was focused indolently upon the hills. He seemed to have forgotten that the cattleman was in Arizona.

Healy ripped out a sudden oath, drove the spurs in, and went down the trail with his broncho on the buck.

Keller looked at Yeager and laughed, but that young man met him with a frosty eye.

"I've got some questions to ask you, Mr. Keller," he said.

"Unload 'em."

Yeager led the way inside, offered his guest the chair, and sat down on the bed with his arms on the table which had been drawn close to it.

"In the first place, I'll announce myself. I don't hold with rustlers or waddies. I'm a white man. That being understood, I want to know where we're at."

"Meaning?"

"Miss Phyllis unloads a story on me about you shooting yourself up accidental. Soon as I looked at you that looked fishy to me. You ain't that kind of a durn fool. Would you mind handing me a dipper of water? Thanks." Yeager tossed the water out of the window, and the dipper back into the pail. "I noticed you handed me that water with your right hand. Your gun is on your right side. Then how in Mexico, you being right-handed, did you manage to shoot yourself _in the right arm below the elbow?_"

Keller laughed dryly, and offered no information. "Quite a Sherlock Holmes, ain't you?"

"Hell, no! I got eyes in my head, though. Moreover, that bullet went in at right angles to your arm. How did you make out to do that?"

"Sleight of hand," suggested the other.

"No powder marks, either. And, lastly, it was, a rifle did it, not a revolver."

"Anything more?"

"Some. That side talk between you and Miss Phyllis wasn't over and above clear to me then. I savez it now. She hates you like p'ison, but she's too tender-hearted to give you up. Ain't that it?"

"That's it."

"She lied for you to me. She lied again to Phil. So did I. Oh, we didn't lie in words, but it's the same thing. Now, I wouldn't lie to save my own skin. Why then should I for yours, and you a rustler and a thief?"

"I'm a rustler and a thief, am I?"

"Ain't you?"

"Would you believe me if I said I wasn't?"

Yeager debated an instant before he answered flatly, "No."

"Then I won't say it."

The wounded man tossed his answer off so flippantly that Yeager scowled at him. "Mr. Keller, you're a newcomer here. I wonder if you know what the Malpais country would be liable to do to a man caught rustling now."

"I can guess."

"Let me tell what I know and your life wouldn't be worth a plugged quarter."

"Why didn't you tell?"

Yeager brought his big fist down heavily on the table. "Because of Phyl Sanderson. That's why. She put it up to me, and I played her game. But I ain't sure I'm going to keep on playing it. I'm a Malpais man. My father has a ranch down there, and I've rode the range all my life. Why should I throw down my friends to save a rustler caught in the act?"

"You've already tried and convicted me, I see."

"The facts convict you, seh."

"Your understanding of the facts, I reckon you mean."

"I haven't noticed that you're giving me any chance to understand them different," Yeager cut back dryly.

The nester took from his pocket a little pearl-handled knife, picked up a potato from a basket beside him, and began to whittle on it absently. He looked across the table at the man sitting on the bed, and debated a question in his mind. Was it best to confess the whole truth? Or should he keep his own counsel?

"I see you've got Miss Sanderson's knife. Did you forget to return it?" Yeager made comment.

For just an instant Keller's eye confessed amazement. "Miss Sanderson's knife! Why--how did you know it was hers?" he asked, gathering himself together lamely.

"I ought to know, seeing as I gave it to her for a Christmas present. Sent to Denver for that knife, I did. Best lady's knife in the market, I'm told. Made in Sheffield, England."

"Ye-es. It's sure a good knife. I'll ce'tainly return it next time I see her."

"Funny she ever let you get away with it. She's some particular who she lends that knife to," Jim said proudly.

Keller wiped the blade carefully, shut it, and put the knife back in his pocket. Nevertheless, he was worried in his mind. For what Yeager had told him changed wholly the problem before him. It suggested a possibility, even a probability, very distasteful to him. He was in trouble himself, and before he was through he expected to get others into deep water, too. But not Phyllis Sanderson--surely not this impulsive girl with the blue-black hair and dark, scornful eyes. Wherefore he decided to keep silent now and let Yeager do what he would.

"I reckon, seh, you'll have to do your own guessing at the facts," he said gently.

"Just as you say, Mr. Keller. I reckon if you had anything to say for yourself you would say it. Now, I'll do what talking I've got to do. You may stay here twenty-four hours. After that you may hit the trail for Bear Creek. I'm going down to Seven Mile to tell what I know."

"That's all right. I'll go along and return the pocketknife."

Yeager viewed him with stern disgust. "Don't make any mistake, seh. If you go down it's an even chance you'll never go back."

"Sure. Life's full of chances. There's even a chance I'm not a rustler."

"Then I'd advise you not to go down to Seven Mile with me. I'd hate to find out too late I'd helped hang the wrong man," Yeager dryly answered.

CHAPTER V

AN AIDER AND ABETTOR

Having come to an understanding, Yeager and Keller wasted no time or temper in acrimony. Both of them belonged to that big outdoors West which plays the game to the limit without littleness. They were in hostile camps, but that did not prevent them from holding amiable conversation on the common topics of Cattleland. Only one of these they avoided by mutual consent. Neither of them had anything to say about rustling.

Together they ate and smoked and slept, and in the morning after breakfast they saddled and set out for Seven Mile. A man might have traveled far without seeing finer specimens of the frontier, any more competent, self-restrained, or fitter for emergency. They rode with straight back and loose seat, breaking long silences with occasional drawling comment. For in the cow country strong men talk only when they have something to say.

The stage had just left when they reached Seven Mile, and Public Opinion was seated on the porch as per custom. It regarded Keller with a stony, expressionless hostility. Yeager with frank disapprobation.

Just before swinging from the saddle, Jim turned to the nester. "I'm giving you an hour, seh. After that, I'm going to speak my little piece to the boys."

"Thank you. An hour will be plenty," Keller answered, and passed into the store, apparently oblivious of the silent observation focused upon him.

Phyllis, busy unwrapping a package of papers, glanced up to see his curly head in the stamp window.

"Anything for L. Keller?" he wanted to know, after he had unburdened himself of a friendly "Mornin', Miss Sanderson."

Her impulse was to ask him how his wound was, but she repressed it sternly. She took the letters from the K pigeonhole and found two for him.

"Thank you, I'm feeling fine," he laughed, gathering up his mail.

"I didn't ask you how you were feeling," she answered, turning coldly to her newspapers.

"I thought mebbe you'd want to know about my punctured tire."

"It's very good of you to relieve my anxiety."

"Let me relieve it some more, Miss Sanderson. Here's the knife you lost."

She glanced up carelessly at the pearl-handled knife he pushed through the window. "I didn't know it was lost."

"Well, now you know it's found. When do you remember seeing it last, ma'am?"

"I lent it to a friend two days ago."

"Oh, to a friend--two days ago."

His eyes were on her so steadily that the girl was aware of some significance he gave to the fact, some hidden meaning that escaped her.

"What friend did you say, Miss Sanderson?"

He asked it casually, but his question irritated her.

"I didn't say, sir."

"That's so. You didn't."

"Where did you get it?" she demanded.

He grinned. "I'll tell you that if you'll tell me who you lent it to."

Her curt answer reminded him that he was in her eyes a convicted criminal. "It's of no importance, sir."

"That's what you think, Miss Sanderson."

She sorted the newspapers in the bundle, and began to slip them into the private boxes where they belonged. Presently, however, her curiosity demanded satisfaction. Without looking at him, she volunteered information.

"But there's no mystery about it. Phil borrowed the knife to fix a stirrup leather, and forgot to give it back to me."

"Your brother?"

"Yes."

He was taken aback. There was nothing for it but a white lie. "I found it near Yeager's mine yesterday. I reckon he must have dropped it on his way there."

"I don't see anything very mysterious about that," she said frostily.

She looked so definitely unaware of him as she worked that he fell back from the window and passed out to the porch. He had found out more than he wanted to know.

Jim Yeager's drawling voice came to him, gentle and low as usual, but with an edge to it. "I been discoverin' I'm some unpopular to-day, Brill. Malpais has been expressin' its opinion right plain. You've arrived in time to chirp in with a 'Me, too.'"

Healy had evidently just ridden up, for he was still in the saddle. He relaxed into one of the easy attitudes used by men of the plains to rest themselves without dismounting.

"You know my sentiments, Jim," he replied, not unamiably.

"Sure I know them. Plumb dissatisfied with me, ain't you? Makes me feel awful bad." Jim was sailing into the full tide of his sarcasm when Keller touched him on the shoulder.

"I'd like to see you for a moment, Mr. Yeager, if you can give me the time," he said.

Healy took in the nester with an eye of jade. "Your twin brother wants you, Jim. Run along with him. Don't mind us."

"I won't, Brill."

The young man rose, and sauntered off with the Bear Creek settler. At the corral fence, some fifty yards from the house, he stopped under the shade of a live oak, and put his arms on the top rail. He had allowed himself to show no sign of it, but he resented this claim upon him that seemed to ally him further with the enemy.

"Here I am, Mr. Keller. What can I do for you?"

"You're a friend of Miss Sanderson. You would stand between her and trouble?" the other demanded abruptly.

"I expect."

"Then find out for me what Phil Sanderson did with the knife his sister lent him two days ago. Find out whether he lent it to anybody, and, if so, who."

"What for?"

It had come to a show-down, and the other tabled his cards.

"I found that knife yesterday mo'ning. It was lying beside the dead cow in the park where your friends happened on me. I reckon the rustlers must have heard me coming and drove the calf away just before I arrived. In his hurry one of them forgot that knife. If you'll tell me the man who had it in his pocket yesterday when he left-home, I'll tell you who one of the Malpais rustlers is."

Jim considered this, his gaze upon the far-away range. When he brought it back to Keller, he was smiling incredulously.

"I hear you say so, seh. But what a man with, a halter round his neck says don't go far before a court."

"I expected you to say about that."

"Then I haven't disappointed you." He continued presently, with cold hostility: "That story you cooked up is about the only one you could spring. What surprises me is that a man with as good a head as yours took twenty-four hours to figure out your explanation. I want to tell you, too, that it don't make any hit with me that you're trying to throw the blame on a boy I've known all my life."

"Who happens to be a brother of Miss Sanderson," Keller let himself suggest.

Yeager flushed. "That ain't the point."

"The point is that I'm trying to clear this boy, and I want your help."

"Looks to me like you want to clear yourself."

"If I prove to you that I'm not a rustler, will you padlock your tongue and help me clear young Sanderson?"

"I sure will--if you prove it to my satisfaction."

Keller drew from his pocket the two letters he had just received. "Read these."

When he had read, Yeager handed them back, and offered his hand. "That clears you, seh. Truth is, I never was satisfied you was a rustler. My mind was satisfied; but, durn it, you didn't look like a waddy. It's lucky I hadn't spoke to the boys yet."

"I want to keep this quiet," the Bear Creek settler explained.

"Sure. I'm a clam, and at your service, seh."

"Then find out the truth about the knife."

Yeager's eye chiselled into that of Keller. "Mind, I ain't going to help you bring trouble to Phyllie, and I ain't going to stand by and see it, either."

The other smiled. "I don't ask it of you. What I want is to clear the boy."

"Good enough," agreed Yeager, and led the way back.

Before they had yet reached the house, a figure dropped from the foliage of the live oak under which they had been standing, and rolled like a ball from the fence into the deep dust of the corral. It picked itself up in a gray cloud, from which shone as a nucleus a black face with beady eyes and flashing-white teeth. Swiftly it scampered across the paddock, disappeared into the rear of the stable, and reappeared at the front door.

"Here you, 'Rastus, where you been?" demanded the wrangler. "Didn't I tell you to clean Miss Phyl's trap? I've wore my lungs out hollering for you. Now, you git to work, or I'll wear you to a frazzle."

'Rastus, general alias for his baptismal name of George Washington Abraham Lincoln Randolph, grinned and ducked, shot out of the stable like a streak of light, and appeared ten seconds later in the kitchen presided over by his rotund mother, Becky.

His abrupt entrance disturbed the maternal after-dinner nap. From the rocking-chair where she sat Becky rolled affronted eyes at him.

"What you doin' here, Gawge Washington? Ain't I done tole you sebenty times seben to keep outa my kitchen at dis time o' day?"

"I wanter see Miss Phyl."

"Then I low you kin take it out in wantin'. Think she got time to fool away on a nigger sprout like you-all? Light a shuck back to the stable, where you belong."

'Rastus grinned amiably, flung himself at a door, and vanished into that part of the house which was forbidden territory to him, the while Becky stared after him in amazement.

"What in tarnation got in dat nigger child?" she gasped.

Phyllis, having arranged the mail and delivered most of it, had left the store in charge of the clerk and retired to her private den, a cool room finished in restful tints at the northeast corner of the house. She was sitting by a window reading a magazine, when there came a knock. Her "Come in" disclosed 'Rastus and the whites of his rolling eyes.

She nodded and smiled. "What can I do for you, George Washington Abraham Lincoln Randolph?"

"I done come to tell you somepin I heerd whilst I was asleep in de live oak at the corral."

"Something you dreamed. It is very good of you, George Wash----"

"Now, don't you call me all dat again, Miss Phyl. And I didn't dream it nerrer. I woke up and heerd it. Mr. Jim Yeager and dat nester they call Keller wuz a-talkin', and Mr. Jim he allowed dat Keller wuz a rustler, and den Keller he allowed dat Mr. Phil wuz de rustler."

"What!" The girl had sprung to her feet, amazed, her dark eyes blazing indignation.

"Tha's what he said. He went on to tell how he done found a knife by the dead cow, an' 'twuz yore knife, an' you done loan it to Mr. Phil."

"He said that!" She was a creature transformed by passion. The hot blood of Southern ancestors raced through her veins clamorously. She wanted to strike down this man, to annihilate him and the cowardly lie he had given to shield himself. And pat to her need came the very person she could best use for her instrument.

Healy stood surprised in the doorway, confronted by the slender young amazon. The storm of passion in the eyes, the underlying flush in the dusky cheeks, indicated a new mood in his experience of this young woman of many moods.

"Come in and shut the door," she ordered. Then, "Tell him, 'Rastus."

The boy, all smiles gone now, repeated his story, and was excused.

"What do you think of that, Brill?" the girl demanded, after the door had closed on him.

The stockman's eyes had grown hard. "I think Keller's covering his own tracks. Of course we've got no direct proof, but----"

"We have," she broke in.

"I can't see it. According to Jim Yeager----"

"Jim lied. I asked him to."

"You--what?"

"I asked him to say that this man had come there to work for him. Jim was not to blame."

"But--why?"

She threw out a gesture of self-contempt. "Why did I do it? I don't know. Because he was wounded, I suppose."

"Wounded! Then I did hit him?"

"Yes. In the arm--a flesh wound. I met him riding through the mesquite. After I had tied up his wound, I took him to Jim's."

His eyes narrowed slightly. "So you tied up his wound?"

"Yes," she answered defiantly, her head up.

"That tender heart of yours," he murmured, with almost a sneer.

"Yes. I'm a fool."

He shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, well."

"And he pays me back by trying to throw it on Phil. Hunt him down, Brill. Bring him to me. I'll tell all I know against him," she cried vindictively.

"I'll get him, Phyl," he promised, and the sound of his laughter was not pleasant. "I'll get him for you, or find out why."

"Think of him trying to put it on Phil, and after I stood by him and kept his secret. Isn't that the worst ever?" the girl flamed.

"He rode away not five minutes ago as big as coffee on that ugly roan of his with the white stockings; knew what we thought about him, but didn't pay any more attention to us than as if we were bumps on a log."

Healy strode out to the porch, told his story, and within five minutes had organized his posse and appointed a rendezvous for two hours later at Seven Mile.

At the appointed time his men were on hand, six of them, armed with rifles and revolvers, ready for grim business.

From her window Phyllis saw them ride away, and persuaded herself that she was glad. Vengeance was about to fall upon this insolent freebooter who had not even manhood enough to appreciate a kindness. But as the hours passed she was beset by a consuming anxiety. What more likely than that he would resist! If so, there could be only one end. She could not keep her thoughts from those seven men whom she had sent against the one.

There was nobody to whom she could talk about it, for Phil and her father were away at Noches. Restless as a caged panther, she twice had her horse brought to the door, and rode into the hills to meet her posse. But she could not be sure which way they would come, and after venturing a short distance she would return for fear they might arrive in her absence. Night had fallen over the country, and the stars were out long before she got back the second time. Nine--ten--eleven o'clock struck, and still no sign of those for whom she waited.

At last they came, their prisoner riding in the midst, bareheaded and with his hands tied.

"I've got him, Phyl!" Healy cried in a voice that told the girl he was riding on a wave of triumph.

"I see you have."

Nevertheless she looked not at the victor, but at the vanquished, and never had she seen a man who looked more master of his fate than this one. He was smiling down at her whimsically, and she saw they had not taken him without a struggle. The marks of it were on them and on him. Healy's cheek bone was laid open in a nasty cut, and Slim had a handkerchief tied round his head.

As for Keller, his shirt was in ribbons and dyed with the stains of blood from the wound that had broken out again in the battle. The hair on the left side of his head was clotted with dried blood, and his cheeks were covered with it. Both eyes were blacked, and hands and face were scratched badly. But his mien was as jaunty, his smile as gallant, as if he had come at the head of a conquering army.

"Good evenin', Miss Sanderson," he bowed ironically.

She looked at him, and turned away without answering. She heard Healy curse softly and knew why. This man contrived somehow to rob him of his triumph.

"You are none of you hurt, Brill?" the girl asked in a low voice.

"No. He fought like a wild cat, but we took him by surprise. He had only his bare fists."

"How about him? Is he hurt?"

"I don't know--or care," the man answered sullenly.

"But he must be looked to."

"I don't know why. It ain't my fault we had to beat him up."

"I didn't say it was your fault, Brill," she answered gently. "But any one can see he has lost a lot of blood, and his wounds are full of dust. They must be washed. I want him brought into the house. Aunt Becky and I will look after him."

"No need of that. Slim will fix him up."

She shook her head. "No, Brill."

His eyes gave way first, but his surrender came with a bad grace.

"All right, Phyl. But he's going to be covered by a gun all the time. I'm not taking chances on him."

"Then have him taken into my den. I'll wake Aunt Becky and we'll be there in a few minutes."

When Phyllis arrived with Aunt Becky she found the nester sitting on the lounge, Healy opposite him with a revolver close to his hand. The prisoner's arms had been freed. His sardonic smile still twitched at the corners of his mouth.

"You've ce'tainly begun your practice on a disreputable patient, Doctor Sanderson. I haven't had time to comb my hair since that little séance with your friends. We sure did have a sociable time. They're all good mixers." He looked into the long glass opposite, laughed at sight of his swollen face, then rattled into a misquotation of some verses he remembered:

"There's many a black black eye, they say, but none so bright as mine; For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May."

"Put the water and things down on that table, Becky," her mistress told her, ignoring the man's blithe folly.

"I'm giving you lots of chances to do the Good Samaritan act," he continued. "Honest, I hate to be so much trouble. You'll have to blame Mr. Healy. He's the responsible party for these little accidents of mine."

"I'm going to be responsible for one more," the stockman told him darkly.

"I understand your intentions are good, but I've noticed that sometimes expectation outruns performance," his prisoner came back promptly.

"Not this time, I think."

Phyllis understood that Brill was threatening the nester and that the latter was defying him lightly, but what either meant precisely she did not know. She proceeded to business without a word except the necessary directions to Becky. Not until the arm was dressed and the wound on the head washed and bandaged did she address Keller.

"I'll send you a powder that will help you get to sleep. The doctor left it here for Phil, and he did not need it," she said.

"Mebbe I won't need it, either." Keller laughed hardily, at his enemy it seemed to the girl, and with some hint of a sinister understanding between them from which she was excluded. "Thanks just the same, for that and for everything else you've done for me."

Phyllis said "Good night" stiffly, and followed the old negress out. She went directly to her bedroom, but not to sleep. The night was hot, and it had been to her a day full of excitement. She had much to think of. Going to the open window, she sat down in a low chair with her arms across the sill.

Two men met beneath her window.

"Gimme the makings, Slim," one said to the other.

While he was shaking the tobacco from the pouch to the paper, Slim spoke. "The boys ought all to be here in another hour, Budd. After that, it won't take us long."

"Not long," the fat man answered uneasily.

There was a silence. Slim broke it. "We got to do it, o' course."

"Looks like. Got to make an example. No peace on the range till we do."

"I hate like sin to, Budd. He's so damn game."

"Me, too. But we got to. No two ways about it."

"I reckon. Brill says so. But I wish the cuss had a chanct to fight for his life."

They moved off together in troubled silence, Budd's cigarette glowing red in the darkness. Behind them they left a girl shocked and rigid. They were going to lynch him! She knew it as certainly as if she had been told it in set words. Her blood grew cold, and she shivered. While the confused horror of it raced through her brain, she noticed subconsciously that her fingers on the sill were trembling violently.

What could she do? She was only a girl. These men deferred to her in the trivial pleasantries, but she knew they would go their grim way no matter how she pleaded. And it would be her fault. She had betrayed the rustler to them. It would be the same as if she had murdered him. He had known while she was tending his wounds that she had delivered him to death, and he had not even reproached her.

Courage flowed back to her heart. She would save him if it were possible. It must be by strategy if at all. But how? For of course he was guarded.

She stepped out into the corridor. All was dark there. She tiptoed along it to the guest room, and found the door unlocked. Nobody was inside. She canvassed in her mind the possibilities. They might have him outdoors or in the men's bunk house with them under a guard, or they might have locked him up somewhere until the arrival of the others. If the latter, it must be in the store, since that was the only safe place under lock and key.

Phyllis slipped out of the back door into the darkness, and skirted the house at a distance. There were lights in the bunk house of the ranch riders, and through the window she could see a group gathered. Creeping close to the window, she looked in. Their prisoner was not with them. In front of the store two men were seated in the darkness. She was almost upon them before she saw them. Each of them carried a rifle.

"Hello! Who's that?" one of them cried sharply.

It was Tom Dixon.

Phyllis came forward and spoke. "That you, Tom? I suppose you are guarding the prisoner."

"Yep. Can't you sleep, Phyl?" He walked a dozen yards with her.

"I couldn't, but I see you're keeping watch, all right. I probably can now. I suppose I was nervous."

"No wonder. But you may sleep, all right. He won't trouble you any. I'll guarantee that," he promised largely. "Oh, Phyl!"

She had turned to go, but she stopped at his call. "Well?"

"Don't you be mad at me. I was only fooling the other day. Course I hadn't ought to have got gay. But a fellow makes a break once in a while."

Under the stress of her deeper anxiety she had forgotten all about her tiff with him. It had seemed important at the time, but since then Tom and his affairs had been relegated to second place in her mind. He was only a boy, full of the vanity that was a part of him. Somehow, her anger against him was all burnt out.

"If you never will again, Tom," she conceded.

"I'll be good," he smiled, meaning that he would be good as long as he must.

"All right," she said, without much enthusiasm.

She left him and passed into the house without haste. But once inside she fairly flew to Phil's room. On a nail near the head of his bed hung a key. She took this, descended to the kitchen, and from there noiselessly down the stairway to the cellar. She groped her way without a light along the adobe wall till she came to a door which was unlocked. This opened into another part of the cellar, used as a room for storing supplies needed in their trade. Past barrels and boxes she went to another stairway and breathlessly ascended it. At the top of eight or nine steps a door barred progress. Very carefully she found the keyhole, fitted in the key, and by infinitesimal degrees unlocked the door.

The night seemed alive with the noise of her movements. Now the door creaked as it swung open before her. She waited, heart beating like a trip hammer, and stared into the blackness of the store.

"Who is it?" a voice asked in a low tone.

"It's me, Phyl Sanderson. Are you alone?" she whispered.

"Yes. Tied to a chair. Guards are just outside."

She went toward him softly with hands outstretched in the darkness, and presently her fingers touched his face. They travelled downward till they found the ropes which bound him. For a moment she fumbled at the knots before she remembered a swifter way.

"Wait," she breathed, and stole back of the counter to the case where pocketknives were kept.

Finding one, she ran to him and hacked at the rope till he was free.

He rose and stretched his cramped limbs.

"This way." Phyllis took him by the hand, and led him to the stairs. Together they descended, after she had locked the door. Another minute, and they stood in the kitchen, still hand in hand.

The girl released herself. "You will find Slim's horse tied to the fence of the corral. When you reach it, ride for your life," she said.

"Why have you saved me after you betrayed me?" he demanded.

"I save you because I did betray you. I couldn't have your blood on my head. Now, go."

"Not till I know why you betrayed me."

"You can ask that." Her indignation gathered and broke. "Because you are what you are. Because I know what you told Jim Yeager this afternoon. Why don't you go?"

"What did I tell Yeager? About the knife, you mean?"

"You tried to lay it on Phil to save yourself."

"Did Yeager tell you that?"

"No, but I know it," She pushed him toward the door. "Go, while there is still a chance."

"I'm not going--not yet. Not till you promise to ask Yeager what I said."

A footstep sounded, and the door opened. The intruder stopped, his hand still on the handle, aware that there were others in the room.

"Who is it?" Phyllis breathed, stricken almost dumb with terror.

"It's Slim. Hope I ain't buttin' in, Phyllie."

Unconsciously he had given her the cue she needed.

"Well, you are." She laughed nervously, as might a lover caught unexpectedly. "It's--it's Phil," she pretended to pretend.

"Oh, it's Phil." Slim laughed in kindly derision, and declared before he went out: "I expect you would spell his name B-r-i-double l. Don't forget to invite me to the wedding, Phyllie. Meanwhile I'll be mum as a clam till you say the word."

With which he jingled away. The door was scarce closed before the girl turned on Keller.

"There! You see. They may catch you any moment."

"Will you ask Yeager?"

"Yes, if you'll go."

"All right. I'll go."

Still he did not leave. The magic of this slim girl had swept him from his feet. In imagination he still felt the touch of her warm fingers, soft as a caress, the thrill of her hair as it had brushed his cheek when she had stooped over him. The drag of sex was upon him and had set him trembling strangely.

"Why don't you go?" she cried softly.

He snatched himself away.

But before he had reached the door he came back in two strides. Startled and unnerved, she waited on him. He caught both her hands in his, and opened them wide so that she was drawn toward him by the swing of the motion. There for an instant he stood, looking down into her eyes by the faint light that sifted through the window upon her.

"What--what do you want?" she demanded tremulously, emotion flooding her in waves.

"Why are you saving me, girl?"

"I--don't know. I've told you why."

"I'm a villain, by your way of it, yet you save my life even while you think me a skunk. I can't thank you. What's the use of trying?"

He looked down into her eyes, and that gaze did more than thank her. It told her he would never forget and never let her forget. How it happened she could not afterward remember, but she found herself in his arms, his kiss tingling through her blood like wine.

She thrust him from her--and he was gone.

She sank into a chair beside the kitchen table, her pulses athrob with excitement. Scorn herself she might and would in good time, but just now her whole capacity for emotion was keyed to an agony of apprehension for this prince of scamps. By the beating of her galloping heart she timed his steps. He must have reached the horse now. Already he would have it untied, would be in the saddle. Surely by this time he had eluded the sentries and was slipping out of the danger zone. Before him lay the open road, the hills, and safety.

A cry rang out in the stillness--and another. A shot, the beat of running feet, a panted oath, more shots! The silent night had suddenly become vocal with action and the fierce passions of men. She covered her face with her hands to shut out the vision of what her imagination conjured--a horse flying with empty saddle into the darkness, while a huddled figure sank together lifeless by the roadside.

CHAPTER VI

A GOOD FRIEND

How long she remained there Phyllis did not know. Fear drummed at her heart. She was sick with apprehension. At last her very terror drove her out to learn the worst. She walked round to the front of the house and saw a light in the store. Swiftly she ran across and up the steps to the porch. Three men were inside examining the empty chair by the light of a lantern one held in his hand.

"Did--did he get away?" the girl faltered.

The men turned. One of them was Slim. He held in his hand pieces of the slashed rope and the open pocket-knife that had freed the prisoner.

"Looks like it," Slim answered. "With some help from a friend. Now, I wonder who that useful friend was and how in time he got in here?"

Her eyes betrayed her. Just for an instant they swept to the cellar door, to make sure it was still shut. But that one glance was enough. Slim, about to speak, changed his mind, and stared at her with parted lips. She saw suspicion grow in his face and resolve itself to certainty, helped to decision by the telltale color dyeing her cheeks.

"Does the cellar stairway from the store connect with the kitchen cellar, Phyllie?" he asked.

"Ye-es."

He nodded, then laughed without mirth. "I reckon I can tell you, boys, who Mr. Keller's friend in need is."

"Who? I'd like right well to know." Brill Healy, in a pallid fury, had just come in and was listening.

Phyllis turned and faced him. "I was that friend, Brill."

"You!" He stared at her in astonishment. "You! Why, it was you sent me out to run him down."

"I didn't tell you that I wanted you to murder him, did I?"

"I guess there's a lot between him and you that you didn't tell me," he jeered.

Slim grinned, not at all maliciously. "I reckon that's right. I don't need to ask you now, Phyllie, who it was I found with you in the kitchen."

"He was just going," she protested.

"Sure, and I busted into the good-bys right inconsiderate."

"Go ahead, Slim. I'm only a girl. You and Brill say what you like," she flashed at him, the nails of her fingers biting into the palms of her hands.

"Only don't say it out loud," cautioned a new voice. Jim Yeager was at the door, and he was looking very pointedly at Healy.

"I say what I think, Jim," Brill retorted promptly.

"And you think?"

Healy slammed his fist down hard on the counter. "I think things ain't right when a Malpais girl helps a hawss thief and a rustler to escape twice."

"Take care, Brill," advised Phyllis.

"Not right how?" asked Yeager quietly, but in an ominous tone.

"Don't you two go to twisting my meaning. All Malpais knows that no better girl than Phyl Sanderson ever breathed."

The young woman's lip curled. "I'm grateful for this indorsement, sir," she murmured with mock humility.

"Do I understand that Keller has made his getaway?" Jim Yeager asked.

"He sure has--clean as a whistle."

"Then you idiots want to be plumb grateful to Phyllie. He ain't any more a rustler than I am. If you had hanged him you would have hanged an innocent man."

"Prove it," cried Healy.

Jim looked at him quietly. "I cayn't prove it just now. You'll have to take my word for it."

"Yore word goes with me, Jim, even if I am an idiot by yore say-so," his father announced promptly.

Jim smiled and let an arm fall across the shoulders of James Yeager, Senior. "I ain't countin' you in on that class, dad. You got to trailing with bad company. I'll have to bring you up stricter."

"I hate to be a knocker, Jim, but I've got to trust my own eyes before your indorsement," Healy sneered.

"That's your privilege, Brill."

"I reckon Jim knows what he's talking about," said Yeager, Senior, with intent to conciliate.

"Of course I know you're right friendly with him, Jim. There's nobody more competent to pass an opinion on him. Like enough you know all about his affairs," conceded Healy with polite malice.

The two young men were looking at each other steadily. They never had been friends, and lately they had been a good deal less than that. Rival leaders of the range for years, another cause had lately fanned their rivalry to a flame. Now a challenge had been flung down and accepted.

"I expect I know more about them than you do, Brill."

"Sure you do. Ain't he just got through being your guest? Didn't he come visiting you in a hurry? Didn't you tie up his wound? And when Phil and I came asking questions didn't you antedate his arrival about six hours? I'm not denying you know all about him. What I'm wondering is why you didn't tell all you knew. Of course, I understand they are your reasons, though, not mine."

"You've said it. They're my reasons."

"I ain't saying they are not good reasons. Whyfor should a man round on his friend?"

The innuendo was plain, and Yeager put it into words. "I'd be right proud to have him for a friend. But we all know what you mean, Brill. Go right ahead. Try and persuade the boys I'm a rustler, too. They haven't known me on an average much over twenty years. But that doesn't matter. They're so durned teachable to-day maybe you can get them to swallow that with the rest."

With which parting shot he followed Phyllis out of the store. She turned on him at the top of the porch steps leading to the house.

"Did he tell you that Phil was the rustler?"

"You mean did Keller tell me?" he said, surprised.

"Yes. 'Rastus was in the live oak and heard all you said."

"No. He didn't tell me that. We neither of us think it was Phil. It couldn't be, for he was riding with you at the time. But he found your knife there by the dead cow. Now, how did it come there? You let Phil have the knife. Had he lent his knife to some one?"

"I don't know." She went on, after a momentary hesitation: "Are you quite sure, Jim, that he really found the knife there?"

"He said so. I believe him."

She sighed softly, as if she would have liked to feel as sure. "The reason I spoke of it was that I accused him of trying to throw the blame on Phil, and he told me to ask you about it."

Jim shook his head. "Nothing to it. If you want my opinion, Keller is white clear enough. He wouldn't try a trick like that."

The girl's face lit, and she held out an impulsive hand. "Anyhow, you're a good friend, Jim."

"I've been that ever since you was knee high to a duck, Phyl."

"Yes--yes, you have. The best I've got, next to Phil and Dad." Her heart just now was very warm to him.

"Don't you reckon maybe a good friend might make a good--something else."

She gasped. "Oh, Jim! You don't mean----"

"Yep. That's what I do mean. Course I'm not good enough. I know that."

"Good. You're the best ever. It isn't that. Only I don't like you that way."

"Maybe you might some day."

She shook her head slowly. "I wish I could, Jim. But I never will."

"Is there--someone else, Phyl?"

If it had been light enough he could have seen a wave of color sweep her face.

"No. Of course there isn't. How could there be? I'm only a girl."

"It ain't Brill then?"

"No. It's--it isn't anybody." She carried the war, womanlike, into his camp. "And I don't believe you care for me--that way. It's just a fancy."

"One I've had two years, little girl."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I do like you, better than any one else. You know that, dear old Jim."

He smiled wistfully. "If you didn't like me so well I reckon I'd have a better chance. Well, I mustn't keep you here. Good night."

Her ringers were lost in his big fist. "Good night, Jim." And again she added, "I'm so sorry."

"Don't you be. It's all right with me, Phyl. I just thought I'd mention it. You never can tell, though I most knew how it would be. _Buenos noches, nina._"

He released her hand, and without once looking back strode to his horse, swung to the saddle, and rode into the night.

She carried into the house with her a memory of his cheerful smile. It had been meant as a reassurance to her. It told her he would get over it, and she knew he would. For he was no puling schoolboy, but a man, game to the core.

The face of another man rose before her, saturnine and engaging and debonair. With the picture came wave on wave of shame. He was a detected villain, and she had let him kiss her. But beneath the self-scorn was something new, something that stung her blood, that left her flushed and tingling with her first experience of sex relations.

A week ago she had not yet emerged fully from the chrysalis of childhood. But in the Southland flowers ripen fast. Adolescence steals hard upon the heels of infancy. Nature was pushing her relentlessly toward a womanhood for which her splendid vitality and unschooled impulses but scantily safeguarded her. The lank, shy innocence of the fawn still wrapped her, but in the heart of this frank daughter of the desert had been born a poignant shyness, a vague, delightful trembling that marked a change. A quality which had lain banked in her nature like a fire since childhood now threw forth its first flame of heat. At sunset she had been still treading the primrose path of youth; at sunrise she had entered upon the world-old heritage of her sex.

CHAPTER VII

A SHOT FROM AMBUSH

From the valley there drifted up a breeze-swept sound. The rider on the rock-rim trail above, shifting in his saddle to one of the easy, careless attitudes of the habitual horseman, recognized it as a rifle shot.

Presently, from a hidden wash rose little balloon-like puffs of smoke, followed by a faint, far popping, as if somebody had touched off a bunch of firecrackers. Men on horseback, dwarfed by distance to pygmy size, clambered to the bank--now one and then another firing into the mesquite that ran like a broad tongue from the roll of hills into the valley.

"Looks like something's broke loose," the young man drawled aloud. "The band's sure playing a right lively tune this glad mo'ning."

Save for one or two farewell shots, the firing ceased. The riders had disappeared into the chaparral.

The rider did not need to be told that this was a man hunt, destined perhaps to be one of a hundred unwritten desert tragedies. Some subtle instinct in him differentiated between these hurried shots and those born of the casual exuberance of the cow-puncher at play. He had a reason for taking an interest in it--an interest that was more than casual.

Skirting the rim of the saucer-shaped valley, he rode forward warily, came at length to a cañon that ran like a sword cleft into the hills, and descended cautiously by a cattle trail, its scarred slope.

Through the defile ran a mountain stream, splashing over and round boulders in its swift fall.

"I reckon we'll slide down, Keno, and work out close to the fire zone," the rider said to his horse, as they began to slither down the precipitous slope, starting rubble at every motion.

Man and horse were both of the frontier, fit to the minute for any call that might be made on them. The broncho was a roan, with muscles of elastic leather, sure-footed as a mountain goat. Its master--a slim, brown man, of medium height, well knit and muscular--looked on the world, quietly and often humorously, with shrewd gray eyes.

As he reached the bottom of the gulch, his glance fell upon another rider--a woman. She crossed the stream hurriedly, her pony flinging water at every step, and cantered up toward him.

Her glance was once and again over her shoulder, so that it was not until she was almost upon him that she saw the young man among the cottonwoods, and drew her pony to an instant halt. The rifle that had been lying across her saddle leaped halfway to her shoulder, covering him instantly.

"_Buenos dios, senorita._ Are you going for to shoot my head off?" he drawled.

"The rustler!" she cried.

"The alleged rustler, Miss Sanderson," he corrected gently.

"Let me past," she panted.

He observed that her eyes mirrored terror of the scene she had just left.

"It's you that has got the drop on me, isn't it?" he suggested.

The rifle went back to the saddle. Instantly the girl was in motion again, flying up the cañon past the white-stockinged roan, her pony's hindquarters gathered to take the sheep trail like those of a wild cat.

Keller gazed after her. As she disappeared, he took off his hat, bowed elaborately, and remarked to himself, in his low, soft drawl:

"Good mo'ning, ma'am. See you again one of these days, mebbe, when you ain't in such a hurry."

But though he appeared to take the adventure whimsically his mind was busy with its meaning. She was in danger, and he must save her. So much he knew at least.

He had scarcely turned the head of his horse toward the mouth of the cañon when the pursuit drove headlong into sight. Galloping men pounded up the arroyo, and came to halt at his sharp summons. Already Keller and his horse were behind a huge boulder, over the top of which gleamed the short barrel of a wicked-looking gun.

"Mornin', gentlemen. Lost something up this gulch, have you?" he wanted to know amiably.

The last rider, coming to a gingerly halt in order not to jar an arm bandaged roughly in a polka-dot bandanna, swore roundly. He was a large, heavy-set man, still on the sunny side of forty, imperious, a born leader, and, by the look of him, not one lightly to be crossed.

"He's our man, boys. We'll take him alive if we can; but, dead or alive, he's ours." He gave crisp orders.

"Oh! It's me you've lost? Any reward?" inquired the man behind the rock.

For answer, a bullet flattened itself against the boulder. The wounded man had whipped up a rifle and fired.

Keller called out a genial warning. "I wouldn't do that. There's too many of you bunched close together, and this old gun spatters like hail. You see, it's loaded with buckshot."

One of the cowboys laughed. He was rather a cool hand himself, but such audacity as this was new to him.

"What's ailing you, Pesky? It don't strike me as being so damned amusing," growled his leader.

"Different here, Buck. I was just grinning because he's such a cheerful guy. Of course, I ain't got one of his pills in my arm, like you have."

"He won't be so gay about it when he's down, with a couple of bullets through him," predicted the other grimly. "But we'll take his advice, just the same. You boys scatter. Cross the creek and sneak up along the other wall, Ned. Curly, you and Irwin climb up this side until you get him in sight. Pesky and I will stay here."

"Hold on a minute! Let's get at the rights of this. What's all the row about?" the cornered man wanted to know.

"You know dashed well what it's about, you blanked bushwhacker. But you didn't shoot straight enough, and you didn't fix it so you could make your getaway. I'm going to hang you high as Haman."

"Thank you. But your intentions aren't directed to the right man. I'm a stranger in this country. Whyfor should I want to shoot you?"

"A stranger. Where from?" demanded Buck Weaver crisply.

"Douglas."

"What doing here?"

"Homesteading."

"Name?"

"Keller."

"Killer, you mean, I reckon. You're a hired assassin, brought in to shoot me. That's what you are."

"No."

"Yes. The man we want came into this gulch, not three minutes ahead of us. If you're not the man, where is he?"

"I haven't got him in my vest pocket."

"I reckon you've got him right there in your coat and pants."

"I ain't so dead sure, Buck," spoke up Pesky. "We didn't see the man so as to know him."

"Riding a roan, wasn't he?" snapped the owner of the Twin Star outfit.

"Looked that way," admitted the cowpuncher.

"Well, then?"

"Keller! Why, that's the name given by the rustler who broke away from us two weeks ago," Curly spoke out.

"No use jawing. I'm going to hang his skin up to dry," Weaver ground out between set teeth.

"By his own way of it, he's only one of them dashed nesters," Irwin added.

Keller was putting two and two together, in amazement. The would-be assassin had, during the past few minutes, been driven into this gulch, riding a roan horse. He could swear that only one person had come in before these pursuers--and that one was a woman on a roan. Her frightened eyes, the fear that showed in every motion, her hurried flight, all contributed to the same inevitable conclusion. It was difficult to believe it, but impossible to deny. This wild, sylvan creature, with the shy, wonderful eyes, had lain in ambush to kill her father's enemy, and was flying from the vengeance on her heels.

His lips were sealed. Even if he were not under heavy obligations to her he could no more save himself at the expense of this brown sylph than he could have testified against his own mother.

"All right. If you feel lucky, come on. You'll get me, of course, but it may prove right expensive," he said quietly.

"That's all right. We're footing our end of the bill," Pesky retorted.

By this time, he and Weaver had dismounted, and were sheltered behind rocks. Already bullets were beginning to spit back and forth, though the flankers had not yet got into action.

"Durn his hide, I hate like sin to puncture it," Pesky told his boss. "I tell you we're making a mistake, Buck. This fellow's a pure--he ain't any hired killer. You can tie to that."

"He's the man that pumped a bullet into my arm from ambush. That's enough for me," the cattleman swore.

"No use being revengeful, especially if it happens he ain't the man. By his say-so, that's a shotgun he's carrying. Loaded with buckshot, he claims. What hit you was a bullet from a Winchester, or some such gun. Mighty easy to prove whether he's lying."

"We'll be able to prove it afterward, all right."

"What's the matter with proving it now? I don't stand for any murder business myself. I'm going to find out what's what."

The cow-puncher tied the red bandanna from his neck round the end of his revolver, and shoved it above the rock in front of him.

"Flag of truce!" he shouted.

"All right. Come right along. Better leave your gun behind," Keller called back.

Pesky waddled forward--a short, thick-set, bow-legged man in chaps, spurs, flannel shirt, and white sombrero. When he took off this last, as he did now, it revealed a head bald as a billiard ball.

"How're they coming?" he inquired genially of the besieged man, as he rounded the rock barricade.

Larrabie's steel eyes relaxed to a hint of a friendly smile. He knew this type of man like a brother.

"Fine and dandy here. Hope you're well yourself, seh."

"Tol'able. Buck's up on his ear, o' course. Can't blame him, can you? Most any man would, with that kind of a pill sent to his address so sudden by special delivery. Wasn't that some inconsiderate of you, Mr. Keller?"

"I thought I explained it was another party did that."

Pesky rolled a cigarette and lit it.

"Right sure of that, are you? Wouldn't mind my taking a look at that gun of yours? You see, if it happens to be what you said it was, that kinder lets you out."

Keller handed over the gun promptly. The cow-puncher broke it, extracted a shell, and with his knife picked out the wad. Into his palm rolled a dozen buckshot.

"Good enough! I told Buck he was barking up the wrong tree. Now, I'll go back and have a powwow with him. I reckon you'll be willing to surrender on guarantee of a square deal?"

"Sure--that's all I ask. I never met your friend--didn't know who he was from Adam. I ain't got any option to shoot all the red-haided men I meet. No, sir! You've followed a cross trail."

"Looks like. Still, it's blamed funny." Pesky scratched his shining poll, and looked shrewdly at the other. "We certainly ran Mr. Bushwhacker into the cañon. I'd swear to that. We was right on his heels, though we couldn't see him very well. But he either come in here or a hole in the ground swallowed him."

He waited tentatively for an answer, but none came other than the white-toothed smile that met him blandly.

"I reckon you know more than you aim to tell, Mr. Keller," continued Pesky. "Don't you figure it's up to you, if we let you out of this thing, to whack up any information you've got? The kind of reptile that kills from ambush don't deserve any consideration."

Half an hour ago, the other would have agreed with him. The man that shot his enemy from cover was a coyote--nothing less. But about that brown slip of a creature, who had for three minutes crossed his orbit, he wanted to reserve judgment.

"I expect I haven't got a thing to tell you that would help any," he drawled, his eye full on that of the cowpuncher.

Pesky threw away his cigarette. "All right. You're the doctor. I'll amble back, and report to the boss."

He did so, with the result that a truce was arranged.

Keller gave up his post of vantage, and came forward to surrender.

Weaver met him with a hard, wintry eye. "Understand, I don't concede your innocence. You're my prisoner, and, by God, if I get any more proof of your guilt, you've got to stand the gaff."

The other nodded quietly, meeting him eye to eye. Nor did his gaze fall, though the big cattleman was the most masterful man on the range. Keller was as easy and unperturbed as when he had been holding half a dozen irate men at bay.

"No kick coming here. But, if it's just the same to you, I'll ask you to get the proof first and hang me afterward."

"If you're homesteading, where's your place?"

"Back in the hills, close to the headwaters of Salt Creek."

"Huh! You'll make that good before I get through with you. And I want to tell you this, too, Mr. Keller. It doesn't make any hit with me that you're one of those thieving nesters. Moreover, there's another charge against you. In the Malpais country we hang rustlers. The boys claim to have you cinched. We'll see."

"Who's that with Curly?" Pesky called out. "By Moses, it's a woman!"

"It is the Sanderson girl," Weaver said in surprise.

Keller swung round as if worked by a spring. The cow-puncher had told the truth. Curly's companion was not only a woman, but the woman--the same slim, tanned creature who had flashed past him on a wild race for safety, only a few minutes earlier.

All eyes were focused upon her. Weaver waited for her to speak. Instead, Curly took up the word. He was smiling broadly, quite unaware of the mine he was firing.

"I found this young lady up on the rock rim. Since we were rounding up, I thought I'd bring her down."

"Good enough. Miss Sanderson, you've been where you could see if anyone passed into the cañon. How about it? Anybody go up in last ten minutes?"

Phyllis moistened her dry lips and looked at the prisoner. "No," she answered reluctantly.

Weaver wheeled on Keller, his eyes hard as jade. "That ties the rope round your neck, my man."

"No," Phyllis cried. "He didn't do it."

The cattleman's stone wall eyes were on her now.

"Didn't? How do you know he didn't?"

"Because I--I passed him here as I rode up a few minutes ago."

"So you rode up a few minutes ago." Buck's lids narrowed. "And he was here, was he? Ever meet Mr. Keller before?"

"Yes."

"When? Speak up. Mind, no lying."

This, struck the first spark of spirit from her. The deep eyes flashed. "I'm not in the habit of lying, sir."

"Then answer my question."

"I've met him at the office when he came for his mail. And the boys arrested him by mistake for a rustler. I saw him when they brought him in."

"By mistake. How do you know it was by mistake?"

"It was I accused him. But I did it because I was angry at him."

"You accused an innocent man of rustling because you were sore at him. You're ce'tainly a pleasant young lady, Miss Sanderson."

Her look flashed defiance at him, but she said nothing. In her slim erectness was a touch of feminine ferocity that gave him another idea.

"So you just rode into the cañon, did you?"

"Yes."

"Meet up with anybody in the valley before you came in?"

"No."

His eyes were like steel drills. They never left her. "Quite sure?"

"Yes."

"What were you doing there?"

She had no answer ready. Her wild look went round in search of a friend in this circle of enemies. They found him in the man who was a prisoner. His steadfast eyes told her to have no fear.

"Did you hear what I said?" demanded Weaver.

"I was--riding."

"Alone?"

The answer came so slowly that it was barely audible. "Yes."

"Riding in Antelope Valley?"

"Yes."

"Let me see that gun." Weaver held out his hand for the rifle.

Phyllis looked at him and tried to fight against his domination; then slowly she handed him the rifle. He broke and examined it. From the chamber he extracted an empty shell.

Grim as a hanging judge, his look chiselled into her.

"I expect the lead that was in here is in my arm. Isn't that right?"

"I--I don't know."

"Who does, then? Either you shot me or you know who did."

Her gaze evaded his, but was forced at last to the meeting.

"I did it."

She was looking at him steadily now. Since the thing must be faced, she had braced herself to it. It was amazing what defiant pluck shone out of her soft eyes. This man of iron saw it, and, seeing, admired hugely the gameness that dwelt in her slim body. But none of his admiration showed in the hard, weather-beaten face.

"So they make bushwhackers out of even the girls among your rustling, sheep-herding outfit!" he taunted.

"My people are not rustlers. They have a right to be on earth, even if you don't want them there."

"I'll show them what rights they have got in this part of the country before I get through with them. But that ain't the point now. What I want to know is how they came to send a girl to do their dirty killing for them."

"They didn't send me. I just saw you, and--and shot on an impulse. Your men have clubbed and poisoned our sheep. They wounded one of our herders, and beat his brother when they caught him unarmed. They have done a hundred mean and brutal things. You are at the bottom of it all; and when I saw you riding there, looking like the lord of all the earth, I just----"

"Well?"

"Couldn't help--what I did."

"You're a nicely brought up young woman--about as savage as the rest of your wolf breed," jeered Weaver.

Yet he exulted in her--in the impulse of ferocity that had made her strike swiftly, regardless of risk to herself, at the man who had hounded and harried her kin to the feud that was now raging. Her shy, untamed beauty would not itself have attracted him; but in combination with her fierce courage it made to him an appeal which he conceded grudgingly.

"What in Heaven's name brought you back after you had once got away?" Weaver asked.

The girl looked at Keller without answering.

"I reckon I can tell you that, seh," explained that young man. "She figured you would jump on me as the guilty party. It got on her conscience that she had left an innocent man to stand for it. I shouldn't wonder but she got to seeing a picture of you-all hanging me or shooting me up. So she came back to own up, if she saw you had caught me."

Weaver nodded. "That's the way I figure it, too. Gamest thing I ever saw a woman do," he said in an undertone to Keller, with whom he was now standing a little apart.

The latter agreed. "Never saw the beat of it. She's scared stiff, too. Makes it all the pluckier. What will you do with her?"

"Take her along with me back to the ranch."

"I wouldn't do that," said the young man quickly.

"Wouldn't you?" Weaver's hard gaze went over him haughtily. "When I want your advice, I'll ask you for it, young man. You're in luck to get off scot-free yourself. That ought to content you for one day."

"But what are you going to do with her? Surely not have her imprisoned for attacking you?"

"I'll do as I dashed please, and don't you forget it, Mr. Keller. Better mind your own business, if you've got any."

With which Buck Weaver turned on his heel, and swung slowly to the saddle. His arm was paining him a great deal, but he gave no sign of it. He expected his men to game it out when they ran into bad luck, and he was stoic enough to set them an example without making any complaints.

The little group of riders turned down the trail, passed through the gateway that led to the valley below, and wound down among the cow-backed hills toward the ranch roofs, which gleamed in the distance. They were the houses of the Twin Star outfit, the big concern owned by Buck Weaver, whose cattle fed literally upon a thousand hills.

It suited Buck's ironic humor to ride beside the girl who had just attempted his life. He bore her no resentment. Had the offender been a man, Buck would have snuffed out his life with as little remorse as he would a guttering candle. But her sex and her youth, and some quality of charm in her, had altered the equation. He meant to show her who was master, but he would choose a different method.

What sport to tame the spirit of this wild desert beauty until she should come like one of her own sheep dogs at his beck and call! He had never yet met the woman he could not dominate. This one, too, would know a good many new emotions before she rejoined her tribe in the hills.

He swung from the saddle at the ranch plaza, and greeted her with a deep bow that mocked her.

"Welcome, Miss Sanderson, to the best the Twin Star outfit has to offer. I hope you will enjoy your visit, which is going to be a long one."

To a Mexican woman, who had come out to the porch in answer to his call, he delivered the girl, charging her duty in two quick sentences of Spanish. The woman nodded her understanding, and led Phyllis inside.

Weaver noticed with delight that his captive's eye met his steadily, with the defiant fierceness of some hunted wild thing. Here was a woman worth taming, even though she was still a girl in years. His exultant eye, returning from the last glimpse of the lissom figure as it disappeared, met the gaze of Keller. That young man was watching him with an odd look of challenge on his usually impassive face.

The cattleman felt the spur of a new antagonism stirring his blood. There was something almost like a sneer on his lips as he spoke:

"Sorry to lose your company, Mr. Keller. But if you're homesteading, of course, we'll have to let you go back to the hills right away. Couldn't think of keeping you from that spring plowing that's waiting to be done."

"You're putting up a different line of talk from what you did. How about that charge of rustling against me, Mr. Weaver? Don't you want to hold me while you investigate it?"

"No, I reckon not. Your lady friend gives you a clean bill of health. She may or may not be lying. I'm not so sure myself. But without her the case against you falls."

Keller knew himself dismissed cavalierly, and, much as he would have liked to stay, he could find no further excuse to urge. He could hardly invite himself to be either the guest or the prisoner of a man who did not want him.

"Just as you say," he nodded, and turned carelessly to his pony.

Yet he was quite sure it would not be as Weaver said if he could help it. He meant to take a hand in the game, no matter what the other might decree. But for the present he acquiesced in the inevitable. Weaver was technically within his rights in holding her until he had communicated with the sheriff. A generous foe might not have stood out for his pound of flesh, but Buck was as hard as nails. As for the reputation of the girl, it was safe at the Twin Star ranch. Buck's sister, a maiden lady of uncertain years, was on hand to play chaperone.

Larrabie swung to the saddle. His horse's hoofs were presently flinging dirt toward the Twin Star as he loped up to the hills.

CHAPTER VIII

MISS-GOING-ON-EIGHTEEN

Time had been when the range was large enough for all, when every man's cattle might graze at will from horizon to horizon. But with the push of settlement to the frontier had come a change. The feeding ground became overstocked. One outfit elbowed another, and lines began to be drawn between the runs of different owners. Water holes were seized and fenced, with or without due process of law.

With the establishment of forest reserves a new policy dominated the government. Sanderson had been one of the first to avail himself of it by leasing the public demesne for his stock. Later, learning that the mountain parks were to be thrown open as a pasturage for sheep, he had bought three thousand and driven them up, having first arranged terms with the forestry service.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I want to be taken home."

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

"You are holding me here a prisoner, then?"

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

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

"Mr. Weaver will do as he thinks best about that." The spinster shut her lips tight and walked from the room.

Supper was brought to Phyllis by the Mexican woman. In spite of her indignation she ate and slept well. Nor did her appetite appear impaired next morning, when she breakfasted in her bedroom. Noon found her promoted to the family dining room. Weaver carried his arm in a sling, but made no reference to the fact. He attempted conversation, but Phyllis withdrew into herself and had nothing more friendly than a plain "No" or "Yes" for him. His sister was presently called away to arrange some household difficulty. At once Phyllis attacked the big man lounging in his chair at his ease.

"I want to go home. I've got to be at the schoolhouse to-morrow morning," she announced.

"It won't hurt you any to miss a few days' schooling, my dear. You'll learn more here than you will there, anyhow," he assured her pleasantly. Buck was cracking two walnuts in the palm of his hand and let his lazy smile drift her way only casually.

She stamped her foot. "I tell you I'm the teacher. It is necessary I should be there."

"You a schoolmarm!" he repeated, in surprise. "How old are you?"

Her dress was scarcely below her shoe tops. She still had the slimness of immature girlhood, the adorable shy daring of some uncaptured wood nymph.

"Does that matter to you, sir?"

"How old?" he reiterated.

"Going-on-eighteen," she answered--not because she wanted to, but because somehow she must. There was something compelling about this man's will. She would have resisted it had she not wanted to gain her point about going home.

"So you teach the kids their A B C's, do you? And you just out of them yourself! How many scholars have you?"

"Fourteen."

"And they all love teacher, of course. Would you take me for a scholar, Miss Going-On-Eighteen?"

"No!" she flamed.

"You'd find me right teachable. And I would promise to love you, too."

Color came and went in her face beneath the brow. How dared he mock her so! It humiliated and embarrassed and angered her.

"Are you going to let me go back to my school?" she demanded.

"I reckon your school will have to get along without you for a few days. Your fourteen scholars will keep right on loving you, I expect. 'To memory dear, though far from eye.' Or, if you like, I'll send my boys up into the hills, and round up the whole fourteen here for you. Then school can keep right here in the house. How about that? Ain't that a good notion, Miss Going-On-Eighteen?"

She could stand his ironic mockery no longer. She faced him, fearless as a tiger: "You villain!"

With that, turning on her heel, she passed swiftly into her little bedroom, and slammed the door. He heard the key turn in the lock.

"She's sure got some devil in her," he laughed appreciatively, and he cracked another walnut.

Already he had struck the steel of her quality. She would be his prisoner because she must, but the "no compromise" flag was nailed to her masthead.

"I wonder why you are so fond of me?" he mused aloud next day when he found her as unresponsive to his advances as a block of wood.

He was lying in the sand at her feet, his splendid body relaxed full length at supple ease. Leaning on an elbow, he had been watching her for some time.

Her gaze was on the distant line of hills; on her face that far-away expression which told him that he was not on the map for her. Used as he was to impressing himself upon the imagination of women, this stung his vanity sharply. He liked better the times when her passion flamed out at him.

Now he lost his sardonic mockery in a flash of anger.

"Do you hear me? I asked you a question."

She brought her head round until her eyes rested upon him.

"Will you ask it again, please? I wasn't listening."

"I want to know what makes you hate me so," he demanded roughly.

"Do I hate you?"

He laughed irritably. "What else do you call it? You won't hardly eat at the same table with me. Last night you wouldn't come down to supper. Same way this morning. If I sit down near you, soon you find an excuse to leave. When I speak, you don't answer."

"You are my jailer, not my friend."

"I might be both."

"No, thank you!"

She said it with such quick, instinctive certainty that he ground his teeth in resentment. He was the kind of man that always wanted what he could not get. He began to covet this girl mightily, even while he told himself that he was a fool for his pains. What was she but an untaught, country schoolgirl? It would be a strange irony of fate if Buck Weaver should fall in love with a sheepman's daughter.

"Many people would go far to get my friendship," he told her.

Quietly she looked at him. "The friends of my people are my friends. Their enemies are mine."

"Yet you said you didn't hate me."

"I thought I did, but I find I don't."

"Not worth hating, I suppose?"

She neither corrected nor rejected his explanation.

He touched his wounded arm as he went on: "If you don't hate me, why this compliment to me? I reckon good, genuine hate sent that bullet."

The girl colored, but after a moment's hesitation answered:

"Once I shot a coyote when I saw it making ready to pounce on one of our lambs. I did not hate that coyote."

"Thank you," he told her ironically.

Her gaze went back to the mountains. She had always had a capacity for silence. But it was as extraordinary to her as to him how, in the past few days, she had sloughed the shy timidity of a mountain girl and found the enduring courage of womanhood. Her wits, too, had taken on the edge of maturity. He found that her tongue could strike swiftly and sharply. She was learning to defend herself in all the ways women have acquired by inheritance.

Weaver's jaw set like a vise. Getting to his feet, he looked down at her with the hard, relentless eyes that had made his name a terror.

"Good enough, Miss Phyllis Sanderson. You've chosen your way. I'll choose mine. You've got to learn that I'm master here; and, by God, I'll teach it to you. Before I get through with you, young woman, you'll come running when I snap my fingers. From to-day things will be different. You'll eat your meals with us and not in your room. You'll speak when you're spoken to. Set yourself up against me, and I'll bring you to your knees fast enough. There's no law on the Twin Star Ranch but Buck Weaver's will."

He strode away, almost herculean in figure, and every inch of him forceful. She had never seen such a man, one so virile and, at the same time, so wilful and so masterful. Before he was out of her sight, she got an instance of his recklessness.

A Mexican vaquero was driving some horses into a corral. His master strode up to him, and dragged him from the saddle.

"Didn't I tell you to take the colts down to the long pasture?"

"_Si, señor,_" answered the trembling native.

Weaver's great fist rose and fell once. The Mexican sank limply down. Without another glance at him, the cattleman flung him aside, and strode to the house.

As the owner of the Twin Star had said, so it was. Thereafter Phyllis sat at the table with him and his sister, while Josephine, the Mexican woman, waited upon them. The girl came and went at his bidding. But she held herself with such a quiet aloofness that his victory was a barren one.

"Do you want to go home?" he taunted her one morning, while at breakfast.

"Is it likely I would want to stay here?" she retorted.

"Why not? What have you to complain of? Aren't you treated well?"

"Yes."

"What, then? Are you afraid?"

"No!" she answered, with a flash of her fine eyes.

"That's good, because you've got to stay here--or go to the pen. You may take your choice."

"You're very generous. I suppose you don't expect to keep me here always," she said scornfully.

"Until my arm gets well. Since you wounded it you ought to nurse it."

"Which I am not doing, even while I am here."

"Anyhow it soothes the temper of the invalid to have you around." He grinned satirically.

"So I judge, from the effects."

"Meaning that I'm always in a rage when I leave you?"

"I notice your men are marked up a good deal these days."

"I'll tell them to thank you for it," he flung back.

Two days later, he scored on her hard for the first time. She came down to breakfast just as two of the Twin Star riders brought a boy into the hall.

She flew instantly into his arms, thereby embarrassing him vastly.

"Phil! How did you come here?"

Her brother nodded toward Curly and Pesky. "They found me outside and got the drop on me."

"You were here looking for me?"

"Yes. Just got back from Noches. Dad is still there. He don't know."

"But--what are they going to do with you?"

"What would you suggest, Miss Phyllis?" a voice behind her gibed.

The speaker was Weaver. He filled the doorway of the dining room triumphantly. She had had no fears for herself; he would see if she had none for her brother.

The boy whirled on the ranchman like a tiger whelp. "I don't care what you do. Go ahead and do your worst."

Weaver looked him over negligently, much as he might watch a struggling calf. To him the boy was not an enemy--merely a tool which he could use for his own ends. Phyllis, watching anxiously the hard, expressionless face, felt that it was cruel as fate. She knew that somehow she would be made to suffer through her love for her brother.

"You daren't touch him. He's done nothing," she cried.

"He shot at one of my riders. I can't have dangerous characters around. I'm a peaceable man, me," grinned Buck.

"You didn't, Phil," his sister reproached.

"Sure I did. He tried to take my gun from me," the boy explained hotly.

"Take him out to the bunk house, boys. I'll attend to him later," nodded Buck, turning away indifferently.

Stung to fury by the cavalier manner of his enemy, the boy leaped at him like a wild cat. Weaver whirled round again, caught him by the shoulder with his great hand, and shook him as if he had been a puppy. When he dropped him, he nodded again to his men, who dragged out the struggling boy.

Phyllis stood straight as an arrow, but white to the lips. "What are you going to do to him?" she asked.

"How would a good chapping do, to start with? That is always good for an unlicked cub."

"Don't!" she implored.

"But, my dear, why not--since it's for his good?"

Passion unleashed leaped from her. "You coward!"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm right desolated to have your bad opinion. But you say it almost as if you did hate me. That's a compliment, you know. You didn't hate the coyote, you mentioned."

Her eyes flamed. "Hate you! If wishes could kill, you would be a thousand times dead!"

"You disappoint me, my dear. I expected more than wishes from you. There's a loaded revolver in that table drawer. It's yours, any time you want it," he derided.

"Don't tempt me!" she cried wildly. "If you lay a hand on Phil, I'll use it--I surely will."

His eyes shone with delight. "I wonder. By Jove, I've a mind to flog the colt and see. I'll do it."

The passion sank in her as suddenly as it had risen. "No--you mustn't! You don't know him--or us. We are from the South."

"That settles it. I will," he exulted. "You have called me a coward. Would a coward do this, and defy your whole crew to its revenge?"

"Would a brave man break the pride of a high-spirited boy for such a mean motive?" she countered.

"His pride will have to look out for itself. He took his chance of it when he tried to assault me. What he'll get is only what's coming to him."

"Please don't! I'll--I'll be different to you. Take it out on me," she begged.

He laughed harshly. "Do you suppose I'm such a fool as not to know that the way to take it out on you is to take it out of him?"

She had come nearer, a step at a time. Now she threw her hand out in a gesture of abandon.

"Be generous! Don't punish me that way. Something dreadful will come of it."

She broke down and struggled with her tears. He watched her for a moment without speaking.

"Good enough. I'll be generous and let you pay his debt for him, if you want to do it."

Her eyes were glad with the swift joy that leaped into them.

"That is good of you! And how shall I pay?" she cried.

"With a kiss."

She drew back as if he had struck her, all the sparkling eagerness driven from her face.

"Oh!" she moaned.

"Just one kiss--I don't ask anything more. Give me that, and I'll turn him loose. Honor bright."

He held her startled gaze as a snake holds that of a fascinated bird.

"Choose," he told her, in his masterful way.

Her imagination conceived a vision of her young brother being tortured by this man. She had not the least doubt that he would do what he said, and probably would think the boy got only what he deserved.

"Take it," she told him, and waited.

Perhaps he might have spared her had it not been for the look of deep contempt that bit into his vanity.

He kissed her full on the lips.

Instantly she woke to life, struck him on the cheek with her little, brown fist, and, with a sob of woe, turned and ran from the room.

Weaver cursed himself in a fury of anger. He felt himself to be a hound because of the thing he had done, and he hated the instinct in him that drove him to master her. He had insulted and trampled on her. Yet he knew in his heart that he would have killed another man for doing it.

[Illustration: SHE DREW BACK AS IF HE HAD STRUCK HER, ALL THE SPARKLING EAGERNESS DRIVEN FROM HER FACE. _Page 116_]

CHAPTER IX

PUNISHMENT

The cattleman strode into the bunk house, where young Sanderson sat sulkily on a bed under the persuasion of Curly's rifle.

"Have this boy's horse saddled and brought around, Curly."

"You're the doctor," answered the cowboy promptly, and forthwith vanished outdoors to obey instructions.

Phil looked sullenly at his captor, and waited for him to begin. One of his hands was under the pillow of the cot upon which he sat. His fingers circled the butt of a revolver he had found there, where one of the riders had chanced to leave it that morning.

"I'm going to turn you loose to go home to the hills," Weaver told him.

"And my sister?"

"She stays here."

"Then so do I."

"That's up to you. There's no law against camping on the plains--that is, out of range of the Twin Star."

"What are you going to do with her?" the boy demanded ominously.

"If you ask no questions, I'll tell you no lies."

"You'll let her go home with me--that's what you'll do," cried Phil.

"I reckon not. You've got a license to feel lucky you're going yourself."

"By God, I say you shall!"

The cattleman's eyes took on their stony, snake-like look. His hand did not move by so much as an inch toward the scabbarded revolver at his side.

"All right. Come a-shooting. I see you've got a gun under that pillow."

The weapon leaped into sight. "You're right I have! I'll drill you full of holes as soon as wink."

Weaver laughed contemptuously. "Begin pumping, son."

"I'm going to take my sister home with me. You'll give orders to your men to that effect."

"Guess again."

"I tell you I'll shoot your hide full of holes if you don't!" cried the excited boy.

"Oh, no, you won't."

Buck Weaver was flirting with death, and he knew it. The very breath of it fanned his cheek. During that moment he lived gloriously; for he was a man who revelled in his sensations. He laughed into the very muzzle of the six-shooter that covered him.

"Quit your play acting, boy," he jeered.

"I give you one more chance before I blow out your brains."

The cattleman put his unwounded hand into his trousers pocket and lounged forward, thrusting his smiling face against the cold rim of the blue barrel.

"I reckon you'll scatter proper what few brains I've got."

With a curse, the boy flung the weapon down on the bed. He could not possibly kill a man so willing as this. To draw guns with him, and chance the issue, would have suited young Sanderson exactly. But this way would be no less than murder.

"You devil!" he cried, with a boyish sob.

Weaver picked up the revolver, and examined it. "Mighty careless of Ned to leave it lying around this way," he commented absently, as if unaware of the other's rage. "You never can tell when a gun is going to get into the wrong hands."

"What are you letting me go for? You've got a reason. What is it?" Phil demanded.

Weaver looked at him through narrowed, daredevil eyes. "The ransom price has been paid," he explained.

"Paid! Who paid it?"

"Miss Phyllis Sanderson."

"Phyllis?" repeated the boy incredulously. "But she had no money."

"Did I say she paid it in money?"

"What do you mean?"

"She asked me to set you free. I named my price, and she agreed."

"What was your price?" the boy asked hoarsely.

"A kiss."

At that, Phil struck him full in the sardonic, mocking face. Blood crimsoned the lips that had been crushed against the strong, white teeth.

"Again," said Weaver.

The brown fist went back and shot forward like a piston rod. This time it left an ugly gash over the cheek bone.

"Much obliged. Once more."

The young man balanced himself carefully, and struck hard and true between the eyes.

A third, a fourth, and a fifth time Phil lashed out at the disfigured, grinning face.

"Let's make it an even half dozen," the cattleman suggested.

But Phil had had enough of it. This was too much like butchery. His passion had spent itself. He struck, but with no force behind the blow.

Weaver went to the washstand, dashed some water on his face, and pressed a towel against the raw wounds. He flung the red-soaked towel aside just as Curly cantered up on Sanderson's horse. The cow-puncher stared at his boss in amazement, opened his lips to speak, and thought better of it. He looked at Phil, whose knuckles were badly barked and bleeding.

Curly had seen his master marked up before, but on such occasions the other man was a sight for the gods to wonder at. Now Weaver was the spectacle, and the other was untouched. In view of Buck's reputation as a rough-and-tumble fighter, this seemed no less than a miracle. Curly departed with the wonder unexplained, for Weaver dismissed him with a nod.

"Like to see your sister before you go?" the cattleman asked curtly of Phil, over his shoulder.

"Yes."

Buck led the way across the plaza to the house, and clapped his hands in the hall. Josephine answered the summons.

"Tell Miss Sanderson that her brother would like to see her."

The woman vanished up the stairway, and the two men waited in silence. Presently Phyllis stood in the door. Her eyes ignored Weaver, and were only for her brother. Her first glance told her that all was well so far as he was concerned, even though it also let her know that the boy was anxious.

"Phil!" she breathed.

"So you bought my freedom for me, did you?" the boy said, his voice trembling.

Phyllis answered in the clearest of low voices. "Yes. Did he tell you?"

"You oughtn't to have done it. I'll have no such bargains made. Understand that!" cried her brother, emotion in his high tones.

"I couldn't help it, Phil. I did it for the best. You don't know."

"I know that you're to keep out of this. I'll fight my own battles. In our family the girls don't sell kisses. Remember that."

Phyl hung her head. She felt herself disgraced, but she knew that she would do it again in like circumstances.

Weaver broke in roughly: "You young fool! She's worth a dozen of you, who haven't sense enough to sabe her kind."

The girl glanced at him involuntarily. At sight of his swollen and beaten face, she started. Her gaze clung to him, eyes wild and fluttering with apprehension.

"I've been taking a massage treatment," he explained.

Phyllis looked at her brother, then back at the ranchman. The thing was beyond comprehension. Ten minutes ago, this ferocious Hercules had left her, sound and unscratched. Now he returned with a face beaten and almost beyond recognition from bloodstains.

"What--what is it?" The appeal was to her brother.

"He let me beat him," Phil explained.

"Let you beat him! Why?"

"I don't know."

What the boy said was true, yet it was something less than the truth. He was dimly aware that this man knew himself to have violated the code, and that he had submitted to punishment because of the violation.

"Tell me," Phyllis commanded.

Phil told her in three sentences. She looked at Weaver with eyes that saw him in a new light. He still sneered, but behind the mask she got for the first time a glimpse of another man. Only dimly she divined him; but what she visioned was half devil and half hero, capable of things great as well as of deeds despicable.

"I'm not going to leave you here in this house," young Sanderson told her. "I'll not go. If you stay, I stay."

She shook her head. "No, Phil--you must go. I'm all right here--as safe as I would be at home. You know, he has a right to send me to prison if he wants to. I suppose he is holding me as a hostage against our friends in the hills."

The boy accepted her decree under protest. He did not know what else to do. Decision comes only with age, and he could hit on no policy that would answer. Reluctantly he gave way.

"If you so much as touch her, you'll die for it," he gulped at Weaver, in a sudden boyish passion. "We'll shoot you down like a dog."

"Or a coyote," suggested Buck, with a swift glance at Phyllis. "It seems to be a family habit. I'm much obliged to you."

Phyl was in her brother's arms, frankly in tears.

It was all very well to tell him to go; it was quite another thing to let him go without a good cry at losing him.

"Just say the word, and I'll see it out with you, sis," he told her.

"No, no! I want you to go. I wouldn't have you stay. Tell the boys it's all right, and don't let them do anything rash."

Sanderson clenched his teeth, and looked at Weaver. "Oh, they'll do nothing rash. Now they know you're here, they won't do a thing but sit down and be happy, I expect."

The twins whispered together for a minute, then the boy kissed her, put her from him suddenly, and strode away. From the door he called back two words at the cattleman.

"Don't forget."

With that, he was gone. Yet a moment, and they heard the clatter of his horse's hoofs.

"Why did you tell him?" Phyllis asked. "It will only anger them. Now they will seek vengeance on you."

The man shrugged his shoulders. "Search me. Perhaps I wanted to prove to myself that a man may be a mean bully, and not all coyote. Perhaps I wanted to get under his hide. Who knows?"

She knew, in part. He had treated her abominably, and wanted blindly to pay for it in the first way that came to his mind. Half savage as he sometimes was, that way had been to stand up to personal punishment, to invite retaliation from his enemies.

"You must have your face looked to. Shall I call Josephine?"

"No," he answered harshly.

"I think I will. We can help it, I'm sure."

That "we" saved the day. He let her call the Mexican woman, and order warm water, towels, dressings, and adhesive plaster. It seemed to him more than a fancy that there was healing in the cool, soft fingers which washed his face and adjusted the bandages. His eyes, usually so hard, held now the dumb hunger one sees in those of a faithful dog. They searched hers for something which he knew he would never find in them.

CHAPTER X

INTO THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY

A man lay on the top of Flat Rock, stretched at supple ease. By his side was a carbine; in his hand a pair of field glasses. These last had been trained upon Twin Star Ranch for some time, but were now focused upon a pair of approaching riders. At the edge of the young willow grove the two dismounted and came forward leisurely.

"Looks like the mountains are coming to Mahomet this trip," the watcher told himself.

One figure was that of a girl--a brown, light-stepping nymph, upon whom the checkered sunlight filtered through the leaves. The other was a finely built man, strong as an ox, but with the sap of youth still in his blood and the spring of it in his step, in spite of his nearly twoscore years. He stopped at the foot of Flat Rock, and turned to his companion.

"I've been wondering why you went riding with me yesterday and again to-day, Miss Phyllis. I reckon I've hit on the reason."

"I like to ride."

"Yes, but I expect you don't like to ride with me so awful much."

"Yet you see I do," answered the girl with her swift, shy smile.

"And the reason is that you know I would be riding, anyway. You don't want any of your people from the hills to use me as a mark. With you along, they couldn't do it."

"My people don't shoot from ambush," she told him hotly. It was easy to send her gallant spirit out in quick defense of her kindred.

He looked at his arm, still resting in a sling, and smiled significantly.

She colored. "That was an impulse," she told him.

"And you're guarding me from any more family impulses like it." He grinned. "Not that it flatters me so much, either. I've got a notion tucked in the back of my head that you're watching me like a hen does her one chick, for their sake and not for mine. Right guess, I'll bet a dollar. How about it, Miss Sanderson?"

"Yes," she admitted. "At least, most for them."

"You'd like to call the chase off for the sake of the hunters, and not for the sake of the coyote."

"I wish you wouldn't throw that word up to me. I oughtn't to have said that. Please!"

"All right--I won't. It isn't your saying it, but thinking it, that hurts."

"I don't think it."

"You think I'm entirely to blame in this trouble with your people. Don't dodge. You know you think I'm a bully."

"I think you're very arbitrary," she replied, flushing.

"Same thing, I reckon. Maybe I am. Did you ever hear my side of the story?"

"No. I'll listen, if you will tell me."

Weaver shook his head. "No--I guess that wouldn't be playing fair. You're on the other side of the fence. That's where you belong. Come to that, I'm no white-winged angel, anyhow. All that's said of me--most of it, at least--I sure enough deserve."

"I wonder," she mused, smiling at him.

Scarcely a week before, she had been so immature that even callow Tom Dixon had seemed experienced beside her. Now she was a young woman in bloom, instinctively sure of herself, even without experience to guide her. Though he had never said so, she knew quite well that this berserk of the plains had begun to love her with all the strength of his untamed heart. She would have been less than human had it not pleased her, even though, at the same time, it terrified her.

Buck swept his hand around the horizon. "Ask anybody. They'll all give me the same certificate of character. And I reckon they ain't so far out, either," he added grimly.

"Perhaps they are all right, and yet all wrong too."

He looked at her in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"Maybe they don't see the other side of you" said Phyllis gently.

"How do you know there's another side?"

"I don't know how, but I do."

"I reckon it must be a right puny one."

"It has a good deal to fight against, hasn't it?"

"You're right it has. There's a devil in me that gets up on its hind legs and strangles what little good it finds. But it certainly beats me how you know so much that goes on inside a sweep like me."

"You forget. I'm not very good myself. You know my temper runs away with me, too."

"You blessed lamb!" she heard him say under his breath; and the way he said it made the exclamation half a groan.

For her naive confession emphasized the gulf between them. Yet it pleased him mightily that she linked herself with him as a fellow wrongdoer.

"I suppose you've been wondering why your people have made no attempt to rescue you," he said presently; for he saw her eyes were turned toward the hills beyond which lay her home.

"I'm glad they haven't, because it must have made trouble; but I am surprised," she confessed.

"They have tried it--twice," he told her. "First time was Saturday morning, just before daylight. We trapped them as they were coming through the Box Cañon. I knew they would come down that way, because it was the nearest; so I was ready for them."

"And what happened?" Her dilated eyes were like those of a stricken doe.

"Nothing that time. I let them see I had them caught. They couldn't go forward or back. They laid down their arms, and took the back trail. There was no other way to escape being massacred."

"And the second time?"

Buck hesitated. "There was shooting that time. It was last night. My riders outnumbered them and had cover. We drove them back."

"Anybody hurt?" cried Phyllis.

"One of them fell. But he got up and ran limping to his horse, I figured he wasn't hurt badly."

"Was he--could you tell--" She leaned against the rock wall for support.

"No--I didn't know him. He was a young fellow. But you may be sure he wasn't hit mortally. I know, because I shot him myself."

"You!" She drew back in a sudden sick horror of him.

"Why not?" he answered doggedly. "They were shooting at me--aiming to kill, too. I shot low on purpose, when I might have killed him."

"Oh, I must go home--I must go home!" she moaned.

"I've got the sheriff's orders to hold you pending an investigation. What harm does it do you to stay here a while?" he asked doggedly.

"Don't you see? When my father hears of it he will be furious. I made Phil promise not to tell him. But he'll hear when he comes back. And then--there will be trouble. He'll drag me from you, or he'll die trying. He's that kind of man."

A pebble rolled down the face of the wall against which she leaned. Weaver looked up quickly--to find himself covered by a carbine.

"Hands up, seh! No--don't reach for a gun."

"So it's you, Mr. Keller! Homesteading up there, I presume?"

"In a way of speaking. You remember I asked you a question."

"And I told you to go to Halifax."

"Well, I came back to answer the question myself. You're going to turn the young lady loose."

"If you say so." Weaver's voice carried an inflection of sarcasm.

"That's what I say. Miss Sanderson, will you kindly unbuckle that belt and round up the weapons of war? Good enough! I'll drift down that way now myself."

Keller lowered himself from Flat Rock, keeping his prisoner covered as carefully as he could the while. But, though Keller came down the steep bluff with infinite pains, the rough going offered a chance of escape to one so reckless as Weaver, of which he made not the least attempt to avail himself. Instead, he smiled cynically and waited with his hand in the air, as bidden. Keller, coming forward with both eyes on his prisoner, slipped on a loose boulder that rolled beneath his foot, stumbled, and fell, almost at the feet of the cattleman. He got up as swiftly as a cat. Weaver and his derisive grin were in exactly the same position.

Keller lowered his carbine instantly. This plainly was no case for the coercion of arms.

"We'll cut out the gun play," he said. "Better rest the hand that's reaching for the sky. I expect hostilities are over."

"You certainly had me scared stiff," Weaver mocked.

From the first roll of the pebble that had announced the presence of a third party, Phyl had experienced surprise after surprise. She had expected to see one of the Seven Mile boys or her brother instead of Keller--had looked with a quaking heart for the cattleman to fling back the swift challenge of a bullet. His tame surrender had amazed her, especially when Keller's fall had given him a chance to seize the carbine. His drawling, sarcastic badinage pointed to the same conclusion. Evidently he had no desire to resist. Behind this must be some purpose which she could not fathom.

"Elected yourself chaperon of the young lady, have you, Mr. Keller?" Buck asked pleasantly.

The young man smiled at the girl before he answered. "You've been losing too much time on the job, Mr. Weaver. Subject to her approval, I got a notion I'd take her back home."

"Best place for her," assented Weaver promptly. "I've been thinking for a day or two that she ought to get back to those school kids of hers. But I'm going to take her there myself."

"Yourself!" Phyllis spoke up in quick surprise.

"Why not?" The cattleman smiled.

"Do you mean with your band of thugs?"

"No, ma'am. You and I will be enough."

The suggestion was of a piece with his usual audacity. The girl knew that he would be quite capable of riding with her into the hills, where he had a score of bitter, passionate enemies, and of affronting them, if the notion should come into his head, even in their stronghold. Within twenty-four hours he had shot one of them; yet he would go among them with his jaunty, mocking smile and that hateful confidence of his.

"You would not be safe. They might kill you."

"Would that gratify you?"

"Yes!" she cried passionately.

He bowed. "Anything to give pleasure to a lady."

"No--you can't go! I won't go with you. I wouldn't be responsible for what might happen."

"What might happen--another family impulse?"

"You know as well as I do--after what you've done. And there's bad blood between you already. Besides, you are so reckless, so intemperate in what you say and do."

"All right. If you won't go with me, I'll go alone," he said.

She appealed to Keller to support her, but the latter shook his head.

"No use. A wilful man must have his way. If he says he's going, I reckon he'll go. But whyfor should I be euchred out of my ride. Let me go along to keep the peace."

Her eyes thanked him. "If you are sure you can spare the time."

"Don't incommode yourself, if you're in a hurry. We won't miss you." Weaver's cold stare more than hinted that three would be a crowd.

The younger man ignored him cheerfully. "Time to burn, Miss Sanderson."

"You don't want to let that spring plowing suffer," the cattleman suggested ironically.

"That's so. Glad you mentioned it. I'll try to pick up some one to do it at the store," returned the optimist.

"Seems to me there are a pair of us, Mr. Keller, who may not be welcome at Seven Mile. Last time you were down there, weren't you the guest of some willing lads who were arranging a little party for you?"

"Mr. Weaver," reproached Phyllis, flushing.

But the reference did not embarrass the nester in the least. He laughed hardily, meeting his rival eye to eye. "The boys did have notions, but I expect maybe they have got over them."

"Nothing like being hopeful. Now I'd back my show against yours every day in the week."

The girl handed his revolver back to Weaver, after first asking a question of the homesteader with her eyes.

"Oh, I get my hardware back, do I?" Buck grinned.

Keller brought his horse round from back of Flat Rock, where it had been picketed. They started at once, cutting across the plain to a flat butte, which thrust itself out from the hills into the valley. Two hours of steady travel brought them to the butte, behind which lay Seven Mile ranch.

At the first glimpse of the roofs shining in the golden sunlight Phyllis gave a cry of delight.

"Home again. I wonder whether Father's here."

"I wonder," echoed Weaver grimly.

"That little fellow riding into the corral is one of my scholars," she told them.

"One of the fourteen that loves you, Miss Going-On-Eighteen. My, there'll be joy in Israel over the lost that is found. I reckon by to-morrow you'll be teaching the young idea how to shoot." He glanced down at his bandaged arm with a malicious grin.

Phyllis looked at him without speaking. It was Keller who made application of the remark.

"There are others here beside her pupils. Some of them are right quick and straight on the shoot, Mr. Weaver. Now you've seen Miss Sanderson home, there's still time to make your getaway without trouble. How about hitting the trail while travelling is good, seh?"

"What's the matter with you taking your own advice, Keller?"

"I don't figure the need is pressing in my case. Different with you."

"I told you I would back my chances against yours. Well, I'm standing pat on that."

"The road will be open to me to-morrow. I wonder will it be open to you then."

"My friend, who elected you guardeen to Buck Weaver?" drawled the big man carelessly.

"I wish you would go," Phyllis pleaded, plainly troubled over his obstinacy.

"Me, I always hated to disoblige a lady," Buck admitted.

"Then go," she cried eagerly.

"But I hate still more to go back on my word. So I'll stay."

There was nothing more to be said. They rode forward to the ranch. 'Rastus, at the stables, raised a shout and broke for the store on the run.

"Hyer's Miss Phyl done come home."

At his call light-stepping dusty men poured from the building like seeds from a squeezed orange. There was a rush for the girl. She was lifted from her saddle and carried in triumph to the porch. Jim Sanderson came running from the cellar in the rear and buried her in his arms.

She broke down and began to cry a little. "Oh, Dad--Dad, I'm so glad to be home."

The old Confederate veteran was close to tears himself.

"Honey, I jes' got back from town. Phil, he done wrong not letting me know. I come pretty nigh giving that boy the bud. Wait till I meet up with Buck Weaver. It's him or me for suah this time."

"No, Dad, no! You must let me explain. I've been quite safe, and it's all over now. Everything is all right."

"Is it?" Sanderson laughed harshly.

"The sheriff telephoned him to keep me, but you see he brought me home."

"Brought you home?" The sheepman's black eyes lifted quickly and met those of his enemy.

"So you're there, Buck Weaver. I reckon you and I will settle accounts."

Phil and Tom Dixon had quietly circled round so as to cut off Weaver's retreat in case he attempted one.

"He's got the rustler with him," Tom Dixon cried quickly.

"Goddlemighty, so he has. We'll make a clean sweep," the Southerner cried, his eyes blazing.

"Then you'll destroy the man who was ready to give his life for mine," his daughter said quietly.

"What's that? How's that, Phyllie?"

"It's a long story. I want you to hear it all. But not here."

Her voice fell. A sudden memory had come to her of one thing at least that she could not tell even to him--the story of that moment when she had lain in the arms of the nester with his heart beating against her breast.

The old man caught her by the shoulder, holding her at arm's length, while the deep eyes under his shaggy, grizzled brows pierced her.

"What have you got to tell me, gyurl? Out with it!"

But on the heels of his imperative demand came reassurance. A tide of color poured into her face, but her eyes met his quietly. They let him understand, more certainly than words, that all was well with his ewe lamb. Putting her gently to one side, he strode toward his enemy.

"What are you doing here, Buck Weaver?"

The cattleman swept the circle of lowering faces, and laughed contemptuously. "A man might think I wasn't welcome if he didn't know better."

"Oh, you're welcome--I reckon nobody on earth is more welcome right now," retorted Sanderson grimly. "We were starting right out after you, seh. But seeing you're here it saves trouble. Better 'light, you and your friend, both."

The declining sun flashed on three weapons that already covered the cattleman. He looked easily from one to another, without the least concern, and swung lightly from his horse.

"Much obliged. Glad to accept your hospitality. But about this young man here--he's not exactly a friend of mine--a mere pick-up acquaintance, in fact. You mustn't accept him on my say-so. Of course, you know _I'm_ all right, but I can't guarantee him," Buck drawled, with magnificent effrontery.

Phyllis spoke up unexpectedly. "I can."

Keller looked at her gratefully. It was not that he cared so much for the certificate of character as for the friendly spirit that prompted it. "That's right kind of you," he nodded.

"We haven't heard yet what you are doing here, Buck Weaver," old Jim Sanderson said, holding the cattleman with a hard and hostile eye. "And after you've explained that, there are a few other things to make clear."

"Such as----" suggested the plainsman.

"Such as keeping my daughter a captive and insulting her while she was in your house," the father retorted promptly.

"I held her captive because it was my right. She admitted shooting me. Would you expect me to turn her loose, and thank her right politely for it? I want to tell you that some folks would be right grateful because I didn't send her to the penitentiary."

"You couldn't send her there. No jury in Arizona would convict--even if she were guilty," Tom Dixon broke out.

"That's a frozen fact about the Arizona jury," the cattleman agreed, with a swift, careless look at the boy. "Just the same, I had a license to hold her. About the insult--well, I've got nothing to say. Nothing except this, that I wouldn't be wearing these decorations"--he touched the scars on his face--"if I didn't agree with you that nobody but a sweep would have done it."

"Everybody unanimous on that point, I reckon," said Jim Yeager promptly.

Phyllis had been speaking to her father in a low voice. The old man listened with no great patience, but finally nodded a concession to her importunity.

"We'll waive the matter of the insult just now. How about that boy you shot up? Looks like you're a fool to come drilling in here, with him still lying there on his bed."

"He took his fighting chance. You ain't kicking because I played out the game the way you-all started to play it? If you are, I'll have to say I might have expected a sheep herder to look at it that way," Weaver retorted insolently.

The old man took a grip on his rising wrath. "No--we're not kicking, any more than you've got a right to kick when we settle accounts with you."

"As we're liable to do right shortly, now we've got you," said Dixon, vindictively.

"All right--go ahead with the indictment," Weaver acquiesced quietly, ignoring the boy.

"Keep still, Tom," Sanderson ordered, and went on with his grievance. "You try to run this valley as if you were God Almighty. By your way of it, a man has to come with hat in hand to ask you if he may take up land here. The United States says we may homestead, but Buck Weaver says we shan't. Uncle Sam says we may lease land to run sheep. Buck Weaver has another notion of it. We're to take orders from him. If we don't he clubs our sheep and drives off our cattle."

"Cattle were here first," retorted Weaver. "The range is overstocked, and they've got a prior right. Nesters in the hills here are making money by rustling Twin Star calves. That's another thing."

"Some of them. You'll not find any rustled calves with the Seven Mile brand on them. And we don't recognize any prior right. We came here legally. We intend to stay. Every time your riders club a bunch of our sheep, we'll even up on Twin Star cattle. You take my daughter captive; I hold you prisoner."

"You'll be in luck if you get away from here with a whole skin," broke out Phil. "You came here to please yourself, but you'll stay to please us."

"So?" Buck smiled urbanely. He was staying because he wanted to, though they never guessed it.

"Unbuckle his gun belt, Tom," ordered the old man.

"Save you the trouble." Weaver unbuckled the belt and tossed it, revolver and all, to Yeager.

"Now, Mr. Weaver, we'll adjourn to the house."

"Anything to oblige."

"What about Mr. Keller?" Phyllis asked, in a low voice, of her father.

The old man's keen, hard eyes surveyed the stranger. "Who is he? What do you know about him?"

As shortly as she could, she told what she knew of Keller, and how he had rescued her from captivity.

Her father strode forward and shook hands with the young man.

"Make yourself at home, seh. We'll be glad to have you stay with us as long as you can. What you have done for my daughter puts us everlastingly in your debt."

"Not worth mentioning. And, to be fair, I think Weaver was going to bring her home, anyhow."

"The way the story reached me, he didn't mention it until you had the drop on him," answered Sanderson dryly.

"That's right," nodded the cattleman ironically, from the porch. "You're the curly-haired hero, Keller, and I'm the red-headed villain of this play. You want to beware of the miscreant, Miss Sanderson, or he'll sure do you a meanness."

Tom Dixon eyed him frostily. "I expect you'll not do her any meanness, Buck Weaver. From now on, you'll go one way and she'll go another. You'll be strangers."

"You don't say!" Buck answered, looking him over derisively, as he passed into the house. "You're crowing loud for your size. And don't you bet heavy on that proposition, my friend."

CHAPTER XI

TOM DIXON

With whoops and a waving of caps boys burst out of one door, while girls came out of the opposite one more demurely, but with the piping of gay soprano voices. For school was out, and young America free of restraint for eighteen hours at least. Resilient youth, like a coiled spring that has been loosed, was off with a bound. Horses were saddled or put to harness. The teacher came to the door, hand in hand with six-year-olds, who clung to her with fond good-bys before they climbed into the waiting buggies. The last straggler disappeared behind the dip in the road.

The girl teacher turned from waving her fare-wells--to meet the eyes of a young man fastened upon her. Light-blue eyes they were, set in a good-looking, boyish face, that had somehow an effect of petulancy. It was not a strong face, yet it was no weaker than nine out of ten that one meets daily.

"Got rid of your kiddies, Phyl?" the young man asked, with an air of cheerful confidence that seemed to be assumed to cover a doubt.

Her eyes narrowed slightly. "They have just gone--all but little Jimmie Tryon. He rides home with me."

"Hang it! We never seem to be alone any more since you came back," complained the man.

"Why should we?" asked the young woman, her gaze apparently as frank and direct as that of a boy.

But he understood it for a challenge. "You didn't use to talk that way. You used to be glad enough to see me alone," he flung out.

"Did I? One outgrows childish follies, I suppose," she answered quietly.

"What's the matter with you?" he cried angrily. "It's been this way ever since----"

He broke off.

A faint, scornful smile touched her lips. "Ever since when, Tom?"

"You know when well enough. Ever since I shot Buck Weaver."

"And left me to pay forfeit," she suggested quickly, and as quickly broke off. "Hadn't we better talk of something else? I've tried to avoid this. Must we thrash it out?"

"You can't throw me over like that, after what's been between us. I reckon you pretend to have forgotten that I used to keep company with you."

A flush of annoyance glowed through the tan of her cheeks, but her eyes refused to yield to his. "Nonsense! Don't talk foolishness, Tom. We were just children."

"Do you mean that everything's all off between us?"

"We made a mistake. Let us be good friends and forget it, Tom," she pleaded.

"What's the use of talking that way, Phyl?" He swung from the saddle, and came toward her eagerly. "I love you--always have since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. We're going to be married one of these days."

She held up a hand to keep him back. "No--we're not. I know now that you're not the right man for me, and I'm not the right girl for you."

"I'm the best judge of that," he retorted.

She shook her head with certainty. It seemed a lifetime since this boy had kissed her at the dance and she had run, tingling, from his embrace. She felt now old enough in experience to be his mother.

"No, Tom--let us both forget it. Go back to your other girls, and let me be just a friend."

"I haven't any other girls," he answered sullenly. "And I won't be put off like that. You've got to tell me what has come between us. I've got a right to know, and I'm going to know."

"Yes, you have a right--but don't press it. Just let it go at this: I didn't know my own mind then, and I do now."

"It's something about the shooting of Buck Weaver," he growled uneasily.

She was silent.

"Well?" he demanded. "Out with it!"

"I couldn't marry a man I don't respect from the bottom of my heart," she told him gently.

"That's a dig at me, I reckon. Why don't you respect me? Is it because I shot Weaver?"

"You shot him from ambush."

"I didn't!" he protested angrily. "You know that ain't so, Phyl. I saw him riding down there, as big as coffee, and I let him have it. I wasn't lying in wait for him at all. It just came over me all of a heap to shoot, and I shot before----"

"I understand that. But you shouldn't have shot without giving warning, even if it was right to shoot at all--which, of course, it wasn't."

"Well, say I did wrong. Can't you forgive a fellow for making a mistake?"

"It isn't a question of forgiveness, Tom. Somehow it goes deeper than that. I can't tell you just what I mean."

"Haven't I told you I'm sorry?" he demanded, with boyish impatience.

"Being sorry isn't enough. If you can't see it then I can't explain."

"You're sore at me because I left you," he muttered, and for very shame his eyes could not meet hers.

"No--I'm not sore at you, as you call it. I haven't the least resentment. But there's no use in trying to hide the truth. Since you ask for it, you shall have it. I don't want to be unkind, but I couldn't possibly marry you after that."

The young man looked sulkily across the valley, his lips trembling with vexation and the shame of knowing that this girl had been a witness of that scene when he had fled like a scared rabbit and left her to bear the brunt of what he had done.

"You told me to go, and now you blame me for doing what you said," he complained bitterly.

She realized the weakness of his defense--that he had saved himself at the expense of the girl he claimed to love, simply because she had offered herself as a sacrifice in his place. She thought of another man, who, at the risk of his life, had held back the half dozen pursuers just to give a better chance to a girl he had not known a week. She thought of the cattleman who had ridden gayly into this valley of enemies, because he loved her, and was willing to face any punishment for the wrong he had done her. Her brother, too, pointed the same moral. He had defied the enemy, though he had been in his power. Not one of them would have done what Tom Dixon, in his panic terror, had allowed himself to do. But they were men, all of them--men of that stark courage that clings to self-respect rather than to life. This youth had met the acid test, and had failed in the assay. She had no anger toward him--only a kindly pity, and a touch of contempt which she could not help.

"No--I don't blame you, Tom," she told him, very kindly. "But I can't marry you. I couldn't if you explained till Christmas. That is final. Now let us be friends."

She held out her hand. He looked at it through the tears of mortification that were in his eyes, dashed it aside with an oath, swung to the saddle, and galloped down the road.

Phyllis gave a wistful sigh. Tears filmed her eyes. He was her first lover, had given her apples and candy hearts when he was in the third grade and she learning her A, B, C. So she felt a heartache to see him go like this. Their friendship was shattered, too. Nor had she experience enough to know that this could not have endured, save as a form, after the wrench he had given it. Yet she knew him well enough now to be sure that it was his vanity and self-esteem that were hurt, and not his love. He would soon find consolation among the other ranch girls, upon whom he had been used to lavish his attentions at intervals when she was not handy to receive them.

"Was Tom Dixon mean to you, teacher?"

Little five-year-old Jimmie Tryon was standing before her, feet apart, fists knotted, and brow furrowed. She swooped upon her champion and snatched him up for a kiss.

"Nobody has been mean to teacher, Jimmie, you dear little kiddikins," she cried. "It's all right, honey. Tom thinks it isn't, but before long he'll know it is."

"Who'll tell him?" Jimmie wanted to know anxiously.

"Some nice girl, little curiosity box. I don't know who yet, but it will be one of two or three I could name," she laughed.

She harnessed the horse and hitched it to the trap in which Jimmie and she came to school. But before she had gathered up the reins to start, another young man strolled upon the scene.

This one was walking and carried a rifle.

At sight of him a glow began to burn through her dark cheeks. They had not been alone together before since that moment when the stress of their emotion had swept them to a meeting of warm lips and warm bodies that had startled her by the electric pulsing of her blood.

Her eyes could not hold to his. Shame dragged the lashes down.

With him it was not shame. The male in him rode triumphant because he had moved a girl to the deeps of her nature. But something in him, some saving sense of embarrassment, of reverence for the purity and innocence he sensed in her, made him shrink from pressing the victory. His mind cast about for a commonplace with which to meet her.

He held up as a trophy of his prowess two cottontails. "Who says I can't shoot?" he wanted to know boisterously.

"Where did you buy them?" she scoffed, faintly trying for sauciness.

"That's a fine reward for honest virtue, after I tramped five miles to get them for your supper," protested Keller.

She recovered her composure quickly, as women will.

"If they are for my supper, we'll have to ask him to ride home with us--won't we, Jimmie? It would never do to have them reach the ranch too late," she said, making room for Keller in the seat beside her.

It was after she had driven several hundred yards that he said, with a smile: "I met a young man on horseback as I was coming up. He went by me like a streak of light. Looked like he found this a right mournful world. You had ought to scatter sunshine and not gloom, Miss Phyllis."

"Am I scattering gloom?" she asked demurely.

"Not right now," he laughed. "But looks like you have been."

She flicked a fly from the flank of her horse before she answered: "Some people are so noticing."

"It was hanging right heavy on him. Had the look of a man who had lost his last friend," the young man observed meditatively.

"Dear me! How pathetic!"

"Yes--he sure looked like he'd rejoice to plug another cattleman. I 'most arranged to send for Buck Weaver again," said Keller calmly.

Phyllis turned on him eyes brilliant with amazement. "What's that you say?"

"I said he looked some like he'd admire to go gunning again."

"Yes, but you said too----"

"Sho! I've been using my eyes and ears. I never did find that story of yours easy to swallow. When I discovered from your brother that you was riding with Tom Dixon the day Buck was shot, and when I found out from 'Rastus that the gun that did the shooting was Dixon's, I surely smelt a mouse. Come to mill the thing out, I knew you led Buck's boys off on a blind trail, while the real coyote hunted cover."

"He isn't a coyote," she objected.

Larrabie thought of the youth with a faint smile of scorn. He knew how to respect an out-and-out villain; but there was no bottom to a man who would shoot from cover without warning, and then leave a girl to bear the blame of his wrongdoing. "No--I reckon coyote is too big a name for him," he admitted.

"Buck Weaver ruined his father and drove him from his homestead. It was natural he should feel a grudge."

"That's all right, too. We're talking about the way he settled it. How come you to let him do it?"

"I was riding about twenty yards behind him. Suddenly I saw his gun go up, and stopped. I thought it might be an antelope. As soon as he had fired, he turned and told me he had shot Weaver. The poor boy was crazy with fear, now that he had done it. I took his gun and made him hide in the big rocks, while I cut across toward the cañon. The men saw me, and gave chase."

"They fired at you. Thank God, none of them hit you," said Keller, with emphasis.

Her swift gaze appreciated the deep feeling that welled from him. "Of course they did not know I was a woman. All they could see was that somebody was riding through the chaparral."

"Jimmie, what do you think of a girl game enough to take so big a chance to save a friend? Deserves a Carnegie medal, don't you reckon?" Keller put the question to the third passenger, using him humorously as a vent to his feelings.

Phyllis did not look at him, nor he at her. "And what do you think of a man game enough to take the same chance to save a girl who was not even a friend?" the girl asked of little Jimmie, as lightly as she could.

"Wasn't she? Well, if my friends will save my life every time I need them to, like this enemy did, I'll be satisfied with them a-plenty."

"He stood by her, too," she answered, trying to keep the matter impersonal.

"Perhaps he wanted to make her his friend," Larrabie suggested.

"There is no perhaps about his success," she said quietly, her gaze just beyond the ears of her horse. The young man dared now to look at her--a child of the sun despite her duskiness. Eagerly he awaited the deep, lustrous eyes that would presently sweep round upon him, big and dark and sparkling. When she turned her head, they were full of that new womanly dignity that yet did not obscure the shy innocence.

"Look!" Jimmie Tryon pointed suddenly to the figure of a man disappearing from the road into the mesquite two hundred yards in front of them.

"That's odd. I reckon you'd better wait here, and let me investigate a few," suggested Keller.

"Be careful," she said anxiously.

"It's all right. Don't worry," the young man assured her.

He got down from the trap and dived into the underbrush, rifle in hand. The two in the buggy waited a long time. No sound came to them from the cactus-covered waste to indicate what was happening. When Phyllis' watch told her that he had been gone ten minutes, a cheerful hail came from the road in front.

"All right. Come on."

But it was far from all right. Keller had with him an old Mexican herder, called Manuel Quito--a man in the employ of her father. A bandanna was tied round his shoulder, and it was soaked with bloodstains. He told his story with many shrugs and much excited gesticulation. He and Jesus Menendez had been herding on Lone Pine when riders of the Twin Star outfit had descended upon them and attacked the sheep. He and Menendez had elected to fight, and Jesus had been shot down; he himself had barely escaped with his life--and that not without a wound. The cow-punchers had followed him, and continued to fire at him, but he had succeeded in escaping. Yes--he felt sure that Menendez was dead. Even if he had not been dead at first, they would have killed him.

Keller consulted Miss Sanderson silently. He knew that she was thinking the thought that was in his own mind. It would never do to let this story reach her father and her brother, while Buck Weaver was still in their power. Inflamed as they already were against him, they would surely do in hot blood that which they would repent later. Somehow, Keller and she must hold back the news until they could contrive a way to free the cattleman.

"Best leave Manuel at the Tryon place till morning. They will look out for him as well as you can. That will give us twelve hours to work before they hear what has happened."

"But what about poor Jesus, lying out there alone?"

"We'll get Bob Tryon to drive out. But you needn't worry about Jesus. If they found him still living, the Twin Star boys will attend to him just as kindly as we could. Cowboys have tender hearts, even though they go off at half cock."

They did as Keller had suggested, and left the old Mexican under the care of Mrs. Tryon, having pledged the family to a reluctant silence until morning. Manuel's wound was not a bad one, and there seemed to be no reason why he should not do well.

It was difficult to decide upon a plan for the release of Weaver. He was confined in an old log cabin and watched continually by some one of the riders; but a tentative plan was accepted, subject to revision if a better chance of escape should occur. The success of this depended upon the possibility of Keller drawing off the guard by a diversion, while Phyllis slipped in and freed the prisoner.

The outlook was not roseate, but nothing better occurred to them. One thing was sure--if Buck Weaver was not out of the hands of his enemies before the news of this last outrage of his cowboys reached them, his chance of life was not worth even an odds-on bet. For the hot blood of the South raced through the veins of the sheepmen. They would strike first and think about it afterward. And without doubt that first swift blow would be a deadly one.

CHAPTER XII

THE ESCAPE

For the sixth time since the three-quarters, Phyllis looked at her watch by the light of a full moon, which shone through the window of her bedroom. The hands indicated five minutes to one.

In her stocking feet she stole out of the room, downstairs, and along the porch to the heavy shadows cast by the cucumber vines that screened one end of it. Here she waited, heart in mouth and pulse beating like a trip hammer.

Presently came the mournful hoot of an owl from the live oaks over in the pasture. Softly her clear, melodious voice flung back the signal. Again the minutes drummed eternally in silence.

But when at last this was shattered, it was with a crash to wake the dead. The girl marvelled that one man could fire so rapidly, and so often. The night seemed to crackle with rifle and revolver shots. To judge from the sound, there might be a company engaged.

The expected happened. The door of the cabin, in which lay the prisoner and Tom Dixon, was flung open. A dark form filled the doorway, and the moonlight gleamed on the shining barrel of a rifle. For an instant Tom stood so, trying to locate the source of the firing. He disappeared into the cabin, then reappeared. The door was closed and locked. Taking what cover he could find, Tom slipped over the fence, and into the mesquite on the other side of the road.

Phyllis darted forward like a flame. Her trembling fingers fitted a key to the lock of the cabin. Opening the door, she slipped in and closed it behind her.

"Where are you?" her young voice breathed.

"Over here by the fireplace. What is it all about, Miss Sanderson?"

She groped her way to him. "Never mind now. We've got to hurry. Are you tied?"

"Yes--hands and feet."

A beam of light through the window showed the flash of a knife. With a few hacks of the blade, she had freed him. He was about to rise when the door opened and a head was thrust in.

"What's the row, Tom?"

Weaver growled an answer. "He isn't here. Pulled out when the firing began. I wish you'd tell me what it is all about."

But the head was already withdrawn, and its owner scudding toward the fray. Phyllis rose from the foot of the cot, where she had crouched.

"Come!" she told the cattleman imperiously, and led the way from the cabin in a hurried flight for the porch shadows.

They had scarcely reached these when another half-clad figure emerged from the house, rifle in hand, and plunged across the road into the cacti. He, too, headed for the scene of the now intermittent shooting.

"Now!" cried Phyllis, and gave her hand to the man huddled beside her.

She led him into the dark house, up the stairs, and into her room. He would have prolonged the sweet intimacy of that minute had it been in his power; but, once inside the chamber, she withdrew her fingers.

"Stay here till I come back," she ordered. "I must show myself, so as not to arouse suspicion."

"But tell me--what does it mean?" demanded Buck.

"It means we're trying to save your life. Whatever happens, don't leave this room or let yourself be seen at the window. If you do, we're lost."

With that she was gone, flying down the stairs to show herself as an apparition of terror to learn what was wrong.

She heard the returning warriors as they reached the door of the log cabin. They had thrashed through the live-oak grove and found nothing, and were now hurrying back to the prison house, full of suspicions.

"He's gone!" she heard Phil cry from within. Came then the sound of excited voices, and presently the shaft of light from a kerosene lamp. Feet trampled in the cabin. Phyllis heard the cot being kicked over. This moment she chose for her entrance.

"What in the world is the matter?" she asked innocently, from the doorway.

"He's got away--we've been tricked!" Tom told her furiously.

"But--how?"

"Never mind, Phyl. Go back to your room. There may be trouble yet. By God, there will be if we find him, or his friends!" her father swore.

Another figure blocked the doorway. This time it was Keller, hatless and coatless, as if he had come quickly from a hurried waking. He, too, fired blandly the inevitable: "What's the trouble?"

"Nothing--except that we are a bunch of first-class locoed fools," snapped Tom. "We've lost our prisoner--that's what's the matter."

Larrabie came in and looked inquiringly from one to another. "I thought you kept him guarded."

"We did, but they drew Tom off on a false trail," explained Phil.

"I notice they worked the rest of us, too," retorted his father tartly.

"I heard the shooting," Keller said innocently. His eyes drifted to a meeting with those of Phyllis. His telegraphed a question, and hers answered that the prisoner was safe so far.

"A dead man could have heard it," suggested Phil, not without sarcasm. "Sounded like a battle--and when we got there not a soul could be found. Beats me how they got away so slick."

Annoyance, disappointment, disgust were in the air. Keller remained to be properly sympathetic, while Phyllis slipped back to her room, as she had been told to do.

She found Weaver sitting by the window looking out. He turned his head quickly when she entered.

"Now, if you'll kindly tell me what's doing, I'll not die of curiosity," he began.

"It's all your wicked men," she told him bluntly. "They have killed one of our herders and wounded another. Mr. Keller and I met the wounded man as he was coming back to the ranch. We stopped him and took him to a neighbor's. If they had known, my people would have revenged themselves on you. They are hot-blooded men, quick to strike. I was afraid--we were both afraid of what they would do. So we planned your escape. Mr. Keller slipped into the chaparral, and feigned an attack upon the ranch, to draw the boys off. I had got the other key to the cabin from the nail above father's bed. When Tom left, I came to you. That is all."

"But what am I to do here?"

"They will scour the valley and watch the pass. If we had let you go, the chances are they would have caught you again."

"And if they had caught me, you think they would have killed me?"

"Doesn't the Bible say that he who takes the sword shall perish by the sword? Are you a god, that you should kill when you please and expect to escape the law that has been written?"

"You say I deserve death, yet you save my life."

"I don't want blood on the hands of my people."

"Personally, then, I don't count in the matter," said Weaver, with his old sneer.

She had saved him, but her anger was hot against the slayers of poor Jesus Menendez. "Why should you count? I am no judge of how great a punishment you deserve; but my father and my brother shall not inflict it, if I can help. They must not carry the curse of Cain on them."

"But Cain killed a brother," he jeered. "I am not a brother, but a wolfish Amalekite. Come--the harvest is ripe. Send me forth to the reapers."

He arose as if to go; but she was at the door before him, arms extended to block the way.

"No, no, no! Are you mad? I tell you they will kill you to-morrow, when the news comes."

"The judgment of the Lord upon the wicked," he answered, with his derisive smile.

"You do nothing but mock--at your own death, at that of others. But you shan't go. I've saved you. Your life belongs to me," she cried, a little wildly.

"If you put it that way----"

"You know what I mean," she broke in fiercely. "Don't dare to pretend to misunderstand me. I've saved you from my people. You shan't go back to them out of spite or dare-deviltry."

"Just as you say."

"I should think you'd be ashamed to be so trivial: You seem to think all our lives are planned for your amusement."

"I wish yours were planned----" He pulled himself up short. "You're right, Miss Sanderson, I'm acting like a schoolboy. I'll put myself in your hands. Whatever you want me to do, I'll do."

"I want you to stay here until they come back from searching for you. You may have to spend all day in this room. Nobody will come here, and you will be quite safe. When night comes again, we'll arrange a chance for you to get away."

"But I'll be driving you out," he protested.

"I'm going to sleep with Anna--the daughter of our housekeeper, Mrs. Allan. She'll suppose me nervous on account of the shooting. Lock the door. I'll give three taps when I want to come in. If anybody else knocks, don't answer. You may sleep without fear."

"Just a moment." He flung up a hand to detain her, then poured out in a low voice part of the feeling pent up in him. "Don't think I haven't the decency to appreciate this. I don't care why you do it. The point is that you have saved my life. I can't begin to tell you what I think of this. You'll surely have to take my thanks for granted till I get a chance to prove them."

She nodded, her eyes grown suddenly shy. "That's all right, then." And with that she left him to himself.

Buck Weaver could not sleep for the thoughts that crowded upon him; but they were not of his danger, great as that still was. The joy of her, and of the thing she had done, flooded him. He might pretend to cynicism to hide his deep pleasure in it; none the less, he was moved profoundly.

The night wore itself away, but before morning had broken he saw her again. She came with her three light taps, and he opened the door to find her in the passage with a tray of food.

"I didn't dare cook you any coffee. There's nothing hot--just what happened to be in the pantry. Mrs. Allan won't miss it, because the boys are always foraging at all hours. She'll think one of them got hungry. Of course, I couldn't wait till morning," she explained, as she put the tray on the table.

Weaver experienced anew the stress of humility and emotion. He caught up her little hand and crushed it with a passion of tenderness in his great fist. She looked at him in the old, startled, shy way; then snatched her hand from him, and, with a wildly beating heart, scudded along the passage and down the back stairs.

He sank into a chair, with a groan. What use? This creature, fine as silk, the heiress of all that youth had to offer in daintiness and charm, was not--could not be for such as he. He had gone too far on the road to hell, ever to find such a heaven open to him.

How long he sat so, he did not know. Probably, not long, but gray morning was sweeping back the curtain of darkness when he came from his absorption with a start. Somebody had tapped thrice for admittance.

He arose and unlocked the door. A young woman stood outside the threshold, peering into the semi-darkness toward him.

"Is it you, Phyl?" she asked.

The cattleman said nothing. On the spur of the moment, he could not think of the fitting speech. The eyes of his visitor, becoming accustomed to the dim light, saw before her the outline of a man. She let out a startled little scream that ended in a laugh of apology.

"It's Phil, isn't it?"

There was no way out of it. "No--it's not Phil. Come in, ma'am, and I'll explain," said Buck Weaver.

Instead, she turned and ran headlong, along the passage, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. Here she came face to face with her young mistress.

"What's the matter? You look as if you had seen a ghost."

"I have! At least, I've seen a man in your room."

"In my room? What were you doing there?" demanded Phyllis sharply.

"Looking for you. I wakened and found you gone. I thought--oh, I don't know what I thought."

Phyllis knew perfectly how it had come about. Anna Allan was a very curiosity box and a born gossip. She had to have her little pug nose in everybody's business.

"So you think you saw somebody in my room?" her mistress said quietly.

"I don't think. I saw him."

"Saw whom? Phil, or was it Father?" suggested the other, with a hint of gentle scorn.

"No--he was a stranger. I think it was Mr. Weaver, but I'm not sure."

"Nonsense, Anna! Don't be foolish. What would he be doing there? I'll go and see myself. You stay here."

She went, and returned presently. "It must have been one of the boys. I wouldn't say anything about it, Anna. No use stirring up bogeys now, when everybody is excited over the escape of that man."

"All right, ma'am. But I saw somebody, just the same," the girl maintained obstinately.

"No doubt it was Phil. He was up to see me."

Anna said no more then; but she took occasion later to find out from Phil, without letting him know that she was pumping him, that he had been searching the hills until after six o'clock. One by one she eliminated every man in the house as a possibility. In the end, she could not doubt her eyes and her ears. Her young mistress had lied to her to save the man in her room.

CHAPTER XIII

A MISTAKE

At breakfast, a ranchman brought in the news of the attack upon the sheep camp, and by means of it set fire to a powder magazine. The Sandersons went ramping mad for the moment. They saw red; and if they could have laid hands on their enemy, they would undoubtedly have made an end of him.

Phyllis, seeing the fury of their passion, trembled for the safety of the man upstairs. He might be discovered at any moment. Yet she must go to school as if nothing were the matter, and leave him to whatever fate might have in store.

When the time came for her to go, she could hardly bring herself to leave.

She was in her room, putting in the few minutes she usually spent there, rearranging her hair and giving the last few touches to her toilet after the breakfast.

"I hate to go," she confessed to Weaver. "Promise me you'll not make a sound or open the door to anybody while I'm away."

"I promise," he told her.

She was very greatly troubled, and could not help showing it. Her face was wan and drawn, all the youthful life stricken out of it.

"It will be all right," he reassured her. "I'll sit here and read, without making a sound. Nothing will happen. You'll see."

"Oh, I hope not--I hope not!" she cried in a whisper. "You will be careful, won't you?"

"I sure will. A hen with one chick won't be a circumstance to me."

Larrabie Keller had hitched her horse and brought it round to the front door. She leaned toward him after she had gathered the reins.

"You'll not go far away, will you? And if anything happens----"

"But it won't. Why should it?"

"Anna knows. She blundered upon him."

"Will she keep it quiet?"

"I think so, but she's a born gossip. Don't leave her alone with the boys."

"All right," he nodded.

"I feel as if I ought to stay at home," the young teacher said piteously, hoping that he would encourage her to do so.

He shook his head. "No--you've got to go, to divert suspicion. It will be all right here. I'll keep both eyes open. Don't forget that I'm going to be on the job all day."

"You're so good!"

"After I've been around you a while. It's catching." He tucked in the dust robe, without looking at her.

But she looked at him, as she started, with that swift, shy glance of hers, and felt the pink tint her cheeks beneath the tan. He was much in her thoughts, this slender brown man with the look of quiet competence and strength. Ever since that night in the kitchen, he had impressed himself upon her imagination. She had fallen into the way of comparing him with Tom Dixon, with her own brother, with Buck Weaver--and never to his disadvantage.

He talked with a drawl. He walked and rode with an air of languid ease. But the man himself, behind the indolence that sat upon him so gracefully, was like a coiled spring. Sometimes she could see this force in his eyes, when for the moment some thought eclipsed the gay good humor of them. Winsome he was. He had already won her father, even as he had won her. But the touch of affection in his manner never suggested weakness.

From the porch Tom Dixon watched her departure sullenly. Since he could not have her, he let himself grow jealous of the man who perhaps could. And because he was what he was--a small man, full of vanity and conceit--he must needs make parade of himself with another girl in the role of conquering squire. Larrabie smiled as the young fellow went off for a walk in obviously confidential talk with Anna Allan, but he learned soon that it was no smiling matter.

Half an hour later, the girl came flying back along the trail the two had taken. Catching sight of Keller, she ran across to him, plainly quivering with excitement and fluttering with fears.

"Oh, Mr. Keller--I've done it now! I didn't think----I thought--"

"Take it easy," soothed the young man, with one of his winning smiles. "Now, what is it you have done?" Already his eyes had picked out Dixon returning, not quite so impetuously, along the trail.

"I told him about the man in Phyllis' room."

Larrabie's eyes narrowed and grew steely. "Yes?"

"I told him--I don't know why, but I never could keep a secret. I made him promise not to tell. But he is going to tell the boys. There he comes now. And I told Phyllis I wouldn't tell!" Anna began to cry, miserably aware that she had made a mess of things.

"I just begged him not to tell--and he had promised. But he says it's his duty, and he's going to do it. Oh, Mr. Keller--if Mr. Weaver is there they will hurt him, and I'll be to blame."

"Yes, you will be," he told her bluntly. "But we may save him yet--if you can go about your business and keep your mouth shut."

"Oh, I will--I will," she promised eagerly. "I'll not say a word--not to anybody."

"See that you don't. Now, run along home. I'm going to have a quiet little talk with that young man. Maybe I can persuade him to change his mind," he said grimly.

"Please--if you could. I don't want to start any trouble."

Larrabie grinned, without taking his eyes from the man coming down the trail. It was usually some good-natured idiot, with a predisposition to gabbling, that made most of the trouble in the world.

"Well, you be a good girl and padlock your tongue. If you do, I'll fix it up with Tom," he promised.

He sauntered forward toward the path. Dixon, full of his news, was hurrying to the ranch. He was eager to tell it to the Sandersons, because he wanted to reinstate himself in their good graces. For, though neither of them knew he had fired the shot that wounded Weaver, he had observed a distinct coolness toward him for his desertion of Phyllis in her time of need. It had been all very well for him to explain that he had thought it best to hurry home to get help. The fact remained that he had run away and left her alone.

Now he was for pushing past Keller with a curt nod, but the latter stopped him with a lift of the hand.

"What's your sweat?"

"Want to see me, do you?"

Keller nodded easily.

"All right. Unload your mind. I can't give you but a minute."

"Press of business on to-day?"

"It's my business."

"I'm going to make it mine."

"What do you mean?" came the quick, suspicious retort.

"Let's walk back up the trail and talk it over."

"No."

"Yes."

Their eyes clashed, and those of the stronger man won.

"We can talk it over here," Dixon said sullenly.

"We can, but we won't."

"I don't know as I want to go back up the trail."

"Come." Larrabie let a hand fall on the shoulder of the other man--a brown, strong hand that showed no more uncertainty than the steady eyes.

Dixon cursed peevishly, but after a moment he turned to go back. He did not know why he went, except that there was something compelling about this man. Besides, he told himself, his news would keep for half an hour without spoiling. They walked nearly a quarter of a mile before he stopped.

"Now get busy, Mr. Keller. I've got no time to monkey," he stormed, attempting to regain what he had lost by his concession.

"Sho! You've got all day. This rush notion is the great failing of the American people. We hadn't ought to go through life on the lope--no, sir! We need to take the rest cure for that habit," Larrabie mused aloud, seating himself on a flat boulder between Tom and the ranch.

Dixon let out an oath. "Did you bring me here to tell me that durn foolishness?"

"Not only to tell you. I figured we would try out the rest cure, you and me. We'll get close to nature out here in the sunshine, and not do a thing but rest till the cows come home," Keller explained easily. His voice was indolent, his manner amiable; but there was a wariness in his eyes that showed him prepared for any move.

So it happened that when Dixon made the expected dash into the chaparral Keller nailed him in a dozen strides.

"Let me alone! Let me go!" cried Tom furiously. "You've got no business to keep me here."

"I'm doing it for pleasure, say."

The other tried to break away, but Larrabie had caught his arm and twisted it in such a way that he could not move without great pain. Impotently he writhed and cursed. Meanwhile his captor relieved him of his revolver, and, with a sudden turn, dropped him to the ground and stepped back.

"What's eating you, Keller? Have you gone plumb crazy? Gimme back that gun and let me go," the young fellow screamed.

"You don't need the gun right now. Maybe, if you had it, you might take a notion to plug me the way you did Buck Weaver."

"What--what's that?" Then, in angry suspicion: "I suppose Phyllis told you that lie."

He had not finished speaking before he regretted it. The look in the face of the other told him that he had gone too far and would have to pay for it.

"Stand up, Tom Dixon! You've got to take a thrashing for that. There's been one coming to you ever since you ran away and left a girl to stand the gaff for you. Now it's due."

"I don't want to fight," Tom whined. "I reckon I oughtn't to have said that, but you drove me to it. I'll apologize----"

"You'll apologize after your thrashing, not before. Stand up and take it."

Dixon got to his feet very reluctantly. He was a larger man than his opponent by twenty pounds--a husky, well-built fellow; but he was entirely without the fighting edge. He knew himself already a beaten man, and he cowered in spirit before his lithe antagonist, even while he took off his coat and squared himself for the attack. For he knew, as did anybody who looked at him carefully, that Keller was a game man from the marrow out.

Men who knew him said of Larrabie Keller that he could whip his weight in wild cats. Get him started, and he was a small cyclone in action. But now he went at his man deliberately, with hard, straight, punishing blows.

Dixon fought back wildly, desperately, but could not land. He could see nothing but that face with the chilled-steel eyes, but when he lashed out it was never there. Again and again, through the openings he left, came a right or a left like a pile driver, with the weight of one hundred and sixty pounds of muscle and bone back of it. He tried to clinch, and was shaken off by body blows. At last he went down from an uppercut, and stayed down, breathing heavily, a badly thrashed man.

"For God's sake, let me alone! I've had enough," he groaned.

"Sure of that?"

"You've pretty near killed me."

Larrabie laughed grimly. "You didn't get half enough. I'll listen to that apology now, my friend."

With many sighs, the prostrate man came through with it haltingly. "I didn't mean--I hadn't ought to have said----"

Keller interrupted the tearful voice. "That'll be enough. You will know better, next time, how to speak respectfully of a lady. While we're on the subject, I don't mind telling you that nobody told me. I'm not a fool, and I put two and two together. That's all. I'm not her brother. It wasn't my business to punish you because you played the coyote. But when you said she lied to me, that's another matter."

For very shame, trampled in the dust as he had been, Tom could not leave the subject alone. Besides, he had to make sure that the story would be kept secret.

"The way of it was like this: After I shot Buck Weaver, we saw they would kill me if I was caught; so we figured I had better hunt cover. 'Course I knew they wouldn't hurt a girl any," he got out sullenly.

"You don't have to explain it to me," answered the other coldly.

"You ain't expecting to tell the boys about me shooting Buck, are you?" Dixon asked presently, hating himself for it. But he was afraid of Phil and his father. They had told him plainly what they thought of him for leaving the girl in the lurch. If they should discover that he had done the shooting and left her to stand the blame for it, they would do more than talk.

"I certainly ought to tell them. Likely they may want to see you about it, and hear the particulars."

"There ain't any need of them knowing. If Phyl had wanted them to know, she could have told them," said Tom sulkily. He had got carefully to his feet, and was nursing his face with a handkerchief.

"We'll go and break our news together," suggested the other cheerfully. "You tell them you think Weaver is in her room, and I'll tell them my little spiel."

"There's no need telling them about me shooting Weaver, far as I can see. I'd rather they didn't know."

"For that matter, there's no need telling them your notions about where Buck is right now."

Tom said nothing, but his dogged look told Larrabie that he was not persuaded.

"I tell you what we'll do," said Keller, then: "We'll unload on them both stories, or we won't tell them either. Which shall it be?"

Dixon understood that an ultimatum was being served on him. For, though his former foe was smiling, the smile was a frosty one.

"Just as you say. I reckon it's your call," he acquiesced sourly.

"No--I'm going to leave it to you," grinned Larrabie.

The man he had thrashed looked as if he would like to kill him. "We'll close-herd both stories, then."

"Good enough! Don't let me keep you any longer, if you're in a hurry. Now we've had our little talk, I'm satisfied."

But Dixon was not satisfied. He was stiff and sore physically, but mentally he was worse. He had played a poor part, and must still do so. If he went down to the ranch with his face in that condition, he could not hope to escape observation. His vanity cried aloud against submitting to the comment to which he would be subjected. The whole story of the thrashing would be bound to come out.

"I can't go down looking like this," he growled.

"Do you have to go down?"

"Have to get my horse, don't I?"

"I'll bring it to you."

"And say nothing about--what has happened?"

"I don't care to talk of it any more than you do. I'll be a clam."

"All right--I'll wait here." Tom sat down on a boulder and chewed tobacco, his head sunk in his clenched palms.

Keller walked down the trail to the ranch. He was glad to go in place of Dixon; for he felt that the young man was unstable and could not be depended upon not to fall into a rage, and, in a passionate impulse, tell all he knew. He saddled the horse, explaining casually to the wrangler that he had lost a bet with Tom, by the terms of which he had to come down and saddle the latter's mount.

He swung to the back of the pony and cantered up the trail. But before he had gone a hundred yards, he was off again, examining the hoofmarks the animal left in the sand. The left hind mark differed from the others in that the detail was blurred and showed nothing but a single flat stamp.

This seemed to interest Keller greatly. He picked up the corresponding foot of the cow pony, and found the cause of the irregularity to be a deformity or swelling in the ball of the foot, which apparently was now its normal condition. The young man whistled softly to himself, swung again to the saddle, and continued on his way.

The owner of the horse had his back turned and did not hear him coming as he padded up the soft trail. The man was testing in his hand something that clicked.

Larrabie swung quietly to the ground, and waited. His eyes were like tempered steel.

"Here's your horse," he said. Before the other man moved, he drawled: "I reckon I'd better tell you I'm armed, too. Don't be hasty."

Dixon turned his swollen face to him in a childish fury. He had picked up, and was holding in his hand, the revolver Larrabie had taken from him and later thrown down. "Damn you, what do you mean? It's my own gun, ain't it? Mean to say I'm a murderer?"

"I happen to know you have impulses that way. I thought I'd check this one, to save you trouble."

He was standing carelessly with his right hand resting on the mane of the pony; he had not even taken the precaution of lowering it to his side, where the weapon might be supposed to lie.

For an instant Tom thought of taking a chance. The odds would be with him, since he had the revolver ready to his fingers. But before that indomitable ease his courage ebbed. He had not the stark fighting nerve to pit himself against such a man as this.

"I don't know as I said anything about shooting. Looks like you're trying to fasten another row on me," the craven said bitterly.

"I'm content if you are; and as far as I'm concerned, this thing is between us two. It won't go any further."

Keller stood aside and watched Dixon mount. The hillman took his spleen out on the horse, finding that the safest vent for his anger. He jerked its head angrily, cursed it, and drove in the spurs cruelly. With a leap, the cow pony was off. In fifty strides it reached the top of the hill and disappeared.

Keller laughed grimly, and spoke aloud to himself, after the manner of one who lives much alone.

"There's a nice young man--yellow clear through. Queer thing she could ever have fancied him. But I don't know, either. He's a right good looker, and has lots of cheek; that goes a long way with girls. Likely he was mighty careful before her. And he'd not been brought up against the acid test, then."

His roving eyes took in with disgust the stains of tobacco juice plastered all over the clean surface of the rocks.

"I'll bet a doughnut she never knew he chewed. Didn't know it myself till now. Well, a man lives and learns. Buck Weaver told me he came on a dead cow of his just after the rustlers had left. Fire still smoldering. Tobacco stains still wet on the rocks. And one of the horses had a hind hoof that left a blurred trail. Surely looks like Mr. Tom Dixon is headed for the pen mighty fast."

He turned and strolled back to the house, smiling to himself.

CHAPTER XIV

A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION

Breakfast finished, Weaver cast about for some diversion to help him pass the time.

This room, alone of those he had seen in the house, seemed to reflect something of the teacher's dainty personality. There were some framed prints on the walls--cheap, but, on the whole, well selected. The rugs were in subdued brown tints that matched well the pretty wall paper. To the cattleman, it was pathetic that the girl had done so much with such frugal means to her hand. For plainly her meagre efforts were circumscribed by the purse limitation.

Ranging over the few books in the stand, he selected a volume of verse by Markham, and, turning the leaves aimlessly, chanced on "A Satyr Song."

I know by the stir of the branches, The way she went; And at times I can see where a stem Of the grass is bent. She's the secret and light of my life, She allures to elude; But I follow the spell of her beauty, Whatever the mood.

"Knows what he's talking about--some poet, that fellow," Buck cried aloud to himself, for it seemed to him that the Californian had put into words his own feeling. He read on avidly, from one poem to another, lost in his discovery.

It was perhaps an hour later that he came back to a realization of a gnawing desire. He wanted a pipe, and the need was an insistent one. It was of no use to argue with himself. He surely had to have one smoke. Longingly he fingered his pipe, filled it casually with the loose tobacco in his coat pocket, and balanced the pros and cons in his mind. From behind the window curtain he examined the plaza.

"Not a soul in sight. Don't believe there's a man about the place. No risk at all, looks to me."

With that, he swept the match to a flame, and lit the pipe. He sat close to the open window, so that the smoke could drift out without his being seen.

The experiment brought no disaster. He finished his smoke undisturbed, and went back to reading.

The hours dragged slowly past. Noon came and went; mid-afternoon was upon him. His watch showed a few minutes past four when he decided on another smoke. From the corner of his pocket he raked the loose tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, and pressed it down. Presently he was again puffing in pleasant serenity.

Suddenly there came a blinding flash and a roar.

Buck started to his feet in amazement, the stem of the pipe still in his mouth, the bowl shattered into a hundred bits. His first thought was that he had been the target for a sharpshooter. There was a neat hole through the framework of the window case, showing where the bullet had plowed. But an investigation left him in the air; for the direction of the bullet hole was such that, if anybody from outside had fired it, he must have been up in a balloon.

The explanation came to him like a flash. In raking the tobacco into his pipe with his fingers, he must have pressed into the bowl a stray cartridge left some time in the pocket. This had gone off after the heat had reached the powder.

By the time he had reached this conclusion some one came running along the passage and tried the locked door. After some rattling at the knob, the footsteps retreated. Buck could hear excited voices.

"Coming back in force, I'll bet," he told himself, with a dubious grin.

The fat was surely in the fire now.

Footsteps made themselves heard again, this time in numbers. The door was tried cautiously. A voice demanded admittance sharply.

Buck opened the door and gazed at the intruders in mild surprise. Old Sanderson and Phil were there, together with Slim and a cow-puncher known as Cuffs. All of them were armed.

"Want to come in, gentlemen?" Weaver asked.

"So you're here, are you?" spoke up Phil.

"That's right. I'm here, sure enough."

"How long you been here?"

"Been hanging round the place ever since my escape. You kept so close a watch I couldn't make my getaway. Some time the other side of noon I drifted in here, figuring some of you would drive me from cover by accident during the day if I stayed out in the chaparral. This room looked handy, so I made myself right at home and locked the door. I hate to shoot up a lady's boudoir, but looks like that's what I've done."

"You durn fool! Who were you shooting at?" Phil asked contemptuously.

But his father stepped forward, and with a certain austere dignity, more menacing than threats, took the words out of the mouth of his son.

"I think I'll negotiate this, Phil."

Buck explained the accident amiably, and relieved himself of the imputation of idiocy. "Serves a man right for smoking without permission in a lady's room," he admitted humorously.

A man came up the stairway two steps at a time, panting as if he had been running. It was Keller.

That the cattleman must have been discovered, he knew even before he saw him grinning round on a circle of armed foes. Weaver nodded recognition, and Larrabie understood it to mean also thanks for what he had done for him last night.

"We'll talk this over downstairs," old Sanderson announced grimly.

They went down into the big hall with the open fireplace, and the old sheepman waved his hand toward a chair.

"Thanks. Think I'll take it standing," said Buck, an elbow on the mantel.

He understood fully his precarious situation; he knew that these men had already condemned him to death. The quiet repression they imposed on themselves told him as much. But his gaze passed calmly from one to another, without the least shrinking. All of them save Keller and Phil were unusually tall men--as tall, almost, as he; but in breadth of shoulder and depth of chest he dwarfed them. They were grim, hard men, but not one so grim and iron as he when he chose.

"Your life is forfeit, Buck Weaver," Sanderson said, without delay.

"Made up your mind, have you?"

"Your own riders made it up for us when they murdered poor Jesus Menendez."

"A bad break, that--and me a prisoner here. Some of the boys had been out on the range a week. I reckon they didn't know I was the rat in your trap."

"So much the worse for you."

"Looks like," Weaver nodded. Then he added, almost carelessly: "I expect there wouldn't be any use mentioning the law to you? It's here to punish the man that shot Menendez."

"Not a bit of use. You own the sheriff and half the juries in this county. Besides, we've got the man right here that is responsible for the killing of poor Jesus."

"Oh! If you look at it that way, of course----"

"That's the way to look at it I don't blame your riders any more than I blame the guns they fired. You did that killing."

"Even though I was locked up on your ranch, more than twenty miles away."

"That makes no difference."

"Seems to me it makes some," suggested Keller, speaking for the first time. "His riders may have acted contrary to orders. He surely did not give any specific orders in this case."

"His actions for months past have been orders enough," said Cuffs.

"You'd better investigate before you take action," Larrabie urged.

"We've done all the investigating we're going to do. This man has set himself up like a czar. I'm not going through the list of it all, but he has more than reached the limit months ago. He's passed it now. He's got to die, by gum," the old sheepman said, his eyes like frozen stars.

"We all have to do that. Just when does my time come?" Weaver asked.

"Now," cried Sanderson, with a bitter oath.

Phil swallowed hard. He had grown white beneath the tan. The thing they were about to do seemed awful to him.

"Good God! You're not going to murder him, are you?" protested Larrabie.

"He murdered poor Jesus Menendez, didn't he?"

"You mean you're going to shoot him down in cold blood?"

"What's the matter with hanging?" Slim asked brutally.

"No," spoke up Keller quickly.

The old man nodded agreement. "No--they didn't hang Menendez."

"Your sheep herder died--if he died at all, and we have no proof of it--with a gun in his hands," Larrabie said.

"That's right," admitted Phil quickly. "That's right. We got to give him a chance."

"What sort of a chance would you like to give him?" Sanderson asked of the boy.

"Let him fight for his life. Give him a gun, and me one. We'll settle this for good and all."

The eyes of the old Confederate gleamed, though he negatived the idea promptly.

"That wouldn't be a square deal, Phil. He's our prisoner, and he has killed one of our men. It wouldn't be right for one of us to meet him on even terms."

"Give me a gun, and I'll meet all of you!" cried Weaver, eyes gleaming.

"By God, you're on! That's a sporting proposition," Sanderson retorted promptly. "Lets us out, too. I don't fancy killing in cold blood, myself. Of course we'll get you, but you'll have a run for your money first, by gum."

"Maybe you'll get me, and maybe you won't. Is this little vendetta to be settled with revolvers, or rifles?"

"Make it rifles," Phil suggested quickly.

There was always a chance that, if the battle were fought at long range, the cattleman might reach the hill cañons in safety.

Keller was helpless. He lived in a man's world, where each one fought for his own head and took his own fighting chance. Weaver had proposed an adjustment of the difficulty, and his enemies had accepted his offer. Even if the Sandersons would have tolerated further interference, the cattleman would not.

Moreover Keller's hands were tied as to taking sides. He could not fight by the side of the owner of the Twin Star Ranch against the father and brother of Phyllis. There was only one thing to do, and that offered little hope. He slipped quietly from the room and from the house, swung to the back of a horse he found saddled in the place and galloped wildly down the road toward the schoolhouse.

Phyllis had much influence over her father. If she could reach the scene in time, she might prevent the duel.

His pony went up and down the hills as in a moving-picture play.

Meanwhile terms of battle were arranged at once, without haggling on either side. Weaver was to have a repeating Winchester and a belt full of cartridges, the others such weapons as they chose. The duel was to start with two hundred and fifty yards separating the combatants, but this distance could be increased or diminished at will. Such cover as was to be found might be used.

"Whatever's right suits me," the cattleman said. "I can't say more than that you are doing handsomely by me. I reckon I'll make that declaration to some of your help, if you don't mind."

The horse wrangler and the Mexican waiter were sent for, and to them the owner of the place explained what was about to occur. Their eyes stuck out, and their chins dropped, but neither of the two had anything to say.

"We're telling you boys so you may know it's all right. I proposed this thing. If I'm shot, nobody is to blame but myself. Understand?" Weaver drove the idea home.

The wrangler got out an automatic "Sure," and Manuel an amazed "_Si, senor_," upon which they were promptly retired from the scene.

Having prepared and tested their weapons, the parties to the difficulty repaired to the pasture.

"I'd like to try out this gun, if you don't mind. It's a new proposition to me," the cattleman said.

"Go to it," nodded Slim, seating himself tailor-fashion on the ground and rolling a cigarette. He was a black, bilious-tempered fellow, but this particular kind of gameness appealed to him.

Weaver glanced around, threw the rifle to his shoulder, and fired immediately. A chicken, one hundred and fifty yards away, fell over.

"Accidents will happen," suggested Slim.

"That accident happened through the neck, you'll find," Weaver retorted calmly.

"Betcher."

Buck dropped another rooster.

"You ain't happy unless you're killing something of ours," Slim grinned. "Well, if you're satisfied with your gun, we'll go ahead and see how good you are on humans."

They measured the distance, and Sanderson called: "Are you ready?"

"I reckon," came back the answer.

The father gave the signal--the explosion of a revolver. Even as it flashed, Buck doubled up like a jack rabbit and leaped for the shelter of a live oak, some thirty yards distant. Four rifles spoke almost at the same instant, so that between the first and the last not a second intervened. One of them cracked a second time. But the runner did not stop until he reached the tree and dropped behind its spreading roots.

"Hunt cover, boys!" the father gave orders. "Don't any of you expose yourself. We'll have to outflank him, but we'll take our time about it."

He got this out in staccato jerks, the last part of it not until all were for the moment safe. The strange thing was that Weaver had not fired once as they scurried for shelter, even though Phil's foot had caught in a root and held him prisoner for an instant while he freed it. But as they began circling round him carefully, he fired--first at one of them and then at another. His shooting was close, but not one of them was hit. Recalling the incident of the chickens, this seemed odd. In Slim's phrasing, he did not seem to be so good on "humans."

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

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

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

Buck patted her shoulders with awkward tenderness.

"Don't you! Don't you!" he implored.

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

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

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

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

"You shouldn't have come. You might have been hit."

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

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

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

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

"He's covering ground right lively for a dead one," Buck said dryly.

"I'm speaking of your intentions. You can't deny you would have done it."

"Anyhow, I haven't denied it."

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

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

"No, but I think all you people are."

"You'll march home to your room, and stay there till I come."

"No, father."'

"Yes, I say!"

"I must see you--alone."

"You can see me afterward. We'll do no talking till this business is finished."

"Why do you talk so? It won't be finished--it can't," she moaned.

"We'll attend to this without your help, my girl."

"You don't understand." Her voice fell to the lowest murmur. "He came here for me."

"For you-all?"

"Oh, don't you see? He brought me back here because he--cared for me." A tide of shame flushed her cheeks. Surely no girl had ever been so cruelly circumstanced that she must tell such things before a lover, who had not declared himself explicitly.

"Cared for you? As a wolf does for a lamb!"

"At first, maybe--but not afterward. Don't you see he was sorry? Everything shows that."

"And to show that he was sorry, he had poor Jesus Menendez killed!"

"No--he didn't know about that till I told him."

"Till you told him?"

"Yes. When I freed him and took him to my room."

"So you freed him--_and took him to your room?_" She had never heard her father speak in such a voice, so full at once of anger and incredulous horror.

"Don't look at me like that, father! Don't you see--can't you see----Oh, why are you so cruel to me?" She buried her face in her forearm against the rock.

Her father caught her arm so savagely that a spasm of pain shot through her. "None of that! Give me the truth. Now--this instant!"

Anger at his injustice welled up in her. "You've had the truth. I knew of the attack on the sheep camp--heard of it on the way home from school, from Manuel. Do you think I've lived with you eighteen years for nothing? I knew what you would do, and I tried to save you from yourself. There was no place where he would be safe but in my room. I took him there, and slept with Anna. I did right. I would do it again."

"Slept with Anna, did you?"

She felt again that furious tide of blood sweep into her face. "Yes. From the time of the shooting."

"Goddlemighty, gyurl, I wisht you'd keep out of my business."

"And let you do murder?"

"Why did you save him? Because you love him?" demanded Sanderson fiercely.

"Because I love you. But you're too blind to see it."

"And him--do you love him? Answer me!"

"No!" she flamed. "But if I did, I would be loving a man. He wouldn't take odds of five to one against an enemy."

Her father's great black eyes chiselled into hers. "Are you lying to me, girl?"

Weaver spoke out quietly. "I expect I can answer that, Mr. Sanderson. Your daughter has given me to understand that I'm about as mean a thing as God ever made."

But Phyl was beyond caution now. Her resentment against her father, for that he had forced her to drag out the secret things of her heart and speak of them in the presence of the man concerned, boiled into words--quick, eager, full of passion.

"I take it all back then--every word of it!" she cried. "You are braver, kinder, more generous to me than my own people--more chivalrous. You would have gone to your death without telling them that I took you to my room. But my own father, who has known me all my life, insults me grossly."

"I was wrong," Sanderson admitted uneasily.

Keller climbed the pasture fence, and came running up at the same time as Phil and Slim.

"Menendez is alive!" he cried. "He is at the Twin Star Ranch. The boys there are taking care of him, and the doctor says he will pull through."

"Who told you?"

"Bob Tryon. I met him not five minutes ago. He is on his way here."

This put a new face on things. If Menendez were still alive, Weaver could be held to await developments. Moreover, since the sheep herder was a prisoner at the Twin Star Ranch, retaliation would follow any measures taken against the cattleman.

Phyllis gave a glad little cry. "Then it's all right now."

Weaver's face crinkled to a leathery grin. "Mighty unfortunate--ain't it, boys? Puts a kind of a kink in our plans for the little entertainment we were figuring on pulling off. But maybe you've a notion of still going on with it."

"If we don't, it won't be on your account, seh, I don't reckon," Sanderson answered reluctantly.

But though he would not admit it, the old man was beginning to admire this big fellow, who could afford to miss his enemies on purpose even in the midst of a deadly duel. He was coming to a grudging sense of quality in Weaver. The cattleman might be many things that were evil, but undeniably he possessed also those qualities which on the frontier count for more than civilized virtues. He was game to the core. And he knew how to keep his mouth shut at the right time, no matter what it was going to cost him. On the whole Buck Weaver would stand the acid test, the old soldier was coming to think. And because he did not want to believe any good of his enemy, old Jim Sanderson, when he was alone in the corral with the horses or on a hillside driving his sheep, would shake his gnarled fist impotently and swear fluently until his surcharged feelings were relieved.

CHAPTER XV

THE BRAND BLOTTER

Two riders followed the trail to Yeager's Spur--one a man, brown and forceful; the other a girl, with sunshine in her dancing eyes and a voice full of the lilt of laughter. What they might come to be to each other both were already speculating about, though neither knew as yet. They were the best of friends--good comrades, save when chance eyes said unguardedly too much. For the girl that sufficed, but it was not enough for the man. He knew that he had found the one woman he wanted for his wife. But Phyllis only wondered, let her thoughts rove over many things. For instance, why queer throbs and sudden shyness swept her soft young body. She liked Larrabie Keller--oh, so much!--but her untutored heart could not quite tell her whether she loved him. His eyes drilled into her electric pulsations whenever they met hers. The youth in him called to the youth in her. She admired him. He stirred her imagination, and yet--and yet----

They rode through a valley of gold and russet, all warm with yellow sunlight. In front of them, the Spur projected from the hill ridge into the mountain park.

"Then I think you're a cow-puncher looking for a job, but not very anxious to find one," she was hazarding, answering a question.

"No. That leaves you one more guess."

"That forces me to believe that you are what you say you are," she mocked; "just a plain, prosaic homesteader."

She had often considered in her mind what business might be his, that could wait while he lingered week after week and rode trail with the cowboys; but it had not been the part of hospitality to ask questions of her friend. This might seem to imply a doubt, and of doubt she had none. To-day, he himself had broached the subject. Having brought it up, he now dropped it for the time.

He had shaded his eyes, and was gazing at something that held his attention--a little curl of smoke, rising from the wash in front of them.

"What is it?" she asked, impatient that his mind could so easily be diverted from her.

"That is what I'm going to find out. Stay here!"

Rifle in hand, Keller slipped forward through the brush. His imperative "Stay here!" annoyed her just a little. She uncased her rifle, dropped from the saddle as he had done, and followed him through the cacti. Her stealthy advance did not take her far before she came to the wash.

There Keller was standing, crouched like a panther ready for the spring, quite motionless and silent--watching now the bushes that fringed the edge of the wash, and now the smoke spiral rising faintly from the embers of a fire.

Slowly the man's tenseness relaxed. Evidently he had made up his mind that death did not lurk in the bushes, for he slid down into the wash and stepped across to the fire. Phyllis started to follow him, but at the first sound of slipping rubble her friend had her covered.

"I told you not to come," he reproached, lowering his rifle as soon as he recognized her.

"But I wanted to come. What is it? Why are you so serious?"

His eyes were busy making an inventory of the situation, his mind, too, was concentrated on the thing before him.

"Do you think it is rustlers? Is that what you mean?" she asked quickly.

"Wait a minute and I'll tell you what I think." He finished making his observations and returned to her. "First, I'll tell you something else, something that nobody in the neighborhood knows but you and Jim Yeager. I belong to the ranger force. Lieutenant O'Connor sent me here to clean up this rustling that has been going on for several years."

"And a lot of the boys thought you were a rustler yourself," she commented.

"So did one or two of the young ladies," he smiled. "But that is not the business before this meeting. Because I'm trained to it I notice things you wouldn't. For instance, I saw a man the other day with a horse whose hind hoof left a trail like that."

He pointed to one, and then another track in the soft sand. "Maybe that might be a coincidence, but the owner of that horse had a habit of squirting tobacco juice on clean rocks--like that--and that."

"That doesn't prove he has been rustling."

"No; but the signs here show he has been branding, and Buck Weaver ran across these same marks left by a waddy who surely was making free with a Twin Star calf."

"How long has he been gone?"

"There were two of them, and they've been gone about twenty minutes."

"How do you know?"

He pointed to a stain of tobacco juice still moist.

"Who is he?" she asked.

He knew her stanch loyalty to her friends, and Tom Dixon had been a friend till very lately. He hesitated; then, without answering, made a second thorough examination of the whole ground.

"Come--if we have any luck, I'll show him to you," he said, returning to her. "But you must do just as I say--must be under my orders."

"I will," she promised.

Forthwith, they started. After they had ridden in silence for some distance, covering ground fast, they drew to a walk.

"You know by the trail for where they were heading," she suggested in a voice that was a question.

"I guessed."

Presently, at the entrance to a little cañon, Keller swung down and examined the ground carefully, seemed satisfied, and rode with her into the gully. But she noticed that now he went cautiously, eyes narrowed and wary, with the hard face and the look of a coiled spring she had seen on him before. Her heart drummed with excitement. She was not afraid, but she was fearfully alive.

At the other entrance to the cañon, Larrabie was down again for another examination. What he seemed to find gave him pleasure.

"They've separated," he told Phyllis. "We'll give our attention to the gentleman with the calf, and let his friend go, to-day."

They swung sharply to the north, taking a precipitous trail of shale that Phyllis judged to be a short cut. It was rough going, but their mountain ponies were good for anything less than a perpendicular wall. They clambered up and down like cats, as sure-footed as wild goats.

At the summit of the ridge, Keller pointed out something in the valley below--a rider on horseback, driving a calf.

"There goes Mr. Waddy, as big as coffee."

"He's going to swing round the point. You mean to drop down the hill and cut him off?"

[Illustration: "DROP THAT GUN!" _Page 205_]

"That's the plan. Better do no more talking after we pass that live oak. See that little wash? We'll drop into it, and hide among the cottonwoods."

The rustler was pushing along hurriedly, driving the calf at a trot, half the time twisted in the saddle, with anxious eyes to the rear. Revolvers and a rifle garnished him, but quite plainly they gave him no sense of safety.

When the summons came to him to "Drop that gun!" it was only a confirmation of his fears. Yet he jumped as a boy jumps under the unexpected cut of a cane.

The rifle went clattering to the stony trail. Without being ordered to do so, the hands of the waddy were thrust skyward.

"Why, it's Tom Dixon! We've made a mistake," Phyllis discovered; and moved forward from her hiding place.

"We've made no mistake. I told you I'd show you the rustler, and I've shown him to you," Keller answered, as he too stepped forward. And to Tom, whose hands dropped at sight of Phyllis: "Better keep them reaching till I get those guns. That's right. Now, you may 'light."

"What's got into you?" demanded Dixon, his teeth still chattering. "Holding up a man for nothing. Take away that gun you got bent on me!"

"You're under arrest for rustling, seh," the cattle detective told him sternly.

"Prove it. Prove it!" Dixon swung from the saddle, and faced the other doggedly.

"That calf you're driving now is rustled. You branded it less than two hours ago in Spring Valley, right by the three cottonwoods below the trail to Yeager's Spur."

"How do you know?" cried the startled youth. And on the heels of that: "It's a lie!" He was getting a better grip on his courage. He spat defiantly a splash of tobacco juice on a flat pebble which his eye found. "No such thing! This calf was a maverick. Ask Phyl. She'll tell you I'm no rustler."

Phyllis said nothing. Her gaze was very steadily on Tom.

Keller pointed to the evidence which the hoof of the horse had printed on the trail, and to that which the man had written on the pebble. "We found both these signs once before. They were left by one of the rustlers operating in this vicinity. That time it was a Twin Star brand you blotted. You've done a poor job, for I can see there has been another brand there. Your partner left you with the cow at the entrance to the cañon. Caught red-handed as you have been driving the calf to your place, you'll find all this aggregates evidence enough to send you to the penitentiary. Buck Weaver will attend to that."

"It's a conspiracy. You and him mean to railroad me through," Tom charged sullenly. "I tell you, Phyllis knows I'm no rustler."

"I've known you were one ever since the day you wanted to go back and tell where Weaver was hidden. You and your pony scattered the evidence around then, just as you're doing here," the ranger answered.

"You've got it cooked up to put me through," Dixon insisted desperately. "You want to get me out of the way, so you'll have a clear track with Phyl. Think I don't sabe your game?"

The angry color sucked into Keller's face beneath the tan. He avoided looking at Phyllis. "We'll not discuss that, seh. But I can say that kind of talk won't help buy you anything."

The girl looked at Dixon in silent contempt. She was very angry, so that for the moment her embarrassment was swamped. But she did not choose to dignify his spleen by replying to it.

There was no iron in Dixon's make-up. When he saw that this attack had reacted against him, he tried whining.

"Honest, you're wrong about this calf, Mr. Keller. I don't say, mind you, it ain't a rustled calf. It may be; but I don't know it if it is. Maybe the rustlers were scared off just before I happened on it."

"We'll see how a jury looks at that. You're going to get the chance to tell that story to one, I expect," Larrabie remarked dryly.

"Pass it up this time, and I'll get out of the country," the youth promised.

"Take care! Whatever you say will be used against you."

"Suppose I did rustle one of Buck Weaver's calves--mind, I don't say I did--but say I did? Didn't he bust my father up in business? Ain't he aiming to do the same by your folks, Phyl?" He was almost ready to cry.

The girl turned her head aside, and spoke in a low voice to Keller. She was greatly angered and disgusted at Tom; but she had been his friend, and on this occasion there had been some justification for him in the wrong the cattleman had done his family.

"Do you have to report him and have him prosecuted?"

"I'm paid to stop the rustling that has been going on," answered Keller, in the same undertone.

"He won't do it again. He has had his scare. It will last him a lifetime." Even while she promised it for him, it was not without contempt for the poor-spirited craven who could be so easily driven from his evil ways. If a man must do wrong, let it be boldly--as Buck Weaver did it.

"Yes, but his pals haven't had theirs."

"But you don't know them."

"I can guess one man in it with him. We've got to root the thing out."

"Why not serve warning on him by Tom? Then they would both clear out."

Dixon divined that she was pleading for him, and edged in another word for himself. "Whatever wrong I've done I've been driven to. There's been an older man to lead me into it, too."

"You mean Red Hughes?" Keller said sharply.

Tom hesitated. He had not got to the point of betraying his accomplice. "I ain't saying who I mean. Nor, for that matter, I ain't admitting I've done any particular wrong--no more than other young fellows."

Keller brought him sharply to time. "You've used your last wet blanket. I've got the evidence that will put you behind the bars. Miss Phyllis wants me to let you off. I can't do it unless you make a clean breast of it. You'll either come through with what I want to know, and do as I say, or you'll have to stand the gaff."

"What do you want to know?"

"How many pals had you in this rustling?"

"You said you would use against me anything I said."

"I say now I'll use it for you if you tell the truth and meet my conditions."

"What are your conditions?"

"Never mind. You'll learn them later. Answer my question. How many?"

"One"--very sullenly.

"Red Hughes?"

"That's the one thing I can't tell you," the lad cried. "Don't you see I can't?"

"It's the one thing I don't need to know. I've got Red cinched about as tight as you, my boy. How long has this been going on?"

The information came from Dixon as reluctantly as a tight cork comes from a bottle. "Nearly a year."

Sharp, incisive questions followed, one after another; and at the end of the quiz Tom was pumped nearly dry. Those who heard his confession listened to the story of how and why he had first started rustling--the tale of each exploit, the location of the mountain cache where the calves had been driven, even the name of the Mexican buyer who once had come across the line to receive a bunch of stolen cattle.

Keller laid down his conditions. "You'll go to Red muy pronto, and tell him he's got thirty-six hours to get across the line. He and you will go to Sonora, and you'll stay there. We've got you dead to rights. Show up in this country again, and you'll both go to Yuma. Understand?"

Tom understood well enough. He writhed under it, but he was up against the need of surrender. Sullenly he waited until the other had laid down the law, then asked for his weapons. Keller emptied the chambers of the cartridges, and returned the revolvers, looking also to the magazine of the rifle before he handed it back. Without a word, without even a nod or a glance, Dixon rode out of the gulch.

The eyes of the remaining two met, and became tangled at once. Hastily both pairs withdrew.

"We'll have to drive the calf back, won't we?" said Phyllis, seizing on the first irrelevant thing that occurred to say.

"Yes--as far as Tryon's."

Presently she said: "Do you think they will leave the country?"

"No."

Her glance swept him in surprise. "Then--why did you let him go so easily?"

He smiled. "Didn't you ask me to let him off?"

"Yes; but----" How could she explain that by lapsing from his duty so far, even at her request, he had disappointed her!

"No, ma'am! I'm a false alarm. It wasn't out of gallantry I unroped him. Shall I tell you why it was? I kept naming Red as his partner. But Hughes ain't in this. He has been in Sonora for a year. When Tom goes back all worried and tells what has happened to him, the gentleman who is the brains for the outfit is going to be right pleased I'm following a false trail. That's liable to make him more careless. If we had had the evidence to cinch Dixon it would have been different. But a roan calf is a roan calf. I don't expect the owner could swear to it, even if we knew who he was. So I made my little play and let him go."

"And I thought all the time you were doing it for me," she laughed, and on the heels of it made her little confession: "And I was blaming you for giving way."

"I'll know now that the way to please you is not to do what you want me to do."

"You know a lot about girls, don't you?" she mocked.

"Me, I'm a wiz," he agreed with her derision.

Keller spoke absently, considering whether this might be the propitious moment to try his luck. They had been comrades together in an adventure well concluded. Both were thinking of what Dixon had said. It seemed to Larrabie that it would be a wonderful thing if they might ride back through the warm sunlight with this new miracle of her love in his life. It was at the meeting of their fingers, when he gave her the bridle, that he spoke.

"I've got to say it, Miss Phyllis. I've got to know where I stand."

She understood him of course. The touch of their eyes had warmed her even before he began. But "Stand how?" she repeated feebly.

"With you. I love you! We both know that. What about you? Could you care for me? Do you?"

Her shy, deep eyes met his fairly. "I don't know. Sometimes I think I do, and then sometimes I think I don't--that way."

The touch of affection that made his face occasionally tender as a woman's, lit his warm smile.

"Couldn't you make that first sometimes always, don't you reckon, Phyllis?"

"Ah! If I knew! But I don't--truly, I don't. I--I want to care," she confessed, with divine shyness.

"That's good listening. Couldn't you go ahead on those times you do, honey?"

"No!" She drew back from his advance. "No--give me time. I'm--I'm not sure--I'm not at all sure. I can't explain, but----"

"Can't decide between me and another man?" he suggested, by way of a joke, to lighten her objection.

Then, in a flash, he knew that by accident he had hit the truth. The startled look of doubt in her eyes told him. Perhaps she had not known it herself before, but his words had clarified her mind. There was another man in the running--one not to be thrust aside easily.

Phyllis' first impulse was to be alone. She turned her face away and busied herself with a stirrup leather.

"Don't say anything more now--please. I'm such a little goose! I don't know--yet. Won't you wait and--forget it till--say, till next week?"

He promised to wait, but he did not promise to forget it. As they rode home, he made cheerful talk on many subjects; but the one in both their minds was that which had been banned. Every silence was full charged with it. Its suppression ran like quicksilver through every spoken sentence.

CHAPTER XVI

A WATERSPOUT

Almost imperceptibly, Buck Weaver's relation to his jailers changed. It was still understood that their interests differed, but the personal bitterness was largely gone. He went riding occasionally with the boys, rather as a guest than as a prisoner.

At any time he might have escaped, but for a tacit understanding that he would stay until Menendez was strong enough to be sent home from the Twin Star.

One pleasure, however, was denied him. He saw nothing of Phyllis, save for a distant glimpse or two when she was starting to school or returning from a ride with Larrabie Keller. He knew that her father and her brother were studiously eliminating him, so far as she was concerned. Certain events had been of a nature to induce whispered gossip. Fortunately, such gossip had been nipped in the bud. They intended that there should be no revival of it.

Weaver had sent word to the riders of the Twin Star that there was to be nothing doing in the matter of the feud until his return.

He had at the same time ordered from them a change of linen, a box of his favorite cigars, and certain papers to be found in his desk. These in due time were delivered by Jesus Menendez in person, together with a note from the ranch.

TWIN STAR RANCH, Tuesday Morning.

DERE BUCK: You've sure got us up in the air. The boys was figurring some on rounding up the whole Seven Mile outfit in a big drive, but looks like you got other notions. Wise us if you want the cooperation of

PESKY and the other boys.

With a smile, Weaver showed it to Phil. "Shall I send word to the boys to start on the round-up?"

"It won't be necessary. You don't need their cooperation. Fact is, now Menendez is back, you're free to go. 'Rastus is getting your horse right now."

The cattleman realized instantly that he did not want to go. Business affairs at home pressed for his attention, but he felt extremely reluctant to pull out and leave the field in possession of Larrabie Keller, even temporarily. He could not, however, very well say so.

"Good enough," he said brusquely. "Before I go, we'd better settle the matter of the range. Send for your father, and I'll make him a proposition that looks fair to me."

When Sanderson arrived, he found the cattleman with a map of the county spread before him upon the table. With a pencil he divided the range in a zigzag, twisting line.

"How about that? I'll take all on the valley side. You take what is in the hills and the parks."

Sanderson looked at him in astonishment. "That's all we've been contending for!"

Buck nodded. "Since you get what you want, you ought to be satisfied," he said gruffly. "Of course, there will have to be some give-and-take about this. My cattle will cross the line. So will yours. That can't be helped. I've worked out this problem of the range feed pretty thoroughly. My territory will feed just about as many as yours. Each year we can arrange together to keep the number of cattle down."

Under his shaggy brows, Sanderson looked at him in perplexity. The proposition was more than generous. It meant that Weaver would have to sell off about a thousand head of cattle, while the hill-men, on the other hand, could increase their holdings.

"What about sheep?" the old man asked bluntly.

Buck's stony gaze met his steadily. "I'm going to leave those sheep on your conscience, Mr. Sanderson. You'll have to settle that matter for yourself."

"You mean you'll not stand in the way, if I want to keep them?"

"That's what I mean. It's up to you."

Phil, who was sitting on the porch sewing on a pair of leather chaps, indulged in a grin. "I see this is where we go out of the sheep business," he said.

"The market's good. I don't know but what it would be the right thing to sell," his father agreed. "I want to meet you halfway in settling this trouble, Mr. Weaver."

The matter was discussed further at some length, after which the cattleman shook hands all round and departed. Out of the tail of his eye he saw Keller saddling a horse at the stables.

"Think I'll beat you out of that ride with the schoolmarm to-day, my friend. A steady diet of rides like that is liable to intoxicate a man," he told himself, with his grim smile. In plain sight of all, he turned the head of his horse toward the road that led to the schoolhouse.

Presently he met pupils galloping home, calling to each other joyously as they rode. Others followed more sedately in buggies. Nearer the schoolhouse he came on one walking.

After Phyllis had looked over some papers, made up her weekly report, and outlined on the board work for next day, she saddled her pony and set out homeward. Not in ten years had the country been so green and lovely as it was now. There had been many winter snows and spring rains, so that the alfilaria covered the hills with a carpet of grass. Muddy little rivulets, pouring down arroyos on their way from the mountains, showed that there had been recent rains. These all ran into the Del Oro, a creek which was dry in summer but was now full to its banks.

She followed the river into the cañon of the same name, a narrow gulch with sheer precipitous walls. So much water was in the river that the trail along the bank scarce gave the pony footing. Half a mile from the point where she had entered the Del Oro the trail crept up the wall and escaped to the mesa above. Phyllis was nearing the ascent when a sound startled her. She swung round in her saddle, to see a wall of water roaring down the lane with the leap of some terrible wild beast. Somewhere in the hills there had been a waterspout.

She called upon her pony with spur and voice, racing desperately for the place where the trail rose. Of that wild dash for life she remembered nothing afterward save the overmastering sense of peril. She knew that the roan was pounding forward with the best speed in him, and presently she knew too that no speed could save her. The roar of the advancing water grew louder as it swept upon her. With a cry of terror she dragged the pony to its haunches, slipped from the saddle, and attempted to climb the rock face.

Catching hold of outcropping ledges, mesquit, and even cactus bushes, she went up like a mountain goat But the water swept upon her, waist high, and dragged at her. She clung to a quartz knob her fingers had found, but her feet were swept from her by the suction of the torrent. Her hold relaxed, and she slid back into the river.

Like a flash of light a rope descended over her outstretched arms, tightened at her waist, and held her taut. She felt the pain of a tremendous tug that seemed to tear her in two. Dimly her brain reported that somebody was shouting. A long time afterward, as it seemed to her then, a strong arm went round her. Inch by inch she was dragged from the water that fought and wrestled for her. Phyllis knew that her rescuer was working up the cliff wall with her. Then her perceptions blurred.

"I'll never make it this way," he told himself aloud, half way up.

In fact, he had come to an impasse. Even without the burden of her weight, the sheer smooth wall rose insurmountable above him. He did the one thing left for him to do. Leaving her unconscious body in a sort of trough formed by the juncture of two strata, he lowered himself into the rushing stream, searched with his foot for a grip, and swung to the left into the niche formed by a mesquit bush growing from the rock. From here, after stiff climbing, he reached the top.

He found, as he had expected, his cow pony with feet braced to keep the rope taut. Old Baldy was practising the lesson learned from scores of roped steers. No man in the Malpais country was stronger than this one. In another minute he had drawn up the girl and laid her on the grass.

Soon she opened her eyes and looked into his troubled face.

"Mr. Weaver," she breathed in faint surprise. "Where am I?"

But her glances were already answering the question. They took in the rope under her arms, followed it to the horn of the saddle, around which the other end was tied, and came back to the leathery weather-beaten face that looked down into hers.

"You have saved my life."

"Not me. Old Baldy did it. I never could have got you out alone. When I roped you, he backed off same as if you had been a steer, and pulled for all there was in him. Between us we got you up."

"Good old Baldy!" She let it go at that for the moment, while she thought it out. "If you hadn't been right here----" She finished her sentence with a shudder.

She could not guess how that thought stabbed him, for he replied cheerfully: "I heard you call, and Baldy brought me on the jump."

Phyllis covered her face with her hands. She was badly shaken and could not quite control herself. "It was awful--awful." And short staccato sobs shook her.

Buck put his arm around her shoulders, and soothed her gently. "Don't you care, Phyllis. It's all past now. Forget it, little girl."

"It was like some tremendous wild beast--a thousand times stronger and crueller than a grizzly. It leaped at me, and----Oh, if you hadn't been here!"

She caught at his sleeve and clung to it with both hands.

"If a fellow sticks around long enough he is sure to come in handy," Buck told her lightly.

She did not answer, but presently she walked across a little unsteadily and put her arms around the neck of the white-faced broncho. Her face she buried in its mane. Weaver knew she was crying softly, and he wisely left her alone while he recoiled the rope.

Presently she recovered her composure and began to pat the white silken nose of the pony.

"You helped him to save my life, Baldy. Even he couldn't have done it without you. How can I ever pay you for it?"

Weaver had an inspiration. "He's yours from this moment. You can pay him by taking him for your saddle horse. Baldy will never ride the round-up again. We'll give him a Carnegie medal and retire him on a good-service pension so far as the rough work goes."

Without looking at him, the girl answered softly: "Thank you. I know I'm taking from you the best cow-pony in Arizona, but I can't help it."

"A cow-pony is a cow-pony, but a horse that saves the life of Miss Phyllis Sanderson is a gentleman and a hero."

"And what about the man who saves her life?" Her voice was very small and weepy.

"Tickled to death to have the chance. We'll forget that."

Still she did not look at him. "Never! Never as long as I live," she cried vehemently.

It came to him that if he was ever going to put his fortune to the test now was the time. He strode across and swung her round till she faced him.

"As long as you live, Phyllis. And you're only eighteen. Me, I'm thirty-seven. I lack just a year of being twice as old. What about it? Am I too old and too hard and tough for you, little girl?"

"I--don't--understand."

"Yes, you do. I'm asking you to marry me. Will you?"

"Oh, Mr. Weaver!" she gasped.

"I ought to wrap it up pretty, oughtn't I? But there's nothing pretty about me. No woman should marry me if she can help it, not unless her heart brings her to me in spite of herself. Is it that way with you?"

Never before had she met a man like him, so masterful and virile. He took short cuts as if he did not notice the "No Trespassing" sign. She read in him a passion clamped by a will of iron, and there thrilled through her a fierce delight in her power over this splendid type of the male lover. She lived in a world of men, lean, wide-shouldered fellows, who moved and had their being in conditions that made hickory withes of them physically, hard close-mouthed citizens mentally. But even by the frontier tests of efficiency, of gameness, of going the limit, Weaver stood head and shoulders above his neighbors. She had lifted her gaze to meet his, quite sure that her answer was not in doubt, but now her heart was beating like a triphammer. She felt herself drifting from her moorings. It was as though she were drowning forty fathoms deep in those calm, unwinking eyes of his.

"I don't think so," she cried desperately.

"You've got to be sure. I don't want you else."

"Yes--yes!" she cried eagerly. "Don't rush me."

"Take all the time you need. You can't be any too sure to suit me."

"I--I don't think it will be yes," she told him shyly.

"I'm betting it will," he said confidently. "And now, little girl, it's time we started. You'll ride your Carnegie horse and I'll walk."

Her eyes dilated, for this brought to her mind something she had forgotten. "My roan! What do you think has become of it?"

He shook his head, preferring not to guess aloud. As he helped her to the saddle his eyes fell on a stain of red running from the wrist of her gauntlet.

"You've hurt your hand," he cried.

"It must have been when I caught at the cactus."

Gently he slipped off the glove. Cruel thorns had torn the skin in a dozen places. He drew the little spikes out one by one. Phyllis winced, but did not cry out. After he had removed the last of them he tied her handkerchief neatly round the wounds and drew on the gauntlet again. It had been only a small service, nothing at all compared to the great one he had just rendered, but somehow it had tightened his hold on her. She wondered whether she would have to marry Buck Weaver no matter what she really wanted to do.

With her left hand she guided Baldy, while Buck strode beside, never wavering from the easy, powerful stride that was the expression of his sinuous strength.

"Were you ever tired in your life?" she asked once, with a little sigh of fatigue.

He stopped in his stride, full of self-reproach. "Now, ain't that like me! Pluggin' ahead, and never thinking about how played out you are. We'll rest here under these cottonwoods."

He lifted her down, for she was already very stiff and sore from her adventure. An outdoor life had given her a supple strength and a wiry endurance, of which her slender frame furnished no indication, but the reaction from the strain was upon her. To Buck she looked pathetically wan and exhausted. He put her down under a tree and arranged her saddle for a pillow. Again the girl felt a net was being wound round her, that she belonged to him and could not escape. Nor was she sure that she wanted to get away from his possessive energy. In the pleasant sun glow she fell asleep, without any intention of doing so. Two hours later she opened her eyes.

Looking round, she saw Weaver lying flat on his back fifty yards away.

"I've been asleep," she called.

He leaped to his feet and walked across the sand to her.

"I suspected it," he said with a smile.

"I feel like a new woman now."

"Like one of them suffragettes?"

"That isn't quite what I meant," she smiled. "I'm ready to start."

Half an hour later they reached her home. It was close to supper time, but Weaver would not stay.

"See you next week," he said quietly, and turned his horse toward the Twin Star ranch.

CHAPTER XVII

THE HOLD-UP

From the wash where the sink of the Mimbres edges close to Noches two riders emerged in mid-afternoon of a day that shimmered under the heat of a blazing sun. They travelled in silence, the core of an alkali dust cloud that moved with them and lay thick upon them. Well down over their eyes were drawn the broad-rimmed hats. One of them wore sun goggles and both of them had their lower faces covered by silk bandannas as if to keep out the thick dust their ponies stirred. For the rest their costumes were the undistinguished chaps, spurs, shirt, neckerchiefs, and gauntlets of the range.

With one distinction, however: these were better armed than the average cow-puncher jaunting to town for the quarterly spree. Revolver butts peeped from the holsters of their loosely hung cartridge belts. Moreover, their rifles were not strapped beneath the stirrup leathers, but were carried across the pommels of the saddles.

The bell in the town hall announced three o'clock as they reached the First National Bank at the corner of San Miguel and Main Streets. Here one of the riders swung from the saddle, handed the reins and his rifle to the other man, and jingled into the bank. His companion took the horses round to the side entrance of the building, and waited there in such shade as two live oaks offered.

He had scarce drawn rein when two other riders joined him, having come from a direction at right angles to that followed by him. One of them rode an iron-gray, the other a roan with white stockings. Both of these dismounted, and one of them passed through the side door into the bank. Almost instantly he reappeared and nodded to his comrade, who joined him with his own rifle and that of the first man that had gone in.

There was an odd similarity in arms, manner, and dress between these and the first arrivals. Once inside the building, each of them slipped a black mask over his face. Then one stepped quickly to the front door and closed and locked it, while the other simultaneously covered the teller with a revolver.

The cashier, busy in conversation with the first horseman about a loan the other had said he wanted, was sitting with his back to the cage of the teller. The first warning he had of anything unusual was the closing of the door by a masked man. One glance was enough to tell him the bank was about to be robbed.

His hand moved swiftly toward the drawer in his desk which contained a weapon, but stopped halfway to its destination. For he was looking squarely into the rim of a six-shooter less than a foot from his forehead. The gun was in the hands of the client with whom he had been talking.

"Don't do that," the man advised him brusquely. Then, more sharply: "Reach for the roof. No monkeying."

Benson, the cashier, was no coward, but neither was he a fool. He knew when not to take a chance. Promptly his arms shot up. But even while he obeyed, his eyes were carrying to his brain a classification of this man for future identification. The bandit was a stranger to him, a heavy-set, bandy-legged fellow of about forty-five, with a leathery face and eyes as stony as those of a snake.

"What do you want?" the bank officer asked quietly.

"Your gold and notes. Is the safe open?"

Before the cashier could reply a shot rang out. The unmasked outlaw slewed his head, to see the president of the bank firing from the door of his private office. The other two robbers were already pumping lead at him. He staggered, clutched at the door jamb, and slowly sank to the floor after the revolver had dropped from his hand.

Benson seized the opportunity to duck behind his desk and drag open a drawer, but before his fingers had closed on the weapon within, two crashing blows descended with stunning force on his head. The outlaw covering him had reversed his heavy revolver and clubbed him with the butt.

"That'll hold him for a while," the bandit remarked, and dragged the unconscious man across the floor to where the president lay huddled.

One of the masked men, a lithe, sinuous fellow with a polka-dot bandanna round his neck, took command.

"Keep these men covered, Irwin, while we get the loot," he ordered the unmasked man.

With that he and the boyish-looking fellow who had ridden into town with him, the latter carrying three empty sacks, followed the trembling teller to the vault.

No sound broke the dead silence except the loud ticking of the bank clock and an occasional groan from the cashier, who was just beginning to return to consciousness. Twice the man left on guard called down to those in the vault to hurry.

There was need of haste. Somebody, attracted by the sound of firing, had come running to the bank, peered in the big front window, and gone flying to spread the alarm.

Outside a shot and then another shattered the sultry stillness of the day. The man left on guard ran to the door and looked out. An upper window down the street was open, and from it a man with a rifle was firing at the outlaw left in charge of the horses.

The wrangler had taken refuge behind a bulwark of horseflesh, and was returning the fire.

"Hurry the boys, Brad! Hell's broke loose!" he called to his companion.

The town was alarmed and buzzing like a hornet's nest. Soon they would feel the sting of the swarm unless they beat an immediate retreat. One sweep of his eyes told the bandy-legged fellow as much. He could hear voices crying the alarm, could see men running to and fro farther down the street. Even in the second he stood there a revolver began potting at him.

"Back in a moment," he cried to the wrangler, and disappeared within to shout an urgent warning to the looters.

Three men came up from the vault, each carrying a sack. The teller was pushed into the street first, and the rest followed. A scattering fire began to converge at once upon them. The roan with the white stockings showed a red ridge across its flank where a bullet had furrowed a path.

The teller dropped, wounded by his friends. Two of the robbers loaded the horses, while the others answered the townsmen. In the inevitable delay of getting started, every moment seemed an hour to the harassed outlaws.

But at last they were in the saddle and galloping down the street, firing right and left as they went. At the next street crossing two men, one fat and the other lean, came running, revolvers in hands, to intercept them. They were too late. Before they reached the corner the outlaws had galloped past in a cloud of white dust, still flinging bullets at the invisible they were escaping.

The big lean cow-puncher stopped with an oath as the riders disappeared. "Nothing doing, Budd," he called to the fat man. "The show's moved on to a new stand."

Jim Budd, puffing heavily and glistening with perspiration, nodded the answer he could not speak. Presently he got out what he wanted to say.

"Notice that leading hawss on the nigh side, Slim?" he asked.

"So you noticed it, too, Jim. I could swear to that roan with the four stockings. It's the hawss Mr. Larrabie Keller mavericks around on, durn his forsaken hide! And the man on it wore a polka-dot bandanna. So does Keller. He'll have to go some to explain away that. I reckon the others must be nesters from Bear Creek, too."

"We've got 'em where the wool's short this time," Budd agreed. "They been shootin' around right promiscuous. If anybody's dead, then Keller has put a rope round his own neck."

Men were already saddling and mounting for the first unorganized pursuit. Slim and his friend joined these, and cantered down the dusty street scarce ten minutes after the robbers.

The suburbs of the town fell to the rear, and left them in the fall and rise of the foothills that merged to the left in the wide, flat, shimmering plain of the Malpais, and on the other side in the saw-toothed range that notched the horizon from north to south. Somewhere in that waste of cow-backed hills, in that swell of endless land waves, the trail of the robbers vanished.

Men rode far and wide, carrying the pursuit late into the night, but the lost trail was not to be picked up again. So one by one, or in pairs, under the yellow stars, they drifted back to Noches, leaving behind the black depths of blue-canopied hills that had swallowed the fleeing quartette.

CHAPTER XVIII

BRILL HEALY AIRS HIS SENTIMENTS

To Phyllis, riding from school near the close of a hot Friday afternoon along the old Fort Lincoln Trail, came the voice of Brill Healy from the ridge above. She waved to him the broad-brimmed hat she was carrying in her hand, and he guided his pony deftly down the edge of the steep slope.

"Been looking for some strays down at Three Pines," he explained. "Awful glad I met you."

"Where were you going now?" she asked.

"Home, I reckon; but I'll ride with you to Seven Mile if you don't mind."

She looked at her watch. "It's just five-thirty. We'll be in time for supper, and you can ride home afterward."

"I guess you know that will suit me, Phyllis," he answered, with a meaning look from his dark eyes.

"Supper suits most healthy men so far as I've noticed," she said carelessly, her glance sweeping keenly over him before it passed to the purple shadowings that already edged the mouth of a distant cañon.

"I'll bet it does when they can sit opposite Phyl Sanderson to eat it."

She frowned a little, the while he took her in out of half-shut, smoldering eyes, as one does a picture in a gallery. In truth, one might have ridden far to find a living picture more vital and more suggestive of the land that had cradled and reared her.

His gaze annoyed her, without her quite knowing why. "I wish you wouldn't look at me all the time," she told him with the boyish directness that still occasionally lent a tang to her speech.

"And if I can't help it?" he laughed.

"Fiddlesticks! You don't have to say pretty things to me, Brill Healy," she told him.

"I don't say them because I have to."

"Then I wish you wouldn't say them at all. There's no sense in it when you've known a girl eighteen years."

"Known and loved her eighteen years. It's a long time, Phyl."

Her eyes rained light derision on him. "It would be if it were true. But then one has to forget truth when one is sentimental, I reckon."

"I'm not sentimental. I tell you I'm in love," he answered.

"Yes, Brill. With yourself. I've known that a long time, but not quite eighteen years," she mocked.

"With you," he made answer, and something of sullenness had by this time crept into his voice. "I've got as much right to love you as any one else, haven't I? As much right as that durned waddy, Keller?"

Fire flashed in her eyes. "If you want to know, I despise you when you talk that way."

The anger grew in him. "What way? When I say anything against the rustler, do you mean? Think I'm blind? Think I can't see how you're running after him, and making a fool of yourself about him?"

"How dare you talk that way to me?" she flamed, and gave her surprised pony a sharp stroke with the quirt.

Five minutes later the bronchos fell again to a walk, and Healy took up the conversation where it had dropped.

"No use flying out like that, Phyl. I only say what any one can see. Take a look at the facts. You meet up with him making his getaway after he's all but caught rustling. Now, what do you do?"

"I don't believe he was rustling at all."

"Course you don't believe it. That proves just what I was saying."

"Jim doesn't believe it, either."

"Yeager's opinion don't have any weight with me. I want to tell you right now that the boys are getting mighty leary of Jim. He's getting too thick with that Bear Creek bunch."

"Brill Healy, I never saw anybody so bigoted and pig-headed as you are," the girl spoke out angrily. "Any one with eyes in his head could see that Jim is as straight as a string. He couldn't be crooked if he tried. Long as you've known him I should think you wouldn't need to be told that."

"Oh, you say so," he growled sullenly.

"Everybody says so. Jim Yeager of all men," she scoffed. Then, with a flash of angry eyes at him, "How would you like it if your friends rounded on you? By all accounts, you're not quite a plaster saint. I've heard stories."

"What about?"

"Oh, gambling and drinking. What of it? That's your business. One doesn't have to believe all the talk that is flying around." She spoke with a kind of fine scorn, for she was a girl of large generosities.

"We've all got enemies, I reckon," he said sulkily.

"You're Phil's friend, and mine, too, of course. I dare say you have your faults like other men, but I don't have to listen to people while they try to poison my mind against you. What's more, I don't."

She had been agile-minded enough to shift the attack and put him upon the defensive, but now Healy brought the question back to his original point.

"That's all very well, Phyl, but we weren't talking about me, but about you. When you found this Keller making his escape you buckled in and helped him. You tied up his wound and took him to Yeager's and lied for him to us. That's bad enough, but later you did a heap worse."

"In saving him from being lynched by you?"

"Before that you made a fuss about him and had to tie up his wounds. I had a cut on my cheek, but I notice you didn't tie it up!"

"I'm surprised at you, Brill. I didn't think you were so small; and just because I didn't let a wounded man suffer."

"You can put it that way if you want to," he laughed unpleasantly.

Her passion flared again. "You and your insinuations! Who made you the judge over my actions? You talk as if you were my father. If you've got to reform somebody, let it be yourself."

"I'm the man that is going to be your husband," he said evenly. "That gives me a right."

"Never! Don't think it," she flung back. "I'd not marry you if you were the last man on earth."

"You'll see. I'll not let a scoundrel like Keller come between us. No, nor Yeager, either. Nor Buck Weaver himself. I notice he was right attentive before he went home."

Resentment burned angrily on her cheek. "Anybody else?" she asked quietly.

"That's all for just now. You're a natural-born flirt, Phyllis. That's what's the matter with you."

"Thank you, Mr. Healy. You're the only one of my friends that has been so honest with me," she assured him sweetly.

"I'm the only one of them that is going to marry you. Don't think I'll let Keller butt in. Not on your life."

Her rage broke bounds. "I never in my life heard of anything so insolent. Never! _You'll_ not let me do this or that. Who are you, Brill Healy?"

"I've told you. I'm the man that means to marry you," he persisted doggedly.

"You never will. I'm not thinking of marrying, but when I do I'll not ask for your indorsement. Be sure of that."

"I'll not stand it! He'd better look out!"

"Who do you mean?"

"Keller, that's who I mean. This thing is hanging over his head yet. He's got to come through with proofs he ain't a rustler, or he's got to pull his freight out of the Malpais country."

"And if he won't?"

"We'll finish that little business you interrupted," he told her, riding his triumph roughshod over her feelings.

"You wouldn't, Brill! Not when there is a doubt about it. Jim says he is innocent, and I believe he is. Surely you wouldn't!"

"You'll see."

"If you do I'll never speak to you again! Never, as long as I live; and I'll never rest till I have you in the penitentiary for his murder!" she cried tensely.

"And yet you don't care anything about him. You've just been kind to him out of charity," he mocked.

For some minutes they had seen Seven Mile Ranch lying below them in the faint twilight. They rode the rest of the way in silence, each of them too bitter for speech. When they reached the house, she swung from the saddle and he kept his seat, for both of them considered her supper invitation and his acceptance cancelled.

He bowed ironically and turned to leave.

"Just a moment, Brill," called an excited voice. "I've got a piece of news that will make you sit up."

The speaker was the young mule skinner known as Cuffs. He came running out to the porch and fired his bolt.

"The First National Bank at Noches was held up two hours ago, and the robbers got away with their loot after shooting three or four men!"

"Two hours ago," the girl repeated. "You got it over the phone, of course."

"Yep. Slim called me up just now. He got back right this minute from following their trail. They lost the fellows in the hills. Four of 'em, Slim says, and he thinks they're headed this way."

"What makes him think so?" asked Healy.

"He figures they are Bear Creek men. One of them was recognized. It was that fellow Keller."

"Keller!" Phyllis and Healy cried the word together.

Cuffs nodded. "Slim says he can swear to his hawss, and he's plumb sure about the man, too. He wants we should organize a posse and nail them as they go into the Pass for Bear Creek. He figures we'll have time to do it if we jump. Noches is fifty-five miles from here, and about forty from the Pass.

"With their bronchs loaded they can't make it in much less than five hours. That gives us most three hours to reach the Pass and stop them. What think, Brill? Can we make it?"

"We'll try damned hard. I'm not going to let Mr. Rustler Keller slip through my fingers again!" Healy cried triumphantly.

"I don't believe it was Bear Creek men at all. I'm sure it wasn't Mr. Keller," Phyllis cried, with a face like parchment.

There was an unholy light of vindictive triumph in Healy's face. "We'll show you about that, Miss Missouri. Get the boys together, Cuffs. Call up Purdy and Jim Budd and Tom Dixon on the phone. Rustle up as many of the boys as you can. Start 'em for the Pass just as soon as they get here. I'm going right up there now. Probably I can't stop them, but I may make out who they are. Notify Buck Weaver, so he can head them off if they try to cross the Malpais. And get a move on you. Hustle the boys right along."

And with that he put spurs to his horse and galloped off.

CHAPTER XIX

THE ROAN WITH THE WHITE STOCKINGS

Unerringly rode Healy through the tangled hills toward a saddle in the peaks that flared vivid with crimson and mauve and topaz. A man of moods, he knew more than one before he reached the Pass for which he was headed. Now he rode with his eyes straight ahead, his face creased to a hard smile that brought out its evil lines. Now he shook his clenched fist into the air and cursed.

Or again he laughed exultingly. This was when he remembered that his rival was trapped beyond hope of extrication.

While the sky tints round the peaks deepened to purple with the coming night he climbed cañons, traversed rock ridges, and went down and up rough slopes of shale. Always the trail grew more difficult, for he was getting closer to the divide where Bear Creek heads. He reached the upper regions of the pine gulches that seamed the hills with wooded crevasses, and so came at last to Gregory's Pass.

Here, close to the yellow stars that shed a cold wintry light, he dismounted and hobbled his horse. After which he found a soft spot in the mossy rocks and fell asleep. He was a light sleeper, and two hours later he awakened. Horses were laboring up the Pass.

He waited tensely, rifle in both hands, till the heads of the riders showed in the moonlight. Three--four--five of them he counted. The men he saw were those he expected, and he lowered his rifle at once.

"Hello, Cuffs! Purdy! That you, Tom? Well, you're too late."

"Too late," echoed little Purdy.

"Yep. Didn't get here in time myself to see who any of them were except the last. It was right dark, and they were most through before I reached here."

"But you knew one," Purdy suggested.

Healy looked at him and nodded. "There were four of them. I crept forward on top of that flat rock just as the last showed up. He was ridin' a hawss with four white stockings."

"A roan, mebbe," Tom put in quickly.

"You've said it, Tom--a roan, and it looked to me like it was wounded. There was blood all over the left flank."

"O' course Keller was riding it," Purdy ventured.

"Rung the bell at the first shot," Healy answered grimly.

"The son of a gun!"

"How long ago was it, Brill?" asked another.

"Must a-been two hours, anyhow."

"No use us following them now, then."

"No use. They've gone to cover."

They turned their horses and took the back trail. The cow ponies scrambled down rocky slopes like cats, and up steep inclines with the agility of mountain goats. The men rode in single file, and conversation was limited to disjointed fragments jerked out now and again. After an hour's rough going they reached the foothills, where they could ride two abreast. As they drew nearer to the ranch country, now one and now another turned off with a shout of farewell.

Healy accepted Purdy's invitation, and dismounted with him at the Fiddleback. Already the first glimmering of dawn flickered faintly from the serrated range. The men unsaddled, watered, fed, and then walked stiffly to the house. Within five minutes both of them lay like logs, dead to the world, until Bess Purdy called them for breakfast, long after the rest of the family had eaten.

"What devilment you been leading paw into, Brill?" demanded Bess promptly when he appeared in the doorway. "Dan says it was close to three when you got home."

She flung her challenge at the young man with a flash of smiling teeth. Bess was seventeen, a romp, very pretty, and hail-fellow-well-met with every range rider in a radius of thirty miles.

"We been looking for a beau for you, Bess," Healy immediately explained.

Miss Purdy tossed her head. "I can find one for myself, Brill Healy, and I don't have to stay out till three to get him, either."

"Come right to your door, do they?" he asked, as she helped him to the ham and eggs.

"Maybe they do, and maybe they don't."

"Well, here's one come right in the middle of the night. Somehow, I jest couldn't make out to wait till morning, Bess."

"Oh, you," she laughed, with a demand for more of this sort of chaffing in her hazel eyes.

At this kind of rough give and take he was an adept. After breakfast he stayed and helped her wash the dishes, romping with her the whole time in the midst of gay bursts of laughter and such repartee as occurred to them.

He found his young hostess so entertaining that he did not get away until the morning was half gone. By the time he reached Seven Mile the sun was past the meridian, and the stage a lessening patch of dust in the distance.

Before he was well out of the saddle, Phyllis Sanderson was standing in the doorway of the store, with a question in her eyes.

"Well?" he forced her to say at last.

Leisurely he turned, as if just aware of her presence.

"Oh, it's you. Mornin', Phyl."

"What did you find out?"

"I met your friend."

"What friend?"

"Mr. Keller, the rustler and bank robber," he drawled insolently, looking full in her face.

"Tell me at once what you found out."

"I found Mr. Keller riding a roan with four white stockings and a wound on its flank."

She caught at the jamb. "You didn't, Brill!"

"I ce'tainly did," he jeered.

"What--what did you do?" Her lips were white as her cheeks.

"I haven't done, anything--yet. You see, I was alone. The other boys hadn't arrived then."

"And he wasn't alone?"

"No; he had three friends with him. I couldn't make out whether any more of them were college chums of yours."

Without another word, she turned her back on him and went into the store. All night she had lain sleepless and longed for and dreaded the coming of the day. Over the wire from Noches had come at dawn fuller details of the robbery, from her brother Phil, who was spending two or three days in town.

It appeared that none of the wounded men would die, though the president had had a narrow escape. Posses had been out all night, and a fresh one was just starting from Noches. It was generally believed, however, that the bandits would be able to make good their escape with the loot.

Her father was absent, making a round of his sheep camps, and would not be back for a week. Hence her hands were very full with the store and the ranch.

She busied herself with the details of her work, nodded now and again to one of the riders as they drifted in, smiled and chatted as occasion demanded, but always with that weight upon her heart she could not shake off. Now, and then again, came to her through the window the voices of Public Opinion on the porch. She made out snatches of the talk, and knew the tide was running strongly against the nester. The sound of Healy's low, masterful voice came insistently. Once, as she looked through the window, she saw a tilted flask at his lips.

Suddenly she became aware, without knowing why, that something was happening, something that stopped her heart and drew her feet swiftly to the door.

Conversation had ceased. All eyes were deflected to a pair of riders coming down the Bear Creek trail with that peculiar jog that is neither a run nor a walk. They seemed quite at ease with the world. Speech and laughter rang languid and carefree. But as they swung from the saddles their eyes swept the group before them with the vigilance of searchlights in time of war.

Brill Healy leaned forward, his right hand resting lightly on his thigh.

"So you've come back, Mr. Keller," he said.

"As you see."

"But not on that roan of yours, I notice."

"You notice correctly, seh."

"Now I wonder why." Healy spoke with a drawl, but his eyes glittered menacingly.

"I expect you know why, Mr. Healy," came the quiet retort.

"Meaning?"

"That the roan was stolen from the pasture two nights ago. Do you happen to know the name of the thief?"

The cattleman laughed harshly, but behind his laughter lay rising anger. "So that's the story you're telling, eh? Sounds most as convincing as that yarn about the pocketknife you picked up."

"I'm not quite next to your point. Have I got to explain to you why I do or don't ride a certain horse, seh?"

"It ain't necessary. We all know why. You ain't riding it because there is a bullet wound in the roan's flank that might be some hard to explain."

"I don't know what you mean. I haven't seen the horse for two days. It was stolen, as I say. Apparently you know a good deal about that roan. I'd be right pleased to hear what you know, Mr. Healy."

"Glad to death to wise you, Mr. Keller. That roan was in Noches yesterday, and you were on its back."

The nester shook his head. "No, I reckon not."

Yeager broke in abruptly: "What have you got up your sleeve, Brill? Spit it out."

"Glad to oblige you, too, Jim. The First National at Noches was held up yesterday, about half-past three or four, by some masked men. Slim and Jim Budd were around and recognized that roan and its rider."

"You mean----"

"You've guessed it, Jim. I mean that your friend, the rustler, is a bank robber, too."

"Yesterday, you say, at four o'clock?"

"About four, yes."

Yeager's face cleared. "Then that lets him out. I was with him yesterday all day."

"Any one else with him?"

"No. We were alone."

"Where?"

"Out in the hills."

"Didn't happen to meet a soul all day maybe?"

"No; what of it?"

Healy barked out again his hard laugh of incredulity. "Go slow, Jim. That ain't going to let him out. It's going to let you in."

Yeager took a step toward him, fists clenched, and eyes flashing. "I'll not stand for that, Brill."

Healy waved him aside. "I've got no quarrel with you, Jim. I ain't making any charges against you to-day. But when it comes to Mr. Keller, that's different." His gaze shifted to the nester and carried with it implacable hostility. "I back my play. He's not only a rustler, he's a bank robber, too. What's more, he'll never leave here alive, except with irons on his wrists!"

"Have you a warrant for my arrest, Mr. Healy?" inquired Keller evenly.

"Don't need one. Furthermore, I'd as lief take you in dead as alive. You cayn't hide behind a girl's skirts this time," continued Healy. "You've got to stand on your own legs and take what's coming. You're a bad outfit. We know you for a rustler, and that's enough. But it ain't all. Yesterday you gave us surplusage when you shot up three men in Noches. Right now I serve notice that you've reached the limit."

"You serve notice, do you?"

"You're right, I do."

"But not legal notice, Mr. Healy."

At sight of his enemy standing there so easy and undisturbed, facing death so steadily and so alertly, Brill's passion seethed up and overflowed. Fury filmed his eyes. He saw red. With a jerk, his revolver was out and smoking. A stop watch could scarce have registered the time before Keller's weapon was answering.

But that tenth part of a second made all the difference. For the first heavy bullet from Healy's .44 had crashed into the shoulder of his foe. The shock of it unsteadied the nester's aim. When the smoke cleared it showed the Bear Creek man sinking to the ground, and the right arm of the other hanging limply at his side.

At the first sound of exploding revolvers, Phyllis had grown rigid, but the fusillade had not died away before she was flying along the hall to the porch.

Brill Healy's voice, cold and cruel, came to her in even tones:

"I reckon I've done this job right, boys. If he hadn't winged me, and if Jim hadn't butted in, I'd a-done it more thorough, though."

Yeager was bending over the man lying on the ground. He looked up now and spoke bitterly: "You've murdered an innocent man. Ain't that thorough enough for you?"

Then, catching sight of Cuffs on the porch of the house, Yeager issued orders sharply: "Get on my horse and ride like hell for Doc Brown! Bob, you and Luke help me carry him into the house. What room, Phyl?"

"My room, Jim. Oh, Cuffs, hurry, please!" With that she was gone into the house to make ready the bed for the wounded man.

Healy picked up the revolver that had fallen from his hand, and slid it back into the holster.

"That's right, boys. Take him in and let Phyl patch up the coyote if she can. I reckon this time, she'll have her hands plumb full. Beats all how a decent girl can take up with a ruffian and a scoundrel."

"That will be enough from you, seh," Yeager told him sharply.

Purdy nodded. "Jim's right, Brill. This man has got what was coming to him. It ain't proper to jump him right now, when he's down and out."

"Awful tender-hearted you boys are. Come to that, I've got a pill in me, too, but of course that don't matter," Healy retorted.

"If he dies you'll have another in you, seh," Yeager told him quietly, meeting his eyes steadily for an instant. "Steady, Bob. You take his feet. That's right."

They carried the nester to the bedroom of Phyllis and laid him down gently on the bed. His eyes opened and he looked about him as if to ask where he was. He seemed to understand what had happened, for presently he smiled faintly at his friend and said:

"Beat me to it, Jim. I'm bust up proper this time."

"He shot without giving warning."

Keller moved his head weakly in dissent. "No, I knew just when he was going to draw, but I had to wait for him."

The big, husky plainsmen undressed him with the tenderness of women, and did their best with the help of Aunt Becky, to take care of his wounds temporarily. After these had been dressed Phyllis and the old colored woman took charge of the nursing and dismissed all the men but Yeager.

It would be many hours before Doctor Brown arrived, and it took no critical eyes to see that this man was stricken low. All the supple strength and gay virility were out of him. Three of the bullets had torn through him. In her heavy heart the girl believed he was going to die. While Yeager was out of the room she knelt down by the bedside, unashamed, and asked for his life as she had never prayed for anything before.

By this time his fever was high and he was wandering in his head. The wild look of delirium was in his eyes, and faint weak snatches of irrelevant speech on his lips. His moans stabbed her heart. There was nothing she could do for him but watch and wait and pray. But what little was to be done in the way of keeping his hot head cool with wet towels her own hands did jealously. Jim and Aunt Becky waited on her while she waited on the sick man.

About midnight the doctor rode up. All day and most of the night before he had been in the saddle. Cuffs had found him across the divide, nearly forty miles away, working over a boy who had been bitten by a rattlesnake. But he brought into the sick room with him that manner of cheerful confidence which radiates hope. You could never have guessed that he was very tired, nor, after the first few minutes, did he know it himself. He lost himself in his case, flinging himself into the breach to turn the tide of what had been a losing battle.

CHAPTER XX

YEAGER RIDES TO NOCHES

Jim Yeager had not watched through the long day and night with Phyllis without discovering how deeply her feelings were engaged. His unobtrusive readiness and his constant hopefulness had been to her a tower of strength during the quiet, dreadful hours before the doctor came.

Once, during the night, she had followed him into the dark hall when he went out to get some fresh cold water, and had broken down completely.

"Is he--is he going to die?" she besought of him, bursting into tears for the first time.

Jim patted her shoulder awkwardly. "Now, don't you, Phyl. You got to buck up and help pull him through. Course he's shot up a heap, but then a man like him can stand a lot of lead in his body. There aren't any of these wounds in a vital place. Chief trouble is he's lost so much blood. That's where his clean outdoor life comes in to help build him up. I'll bet Doc Brown pulls him through."

"Are you just saying that, Jim, or do you really think so?"

"I'm saying it, and I think it. There's a whole lot in gaming a thing out. What we've got to do is to think he's going to make it. Once we give up, it will be all off."

"You are such a help, Jim," she sighed, dabbing at her eyes with her little handkerchief. "And you're the best man."

"That's right. I'll be the best man when we pull off that big wedding of yours and his."

Her heart went out to him with a rush. "You're the only friend both of us have," she cried impulsively.

With the coming of Doctor Brown, Jim resigned his post of comforter in chief, but he stayed at Seven Mile until the crisis was past and the patient on the mend. Next day Slim, Budd, and Phil Sanderson rode in from Noches. They were caked with the dust of their fifty-mile ride, but after they had washed and eaten, Yeager had a long talk with them. He learned, among other things, that Healy had telephoned Sheriff Gill that Keller was lying wounded at Seven Mile, and that the sheriff was expecting to follow them in a few hours.

"Coming to arrest Brill for assault with intent to kill, I reckon," Yeager suggested dryly.

Phil turned on him petulantly. "What's the use of you trying to get away with that kind of talk, Jim? This fellow Keller was recognized as one of the robbers."

"That ain't what Slim has just been telling, Phil. He says he recognized the hawss, and thinks it was Keller in the saddle. Now, I don't think anything about it. I know Keller was with me in the hills when this hold-up took place."

"You're his friend, Jim," the boy told him significantly.

"You bet I am. But I ain't a bank robber, if that's what you mean, Phil."

His clear eyes chiselled into those of the boy and dominated him.

"I didn't say you were," Phil returned sulkily. "But I reckon we all recall that you lied for him once. Whyfor would it be a miracle if you did again?"

Jim might have explained, but did not, that it was not for Keller he had lied. He contented himself with saying that the roan with the white stockings had been stolen from the pasture before the holdup. He happened to know, because he was spending the night in Keller's shack with him at the time.

Slim cut in, with drawling sarcasm: "You've got a plumb perfect alibi figured out for him, Jim. I reckon you've forgot that Brill saw him riding through the Pass with the rest of his outfit."

"Brill says so. I say he didn't," returned Yeager calmly.

Toward evening Gill arrived and formally put Keller under arrest. Practically, it amounted only to the precaution of leaving a deputy at the ranch as a watch, for one glance had told the sheriff that the wounded man would not be in condition to travel for some time.

It was the following day that Yeager saddled and said good-by to Phyllis.

"I'm going to Noches to see if I cayn't find out something. It don't look reasonable to me that those fellows could disappear, bag and baggage, into a hole and draw it in after them."

"What about Brill's story that he saw them at the Pass?" the girl asked.

"He may have seen four men, but he ce'tainly didn't see Larrabie Keller. My notion is, Brill lied out of whole cloth, but of course I'm not in a position to prove it. Point is, why did he lie at all?"

Phyllis blushed. "I think I know, Jim."

Yeager smiled. "Oh, I know that. But that ain't, to my way of thinking, motive enough. I mean that a white man doesn't try to hang another just because he--well, because he cut him out of his girl."

"I never was his girl," Phyllis protested.

"I know that, but Brill couldn't get it through his thick head till a stone wall fell on him and give him a hint."

"What other motive are you thinking of, Jim?"

He hesitated. "I've just been kinder milling things around. Do you happen to know right when you met Brill the day of the robbery?"

"Yes. I looked at my watch to see if we would be in time for supper. It was five-thirty."

"And the robbery was at three. The fellows didn't get out of town till close to three-thirty, I reckon," he mused aloud.

"What has that got to do with it? You don't mean that----" She stopped with parted lips and eyes dilating.

He shook his head. "I've got no right to mean that, Phyllie. Even if I did have a kind of notion that way I'd have to give it up. Brill's got a steel-bound, copper-riveted alibi. He couldn't have been at Noches at three o'clock and with you two hours later, fifty-five miles from there. No hawss alive could do it."

"But, Jim--why, it's absurd, anyway. We've known Brill always. He couldn't be that kind of a man. How could he?"

"I didn't say he could," returned her friend noncommittally. "But when it comes to knowing him, what do you know about him--or about me, say? I might be a low-lived coyote without you knowing it. I might be all kinds of a devil. A good girl like you wouldn't know it if I set out to keep it still."

"I could tell by looking at you," she answered promptly.

"Yes, you could," he derided good-naturedly. "How would you know it? Men don't squeal on each other."

"Do you mean that Brill isn't--what we've always thought him?"

"I'm not talking about Brill, but about Jim Yeager," he evaded. "He'd hate to have you know everything that's mean and off color he ever did."

"I believe you must have robbed the bank yourself, Jim," she laughed. "Are you a rustler, too?"

He echoed her laugh as he swung to the saddle. "I'm not giving myself away any more to-day."

Brill Healy rode up, his arm in a sling. Deep rings of dissipation or of sleeplessness were under his eyes. He looked first at Yeager and then at the young woman, with an ugly sneer. "How's your dear patient, Phyl?"

"He is better, Brill," she answered quietly, with her eyes full on him. "That is, we hope he is better. The doctor isn't quite sure yet."

"Some of us don't hope it as much as the rest of us, I reckon."

She said nothing, but he read in her look a contempt that stung like the lash of a whip.

"He'll be worse again before I'm through with him," the man cried, with a furious oath.

Phyllis measured him with her disdainful eye, and dismissed him. She stepped forward and shook hands with Yeager.

"Take care of yourself, Jim, and don't spare any expense that is necessary," she said.

For a moment she watched her friend canter off, then turned on her heel, and passed into the house, utterly regardless of Healy.

Yeager reached Noches late, for he had unsaddled and let his horse rest at Willow Springs during the heat of the broiling day.

After he had washed and had eaten, Yeager drifted to the Log Cabin Saloon and gambling house. Here was gathered the varied and turbulent life of the border country. Dark-skinned Mexicans rubbed shoulders with range riders baked almost as brown by the relentless sun. Pima Indians and Chinamen and negroes crowded round the faro and dice tables. Games of monte and chuckaluck had their devotees, as had also roulette and poker.

It was a picturesque scene of strong, untamed, self-reliant frontiersmen. Some of them were outlaws and criminals, and some were as simple and tender-hearted as children. But all had become accustomed to a life where it is possible at any moment to be confronted with sudden death.

A man playing the wheel dropped a friendly nod at Jim. He waited till the wheel had stopped and saw the man behind it rake in his chips before he spoke. Then, as he scattered more chips here and there over the board, he welcomed Yeager with a whoop.

"Hi there, Malpais! What's doing in the hills these yere pleasant days?"

"A little o' nothin', Sam. The way they're telling it you been having all the fun down here."

Sam Wilcox gathered the chips pushed toward him by the croupier and cashed in. He was a heavy-set, bronzed man, with a bleached, straw-colored mustache. Taking his friend by the arm, he led him to one end of the bar that happened for the moment to be deserted.

"Have something, Jim. Oh, I forgot. You're ridin' the water wagon and don't irrigate. More'n I can say for some of you Malpais lads. Some of them was in here right woozy the other day."

"The boys will act the fool when they hit town. Who was it?"

"Slim and Budd and young Sanderson."

"Was Phil Sanderson drunk?" Yeager asked, hardly surprised, but certainly troubled.

"I ain't sure he was, but he was makin' the fur fly at the wheel, there. Must have dropped two hundred dollars."

Jim's brows knit in a puzzled frown. He was wondering how the boy had come by so much money at a time.

"Who was he trailin' with?"

"With a lad called Spiker, that fair-haired guy sitting in at the poker table. He's another youngster that has been dropping money right plentiful."

"Who is he?"

"He's what they call a showfer. He runs one o' these automobiles; takes parties out in it."

"Been here long? Looks kind o' like a tinhorn gambler."

"Not long. He's thick with some of you Malpais gents. I've seen him with Healy a few."

"Oh, with Healy."

Jim regarded the sportive youth more attentively, and presently dropped into a vacant seat beside him, buying twenty dollars worth of chips.

Spiker was losing steadily. He did not play either a careful or a brilliant game. Jim, playing very conservatively, and just about holding his own, listened to the angry bursts and the boastings of the man next him, and drew his own conclusions as to his character. After a couple of hours of play the Malpais man cashed in and went back to the hotel where he was putting up.

He slept till late, ate breakfast leisurely, and after an hour of looking over the paper and gossiping with the hotel clerk about the holdup he called casually upon the deputy sheriff. Only one thing of importance he gleaned from him. This was that the roan with the white stockings had been picked up seven miles from Noches the morning after the holdup.

This put a crimp in Healy's story of having seen Keller in the Pass on the animal. Furthermore, it opened a new field for surmise. _Brill Healy said that he had seen the horse with a wound in its flank._ Now, how did he know it was wounded, since Slim had not mentioned this when he had telephoned? It followed that if he had not seen the broncho--and that he had seen it was a sheer physical impossibility--he could know of the wound only because he was already in close touch with what had happened at Noches.

But how could he be aware of what was happening fifty miles away? That was the sticker Jim could not get around. His alibi was just as good as that of the horse. Both of them rested on the assumption that neither could cover the ground between two given points in a given time. There was one other possible explanation--that Healy had been in telephonic communication with Noches before he met Phyllis. But this seemed to Jim very unlikely, indeed. By his own story he had been cutting trail all afternoon and had seen nobody until he met Phyllis.

Yeager called on the cashier, Benson, later in the day, and had a talk with him and with the president, Johnson. Both of these were now back at their posts, though the latter was not attempting much work as yet. Jim talked also with many others. Some of them had theories, but none of them had any new facts to advance.

The young cattleman put up at the same hotel as Spiker and struck up a sort of intimacy with him. They sometimes loafed together during the day, and at night they were always to be seen side by side at the poker table.

CHAPTER XXI

BREAKING DOWN AN ALIBI

Keller found convalescence under the superintendence of Miss Sanderson one of the great pleasures of his life. Her school was out for the summer and she was now at home all day. He had never before found time to be lazy, and what dreaming he had done had been in the stress of action. Now he might lie the livelong day and not too obviously watch her brave, frank youth as she moved before him or sat reading. For the first time in his life he was in love!

But as the nester grew better he perceived that she was withdrawing herself from him. He puzzled over the reason, not knowing that her brother, Phil, was troubling her with flings and accusations thrown out bitterly because his boyish concern for her good name could find no gentler way to express itself.

"They're saying you're in love with the fellow--and him headed straight for the pen," he charged.

"Who says it, Phil?" she asked quietly, but with flaming cheeks.

He smote his fist on the table. "It don't matter who says it. You keep away from him. Let Aunt Becky nurse him. You haven't any call to wait on him, anyhow. If he's got to be nursed by one of the family, I'll do it."

He tried to keep his word, and as a result of it the wounded man had to endure his sulky presence occasionally. Keller was man of the world enough to be amused at his attitude, and yet was interested enough in the lad's opinion of him to keep always an even mood of cheerful friendliness. There was a quantity of winsome camaraderie about him that won its way with Phil in spite of himself. Moreover, all the boy in him responded to the nester's gameness, the praises of which he heard on all sides.

"I see you have quite made up your mind I'm a skunk," the wounded man told him amiably.

"You robbed the bank at Noches and shot up three men that hadn't hurt you any," the boy retorted defiantly.

"Not unless Jim Yeager is a liar."

"Oh, Jim! No use going into that. He's your friend. I don't know why, but he is."

"And you're Brill Healy's. That's why you won't tell that he was carrying your sister's knife the day I saw you and him first."

The boy flashed toward the bed startled eyes. Keller was looking at him very steadily.

"Who says he had Phyl's knife?"

"Hadn't he?"

"What difference does that make, anyhow? I hear you're telling that you found the knife beside the dead cow. You ain't got any proof, have you?" challenged young Sanderson angrily.

"No proof," admitted the other.

"Well, then." Phil chewed on it for a moment before he broke out again: "I reckon you cayn't talk away the facts, Mr. Keller. We caught you in the act--caught you good. By your own story, you're the man we came on. What's the use of you trying to lay it on me and Brill?"

"Am I trying to lay it on you?"

"Looks like. On Brill, anyhow. There's nothing doing. Folks in this neck of the woods is for him and against you. Might as well sabe that right now," the lad blurted.

"I sabe that some of them are," the other laughed, but not with quite his usual debonair gayety. For he did not at all like the way things looked.

But though Phil had undertaken to do all the nursing that needed to be done by the family, he was too much of an outdoors dweller to confine himself for long to the four walls of a room. Besides, he was often called away by the work of looking after the cattle of the ranch. Moreover, both he and his father were away a good deal arranging for the disposal of their sheep. At these times her patient hoped, and hoped in vain, that Phyllis would take her brother's place.

Came a day when Keller could stand it no longer. In Becky's absence, he made shift to dress himself, bit by bit, lying on the bed in complete exhaustion after the effort of getting into each garment. He could scarce finish what he had undertaken, but at last he was clothed and ready for the journey. Leaning on a walking stick, he dragged himself into the passage and out to the porch, where Phyllis was sitting alone.

She gave a startled cry at sight of him standing there, haggard and white, his clothes hanging on his gaunt frame much as if he had been a skeleton.

"What are you doing?" she cried, running to his aid.

After she had got him into her chair, he smiled up at her and panted weakly. He was leaning back in almost complete exhaustion.

"You wouldn't come to see me, so--I came--to see you," he gasped out, at last.

"But--you shouldn't have! You might have done yourself a great injury. It's--it's criminal of you."

"I wanted to see you," he explained simply.

"Why didn't you send for me?"

"There wasn't anybody to send. Besides, you wouldn't have stayed. You never do, now."

She looked at him, then looked away. "You don't need me now--and I have my work to do."

"But I do need you, Phyllie."

It was the first time he had ever spoken the diminutive to her. He let out the word lingeringly, as if it were a caress. The girl felt the color flow beneath her dusky tan. She changed the subject abruptly.

"None of the boys are here. How am I to get you back to your room?"

"I'll roll a trail back there presently, ma'am."

She looked helplessly round the landscape, in hope of seeing some rider coming to the store. But nobody was in sight.

"You had no business to come. It might have killed you. I thought you had better sense," she reproached.

"I wanted to see you," he parroted again.

Like most young women, she knew how to ignore a good deal. "You'll have to lean on me. Do you think you can try it now?"

"If I go, will you stay with me and talk?" he bargained.

"I have my work to do," she frowned.

"Then I'll stay here, thank you kindly." He settled back into the chair and let her have his gay smile. Nevertheless, she saw that his lips were colorless.

"Yes, I'll stay," she conceded, moved by her anxiety.

"Every day?"

"We'll see."

"All right," he laughed weakly. "If you don't come, I'll take a pasear and go look for you." She helped him to his feet and they stood for a moment facing each other.

"You must put your hand on my shoulder and lean hard on me," she told him.

But when she saw the utter weakness of him, her arm slipped round his waist and steadied him.

"Now then. Not too fast," she ordered gently.

They went back very slowly, his weight leaning on her more at every step. When they reached his room, Keller sank down on the bed, utterly exhausted. Phyllis ran for a cordial and put it to his lips. It was some time before he could even speak.

"Thank you. I ain't right husky yet," he admitted.

"You mustn't ever do such a thing again," she charged him.

"Not ever?"

"Not till the doctor says you're strong enough to move."

"I won't--if you'll come and see me every day," he answered irrepressibly.

So every afternoon she brought a book or her sewing, and sat by him, letting Phil storm about it as much as he liked. These were happy hours. Neither spoke of love, but the air was electrically full of it. They laughed together a good deal at remarks not intrinsically humorous, and again there were conversational gaps so highly charged that she would rush at them as a reckless hunter takes a fence.

As he got better, he would be propped up in bed, and Aunt Becky would bring in tea for them both. If there had been any corner of his heart unwon it would have surrendered then. For to a bachelor the acme of bliss is to sit opposite a girl of whom he is very fond, and to see her buttering his bread and pouring his tea with that air of domesticity that visualizes the intimacy of which he has dreamed. Keller had played a lone hand all his turbulent life, and this was like a glimpse of Heaven let down to earth for his especial benefit.

It was on such an occasion that Jim Yeager dropped in on them upon his return from Noches. He let his eyes travel humorously over the room before he spoke.

"Why for don't I ever have the luck to be shot up?" he drawled.

"Oh, you Jim!" Keller called a greeting from the bed. Phyllis came forward, and, with a heightened color, shook hands with him.

"You'll sit down with us and have some tea, Jim," she told him.

"Me? I'm no society Willie. Don't know the game at all, Phyl. Besides, I'm carrying half of Arizona on my clothes. It's some dusty down in the Malpais."

Nevertheless he sat down, and, over the biscuits and jam, told the meagre story of what he had found out.

The finding of the stocking-footed roan near Noches so soon after the robbery disposed of Healy's lie, though it did not prove that Keller had not been riding it at the time of the holdup. As for Healy, Yeager confessed he saw no way of implicating him. His alibi was just as good as that of any of them.

But there was one person his story did involve, and that was Spiker, the tinhorn, tenderfoot sport of Noches. During the absence of this young man at the gaming table, Jim and his friend, Sam Weaver, had got into his room with a skeleton key and searched it thoroughly. They had found, in a suit case, a black mask, a pair of torn and shiny chaps, a gray shirt, a white, dusty sombrero, much the worse for wear, and over three hundred dollars in bills.

"What does he pretend his business is?" Keller asked, when Jim had finished.

"Allows he's a showfer. Drives folks around in a gasoline wagon. That's the theory, but I notice he turned down a mining man who wanted to get him to run him into the hills on Monday. Said he hadn't time. The showfer biz is a bluff, looks like."

The nester made no answer. His eyes, narrowed to slits, were gazing out of the window absently. Presently he came from deep thought to ask Yeager to hand him the map he would find in his inside coat pocket. This he spread out on the bed in front of him. When at last he looked up he was smiling.

"I reckon it's no bluff, Jim. He's a chauffeur, all right, but he only drives out select outfits."

"Meaning?"

The map lying in front of Keller was one of Noches County. The nester located, with his index finger, the town of that name, and traced the road from it to Seven Mile. Then his finger went back to Noches, and followed the old military road to Fort Lincoln, a route which almost paralleled the one to the ranch.

The eyes of Phyllis were already shining with excitement. She divined what was coming.

"Is this road still travelled, Jim?"

"It goes out to the old fort. Nobody has lived there for most thirty years. I reckon the road ain't travelled much."

"Strikes through Del Oro Cañon, doesn't it, right after it leaves Noches?"

"Yep."

"I reckon, Jim, your friend, Spiker, drove a party out that way the afternoon of the holdup," the nester drawled smilingly. "By the way, is your friend in the lockup?"

"He sure is. The deputy sheriff arrested him same night we went through his room."

"Good place for him. Well, it looks like we got Mr. Healy tagged at last. I don't mean that we've got the proof, but we can prove he might have been on the job."

"I don't see it, Larry. I reckon my head's right thick."

"I see it," spoke up Phyllis quickly.

Keller smiled at her. "You tell him."

"Don't you see, Jim? The motor car must have been waiting for them somewhere after they had robbed the bank," she explained.

"At the end of Del Oro Cañon, likely," suggested the nester.

She nodded eagerly. "Yes, they would get into the cañon before the pursuit was in sight. That is why they were not seen by Slim and the rest of the posse."

Yeager looked at her, and as he looked the certainty of it grew on him. His mind began to piece out the movements of the outlaws from the time they left Noches. "That's right, Phyl. His car is what he calls a hummer. It can go like blazes--forty miles an hour, he told me. And the old fort road is a dandy, too."

"They would leave the automobile at Willow Creek, and cut across to the Pass," she hazarded.

"All but Brill. Being bridlewise, he rode right for Seven Mile to make dead sure of his alibi, whilst the others made their getaway with the loot. When he happened to meet you on the way, he would be plumb tickled, for that cinched things proper for him. You would be a witness nobody could get away from."

"And what about their hawsses? Did they bring the bronchs in the car, too?" drawled Keller, an amused flicker in his eyes.

The others, who had been swimming into their deductions so confidently, were brought up abruptly. Phyllis glanced at Jim and looked foolish.

"The bronchs couldn't tag along behind at a forty per clip. That's right," admitted Yeager blankly.

"I hadn't thought about that. And they had to have their horses with them to get from Willow Creek to the Pass. That spoils everything," the girl agreed.

Then, seeing her lover's white teeth flashing laughter at her, she knew he had found a way round the difficulty. "How would this do, partners--just for a guess: The car was waiting for them at the end of the Del Oro Cañon. They dumped their loot into it, then unsaddled and threw all the saddles in, too. They gave the bronchs a good scare, and started them into the hills, knowing they would find their way back home all right in a couple of days. At Willow Creek they found hawsses waiting for them, and Mr. Spiker hit the back trail for Noches, with his car, and slid into town while everybody was busy about the robbery."

"Sure. That would be the way of it," his friend nodded. "All we got to do now is to get Spiker to squeal."

"If he happens to be a quitter."

"He will--under pressure. He's that kind."

A knock came on the door, and Tom Benwell, the store clerk, answered her summons to come in.

"It's Budd, Miss Phyl. He came to see about getting-that stuff you was going to order for a dress for his little girl," the storekeeper explained.

Phyllis rose and followed the man back to the store. When she had gone, Jim stepped to the door and shut it. Returning, he sat down beside the bed.

"Larry, I didn't tell all I know. That hat in Spiker's room had the initials P.S. written on the band. What's more, I knew the hat by a big coffee stain splashed on the crown. It happens I made that stain myself on the round-up onct when we were wrastling and I knocked the coffeepot over."

Keller looked at his friend gravely. "It was Phil Sanderson's hat?"

Yeager nodded assent. "He must have loaned his old hat to Spiker for the holdup."

"You didn't turn the hat over to the sheriff?"

"Not so as you could notice it. I shoved it in my jeans and burnt it over my camp fire next day."

"This mixes things up a heap. If Phil is in this thing--and it sure looks that way--it ties our hands. I'd like to have a talk with Spiker before we do anything."

"What's the matter with having a talk with Phil? Why not shove this thing right home to him?"

The nester shook his head. "Let's wait a while. We don't want to drive Healy away yet. If the kid's in it he would go right to Healy with the whole story."

Yeager swore softly. "It's all Brill's fault. He's been leading Phil into devilment for two years now."

"Yes."

"And all the time been playing himself for the leader of us fellows that are against the rustlers and that Bear Creek outfit," continued Jim bitterly. "Why, we been talking of electing him sheriff. Durn his forsaken hide, he's been riding round asking the boys to vote for him on a promise to clean out the miscreants."

"You can oppose him, of course. But we have no absolute proof against him yet. We must have proof that nobody can doubt."

"I reckon. And'll likely have to wait till we're gray."

"I don't think so. My guess is that he's right near the end of his rope. We're going to make a clean-up soon as I get solid on my feet."

"And Phil? What if we catch him in the gather, and find him wearing the bad-man brand?"

Keller's eyes met those of his friend. "There never was a rodeo where some cattle didn't slip through unnoticed, Jim."

CHAPTER XXII

SURRENDER

The weeks slipped away and brought with them healing to the wounded man at Seven Mile. He moved from the bed where at first he had spent his days to a lounge in the living room, and there, from the bay window, he could look out at the varied life of the cattle country. Men came and went in the dust of the drag drive, their approach heralded by the bawl of thirsty cattle. Others cantered up and bought tobacco and canned goods. The stage arrived twice a week with its sack of mail, and always when it did Public Opinion gathered upon the porch of the store, as of yore. Phil Sanderson he saw often, Yeager sometimes, and once or twice he caught a glimpse of Healy's saturnine face.

A scarcity of beef and a sharp rise in prices brought the round-up earlier than usual. Every spare man was called upon to help comb the hills for the wild steers that ran the wooded water-sheds, as untamed as the deer and the lynx. Even the storekeeper, Benwell, was pressed into the service. 'Rastus and the nester were the only men about the place, the deputy sheriff having been recalled to Noches on the collapse of Healy's story.

The removal to a distance of the rest of her admirers did not have the effect of throwing Keller alone with Phyllis more often. The young mistress of the ranch invited Bess Purdy to visit her, and now he never saw her except in the presence of her other guest.

Bess took him in at once, evidencing her approval of him by entering upon a spirited war of repartee with him. She had not been in the house twenty-four hours before she had unbosomed herself of a derisive confidence.

"I don't believe you're a bank robber, at all! I don't believe you are even a rustler! You're a false alarm!"

Both Keller and Miss Sanderson smiled at the daring of the girl's challenge. But the former defended himself with apparent heat.

"What makes you think so? Why should you undermine my reputation with such an assertion? You can't talk that way about me without proving it, Miss Purdy."

"Well, I don't. You don't look it."

"I can't help that. You ask Mr. Healy. He'll tell you I am."

"You'll need a better witness than Brill before I'll believe it."

"And I thought you were going to like me," he lamented.

"I like a lot of people who aren't ruffians, but of course I can't admire you so much as if you were a really truly bad man."

"But if I promise to be one?"

"Oh, anybody can promise," she flung back, eyes bubbling with laughter.

"Wait till I get on my feet again."

A youth galloped up to the house in a cloud of alkali dust.

"There's Cuffs," announced Phyllis, smiling at Bess.

That young woman blushed a little, supposed, aloud, she must go out to see him, and withdrew in seeming reluctance.

"He wants Bess to go with him to the Frying Pan dance. He sent a note over from the round-up to ask her. She hasn't had a chance yet to tell him that she would," explained her friend.

"How will he take her?" asked the nester, his eyes quickening.

"In the surrey, I suppose. Why?"

"The surrey will hold four."

She made no pretense of not understanding. Her look met his in a betrayal of the pleasure his invitation gave her. Yet she shook her head.

"No, thank you."

"But why--if I may ask?"

"Ah! But you mayn't," she smiled.

He considered that. "You like to dance."

"Most girls do."

"Then it is because of me," he soliloquized aloud.

"Please," she begged lightly.

"My reputation, I suppose."

She began to roll up the embroidery upon which she was busy. But he got to the door before her.

"No, you don't."

"You are not going to make me tell you why I can't go with you, are you?"

"That, to start with. Then I'm going to make you tell me some other things."

"But if I don't want to tell?" Her eyes were wide open with surprise, for he had never before taken the masterful line with her. Deep down, she liked it; but she had no intention of letting him know so.

"There are times not to tell, and there are times to tell. This will be one of the last kind, Phyllis."

She tried mockery. "When you throw a big chest like that I suppose you always get what you want."

"You act right funny, girl. I never see you alone any more. We haven't had a good talk for more than a week. Now, why?"

She thought of telling him she had been too busy; then, moved by an impulse of impatience, met his gaze fully, and told him part of the truth.

"I should think you would understand that a girl has to be careful of what she does!"

"You mean about us being friends?"

"Oh, we can be friends, but----If you can't see it, then I can't tell you," she finished.

"I can see it, I reckon. You saved my life, and I expect some human cat got his claws out and said it was because you were fond of me.

"Then you saved it again by your nursing. No two ways about that. Doc Brown says you and Jim did. I was so sick folks knew it had to be. But now I'm getting well, you have to show them you're not interested in me. Isn't that about it?"

"Yes."

"But you don't have to show me, too, do you?"

"Am I not--courteous?"

"I ain't worrying any about your courtesy. But, look here, Phyllie. Have you forgotten what happened in the kitchen that night you helped me to escape?"

She flashed him one look of indignant reproach. "I should think you would be the last person in the world to remind me of it."

"I've got a right to mention it because I've asked you a question since that ain't been answered. That week's been up ten days."

"I'm not going to answer it now."

And with that she slipped past him and from the room.

He ran a hand through his curls and voiced his perplexity. "Now, if a woman ain't the strangest ever. Just as a fellow is ready to tell her things, she gets mad and hikes."

Nevertheless he smiled, not uncheerfully. What experience he had had with young women told him the signs were not hopeless for his success. He was not sure of her, not by a good deal. He had captured her imagination. But to win a girl's fancy is not the same as to storm her heart. He often caught himself wondering just where he stood with her. For himself, he knew he was fathoms deep in love.

She was in his thoughts when he fell asleep.

He awoke in the darkness, and sat upright in the bed, a feeling of calamity oppressing him. Something pungent tickled his nostrils.

A faint crackling sounded in the air.

Swiftly he slipped on such clothes as he needed and stepped into the passage. A heavy smoke was pouring up the back stairway. He knocked insistently upon the door where Phyllis and her guest were sleeping.

"What is it?" a voice demanded.

"Get up and dress, Miss Sanderson! The house is on fire! You have plenty of time, I think. If there's any hurry I'll let you know after I've looked."

He went down the front stairs and found that the fire was in the back part of the house. Already volumes of smoke with spitting tongues of flame were reaching toward the foot of the stairs. He ran up to the room where the girls were dressing, and called to them:

"Are you ready?"

"Yes."

The door opened, to show him two very pale girls, each carrying a bundle of clothes. They were only partially dressed, but wrappers covered their disarray. Keller went to the clothes closet, emptied it with a sweep and lift of his arm, and returned, to lead the way downstairs.

"Take a breath before you start. The smoke's bad, but there is no real danger," he told them as he plunged forward.

At the foot of the stairs he stopped to see that they were following him closely, then flung open the outer door and let in a rush of cool, sweet air. In another moment they were outside, safe and unhurt.

Phyllis drew a long breath before she said:

"The house is gone!"

"If there is anything you want particularly from the living room I can get in through the window," Keller told her.

She shuddered. Flame jets were already shooting out here and there. "I wouldn't let you go back for the world. We didn't get out too soon."

"No," he agreed.

A sniveling voice behind them broke in: "Where is Mr. Phil? I yain't seen him yet."

Larrabie swung round on 'Rastus like a flash. "What do you mean? He's at the round-up, of course."

The little fellow began to bawl: "No, sah. He done come home late last night. Aftah you-all had gone to bed. He's in his room, tha's where he is."

Phyllis caught at the arm of Keller to steady her. She was colorless to the lips.

"Oh, God! Oh, God!" she cried faintly.

The nester pushed her gently into the arms of her guest.

"Take care of her, Bess. I'll get Phil."

He ran round the house to the back. The bedroom occupied by young Sanderson was on the first floor. The ranger caught up a stick, smashed the window, and tore out the frame by main strength. Presently he was inside, groping through the dense smoke toward the bed.

Flames leaped at him from out of it like darting serpents. His hair, his face, his clothes, caught fire before he had discovered that the bed had been used, but was now empty. The door into the hall was open, and through it were pouring billows of smoke. Evidently Phil must have tried to escape that way and been overpowered.

The young man caught up a towel and wrapped it around his throat and mouth, then plunged forward into the caldron of the passage. The smoke choked him and the intense heat peeled his face and made the endurance of it an agony.

He stumbled over something soft, and discovered with his hands that it was a body. Smothered and choked, half frantic with the heat, he struggled back into the bedroom with his burden.

Somehow he reached the window, stumbled through it, and dragged the inanimate body after him. Then, with Phil in his arms, he reeled forward into the fresh air beyond.

With a cry Phyllis broke from Bess and ran toward him. But before she had reached the rescuer and the rescued, Keller went down in total collapse. He, too, was unconscious when she knelt beside him and began with her hands to crush out the smoldering fire in his clothes.

He opened his eyes and smiled faintly when he saw who it was.

"How's the boy?" he asked.

"He is breathing," cried Bess joyfully, from where she was bending over Sanderson.

"You go attend to him. I'm all right now."

"Are you truly?"

"Truly."

He proved it by sitting up, and presently by rising and joining with her the group gathered around Phil. For Aunt Becky had now emerged from her cabin and taken charge of affairs.

Phil was supported to the bunk house and put to bed by Keller and 'Rastus. It was already plain that he would be none the worse for his adventure after a night's good sleep. Aunt Becky applied to his case the homely remedies she had used before, while the others stood around the bed and helped as best they could. Strangely enough, he was not burned at all. In this he had escaped better than Keller, whose hair and eyebrows and skin were all the worse for singeing.

The nester noticed that Phyllis, in handing a bowl of water to Bess, used awkwardly her left hand. The right one, he observed, was held with the palm concealed against the folds of her skirt.

Presently Phyllis, her anxiety as to Phil relieved, left Aunt Becky and Bess to care for him, while she went out to make arrangements for disposing of the party until morning. The nester followed her into the night and walked beside her toward the house of the foreman. The darkness was lit up luridly by the shooting flames of the burning house.

"The store isn't going to catch fire. That's one good thing," Keller observed, by way of comfort.

"Yes." There was a catch in her voice, for all the little treasures of her girlhood, gathered from time to time, were going up in smoke.

"You're insured, I reckon?"

"Yes."

"Well, it might be worse."

She thought of the narrow escape Phil had had, and nodded.

"You'll have to sleep in the bunk house. Take any of the beds you like. Bess and I will put up at the foreman's," she explained.

As is the custom among bachelors who attend to their own domestic affairs, they found the bed just as the foreman had stepped out of it two weeks before. While Keller held the lantern, Phyllis made it up, and again he saw that she was using her right hand very carefully and flinching when it touched the blankets. Putting the lantern down on the table, he walked up to her.

"I'll make the bed."

She stepped back, with a little laugh. "All right."

He made it, then turned to her at once.

"I want to see your hand."

She gave him the left one, even as he had done on the occasion of their second meeting. He took it, and kept it.

"Now the other."

"What do you want with it?"

"Never mind." He reached down and drew it from the folds of her skirt, where it had again fallen. Very gently he turned it so that the palm was up. Ugly blisters and a red seam showed where she had burned herself. He looked at her without speaking.

"It's nothing," she told him, a little hysterically.

For an instant her mind flashed back to the time when Buck Weaver had drawn the cactus spines out of that same hand.

His voice was rough with feeling. "I can see it isn't. And you got it for me--putting out the fire in my clothes. I reckon I cayn't thank you, you poor little tortured hand." He lifted the fingers to his lips and kissed them.

"Don't," she cried brokenly.

"Has it got to be this way always, Phyllie--you giving and me taking?" His hand tightened on hers ever so slightly, and a spasm of pain shot across her face. He looked at the burned fingers again tenderly. "Does it hurt pretty bad, girl?"

"I wish it was ten times as bad!" she broke out, with a sob. "You saved Phil's life--at the risk of your own. I wish I could tell you how I feel, what I think of you, how splendid you are." In default of which ability, she began to cry softly.

He wasted no more time. He did not ask her whether he might. With a gesture, his arm went around her and drew her to him.

"Let me tell what I think of you, instead, girl o' mine. I cayn't tell it, either, for that matter, but I reckon I can make out to show you, honey."

"I didn't mean--that way," she protested, between laughter and tears.

"Well, that's the way I mean."

Neither spoke again for a minute. Than: "Do you really--love me?" she murmured.

"What do you think?" He laughed with the sheer unconquerable boyish delight in her.

"I think you're pretending right well," she smiled.

"If I am making believe."

"If you are." Her arms slipped round his neck with a swift impulse of love. "But you're not. Tell me you're not, Larry."

He told her, in the wordless way lovers have at command, the way that is more convincing than speech.

So Phyllis, from the troubled waters of doubt, came at last to safe harborage.

CHAPTER XXIII

AT THE RODEO

There was an exodus from Seven Mile the second day after the fire. Keller went up Bear Creek, Phyllis accepted the invitation of Bess to stay with her at the Fiddleback, and her brother returned to the round-up.

The riders were now combing the Lost Creek watershed. Phil knew the camp would be either at Peaceful Valley or higher up, near the headwaters of the creek. Before he reached the valley the steady bawl of cattle told him that the outfit was camped there. He topped the ridge and looked down upon Cattleland at its busiest. Just below him was the remuda, the ponies grazing slowly toward the hills under the care of three half-grown boys.

Beyond were the herded cattle. Here all was activity. Within the fence of riders surrounding the wild creatures the cutting out and the branding were being pushed rapidly forward. Occasionally some leggy steer, tail up and feet pounding, would make a dash to break the cordon. Instantly one of the riders would wheel in chase, head off the animal, and drive it back.

Brill Healy, boss of the rodeo by election, was in charge. He was an expert handler of cattle, one of the best in the country. It was his nature to seek the limelight, though it must be said for him that he rose to his responsibilities. The owners knew that when he was running the round-up few cattle would slip through the net he wound around them.

"Hello, Brill!" shouted the young man as he rode up.

"Hello, son! Too bad about the fire. I'll want to hear about it later. Looking for a job?" he flung hurriedly over his shoulder. For he had not even a minute to spare.

"I reckon."

Phil did not wait to be assigned work, but joined the calf branders.

Not until night had fallen and they were gathered round in a semicircle leaning against their saddles did Phil find time to tell the story of the fire. There was some haphazard comment when he had finished, after which Slim spoke.

"So the nester hauled you out. Ce'tainly looks like he's plumb game. You said he was afire when he got you into the open, didn't you, Phil?"

The boy nodded. "And all in. He fainted right away."

"With him still burning away like the doctor's fire there," murmured Healy ironically, with a slight gesture toward the cook.

Phil looked at him angrily. "I didn't say that. Some one put the fire out."

"Oh, some one! Might a man ask who?"

Phil had not had any intention of telling, but he found himself letting Healy have it straight.

"Phyllis."

"About what I thought!" Healy said it significantly, and with a malice that overrode his discretion.

"What do you mean?" demanded the boy fiercely.

"I ain't said anything, have I?" Healy came back smoothly.

Yeager's quiet voice broke the silence that followed, while Phil was trying to voice the resentment in him.

"You mean what we're all thinking, Brill, I reckon--that she is the sort to forget herself when somebody needs her help. Ain't that it?"

The eyes of the two met steadily in a clash of wills. Healy's gave way for the time, not because he was mastered, but because he did not wish to alienate the rough, but fair-minded, men sitting around.

"You're mighty good at explaining me to the boys, Jim. I expect that is what I mean," he answered sullenly.

"Sure," put in Purdy, with amiable intent.

"But when it comes to Mr. Keller I can explain myself tol'able well. I don't need any help there, Jim, not even if he is yore best friend."

"If you've got anything to say against him, I'll ask you to say it when I'm not around," broke in Phil. "You'll recollect, please, that he's my friend, too."

"That so? Since, when, Phil?" the rodeo boss retorted sarcastically.

"Since he went into the fire after me and saved my life. Think I'm a coyote to round on him? I tell you he's a white man clear through. In my opinion, he's neither a rustler nor a bank robber." He was flushed and excited, but his gaze met that of his former friend and challenged him defiantly.

Healy's eyes narrowed. He gazed at the boy darkly, as if he meant to read him through and through. For years he had dominated Phil, had shaped him to his ends, had led him into wild, lawless courses after him. Now the anchors were dragging. He was losing control of him. He resolved to turn the screws on him, but not at this time and place.

"I've always been considered a full-grown man, Phil. What I think I aim to say out loud when the notion hits me. That being so, I go on record as having an opinion about Keller. You think he's on the square, and you give him a whitewashed certificate as a bony-fidy Sunday-school scholar.

"Different here. I think him a coyote and a crook, and so I say it right out in meeting. Any objections?" The gaze of the boss shifted from Sanderson to Yeager, and fastened.

"None in the world. You think what you like, Brill, and we'll stick to our opinions," Yeager replied cheerfully.

"And when I get good and ready I'll act on mine," Healy replied with an evil grin.

"If you find it right convenient. I expect Keller ain't exactly a wooden cigar Indian. Maybe he'll have a say-so in what's doing," suggested Yeager.

"About as much as he had last time," sneered the round-up boss. With which he rose, stretched himself, and gave orders. "Time to turn in, boys. We're combing Old Baldy to-morrow, remember."

"And Old Baldy's sure a holy terror," admitted Slim.

"Come three more days and we'd ought to be through. I'm not going to grieve any when we are. This high life don't suit me too durned well," put in Benwell.

"Yet when you come here first you was a right sick man, Tom. Now, you're some healthy. Don't that prove the outside of a hawss is good for the inside of a man, like the docs say?" grinned Purdy.

"Tom's notion of real living is sassiety with a capital S," explained Cuffs. "You watch him cut ice at the Frying Pan dance next week. He'll be the real-thing lady-killer. All you lads going, I reckon. How about you, Jim?"

Yeager said he expected to be there.

"With yore friend the rustler?" asked Healy insolently over his shoulder.

"I haven't got any friend that's a rustler."

"I'm speaking of Mr. Larrabie Keller." There was a slurring inflection on the prefix.

"He'll be there, I shouldn't wonder."

"I'd wonder a heap," retorted Healy. "You'll see he won't show his face there."

"That's where you're wrong, Brill. He told me he was going," spoke up Phil triumphantly.

"We'll see. He's wise to the fact that this country knows him for an out-and-out crook. He'll stay in his hole."

"You going, Slim?" asked Purdy amiably, to turn the conversation into a more pacific channel.

"Sure," answered that young giant, getting lazily to his feet. "Well, sons, the boss is right. Time to pound our ears."

They rolled themselves in their blankets, the starry sky roofing their bedroom. Within five minutes every man of them was asleep except the night herders--and one other.

Healy lay a little apart from the rest, partially screened by some boxes of provisions and a couple of sacks of flour. His jaw was clamped tight. He looked into the deep velvet sky without seeing. For a long time he did not move. Then, noiselessly, he sat up, glanced around carefully to make sure he was not observed, rose, and stole into the darkness, carrying with him his saddle and bridle.

One of his ponies was hobbled in the mesquite. Swiftly he saddled. Leading the animal very carefully so as to avoid rustling the brush, he zigzagged from the camp until he had reached a safe distance. Here he swung himself on and rode into the blur of night, at first cautiously, but later with swift-pounding hoofs. He went toward the northwest in a bee line without hesitation or doubt. Only when the lie of the ground forced a detour did he vary his direction.

So for hours he travelled until he reached a cañon in which squatted a little log cabin. He let his voice out in the howl of a coyote before he dismounted. No answer came, save the echo from the cliff opposite. Again that mournful call sounded, and this time from the cabin found an answer.

A man came sleepily to the door and peered out. "Hello! That you, Brill?"

Healy swung off, trailed his rein, and followed the man into the cabin. "Don't light up, Tom. No need."

For ten minutes they talked in low tones. Healy emerged from the cabin, remounted, and rode back to the cow camp. He reached it just as the first, faint streaks of gray tinged the eastern sky.

Silently he unsaddled, hobbled his pony, and carried his saddle back to the place where he had been lying. Once more he lay down, glanced cautiously round to see all was quiet, and fell asleep as soon as his head touched the saddle.

CHAPTER XXIV

MISSING

From all over the Malpais country, from the water-sheds where Bear and Elk and Cow creeks head, from the halfway house far out in the desert where the stage changes horses, men and women dribbled to the Frying Pan for the big dance after the round-up. Great were the preparations. Many cakes and pies and piles of sandwiches had been made ready. Also there was a wash boiler full of coffee and a galvanized tub brimming with lemonade. For the Frying Pan was doing itself proud.

Phil and his sister drove over together. The boy had asked Bess to go with him, but Cuffs had beaten him to it. The distance was only twenty-five miles, a neighborly stroll in that country of wide spaces and desert stretches filled with absentees.

When Phyllis came into the big room where the dancing was in progress, her dark eye swept the room without finding him for whom she looked. There were many there she knew, not more than two or three whom she had never met, but among them all she looked at none who was a magnet for her eyes. Keller had not yet arrived.

Before she had taken her seat she had three engagements to dance. Jim Yeager had waylaid her; so, too, had Slim and Curly. She waltzed first with Phil, and after he had done his duty he left her to the besiegings of half a score of riders for various ranches who came and went and came again. She joked with them, joined the merry banter that went on, laughed at them when they grew sentimental, always with a sprightly devotion to the matter in hand.

Nevertheless, though they did not know it, her mind was full of him who had not yet appeared. Why was he late? Could he have missed the way by any chance? And later--as the hours passed without bringing him--could anything have happened to him? More than once her troubled gaze fell upon Brill Healy with a brooding question in it. The man had received only the day before his party's nomination for sheriff, and he was doing the gracious to all the women and children.

He had many of the qualities that make for popularity, even though he was often overbearing, revengeful, and sullen. When he chose he could be hail fellow well met in a way Malpais found flattering to its vanity. Now he was apparently having the time of his life. Wherever he moved an eddy of laughter and gayety went with him. The eyes of men as well as women admiringly followed his dark, lithe, picturesque figure.

Phyllis had declined to dance with him, giving as an excuse a full programme, and for an instant his face had blazed with the suppressed rage in him. He had bowed and swaggered away with a malicious sneer. Her judgment told her it was folly to connect this man with the absence of her lover, but that look of malevolent triumph had none the less shaken her heart. What had he meant? It seemed less a threat for the future than a gloating over some evil already done.

When she could endure them no longer she carried her fears to Jim Yeager. They were dancing, but she made an excuse of fatigue to drop out.

"First time I ever knew you to play out at a dance, Phyl," he rallied her.

"It isn't that. I want to say something to you," she whispered.

He had a guess what it was, for his own mind was not quite easy.

"Do you think anything could have happened, Jim?" she besought pitifully when for a moment they were alone in a corner.

"What could have happened, Phyllie? Do you reckon he fell off his hawss, and him a full-size man?" he scoffed.

"Yes, but--you don't know how Brill looked at me. I'm afraid."

"Oh, Brill!" His voice held an edge of scorn, but none the less it concealed a real fear. He was making as much concession to it as to her when he added lightly: "Tell you what I'll do, Phyl. I'll saddle up and take a look back over the Bear Creek trail. Likely I'll meet him, and we'll come in together."

Her eyes met his, and he needed no other thanks. "You'll lose the dance," was her only comment.

Jim followed the road until it branched off to join the Bear Creek trail. Here he deflected toward the mountains, taking the zigzag path that ran like a winding thread among the rocks as it mounted. Now for the first time there came to him the faint rhythmic sound of a galloping horse's hoofs. He did not stop, and as he picked his way among the rocks he heard for some time no more of it.

"Mr. Hurry-up-like-hell kept the road, I reckon," Jim ruminated aloud, and even as he spoke he caught again the echo of an iron shoe striking a rock.

He stopped and listened. Some one was climbing the trail behind him.

"Mebbe he's a friend, and then mebbe he isn't. We'll let him have the whole road to himself, eh, Keno?"

Yeager guided his pony to the left, and took up a position behind some huge bowlders from whence he could see without being seen. The pursuer toiled into sight, a slim, wiry youth on a buckskin. He came forward out of the shadows into the fretted moonlight.

Yeager gave a glad whoop of recognition. "Hi-yi, Phil!"

"You're there, are you? Did I scare you off the trail, Jim?"

"That's whatever, boy. What are you doing here?"

"Sis sent me. She got worried again, and we figured I'd better join you."

"I reckon there's nothing serious the matter. Still, it ain't like Larry to say he would come and then not show up."

"Brill is back there bragging about it." Phil nodded his head toward the lights of the Frying Pan glimmering far below. "Says he knew the waddy wouldn't show his head. You don't reckon, Jim, he's turned a trick on Keller, do you?"

"That's what we have got to find out, Phil."

"Looks funny he'd be so durned sure when we all know how game Keller is," the boy reflected aloud.

"I don't expect you're armed, Phil?" Jim put the statement as a question.

"Nope. Are you?"

"No, I ain't. Didn't think of it when I started. Oh, well, we'll make out. Like enough there will be no need of guns."

A gray light was sifting into the sky, and still they rode, winding up toward the peaks of the divide. Jim, leading the way, drew rein and pointed to a cactus bush beside the trail. Among its spines lay a gray felt hat. From it his eye wandered to the very evident signs of a struggle that had taken place. Moss and cactus had been trampled down by boot heels. To the cholla hung here and there scraps of cloth. A blood splash stared at them from an outcropping slope of rock.

Jim swung from the saddle and rescued the hat from the spines. Inside the sweat band were the initials L.K. Silently he handed the hat to Phil.

"It's his hat," the boy cried.

"It's his hat," Jim agreed. "They must have laid for him here. He put up a good scrap. Notice how that cholla is cut to ribbons. Point is, what did they do to him?"

They searched the ground thoroughly, and discovered no body hidden in the brush.

"They've taken him away. Likely he's alive," Yeager decided aloud at last.

"Brill couldn't have been in this. He was at the Frying Pan before I was."

"I reckon he ordered it done. If that's correct they will be holding Larry till Brill gets there to give further orders."

Phil entered an objection. "That doesn't look to me like Brill's way. He's not scared of any man that lives. When he squares accounts with Keller he'll be on the job himself."

"That's so, too," admitted Yeager. "Still, I figure this is Healy's work. Maybe he gave out there was to be no killing. He was at the ranch himself, big as coffee, so as to be sure of his alibi."

"What does he care about an alibi? When he gets ready to go gunnin' after Keller he won't care if the whole Malpais sees him. There's something in this I don't sabe."

"There sure is. We've got to run the thing down muy pronto. No use both of us going ahead without arms, Phil. My notion is this: You burn a shuck back to the Frying Pan and round up some of our friends on the q.t. Don't let Brill get a notion of what's in the air. Better make straight for Gregory's Pass. I'm going to follow this trail we've cut and see what's doing. Once I find out I'll double back to the Pass and meet you. Bring along an extra gun for me."

"I don't reckon I will, Jim. What's the matter with me going on instead of you? I can follow this trail good as you can. I announce right here that I'm not going back. I've got first call on this job. Keller went into the fire after me. I'm going to follow this trail to hell if I have to."

Yeager tried persuasion, argument, appeal. The lad was as fixed as Gibraltar.

"I'm not going to go buttin' in where I'm not wanted any more than you would, Jim. I'll play this hand out with a cool head, but I'm going to play it my ownself."

"All right. It's your say-so. I'll admit you've got a claim. But you want to remember one thing--if anything happens to you I cayn't square it with Phyl. Go slow, boy!"

Without more words they parted, Jim to ride swiftly back for help, and young Sanderson to push on up the trail with his eyes glued to it. Ever since he could swing himself to a saddle he had been a vaquero in the cow country.

He was therefore an expert at reading the signs left by travellers. What would have been invisible to a tenderfoot offered evidence to him as plain as the print on a primer. Mile after mile he covered with a minute scrutiny that never wavered.

CHAPTER XXV

LARRY TELLS A BEAR STORY

Keller rode blithely down the piney trail while the sun flung its brilliant good-bye over the crotch of the mountains behind which it was slipping. The western sky was a Turner sublimated to the nth degree, a thing magnificent and indescribable. The young man rode with his crisp curls bared to the light, grateful breeze that came like healing from the great peaks. From the joyous, unquenchable youth in him bubbled snatches of song and friendly smiles scattered broadcast over a world that pleased him mightily.

He was going to see his girl, going down to the Frying Pan to take her in his arms and whirl her into the land of romance to the rhythm of the waltz. He wanted to shout it out to the chipmunks and the quails. Ever and again he broke out with a line or two of a melody he had heard once from a phonograph. No matter if he did not get the words exactly. He was sure of the sentiment. So the hills flung back his lusty:

"I love a lassie, A bonnie Hieland lassie, She's as pure as the lily of the dell."

Disaster fell upon him like a bolt out of a June sky. His pony stumbled, went down heavily with its weight on his leg. From the darkness men surged upon him. Rough hands dragged at him. The butt of a weapon crashed down on his hat and stunned him.

He became dimly aware that his leg was free from the horse, that he was struggling blindly to rise against the force that clamped him down. He knew that he reached his feet, that he was lashing out furiously with both hands, that even as he grappled with one assailant a gleam of steel flashed across the moonlight and shot through him with a zigzag pain that blotted out the world.

As his mind swam back to consciousness through troubled waters a far-away voice came out of the fog that surrounded him.

"He's coming to, looks like. I reckon you ain't bust his head, after all, Brad."

Vague, grinning gargoyles mocked him from the haze. Slowly these took form. Features stood out. The masks became faces. They no longer floated detached in space, but belonged definitely to human beings.

"It ain't our fault if you're stove up some, pardner. You're too durned anxious to whip yore weight in wildcats," one of the men grinned.

"Right you are, Tom. He shore hits like a kicking mule," chimed in a third, nursing a cheek that had been cut open to the bone.

A fourth spoke up, a leather-faced vaquero with hard eyes of jade. "No hard feelings, friend. All in the way of business." With which he gave a final tug at the knot that tied the hands of his prisoner.

"I've got Mr. Healy to thank for this, I expect," commented the nester quietly.

"We've got no rope on yore expectations, Mr. Keller; but this outfit doesn't run any information bureau," answered the heavy-set, sullen fellow who had been called Brad.

There were four of them, all masked; but the ranger was sure of one of them, if not two. The first speaker had been Tom Dixon; the last one was Brad Irwin, a rider belonging to the Twin Star outfit.

They helped the bound man to his horse and held a low-voiced consultation. Three of his captors turned their horses toward the south, while Irwin took charge of Keller. With his rifle resting across the horn of his saddle, the man followed his charge up the trail, winding among the summits that stood as sentinels around Gregory's Pass. Through the defile they went, descending into the little-known mountain parks beyond.

This region was the heart of the watershed where Little Goose Creek heads. The peaks rose gaunt above them. Occasionally they glimpsed wide vistas of tangled, wooded cañons and hills innumerable as sea billows. Into this maze they plunged ever deeper and deeper. Daylight came, and found them still travelling. The prisoner did not need to be told that this inaccessible country was the lurking place of the rustlers who had preyed so long upon the Malpais district. Nor did he need evidence to connect the sinister figure behind him with the gang of outlaws who rode in and out of these silent places on their nefarious night errands while honest folks kept their beds.

The sun was well up to its meridian before they came through a thick clump of quaking aspens to the mouth of a gulch opening from the end of a little mountain park. On one of the slopes of the gulch a cabin squatted, half hidden by the great boulders and the matting of pine boughs in front. Here Brad swung stiffly from the saddle.

"We'll 'light hyer," he announced.

"Time, too," returned Keller easily. "If anybody asks you, tell them I usually eat breakfast some before ten o'clock."

"You'll do yore eating from now on when I give the word," his guard answered surlily.

He was a big, dark man with a grouch, one who took his duties sourly. Not by any stretch of imagination could he be considered a brilliant conversationalist. What he had to say he growled out audibly enough, but for the rest his opinions had to be cork-screwed out of him in surly monosyllables.

There was a good deal of the cave man about him. The heavy, slouching shoulders, the glare of savagery, the long, hairy arms, all had their primordial suggestion. Given a club and a stone ax, he might have been set back thousands of years with no injustice to his mentality.

The man soon had a fire blazing in the stove, and from it came a breakfast of bacon, black coffee, and biscuits. He freed the hands of the nester and sat opposite him at the table, a revolver by the side of his plate for use in an emergency.

Keller smiled. "This is one of those fashionable dinners where they have extra hardware beside the plates," he suggested.

"Get gay, and I'll blow the top of yore head off!" the cow-puncher swore with gusto.

"Thanks. Under the circumstances, I reckon I'll not get gay. I'm in no hurry to put you in the pen, seh. Plenty of time. I'm going to need the top of my head to testify against you."

Irwin swore violently.

"For two cents I'd pump you full of holes right now," he glared.

Keller laughed, meeting him eye to eye pleasantly.

"Those aren't the orders, friend. I'm to be held here till the boss shows up or gives the signal."

The big jaw of his captor fell from astonishment. "Who told you that?"

The prisoner helped himself to more bacon and laughed again. He had made a guess, but he knew now that he had hit the bull's-eye with his shot in the dark.

"Some things don't need telling. I don't have to be told, for instance, that if things get too hot for Brill Healy he will slide out and leave you to settle the bill with the law."

Irwin's eyes glared angrily at his smiling ones. The unabashed impudence, the unfluttered aplomb, but above all the uncanny prescience of this youth disturbed him because he could not understand them. Moreover, it happened that his suspicious mind had lingered on the chance of a betrayal at the hands of his chief. For which very reason he broke into angry denial.

"That's a lie! Brill ain't that sort. He'd stand pat to a finish." Then, tardily, came the instinct for caution. "And there's nothing to tell, anyways," he finished sulkily.

"Sure. What's a little rustling and a little bank robbing among friends?" Keller wanted to know cheerfully.

For just an instant he thought he had gone too far. The big ruffian opposite choked over his biscuit, the while rage purpled his face. He caught up the revolver, and his fingers itched at the trigger.

His prisoner, leaning back in the chair, held him with quiet, unwavering eyes. "Steady! Steady!" he drawled.

"That will be about enough from you," Irwin let out through set teeth. "You padlock that mouth of yours, mister."

Keller took his advice temporarily, but it was not in him to long repress the spirit of adventure that bubbled in him. The temptation to bait this bear drew him irresistibly. He could not let him alone, the more that he sensed the danger to himself of the prods he sent home through the thick skin.

Lying carelessly on the bed with his head on his arm, or perhaps sitting astride a chair with his hands crossed on the back support, he would smile with childlike innocence and sent his barbs in gayly. And Irwin, murder in his dull brain, would glare at him like a maniac.

"Now would be a good time to blow off the top of my cocoanut," the nester suggested more than once to the infuriated cave man. "I'm allowing, you know, to send you to Yuma as soon as I get out of this. Nothing like grabbing your opportunity by the forelock."

"And when are you expecting to get out of here?" his guard demanded huskily.

Keller waved his hand with airy persiflage. "No exact information obtainable, my friend. Likely to-day. Maybe not till to-morrow. The one dead-sure point is that I'll make my getaway at the right time."

"There's one more dead-sure point--that I'm going to blow holes in you at the right time," retorted the other.

"Like to bet on which of us is a true prophet?"

Brad relapsed into black, sulky silence.

The hours followed each other, and still nobody came to relieve the guard. Keller could not understand the reason for this, any more than he could fathom an adequate one for his abduction. There was of course something behind it--something more potent than mere malice. If the intention had been merely to kill him, the thing could have been done without all this trouble. But though he searched his brain for an explanation, he could not find one that satisfied.

The answer came to him later in the day. In the middle of the afternoon a horse pounded up the draw to the cabin. Irwin went to the door, his eye still on his prisoner, except for a swift glance at the newcomer.

"How's yore five-thousand-dollar beauty, Brad?" inquired a voice that the nester recognized.

"Finer than silk, boss."

The rider swung from the saddle, trailed his rein, and came with jingling spurs into the cabin.

"Good evening, Mr. Keller," he said with derisive respect.

The nester, lying sideways on the bed with his head on his hand, nodded a greeting.

"I didn't know you and Mr. Irwin had doubled up and were bunkies," continued the jubilant voice. "When did you-all patch up the partnership?"

"About eight o'clock last night, Mr. Healy," returned the prisoner, eying him coolly. "And of course I knew it would be a surprise to you when you learned it."

"Expecting to stay long with him?"

"He seems right hospitable, but I don't reckon I'll outstay my welcome."

Healy laughed, with mockery and not amusement. "Brad's such a pressing host there's no telling when he'll let you go."

He was as malevolent as ever, but it was plain to be seen that he was riding high on a wave of triumph. Affairs were plainly going to his liking.

"The way I heard it you were expected down at the Frying Pan last night. Changed yore mind about going, I reckon," he went on insolently.

"I reckon."

"Had business that detained you, maybe."

"You're a good guesser."

"Folks were right anxious down there, according to the say-so that reached me."

Keller's cool eye measured him in silence, at which his enemy laughed contemptuously and turned on his heel.

Healy drew his confederate to one side of the room and held a whispered talk with him. Apparently he did not greatly care whether his foe caught the drift of it or not, for occasionally his voice lifted enough so that scraps of sentences reached the man lounging on the bed.

"--close to two hundred head--by the Mimbres Pass--the boys are ce'tainly pushing the drive--out of danger by midnight--wait for the signal before you turn him loose----"

"So-long, Mr. Keller. I cayn't spare the time to stay longer with you," their owner jeered.

"Just a moment, Mr. Healy. I want to know why you are keeping me here."

The man grinned. "Am I keeping you here, seh? Looks to me like it was Brad that's a-keeping you. Make a break for a getaway, and I'll not do a thing to you. Course I cayn't promise what Brad won't do. He's such a plumb anxious host."

"You're his brains. What you tell him to do he does. I hold you responsible for this!"

"You don't say!"

"And right now I'll add, for all the devilment that has been going on in these parts for years. You've about reached the end of your rope, though."

"I'll bet dollars to doughnuts you reach the end of one inside of forty-eight hours, Mr. Rustler," flashed back Healy.

And with an evil, significant grin he was gone. They heard the sound of retreating hoofs die in the distance.

But his visit had told the prisoner two things. A hurried wholesale drive of rustled cattle was being made across the line into Sonora, and it was being done in such a way as to fasten the suspicion of it upon the nester who had not appeared at the dance and had not been seen since that time. The irony of the thing was superb in its audacity. Healy and his friends would get the profit from the stolen cattle, and they would visit the punishment for the crime upon him. Evidence would be cooked up of course, and the retribution would be so swift that his friends would not be able to save him. This time his enemy would take no chances. He would be wiped out like a troublesome insect. The thing was diabolic in the simplicity of its cleverness.

Keller watched his jailer now like a hawk. He was ready to take the first chance that offered, no matter how slight a one it seemed. But the man was vigilant and wary. He never let his hand wander a foot from the handle of the weapon he carried.

Silently Irwin cooked a second meal. They sat down to it opposite each other, Keller facing the open window. While his jailer plied the knife, his revolver again lay on the oilcloth within reach.

"While I'm your guest and eating at your expense, I want to be properly grateful," the nester told his vis-à-vis. "Some folks might kick because the me-an'-you wasn't more varied, but I ain't that kind. You're doing your best, and nobody could do more."

"The which?" asked Irwin puzzled.

"The me-an'-you. It's French for just plain grub. For breakfast we get bacon and coffee and biscuits. For supper there's a variety. This time it is biscuits and coffee and bacon. To-morrow I reckon----"

Keller stopped halfway in his sentence, but took up his drawling comment again instantly. Only an added sparkle in his eyes betrayed the change that had suddenly wiped out his indolence and left him tense and alert. For while he had been speaking a head had slowly raised itself above the window casement and two eyes had looked in and met his. They belonged to Phil Sanderson.

Never had the brain of the prisoner been more alert. While his garrulous tongue ran aimlessly on, he considered ways and means. The boy held up empty hands to show him that he was unarmed. The nester did not by the flicker of an eyelash betray the presence of a third party to the man at table with him. Nevertheless his chatter became from that moment addressed to two listeners. To one it meant nothing in particular. To the other it was pregnant with meaning.

"No, seh. Some might complain because you ain't better provided with grub and fixings, but what I say is _to make out the best we can with what we've got_," the slow, drawling voice continued. "Some folks cayn't get along unless things are up to the Delmonico standard. That's plumb foolishness. Reminds me of a friend of mine that happened on a grizzly onct while he was cutting trail.

"Not expecting to meet Mr. Bear, he didn't have any gun along. Mr. Bear was surely on the wah-path that day. He made a bee line for my friend to get better acquainted. Nothing like presence of mind. That cow-puncher got his rope coiled in three shakes of a maverick's tail, his pinto bucking for fair to make his getaway. The rope drapped over Mr. Bear's head just as the puncher and the hawss separated company.

"Things were doing right sudden then. My friend grabbed the end of that rope and twisted it round and round a young live oak. Then he remembered an appointment and lit out, Mr. Bear after him on the jump. Muy pronto that grizzly came up awful sudden. The more he jerked the nearer he was to being choked. You better believe Mr. Puncher was hitting that trail right willing in the meanwhile."

"You talk too much with yore mouth," growled Irwin.

"It's a difference of opinion that makes horse races. I was just aiming to show you that _if my friend hadn't happened to have a rope along he would have been in a bad fix_. But, you notice, he used his brains, and a rope did just as well as a gun."

The eyes just above the window casing disappeared. Brad attended to the business in hand, which was that of getting away with bacon and biscuits while he kept an eye on the man opposite. His prisoner also did justice to his supper, to his flow of conversation, and to the window behind the unconscious jailer.

In that open window were presently framed again the head and shoulders of young Sanderson. Irwin pushed back his chair to get some more coffee, and the picture in the frame shot instantly down. The guard, his coffee cup, and his revolver went to the stove and returned. Phil reappeared at the window, his rope coiled for action. It slid gracefully forward, dropped over the head of Brad, and was instantly jerked tight.

Keller vaulted across the table, and flung himself upon the struggling man. Brad's arms were entangled in the rope, but one leg shot out and hurled back the nester. But before he could free himself from the taut loop his prisoner was upon him again and had borne him to the ground.

Of the two, Irwin was far the more powerful, Keller the more agile and supple. He knew every trick of the wrestling game, whereas the other was clumsy and muscle-bound. By main strength the older man got to his feet again. Over went the table as they surged against it.

A chair, stamped into kindling, was hurled aside by the force of their impact. The stove rocked, and the bed collapsed as the locked figures crashed down upon it. The ranger, twisting as they fell, landed on top and his fingers instantly found the throat of his foe. Simultaneously Phil came to his assistance.

Even then, taken at an advantage, with two much younger men against him, the big jailer fought to the finish like a bear. Not till he was completely exhausted and they nearly so did he give up and lie quiet. All three of them panted heavily, the allies lying across his chest and legs. The nester managed to draw the loop taut about Irwin's neck and insert his knuckles so that he could use them as a tourniquet if necessary.

"Gather up the other end of the rope, loop it, and tie his feet together," the nester ordered, getting his sentence out in fragmentary jerks.

Phil did so, deftly and expertly, after which, in spite of renewed struggles, they tied the hands of their prisoner behind his back.

"Looks like a cyclone had hit the room," said the boy, glancing at the debris.

Larrabie laughed. "He's the most willing mixer I ever saw."

"What are you going to do with him?"

"We'll leave him tied right where he is. When we get down into the settlement we'll notify his friends, though I reckon they'll find him without any help from us."

In order to make sure they went over the knots again, tightening them here and there. The revolver and the rifle of the bound man they appropriated. The nester's horse was in a little corral back of the house. He saddled, and shortly the two were on the back trail. Phil knew the country as a golfer knows his links. To him Keller put the question in his mind:

"How far is the Mimbres Pass from here, and in what direction?"

The younger man looked at him in surprise. "A dozen miles, I reckon. See that cleft over there? That's the Mimbres."

His friend drew rein and looked with level eyes at him.

"Phil, it's come to a show-down! Are you for Brill Healy or are you for me?"

"I'm through with Brill."

"Dead sure of that?"

"Dead sure. Why?"

"Because you've got to make your choice to-night whether you're going to stand with honest men or thieves. Healy's gang is rustling a bunch of cows gathered at the round-up. They're heading for Mimbres Pass. I'm going to stop them if I can."

"I'm with you, Larry."

"Good! I was sure of you, Phil."

The boy flushed, but his eyes did not waver. "I want to tell you something. That day we most caught you over the dead cow of the C.O. outfit Brill was carrying Phyl's knife. I had lent it to him the night before."

Keller nodded. "I had figured it out that way."

"But that ain't all. Once when I was cutting trail in the hills--must have been about six months before that time--I happened on Brill driving a calf still bleeding from the brand he had put on it.

"I didn't think anything of that, but I noticed he was anxious to have me turn and join him. But I kept on the way I was going, and just by a miracle my pony almost stumbled over a dead cow lying in the brush. That set me thinking. That night I rode over to Healy's and asked an explanation.

"He had one ready. Some one else must have killed the cow. He found the calf wandering about alone, and branded it. Somehow his story didn't quite satisfy me, but I wasn't ready then to think him a coyote. I liked him--always had. And it flattered me that he had picked me out to be his best friend. So I said nothing, and figured it out that he was on the square. Of course I knew he was reckless and wild, but I didn't like him any the less for that. I reckon nobody ever accused him of not being game."

"Hardly," smiled Keller. "He'll stand the acid that way."

"The thing that stuck in my craw was his lying about seeing you on the night of the bank robbery. He said you were riding the roan with white stockings. Later we found out that couldn't be true. Then I knew Jim was telling the truth about you being with him in the hills at the time. It kind of sifted to me by degrees that you were a white man and he was a skunk."

"And then?"

"Then we had it out one day. He had his reason for wanting to stand well with me. I reckon you know what it is."

"I know his reason. No man could have a better. I reckon I've a right to think so, Phil, because she has promised to marry me."

The boy shook hands with him impulsively. "I'm right glad to hear it--and I want to say they don't make girls any better than Phyl."

"That's not news to me. I have known it since the first time I saw her."

Sanderson returned to the order of the day. "Well, Brill and I had had one or two tiffs, mostly about you and Phyl. He saw I was changed toward him, and he wanted to know why. I let him have it straight, and since then we haven't been friends."

"I'm glad of that. It makes plain sailing for me. He's got to be run down and caged, Phil. Healy is at the head of all this rustling that has been troubling the Malpais country. His gang stuck up the Diamond Nugget stage, killed Sheriff Fowler, and robbed the Noches Bank."

"How could he have robbed the bank when he was seen fifty miles from there not two hours afterward?"

Keller briefly explained his theory then pushed on at once to his plans.

"I'm going to make straight for the Mimbres Pass while you go back and rustle help. I'll try to keep them from getting through the Pass until you close in on them behind."

"That don't look good to me. How do I know how long it will be before I can gather the boys together or find Jim and his outfit? You might be massacred before I got back."

"A man has to take his fighting chance."

"Then let me take mine. We'll hold the pass together. I'll bet we can. Don't you reckon?"

"What use would you be without a rifle? No, Phil, you'll have to bring up the reinforcements. That's the best tactics."

Sanderson protested eagerly, but in the end was overborne. They turned their backs upon each other, one headed for the Mimbres and the other for the trail that ran down to the Malpais country.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE MAN-HUNT

When Jim Yeager separated from Phil after their discovery of Keller's hat and the deductions they drew from it, the former turned his pony toward the Frying Pan. Daylight had already broken before he came in sight of it, but sounds of revelry still issued boisterously from the house.

As he drew near there came to him the squeal of sawing riddles, the high-pitched voice of the dance caller in sing-song drawl, the shuffling of feet keeping time to the rhythm of the music. For though a new day was at hand, the quadrilles continued with unflagging vigor, one succeeding another as soon as the floor was cleared.

The cow country takes its amusements seriously. A dance is infrequent enough to be an event. Men and women do not ride or drive from thirty to fifty miles without expecting to drink the last drop of pleasure there may be in the occasion.

As Jim swung from the saddle, a slim figure in white glided from the shadow of the wild cucumber vines that rioted over one end of the porch.

"Well, Jim?"

The man came to the point with characteristic directness. "He has been waylaid, Phyl. We found his hat and the place where they ambushed him."

"Is he----" Her voice died at the word, but her meaning was clear.

"I don't think it. Looks like they were aiming to take him prisoner without hurting him. They might easily have shot him down, but the ground shows there was a struggle."

"And you came back without rescuing him?" she reproached.

"Phil and I were unarmed. I came back to get guns and help."

"And Phil?"

"He's following the trail. I wanted him to let me while he came back. But he wouldn't hear to it. Said he had to square his debt to Larry."

"Good for Phil!" his sister cried, eyes like stars.

"Is Brill still here?" he asked.

"No. He rode away about an hour ago. He was very bitter at me because I wouldn't dance with him. Said I'd curse myself for it before twenty-four hours had passed. He must have Larry in his power, Jim."

"Looks like," he nodded, and added grimly: "If you do any regretting there will be others that will, too."

She caught the lapels of his coat and looked into his face with extraordinary intensity. "I'm going back with you, Jim. You'll let me, won't you? I've waited--and waited. You can't think what an awful night it has been. I can't stand it any longer! I'll go mad! Oh, Jim, you'll take me, I know!" Her hands slipped down to his and clung to them with passionate entreaty.

"Why, honey, I cayn't. This is likely to be war before we finish. It ain't any place for girls."

"I'll stay back, Jim. I'll do whatever you say, if you'll only let me go."

He shook his head resolutely. "Cayn't be done, girl. I'm sorry, but you see yourself it won't do."

Nor could all her beseechings move him. Though his heart was very tender toward her he was granite to her pleadings. At last he put her aside gently and stepped into the house.

Going at once to the fiddlers, he stopped the music and stood on the little rostrum where they were seated. Surprised faces turned toward him.

"What's up, Jim?" demanded Slim, his arm still about the waist of Bess Purdy.

"A man was waylaid while coming to this dance and taken prisoner by his enemies. They mean to do him a mischief. I want volunteers to rescue him."

"Who is it?" several voices cried at once.

"The man I mean is Larrabie Keller."

A pronounced silence followed before Slim drawled an answer:

"Cayn't speak for the other boys, but I reckon I haven't lost any Kellers, Jim."

"Why not? What have you got against him?"

"You know well enough. He's under a cloud. We don't say he's a rustler and a bank robber, but then we don't say he ain't."

"I say he isn't! Boys, it has come to a show-down. Keller is a member of the Rangers, sent here by Bucky O'Connor to run down the rustlers."

Questions poured upon him.

"How do you know?"

"How long have you known?"

"Who told you?"

"Why didn't he tell us so himself, then?"

Jim waited till they were quiet. "I've seen letters from the governor to him. He didn't come here declaring his intentions because he knew there would be nothing doing if the rustlers knew he was in the neighborhood. He has about done his work now, and it's up to us to save him before they bump him off. Who will ride with me to rescue him?"

There was no hesitation now.

Every man pushed forward to have a hand in it.

"Good enough," nodded Yeager. "We'll want rifles, boys. Looks to me like hell might be a-popping before mo'ning grows very ancient. We'll set out from Turkey Creek Crossroads two hours from now. Any man not on hand then will get left behind.

"And remember--this is a man hunt! No talking, boys. We don't want the news that we're coming spread all over the hills before we arrive."

As Jim descended from the rostrum, his roving gaze fell on Phyl Sanderson standing in the doorway. Her fears had stolen the color even from her lips, but the girl's beauty had never struck him more poignantly.

Misery stared at him out of her fine eyes, yet the unconscious courage of her graceful poise--erect, with head thrown back so that he could even see the pulse beat in the brown throat--suggested anything but supine surrender to her terror. Before he could reach her she had slipped into the night, and he could not find her.

Men dribbled in to the Turkey Creek Crossroads along as many trails as the ribs of a fan running to a common centre. Jim waited, watch open, and when it said that seven o'clock had come he snapped it shut and gave the word to set out.

It was a grim, business-like posse, composed of good men and true who had been sifted in the impartial sieve of life on the turbid frontier. Moreover, they were well led. A certain hard metallic quality showed in the voice and eye of Jim Yeager that boded no good for the man who faced him in combat to-day. He rode with his gaze straight to the front, toward that cleft in the hills where lay Gregory's Pass. The others fell in behind, a silent, hard-bitten outfit as ever took the trail for that most dangerous of all big game--the hidden outlaw.

The little bunch of riders had not gone far before Purdy, who was riding in the rear, called to Yeager.

"Somebody coming hell-to-split after us, Jim."

It turned out to be Buck Weaver, who had been notified by telephone of what was taking place. A girl had called him up out of his sleep, and he had pounded the road hard to get in at the finish.

Jim explained the situation in a few words and offered to yield command to the owner of the Twin Star ranch. But Buck declined.

"You're the boss of this rodeo, Yeager. I'm riding in the ranks to-day."

"How did you hear we were rounding-up to-day?" Jim asked.

"Some one called me up," Buck answered briefly, but he did not think it necessary to say that it was Phyllis.

Behind them, unnoticed by any, sometimes hidden from sight by the rise and fall of the rough ground, sometimes silhouetted against the sky line, rode a slim, supple figure on a white-faced cow pony. Once, when the fresh morning wind swept down a gulch at an oblique angle, it lifted for an instant from the stirrup leather what might have been a gray flag. But the flag was only a skirt, and it signalled nothing more definite than the courage and devotion of a girl who knew that the men she loved best on earth were in danger.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE ROUND-UP

The Mimbres Pass narrows toward the southern exit where Point o' Rocks juts into the cañon and commands it like a sentinel. Toward this column of piled boulders slowly moved a cloud of white dust, at the base of which crept a band of hard-driven cattle. Swollen tongues were out, heads stretched forward in a bellow for water taken up by one as another dropped it. The day was still hot, though the sun had slipped down over the range, and the drove had been worked forward remorselessly. Every inch that could be sweated out of them had been gained.

For those that pushed them along were in desperate hurry. Now and again a rider would twist round in his saddle to sweep back a haggard glance. Dust enshrouded them, lay heavy on every exposed inch; but through it seams of anxiety crevassed their leathern faces. Iron men they were, with one exception. Fight they could and would to the last ditch. But behind the jaded, stony eyes lay a haunting fear, the never-ending dread of a pursuit that might burst upon them at any moment. Driven to the wall, they would have faced the enemy like tigers, with a fierce, exultant hate. It was the never-ending possibility of disaster that lay heavily upon them.

Just as they entered the pass, a man came spurring up the steep trail behind them. The drag drivers shouted a warning to those in front and waited alertly with weapons ready. The man trying to overtake them waved a sombrero as a flag of truce.

"Keep an eye on him, Tom. If he makes a move that don't look good to you, plug him!" ordered the keen-eyed man beside one of the drag drivers.

"I'm bridle wise, boss." But though he spoke with bravado Dixon shook like an aspen in a breeze.

The man he had called boss looked every inch a leader. He rode with the loose seat and the straight back of the Westerner to the saddle born. Just now he was looking back with impassive, reddened eyes at the approaching figure.

"Hold on, Tom! Don't shoot! It's Brad," he decided. "And I wonder what in Mexico he is doing here."

The leader of the outlaws was soon to learn. Irwin told the story of the strategy that had changed him from jailer to prisoner and of the way he had later freed himself from the rope that bound him.

Healy unloaded his sentiments with an emphasis that did the subject justice. Nevertheless he could not see that their plans were seriously affected.

"It's a leetle premature, but his getaway doesn't cut any ice. What we want to do is to nail him, clamp the evidence home, and put him out of business before his friends can say Jack Robinson. The story now is that he was caught driving a little bunch of cows to met the big bunch his pals were rustling, and that we left him in charge of Brad while we tried to run down the other waddies. Understand, boys?"

They did, and admired the more the versatility of a leader who could make plans on the spur of the moment to meet any emergency.

"We'll push right on, boys. Once we get through the pass it will trouble anybody to find us. Before mo'ning you'll be across the line."

"And you, Brill?"

"I'm going back to settle accounts for good and all with Mr. Keller," answered Healy grimly between set teeth. "I've got a notion about him. I believe he's a spy."

Just before Point o' Rocks a defile runs into the Mimbres Pass at right angles. The leaders of the cattle, pushed forward by the pressure from behind, stopped for a moment, and stood bawling at the junction. A rider spurred forward to keep them from attempting the gulch. Suddenly he dragged his pony to its haunches, so quickly did he stop it. For a clear voice had called down a warning as if from the heavens:

"You can't go this way! The Pass is closed!"

The rider looked up in amazement, and beheld a man standing on the ledge above with a rifle resting easily across his forearm.

"By Heaven, it's Keller!" the rustler muttered.

He wheeled as on a half dollar, pushed his way back along the edge of the wall past the cattle, and shouted to his chief:

"We're trapped, Brill!"

None of the outlaws needed that notification. Five pair of eyes had lifted to the ledge upon which Keller stood. The shock of the surprise paralyzed them for an instant. For it occurred to none of the five that this man would be standing there so quietly unless he were backed by a posse sufficient to overpower them. He had not the manner of a man taking a desperate chance. The situation was as dramatic as life and death, but the voice that had come down to them had been as matter-of-fact as if it had asked some one to pass him a cup of coffee at the breakfast table.

The temper of the outlaws' metal showed instantly. Dixon dropped his rifle, threw up his hands, and ran bleating to the cover of some large rocks, imploring the imagined posse not to shoot. Others found silently what shelter they could. Healy alone took reckless counsel of his hate.

Flinging his rifle to his shoulder, he blazed away at the figure on the ledge--once, twice, three times. When the smoke cleared the ranger was no longer to be seen. He was lying flat on his rock like a lizard, where he had dropped just as his enemy whipped up his weapon to fire. Cold as chilled steel, in spite of the fire of passion that blazed within him, Healy slid to the ground on the far side of his horse and, without exposing himself, slowly worked to the loose boulders bordering the edge of the canon bed.

The bawling of the cattle and the faint whimpering of Dixon alone disturbed the silence. Healy and his confederates were waiting for the other side to show its hand. Meanwhile the leader of the outlaws was thinking out the situation.

"I believe there's only two of them, Bart," he confided in a low voice to the big fellow lying near. "Keller must have heard us when we talked it over at the shack. I reckon he and Phil hit the trail for here immediate. They hadn't time to go back and rustle help and still get here before us.

"We'll make Mr. Keller table his cards. I'm going to try to rush the cattle through. We'll see at once what's doing. If they are too many for us to do that we'll break for the gulch and fight our way out--that is, if we find we're hemmed in behind, too."

He called to the rest of the bandits and gave crisp instructions. At sound of his sharp whistle four men leaped into sight, each making for his horse. Dixon alone did not answer to the call. He lay white and trembling behind the rock that sheltered him, physically unable to rise and face the bullets that would rain down upon him.

Keller, watching alertly from above, guessed what they would be at. His rifle cracked twice, and two of the horses staggered, one of them collapsing slowly. He had to show himself, and for three heartbeats stood exposed to the fire of four rifles. One bullet fanned his cheek, a second plunged through his coat sleeve, a third struck the rock at his feet. While the echoes were still crashing, he was flat on his rock again, peering over the edge to see their next move.

"He's alone," cried Healy jubilantly. "Must have sent the kid back for help. Bart, get Dixon's gun, steal up the ravine, and take him in the rear. I'd go myself, but I can't leave the boys now."

Slowly the cattle felt the impetus from behind, and began to move forward. The voice above shouted a second warning. Healy answered with a derisive yell. Keller again stood exposed on the ledge.

Rifles cracked.

This time the cattle detective was firing at men and not at horses, and they in turn were pumping at him fast as they could work the levers. One man went down, torn through and through by a rifle slug in his vitals. Healy's horse twitched and staggered, but the rider was unhurt. The officer on the ledge, a perfect target, was the heart of a very hail of lead, but when he sank again to cover he was by some miracle still unhurt.

"They'll try a flank attack next time," Keller told himself.

Up to date the honors were easily his. He had put three horses out of commission and disabled one of the outlaws so badly that he would prove negligible in the attack. Peering down, he could see Healy, with superb contempt for the marksman above, slowly and carefully carry his wounded comrade to shelter. The other men were already driven back to cover. The cattle, excited by the firing, were milling round and round uneasily.

Healy laid the wounded man down, knelt beside him, and gave him water from his flask. The man was plainly hard hit, though he was not bleeding much.

"Where is it, Duke? Can I do anything for you, old fellow?"

The dying man shook his head and whispered hoarsely: "I've got mine, Brill. Shot to pieces. I'm dying right now. Get out while you can. Don't mind me."

His chief swore softly. "We'll get him right, Duke. Brad's after him now. Buck up, old pard. You'll worry through yet."

"Not this time, Brill. I've played rustler once too often."

Keller, far up on the precipice, became aware of approaching riders long before the outlaws below could see them. He counted eight--nine--ten men, still black dots in a cloud of dust. This he knew must be Phil's posse.

If he could hold the rustlers for ten minutes more they would be caught like rats in a trap. Once or twice he glanced behind him as a precaution against some one of the enemy climbing Point o' Rocks from the defile, but he gave this little consideration. He had not seen Brad when he disappeared into the mesquite, and he supposed all of the rustlers were still in the Pass five hundred feet below him.

What he had expected was that they would force their way up the defile for a quarter of a mile and strike the easy trail that ran from the rear to the top of the Point. He wondered that this had not occurred to Healy.

In point of fact it had, but the outlaw leader knew that as they picked their way among the broken boulders of the gulch bottom the enemy would have them in the open for more than a hundred yards of slow going. He had chosen the alternative of sending Brad quietly up the rough face of the cliff. The other plan would do as a last resource if this failed.

Healy believed that his enemy had been delivered into his hands. After Keller had been killed they would toss his body down into the Pass, and while his companions continued the drive to Mexico, Healy would return to get help for Duke and spread the story he wanted to get out. The main features of that tale would be that he and Duke had cut their trail by accident, suspected rustling, and followed as far as the Mimbres Pass, where Keller had shot Duke and been in turn shot by Healy.

It was a neat plan, and one that would have been fairly sure of success but for one unforeseen contingency--the approach of Yeager's posse a half hour too soon. Healy heard them coming, knew he was trapped, and attempted to force an escape through the narrows in front of Point o' Rocks.

The milling cattle had jammed the gateway. Keller, shooting down one or two of them, blocked the exit still more. Healy and his confederates could not get through, and turned to try the defile just as the first of the posse came flying down the Pass.

Young Sanderson was in the van, a hundred yards in front of Yeager, dashing over the uneven ground in a reckless haste that Jim's slower horse could not match. Loose shale was flying from his pony's hoofs as it pounded forward. The outlaws just beat him to the mouth of the intersecting gulch. Dragging his broncho to a slithering halt, he fired twice at the retreating men. He had taken no time to aim, and his bullets went wild.

Brill laughed in mockery, covered him deliberately with his rifle, and just as deliberately raised the barrel and fired into the air. The distance was scarce a hundred yards. Phil could not doubt that his former friend had purposely spared his life. The boy's rifle dropped from his shoulder.

"Brill wouldn't shoot at me! I couldn't kill him!" he shouted to Weaver, as the latter rode up.

Buck nodded. "Let me have him!" And he plunged into the gorge after the men that had disappeared.

Twice Keller's rifle spat at Healy and his companion as they plowed forward across the boulder bed, but the difficulty of shooting from far above at moving figures almost directly below saved the rustlers. They reached a thick growth of aspens and disappeared. Healy parted company with his ally at the place where the trail to the summit of Point o' Rocks led up.

"Break south when you get out of the gulch, Sam. In half an hour it will be night, and you'll be safe. So-long."

"Where you going, Brill?"

"I'm going to settle accounts with that dashed spy!" answered Healy, with an epithet. "Inside of half an hour either Keller or I will be down and out!"

The outlaw took the stiff incline leisurely, for he knew Keller could come down only this way, and he had no mind to let himself get so breathed as to disturb the sureness of his aim. The aspen grove ran like a forked tongue up the ridge for a couple of hundred yards. As Healy emerged from it he saw a rider just disappearing over the shoulder of the hill in front of him. For an instant he had an amazed impression that the figure was that of a woman, but he dismissed this as absurd. He went the more cautiously, for he now knew that there would be two for him to deal with on the Point instead of one--unless Brad reached the scene in time to assist him.

The sound of a shot drifted down to him, followed presently by a far, faint cry of terror. What had happened was this:

Keller, turning away from the overhanging ledge from which he had seen the outlaws vanish into the grove, looked down the long slope preliminary to descending. He was surprised to see a horse and rider halfway between him and the aspen tongue. To him, too, there came a swift impression that it was a woman, and almost at once something in the poise of the gallant figure told him what woman. His heart leaped to meet her. He waved a hand, and broke into a run.

But only for two strides. For there had come to him a warning. He swung on his heel and waited. Again he heard the light rumble of shale, and before that had died away a sinister click. Alert in every fiber, his gaze swept the bluff--and stopped when it met a pair of beady eyes peering at him over the edge of the precipice.

The two pair of eyes fastened for what seemed like an eternity, but could have been no longer than four ticks of a clock. Neither of the men spoke. The outlaw fired first--wildly, for the arm which held the rifle was cramped for space. Keller's revolver flashed an answer which tore through Irwin's teeth and went out beneath his ear. With a furious oath the man dropped his weapon and flung himself upward and forward, landing in a heap almost at the feet of the detective.

"Don't move!" ordered the latter.

Brad writhed forward awkwardly, knew the shock of another heavy bullet in his shoulder, and catching his foe by the legs dragged him from his feet. Keller's revolver was jerked over the edge of the precipice as he let go of it to close with the burly ruffian.

Both of them were unarmed save for the weapons nature had given them. The detailed purpose of the struggle defined itself at once. Irwin meant by main strength to fling the detective into the gulf that descended sheer for five hundred feet. The other fought desperately to save himself by dragging his infuriated antagonist back from the edge.

They grappled in silence, save for the heavy panting that evidenced the tension of their efforts. Each tried to bear the other to the ground, to establish a grip against which his foe would be helpless. Now they were on their knees, now on their sides. Over and over they rolled, first one and then the other on top, shifting so fast that neither could clinch any temporary advantage.

[Illustration: THEY GRAPPLED IN SILENCE SAVE FOR THE HEAVY PANTING THAT EVIDENCED THE TENSION OF THEIR EFFORTS. _Page 340_]

Yet Keller, with a flying glance at the cliff, knew that he was being forced nearer the gulf by sheer strength of muscle. Irwin, his jaw shattered and his shoulder torn, was not fighting to win, but to kill. He cared not whether he himself also went to death. He was obsessed by the old primeval lust to crush the life out of this lusty antagonist, and his whole gigantic force was concentrated to that end. He scarce knew that he was wounded, and he cared not at all. Backward and forward though the battle went, on the whole it moved jerkily toward the chasm.

The end came with a suddenness of which Larrabie had but an instant's warning in the swift flare of joy that lit the madman's face. His foot, searching for a brace as he was borne back, found only empty space. Plunged downward, the nester clung viselike to the man above, dragged him after, and by the very fury of Irwin's assault flung him far out into the gulf head-first.

It was Phyl Sanderson's cry of horror that Healy heard. She had put her horse up the steep at a headlong gallop, had seen the whole furious struggle and the tragic end of it that witnessed two men hurled over the precipice into space. She slipped from the saddle, and sank dizzily to the ground, not daring to look over the cliff at what she would see far below. Waves of anguish shot through her and shook her very being.

A man bent over her, and gave a startled cry.

"My heaven, it's Phyl!" he cried.

"Yes." She spoke in a flat, lifeless voice he could not have recognized as hers.

"Where is he? What's become of him?" Healy demanded.

She told him with a gesture, then flung herself on the turf, and broke down helplessly. The outlaw went to the edge and looked over. The gulf of air told no story except the obvious one. No wingless living creature could make that descent without forfeiture of life. He stepped back to the girl and touched her on the shoulder.

"Come."

She looked up, shuddering, and asked, "Where?"

"With me."

"With you? It was you that drove him to his death, and I loved him!"

"Never mind that now. Come."

"I hate you! I should kill you when I got a chance! Why should I go with you?" she asked evenly.

He did not know why. He had no definite plan. All he knew was that his old world lay in ruins at his feet, that he must fly through the night like a hunted wolf, and that the girl he loved was beside him, forever free from the rival who lay crushed and lifeless at the foot of the cliff. He could not give her up now. He would not.

The old savage instinct of ownership rose strong in him. She was his. He had won her by the fortune of war. He would keep her against all comers so long as he had life to fight. Night was falling softly over the hills. They would go forth into it together to a new heaven and a new earth.

He lifted her to her feet and brought up her horse. She looked at him in a silence that stripped him of his dreams.

"Come!" he said again, between clenched teeth.

"Not with you. I don't know you. Leave me alone. You killed him! You're a murderer!"

He stretched hands toward her, but she shrank from him, still in the dull stupor of horror that was on her spirit.

"Go away! Don't touch me! You and your miscreants killed him!" And with that she flung herself down again, and buried her face from the sight of him.

He waited doggedly, helpless against her grief and her hatred of him, but none the less determined to take her with him. Across the border he would not be a hunted man with a price on his head. They could be married by a padre in Sonora, and perhaps some day he would make her love him and forget this man that had come between them. At all events, he would be her master and would tie her life inextricably to his. He stooped and caught her shoulder. She had fainted.

A footfall set rolling a pebble. He looked up quickly, and almost of its own volition, as it seemed, the rifle leaped to both of his hands. A man stood looking at him across the plateau of the summit. He, too, held a rifle ready for instant action.

"So it's you!" Healy cried with an oath.

"Have you killed him?"

The outlaw lied, with swift, unblazing passion: "Yes, Buck Weaver, and tossed his body to the buzzards. Your turn now!"

"Then who is that with you there?"

"The woman you love, the woman that turned you and him down for me," taunted his rival. "After I've killed you we're going off to be married."

"Only a coyote would stand behind a woman's skirts and lie. I can't kill you there, and you know it."

Healy asked nothing better than an even break. He might have killed with impunity from where he stood. Yet pantherlike, he swiftly padded six paces to the left, never lifting his eyes from his antagonist.

Buck waited, motionless. "Are you ready?"

The outlaw's weapon flashed to the level and cracked. Almost simultaneously the other answered. Weaver felt a bullet fan his cheek, but he knew that his own had crashed home.

The shock of it swung Healy half round. The man hung in silhouette against the sky line, then the body plunged to the turf at full length. Buck moved forward cautiously, fearing a trick, his eyes fastened on the other. But as he drew nearer he knew it was no ruse. The body lay supine and inert, as lifeless as the clay upon which it rested.

Once sure of this Buck turned immediately to Phyllis. A faint crackling of bushes stopped him. He waited, his eyes fixed on the edge of the precipice from which the sound had come. Next there came to him the slipping of displaced rubble. He was all eyes and ears, tense and alert in every pulse.

From out of the gulf a hand appeared and groped for a hold. Weaver stepped noiselessly to the edge and looked down. A torn and bleeding face looked up into his.

"Good heavens, Keller!"

Buck was on his knees instantly. He caught the ranger's hand with both of his and dragged him up. The rescued man sank breathless on the ground and told his story in gasped fragments.

"--caught on a ledge--hung to some bushes growing there--climbed up--lay still when Healy looked over--a near thing--makes me sick still!"

"It was a millionth chance that saved you--if it was a chance."

"Where's Healy?"

Weaver pointed to the body. "We fought it out. The luck was with me."

A faint, glad, terrified little cry startled them both. Phyllis was staring with dilated eyes at the man restored to her from the dead. He got up and walked across to her with outstretched hands.

"My little girl."

"Oh, Larry! I don't understand. I thought----"

He nodded. "I reckon God was good to us, sweetheart."

Her arms crept up and round his neck. "Oh, boy--boy--boy. I thought you were--I thought you were----"

She broke down, but he understood. "Well, I'm not," he laughed happily. Catching sight of Buck's grim, set face, Larrabie explained what scarce needed an explanation. "You'll have to excuse us, I reckon. It's my day for congratulations."

Phyllis freed herself and walked across to her other lover. "My friend, I know the answer now," she told him.

"I see you do."

"Don't--please don't be hurt," she begged. "I have to care for him."

The hard, leathery face softened. "I lose, girl. But who told you I was a bad loser? The best man wins. I've got no kick to register."

"Not the best man," Keller corrected, shaking hands with his rival.

Phyllis summed it up in woman fashion: "My man, whether he is the best or not. It's just that a girl goes where her heart goes."

Weaver nodded. "Good enough. Well, I'll be going. I expect you'll not miss me."

He turned and went down the hill alone. At the foot of it he met Jim Yeager.

"What about Brill?" the younger man asked quickly.

"He'll never rustle another cow," Buck answered gravely. "I killed him on the top of Point o' Rocks after an even break."

"Duke has cashed in. Game to the last. Wouldn't say a word to implicate his pals. But Tom has confessed everything. The boys slipped a noose over his head, and he came through right away.

"Says he and Duke and Irwin helped Healy rob the Noches Bank and do a lot of other deviltry. It was just like Keller figured. The automobile was waiting for the bunch with the showfer, and took them out the old Fort Lincoln Road. Dixon knows where the gold is hidden, and is going to show the boys."

"That clears up everything, then. I judge we've made a pretty thorough gather."

Jim looked up and indistinctly saw the lovers coming slowly down through the grove. Dusk had fallen and soon the cloak of night would be over the mountains.

"Who is that?"

Buck did not look round. "I reckon it's Keller and his sweetheart. She followed us here."

"I told her not to come."

"I expect she takes her telling from Mr. Keller." He changed the subject abruptly. "We'll go on down to the boys and see what's doing. They'll be some glad, I shouldn't wonder, at making a gather that cleans out the worst bunch of cutthroats and rustlers in the Malpais. Don't you reckon?"

"I reckon," answered Yeager briefly.

THE END

Contents

CROOKED TRAILS AND STRAIGHT

BY WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE

PART I

CURLY

CHAPTER I

FOLLOWING A CROOKED TRAIL

Across Dry Valley a dust cloud had been moving for hours. It rolled into Saguache at the brisk heels of a bunch of horses just about the time the town was settling itself to supper. At the intersection of Main and La Junta streets the cloud was churned to a greater volume and density. From out of the heart of it cantered a rider, who swung his pony as on a half dollar, and deflected the remuda toward Chunn's corral.

The rider was in the broad-rimmed felt hat, the gray shirt, the plain leather chaps of a vaquero. The alkali dust of Arizona lay thick on every exposed inch of him, but youth bloomed inextinguishably through the grime. As he swept forward with a whoop to turn the lead horses it rang in his voice, announced itself in his carriage, was apparent in the modeling of his slim, hard body. Under other conditions he might have been a college freshman for age, but the competent confidence of manhood sat easily on his broad shoulders. He was already a graduate of that school of experience which always holds open session on the baked desert. Curly Flandrau had more than once looked into the chill eyes of death.

The leaders of the herd dribbled into the corral through the open gate, and the others crowded on their heels. Three more riders followed Curly into the enclosure. Upon them, too, the desert had sifted its white coat. The stained withers of the animals they rode told of long, steady travel. One of them, a red-haired young fellow of about the same age as Curly, swung stiffly from the saddle.

"Me for a square meal first off," he gave out promptly.

"Not till we've finished this business, Mac. We'll put a deal right through if Warren's here," decided a third member of the party. He was a tough-looking customer of nearly fifty. From out of his leathery sun-and-wind beaten face, hard eyes looked without expression. "Bad Bill" Cranston he was called, and the man looked as if he had earned his sobriquet.

"And what if he ain't here?" snarled the fourth. "Are you aiming to sit down and wait for him?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Bad Bill answered. "Curly, want to ride up to the hotel and ask if Mr. Dave Warren is there? Bring him right down if he is."

"And say, young fellow, don't shout all over the place what your business is with him," ordered the previous speaker sulkily. Lute Blackwell, a squat heavily muscled man of forty, had the manner of a bully. Unless his shifty eyes lied he was both cruel and vindictive.

Curly's gaze traveled over him leisurely. Not a muscle in the boyish face moved, but in the voice one might have guessed an amused contempt. "All right. I won't, since you mention it, Lute."

The young man cantered up the dusty street toward the hotel. Blackwell trailed toward the windmill pump.

"Thought you'd fixed it with this Warren to be right on the spot so's we could unload on him prompt," he grumbled at Cranston without looking toward the latter.

"I didn't promise he'd be hanging round your neck soon as you hit town," Cranston retorted coolly. "Keep your shirt on, Lute. No use getting in a sweat."

The owner of the corral sauntered from the stable and glanced over the bunch of horses milling around.

"Been traveling some," he suggested to Bad Bill.

"A few. Seen anything of a man named Warren about town to-day?"

"He's been down here se-ve-re-al times. Said he was looking for a party with stock to sell. Might you be the outfit he's expecting?"

"We might." Bad Bill took the drinking cup from Blackwell and drained it. "I reckon the dust was caked in my throat an inch deep."

"Drive all the way from the Bar Double M?" asked the keeper of the corral, his eyes on the brand stamped on the flank of a pony circling past.

"Yep."

Bad Bill turned away and began to unsaddle. He did not intend to volunteer any information, though on the other hand he did not want to stir suspicion by making a mystery for gossips to chew on.

"Looks like you been hitting the road at a right lively gait."

Mac cut in. "Shoulder of my bronc's chafed from the saddle. Got anything that'll heal it?"

"You bet I have." The man hurried into the stable and the redheaded cowpuncher winked across the back of his horse at Bill.

The keeper of the stable and the young man were still busy doctoring the sore when Curly arrived with Warren. The buyer was a roundbodied man with black gimlet eyes that saw much he never told. The bargain he drove was a hard one, but it did not take long to come to terms at about one-third the value of the string he was purchasing. Very likely he had his suspicions, but he did not voice them. No doubt they cut a figure in the price. He let it be understood that he was a supply agent for the rebels in Mexico. Before the bills were warm in the pockets of the sellers, his vaqueros were mounted and were moving the remuda toward the border.

Curly and Mac helped them get started. As they rode back to the corral a young man came out from the stable. Flandrau forgot that there were reasons why he wanted just now to be a stranger in the land with his identity not advertised. He let out a shout.

"Oh you, Slats Davis!"

"Hello, Curly! How are things a-comin'?"

"Fine. When did you blow in to Saguache? Ain't you off your run some?"

They had ridden the range together and had frolicked around on a dozen boyish larks. Their ways had suited each other and they had been a good deal more than casual bunkies. To put it mildly the meeting was likely to prove embarrassing.

"Came down to see about getting some cows for the old man from the Fiddleback outfit," Davis explained. "Didn't expect to bump into friends 'way down here. You riding for the Bar Double M?"

There was a momentary silence. Curly's vigilant eyes met those of his old side partner. What did Slats know? Had he been in the stable while the remuda was still in the corral? Had he seen them with Bad Bill and Blackwell? Were his suspicions already active?

"No, I'm riding for the Map of Texas," Flandrau answered evenly.

"Come on, Curly. Let's go feed our faces," Mac called from the stable.

Flandrau nodded. "You still with the Hashknife?" he asked Davis.

"Still with 'em. I've been raised to assistant foreman."

"Bully for you. That's great. All right, Mac. I'm coming. That's sure great, old hoss. Well, see you later, Slats."

Flandrau followed Mac, dissatisfied with himself for leaving his friend so cavalierly. In the old days they had told each other everything, had talked things out together before many a campfire. He guessed Slats would be hurt, but he had to think of his partners in this enterprise.

After supper they took a room at the hotel and divided the money Warren had paid for the horses. None of them had slept for the last fifty hours and Mac proposed to tumble into bed at once.

Bad Bill shook his head. "I wouldn't, Mac. Let's hit the trail and do our sleeping in the hills. There's too many telephone lines into this town to suit me."

"Sho! We made a clean getaway, and we're plumb wore out. Our play isn't to hike out like we were scared stiff of something. What we want to do is to act as if we could look every darned citizen in the face. Mac's sure right," Curly agreed.

"You kids make me tired. As if you knew anything about it. I'm going to dust muy pronto," Blackwell snarled.

"Sure. Whenever you like. You go and we'll stay. Then everybody'll be satisfied. We got to split up anyhow," Mac said.

Bad Bill looked at Blackwell and nodded. "That's right. We don't all want to pull a blue streak. That would be a dead give away. Let the kids stay if they want to."

"So as they can round on us if they're nabbed," Blackwell sneered.

Cranston called him down roughly. "That'll be enough along that line, Lute. I don't stand for any more cracks like it."

Blackwell, not three months out from the penitentiary, faced the other with an ugly look in his eyes. He was always ready to quarrel, but he did not like to fight unless he had a sure thing. He knew Bad Bill was an ugly customer when he once got started.

"Didn't mean any harm," the ex-convict growled. "But I don't like this sticking around town. I tell you straight I don't like it."

"Then I wouldn't stay if I were you," Curly suggested promptly. "Mac and I have got a different notion. So we'll tie to Saguache for a day or two."

As soon as the older men had gone the others tumbled into bed and fell asleep at once. Daylight was sifting in through the open window before their eyes opened. Somebody was pounding on the bedroom door, which probably accounted for Flandrau's dream that a sheriff was driving nails in the lid of a coffin containing one Curly.

Mac was already out of bed when his partner's feet hit the floor.

"What's up, Mac?"

The eyes of the redheaded puncher gleamed with excitement. His six-gun was in his hand. By the look of him he was about ready to whang loose through the door.

"Hold your horses, you chump," Curly sang out "It's the hotel clerk. I left a call with him."

But it was not the hotel clerk after all. Through the door came a quick, jerky voice.

"That you, Curly? For God's sake, let me in."

Before he had got the words out the door was open. Slats came in and shut it behind him. He looked at Mac, the forty-five shaking in the boy's hand, and he looked at Flandrau.

"They're after you," he said, breathing fast as if he had been running.

"Who?" fired Curly back at him.

"The Bar Double M boys. They just reached town."

"Put up that gun, Mac, and move into your clothes immediate," ordered Curly. Then to Davis: "Go on. Unload the rest. What do they know?"

"They inquired for you and your friend here down at the Legal Tender. The other members of your party they could only guess at."

"Have we got a chance to make our getaway?" Mac asked.

Davis nodded. "Slide out through the kitchen, cut into the alley, and across lots to the corral. We'll lock the door and I'll hold them here long as I can."

"Good boy, Slats. If there's a necktie party you'll get the first bid," Curly grinned.

Slats looked at him, cold and steady. Plainer than words he was telling his former friend that he would not joke with a horse thief. For the sake of old times he would save him if he could, but he would call any bluffs about the whole thing being a lark.

Curly's eyes fell away. It came to him for the first time that he was no longer an honest man. Up till this escapade he had been only wild, but now he had crossed the line that separates decent folks from outlaws. He had been excited with liquor when he joined in this fool enterprise, but that made no difference now. He was a rustler, a horse thief. If he lived a hundred years he could never get away from the disgrace of it.

Not another word was said while they hurried into their clothes. But as Curly passed out of the door he called back huskily. "Won't forget what you done for us, Slats."

Again their eyes met. Davis did not speak, but the chill look on his face told Flandrau that he had lost a friend.

The two young men ran down the back stairs, passed through the kitchen where a Chinese cook was getting breakfast, and out into the bright sunlight. Before they cut across to the corral their eyes searched for enemies. Nobody was in sight except the negro janitor of a saloon busy putting empty bottles into a barrel.

"Won't do to be in any hurry. The play is we're gentlemen of leisure, just out for an amble to get the mo'ning air," Curly cautioned.

While they fed, watered, and saddled they swapped gossip with the wrangler. It would not do to leave the boy with a story of two riders in such a hurry to hit the trail that they could not wait to feed their bronchos. So they stuck it out while the animals ate, though they were about as contented as a two-pound rainbow trout on a hook. One of them was at the door all the time to make sure the way was still clear. At that they shaved it fine, for as they rode away two men were coming down the street.

"Kite Bonfils," Curly called to his partner.

No explanation was needed. Bonfils was the foreman of the Bar Double M. He let out a shout as he caught sight of them and began to run forward. Simultaneously his gun seemed to jump from its holster.

Mac's quirt sang and his pony leaped to a canter in two strides. A bullet zipped between them. Another struck the dust at their heels. Faintly there came to the fugitives the sound of the foreman's impotent curses. They had escaped for the time.

Presently they passed the last barb wire fence and open country lay before them. It did not greatly matter which direction they followed, so long as they headed into the desert.

"What we're looking for is a country filled with absentees," Curly explained with a grin.

Neither of them had ever been in serious trouble before and both regretted the folly that had turned their drunken spree into a crime. Once or twice they came to the edge of a quarrel, for Mac was ready to lay the blame on his companion. Moreover, he had reasons why the thing he had done loomed up as a heinous offense.

His reasons came out before the camp fire on Dry Sandy that evening. They were stretched in front of it trying to make a smoke serve instead of supper. Mac broke a gloomy silence to grunt out jerkily a situation he could no longer keep to himself.

"Here's where I get my walking papers I reckon. No rustlers need apply."

Curly shot a slant glance at him. "Meaning--the girl?"

The redheaded puncher nodded. "She'll throw me down sure. Why shouldn't she? I tell you I've ruined my life. You're only a kid. What you know about it?"

He took from his coat pocket a photograph and showed it to his friend. The sweet clean face of a wholesome girl smiled at Curly.

"She's ce'tainly a right nice young lady. I'll bet she stands by you all right. Where's she live at?"

"Waits in a restaurant at Tombstone. We was going to be married soon as we had saved five hundred dollars." Mac swallowed hard. "And I had to figure out this short cut to the money whilst I was drunk. As if she'd look at money made that way. Why, we'd a-been ready by Christmas if I'd only waited."

Curly tried to cheer him up, but did not make much of a job at it. The indisputable facts were that Mac was an outlaw and a horse thief. Very likely a price was already on his head.

The redheaded boy rolled another cigarette despondently. "Sho! I've cooked my goose. She'll not look at me--even if they don't send me to the pen." In a moment he added huskily, staring into the deepening darkness: "And she's the best ever. Her name's Myra Anderson."

Abruptly Mac got up and disappeared in the night, muttering something about looking after the horses. His partner understood well enough what was the matter. The redheaded puncher was in a stress of emotion, and like the boy he was he did not want Curly to know it.

Flandrau pretended to be asleep when Mac returned half an hour later.

They slept under a live oak with the soundness of healthy youth. For the time they forgot their troubles. Neither of them knew that as the hours slipped away red tragedy was galloping closer to them.

CHAPTER II

CAMPING WITH OLD MAN TROUBLE

The sun was shining in his face when Curly wakened. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Mac was nowhere in sight. Probably he had gone to get the horses.

A sound broke the stillness of the desert. It might have been the explosion of a giant firecracker, but Flandrau knew it was nothing so harmless. He leaped to his feet, and at the same instant Mac came running over the brow of the hill. A smoking revolver was in his hand.

From behind the hill a gun cracked--then a second--and a third. Mac stumbled over his feet and pitched forward full length on the ground. His friend ran toward him, forgetting the revolver that lay in its holster under the live oak. Every moment he expected to see Mac jump up, but the figure stretched beside the cholla never moved. Flandrau felt the muscles round his heart tighten. He had seen sudden death before, but never had it come so near home.

A bullet sent up a spurt of dust in front of him, another just on the left. Riders were making a half circle around the knoll and closing in on him. In his right mind Curly would have been properly frightened. But now he thought only of Mac lying there so still in the sand. Right into the fire zone he ran, knelt beside his partner, and lifted the red-thatched head. A little hole showed back of the left ear and another at the right temple. A bullet had plowed through the boy's skull.

Softly Flandrau put the head back in the sand and rose to his feet. The revolver of the dead puncher was in his hand. The attackers had stopped shooting, but when they saw him rise a rifle puffed once more. The riders were closing in on him now. The nearest called to him to surrender. Almost at the same time a red hot pain shot through the left arm of the trapped rustler. Someone had nipped him from the rear.

Curly saw red. Surrender nothing! He would go down fighting. As fast as he could blaze he emptied Mac's gun. When the smoke cleared the man who had ordered him to give up was slipping from his horse. Curly was surprised, but he knew he must have hit him by chance.

"We got him. His gun's empty," someone shouted.

Cautiously they closed in, keeping him covered all the time. Of a sudden the plain tilted up to meet the sky. Flandrau felt himself swaying on his feet. Everything went black. The boy had fainted.

When he came to himself strange faces were all around him, and there were no bodies to go with them. They seemed to float about in an odd casual sort of way. Then things cleared.

"He's coming to all right," one said.

"Good. I'd hate to have him cheat the rope," another cried with an oath.

"That's right. How is Cullison?"

This was said to another who had just come up.

"Hard hit. Looks about all in. Got him in the side."

The rage had died out of Curly. In a flash he saw all that had come of their drunken spree: the rustling of the Bar Double M stock, the discovery, the death of his friend and maybe of Cullison, the certain punishment that would follow. He was a horse thief caught almost in the act. Perhaps he was a murderer too. And the whole thing had been entirely unpremeditated.

Flandrau made a movement to rise and they jerked him to his feet.

"You've played hell," one of the men told the boy.

He was a sawed-off little fellow known as Dutch. Flandrau had seen him in the Map of Texas country try a year or two before. The rest were strangers to the boy. All of them looked at him out of hard hostile eyes. He was scarcely a human being to them; rather a wolf to be stamped out of existence as soon as it was convenient. A chill ran down Curly's spine. He felt as if someone were walking on his grave.

At a shift in the group Flandrau's eyes fell on his friend lying in the sand with face turned whitely to the sky he never would see again. It came over him strangely enough how Mac used to break into a little chuckling laugh when he was amused. He had quit laughing now for good and all. A lump came into the boy's throat and he had to work it down before he spoke.

"There's a picture in his pocket, and some letters I reckon. Send them to Miss Myra Anderson, Tombstone, care of one of the restaurants. I don't know which one."

"Send nothin'," sneered Dutch, and coupled it with a remark no decent man makes of a woman on a guess.

Because of poor Mac lying there with the little hole in his temple Curry boiled over. With a jerk his right arm was free. It shot out like a pile-driver, all his weight behind the blow. Dutch went down as if a charging bull had flung him.

Almost simultaneously Curly hit the sand hard. Before he could stir three men were straddled over his anatomy. One of them ground his head into the dust.

"You would, eh? We'll see about that. Jake, bring yore rope."

They tied the hands of the boy, hauled him to his feet, and set him astride a horse. In the distance a windmill of the Circle C ranch was shining in the morning sun. Toward the group of buildings clustered around this two of his captors started with Flandrau. A third was already galloping toward the ranch house to telephone for a doctor.

As they rode along a fenced lane which led to the house a girl came flying down the steps. She swung herself to the saddle just vacated by the messenger and pulled the horse round for a start. At sight of those coming toward her she called out quickly.

"How is dad?" The quiver of fear broke in her voice.

"Don' know yet, Miss Kate," answered one of the men. "He's right peart though. Says for to tell you not to worry. Don't you, either. We've got here the mangy son of a gun that did it."

Before he had finished she was off like an arrow shot from a bow, but not until her eyes had fallen on the youth sitting bareheaded and bloody between the guns of his guard. Curly noticed that she had given a shudder, as one might at sight of a mangled mad dog which had just bit a dear friend. Long after the pounding of her pony's hoofs had died away the prisoner could see the startled eyes of fear and horror that had rested on him. As Curly kicked his foot out of the stirrup to dismount a light spring wagon rolled past him. In its bed were a mattress and pillows. The driver whipped up the horse and went across the prairie toward Dry Sandy Creek. Evidently he was going to bring home the wounded man.

His guards put Flandrau in the bunk house and one of them sat at the door with a rifle across his knees. The cook, the stable boy, and redheaded Bob Cullison, a nephew of the owner of the ranch, peered past the vaquero at the captive with the same awe they would have yielded to a caged panther.

"Why, he's only a kid, Buck," the cook whispered.

Buck chewed tobacco impassively. "Old enough to be a rustler and a killer."

Bob's blue eyes were wide with interest "I'll bet he's a regular Billy the Kid," murmured the half-grown boy to the other lad.

"Sure. Course he is. He's got bad eyes all right."

"I'll bet he's got notches on his gun. Say, if Uncle Luck dies--" Bob left the result to the imagination.

The excitement at the Circle C increased. Horses cantered up. Men shouted to each other the news. Occasionally some one came in to have a look at the "bad man" who had shot Luck Cullison. Young Flandrau lay on a cot and stared at the ceiling, paying no more attention to them than if they had been blocks of wood. It took no shrewdness to see that there burned in them a still cold anger toward him that might easily find expression in lynch law.

The crunch of wagon wheels over disintegrated granite drifted to the bunk house.

"They're bringing the boss back," Buck announced from the door to one of his visitors.

The man joined him and looked over his shoulder. "Miss Kate there too?"

"Yep. Say, if the old man don't pull through it will break her all up."

The boy on the bed turned his face to the wall. He had not cried for ten years, but now he would have liked the relief of tears. The luck had broken bad for him, but it would be the worst ever if his random shot were to make Kate Cullison an orphan. A big lump rose in his throat and would not stay down. The irony of it was that he was staged for the part of a gray wolf on the howl, while he felt more like a little child that has lost its last friend.

After a time there came again the crisp roll of wheels.

"Doc Brown," announced Buck casually to the other men in the bunk house.

There was more than one anxious heart at the Circle C waiting for the verdict of the bowlegged baldheaded little man with the satchel, but not one of them--no, not even Kate Cullison herself--was in a colder fear than Curly Flandrau. He was entitled to a deep interest, for if Cullison should die he knew that he would follow him within a few hours. These men would take no chances with the delays of the law.

The men at the bunk house had offered more than once to look at Curly's arm, but the young man declined curtly. The bleeding had stopped, but there was a throb in it as if someone were twisting a red-hot knife in the wound. After a time Doctor Brown showed up in the doorway of the men's quarters.

"Another patient here, they tell me," he grunted in the brusque way that failed to conceal the kindest of hearts.

Buck nodded toward Flandrau.

"Let's have a look at your arm, young fellow," the doctor ordered, mopping his bald head with a big bandanna handkerchief.

"What about the boss?" asked Jake presently.

"Mighty sick man, looks like. Tell you more to-morrow morning."

"Do you mean that he--that he may not get well?" Curly pumped out, his voice not quite steady.

Doctor Brown looked at him curiously. Somehow this boy did not fit the specifications of the desperado that had been poured into his ears.

"Don't know yet. Won't make any promises." He had been examining the wound in a businesslike way. "Looks like the bullet's still in there. Have to give you an anesthetic while I dig it out."

"Nothin' doing," retorted Flandrau. "You round up the pill in there and I'll stand the grief. When this lead hypodermic jabbed into my arm it sorter gave me one of them annie-what-d'ye-call-'em--and one's a-plenty for me."

"It'll hurt," the little man explained.

"Expect I'll find that out. Go to it."

Brown had not been for thirty years carrying a medicine case across the dusty deserts of the frontier without learning to know men. He made no further protest but set to work.

Twenty minutes later Curly lay back on the bunk with a sudden faintness. He was very white about the lips, but he had not once flinched from the instruments.

The doctor washed his hands and his tools, pulled on his coat, and came across to the patient.

"Feeling like a fighting cock, are you? Ready to tackle another posse?" he asked.

"Not quite." The prisoner glanced toward his guards and his voice fell to a husky whisper. "Say, Doc. Pull Cullison through. Don't let him die."

"Hmp! Do my best, young fellow. Seems to me you're thinking of that pretty late."

Brown took up his medicine case and went back to the house.

CHAPTER III

AT THE END OF THE ROAD

Curly's wooden face told nothing of what he was thinking. The first article of the creed of the frontier is to be game. Good or bad, the last test of a man is the way he takes his medicine. So now young Flandrau ate his dinner with a hearty appetite, smoked cigarettes impassively, and occasionally chatted with his guards casually and as a matter of course. Deep within him was a terrible feeling of sickness at the disaster that had overwhelmed him, but he did not intend to play the quitter.

Dutch and an old fellow named Sweeney relieved the other watchers about noon. The squat puncher came up and looked down angrily at the boy lying on the bunk.

"I'll serve notice right now that if you make any breaks I'll fill your carcass full of lead," he growled.

The prisoner knew that he was nursing a grudge for the blow that had floored him. Not to be bluffed, Curly came back with a jeer. "Much obliged, my sawed-off and hammered-down friend. But what's the matter with your face? It looks some lopsided. Did a mule kick you?"

Sweeney gave his companion the laugh. "Better let him alone, Dutch. If he lands on you again like he did before your beauty ce'tainly will be spoiled complete."

The little puncher's eyes snapped rage. "You'll get yours pretty soon, Mr. Curly Flandrau. The boys are fixin' to hang yore hide up to dry."

"Does look that way, doesn't it?" the boy agreed quietly.

As the day began to wear out it looked so more than ever. Two riders from the Bar Double M reached the ranch and were brought in to identify him as the horse thief. The two were Maloney and Kite Bonfils, neither of them friends of the young rustler. The foreman in particular was a wet blanket to his chances. The man's black eyes were the sort that never soften toward the follies and mistakes of youth.

"You've got the right man all right," he said to Buck without answering Flandrau's cool nod of recognition.

"What sort of a reputation has he got?" Buck asked, lowering his voice a little.

Kite did not take the trouble to lower his. "Bad. Always been a tough character. Friend of Bad Bill Cranston and Soapy Stone."

Dutch chipped in. "Shot up the Silver Dollar saloon onct. Pretty near beat Pete Schiff's head off another time."

Curly laughed rather wildly. "That's right. Keep a-coming, boys. Your turn now, Maloney."

"All right. Might as well have it all," Buck agreed.

"I don't know anything against the kid, barring that he's been a little wild," Maloney testified. "And I reckon we ain't any of us prize Sunday school winners for that matter."

"Are we all friends of Soapy Stone and Bad Bill? Do we all rustle stock and shoot up good citizens?" Dutch shrilled.

Maloney's blue Irish eyes rested on the little puncher for a moment, then passed on as if he had been weighed and found wanting.

"I've noticed," he said to nobody in particular, "that them hollering loudest for justice are most generally the ones that would hate to have it done to them."

Dutch bristled like a turkey rooster. "What do you mean by that?"

The Irishman smiled derisively. "I reckon you can guess if you try real hard."

Dutch fumed, but did no guessing out loud. His reputation was a whitewashed one. Queer stories had been whispered about him. He had been a nester, and it was claimed that calves certainly not his had been found carrying his brand. The man had been full of explanations, but there came a time when explanations no longer were accepted. He was invited to become an absentee at his earliest convenience. This was when he had been living across the mountains. Curly had been one of those who had given the invitation. He had taken the hint and left without delay. Now he was paying the debt he owed young Flandrau.

Though the role Curly had been given was that of the hardened desperado he could not quite live up to the part. As Buck turned to leave the bunk house the boy touched him on the arm.

"How about Cullison?" he asked, very low.

But Buck would not have it that way. "What about him?" he demanded out load, his voice grating like steel when it grinds.

"Is he--how is he doing?"

"What's eatin' you? Ain't he dying fast enough to suit you?"

Flandrau shrank from the cruel words, as a schoolboy does from his teacher when he jumps at him with a cane. He understood how the men were feeling, but to have it put into words like this cut him deeply.

It was then that Maloney made a friend of the young man for life. He let a hand drop carelessly on Curly's shoulder and looked at him with a friendly smile in his eyes, just as if he knew that this was no wolf but a poor lost dog up against it hard.

"Doc thinks he'll make it all right."

But there were times when Curly wondered whether it would make any difference to him whether Cullison got well or not. Something immediate was in the air. Public opinion was sifting down to a decision. There were wise nods, and whisperings, and men riding up and going off again in a hurry. There had been a good deal of lawlessness of late, for which Soapy Stone's band of followers was held responsible. Just as plainly as if he had heard the arguments of Dutch and Kite Bonfils he knew that they were urging the others to make an example of him. Most of these men were well up to the average for the milk of human kindness. They were the squarest citizens in Arizona. But Flandrau knew they would snuff out his life just the same if they decided it was best. Afterward they might regret it, but that would not help him.

Darkness came, and the lamps were lit. Again Curly ate and smoked and chatted a little with his captors. But as he sat there hour after hour, feeling death creep closer every minute, cold shivers ran up and down his spine.

They began to question him, at first casually and carelessly, so it seemed to Curly. But presently he discerned a drift in the talk. They were trying to find out who had been his partners in the rustling.

"And I reckon Soapy and Bad Bill left you lads at Saguache to hold the sack," Buck suggested sympathetically.

Curly grew wary. He did not intend to betray his accomplices. "Wrong guess. Soapy and Bad Bill weren't in this deal," he answered easily.

"We know there were two others in it with you. I guess they were Soapy and Bad Bill all right."

"There's no law against guessing."

The foreman of the Bar Double M interrupted impatiently, tired of trying to pump out the information by finesse. "You've got to speak, Flandrau. You've got to tell us who was engineering this theft. Understand?"

The young rustler looked at the grim frowning face and his heart sank. "Got to tell you, have I?"

"That's what?"

"Out with it," ordered Buck.

"Oh, I expect I'll keep that under my hat," Curly told them lightly.

They were crowded about him in a half circle, nearly a score of hard leather-faced plainsmen. Some of them were riders of the Circle C outfit. Others had ridden over from neighboring ranches. All of them plainly meant business. They meant to stamp out rustling, and their determination had been given an edge by the wounding of Luck Cullison, the most popular man in the county.

"Think again, Curly," advised Sweeney quietly. "The boys ain't trifling about this thing. They mean to find out who was in the rustling of the Bar Double M stock."

"Not through me, they won't."

"Through you. And right now."

A dozen times during the evening Curly had crushed down the desire to beg for mercy, to cry out desperately for them to let him off. He had kept telling himself not to show yellow, that it would not last long. Now the fear of breaking down sloughed from his soul. He rose from the bed and looked round at the brown faces circled about him in the shine of the lamps.

"I'll not tell you a thing--not a thing."

He stood there chalk-faced, his lips so dry that he had to keep moistening them with the tip of his tongue. Two thoughts hammered in his head. One was that he had come to the end of his trail, the other that he would game it out without weakening.

Dutch had a new rope in his hand with a loop at one end. He tossed it over the boy's head and drew it taut. Two or three of the faces in the circle were almost as bloodless as that of the prisoner, but they were set to see the thing out.

"Will you tell now?" Bonfils asked.

Curly met him eye to eye. "No."

"Come along then."

One of the men caught his arm at the place where he had been wounded. The rustler flinched.

"Careful, Buck. Don't you see you're hurting his bad arm?" Sweeney said sharply.

"Sure. Take him right under the shoulder."

"There's no call to be rough with him."

"I didn't aim to hurt him," Buck defended himself.

His grip was loose and easy now. Like the others he was making it up to his conscience for what he meant to do by doing it in the kindest way possible.

Curly's senses had never been more alert. He noticed that Buck had on a red necktie that had got loose from his shirt and climbed up his neck. It had black polka dots and was badly frayed. Sweeney was chewing tobacco. He would have that chew in his mouth after they had finished what they were going to do.

"Ain't he the gamest ever?" someone whispered.

The rustler heard the words and they braced him as a drink of whiskey does a man who has been on a bad spree. His heart was chill with fear, but he had strung his will not to let him give way.

"Better do it at the cottonwoods down by the creek," Buck told Bonfils in a low voice.

The foreman of the Bar Double M moved his head in assent. "All right. Let's get it over quick as we can."

A sound of flying feet came from outside. Someone smothered an oath of surprise. Kate Cullison stood in the doorway, all out of breath and panting.

She took the situation in before she spoke, guessed exactly what they intended to do. Yet she flung her imperious question at them.

"What is it?"

They had not a word to say for themselves. In that room were some of the most callous hearts in the territory. Not one man in a million could have phased them, but this slender girl dumfounded them. Her gaze settled on Buck. His wandered for help to Sweeney, to Jake, to Kite Bonfils.

"Now look-a-here, Miss Kate," Sweeney began to explain.

But she swept his remonstrance aside.

"No--No--No!" Her voice gathered strength with each repetition of the word. "I won't have it. What are you thinking about?"

To the boy with the rope around his neck she was an angel from heaven as she stood there so slim and straight, her dark eyes shining like stars. Some of these men were old enough to be her father. Any of them could have crushed her with one hand. But if a thunderbolt had crashed in their midst it could not have disturbed the vigilantes more.

"He's a rustler, Miss Kate; belongs to Soapy Stone's outfit," Sweeney answered the girl.

"Can you prove it?"

"We got him double cinched."

"Then let the law put him in prison."

"He shot yore paw," Buck reminded her.

"Is that why you're doing it?"

"Yes'm," and "That's why," they nodded.

Like a flash she took advantage of their admission. "Then I've got more against him than you have, and I say turn him over to the law."

"He'd get a good lawyer and wiggle out," Dutch objected.

She whirled on the little puncher. "You know how that is, do you?"

Somebody laughed. It was known that Dutch had once been tried for stealing a sheep and had been acquitted.

Kite pushed forward, rough and overbearing. "Now see here. We know what we're doing and we know why we're doing it. This ain't any business for a girl to mix in. You go back to the house and nurse your father that this man shot."

"So it isn't the kind of business for a girl," she answered scornfully. "It's work for a man, isn't it? No, not for one. For nine--eleven--thirteen--seventeen big brave strong men to hang one poor wounded boy."

Again that amused laugh rippled out. It came from Maloney. He was leaning against the door jamb with his hands in his pockets. Nobody had noticed him before. He had come in after the girl. When Curly came to think it over later, if he had been given three guesses as to who had told Kate Cullison what was on the program he would have guessed Maloney each time.

"Now that you've relieved your mind proper, Miss Cullison, I expect any of the boys will be glad to escort you back to the house," Kite suggested with an acid smile.

"What have you got to do with this?" she flamed. "Our boys took him. They brought him here as their prisoner. Do you think we'll let you come over into this county and dictate everything we do?"

"I've got a notion tucked away that you're trying to do the dictating your own self," the Bar Double M man contradicted.

"I'm not. But I won't stand by while you get these boys to do murder. If they haven't sense enough to keep them from it I've got to stop it myself."

Kite laughed sarcastically. "You hear your boss, boys."

"You've had yore say now, Miss Kate. I reckon you better say good-night," advised Buck.

She handed Buck and his friends her compliments in a swift flow of feminine ferocity.

Maloney pushed into the circle. "She's dead right, boys. There's nothing to this lynching game. He's only a kid."

"He's not such a kid but what he can do murder," Dutch spat out.

Kate read him the riot act so sharply that the little puncher had not another word to say. The tide of opinion was shifting. Those who had been worked up to the lynching by the arguments of Bonfils began to resent his activity. Flandrau was their prisoner, wasn't he? No use going off half cocked. Some of them were discovering that they were not half so anxious to hang him as they had supposed.

The girl turned to her friends and neighbors. "I oughtn't to have talked to you that way, but you know how worried I am about Dad," she apologized with a catch in her breath. "I'm sure you didn't think or you would never have done anything to trouble me more just now. You know I didn't half mean it." She looked from one to another, her eyes shiny with tears. "I know that no braver or kinder men live than you. Why, you're my folks. I've been brought up among you. And so you've got to forgive me."

Some said "Sure," others told her to forget it, and one grass widower drew a laugh by saying that her little spiel reminded him of happier days.

For the first time a smile lit her face. The boy for whose life she was pleading thought it was like sunshine after a storm.

"I'm so glad you've changed your minds. I knew you would when you thought it over," she told them chattily and confidentially.

She was taking their assent for granted. Now she waited and gave them a chance to chorus their agreement. None of them spoke except Maloney. Most of them were with her in sympathy but none wanted to be first in giving way. Each wanted to save his face, so that the others could not later blame him for quitting first.

She looked around from one to another, still cheerful and sure of her ground apparently. Two steps brought her directly in front of one. She caught him by the lapels of his coat and looked straight into his eyes. "You have changed your mind, haven't you, Jake?"

The big Missourian twisted his hat in embarrassment. "I reckon I have, Miss Kate. Whatever the other boys say," he got out at last.

"Haven't you a mind of your own, Jake?"

"Sure. Whatever's right suits me."

"Well, you know what is right, don't you?"

"I expect."

"Then you won't hurt this man, our prisoner?"

"I haven't a thing against him if you haven't."

"Then you won't hurt him? You won't stand by and let the other boys do it?"

"Now, Miss Kate--"

She burst into sudden tears. "I thought you were my friend, but now I'm in trouble you--you think only of making it worse. I'm worried to death about Dad--and you--you make me stay here--away from him--and torment me."

Jake gave in immediately and the rest followed like a flock of sheep. Two or three of the promises came hard, but she did not stop till each one individually had pledged himself. And all the time she was cajoling them, explaining how good it was of them to think of avenging her father, how in one way she did not blame them at all, though of course they had seen it would not do as soon as they gave the matter a second thought. Dad would be so pleased at them when he heard about it, and she wanted them to know how much she liked and admired them. It was quite a love feast.

The young man she had saved could not keep his eyes from her. He would have liked to kneel down and kiss the edge of her dress and put his curly head in the dust before her. The ice in his heart had melted in the warmth of a great emotion. She was standing close to him talking to Buck when he spoke in a low voice.

"I reckon I can't tell you--how much I'm obliged to you, Miss."

She drew back quickly as if he had been a snake about to strike, her hand instinctively gathering her skirts so that they would not brush against him.

"I don't want your thanks," she told him, and her voice was like the drench of an icy wave.

But when she saw the hurt in his eyes she hesitated. Perhaps she guessed that he was human after all, for an impulse carried her forward to take the rope from his neck. While his heart beat twice her soft fingers touched his throat and grazed his cheek. Then she turned and was gone from the room.

It was a long time before the bunk house quieted. Curly, faint with weariness, lay down and tried to sleep. His arm was paining a good deal and he felt feverish. The men of the Circle C and their guests sat down and argued the whole thing over. But after a time the doctor came in and had the patient carried to the house. He was put in a good clean bed and his arm dressed again.

The doctor brought him good news. "Cullison is doing fine. He has dropped into a good sleep. He'd ought to make it all right."

Curly thought about the girl who had fought for his life.

"You'll not let him die, Doc," he begged.

"He's too tough for that, Luck Cullison is."

Presently Doctor Brown gave him a sleeping powder and left him. Soon after that Curly fell asleep and dreamed about a slim dark girl with fine longlashed eyes that could be both tender and ferocious.

CHAPTER IV

THE CULLISONS

Curly was awakened by the sound of the cook beating the call to breakfast on a triangle. Buck was standing beside the bed.

"How're they coming this glad mo'ning, son?" he inquired with a grin.

"Fine and dandy," grinned back Flandrau.

So he was, comparatively speaking. The pain in his arm had subsided. He had had a good sleep. And he was lying comfortably in a clean bed instead of hanging by the neck from the limb of one of the big cottonwoods on the edge of the creek.

A memory smote him and instantly he was grave again.

"How is Cullison?"

"Good as the wheat, doc says. Mighty lucky for Mr. C. Flandrau that he is. Say, I'm to be yore valley and help you into them clothes. Git a wiggle on you."

Buck escorted his prisoner over to the ranch mess house. The others had finished breakfast but Maloney was still eating. His mouth was full of hot cakes, but he nodded across at Curly in a casual friendly way.

"How's the villain in the play this mo'ning?" he inquired.

Twenty-one usually looks on the cheerful side of life. Curly had forgotten for the moment about what had happened to his friend Mac. He did not remember that he was in the shadow of a penitentiary sentence. The sun was shining out of a deep blue sky. The vigor of youth flowed through his veins. He was hungry and a good breakfast was before him. For the present these were enough.

"Me, I'm feeling a heap better than I was last night," he admitted.

"Came pretty near losing him out of the cast, didn't we?"

"Might a-turned out that way if the stage manager had not remembered the right cue in time."

Curly was looking straight into the eyes twinkling across the table at him. Maloney knew that the young fellow was thanking him for having saved his life. He nodded lightly, but his words still seemed to make a jest of the situation.

"Enter the heroine. Spotlight. Sa-a-ved," he drawled.

The heart of the prisoner went out to this man who was reaching a hand to him in his trouble. He had always known that Maloney was true and steady as a snubbing post, but he had not looked for any kindness from him.

"Kite just got a telephone message from Saguache," the Bar Double M man went on easily. "Your friends that bought the rustled stock didn't get away with the goods. Seems they stumbled into a bunch of rurales unexpected and had to pull their freight sudden. The boys from the ranch happened along about then, claimed ownership and got possession."

"If the men bought the stock why didn't they stop and explain?" asked Buck.

"That game of buying stolen cattle is worn threadbare. The rurales and the rangers have had their eye on those border flitters for quite some time. So they figured it was safer to dust."

"Make their getaway?" Curly inquired as indifferently as he could. But in spite of himself a note of eagerness crept into his voice. For if the men had escaped that would be two less witnesses against him.

"Yep."

"Too bad. If they hadn't I could have proved by them I was not one of the men who sold them the stock," Flandrau replied.

"Like hell you could," Buck snorted, then grinned at his prisoner in a shamefaced way: "You're a good one, son."

"Luck has been breaking bad for me, but when things are explained----"

"It sure will take a lot of explaining to keep you out of the pen. You'll have to be slicker than Dutch was."

Jake stuck his head in at the door. "Buck, you're needed to help with them two-year-olds. The old man wants to have a talk with the rustler. Doc says he may. Maloney, will you take him up to the house? I'll arrange to have you relieved soon as I can."

Maloney had once ridden for the Circle C and was friendly with all the men on the place. He nodded. "Sure."

A Mexican woman let them into the chamber where the wounded man lay. It was a large sunny southeast room with French windows opening upon a long porch. Kate was bending over the bed rearranging the pillows, but she looked up quickly when the two men entered. Her eyes were still gentle with the love that had been shining down from them upon her father.

Cullison spoke. "Sit down, Dick." And to his prisoner: "You too."

Flandrau saw close at hand for the first time the man who had been Arizona's most famous fighting sheriff. Luck Cullison was well-built and of medium height, of a dark complexion, clean shaven, wiry and muscular. Already past fifty, he looked not a day more than forty. One glance was enough to tell Curly the kind of man this was. The power of him found expression in the gray steel-chilled eyes that bored into the young outlaw. A child could have told he was not one to trifle with.

"You have begun early, young fellow," he said quietly.

"Begun what?" Curly asked, having nothing better to say.

"You know what. But never mind that. I don't ask you to convict yourself. I sent for you to tell you I don't blame you for this." He touched the wound in his side.

"Different with your boys, sir."

"So the boys are a little excited, are they?"

"They were last night anyhow," Curly answered, with a glimmer of a smile.

Cullison looked quickly at Maloney and then at his daughter.

"I'll listen to what you've been hiding from me," he told them.

"Oh, the boys had notions. Miss Kate argued with them and they saw things different," the Bar Double M rider explained.

But Cullison would not let it go at that. He made them tell him the whole story. When Curly and Maloney had finished he buried his daughter's little hand in his big brown fist. His eyes were dancing with pride, but he gave her not a word of spoken praise.

Kate, somewhat embarrassed, changed the subject briskly. "Now you're talking too much, Dad. Doctor Brown said you might see him for just a few minutes. But you're not to tire yourself, so I'll do the talking for you."

He took his orders with the smiling submission of the man who knows his mistress.

Kate spoke to Curly. "Father wants me to tell you that we don't blame you for shooting at him. We understand just how it was. Your friend got excited and shot as soon as he saw he was surrounded. We are both very sorry he was killed. Father could not stop the boys in time. Perhaps you remember that he tried to get you to surrender."

The rustler nodded. "Yes, I heard him holler to me to put my gun down, but the others blazed away at me."

"And so you naturally defended yourself. That's how we understand it. Father wants it made clear that he feels you could have done nothing else."

"Much obliged. I've been sorry ever since I hit him, and not only on my own account."

"Then none of us need to hold hard feelings." The girl looked at her father, who answered her appeal with a grim nod, and then she turned again to the young rustler a little timidly. "I wonder if you would mind if I asked you a question."

"You've earned the right to ask as many as you like."

"It's about---- We have been told you know the man they call Soapy Stone. Is that true?"

Flandrau's eyes took on a stony look. It was as if something had sponged all the boyishness from his face. Still trying to get him to give away his partners in the rustling, were they? Well, he would show them he could take his medicine without squealing.

"Maybe it is and maybe it isn't."

"Oh, but you don't see what we mean. It isn't that we want to hurt you." She spoke in a quick eager voice of protest.

"No, you just want me to squeal on my friends to save my own hide. Nothing doing, Miss Cullison."

"No. You're wrong. Why are you so suspicious?"

Curly laughed bitterly. "Your boys were asking that question about Soapy last night. They had a rope round my neck at the time. Nothing unfriendly in the matter, of course. Just a casual interest in my doings."

Cullison was looking at him with the steel eyes that bored into him like a gimlet. Now he spoke sharply.

"I've got an account running with Soapy Stone. Some day I'll settle it likely. But that ain't the point now. Do you know his friends--the bunch he trails with?"

Wariness still seemed to crouch in the cool eyes of Flandrau.

"And if I say yes, I'll bet your next question will be about the time and the place I last saw them."

Kate picked up a photograph from the table and handed it to the prisoner. "We're not interested in his friends--except one of them. Did you ever see the boy that sat for that picture?"

The print was a snapshot of a boy about nineteen, a good looking handsome fellow, a little sulky around the mouth but with a pair of straight honest eyes.

Curly shook his head slowly. Yet he was vaguely reminded of someone he knew. Glancing up, he found instantly the clew to what had puzzled him. The young man in the picture was like Kate Cullison, like her father too for that matter.

"He's your brother." The words were out before Flandrau could stop them.

"Yes. You've never met him?"

"No."

Cullison had been watching the young man steadily. "Never saw him with Soapy Stone?"

"No."

"Never heard Stone speak of Sam Cullison?"

"No. Soapy doesn't talk much about who his friends are."

The ex-sheriff nodded. "I've met him."

Of course he had met him. Curly knew the story of how in one drive he had made a gather of outlaws that had brought fame to him. Soapy had broken through the net, but the sheriff had followed him into the hills alone and run him to earth. What passed between the men nobody ever found out. Stone had repeatedly given it out that he could not be taken alive. But Cullison had brought him down to the valley bound and cowed. In due season the bandits had gone over the road to Yuma. Soapy and the others had sworn to get their revenge some day. Now they were back in the hills at their old tricks. Was it possible that Cullison's son was with them, caught in a trap during some drunken frolic just as Curly had been? In what way could Stone pay more fully the debt of hate he owed the former sheriff than by making his son a villain?

The little doctor came briskly into the room.

"Everybody out but the nurse. You've had company enough for one day, Luck," he announced cheerily.

Kate followed Maloney and his prisoner to the porch.

"About the letters of your friend that was shot," she said to Curly. "Doctor Brown was telling me what you said. I'll see they reach Miss Anderson. Do you know in what restaurant she works?"

"No. Mac didn't tell me." The boy gulped to swallow an unexpected lump in his throat. "They was expecting to get married soon."

"I--I'll write to her," Kate promised, her eyes misty.

"I'd be obliged, Miss. Mac was a good boy. Anyone will tell you that. And he was awful fond of her. He talked about her that last night before the camp fire. I led him into this."

"I'll tell her what you say."

"Do. Tell her he felt bad about what he had done. Bad companions got him going wrong, but he sure would have settled down into a good man. That's straight goods, too. You write it strong."

The girl's eyes were shiny with tears. "Yes," she answered softly.

"I ain't any Harvard A. B. Writing letters ain't my long suit. I'm always disremembering whether a man had ought to say have went and have knew. Verbs are the beatingest things. But I know you'll fix it up right so as to let that little girl down easy."

"I've changed my mind. I'll not write but go to see her."

Curly could only look his thanks. Words seemed strangely inadequate. But Kate understood the boy's unspoken wish and nodded her head reassuringly as he left the room.

CHAPTER V

LAURA LONDON

Kite Bonfils and Maloney took Curly back to Saguache and turned him over to Sheriff Bolt.

"How about bail?" Maloney asked.

The sheriff smiled. He was a long lean leather-faced man with friendly eyes from which humorous wrinkles radiated.

"You honing to go bail for him, Dick?"

"How much?"

"Oh, say two thousand."

"You're on."

"What!"

A cowpuncher with fifty dollars two weeks after pay day was a rarity. No wonder Bolt was surprised.

"It's not my money. Luck Cullison is going bail for him," Maloney explained.

"Luck Cullison!" Maloney's words had surprised the exclamation from Curly. Why should the owner of the Circle C of all men go bail for him?

The sheriff commented dryly on the fact. "I thought this kid was the one that shot him."

"That was just a happenstance. Curly shot to save his bacon. Luck don't hold any grudge."

"So I should judge. Luck gave you his check, did he?"

Bolt belonged to the political party opposed to Cullison. He had been backed by Cass Fendrick, a sheepman in feud with the cattle interests and in particular with the Circle C outfit. But he could not go back on his word. He and Maloney called together on the district attorney. An hour later Dick returned to the jail.

"It's all right, kid," he told Curly. "You can shake off the dust of Saguache from your hoofs till court meets in September."

To Flandrau the news seemed too good for the truth. Less than twenty-four hours ago he had been waiting for the end of the road with a rope around his neck. Now he was free to slip a saddle on his pony Keno and gallop off as soon as he pleased. How such a change had been brought about he did not yet understand.

While he and Maloney were sitting opposite each other at the New Orleans Hash House waiting for a big steak with onions he asked questions.

"I don't savvy Cullison's play. Whyfor is he digging up two thousand for me? How does he know I won't cut my stick for Mexico?"

"How do I know it?"

"Well, do you?"

Maloney helped himself to the oyster crackers to pass the time. "Sure I do."

"How?"

"Search me. But I know you'll be here in September if you're alive and kicking."

Flandrau persisted. "But Luck don't owe me anything, except one pill sent promiscuous to his address. What's he going down into his jeans for? Will you tell me that? And shove them crackers north by east. Got to fill up on something."

"Ain't you as good a guesser as I am, Curly?"

"Well then, here's my guess. Miss Kate made him."

"I reckon maybe she influenced him. But why did she? You don't figure that curly topknot of yours is disturbing her dreams any, do you?"

"Quit your joshing and tell me why."

"I can't tell you for sure. But here's my guess. Don't cost you a cent if you ain't satisfied with it. First off, there was poor Mac shot by the Circle C boys. Course Mac was a horse thief, but then he was a kid too. That worried the little girl some. She got to thinking about brother Sam and how he might be in the same fix one of these days as you are now. He's on her mind a good deal, Sam is. Same way with the old man too, I reckon, though he don't say much. Well, she decided Soapy Stone had led you astray like he's doing with Sam. It got to worrying her for fear her brother might need a friend some time. So she handed over her worry to the old man and made him dig up for you."

"That's about it. Tell me what you know of Sam. Is he as white as the rest of the family?"

"Sam is all right, but he has got off wrong foot first. He and the old man got to kind of disagreeing, for the kid was a wild colt. Come by it honestly from the old man too. Well, they had a row one time when Sam got into trouble. Luck told him he never wanted to see him again. Sam lit out, and next folks knew he was trailing with Soapy's gang. Consequence is, Sam's hitting the toboggan for Tophet by all accounts."

"Looks like some one ought to be able to pry him loose from that bunch," Curly mused aloud.

Maloney grinned across at him. "You try it, son. You've always led a good pious life. He sure would listen to you."

He had said it as a jest, but Curly did not laugh. Why not? Why shouldn't he hunt up Sam and let him know how his folks were worrying about him? What was to hinder him from trying to wipe out some of the big debt he owed the Cullison family? He was footloose till September and out of a job. For he could not go back to the Map of Texas with his hat in his hand and a repentant whine on his lips. Why not take a hike into the hills and round up the boy? Of course Sam might not listen to him, but he could not tell that till he had tried. It had taken him scarcely a moment to make up his mind. The smile had not yet died out of Maloney's eyes when he spoke.

"Damn if I don't take a crack at it."

The man on the other side of the table stared at him.

"Meaning that, are you?"

"Yep."

"Might be some lively if Soapy gets wise to your intentions," he said in a casual sort of way.

"I don't aim to declare them out loud."

That was all they said about it at the time. The rest of the evening was devoted to pleasure. After dinner they took in a moving picture show. The first film was a Western melodrama and it pleased them both immensely.

"I'd be afraid to live in a country where guns popped like they do in moving picture land," Curly drawled. "Where is it anyhow? It ain't Texas, nor Oklahoma, nor Wyoming, nor Montana, nor any of the spots in between, because I've been in all of them."

Maloney laughed. "Day before yesterday that's the way I'd a-talked my own self, but now I know better. What about your little stunt? Wasn't that warm enough for you? Didn't guns pop enough? Don't you talk about moving pictures!"

After the picture show there were other things. But both of them trod the narrow path, Maloney because he was used to doing so and Flandrau because his experiences had sobered him.

"I'm on the water wagon, Dick." He grinned ruefully at his friend. "Nothing like locking the stable after your bronc's been stole. I'd a-been a heap better off if I'd got on the wagon a week ago."

Since their way was one for several miles Maloney and Curly took the road together next morning at daybreak. Their ponies ambled along side by side at the easy gait characteristic of the Southwest. Steadily they pushed into the brown baked desert. Little dust whirls in the shape of inverted cones raced across the sand wastes. The heat danced along the road in front of them in shimmering waves.

Your plainsman is a taciturn individual. These two rode for an hour without exchanging a syllable. Then Curly was moved to talk.

"Can you tell me how it is a man can get fond of so Godforsaken a country? Cactus and greasewood and mesquite, and for a change mesquite and greasewood and cactus! Nothing but sand washes and sand hills, except the naked mountains 'way off with their bones sticking through. But in the mo'ning like this, when the world's kind o' smiley with the sunshine, or after dark when things are sorter violet soft and the mountains lose their edges--say, would you swap it for any other country on earth?"

Maloney nodded. He had felt that emotion a hundred times, though he had never put it into words.

At Willow Wash their ways diverged. They parted with a casual "So-long; see you later." Curly was striking for the headwaters of Dead Cow Creek, where Soapy Stone had a horse ranch.

He put up that night at the place of a nester in the foothills. His host looked at him curiously when he mentioned his destination, but he did not say anything. It was none of his business how many young fellows rode to Soapy's ranch.

Flandrau took the trail again next morning after breakfast. About two o'clock he reached a little park in the hills, in the middle of which, by a dry creek, lay a ranch.

The young man at first thought the place was deserted for the day, but when he called a girl appeared at the door. She smiled up at him with the lively interest any ranch girl may be expected to feel in a stranger who happens to be both young and good looking.

She was a young person of soft curves and engaging dimples. Beneath the brown cheeks of Arizona was a pink that came and went very attractively.

Curly took off his dusty gray hat. "Buenos tardes; senorita! I'll bet I'm too late to draw any dinner."

"Buenos, senor," she answered promptly. "I'll bet you'd lose your money."

He swung from the saddle. "That's good hearing. When a fellow has had his knees clamped to the side of a bronch for seven hours he's sure ready for the dinner bell."

"You can wash over there by the pump. There's a towel on the fence."

She disappeared into the house, and Curly took care of his horse, washed, and sauntered back to the porch. He could smell potatoes frying and could hear the sizzling of ham and eggs.

While he ate the girl flitted in and out, soft-footed and graceful, replenishing his plate from time to time.

Presently he discovered that her father was away hunting strays on Sunk Creek, that the nearest neighbor was seven miles distant, and that Stone's ranch was ten miles farther up Dead Cow.

"Ever meet a lad called Sam Cullison?" the guest asked carelessly.

Curly was hardly prepared to see the color whip into her cheeks or to meet the quick stabbing look she fastened on him.

"You're looking for him, are you?" she said.

"Thought while I was here I'd look him up. I know his folks a little."

"Do you know him?"

He shook his head. She looked at him very steadily before she spoke.

"You haven't met him yet but you want to. Is that it?"

"That's it."

"Will you have another egg?"

Flandrau laughed. "No, thanks. Staying up at Stone's, is he?"

"How should I know who's staying at Stone's?"

It was quite plain she did not intend to tell anything that would hurt young Cullison.

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter. I ain't lost him any to speak of," the young man drawled.

"Are you expecting to stop in the hills long--or just visiting?"

"Yes," Curly answered, with his most innocent blank wall look.

"Yes which?"

"Why, whichever you like, Miss London. What's worrying you? If you'll ask me plain out I'll know how to answer you."

"So you know my name?"

"Anything strange about that? The Bar 99 is the London brand. I saw your calves in the corral with their flanks still sore. Naturally I assume the young lady I meet here is Miss Laura London."

She defended her suspicions. "Folks come up here with their mysterious questions. A person would think nobody lived on Dead Cow but outlaws and such, to hear some of you valley people tell it."

"There's nothing mysterious about me and my questions. I'm just a lunkheaded cowpuncher out of a job. What did you think I was?"

"What do you want with Sam Cullison? Are you friendly to him? Or aren't you?"

"Ladies first. Are you friendly to him? Or aren't you?"

Curly smiled gaily across the table at her. A faint echo of his pleasantry began to dimple the corners of her mouth. It lit her eyes and spread from them till the prettiest face on the creek wrinkled with mirth. Both of them relaxed to peals of laughter, and neither of them quite knew the cause of their hilarity.

"Oh, you!" she reproved when she had sufficiently recovered.

"So you thought I was a detective or a deputy sheriff. That's certainly funny."

"For all I know yet you may be one."

"I never did see anyone with a disposition so dark-complected as yours. If you won't put them suspicions to sleep I'll have to table my cards." From his pocket he drew a copy of the Saguache Sentinel and showed her a marked story. "Maybe that will explain what I'm doing up on Dead Cow."

This was what Laura London read:

From Mesa comes the news of another case of bold and flagrant rustling. On Friday night a bunch of horses belonging to the Bar Double M were rounded up and driven across the mountains to this city. The stolen animals were sold here this morning, after which the buyers set out at once for the border and the thieves made themselves scarce. It is claimed that the rustlers were members of the notorious Soapy Stone outfit. Two of the four were identified, it is alleged, as William Cranston, generally known as "Bad Bill," and a young vaquero called "Curly" Flandrau.

At the time of going to press posses are out after both the outlaws and the stolen horses. Chances of overtaking both are considered excellent. All likely points and outlying ranches have been notified by telephone whenever possible.

In case the guilty parties are apprehended the Sentinel hopes an example will be made of them that will deter others of like stamp from a practice that has of late been far too common. Lawlessness seems to come in cycles. Just now the southern tier of counties appears to be suffering from such a sporadic attack. Let all good men combine to stamp it out. The time has passed when Arizona must stand as a synonym for anarchy.

She looked up at the young man breathlessly, her pretty lips parted, her dilated eyes taking him in solemnly. A question trembled on her lips.

"Say it," advised Flandrau.

The courage to ask what she was thinking came back in a wave. "Then I will. Are you a rustler?"

"That's what the paper says, don't it?"

"Are you this man mentioned here? What's his name--'Curly' Flandrau?"

"Yes."

"And you're a rustler?"

"What do you think? Am I more like a rustler than a deputy sheriff? Stands to reason I can't be both."

Her eyes did not leave him. She brushed aside his foolery impatiently. "You don't even deny it."

"I haven't yet. I expect I will later."

"Why do men do such things?" she went on, letting the hands that held the paper drop into her lap helplessly. "You don't look bad. Anyone would think----"

Her sentence tailed out and died away. She was still looking at Curly, but he could see that her mind had flown to someone else. He would have bet a month's pay that she was thinking of another lad who was wild but did not look bad.

Flandrau rose and walked round the table to her. "Much obliged, Miss Laura. I'll shake hands on that with you. You've guessed it. Course, me being so 'notorious' I hate to admit it, but I ain't bad any more than he is."

She gave him a quick shy look. He had made a center shot she was not expecting. But, womanlike, she did not admit it.

"You mean this 'Bad Bill'?"

"You know who I mean all right. His name is Sam Cullison. And you needn't to tell me where he is. I'll find him."

"I know you don't mean any harm to him." But she said it as if she were pleading with him.

"C'rect. I don't. Can you tell me how to get to Soapy Stone's horse ranch from here, Miss London?"

She laughed. Her doubts were vanishing like mist before the sunshine. "Good guess. At least he was there the last I heard."

"And I expect your information is pretty recent."

That drew another little laugh accompanied by a blush.

"Don't you think I have told you enough for one day, Mr. Flandrau?"

"That 'Mr.' sounds too solemn. My friends call me 'Curly,'" he let her know.

She remembered that he was a stranger and a rustler and she drew herself up stiffly. This pleasant young fellow was too familiar.

"If you take this trail to the scrub pines above, then keep due north for about four miles, you'll strike the creek again. Just follow the trail along it to the horse ranch."

With that she turned on her heel and walked into the kitchen.

Curly had not meant to be "fresh." He was always ready for foolery with the girls, but he was not the sort to go too far. Now he blamed himself for having moved too fast. He had offended her sense of what was the proper thing.

There was nothing for it but to saddle and take the road.

CHAPTER VI

A BEAR TRAP

The winding trail led up to the scrub pines and from there north into the hills. Curly had not traveled far when he heard the sound of a gun fired three times in quick succession. He stopped to listen. Presently there came a faint far call for help.

Curly cantered around the shoulder of the hill and saw a man squatting on the ground. He was stooped forward in an awkward fashion with his back to Flandrau.

"What's up?"

At the question the man looked over his shoulder. Pain and helpless rage burned in the deep-set black eyes.

"Nothing at all. Don't you see I'm just taking a nap?" he answered quietly.

Curly recognized him now. The man was Soapy Stone. Behind the straight thin-lipped mouth a double row of strong white teeth were clamped tightly. Little beads of perspiration stood out all over his forehead. A glance showed the reason. One of his hands was caught in a bear trap fastened to a cottonwood. Its jaws held him so that he could not move.

The young man swung from the back of Keno. He found the limb of a cottonwood about as thick as his forearm below the elbow. This he set close to the trap.

"Soon as I get the lip open shove her in," he told Stone.

The prisoner moistened his dry lips. It was plain that he was in great pain.

The rescuer slipped the toes of his boots over the lower lip and caught the upper one with both hands. Slowly the mouth of the trap opened. Stone slipped in the wooden wedge and withdrew his crushed wrist. By great good fortune the steel had caught on the leather gauntlet he was wearing. Otherwise it must have mangled the arm to a pulp.

Even now he was suffering a good deal.

"You'll have to let a doc look at it," Curly suggested.

Stone agreed. "Reckon I better strike for the Bar 99." He was furious at himself for having let such an accident happen. The veriest tenderfoot might have known better.

His horse had disappeared, but Curly helped him to the back of Keno. Together they took the trail for the Bar 99. On the face of the wounded man gathered the moisture caused by intense pain. His jaw was clenched to keep back the groans.

"Hard sledding, looks like," Curly sympathized.

"Reckon I can stand the grief," Stone grunted.

Nor did he speak again until they reached the ranch and Laura London looked at him from a frightened face.

"What is it?"

"Ran a sliver in my finger, Miss Laura. Too bad to trouble you," Soapy answered with a sneer on his thin lips.

A rider for the Bar 99 had just ridden up and Laura sent him at once for the doctor. She led the way into the house and swiftly gathered bandages, a sponge, and a basin of water. Together she and Curly bathed and wrapped the wound. Stone did not weaken, though he was pretty gray about the lips.

Laura was as gentle as she could be.

"I know I'm hurting you," she said, her fingers trembling.

"Not a bit of it. Great pleasure to have you for a nurse. I'm certainly in luck." Curly did not understand the bitterness in the sardonic face and he resented it.

"If the doctor would only hurry," Laura murmured.

"Yes, I know I'm a great trouble. Too bad Curly found me."

She was busy with the knots of the outer wrapping and did not look up. "It is no trouble."

"I'm too meddlesome. Serves me right for being inquisitive about your father's trap."

"He'll be sorry you were caught."

"Yes. He'll have to climb the hill and reset it."

That something was wrong between them Curly could see. Soapy was very polite in spite of his bitterness, but his hard eyes watched her as a cat does a mouse. Moreover, the girl was afraid of him. He could tell that by the timid startled way she had of answering. Now why need she fear the man? It would be as much as his life was worth to lift a hand to hurt her.

After the doctor had come and had attended to the crushed wrist Curly stepped out to the porch to find Laura. She was watering her roses and he went across the yard to her.

"I'm right sorry for what I said, Miss Laura. Once in a while a fellow makes a mistake. If he's as big a chump as I am it's liable to happen a little oftener. But I'm not really one of those smart guys."

Out came her gloved hand in the firmest of grips.

"I know that now. You didn't think. And I made a mistake. I thought you were taking advantage because I had been friendly. I'm glad you spoke about it. We'll forget it."

"Then maybe we'll be friends after all, but I sha'n't tell you what my friends call me," he answered gaily.

She laughed out in a sudden bubbling of mirth. "Take care."

"Oh, I will. I won't even spell it."

He helped her with the watering. Presently she spoke, with a quick look toward the house.

"There's something I want to say."

"Yes."

"Something I want you to do for me."

"I expect maybe I'll do it."

She said nothing more for a minute, then the thing that was troubling her burst from the lips of the girl as a flame leaps out of a pent fire.

"It's about that boy he has up there." She gave a hopeless little gesture toward the hills.

"Sam Cullison?"

"Yes."

"What about him?"

"He's bent on ruining him, always has been ever since he got a hold on him. I can't tell you how I know it, but I'm sure---- And now he's more set on it than ever."

Curly thought he could guess why, but he wanted to make sure. "Because you are Sam's friend?"

The pink flooded her cheeks. "Yes."

"And because you won't be Soapy Stone's friend?"

She flashed a startled look at him. "How do you know?"

"Jealous, is he?"

Her face, buried in the blooms she had been cutting, was of the same tint as the roses.

"And so he wants to hurt you through him?" Flandrau added.

"Yes. If he can drag Sam down and get him into trouble he'll pay off two grudges at once. And he will too. You'll see. He's wily as an Indian. For that matter there is Apache blood in him, folks say."

"What about young Cullison? Can't he make a fight for himself?"

"Oh, you know how boys are. Sam is completely under this man's influence." Her voice broke a little. "And I can't help him. I'm only a girl. He won't listen to me. Besides, Dad won't let me have anything to do with him because of the way he's acting. What Sam needs is a man friend, one just as strong and determined as Soapy but one who is good and the right sort of an influence."

"Are you picking me for that responsible friend who is to be such a powerful influence for good?" Curly asked with a smile.

"Yes--yes, I am." She looked up at him confidently.

"Haven't you forgotten that little piece in the Sentinel? How does it go? An example had ought to be made of the desperadoes, and all the rest of it."

"I don't care what it says. I've seen you."

"So had the editor."

She waved his jests aside. "Oh, well! You've done wrong. What of that? Can't I tell you are a man? And I don't care how much fun you make of me. You're good too."

Curly met her on the ground of her own seriousness. "I'll tell you something, Miss Laura. Maybe you'll be glad to know that the reason I'm going to the horse ranch is to help Sam Cullison if I can."

He went on to tell her the whole story of what the Cullisons had done for him. In all that he said there was not one word to suggest such a thing, but Laura London's mind jumped the gaps to a knowledge of the truth that Curly himself did not have. The young man was in love with Kate Cullison. She was sure of it. Also, she was his ally in the good cause of romance.

When Curly walked back into the house, Stone laid down the paper he had been reading.

"I see the Sentinel hints that Mr. Curly Flandrau had better be lynched," he jeered.

"The Sentinel don't always hit the bull's-eye, Soapy," returned the young man evenly. "It thinks I belong to the Soapy Stone outfit, but we know I haven't that honor."

"There's no such outfit--not in the sense he means," snapped the man on the lounge. "What are your plans? Where you going to lie low? Picked a spot yet?"

"I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on the way," Curly assured him gaily.

Soapy frowned at him under the heavy eyebrows that gave him so menacing an effect.

"Better come back with me to the ranch till you look around."

"Suits me right down to the ground if it does you."

Someone came whistling into the house and opened the door of the room. He was a big lank fellow with a shotgun in his hands. "From Missouri" was stamped all over his awkward frame. He stood staring at his unexpected guests. His eyes, clashing with those of Stone, grew chill and hard.

"So you're back here again, are you?" he asked, looking pretty black.

Stone's lip smile mocked him. "I don't know how you guessed it, but I sure am here."

"Didn't I tell you to keep away from the Bar 99--you and your whole cursed outfit?"

"Seems to me you did mention something of that sort. But how was I to know whether you meant it unless I came back to see?"

Laura came into the room and ranged herself beside her father. Her hand rested lightly on his forearm.

"He got caught in one of your bear traps and this young man brought him here to wait for the doctor," she explained.

"Hmp!"

The Missourian stared without civility at his guest, turned on his heel, and with his daughter beside him marched out of the room. He could not decently tell Stone to leave while he was under the care of a doctor, but he did not intend to make him welcome. London was a blunt grizzled old fellow who said what he thought even about the notorious Soapy Stone.

"We'll pull our freights right away, Curly," Stone announced as soon as his host had gone.

The young man went to the stable and saddled Keno. While he was tightening the cinch a shadow fell across his shoulder. He did not need to look round to see whose it was.

"I'm so glad you're going to the horse ranch. You will look out for Sam. I trust you. I don't know why, but I have the greatest confidence in you," the owner of the shadow explained sweetly.

Curly smiled blandly over his shoulder at her. "Fine! That's a good uplifting line of talk, Miss Laura. Now will you please explain why you're feeding me this particular bunch of taffy? What is it I'm to do for you?"

She blushed and laughed at the same time. Her hand came from behind her back. In it was a letter.

"But I do mean it, every word of it."

"That's to be my pay for giving Master Sam his billy doo, is it?"

"How did you guess? It is a letter to Sam."

"How did I guess it? Shows I'm sure a wiz, don't it?"

She saw her father coming and handed him the letter quickly.

"Here. Take it." A spark of mischief lit her eye and the dimples came out on her cheeks. "Good-by, Curly."

CHAPTER VII

BAD MEDICINE

The house at the horse ranch was a long, low L-shaped adobe structure. The first impression Curly received was that of negligence. In places the roof sagged. A door in the rear hung from one hinge. More than one broken pane of glass was stuffed with paper. The same evidence of shiftlessness could be seen on every hand. Fences had collapsed and been repaired flimsily. The woodwork of the well was rotting. The windmill wheezed and did its work languidly for lack of oil.

Two men were seated on the porch playing seven up. One was Bad Bill, the other Blackwell. At sight of Curly they gave up their game.

"Hello, kid! Where did you drop from?" Cranston asked.

A muscle twitched in Flandrau's cheek. "They got Mac."

"Got him! Where? At Saguache?"

"Ran us down near the Circle C. Mac opened fire. They--killed him."

"Shot him, or----?" Curly was left to guess the other half of the question.

"Shot him, and took me prisoner."

"They couldn't prove a thing, could they?"

"They could prove I wounded Cullison. That was enough for them. They set out to hang me. Later they changed their minds."

"How come you here? Did you escape?"

"Nope. Friends dug up bail."

Cranston did not ask what friends. He thought he knew. Alec Flandrau, an uncle of Curly, owned a half interest in the Map of Texas ranch. No doubt he had come to the aid of the young scapegoat.

"I'll bet the old man was sore at having to ante," was Big Bill's comment.

"Say, Soapy has been telling me that the Cullison kid is up here. I reckon we better not say anything about my mixup with his folks. I'm not looking for any trouble with him."

"All right, Curly. That goes with me. How about you, Blackwell?"

"Sure. What Sam don't know won't hurt him."

Curly sat down on the porch and told an edited story of his adventures to them. Before he had finished a young fellow rode up and dismounted. He had a bag of quail with him which he handed over to the Mexican cook. After he had unsaddled and turned his pony into a corral he joined the card players on the porch.

By unanimous consent the game was changed to poker. Young Cullison had the chair next to Flandrau. He had, so Curly thought, a strong family resemblance to his father and sister. "His eye jumps straight at you and asks its questions right off the reel," the newcomer thought. Still a boy in his ways, he might any day receive the jolt that would transform him into a man.

The cook's "Come and get it" broke up the game for a time. They trooped to supper, where for half an hour they discussed without words fried quail, cornbread and coffee. Such conversation as there was held strictly to necessary lines and had to do with the transportation of edibles.

Supper over, they smoked till the table was cleared. Then coats were removed and they sat down to the serious business of an all night session of draw.

Curly was not playing to win money so much as to study the characters of those present. Bill he knew already fairly well as a tough nut to crack, game to the core, and staunch to his friends. Blackwell was a bad lot, treacherous, vindictive, slippery as an eel. Even his confederates did not trust him greatly. But it was Soapy Stone and young Cullison that interested Flandrau most. The former played like a master. He chatted carelessly, but he overlooked no points. Sam had the qualities that go to make a brilliant erratic player, but he lacked the steadiness and the finesse of the veteran.

The last play before they broke up in the gray dawn was a flashlight on Stone's cool audacity. The limit had long since been taken off. Blackwell and Stone had been the winners of the night, and the rest had all lost more or less.

Curly was dealing, Cranston opened the pot.

"She's cracked," he announced.

Blackwell, sitting next to him, had been waiting his turn with palpable eagerness. "Got to boost her, boys, to protect Bill," he explained as his raise went in.

Sam, who had drunk more than was good for him, raised in his turn. "Kick her again, gentlemen. Me, I'm plumb tired of that little song of mine, 'Good here'."

Stone stayed. Curly did not come in.

Cranston showed his openers and laid down his hand. Blackwell hesitated, then raised again.

"Reckon I'm content to trail along," Cullison admitted, pushing in the necessary chips.

Soapy rasped his stubby chin, looked sideways at Sam and then at Blackwell, and abruptly shaved in chips enough to call the raise.

"Cards?" asked Curly.

"I'll play these," Blackwell announced.

Sam called for two and Stone one.

Blackwell raised. Sam, grumbling, stayed.

"Might as well see what you've got when I've gone this far," he gave as a reason for throwing good money after bad.

Soapy took one glance at his new card and came in with a raise.

Blackwell slammed his fist down on the table. "Just my rotten luck. You've filled."

Stone smiled, then dropped his eyes to his cards. Suddenly he started. What had happened was plain. He had misread his hand.

With a cheerful laugh Blackwell raised in his turn.

"Lets me out," Sam said.

For about a tenth of a second one could see triumph ride in Soapy's eyes. "Different here," he explained in a quiet businesslike way. All his chips were pushed forward to the center of the table.

On Blackwell's face were mapped his thoughts. Curly saw his stodgy mind working on the problem, studying helplessly the poker eyes of his easy placid enemy. Was Soapy bluffing? Or had he baited a hook for him to swallow? The faintest glimmer of amusement drifted across the face of Stone. He might have been a general whose plans have worked out to suit him, waiting confidently for certain victory. The longer the convict looked at him the surer he was that he had been trapped.

With an oath he laid down his hand. "You've got me beat. Mine is only a jack high straight."

Stone put down his cards and reached for the pot.

Curly laughed.

Blackwell whirled on him.

"What's so condemned funny?"

"The things I notice."

"Meaning?"

"That I wouldn't have laid down my hand."

"Betcher ten plunks he had me beat."

"You're on." Curly turned to Soapy. "Object to us seeing your hand?"

Stone was counting his chips. He smiled. "It ain't poker, but go ahead. Satisfy yourselves."

"You turn the cards," Flandrau said.

A king of diamonds showed first, then a ten-spot and a six-spot of the same suit.

"A flush," exulted Blackwell.

"I've got just one more ten left, but it says you're wrong."

The words were not out of Curly's mouth before the other had taken the bet. Soapy looked at Flandrau with a new interest. Perhaps this boy was not such a youth as he had first seemed.

The fourth card turned was a king of hearts, the last a six of spades. Stone had had two pair to go on and had not bettered at the draw.

Blackwell tossed down two bills and went away furious.

That night was like a good many that followed. Sam was at an impressionable age, inclined to be led by any man whom he admired. Curly knew that he could gain no influence over him by preaching. He had to live the rough-and-tumble life of these men who dwelt beyond the pale of the law, to excel them at the very things of which they boasted. But in one respect he held himself apart. While he was at the horse ranch he did not touch a drop of liquor.

Laura London's letter was not delivered until the second day, for, though she had not told her messenger to give it to Sam when he was alone, Curly guessed this would be better. The two young men had ridden down to Big Tree spring to get quail for supper.

"Letter for you from a young lady," Flandrau said, and handed it to Cullison.

Sam did not read his note at once, but put it in his pocket carelessly, as if it had been an advertisement. They lay down in the bushes about twenty yards apart, close to the hole where the birds flew every evening to water. Hidden by the mesquite, Sam ran over his letter two or three times while he was waiting. It was such a message as any brave-hearted, impulsive girl might send to the man she loved when he seemed to her to walk in danger. Cullison loved her for the interest she took in him, even while he ridiculed her fears.

Presently the quails came by hundreds on a bee-line for the water hole. They shot as many as they needed, but no more, for neither of them cared to kill for pleasure.

As they rode back to the ranch, Curly mentioned that he had seen Sam's people a day or two before.

Cullison asked no questions, but he listened intently while the other told the story of his first rustling and of how Miss Kate and her father had stood by him in his trouble. The dusk was settling over the hills by this time, so that they could not see each other's faces clearly.

"If I had folks like you have, the salt of the earth, and they were worrying their hearts out about me, seems to me I'd quit helling around and go back to them," Curly concluded.

"The old man sent you to tell me that, did he?" Hard and bitter came the voice of the young man out of the growing darkness.

"No, he didn't. He doesn't know I'm here. But he and your sister have done more for me than I ever can pay. That's why I'm telling you this."

Sam answered gruffly, as a man does when he is moved, "Much obliged, Curly, but I reckon I can look out for myself."

"Just what I thought, and in September I have to go to the penitentiary. Now I have mortgaged it away, my liberty seems awful good to me."

"You'll get off likely."

"Not a chance. They've got me cinched. But with you it's different. You haven't fooled away your chance yet. There's nothing to this sort of life. The bunch up here is no good. Soapy don't mean right by you, or by any young fellow he trails with."

"I'll not listen to anything against Soapy. He took me in when my own father turned against me."

"To get back at your father for sending him up the road."

"That's all right. He has been a good friend to me. I'm not going to throw him down."

"Would it be throwing him down to go back to your people?"

"Yes, it would. We've got plans. Soapy is relying on me. No matter what they are, but I'm not going to lie down on him. And I'm not going back to the old man. He told me he was through with me. Once is a-plenty. I'm not begging him to take me back, not on your life."

[Illustration: HE WAS THE MADDEST MAN IN ARIZONA.]

Curly dropped the matter. To urge him further would only make the boy more set in his decision. But as the days passed he kept one thing in his mind, not to miss any chance to win his friendship. They rode together a good deal, and Flandrau found that Sam liked to hear him talk about the Circle C and its affairs. But often he was discouraged, for he made no progress in weaning him from his loyalty to Stone. The latter was a hero to him, and gradually he was filling him with wrong ideas, encouraging him the while to drink a great deal. That the man had some definite purpose Curly was sure. What it was he meant to find out.

Meanwhile he played his part of a wild young cowpuncher ready for any mischief, but beneath his obtuse good humor Flandrau covered a vigilant wariness. Soapy held all the good cards now, but if he stayed in the game some of them would come to him. Then he would show Mr. Stone whether he would have everything his own way.

CHAPTER VIII

A REHEARSED QUARREL

Because he could not persuade him to join in their drinking bouts, Stone nicknamed Curly the good bad man.

"He's the prize tough in Arizona, only he's promised his ma not to look on the wine when it is red," Blackwell sneered.

Flandrau smiled amiably, and retorted as best he could. It was his cue not to take offence unless it were necessary.

It was perhaps on account of this good nature that Blackwell made a mistake. He picked on the young man to be the butt of his coarse pleasantries. Day after day he pointed his jeers at Curly, who continued to grin as if he did not care.

When the worm turned, it happened that they were all sitting on the porch. Curly was sewing a broken stirrup leather, Blackwell had a quirt in his hand, and from time to time flicked it at the back of his victim. Twice the lash stung, not hard, but with pepper enough to hurt. Each time the young man asked him to stop.

Blackwell snapped the quirt once too often. When he picked himself out of the dust five seconds later, he was the maddest man in Arizona. Like a bull he lowered his head and rushed. Curly sidestepped and lashed out hard with his left.

The convict whirled, shook the hair out of his eyes, and charged again. It was a sledge-hammer bout, with no rules except to hit the other man often and hard. Twice Curly went down from chance blows, but each time he rolled away and got to his feet before his heavy foe could close with him. Blackwell had no science. His arms went like flails. Though by sheer strength he kept Flandrau backing, the latter hit cleaner and with more punishing effect.

Curly watched his chance, dodged a wild swing, and threw himself forward hard with his shoulder against the chest of the convict. The man staggered back, tripped on the lowest step of the porch, and went down hard. The fall knocked the breath out of him.

"Had enough?" demanded Curly.

For answer Blackwell bit his thumb savagely.

"Since you like it so well, have another taste." Curly, now thoroughly angry, sent a short-arm jolt to the mouth.

The man underneath tried to throw him off, but Flandrau's fingers found his hairy throat and tight-

[Transcriber's Note: the last line printed in the preceeding paragraph was "tight-" and that was at a page break. The continuation was not printed at the top of the following page. From the context, "tightened" is likely the completed word.]

"You're killing me," the convict gasped.

"Enough?"

"Y-yes."

Curly stepped back quickly, ready either for a knife or a gun-play. Blackwell got to his feet, and glared at him.

"A man is like a watermelon; you can't most generally tell how good he is till you thump him," Sam chuckled.

Cranston laughed. "Curly was not so ripe for picking as you figured, Lute. If you'd asked me, I could a-told you to put in yore spare time letting him alone. But a fellow has to buy his own experience."

The victor offered his hand to Blackwell. "I had a little luck. We'll call it quits if you say so."

"I stumbled over the step," the beaten man snarled.

"Sure. I had all the luck."

"Looked to me like you were making yore own luck, kid," Bad Bill differed.

The paroled convict went into the house, swearing to get even. His face was livid with fury.

"You wouldn't think a little thing like a whaling given fair and square would make a man hold a grudge. My system has absorbed se-ve-real without doing it any harm." Sam stooped to inspect a rapidly discoloring eye. "Say, Curly, he hung a peach of a lamp on you."

Soapy made no comment in words, but he looked at Flandrau with a new respect. For the first time a doubt as to the wisdom of letting him stay at the ranch crossed his mind.

His suspicion was justified. Curly had been living on the edge of a secret for weeks. Mystery was in the air. More than once he had turned a corner to find the other four whispering over something. The group had disintegrated at once with a casual indifference that did not deceive. Occasionally a man had ridden into the yard late at night for private talk with Stone, and Curly was morally certain that the man was the little cowpuncher Dutch of the Circle C.

Through it all Curly wore a manner of open confidence. The furtive whisperings did not appear to arouse his curiosity, nor did he intercept any of the knowing looks that sometimes were exchanged. But all the time his brain was busy with questions. What were they up to? What was it they had planned?

Stone and Blackwell rode away one morning. To Curly the word was given that they were going to Mesa. Four days later Soapy returned alone. Lute had found a job, he said.

"That a paper sticking out of your pocket?" Flandrau asked.

Soapy, still astride his horse, tossed the Saguache Sentinel to him as he turned toward the stable.

"Lie number one nailed," Curly said to himself. "How came he with a Saguache paper if he's been to Mesa?"

Caught between the folds of the paper was a railroad time table. It was a schedule of the trains of the Texas, Arizona & Pacific for July. This was the twenty-ninth of June. Certainly Soapy had lost no time getting the new folder as soon as it was issued. Why? He might be going traveling. If so, what had that to do with the mystery agitating him and his friends?

Curly turned the pages idly till a penciled marking caught his eye. Under Number 4's time was scrawled, just below Saguache, the word Tin Cup, and opposite it the figures 10:19. The express was due to leave Saguache at 9:57 in the evening. From there it pushed up to the divide and slid down with air brakes set to Tin Cup three thousand feet lower. Soapy could not want to catch the train fifteen miles the other side of Saguache. But this note on the margin showed that he was interested in the time it reached the water tank. There must be a reason for it.

Stone came back hurriedly from the corral, to find Curly absorbed in the Sentinel.

"Seen anything of a railroad folder? I must a-dropped it."

"It was stuck in the paper. I notice there's liable to be trouble between Fendrick and the cattle interests over his sheep," the reader answered casually.

"Yep. Between Fendrick and Cullison, anyhow." Stone had reclaimed and pocketed his time table.

Incidentally Flandrau's doubt had been converted into a lively suspicion. Presently he took a gun, and strolled off to shoot birds. What he really wanted was to be alone so that he could think the matter over. Coming home in the dusk, he saw Stone and young Cullison with their heads together down by the corral. Curious to see how long this earnest talk would last, Curly sat down on a rock, and watched them, himself unobserved. They appeared to be rehearsing some kind of a scene, of which Soapy was stage director.

The man on the rock smiled grimly. "They're having a quarrel, looks like.... Now the kid's telling Soapy to go to Guinea, and Soapy's pawing around mad as a bull moose. It's all a play. They don't mean it. But why? I reckon this dress rehearsal ain't for the calves in the corral."

Curly's mind was so full of guesses that his poker was not up to par that night. About daybreak he began to see his way into the maze. His first gleam of light was when a row started between Soapy and Cullison. Before anyone could say a word to stop them they were going through with that identical corral quarrel.

Flandrau knew now they had been preparing it for his benefit. Cranston chipped in against Sam, and to keep up appearances Curly backed the boy. The quarrel grew furious. At last Sam drove his fist down on the table and said he was through with the outfit and was going back to Saguache.

"Yo tambien," agreed Curly. "Not that I've got anything against the horse ranch. That ain't it. But I'm sure pining for to bust the bank at Bronson's.

'Round and round the little ball goes, Where it will land nobody knows.'

I've got forty plunks burning my jeans. I've got to separate myself from it or make my roll a thousand."

The end of it was that both Sam and Curly went down to the corral and saddled their ponies. To the last the conspirators played up to their parts.

"Damned good riddance," Stone called after them as they rode away.

"When I find out I'm doing business with four-flushers, I quit them cold," Sam called back angrily.

Curly was amused. He wanted to tell his friend that they had pulled off their little play very well. But he did not.

Still according to program, Sam sulked for the first few miles of their journey. But before they reached the Bar 99 he grew sunny again.

"I'm going to have a talk with Laura while I'm so near," he explained.

"Yes, that will be fine. From the way the old man talked when I was there, I expect he'll kill the fatted yearling for you."

"I don't figure on including the old man in my call. What's the use of having a friend along if you don't use him? You drift in ... just happen along, you know. I'll stay in the scrub pines up here. If the old man is absent scenery, you wave your bandanna real industrious. If he is at home, give Laura the tip and she'll know where to find me."

The owner of the ranch, as it happened, was cutting trail over by Agua Caliente.

"Do you want to see him very bad, Mr. Flandrau?" asked Miss Laura demurely.

"My friends call me Curly."

"I meant to say Curly."

"That's what I thought. No, I can't say I've lost Mr. London."

"You inquired for him."

"Hmp! That's different. When I used to come home from the swimming hole contrary to orders, I used to ask where Dad was, but I didn't want to see him."

"I see. Did you just come down from the horse ranch?"

"You've guessed it right."

"Then I'm sorry I can't ask you to 'light. Dad's orders."

"You've got lots of respect for his orders, haven't you?" he derided.

"Yes, I have." She could not quite make up her mind whether to laugh or become indignant.

"Then there's no use trying to tell you the news from the ranch."

A smile dimpled her cheeks and bubbled in her eyes. "If you should tell me, I suppose I couldn't help hearing."

"But I'm trying to figure out my duty. Maybe I oughtn't to tempt you."

"While you're making up your mind, I'll run back into the kitchen and look at the pies in the oven."

Curly swung from the saddle, and tossed the bridle rein to the ground. He followed her into the house. She was taking an apple pie from the oven, but took time to be saucy over her shoulder.

"I'm not allowed to invite you into the house, sir."

"Anything in the by-laws about me inviting myself in?"

"No, that wasn't mentioned."

"Anything in them about you meeting one of the lads from the horse ranch up on the hillside where it is neutral ground?"

"Did Sam come with you?" she cried.

"Who said anything about Sam?"

Glints of excitement danced in the brown pupils of her eyes. "He's here. Oh, I know he's here."

"What do I get for bringing good news?"

"I didn't say it was good news."

"Sho! Your big eyes are shouting it."

"Was that the news from the horse ranch?"

"That's part of it, but there is more. Sam and Curly are on their way to Saguache to spend the Fourth of July. Sam is going for another reason, but I'm not sure yet what it is."

"You mean----?"

"There's something doing I don't savez, some big deal on foot that's not on the level. Sam is in it up to the hocks. To throw me off the scent they fixed up a quarrel among them. Sam is supposed to be quitting Soapy's outfit for good. But I know better."

White to the lips, she faced him bravely. "What sort of trouble is he leading Sam into?"

"I've got a kind of a notion. But it won't bear talking about yet. Don't you worry, little girl. I'm going to stand by Sam. And don't tell him what I've told you, unless you want to spoil my chance of helping him."

"I won't," she promised; then added, with quick eagerness: "Maybe I can help you. I'm going down to Saguache to visit on the fourth. I'm to be there two weeks."

"I'll look you up. Trouble is that Sam is hell bent on ruining himself. Seems to think Soapy is his best friend. If we could show him different things might work out all right."

While she climbed the hill to Sam, Curly watered his horse and smoked a cigarette. He was not hired to chaperone lovers. Therefore, it took him three-quarters of an hour to reach the scrub pine belt on the edge of the park.

At once he saw that they had been having a quarrel. The girl's eyes were red, and she was still dabbing at them with her handkerchief when he came whistling along. Sam looked discouraged, but stubborn. Very plainly they had been disagreeing about his line of conduct.

The two young men took the trail again. The moroseness of Sam was real and not affected this time. He had flared up because the girl could not let him alone about his friendship for Soapy Stone. In his heart the boy knew he was wrong, that he was moving fast in the wrong direction. But his pride would neither let him confess it or go back on his word to the men with whom he had been living.

About noon the next day they reached Saguache. After they had eaten, Curly strolled off by himself to the depot.

"Gimme a ticket to Tin Cup for this evening. I want to go by the express," he told the agent.

The man looked at him and grinned. "I saw you at Mesa in the bucking broncho doings last year, didn't I?"

"Maybe you did and maybe you didn't. Why?"

"You certainly stay with the bad bronchs to a fare-you-well. If I'd been judge you'd a-had first place, Mr. Flandrau."

"Much obliged. And now you've identified me sufficient, how about that ticket?"

"I was coming to that. Sure you can get a ticket. Good on any train. You're so darned active, maybe you could get off Number 4 when she is fogging along sixty miles per. But most folks couldn't, not with any comfort."

"Meaning that the Flyer doesn't stop?"

"Not at Tin Cup."

"Have to take the afternoon train then?"

"I reckon." He punched a ticket and shoved it through the window toward Curly. "Sixty-five cents, please."

Flandrau paid for and pocketed the ticket he did not intend to use. He had found out what he wanted to know. The express did not stop at Tin Cup. Why, then, had Soapy marked the time of its arrival there? He was beginning to guess the reason. But he would have to do more than guess.

Curly walked back to the business section from the depot. Already the town was gay with banners in preparation for the Fourth. On the program were broncho-busting, roping, Indian dances, races, and other frontier events. Already visitors were gathering for the festivities. Saguache, wide open for the occasion, was already brisk with an assorted population of many races. Mexicans, Chinese, Indians of various tribes brushed shoulders with miners, tourists and cattlemen. Inside the saloons faro, chuckaluck and roulette attracted each its devotees.

Flandrau sauntered back to the hotel on the lookout for Sam. He was not there, but waiting for him was a boy with a note for the gentleman in Number 311.

"Kid looking for you," the clerk called to the cowpuncher.

"Are you Mr. Soapy Stone's friend, the one just down from Dead Cow creek?" asked the boy.

Taken as a whole, the answer was open to debate. But Curly nodded and took the note.

This was what he read:

Sam, come to Chalkeye's place soon as you get this. There we will talk over the business.

You Know Who.

Though he did not know who, Curly thought he could give a pretty good guess both as to the author and the business that needed talking over.

Through the open door of the hotel he saw Sam approaching. Quickly he sealed the flap of the envelope again, and held it pressed against his fingers while he waited.

"A letter for you, Sam."

Cullison tore open the envelope and read the note.

"A friend of mine has come to town and wants to see me," he explained.

To help out his bluff, Curly sprang the feeble-minded jest on him. "Blonde or brunette?"

"I'm no lady's man," Sam protested, content to let the other follow a wrong scent.

"Sure not. It never is a lady," Flandrau called after him as he departed.

But Sam had no more than turned the corner before Curly was out of a side door and cutting through an alley toward Chalkeye's place. Reaching the back door of the saloon, he opened it a few inches and peered in. A minute later Sam opened the front screen and asked a question of the man in the apron. The bartender gave a jerk of his thumb. Sam walked toward the rear and turned in at the second private booth.

Curly slipped forward quietly, and passed unobserved into the third stall. The wall which divided one room from another was of pine boarding and did not reach the ceiling. As the eavesdropper slid to a seat a phonograph in front began the Merry Widow waltz. Noiselessly Flandrau stood on the cushioned bench with his ear close to the top of the dividing wall. He could hear a murmur of voices but could not make out a word. The record on the instrument wheezed to silence, but immediately a rag-time tune followed.

Presently the music died away. Flattened against the wall, his attention strained to the utmost, Curly began to catch words and phrases of the low-voiced speakers in the next compartment. His position was perilous in the extreme, but he would not leave now until he had found out what he wanted to know.

CHAPTER IX

EAVESDROPPING

Out of the murmur of voices came one that Curly recognized as that of Soapy Stone, alias You Know Who.

" ... then you'll take the 9:57, Sam...."

After more whispering, "Yep, soon as you hear the first shot ... cover the passengers...."

The listener lost what followed. Once he thought he heard the name Tin Cup, but he could not be sure. Presently another fragment drifted to him. "...make our getaway and cache the plunder...."

The phonograph lifted up its voice again. This time it was "I love a lassie." Before the song was finished there came the sound of shuffling feet. One of the men in the next stall was leaving. Curly could not tell which one, nor did he dare look over the top of the partition to find out. He was playing safe. This adventure had caught him so unexpectedly that he had not found time to run back to his room for his six-gun. What would happen to him if he were caught listening was not a matter of doubt. Soapy would pump lead into him till he quit kicking, slap a saddle on a broncho, and light out for the Sonora line.

As the phonograph finished unexpectedly--someone had evidently interrupted the record--the fragment of a sentence seemed to jump at Curly.

" ... so the kid will get his in the row."

It was the voice of Soapy, raised slightly to make itself heard above the music.

"Take care," another voice replied, and Flandrau would have sworn that this belonged to Blackwell.

Stone, who had been sitting on the other side of the table, moved close to the paroled convict. Between him and Curly there was only the thickness of a plank. The young man was afraid that the knocking of his heart could be heard.

" ... don't like it," Blackwell was objecting sullenly.

"Makes it safe for us. Besides"--Stone's voice grated like steel rasping steel, every word distinct though very low--"I swore to pay off Luck Cullison, and by God! I'm going to do it."

"Someone will hear you if you ain't careful," the convict protested anxiously.

"Don't be an old woman, Lute."

" ... if you can do it safe. I owe Luck Cullison much as you do, but...."

Again they fell to whispers. The next word that came to Curly clearly was his own name. But it was quite a minute before he gathered what they were saying.

"Luck Cullison went his bail. I learnt it this mo'ning."

"The son-of-a-gun. It's a cinch he's a spy. And me wanting you to let him in so's he could hold the sack instead of Sam."

"Knew it wouldn't do, Lute. He's smart as a whip."

"Reckon he knows anything?"

"No. Can't."

"If I thought he did----"

"Keep your shirt on, Lute. He don't know a thing. And you get revenge on him all right. Sam will run with him and his friends while he's here. Consequence is, when they find the kid where we leave him they'll sure guess Curly for one of his pardners. Tell you his ticket is good as bought to Yuma. He's a horse thief. Why shouldn't he be a train robber, too. That's how a jury will argue."

Blackwell grumbled something under his breath.

Stone's voice grated harshly. "Me too. If he crosses my trail I'm liable to spoil his hide before court meets. No man alive can play me for a sucker and throw me down. Not Soapy Stone."

Once more the voices ran together indistinctly. It was not till Blackwell suggested that they go get a drink that Curly understood anything more of what was being said.

The outlaws passed out of the little room and strolled forward to the bar.

Curly had heard more than he had expected to. Moreover, as he congratulated himself, his luck had stood up fine. Nobody in the sunburnt territory felt happier than he did that minute when he struck the good fresh air of the alley and knew that he had won through his hazardous adventure alive.

The first thing that Flandrau did was to walk toward the outskirts of the town where he could think it out by himself. But in this little old planet events do not always occur as a man plans them. Before he reached Arroyo street Curly came plump against his old range-mate Slats Davis.

The assistant foreman of the Hashknife nodded as he passed. He had helped Curly escape less than a month before, but he did not intend to stay friendly with a rustler.

Flandrau caught him by the arm. "Hello, Slats. You're the man I want."

"I'm pretty busy to-day," Davis answered stiffly.

"Forget it. This is more important."

"Well?"

"Come along and take a walk. I got something to tell you."

"Can't you tell it here?"

"I ain't going to, anyhow. Come along. I ain't got smallpox."

Reluctantly Davis fell in beside him. "All right. Cut it short. I've got to see a man."

"He'll have to wait." Curly could not help chuckling to himself at the evident embarrassment of the other. The impish impulse to "devil" him had its way. "You're a man of experience, Slats. Ever hold up a train?"

The foreman showed plainly his disgust at this foolishness. "Haven't you sense enough ever to be serious, Curly? You're not a kid any more. In age you're a grown man. But how do you act? Talk like that don't do you any good. You're in trouble good and deep. Folks have got their eyes on you. Now is the time to show them you have quit all that hell raising you have been so busy at."

"He sure is going good this mo'ning," Curly drawled confidentially to the scenery. "You would never guess, would you, that him and me had raised that crop in couples?"

"That's all right, too. I'm no sky pilot. But I know when to quit. Seemingly you don't. I hear you've been up at Stone's horse ranch. I want to tell you that won't do you any good if it gets out."

"Never was satisfied till I had rounded up all the trouble in sight. That's why I mentioned this train robbery. Some of my friends are aiming to hold up one shortly. If you'd like to get in I'll say a good word for you."

Davis threw at him a look that drenched like ice water. "I expect you and me are traveling different trails these days, Curly. You don't mean it of course, but the point is I'm not going to joke with you along that line. Understand?"

"Wrong guess, old hoss. I do mean it."

Davis stopped in his tracks. "Then you've said too much to me. We'll part right here."

"It takes two to agree to that, Slats."

"That's where you're wrong. One is enough. We used to be good friends, but those days are past. None of us can keep a man from being a durned fool if he wants to be one. Nor a scoundrel. You've got the bit in your teeth and I reckon you'll go till there is a smash. But you better understand this. When you choose Soapy Stone's, crowd to run with that cuts out me and other decent folks. If they have sent you here to get me mixed up in their deviltry you go back and tell them there's nothing doing."

"Won't have a thing to do with them. Is that it?"

"Not till the call comes for citizens to get together and run them out of the country. Or to put them behind bars. Or to string them to a cottonwood. Then I'll be on the job."

He stood there quiet and easy, the look in his steady eyes piercing Curly's ironic smile as a summer sun does mackerel clouds in a clear sky. Not many men would have had the courage to send that message to Soapy and his outfit. For Stone was not only a man killer, but a mean one at that. Since he had come back from the penitentiary he had been lying pretty low, but he brought down from the old days a record that chilled the blood.

Curly sloughed his foolishness and came to the point.

"You're on, Slats. I'm making that call to you now."

The eyes of the two men fastened. Those of Flandrau had quit dancing and were steady as the sun in a blue sky. Surprise, doubt, wonder, relief filled in turn the face of the other man.

"I'm listening, Curly."

His friend told him the whole story from the beginning, just as he had been used to do in the old days. And Davis heard it without a word, taking the tale in quietly with a grim look settling, on his face.

"So he aims to play traitor to young Cullison. The thing is damnable."

"He means to shut Sam's mouth for good and all. That is what he has been playing for from the start, to get even with Luck. He and his gang will get away with the haul and they will leave Sam dead on the scene of the hold-up. There will be some shooting, and it will be figured the boy was hit by one of the train crew. Nothing could be easier."

"If it worked out right."

"Couldn't help working out right. That's why Soapy didn't let me in on the proposition. To get rid of one would be no great trouble, but two--well, that's different. Besides, I could tell he was not sure of me. Now he aims to put me on the stand and prove by me that Sam and he had a quarrel and parted company mighty sore at each other hardly a week before the hold-up. He'll have an alibi too to show he couldn't have been in it. You'll see."

"You wouldn't think a white man could take a revenge like that on his enemy. It's an awful thing to do in cold blood."

"Soapy is no white man. He's a wolf. See how slick his scheme is. At one flip of the cards he kills the kid and damns his reputation. He scores Cullison and he snuffs out Sam, who had had the luck to win the girl Soapy fancies. The boy gets his and the girl is shown she can't love another man than Stone."

"Ever hear the story of French Dan?" asked Slats.

"Not to know the right of it."

"Soapy and Dan trained together in them days and went through a lot of meanness as side pardners. One day the Arivaca stage was held up by two men and the driver killed. In the scrap one of the men had his mask torn off. It was French Dan. Well, the outlaws had been too damned busy. Folks woke up and the hills were sprinkled with posses. They ran the fellows down and hunted them from place to place. Two--three times they almost nailed them. Shots were exchanged. A horse of one of the fugitives was killed and they could not get another. Finally one dark night the outlaws were surrounded. The posse lay down in the zacaton and waited for morning. In the night one of them heard a faint sound like the popping of a cork. When mo'ning broke the hunters crept forward through the thick grass. Guess what they found."

Curly's answer was prompt. "Gimme a harder one. There were two men and only one horse. The only chance was to slip through the line before day arrived. My guess is that they found French Dan with a little round hole in his skull--and that the bullet making it had gone in from behind. My guess also is that the posse didn't find the horse and the other man, just a trail through the zacaton back into the hills."

"Go to the head of the class. There was one man too many in that thicket for the horse. French Dan's pardner was afraid they might not agree about who was to have the bronch for a swift getaway. So he took no chances. There's only one man alive to-day can swear that Soapy was the man with French Dan lying in the zacaton. And he'll never tell, because he pumped the bullet into his friend. But one thing is sure. Soapy disappeared from Arizona for nearly two years. You can pick any reason you like for his going. That is the one I choose."

"Same here. And the man that would shoot one partner in the back would shoot another if he had good reasons. By his way of it Soapy has reasons a-plenty."

"I'm satisfied that is his game. Question is how to block it. Will you go to the sheriff?"

"No. Bolt would fall down on it. First off, he would not believe the story because I'm a rustler myself. Soapy and his friends voted for Bolt. He would go to them, listen to their story, prove part of it by me, and turn them loose for lack of evidence. Sam would go back to Dead Cow with them, and Stone would weave another web for the kid."

"You've got it about right," Slats admitted. "How about warning Sam?"

"No use. He would go straight to Soapy with it, and his dear friend would persuade him it was just a yarn cooked up to get him to throw down the only genuwine straight-up pal he ever had."

"Cullison then?"

"You're getting warm. I've had that notion myself. The point is, would he be willing to wait and let Soapy play his hand out till we called?"

"You would have to guarantee his boy would be safe meanwhile."

"Two of us would have to watch him day and night without Sam knowing it."

"Count me in."

"This is where we hit heavy traveling, Slats. For we don't know when the thing is going to be pulled off."

"We'll have to be ready. That's all."

"Happen to know whether Dick Maloney is here for the show?"

"Saw him this mo'ning. Luck is here too, him and his girl."

"Good. We've got to have a talk with them, and it has to be on the q.t. You go back to town and find Dick. Tell him to meet us at the Del Mar, where Luck always puts up. Find out the number of Cullison's room and make an appointment. I'll be on El Molino street all mo'ning off and on. When you find out pass me without stopping, but tell me when we are to meet and just where."

Curly gave Slats a quarter of an hour before sauntering back to town. As he was passing the Silver Dollar saloon a voice called him. Stone and Blackwell were standing in the door. Flandrau stopped.

Soapy's deep-set eyes blazed at him. "You didn't tell me it was Luck Cullison went bail for you, Curly."

"You didn't ask me."

"So you and him are thick, are you?"

"I've met him once, if that's being thick. That time I shot him up."

"Funny. And then he went bail for you."

"Yes."

"Now I wonder why."

The eyes of the man had narrowed to red slits. His head had shot forward on his shoulders as that of a snake does. Curly would have given a good deal just then for the revolver lying on the bed of his room. For it was plain trouble was in sight. The desperado had been drinking heavily and was ready to do murder.

"That's easy to explain, Soapy. I shot him because I was driven to it. He's too much of a man to bear a grudge for what I couldn't help."

"That's it, is it? Does that explain why he dug up good money to turn loose a horse thief?"

"If I told you why, you would not understand."

"Let's hear you try."

"He did it because I was young, just as Sam is; and because he figured that some day Sam might need a friend, too."

"You're a liar. He did it because you promised to sneak up to my ranch and spy on us. That's why he did it."

With the last word his gun jumped into sight. That he was lashing himself into a fury was plain. Presently his rage would end in a tragedy.

Given a chance, Curly would have run for it. But Soapy was a dead shot. Of a sudden the anger in the boy boiled up over the fear. In two jumps he covered the ground and jammed his face close to the cold rim of the blue steel barrel.

"I'm not heeled. Shoot and be damned, you coward. And with my last breath I'll tell you that you're a liar."

Flandrau had called his bluff, though he had not meant it as one. A dozen men were in sight and were watching. They had heard the young man tell Stone he was not armed. Public opinion would hold him to account if he shot Curly down in cold blood. He hung there undecided, breathing fast, his jaw clamped tightly.

The lad hammered home his defiance. "Drop that gun, you four-flusher, and I'll whale you till you can't stand. Sabe? Call yourself a bad man, do you? Time I'm through with you there will be one tame wolf crawling back to Dead Cow with its tail between its legs."

The taunt diverted his mind, just as Curly had hoped it would. He thrust the revolver back into the holster and reached for his foe.

Then everybody, hitherto paralyzed by the sight of a deadly weapon, woke up and took a hand. They dragged the two men apart. Curly was thrust into a barber shop on the other side of the street and Stone was dragged back into the Silver Dollar.

In two minutes Flandrau had made himself famous, for he was a marked man. The last words of the straggling desperado had been that he would shoot on sight. Now half a dozen talked at once. Some advised Curly one thing, some another. He must get out of town. He must apologize at once to Stone. He must send a friend and explain.

The young man laughed grimly. "Explain nothing. I've done all the explaining I'm going to. And I'll not leave town either. If Soapy wants me he'll sure find me."

"Don't be foolish, kid. He has got four notches on that gun of his. And he's a dead shot."

The tongues of those about him galloped. Soapy was one of these Billy-the-Kid killers, the only one left from the old days. He could whang away at a quarter with that sawed-off .45 of his and hit it every crack. The sooner Curly understood that no boy would have a chance with him the better it would be. So the talk ran.

"He's got you bluffed to a fare-you-well. You're tame enough to eat out of his hand. Didn't Luck Cullison go into the hills and bring him down all alone?" Flandrau demanded.

"Luck's another wonder. There ain't another man in Arizona could have done it. Leastways no other but Bucky O'Connor."

But Curly was excited, pleased with himself because he had stood up to the bogey man of the Southwest, and too full of strength to be afraid.

Maloney came into the barber shop and grinned at him.

"Hello, son!"

"Hello, Dick!"

"I hear you and Soapy are figuring on setting off some fireworks this Fourth."

It did Curly good to see him standing there so easy and deliberate among the excitable town people.

"Soapy is doing the talking."

"I heard him; happened to be at the Silver Dollar when they dragged him in."

Maloney's eyebrows moved the least bit. His friend understood. Together they passed out of the back door of the shop into an alley. The others stood back and let them go. But their eyes did not leave Curly so long as he was in sight. Until this thing was settled one way or the other the young rustler would be one of the most important men in town. Citizens would defer to him that had never noticed him before. He carried with him a touch of the solemnity that is allowed only the dead or the dying.

Back to the hotel the two ran. When Curly buckled on his revolver and felt it resting comfortably against his thigh he felt a good deal better.

"I've seen Slats Davis," Maloney explained. "He has gone to find Luck, who is now at the Del Mar. At least he was an hour ago."

"Had any talk with Slats?"

"No. He said you'd do the talking."

"I'm to wait for him on El Molino street to learn where I'm to meet Cullison."

"That won't do. You'd make too tempting a target. I'll meet him instead."

That suited Curly. He was not hunting trouble just now, even though he would not run away from it. For he had serious business on hand that could not take care of itself if Soapy should kill him.

Nearly an hour later Maloney appeared again.

"We're to go right over to the Del Mar. Second floor, room 217. You are to go down El Molino to Main, then follow it to the hotel, keeping on the right hand side of the street. Slats will happen along the other side of the street and will keep abreast of you. Luck will walk with me behind you. Unless I yell your name don't pay any attention to what is behind you. Soon as we reach the hotel Slats will cross the road and go in by the side door. You will follow him a few steps behind, and we'll bring up the rear casually as if we hadn't a thing to do with you."

"You're taking a heap of pains, seems to me."

"Want to keep you from getting spoilt till September term of court opens. Didn't I promise Bolt you would show up?"

They moved down the street as arranged. Every time a door opened in front of him, every time a man came out of a store or a saloon, Curly was ready for that lightning lift of the arm followed by a puff of smoke. The news of his coming passed ahead of him, so that windows were crowded with spectators. These were doomed to disappointment. Nothing happened. The procession left behind it the Silver Dollar, the Last Chance, Chalkeye's Place and Pete's Palace.

Reaching the hotel first, Davis disappeared according to program into the side door. Carly followed, walked directly up the stairs, along the corridor, and passed without knocking into Room 217.

A young woman was sitting there engaged with some fancy work. Slender and straight, Kate Cullison rose and gave Curly her hand. For about two heartbeats her fingers lay cuddled in his big fist. A strange stifling emotion took his breath.

Then her arm fell to her side and she was speaking to him.

"Dad has gone to meet you. We've heard about what happened this morning."

"You mean what didn't happen. Beats all how far a little excitement goes in this town," he answered, embarrassed.

Her father and Maloney entered the room. Cullison wrung his hand.

"Glad to see you, boy. You're in luck that convict did not shoot you up while he had the chance. Saguache is sure buzzing this mo'ning with the way you stood up to him. That little play of yours will help with the jury in September."

Curly thanked him for going bail.

Luck fixed his steel-spoked eyes on him. "By what Dick tells me you've more than squared that account."

Kate explained in her soft voice. "Dick told us why you went up to Dead Cow creek."

"Sho! I hadn't a thing to do, so I just ran up there. Sam's in town with me. We're rooming together."

"Oh, take me to him," Kate cried.

"Not just now, honey," her father said gently. "This young man came here to tell us something. Or so I gathered from his friend Davis."

Flandrau told his story, or all of it that would bear telling before a girl. He glossed over his account of the dissipation at the horse ranch, but he told all he knew of Laura London and her interest in Sam. But it was when he related what he had heard at Chalkeye's place that the interest grew most tense. While he was going over the plot to destroy young Cullison there was no sound in the room but his voice. Luck's eyes burned like live coals. The color faded from the face of his daughter so that her lips were gray as cigar ash. Yet she sat up straight and did not flinch.

When he had finished the owner of the Circle C caught his hand. "You've done fine, boy. Not a man in Arizona could have done it better."

Kate said nothing in words but her dark longlashed eyes rained thanks upon him.

They talked the situation over from all angles. Always it simmered down to one result. It was Soapy's first play. Until he moved they could not. They had no legal evidence except the word of Curly. Nor did they know on what night he had planned to pull off the hold-up. If they were to make a complete gather of the outfit, with evidence enough to land them in the penitentiary, it could only be after the hold-up.

Meanwhile there was nothing to do but wait and take what precautions they could against being caught by surprise. One of these was to see that Sam was never for an instant left unguarded either day or night. Another was to ride to Tin Cup and look the ground over carefully. For the present they could do no more than watch events, attracting no attention by any whispering together in public.

Before the conference broke up Kate came in with her protest.

"That's all very well, but what about Mr. Flandrau? He can't stay in Saguache with that man threatening to kill him on sight."

"Don't worry about me, Miss Kate;" and Curly looked at her and blushed.

Her father smiled grimly. "No, I wouldn't, Kate. He isn't going to be troubled by that wolf just now."

"Doesn't stand to reason he'd spoil all his plans just to bump me off."

"But he might. He forgot all about his plans this morning. How do we know he mightn't a second time?"

"Don't you worry, honey. I've got a card up my sleeve," Luck promised.

CHAPTER X

"STICK TO YOUR SADDLE"

The old Arizona fashion of settling a difference of opinion with the six-gun had long fallen into disuse, but Saguache was still close enough to the stark primeval emotions to wait with a keen interest for the crack of the revolver that would put a period to the quarrel between Soapy Stone and young Flandrau. It was known that Curly had refused to leave town, just as it was known that Stone and that other prison bird Blackwell were hanging about the Last Chance and Chalkeye's Place drinking together morosely. It was observed too that whenever Curly appeared in public he was attended by friends. Sometimes it would be Maloney and Davis, sometimes his uncle Alec Flandrau, occasionally a couple of the Map of Texas vaqueros.

It chanced that "Old Man" Flandrau, drifting into Chalkeye's Place, found in the assembled group the man he sought. Billie Mackenzie, grizzled owner of the Fiddleback ranch, was with him, and it was in the preliminary pause before drinking that Alec made his official announcement.

"No, Mac, I ain't worrying about that any. Curly is going to get a square deal. We're all agreed on that. If there's any shooting from cover there'll be a lynching pronto. That goes."

Flandrau, Senior, did not glance at the sullen face of Lute Blackwell hovering in the background but he knew perfectly well that inside of an hour word would reach Soapy Stone that only an even break with Curly would be allowed.

The day passed without a meeting between the two. Curly grew nervous at the delay.

"I'm as restless as a toad on a hot skillet," he confessed to Davis. "This thing of never knowing what minute Soapy will send me his leaden compliments ain't any picnic. Wisht it was over."

"He's drinking himself blind. Every hour is to the good for you."

Curly shrugged. "Drunk or sober Soapy always shoots straight."

Another day passed. The festivities had begun and Curly had to be much in evidence before the public. His friends had attempted to dissuade him from riding in the bucking broncho contest, but he had refused to let his name be scratched from the list of contestants.

A thousand pair of eyes in the grandstand watched the boy as he lounged against the corral fence laughing and talking with his friends. A dozen people were on the lookout for the approach of Stone. Fifty others had warned the young man to be careful. For Saguache was with him almost to a man.

Dick Maloney heard his voice called as he was passing the grandstand, A minute later he was in the Cullison box shaking hands with Kate.

"Is--is there anything new?" she asked in a low voice.

Her friend shook his head. "No. Soapy may drift out here any minute now."

"Will he----?" Her eyes finished the question.

He shook his head. "Don't know. That's the mischief of it. If they should meet just after Curly finishes riding the boy won't have a chance. His nerves won't be steady enough."

"Dad is doing something. I don't know what it is. He had a meeting with a lot of cattlemen about it---- I don't see how that boy can sit there on the fence laughing when any minute----"

"Curly's game as they make 'em. He's a prince, too. I like that boy better every day."

"He doesn't seem to me so----wild. But they say he's awfully reckless." She said it with a visible reluctance, as if she wanted him to deny the charge.

"Sho! Curly needs explaining some. That's all. Give a dog a bad name and hang him. That saying is as straight as the trail of a thirsty cow. The kid got off wrong foot first, and before he'd hardly took to shaving respectable folks were hunting the dictionary to find bad names to throw at him. He was a reprobate and no account. Citizens that differed on everything else was unanimous about that. Mothers kinder herded their young folks in a corral when he slung his smile their way."

"But why?" she persisted. "What had he done?"

"Gambled his wages, and drank some, and, beat up Pete Schiff, and shot the lights out of the Legal Tender saloon. That's about all at first."

"Wasn't it enough?"

"Most folks thought so. So when Curly bumped into them keep-off-the-grass signs parents put up for him he had to prove they were justified. That's the way a kid acts. Half the bad men are only coltish cowpunchers gone wrong through rotten whiskey and luck breaking bad for them."

"Is Soapy that kind?" she asked, but not because she did not know the answer.

"He's the other kind, bad at the heart. But Curly was just a kid crazy with the heat when he made that fool play of rustling horses."

A lad made his way to them with a note. Kate read it and turned to Dick. Her eyes were shining happily.

"I've got news from Dad. It's all right. Soapy Stone has left town."

"Why?"

"A dozen of the big cattlemen signed a note and sent it to Stone. They told him that if he touched Curly he would never leave town alive. He was given word to get out of town at once."

Maloney slapped his hand joyously on his thigh. "Fine! Might a-known Luck would find a way out. I tell you this thing has been worying me. Some of us wanted to take it off Curly's hands, but he wouldn't have it. He's a man from the ground up, Curly is. But your father found a way to butt in all right. Soapy couldn't stand out against the big ranchmen when they got together and meant business. He had to pull his freight."

"Let me tell him the good news, Dick," she said, eagerly.

"Sure. I'll send him right up."

Bronzed almost to a coffee brown, with the lean lithe grace of youth garbed in the picturesque regalia of the vaquero, Flandrau was a taking enough picture to hold the roving eye of any girl. A good many centered upon him now, as he sauntered forward toward the Cullison box cool and easy and debonair. More than one pulse quickened at sight of him, for his gallantry, his peril and his boyishness combined to enwrap him in the atmosphere of romance. Few of the observers knew what a wary vigilance lay behind that careless manner.

Kate gathered her skirts to make room for him beside her.

"Have you heard? He has left town."

"Who?"

"Soapy Stone. The cattlemen served notice on him to go. So he left."

A wave of relief swept over the young man. "That's your father's fine work."

"Isn't it good?" Her eyes were shining with gladness.

"I'm plumb satisfied," he admitted. "I'm not hankering to shoot out my little difference with Soapy. He's too handy with a six-gun."

"I'm so happy I don't know what to do."

"I suppose now the hold-up will be put off. Did Sam and Blackwell go with him?"

"No. He went alone."

"Have you seen Sam yet?"

"No, but I've seen Laura London. She's all the nice things you've said about her."

Curly grew enthusiastic, "Ain't she the dandiest girl ever? She's the right kind of a friend. And pretty--with that short crinkly hair the color of ripe nuts! You would not think one person could own so many dimples as she does when she laughs. It's just like as if she had absorbed sunshine and was warming you up with her smile."

"I see she has made a friend of you."

"You bet she has."

Miss Cullison shot a swift slant glance at him. "If you'll come back this afternoon you can meet her. I'm going to have all those dimples and all that sunshine here in the box with me."

"Maybe that will draw Sam to you."

"I'm hoping it will. But I'm afraid not. He avoids us. When they met he wouldn't speak to Father."

"That's the boy of it. Just the same he feels pretty bad about the quarrel. I reckon there's nothing to do but keep an eye on him and be ready for Soapy's move when he makes it."

"I'm so afraid something will happen to Sam."

"Now don't you worry, Miss Kate. Sam is going to come out of this all right. We'll find a way out for him yet."

Behind her smile the tears lay close. "You're the best friend. How can we ever thank you for what you're doing for Sam?"

A steer had escaped from the corral and was galloping down the track in front of the grandstand with its tail up. The young man's eyes followed the animal absently as he answered in a low voice.

"Do you reckon I have forgot how a girl took a rope from my neck one night? Do you reckon I ever forget that?"

"It was nothing. I just spoke to the boys."

"Or that I don't remember how the man I had shot went bail for a rustler he did not know?"

"Dick knew you. He told us about you."

"Could he tell you any good about me? Could he say anything except that I was a worthless no-'count----?"

She put her hand on his arm and stopped him. "Don't! I won't have you say such things about yourself. You were just a boy in trouble."

"How many would have remembered that? But you did. You fought good for my life that night. I'll pay my debt, part of it. The whole I never could pay."

His voice trembled in spite of the best he could do. Their eyes did not meet, but each felt the thrill of joy waves surging through their veins.

The preliminaries in the rough riding contest took place that afternoon. Of the four who won the right to compete in the finals, two were Curly Flandrau and Dick Maloney. They went together to the Cullison box to get the applause due them.

Kate Cullison had two guests with her. One was Laura London, the other he had never seen. She was a fair young woman with thick ropes of yellow hair coiled round her head. Deep-breasted and robust-loined, she had the rich coloring of the Scandinavian race and much of the slow grace peculiar to its women.

The hostess pronounced their names. "Miss Anderson, this is Mr. Flandrau. Mr. Flandrau--Miss Anderson."

Curly glanced quickly at Kate Cullison, who nodded. This then was the sweetheart of poor Mac.

Her eyes filled with tears as she took the young man's hand. To his surprise Curly found his throat choking up. He could not say a word, but she understood the unspoken sympathy. They sat together in the back of the box.

"I'd like to come and talk to you about--Mac. Can I come this evening, say?"

"Please."

Kate gave them no more time for dwelling on the past.

"You did ride so splendidly," she told Curly.

"No better than Dick did," he protested.

"I didn't say any better than Dick. You both did fine."

"The judges will say you ride better. You've got first place cinched," Maloney contributed.

"Sho! Just because I cut up fancy didoes on a horse. Grandstand stunts are not riding. For straight stick-to-your-saddle work I know my boss, and his name is Dick Maloney."

"We'll know to-morrow," Laura London summed up.

As it turned out, Maloney was the better prophet. Curly won the first prize of five hundred dollars and the championship belt. Dick took second place.

Saguache, already inclined to make a hero of the young rustler, went wild over his victory. He could have been chosen mayor that day if there had been an election. To do him justice, Curly kept his head remarkably well.

"To be a human clothes pin ain't so much," he explained to Kate. "Just because a fellow can stick to the hurricane deck of a bronch without pulling leather whilst it's making a milk shake out of him don't prove that he has got any more brains or decency than the law allows. Say, ain't this a peach of a mo'ning."

A party of young people were taking an early morning ride through the outskirts of the little city. Kate pulled her pony to a walk and glanced across at him. He had taken off his hat to catch the breeze, and the sun was picking out the golden lights in his curly brown hair. She found herself admiring the sure poise of the head, the flat straight back, the virile strength of him.

It did not occur to her that she herself made a picture to delight the heart. The curves of her erect tiger-lithe young body were modeled by nature to perfection. Radiant with the sheer pleasure of life, happy as God's sunshine, she was a creature vividly in tune with the glad morning.

"Anyhow, I'm glad you won."

Their eyes met. A spark from his flashed deep into hers as a star falls through the heavens on a summer night. Each looked away. After one breathless full-pulsed moment she recovered herself.

"Wouldn't it be nice if----?"

His gaze followed hers to two riders in front of them. One was Maloney, the other Myra Anderson. The sound of the girl's laughter rippled back to them on the light breeze.

Curly smiled. "Yes, that would be nice. The best I can say for her--and it's a whole lot--is that I believe she's good enough for Dick."

"And the best I can say for him is that he's good enough for her," the girl retorted promptly.

"Then let's hope----"

"I can't think of anything that would please me more."

He looked away into the burning sun on the edge of the horizon. "I can think of one thing that would please me more," he murmured.

She did not ask him what it was, nor did he volunteer an explanation. Perhaps it was from the rising sun her face had taken its swift glow of warm color.

PART II

LUCK

CHAPTER I

AT THE ROUND UP CLUB

A big game had been in progress all night at the Round Up Club. Now the garish light of day streamed through the windows, but the electric cluster still flung down its yellow glare upon the table. Behind the players were other smaller tables littered with cigars, discarded packs, and glasses full or empty. The men were in their shirt sleeves. Big broad-shouldered fellows they were, with the marks of the outdoors hard-riding West upon them. No longer young, they were still full of the vigor and energy of unflagging strength. From bronzed faces looked steady unwinking eyes with humorous creases around the corners, hard eyes that judged a man and his claims shrewdly and with good temper. Most of them had made good in the land, and their cattle fed upon a thousand hills.

The least among them physically was Luck Cullison, yet he was their recognized leader. There was some innate quality in this man with the gray, steel-chilled eyes that marked him as first in whatever company he chose to frequent. A good friend and a good foe, men thought seriously before they opposed him. He had made himself a power in the Southwest because he was the type that goes the limit when aroused. Yet about him, too, there was the manner of a large amiability, of the easy tolerance characteristic of the West.

While Alec Flandrau shuffled and dealt, the players relaxed. Cigars were relit, drinks ordered. Conversation reverted to the ordinary topics that interested Cattleland. The price of cows, the good rains, the time of the fall roundup, were touched upon.

The door opened to let in a newcomer, a slim, graceful man much younger than the others present, and one whose costume and manner brought additional color into the picture. Flandrau, Senior, continued to shuffle without turning his head. Cullison also had his back to the door, but the man hung his broad-rimmed gray hat on the rack--beside an exactly similar one that belonged to the owner of the Circle C--and moved leisurely forward till he was within range of his vision.

"Going to prove up soon on that Del Oro claim of yours, Luck?" asked Flandrau.

He was now dealing, his eyes on the cards, so that he missed the embarrassment in the faces of those about him.

"On Thursday, the first day the law allows," Cullison answered quietly.

Flandrau chuckled. "I reckon Cass Fendrick will be some sore."

"I expect." Cullison's gaze met coolly the black, wrathful eyes of the man who had just come in.

"Sort of put a crimp in his notions when you took up the cañon draw," Flandrau surmised.

Something in the strained silence struck the dealer as unusual. He looked up, and showed a momentary confusion.

"Didn't know you were there, Cass. Looks like I put my foot in it sure that time. I ce'tainly thought you were an absentee," he apologized.

"Or you wouldn't have been talking about me," retorted Fendrick acidly. The words were flung at Flandrau, but plainly they were meant as a challenge for Cullison.

A bearded man, the oldest in the party, cut in with good-natured reproof. "I shouldn't wonder, Cass, but your name is liable to be mentioned just like that of any other man."

"Didn't know you were in this, Yesler," Fendrick drawled insolently.

"Oh, well, I butted in," the other laughed easily. He pushed a stack of chips toward the center of the table. "The pot's open."

Fendrick, refused a quarrel, glared at the impassive face of Cullison, and passed to the rear room for a drink. His impudence needed fortifying, for he knew that since he had embarked in the sheep business he was not welcome at this club, that in fact certain members had suggested his name be dropped from the books. Before he returned to the poker table the drink he had ordered became three.

The game was over and accounts were being straightened. Cullison was the heavy loser. All night he had been bucking hard luck. His bluffs had been called. The others had not come in against his strong hands. On a straight flush he had drawn down the ante and nothing more. To say the least, it was exasperating. But his face had showed no anger. He had played poker too many years, was too much a sport in the thorough-going frontier fashion, to wince when the luck broke badly for him.

The settlement showed that the owner of the Circle C was twenty-five hundred dollars behind the game. He owed Mackenzie twelve hundred, Flandrau four hundred, and three hundred to Yesler.

With Fendrick sitting in an easy chair just across the room, he found it a little difficult to say what otherwise would have been a matter of course.

"My bank's busted just now, boys. Have to ask you to let it stand for a few days. Say, till the end of the week."

Fendrick laughed behind the paper he was pretending to read. He knew quite well that Luck's word was as good as his bond, but he chose to suggest a doubt.

"Maybe you'll explain the joke to us, Cass," the owner of the Circle C said very quietly.

"Oh, I was just laughing at the things I see, Luck," returned the younger man with airy offense, his eyes on the printed sheet.

"Meaning for instance?"

"Just human nature. Any law against laughing?"

Cullison turned his back on him. "See you on Thursday if that's soon enough, boys."

"All the time you want, Luck. Let mine go till after the roundup if you'd rather," Mackenzie suggested.

"Thursday suits me."

Cullison rose and stretched. He had impressed his strong, dominant personality upon his clothes, from the high-heeled boots to the very wrinkles in the corduroy coat he was now putting on. He bad enemies, a good many of them, but his friends were legion.

"Don't hurry yourself."

"Oh, I'll rustle the money, all right. Coming down to the hotel?" Luck was reaching for his hat, but turned toward his friends as he spoke.

Without looking again at Fendrick, he led the way to the street.

The young man left alone cursed softly to himself, and ordered another drink. He knew he was overdoing it, but the meeting with Cullison had annoyed him exceedingly. The men had never been friends, and of late years they had been leaders of hostile camps. Both of them could be overbearing, and there was scarcely a week but their interests overlapped. Luck was capable of great generosity, but he could be obstinate as the rock of Gibraltar when he chose. There had been differences about the ownership of calves, about straying cattle, about political matters. Finally had come open hostility. Cass leased from the forestry department the land upon which Cullison's cattle had always run free of expense. Upon this he had put sheep, a thing in itself of great injury to the cattle interests. The stockmen had all been banded together in opposition to the forestry administration of the new régime, and Luck regarded Fendrick's action as treachery to the common cause.

He struck back hard. In Arizona the open range is valuable only so long as the water holes also are common property or a private supply available. The Circle C cattle and those of Fendrick came down from the range to the Del Oro to water at a point where the cañon walls opened to a spreading valley. This bit of meadow Luck homesteaded and fenced on the north side, thus cutting the cattle of his enemy from the river.

Cass was furious. He promptly tore down the fence to let his cattle and sheep through. Cullison rebuilt it, put up a shack at a point which commanded the approach, and set a guard upon it day and night. Open warfare had ensued, and one of the sheepherders had been beaten because he persisted in crossing the dead line.

Now Cullison was going to put the legal seal on the matter by making final proof on his homestead. Cass knew that if he did so it would practically put him out of business. He would be at the mercy of his foe, who could ruin him if he pleased. Luck would be in a position to dictate terms absolutely.

Nor did it make his defeat any more palatable to Cass that he had brought it on himself by his bad-tempered unneighborliness and by his overreaching disposition. A hundred times he had blacknamed himself for an arrant fool because he had not anticipated the move of his enemy and homesteaded on his own account.

He felt that there must be some way out of the trap if he could only find it. Whenever the thought of eating humble pie to Luck came into his mind, the rage boiled in him. He swore he would not do it. Better a hundred times to see the thing out to a fighting finish.

Taking the broad-rimmed gray hat he found on the rack, Cass passed out of the clubhouse and into the sun-bathed street.

CHAPTER II

LUCK MEETS AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE

Cullison and his friends proceeded down Papago street to the old plaza where their hotel was located. Their transit was an interrupted one, for these four cattlemen were among the best known in the Southwest. All along the route they scattered nods of recognition, friendly greetings, and genial banter. One of them--the man who had formerly been the hard-riding, quick-shooting sheriff of the county--met also scowls once or twice, to which he was entirely indifferent. Luck had no slavish respect for law, had indeed, if rumor were true, run a wild and stormy course in his youth. But his reign as sheriff had been a terror to lawbreakers. He had made enemies, desperate and unscrupulous ones, who had sworn to wipe him from among the living, and one of these he was now to meet for the first time since the man had stood handcuffed before him, livid with fury, and had sworn to cut his heart out at the earliest chance.

It was in the lobby of the hotel that Cullison came plump against Lute Blackwell. For just a moment they stared at each other before the former sheriff spoke.

"Out again, eh, Blackwell?" he said easily.

From the bloodshot eyes one could have told at a glance the man had been drinking heavily. From whiskey he had imbibed a Dutch courage just bold enough to be dangerous.

"Yes, I'm out--and back again, just as I promised, Mr. Sheriff," he threatened.

The cattleman ignored his manner. "Then I'll give you a piece of advice gratis. Papago County has grown away from the old days. It has got past the two-gun man. He's gone to join the antelope and the painted Indian. You'll do well to remember that."

The fellow leaned forward, sneering so that his ugly mouth looked like a crooked gash. "How about the one-gun man, Mr. Sheriff?"

"He doesn't last long now."

"Doesn't he?"

The man's rage boiled over. But Luck was far and away the quicker of the two. His left hand shot forward and gripped the rising wrist, his right caught the hairy throat and tightened on it. He shook the convict as if he had been a child, and flung him, black in the face, against the wall, where he hung, strangling and sputtering.

"I--I'll get you yet," the ruffian panted. But he did not again attempt to reach for the weapon in his hip pocket.

"You talk too much with your mouth."

With superb contempt, Luck slapped him, turned on his heel, and moved away, regardless of the raw, stark lust to kill that was searing this man's elemental brain.

Across the convict's rage came a vision. He saw a camp far up in the Rincons, and seated around a fire five men at breakfast, all of them armed. Upon them had come one man suddenly. He had dominated the situation quietly, had made one disarm the others, had handcuffed the one he wanted and taken him from his friends through a hostile country where any hour he might be shot from ambush. Moreover, he had traveled with his prisoner two days, always cheerful and matter of fact, not at all uneasy as to what might lie behind the washes or the rocks they passed. Finally he had brought his man safely to Casa Grande, from whence he had gone over the road to the penitentiary. Blackwell had been the captured man, and he held a deep respect for the prowess of the officer who had taken him. The sheer pluck of the adventure had alone made it possible. For such an unflawed nerve Blackwell knew his jerky rage was no match.

The paroled convict recovered his breath and slunk out of the hotel.

Billie Mackenzie, owner of the Fiddleback ranch, laughed even while he disapproved. "Some day, Luck, you'll get yours when you are throwing chances at a coyote like this. You'll guess your man wrong, or he'll be one glass drunker than you figure on, and then he'll plug you through and through."

"The man that takes chances lives longest, Mac," his friend replied, dismissing the subject carelessly. "I'm going to tuck away about three hours of sleep. So long." And with a nod he was gone to his room.

"All the same Luck's too derned rash," Flandrau commented. "He'll run into trouble good and hard one of these days. When I'm in Rattlesnake Gulch I don't aim to pick posies too unobservant."

Mackenzie looked worried. No man lived whom he admired so much as Luck Cullison. "And he hadn't ought to be sitting in these big games. He's hard up. Owes a good bit here and there. Always was a spender. First thing he'll have to sell the Circle C to square things. He'll pay us this week like he said he would. That's dead sure. He'd die before he'd fall down on it, now Fendrick has got his back up. But I swear I don't know where he'll raise the price. Money is so tight right now."

That afternoon Luck called at every bank in Saguache. All of the bankers knew him and were friendly to him, but in spite of their personal regard they could do nothing for him.

"It's this stringency, Luck," Jordan of the Cattlemen's National explained to him. "We can't let a dollar go even on the best security. You know I'd like to let you have it, but it wouldn't be right to the bank. We've got to keep our reserve up. Why, I'm lying awake nights trying to figure out a way to call in more of our money."

"I'm not asking much, Jack."

"Luck, I'd let you have it if I dared. Why, we're running close to the wind. Public confidence is a mighty ticklish thing. If I didn't have twenty thousand coming from El Paso on the Flyer to-night I'd be uneasy for the bank."

"Twenty thousand on the Flyer. I reckon you ship by express, don't you?"

"Yes. Don't mention it to anyone. That twenty thousand would come handy to a good many people in this country these times."

"It would come right handy to me," Luck laughed ruefully. "I need every cent of it. After the beef roundup, I'll be on Easy Street, but it's going to be hard sledding to keep going till then."

"You'll make a turn somehow. It will work out. Maybe when money isn't so tight I'll be able to do something for you."

Luck returned to the hotel morosely, and tried to figure a way out of his difficulties. He was not going to be beaten. He never had accepted defeat, even in the early days when he had sometimes taken a lawless short cut to what he wanted. By God, he would not lose out after all these years of fighting. It had been his desperate need of money that had made him sit in last night's poker game. But he had succeeded only in making a bad situation worse. He knew his debts by heart, but he jotted them down on the back of an envelope and added them again.

Mortgage on ranch (due Oct. 1), $13,000 Note to First National, 3,500 Note to Reynolds, 1,750 I O U to Mackenzie, 1,200 Same to Flandrau, 400 Same to Yesler, 300 ------ Total, $20,150

Twenty thousand was the sum he needed, and mighty badly, too. Absentmindedly he turned the envelope over and jotted down one or two other things. Twenty thousand dollars! Just the sum Jordan had coming to the bank on the Flyer. Subconsciously, Luck's fingers gave expression to his thoughts. $20,000. Half a dozen times they penciled it, and just below the figures, "W. & S. Ex. Co." Finally they wrote automatically the one word, "To-night."

Luck looked at what he had written, laughed grimly, and tore the envelope in two. He threw the pieces in the waste paper basket.

CHAPTER III

AN INITIALED HAT

Mackenzie was reading the Sentinel while he ate a late breakfast. He had it propped against the water bottle, so that it need not interfere with the transportation of sausages, fried potatoes, hot cakes, and coffee to their common destination.

Trying to do two things at once has its disadvantages. A startling headline caught his eyes just as the cup was at his lips. Hot coffee, precipitately swallowed, scalded his tongue and throat. He set down the cup, swore mildly, and gave his attention to the news that had excited him. The reporter had run the story to a column, but the leading paragraph gave the gist of it:

While the citizens of Saguache were peacefully sleeping last night, a lone bandit held up the messengers of the Western and Southern Express Company, and relieved them of $20,000 just received from El Paso on the Flyer.

Perry Hawley, the local manager of the company, together with Len Rogers, the armed guard, had just returned from the depot, where the money had been turned over to them and receipted for. Hawley had unlocked the door of the office and had stepped in, followed by Rogers, when a masked desperado appeared suddenly out of the darkness, disarmed the guard and manager, took the money, passed through the door and locked it after him, and vanished as silently as he had come. Before leaving, he warned his victims that the place would be covered for ten minutes and at any attempt to call for help they would be shot. Notwithstanding this, the imprisoned men risked their lives by raising the alarm.

Further down the page Mackenzie discovered that the desperado was still at large, but that Sheriff Bolt expected shortly to lay hands on him.

"I'll bet a dollar Nick Bolt didn't make any such claim to the reporter. He ain't the kind that brags," Mackenzie told himself.

He folded the paper and returned to his room to make preparation to return to his ranch. The buzz of the telephone called him to the receiver. The voice of Cullison reached him.

"That you, Mac. I'll be right up. No, don't come down. I'd rather see you alone."

The owner of the Circle C came right to business. "I've made a raise, Mac, and while I've got it I'm going to skin off what's coming to you."

He had taken a big roll of bills from his pocket, and was counting off what he had lost to his friend. The latter noticed that it all seemed to be in twenties.

"Twelve hundred. That squares us, Mac."

The Scotchman was vaguely uneasy without a definite reason for his anxiety. Only last night Cullison had told him not a single bank in town would advance him a dollar. Now he had money in plenty. Where had he got it?

"No hurry at all, Luck. Pay when you're good and ready."

"That's now."

"Because I'll only put it in the Cattlemen's National. It's yours if you need it."

"I'll let you know if I do," his friend nodded.

Mackenzie's eye fell on a copy of the Sentinel protruding from the other's pocket. "Read about the hold-up of the W. & S. Express? That fellow had his nerve with him."

"Sho! This hold-up game's the easiest yet. He got the drop on them, and there was nothing to it. The key was still in the lock of the door. Well, when he gets through he steps out, turns the key, and rides away."

"How did he know there was money coming in last night?"

"There's always a leak about things of that sort. Somebody talks. I knew it myself for that matter."

"You knew! Who told you?"

"That's a secret, Mac. Come to think of it, I wish you wouldn't tell anybody that I knew. I don't want to get the man who told me in trouble."

"Sure I won't." He passed to another phase of the subject. "The Sentinel says Bolt expects to catch the robber. Think he will?"

"Not if the fellow knows his business. Bolt has nothing to go on. He has the whole Southwest to pick from. For all he knows, it was you."

"Yes, but----"

"Or more likely me." The gray eyes of the former sheriff held a frosty smile.

In spite of that smile, or perhaps because of it, Mackenzie felt again that flash of doubt. "What's the use of talking foolishness, Luck? Course you didn't do it. Anybody would know that. Man, I whiles wonder at you," he protested, relapsing into his native tongue as he sometimes did when excited.

"I didn't say I did it. I said I might have done it"

"Oh, well! You didn't. I know you too well."

But the trouble was Mackenzie did not know him well enough. Cullison was hard up, close to the wall. How far would he go to save himself? Thirty years before when they had been wild young lads these two had hunted their fun together. Luck had always been the leader, had always been ready for any daredeviltry that came to his mind. He had been the kind to go the limit in whatever he undertook, to play it to a finish in spite of opposition. And what a man is he must be to the end. In his slow, troubled fashion, Mac wondered if his old side partner's streak of lawlessness would take him as far as a hold-up. Of course it would not, he assured himself; but he could not get the ridiculous notion out of his head. It drew his thoughts, and at last his steps toward the express office where the hold-up had taken place.

He opened a futile conversation with Hawley, while Len Rogers, the guard who had not made good, looked at him with a persistent, hostile eye.

"Hard luck," the cattleman condoled.

"That's what you think, is it? You and your friends, too, I reckon."

Mackenzie looked at the guard, who was plainly sore in every humiliated crevice of his brain. "I ain't speaking for my friends, Len, but for myself," he said amiably.

Rogers laughed harshly. "Didn't know but what you might be speaking for one of your friends."

"They can all speak for themselves when they have got anything to say."

Hawley sent a swift, warning look toward his subordinate. The latter came to time sulkily. "I didn't say they couldn't."

Mackenzie drifted from this unfriendly atmosphere to the courthouse. He found Sheriff Bolt in his office. It was that official's busy day, but he found time not only to see the owner of the Fiddleback, but to press upon him cordially an invitation to sit down and smoke. The Scotchman wanted to discuss the robbery, but was shy about attacking the subject. While he boggled at it, Bolt was off on another tack.

Inside of a quarter of an hour the sheriff had found out all he wanted to know about the poker game, Cullison's financial difficulties, and the news that Luck had liquidated his poker debt since breakfast time. He had turned the simple cattleman's thoughts inside out, was aware of the doubt Billie had scarcely admitted to himself, and knew all he did except the one point Luck had asked him not to mention. Moreover, he had talked so casually that his visitor had no suspicion of what he was driving at.

Mackenzie attempted a little sleuthing of his own. "This hold-up fellow kind of slipped one over on you last night, Bolt."

"Maybe so, and maybe not."

"Got a clew, have you?"

"Oh, yes--yes." The sheriff looked straight at him. "I've a notion his initials are L. C."

Billie felt himself flushing. "What makes you think that, Nick?"

Bolt walked to a cupboard and unlocked it. His back was toward the cattleman, but the latter could see him take something from a shelf. Turning quickly, the sheriff tossed a hat upon the table.

"Ever see this before?"

Mac picked it up. His fingers were not quite steady, for a great dread drenched his heart like a rush of icy water. Upon that gray felt hat with the pinched crown was stamped the individuality--and the initials--of Luck Cullison.

"Don't know as I recognize it," he lied, not very readily. "Not to know it. Why?"

"Thought perhaps you might know it. The hold-up dropped it while getting away."

Mackenzie's eyes flinched. "Dropped it. How was that?"

"A man happened to come along San Miguel street just as the robber swung to his horse. He heard the cries of the men inside, guessed what was doing, and exchanged shots with the miscreant. He shot this hat off the fellow's head."

"The Sentinel didn't tell any such a story."

"I didn't give that detail to the editor."

"Who was the man that shot the robber?"

"Cass Fendrick."

"But he didn't claim to recognize the hold-up?" Mackenzie forced himself to ask this in spite of his fears.

"Not for certain."

"Then he--he had a guess."

"Yes, Mac. He guessed a man whose initials are the same as those in that hat."

"Who do you mean, Nick?"

"I don't need to tell you that. You know who."

"If you mean Luck Cullison, it's a damned lie," exploded the cattleman. He was furious with himself, for he felt now that he had been unsuspectingly helping to certify the suspicions of the sheriff. Like an idiot, he had let out much that told heavily against his friend.

"I hope so."

"Cass Fendrick is not on good terms with him. We all know that. Luck has got him in a hole. I wouldn't put it a bit above Cass to lie if he thought it would hurt Luck. Tell you it's a damned conspiracy. Man, can't you see that?"

"What about this hat, with the two holes shot through the rim?"

"Sho! We all wear hats just like that. Look at mine." Billie held it out eagerly.

"Has yours an L. C. stamped in the sweat band?" Bolt asked with a smile.

"I know you ain't his friend, Nick. But you want to be fair to him even if he did oppose your election." Mackenzie laid an appealing hand on the knee of the man seated opposite him.

"I'm sheriff of Papago County. It doesn't make any difference who worked for or against me, Billie. I was elected, and I'm going to enforce the law."

"And you think Luck would do a fool thing like this?"

"I didn't say I thought so, but it's my business not to overlook any bets."

"But you do believe it. Now, don't you?"

"Since you've got to have an answer--yes, I do."

"By heaven, I'd as lief think I did it myself."

"You're a good friend," Bolt conceded. "By the way, I've got to pay for some supplies this morning. Can you cash a check for a hundred?"

"I reckon so." Mackenzie drew from his pocket the roll Cullison had given him two hours before. He peeled five twenties from it. The sheriff observed that the prevailing denomination was the same.

"Get these from Luck?" he asked carelessly.

The cattleman stared at him, and the suspicion grew on him that he had been trapped again.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because it happens the bills stolen from the W. & S. were all twenties."

"No, I didn't get them from Cullison. This is money I had," he answered sullenly.

"Then I dare say you can let me see the money you got from him."

"He paid me by check."

"Banked it yet?"

"That's my business, Nick."

"And mine, Billie. I can find out from the bank if you have. Besides, I happen to know that Luck's bank account is overdrawn."

"Some one has been at you to prejudice you, Bolt."

"Nobody but Luck Cullison himself--and his actions."

From the office of the sheriff, Mackenzie wandered to the club in search of Luck. He was thoroughly dispirited, both dreaded to meet Luck, and yet was anxious to do so. For he wanted to warn him, wanted to see him fall into one of his chill rages when he told him there were suspicions against him.

Cullison had left the club, but Alec Flandrau was still there. Billie drew him into a corner, and learned that Luck had just settled with him.

"Anyone see him give it to you, Alec?"

"No. He took me upstairs to the library and paid me."

"In bills?"

"Yes--in twenties."

"For God's sake, don't tell anybody that." In a dozen jerky sentences the owner of the Fiddleback told Flandrau of the suspicions of the sheriff.

Together they went in search of Luck. But though they looked for him all day, he was not to be found. They might have concluded he had ridden out to the ranch, but his horse was still at the stable where he had left it.

The last that had been seen of him Luck was walking along the plaza toward the hotel, not a hundred and fifty yards from the latter. A dozen men had spoken to him in the distance of a block. But he had not been seen to reach his hotel. He had not called for his room key. Somehow he had vanished, and none could tell how or where.

To Bolt his disappearance was as good as a confession of guilt. He searched Luck's room at the hotel. Among other things, he found an old envelope with interesting data penciled on it.

Before nightfall the word was whispered all over Saguache that Luck Cullison, pioneer cattleman and former sheriff, was suspected of the W. & S. Express robbery and had fled to save himself from arrest. At first men marveled that one so well known and so popular, one who had been so prominent in affairs, could be suspected of such a crime, but as they listened to the evidence and saw it fall like blocks of a building into place, the conviction grew that he was the masked bandit wanted by the sheriff.

CHAPTER IV

KATE USES HER QUIRT

Red-headed Bob Cullison finished making the diamond hitch and proudly called his cousin Kate to inspect the packhorse.

"You never saw the hitch thrown better, sis," he bragged, boy-like. "Uncle Luck says I do it well as he can."

"It's fine, Bob," his cousin agreed, with the proper enthusiasm in her dark eyes. "You'll have to teach me how to do it one of these days."

She was in a khaki riding skirt, and she pulled herself to the saddle of her own horse. From this position she gave him final instructions before leaving. "Stay around the house, Bob. Dad will call the ranch up this morning probably, and I want you to be where you can hear the 'phone ring. Tell him about that white-faced heifer, and to be sure to match the goods I gave him. You'll find dinner set out for you on the dining-room table."

It had been on Wednesday morning that Luck Cullison disappeared from the face of the earth. Before twenty-four hours the gossip was being whispered in the most distant cañons of Papago County. The riders of the Circle C knew it, but none of them had yet told either Bob or Kate.

Now it was Friday morning and Kate was beginning to wonder why her father did not call her up. Could it be that Soapy Stone was pulling off his train robbery at Tin Cup and her father so busy that he could not take time to ride to a telephone station? She did not like to leave the ranch just now, even for a few hours, but other business called her away. Sweeney was holding down the fort at the Del Oro against Fendrick's sheepherders, and his weekly supply of provisions had to be taken to him. Since she wanted to see with her own eyes how things were getting along at the cañon, she was taking the supplies in person.

It was a beautiful morning, even for Arizona. The soft air was at its winiest best. The spring rains had carpeted the hills with an unusually fine grass, and the summer suns had not yet burnt this to the crisp brown of August. Her young heart expanded with the very joy of life. Oh, how good it was to be alive in a world of warm sunshine, of blue, unflecked sky, and of cool, light breezes. Swifts basked on the rocks or darted like arrows for safety, and lay palpitating with suspense. The clear call of the quails sounded to right and left of her. To her eager consciousness it was as if some bath of splendor had poured down overnight upon the old earth.

She rode from sunlight into shadow and from shadow to sunlight again, winding along the hill trail that took her toward the Del Oro. After hours of travel she came to the saddle from which one looked down to the gap in the cañon walls that had been the common watering place of all men's cattle, but now was homesteaded by her father. Far below her it lay, a dwarfed picture with detail blurred to a vague impressionistic map. She could see the hut, the fence line running parallel to the stream on the other side, some grazing cattle, Sweeney's horse in the corral.

The piteous bleating of a lamb floated to her. Kate dismounted and made her way toward the sound. A pathetic little huddle of frightened life tried to struggle free at her approach. The slim leg of the lamb had become wedged at the intersection of several rocks in such a way that it could not be withdrawn.

Kate pulled the boulder away, and released the prisoner. It looked at her and bleated without attempting to move. She took the soft, woolly creature in her arms, and examined the wounded limb, all torn and raw from its efforts to escape. A wound, she recalled, ought to be washed with cold water and bound. Returning to her horse, she put the little animal in front of the saddle and continued on the trail that led down to the river.

Sweeney came out from the cabin and hailed her. He was a squat, weather-beaten man, who had ridden for her father ever since she could remember.

"What in Mexico you got there?" he asked in surprise.

She explained the circumstances under which she had found the lamb.

"And what you aiming to do with it?"

"I'm going to tie up its leg and take it across the river. Some of the C. F. herders are sure to find it before night."

"Sho! What are you fooling with Cass Fendrick's sheep for?" he grumbled.

"It isn't a sheep, but a lamb. And I'm not going to see it suffer, no matter who owns it."

She was already walking toward the river. Protestingly he followed, and lent a hand at tying up the leg with the girl's handkerchief.

"I'll just ride across and leave it outside the fence," she said.

"Lemme go. I know the river better."

Sweeney did not wait for her assent, but swung to the saddle. She handed him the lamb, and he forded the stream. At no place did the water come above the fetlocks of the horse.

"I'm so glad you know the dangerous places. Be careful you don't drown," she mocked.

The rider's laughter rang back to her. One of her jokes went a long way with Sweeney. The danger of the river had been the flimsiest of excuses. What he had been afraid of was that one of Fendrick's herders might be lurking in some arroyo beyond the fence. There was little chance that he would dare hurt her, but he might shout something unpleasant.

In point of fact, Sweeney saw some one disappear into a wash as he reached the fence. The rider held up the lamb, jabbered a sentence of broncho Spanish at the spot where the man had been, put down his bleating burden, and cantered back to his own side of the river without unnecessary delay. No bullets had yet been fired in the Cullison-Fendrick feud, but a "greaser" was liable to do anything, according to the old puncher's notion. Anyhow, he did not want to be a temptation to anyone with a gun in his hand.

An hour later, Kate, on the return trip, topped the rise where she had found the lamb. Pulling up her pony, to rest the horse from its climb, she gazed back across the river to the rolling ridges among which lay the C. F. ranch. Oddly enough, she had never seen Cass Fendrick. He had come to Papago County a few years before, and had bought the place from an earlier settler. In the disagreement that had fallen between the two men, she was wholly on the side of her father. Sometimes she had wondered what manner of man this Cass Fendrick might be; disagreeable, of course, but after precisely what fashion.

"Your property, I believe, Miss Cullison."

She turned at sound of the suave, amused drawl, and looked upon a dark, slim young man of picturesque appearance. He was bowing to her with an obvious intention of overdoing it. Voice and manner had the habit of the South rather than of the West. A kind of indolent irony sat easily upon the swarthy face crowned with a black sleek head of hair.

Her instinct told the girl who he was. She did not need to ask herself any longer what Cass Fendrick looked like.

He was holding out to her the bloodstained kerchief that had been tied to the lamb's leg.

"I didn't care to have it returned," she told him with cold civility.

"Now, if you'd only left a note to say so, it would have saved me a quite considerable climb," he suggested.

In spite of herself a flicker of amusement lit her eyes. She had a sense of humor, "I did not think of that, and since you have troubled to return it to me, I can only say thank you."

She held out her hand for the kerchief, but he did not move. "I don't know but what I'll keep it, after all, for a souvenir. Just to remind me that Luck Cullison's daughter went out of her way to help one of Cass Fendrick's sheep."

She ignored his sardonic mockery. "I don't let live creatures suffer when I can help it. Are you going to give me my handkerchief?"

"Haven't made up my mind yet. Perhaps I'll have it washed and bring it home to you."

She decided that he was trying to flirt with her, and turned the head of her horse to start.

"Now your father has pulled his freight, I expect it will be safe to call," he added.

The bridle rein tightened. "What nonsense are you saying about my father?"

"No news, Miss Cullison; just what everybody is saying, that he has gone to cover on account of the hold-up."

A chill fear drenched her heart. "Do you mean the hold-up of the Limited at Tin Cup?"

"No, I don't." He looked at her sharply. "Mean to say you haven't heard of the hold-up of the W.& S. Express Company at Saguache?"

"No. When was it?"

"Tuesday night. The man got away with twenty thousand dollars."

"And what has my father to do with that?" she demanded haughtily.

A satisfied spleen purred in his voice. "My dear young lady, that is what everyone is asking."

"What do you mean? Say it." There was fear as well as anger in her voice. Had her father somehow got into trouble trying to save Sam?

"Oh, I'm saying nothing. But what Sheriff Bolt means is that when he gets his handcuffs on Luck Cullison, he'll have the man that can tell him where that twenty thousand is."

"It's a lie."

He waved his hand airily, as one who declined responsibility in the matter, but his dark, saturnine face sparkled with malice.

"Maybe so. Seems to be some evidence, but I reckon he can explain that away--when he comes back. The hold-up dropped a hat with the initials L. C. in the band, since identified as his. He had lost a lot of money at poker. Next day he paid it. He had no money in the bank, but maybe he found it growing on a cactus bush."

"You liar!" she panted, eyes blazing.

"I'll take that from you, my dear, because you look so blamed pretty when you're mad; but I wouldn't take it from him--from your father, who is hiding out in the hills somewhere."

Anger uncurbed welled from her in an inarticulate cry. He had come close to her, and was standing beside the stirrup, one bold hand upon the rein. Her quirt went swiftly up and down, cut like a thin bar of red-hot iron across his uplifted face. He stumbled back, half blind with the pain. Before he could realize what had happened the spur on her little boot touched the side of the pony, and it was off with a bound. She was galloping wildly down the trail toward home.

He looked after her, fingers caressing the welt that burned his cheek.

"You'll pay for that, Kate Cullison," he said aloud to himself.

Anger stung him, but deeper than his rage was a growing admiration. How she had lashed out at him because he had taunted her of her father. By Jove, a girl like that would be worth taming! His cold eyes glittered as he put the bloodstained kerchief in his pocket. She was not through with him yet--not by a good deal.

CHAPTER V

"AIN'T SHE THE GAMEST LITTLE THOROUGHBRED?"

Kate galloped into the ranch plaza around which the buildings were set, slipped from her pony, and ran at once to the telephone. Bob was on a side porch mending a bridle.

"Have you heard anything from dad?" she cried through the open door.

"Nope," he answered, hammering down a rivet.

Kate called up the hotel where Maloney was staying at Saguache, but could not get him. She tried the Del Mar, where her father and his friends always put up when in town. She asked in turn for Mackenzie, for Yesler, for Alec Flandrau.

While she waited for an answer, the girl moved nervously about the room. She could not sit down or settle herself at anything. For some instinct told her that Fendrick's taunt was not a lie cut out of whole cloth.

The bell rang. Instantly she was at the telephone. Mackenzie was at the other end of the line.

"Oh, Uncle Mac." She had called him uncle ever since she could remember. "What is it they are saying about dad? Tell me it isn't true," she begged.

"A pack of lees, lassie." His Scotch idiom and accent had succumbed to thirty years on the plains, but when he became excited it rose triumphant through the acquired speech of the Southwest.

"Then is he there--in Saguache, I mean."

"No-o. He's not in town."

"Where is he?"

"Hoots! He'll just have gone somewhere on business."

He did not bluff well. Through the hearty assurance she pierced to the note of trouble in his voice.

"You're hiding something from me, Uncle Mac. I won't have it. You tell me the truth--the whole truth."

In three sentences he sketched it for her, and when he had finished he knew by the sound of her voice that she was greatly frightened.

"Something has happened to him. I'm coming to town."

"If you feel you'd rather. Take the stage in to-morrow."

"No. I'm coming to-night. I'll bring Bob. Save us two rooms at the hotel."

"Better wait till to-morrow. Forty miles is a long ride, lass."

"No, I can't wait. Have Curly Flandrau come to the Del Mar if he's in town--and Dick Maloney, too. That's all. Good-by."

She turned to her cousin, who was standing big-eyed at her elbow.

"What is it, Kate? Has anything happened to Uncle Luck?"

She swallowed a lump in her throat. "Dad's gone, Bob. Nobody knows where. They say--the liars--that he robbed the W. & S. Express Company."

Suddenly her face went down into her forearm on the table and sobs began to rack her body. The boy, staggered at this preposterous charge, could only lay his hand on her shoulder and beg her not to cry.

"It'll be all right, Kate. Wait till Uncle Luck comes back. He'll make 'em sick for talking about him."

"But suppose he--suppose he----" She dared not complete what was in her mind, that perhaps he had been ambushed by some of his enemies and killed.

"You bet they'll drop into a hole and pull it in after them when Uncle Luck shows up," the boy bragged with supreme confidence.

His cousin nodded, choking down her sobs. "Of course. It--it'll come out all right--as soon as he finds out what they're saying. Saddle two horses right away, Bob."

"Sure. We'll soon find where he is, I bet you."

The setting sun found their journey less than half done. The brilliant rainbow afterglow of sunset faded to colder tints, and then disappeared. The purple saw-toothed range softened to a violet hue. With the coming of the moon the hard, dry desert lost detail, took on a loveliness of tone and outline that made it an idealized painting of itself. Myriads of stars were out, so that the heavens seemed sown with them as an Arizona hillside is in spring with yellow poppies.

Kate was tortured with anxiety, but the surpassing beauty that encompassed them was somehow a comfort to her. Deep within her something denied that her father could be gone out of a world so good. And if he were alive, Curly Flandrau would find him--Curly and Dick between them. Luck Cullison had plenty of good friends who would not stand by and see him wronged.

Any theory of his disappearance that accepted his guilt did not occur to her mind for an instant. The two had been very close to each other. Luck had been in the habit of saying smilingly that she was his majordomo, his right bower. Some share of his lawless temperament she inherited, enough to feel sure that this particular kind of wrongdoing was impossible for him. He was reckless, sometimes passionate, but she did not need to reassure herself that he was scrupulously honest.

This brought her back to the only other tenable hypothesis--foul play. And from this she shrank with a quaking heart. For surely if his enemies wished to harm him they would destroy him, and this was a conclusion against which she fought desperately.

The plaza clock boomed ten strokes as they rode into Saguache. Mackenzie was waiting for them on the steps of the hotel.

"Have they--has anything been----?"

The owner of the Fiddleback shook his grizzled head. "Not yet. Didn't you meet Curly?"

"No."

"He rode out to come in with you, but if he didn't meet you by ten he was to come back. You took the north road, I reckon?"

"Yes."

His warm heart was wrung for the young woman whose fine eyes stared with dumb agony from a face that looked very white in the shining moonlight. He put an arm around her shoulders, and drew her into the hotel with cheerful talk.

"Come along, Bob. We're going to tuck away a good supper first off. While you're eating, I'll tell you all there is to be told."

Kate opened her lips to say that she was not hungry and could not possibly eat a bite, but she thought better of it. Bob had tasted nothing since noon, and of course he must be fed.

The lad fell to with an appetite grief had not dulled. His cousin could at first only pick at what was set before her. It seemed heartless to be sitting down in comfort to so good a supper while her father was in she knew not how great distress. Grief swelled in her throat, and forced back the food she was trying to eat.

Mackenzie broke off his story to remonstrate. "This won't do at all, Kate. If you're going to help find Luck, you've got to keep yourself fit. Now, you try this chicken, honey."

"I--just can't, Uncle Mac."

"But you need it."

"I know," the girl confessed, and as she said it broke down again into soft weeping.

Mac let her have her cry out, petting her awkwardly. Presently she dried her eyes, set at her supper in a businesslike way, heard the story to an end quietly, and volunteered one heartbroken comment.

"As if father could do such a thing."

The cattleman agreed eagerly. There were times when he was full of doubt on that point, but he was not going to let her know it.

Curly came into the room, and the girl rose to meet him. He took her little hand in his tanned, muscular one, and somehow from his grip she gathered strength. He would do all that could be done to find her father, just as he had done so much to save her brother.

"I'm so glad you've come," she said simply.

"I'm glad you're glad," he smiled cheerfully.

He knew she had been crying, that she was suffering cruelly, but he offered her courage rather than maudlin sympathy. Hope seemed to flow through her veins at the meeting of the eyes. Whatever a man could do for her would be done by Curly.

They talked the situation over together.

"As it looks to me, we've got to find out two things--first, what has become of your father, and, second, who did steal that money."

"Now you're talking," Mackenzie agreed. "I always did say you had a good head, Curly."

"I don't see it yet, but there's some link between the two things. I mean between the robbery and his disappearance."

"How do you mean?" Kate asked.

"We'll say the robbers were his enemies--some of the Soapy Stone outfit maybe. They have got him out of the way to satisfy their grudge and to make people think he did it. Unfortunately there is evidence that makes it look as if he might have done it--what they call corroborating testimony."

Billie Mackenzie scratched his gray poll. "Hold on, Curly. This notion of a link between the hold-up and Luck's leaving is what the other side is tying to. Don't we want to think different from them?"

"We do. They think he is guilty. We know he isn't."

"What does Sheriff Bolt think?"

Curly waved the sheriff aside. "It don't matter what he thinks, Miss Kate. He says he thinks Luck was mixed up in the hold-up. Maybe that's what he thinks, but we don't want to forget that Cass Fendrick made him sheriff and your father fought him to a fare-you-well."

"Then we can't expect any help from him."

"Not much. He ain't a bad fellow, Bolt ain't. He'll be square, but his notions are liable to be warped."

"I'd like to talk with him," the young woman announced.

"All right," Mackenzie assented. "To-morrow mo'ning----"

"No, to-night, Uncle Mac."

The cattleman looked at her in surprise. Her voice rang with decision. Her slight figure seemed compact of energy and resolution. Was this the girl who had been in helpless tears not ten minutes before?

"I'll see if he's at his office. Maybe he'll come up," Curly said.

"No. I'll go down to the courthouse if he's there."

Flandrau got Bolt on the telephone at his room. After a little grumbling he consented to meet Miss Cullison at his office.

"Bob, you must go to bed. You're tired out," his cousin told him.

"I ain't, either," he denied indignantly. "Tired nothing. I'm going with you."

Curly caught Kate's glance, and she left the boy to him.

"Look here, Bob. We're at the beginning of a big job. Some of us have to keep fresh all the time. We'll work in relays. To-night you sleep so as to be ready to-morrow."

This way of putting it satisfied the boy. He reluctantly consented to go to bed, and was sound asleep almost as soon as his head struck the pillow.

At the office of the sheriff, Kate cut to essentials as soon as introductions were over.

"Do you think my father robbed the W. & S. Express Company, Mr. Bolt?" she asked.

Her plainness embarrassed the officer.

"Let's took at the facts, Miss Cullison," he began amiably. "Then you tell me what you would think in my place. Your father needed money mighty bad. There's no doubt at all about that. Here's an envelope on which he had written a list of his debts. You'll notice they run to just a little more than twenty thousand. I found this in his bedroom the day he disappeared."

She took the paper, glanced at it mechanically, and looked at the sheriff again. "Well? Everybody wants money. Do they all steal it?"

"Turn that envelope over, Miss Cullison. Notice how he has written there half a dozen times in a row, '$20,000,' and just below it twice, 'W. & S. Ex. Co.' Finally, the one word, 'To-night.'"

She read it all, read it with a heart heavy as lead, and knew that there he had left in his own strong, bold handwriting convincing evidence against himself. Still, she did not doubt him in the least, but there could be no question now that he knew of the intended shipment, that absent-mindedly he had jotted down this data while he was thinking about it in connection with his own debts.

The sheriff went on tightening the chain of evidence in a voice that for all its kindness seemed to her remorseless as fate. "It turns out that Mr. Jordan of the Cattleman's National Bank mentioned this shipment to your father that morning. Mr. Cullison was trying to raise money from him, but he couldn't let him have it. Every bank in the city refused him a loan. Yet next morning he paid off two thousand dollars he owed from a poker game."

"He must have borrowed the money from some one," she said weakly.

"That money he paid in twenty-dollar bills. The stolen express package was in twenties. You know yourself that this is a gold country. Bills ain't so plentiful."

The girl's hand went to her heart. Faith in her father was a rock not to be washed away by any amount of evidence. What made her wince was the amount of circumstantial testimony falling into place so inexorably against him.

"Is that all?" she asked despairingly.

"I wish it were, Miss Cullison. But it's not. A man came round the corner and shot at the robber as he was escaping. His hat fell off. Here it is."

As Kate took the hat something seemed to tighten around her heart. It belonged to her father. His personality was stamped all over it. She even recognized a coffee stain on the under side of the brim. There was no need of the initials L. C. to tell her whose it had been. A wave of despair swept over her. Again she was on the verge of breaking down, but controlled herself as with a tight curb.

Bolt's voice went on. "Next day your father disappeared, Miss Cullison. He was here in town all morning. His friends knew that suspicion was fastening on him. The inference is that he daren't wait to have the truth come out. Mind, I don't say he's guilty. But it looks that way. Now, that's my case. If you were sheriff in my place, what would you do?"

Her answer flashed back instantly. "If I knew Luck Cullison, I would be sure there was a mistake somewhere, and I would look for foul play. I would believe anything except that he was guilty--anything in the world. You know he has enemies."

The sheriff liked her spirited defense no less because he could not agree with her. "Yes, I know that. The trouble is that these incriminating facts don't come in the main from his enemies."

"You say the robber had on his hat, and that somebody shot at him. Whoever it was must know the man wasn't father."

Gently Bolt took this last prop from her hope. "He is almost sure the man was your father."

A spark of steel came into her dark eyes. "Who is the man?"

"His name is Fendrick."

"Cass Fendrick?" She whipped the word at him, leaning forward in her chair rigidly with her hands clenched on the arms of it. One could have guessed that the sound of the name had unleashed a dormant ferocity in her.

"Yes. I know he and your father aren't friends. They have had some trouble. For that reason he was very reluctant to give your father's name."

The girl flamed. "Reluctant! Don't you believe it? He hates Father like poison." A flash of inspiration came to her. She rose, slim and tall and purposeful. "Cass Fendrick is the man you want, and he is the man I want. He robbed the express company, and he has killed my father or abducted him. I know now. Arrest him to-night."

"I have to have evidence," Bolt said quietly.

"I can give you a motive. Listen. Father expected to prove up yesterday on his Del Oro claim. If he had done so Cass Fendrick's sheep would have been cut off from the water. Father had to be got out of the way not later than Wednesday, or that man would have been put out of business. He was very bitter about it. He had made threats."

"It would take more than threats to get rid of the best fighting man in Arizona, right in the middle of the day, in the heart of the town, without a soul knowing about it." The officer added with a smile: "I'd hate to undertake the contract, give me all the help I wanted."

"He was trapped somehow, of course," Curly cut in. For he was sure that in no other way could Luck Cullison have been overcome.

"If you'll only tell me how, Flandrau," Bolt returned.

"I don't know how, but we'll find out."

"I hope so."

Kate felt his doubt, and it was like a spark to powder.

"Fendrick is your friend. You were elected by his influence. Perhaps you want to prove that Father did this."

"The people elected me, Miss Cullison," answered Bolt, with grave reproach. "I haven't any friends or any enemies when it comes to doing what I've sworn to do."

"Then you ought to know Father couldn't have done this. There is such a thing as character. Luck Cullison simply couldn't be a thief."

Mackenzie's faith had been strengthened by the insistent loyalty of the girl. "That's right, Nick. Let me tell you something else. Fendrick knew Luck was going to prove up on Thursday. He heard him tell us at the Round-Up Club Tuesday morning."

The sheriff summed up. "You've proved Cass had interests that would be helped if Mr. Cullison were removed. But you haven't shaken the evidence against Luck."

"We've proved Cass Fendrick had to get Father out of the way on the very day he disappeared. One day later would have been too late. We've shown his enmity. Any evidence that rests on his word is no good. The truth isn't in the man."

"Maybe not, but he didn't make this evidence."

Kate had another inspirational flash. "He did--some of it. Somehow he got hold of father's hat, and he manufactured a story about shooting it from the robber's head. But to make his story stick he must admit he was on the ground at the time of the hold-up. So he must have known the robbery was going to take place. It's as plain as old Run-A-Mile's wart that he knew of it because he planned it himself."

Bolt's shrewd eyes narrowed to a smile. "You prove to me that Cass had your father's hat before the hold-up, and I'll take some stock in the story."

"And in the meantime," suggested Curly.

"I'll keep right on looking for Luck Cullison, but I'll keep an eye on Cass Fendrick, too."

Kate took up the challenge confidently. "I'll prove he had the hat--at least I'll try to pretty hard. It's the truth, and it must come out somehow."

After he had left her at the hotel, Curly walked the streets with a sharp excitement tingling his blood. He had lived his life among men, and he knew little about women and their ways. But his imagination seized avidly upon this slim, dark girl with the fine eyes that could be both tender and ferocious, with the look of combined delicacy and strength in every line of her.

"Ain't she the gamest little thoroughbred ever?" he chuckled to himself. "Stands the acid every crack. Think of her standing pat so game--just like she did for me that night out at the ranch. She's the best argument Luck has got."

CHAPTER VI

TWO HATS ON A RACK

One casual remark of Mackenzie had given Kate a clew. Even before she had explained it, Curly caught the point and began to dig for the truth. For though he was almost a boy, the others leaned on him with the expectation that in the absence of Maloney he would take the lead. Before they separated for the night he made Mackenzie go over every detail he could remember of the meeting between Cullison and Fendrick at the Round-Up Club. This was the last time the two men had been seen together in public, and he felt it important that he should know just what had taken place.

In the morning he and Kate had a talk with his uncle on the same subject. Not content with this, he made the whole party adjourn to the club rooms so that he might see exactly where Luck had sat and the different places the sheepman had stood from the time he entered until the poker players left.

Together Billie Mackenzie and Alec Flandrau dramatized the scene for the young people. Mac personated the sheepman, came into the room, hung up his hat, lounged over to the poker table, said his little piece as well as he could remember it, and passed into the next room. Flandrau, Senior, taking the role of Cullison, presently got up, lifted his hat from the rack, and went to the door.

With excitement trembling in her voice, the girl asked an eager question. "Were their hats side by side like that on adjoining pegs?"

Billie turned a puzzled face to his friend. "How about that, Alec?"

"That's how I remember it."

"Same here, my notion is."

"Both gray hats?" Curly cut in.

His uncle looked helplessly at the other man. "Can't be sure of that. Luck's was gray all right."

"Cass wore a gray hat too, seems to me," Mackenzie contributed, scratching his gray hair.

"Did Father hesitate at all about which one to take?"

"No-o. I don't reckon he did. He had turned to ask me if I was coming--wasn't looking at the hats at all."

Curly looked at Kate and nodded. "I reckon we know how Cass got Mr. Cullison's hat. It was left on the rack."

"How do you mean?" his uncle asked.

"Don't you see?" the girl explained, her eyes shining with excitement. "Father took the wrong hat. You know how absent-minded he is sometimes."

Mackenzie slapped his knee. "I'll bet a stack of blues you've guessed it."

"There's a way to make sure," Curly said.

"I don't get you."

"Fendrick couldn't wear Mr. Cullison's hat around without the risk of someone remembering it later. What would he do then?"

Kate beamed. "Buy another at the nearest store."

"That would be my guess. And the nearest store is the New York Emporium. We've got to find out whether he did buy one there on Tuesday some time after nine o'clock in the morning."

The girl's eyes were sparkling. She bustled with businesslike energy. "I'll go and ask right away."

"Don't you think we'd better let Uncle Alec find out? He's not so likely to stir up curiosity," Curly suggested.

"That's right. Let me earn my board and keep," the owner of the Map of Texas volunteered.

Within a quarter of an hour Alec Flandrau joined the others at the hotel. He was beaming like a schoolboy who has been given an unexpected holiday.

"You kids are right at the head of the class in the detective game. Cass bought a brown hat, about 9:30 in the mo'ning. Paid five dollars for it. Wouldn't let them deliver the old one but took it with him in a paper sack."

With her lieutenants flanking her Kate went straight to the office of the sheriff. Bolt heard the story out and considered it thoughtfully.

"You win, Miss Cullison. You haven't proved Fendrick caused your father's disappearance by foul play, and you haven't proved he committed the robbery. Point of fact I don't think he did either one. But it certainly looks like he may possibly have manufactured evidence."

Curly snorted scornfully. "You're letting your friend down easy, Mr. Bolt. By his own story he was on the ground a minute after the robbery took place. How do we know he wasn't there a minute before? For if he didn't know the hold-up was going to occur why did he bring Mr. Cullison's hat with him punctured so neatly with bullet holes?"

"I'll bet a thousand dollars he is at the bottom of this whole thing," Mackenzie added angrily.

The sheriff flushed. "You gentlemen are entitled to your opinions just as I'm entitled to mine. You haven't even proved he took Mr. Cullison's hat; you've merely showed he may have done it."

"We've given you a motive and some evidence. How much more do you want?" Curly demanded.

"Hold your hawses a while, Flandrau, and look at this thing reasonable. You're all prejudiced for Cullison and against Fendrick. Talk about evidence! There's ten times as much against your friend as there is against Cass."

"Then you'll not arrest Fendrick?"

"When you give me good reason to do it," Bolt returned doggedly.

"That's all right, Mr. Sheriff. Now we know where you stand," Flandrau, Senior, said stiffly.

The harassed official mopped his face with a bandanna. "Sho! You all make me tired. I'm not Fendrick's friend while I'm in this office any more than I'm Luck's, But I've got to use my judgment, ain't I?"

The four adjourned to meet at the Del Mar for a discussion of ways and means.

"We'll keep a watch on Fendrick--see where he goes, who he talks to, what he does. Maybe he'll make a break and give himself away," Curly said hopefully.

"But my father--we must rescue him first."

"As soon as we find where he is. Me, I'm right hopeful all's well with him. Killing him wouldn't help Cass any, because you and Sam would prove up on the claim. But if he could hold your father a prisoner and get him to sign a relinquishment to him he would be in a fine position."

"But Father wouldn't sign. He ought to know that."

"Not through fear your father wouldn't. But if Fendrick could get at him some way he might put down his John Hancock. With this trouble of Sam still unsettled and the Tin Cup hold-up to be pulled off he might sign."

"If we could only have Fendrick arrested--"

"What good would that do? If he's guilty he wouldn't talk. And if he is holding your father somewhere in the hills it would only be serving notice that we were getting warm. No, I'm for a still hunt. Let Cass ride around and meet his partners in this deal. We'll keep an eye on him all right."

"Maybe you're right," Kate admitted with a sigh.

CHAPTER VII

ANONYMOUS LETTERS

Sheriff Bolt, though a politician, was an honest man. It troubled him that Cullison's friends believed him to be a partisan in a matter of this sort. For which reason he met more than half way Curly's overtures. Young Flandrau was in the office of the sheriff a good deal, because he wanted to be kept informed of any new developments in the W. & S. robbery case.

It was on one of those occasions that Bolt tossed across to him a letter he had just opened.

"I've been getting letters from the village cut-up or from some crank, I don't know which. Here's a sample."

The envelope, addressed evidently in a disguised hand, contained one sheet of paper. Upon this was lettered roughly,

"Play the Jack of Hearts."

Flandrau looked up with a suggestion of eagerness in his eyes.

"What do you reckon it means?" he asked.

"Search me. Like as not it don't mean a thing. The others had just as much sense as that one."

"Let's see the others."

"I chucked them into the waste paper basket. One came by the morning mail yesterday and one by the afternoon. I'm no mind reader, and I've got no time to guess fool puzzles."

Curly observed that the waste paper basket was full. Evidently it had not been emptied for two or three days.

"Mind if I look for the others?" he asked.

Bolt waved permission. "Go to it."

The young man emptied the basket on the floor and went over its contents carefully. He found three communications from the unknown writer. Each of them was printed by hand on a sheet of cheap lined paper torn from a scratch pad. He smoothed them out and put them side by side on the table. This was what he read:

HEARTS ARE TRUMPS WHEN IN DOUBT PLAY TRUMPS PLAY TRUMPS NOW

There was only the one line to each message, and all of them were plainly in the same hand. He could make out only one thing, that someone was trying to give the sheriff information in a guarded way.

He was still puzzling over the thing when a boy came with a special delivery letter for the sheriff. Bolt glanced at it and handed the note to Curly.

"Another billy doo from my anxious friend."

This time the sender had been in too much of a hurry to print the words. They were written in a stiff hand by some uneducated person.

The Jack of Trumps, to-day

"Mind if I keep these?" Curly asked.

"Take 'em along."

Flandrau walked out to the grandstand at the fair grounds and sat down by himself there to think out what connection, if any, these singular warnings might have with the vanishing of Cullison or the robbery of the W. & S. He wasted three precious hours without any result. Dusk was falling before he returned.

"Guess I'll take them to my little partner and give her a whack at the puzzle," he decided.

Curly strolled back to town along El Molino street and down Main. He had just crossed the old Spanish plaza when his absorbed gaze fell on a sign that brought him up short. In front of a cigar store stretched across the sidewalk a painted picture of a jack of hearts. The same name was on the window.

Fifty yards behind him was the Silver Dollar saloon, where Luck Cullison had last been seen on his way to the Del Mar one hundred and fifty yards in front of him. Somewhere within that distance of two hundred yards the owner of the Circle C had vanished from the sight of men. The evidence showed he had not reached the hotel, for a cattle buyer had been waiting there to talk with him. His testimony, as well as that of the hotel clerk, was positive.

Could this little store, the Jack of Hearts, be the central point of the mystery? In his search for information Curly had already been in it, had bought a cigar, and had stopped to talk with Mrs. Wylie, the proprietor. She was a washed-out little woman who had once been pretty. Habitually she wore a depressed, hopeless look, the air of pathetic timidity that comes to some women who have found life too hard for them. It had been easy to alarm her. His first question had evidently set her heart a-flutter, but Flandrau had reassured her cheerfully. She had protested with absurd earnestness that she had seen nothing of Mr. Cullison. A single glance had been enough to dismiss her from any possible suspicion.

Now Curly stepped in a second time. The frightened gaze of Mrs. Wylie fastened upon him instantly. He observed that her hand moved instinctively to her heart. Beyond question she was in fear. A flash of light clarified his mind. She was a conspirator, but an unwilling one. Possibly she might be the author of the anonymous warnings sent Bolt.

The young vaquero subscribed for a magazine and paid her the money. Tremblingly she filled out the receipt. He glanced at the slip and handed it back.

"Just write below the signature 'of the Jack of Hearts,' so that I'll remember where I paid the money if the magazine doesn't come," he suggested.

She did so, and Curly put the receipt in his pocket carelessly. He sauntered leisurely to the hotel, but as soon as he could get into a telephone booth his listlessness vanished. Maloney had returned to town and he telephoned him to get Mackenzie at once and watch the Jack of Hearts in front and rear. Before he left the booth Curly had compared the writing of Mrs. Wylie with that on the sheet that had come by special delivery. The loop of the J's, the shape of the K's, the formation of the capital H in both cases were alike. So too was the general lack of character common to both, the peculiar hesitating drag of the letters. Beyond question the same person had written both.

Certainly Mrs. Wylie was not warning the sheriff against herself. Then against whom? He must know her antecedents, and at once. There was no time for him to mole them out himself. Calling up a local detective agency, he asked the manager to let him know within an hour or two all that could be found out about the woman without alarming her.

"Wait a moment I think we have her on file. Hold the 'phone." The detective presently returned. "Yes. We can give you the facts. Will you come to the office for them?"

Fifteen minutes later Curly knew that Mrs. Wylie was the divorced wife of Lute Blackwell. She had come to Saguache from the mountains several years before. Soon after there had been an inconspicuous notice in the Sentinel to the effect that Cora Blackwell was suing for divorce from Lute Blackwell, then a prisoner in the penitentiary at Yuma. Another news item followed a week later stating that the divorce had been granted together with the right to use her maiden name. Unobtrusively she had started her little store. Her former husband, paroled from the penitentiary a few months before the rustling episode, had at intervals made of her shop a loafing place since that time.

Curly returned to the Del Mar and sent his name up to Miss Cullison. With Kate and Bob there was also in the room Alec Flandrau.

The girl came forward lightly to meet him with the lance-straight poise that always seemed to him to express a brave spirit ardent and unafraid.

"Have you heard something?" she asked quickly.

"Yes. Tell me, when did your father last meet Lute Blackwell so far as you know?"

"I don't know. Not for years, I think. Why?"

The owner of the Map of Texas answered the question of his nephew. "He met him the other day. Let's see. It was right after the big poker game. We met him downstairs here. Luck had to straighten out some notions he had got."

"How?"

Flandrau, Senior, told the story of what had occurred in the hotel lobby.

"And you say he swore to get even?"

"That's what he said. And he looked like he meant it too."

"What is it? What have you found out?" Kate implored.

The young man told about the letters and Mrs. Wylie.

"We've got to get a move on us," he concluded. "For if Lute Blackwell did this thing to your father it's mighty serious for him."

Kate was white to the lips, but in no danger of breaking down. "Yes, if this man is in it he would not stop at less than murder. But I don't believe it. I know Father is alive. Cass Fendrick is the man we want. I'm sure of it."

Curly had before seen women hard as nails, gaunt strong mountaineers as tough as hickory withes. But he had never before seen that quality dwelling in a slim girlish figure of long soft curves, never seen it in a face of dewy freshness that could melt to the tenderest pity. She was like flint, and yet she could give herself with a passionate tenderness to those she loved. He had seen animals guard their young with that same alert eager abandon. His conviction was that she would gladly die for her father if it were necessary. As he looked at her with hard unchanging eyes, his blood quickened to a fierce joy in her it had known for no other woman.

"First thing is to search the Jack of Hearts and see what's there. Are you with me, Uncle Alec?"

"I sure am, Curly;" and he reached for his hat.

Bob too was on his feet. "I'm going. You needn't any of you say I ain't, for I am."

Curly nodded. "If you'll do as you're told, Bob."

"I will. Cross my heart."

"May I come too?" Kate pleaded.

She was a strongwilled impulsive young woman, and her deference to Curly flattered him; but he shook his head none the less.

"No. You may wait in the parlor downstairs and I'll send Bob to you with any news. There's just a chance this may be a man's job and we want to go to it unhampered." He turned at the door with his warm smile. "By the way, I've got some news I forgot. I know where your father got the money to pay his poker debts. Mr. Jordan of the Cattlemen's National made him a personal loan. He figured it would not hurt the bank because the three men Luck paid it to would deposit it with the bank again."

"By George, that's what we did, too, every last one of us," his uncle admitted.

"Every little helps," Kate said; and her little double nod thanked Curly.

The young man stopped a moment after the others had gone. "I'm not going to let Bob get into danger," he promised.

"I knew you wouldn't," was her confident answer.

At the corner of the plaza Curly gave Bob instructions.

"You stay here and keep an eye on everyone that passes. Don't try to stop anybody. Just size them up."

"Ain't I to go with you? I got a gun."

"You're to do as I say. What kind of a soldier would you make if you can't obey orders? I'm running this. If you don't like it trot along home."

"Oh, I'll stay," agreed the crestfallen youth.

Maloney met them in front of the Jack of Hearts.

"Dick, you go with me inside. Uncle Alec, will you keep guard outside?"

"No, bub, I won't. I knew Luck before you were walking bowlegged," the old cattleman answered brusquely.

Curly grinned. "All right. Don't blame me if you get shot up."

Mrs. Wylie's startled eyes told tales when she saw the three men. Her face was ashen.

"I'm here to play trumps, Mrs. Wylie. What secret has the Jack of Hearts got hidden from us?" young Flandrau demanded, his hard eyes fastened to her timorous ones.

"I--I--I don't know what you mean."

"No use. We're here for business. Dick, you stay with her. Don't let her leave or shout a warning."

He passed into the back room, which was a kind of combination living room, kitchen and bedroom. A door led from the rear into a back yard littered with empty packing cases, garbage cans and waste paper. After taking a look around the yard he locked the back door noiselessly. There was no other apparent exit from the kitchen-bedroom except the one by which he and his uncle had entered from the shop. But he knew the place must have a cellar, and his inspection of the yard had showed no entrance there. He drew back the Navajo rug that covered the floor and found one of the old-fashioned trap doors some cheap houses have. Into this was fitted an iron ring with which to lift it.

From the darkness below came no sound, but Curly's imagination conceived the place as full of shining eyes glaring up at him. Any bad men down there already had the drop on them. Therefore neither Curly nor his uncle made the mistake of drawing a weapon.

"I'm coming down, boys," young Flandrau announced in a quiet confident voice. "The place is surrounded by our friends and it won't do you a whole lot of good to shoot me up. I'd advise you not to be too impulsive"

He descended the steps, his face like a stone wall for all the emotion it recorded. At his heels came the older man. Curly struck a match, found an electric bulb above his head, and turned the button. Instantly the darkness was driven from the cellar.

The two Flandraus were quite alone in the room. For furniture there was a table, a cot which had been slept in and not made up, and a couple of rough chairs. The place had no windows, no means of ventilation except through the trap door. Yet there were evidences to show that it had recently been inhabited. Half smoked cigars littered the floor. A pack of cards lay in disorder on the table. The Sentinel with date line of that day lay tossed in a corner.

The room told Curly this at least: There had been a prisoner here with a guard or guards. Judging by the newspaper they had been here within a few hours. The time of sending the special delivery letter made this the more probable. He had missed the men he wanted by a very little time. If he had had the gumption to understand the hints given by the letters Cullison might now be eating supper with his family at the hotel.

"Make anything out of it?" the older Flandrau asked.

"He's been here, but they've taken him away. Will you cover the telephoning? Have all the ranches notified that Luck is being taken into the hills so they can picket the trails."

"How do you know he is being taken there?"

"I don't know. I guess. Blackwell is in it. He knows every nook of the hills. The party left here not two hours since, looks like."

Curly put the newspaper in his pocket and led the Way back to the store.

"The birds have flown, Dick, Made their getaway through the alley late this afternoon, probably just after it got dark." He turned to the woman. "Mrs. Wylie, murder is going to be done, I shouldn't wonder. And you're liable to be held guilty of it unless you tell us all you know."

She began to weep, helplessly, but with a sort of stubbornness too. Frightened she certainly was, but some greater fear held her silent as to the secret. "I don't know anything about it," she repeated over and over.

"Won't do. You've got to speak. A man's life hangs on it."

But his resolution could not break hers, incomparably stronger than she though he was. Her conscience had driven her to send veiled warnings to the sheriff. But for very fear of her life she dared not commit herself openly.

Maloney had an inspiration. He spoke in a low voice to Curly. "Let's take her to the hotel. Miss Kate will know how to get it out of her better than we can."

Mrs. Wylie went with them quietly enough. She was shaken with fears but still resolute not to speak. They might send her to prison. She would tell them nothing--nothing at all. For someone who had made terror the habit of her life had put the fear of death into her soul.

CHAPTER VIII

A MESSAGE IN CIPHER

While Kate listened to what Curly had to tell her the dark eyes of the girl were fastened upon the trembling little woman standing near the door.

"Do you mean that she is going to let my father be killed rather than tell what she knows?" Her voice was sharply incredulous, touched with a horror scarcely realized.

"So she says."

Mrs. Wylie wrung her hands in agitation. Her lined face was a mirror of distress.

"But that's impossible. She must tell. What has Father ever done to hurt her?"

"I--I don't know anything about it," the harassed woman iterated.

"What's the use of saying that when we know you do? And you'll not get out of it by sobbing. You've got to talk."

Kate had not moved. None the less her force, the upblaze of feminine energy in her, crowded the little storekeeper to the wall. "You've got to tell--you've just got to," she insisted.

The little woman shrank before the energy of a passion so vital. No strength was in her to fight. But she could and did offer the passive resistance of obstinate silence.

Curly had drawn from his pocket the newspaper found in the cellar. His eyes had searched for the date line to use as cumulative evidence, but they had remained fastened to one story. Now he spoke imperatively.

"Come here, Miss Kate."

She was beside him in an instant. "What is it?"

"I'm not sure yet, but---- Look here. I believe this is a message to us."

"A message?"

"From your father perhaps."

"How could it be?"

"I found the paper in the cellar where he was. See how some of these words are scored. Done with a finger nail, looks like."

"But how could he know we would see the paper, and if we did see it would understand?"

"He couldn't. It would be one chance in a million, but all his life he's been taking chances. This couldn't do any harm."

Her dark head bent beside his fair one with the crisp sun-reddened curls.

"I don't see any message. Where is it?"

"I don't see it myself--not much of it. Gimme time."

This was the paragraph upon which his gaze had fastened, and the words and letters were scored sharply as shown below, though in the case of single letters the mark ran through them instead of underneath, evidently that no mistake might be made as to which was meant.

J. P. Kelley of the ranger force reports

over the telephone that by unexpected good

luck he has succeeded in taking prisoner ---- -------- the notorious Jack Foster of Hermosilla ---- -- -- - and the Rincons notoriety and is now - - - --- bringing him to Saguache where he will be -------- locked up pending a disposition of his case. ------------------------------------------- Kelley succeeded in surprising him while --------------------------- he was eating dinner at a Mexican road-house

just this side of the border.

"Do you make it out?" Maloney asked, looking over their shoulders.

Curly took a pencil and an envelope from his pocket. On the latter he jotted down some words and handed the paper to his friend. This was what Maloney read:

........................................ .......................................... luck............................prisoner the notorious Jack Foster of Hermosilla ..............Jack........of.He.......a ........R.........t............s.now ................Saguache................. locked up pending a disposition of his case. .......succeeded in surprising him...... ............................................ .............................

"Read that right ahead."

Dick did not quite get the idea, but Kate, tense with excitement, took the envelope and read aloud.

"Luck----prisoner----Jack of Hearts----now Saguache----locked up pending a disposition of his case----succeeded in surprising him." She looked up with shining eyes. "He tells us everything but the names of the people who did it. Perhaps somewhere else in the paper he may tell that too."

But though they went over it word for word they found no more. Either he had been interrupted, or he had been afraid that his casual thumb nail pressures might arouse the suspicion of his guards if persisted in too long.

"He's alive somewhere. We'll save him now." Kate cried it softly, all warm with the joy of it.

"Seems to let our friend Fendrick out," Maloney mused.

"Lets him out of kidnapping Uncle Luck but maybe not out of the robbery," Bob amended.

"Doesn't let him out of either. Somebody was in this with Blackwell. If it wasn't Cass Fendrick then who was it?" Kate wanted to know.

"Might have been Soapy Stone," Dick guessed.

"Might have been, but now Sam has gone back into the hills to join Soapy; the gang would have to keep it from Sam. He wouldn't stand for it."

"No, not for a minute," Kate said decisively.

Curly spoke to her in a low voice. "You have a talk with Mrs. Wylie alone. We'll pull our freights. She'll tell you what she knows." He smiled in his gentle winning way. "She's sure had a tough time of it if ever a woman had. I reckon a little kindness is what she needs. Let her see we're her friends and will stand by her, that we won't let her come to harm because she talks. Show her we know everything anyhow but want her to corroborate details."

It was an hour before Kate joined them, and her eyes, though they were very bright, told tales, of tears that had been shed.

"That poor woman! She has told me everything. Father has been down in that cellar for days under a guard. They took him away to-night. She doesn't know where. It was she sent the warnings to Sheriff Bolt. She wanted him to raid the place, but she dared not go to him."

"Because of Blackwell?"

"Yes. He came straight to her as soon as he was freed from the penitentiary. He had her completely terrorized. It seems she has been afraid to draw a deep breath ever since he returned. Even while he was in the hills she was always looking for him to come. The man used to keep her in a hell and he began bullying her again. So she gave him money, and he came for more--and more."

Curly nodded. He said nothing, but his strong jaw clamped.

"He was there that day," the girl continued. "She plucked up courage to refuse him what little she had left because she needed it for the rent. He got hold of her arm and twisted it. Father heard her cry and came in. Blackwell was behind the door as it opened. He struck with a loaded cane and Father fell unconscious. He raised it to strike again, but she clung to his arm and called for help. Before he could shake her off another man came in. He wrenched the club away."

"Fendrick?" breathed Curly.

"She doesn't know. But the first thing he did was to lock the outer door and take the key. They carried Father down into the cellar. Before he came to himself his hands were tied behind his back."

"And then?"

"They watched him day and night. Fendrick himself did not go near the place--if it was Fendrick. Blackwell swore to kill Mrs. Wylie if she told. They held him there till to-night. She thinks they were trying to get Father to sign some paper."

"The relinquishment of course. That means the other man was Fendrick."

Kate nodded. "Yes."

Curly rose. The muscles stood out in his jaw; hard as steel ropes.

"We'll rake the Rincons with a fine tooth comb. Don't you worry. I've already wired for Bucky O'Connor to come and help. We'll get your Father out of the hands of those hell hounds. Won't we, Dick?"

The girl's eyes admired him, a lean hard-bitten Westerner with eyes as unblinking as an Arizona sun and with muscles like wire springs. His face still held its boyishness, but it had lost forever the irresponsibility of a few months before. She saw in him an iron will, shrewdness, courage and resource. All of these his friend Maloney also had. But Curly was the prodigal son, the sinner who had repented. His engaging recklessness lent him a charm from which she could not escape. Out of ten thousand men there were none whose voice drummed on her heart strings as did that of this youth.

CHAPTER IX

"THE FRIENDS OF L. C. SERVE NOTICE"

Two men sat in a log cabin on opposite sides of a cheap table. One of them was immersed in a newspaper. His body was relaxed, his mind apparently at ease. The other watched him malevolently. His fingers caressed the handle of a revolver that protruded from the holster at his side. He would have liked nothing better than to have drawn it and sent a bullet crashing into the unperturbed brain of his prisoner.

There were reasons of policy why it were better to curb this fascinating desire, but sometimes the impulse to kill surged up almost uncontrollably. On these occasions Luck Cullison was usually "deviling" him, the only diversion that had been open to the ranchman for some days past. Because of its danger--for he could never be quite sure that Blackwell's lust for swift vengeance would not over-power discretion--this pastime made a peculiar appeal to the audacious temper of the owner of the Circle C.

From time to time as Luck read he commented genially on the news.

"I see Tucson is going to get the El Paso & Southwestern extension after all. I'll bet the boys in that burg will be right tickled to hear it. They sure have worked steady for it."

Blackwell merely scowled. He never relaxed to the give and take of casual talk with his captive. Given his way, Cullison would not be here to read the Sentinel. But the brains of the conspiracy had ruled otherwise and had insisted too upon decent treatment. With one ankle securely tied to a leg of the table there was no danger in freeing the hands of the cattleman, but his hosts saw that never for an instant were hands and feet at liberty together. For this man was not the one with whom to take chances.

"Rudd has been convicted of forgery and taken to Yuma. Seems to me you used to live there, didn't you?" asked the cattleman with cool insolence, looking up from his paper to smile across at the furious convict.

Blackwell was livid. The man who had sent him to the territorial prison at Yuma dared to sit there bound and unarmed and taunt him with it.

"Take care," he advised hoarsely.

Cullison laughed and went back to the paper.

"'Lieutenant O'Connor of the Arizona Rangers left town to-day for a short trip into the hills where he expects to spend a few days hunting.' Hunting what, do you reckon? Or hunting who, I should say. Ever meet Bucky O'Connor, Blackwell? No, I reckon not. He's since your time. A crackerjack too! Wonder if Bucky ain't after some friends of mine."

"Shut up," growled the other.

"Sure you'll be shut up--when Bucky lands you," retorted Luck cheerfully. Then, with a sudden whoop: "Hello, here's a personal to your address. Fine! They're getting ready to round you up, my friend. Listen. 'The friends of L. C. serve notice that what occurred at the Jack of Hearts is known. Any violence hereafter done to him will be paid for to the limit. No guilty man will escape.' So the boys are getting busy. I figured they would be. Looks like your chance of knocking me on the head has gone down Salt River. I tell you nowadays a man has to grab an opportunity by the tail when it's there."

The former convict leaned forward angrily. "Lemme see that paper."

His guest handed it over, an index finger pointing out the item. "Large as life, Blackwell. No, sir. You ce'tainly didn't ride herd proper on that opportunity."

"Don't be too sure it's gone, Mr. Sheriff."

The man's face was twisted to an ugly sneer back of which lurked cruel menace. The gray eyes of Cullison did not waver a hair's breadth.

"It's gone. I'm as safe as if I were at the Circle C."

"Don't you think it."

"They've got you dead to rights. Read that personal again. Learn it by heart. 'The friends of L. C. give warning.' You better believe they're rounding up your outfit. They know I'm alive. They know all about the Jack of Hearts. Pretty soon they'll know where you've got me hidden."

"You'd better pray they won't. For if they find the nest it will be empty."

"Yes?" Luck spoke with ironical carelessness, but he shot an alert keen glance at the other.

"That's what I said. Want to know where you will be?" the other triumphed.

"I see you want to tell me. Unload your mind."

Triumph overrode discretion. "Look out of that window behind you."

Luck turned. The cabin was built on a ledge far up on the mountain side. From the back wall sloped for a hundred feet an almost perpendicular slide of rock.

"There's a prospect hole down there," Blackwell explained savagely. "You'd go down the Devil's Slide--what's left of you, I mean--deep into that prospect hole. The timberings are rotted and the whole top of the working ready to cave in. When your body hits it there will be an avalanche--with Mr. Former-sheriff Cullison at the bottom of it. You'll be buried without any funeral expenses, and I reckon your friends will never know where to put the headstone."

The thing was devilishly simple and feasible. Luck, still looking out of the window, felt the blood run cold down his spine, for he knew this fellow would never stick at murder if he felt it would be safe. No doubt he was being well paid, and though in this workaday world revenge has gone out of fashion there was no denying that this ruffian would enjoy evening the score. But his confederate was of another stripe, a human being with normal passions and instincts. The cattleman wondered how he could reconcile it to his conscience to go into so vile a plot with a villain like the convict.

"So you see I'm right; you'd better pray your friends won't find you. They can't reach here without being heard. If they get to hunting these hills you sure want to hope they'll stay cold, for just as soon as they get warm it will be the signal for you to shoot the chutes."

Luck met his triumphant savagery with an impassive face. "Interesting if true. And where will you be when my friends arrive. I reckon it won't be a pleasant meeting for Mr. Blackwell."

"I'll be headed for Mexico. I tell you because you ain't liable to go around spreading the news. There's a horse saddled in the dip back of the hill crest. Get it?"

"Fine," Cullison came back. "And you'll ride right into some of Bucky O'Connor's rangers. He's got the border patroled. You'd never make it."

"Don't worry. I'd slip through. I'm no tenderfoot."

"What if you did? Bucky would drag you back by the scruff of the neck in two weeks. Remember Chavez."

He referred to a murderer whom the lieutenant of rangers had captured and brought back to be hanged later.

"Chavez was a fool."

"Was he? You don't get the point. The old days are gone. Law is in the saddle. Murder is no longer a pleasant pastime." And Cullison stretched his arms and yawned.

From far below there came through the open window the faint click of a horse's hoofs ringing against the stones in the dry bed of a river wash. Swiftly Blackwell moved to the door, taking down a rifle from its rack as he did so. Cullison rose noiselessly in his chair. If it came to the worst he meant to shout aloud his presence and close with this fellow. Hampered as he was by the table, the man would get him without question. But if he could only sink his fingers into that hairy throat while there was still life in him he could promise that the Mexican trip would never take place.

Blackwell, from his place by the door, could keep an eye both on his prisoner and on a point of the trail far below where horsemen must pass to reach the cabin.

"Sit down," he ordered.

Cullison's eyes were like finely-tempered steel. "I'd rather stand."

"By God, if you move from there----" The man did not finish his sentence, but the rifle was already half lifted. More words would have been superfluous.

A rider came into sight and entered the mouth of the cañon. He was waving a white handkerchief. The man in the doorway answered the signal.

"Not your friends this time, Mr. Sheriff," Blackwell jeered.

"I get a stay of execution, do I?" The cool drawling voice of the cattleman showed nothing of the tense feeling within.

He resumed his seat and the reading of the newspaper. Presently, to the man that came over the threshold he spoke with a casual nod.

"Morning, Cass."

Fendrick mumbled a surly answer. The manner of ironical comradeship his captive chose to employ was more than an annoyance. To serve his ends it was necessary to put the fear of death into this man's heart, which was a thing he had found impossible to do. His foe would deride him, joke with him, discuss politics with him, play cards with him, do anything but fear him. In the meantime the logic of circumstances was driving the sheepman into a corner. He had on impulse made the owner of the Circle C his prisoner. Seeing him lie there unconscious on the floor of the Jack of Hearts, it had come to him in a flash that he might hold him and force a relinquishment of the Del Oro claim. His disappearance would explain itself if the rumor spread that he was the W. & S. express robber. Cass had done it to save himself from the ruin of his business, but already he had regretted it fifty times. Threats could not move Luck in the least. He was as hard as iron.

So the sheepman found himself between the upper and the nether millstones. He could not drive his prisoner to terms and he dared not release him. For if Cullison went away unpledged he would surely send him to the penitentiary. Nor could he hold him a prisoner indefinitely. He had seen the "personal" warning in both the morning and the afternoon papers. He guessed that the presence of the ranger Bucky O'Connor in Saguache was not a chance. The law was closing in on him. Somehow Cullison must be made to come through with a relinquishment and a pledge not to prosecute. The only other way out would be to let Blackwell wreak his hate on the former sheriff. From this he shrank with every instinct. Fendrick was a hard man. He would have fought it out to a finish if necessary. But murder was a thing he could not do.

He had never discussed the matter with Blackwell. The latter had told him of this retreat in the mountains and they had brought their prisoner here. But the existence of the prospect hole at the foot of the Devil's Slide was unknown to him. From the convict's revenge he had hitherto saved Luck. Blackwell was his tool rather than his confederate, but he was uneasily aware that if the man yielded to the elemental desire to kill his enemy the law, would hold him, Cass Fendrick, guilty of the crime.

"Price of sheep good this week?" Cullison asked amiably.

"I didn't come here to discuss the price of sheep with you." Fendrick spoke harshly. A dull anger against the scheme of things burned in him. For somehow he had reached an impasse from which there was neither advance nor retreat.

"No. Well, you're right there. What I don't know about sheep would fill several government reports. Of course I've got ideas. One of them is----"

"I don't care anything about your ideas. Are you going to sign this relinquishment?"

Luck's face showed a placid surprise. "Why no, Cass. Thought I mentioned that before."

"You'd better." The sheepman's harassed face looked ugly enough for anything.

"Can't figure it out that way."

"You've got to sign it. By God, you've no option."

"No?" Still with pleasant incredulity.

"Think I'm going to let you get away from here now. You'll sign and you'll promise to tell nothing you know against us."

"No, I don't reckon I will."

Cullison was looking straight at him with his fearless level gaze. Fendrick realized with a sinking heart that he could not drive him that way to surrender. He knew that in the other man's place he would have given way, that his enemy was gamer than he was.

He threw up his hand in a sullen gesture that disclaimed responsibility. "All right. It's on your own head. I've done all I can for you."

"What's on my head?"

"Your life. Damn you, don't you see you're driving me too far?"

"How far?"

"I'm not going to let you get away to send us to prison. What do you expect?"

Luck's frosty eyes did not release the other for a moment. "How are you going to prevent it, Cass?"

"I'll find a way."

"Blackwell's way--the Devil's Slide?"

The puzzled look of the sheepman told Cullison that Blackwell's plan of exit for him had not been submitted to the other.

"Your friend from Yuma has been explaining how he has arranged for me to cross the divide," he went on. "I'm to be plugged full of lead, shot down that rock, and landed in a prospect hole at the bottom."

"First I've heard of it." Fendrick wheeled upon his accomplice with angry eyes. He was in general a dominant man, and not one who would stand much initiative from his assistants.

"He's always deviling me," complained the convict surlily. Then, with a flash of anger: "But I stand pat. He'll get his before I take chances of getting caught. I'm nobody's fool."

Cass snapped him up. "You'll do as I say. You'll not lift a finger against him unless he tries to escape."

"Have you seen the Sentinel? I tell you his friends know everything. Someone's peached. They're hot on our trail. Bucky O'Connor is in the hills. Think I'm going to be caught like a rat in a trap?"

"We'll talk of that later. Now you go look after my horse while I keep guard here."

Blackwell went, protesting that he was no "nigger" to be ordered about on errands. As soon, as he was out of hearing Fendrick turned his thin lip-smile on the prisoner.

"It's up to you, Cullison. I saved your life once. I'm protecting you now. But if your friends show up he'll do as he says. I won't be here to stop him. Sign up and don't be a fool."

Luck's answer came easily and lightly. "My friend, we've already discussed that point."

"You won't change your mind?"

"Your arguments don't justify it, Cass."

The sheepman looked at him with a sinister significance. "Good enough. I'll bring you one that will justify it muy pronto."

"It will have to be a mighty powerful one. Sorry I can't oblige you and your friend, the convict."

"It'll be powerful enough." Fendrick went to the door and called Blackwell. "Bring back that horse. I'm going down to the valley."

CHAPTER X

CASS FENDRICK MAKES A CALL

Kate was in her rose garden superintending the stable boy as he loosened the dirt around the roots of some of the bushes. She had returned to the Circle C for a day or two to give some directions in the absence of her father. Buck and the other riders came to her for orders and took them without contempt. She knew the cattle business, and they knew she knew it. To a man they were proud of her, of her spirit, her energy, and her good looks.

This rose garden was one evidence of her enterprise. No ranch in the county could show such a riot of bloom as the Circle C. The American Beauty, the Duchess, the La France bowed gracefully to neighbors of a dozen other choice varieties. Kate had brought this glimpse of Eden into the desert. She knew her catalogues by heart and she had the loving instinct that teaches all gardeners much about growing things.

The rider who cantered up to the fence, seeing her in her well-hung corduroy skirt, her close-fitting blouse, and the broad-rimmed straw hat that shielded her dark head from the sun, appreciated the fitness of her surroundings. She too was a flower of the desert, delicately fashioned, yet vital with the bloom of health.

At the clatter of hoofs she looked up from the bush she was trimming and at once rose to her feet. With the change in position she showed slim and tall, straight as a young poplar. Beneath their long lashes her eyes grew dark and hard. For the man who had drawn to a halt was Cass Fendrick.

From the pocket of his shirt he drew a crumpled piece of stained linen.

"I've brought back your handkerchief, Miss Cullison."

"What have you done with my father?"

He nodded toward the Mexican boy and Kate dismissed the lad. When he had gone she asked her question again in exactly the same words.

"If we're going to discuss your father you had better get your quirt again," the sheepman suggested, touching a scar on his face.

A flush swept over her cheeks, but she held her voice quiet and even. "Where is Father? What have you done with him?"

He swung from the horse and threw the rein to the ground. Then, sauntering to the gate, he let himself in.

"You've surely got a nice posy garden here. Didn't know there was one like it in all sunbaked Arizona."

She stood rigid. Her unfaltering eyes, sloe-black in the pale face, never lifted from him.

"There's only one thing you can talk to me about Where have you hidden my father?"

"I've heard folks say he did himself all the hiding that was done."

"You know that isn't true. That convict and you have hidden him somewhere. We have evidence enough to convict you both."

"Imagination, most of it, I expect." He was inspecting the roses and inhaling their bloom.

"Fact enough to send you to the penitentiary."

"I ought to be scared. This is a La France, ain't it?"

"I want you to tell me what you have done with my father."

He laughed a little and looked at her with eyes that narrowed like those of a cat basking in the sun. He had something the look of the larger members of the cat family--the soft long tread, the compact rippling muscles of a tame panther, and with these the threat that always lies behind its sleepy wariness.

"You're a young lady of one idea. No use arguing with you, I reckon."

"Not the least use. I've talked with Mrs. Wylie."

He raised his eyebrows. "Do I know the lady?"

"She will know you. That is more to the point."

"Did she say she knew me?" he purred.

"She will say it in court--if it ever comes to that."

"Just what will she say, if you please."

Kate told him in four sentences with a stinging directness that was the outstanding note of her, that and a fine self-forgetful courage.

"Is that all? Comes to this then, that she says I heard her scream, ran in, and saved your father's life. Is that a penitentiary offense? I don't say it oughtn't to be, but is it?"

"You helped the villain take his body into the cellar. You plotted with him to hold Father a prisoner there."

"Says that, does she--that she overheard us plotting?"

"Of course she did not overhear what you said. You took good care of that. But she knew you were conspiring."

"Just naturally knew it without overhearing," he derided. "And of course if I was in a plot I must have been Johnny-on-the-spot a good deal of the time. Hung round there a-plenty, I expect?"

He had touched on the weak spot of Mrs. Wylie's testimony. The man who had saved Cullison's life, after a long talk with Blackwell, had gone out of the Jack of Hearts and had not returned so far as she knew. For her former husband had sent her on an errand just before the prisoner was taken away and she did not know who had helped him.

Kate was silent.

"How would this do for an explanation?" he suggested lazily. "We'll say just for the sake of argument that Mrs. Wylie's story is true, that I did save your father's life. We'll put it that I did help carry him downstairs where it was cooler and that I did have a long talk with the fellow Blackwell. What would I be talking to him about, if I wasn't reading the riot act to him? Ain't it likely too that he would be sorry for what he did while he was angry at your father for butting in as he was having trouble with his wife? And after he had said he was sorry why shouldn't I hit the road out of there? There's no love lost between me and Luck Cullison. I wasn't under any obligations to wrap him up in cotton and bring him back this side up with care to his anxious friends. If he chose later to take a hike out of town on p.d.q. hurry up business I ain't to blame. And I reckon you'll find a jury will agree with me."

She had to admit to herself that he made out a plausible case. Not that she believed it for a moment. But very likely a jury would. As for his subsequent silence that could be explained by his desire not to mix himself in the affairs of one with whom he was upon unfriendly terms. The irrefutable fact that he had saved the life of Cullison would go a long way as presumptive proof of his innocence.

"I see you are wearing your gray hat again? What have you done with the brown one?"

She had flashed the question at him so unexpectedly that he was startled, but the wary mask fell again over the sardonic face.

"You take a right friendly interest in my hats, seems to me."

"I know this much. Father took your hat by mistake from the club. You bought a brown one half an hour later. You used Father's to manufacture evidence against him. If it isn't true that he is your prisoner how does it come that you have your gray hat again? You must have taken it from him."

He laughed uneasily. She had guessed the exact truth.

"In Arizona there are about forty thousand gray hats like this. Do you figure you can identify this one, Miss Cullison? And suppose your fairy tale of the Jack of Hearts is true, couldn't I have swapped hats again while he lay there unconscious?"

She brushed his explanation aside with a woman's superb indifference to logic.

"You can talk of course. I don't care. It is all lies--lies. You have kidnapped Father and are holding him somewhere. Don't you dare to hurt him. If you should--Oh, if you should--you will wish you had never been born." The fierceness of her passion beat upon him like sudden summer hail.

He laughed slowly, well pleased. A lazy smoldering admiration shone in his half shuttered eyes.

"So you're going to take it out of me, are you?"

A creature of moods, there came over her now a swift change. Every feature of her, the tense pose, the manner of defiant courage, softened indescribably. She was no longer an enemy bent on his destruction but a girl pleading for the father she loved.

"Why do you do it? You are a man. You want to fight fair. Tell me he is well. Tell me you will set him free."

He forgot for the moment that he was a man with the toils of the law closing upon him, forgot that his success and even his liberty were at stake. He saw only a girl with the hunger of love in her wistful eyes, and knew that it lay in his power to bring back the laughter and the light into them.

"Suppose I can't fight fair any longer. Suppose I've let myself get trapped and it isn't up to me but to somebody else."

"How do you mean?"

"Up to your father, say."

"My father?"

"Yes. How could I turn him loose when the first thing he did would be to swear out a warrant for my arrest?"

"But he wouldn't--not if you freed him."

He laughed harshly. "I thought you knew him. He's hard as nails."

She recognized the justice of this appraisal. "But he is generous too. He stands by his friends."

"I'm not his friend, not so you could notice it." He laughed again, bitterly. "Not that it matters. Of course I was just putting a case. Nothing to it really."

He was hedging because he thought he had gone too far, but she appeared not to notice it. Her eyes had the faraway look of one who communes with herself.

"If I could only see him and have a talk with him."

"What good would that do?" he pretended to scoff.

But he watched her closely nevertheless.

"I think I could get him to do as I ask. He nearly always does." Her gaze went swiftly back to him. "Let me talk with him. There's a reason why he ought to be free now, one that would appeal to him."

This was what he had come for, but now that she had met him half way he hesitated. If she should not succeed he would be worse off than before. He could neither hold her a prisoner nor free her to lead the pack of the law to his hiding place. On the other hand if Cullison thought they intended to keep her prisoner he would have to compromise. He dared not leave her in the hands of Lute Blackwell. Fendrick decided to take a chance. At the worst he could turn them both free and leave for Sonora.

"All right. I'll take you to him. But you'll have to do as I say."

"Yes," she agreed.

"I'm taking you to back my play. I tell you straight that Blackwell would like nothing better than to put a bullet through your father. But I've got a hold on the fellow that ties him. He's got to do as I say. But if I'm not there and it comes to a showdown--if Bucky O'Connor for instance happens to stumble in--then it's all off with Luck Cullison. Blackwell won't hesitate a second. He'll kill your father and make a bolt for it. That's one reason why I'm taking you. I want to pile up witnesses against the fellow so as to make him go slow. But that's not my main object. You've got to persuade Luck to come through with an agreement to let go of that Del Oro homestead and to promise not to prosecute us. He won't do it to save his own life. He's got to think you come there as my prisoner. See? He's got to wrestle with the notion that you're in the power of the damnedest villain that ever went unhung. I mean Blackwell. Let him chew on that proposition a while and see what he makes of it."

She nodded, white to the lips. "Let us go at once, please. I don't want to leave Father alone with that man." She called across to the corral. "Manuel, saddle the pinto for me. Hurry!"

They rode together through the wind-swept sunlit land. From time to time his lazy glance embraced her, a supple graceful creature at perfect ease in the saddle. What was it about her that drew the eye so irresistibly? Prettier girls he had often seen. Her features were irregular, mouth and nose too large, face a little thin. Her contour lacked the softness, the allure that in some women was an unconscious invitation to cuddle. Tough as whipcord she might be, but in her there flowed a life vital and strong; dwelt a spirit brave and unconquerable. She seemed to him as little subtle as any woman he had ever met. This directness came no doubt from living so far from feminine influences. But he had a feeling that if a man once wakened her to love, the instinct of sex would spring full-grown into being.

They talked of the interests common to the country, of how the spring rains had helped the range, of Shorty McCabe's broken leg, of the new school district that was being formed. Before she knew it Kate was listening to his defense of himself in the campaign between him and her father. He found her a partisan beyond chance of conversion. Yet she heard patiently his justification.

"I didn't make the conditions that are here. I have to accept them. The government establishes forest reserves on the range. No use ramming my head against a stone wall. Uncle Sam is bigger than we are. Your father and his friends got stubborn. I didn't."

"No, you were very wise," she admitted dryly.

"You mean because I adapted myself to the conditions and made the best of them. Why shouldn't I?" he flushed.

"Father's cattle had run over that range thirty years almost. What right had you to take it from him?"

"Conditions change. He wouldn't see it. I did. As for the right of it--well, Luck ain't king of the valley just because he thinks he is."

She began to grow angry. A dull flush burned through the tan of her cheeks.

"So you bought sheep and brought them in to ruin the range, knowing that they would cut the feeding ground to pieces, kill the roots of vegetation with their sharp hoofs, and finally fill the country with little gullies to carry off the water that ought to sink into the ground."

"Sheep ain't so bad if they are run right."

"It depends where they run. This is no place for them."

"That's what you hear your father say. He's prejudiced."

"And you're not, I suppose."

"I'm more reasonable than he is."

"Yes, you are," she flung back at him irritably.

Open country lay before them. They had come out from a stretch of heavy underbrush. Catclaw had been snatching at their legs. Cholla had made the traveling bad for the horses. Now she put her pony to a canter that for the time ended conversation.

CHAPTER XI

A COMPROMISE

Luck lay stretched full length on a bunk, his face, to the roof, a wreath of smoke from his cigar traveling slowly toward the ceiling into a filmy blue cloud which hung above him. He looked the personification of vigorous full-blooded manhood at ease. Experience had taught him to take the exigencies of his turbulent life as they came, nonchalantly, to the eye of an observer indifferently, getting all the comfort the situation had to offer.

By the table, facing him squarely, sat José Dominguez, a neatly built Mexican with snapping black eyes, a manner of pleasant suavity, and an ever-ready smile that displayed a double row of shining white teeth. That smile did not for an instant deceive Luck. He knew that José had no grudge against him, that he was a very respectable citizen, and that he would regretfully shoot him full of holes if occasion called for so drastic a termination to their acquaintanceship. For Dominguez had a third interest in the C. F. ranch, and he was the last man in the world to sacrifice his business for sentiment. Having put the savings of a lifetime into the sheep business, he did not propose to let anybody deprive him of his profits either legally or illegally.

Luck was talking easily, in the most casual and amiable of voices.

"No, Dominguez, the way I look at it you and Cass got in bad this time. Here's the point. In this little vendetta of ours both sides were trying to keep inside the law and win out. When you elected Bolt sheriff that was one to you. When you took out that grazing permit and cut me off the reserve that was another time you scored heavy. A third time was when you brought 'steen thousand of Mary's little lambs baaing across the desert. Well, I come back at you by deeding the Circle C to my girl and taking up the Del Oro homestead. You contest and lose. Good enough. It's up to you to try another move."

"Si, Señor, and we move immediate. We persuade you to visit us at our summer mountain home where we can talk at leisure. We suggest a compromise."

Luck grinned. "Your notion of a compromise and mine don't tally, José. Your idea is for me to give you the apple and stand by while you eat it. Trouble is that both parties to this quarrel are grabbers."

"True, but Señor Cullison must remember his hands are tied behind him. He will perhaps not find the grabbing good," his opponent suggested politely.

"Come to that, your hands are tied too, my friend. You can't hold me here forever. Put me out of business and the kid will surely settle your hash by proving up on the claim. What are you going to do about it?"

"Since you ask me, I can only say that it depends on you. Sign the relinquishment, give us your word not to prosecute, and you may leave in three hours."

Cullison shook his head. "That's where you get in wrong. Buck up against the law and you are sure to lose."

"If we lose you lose too," Dominguez answered significantly.

The tinkle of hoofs from the river bed in the gulch below rose through the clear air. The Mexican moved swiftly to the door and presently waved a handkerchief.

"What gent are you wig-wagging to now?" Luck asked from the bed. "Thought I knew all you bold bad bandits by this time. Or is it Cass back again?"

"Yes, it's Cass. There's someone with him too. It is a woman," the Mexican discovered in apparent surprise.

"A woman!" Luck took the cigar from his mouth in vague unease. "What is he doing here with a woman?"

The Mexican smiled behind his open hand. "Your question anticipates mine, Señor. I too ask the same."

The sight of his daughter in the doorway went through the cattleman with a chilling shock. She ran forward and with a pathetic cry of joy threw herself upon him where he stood. His hands were tied behind him. Only by the turn of his head and by brushing his unshaven face against hers could he answer her caresses. There was a look of ineffable tenderness on his face, for he loved her more than anything else on earth.

"Mr. Fendrick brought me," she explained when articulate expression was possible.

"He brought you, did he?" Luck looked across her shoulder at his enemy, and his eyes grew hard as jade.

"Of my own free will," she added.

"I promised you a better argument than those I'd given you. Miss Cullison is that argument," Fendrick said.

The cattleman's set face had a look more deadly than words. It told Fendrick he would gladly have killed him where he stood. For Luck knew he was cornered and must yield. Neither Dominguez nor Blackwell would consent to let her leave otherwise.

"He brought me here to have a talk with you, Dad. You must sign any paper he wants you to sign."

"And did he promise to take you back home after our talk?"

"Miss Cullison would not want to leave as long as her father was here," Fendrick answered for her glibly with a smile that said more than the words.

"I'm going to hold you responsible for bringing her here."

Fendrick could not face steadily the eyes of his foe. They bored into him like gimlets.

"And responsible for getting her back home just as soon as I say the word," Luck added, the taut muscles standing out in his clenched jaw.

"I expect your say-so won't be final in this matter, Luck. But I'll take the responsibility. Miss Cullison will get home at the proper time."

"I'm not going home till you do," the girl broke in. "Oh, Dad, we've been so worried. You can't think."

"You've played a rotten trick on me, Fendrick. I wouldn't have thought it even of a sheepman."

"No use you getting crazy with the heat, Cullison. Your daughter asked me to bring her here, and I brought her. Of course I'm not going to break my neck getting her home where she can 'phone Bolt or Bucky O'Connor and have us rounded up. That ain't reasonable to expect. But I aim to do what's right. We'll all have supper together like sensible folks. Then José and I will give you the cabin for the night if you'll promise not to attempt to escape. In the morning maybe you'll see things different."

Fendrick calculated not without reason that the best thing to do would be to give Kate a chance for a long private talk with her father. Her influence would be more potent than any he could bring to bear.

After supper the door of the cabin was locked and a sentry posted. The prisoners were on parole, but Cass did not on that account relax his vigilance. For long he and his partner could hear a low murmur of voices from within the cabin. At length the lights went out and presently the voices died. But all through the night one or the other of the sheepmen patroled a beat that circled around and around the house.

Fendrick did not broach the subject at issue next morning till after breakfast.

"Well, what have you decided?" he asked at last.

"Let's hear about that compromise. What is it you offer?" Luck demanded gruffly.

"You sign the relinquishment and agree not to make us any trouble because we brought you here, and you may go by two o'clock."

"You want to reach Saguache with the relinquishment in time to file it before I could get to a 'phone. You don't trust me."

Fendrick smiled. "When we let you go we're trusting you a heap more than we would most men. But of course you're going to be sore about this and we don't want to put temptation in your way."

"I see. Well, I accept your terms. I'll make you no legal trouble. But I tell you straight this thing ain't ended. It's only just begun. I'm going to run you out of this country before I'm through with you."

"Go to it. We'll see whether you make good."

"Where is that paper you want me to sign?"

Luck dashed off his signature and pushed the document from him. He hated the necessity that forced him to surrender. For himself he would have died rather than give way, but he had to think of his daughter and of his boy Sam who was engaged in a plot to hold up a train.

His stony eyes met those of the man across the table. "No need for me to tell you what I think of this. A white man wouldn't have done such a trick. It takes sheepherders and greasers to put across a thing so damnable as dragging a woman into a feud."

Fendrick flushed angrily. "It's not my fault; you're a pigheaded obstinate chump. I used the only weapon left me."

Kate, standing straight and tall behind her father's chair, looked at their common foe with uncompromising scorn. "He is not to blame, Dad. He can't help it because he doesn't see how despicable a thing he has done."

Again the blood rushed to the face of the sheepman. "I reckon that will hold me hitched for the present, Miss Cullison. In the meantime I'll go file that homestead entry of mine. Nothing like living up to the opinion your friends have of you."

He wheeled away abruptly, but as he went out of the door one word came to him.

"Friends!" Kate had repeated, and her voice told fully the contempt she felt.

At exactly two o'clock Dominguez set the Cullisons on the homeward road. He fairly dripped apologies for the trouble to which he and his friends had been compelled to put them.

Blackwell, who had arrived to take his turn as guard, stood in the doorway and sulkily watched them go.

[Illustration: SHE WAS THANKING GOD THE AFFAIR WAS ENDED]

From the river bed below the departing guests looked up at the cabin hidden in the pines. The daughter was thanking God in her heart that the affair was ended. Her father was vowing to himself that it had just begun.

CHAPTER XII

AN ARREST

After half a week in the saddle Lieutenant Bucky O'Connor of the Arizona Rangers and Curly Flandrau reached Saguache tired and travel-stained. They had combed the Rincons without having met hide or hair of the men they wanted. Early next morning they would leave town again and this time would make for Soapy Stone's horse ranch.

Bucky O'Connor was not disheartened. Though he was the best man hunter in Arizona, it was all in the day's work that criminals should sometimes elude him. But with Curly the issue was a personal one. He owed Luck Cullison a good deal and his imagination had played over the picture of that moment when he could go to Kate and tell her he had freed her father.

After reaching town the first thing each of them did was to take a bath, the second to get shaved. From the barber shop they went to the best restaurant in Saguache. Curly was still busy with his pie à la mode when Burridge Thomas, United States Land Commissioner for that district, took the seat opposite and told to O'Connor a most interesting piece of news.

They heard him to an end without interruption. Then Curly spoke one word. "Fendrick."

"Yes, sir, Cass Fendrick. Came in about one o'clock and handed me the relinquishment just as I've been telling you."

"Then filed on the claim himself, you said."

"Yes, took it up himself."

"Sure the signature to the relinquishment was genuine?"

"I'd take oath to it. As soon as he had gone I got out the original filing and compared the two. Couldn't be any possible mistake. Nobody could have forged the signature. It is like Luck himself, strong and forceful and decided."

"We're not entirely surprised, Mr. Thomas," Lieutenant O'Connor told the commissioner. "In point of fact we've rather been looking for something of the kind."

"Then you know where Luck is?" Thomas, a sociable garrulous soul, leaned forward eagerly.

"No, we don't. But we've a notion Fendrick knows." Bucky gave the government appointee his most blandishing smile. "Of course we know you won't talk about this, Mr. Thomas. Can we depend on your deputies?"

"I'll speak to them."

"We're much obliged to you. This clears up a point that was in doubt to us. By the way, what was the date when the relinquishment was signed?"

"To-day."

"And who was the notary that witnessed it?"

"Dominguez. He's a partner of Fendrick in the sheep business."

"Quite a family affair, isn't it. Well, I'll let you know how things come out, Mr. Thomas. You'll be interested to know. Have a cigar."

Bucky rose. "See you later, Curly. Sorry I have to hurry, Mr. Thomas, but I've thought of something I'll have to do right away."

Bucky followed El Molino Street to the old plaza and cut across it to the Hotel Wayland. After a sharp scrutiny of the lobby and a nod of recognition to an acquaintance he sauntered to the desk and looked over the register. There, among the arrivals of the day, was the entry he had hoped to see.

Cass Fendrick, C. F. Ranch, Arizona.

The room that had been assigned to him was 212.

"Anything you want in particular, Lieutenant?" the clerk asked.

"No-o. Just looking to see who came in to-day."

He turned away and went up the stairs, ignoring the elevator. On the second floor he found 212. In answer to his knock a voice said "Come in." Opening the door, he stepped in, closed it behind him, and looked at the man lying in his shirt sleeves on the bed.

"Evening, Cass."

Fendrick put down his newspaper but did not rise. "Evening, Bucky."

Their eyes held to each other with the level even gaze of men who recognize a worthy antagonist.

"I've come to ask a question or two."

"Kick them out."

"First, I would like to know what you paid Luck Cullison for his Del Oro claim."

"Thinking of buying me out?" was the ironical retort of the man on the bed.

"Not quite. I've got another reason for wanting to know."

"Then you better ask Cullison. The law says that if a man sells a relinquishment he can't file on another claim. If he surrenders it for nothing he can. Now Luck may have notions of filing on another claim. You can see that we'll have to take it for granted he gave me the claim."

It was so neat an answer and at the same time so complete a one that O'Connor could not help appreciating it. He smiled and tried again.

"We'll put that question in the discard. That paper was signed by Luck to-day. Where was he when you got it from him?"

"Sure it was signed to-day? Couldn't it have been ante-dated?"

"You know better than I do. When was it signed?"

Fendrick laughed. He was watching the noted officer of rangers with narrowed wary eyes. "On advice of counsel I decline to answer."

"Sorry, Cass. That leaves me only one thing to do. You're under arrest."

"For what?" demanded the sheepman sharply.

"For abducting Luck Cullison and holding him prisoner without his consent."

Lazily Cass drawled a question. "Are you right sure Cullison can't be found?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are you right sure he ain't at home attending to his business?"

"Has he come back?"

"Maybe so. I'm not Luck Cullison's keeper."

Bucky thought he understood. In return for the relinquishment Cullison had been released. Knowing Luck as he did, it was hard for him to see how pressure enough had been brought to bear to move him.

"May I use your 'phone?" he asked.

"Help yourself."

Fendrick pretended to have lost interest. He returned to his newspaper, but his ears were alert to catch what went on over the wires. It was always possible that Cullison might play him false and break the agreement. Cass did not expect this, for the owner of the Circle C was a man whose word was better than most men's bond. But the agreement had been forced upon him through a trick. How far he might feel this justified him in ignoring it the sheepman did not know.

O'Connor got the Circle C on long distance. It was the clear contralto of a woman that answered his "Hello!"

"Is this Miss Cullison?" he asked. Almost at once he added: "O'Connor of the rangers is speaking. I've heard your father is home again. Is that true?"

An interval followed during which the ranger officer was put into the role of a listener. His occasional "Yes----Yes----Yes" punctuated the rapid murmur that reached Fendrick.

Presently Bucky asked a question. "On his way to town now?"

Again the rapid murmur.

"I'll attend to that, Miss Cullison. I am in Fendrick's room now. Make your mind easy."

Bucky hung up and turned to the sheepman. The latter showed him a face of derision. He had gathered one thing that disquieted him, but he did not intend to let O'Connor know it.

"Well?" he jeered. "Find friend Cullison in tolerable health?"

"I've been talking with his daughter."

"I judged as much. Miss Spitfire well?"

"Miss Cullison didn't mention her health. We were concerned about yours."

"Yes?"

"Cullison is headed for town and his daughter is afraid he is on the warpath against you."

"You don't say."

"She wanted me to get you out of her father's way until he has cooled down."

"Very kind of her."

"She's right, too. You and Luck mustn't meet yet. Get out of here and hunt cover in the hills for a few days. You know why better than I do."

"How can I when I'm under arrest?" Fendrick mocked.

"You're not under arrest. Miss Cullison says her father has no charge to bring against you."

"Good of him."

"So you can light a shuck soon as you want to."

"Which won't be in any hurry."

"Don't make any mistake. Luck Cullison is a dangerous man when he is roused."

The sheepman looked at the ranger with opaque stony eyes. "If Luck Cullison is looking for me he is liable to find me, and he won't have to go into the hills to hunt me either."

Bucky understood perfectly. According to the code of the frontier no man could let himself be driven from town by the knowledge that another man was looking for him with a gun. There are in the Southwest now many thousands who do not live by the old standard, who are anchored to law and civilization as a protection against primitive passions. But Fendrick was not one of these. He had deliberately gone outside of the law in his feud with the cattleman. Now he would not repudiate the course he had chosen and hedge because of the danger it involved. He was an aspirant to leadership among the tough hard-bitted denizens of the sunbaked desert. That being so, he had to see his feud out to a fighting finish if need be.

"There are points about this case you have overlooked," Bucky told him.

"Maybe so. But the important one that sticks out like a sore thumb is that no man living can serve notice on me to get out of town because he is coming on the shoot."

"Luck didn't serve any such notice. All his daughter knows is that he is hot under the collar. Look at things reasonably, Cass. You've caused that young lady a heap of trouble already. Are you going to unload a lot more on her just because you want to be pigheaded. Only a kid struts around and hollers 'Who's afraid?' No, it's up to you to pull out, not because of Luck Cullison but on account of his daughter."

"Who is such a thorough friend of mine," the sheepman added with his sardonic grin.

"What do you care about that? She's a girl. I don't know the facts, but I can guess them. She and Luck will stand pat on what they promised you. Don't you owe her something for that? Seems to me a white man wouldn't make her any more worry."

"It's because I am a white man that I can't dodge a fight when it's stacked up for me, Bucky."

He said it with a dogged finality that was unshaken, but O'Connor made one more effort.

"Nobody will know why you left."

"I would know, wouldn't I? I've got to go right on living with myself. I tell you straight I'm going to see it out."

Bucky's jaw clamped. "Not if I know it. You're under arrest."

Fendrick sat up in surprise. "What for?" he demanded angrily.

"For robbing the W. & S. Express Company."

"Hell, Bucky. You don't believe that."

"Never mind what I believe. There's some evidence against you--enough to justify me."

"You want to get me out of Cullison's way. That's all."

"If you like to put it so."

"I won't stand for it. That ain't square."

"You'll stand for it, my friend. I gave you a chance to clear out and you wouldn't take it."

"I wouldn't because I couldn't. Don't make any mistake about this. I'm not looking for Luck. I'm attending to my business. Arrest him if you want to stop trouble."

There came a knock on the door. It opened to admit Luck Cullison. He shut it and put his back to it, while his eyes, hard as hammered iron, swept past the officer to fix on Fendrick.

The latter rose quickly from the bed, but O'Connor flung him back.

"Don't forget you're my prisoner."

"He's your prisoner, is he?" This was a turn of affairs for which Luck was manifestly unprepared: "Well, I've come to have a little settlement with him."

Fendrick, tense as a coiled spring, watched him warily. "Can't be any too soon to suit me."

Clear cut as a pair of scissors through paper, Bucky snapped out his warning. "Nothing stirring, gentlemen. I'll shoot the first man that makes a move."

"Are you in this, Bucky?" asked Cullison evenly.

"You're right I am. He's my prisoner."

"What for?"

"For robbing the W. & S."

Luck's face lit. "Have you evidence enough to cinch him?"

"Not enough yet. But I'll take no chances on his getting away."

The cattleman's countenance reflected his thoughts as his decision hung in the balance. He longed to pay his debt on the spot. But on the other hand he had been a sheriff himself. As an outsider he had no right to interfere between an officer and his captive. Besides, if there was a chance to send Fendrick over the road that would be better than killing. It would clear up his own reputation, to some extent under a cloud.

"All right, Bucky. If the law wants him I'll step aside for the time."

The sheepman laughed in his ironic fashion. His amusement mocked them both. "Most as good as a play of the movies, ain't it? But we'd ought all to have our guns out to make it realistic."

But in his heart he did not jeer. For the situation had been nearer red tragedy than melodrama. The resource and firmness of Bucky O'Connor had alone made it possible to shave disaster by a hair's breadth and no more.

CHAPTER XIII

A CONVERSATION

Bucky O'Connor and his prisoner swung down the street side by side and turned in at the headquarters of the rangers. The officer switched on the light, shut the door, and indicated a chair. From his desk he drew a box of cigars. He struck a match and held it for the sheepman before using it himself.

Relaxed in his chair, Fendrick spoke with rather elaborate indolence.

"What's your evidence, Bucky? You can't hold me without any. What have you got that ties me to the W. & S. robbery?"

"Why, that hat play, Cass? You let on you had shot Cullison's hat off his head while he was making his getaway. Come to find out you had his hat in your possession all the time."

"Does that prove I did it myself?"

"Looks funny you happened to be right there while the robbery was taking place and that you had Luck's hat with you."

The sleepy tiger look lay warily in the sheepman's eyes. "That's what the dictionaries call a coincidence, Bucky."

"They may. I'm not sure I do."

"Fact, just the same."

"I've a notion it will take some explaining."

"Confidentially?"

"Confidentially what?"

"The explanation. You won't use it against me."

"Not if you weren't in the hold-up."

"I wasn't. This is the way it happened. You know Cullison was going to prove up on that Del Oro claim on Thursday. That would have put the C. F. ranch out of business. I knew he was in town and at the Del Mar, but I didn't know where he would be next day. He had me beat. I couldn't see any way out but to eat crow and offer a compromise. I hated it like hell, but it was up to me to hunt Luck up and see what he would do. His hat gave me an excuse to call. So I started out and came round the corner of San Mateo Street just in time to see the robber pull out. Honest, the fellow did shape up a little like Luck. Right then I got the darned fool notion of mixing him up in it. I threw his hat down and shot a hole in it, then unlocked the door of the express office carrying the hat in my hand. That's all there was to it."

"Pretty low-down trick, wasn't it, to play on an innocent man?"

"He was figuring to do me up. I don't say it was exactly on the square, but I was sore at him clear through. I wanted to get him into trouble. I had to do something to keep his mind busy till I could turn round and think of a way out."

Bucky reflected, looking at the long ash on his cigar. "The man that made the raid of the W. & S. shaped up like Luck, you say?"

"In a general way."

The ranger brushed the ash from the end of the cigar into the tray. Then he looked quietly at Fendrick. "Who was the man, Cass?"

"I thought I told you----"

"You did. But you lied. It was a moonlight night. And there's an arc light at that corner. By your own story, the fellow took his mask off as he swung to his horse. You saw his face just as distinctly as I see yours now."

"No, I reckon not," Fendrick grinned.

"Meaning you won't tell?"

"That's not how I put it, Bucky. You're the one that says I recognized him. Come to think of it, I'm not sure the fellow didn't wear his mask till he was out of sight."

"I am."

"You are."

"Yes. The mask was found just outside the office where the man dropped it before he got into the saddle."

"So?"

"That's not all. Curly and I found something else, too--the old shirt from which the cloth was cut."

The sheepman swept him with one of his side-long, tiger-cat glances. "Where did you find it?"

"In a barrel back of the Jack of Hearts."

"Now, if you only knew who put it there," suggested Cass, with ironic hopefulness.

"It happens I do. I have a witness who saw a man shove that old shirt down in the barrel after tearing a piece off."

"Your witness got a name, Bucky?"

"I'll not mention the name now. If it became too well known something might happen to my witness."

Fendrick nodded. "You're wiser there. She wouldn't be safe, not if a certain man happened to hear what you've just told me."

"I didn't say she, Cass."

"No, I said it. Your witness is Mrs. Wylie."

"Maybe, then, you can guess the criminal, too."

"Maybe I could, but I'm not going to try."

"Then we'll drop that subject. I'll ask you a question. Can you tell me where I can find a paroled convict named Blackwell?"

Fendrick shook his head. "Don't know the gentleman. A friend of yours?"

"One of yours. Better come through, Cass. I'm satisfied you weren't actually in this robbery, but there is such a thing as accessory after the fact. Now, I'm going to get that man. If you want to put yourself right, it's up to you to give me the information I want. Where is he?"

"Haven't got him in my pocket."

The officer rose, not one whit less amiable. "I didn't expect you to tell me. That's all right. I'll find him. But in the meantime I'll have to lock you up till this thing is settled."

From his inside coat pocket, Fendrick drew a sealed envelope, wrote the date across the front, and handed it to O'Connor.

"Keep this, Bucky, and remember that I gave it to you. Put it in a safe place, but don't open the envelope till I give the word. Understand?"

"I hear what you say, but I don't understand what you mean--what's back of it."

"It isn't intended that you should yet. I'm protecting myself. That's all."

"I guessed that much. Well, if you're ready, I'll arrange your lodgings for the night, Cass. I reckon I'll put you up at a hotel with one of the boys."

"Just as you say."

Fendrick rose, and the two men passed into the street.

CHAPTER XIV

A TOUCH OF THE THIRD DEGREE

Cullison was not the man to acknowledge himself beaten so long as there was a stone unturned. In the matter of the Del Oro homestead claim he moved at once. All of the county commissioners were personal friends of his, and he went to them with a plan for a new road to run across the Del Oro at the point where the cañon walls opened to a valley.

"What in Mexico is the good of a county road there, Luck? Can't run a wagon over them mountains and down to the river. Looks to me like it would be a road from nowhere to nowhere," Alec Flandrau protested, puzzled at his friend's request.

"I done guessed it," Yesler announced with a grin. "Run a county road through, and Cass Fendrick can't fence the river off from Luck's cows. Luck ain't aiming to run any wagon over that road."

The Map of Texas man got up and stamped with delight. "I get you. We'll learn Cass to take a joke, by gum. Luck sure gets a county road for his cows to amble over down to the water. Cass can have his darned old homestead now."

When Fendrick heard that the commissioners had condemned a right of way for a road through his homestead he unloaded on the desert air a rich vocabulary. For here would have been a simple way out of his trouble if he had only thought of it. Instead of which he had melodramatically kidnapped his enemy and put himself within reach of the law and of Cullison's vengeance.

Nor did Luck confine his efforts to self-defense. He knew that to convict Fendrick of the robbery he must first lay hands upon Blackwell.

It was, however, Bucky that caught the convict. The two men met at the top of a mountain pass. Blackwell, headed south, was slipping down toward Stone's horse ranch when they came face to face. Before the bad man had his revolver out, he found himself looking down the barrel of the ranger's leveled rifle.

"I wouldn't," Bucky murmured genially.

"What you want me for?" Blackwell demanded sulkily.

"For the W. & S. robbery."

"I'm not the man you want. My name's Johnson."

"I'll put up with you till I find the man I do want, Mr. Johnson," Bucky told him cheerfully. "Climb down from that horse. No, I wouldn't try that. Keep your hands up."

With his prisoner in front of him, O'Connor turned townward. They jogged down out of the hills through dark gulches and cactus-clad arroyos. The sharp catclaw caught at their legs. Tangled mesquite and ironwood made progress slow. They reached in time Apache Desert, and here Bucky camped. He hobbled his prisoner's feet and put around his neck a rope, the other end of which was tied to his own waist. Then he built a small fire of greasewood and made coffee for them both. The prisoner slept, but his captor did not. For he could take no chances of an escape.

The outlines of the mountain ranges loomed shadowy and dim on both sides. The moonlight played strange tricks with the mesquit and the giant cactus, a grove of which gave to the place an awesome aspect of some ghostly burial ground of a long vanished tribe.

Next day they reached Saguache. Bucky took his prisoner straight to the ranger's office and telephoned to Cullison.

"Don't I get anything to eat?" growled the convict while they waited.

"When I'm ready."

Bucky believed in fair play. The man had not eaten since last night. But then neither had he. It happened that Bucky was tough as whipcord, as supple and untiring as a hickory sapling. Well, Blackwell was a pretty hard nut to crack, too. The lieutenant did not know anything about book psychology, but he had observed that hunger and weariness try out the stuff that is in a man. Under the sag of them many a will snaps that would have held fast if sustained by a good dinner and a sound night's sleep. This is why so many "bad men," gun fighters with a reputation for gameness, wilt on occasion like whipped curs. In the old days this came to nearly every terror of the border. Some day when he had a jumping toothache, or when his nerves were frayed from a debauch, a silent stranger walked into his presence, looked long and steadily into his eyes, and ended forever his reign of lawlessness. Sometimes the two-gun man was "planted," sometimes he subsided into innocuous peace henceforth.

The ranger had a shrewd instinct that the hour had come to batter down this fellow's dogged resistance. Therefore he sent for Cullison, the man whom the convict most feared.

The very look of the cattleman, with that grim, hard, capable aspect, shook Blackwell's nerve.

"So you've got him, Bucky."

Luck looked the man over as he sat handcuffed beside the table and read in his face both terror and a sly, dogged cunning. Once before the fellow had been put through the third degree. Something of the sort he fearfully expected now. Villainy is usually not consistent. This hulking bully should have been a hardy ruffian. Instead, he shrank like a schoolgirl from the thought of physical pain.

"Stand up," ordered Cullison quietly.

Blackwell got to his feet at once. He could not help it, even though the fear in his eyes showed that he cowered before the anticipated attack.

"Don't hit me," he whined.

Luck knew the man sweated under the punishment his imagination called up, and he understood human nature too well to end the suspense by making real the vision. For then the worst would be past, since the actual is never equal to what is expected.

"Well?" Luck watched him with the look of tempered steel in his hard eyes.

The convict flinched, moistened his lips with his tongue, and spoke at last.

"I--I--Mr. Cullison, I want to explain. Every man is liable to make a mistake--go off half cocked. I didn't do right. That's a fac'. I can explain all that, but I'm sick now--awful sick."

Cullison laughed harshly. "You'll be sicker soon."

"You promised you wouldn't do anything if we turned you loose," the man plucked up courage to remind him.

"I promised the law wouldn't do anything. You'll understand the distinction presently."

"Mr. Cullison, please---- I admit I done wrong. I hadn't ought to have gone in with Cass Fendrick. He wanted me to kill you, but I wouldn't."

With that unwinking gaze the ranchman beat down his lies, while fear dripped in perspiration from the pallid face of the prisoner.

Bucky had let Cullison take the center of the stage. He had observed a growing distress mount and ride the victim. Now he stepped in to save the man with an alternative at which Blackwell might be expected not to snatch eagerly perhaps, but at least to be driven toward.

"This man is my prisoner, Mr. Cullison. From what I can make out you ought to strip his hide off and hang it up to dry. But I've got first call on him. If he comes through with the truth about the W. & S. Express robbery, I've got to protect him."

Luck understood the ranger. They were both working toward the same end. The immediate punishment of this criminal was not the important issue. It was merely a club with which to beat him into submission, and at that a moral rather than a physical one. But the owner of the Circle C knew better than to yield to Bucky too easily. He fought the point out with him at length, and finally yielded reluctantly, in such a way as to aggravate rather than relieve the anxiety of the convict.

"All right. You take him first," he finally conceded harshly.

Bucky kept up the comedy. "I'll take him, Mr. Cullison. But if he tells me the truth--and if I find out it's the whole truth--there'll be nothing doing on your part. He's my prisoner. Understand that."

Metaphorically, Blackwell licked the hand of his protector. He was still standing, but his attitude gave the effect of crouching.

"I aim to do what's right, Captain O'Connor. Whatever's right. You ask me any questions."

"I want to know all about the W. & S. robbery, everything, from start to finish."

"Honest, I wish I could tell you. But I don't know a thing about it. Cross my heart, I don't."

"No use, Blackwell. If I'm going to stand by you against Mr. Cullison, you'll have to tell the truth. Why, man, I've even got the mask you wore and the cloth you cut it from."

"I reckon it must a-been some one else, Major. Wisht I could help you, but I can't."

Bucky rose. "All right. If you can't help me, I can't help you." Apparently he dismissed the matter from his mind, for he looked at his watch and turned to the cattleman. "Mr. Cullison, I reckon I'll run out and have some supper. Do you mind staying here with this man till I get back?"

"No. That's all right, Bucky. Don't hurry, I'll keep him entertained." Perhaps it was not by chance that his eye wandered to a blacksnake whip hanging on the wall.

O'Connor sauntered to the door. The frightened gaze of the prisoner clung to him as if for safety.

"Major--Colonel--you ain't a-going," he pleaded.

"Only for an hour or two. I'll be back. I wouldn't think of saying good-by--not till we reach Yuma."

With that the door closed behind him. Blackwell cried out, hurriedly, eagerly. "Mister O'Connor!"

Bucky's head reappeared. "What! Have you reduced me to the ranks already? I was looking to be a general by the time I got back," he complained whimsically.

"I--I'll tell you everything--every last thing. Mr. Cullison--he's aiming to kill me soon as you've gone."

"I've got no time to fool away, Blackwell. I'm hungry. If you mean business get to it. But remember that whatever you say will be used against you."

"I'll tell you any dog-goned thing you want to know. You've got me beat. I'm plumb wore out--sick. A man can't stand everything."

O'Connor came in and closed the door. "Let's have it, then--the whole story. I want it all: how you came to know about this shipment of money, how you pulled it off, what you have done with it, all the facts from beginning to the end."

"Lemme sit down, Captain. I'm awful done up. I reckon while I was in the hills I've been underfed."

"Sit down. There's a good dinner waiting for you at Clune's when you get through."

Even then, though he must have known that lies could not avail, the man sprinkled his story with them. The residuum of truth that remained after these had been sifted out was something like this.

He had found on the street a letter that had inadvertently been dropped. It was to Jordan of the Cattlemen's National Bank, and it notified him that $20,000 was to be shipped to him by the W. & S. Express Company on the night of the robbery. Blackwell resolved to have a try for it. He hung around the office until the manager and the guard arrived from the train, made his raid upon them, locked the door, and threw away his mask. He dived with the satchel into the nearest alley, and came face to face with the stranger whom he later learned to be Fendrick. The whole story of the horse had been a myth later invented by the sheepman to scatter the pursuit by making it appear that the robber had come from a distance. As the street had been quite deserted at the time this detail could be plausibly introduced with no chance of a denial.

Fendrick, who had heard the shouting of the men locked in the express office, stopped the robber, but Blackwell broke away and ran down the alley. The sheepman followed and caught him. After another scuffle the convict again hammered himself free, but left behind the hand satchel containing the spoils. Fendrick (so he later explained to Blackwell) tied a cord to the handle of the bag and dropped it down the chute of a laundry in such a way that it could later be drawn up. Then he hurried back to the express office and released the prisoners. After the excitement had subsided, he had returned for the money and hid it. The original robber did not know where.

Blackwell's second meeting with the sheepman had been almost as startling as the first. Cass had run into the Jack of Hearts in time to save the life of his enemy. The two men recognized each other and entered into a compact to abduct Cullison, for his share in which the older man was paid one thousand dollars. The Mexican Dominguez had later appeared on the scene, had helped guard the owner of the Circle C, and had assisted in taking him to the hut in the Rincons where he had been secreted.

Both men asked the same question as soon as he had finished.

"Where is the money you got from the raid on the W. & S. office?"

"Don't know. I've been at Fendrick ever since to tell me. He's got it salted somewhere. You're fixing to put me behind the bars, and he's the man that really stole it."

From this they could not shake him. He stuck to it vindictively, for plainly his malice against the sheepman was great. The latter had spoiled his coup, robbed him of its fruits, and now was letting him go to prison.

"I reckon we'd better have a talk with Cass," Bucky suggested in a low voice to the former sheriff.

Luck laughed significantly. "When we find him."

For the sheepman had got out on bail the morning after his arrest.

"We'll find him easily enough. And I rather think he'll have a good explanation, even if this fellow's story is true."

"Oh, he'll be loaded with explanations. I don't doubt that for a minute. But it will take a hell of a lot of talk to get away from the facts. I've got him where I want him now, and by God! I'll make him squeal before the finish."

"Oh, well, you're prejudiced," Bucky told him with an amiable smile.

"Course I am; prejudiced as old Wall-eyed Rogers was against the vigilantes for hanging him on account of horse stealing. But I'll back my prejudices all the same. We'll see I'm right, Bucky."

CHAPTER XV

BOB TAKES A HAND

Fendrick, riding on Mesa Verde, met Bob Cullison, and before he knew what had happened found a gun thrown on him.

"Don't you move," the boy warned.

"What does this tommyrot mean?" the sheepman demanded angrily.

"It means that you are coming back with me to the ranch. That's what it means."

"What for?"

"Never you mind what for."

"Oh, go to Mexico," Cass flung back impatiently. "Think we're in some fool moving-picture play, you blamed young idiot. Put up that gun."

Shrilly Bob retorted. He was excited enough to be dangerous. "Don't you get the wrong idea. I'm going to make this stick. You'll turn and go back with me to the Circle C."

"And you'll travel to Yuma first thing you know, you young Jesse James. What you need is a pair of leather chaps applied to your hide."

"You'll go home with me, just the same."

"You've got one more guess coming, kid. I'll not go without knowing why."

"You're wanted for the W. & S. Express robbery. Blackwell has confessed."

"Confessed that I did it?" Fendrick inquired scornfully.

"Says you were in it with him. I ain't a-going to discuss it with you. Swing that horse round; and don't make any breaks, or there'll be mourning at the C. F. ranch."

Cass sat immovable as the sphinx. He was thinking that he might as well face the charge now as any time. Moreover, he had reasons for wanting to visit the Circle C. They had to do with a tall, slim girl who never looked at him without scorn in her dark, flashing eyes.

"All right. I'll go back with you, but not under a gun."

"You'll go the way I say."

"Don't think it. I've said I'll go. That settles it. But I won't stand for any gun-play capture."

"You'll have to stand for it."

Fendrick's face set. "Will I? It's up to you, then. Let's see you make me."

Sitting there with his gaze steadily on the boy, Cass had Bob at a disadvantage. If the sheep owner had tried to break away into the chaparral. Bob could have blazed away at him, but he could not shoot a man looking at him with cynical, amused eyes. He could understand the point of view of his adversary. If Fendrick rode into the Circle C under compulsion of a gun in the hands of a boy he would never hear the end of the laugh on him.

"You won't try to light out, will you?"

"I've got no notion of lighting out."

Bob put up his big blue gun reluctantly. Never before had it been trained on a human being, and it was a wrench to give up the thought of bringing in the enemy as a prisoner. But he saw he could not pull it off. Fendrick had declined to scare, had practically laughed him out of it. The boy had not meant his command as a bluff, but Cass knew him better than he did himself.

They turned toward the Circle C.

"Must have been taking lessons on how to bend a gun. You in training for sheriff, or are you going to take Bucky's place with the rangers?" Fendrick asked with casual impudence, malicious amusement gleaming from his lazy eyes.

Bob, very red about the ears, took refuge in a sulky silence. He was being guyed, and not by an inch did he propose to compromise the Cullison dignity.

"From the way you go at it, I figure you an old hand at the hold-up game. Wonder if you didn't pull off the W. & S. raid yourself."

Bob writhed impotently. At this sort of thing he was no match for the other. Fendrick, now in the best of humors, planted lazily his offhand barbs.

Kate was seated on the porch sewing. She rose in surprise when her cousin and the sheepman appeared. They came with jingling spurs across the plaza toward her. Bob was red as a turkeycock, but Fendrick wore his most devil-may-care insouciance.

"Where's Uncle Luck, sis? I've brought this fellow back with me. Caught him on the mesa," explained the boy sulkily.

Fendrick bowed rather extravagantly and flashed at the girl a smiling double-row of strong white teeth. "He's qualifying for a moving-picture show actor, Miss Cullison. I hadn't the heart to disappoint him when he got that cannon trained on me. So here I am."

Kate looked at him and then let her gaze travel to her cousin. She somehow gave the effect of judging him of negligible value.

"I think he's in his office, Bob. I'll go see."

She went swiftly, and presently her father came out. Kate did not return.

Luck looked straight at Cass with the uncompromising hostility so characteristic of him. Neither of the men spoke. It was Bob who made the necessary explanations. The sheepman heard them with a polite derision that suggested an impersonal amusement at the situation.

"I've been looking for you," Luck said bluntly, after his nephew had finished.

"So I gathered from young Jesse James. He intimated it over the long blue barrel of his cannon. Anything particular, or just a pleasant social call?"

"You're in bad on this W. & S. robbery. I reckoned you would be safer in jail till it's cleared up."

"You still sheriff, Mr. Cullison? Somehow I had got a notion you had quit the job."

"I'm an interested party. There's new evidence, not manufactured, either."

"Well, well!"

"We'll take the stage into town and see what O'Connor says--that is, if you've got time to go." Luck could be as formal in his sarcasm as his neighbor.

"With such good company on the way I'll have to make time."

The stage did not usually leave till about half past one. Presently Kate announced dinner. A little awkwardly Luck invited the sheepman to join them. Fendrick declined. He was a Fletcherite, he informed Cullison ironically, and was in the habit of missing meals occasionally. This would be one of the times.

His host hung in the doorway. Seldom at a loss to express himself, he did not quite know how to put into words what he was thinking. His enemy understood.

"That's all right. You've satisfied the demands of hospitality. Go eat your dinner. I'll be right here on the porch when you get through."

Kate, who was standing beside her father, spoke quietly.

"There's a place for you, Mr. Fendrick. We should be very pleased to have you join us. People who happen to be at the Circle C at dinner time are expected to eat here."

"Come and eat, man. You'll be under no obligations. I reckon you can hate us, just as thorough after a square meal as before. Besides, I was your guest for several days."

Fendrick looked at the young mistress of the ranch. He meant to decline once more, but unaccountably found himself accepting instead. Something in her face told him she would rather have it so.

Wherefore Cass found himself with his feet under the table of his foe discussing various topics that had nothing to do with sheep, homestead claims, abductions, or express robberies. He looked at Kate but rarely, yet he was aware of her all the time. At his ranch a Mexican did the cooking in haphazard fashion. The food was ill prepared and worse served. He ate only because it was a necessity, and he made as short a business of it as he could. Here were cut roses on a snowy tablecloth, an air of leisure that implied the object of dinner to be something more than to devour a given quantity of food. Moreover, the food had a flavor that made it palatable. The rib roast was done to a turn, the mashed potatoes whipped to a flaky lightness. The vegetable salad was a triumph, and the rice custard melted in his mouth.

Presently a young man came into the dining room and sat down beside Kate. He looked the least in the world surprised at sight of the sheepman.

"Mornin', Cass," he nodded

"Morning, Curly," answered Fendrick. "Didn't know you were riding for the Circle C."

"He's my foreman," Luck explained.

Cass observed that he was quite one of the family. Bob admired him openly and without shame, because he was the best rider in Arizona; Kate seemed to be on the best of terms with him, and Luck treated him with the offhand bluffness he might have used toward a grown son.

If Cass had, in his bitter, sardonic fashion, been interested in Kate before he sat down, the feeling had quickened to something different before he rose. It was not only that she was competent to devise such a meal in the desert. There was something else. She had made a home for her father and cousin at the Circle C. The place radiated love, domesticity, kindly good fellowship. The casual give and take of the friendly talk went straight to the heart of the sheepman. This was living. It came to him poignantly that in his scramble for wealth he had missed that which was of far greater importance.

The stage brought the two men to town shortly after sundown. Luck called up O'Connor, and made an appointment to meet him after supper.

"Back again, Bucky," Fendrick grinned at sight of the ranger. "I hear I'm suspected of being a bad hold-up."

"There's a matter that needs explaining, Cass. According to Blackwell's story, you caught him with the goods at the time of the robbery, and in making his getaway he left the loot with you. What have you done with it?"

"Blackwell told you that, did he?"

"Yes."

"Don't doubt your word for a moment, Bucky, but before I do any talking I'd like to hear him say so. I'll not round on him until I know he's given himself away."

The convict was sent for. He substantiated the ranger reluctantly. He was so hemmed in that he did not know how to play his cards so as to make the most of them. He hated Fendrick. But much as he desired to convict him, he could not escape an uneasy feeling that he was going to be made the victim. For Cass took it with that sarcastic smile of his that mocked them all in turn. The convict trusted none of them. Already he felt the penitentiary walls closing on him. He was like a trapped coyote, ready to snarl and bite at the first hand he could reach. Just now this happened to belong to Fendrick, who had cheated him out of the money he had stolen and had brought this upon him.

Cass heard him out with a lifted upper lip and his most somnolent tiger-cat expression. After Blackwell had finished and been withdrawn from circulation he rolled and lit a cigarette.

"By Mr. Blackwell's say-so I'm the goat. By the way, has it ever occurred to you gentlemen that one can't be convicted on the testimony of a single accomplice?" He asked it casually, his chair tipped back, smoke wreaths drifting lazily ceilingward.

"We've got a little circumstantial evidence to add, Cass." Bucky suggested pleasantly.

"Not enough--not nearly enough."

"That will be for a jury to decide," Cullison chipped in.

Fendrick shrugged. "I've a notion to let it go to that. But what's the use? Understand this. I wasn't going to give Blackwell away, but since he has talked, I may tell what I know. It's true enough what he says. I did relieve him of the plunder."

"Sorry to hear that, Cass," Bucky commented gravely. "What did you do with it?"

The sheep owner flicked his cigarette ash into the tray, and looked at the lieutenant out of half-shuttered, indolent eyes. "Gave it to you, Bucky."

O'Connor sat up. His blue Irish eyes were dancing. "You're a cool customer, Cass."

"Fact, just the same. Got that letter I handed you the other day?"

The officer produced it from his safe.

"Open it."

With a paper knife Bucky ripped the flap and took out a sheet of paper.

"There's something else in there," Fendrick suggested.

The something else proved to be a piece of paper folded tightly, which being opened disclosed a key.

O'Connor read aloud the letter:

To Nicholas Bolt, Sheriff, Or Bucky O'connor, Lieutenant of Rangers:

Having come into possession of a little valise which is not mine, I am getting rid of it in the following manner. I have rented a large safety-deposit box at the Cattlemen's National Bank, and have put into it the valise with the lock still unbroken. The key is inclosed herewith. Shaw, the cashier, will tell you that when this box was rented I gave explicit orders it should be opened only by the men whose names are given in an envelope left with him, not even excepting myself. The valise was deposited at exactly 10:30 A. M. the morning after the robbery, as Mr. Shaw will also testify. I am writing this the evening of the same day.

Cass Fendrick.

"Don't believe a word of it," Cullison exploded.

"Seeing is believing," the sheepman murmured. He was enjoying greatly the discomfiture of his foe.

"Makes a likely fairy tale. What for would you keep the money and not turn it back?"

"That's an easy one, Luck. He wanted to throw the burden of the robbery on you," Bucky explained.

"Well, I've got to be shown."

In the morning he was shown. Shaw confirmed exactly what Fendrick had said. He produced a sealed envelope. Within this was a sheet of paper, upon which were written two lines.

Box 2143 is to be opened only by Sheriff Bolt or Lieutenant Bucky O'Connor of the Rangers, and before witnesses.

CASS FENDRICK.

From the safety-deposit vault Bucky drew a large package wrapped in yellow paper. He cut the string, tore away the covering, and disclosed a leather satchel. Perry Hawley, the local manager of the Western & Southern Express Company, fitted to this a key and took out a sealed bundle. This he ripped open before them all. Inside was found the sum of twenty thousand dollars in crisp new bills.

CHAPTER XVI

A CLEAN UP

A slight accident occurred at the jail, one so unimportant that Scanlan the jailer did not think it worth reporting to his chief. Blackwell, while eating, knocked a glass from the table and broke it on the cement floor of his cell. There is a legend to the effect that for want of a nail a battle was lost. By reason of a bit of glass secreted in his bed something quite as important happened to the convict.

From the little table in his room he pried loose one of the corner braces. At night he scraped away at this with his bit of glass until the wood began to take the shape of a revolver. This he carefully blacked with the ink brought him by his guard. To the end of his weapon he fitted an iron washer taken from the bedstead. Then he waited for his opportunity.

His chance came through the good nature of Scanlan. The jailer was in the habit of going down town to loaf for an hour or two with old cronies after he had locked up for the night. Blackwell pretended to be out of chewing tobacco and asked the guard to buy him some. About ten o'clock Scanlan returned and brought the tobacco to his prisoner. The moon was shining brightly, and he did not bring a lantern with him. As he passed the plug through the grating Blackwell's fingers closed around his wrist and drew the man close to the iron lattice work. Simultaneously a cold rim was pressed against the temple of the guard.

"Don't move, or I'll fill you full of holes," the convict warned.

Scanlan did not move, not until the man in the cell gave the word. Then he obeyed orders to the letter. His right hand found the bunch of keys, fitted the correct one to the door, and unlocked it according to instructions. Not until he was relieved of his weapon did Blackwell release him. The jailer was backed into the cell, gagged with a piece of torn bedding, and left locked up as securely as the other had been a few minutes earlier.

The convict made his way downstairs, opened the outer door with the bunch of keys he had taken from Scanlan, locked it behind him, and slipped into the first alley that offered refuge. By way of the Mexican quarters he reached the suburbs and open country. Two hours later he stole a horse from an irrigated ranch near town. Within twenty-four hours he had reached the Soapy Stone horse ranch and safety.

After this the plans for the raid on the Texas, Arizona & Pacific Flyer moved swiftly to a head. Soapy Stone and Sam dropped into Saguache inconspicuously one evening. Next day Stone rode down to Tin Cup to look over the ground. Maloney telephoned their movements to the Circle C and to the Hashknife. This brought to Saguache Luck Cullison, Curly Flandrau, and Slats Davis. Bucky O'Connor had been called to Douglas on important business and could not lend his help.

Curly met Sam in front of Chalkeye's Place. They did the town together in a mild fashion and Flandrau proposed that they save money by taking a common room. To this young Cullison agreed.

Luck, Curly and Dick Maloney had already ridden over the country surrounding the scene of the projected hold-up. They had decided that the robbery would probably take place at the depot, so that the outlaws could get the agent to stop the Flyer without arousing suspicion. In a pocket of the hills back of the station a camp had been selected, its site well back from any trail and so situated that from it one could command a view of Tin Cup.

The owner of the Circle C selected three of his closemouthed riders--Sweeney, Jake and Buck were the ones he chose--to hold the camp with him until after the robbery. The only signal they needed was the stopping of the Flyer at Tin Cup. Then they would come pounding down from the hills in time to catch the robbers before they had got through with their work. Maloney or Curly would be on the train to take a hand in the battle. Caught by surprise, Soapy's gang would surely be trapped.

So they planned it, but it happened that Soapy Stone had made his arrangements differently.

Luck and his riders took their blankets and their traps down to Tin Cup according to agreement, while Davis, Maloney and Flandrau looked after the Saguache end of the business. All of them were very friendly with Sam. The boy, younger than any of them, was flattered that three of the best known riders in the territory should make so much of him. Moreover, Stone had given him instructions to mix with Curly's crowd as much as he could. He had given as a reason that it would divert suspicion, but what he really wanted was to throw the blame of the hold-up on these friends after Sam was found dead on the scene.

Young Cullison had stopped drinking, but he could not keep his nerves from jumping. His companions pretended not to notice how worried he was, but they watched him so closely that he was never out of the sight of at least one of them. Soapy had decreed the boy's death by treachery, but his friends were determined to save him and to end forever the reign of Stone as a bad man.

It was one day when the four young cowpunchers were sitting together in Curly's room playing poker that a special delivery letter came to Sam. The others, to cover their excitement, started an argument as to whether five aces (they were playing with the joker) beat a straight flush. Presently Sam spoke, as indifferently as he could.

"Got the offer of a job down the line. Think I'll run down to-night far as Casa Grande and see what's doing."

"If they need any extra riders here's some more out of a job," Dick told him.

"Heard to-day of a freighter that wants a mule-skinner. I'm going to see him to-morrow," Slats chipped in.

"Darn this looking for a job anyhow. It's tur'ble slow work," Curly followed up, yawning. "Well, here's hoping you land yours, Sam."

This was about two o'clock in the afternoon. The game dragged on for a while, but nobody took any interest in it. Sam had to get ready for the work of the night, and the rest were anxious to get out and give him a chance. So presently Dick threw down his cards.

"I've had enough poker for one session. Me, I'm going to drift out and see what's moving in town."

"Think I'll snooze for a while," Sam said, stretching sleepily.

The others trooped out and left him alone. From the room rented by Davis the three watched to see that Sam did not leave without being observed. He did not appear, and about six o'clock Curly went back to his room.

"Time to grub," he sang out.

"That's right," Sam agreed.

They went to the New Orleans Hash House, and presently Davis and Maloney also arrived. The party ordered a good dinner and took plenty of time to eat it. Sam was obviously nervous, but eager to cover his uneasiness under a show of good spirits.

Curly finished eating just as Sam's second cup of coffee came. Flandrau, who had purposely chosen a seat in the corner where he was hemmed in by the chairs of the others, began to feel in his vest pockets.

"Darned if I've got a cigar. Sam, you're young and nimble. Go buy me one at the counter."

"Sure." Cullison was away on the instant.

Curly's hand came out of his pocket. In it was a paper. Quickly he shook the contents of the paper into the steaming cup of coffee and stirred the liquid with a spoon.

Sam brought back the cigar and drank his coffee. Without any unnecessary delay they returned to his room. Before the party had climbed the stairs the boy was getting drowsy.

"Dunno what's the matter with me. I'm feeling awful sleepy," he said, sitting on the bed.

"Why don't you take a snooze? You've got lots of time before the train goes."

"No, I don't reckon I better."

He rubbed his eyes, yawned, and slumped down. His lids wavered, shut, jerked open again, and closed slowly.

"Wake me, Curly--time for train." And with that he was sound asleep.

They took off his boots and settled him comfortably. In his pocket they found a black mask big enough to cover his whole face. The registered letter could not be found and they decided he must have destroyed it.

The sight of the mask had given Curly an idea. He was of about the same build as Sam. Why not go in his place? It would be worth doing just to catch sight of Soapy's face when he took the mask off after the robbers had been captured.

"What's the use?" Davis protested. "It's an unnecessary risk. They might shoot you in place of Sam."

"I'll look out for myself. Don't worry about that. Before the time for getting rid of Sam comes Mr. Soapy and his bunch will be prisoners."

They argued it out, but Curly was set and could not be moved. He dressed in young Cullison's clothes and with Maloney took the express at 9:57. Davis remained to guard Sam.

Curly's watch showed 10:17 when the wheels began to grind from the setting of the air brakes. He was in the last sleeper, Dick in the day coach near the front. They had agreed that Dick was to drop off as soon as the train slowed down enough to make it safe, whereas Curly would go on and play Sam's part until the proper time.

The train almost slid to a halt from the pressure of the hard-jammed brakes. A volley of shots rang out. Curly slipped the mask over his face and rose with a revolver in each hand. He had been sitting at the end of the car, so that nobody noticed him until his voice rang out with a crisp order.

"Hands up! Don't anybody move!"

An earthquake shock could not have alarmed the passengers more. The color was washed completely from the faces of most of them.

"Reach for the roof. Come, punch a hole in the sky!" To do it thoroughly, Curly flung a couple of shots through the ceiling. That was enough. Hands went up without any argument, most of them quivering as from an Arkansas chill.

Presently Cranston herded the passengers in from the forward coaches. With them were most of the train crew. The front door of the car was locked so that they could not easily get out.

"We're cutting off the express car and going forward to 'Dobe Wells with it. There we can blow open the safe uninterrupted," Bad Bill explained. "You ride herd on the passengers here from the outside till you hear two shots, then hump yourself forward and hop on the express car."

Fine! Curly was to stand out there in the moonlight and let anybody in the car that had the nerve pepper away at him. If they did not attend to the job of riddling him, his false friends would do it while he was running forward to get aboard. Nothing could have been simpler--if he had not happened to have had inside information of their intent.

He had to think quickly, for the plans of him and his friends had been deranged. They had reckoned on the express car being rifled on the spot. This would have given Cullison time to reach the scene of action. Mow they would be too late. Maloney, lying snugly in the bear grass beside the track, would not be informed as to the arrangement. Unless Curly could stop it, the hold-up would go through according to the program of Soapy and not of his enemies.

The decision of Flamdrau was instantaneous. He slid down beside the track into the long grass. Whipping up one of his guns, he fired. As if in answer to the first shot his revolver cracked twice. Simultaneously, he let out a cry of pain, wriggled back for a dozen yards through the grass, and crossed the track in the darkness. As he crouched down close to the wheels of the sleeper someone came running back on the other side.

"What's up, Sam? You hit?" he could hear Blackwell whisper.

No answer came. The paroled convict was standing close to the car for fear of being hit himself and he dared not move forward into the grass to investigate.

"Sam," he called again; then, "He's sure got his."

That was all Curly wanted to know. Softly he padded forward, keeping as low as he could till he reached the empty sleepers. A brakeman was just uncoupling the express car when Curly dived underneath and nestled close to the trucks.

From where he lay he could almost have reached out and touched Soapy standing by the car.

"What about the kid?" Stone asked Blackwell as the latter came up.

"They got him. Didn't you hear him yelp?"

"Yes, but did they put him out of business? See his body?"

Blackwell had no intention of going back into the fire zone and making sure. For his part he was satisfied. So he lied.

"Yep. Blew the top of his head off."

"Good," Soapy nodded. "That's a receipt in full for Mr. Luck Cullison."

The wheels began to move. Soon they were hitting only the high spots. Curly guessed they must be doing close to sixty miles an hour. Down where he was the dust was flying so thickly he could scarce breathe, as it usually does on an Arizona track in the middle of summer.

Before many minutes the engine began to slow down. The wheels had hardly stopped moving when Curly crept out, plowed through the sand, up the rubble of a little hill, and into a draw where a bunch of scrub oaks offered cover.

A voice from in front called to him. Just then the moon appeared from behind drifting clouds.

"Oh, it's you, Sam. Everything all right?"

"Right as the wheat. We're blowing open the safe now," Flandrau answered.

Moving closer, he saw that his questioner was the man in charge of the horses. Though he knew the voice, he could not put a name to its owner. But this was not the point that first occupied his mind. There were only four horses for five riders. Curly knew now that he had not been mistaken. Soapy had expected one of his allies to stay on the field of battle, had prepared for it from the beginning. The knowledge of this froze any remorse the young vaquero might have felt.

He pushed his revolver against the teeth of the horse wrangler.

"Don't move, you bandy-legged maverick, or I'll fill your hide full of holes. And if you want to keep on living padlock that mouth of yours."

In spite of his surprise the man caught the point at once. He turned over his weapons without a word.

Curly unwound a rope from one of the saddles and dropped a loop round the neck of his prisoner. The two men mounted and rode out of the draw, the outlaw leading the other two horses. As soon as they reached the bluff above Flandrau outlined the next step in the program.

"We'll stay here in the tornilla and see what happens, my friend. Unless you've a fancy to get lead poisoning keep still."

"Who in Mexico are you?" the captured man asked.

"It's your showdown. Skin off that mask."

The man hesitated. His own revolver moved a few inches toward his head. Hastily he took off the mask. The moon shone on the face of the man called Dutch. Flandrau laughed. Last time they had met Curly had a rope around his neck. Now the situation was reversed.

An explosion below told them that the robbers had blown open the safe. Presently Soapy's voice came faintly to them.

"Bring up the horses."

He called again, and a third time. The dwarfed figures of the outlaws stood out clear in the moonlight. One of them ran up the track toward the draw. He disappeared into the scrub oaks, from whence his alarmed voice came in a minute.

"Dutch! Oh, Dutch!"

The revolver rim pressed a little harder against the bridge of the horse wrangler's nose.

"He ain't here," Blackwell called back to his accomplices.

That brought Stone on the run. "You condemned idiot, he must be there. Ain't he had two hours to get here since he left Tin Cup?"

They shouted themselves hoarse. They wandered up and down in a vain search. All the time Curly and his prisoner sat in the brush and scarcely batted an eye.

At last Soapy gave up the hunt. The engine and the express car were sent back to join the rest of the train and as soon as they were out of sight the robbers set out across country toward the Flatiron ranch.

Curly guessed their intentions. They would rustle horses there and head for the border. It was the only chance still left them.

After they had gone Curly and his prisoner returned to the road and set out toward Tin Cup. About a mile and a half up the line they met Cullison and his riders on the way down. Maloney was with them. He had been picked up at the station.

Dick gave a shout of joy when he heard Flandrau's voice.

"Oh, you Curly! I've been scared stiff for fear they'd got you."

Luck caught the boy's hand and wrung it hard. "You plucky young idiot, you've got sand in your craw. What the deuce did you do it for?"

They held a conference while the Circle C riders handcuffed Dutch and tied him to a horse. Soon the posse was off again, having left the prisoner in charge of one of the men. They swung round in a wide half circle, not wishing to startle their game until the proper time. The horses pounded up hills, slid into washes, and plowed through sand on a Spanish trot, sometimes in the moonlight, more often in darkness. The going was rough, but they could not afford to slacken speed.

When they reached the edge of the mesa that looked down on the Flatiron the moon was out and the valley was swimming in light. They followed the dip of a road that led down to the corral. Passing the fenced lane leading to the stable, they tied their ponies inside and took the places assigned to them by Cullison.

They had not long to wait. In less than half an hour three shadowy figures slipped round the edge of the corral and up the lane. Each of them carried a rifle in addition to his hip guns.

They slid into the open end of the stable. Cullison's voice rang out coldly.

"Drop your guns!"

A startled oath, a shot, and before one could have lifted a hand that silent moonlit valley of peace had become a battlefield.

The outlaws fell back from the stable, weapons smoking furiously. Blackwell broke into a run, never looking behind him, but Soapy and Bad Bill gave back foot by foot fighting every step of the way.

Dick and Curly rose from behind the rocks where they had been placed and closed the trap on Blackwell. The paroled convict let out one yell.

"I give up. Goddlemighty, don't shoot!"

His rifle he had already thrown away. With his arms reaching above him, his terror-stricken eyes popping from his head, he was a picture of the most frightened "bad man" who had ever done business in Arizona.

Half way down the lane Cranston was hit. He sank to his knees, and from there lopped over sideways to his left elbow. In the darkness his voice could be heard, for the firing had momentarily ceased.

"They've got me, Soapy. Run for it. I'll hold 'em back."

"Hit bad, Bill?"

"I'm all in. Vamos!"

Stone turned to run, and for the first time saw that his retreat was cut off. As fast as he could pump the lever his rifle began working again.

The firing this time did not last more than five seconds. When the smoke cleared it was all over. Soapy lay on his back, shot through and through. Blackwell had taken advantage of the diversion to crawl through the strands of barbed wire and to disappear in the chaparral. Bill had rolled over on his face.

Curly crept through the fence after the escaping man, but in that heavy undergrowth he knew it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. After a time he gave it up and returned to the field of battle.

Dick was bending over Stone. He looked up at the approach of his friend and said just one word.

"Dead."

Cullison had torn open Cranston's shirt and was examining his wounds.

"No use, Luck. I've got a-plenty. You sure fooled us thorough. Was it Sam gave us away?"

"No, Bill. Curly overheard Soapy and Blackwell at Chalkeye's Place. Sam stood pat, though you were planning to murder him."

"I wasn't in on that, Luck--didn't know a thing about it till after the boy was shot. I wouldn't a-stood for it."

"He wasn't shot. Curly saved him. He had to give you away to do it."

"Good enough. Serves Soapy right for double crossing Sam. Take care of that kid, Luck. He's all right yet." His eye fell on Flandrau. "You're a game sport, son. You beat us all. No hard feelings."

"Sorry it had to be this way, Bill."

The dying man was already gray to the lips, but his nerve did not falter. "It had to come some time. And it was Luck ought to have done it too." He waved aside Sweeney, who was holding a flask to his lips. "What's the use? I've got mine."

"Shall we take him to the house?" Maloney asked.

"No. I'll die in the open. Say, there's something else, boys. Curly has been accused of that Bar Double M horse rustling back in the early summer. I did that job. He was not one of us. You hear, boys. Curly was not in it."

A quarter of an hour later he died. He had lied to save from the penitentiary the lad who had brought about his death. Curly knew why he had done it--because he felt himself to blame for the affair. Maybe Bad Bill had been a desperado, a miscreant according to the usual standard, but when it came to dying he knew how to go better than many a respectable citizen. Curly stole off into the darkness so that the boys would not see him play the baby.

By this time the men from the Flatiron were appearing, armed with such weapons as they could hastily gather. The situation was explained to them. Neighboring ranches were called up by telephone and a systematic hunt started to capture Blackwell.

Luck left his three riders to help in the man hunt, but he returned with Curly and Maloney to Saguache. On the pommel of his saddle was a sack. It contained the loot from the express car of the Flyer. Two lives already had been sacrificed to get it, and the sum total taken amounted only to one hundred ninety-four dollars and sixteen cents.

CHAPTER XVII

THE PRODIGAL SON

They found the prodigal son with his sister and Laura London at the Del Mar. Repentance was writ large all over his face and manner. From Davis and from the girls he had heard the story of how Soapy Stone had intended to destroy him. His scheme of life had been broken into pieces and he was a badly shaken young scamp.

When Luck and Curly came into the room he jumped up, very white about the lips.

"Father!"

"My boy!"

Cullison had him by the hand, one arm around the shaking shoulders.

"What----what----?"

Sam's question broke down, but his father guessed it.

"Soapy and Bad Bill were killed, Dutch is a prisoner, and Blackwell escaped. All Spring Valley is out after him."

The boy was aghast. "My God!"

"Best thing for all of us. Soapy meant to murder you. If it hadn't been for Curly----"

"Are you sure?"

"No question about it. He brought no horse for you to ride away on. Bill admitted it, though he didn't know what was planned. Curly heard Soapy ask Blackwell whether he had seen your body."

The boy shuddered and drew a long sobbing, breath. "I've been a fool, Father--and worse."

"Forget it, son. We'll wipe the slate clean. I've been to blame too."

It was no place for outsiders. Curly beat a retreat into the next room. The young women followed him. Both of them were frankly weeping. Arms twined about each other's waists, they disappeared into an adjoining bedroom.

"Don't go," Kate called to him over her shoulder.

Curly sat down and waited. Presently Kate came back alone. Her shining eyes met his.

"I never was so happy in all my life before. Tell me what happened--everything please."

As much as was good for her to know Curly told. Without saying a word she listened till he was through. Then she asked a question.

"Won't Dutch tell about Sam being in it?"

"Don't matter if he does. Evidence of an accomplice not enough to convict. Soapy overshot himself. I'm here to testify that Sam and he quarrelled before Sam left. Besides, Dutch won't talk. I drilled it into him thorough that he'd better take his medicine without bringing Sam in."

She sat for a long time looking out of the window without moving. She did not make the least sound, but the young man knew she was crying softly to herself. At last she spoke in a low sweet voice.

"What can we do for you? First you save Father and then Sam. You risked everything for my brother--to win him back to us, to save his life and now his reputation. If you had been killed people would always have believed you were one of the gang."

"Sho! That's nonsense, Miss Kate." He twisted his hat in his hand uneasily. "Honest, I enjoyed every bit of it. And a fellow has to pay his debts."

"Was that why you did it?" she asked softly.

"Yes. I had to make good. I had to show your father and you that I had not thrown away all your kindness. So I quit travelling that downhill road on which I had got started."

"I'm glad--I'm so glad." She whispered it so low he could hardly hear.

"There was one way to prove myself. That was to stand between Sam and trouble. So I butted in and spoiled Soapy's game."

"I wish I could tell you how fine Father thinks it was of you. He doesn't speak of it much, but I know."

"Nothing to what I did--nothing at all." A wave of embarrassment had crept to the roots of his curly hair. "Just because a fellow--Oh, shucks!"

"That's all very well for you to say, but you can't help us thinking what we please."

"But that ain't right. I don't want you thinking things that ain't so because----"

"Yes? Because----?"

She lifted her eyes and met his. Then she knew it had to come out, that the feeling banked in him would overflow in words.

"Because you're the girl I love."

He had not intended to say it now, lest he might seem to be urging his services as a claim upon her. But the words had slipped out in spite of him.

She held out her two hands to him with a little gesture of surrender. The light of love was in her starry eyes.

And then----

She was in his arms, and the kisses he had dreamed about were on his lips.

CHAPTER XVIII

CUTTING TRAIL

Kate Cullison had disappeared, had gone out riding one morning and at nightfall had not returned. As the hours passed, anxiety at the Circle C became greater.

"Mebbe she got lost," Bob suggested.

Her father scouted this as absurd. "Lost nothing. You couldn't lose her within forty miles of the ranch. She knows this country like a cow does the range. And say she was lost--all she would have to do would be to give that pinto his head and he'd hit a bee line for home. No, nor she ain't had an accident either, unless it included the pony too."

"You don't reckon a cougar----," began Sweeney, and stopped.

Luck looked at his bandy-legged old rider with eyes in which little cold devils sparkled. "A human cougar, I'll bet. This time I'll take his hide off inch by inch while he's still living."

"You thinking of Fendrick?" asked Sam.

"You've said it."

Sweeney considered, rasping his stubbly chin. "I don't reckon Cass would do Miss Kate a meanness. He's a white man, say the worst of him. But it might be Blackwell. When last seen he was heading into the hills. If he met her----"

A spasm of pain shot across Luck's face. "My God! That would be awful."

"By Gum, there he is now, Luck." Sweeney's finger pointed to an advancing rider.

Cullison swung as on a pivot in time to see someone drop into the dip in the road, just beyond the corral. "Who--Blackwell?"

"No. Cass."

Fendrick reappeared presently and turned in at the lane. Cullison, standing on the porch at the head of the steps looked like a man who was passing through the inferno. But he looked too a personified day of judgment untempered by mercy. His eyes bored like steel gimlets into those of his enemy.

The sheepman spoke, looking straight at his foe. "I've just heard the news. I was down at Yesler's ranch when you 'phoned asking if they had seen anything of Miss Cullison. I came up to ask you one question. When was she seen last?"

"About ten o'clock this morning. Why?"

"I saw her about noon. She was on Mesa Verde, headed for Blue Cañon looked like."

"Close enough to speak to her?" Sam asked.

"Yes. We passed the time of day."

"And then?" Luck cut back into the conversation with a voice like a file.

"She went on toward the gulch and I kept on to the ranch. The last I saw of her she was going straight on."

"And you haven't seen her since?"

The manner of the questioner startled Fendrick. "God, man, you don't think I'm in this, do you?"

"If you are you'd better blow your brains out before I learn it. And if you're trying to lead me on a false scent----" Luck stopped. Words failed him, but his iron jaw clamped like a vice.

Fendrick spoke quietly. "I'm willing. In the meantime we'd better travel over toward Mesa Verde, so as to be ready to start at daybreak."

Cullison's gaze had never left him. It observed, weighed, appraised. "Good enough. We'll start."

He left Sweeney to answer the telephone while he was away. All of his other riders were already out combing the hills under supervision of Curly. Luck had waited with Sam only to get some definite information before starting. Now he had his lead. Fendrick was either telling the truth or he was lying with some sinister purpose in view. The cattleman meant to know which.

Morning breaks early in Arizona. By the time they had come to the spot where the sheepman said he had met Kate gray streaks were already lightening the sky. The party moved forward slowly toward the cañon, spreading out so as to cover as much ground as possible. Before they reached its mouth the darkness had lifted enough to show the track of a horse in the sand.

They pushed up the gulch as rapidly as they could. The ashes of a camp fire halted them a few minutes later. Scattered about lay the feathers and dismembered bones of some birds.

Cass stooped and picked up some of the feathers. "Quails, I reckon. Miss Cullison had three tied to her saddle horn when I met her."

"Why did she come up here to cook them?" Sam asked.

Luck was already off his horse, quartering over the ground to read what it might tell him.

"She wasn't alone. There was a man with her. See these tracks."

It was Fendrick who made the next discovery. He had followed a draw for a short distance and climbed to a little mesa above. Presently he called to Cullison.

Father and son hurried toward him. The sheep-owner was standing at the edge of a prospect hole pointing down with his finger.

"Someone has been in that pit recently, and he's been there several days."

"Then how did he get out?" Sam asked.

Fendrick knelt on the edge of the pit and showed him where a rope had been dragged so heavily that it had cut deeply into the clay.

"Someone pulled him out."

"What's it mean anyhow? Kate wasn't in that hole, was she?"

Cass shook his head. "This is my guess. Someone was coming along here in the dark and fell in. Suppose Miss Cullison heard him calling as she came up the gulch. What would she do?"

"Come up and help the fellow out."

"Sure she would. And if he was hungry--as he likely was--she would cook her quail for him."

"And then? Why didn't she come home?"

Luck turned a gray agonized face on him. "Boy, don't you see? The man was Blackwell."

"And if you'll put yourself in Blackwell's place you'll see that he couldn't let her go home to tell where she had seen him," Fendrick explained.

"Then where is she? What did he do with her?"

There came a moment's heavy silence. The pale face of the boy turned from the sheepman to his father. "You don't think that--that----"

"No, I don't," Cass answered. "But let's look this thing squarely in the face. There were three things he could do with her. First, he might leave her in the pit. He didn't do that because he hadn't the nerve. She might be found soon and set the hunters on his track. Or she might die in that hole and he be captured later with her pinto. I know him. He always plays a waiting game when he can. Takes no chances if he can help it."

"You think he took her with him then," Luck said.

"Yes. There's a third possibility. He may have shot her when he got a good chance, but I don't think so. He would keep her for a hostage as long as he could."

"That's the way I figure it," agreed Cullison. "He daren't hurt her, for he would know Arizona would hunt him down like a wolf if he did."

"Then where's he taking her?" Sam asked.

"Somewhere into the hills. He knows every pocket of them. His idea will be to slip down and cut across the line into Sonora. He's a rotten bad lot, but he won't do her any harm unless he's pushed to the wall. The fear of Luck Cullison is in his heart."

"That's about it," nodded Luck. "He's somewhere in these hills unless he's broken through. Bolt 'phoned me that one of his posse came on the ashes of a camp fire still warm. They're closing in on him. He's got to get food or starve, unless he can break through."

"There's a chance he'll make for one of my sheep camps to lay in a supply. Wouldn't it be a good idea to keep a man stationed at each one of them?"

"You're talking sense," Cullison approved. "Sam, ride back and get in touch with Curly. Tell him to do that. And rouse the whole country over the wire. We'll run him down and feed him to the coyotes."

CHAPTER XIX

A GOOD SAMARITAN

Fendrick had told the exact truth. After leaving him Kate had ridden forward to the cañon and entered it. She did not mean to go much farther, but she took her time. More than once she slipped from under a fold of her waist a letter and reread sentences of it. Whenever she did this her eyes smiled. For it was a love letter from Curly, the first she had ever had. It had been lying on the inner edge of the threshold of her bedroom door that morning when she got up, and she knew that her lover had risen early to put it there unnoticed.

They were to be married soon. Curly had wished to wait till after his trial, but she had overruled him. Both her father and Sam had sided with her, for she had made them both see what an advantage it would be with a jury for Flandrau to have his bride sitting beside him in the courtroom.

Faintly there came to her a wind-swept sound. She pulled up and waited, but no repetition of it reached her ears. But before her pony had moved a dozen steps she stopped him again. This time she was almost sure of a far cry, and after it the bark of a revolver.

With the touch of a rein she guided her horse toward the sound. It might mean nothing. On the other hand it might be a call for help. Her shout brought an answer which guided her to the edge of a prospect hole. In the darkness she made out an indistinct figure.

"Water," a husky voice demanded.

She got her canteen from the saddle and dropped it to him. The man glued his lips to the mouth as if he could never get enough.

"For God's sake get me out of here," he pleaded piteously.

"How long have you been there?"

"Two days. I fell in at night whilst I was cutting acrost country."

Kate fastened her rope to the horn of the saddle, tightened the cinch carefully, and dropped the other end to him. She swung to the back of the horse and braced herself by resting her full weight on the farther stirrup.

"Now," she told him.

The imprisoned man tried to pull himself up, bracing his feet against the rough projections of the rock wall to help him. But he could not manage the climb. At last he gave it up with an oath.

"We'll try another way," the girl told him cheerfully.

At spaces about a foot distant she tied knots in the rope for about the first six feet.

"This time you'll make it," she promised. "You can get up part way as you did before. Then I'll start my horse forward. Keep braced out from the wall so as not to get crushed."

He growled an assent. Once more she got into the saddle and gave the word. He dragged himself up a few feet and then the cowpony moved forward. The legs of the man doubled up under the strain and he was crushed against the wall just as he reached the top. However, he managed to hang on and was dragged over the edge with one cheek scratched and bleeding.

"Might a-known you'd hurt me if you moved so fast," he complained, nursing his wounded face in such a way as to hide it.

"I'm sorry. I did my best to go carefully," the girl answered, stepping forward.

His hand shot forward and caught her wrist Her startled eyes flashed to his face. The man was the convict Blackwell.

"Got anything to eat with you. I'm starving," he snapped.

"Yes. I shot some quail Let go my hand."

He laughed evilly, without mirth. "Don't try any of your sassy ways on me. By God, I'm a wolf on the howl."

In spite of her supple slenderness there was strength in her small wrists. She fought and twisted till she was worn out in her efforts to free herself. Panting, she faced him.

"Let me go, I tell you."

For answer his open hand struck her mouth. "Not till you learn your boss. Before I'm through with you a squaw won't be half so tame as you."

He dragged her to the horse, took from its case the rifle that hung by the saddle, and flung her from him roughly. Then he pulled himself to the saddle.

"March ahead of me," he ordered.

As soon as they had reached the bed of the cañon lie called a halt and bade her light a fire and cook him the quail. She gathered ironwood and catclaw while he watched her vigilantly. Together they roasted the birds by holding them over the fire with sharpened sticks thrust through the wings. He devoured them with the voracity of a wild beast.

Hitherto his mind had been busy with the immediate present, but now his furtive shifting gaze rested on her more thoughtfully. It was as a factor of his safety that he considered her. Gratitude was a feeling not within his scope. The man's mind worked just as Fendrick had surmised. He would not let her go back to the ranch with the news that he was hidden in the hills so close at hand. He dared not leave her in the prospect hole. He was not yet ready to do murder for fear of punishment. That was a possibility to be considered only if he should be hard pressed. The only alternative left him was to take her to the border as a companion of his fugitive doublings.

"We'll be going now," he announced, after he had eaten.

"Going where? Don't you see I'll be a drag to you? Take my horse and go. You'll get along faster."

"Do you think so?"

She opened her lips to answer, but there was something in his face--something at once so cruel and deadly and wolfish--that made the words die on her lips. For the first time it came to her that if he did not take her with him he would kill her to insure his own safety. None of the arguments that would have availed with another man were of any weight here. Her sex, her youth, the service she had done him--these would not count a straw. He was lost to all the instincts of honor that govern even hard desperate men of his class.

They struck into the mountains, following a cattle trail that wound upward with devious twists. The man rode, and the girl walked in front with the elastic lightness, the unconscious flexuous grace of poise given her body by an outdoor life. After a time they left the gulch. Steadily they traveled, up dark arroyos bristling with mesquite, across little valleys leading into timbered stretches through which broken limbs and uprooted trees made progress almost impossible, following always untrodden ways that appalled with their lonely desolation.

By dusk they were up in the headwaters of the creeks. The resilient muscles of the girl had lost their spring. She moved wearily, her feet dragging heavily so that sometimes she staggered when the ground was rough. Not once had the man offered her the horse. He meant to be fresh, ready for any emergency that might come. Moreover, it pleased his small soul to see the daughter of Luck Cullison fagged and exhausted but still answering the spur of his urge.

The moon was up before they came upon a tent shining in the cold silvery light. Beside it was a sheetiron stove, a box, the ashes of a camp fire, and a side of bacon hanging from the limb of a stunted pine. Cautiously they stole forward.

The camp was for the time deserted. No doubt its owner, a Mexican sheepherder in the employ of Fendrick and Dominguez, was out somewhere with his flock.

Kate cooked a meal and the convict ate. The girl was too tired and anxious to care for food, but she made herself take a little. They packed the saddlebags with bacon, beans, coffee and flour. Blackwell tightened again the cinches and once more the two took the trail.

They made camp in a pocket opening from a gulch far up in the hills. With her own reata he fastened her hands behind her and tied the girl securely to the twisted trunk of a Joshua tree. To make sure of her he lay on the rope, both hands clinched to the rifle. In five minutes he was asleep, but it was long before Kate could escape from wakefulness. She was anxious, her nerves were jumpy, and the muscles of arms and shoulders were cramped. At last she fell into troubled catnaps.

From one of these she awoke to see that the morning light was sifting through the darkness. Her bones and muscles ached from the constraint of the position in which the rope held them. She was shivering with the chill of an Arizona mountain night. Turning her body, the girl's eyes fell upon her captor. He was looking at her in the way that no decent man looks at a woman. Her impulse was to scream, to struggle to her feet and run. What did he mean? What was he going to do?

But something warned her this would precipitate the danger. She called upon her courage and tried to still the fearful tumult in her heart. Somehow she succeeded. A scornful, confident pride flashed from her eyes into his. It told him that for his life he dared not lay a finger upon her in the way of harm. And he knew it was true, knew that if he gave way to his desire no hole under heaven would be deep enough to hide him from the vengeance of her friends.

He got sullenly to his feet. "Come. We'll be going."

Within the hour they saw some of his hunters. The two were sweeping around the lip of a mountain park nestling among the summits. A wisp of smoke rose from the basin below. Grouped about it were three men eating breakfast.

"Don't make a sound," warned Blackwell.

His rifle covered her. With all her soul she longed to cry for help. But she dared not take the risk. Even as the two on the edge of the bowl withdrew from sight one of the campers rose and sauntered to a little grove where the ponies were tethered. The distance was too far to make sure, but something in the gait made the girl sure that the man was Curly. Her hands went out to him in a piteous little gesture of appeal.

She was right. It was Curly. He was thinking of her at that moment despairingly, but no bell of warning rang within to tell him she was so near and in such fearful need of him.

Twice during the morning did the refugee attempt to slip down into the parched desert that stretched toward Sonora and safety. But the cordon set about him was drawn too close. Each time a loose-seated rider lounging in the saddle with a rifle in his hands drove them back. The second attempt was almost disastrous, for the convict was seen. The hum of a bullet whistled past his ears as he and his prisoner drew back into the chaparral and from thence won back to cover.

Kate, drooping with fatigue, saw that fear rode Blackwell heavily. He was trapped and he knew that by the Arizona code his life was forfeit and would be exacted of him should he be taken. He had not the hardihood to game it out in silence, but whined complaints, promises and threats. He tried to curry favor with her, to work upon her pity, even while his furtive glances told her that he was wondering whether he would have a better chance if he sacrificed her life.

From gulch to arroyo, from rock-cover to pine-clad hillside he was driven in his attempts to break the narrowing circle of grim hunters that hemmed him. And with each failure, with every passing hour, the terror in him mounted. He would have welcomed life imprisonment, would have sold the last vestige of manhood to save the worthless life that would soon be snuffed out unless he could evade his hunters till night and in the darkness break through the line.

He knew now that it had been a fatal mistake to bring the girl with him. He might have evaded Bolt's posses, but now every man within fifty miles was on the lookout for him. His rage turned against Kate because of it. Yet even in those black outbursts he felt that he must cling to her as his only hope of saving himself. He had made another mistake in lighting a campfire during the morning. Any fool ought to have known that the smoke would draw his hunters as the smell of carrion does a buzzard.

Now he made a third error. Doubling back over an open stretch of hillside, he was seen again and forced into the first pocket that opened. It proved to be a blind gulch, one offering no exit at the upper end but a stiff rock climb to a bluff above.

He whipped off his coat and gave it to Kate.

"Put it on. Quick."

Surprised, she slipped it on.

"Now ride back out and cut along the edge of the hill. You've got time to make it all right before they close in if you travel fast. Stop once--just once--and I'll drop you in your tracks. Now git!"

She saw his object in a flash. Wearing his gray felt hat and his coat, the pursuers would mistake her for him. They would follow her--perhaps shoot her down. Anyhow, it would be a diversion to draw them from him. Meanwhile he would climb the cliff and slip away unnoticed.

The danger of what she had to do stood out quite clearly, but as a chance to get away from him she welcomed it gladly. She swung the pony with a touch of the rein and set him instantly at the canter. It was rough going, but she took it almost blindly.

From the lip of the gulch she swung abruptly to the right. Her horse stumbled and went down just as a bullet flew over her head. Before she was free of the stirrups strong hands pinned her shoulders to the ground. She heard a glad startled cry. The rough hands became immediately gentle. Then things grew black. The last she remembered was that the mountains were dancing up and down in an odd fashion.

Her eyes opened to see Curly. She was in his arms and his face was broken with emotions of love and tenderness.

"You're not hurt," he implored.

"No."

"He didn't--mistreat you?" His voice was trembling as he whispered it.

"No--No."

And at that she broke down. A deep sob shook her body--and another. She buried her head on his shoulder and wept.

* * * * *

Without losing an instant the convict set himself at the climb. His haste, the swift glances shot behind him, the appalling dread that made his nerves ragged, delayed his speed by dissipating the singleness of his energy. His face and hands were torn with catclaw, his knee bruised by a slip against a sharp jut of quartz.

When he reached the top he was panting and shaken. Before he had moved a dozen steps a man came out of the brush scarce seventy-five yards away and called to him to surrender. He flung his rifle to place and fired twice.

The man staggered and steadied himself. A shell had jammed and Blackwell could not throw it out. He turned to run as the other fired. But he was too late. He stumbled, tripped, and went down full length.

The man that had shot him waited for him to rise. The convict did not move. Cautiously the wounded hunter came forward, his eyes never lifting from the inert sprawling figure. Even now he half expected him to spring up, life and energy in every tense muscle. Not till he stood over him, till he saw the carelessly flung limbs, the uncouth twist to the neck, could he believe that so slight a crook of the finger had sent swift death across the plateau.

The wounded man felt suddenly sick. Leaning against a rock, he steadied himself till the nausea was past. Voices called to him from the plain below. He answered, and presently circled down into the gulch which led to the open.

At the gulch mouth he came on a little group of people. One glance told him all he needed to know. Kate Cullison was crying in the arms of Curly Flandrau. Simultaneously a man galloped up, flung himself from his horse, and took the young woman from her lover.

"My little girl," he cried in a voice that rang with love.

Luck had found his ewe lamb that was lost.

It was Curly who first saw the man approaching from the gulch. "Hello, Cass! Did you get him?"

Fendrick nodded wearily.

"Dead sure?"

"Yep. He's up there." The sheepman's hand swept toward the bluff.

"You're wounded."

"Got me in the shoulder. Nothing serious, I judge."

Cullison swung around. "Sure about that, Cass?" It was the first time for years that he had called the other by his first name except in irony.

"Sure."

"Let's have a look at the shoulder."

After he had done what he could for it Luck spoke bluffly. "This dashed feud is off, Cass. You've wiped the slate clean. When you killed Blackwell you put me out of a hostile camp."

"I'm glad--so glad. Now we'll all be friends, won't we?" Kate cried.

Cass looked at her and at Curly, both of them radiant with happiness, and his heart ached for what he had missed. But he smiled none the less.

"Suits me if it does you."

He gave one hand to Luck and the other to his daughter.

Curly laughed gaily. "Everybody satisfied, I reckon,"

CHAPTER XX

LOOSE THREADS

Curly was right when he said that those who knew about Sam's share in the planning of the Tin Cup hold-up would keep their mouths closed. All of the men implicated in the robbery were dead except Dutch. Cullison used his influence to get the man a light sentence, for he knew that he was not a criminal at heart. In return Dutch went down the line without so much as breathing Sam's name.

Luck saw to it that Curly got all the credit of frustrating the outlaws in their attempt on the Flyer and of capturing them afterward. In the story of the rescue of Kate he played up Flandrau's part in the pursuit at the expense of the other riders. For September was at hand and the young man needed all the prestige he could get. The district attorney had no choice but to go on with the case of the State versus Flandrau on a charge of rustling horses from the Bar Double M. But public sentiment was almost a unit in favor of the defendant.

The evidence of the prosecution was not so strong as it had been. All of his accomplices were dead and one of the men implicated had given it out in his last moments that the young man was not a party to the crime. The man who had owned the feed corral had sold out and gone to Colorado. The hotel clerk would not swear positively that the prisoner was the man he had seen with the other rustlers.

Curly had one important asset no jury could forget. It counted for a good deal that Alec Flandrau, Billy Mackenzie, and Luck Cullison were known to be backing him, but it was worth much more that his wife of a week sat beside him in the courtroom. Every time they looked at the prisoner the jurymen saw too her dusky gallant little head and slender figure. They remembered the terrible experience through which she had so recently passed. She had come through it to happiness. Every look and motion of the girl wife radiated love for the young scamp who had won her. And since they were tender-hearted old frontiersmen they did not intend to spoil her joy. Moreover, society could afford to take chances with this young fellow Flandrau. He had been wild no doubt, but he had shown since the real stuff that was in him. Long before they left the box each member of the jury knew that he was going to vote for acquittal.

It took the jury only one ballot to find a verdict of not guilty. The judge did not attempt to stop the uproar of glad cheers that shook the building when the decision was read. He knew it was not the prisoner so much they were cheering as the brave girl who had sat so pluckily for three days beside the husband she had made a man.

From the courtroom Curly walked out under the blue sky of Arizona a free man. But he knew that the best of his good fortune was that he did not go alone. For all the rest of their lives her firm little steps would move beside him to keep him true and steady. He could not go wrong now, for he was anchored to a responsibility that was a continual joy and wonder to him.

The End

Contents

THE VISION SPLENDID

by William MacLeod Raine

CHAPTER 1

Of all the remote streams of influence that pour both before and after birth into the channel of our being, what an insignificant few--and these only the more obvious--are traceable at all. We swim in a sea of environment and heredity, are tossed hither and thither by we know not what cross currents of Fate, are tugged at by a thousand eddies of which we never dream. The sum of it all makes Life, of which we know so little and guess so much, into which we dive so surely in those buoyant days before time and tide have shaken confidence in our power to snatch success and happiness from its mysterious depths. --From the Note Book of a Dreamer.

A REBEL IN THE MAKING

Part 1

The air was mellow with the warmth of the young spring sun. Locusts whirred in rhapsody. Bluebirds throbbed their love songs joyously. The drone of insects, the shimmer of hear, were in the atmosphere. One could almost see green things grow. To confine youth within four walls on such a day was an outrage against human nature.

A lean, wiry boy, hatchet-faced, stared with dreamy eyes out of the window of his prison. By raising himself in his seat while the teacher was not looking he could catch a silvery gleam of the river through the great firs. His thoughts were far afield. They were not concerned with the capitals of the States he was supposed to be learning, but had fared forth to the reborn earth, to the stir and movement of creeping things. The call of nature awakening from its long winter sleep drummed in his heart. He could sympathize with the bluebottle buzzing against the sunny windowpane in its efforts to reach the free world outside.

Recess! With the sound of the gong his heart leaped, but he kept his place in the line with perfect decorum. It would never do to be called back now for a momentary indiscretion. From the school yard he slipped the back way and dived into a bank of great ferns. In the heart of this he lay until the bell had called his classmates back to work. Cautiously he crept from his hiding place and ran down to the river.

Flinging himself on Big Rock, with his chin over the edge, he looked into the deep holes under the bank where the trout lay close to the strings of shiny moss, their noses to the current, motionless save for the fanning tails.

Idly he enjoyed himself for a happy hour, letting thoughts happen as they would. Not till the school bell rang for dismissal did he drag himself back with a sigh to the workaday world that called. He had a lawn to mow and a back yard to clean up for Mr. Rawson.

With his cap stuck on the back of his head and his hands in the pockets of his patched trousers, the boy went whistling townward on his barefoot way. At Adams Street he met the schoolchildren bound for home. A dozen boys from his own room closed in on him with shouts of joyous malice.

"Played hookey! Played hookey! Jeff Farnum played hookey!" they shrilled at him.

Ned Merrill assumed leadership of the young Apaches. "You're goin' to catch it. Old Webber was down askin' for you. Wasn't he, Tom? Wasn't he, Dick?"

Tom and Dick lied cheerfully to increase Jeff's dread. They added graphic details to help the story.

The victim looked around with stoicism. He remembered the philosophy of the optimist that a licking does not last long.

"Don't care if he was down," the boy bluffed.

"Huh! Mr. Don't Care! Mr. Don't Care!" shrieked Merrill gleefully.

They made a circle around Jeff and mocked him. Once or twice a bolder tormentor snatched at his cap or pushed a neighbor against him. Then, with the inconstancy of youth, they suddenly deserted him for more diverting game.

A forlorn little Italian girl was trying to slip past on the other side of the street. Someone caught sight of her and with a whoop the Apaches were upon her pell-mell. She began to run, but they hemmed her in. One tugged at her braided hair. Another flipped mud at her dress from the end of a stick. Merrill snatched her slate and made off with it.

Jeff cut swiftly across the street. Merrill was coming directly toward him, his head turned to the girl. Triumphant whoops broke from his throat. He bumped into Jeff, stumbled, and went down in the mud.

Young Merrill was up in an instant, clamorous for battle. His hands and clothes were plastered with filth.

"I'm goin' to lick the stuffin' out of you," he bellowed.

Jeff said nothing. He was very white. His fingers worked nervously.

"Yah! Yah! He's scared," the mob jeered.

Jeff was. In that circle of hostile faces he found no sympathy. He had to stand up to the bully of the class, a boy who could have given him fifteen pounds. Looking around for help, he saw that none was at hand. The thin legs of the rescued Italian girl were flashing down the street. On the steps of the big house of P. C. Frome a six-year-old little one was standing with her nurse. Nobody else was in sight except his cousin, James, and the Apaches.

"You're goin' to get the maulin' of your life," Ned Merrill promised as he slipped out of his coat. "Webber'll lick you if he finds out you been fightin'," James Farnum prophesied cheerfully to his cousin. He intended to do his duty in the way of protest and then watch the fight.

Ned worked his wiry little foe to the fence and pummeled him. Jeff ducked and backed out of danger. Keeping to the defensive, he was being badly punished. Once he slipped in the mud and went down, but he was up again before his slower antagonist could close with him. Blood streamed from his nose. His lip was gashed. Under the buffeting he was getting his head began to sing.

"Punch him good, Ned," one of the champion's friends advised.

"You bet he is," another chortled.

Their jeers had an unexpected effect. Jeff's fears were blotted out by his desperate need. Some spark of the fighting edge, inherited from his father, was fanned to a flame in the heart of the bruised little warrior. Like a tiger cat he leaped for Ned's throat, twisted his slim legs round the sturdy ones of his enemy, and went down with him in a heap.

Jeff landed on the bottom, but like an eel he squirmed to the top before the other had time to get set. The champion's patrician head was thumped down into the mud and a knobby little fist played a painful tattoo on his mouth and cheek.

"Take him off! Take him off!" Merrill shrieked after he had tried in vain to roll away the incubus clamped like a vise to his body.

His henchmen ran forward to obey. An unexpected intervention stopped them. A one-armed little man who had drifted down the street in time to see part of the fracas pushed forward.

"I reckon not just yet. Goliath's had a turn. Now David gets his."

"Lemme up," sobbed Goliath furiously.

"Say you're whopped." Jeff's fist emphasized the suggestion.

"Doggone you!"

This kind of one-sided warfare did not suit Jeff. He made as if to get up, but his backer stopped him.

"Hold on, son. You're not through yet. When you do a job do it thorough." To the former champion he spoke. "Had plenty yet?"

"I--I'll have him skinned," came from the tearful champion with a burst of profanity.

"That ain't the point. Have you had enough so you'll be good? Or do you need some more?"

"I'm goin' to tell Webber."

"Needs just a leetle more, son," the one-armed man told Jeff, dragging at his goatee.

But young Farnum had made up his mind. With a little twist of his body he got to his feet.

Merrill rose, tearful and sullen. "I--I'll fix you for this," he gulped, and went sobbing toward the schoolhouse.

"Better duck," James whispered to his cousin.

Jeff shook his head.

The little man looked at the boy sharply. The eyes under his shaggy brows were like gimlets.

"Come up to the school with me. I'll see your teacher, son."

Jeff walked beside him. He knew by the sound of the voice that his rescuer was a Southerner and his heart warmed to him. He wanted greatly to ask a question. Presently it plumped out.

"Was it in the war, sir?"

"I reckon I don't catch your meaning."

"That you lost your arm?" The boy added quickly, "My father was a soldier under General Early."

The steel-gray eyes shot at him again. "I was under Early myself."

"My father was a captain--Captain Farnum," the young warrior announced proudly.

"Not Phil Farnum!"

"Yes, sir. Did you know him?" Jeff trembled with eagerness. His dead soldier-father was the idol of his heart.

"Did I?" He swung Jeff round and looked at him. "You're like him, in a way, and, by Gad! you fight like him. What's your name?"

"Jefferson Davis Farnum."

"Shake hands, Jefferson Davis Farnum, you dashed little rebel. My name is Lucius Chunn. I was a lieutenant in your father's company before I was promoted to one of my own."

Jeff forgot his troubles instantly. "I wish I'd been alive to go with father to the war," he cried.

Captain Chunn was delighted. "You doggoned little rebel!"

"I didn't know we used that word in the South' sir."

Chunn tugged at his goatee and laughed. "We're not in the South, David."

The former Confederate asked questions to piece out his patchwork information. He knew that Philip Farnum had come out of the war with a constitution weakened by the hardships of the service. Rumors had drifted to him that the taste for liquor acquired in camp as an antidote for sickness had grown upon his comrade and finally overcome him. From Jeff he learned that after his father's death the widow had sold her mortgaged place and moved to the Pacific Coast. She had invested the few hundreds left her in some river-bottom lots at Verden and had later discovered that an unscrupulous real estate dealer had unloaded upon her worthless property. The patched and threadbare clothes of the boy told him that from a worldly point of view the affairs of the Farnums were at ebb tide.

"Did . . . did you know father very well?" Jeff asked tremulously.

Chunn looked down at the thin dark face of the boy walking beside him and was moved to lay a hand on his shoulder. He understood the ache in that little heart to hear about the father who was a hero to him. Jeff was of no importance in the alien world about him. The Captain guessed from the little scene he had witnessed that the lad trod a friendless, stormy path. He divined, too, that the hungry soul was fed from within by dreams and memories.

So Lucius Chunn talked. He told about the slender, soldierly officer in gray who had given himself so freely to serve his men, of the time he had caught pneumonia by lending his blanket to a sick boy, of the day he had led the charge at Battle Creek and received the wound which pained him so greatly to the hour of his death. And Jeff drank his words in like a charmed thing. He visualized it all, the bitter nights in camp, the long wet marches, the trumpet call to battle. It was this last that his imagination seized upon most eagerly. He saw the silent massing of troops, the stealthy advance through the woods; and he heard the blood-curdling rebel yell as the line swept forward from cover like a tidal wave, with his father at its head.

Captain Chunn was puzzled at the coldness with which Mr. Webber listened to his explanation of what had taken place. The school principal fell back doggedly upon one fact. It would not have happened if Jeff had not been playing truant. Therefore he was to blame for what had occurred.

Nothing would be done, of course, without a thorough investigation.

The Captain was not satisfied, but he did not quite see what more he could do.

"The boy is a son of an old comrade of mine. We were in the war together. So of course I have to stand by Jeff," he pleaded with a smile.

"You were in the rebel army?" The words slipped out before the schoolmaster could stop them.

"In the Confederate army," Chunn corrected quietly.

Webber flushed at the rebuke. "That is what I meant to say."

"I leave to-morrow for Alaska. It would be pleasant to know before I go that Jeff is out of his trouble."

"I'm afraid Jeff always will be in trouble. He is a most insubordinate boy," the principal answered coldly.

"Are you sure you quite understand him?"

"He is not difficult to understand." Webber, resenting the interference of the Southerner as an intrusion, disposed of the matter in a sentence. "I'll look into this matter carefully, Mr. Chunn."

Webber called immediately at the office of Edward B. Merrill, president of the tramway company and of the First National Bank. It happened that the vice-president of the bank was a school director; also that the funds of the district were kept in the First National. The schoolteacher did not admit that he had come to ingratiate himself with the powers that ruled his future, but he was naturally pleased to come in direct touch with such a man as Merrill.

The financier was urbane and spent nearly half an hour of his valuable time with the principal. When the latter rose to go they shook hands. The two understood each other thoroughly.

"You may depend upon me to do my duty, Mr. Merrill, painful though such a course may be to me."

"I am very glad to have met you, Mr. Webber. It is a source of satisfaction to me that our educational system is in the care of men of your stamp. I leave this matter with confidence entirely in your hands. Do what you think best."

His confidence was justified. After school opened next morning Jeff was called up and publicly thrashed for playing truant. As a prelude to the corporal punishment the principal delivered a lecture. He alluded to the details of the fight gravely, with selective discrimination, giving young Farnum to understand that he had reached the end of his rope. If any more such brutal affairs were reported to him he would be punished severely.

The boy took the flogging in silence. He had learned to set his teeth and take punishment without whimpering. From the hardest whipping Webber had ever given he went to his seat with a white, set face that stared straight in front of him. Young as he was, he knew it had not been fair and his outraged soul cried out at the injustice of it. The principal had seized upon the truancy as an excuse to let him escape from an investigation of the cause of the fight. Ned Merrill got off because his father was a rich man and powerful in the city. He, Jeff, was whipped because he was an outcast and had dared lift his hand against one of his betters.

And there was no redress. It was simply the way of the world.

Jeff and his mother were down that afternoon to see their new friend off in the City of Skook. Captain Chunn found a chance to draw the boy aside for a question.

"Is it all right with Mr. Webber? What did he do?"

"Oh, he gave me a jawing," the boy answered.

The little man nodded. "I reckoned that was what he would do. Be a good boy, Jeff. I never knew a man more honorable than your father. Run straight, son."

"Yes, sir," the lad promised, a lump in his throat.

It was more than ten years before he saw Captain Chunn again.

Part 2

As an urchin Jeff had taken things as they came without understanding causes. Thoughts had come to him in flashes, without any orderly sequence, often illogically. As a gangling boy he still took for granted the hard knocks of a world he did not attempt to synthesize.

Even his mother looked upon him as "queer." She worried plaintively because he was so careless about his clothes and because his fondness for the outdoors sometimes led him to play truant. Constantly she set before him as a model his cousin, James, who was a good-looking boy, polite, always well dressed, with a shrewd idea of how to get along easily.

"Why can't you be like Cousin James? He isn't always in trouble," she would urge in her tired way.

It was quite true that the younger cousin was more of a general favorite than harum-scarum Jeff, but the mother might as well have asked her boy to be like Socrates. It was not that he could not learn or that he did not want to study. He simply did not fit into the school groove. Its routine of work and discipline, its tendency to stifle individuality, to run all children through the same hopper like grist through a mill, put a clamp upon his spirits and his imagination. Even thus early he was a rebel.

Jeff scrambled up through the grades in haphazard fashion until he reached the seventh. Here his teacher made a discovery. She was a faded little woman of fifty, but she had that loving insight to which all children respond. Under her guidance for one year the boy blossomed. His odd literary fancy for Don Quixote, for Scott's poems and romances she encouraged, quietly eliminating the dime novels he had read indiscriminately with these. She broke through the shell of his shyness to find out that his diffidence was not sulkiness nor his independence impudence.

The boy was a dreamer. He lived largely in a world of his own, where Quentin Durward and Philip Farnum and Robert E. Lee were enshrined as heroes. From it he would emerge all hot for action, for adventure. Into his games then he would throw a poetic imagination that transfigured them. Outwardly he lived merely in that boys' world made to his hand. He adopted its shibboleths, fought when he must, went through the annual routine of marbles, tops, kites, hop scotch, and baseball. From his fellows he guarded jealously the knowledge of even the existence of his secret world of fancy.

His progress through the grades and the high school was intermittent. Often he had to stop for months at a time to earn money for their living. In turn he was newsboy, bootblack, and messenger boy. He drove a delivery wagon for a grocer, ushered at a theater, was even a copyholder in the proofroom of a newspaper. Hard work kept him thin, but he was like a lath for toughness.

Seven weeks after he was graduated from the high school his mother died. The day of the funeral a real estate dealer called to offer three, hundred dollars for the lots in the river bottom bought some years earlier by Mrs. Farnum.

Jeff put the man off. It was too late now to do his mother any good. She had had to struggle to the last for the bread she ate. He wondered why the good things in life were so unevenly distributed.

Twice during the next week Jeff was approached with offers for his lots. The boy was no fool.

He found out that the land was wanted by a new railroad pushing into Verden. Within three days he had sold direct to the agent of the company for nine hundred dollars. With what he could earn on the side and in his summers he thought that sum would take him through college.

CHAPTER 2

I wonder if Morgan, the Pirate, When plunder had glutted his heart, Gave part of the junk from the ships he had sunk To help some Museum of Art; If he gave up the role of "collector of toll" And became a Collector of Art?

I wonder if Genghis, the Butcher, When he'd trampled down nations like grass, Retired with his share when he'd lost all his hair And started a Sunday-school class; If he turned his past under and used half his plunder In running a Sunday-school class?

I wonder if Roger, the Rover, When millions in looting he'd made, Built libraries grand on the jolly mainland To honor success and "free trade"; If he founded a college of nautical knowledge Where Pirates could study their trade?

I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, If Pirates were ever the same, Ever trying to lend a respectable trend To the jaunty old buccaneer game Or is it because of our Piracy Laws That philanthropists enter the game? --Wallace Irwin, in Life.

THE REBEL IS INSTRUCTED IN THE WORSHIP OF THE GOD-OF-THINGS-AS- THEY-ARE

Part 1

Jeff was digging out a passage in the "Apology" when there came a knock at the door of his room. The visitor was his cousin, James, and he radiated such an air of prosperity that the plain little bedroom shrank to shabbiness.

James nodded in offhand fashion as he took off his overcoat. "Hello, Jeff! Thought I'd look you up. Got settled in your diggings, eh?" Before his host could answer he rattled on: "Just ran in for a moment. Had the devil of a time to find you. What's the object in getting clear off the earth?"

"Cheaper," Jeff explained.

"Should think it would be," James agreed after he had let his eyes wander critically around the room. "But you can't afford to save that way. Get a good suite. And for heaven's sake see a tailor, my boy. In college a man is judged by the company he keeps."

"What have my room and my clothes to do with that?" Jeff wanted to know, with a smile.

"Everything. You've got to put up a good front. The best fellows won't go around with a longhaired guy who doesn't know how to dress. No offense, Jeff."

His cousin laughed. "I'll see a barber to-morrow."

"And you must have a room where the fellows can come to see you."

"What's the matter with this one?"

A hint of friendly patronage crept into the manner of the junior. "My dear chap, college isn't worth doing at all unless you do it right. You're here to get in with the best fellows and to make connections that will help you later. That sort of thing, you know."

Into Jeff's face came the light that always transfigured its plainness when he was in the grip of an idea. "Hold on, J. K. Let's get at this right. Is that what I'm here for? I didn't know it. There's a hazy notion in my noodle that I'm here to develop myself."

"That's what I'm telling you. Go in for the things that count. Make a good frat. Win out at football or debating. I don't give a hang what you go after, but follow the ball and keep on the jump. I'm strong with the crowd that runs things and I'll see they take you in and make you a cog of the machine. But you'll have to measure up to specifications."

"But, hang it, I don't want to be a cog in any machine. I'm here to give myself a chance to grow--sit out in the sun and hatch an individuality--give myself lots of free play."

"Then you've come to the wrong shop," James informed him dryly. "If you want to succeed at college you've got to do the things the other fellows do and you've got to do them the same way."

"You mean I've got to travel in a rut?"

"Oh, well! That's a way of putting it. I mean that you have to accept customs and traditions. You have to work like the devil doing things that count. If you make the team you've got to think football, talk it, eat it, dream it."

"But is it worth while?"

James waved his protest aside. "Of course it's worth while. Success always is. Get this in your head. Four-fifths of the fellows at college don't count. They're also-rans. To get in with the right bunch you've got to make a good showing. Look at me. I'm no John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Athletics bore me. I can't sing. I don't grind. But I'm in everything. Best frat. Won the oratorical contest. Manager of the football team next season. President of the Dramatic Club. Why?"

He did not wait for Jeff to guess the reason. "Because our set runs things and I go after the honors."

"But a college ought to be a democracy," Jeff protested.

"Tommyrot! It's an aristocracy, that's what it is, just like the little old world outside, an aristocracy of the survival of the fittest. You get there if you're strong. You go to the wall if you're weak. That's the law of life."

The freshman came to this squint of pragmatism with surprise. He had thought of Verden University as a splendid democracy of intellectual brotherhood that was to leaven the world with which it came in touch.

"Do you mean that a fellow has to have money enough to make a good showing before he can win any of the prizes?"

James K. nodded with the sage wisdom of a man of the world. "The long green is a big help, but you've got to have the stuff in you. Success comes to the fellow who goes after it in the right way."

"And suppose a fellow doesn't care to go after it?"

"He stays a nobody."

James was in evening dress, immaculate from clean-shaven cheek to patent leather shoes. He had a well-filled figure and a handsome face with a square, clean-cut jaw. His cousin admired the young fellow's virile competency. It was his opinion that James K. Farnum was the last person he knew likely to remain a nobody. He knew how to conform, to take the color of his thinking from the dominant note of his environment, but he had, too, a capacity for leadership.

"I'm not going to believe you if I can help it," Jeff answered with a smile.

The upper classman shrugged. "You'd better take my advice, just the same. At college you don't get a chance to make two starts. You're sized up from the crack of the pistol."

"I haven't the money to make a splurge even if I wanted to."

"Borrow."

"Who from?" asked Jeff ungrammatically.

"You can rustle it somewhere. I'm borrowing right now."

"It's different with you. I'm used to doing without things. Don't worry about me. I'll get along."

James came with a touch of embarrassment to the real object of his visit. "I say, Jeff. I've had a tough time to win out. You won't-- you'll not say anything--let anything slip, you know--something that might set the fellows guessing."

His cousin was puzzled. "About what?"

"About the reason why Mother and I left Shelby and came out to the coast."

"What do you take me for?"

"I knew you wouldn't. Thought I'd mention it for fear you might make a slip."

"I don't chatter about the private affairs of my people."

"Course not. I knew you didn't." The junior's hand rested caressingly on the shoulder of the other. "Don't get sore, Jeff. I didn't doubt you. But that thing haunts me. Some day it will come out and ruin me when I'm near the top of the ladder."

The freshman shook his head. "Don't worry about it, James. Just tell the plain truth if it comes out. A thing like that can't hurt you permanently. Nothing can really injure you that does not come from your own weakness."

"That's all poppycock," James interrupted fretfully. "Just that sort of thing has put many a man on the skids. I tell you a young fellow needs to start unhampered. If the fellows got onto it that my father had been in the pen because he was a defaulting bank cashier they would drop me like a hot potato."

"None but the snobs would. Your friends would stick the closer."

"Oh' friends!" The young man's voice had a note of angry derision.

Jeff's affectionate grin comforted him. "Don't let it get on your nerves, J. K. Things never are as bad as we expect at their worst."

The junior set his teeth savagely. "I tell you, sometimes I hate him for it. That's a fine heritage for a father to give his son, isn't it? Nothing but trouble and disgrace."

His cousin spoke softly. "He's paid a hundred times for it, old man."

"He ought to pay. Why shouldn't he? I've got to pay. Mother had to as long as she lived." His voice was hard and bitter.

"Better not judge him. You're his only son, you know."

"I'm the one he's injured most. Why shouldn't I judge him? I've been a pauper all these years, living off money given us by my mother's people. I had to leave our home because of what he did. I'd like to know why I shouldn't judge him."

Jeff was silent.

Presently James rose. "But there's no use talking about it. I've got to be going. We have an eat to-night at Tucker's."

Part 2

Jeff came to his new life on the full tide of an enthusiasm that did not begin to ebb till near the close of his first semester. He lived in a new world, one removed a million miles from the sordid one through which he had fought his way so many years. All the idealism of his nature went out in awe and veneration for his college. It stood for something he could not phrase, something spiritually fine and intellectually strong. When he thought of the noble motto of the university, "To Serve," it was always with a lifted emotion that was half a prayer. His professors went clothed in majesty. The chancellor was of godlike dimensions. Even the seniors carried with them an impalpable aura of learning.

The illusion was helped by reason of the very contrast between the jostling competition of the street and the academic air of harmony in which he now found himself. For the first time was lifted the sense of struggle that had always been with him.

The outstanding notes of his boyhood had been poverty and meagerness. It was as if he and his neighbors had been flung into a lake where they must keep swimming to escape drowning. There had been no rest from labor. Sometimes the tragedy of disaster had swept over a family. But on the campus of the university he found the sheltered life. The echo of that battling world came to him only faintly.

He began to make tentative friendships, but in spite of the advice of his cousin they were with the men who did not count. Samuel Miller was an example. He was a big, stodgy fellow with a slow mind which arrived at its convictions deliberately. But when he had made sure of them he hung to his beliefs like a bulldog to a bone.

It was this quality that one day brought them together in the classroom. An instructor tried to drive Miller into admitting he was wrong in an opinion. The boy refused to budge, and the teacher became nettled.

"Mr. Miller will know more when he doesn't know so much," the instructor snapped out.

Jeff's instinct for fair play was roused at once, all the more because of the ripple of laughter that came from the class. He spoke up quietly.

"I can't see yet but that Mr. Miller is right, sir."

"The discussion is closed," was the tart retort.

After class the dissenters walked across to chapel together.

"Poke the animal up with a stick and hear him growl," Jeff laughed airily.

"Page always thinks a fellow ought to take his say-so as gospel," Miller commented.

Most of the students saw in Jeff Farnum only a tallish young man, thin as a rail, not particularly well dressed, negligent as to collar and tie. But Miller observed in the tanned face a tender, humorous mouth and eager, friendly eyes that looked out upon the world with a suggestion of inner mirth. In course of time he found out that his friend was an unconquerable idealist.

Jeff made discoveries. One of them was a quality of brutal indifference in some of his classmates to those less fortunate. These classy young gentlemen could ignore him as easily as a hurrying business man can a newsboy trying to sell him a paper. If he was forced upon their notice they were perfectly courteous; otherwise he was not on the map for them.

Another point that did not escape his attention was the way in which the institution catered to Merrill and Frome, because they were large donors to the university. He had once heard Peter C. Frome say in a speech to the students that he contributed to the support of Verden University because it was a "safe and conservative citadel which never had yielded to demagogic assaults." At the time he had wondered just what the president of the Verden Union Water Company had meant. He was slowly puzzling his way to an answer.

Chancellor Bland referred often to the "largehearted Christian gentlemen who gave of their substance to promote the moral and educational life of the state." But Jeff knew that many believed Frome and Merrill to be no better than robbers on a large scale. He knew the methods by which they had gained their franchises and that they ruled the politics of the city by graft and corruption. Yet the chancellor was always ready to speak or write against municipal ownership. It was common talk on the streets that Professor Perkins, of the chair of political science, had had his expenses paid to England by Merrill to study the street railway system of Great Britain, and that Perkins had duly written several bread-and-butter articles to show that public ownership was unsuccessful there.

The college was a denominational one and the atmosphere wholly orthodox. Doubt and skepticism were spoken of only with horror. At first it was of himself that Jeff was critical. The spirit of the place was opposed to all his convictions, but he felt that perhaps his reaction upon life had been affected too much by his experiences.

He asked questions, and was suppressed with severity or kindly paternal advice. It came to him one night while he was walking bareheaded under the stars that there was in the place no intellectual stimulus, though there was an elaborate presence of it. The classrooms were arid. Everywhere fences were up beyond which the mind was not expected to travel. A thing was right, because it had come to be accepted. That was the gospel of his fellows, of his teachers. Later he learned that it is also the creed of the world.

What Jeff could not understand was a mind which refused to accept the inevitable conclusions to which its own processes pushed it. Verden University lacked the courage which comes from intellectual honesty. Wherefore its economics were devitalized and its theology an anachronism.

But Jeff had been given a mind unable to lie to itself. He was in very essence a non-conformist. To him age alone did not lend sanctity to the ghosts of dead yesterdays that rule to-day.

CHAPTER 3

"Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind," --Emerson.

CONVERSING ON RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY, THE REBEL LEARNS THAT IT IS SOMETIMES WISE TO SOFT PEDAL IDEAS UNLESS THEY ARE ACCEPTED ONES

During his freshman year Jeff saw little of his cousin beyond the usual campus greetings, except for a period of six weeks when the junior happened to need him. But the career of James K. tickled immensely the under classman's sense of humor. He was becoming the most dazzling success ever developed by the college. Even with the faculty he stood high, for if he lacked scholarship he had the more showy gifts that went farther. He knew when to defer and when to ride roughshod to his end. It was felt that his brilliancy had a solidity back of it, a quality of flintiness that would endure.

James was inordinately ambitious and loved the spotlight like an actor. The flamboyant oratory at which he excelled had won for him the interstate contest. He was editor-in-chief of the "Verdenian," manager of the varsity football team, and president of the college senate.

With the beginning of his senior year James entered another phase of his development. He offered to the college a new, or at least an enlarged, interpretation of himself. Some of his smiling good-fellowship had been sloughed to make way for the benignity of a budding statesman. He still held a tolerant attitude to the antics of his friends, but it was easy to see that he had put away childish things. To his many young women admirers he talked confidentially of his aims and aspirations. The future of James K. Farnum was a topic he never exhausted.

It was, too, a subject which greatly interested Jeff and Sam Miller. His cousin might smile at his poses, and often did, but he never denied James qualities likely to carry him far.

"His one best bet is his belief in himself," Sam announced one night.

"It's a great thing to believe in yourself."

"He's so dead sure he's cast for a big part. The egoism just oozes out of him. He doesn't know himself that he's a faker."

"He is a long way from that," Jeff protested warmly.

"Take his oratory," Miller went on irritably. "It's all bunk. He throws a chest and makes you feel he's a big man, but what he says won't stand analysis--just a lot of platitudes."

"Don't forget he's young yet. James K. hasn't found himself."

"Sure there's anything to find?"

"There's a lot in him. He's the biggest man in the university to-day."

"You practically wrote the oration that won the interstate contest. Think I don't know that?" Miller snorted.

Jeff's mouth took on a humorous twist. "I gave him some suggestions. How did you know?"

"Knew he wasn't hanging around last term for nothing. He's selfish as the devil."

"You're all wrong about him, Sam. He isn't selfish at all at bottom."

"Shoot the brains out of that oration and what's left would be the part he supplied. The fellow's got a gift of absorbing new ideas superficially and dressing them up smartly."

"Then he's got us beat there," Jeff laughed goodnaturedly. He had not in his make-up a grain of envy. Even his laughter was generally genial, though often irreverent to the God-of-things- as-they-are.

"When he won the interstate he lapped up flattery like a thirsty pup, but his bluff was that it was only for the college he cared to win."

"Most of us have mixed motives."

"Not J. K. Reminds me of old Johnson's 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.'"

Jeff straightened. "That won't do, Sam. I believe in J. K. You've got nothing against him except that you don't like him."

"Forgot you were his cousin, Jeff," Miller grumbled. "But it's a fact that he works everybody to shove him along."

"He's only a kid. Give him time. He'll be a big help to any community."

"James K.'s biggest achievement will always be James K."

Jeff chuckled at the apothegm even while he protested. Sam capped it with another.

"He's always sitting to himself for his own portrait."

"He'll get over that when he brushes up against the world." Jeff added his own criticism thoughtfully. "The weak spot in him is a sort of flatness of mind. This makes him afraid of new ideas. He wants to be respectable, and respectability is the most damning thing on earth."

After Miller had left Jeff buckled down to Ely's "Political Economy." He had not been at it long when James surprised him by dropping in. His host offered the easiest chair and shoved tobacco toward him.

"Been pretty busy with the team, I suppose?" Jeff suggested.

"It's taken a lot of my time, but I think I've put the athletic association on a paying basis at last."

"I see by your report in the 'Verdenian' that you made good."

"A fellow ought to do well whatever he undertakes to do."

Jeff grinned across at him from where he lay on the bed with his fingers laced beneath his head. "That's what the copybooks used to say."

"I want to have a serious talk with you, Jeff."

"Aren't you having it? What can be more important than the successes of James K. Farnum?"

The senior looked at him suspiciously. He was not strongly fortified with a sense of humor. "Just now I want to talk about the failures of Jefferson D. Farnum," he answered gravely.

Jeff's eyes twinkled. "Is it worth while? I am unworthy of this boon, O great Cesar."

"Now that's the sort of thing that stands in your way," James told him impatiently. "People never know when you're laughing at them. There is no reason why you shouldn't succeed. Your abilities are up to the average, but you fritter them away."

"Thank you." Jeff wore an air of being immensely pleased.

"The truth is that you're your own worst enemy. Now that you have taken to dressing better you are not bad looking. I find a good many of the fellows like you--or they would if you'd let them."

"Because I'm so well connected," Jeff laughed.

"I suppose it does help, your being my cousin. But the thing depends on you. Unless you make a decided change you'll never get on."

"What change do you suggest? Item one, please?"

James looked straight at him. "You lack bedrock principles, Jeff."

"Do I?"

"Take your habits. Two or three times you've been seen coming out of saloons."

"Expect I went in to get a drink."

"It's not generally known, of course, but if it reached Prexy he'd fire you so quick your head would swim."

"I dare say."

The senior looked at him significantly. "You're the last man that ought to go to such places. There's such a thing as an inherited tendency."

The jaw muscles stood out like ropes under the flesh of Jeff's lean face. "We'll not discuss that."

"Very well. Cut it out. A drinking man is handicapped too heavily to win."

"Much obliged. Second count in the indictment, please."

"You've got strange, unsettling notions. The profs don't like them."

"Don't they?"

"You know what I mean. We didn't make this world. We've got to take it as it is. You can't make it over. There are always going to be rich people and poor ones. Just because you've fed indigestibly on Ibsen and Shaw you can't change facts."

"So you advise?"

"Soft pedal your ideas if you must have them."

"Hasn't a man got to see things as straight as he can?"

"That's no reason for calling in the neighbors to rejoice with him because he has astigmatism."

Jeff came back with a tag of Emerson, whose phrases James was fond of quoting in his speeches. "Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

"You can push that too far. It isn't practical. We've got to make compromises, especially with established things."

Jeff sat up on the bed. Points of light were dancing in his big eyes. "That's what the Pharisees said to Jesus when he wouldn't stand for lies because they were deep rooted and for injustice because it had become respectable."

"Oh, if you're going to compare yourself to Christ--"

"Verden University is supposed to stand for Christianity, isn't it? It was because Jesus whanged away at social and industrial freedom, at fraternity, at love on earth, that he had to endure the Cross. He got under the upper class skin when he attacked the traditional lies of vested interests. Now why doesn't Bland preach the things that Jesus taught?"

"He does."

"Yes, he does," Jeff scoffed. "He preaches good form, respectability, a narrow personal righteousness, a salvation canned and petrified three hundred years ago."

"Do you want him to preach socialism?"

"I want him to preach the square deal in our social life, intellectual honesty, and a vital spiritual life. Think of what this college might mean, how it might stand for democracy It ought to pour out into the state hundreds of specialists on the problems of the country. Instead, it is only a reflection of the caste system that is growing up in America."

James shrugged his broad shoulders. "I've been through all that. It's a phase we pass. You'll get over it. You've got to if you are going to succeed."

A quizzical grin wrinkled Jeff's lean face. "What is success?"

"It's setting a high goal and reaching it. It's taking the world by the throat and shaking from it whatever you want." James leaned across the table, his eyes shining. "It's the journey's end for the strong, that's what it is. I don't care whether a man is gathering gilt or fame, he's got to pound away with his eye right on it. And he's got to trample down the things that get in his way."

Jeff's eye fell upon a book on the table. "Ever hear of a chap called Goldsmith?"

"Of course. He wrote 'The School for Scandal.' What's he got to do with it?"

Jeff smiled, without correcting his cousin. "I've been reading about him. Seems to have been a poor hack writer 'who threw away his life in handfuls.' He wrote the finest poem, the best novel, the most charming comedy of his day. He knew how to give, but he didn't know how to take. So he died alone in a garret. He was a failure."

"Probably his own fault."

"And on the day of his funeral the stairway was crowded with poor people he had helped. All of them were in tears."

"What good did that do him? He was inefficient. He might have saved his money and helped them then."

"Perhaps. I don't know. It might have been too late then. He chose to give his life as he was living it."

"Another reason for his poverty, wasn't there?"

Jeff flushed. "He drank."

"Thought so." James rose triumphantly and put on his overcoat. "Well, think over what I've said."

"I will. And tell the chancellor I'm much obliged to him for sending you."

For once the Senior was taken aback. "Eh, what--what?"

"You may tell him it won't be your fault that I'll never be a credit to Verden University."

As he walked across the campus to his fraternity house James did not feel that his call had been wholly successful. With him he carried a picture of his cousin's thin satiric face in which big expressive eyes mocked his arguments. But he let none of this sense of futility get into the report given next day to the Chancellor.

"Jeff's rather light-minded, I'm afraid, sir. He wanted to branch off to side lines. But I insisted on a serious talk. Before I left him he promised to think over what I had said."

"Let us hope he may."

"He said it wouldn't be my fault if he wasn't a credit to the University."

"We can all agree with him there, Farnum."

"Thank you, sir. I'm not very hopeful about him. He has other things to contend with."

"I'm not sure I quite know what you mean."

"I can't explain more fully without violating a confidence."

"Well, we'll hope for the best, and remember him in our prayers."

"Yes, sir," James agreed.

CHAPTER 4

"I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were all my brothers."--Old Proverb.

THE REBEL FLUNKS IN A COURSE ON HOW TO GET ON IN LIFE

Part 1

It would be easy to overemphasize Jeff's intellectual difficulties at the expense of the deep delight he found in many phases of his student life. The daily routine of the library, the tennis courts, and the jolly table talk brought out the boy in him that had been submerged.

There developed in him a vagabond streak that took him into the woods and the hills for days at a time. About the middle of his Sophomore year he discovered Whitman. While camping alone at night under the stars he used to shout out,

"Strong and content, I travel the open road," or

"Allons! The road is before us!

"It is safe--I have tried it--my own feet have tried it well."

Through Stevenson's essay on Whitman Jeff came to know the Scotch writer, and from the first paragraph of him was a sealed follower of R. L. S. In different ways both of these poets ministered to a certain love of freedom, of beauty, of outdoor spaces that was ineradicably a part of his nature. The essence of vagabondage is the spirit of romance. One may tour every corner of the earth and still be a respectable Pharisee. One may never move a dozen miles from the village of his birth and yet be of the happy company of romantics. Jeff could find in a sunset, in a stretch of windswept plain, in the sight of water through leafless trees, something that filled his heart with emotion.

Perhaps the very freedom of these vacation excursions helped to feed his growing discontent. The yeast of rebellion was forever stirring in him. He wanted to come to life with open mind. He was possessed of an insatiable curiosity about it. This took him to the slums of Verden, to the redlight district, to Socialist meetings, to a striking coal camp near the city where he narrowly escaped being killed as a scab. He knew that something was wrong with our social life. Inextricably blended with success and happiness he saw everywhere pain, defeat, and confusion. Why must such things be? Why poverty at all?

But when he flung his questions at Pearson, who had charge of the work in sociology, the explanations of the professor seemed to him pitifully weak.

In the ethics class he met the same experience. A chance reference to Drummond's "Natural Law in the Spiritual world" introduced him to that stimulating book. All one night he sat up and read it-- drank it in with every fiber of his thirsty being.

The fire in his stove went out. He slipped into his overcoat. Gray morning found him still reading. He walked out with dazed eyes into a world that had been baptized anew during the night to a miraculous rebirth.

But when he took his discovery to the lecture room Dawson was not only cold but hostile. Drummond was not sound. There was about him a specious charm very likely to attract young minds. Better let such books alone for the present. In the meantime the class would take up with him the discussion of predeterminism as outlined in Tuesday's work.

There were members of the faculty big enough to have understood the boy and tolerant enough to have sympathized with his crude revolt, but Jeff was diffident and never came in touch with them.

His connection with the college ended abruptly during the Spring term of his Sophomore year.

A celebrated revivalist was imported to quicken the spiritual life of the University. Under his exhortations the institution underwent a religious ferment. An extraordinary excitement was astir on the campus. Class prayer meetings were held every afternoon, and at midday smaller groups met for devotional exercises. At these latter those who had made no profession of religion were petitioned for by name. James Farnum was swept into the movement and distinguished himself by his zeal. It was understood that he desired the prayers of friends for that relative who had not yet cast away the burden of his sins.

It became a point of honor with his cousin's circle to win Jeff for the cause. There was no difficulty in getting him to attend the meetings of the revivalist. But he sat motionless through the emotional climax that brought to an end each meeting. To him it seemed that this was not in any vital sense religion, but he was careful not to suggest his feeling by so much as a word.

One or two of his companions invited him to come to Jesus. He disconcerted them by showing an unexpected familiarity with the Scriptures as a weapon of offense against them.

James invited him to his rooms and labored with him. Jeff resorted to the Socratic method. From what sins was he to be saved? And when would he know he had found salvation?

His cousin uneasily explained the formula. "You must believe in Christ and Him crucified. You must surrender your will to His. Shall we pray together?"

"I'd rather not, J. K. First, I want to get some points clear. Do you mean that I'm to believe in what Jesus said and to try to live as he suggested?"

"Yes."

Jeff picked up his cousin's Bible and read a passage. " 'We know that we have passed from death unto life, BECAUSE WE LOVE THE BRETHREN. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.' That's the test, isn't it?"

"Well, you have to be converted," James said dubiously.

"Isn't that conversion--loving your brother? And if a man is willing to live in plenty while his brother is in poverty, if he exploits those weaker than himself to help him get along, then he can't be really converted, can he?"

"Now see here, Jeff, you've got the wrong idea. Christ didn't come into the world to reform it, but to save it from its sins. He wasn't merely a man, but the Divine Son of God."

"I don't understand the dual nature of Jesus. But when one reads His life it is easy to believe in His divinity." After a moment the young man added: "In one way we're all divine sons of God, aren't we?"

James was shocked. "Where do you get such notions? None of our people were infidels."

"Am I one?"

"You ought to take advantage of this chance. It's not right to set your opinion up against those that know better."

"And that's what I'm doing, isn't it?" Jeff smiled. "Can't help it. I reckon I can't be saved by my emotions. It's going to be a life job."

James gave him up, but he sent another Senior to make a last attempt. The young man was Thurston Thomas and he had never exchanged six sentences with Jeff in his life. The unrepentant sinner sent him to the right about sharply.

"What the devil do you mean by running about officiously and bothering about other people's souls? Better look out for your own."

Thomas, a scion of one of the best families in Verden, looked as if he had been slapped in the face.

"Why Farnum, I--I spoke for your good."

"No, you didn't," contradicted Jeff flatly. "You don't care a hang about me. You've never noticed me before. We're not friends. You've always disliked me. But you want the credit of bringing me into the fold. It's damned impertinent of you."

The Senior retired with a white face. He was furious, but he thought it due himself to turn the other cheek by saying nothing. He reported his version to a circle of friends, and from them it spread like grass seed in the wind. Soon it was generally known that Jeff Farnum had grossly insulted with blasphemy a man who had tried to save his soul.

Two days later Miller met Jeff at the door of Frome 15.

"You're in bad! Jeff. What the deuce did you do to Sissy Thomas?"

"Gave him some good advice."

Miller grinned. "I'll bet you did. The little cad has been poisoning the wells against you. Look there."

A young woman of their class had passed into the room. Her glance had fallen upon Farnum and been quickly averted.

"That's the first time Bessie Vroom ever cut you," Sam continued angrily. "Thomas is responsible. I've heard the story a dozen times already."

"I only told him to mind his own business."

"He can't. He's a born meddler. Now he's queered you with the whole place."

"Can't help it. I wasn't going to let him get away with his impudence. Why should I?"

Miller shrugged. "Policy, my boy. Better take the advice of Cousin James and crawl into your shell till the storm has pelted past."

Half an hour later Jeff met his cousin near the chapel and was taken to task.

"What's this I hear about your insulting Thomas?"

"You have it wrong. He insulted me," Jeff corrected with a smile.

"Tommyrot! Why couldn't you treat him right?"

"Didn't like to throw him through the window on account of littering up the lawn with broken glass. "

James K.'s handsome square-cut face did not relax to a smile. "You may think this a joke, but I don't. I've heard the Chancellor is going to call you on the carpet."

"If he does he'll learn what I think."

The upper classman's anger boiled over. "You might think of me a little."

"Didn't know you were in this, J. K."

"They know I'm your cousin. It's hurting my reputation."

A faint ironic smile touched Jeff's face. "No, James, I'm helping it. Ever notice how blondes and brunettes chum together. Value of contrasts, you see. I'm a moral brunette. You're a shining example of all a man should be. I simply emphasize your greatness."

"That's not the way it works," his cousin grumbled.

"That's just how it works. Best thing that could happen to you would be for me to get expelled. Shall I?"

Jeff offered his suggestion debonairly.

"Of course not."

"It would give you just the touch of halo you need to finish the picture. Think of it: your noble head bowed in grief because of the unworthy relative you had labored so hard to save; the sympathy of the faculty, the respect of the fellows, the shy adoration of the co-eds. Great Brutus bowed by the sorrow of a strong man's unrepining emotion. By Jove, I ought to give you the chance. You'd look the part to admiration."

For a moment James saw himself in the role and coveted it. Jeff read his thought, and his laughter brought his cousin back to earth. He had the irritated sense of having been caught.

"It's not an occasion for talking nonsense," he said coldly.

Jeff sensed his disgrace in the stiff politeness of the professors and in the embarrassed aloofness of his classmates. Some of the men frankly gave him a wide berth as if he had been a moral pervert.

His temperament was sensitive to slights and he fell into one of his rare depressions. One afternoon he took the car for the city. He wanted to get away from himself and from his environment.

A chill mist was in the air. Drawn by the bright lights, Jeff entered a saloon and sat down in an alcove with his arms on the table. Why did they hammer him so because he told the truth as he saw it? Why must he toady to the ideas of Bland as everybody else at the University seemed to do? He was not respectable enough for them. That was the trouble. They were pushing him back into the gutter whence he had emerged. Wild fragmentary thoughts chased themselves across the record of his brain.

Almost before he knew it he had ordered and drunk a highball. Immediately his horizon lightened. With the second glass his depression vanished. He felt equal to anything.

It was past nine o'clock when he took the University car. As chance had it Professor Perkins and he were the only passengers. The teacher of Economics bowed to the flushed youth and buried himself in a book. It was not till they both rose to leave at the University station that he noticed the condition of Farnum. Even then he stood in momentary doubt.

With a maudlin laugh Jeff quieted any possible explanation of sickness.

"Been havin' little spree down town, Profeshor. Good deal like one ev'body been havin' out here. Yours shpiritual; mine shpirituous. Joke, see! Play on wor'd. Shpiritual--shpirituous."

"You're intoxicated, sir," Perkin,s told him sternly.

"Betcherlife I am, old cock! Ever get shp--shp--shpiflicated yourself?"

"Go home and go to bed, sir!"

"Whaffor? 'S early yet. 'S reasonable man I ask whaffor?"

The professor turned away, but Jeff caught at his sleeve.

"Lesh not go to bed. Lesh talk economicsh."

"Release me at once, sir."

"Jush's you shay. Shancellor wants see me. I'll go now."

He did. What occurred at that interview had better be omitted. Jeff was very cordial and friendly, ready to make up any differences there might be between them. An ice statue would have been warm compared to the Chancellor.

Next day Jeff was publicly expelled. At the time it did not trouble him in the least. He had brought a bottle home with him from town, and when the notice was posted he lay among the bushes in a sodden sleep half a mile from the campus.

Part 2

From a great distance there seemed to come to Jeff vaguely the sound of young rippling laughter and eager girlish voices. Drawn from heavy sleep, he was not yet fully awake. This merriment might be the music of fairy bells, such stuff as dreams are made of. He lay incurious, drowsiness still heavy on his eyelids.

"Oh, Virgie, here's another bunch! Oh, girls, fields of them!"

There was a little rush to the place, and with it a rustle of skirts that sounded authentic. Jeff began to believe that his nymphs were not born of fancy. He opened his eyes languidly to examine a strange world upon which he had not yet focused his mind.

Out of the ferns a dryad was coming toward him, lance straight, slender, buoyantly youthful in the light tread and in the poise of the golden head.

At sight of him she paused, held in her tracks, eyes grown big with solicitude.

"You are ill."

Before he could answer she had dropped the anemones she carried, was on her knees beside him, and had his head cushioned against her arm.

"Tell me! What can I do for you? What is the matter?"

Jeff groaned. His head was aching as if it would blow up, but that was not the cause of the wave of pain which had swept over him. A realization had come to him of what was the matter with him. His eyes fell from hers. He made as if to get up, but her hand restrained him with a gentle firmness.

"Don't! You mustn't." Then aloud, she cried: "Girls--girls-- there's a sick man here. Run and get help. Quick."

"No--no! I--I'm not sick."

A flood of shame and embarrassment drenched him. He could not escape her tender hands without actual force and his poignant shyness made that impossible. She was like a fairy tale, a creature of dreams. He dared not meet her frank pitiful eyes, though he was intensely aware of them. The odor of violets brings to him even to this day a vision of girlish charm and daintiness, together with a memory of the abased reverence that filled him.

They came running, her companions, eager with question and suggestion. And hard upon their heels a teamster from the road broke through the thicket, summoned by their calls for help. He stooped to pick up something that his foot had struck. It was a bottle. He looked at it and then at Jeff.

"Nothing the matter with him, Miss, but just plain drunk," the man said with a grin. "He's been sleeping it off."

Jeff felt the quiver run through her. She rose, trembling, and with one frightened sidelong look at him walked quickly away. He had seen a wound in her eyes he would not soon forget. It was as if he had struck her down while she was holding out hands to help him.

CHAPTER 5

Lies need only age to make them respectable. Given that, they become traditions and are put upon a pedestal. Then the gentlest word for him who attacks them is traitor. --From the Note Book of a Dreamer.

THE REBEL FOLLOWS THE RAMIFICATIONS OF BIG BUSINESS AND FINDS THAT THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY ARE NOT IN POLITICS FOR THEIR HEALTH

Part 1

"Hmp! Want to be a reporter, do you?"

Warren, city editor on the Advocate, leaned back in his chair and looked Jeff over sharply.

"Yes."

"It's a hell of a life. Better keep out."

"I'd like to try it."

"Any experience?"

"Only correspondence. I've had two years at college."

The city editor snorted. He had the unreasoning contempt for college men so often found in the old-time newspaper hack.

"Then you don't want to be a reporter. You want to be a journalist," he jeered.

"They kicked me out," Jeff went on quietly.

"Sounds better. Why?"

Jeff hesitated. "I got drunk."

"Can't use you," Warren cut in hastily.

"I've quit--sworn off."

The city editor was back on the job, his eyes devouring copy. "Heard that before. Nothing to it," he grunted.

"Give me a trial. I'll show you."

"Don't want a man that drinks. Office crowded with 'em already."

Jeff held his ground. For five minutes the attention of Warren was focused on his work.

Suddenly he snapped out, "Well?"

He met Farnum's ingratiating smile. "You haven't told me yet what to start doing."

"I told you I didn't want you."

"But you do. I'm on the wagon."

"For how long?" jeered the city editor.

"For good."

Warren sized him up again. He saw a cleareyed young fellow without a superfluous ounce of flesh on him, not rugged but with a look of strength in the slender figure and the thin face. This young man somehow inspired confidence.

"Sent in that Colby story to us, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Rotten story. Not half played up. Report to Jenkins at the City Hall."

"Now?"

"Now. Think I meant next year?"

The city editor was already lost in the reading of more copy.

Inside of half an hour Jeff was at work on his first assignment. Some derelict had committed suicide under the very shadow of the City Hall. Upon the body was a note scrawled on the bask of a dirty envelope.

Sick and out of work. Notify Henry Simmons, 237 River Street, San Francisco.

Jenkins, his hands in his pockets, looked at the body indifferently and turned the story over to the cub with a nod of his head.

"Go to it. Half a stick," he said.

From another reporter Jeff learned how much half a stick is. He wrote the account. When he had read it Jenkins glanced sharply at him. Though only the barest facts were told there was a sob in the story.

"That ain't just how we handle vag suicides, but we'll let 'er go this time," he commented.

It did not take Jeff long to learn how to cover a story to the satisfaction of the city editor. He had only to be conventional, sensational, and in general accurate as to his facts. He fraternized with his fellow reporters at the City Hall, shared stories with them, listened to the cheerful lies they told of their exploits, and lent them money they generally forgot to return. They were a happy-go-lucky lot, full of careless generosities and Bohemian tendencies. Often a week's salary went at a single poker sitting. Most of them drank a good deal.

After a few months' experience Jeff discovered that while the gathering of news tends to sharpen the wits it makes also for the superficial. Alertness, cleverness, persistence, a nose for news, and a surface accuracy were the chief qualities demanded of him by the office. He had only to look around him to see that the profession was full of keen-eyed, nimble-witted old-young men who had never attempted to synthesize the life they were supposed to be recording and interpreting. While at work they were always in a hurry, for to-day's news is dead to-morrow. They wrote on the run, without time for thought or reflection. Knowing beyond their years, the fruit of their wisdom was cynicism. Their knowledge withered for lack of roots.

The tendency of the city desk and of copy readers is to reduce all reporters to a dead level, but in spite of this Jeff managed to get himself into his work. He brought to many stories a freshness, a point of view, an optimism that began to be noticed. From the police run Jeff drifted to other departments. He covered hotels, the court house, the state house and general assignments.

At the end of a couple of years he was promoted to a desk position. This did not suit him, and he went back to the more active work of the street. In time he became known as a star man. From dramatics he went to politics, special stories and feature work. The big assignments were given him.

It was his duty to meet famous people and interview them. The chance to get behind the scenes at the real inside story was given him. Because of this many reputations were pricked like bubbles so far as he was concerned. The mask of greatness was like the false faces children wear to conceal their own. In the one or two really big men he met Jeff discovered a humility and simplicity that came from self-forgetfulness. They were too busy with their vision of truth to pose for the public admiration.

Part 2

It was while Jeff was doing the City Hall run that there came to him one night at his rooms a man he had known in the old days when he had lived in the river bottom district. If he was surprised to see him the reporter did not show it.

"Hello, Burke! Come in. Glad to see you."

Farnum took the hat of his guest and relieved his awkwardness by guiding him to a chair and helping him get his pipe alight.

"How's everything? Little Mike must be growing into a big boy these days. Let's see. It's three years since I've seen him."

A momentary flicker lit the gloomy eyes of the Irishman. "He's a great boy, Mike is. He often speaks of you, Mr. Farnum.

"Glad to know it. And Mrs. Burke?"

"Fine."

"That leaves only Patrick Burke. I suppose he hasn't fallen off the water wagon yet."

The occupation of Burke had been a threadbare joke between them in the old days. He drove a street sprinkler for the city.

"That's what he has. McGuire threw the hooks into me this mor- rning. I've drove me last day."

"What's the matter?"

"I'm too damned honest. . . . or too big a coward. Take your choice."

"All right. I've taken it," smiled the reporter.

Pat brought his big fist down on the table so forcefully that the books shook. "I'll not go to the penitentiary for an-ny man. . . . He wanted me to let him put two other teams on the rolls in my name. I wouldn't stand for it. That was six weeks ago. To-day he lets me out."

Jeff began to see dimly the trail of the serpent graft. He lit his pipe before he spoke.

"Don't quite get the idea, Pat. Why wouldn't you?"

"Because I'm on the level. I'll have no wan tellin' little Mike his father is a dirty thief. . . .It's this way. The rolls were to be padded, understand."

"I see. You were to draw pay for three teams when you've got only one."

"McGuire was to draw it, all but a few dollars a month." The Irishman leaned forward, his eyes blazing. "And because I wouldn't stand for it I'm fired for neglecting my duty. I missed a street yesterday. If he'd been frientlly to me I might have missed forty. . . . But he can't throw me down like that. I've got the goods to show he's a dirty grafter. Right now he's drawing pay for seven teams that don't exist."

"And he doesn't know you know it?"

"You bet he don't. I've guessed it for a month. To-day I went round and made sure."

Jeff asked questions, learned all that Burke had to tell him. In the days that followed he ran down the whole story of the graft so secretly that not even the city editor knew what he was about. Then he had a talk with the "old man" and wrote his story.

It was a red-hot exposure of one of the most flagrant of the City Hall gang. There was no question of the proof. He had it in black and white. Moreover, there was always the chance that in the row which must follow McGuire might peach on Big Tim himself, the boss of all the little bosses.

Within twenty-four hours Jeff was summoned to a conference at which were present the city editor and Warren, now managing editor.

"We've killed your story, Farnum," announced the latter as soon as the door was closed.

"Why? I can prove every word of it."

"That was what we were afraid of."

"It's a peach of a story. With the spring elections coming on we need some dynamite to blow up Big Tim. I tell you McGuire would tell all he knows to save his own skin."

"My opinion, too," agreed Warren dryly. "My boy, it's too big a story. That's the whole trouble. If we were sure it would stop at McGuire we'd run it. But it won't. The corporations are backing Big Tim to win this spring. It won't do to get him tied up in a graft scandal."

"But the Advocate has been out after his scalp for years."

"Well, we're not after it any more. Of course, we're against him on the surface still."

Jeff did some rapid thinking. "Then the program will be for us to nominate a weak ticket and elect Big Tim's by default. Is that it?"

"That's about it. The big fellows have to make sure of a Mayor who will be all right about the Gas and Electric franchise. So we're going to have four more years of Big Tim."

"Will Brownell stand for it?"

Brownell was the principal owner of the Advocate.

"Will he?" Warren let his eyelash rest for a second upon the cheek nearest Jeff. "He's been seen. My orders come direct from the old man."

The story was suppressed. No more was heard about the McGuire graft scandal exposure. It had run counter to the projects of big business.

Burke had to be satisfied without his revenge.

He got a job with a brewery and charged the McGuire matter to profit and loss.

As for Jeff the incident only served to make clearer what he already knew. More and more he began to understand the forces that dominate our cities, the alliance between large vested interests and the powers that prey. These great corporations were seekers of special privileges. To secure this they financed the machines and permitted vice and corruption. He saw that ultimately most of the shame for the bad government of American cities rests upon the Fromes and the Merrills.

As for the newspapers, he was learning that between the people and an independent press stand the big advertisers. These make for conservatism, for an unfair point of view, for a slant in both news recording and news interpretation. Yet he saw that the press is in spite of this a power for good. The evil that it does is local and temporary, the good general and permanent.

Part 3

The spirit of commercialism that dominated America during the nineties and the first years of the new century never got hold of Jeff. The air and the light of his land were often the creation of a poet's dream. The delight of life stabbed him, so, too, did its tragedy. Not anchored to conventions, his mind was forever asking questions, seeking answers.

He would come out from a theater into a night that was a flood of illumination. Electric signs poured a glare of light over the streets. Motor cars and electrics whirled up to take away beautifully gowned women and correctly dressed men. The windows of the department stores were filled with imported luxuries. And he would sometimes wonder how much of misery and trouble was being driven back by that gay blare of wealth, how many men and women and children were giving their lives to maintain a civilization that existed by trampling over their broken hearts and bodies.

Preventable poverty stared at him from all sides. He saw that our social fabric is thrown together in the most haphazard fashion, without scientific organization, with the greatest waste, in such a way that non-producers win all the prizes while the toilers do without. Yet out of this system that sows hate and discontent, that is a practical denial of brotherhood, of God, springs here and there love like a flower in a dunghill.

He felt that art and learning, as well as beauty and truth, ought to walk hand in hand with our daily lives. But this is impossible so long as disorder and cruelty and disease are in the world unnecessarily. He heard good people, busy with effects instead of causes, talk about the way out, as if there could be any way out which did not offer an equality of opportunity refused by the whole cruel system of to-day.

But Jeff could be in revolt without losing his temper. The men who profited by present conditions were not monsters. They were as kind of heart as he was, effects of the system just as much as the little bootblack on the corner. No possible good could come of a blind hatred of individuals.

His Bohemian instinct sent Jeff ranging far in those days. He made friends out of the most unlikely material. Some of the most radical of these were in the habit of gathering informally in his rooms about once a week. Sometimes the talk was good and pungent. Much of it was merely wild.

His college friend, Sam Miller, now assistant city librarian, was one of this little circle. Another was Oscar Marchant, a fragile little Socialist poet upon whom consumption had laid its grip. He was not much of a poet, but there burnt in him a passion for humanity that disease and poverty could not extinguish.

One night James Farnum dropped in to borrow some money from his cousin and for ten minutes listened to such talk as he had never heard before. His mind moved among a group of orthodox and accepted ideas. A new one he always viewed as if it were a dynamite bomb timed to go off shortly. He was not only suspicious of it; he was afraid of it.

James was, it happened, in evening dress. He took gingerly the chair his cousin offered him between the hectic Marchant and a little Polish Jew.

The air was blue with the smoke from cheap tobacco. More than one of those present carried the marks of poverty. But the note of the assembly was a cheerful at-homeness. James wondered what the devil his cousin meant by giving this heterogeneous gathering the freedom of his rooms.

Dickinson, the single-taxer, was talking bitterly. He was a big man with a voice like a foghorn. His idea of emphasis appeared to be pounding the table with his blacksmith fist.

"I tell you society doesn't want to hear about such things," he was declaiming. "It wants to go along comfortably without being disturbed. Ignore everything that's not pleasant, that's liable to harrow the feelings. The sins of our neighbors make spicy reading. Fill the papers with 'em. But their distresses and their poverty! That's different. Let's hear as little about them as possible. Let's keep it a well-regulated world."

Nearly everybody began to talk at once. James caught phrases here and there out of the melee.

". . . Democratic institutions must either decay or become revitalized. . . .To hell with such courts. They're no better than anarchy. . . .In Verden there are only two classes: those who don't get as much as they earn and those who get more. . . . Tell you we've got to get back to the land, got to make it free as air. You can't be saved from economic slavery till you have socialism. . . ."

Suddenly the hubbub subsided and Marchant had the floor. "All of life's a compromise, a horrible unholy giving up as unpractical all the best things. It's a denial of love, of Christ, of God."

A young preacher who was conducting a mission for sailors on the water front cut in. "Exactly. The church is radically wrong because--"

"Because it hasn't been converted to Christianity yet. Mr. Moneybags in the front pew has got a strangle hold on the parson. Begging your pardon, Mifflin. We know you're not that kind."

Marchant won the floor again. "Here's the nub of it. A man's a slave so long as his means of livelihood is dependent on some other man. I don't care whether it's lands or railroads or mines. Abolish private property and you abolish poverty."

They were all at it again, like dogs at a bone. Across the Babel James caught Jeff's gay grin at him.

By sheer weight Dickinson's voice boomed out of the medley.

". . . just as Henry George says: 'Private ownership of land is the nether mill-stone. Material progress is the upper mill-stone. Between them, with an increasing pressure, the working classes are being ground.' We're just beginning to see the effect of private property in land. Within a few years. . . ."

"What we need is to get back to Democracy. Individualism has run wild. . . ."

"Trouble is we can't get anywhere under the Constitution. Every time we make a move--check. It was adopted by aristocrats to hold back the people and that's what it's done. Law--"

Apparently nobody got a chance to finish his argument. The Polish Jew broke in sharply. "Law! There iss no law."

"Plenty of it, Sobieski, Go out on the streets and preach your philosophic anarchy if you don't believe it. See what it will do to you. Law's a device to bolster up the strong and to hammer down the weak."

James had given a polite cynical indulgence to views so lost to reason and propriety. But he couldn't quite stand any more. He made a sign to Jeff and they adjourned to the next room.

"Your friends always so--so enthusiastic?" he asked with the slightest lift of his upper lip.

"Not always. They're a little excited to-night because Harshaw imprisoned those fourteen striking miners for contempt of court."

"Don't manufacture bombs here, do you?"

Jeff laughed. "We're warranted harmless."

James offered him good advice. "That sort of talk doesn't lead to anything--except trouble. Men who get on don't question the fundamentals of our social system. It doesn't do, you know. Take the constitution. Now I've studied it. A wonderful document. Gladstone said."

"Yes, I know what Gladstone said. I don't agree with him. The constitution was devised by men with property as a protection against those who had none."

"Why shouldn't it have been?"

"It should, if vested interests are the first thing to consider. In there"--with a smiling wave of his hand--"they think people are more important than things. A most unsettling notion!"

"Mean to say you believe all that rant they talk?"

"Not quite," Jeff laughed.

"Well, I'd cut that bunch of anarchists if I were you," his cousin suggested. "Say, Jeff, can you let me have fifty dollars?"

Jeff considered. He had been thinking of a new spring overcoat, but his winter one would do well enough. From the office he could get an advance of the balance he needed to make up the fifty.

"Sure. I'll bring it to your rooms to-morrow night."

"Much obliged. Hate to trouble you," James said lightly. "Well, I won't keep you longer from your anarchist friends. Good-night."

CHAPTER 6

"The cure for the evils of Democracy is more Democracy." --De Tocqueville.

THE REBEL HUMBLY ASSISTS AT THE UNVEILING OF A HERO'S STATUE

Part 1

On the occasion when his cousin was graduated with the highest honors from the law school of Verden University Jeff sat inconspicuously near the rear of the chapel. James, as class orator, rose to his hour. From the moment that he moved slowly to the front of the platform, handsome and impassive, his calm gaze sweeping over the audience while he waited for the little bustle of expectancy to subside, Jeff knew that the name of Farnum was going to be covered with glory.

The orator began in a low clear voice that reached to the last seat in the gallery. Jeff knew that before he finished its echoes would be ringing through the hall like a trumpet call to the emotions of those present.

It was not destined that Jeff should hear a word of that stirring peroration. His eye fell by chance upon a young woman seated in a box beside an elderly man whom he recognized as Peter C. Frome. From that instant he was lost to all sense perception that did not focus upon her. For he was looking at the dryad who had come upon him out of the ferns three years before. She would never know it, but Alice Frome had saved him from the weakness that might have destroyed him. From that day he had been a total abstainer. Now as he looked at her the vivid irregular beauty of the girl flowed through him like music. Her charm for him lay deeper than the golden gleams of imprisoned sunlight woven in her hair, than the gallant poise of the little head above the slender figure. Though these set his heart beating wildly, a sure instinct told him of the fine and exquisite spirit that found its home in her body.

She was leaning forward in her chair, her eyes fixed on James almost as if she were fascinated by his oratory. Her father watched her, a trifle amused at her eagerness. In her admiration she was frank as a boy. When Farnum's last period was rounded out and he made to leave the stage her gloved hands beat together in excited applause.

After the ceremonies were over James came straight to her. Jeff missed no detail of their meeting. The young lawyer was swimming on a tide of triumph, but it was easy to see that Alice Frome's approval was the thing he most desired. His cousin had never seen him so gay, so handsome, so altogether irresistible. For the first time a little spasm of envy shot through Jeff, That the girl liked James was plain enough. How could any girl help liking him?

The orator was so much the center of attention that Jeff postponed his congratulations till evening. He called on his cousin after midnight at his rooms. James had just returned from a class banquet where he had been the toastmaster. He was still riding the big wave.

"It's been a great day for me, Jeff," he broke out after his cousin had congratulated him. "I've earned it, too. For seven years I've worked toward this day as a climax. Did you see me talking to P. C. Frome and his daughter? I'm going to be accepted socially in the best houses of the city. I'll make them all open to me."

"I don't doubt it."

"And the best of it is that I've made my own success."

"Yes, you've worked hard," Jeff admitted with a little gleam of humor in his eyes. He would not remind his cousin that he had lent him most of the money to see him through law school.

"Oh, worked!" James was striding up and down the room to get rid of some of his nervous energy. "I've done more than work. I've made opportunities . . . grabbed them coming and going. Young as I am Verden expects big things of me. And I'll deliver the goods, too."

"What's the program?" Jeff asked, much amused.

"Don't know yet. I'm going into politics and I mean to get ahead. I'll make a big splash and keep in the public eye."

His cousin could not help laughing. "You always were a pretty good press agent for J. K. Farnum."

"Why shouldn't I be?"

"I don't know why you shouldn't. A man who gets ahead puts himself in a position where he can bring about reforms."

"That's it exactly. I mean to make myself a power."

"Get hold of one good practical reform and back it. Pound away on it until the people identify you with it. Take direct legislation as your text, say. There's going to be a strong drift that way in the next ten years. Machines and bosses are going to be swept to the junk heap."

"How do you know?"

Jeff could give no adequate justification for the faith that was in him. It would be no answer to tell James that he knew the plain people of the state better than the politicians did. However, he mentioned a few facts.

"It's all very well for you to be a radical, but I have to conserve my influence," James objected. "I've got to be practical. If I were just going to be a reporter it would be different."

"Don't be too practical, James. You've got to have some vision if you're going to lead the people. Nobody is so blind to the future as practical politicians and business men." He stopped, smiling quizzically. "But you're the orator of the family. I don't want to infringe on your copyright. Only you have the personality to be a real leader. Get started right. Remember that America faces forward, and that we're going to move with seven league boots to better conditions."

James mused out loud. "If a man could be a Lincoln to save the people from industrial slavery it would be worth while."

Jeff did not laugh at his conceit. "Go to it. I'll promise you the backing of the World."

"What have you to do with the World?"

"Beginning with next Monday I'm to be managing editor."

"You!"

"Even so. Captain Chunn has bought the paper."

"Chunn, the man who made millions in a lucky strike in Alaska?"

"Same man."

James was still incredulous. "How did Chunn happen to pick you for the editor?"

"He's an old friend of mine. 'Member the day I had the fight with Ned Merrill. Captain Chunn was the man who stood up for me."

"And you've known him ever since?"

"I've always corresponded with him."

"Well, I'll be hanged. Talk about luck." James looked his cousin over with increased respect. He always took off his hat to success, but he had been so long accustomed to thinking of Jeff as a failure that he could not adjust his mind to the situation. "Why, you can't run a paper. Can you?"

Jeff smiled. "I told Captain Chunn he was taking a big chance."

"If he's as rich as they say he is he can afford to lose some money."

James took the news of his cousin's good fortune a little peevishly. He did not grudge Jeff's advancement, but he resented that it had befallen him to-day of all days. The promotion of the reporter took the edge off his own achievements.

Part 2

As James understood his own genius, it was as a statesman that he was fitted preeminently to shine. He had the urbanity, the large impassive manner, and the magnetic eloquence of the old-style congressman. All he needed was the chance.

With the passing months he grew more restless at the delay. There were moments in the night when he trembled lest some stroke of evil fate might fall upon him before he had carved his name in the niche of fame. To sit in an empty law office and wait for clients took more patience than he could summon. He wanted an opportunity to make speeches in the campaign that was soon to open. That he finally went to Big Tim himself about it instead of to his ward committeeman was characteristic of James K.

After he sent his card in the young lawyer was kept waiting for thirty-five minutes in an outer office along with a Jew peddler, a pugilist ward heeler, an Irish saloonkeeper, and a brick contractor. Naturally he was exceedingly annoyed. O'Brien ought to know that James K. Farnum did not rank with this riff-raff.

When at last James got into the holy of holies he found Big Tim lolling back in his swivel chair with a fat cigar in his mouth. The boss did not take the trouble to rise as he waved his visitor to a chair.

Farnum explained that he was interested in the political situation and that he was prepared to take an active part in the campaign about to open. The big man listened, watching him out of half shut attentive eyes. He had never yet seen a kid glove politician that was worth the powder to blow him up. Moreover, he had special reasons for disliking this one. His cousin was editor of the World, and that paper was becoming a thorn in his side.

O'Brien took the cigar from his mouth. "Did youse go to the primary last night?' he asked.

James did not even know there had been one. He had in point of fact been at a Country Club dance.

"Can youse tell me what the vote of your precinct was at the last city election?"

The budding statesman could not.

"What precinct do youse live in?"

Farnum was not quite sure. He explained that he had moved recently.

Big Tim grunted scornfully. He was pleased to have a chance to take down the cheek of any Farnum.

"What do youse think you can do?"

"I can make speeches. I'm the best orator that ever came out of Verden University."

"Tommyrot! How do youse stand in your precinct? Can youse get the vote out to go down the line for us? That's what counts. Oratory be damned!"

James was pale with rage. The manner of the boss was nothing less than insulting.

"Then you decline to give me a chance, Mr. O'Brien?"

"I do not. In politics a man makes his own chance. He gets along by being so useful we can't get along without him. See? He learns the game. You don't know the A B C of it. It's my opinion youse never will."

O'Brien's hard cold eye triumphed over him as a principal does over a delinquent schoolboy.

His vanity stung, the lawyer sprang to his feet. "Very well, Mr. O'Brien. I'll show you a thing or two about what I can and can't do."

For just an instant a notion flitted across Big Tim's mind that he might be making a mistake. He was indulging an ugly temper, and he knew it. This was a luxury he rarely permitted himself. Now he decided to "go the whole hog," as he phrased it to himself later. His lips set to an ugly snarl.

"It's like the nerve of ye to come to me. Want to begin at the top instid of at the bottom. Go to Billie Gray if youse want to have some wan learn youse the game. If you're any good he'll find it out."

James got himself out of the office with all the dignity of which he was capable. Go to Billie Gray, the notorious ballot box stuffer! Take orders from the little rascal who had shaved the penitentiary only because of his pull! James saw himself doing it. He was sore in every outraged nerve of him. Never before in his life had anybody sat and sneered at him openly before his eyes. He would show the big boss that he had been a fool to treat him so. And he would show P. C. Frome and Ned Merrill that he was a very valuable man.

How? Why, by fighting the corporations! Wasn't that the way that all the big men got their start nowadays as lawyers? As soon as they discovered his value Frome and his friends would be after his services fast enough. James was no radical, but he believed Jeff knew what he was talking about when he predicted an impending political change, one that would carry power back from the machine bosses to the people. The young lawyer decided to ride that wave as far as it would take him. He would be a tribune of the people, and they in turn would make of him their hero. With the promised backing of the World he would go a long way. He knew that Jeff would fling him at once into the limelight. And he would make good. He would be the big speaker for the reform movement. Nobody in the state could sway a crowd as he could. James had not the least doubt about that. It was glory and applause he wanted, not the drudgery of dirty ward politics.

Part 3

Under Jeff's management the World had at once taken the leadership in the fight for political reform in the state. He made it the policy of the paper to tell the truth as to corruption both in and out of his own party. Nor would he allow the business office, as influenced by the advertisers, to dictate the policy of the paper. The result was that at the end of the first year he went to the owner with a report of a deficit of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars for the twelve months just ended.

Captain Chunn only laughed. "Keep it up, son. I've had lots of fun out of it. You've given this town one grand good shaking up. The whole state is getting its fighting clothes on. We've got Merrill and Frome scared stiff about their supreme court judges. Looks to me as if we were going to lick them."

The political campaign was already in progress. Hitherto the public utility corporations of Verden had controlled and practically owned the machinery of both parties. The World had revolted, rallied the better sentiment in the party to which it belonged, and forced the convention to declare for a reform platform and to nominate a clean ticket composed of men of character.

Jeff agreed. "I think we're going to win. The people are with us. The World is booming." It's the advertising troubles me. Frome and Merrill have got at the big stores and they won't come in with any space worth mentioning."

"Damn the big advertisers," exploded Chunn. "I've got two million cold and I'm going to see this thing out, son. That's what I told Frome last week when he had the nerve to have me nominated to the Verden Club. Wanted to muzzle me. Be a good fellow and quit agitating. That was the idea. I sent back word I'd stuck by Lee to Appomattox and I reckoned I was too old a dog to learn the new trick of deserting my flag."

"If you're satisfied I ought to be," Jeff laughed. "As for the advertising, the stores will come back soon. The managers all want to take space, but they are afraid of spoiling their credit at the banks while conditions are so unsettled."

"Oh, well. We'll stick to our guns. You fire'em and I'll supply the ammunition." The little man put his hand on Jeff's shoulder with a chuckle. "We're both rebels--both irreconcilables, son. I reckon we're going to be well hated before we get through with this fight."

"Yes. They're going about making people believe we're cranks and agitators who are hurting business for our own selfish ends."

"I reckon we can stand it, David." Chunn had no children of his own and he always called Jeff son or David. "By the way, how's that good looking cousin of yours coming out? I see you're giving his speeches lots of space."

A light leaped to the eyes of the younger man. "He's doing fine. James is a born orator. Wherever he goes he gets a big ovation."

Chunn grunted. "Humph! That'll please him. He's as selfish as the devil, always looking out for James Farnum."

"He wins the people, Captain."

"You talk every evening yourself, but I don't see reports of any of your speeches."

"I don't talk like James. There's not a man in the state to equal him, young as he is."

"Humph!"

Captain Chunn grumbled a good deal about the way Jeff was always pushing his cousin forward and keeping in the background himself. In his opinion "David" was worth a hundred of the other.

CHAPTER 7

"Spirits of old that bore me, And set me, meek of mind, Between great deeds before me, And deeds as great behind,

Knowing Humanity my star As forth of old I ride, 0 help me wear with every scar Honor at eventide."

THE REBEL DISCOVERS THAT ADHESION IS A PROPERTY OF MUD; ALSO THAT A SOLDIER MUST SOMETIMES TURN HIS BACK AND BURN THE BRIDGES BEHIND HIM

Part 1

The fight for the control of the state developed unprecedented bitterness. The big financial interests back of the political machines poured out money like water to elect a ticket that would be friendly to capital. An eight-hour-day bill to apply to miners and underground workers had been passed by the last legislature and a supreme court must be elected to declare this law unconstitutional. Moreover, a United States senator was to be chosen, so that the personnel of the assembly was a matter of great importance.

Through the subsidized columns of the Advocate and the Herald all the venom of outraged public plunder was emptied on the heads of Jeff Farnum and Captain Chunn. They were rebels, blackmailers, and anarchists. Jeff's life was held up to public scorn as dissolute and licentious. He had been expelled from college and consorted only with companions of the lowest sort. A free thinker and an atheist, he wanted to tear down the pillars which upheld society. Unless Verden and the state repudiated him and his gang of trouble breeders the poison of their opinions would infect the healthy fabric of the community.

There was about Jeff a humility, a sort of careless generosity, that could take with a laugh a hit at himself. But in the days that followed he was often made to wince when good men drew away from him as from a moral pervert. Twice he was hissed from the stage when he attempted to talk, or would have been, if he had not quietly waited until the indignant protesters were exhausted. It amused him to see that his old college acquaintance "Sissie" Thomas and Billy Gray, the ballot box stuffer of the Second Ward, were among the most vehement of those who thus scorned him. So do the extremes of virtue and vice find common ground when the blasphemer raises his voice against intrenched capital.

The personal calumny of the enemy showed how hard hit the big bosses were, how beneath their feet they felt the ground of public opinion shift. It had been only a year since Big Tim O'Brien, boss of the city by permission of the public utility corporations, had read Jeff's first editorial against ballot box stuffing. In it the editor of the World had pledged that paper never to give up the fight for the people until such crookedness was stamped out. Big Tim had laughed until his paunch shook at the confidence of this young upstart and in impudent defiance had sent him a check for fifty dollars for the Honest Election League.

Neither Big Tim nor the respectable buccaneers back of him were laughing now. They were fighting with every ounce in them to sweep back the wave of civic indignation the World had gathered into a compact aggressive organization.

Young Ned Merrill, who represented the interests of the allied corporations, had Big Tim on the carpet. The young man had not been out of Harvard more than three years, but he did not let any nonsense about fair play stand in his way. In spite of the clean- cut look of him--he was broadshouldered and tall, with an effect of decision in the square cleft chin that would some day degenerate into fatness--Ned Merrill played the game of business without any compunctions.

"You're making a bad fight of it, O'Brien. Old style methods won't win for us. These crank reformers have got the people stirred up. Keep your ward workers busy, but don't expect them to win." He leaned forward and brought his fist down heavily on the desk. "We've got to smash Farnum--discredit him with the bunch of sheep who are following him."

"What more do youse want? We're callin' him ivery black name under Hiven."

Merrill shook his head decisively. "Not enough. Prove something. Catch him with the goods."

"If youse'll show me how?"

"I don't care how, You've got detectives, haven't you? Find out all about him, where he comes from, who his people were. Rake his life with a fine tooth comb from the day he was born. He's a bad egg. We all know that. Dig up facts to prove it."

Within the hour detectives were set to work. One of them left next day for Shelby. Another covered the neighborhoods where Jeff had lived in Verden. Henceforth wherever he went he was shadowed.

It was about this time that Samuel Miller lost his place in the city library on account of his political opinions. For more than a year he and Jeff had roomed together at a private boarding house kept by a Mrs. Anderson. Within twentyfour hours of his dismissal Miller was on the road, sent out by the campaign committee of his party to make speeches throughout the state.

Jeff himself was speaking nearly every night now that the day of election was drawing near. This, together with the work of editing the paper and the strain of the battle, told heavily on a vitality never too much above par. He would come back to his rooms fagged out, often dejected because some friend had deserted to the enemy.

One cold rainy evening he met Nellie Anderson in the hall. She had been saying good-bye to some friends who had been in to call on her.

"You're wet, Mr. Farnum," the young woman said.

"A little."

She stood hesitating in the doorway leading to the apartment of herself and her mother, then yielded shyly to a kindly impulse.

"We've been making chocolate. Won't you come in and have some? You look cold."

Jeff glimpsed beyond her the warm grate fire in the room. He, too, yielded to an impulse. "Since you're so good as to ask me, Miss Nellie."

She took charge of his hat and overcoat, making him sit down in a big armchair before the fire. He watched her curiously as she moved lightly about waiting on him. Nellie was a soft round little person with constant intimations of a childhood not long outgrown. Jeff judged she must be nineteen or twenty, but she had moments of being charmingly unsure of herself. The warm color came and went in her clear cheeks at the least provocation.

"Mother's gone to bed. She always goes early. You don't mind," she asked naively.

Jeff smiled. She was, he thought, about as worldly wise as a fluffy kitten. "No, I don't mind at all," he assured her.

Nor did he in the least. His weariness was of the spirit rather than the body, and he found her grace, her shy sweetness, grateful to the jaded senses. It counted in her favor that she was not clever or ultra-modern. The dimpling smiles, the quick sympathy of this innocent, sensuous young creature, drew him out of his depression. When he left the pleasant warmth of the room half an hour later it was with a little glow at the heart. He had found comfort and refreshment.

How it came to pass Jeff never quite understood, but it soon was almost a custom for him to drop into the living room to get a cup of chocolate when he came home. He found himself looking forward to that half hour alone with Nellie Anderson. Whoever else criticized him, she did not. The manner in which she made herself necessary to his material comfort was masterly. She would be waiting, eager to help him off with his overcoat, hot chocolate and sandwiches ready for him in the cozy living-room. To him, who for years had lived a hand-to-mouth boarding house existence, her shy wholesome laughter made that room sing of home, one which her personality fitted to a dot. She was always in good humor, always trim and neat, always alluring to the eye. And she had the pretty little domestic ways that go to the head of a bachelor when he eats alone with an attractive girl.

Their intimacy was not exactly a secret. Mrs. Anderson, who was rather deaf and admitted to being a heavy sleeper, knew that Jeff dropped in occasionally. He suspected she did not know how regularly, but she was one of that large class of American mothers who let their daughters arrange their own love affairs and would not have interfered had she known.

Once or twice it flashed upon Jeff that this ought not to go on. Since he had no intention of marrying Nell he must not let their relationship reach the emotional climax toward which he guessed it was racing. But his experience in such matters was limited. He did not know how to break off their friendship without hurting her, and he was eager to minimize the possibility of danger. His modesty made this last easy. Out of her kindness she was good to him, but it was not to be expected that so pretty a girl would fall in love with a man like him.

The most potent argument for letting things drift was his own craving for her. She was becoming necessary to him. Whenever he thought of her it was with a tender glow. Her soft long-lashed eyes would come between him and the editorial he was writing. A dozen times a day he could see a picture of the tilted little coaxing mouth. The gurgle of her laughter called to him for hours before he left the office.

He got into the habit of talking to her about the things that were troubling him--the tactics of the enemy, the desertion of friends, the dubious issue of the campaign. Curled up in a big chair, her whole attention absorbed in what he was saying Nellie made a good listener. If she did not show a full understanding of the situation, he could always sense her ready sympathy. Her naive, indignant loyalty was touching.

"I read what the Advocate said about you today," she told him one night, a tide of color in her cheeks. "It was horrid. As if anybody would believe it."

"I'm afraid a good many people do," he said gravely.

"Nobody who knows you," she protested stoutly.

"Yes, some who know me."

He let his eyes dwell on her. It was easy to see how undisciplined of life she was, save where its material aspects had come into impact with her on the economic side.

"None of your real friends."

"How many real friends has a man--friends who will stand by him no matter how unpopular he is?"

"I don't know. I should think you'd have lots of them."

He shook his head, a hint of a smile in his eyes. "Not many. They keep their chocolate and sandwiches for folks whose trolley do'esn't fly the wire."

"What wire?" she asked, her forehead knitted to a question.

"Oh, the wire that's over the tracks of respectability and vested interests and special privilege."

She had been looking at him, but now her gaze went to the fire with that slow tilt of the chin he liked. Another color wave swept the oval of the soft cheeks.

"You've got more friends than you think," she said in a low voice.

"I've got one little friend I wouldn't like to lose."

She did not speak and his hand moved forward to cover hers. Instantly a wild and insurgent emotion tingled through him. He felt himself trembling and could not steady his nerves.

Without a word Nellie looked up and their eyes met. Something electric flashed from one to another. Her shy fear of him was adorable.

"Oh, don't, don't!" she murmured. "What will you think of me now?"

He had leaned forward and kissed her on the lips.

Jeff sprang to his feet, the muscles in his lean cheeks standing out. Some bell of warning was ringing in him. He was a man, young and desirous, subject to all the frailties of his sex, holding experiences in his past that had left him far from a puritan. And she was a woman, of unschooled impulses, with unsuspected banked passions, an innocent creature in whom primeval physical life rioted.

He moved toward the door, his left fist beating into the palm of his right hand. He must protect her, against himself--and against her innocent affection for him.

She fluttered past him, barring the way. Her cheeks were flaming with shame.

"You despise me. Why did I let you?" A sob swelled up into her soft round throat.

"You blessed lamb," he groaned.

"You're going to leave me. You--you don't want me for a friend any longer."

Her lips trembled--the red little lips that always reminded him of a baby's with its Cupid's bow. She was on the verge of breaking down. Jeff could not stand that. He held out his hands, intending to take hers and explain that he was not angry or disappointed at her. But somehow he found her in his arms instead, supple and warm, vital youth flowing in the soft cheeks' rich coloring and in the eyes quick and passionate with the tender abandon of her sex.

He set his teeth against the rush of desire that flooded him as her soft body clung to his. The emotional climax he had vaguely feared had leaped upon them like an uncaged tiger. He fought to stamp down the fires that blazed up in him. Time to think--he must have time to think.

"You don't despise me then," she cried softly, a little catch in her breath.

"No," he protested, and again "No."

"But you think I've done wrong."

"No. I've been to blame. You're a dear girl--and I've abused your kindness. I must go away--now."

"Then you--you do hate me," she accused with a quivering lip.

"No . . . no. I'm very fond of you."

"But you're going to leave me. It's because I've done wrong."

"Don't blame yourself, dear. It has been all my fault. I ought to have known."

Her hands fell from him. The life seemed to die out of her whole figure. "You do despise me."

Desire of her throbbed through him, but he spoke very quietly. "Listen, dear. There is nobody I respect more . . . and none I like so much. I can't tell you how. . . fond of you I am. But I must go now. You don't understand."

She bit her lip to repress the sobs that would come and turned away to hide her shame. Jeff caught her in his arms, kissed her passionately on the lips, the eyes, the soft round throat.

"You do . . . like me," she purred happily.

Abruptly he pushed her from him. Where were they drifting? He must get his anchors down before it was too late.

Somehow he broke away, leaving her there hurt and bewildered at his apparent fickleness, at the stiffness with which he had beaten back the sweet delight inviting them.

Jeff went to his rooms, his mind in a blind chaotic surge. He sat before the table for hours, fighting grimly to persuade himself he need not put away this joy that had come to him. Surely friendship was a good thing . . . and love. A man ought not to turn his back on them.

It was long past midnight when he rose, took his father's sword from the wall where it hung, and unsheathed it. A vision of an open fireplace in a log house rose before him, his father in the foreground looking like a picture of Stonewall Jackson. The kind brave eyes that were the soul of honor gazed at him.

"You damned scoundrel! You damned scoundrel!" Jeff accused himself in a low voice.

He knew his little friend was good and innocent, but he knew too she had inherited a temperament that made her very innocence a

anger to her. Every instinct of chivalry called upon him to protect her from the weakness she did not even guess. She had given him her kindness and her friendship, the dear child! It was up to him to be worthy of them. If he failed her he would be a creature forever lost to decency.

There was a sob in his throat as Jeff pushed the blade back into the worn scabbard and rehung the sword upon the wall. But the eyes in his lifted face were very bright. He too would keep his sword unstained and the flag of honor flying.

All through the next day and the next his resolution held. He took pains not to see her alone, though there was not an hour of the day when he could get away from the thought of her. The uneasy consciousness was with him that the issue was after all only postponed, that decisions of this kind must be made again and again so long as opportunity and desire go together. And there were moments of reaction when his will was like a rope of sand, when the longing for her swept over him like a great wave.

As Jeff slipped quietly into the hall the door of her room opened. Their eyes met, and presently hers fell. She was troubled and ashamed at what she had done, but plainly eager in her innocence to be forgiven.

Jeff spoke gently. "Nellie."

Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. "Aren't we ever going to be friends again?"

Through the open door he could see the fire glowing in the grate and the chocolate set on the little table. He knew she had prepared for his coming and how greatly she would be hurt if he rejected her advances.

"Of course we're friends."

"Then you'll come in, just for a few minutes."

He hesitated.

"Please," she whispered. "Or I'll know you don't like me any more."

Jeff followed her into the room and closed the door behind him.

Part 2

Two days before the election Big Tim's detective wired from Shelby, Tennessee, the outline of a story that got two front page columns in both the Advocate and the Herald. Jefferson Davis Farnum was the son of a thief, of a rebel soldier who had spent seven years in the penitentiary for looting the bank of which he was cashier. In addition to featuring the news story both papers handled the subject at length in their editorial columns. They wanted to know whether the people of this beautiful state were willing to hand over the Commonwealth to be plundered by the reckless gang of which this son of a criminal was the head.

The paper reached Jeff at his rooms in the morning. He had lately taken the apartments formerly occupied by his cousin, James moving to Mrs. Anderson's until after the election. The exchange had been made at the suggestion of the editor, who gave as a reason that he wanted to be close to his work until the winter was past. It happened that James was just now very glad to get a cheaper place. He was very short of funds and until after the election had no time for social functions. All he needed with a room was to sleep in it.

Jeff was still reading the story from Shelby when his cousin came in hurriedly. James was excited and very white.

"My God, Jeff! It's come at last. I knew it would ruin me some day," the lawyer cried, after he had carefully closed the door of the bedroom.

"It won't ruin you, James. Your name isn't mentioned yet. Perhaps it may not be. It can't hurt you, even if it is."

"I tell you it will ruin me both socially and politically. Once it gets out nobody will trust me. I'll be the son of a thief," James insisted wildly.

"You're the son of a man who made a slip and has paid for it," answered Jeff steadily. "Don't let your ideas get warped. This town is full of men who have done wrong and haven't paid for it."

"That's one of your fool socialist theories." James spoke sharply and irritably. "No man's guilty till the law says so. They haven't been in the penitentiary. He has. That's what damns me if it gets out."

Jeff laid a hand affectionately on his cousin's shoulder. "Don't you believe it for a moment. There's no moral distinction between the man who has paid and the man who hasn't paid for his sins toward society. There is good and there is bad in all of us, closely intertwined, knit together into the very warp and woof of our lives. We're all good and we're all bad."

It was with James a purely personal equation. He could not forget its relation to himself.

"My name is to be voted on at the University Club next month. I'll be blackballed to a dead certainty," he said miserably.

"Probably, if the story gets out. It's tough, I know." Jeff's eyes gleamed angrily. "And why should they? You're just as good a man to-day as you were yesterday. But there's nothing so fettering, so despicable as good form. It blights. Let a man bow down to the dead hand of custom and he can never again be true to what he thinks and knows. His judgment gets warped. Soon Madame Grundy does his thinking for him, along well-grooved lines."

"Oh, well! That's just talk. What am I to do?" James broke out nervously.

"I know what I would do in your case."

"What?"

"Come out with a short statement telling the exact facts. I'd make no apologies or long explanation. Just the plain story as simply as you can."

"Well, I'll not," the lawyer broke out. "Easy enough for you to say what I ought to do. Look at who my friends are--the Fromes and the Merrills and the Gilmans. Best set in town. I strained a point when I broke loose from them to take up this progressive fight. They'd cut me dead if a story like this came out."

"I daresay. Communities are loaded to the guards with respectable cowards. But if you stand on your own feet like a man they'll think more of you for it. Most of them will be glad to know you again inside of five years. For you're going to be successful, and people like the Merrills and the Gilmans bow down to success."

The lawyer shook his head doggedly. "I'm not going to tell a thing I don't have to tell. That's settled." He hesitated a moment before he went on. "I've got a reason why I want to stand well with the Fromes, Jeff. I'm not in a position to risk anything."

Jeff waited. He thought he knew that reason.

"I'm going to marry Alice Frome if I can."

"You've asked her." Jeff's voice sounded to himself as if it belonged to another man.

"No. Not yet. Ned Merrill's in the running. Strong, too. He's being backed by his father and old P. C. Frome. The idea is to consolidate interests by this marriage. But I've got a fighting chance. She likes me. Since I went into this political fight against her father she's taken pains to show me how friendly she feels. But if this story gets out--I'm smashed. That's all."

"Go to her. Tell her the truth. She'll stand by you," his cousin urged.

"You don't understand these people, Jeff. I do. Even if she wanted to stand by me she couldn't. They wouldn't let her. Right now I'm carrying all the handicap I can."

Jeff walked to the window and stood looking out with his hands in his pockets. The hum of the busy street rose to his ears, but he did not hear it. Nor did he see the motor cars whizzing past, the drays lumbering along, the thronged sidewalks of Powers Avenue. A door that had for years been ajar in his heart had swung to with a crash. The incredible folly of his dream was laid bare to him. Despised, distrusted and disgraced, there was no chance that he might be even a friend to her. She moved in another world, one he could not reach if he would and would not if he could. All that he believed in she had been brought up to disregard. Much that was dear to her he must hammer down so long as there was life in him.

But James--he had fought his way up to her. Why shouldn't he have his chance? Better--far better James than Ned Merrill. He had heard the echoes of a disgraceful story about that young man in his college days, the story of how he had trampled down a working girl for his pleasure. James was clean and honorable . . . and she loved him. Jeff's mind fastened on that last as a thing assured. Had he not seen her with starry eyes fixed on her hero, held fast as a limed bird? She too was entitled to her chance, and there was a way he could give it to her.

He turned back to James, who was sitting despondently at the managing editor's desk, jabbing at the blotting sheet with a pencil.

Jeff touched the Advocate he still held in his hand. "Did you read this story carefully?"

"No. I just ran my eye down it. Why?"

"Whoever dug it up has made a mistake. He has jumped to the conclusion that I'm Uncle Robert's son. Why not let it go at that?"

His cousin looked up with a flash of eager hope. "You mean--"

"I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Let it go the way they have it."

The lawyer's heart leaped, but he could not let this go without a protest. "No, I--I couldn't do that. It's awfully good of you, Jeff."

The managing editor smiled in his whimsical way. "My reputation has long been in tatters. A little more can't hurt it."

James conceded a reflective assent with a manner of impartiality. "Of course your friends wouldn't think any the less of you. They're not so--so--"

"respectable as yours," Jeff finished for him.

"I was going to say so hidebound."

"All the same, isn't it?"

"But it would be a sacrifice for you. I recognize that. And I'm not sure that I could accept it. I will have to think that over," the lawyer concluded magnanimously.

"You'll find it is best. But I think I would tell Miss Frome, even if I didn't tell anybody else. She has a right to know."

"You may depend upon me to do whatever is best about that."

James was hardly out of the office before Captain Chunn blew in like a small tornado. He was boiling with rage.

"What's this infernal lie about you being the son of a convict, David?" he demanded, waving a copy of the Herald.

"Sit down, Captain. I'll tell you the story because you're entitled to it. But I shall have to speak in confidence."

"Confidence! Dad burn it, what are you talking about? Are you trying to tell me that Phil Farnum was a thief and a convict?"

Jeff's steel-blue eyes looked straight into his. "Nothing so impossible as that, Captain. I'm going to tell you the story of his brother."

Jeff told it, but he and the owner of the World disagreed radically about the best way to answer the attack.

"Why must you always stand between that kid glove cousin of yours and trouble? Let him stand the gaff himself. It will do him good," Chunn stormed.

But Jeff had his way. The World made no denial of the facts charged. In a statement on the front page that covered less than three sticks he told the simple story of the defalcation of Robert Farnum. One thing only he added to the account given in the opposition papers. This was that during the past two years the shortage of the bank cashier had been paid in full to the Planters' First National at Shelby.

There were many forecasts as to what the effect of the Farnum story would be on the election returns. It is enough to say that the ticket supported by the World was chosen by a small majority. James was elected to the legislature by a plurality of fifteen hundred votes over his antagonist, a majority unheard of in the Eleventh District.

CHAPTER 8

Is not this the trouble with our whole man-made world, that the game is played with loaded dice? Against the poor, the weak and the unfortunate have the cards been stacked. A tremendous percentage is in favor of the crook, the scoundrel, the smug robber of industry by whom the hands are dealt.

Wealth, created by the many, is more and more flowing into the vaults of the few. Legislatures, Congress, the courts, all the machinery of government, answer to the crack of the whip wielded by Big Business. The creed of the allied plunderers is that he should take who has the power and he should keep who can.

Until we mutiny against the timidity of our times Democracy and Prosperity will be dreams. The poor and the parasite we shall have always with us.

In that new world which is to be MEN and not THINGS will be supreme, property a means and not an end. The heart of the world will be born anew under an economic reconstruction that will give freedom for individual development. For our social and industrial life will be founded not on a denial of God but on an affirmation of Brotherhood.--From the Note Book of a Dreamer.

THE HERO MEETS AND ADMIRES A MONA LISA SMILE. HE IS TENDERED AN APOLOGY FOR A PAST DISCOURTESY

Part 1

Came James Farnum down Powers Avenue carrying with buoyant dignity the manner of greatness that sat so well on him. His smile was warm for a world that just now was treating him handsomely. There could be no doubt that for a first term he was making an extraordinary success of his work in the legislature. He had worked hard on committees and his speeches had made a tremendous hit. Jeff had played him up strong in the world too, so that he was becoming well known over the state. That he had risen to leadership of the progressives in the House during his first term showed his quality. His ambition vaulted. Now that his feet were on the first rungs of the ladder it would be his own fault if he did not reach the top.

His progress down the busy street was in the nature of an ovation. Everywhere he met answering smiles that told of the people's pride in their young champion. Already James had discovered that Americans are eager for hero worship. He meant to be the hero of his state, the favorite son it would delight to honor. This was what he loved: the cheers for the victor, not the clash of the battle.

"Good morning, Farnum. What are the prospects?" It was Clinton Rogers, of the big shipbuilding firm Harvey & Rogers, that stopped him now.

"Still anybody's fight, Mr. Rogers." The young lawyer's voice fell a note to take on a frankly confidential tone, an accent of friendliness that missed the fatal buttonholing familiarity of the professional politician. "If we can hold our fellows together we'll win. But the Transcontinental is bidding high for votes--and there's always a quitter somewhere."

"Does Frome stand any chance?"

"It will be Hardy or Frome. The least break in our ranks will be the signal for a stampede to P. C. The Republicans will support him when they get the signal. It's all a question of our fellows standing pat."

"From what I can learn it won't be your fault if Hardy isn't elected. I congratulate you on the best record ever made by a

ember in his first term."

"Oh, we all do our best," James answered lightly. "But I'm grateful for your good opinion. I hope I deserve it."

James could afford to be modest about his achievements so long as Jeff was shouting his praises through the columns of the World to a hundred thousand readers of that paper. What the shipbuilder had said pleased him mightily. For Clinton Rogers was one of the few substantial moneyed men of Verden who had joined the reform movement. Not a single member of the Verden Club, with the exception of Rogers, was lined up with those making the fight for direct legislation. Even those who had no financial interest in the Transcontinental or the public utility corporations supported that side from principle.

James himself had thought a long time before casting in his lot with the insurgents led by his cousin. He had made tentative approaches both to Frome and to Edward B. Merrill. Both of these gentlemen had been friendly enough, but James had made up his mind they undervalued his worth. The way to convince them of this was to take the field against them.

He smiled now as he swung along the avenue. Both Frome and Merrill --yes, and Big Tim too, for that matter!--knew by this time whether they had made a mistake in sizing him up as a raw college boy with his eye teeth not cut.

A passing electric containing two young women brought his gloved hand to his hat. The long slant eyes of the lady on the farther side swept him indolently. In answer to her murmured suggestion the girl who was driving brought the machine round in a half circle which ended at the edge of the curb in front of Farnum.

The lawyer's hat came off again with easy grace. The slim young driver leaned back against the cushions and merely smiled a greeting, tacitly yielding command of the situation to her cousin, an opulent young widow adorned demurely with that artistic touch of mourning that suggests a grief not inconsolable.

"Good morning, Miss Frome--Mrs. Van Tyle," James distributed impartially before turning to the latter lady. "Isn't this a day to be alive in? Who says it always rains in Verden?"

"I do--or nearly always. At least it finds no difficulty in giving a good imitation," returned the young woman addressed.

"A libel--I vow a libel," Farnum retorted gaily. "I was just going to hope you might be tempted to forget New York and Vienna and Paris to pay us a long visit. We're all hoping it. I'm merely the spokesman." He waved a hand to indicate the busy street black with humanity.

A hint of pleasant adventure quickened the eyes of the young widow who surveyed lazily his wellgroomed good looks. She judged him a twentieth century American emerging from straightened circumstances and eager to trample even the memory of it under foot.

"Did the Chamber of Commerce appoint you a committee to hope that I would impose on my relatives longer? Or was it resoluted at a mass meeting?" she asked with her Mona Lisa smile.

He laughed. "Well, no! I'm a self-appointed committee voicing a personal desire that has universal application. But if it would have more weight with you I'll have the Chamber take it up and get myself an accredited representative."

"So kind of you. But do you think the committee could do itself justice on the street curb?"

She had among other sensuous charms a voice attuned to convey slightest shades of meaning. James caught her half-shuttered smoldering glance and divined her a woman subtle and complex, capable of playing the world-old game of the sexes with unusual dexterity. The hint of challenging mystery in the tawny depths of the mocking eyes fired his imagination. She was to him a new find in women, one altogether different from those he had known. He had a curiosity to meet at close range this cosmopolitan heiress of such cultivation as Joe Powers' millions could purchase.

What Verden said of her he knew: that she was too free, too scornful, too independent of conventions. All the tabby cats whispered it to each other with lifted eyebrows that suggested volumes, the while they courted her eager and unashamed. But he had a feeling that perhaps Verden was not competent to judge. The standards of this town and of New York were probably vastly different. James welcomed the chance to enlarge his social experience. Promptly he accepted the lead offered.

"I'm sure it can't. To present the evidence cogently will take at least two hours. May I make the argument this evening, if it please the court, during a call?"

"But I understood you were too busy saving the state--from my father and my uncle by the way--to have time for a mere woman," she parried.

The good humor of her irony flattered him because it implied that she offered him a chance to cultivate her--he was not at all sure how much or how little that might mean--regardless of his political affiliations. Not many women were logical enough to accept so impersonally his opposition to the candidacy of an uncle and the plans of a father. "I AM busy," he admitted, "but I need a few hours' relaxation. It will help me to work more effectively to-morrow--against your father and your uncle," he came back with a smile that included them both.

Alice Frome took up the challenge gaily. "We're going to beat you. Father will be elected."

"Then I'll be the first to congratulate him," he promised. Turning to Mrs. Van Tyle, "Shall we say this evening?" he added.

"You're not afraid to venture yourself into the hands of the enemy," drawled that young woman, her indolent eyes daring him.

Again he studiously included them both in his answer. "I'm afraid all right, but I'm not going to let you know it. Did I hear you set a time?"

"If you are really willing to take the risk we shall be glad to see you this afternoon."

James observed that Alice Frome did not second her cousin's invitation. He temporized.

"Oh, this afternoon! I have an engagement, but I am tempted to forget it in remembering a subsequent one."

His smiling gaze passed to Alice and gave her another chance. Still she did not speak.

"The way to treat a temptation is to yield to it," the older cousin sparkled.

"In order to be done with it, I suppose. Very well. I yield to mine. This afternoon I will have the pleasure of calling at The Brakes."

Alice nodded a curt good-bye, but her cousin offered him a beautifully gloved hand to shake. A delightful tingle of triumph warmed him. The daughter of Big Joe Powers, the grim gray pirate who worked the levers of the great Transcontinental Railroad system, had taken pains to be nice to him. The only fly in the ointment of his self-satisfaction had been Alice Frome's reticence.

Why had she not shown any desire to have him call? He could guess at one reason. The campaign for the legislature and the subsequent battle for the senatorship had been bitter. Charges of corruption had been flung broadcast. A dozen detectives had been hired to get evidence on one side or the other. If he were seen going to The Brakes just now fifty rumors might be flying inside of the hour.

His guess was a good one. Alice drove the car forward several blocks without speaking, Valencia Van Tyle watching with good- humored contempt the little frown that rested on her cousin's candid face.

"I perceive that my uncompromising cousin is moved to protest," she suggested placidly.

"You ought not to have asked him, Val. It isn't fair to him or to father," answered Alice promptly. "People will talk. They will say father is trying to influence him unfairly. I wish you hadn't asked him till this fight is over."

"My dear Nora, does it matter in the least what people say?" yawned Valencia behind her hand.

"Not to you because you consider yourself above criticism. But it matters to me that two honest men should be brought into unjust obloquy without cause."

"My dear Hothead, they are big enough to look out for themselves."

"Nobody is big enough to kill slander."

"Nonsense, child. You make a mountain out of a mole hill. People WILL gossip. It really isn't of the least importance what they gabble about."

"Especially when you want to amuse yourself by making a fool of Mr. Farnum," retorted the downright Alice with a touch of asperity.

Valencia already half regretted having asked him. The chances were that he would prove a bore. But she did not choose to say so. "If I'm treading on your preserves, dear," she ventured sweetly.

"That's ridiculous," flushed Alice. "I only suggested that you wait till after the election before chaining him to your chariot wheels."

"You're certainly an enfant terrible, my dear," murmured the widow, with the little rippling laugh of cynicism her cousin found so annoying. "But that young man does need a lesson. He's eaten up with conceit of himself. Somebody ought to take him in hand."

"So you're going to sacrifice yourself to duty," scoffed Alice as she brought the electric to a stop under the porte-cochere of the Frome residence.

Mrs. Van Tyle folded her hands demurely. "It's sweet of you to see it that way, Alice."

Part 2

James turned in at the Century Building. In the elevator he met his cousin. Both of them were bound for the office of the candidate being supported by the progressives for the Senate.

"Anything new?" Jeff asked.

"A rumor that Killen has fallen by the wayside. Big Tim was with him for an hour last night at the Pacific."

"I've not been sure of Killen for quite a while. He's a weak sister."

"He'd better not go wrong if he expects to keep on living in this state," James imparted, a hard light in his eyes.

At the third floor they left the elevator and turned to the right under an arch bearing the sign Hardy, Elliott & Carson. Without knocking they passed into Hardy's private office.

Of the three men they found there it was plain that one was being pushed doggedly to bay. He was small and insignificant, with weak blinking eyes. Standing with his back to the wall, he moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.

"Who says it?" he whined shrilly. "Who says I sold out?"

An apoplectic, bull-necked ruffian stood directly in front of him and sawed the air violently with a fat forefinger.

"I ain't sayin' it, Killen--I'm askin' if you have. What I say is that you'd better make your will before you vote for Frome. Make 'em pay fat, for by thunder! you'll be political junk, Mr. Sam Killen."

Killen, sweating agony, turned appealingly to Jeff. "I haven't said I was going to vote for Frome. Mr. Rawson's got no right to bulldoze me and I'm not going to stand it."

"The hell you ain't," roared Rawson, shaking his fist at the unhappy legislator. "I guess you'll stand the gaff till you explain."

"Just a moment, Bob," interrupted Jeff. "Let's get at the facts. Don't convict the prisoner till the evidence is in."

Rawson hobbled his wrath for the moment. "That's all right, Jeff. You ask Hardy. I'm giving you straight goods."

The keen-eyed, smooth-shaven man in a gray business suit who had been listening silently to the gathering storm contributed information briefly and impartially.

"Mr. Killen spent an hour last night with Big Tim at the Pacific Hotel."

"Sneaked in by the side entrance and took the elevator to the seventh floor. The deal was arranged in Room 743," added Rawson.

"You spied on me," burst from Killen's lips.

"Sure thing. And we caught you with the goods," sneered the red- faced politician.

"I'll not stand it. I'll not support a man that won't trust me."

"You won't, eh?" Rawson was across the floor in two jumps, worrying his victim as a terrier does a rat. "Forget it. You were elected to support R. K. Hardy, sewed up with a pledge tight and fast. We're not in the primer class, Killen. Don't get a notion you're going to do as you damn please. You'll--vote--for--R.--K.-- Hardy. Get that?"

"I refuse to be moved by threats, and I decline to discuss the matter further," retorted Killen with a pitiable attempt at dignity.

Rawson laughed with insulting menace. "That's a good one. I've sold out, but it's none of your business what I got. That what you mean?"

"You surely must recognize our right to an explanation, Killen," Jeff said gently.

"No, sir, I don't," flushed the little man with sullen bravado. "I ain't got a thing against you, but Rawson goes too far."

"I think he does," Jeff agreed. "Killen is all right. Gentlemen, suppose you let him and me talk it over alone. We can reach an agreement that is satisfactory."

Hardy's face cleared. This was not the first waverer Jeff had brought back into line, not the first by several. There was something compelling in his friendly smile and affectionate manner.

"I'm sure Mr. Killen intends only what is right. I'm content to leave the matter entirely with you and him," Hardy said.

Jeff turned to Rawson. "And you, old warhorse?"

"Have it your own way, but don't forget there's a nigger in the woodpile."

Jeff and Killen walked to the office of the latter, which was on the next floor of the Century Building, the legislator stiffening his will to resist the assaults he felt would be made upon it. But as soon as the door was shut Jeff surprised him by laying a hand on his shoulder.

"Tell me all about it, Sam."

Killen gasped. He got an impossible vision of young Farnum as his brother in trouble. "About what? I didn't say--"

"I've known for a week something was wrong. I couldn't very well ask you, but since I've blundered in you'd better let me help you if I can."

Killen was touched. His lip trembled. "It don't do any good to talk about things. I guess a fellow has to carry his own griefs. Nobody else is hunting for a chance to invest in them."

"What's a friend for?" Jeff wanted to know gently.

The little man gulped. "I guess I've got no friends. Anyhow they don't count when a fellow's in hard luck. It's every man for himself."

The younger man's smile was warm as summer sunshine. "Wrong guess, Sam. We're in this little old world to help each other when we can."

The wretched man drew the back of a trembling hand across his moist eyes. He inhaled a long sobbing breath and broke into apology for his weakness. "Haven't slept for a week except from trional. The back of my head pricks day and night. Can't think of anything but my troubles."

"Unload them on me," Jeff said lightly.

"It's that mortgage on my mill," Killen blurted out. "It falls due this month and I can't meet it. Things haven't been going well with me."

"Can't you get it renewed?"

"Through a dummy Big Tim has bought it up. He won't renew, unless --" Killen broke off, to continue in a moment: "And that ain't all. My little girl needs an operation awful badly. The doctor says she had ought to go to Chicago. I just can't raise the price."

"How much is the mortgage?"

"Three thousand," replied the man; and he added with a gust of weak despair, "My God, man! That mill's all I've got to keep bread in the mouths of my motherless children."

"I reckon Big Tim has offered to cancel the mortgage notes and give you about a thousand to go on," Jeff suggested casually.

Killen nodded. "It would put me on my feet again and give the kiddie her chance." The answer had slipped out naturally, but now the fear chilled him that he had been lured into making a confession. "I didn't say I was going to take it," he added hastily.

"You're quite safe with me, Killen," Jeff told him. He was wondering whether he could not get Captain Chunn to take over the mortgage.

"I'm not so much struck on Hardy myself," grumbled the legislator. "He's a rich man, just as Frome is. Six of one and half a dozen of the other, looks like to me."

"No, Killen. Frome represents the Transcontinental and the utility corporations. Hardy stands for the people. And you're pledged to support Hardy. You mustn't forget that."

"I ain't likely to forget that mortgage either," Killen came back drearily.

"I think I can arrange about having the mortgage renewed. Will that do?"

"Yes. We're going to have a good year in the lumber business. Probably in twelve months I could clear it off."

"Good! And about the little girl--she'll have her chance. I promise you that."

The mill man wrung his hand, tears in his eyes. "You're a white man, Jeff, and a dashed good friend. I tell you I'd hate like poison to go back on Hardy. A fellow can't afford to do a thing like that. But what else could I do? A fellow's got to stand by the children he brings into the world, ain't he?"

Farnum evaded with a smile this discussion of moral issues. "Well, you can stand by them and us, too, if I can fix up this mortgage proposition for you."

"When will you let me know?" asked Killen anxiously.

"Will to-morrow morning do? In James' office, say."

"I'll have to know before noon," Killen reminded him, flushing with embarrassment.

"If I can arrange to get the money--and I think I can--I'll let you know at eleven. Don't worry, Sam. It will be all right."

The legislator shook hands again. "I ain't going to forget what you're doing for me. No, sir!"

Jeff laughed his thanks easily. "That's all right. I reckon you would have done as much for me. Sam Killen isn't the man to throw his friends down."

"That's right," returned the other with a sudden valiant infusion of courage. "I stand pat. I'm not going to lie down before the Transcontinental. Not on your life, I ain't."

They were walking toward the outer door as Killen's speech overflowed. "The Transcontinental doesn't own this state yet. No, sir! Nor Frome and Merrill either. We'll show 'em--"

The valor of the big voice collapsed like a rent balloon. For the office door had opened to let in Big Tim O'Brien. His shrewd eyes passed with whimsical disgust over Killen and rested on Farnum.

The situation made for amusement, since Jeff knew that Big Tim had heard over the transom enough to show that Killen's vote had been recaptured for Hardy.

"You've stumbled on a red hot Hardy ratification meeting. Did you come to get into the bandwagon while there is time, Tim?" Jeff asked with twinkling eyes.

"No sinking ship for mine. I guess I wouldn't ratify yet a while if I were youse, Farnum."

He stood aside to let the editor of the World pass. Jeff laughed. "Go to it, Tim."

"I haven't got anything to say to you, Mr. O'Brien," the mill man announced with heightened color.

"Maybe I've got something to say to youse, Mr. Killen."

Jeff passed out smiling. "Well, I'll not interrupt you. See you to-morrow, Sam."

Big Tim sat down heavily in a chair and pulled from his vest pocket a fat black cigar.

"Smoke, Killen?"

"No, thanks." The legislator spoke with stiff dignity.

Big Tim looked at the other man and his paunch shook with the merriment that appeared to convulse him.

"What's the matter?" snapped the mill man.

"I'm laughin' at the things I see, Killen. Man, but you're an easy mar-rk."

"How?"

"Can't you see they're stringin' youse for a sucker?"

"No, I can't see it. I've made up my mind. I'm going to stand by Hardy."

"Fine! Now I'll tell youse one thing. We're goin' to elect Frome to-morrow." O'Brien rose as one who has no time for unprofitable talk. "Your friends have sold youse out. I'm going to call on one of thim right now."

"I don't believe it."

"Of course you don't." Tim's projecting balcony shook with the humor of it. "But you'll be convinced when they take your mill from youse, me boy. It's a frame-up--and you're the goat."

With which shot he took his departure, too shrewd to attempt any argument. He had left behind him a doubt. That was all he could do just now.

Before Tim was out of the building Killen was gumshoeing after him. He meant to find out whether O'Brien had been lying when he said he was going to call on one of his friends. Fifty yards behind him Killen followed, along Powers Avenue, down Pacific Street, to the Equitable Building. From the pilot of one of the elevators he learned that the big boss had got off at the seventh floor and gone straight into James Farnum's office.

His mind was instantly alive with suspicions tumbling over each other in chaotic incoherency. There was a deal of some kind on foot. Jeff's cousin was in it. Then Jeff must be playing him for a sucker. His teeth set with a snap.

Meanwhile Big Tim was having a heart to heart talk with James K. Farnum.

The young lawyer had risen in surprise at the entrance of O'Brien. The big fellow, laughing easily, had helped himself to a chair.

"Make yourself at home, Tim," he said jauntily.

"Anything I can do for you, Mr. O'Brien?" James asked with stiff dignity.

"Sure. Or I wouldn't be here. Sit down. I'll not bite ye."

The lawyer continued to stand.

"I've come to tell you that I'm a dammed fool, Mr. Farnum," the boss grinned.

James bowed slightly. He did not know what was coming, but he had no intention of committing himself to anything as yet.

"In ever lettin' youse get away from me. I mistook yez for a kid glove."

Big Tim gazed with palpable admiration at the cleancut figure, at the square cleft chin in the strong handsome face. It was his opinion this young man would go far, and that every step of the way would be in the interests of James K. Farnum. Shrewdly he guessed that the way to pierce that impassive front was through an appeal to vanity and to selfinterest.

James waited, alert and expressionless, but O'Brien, having made his apology, puffed in silence.

"I think you suggested some business that brought you," James reminded him.

"You've got in you the makings of a big man. Nothing on the coast to touch youse, Mr. Farnum. And I didn't see it. I was sore on your name. That was what was bitin' me. It's sure on Big Tim this time."

None of the triumph that flooded Farnum reached the surface.

"I think I don't quite understand," he said quietly.

"I'm eatin' humble pie because youse slipped wan over on me. You're the best campaign speaker in the state, bar none, boy as you are."

James could not keep his gratified smile down. "This heart-felt testimonial comes free, I take it," he pretended to mock.

"Come off with youse," O'Brien flung back good humoredly. "I'm not here to hand you booquets, but to talk business. Here's the nub of it, me boy. You need me, and I need you."

"I don't quite see how I need you, Mr. O'Brien."

"That's because you're young yet and don't know the game. Let me tell you this." The boss leaned forward, his hard eyes focused on Farnum. "You'll never get anywhere so long as youse trail with that reform bunch. It's all hot air and tomfool theory. Populism and socialism! Take my wor-rd for it, there's nothin' to 'em."

"I'm neither a populist nor a socialist, Mr. O'Brien."

"Coorse you're not. I can see that with wan eye shut. That's why I hate to see youse ruin yourself with them that are. I've no need to tell you that this country's run by business men and not cranks. Me, I'm a business man, and I run the city. P. C. Frome's a business man; so's Merrill. That's why they're on top. Old Joe Powers is a business man from first to last. You'll never get anywhere, me boy, until youse look at things from a business point of view."

If James was impressed he gave no sign of it. "Which means you want me to support P. C. for the Senate. Is that it?"

"I don't care whether you do or don't. We've got this fight won. But this is only the beginning. I can see that. Agitators and trouble breeders are busy iverywhere. Line up right and you've got a big future before you. Joe Powers himself has noticed your speeches. P. C. told me that last night."

For a moment the lawyer felt an exultant paeon of victory beat in his blood. His imagination saw the primrose path of the future stretch before him in a golden glow. The surge of triumph passed and he was himself again, cool and wary. His eyes met Big Tim's full and straight. "I was elected to support Hardy. I expect to stay with him."

The political boss waved aside this declaration. "Sure. Of course you've got to VOTE for him. I've got too much horse sense to try to buy YOU. But after this election? Your whole future's not tied up with fool reformers, is it? Say, what's the matter with you havin' a talk with P. C.?"

"Oh, I'll talk with him. P. C. and I are good friends."

"When can you see him? Why not to-night?"

"No hurry, is there?" James paused an instant before he added: "I'm going to The Brakes this afternoon on a social call. If Frome happens to be at home we might talk then. So far as making a direct appointment with him, I wouldn't care to do that until the senatorial election is decided. You understand that I pledge myself to nothing."

"That's right," agreed Big Tim. "It don't do any harm to hear both sides of a proposition. I guess that cousin o' yours kind of hypnotized you. He's got more fool schemes for redeemin' this state. Far as I can see it don't need any redeemin'. It's loaded to the rails with prosperity and clippin' off its sixty miles an hour. I say, let well enough alone. Where youse keep your matches, Mr. Farnum? Thanks! Well, talk it over with P. C. I reckon you can get together. So long, me boy."

Not until he was safe in the street did the big boss of Verden allow his satisfaction expression.

"We've got him! We've got the boob hooked!" he told himself exultantly.

A little man standing behind a showcase was watching him tensely.

CHAPTER 9

"Man is for woman made, And woman made for man As the spur is for the jade, As the scabbard for the blade, As for liquor is the can, So man's for woman made, And woman made for man."

THE HERO STUDIES THE MONA LISA SMILE IN ITS PROPER SETTING. INCIDENTALLY, HE MEETS AN EMPIRE BUILDER

Since James was not courting observation he took as inconspicuous a way as possible to The Brakes. He was irritably conscious of the incongruity of his elaborate afternoon dress with the habits of democratic Verden, which had been too busy "boosting" itself into a great city, or at least one in the making, to have found time to establish as yet a leisure class.

Leaving the car at the entrance to Lakeview Park, he cut across it by sinuous byways where madronas and alders isolated him from the twilit green of the open lawn. Though it was still early the soft winter dusk of the Pacific Northwest was beginning to render objects indistinct. This perhaps may have been the reason he failed to notice the skulking figure among the trees that dogged him to his destination.

James laughed at himself for the exaggerated precaution he took to cover a perfectly defensible action. Why shouldn't he visit at the house of P. C. Frome? Entirely clear as to his right, he yet preferred his call not to become a matter of public gossip. For he did not need to be told that there would be ugly rumors if it should get out that Big Tim had called at his office for a conference and he had subsequently been seen going to The Brakes. Dunderheads not broad enough to separate social from political intercourse would be quick to talk unpleasantly about it.

Deflecting from the path into a carriage driveway, he came through a woody hollow to the rear of The Brakes. The grounds were spacious, rolling toward the road beyond in a falling sweep of wellkept lawn. He skirted the green till he came to a "raveled walk that zig-zagged up through the grass, leaving to the left the rough fern-clad bluff that gave the place its name.

The man who let him in had apparently received his instructions, for he led Farnum to a rather small room in the rear of the big house. Its single occupant was reclining luxuriantly among a number of pillows on a lounge. From her lips a tiny spiral of smoke rose like incense to the ceiling. James was conscious of a little ripple of surprise as he looked down upon the copper crown of splendid hair above which rested the thin nimbus of smoke. He had expected a less intimate reception.

But the astonishment had been sponged from his face before Valencia Van Tyle rose and came forward, cigarette in hand.

"You did find time."

"Was it likely I wouldn't?"

"How should I know?" her little shrug seemed to say with an indifference that bordered on insolence.

James was piqued. After all then she had not opened to him the door to her friendship. She was merely amusing herself with him as a provincial pis aller.

Perhaps she saw his disappointment, for she added with a touch of warmth: "I'm glad you came. Truth is, I'm bored to death of myself."

"Then I ought to be welcome, for if I don't exorcise the devils of ennui you can now blame me."

"I shall. Try that big chair, and one of these Egyptians."

He helped himself to a cigarette and lit up as casually as if he had been in the habit of smoking in the lounging rooms of the ladies he knew. She watched him sink lazily into the chair and let his glance go wandering over the room. In his face she read the indolent sense of pleasure he found in sharing so intimately this sanctum of her more personal life.

The room was a bit barbaric in its warmth of color, as barbaric as was the young woman herself in spite of her super-civilization. The walls, done in an old rose, were gilded and festooned to meet a ceiling almost Venetian in its scheme of decoration. Pink predominated in the brocaded tapestries and in the rugs, and the furniture was a luxurious modern compromise with the Louis Quinze. There were flowers in profusion--his gaze fell upon the American Beauties he had sent an hour or two ago--and a disorder of popular magazines and French novels. Farnum did not need to be told that the room was as much an exotic as its mistress.

"You think?" her amused voice demanded when his eyes came back to her. "that the room seems made especially for you."

She volunteered information. "My uncle gave me a free hand to arrange and decorate it."

As he looked at her, smoking daintily in the fling of the fire glow, every inch the pampered heiress of the ages, his blood quickened to an appreciation of the sensuous charm of sex she breathed forth so indifferently. The clinging crepe-de-chine-- except in public she did not pretend even to a conventional mourning for the scamp whose name she bore lent accent to her soft, rounded curves, and the slow, regular rise and fall of her breathing beneath the filmy lace promised a perfect fullness of bust and throat. He was keenly responsive to the physical allure of sex, and Valencia Van Tyle was endowed with more than her share of magnetic aura.

"You have expressed yourself. It's like you," he said with finality.

Her tawny eyes met his confident appraisal ironically. "Indeed! You know then what I am like?"

"One uses his eyes, and such brains as heaven has granted him," he ventured lightly.

"And what am I like?" she asked indolently.

"I'm hoping to know that better soon--I merely guess now."

"They say all women are egoists--and some men." She breathed her soft inscrutable ripple of laughter. "Let me hasten to confess, and crave a picture of myself."

"But the subject deserves an artist," he parried.

"He's afraid," she murmured to the fire. "He makes and unmakes senators--this Warwick; but he's afraid of a girl."

James lit a fresh cigarette in smiling silence.

"He has met me once--twice--no, three times," she meditated aloud. "But he knows what I'm like. He boasts of his divination and when one puts him to the test he repudiates."

"All I should have claimed is that I know I don't know what you are like."

"Which is something," she conceded.

"It's a good deal," he claimed for himself. "It shows a beginning of understanding. And--given the opportunity--I hope to know more." He questioned of her eyes how far he might go. "It's the incomprehensible that lures. It piques interest and lends magic. Behind those eyelids a little weary all the subtle hidden meaning of the ages shadows. The gods forbid that I should claim to hold the answer to the eternal mystery of woman."

"Dear me! I ask for a photograph and he gives me a poem," she mocked, touching an electric button.

"I try merely to interpret the poem."

She looked at him under lowered lids with a growing interest. Her experience had not warranted her in hoping that he would prove worth while. It would be clear gain if he were to disappoint her agreeably.

"I think I have read somewhere that the function of present-day criticism is to befog the mind and blur the object criticised."

He considered an answer, but gave it up when a maid appeared with a tray, and after a minute of deft arrangement disappeared to return with the added paraphernalia that goes to the making and consuming of afternoon tea.

James watched in a pleasant content the easy grace with which the flashing hands of his hostess manipulated the brew. Presently she flung open a wing of the elaborate cellaret that stood near and disclosed a gleaming array of cut-glass decanters. Her fingers hovered over them.

"Cognac?"

"Think I'll take my tea straight just as you make it."

"Most Western men don't care for afternoon tea. You should hear my father on the subject."

"I can imagine him." He smiled. "But if he has tried it with you I should think he'd be converted."

She laughed at him in the slow tantalizing way that might mean anything or nothing. "I absolve you of the necessity of saying pretty things. Instead, you may continue that portrait you were drawing when the maid interrupted."

"It's a subject I can't do justice."

She laughed disdainfully. "I thought it was time for the flattery. As if I couldn't extort that from any man. It's the A B C of our education. But the truth about one's self--the unpalatable, bitter truth--there's a sting of unexpected pleasure in hearing that judicially."

"And do you get that pleasure often?"

"Not often. Men are dreadful cowards, you know. My father is about the only man who dares tell it to me."

Farnum put down his cup and studied her. She was leaning back with her fingers laced behind her head. He wondered whether she knew with what effectiveness the posture set off her ripe charms--the fine modeling of the full white throat, the perfect curves of the dainty arms bare to the elbows, the daring set of the tawny, tilted head. A spark glowed in his eyes.

"Far be it from me to deny you an accessible pleasure, though I sacrifice myself to give it. But my sketch must be merely subjective. I draw the picture as I see it."

She sipped her tea with an air of considering the matter. "You promise at least a family likeness, with not an ugly wrinkle of character smoothed away."

"I don't even promise that. For how am I to know what meaning lurks behind that subtle, shadowy smile? There's irony in it--and scorn--and sensuous charm--but back of them all is the great enigma."

"He's off," she derided slangily.

"And that enigma is the complex YOU I want to learn. Of course you're a specialized type, a product of artistic hothouse propagation. You're so exquisite in your fastidiousness that to be near you is a luxury. Simplicity and you have not a bowing acquaintance. One looks to see your most casual act freighted with intentions not obvious."

"The poor man thinks I invited him here to propose to him," she told the fire gravely, stretching out her little slippered feet toward it.

He laughed. "I'm not so presumptuous. You wouldn't aim at such small game. You would be quite capable of it if you wanted to, but you don't. But I'm devoured with curiosity to know why you asked me, though of course I shan't find out."

Her narrowed eyes swept him with amusement. "If I knew myself! Alice says it was to make a fool of you. I don't think she is right. But if she is I'm in to score a failure. You're too coolheaded and--" She stopped, her eyes sparkling with the daring of her unvoiced suggestion.

"Say it," he nodded.

"--and selfish to be anybody's fool. Perhaps I asked you just in the hope you might prove interesting."

He got up and stood with his arm on the mantel. From his superior height he looked down on her dainty insolent perfection, answering not too seriously the challenge of her eyes. No matter what she meant--how much or how little she was wonderfully attractive. The provocation of the mocking little face lured mightily.

"I am going to prove interested at any rate. Let's hope it may be a preliminary to being interesting."

"But it never does. Symptoms of too great interest bore one. I enjoy more the men who are impervious to me. Now there's my father. He comes nearer understanding me than anybody else, but he's quite adamantine to my wiles."

"I shall order a suit of chain armor at once."

"An unnecessary expense. Your emotions are quite under control," she told him saucily.

"I wish I were as sure."

"I thought you promised to be interesting," she complained.

"Now you're afraid I'm going to make love to you. Let me relieve your mind. I'm not."

"I knew you wouldn't be so stupid," she assured him.

"No objection to my admiring your artistic effect at a distance, as a spectator in a gallery?"

"I shall expect that," she rippled.

"Just as one does a picture too expensive to own."

"I suppose I AM expensive."

"Not a doubt of it. But if you don't mind I'll come occasionally to the gallery to study the masterpiece."

"I'll mind if you don't."

Voices were heard approaching along the hall. The portieres parted. The immediate effect on Farnum of the great figure that filled the doorway was one of masterful authority. A massive head crested a figure of extraordinary power. Gray as a mediaeval castle, age had not yet touched his gnarled strength. The keen steady eyes, the close straight lips, the shaggy eyebrows heavy and overhanging, gave accent to the rugged force of this grim freebooter who had reversed the law of nature which decrees that railroads shall follow civilization. Scorning the established rule of progress, he had spiked his rails through untrodden forests and unexplored canons to watch the pioneer come after by the road he had blazed. Chief among the makers of the Northwest, he yearly conceived and executed with amazing audacity enterprises that would have marked as monumental the life work of lesser men.

Farnum, rising from his seat unconsciously as a tribute of respect, acknowledged thus tacitly the presence of greatness in the person of Joe Powers.

The straight lips of the empire builder tightened as his eyes gleamed over the soft luxury of his daughter's boudoir. James would have been hard put to it to conceive any contrast greater than the one between this modern berserk and the pampered daughter of his wealth. A Hun or a Vandal gazing down with barbaric scorn on some decadent paramour of captured Rome was the most analogous simile Farnum's brain could summon. What freak of nature, he wondered, had been responsible for so alien an offspring to this ruthless builder? And what under heaven had the two in common except the blood that ran in both their veins?

Peter C. Frome, who had followed his brother-in-law into the room, introduced the young man to the railroad king.

The great man's grip drove the blood from Farnum's hand.

"I've heard about you, young man. What do you mean by getting in my way?"

The young man's veins glowed. He had made Joe Powers notice him. Not for worlds would he have winked an eyelash, though the bones of his hand felt as if they were being ground to powder.

"Do I get in your way, sir?" he asked innocently.

"Do you?" boomed the deep bass of the railroader. "You and that mad brother of yours."

"He's my cousin," James explained.

"Brother or cousin, he's got to get off the track or be run over. And you, too, with that smooth tongue of yours."

Farnum laughed. "Jeff's pretty solid. He may ditch the train, sir."

"No!" roared Powers. "He'll be flung into the ditch." He turned abruptly to Frome. "Peter, take me to a room where I can talk to this young man. I need him."

"'Come into my little parlor,' said the spider to the fly."

They wheeled as at a common rein to the sound of the young mocking voice. Alice Frome had come in unnoticed and was standing in the doorway smiling at them. The effect she produced was demurely daring. The long lines of her slender sylph-like body, the girlishness of her golden charm, were vigorously contradicted in their suggestion of shyness by the square tilted chin and the challenge in the dancing eyes.

"Alice," admonished her father with a deprecatory apology in his voice to his brother-in-law.

Powers knit his shaggy brows in a frown not at all grim. The young woman smiled back confidently. She could go farther with him than anybody else in the world could, and she knew it. For he recognized in her vigorous strength of fiber a kinship of the spirit closer than that between him and his own daughter. An autocrat to the marrow, it pleased him to recognize her an exception to his rule. Valencia was also an exception, but in a different way.

"Have you any remarks to make, Miss Frome?" he asked.

"Oh, I've made it," returned the girl unabashed. She turned to James and shook hands with him. "How do you do, Mr. Farnum? I see you are going to be tied to Uncle Joe's kite, too."

Was there in her voice just a hint of scorn? James did not know. He laughed a little uneasily.

"Shall I be swallowed up alive, Miss Frome?"

"You think you won't, but you will. He always gets what he wants."

For all the warmth and energy of youth in her there was a vivid spiritual quality that had always made a deep appeal to James. He sensed the something fine and exquisite she breathed forth and did reverence to it.

"And what does he want now?" the young man parried.

"He wants YOU."

"Unless you would like him yourself, Alice," her uncle countered.

The color washed into her cheeks. "Not just now, thank you. I was merely giving him a friendly warning."

"I'm awfully obliged to you. I'll be on my guard," laughed James.

He stepped across to the lounge to make his farewell to Mrs. Van Tyle.

"You'll come again," she said in a low voice.

"Whenever the gallery is open--if I am sent a ticket of admission."

"Wouldn't it be better to apply for a ticket and not wait for it to be sent?"

"I think it would--and to apply for one often."

"I am waiting, Mr. Farnum," interrupted Powers impatiently.

To the young man the suggestion sounded like a command. He bowed to Alice and followed the great man out of the room.

CHAPTER 10

Many business men of every community are respectable cowards. The sense of property fills them with a cramping timidity. --From the Note Book of a Dreamer.

SAFE AND SOUND BUSINESS RALLIES TO THE DEFENSE OF THE COUNTRY. THE REBEL, FRUSTRATED, PLANS FURTHER VILLAINIES

Part 1

When James reached his office next morning he found Killen waiting for him. One glance at the weak defiant face told him that the legislator was again in revolt. The lawyer felt a surge of disgust sweep over him. All through the session he had cajoled and argued the weak-kneed back into line. Why didn't Hardy do his own dirty work instead of leaving it to him to soil his hands with these cheap grafters?"

No longer ago than yesterday it had been a keen pleasure to feel himself so important a factor in the struggle, to know that his power and his personality were of increasing value to his side.

But to-day--somehow the salt had gone out of it. The value of the issue had dwindled, his enthusiasm gone stale. After all, what did it matter who was elected? Why should not the corporate wealth that was developing the country see that men were chosen to office who would safeguard vested interests? It was all very well for Jeff to talk about democracy and the rights of the people. But Jeff was an impracticable idealist. He, James, stood for success. Within the past twenty-four hours there had been something of a shift of standards for him.

His visit to The Brakes had done that for him. He craved luxury just as he did power, and the house on the hill had said the final word of both to him in the personalities of Joe Powers and his daughter. It had come home to him that the only way to satisfy his ambition was by making money and a lot of it. This morning, with the sharpness of his hunger rendering him irritable, he was in no mood to conciliate disaffectants to the cause of which he was himself beginning to weary.

"Well?" he demanded sharply of Killen.

"I've been looking for your cousin, but I can't find him. He was to have met me here later."

"Then I presume he'll be here when he said he would." The eyes of the lawyer were cold and hard as jade.

"You can tell him it won't be necessary for me to see him. I've made other arrangements," Killen said uneasily.

"You mean that you repudiate your agreement with him. Is that it?" Farnum's voice was like a whiplash.

"I've decided to support Frome. Fact is--"

"Oh, damn the facts! You made an agreement. You're going to sell out. That's all there is to it."

The young man's face was dark with furious disgust.

Killen flared up. "You better be careful how you talk to me, Mr. Farnum. I might want to know what Big Tim was doing in your office yesterday. I might want to know what business took you up to The Brakes by a mighty roundabout way."

James strode forward in a rage. "Get out of here before I throw you out, you little spying blackguard."

"You bet I'll get out," screamed the mill man. "Get clear out and have nothing more to do with your outfit. But I want to tell you that folks will talk a lot when they know how you and Big Tim fixed up a deal--" Killen, backing toward the door as he spoke, broke off to hasten his exit before the lawyer's threatening advance.

James slammed the door shut on him and paced up and down in an impotent fury of passion. "The dirty little blackleg! He'd like to bracket me in the same class as himself. He'd like to imply that I--By Heaven, if he opens his lying mouth to a hint of such a thing I'll horsewhip the little cad."

But running uneasily through his mind was an undercurrent of disgust--with himself, with Jeff, with the whole situation. Why had he ever let himself get mixed up with such an outfit? Government by the people! The thing was idiotic, mere demagogic cant. Power was to the strong. He had always known it. But yesterday that old giant at The Brakes had hammered it home to him. He did not like to admit even to himself that his folly had betrayed Hardy's cause, but at bottom he knew he should not have gone to The Brakes until after the election and that he ought never to have let Killen out of the office without an explanation. Yesterday he would have won back the man somehow by an appeal to his loyalty and his self-interest.

He must send word at once to Jeff and let him try to remedy the mischief.

His cousin, coming into the office with Rawson just as James took down the receiver of the telephone, noticed at once the disturbance of the latter.

James told his story. It was clear to him that he must anticipate Killen's disclosure of his visit to The Brakes and so draw the sting from it as far as possible. But his natural reluctance to shoulder blame made him begin with Killen's defection.

"I told you to let me deal with the little traitor," Rawson exploded.

"He was quite satisfied when I left him yesterday. They must have got at him again," Jeff suggested. "I left O'Brien with him. But I was dead sure of him."

James cleared his throat and began casually. "I expect the little beggar got suspicious when he saw Big Tim coming to my office."

"To your office?" Rawson cut in sharply.

The lawyer flushed, but his eyes met and quelled the incipient doubt in those of the politician. "Yes, he came to feel the ground. Of course I told him flatly where I stood. But Killen must have thought something was doing he wasn't in on. It seems he followed me to The Brakes yesterday afternoon when I called on Mrs. Van Tyle."

"Followed you to The Brakes. Good Lord!" groaned Rawson. "What in Mexico were you doing there?"

"Thought I mentioned that I was calling on Mrs. Van-Tyle," returned James stiffly.

"Wasn't that call a little injudicious under the circumstances, James?" contributed Jeff with his whimsical smile.

"I suppose I may call wherever I please."

"It was a piece of dashed foolishness, that's what it was. You say Killen saw you. The thing will fly like dust in the wind. It will be buzzed all over the House by this time and every man that wants to sell out will find a reason right there," stormed Rawson.

"Are you implying that I sold out?" demanded James icily.

Jeff put a conciliatory hand on his cousin's shoulder. "Of course he doesn't. He isn't a fool, James. But there's a good deal in what Rawson says. It was a mistake. The waverers will find in it their excuse for deserting. Of course Big Tim has been at them all night. We'll go right up to the House in your machine, Rawson. We haven't a moment to lose."

Rawson nodded. "It's dollars to doughnuts the thing is past mending, but it's up to us to see. If I can only get at Killen in time I'll choke the story in his throat. You wait here at the 'phone, Jeff, and I'll call you up if you're needed at this end of the line. Better have a taxi waiting below in case you need one. Come along, James."

If he did not get to Killen in time it was not Rawson's fault, for he made his car flash up and down Verden's hills with no regard to the speed limit. He swept it along Powers Avenue, dodging in and out among the traffic of the busy city like a halfback through a broken field after a kick. With a twist of the wheel he put the machine at the steep hill of Yarnell Way, climbed the brow of it, and plunged with a flying leap down the long incline to the State House.

James clung to the swaying side of the car as it raced down. It was raining hard, and the drops stung their faces like bird shot. Two hundred yards in front appeared a farm wagon, leaped toward them, and disappeared in the gulf behind. A dog barking at them from the roadside was for an instant and then was not. In their wake they left cursing teamsters, frightened horses, women and children scurrying for safety; and in the driver's seat Rawson sat goggle-eyed and rigid, swallowing the miles that lay in front of him.

The car took the last incline superbly and swung up the asphalt carriage way to a Yale finish at the marble stairway of the State House. Rawson was running up the steps almost before the machine had stopped. Farnum caught him at the elevator and a minute later they entered together the assembly room of the House.

One swift glance told Rawson that Killen was not in his seat, and as his eyes swept the room he noted also the absence of Pitts, Bentley, and Miller. Of the doubtful votes only Ashton and Reilly were present.

He flung a question anything of Bentley, Akers?"

"Mr. Bentley! Why, yes, sir. He was called to the telephone a few minutes ago and he left at once. Mr. Miller went with him, and Mr. Pitts."

"Were Ashton and Reilly here then?"

"No, sir. They came in a moment before you did."

Rawson drew Farnum to one side and whispered.

"Killen must have gone right from your room to Big Tim. They got the others on the phone. They must have been on that street car we met a mile back. There's just a chance to head 'em off. I'll chase back in my machine while you call up Jeff and have him meet the car as it comes in. Tell him not to let them out of his sight if he has to hold them with a gun. You keep an eye on Reilly and Ashton. Don't let anyone talk to them or get them on the phone. Better take them up to the library."

James nodded sulkily. He did not like Rawson's peremptory manner any the better because he knew his indiscretion had called it down upon him. What he had been unable to forget for the past hour was that if this break to Frome had happened yesterday it would have been he that gave the orders and Rawson who jumped to execute them. Now he had slipped back to second place.

He caught Jeff on the line and repeated Rawson's orders without comment of his own, after which he went back from the committee room, gathered up Reilly and Ashton, and took them on a pretext to the library.

It must have been nearly an hour later that a messenger boy handed James a note. It was a hasty scribble from Rawson.

Euchred, by thunder! Both Jeff and I missed them. Big Tim butted in with a car at Grover Street before we could make connections. Am waiting at the House for them. Don't bring A. & R. in till time to vote. FROME CAN'T WIN IF YOU MAKE THEM BOTH STICK.

James stuck the note in his pocket and flung himself with artificial animation into the story he was telling. Once or twice the others suggested a return to the House, but he always had just one more good story they must hear. Since only routine business was under way there was no urgency, and when at length they returned to the House chamber the clock pointed to five minutes to twelve.

Rawson and two or three of the staunchest Hardy men relieved Farnum of his charge in the cloak room and took care of the two doubtfuls. The seats of Bentley, Miller, Pitts and Killen were still vacant, and there was a tense watchfulness in the room that showed rumors were flying of a break in the deadlock.

Already the state senators were drifting in for the noon joint sessions, and along with them came presently the missing assemblymen flanked by O'Brien and Frome adherents.

The President of the Senate called the session to order and announced that the eleventh general assembly would now proceed to take the sixty-fourth ballot for the election of a United States Senator.

In an oppressive silence the clerk began to call the roll.

"Allan."

A raw-boned farmer from one of the coast counties rose and answered "Hardy."

"Anderson."

In broken English a fat Swede shouted, "Harty."

"Ashton."

"Hardy." The word fell hesitantly from dry lips. The man would have voted for the Transcontinental candidate had he dared, but he was not sure enough that the crucial moment was at hand and the pressure of his environment was too great.

"Bentley."

Three hundred eyes focused expectantly on the gaunt white-faced legislator who rose nervously at the sound of his name and almost inaudibly gulped the word "Frome."

A fierce tumult of rage and triumph rose and fell and swelled again. Bentley became the center of a struggling vortex of roaring humanity and found himself tossed hither and thither like a chip in a choppy sea.

It was many minutes before the clerk could proceed with the roll- call. When his name was reached James said "Hardy" in a clear distinct voice that brought from the gallery a round of applause sharply checked by the presiding officer. Killen gave his vote for Frome tremulously and shrank from the storm he had evoked. Rawson could be seen standing on his seat, one foot on the top of his desk, shaking his fist at him in purple apoplectic rage, the while his voice rose above the tumult, "You damned Judas! You damned little traitor!"

The presiding officer beat in vain with his gavel for quiet. Not until they had worn themselves to momentary exhaustion could the roll-call be continued.

Miller and Pitts voted for Frome and stirred renewed shouts of support and execration.

"Takes one more change to elect Frome. All depends on Reilly now," Rawson whispered hoarsely to Jeff. "If he sticks we're safe for another twenty-four hours."

But Reilly, knowing the decisive moment had come, voted for Frome and gave him the one more needed to elect. Pandemonium was loose at once. The Transcontinental forces surrounded him and fought off the excited men he had betrayed who tried to get at him to make him change his vote. The culminating moment of months of battle had come and mature men gave themselves to the abandon of the moment like college boys after a football game.

When at last the storm had subsided Ashton, who had seen several thousand dollars go glimmering because his initial came at the beginning of the alphabet instead of at the close, in the hope of still getting into the bandwagon in time moved to make the election unanimous. His suggestion was rejected with hoots of derision, and Frome made the conventional speech of acceptance to a House divided against itself.

Jeff joined his cousin as he was descending the steps to the lower hall. "Don't blame yourself, old man. It would have happened anyhow in a day or two. They were looking for a chance to desert. We couldn't have held them. Better luck next time."

James found cold comfort in such consolation. He was dissatisfied with the part he had played in the final drama. Instead of being the hero of the hour, he was the unfortunate whose blunder had started the avalanche. Yet he was gratified when Rawson said in effect the same thing as Jeff.

"And I'm going to have the pleasure of telling that damned little Killen what I think of him," the politician added with savage satisfaction.

"Don't blame him. He's only a victim. What we must do is to change the system that makes it possible to defeat the will of the people through money," Jeff said.

"How are you going about it?" Rawson demanded incredulously.

"We'll go after the initiative and referendum right now while the people are stirred up about this treachery. The very men who threw us down will support us to try and square themselves. The bill will slip through as if it were oiled," Jeff prophesied.

"Oh, hang your initiative and referendum. I'm a politician, not a socialist reformer," grinned Rawson.

James said nothing.

Part 2

If the years were bringing Jeff a sharper realization of the forces that control so much of life they were giving him too the mellowness that can be in revolt without any surrender of faith in men. He could for instance now look back on his college days and appreciate the kindness and the patience of the teachers whom he had then condemned. They had been conformists. No doubt they had compromised to the pressure of their environment. But somehow he felt much less like judging men than he used to in the first flush of his intellectual awakening. It was perhaps this habit of making allowance for weakness, together with his call to the idealism in them, that made him so effective a worker with men.

He was as easy as an old shoe, but people sensed the steel in him instinctively. In his quiet way he was coming to be a power. For one thing he was possessed of the political divination that understands how far a leader may go without losing his following. He knew too how to get practical results. It was these qualities that enabled him out of the wreckage of the senatorial defeat to build a foundation of victory for House Bill 77.

To bring into effect Jeff's pet measure of the initiative and referendum necessitated an amendment to the state constitution, which must be passed by two successive legislative assemblies and ratified by a vote of the people in order to become effective. The bill had been slumbering in committee, but immediately after the senatorial election Jeff insisted on having it brought squarely to the attention of the House.

His feeling for the psychological moment was a true one and he succeeded by a skillful newspaper campaign in rallying the people to his support. The sense of outrage felt at this shameless purchase of a seat in the Senate, accented by a knowledge of its helplessness to avenge the wrong done it, counted mightily in favor of H. B. No. 77 just now. It promised a restoration of power to the people, and the clamor for its passage became insistent.

A good deal of quiet lobbying had been done for the bill, and the legislators who had sold themselves, having received all they could reasonably expect from the allied corporations, were anxious to make a show of standing for their constituents. Politicians in general considered the bill a "freak" one. Some who voted for it explained that they did not believe in it, but felt the people should have a chance to vote on it themselves. By a large majority it passed the House. Two days later it squeezed through the Senate.

Rawson, who had been persuaded half against his judgment to support the bill, lunched with Jeff that day.

"Now watch the corporations dig a grave for your little pet at the next legislature," he chuckled, helping himself to bread while he waited for the soup.

"They may. Then again they may not," Farnum answered. "We are ruled by political machines and corporations only as long as we let them. I've a notion the people are going to assert themselves at the next election."

"How are you going to make the will of the dear people effective with the assembly?" asked Rawson, amused.

"Make the initiative and referendum the issue of the campaign. Pledge the legislators to vote for it before nominating them."

"Pledge them?" grinned Rawson cynically. "Weren't they pledged to support Hardy? And did they?"

"No, but they'll stick next time, I think."

"You're an incurable optimist, my boy."

"It isn't optimism this time. It's our big stick."

"Didn't know we had one."

"Do you remember House Bill 19?"

"No. What's that got to do with it?"

"It slipped through early in the session. Anderson introduced it. Nobody paid any attention to it because he's a back country Swede and his bill was very wordy. The governor signed it to-day. That bill provides for the recall of any public official, alderman or legislator if the people are not satisfied with his conduct."

The big man stared. "I thought it only applied to district road supervisors. Were you back of that bill, Jeff?"

"I had it drawn up and helped steer it through the committee, though I was careful not to appear interested."

"You sly old fox! And nobody guessed it had general application. None of us read the blamed thing through. You're going to use it as a club to make the legislators stand pat on their pledges."

"Yes."

"But don't you see how revolutionary your big stick is?" Rawson's smile was expansive. "Why, hang it, man, you're destroying the fundamental value of representative government. It's a deliberate attack on graft."

"Looks like it, doesn't it?"

It was while Rawson was waiting for his mince pie piled with ice cream that he ventured a delicate question.

"Say, Jeff! What about James? Is he getting ready to flop over to the enemy?"

"No. Why do you ask that?"

"I notice he explained when he voted for House Bill 77 that he reserved the right to oppose it later. Said he hadn't made up his mind, but felt the people should be given a chance to express themselves on it."

Upon Farnum's face rested a momentary gravity. "I can't make James out lately. He's lost his enthusiasm. Half the time he's irritable and moody. I think perhaps he's been blaming himself too much for Hardy's defeat."

Rawson laughed with cynical incredulity. "That's it, is it?"

CHAPTER 11

"Faustina hath the fairest face, And Phillida the better grace; Both have mine eye enriched: This sings full sweetly with her voice; Her fingers make so sweet a noise; Both have mine ear bewitched. Ah me! sith Fates have so provided, My heart, alas! must be divided."

THE HERO, ASSISTED BY THE MONA LISA SMILE, DEPLORES THE DEBILITATING EFFECTS OF MODERN CIVILIZATION

Part 1

With the adjournment of the legislature politics became a less absorbing topic of interest. James at least was frankly glad of this, for his position had begun to be embarrassing. He could not always stand with a foot in either camp. As yet he had made no break with the progressives. Joe Powers had given him a hint that he might be more useful where he was. But as much as possible he was avoiding the little luncheons at which Jeff and his political friends were wont to foregather. He gave as an excuse the rush of business that was swamping him. His excuse at least had the justification of truth. His speeches had brought him a good many clients and Frome was quietly throwing cases his way.

It was at one of these informal little noonday gatherings that Rawson gave his opinion of the legal ability of James.

"He isn't any great lawyer, but he never gives it away. He knows how to wear an air of profound learning with a large and impressive silence. Roll up the whole Supreme Court into one and it can't look any wiser than James K. Farnum."

Miller laughed. "Reminds me of what I heard last week. Jeff was walking down Powers Avenue with James and an old fellow stopped me to point them out. There go the best citizen and the worst citizen in this town, he said. I told him that was rather hard on James. You ought to have heard him. For him James is the hero of the piece and Jeff the villain."

"Half the people in this town have got that damn fool notion," Captain Chunn interrupted violently.

"More than half, I should say."

"Every day or two I hear about how dissipated Jeff used to be and how if it were not for his good and noble cousin he would have gone to the deuce long ago," Rawson contributed.

Chunn pounded on the table with his fist. "Jeff's own fault. Talk about durn fools! That boy's got them all beat clear off the map. And I'm dashed if I don't like him better for it."

"Move we change the subject," suggested Rawson. "Here comes Verden's worst citizen."

With a casual nod of greeting round the table Jeff sat down.

"Any of you hear James' speech before the Chamber of Commerce yesterday? It was bully. One of his best," he said as he reached for the menu card.

Captain Chunn groaned. The rest laughed. Jeff looked round in surprise. "What's the joke?"

Part 2

It was a great relief to James, in these days when the complacency of his self-satisfaction was a little ruffled, to call often on Valencia Van Tyle and let himself drift pleasantly with her along primrose paths where moral obligations never obtruded. Under the near-Venetian ceiling of her den, with its pink Cupids and plump dimpled cherubs smiling down, he was never troubled about his relation to Hardy's defeat. Here he got at life from another slant and could always find justification to himself for his course.

She had a silent divination of his moods and knew how to minister indolently to them. The subtle incense of luxury that she diffused banished responsibility. In her soft sensuous blood the lusty beat of duty had small play.

But even while he yielded to the allure of Valencia Van Tyle, admitting a finish of beauty to which mere youth could not aspire, all that was idealistic in him went out to the younger cousin whose admiration and shy swift friendship he was losing. His vanity refused to accept this at first. She was a little piqued at him because of the growing intimacy with Valencia. That was all. Why, it had been only a month or two ago that her gaze had been warm for him, that her playful irony had mocked sweetly his ambition for service to the community. Their spirits had touched in comradeship. Almost he had caught in her eyes the look they would hold for only one man on earth. The best in him had responded to the call. But now he did not often meet her at The Brakes. When he did a cool little nod and an indifferent word sufficed for him. How much this hurt only James himself knew.

One of the visible signs of his increasing prosperity was a motor car, in which he might frequently be seen driving with the daughter of Joe Powers, to the gratification of its owner and the envy of Verden. The cool indifference with which Mrs. Van Tyle ignored the city's social elite had aroused bitter criticism. Since she did not care a rap for this her escapades were frankly indiscreet. James could not really afford a machine, but he justified it on the ground that it was an investment. A man who appears to be prosperous becomes prosperous. A good front is a part of the bluff of twentieth century success. He did not follow his argument so far as to admit that the purchase of the car was an item in the expenses of a campaign by which he meant to make capital out of a woman's favor to him, even though his imagination toyed with the possibilities it might offer to build a sure foundation of fortune.

"You should go to New York," she told him once after he had sketched, with the touch of eloquence so native to him, a plan for a line of steamers between Verden and the Orient.

"To be submerged in the huddle of humanity. No, thank you."

"But the opportunities are so much greater there for a man of ability."

"Oh, ability!" he derided. "New York is loaded to the water line with ability in garrets living on crusts. To win out there a man must have a pull, or he must have the instinct for making money breed, for taking what other men earn."

She studied him, a good-looking, alert American, sheet-armored in the twentieth century polish of selfishness, with an inordinate appetite for success. Certainly he looked every inch a winner.

"I believe you could do it. You're not too scrupulous to look out for yourself." Her daring impudence mocked him lightly.

"I'm not so sure about that." James liked to look his conscience in the face occasionally. "I respect the rights of my fellows. In the money centers you can't do that and win. And you've got to win. It doesn't matter how. Make good-- make good! Get money--any way you can. People will soon forget how you got it, if you have it."

"Dear me! I didn't know you were so given to moral reflections." To Alice, who had just come into the room to settle where they should spend their Sunday, Valencia explained with mock demureness the subject of their talk. "Mr. Farnum and I are deploring the immoral money madness of New York and the debilitating effects of modern civilization. Will you deplore with us, my dear?"

The younger woman's glance included the cigarette James had thrown away and the one her cousin was still smoking. "Why go as far as New York?" she asked quietly.

Farnum flushed. She was right, he silently agreed. He had no business futtering away his time in a pink boudoir. Nor could he explain that he hoped his time was not being wasted.

"I must be going," he said as casually as he could.

"Don't let me drive you away, Mr. Farnum. I dropped in only for a moment."

"Not at all. I have an appointment with my cousin."

"With Mr. Jefferson Farnum?" Alice asked in awakened interest. "I've just been reading a magazine article about him. Is he really a remarkable man?"

"I don't think you would call him remarkable. He gets things done, in spite of being an idealist."

"Why, in spite of it?"

"Aren't reformers usually unpractical?"

"Are they? I don't know. I have never met one." She looked straight at Farnum with the directness characteristic of her. "Is the article in Stetson's Magazine true?"

"Substantially, I think."

Alice hesitated. She would have liked to pursue the subject, but she could not very well do that with his cousin. For years she had been hearing of this man as a crank agitator who had set himself in opposition to her father and his friends for selfish reasons. Her father had dropped vague hints about his unsavory life. The Stetson write-up had given a very different story. If it told the truth, many things she had been brought up to accept without question would bear study.

James suavely explained. "The facts are true, but not the inferences from the facts. Jeff takes rather a one-sided view of a very complex situation. But he's perfectly honest in it, so far as that goes."

"You voted for his bill, didn't you?" Alice asked.

"Yes, I voted for it. But I said on the floor I didn't believe in it. My feeling was that the people ought to have a chance to express an opinion in regard to it."

"Why don't you believe in it?"

Valencia lifted her perfect eyebrows. "Really, my dear, I didn't know you were so interested in politics."

Alice waited for the young man's answer.

"It would take me some time to give my reasons in full. But I can give you the text of them in a sentence. Our government is a representative one by deliberate choice of its founders. This bill would tend to make it a pure democracy, which would be far too cumbersome for so large a country."

"So you'll vote against it next time to save the country," Alice suggested lightly. "Thank you for explaining it." She turned to her cousin with an air of dismissing the subject. "Well, Val. What about the yacht trip to Kloochet Island for Sunday? Shall we go? I have to 'phone the captain to let him know at once."

"If you'll promise not to have it rain all the time," the young widow shrugged with a little move. "Perhaps Mr. Farnum could join us? I'm sure uncle would be pleased."

Alice seconded her cousin's invitation tepidly, without any enthusiasm. James, with a face which did not reflect his disappointment, took his cue promptly. "Awfully sorry, but I'll be out of the city. Otherwise I should be delighted."

Valencia showed a row of dainty teeth in a low ripple of amusement. Alice flashed her cousin one look of resentment and with a sentence of conventional regret left the room to telephone the sailing master.

Farnum, seeking permission to leave, waited for his hostess to rise from the divan where she nestled.

But Valencia, her fingers laced in characteristic fashion back of her neck, leaned back and mocked his defeat with indolent amused eyes.

"My engagement," he suggested as a reminder.

"Poor boy! Are you hard hit?"

"Your flights of fancy leave me behind. I can't follow," he evaded with an angry flush.

"No, but you wish you could follow," she laughed, glancing at the door through which her cousin had departed. Then, with a demure impudent little cast of her head, she let him have it straight from the shoulder. "How long have you been in love with Alice? And how will you like to see Ned Merrill win?"

"Am I in love with Miss Frome?"

"Aren't you?"

"If you say so. It happens to be news to me."

"As if I believed that, as if you believed it yourself," she scoffed.

Her pretty pouting lips, the long supple unbroken lines of the soft sinuous body, were an invitation to forget all charms but hers. He understood that she was throwing out her wiles, consciously or unconsciously, to strike out from him a denial that would convince her. His mounting vanity drove away his anger. He forgot everything but her sheathed loveliness, the enticement of this lovely creature whose smoldering eyes invited. Crossing the room, he stood behind her divan and looked down at her with his hands on the back of it.

"Can a man care much for two women at the same time?" he asked in a low voice.

She laughed with slow mockery.

Her faint perfume was wafted to his brain. He knew a besieging of the blood. Slowly he leaned forward, holding her eyes till the mockery faded from them. Then, very deliberately, he kissed her.

"How dare you!" she voiced softly in a kind of wonder not free from resentment. For with all her sensuous appeal the daughter of Joe Powers was not a woman with whom men took liberties.

"By the gods, why shouldn't I dare? We played a game and both of us have lost. You were to beckon and coolly flit, while I followed safely at a distance. Do you think me a marble statue? Do you think me too wooden for the strings of my heart to pulsate? By heaven, my royal Hebe, you have blown the fire in me to life. You must pay forfeit."

"Pay forfeit?"

"Yes. I'm your servant no longer, but your lover and your master-- and I intend to marry you."

"How ridiculous," she derided. "Have you forgotten Alice?"

"I have forgotten everything but you--and that I'm going to marry you."

She laughed a little tremulously. "You had better forget that too. I'm like Alice. My answer is, 'No, thank you, kind sir.'"

"And my answer, royal Hebe, is this." His hot lips met hers again in abandonment to the racing passion in him.

"You--barbarian," she gasped, pushing him away.

"Perhaps. But the man who is going to marry you."

She looked at him with a flash of almost shy curiosity that had the charm of an untasted sensation. "Would you beat me?"

"I don't know." He still breathed unevenly. "I'd teach you how to live."

"And love?" She was beginning to recover her lightness of tone, though the warm color still dabbed her cheeks.

"Why not?" His eyes were diamond bright. "Why not? You have never known the great moments, the buoyant zest of living in the land that belongs only to the Heirs o Life."

"And can you guide me there?" The irony in her voice was not untouched with wistfulness.

"Try me."

She laughed softly, stepped to the table, and chose a cigarette. "My friend, you promise impossibilities. I was not born to that incomparable company. To be frank, neither were you. Alice, grant you, belongs there. And that mad cousin of yours. But not we two earth creepers. We're neither of us star dwellers. In the meantime"--she lit her Egyptian and stopped to make sure of her light every moment escaping more definitely from the glamor of his passion--"you mentioned an engagement that was imperative. Don't let me keep you from it."

CHAPTER 12

From The New Catechism

Question: What is the whole duty of man?

Answer: To succeed.

Q. What is success?

A. Success is being a Captain of Industry.

Q. How may one become a Captain of Industry?

A. By stacking in his barns the hay made by others while the sun shines.

Q. But is this not theft?

A. Not if done legally and respectably on a large scale. It is high finance.

THE REBEL AND THE UNDESIRABLE CITIZEN TALK TREASON. THE HERO HAS PRIVATE CONVERSE WITH A GREAT PIONEER OF CIVILIZATION

Part 1

Jeff never for a day desisted from his fight to win back for the people the self rule that had been wrested from them for selfish purposes by corporate greed. "Government by the people" was the watchword he kept at the head of his editorial column. Better a bad government that is representative than a good one emanating from the privileged few, he maintained with conviction.

To his office came one day Oscar Marchant, the little, half- educated Socialist poet, coughing from the exertion of the stairs he had just climbed. He had come begging, the consumptive presently explained.

"Remember Sobieski, the Polish Jew?"

Jeff smiled. "Of course. Philosophical anarchy used to be his remedy."

"Starvation is the one he's trying now," returned Marchant grimly. "He's had typhoid and lost his job. The rent's due and they'll be turned out tomorrow. He's got a wife and two kids."

Farnum asked questions briefly and pulled out his check book. "Tell Sobieski not to worry," he said as he handed over a check. "I'll send a reporter out there and we'll make an appeal through the World. Of course his own name won't be used. No one will know who it really is. We'll look out for him till he's on his feet again."

Marchant gave him the best he had. "You're a pretty good Socialist, even though you don't know it."

"Am I?"

"But you're blind as a bat. The things you fight for in the World don't get to the bottom of what ails us."

"We've got to forge the tools of freedom before we can use them, haven't we?"

"You're all for patching up the rotten system we've got. It will never do."

"Great changes are most easily brought about under the old forms. Men's minds in the mass move slowly. They can see only a little truth at a time."

"Because they are blinded by ignorance and selfishness. Get at bottom facts, Farnum. What's the one great crime?"

Without a moment's hesitation Jeff answered. "Poverty. All other crimes are paltry beside that."

Marchant cocked himself up on the window seat with his legs doubled under him tailor fashion. "Why?"

"Because it stamps out hope and love and aspiration, all that is fine and true in life."

"Exactly. Men ought to love their work. But how can they

ove that which is always associated in their minds with a denial of justice? Is it likely that men will work better under a system whereby they are condemned in advance to failure than under one standing rationally for a just and fair division of the fruits of labor? I tell you, Farnum, under present conditions the Juggernaut of progress is forever wasting humanity."

"I've always thought it a pity that the mainsprings of work should be fear and greed instead of hope and love," Jeff agreed.

"Why is it that poverty coexists with wealth increasing so rapidly? Why is it that productive power has been so enormously developed without lightening the burdens of labor?"

Marchant's eyes were starlike in their earnestness. He had a passion for humanity that neither want nor disease could quench, and with it a certain gift of expression street oratory had brought out. Even in private conversation he had got into the way of declaiming. But Jeff knew he was no empty talker. All that he had he literally gave to the poor.

"Because the whole spirit of business life is wrong," Farnum responded.

"Of course it's wrong. It's a survival of the law of the jungle, of tooth and fang. Its motto is dog eat dog. We all work under the rule of get and grab. What's the result of this higgledypiggledy system? One man starves and another has indigestion. That's the trouble with Verden to-day. Some of us haven't enough and others have too much. They take from us what we earn. That's the whole cause of poverty. The Malthusian theory is all wrong. It's not nature, but man that is to blame."

Farnum knew the little Socialist was right so far. Here in Verden, under the forms of freedom, was the very essence of slavery. All the product of labor was taken from it except enough to sustain a mere animal existence. Something was wrong in a world where a man begs in vain for work to support his family. Given proper conditions, men would not rise by trampling each other down, but by lending a hand to the unfortunate. The effect of efficiency would be to make things easier for the weak. The reward of service would be more service.

"The principle of the old order is dead," Marchant went on, wagging his thin forefinger at Jeff. "The whole social fabric is made up of lies, compromises, injustice. The only reason it has hung together so long is that people have been trained to think along certain lines like show animals. But they're waking up. Look at Germany. Look at England. What the plutocrats call the menace of Socialism is everywhere. Now that every worker knows he is being robbed of what he earns, how long do you think he will carry the capitalistic system on his back? From the beginning of the world we have tried it. With what result? An injustice that is staggering, a waste that is appalling, an inhumanity that is deadening."

Jeff let a hand fall lightly on his shoulder. "Of course it's all wrong. We know that. But can you show me how to make it right, except out of the hearts of men growing slowly wiser and better?"

"Why slowly?" demanded Marchant. "Why not to-day while we're still alive to see the smiles of men and women and children made glad? You always want to begin at the wrong end. I tell you that you can't change men's hearts until you change the conditions under which they live."

"And I tell you that you can't change the conditions until you change men's hearts," Jeff answered with his wistful smile.

"Rubbish! The only way to change the hearts of most plutocrats is to hit them over the head with a two-by-four. Smug respectability is in the saddle, and it knows it's right. We'll get nowhere until we smash this iniquitous system to smithereens."

"So you want to substitute one system for another. You think you can eliminate by legal enactment all this fatty degeneration of greed and selfishness that has incased our souls. I'm afraid it will be a slower process. We must free ourselves from within. I believe we are moving toward some sort of a socialistic state. No man with eyes in his head can help seeing that. But we'll move a step at a time, and only so fast as the love and altruism inside us can be organized into external law."

"No. You'll wake up some morning and find that this whole capitalistic organization has crumbled in the night, fallen to pieces from dry rot."

Jeff might not agree with him, but he knew that Marchant, dreamer and incoherent poet, his heart aflame with zeal for humanity, was far nearer the truth of life than the smug complacent Pharisees that fattened from the toil of the helpless many who could do nothing but suffer in dumb silence.

Part 2

As the months passed Jeff grew in stature with the people of the state. In spite of his energy he was always fair. The plain truth he felt to be a better argument than the tricks of a demagogue.

A rational common sense was to be found in all his advice. Add to this that he had no personal profit to seek, no political axe to grind, and was always transparent as a child. More and more Verden recognized him as the one most conspicuous figure in the state dedicated to uncompromising war against the foes of the Republic.

Those who knew him best liked his humility, his good humor, the gentleness that made him tolerant of the men he must fight. His poise lifted him above petty animosities, and the daily sand- stings of life did not disturb his serenity.

Everywhere his propaganda gained ground. People's Power Leagues were formed with a central steering committee at Verden. Politicians with their ears close to the ground heard rumbles of the coming storm. They began to notice that reputable business men, prominent lawyers not affiliated with corporations, and even a few educators who had shaken away the timidity of their class were lining up to support Jeff's freak legislation. It began to look as if one of those periodical uprisings of the people was about to sweep the state.

Big Tim found his ward workers met persistently by the same questions from their ordinarily docile following. "Why shouldn't we tie strings to our representatives so as to keep them from betraying us? . . . Why can't we make laws ourselves in emergency and kill bad laws the legislature makes? . . . What's the matter with taking away some of the power from our representatives who have abused it?"

In the city election O'Brien went down to defeat. Only fragments of his ticket were saved from the general wreckage. Next day Joe Powers wired James Farnum to join him immediately at Chicago.

"I'm going to put you in charge of the political field out there," the great man announced, his gray granite eyes fastened on the young lawyer. "Ned Merrill won't do. Neither will O'Brien. Between them they've made a mess of things."

"I don't know that it is their fault, except indirectly. One of those populistic waves swept over the city."

"Why didn't they know what was going to happen? Why didn't they let me know? That's what I pay them for."

"A child could have foreseen it, but O'Brien wouldn't believe his eyes. He's been giving Verden an administration with too much graft. The people got tired of it."

"What were Merrill and Frome up to? Why did they permit it?" demanded Powers impatiently.

"They were looking out for their franchises. To get the machine's support they had to give O'Brien a free hand."

"If necessary you had better eliminate Big Tim. Or at least put him and his gang in the background. Make the machine respectable so that good citizens can indorse it."

James nodded agreement. "I've been thinking about that. The thing can be done. A business men's movement from inside the party to purify it. A reorganization with new men in charge. That sort of thing."

"Exactly. And how about the state?"

"Things don't look good to me."

"Why not?"

"This initiative and referendum idea is spreading."

Powers drove his fist into a pile of papers on the desk. "Stop it. I give you carte blanche. Spend as much as you like. But win. What good is a lobby to me if those hare-brained farmers can kill every bill we pass through their grafting legislature?"

The possibilities grew on Farnum. "I'll send Professor Perkins of Verden University to New Zealand to prepare a paper showing the thing is a failure there. I'll have every town in the state thoroughly canvassed by lecturers and speakers against the bill. I'll bombard the farmers with literature."

"What about the newspapers?"

"We control most of them. At Verden only the World is against us."

"Buy it."

"Can't be bought. Its editorial columns are not for sale."

"Anything can be bought if you've got the price. Who owns it?"

"A Captain Chunn. He made his money in Alaska. My cousin is the editor. He is the real force back of it."

"Does the paper have any influence?"

"A great deal."

"I've heard of your cousin. A crack-brained Socialist, I understand."

"You'll find he's a long way from that," James denied.

"Whatever he is, buy him," ordered Powers curtly.

The young man shook his head. "Can't be done. He doesn't want the things you have to offer."

"Every man has his price. Find his, and buy him."

James shook his head decisively. "Absolutely impossible. He's an idealist and an altruist."

Powers snorted impatiently. "Talk English, young man, and I'll understand you."

Farnum had heard Joe Powers was a man who would stand plain talk from those who had the courage to give it him. His cool eyes hardened. Why not? For once the old gray pirate, chief of the robber buccaneers who rode on their predatory way superior to law, should see himself as Jeff Farnum saw him.

"What I mean is that the things he holds most important can't be bought with dollars and cents. He believes in justice and fair play. He thinks the strong ought to bear the burdens of the weak.

He has a passion to uplift humanity. You can't understand him because it isn't possible for you to conceive of a man whose first thought is always for what is equitable."

"Just as I thought, a Socialist dreamer and demagogue," pronounced Powers scornfully.

"Merrill and Frome have been thinking of him just as you do." James waved his hand toward the newspaper in front of the railroad king. "With what result our election shows."

"Well, where does his power lie? How can you break it?" the old man asked.

"He is a kind of brother to the lame and the halt all over the state. Among the poor and the working classes he has friends without number. They believe in him as a patriot fighting for them against the foes of the country."

"Do you call me a foe of the country, young man?" Powers wanted to know grimly.

"Not I," laughed James. "Why should I quarrel with my bread and jam? If you had ever done me the honor to read any of my speeches you would see that I refer to you as a Pioneer of Civilization and a Builder for the Future. But my view doesn't happen to be universal. I was trying to show you how the man with the dinner pail feels."

"Who fills his dinner pails?"

James met his frown with a genial eye. "There's a difference of opinion about that, sir. According to the economics of Verden University you fill them. According to the World editorials it's the other way. They fill yours."

"Hmp! And what's your personal opinion? Am I a robber of labor?"

"I think that the price of any success worth while is paid for in the failure of others. You win because you're strong, sir. That's the law of the game. It's according to the survival of the fittest that you're where you are. If you had hesitated some other man would have trampled you down. It's a case of wolf eat wolf."

The old railroad builder laughed harshly. This was the first time in his experience that a subordinate had so analyzed him to his face.

"So I'm a wolf, am I?"

"In one sense of the word you're not that at all, sir. You're a great builder. You've done more for the Northwest than any man living. You couldn't have done it if you had been squeamish. I hold the end justifies the means. What you've got is yours because you've won it. Men who do a great work for the public are entitled to great rewards."

"Glad to know you've got more sense than that fool cousin of yours. Now go home and beat him. I don't care how you do it, just so that you get results. Spend what money you need. but make good, young man--make good."

"I'll do my best," James promised.

"All I demand is that you win. I'm not interested in the method you use. But put that cousin of yours out of the demagogue business if you have to shanghai him."

James laughed. "That might not be a bad way to get rid of him till after the election. The word would leak out that he had been bought off."

The old buccaneer's eyes gleamed. He was as daring a lawbreaker as ever built or wrecked a railroad. "Have you the nerve, young man?"

"When I'm working for you, sir," retorted James coolly.

"What do you mean by that?"

"If I've studied your career to any purpose, sir, one thing stands out pretty clear. You haven't the slightest respect for law merely as law. When it's on your side you're a stickler for it; when it isn't you say nothing, but brush it aside as if it did not exist. In either case you get what you want."

"I'm glad you've noticed that last point. Now we'll have luncheon." He smiled grimly. "I daresay you'll enjoy it no less because I stole it from the horny hand of labor, by your mad cousin's way of it."

"Not a bit," answered James cheerfully.

CHAPTER 13

"Must it be? Must we then Render back to God again This, His broken work, this thing For His man that once did sing?" --Josephine Prestor Peabody.

"And listen! I declare to you that if all is as you say--and I do not doubt it--you have never ceased to be virtuous in the sight of God!" --Victor Hugo.

THE REBEL PROVES THAT HE IS LOST TO GOOD FORM AND RESPECTABILITY BY STEPPING BETWEEN A SINNER AND THE WAGES OF SIN, THUS EVIDENCING TO THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY HIS COMPLETE DEGENERATION

Part 1

Sam Miller came into Jeff's office one night as he was looking over the editorials. Farnum nodded abstractedly to him.

"Take a chair, Sam. Be through in a minute."

Presently Jeff pushed the galley proof to one side and looked at his friend. "Well, Sam?" Almost at once he added: "What's the matter?"

There were queer white patches on Miller's fat face. He looked like a man in hell. A lump rose in his throat. Two or three times he swallowed hard.

"It's--it's Nellie."

"Nellie Anderson?"

He nodded.

Jeff felt as if his heart had been drenched in icy water. "What about her?"

"She's--gone."

"Gone where?"

"We don't know. She left Friday. There was a note for her mother. It said to forget her, because she was a disgrace to her name."

"You mean--" Jeff did not finish his question. He knew what the answer was, and in his soul lay a reflection of the mortal sickness he saw in his friend's face.

Miller nodded, unable to speak. Presently his words came brokenly. "She's been acting strangely for a long time. Her mother noticed it. . . . So did I. Like as if she wasn't happy. We've been worried. I . . .I . . ." He buried his face in his arm on the table. "My God, I love her, Jeff. I have for years. If I'd only known . . . if she'd only told me."

Jeff was white as the galley proof that lay before him with the unprinted side up. "Tell me all about it, Sam."

Miller looked up. "That's all. We don't know where she's gone. She had no money to speak of."

"And the man?" Jeff almost whispered.

"We don't know who he is. Might be any one of the clerks at the Verden Dry Goods Company.

Maybe it's none of them. If I knew I'd cut his heart out."

The clock on the wall ticked ten times before Jeff spoke. "Did she go alone?"

"We don't know. None of the clerks are missing from the store where she worked. I checked up with the manager yesterday."

Another long silence. "They may have rooms in town here."

"Not likely." Presently Miller added miserably: "She's--going to be a mother soon. We found the doctor she went to see."

"You're sure she hasn't been married? Of course you've looked over the marriage licenses for the past year."

"Yes. Her name isn't on the list."

"Did she have money?"

"About fifteen dollars, we figure."

"That wouldn't take her far--unless the man gave her some. Have you been to a detective agency?"

"Yes."

"We'll put blind ads in all the papers telling her to come home. We'll rake the city and the state with a fine tooth comb. We're bound to hear of her."

"She's desperate, Jeff. If she's alone she'll think she has no friends. We've got to find her in time or--"

Jeff guessed the alternative. She might take the easy way out, the one which offered an escape from all her earthly troubles. Girls of her type often did. Nellie was made for laughter and for happiness. He had known her innocent as a sunbeam and as glad. Now that she was in the pit, facing disgrace and disillusionment and despair, the horror and the dread of existence to her would be a millstone round her neck.

The damnable unfairness of it took. Jeff by the throat. Was it her fault that she had inherited a temperament where passions lurked unsuspected like a banked fire? Was she to blame because her mother had brought her up without warning, because she had believed in the love and the honor of a villain? Her very faith and trust had betrayed her. Every honest instinct in him cried out against the world's verdict, that she must pay with salt tears to the end of her life while the scoundrel who had led her into trouble walked gaily to fresh conquests.

Cogged dice! She had gone forth smiling to play the game of life with them, never dreaming that the cubes were loaded. He remembered how once her every motion sang softly to him like music, with what dear abandon she had given herself to his kisses. Her fondness had been a thing to cherish, her innocence had called for protection. And her chivalrous lover had struck the lightness forever from her soul.

For long he never thought of her without an icy sinking of the heart.

Part 2

Weeks passed. Sam Miller gave his whole time to the search for the missing girl. Jeff supplied the means; in every way he could he encouraged him and the broken mother. For a thousand miles south and east the police had her description and her photograph. But no trace of her could be found. False clews there were aplenty. A dozen haggard streetwalkers were arrested in mistake for her. Patiently Sam ran down every story, followed every possibility to its hopeless end.

The weeks ran into months. Mrs. Anderson still hoped drearily. Every night the light in the hall burned now till daybreak. And every night she wept herself to sleep for that her one ewe lamb was lost in a ravenous world.

Tears were for the night. Wan smiles for the day, when she and Sam, drawn close by a common grief, met to understand each other with few words. He was back again at his work as curator of the museum at the State House, a place Jeff had secured for him after the election.

Outside of Nellie's mother the one friend to whom Sam turned now was Jeff. He came for comfort, to sit long hours in the office while Farnum did his night work. Sometimes he would read; more often sit brooding with his chin in his hands. When the midnight rush was past and Jeff was free they would go together to a restaurant.

Afterwards they would separate at the door of the block where Jeff had his rooms.

Part 3

Yet when Jeff found her it was not Sam who was with him, but Marchant. They had been to see Sobieski about a place Captain Chunn had secured for him as a night watchman of the shipbuilding plant of which Clinton Rogers was part owner. The Pole had mounted his hobby and it had been late when they got away from his cabin under the viaduct.

Just before they turned into lower Powers Avenue from the deadline below Yarnell Way, Marchant clutched at the sleeve of his friend.

"See that woman's face?" he asked sharply.

"No."

Jeff was interested at once. For during the past months he had fallen into a habit of scanning the countenance of any woman who might be the one they sought.

"She knew you. I could see fear jump to her eyes."

"We'll go back," Jeff decided instantly.

"She's in deep water. Death is written on her face."

Already Jeff was swinging back, almost on the run. But she had gone swallowed up in the darkness of the night. They listened, but could hear only the steady splashing of the rain. While they stood hesitating the figure of a woman showed at the other end of the alley and was lost at once down Pacific Avenue.

Jeff ran toward the lights of the other avenue, but before he reached it she had again disappeared. Marchant joined him a few moments later. The little socialist leaned against the wall to steady himself against the fit of coughing that racked him.

"Nuisance . . . this . . . being a lunger. . . What's it all . . . about, Jeff?"

"I know her. We'll cover the waterfront. Take from Coffee Street up. Don't miss a wharf or a boathouse. And if you find the girl don't let her get away."

The editor crossed to the Pacific & Alaska dock, his glance sweeping every dark nook and cranny that might conceal a huddled form. Out of a sodden sky rain pelted in a black night.

He was turning away when an empty banana crate behind him crashed down from a pyramid of them. Jeff whirled, was upon her in an instant before she could escape.

She was shrinking against the wall of the warehouse, her face a tragic mask in its haggard pallor, a white outline clenched hard against the driving rain. One hand was at her heart, the other beat against the air to hold him back.

"Nellie!" he cried.

"What do you want? Let me alone! Let me alone!" She was panting like a spent deer, and in her wild eyes he saw the hunted look of a forest creature at bay.

"We've looked everywhere for you. I've come to take you home."

"Home!" Her strange laughter mocked the word. "There's no home for folks like me in this world."

"Your mother is breaking her heart for you. She thinks of nothing else. All night she keeps a light burning to let you know."

She broke into a sob. "I've seen it. To-night I saw it--for the last time."

"It is pitiful how she waits and waits," he went on quietly. "She takes out your dresses and airs them. All the playthings you used when you were a little girl she keeps near her. She--"

"Don't! Don't!" she begged.

"Your place is set at the table every day, so that when you come in it may be ready."

At that she leaned against the crates and broke down utterly. Jeff knew that for the moment the battle was won. He slipped out of his rain coat and made her put it on, coaxing her gently while the sobs shook her. He led her by the hand back to Pacific Avenue, talking cheerfully as if it were a matter of course.

Here Marchant met them.

"I want a cab, Oscar," Jeff told him.

While he was gone they waited in the entrance to a store that sheltered them from the rain.

Suddenly the girl turned to Jeff. "I--I was going to do it to- night," she whispered.

He nodded. "That's all past now. Don't think of it. There are good days ahead--happy days. It will be new life to your mother to see you. We've all been frightfully anxious."

She shivered, beginning to sob once more. Not for an instant had he withdrawn the hand to which she clung so desperately.

"It's all right, Nellie. . .All right at last. You're going home to those that love you."

"Not to-night--not while I'm looking like this. Don't take me home to-night," she begged. "I can't stand it yet. Give me to-night, please. I . . ."

She trembled like an aspen. Jeff could see she was exhausted, in deadly fear, ready to give way to any wild impulse that might seize her. To reason with her would do no good and might do much harm. He must humor her fancy about not going home at once. But he could not take her to a rooming house and leave her alone while her mind was in this condition. She must be watched, protected against herself. Otherwise in the morning she might be gone.

"All right. You may have my rooms. Here's the cab."

Jeff helped her in, thanked Marchant with a word, got in himself, and shut the door. They were driven through streets shining with rain beneath the light clusters. Nellie crouched in a corner and wept. As they swung down Powers Avenue they passed motor car after motor car filled with gay parties returning from the theaters. He glimpsed young women in furs, wrapped from the cruelty of life by the caste system in which wealth had incased them. Once a ripple of merry laughter floated to him across the gulf that separated this girl from them.

A year ago her laughter had been light as theirs. Life had been a thing beautiful, full of color. She had come to it eagerly, like a lover, glad because it was so good.

But it had not been good to her. By the cluster lights he could see how fearfully it had mauled her, how cruelly its irony had kissed hollows in her young cheeks. All the bloom of her was gone, all the brave pride and joy of youth--gone beyond hope of resurrection. Why must such things be? Why so much to the few, so little to the many? And why should that little be taken away? He saw as in a vision the infinite procession of her hopeless sisters who had traveled the same road, saw them first as sweet and carefree children bubbling with joy, and again, after the World had misused them for its pleasure, haggard, tawdry, with dragging steps trailing toward the oblivion that awaited them. Good God, how long must life be so terribly wasted? How long a bruised and broken thing instead of the fine, brave adventure for which it was meant?

Across his mind flashed Realf's words:

"Amen!" I have cried in battle-time, When my beautiful heroes perished; The earth of the Lord shall bloom sublime By the blood of his martyrs nourished. "Amen!" I have said, when limbs were hewn And our wounds were blue and ghastly The flesh of a man may fail and swoon But God shall conquer lastly.

Part 4

As Jeff helped her from the cab in front of the block where he lived a limousine flashed past. It caught his glance for an instant, long enough for him to recognize his Cousin James, Mrs. Van Tyle and Alice Frome. The arm which supported Nellie did not loosen from her waist, though he knew they had seen him and would probably draw conclusions.

The young woman was trembling violently.

"My rooms are in the second story. Can you walk? Or shall I carry you?" Farnum asked.

"I can walk," she told him almost in a whisper.

He got her upstairs and into the big armchair in front of the gas log. Now that she had slipped out of his rain coat he saw that she was wet to the skin. From his bedroom he brought a bathrobe, pajamas, woolen slippers, anything he could find that was warm and soft. In front of her he dumped them all.

"I'm going down to the drug store to get you something that will warm you, Nellie. While I'm away change your clothes and get into these things," he told her.

She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. "You're good."

A lump rose in his heart. He thought of those evenings before the grate alone with her and of the desperate fight he had had with his passions. Good! He accused himself bitterly for the harm that he had done her. But before her his smile was bright and cheerful.

"We're all going to be so good to you that you'll not know us. Haven't we been waiting two months for a chance to spoil you?"

"Do you . . . know?" she whispered, color for an instant in her wan face.

"I know things aren't half so bad as they seem to you. Dear girl, we are your friends. We've not done right by you. Even your mother has been careless and let you get hurt. But we're going to make it up to you now."

A man on the other side of the street watched Jeff come down and cross to the drug store. Billie Gray, ballot box stuffer, detective, and general handy man for Big Tim O'Brien, had been lurking in that entry when Jeff came home. He had sneaked up the stairs after them and had seen the editor disappear into his rooms with one whom he took to be a woman of the street. Already a second plain clothes man was doing sentry duty. The policeman whose beat it was sat in the drug store and kept an eye open from that quarter.

To the officer Jeff nodded casually. "Bad weather to be out all night in, Nolan."

"Right you are, Mr. Farnum."

The editor ordered a bottle of whiskey and while it was being put up passed into the telephone booth and closed the door behind him. He called up Olive 43I.

Central rang again and again.

"Can't get your party," she told him at last.

"You'll waken him presently. Keep at it, please. It's very important."

At last Sam Miller's voice answered. "Hello! Hello! What is it?"

"I've found Nellie. . . . Just in time. thank God. . .She's at my rooms. . . . Have Mrs. Anderson bring an entire change of clothing for her. . . . Yes, she's very much exhausted. I'll tell you all about it later.... Come quietly. She may be asleep when you get here."

Jeff hung up the receiver, paid for the whiskey, and returned to his rooms. He did not know that he had left three good and competent witnesses who were ready to take oath that he had brought to his rooms at midnight a woman of the half world and that he had later bought liquor and returned with it to his apartment.

Billie Gray thumped his fist into his open palm. "We've got him. We've got him right. He can't get away from it. By Gad, we've got him at last!"

Jeff found Nellie wrapped in his bathrobe in the big chair before the gas log. Her own wet clothes were out of sight behind a screen.

"You locked the door when you went out," she charged.

"Some of my friends might have dropped in to see me," he explained with his disarming smile.

But he could see in her eyes the unreasoning fear of a child that has been badly hurt. He had locked the door on the outside. She was going to be dragged home whether she wanted to go or not. Dread of that hour was heavy on her soul. Jeff knew the choice must be hers, not his. He spoke quietly.

"You're not a prisoner, of course. You may go whenever you like. I would have no right to keep you. But you will hurt me very much if you go before morning."

"Where will you stay?" she asked.

"I'll sleep on the lounge in this room," he answered in his most matter of fact voice.

While he busied himself preparing a toddy for her she began to tell brokenly, by snatches, the story of her wanderings. She had gone to Portland and had found work in a department store at the notion counter. After three weeks she had lost her place. Days of tramping the streets looking for a job brought her at last to an overall factory where she found employment. The foreman had discharged her at the end of the third day. Once she had been engaged at an agency as a servant by a man, but as soon as his wife saw her Nellie was told she would not do. Bitter humiliating experiences had befallen her. Twice she had been turned out of rooming houses. Jeff read between the lines that as her time drew near some overmastering impulse had drawn her back to Verden. Already she was harboring the thought of death, but she could not die in a strange place so far from home. Only that morning she had reached town.

After she had retired to the bedroom Jeff sat down in the chair she had vacated. He heard her moving about for a short time. Presently came silence.

It must have been an hour and a half later that Sam and Mrs. Anderson knocked gently on the door.

"Cars stopped running. Had to 'phone for a taxi," Miller whispered.

The agitation of the mother was affecting. Her fingers twitched with nervousness. Her eyes strayed twenty times in five minutes toward the door behind which her daughter slept. Every little while she would tip-toe to it and listen breathlessly. In whispers Jeff told them the story, answering a hundred eager trembling questions.

Slowly the clock ticked out the seconds of the endless night. Gray day began to sift into the room. Mrs. Anderson's excursions to the bedroom door grew more frequent. Sometimes she opened it an inch or two. On one of these occasions she went in quickly and shut the door behind her.

"Good enough. They don't need us here, Sam. We'll go out and have some breakfast," Jeff proposed.

On the street they met Billie Gray. He greeted the editor with a knowing grin. "Good morning, Mr. Farnum. How's everything? Fine and dandy, eh?"

Jeff looked at him sharply. "What the mischief is he doing here?" he asked Miller by way of comment.

All through breakfast that sinister little figure shadowed his thoughts. Gray was like a stormy petrel. He was surely there for no good, barring the chance of its being an accident. Both of them kept their eyes open on their way back, but they met nobody except a policeman swinging his club as he leaned against a lamp post and

whistled the Merry Widow waltz.

But Farnum was not satisfied. He cautioned both Sam and Mrs. Anderson to say nothing, above all to give no names or explanation to anybody. A whisper of the truth would bring reporters down on them in shoals.

"You had better stay here quietly to-day," their host advised. "I'll see you're not disturbed by the help. Sam will bring your meals in from a restaurant. I'd say stay here as long as you like, but it can't be done without arousing curiosity, the one thing we don't want."

"No, better leave late to-night in a taxi," Sam proposed.

"Better still, I'll bring around Captain Chunn's car and Sam can drive you home. We can't be too careful."

So it was arranged. Mrs. Anderson left it to them and went back into the bedroom where her wounded lamb lay.

About midnight Jeff stopped a car in front of the stairway. The two veiled women emerged, accompanied by Sam. They were helped into the tonneau and Miller took the driver's seat. Just as the machine began to move a little man ran across the street toward them.

Jeff's forearm went up suddenly and caught him under the chin. Billie Gray's head went back and his heels came up. Farnum was on him in an instant, ostensibly to help him up, but really to see he did not get up too quickly. As soon as the automobile swung round the corner Jeff lifted him to his feet.

"Sorry. Hope I didn't hurt you," he smiled.

"Smart trick, wasn't it?" snarled the detective. "Never mind, Mr. Farnum. We've got your goat right."

"Again?" Jeff asked with pleasant impudence.

"Got you dead to rights this trip." Gray fired another shot as he turned away. "And we'll find out yet who your lady friends are. Don't you forget it."

But Billie had overlooked a bet. He had been in the back of the drug store getting a drink when Sam and Mrs. Anderson arrived. The policeman on guard had not connected the coming of these with Jeff. None of the watchers knew that Jeff had not been alone with the girl all night.

Part 5

Sam called on Jeff two days later.

"I want you to come round to-night at seven-fifteen. We're going to be married," he explained.

The newspaper man's eye met his in a swift surprise. "You and Nellie?"

"Yes." Miller's jaw set. "Why not? YOU'RE not going to spring that damned cant about--"

"I thought you knew me better," his friend interrupted.

Miller's face worked. "I'll ask your pardon for that, Jeff. You've been the best friend she has. Well, we've thrashed it all out. She fought her mother and me two days; didn't think it right to let me give my name to her, even though she admits she has come to care for me. You can see how she would be torn two ways. It's the only road out for her and the baby that is on the way, but she couldn't bring herself to sacrifice me, as she calls it. I've hammered and hammered at her that it's no sacrifice. She can't see it; just cries and cries."

"Of course she would be unusually sensitive; Her nerves must be all bare so that she shrinks as one does when a wound is touched."

"That's it. She keeps speaking of herself as if she were a lost soul. At last we fairly wore her out. After we are married her mother and she will take the eight o'clock for Kenton. Nobody there knows them, and she'll have a chance to forget."

"You're a white man, Sam," Jeff nodded lightly. But his eyes were shining.

"I'm the man that loves her. I couldn't do less, could I?"

"Some men would do a good deal less."

"Not if they looked at it the way I do. She's the same Nellie I've always known. What difference does it make to me that she stumbled in the dark and hurt herself--except that my heart is so much more tender to her it aches?"

"If you hold to that belief she'll live to see the day when she is a happy woman again," the journalist prophesied.

"I'm going to teach her to think of it all as only a bad nightmare she's been through." His jaw clinched again so that the muscles stood out on his cheeks. "Do you know she won't say a word--not even to her mother--about who the villain is that betrayed her? I'd wring his coward neck off for him," he finished with a savage oath.

"Better the way it is, Sam. Let her keep her secret.. The least said and thought about it the better."

Miller looked at his watch. "Perhaps you're right. I've got to go to work. Remember, seven-fifteen sharp. We need you as a witness. Just your business suit, you understand. No present, of course."

The wedding took place in the room where Jeff had been used to drinking chocolate with his little friend only a year before. It was the first time he had been here since that night when the danger signal had flashed so suddenly before his eyes. The whole thing came back to him poignantly.

It was a pitiful little wedding, with the bride and her mother in tears from the start. The ceremony was performed by their friend Mifflin, the young clergyman who had a mission for sailors on the waterfront. Nobody else was present except Marchant, the second witness.

As soon as the ceremony was finished Sam put Nellie and her mother into a cab to take them to their train. The other three walked back down town.

As Jeff sat before his desk four hours later, busy with a tax levy story, Miller came in and took a seat. Jeff waved a hand at him and promptly forgot he was on earth until he rose and put on his coat an hour later.

"Well! Did they get off all right?" he asked.

Miller nodded absently. Ten minutes later he let out what he was thinking about.

"I wish to God I knew the man," he exploded.

Jeff looked at him quietly. "I'm glad you don't. Adding murder to it wouldn't help the situation one little bit, my friend."

CHAPTER 14

Only the man who is sheet-armored in a triple plate of selfishness can be sure that weak hands won't clutch at him and delay his march to success.--From the Note Book of a Dreamer.

THE HERO, CONFRONTED WITH AN UNPLEASANT POSSIBILITY, PROVES HIS GREATNESS BY RISING SUPERIOR TO SENTIMENT

Part 1

James came down to the office one morning in his car with a smile of contentment on his handsome face. It had been decided that he was to be made speaker of the House after the next election, assuming that he and his party were returned to power. Jeff and the progressives were to stand back of him, and he felt sure that after a nominal existence the standpatters would accept him. He intended by scrupulous fair play to win golden opinions for himself. From the speakership to the governor's chair would not be a large step. After that--well, there were many possibilities.

He did not for a moment admit to himself that there was anything of duplicity in the course he was following. His intention was to line up with the progressives during the campaign, to win his reelection on that platform, and to support a rational liberal program during the session. He would favor an initiative and referendum amendment not so radical as the one Jeff offered, a bill that would not cripple business or alarm capital. As he looked at it life was a compromise. The fusion of many minds to a practical result always demanded this. And results were more important than any number of theories.

As James passed into his office the stenographer stopped him with a remark.

"A man has been in twice to see you this morning, Mr. Farnum."

"Did he leave his name?"

"No. He said he would call again."

James passed into his private office and closed the door.

A quarter of an hour later his stenographer knocked. "He's here again, Mr. Farnum."

"Who?"

"The man I told you of."

"Oh!" James put down the brief he was reading. "Show him in."

A figure presently stood hesitating in the doorway. James saw an oldish man, gray and stooped with a rather wistful lost-dog expression on his face.

"What can I do for you, sir?" he questioned.

"Don't you know me?" the stranger asked with a quaver in his voice.

The lawyer did not, but some premonition of disaster clutched at his heart. He rose swiftly and closed the door behind his caller.

A faint smile doubtful of its right touched the weak face of the little old man. "So you don't know your own father--boy!"

A sudden sickness ran through the lawyer and sapped his strength. He leaned against the desk uncertainly. It had come at last. The whole world would learn the truth about him. The Merrills, the Fromes, Valencia Van Tyle--all of them would know it and scorn him.

"What are you doing here?" James heard himself say hoarsely.

"Why, I--I--I came to see my son."

"What for?"

Before so harsh and abrupt a reception the weak smile went out like a blown candle.

"I thought you'd be glad to see me--after so many years."

"Why should I be glad to see you? What have you ever done for me but disgrace me?"

Tears showed in the watery eyes. "That's right. It's gospel truth, I reckon."

"And now, when I've risen above it, so that all men respect me, you come back to drag me down."

"No--no, I wouldn't do that, son."

"That's what you'll do. Do you think my friends will want to know a man who is the son of a convict? I've got a future before me. Already I've been mentioned for governor. What chance would I have when people know my father is a thief?"

"Son," winced the old man.

"Oh, well! I'm not picking my words," James went on with angry impatience. "I'm telling you the facts. I've got enemies. Every strong man has. They'll smash me like an empty eggshell."

"They don't need to know about me. I'll not do any talking."

"That's all very well. Things leak out," James grumbled a little more graciously. "Well, you better sit down now you're here. I thought you were living in Arkansas."

"So I am. I've done right well there. And I thought I'd take a little run out to see you. I didn't know but what you might need a little help." He glanced aimlessly around the well-furnished office. "But I expect you don't, from the looks of things."

"If you think I've got money you're wrong," James explained. "I'm just starting in my profession, and of course I owe a good deal here and there. I've been hard pressed ever since I left college."

His father brightened up timidly. "I owe you money. We can fix that up. I've got a little mill down there and I've done well, though it was hard sledding at first."

James caught at a phrase. What do you mean?"

"Owe me money!

"I knew it must be you paid off the shortage at the Planters' National. When I sent the money it was returned. You'd got ahead of me. I was THAT grateful to you, son."

The lawyer found himself flushing. "Oh, Jeff paid that. He was earning money at the time and I wasn't. Of course I intended to pay him back some day."

"Did Jeff do that? Then you and he must be friends. Tell me about him."

"There's not much to tell. He's managing editor of a paper here that has a lot of influence. Yes. Jeff has been a staunch friend to me always. He recognizes that I'm a rising man and ought to be kept before the public."

"I wonder if he's like his father."

"Can't tell you that," his son replied carelessly. "I don't remember Uncle Phil much. Jeff's a queer fellow, full of Utopian notions about brotherhood and that sort of thing. But he's practical in a way. He gets things done in spite of his softheadedness."

There was a knock at the door. "Mr. Jefferson Farnum, sir."

James considered for a second. "Tell him to come in, Miss Brooks."

The lawyer saw that the door was closed before he introduced Jeff to his father. It gave him a momentary twinge of conscience to see his cousin take the old man quickly by both hands. It was of course a mere detail, but James had not yet shaken hands with his father.

"I'm glad to see you, Uncle Robert," Jeff said.

His voice shook a little. There was in his manner that hint of affection which made him so many friends, the warmth that suggested a woman's sympathy, but not effeminacy.

The ready tears brimmed into his uncle's eyes. "You're like your father, boy. I believe I would have known you by him," he said impulsively.

"You couldn't please me better, sir. And what about James--would you have known him?"

The old man looked humbly at his handsome, distinguished son. "No, I would never have known him."

"He's becoming one of our leading citizens, James is. You ought to hear him make a speech. Demosthenes and Daniel Webster hide their heads when the Honorable James K. Farnum spellbinds," Jeff joked.

"I've read his speeches," the father said unexpectedly. "For more than a year I've taken the World so as to hear of him."

"Then you know that James is headed straight for the Hall of Fame. Aren't you, James?"

"Nonsense! You've as much influence in the state as I have, or you would have if you would drop your fight on wealth."

"Bless you, I'm not making a fight on wealth," Jeff answered with good humor. "It's illicit wealth we're hammering at. But when you compare me to James K. I'll have to remind you that I'm not a silver-tongued orator or Verden's favorite son."

The father's wistful smile grew bolder. Somehow Jeff's arrival had cleared the atmosphere. A Scriptural phrase flashed into his mind as applicable to this young man. Thinketh no evil. His nephew did not regard him with suspicion or curiosity. To him he was not a sinner or an outcast, but a brother. His manner had just the right touch of easy deference youth ought to give age.

"Of course you're going to make us a long visit, Uncle Robert."

The old man's propitiating gaze went to his son. "Not long, I reckon. I've got to get back to my business."

"Nonsense! We'll not let you go so easily. Eh, James?"

"No, of course not," the lawyer mumbled. He was both annoyed and embarrassed.

"I don't want to be selfish about it, but I do think you had better put up with me, Uncle. James is at the University Club, and only members have rooms there. We'll let him come and see you if he's good," Jeff went on breezily.

James breathed freer. "That might be the best way, if it wouldn't put you out, Jeff."

"I wouldn't want to be any trouble," the old man explained.

"And you won't be. I want you. James wants you, too, but he can't very well arrange it. I can. So that's settled."

In his rooms that evening Jeff very gently made clear to his uncle that Verden believed him to be his son.

"If you don't mind, sir, we'll let it go that way in public. We don't want to hurt the political chances of James just now. And there are other things, too. He'll tell you about them himself probably."

"That's all right. Just as you say. I don't want to disturb things."

"I adopted you as a father about a year ago without your permission. It won't do for you to give me away now," the nephew laughed.

Robert Farnum nodded without speaking. A lump choked his throat. He had found a son after all, but not the one he had come to meet.

Part 2

At the ensuing election the progressives swept the state in spite of all that the allied corporations could do. James was returned to the legislature with an increased majority and was elected speaker of the House according to program. His speech of acceptance was the most eloquent that had ever been heard in the assembly hall. The most radical of his party felt that the committees appointed by him were in their personnel a little too friendly to the vested interests of Verden, but the World took the high ground that he could render his party no higher service than absolute fair play, that the bills for the rights of the people ought to pass on their merits and not by tricky politics.

Never before had there been seen at the State House a lobby like the one that filled it now. The barrel was tapped so that the glint of gold flowed through the corridors, into committee rooms, and to out of the way corners where legislators fought for their honor against an attack that never ceased. Sometimes the corruption was bold. More often it was insidious. To see how one by one men hitherto honest surrendered to bribery was a sight pathetic and tragic.

The Farnum cousins were the centers around whom the reformers rallied. James directed their counsels in the House and Jeff pounded away in the World with vital trenchant editorials and news stories. Every day that paper carried to the farthest corner of the state bulletins of the battle. Farmers and miners and laboring men watched its roll of honor to see if the local representatives were standing firm. As the weeks passed the fight grew more bitter. Now and again men fell by the wayside disgraced. But the pressure from their constituents was so strong that Jeff believed his bill would go through.

His friends forced it through the committee and pushed it to a vote. House Bill 33, as the initiative and referendum amendment was called, passed the lower legislative body with a small majority. The pool rooms offered five to four that it would carry in the senate.

It was on the night of the twenty-first of December that the amendment passed the House. On the morning of the twenty-third the Herald sprang a front page sensation. It charged that the editor of the World had ruined a girl named Nellie Anderson at a house where he had boarded and that she had subsequently disappeared. It featured also a story of how he had been seen to enter his rooms at midnight with a woman of the street, who remained there until morning reveling with him. Attached to this were the affidavits of two detectives, a police officer, and the druggist who had furnished the liquor.

The story exploded like a bomb shell in the camp of the progressives. Rawson tried at once without success to get Jeff on the telephone. He was not at the office, nor had he reached his rooms at all after leaving the World building on the previous night. None of his friends had seen or heard of him.

The afternoon papers had a sensation of their own. Jefferson Farnum had left Verden secretly without leaving an address. Evidently he had been given a hint of the exposure that was to be made of his life and had decamped rather than face the charges.

Rumor had a hundred tales to tell. The waverers at the State House chose to believe that Jeff had sold them out and fled with his price. It was impossible to deny the stories of his immorality, since it happened that Sam Miller, the only man who knew the whole story, was far up in the mountains arranging for a shipment of Rocky Mountain sheep to the state museum. Farnum's friends could only affirm their faith in him or surrender. Some gave way, some stood firm. The lobbyists and the opposition went about with confident, "I-told-you-so" smiles writ large on their faces. Within a few days it became apparent that the reform bill would be defeated in the senate. Its fate had been so long tied up with the people's belief in Jeff that with his collapse the general opinion condemned it to defeat. Its friends hung back, unwilling to risk a vote as yet.

The situation called for a leader and developed one. James Farnum stepped into the breach and took command. In a ringing speech he called for a new alignment. He would yield to none in the devotion he had given to House Bill Number 33. But it needed no prophet to see that now this amendment was doomed. Better half a loaf than no bread. He was a practical man and wanted to see practical results. Rather than see the will of the people frustrated he felt that House Bill I7 should be passed. While not an ideal bill it was far better than none. The principle of direct legislation at least would be established.

H. B. No. I7 was brought hurriedly out of committee. It had been introduced as a substitute measure to defeat the real reform. According to its provision legislation could be initiated by the people, but to make it valid as a law the legislature had to approve any bill so passed. The people could advise. They could not compel.

The speech of the speaker of the House precipitated a bitter fight. The more eager friends of H. B. No. 33 accused him of treachery, but many felt that it was the best possible practical politics under the circumstances. For weeks the issue hung in doubt, but gradually James gathered adherents among both progressives and conservatives. It became almost a foregone conclusion that H. B. No. I7 would pass.

CHAPTER 15

"Old Capting Pink of the Peppermint, Though kindly at heart and good, Had a blunt, bluff way of a-gittin' 'is say That we all of us understood.

When he brained a man with a pingle spike Or plastered a seaman flat, We should 'a' been blowed but we all of us knowed That he didn't mean nothin' by that.

I was wonderful fond of old Capting Pink, And Pink he was fond o' me, As he frequently said when he battered me head Or sousled me into the sea." --Wallace Irwin.

BULLY GREEN PRESERVES DISCIPLINE AND THE REBEL LEARNS TO SAY "SIR"

Part 1

On the night of the twenty-second of December Jeff left the World building and moved down Powers Avenue to the all night restaurant he usually frequented. The man who was both cook and waiter remembered afterwards that Farnum called for coffee, sausage, and a waffle.

Before the editor left the waffle house it was the morning of the twenty-third. He had never felt less sleepy. Nor did a book and a pipe before his gas log seem quite what he wanted. The vagabond streak in him was awake, the same potent wanderlust that as a boy had driven him to the solitude of the forests and the hills. This morning it sent him questing down Powers Avenue to that lower town where the derelicts of the city floated without a rudder.

A cold damp mist had crept up from the water front and enwrapped the city so that its lights showed like blurred moons. Some instinct took him toward the wharves. He could hear the distant cough of a tug as it fussed across the bay, and as he drew near the big Transcontinental wharves of Joe Powers the black hulk of a Japanese liner rose black out of the gray fog shadow. But the freighters, the coasters, tramps that went hither and thither over the earth wherever fat cargoes lured them--they were either swallowed in the mist or shadowed to a ghost-like wraith of themselves so tenuous that all detail was lost in the haze.

Jeff leaned on a pile and let his imagination people the harbor with the wandering children of the earth who had been drawn from all its seafaring corners to this Mecca of trade. He knew that here were swarthy little Japanese with teas and silks, dusky Kanakas with copra, and Alaskan liners carrying gold and returning miners. There would be brigs from Buenos Ayres and schooners that had nosed into Robert Louis Stevenson's magic South Sea islands. Puffy London steamers, Nome and Skagway liners condemned long since on the Atlantic Coast, queer rigged hybrids from Rio and other South American ports, were gorging themselves with lumber or wheat or provisions according to their needs. Here truly lay before him the romance of the nations.

The sound of a stealthy footfall warned him of impending danger. He whirled, and faced three men who were advancing on him. A vague suspicion that had oppressed him more than once in the past week leaped to definite conviction in his brain. He was the victim of a plot to waylay--perhaps to murder him. One of these men was a huge Swede, another a swarthy Italian with rings in his ears. He had seen them before, lurking in the shadows of an alley outside the World building. Last night he had come out from the office with Jenkins, which no doubt had saved him for the time. This morning he had played into the hands of these men, had obligingly wandered down to the waterfront where they could so easily conceal murder in a tide running out fast.

Strangely enough he felt no fear; rather a fierce exultant drumming of the blood that braced him for the struggle. His eyes swept the wharf for a weapon and found none.

"What do you want?" he demanded sharply.

The man in command ignored his question. "Stand by and down him."

The Italian crouched and leaped. Jeff's fist caught him fairly between the eyes. He went down like a log, rolled over once and lay still. The others closed instantly with Farnum and the three swayed in a fierce silent struggle.

Both of his attackers were more powerful than Jeff, but he was far more active. The darkness, too, aided him and hampered them. The Swede he could have managed, for the fellow was awkward as a bear. But the leader stuck to him like a burr. They went down together over a cleat in the flooring, rolling over and over each other as they fought.

Somehow Jeff emerged out of the tangle. He dragged himself to his knees and hammered with his fist at an upturned face beside him. Battered, bleeding, and winded, he got to his feet and shook off the hands that reached for him. Dodging past, he lurched along the wharf like a drunken man. The Italian had gathered himself to his knees. When Jeff came opposite him he dived like a football tackle and threw his arms around the moving legs. The newspaper man crashed heavily down to unconsciousness.

When Farnum opened his eyes upon a world strangely hazy he found himself lying in a row boat, his head bolstered by a man's knees.

"Drink this, mate," ordered a voice that seemed very far away.

The neck of a bottle was thrust between his lips and tilted so that he could not escape drinking.

"That dope'll hold him for a while, Say, Johnny Dago, put your back into them oars," he heard indistinctly.

Faintly there came to him the slap of the waves against the side of the boat. These presently died rhythmically away.

It was daylight when he awakened again. His throbbing head slowly definitized the vile hole in which he lay as the forecastle of a ship. Gradually the facts sifted back to him. He recalled the fight on the wharf and the drink in the boat. In this last he suspected knockout drops. That he had been shanghaied was beyond suspicion.

Laboriously he sat up on the side of his bunk and in doing so became aware of a sailor asleep in the crib opposite. His stertorous breathing stirred a doubt in Jeff's mind. Perhaps the crimps had taken him too.

The ship was rolling a good deal, but by a succession of tacks Jeff staggered to the scuttle and climbed the hatchway to the deck. A wintry sun was shining, and for a few moments he stood blinking in the light.

She was a three-masted schooner and was plunging forward into the choppy seas outside the jaws of the harbor. He whiffed the salt tang of the air and tasted the flying spray. An ebb tide was lifting the vessel forward on a freshening wind, and trim as a greyhound she slipped through the cat's-paws.

A thickset, powerful figure paced to and fro on the quarter-deck, occasionally bellowing an order in a tremendous voice like the roar of a bull. He was getting canvas set for the fresh breeze of the open seas that was catching him astern, and the sailors were jumping to obey his orders. The pounding sails and the singing cordage, the rattling blocks and the whipping ropes, would have told Jeff they were scudding along fast, even if the heeling of the schooner and its swift forward leaps had not made it plain.

"By God, Jones, she's walking," he heard the captain boom across to the mate.

Just then a figure cut past him and made straight for the captain. Farnum recognized in it the sailor whom he had left asleep in the forecastle and even in that fleeting glance was aware of the man's livid fury. Up the steps he went like a wild beast.

"What kind of a boat is this?" he panted hoarsely.

The captain turned toward him. His eyes were shining wickedly, but his voice was ominously suave and honeyed. "This boat, son, is a threemasted schooner, name of Nancy Hanks , Master Joshua Green, bound for the Solomon Islands with a cargo of Oregon fir."

"I've been shanghaied. This is a nest of crimps," the man screamed.

Joshua Green's salient jaw came forward. "Been shanghaied, have you? And we're a nest of crimps, are we? Son, the less I hear of that line of talk the better. Put that in your pipe and smoke it."

The man turned loose a flood of profanity and swore he would rot in hell before he would touch a rope on that ship.

Out went Green's great gnarled fist. The seaman shot back from the quarterdeck and struck a pile of rope below. He was up again and down again almost quicker than it takes to tell. Three times he hit the planks before he lay still.

The captain stood over him, his eyes blazing. He looked the savage, barbaric slavedriver he was.

"Me, I'm Bully Green, and don't you forget it. Been shanghaied, have you? Not going to touch a rope? Then, by thunder, you white-livered beachcomber, a rope will touch you till you're flayed. Get this in your coconut. You'll walk chalk, you lazy son of a sea cook, or I'll haze you till you wish you'd never been born." He punctuated his remarks with vigorous kicks. "Bully Green runs this tub, strike me dead if he don't. Now you hump for'ard and clap a hand to them sheets. Walk, you shanghaied Dutchman!"

The sailor crawled away, completely cowed. For one day he had had more than enough. The captain watched him for a moment, his great jaw thrust grimly out. Then, as on a pivot, he whirled toward Jeff.

"Come here, you! Step lively, Sport!"

Farnum wondered whether he was about to undergo an experience similar to that of the sailor. "Do you want to know what kind of a ship this is?"

"No, sir. I'm perfectly satisfied about that," smiled his victim.

"Got no opinions you want to hand out free, son?"

"Think I'll keep them bottled."

"Say 'sir,' Sport!"

"Yes, sir," answered Farnum, his quiet eyes steady and unafraid.

"When I give an order you expect to jump?"

"Jump isn't the word."

"Sir!" thundered Green, and "Sir" the newspaper man corrected himself.

"Got no story to spiel about being shanghaied, son?"

"Would it do any good, sir?"

"Not unless you're aching to get what that son of a Dutchman got. See here, sport! You walk the chalk line, and Bully Green and you'll get along fine. I'm a lamb, I am, when I'm not riled. But get gay--and you'll have a hectic time. I'll rough you till you're shark-food. Get that through your teeth?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now you trot down to the fo'c'sle and dive into them slops you find there. You got just three minutes to do the dress-suit act."

Jeff, as he passed below, could hear the great bull voice roaring orders to the men. "Set y'r topsails! Jam 'er down hard, Johnnie Dago! Stand by, you lubbers! . . . Now then, easy does it . . . easy!"

Within the allotted three minutes Farnum had climbed into the foul oilskin coat and tarry breeches he found below and was ready for orders.

"Clap on to that windlass, sport! No loafing here. . . . Hump y'rself. D'ye hear me? Hump?"

Jeff threw his one hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle against the crank of the windlass. Some men would have fought first as long as they could stand and see. Others would have begged, argued, or threatened. But Jeff had schooled himself to master impulses of rage. He knew when to fight and when to yield. Nor did he give way sullenly or passionately. It was an outrage-- highhanded tyranny--but at the worst it was a magnificent adventure. As he flung his weight into the crank he smiled.

Part 2

Before the trade winds the Nancy Hanks foamed along day after day, all sails set, making excellent time. But for his anxiety as to the effect his disappearance would have upon the political situation, Jeff would have enjoyed immensely the wild rough life aboard the schooner. But he could not conceal from himself the interpretation of his absence the machine agents would scatter broadcast. He foresaw a reaction against his bill and its probable defeat.

The issue was on the knees of chance. The fact that could not be obliterated was that he had been wiped from the slate until after the legislature would adjourn. For every hour was carrying him farther from the scene of action.

His only hope was that the Nancy Hanks might put in at the Hawaiian Islands, from which place he might get a chance to write, or, better still, to cable the reason of his absence. Captain Green himself wiped out this expectation. He jocosely intimated to Farnum one afternoon that he had no intention of calling the Islands.

"When we get through this six months' cruise you'll be a first- rate sailorman, son, and you'll get a sailorman's wages," he added genially.

The shanghaied man met his eye squarely. "I think I could arrange to draw on Verden for a thousand dollars if you would drop me at the Islands."

"Not for twenty thousand. You're going to stay with us till we get to the Solomon Islands, and don't you forget it."

Bully Green had taken rather a fancy to this amiable young man who had taken so sensible a view of the little misadventure that had befallen him, but of course business was business. He had been paid to keep him out of the way and he intended to fulfil the contract.

"Here I'm educatin' you, makin' an able-bodied seaman out of you, son. You had ought to be grateful," he grinned.

"Oh, I am," Jeff agreed with a twinkle.

But Captain Green had reckoned without the weather. The Nancy Hanks drifted into three days of calm and sultry heat. At the end of the third day she began to rock gently beneath a murky sky.

"Dirty weather," predicted the mate, the same who had assisted at the shanghaing. "When you see a satin sea turn indigo and that peculiar shade in the sky you want to look out for squalls," he explained to Jeff.

It came on them in a rush. The sun went out of a black sky like a blown candle and the sea began to whip itself to a froth. The wind quickened, boomed to a roar, and sent the schooner heeling to a squall across the leaden waters. The open sea closed in on them. Before they could get in sail and make secure the sheets ripped with a scream, braces parted and the topmasts snapped off. The Nancy went pitching forward into the yawning deeps with drunken plunges from which it seemed she would never emerge. Great combing seas toppled down and pounded the decks, while the sailors clung to stays or whatever would give them a hold.

The squall lasted scarce an hour, but it left the schooner dismantled. Her sheets were in ribbons, her topmasts and bowsprit gone. There was nothing for it but a crippled beat toward the Islands.

Four days later she made an offing in the harbor at Honolulu just as a liner was nosing her way out.

Bully Green ranged up beside Farnum and cast a speculative eye on him.

"Sport, I had ought to iron you and keep you in the fo'c'sle until we leave here. It's the only square thing to do."

Jeff's gaze was on the advancing steamer. She was scarce two hundred yards away now and he could plainly read the name painted on her side. She was the Bellingham of Verden.

"I don't see the necessity, sir," he answered.

"I reckon you do, son. Samuel Green stands by his word to a finish. Now I've promised to keep you safe, and you can bet your last dollar I'm a-going to do it."

His prisoner turned from the rail against which he was leaning to the captain. Pinpoints of light were gleaming in the big eyes.

"How much safer do you want me than this?"

Green expectorated at a chip in the water and shifted his quid. "You've got brains, son. No telling what you might try to do. But see here. You're no drunken beachcomber. I know a gentleman when I see one. Gimme your word you'll not try to skip out or send a message back to the States and I'll go easy on you. I'm so dashed kindhearted, I am, that--"

Jeff leaped to the rail, stood poised an instant, and dived into the blue Pacific.

"Well, I'll be " Bully Green interrupted himself to roar an order to lower a boat.

CHAPTER 16

A young man left his father's house to see the world. Everywhere he found busy human beings. Cities were rising toward the skies, seas and plains were being lined with traffic, school, mill and office hummed with life. He wondered why men were so busy and what they were trying to do.

He went to a railroad director and asked: "Why are you building railroads?" "For profits," was the answer. But a laborer beckoned him aside and whispered: "No--we are making the World one neighborhood. East is now next door to West, and all peoples dwell in one continuing city."

The young man went to the boss of a labor union. "Why," he asked, "do you spend your days breeding discontent and leading strikes?" "Why?" repeated the leader fiercely, "that the workers receive more pay for shorter hours." "No," whispered a laborer, "we are teaching the World the sacred value of human beings. We are learning how to be brotherly--how to stand up for each other. --James Oppenheim.

UNDER STRANGE CIRCUMSTANCES THE REBEL MAKES HIS BOW TO POLITE SOCIETY. TAKING AN APPLE AS A TEXT, HE PREACHES ON THE RISE OF ADAM

Part 1

"Man overboard!"

Somebody on the liner sang it out. Instantly there was a rush of passengers to the side. From the schooner a boat was being lowered and manned.

"I see him. He's swimming this way. I believe he's trying to escape," one slender young woman cried.

"Nonsense, Alice! He fell overboard and he's probably so frightened he doesn't know which way he is swimming." This suggestion was from the beautiful blonde with bronze hair who stood beside her under a tan parasol held by a fresh-faced globetrotter.

"Don't you believe it, Val. Look how he's cutting through the water. He's trying to reach us. Oh, I hope they won't get him. Somebody get a rope to throw out."

"By Jove, you're right, Miss Alice," cried the Englishman. "It's a race, and it's going to be a near thing." He disappeared and was presently back with a rope.

"Come on! Come on!" screamed the passengers to the swimmer.

"He's ripping strong with that overhead stroke. Ye gods, it's close!" exclaimed the Britisher.

It was. The swimmer reached the side of the ship not four yards in front of the pursuing boat. He caught at the trailing rope and began to clamber up hand over hand, while the Englishman, a man standing near, and Alice Frome dragged him up.

The mate of the Nancy Hanks, standing up in the boat, caught at his foot and pulled. The man's hold loosened on the rope. He slid down a foot, steadied himself. Suddenly the left leg shot out and caught the grinning mate in the mouth. He went over backward into the bottom of the boat. Before he could extricate himself from the tangle his fall had precipitated, the dripping figure of the swimmer stood safely on the deck of the Bellingham.

In his wet foul slops the man was a sight to draw stares. The cabin passengers moved back to give him a wide circle, as men do with a wet retriever.

"What does this mean, my man?" demanded the captain of the Bellingham, pushing forward. He was a big red-faced figure with a heavy roll of fat over his collar.

"I have been shanghaied, sir. From Verden. I'm the editor of the World of that city."

"That's a lie," proclaimed the mate of the Nancy Hanks , who by this time had reached the deck. "He's a nutty deckswabber we picked up at 'Frisco."

"Why, it's Mr. Farnum," cried a fresh young voice from the circle.

The rescued man turned. His eyes joined those of a slim golden girl and he was struck dumb.

"You know this man, Miss Frome?" the captain asked.

"I know him by sight." She stepped to the front. "There can't be any doubt about it. He's Mr. Farnum of Verden, the editor of the World."

"You're quite sure?"

"Quite sure, Captain Barclay. My cousin knows him, too."

The captain turned to Mrs. Van Tyle. She nodded languidly.

Barclay swung back to the mate of the Nancy Hanks . "I know your kind, my man, and I can tell you that I think the penitentiary would be the proper place for you and your captain, with my compliments to him."

"Better come and pay 'em yourself, sir," sneered the mate.

"Get off my deck, you dirty crimp," roared the captain. "Slide now, or I'll have you thrown off."

Mr. Jones made a hurried departure. Once in the boat, he shook his fist at Barclay and cursed him fluently.

The captain turned away promptly. "Mr. Farwell, if you'll step this way the steward will outfit you with some clothes. If they don't fit they'll do better than those togs you're wearing."

The English youth came forward with a suggestion. "Really, I think I can do better than that for Mr. Far--" He hesitated for the name.

"Farnum," supplied the owner of it.

"Ah! You're about my size, Mr. Farnum. If you don't mind, you know, you're quite welcome to anything I have."

"Thank you very much."

"Very well. Mr. Farwell--Farnum, I mean--shake hands with Lieutenant Beauchamp," and with the sense of duty done the worthy captain dismissed the new arrival from his mind.

Jeff bowed to Miss Frome and followed his broad-shouldered guide to a cabin. He was conscious of an odd elation that had not entirely to do with a brave adventure happily ended. The impelling cause of it was rather the hope of a braver adventure happily begun.

Part 2

"By Jove, I envy you, Mr. Farnum. Didn't know people bucked into adventures like that these tame days. Think of actually being shanghaied. It's like a novel. My word, the ladies will make a lion of you!"

The Englishman was dragging a steamer trunk from under his bed. It needed no second glance at his frank boyish face to divine him a friend worth having. Fresh-colored and blue-eyed, he looked very much the country gentleman Jeff had read about but never seen. It was perhaps by the gift of race that he carried himself with distinction, though the flat straight back and the good shoulders of the cricketer contributed somewhat, too. Jeff sized him up as a resolute, clean-cut fellow, happily endowed with many gifts of fortune to make him the likable chap he was.

Beauchamp threw out some clothes from a steamer trunk and left the rescued man alone to dress. Ten minutes later he returned.

"Expect you'd like an interview with the barber. I'll take you round. By the way, you'll let me be your banker till you reach Verden?"

"Thank you. Since I must."

From the barber shop the Englishman took him to the dining saloon. "Awfully sorry you can't sit at our table, Mr. Farnum. It's full up. You're to be at the purser's."

Jeff let a smile escape into his eyes. "Suits me. I've been at the bos'n's for several weeks."

"Beastly outrage. We'll want to hear all about it. Miss Frome's tremendously excited. Odd you and she hadn't met before. Didn't know Verden was such a big town."

"I'm not a society man," explained Jeff. "And it happens I've been fighting her father politically for years. Miss Frome and Mrs. Van Tyle are about the last people I would be likely to meet."

From his seat Jeff could see the cousins at the other end of the room. They were seated near the head of the captain's table, and that officer was paying particular attention to them, perhaps because the Bellingham happened to be one of a line of boats owned by Joe Powers, perhaps because both of them were very attractive young women. They were types entirely outside Farnum's very limited experience. The indolence, the sheathed perfection, the soft sensuous allure of the young widow seemed to Jeff a product largely of her father's wealth. But the charm of her cousin, with its sweet and mocking smile, its note of youthful austerity, was born of the fine and gallant spirit in her.

Beauchamp sat beside Miss Frome and the editor observed that they were having a delightful time. He wondered what they could be talking about. What did a man say to bring such a glow and sparkle of life into a girl's face? It came to him with a wistful regret for his stolen youth that never yet had he sat beside a young woman at dinner and entertained her in the gay adequate manner of Lieutenant Beauchamp. James could do it, had done it a hundred times. But he had been sold too long to an urgent world of battle ever to know such delights.

Part 3

After dinner Jeff lost no time in waiting upon Miss Frome to thank her for her assistance. It was already dark. When he found her it was not in one of the saloons, but on deck. She was leaning against the deck railing in animated talk with Beauchamp, the while Mrs. Van Tyle listened lazily from a deck chair.

"I like the way that red head of his came bobbing through the water," Beauchamp was saying. "Looks to me as if he would take a lot of beating. He's no quitter. Since I haven't the pleasure of knowing Mr. Powers or Senator Frome, I think I'll back Farnum to win."

"It's very plain you don't know Joe Powers. He always wins," contributed his daughter blandly.

"But Mr. Farnum is a remarkable man just the same," Alice added. Then, with a little cry to cover her flushed embarrassment: "Here he is. We do hope you're a little deaf, Mr. Farnum. We've been talking about you."

"You may say anything you like about me, Miss Frome, except that I'm not grateful for the lift aboard you gave me this afternoon," Jeff answered.

He found himself presently giving the story of his adventure. He did not look at Alice, but he told the tale to her alone and was aware of the eagerness with which she listened.

"But why should they want to kidnap you? I don't see any reason for it," Alice protested.

A shadowy smile lay in the eyes of Mrs. Van Tyle. "Mr. Farnum is in politics, my dear."

A fat pork packer from Chicago joined the group. "I've been thinking about the sharks, Mr. Farnum. You played in great luck to escape them."

"Sharks!" Jeff heard the young woman beside him give a gasp. In the moonlight her face showed white.

"These waters are fairly infested with them," the Chicagoan explained. "We saw two this morning in the harbor. It was when the stewards threw out the scraps. They turned over on their--"

"Don't!" cried Alice Frome sharply.

The petrified horror on the vivid mobile face remained long as a sweet memory to Jeff. It had been for him that she had known the swift heart clutch of terror.

Part 4

Farnum, pacing the deck as he munched at an apple, heard himself hailed from the bridge above. He looked up, to see Alice Frome, caught gloriously in the wind like a winged Victory. Her hair was parted in the middle with a touch of Greek simplicity and fell in wavy ripples over her temples beneath the jaunty cap. She put her arms on the railing and leaned forward, her chin tilted to an oddly taking boyish piquancy.

"I say, give a fellow a bite."

By no catalogue of summarized details could this young woman have laid claim to beauty, but in the flashing play of her expression, the exquisite golden coloring, one could not evade the charm of a certain warm witchery, of the passionate beat of innocent life. The wonder of her lay in the sparkle of her inner self. Every gleam of the deep true eyes, every impulsive motion of the slight supple body, expressed some phase of her infinite variety. Her flying moods swept her from demure to daring, from warm to cool. And for all her sweet derision her friends knew a heart full of pure, brave enthusiasms that would endure.

"I don't believe in indiscriminate charity," Jeff explained, and he took another bite.

"Have you no sympathy for the deserving poor?" she pleaded. "Besides, since you're a socialist, it isn't your apple any more than it is mine. Bring my half up to me, sir."

"Your half is the half I've already eaten. And if you knew as much as you pretend to about socialism you'd know it isn't yours until you've earned it."

Her eyes danced. He noticed that beneath each of them was a sprinkle of tiny powdered freckles. "But haven't I earned it? Didn't I blister my hands pulling you aboard?"

He promptly shifted ground. "We're living under the capitalistic system. You earn it and I eat it," he argued. "The rest of this apple is my reward for having appropriated what didn't belong to me."

"But that's not fair. It's no better than stealing."

"Sh--h! It's high finance. Don't use that other word," he whispered. "And what's fair hasn't a thing to do with it. It's my apple because I've got it."

"But--"

He waved her protest aside blandly. "Now try to be content with the lot a wise Providence has awarded you. I eat the apple. You see me eat it.

That's the usual division of profits. Don't be an agitator, or an anarchist."

"Don't I get even the core?" she begged.

"I'd like to give it to you, but it wouldn't be best. You see I don't want to make you discontented with your position in life." He flung what was left of the apple into the sea and came up the steps to join her.

Laughter was in the eyes of both, but it died out of hers first.

"Mr. Farnum, is it really as bad as that?" Before he could find an answer she spoke again. "I've wanted for a long time to talk with some one who didn't look at things as we do. I mean as my father does and my uncle does and most of my friends. Tell me what you think of it--you and your friends."

"That's a large order, Miss Frome. I hardly know where to begin."

"Wait! Here comes Lieutenant Beauchamp to take me away. I promised to play ring toss with him, but I don't want to go now." She led a swift retreat to a spot on the upper deck shielded from the wind and warmed by the two huge smokestacks. Dropping breathless into a chair, she invited him with a gesture to take another. Little imps of mischief flashed out at him from her eyes. In the adventure of the escape she had made him partner. A rush of warm blood danced through his veins.

"Now, sir, we're safe. Begin the propaganda. Isn't that the word you use? Tell me all about everything. You're the first real live socialist I ever caught, and I mean to make the most of you."

"But I'm unfortunately not exactly a socialist."

"An anarchist will do just as well."

"Nor an anarchist. Sorry."

"Oh, well, you're something that's dreadful. You haven't the proper bump of respect for father and for Uncle Joe. Now why haven't you?"

And before he knew it this young woman had drawn from him glimpses of what life meant to him. He talked to her of the pressure of the struggle for existence, of the poverty that lies like a blight over whole sections of cities, spreading disease and cruelty and disorder, crushing the souls of its victims, poisoning their hearts and bodies. He showed her a world at odds and ends, in which it was accepted as the natural thing that some should starve while others were waited upon by servants.

He made her see how the tendency of environment is to reduce all things to a question of selfinterest, and how the great triumphant fact of life is that love and kindness persist. Her interest was insatiable. She poured questions upon him, made him tell her stories of the things he had seen in that strange underworld that was farther from her than Asia. So she learned of Oscar Marchant, coughing all day over the shoes he half-soled and going out at night to give his waning life to the service of those who needed him. He told her--without giving names--the story of Sam Miller and his wife, of shop girls forced by grinding poverty to that easier way which leads to death, of little children driven by want into factories which crushed the youth out of them.

Her eyes with the star flash in them never left his face. She was absorbed, filled with a strange emotion that made her lashes moist. She saw not only the tragedy and waste of life, but a glorious glimpse of the way out. This man and his friends set the common good above their private gain. For them a new heart was being born into the world. They were no longer consumed with blind greed, with love of their petty selves. They were no longer full of cowardice and distrust and enmity. Life was a thing beautiful to them. It was flushed with the color of hope, of fine enthusiasms. They might suffer. They might be defeated. But nothing could extinguish the joy in their souls. They walked like gods, immortals, these brothers to the spent and the maimed. For they had found spiritual values in it that made any material profit of small importance. Alice got a vision of the great truth that is back of all true reforms, all improvement, all progress.

"Love," she said almost in a whisper, "is forgetting self."

Jeff lost his stride and pulled up. He thought he could not have heard aright. "I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing. I was just thinking out loud. Go on please."

But she had broken the thread of his talk. He attempted to take it up again, but he was still trying for a lead when Alice saw Mrs. Van Tyle and Beauchamp coming toward them.

She rose. Her eyes were the brightest Jeff had ever seen. They were filled with an ardent tenderness. It was as if she were wrapped in a spiritual exaltation.

"Thank you. Thank you. I can't tell you what you've done for me."

She turned and walked quickly away. To be dragged back to the commonplace at once was more than she could bear. First she must get alone with herself, must take stock of this new emotion that ran like wine through her blood. A pulse throbbed in her throat, for she was in a passionate glow of altruism.

"I'm glad of life--glad of it--glad of it!" she murmured through the veil she had lowered to screen her face from observation.

It had come to her as a revelation straight from Heaven that there can be no salvation without service. And the motive back of service must be love. Love! That was what Jesus had come to teach the world, and all these years it had warped and mystified his message.

She felt that life could never again be gray or colorless. For there was work waiting that she could do, service that she could give. And surely there could be no greater happiness than to find her work and do it gladly.

CHAPTER 17

All sorts of absurd assumptions pass current as fixed and non- debatable standards. We might be free, and we tie ourselves to the slavery of rutted convention. Afraid of ideas, we come to no definite philosophy of life that is the result of clear and pellucid thinking.

We must get rid of our bonds, but only in order to take on new ones. For our convictions will shackle us. The difference is that then we shall be servants of Truth and not of dead Tradition. --From the Note Book of a Dreamer.

THE CHAPERONE EXPLAINS THAT THE REBEL IS IMPOSSIBLE AND THE CHAPERONED BEGS LEAVE TO DIFFER

Part 1

"And why mustn't I?" Alice demanded vigorously.

Her cousin regarded her with indolent amusement. "My dear, you are positively the most energetic person I know. It is refreshing to see with what interest you enter into a discussion."

Miss Frome, very erect and ready for argument, watched her steadily from the piano stool of their joint sitting room. "Well?"

"I didn't say you mustn't, my dear. I know better than to deal in imperatives with Miss Alice. What I did was mildly to suggest that you are going rather far. It's all very well to be civil, but--" Mrs. Van Tyle shrugged her shoulders and let it go at that. She was leaning back in an easychair and across its arm her wrist hung. Between the fingers, polished like old ivory to the tapering pink nails, was a lighted cigarette.

"Why shouldn't I be--pleasant to him? I like him." Her color deepened, but the eyes of the girl did not give way. There was in them a little flare of defiance.

"Be pleasant to him if you like, and if it amuses you. But--" Again Valencia stopped, but after a puff or two at her cigarette she added presently: "Don't get too interested in him."

"I'm not likely to," Alice returned with a touch of scorn. "Can't I like a man and admire him without wanting to marry him? I think that's a hateful way to look at it."

"It's your interpretation, not mine," Mrs. Van Tyle answered with perfect good humor. "Of course you couldn't want to marry him under any circumstances. His station in life--his anarchistic ideas--his reputation as a confirmed libertine--all of them make the thought of such a thing impossible."

Miss Frome's mind seized on only one of the charges. "I don't believe it. I don't believe a word of it. Anybody can throw mud--and some of it is bound to stick. He's a good man. You can see that in his face."

"You can perhaps. I can't." Valencia studied her beneath a droop of eyelids behind which she was very alert. "Those things aren't said about a man unless they are true. Moreover, it happens we don't have to depend on hearsay."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you remember that night we saw the Russian dancers?"

"Yes."

"On the way home our car passed him. He was helping a woman out of a cab in front of the building where he rooms. She was intoxicated, and--his arm was round her waist."

"I don't believe it. It was somebody else," the young woman flamed.

"His cousin recognized him. So did I."

"There must be some explanation. I'll ask him."

"Ask him!" Valencia's level eyebrows lifted "Really, I don't think that will do. Better quietly eliminate him."

"You mean treat him as if he were guilty when, I am sure he is not."

Mrs. Van Tyle's little laugh rippled out. "You're quite dramatic about it, my dear. The man's of no importance. He's a poseur, a demagogue, and one with a vicious streak in him. I understand, of course, that you're interested only because he different from the other men you know. That merely a part of his pose."

"I'm sure it isn't."

"You're romantic, my dear. I'll admit his arrival on this ship was dramatic. No doubt you're imagining him a knight going back to save gallantly a day that is lost. He's only a politician, and so far as I can understand they are almost all a bad lot."

"Including Father and Uncle Joe and Ned Merrill?" Alice asked acidly.

"They are not politicians, but business men. They are in politics merely to protect their interests. But I didn't intend to start a discussion about Mr. Farnum. I ask you to remember that as your chaperone I'm here to represent your father. Would he wish you to be friendly with this man?"

Alice was silent. What her father would think was not a matter of doubt.

"The man's impossible," Mrs. Van Tyle went on pleasantly. "And it's just as well to be careful. Not that I'm very prudish myself. But if you're going to marry Ned Merrill--"

She had struck the wrong note. Like a flash Alice answered.

"I'm not. That's definitely decided."

"Really! I thought it was rather arranged," Valencia smiled blandly.

It was all very well for Alice to protest, but in the end she would be a good girl and do as she was told. Not that her cousin objected to her having a little fling before the fatal day. But why couldn't the girl do her flirting with Beauchamp instead of with this wild socialist?

Valencia reflected that at any rate she had done her duty.

Part 2

Jeff was tramping the deck, his hands in his coat pockets, waiting for the trumpeter to fling out the two bars of music that would summon him to breakfast. He walked vigorously? drawing in deep breaths of the salt sea air. His thoughts were of Alice Frome. He was a lover, and in his imagination she embodied all things beautiful. Her charm flowed through him, pierced him with delight. When he heard music his mind flew to her. It voiced the rhythm of her motions and the sound of her warm laughter. The sunshine but reflected the golden gleams of light in her wavy hair.

As he swung round the smoking saloon Jeff came face to face with Alice. He turned and caught step with her. The coat she wore came to her ankles, but it could not conceal her light, strong tread nor the long lines of the figure that gave her the grace of a captured wood nymph.

"Only five hundred miles from Verden. By night we ought to be in wireless communication," he suggested.

Her glance flashed at him. "You'll be glad to get home."

"I will and I won't. There's work for me to do there. But it's the first real vacation I ever had in my life that lasted over a week. You can't think how I've enjoyed it."

"So have I. More than anything I can remember." They stopped to look at a steamer which lay low on the distant horizon line. After they had fallen into step again she continued at the point where they had been interrupted: "And after we reach home? Are you going to come and see me? Are you going to let me meet your friends, those dear people who are giving themselves to make life less hideous and harsh for the weak? Shall I meet Mr. Mifflin . . . and Mr. Miller and your little Socialist poet? Or are you going to desert me?"

He smiled a little at her way of putting it, but he was troubled none the less. "Are you sure that your way is our way? One can give service on the Hill just as much as down in the bottoms. There's no moral grandeur in rags or in dirt. Isn't your place with your friends?"

"Haven't I a right to take hold of life for myself at first hand? Haven't I a right to know the truth? What have I done that I should be walled off from all these people who earn the bread I eat?"

"But your friends . . . your father. . ."

Her ironic smile derided him. "So after all you haven't the courage of your convictions. Because I'm Peter C. Frome's daughter I'm not to have the right to live."

"No, it's your right to take hold of life with both hands. But surely you must live it among your own people."

"I've got to learn how to live it first, haven't I?

Most of my friends are not even aware there a problem of poverty. They thrust the thought of it from them. Our wealthy class has no social consciousness. Take my father. He thinks the submerged are lost because they are thriftless and that all would be right if they wouldn't drink. To him they are just a waste product of civilization.

"But can you study the life of the people without growing discontented with the life you must lead?"

"There is a divine discontent, you know. I've got to see things for myself. Why should all my opinions, my faith, be given to me ready-made. Why must I live by a formula I have never examined? If it isn't true I want to know it. And if it is true I want to know it." She had been looking straight before them toward the rising sun but now her gaze swept round on him. "Don't blame yourself for giving me new thoughts. I suppose all new ideas are likely to make trouble. But I've been working in this direction for years. Ever since I've been a little girl my heresies have puzzled my father. Meeting you has shown me a short cut. That's all."

Something she had said recalled to him a fugitive memory.

"Do you know, I think I saw you once when you were a little bit of a thing?"

"Where?"

"On the doorstep of your old place. I was rather busy at the time fighting Edward Merrill."

She stopped, looking at him in surprise. "Were you that boy?"

"I was that boy."

"You fought him to help a little ragged girl. She was a foreigner."

"I've forgotten why I fought him. The reason I remember the occasion is that I met then for the first time two of my friends."

She claimed a place immediately. "Who was the other one?"

"Captain Chunn."

Presently she bubbled into a little laugh. "How did the fight come out? My nurse dragged me into the house."

"Don't remember. I know the school principal licked me next day. I had been playing hookey."

They made another turn of the deck before she spoke again.

"So we're old acquaintances, and I didn't know it. That was nearly eighteen years ago. Isn't it strange that after so long we should meet again only last week?"

Jeff felt the blood creep into his face. "We met once before, Miss Frome."

"Oh, on the street. I meant to speak."

"So did I."

"When?"

With his eyes meeting hers steadily Jeff told her of the time she had found him in the bushes and mistaken him for a sick man. He could see that he had struck her dumb. She looked at him and looked away again.

"Why do you tell me this?" she asked at last in a low voice.

"It's only fair you should know the truth about me."

They tramped the circuit once more. Neither of them spoke. The trumpeter's bugle call to breakfast rang out.

At the bow she stopped and looked down at the waters they were furrowing. It was a long time before she raised her head and met his eyes. The color had whipped into her cheeks, but she put her question steadily.

"Are you telling me. . . that I must lose my friend?"

"Isn't that for you to say?"

"I don't know." She faltered for words, but not the least in her intention. "Are you--what I have always heard you are?"

"Can you be a little more definite?" he asked gently.

"Well--dissipated! You're not that?"

"No. I've trodden down the appetite. I'm a total abstainer."

"And you're not. . . those worse things that the papers say?"

"No."

"I knew it." Triumph rang in her voice. She breathed a generous trust. To know him for a true man it was necessary only to look into his fearless eyes set deep in the thin tanned face. It was impossible for anything unclean to survive with his humorous humility and his pervading sympathy and his love of truth. "I didn't care what they said. I knew it all the time."

Her sweet faith was a thing to see with emotion. He felt tears scorch the back of his eyes.

"The thing you know is bad enough."

"Oh, that! That is nothing . . . now. It doesn't matter."

Lieutenant Beauchamp emerged from a saloon and bore down upon them.

"Mrs. Van Tyle has sent me to bring you to breakfast, Miss Frome. Mornin', Mr. Farnum."

"And I'm ready for it, We've been round the deck ever so many times. Haven't we, Mr. Farnum?"

She nodded lightly to Jeff and walked away with the Englishman. The sunshine of her warm vitality was like quicksilver in Farnum's veins. What a gallant spirit, at once delicate and daring, dwelt in that vivid slender form! A snatch of Chesterton came to his mind:

Her face was like an open word When brave men speak and choose, The very colors of her coat Were better than good news.

"It is the hour of man: new purposes, Broad shouldered, press against the world's slow gate; And voices from the vast eternities Publish the soul's austere apostolate.

Man bursts the chains that his own hands have made; Hurls down the blind, fierce gods that in blind years He fashioned, and a power upon them laid To bruise his heart and shake his soul with fears." --Edwin Markham.

CHAPTER 18

THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY ARE GIVEN AN ILLUSTRATION OF A ROORBACK

Part 1

Rawson sat in the rotunda of the Pacific Hotel in desultory conversation with Captain Chunn, Hardy and Rogers. He brought his clenched hand down on the padded leather arm of the big chair.

"They'll jam it through to-morrow. That's what they'll do. James K. Farnum's been playing mighty pretty politics and he has got the votes to deliver the goods."

Hardy nodded as he knocked the ash from his cigar. "Now that it's all over we can see James K.'s trail easily enough. He meant to defeat the initiative and referendum amendment, and he meant to do it without losing his popularity. He's done it too. Jeff's disappearance made it certain our bill wouldn't go through. James jumps in with a hurrah and passes one that isn't worth the powder to blow it up. But he's going to claim it as a great victory for the people--and if I know that young man he'll get away with his bluff. Yet it's certain as taxes that he's been working for Joe Powers all the time."

"I wouldn't put it past him to have engineered some deal to get rid of his cousin," Chunn suggested.

Rawson shook his head. "No. Not respectable enough for James. And he's not fool enough to run his head into a trap. But I'd bet my head Big Tim gave him a tip it was to be pulled off. J. K. had to know. Otherwise he wouldn't have been in a position to play the game for them. But he didn't know any details--just a suggestion. Enough to wise him without making him responsible."

"And the play he's been making in the papers. Offering a reward for information about Jeff, insisting publicly that he has absolute confidence in his cousin's integrity while he shakes his head in private. If you want my opinion, that young man is a whited sepulchre. I never did believe in him."

Rogers turned to Captain Chunn with an incredulous smile. "But you still believe in Jeff. Frankly, it looks to me like a double sell out."

The old Confederate's eyes gleamed. "Sir, I've known that boy since he was a little tad. He's never told me a lie. He's square as they make them."

"I used to believe in his cousin James, too," Rogers commented.

"Oh, James! He's another proposition." Rawson's voice was sour with disgust. "He just naturally looked to see where his bread was buttered. He's as selfish as the devil for all that suave, cordial way of his. Right from the first his idea has been to make a big personal hit. And he figured out he could do it easier with Joe Powers back of him than against him. James K. is the smoothest fraud on the Pacific Coast. But Jeff--why, every hair of his head is straight. He's one out of a million, believe me."

"You've said it," Chunn agreed.

Rogers smiled across at them. "He's left a lot of good friends behind him anyhow. But it's strange he could drop off the earth without a soul knowing about it."

"The men who murdered him know about it," Rawson answered significantly.

Captain Chunn shook his head. "No, that boy will turn up yet."

"But not in time to save us. We're licked. There's not one chance in a million for us. That's the discouraging feature of it, to be sold out after we had won our fight."

Rawson agreed with Hardy. "Yes, we're licked. Even if Jeff were to show up, with all these stories against him, we wouldn't be able to stem the tide now."

"Mister Raw-w-son--Mister Raw-w-son." The singsong voice of a bellhop echoed through the rotunda.

Captain Chunn's walking stick flagged the lad and brought him sliding across the polished floor.

"Telegram for Mr. Rawson."

The big politician ripped it open and ran his eyes rapidly over the yellow slip. From his lips burst a sudden oath of surprise.

"By Jupiter, the miracle's happened. Jeff is alive and on his way here. He's sent me a wireless from out at sea somewhere."

"What!" Captain Chunn let out a whoop of joy.

"Listen here." Rawson read aloud his message. "'Shanghaied on schooner Nancy Hanks . Escaped at Honolulu. Back in Verden to-night. Keep up the fight.'"

"Didn't I say Jeff was alive? Didn't I say he would come back and beat those robbers yet?" the owner of the World demanded.

"Don't get excited. It may be a fake." This from Hardy, who was almost as much moved himself.

"Fake nothing! We'll go down to the telegraph office and make sure it's 0. K. Won't this make a bully story for the World 'Shanghaied' in big letters across the top, and underneath a red hot roast of the old city hall gang's methods of trying to defeat the will of the people." Rawson laughed aloud as his imagination pictured the story.

The old soldier's eyes gleamed. "I'll run twice as many copies as usual. We'll plaster the state with them, calling for mass meetings everywhere to insist on the legislature passing our bill."

"Go easy, gentlemen," advised Rogers. "If it's true we hold a trump card, but we want to play it mighty carefully so as to make it carry as much dynamite as possible."

The company could give no information more definite than that the message had come from the Bellingham, which was still a couple of hundred miles out at sea.

In view of the value of the news from a strategic slant his friends succeeded in keeping the lid on Captain Chunn's enthusiasm until the party was safe aboard a fast yacht steaming out of the harbor to meet the Bellingham. The old Confederate's first impulse had been to run an extra immediately, but he was argued out of it.

"We don't want to go off half cocked. We've got a beautiful comeback if we play it right. That is, if Jeff's got any proof. But we better wait and let Jeff run the newspaper end of it, Captain."

This was Hardy's view, and it was indorsed by the others.

"Another thing. This story has got to come just like an explosion on James K. Farnum's supporters. We've got to sweep them right back to our bill. Now if we break the force of it by giving them warning that swarm of lobbyists will get busy and stay busy all night," Rawson added.

Jim Dunn, the star reporter of the World, was hurriedly summoned by telephone. Chunn explained to the city editor that Dunn and the staff photographer were needed to cover a big story, but of what the story was no mention was made to the office. As soon as Dunn and Quillen reached the wharf the Fly by Night shot out of the dock.

Part 2

In the wintry afternoon sunlight Beauchamp and Alice were playing a match of shuffleboard against Jeff and the daughter of a Honolulu missionary. The game had reached an exciting and critical stage when they noticed that the ship was no longer quivering from the throb of the engines.

"A steam yacht, probably from Verden," the ship purser remarked to the first mate as they passed.

The players gave up their game to watch the boat that was being lowered from the deck of a yacht close at hand. Into it stepped five men in addition to the crew. Presently Jeff, leaning against the rail, borrowed the glasses of a man near. After Alice had looked she handed them to Farnum.

He gave a little exclamation of surprise.

"I beg your pardon?" the girl beside him murmured.

"They are my friends, Miss Frome. Come to meet me, I expect. The little man in gray with one arm is Captain Chunn."

She was all excitement at once. "Then they must have received your message?"

"Probably."

Jeff was the first man to meet Captain Chunn as he walked up the steps. The gray little man gave a whoop of joy.

"David!"

Their hands gripped.

Rawson fell on Farnum from behind and pounded him jubilantly. Instantly the editor was the center of a group of eager, urgent wellwishers.

Alice explained to Captain Barclay what it was all about and stood back smiling while questions and answers flew back and forth.

"What about our bill?" Jeff inquired as soon as the first hubbub had quieted.

"Dead as a door nail. Your cousin has substituted H. B. I7. They will pass it to-morrow or the next day."

A swift sickness ran through Farnum. "James gone back on us?"

"That's what. He's double-crossed us." Rawson snapped the words out bitterly.

"Why--why--surely not James." Jeff's mind groped for some possible

explanation.

"Says our bill was lost anyhow and it was a question of getting through Garman's bill or none."

"But Garman's bill was framed by Ned Merrill. It doesn't give us anything."

Rawson nodded grimly. "That's the idea. We're to get nothing, but it's to be wrapped up like a Christmas present so as to fool us."

"And isn't there any chance at all for our bill?"

"Just this one chance." Rawson leaned forward and spoke in a low voice, driving his hand down on the deck railing. "That you've got a charge of dynamite up your sleeve to throw into their camp. If you can't stampede them we're down and out."

Jeff and his allies presently moved away together to hold a conference of ways and means. The boat crew pulled back to the yacht. The engines began to throb once more. The Bellingham gathered momentum and was soon plunging forward at full speed.

Part 3

With a queer little surge of pride in him Alice watched Jeff and his friends move away. They depended on him. Unless he could save it their fight was lost. To her he was a prophet of the better civilization that would some day rise on the ruins of an Individualism grown topheavy. But he was neither a dreamer nor a weakling. His idealism was sane and practical, and he would fight to the last ditch when he must.

And this was another strange thing about him, that though his democracy was a faith, vital and ardent, it was tempered with the liberal spirit. He could make allowances; held no grudges, would laugh away insults at which another man would have raged. Out of her very limited experience Alice decided that he was a great man. That he was so warm and human with it all was one of his seizing charms. No boy could have been more interested in winning the shuffleboard game than he.

The fat pork packer from Chicago came wheezing toward her. He took the steamer chair beside Alice and jerked his head toward the spot where Jeff had disappeared.

"Now if you want my notion, Miss Frome, that's the kind of a man that breeds anarchy. I've seen his paper. He fills it full of stuff that makes the workingman discontented with his lot. A trouble maker, that's what he is. Stops the wheels of industry. Gets in the road of the boosters to croak hard times."

Alice observed the thick rolls of purple fat that bulged over his collar.

"Progress now," he went on. "I'm for progress. Develop the country. That gives work to the laborers and keeps them contented. But men like Farnum are always hampering development by annoying capital. Now that's foolish because capital employs labor."

The young woman suggested another possibility. "Or else labor employs capital."

"What!" The fat little man sat bolt upright in surprise. "I guess you never heard your Uncle Joe Powers talk any such foolishness." He snorted indignantly. "Hmp! The best friend labor has got is capital. If I had the say so I'd crush every labor union--for the good of the working people themselves."

Alice decided that the mental indigestion of the rich sat heavily upon him. She felt her temper rising and took advantage of the approach of Beauchamp to leave quickly.

"Oh, Lieutenant! Have you seen Valencia?"

The Englishman showed surprise. It happened that Alice had at that moment a view of Mrs. Van Tyle stretched on a deck chair some thirty feet away.

Miss Frome hurried him along. Presently, with a low laugh, she explained. "I wanted to get away from him. Carelessly, I dropped a new idea there. It's likely to go off. You know how dangerous they are."

"To people who haven't many. Had it anything to do with making money?"

"Not directly."

"Then you needn't be alarmed on our stout friend's account. He's immune to all ideas not connected with that subject."

The double blast of a trumpet invited them to dinner down stairs.

Part 4

Dunn was sitting in the smoking room writing his story of the kidnapping when a ruddy young Englishman stopped opposite him.

"You're Mr. Dunn, are you not? Reporter for the World?"

"Yes." The newspaper man looked him over with a swift, trained attention.

"A young lady would like to see you for a few minutes. She is interested in this shanghaing of Mr. Farnum."

Dunn's black gimlet eyes searched Beauchamp's face.

"All right. Glad to see her." Dunn's story was being transferred to his pocket as he rose.

He followed his guide to the ladies' writing room. A slender young woman was standing in front of the bookcase. She turned as they entered. Beauchamp introduced the reporter to her, but Dunn failed to catch the name of this rather remarkable looking young lady.

"You are to write the story of Mr. Farnum's adventure?" she asked.

The reporter's eyes narrowed very slightly. "What story?"

"The account of the shanghaing. Oh, I know all about it. Have you all the facts?"

"I'll be glad to hear what you know, Miss--"

She answered his hesitation by mentioning her name.

Dunn grew more wary. "Miss Alice Frome, daughter of Senator Frome?"

"Yes."

"Anything you have to say I'll be pleased to hear, Miss Frome."

To his surprise she broke through the hedge of reserve he had withdrawn behind.

"You distrust me. You think because I'm Senator Frome's daughter that I must be against Mr. Farnum. Is that it?"

"I didn't say that," he sparred.

"I'm not against him. It's because I'm anxious to see him win that I want to be sure he has given you the whole story."

"Why shouldn't he give me the whole story?"

"Because he isn't the kind to boast. Did he tell you about the sharks?"

"Or how Miss Frome helped pull him aboard just in time to save him from the crimps?"

The reporter's eyes gleamed. "What's that?" he snapped quickly.

"And all about the race from the schooner to the Bellingham, It was the most exciting thing I ever saw."

"Great guns! What's the matter with Jeff Farnum? He didn't say a word about that--missed the cream of the story."

Alice smiled. "I thought perhaps he might have."

"He said he saw a chance to swim across to the Bellingham. That made a pretty good story. But sharks--and the shanghaiers chasing him--and a young lady helping to haul him aboard to safety--and that young lady Miss Alice Frome! Say, this is the biggest story that ever broke in Verden. If I fall down on it I'm a dead one sure enough."

"You think it will help Mr. Farnum's fight for his bill?"

"Help it. Say, I'd give fifty dollars to see James K. Farnum's face when he reads the World tomorrow morning. The town will go right up in the air. Hundreds of telegrams are going to pour in to members of the assembly from their constituents. We'll make a Yale finish of this yet."

"It's lucky Miss Frome recognized Mr. Farnum. Otherwise I suppose he would have been sent back to the Nancy Hanks ."

"Oh, Miss Frome recognized him? Jeff said one of the passengers did. He couldn't remember who."

"I don't suppose my name is necessary to the story. Just say a young woman on board," Alice suggested.

Dunn's black eyes questioned her. "Are you for us, Miss Frome?"

She smiled. "I'm for you."

"Against Senator Frome and Mr. Powers?"

"I think the bill ought to be passed. I'm not against anybody."

"Well, I'll tell you this. It will help the story a lot to have you in it. Some people might say we framed the whole thing up. But with Senator Frome's daughter starring in it."

"Oh, no, Mr. Farnum's the star."

"Well, you're the leading lady. Don't you see how it helps? Clinches the whole thing as genuine. It's as good as putting the Senator himself on the stand as a witness for us. We've just got to have you."

"It will really help, you think?"

"No question."

"Very well."

"And photographs. You'll stand for one, of course."

"Now really I don't see "

"They can't get back of a photograph. It carries conviction. Of course we've got pictures of you at the office, Miss Frome. But I want to play fair with you. Besides, I want them to show the ship setting."

She laughed. "Don't worry. Your enterprising photographer caught me twice before I knew it. And he got one of my cousin, Mrs. Van Tyle. She doesn't know it, though."

"Good boy, Quillen. Now, if you'll begin at the beginning, Miss Frome, I'll listen to your story.

When she had finished his eyes were gleaming. "It's the biggest scoop I ever got in on. Sounds too good to be true."

Part 5

At Gillam's Point Jeff and his friends, with Dunn and Quillen, left the Bellingham on the launch which brought the pilot. They caught the fast express a half hour later and reached Verden shortly after midnight. His hat drawn down over his eyes and muffied to the ears in an ulster so that he might not be recognized, Farnum took a cab with Captain Chunn, Dunn and Quillen for the office of the World. He slipped into the building and his private room unnoticed by any member of the staff.

Dunn presently brought to him Jenkins, the make-up man.

"Rip your front page to pieces. We've got the story of a life time," Captain Chunn exploded.

Jenkins opened his eyes and grinned at Jeff. "That's what Jim tells me. Have you got the proof to hang the thing on Big Tim?"

"I've got a letter he wrote to Captain Green of theNancy Hanks . It's on city hall stationery of the last administration."

"Funny he used that paper."

"Someone usually makes a slip in putting a deal of this kind through."

"And the letter?"

"Just a line, signed with O'Brien's initials. 'The terms agreed on are satisfactory.' I found the letter in Green's cabin. As I thought I might make use of it I helped myself."

"Bully! We'll run a fac-simile of it on the front page."

"Dunn's story covers the whole affair. I don't like some features of it, but our friends say it ought to be run as it stands. I've written three columns of editorial stuff dealing with the situation. And here's a story calling for a mass meeting in front of the State House to-morrow morning."

"You'll speak to the people?"

"I'll say a few words. Hardy and Rawson will be the speakers."

"Pity we've lost your cousin. He'd stir them up."

The muscles stood out on Jeff's lean jaw. James was a subject he could not yet discuss. "We're nailing the No Compromise flag to our masthead, Jenkins. We've got to prevent them from forcing through Garman's bill to-morrow. After that every day will be in our favor. Unless I'm mistaken the state will waken up as it never has before. The people will see how nearly they've been euchred out of what they want."

Jenkins came bluntly to another point. "This story would carry a lot more weight if those charges made against your character by the other papers had been answered."

"Then we'll answer them."

The night editor looked at him dubiously. "They've got four affidavits to back their story."

"Only four?" A gay smile was dancing in Jeff's eyes.

"Both the Herald and the Advocate have been playing it strong. Every day they rehash the story and challenge a denial."

"It will all be free advertising for us if we can make them eat crow."

"If we can!" Jenkins did not see how any effective answer was possible and he knew that in the present state of public opinion an unsupported bluff would be fatal.

"How would this do for a starter?"

Jeff handed him two typewritten sheets. The night editor read them through. He looked straight at Jeff.

"Can you back this up?"

"I can."

"But--what about those affidavits?"

Farnum grinned. "We'll take care of them when we come to them."

"It's your funeral," Jenkins admitted.

The whole front page of the World next morning was filled with the Farnum story. As part of it there were interviews with Alice Frome, with Captain Barclay, and with other passengers. The deadly note from O'Brien to Green of the Nancy Hanks occupied the place usually held by the cartoon. Beneath it, exactly in the center of the page, was a leaded box with the caption "A Challenge." It ran as follows:

The editor of the World does not think his reputation important enough to protect it at the expense of a woman. Yet he denies absolutely the import of the charges made by the Herald and the Advocate. That the matter may be forever set at rest the World challenges the papers named to a searching investigation. It proposes:

(1) That the names of five representative citizens of Verden be submitted to Governor Hawley by each of the three papers, and that from this number be select a committee of five to sift thoroughly the allegations;

(2) That the meetings of the committee be held in secret, no members of the press being admitted, and that those composing it pledge themselves never to divulge the names of any witnesses who may appear to give evidence;

(3) That the Herald, the Advocate, and the World severally agree to print on the front page for a week the findings of the committee as soon as received and exactly as received, without any editorial or other comment whatsoever.

By the decision of this committee Jefferson Farnum pledges himself to abide. If found guilty, he will at once resign from the editorial charge of the World and will leave Verden forever.

CHAPTER 19

The practical man is the man who knows what can't be done. When he begins to let hope take the place of information in this regard, he becomes a conservative. When prejudice takes the place of hope, the mere conservative graduates into a tory, or a justice of the supreme court. It's all a matter of the chemistry of substitution. --Dr.G.L. Knapp.

THE SAFE MAN FURNISHES DIVERSION

Part 1

For once the machine had overplayed its hand. Caught unexpectedly by Jeff's return, no effective counter attack was possible. Dunn's story in the World swept the city and the state like wildfire. It was a crouched dramatic narrative and its effect was telling. From it only one inference could be drawn. The big corporations, driven to the wall, had attempted a desperate coup to save the day. It was all very well for Big Tim to file a libel suit. The mind of the public was made up.

The mass meeting at the State House drew an enormous crowd, one so great that overflow meetings had to be held. Every corridor in the building was full of excited jostling people. They poured into the gallery of the Senate room and packed the rear of the floor itself. Against such a demonstration the upper house did not dare pass the Garman bill immediately. It was held over for a few days to give the public emotion a chance to die. Instead, the resentment against machine and corporate domination grew more bitter. Stinging resolutions from the back counties were wired to members who had backslidden. Committees of prominent citizens from up state and across the mountains arrived at Verden for heart-to- heart talks with the assemblymen from their districts.

At a hurried meeting of the managers of the public utilities companies it was decided that the challenge of the World must be accepted. For many who had believed in the total depravity of Jefferson Farnum were beginning to doubt. Unless the man's character could be impeached successfully the day was lost. And with four witnesses against him how could the trouble maker escape?

The committee of investigation consisted of Senator Frome; Clinton Rogers, the shipbuilder; Thomas Elliott, a law partner of Hardy; James Moran, a wholesale wheat shipper, and the leading clergyman of Verden. It sat behind locked doors, adjourning from one office to another to obtain secrecy.

For the defense appeared as witnesses Marchant, Miller, Mrs. Anderson and Nellie. To doubt the truth of the young wife's story was impossible. The agony of shyness and shame that flushed her, the simple broken words of her little tragedy, bore the stamp of minted gold. It was plain to see that she was a victim of betrayal, being slowly won back to love of life by her husband and her child.

The committee in its report told the facts briefly without giving names. Even P. C. Frome could find no excuse for not signing it.

The effect was instantaneous. On this one throw the machine had staked everything. That it had lost was now plain. In a day Jeff was the hero of Verden, of the state at large. His long fight for reform, the dramatic features of the shanghaing and his return, the collapse of the charges against his character, all contributed to lift him to dizzy popularity. He was the very much embarrassed man of the hour.

All the power of the Transcontinental, of the old city hall gang, of the money that had been spent to corrupt the legislature, was unable to roll back the tide of public determination. White-faced assemblymen sneaked into offices at midnight to return the bribe money for which they dared not deliver the goods. Two days after the report of the investigating committee Jeff's bill passed the Senate. Within three hours it was signed by Governor Hawley. That it would be ratified by a vote of the people and so become a part of the state constitution was a foregone conclusion.

Jeff and his friends had forged the first of the tools they needed to rescue the government of the state from the control of the allied plunderers.

Part 2

In the days following her return to Verden Alice Frome devoured the newspapers as she never had before. They were full of the dramatic struggle between Jeff Farnum and the forces which hitherto had controlled the city and state. To her the battle was personal. It centered on the attacks made upon the character of her friend and his pledge to refute them.

When she read in the Advocate the report of the committee Alice wept. It was like her friend, she thought, to risk his reputation for some poor lost wanderer of the streets. Another man might have done it for the girl he loved or for the woman he had married. But with Jeff it would be for one of the least of these. There flashed into her mind an old Indian proverb she had read. "I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were all my brothers." Yes! None were too deep sunk in the mire to be brothers and sisters to Jeff Farnum.

Ever since her return Alice had known herself in disgrace with her father and that small set in which she moved. Her part in the big World story had been "most regrettable." It was felt that in letting her name be mentioned beside that of one who was a thoroughly disreputable vagabond she had compromised her exclusiveness and betrayed the cause of her class. Her friends recalled that Alice had always been a queer girl.

Her father and Ned Merrill agreed over a little luncheon at the Verden Club that girls were likely to lose themselves in sentimental foolishness and that the best way to stop such nonsense was for one to get married to a safe man. Pending this desirable issue she ought to be diverted by pleasant amusements.

The safe man offered to supply these.

Part 3

The farthest thing from Merrill's thoughts had been to discuss with her the confounded notions she had somehow absorbed. The thing to do, of course, was to ignore them and assume everything was all right. After all, of what importance were the opinions of a girl about practical things?

How the thing cropped up he did not afterward remember, but at the thirteenth green he found himself mentioning that all reformers were out of touch with facts. They were not practical.

The smug finality of his verdict nettled her. This may or may not have been the reason she sliced her ball, quite unnecessarily. But it was probably due to her exasperation at the wasted stroke that she let him have it.

"I'm tired of that word. It means to be suicidally selfish. There's not another word in the language so abused."

"Didn't catch the word that annoys you," the young man smiled.

"Practical! You used it yourself. It means to tear down and not build up, to be so near-sighted you can't see beyond your reach. Your practical man is the least hopeful member of the community. He stands only for material progress. His own, of course!"

"You sound like a Farnum editorial, Alice."

"Do I?" she flashed. "Then I'll give you the rest of it. He--your practical man--is rutted to class traditions. This would not be good form or respectable. That would disturb the existing order. So let's all do nothing and agree that all's well with the world."

Merrill greeted this outburst with a complacent smile. "It's a pretty good world. I haven't any fault to find with it--not this afternoon anyhow."

But Alice, serious with young care and weighted with the problems of a universe, would have none of his compliments.

"Can't you see that there's a--a " She groped and found a fugitive phrase Jeff had once used--"a want of adjustment that is appalling?"

"It doesn't appall me. I believe in the survival of the fittest."

Her eyes looked at him with scornful penetration. They went through the well-dressed, broad-shouldered exterior of him, to see a suave, gracious Pharisee of the modern world. He believed in the God-of-things-as-they-are because he was the man on horseback. He was a formalist because it paid him to be one. That was why he and his class looked on any questioning of conditions as almost atheistic. They were born to the good things of life. Why should they doubt the ethics of a system that had dealt so kindly with them?

She gave him up. What was the use of talking about such things to him? He had the sense of property ingrained in him. The last thing he would be likely to do was to let any altruistic ideas into his head. He would play safe. Wasn't he a practical man?

She devoted herself to the game. To see her play was a pleasure to the eye. The long lines and graceful curves of her supple young body never appeared to better advantage than at golf. Her motions showed the sylvan freedom of the woods. Ned Merrill appreciated the long, light tread of her, the harmony of movement as of a perfect young animal, together with the fine spiritual quality that escaped her personality so unconsciously.

At the fifteenth hole he continued her education. "This country is founded upon individualism. It stands for the best chance of development possible to all its citizens. When you hamper enterprise you stop that development."

She took him up dryly. "I see. So you and father and Uncle Joe have developed your individualism at the expense of a million other people's. You have gobbled up franchises, forests, ore lands, coal mines, and every other opportunity worth having. As a result you're making them your slaves and crushing out all individuality."

"Not at all. We're really custodians for the people. We administer these things for their benefit because we are more fit to do it."

"How do you know you are?"

"The very fact that we have succeeded in getting what we have is evidence of it."

"All I can see is that our getting it and keeping it--you and I and Uncle Joe and a thousand like us--is responsible for all the poverty in the world. We're helping to make it every time we eat a dinner we didn't work to get."

Alice made a beautiful approach that landed her ball within four feet of the hole. Presently Merrill joined her.

"That was a dandy shot," he told her, and watched Alice hole out. "I don't agree with you. For instance, I work as hard as other men."

"But you're not working for the common good."

His impatience reached words. "That sort of talk is nonsense, Alice. I don't know what has come over you of late."

She smiled provokingly and changed the subject. Why argue with him? The slant with which they got at things was different. Like her father, he had the mental rigidity that is death to open- mindedness.

Briskly she returned to small talk. "You're only three up."

Part 4

On their way back to the club house the safe man recurred to one phase of their talk.

"You ought not to need any telling as to why I work, Alice."

She shot one swift annoyed glance at him. When Ned Merrill tried the sentimental she liked him least.

"Oh, all men like to work, I suppose. Uncle Joe says it's half the fun of life."

"Most men work for some woman. I'm working for you," he told her solenmly.

A little giggle of laughter floated across to him.

"What are you laughing about?" he demanded.

"Oh, the things I notice. Just now it's you, Ned."

"If you'll explain the joke."

"You wouldn't understand it. Dear me, what are you so stiff about?"

Merrill brought things to an issue. "Look here, Alice! What's the use of playing fast and loose? I'd like to know where we're at."

"Would you?"

"Yes, I would. You know all about the arrangement just as well as I do. I haven't pushed you. I've stood back and let you have your good times. Don't you think it's about time for us to talk business?"

"Just as soon as you like, Ned."

"Well, then, let's announce it."

"That we're not engaged to be married and never will be! Is that what you want to announce?"

He flushed angrily. "What's the use of talking that way? You know it has been arranged for years."

"I'm not going through with it. I told Father so. The thing is outrageous," she flamed.

"I don't see why. Our people want it. We are fond of each other. I never cared for any girl but you."

"Let's stick to the business reasons, Ned."

"Hang it, you're so acid about it! I do care for you "

Her dry anger spurted out. "That's unfortunate, since I don't care for you."

"I know you do. Just now you're vexed at me."

"Yes, I am," she admitted, nodding her head swiftly. "But it doesn't make any difference whether I am or not. I've made up my mind. I'm not going through with it."

"You promised."

"I didn't, not in so many words. And I was pushed into it. None of you gave me a fair chance. But I'll not go on with it."

"But, why?"

"Because I'm an American girl, and here we don't have to marry to amalgamate business interests. I won't do it. I'd rather be " She gave a little shrug of her shoulders. The passion died out of her voice. "Oh, well! No need getting melodramatic about it. Just the same, I won't do it. My mind's made up."

"A pretty figure I'll cut, after all these years," he complained sulkily. "Everyone will know you jilted me."

Alice turned to him, mischief sparkling in her eyes. "I wouldn't stand it if I were you. Show your spunk."

He stared. "What do you mean?"

"Why don't you jilt ME?"

"Jilt you?"

Her head went up and down in a dozen little nods of affirmation. "Yes. Marry Pauline Gillam. You know you'd like to, but you haven't had the courage to give me up. Now that you've got to give me up anyhow--"

"I'm very much obliged, Miss Frome. But I don't think it will be necessary for you to select another wife for me."

"Have you been married once. I didn't know it."

"You know what I mean?" He was stiff as a poker.

"I believe I do." She was in a perfectly good humor again now. "But you better take my advice, Ned. Think what a joke it will be on me. Everybody will say you could have had me."

"We'll not discuss the subject if you please."

Nevertheless Alice knew that she had dropped a seed on good ground.

CHAPTER 20

Now poor Tom Dunstan's cold, Our shop is duller; Scarce a tale is told, And our talk has lost the old Red-republican color!

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

'She's coming, she's coming!' said he; 'Courage, boys I wait and see! 'FREEDOM'S AHEAD!' --Robert Buchanan.

THE HERO IS LURED TO AN ADVENTURE INTO THE UNCONVENTIONAL AND HEARS MUCH THAT IS PAINFUL TO A WELL-REGULATED MIND

Near the close of a fine spring afternoon James Farnum and Alice Frome were walking at the lower end of Powers Avenue. In the conventional garb he affected since he had become a man of substance the lawyer might have served as a model of fashion to any aspiring youth. His silk hat, his light trousers, the double- breasted coat which enfolded his manly form, were all of the latest design. The weather, for a change, was behaving itself so as not to soil the chaste glory of Solomon thus displayed. There had been rain and would be more, but just now they passed through a dripping world shot full of sunlight.

"Of course I'm no end flattered at being allowed to go with you. But I'm dying of curiosity to know where we are going."

The young woman gave James her beguiling smile. "We're going to call on a sick man. I'm taking you along as chaperon. You needn't be flattered at all. You're merely a convenience, like a hat pin or an umbrella."

"But I'm not sure this is proper. Now as your chaperone--"

"You're not that kind of a chaperon, Mr. Farnum. You haven't any privileges. Nothing but duties. Unless it's a privilege to be chosen. That gives you a chance to say something pretty."

They crossed Yarnell Way. James, looking around upon the wrecks of humanity they began to meet, was very sure that he did not enjoy this excursion. An adventure with Miss Frome outside of the conventions was the very thing he did not want. What in the world did the girl mean anyhow? Her vagaries were beginning to disturb her relatives. So much he had gathered from Valencia.

Before he had got as far as a protest Alice turned in to the entrance of a building and climbed a flight of stairs. She pushed a button. A woman of rather slatternly appearance came to the door.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Maloney. I've come to see how Mr. Marchant is."

The landlady brushed into place some flying strands of hair. "Well, now, Miss Frome, he's better to-day. The nurse is with him. If you'll jist knock at the door 'twill be all right."

While they were in the passage James interposed an objection. "My dear Miss Frome, I really don't think--"

She interrupted brightly. "I'm glad you don't. You're not expected to, you know. I'm commanding this expedition. Yours not to answer why. Yours but to do and die." And she knocked on the door of the room at which they had stopped.

It was opened by a nurse in uniform. James observed that she, too, like Mrs. Maloney, brightened at sight of the visitor.

"Mr. Marchant will be pleased to see you, Miss Frome."

He was. His gladness illuminated the white face through the skin of which the cheek bones appeared about to emerge. A thin blue- veined hand shot forward to meet hers.

"Oh, comrade, but I'm glad to meet you."

"I think you know Mr. Farnum."

The man propped up in bed nodded a little grin at the lawyer. "We've met. It was years ago in Jeff's rooms."

"Oh--er--yes. Yes, I remember."

Presently Jeff and Sam Miller dropped in to see the invalid. From chance remarks the lawyer gathered that the little cobbler had brought himself so low by giving his overcoat one bitter night to a poor girl he had found shivering in the streets.

The frankness with which they discussed before Alice Frome things never referred to in good society shocked James.

It appeared that the story of this little factory girl who had been led astray was still urgent in Marchant's mind. At the time of their arrival he had just finished scribbling some verses hot from his heart. Jeff read them aloud, in spite of the poet's modest insistence that they were only a first draft.

"This is a story that two may tell, I am the one, the other's in hell; A story of passionate amorous fire, With the glamor of love to attune the lyre.

She traveled the road at breakneck speed, I opened the gates and saddled the steed; "Ride free!" I cried as we dashed along. Her sweet voice echoed a mocking song."

"'Fraid it doesn't always scan. They seldom do," apologized the author of the verses.

Jeff rapped for order. "The sense of the meeting is that the blushing poet will please not interrupt."

"Nights of the wildest revel and mirth, Days of sorrow, remorse, and dearth, A heaven of love and a hell of regret-- But there's always the woman to pay my debt.

'Sin,' says the preacher, 'shall be washed free, The blood of the Lamb was shed for thee.' Smugly I pass the sacred wine, The woman in hell pays toll for mine.

'I am a pillar of Church and State, She but the broken sport of Fate; This is a story that two may tell, I am the one, the other's in hell.'"

There was a moment's silence after Jeff had finished.

"What are you going to call your verses?" the nurse asked.

"I'll call them, 'She Pays.' That's the idea of it."

James was distinctly uneasy. There was positively something indecent about this. He had an aversion to thinking about unpleasant things. Every well-regulated mind ought to have. He would like to make a protest, but he could not very well do that here. He promised himself to let Alice Frome know as soon as they were alone what he thought about her escapades into this world below the dead line.

He moved uncomfortably in his chair, and in doing so his gaze fell full into the eyes of Sam Miller. The fat librarian was staring at him out of a very white face. Before James could break the spell an unvoiced question had been asked and answered.

Marchant was already riding the hobby that was religion to him. "Four dollars a week. That's what she was getting. And her employer is worth two millions. Think of it. All her youth to be sold for four dollars a week. Just enough to keep body and soul together. And when she went to the head of her department to ask for a raise he leered at her and said a good looking girl like her could always find someone to take care of her. Eight months she stuck it out, getting more ragged every day. Then enter the man, offering her some comfort and pleasure and love. Do you blame her?"

"You must give me her address," Alice said softly.

Oscar nodded. "Good enough, comrade. Jeff has looked out for her, but she needs a woman friend." With a sweep of the hand he went back to the impersonal. "Her trouble was economic, just as ours is. Look at it. We've got a perfect self-regulating system that adjusts itself automatically to bring hard times when we're most prosperous. Give us big crops and boom times, and we head straight for a depression. Why?" He interrupted himself with a fit of coughing, but presently began again, talking also with his swift supple hands. "Because then the foreign market will be glutted. Surplus goods won't sell abroad. The manufacturer, unable to dispose of his produce, will cut down his force or close his plant. Labor, out of work, cannot buy. So every branch of industry suffers because we're too well off. It's a vicious absurd circle born of the system under which we live. Under socialism the remedy would be merely to work less for a time until the surplus was used. It would affect nobody injuriously. The whole thing's as simple as A B C."

It had been plain to the first casual glance of James that the little Socialist was far gone. The amazing thing was the eagerness with which his spirit dominated the body in such ill case. He was alive to the fingertips, though he was already in the Valley of the Shadow. To the lawyer there was something eerie about it all. Marchant was done with the business of living. Why didn't he lie down and accept the verdict?

But to Alice it was God-like, a thing to stand uncovered before. His remedies might be all wrong. Probably they were. None the less his vital courage for life took her by the throat.

Jeff nodded at the invalid cheerfully. "We're going to change all that, Oscar. Into this little old world a new soul is being born. Or perhaps the old soul is being born again."

The Socialist caught at this swiftly. "Yes, we're going to change this terrible waste of human lives. I see a new world, where men will live like brothers and not like wolves rending each other. There poverty will be blotted out . . . and disease and all mean and cruel things that hamper and destroy life. Law and justice will walk hand in hand through a land of peace and plenty. Our cities, the expression of our social life, will be clean and sunny and beautiful because the lives of the common people are so. There strong men and deep-breasted women will work for the joy of working, since all is for the common good. Their children will be free and happy and well fed . . . yes, and equal to each other. From that highly socialized state, because it is tied together by love, will come that restrained freedom which is the most perfect individualism."

The nurse forced him gently back upon the pillows. "There! You've talked enough to-day."

He lay coughing, a hectic flush above the high cheek bones. Presently, at a look from the nurse, his guests departed.

Outside the building Miller left the rest abruptly. Flanked by the two cousins, Alice crossed Yarnell Way back to that world to which she had always belonged.

James laid down the law to her concerning the folly of such excursions into the unconventional. Alice listened. She discovered that his viewpoint was exactly like that of Ned Merrill. Any deviation from the conventional was a mistake. Any attempt to escape from existing conditions was a form of treason. Trade, property, business, respectability, good form; these were the shibboleth they worshipped. It was just because she did not want to believe this of James Farnum that she had taken him with her to call on Marchant. It was in a sense a test, and he was answering it by showing himself complacently callous and hidebound.

Surely he had not always been like this, a smug and well-clad Pharisee, afraid to look at the truth. In those early days, when they had been friends, with the possibility of being a good deal more, there had been an impetuous touch of ardor she could no longer find. Her cool glance ran down his figure. The man was taking on flesh, the plump well-fed look of one who has escaped moral conduct by giving up the fight. Fat cushioned the square jaw and detracted from its strength. For the first time she observed a

hardening of the eye. The visible deterioration of an inner collapse was being writ on him.

Alice sighed. After all she might have spared herself the trouble. He had chosen his path and he must follow it.

At the corner of Powers Avenue and Van Ault Street James left them. It was natural that the talk should revert to Marchant.

"Oscar finds your visits a very great pleasure," Jeff told her.

"The dear madman!" Her eyes were shining softly. "Isn't he brave and optimistic?"

"Yes."

Both of them were thinking how soon the arm of that unseen God of love and law he worshipped would enfold him.

Alice smiled tenderly, and for the moment the street in front of her danced in a mist. "And his perfect state! Shall we ever realize it?"

"We must hope so. Perhaps not in the form he sees it, but in the way we work it out through a species of evolution. Think of the progress we have made in the last five years. How many dark corners in the long disused houses of our minds have been flooded with light!"

"Yes. Why have we made more progress in the past few years?"

Jeff's eyes held a gleam of humor. "This is a big country with enormous resources. There used to be room for all the most active plunderers to grab something. But lately the grabbing hasn't been so good. We have discoveredthat the most powerful robbers are doing their snatching from us. So we've suffered a moral awakening."

"You don't believe that," she said quickly.

"There's a good deal in the bread and butter interpretation of history. The push of life, its pressure, drives us to think. Out of thought grow new hopes and a broader vision."

"And then?"

"Pretty soon the thought will flood the world that we make our own poverty, that God and nature have nothing to do with it. After that we'll proceed to eliminate it."

"By means of Mr. Marchant's perfect state?"

"Not by any revolution of an hour probably. Society cannot change its nature in a day. We'll pass gradually from our present state to a better one, the new growing out of the old by generations of progress. But I think we will pass into a form of socialism. It will be necessary to repress the predatory instinct in us that has grown strong under the present system. I don't much care whether you call it democracy or socialism. We must recognize how interdependent we are and work together for the common good."

They had come to the car line that would take her home. Up the hill a trolley car was coming.

"May I not see you home?" Jeff dared to ask.

"You may."

They left the car at Lakeview Park and crossed it to The Brakes. Every step of that walk led Jeff deeper into an excursion of endearment. It was amazingly true that he trod beside her an acknowledged friend, a secret lover. The turn of her head, the shadowy smile bubbling into laughter, the gracious undulations of the body, indeed the whole dear delight of her presence, belonged for that hour to him alone.

CHAPTER 21

Many a man has kept his self-respect through a long lifetime of decalog breaking, only to go to smash like a crushed eggshell when he commits the crime of being found out. --From the Note Book of a Dreamer.

THE HERO IS PAINED TO FIND THAT EVEN IN A WELL-REGULATED WORLD THE GODS ARE JUST, AND OF OUR PLEASANT VICES MAKE INSTRUMENTS TO PLAGUE US

Going back across the park Jeff trod the hilltops. He was not thinking about society, except that small unit of it represented by a slender, golden girl who had just bidden him good-bye. And because his heart sang within him his footsteps turned toward the office of his cousin. There had been between them of late an estrangement. Since the lawyer had been appointed general attorney for the Transcontinental and had formed a partnership with Scott, thus bringing to the firm the business of the public utility corporations, James had not found much time for Jeff. He was a member of the most important law firm on the Pacific Coast, judged by the business it was doing, and he had definitely cut loose politically from his former associates. His cousin blamed himself for the change in their personal relations, and he meant to bring things back to the old basis if he could.

It was past office hours, but a light in the window of the junior member's private office gave promise that James might be in. Leaving the elevator at the fourth floor, he walked down the corridor toward the suite occupied by the firm.

Before he reached the door Jeff stopped. Something unusual was happening within. There came to him the sounds of shuffling feet, of furniture being smashed, of an angry oath. Almost at once there was a thud, as if something heavy had fallen. The listener judged that a live body was thrashing around actively. The impact of blows, a heavy grunt, a second stifled curse, decided Farnum. Pushing through the outer office, he entered the one usually occupied by James.

Two men were on the floor, one astride of the other. The man on top was driving home heavy jarring blows against his opponent's face and head. Jeff ran forward and dragged him away.

"Good heavens, Sam! What's the matter?" his friend demanded in surprise.

Miller waited panting, his fists still doubled, the lust of battle in his eyes.

"The damned cad! The damned cad!" was all he could get out.

From the floor James Farnum was rising. His forehead, his cheek, and his lips were bleeding from cuts. One of his eyes was closing rapidly. There was a dogged look of fear in the battered face.

"I tripped over a chair, he explained, glaring at his foe.

"Damn you then, stand up and fight!"

Disgust and annoyance were pictured on the damaged countenance of the lawyer. "I don't fight with riff raff from the streets."

With a lurch Miller was free from Jeff and at him again. James lashed straight out and cut open his lip without stopping him. Jeff wrenched the furious man back again. A moment later he made a discovery. The fear of his cousin was not physical.

"Here! Stop it, man! What's the row about?" Jeff hung on with a strangle hold while he fired his questions.

Sam turned a distorted face toward him. "Nellie."

The truth crashed home like a bolt of lightning. James was the man who had betrayed Nellie Anderson. The thing was incredible, but Jeff knew instantly it was so.

Except where the blood streamed down it the face of the lawyer was colorless. His lips twitched.

"Is this true, James?"

The sullen eyes of the detected man fell. "It will ruin me. It will ruin my career. And all because in a moment of fearful temptation I yielded, God help me."

"God help you!" The angry scorn in Miller's voice burned like vitriol. "God help you! you selfish villain and coward! You pursued her! You hounded her. You made your own temptation--and hers. And afterward you left her to bear a lifetime of shame--to kill herself if she couldn't stand it. When I think of you, smug liar and hell hound, I know that killing isn't good enough for you."

"Steady, old man," counseled Jeff.

Miller began to tremble violently. Tears gathered in his eyes and coursed down his fat cheeks. "And I can't stamp him out. I can't expose him without hurting her worse. I've got to stand it without touching him."

Faintly Jeff smiled. James did not look quite untouched. He was a much battered statue of virtue, his large dignity for once torn to shreds.

Miller flung himself down heavily in a chair and buried his face in his hands. James began to talk, and as he talked his fluency came back to him.

"It's the only stain on my life record . . . the only one. My life has been an open book but for that. I was only a boy--and I made a slip. Ought that to spoil my whole life, a splendid career of usefulness for the city and the state? Ought I to be branded for that one error?"

Miller looked up whitely. "Shut up, you liar! If it had been a slip you would have stood by her, you would have married the girl you had ruined. But you left her--to death or worse. She was loyal to you. She kept your secret, you damned villain. I wrung it out of her to-day when I went home only by pretending that I knew.... And you let Jeff bear the blame of it without saying a word. I know now why her name wasn't unearthed by the reporters. You killed the story because you were afraid the truth would leak out. You haven't a straight hair in your head. You sold out Jeff's bill. You're for yourself first and last, no matter who pays the price."

"That's your interpretation of my career. But what does Verden think of me? No man stands higher among the best people of the community."

"To hell with you and your best people. I say you're nothing but a whited sepulchre," snarled Miller.

Suddenly he reached for his hat and left the office. He was stifling.

He knew that if he stayed he could not keep his hands from his enemy's throat.

James wrung his hands. "My God, Jeff, it's awful! To think that a little fault should come out now to ruin me. After I've gone so far and am on the way to bigger things. It's ghastly luck. Can't you do something? Can't you keep the fellow quiet? I'll pay anything in reason."

Jeff looked at him steadily. "I wouldn't say that to him if I were you."

"Oh, I don't know what I'm saying." He mopped the blood from his face with a handkerchief. "I'm half crazy. Did he mark me up badly?" James examined himself anxiously in the glass. "He's just chopped my face to pieces. I'll have to get out of the city to-night and stay away till the marks are gone. But the main point is to keep him from talking. Can you do it?"

For once Jeff's toleration failed him. "He's right. You are a selfish beggar. Don't you ever think of anyone except yourself?"

"I'm not thinking of myself at all, but of--of someone else. You're wronging me, Jeff. This is not the time to go back on me, now that I'm in trouble. You've got to help me out. You've got to keep Miller quiet. If he talks I'm done for."

His cousin looked at him with contemptuous eyes. "Can't you see-- haven't you fineness enough to see that Sam Miller would cut an arm off before he would expose his wife to more talk? Your precious secret's safe."

"It's all very well for you to talk that way," James complained. "I don't suppose you ever were put into temptation by a woman. You're not a lady's man. I'm the kind they take a shine to for some reason. Now this Anderson woman--"

Sharply Jeff cut in. "That's enough. When you speak of her it won't be in that tone of voice. You'll speak respectfully of her. She's the wife of my friend; and before she met you was innocent as a child."

"What do you know of her? I tell you, Jeff, there's a type of woman that's always smiling round the corner at you. I don't say I did right to yield to her. Of course I didn't. But, hang it, I'm not a block of wood. I've got red blood in my veins. The whip of youth drove me on. You've probably never noticed it, but she was a devilish pretty girl."

He was swimming into his phrases so fluently that Jeff knew he would soon persuade himself that he had been the victim of her wiles. So, no doubt, in one sense, he had. She had laid her innocent bait to win his friendship, with never a thought of what was to come of it.

"It happened of course while you were rooming there," the editor shot at him.

James nodded sullenly.

His cousin knew now that more than once he had put away doubts of James. When Sam Miller told him of her disappearance he had thought of the lawyer and had dismissed his suspicions as unworthy. He had always believed James to be a more moral man than himself, and he had turned his own back on the temptation lest it might prove too great for him. It would have been better for Nellie if he had stayed and fought it out to a finish.

James began further explanations. "Look at it the way it is. She put herself in my way."

Two steps carried Jeff to him. Without touching James he stood close to him, arms rigid and eyes blazing. "Don't say that again, you liar. You ruined her life. You let her suffer. She might have died for all of you. She nursed your child and never whispered the name of its father. Sam Miller is charging himself with the keep of your daughter. Do you think she hasn't paid a hundred times for her mistake? Now, by God, keep your mouth shut! Be decent enough not to fling mud at her, you of all men."

James shrugged his shoulders and turned away in petulant disgust. "I see. You've heard her side of it and you've made up your mind. All right. I've nothing more to say."

"I've never heard her side of it. Her own mother doesn't know the truth. Sam didn't know not till to-day. But I know her--and now I know you."

"That's no way to talk, Jeff. I admit I did wrong. Can a man say more than that? Do you want me to crawl on my hands and knees?"

"It's easy for you to forgive yourself."

"Maybe you think I haven't suffered too. I've lain awake nights worrying over this."

"Yes. For fear you might be found out."

"I intended to look out for the girl, but she disappeared without letting me know where she was going. What could I do?" The lawyer was studying his face very carefully in the glass. "My face is a sight. It will be weeks before that eye is fit to be seen."

Jeff turned away and left him. He walked to his rooms and found his uncle waiting for him. Robert Farnum had sold out his interests in Arkansas and returned to Verden with the intention of buying a small mill in the vicinity. Meanwhile he had the apartment next to the one used by his nephew.

"Seen anything of James lately?" he inquired as they started down the street to dinner.

"Yes. I saw him to-day. He's leaving town for a week or so."

"On business, I suppose. He didn't mention it when I saw him Wednesday."

"It's a matter that came up suddenly, I understand."

The father agreed proudly. There were moments when he had doubts of James, but he always stifled them by remembering what a splendid success he was. "Probably something nobody else could attend to but him."

"Exactly."

"It's amazing how that boy gets along. His firm has the cream of the corporation business of Verden. I never saw anything like it."

The younger man assented, rather wearily. Somehow to-night he did not feel like sounding the praises of James.

His uncle's kindly gaze rested on him. "Tired, boy?"

"I think I am a little. I'll be all right after we've had something to eat."

CHAPTER 22

But when your arms are full of girl and fluff You hide your nerve behind a yard of grin; You'd spit into a bulldog's face, or bluff A flock of dragons with a safety pin. Life's a slow skate, but love's the dopey glim That puts a brewery horse in racing trim. --Wallace Irwin.

CANARIES SING FOR THE HERO

Part 1

James Farnum had been back in Verden twenty-four hours. A few little scars still decorated his handsome visage, but he explained them away with the story of a motor car accident. Just now he was walking to the bank, and he had spoken his piece five times in a distance of three blocks. From experience he was getting letter perfect as to the details. Even the idiotic joke about the clutch seemed now a necessary part of the recital.

It was just as he was crossing Powers that a motor car whirled around the corner and down upon a man descending from a street car. The chauffeur honked wildly and rammed the brakes home. Simultaneously James leaped, flinging his weight upon the man standing dazed in the path of the automobile. The two went down together, and for a moment Farnum knew only a crash of the senses.

He was helped to his feet. Voices, distant and detached, asked whether he was hurt. Blood trickled into his eyes from a cut in the head. It came to him oddly enough that his story about the motor car accident would now be true.

A slender figure in gray slipped swiftly past him and knelt beside the still shape lying on the asphalt.

"Bring water, Roberts!"

James knew that clear, sweet voice. It could belong only to Alice Frome.

"Are you much hurt, Mr. Farnum?"

"No, I think not--a cut over my eye and a few bruises."

"I'm so glad. But this poor old man--I'm afraid he's badly hurt."

"Was he run over?"

"No. You saved him from that. You don't know him, do you?"

The lawyer looked at the unconscious man and could not repress a start. It was his father. For just an eyebeat he hesitated before he said, "I've seen him before somewhere."

"We must take him to the hospital. Isn't there a doctor here? Someone run for a doctor." The young woman's glance swept the crowd in appeal.

"I'll take care of him. Better get away before the crowd is too large, Miss Frome."

"No. It was our machine did it. Oh, here's a doctor."

A pair of lean, muscular shoulders pushed through the press after the doctor. "Much hurt, James?" inquired their owner.

"No. For heaven's sake, get Miss Frome away, Jeff," implored his cousin.

"Miss Frome!" Jeff stepped forward with an exclamation.

The young woman looked up. She was kneeling in the street and supporting the head of the wounded man. Her face was almost as bloodless as his.

"We almost ran him down. Your cousin jumped to save him. He isn't dead, doctor, is he?"

Jeff turned swiftly to his cousin and spoke in a low voice. "It's your father."

The lawyer pushed forward with a manner of authority.

"This won't do, doctor. The crowd's growing and we're delaying the traffic. Let us lift him into the machine and take him to the hospital."

"Very good, Mr. Farnum."

"Doctor, will you go with him to the hospital? And Jeff . . . you, too, if you please."

A minute later the car pushed its way slowly through the crush of people and disappeared. James was left standing on the curb with Alice.

He spoke brusquely. "Someone call a cab, please....I'll send you home, Miss Frome."

"No, to the hospital," she corrected. "I couldn't go home now without knowing how he is."

"Very well. Anything to get away from here."

"And you can have your cut attended to there."

"Oh, that's nothing. A basin of cold water is all I need. Here's the cab, thank heaven."

The girl's gaze followed the automobile up the hill as she waited for the taxicab to stop. "I do hope he isn't hurt badly," she murmured piteously.

"Probably he isn't. Just stunned, the doctor seemed to think. Anyhow it was an unavoidable accident."

The eyes of the young woman kindled. "I'll never forget the way you jumped to save him. It was splendid."

James flushed with pleasure. "Nonsense. I merely pushed him aside."

"You merely risked your life for his. A bagatelle--don't mention it," the girl mocked.

Farnum nodded, the old warmth for her in his eyes. "All right, I'll take all the praise you want to give me. It's been a good while since you have thought I deserved any."

Alice looked out of the window in a silence that appeared to accuse him.

"Yet once"--She felt in his fine voice the vibration of feeling-- "once we were friends. We met on the common ground of--of the spirit," he risked.

Her eyes came round to meet his. "Is it my fault that we are not still friends?"

"I don't know. Something has come between us. What is it?"

"If you don't know I can't tell you."

"I think I know." He folded his handkerchief again to find a spot unstained. "You wanted me to fit into some ideal of me you had formed. Am I to blame because I can't do it? Isn't the fault with your austerity? I've got to follow my own convictions--not Jeff's, not even yours. Life's a fight, and it's every man for himself. He has to work out his own salvation in his own way. Nobody can do it for him. The final test is his success or failure. I'm going to succeed."

"Are you?" The compassion of her look he could not understand. "But how shall we define success?"

"It's getting power and wielding it."

"But doesn't it depend on how one wields it?"

"Yes. It must be made to produce big results. Now my idea of a successful man is your uncle, Joe Powers."

"And my idea of one is your cousin, Jefferson Farnum."

The young man sat up. "You're not seriously telling me that you think Jeff is successful as compared with Joe Powers?"

"Yes. In my opinion he is the most successful man I ever met."

James was annoyed. "I expect you have a monopoly in that opinion, Miss Frome--unless Jeff shares it."

"He doesn't."

The lawyer laughed irritably. "No, I shouldn't think he would." He added a moment later: "I don't suppose Jeff is worth a hundred dollars."

"Probably not."

"And Joe Powers is worth a hundred millions."

"That settles it. I must have been wrong." Alice looked at him with a flash of demure daring. "Valencia said something to me the other day I didn't quite understand. Ought I to congratulate you?"

"What did she say?" he asked eagerly.

"Oh, I'll not tell you what she said. My question was in first."

"You may as well, though it's still a secret. Nobody knows it but you and me."

"And Valencia."

"I didn't know she knew it yet."

Alice stared. "Not know that she is going to marry you? Then it isn't really arranged?"

"It is and it isn't."

"Oh!"

"I know it and she suspects it."

"Is this a riddle?"

"Riddle is a good word when we speak of your cousin," he admitted judicially.

"Perhaps I asked a question I ought not to have."

"Not at all. I'm trying to answer you as well as I can. Last time I mentioned the subject she laughed at me."

"So you've asked her?"

"No, I told her."

"And she said?"

"Regretted that other plans would not permit her to fall in with mine."

"Then I don't quite see how you are so sure."

"That's just what she says, but I've a notion she is planning the trousseau."

Alice flashed a sidelong look at him. Was he playing with her? Or did he mean it?

"You'll let me know when I may safely congratulate you," she retorted ironically.

"Now is the best time. I may not see you this evening."

"Oh, it's to be this evening, is it?"

"To the best of my belief and hope."

His complacency struck a spark from her. "You needn't be so cock sure. I daresay she won't have you."

His smile took her into his confidence. "That's what I'm afraid of myself, but I daren't let her see it."

"That sounds better."

"I think she wants to eat her cake and have it, too."

"Meaning, please?"

"That she likes me, but would rather hold me off a while."

Alice nodded. "Yes, that would be like Val."

"Meanwhile I don't know whether I'm to be a happy man or not."

Her fine eyes looked in their direct fashion right into his. "I must say you appear greatly worried."

"Yes," he smiled.

"You must be tremendously in love with her."

"Ye-es, thank you."

"Why are you going to marry her then--if she'll let you?"

"Now I'm having Joe Powers' railroads and his steamboats and his mines thrown at me, am I not?" he asked lightly.

"No, I don't think that meanly of you. I know you're a victim of ambition, but I don't suppose it would take you that far."

He gave her an ironical bow. "Thanks for this testimonial of respect. You're right. It wouldn't. I'm going to marry Joe Power's daughter, Deo volente because she is the most interesting woman I know and the most beautiful one."

"Oh! That's the reason."

"These, plus a sentimental one which I can't uncover to the cynical eyes of my young cousin that is to be, are my motives; though, mind you, I'm not fool enough to be impervious to the railroads and the ocean liners and the mines you didn't mention. I hope my reasons satisfy you," he added coolly.

"If they satisfy Val they do me, but very likely you'll find they won't."

"The doubt adds a fillip to the situation."

Her eyes had gone from time to time out of the window. Now she gave a sigh of relief. "Here we are at the hospital. Oh, I do hope that poor man is all right!"

"I'm sure he is. He was recovering consciousness when they left.

James helped her out of the cab and they went together up the steps. In the hall they met Jeff. He had just come down stairs.

"Everything's all right. His head must have struck the asphalt, but there seems to be no danger."

Alice noticed that the newspaper man spoke to his cousin and not to her.

Part 2

Though Valencia Van Tyle had not made up her mind to get married, James hit the mark when he guessed that she was interesting herself in the accessories that would go with such an event. The position she took in the matter was characteristic. She had gone the length of taking expert counsel with her New York modiste concerning gowns for the occasion, without having at all decided that she would exchange her present independence for another venture into stormy matrimonial seas.

"Perhaps I shatn't have to make up my mind at all," she found amusement in chuckling to herself. "What a saving of trouble it would be if he would abduct me in his car. I could always blame him then if it did not turn out well."

Something of this she expressed to James the evening of the day of the accident, watching him through half-shuttered eyes to see how he would take her first concession that she was considering him.

He took without external disturbance her gay, embarrassed suggestion, the manner of which might mean either shyness or the highest expression of her art.

"I'd kidnap you fast enough except that I don't want to rob you of the fun of getting ready. How long will it take you? Would my birthday be too soon? It's on the fourth of June."

"Too soon for what?" she asked innocently.

"For my birthday present--Valencia Powers."

She liked it that he used her maiden surname instead of her married one. It seemed to imply that he loved her in the swift, ardent way of youth.

"Are you sure you want it?"

The lawyer appreciated her soft, warm allurement, the appeal of sex with which she was so prodigally endowed. His breath came a little faster.

"He won't be happy till he gets it."

Her faint laughter rippled out. "That's just the point, my friend. Will he be happy then? And, which is more important to her, will she?"

"That's what I'm here to see. I'm going to make you happy."

She laced her fingers behind her tawny head, not quite unaware perhaps that the attitude set off the perfect modeling of her soft, supple body.

"I don't doubt your good intentions, but it takes more than that to make marriage happy when the contracting parties are not Heaven-sent."

"But we are--we are."

Valencia shook her head. "Oh, no! There will be no rapturous song of birds for us, none of that fine wantonness that doesn't stop to count the cost. If we marry no doubt we'll have good reasons, but not the very best one--that we can't help it."

He would not consent to that. "You're not speaking for me. The birds sing, Valencia."

"Canaries in a cage," she mocked.

"You've forgotten two things."

"Yes?"

"That you are the most beautiful woman on earth, and that I'm a man, with red blood in my veins."

Under lowered lids she studied him. This very confident, alert American, modern from head to heel, attracted her more than any other man. There was a dynamic quality in him that stirred her blood. He was efficient, selfish enough to win, and yet considerate in the small things that go to make up the sum of existence. Why not then? She must marry some time and she was as nearly in love as she would ever be.

"What ARE your reasons for wanting me?"

"We smoke the same Egyptians," he mocked.

"That's a good reason, so far as it goes."

"And you're such a charming puzzle that I would like to domesticate it and study the eternal mystery at my leisure."

"Then it's as a diversion that you want me."

"A thing of beauty and a joy forever, the poet puts it. But diversion if you like. What greater test of charming versatility for a woman than that she remain a diversion to her husband, unstaled by custom and undulled by familiarity?"

After all her father would be pleased to have her marry an American business man. The Powers' millions could easily buy for her a fine old dukedom if she wanted one. At present there was more than one available title-holder on her horizon. But Valencia did not care to take up the responsibilities that go with such a position. She was too indolent to adapt her life to the standards of others--and perhaps too proud. Moreover, it happened that she had had enough of the club man type in the late lamented Van Tyle. This man was a worker. He would not annoy her or interfere with her careless pleasures. Again she asked herself, Why not?

"I suppose you really do like me." Her face was tilted in gay little appeal.

"I'm not going to tell you how much. It wouldn't be good for discipline in the house."

Her soft little laugh bubbled over. "We seem to have quite settled it. And I hadn't the slightest notion of agreeing to anything so ridiculous when I ventured that indiscreet remark about an abduction." She looked up at him with smiling insolence. "You're only an adventurer, you know. I daresay you haven't even paid for the car in which you were going to kidnap me."

"No," he admitted cheerfully.

"I wonder what Dad will think of it,"

"He'll thank Heaven you didn't present him with a French or Italian count to support."

"I believe he will. His objection to Gus was that he looked like a foreigner and never had done a day's work in his life. Poor Gus! He didn't measure up to Dad's idea of a man. Now I suppose you could earn a living for us."

"I'm not expecting you to take in sewing."

"Are you going to do the independent if Dad cuts up rough?" she asked saucily.

"Independent is the word." He smiled with a sudden appreciation of the situation. "And I take it he means to cut up rough. I wired him to-day I was going to ask you to marry me."

"You didn't."

"Yes."

"But wasn't that a little premature? Perhaps it wouldn't have been necessary. Or did you take me for granted"

"There was always the car for a kidnapping in case of necessity," he joked.

"Why did you do it?"

"I wanted to be above board about it even if I am an adventurer."

"What did he say? How could you put it in a telegram?"

"Red consoles marooned sweet post delayed."

"Dear me! What gibberish is that?"

"It's from our private code. It means, 'Going to marry your daughter if she is willing. With your consent, I hope.'"

"And he answered? I'll take the English version, please."

"'Consent refused. No fortune hunters need apply.' That is not a direct quotation, but it conveys his meaning accurately enough."

"So I'm to be cut off with a shilling." Her eyes bubbled with delight.

"I reckon so. Of course I had to come back at him."

"How, may I ask?" She was vastly amused at this novel correspondence.

"Oh, I merely said in substance that I was glad to hear it because you couldn't think now I wanted to marry you for your money. I added that if things came my way we would send him cards later. One doesn't like to slang one's wife's father, so I drew it mild."

"I don't believe a word of it. You wouldn't dare."

That she admired and at the same time distrusted was so apparent that he drew a yellow envelope from his pocket and handed it to her.

"This is his latest contribution to the literature of frankness. You see his feelings overflowed so promptly he had to turn loose in good American talk right off the bat. Couldn't wait for the code."

She read aloud. "Your resignation as General Counsel Transcontinental will be accepted immediately. Turn over papers to Walker and go to the devil." It was signed "Powers."

"That's all, is it? No further exchange of compliments," she wanted to know.

"That's all, except that he is reading my resignation by this time. I sent it two hours ago. In it I tried to convey to him my sense of regret at being obliged to sever business relations owing to the fact that I was about to contract family ties with him. I hoped that he would command me in any way he saw fit and was sorry we couldn't come to an agreement in the present instance."

"I don't believe you're a bit sorry. Don't you realize what an expensive luxury you're getting in me and how serious a thing it is to cast off heaven knows how many millions?"

"Oh, I realize it!"

"But you expect him to come round when he has had time to think it over?"

"It's hard for me to conceive of anybody not wanting me for a son-in-law," he admitted cheerfully.

Valencia nodded. "He'll like you all the better for standing up to him. He's fond of Alice because she's impudent to him."

"I didn't mean to be impudent, but I couldn't lie down and let him prove me what he called me."

"If you're that kind of a man I'm almost glad you're going to make me marry you," she confided.

He leaned over her chair, his eyes shining. "I'll make you more than almost glad, Valencia. You're going to learn what it is to-- oh, damn it!"

He was impersonally admiring her Whistler when the maid brushed aside the portieres. She had come to bring Mrs. Van Tyle a telegram.

"No answer, Pratt."

After the maid had retired her mistress called James to her side. Over her shoulder he read it.

"Glad he is an American and not living on his father. Didn't think you had so much sense. Tell that young man I want to see him in New York immediately."

The message was signed with the name of her father.

"What do you suppose he wants with you in New York?"

James was radiant. He kissed the perfect lips turned toward him before he answered. "Oh, to make me president of the Transcontinental maybe. How should I know? It's an olive branch. Isn't that enough?"

"When shall you go?"

He looked at his watch. "The limited leaves at nine-thirty. That gives me nearly an hour."

"You're not going to-night?"

"I'm going to-night. I must, dear. Those are the orders and I've got to obey them."

"But suppose I give you different orders. Surely I have some rights, to-night of all nights. Why, we haven't been engaged ten minutes. Business doesn't always come first."

James hesitated. "It's the last thing I want to do, but when Joe Powers says 'Come!' I know enough to jump."

"But when I say stay?" she pleaded.

"Then I stop the prettiest mouth in the world with kisses and run away before I hear the order." Gaily he suited the action to the word.

But, for once swift, she reached the door before him.

"Wait. Don't go, dear."

The last word came faintly, unexpectedly. The enticement of the appeal went to his head. He had shaken her out of the indifference that was her pride. One arm slipped round her waist. His other hand tilted back her head until he could look into the eyes in which a new fire had been kindled.

"What about that almost glad? If I stay will you forget all qualifying words and be just glad?"

She nodded quickly, laughing ever so softly. "Yes, I'll help you listen to the birds sing. Do you know I can almost hear them?"

James drew a deep breath and caught her swiftly to him. "New York will have to wait till to-morrow. The birds will sing to-night and we will not count the cost."

"Yes, my lord," she answered demurely.

For to-night she wanted to forget that their birds were only caged canaries.

CHAPTER 23

"And what are the names of the Fortunate Isles, Lo! duty and love and a large content; And these are the Isles of the watery miles That God let down from the firmament.

Lo! duty and love and a true man's trust, Your forehead to God and your feet in the dust: Lo! duty and love and a sweet babe's smiles, And these, O friends, are the Fortunate Isles."

AND LARKS FOR THE REBEL

Beneath a sky faintly pink with the warning of the coming sunrise Jeff walked an old logging trail that would take him back to camp from his morning dip. Ferns and blackberry bushes, heavy with dew, reached across the road and grappled with each other. At every step, as he pushed through the tangle, a shower of drops went flying.

His was the incomparable buoyant humor of a lover treading a newborn world. A smile was in his eyes, tender, luminous, cheerful. He thought of the woman whom he had not seen for many months, and he was buoyed up by the fine spiritual edge which does not know defeat. Win or lose, it was clear gain to have loved her.

With him he carried a vision of her, young, ardent, all fire and flame. One spoke of things beautiful and her face lit from within. Her words, motions, came from the depths, half revealed and half concealed dear hidden secrets. He recalled the grace of the delicate throat curve, little tricks of expression, the sweetness of her energy.

The forest broke, opening into a clearing. He stood to drink in its beauty, for the sun, peeping over a saddle in the hills, had painted the place a valley of gold and russet. And while he waited there came out of the woods beyond, into that splendid setting, the vision that was in his mind.

He was not surprised that his eyes were playing him tricks. This was after all the proper frame for the picture of his golden sweetheart. Lance-straight and slender, his wood nymph waded knee deep through the ferns. Straight toward him she came, and his temples began to throb. A sylph of the woods should be diaphanous. The one he saw was a creature of color and warmth and definiteness. Life, sweet and mocking, flowed through her radiantly. His heart sang within him, for the woman he loved out of a world of beautiful women was coming to him, light-footed as Daphne, the rhythm of the morning in her step.

She spoke, commonplace words enough. "Last night I heard you were here."

"And I didn't know you were within a thousand miles."

"We came back to Verden Thursday and are up over Sunday," she explained.

He was lost in the witchery of the spell she cast over him. Not the drooping maidenhair ferns through which she trailed were more delicate or graceful than she. But some instinct in him played surface commonplaces against the insurgent emotion of his heart.

"You like Washington?"

"I like home better."

"But you were popular at the capital. I read a great deal in the papers about your triumphs."

The dye in her cheeks ran a little stronger. There had been much gossip about a certain Italian nobleman who had wooed her openly and madly. "They told a lot of nonsense."

"And some that wasn't nonsense."

"Not much." She changed the subject lightly. "You read all about the wedding, of course."

He quoted. "Miss Alice Frome as maid of honor preceded the bride, appearing in a handsome gown of very delicate old rose satin with an overdress of--"

"Very good. You may go to the head of the class, sir. Valencia was beautiful and your cousin never looked more handsome."

"Which is saying a good deal."

"And we're all hoping they will live happy ever after."

"You know he is being talked of for United States Senator already."

"You will oppose him?" she asked quickly.

"I shall have to."

"Still an irreconcilable." Her smile could be vivid, and just now it was.

"Still a demagogue and a trouble maker," he admitted.

"You've won the recall and the direct primary since I left."

"Yes. We've been busy."

"And our friends--how are they?"

"You should see Jefferson Davis Farnum Miller. He's two months old and as fat as a dumpling."

"I've seen him. He's a credit to his godfather."

"Isn't he? That's one happy family."

"I wonder who's to blame for that," she said, the star flash in her eyes.

"Nellie told you?"

"She told me."

"They exaggerate. Nobody could have done less than I."

"Or more." She did not dwell upon the subject. "Tell me about Mr. Marchant."

He went over for her the story of the little poet's gentle death. She listened till he made an end.

"Then it was not hard for him?"

"No. He had one of his good, eager days, then guietly fell asleep."

"And passed to where, beyond these voices, there is rest and peace," she quoted, ever so softly.

"Yes."

"Perhaps he knows now all about his Perfect State." Her wistful smile was very tender.

"Perhaps."

They walked together slowly across the valley.

"It is nearly six months since I have seen you."

"Five months and twenty-seven days." The words had slipped out almost without her volition. She hurried on, ashamed, the color flying in her cheeks, "I remember because it was the day we ran down your cousin and that old gentleman. It has always been a great comfort to me to know that he was not seriously injured."

"No. It was only the shock of his fall."

"What was his name? I don't think I heard it."

There was just an instant's silence before he pronounced, "Farnum--Mr. Robert Farnum."

"A relative of yours?"

"Yes."

Across her brain there flashed a fugitive memory of three words Jeff had spoken to his cousin the day of the accident. "It's your father."

But how could that be? She had always understood that both the parents of James were dead. The lawyer had denied knowing the man whose life he had saved. And yet she had been sure of the words and of a furtive, frightened look on the face of James. According to the story of the Herald the father of Jefferson, a former convict, was named Robert. But once, when she had made some allusion to it Captain Chunn had exploded into vigorous denial. It was a puzzle the meaning of which she could not guess.

"He has several times mentioned his wish to thank you for your kindness," Jeff mentioned.

"I'll be glad to meet him." Swiftly she flashed a question at him. "Is he James Farnum's father?"

"Haven't you read the papers? He is said to be mine."

"But he isn't. He isn't. I see it now. James was ashamed to acknowledge a father who had been in prison. Your enemies made a mistake and you let it go."

"It's all long since past. I wouldn't say anything about it to anybody."

"Of course you wouldn't," she scoffed. Her eyes were very bright. She wanted to laugh and to weep at her discovery.

"You see it didn't matter with my friends. And my reputation was beyond hope anyhow. It was different with James."

She nodded. "Yes. It wouldn't have improved his chances with Valencia," her cousin admitted.

Jeff permitted himself a smile. "My impression was that he did not have Mrs. Van Tyle in mind at the time."

They had waded through the wet ferns to the edge of the woods. As her eyes swept the russet valley through which they had passed Alice drew a deep breath of pleasure. How good it was to be alive in such a world of beauty! A meadow lark throbbed its three notes at her joyfully to emphasize their kinship. An English pheasant strutted across the path and disappeared into the ferns. Neither the man nor the woman spoke. All the glad day called them to the emotional climax toward which they were racing.

Womanlike, Alice attempted to evade what she most desired. He was to be her mate. She knew it now. But the fear of him was in her heart.

"Were you so fond of him? Is that why you did it for him?" she asked.

"I didn't do it for him."

"For whom then?"

He did not answer. Nor did his eyes meet hers. They were fixed on the moving ferns where the pheasant had disappeared.

Alice guessed. He had done it for the girl because he thought her in love with his cousin. A warm glow suffused her. No man made such a sacrifice for a woman unless he cared for her.

The meadow lark flung out another carefree ecstasy. The theme of it was the triumphant certainty that love is the greatest thing in the world. Jeff felt that it was now or never.

"I love you. It's been hidden in my heart more than eight years, but I find I must tell you. All the arguments against it I've rehearsed a thousand times. The world is at your feet. You could never love a man like me. To your friends I'm a bad lot. They never would consider me a moment."

Gently she interrupted. "Is it my friends you want to marry?"

The surprise of it took him by the throat. His astonished eyes questioned for a denial. In that moment a wonderful secret was born into the world. She held out both hands with a divine frankness, a sweetness of surrender beyond words.

"But your father--your people!"

"'Where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people."' She murmured it with a broken little laugh that was a sob.

Even then he did not take her in his arms. The habit of reverence for her was of many years' growth and not to be broken in an instant.

"You are sure, dear--quite sure?"

"I've been sure ever since the day of our first talk on the Bellingham."

Still he fought the joy that flooded him. "I must tell you the truth so that you won't idealize me . . . and the situation. I am enlisted in this fight for life. Where it will lead me I don't know. But I must follow the road I see. You will lose your friends. They will think me a crank, an enemy to society; and they will think you demented. But even for you I can't turn back."

A tender glow was in her deep eyes. "If I did not know that do you think I would marry you?"

"But you've always had the best things. You've never known what it is to be poor."

"No, I've never had the best things, never till I knew you, dear. I've starved for them and did not know how to escape the prison I was in. Then you came . . . and you showed me. The world is at my feet now. Not the world you meant, of idleness and luxury and ennui . . . but that better one of the spirit where you and I shall walk together as comrades of all who work and laugh and weep."

"If I could be sure!"

"Of me, Jeff?"

"That I can make you happy. After all it's a chance."

"We all live on a chance. I'll take mine beside the man I love. There is one way under heaven by which men may be saved. I'm going to walk that way with you, dear."

Jeff threw away the reins of a worldly wise prudence.

"For ever and ever, Alice," he cried softly, shaken to his soul.

As their lips met the lark throbbed a betrothal song.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

They went slowly through the wet ferns, hand in hand. It was amazingly true that he had won her, but Jeff could scarce believe the miracle. More than once he recurred to it.

"You saw what no other young woman of your set in Verden did, the human in me through my vagabondage. But why? There's nothing in my appearance to attract."

"Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck," she laughed. "And I won't have you questioning my taste, sir. I've always thought you very good-looking, if you must have it."

"If you're as far gone as that!" His low laughter rang out to meet hers, for no reason except the best of reasons--that they walked alone with love through a world wonderful.

Contents

THE PIRATE OF PANAMA

A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure

By WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE

CHAPTER I

A SCRAP OF PAPER

It was a dismal, sodden morning, with heavy clouds banked in the western sky. Rain had sloshed down since midnight so that the gutter in front of me was a turbid little river.

A chill wind swept across the city and penetrated to the marrow. From the summit of the hill, three blocks above me, my car was sliding down, but I clung to the curb to postpone until the last moment a plunge into the flowing street.

Since I was five-and-twenty, in tip-top health, and Irish by descent, I whistled while the windswept drops splashed the shine from my shoes. Rain or sun, 'twas a good little old world, though, faith! I could have wished it a less humdrum one.

For every morning I waited at that same time and place for the same car to take me to my desk in the offices of Kester & Wilcox, and every day I did the same sort of routine grubbing in preparation of cases for more experienced lawyers to handle.

Sometimes it flashed across me that I was a misfit. Nature had cast me for the part of a soldier of fortune, and instead I was giving my services to help a big corporation escape the payment of damages for accidents caused by its cars. I had turned my back on the romance of life. Well, it was the penalty one must pay to win success.

And while I stood on the curb there fluttered down to me from the dun heavens an invitation to the great adventure my soul longed for. It came on a gust of wind and lay on the sidewalk at my feet, a torn sheet of paper yellowed with age.

I had no premonition of what that faded bit of parchment meant, no picture of men in deadly battle, of the flash of knives or the gleam of revolvers, of lusty seamen lying curled on the deck where they had fallen at the call of sudden death. The only feeling that stirred in me was a faint curiosity at the odd markings on the sheet.

My foot moved forward and pinned the paper to the cement walk. Should I pick it up? Of what use? It would turn out to be only some Chinese laundry bill. Already the gong of the street-car was not more than a block away as it swept down the hill.

Was it some faint sound that drew my eyes up? Or was I answering the call of my destiny when my lifted gaze met the figure of a young woman framed in a second-story window? She was leaning far out, with arm stretched down and fingers opened wide.

Behind her stood a man, also out of the window to his waist. One of his hands clutched her wrist, the other reached toward hers. That he had been trying to take from her the paper she had flung away was an easy guess.

I had but the fraction of a second before my car was slowing for the crossing, but it was long enough to read in his dark face a malignant rage, in her fair, flushed one a defiant triumph. Stooping, I gathered the document that lay under my foot, then ran forward and swung to the platform of the car.

If there had been time for second thought I might have stayed to see the drama out, or I might have left the cause of quarrel where it lay. As it was I had done neither one thing nor the other. Having yielded to impulse so far as to pick up the paper, I had then done the conventional thing and ignored the little scene above.

But when I glanced back up the hill I glimpsed a man flying bareheaded from a doorway and pursuing the car with gestures of impotent fury.

All the way down to the business quarter the odd affair challenged my interest. What did it mean? The picture in the window was no laughing romp meant to end in kisses. So much I was willing to swear. There was passion in both the faces.

Out of those two lives I had snatched a vivid moment, perhaps one of many common to them, perhaps the first their intersecting life-lines had developed.

Was the man her husband? I was not willing to think so. More likely a brother, I persuaded myself. For it was already being borne in upon me that freakish chance had swept me into the orbit of the thing we spell Romance.

A petty domestic quarrel suggested itself as the obvious solution, but the buoyant youth in me refused any such tame explanation. For the girl was amazingly pretty.

After a glance at it I put the crumpled paper in my pocketbook. In that crowded car, hanging to a strap, I could make nothing of it. At the office my time belonged to Kester & Wilcox until noon, for I was still in that preliminary stage of my legal career during which I found it convenient to exchange my inexperience for fifteen dollars a week. A clouded real-estate title was presumably engaging my attention, but between my mind and the abstract kept jumping a map with the legend "Doubloon Spit" above it.

Faith, the blood sang in my veins. The scent of adventure was in my nostrils. A fool you may think me, but I was already on the hunt for buried treasure. Half a dozen times I had the paper out furtively, and as soon as my hour of release came I cleared the desk and spread the yellow, tattered document upon it.

The ink had been originally red, but in places it was faded almost to illegibility. The worn edges at the folds showed how often it had been opened and scanned. One lower corner had been torn away, leaving perhaps seven-eighths of the original manuscript. Yet in spite of its imperfect state of preservation I found this relic of a dead and forgotten past pulse-stirring.

Before me lay the map of a peninsula, the upper part sketched in vaguely but the toe marked apparently with the greatest care. The first detail that caught my eye was a sketch of a brig in the bay, beneath which was written:

"Here Santa Theresa went to Hell."

It was plain that the coast line was charted accurately so as to show the precise location of the inlets. It was a contour map, giving the hills, sand reaches, and groves. At the nearest one of these last was jotted down the words: "Umbrela Tree."

A little cross had been drawn near the foot of a hill. From this a long line ran into the bay with a loop at the end in which had been printed neatly: "Where Lobardi croked. Good riddance."

Not far from this were three little circles, beneath which was one word in capitals, "ITTE."

My heart leaped like an unleashed foxhound taking the trail. What could it mean but treasure? What had happened to the Santa Theresa? Had some one helped Lobardi to "croke" by cracking his skull? Could that dim, red ink once have been, the life blood in a man's veins?

Here was food enough to fire the blood of a cool-headed Yankee, let alone that of a mad Irishman. I caught a vision of a boatload of red-turbaned buccaneers swarming up the side of a brig; saw the swish of cutlases and the bellying smoke of pistols; beheld the strangely garbed seadogs gathered around an open chest of yellow gold bars shining in the sun.

For an eyebeat it was all clear to me as day. Then I laughed aloud at myself in returning sanity. I was in the twentieth century, not the eighteenth. An imagination so vivid that it read all this from a scrap of paper picked from the gutter needed curbing. I repocketed the chart and went to lunch.

But I found I could not laugh myself out of my interest. The mystery of it drew me, despite myself. While I waited for my chop I had the map out again, studying it as a schoolboy does a paper-backed novel behind his geography.

Beneath the map were some closely written lines of directions for finding "itte," whatever that might be. As to that my guess never wavered.

Whoever had drawn the map had called the peninsula "Doubloon Spit." Why? Clearly because he and his fellow buccaneers had buried there the ill-gotten treasure they had gained from piracy. No doubt the Santa Theresa was a gold ship they had waylaid and sunk.

At my entrance I had taken a little side table, but the restaurant was filling rapidly. A man stopped beside my table and took off a frogged overcoat with astrakhan trimmings. He hung this and his hat on a rack and sat down in the chair opposite me.

Instinctively I had covered the map with a newspaper. With amazement I now discovered that my vis-à-vis was the villain of the Adventure of the Young Lady and the Chart, as the author of the "New Arabian Nights" would have phrased it.

The man was in a vile humor, so much could be seen at a glance. Without doing me the honor of a single glance he stared moodily in front of him, his heavy black brows knit to a grim frown.

He was a splendid specimen of physical manhood, big and well-muscled, with a broad, flat back and soldierly carriage. That he was a leader of men was an easy deduction, though the thin, straight mouth and the hard glitter in the black eyes made the claim that he would never lead toward altruism.

In quick, short puffs he smoked a cigarette, and as soon as he had finished it he lit a second. Men all around us were waiting their turn, but I observed that the first lift of his finger brought an attendant.

"Tenderloin with mushrooms--asparagus tips--strong black coffee--cognac," he ordered with the curtness of an army officer snapping commands at a trooper. His voice was rich and cultivated, but had a very distinctly foreign quality in spite of the fact that his English was faultless.

I took advantage of the distraction of the waiter's presence to slip the map from the table into my pocket. After this I breathed freer, for it is scarcely necessary to say that in the struggle for the map--and by this time I had quite made up my mind that there would be fought out a campaign for its possession--I was wholly on the side of the young woman.

But as yet I knew none of the facts, and so was not in a position to engage with him to advantage. I called for the check and took my coat and hat from the rack.

Then I made my first mistake. I should have carried my raincoat to the door before putting it on. As I buttoned it recognition began to struggle faintly into his eyes. I waited for no further developments.

But as I went out of the door I could see him hurrying forward. Instantly I turned to the right, dodged into a tobacco shop, ran swiftly through it to the surprise of the proprietor, and found myself in an alley. I took this in double-quick time and presently had lost myself in the hurrying crowds on Kearney Street. Five minutes later I was in the elevator on the way to our office.

I set to work resolutely, but my drifting thoughts went back to the military man with the frogged coat, to the distractingly pretty girl who did not want him to have the map, and to that spit of land lapped by Pacific waves in a latitude and longitude that shall be nameless for reasons that will hereafter appear.

It must have been fifteen minutes after my return that our office boy, Jimmie, came in to tell me that a lady wanted to see me.

"She's a peach, too," he volunteered with the genial impudence that characterized him.

This brought me back to earth, a lawyer instead of a treasure seeker, and when my first client crossed the threshold she found me deep in a volume on contracts, eight other large and bulky reference books piled on the table.

The name on the card Jimmie had handed me was Miss Evelyn Wallace. I rose at once to meet her.

"You are Mr. John Sedgwick?" asked a soft, Southern voice that fell on my ears like music.

"I am."

My bow stopped abruptly. I stifled an exclamation. The young woman was the one I had seen framed in a second-story window some hours earlier.

"I think you know me by sight," she said, not smiling exactly, but little dimples lurking in her cheeks ready to pounce out at the first opportunity. "That is, unless you have forgotten?"

Forgotten! I might have told her it would be hard to forget that piquant, oval face of exquisite coloring, and those blue eyes in which the sunshine danced like gold. I might have, but I did not. Instead, I murmured that my memory served me well enough.

"I have come for the paper you were good enough to take care of for me, Mr. Sedgwick. It belongs to me--the paper you picked up this morning."

From my pocket I took the document and handed it to her.

"May I ask how you found out who I was, Miss Wallace?"

You might have thought that roses had brushed her cheeks and left their color there.

"I asked a policeman," she confessed, just a little embarrassed.

"To find you a man in a gray ulster, medium height, weight, and complexion," I laughed.

"I had seen you come from the Graymount once or twice, and by describing you to the landlady he discovered who you were and where you worked," she explained.

Her touch of shyness had infected me, too. It was as if unwittingly I had intruded on her private affairs, had seen that morning an incident not meant for the eyes of a stranger. We avoided the common interest between us, though both of us were thinking of it.

Later I was to learn that she had been as eager to approach the subject as I. But she could not very well invite a stranger into her difficulty any more than I could push myself into her confidence.

"I hope you find the paper exactly as you left it, or rather as it left you," I stammered at last.

She had put the map in her hand-bag, but at my words she took it out, not to verify my suggestion but to prolong for a moment her stay in order to find courage to broach the difficulty. For she had come to the office in desperation, determined to confide in me if she liked my face and felt I was to be trusted.

"Yes. It was torn at the moment I threw it away. My cousin has the other part. It is a map."

"So I noticed. My impression was that the paper was yours. I examined it to see whether it held your name and address."

Her blue eyes met mine shyly.

"Did it--interest you at all?"

"Indeed, and it did. Nothing in a long time has interested me more."

I might have made an exception in favor of the owner of the document, but once more I decided to move with discretion.

"You understood it?" Her soft voice trailed upward so that her declaration was in essence a question.

"I am thinking it was only a wild guess I made."

"I'd like right well to hear it."

My eyes met hers.

"Buried treasure."

With eager little nods she assented.

"Right, sir; treasure buried by pirates early in the nineteenth century. We have reason to think it has never been lifted."

"Good reason?"

"The best. Except the copy I have, this map is the only one in existence. Only four men saw the gold hidden. Two of them were killed by the others within the hour. The third was murdered by his companion some weeks later. The fourth--but it is a long story. I must not weary you with it."

"Weary me," I cried, and I dare swear my eyes were shining. But there I pulled myself up. "You're right. I had forgotten. You don't know me. There is no reason why you should tell me the story."

"That is true," she asserted. "It is of no concern to you."

That she was a little rebuffed by my words was plain. I made haste to explain them.

"I am meaning that there is no reason why you should trust me."

"Except your face," she answered impulsively. "Sir, you are an honest gentleman. Chance, or fate, has thrown you in my way. I must go to somebody for advice. I have no friends in San Francisco that can help me--none nearer than Tennessee. You are a lawyer. Isn't it your business to advise?"

"If you put it that way. But it is only fair to say that I am a very inexperienced one. To be frank, I've never had a client of my own."

Faith, her smile was warm as summer sunshine.

"Then I'll be your first, unless you refuse the case. But it may turn out dangerous. I have no right to ask you to take a risk for me"--she blushed divinely--"especially since I am able to pay so small a fee."

"My fee shall be commensurate with my inexperience," I smiled. "And are you thinking for a moment that I would let my first case get away from me at all? As for the danger--well, I'm an Irishman."

"But it isn't really a law case at all."

"So much the better. I'll have a chance of winning it then."

"It will be only a chance."

"We'll turn the chance into a certainty."

"You seem very sure, sir."

"I must, for confidence is all the stock in trade I have," was my gay answer.

From her bag Miss Wallace took the map and handed it to me.

"First, then, you must have this put in a safety-deposit vault until we need it. I'm sure attempts will be made to get it."

"By whom?"

"By my cousin. He'll stick at nothing. If you had met him you would understand. He is a wonder. I'm afraid of him. His name is Boris Bothwell--Captain Bothwell, lately cashiered from the British army for conduct unbecoming a gentleman. In one of his rages he nearly killed a servant."

"But you are not English, are you?"

"He is my second cousin. He isn't English, either. His father was a Scotchman, his mother a Russian."

"That explains the name--Boris Bothwell."

Like an echo the words came back to me from over my shoulder.

"Capt. Boris Bothwell to see you, Mr. Sedgwick."

In surprise I swung around. The office boy had come in quietly, and hard on his heels was a man in a frogged overcoat with astrakhan trimmings. Not half an hour earlier I had sat opposite him at luncheon.

CHAPTER II

CAPTAIN BOTHWELL INTERRUPTS

As he moved into the room with his easy, vigorous stride, one could not miss the impression, of his extraordinary physical power.

I am an outdoor man myself, but I have never seen the day when I was a match for Boris Bothwell at feats of strength. Unusually deep in the chest and wide of shoulder, with long, well-packed arms that gave his big, sinewy hands a tremendous grip, he was not in the least muscle-bound.

In my junior year I was the champion intercollegiate sprinter of the Pacific coast, but I have done a fifty with Bothwell for no less a stake than my life, and not gained two feet on the man.

At sight of his cousin he bowed ironically, with the most genial of mocking smiles. To that smile I despair of doing justice. It was not from the lips merely, nor yet was it from the good will in him, but had its birth apparently of some whimsical thought that for the moment lent his face a rare charm. A second bow was for me.

"Mr. John Sedgwick, I presume?"

"At your service, sir."

He removed his coat leisurely and hung it on the back of a chair.

"Just so. I've had the devil of a time running you down, but here we are at last. And all's well that ends well."

"You have business with me?" I asked curtly.

"Even at the risk of interrupting a tête-à-tête with the most charming young lady under heaven." His head dipped again with derisive courtesy toward Miss Wallace. "But I need detain you scarce a moment. You found this morning a paper I had the misfortune to lose. You will allow me to offer a thousand thanks for the very good care you have doubtless taken of it and will permit me to relieve you of it."

He was the very letter of urbanity, but beneath the velvet of his voice I felt the steel. It lay, too, in the glitter of the cold eyes that gimleted mine sharply.

Be sure I gave him back his smile and his insolent aplomb.

"Surely you are mistaken, Captain Bothwell. I recollect finding nothing that belongs to you."

"We'll waive that point. You found a paper," he answered quietly, drawing up a chair and seating himself astride it with his face to the back.

"I picked up a paper that fell from the hand of Miss Wallace."

"Exactly. I speak, of course, in the interest of my cousin. If you have returned it to her my purpose is served."

Impatient at our fencing, or afraid, perhaps, that I might be deceived by his suavity, the girl cut in tartly:

"You think you could rob me more successfully next time, Boris?"

His kindly toleration was a lesson in diplomacy.

"Fie, fie, Evie! A family difference of opinion. I think we must not trouble Mr. Sedgwick with our little diversions entre nous."

"Unfortunately, you are a day after the fair, Captain Bothwell. Miss Wallace has already done me the honor to consult me in an advisory capacity."

I let him have my declaration of war with the airiest manner in the world. My spirits were rising with the nearness of the battle, and I thought it would do our cause not the least harm in the world to let him see I was not a whit afraid to cross blades.

"Indeed! Then for the matter in hand I may consider you one of the family. I congratulate you, Evie. Shall we say a brother--or a cousin--or----"

"It isn't necessary to be a cad, Boris," she flung back hotly.

"Pardon me. You are right--neither necessary nor desirable. I offer regrets." Then of a sudden the apology went out of his face like the flame from a blown candle. He swung curtly around upon me. "Mr. Sedgwick, I must trouble you for the map."

I will be the last to deny that there was something compelling about the man. He sat there stroking his imperial, while the black eyes of the man held mine with a grip of steel. Masterful he looked, and masterful I found him to the last day of that deadly duel we fought out to a finish.

In that long moment of suspended animation when only our eyes lived--crossed and felt the temper of each other as with the edge of grinding rapiers--we took each the measure of his foe pretty accurately. If I held my own it was but barely. The best I could claim was a drawn battle.

"Regretfully I am compelled to decline your request."

"It is not a request but a demand. Come, sir, the map!" he repeated more harshly.

That he would somehow back his demand I did not for an instant doubt, though as to how I was still in the dark.

"Let me set you right, Captain Bothwell. This is a law office, in the city of San Francisco, United States of America. I am neither Tommy Atkins nor a Russian serf. Therefore, I again decline."

Coals of fire lay in his eyes.

"I--want--that--map!"

"So I gather, and as a child you often wanted the moon. But did you get it?" I inquired pleasantly.

"The map--the map!" He had not raised his voice a note, but I give you my word his eyes were devilish. He was a dangerous man in an ugly frame of mind.

"Certainly you are a man of one idea, captain. Show proof of ownership and I shall be glad to comply with your request."

"But certainly."

So quick was his motion that the revolver seemed to have leaped to his hand of its own accord.

"I give you my word, Mr. John Sedgwick of San Francisco, United States of America, that in the event you do not at once hand me that map I shall blow the top of your head off!"

In a measure I was prepared for this. I told myself that we were in the heart of a great city, in daylight, with the twentieth century setting of a fifteen-story office building. Were I to put my head out of the window a thousand hurrying people on Market Street would hear my call.

Yet I knew that I might as well be alone with him on a desert island for all the help that could reach me. I knew, too, that he was not bluffing. What he said he would do, that he would do.

My face can on occasion be wooden.

"Interesting, if true," I retorted coolly.

"And absolutely true. Make no mistake about that, Mr. Sedgwick."

His hand rested on the back of the chair for a support. My eyes looked straight into the blue barrel of his weapon. It was a ticklish moment. I congratulate myself that my nerves were in good condition. My fingers played a tattoo upon a sheet of paper on my desk. Beneath that page of office stationery lay the map he wanted.

"One moment, captain. This is not Russia. Have you considered that the freedom of my country carries with it disadvantages? You would probably be hanged by the neck till you were dead."

His mood had changed, but I knew he was not a whit less dangerous because the veneer of suave mockery masked the savagery of the Slav.

"Not at all. The unwritten law, my friend. I find you insulting my cousin and the hot blood in me boils. I avenge her. Regrettable, of course. Too hasty, perhaps. But--oh well, let bygones be bygones."

In one breath he had tried and acquitted himself.

"And do you think that I would agree to your accursed lies?" his cousin asked, white as new-fallen snow.

"Let us hope so. Otherwise I should have to base my action upon a construction less creditable to you. The point is that I shall not hesitate to carry out my promise. We can arrange the details later, my dear. Come, Mr. Sedgwick! Choose!"

"You coward!" flashed his cousin in a blaze of scorn.

"Not at all, dear Evie. All point of view, I assure you. Mr. Sedgwick has told you that I take a sporting chance of being scragged. I haven't the slightest ill feeling, but--I want what I want. Have you decided, sir?"

He was scarcely two yards from me, but neither his keen gaze nor the point of the automatic revolver wandered for a fraction of a second from me. There was not a single chance to close with him. I was considering ignominious surrender when Miss Wallace saved my face.

"Can he give you what he hasn't got?" she cried out, her natural courage and her contempt struggling with her fear for me.

"So he hasn't it, eh?" There was a silence before he went on: "But it is in this room somewhere. You have it or he has it. Now, I wonder which?" He spoke softly, as if to himself, without the least trace of nervousness or passion. "Yes, that's the riddle. Which of you?"

His eyes released me long enough to shoot a questioning glance at her, for from my face he could read nothing.

"If you have it, Evie, my cousin, you will perhaps desire to turn it over to me for safe keeping. It will be better, I think."

"For you or for me?"

He laughed noiselessly, with the manner peculiar to him of having some private source of amusement within.

"Would you shoot me if I didn't agree with you?" she continued.

"My dear cousin," he reproved. From his air one might have judged him a pained and loving father.

"Then what will you do?"

"Yes, I really think it will be better," he murmured with his strange smile.

"And I ask again, better for whom?"

"For Mr. Sedgwick, my dear," he cut back.

She was plainly taken aback.

"But--since he hasn't the paper----"

"We'll assume he has it. At least he knows where it is."

His manner dismissed her definitely from the business in hand. "I must apologize for my brusqueness, Mr. Sedgwick, but I'm sure you'll understand that with a busy man time is money. Believe me, it is with great regret I am forced to cut short so promising a career. You're a man after my own heart. I see quite unusual qualities in you that I would have found pleasure in cultivating. But I mustn't let my selfish regret interfere with what is for the good of the greatest number. At best it's an unsatisfactory world. You're well rid of it. Any last messages, by the way?"

He purred out his atrocious mockery as a great cat gifted with speech might have done while playing with the mouse it meant to destroy.

"I'd like to make it clear to you what a villain you are--but I despair of finding words to do justice to the subject. As for your threat, it is absurd. You'd hang, to a certainty, on the testimony of Miss Wallace."

He shrugged his broad shoulders.

"Life is full of risks. We all have to take them, and for my part it lends a zest. Unfortunately, if you take this risk you will not be in a position later to realize that your judgment was at fault. That, however, is your business and not mine," he concluded cheerfully, lifting his weapon slightly and taking aim.

"For the last time---- Do you give me the map, or do I give you a pass to kingdom come?"

The girl moved forward so that she stood directly between me and the weapon. She was taking a paper from her hand-bag, but she did not lower her eyes to direct her hands in their search.

"I reckon I couldn't make you understand how I despise you--and hate you! I'd rather be kin to the poorest beggar who sweeps the streets down there than to you," she flamed, flinging before him a paper.

Warily he picked it up and glanced at it, still covering me carefully.

"This is the map, is it?"

"You may see for yourself," she blazed.

"It is really very good of you to ask me to keep it for you, Evie. I'll take good care of it--not a doubt of that. It's far better in my hands than yours, for of course you might be robbed."

His impudent smile derided her contempt. For me--I wouldn't have faced that look of hers for twenty maps.

"We're not through with you yet," I told him.

In gay reproof he shook a finger at me.

"Ah! There speaks the lawyer. You'll bring an action, will you?"

It annoyed me to be playing so poor a part before Miss Wallace.

"You're an infernal scoundrel!"

"I could argue you out of that uncharitable opinion if I had time, Mr. Sedgwick. But I'm devilishly de trop--the superfluous third, you know. My dear cousin frowns at me. 'Pon my word, I don't blame her. But you'll excuse me for intruding, won't you? I plead the importance of my business. And I'm very glad of an excuse for meeting you formally, Mr. Sedgwick. The occasion has been enjoyable and will, I trust, prove profitable. I'll not say good-bye--hang me if I do. We'll make it au revoir. Eh?"

An imp of malicious deviltry danced in his eyes. It was not necessary to tell me that he was having a pleasant time.

"Au revoir be it," I nodded, swallowing my bad temper.

Once more he gave us his bland smile, a bow of audacious effrontery, then whipped open the door and was gone.

It may be guessed he left me in no exultant mood. From the first the fellow had taken and held the upper hand. I had come through with no distinction at all and had let him walk off with the booty. But if there be those who think my spirit small I ask them to remember that a revolver staring one in the eye is a potent persuader.

Miss Wallace was the first to speak.

"You know now why I think him a dreadful man," she said, taking a deep breath of relief.

"Just a moment," I excused myself, and ran into the outer office.

Our office Cerberus was sitting at the gate of entry reading the enthralling story of "Hal Hiccup, the Boy Demon." From my pocket I fished one of the few dollars it held.

"Jimmie, follow that man who has just gone out. Find out where he goes and whom he meets. If he stops anywhere keep a note of the place."

The eyes of Young America grew big and round with astonishment, then lit with ecstatic delight. He was going to be a real detective.

"The boss?" He jerked a dirty thumb in the direction of the chief clerk.

"I'll make it right with him. Hurry!"

"You bet I'll keep a peeper on him," he bragged, reaching for his hat.

He was gone.

I returned to my client.

"Excuse me. I wanted to put a spy on your cousin. If he takes the map to a safe-deposit vault we ought to know where. And that reminds me---- What was it you gave him? I thought the map was on my table here?"

"I gave him a copy of it, one my father took years ago."

"But had it a corner torn off just like this one?"

From her hand-bag she drew a scrap of paper. "I was tearing it off just before I took it out."

My admiration was genuine enough.

"You're a cool hand, Miss Wallace. My hat is off to you."

The color deepened slightly in her cheeks. "That was nothing. I just happened to think of it."

"You saved the day, anyhow. He stands only an equal chance with us."

"But he doesn't. My father purposely made an error in the details in case the map happened to fall into the wrong hands. And the latitude and longitude aren't marked."

I could have shouted my delight.

"But he has heard the diary read," she added. "In that the right latitude was given. If he happens to remember----"

"A hundred to one he doesn't, and even at the worst he's no better off than we are."

"Except that he has money and can finance an expedition in search of the treasure."

I came to earth as promptly as Darius Green.

"By Jove! that's true."

For the humiliating fact was that I had not a hundred dollars with which to bless myself, having just lost my small inheritance in a wildcat mining venture.

"I suppose it would take a lot of money?" she said timidly.

"Where is the treasure hidden?"

"On the coast of Panama."

"Near the canal zone?"

"I don't know. The latitude and the longitude are exactly marked, but I haven't looked them up."

"We'll have to outfit a ship here, or make our start from Panama. Yes, it's going to take money."

"Then we can't go any farther with it. I have no means," she said quietly.

The lawyer in me came reluctantly to the fore.

"I suppose I ought to advise you to compromise with Captain Bothwell."

Resolution flashed in the eyes that looked straight into mine.

"I'd rather lose it all! He wouldn't stick to any bargain he made because--well, he would use the treasure as a lever to--get something else he wants."

The flush in her cheeks told me what else it was he wanted, and my heart was lifted within me. Bothwell intended to marry her, and she did not intend that he should. My wishes ran pat with hers.

"That is final, is it?"

"Quite. If you don't want to go on with it you can drop out, Mr. Sedgwick. I thank you for your kindness----"

"And who's talking of dropping out? I suggested compromise because I thought I ought, but I'm the pleased man that you won't listen to my good advice. No, no! I'm in to stay, and here's my hand on it."

"You're just spoiling for the fight," she smiled, her little hand in mine.

"Indeed, and that's a guess which rings the bell. I'll not be satisfied till I try another fall with Mr. Bothwell."

"You're a right funny lawyer."

"I'll tell you a secret. My father was an Irish filibuster in Cuba. He died with his back to a wall when I was five."

"Then it's in the blood."

"He had a chance to slip away by leaving his men, but Barry Sedgwick wasn't the man to take that kind of an opportunity."

"The dear hero! How proud you must be of him," she said in the softest of voices.

I nodded.

"He's the best reference I can give you. Now, Miss Wallace, I'll have to tell this story--or part of it--before I can interest capital in the venture. You are willing that I should?"

"Do whatever you must. It's in your hands."

"First, we'll make sure of the map, then; and after that you can tell me the story of Doubloon Spit."

Together we went to the International Safe Deposit vaults, rented a box, and put in it the map. Afterward we took a car for Golden Gate Park. There she told me the story, in substance if not in the same words, to be found in the next two chapters.

Those who find interest only in the conventional had better read no farther. For this true tale runs red with the primal emotions of the old buccaneers. It is a story of love and hate, of heroism and cowardice, of treasure-trove and piracy on the high seas, of gaping wounds and foul murder. If this is not to your taste, fall out. My story is not for you.

CHAPTER III

CONCERNING DOUBLOON SPIT

Robert Wallace, the father of Evelyn, was not one of the forty-niners, but he had come to California by way of the Isthmus not very many years later. Always of an adventurous turn, it was on his fourteenth birthday that he ran away from his home in Baltimore to become a stowaway on board a south-bound vessel.

It was a day of privations, and the boy endured more than his share of them without complaint. Somehow he got along, knocking about from one point to another, now at the gold diggings, now on the San Francisco wharfs, and again as a deck hand on the coasters that plied from port to port.

When he was eighteen, but well grown for his age, he fell in with an old salt named Nat Quinn. Quinn was an old man, close to seventy, a survival of a type of sailor which even then had all but passed away.

The sea and the wind had given Quinn a face of wrinkled leather. It was his custom to wear rings in his ears, to carry a murderous dirk, and to wrap around his bald head a red bandanna after the fashion of the buccaneers of old.

He was a surly old ruffian, quick to take offense, and absolutely fearless. When the old fellow was in drink it was as much as one's life was worth to cross his whim.

Nat Quinn was second mate of the Porto Rico when young Wallace shipped before the mast at San Francisco for a cruise to Lima. The crew were probably rough specimens, but there can be no doubt that Quinn hazed them mercilessly.

Soon the whole forecastle was simmering with talk about revenge. Off Guayaquil one night three of the crew found him alone on the deck and rushed him overboard. The old man was no swimmer. No doubt this would have been the end of him if young Wallace, hearing his cry for help, had not dived from the rail and kept him afloat until a boat reached them.

From that night Nat Quinn took a great fancy to the young man and often hinted that he was going to make his fortune. He told of hidden treasure, but never definitely; spoke of a great fortune to be had for the lifting, and promised Wallace that he should go halves.

No doubt he trusted the boy, but the habit of secrecy had grown too strong easily to be broken. Several times he approached the subject, but usually sheered off before he had gone far. Of shrugs and winks he offered plenty, enough to keep the youngster tantalized almost beyond endurance. Nor was it possible to force his confidence, for he was of a surly, taciturn disposition, given to brooding suspicions.

But at last the story came out. Quinn had been in his early days a seaman on board the ship Mary Ann of Bristol, which in the year 1817 was wrecked off the coast of Peru and cast upon the rocks. Most of the crew were saved, including the captain, one Thomas Rogers, the first mate, "Bully" Evans, and the boatswain, Pablo Lobardi, a quarrelsome fellow with whom Quinn had had a difficulty.

The rescued seamen were treated with the greatest kindness by the simple-hearted natives. To Cerro Blanco, the nearest town, they were taken and given work. Most of them found employment in the rich mines of the neighborhood, pending the arrival of some ship to take them back to Europe.

Lobardi was the only one of the crew who could talk Spanish, so that in his capacity of interpreter he acquired much influence with the men. It was he that hatched the vile plot to rob the mines, loot the rich churches and the banks of Cerro Blanco, and make their escape on the ship which put in twice a year to carry the gold to Lima.

It looked a desperate enough adventure, this plan to seize an armed transport and escape with a great treasure, but these ruffians were the very men to carry through such an attempt. In its apparent hopelessness lay one prime factor of success, for none could expect a score of unarmed men to try so forlorn a hope. The transport carried twice as many soldiers, and these could call upon the town for aid in case of need.

Everything went as well for the rascally buccaneers as they could desire. As the treasure wagons from the mines filed through a narrow gorge the sailors fell upon them. By means of three stolen rifles they drove away the guard. In their wild flight for safety the men who composed this body flung away their weapons in panic.

Bully Evans, captain in fact though not in name, now had eleven rifles and three pistols to distribute among his men. Leaving an escort with the gold, he pushed to Cerro Blanco with the main body of robbers. At the outskirts of the town he again divided his forces. One party hastened to the banks and another looted the cathedral. Within an hour the town had been stripped clean of its gold and jewels and the scoundrels had again joined forces at the wharves. Only the need of absolute silence saved the town from a carnival of fire and murder.

It was by this time in the small hours of a dark, moonless night. The pirates loaded the treasure into boats and pulled quietly for the Santa Theresa, a transport which lay like a black hulk in the harbor.

The first boat was challenged by a sentinel on board, but Lobardi gave the countersign which they had forced from the leader of the treasure convoy.

"Muy bien," answered the sentry, and he at once moved away to call the captain of the marines.

As that officer came sleepily to the deck a half dozen figures swarmed over the side of the ship. He gave a cry, the last he ever uttered. A knife hurtling through the dark was buried to the hilt in his throat. Simultaneously one of the men on guard let out his death shriek and the other fled down the hatchway to the quarters of the men.

The first rush of the troopers to the deck was met by a volley that mowed them down. Before they could recover, the pirates were upon them with cutlases. Taken by surprise, hemmed in by the narrow hatchway, the soldiers made a poor defense. Some were pursued and cut down, others escaped by swimming to the wharves. Those who surrendered were flung into a boat and ordered ashore.

Captain Rogers worked the brig out of the harbor and set her nose to the north. There was need of haste, for the ship's consort was expected in a day or two. That there would be a pursuit nobody doubted.

Now occurred a state of affairs to be accounted the most strange were it not the most natural in the world. While the plot had been fomenting, and during its execution, these scurvy fellows had been of one mind, amenable to discipline, and entirely loyal to each other.

The thing had been in the wind a month, yet not one of them had breathed a word in betrayal. But no sooner had they won success than dissensions broke out. They were jealous of their officers, suspicious of each other.

Men whispered together in corners, and others scowled at them in distrust. They grew unruly, were soon ripe for mutiny.

To make matters worse, the wines and liquors aboard were made too free. It was not long before the cutthroats were in a debauch that threatened to last as long as the rum. Fights grew frequent. Within a week one man was buried and another lay in his bunk cut to ribbons.

At this juncture Rogers, Evans, and Lobardi put their heads together and quietly dumped overboard the liquor supply. Captain Rogers was the ablest seaman among the officers, and he it was that worked the brig. But Bully Evans was the real leader of the pirates. He was a big man, of tremendous vitality and strength, and he ruled like a czar, hazing his men into submission by sheer brutality.

One specimen of his methods must serve to illustrate a week of battle, every hour filled with disorder. The brig Truxillo, consort of the Santa Theresa, had appeared in the offing one morning and hung on in chase with all sail set. All day and night the two ships raced, the one to escape, the other to capture the pirates.

Next morning there came up a heavy fog. Orders were given to about ship. Nothing could have amazed the crew more, and mutiny was instantly in the air. The malcontents whispered together and sent forward a committee of three to voice their refusal to comply with the order.

Before a dozen words had been spoken Evans stepped forward and flung the spokesman from the quarterdeck. While the other two hesitated he was upon them, had cracked their heads together, and hammered them down the steps to the waist.

From his belt he whipped two pistols and leveled them at the grumblers.

"Avast, you lubbers!" he bellowed. "By the powers, I'll learn you to play horse with Bully Evans! Pipe up your complaint or foot it, you flabby seacocks what call yourselves gentlemen of fortune! Stow my quid, but I'll send some of you to feed the fishes if you try to make the f'c'sle rule the quarterdeck. Come, pipe up!"

They did not say much of what was in their minds, for he took the words out of their mouths, berating them for meddlesome fools and explaining how their sole chance of escaping was to slip past the Truxillo in the fog and shake off the pursuit. All this he roared with the foulest of accompanying oaths, treating the crew like dogs so effectively that they turned tail and gave up without a blow.

On the morning of the third day after this the Santa Theresa poked her nose into San Miguel Gulf on the southern coast of Panama. The captain took her across the gulf into Darien Harbor, then followed the southern branch practically to the head of the bay, at which point he anchored.

Tired of being confined aboard the ship, the crew were eager to get ashore. This suited the plans of Evans. As soon as the long boat had gone with the shore party he packed the treasure in boxes and lowered them into a boat. Late in the afternoon the tired sailors returned to the ship.

Evans ordered the boatswain to pipe all hands on deck. To the assembled crew he made a speech, pointing out the need of getting the treasure to some safer place than aboard a ship which might any day fall into the hands of the enemy. He intended, he said, to take three men with him and bury the chests on the sand spit within sight of them all.

But at this proposal the men broke into flat rebellion. Not one of them was willing to trust the gold out of his reach. Things in fact had come to such a pass that, though there was plenty for all, each was plotting how he might increase his share by robbing his neighbor.

Evans had made his preparations. The officers, Lobardi, Quinn, and two other sailors who sided with the chief villains were grouped together, all of them heavily armed. In the struggle that followed the victory lay with the organized party. The mutineers were defeated and disarmed.

Evans selected Quinn, Lobardi, and a sailor named Wall to go with him ashore to bury the gold. Those on board watched the boat pull away with the gold that had cost so many lives. To the fury and amazement of all of them the boat rounded a point of land and disappeared from sight.

Evans had broken his agreement to bury the treasure in the sight of all. Even Captain Rogers joined in the imprecations of the men. He ordered the long boat lowered for a pursuit, but hardly had this started when a shot plumped into the water in front of it.

Unobserved in the excitement, the Truxillo had slipped into the bay. Its second shot fell short, its third wide, but the fourth caught the boat amidship and crumpled it as the tap of a spoon does an empty eggshell. Of the eight men aboard two were killed outright and the rest thrown into the sea. One of them--a man named Bucks, as we were to learn in a most surprising way--clung to the wreckage and succeeded in reaching shore. The rest were drowned or fell a prey to sharks.

The long boat disposed of, the Truxillo turned her guns upon the Santa Theresa. Those left on board made a desperate defense, but the captain, seeing that escape was impossible, chose to blow up the ship rather than be hanged as a pirate from the yardarm.

Meanwhile, the boat with the treasure, which had rounded the point before the Truxillo had appeared, had been beached on the spit and the chests dragged ashore. Evans was burying the boxes when the first shot of the Truxillo fell upon his ears. Naturally he concluded that it was from the Santa Theresa as a warning of what he might expect.

Bully Evans showed his yellow teeth in a grin.

"Compliments of the old man," he said, no whit disturbed at his double treachery.

But at the sound of the final explosion the desperadoes looked at each other.

They ran to the nearest hill and saw the destruction of their companions.

The Portuguese boatswain was the first to recover.

"There ees now fewer to share," he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

Evans looked at Quinn and gave a signal. The double murder was done with knives. Where there had been four, now only two remained.

Evans and Quinn finished burying the treasure and removed all trace of their work. A map was drawn by Quinn, showing the exact location of the cache. The murderers slipped back to their boat and, under cover of darkness, crept up the harbor till they came to the mouth of a large river. Up this they pulled and disappeared into the interior. Neither of them was aware that Bucks had seen the treacherous killing and the disposal of the treasure.

Six weeks later a living skeleton crawled out of the fever-laden swamps of Panama and staggered down to a little village on the Gulf of Uraba. The man was Nat Quinn. He had followed the Rio Tuyra, zigzagged across the Isthmus, and reached the northern coast.

Somewhere in the dark tangle of forest behind him, where daylight never penetrates the thick tropical growth, lay the body of Bully Evans. It was lying face down in the underbrush, a little round hole in the back of the head. Quinn's treachery had anticipated that of the mate.

As the survivor lurched down to the settlement his voice rose in a high cackle of delirious song. These were the words of his chant:

It's bully boys, ho! and a deck splashed red-- The devil is paid, quo' he, quo' he, A knife in the back and a mate swift sped! Heave yo ho! and away with me.

CHAPTER IV

THE MAN WITH THE SECRET

This was the terrible story old Cap Nat, as he was commonly called, told to Robert Wallace one night in a grog shop at San Francisco nearly forty years after the events had taken place. Only one point he omitted--the fact that Bucks had escaped from the long boat and witnessed the caching of the plunder--and this only because he was not aware of it.

During all those forty years Quinn had kept it as a fixed purpose to return to the scene of his crime and possess himself of the wealth he had lost his soul to gain.

But to outfit an expedition of the necessary proportions took much money. On this rock the man's purpose had always split. Periodically he was a hard drinker. He would live hard and close for a year, saving every cent he could, and then spend the whole amount in one grand debauch.

Had he been willing to confide his story to some capitalist of California it is likely he might have raised the needed funds, but the nature of the man was both suspicious and secretive and he had guarded his knowledge all these years with jealousy.

Wallace was acquainted with the owner and master of a tramp schooner which had a doubtful reputation along the water front. Jim Slack had been an opium smuggler and was watched so closely by the revenue officers that he jumped at the chance of a trip to parts where no government officials could reach him.

Cautiously Wallace broached the subject to him, hinting at treasure but leaving the details dark. He drew a map which was a facsimile of the one made by Quinn, except that the latitude and longitude were omitted, and one or two details altered.

The result was that two weeks later the three men, together with a crew of five, were beating their way along the coast of Lower California in the notorious Jennie Slack. A bargain had been struck by which the owner of the vessel was to get one-third of the gold, out of which share he was to pay all the expenses of the cruise.

Each of the three leaders of the expedition was pledged to secrecy, but before they had been a week out of the Golden Gate Wallace discovered by accident not only that the crew knew the story, but that they were implicated with the master of the boat in a plot to obtain the whole treasure for themselves.

He told what he had learned to Quinn under cover of an evening smoke on deck. The old pirate took it without winking an eyelash, for he could see Slack and one of his men watching them.

"Six to two. Long odds, boy," he said, knocking the ashes from his pipe.

To keep up appearances Bob Wallace laughed.

"I'm to be got rid of just before we land. It is to be made to look like an accident. You're safe until you have uncovered the treasure. Then it's good-by Cap Nat, too."

Quinn's laugh rang loudly, for the old man could play the game with any of them.

"We can't go back. If we suggested that the row would begin at once. No, we must choose our time instead of letting them choose theirs. And we can't wait too long, because they would see we were taking precautions against being surprised. We'll strike to-night--and hard."

No doubt Cap Nat was right in his strategy, but the scruples of the boy's conscience lost them the advantage of a sudden attack. He would fight to save his life, but he would not take advantage of his enemies.

Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that he could not. Something stuck in his throat at the thought of falling upon men unexpectedly and dealing murder broadcast. Nor could the arguments of the old man shake him.

Dreadfully frightened though he was, the boy stuck doggedly to his position. He would die before he would do such a thing. And indeed he counted himself as no better than dead.

The two shared the same cabin, so that they were able to see each other alone several times during the day. Neither of them went out without being armed with a brace of pistols and a dirk, though these they kept hidden under their rough coats.

During Slack's watch that evening Quinn and his friend made their final preparation for defense. The captain's cabin was larger than theirs, and offered better points of defense. Furthermore, here were kept the arms and the ammunition of the ship. Quinn volunteered to get food and water into it while Wallace held the cabin.

Three trips were made by the old salt to the cook's gallery. The first time he brought back a keg of water, the second time a large tin into which he had crammed a varied assortment of food. It was while he was away on the third journey that a scream rang out in the stillness.

The boy heard a rush of feet, followed by a shot. Bob ran out of the cabin toward the galley. Up the steps from the lower deck came Quinn, blood streaming from his head. In one hand he carried a knife, in the other a copper kettle full of beans still steaming.

"Back, lad, back! Hell's broke loose," the old man cried.

"What happened? Are you badly hurt?"

"I killed cookie. Caught me in the galley and I knifed him," panted the old man.

A bullet whistled past. Wallace turned, caught sight of Slack's head above the hatchway, and fired. The head disappeared. A few moments and they were safe in the cabin.

"You are wounded," Bob cried.

Quinn shrugged.

"A bullet grazed my head. Get ready for them. Never mind me."

He tied a bandanna over the wound while the young man arranged on the bunk cutlases, their spare pistol, and the musket.

Slack was the first of the enemy to appear. He carried with him a white napkin for a flag. Ostensibly he had come to find out the cause of this outbreak, really to learn how well prepared the defenders were.

Cap Nat sent him to the right about briskly. "Get out, traitor! Step lively now, or I'll pepper you!"

From his breast Slack whipped a pistol and fired at the bald head of the old buccaneer. A shot from Wallace rang-out in answer. Slack ran for cover, but at the stairs waved a derisive gesture.

For half an hour everything was quiet. Then came the sound of stealthy whispers and softly padding feet.

Quinn swung his cutlas to test it.

"Stand by for a rush. They're coming," he said.

Almost before he had finished speaking feet pattered swiftly along the deck. The night was suddenly broken with shouts and curses. The stars that had been shining through the window were blotted out with smoke.

The door crashed in and men poured pell-mell through the opening. The details of what followed were always blurred into a medley of carnage in the mind of Wallace. He knew that both he and Quinn fired, and that the cabin filled with smoke.

Fierce arms gripped him. He hacked into the smoke with his knife. Twice bodies thudded to the floor. A cutlas slashed his left arm. He was dragged from the cabin to the open deck and found himself struggling with a red-bearded giant who tossed him about as if he had been a child.

The fellow had a knife in his belt which he was trying to draw. Robert fought to the last ounce of strength in him to prevent this. But the sailor was too strong for him. Inch by inch he went down. The other's knee drove into his chest, his sinewy hand closed on the lad's throat. Wallace saw the knife flash and for the moment lost his senses.

When his eyes opened again the vise at his throat had withdrawn, the knee on his chest was relaxing. The giant was dropping like a log. Above him stood Quinn, a ghastly sight, in his hand a streaming cutlas.

Wallace rose and looked about him. Two men lay huddled in the cabin, a third was staggering away with both hands clapped to his head. The giant made four, the cook five. This left only Captain Slack against them.

"By Heaven, we've beat them," the boy cried.

"Yes, lad, we've beat them," grinned Quinn, leaning heavily against the door. "But it's Nat's last fight. I've got a bellyful--more than I can carry. The old man is bound for Davy Jones's locker."

Slowly he slid to the deck.

Robert carried him into the cabin, bleeding from a dozen wounds. He was badly hacked, and from a gunshot wound in the vitals he was bleeding to death.

His comrade forced liquor between his teeth and offered to examine his wounds. Old Nat waved him aside.

"No use. I'm for hell." He smiled and began to sing in a quavering voice the chorus of the grim old buccaneers' song.

It's bully boys, ho! and a deck splashed red-- The devil is paid, quo' he, quo' he, A knife in the back and a mate swift sped! Heave yo ho! and away with me.

It must have been weird to hear the man, after so wicked and turbulent a life, troll from ashen lips the godless song of the old seadogs with whom he had broken all the commandments.

Only once after this did his mind come back to the present. A few minutes before the end the old pirate's eyes opened. He tried to whisper something, but could not. Feebly his hand tapped at something hard above his heart. Robert took from next the skin a package wrapped in oilcloth. Quinn's eyes lit.

In this was the map of Doubloon Spit.

Imagine now the situation on this ship of death. Three men only were left alive, and one of these so badly wounded that he leaped overboard in madness before morning. Of the remaining two, neither could sleep without the fear of murder in his heart.

Two days wore away, one holding the upper and the other the lower deck. Meanwhile the ship drifted, a derelict on the face of the Pacific.

At length an agreement was patched up. Slack and Wallace sailed the ship together, each with one eye on the other. It is certain that neither slept without locked and bolted doors.

On the fourth day after truce had been declared, land was sighted. While it was the boy's watch and the captain was asleep Wallace managed to lower a boat and paddle to the shore. He had scarcely reached the beach when a tropical storm swept across the waters. At daybreak the Jennie Slack was no longer in sight. Neither schooner nor owner was ever seen again.

Robert Wallace was picked up several days later by a Mexican sheepherder. In time he worked his way back to San Francisco. At the completion of the Union Pacific Railroad he left California for the South.

Here he engaged in business, forsook his vagabond habits, and in course of time married. No doubt it was always in his mind to have another try at the treasure, but time slipped away without his doing so. His happy marriage fettered him. Before he realized it, he was an old man. The most he could do was to leave the secret for his daughter.

The package was found by his executor sealed in a safety deposit box. He left instruction that it was to be opened by his daughter upon her twenty-first birthday.

A week before the events told in the first chapter she had reached her majority. In the presence of Boris Bothwell, whom she had lately met for the first time, the oilcloth package had been opened.

He had agreed to finance the expedition to Doubloon Spit and she had come to San Francisco with her aunt to make the voyage with him. Meanwhile, letters had reached her from Scotland which made clear the true character of Bothwell.

He had attempted twice to get possession of the map. His personal attention displeased her. They had quarreled, finally, on the morning of the episode of the second-story window.

CHAPTER V

WE FIND A SHIP

Partly from the diary of Robert Wallace and partly from the lips of his daughter I gathered the story set down in the two preceding chapters.

If I have given it with some detail, believe me, it is not because I care to linger over the shadow of tragedy that from the first hung about the ill-gathered treasure, but rather that you may understand clearly the issue facing us.

Some men would have turned their back upon the adventure and voted the gold well lost. I wanted to see the thing out to a finish.

I shall never deny that the personality of her who was to be my partner in the enterprise had something to do with the decision to which I came. The low, sweet voice of the Southland, the gay, friendly eyes, the piquant face, all young, all irresistibly eager and buoyant, would have won a less emotional man than Jack Sedgwick.

But why make apologies? After all, every man that lives has his great adventure, whether it come garbed in drab or radiant with the glow of the sunrise. A prosaic, money-grubbing age we call this, but by the gods! romance hammers once in a lifetime at the door of every mother's son of us. There be those too niggardly to let her in, there be those to whom the knock comes faintly; and there be a happy few who fling wide the door and embrace her like a lover.

For me, I am Irish, as I have said. I cried "Aye!" and shook hands on the bargain. We would show Captain Boris Bothwell a thing or two. It would be odds but we would beat him to those chests hidden in the sand.

This was all very well, but one cannot charter and outfit a ship for a long cruise upon day-dreams. The moneyed men that I approached smiled and shook their wise gray heads. To them the whole story was no more than a castle in Spain. For two days I tramped the streets of San Francisco and haunted the offices of capitalists without profit to our enterprise.

On the afternoon of the third I retired, temporarily defeated, to my club, the Golden Gate. On my salary I had no business belonging to so expensive a club, but I had inherited from my college days a taste for good society and I gratified it at the expense of other desires.

In the billiard-room I ran across an acquaintance I had met for the first time on the Valdez trail some years earlier. His name was Samuel Blythe. By birth he was English, by choice cosmopolitan. Possessed of more money than he knew what to do with, he spent a great deal of time exploring unknown corners of the earth. He was as well known at Hong-Kong and Simla as in Paris and Vienna. Within the week he had returned to San Francisco, from an attempt to reach the summit of Mount McKinley.

He was knocking balls about aimlessly.

"Shoot you a game of pool, Sedgwick," he proposed.

Then I had an inspiration.

"I can give you more fun for your money another way. Come into the library, Blythe."

There I told him the whole story. He heard me out without a smile. For that alone I could have thanked him. When I had finished he looked for a minute out of the window with a far-away expression in his eyes.

"It's a queer yarn," he said at last.

"And of course you don't believe a word of it?" I challenged.

"Don't I? Let me tell you this, old man. There are a number of rum things in this old world. I've bucked up against two or three of them. Let me see your map."

I had made another copy of it, with the latitude and longitude omitted. This I handed to him.

While he examined it his eyes shone.

"By Jove, this is a lark. You can have the old tub if you want it."

He was referring to his splendid steam yacht the Argos, in which he had made the trip to Alaska.

"I haven't the price to outfit her and pay your crew," I explained.

"I have. You'll have to let me be your bank. But I say, Sedgwick, you'll need a sailing master. You're not a seaman."

Our eyes met.

"Could Sam Blythe be persuaded to take the place?"

"Could I?" He got up and wrung my hand. "That's what I wanted you to say. Of course I'll go--jump at the chance."

"There's the chance of a nasty row. We're likely to meet Bothwell in that vicinity. If we do, there will be trouble."

"So I gather from your description of the gentleman."

I was delighted. Blythe was not only a good navigator; he was a tried companion, true as steel, an interesting fellow who had passed through strange experiences but never used them to impress upon others a sense of his importance.

He had served through the Boer and the Spanish-American wars with distinction. As I looked at him--a spare tall man with a bronzed face of power, well-shouldered, clear-eyed, and light-footed--I felt he was the one out of ten thousand for my purpose.

"Too bad I didn't know a week ago. I've let my crew go. But we can pick up another. My sailing master Mott is a thoroughly reliable man. He'll look after the details. My opinion is that we ought to get under way as soon as possible. That fellow Bothwell is going to crowd on all sail in his preparations. I take it as a sure thing that he means to have a try for the treasure."

"My notion too. He struck me as a man of resource and determination."

"So much the better. He'll give us a run for our money. My dear fellow, you've saved my life. I was beginning to get bored to extinction. This will be a bully picnic."

"How long will it take you to get the yacht ready?"

"Give me a week to pick a crew and get supplies aboard. I'll offer a bonus to get things pushed."

To see the enthusiasm he put into the adventure did me good after the three days of disappointment I had endured. I was eager to have him and Miss Wallace meet, and I got her at once on the telephone and made arrangements to bring him up after dinner to the private hotel where she and her aunt were stopping.

They took to each other at once. Inside of ten minutes we were all talking about our equipment for the trip.

"If we have a good run and the proper luck we'll be back to you with the treasure inside of a month, Miss Wallace," Blythe promised as he rose to leave.

"Back to me!" She looked first at him and then at me. "You don't think that I'm not going, too, do you?"

It is odd that the point had not come up before, but I had taken it for granted she would wait in 'Frisco for us.

"It's hardly a lady's job, I should say," was my smiling answer.

"Nonsense! Of course I am going." Sharp decision rang in her voice.

"It may be dangerous."

"Fiddlesticks! Panama is a tourist point of travel these days. Half of my schoolgirl chums have been there. It's as safe as--Atlantic City."

"Atlantic City isn't safe if one ventures too far out in the surf," I reminded her.

"I'll stick close to the life line," she promised.

Both Blythe and I were embarrassed. It was of course her right to go if she insisted. I appealed to her aunt, a plump, amiable lady nearer fifty than forty.

"Don't you think, Miss Berry, that it would be better to wait here for us? There would be discomforts to which you are not used."

"That is just what Boris told us," Evelyn put in mischievously.

Miss Berry gave a little shrug of her shoulders.

"Oh, I'd as soon stay here, but Evie will have her way." Her pleasant smile took from the words any sting they might otherwise have held.

"Of course I shall. This is a matter of business," Miss Wallace triumphantly insisted.

Excitement danced in her eyes. She might put it on commercial grounds if she liked, but the truth is that the romance of the quest had taken hold of her even as it had of us. One could not blame her for wanting to go.

I consulted Sam with my eyes.

"I suppose there is no absolute bar to letting the ladies go. There is room enough on the Argos."

"There's plenty of room," he admitted.

After all it was fanciful to suppose that we should run across Bothwell on the face of the broad Pacific. Why shouldn't they have the pleasure of a month's yachting? Certainly their presence would make the voyage a more pleasant one for us.

"All right. Go if you must, but don't blame me if it turns out to be no picnic."

"Thank you, Mr. Sedgwick. That's just what it is going to be--a nice long picnic," the girl beamed.

"Wish I had your beautiful confidence. Have you forgotten Captain Bothwell? Shall we take him along, too?" I asked with a laugh.

"I'm afraid he would want all the cake. No, we'll not ask him to our picnic. He may stay at home."

"Let's hope he will," Miss Berry contributed cheerfully.

I don't think she gave the least weight to our fears of Bothwell. In fact he was rather a favorite of hers.

"If he comes he'll have to take what is left. He understands he's not invited," Miss Wallace nodded gaily.

Blythe was fortunately able to secure his sailing master, Mott, and one of the crew that had sailed with him before, a man named Williams. The Englishman's valet, Morgan, went as steward. For the rest, we had to be content with such men as we could get hurriedly together.

Two brothers named Fleming were secured as engineers, a little cockney as fat as a prize pig for cook. He answered to the cognomen of 'Arry 'Iggins, though on the ship's register the letter H was the first initial of both his names. Caine, the boatswain, was a sinister-looking fellow, but he knew his business. Taken as a whole, the crew appeared to average well enough.

From long practice Blythe was an adept at outfitting a yacht for a cruise. Without going into details I'll only say that we carried very little that was superfluous and lacked nothing that would tend to increase our comfort.

I am no sailor, but it did not take a professional eye to see that the Argos was a jewel of a boat. Of her seagoing qualities I knew nothing except by repute, but her equipment throughout was of the best. She was a three-masted schooner with two funnels, fitted with turbines and Yarrow boilers. To get eighteen knots out of her was easy, and I have seen her do twenty in a brisk wind.

In addition to her main deck the Argos carried a topgallant forecastle and a bridge, the latter extended on stanchions from the main deck to the sides of the ship so as to give plenty of space for games or promenades. The bridge contained a reception and a tea room, which were connected by a carved stairway with the deck below.

The rooms of the commander, the cook, and other servants lay well forward under the bridge. Abaft of these were the kitchen and the pantry, the dining room, the saloon, and the rooms of the owner and his guests.

The conventional phrase "a floating palace" will do well enough to describe the interior of this turbine yacht. No reasonable man could have asked more of luxury than was to be found in the well-designed bath rooms, in the padded library with its shelves of books, its piano and music rack, and in the smoking room arranged to satisfy the demands of the most fastidious.

I had resigned my place with Kester & Wilcox to help push the preparation for our departure, but I was still spending a good deal of my time in the office cleaning up some matters upon which I had been working. Much of the time I was down at the docks, and when I could not be there my thoughts were full of the Argos and her voyage.

Since I was giving my time to the firm without pay I took the liberty of using the boy Jimmie to run errands for me. Journeying back and forth to the wharf with messages and packages, he naturally worked up a feverish interest in our cruise, even though he did not know the object of it. When he came out point-blank one morning with a request to go with us as cabin boy I was not surprised. I sympathized with Master Jimmie's desire, but I very promptly put the lid on his hopes.

"Nothing doing, Mr. James A. Garfield Welch."

"You've gotter have a kid to run errands for youse, Mr. Sedgwick," he pleaded.

"No use talking, Jimmie. You're not going."

"All right," he acquiesced meekly.

Too meekly, it occurred to me later.

CHAPTER VI

THE MISSING CORNER

Blythe and I had agreed that Bothwell would not let us get away without first making an effort to get hold of the original map of Doubloon Spit. He was nobody's fool, and there was no doubt but he had very soon detected the trick his cousin had played upon him.

Since the chart was in a safety-deposit vault we felt pretty sure of ourselves, for he would have to secure it between the time we took it out and our arrival on the Argos, at best a spare half hour in the middle of the day. But since the captain did not know what we had done with the document, it was a good guess that he would have a try at searching for it.

On the evening of the third day before we were due to sail, Blythe and I took Miss Berry and her niece to the opera and afterward to a little supper at a cozy French restaurant just round the corner from the Chronicle Building.

It was well past midnight when we reached the hotel where the ladies had their rooms. Miss Wallace had no sooner flung open the door than she gave an exclamation of amazement.

The room had been fairly turned upside down. Drawers had been emptied, searched, and their contents dumped down in one corner. Rugs had been torn up. Even the upholstery of chairs and the lounge had been ripped. The inner room was in the same condition. A thorough, systematic examination had been made of every square inch of the apartment. It had been carried so far that the linings of gowns had been cut away and the trimming of hats plucked off.

"A burglar!" gasped Miss Berry.

"Let's give him a name. Will Captain Boris Bothwell do?" I asked of Blythe.

The Englishman nodded.

"You've rung the bell at the first shot, Sedgwick."

"Oh, I don't think it," Miss Berry protested. "Captain Bothwell is too much of a gentleman to destroy a lady's things wantonly. Just look at this hat!"

Evelyn laughed at her wail. It happened not to be her hat.

"It's dear Boris, all right. I wonder if he left his card?"

"Shall we call in the police?" her aunt asked.

Miss Wallace questioned me with her eyes.

"Might as well," I assented. "Not that it will make a bit of difference, but it will satisfy the hotel people. Probably it would be as well not to mention our suspicions."

So we had the police in. They talked and took notes and asked questions, and at last went away with the omniscient air peculiar to officers of the law the world over. They had decided it was the work of Nifty Jim, a notorious diamond thief at that time honoring San Francisco with his presence.

Over a cigar in my rooms Blythe and I talked the matter out. Bothwell had made the first move. Soon he would make another, for of course he would search my place at the Graymount. The question was whether to keep the rooms guarded or to let him have a clear field. We decided on the latter.

"How far will the man go? That's the question." My friend looked at his cigar tip speculatively. "Will he have you knocked on the head to see if you are carrying it?"

"He will if he can," I told him promptly. "But I'm taking no chances. I carry a revolver."

"Did you happen to notice that we were followed to-night?"

"That's nothing new. They've been dogging me ever since I got the map. But I play a pretty careful game."

"I would," Blythe agreed gravely. "I say. Let me stay with you here till we get off. Better be sure than sorry."

"Glad to have you, though I don't think it's necessary."

It may have been five minutes later that I suddenly sat bolt upright in my chair. An idea had popped into my head, one so bold that it might have been borrowed from Bothwell's lawless brain.

"I say. Let's play this out with Captain Boris his own way. Let's just remind him we're on earth too."

"Meaning----"

My eyes danced.

"I'm as good a burglar as he is, and so are you."

Blythe waited.

"He doesn't give a tinker's dam for the law," I continued. "Good enough! We'll take a leaf out of his book. To-morrow night you have an engagement--to ransack the captain's rooms."

"What for?"

"To get that corner of a map he stole from his cousin. Part of the directions for finding the treasure are on it."

"But Miss Wallace has another copy."

"An inaccurate one. Her father changed the directions on purpose in case some one found it."

Blythe smoked for a minute without answering.

"You're a devilish cool hand, Sedgwick. I'm a law-abiding citizen myself."

"And so am I--when the other fellow will let me. But if a chap hits me on the head with a bit of scantling I'll not stop to look for a policeman."

"Just so. I was about to say that since I'm a law-abiding citizen it's my duty to take from Bothwell the goods he has stolen. I'm with you to search his rooms for that paper."

Underneath his British phlegm I could see that he was as keen on the thing as Jack Sedgwick. Looking back on it from this distance, it seems odd that two reputable citizens should have adventured into housebreaking so gaily as we did.

But Bothwell had brought it on himself, and both of us were eager to show him he had some one more formidable than a young woman to deal with. Moreover, there is something about the very name of buried treasure that knocks the pins of respectability from under a man.

Up to date I had led the normal life of a super-civilized city dweller, but within a fortnight I was to shoot a man down and count it just part of the day's work. None of us knows how strong the savage is in us until we are brought up against life in the raw.

My trailers followed me about next day as usual, but I chuckled whenever I saw them. For we were doing a little sleuthing ourselves. I borrowed Jimmie from the firm and the little gamin kept tab on Bothwell.

The captain did not leave his room until nearly midday, but as soon as he had turned the corner next to his hotel, the Argonaut, on the way to his breakfast-lunch, Jimmie dodged in at the side entrance, slipped up the stairs and along a corridor, up a second and a third flight by the back way, down another passage, and stopped at a room numbered 417.

With him he had a great bunch of keys similar to those used in that hotel. One after another he tried these, stopping whenever he heard approaching footsteps to hide the keys under his coat. Several persons passed, but found nothing unusual in the sight of a boy knocking innocently on a door.

At last Jimmie found a key which turned in the socket. That was all he wanted. Relocking the door he went down the stairs to the street, his fingers tightly clenched around the key that fitted. Nor did he take the little closed fist out of his coat pocket until he and I were alone together in my office, from whence he departed two dollars richer than he had entered.

Jimmie having been retired from duty, Blythe took his place in watching Bothwell. He engaged a room on the fourth floor of the Argonaut, from which he was able to observe the coming and going of the enemy.

My work at the office finished, I took a car for the Graymount, followed as usual by one of the detectives that for days had dogged me. My attendant on this occasion was a shrimp of a man with a very wrinkled face and a shock of red hair. Some imp of deviltry in me moved me to change my seat for one beside his.

"A pleasant day," I suggested to open the conversation.

He agreed that it was.

"I suppose your kind of work is always more cheerful in good weather," I went on.

"My kind of work!" Plainly he was disconcerted at my remark.

"Yes. Must be devilish unpleasant shadowing a man in cold weather. Don't you have to wait outside houses sometimes for hours at a stretch?"

The palm of his hand rasped a stubbly chin as he looked askance at me.

"Why--er--I don't know what you mean."

"Don't you?" I laughed in his face. "Come now, let's put aside the little fiction that I'm not wise to your game. I'm not at all annoyed at the attentions you pay me. It's entirely a matter of business with you. I suppose I'm good for about five dollars a day to you. Faith, that's more than I've ever been able to earn for myself. Sorry I'm leaving these parts soon--on your account."

He did not at all know how to take me, but he earnestly assured me that I was quite mistaken. He was a carpenter by trade.

"Why not make it as easy for you as we can?" I chuckled. "Come in to the Graymount and have dinner with me. Our cafe isn't what it should be, but it will pass at a pinch. What do you say?"

He said that I was making game of him.

"Not at all," I assured him. "I'm merely trying to lighten the load of honest labor. Well, if you won't, you won't. After dinner I'm going to my rooms to smoke a cigar. About nine--or somewhere near that time--I'll be going out for an hour. Are your instructions to follow me?"

"You're all wrong about me, sir. I don't know any more than a rabbit what you are talking about."

"I was only going to say that if you care to go I'll try to arrange for another place at our little party."

He was, I judged, glad to get rid of me at my corner. It had been his instruction to leave the car there too, no doubt, but my discovery of him drove the little man one block farther. I waited till he got off and waved a hand at him before I walked to the Graymount. For me it had been a very entertaining little adventure, but I am inclined to think he found it embarrassing.

The program of my movements which I had given him was accurate enough. Dinner finished. I went to my room for a cigar, after which I called up a taxi.

I selected an ulster with a deep collar, and in the right hand pocket I dropped a revolver, but not before I had carefully examined the weapon.

As I stepped into the taxi the vest-pocket edition of Nick Carter with whom I had ridden up from the city a few hours earlier darted out from the alley where he had been lurking. Again I waved a hand derisively toward him. The chauffeur threw in the clutch and we moved swiftly down the hill. The little sleuth wheeled off in the direction of the nearest drug store.

"He's going to call up Bothwell to tell him I've gone," was my guess.

For perhaps a quarter of an hour I had the chauffeur drive me about the city, now fast, now slow, crossing and recrossing our track half a dozen times. When I was finally convinced that no other car was following mine I paid the driver and dismissed him.

Catching the nearest street car I rode down to Market Street. It was a cool night, so that I was justified in turning up my coat collar in such a way as to conceal partially my face.

Inconspicuously I stepped into the Argonaut and up the stairs to Blythe's room.

Sam met me at the door and nodded in the direction of No. 417.

"He went out half an hour ago."

"I'll bet he got a telephone message from little Nick Carter first," I grinned.

Three minutes later we were in Bothwell's room. Since it was probable that he was making himself at home in mine it seemed only fair that we should do as much in his.

We did. If there was a nook or corner within those four walls we did not examine I do not know where it could have been. Every drawer was opened and searched for secret places. Bedposts, legs of chairs and tables, all the woodwork, had to undergo a microscopic scrutiny. The walls were sounded for cavities. We probed the cushions with long fine needles and tore the spreads from the beds. The carpet and the floor underneath were gone over thoroughly. Blythe even took the frame of the mirror to pieces to make sure that the shred of paper we wanted did not lie between the glass and the boards behind.

At last I found our precious document. It was in the waste-paper basket among some old bills, a torn letter, some half smoked cigarettes, and a twisted copy of that afternoon's Call. Bothwell had thrust it down among this junk because he shrewdly guessed a waste-paper basket the last place one would likely look for a valuable chart.

To deprive him of it seemed a pity, so we merely made a copy of what we wanted and left him the original buried again in the junk where he had hidden it.

My watch showed that it was now between one and two o'clock. Since Bothwell might now be back at any time we retired to Blythe's room and learned by heart the torn fragment of directions.

This did not take us long for there was nothing on the faded corner but these letters and words:

wh 12 Take Forked till Tong of west to Big Rock

In the milkman hours we slipped from the hotel and took a car for the Graymount. My rooms were a sight. Some one--and I could put a name to him--had devastated them as a cyclone does a town in the middle West. The wreckage lay everywhere, tossed hither and thither as the searchers had flung away the articles after an examination. Blythe laughed.

"The middle name of our friend Bothwell must be thorough. He hasn't overlooked anything, by Jove."

"Oh, well, it's our inning anyhow," I grinned. "He didn't get what he wanted, and we know it. We did get what we wanted, and he doesn't know it." The Englishman flung himself down into a Morris chair and reached for my cigarettes.

"On the whole I rather fancy our new profession, Jack. I wonder if Captain Bothwell will send our photographs to the chief of police for his rogues' gallery."

CHAPTER VII

IN THE FOG

The day before we sailed I spent an hour aboard the Argos arranging my things in my cabin. While returning in one of the yacht's boats I caught sight through the fog of two figures standing on the wharf.

I had a momentary impression that one of these was our chief engineer, George Fleming, but when I scrambled ashore only one of the two was in sight. The one I had taken to be our engineer had sheered off into the fog.

The outline of the other bulked large in the heavy mist, partly because of the big overcoat, no doubt. I had a feeling that I ought to know the man, but it was not until he stepped forward to me that I recognized him.

"A pleasant evening if one doesn't object to fog, Mr. Sedgwick," he said, lifting his hat and bowing.

"It's you, is it?" I answered, coolly enough.

"Thought I'd drop down and see how you are getting along. The Argos looks like a good sailor. I congratulate you."

"Thanks."

"You sail to-morrow, I understand."

"Since you know already I'll save myself the trouble of telling you."

"Sharp work, Mr. Sedgwick. I needed only one good look at you to know you were a first-class man for this sort of thing."

"I am delighted that my work pleases Captain Bothwell."

He passed my irony with a laugh.

"Oh, I didn't say it pleased me. I'm after the treasure myself, and I'm going to get it. But I'm not a fool. I can appreciate even an enemy when I find him on the job."

"And of course your appreciation won't keep you from sticking a knife in him if you find it necessary."

"Of course not. I said I wasn't a fool," he admitted easily.

We were standing on the edge of the wharf, shut out from the world by a fog bank that left us to all intents alone. It was an uncanny place to meet one's dearest enemy. Faintly I could still hear the splashing of the oars as the boat that had brought me ashore moved back to the Argos. Otherwise no sound but the lapping of the waves at the piles broke the silence.

Our eyes met straight as a plummet falls. Each of us had his right hand in his overcoat pocket. I can't swear to what was in his fingers, but I felt a good deal safer for what was in mine. My back was still toward the bay, for I had a vision of the man who had disappeared--whoever he might be--slipping up through the white fog and sticking a knife between my shoulder-blades.

The captain gave me his friendliest smile.

"But you needn't be afraid. What would it profit me to get rid of you here? I don't suppose you have the map with you?"

At the last words his black eyes stabbed at me a question.

I shook my head.

"No, it wouldn't be worth while murdering me now to get the map. I'm not a fool either, captain. It isn't on me."

"So I judged. Then you may make your mind easy--for the present."

"I'm not so sure about that. Wouldn't it pay you to put me out of the road, anyhow? You'll not get the treasure so long as I'm alive, you know."

"There you touch my vanity, Mr. Sedgwick. I'm of a contrary opinion. Dead or alive you can't keep me from it."

"Have you never noticed, captain, that in this world a man's opportunities do not always match his inclinations?"

"I've noticed that a man gets what he wants if he is strong enough to take it."

"So far as I know you have made four attempts to get the map. Have you got it?"

"Not yet. Plenty of time though. When I need it I'll get it."

My skeptical laugh must have annoyed him.

"Then you'd better get busy if it's true that we sail to-morrow."

"Hope you'll have a pleasant trip."

"Thanks. Sorry we can't ask you, captain. But there really isn't room and our party is full. No doubt you'll be starting on a little jaunt of your own soon?"

"Yes, to-morrow, too, as it happens. Perhaps we may meet again. It's a small world after all, Mr. Sedgwick."

"We'll look out for you."

"Do. And go prepared for squalls. One never knows what may happen. The Pacific is treacherous. Likely enough you'll meet dirty weather."

"I'm thinking you're right. But the yacht is good for it."

"And the yacht's passengers?" he asked with angled brows.

"We're all good sailors."

"But isn't there a good deal of yellow fever in Panama?"

"Not now. There used to be."

"Haven't I heard of pirates in the Isthmus country?" he asked, smiling with superb impudence.

"That's in the past too, captain; but if we meet any, the vermin will be glad to sheer off. I'll promise you that."

The villain drew a breath of mock relief.

"That makes my mind easier, Mr. Sedgwick. I'll confess I've been a little troubled for you."

"Thanks for your kind thoughts, but I'm confident we can look out for ourselves."

Our words had been light enough, but be sure there was no laughter in the eyes that fastened each pair to the other. For me, I never was more vigilant in my life--and Bothwell knew it.

"Going up-town, captain? If not I'll say good evening."

He nodded genially.

"Pleasant voyage. And do be careful of the squalls and the fever and the pirates. Do you know I can't help thinking you had better leave Evie at home for me to take care of."

"But you're leaving, too, I understood you to say. No, we'll take good care of her. I give you my word on that."

I had been edging round him with the intention of backing away. He held out his hand, but--well, my fingers were otherwise engaged. They still caressed a knobby bit of metal in my overcoat pocket.

At the last moment, so it appeared, he yielded to an impulse.

"Must we really be in opposite camps, Mr. Sedgwick? Come! Let's arrange a compromise. Neither of us alone has enough to go on. You need me and my scrap of map. I need you and your bit of chart. We'll consolidate forces and go to Panama together."

"Afraid you're a little late, captain. You play your hand and we'll play ours."

I had been increasing the distance between us. Now I turned sharply on my heel and walked away almost at a run, for I did not like the idea of taking with me a bullet in the small of my back.

At the end of the wharf a figure brushed past me. Night had begun to fall, and in the gray dusk I could not make sure, but again I was oddly struck by its resemblance to our engineer, Fleming. I slued around my head to look a second time, but the fog had already swallowed him. Strange, I thought, that he had not recognized me; but perhaps, if the man was Fleming, he had found me too indistinct to know.

At any rate it was a matter of no great importance. I pushed past the warehouse to take an up-town car.

CHAPTER VIII

ABOARD THE ARGOS

Blythe and I had agreed that an attempt would be made to relieve us of the map while we were carrying it from the safety-deposit vault to the ship. So far as we could see it was Bothwell's last chance to gain possession of the coveted chart, and he was not the man to leave a stone unturned.

At half past three we drove in the car of a friend to the International Safe Deposit Company's place of business. He waited outside while we went in to reclaim the document.

Five minutes later we reappeared, the paper in the inside pocket of my tightly buttoned coat. My eyes explored to right and left.

The thunder of trolley cars, the rumble of wholesale wagons, the buzz of automobiles, all made their contribution to the roar of the busy cañon up and down which men and women passed by hundreds. That Bothwell would make an attempt at a hold-up here seemed inconceivable. But if not here, then--where? He had to have the map or give up the fight.

Blythe followed me into the tonneau and our car swept out into the stream of traffic. Less than a quarter of an hour later we stepped down from the machine, shook hands with our friend, and took the boat which was waiting for us at the wharf. Even now we were alert, ready for any emergency that might occur.

Nothing happened, except our safe arrival at the Argos. Miss Wallace and her aunt were on deck to welcome us. Sam and I exchanged rather sheepish glances. Nobody likes to be caught making a mountain out of a mole hill, and that was apparently what we had done. Our elaborate preparations to defend the map during the past half hour had been unnecessary.

"Tide right, Mr. Mott?" Blythe asked.

"All right, sir."

"Then we'll start at once."

I retired to my cabin, disposed of a certain document, and presently returned to the deck. The engines were throbbing and the Argos was beginning to creep.

"We're off," I said to Miss Wallace, who was standing by my side on the bridge deck leaning upon the rail.

"Yes, we're off. Luck with us," she cried softly with shining eyes.

I looked at her and smiled. The excitement that burned in her I could understand, since I too shared it. We were answering the call of the sea and its romance was tingling in our blood. Into what wild waters we were to be whirled none of us had the slightest guess. It was fortunate that the future was screened by a veil behind which we could not peep.

The quiver of the engines grew stronger. The Argos was walking smartly out into the bay, her funnels belching black smoke. A stiff wind was blowing and the vessel leaped as she took the waves. Behind us in the falling dusk the lights of the city began to come out like stars.

"I wonder when we'll see her again," my companion said softly, her gaze on the hill of twinkling lights.

Like a Winged Victory her fine, lithe figure was outlined by the wind, which had flung back the white skirt against the slender limbs, showing the flowing lines as she moved. In her jaunty yachting cap, the heavy chestnut hair escaping in blowing tendrils, a warmer color whipped into her soft cheeks by the breeze, there was a sparkle to her gayety, a champagne tang to her animation. One guessed her an Ionian goddess of the sea reincarnated in the flesh of a delightful American girl.

It was this impression on me that gave the impetus to my answer.

"Not too soon, I hope."

Miss Berry joined us. I tucked her arm under mine and the three of us tramped the promenade deck. Mott went down to his dinner and Blythe took the wheel. My friend was an experienced sailor, and he had that dash of daring which somehow never results in disaster. We could see the men scurrying to and fro at his orders. The white sails began to belly out with the whistling wind.

Blythe roared an order down the speaking tube and swung round the spokes of the wheel. Straight toward the Golden Gate we sprang, bowling along with increasing speed. Past Tamalpais we scudded and through the narrows, out to the fresh Pacific like a bloodhound taking the scent.

"By the way she's going the Argos smells treasure at our journey's end," I laughed.

"Oh, I like this! Isn't it glorious?" the girl murmured.

"You come of sailor blood," I reminded her. "Many a girl would be in the hands of the ship's doctor already."

"Didn't know we had a doctor on board."

"Morgan will have to serve in lieu of one. But there goes the dinner gong. We must go and get ready."

"I suppose so," she sighed regretfully. "But it's a pity to miss a moment of this. Do you see that glow on the water? Is that why it's called the Golden Gate?"

"I fancy the argonauts called it that because it was the passage through which they passed on their way to the gold fields. And for the same reason we can give it that name too."

We moved to the stairway, which was in the pavilion, and descended to our rooms on the main deck.

As soon as I had entered mine I switched on the light and threw off my coat. Collar and tie followed the coat into the berth. I passed into the bath room and washed. At the moment I flung the towel back on the rack a sound came to me from my bedroom. I turned quickly, to see a diminutive figure roll from the back of the bed and untangle itself from my coat.

"Please, I'm awful sick, Mr. Sedgwick," a voice lugubriously groaned.

I stood staring at the little yellow face. The forlorn urchin was our office boy, Jimmie Welch.

"You young cub, what are you doing here?" I demanded.

"I'm a stowaway," he groaned. "Like Hall Hiccup, the Boy Pirate, you know. But, by crickey, I wouldn't a come if I'd a known it would be like this."

"Didn't I tell you that you couldn't come? How did you get here?"

"Golly, I'm sick! I'm going to die."

"Serves you right, you young rascal."

I didn't blow him up any more just then. Instead I hurriedly offered first aid to the seasick. He felt a little better after that.

"I told Mr. Mott you had sent me on an errand. He thought I'd gone ashore again, mebbe."

"That's where you'll go as soon as we reach San Pedro."

"Yes, sir. Hope so." He groaned woefully. "Thought you'd need a cabin boy, sir, but I'll never do it again, s'elp me."

"I'm going to give you a licking as soon as you get well. Don't forget that. Now I have to leave you. I'll be back after a while. Go to sleep if you can."

By reason of Jimmie I reached the dinner table as the soup was being removed. Only four of us messed in the cabin. Mott, the engineers, and Morgan had a separate table of their own aft.

"Late already, my boy. This won't do. Ship's discipline, you know. Make a report and clear yourself," Blythe called out as I entered.

"My patient seems a bit better," I announced, sitting down opposite Miss Wallace.

"Your patient?" that young woman repeated.

"Yes, I find I have a guest to share my cabin with me, and he has begun by yielding to an attack of mal-de-mer."

"Is this a conundrum? I'm not good at them." This from Miss Berry.

"No, it's a stowaway. The conundrum is to know what to do with the little rascal."

"Meaning who?"

"James A. Garfield Welch. I found him tucked away in my berth, very much the worse for wear."

The Englishman helped himself to asparagus tips and laughed.

"He's certainly a persevering young beggar. He hung around me for three days trying to persuade me to take him. Now he's here on French leave."

"He'll have to make himself useful, now he's here. The little idiot imagines himself a sort of boy pirate, so he explained to me. I'm going to try to introduce a little sense into his system by means of a strap applied to the cuticle."

"Oh, I wouldn't," Evelyn begged quickly. "Poor fellow! I daresay he wanted to come as badly as we did."

"He happens to have a mother," I added dryly. "She's no doubt worrying her life out about the young pirate. I really think we owe him a licking on her account."

"Poor woman! She must be feeling dreadfully. Isn't there any way of letting her know that he is safe?" Miss Berry asked.

"We'll have to call in at San Pedro, though that means the loss of a day. We can send the youngster home from Los Angeles," Blythe suggested.

"If his mother is willing, Jimmie might go on with us. He would be useful to run errands," Evelyn proposed.

"Jimmie has a staunch friend in you, Miss Wallace. We'll think it over. There's plenty of time before we reach Los Angeles," our captain answered. "He can take the upper berth in the cook's cabin. Have him moved after dinner, Morgan."

We lingered after dinner till the second dog watch was over, when Blythe excused himself to go on deck. I soon followed him, for though I am no sailor I was rated as second officer on the Argos, Mott being the first.

I had not yet had a good view of the crew and I looked them over carefully as Blythe divided them in watches. They appeared a lively enough lot, though it struck me that one or two showed sullen faces.

Caine, the boatswain, was a villainous looking fellow, due in part to the squint of his eyes that set them at different angles. But he turned out a thoroughly capable man with a knack of getting out of the men all that was in them.

Under Mott's supervision I took a turn at the wheel, for I did not intend, if I could help it, to be deadwood throughout the whole cruise. I could see Miss Wallace pacing the deck with Blythe for hours, his cigar tip glowing in the darkness as they advanced toward the wheel house. I would have liked to join them, but I had set out to make of myself enough of a sailor to serve at a pinch, and I stuck to my task. It was late when I reached my cabin. I must have fallen asleep at once, for it was day again before I knew anything more.

We met at breakfast, the four of us, and not one but was touched by the loveliness of which we were the center. It was not a new story to Blythe--this blue arched roof of sky, this broad stretch of sea, this warm sun on a day cool enough to invigorate the blood--but he too showed a lively pleasure in it.

Miss Berry took some fancy work and a magazine with her on deck and spent the morning placidly in a steamer chair, but her niece and I were too full of our pleasure to rest so contentedly.

To any who have sailed on the glassy breast of the Pacific day after day, knowing all the little pleasures of life aboard a well-found turbine yacht, a description would be superfluous; to one who has never known it, such an attempt would be entirely futile. By either alternative I am debarred from trying to set down the delight of our days, the glory of our nights of stars.

CHAPTER IX

BOTHWELL MAKES A MOVE

We put into San Pedro in the early morning and tied up opposite the Harvard. Blythe and I ran up to Los Angeles on the electric, taking Jimmie Welch with us.

No matter how well one may be equipped for an expedition, every port touched finds needs to be satisfied. After I had wired Mrs. Welch that her hopeful was safe and would be returned to her or retained as ship's boy at her desire, I spent the morning executing commissions for the ladies and attending to little matters that needed looking after.

We made an appointment to lunch at one of Los Angeles' numberless cafeterias. I went out of my way to the telegraph office to get the answer from Mrs. Welch, for which reason I was a few minutes late to luncheon.

A stranger to me was sitting opposite Blythe. My friend introduced him as Mr. Yeager, known all over Arizona as Tom Yeager. It appeared that he had come to the coast with a couple of carloads of steers, having disposed of which, time was hanging heavy on his hands.

Anybody who has lived in the cattle country knows the Yeager type. He was a brown, lithe man, all sinew, bone and muscle. His manner was easy and indifferent, but out of his hard face cool, quiet eyes judged men and situations competently.

Over many straight and crooked trails his thirty-five years had brought him without shame. No doubt he had often skirted the edge of law, but even when he had been a scamp his footsteps had followed ways justified by his code.

I gathered from their talk that Blythe and he had served together in the Rough Riders during the Spanish War. They were exchanging reminiscences and Jimmie Welch was listening open-mouthed to their conversation.

"Say, ain't he a peacherino, Mr. Sedgwick," whispered my young hopeful. "Get onto those muscles of his. I'll bet he's got a kick like a mule in either mitt. Say, him and Teddy Roosevelt must 'a' made the dagoes sick down in Cuba."

More jokes and stories of camp life passed back and forth.

"Do you reckon he ever killed a Spaniard?" Jimmie murmured to me.

"Better ask him," I suggested.

But at thought of this audacity to his hero the young pirate collapsed. I put the question for him.

The cowman grinned.

"Only one, Jimmie. And he ain't all mine. Me and a fellow called the Honorable Samuel Blythe was out scouting one day while we were pushing through the tangle of brush toward Santiago. I reckon we got too anxious. Anyhow, we bumped into an ambush and it was a swift hike for us back to the lines. The bullets were fair raining through the leaves above us. Recollect, Sam?"

Blythe nodded.

"Rather. Whenever I think of it pins and needles run down my back."

"Well, we cut a blue streak for camp, those fellows after us on the jump. I used to think I was some runner, but the Honorable Samuel set me right that day. He led good and strong, me burning the wind behind and 'steen Spaniards spread out in the rear. A fat little cuss was leading them, and the way he plowed through that underbrush was a caution. You want to remember, Jimmie, that the thermometer was about a hundred and fifty in the shade. I went till I was fit to drop, then looked round and saw Don Fatty right close. I hadn't invited him to my party, so I cracked away at him with my gun."

"And you killed him," Jimmie breathed, his eyes popping out.

"Killed nothing," answered the Arizonian in disgust. "I missed him a mile, but he was so plumb discouraged with the heat and with running his laigs off that he up and laid down and handed in his checks. He's the only Spaniard I've got to my credit and Mr. Blythe here always claimed half of him because he ran faster."

"You're kidding me," announced Jimmie promptly.

"Well, I've always had a kind a suspicion myself that mebbe he had just fainted. But I like to figure it out that I destroyed one of my country's enemies that day, with a leetle help from my friend here."

While Yeager was joyously fabricating this yarn Blythe had been writing on the back of an envelope. This he now shoved quietly across to me.

He's as well-plucked as they make them, Jack--and straight as a string. Want to make him a proposition to join us?

Those were the lines he had penciled on the envelope. Beneath them I wrote two words: "Suits me."

Jimmie's mother had consented to let him go on with us. Now I took him away to get some necessary wearing apparel, leaving Blythe to make a proposition to Yeager.

"Your mother says I'm in full charge of you. That means I'm to lick you whenever you need it," I told Jimmie, for I had already discovered that my young sleuth needed considerable repressing from time to time.

"Yes, sir. I'll do whatever you say," agreed Young America, who was long since over his seasickness and was again eager for the voyage.

The Englishman nodded when I saw him an hour later.

"Tom's in with us."

"He understands this ain't a pleasure excursion, doesn't he?" I asked.

"Folks take their pleasure different, Mr. Sedgwick," drawled the cowman. "I shouldn't wonder but I might enjoy this little cruise even if it gets lively."

"My opinion is that it may get as lively as one of your own broncos," I explained.

"I'll certainly hope for the worst," he commented.

I turned Jimmie over to my friends and spent the afternoon with a college classmate who was doing newspaper work on the Herald. In looking up a third man who also had belonged to our fraternity, time slipped away faster than we had noticed. It was getting along toward sunset when I separated from my friends to take the interurban for San Pedro at the big electric station. Before my car reached the port, dusk was falling.

Whistling as I went, I walked briskly down the hill toward the wharf. As I passed an alley my name was called. I stopped in my stride and turned. Then a jagged bolt of fire seared my brain. My knees sagged. I groped in the darkness, staggering as I moved. About that time I must have lost consciousness.

When I came to myself I was lying in the alley and a man was going through my clothes. A second man directed him from behind a revolver leveled at my head. Both of them were masked.

"I tell you it ain't on him," the first man was saying.

"We want to make dead sure of that, mate," the other answered.

"If he's got it the damned thing is sewed beneath his skin," retorted the first speaker.

"He's coming to. We'll take his papers and his pocketbook and set sail," the leader decided.

I could hear their retreating footsteps echo down the alley and was quite sensible of the situation without being able to rise, or even cry out. For five minutes perhaps I lay there before I was sufficiently master of myself to get up. This I did very uncertainly, a little at a time, for my head was still spinning like a top. Putting my hand to the back of it I was surprised to discover that my palm was red with blood.

As I staggered down to the wharf I dare say the few people who met me concluded I was a drunken sailor. The Argos was lying at the opposite side of the slip, but two of our men were waiting for me with a boat. One of them was the boatswain Caine, the other a deckhand by the name of Johnson.

"Split me, but Mr. Sedgwick has been hurt. What is it, sir? Did you fall?" the boatswain asked.

"Waylaid and knocked in the head," I answered, sinking down into the stern on account of a sudden attack of dizziness.

Caine was tying up my head with a handkerchief when the mists cleared again from my brain.

"All right, sir. A nasty crack, but you'll be better soon. I've sent Johnson up to have a lookout for the guys that done it," the boatswain told me cheerily.

"No use. They've gone to cover long since. Call him back and let's get across to the ship."

"Yes, sir. That will be better."

He called, and presently Johnson came back.

"Seen anything of the scoundrels, Johnson?" demanded Caine.

"Not a thing."

I had been readjusting the handkerchief, but I happened to look up unexpectedly. My glance caught a flash of meaning that passed between the two. It seemed to hint at a triumphant mockery of my plight.

"Caine is a deep-sea brute, mean-hearted enough to be pleased at what has happened," I thought peevishly. Later I learned how wide of the mark my interpretation of that look had been.

A chorus of welcome greeted me as I passed up the gangway to the deck of the Argos. One voice came clear to me from the rest. It had in it the sweet drawl of the South.

"You're late again, Mr. Sedgwick. And--what's the matter with your head?"

"Nothing worth mentioning, Miss Wallace. Captain Bothwell has been trying to find what is inside of it. I think he found sawdust."

"You mean----"

"Knocked in the head as I came down to the wharf. Serves me right for being asleep at the switch. Think I'll run down to my room and wash the blood off."

Yeager offered to examine the wound. He had had some experience in broken heads among the boys at his ranch, he said.

"Perhaps I could dress the hurt. I had a year's training as a nurse," suggested Miss Wallace, a little shyly.

"Mr. Yeager is out of a job," I announced promptly.

The girl blushed faintly.

"We'll work together, Mr. Yeager."

She made so deft a surgeon that I was sorry when her cool, firm fingers had finished with the bandages. Nevertheless, I had a nasty headache and was glad to get to bed after drinking a cup of tea and eating a slice of toast.

CHAPTER X

ANOTHER STOWAWAY

Southward ho! Before the trade winds we scudded day after day, past Catalina Island and San Diego, past Santa Margarita lying like a fog bank on the offing, out into the warm sunshine of the tropical Pacific.

We promised ourselves that after the treasure had been lifted and we were headed again for the Golden Gate, our sails should have a chance to show what they could do alone, but now Blythe was using all his power to drive the Argos forward.

What plans Bothwell might have we did not know, but we were taking no chances of reaching Doubloon Spit too late. If we succeeded in getting what we had come after there would be plenty of time to dawdle.

No days in my life stand out as full of enjoyment as those first ones off the coast of Lower California and Mexico. Under a perfect sky we sailed serenely. Our fears of Bothwell had vanished. We had shaken him off and held the winning hand in the game we had played with him. The tang of the sea spume, of the salt-laden spray was on our lips; the songs of youth were in our hearts.

Every hour that I was not on duty, except those given to necessary sleep, I spent in the company of Evelyn Wallace. Usually her aunt was also present, and either Blythe or Yeager. That did not matter in the least, so long as my golden-brown beauty was near, so long as I could watch the dimples flash in her cheeks and the little nose crinkle to sudden mirth, or could wait for the sweep of the long lashes that would bring round to mine the lovely eyes, tender and merry and mocking by turns.

Faith, I'll make a clean breast of it. I was already fathoms deep in love, and my lady did not in the least particularly seem to favor me. There were moments when hope was strong in me. I magnified a look, a word, the eager life in her, to the significance my heart desired, but reason told me that she gave the same friendly comradeship to Blythe and Yeager.

It is possible that the absorption in this new interest dulled my perception of external matters. So at least Sam hinted to me one night after the ladies had retired. Mott was at the wheel, a game of solitaire in the smoking room claimed Yeager. Blythe and I were tramping the deck while we smoked.

"Notice anything peculiar about the men to-day and yesterday, Jack?" he asked in a low voice.

We were for the moment leaning against the rail, our eyes on the phosphorescent light that gleamed on the waves.

"No-o. Can't say that I have. Why?"

He smiled.

"Thought perhaps you hadn't. When man's engaged----"

"What!" I interrupted.

"---- engaged in teaching a pretty girl how to steer, he doesn't notice little things he otherwise might."

"Such as----" I suggested.

He looked around to make sure we were alone.

"There's something in the wind. I don't know what it is."

"Something to do with the crew?"

"Yes. They know something about the reason why we're making this trip. You haven't talked, of course?"

"No."

"Nor Miss Wallace? Perhaps her aunt----"

"It doesn't seem likely. Whom would she talk to?"

"Some of the men may have overheard a sentence or two. The point is that they are talking treasure in the f'c'sle. Morgan got it from Higgins."

"From the cook?"

"Yes. Afterward the man was sorry he had spoken. He's the type that can't keep a secret. Some of it is bound to leak out in his talk."

"Couldn't Morgan find out where Higgins learned what he knows?"

"No. I had him try. The man was frightened about what he had already said. He wouldn't say another word. That doesn't look well."

After a moment of reflection I spoke.

"Perhaps Bothwell may have told some of the men before we started. I saw him talking to a man that looked like our chief engineer."

"When was that?"

I told in detail about my meeting with Bothwell on the wharf. Of course I had mentioned the occurrence at the time, but without referring to Fleming.

"Yes, he may have told Fleming about it, but----"

The uncompleted sentence suggested his doubt.

"You think he isn't the man to give away anything without a good reason?"

"You've said it."

"Of course it's really no business of the crew what we are going after."

"True enough, but we agreed among ourselves to tell them at the last moment and in such a way as to enlist them as partners with us. Unless I guess wrong, their feeling is sullenness. They think we're after booty in which they have no share."

"They'll feel all the kinder to us when we let them know that a percentage of our profits is to go to the crew."

"Will they? I wonder."

He was plainly disturbed, more so than I could find any justification for in the meager facts and surmises he had just confided to me.

"What is troubling you? What are you afraid of?"

"I can't put a name to my feeling, but I jolly well wish they didn't know. Seamen are a rough lot and they get queer ideas."

"You don't imagine for an instant that they'll maroon us and hoist the Jolly Roger, do you?" I asked with a laugh.

He did not echo my laugh.

"No, but I don't like it. I thought we had the game in our own hands, and now I find the crew has notions, too."

"Don't you think you're rather overemphasizing the matter, Sam?"

"Perhaps I am." He appeared to shake off his doubts. "In fact, I'm pretty sure I am. But I thought it best to mention the thing to you."

"Glad you did. We'll keep an eye open and, if there's any trouble, nip it in the bud."

This was easy enough to say, but the event proved far otherwise. Within twenty-four hours we were to learn that serious trouble was afoot.

It was midday of a Saturday, and the sky was clear and cloudless as those which had gone before. During the forenoon we had been doing a steady fifteen knots, but there had been some slight trouble with the engines and we were now making way with the sails alone while the engineers overhauled the machinery.

Yeager and I were standing near the cook's scuppers fishing for shark with fat pork for bait. More than once I had caught the flash of a white-bellied monster, but Mr. Shark was wary about taking chances.

Dugan, our carpenter, stopped as he was passing, apparently to watch us. Glancing at him I noticed something in his face that held my eyes.

"There's trouble afoot, Mr. Sedgwick," he broke out in a low, jerky voice. "For God's sake, make a chance for me to talk to you or Captain Blythe!"

The cook came out of his galley at that moment. My wooden face told no tales.

"No chance. The beggar's too shy. I've had enough. How about you, Yeager?"

"Me to," the Arizonian laughed easily, and he hauled up the line.

I strolled forward to the pilot house, stopping to chat for an instant with Miss Berry, who lay in a steamer chair under the awning. For I had no intention of letting the men suspect that Dugan had told me anything of importance.

Blythe was at the wheel. I told him what Dugan had said. Our captain did not turn a hair.

"There's a shingle loose on the edge of the roof. Call Dugan to nail it tight."

The carpenter brought a hammer and nails. Tom Yeager meanwhile was sitting on a coil of rope talking to Caine. His laughter rippled up to us care-free as that of a schoolboy. He never even glanced our way, but I knew he would be ready when we needed him.

The captain turned the wheel over to me and stepped outside of the wheelhouse. Three or four of the men were lounging about the deck. So far as they could see, Blythe was directing the carpenter about the work and the latter was explaining how it could be best done.

"Keep cool, my man. Don't let them guess what you are saying," the Englishman advised, lighting a cigar.

"What have you to tell me?"

"Mutiny, sir. That's what it is. We're after treasure. That's the story I've heard, and the men mean to take the ship."

I thought of Evelyn and her aunt, and my heart sank.

Sam stretched his arms and yawned.

"When?"

"Don't know, sir. I've picked up only a little here and there. Caine came to me this morning and asked me if I would go in with them."

Dugan drove two nails into the shingle.

"Do you know which of the men are stanch?"

"No, sir. Can't say as I do, outside of Alderson. Tom's all right."

"What about arms?"

"They have plenty. They've been packed in a bulkhead, but Fleming and Caine gave them out to the men this morning."

"The deuce! That looks ugly. They must be getting ready for business soon. If Caine approaches you again, fall in with his plans. Find out all you can, especially what men we can rely on. That will do."

"Yes, sir."

As soon as the man had gone the captain turned to me with a fighting gleam in his quiet eyes.

"Well, Jack, it's worse by a devilish lot than I had thought. We're in for mutiny. I wouldn't ask for anything better than a turn with these wharf rats if it weren't for the ladies. But with them aboard it's different. Wish I knew when Mr. Caine intends to set the match to the powder."

"What's the matter with my going down into the men's quarters and having a look around? I might stumble on some information worth while."

He shook his head.

"No, thanks. I need my second officer. If he went down there an accident might happen to him--due to a fall down the stairway or something of the sort."

"Then let me send Jimmie. Nobody would pay any attention to him. He could go into their quarters without suspicion."

"It would be safe enough for him at present. Why not? Don't tell him too much, Jack."

"Trust me."

Jimmie jumped at the chance to go sleuthing again. I had told him a yarn about suspecting some of the men had whisky concealed in the ship. He was away less than half an hour, but when he came back it was with a piece of news most alarming.

"Mr. Sedgwick," he gasped, "you remember that big, black-faced guy you set me trailing in 'Frisco--Captain what's-his-name--well, he's on this ship sure as I'm a foot high!"

My heart lost a beat. "Certain of that, Jimmie?"

"Yep, it's a lead-pipe cinch. Saw him in the engine room talking to Mr. Fleming. When he seen me Mr. Fleming called me to come down. But not for Jimmie. He took a swift hike up the stairs."

The boy was all excitement. For that matter so was I, though I concealed it better. If Bothwell were on board the ship as a stowaway the aspect of affairs was more serious even than we had thought.

"You're sure it was Captain Bothwell, Jimmie?"

"Say, would I know me own mother? Would I know Jim Jeffries or Battling Nelson if I got an eyeful of them walking down Market Street? Would I be sure of the Chronicle Building if I set my peepers on it? Betcherlife."

"How was he dressed?"

"In sailors' slops. Didn't have on any coat. Wasn't right sure of him at first, 'cause he's run a lawn mower over them whiskers of his. But this guy's the original Bothwell all right, all right."

"Jimmie, listen to me. Don't whisper a word of this. Do you hear?"

"I'm a clam."

"And don't go exploring in that end of the ship again. Captain Bothwell would as soon wring your neck as a chicken's, my boy. Keep away from the forecastle."

Immediately I joined Blythe on the bridge and told him what Jimmie had discovered.

The captain nodded.

"That explains what was puzzling us. Bothwell has been too shrewd for us. He must have arranged it to throw his men in our way when we were selecting a crew. The scoundrel is laughing in his sleeve at us because we're taking him and his men at our expense to the treasure."

"He's diddled us beautifully," I admitted with a sour grin.

"I grant him one round. The man is dangerous as a wild beast that has escaped from its cage. But we're warned now. If he bests us it's our own fault."

"It will be a finish fight, no surrender and no quarter."

My friend nodded, his jaw gripped tight.

"You've said it."

"We've one advantage. All of us will stand together. He can't hold his riffraff long. They will quarrel among themselves. Every day that passes works in our favor."

"Right enough, but Bothwell knows this as well as we do. He'll move soon. We've forced his hand by discovering his presence. Now he can't let us get into port because he knows we would get help against him."

"That's true."

"Unless I guess wrong we'll hear from him inside of twenty-four hours."

"Since it has to be, the sooner the better."

Blythe shrugged his broad, lean shoulders coolly.

"What must be must. As for Captain Bothwell, I don't think he'll have an easy time of it. If he doesn't like the treatment he's going to get he'll have nobody to blame but himself. Nobody asked him on board."

"We must lose no time in making preparations to meet an attack."

"You're right. Tell Mr. Mott I wish to see him. Have Yeager look our weapons over and make sure that they are loaded. Tell him to guard the armory until further notice. Better give Morgan a revolver at once and slip Dugan one if you can."

The flinty resolution in his eye warmed my heart. Man for man, I was ready to back Blythe against Bothwell.

The Scotch-Russian had more of the devil in him, a starker cruelty, a more blazing passion, and perhaps greater cunning; but if I read the Englishman aright there was in him that same quiet force which carried Captain Scott to the south pole and afterward gave to the world that immortal letter, written in a bleak Antarctic waste of icy death.

Sam Blythe would play the game out steadily to a fighting finish.

CHAPTER XI

TAKING STOCK

Yeager was sitting with the ladies under the awning telling them some story of his beloved Arizona. At a signal from me he arose and excused himself. We passed into the reception room and down the stairway.

"You're armed, of course," I said.

"Me? I always pack a gun. Got the habit when I was a kid and never shucked it. For rattlesnakes," he added with a grin.

"We have a few of them on board. Yeager, the kid saw Bothwell in the engine room talking with Fleming. Do you know what that means?"

"I can guess, I reckon," he drawled.

"It means war--and soon."

"And war is hell, Sherman said. Let's make it hell for Bothwell. It's about time for me to begin earning my passage. What's the matter with me happening down into the forecastle and inviting Capt. Bothwell up to be more sociable?"

"Won't do at all. If he were alone it would be a different matter. If you went down there you'd never come up alive. We need every man we've got. Think of the women."

His light-blue eye rested in mine.

"I'd give twenty cows if they were back in Los Angeles, Jack."

From my pocket I took the key which unlocked the door of the room we called the armory. After I had selected two revolvers I left him there attending to business. Morgan I found in Blythe's cabin. He took my news quietly enough, though he lost color when I told him what we had to expect.

"I don't know much about revolvers, sir," he said, handling very respectfully the one I handed him.

"You'll know more in a day or two," I promised. "Morgan, we're going to beat these scoundrels. Be quite sure of that."

"Yes, sir. Glad to hear it, sir," he answered doubtfully.

"You know Captain Blythe. He's worth half a dozen of these wharf rats. So is Mr. Yeager."

"Are--are all the crew against us?" he asked after a moment's struggle with his trepidation.

"No, we know of at least two who are for us. Probably there are others. Don't be afraid. We're going to smash this mutiny."

"Yes, sir. Captain Blythe will see to that. I put my faith in him."

But in spite of what I had said it was plain that Morgan's faith was a quavering one. He was a useful man, competent in his own line, but his métier plainly was not fighting. My news had given him a shock from which he would not quickly recover.

It was nearly time for the change of watches, and when I returned to the deck I saw that Mott was already on the bridge. He listened to our story with plain incredulity.

"I know nothing about this man Bothwell, but say the word and I'll go down and haul him on deck for you, Captain Blythe," he offered, contemptuously.

"You don't understand the situation. He's as dangerous as a mad dog."

"I've yet to see the first stowaway I couldn't bring to time. They're a chicken-hearted lot, take my word for it."

"He isn't a stowaway at all in the ordinary sense of the word. I'll be plain, Mr. Mott. We're after treasure, and Bothwell means to get it. The crew are with him."

"Slap doodle bugs!" retorted our first officer. "I make nothing at all of your story, captain. Thirty years I've sailed this coast and I've yet to see my first mutiny. Haul up this fellow Bothwell and set him swabbing decks. If he shows his teeth, give him a rope's end or a marlinspike. I'll haze him for you a-plenty."

I could have smiled at Mott's utter lack of appreciation of our dilemma if his bull-headed obstinacy had not been likely to cost us so much.

"You don't understand the man with whom we have to deal, Mr. Mott. He sticks at nothing," I explained.

"Beg pardon, Mr. Sedgwick. He'd stick at deck swabbing if I stood over him with a handspike," the burly mate answered grimly. "Truth is, gentlemen, I don't think that of your mutiny." And he snapped his fingers with a complacent laugh. "Mind you, I don't deny the men are a bit unsettled, what with all this talk of treasure that's going around. What they need is roughing and, by the jumping mercury, Johnny Mott is the man to do it!"

There are none so blind as those who will not see. We could not even persuade Mott to accept a revolver. He had made up his mind that the whole thing was nothing more or less than a mare's nest.

"What do you know of the men?" I urged. "Take our engineers. We picked up the Flemings on the wharf because we needed engineers in a hurry. The day before we sailed I saw George Fleming on the wharf talking to this man Bothwell. They are working together against us."

"What of it? Let them work. But don't go to dreaming about mutiny, Mr. Sedgwick. You ask what I know of the crew. By your leave, I know this much. I've bullied American seamen for thirty years come next November, and there's not an ounce of mutiny in a million of them."

And at that we had to let it go for the present. There were more important things on hand than the conversion of a wooden-headed tar.

Leaving Mott at the wheel we adjourned to the deck saloon for a discussion of ways and means. Miss Wallace sauntered in with a magazine in her hand.

The captain's eye questioned mine. I nodded. She would have to learn soon how things stood, and I trusted to her courage to hear the news without any fainting or hysterics. The color washed out of her face, but she showed not the least sign of panic.

"What can I do?" she asked in a steady voice.

"At present you may join an officers' council, Miss Wallace," said he. "The first thing to find out is who are for us and who against. Let's take the enemy first. There is Bothwell himself to begin with, and, of course, the two Flemings and Caine. Are we sure of any others?"

"Johnson," I replied at once. "He was one of the two men who attacked me at San Pedro. I thought at the time one of the voices sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it. After I reached the boat I noticed Caine watching me closely. The reason is clear enough to me now. He and Johnson slugged me, and he was watching to see if I had any suspicion of him."

"Sure, Jack?"

"Quite. I couldn't swear to them, but I'm morally certain. Johnson's English is just a little broken. It was his voice I knew."

"That makes five against us so far. We can add the firemen to that, since George Fleming chose them."

"Eight to begin with. What about the rest of the crew?"

"The man they call Tot Dennis was signed for me by Caine. Afraid we'll have to give him to the enemy."

"Williams is a great friend of Dennis. I've seen them together a lot," Evelyn suggested.

"That's true, but Williams has sailed with me twice before. I did think I could have trusted him."

"No doubt Caine and Bothwell have been influencing him. Put Williams down doubtful."

We checked off the rest of the crew by name, but could find no evidence against any of them.

"How many can we depend upon?" Evelyn asked.

"Yeager, Mott, Morgan, Jack here, and myself. That's five to begin with," counted Blythe.

"Dugan and Alderson," I added.

"Seven. Any more?"

"Our steward. Phillips is his name."

"Sure, Miss Wallace?"

"He's the most harmless creature on earth."

The captain smiled.

"Afraid he won't be of much use to us then. We want harmful men. But count him. That makes eight for us, nine against us, six doubtful. We'll do very nicely."

"And there's the cook. He's so fat and good-natured he must be all right," Evelyn suggested.

"By Jove! I'd forgotten 'Arry 'Iggins. No, he's against us. He talked to my man Morgan."

"And I suppose his flunky, Billie Blue, goes with cookie?" I added.

"The nine against us is now eleven," the girl said quietly.

I spoke cheerfully, which is far from how I felt.

"Oh, well, what's the odds? Nine or eleven, we'll beat them."

A steamer rug lying on a lounge at the end of the room heaved itself up. From its folds emerged the red head of Jimmie, belligerently. Its owner had evidently been roused from a nap.

"Where do I get off at I'd like to know?" demanded the indignant namesake of a martyred President. "Didn't I run down his nibs for you in 'Frisco and wise you where he was staying? Didn't I find out he was aboard here? Why ain't you countin' me in?"

Blythe assented gravely, but with a twinkle in his eye.

"Our error, Jimmie. Counting you we have nine good men and true."

"One of Jimmie's strong points is that he doesn't talk. He knows how to keep his mouth shut. Don't you, Jimmie?"

"Sure thing, Mr. Sedgwick. I'm a clam, I am."

I nodded.

"Then run along and keep an eye on things outside. If you see anything suspicious, let me know at once."

"Yes, sir. You bet you." And the boy was off at the word.

"Couldn't we put back to San Diego?" Miss Wallace asked.

The captain shook his head.

"No. If I turned the ship's head they would be about our ears like rats."

"We'll have to keep on as we are going."

A sardonic smile touched Blythe's strong, lean face.

"It's Mr. Bothwell's move. If we turned back he would have to stop us; if we continue to Panama he must prevent us from going into the harbor, or his game is up."

"Then what will he do?"

"He'll move, Miss Wallace."

She looked at him, a man of quiet, contained strength, and some sort of vision of what we were to go through flitted before her mind. Her lips were gray and bloodless.

"That dreadful treasure!" she murmured. "Why did we ever come after it?"

A faint sound drew me to my feet and across the room to the stairway. A fat bulk of a man was crouched on the steps about half-way down. He scuttled to his feet at sight of me.

"Good afternoon, Higgins! Just taking a nap on the stairs, I presume," was my ironical greeting.

The color faded from his blotched face.

"No, sir, not as you might say----" He moistened his dry lips with the tip of his tongue and tried again. "Truth is, sir, Hi wanted to ask Miss Wallace what she would like for dinner."

"That's very considerate of you. And I'm sure it's the truth. You were merely resting on the way. Come on up, Higgins. That is, if you're now able to finish the journey. Or shall I help you?"

The tail of his eye had swung round to take in the lower deck. I could have sworn the man was considering making a bolt for it, but at my words he gave up the idea with a fat sigh. He came up slowly, his eyes fixed on mine as if I held them fascinated. Tiny beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. 'Arry 'Iggins was not at that moment comfortable in his mind.

"Hi strive to please, sir," he explained. "Whatever the young lady would like. Hin a manner of speakin' I'm 'er 'umble servant, very respectably, 'Arry Iggins."

He ducked his head toward her and again toward Blythe.

"Come here," the captain ordered.

Higgins shuffled reluctantly forward.

"When did you first meet this man Bothwell?"

"Beg pardon, sir. Don't think I know the gent, sir."

The Englishman's eyes pierced into his fellow-countryman like a drill.

"Don't lie to me."

The cook had recourse to a large bandanna handkerchief to mop away his perspiration.

"If you mean the stowaway, sir, Hi met 'im just before we reached Los Angeles."

"How many of the crew are with him in this mutiny?"

"Mutiny, sir?"

"I don't mince words. How many?"

"There you 'ave me, sir. S'elp me, Captain Blythe, Hi'm not in 'is confidence."

The man's painful assumption of innocence would have been pathetic had it not been ridiculous.

"I know that," retorted my friend contemptuously. "He'll use you and chuck you aside, dead or alive, whichever is most convenient. Bothwell would as soon knife his fat friend as wink. But that's not the point just now. You'll--tell--me--all--you--know--about--this--affair--at--once. Understand?"

Higgins wriggled like a trout on the hook, but he had to tell what he knew. In point of fact this was not much more than we had already learned.

"You will go back to Bothwell and tell him to start the band playing just as soon as he has his program arranged. Tell him we don't care a jackstraw for his mutiny, and that if he lives through it we'll take him in irons to Panama and have him hanged as high as Haman. Get that, my man?" demanded Blythe.

"Yes, sir. 'Anged as 'igh as 'Aman. Hi'll remember, sir."

Sam turned to me and spoke in a low voice.

"Before this fellow goes I want Mott to hear what he has said. Take Yeager up with you and relieve him. And see that Alderson gets a revolver."

I took our mate's place at the wheel and sent him forward. Tom Yeager leaned on the ship's rail and looked away across the glassy waters of the Pacific. I remember that he was humming, as was his fashion, a snatch from a musical comedy.

It was such a day as one dreams about, with that pleasant warmth in the air that makes for indolent content. One or two of the men were lounging lazily on the forecastle deck. Caine was reading a book of travels I had lent him the previous day.

Were we all, as Mott believed, the victims of a stupid nightmare? Or could it be true that beneath all this peace boiled a volcano ready at any minute for an eruption?

Mott returned in an unpleasant mood. The truth is that he was nursing a grudge because he was the last man on board to know that we were on a cruise for treasure. He resented it that our party had not told him, and he took it with a bad grace that every man jack of the crew had been whispering for days about something of which he had been kept in the dark. Upon my word I think he had some just cause of complaint.

While he jeered at the precautions we were taking I tried to placate him, for now of all times we could least afford to have any quarrels in our party.

"You will admit there is no harm in going prepared, Mr. Mott?" I argued.

"To be sure. Ballast yourselves with revolvers, for all I care. I'll carry one because Captain Blythe has ordered it, but don't expect me to join in the play acting."

I felt myself flushing.

"The situation appears to us a very serious one."

"Slap doodle bugs! Let Captain Blythe give the word and I'll go down and bring up this bogey man, that is, if there is such a fellow aboard at all."

Presently I was called down to luncheon. I found Miss Wallace lingering with Blythe in the dining-room. As soon as I arrived the captain left.

Philips waited on me. He had already heard the news, and was ashen. His hands trembled as he passed dishes so that I was sorry for him.

"He's badly frightened, poor man," the young woman whispered to me across the table during one of his absences. "I wish I could tell him that there will probably be no serious trouble."

Her eyes appealed to mine. I could see that with her aunt and poor Philips on her hands she was in for no easy time. But I could not lie to her.

"What do you think yourself? You know your cousin. Will he lie down and let us win without a fight?"

She shook her head slowly. "No. He'll go through with his villainy, no matter what it costs."

"Yes. There is no use blinking the facts. We're in for a test of strength. I'm sorry, but the only way to meet the situation is to accept it and be ready for it. I don't fear the result."

She looked steadily at me.

"Nor I. But it's dreadful to have to wait and hold our hands. I wish I could do something."

"You can," I smiled. "You may pass me the potatoes, and after I have finished eating you may play for us. We must show these scurvy ruffians that we aren't a bit afraid of them."

CHAPTER XII

MY UNEXPECTED GUEST

"And will they murder us all in our beds?"

Miss Berry, very white but not at all hysterical, had Blythe penned in a corner by the piano as she asked the question.

"Don't be a goose, auntie," her niece smiled affectionately.

"The fact is that we were afraid you might complain of ennui, so we have stirred up a little excitement," explained Sam.

"Truly, Mr. Blythe?"

My friend looked at me appealingly and I came to the rescue.

"Sailors are a queer lot. They often get notions that have to be knocked out of them. We'll try not to disturb you while we do the hammering, Miss Berry."

A faint color washed back into her face.

"Oh, I hope you are right. It would be dreadful if----" she interrupted herself to take a more cheerful view. "But I am sure Mr. Mott is right. He has been on the seas a great many years more than you two. He ought to know best, oughtn't he?"

"Certainly," I conceded. "And I hope he does."

"Besides, Captain Bothwell is such a gentleman. I'm sure he wouldn't do anything so dreadful. I wish I could talk to him. He was always so reasonable with me, though Evie and he couldn't get along."

I concealed my smile at the thought of Miss Berry converting him.

The trumpet call to dinner diverted our thoughts. I dropped into my room to wash before dinner, with the surprising result that I lost the meal.

As I opened the door a low voice advised me to close it at once. Since I was looking into the wrong end of a revolver, and that weapon was in the hand of a very urgent person, I complied with the suggestion. The man behind the gun was Boris Bothwell.

"Hope I don't intrude," I apologized, glancing at the disorder in my stateroom.

The floor was littered with papers, coats, collars, ties, and underwear. Drawers had been dragged out and emptied, my trunk gutted of its contents. Evidently the captain had been engaged in a thorough search of the cabin when my entrance diverted his attention.

"Not at all. I was hoping you would come," he answered pleasantly.

"Perhaps I should have knocked before entering, but then I didn't expect to find you here."

"I came on impulse," he explained. "I had reason to suppose you would be busy for an hour or two. By the way, Evie is entertaining. Did I ever mention to you that it is my intention to marry her?"

"I think not."

"Ah! Then I make a confidant of you now. Congratulate me, my friend."

"Is this an official announcement?" I asked.

"Hardly official, I think. The lady does not know it."

"Then I think I'll wait till the engagement gets her O. K."

"As you like, Mr. Sedgwick, but I assure you I am an irresistible lover."

"So I hear you say," I replied coldly. "Was it to tell me this that you have put me in debt to you for this call?"

"Hardly. To be frank, I came to get a map."

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Again?"

"As you say, again."

"Quite like old times, isn't it? I am reminded of our 'Frisco Nights' Entertainment. The search for a map in other people's apartments is becoming rather a habit with you, isn't it?"

"I'm a persistent beggar," he admitted.

"I regret we have no more copies to lend."

He laughed indulgently.

"Touché, monsieur. But I don't care for copies. I am a collector of originals."

"They are said to be expensive."

"But valuable."

"Still, the cost is a consideration."

"Not when some one else pays the shot, Mr. Sedgwick."

"I see. You expect those poor devils whom you are misleading to draw the chestnut out of the fire for you."

"Exactly," he admitted with the gayest aplomb.

"You are willing that they should pay to the limit?" I asked, curious to see how far his cynical audacity would carry him.

He shrugged, with a lift of his strong hands.

"That is as luck, or fate, or Providence--whichever you believe in, Mr. Sedgwick--deals out the cards. I'm not a god, you know."

"You know that you cannot follow the course outlined without lives being lost," I persisted.

"I'll take your word for it," he flung back lightly.

"That won't deter you in the least?"

"Wasn't it Napoleon who said one couldn't make an omelet without breaking eggs?"

"And yet his omelet was not a success," I reflected aloud.

"Whose is, Mr. Sedgwick? We all have our Waterloos. Love, ambition, the search for wealth--none of them satisfy. But though none of us find happiness we yet seek. That is human nature."

I shot a question at him abruptly.

"Suppose you got all this treasure--would you keep faith with those poor, deluded ruffians and share with them?"

His hardy smile approved me.

"You're deep, my friend. Now I wonder what I would do? My tools are deluded. Wealth could not bring them the happiness they think it would. Most of them it would ruin. I fear it would be my duty to----"

"---- let them hold the sack," I finished for him.

"Precisely."

"There is, then, no honor among thieves."

"Not a bit. No more than there is among gentlemen. But since you object to having eggs broken, I offer you an alternative."

I waited.

"In order to save eggs I'll ask you to turn over to me the map."

"Where do you think I keep it? You've already searched my rooms and my person. I'm no wizard."

His black eyes bored into mine.

"We've been over this ground once before, Mr. Sedgwick. You know me. I'm here for business."

"So I judge."

"Come! This won't do. I'm a determined man. That map I'm going to have. Unless you want the scene to close with the final exit of John Sedgwick, find for me the map."

"Suppose I tell you that I haven't it?"

"I shall believe you, since the evidence would support the assertion. I should then ask who has it?"

"You certainly are a man of one idea. I think I've never had the pleasure of talking with you that you didn't switch the conversation back to that map."

He raised the revolver.

"I asked a question."

There was a step outside, followed by a knock on the door. "Come in," I sang out instantly.

Bothwell's furious gaze came back from the door just as I leaped. A bullet crashed through the skylight, for my arm had deflected his. I wrapped myself about him in silent struggle for the weapon. We swayed against the bed and went down upon it hard, our weight tearing through the springs. Desperately I clung to his arm to keep the weapon from pointing at me.

"Let go, Sedgwick," a voice ordered.

Sinewy fingers had tightened on Bothwell's throat and a strong hand had wrenched the revolver from him.

Panting, I struggled to my feet. My opportune friend covered the Russian with his own weapon and drawled out a warning.

"Don't you now, Mr. Pirate, or I'll certainly have to load you up with lead."

Bothwell lay on the bed, his breast heaving from his exertions. In no man's looks have I ever seen a more furious malice, but he had sense enough to recognize that this was our moment.

"If it ain't butting in, what were you gentlemen milling around so active about this warm day?" asked Yeager.

"Same old point of difference. Captain Bothwell wanted a map."

Tom laughed gently.

"Sho! You hadn't ought to be so blamed urgent, cap. It don't buy you anything."

The Russian struggled with his rage, fought it down, and again found his ironic smile.

"I am under the impression that it would have bought me a map if it had not been for your arrival, sir."

"Too bad I spoiled yore game, then."

"For the present," amended the defeated man. "I am a person of much resource, Mr. Sedgwick will tell you." Then, with a glance at the bit of plaster on my head: "He still wears a souvenir to remind him of it."

"My little adventure at San Pedro. I always, credited you with that, captain. Thanks."

"You're entirely welcome. More to follow," he smiled.

"What are you allowing to do with your guest, Sedgwick?" asked Yeager.

"We'll leave that to Blythe. I suppose we had better put him in irons and guard him. We can drop him off at Panama."

"Any port in a time of storm," suggested our prisoner blithely.

"Personally, I'd like to see you marooned for a few months," I growled, for the man's insolence ruffled me.

I found Blythe on the bridge with Mott.

"I have to report a prisoner of war captured, captain," I announced in formal military style.

Blythe laughed.

"Who is he?"

"Captain Boris Bothwell, sir."

"What!"

I told him and Mott the circumstances. The mate unbent a little.

"And the lubber shot at you? In your own cabin! Put him in irons and throw him ashore at Panama. That's my advice, Mr. Blythe. Get rid of him, and you'll not hear any more about this mutiny business."

"I'm of that opinion myself, Mr. Mott. We'll keep him under guard until he's in safe custody."

Blythe followed me down to my cabin, and for the first time he and Bothwell looked each other over.

"This isn't a passenger ship, sir," announced the owner of the Argos bluntly. "You've made a mistake, sir. We'll hand you over to the authorities at Panama."

Bothwell bowed.

"Dee-lighted! I've always wanted to see the old city of Pizarro, Drake and Morgan. Many a galleon has been looted of ingots and bullion by the old seadogs there. If I weren't so conscientious, by Jupiter, I'd turn pirate myself."

"Haven't a doubt of it," Blythe assented curtly. "We'll try to see that your opportunities don't match your inclinations. Unless I guess wrong you wouldn't hesitate to cut a throat to escape if your hands were free."

"Not at all."

"Just so. Merely as a formality we'll take the precaution of making sure you haven't any weapons that might go off and injure you--or anybody else. Jack, may I trouble you to look in my cabin for a pair of handcuffs--middle right hand drawer of my dressing table?"

We made our prisoner secure and spelled each other watching him. The first three hours fell to me. Except the Arizonian I think all of us felt a weight lifted from our hearts. The chief villain was in our hands and the mutiny nipped in the bud.

But Bothwell had managed to inject a fly into the ointment of my content.

"We've drawn your sting now," Blythe had told him before he left.

"Have you? Bet you a pony I'll be free inside of twenty-four hours," the Russian had coolly answered.

CHAPTER XIII

MUTINY

It was in the afternoon of the day after our encounter with Bothwell--to be more accurate, just after four bells. Miss Wallace and I were sitting under the deck awning, she working in a desultory fashion upon a piece of embroidery while I watched her lazily.

The languorous day was of the loveliest. It invited to idleness, made repudiation of work a virtue. My stint was over for a few hours at least and I enjoyed the luxury of pitying poor Mott, who was shut up in a stuffy cabin with our prisoner.

Yeager, too, was off duty. We could hear him pounding away at the piano in the saloon. Ragtime floated to us, and presently a snatch from "The Sultan of Sulu."

Since I first met you, Since I first met you, The open sky above me seems a deeper blue, Golden, rippling sunshine warms me through and through, Each flower has a new perfume since I first met you.

"T. Yeager is a born optimist," I commented idly. "Life is one long, glorious lark to him. I believe he would be happy if he knew raw, red mutiny were going to break out in twenty minutes."

"He's very likable. I never knew a man who has had so many experiences. There's something right boyish about him."

"Even if he could give me about a dozen years."

"Years don't count with his kind. He's so full of life, so fresh and yet so wise."

"His music isn't fresh anyhow. I move we go stop it."

"Thank you, I'm very comfortable here. I don't second the motion," she declined.

"Motion withdrawn. But I'm going to tempt him from that piano just the same. Jimmie, come here. Run down to the music-room and tell Mr. Yeager that Miss Wallace would like to see him."

Evelyn laughed.

"I think you're real mean, Mr. Sedgwick."

"For saving the life of your musical soul?"

"He is pretty bad," she admitted.

He was on the chorus again, his raucous exuberant voice riding it like one of his own bucking broncos.

Golden, rippling sunshine warms me through and through, Each flower has a new perfume since I first met you.

"Bad. He's the worst ever. Thank Heaven, we've got him stopped! There he comes with Jimmie."

He moved across the deck toward us with that little roll usually peculiar to dismounted horsemen of the plains.

"I do like him," the young woman murmured. "He's so strong and gentle and good-natured. I don't suppose he could get mad."

"Oh, couldn't he? I'll ask him about that."

"Now I do think you're mean," she reproached with a flash of her eyes.

"You sent for me, Miss Wallace? Was it to throw him overboard because he's mean?" Yeager asked genially.

Her eye was sparkling and her lips open for an answer, but the words were never spoken. For at that instant a man burst past us with blood streaming down his face from a ghastly cut in the forehead. He was making for the bridge.

"It's come," I said, rising and drawing my revolver.

"I must go to Auntie," Evelyn said, very white about the lips.

"Not now. She's perfectly safe. They won't trouble her till they have won the ship."

"And there will be some merry times before then, I expect," said Tom, his hand on the butt of a revolver and his vigilant eye sweeping the deck.

We were hurrying forward to the wheelhouse. Every moment I expected to see a rush of men tearing up the companionway, but all seemed quiet and orderly. The hands on deck either had not noticed Dugan, or else were awaiting developments.

"'Twas Caine did it, sir," Dugan explained to Blythe. "I was lying in my bunk when he came down with the stowaway you were holding prisoner."

"With Bothwell?" I cried.

"Yes, sir. They asked me to join them in taking the ship. They put it plain they meant to get the treasure."

"Do you know which of the men is with them?" I asked.

"No, sir. Soon as I got the drift of what they were at I let Caine have my fist in his dirty mouth. He came at me with a cutlas. I got this cut before I could break away. Gallagher tried to head me, but I bowled him over."

"Do you know how Bothwell escaped?"

"Caine helped him. I heard Tot Dennis say that Mr. Mott had got his. That was just before they spoke to me."

Evelyn sat down quickly. I think she wanted to faint. She too understood what was meant by the words that Mott had "got his."

"What about Alderson? Are you sure he can be trusted?" Blythe asked of the sailor.

"Yes, sir. I can speak for him and for Smith."

Alderson was on deck and I called him to us. He was a clean-cut seamanly fellow of about thirty. His blue eyes were frank and self-reliant.

"My man, there's mutiny aboard. That's the short of it. Are you for us or against us?"

"I'm for you, sir."

"Good. We're going to beat the scoundrels, but there is going to be fighting."

"Yes, sir."

"Bully for you!" cried Yeager, and slapped him on the back. "Can you shoot?"

"Not especially well, sir."

"Listen to me," ordered Blythe. "Our aim must be to hold the wheelhouse and the cabins. Mr. Sedgwick, you will take Miss Wallace back to the staterooms and rally the rest of our forces. Mr. Mott is done for, I am afraid, but the rest of our friends are probably all right. Arm all of them. Get the rifles out. Better nail up the windows and lock the doors after you are in. Alderson and Dugan will go with you. You, too, Jimmie. Yeager, you are the best shot. I'll have you stay with me."

"Hadn't you better join us and give up the wheelhouse for the present?"

The Englishman's eyes flashed.

"Surrender my ship to that scum! I'm surprised at you, Jack."

"I'm not surprised at you," I grinned. "I meant only until we have beaten them."

"What about the rest of the crew who are for us?" Miss Wallace asked.

"We'll have to give them time to declare themselves."

We obeyed orders at once, Alderson supporting Dugan, who was growing weak from loss of blood. As we went to the reception room I caught sight of Tot Dennis, his hatchet face peering above the companionway at the end of the bridge deck. At sight of me his head disappeared hastily. But he had given me an idea. I hung back while the rest of our party passed into the saloon, then walked forward quickly and descended to the lower deck.

A little group of men were gathered at the hatchway leading to the forecastle. I stepped briskly toward them, though Johnson's revolver was covering me. I'll admit I took a chance, but it was a calculated one. If Caine or Bothwell had been with them I would not have dared so far, but I reckoned that their mental habits as seamen were still strong enough to keep them from shooting an officer.

"You poor devils, Dennis, Johnson and Mack! Do you know what this means? It spells hanging for every mother's son of you. Don't be a madman and fire that gun, Johnson. There's still a chance, even for you. Cut loose from the pirate you're serving and join the honest party. Mack, you're not a mutineer, are you? You don't want to be hanged at the yardarm, do you?"

The group at the stairway had become four instead of three.

"Avast there, Mr. Sedgwick. Get back or I'll fire," growled Caine.

"I'm not speaking to you, Caine. Your bacon is cooked. I'm making my offer to the others. I've got no time to wait, my men. Are you coming?"

A bullet from Caine's revolver whistled past my ear. I stayed no longer, but fell back to the stairs and took to my heels. A bullet chipped away a splinter of wood beside me as I ran.

I found Dugan stretched on one of the long saloon seats, already being ministered to by Morgan and Evelyn. Alderson had locked one door and was on guard at the other, cutlas and revolver in hand.

"Well done, Alderson. That's the way to keep a lookout," I sang out cheerfully.

"Thank you, sir. Were you hit? That was risky, sir, talking to them without cover."

"They can't hit a barn door," I answered with a laugh.

I had moved over to the hospital corps and was looking down at the wounded man.

"Is he badly hurt?" I asked.

Evelyn looked at me with an expression I did not understand.

"I don't think so. You mustn't do that again, Mr. Sedgwick. It isn't right to take unnecessary risks." Her voice was a little tense and strained.

We heard the sound of a shot and presently of slapping footsteps.

"Let me in," called a panting voice.

Alderson turned to me.

"It's Williams, sir. Shall I let him in?"

"Yes."

There came the crack of a rifle. Simultaneously Williams burst in on us.

"They're shooting at me, sir. I watched my chance to follow you."

"You're an honest man?" I asked sharply.

"Of course I am, sir. Couldn't say so with all of them around me."

"Good." I gave Jimmie the key of our armory. "Take Williams down and let him choose a revolver and a cutlas."

I would have gone with him myself, but at that moment a voice had hailed the captain. Stepping from the saloon I saw Bothwell with a white handkerchief at the head of the stairway leading from the main deck.

"Envoy to former Captain Blythe from the crew," I heard him say.

Crisp and clear sang the answer of our captain.

"My man, I don't know you. If my crew have anything to say let them send one of their own number. I don't deal with stowaways scalawags."

"You'll deal with me if you deal with them. I've been elected captain in place of Mr. Blythe, deposed."

"The devil you have! Bite on this, my man. I own this boat, every stick and ribbon of her. I'm going to be master here. If the men want to talk I'll name conditions. Let them bring you and Caine up here in irons and put their arms down on the deck. That will be a preliminary to any talk between me and them."

"You speak large, Mr. Blythe."

"Captain Blythe, my man, and don't you forget it! Now tramp. Get back to your ruffians or I'll put a bullet through you."

"Would you fire on a flag of truce?"

"I recognize no flag of truce in your hands. Look lively."

"I've only got to say that I'll take pleasure in settling your hash for this," Bothwell cried angrily.

"I'm not Mr. Mott. You'll not find it so easy to murder me. Move!"

Bothwell disappeared with a curse. I retired into the saloon.

Evelyn was standing near the door with a face in which I could read both anxiety and anger.

"Why do you expose yourself like that?" she cried.

"I wanted to see what was going on."

"You'll be shot. Then what shall we do?"

"There's not much danger yet, and I must keep in touch with our friends forward. Don't you think we had better get your patient to bed?"

"I'm all right, sir," Dugan spoke up faintly.

"He ought to be kept quiet for a day or two," his young nurse decided.

"I'll take him down to my cabin. Perhaps you can get him something to put him to sleep, Miss Wallace."

Miss Berry came up the stairs just as we were starting down. She looked like a ghost.

"Mr. Sedgwick, I've just been wakened from a nap. I heard some one groaning in the cabin next to mine." She caught sight of Dugan's bandaged head and cried out: "What's the matter? Has something happened?"

"Don't be frightened, Miss Berry."

"What are these men doing with pistols? Where does that blood come from?"

Evelyn came forward and took her aunt in her arms.

"Dearie, we can trust Captain Blythe and Mr. Sedgwick. We mustn't make it harder for them. Just now they are very busy."

I looked my thanks.

Williams and Jimmie returned from the armory. Morgan and Philips were at their heels. The steward looked very yellow.

"Let me know if there is any sign of trouble. I'll be back presently," I told Alderson.

Having put Dugan to bed in my room, I stepped into the one where we had been keeping our prisoner. Mott lay on the floor, his body still warm, quite dead. I judged that he had expired within the past few minutes. He had been struck with some blunt instrument and then knifed. The man had paid for his obstinate disbelief with his life.

I lifted the body to the bed, locked the door, and returned to the promenade deck saloon. For the throb of the propeller had ceased. An immediate attack was probably impending.

Miss Berry was sobbing softly in the arms of her niece. In my absence we had gained another adherent. Billie Blue, the cook's flunky, had come up from below.

"Where is Higgins?" I asked.

"Don't know, sir. He left right after lunch."

Alderson, who had been craning out of the door, drew back his head to speak.

"They're coming, sir."

"Down to your cabin, ladies. You go with them, Jimmie. Lock yourselves in," I ordered.

Evelyn's white lips tried to frame some words as she passed me. I understood what she wanted to say.

"I'll be careful," I promised.

"I have no weapon, sir," Billie Blue told me.

I had brought up with me from below a repeating rifle, so I handed him one of my revolvers and an Italian dirk that had been hanging on the wall as an ornament.

The second door I ordered locked. Putting my head out of one of the windows I counted the enemy as they stood grouped near the stairway from the main deck. Bothwell was in the lead, followed by Caine. At their heels trooped both engineers, the three firemen, the cook, Johnson, Mack, Gallagher, Dennis, Smith, and Neidlinger. It was not easy to count them, because they shifted to and fro, but I was almost sure they were fourteen. The boatswain carried in his hand a towel, which he was waving.

"Crew to have a conference with you, Cap'n Blythe," he called out.

"I hold no conference with armed mutineers," Blythe called back sternly.

He was standing in the wheelhouse, rifle in hand. Beside him was the curly head of Tom Yeager.

"This here ship's company offers to do the square thing, share and share alike, cap'n," boomed out the boatswain. "We wants a bit of that there treasure, and by Moses! we're going to have it. But we don't want no bloodshed, cap'n."

"Then get back to duty in a hurry, my man!"

George Fleming spoke up.

"Give us that map and we'll put your party ashore safe, sir."

"I'll see you hung up to dry at my yardarm first! If you want the ship come and take it, you scurvy scoundrel!"

It looked like long odds--fourteen to two. I began to wonder if Bothwell had forgotten us, and I ordered Alderson to unlock the door for a sortie if one should be necessary.

Even while I was speaking the rush came. They divided like running water when it reaches a big rock in midstream. Some of them poured toward us, the rest made for the bridge. I heard the crack of Sam's rifle, the rattle of small arms, and then the battle was upon us.

CHAPTER XIV

THE BATTLE

I fired through the window and brought down one fellow while they were still coming in a huddle toward us. Before I could fire again they were in the saloon and at close quarters with us.

To me it seemed that a hundred men were struggling in that narrow, smoke-filled space. A grimy, black-faced stoker leaped at me and I fired. I remember beating him over the head with my revolver and that we went down together in a clinch.

As I was falling it came over me that the attack was only a feint to keep us busy. The main body of the mutineers was storming the wheelhouse.

When I clambered to my feet I found that our attackers had been routed. Billie Blue's dirk had put a temporary quietus on my stoker, and the rest had fled as quickly as they had come.

"This way!" I shouted, and was out of the door in a jiffy.

A swarm of men were racing up the steps that led to the bridge and the pilot house. One lay with arms outstretched, face down on the deck. Another was sliding down the rail of the steps, his face writhing with pain.

Our friends were hard pressed. Blythe was keeping the door against a mob, while Yeager was firing through the window. Twice I saw the captain's cutlas flash. Then I lost sight of him and I knew that Bothwell had forced the entrance.

At the same instant the Arizonian disappeared from the opening which he had been using as a porthole. I knew that Sam was down and that his friend had gone to his assistance. My flank attack must have come as a surprise. The mutineers turned, finding themselves between two fires. We crowded in on them, and for a time the jam was so thick that none of us could do much damage.

Now they fought as desperately to get out of the wheelhouse as they had a minute earlier to get in. They were in a panic of fear, fancying themselves trapped.

I was flung against Bothwell, his furious face so close to mine that the hot breath filled my nostrils. We tried to grip each other, but in the huddle we were thrust apart.

Suddenly the room was no longer full, I could see that the enemy was in flight. Before I reached the open I knew that the day was won. Alderson, Billie Blue, and Morgan were pursuing the flying rabble.

Bothwell, making play with his cutlas against both Blythe and Yeager, was retreating slowly to the bridge rail. I remember crying out as I ran toward them.

Bothwell vaulted over the rail to the deck below. I followed like a fool, for in the row I had lost my weapons. As I recall it now, Sam shouted to me to come back. But there was some idiotic notion in my head that the Russian might run into the reception room with his fellows and get possession of the women.

Instead, he turned and slashed at me. The blow would have carved my head had not I dodged. At that I received a nasty swipe in the arm. It was not possible to stop. All I could do was to slip past him and continue running.

George Fleming had stopped at the head of the stairway to the main deck. He leveled a pistol and waited for me. Bothwell was at my heels. I was between the devil and the deep sea.

"We've got him!" the Russian cried.

I swung in behind one of the boats which lay under a tarpaulin near the edge of the deck. Simultaneously I heard the engineer's gun crack. No rabbit could have clambered around the boat quicker than I. Bothwell had doubled back and was charging me. His whistling cutlas hissed down not an inch from my ear and ripped through the tarpaulin to bury the blade in the wood of the bow.

I scudded back toward the bridge, my enemy in full chase.

Every instant I expected to feel the slash of his blade between my shoulders. It seemed to me that my leaden feet clung to the planks, that a toddling child could do that stretch to safety quicker than I was doing it.

As I ran the deck began to tilt dizzily. Before my eyes there spread a haze. All grew black even while my feet still automatically moved.

"Badly hurt, old man?"

The voice came to me from a great distance. With returning consciousness I found that the strong arm of its owner was supporting my head and shoulders. My eyes looked into those of our captain.

"It's all right, Jack," he explained. "We got to you just as you fell and Tom drove that villain back. How badly cut are you?"

"A glancing cut, I think. But I'm a bit dizzy? We beat them, didn't we?"

"Yes. The rats have scuttled back to their holes."

He helped me into the reception room and I sank down on the lounge.

"Just a bit light-headed," I explained to Yeager, who came in at that moment.

"Glad it's no worse. We gave them a drubbing, anyhow."

"Get Bothwell?" asked Sam.

"Nope. My gun was empty. I had him at the foot of the ladder, not ten feet from the muzzle, and click--nothing doing. The beggar turned and laughed in my face."

"Keep a lookout, Alderson," the captain ordered, while he unbuttoned my coat. "Tom, you'd better take a look around and size up the damage."

"Mott is dead. I found his body in the cabin," I told our chief.

"I was afraid of it. With Mott gone and Dugan wounded we were short two men at the beginning of the scrimmage. Eight to fourteen--devilish long odds. Easy with that sleeve there. Here you, Billie Blue, get me a sponge and a basin of water. And tell Miss Wallace to bring her sticking plaster."

Morgan, very white, was sitting on the opposite lounge trying to stop with a handkerchief the blood from a scalp wound. From where I lay I could see the body of Williams just outside the saloon. A stray bullet from one of the retreating mutineers had killed him at the very close of the battle.

Altogether that left us five sound men, counting Blue as a man, and three wounded ones. The pirates had suffered more. One I had disposed of at the first rush, just before they reached the cabin, and the flunky had wounded one of the firemen.

Yeager had picked off Johnson in the run for the bridge, and Sam had wounded Caine. In addition to these at least two more had been blooded in the scrimmage at close quarters outside the wheelhouse.

"Eight of them left against five of us, not counting the wounded on either side," Yeager summed up.

"What has become of Philips?" I asked, remembering that I had not seen him since the row began.

"Thought I saw him run down stairs when the beggars poured in on us here, sir," Alderson answered.

Later the poor fellow was found in his berth, trembling like an aspen leaf. He had locked his door and buried his face in the pillows.

A shock of red hair above a very white face appeared at the head of the companionway. "Is--is it all over?" gasped a small voice.

"Yes, Jimmie, right now it is. And you'll notice that we're still sticking to the saddle, son, and not pulling leather either," observed the plainsman cheerfully.

"I--I didn't know it would be like this," murmured the boy. "I thought----" His voice tailed out and he dropped limply into a seat, his fascinated eyes fixed on my bleeding arm.

Yeager clasped a hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Brace up, kid. The first round is ours, strong. We've had to hustle, but I reckon we've given them a hectic time of it. They'll not bother us for quite some hours. Captain Bothwell is busy explaining to a real sore outfit just why his plans miscarried."

"Is Mr. Sedgwick--killed?" asked the boy, swallowing hard.

I laughed faintly.

"He's worth a dozen dead men yet, Jimmie."

And to prove it I fell back among the pillows, unconscious.

CHAPTER XV

THE MORNING AFTER

My opening eyes fell upon Evelyn. She was putting the last touches to the bandage on my arm, which was already dressed and bound. Evidently I had been unconscious some time.

"It's all right. We won," were my first words to her.

"I know," she answered with a faint glow of color. "Thanks to the brave men who risked their lives for us!"

"Poor Williams was killed, and Morgan was hurt. Has his wound been looked to?"

"On the job now," sang out Yeager. "When I get through with him he'll be as good as new. Eh, Morgan?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," returned that impassive individual.

"Where's Sam?" I asked.

"Back at the wheel."

"Alone?"

"Alderson is with him. Don't worry about them. You couldn't dynamite that bunch of pirates on deck just now. There'll be nothing doing until they get Dutch courage from the bottle. We jolted them a heap harder than they did us," Tom rejoined lightly.

It was all very well for him to keep up his cheerful talk to raise the spirits of our friends, but I did not forget the fact that since the beginning of hostilities we had lost as many men as they had in killed, and only one less in wounded. To be sure, with the exception of Dugan, their disabled were in worse condition than ours. Morgan had only a scratch, and a day or two of rest would set me right.

"Time is fighting for us too, you bet," continued Tom briskly. "We're a unit, and I'll bet they're pulling already every which way. We've got them traveling south, Miss Wallace."

Perhaps his cheerful, matter-of-fact talk was the best possible tonic for the depression which had settled upon us. I could not help think what a blessing it was that we had picked up at Los Angeles this competent frontiersman whose strong, brown hands could make or dress a wound with equal skill.

It was plain to me that during the next few hours I would not be of much use. Out of ten thousand, Tom Yeager was the one I would have picked to take charge of the defense in my absence.

When a few minutes later the beat of the screw began again the sound of it was like wine to me. It meant that, for the present, the mutineers had had enough. They would join in a tacit truce while the yacht was being worked south.

"Help Mr. Sedgwick down to his cabin, Morgan, and then both of you turn in for a few hours' sleep. We'll look out for trouble. Won't we, Jimmie? You and I and Billie Blue, eh?"

"Yes, Mr. Yeager."

"You'll call us if another attack threatens?" I asked.

"Sure."

The steady throb--throb--throb of the propeller was again shaking the yacht as she took up her journey. This might be a ruse to throw us off our guard, but I did not think so. The enemy was badly demoralized, and the chances were that Bothwell would welcome a chance to whip his forces into shape again.

"Is the door from the galley to the main deck locked and nailed up, Billie?" I asked of the flunky.

"Yes, sir."

"Nail planks across the window too. Philips will help you get dinner if you can find him. I'll expect you to see that our party is well fed."

"Yes, sir," the young fellow promised.

"You must go to your room at a moment's notice, Miss Wallace. Have Philips nail up your porthole. You need not be a bit afraid. We hold a very safe position at present. Get all the sleep you can to-night."

"That's good advice, Mr. Sedgwick. Take it yourself," she returned with a little flicker of a wan smile.

For an instant her hand, warm and firm, rested in mine. If I had not been sure of my love before, there was no uncertainty now. While her brave eyes met mine I seemed to drown fathoms deep in the blue of them. Trouble was what I read in them, but part of that trouble was for me. I gloried in that certainty.

She might not love me--it was presumptuous to suppose she did--but at least I held a place in her regard. That was the thought I carried with me down-stairs, and it stayed pleasantly with me till I fell asleep in spite of the pain in my arm.

About nine o'clock I was awakened by a knock on the door. Philips had brought me dinner on a tray.

His eye would not meet mine. He was ashamed because he had shown the white feather in the scrimmage.

"I--I've got a wife and three little children, sir," he blurted out before he left.

I nodded pleasantly at him.

"You're going to see them again. But you must help us beat those ruffians. You see we can do it. We've done it once."

"Yes, sir. I--hope to do better next time."

"I'm sure you will, Philips."

We shook hands on it.

I must have fallen asleep again almost immediately. When I opened my eyes it was day. I pushed the electric bell. Philips presently appeared.

"All well?" I asked him.

"Yes, sir. No more trouble. The yacht is still on her course. Doing about nine knots I should judge."

"Heard from Dugan this morning?"

"He isn't doing just what you could call first rate, sir. I think he is delirious. Miss Wallace and Miss Berry are taking care of him by turns."

"And Morgan?"

"Quite all right, sir. Your arm must be stiff. Shall I shave you this morning? I used to be a barber, sir."

"Thanks. If you have time."

Breakfast was served in the English fashion, for it was necessary to keep some one on guard all the time. The Arizonian was making play with a platter of bacon and fried eggs when I joined him.

"How d'ye do? Ready for the round-up again?" he asked cheerfully, with his mouth full.

"My arm's stiff, and when I move there's a pain jumps in it. Otherwise I'm fit as a fiddle. Anything new in the way of trouble?"

"Not a thing. We've arranged a code of signals with our friends at the wheel. You'll find the code pasted up in the saloon. Say, what do you think? That girl slipped out with breakfast for Cap. Blythe and Alderson while I wasn't looking."

"Crossed the deck with it?"

"That's whatever, and sauntered back as cool as you please. Two or three of them were on the forecastle deck, but they didn't lift a hand to hurt her."

I drew a long breath.

"We mustn't let her do it again."

"Not while I'm in the game. She's an ace-high trump just the same. Wonder if she would have any use for a maverick rancher from the alkali country? I got a pretty good outfit in the Flying D."

"Better ask her."

"I'm going to," he answered coolly. "Drift that butter down this way, will you?"

"Where is she now?" I asked.

"Not up yet. She took a two-hour turn watching while we slept. Then she sat by Dugan for a while. You'd ought to have seen her at the piano singing 'My Maryland' and 'Dixie' to us just as if she had starred in a mutiny every week of her life. She was doing it for what they call the moral effect, and it sure did keep up the nerve of the boys. I could see Jimmie and Billie get real gay again. Used to live in Tennessee, you know."

"Jimmie or Billie?" I asked innocently.

"You know who I mean all right, you old son of a gun. Try this bacon. It's the genuine guaranteed article. That Billie boy is some cook. Seems her mother was a Southerner before Wallace married her."

"What was she afterward?"

"My, you're a humorist! Say, do you reckon that little bald spot on the crown of my haid would be objectionable to her? I've never monkeyed with these here hair tonics, but I'd be willing to take a whirl at them."

"Here she comes now. You can ask her."

"Did you sleep well?" the young woman asked, after we had exchanged morning greetings.

"Clear round the clock and then some more. You must have had a fine night's rest yourself from what I hear. On watch till one, and nursing Dugan from one. Wasn't that about it?"

"Not quite. I had three hours' sleep. Is your arm paining you much?"

"Don't waste any sympathy on him, Miss Evelyn," the cowman interrupted. "His arm's just as good as a new wooden one, and his repartee is as sharp as the cutlas that broke the skin on it."

She smiled as she began on her grapefruit. "Are you boys quarreling?"

"He hasn't had time to quarrel. He has been making a dreary waste of what was once a platter of eggs and bacon."

"Now I like that," Tom protested.

"So I judge. Never mind, Miss Wallace. Billie can cook you some more."

"Who is on guard?" Evelyn asked.

"The kid. He's a scout for fair too; imagines he's Apache Jim, the terror of the Navajos, or some other paper-backed hero. I hope his gun won't go off and shoot him up."

We made a lively breakfast of it till Yeager had to leave. You may think it strange that we could laugh and jest on that death ship, but one gets accustomed to the strain and on the reflex from anxiety arrives at a temporary gaiety.

After the cattleman had taken his breezy departure a constraint fell upon us. Evelyn's eyes were shy, and mine not a great deal bolder. Yesterday we could have chatted away with the most delightful freedom; to-day we were confined to the veriest commonplaces.

And all because our eyes had met for one long instant the evening before and hinted at something in the unspoken language of young people the world over.

The arrival of Jimmie Welch with a very robust appetite helped things a good deal, and we were presently ourselves again. After breakfast Miss Wallace went to relieve her aunt at the bedside of the wounded carpenter while I mounted to the bridge to take Blythe's place, Tom doing the same for Alderson.

It struck me as a piece of grim satire that I should be ringing orders down to the men in the engine room with whom a few hours before we had been battling for life, and probably soon would be again.

It was beyond doubt that we would have to measure strength with them a second time. Bothwell would never let us run into port at Panama if he could help it. The men were probably not anxious for another brush after the drubbing they had received, but the situation forced their hands. They must either take the ship or let us give them up to the authorities as mutineers.

My opinion is that if Bothwell had not been recognized by Jimmie he would have waited until we were actually on the treasure ground, and perhaps even until we had lifted it.

From the sounds that came forward to us from the forecastle it was plain that the enemy were drinking pretty steadily. More than once I saw an empty bottle flung through a porthole into the sea. Occasionally some one appeared on the deck aft, and from the drunken shouts bawled up and down the hatchway the condition of the crew could be guessed.

Blythe and I agreed that this probably meant an attack after darkness had fallen. Fortified by the courage which comes from whisky, they would try and slip up on us in the night and win by a surprise.

CHAPTER XVI

THE NIGHT ATTACK

The captain and I were in the wheelhouse when the attack came. It must have been an hour past midnight of a gentle starry night, without the faintest breath of wind in the air. Ever since dark the vibration of the propeller had ceased.

No doubt the charge was intended for a surprise, but we had half a minute of warning. Dimly I could make out figures moving tiptoe at the head of the stairway. Three times I flashed a lantern in signal to our friends. Almost simultaneously came the rush along the deck.

This time they took cover as they advanced, scattering like a covey of young quail. One dropped behind a boat here, another there. Some crouched close to the deckhouse. Bullets sang about our ears from invisible foes.

It looked as if their intention was to pick us off without exposing themselves. The thing could be done too. For a rifle ball would tear through the flimsy woodwork of our shelter as if it had been paper.

"We've got to get out of here," I told my friend.

"Confound it, yes. But where shall we go?"

"What's that? Listen, Sam."

From below and to the left of us there came a sound as of some one moving. We could hear stealthy voices in animated whisper.

"I see their game," Blythe murmured in my ear. "Those fellows on deck are to keep us busy pot-shotting us while the rest climb up from below and close with us when we're not looking."

A bullet zipped through a window and left a little round hole. It must have passed between our heads.

"Hot work," said the Englishman coolly, putting down his rifle and taking up a revolver and a cutlas. "We'd better sally out and have a look at the gentlemen who are climbing up the stanchions. You take that side and I'll take this."

We were not a moment too soon. As I peered over the bridge rail an outstretched hand was reaching for a hold. Instantly it was withdrawn. The moonlight poured like a spotlight on the uplifted face of the sailor Neidlinger. Never have I seen a look more expressive of stupid, baffled surprise. His mouth was open, his eyes popping. But when I made a motion to aim my revolver he slid down the stanchion with a rush, knocking over the fellow supporting him from below.

I paid no more attention to him, for the feet of those who had been shooting at us were already scurrying forward.

"Blythe," I called in warning.

But the captain was engaged with a mutineer who had climbed up in the way Neidlinger had attempted. A second man--and I saw in an instant that it was Caine--was astride the rail on his way to support the first. Half way over he had stopped to take a shot at Sam.

I fired from my hip without waiting to take aim. It was the luckiest shot of my life. The boatswain's shoulders sagged, his fingers relaxed so that the weapon clattered on the floor, and slowly his figure swayed outward. There was no grip to his knees. He toppled overboard, head first. I heard the plop as his body dived into the sea.

Blythe cut down his man at the same instant.

"Back to the wheelhouse," I shouted.

We were barely in time. They came crowding in on us pell-mell. We had already switched off the light. Now the lantern was dashed to pieces by trampling heels.

I was flung back against the wheel and the revolver knocked from my hand. Sinewy fingers gripped my throat and forced me down until I thought my back would break. Close to my ear a gun exploded. The pressure on my jugular relaxed instantly. The body of my opponent sank slowly to the floor and lay there limp.

I took a long breath, leaped across the prostrate figure, and flung myself upon another. We struggled. I became aware that we had the room to ourselves. The others were fighting outside.

The vessel had fallen into the trough of the waves. In one of its lurches the moon flooded the place with light.

"Sam!" I cried, and he "Jack!"

In the darkness we had mistaken each other for the enemy.

Catching up a cutlas I followed him into the open. Our friends had come and gone again. To say that they were going would be more accurate. For they were now in full flight, the pack of wolves in chase.

A few moments earlier and we might have saved the day. Now we could only pursue the pursuers.

Blythe leaped down the steps, revolver in hand. I followed, but my foot caught on a body lying at the foot of the ladder. A hand caught my coat.

"Gimme a lift, partner," asked a voice.

"You, Tom?" I cried, helping him up. "Hurt, are you?"

"Knocked in the head. A bit groggy. That's all."

The delay made me a witness rather than an actor in the dénouement. Our friends had disappeared within the saloon and slammed the door. The foremost mutineer reached it, tried the handle, and threw his weight against the panels. The others came to his assistance. A revolver shot through the door dropped one of them. The others fell back at once.

They met Blythe. A stoker swung a cutlas and rushed for him. Full in the forehead a bullet from the captain's revolver crashed into his brain. Like a football tackler the body plunged forward to Sam's feet.

For a moment nobody moved or spoke. Then,

"My God!" groaned Henry Fleming.

I cannot account for it. These men had been brave enough in the thick of the fight while facing numbers not so very inferior to their own. But now, standing there three to one, it seemed as if some wave of horror sickened them at sight of the lifeless body plunging along the deck.

They stood there with eyes distended, while Blythe, grimly erect, faced them as motionless as a statue.

"Gawd, I've 'ad enough," the cook gasped, and got his fat bulk to the stairway with incredible swiftness.

The others were at his heel, fighting for the first chance down.

A bullet clipped the deck in front of me. I looked up hastily to see Bothwell's malevolent face in the wheelhouse window.

"Turn about, Mr. Sedgwick," he jeered, and let fly again.

Half dragging him with me, I got Yeager into the shadow.

"Got a revolver?" I whispered.

"Yes." He felt for it in the darkness. "Damn! I must 'a dropped it when Bothwell hit me over the coconut."

"Are you good for a run to the saloon? He'll pick us off just as soon as the moon comes out from behind that cloud."

A bullet took a splinter from the rail beside me.

"We'd better toddle," agreed the cattleman. "Go ahead."

I scudded for safety, Yeager at my heels. We reached the door of the saloon just as the captain did.

"Let us in. Captain Blythe and friends," I cried, hammering on a panel.

Some one unlocked the door. It was Dugan.

"You here?" I exclaimed.

"Yes, sir. I heard the shooting and came up just in time to lock the door on Mack. Think I wounded him through the door afterward, sir."

"Any of our men short?" Blythe asked quickly, glancing around with the keen, quiet eye of a soldier.

Alderson spoke up.

"Fleming cut Blue down as we tried to force the steps, sir."

"Killed him, you think?"

"No doubt of it, sir."

"Any more lost?"

We did not notice it till a few minutes later, but little Jimmie Welch was missing. None of us was seriously wounded in the scrimmage, though nearly all had marks to show. Even Philips had a testimonial of valor in the form of a badly swollen eye.

"They've suffered more than we have. Check up, my men. Mack, dead or badly wounded, shot by Dugan. Can you name any, Alderson?"

"Only Sutton, sir, that you killed out here. There was a man lying on the bridge when we got there. Don't know who, sir."

"Tot Dennis," answered Blythe, who had cut him down at the same time when I disposed of the boatswain.

I mentioned Caine.

"Didn't you finish another in the wheelhouse, Jack?"

"I didn't. You did."

The captain shook his head.

"You're wrong about that. Must have been you."

This puzzled me at the time, but we learned later that the man--he turned out to be the stoker Billie Blue had dirked in the first fight--had been killed by an unexpected ally who joined us later.

"Counting Mack, they've lost five to our one," Sam summed up.

"Hope they've got a bellyful by this time," I said bitterly.

"They've won the wheel--for the present. But that's unimportant. Bothwell can't hold it. We'll starve him out. Practically it's our fight."

What our captain said was quite true. Even if Bothwell could have solved the food problem and the question of sleep, he dared not leave his allies too long alone for fear they might make terms and surrender.

For we had beaten them again. They had left now only seven men (not counting Mack), at least two of whom were wounded. This was exactly the same number that we had. Whereas the odds had been against us, now they were very much in our favor when one considered morale and quality.

At Blythe's words we raised a cheer. I have heard heartier ones, for we were pretty badly battered up. But that cheer--so we heard later--put the final touch to the depression of the mutineers.

"Mr. Sedgwick, will you kindly step down-stairs and notify the ladies that the day is ours? Get me some water, Morgan, and I'll take a look at Mr. Yeager's head. Philips, find Jimmie. Alderson, will you keep guard for the present? You'd better get back to bed, Dugan. I want to say that each one of you deserves a medal. If the treasure is ever found I promise, on behalf of Miss Wallace, that every honest man shall share in it."

At this there was a second cheer and we scattered to obey orders.

When I knocked on the door of Miss Wallace's stateroom a shaky voice answered.

"Who is there?"

"It is I--Sedgwick."

The door opened. Evelyn, very pale, was standing before me with a little revolver in her hand. She wore a kind of kimono of some gray stuff, loose about the beautifully modeled throat, in which just now a pulse was beating fast. Sandals were on her feet, and from beneath the gown her toes peeped.

"What is it? Tell me," she breathed in a whisper, her finger on her lips.

I judged that her aunt had slept through the noise of the firing.

"They attacked us on the bridge again. We had the best of it."

"Is anybody--hurt?" she asked tremulously.

"Five of them have been killed or badly wounded. We lost Billie Blue, poor fellow."

"Dead?" her white lips framed.

"I'm afraid so."

"Nobody else?"

I hesitated.

"Little Jimmie is missing. We are afraid----"

Tears filled her eyes and brimmed over.

"Poor Jimmie!"

I'll not swear that the back of my eyes did not scorch with hot tears too. I thought of the likable little Arab, red-headed, freckled and homely, and I blamed myself bitterly that I had ever let him rejoin us at Los Angeles.

"He wouldn't have come if it hadn't been for me. I asked you to let him," the young woman reproached herself.

"It isn't your fault. You meant it for the best."

Of a sudden she turned half from me and leaned against the door-jamb, covering her face with her hands. She was sobbing very softly.

I put my arm across her shoulders and petted her awkwardly. Presently she crowded back the sobs and whispered brokenly, not to me, but as a relief to her surcharged feelings.

"This dreadful ship of death! This dreadful ship! Why did I ever lead true men to their deaths for that wicked treasure?"

I do not know how it happened, but in her wretchedness the girl swayed toward me ever so slightly. My arms went round her protectingly. For an instant her body came to me in sweet surrender, the soft curves of her supple figure relaxed in weariness. Then she pushed me from her gently.

"Not now--not now."

I faced a closed door, but as I went up the companionway with elastic heels my heart sang jubilantly.

CHAPTER XVII

A TASTE OF THE INQUISITION

It could have been no more than five minutes after I left her that Evelyn followed me to the upper deck saloon. Yet in the interval her nimble fingers had found time to garb her in a simple blue princess dress she had found near to her hand.

Without looking at me she went straight to Blythe, who was sponging the wrist of Alderson.

"You'll let me help, won't you?" she asked, with such sweet simplicity that I fell fathoms deeper in love.

"Of course. You're our chief surgeon. Eh, Alderson?"

The sailor grinned. Though he was a little embarrassed he was grateful for the addition to the staff.

After they had finished I brought her water to wash her hands. For the first time since she had entered the room our gaze met.

Braver eyes no woman ever had, but the thick lashes fluttered down now and a wave of pink beat into her cheeks. Moved as she was by a touch of shy confusion, the oval of her face stirred delicately as if with the spirit of fire, she seemed a very blush rose, a creature of so fine a beauty as to stir a momentary fear.

But I knew her to be strong, even if slight, and abrim with health. When she walked away with that supple, feathered tread of hers, so firm and yet so light, the vitality of her physique reasserted itself.

"Some one slipping this way in the shadows, Captain Blythe," spoke up Morgan, who was on guard.

Sam had been reloading his revolver. At once he stepped to the door.

"Who goes there? Hands up! I have you covered. Move forward into the light. Oh, it's you, Smith! What do you want?"

"I've come to give myself up, sir. I'm sick of it. Very likely you won't believe me, sir, but I joined under compulsion to save my life. I didn't dare leave them so long as Captain Bothwell----"

"Mr. Bothwell," corrected Blythe sharply.

"Mr. Bothwell, sir, I meant. He watched me as if I were a prisoner."

"I think I noticed you on my bridge with a revolver in your hand," the Englishman told him dryly.

"Yes, sir. But I fired in the air, except once when I shot the fireman who was killing Mr. Sedgwick over the wheel."

I turned in astonishment to Blythe.

"That explains it. Some one certainly saved me. If you didn't it must have been Smith."

"That's one point to your credit," Blythe admitted. "So now you want to be an honest man?"

"I always have been at heart, sir. I had no chance to come before. They kept me unarmed except during the fighting."

His head bandaged with a blood-soaked bandanna, his face unshaven and bloodstained, Smith was a sorry enough sight. But his eye met the captain's fairly. I don't think it occurred to any of us seriously to doubt him.

Sam laughed grimly.

"You look the worse for the wars, my friend."

Smith put his hand to the bound head and looked at the captain reproachfully.

"Your cutlas did it at the pilot-house, sir."

"You should be more careful of the company you keep, my man."

"Yes, sir. I did try to slip away once, but they brought me back."

"Let me look at your head. Perhaps I can do something for it," Evelyn suggested to the sailor.

While she prepared the dressings I put the question to Smith.

"Jimmie. Oh, yes, sir. He's down in the f'c'sle. Gallagher ran across him and took him down there."

This was good news, the best I had heard since the mutiny began. It seemed that the boy had slipped out to get a shot at the enemy, and that his escape had been cut off by the men returning from the attack.

Judging from what Smith said the men were very down-hearted and in vicious spirits. They were ready to bite at the first hand in reach, after the manner of trapped coyotes.

"How many of them are there?" I asked.

"Let's see. There's the two Flemings, sir, and Gallagher, and the cook, and Neidlinger, and Mack, but he won't last long."

"Do you think they're likely to hurt the boy?"

"Not unless they get to drinking, sir. They want him for a hostage. But there has been a lot of drinking. You can't tell what they will do when they're in liquor."

I came to an impulsive decision. We couldn't leave Jimmie to his fate. The men were ready to give up the fight if the thing could be put to them right. The time to strike was now, in the absence of Bothwell, while they were out of heart at their failure.

Why shouldn't I go down into the forecastle and see what could be done? That there was some danger in it could not be denied, but not nearly so much as if the Russian had been down there.

I was an officer of the ship, and though that would have helped me little if they had been sure of victory it would have a good deal of weight now.

Blythe would, I knew, forbid me to go. Therefore I did not ask him. But I took Yeager aside and told him what I intended.

"I'll likely be back in half an hour, perhaps less. I don't want you to tell Sam unless he has to know. Don't let him risk defeat by attempting a rescue in case I don't show up. Tell him I'm playing off my own bat. That's a bit of English slang he'll understand."

"Say! Let me go too," urged the cattleman, his eyes glistening.

"No. We can't go in force. I'm not even going to take a weapon. That would queer the whole thing. It's purely a moral and not a physical argument I'm making."

He did not want to see it that way, but in the end he grumblingly assented, especially when I put it to him that he must stay and keep an eye on Bothwell.

While Blythe was down in his cabin getting a shave I watched my chance and slipped down to the main deck. Cautiously I ventured into the forecastle, tiptoeing down the ladder without noise.

"Dead as a door nail. That makes seven gone to Davy Jones's locker," I heard a despondent voice say.

"'E could sing a good song, Mack could, and 'e carried 'is liquor like a man, but that didn't 'elp 'im from being shot down like a dog. It'll be that wye with us next."

"Stow that drivel, cookie," growled a voice which I recognized as belonging to the older Fleming. "You're nice, cheerful company for devils down on their luck. Ain't things bad enough without you croaking like a sky pilot?"

"That's wot I say, says I; we'll all croak before this blyme row is over," Higgins prophesied.

I sauntered forward with my hands in my pockets.

"Looks that way, doesn't it? Truth is, you've made a mess of it from first to last. Whichever way you look at it the future is devilishly unpleasant. Even if you live to be hanged--which isn't at all likely--one can't call it a cheerful end."

Conceive, if you can, a more surprised lot of ruffians than these. They leaped to their feet and stared at me in astonishment. I'll swear four revolvers jumped to sight while one could bat an eyelid.

I leaned on the edge of the table and gave them the most care-free grin I could summon. All the time I was wondering whether some fool would perhaps blaze away at me and do his thinking afterward.

"How did you get down here?" the senior engineer demanded.

"Walked down. I'm really surprised at you, Fleming. What would Bothwell think of you? Why, I might have shot half of you before Higgins could say Jack Robinson."

It showed how ripe they were for my purpose that at the mention of Bothwell's name two or three growled curses at him.

"He got us into this, he did; promised us a fortune if we'd join him," Gallagher said sulkily.

"And no blood shed, Mr. Sedgwick. That's wot 'e promised," whined the cook.

"Probably he meant none of ours," I explained ironically.

"He was going to wait till you'd got the treasure and then put you in a boat near the coast," Gallagher added.

Neidlinger spat sulkily at a knot in the floor. His eyes would not meet mine. It was a fair guess that he was no hardened mutineer, but had been caught in a net through lack of moral backbone.

"Afraid Bothwell isn't a very safe man to follow. He's let you be mauled up pretty badly. I've a notion he'll slip away and leave you to be hanged without the comfort of his presence."

"You don't need to rub that in, Mr. Sedgwick," advised George Fleming. "And perhaps, since you're here, you will explain your business."

It must be said for George Fleming that at least he was a hardy villain and no weakling. The men were like weather-vanes. They veered with each wind that blew.

"That's right," chimed in Gallagher. "We didn't ask your company. If we go to hell I shouldn't wonder but you'll travel the road first, sir. Take a hitch and a half turn on this. We're in the same boat, you and us. Now you take an oar and pull us out of the rough water, Mr. Sedgwick."

I laughed.

"Not I, Gallagher. You made your own bed, and I'm hanged if I'll lie in it, though I believe it is bad taste to refer to hanging in this company. I didn't start a little mutiny. I didn't murder as good a mate as any seaman could ask for. It isn't my fault that a round half dozen of you are dead and gone to feed the fishes."

Higgins groaned lugubriously. Neidlinger shifted his feet uneasily. Not one of them but was impressed.

Harry Fleming glanced at his brother, cleared his throat, and spoke up.

"Mr. Sedgwick, spit it out. What have you to offer? Will Captain Blythe let this be a bygone if we return to duty? That's what we want to know. If not, we've got to fight it out. A blind man could see that."

I told them the truth, that I had no authority to speak for Blythe. He would probably think it his duty to give them up to the authorities if they were still on board when we reached Panama.

It was pitiful to see how they clutched at every straw of hope.

"Well, sir, what do you mean by that if? Will he stand back and let us escape?"

"All of you but Bothwell. Mind, I don't promise this. Why not send a deputation to the captain and ask for terms?"

Higgins slapped his fat thigh.

"By crikey, 'e's said it. A delegation to the captain. That's the bloomin' ticket."

Pat to his suggestion came an unexpected and startling answer.

"Fortunately it won't be necessary to send the delegation, since your captain has come down to join you."

The voice was Bothwell's; so, too, were the ironic insolence, the sardonic smile, the air of contemptuous mastery that sat so lightly on him. He might be the greatest scoundrel unhanged--and that was a point upon which I had a decided opinion--but I shall never deny that there was in him the magnetic force which made him a leader of men.

Immediately I recognized defeat for my attempt to end the mutiny at a stroke. His very presence was an inspiration to persistence in evil. For though he had brought them nothing but disaster, the fellow had a way of impressing himself without appearing to care whether he did or not.

The careless contempt of his glance emphasized the difference between him and them. He was their master, though a fortnight before none of them had ever seen Bothwell. They feared and accepted his leadership, even while they distrusted him.

The men seemed visibly to stiffen. Instead of beseeching looks I got threatening ones. Three minutes before I had been dictator; now I was a prisoner, and if I could read signs one in a very serious situation.

"I'm waiting for the deputation," suggested Bothwell, his dark eye passing from one to another and resting on Higgins.

The unfortunate cook began to perspire.

"Just our wye of 'aving a little joke, captain," he protested in a whine.

"You didn't hear aright, Bothwell. A deputation to the captain was mentioned," I told him.

"And I'm captain of this end of the ship, or was at last accounts. Perhaps Mr. Sedgwick has been elected in my absence," he sneered.

"You bet he ain't," growled Gallagher.

"It's a position I should feel obliged to decline. No sinking ship for me, thank you. I've no notion of trying to be a twentieth century Captain Kidd. And, by the way, he was hanged, too, wasn't he, captain?"

"That's a prophecy, I take it. I'll guarantee one thing: You'll not live to see it fulfilled. You've come to the end of the passage, my friend."

"Indeed!"

"But before you pass out I've a word to say to you about that map."

His eye gave a signal. Before I could stir for resistance even if I had been so minded, George Fleming and Gallagher pinned my back to the table. Bothwell stepped forward and looked down at me.

A second time I glimpsed the Slav behind his veneer of civilization. Opaque and cruel eyes peered into mine through lids contracted to slits. Something in me stronger than fear looked back at him steadily.

His voice was so low that none, I think, except me caught the words. In his manner was an extraordinary bitterness.

"You're the rock I've split on from the first. You stole the map from me--and you tried to steal her. By God, I wipe the slate clean now!"

"I've only one thing to say to you. I'd like to see you strung up, you damned villain!" I replied.

"The last time I asked you for that map your friend from Arizona blundered in. He's not here now. I'm going to find out all you know. You think you can defy me. Before I've done with you I'll make you wish you'd never been born. There are easy deaths and hard ones. You shall take your choice."

With that fiend's eyes glittering into mine it was no easy thing to keep from weakening. I confess it, the blood along my spine was beginning to freeze. Fortunately I have a face well under control.

"You have a taste for dramatics, Captain Kidd." I raised my voice so that all might hear plainly. "You threaten to torture me. You forget that this is the year 1913. The inquisition is a memory. You are not in Russia now. American sailors--even mutineers--will draw the line at torture."

His face was hard as hammered iron.

"Don't flatter yourself, Mr. Sedgwick. I'm master here. When I give the word you will suffer."

I turned my head and my eyes fell upon Henry Fleming. He had turned white, shaken to the heart. Beyond him was Neidlinger, and the man was moistening his gray lips with his tongue. The fat cockney looked troubled. Plainly they had no stomach for the horrible work that lay before them if I proved resolute.

To fight for treasure was one thing, and I suppose that even in this they had been led to believe that a mere show of force would be sufficient; to lend their aid to torture an officer of the ship was quite another and a more sinister affair.

The Slav in Bothwell had failed to understand the Anglo-Saxon blood with which he was dealing.

I faced the man with a dry laugh.

"We'll see. Begin, you coward!"

Pinned down to the table as I was, he struck me in the face for that.

"You lose no time in proving my words true," I jeered.

An odd mixture is man. Faith, one might have thought Bothwell impervious to shame, but at my words the fellow flushed. He could not quite forget that he had once been a gentleman.

In the way of business he could torture me, wipe me from his path without a second thought, but on the surface he must live up to the artificial code his training had imposed upon him.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Sedgwick. Were there time I would give you satisfaction for that blow in the customary manner. But time presses. I shall have to ask you instead to accept my apologies. I have the devil of a temper."

"So I judge."

"It flares like powder. But I must not waste your time in explanations." From his vest pocket he drew three little cubes of iron. "You still have time, Mr. Sedgwick. The map!"

I flushed to the roots of my hair.

"Never, you Russian devil!"

He selected the hand pinned down by Fleming, perhaps because he was not sure that he could trust Gallagher. Between my fingers close to the roots he slipped the cubes. His fingers fastened over mine and drew the ends of them together slowly, steadily.

An excruciating pain shot through me. I set my teeth to keep from screaming and closed my eyes to hide the anguish in them.

"You are at liberty to change your mind--and your answer, Mr. Sedgwick," he announced suavely.

"You devil from hell!"

Again I suffered that jagged bolt of pain. It seemed as if my fingers were being rent asunder at the roots. I could not concentrate my attention on anything but the physical agony, yet it seems to me now that Gallagher was muttering a protest across the table.

Bothwell released my hand. I saw a flash of subtle triumph light his eyes.

"A wilful man must have his way, Mr. Sedgwick," he nodded to me, then whispered in the ear of George Fleming, who at once left the room.

They pulled me up from the table and seated me in a chair. Bothwell whistled a bar or two of the sextet from Lucia until he was interrupted by the entrance of the engineer with Jimmie Welch.

In a flash I knew what the man meant to do, and the devilish ingenuity of it appalled me. He had concluded that I was strung up to endure anything he might inflict.

Now he was going to force me to tell what I knew in order to save the boy from the pain I had myself found almost unendurable.

What must I do? I beat my wits for a way out. One glance around the room showed me that the scoundrel's accomplices would not let him go much further.

The weak spot in his leadership was that he did not realize the humanity which still burned in their lost souls. But at what point would they revolt? I could not let little Jimmie go through the pain I had undergone.

The boy gave a sobbing cry of relief when he saw me and tried to break away to my side. He was flung on the table just as I had been. Gallagher looked at me imploringly while Bothwell fitted the cubes.

Neidlinger stole a step nearer. His fingers were working nervously. Harry Fleming had turned away so as not to see what would follow.

"Mr. Sedgwick, what are they going to do with me?" the frightened little fellow called in terror.

Bothwell took the lad's fingers in his. I opened my lips to surrender--and closed them again. Neidlinger had drawn still another step nearer. The big blond Scandinavian had reached his limit.

The Slav gave a slight pressure and Jimmie howled. Crouched like a panther, Neidlinger flung himself upon his chief and bore him back to the wall. Bothwell, past his first surprise, lashed out with a straight left and dropped the man.

Simultaneously Gallagher closed with him, tripping Bothwell so that the two went down hard together. Neidlinger crawled forward on hands and knees to help his partner.

Shaking off the grip of the irresolute men holding me, I was in time to seize George Fleming, who had run forward to aid the captain.

From the hatchway a crisp order rang out.

"Back there, Fleming!"

I turned. Blythe and Yeager were standing near the foot of the ladder; behind them Alderson, Smith, Morgan, and Philips. All six were armed. Their weapons covered the mutineers.

"Gallagher--Neidlinger, don't release that man. You are prisoners--all of you," Sam announced curtly.

Taken by surprise, the two sailors had ceased to struggle with Bothwell. I could see the master villain's hand slip to the butt of his revolver.

My foot came down heavily on his wrist and the fingers fell limp. A moment, and the revolver was in my hand.

Bothwell was handcuffed and disarmed before the eyes of his followers, who in turn had to endure the same ignominy.

The mutiny on the Argos was quelled at last.

CHAPTER XVIII

ANCHORED HEARTS

Our rescue had been due to the vigilance of Tom Yeager. He had seen Bothwell slip down from the bridge and follow me to the forecastle.

The first impulse of the Arizonian had been to step out and end the campaign by a fighting finish with the Slav. But second thoughts brought wiser counsels. Blythe, called hurriedly upstairs, had agreed to his proposal to try and determine the mutiny at a stroke.

To both of them it had been clear that Bothwell surrendered the bridge because he was afraid to let me have a talk with the men alone. That my life was in great danger neither doubted.

Swiftly the men had been gathered for the sortie into the forecastle, Evelyn having volunteered to take the wheel until relieved. The success of the plan had been beyond the expectations of any.

Bothwell was the first of the prisoners to speak.

"Let me offer my congratulations, Captain Blythe," he said with suave irony.

The lean, brown face of the Englishman expressed quiet scorn.

"Not necessary at all. It is the only result I have considered from the first. One doesn't expect to be driven from his ship by wharf rats, no matter how numerous they may be."

Bothwell laughed, debonair as ever.

"True enough, captain. My scoundrels made an awful botch of it. They played a good hand devilish badly or we should have won out."

"The devil you would! We beat you from first to last at odds against of two to one nearly. I reckon, Mr. Pirate, you undertook too big a round-up," grinned the cattleman.

"Fortunately there is always a to-morrow," retorted Bothwell with a bow.

"Sometimes it's mortgaged to Jack Ketch."

"I'll wager he doesn't foreclose, Mr. Yeager," answered Boris with a lip smile.

Blythe cut short the repartee.

"We'll put this man in a stateroom and lock him up, Sedgwick. The rest will stay here guarded by Alderson. If one of them makes a suspicious move, shoot him down like a mad dog. Understand, my man?"

"Yes, sir. I'll see they make no trouble," Alderson answered resolutely.

I made a suggestion to our captain. After a moment's consideration he accepted it.

"Very good, Mr. Sedgwick. Have Gallagher, Neidlinger, and Higgins freed. See that they clean the ship up till she is fresh as paint."

The first thing we did was to gather the bodies of the poor fellows who had fallen in the struggles for the ship. Blythe read the burial service before we sank the weighted corpses into the sea.

Under my direction the men then swabbed the decks, washed the woodwork, and scoured the copper plates until they shone.

It was not until luncheon that I found time for more than a word with Evelyn. None of us, I suppose, had suffered more than she and Miss Berry, but they made it their business to help us forget the nightmare through which we had lately passed.

I remember that Miss Wallace looked round from a gay little sally at Jimmie with a smile in her eyes. I was reaching for some fruit when her glance fell upon my hand.

"What's the matter with your fingers?" she asked quickly.

I withdrew my hand promptly. The flesh was swollen and discolored from the attentions of Boris Bothwell.

"I had a little accident--nothing of importance," was my inadequate answer.

Her gaze circled the table, passed from Sam's face to that of Jimmie and from Jimmie to Higgins, who was waiting on us. She must have read a confirmation of her intuition of a secret, for she dropped the subject at once.

"Jack crushed his hand against a piece of iron," explained the captain.

At which Miss Evelyn murmured. "Oh!" and inquired how long it would probably be before we reached the Bay of Panama.

"Using only our canvas we may reach there to-morrow night, and we may not. We can't make very good time till we start the engines again," Blythe said.

"And when are you going to start them?" Miss Berry asked.

"Don't quite know. I'm shy of engineers. The only ones I have are on a vacation," Sam answered with a smile.

They were not to enjoy one very long, however. About sunset the Argos began to rock gently on a sea no longer glassy.

"Cap says we're going to have trouble," Yeager informed me. "When you get this sultry smell in the air and that queer look in the sky there is going to be something doing. She's going to begin to buck for fair."

I noticed that Blythe was taking in sail and that the wind was rising.

"Knock the irons off the Flemings and send Gallagher down into the engine room to stoke for them. We'll need more hands. This thing is going to hit us like a wall of wind soon," he told me.

When I returned from the forecastle the sea had risen. As I was standing on the bridge a voice called my name. I looked down to see Evelyn on the promenade deck in a long, close-fitting waterproof coat, her hair flying a little wildly in the breeze. In the face upturned to mine was a very vivid interest.

"We're in for it. There's going to be a real squall," she cried delightedly.

I stepped down and tucked her arm under mine, for the deck was already tipping in the heavy run of seas.

Most of our canvas was in, and the booming wind was humming through the rest with growing power. The Argos put her nose into the whitecaps and ran like a racer, for the engines were shaking the yacht as she plowed forward.

The young woman turned to me an eager, mobile face into which the wind had whipped a rich color.

"What would you take to be somewhere else? Back in your stuffy old law office, say?"

The lurch of the staggering yacht threw her forward so that the lithe, supple body leaned against me and the breath of the dimpling lips was in my nostrils.

Just an instant she lay there, with that smile of warm eyes and rose-leaf mouth to tantalize me, before she recovered and drew back.

"Not for a thousand dollars a minute," I answered, a trumpet peal of indomitable happiness ringing in my heart.

From the wheelhouse Blythe shouted a warning to be careful. His voice scarcely reached us through the singing of the wind. I nodded and took hold of the little hand that lay close to mine.

"You must be a rich man to value the pleasure of the hour so highly," she answered lightly, with a look quick and questioning at me.

The squall that had flung itself across the waters hit us in earnest now. We went down into the yawning troughs before us with drunken plunges and climbed the glassy hills beyond to be ready for another dive.

"The richest man alive if last night was not a dream."

Our fingers interlaced, palms kissing each other.

"Does it seem to you a dream?" she asked, deep in a valley of the seas.

From the top of the next comber I answered:

"It did until you joined me here, but now I know you belong to me forever, both in the land of dreams and waking."

"Did the storm teach you that?"

I looked out at the flying scud and back at the storm-bewitched girl with laughter rippling from her throat and the wild joy of a rare moment in her eyes.

"Yes, the storm. It brought you to my arms and your heart to mine."

"I think it did, Jack; the wee corner of it that was not yours already."

Her shy eyes fell and I drew her close to me. In the dusk that had fallen like a cloak over the ship her lips met mine with the sweetest surrender in the world.

So in the clamorous storm our hearts found safe anchorage.

CHAPTER XIX

SENSE AND NONSENSE

The squall passed as suddenly as it had swept upon us, and left in its wake a night of stars and moonbeat.

Apparently there was no question of returning the mutineers to the irons from which we had freed them. Alderson, Smith, Neidlinger, and Higgins were grouped together on the forecastle deck in amiable chat.

Blythe was still at the wheel, and our cheerful friend from the cattle country at the piano bawling out the identical chorus I had interrupted so ruthlessly just before the first blow of the mutiny was struck.

He was lustily singing as Evelyn and I trod the deck.

"Tom sings as if with conviction. I hope it may not be deep-rooted," I laughed.

"If you mean me----"

"I don't mean Miss Berry."

To my surprise she took the words seriously.

"It isn't so, Jack. Say it isn't so."

"Does that mean that it is?" I asked.

"No-o. Only I can't bear to think that our happiness will make anybody else unhappy."

"It doesn't appear to be making him unhappy."

"But he doesn't know--yet."

"Then he's really serious? I wasn't quite sure."

She sighed.

"I wish he wasn't. How girls can like to make men fall in love with them I can't conceive. He's such a splendid fellow, too."

"He's a man, every inch of him," I offered by way of comfort. "It won't hurt him to love a good woman even if he doesn't win her. He'll recover, but it will do him a lot of good first."

"Would you feel so complacent if it were you?" she asked slyly, with a flash of merry eyes.

We happened to be in the shadow of the smokestack. After the interlude I expounded my philosophy more at length.

"He's young yet--at least his heart is. A man has to love a nice girl or two before he is educated to know the right one when he meets her. I don't pity Yeager--not a great deal, anyhow. It's life, you know," I concluded cheerfully.

"Oh, I see. A man has to love a nice girl or two as an educative process." Her voice trailed into the rising inflection of a question. "Then the right girl ought to thank me for helping to prepare Mr. Yeager for her--if I am."

"That's a point of view worth considering," I assented.

"But I suppose she will never even know my name," she mused.

"Most likely not," was my complacent answer.

Whereupon she let me have her thrust with a little purr of amusement in her voice.

"Any more than I shall know what nice girls prepared you for me."

"Touché," I conceded with a laugh. "I didn't know you were the kind of young woman that lays traps for a fellow to tumble into."

"And I didn't know you were a war-worn veteran toughened by previous campaigns," she countered gaily. "You've been very liberally educated, didn't you say?"

"No, I didn't say. This is how I put it to myself: A boy owes something to the nice girls all about him. One would not like to think, for instance, that the youths of Tennessee had been so insensible as never to have felt a flutter when your long lashes drifted their way," I diplomatically suggested.

"How nicely you wrap it up," she said with her low, soft laugh. "And must my heart have fluttered, too, for them? Unless it has, I won't be properly educated for you, shall I?"

"Ah, that's the difference. You are born perfect lovers, but we have to acquire excellence through experience."

"Oh!"

An interjection can sometimes express more than words. My sweetheart's left me wondering just what she meant. There was amusement in it, but there was, too, a demure suppression to which I had not the key.

She, too, I judged, had known a few love episodes in her life. Perhaps she had been engaged before, as is sometimes the custom among Southern girls. The thought gave me a queer little stab of pain.

Yeager came out of the deck pavilion as we passed.

"I say, let's have some music, good people."

I looked at my watch.

"My turn at the wheel. Maybe Blythe will join you."

He did. From the pilot-house I could hear his clear tenor and Evelyn's sweet soprano filling the night with music. Presently they drifted into patriotic songs, in which Tom came out strong if not melodious. But when the piano sounded the notes of "Dixie" Evelyn's voice rose alone, clear and full-throated as that of a lark.

After being relieved by Alderson I turned in and slept round the clock. The tune of drumming engines was in my ears when I woke.

"Sam is making her walk," I thought, and when I reached the deck I learned that we had entered the Gulf of Panama. A long, low line showed dimly in the foggy distance to the left. We were running parallel with it, Prieto Point directly in front of us.

With the exception of the older Fleming, who had been transferred to the same cabin as Bothwell, all the crew were at work. Only the true men, however, were armed. From the looks cast by the former mutineers toward the blurred shore line it was plain that they looked forward to Panama with anxiety.

In the canal zone, with the flag of the United States flying to the breeze, the law would give them short shrift. We observed that whenever their duties permitted it, they drew uneasily together in earnest talk.

Blythe smiled grimly.

"Our friends don't like the wages of sin, now that pay day is at hand. I'll give you two to one, Jack, that before an hour is up you'll see a delegation to the captain."

He was right. As Sam stepped down from the bridge, having turned the wheel over to Alderson, he was approached timidly by Neidlinger and Gallagher. Higgins, in partial payment for his share in the revolt, was taking a turn at shoveling coal in the stifling furnace room.

Gallagher touched his hat humbly.

"We'd like a word with you, Captain Blythe."

"I thought Bothwell was your captain?"

The sailor flushed.

"No, sir. We're through with him."

"Now that he's a prisoner?" suggested Sam.

"We wish we'd never let him bamboozle us, sir. It would 'a' been a sight better for a lot of poor fellows if we'd never seen him. That man's a devil, sir."

"Indeed!"

As he stood there, a lean brown man straight as a ramrod, efficient to the last inch of him, it struck me that the mutineers would get justice rather than mercy from our captain.

The sailor moistened his dry lips and went on.

"Captain Blythe, we--we're sorry we let ourselves be led into--into----"

Gallagher stumbled for a word. Sam supplied it quietly:

"Mutiny."

"Yes, sir; if you want to put it that way, sir."

"How else can I put it?"

"We were led astray by that man Bothwell, sir. He promised there would be no bloodshed. We're sorry, sir."

"I don't doubt it," the Englishman assented dryly.

"Begging your pardon, sir, we asks to be taken back and punished by you. Whatever you give us we'll take and not a word out of our heads. Say a flogging and we'll thank you kindly, sir. But don't turn us over to the law."

"Didn't I tell you what would come of it, Gallagher?"

"Yes, sir; you warned us straight. But that man Bothwell had us bewitched."

"If you're taken ashore at Panama you'll be hanged."

"We know that, sir."

Blythe considered for a minute and announced his decision sharply.

"I'll give you another chance--you two and Higgins and young Fleming. I'll not let you off scot-free, but your punishment will depend on how faithful you are for the rest of the cruise."

Once I saw a man acquitted of murder in a courtroom. The verdict was such a relief that he fainted. The captain's unexpected clemency took these men the same way, for virtually he had untied the noose from their necks. Tears started to their eyes. Plainly they were shaken with emotion.

"You'll not regret it, sir. We'll be true to the death, Captain Blythe," the Irishman promised, his white lips trembling.

After Alderson's turn at the wheel came mine. Evelyn presently joined me in the pilot-house.

"When shall we get ashore?" she asked me.

We were at the time, I remember, passing Taboga Island.

"Not till morning. We'll have to be inspected. To-night we'll lie in the harbor."

"How is your hand?" she asked, glancing at my bruised fingers.

I flashed a look quickly at her.

"My hand! Oh, it's all right now."

"Jimmie's is better, too," she said quietly.

In the language of my boyhood I was up a stump. So I played for time.

"Jimmie's?"

"Yes. I have been taking care of it for him. His fingers were not bruised much, though. It's odd, isn't it, that both of you were hurt in exactly the same place--by accident?"

I murmured that it was strange.

"So I had a little talk with him," she went on quietly.

"Yes?"

"And he told me all about it. Oh, Jack, I didn't think even Boris would do a thing like that!" She looked up at me with bright, misty eyes. "I asked Gallagher and Neidlinger about it. They both told me how brave you were."

"I'm grateful for their certificate of valor," I answered lightly.

Before I knew what she was at my sweetheart had stooped to kiss the bruises above my knuckles. I snatched my hand away.

"Don't do that," I said gruffly. "It isn't exactly--you know--right."

"Why not?" She looked at me with head flung back in characteristic fashion. "Why not? They suffered for us, the poor, bruised fingers. Why shouldn't I honor them with my poor best?"

"Oh, well!" I shrugged, embarrassed by her shining ardor, even though in my heart it pleased me.

She came close to me.

"I love you better every day, Jack. You're splendid. Life is going to be a great, big thing for me with you."

"Even though we don't find the treasure?" I asked, thrilling with the joy of her confession.

"We've found the treasure," she whispered. "I don't give that"--she snapped her fingers with a gesture of scorn--"for all the gold that was ever buried compared to you, laddie. I just spend my time thanking God for you with all my heart."

"But you mustn't idealize me. I'm full of faults."

"Don't I know it? Don't I love your faults, too, you goose? Who wants a perfect man?"

"I know, I know."

The wheel was getting very little attention, for my darling was in my arms and I was kissing softly her tumbled hair and the shadows under her glorious eyes.

"Love is like that. It doesn't want perfection. I care more for you because you're always wanting your own way. The tiny, powdered freckles on the side of your nose are beauty marks to me."

"You are a goose," she laughed. "But it's true. I've seen lots of handsomer men than you--Boris, for example; but I've never seen one so good looking."

"And that's just nonsense," I told her blithely.

"Of course it's nonsense. But there is no sense so true as nonsense."

I dare say we babbled foolishly the inarticulate rhapsody all lovers find so expressive.

CHAPTER XX

THE BIG DITCH

Darkness had fallen before we dropped anchor in the harbor of Panama. It was such a night as only the tropics can produce, the stars burning close and brilliant, the full moon rising out of a silent sea. In front of us the lights of the city came twinkling out. Behind them lay the mystery of conquest.

No spot in all the western hemisphere held so much of romance as this. Drake and Pizarro had tarried here in their blustering careers, Morgan had captured and burned the city.

Many times in the past centuries the Isthmus had been won and lost, but never had such a victory been gained as that our countrymen had secured in the past half dozen years.

They had overcome yellow fever and proved that the tropics might be made a safe place for the Anglo-Saxon to live. They had driven a sword through the backbone of the continent and had built a canal through which great liners could climb up and down stairs from one ocean to another.

The dream of the centuries had become a reality through the skill and resolution with which the sons of Uncle Sam had tackled the big ditch.

It may be guessed how anxious all of us were to get ashore. There was little sleep aboard the Argos that night. It was long past midnight before any of us left the deck.

The truth is that the yacht had become a prison to us just as it had to Bothwell. The thought of a few days on land, where we need not watch every moment to keep our throats from being slit, was an enormous relief.

But Blythe was taking no chances with the vessel. It had been decided among us that either he, Yeager, or I should remain in charge of the Argos every minute of our stay.

I had volunteered for the first day and Yeager was to relieve me on the second.

All three of us were firmly resolved, though we had not yet broached the subject to Evelyn, that the ladies should remain in the canal zone while we continued down the coast to lift the treasure.

Before Bothwell was taken ashore he had the effrontery to ask for a talk with his cousin. Blythe did not even submit his request to her. Fleming and he were removed from the vessel while the ladies were eating breakfast with Yeager, so that they did not even know until afterward that the men had been turned over to the authorities.

None of the reconstructed mutineers asked for shore leave. Each of them knew that if he left the ship he would be liable to arrest for a capital offense and preferred to take his chance of any punishment the captain might inflict.

The day was an endless one, but it wore away at last. The cattleman was to relieve me at breakfast time. I was up with the summer sun and had bathed, shaved, and eaten long before the city showed any sign of activity around the harbor.

"You'll like Panama," Yeager assured me after he had clambered aboard. "It's a city of madmen, plumb daffy about the big ditch. The men can't talk anything but cuts, dams, cubic feet, steam plows, and earth slides. But, by Moses, when I see what they've done it makes me glad I'm an American. Everything is the biggest in the world--the dam, the locks, the cuts, the lake, the machinery, the whole blessed works. They've set a new mark for the rest of the earth."

"What is Sam doing about getting a crew in place of our precious mutineers?" I asked.

"He's picked up several fellows already. A Yankee named Stubbs is chief engineer. Sam is shipping Jamaica niggers for firemen."

No schoolboy out for a holiday could have been half so keen to be free as I was. At the wharf I picked up a coche and was driven to the Tivoli, the hotel in the American quarter where our party was staying.

The mud and the mosquitoes of former years were gone, though the natives were as indolent as ever. It is a town of color, due largely to the assorted population. I was told by a young engineer from Gatun that forty languages are spoken on the Isthmus at present, a condition due to the number of Caribbean islanders employed by our government.

I found that the program for the day included a trip to Colon on the Isthmus railroad. Miss Berry preferred to rest quietly at the hotel, so her niece, Sam, and I set out to see the great canal.

As I look back on it now Panama means to me a series of panoramic pictures. To give more than a cursory description of our impressions is impossible. The fact is that one obliterated another so swiftly as to leave a sense only of confusion.

Take Culebra Cut, for instance, where the monsters of man's invention are biting into the mountain sides, ripping down with giant jaws loose dirt, and hauling it away on a maze of tracks.

Great hoses, under tremendous pressure, are tearing at hills and washing them down. All the time there is a deafening noise, the crash of the continent's spine being rent by dynamite, the roar of trains, the shrieks of dirt shovels blowing off steam, the stab and hammer of drills.

Man is making war on nature with amazing energy on a titanic scale. The disorder seemed hopeless, but one realized that these little figures moving about it in the man-made cañon were achieving the seemingly impossible none the less.

"Isn't it wonderful?" Evelyn asked for the tenth time, as we looked down on a machine which had just seized a section of track and hoisted it up, rails and ties complete, to swing it over to another place.

I quoted to her Damon Runyon's verses:

We are ants upon a mountain, but we're leavin' of our dent, An' our teeth-marks bitin' scenery they will show the way we went; We're a liftin' half-creation, and we're changin' it around, Just to suit our playful purpose when we're diggin' in the ground.

"You Americans take the cake," Blythe admitted. "You never tire of doing big things."

His eyes had come back to a group of young engineers who had just entered the car. The grimy sweat had dried on their sooty faces and their hands were black and greasy. They wore no coats and their shirts, wet from the perspiration drawn by the hot Panama sun, stuck to the muscular shoulders.

They looked like tramps from their attire, but Olympians could not have carried in their manner a blither confidence. These boys--I'll swear the oldest could have been no more than twenty-five--had undertaken to cut asunder what God has joined.

It did not matter to them in the least that they looked like coal miners. The only thing of importance was the work, the big ditch. Yet I knew that these were just such splendid fellows as our technical schools are turning out by thousands.

A few years before their thoughts had been full of cotillions and girls and the junior prom. The Isthmus had laid hold of them and hardened their muscles and bronzed their faces and given them a toughness of fiber that would last a lifetime.

They had taken on responsibility as if they had been born to it. A glow of pride in them flushed me. I was proud of the country that could fling out by hundreds of thousands such young fellows as these.

Empire, Gorgona, Gatun. From one to another we were hurried, passing through jungles such as we of the North never dream exist. In that humid climate vegetation is prodigal beyond belief, gorgeous with spattered greens and yellows and crimsons bizarre enough to take the breath.

We ate luncheon at Colon and were back across the Isthmus at Panama a few hours later. After dinner we strolled around the city and saw the Parque de la Catedral, the Plaza Santa Ana, and the old sea wall.

It did my heart good to see broad-shouldered, alert young Americans walking with wholesome girls from home and making love to them in the same fashion their friends were doing up in "God's country."

Bothwell and his bunch of pirates began to lose themselves in the background of my mind. There was a dance at the hotel that evening. Before I had waltzed twice with Evelyn her buccaneer cousin had dissolved into a myth.

When Yeager came ashore next morning he brought a piece of news. Henry Fleming had taken a boat during the night and escaped.

"If I run across him I'll curl his hair for him," Tom promised with a look that made me think he would keep his word.

But I was not sorry Fleming had taken French leave. Neidlinger could be trusted now, and neither Higgins nor Gallagher would go far astray without a leader.

But both the engineers had known of Bothwell's plans from the first. If I could have foreseen what effect the desertion of our second engineer was to have upon the expedition I would not have taken his disappearance so easily.

Our stay on the canal zone was a delightful one, though we were busy every minute of the time enjoying ourselves or making preparations for departure. With some difficulty Blythe picked up two engineers and a couple of firemen from Barbados and Jamaica, the latter of whom were natives. Philips was to stay at Panama until our return.

I had my share of duty aboard the Argos to do, but every minute that was my own I spent in the old city or on the works.

Evelyn surprised us by making no objection to our decree that she should remain at Panama while we took the Argos down to San Miguel Bay to lift the doubloons. In spite of her courage she was a woman. She confessed to me that she had seen bloodshed enough on the way down from California to last her a lifetime. The thought of returning so soon to the yacht had been a dreadful one to her.

On the afternoon of our last day at Panama, Evelyn and I went out to the old sea wall for an hour together. The tide was in and from the parapet we watched the waves beat against the foot of the wall.

Away to our right was Balboa, above which rested a smoke pall from tugs, dredges, and tramp west coasters. Taboga we could just make out, and closer in a group of smaller islands the names of which I have forgotten. Beyond them all stretched the endless Pacific.

Evelyn was quieter than usual, but I had never seen her look so lovely. The poise of my dear girl's burnished head, the untutored grace of her delicate youth, the gleam of tears behind the tremulous smile, all made mighty appeal to me.

"I'm afraid for you, Jack. That's the truth of it. We've just found each other--after all these years. I don't want to run the risk of losing you again." Ever so slightly her voice broke.

"You'll not lose me. Do you think anything could keep me away--with the sweetest girl in the world waiting for me here?"

"I know," she smiled, a little drearily. "It sounds foolish, but I think of that dreadful man."

We had been following the cement promenade on top of the wall. I led her across it to the landward side, from which we could look down into the yard of a prison. Under the eyes of an armed guard some prisoners were crossing to their cells. Two of them were in stripes, the third was not.

"Look," I told her. "Bothwell is down there, locked up and guarded. He can't escape."

The little group below came closer. I had noticed that the prisoner not in uniform was a white man and not a native. He carried himself with a distinction one could not miss. Even before he looked up both of us knew the man was Boris Bothwell.

He stopped in his tracks, white-lipped, a devil of hatred and rage burning out of his deep-set eyes. A dullard could not have missed his thoughts. He was a prisoner in this vile hole, while I had brought the woman he loved to mock at him. The girl and the treasure would both be mine. Before him lay no hope.

I felt a sense of shame at being an unexpected witness of his degradation. As I started to draw Evelyn back a guard prodded the Slav with his bayonet point. Bothwell whirled like a tiger and sprang for the throat of the fellow. They went down together. Other guards rushed to the rescue of their companion.

We waited to see no more.

It must have been a minute before either of us spoke.

"Bad as he is, I can't help being sorry for him. It's as if a splendid lion were being worried to death by a pack of coyotes," Evelyn said with a shudder.

"Yes, there's something big even in his villainy. But you may take one bit of comfort: He can't get free to interfere with us--and he deserves all he'll get."

"I know. My reason tells me that all will be well now, but I have a feeling as if the worst were not yet over."

I tried to joke her out of it.

"It hasn't begun. You're not married to Jack Sedgwick yet."

"No; but, dear, I can't get away from the thought that you are going into danger again," she went on seriously.

"Tis dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink," I quoted lightly.

"I dare say I'm a goose," she admitted.

"You are. My opinion is that you're in as much danger as we shall be."

"Is that why you are leaving me here?" she flashed back.

I laughed. In truth I did not quite believe what I had said. For I could see no danger at all that lay in wait for her. But the events proved that I had erred only in not putting the case strongly enough. Before we returned to civilization she was to be in deadly peril.

CHAPTER XXI

A MESSAGE FROM BUCKS

In the forenoon we drew out from the harbor and followed the shore line toward the southwest, bound for that neck of the Isthmus which is known loosely as The Darien.

Before night had fallen we were rounding Brava Point into the Gulf of San Miguel, so named by Balboa because it was upon St. Michael's Day, 1513, that his eyes here first fell upon the blue waters of the Pacific.

We followed the north shore, along precipitous banks that grew higher the farther inland we went. The dense jungle came down to the water's edge and was unbroken by any sign of human habitation.

In the brilliant moonlight we passed the South and the North bays, pushing straight into the Darien Harbor by way of the Boco Chico. The tides here have a rise and fall of nearly twenty feet, but we found a little inlet close to a mangrove swamp that offered a good harborage for the night.

The warm sun was pouring over the hill when I reached the deck next morning. We were steaming slowly past the village of La Palma along a precipitous shore heavily timbered. One could not have asked a pleasanter trip than that to the head of the harbor, at which point the Rio Tuyra pours its waters into the bay. Between La Palma and the river mouth we did not see a sign of human life.

At the distance of a rifle shot from the head of the harbor we rounded a point and saw before us a long tongue of sand running into the water.

Blythe and I spoke almost together:

"Doubloon Spit."

There could be no mistake about it. We had reached the place where Bully Evans and Nat Quinn had buried the gold ingots they had sold their souls to get. We came to anchor a couple of hundred yards from the end of the sand spit.

Neither Blythe nor I had said a word to any of the crew to indicate that we were near our journey's end, but all morning there had been an unusual excitement aboard. Now we could almost see the word run from man to man that the spot where the treasure was buried lay before us.

"You'll command the shore party to-day, Jack," Blythe announced.

"Do I draw shore duty?" Yeager asked eagerly.

"You do. I'll stay with the ship. Jack, you'll have with you, too, Alderson, Smith, Gallagher, and one of the stokers."

"Also James A. Garfield Welch," I added.

"Also Jimmie," he nodded.

We had no reason to expect any trouble, but we went ashore armed, with the exception of Gallagher and Barbados, as we called our white-toothed, black-faced fireman.

I had our boat beached at the neck of the peninsula. While the men were drawing it up on the sand beyond reach of the tide I called to Jimmie.

"Yes, Mr. Sedgwick."

"Take off your coat."

"Are youse going to give me that licking now?" he asked, eyes big with surprise.

"How often have I told you not to ask questions? Shuck the coat."

He twisted out of it like an eel. I took it from him, turned it inside out, and opened my pocket knife. Carefully I ripped the lining at the seams. From a kind of pocket I drew an envelope. Out of the envelope I took the map that had been so closely connected with the history of Doubloon Spit.

When I say the men were surprised, I do them less than justice. One could have knocked their eyes off with a stick.

"Crikey! I didn't know that was there," Jimmie cried.

It had been Evelyn's idea to sew the map in Jimmie's coat, since that was the last place the mutineers would think of looking for it. While he had been peacefully sleeping Miss Wallace had done so neat a piece of tailoring that Jimmie did not suspect the garment had been tampered with.

We had, however, taken the precaution to take a copy of the map. During all the desperate fighting it had been lying in a shell snugly fitted into one of the chambers of a revolver in Yeager's room.

"Beg pardon, sir. Did the boy have the map with him while he was Mr. Bothwell's prisoner?" asked Gallagher.

"He did; but he didn't know it."

"Glad he didn't, sir, because if he had that devil would have got it out of him."

"Which no doubt would have distressed you greatly," I answered dryly.

"I'm on the honest side now, sir," the sailor said quietly.

"Let's hope you stay there."

"I intend to, sir," he said, flushing at my words.

[Illustration: "CRIKEY! I DIDN'T KNOW THAT WAS THERE," JIMMIE CRIED. p. 240]

The chart that Tom and I looked at was a contour map of the spit and the territory adjacent to it. No doubt it had in the old days been roughly accurate, but now the tongue of sand was wider than it had been by nearly a hundred years of sand deposits washed up by the tide.

Both on the map and the spit a salient feature was the grove of palms that stood on the hill just beyond the neck of the peninsula. Here plainly was the starting point of our quest. With Yeager I led the way to the clump, followed by my men carrying spades and shovels.

"Ye Grove" the clump of palms was labeled, and the great drooping tree to one side some fifty yards farther down the hill must be "Ye Umbrela Tree."

Beneath the map were the directions for finding the treasure, written in the angular hand of Nat Quinn. In order that you may understand I give these just as he had written them.

HOW TO FIND ITTE:

From inlet nearest shore go 200 paces to summit where Grove is. From most eastern palm measure 12 steps to Ye Umbrela Tree and seven beyond. Take a Be line from here thirty paces throu ye Forked Tree. Here cut a Rite Anggel N. N. E. till Tong of Spit is lost. Cast three long steps Souwest to Big Rock and dig on landward side.

(Sined)

Bully Evans X (His Mark) Nat Quinn

While I had been poring over this map and the directions with it in my office at San Francisco it had seemed an easy thing to follow them, but in this dense, tropical jungle I found it quite another matter.

The vegetation and the underbrush were so rank that one found himself buried before he had gone three steps in them.

No doubt at the time when the survivors of the Mary Ann of Bristol had cached their ill-gotten doubloons a recent fire had swept this point of land so that they had found no difficulty in traversing it, but now the jungle was so thick and matted that I decided to begin by cutting roads to the palm grove and the umbrella tree.

From the yacht I got hatchets and machetes and we set to work. Before night we all had a tremendous respect for the power of resistance offered by a Panama jungle. We might almost as well have hacked at rubber.

There was none of that sturdy solidity of our northern woods. The jungle yields to every blow and springs back into place with a persistence that seems devilish. By nightfall we had made so little progress that I was discouraged.

To our right there was a mangrove swamp. As we passed its edge on the way back to the boat our eyes beheld thousands upon thousands of birds coming there to roost for the night. Among them were many aigrette herons, white as the driven snow. I think I have never seen a bird so striking as this one.

Blythe, with Neidlinger, Higgins, our engineers, and the other fireman, took the second day on shore. Morgan was doing the cooking, and so was exempt from service. Dugan, still weak from his wound, was helping in the galley as best as he could.

All through the third day it rained hard, but on the fourth I and my detail were back on the job. We were making progress. By this time a path had been cut through to the palm grove and from it to the umbrella tree.

It was clear that a century ago the line of palms must have stretched farther down the hill, for now the nearest was at least fifty yards from the umbrella tree, instead of twelve as mentioned in the directions.

The only alternative to this was that the original umbrella tree had disappeared, and this I did not want to believe. At best one of the landmarks had gone.

We could go seven paces beyond the big tree, but "beyond" is a vague word, the point from which the measurement began having vanished.

Moreover, we encountered here another difficulty.

"Take a Be line from here thirty paces throu ye Forked Tree," we read on the chart, but the forked tree had apparently fallen and rotted long since. There were trees in the jungle, to be sure, but none of them were of sufficient age to have been in existence then.

The best I could do was to guess at the point seven paces beyond the umbrella tree and, using it as a center, draw a circle around it at thirty paces. Our machetes hacked a trail, and at one point of it we crossed the stump of a tree that had been in its day of some size.

The stump had rotted so that one could kick it to pieces with the heel of a boot. This might or might not be the remains of the forked tree, but since we were working on a chance, this struck us as a good one to try.

It was impossible to tell where the fork had been, but we made a guess at it and proceeded to follow directions.

"Here cut a Rite Anggel N. N. E. till Tong of Spit is lost."

This at least was specific and definite. North northeast we went by the compass, slashing our way through the heavy vines and shrubbery inch by inch. We dipped over a hillock and came out of the jungle into the sand before the end of the spit was hidden by higher ground.

"Cast three long steps Souwest to Big Rock and dig on landward side."

Three steps to the southwest brought me deeper into the sand. There was no big rock in sight.

I looked at Tom. He laughed, as he had a habit of doing when in a difficulty.

"I guess we'll have to try again, Jack."

Gallagher broke in, touching his hat in apology:

"Not meaning to butt in, Mr. Sedgwick, but mightn't the rock be covered with sand? Give a hundred years and a heap of sand would wash into this cove here."

"There's sense in that. Anyhow, we'll try out your theory, Gallagher."

I marked a space about twelve by twelve upon which to begin operations. It took us an hour and a half to satisfy ourselves that nothing was hidden there.

I marked a second square, a third, and finally a fourth. Dusk fell before we had finished digging the last. Tired and dispirited we pulled back to the yacht.

During the night it came on to rain again, and for three successive days water sluiced down from skies which never seemed empty of moisture. There was a gleam of sunshine the fourth day and though the jungle was like a shower bath Blythe took his machete and shovel squad to work.

At the end of the day they were back again. Sam had picked on a great lignum vitæ as the forked tree named in the chart and had come to disappointment, even as I had.

In the end it was Gallagher who set us right. By this time, of course, every member of our party had the directions on the chart by heart, though several had not read the paper. We had finished luncheon and several of the men were strolling about. I was half way through my cigar when Gallagher came swinging back almost at a run.

"Beg pardon, sir. Would you mind coming with me?"

"What is it?" I asked in some excitement.

"It may not amount to anything. I don't know. But I thought I'd tell you, Mr. Sedgwick."

He had been lying down on the sand where it ran back to the jungle from the farthest inlet. Kicking idly with his heel he had come to solid stone. An examination proved to him that he was lying on a big rock covered with sand.

"You think this is the Big Rock," I said, after I had examined it.

"That's my idea. Stand here, sir, at the edge. You can't see the tongue of the spit, can you?"

"No, but that doesn't prove anything. We can't see it from this inlet at all."

"Sure about that, sir? Take three steps nor'east--long ones. Can you see the point now?"

"No, there's a hillock between."

"Take one step more."

I moved forward another yard. Over the top of the rise I could just see the sand tongue running into the bay.

Jimmie, the irrepressible, broke out impatiently.

"Don't see what he's getting at, Mr. Sedgwick. The map says to take three steps southwest to the big rock."

"Exactly, Jimmie, but we're starting from the big rock, so we have to reverse directions. By Jove, I believe you've hit on the spot, Gallagher."

I called to Alderson to bring the men with their spades. A tree more than a foot thick at the ground had grown up at the edge of the rock. We brought this down by digging at the roots. After another quarter of an hour's work Barbados unearthed a bottle. He was as proud of his find as if it had been a bar of gold.

We were all excited. The bottle was passed from hand to hand.

"We're getting warm," I cried. "This is the spot. Remember that every mother's son of you shares what we find. Five dollars to the man that first touches treasure."

There was a cheer. The men fell to work with renewed vigor. Presently Gallagher's spade hit something solid. A little scraping showed the top of an iron box.

"I claim that five, sir," cried Gallagher.

I jumped into the hole beside him. With our hands we scraped the dirt away from the sides.

"Heave away," I gave the word.

We lifted the box to the solid ground above. It was very rusty, of a good size, and heavy.

"Let's open it now," cried Jimmie, dancing with enthusiasm.

"Let's not," I vetoed. "We'll take it on board first. Five dollars to the man that finds the second box."

But there was no second box. We worked till dark at the hole. Before we left there was an excavation large enough for the cellar of a house. But not a trace of more treasure did we find.

Blythe had decided it best not to open the treasure before the men, and though the crew was plainly disappointed we stuck to that resolution.

Sam promised the men that they should see it before we reached San Francisco, and that they should appoint two of their number to accompany the treasure to the assay office in that city to determine the value of our find and their share.

Yeager, being handier with an ax than the rest of us, broke open the lid of the chest. A piece of coarse sacking covered the contents. Blythe lifted this--and disclosed to our astonished eyes a jumble of stones and sand.

We looked at our find and at each other. Tom put our feeling into words.

"Bilked, by Moses!"

We tossed the rocks and sand upon the table and came to a piece of ragged paper folded in two. In a faint red four words were traced as if with the end of a pointed stick.

Sold, you devils! BUCKS.

CHAPTER XXII

TREASURE-TROVE

Tom broke the silence again.

"Now will some one tell me who the devil is Bucks?"

It was the question in all our minds and our eyes groped helplessly in those of each other for an answer.

"Bucks! Bucks! I've heard his name somewhere."

Blythe spoke up like a flash.

"So have I, Jack. He was one of the sailors that took the Santa Theresa. Quinn gave a list of them in his story. This fellow must have escaped somehow when the ship was blown up."

"Or from the gig that set out to pursue the long boat. Perhaps when the Truxillo pounded the boat to pieces he swam to shore," I suggested.

"Yes, but Quinn does not mention that Bucks got ashore. That's funny too, because he says that he was the only man from the Santa Theresa left alive after Bully Evans was shot."

"That is queer. But it's plain Bucks did escape. Don't you think it might be this way? When he got to shore he ran forward to tell the four who had landed with the treasure about the coming of the Truxillo. But before he reached the top of the hill he heard shots and suspected danger. So he stole forward cautiously and saw what had happened to Wall and Lobardi. Of course he wouldn't dare show himself then, for he was probably unarmed. So he kept hidden while the two survivors buried the treasure."

"Of course. Like a wise man too," assented Tom. "And when Quinn and the mate had pulled their freights he steps out and buries the gold in another place."

"Probably he waited till the Truxillo was out of the harbor," amended the Englishman.

"Sure. But the big point that sticks out like a sore thumb is that Bucks didn't fool Evans and Quinn, but us. The treasure's gone. That's a rock-bottom fact," Yeager commented.

"I'm not so sure about that," I reflected aloud. "Look here. If Bucks dug the gold up he had to rebury it somewhere. He had no way of taking the doubloons with him. He couldn't have hauled the other boxes far. Therefore, it follows that he buried them close to where he found them. The one thing we don't know is whether he came back later and got the treasure. I'll bet he didn't. The man was a common sailor and had no means."

"Even if we give you the benefit of every doubt, the treasure is hidden. We don't know where. In a year we might not find it."

"True enough, Sam. And we might stumble on it to-morrow. Look at the facts. He was alone, probably superstitious, certainly in fear lest Bully Evans might return and find him there. More than that, he had no provisions. To get away and reach the Indians to get food would be his main thought. It was a case of life and death with him. So you can bet he chose easy digging when he transferred the treasure. That means he buried it in the sand not far from where he found it."

"You have it figured out beautifully," Sam laughed. "Well, I wish you luck."

"But you don't expect any for me. Just you wait and see."

We called the crew in and showed them what we had found, explaining the facts and our deductions from them. For we thought it better they should know just how matters stood. Their disappointment was keen, but to a man they were eager to search further.

Hitherto we had staked our chances for success upon the map, but it was now manifest that the chart was no longer of any use. I decided first to take a look along the shore from the point where we had discovered the first box.

Fortune is a fickle jade. We had spent a week here and met only disappointment, working on careful calculations made from the directions left by Quinn. By chance Gallagher had hit on the first cache. By chance I hit on the second.

Fighting my way through the jungle just adjacent to the beach I stumbled over what I took to be a root. In some annoyance I glanced hastily at the projection--and then looked again. My foot had been caught by a bone sticking out of the ground. The odd thing was that it looked like a human bone.

I plied my machete. Within a quarter of an hour I had cleared a small square of ground and was digging with a pick. What I presently uncovered were the remains of a skeleton. An old sack, more brittle than paper, lay beneath these. This I removed. There, lying in the sand, were three bars of gold.

My heart jumped, lost a beat, hammered furiously. I looked around quickly. Alderson and Gallagher were the only men I had brought ashore with me. They were digging at haphazard in the sand a hundred yards away. With one stroke of the pick I upended several more yellow bars.

That was enough for me. I laid aside the first three and covered the others with sand, using my foot as a spade. The three original bars I buttoned under my coat and then walked down hill to the beach.

"I'm going aboard," I told the men.

"Gallagher, you may row me out. I'll be back presently, Alderson."

I was under a tremendous suppressed excitement. Blythe met me as I came aboard and his eyes questioned mine. Without a word we moved toward the bridge pavilion and down into the saloon.

"I've had another message from Mr. Bucks," I told him.

"The deuce you say!"

"He delivered it in person this time."

The Englishman's eyes danced, but otherwise his face was immobile.

"Did he say his name was Bucks?"

"No. I'm not dead sure I have him identified correctly. As Tom would say, the brand is worn out."

"I never was any good at riddles," he admitted.

"I stumbled over a thigh bone in the jungle. It was sticking out of the ground, where in the course of time the sand had buried the rest of the body. I have reason to think it belonged to Bucks because----"

I paused for dramatic effect, my arms folded across my chest to keep the treasure from slipping down.

"Just so, because----?"

He was as cool as an iced melon, the drawl in his voice not quickening in the least. But his eyes gave away his tense interest.

"Why, because I found a lot of these in the sand, all of them measuring up to sample." From under my coat I drew the shining yellow bars and handed them to him.

"Gold!" he cried softly. "By Jove, this is a find."

"And a lot more where those came from, or I miss my guess. There is a mound there that looks to me like a cache."

"But what was Bucks doing there?"

"That's a guess. Here is mine. It doesn't cost you a cent even if you don't accept it. After he had made the cache we'll say that he hiked off to try to find a settlement. Very likely he had no idea where to look and he found progress through the jungle impossible. After a while he wandered back, half starved and exhausted. Perhaps his idea may have been that the Truxillo was still on the ground. If so, he may have wanted to offer the gold in exchange for his life. Anyhow, back he comes, to find that he is too late. The brig has gone. In his delirium he has some notion of digging up the treasure to buy food. He gets the first sack of bullion up and then quits, too weak to do any more."

"Sounds reasonable enough. The chief point is that you've found the gold. I'll order a force ashore to help you."

There is something in the very thought of treasure-trove that unsettles the most sane. Not a word was said to anybody except Tom about what I had found, but everybody on board was sure the bullion had been found.

Before the eyes of each man danced shining yellow ingots and pieces of eight. We could tell it by the eagerness with which they volunteered for shore duty.

I chose Yeager, the chief engineer--he was a lank Yankee named Stubbs--and Jamaica Ginger, as we called our second fireman. With us we took ashore a stout box, in which to pack the loose gold.

Those left on board cheered us as we pulled toward the beach, and we answered lustily their cheer. Every man jack of us was in the best of spirits.

By this time it was late in the afternoon, but the sun was still very hot. I was careful not to let anybody work long at a stretch. As the bars of gold were uncovered we packed them in the box brought for the purpose. Every time a shovel disclosed a new find there was fresh jubilation.

While Alderson and I were resting under the shade of a mangrove the sailor made a suggestion.

"You don't expect to get all the treasure out to-night, do you, sir?"

"No. Perhaps not by to-morrow night. It is hard digging among so many roots. And Mr. Bucks does not seem to have put it all together."

"Will you keep a guard here, Mr. Sedgwick?"

"Yes. It looks like a deserted neck of the woods, but we'll take no chances."

"That is what I was thinking, sir. Last night I couldn't sleep for the heat and I strung a hammock on deck. About three o'clock this morning a boat passed on its way to the mouth of the river."

"Cholo Indians, likely."

"No, sir. This was a schooner. It was some distance away, but I could make that out."

"Well, we'll keep this place under our eye till the treasure is lifted."

About sunset I sent Gallagher, Stubbs, and Jamaica Ginger aboard with the box of treasure, the Arizonian being in charge of the boat. While I waited for its return I took a turn up the beach to catch the light breeze that was beginning to stir.

I walked toward the head of the harbor, strolling farther in that direction than any of us had yet gone. I went possibly an eighth of a mile above the spit, carrying my hat in my hand and moving in a leisurely way.

In truth I was at peace with the world. We had succeeded in our quest and found the treasure. In a few days at most I should be back at Panama with my slim sweetheart in my arms. What more could rational man ask?

Then I stopped in my stride, snatched into a sudden amazement. For there before me in the sand was the imprint of a boot made since the tide went out a few hours earlier in the day.

No flat-footed Indian had left the track. It was too sharp, too decisive, had been left plainly by a shoe of superior make.

No guess of the truth came to me, but instinctively I eased the revolver in the scabbard by my side. Of this much I was sure, that whereas I had supposed no white man except those of our party to be within many miles, there was at least one in the immediate vicinity.

What, then, was he doing here? How had he come? Had he any intimation that there was treasure to be found? It was altogether likely that whoever this man was he had not come to this desolate spot without companions and without a very definite purpose.

Where were they, then? And how did it happen we had not seen them? The very secrecy of their presence seemed to suggest a sinister purpose.

Should I go on and follow the tracks. Or should I go back and notify Blythe at once? The latter no doubt would be the wiser course, but my impulse was to push forward and discover something more definite. As luck would have it, the decision was taken out of my hands.

Out of the jungle a man came straight toward me. The very sight of that strong, erect figure moving swiftly with easy stride tied, as it were, a stone to my heart. The man was Boris Bothwell. I was sure of it long before his face was distinguishable.

He waved a hand at me with debonair insouciance.

I waited for him without moving, my fingers on the butt of the revolver at my side.

"So happy to meet you again, dear friend," he jeered as soon as he was within hail.

"What are you doing here? How did you get out?" I demanded.

"My simple-minded youth, money goes a long way among the natives. I bought my way out, since you are curious to know."

"And you've followed us down here to make more trouble?"

"To renew our little private war. How did you guess it?"

"So you haven't had enough yet. You have come back to take another licking."

"It's a long lane that has no turning," he assured me gaily. "I give you my word that I've reached the bend, Mr. Sedgwick."

His confident audacity got on my nerves. On the surface we had all the best of the game. The trouble was that he knew the cards I held, whereas I could only guess at his.

"You are the most unmitigated villain not yet hanged!" I cried in rage.

He bowed, rakish and smiling, with all the airs of a dancing master.

"I fear you flatter me, sir."

"I warn you to keep your hands off. We're ready for you."

"I thought it only fair to warn you. That is why I am here and have the pleasure of talking with you."

"More lies. You showed yourself only because you knew I had seen your footprints."

He gave up the point with an easy laugh.

"But really I did want to talk with you. We have many interests in common. Our taste in women, for instance. By the way, did you leave Evie well?"

Triumph swam in the eyes, narrowed to slits, through which he watched me. I could not understand his derisive confidence.

"We'll not discuss that," I told him bluntly.

"As you say. I come to another common interest--the treasure. Is it running up to our hopes?"

So he knew that we had found it. No doubt he had been watching us all day through the telescope that hung at his side.

"We don't recognize any hopes you may have."

"But why not face facts? I intend to own the treasure when you have dug it up for me."

"You're of a sanguine temperament."

"Poof! Life is a game of cards. First you hold trumps, then they fall to me. It chances that now I hold the whip and ride on the crest of fortune's wave. Hope you don't mind mixed figures."

"You'll ride at the end of the hangman's rope," I prophesied.

"Let us look on the bright side."

"I'm trying to do that."

The man knew something that I did not. I was not bandying repartee with him for pleasure, but because I knew that if he talked long enough he would drop the card hidden up his sleeve.

What was his ace of trumps? How could he afford to sit back and let us dig up the gold? He could not be merely bluffing, for the man had been laughing at me from that first wave of the hand.

"It is unfortunate that you and I don't pull together, Mr. Sedgwick. We'd make an invincible team. You're the best enemy I ever met."

"And you're the worst I've met."

"Same thing, I assure you. We both mean compliments. But what I want to say is that it is against the law of conservation of energy for us to be opposing each other. I propose combination instead of competition."

"Be a little more definite, please."

"Chuck your friends overboard and go into partnership with me."

"Are you speaking literally, or in metaphor, captain?"

He shrugged.

"That's a mere detail. If you have compunctions we'll maroon them."

"Just what you promised the crew last time," I scored.

"Wharf rats!" He waved the point aside magnificently. "I'm proposing now a gentleman's agreement."

"Which you'll keep as long as it suits you."

"I thought you knew me better."

"What have you to offer? My friends and I can keep the treasure. Why should I ditch them for you? What's the quid pro quo?"

"You and Evie and I will go shares, third and third alike. The better man of us two will marry her. If it should be you, that will give you two-thirds."

"You're very generous."

"Oh, I intend to marry her if I can. But I'll play fair. If she has the bad taste to prefer you----"

"In the event that I should happen to be alive still," I amended. "You know how dangerous yellow fever is in the Isthmus, captain. I am afraid that it would get me before we reached the canal zone again."

He chuckled.

"If you have a fault, my friend, it lies on the side of suspicion. When I give my word I keep it--that is, when I give it to a gentleman."

"I don't want to lead you into the temptation of revising your opinion of me and deciding that I am no gentleman."

"Come, Mr. Sedgwick. We're not two fishwives to split hairs over a trifle. I offer a compromise. Do you accept it?"

"You offer me nothing I haven't got already. A share of the treasure--that will be mine, anyhow, as soon as we have it assayed and weighed."

"You forget Evie."

"Who is safe at Panama, beyond your reach, you scoundrel. Why should I fear you as a rival since your life is forfeit as soon as you show your head?"

He could not have spoken more insolently himself. It was hot shot, but I poured it in for a purpose. The mask fell from his face. One could see the devil in his eyes now.

"You reject my offer," he said, breathing hard to repress his rising passion.

A second man had come out of the jungle and was moving toward us. It was time to be going. I moved back a step or two, my fingers caressing the butt of a revolver.

"Yes, since I don't want to commit suicide, captain."

He suddenly lost his temper completely and hopelessly. He glared at me in a speechless rage, half of a mind to fight our quarrel out on the spot. But the advantage lay with me. All I had to do to blaze away was to tilt the point of my revolver at him without drawing it from the scabbard. Then words came, poured out of him in a torrent. He cursed me in Russian, in French, in English.

I backed from him, step by step, till I was out of range. Then, swiftly as his rage had swept upon him it died away, leaving him white and shaken. He leaned heavily upon the man who had now joined him.

Unless I was much mistaken the man was George Fleming.

CHAPTER XXIII

ABOARD THE SCHOONER

Dignity be hanged! I scudded down the beach as fast as my legs would carry me. Alderson had been left alone at the cache and my heart was in my throat.

When I saw him strolling about with his hands in his pockets I could have shouted for joy if I had had the breath. For I had half expected to find him dead.

He came forward quickly to meet me.

"A tug rounded the bend five minutes since and stopped at the yacht, Mr. Sedgwick," he told me.

I looked out into the bay. A boat was just leaving the Argos for the shore. At the point where the sailors presently beached it I was waiting. Blythe jumped out and splashed through the shallow water to meet me. From the look on his face it was clear that something had gone wrong.

Taking me by the arm he led me a few yards along the sand.

"Bad news, Jack."

"What is it?"

"Miss Wallace was waylaid and kidnaped four days ago while she and her aunt were driving."

"How do you know?"

"Miss Berry sent Philips down in a tug to let us know. But that is not the worst. The day before the kidnaping Bothwell escaped from prison. It is thought that his guards were bribed."

I saw in a flash the cause of the Slav's gloating triumph. Evelyn was his prisoner. He had her safely hidden somewhere in the mangrove swamps.

We might dig the treasure up, but we would have to give him every cent of it in ransom for her. That was his plan, and in it lay the elements of success. For Blythe and Yeager, no more than I, would weigh gold against her safety.

We knew Bothwell. His civilization was a veneer. Disappointed of the wealth he had come seeking, the man would revenge himself on the girl who had stood in his way. I dared not think of the shame and degradation he would make her suffer.

I told Blythe of my meeting with Bothwell.

My face must have been ashen, for Sam put a hand on my shoulder.

"Keep a stiff upper lip, old chap. Bothwell won't hurt her until he is pushed to it. Before that time comes we'll take care of her."

"That's easy saying. But how? That prince of devils has her back there in the swamps guarded by his ruffians. We don't know where they are. This very minute she may be---- My God, think of the danger she runs!"

Blythe shook his head.

"She's safe till Bothwell gives the word. Not one of his fellows would dare lift a hand against her. The captain would shoot him like a dog."

"And Bothwell himself?"

"She's safe yet, Jack. He's playing for the treasure and to marry her, too. The man is not such a fool as to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. The hour of danger for her would be the one when he found out that he had lost the treasure."

"Let's give it to him. I'll go tell him he may have it all."

"Easy, lad, easy. We must play our cards and not throw the hand down. We must get hold of the treasure before we can make terms."

"And let Evelyn stay in his hands without making an effort to free her?" I demanded.

"Did I say that, Jack?"

"What are you going to do, then?"

"As soon as night falls we'll send a boat up the river to find out where his camp is. We'll make a reconnaissance."

"I'll go."

"Don't you think somebody less impetuous would be better, Jack? We don't want to spoil things by any premature attack."

"I'm going, Sam. That's all there is to say about that."

"All right. If you are, you are. But you'd better let me."

"You may come along if you like."

"No, if you go I'll have to stay by the ship against a possible attack. Tom will have charge of the party that watches the treasure. The deuce of it is that our force will be divided into three. I hope Bothwell does not take the occasion to make mischief."

Within the hour the tug that had brought Philips steamed back down the harbor on the return trip to Panama. With it we sent Jimmie and the steward. Dugan flatly declined to go, and since his wound was almost healed the captain let him stay.

This left us fourteen men, counting the former mutineers and the native stokers. To go with me on my night expedition I chose Alderson and Smith. The guard for the treasure cache consisted of Yeager, Gallagher, Barbados and Stubbs. The rest were to remain with the ship.

The tide was coming in when we pulled from the Argos toward the mouth of the Tuyra. The wash of the waves made it unnecessary for us to take any precautions to muffle the sound of our oars and the darkness of the night made detection at any distance improbable.

One difficulty we did encounter. For the first few hundred yards of our journey up the river we disturbed some of the numberless birds which had settled for the night on the trees close to the banks. The flapping of their wings gave notice of our approach as plainly as if a herald had shouted it.

We carried no light. The heavy tropical jungle growth on the mud flats which extended on both sides of the river helped to increase the darkness. Our progress was slow, for we had to make sure that we did not slip past without noticing the schooner that had brought the pirates down from Panama.

The sound of voices on the water warned us that we were approaching the boat of which we were in search. Very cautiously, keeping close to the bushes along the shore, we drew near the schooner which began to take dim shape in the darkness.

The tide was still strong, and it carried our boat across the bow of the schooner. The anchor chain was hanging and served to hold us in place, though with each lift of the tide I was afraid those on board would hear us grind against her side. Intermittently the voices came to us, though we could make out no words.

We were in a good deal of danger, for any minute one of the crew might saunter to the side of the vessel and look over. It was plain to me that we could not stay here. Either we must go forward or back.

Now back I would not go without finding whether Evelyn was here, and to try to board the schooner in attack would be sheer madness. My mind caught at a compromise.

I whispered to Alderson directions, and when the jibboom of the schooner came down with the next recession of a wave I swung myself to it by means of the chain, using the stays to brace my foot.

Here I lay for a minute getting my bearings, while the sailors in the boat below backed quietly out of sight among the shore bushes that overhung the banks.

So far as I could see the deck was deserted. Carefully I edged on to the bowsprit, crept along it, and let myself down gently to the deck. I could see now that men were lying asleep at the other end of the vessel.

One was standing with his back toward me beside the mizzen-mast. From his clothes I guessed the watch to be a native.

The voices that had come to us across the water still sounded, but more faintly than before I had come on board. Evidently they were from below.

Probably the speakers were in a cabin with the porthole open. I could not be sure, but it struck me that one of them was a woman. My impression was that she pleaded and that he threatened, for occasionally the heavier voice was raised impatiently.

From its scabbard I drew my revolver and crept forward in the shadow of the bulwarks. My life hung on a hair; so too did that of the watchman drowsing by the mast. If he looked up and turned I was lost, and so was he.

Foot by foot I stole toward the forecastle ladder, reached it, and noiselessly passed down the stairs.

I say noiselessly, yet I could hear my heart beat against my ribs as I descended. For I knew now that the voices which came from behind the closed door of the cabin to my right belonged to my sweetheart and to Boris Bothwell.

"Not I, but you," he was saying. "I'm hanged if I take the responsibility. If you had trusted me we might have lifted the gold without the loss of a drop of blood."

"You are so worthy of trust!" Evelyn's voice answered with bitterness.

"Have you ever known me to break my word? But let that pass. You chose to reject my love and invite that meddler Sedgwick into our affairs. What is the result? What have you gained?"

"A knowledge of the difference between the love of a true man and that of a false one," she answered quietly.

"A true man! Oh, call him a fool and be done with it."

"Perhaps, but I could love such folly."

He seemed to strangle his irritation in his throat.

"A lot of good it will do! You belong to me. That is written in the book of your life, and what is to be will be. And I'll get the treasure, too."

"Never! You call them fools, but they have outwitted you from start to finish."

"They've pulled the chestnuts out of the fire for me, if that is what you mean."

"And as for me, I'm only a girl, but I swear before Heaven I'd rather sink a knife into my heart than give myself to you."

He clapped his hands ironically with a deep laugh like the bay of a wolf.

"Bravo! Well done! You'd make a fortune in tragedy, Evie. But dramatics apart, you may make up your mind to it. I'm your master, and before twenty-four hours shall be your mate. Why else have I brought this broken wretch of a priest along, but to tie the knot in legal fashion? I'm a reasonable man. Since you have a taste for the conventional and decorum you shall have them. But priest or no priest, willy nilly, mine you are and shall be."

"You think everybody is a fool but yourself. Can't I see why you want the marriage? It's not to please me, but through me to give you a legal claim on the treasure."

"Why do you always stir up the devil in me? I love you. I want to please you. I'll treat you right if you'll let me."

"Then send me back to the yacht, Boris. I'll give my word to divide the treasure with you. My friends will do as I say. You don't want to break my heart, do you? Think of all the dreadful murder that has been done by you."

"Not by me, but by you and your friends. I offered to compromise and you would not. Now it is too late. No, by God! I'll play the game out to a fighting finish."

She gave a sobbing little cry.

"Have you no heart?"

His voice fell a note. He moved close to her.

"Cherie, you have stolen it and hold it fast in this little palm I kiss!"

By the sounds from within she must have struggled in vain. I told myself:

"Not yet, not yet!"

"In such fashion my ancestor Bothwell wooed Mary Queen of Scots. Fain she would, but dare not. She knew he was a man and a lover out of ten thousand, and though her heart beat fast for him she was afraid. She fled, and he followed. For he was a lover not to be denied, though a king must die to clear the road. So it is with Boris, my queen."

"You mean----?"

The catch in her voice told me she breathed fast.

He laughed, with that soft boisterousness that marked his merriment.

"Your mad Irishman is no king, but he has crossed my path enough. Next time he dies."

"Because he has tried to serve me!"

"Because he is in my way. Reason enough for me."

The door knob was in my hand. All I had to do was to open it and shoot the man dead. But what after that? His men would swarm down and murder me before the eyes of my love. And she would be left alone with a pack of wolves which had already tasted blood.

It was the hardest ordeal of my life to keep quiet while the fellow pressed his hateful suit, pushed it with the passionate ardor of the Slav, regardless of her tears, her despair, and her helplessness.

For an hour--to make a guess at the time--she fought with all the weapons a woman has at command, fending him off as best she could with tears and sighs and entreaties.

Then I heard a man stumbling down the ladder and moved aside. If he should turn my way I was a dead man, for he must come plump against me. He knocked on the door of the cabin.

Bothwell opened and whispered with him a moment, then excused himself to his cousin, locked the door, and followed the sailor up to the deck.

I unlocked the door softly and walked into the cabin. By the dim light of a hanging lantern I made out a rough room furnished only with two bunks, one above the other, a deal table, and two cheap chairs.

Evelyn had not heard me enter. She was standing with her back to me, leaning against the woodwork of the bed, her face buried in one arm. Despair and weariness showed in every line of the slight, drooping figure.

She must have heard me as I moved. She turned, the deep shadowy eyes gleaming with fear. Never have I seen the soul's terror more vividly flung to the surface.

I suppose that for a moment she could not believe that it was I, and not Bothwell. Perhaps she thought the ghost of me had come to say farewell to her.

She stared at me out of a face from which the color was gone, the great eyes dilating as the truth came home to her. From her throat broke a startled, stifled little cry.

"You!"

I took her in my arms and her tired body came to me. The sensitive mouth trembled, the eyes closed, a shiver of relief passed through her. She clung to me as a frightened child does to its mother, burying her soft cheeks on my shoulder.

Then came sobs. The figure of my love rocked. The horror of what she had been through engulfed her as she told me her story in broken words, in convulsive shivers, in silence so poignant that they stabbed my heart like a needle.

It was such a tale as no girl should have to tell, least of all to the man she loves. But I had come in time--I had come in time. The knowledge of that warmed me like champagne.

I whispered love to her as I kissed in a passion of tenderness the golden hair, the convolutions of the pink ears, the shadows beneath the sad, tired eyes.

"Tell me, how did you come?" she begged.

I told her, in the fewest possible words, for it might be that our time was brief. Briefly I outlined a plan for her rescue.

I would send Alderson and Smith back for aid and would hide somewhere in the vessel during their absence, to be ready in case she needed help.

When Blythe arrived I would join her and barricade the cabin to protect her until our friends had won the ship.

"But if he should find you before----"

I said then what any man with the red blood of youth still running strong in his veins would say to the woman he loves when she is in peril. Let it cost me what it would I was going to free her from these wolves.

Her deep eyes, soft with love, aglow with an adorable trust, met mine for a long instant.

"Do as you will, dear. But go now--before any one comes. And--God with us, Jack!"

Her arm slid round my neck, she drew my face down to hers, and kissed me with a passion that I had not known was in her.

"Remember, Jack--if I never see you again--no matter what happens--I love you, dearest, for ever and ever."

She whispered it brokenly, then pushed me from her toward the door.

The last glimpse I had of her she was standing there in the shadows, like a divine incarnation of love, her eyes raining upon me the soft light that is the sweetest glimpse of heaven given to a man in this storm-battered world.

CHAPTER XXIV

A RAT IN A TRAP

I groped my way forward in the darkness till I came to a room used for storing purposes. Well up near the beams was a porthole. Too high for me to reach, I presently found a large box which I upended cautiously until it lay beneath the port. Standing on this I could look through into the heavy foliage of the bushes projecting from the shore.

Except for the lapping of the waves the night was very still. The moon rode low in the sky. A fan-shaped wedge of light silvered the inky river.

I gave the signal agreed upon between me and my men, but no answering flash of white replied to the wave of my handkerchief. Again I shook the piece of linen from the porthole, and at intervals for fully five minutes.

Did Alderson see me? Or was there a reason why he could not answer? It was impossible they could have been captured without some sound having reached me. Nor was it more likely that they had deserted their post.

The bushes stirred at last and the bow of a boat pushed through. Smith stood up so that his face was just below mine. His finger was on his lips.

"Couldn't come any sooner, sir. Captain Bothwell was leaning over the rail smoking a cigarette. I wonder he didn't see your handkerchief," he whispered.

I gave him orders concisely and the men backed the boat till the bushes hid them. For me there was nothing left to do but wait. How long it might be before Blythe would get back with a rescue party I could not tell. The men in the boat would not dare to stir from their hiding-place until the moon went under a cloud.

The tide must now be at the full, so that it would be running out strong before they got started. This would carry them swiftly back to the bay.

I found myself giving my friends two hours as a minimum before they could return to me. At the worst they should be here within four, unless my messenger met with bad luck.

But what about Bothwell? Would he force my hand before Blythe arrived? I thought it very likely. There is something in the tropical air that calls to the passion of a man, and reduces his sense of law till restraint ebbs away.

In Bothwell's case desire and interest went together. He was a criminal on more than one count, but the charges against him would in a measure fall to the ground if he could drive Evie to marry him.

Once she was his wife the kidnaping charge would not stick, and even his black record on the Argos could be made to appear the chivalry of a high-minded man saving the woman he loved from her enemies.

Moreover, his claim to the treasure would then be a valid one. The man was no fool. What he did must be done quickly. There lay before him one safe road. Since that was the path he desired above all things to follow, it was sure he would set out on it without delay.

Her scruples had hitherto held him back, because it would be better she should come of her own accord to him. But these could not hold him many hours longer.

The masterful insistence of the man had told me that, but no more plainly than his mounting passion.

I sat down on the box and waited. In that dark, stuffy hole the heat was intense. The odor of food decomposing in the moisture of the tropics did not add to my comfort.

Sitting in cushioned chairs in club rooms with a surfeit of comfort within reach, men have argued in my presence that there is no such thing as luck. Men win because of merit; they fail only if there is some lack in themselves.

This is a pleasant gospel for those who have found success, but it does not happen to be true. Take my own case here. How could I foresee that a barefooted, half-naked black cook would come into the storeroom to get a pan of rice for next day's dinner?

Or, as I lay crouched beside a box in the shadows beyond the dim circle illumined by his candle, how could I know whether it were best to announce myself or lie still?

I submit that the part of wisdom was to let the fellow go in peace, and this I did.

But as he turned the light for an instant swept across me. He gave a shriek and flung away both the candle and the pan of rice, bolting for the door. I called to him to stop. For answer he slammed the door--and locked it. Nor did my calls stay the slap of his retreating feet. I was caught fast as a rat in a trap.

I certainly had spilt the fat into the fire this time. Inside of five minutes the passage outside was full of men. But during that time I had been an active Irishman. In front of me and around me I had piled a barrier of boxes and barrels.

"Who's in there?" Bothwell called.

I fired through the door. Some one groaned. There was a sudden scurry of retreating footsteps, followed by whisperings at the end of the passage. These became imperative, rose and fell abruptly, so that I judged there was a division of counsel.

Presently Bothwell raised his voice and spoke again.

"We've got you, whoever you are. My friend, you'll have a sick time of it if you don't surrender without any more trouble. Do you hear me?"

He waited for an answer, and got none. I had him guessing, for it was impossible to know how many of us might be there. Moreover, there was a chance of working upon the superstition of the natives among the crew. The cook had very likely reported that he had seen a ghost.

Except a shot out of the darkness no sound had come from me since. So long as I kept silent the terror of the mystery would remain. Was I man or devil? What was it spitting death at them from the black room?

"We're going to batter that door down," went on Bothwell, "and then we're going to make you wish you'd never been born."

The voices fell again to a whispered murmur. Soon there would be a rush and the door would be torn from its hinges. I made up my mind to get Bothwell if I could before the end.

Above the mutterings came clearly a frightened soprano.

"What is it, Boris? What are you going to do?"

Evelyn had come out of her room to try to save me.

"Just getting ready to massacre your friend," her cousin answered promptly.

"Mr. Sedgwick?"

Terror shook in the voice that died in her throat.

Bothwell bayed deep laughter.

"O-ho! My friend from Erin once more--for the last time. Come out and meet your welcome, Sedgwick."

"Suppose you come and take me," I suggested.

"By God, I will! Back with you into that room, girl."

A door slammed and a key turned.

Still the rush did not come. I waited, nerves strung to the highest pitch. One could have counted sixty in the dead silence.

I knew that some devilish plan had come to the man and that he was working out the details of it in his mind.

"Say the word, Cap," Fleming called to him impatiently.

"Not just yet, my worthy George. We'll give the meddler an hour to say his prayers. But I'm all for action. Since it isn't to be a funeral just yet, what do you say to a marriage?"

"I don't take you."

"H-m! Hold this passage for a few minutes, George. You'll see what you'll see."

A key turned in a lock. When I heard his voice again the man had stepped inside the cabin used by Evelyn. It lay just back of the storeroom and the portholes of the two rooms were not six feet apart. Every word that was said came clearly to me.

"So you thought you'd trick me, my dear--thought you'd play a smooth trick on your trusting cousin. Fie, Evie!"

"What are you going to do to Mr. Sedgwick?" she demanded.

"There's been some smooth work somewhere. I grant you that. How the devil did he get aboard here? He didn't come alone. If he did, what has become of the boat? Speak up, m'amie."

"Do you think I'd tell you even if I knew?" she asked scornfully.

He laughed softly, with diabolical enjoyment.

"I think you would--and will. I have ways to force open closed mouths, beloved."

"You would--torture me?"

"If it were necessary," he admitted coolly.

She answered in a blaze of defiance.

"Get out your iron cubes for my fingers, you black-hearted villain!"

"Not for your soft fingers, ma cherie. I kiss them one by one as a lover should. Shall we say for your friend's fingers? If you won't talk, perhaps he will."

"Are you all tiger, Boris? Isn't there somewhere in your heart a spark of manhood?" she sobbed, her spirit melted at my danger.

"Rhetorical questions, Evie. Shall we come to business? How did your soon-to-be-deceased lover come on board? Who brought him? What were his plans?"

"If I tell you, will you spare him?" she begged.

"I'll promise this," he assured her maliciously. "If you don't tell I'll not spare him."

She told all she knew except my plan of rescue. As soon as she mentioned the boat in which I had come the fellow hurried up on deck to intercept it.

I could hear a boat scraping against the side of the schooner as it was being lowered. Fleming and two others got in and paddled back and forth among the bushes. They found nothing.

My friends had managed to slip away unseen and were headed for the Argos. You may believe that I wished them a safe and speedy voyage.

Bothwell came down the forecastle ladder swearing. He went straight to Evelyn. Before he opened the door he was all suavity once more.

"They've got away this time. Just as well perhaps. We'll be able to concentrate our attention on the wedding festivities. Can you be ready in half an hour, dear heart?"

"Ready for what?" The words choked in her throat.

"To make your lover a happy man. This is our wedding night, my dear."

"Never! I'd rather lie at the bottom of the bay. I wouldn't marry you to save my life."

"H-m! You exaggerate, as is the manner of your charming sex. Now I'll wager that you'd marry me to save--why, to save even that meddling Irishman who is listening to our talk."

She strangled a little cry of despair.

"Why do you hate him so? Is it because he is so much better and braver than you?"

"I don't hate him. He annoys me. So I step on him, just as I do on this spider."

"Don't, Boris. I'll give you all my share of the treasure. I'll forgive you everything you've done. I'll see that you're not prosecuted. Be merciful for once."

"Don't get hysterical, Evie. Sedgwick understands he has got to pay. He took a fighting chance and he has lost. It's all in the game." The villain must have looked at his watch, and then yawned. "Past 10:30. Excuse me for a half hour while I settle your friend's hash. Afterward I'll be back with the priest."

"No--no! I won't have it. Boris, if you ever loved me--Oh, God in heaven, help me now!"

I think that in her wild despair she had flung herself on her knees in front of him. Her voice shook, broke almost into a scream.

"Are these--dramatics--for yourself or for him?" Bothwell asked with a sneer.

"Don't kill him! Don't! I'll do whatever you say."

"Will you marry me--at once--to-night?"

I spoke up from the porthole where I was listening.

"No, she won't, you scoundrel! As for me, I'd advise you to catch your hare before you cook it."

"I'm on my way to catch it now, dear Sedgwick, just as soon as I break away from the lady," he called back insolently.

"I'll--marry you." The words came from a parched throat.

"To-night," he demanded.

"Not to-night," she begged. "When we get back to Panama."

"No. I'm not going to give you a chance to welch. Now--here--on this schooner."

"Not to-night. I'm so--weary and--unstrung. I'll do whatever you say, but--give me time to--to--Oh, I'm afraid!"

"Bothwell, you cur, come in here and you and I will see this out to a finish!" I cried in helpless fury.

"Presently, my dear Sedgwick. I'll be there soon enough, and that's a promise. But ladies first. You wouldn't have me delay my wedding, would you?"

I flung myself against the door repeatedly and tried to beat it down, but my rage was useless. The lock and the hinges held. Back I went to my porthole.

"Evelyn, are you there?"

"Yes," came the answer in a choked voice.

"Don't do it. What are you thinking of? I'd rather die a hundred deaths than have you marry him."

"I must, Jack. If you should be killed--and I could have prevented it---- Oh, don't you see I must?"

The words were wrung from her in a cry, as if she had been a tortured child.

"Of course she must. But why make a tragedy of it? By Heaven, you wound my vanity between the pair of you. Am I not straight--as good a man as my neighbor--still young? Come, let us make an end of the heavy-villain-and-hero business. You, my dear Sedgwick, shall stand up and give the bride away. That is to say, you shall stand at your porthole. You'll find rice in a sack to scatter if you will. We want you to enjoy yourself. Don't we, Evie?" Bothwell jeered blithely.

"You devil from hell!"

"Pooh! Be reasonable, man. We can't both marry the maid, and by your leave I think the best man wins. Abrupt I may be, but every Katherine is the better for her Petruchio." He turned to her, dropping his irony for tones of curt command. "I'll be back in twenty minutes with the parson. Be ready then."

With that he turned on his heel and left, locking the door behind him.

CHAPTER XXV

A RESCUE

Even now when it is only a memory I do not like to look back upon that twenty minutes. My poor girl was hysterical, but decided. Neither argument nor entreaty could move her from her resolution to save my life, no matter what the cost. I pleaded in vain.

"I can't let you die, Jack--I can't--I can't." So she answered all my appeals, with a kind of hopeless despair that went straight to my heart.

Through my remonstrances there broke a high-pitched voice jabbering something in Spanish of a sort. The sound of running footsteps on the deck above came to us. Some one called a warning.

"Keep back there or we'll fire!"

Then my heart leaped, for across the water came the cool, steady voice of Blythe.

"My man, I want to talk with Bothwell."

More feet pattered back and forth on the deck, and among the hurrying steps was one sharp and strong.

"Good evening, Captain Blythe. You're rather late for a call, aren't you? Mr. Sedgwick was in better time. We have to thank him for an hour's pleasant entertainment."

I recognized the voice as belonging to Bothwell.

"If you've hurt a hair of his head I'll hold you personally to account. Unless you want me to board your schooner you will at once release Mr. Sedgwick and Miss Wallace."

"Miss Wallace has practically ceased to exist," the Russian drawled.

"What do you mean?"

"I shall have the honor to send you cards, captain. Miss Wallace has become my wife."

I stuck my head out of the porthole and shouted. "That's a lie, Sam. You're just in time to save her."

"Are you a prisoner, Jack?"

"Yes. So is she. In the next cabin." Some one stepped quickly across the deck and leaned over the rail above me. Bothwell's dark face looked down into mine. He leveled a revolver at my head and fired just as I drew back.

That shot served as a signal for the attack. Bullets sang back and forth, some from the schooner, others from the boats of my friends.

As for the battle, I saw from my porthole only the edge of it, and that but for a few moments as a boat full of men swept forward. Someone was firing with a rifle, while the others put their backs to the oars.

Presently the boat swept round the bow of the schooner and was lost to my view. But I could hear the firing of guns, the trampling of men above, and from their words could tell that the attackers were keeping their distance, even though they were firing pretty steadily from the cover of the shore bushes.

I must confess that Blythe's method of attack surprised me. How many men Bothwell had I did not know, but it was plain to me that the only way to take the ship was to rush it. We might fire at long distance for a week without doing more than keep them busy.

That I was wild to be free and in the thick of it may be guessed. Knowing as I did how matters stood between Evelyn and her cousin, I saw that she must be rescued at once to prevent the unholy marriage the Slav planned.

Strange that Sam could not see this and that he had not led a more dashing attempt at succoring the girl.

Three taps on the door of my prison jerked me round as if I had been pulled by a string. My revolver was in my hand. The door opened slowly and let in a man.

"That's far enough. What do you want?" I asked brusquely.

"S-sh! It's me, Mr. Sedgwick. Are you in irons?"

It was Gallagher. If I had been a Frenchman I would have kissed his ugly old mug for the sheer pleasure of seeing it. I knew now that Blythe had kept up the long distance fusillade in order to distract the attention of the defenders while Gallagher had crept close from the shore side.

I ran forward.

"Where is your boat?"

"Hidden in the bushes. Alderson is with it. Where is the lady, sir?"

In another minute Evelyn was free and standing with us in the passage. I noticed that the fire of the attackers had grown more rapid. The sound seemed closer. The demonstration was taking on the appearance of a real boarding expedition.

We climbed the forecastle ladder. I led the way, revolver in hand. From where I stood, a few steps from the top of the ladder, my eyes could sweep the forward deck.

Bothwell, the Flemings, and perhaps half a dozen dark-skinned sailors were crouching behind the bulwarks, raising their heads above the rail only to shoot.

A constant crackling of small arms filled the air. The boats had crept nearer and were pouring a very steady fire upon the defenders.

The forward movement was only a diversion under cover of which we might have a chance to escape, but it was being executed with so much briskness and spirit that Bothwell could not guess its harmless nature.

At my signal the sailor led Evelyn quickly toward the poop. With my eyes over my left shoulder I followed at their heels. We had all but reached the stern when I heard the smack of a fist and turned in time to see a Panama peon hit the deck full length.

He had been hurrying forward and had caught sight of us. His mouth was open to shout an alarm at the time the Irishman's fist had landed against the double row of shining teeth.

The fellow rolled over and was up like an acrobat. But my revolver, pointing straight at his stomach, steadied him in an instant.

"Don't move or shout," I warned.

From the bushes Alderson had been waiting for us and his boat was in place. He flung up a rope ladder with grappling hooks on the end. Gallagher fixed them to the rail and helped Evelyn down.

"You next," I ordered.

"Yes, sir."

"Your turn now, Sambo," I told the peon after the sailor had gone.

The fellow rolled his eyes wildly toward the stem of the vessel but found no hope from that quarter. He clambered over the rail like a monkey and went down hand after hand. I followed him.

We were huddled promiscuously in the little boat so that it rocked to the very lip. For a half a minute I was afraid we were going down, but a shift in position by Gallagher steadied the shell.

Meanwhile Alderson had thrown his muscles into the oars and we drew away steadily; fifty strokes, and the shadows had swallowed us.

Alderson pulled across the river and let the boat drift down the opposite bank. The outgoing tide carried us swiftly. We slipped past the schooner unobserved. Gallagher blew twice on a whistle and the two boats commanded by Blythe and Yeager at once drew back into safety.

Some three hundred yards farther down stream they caught up with us.

"All right, Jack?" Blythe called across to me.

"All right, Sam."

"Miss Wallace is with you, of course?"

"Yes, and one other passenger who nearly swamped us. Can you take our prisoner?"

His boat pulled up beside us and relieved us of one very frightened Panama peon. We were very glad to be rid of him, for a dozen times the waves had nearly swamped our overloaded skiff and I had been bailing every second.

A few minutes later we reached the Argos.

From Blythe I learned that Gallagher had been responsible for the plan by means of which he had rescued us. Moreover, he had insisted on taking the stellar rôle in carrying it out, dangerous as the part had been. It was his way of wiping out his share in the mutiny.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE LAST BRUSH

We resumed next morning the digging for the treasure. The shore party was made up of Blythe, Yeager, Smith, Higgins and Barbados.

Those of us left on board had a lazy time of it. I arranged watches of two to guard against any surprise on the part of the enemy either by an attack upon the yacht or by a sally along the shore upon the treasure diggers.

Having divided my men into watches, I discharged my mind of responsibility. Evelyn and I had a thousand things to tell each other. We sat on the upper deck under the tarpaulin and forgot everything except that we were lovers reunited after dreadful peril.

Youth is resilient. One would scarce have believed that this girl bubbling over with life and spirits was the same one who had been in such hopeless despair a few hours earlier.

A night's good sleep had set her up wonderfully.

Last night I had looked into tired eyes that had not yet fully escaped from the shadows of tragedy, into the sharp oval of a colorless face from which waves of storm had washed the life.

This morning the sun shone for her.

Courage had flowed back into her heart. Swift love ran now and again through her cheeks and tinted them.

She was herself, golden and delicate, elastic and vivid as a captured nymph.

"When I left the old Argos I thought I never wanted to see the yacht again, but now I think I could be happy here all my life," she confided.

"Wouldn't you prefer to have your cousin just a few miles farther away?"

She fell grave for a moment.

"Do you think he'll try to do more mischief?"

"He'll try. That's a safe bet. But I think we have him checkmated. By night we ought to have the bulk of the treasure on board. Once we get it the Argos will show him her heels."

Four bells sounded, six, eight. Dugan came down from the bridge to report to me.

"Captain Blythe's party coming down to the beach, sir."

Two of the men were carrying a large chest. It was so heavy that every forty or fifty yards relays relieved each other. The box was brought down to the edge of the water and loaded into a boat. Smith and Higgins took their places at the oars and Blythe stepped into the bow.

The cargo seemed to call for tackle and ropes. I had them ready before the boat reached us. Blythe superintended the hoisting of the chest, arranging the ropes so as to make a slip impossible. We hauled it safely aboard.

"Have it taken to the strong room, Sam. There's another waiting for us ashore," Blythe explained.

"Want me to go back for it?"

"No. Keep a sharp lookout for our friend up the river."

He was pulled ashore again and returned two hours later with a second chest, this time leaving Yeager and Barbados on guard at the cache. Gallagher and Alderson were sent ashore later to join Tom's party for the night watch.

A few more hours' work would be enough to lift the rest of the treasure. Already we had on board a fortune in doubloons and bars of gold, but there was still one more chest to be unearthed. We felt that we were near the end of our adventure and our spirits were high.

Blythe got out his violin and Evie sang some of her plantation songs, her soft voice falling easily into the indolent negro dialect.

My stunt was Irish stories. We dragooned the staid Morgan into playing the piano while we ragged.

It must have been close to midnight before we spoke of breaking up.

Evelyn and I took a turn on the deck. Our excuse was to get a breath of fresh air, but the truth is that we were always drifting together.

Even in the company of others our eyes had a way of sending wireless messages of which we two only understood the code.

We leaned against the rail and looked across the bay. It was a night of ragged clouds behind which the moon was screened.

"Isn't that a boat over there?" Evie asked, pointing in the direction of the river mouth.

The moon had peeped out and was flinging a slant of light over the water. I looked for a long minute.

"Yes. I believe it's Bothwell's schooner. He has slipped out unnoticed. The fellow must mean mischief."

"Oh, I hope not," said Evie, and she gave a little shiver.

A sound came faintly over the water to us from the shore.

"Did you hear that?" Evelyn turned to me, her face white in the shining moonbeam.

A second pistol shot followed the first.

"Trouble at the cache!"

I turned toward the pavilion and met Blythe. Already he was flinging a crisp order to the watch.

"Lower a boat, Neidlinger. Smith will help you. That you, Higgins? Rouse all hands from sleep. We've work afoot."

Again came a faint echo across the still waters, followed by two sharper explosions. Some one had brought a rifle into action.

Blythe turned to me. "It's my place to stand by the ship, Jack. This may be a ruse to draw us off. I can spare you one man to go ashore and see what the trouble is. Take your pick."

I chose Smith.

"Keep a sharp lookout, Jack. He's wily as the devil, Bothwell is. Better not land at the usual place. He may have an ambush planted."

"All right, Sam."

The Englishman turned to give Stubbs orders for arming the crew.

In the darkness a groping little hand found mine.

"Must you go, Jack? I--wish you would stay here."

My arm slid around the shoulders of my girl.

"It's up to me to go, honey."

We were alone under the awning. Her soft arms went round my neck and her fingers laced themselves.

"You'll be careful, won't you? It's all so horrible. I thought it was all over, and now---- Oh, boy, I'm afraid!"

"Don't worry. Blythe will hold the ship."

"Of course. It isn't that. It's you. I don't want you to go. Let Mr. Stubbs."

I shook my head.

"No, dear. That won't do. It's my place to go. But you needn't worry. The gods take care of lovers. I'll come back all right."

Her interlaced fingers tightened behind my neck.

"Don't be reckless, then. You're so foolhardy. I couldn't bear it if--if anything happened to you."

"Nothing will happen except that I shall come back to brag of our victory," I smiled.

"If I could be sure!" she cried softly.

The sinister sound of shots had drifted to us as we talked. The boat was by this time lowered and I knew I must be gone. Gently I unclasped the knotted fingers.

"Must you go already?" She made no other protest, but slipped a plain band ring from her finger to my hand. "I want you to have something of mine with you, so that----"

Her voice broke, but I knew she meant so that the gods of war might know she claimed ownership and send me back safe. For another instant she lay on my heart, then offered me her lips and surrendered me to my duty.

"Ready, Jack!" called Blythe cheerfully.

I ran across the deck and joined the man in the skiff. We pushed off and bent to the stroke. As our oars gripped the water the sound of another far, faint explosion drifted to us.

We landed a couple of hundred yards to the right of the spit and dragged our little boat into some bushes close to the shore.

I gave Smith instructions to stay where he was unless he heard the hooting of an owl. If the call came once he was to advance very quietly; if twice, as fast as he could cover the ground.

The mosquitoes were a veritable plague. As I moved forward they swarmed around me in a cloud. Unfortunately I had not taken the time to bring the face netting with which we all equipped ourselves when going ashore.

Before I had covered fifty yards I heard voices raised as in anger. Presently I made out the sharp, imperious tones of Bothwell and the dogged persistent ones of Henry Fleming.

"I'll do as I please. Understand that, my man!" The words were snapped out with a steel edge to them.

"No, by thunder, you won't! I don't care about the cattleman, but Gallagher and Alderson were my shipmates. I'm no murderous pirate."

"You'll hang for one, you fool, if you're not careful. Didn't Gallagher desert to the enemy? Wasn't Alderson against us from start to finish? Didn't one of them give me this hole in my arm just now? They'll either join us or go to the sharks," Bothwell announced curtly.

From where I stood, perhaps forty yards north of the cache, I could make out that my friends were prisoners. No doubt the pirate had taken them at advantage and forced a surrender. Of Barbados I could see no sign. Later I learned that he had taken to his heels at the first shot.

Twice I gave the hoot of an owl. Falling clearly on the still night, the effect of my signal was startling.

"What was that, boss?" asked a Panamanian faintly.

"An owl, you fool," retorted Bothwell impatiently. "Come, I give you one more chance, Gallagher. Will you join us and share the booty? Or shall I blow out your brains?"

Gallagher, from where he lay on the ground, spoke out firmly:

"I'll sail no more with murderous mutineers."

"Bully for you, partner!" boomed the undaunted voice of the cattleman.

"And you, Alderson?"

"I stand with my friends, Captain Bothwell."

"The more fool you, for you'll be a long time dead. Stand back, Fleming."

As I ran forward I let out a shout.

Simultaneously a revolver cracked.

Bothwell cursed furiously, for Henry Fleming had struck up the arm of the murderer.

The Russian turned furiously on the engineer and fired point-blank at him.

The bullet must have struck him somewhere, for the man gave a cry.

Bothwell whirled upon me and fired twice as I raced across the moonlit sand.

A flash of lightning seared my shoulder but did not stop me.

"Ha! The meddler again! Stung you that time, my friend," he shouted, and fired at me a third time.

They were the last words he was ever to utter. One moment his dark, venomous face craned toward me above the smoke of his revolver, the next it was slowly sinking to the ground in a contorted spasm of pain and rage.

For George Fleming had avenged the attempt upon his brother's life with a shot in the back.

Bothwell was dead almost before he reached the ground.

For a moment we all stood in a dead silence, adjusting our minds to the changed conditions.

Then one of the natives gave a squeal of terror and turned to run. Quick as a flash the rest of them--I counted nine and may have missed one or two--were scuttling off at his heels.

George Fleming stared at the body of his chief which lay so still on the ground with the shining moon pouring its cold light on the white face.

Then slowly his eyes came up to meet mine.

In another moment he and his brother were crashing through the lush underbrush to the beach. I judged from the rapidity with which Henry moved that he could not be much hurt. From the opposite direction Smith came running up.

I dropped to my knees beside Yeager and cut the thongs that tied his hands.

"Hurt?" I asked.

"No," he answered in deep disgust at himself. "I stumbled over a root and hit my head against this tree right after the game opened. Gallagher and Alderson had to play it out alone. But Bothwell must have had fourteen men with him. He got Gallagher in the leg and rushed Alderson. You dropped in right handy, Jack."

"And not a minute too soon. By Jove! we ran it pretty fine this trip. Badly hurt, Gallagher?"

"No, sir. Hit in the thigh."

I examined the wound as well as I could and found it not as bad as it might have been.

"A good clean flesh wound. You're in luck, Gallagher. The last two days have more than wiped out your week of mutiny. We're all deep in your debt."

"Thank you, sir," he said, flushing with pleasure.

Here I may put it down that this was the last word Gallagher heard about his lapse from duty. He and the other reconstructed mutineers were forgiven, their fault wiped completely off the slate.

I sent Alderson down to the spit to signal the Argos for a boat. One presently arrived with Stubbs and Higgins at the oars. The little cockney was struck with awe at sight of the dead man.

"My heye, Mr. Sedgwick, 'e's got 'is at larst and none too soon. 'Ow did you do it?"

"I didn't do it. One of his friends did."

"Well, 'e 'ad it comin' to 'im, sir. But I'll sye for him that 'e was a man as well as a devil."

We helped Gallagher down to the boat and he and I were taken aboard.

The wound in my shoulder was but a scratch.

It was enough, however, to let me in for a share of the honors with Gallagher.

In truth I had done nothing but precipitate by my arrival the final tragedy; but love, they say, is blind.

It was impossible for me to persuade Evelyn that I had not been the hero of the occasion.

She could appreciate the courage of the three men who had chosen death rather than to join Bothwell in his nefarious plans, but she was caught by the melodramatic entry I had made upon the stage.

"You were one against fourteen, but that didn't stop you at all. Of course the others were brave, but----"

"Sheer nonsense, my dear. Any one can shout 'Villain, avaunt!' and prance across the sand, but there wasn't any pleasant excitement about looking Boris Bothwell in the eye and telling him to shoot and be hanged. That took sheer, cold, unadulterated nerve, and my hat's off to the three of them."

She leaned toward me out of the shadow, and the light in her eyes was wonderful.

With all the innocence of a Grecian nymph they held, too, the haunting, wistful pathos of eternal motherhood.

She yearned over me, almost as if I had been the son of her dreams.

"Boy, Jack, I'm glad it's over--so glad--so glad. I love you--and I've been afraid for you."

Desire of her, of the sweet brave spirit in its beautiful sheath of young flesh, surged up in my blood irresistibly.

I caught her to my heart and kissed the soft corn-silk hair, the deep melting eyes, the ripe red lips.

By Heaven, I had fought for her and had won her! She was the gift of love, won in stark battle from the best fighter I had ever met.

The mad Irish blood in me sang.

After all I am not the son of a filibuster for nothing.

CHAPTER XXVII

IN HARBOR

The morning found me as good as new except for a dull ache in my shoulder. I was up betimes for breakfast and ready for shore duty.

Yet I was glad to accept Blythe's orders to stay on board as long as we remained in Darien Harbor.

It was good to avoid the sun and the mosquitoes and the moist heat of the jungle, though I felt a little guilty at lying in a hammock on the shady side of the deck with Evelyn at my side, while my friends were perspiring in the burning sand pits with shovel and pick.

Fortunately, it was only a few hours before the last of the boxes buried by Bucks was uncovered. Jamaica Ginger's hatchet found it a good fifty yards from the others. Within an hour it had been dragged out of the dirt and brought aboard.

We sailed the same afternoon about twelve hours later than the schooner, which had quietly slipped past us on its way to the sea in the faint light of early dawn.

That Fleming had given up the attempt to win the treasure was plain. I doubt whether his men would have followed him even if he had wished it, for he had not the dominant temper of his chief.

We dropped anchor under the lee of a little island in the Boco Chico, but our engines were throbbing again by break of day. As we puffed across the North Bay we passed the schooner almost within a stone's throw.

Henry Fleming was on deck, and half a dozen of the blacks and browns who made up the crew swarmed to the side of the vessel to see us. Blythe had made quiet preparations in case any attempt at stopping us should be made, but apparently nothing was farther from the thoughts of the enemy.

In fact several of the dusky deck hands waved us a friendly greeting as we drove swiftly past. From that day to this I have never seen any member of that crew, though a letter received last week from Gallagher--who is doing well in the cattle business in the Argentine--mentioned that he had run across Henry Fleming at Buenos Ayres.

Out of the Gulf of San Miguel we pushed past Brava Point as fast as Stubbs could send the Argos. The lights of Panama called to us. They stood for law and civilization and the blessed dominance of the old stars and stripes.

We were in a hurry to get back to the broad piazzas of its hotels, where women at their ease did fancy work and played bridge while laughing children romped without fear.

Adventure is all very well, but I have discovered that one can get a surfeit of it.

Before the division of the treasure there arose a point of morality that, oddly enough, had not been considered before. It was born of my legal conscience and for a few minutes was disturbing.

Tom and I were in Blythe's cabin with him discussing an equitable division of the spoils. Into my mind popped the consideration that we were not the owners of it all but certain remote parties in Peru.

After having fought for it and won it the treasure was not ours. The thing hit me like a blow in the face. I spoke my thought aloud. Sam looked blankly at me.

Yeager laughed grimly. There was a good deal of the primitive man still in the Arizonian.

"If they want it let them come and take it. I reckon finding is keeping."

But I knew the matter could not be settled so easily as that. A moral question had arisen and it had to be faced. Evelyn was called into counsel.

She had an instant solution of the difficulty.

"We can't return it even if we want to. The town of Cerro Blanco and the neighboring mines were destroyed by an earthquake in 1819. Not a soul at the mines escaped and only a few peasants from the town. You will find the whole story in Vanbrough's 'Great Earthquakes.'"

"Then, after all, we are the rightful owners."

"I'm afraid we are," she smiled.

Blythe, already as wealthy as he cared to be, declined to accept any share of our spoils beyond the expenses of the cruise. Each of the sailors received a good-sized lump sum, as did also Philips and Morgan.

Rather against the wishes of our captain the three former mutineers shared with the rest of the crew. We did not of course forget the relatives of the men who had fallen in our defense.

The boatswain Caine left a widow and two children. We put her upon a pension until she married a grocer two years later.

We were never able to hear that she thought the loss of husband number one anything but a good riddance.

Jimmie's share went into a fund, which is being managed by Yeager and me as trustees. It is enough to keep him and his mother while the boy is being educated and to leave a small nest-egg in addition.

Yeager, of course, put his profits into cattle. Since Evelyn and I moved to Los Angeles we see a good deal of Tom and his wife. At least once during the winter we run across to his Arizona ranch for a week or two. His boy is just old enough to give his name proudly with a lisp as "Tham Blythe Yeager."

Ours is a girl. She has the golden hair and the sparkling spirit of her mother.

* * * * *

N. B.--The autocrat of the household has just read the last line as she leans over my shoulder. She will give me no peace till I add that the baby has the blue, Irish eyes of her dad.

THE END

Contents

A DAUGHTER OF THE DONS

A Story of New Mexico Today

BY WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

CHAPTER I

DON MANUEL INTRODUCES HIMSELF

For hours Manuel Pesquiera had been rolling up the roof of the continent in an observation-car of the "Short Line."

His train had wound in and out through a maze of bewildering scenery, and was at last dipping down into the basin of the famous gold camp.

The alert black eyes of the young New Mexican wandered discontentedly over the raw ugliness of the camp. Towns straggled here and there untidily at haphazard, mushroom growths of a day born of a lucky "strike." Into the valleys and up and down the hillsides ran a network of rails for trolley and steam cars. Everywhere were the open tunnel mouths or the frame shaft-houses perched above the gray Titan dump beards.

The magic that had wonderfully brought all these manifold activities into being had its talisman in the word "Gold"; but, since Pesquiera had come neither as a prospector nor investor, he heard with only half-concealed impatience the easy gossip of his fellow travelers about the famous ore producers of the district.

It was not until his inattentive ears caught the name of Dick Gordon that he found interest in the conversation.

"Pardon, sir! Are you acquaint' with Mr. Richard Gordon?" he asked, a touch of the gentle Spanish accent in his voice.

The man to whom he had spoken, a grizzled, weather-beaten little fellow in a corduroy suit and white, broad-brimmed felt hat, turned his steady blue eyes on his questioner a moment before he answered:

"I ought to know him, seeing as I'm his partner."

"Then you can tell me where I may find him?"

"Yes, sir, I can do that. See that streak of red there on the hill--the one above the big dump. That's the shafthouse of the Last Dollar. Drop down it about nine hundred feet and strike an airline west by north for about a quarter of a mile, and you'd be right close to him. He's down there, tackling a mighty uncertain proposition. The shaft and the workings of the Last Dollar are full of water. He's running a crosscut from an upraise in the Radley drift, so as to tap the west tunnel of the Last Dollar."

"It is dangerous, you inform me?"

"Dangerous ain't the word. It's suicide, the way I look at it. See here, my friend. His drill goes through and lets loose about 'steen million gallons of water. How is he going to get in out of the rain about that time?"

The New Mexican showed a double row of pearly teeth in a bland smile.

"Pardon, sir. If you would explain a leetle more fully I would then comprehend."

"Sure. Here's the way it is. Dick and his three men are plugging away at the breast of the drift with air-drills. Every day he gits closeter to that lake dammed up there. Right now there can't be more'n a few feet of granite 'twixt him and it. He don't know how many any more'n a rabbit, because he's going by old maps that ain't any too reliable. The question is whether the wall will hold till he dynamites it through, or whether the weight of water will crumple up that granite and come pouring out in a flood."

"Your friend, then, is in peril, is it not so?"

"You've said it. He's shooting dice with death. That's the way I size it up. If the wall holds till it's blown up, Dick has got to get back along the crosscut, lower himself down the upraise, and travel nearly a mile through tunnelings before he reaches a shaft to git out. That don't leave them any too much time at the best. But if the water breaks through on them, it's Heaven help Dick, and good-by to this world."

"Then Mr. Gordon is what you call brave?"

"He's the gamest man that ever walked into this camp. There ain't an inch of him that ain't clear grit through and through. Get into a tight place, and he's your one best bet to tie to."

"Mr. Gordon is fortunate in his friend," bowed the New Mexican politely.

The little miner looked at him with shining eyes.

"Nothing like that. Me, I figure the luck's all on my side. Onct you meet Dick you'll see why we boost for him. Hello, here's where we get off at. If you're looking for Dick, stranger, you better follow me. I'm going right up to the mine. Dick had ought to be coming up from below any minute now."

Pesquiera checked his suitcase at the depot newsstand and walked up a steep hill trail with his guide. The miner asked no questions of the New Mexican as to his business with Gordon, nor did the latter volunteer any information. They discussed instead the output of the camp for the preceding year, comparing it with that of the other famous gold districts of the world.

Just as they entered the shafthouse the cage shot to the surface. From it stepped two men.

Several miners crowded toward them with eager greetings, but they moved aside at sight of Pesquiera's companion, who made straight for those from below.

"What's new, Tregarth?" he asked of one of them, a huge Cornishman.

"The drill have brook into the Last Dollar tunnel. The watter of un do be leaking through, Measter Davis. The boss sent us oop while Tom and him stayed to put the charges in the drill holes to blow oot the wall. He wouldna coom and let me stay."

Davis thought a moment.

"I'll go down the shaft and wait at the foot of it. There'll be something doing soon. Keep your eye peeled for signals, Smith, and when you git the bell to raise, shoot her up sudden. If the water's coming, we'll be in a hurry, and don't you forget it. Want to come down with me, Tregarth?"

"I do that, sir." The man stepped into the cage and grinned. "We'll bring the byes back all right. Bet un we do, lads."

The cage shot down, and the New Mexican sat on a bench to wait its return. Beside him was a young doctor, who had come prepared for a possible disaster. Such conversation as the men carried on was in low tones, for all felt the strain of the long minutes. The engineer's eye was glued to his machinery, his hand constantly on the lever.

It must have been an hour before the bell rang sharply in the silence and the lever swept back instantly. A dozen men started to their feet and waited tensely. Next moment there was a wild, exultant cheer.

For Tregarth had stepped from the cage with a limp figure in his arms, and after him Davis, his arm around the shoulder of a drenched, staggering youth, who had a bleeding cut across his cheek. Through all the grime that covered the wounded miner the pallor of exhaustion showed itself.

But beaten and buffeted as the man had plainly been in his fight for life, the clean, supple strength and the invincible courage of him still shone in his eye and trod in his bearing. It was even now the salient thing about him, though he had but come, alive and no more, from a wrestle with death itself.

He sank to a bench, and looked around on his friends with shining eyes.

"'Twas nip and tuck, boys. The water caught us in the tunnel, and I thought we were gone. It swept us right to the cage," he panted.

"She didn't sweep Tom there, boss; ye went back after un," corrected the Cornishman.

"Anyhow, we made it in the nick o' time. Tom all right, Doctor?"

The doctor looked up from his examination.

"No bones broken. He seems sound. If there are no internal injuries it will be a matter of only a day or two in bed."

"Good. That's the way to talk. You got to make him good as new, Doctor. You ought to have seen the way he stayed by that drill when the water was pouring through the cracks in the granite. Have him taken to the hospital, and send the bill to me."

Tregarth boomed out in a heavy bass:

"What's the matter with the boss? Both of un? They be all right. Bean't they, lads?"

It was just after the answering chorus that Pesquiera came forward and bowed magnificently to the young mine operator. The New Mexican's eyes were blazing with admiration, for he was of Castilian blood and cherished courage as the chief of virtues.

"I have the honor to salute a hero, señor" he cried enthusiastically. "Your deed is of a most fine bravery. I, Manuel Pesquiera, say it. Have I the right in thinking him of the name of Mr. Richard Gordon?"

Something that was almost disgust filmed the gray eyes of the young miner. He had the Anglo-Saxon horror of heroics. What he had done was all in the day's work, and he was the last man in the world to enjoy having a fuss made over it.

"My name is Gordon," he said quietly.

The Spaniard bowed again.

"I have the honor to be your servant to command, Don Manuel Pesquiera. I believe myself to be, sir, a messenger of fortune to you--a Mercury from the favoring gods, with news of good import. I, therefore, ask the honor of an audience at your convenience."

Dick flung the wet hat from his curly head and took a look at the card which the Spaniard had presented him. From it his humorous gaze went back to the posturing owner of the pasteboard. Suppressing a grin, he answered with perfect gravity.

"If you will happen round to the palace about noon to-morrow, Señor Pesquiera, you will be admitted to the presence by the court flunkies. When you're inquiring for the whereabouts of the palace, better call it room 14, Gold Nugget Rooming-House."

He excused himself and stepped lightly across to his companion in the adventure, who had by this time recovered consciousness.

"How goes it, Tom? Feel as if you'd been run through a sausage-grinder?" he asked cheerily.

The man smiled faintly. "I'm all right, boss. The boys tell me you went back and saved me."

"Sho! I just grabbed you and slung you in the cage. No trick at all, Tom. Now, don't you worry, boy. Just lie there in the hospital and rest easy. We're settling the bill, and there's a hundred plunks waiting you when you get well."

Tom's hand pressed his feebly.

"I always knew you were white, boss."

The doctor laughed as he came forward with a basin of water and bandages.

"I'm afraid he'll be whiter than he need be if I don't stop that bleeding. I think we're ready for it now, Mr. Gordon."

"All right. It's only a scratch," answered Gordon indifferently.

Pesquiera, feeling that he was out of the picture, departed in search of a hotel for the night. He was conscious of a strong admiration for this fair brown-faced Anglo-Saxon who faced death so lightly for one of his men. Whatever else he might prove to be, Richard Gordon was a man.

The New Mexican had an uneasy prescience that his mission was foredoomed to failure and that it might start currents destined to affect potently the lives of many in the Rio Chama Valley.

CHAPTER II

THE TWO GRANTS

The clock in the depot tower registered just twelve, and the noon whistles were blowing when Pesquiera knocked at apartment 14, of the Gold Nugget Rooming-House.

In answer to an invitation to "Come in," he entered an apartment which seemed to be a combination office and living-room. A door opened into what the New Mexican assumed to be a sleeping chamber, adjoining which was evidently a bath, judging from the sound of splashing water.

"With you in a minute," a voice from within assured the guest.

The splashing ceased. There was the sound of a towel in vigorous motion. This was followed by the rustling of garments as the bather dressed. In an astonishingly short time the owner of the rooms appeared in the doorway.

He was a well-set-up youth, broad of shoulder and compact of muscle. The ruddy bloom that beat through the tanned cheeks and the elasticity of his tread hinted at an age not great, but there was no suggestion of immaturity in the cool steadiness of the gaze or in the quiet poise of the attitude.

He indicated a chair, after relieving his visitor of hat and cane. Pesquiera glanced at the bandage round the head.

"I trust, señor, your experience of yesterday has not given you a wakeful night?"

"Slept like a top. Fact is, I'm just getting up. You heard this morning yet how Tom is?"

"The morning newspaper says he is doing very well indeed."

"That's good hearing. He's a first-rate boy, and I'd hate to hear worse of him. But I mustn't take your time over our affairs. I think you mentioned business, sir?"

The Castilian leaned forward and fixed his black, piercing eyes on the other. Straight into his business he plunged.

"Señor Gordon, have you ever heard of the Valdés grant?"

"Not to remember it. What kind of a grant is it?"

"It is a land grant, made by Governor Facundo Megares, of New Mexico, which territory was then a province of Spain, to Don Fernando Valdés, in consideration of services rendered the Spanish crown against the Indians."

Dick shook his head. "You've got me, sir. If I ever heard of it the thing has plumb slipped my mind. Ought I to know about it?"

"Have you ever heard of the Moreño grant?"

Somewhere in the back of the young man's mind a faint memory stirred. He seemed to see an old man seated at a table in a big room with a carved fireplace. The table was littered with papers, and the old gentleman was explaining them to a woman. She was his daughter, Dick's mother. A slip of a youngster was playing about the room with two puppies. That little five-year-old was the young mine operator.

"I have," he answered calmly.

"You know, then, that a later governor of the territory, Manuel Armijo, illegally carved half a million acres out of the former grant and gave it to José Moreño, from whom your grandfather bought it."

The miner's face froze to impassivity. He was learning news. The very existence of such a grant was a surprise to him. His grandfather and his mother had been dead fifteen years. Somewhere in an old trunk back in Kentucky there was a tin box full of papers that might tell a story. But for the present he preferred to assume that he knew what information they contained.

"I object to the word illegal, Don Manuel," he answered curtly, not at all sure his objection had any foundation of law.

Pesquiera shrugged. "Very well, señor. The courts, I feel sure, will sustain my words."

"Perhaps, and perhaps not."

"The law is an expensive arbiter, Señor Gordon. Your claim is slight. The title has never been perfected by you. In fifteen years you have paid no taxes. Still your claim, though worthless in itself, operates as a cloud upon the title of my client, the Valdés heir."

Dick looked at him steadily and nodded. He began to see the purpose of this visit. He waited silently, his mind very alert.

"Señor, I am here to ask of you a relinquishment. You are brave; no doubt, chivalrous----"

"I'm a business man, Don Manuel," interrupted Gordon. "I don't see what chivalry has got to do with it."

"Señorita Valdés is a woman, young and beautiful. This little estate is her sole possession. To fight for it in court is a hardship that Señor Gordon will not force upon her."

"So she's young and beautiful, is she?"

"The fairest daughter of Spain in all New Mexico," soared Don Manuel.

"You don't say. A regular case of beauty and the beast, ain't it?"

"As one of her friends, I ask of you not to oppose her lawful possession of this little vineyard."

"In the grape business, is she?"

"I speak, señor, in metaphor. The land is barren, of no value except for sheep grazing."

"Are you asking me to sell my title or give it?"

"It is a bagatelle--a mere nothing. The title is but waste paper, I do assure. Yet we would purchase--for a nominal figure--merely to save court expenses."

"I see," Dick laughed softly. "Just to save court expenses--because you'd rather I'd have the money than the lawyers. That's right good of you."

Pesquiera talked with his hands and shoulders, sparkling into animation. "Mr. Gordon distrusts me. So? Am I not right? He perhaps mistakes me for what you call a--a pettifogger, is it not? I do assure to the contrary. The blood of the Pesquieras is of the bluest Castilian."

"Fine! I'll take your word for it, Don Manuel. And I don't distrust you at all. But here's the point. I'm a plain American business man. I don't buy and I don't sell without first investigating a proposition submitted to me. I'm from Missouri."

"Oh, indeed! From St. Louis perhaps. I went to school there when I was a boy."

Gordon laughed. "I was speaking in metaphor, Don Manuel. What I mean is that I'll have to be shown. No pig-in-a-poke business for me."

"Exactly. Most precisely. Have I not traveled from New Mexico up this steep roof of the continent merely to explain how matters stand? Valencia Valdés is the true and rightful heiress of the valley. She is everywhere so recognize' and accept' by the peons."

The miner's indolent eye rested casually upon his guest. "Married?"

"I have not that felicitation," replied the Spaniard.

"It was the lady I meant."

"Pardon. No man has yet been so fortunate to win the señorita"

"I reckon it's not for want of trying, since the heiress is so beautiful. There's always plenty of willing lads to take over the job of prince regent under such circumstances."

The spine of the New Mexican stiffened ever so slightly. "Señorita Valdés is princess of the Rio Chama valley. Her dependents understan' she is of a differen' caste, a descendant of the great and renowned Don Alvaro of Castile."

"Don't think I know the gentleman. Who was he?" asked Gordon genially, offering his guest a cigar.

Pesquiera threw up his neat little hands in despair. "But of a certainty Mr. Gordon has read of Don Alvaro de Valdés y Castillo, lord of demesnes without number, conqueror of the Moors and of the fierce island English who then infested Spain in swarms. His retinue was as that of a king. At his many manors fed daily thirty thousand men at arms. In all Europe no knight so brave, so chivalrous, so skillful with lance and sword. To the nobles his word was law. Young men worshiped him, the old admired, the poor blessed. The queen, it is said, love' him madly. She was of exceeding beauty, but Don Alvaro remember his vows of knighthood and turn his back upon madness. Then the king, jealous for that his great noble was better, braver and more popular than he, send for de Valdés to come to court."

"I reckon Don Alvaro ought to have been sick a-bed that day and unable to make the journey," suggested Dick.

"So say his wife and his men, but Don Alvaro scorn to believe his king a traitor. He kiss his wife and babies good-bye, ride into the trap prepare' for him, and die like a soldier. God rest his valiant soul."

"Some man. I'd like to have met him," Gordon commented.

"Señorita Valencia is of the same blood, of the same fine courage. She, too, is the idol of her people. Will Mr. Gordon, who is himself of the brave heart, make trouble for an unprotected child without father or mother?"

"Unprotected isn't quite the word so long as Don Manuel Pesquiera is her friend," the Coloradoan answered with a smile.

The dark young man flushed, but his eyes met those of Dick steadily. "You are right, sir. I stand between her and trouble if I can."

"Good. Glad you do."

"So I make you an offer. I ask you to relinquish your shadowy claim to the illegal Moreño grant."

"Well, I can't tell you offhand just what I'll do, Don Manuel. Make your proposition to me in writing, and one month from to-day I'll let you know whether it's yes or no."

"But the señorita wants to make improvements--to build, to fence. Delay is a hardship. Let us say a thousand dollars and make an end."

"Not if the court knows itself. You say she's young. A month's wait won't hurt her any. I want to look into it. Maybe you're offering me too much. A fifth of a cent an acre is a mighty high price for land. I don't want any fairest daughter of Spain to rob herself for me, you know," he grinned.

"I exceed my instructions. I offer two thousand, Mr. Gordon."

"If you said two hundred thousand, I'd still say no till I had looked it up. I'm not doing business to-day at any price, thank you."

"You are perhaps of an impression that this land is valuable. On the contrary, I offer an assurance. And our need of your shadowy claim----"

"I ain't burdened with impressions, except one, that I don't care to dispose of my ghost-title. We'll talk business a month from to-day, if you like. No sooner. Have a smoke, Don Manuel?"

Pesquiera declined the proffered cigar with an impatient gesture. He rose, reclaimed his hat and cane, and clicked his heels together in a stiff bow.

He was a slight, dark, graceful man, with small, neat hands and feet, trimly gloved and shod. He had a small black mustache pointing upward in parallels to his smooth, olive cheeks. The effect was almost foppish, but the fire in the snapping eyes contradicted any suggestion of effeminacy. His gaze yielded nothing even to the searching one of Gordon.

"It is, then, war between us, Señor Gordon?" he asked haughtily.

Dick laughed.

"Sho! It's just business. Maybe I'll take your offer. Maybe I won't. I might want to run down and look at the no-'count land," he said with a laugh.

"I think it fair to inform you, sir, that the feeling of the country down there is in favor of the Valdés grant. The peons are hot-tempered, and are likely to resent any attempt to change the existing conditions. Your presence, señor, would be a danger."

"Much obliged, Don Manuel. Tell 'em from me that I got a bad habit of wearing a six-gun, and that if they get to resenting too arduous it's likely to ventilate their enthusiasm."

Once more the New Mexican bowed stiffly before he retired.

Pesquiera had overplayed his hand. He had stirred in the miner an interest born of curiosity and a sense of romantic possibilities. Dick wanted to see this daughter of Castile who was still to the simple-hearted shepherds of the valley a princess of the blood royal. Don Manuel was very evidently her lover. Perhaps it was his imagination that had mixed the magic potion that lent an atmosphere of old-world pastoral charm to the story of the Valdés grant. Likely enough the girl would prove commonplace in a proud half-educated fashion that would be intolerable for a stranger.

But even without the help of the New Mexican the situation was one which called for a thorough personal investigation. Gordon was a hard-headed American business man, though he held within him the generous and hare-brained potentialities of a soldier of fortune. He meant to find out just what the Moreño grant was worth. After he had investigated his legal standing he would look over the valley of the Chama himself. He took no stock in Don Manuel's assurance that the land was worthless, any more than he gave weight to his warning that a personal visit to the scene would be dangerous if the settlers believed he came to interfere with their rights. For many turbulent years Dick Gordon had held his own in a frontier community where untamed enemies had passed him daily with hate in their hearts. He was not going to let the sulky resentment of a few shepherds interfere with his course now.

A message flashed back to a little town in Kentucky that afternoon. It was of the regulation ten-words length, and this was the body of it:

Send immediately, by express, little brown leather trunk in garret.

The signature at the bottom of it was "Richard Gordon."

CHAPTER III

FISHERMAN'S LUCK

A fisherman was whipping the stream of the Rio Chama.

In his creel were a dozen trout, for the speckled beauties had been rising to the fly that skipped across the top of the riffles as naturally as life. He wore waders, gray flannel shirt, and khaki coat. As he worked up the stream he was oftener in its swirling waters than on the shore. But just now the fish were no longer striking.

"Time to grub, anyhow. I'll give them a rest for a while. They'll likely be on the job again soon," he told himself as he waded ashore.

A draw here ran down to the river, and its sunny hillside tempted him to eat his lunch farther up.

Into the little basin in which he found himself the sun had poured shafts of glory to make a very paradise of color. Down by the riverside the willows were hesitating between green and bronze. Russet and brown and red peppered the slopes, but shades of yellow predominated in the gulch itself.

The angler ate his sandwiches leisurely, and stretched his lithe body luxuriantly on the ground for a siesta. When he resumed his occupation the sun had considerably declined from the meridian. The fish were again biting, and he landed two in as many minutes.

The bed of the river had been growing steeper, and at the upper entrance of the little park he came to the first waterfall he had seen. Above this, on the opposite side, was a hole that looked inviting. He decided that a dead tree lying across the river would, at a pinch, serve for a bridge, and he ventured upon it. Beneath his feet the rotting bark gave way. He found himself falling, tried desperately to balance himself, and plunged head first into the river.

Coming to the surface, he caught at a rock which jutted from the channel. At this point the water was deep and the current swift. Were he to let loose of the boulder he must be swept over the fall before he could reach the shore. Nor could he long maintain his position against the rush of the ice-cold waters fresh from the mountain snow fields.

He had almost made up his mind to take his chances with the fall, when a clear cry came ringing to him:

"No suelte!"

A figure was flying down the slope toward him--the slim, graceful form of a woman. As she ran she caught up a stick from the ground. This she held out to him from the bank.

He shook his head.

"I would only drag you in."

She put her fingers to her mouth and gave a clear whistle. Far up on the slope a pony lifted its head and nickered. Again her whistle shrilled, and the bronco trotted down toward her.

"Can you hold on?" she asked in English.

He was chilled to the marrow, but he answered quietly: "I reckon."

She was gone, swift-footed as a deer, to meet the descending animal. He saw her swing to the saddle and lean over it as the pace quickened to a gallop.

He did not know her fingers were busy preparing the rawhide lariat that depended from the side of the saddle. On the very bank she brought up with a jerk that dragged her mount together, and at the same moment slipped to the ground.

Running open the noose of the lariat, she dropped it surely over his shoulders. The other end of the rope was fastened to the saddle-horn, and the cow-pony, used to roping and throwing steers, braced itself with wide-planted front feet for the shock.

"Can you get your arm through the loop?" cried the girl.

His arms were like lead, and almost powerless. With one hand he knew he could not hang on. Nor did he try longer than for that one desperate instant when he shot his fist through the loop. The wall of water swept him away, but the taut rope swung him shoreward.

Little hands caught hold of him and fought with the strong current for the body of the almost unconscious man; fought steadily and strongly, for there was strength in the small wrists and compact muscle in the shapely arms. She was waist deep in the water before she won, for from above she could find no purchase for the lift.

The fisherman's opening eyes looked into dark anxious ones that gazed at him from beneath the longest lashes he had ever seen. He had an odd sense of being tangled up in them and being unable to escape, of being both abashed and happy in his imprisonment. What he thought was: "They don't have eyes like those out of heaven." What he said was entirely different.

"Near thing. Hadn't been for you I wouldn't have made it."

At his words she rose from her knees to her full height, and he saw that she was slenderly tall and fashioned of gracious curves. The darkness of her clear skin was emphasized by the mass of blue-black hair from which little ears peeped with exquisite daintiness. The mouth was sweet and candid, red-lipped, with perfect teeth just showing in the full arch. The straight nose, with its sensitive nostrils, proclaimed her pure patrician.

"You are wet," he cried. "You went in after me."

She looked down at her dripping skirts, and laughter rippled over her face like the wind in golden grain. It brought out two adorable dimples near the tucked-in corners of her mouth.

"I am damp," she conceded.

"Why did you do it? The water might have swept you away," he chided, coming to a sitting posture.

"And if I hadn't it might have swept you away," she answered, with a flash of her ivory teeth.

He rose and stood before her.

"You risked your life to save mine."

"Is it not worth it, sir?"

"That ain't for me to say. The point is, you took the chance."

Her laughter bubbled again. "You mean, I took the bath."

"I expect you'll have to listen to what I've got to say, ma'am."

"Are you going to scold me? Was I precipitate? Perhaps you were attempting suicide. Forgive, I pray."

He ignored her raillery, and told her what he thought of a courage so fine and ready. He permitted a smile to temper his praise, as he added: "You mustn't go jumping in the river after strangers if you don't want them to say, 'Thank you kindly.' You find four out of five of them want to, don't you?"

"It is not yet a habit of mine. You're the first"

"I hope I'll be the last."

She began to wring out the bottom of her skirt, and he was on his knees at once to do it for her.

"That will do very nicely," she presently said, the color billowing her cheeks.

He gathered wood and lit a fire, being fortunate enough to find his match-case had been waterproof. He piled on dry branches till the fire roared and licked out for the moisture in their clothes.

"I've been wondering how you happened to see me in the water," he said. "You were riding past, I expect?"

"No, I was sketching. I saw you when you came up to eat your lunch, and I watched you go back to the river."

"Do you live near here, then?" he asked.

"About three miles away."

"And you were watching me all the time?" He put his statement as a question.

"No, I wasn't," the young woman answered indignantly. "You happened to be in the landscape."

"A blot in it," he suggested. "A hop-toad splashing in the puddle."

The every-ready dimples flashed out at this. "You did make quite a splash when you went in. The fish must have thought it was a whale."

"And when I told you the water was fine, and you came in, too, they probably took you for a naiad."

She thanked him with an informal little nod.

"I thought you Anglo-Saxons did not give compliments."

"I don't," he immediately answered.

"Oh! If that isn't another one, I'm mistaken, sir." She turned indifferently away, apparently of the opinion that she had been quite friendly enough to this self-possessed young stranger.

Rewinding the lariat, she fastened it to the saddle, then swung to the seat before he could step forward to aid her.

"I hope you will suffer no bad effects from your bath," he said.

"I shall not; but I'm afraid you will. You were in long enough to get thoroughly chilled. Adios, señor."

He called to her before the pony had taken a dozen steps:

"Your handkerchief, señorita!"

She turned in the saddle and waited for him to bring it. He did so, and she noticed that he limped badly.

"You have hurt yourself," she said quickly.

"I must have jammed my knee against a rock," he explained. "Nothing serious."

"But it pains?"

"Just enough to let me know it's there."

Frowning, she watched him.

"Is it a bruise or a sprain?"

"A wrench, I think. It will be all right if I favor it"

"Favor it? Except the ranch, there is no place nearer than seven miles. You are staying at Corbett's, I presume?"

"Yes."

"You can't walk back there to-night. That is certain." She slipped from the saddle. "You'll have to go back to the ranch with me, sir. I can walk very well."

He felt a wave of color sweep his face.

"I couldn't take the horse and let you walk."

"That is nonsense, sir. You can, and you shall."

"If I am to take your horse I need not saddle myself upon your hospitality. I can ride back to Corbett's, and send the horse home to-morrow."

"It is seven miles to Miguel's, and Corbett's is three beyond that. No doctor would advise that long ride before your knee receives attention, I think, sir, you will have to put up with the ranch till to-morrow."

"You ain't taking my intention right. All I meant was that I didn't like to unload myself on your folks; but if you say I'm to do it I'll be very happy to be your guest." He said it with a touch of boyish embarrassment she found becoming.

"We'll stop at the top of the hill and take on my drawing things," she told him.

He need have had no fears for her as a walker, for she was of the elect few born to grace of motion. Slight she was, yet strong; the delicacy that breathed from her was of the spirit, and consisted with perfect health. No Grecian nymph could have trod with lighter or surer step nor have unconsciously offered to the eye more supple and beautiful lines of limb and body.

Never had the young man seen before anybody whose charm went so poignantly to the root of his emotions. Every turn of the head, the set of the chin, the droop of the long, thick lashes on the soft cheek, the fling of a gesture, the cadence of her voice; they all delighted and fascinated him. She was a living embodiment of joy-in-life, of love personified.

She packed her sketches and her paraphernalia with businesslike directness, careless of whether he did or did not see her water-colors. A movement of his hand stayed her as she took from, the easel the one upon which she had been engaged.

It represented the sun-drenched slope below them, with the little gulch dressed riotously in its gala best of yellows.

"You've got that fine," he told her enthusiastically.

She shook her head, unmoved by praise which did not approve itself to her judgment as merited.

"No, I didn't get it at all. A great artist might get the wonder of it; but I can't."

"It looks good to me," he said.

"Then I'm afraid you're not a judge," she smiled.

From where they stood a trail wound along the ridge and down into a valley beyond. At the farther edge of this, nestling close to the hills that took root there, lay the houses of a ranch.

"That is where I live," she told him.

He thought it a lovely spot, almost worthy of her, but obviously he could not tell her so. Instead, he voiced an alien thought that happened to intrude:

"Do you know Señorita Valdés? But of course you must."

She flung a quick glance at him, questioning.

"Yes, I know her."

"She lives somewhere round here, too, does she not?"

Her arm swept round in a comprehensive gesture. "Over that way, too."

"Do you know her well?"

An odd smile dimpled her face.

"Sometimes I think I do, and then again I wonder."

"I have been told she is beautiful."

"Beauty is in the beholder's eyes, señor. Valencia Valdés is as Heaven made her."

"I have no doubt; but Heaven took more pains with some of us than others--it appears."

Again the dark eyes under the long lashes swept him from the curly head to the lean, muscular hands, and approved silently the truth of his observation. The clean lithe build of the man, muscles packed so that they rippled smoothly like those of a panther, appealed to her trained eyes. So, too, did the quiet, steady eyes in the bronzed face, holding as they did the look of competent alertness that had come from years of frontier life.

"You are interested in Miss Valdés?" she asked politely.

"In a way of speaking, I am. She is one of the reasons why I came here."

"Indeed! She would no doubt be charmed to know of your interest," still with polite detachment.

"My interest ain't exactly personal; then again it is," he contributed.

"A sort of an impersonal personal interest?"

"Yes; though I don't quite know what that means."

"Then I can't be expected to," she laughed.

His laughter joined hers; but presently he recurred to his question:

"You haven't told me yet about Miss Valdés. Is she as lovely as they say she is?"

"I don't know just how lovely they say she is. Sometimes I have thought her very passable; then again--" She broke off with a defiant little laugh. "Don't you know, sir, that you mustn't ask one lady to praise the beauty of another?"

"I suppose I may ask questions?" he said, much amused.

"It depends a little on the questions."

"Is she tall?"

"Rather. About as tall as I am."

"And dark, of course, since she is a Spanish señorita"

"Yes, she is dark."

"Slim and graceful, I expect?"

"She is slender."

"I reckon she banks a heap on that blue blood of hers?"

"Yes; she is prouder of it than there is really any need of, though I think probably her pride is unconscious and a matter of habit."

"I haven't been able to make out yet whether you like her," he laughed.

"I don't see what my liking has to do with it."

"I expect to meet her, and I want to use your judgment to base mine on."

"Oh, you expect to meet her?"

She said it lightly, yet with a certain emphasis that he noted.

"Don't you think she will let me? Do I have to show blue blood before I can be presented? One of my ancestors came over on the Mayflower. Will that do?"

Her raillery met his.

"That ought to do, I should think. I suppose you have brought genealogical proofs with you?"

"I clean forgot. Won't you please get on and ride now? I feel like a false alarm, playing the invalid on you, ma'am."

"No; I'll walk. We're almost at the ranch. It's just under this hill. But there's one thing I want to ask of you as a favor."

"It's yours," he replied briefly.

She seemed to struggle with some emotion before she spoke:

"Please don't mention Valencia Valdés while you are at the ranch. I--I have reasons, sir."

"Certainly; I'll do as you prefer."

To himself he thought that there was probably a feud of some kind between the two families that might make a mention of the name unpleasant. "And that reminds me that I don't know what your name is. Mine is Muir--Richard Muir."

"And mine is Maria Yuste."

He offered her his brown hand. "I'm right happy to meet you, Señorita Maria."

"Welcome to the Yuste hacienda, señor. What is ours is yours, so long as you are our guest. I pray you make yourself at home," she said as they rode into the courtyard.

Two Mexican lads came running forward; and one whom she called Pedro took the horse, while the other went into the house to attend to a quick command she gave in Spanish.

The man who had named himself Richard Muir followed his hostess through a hall, across an open court, and into a living-room carpeted with Navajo rugs, at the end of which was a great open fireplace bearing a Spanish motto across it.

Large windows, set three feet deep in the thick adobe walls, were filled with flowers or padded with sofa pillows for seats. One of these his hostess indicated to the limping man.

"If you will be seated here for the present, sir, your room will be ready very soon."

A few minutes later the fisherman found himself in a large bedroom. He was seated in an easy-chair before a crackling fire of piñon knots.

A messenger had been dispatched for a doctor, Señorita Yuste had told him, and in the meantime he was to make himself quite at home.

CHAPTER IV

AT THE YUSTE HACIENDA

The wrench to the fisherman's knee proved more serious than he had anticipated. The doctor pronounced it out of the question that he should be moved for some days at least.

The victim was more than content, because he was very much interested in the young woman who had been his rescuer, and because it gave him a chance to observe at first hand the remains of the semifeudal system that had once obtained in New Mexico and California.

It was easy for him to see that Señorita Maria Yuste was still considered by her dependents as a superior being, one far removed from them by the divinity of caste that hedged her in. They gave her service; and she, on her part, looked out for their needs, and was the patron saint to whom they brought all their troubles.

It was an indolent, happy life the peons on the estate led, patriarchal in its nature, and far removed from the throb of the money-mad world. They had enough to eat and to wear. There was a roof over their heads. There were girls to be loved, dances to be danced, and guitars to be strummed. Wherefore, then, should the young men feel the spur of an ambition to take the world by the throat and wring success from it?

It had been more years than he could remember since this young American had taken a real holiday except for an occasional fishing trip on the Gunnison or into Wyoming. He had lived a life of activity. Now for the first time he learned how to be lazy. To dawdle indolently on one of the broad porches, while Miss Yuste sat beside him and busied herself over some needlework, was a sensuous delight that filled him with content. He felt that he would like to bask there in the warm sunshine forever. After all, why should he pursue wealth and success when love and laughter waited for him in this peaceful valley chosen of the gods?

The fourth morning of his arrival he hobbled out to the south porch after breakfast, to find his hostess in corduroy skirt, high laced boots, and pinched-in sombrero. She was drawing on a pair of driving gauntlets. One of the stable boys was standing beside a rig he had just driven to the house.

The young woman flung a flashing smile at her guest.

"Good day, Señor Muir. I hope you had a good night's rest, and that your knee did not greatly pain you?"

"I feel like a colt in the pasture--fit for anything. But the doctor won't have it that way. He says I'm an invalid," returned the young man whimsically.

"The doctor ought to know," she laughed.

"I expect it won't do me any harm to lie still for a day or two. We Americans all have the git-up-and-dust habit. We got to keep going, though Heaven knows what we're going for sometimes."

Though he did not know it, her interest in him was considerable, though certainly critical. He was a type outside of her experience, and, by the law of opposites, attracted her. Every line of him showed tremendous driving power, force, energy. He was not without some touch of Western swagger; but it went well with the air of youth to which his boyish laugh and wavy, sun-reddened hair contributed.

The men of her station that she knew were of one pattern, indolent, well-bred aristocrats, despisers of trade and of those who indulged in it more than was necessary to live. But her mother had been an American girl, and there was in her blood a strong impulse toward the great nation of which her father's people were not yet in spirit entirely a part.

"I have to drive to Antelope Springs this morning. It is not a rough trip at all. If you would care to see the country----"

She paused, a question in her face. Her guest jumped at the chance.

"There is nothing I should like better. If you are sure it will be no inconvenience."

"I am sure I should not have asked you if I had not wanted you," she said; and he took it as a reproof.

She drove a pair of grays that took the road with the spirit of racers. The young woman sat erect and handled the reins masterfully, the while Muir leaned back and admired the steadiness of the slim, strong wrists, the businesslike directness with which she gave herself to her work, the glow of life whipped into her eyes and cheeks by the exhilaration of the pace.

"I suppose you know all about these old land-grants that were made when New Mexico was a Spanish colony and later when it was a part of Mexico," he suggested.

Her dark eyes rested gravely on him an instant before she answered: "Most of us that were brought up on them know something of the facts."

"You are familiar with the Valdés grant?"

"Yes."

"And with the Moreño grant, made by Governor Armijo?"

"Yes."

"The claims conflict, do they not?"

"The Moreño grant is taken right from the heart of the Valdés grant. It includes all the springs, the valleys, the irrigable land; takes in everything but the hilly pasture land in the mountains, which, in itself, is valueless."

"The land included in this grant is of great value?"

"It pastures at the present time fifty thousand sheep and about twelve thousand head of cattle."

"Owned by Miss Valdés?"

"Owned by her and her tenants."

"She's what you call a cattle queen, then. Literally, the cattle on a thousand hills are hers."

"As they were her father's and her grandfather's before her, to be held in trust for the benefit of about eight hundred tenants," she answered quietly.

"Tell me more about it. The original grantee was Don Bartolomé de Valdés, was he not?"

"Yes. He was the great-great-grandson of Don Alvaro de Valdés y Castillo, who lost his head because he was a braver and a better man than the king. Don Bartolomé, too, was a great soldier and ruler. He was generous and public-spirited to a fault; and when the people of this province suffered from Indian raids he distributed thousands of sheep to relieve their distress."

"Bully for the old boy. He was a real philanthropist."

"Not at all. He had to do it. His position required it of him."

"That was it, eh?"

Her dusky eyes questioned him.

"You couldn't understand, I suppose, since you are an American, how he was the father and friend of all the people in these parts; how his troopers and vaqueros were a defense to the whole province?"

"I think I can understand that."

"So it was, even to his death, that he looked out for the poor peons dependent upon him. His herds grew mighty; and he asked of Facundo Megares, governor of the royal province, a grant of land upon which to pasture them. These herds were for his people; but they were in his name and belonged to him. Why should he not have been given land for them, since his was the sword that had won the land against the Apaches?"

"You ain't heard me say he shouldn't have had it"

"So the alcalde executed the act of possession for a tract, to be bounded on the south by Crow Spring, following its cordillera to the Ojo del Chico, east to the Pedornal range, north to the Ojo del Cibolo --Buffalo Springs--and west to the great divide. It was a princely estate, greater than the State of Delaware; and Don Bartolomé held it for the King of Spain, and ruled over it with powers of life and death, but always wisely and generously, like the great-hearted gentleman he was."

"Bully for him."

"And at his death his son ruled in his stead; and his only son died in the Spanish-American War, as a lieutenant of volunteers in the United States Army. He was shot before Santiago."

The voice died away in her tremulous throat; and he wondered if it could be possible that this girl had been betrothed to the young soldier. But presently she spoke again, cheerfully and lightly:

"Wherefore, it happens that there remains only a daughter of the house of Valdés to carry the burden that should have been her brother's, to look out for his people, and to protect them both against themselves and others. She may fail; but, if I know her, the failure will not be because she has not tried."

"Good for her. I'd like to shake her aristocratic little paw and tell her to buck in and win."

"She would no doubt be grateful for your sympathy," the young woman answered, flinging a queer little look of irony at him.

"But what's the hitch about the Valdés grant? Why is there a doubt of its legality?"

She smiled gaily at him.

"No person who desires to remain healthy has any doubts in this neighborhood. We are all partizans of Valencia Valdés; and many of her tenants are such warm followers that they would not think twice about shedding blood in defense of her title. You must remember that they hold through her right. If she were dispossessed so would they be."

"Is that a threat? I mean, would it be if I were a claimant?" he asked, meeting her smile pleasantly.

"Oh, no. Miss Valdés would regret any trouble, and so should I." A shadow crossed her face as she spoke. "But she could not prevent her friends from violence, I am afraid. You see, she is only a girl, after all. They would move without her knowledge. I know they would."

"How would they move? Would it be a knife in the dark?"

His gray eyes, which had been warm as summer sunshine on a hill, were now fixed on her with chill inscrutability.

"I don't know. It might be that. Very likely." He saw the pulse in her throat beating fast as she hesitated before she plunged on. "A warning is not a threat. If you know this Señor Gordon, tell him to sell whatever claim he has. Tell him, at least, to fight from a distance; not to come to this valley himself. Else his life would be at hazard."

"If he is a man that will not keep him away. He will fight for what is his all the more because there is danger. What's more, he'll do his fighting on the ground--unless he's a quitter."

She sighed.

"I was afraid so."

"But you have not told me yet the alleged defect in the Valdés claim. There must be some point of law upon which the thing hangs."

"It is claimed that Don Bartolomé did not take up his actual residence on the grant, as the law required. Then, too, he himself was later governor of the province, and while he was president of the Ayuntamiento at Tome he officially indorsed some small grants of land made from this estate. He did this because he wanted the country developed, and was willing to give part of what he had to his neighbors; but I suppose the contestant will claim this showed he had abandoned his grant."

"I see. Title not perfected," he summed up briefly.

"We deny it, of course--I mean, Miss Valdés does. She shows that in his will the old don mentions it, and that her father lived there without interruption, even though Manuel Armijo later granted the best of it to José Moreño."

"It would be pretty tough for her to be fired out now. I reckon she's attached to the place, her and her folks having lived there so long," the young man mused aloud.

"Her whole life is wrapped up in it. It is the home of her people. She belongs to it, and it to her," the girl answered.

"Mebbe this Gordon is a white man. I reckon he wouldn't drive her out. Like as not he'd fix up a compromise. There's enough for both."

She shook her head decisively.

"No. It would have to be a money settlement. Miss Valdés's people are settled all over the estate. Some of them have bought small ranches. You see, she couldn't--throw them down--as you Americans say."

"That's right," he agreed. "Well, I shouldn't wonder but it can be fixed up some way."

They had been driving across a flat cactus country, and for some time had been approaching the grove of willows into which she now turned. Some wooden barns, a corral, an adobe house, and outhouses marked the place as one of the more ambitious ranches of the valley.

An old Mexican came forward with a face wreathed in smiles.

"Buenos, Doña Maria," he cried, in greeting.

"Buenos, Antonio. This gentleman is Mr. Richard Muir."

"Buenos, señor. A friend of Doña Maria is a friend of Antonio."

"The older people call me 'doña,'" the girl explained. "I suppose they think it strange a girl should have to do with affairs, and so they think of me as 'doña,' instead of 'señorita,' to satisfy themselves."

A vague suspicion, that had been born in the young man's mind immediately after his rescue from the river now recurred.

His first thought then had been that this young woman must be Valencia Valdés; but he had dismissed it when he had seen the initial M on her kerchief, and when she had subsequently left him to infer that such was not the case.

He remembered now in what respect she was held in the home hacienda; how everybody they had met had greeted her with almost reverence. It was not likely that two young heiresses, both of them beautiful orphans, should be living within a few miles of each other.

Besides, he remembered that this very Antelope Springs was mentioned in the deed of conveyance which he had lately examined before leaving the mining camp. She was giving orders about irrigating ditches as if she were owner.

It followed then that she must be Valencia Valdés. There could be no doubt of it.

He watched her as she talked to old Antonio and gave the necessary directions. How radiant and happy she was in this life which had fallen to her; by inheritance! He vowed she should not be disinherited through any action of his. He owed her his life. At least, he could spare her this blow.

They drove home more silently than they had come. He was thinking over the best way to do what he was going to do. The evening before they had sat together in front of the fire in the living-room, while her old duenna had nodded in a big arm-chair. So they would sit to-night and to-morrow night.

He would send at once for the papers upon which his claim depended, and he would burn them before her eyes. After that they would be friends--and, in the end, much more than friends.

He was still dreaming his air-castle, when they drove through the gate that led to her home. In front of the porch a saddled bronco trailed its rein, and near by stood a young man in riding-breeches and spurs. He turned at the sound of wheels; and the man in the buggy saw that it was Manuel Pesquiera.

The Spaniard started when he recognized the other, and his eyes grew bright. He moved forward to assist the young woman in alighting; but, in spite of his bad knee, the Coloradoan was out of the rig and before him.

"Buenos, amigo" she nodded to Don Manuel, lightly releasing the hand of Muir.

"Buenos, señorita" returned that young man. "I behold you are already acquaint' with Mr. Richard Gordon, whose arrival is to me very unexpect'."

She seemed to grow tall before her guest's eyes; to stand in a kind of proud splendor that had eclipsed her girlish slimness. The dark eyes under the thick lashes looked long and searchingly at him.

"Mr. Richard Gordon? I understand this gentleman's name to be Muir," she made voice gently.

Dick laughed with a touch of shame. Now once in his life he wished he could prove an alibi. For, under the calm judgment of that steady gaze, the thing he had done seemed scarce defensible.

"Don Manuel has it right, señorita. Gordon is my name; Muir, too, for that matter. Richard Muir Gordon is what I was christened."

The underlying red of her cheeks had fled and left them clear olive. One might have thought the scornful eyes had absorbed all the fire of her face.

"So you have lied to me, sir?"

"Let me lay the facts before you, first. That's a hard word, señorita."

"You gave your name to me as Muir, You imposed yourself on my hospitality under false pretenses. You are only a spy, come to my house to mole for evidence against me."

"No--no!" he cried sharply. "You will remember that I did not want to come. I foresaw that it might be awkward, but I did not foresee this."

"That you would be found out before you had won your end? I believe you, sir," she retorted contemptuously.

"I see I'm condemned before I'm heard."

"Will any explanation alter the facts? Are you not a liar and a cheat? You gave me a false name to spy out the land."

"Am I the only one that gave a wrong name?" he asked.

"That is different," she flamed. "You had made a mistake and, half in sport, I encouraged you in it. But you seem to have found out my real name since. Yet you still accepted what I had to offer, under a false name, under false pretenses. You questioned me about the grants. You have lived a lie from first to last."

"It ain't as bad as you say, ma'am. Don Manuel had told me it wasn't safe to come here in my own name. I didn't care about the safety, but I wanted to see the situation exactly as it was. I didn't know who you were when I came here. I took you to be Miss Maria Yuste. I----"

"My name is Maria Yuste Valencia Valdés," the young woman explained proudly. "When, may I ask, did you discover who I was?"

"I guessed it at Antelope Springs."

"Then why did you not tell me then who you are? Surely that was the time to tell me. My deception did you no harm; yours was one no man of honor could have endured after he knew who I was."

"I didn't aim to keep it up very long. I meant, in a day or two----"

"A day or two," she cried, in a blaze of scorn. "After you had found out all I had to tell; after you had got evidence to back your robber-claim; after you had made me breathe the same air so long with a spy?"

Her face was very white; but she faced him in her erect slimness, with her dark eyes fixed steadily on him.

"You ain't quite fair to me; but let that pass for the present. When I asked you about the grants didn't you guess who I was? Play square with me. Didn't you have a notion?"

A flood of spreading color swept back into her face.

"No, I didn't. I thought perhaps you were an agent of the claimant; but I didn't know you were passing under a false name, that you were aware in whose house you were staying. I thought you an honest man, on the wrong side--nothing so contemptible as a spy."

"That idea's fixed in your mind, is it?" he asked quietly.

"Beyond any power of yours to remove it," she flashed back.

"The facts, Señor Gordon, speak loud," put in Pesquiera derisively.

Dick Gordon paid not the least attention to him. His gaze was fastened on the girl whose contempt was lashing him.

"Very well, Miss Valdés. Well let it go at that just now. All I've got to say is that some day you'll hate yourself for what you have just said."

Neither of them had raised their voices from first to last. Hers had been low and intense, pulsing with the passion that would out. His had held its even way.

"I hate myself now, that I have had you here so long, that I have been the dupe of a common cheat."

"All right. 'Nough said, ma'am. More would certainly be surplusage. I'll not trouble you any longer now. But I want you to remember that there's a day coming when you'll travel a long way to take back all of what you've just been saying. I want to thank you for all your kindness to me. I'm always at your service for what you did for me. Good-bye, Miss Valdés, for the present."

"I am of impression, sir, that you go not too soon," said Pesquiera suavely.

Miss Valdés turned on her heel and swept up the steps of the porch; but she stopped an instant before she entered the house to say over her shoulder:

"A buggy will be at your disposal to take you to Corbett's. If it is convenient, I should like to have you go to-night."

He smiled ironically.

"I'll not trouble you for the buggy, señorita. If I'm all you say I am, likely I'm a horse thief, too. Anyhow, we won't risk it. Walking's good enough for me."

"Just as you please," she choked, and forthwith disappeared into the house.

Gordon turned from gazing after her to find the little Spaniard bowing before him.

"Consider me at your service, Mr. Gordon----"

"Can't use you," cut in Dick curtly.

"I was remarking that, as her kinsman, I, Don Manuel Pesquiera, stand prepared to make good her words. What the Señorita Valdés says, I say, too."

"Then don't say it aloud, you little monkey, or I'll throw you over the house," Dick promised immediately.

Don Manuel clicked his heels together and twirled his black mustache.

"I offer you, sir, the remedy of a gentleman. You, sir, shall choose the weapons."

The Anglo-Saxon laughed in his face.

"Good. Let it be toasting-forks, at twenty paces."

The challenger drew himself up to his full five feet six.

"You choose to be what you call droll. Sir, I give you the word, poltroon--lâche--coward."

"Oh, go chase yourself."

One of Pesquiera's little gloved hands struck the other's face with a resounding slap. Next instant he was lifted from his feet and tucked under Dick's arm.

There he remained, kicking and struggling, in a manner most undignified for a blue blood of Castile, while the Coloradoan stepped leisurely forward to the irrigating ditch which supplied water for the garden and the field of grain behind. This was now about two feet deep, and running strong. In it was deposited, at full length, the clapper little person of Don Manuel Pesquiera, after which Dick Gordon turned and went limping down the road.

From the shutters of her room a girl had looked down and seen it all. She saw Don Manuel rescue himself from the ditch, all dripping with water. She saw him gesticulating wildly, as he cursed the retreating foe, before betaking himself hurriedly from view to the rear of the house, probably to dry himself and nurse his rage the while. She saw Gordon go on his limping way without a single backward glance.

Then she flung herself on her bed and burst into tears.

CHAPTER V

"AN OPTIMISTIC GUY"

Dick Gordon hobbled up the road, quite unaware for some time that he had a ricked knee. His thoughts were busy with the finale that had just been enacted. He could not keep from laughing ruefully at the difference between it and the one of his day-dreams. He was too much of a Westerner not to see the humor of the comedy in which he had been forced to take a leading part, but he had insight enough to divine that it was much more likely to prove melodrama than farce.

Don Manuel was not the man to sit down under such an insult as he had endured, even though he had brought it upon himself. It would too surely be noised round that the Americano was the claimant to the estate, in which event he was very likely to play the part of a sheath for restless stilettos.

This did not trouble him as much as it would have done some men. The real sting of the episode lay in Valencia Valdés' attitude toward him. He had been kicked out for his unworthiness. He had been cast aside as a spy and a sneak.

The worst of it was that he felt his clumsiness deserved no less an issue to the adventure. Confound that little Don Manuel for bobbing up at such an inconvenient time! It was fierce luck.

He stopped his tramp up the hill, and looked back over the valley. Legally it was all his. So his Denver lawyers had told him, after looking the case over carefully. The courts would decide for him in all probability; morally he had not the shadow of a claim. The valley in justice belonged to those who had settled in it and were using it for their needs. His claim was merely a paper one. It had not a scintilla of natural justice back of it.

He resumed his journey. By this time his knee was sending telegrams of pain to headquarters. He cut an aspen by the roadside and trimmed it to a walking-stick and, as he went forward, leaned more and more heavily upon it.

"I'm going to have a game leg for fair if I don't look out," he told himself ruefully. "This right pin surely ain't good for a twelve-mile tramp."

It was during one of his frequent stops to rest that a buggy appeared round the turn from the same direction he had come. It drew to a halt in front of him, and the lad who was driving got out.

"Señorita Maria sends a carriage for Señor Gordon to take him to Corbett's," he said.

Dick was on hand with a sardonic smile.

"Tell the señorita that Mr. Gordon regrets having put her to so much trouble, but that he needs the exercise and prefers to walk."

"The señorita said I was to insist, señor."

"Tell your mistress that I'm very much obliged to her, but have made other arrangements. Explain to her I appreciate the offer just the same."

The lad hesitated, and Dick pushed him into decision.

"That's all right, Juan--José--Pedro--Francisco--whatever your name is. You've done your levelest. Now, hike back to the ranch. Vamos! Sabe."

"Si, señor."

Dick heard the wheels disappear in the distance, and laughed aloud.

"That young woman's conscience is hurting her. I reckon this tramp to Corbett's is going to worry her tender heart about as much as it does me, and I've got to sweat blood before I get through with it. Here goes again, Dicky."

Every step sent a pain shooting through him, but he was the last man to give up on that account what he had undertaken.

"She let me go without any lunch," he chuckled. "I'll bet that troubles her some, too, when she remembers. She's got me out of the house, but I'll bet the last strike in the Nancy K. against a dollar Mex that she ain't got me out of her mind by a heap."

A buggy appeared in sight driven by a stout, red-faced old man. Evidently he was on his way to the ranch.

"Who, hello, Doctor! I'm plumb glad to see you; couldn't wait till you came, and had just to start out to meet you," cried Dick.

He stood laughing at the amazement in the face of the doctor, who was in two minds whether to get angry or not.

"Doggone your hide, what are you doing here? Didn't I tell you not to walk more than a few steps?" that gentleman protested.

"But you didn't leave me a motor-car and, my visit being at an end, I ce'tainly had to get back to Corbett's." As he spoke he climbed slowly into the rig. "That leg of mine is acting like sixty, Doctor. When you happened along I was wondering how in time I was ever going to make it."

"You may have lamed yourself for life. It's the most idiotic thing I ever heard of. I don't see why Miss Valdés let you come. Dad blame it, have I got to watch my patients like a hen does its chicks? Ain't any of you got a lick of sense? Why didn't she send a rig if you had to come?" the doctor demanded.

"Seems to me she did mention a rig, but I thought I'd rather walk," explained Gordon casually, much amused at Dr. Watson's chagrined wonder.

"Walk!" snorted the physician. "You'll not walk, but be carried into an operating-room if you're not precious lucky. You deserve to lose that leg, and I don't say you won't."

"I'm an optimistic guy, Doctor. I'll say it for you. I ain't got any legs to spare."

"Huh! Some people haven't got the sense of a chicken with its head cut off."

"Now you're shouting. Go for me, Doc. Then, mebbe, I'll do better next time."

The doctor gave up this incorrigible patient and relapsed into silence, from which he came occasionally with an explosive "Huh!" Once he broke out with: "Didn't she feed you well enough, or was it just that you didn't know when you were well off?"

For he was aware that his patient's fever was rising and, like a good practitioner, he fumed at such useless relapse.

The knee had been doing fine. Now there would be the devil to pay with it. The utter senselessness of the proceeding irritated Watson. What in Mexico had got into the young idiot to make him do such a fool thing? The doctor guessed at a quarrel between him and Miss Valdés. But the close-mouthed American gave him no grounds upon which to base his suspicion.

The first thing that Dick did after reaching Corbett's was to send two telegrams. One was addressed to Messrs. Hughes & Willets, 411-417 Equitable Building, Denver, Colorado; the other went to Stephen Davis, Cripple Creek, of the same state.

Doctor Watson hustled his patient to bed and did his best to relieve the increasing pain in the swollen knee. He swore gently and sputtered and fumed as he worked, restraining himself only when Mrs. Corbett came into the room with hot water, towels, compresses, and other supplies.

"What about a nurse?" Watson wanted to know of Mrs. Corbett, a large motherly woman whose kind heart always found room in it for the weak and helpless.

"I got no room for one. Juanita and I will take care of him. The work's slack now. We'll have time."

"He's going to take a heap of nursing," the doctor answered, rubbing his unshaven chin dubiously with the palm of his hand. "See how the fever's climbed up even in the last half hour. That boy's going to be a mighty sick hombre."

"I'm used to nursing, and Juanita is the best help I ever had, if she is a Mexican. You may trust him to us."

"Hmp! I wasn't thinking of him, but of you. Couldn't be in better hands, but it's an imposition for him to go racing all over these hills with a game leg and expect you to pull him through."

Before midnight Dick was in a raging fever. In delirium he tossed from side to side, sometimes silent for long stretches, then babbling fragments of forgotten scenes rescued by his memory automatically from the wild and picturesque past of the man. Now he fancied himself again a schoolboy, now a ranger in Arizona, now mushing on the snow trails of Alaska. At times he would imagine that he was defending his mine against attacking strikers, or that he was combing the Rincons for horse thieves. Out of his turbid past flared for an instant dramatic moments of comedy or tragedy. These passed like the scenes of a motion-picture story, giving place to something else.

In the end he came back always to the adventure he was still living.

"You're a spy.... You're a liar and a cheat.... You imposed yourself upon my hospitality under false pretenses.... I hate myself for breathing the same air as you." He would break off to laugh foolishly, in a high-pitched note of derision at himself. "Stand up, Dick Gordon, and hear the lady tell you what a coyote you are. Stan' up and face the music, you quitter. Liar ... spy ... cheat! That's you, Dick Gordon, un'erstand?"

Or the sick mind of the man would forget for the moment that they had quarreled. His tongue would run over conversations that they had had, cherishing and repeating over and over again her gay little quips and sallies or her light phrases.

"Valencia Valdés is as God made her. Now you're throwing sixes, ma'am. Sure she's like that. The devil helped a heap to make most of us what we are, but I reckon God made that little lady early in the mo'ning when He was feeling fine.... Say, I wish you'd look at me like that again and light up with another of them dimply smiles. I got a surprise for you, Princess of the Rio Chama. Honest, I have. Sure as you're a foot high.... Never you mind what it is. Just you wait a while and I'll spring it when the time's good and ready. I got to wait till the papers come. See? ... Oh, shucks, you're sore at me again! Liar ... cheat ... spy! Say, I know when I've had a-plenty. She don't like me. I'm goin' to pull my freight for the Kotzebue country up in Alaska.

'On the road to Kotzebue, optimistic through and through, We'll hit the trail together, boy, once more, jest me an' you.'

Funny how women act, ain't it? Stand up and take your medicine--liar ... cheat ... spy! She said it, didn't she? Well, then, it must be so. What you kickin' about?"

So he would run on until the fever had for the hour exhausted itself and he lay still among the pillows. Sometimes he talked the strong language of the man in battle with other men, but even in his oaths there was nothing of vulgarity.

Mrs. Corbett took the bulk of the nursing on her own broad fat shoulders, but during the day she was often relieved by her maid while she got a few hours of sleep.

Juanita was a slim, straight girl not yet nineteen. Even before his sickness Dick, with the instinct for deference to all women of self-respect that obtains among frontiersmen, had won the gratitude of the shy creature. There was something wild and sylvan about her sweet grace. The deep, soft eyes in the brown oval face were as appealing as those of a doe wounded by the hunter.

She developed into a famous nurse. Low-voiced and soft-footed, she would coax the delirious man to lie down when he grew excited or to take his medicine according to the orders of the doctor.

It was on the third day after Gordon's return to Corbett's that Juanita heard a whistle while she was washing dishes after supper in the kitchen. Presently she slipped out of the back door and took the trail to the corral. A man moved forward out of the gloom to meet her.

"Is it you, Pablo?"

A slender youth, lean-flanked and broad-shouldered, her visitor turned out to be. His outstretched hands went forward swiftly to meet hers.

"Juanita, light of my life?" he cried softly. "Corazon mia!"

She submitted with a little reluctant protest to his caress. "I have but a minute, Pablo. The señora wants to walk over to Dolan's place. I am to stay with the sick American."

He exploded with low, fierce energy. "A thousand curses take the gringo! Why should you nurse him? Is he not an enemy to the señorita--to all in the valley who have bought from her or her father or her grandfather? Is he not here to throw us out--a thief, a spy, a snake in the grass?"

"No, he is not. Señor Gordon is good ... and kind."

"Bah! You are but a girl. He gives you soft words--and so----" The jealousy in him flared suddenly out. He caught his sweetheart tightly by the arm. "Has he made love to you, this gringo? Has he whispered soft, false lies in your ear, Juanita? If he has----"

She tried to twist free from him. "You are hurting my arm, Pablo," the girl cried.

"It is my heart you hurt, niña. Is it true that this thief has stolen the love of my Juanita?"

"You are a fool, Pablo. He has never said a hundred words to me. All through his sickness he has talked and talked--but it is of Señorita Valdés that he has raved."

"So. He will rob her of all she has and yet can talk of loving her. Do you not see he is a villain, that he has the forked tongue, as old Bear Paw, the Navajo, says of all gringoes? But let Señor Gordon beware. His time is short. He will not live to drive us from the valley. So say I. So say all the men in the valley."

"No--no! I will not have it, Pablo. You do not know. This Señor Gordon is good. He would not drive us away." Her arms slid around the neck of her lover and she pleaded with him impetuously. "You must not let them hurt him, for it is a kind heart he has."

"Why should I interfere? He is only a gringo. Let him die. I tell you he means harm to all of us."

"I do not know my Pablo when he talks like this. My Pablo was always kind and good and of a soft heart. I do not love him when he is cruel."

"It is then that you love the American," he cried. "Did I not know it? Did I not say so?"

"You say much that is foolish, muchacho. The American is a stranger to me ... and you are Pablo. But how can I love you when your heart is full of cruelty and jealousy and revenge? Go to the Blessed Virgin and confess before the good priest your sins, amigo."

"Amigo! Since when have I been friend to you and not lover, Juanita? I know well for how long--since this gringo with the white face crossed your trail."

Suddenly she flung away from him. "Muy bien! You shall think as you please. Adios, my friend with the head of a donkey! Adios, icabron!"

She was gone, light as the wind, flying with swift feet down the trail to the house. Sulkily he waited for her to come out again, but the girl did not appear. He gave her a full half hour before he swung to the saddle and turned the head of his pony toward the Valdés' hacienda. A new and poignant bitterness surged in his heart. Had this stranger, who was bringing trouble to the whole valley, come between him and little Juanita, whom he had loved since they had been children? Had he stolen her heart with his devilish wiles? The hard glitter in the black eyes of the Mexican told that he would punish him if this were true.

His younger brother Pedro took the horse from him as he rode into the ranch plaza an hour later.

"You are to go to the señorita at once and tell her how the gringo is, Pablo." After a moment he added sullenly: "Maldito, how is the son of a thief?"

"Sick, Pedro, sick unto death. The devil, as you say, may take him yet without any aid from us," answered Pablo Menendez brusquely.

"Why does the señorita send you every day to find out how he is? Can she not telephone? And why should she care what becomes of the traitor?" demanded Pedro angrily.

His brother shrugged. "How should I know?" He had troubles enough with the fancies of another woman without bothering about those of the señorita.

Valencia Valdés was on the porch waiting for her messenger.

"How is he, Pablo? Did you see the doctor and talk with him? What does he say?"

"Si, señorita. I saw Doctor Watson and he send you this letter. They say the American is a sick man--oh, very, very sick!"

The young woman dismissed him with a nod and hurried to her room. She read the letter from the doctor and looked out of one of the deep adobe windows into the starry night. It happened to be the same window from which she had last seen him go hobbling down the road. She rose and put out the light so that she could weep the more freely. It was hard for her to say why her heart was so heavy. To herself she denied that she cared for this jaunty debonair scoundrel. He was no doubt all she had told him on that day when she had driven him away.

Yes, but she had sent him to pain and illness ... perhaps to death. The tears fell fast upon the white cheeks. Surely it was not her fault that he had been so obstinate. Yet--down in the depth of her heart she knew she loved the courage that had carried him with such sardonic derision out upon the road for the long tramp that had so injured him. And there was an inner citadel within her that refused to believe him the sneaking pup she had accused him of being. No man with such honest eyes, who stood so erect and graceful in the image of God, could be so contemptible a cur. There was something fine about the spirit of the man. She had sensed the kinship of it without being able to put a finger exactly upon the quality she meant. He might be a sinner, but it was hard to believe him a small and mean one. The dynamic spark of self-respect burned too brightly in his soul for that.

CHAPTER VI

JUANITA

The fifth day marked the crisis of Gordon's illness. After that he began slowly to mend.

One morning he awoke to a realization that he had been very ill. His body was still weak, but his mind was coherent again. A slender young woman moved about the room setting things in order.

"Aren't you Juanita?" he asked.

Her heart gave a leap. This was the first time he had recognized her. Sometimes in his delirium he had caught at her hand ind tried to kiss it, but always under the impression that she was Miss Valdés.

"Si, señor," she answered quietly.

"I thought so." He added after a moment, with the childlike innocence a sick person has upon first coming back to sanity: "There couldn't be two girls as pretty as you in this end of the valley, could there?"

Under her soft brown skin the color flooded Juanita's face. "I--I don't know." She spoke in a flame of embarrassment, so abrupt had been his compliment and so sincere.

"I've been very sick, haven't I?"

She nodded. "Oh, señor, we have been--what you call--worried."

"Good of you, Juanita. Who has been taking care of me?"

"Mrs. Corbett."

"And Juanita?"

"Sometimes."

"Ah! That's good of you, too, amiga."

She recalled a phrase she had often heard an American rancher's daughter say. "I loved to do it, señor."

"But why? I'm your enemy, you know. You ought to hate me. Do you?"

Once again the swift color poured into the dark cheeks, even to the round birdlike throat.

"No, señor."

He considered this an instant before he accused her whimsically. "Then you're not a good girl. You should hate the devil, and I'm his agent. Any of your friends will tell you that."

"Señor Gordon is a joke."

He laughed weakly. "Am I? I'll bet I am, the fool way I acted."

"I mean a--what you call--a joker," she corrected.

"But ain't I your enemy, my little good Samaritan? Isn't that what all your people are saying?"

"I not care what they say."

"If I'm not your enemy, what am I?"

She made a great pretense of filling the ewer with water and gathering up the soiled towels.

"How about that, niña?" he persisted, turning toward her on the pillow with his unshaven face in his hand, a gentle quizzical smile in his eyes.

"I'm your ... servant, señor," she flamed, after the embarrassment of silence had grown too great.

"No, no! Nothing like that. What do you say? Will you take me for a friend, even though I'm an enemy to the whole valley?"

Her soft, dark eyes flashed to meet his, timidly and yet with an effect of fine spirit.

"Si, señor."

"Good. Shake hands on it, little partner."

She came forward reluctantly, as if she were pushed toward him by some inner compulsion. Her shy embarrassment, together with the sweetness of the glad emotion that trembled in her filmy eyes, lent her a rare charm.

For just an instant her brown fingers touched his, then she turned and fled from the room.

Mrs. Corbett presently bustled in, fat, fifty, and friendly.

"I can't hardly look you in the face," he apologized, with his most winning smile. "I reckon I've been a nuisance a-plenty, getting sick on your hands like a kid."

Mrs. Corbett answered his smile as she arranged the coverlets.

"You'll just have to be good for a spell to make up for it. No more ten-mile walks, Mr. Muir, till the knee is all right."

"I reckon you better call me Gordon, ma'am." His mind passed to what she had said about his walk. "Ce'tainly that was a fool pasear for a man to take. Comes of being pig-headed, Mrs. Corbett. And Doc Watson had told me not to use that game leg much. But, of course, I knew best," he sighed ruefully.

"Well, you've had your lesson. And you've worried all of us. Miss Valdés has called up two or three times a day on the phone and sent a messenger over every evening to find out how you were."

Dick felt the blood flush his face. "She has?" Then, after a little: "That's very kind of Miss Valdés."

"Yes. Everybody has been kind. Mr. Pesquiera has called up every day to inquire about you. He has been very anxious for you to recover."

A faint sardonic smile touched the white lips. "A fellow never knows how many friends he has till he needs them. So Don Manuel is in a hurry to have me get on my feet. That's surely right kind of him."

He thought he could guess why that proud and passionate son of Spain fretted to see him ill. The humiliation to which he had been subjected was rankling in his heart and would oppress him till he could wipe it out in action.

"You've got other friends, too, that have worried a lot," said Mrs. Corbett, as she took up some knitting.

"More friends yet? Say, ain't I rich? I didn't know how blamed popular I was till now," returned the invalid, with derisive irony. "Who is it this time I've got to be grateful for?"

"Mr. Davis."

"Steve Davis--from Cripple Creek, Colorado, God's Country?"

"Yes."

"Been writing about me, has he?"

Mrs. Corbett smiled. She had something up her sleeve. "First writing, then wiring."

"He's a kind of second dad to me. Expect the old rooster got anxious."

"Looks that way. Anyhow, he reached here last night."

Gordon got up on an elbow in his excitement. "Here? Here now? Old Steve?"

She nodded her head and looked over her shoulder toward the dining-room. "In there eating his breakfast. He'll be through pretty soon. You see, he doesn't know you're awake."

Presently Davis came into the room. He walked to the bed and took both of his friend's hands in his. Tears were shining in his eyes.

"You darned old son-of-a-gun, what do you mean by scaring us like this? I've lost two years' growth on account of your foolishness, boy."

"Did Mrs. Corbett send for you?"

"No, I sent for myself soon as I found out how sick you was. Now hustle up and get well."

"I'm going to do just that"

Dick kept his word. Within a few days he was promoted to a rocking-chair on the porch. Here Juanita served his meals and waited on his demands with the shy devotion that characterized a change in her attitude to him. She laughed less than she did. His jokes, his claim upon her as his "little partner," his friendly gratitude, all served to embarrass her, and at the same time to fill her with a new and wonderful delight.

A week ago, when he had been lying before her asleep one day, she had run her little finger through one of his tawny curls and admired its crisp thickness. To her maiden fancy something of his strong virility had escaped even to this wayward little lock of hair. She had wondered then how the Señorita Valdés could keep from loving this splendid fellow if he cared for her. All the more she wondered now, for her truant heart was going out to him with the swift ardent passion of her race. It was as a sort of god she looked upon him, as a hero of romance far above her humble hopes. She found herself longing for chances to wait upon him, to do little services that would draw the approving smile to his eyes.

Gordon was still in the porch-dwelling stage of convalescence when a Mexican rider swung from his saddle one afternoon with a letter from Manuel Pesquiera. The note was a formal one, written in the third person, and it wasted no words.

After reading it Dick tossed the sheet of engraved stationery across to his companion.

"Nothing like having good, anxious friends in a hurry to have you well, Steve," he said, with a smile.

The old miner read the communication. "Well, what's the matter with his hoping you'll be all right soon?"

"No reason why he shouldn't. It only shows what a Christian, forgiving disposition he's got. You see, that day I most walked my leg off I soused Mr. Pesquiera in a ditch."

"You--what?"

"Just what I say. I picked him up and dropped the gentleman in the nearest ditch. That's why he's so anxious to get me well."

"But--why for, boy?"

Dick laughed. "Can't you see, you old moss-back? He wants me well enough to call out for a duel."

"A duel." Davis stared at him dubiously. He did not know whether or not his friend was making game of him.

"Yes, sir. Pistols and coffee for two, waiter. That sort of thing."

"But folks don't fight duels nowadays," remonstrated the puzzled miner. "Anyhow, what's he want to fight about? I reckon you didn't duck him for nothing, did you? What was it all about?"

Dick told his tale of adventures, omitting only certain emotions that were his private property. He concluded with an account of the irrigating-ditch episode. "It ain't the custom in this part of the country to duck the blue bloods. Shouldn't wonder but what he's some hot under the collar. Writes like he sees red, don't you think, but aims to be polite and keep his shirt on."

Davis refused to treat the matter as a joke.

"I told you to let your lawyers 'tend to this, Dick, and for you not to poke your nose into this neck of the woods. But you had to come, and right hot off the reel you hand one to this Pesky fellow, or whatever you call him. Didn't I tell you that you can't bat these greasers over the head the way you can the Poles in the mines?"

"Sure you told me. You're always loaded with good advice, Steve. But what do you expect me to do when a fellow slaps my face?"

"They won't stand fooling with, these greasers. This Pesky fellow is playing squarer than most would if he gives you warning to be ready with your six-gun. You take my advice, and you'll burn the wind out of this country. If you git this fellow, the whole pack of them will be on top of you, and don't you forget it, son."

"So you advise me to cut and run, do you?" said Dick.

"You bet."

"That's what you'd do, is it?"

"Sure thing. You can't clean out the whole of New Mexico."

"Quit your lying, Steve, you old war-horse. You'd see it out, just like I'm going to."

Davis scratched his grizzled poll and grinned, but continued to dispense good advice.

"You ain't aiming to mix with this whole blamed country, are you?"

The man in the chair sat up, his lean jaw set and his eyes gleaming.

"I've been called the scum o' the earth. I've been kicked out of her house as a fellow not decent enough to mix with honest folks. Only yesterday I got a letter from some of her people warning me to leave the country while I was still alive. This Pesquiera is camping on my trail."

"Maybe he ain't. You've only guessed that."

"Guess nothing. It's a cinch."

"What you going to do about it?"

"Nothing."

"But if he lays for you."

"Good enough. Let him go to it. I'm going through with this thing. I'm going to show them who's the best man. And when I've beat them to a standstill I've got a revenge ready that will make Miss Valdés eat humble pie proper. Yes, sir. I'm tied to this country till this thing's settled."

"Then there ain't any use saying any more about it. You always was a willful son-of-a-gun," testified his partner, with a grin. "And I reckon I'll have to stay with you to pack you home after the greasers have shot you up."

"Don't you ever think it, Steve," came back the cheerful retort. "I've got a hunch this is my lucky game. I'm sitting in to win, old hoss."

"What's your first play, Dick?"

"I made it last week, within twenty minutes of the time I got back here. Wired my lawyers to bring suit at once, and to push it for all it was worth."

"You can't settle it by the courts inside of a year, or mebbe two."

"I ain't aiming to settle it by the courts. All I want is they should know I've got them beat to a fare-ye-well in the courts. Their lawyers will let them know that mighty early, just as soon as they look the facts up. There ain't any manner of doubt about my legal claim. I guess Miss Valdés knows that already, but I want her to know it good and sure. Then I'll paddle my own canoe. The law's only a bluff to make my hand better. I'm calling for that extra card for the looks of it, but my hand is full up without it"

"What's in your hand, anyhow, outside of your legal right? Looks to me they hold them all from ace down."

Dick laughed.

"You wait and see," he said.

CHAPTER VII

TWO MESSAGES

Because Dick had always lived a clean, outdoor life he rallied magnificently from the relapse into which his indiscretion had thrown him. For a few days Dr. Watson was worried by reason of the danger of blood-poisoning, but the splendid vitality of his patient quickly swept him out of danger. Soon he was hobbling round with a cane, and shortly after was able to take long rides over the country with his friend.

On one of these occasions, while they were climbing a hill trail, Davis broke a long silence to say aloud to himself: "There's just one way to account for it."

"Then it can't be a woman you're thinking of," Dick laughed; "for as far as I can make out there's always several ways to account for them, and the one you guess usually ain't right."

"You've said it, son. It's a woman. I been doing some inquiring about this Miss Valdés, and from all telling she's the prettiest ever."

"I could have told you that. It ain't a secret."

"I notice you didn't tell me."

"You didn't ask, you old geezer."

"Sho! You ain't such a clam when it comes to pretty girls. You didn't talk about her, because your haid's been full of her. It don't take a mind-reader to know that."

"You're ce'tainly a wizard, Steve," came back his partner dryly.

"I know you and your little ways by this time."

"So I'm in love, am I?"

"You're there, or traveling there mighty fast. Course I don't know about the lady."

"What don't you know about her?" asked Dick, who was by way of being both amused and pleased that the subject had been broached.

"How she feels about the proposition. She had you kicked out of the house. That looks kinder as if your show was slim. She did send over right often to see how you was getting along, but I reckon she didn't want to feel responsible for your turning up your toes. Women are that way, even when they hate a man real thorough."

"You're quite an expert. I wonder you know so much about them, and you never married."

To this sarcastic reminder Steve made philosophic reply. "Mebbe it was because I knew so much about them I never married."

"You're surely a wise old rooster. You think she hates me, then?"

Davis covered a grin. He knew from his friend's tone that the barb had pierced the skin.

"Well, looking at it like a reasonable man, there ain't any question about it. Soon as you begin to mend she quits taking any interest in you; don't know you're on the earth any more. A reasonable man----"

"A reasonable goat!" Dick reined up till the other horse was abreast of his, then dived into his pocket and handed Steve a letter. "She's quit taking any interest in me, has she? Don't know I'm on the earth, you old owl? Looks like it, and her sending me a letter this very day."

Steve turned the square envelope around and weighed it in his hand.

"Am I to read this here billy doo?" he wanted to know.

"Yes, sir."

Gravely the old miner opened and read the following:

"Miss Valdés begs to inform Mr. Gordon that she has reason to fear Mr. Gordon's life is not safe in the present feeling of the country. Out of regard for her people, whom she would greatly regret to see in trouble, Miss Valdés would recommend Mr. Gordon to cut short his pleasure trip to New Mexico. Otherwise Miss Valdés declines any responsibility for the result."

"Can't be called very affectionate, can it?" was Mr. Davis's comment. "Ain't it jest a leetle mite--well, like she was writing with a poker down her back?"

"I didn't say it was affectionate," snorted the young man.

"Oh, I allowed you thought she was in love with you."

"I didn't say or think anything of the kind," protested Dick indignantly. "I said she hadn't forgotten me."

"Well, she ain't, if that's any comfort."

With which, Mr. Davis handed back the letter. "What did you answer to the billy doo?"

"I said that Mr. Gordon presented his compliments and begged to reply that he had large business interests in this part of the country that necessitated a visit of some length, and probably in the end a permanent residence here; and that he would very fully absolve Miss Valdés of any responsibility for his remaining."

"Both of you used up a heap of dictionary words; but that wasn't so bad, either," grinned Steve. "You got back at her, all right, for the 'pleasure trip' part of her letter, but I expect you and she would disagree as to what that 'permanent residence' means. I hope it won't be more permanent than you think."

From the rocks above came the sound of an exploding rifle. Dick's hat was lifted from his head as by a gust of wind. Immediately after they caught sight of a slim, boyish figure dodging among the rocks.

"There he goes," cried Dick; and he slid from his saddle and took up the chase.

"Come back. There may be several of them up there," called the old miner.

Gordon paid no attention; and Steve had nothing left to do but follow him up the rocky hillside.

"He'll spoil that game leg of his again, first thing he knows," the old-timer growled as he followed in the rear.

Presently a second shot rang out. Davis hastened forward as fast as he could.

At the top of the ridge he came on his companion sitting behind a rock.

"Lost him in these rocks, did you?" he asked.

A sardonic smile lit up the face of his friend.

"No, Steve, I found him; but he persuaded me I oughtn't to travel so fast on this leg. You see, he had a rifle, and my six-gun was outclassed. I couldn't get into range, and decided to hunt cover, after he took another crack at me."

"I should think you'd know better than to go hunting bear with a twenty-two."

"It ain't a twenty-two; but, for a fact, it don't carry a mile. I got what I want, though. I know who the gentleman is."

"Sure it wasn't a lady, Dick?"

"Don't you, Steve," warned Gordon. "She's a lady and a Christian. You wouldn't say that if you knew her. Besides, she saved my life."

"Who was it? That Pesky fellow?"

"No. He's hot-blooded; but he wouldn't strike below the belt. He's a gentleman. This was one of the lads on her home-place, an eighteen-year-old boy named Pedro. He's in love with her. I saw it soon as I set eyes on him the day I went there. He worships her as if she were a saint. Of course, he loves her without any hope; but that doesn't keep him from being jealous of me. He's heard about the row, and he thinks he'll do her a service by putting me out of the game."

"Sort of fix you up with that permanent residence you were talking about," suggested Steve.

"He didn't make good this time, anyhow. I'll bet a hat he'd catch it if Miss Valdés knew what he had been doing."

"She may be a Christian and all you say, Dick, but she don't run a Sunday school on her ranch and train these young greasers proper. I don't like this ambushing. They might git the wrong man."

"I'm not partial to it, myself. That lead pill hummed awful close to me."

They had by this time returned to the road, and Dick picked up his hat from the dust. There were two little round holes in the crown, and one in the brim.

"If he had shot an inch lower I would have qualified for that permanent residence, Steve," Dick laughed.

"Hmp! Let's get out of here pronto, Dick. I'm darned if I like to be the target at a shooting gallery. And next time I go riding there's going to be a good old Winchester lying over my saddle-horn."

Now, as very chance would have it, Miss Valdés, too, rode the hill trail that afternoon; and every step of the broncos lessened the distance between them.

They met at a turn of the steep path. Davis was in the lead, and the girl passed him just in time to meet Dick's bow. It was a very respectful bow; but there was a humorous irony in the gray eyes that met hers, which hinted at a different story. She made as if to pass him, but, on an impulse, reined in. His ventilated hat came off again, as he waited for her to speak.

For an instant she let her gaze rest in his, the subdued crimson of her cheeks triumphant over the olive. But the color was not of embarrassment, and in her eyes shone the spirit of a descendant of old Don Alvaro de Valdés y Castillo. She sat her mount superbly; as jimp and erect as a willow sapling.

"You received a message from me this morning, sir," she said haughtily.

"Yes, Miss Valdés; I received a message from you this morning and answered it. This afternoon I received one from one of your friends; but I haven't answered that yet."

As he spoke he let his eyes fall upon the hat in his hand.

Hers followed his, and she started in spite of herself.

"Did--did--were you shot at?" she asked, with dilating eyes.

"Oh, well! He didn't hit me. It's not worth mentioning."

"Not worth mentioning? Who did it, sir? I demand to know who did it?"

He hesitated as he picked his words.

"You see--well--he was behind a rock, and not very close, at that."

"But you knew him. I demand his name. He shall be punished. I myself will see to that."

"I'll do what punishing needs to be done, Miss Valdés. Much obliged to you, just the same."

Her eyes flashed.

"You forget, sir, that they are my people. I gave orders--the very strictest orders. I told them that, no matter what you did or how far you went, you were not to be molested."

"How far I went? You've been served with a legal notice, then? I thought you must have by this time."

"Yes, sir, I have. But neither on that nor any other subject do I desire any conversation with you."

"Of course not, me being a spy and all those other things you mentioned," he said quietly.

"I stopped to tell you only one thing. You must leave this country. Prosecute your suit from a distance. My people are wrought up. You see for yourself now." Her gauntlet indicated the hat.

"They do seem to be enthusiastic about hating me," he agreed pleasantly. "I suppose I'm not what you would call popular here."

She gave a gesture of annoyance.

"Can't you understand that this is no time for flippancy? Can't you make him see it, sir?" she called to Davis.

That gentleman shook his head.

"He'll go his own way, I expect. He always was that bull-headed."

"Firm--I call it," smiled Gordon.

"I ask you to remember that he has had his warning," the girl called to Steve.

"I've had several," acknowledged Dick, his eyes again on the hat. "There won't be anybody to blame but myself."

"You know who shot at you. I saw it in your face. Tell me, and I will see that he is punished," she urged.

Dick shook his head imperturbably.

"No; I reckon that wouldn't do. I'm playing a lone hand. You're on the other side. How can I come and ask you to fight my battles for me? That wouldn't be playing the game. I'll attend to the young man that mistook me for a rabbit."

"Very well. As you like. But you are quite mistaken if you think I asked on your account. He had disobeyed my orders, and he deserved to pay for it. I have no further interest in the matter."

"Certainly. I understand that. What interest could Miss Valdés have in a spy and a cheat?" he drawled negligently.

The young woman flushed, made as if to speak, then turned away abruptly.

She touched her pony with the spur, and as it took the outside of the slanting, narrow trail, its hoof slipped on loose gravel and went over the edge. Dick's arm went out like a streak of lightning and caught the rein.

For an instant the issue hung in doubt whether he could hold the bronco and save her a nasty fall. The taut muscles of his lean arm and body grew rigid with the strain before the animal found its feet and the path.

"Thank you," the young woman said quietly, and at once disengaged the rein from his fingers by a turn of the pony's head.

Yet a moment, and she had disappeared round a bend in the trail. Gordon had observed with satisfaction that there had been no sign of fear in her eyes at the danger she faced, no screaming or wild clutching at his arm for help. Her word of thanks to him had been as cool and low as the rest of her talk.

"She's that game. Ain't she a thoroughbred, Steve?" demanded Dick, with deep delight in his fair foe.

"You bet she is. It's a shame for you to be annoying her this way. Why don't you come to an agreement with her?"

"She ain't ready for that yet. When the time comes I'll dictate the terms of the treaty. Don't you think it's about time for us to be heading back home?"

"Then we'll meet your lady of the ranch quicker, won't we?" chuckled Davis. "Funny you didn't think about going back till after she had passed."

But if Dick had hoped to see her again he was disappointed for that day, at least. They reached Corbett's with never another glimpse of her; nor was there any sign of her horse in front of the post office and general store.

"Must have taken that lower trail that leads back to the ranch," hazarded Gordon.

"I reckon," agreed his friend. "Seems funny, too; her knowing you was on the upper one."

"Guy me all you like. I can stand it," returned Dick cheerfully.

For he had scored once in spite of her. He had saved her from a fall, at a place where, to say the least, it would have been dangerous. She had announced herself indifferent to his existence; but the very fact that she had felt called upon to say so gave denial to the statement. She might hate him, and she probably did; at least, she had him on her mind a good deal. The young man was sure of that. He was shrewdly of opinion that his chances were better if she hated him than if she never thought of him at all.

CHAPTER VIII

TAMING AN OUTLAW

"Something doing back of the corral, Mr. Gordon."

Yeager, the horse-wrangler at Corbett's, stopped in front of the porch, and jerked his head, with a twisted grin, in the direction indicated.

Everything about the little stableman was crooked. From the slope of his legs to the set of his bullet head on the narrow shoulders, he was awry. But he had an instinct about horses that was worth more than the beauty of any slim, tanned vaquero of the lot.

Only one horse had he failed to subdue. That was Teddy, a rakish sorrel that had never yet been ridden. Many had tried it, but none had stuck to the saddle to the finish; and some had been carried from the corral to the hospital.

Dick got up and strolled back, with his hands in his pockets.

A dozen vaqueros and loungers sat and stood around the mouth of the corral, from which a slim young Mexican was leading the sorrel.

"So, it's you, Master Pedro," thought the young American. "I didn't expect to see you here."

The lad met his eyes quietly as he passed, giving him a sullen nod of greeting; evidently he hoped he had not been recognized as the previous day's ambusher.

"Is Pedro going to ride the outcast?" Dick asked of Yeager, in surprise.

Yeager grinned.

"He's going to try. The boy's slap-up rider, but he ain't got it in him to break Teddy--no, nor any man in New Mexico ain't."

Dick looked the horse over carefully, as it stood there while the boy tightened the girths--feet wide apart, small head low, and red eyes gleaming wickedly. Deep-chested, with mighty shoulders, barrel-bodied like an Indian pony, Teddy showed power in every line of him. It was easy to guess him for the unbroken outlaw he was.

There was a swift scatter backward of the onlookers as Pedro swung to the saddle. Before his right foot was in the stirrup, the bronco bucked.

The young Mexican, light and graceful, settled to the saddle with a delighted laugh, and drove the spurs home. The animal humped like a camel, head and tail down, went into the air and back to earth, with four feet set like pile-drivers. It was a shock to drive a man's spine together like a concertina; but Pedro took it limply, giving to the jar of the impact as the pony came down again and again.

Teddy tasted the quirt along his quarters, and the pain made him frantic. He went screaming straight into the air, hung there a long instant, and fell over backward. The lad was out of the saddle in time and no more, and back in his seat before the outlaw had scrambled to his feet.

The spur starred him to renewed life. Like a flash of lightning, the brute's head swung round and snapped at the boy's leg. Pedro wrenched the head back in time to save himself; and Teddy went to sun-fishing, and presently to fence-rowing.

The dust flew in clouds. It wrapped them in so that the boy saw nothing but the wicked ears in front of him. His throat became a lime-kiln, his eyes stared like those of a man weary from long wakefulness. The hot sun baked his bare neck and head, the while Teddy rocketed into the sky and pounded into the earth.

Neither rider nor mount had mercy. The quirt went back and forth like a piston-rod, and the outlaw, in screaming fury, leaped and tossed like a small boat in a tremendous sea of cross-currents.

"It's sure hell-for-leather. That hawss can tie himself in more knots than any that was ever foaled," commented a tobacco-chewing puncher in a scarlet kerchief.

"Pedro is a straight-up rider, but he ain't got it in him to master Teddy--no; nor no man ain't," contributed Yeager again proudly. "Hawsses is like men. Some of 'em can't be broke; you can only kill them. Teddy's one of them kind."

Dick differed, but did not say so.

"Look at him now. There he goes weaving. That hawss is a devil, I tell you. He's got every hawss-trick there is, and all of 'em worked up to a combination of his own. Look out there, Ped."

The warning came too late. Teddy had jammed into the corral fence, and ground his rider's knee till the torture of the pain had distracted his attention. Once more then swept round the ugly stub nose, and the yellow teeth fastened in the leather chaps with a vicious snap that did not entirely miss the flesh of the leg.

The boy, with a cry of pain and terror, slipped to the ground, his nerve completely shaken. The sorrel lashed out with his hind feet, and missed his head by a hairbreadth. Pedro turned to run, stumbled, and went down.

The outlaw was upon him like a streak, striking with sharp chiseled forefeet at the prostrate man. Along the line of spectators ran a groan, a kind of sobbing murmur of despair. A young Mexican who had just ridden up flung himself from his horse and ran forward, though he knew he was too late.

"Pedro's done for," cried one.

And so he would have been but for the watchfulness and alertness of one man.

Dick had been ready the instant the outlaw had flung against the fence. He had been prepared to see the boy weaken, and had anticipated it in his forward leap. The furious animal had risen to drive home his hoofs, when an arm shot out, caught the bridle, and dragged him sideways. This unexpected intervention dazed the animal; and while he still stood uncertain, Gordon swung to the saddle and dug his heels into the bleeding sides.

As to a signal the bronco rose, and the battle was on again.

But this time the victory was not in doubt to the onlookers after the first half-dozen jumps. For this man rode like a master. He held a close but easy seat, and a firm rein, along which ran the message of an iron will to the sensitive foaming mouth which held the bit tight-clamped.

This brown, lithe man was all bone and sinew and muscle. He rode like a Centaur, as if he were a part of the horse, as easily and gracefully as a chip does the waves. The outlaw was furious with hate, blind with a madness that surged through it; but all its weaving and fence-rowing could not shake the perfect poise of the rider, nor tinge with fear the glad fighting edge that throbbed like a trumpet-call in the blood.

Slowly the certainty of this sifted to the animal. The pitches grew less volcanic, died presently into fitful mechanical rises and falls that foretold the finish. Its spirit broken, with that terrible incubus of a human clothes-pin still clamped to the saddle, Teddy gave up, and for the first time hung his head in token of defeat.

Dick tossed the bridle to Yeager and swung off.

"There aren't any of them so bad, if a fellow will stay with them," he said.

"Where did you learn your riding, partner?" asked the puncher with the scarlet kerchief knotted around his neck.

"I used to ride for an outfit up in Wyoming," returned Dick.

"Well, I'd like to ride for that outfit, if all the boys stick to the saddle like you," returned the kerchiefed one.

Gordon did not explain that he had been returned winner in more than one bucking-bronco contest in the days when he rode the range.

He was already sauntering toward the house.

From a side porch Pedro, awaiting the arrival of a rig to take him back to the ranch, sat with his bruised leg on a chair and watched the approach of the stalwart figure that came as lightly as though it trod on eggs. He had hobbled here and watched the other do easily what had been beyond him.

His heart was bitter with the sense of defeat, none the less because this man whom he had lately tried to kill had just saved his life.

"Como?" asked Dick, stopping in front of him to brush dust from his trousers with a pocket-handkerchief.

Pedro mumbled something. Under his olive skin the color burned. Tears of mortification were in his eyes.

"You saved my life, señor. Take it. It is yours," the boy cried.

"What shall I do with it?"

"I care not. Make an end of it, as on Tuesday I tried to make an end of yours," cried the lad wildly.

Gordon took off his hat and looked at the bullet holes casually.

"You did not miss it very far, Pedro."

"You knew then, señor, that I was the man?" the Mexican asked in surprise.

"Oh, yes; I knew that."

"And you did nothing?"

"Yes; I ducked behind a rock," laughed Gordon.

"But you make no move to arrest me?"

"No."

"But, if I should shoot again?"

"I expect to carry a rifle next time I go riding, Pedro."

The Mexican considered this.

"You are a brave man, señor."

The Anglo-Saxon snorted scornfully.

"Because I ain't bluffed out by a kid that needs a horse-whip laid on good and hard? Don't you make any mistake, boy. I'm going to give you the licking of your young life. You were due for it to-day, but it will have to be postponed, I reckon, till you're on your feet again."

Pedro's eyes glittered dangerously.

"Señor Gordon has saved my life. It is his. But no living man lays hands on Pedro Menendez," the boy said, drawing himself haughtily to his full slender height.

"You'll learn better, Pedro, before the week's out. You've got to stand the gaff, just the same as a white boy would. You're in for a good whaling, and there ain't any use getting heroic about it."

"I think not, Señor Gordon." There was a suggestion of repressed emotion in the voice.

Dick turned sharply at the words. A lean, clean-built young fellow stood beside the porch. He stepped up lightly, so that he was behind the chair in which Pedro had been sitting. Seen side by side thus, there could be no mistaking the kinship between the two Mexicans. Both were good looking, both lean and muscular, both had a sort of banked volcanic passion in their black eyes. Dangerous men, these slim swarthy youths, judged Gordon with a sure instinct.

"You think not, Pedro Number 2," retorted the American lightly.

"My name is Pablo, Señor--Pablo Menendez," corrected the young man with dignity.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Menendez. I was just telling your brother--if Pedro is your brother--that I intend to wear out a buggy whip on him as soon as his leg is well," explained Dick pleasantly.

"No. You have saved his life. It is yours. Take it." The black eyes of the Mexican met steadily the blue-gray ones of the American.

"Much obliged, but I can't use it. As soon as I've tanned his hide I'm through with Master Pedro," returned the miner carelessly.

He was turning away when Pablo stopped him. The musical voice was low and clear. "Señor Gordon understands then. Pedro will pay. He will endure shot for shot if the Señor wishes it. But no man living shall lay a whip upon him."

Gordon shrugged his shoulders. "We shall see, my friend. The first time I meet him after his leg is all right Master Pedro gets the licking he needs."

"You are warned, señor."

Dick nodded and walked away, humming a song lightly.

The black eyes of the Mexicans followed him as long as he was in sight. A passionate hatred burned in those of the elder brother. Those of Pedro were full of a wistful misery. With all his heart he admired this man whom he had yesterday tried to kill, who had to-day saved his life, and in the next breath promised him a thrashing.

He gave him a grudging hero-worship, even while he hated him; for the man trod the world with the splendor of a young god, and yet was an enemy of the young mistress to whom he owed his full devotion. Pedro's mind was made up.

If this Gordon laid a whip on him, he would drive a knife into his heart.

CHAPTER IX

OF DON MANUEL AND MOONLIGHT

Don Manuel sat curled up in one of the deep window-seats of the living room at the Valdés home, and lifted his clear tenor softly in an old Spanish love-song to the accompaniment of the strumming of a guitar.

It is possible that the young Spaniard sang the serenade impersonally, as much to the elderly duenna who slumbered placidly on the other side of the fireplace as to his lovely young hostess. But his eyes told another story. They strayed continuously toward that slim, gracious figure sitting in the fireglow with a piece of embroidery in the long fingers.

He could look at her the more ardently because she was not looking at him. The fringes of her lids were downcast to the dusky cheeks, the better to examine the work upon which she was engaged.

Don Manuel felt the hour propitious. It was impossible for him not to feel that in the past weeks somehow he had lost touch with her. Something had come between them; some new interest that threatened his influence.

But to-night he had again woven the spell of romance around her. As she sat there, a sweet shadowy form touched to indistinctness by the soft dusk, he knew her gallant heart had gone with him in the Castilian battle song he had sung, had remained with him in the transition to the more tender note of love.

He rose, thumbed a chord or two, then set his guitar down softly. For a time he looked out into the valley swimming in a silvery light, and under its spell the longing in him came to words.

"It is a night of nights, my cousin. Is it not that a house is a prison in such an hour? Let us forth."

So forth they fared to the porch, and from the porch to the sentinel rock which rose like a needle from the summit of a neighboring hill. Across the sea of silver they looked to the violet mountains, soft and featureless in the lowered lights of evening, and both of them felt it earth's hour of supreme beauty.

"It is good to live--and to know this," she said at last softly.

"It is good to live and, best of all, to know you," he made answer slowly.

She did not turn from the hills, made no slightest sign that she had heard; but to herself she was saving: "It has come."

While he pleaded his cause passionately, with all the ardor of hot-blooded Spain, the girl heard only with her ears. She was searching her heart for the answer to the question she asked of it:

"Is this the man?"

A month ago she might have found her answer easier; but she felt that in some subtle, intangible way she was not the same girl as the Valencia Valdés she had known then. Something new had come into her life; something that at times exalted her and seemed to make life's currents sweep with more abandon.

She was at a loss to know what it meant; but, though she would not confess it even to herself, she was aware that the American was the stimulating cause. He was her enemy, and she detested him; and, in the same breath with which she would tell herself this, would come that warm beat of exultant blood she had never known till lately.

With all his ardor, Don Manuel never quickened her pulses. She liked him, understood him, appreciated his value. He was certainly very handsome, and, without doubt, a brave, courteous gentleman of her own set with whom she ought to be happy if she loved him. Ah! If she knew what love were.

So, when the torrent of Pesquiera's speech was for the moment dammed, she could only say:

"I don't know, Manuel."

Confidently he explained away her uncertainty:

"A maiden's love is retiring, shy, like the first flowers of the spring. She doubts it, fears it, hides it, my beloved, like----"

He was just swimming into his vocal stride when she cut him short decisively:

"It isn't that way with me, Manuel. I should tell you if I knew. Tell me what love is, my cousin, and I may find an answer."

He was off again in another lover's rhapsody. This time there was a smile almost of amusement in her eyes as she listened.

"If it is like that, I don't think I love you, Manuel. I don't think poetry about you, and I don't dream about you. Life isn't a desert when you are away, though I like having you here. I don't believe I care for you that way, not if love is what the poets and my cousin Manuel say it is."

Her eyes had been fixed absently now and again on an approaching wagon. It passed on the road below them, and she saw, as she looked down, that her vaquero Pedro lay in the bottom of it upon some hay.

"What is the matter? Are you hurt?" she called down.

The lad who was driving looked up, and flashed a row of white teeth in a smile of reassurance to his mistress.

"It is Pedro, doña. He tried to ride that horse Teddy, and it threw him. Before it could kill him, the Americano jumped in and saved his life."

"What American?" she asked quickly: but already she knew by the swift beating of her heart.

"Señor Muir; the devil fly away with him," replied the boy loyally.

Already his mistress was descending toward him with her sure stride, Don Manuel and his suit forgotten in the interest of this new development of the feud. She made the boy go over the tale minutely, asking questions sometimes when she wanted fuller details.

Meanwhile, Manuel Pesquiera waited, fuming. Most certainly this fellow Gordon was very much in the way. Jealousy began to add its sting to the other reasons good for hastening his revenge.

When Valencia turned again to her cousin her eyes were starry.

"He is brave--this man. Is he not?" she cried.

It happened that Don Manuel, too, was a rider in a thousand. He thought that Fate had been unkind to refuse him this chance his enemy had found. But Pesquiera was a gentleman, and his answer came ungrudgingly:

"My cousin, he is a hero--as I told you before."

"But you think him base," she cried quickly.

"I let the facts speak for me," he shrugged.

"Do they condemn him--absolutely? I think not."

She was a creature of impulse, too fine of spirit to be controlled by the caution of speech that convention demands. She would do justice to her foe, no matter how Manuel interpreted it.

What the young man did think was that she was the most adorable and desirable of earth's dwellers, the woman he must win at all hazards.

"He came here a spy, under a false name. Surely you do not forget that, Valencia," he said.

"I do not forget, either, that we flung his explanations in his face; refused him the common justice of a hearing. Had we given him a chance, all might have been well."

"My cousin is generous," Manuel smiled bitterly.

"I would be just."

"Be both, my beloved, to poor Manuel Pesquiera, an unhappy wreck on the ocean of love, seeking in vain for the harbor."

"There are many harbors, Manuel, for the brave sailor. If one is closed, another is open. He hoists sail, and beats across the main to another port."

"For some. But there are others who will to one port or none. I am of those."

When she left him it was with the feeling that Don Manuel would be hard hit, if she found herself unable to respond to his love.

He was not like this American, competent, energetic, full of the turbulent life of a new nation which turns easily from defeat to fresh victory.

Her heart was full of sympathy, and even pity, for him. But these are only akin to love.

It was not long before Valencia began to suspect that she had not been told the whole truth about the affair of the outlaw horse. There was some air of mystery, of expectation, among her vaqueros.

At her approach, conversation became suspended, and perceptibly shifted to other topics. Moreover, Pedro was troubled in his mind, out of all proportion to the extent of his wound.

She knew it would be no use to question him; but she made occasion soon to send for Juan Gardiez, the lad who had driven him home.

From the doorway of the living-room, Juan presently ducked a bow at her.

"The señorita sent for me?"

"Yes. Come in, Juan. Take that chair."

Now, though Juan had often sat down in the kitchen, he had never before been invited to seat himself in this room. Wherefore, the warm smile that now met him, and went with the invitation, filled him with a more than mild surprise. Gingerly he perched himself on the edge of a chair, twirling his dusty sombrero round and round as a relief to his embarrassment.

"I am sorry, Juan, that you don't like me or trust me any longer," his mistress began.

"But, doña, I do," exclaimed the boy, nearly falling from his chair in amazement.

She shook her head.

"No; I can see you don't. None of you do. You keep secrets from me. You whisper and hide things."

"But, no, señorita----"

"Yes. I can see it plainly. My people do not love me. I must go away from them, since----"

Juan, having in his tender boyish heart a great love for his doña, could not stand this.

"No, no, no, señorita! It is not so. I do assure you it is a mistake. There is nothing about the cattle, nothing about the sheep you do not know. It is all told--all."

"Muy bien. Yet you conceal what happened yesterday to Pedro."

"He was thrown----"

She stopped him with a gesture.

"I don't want to know that again. Tell me what is in the air; what is planned for Señor Gordon; what Pedro has to do with it? Tell me, or leave me to know my people no longer love me."

The boy shook his head and let his eyes fall before her clear gaze.

"I can tell nothing."

"Look at me, Juan," she commanded, and waited till he obeyed. "Pedro it was that shot at this man Gordon. Is it not so?"

His eyes grew wide.

"Some one has told?" he said questioningly.

"No matter. It was he. Yesterday the American saved his life. Surely Pedro does not still----"

She did not finish in words, but her eyes chiseled into his stolid will to keep silent.

"The stranger invites evil. He would rob the señorita and us all. He has said he would horsewhip Pedro. He rides up and down the valley, taunting us with his laugh. Is he a god, and are we slaves?"

"He said he would horsewhip Pedro, did he?"

"Si señorita; when Pedro told him to take his life, since it was his."

"And this was after Pedro had been thrown?"

"Directly after. The American is a devil, doña. He rode that man-killer like Satan. Did he not already know that it was Pedro who shot at him? Is not Pedro a sure shot, and did he not miss twice? Twice, señorita; which makes it certain that this Señor Gordon is a devil."

"Don't talk nonsense, Juan. I want to know how he came to tell Pedro that he would whip him."

"He came up to the piazza when he had broken the heart of that other devil, the man-killer, and Pedro was sitting there. Then Pedro told him that he was the one who had shot at him, but he only laughed. He always laughs, this fiend. He knew it already, just as he knows everything. Then it was he said he had saved the boy to whip him."

"And that is all?"

"Por Dios--all" shrugged the lad.

"Are there others beside you that believe this nonsense about the American being in league with evil?"

"It is not nonsense, señorita, begging your pardon," protested Juan earnestly. "And Ferdinand and Pablo and Sebastian, they all believe it."

Valencia knew this complicated the situation. These simple peons would do, under the impulsion of blind bigotry, what they would hesitate to do otherwise. Let them think him a devil, and they would stick at nothing to remove him.

Her first thought was that she must keep informed of the movements of her people. Otherwise she would not be able to frustrate them.

"Juan, if this man is really what you think, he will work magic to destroy those who oppose him. It will not be safe for any of my people to set themselves against him. I know a better way to attack him. I want to talk with Pablo and Sebastian. You must work with me. If they try to do anything, let me know at once; otherwise they will be in great danger. Do you understand?"

"Si, señorita."

"And will you let me know, quietly, without telling them?"

"Si, señorita."

"That is good. Now, I know my Juan trusts and loves his mistress. You have done well. Go, now."

From the point of view of her people the girl knew it was all settled. If the stranger whipped Pedro, the boy would kill him unless he used magic to prevent it. If he did use it, they must contrive to nullify his magic. There was, too, Don Manuel, who would surely strike soon, and however the encounter might terminate, it was a thing to dread miserably.

But, though her misery was acute, she was of a temperament too hopeful and impulsive to give up to despair so long as action was possible. While she did not yet know what she could do, she was not one to sit idle while events hurried to a crisis.

Meantime she had her majordomo order a horse saddled for her to ride over to Corbett's for the mail.

CHAPTER X

MR. AINSA DELIVERS A MESSAGE

Back to Davis, who had stopped to tighten his saddle-girth, came Dick Gordon's rather uncertain tenor in rollicking song:

"Bloomin' idol made o' mud-- Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd-- Plucky lot she cared for idols when I Kissed 'er where she stud!"

"There he goes, advertising himself for a target to every greaser in the county. Pity he can't ride along decent, if he's got to ride at all in these hills, where every gulch may be a trap," grumbled the old miner.

He jerked the leather strap down with a final tug, pulled himself to the saddle, and cantered after his friend.

"Elephints a pilin' teak In the sludgy, squdgy creek, Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you Was 'arf afraid to speak!"

"No danger of the silence hanging heavy here while you're around trying to be a whole opery troupe all by your lonesome," suggested Davis. "Seems to me if you got to trapse round this here country hunting for that permanent residence, it ain't necessary to disturb the Sabbath calm so on-feelin'. I don't seem to remember hearing any great demand for an encore after the rendering of the first verse."

"You do ce'tainly remind me of a lien with one chick, Steve," laughed Dick.

"I ain't worrying about you none. It's my own scalp kinder hangs loose every time you make one of your fool-plays," explained the other.

"Go pipe that up to your granny. Think I ain't learned my ABC's about my dry-nurse yet?"

"I'm going back to the gold camp to-morrow."

"You been saying that ever since you came here. Why don't you go, old Calamity Prophet?"

"Well, I am. Going to-morrow."

"You've hollered wolf too often, Steve. I'll believe it when I see it."

"Well, why don't you behave? What's the use of making a holy Caruso of yourself? Nobody ain't ever pined to hear you tune up, anyhow."

"All right. Mum's the word, old hoss. I'll be as solemn as if I was going to my own funeral."

"I ain't persuaded yet you're not."

"I'm right fully persuaded. Hallo! Stranger visiting at Corbett's. Guess I'll unlimber the artillery."

They dismounted, and, before turning over his horse to Yeager, Dick unstrapped from the saddle his rifle. Nowadays he never for a moment was separated from some weapon of defense. For he knew that an attack upon his life was almost a certainty in the near future. Though his manner was debonair, he saw to it that nobody got a chance to tamper with his guns.

"Make you acquainted with Mr. Ramon Ainsa, gentlemen. Mr. Gordon--Mr. Davis," said Corbett, standing in the doorway in his shirt-sleeves.

Mr. Ainsa, a very young man with the hint of a black mustache over his boyish mouth, clicked his heels together and bowed deeply. He expressed himself as delighted, but did not offer to shake hands. He was so stiff that Dick wanted to ask him whether the poker he had swallowed was indigestible.

"I am the bearer of a message to Mr. Richard Muir Gordon," he said with another bow.

"My name," acknowledged its owner. "You ain't missed a letter of it. Must have been at the christening, I expect."

"A message from Don Manuel Pesquiera."

"Good enough. That's right friendly of him. How's the don?"

And Dick, the sparkle of malicious humor gleaming in his eye, shook Mr. Ainsa warmly by the hand, in spite of that gentleman's effort to escape.

The messenger sidestepped as soon as he could, and began again, very red:

"Don Manuel considers himself deeply insulted, and desires through me, his friend, to present this note."

Dick looked at the envelope, and back at the youth who had handed it to him, after which he crowded in and pump-handled the other's arm again.

"That's awfully good of him, Mr. 'Tain't-so."

"My name is Ainsa, at your service," corrected the New Mexican.

"Beg pardon--Ainsa. I expect I hadn't ought to have irrigated the don so thorough, but it's real good of him to overlook it and write me a friendly note. It's uncommon handsome of him after I disarranged his laundry so abrupt."

"If the señor will read the letter--" interrupted the envoy desperately.

"Certainly. But let me offer you something to drink first, Mr. Ain't-so."

"Ainsa."

"Ainsa, I should say. A plain American has to go some to round up and get the right brand on some of these blue-blooded names of yours. What'll it be?"

"Thank you. I am not thirsty. I prefer not." With which Mr. Ainsa executed another bow.

"Just as you say, colonel. But you'll let me know if you change your mind."

Dick indicated a chair to his visitor, and took another himself; then leisurely opened the epistle and read it. After he had done so he handed it to Davis.

"This is for you, too, Steve. The don is awfully anxious to have you meet Mr. Ainsa and have a talk with him," chuckled Gordon.

"'To arrange a meeting with your friend,' Why, it's a duel he means, Dick."

"That's what I gathered. We're getting right up in society. A duel's more etiquettish than bridge-whist, Steve. Ain't you honored, being invited to one. You're to be my second, you see."

"I'm hanged if I do," exploded the old miner promptly.

"Sho! It ain't hard, when you learn the steps."

"I ain't going to have nothing to do with it. Tommyrot! That's what I call it."

"Don't say it so loud, Steve, or you'll hurt Mr. Ainsa's feelings," chided his partner.

"Think I'm going to make a monkey of myself at my age?"

Dick turned mournfully to the messenger of war.

"I'm afraid it's off, Mr. Ainsa. My second says he won't play."

"We shall be very glad to furnish you a second, sir."

"All right, and while you're at it furnish a principal, too. I'm an American. I write my address Cripple Creek, Colorado, U.S.A. We don't fight duels in my country any more. They've gone out with buckled shoes and knee-pants, Mr. Ainsa."

"Do I understand that Mr. Gordon declines to meet my friend on the field of honor?"

"That's the size of it."

"I am then instruct' to warn you to go armed, as my friend will punish your insolence at sight informally."

It was just at this moment that Mrs. Corbett, flushed with the vain chase of her fleeing brood of chickens, came perspiring round the house. Her large, round person, not designed by nature for such arduous exercise, showed signs of fatigue.

"I declare, if them chickens ain't got out, and me wanting two for supper," she panted, arms on her ample hips.

"That's too bad. Let me chase them," volunteered Dick.

He grasped his rifle, took a quick, careless aim, and fired. A long-legged, flying cockerel keeled over and began to kick.

"Gracious me!" ejaculated the woman.

"Two, did you say?" asked the man behind the gun.

"I said two."

Again the rifle cracked. A second chicken flopped down, this one with its head shot off at the neck.

The eyes of the minister of war were large with amazement. The distance had been seventy yards, if it had been a step. When little Jimmie Corbett came running forward with the two dead cockerels a slight examination showed that the first had also been shot through the neck.

Dick smiled.

"Shall I shoot another and send it for a present to Don Manuel, Jimmie?" he pleasantly inquired.

Mr. Ainsa met his persiflage promptly.

"I do assure you, señor, it will not be at all necesair. Don Manuel can shoot chickens for himself--and larger game."

"I'm sure he'll find good hunting," the other gave him back, looking up genially.

"He is a good hunter, señor."

"Don't doubt it a bit," granted the cordial Anglo-Saxon. "Trouble is that even the best hunters can't tell whether they are going to bring back the bear, or Mr. Bear is going to get them. That's what makes it exciting, I reckon."

"Is Don Manuel going bear-hunting?" asked Jimmie, with a newly aroused boy interest.

"Yes, Jimmie. One's been bothering him right considerable, and he's going gunning for it," explained Dick.

"Gee! I hope he gets it."

"And I hope he don't," laughed Gordon. "Must you really be going, colonel? Can't I do a thing for you in the refreshment line first? Well, so long. Good hunting for your friend. See him later."

Thus cheerfully did the irrepressible Gordon speed Mr. Ainsa on his way.

That young man had somehow the sense of having been too youthful to cope with the gay Gordon.

* * * * *

Valencia Valdés had not ridden far when she met Ramon Ainsa returning from his mission. He was a sunny young fellow, whom she had known since they had been children together.

It occurred to her that he bore himself in a manner that suggested something important on hand. His boyish mouth was set severely, and he greeted her with a punctilio quite unusual. At once she jumped shrewdly to a conclusion.

"Did you bring our mail back with you from Corbett's?" she innocently inquired.

"Yes, señorita."

"Since when have I been 'señorita' to you, Ramon?"

"Valencia, I should say." He blushed.

"Indeed, I should think so. It hasn't been so long since you called me Val."

"Ah! Those happy days!" he sighed.

"Fiddlesticks!" she promptly retorted. "Don't be a goose. You're not in the sere and yellow yet. Don't forget you'll not be twenty-one till next month."

"One counts time not by years, but by its fullness," he said, in the manner of one who could tell volumes if he would.

"I see. And what has been happening of such tremendous importance?"

Mr. Ainsa attempted to twirl his mustache, and was as silent as honor demanded.

"Pooh! It's no secret. Did you find Mr. Gordon at home?"

"At home?" he gasped.

"Well, at Corbett's, then?"

"I didn't know---- Who told you--er----"

"I'm not blind and deaf and dumb, you know."

"But you certainly have a great deal of imagination," he said, recovering himself.

"Not a bit of it. You carried a challenge to this American from Don Manuel. Now, I want to know the answer."

"Really, my dear girl----"

"You needn't try to evade me. I'm going to know, if I stay here all night."

"It's a hold-up, as the Americans say," he joked.

"I don't care what you call it. You have got to tell me, you know."

"But I can't tell you, niña. It isn't mine to tell."

"Anyhow, you can't keep me from guessing," she said, with an inspiration.

"No, I don't see how I can very well," he admitted.

"The American accepted the challenge immediately."

"But he didn't," broke out the young man.

"Then he refused?"

"That's a little obvious now," replied Ramon, with a touch of chagrin.

"He was very angry about it, and threatened to call the law to his aid."

Her friend surrendered at discretion, and broke into a laugh of delight.

"I never saw such a fellow, Val. He seemed to think it was all a joke. He must have known why I was there, but before I could get in a word he got hold of my hand and shook it till I wanted to shriek with the pain. He's got a grip like a bear. And he persisted in assuming we were the best of friends. Wouldn't read the letter at all."

"But after he did?"

"Said duels were not fashionable among his people any more."

"He is very sensible, but I'm afraid Manuel won't rest satisfied with that," the girl sighed.

"I hinted as much, and told him to go armed. What do you think the madman did then?"

"I can never guess."

Ramon retailed the chicken-shooting episode.

"You were to mention that to Manuel, I suppose?'" the girl said thoughtfully.

"So I understood. He was giving fair warning."

"But Manuel won't be warned."

"When he hears of it he'll be more anxious than ever to fight."

Valencia nodded. "A spur to a willing horse."

"If he knew he would be killed it would make no difference to him. He is quite fearless."

"Quite."

"But he is a very good shot, too. You do not need to be alarmed for him."

"Oh, no! Not at all," the girl answered scornfully. "He is only my distant cousin, anyhow--and my lover."

"It is hard, Val. Perhaps I might pick a quarrel with this American and----"

She caught him up sharply, but he forgave it when he saw her white misery.

"Don't you dare think of it, Ramon Ainsa. One would think nobody in the valley had any business except fighting with this man. What has he done to you? Or to these others? You are very brave, all of you, when you know you are a hundred to one. I suppose you, too, will want to shoot him from ambush?"

This bit of feminine injustice hurt the young man, but he only said quietly:

"No; I don't think I would do that."

Impulsively she put out her hand.

"Forgive me, Ramon. I don't mean that, of course, but I'm nearly beside myself. Why must all this bad will and bloodshed come into our happy little valley? If we must have trouble why can't we let the law settle it? I thought you were my friends--you and Manuel and my people--but between you I am going to be made unhappy for life."

She broke down suddenly and began to sob. The lad slipped to the ground and went quickly to her, putting an arm around her waist across the saddle.

"Don't cry, Val. We all love you--of course we do. How can we help it? It will all come right yet. Don't cry, niña"

"How can it come right, with all of you working to make things wrong?" she sobbed.

"Perhaps the stranger will go away."

"He won't. He is a man, and he won't let you drive him out."

"We'll find some way, Val, to save Manuel for you."

"But it isn't only Manuel. I don't want any of you hurt--you or anybody--not even this Mr. Gordon. Oh, Ramon, help me to stop this wicked business."

"If you can tell me how."

She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, as a sign that her weakness was past.

"We must find a way. Do you know, my own people are in a dangerous mood? They think this man's some kind of a demon. I shall talk to them to-night. And you must send Manuel to me. Perhaps he may listen to me."

Ainsa agreed, though he felt sure that even she could not induce his friend to withdraw from a position which he felt his honor called him to take.

Nor did the mistress of the valley find it easy to lead her tenants to her way of thinking. They were respectful, outwardly acquiescent, but the girl saw, with a sinking heart, that they remained of their own opinion. Whether he were man or devil, they were determined to make an end of Gordon's intrusion.

CHAPTER XI

THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY AND THE TWENTIETH

It was the second day after Pesquiera's challenge that his rival was called to Santa Fé, the capital of the State, to hold a conference with his lawyers about the progress of the suit of ouster against those living on the Moreño grant. Gordon knew how acute was the feeling of the residents of the valley against him. The Corbetts, whose homestead was not included in either the original Valdés or Moreño grant, reported daily to him whatever came to their ears. He could see that the impression was strong among the Mexicans that their champion, Doña Maria as they called her, would be worsted in the courts if the issue ever came to final trial.

To live under the constant menace of an attack from ambush is a strain upon the best of nerves. Dick and his friend Davis rode out of the valley to meet the Santa Fé stage with a very sensible relief. For a few days, anyhow, they would be back where they could see the old Stars and Stripes flutter, where feudal retainers and sprouts of Spanish aristocracy were not lying in wait with fiery zeal to destroy the American interloper.

They reached the little city late, but soon after sunup Gordon rose, took a bath, dressed, and strolled out into the quaint old town which lays claim to being the earliest permanent European settlement in the country. It was his first visit to the place, and as he poked his nose into out of the way corners Dick found every step of his walk interesting.

Through narrow, twisted streets he sauntered, along unpaved roads bounded by century-old adobe houses. His walk took him past the San Miguel Church, said to be the oldest in America. A chubby-faced little priest was watering some geraniums outside, and he showed Dick through the mission, opening the door of the church with one of a bunch of large keys which hung suspended from his girdle. The little man went through the usual patter of the guide with the facility of long practice.

The church was built, he said, in 1540, though Bandelier inaccurately sets the date much later. The roof was destroyed by the Pueblo Indians in 1680 during an attack upon the settlement, at which time the inhabitants took refuge within the mission walls. These are from three to five feet thick. The arrows of the natives poured through the windows. The señor could still see the holes in the pictures, could he not? Penuelo restored the church in 1710, as could be read by the inscription carved upon the gallery beam. It would no doubt interest the señor to know that one of the paintings was by Cimabue, done in 1287, and that the seven hundred pound bell was cast in Spain during the year 1356 and had been dragged a thousand miles across the deserts of the new world by the devoted pioneer priests who carried the Cross to the simple natives of that region.

Gordon went blinking out of the San Miguel mission into a world that basked indolently in a pleasant glow of sunshine. It seemed to him that here time had stood still. This impression remained with him during his tramp back to the hotel. He passed trains of faggot-laden burros, driven by Mexicans from Tesuque and by Indians from adjoining villages, the little animals so packed around their bellies with firewood that they reminded him of caricatures of beruffed Elizabethan dames of the olden days.

Surely this old town, which seemed to be lying in a peaceful siesta for centuries unbroken, was an unusual survival from the buried yesterdays of history. It was hard to believe, for instance, that the Governor's Palace, a long one-story adobe structure stretching across one entire side of the plaza, had been the active seat of so much turbulent and tragic history, that for more than three hundred years it had been occupied continuously by Spanish, Mexican, Indian, and American governors. Its walls had echoed the noise of many a bloody siege and hidden many an execution and assassination. From this building the old Spanish cavaliers Onate and Vicente de Salivar and Penalosa set out on their explorations. From it issued the order to execute forty-eight Pueblo prisoners upon the plaza in front. Governor Armijo had here penned his defiance to General Kearney, who shortly afterward nailed upon the flagpole the Stars and Stripes. The famous novel "Ben Hur" was written in one of these historic rooms.

But the twentieth century had leaned across the bridge of time to shake hands with the sixteenth. A new statehouse had been built after the fashion of new Western commonwealths, and the old Palace was now given over to curio stores and offices. Everywhere the new era compromised with the old. He passed the office of the lawyer he had come to consult, and upon one side of the sign ran the legend:

+---------------------------------+ | Despacho | | de | | Thomas M. Fitt, Licendiado. | +---------------------------------+

Upon the other he read an English translation:

+---------------------------------+ | Law Office | | of | | Thomas M. Fitt, Attorney. | +---------------------------------+

Plainly the old civilization was beginning to disappear before an alert, aggressive Americanism.

At the hotel the modern spirit became so pronounced during breakfast, owing to the conversation of a shoe and a dress-goods drummer at an adjoining table, that Gordon's imagination escaped from the tramp of Spanish mailclad cavalry and from thoughts of the plots and counterplots that had been devised in the days before American occupancy.

In the course of the morning Dick, together with Davis, called at the office of his attorney. Thomas M. Fitt, a bustling little man with a rather pompous manner, welcomed his client effusively. He had been appointed local attorney in charge by Gordon's Denver lawyers, and he was very eager to make the most of such advertising as his connection with so prominent a case would bring.

He washed the backs of his hands with the palms as he bowed his visitors to chairs.

"I may say that the case is progressing favorably--very favorably indeed, Mr. Gordon. The papers have been drawn and filed. We await an answer from the defendants. I anticipate that there will be only the usual court delays in pressing the action."

"We'll beat them, I suppose," Dick replied, with a manner almost of indifference.

"One can never be positive in advance, but I'd like to own your claim to the estate, Mr. Gordon," laughed the lawyer wheezily.

"Think we'll be able to wolf the real owners out of their property all right, do you?"

Fitt's smile went out like the flame of a burnt match. The wrinkles of laughter were ironed out of his fat cheeks. He stared at his client in surprise. It took him a moment to voice the dignified protest he felt necessary.

"Our title is good in law, Mr. Gordon. I have been over the evidence very carefully. The court decisions all lean our way. Don Bartolomé Valdés, the original grantee, failed to perfect his right of ownership in many ways. It is very doubtful whether he himself had not before his death abandoned his claim. His official acts appear to point to that conclusion. Our case is a very substantial one--very substantial, indeed."

"The Valdés' tenants have settled on the land, grazed their flocks over it, bought farms here and there from the heirs, haven't they?"

"Exactly. But if the sellers cannot show a good title--and my word as a lawyer for it they can't. Prove that in court and all we'll need is a writ of ejectment against the present holders as squatters. Then----" Fitt snapped his finger and thumb in an airy gesture that swept the Valdés' faction into the middle of the Pacific.

"It'll be the story of Evangeline all over again, won't it?" asked Gordon satirically.

"Ah! You have a kind heart, Mr. Gordon. Your sympathy does you credit. Still--business is business, of course."

"Of course," Dick picked up a pen and began to jab holes aimlessly into a perfectly good blotter tacked to the table. "Well, let's hear the story--just a sketch of it. Why do the rightful heirs lose out and the villain gain possession?"

Mr. Fitt smiled blandly. He had satisfied himself that his client was good pay and he did not intend to take offense. "It pleases you to be facetious, Mr. Gordon. But we all know that what this country needs--what such a valley as the Rio Chama ought to have--is up to date American development. People and conditions are in a primitive state. When men like you get possession of the Moreño and similar tracts New Mexico will move forward with giant strides to its great destiny. Time does not stand still. The day of the indolent semi-feudal Spanish system of occupancy has passed away. New Mexico will no longer remain mañana land. You--and men like you--of broad ideas, progressive, energetic----"

"Quite a philanthropist, ain't I?" interrupted Gordon, smiling lazily. "Well, let's hear the yarn, Mr. Fitt."

The attorney gave up his oration regretfully. He subsided into a chair and resumed the conversational tone.

"You've got to understand how things were here in the old Spanish days, gentlemen. Don Bartolomé for instance was not merely a cattleman. He was a grandee, a feudal lord, a military chief to all his tenants and employees. His word was law. The power of life and death lay in him."

Dick nodded. "Get you."

"The old Don was pasturing his sheep in the Rio Chama valley and he had started a little village there--called the place Torreon, I think, from a high tower house he had built to overlook the valley so that Indians could be seen if they attempted an attack. Well, he takes a notion that he'd better get legal title to the land he was using, though in those days he might have had half of New Mexico for his cattle and sheep as a range. So he asks Facundo Megares, governor of the royal province, for a grant of land. The governor, anxious to please him, orders the constitutional alcalde, a person named José Garcia de la Mora, to execute the act of possession to Valdés of a tract described as follows, to wit----"

"I've heard the description," cut in the young man. "Well, did the Don take possession?"

"We claim that he never did. He visited there, and his shepherds undoubtedly ran sheep on the range covered by the grant. But Valdés and his family never actually resided on the estate. Other points that militate against the claim of his descendants may be noted. First, that minor grants of land, taken from within the original Valdés grant, were made by the governor without any protest on the part of the Don. Second, that Don Bartolomé himself, subsequently Governor and Captain-General of the province of New Mexico, did, in his official capacity as President of the Council, endorse at least two other small grants of land cut out from the heart of the Valdés estate. This goes to show that he did not himself consider that he owned the land, or perhaps he felt that he had forfeited his claim."

"Or maybe it just showed that the old gentleman was no hog," suggested Gordon.

"I guess the law will construe it as a waiver of his claim. It doesn't make any allowances for altruism."

"I've noticed that," Gordon admitted dryly.

"A new crowd of politicians got in after Mexico became independent of Spain. The plums had to be handed out to the friends of the party in power. So Manuel Armijo, the last Mexican Governor of the province, being a favorite of the President of that country because he had defeated some Texas Rangers in a battle, and on that account endowed with extraordinary powers, carved a fat half million acres out of the Valdés grant and made a present of it to José Moreño for 'services to the government of Mexico.' That's where you come in as heir to your grandfather, who purchased for a song the claim of Moreño's son."

"My right has been lying dormant twenty-five years. Won't that affect its legality?"

"No. If we knock out the Valdés' grant, all we have to do is to prove the legality of the Moreño one. It happens we have evidence to show that he satisfied all legal requirements by living on the land more than four years. This gave him patent in perpetuity subject to taxes. By the payment of these we can claim title." Fitt rubbed his hands and walked backward and forward briskly. "We've got them sewed up tight, Mr. Gordon. The Supreme Court has sustained our contention in the almost parallel Baca case."

"Fine," said Dick moodily. He knew it was unreasonable for him to be annoyed at his counsel because the latter happened to be an alert and competent lawyer. But somehow all his sympathies were with Valencia Valdés and her dependents.

"If you'd like to look at the original documents in the case, Mr. Gordon----"

"I would."

"I'll take you up to the State House this afternoon. You can look over them at your leisure."

Davis laughed at his friend as they walked back to the hotel.

"I don't believe you know yourself what you want. You act as if you'd rather lose than win the suit."

"Sometimes I'm a white man, Steve. I don't want to grab other people's property just because some one can dig up a piece of paper that says it's mine. We sit back and roast the trusts to a fare-you-well for hogging all there is in sight. That's what Fitt and his tribe expect me to do. I'm damned if I will."

CHAPTER XII

"I BELIEVE YOU'RE IN LOVE WITH HER, TOO"

It was characteristic of Dick Gordon that he established at once a little relation of friendliness between him and the young woman at the State House who waited upon him with the documents in the Valdés grant case. She was a tall, slight girl with amazingly vivid eyes set in a face scarcely pretty. In her manner to the world at large there was an indifference amounting almost to insolence. She had a way of looking at people as if they were bits of the stage setting instead of individuals.

A flare of interest had sparkled in her eyes when Gordon's fussy little attorney had mentioned the name of his client, but it had been Dick's genial manner of boyish comradeship that had really warmed Miss Underwood to him. She did not like many people, but when she gave her heart to a friend it was without stipulations. Dick was a man's man. Essentially he was masculine, virile, dominant. But the force of him was usually masked either by his gay impudence or his sunny friendliness. Women were drawn to his flashing smile because they sensed the strength behind it.

Kate Underwood could have given a dozen reasons why she liked him. There were for instance the superficial ones. She liked the way he tossed back the tawny sun-kissed hair from his eyes, the easy pantherish stride with which he covered ground so lightly, the set of his fine shoulders, the peculiar tint of his lean, bronzed cheeks. His laugh was joyous as the song of a bird in early spring. It made one want to shout with him. Then, too, she tremendously admired his efficiency. To look at the hard, clear eye, at the clean, well-packed build of the man, told the story. The movements of his strong, brown hands were sure and economical. They dissipated no energy. Every detail of his personality expressed a mind that did its own thinking swiftly and incisively.

"It's curious about these documents of the old Valdés and Moreño claims. They have lain here in the vaults--that is, here and at the old Governor's Palace--for twenty years and more untouched. Then all at once twenty people get interested in them. Scarce a day passes that lawyers are not up to look over some of the copies. You have certainly stirred things up with your suit, Mr. Gordon."

Dick looked out of the window at the white adobe-lined streets resting in a placid coma of sun-beat.

"Don't you reckon Santa Fé can stand a little stirring up, Miss Underwood?"

"Goodness, yes. We all get to be three hundred years old if we live in this atmosphere long enough."

The man's gaze shifted. "You'd have to live here a right long time, I reckon."

A quick slant of her gay eyes reproached him. "You don't have to be so gallant, Mr. Gordon. The State pays me fifteen hundred dollars a year to wait on you, anyhow."

"You don't say. As much as that? My, we're liable to go bankrupt in New Mexico, ain't we? And, if you want to know, I don't say nice things to you because I have to, but because I want to."

She laughed with a pretense at incredulity. "In another day or two I'll find out just what special favor I'm able to do Mr. Gordon. The regular thing is to bring flowers or candy, you know. Generally they say, too, that there never has been a clerk holding this job as fit for it as I am."

"You're some clerk, all right. Say, where can I find the original of this Agua Caliente grant, Miss Kate?"

She smiled to herself as she went to get him a certified copy. "Only two days, and he's using my first name. Inside of a week he'll be calling me 'Dearie,'" she thought. But she knew very well there was no danger. This young fellow was the kind of man that could be informal without the slightest idea of flirting or making love.

Kate Underwood's interest in the fight between the claimants for the Valdés and Moreño grants was not based entirely upon her liking for Dick. He learned this the fourth day of his stay in Santa Fé.

"Do you know that you were followed to the hotel last night, Mr. Gordon?" she asked him, as soon as he arrived at the State House.

His eyes met hers instantly. "Was I? How do you know?"

"I left the building just after you did. Two Mexicans followed you. I don't know when I first suspected it, but I trailed along to make sure. There can be no doubt about it."

"Not a bit of doubt. Found it out the first day when I left the hotel," he told her cheerfully.

"You knew it all the time," she cried, amazed.

"That doesn't prevent me from being properly grateful to you for your kindness," he hastened to say.

"What are they following you for?" she wanted to know.

Dick told her something of his experiences in the Rio Chama Valley without mentioning that part of them which had to do with Miss Valdés. At the sound of Manuel Pesquiera's name the eyes of the girl flashed. Dick had already noticed that his name was always to her a signal for repression of some emotion. The eyes contracted and hardened the least in the world. Some men would not have noticed this, but more than once Gordon's life had hung upon the right reading of such signs.

"You think that Mr. Pesquiera has hired them to watch you?" she suggested.

"Maybe he has and maybe he hasn't. Some of those willing lads of Miss Valdés don't need any hiring. They want to see what I'm up to. They're not overlooking any bets."

"But they may shoot you."

He looked at her drolly. "They may, but I'll be there at the time. I'm not sleeping on the job, Miss Kate."

"You didn't turn around once yesterday."

"Hmp! I saw them out of the edge of my eyes. And when I turned a corner I always saw them mighty plain. They couldn't have come very close without my knowing it."

"Don Manuel is very anxious to have Miss Valdés win, isn't he?"

Dick observed that just below the eyes two spots were burning in the usually pale cheeks.

"Yes," he answered simply.

"Why?"

"He's her friend and a relative."

It seemed to Gordon that there was a touch of defiance in the eyes that held to his so steadily. She was going to find out the truth, no matter what he thought.

"Is that all--nothing more than a friend or a relative?"

The miner's boyish laugh rippled out. "You'd ought to have been a lawyer, Miss Kate. No, that ain't all Don Manuel doesn't make any secret of it. I don't know why I should. He wants to be prince consort of the Valdés kingdom."

"Because of ... the estate?"

"Lord, no! He's one man from the ground up, M. Pesquiera is. In spite of the estates."

"You mean that he ... loves Valencia Valdés?"

"Sure he does. Manuel doesn't care much who gets the kingdom if he gets the princess."

"Is she so ... pretty?"

Dick stopped to consider this. "Why, yes, I reckon she is pretty, though I hadn't thought of it before. You see, pretty ain't just the word. She's a queen. That is, she looks like a queen ought to but don't. Take her walk for instance: she steps out like as if in another moment she might fly."

"That doesn't mean anything. It's almost silly," replied the downright Miss Underwood, not without a tinge of spite.

"It means something to me. I'm trying to give you a picture of her. But you'd have to see her to understand. When she's around mean and little things crawl out of your mind. She's on the level and square and fine--a thoroughbred if there ever was one."

"I believe you're in love with her, too."

The young man found himself blushing. "Now don't get to imagining foolishness. Miss Valdés hates the ground I walk on. She thinks I'm the limit, and she hasn't forgotten to tell me so."

"Which, of course, makes you fonder of her," scoffed Miss Underwood. "Does she hate the ground that Don Manuel walks on?"

"Now you've got me. I go to the foot of the class, because I don't know."

"But you wish you did," she flung at him, with a swift side glance.

"Guessing again, Miss Kate. I'll sure report you if you waste the State's time on such foolishness," he threatened gaily.

"Since you're in love with her, why don't you marry Miss Valdés and consolidate the two claims?" demanded the girl.

Her chin was tilted impudently toward him, but Gordon guessed that there was an undercurrent of meaning in her audacity.

"What commission do you charge for running your matrimonial bureau?" he asked innocently.

"The service comes free to infants," she retorted sweetly.

She was called away to attend to other business. An hour later she passed the desk where he was working.

"So you think I'm an infant at that game, do you?"

"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings," was her saucy answer.

"You haven't--not a mite. What about Don Manuel? Is he an infant at it, too?"

A sudden flame of color swept her face. The words she flung at Gordon seemed irrelevant, but he did not think them so. "I hate him."

And with that she was gone.

Dick's eyes twinkled. He had discovered another reason for her interest in his fortunes.

Later in the day, when the pressure of work had relaxed, the clerk drifted his way again while searching for some papers.

"Your lawyers are paid to look up all this, aren't they? Why do you do it, then?" she asked.

"The case interests me. I want to know all about it."

"Would you like to see the old Valdés house here in Santa Fé? My father bought it when Alvaro Valdés built his new town house. One day I found in the garret a bundle of old Spanish letters. They were written by old Bartolomé to his son. I saved them. Would you care to see them?"

"Very much. The old chap was a great character. I suppose he was really the last of the great feudal barons. The French Revolution put an end to them in Europe--that and the industrial revolution. It's rather amazing that out here in the desert of this new land dedicated to democracy the idea was transplanted and survived so long."

"I'll bring the letters to-morrow and you can look them over. Any time you like I'll show you over the house. It's really rather interesting--much more so than their new one, which is so modern that it looks like a thousand others. Valencia was born in the old house. What will you give me to let you into the room?"

He brushed aside her impudence with a laugh. "Your boss is looking this way. I think he's getting ready to fire you."

"He's more likely to be fired himself. I'm under civil service and he isn't. Will you take your shoes off when you go into the holy of holies?"

"What happens to little girls when they ask too many questions? Go 'way. I'm busy."

CHAPTER XIII

AMBUSHED

On her return from luncheon that same afternoon Miss Underwood brought Dick a bundle of letters tied with a ribbon. She tossed them down upon the desk in front of him.

"I haven't read them myself. Of course they're in Spanish. I did try to get through one of them, but it was too much like work and I gave it up. But since they're written by her grandfather they'll interest you more than they did me," Miss Kate told him, with the saucy tilt to her chin that usually accompanied her impudence.

He had lived in Chihuahua three years as a mining engineer, so that he spoke and read Spanish readily. The old Don wrote a stiff angular hand, but as soon as he became accustomed to it Dick found little difficulty. Some of the letters were written from the ranch, but most of them carried the Santa Fé date line at the time the old gentleman was governor of the royal province. They were addressed to his son Alvaro, at that time a schoolboy in Mexico City. Clearly Don Bartolomé intended his son to be informed as to the affairs of the province, for the letters were a mine of information in regard to political and social conditions. They discussed at length, too, the business interests of the family and the welfare of the peons dependent upon it.

All afternoon Gordon pored over these fascinating pages torn from a dead and buried past. They were more interesting than any novel he had ever read, for they gave him a photograph, as it were projected by his imagination upon a moving picture canvas, of the old regime that had been swept into the ash heap by modern civilization. The letters revealed the old Don frankly. He was proud, imperious, heady, and intrepid. To his inferiors he was curt but kind. They flocked to him with their troubles and their quarrels. The judgment of their overlord was final with his tenants. Clearly he had a strong sense of his responsibilities to them and to the state. A quaint flavor of old-world courtesy ran through the letters like a thread of gold.

It was a paragraph from one of the last letters that riveted Dick's attention. Translated into English, it ran as follows:

"You ask, my dear son, whether I have relinquished the great grant made us by Facundo Megares. In effect I have. During the past two years I have twice, acting as governor, conveyed to settlers small tracts from this grant. The conditions under which such a grant must be held are too onerous. Moreover, neither I nor you, nor your son, nor his son will live to see the day when there is not range enough for all the cattle that can be brought into the province. Just now time presses, but in a later letter I shall set forth my reasons in detail."

A second and a third time Dick read the paragraph to make sure that he had not misunderstood it. The meaning was plain. There could be no doubt about it. In black and white he had a statement from old Don Bartolomé himself that he considered the grant no longer valid, that he had given it up because he did not think it worth holding. He had but to prove the handwriting in court--a thing easy enough to do, since the Don's bold, stiff writing could be found on a hundred documents--and the Valdés claimants would be thrown out of possession.

Gordon looked in vain for the "later letter" to which Bartolomé referred. Either it had never been written or it had been destroyed. But without it he had enough to go on.

Before he left the State House he made a proposal to Miss Underwood to buy the letters from her.

"What do you want with a bunch of old letters?" she asked.

"One of them helps my case. The Don refers to the grant and says he has relinquished his claim."

She nodded at him with brisk approval. "It's fair of you to tell me that." The girl stood for a moment considering, a pencil pressed against her lips. "I suppose the letters are not mine to give. They belong to father. Better see him."

"Where?"

"At the office of the New Mexican. Or you can come to the house to-night."

"Believe I'll see him right away."

Within half an hour Dick had bought the bundle of letters for five hundred dollars. He returned to the State House with an order to Kate Underwood to deliver them to him upon demand.

"Dad make a good bargain?" asked Miss Underwood, with a laugh.

Gordon told her the price he had paid.

"If I had telephoned to him what you wanted them for they would have cost you three times as much," she told him, nodding sagely.

"Then I'm glad you didn't. Point of fact you haven't the slightest idea what I want with them."

"To help your suit. Isn't that what you're going to use them for?"

Mildly he answered "Yes," but he did not tell her which suit they were to help.

As he was leaving she spoke to him without looking up from her writing. "Mother and I will be at home this evening, if you'd like to look the house over."

"Thanks. I'd be delighted to come. I'm really awfully interested."

"I see you are," she answered dryly.

Followed by his brown shadows at a respectful distance, Dick walked back to the hotel whistling gaily.

"Some one die and leave you a million dollars, son?" inquired the old miner, with amiable sarcasm.

"Me, I'm just happy because I'm not a Chink," explained his friend, and passed to the hotel writing-room.

He sat down, equipped himself with stationery, and selected a new point for a pen. Half a dozen times he made a start and as often threw a crumpled sheet into the waste-paper basket. It took him nearly an hour to compose an epistle that suited him. What he had finally to content himself with was as follows:

"DEAR MADAM:--Please find inclosed a bundle of letters that apparently belong to you. They have just come into my possession. I therefore send them to you without delay. Your attention is particularly called to the one marked 'Exhibit A.'

"Very truly yours, RICHARD MUIR GORDON."

He wrapped up the letters, including his own, sealed the package carefully, and walked downtown to the post office. Here he wrote upon the cover the name and address of Miss Valencia Valdés, then registered the little parcel with a request for a signed receipt after delivery at its destination.

Davis noticed that at dinner his friend was more gay than usual.

"You ce'tainly must have come into that million I mentioned, judging by your actions," he insisted, with a smile.

"Wrong guess, Steve. I've just been giving away a million. That's why I'm hilarious."

"You'll have to give me an easier one, son. Didn't know you had a million."

"Oh, well! A million, or a half, or a quarter, whatever the Moreño claim is worth. I'm not counting nickels. An hour ago I had it in my fist. I've just mailed it, very respectfully yours, to my friend the enemy." "Suppose you talk simple American that your Uncle Steve can understand, boy. What have you been up to?"

Dick told him exultantly.

"But, good Lord, why for did you make such a play? You had 'em where the wool was short. Now you've let loose and you'll have to wait 'steen years while the courts eat up all the profits. Of all the mule-headed chumps----"

"Hold your horses, Steve. I know what I'm doing. Said I was a spy and a thief and a liar, didn't she? Threw the hot shot into me proper for a cheap skate swindler, eh?" The young man laid down his knife, leaned across the table, and wagged a forefinger at Davis. "What do you reckon that young woman is going to think of herself when she opens that registered package and finds the letter that would have put the rollers under her claim muy pronto?"

"Think! She'll think you the biggest burro that ever brayed on the San Jacinto range. She'll have a commission appointed to examine you for lunacy. What in Mexico is ailin' you, anyhow? You're sick. That's what's wrong. Love-sick, by Moses!" exploded his friend.

Dick smiled blandly. "You've got another guess coming, Steve. She's going to eat dirt because she misjudged me so. She's going to lie awake nights and figure what play she can make to get even again. Getting hold of those blamed letters is the luckiest shot I've made yet. I was in bad--darned bad. Explanations didn't go. I was just a plain ornery skunk. Then I put over this grand-stand play and change the whole situation. She's the one that's in bad now. Didn't she tell me right off the bat what kind of a hairpin I was? Didn't she drive me off the ranch with that game leg of mine all to the bad? Good enough. Now she finds out I'm a white man she's going to be plumb sore at herself."

"What good does that do you? You're making a fight for the Rio Chama Valley, ain't you? Or are you just having a kid quarrel with a girl?"

"I wouldn't take the Rio Chama Valley as a gift if I had to steal it from Miss Valdés and her people. Ain't I making enough money up at Cripple Creek for my needs? No, Steve! I'm playing for bigger game than that. Size up my hand beside Don Manuel's, and it looks pretty bum. But I'm going to play it strong. Maybe at the draw I'll fill."

"Mebbe you won't."

"I can bet it like I had an ace full, can't I? Anybody can play poker when he's got a mitt full of big ones. Show me the man that can make two pair back an all-blue hand off the map."

"Go to it, you old sport. My money's on you," grinned the miner admiringly. "I'll go order a wedding present."

Through the pleasant coolness of the evening Dick sauntered along the streets to the Underwood home, nor was his contentment lessened because he knew that at a safe distance the brown shadows still dogged his steps. In a scabbard fitted neatly beneath his left arm rested a good friend that more than once had saved its owner's life. To the fraction of a second Gordon knew just how long it would take him to get this into action in case of need.

Kate Underwood met him at the door and took her guest into the living-room. Beside a student lamp a plump little old lady sat knitting. Somehow even before her soft voice welcomed him the visitor knew that her gentle presence diffused an atmosphere of home.

"Thee is welcome, Mr. Gordon. Kate has been telling us of thee."

The young man gave no evidence of surprise, but Kate explained as a matter of course.

"We are Friends, and at home we still use the old way of address."

"I have very pleasant memories of the Friends. A good old lady who took the place of my own mother was one. It is nice to hear the speech again," answered Gordon.

Presently the conversation drifted to the Valdés family. It appeared that as children Kate and Valencia had known each other. The heiress of the Valdés estates had been sent to Washington to school, and later had attended college in the East. Since her return she had spent most of her time in the valley. So that it happened the two young women had not met for a good many years.

It occurred to Dick that there was a certain aloofness in Miss Underwood's attitude toward Valencia, a reticence that was not quite unfriendliness but retained the right of criticism. She held her judgment as it were in abeyance.

While Miss Underwood was preparing some simple refreshments Gordon learned from her mother that Manuel Pesquiera had been formerly a frequent caller.

"He has been so busy since he moved down to his place on the Rio Chama that we see nothing of him," she explained placidly. "He is a fine type of the best of the old Spanish families. Thee would find him a good friend."

"Or a good foe," the young man added.

She conceded the point with a sigh. "Yes. He is testy. He has the old patrician pride."

After they had eaten cake and ice cream, Kate showed Gordon over the house. It was built of adobe, and the window seats in the thick walls were made comfortable with cushions or filled with potted plants. Navajo rugs and Indian baskets lent the rooms the homey appearance such furnishings always give in the old Southwest. The house was built around a court in the center, fronting on which were long, shaded balconies both on the first and second floor. A profusion of flowering trailers rioted up the pillars and along the upper railing.

"The old families knew how to make themselves comfortable, anyhow," commented the guest.

"Yes, that's the word--comfort. It's not modern or stylish or up to date, but I never saw a house really more comfortable to live in than this," Miss Underwood agreed. She led the way through a French window from the veranda to a large room with a southern exposure. "How do you like this room?"

"Must catch the morning sunshine fine. I like even the old stone fireplace in the corner. Why don't builders nowadays make such rooms?"

"You've saved yourself, Mr. Gordon. This is the sacred room. Here the Princess of the Rio Chama was born. This was her room when she was a girl until she went away to school. She slept in that very bed. Down on your knees, sir, and worship at the shrine."

He met with a laugh the cool, light scorn of her banter. Yet something in him warmed to his environment. He had the feeling of having come into more intimate touch with her past than he had yet done. The sight of that plain little bed went to the source of his emotions. How many times had his love knelt beside it in her night-gown and offered up her pure prayers to the God she worshiped!

He made his good-byes soon after their return to Mrs. Underwood. Dick was a long way from a sentimentalist, but he wanted to be alone and adjust his mind to the new conception of his sweetheart brought by her childhood home. It was a night of little moonlight. As he walked toward the hotel he could see nothing of the escort that had been his during the past few days. He wondered if perhaps they had got tired of shadowing his movements.

The road along which he was passing had on both sides of it a row of big cottonwoods, whose branches met in an arch above. Dick, with that instinct for safety which every man-hunter has learned, walked down the middle of the street, eyes and ears alert for the least sign of an ambush.

Two men approached on the plank sidewalk. They were quarreling. Suddenly a knife flashed, and one of the men went with an oath to the ground. Dick reached for his gun and plunged straight for the assailant, who had stooped as if to strike again the prostrate man. The rescuer stumbled over a taut rope and at the same moment a swarm of men fell upon him. Even as he rose and shook off the clutching hands Gordon knew that he was the victim of a ruse.

He had lost his revolver in the fall. With clenched fists he struck hard and sure. They swarmed upon him, so many that they got in each other's way. Now he was down, now up again. They swayed to and fro in a huddle, as does a black bear surrounded by a pack of dogs. Still the man at the heart of the mêlée struck--and struck--and struck again. Men went down and were trodden under foot, but he reeled on, stumbling as he went, turning, twisting, hitting hard and sure with all the strength that many good clean years in the open had stored within him. Blows fell upon his curly head as it rose now and again out of the storm--blows of guns, of knives, of bony knuckles. Yet he staggered forward, bleeding, exhausted, feeling nothing of the blows, seeing only the distorted faces that snarled on every side of him.

He knew that when he went down it would be to stay. Even as he flung them aside and hammered at the brown faces he felt sure he was lost. The coat was torn from his back. The blood from his bruised and cut face and scalp blinded him. Heavy weights dragged at his arms as they struck wildly and feebly. Iron balls seemed to chain his feet. He plowed doggedly forward, dragging the pack with him. Furiously they beat him, striking themselves as often as they did him. His shoulders began to sway forward. Men leaped upon him from behind. Two he dragged down with him as he went. The sky was blotted out. He was tired--deadly tired. In a great weariness he felt himself sinking together.

The consciousness drained out of him as an ebbing wave does from the sands of the shore.

CHAPTER XIV

MANUEL TO THE RESCUE

Valencia Valdés did not conform closely to the ideal her preceptress at the Washington finishing school had held as to what constitutes a perfect lady. Occasionally her activities shocked Manuel, who held to the ancient view that maidens should come to matrimony with the innocence born of conventual ignorance. He would have preferred his wife to be a clinging vine, but in the case of Valencia this would be impossible.

No woman in New Mexico could ride better than the heiress of the Rio Chama. She could throw a rope as well as some of her vaqueros. At least one bearskin lay on the floor of her study as a witness to her prowess as a Diana. Many a time she had fished the river in waders and brought back with her to the ranch a creel full of trout. Years in the untempered sun and wind of the southwest had given her a sturdiness of body unusual in a girl so slenderly fashioned. The responsibility of large affairs had added to this an independence of judgment that would have annoyed Don Manuel if he had been less in love.

Against the advice of both Pesquiera and her foreman she had about a year before this time largely increased her holdings in cattle, at the same time investing heavily in improved breeding stock. Her justification had been that the cost of beef, based on the law of supply and demand, was bound to continue on the rise.

"But how do you know, Doña?" her perplexed major domo had asked. "Twenty--fifteen years ago everybody had cattle and lost money. Prices are high to-day, but mañana----"

"To-morrow they will be higher. It's just a matter of arithmetic, Fernando. There are seventeen million less cattle in the country than there were eight years ago. The government reports say so. Our population is steadily increasing. The people must eat. Since there are fewer cattle they must pay more for their meat. We shall have meat to sell. Is that not simple?"

"Si, Doña, but----"

"But in the main we have always been sheep-herders, so we ought always to be? We'll run cattle and sheep, too, Fernando. We'll make this ranch pay as it never has before."

"But the feed--the winter feed, Señorita?"

"We'll have to raise our feed. I'm going to send for engineers and find what it will cost to impound, water in the cordilleras and run ditches into the valley. We ought to be watering thousands of acres for alfalfa and grain that now are dry."

"It never has been done--not in the time of Don Alvaro or even in that of Don Bartolomé."

"And so you think it never can?" she asked, with a smile.

"The Rio Chama Valley is grazing land. It is not for agriculture. Everybody knows that," he insisted doggedly.

"Everybody knows we were given two legs with which to walk, but it is an economy to ride. So we use horses."

Fernando shrugged his shoulders. Of what use to argue with the doña when her teeth were set? She was a Valdés, and so would have her way.

That had been a year ago. Now the ditches were built. Fields had been planted to alfalfa and grain. Soon the water would be running through the laterals to irrigate the growing crops. Quietly the young woman at the head of things was revolutionizing the life of the valley by transforming it from a pastoral to a farming community.

This morning, having arranged with the major domo the work of the day, Valencia appeared on the porch dressed for riding. She was going to see the water turned on to the new ditches from the north lateral.

The young mistress of the ranch swung astride the horse that had just been brought from the stables, for she rode man-fashion after the sensible custom of the West. Before riding out of the plaza she stopped to give Pedro some directions about a bunch of yearlings in the corral.

The mailman in charge of the R.F.D. route drove into the yard and handed Valencia a bunch of letters and papers. One of the pieces given her was a rather fat package for which she had to sign a registry receipt.

She handed the mail to Juan and told him to put it on the desk in her office library; then she changed her mind, moved by an impulse of feminine curiosity.

"Give me back that big letter, Juan. I'll just see what it is before I go."

Five minutes later she descended to the porch. "I'm not going riding just now. Keep the horse saddled, Pedro." She had read Dick Gordon's note and the letter marked Exhibit A. Even careless Juan noticed that his mistress was much agitated. Pedro wondered savagely whether that splendid devil Americano had done something fresh to annoy the dear saint he worshiped.

Gordon had not overemphasized the effect upon her of his action. Her pride had clung to a belief in his unworthiness as the justification for what she had said and done. Now, with a careless and mocking laugh, he had swept aside all the arguments she had nursed. He had sent to her, so that she might destroy it, the letter that would have put her case out of court. If he had wanted a revenge for her bitter words the American had it now. He had repaid her scorn and contempt with magnanimity. He had heaped coals of fire upon her head, had humiliated her by proving that he was more generous of spirit than she.

Valencia paced the floor of her library in a stress of emotion. It was not her pride alone that had been touched, but the fine instincts of justice and fair play and good will. She had outraged hospitality and sent him packing. She had let him take the long tramp in spite of his bad knee. Her dependents had attempted to murder him. Her best friend had tried to fasten a duel upon him. All over the valley his name had been bandied about as that of one in league with the devil. As an answer to all this outrage that had been heaped upon him he refused to take advantage of this chance-found letter of Bartolomé merely because it was her letter and not his. Her heart was bowed down with shame and yet was lifted in a warm glow of appreciation of his quality. Something in her blood sang with gladness. She had known all along that the hateful things she had said to him could not be true. He was her enemy, but--the brave spirit of her went out in a rush to thank God for this proof of his decency.

The girl was all hot for action. She wanted to humble herself in apology. She wanted to show him that she could respond to his generosity. But how? Only one way was open just now.

She sat down and wrote a swift, impulsive letter of contrition. For the wrong she had done him Valencia asked forgiveness. As for the letter he had so generously sent, she must beg him to keep it and use it at the forthcoming trial. It would be impossible for her to accept such a sacrifice of his rights. In the meantime she could assure him that she would always be sorry for the way in which she had misjudged him.

The young woman called for her horse again and rode to Corbett's, which was the nearest post-office. In the envelope with her letter was also the one of her grandfather marked "Exhibit A." She, too, carefully registered the contents before mailing.

As she stood on the porch drawing up her gauntlets a young man cantered into sight. He wore puttees, riding breeches, and a neat corduroy coat. One glance told her it was Manuel. No other rider in the valley had quite the same easy seat in the saddle as the young Spaniard. He drew up sharply in front of Valencia and landed lightly on his feet beside her.

"Buenos, Señorita."

"Buenos, cousin." Her shining eyes went eagerly to his. "Manuel, what do you think Mr. Gordon has done?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "How can I guess? That mad American might do anything but show the white feather."

In four sentences she told him.

Manuel clapped his hands in approval. "Bravo! Done like a man. He is at least neither a spy nor a thief."

Valencia smiled with pleasure. Manuel, too, had come out of the test with flying colors. He and Gordon were foes, but he accepted at face value what the latter had done, without any sneers or any sign of jealousy.

"And what shall I do with the letter?" his cousin asked.

"Do with it? Put it in the first fire you see. Shall I lend you a match?"

She shook her head, still with the gleam of a smile on her vivid face. "Too late, Manuel. I have disposed of the dangerous evidence."

"So? Good. You took my advice before I gave it, then."

"Not quite. I couldn't be less generous than our enemy. So I have sent the letter back to him and told him to use it."

The young man gave her his best bow. "Magnificent, but not war. I might have trusted the daughter of Don Alvaro to do a thing so royal. My cousin, I am proud of you."

"What else could I have done and held my self-respect? I had insulted him gratuitously and my people had tried to kill him. The least I could do now was to meet him in a spirit like his own."

"Honors are easy. Let us see what Mr. Gordon will now do."

The sound of a light footfall came to them. A timid voice broke into their conversation.

"May I see Doña Valencia--alone--for just a minute?"

Miss Valdés turned. A girl was standing shyly in the doorway. Her soft brown eyes begged pardon for the intrusion.

"You are Juanita, are you not?" the young woman asked.

"Si, Doña."

Pesquiera eliminated himself by going in to get his mail.

"What is it that I can do for you?" asked Valencia.

The Mexican girl broke into an emotional storm. She caught one of her hands in the brown palm of the other with a little gesture of despair.

"They have gone to kill him. Doña. I know it. Something tells me. He will never come back alive." The feeling she had repressed was finding vent in long, irregular sobs.

Valencia felt as if she were being drowned in icy water. The color washed from her cheeks. She had no need to ask who it was that would never come back alive, but she did.

"Who, child? Whom is it that they have gone to kill?"

"The American--Señor Gordon."

"Who has gone? And when did they go? Tell me quick."

"Sebastian and Pablo--maybe others--I do not know."

Miss Valdés thought quickly. It might be true. Both the men mentioned had asked for a holiday to go to Santa Fé. What business had they there at this time of the year? Could it be Pablo who had shot at Gordon from ambush? If so, why was he so bitter against the common enemy?

"Juanita, tell me everything. What is it that you know?"

The sobs of the girl increased. She leaned against the door jamb and buried her face in the crook of her arm.

The older girl put an arm around the quivering shoulders and spoke gently. "But listen, child. Tell me all. It may be we can save him yet."

A name came from the muffled lips. It was "Pablo."

Valencia's brain was lit by a flash of understanding. "Pablo is your lover. Is it not so, niña?"

The dark crown of soft hair moved up and down in assent. "Oh, Doña, he was, but--"

"You have quarreled with him?"

Miss Valdés burned with impatience, but some instinct told her she could not hurry the girl.

"Si, Señorita. He quarreled. He said--"

"Yes?"

"----that ... that Señor Gordon ..."

Again, groping for the truth, Valencia found it swiftly.

"You mean that Pablo was jealous?"

"Because I had nursed Señor Gordon, because he was kind to me, because----" Juanita had lifted her face to answer. As she spoke the color poured into her cheeks even to her throat, convicting evidence of the cruel embarrassment she felt.

Valencia's hand dropped to her side. When she spoke again the warmth had been banished from her voice. "I see. You nursed Mr. Gordon, did you?"

Juanita's eyes fell before the cold accusation in those of Miss Valdés. "Si, Señorita."

"And he was kind to you? In what way kind?"

The slim Mexican girl, always of the shyest, was bathed in blushes. "He called me ... niña. He ..."

"----made love to you."

A sensation as if the clothes were being torn from her afflicted Juanita. Why did the Doña drag her heart out to look at it? Nor did the girl herself know how much or how little Richard Gordon's gay camaraderie meant. She was of that type of women who love all that are kind to them. No man had ever been so considerate as this handsome curly-headed American. So dumbly her heart went out to him and made the most of his friendliness. Had he not once put his arm around her shoulder and told her to "buck up" when he came upon her crying because of Pedro? Had he not told her she was the prettiest girl in the neighborhood? And had he not said, too, that she was a little angel for nursing him so patiently?

"Doña, I--do--not--know." The words came out as if they were being dragged from her. Poor Juanita would have liked the ground to open up and swallow her.

"Don't you know, you little stupid, that he is playing with you, that he will not marry you?"

"If Doña Valencia says so," murmured the Mexican submissively.

"Men are that way, heartless ... selfish ... vain. But I suppose you led him on," concluded Valencia cruelly.

With a little flare of spirit Juanita looked up. Her courage was for her friend, not for herself.

"Señor Gordon is good. He is kind."

"A lot you know about it, child. Have nothing to do with him. His love can only hurt a girl like you. Go back to your Pablo and forget the American. I will see he does not trouble you again."

Juanita began to cry again. She did not want Señorita Valdés or anybody else interfering between her and the friend she had nursed. But she knew she could not stop this imperative young woman from doing as she pleased.

"Now tell me how you know that Pablo has gone to injure the American. Did he tell you so?"

"No-o."

"Well, what did he say? What is it that you know?" Valencia's shoe tapped the floor impatiently. "Tell me--tell me!"

"He--Pablo--met me at the corral the day he left. I was in the kitchen and he whistled to me." Juanita gave the information sullenly. Why should Señorita Valdés treat her so harshly? She had done no wrong.

"Yes. Go on!"

If she had had the force of character Juanita would have turned on her heel and walked away. But all her life it had been impressed upon her that the will of a Valdés was law to her and her class.

"I do not know ... Pablo told me nothing ... but he laughed at me, oh, so cruelly! He asked if I ... had any messages for my Gringo lover."

"Is that all?"

"All ... except that he would show me what happened to foreign devils who stole my love from him. Oh, Señorita, do you think he will kill the American?"

Valencia, her white lips pressed tightly together, gave no answer. She was thinking.

"I hate Pablo. He is wicked. I will never speak to him again," moaned Juanita helplessly.

Manuel, coming out of the post-office with his mail, looked at the weeping girl incuriously. It was, he happened to know, a habit of the sex to cry over trifles.

Juanita found in a little nod from Miss Valdés permission to leave. She turned and walked hurriedly away to the adobe cabin where she slept. Before she reached it the walk had become a run.

"Has the young woman lost a ribbon or a lover?" commented Pesquiera, with a smile.

"Manuel, I am worried," answered Valencia irrelevantly.

"What about, my cousin?"

"It's this man Gordon again. Juanita says that Pablo and Sebastian have gone to kill him."

"Gone where?"

"To Santa Fé. They asked for a leave of absence. You know how sullen and suspicious Sebastian is. It is fixed firmly in his head that Mr. Gordon is going to take away his farm."

Manuel's black eyes snapped. He did not propose to let any peons steal from him the punishment he owed this insolent Gordon.

"But Pablo is not a fool. Surely he knows he cannot do such a mad thing."

"Pablo is jealous--and hot-headed." The angry color mounted to the cheeks of the young woman. "He is in love with Juanita and he found out this stranger has been philandering with her. It is abominable. This Gordon has made the silly little fool fall in love with him."

"Oh, if Pablo is jealous----" Pesquiera gave a little shrug of his shoulders. He understood pretty well the temperament of the ignorant Mexican. The young lover was likely to shoot first and think afterward.

Valencia was still thinking of the American. Beneath the olive of her cheeks two angry spots still burned. "I detest that sort of thing. I thought he was a gentleman--and he is only a male flirt ... or worse."

"Perhaps--and perhaps not, my cousin. Did Juanita tell you----?"

"She told me enough. All I need to know."

Again the young man's shoulders lifted in a little gesture of humorous resignation. He knew the uncompromising directness of Miss Valdés and the futility of arguing with her. After all, the character of Gordon was none of his business. The man might have made love to Juanita, though he did not look like that kind of a person. In any case the important thing was to save his life.

After a moment's thought he announced a decision. "I shall take the stage for Santa Fé this afternoon. When I have warned the American I'll round up your man-hunters and bring them back to you."

His lady's face thanked him, though her words did not. "You may tell them I said they were to come back at once."

At her cousin's urgent request Miss Valdés stayed to eat luncheon with him at Corbett's, which was a half-way station for the stage and maintained a public eating-house. Even Valencia hesitated a little at this, though she was at heart an emancipated American girl and not a much-chaperoned Spanish maid. But she wanted to repay him for the service he was undertaking so cheerfully, and therefore sacrificed her scruples.

As they were being served by Juanita the stage rolled up and disgorged its passengers. They poured into the dining-room--a mine-owner and his superintendent, a storekeeper from the village at the other end of the valley, a young woman school-teacher from the Indian reservation, a cattleman, and two Mexican sheepmen.

While the fresh horses were being hitched to the stage Pesquiera and his guest stood back a little apart from the others. Corbett brought out a sack containing mail and handed it to the driver. The passengers found again their places.

Pesquiera shook hands with Valencia. His gaze rested for a moment in her dark eyes.

"Adios, linda," he said, in a low voice.

The color deepened in her cheeks. She understood that he was telling her how very much he was her lover now and always. "Good-bye, amigo," she answered lightly.

Pesquiera took his place on the back seat. The whip of the driver cracked. In a cloud of white dust the stage disappeared around a bend in the road.

Valencia ordered her horse brought, and left for the ranch. Having dispatched Manuel to the scene of action, it might be supposed that she would have awaited the issue without farther activity. But on the way home she began to reflect that her cousin would not reach Santa Fé until next morning, and there was always a chance that this would be too late. As soon as she reached the ranch she called up the station where the stage connected with the train. To the operator she dictated a message to be wired to Richard Gordon. The body of it ran thus:

"Have heard that attack may be made upon your life. Please do not go out alone or at night at all. Answer."

She gave urgent instructions that if necessary to reach Gordon her telegram be sent to every hotel in the city and to his lawyer, Thomas M. Fitt.

Now that she had done all she could the young woman tried to put the matter out of her mind by busying herself with the affairs of the ranch. She had a talk with a cattle buyer, after which she rode out to see the engineer who had charge of the building of the irrigation system she had installed. An answer would, she was sure, be awaiting her upon her return home.

Her anticipation was well founded. One of the housemaids told her that the operator at San Jacinto had twice tried to get her on the telephone. The mistress of the ranch stepped at once to the receiver.

"Give me San Jacinto," she said to the operator.

As soon as she was on the wire with the operator he delivered the message he had for her. It was from Santa Fé and carried the signature of Stephen Davis:

"Gordon has been missing since last night. I fear the worst. For God's sake, tell me what you know."

Valencia leaned against the telephone receiver and steadied herself. She felt strangely faint. The wall opposite danced up and down and the floor swayed like the deck of a vessel in a heavy sea. She set her teeth hard to get a grip on herself. Presently the wave of light-headedness passed.

She moved across the room and sank down into a chair in front of her desk. They had then murdered him after all. She and her people were responsible for his death. There was nothing to be done now--nothing at all.

Then, out of the silence, a voice seemed to call to her--the voice of Richard Gordon, faint and low, but clear. She started to her feet and listened, shaken to the soul by this strange summons from that world which lay beyond the reach of her physical senses. What could it mean? She had the body of a healthy young animal. Her nerves never played her any tricks. But surely there had come to her a call for help not born of her own excited fancy.

In an instant she had made up her mind. Her finger pressed an electric button beside the desk, and almost simultaneously a second one. The maid who appeared in the doorway in answer to the first ring found her mistress busily writing.

Valencia looked up. "Rosario, pack a suitcase for me with clothes for a week. Put in my light brown dress and a couple of shirt-waists. I'll be up presently." Her gaze passed to the major domo who now stood beside the maid. "I'm going to Santa Fé to-night, Fernando. Order the grays to be hitched to the buggy."

"To-night! But, Señorita, the train has gone."

"Juan will go with me. We'll drive right through. My business is important."

"But it is seventy miles to Santa Fé, and part of the way over mountain roads," he protested.

"Yes. We should reach there by morning. I mean to travel all night. Make the arrangements, please, and tell Juan. Then return here. I want to talk over with you the ranch affairs. You will have charge of the ditches, too, during my absence. Don't argue, Fernando, but do as I say."

The old man had opened his mouth to object, but he closed it without voicing his views. A little smile, born of his pride in her wilfulness, touched his lips and wrinkled the parchment skin. Was she not a Valdés? He had served her father and her grandfather. To him, therefore, she could do no wrong.

CHAPTER XV

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD

The night of his disappearance Dick had sauntered forth from the hotel with the jaunty assurance to Davis that he was going to call on a young lady. He offered no further details, and his friend asked for none, though he wondered a little what young woman in Santa Fé had induced Gordon to change his habits. The old miner had known him from boyhood. His partner had never found much time for the society of eligible maidens. He had been too busy living to find tea-cup discussions about life interesting. The call of adventure had absorbed his youth, and he had given his few mature years ardently to the great American game of money-making. It was not that he loved gold. What Richard Gordon cared for was the battle, the struggle against both honorable and unscrupulous foe-men for success. He fought in the business world only because it was the test of strength. Money meant power. So he had made money.

It was not until Dick failed to appear for breakfast next morning that Davis began to get uneasy. He sent a bellboy to awaken Gordon, and presently the lad came back with word that he could get no answer to his knocks. Instantly Steve pushed back his chair and walked out of the room to the desk in the lobby.

"Got a skeleton key to Mr. Gordon's room--317, I think it is?" he demanded.

"Yes. We keep duplicate keys. You see, Mr. Davis, guests go away and carry the keys----"

"Then I want it. Afraid something's wrong with my friend. He's always up early and on hand for breakfast. He hasn't showed up this mo'ning. The bell hop can't waken him. I tell you something's wrong."

"Oh, I reckon he'll turn up all right." The clerk turned to the key rack. "Here's the key to Room 317. Mr. Gordon must have left it here. Likely he's gone for a walk."

Davis shook his head obstinately. "Don't believe it. I'm going up to see, anyhow."

Within five minutes he discovered that the bed in Room 317 had not been slept in the previous night. He was thoroughly alarmed. Gordon had no friends in the town likely to put him up for the night. Nor was he the sort of rounder to dissipate his energies in all-night debauchery. Dick had come to Santa Fé for a definite purpose. The old miner knew from long experience that he would not be diverted from it for the sake of the futile foolish diversions known by some as pleasure. Therefore the mind of Davis jumped at once to the conclusion of foul play.

And if foul play, then the Valdés claimants to the Rio Chamo Valley were the guilty parties. He blamed himself bitterly for having let Dick venture out alone, for having taken no precautions whatever to guard him against the Mexicans who had already once attempted his life.

"I'm a fine friend. Didn't even find out who he was going out to call on. Fact is, I didn't figure he was in any danger so long as he was in town here," he explained to the sheriff.

He learned nothing either at the police headquarters or at the newspaper offices that threw light on the disappearance of Gordon. No murder had been reported during the night. No unusual disturbance of any kind had occurred, so far as could be learned.

Before noon he had the town plastered with posters in English and in Spanish offering a reward of five hundred dollars for news leading to the recovery of Richard Gordon or for evidence leading to the conviction of his murderers in case he was dead. This brought two callers to the hotel almost at once. One was the attorney Fitt, the other a young woman who gave her name as Kate Underwood. Fitt used an hour of the old miner's time to no purpose, but the young woman brought with her one piece of news.

"I want to know when Mr. Gordon was last seen," she explained, "because he was calling on my mother and me last night and left about ten o'clock."

The little man got to his feet in great excitement. "My dear young woman, you're the very person I've been wanting to see. He told me he was going calling, but I'm such a darned chump I didn't think to ask where. Is Dick a friend of your family?"

"No, hardly that. I met him when he came to our office in the State House to look up the land grant papers. We became friendly and I asked him to call because we own the old Valdés house, and I thought he would like to see it." She added, rather dryly: "You haven't answered my question."

"I'll say that so far as I know you are the last person who ever saw Dick alive except his murderers," Davis replied, a gleam of tears in his eyes.

"Oh, it can't be as bad as that," she cried. "They wouldn't go that far."

"Wouldn't they? He was shot at from ambush while we were out riding one day in the Chama Valley."

"By whom?"

"By a young Mexican--one of Miss Valdés servants."

"You don't mean that Valencia----?"

She stopped, unwilling to put her horrified thought into words. He answered her meaning.

"No, I reckon not. She wanted Dick to tell her who it was, so she could punish the man. But that doesn't alter the facts any. He was shot at. That time the murderer missed, but maybe this time----"

Miss Underwood broke in sharply. "Do you know that he has been followed ever since he came to town, that men have dogged his steps everywhere?"

Davis leaned across the table where he was sitting. "How do you know?" he questioned eagerly.

"I saw them and warned him. He laughed about it and said he knew already. He didn't seem at all worried."

"Worried! He's just kid enough to be tickled to death about it," snapped the miner, masking his anxiety with irritation. "He hadn't sense enough to tell me for fear it would disturb me--and I hadn't the sense to find out in several days what you did in five minutes."

Davis and Miss Underwood went together over every foot of the road between her home and the hotel. One ray of hope they got from their examination of the ground he must have traversed to reach the El Tovar, as the hotel was named. At one spot--where a double row of cottonwoods lined the road--a fence had been knocked down and many feet had trampled the sandy pasture within. Steve picked up a torn piece of cloth about six inches by twelve in dimension. It had evidently been a part of a coat sleeve. He recognized the pattern as that of the suit his friend had been wearing.

"A part of his coat all right," he said. "They must have bushwhacked him here. By the foot-prints there were a good many of them."

"I'm glad there were."

"Why?"

"For two reasons," the girl explained. "In the first place, if they had wanted to kill him, one or two would have been enough. They wouldn't take any more than was necessary into their confidence."

"That's right. Your head's level there."

"And, in the second place, two men can keep a secret, but six or eight can't. Some one of them is bound to talk to his sweetheart or wife or friend."

"True enough. That five hundred dollars might get one of 'em, too."

"Somehow I believe he is alive. His enemies have taken him away somewhere--probably up into the hills."

"But why?"

"You ought to know that better than I do. What could they gain by it?"

He scratched his gray head. "Search me. They couldn't aim to hold him till after the trial. That would be a kid's play."

"Couldn't they get him to sign some paper--something saying that he would give up his claim--or that he would sell out cheap?"

"No, they couldn't," the old man answered grimly. "But they might think they could. I expect that's the play. Dick never in the world would come through, though. He's game, that boy is. The point is, what will they do when they find he stands the acid?"

Miss Underwood looked quickly at him, then looked quickly away. She knew what they would do. So did Davis.

"No, that's not the point. We must find him--just as soon as we can. Stir this whole town up and rake it with a fine-tooth comb. See if any of Miss Valdés' peons are in town. If they are have them shadowed."

They separated presently, she to go to the State House, he to return to the El Tovar. There he found the telegram from Miss Valdés awaiting him. Immediately he dictated an answer.

Before nightfall a second supply of posters decorated walls and billboards. The reward was raised to one thousand dollars for information that would lead to the finding of Richard Gordon alive and the same sum for evidence sufficient to convict his murderers in case he was dead. It seemed impossible that in so small a place, with everybody discussing the mysterious disappearance, the affair could long remain a secret. Davis did not doubt that Miss Underwood was correct in her assumption that the assailants of Gordon had carried him with them into some hidden pocket of the hills, in which case it might take longer to run them to earth. The great danger that he feared was panic on the part of the abductors. To cover their tracks they might kill him and leave this part of the country. The closer pursuit pressed on them the more likely this was to happen. It behooved him to move with the greatest care.

CHAPTER XVI

VALENCIA MAKES A PROMISE

When Manuel descended from the El Tovar hack which had brought him from the station to that hotel the first person he saw standing upon the porch was Valencia Valdés. He could hardly believe his eyes, for of course she could not be here. He had left her at Corbett's, had taken the stage and the train, and now found her waiting for him. The thing was manifestly impossible. Yet here she was.

Swiftly she came down the steps to meet him.

"Manuel, we are too late. Mr. Gordon has gone."

"Gone where?" he asked, his mind dazed as it moved from one puzzle to another.

"We don't know. He was attacked night before last and carried away, whether dead or alive we have no proof."

"One thing at a time, Valencia. How did you get here?"

"I drove across the mountains--started when I got the news from Mr. Davis that his friend had disappeared."

"Do you mean that you drove all night--along mountain roads?" he asked, amazed.

"Of course. I had to get here." She dismissed this as a trifle with a little gesture of her hand. "Manuel, we must find him. I believe he is alive. This is some of Pablo's work. Down in old-town some one must know where he is. Bring him to me and I'll make him tell what he has done with Mr. Gordon."

Pesquiera was healthily hungry. He would have liked to sit down to a good breakfast, but he saw that his cousin was laboring under a heavy nervous tension. Cheerfully he gave up his breakfast for the present.

But when, three hours later, he returned from the old adobe Mexican quarter Manuel had nothing to report but failure. Pablo had been seen by several people, but not within the past twenty-four hours. Nor had anything been seen of Sebastian. The two men had disappeared from sight as completely as had Gordon.

Valencia, in the privacy of one of the hotel parlors, broke down and wept for the first time. Manuel tried to comfort her by taking the girl in his arms and petting her. She submitted to his embrace, burying her face in his shoulder.

"Oh, Manuel, I'm a--a murderess," she sobbed.

"You're a goose," he corrected. "Haven't you from the first tried to save this man from his own rashness? You're not to blame in any way, Val."

"Yes ... Yes," she sobbed. "Pablo and Sebastian would never have dared touch him if they hadn't known that I'd quarreled with him. It all comes back to that."

"That's pure nonsense. For that matter, I don't believe he's dead at all. We'll find him, as gay and insolent as ever, I promise you."

Hope was buoyant in the young man's heart. For the first time he held his sweetheart in his arms. She clung to him, as a woman ought to her lover, palpitant, warm, and helpless. Of course they would find this pestiferous American who had caused her so much worry. And then he--Manuel--would claim his reward.

"Do you think so ... really? You're not just saying so because ...?" Her olive cheek turned the least in the world toward him.

Manuel trod on air. He felt that he could have flown across the range on the wings of his joy.

"I feel sure of it, niña." Daring much, his hand caressed gently the waves of heavy black hair that brushed his cheek.

Almost in a murmur she answered him. "Manuel, find him and save him. Afterward ..."

"Afterward, alma mia?"

She nodded. "I'll ... do what you ask."

"You will marry me?" he cried, afraid to believe that his happiness had come at last.

"Yes."

"Valencia, you love me?"

She trod down any doubts she might feel. Was he not the one suitable mate for her of all the men she knew?

"How can I help it. You are good. You are generous. You serve me truly." Gently she disengaged herself and wiped her eyes with a lace kerchief. "But we must first find the American."

"I'll find him. Dead or alive I'll bring him to you. Dear heart, you've given me the strength that moves mountains."

A little smile fought for life upon her sad face. "You'll not have strength unless you eat. Poor Manuel, I think you lost your breakfast. I ordered luncheon to be ready for us early. We'll eat now."

A remark of Manuel during luncheon gave his vis-à-vis an idea.

"Mr. Davis is most certainly thorough. I never saw a town so plastered with bills before," he remarked.

Valencia laid down her knife and fork as she looked at him. "Let's offer a reward for Pablo and Sebastian--say, a hundred dollars. That would bring us news of them."

"You're right," he agreed. "I'll get bills out this afternoon. Perhaps I'd better say no incriminating questions will be asked of those giving us information."

Stirred to activity by the promise of such large rewards, not only the sheriff's office and the police, but also private parties scoured the neighboring country for traces of the missing man or his captors. Every available horse in town was called into service for the man-hunt. Others became sleuths on foot and searched cellars and empty houses for the body of the man supposed to have been murdered. Never in its history had so much suspicion among neighbors developed in the old-town. Many who could not possibly be connected with the crime were watched jealously lest they snap up one of the rewards by stumbling upon evidence that had been overlooked.

False clews in abundance were brought to Davis and Pesquiera. Good citizens came in with theories that lacked entirely the backing of any evidence. One of these was that a flying machine had descended in the darkness and that Gordon had been carried away by a friend to avoid the payment of debts he was alleged to owe. The author of this explanation was a stout old lady of militant appearance who carried a cotton umbrella large enough to cover a family. She was extraordinarily persistent and left in great indignation to see a lawyer because Davis would not pay her the reward.

That day and the next passed with the mystery still unsolved. Valencia continued to stay at the hotel instead of opening the family town house, probably because she had brought no servants with her from the valley and did not know how long she would remain in the city. She and Manuel called upon the Underwoods to hear Kate's story, but from it they gathered nothing new. Mrs. Underwood welcomed them with the gentle kindness that characterized her, but Kate was formal and distant.

"She doesn't like me," Valencia told her cousin as soon as they had left. "I wonder why. We were good enough friends as children."

Manuel said nothing. He stroked his little black mustache with the foreign manner he had inherited. If he had cared to do so perhaps he could have explained Kate Underwood's stiffness. Partly it was embarrassment and partly shyness. He knew that there had been a time--before Valencia's return from college--when Kate lacked very little of being in love with him. He had but to say the word to have become engaged--and he had not said it. For, while on a visit to the East, he had called upon his beautiful cousin and she had won his love at once. This had nipped in the bud any embryonic romance that might otherwise have been possible with Kate.

A little old Mexican woman with a face like wrinkled leather was waiting to see them in front of the hotel.

"Señor Pesquiera?" she asked, with a little bob of the body meant to be a bow.

"Yes."

"And Señorita Valdés?"

"That is my name," answered Valencia.

"Will the señor and the señorita take a walk? The night is fine."

"Where?" demanded Manuel curtly.

"Into old-town, señor."

"You have something to tell us."

"To show you, señor--for a hundred dollars."

"Sebastian--or is it Pablo?" cried Valencia, in a low voice.

"I say nothing, señorita" whined the old woman. "I show you; then you pay. Is it not so?"

"Get the money, Manuel," his cousin ordered quietly.

Manuel got it from the hotel safe. He took time also to get from his room a revolver. Gordon had fallen victim to an ambush and he did not intend to do so if he could help it. In his own mind he had no doubt that some of their countrymen were selling either Pablo or Sebastian for the reward, but it was better to be safe than to be sorry.

The old crone led them by side streets into the narrow adobe-lined roads of old-town. They passed through winding alleys and between buildings crumbling with age. Always Manuel watched, his right hand in his coat pocket. At the entrance to a little court a man emerged from the shadow of a wall. He whispered with the old dame for a minute.

"Come. Make an end of this and show us what you have to show, muy pronto," interrupted Manuel impatiently.

"In good time, señor," the man apologized.

"Just a word first, my friend. I have a revolver in my hand. If there is trickery in your mind, better give it up. I'm a dead shot, and I'll put the first bullet through your heart. Now lead on."

The Mexican threw up his hands in protest to all the saints that his purpose was good. He would assuredly keep faith, señor.

"See you do," replied the Spaniard curtly.

Their guide rapped three times on a door of a tumble-down shack. Cautiously it was opened a few inches. There was another whispered conversation.

"The señor and the señorita can come in," said the first man, standing aside.

Manuel restrained the young woman by stretching his left arm in front of her.

"Just a moment. Light a lamp, my friends. We do not go forward in the dark."

At this there was a further demur, but finally a match flickered and a lamp was lit. Manuel moved slowly forward into the room, followed by Valencia. In a corner of the room a man lay bound upon the floor, his back toward them. One of the men rolled him over as if he had been a sack of potatoes. The face into which they looked had been mauled and battered, but Valencia had no trouble in recognizing it.

"Sebastian!" she cried.

He said nothing. A sullen, dogged look rested on his face. Manuel had seen it before on the countenance of many men. He knew that the sheep grazer could not be driven to talk.

Miss Valdés might have known it, too, but she was too impatient for finesse. "What have you done with Mr. Gordon? Tell me--now--at once," she commanded.

The man's eyes did not lift to meet hers. Nor did he answer a single word.

"First, our hundred dollars, Señorita," one of the men reminded her.

"It will be paid when you deliver Sebastian to us in the street with his hands tied behind him," Manuel promised.

They protested, grumbling that they had risked enough already when they had captured him an hour earlier. But in the end they came to Pesquiera's condition. The prisoner's hands were tied behind him and his feet released so that he could walk. Manuel slid one arm under the right one of Sebastian. The fingers of his left hand rested on the handle of a revolver in his coat pocket.

Valencia, all impatience, could hardly restrain herself until they were alone with their prisoner. She walked on the other side of her cousin, but as soon as they reached the Plaza she stopped.

"Where is he, Sebastian? What have you done with him? I warn you it is better to tell all you know," she cried sternly.

He looked up at her doggedly, moistened his lips, and looked down again without a word.

"Speak!" she urged imperiously. "Where is Mr. Gordon? Tell me he is alive. And what of Pablo?"

Manuel spoke in a low voice. "My cousin, you are driving him to silence. Leave him to me. He must be led, not driven."

Valencia was beyond reason. She felt that every minute lost was of tremendous importance. If Gordon was alive they must get help to him at once. All her life she had known Sebastian. When she had been a little tot he had taught her how to ride and how to fish. Since her return from college she had renewed acquaintance with him. Had she not been good to his children when they had small-pox? Had she not sold him his place cheaper than any other man could have bought it? Why, then, should he assume she was his enemy? Why should he distrust her? Why, above all, had he done this foolish and criminal thing?

Her anger blazed as she recalled all this and more. She would show Sebastian that because she had been indulgent he could not trade defiantly upon her kindness.

"No," she told Manuel. "No. I shall deal with him myself. He will speak or I shall turn him over to the sheriff."

"Let us at least go to the hotel, Valencia. We do not want to gather a crowd on the street."

"As you please."

They reached the hotel parlor and Valencia gave Sebastian one more chance.

The man shuffled uneasily on his feet, but did not answer.

"Very well," continued Miss Valdés stiffly, "it is not my fault that you will have to go to the penitentiary and leave your children without support."

Manuel tried to stop her, but Valencia brushed past and left the room. She went straight to a telephone and was connected with the office of the sheriff. After asking that an officer be sent at once to arrest a man whom she was holding as prisoner, she hung up the receiver and returned to the parlor.

In all she could not have been absent more than five minutes, but when she reached the parlor it was empty. Both Manuel and his prisoner had gone.

CHAPTER XVII

AN OBSTINATE MAN

When Richard Gordon came back from unconsciousness to a world of haziness and headaches he was quite at a loss to account for his situation. He knew vaguely that he was lying flat on his back and that he was being jolted uncomfortably to and fro. His dazed brain registered sensations of pain both dull and sharp from a score of bruised nerve centers. For some reason he could neither move his hands nor lift his head. His body had been so badly jarred by the hail of blows through which he had plowed that at first his mind was too blank to give him explanations.

Gradually he recalled that he had been in a fight. He remembered a sea of faces, the thud of fists, the flash of knives. This must be the reason why every bone ached, why the flesh on his face was caked and warm moisture dripped from cuts in his scalp. It dawned upon him that he could not move his arms because they were tied and that the interference with his breathing was caused by a gag. When he opened his eyes he saw nothing, but whenever his face or hands stirred from the jolting something light and rough brushed his flesh; An odor of alfalfa filled his nostrils. He guessed that he was in a wagon and covered with hay.

Where were they taking him? Why had they not killed him at once? Who was at the bottom of the attack upon him? Already his mind was busy with the problem.

Presently the jolting ceased. He could hear guarded voices. The alfalfa was thrown aside and he was dragged from his place and carried down some steps. The men went stumbling through the dark, turning first to the right, and then to the left. They groped their way into a room and dropped him upon a bed. Even now they struck no light, but through a small window near the ceiling moonbeams entered and relieved somewhat the inky blackness.

"Is he dead?" someone asked in Spanish.

"No. His eyes were open as we brought him in," answered a second voice guardedly.

They stood beside the bed and looked down at their prisoner. His eyes were getting accustomed to the darkness. He saw that one of the men was Pablo Menendez. The other, an older Mexican with short whiskers, was unknown to him.

"He fought like a devil from hell. Roderigo's arm is broken. Not one of us but is marked," said the older man admiringly.

"My head is ringing yet, Sebastian," agreed Pablo. "Dios, how he slammed poor José down. The blood poured from his nose and mouth. Never yet have I seen a man fight so fierce and so hard as this Americano. He may be the devil himself, but his claws are clipped now. And here he lies till he does as we want, or----" The young Mexican did not finish his sentence, but the gleam in his eyes was significant.

Pablo stooped till his eyes were close to those of the bound man. "Señor, shall I take the gag from your mouth? Will you swear not to cry out and not to make any noise?"

Gordon nodded.

"So, but if you do the road to Paradise will be short and swift," continued Menendez. "Before your shout has died away you will be dead. Sabe, Señor?"

He unknotted the towel at the back of his prisoner's head and drew it from Dick's mouth. Gordon expanded his lungs in a deep breath before he spoke coolly to his gaoler.

"Thank you, Menendez. You needn't keep your fist on that gat. I've no intention of committing suicide until after I see you hanged."

"Which will be never, Señor Gordon," replied Pablo rapidly in Spanish. "You will never leave here alive except on terms laid down by us."

"Interesting if true--but not true, I think," commented Dick pleasantly. "You have made a mistake, my friends, and you will have to pay for it."

"If we have made a mistake it can yet be remedied, Señor" retorted Pablo quietly. "We have but to make an end of you and behold! all is well again."

"Afraid not, my enthusiastic young friend. Too many in the secret. Someone will squeal, and the rest of you--particularly you two ringleaders--will be hanged by the neck. It takes only ordinary intelligence to know that. Therefore I am quite safe, even though I have a confounded headache and a rising fever." Gordon added with cheerful solicitude: "I do hope I'm not going to get sick on your hands. It's rather a habit of mine, you know. But, really, you can't blame me this time."

A danger signal flared in the eyes of the young Mexican. "Better not, Señor. You will here have no young and charming nurse to wait upon you."

"Meaning Mrs. Corbett?" asked the prisoner, smiling up impudently.

"Whose heart your soft words can steal away from him to whom it belongs," continued Pablo furiously.

"Sho, I reckon Corbett----"

"Mil diablos!"

A devil of jealousy was burning out of the black eyes that blazed into those of the American. It was no longer possible for Dick to miss the menace and its meaning. The Mexican was speaking of Juanita. He believed that his prisoner had been making love to the girl and his heart was black with hate because of it.

Gordon looked at him steadily, then summed up with three derisive words. "You damn fool!"

Something in the way he said them shook Pablo's conviction. Was it possible after all that his jealousy had been useless? Juanita had told him that all through his delirium this man had raved of Miss Valdés. Perhaps---- But, no, had he not with his own eyes seen the man bantering Juanita while the color came and went in her wild rose cheeks? Had he not seen him lean on her shoulder as he hobbled out to the porch, just as a lover might on that of his sweetheart?

With an oath Pablo turned sullenly away. He knew he was no match for this man at any point. Yet he was a leader among his own people because of the force in him.

Gordon slept little during the night. He had been so badly beaten that outraged nature took her revenge in a feverish restlessness that precluded any real rest. With the coming of day the temperature subsided. Pablo brought a basin of water and a sponge, with which he washed the bloody face and head of the bound man.

Dick observed that his nurse had a few marks of his own as souvenirs of the battle. The cheek bone had been laid open by a blow that must have been made with his knuckles. One eye was half shut, and beneath it was a deep purple swelling.

"Had quite a little jamboree, didn't we?" remarked Gordon, with a grin. "I'll bet you lads mussed my hair up some."

Pablo said nothing, but after he had made his unwilling guest as presentable and comfortable as possible he proceeded to business.

"You want to know why we have made you prisoner, Señor Gordon?" he suggested. "It has perhaps occur to you that it would have been much easier to shoot you and be done?"

"Yes, that has struck me, Menendez. I reckon your nerve didn't quite run to murder maybe."

"Not so. I spare you because you save my brother's life after he shoot at you. But I exact conditions. So?"

The eyes of the miner had grown hard and steelly. The lids had closed on them so that only slits were open. "Let's hear them."

"First, that you give what is called word of honor not to push any charges against those taking you prisoner."

"Pass that for the present," ordered Dick curtly. "Number two please."

"That you sign a paper drawn up by a lawyer giving all your rights in the Rio Chama Valley to Señorita Valdés and promise never to go near the valley again."

"Nothing doing," answered the prisoner promptly, his jaws snapping tight.

"But yes--most assuredly yes. I risk much to save your life. But you must go to meet me, Señor. Is a man's life not worth all to him? So? Sign, and you live."

The eyes of the men had fastened--the fierce, black, eager ones of the Mexican and the steelly gray ones of the Anglo-Saxon. There was the rigor of battle in that gaze, the grinding of rapier on rapier. Gordon was a prisoner in the hands of his enemy. He lay exhausted from a terrible beating. That issues of life and death hung in the balance a child might have guessed. But victory lay with the white man. The lids of Menendez fell over sullen, angry eyes.

"You are a fool, Señor. We go to prison for no man who is our enemy. Pouf! When the hour comes I snuff out your life like that." And Pablo snapped his fingers airily.

"Maybe--and maybe not. I figure on living to be an old man. Tell you what I'll do, Menendez. Turn me loose and I'll forget about our little rumpus last night. I'd ought to send you to the pen, but I'll consent to forego that pleasure."

Sulkily Pablo turned away. What could one do with a madman who insisted on throwing his life away? The young Mexican was not a savage, though the barbaric strain in his wild lawless blood was still strong. He did not relish the business of killing in cold blood even the man he hated.

"If you kill me you'll hang," went on Gordon composedly. "You'll never get away with it. Your own friends will swear your neck into a noose. Your partner Sebastian--you'll excuse me if I appear familiar, but I don't know the gentleman's other name--will turn State's evidence to try to save his own neck. But I reckon he'll have to climb the ladder, too."

Sebastian pushed aside his companion angrily and took the American by the throat.

"Por Dios, I show you. If I hang I hang--but you----" His muscular fingers tightened till the face of his enemy grew black. But the eyes--the steady, cool, contemptuous eyes--still looked into his defiantly.

Pablo dragged his accomplice from the bedside. The time might come for this, but it was not yet.

It had been a close thing for Gordon. If those lean, strong fingers had been given a few seconds more at his throat they would have snapped the cord of life. But gradually the distorted face resumed its natural hue as the coughing, strangling man began to breathe again.

"Your--friend--is--impetuous," Dick suggested to Pablo as soon as he could get the words out one at a time.

"He will shake the life out of you as a terrier does that of a rat," Pablo promised vindictively.

"There's no fun--in being strangled, as you'll both--find out later," the prisoner retorted whimsically but with undaunted spirit.

Sebastian had left the room. At the expiration of half an hour he returned with a tray, upon which were two plates with food and two cups of steaming coffee. The Mexicans ate their ham and their frijoles and drank their coffee. The prisoner they ignored.

"Don't I draw even a Libby Prison allowance?" the American wanted to know.

"You eat and you drink after you have signed the paper," Pablo told him.

"I always did think we ate too much and too often. Much obliged for a chance to work out my theories."

Gordon turned his back upon them, his face to the wall. Presently, in spite of the cramped position necessitated by his bound arms, he yielded to weariness and fell asleep. Sebastian lay down in a corner of the room and also slept. He and Pablo would have to relieve each other as watchmen so long as they held their prisoner. For that reason they must get what rest they could during the day.

Menendez found himself the victim of conflicting emotions. It had been easy while they were plotting the abduction to persuade himself that the man would grant anything to save his life. Now he doubted this. Looking clown at the battered face of the miner, so lean and strong and virile, he could not withhold a secret reluctant admiration. How was it possible for him to sleep so easily and lightly while he lay within the shadow of violent death? There was even a little smile about the corners of his mouth, as if he were enjoying pleasant dreams. Never had Pablo known another man like this one. Had he not broken the spirit of that outlaw devil Teddy in ten minutes? Who else could shoot the heads off chickens at a distance as he had done? Was there another in New Mexico that could, though taken at advantage, put up so fierce a fight against big odds? The young Mexican hated him because of Juanita and his opposition to Miss Valdés. But the untamed and gallant spirit of the young man went out in spite of himself in homage to the splendid courage and efficiency of his victim.

Not till the middle of the afternoon did Gordon awaken. He was surprised to find that his hands were free. Of Menendez he asked an explanation.

Pablo gave him none. How could he say that he was ashamed to keep him tied while two armed men were in the room to watch him?

"Move from that bed and I'll blow your brains out," the Mexican growled in Spanish.

Presently Pablo brought him a tin dipper filled with water.

"Drink, Señor" he ordered ungraciously.

Dick drank the last drop and smiled at his guard gratefully. "You're white in spots, Mr. Miscreant, though you hate to think it of yourself," he said lightly.

Odd as it may seem, Gordon found a curious pleasure in exploring the mind of the young man. He detected the struggle going on in it, and he made remarks so uncannily wise that the Mexican was startled at his divination. The miner held no grudge. These men were his enemies because they thought him a selfish villain who ought to be frustrated in his designs. Long ago, in that school of experience which had made him the hard, competent man he was, Dick had learned the truth of the saying that to know all is to forgive all. He himself had done bold and lawless things often enough, but it was seldom that he did a mean one. Warily alert though he was for a chance to escape, his feelings were quite impersonal toward these Mexicans. Confronted with the need, he would kill if he must to save himself; but it would not be because he was vindictive.

Dick's mind was alert to every chance of escape. He studied his situation as well as he could without moving from the bed. From the glimpse of the house he had had as the two men carried him in he knew that it was a large, modern one set in grounds of considerable size. He had been brought down a flight of steps and was now in the basement. Was the house an unoccupied one? Or was it in the possession of some one friendly to the scheme upon which the Mexicans had engaged?

A suspicion had startled him just after the men finished eating, but he had dismissed it as a fantasy of his excited imagination. Sebastian, carrying out the dishes, had dropped a spoon and left it lying beside the bed. Dick contrived, after he had wakened, to roll close to the edge and look down. The spoon was still there. Two letters were engraved upon the handle. They were A.V. If these stood for Alvaro Valdés, then this must be the town house of Valencia, and she was probably a party to his abduction.

He could not without distress of heart accept such a conclusion. She was his enemy, but she had seemed to him so frank and generous a one that complicity in a plot of this nature had no part in the picture of her his mind had drawn. He wrestled with the thought of this until he could stand it no longer.

"Did Miss Valdés come to town herself, or is she letting you run this abduction, Menendez?" he asked suddenly.

Pablo repeated stupidly, "Miss Valdés--the señorita?"

The keen, hard eyes of Gordon did not lift for an instant from those of the other man. "That's what I said."

It occurred to the Mexican that this was a chance to do a stroke of business for his mistress. He would show the confident Americano what place he held in her regard.

His shoulders lifted in a shrug. "You are clevair, Señor. How do you know the señorita knows?"

"This is her house. She told you to bring me here."

Pablo was surprised. "So? You know it is her house?"

"Surest thing you know."

"The señorita trusts me. She is at the ranch."

"But you are acting under her orders?"

"If the señor pleases."

Dick turned his back to the wall again. His heart was bitter within him. He had thought her a sportsman, every inch a thoroughbred. But she had set her peons to spy on him and to attack him--ten to one in their favor--so that she might force him to sign away his rights to her. Very well. He would show her whether she could drive him to surrender, whether she could starve him into doing what he did not want to do.

The younger Mexican wakened Sebastian late in the afternoon and left him to guard the prisoner while he went into the town to hear what rumors were flying about the affair. About an hour later he returned, bringing with him some provisions, a newspaper, and a handbill. The latter he tossed to Gordon.

"Señor, I never saw five hundred dollars dangling within reach before. Shall I go to your friend and give him information?" asked Pablo.

Dick read the poster through with interest. "Good old Steve. He's getting busy. Inside of twenty-four hours he'll ferret out this spot."

"It may be too late," Pablo flung back significantly. "If they press us hard we'll finish the job and make a run for it."

They were talking in Spanish, as they did most of the time. The prisoner read aloud the offer on the handbill.

"Please notice that I'm worth no more alive than you are if I'm dead. I reckon this town is full of friends of yours anxious to earn five hundred plunks by giving a little information. Let me ask a question of you. Suppose you do finish the job and hit the trail. Where would you go?"

"The hills are full of pockets. We could hide and watch a chance to get out of the country."

"We wouldn't have to hide. Jesu Cristo, who would know we did it?" chipped in Sebastian roughly.

"Everybody will know it soon. You made a bad mistake when you didn't bump me off at the start. All your friends that helped bushwhack me will itch to get that five hundred, Sebastian. As to hiding--well, I was a ranger once. Offer a reward, and everybody is on the jump to earn it. The way these hills are being combed this week by anxious man-hunters you'd never reach your cache."

"Maybe we would and maybe we wouldn't. We'll have to take a chance on that," replied the bearded Mexican sullenly.

To their prisoner it was plain that the men were I growing more anxious every hour. They regretted the course they had followed and yet could see no way of safety opening to them. Suspicious by nature, Sebastian judged the American by himself. If their positions were reversed, he knew he would break any pledge he might make and go straight to the sheriff with his story. Therefore they could not with safety release the man. To kill him would be dangerous. To keep him prisoner was possible only for a limited time. Whatever course they followed seemed precarious and uncertain. Temperamentally he was inclined to put an end to the man and try a bolt for the hills, but he found in Pablo an unexpected difficulty. The young man would not hear of this. He had made up his mind riot to let Gordon be killed if he could prevent it, though he did not tell the American so.

Menendez made another trip after supplies next day, but he came back hurriedly without them. Pesquiera's poster offering a reward of one hundred dollars for the capture of him or Sebastian had brought him up short and sent him scurrying back to his hole.

Gordon used the poster for a text. His heart was jubilant within him, for he knew now that Valencia was not back of this attack upon him.

"All up with you now," he assured them in a genial, offhand fashion. "Miss Valdés must be backing Pesquiera. They know you two are the guilty villains. Inside of twelve hours they'll have you both hogtied."

Clearly the conspirators were of that opinion themselves. They talked together a good deal in whispers. Dick was of the opinion that a proposition would be made him before morning, though it was just possible that the scale might tip the other way and his death be voted. He spent a very anxious hour.

After dark Sebastian, who was less well known in the town than Pablo, departed on an errand unknown to Gordon. The miner guessed that he was going to make arrangements for horses upon which to escape. Dick was not told their decision. Menendez had fallen sulky again and refused to talk.

CHAPTER XVIII

MANUEL INTERFERES

Valencia had scarcely left the parlor to telephone for the sheriff before Manuel flashed a knife and cut the rope that tied his prisoner's hands.

Sebastian had shrunk back at sight of the knife, but when he found that he was free he stared at Pesquiera in startled amazement.

"Come! Let's get out of here. We can talk when you are free of danger," said Manuel with sharp authority in his voice.

He led the way into the corridor, walked quickly down one passage and along another, and so by a back stairway into the alley in the rear. Within a few minutes they were a quarter of a mile from the El Tovar.

Sebastian, still suspicious, yet aware that for some reason Don Manuel was unexpectedly on his side, awaited explanations.

"Doña Valdés is quite right, Sebastian. She means well, but she is, after all, a woman. This is a man's business, and you and I can settle it better alone." Manuel smiled with an air of frank confidence at his former prisoner. "You are in a serious fix--no doubt at all about that. The question is to find the best way out."

"Si, Señor".

Pesquiera's bright black eyes fastened on him as he flung a question at the man. "I suppose this Gordon is still alive."

Sebastian nodded gloomily. "He is like a cat with its nine lives. We have beaten and starved him, but he laughs--this Gringo devil--and tells us he will live to see us wearing stripes in prison."

"Muy bien." Manuel talked on briskly, so as to give the slower-witted Mexican no time to get set in obstinacy. "I should be able to arrange matters then. We must free the man after I have his word to tell nothing."

"But he will run straight to the sheriff," protested Sebastian.

"Not if he gives his word. I'll see to that. Where have you him hidden?" The young Spaniard asked the question carelessly, almost indifferently, as if it were merely a matter of course.

Sebastian opened his mouth to tell--and then closed it. He had had no intention of telling anything. Now he found he had told everything except their hiding-place. The suspicion which lay coiled in his heart lifted its head like a snake. Was he being led into a trap? Would Don Manuel betray him to the law? The gleaming eyes of the man narrowed and grew hard.

Manuel, intuitively sensing this, hurried on. "It can be a matter of only hours now until they stumble upon your hiding-place. If this happens before we have come to terms with Gordon you are lost. I have come to town to save you and Pablo. But I can't do this unless you trust me. Take me to Gordon and let me talk with him. Blindfold me if you like. But lose no time."

As Sebastian saw it, this was a chance. He knew Manuel was an honest man. His reputation was of the best. Reluctantly he gave way.

"The Americano is at the Valdés house," he admitted sulkily.

"At the Valdés house? Why, in Heaven's name, did you take him there?"

"How could we tell that the Señorita would come to town? The house was empty. Pablo worked there in the stables as a boy. So we moved in."

A quarter of an hour later Pablo opened the outer basement door in answer to the signal agreed upon by them. He had left the prisoner upon the bed with his hands tied. Sebastian entered. Pablo noticed that another man was standing outside. Instantly his rifle covered him. For, though others of their countrymen had been employed to help capture Gordon, none of these knew where he was hidden.

"It is Don Manuel Pesquiera," explained Sebastian. "I brought him here to help us out of this trouble we are in. Let him in and I will tell you all."

For an instant Pablo suspected that his accomplice had sold him, but he dismissed the thought almost at once. He had known Sebastian all his life. He stepped aside and let Pesquiera come into the hall.

The three men talked for a few minutes and then passed into the bedroom where the prisoner was confined. Evidently this had formerly been the apartment of the cook, who had slept in the basement in order no doubt to be nearer her work. Pesquiera looked around and at last made out a figure in the darkness lying upon the bed.

He stepped forward, observing that the man on the bed had his hands bound. Bending down, he recognized the face of Gordon. Beaten and bruised and gaunt from hunger it was, but the eyes still gleamed with the same devil-may-care smile.

"Happy to meet you, Don Manuel."

The Spaniard's heart glowed with admiration. He did not like the man. It was his intention to fight him as soon as possible for the insult that had been put upon him some weeks earlier. But his spirit always answered to the call of courage, and Gordon's pluck was so debonair he could not refuse a reluctant appreciation.

"I regret to see you thus, Mr. Gordon," he said.

"Might have been worse. Sebastian has had se-vere-al notions about putting me out of business. I'm lucky to be still kicking."

"I have come from Miss Valdés. She came to Santa Fé when she heard from your friend Mr. Davis that you had disappeared. To-night we saw Sebastian for the first time. He brought me here."

"Good of him," commented Dick ironically.

"You will be freed of course--at once." Manuel drew out his knife and cut the cords that bound the prisoner. "But I must ask your forbearance in behalf of Sebastian and Pablo and the others that have injured you. May I give them your pledge not to appear as a witness against them for what they have done?"

"Fine! I'm to be mauled and starved and kidnaped, but I'm to say 'Thank you kindly' for these small favors, hoping for a continuance of the same. You have another guess coming, Mr. Pesquiera. I offered those terms two days ago. They weren't accepted. My ideas have changed. I'm going to put your friends behind the bars--unless you decide to let them murder me instead. I've been the goat long enough."

"Your complaint is just, Mr. Gordon. It iss your right to enforce the law. Most certainly it iss your right. But consider my position. Sebastian brought me here only upon my pledge to secure from you a promise not to press your rights. What shall I do? I must see that you are released. That goes without saying. But shall I break faith with him and let him be delivered to justice? I have given my word, remember."

Gordon looked up at him with his lean jaw set. "You couldn't give my word, could you? Very well. Go away. Forget that you've seen me. I'll be a clam so far as you are concerned. But if I get free I'm going to make things hot for these lads that think they can play Ned with me. They're going to the pen, every last one of them. I'm going to see this thing out to a finish and find out if there's any law in New Mexico."

Manuel stiffened. "You put me in an awkward position, Mr. Gordon. I have no choice but to see you are set at liberty. But my honor is involved. These men shall not go to prison. They have made a serious mistake, but they are not what you call criminals. You know well----"

"I know that they and their friends have shot at me, ambushed me, beaten me, and starved me. They've been wanting to kill me ever since they got me here--at least one of them has--but they just didn't have the guts to do it. What is your definition of a criminal anyhow? Your friends here fill the specifications close enough to suit me. I ain't worried about their being too good for the company they'll join at the pen."

"You are then resolve', Señor?"

"That's what I am. I'm going to see they get the limit. I've not got a thing against you, Mr. Pesquiera, and I'd like to oblige you if I could. But I'm playing this hand myself."

The Spaniard spoke to him in a low voice. "These men are the people of Miss Valdés. She drove all night across the mountains to get here sooner when she found you were gone. She offered and paid a reward of one hundred dollars to help find you. Do you not owe something to her?"

"I owe one hundred dollars and my thanks, sir. I'll pay them both. But Miss Valdés cannot ask me to give up prosecuting these men because she would not stand back and see murder done."

"Will you then leave it to her to punish these men?"

"No. I pay my own debts."

Manuel was troubled. He had expected to find the prisoner so eager for release that he would consent at once to his proposal. Instead, he found a man hard and cold as steel. Yet he had to admit that Gordon claimed only his rights. No man could be expected to stand without an appeal to the law such outrageous treatment as he had been given.

"Will you consent then to settle the matter with me, man to man? These men are but peons. They are like cattle and do not think. But I--I am a more worthy foeman. Let me take the burden of their misdeeds on my shoulders."

Dick wagged a forefinger at him warningly. "Now you've got that swashbuckler notion of a duel again. I'm no cavalier of Spain, but a plain American business man, Don Quixote. As for these jail-birds"--his hand swept the room to include the Mexicans--"since I'm an unregenerate human I mean to make 'em pay for what they've done. That's all there is to it."

Don Manuel bowed. "Very good, Mr. Gordon. We shall see. I promise you that I shall stand between them and prison. I offer you a chance to win the friendship of the Mexicans in the valley. You decline. So be it. I wash my hands, sir."

He turned away and gave directions to Pablo, who left the room at once. The Spaniard called for candles and lit two. He pointedly ignored Gordon, but sat with his hands in his pockets whistling softly a popular air.

About a quarter of an hour later Pablo returned with a hot meal on a tray. Gordon, having done without food for two days, ate his ham and eggs and drank his coffee with an appetite given to few men. Meanwhile Pesquiera withdrew to the passage and laid down an ultimatum to the Mexicans. They must take horse at once and get back to the hills above the Rio Chama Valley. He would bring saddle horses from a stable so that they could start within the hour and travel all night.

The Mexicans listened sullenly. But they knew that the matter was now out of their hands. Since the arrival of Pesquiera it had become manifestly impossible to hold their prisoner longer. They agreed to the plan of the Spaniard reluctantly.

After Pablo and Sebastian had taken horse Pesquiera returned to the prisoner.

"We will, if it pleases you, move upstairs, Mr. Gordon," he announced. "To-night I must ask you to remain in the house with me to give those poor fools a little start on their ride for freedom. We shall find better beds upstairs no doubt."

"They're hitting the trail, are they?" Dick asked negligently as he followed his guide.

"Yes. If you'll give me your parole till morning, Mr. Gordon, I shall be able to return to Miss Valdés and let her know that all is well. Otherwise I shall be obliged to sit up and see that you do not get active in interfering with the ride of Pablo and his friend."

"I'll stay here till seven o'clock to-morrow morning. Is that late enough? Then I'll see the sheriff and start things moving."

Pesquiera bowed in his grand, formal manner. "The terms satisfy. I wish Mr. Gordon a very good night's sleep. This room formerly belonged to the brother of Miss Valdés. It is curious, but she was here airing this room only to-day. She did not know you were in the house at the time. Adios, Señor."

"Good night, Mr. Pesquiera. I reckon I'm in your debt quite a bit. Sorry we couldn't agree about this little matter of what to do with the boys."

Manuel bowed again and withdrew from the room.

Inside of ten minutes Gordon was fast asleep.

CHAPTER XIX

VALENCIA ACCEPTS A RING

Manuel found Valencia pacing up and down the porch of the hotel in a fever of impatience. Instantly at sight of him she ran forward quickly.

"Where have you been? What have you done with Sebastian? Why did you leave without telling me about it?" she demanded.

"One question at a time, my cousin," he answered, smiling at her. "But let us walk while I tell you."

She fell into step beside him, moving with the strong, lissom tread that came from controlled and deliberate power.

"What is it you have to tell? If you were called away, why did you not leave a message for me?" she asked, a little imperiously.

"I wasn't called away, Valencia. You were excited and angry. My opinion was that Sebastian would speak if the matter was put to him right. So I cut the rope that tied him and we ran away through the back door of the hotel."

Her dark eyes, proud and passionate, began to smoulder. But the voice with which she answered him was silken smooth.

"I see. You pretended to be working with me--and then you betrayed me. Is that it?"

"If you like," he said with a little shrug. "I backed my judgment against your impatience. And it turns out that I was right."

"How? What has happened? Where is Sebastian?"

"He is galloping toward the hills as fast as he can--at least I hope he is. What happened is that he told me where Gordon is hidden."

"Where?"

"At your house. When you were there to-day you must have passed within twenty feet of him."

"But--do you mean that Pablo and Sebastian took him there?"

"Exactly. They did not foresee that you would come to town, Valencia." He added, after a moment: "I have seen Mr. Gordon, talked with him, and released him. At this moment he is in your brother's room, probably asleep."

All the sharpness had died out of the young woman's voice when she turned to her cousin and spoke with a humility rare to her.

"Forgive me, Manuel. I always know best about everything. I drive ahead and must have my own way, even when it is not the wise one. You did just right to ignore me."

She laid her hand on his coat sleeve pleadingly, and he lifted it to his lips.

"Niña ... the Queen can do no wrong. But I saw you were driving Sebastian to stubbornness. I tried to let him see we meant to be his friends if he would let us."

"Yes, you were right. Tell me everything, please." She paused just a moment before she said quietly: "But first, what about Mr. Gordon? He is ... uninjured?"

"Beaten and mauled and starved, but still of the gayest courage," answered the Spaniard with enthusiasm. "Did I not say that he was a hero? My cousin, I say it again. The fear of death is not in his heart."

He did not see the gleam in her dark eyes, the flush that beat into her dusky face. "Starved as well as beaten, Manuel?"

"They were trying to force him to give up his claim to the valley. But he--as I live the American is hard as Gibraltar."

"They dared to starve him--to torture him. I shall see that they are punished," she cried with the touch of feminine ferocity that is the heritage of the south.

"No need, Valencia," returned Pesquiera with a dry little laugh. "Mr. Gordon has promised himself to attend to that."

He told her the story from first to last. Intently she listened, scarce breathing until he had finished.

Manuel had told the tale with scrupulous fairness, but already her sympathies were turning.

"And he wouldn't agree not to prosecute?" she asked.

"No. It is his right to do so if he likes, Valencia."

She brushed this aside with an impatient wave of her hand. "Oh, his right! Doesn't he owe something to us--to me--and especially to you?"

"No, he owes me nothing. What I did was done for you, and not for him," the Spaniard replied instantly.

"Then to me at least he is in debt. I shall ask him to drop the prosecution."

"He is what his people call straight. But he is hard--hard as jade."

They were walking along a dark lane unlighted save by the stars. Valencia turned to him impetuously.

"Manuel, you are good. You do not like this man, but you save him because--because my heart is torn when my people do wrong. For me you take much trouble--you risk much. How can I thank you?"

"Niña mia, I am thanked if you are pleased. It is your love I seek, Heart of mine." He spoke tremulously, taking her hands in his.

For the beat of a heart she hesitated. "You have it. Have I not given my word that--after the American was saved----?"

He kissed her. Hers was a virginal soul, but full-blooded. An unsuspected passion beat in her veins. Not for nothing did she have the deep, languorous eyes, the perfect scarlet lips, the sumptuous grace of an artist's ideal. Fires lay banked within her in spite of the fine purity of her nature. Nature had poured into her symmetrical mold a rich abundance of what we call sex.

The kisses of Manuel stirred within her new and strange emotions, though she accepted rather than returned them. A faint vague unease chilled her heart. Was it because she had been immodest in letting him so far have his way?

When they returned to the hotel Manuel's ring was on her finger. She was definitely engaged to him.

It was long before she slept. She thought of Manuel, the man chosen it seemed by Fate to be her mate. But she thought, too, of the lithe, broad-shouldered young American whose eyes could be so tender and again so hard. Why was it he persisted in filling her mind so much of the time? Why did she both admire him and resent his conduct, trust him to the limit one hour and distrust the next? Why was it that he--an unassuming American without any heroics--rather than her affianced lover seemed to radiate romance as he moved? She liked Manuel very much, she respected him greatly, trusted him wholly, but--it was this curly-headed youth of her mother's race that set her heart beating fast a dozen times a day.

She resolved resolutely to put him out of her mind. Had he not proved himself unworthy by turning the head of Juanita, whom he could not possibly expect to marry? Was not Manuel in every way worthy of her love? Her finger touched the diamond ring upon her hand. She would keep faith in thought as well as in word and deed.

At last she fell asleep--and dreamed of a blond, gray-eyed youth fighting for his life against a swarm of attacking Mexicans.

CHAPTER XX

DICK LIGHTS A CIGARETTE

Gordon met Miss Valdés in the El Tovar dining-room next morning. He was trying at the same time to tell Davis the story of his kidnaping and to eat a large rare steak with French-fried potatoes. The young man had chosen a seat that faced the door. The instant his eyes fell upon her he gave up both the story and the steak. Putting aside his napkin, he rose to meet her.

She had fallen asleep thinking of him, her dreams had been full of his vivid personality, and she had wakened to an eager longing for the sight of his gay, mocking eyes. But she had herself under such good control that nobody could have guessed how fast her heart was beating as her fingers touched his.

"We are glad your adventure is ended, Mr. Gordon, and that it has turned out no worse. Probably Mr. Davis has told you that he and I got our heads together a great many times a day," she said, a little formally.

"You were mighty good to take so much interest in such a scalawag," he answered warmly.

The color deepened ever so little in her face. "I couldn't let my men commit murder under the impression they were doing me a service," she explained lightly. "There are several things I want to talk over with you. Can you call on me this morning, Mr. Gordon?"

"Can I?"

He put the question so forcefully that she smiled and dashed a bucket of cold water over his enthusiasm.

"If you'll be so good then. And bring Mr. Davis along with you, please. He'll keep us from quarreling too much."

"I'll throw him out of the window if he don't behave right," Davis promised joyfully. He was happy to-day, and he did not care who knew it.

Valencia passed on to her table, and Dick resumed his seat. He had a strong interest in this young woman, but even the prospect of a talk with her could not make him indifferent to the rare steak and French-fried potatoes before him. He was a healthy normal American in his late twenties, and after several days of starvation well-cooked food looked very good to him.

"There's some mail waiting for you upstairs--one of the letters is a registered one, mailed at Corbett's," his friend told him as they rose to leave. He was like a hen with one chick in his eagerness to supply Dick's wants and in his reluctance to let Gordon out of his sight.

The registered letter was the one Valencia had sent him, inclosing the one written by her grandfather to her father. Her contrite little note went straight to his emotions. If not in words, at least in spirit, it pleaded for pardon. Even the telegram she had wired implied an undeniable interest in him. Dick went with a light heart to the interview she had appointed him.

He slipped an arm through that of Davis. "Come on, you old bald-headed chaperone. Didn't you hear the lady give you a bid to her party this mo'ning? Get a move on you."

"Ain't you going to let her invite get cold before you butt in?" retorted Steve amiably.

Valencia took away from the dining-room a heart at war with itself. The sight of his gaunt face, carrying the scars of many wounds and the lines marked by hunger, stirred insurgent impulses. The throb of passion and of the sweet protective love that is at the bottom of every woman's tenderness suffused her cheeks with warm life and made her eyes wonderful. Out of the grave he had come back to her, this indomitable foe who played the game with such gay courage. It was useless to tell herself that she was plighted to a better man, a worthier one. Scamp he might be, but Dick Gordon held her heart in the hollow of his strong brown hand.

Some impulse of shyness, perhaps of reluctance, had restrained her from wearing Manuel's ring at breakfast. But when she returned to her room she went straight to the desk where she had locked it and put the solitaire on her finger. The fear of disloyalty drove her back to her betrothed from the enticement of forbidden thoughts. She must put Richard Gordon out of her mind. It was worse than madness to be dreaming of him now that she was plighted to another.

Gordon, coming eagerly to meet her, found a young woman more reserved, more distant. He was conscious of this even before his eyes stopped at the engagement ring sparkling on her finger, the visible evidence that his rival had won.

"You have been treated cruelly, Mr. Gordon. Tell me that you are again all right," she said, the color flooding her face at the searching question of his eyes.

"Right as a rivet, thanks. It is to you I owe my freedom, I suppose."

"To Manuel," she corrected. "His judgment was better than mine."

"I can believe that. He didn't ride all night across dangerous mountain roads to save me."

"Oh, that!" She tossed off his thanks with a little shrug. "They are so impulsive, my boys ... like children, you know.... I was a little afraid they might----"

"I was a little afraid myself they might," he agreed dryly. "But when you say children--well, don't you think wolves is a more accurate term for them?"

"Oh, no--no!" Her protest was quick, eager, imperative. "You don't know how loyal they can be--how faithful. They are really just like children, so impulsive--so unreasoning."

"Afraid I can't enthuse with you on that subject for a day or two yet," he answered with a laugh. "Truth is I found their childlike impulses both painful and annoying. Next time you see them you might mention that I'm liable to have an impulse of my own they won't enjoy."

"That's one of the things I want to talk with you about. Manuel says you mean to prosecute. I hope you won't. They're friends of mine. They thought they were helping me. Of course I have no claim on you, but----"

"You have a claim, Miss Valdés. We'll take that up presently. Just now we're talking about a couple of criminals due for a term in the penitentiary. I offered them terms. They wouldn't accept. Good enough. They'll have to stand the gaff, I reckon."

She realized at once there was no use arguing with him. The steel in his eyes told her he had made up his mind and was not to be moved. But she could not desert her foolish dependents.

"I know. What you say is quite true, but--I'll have to come to some agreement with you. I can't let them be punished for their loyalty to me."

Her direct, unflinching look, its fearlessness, won his admiration. In her slim suppleness, vibrant, feminine to the finger tips, alluring with the unconscious appeal of sex, there was a fine courage to face frankly essential facts. But he was a hard man to move once he had made up his mind. For all his frivolous impudence and his boyish good nature, he knew his own mind, and held to it with the stiffness characteristic of outdoor Westerners.

"You're not in this, Miss Valdés. I'll settle my own accounts with your friends Sebastian and Pablo."

"But even for your own sake----" She stopped, intuitively aware that this was not the ground upon which to treat with him. He would never drop the charges against the Mexicans merely because there was danger in pressing them.

"I reckon I'll have to try to look out for myself. Maybe next time I won't be so easy a mark," he answered with an almost insolent laugh.

Valencia was a little puzzled. Things were not going right, and she did not quite know the reason. There was just a touch of bitterness in his voice, of aloofness in his manner. She did not know that the sight of the solitaire sparkling on her left hand stirred in him the impulse to hurt her, to refuse rather than concede her requests.

"You're not going to push the cases against Pablo and Sebastian and still try to live in the valley, are you?" she asked, beginning to feel a little irritation at him.

"That's just what I'm going to do."

"You mustn't. I won't have it. Don't you see what my people will think, that because Pablo and Sebastian were loyal to me----"

His acrid smile cut her sentence in two. "That's about the third time you've mentioned their loyalty. Me, I don't see it. Sebastian owns land under the Valdés grant. He didn't want me to take it from him. Mr. Pablo Menendez--well, he had private reasons of his own, too."

The resentment flamed in her heart. If he was shameless enough to refer to the affair with Juanita she would let him know that she knew.

"What were his reasons, Mr. Gordon--that is, if they are not a private affair between you and him?"

"Not at all." The steel-blue eyes met hers, steadily. Dick was yielding to a desire to hurt himself as well as her, to defy her judgment if she had no better sense than to condemn him. "The idiot is jealous."

"Jealous--why?" The angry color beat its way to the surface above her cheek bones. Her disdain was regal.

"About Juanita."

"What about Juanita?"

"The usual thing, Miss Valdés. He was afraid she had the bad taste to prefer another man to himself."

Davis broke in. "Now, don't you be a goat, Dick. Miss Valdés, he----"

"If you please, Mr. Davis. I'm quite sure Mr. Gordon is able to defend himself," she replied scornfully.

"Didn't know I was defending myself. What's the charge against me?" asked the young miner with a touch of quiet insolence.

"There isn't any--if you don't see what it is. And you're quite right, Mr. Gordon. Your difficulties with Pablo are none of my business. You'll have to settle them yourselves--with Juanita's help. May I ask whether you received the registered letter I sent you, Mr. Gordon?"

Dick was angry. Her cool contempt told him that he had been condemned. He knew that he was acting like an irresponsible schoolboy, but he would not justify himself. She might think what she liked.

"Found it waiting for me this morning, Miss Valdés."

"It was very fair and generous of you to send me the letter, I recognize that fully. But of course I can't accept such a sacrifice," she told him stiffly.

"Not necessary you should. Object if I smoke here?"

Valencia was a little surprised. He had never before offered to smoke in the house except at her suggestion. "As you please, Mr. Gordon. Why should I object?"

From his coat pocket Dick took the letter Don Bartolomé had written to his son, and from his vest pocket a match. He twisted the envelope into a spill, lit one end, and found a cigarette. Very deliberately he puffed the cigarette to a glow, holding the letter in his fingers until it had burned to a black flake. This he dropped in the fireplace, and along with it the unsmoked cigarette.

[Illustration: Holding the letter in his fingers until it had burned to a black flake]

"Easiest way to settle that little matter," he said negligently.

"I judge you're a little impulsive, too, sometimes, Mr. Gordon," Valencia replied coldly.

"I never rode all night over the mountains to save a man who was trying to rob me of my land," he retorted.

This brought a sparkle to her eyes. "I had to think of my foolish men who were getting into trouble."

"Was that why you offered a hundred dollars' reward for the arrest of these same men?" came his indolent, satiric reply.

"Don Manuel offered the reward," she told him haughtily.

An impish smile was in his eyes. "At your suggestion, he tells me. And I understand you insisted on paying the bill, Miss Valdés."

"Why should he pay it? The men worked for me. They were brought up on my father's place. They are my responsibility, not his," she claimed with visible irritation.

"And now they're my responsibility, too--until I land them in the penitentiary," he added cheerfully.

From his pocket he took a billbook and selected two fifty-dollar bills. These he offered to Valencia.

She stood very straight. "You owe me nothing, sir."

"I owe you the hundred dollars you paid to get hold of Sebastian. And I'm going to pay it."

"I don't acknowledge the debt. I wanted Sebastian for his sake, not yours. Certainly I shall not accept the money."

"Just as you say. It isn't mine. Care if I smoke again?" he asked genially.

She caught his meaning in a flash. "Not at all. Burn them if you like."

"Now, see here," interrupted Davis amiably. "You're both acting like a pair of kids. I'm not going to stand for any hundred-dollar smokes, Dick. Gimme those bills." He snatched them from his friend and put them in his pocket. "When you two get reasonable again we'll decide whose money it is. Till then I expect I'll draw the interest on it."

"And now, since our business is ended, I think I'll not detain you any longer, Mr. Gordon, except to warn you that it will be foolhardy to return to the Rio Chama Valley with intentions such as you have."

"Good of you to warn me, Miss Valdés. It's not the first time, either, is it? But I'm that bull-headed. Steve will give me a recommend as the most sot chump in New Mexico. Won't you Steve?"

"I sure will--before a notary if you like. You've got a government mule backed off the map."

"I've done my duty, anyhow." Miss Valdés turned to the older man, and somehow the way she did it seemed to wipe Gordon out of the picture. "There is something I want to talk over with you, Mr. Davis. Can you wait a few moments?"

"Sure I can--all day if you like."

Dick retired with his best bow. "Steve, you always was popular with the ladies."

Valencia, uncompromising, waited until he had gone. Then, swiftly, with a little leap of impulse as it were, she appealed to Davis.

"Don't let him go back to the valley. Don't let him push the cases against Sebastian and Pablo."

The old miner shook his head "Sorry, Miss Valencia. Wish I could stop him, but I can't. He'll go his own way--always would."

"But don't you see they'll kill him. It's madness to go back there while he's pushing the criminal case. Before it was bad enough, but now----" She threw up her hands with a gesture of despair.

"I reckon you're right. But I can't help it."

"Then look out for him. Don't let him ride around in the hills. Don't let him leave the house at night. Never let him go alone. Remember that he is in danger every hour while he remains in the valley."

"I'll remember, Miss Valencia," Davis promised.

He wondered as he walked away why the talk between Dick and Miss Valdés had gone so badly. He knew his friend had come jubilantly, prepared to do anything she asked of him. The fear and anxiety that had leaped to her face the instant Gordon had gone showed him that the girl had a deep interest in the young man. She, too, had meant to meet him half way in wiping out the gulf between them. Instead, they had only increased it.

CHAPTER XXI

WHEN THE WIRES WERE CUT

Don Manuel rode into the moonlit plaza of the Valdés ranch, dismounted, and flung the reins to the boy that came running. Pesquiera nodded a careless greeting and passed into the house. He did not ask of anyone where Valencia was, nor did he send in a card of announcement. A lover's instinct told him that he would find her in the room that served both as an office and a library for her, seated perhaps before the leaping fireglow she loved or playing softly on the piano in the darkness.

The door was open, and he stood a moment on the threshold to get accustomed to the dim light.

A rich, low-pitched voice came across the room to him.

"It is you, Manuel?"

He stepped swiftly forward to the lounge upon which she was lying and knelt on one knee beside her, lifting her hand to his lips. "It is I, corazon mia, even Manuel the lucky."

She both smiled and sighed at that. A chord in her responded to the extravagance of his speech, even though vaguely it did not quite satisfy. A woman of the warm-blooded south and no plaster saint, she answered presently with shy, reluctant lips the kisses of her lover. Why should she not? Had he not won her by meeting the test she had given him? Was he not a gallant gentleman, of her own race and caste, bound to her by ties of many sorts, in every way worthy to be the father of her children? If she had to stifle some faint, indefinable regret, was it not right that she should? Her bridges were burned behind her. He was the man of her choice. She listened, eyes a little wistful, while he poured out ardently the tale of his devotion.

"You do love me, don't you, Manuel?" she demanded, a little fiercely. It was as if she wanted to drown any doubts she might have of her own feeling in the certainty of his.

"More than life itself, I do believe," he cried in a low voice.

Her lithe body turned, so that her shining eyes were close to his.

"Dear Manuel, I am glad. You don't know how worried I've been ... still am. Perhaps if I were a man it would be different, but I don't want my people to take the life of this stranger. But they mean him harm--especially since he has come back and intends to punish Pablo and Sebastian. I want them to let the law take its course. Something tells me that we shall win in the end. I've talked to them--and talked--but they say nothing except 'Si, doña.' But with you to help me----"

"They'd better not touch him again," broke in her lover swiftly.

"It's a great comfort to me, Manuel, that you have blotted out your own quarrel with him. It was magnanimous, what I should expect of you."

He said nothing, but the hand that lay on hers seemed suddenly to stiffen. A kind of fear ran shivering through her. Quickly she rose from the couch.

"Manuel, tell me that I am right, that you don't mean to ... hurt him?" Her dark eyes searched his unflinchingly. "You don't mean ... you can't mean ... that----?"

"Let us forget the American and remember only that we love, my beloved," he pleaded.

"No ... No!" The voice of the girl was sharp and imperative. "I want the truth. Is it that you are still thinking of murdering him, Manuel?"

The sting of her words brought a flush to his cheeks. "I fight fair, Valencia. I set against his life my own, with all the happiness that has come flooding it. Nor is it that I seek the man's life. For me he might live a thousand years--and welcome. But my honor----"

"No, Manuel. No--no--no! I will not have it. If you are betrothed to me your life is mine. You shall not risk it in a barbarous duel."

"Let us change the subject, dear heart."

"Not till I hear you say that you have given up this wicked intention of yours."

He gave up the attempt to evade her and met her fairly as one man does another.

"I can't say that, Valencia, not even for you. This quarrel lies between him and me. I have suffered humiliation and disgrace. Until those are wiped out there must be war between me and the American."

"Since the day I first wore your ring, Manuel, I have asked nothing of you. I ask now that you will forget the slight this man has put upon you ... because I ask it of you with all my heart."

A slight tremor ran through his blood. He felt himself slipping from his place with her.

"I can't, Valencia. You don't know what you ask, how impossible it is for me--a Pesquiera, son of my honored fathers--to grant such a request." He stretched his hands toward her imploringly.

"Yet you say you love me?"

"Heaven knows whether it is not true, my cousin."

"You want me to believe that, even though you refuse the first real request I ever made of you?"

"Anything else in the world that is in my power."

"It is easy to say that, Manuel, when it isn't something else I want. Give me this American's life. I shall know, then, that you love me."

"You know now," he answered quietly.

"Is love all sighs and vows?" she cried impatiently. "Will it not sacrifice pride and vanity for the object of its devotion?"

"Everything but honor," answered the man steadfastly.

She made a gesture of despair.

"What is this honor you talk so much about? It is neither Christian nor lawful nor right."

"It is a part of me, Valencia."

"Then your ideas are archaic. The duel was for a time when every man had to seek his personal redress. There is law in this twentieth century."

"Not as between man and man in the case of a personal indignity--at least, not for Manuel Pesquiera."

"But it is so needless. We know you are brave; he knows it, too. Surely your vanity----"

He smiled a little sadly.

"I think it is not vanity, but something deeper. None of my ancestors could have tolerated this stigma, nor can their son. My will has nothing to do with it, and my desire still less. It is kismet."

"Then you must know the truth--that if you kill this man I can never----"

"Never what?"

"Never marry you."

"Why?"

"His blood would stand between us."

"Do you mean that you--love him?"

Her dark eyes met his steadily.

"I don't think I mean that, Manuel. How could I mean that, since I love you and am betrothed to you? Sometimes I hate him. He is so insolent in his daring. Then, too, he is my enemy, and he has come here to set this happy valley to hate and evil. Yet, if I should hurt him, it would stand between us forever."

"I am sorry."

"Only sorry, Manuel?"

He clamped his teeth on the torrent of protest that rose within him when she handed him back his ring. It would do no good to speak more. The immutable fact stood between them.

"I did not know life could be so hard--and cruel," she cried out in a burst of passion.

She went to the open window and looked out upon the placid, peaceful valley. She had a swift, supple way of moving, as if her muscles responded with effortless ease to her volition; but the young man noticed that to-night there was a drag to her motions.

His heart yearned toward her. He longed mightily to take her in his arms and tell her that he would do as she wished. But, as he had said, something in him more potent than vanity, than pride, than his will, held him to the course he had set for himself. His views of honor might be archaic and ridiculous, but he lived by his code as tenaciously as had his fathers. Gordon had insulted and humiliated him publicly. He must apologize or give him satisfaction. Until he had done one or the other Manuel could not live at peace with himself. He had put a powerful curb upon his desire to wait as long as he had. Circumstances had for a time taken the matter out of his hands, but the time had come when he meant to press his claims. The American might refuse the duel; he could not refrain from defending himself when Pesquiera attacked.

A step sounded in the doorway, and almost simultaneously a voice.

"Doña, are you here?"

The room was lighted only by the flickering fire; but Valencia, her eyes accustomed to the darkness, recognized the boy as Juan Gardiez.

"Yes, I am here, Juan. What have you to tell me?" she said quickly.

"I do not know, señorita. But the men--Pablo, Sebastian; all of them--are gone."

"Gone where?" she breathed.

"I do not know. To-day I drove a cow and calf to Willow Springs. I am but returned. The houses are empty. Señor Barela's wife says she saw men riding up the hill toward Corbett's--eight, nine, ten of them."

"To Corbett's?" She stared whitely at him without moving. "How long ago?"

"An hour ago--or more."

"Saddle Billy at once and bring him round," the girl ordered crisply.

She turned as she spoke and went lightly to the telephone. With the need of action, of decision, her hopelessness was gone. There was a hard, bright light in her eyes that told of a resolution inflexible as tempered steel when once aroused.

"Give me Corbett's--at once, please. Hallo, Central--Corbett's----"

No answer came, though she called again and again.

"There must be something wrong with the telephone," suggested Don Manuel.

She dropped the receiver and turned quietly to him.

"The wires have been cut."

"But, why? What is it all about?"

"Merely that my men are anticipating you. They have gone to murder the American. Deputy sheriffs from Santa Fé to-day came here to arrest Pablo and Sebastian. The men suspected and were hidden. Now they have gone to punish Mr. Gordon for sending the officers."

She could not have touched him more nearly. He came to her with burning eyes.

"How do you know? What makes you think so?"

She told him, briefly and simply, giving more detailed reasons.

Without a word, he turned and left her. She could hear him rushing through the hall, traced his progress by the slamming of the door, and presently caught sight of him running toward the corral. He did not hear, or heed, her call for him to wait.

The girl hurried out of the house after him, in time to see him slap a saddle on his bronco, swing to his seat lightly, and gallop in a cloud of dust to the road.

Valencia waited for no more. Quickly running to her room, she slipped on a khaki riding-skirt. Her deft, tapering fingers moved swiftly, so that she was ready, crop in hand, booted and spurred, by the time Juan brought round her horse.

It took but an instant to lift herself to the saddle and send Billy galloping forward.

Already her cousin had disappeared in great clouds of dust over the brow of the hill.

CHAPTER XXII

THE ATTACK

Dick Gordon and Davis were sitting on the porch of their cabin, which was about an eighth of a mile from the main buildings of the Corbett place. They had returned the day before from Santa Fé, along with two deputy sheriffs who had come to arrest Pablo and Sebastian. The officers had scoured the valley for two days, and as yet had not caught a glimpse of the men they had come to get. Their inquiries were all met by a dogged ignorance on the part of the Mexicans, who had of a sudden turned surprisingly stupid. No, they had seen nothing of Pablo or of Sebastian. They knew nobody of that name--unless it was old Pablo Gardiez the señors wished to see. Many strangers desired to see him, for he was more than a hundred years old and still remembered clearly the old days.

Gordon laughed at the discomfiture of his sleuths. "I dare say they may have been talking to the very men they wanted. But everybody hangs together in this valley. I'm going out with them myself to-morrow after the gentlemen the law requires."

"No, I wouldn't do that, Dick. With every greaser in the valley simmering against you, it won't do for you to go trapsing right down among them," Davis explained.

"That's where I'm going, anyhow--to-morrow morning. The deputies are staying up at Morrow's. I'm going to phone 'em to-night that I'll ride with them to-morrow. Bet you a new hat we flush our birds."

"What's the sense of you going into the police business, Dick? I'll tell you what's ailing you. You're just honing to see Miss Valdés again. You want to go grand-standing around making her mad at you some more."

"You're a wiz, Steve," admitted his friend dryly. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I do want to see her again. Why shouldn't I?"

"What good does it do you when you quarrel all the time you're together? She's declared herself already on this proposition--told the deputies flat-footed that she wouldn't tell them anything and would help her boys to escape in any way she could. You're just like a kid showing off his muscle before a little girl in the first grade."

"All right, Steve. You don't hear me denying it."

"Denying it," snapped the old miner. "Hmp! Lot of good that would do. You're fair itching to get a chance to go down to the ranch and swagger around in plain sight of her lads. You'd be tickled to death if you could cut out the two you want and land them here in spite of her and Don Manuel and the whole pack of them. Don't I know you? Nothing but vanity--that's all there's to it."

"He's off," murmured Dick with a grin to the scenery.

"You make me tired. Why don't you try a little horse sense for a change? Honest, if you was a few years younger I'd put you acrost my knee and spank you."

Gordon lit a cigarette, but did not otherwise contribute to the conversation.

"Ain't she wearing another man's ring?" continued Davis severely. "What's bitin' you, anyhow? How many happy families you want to break up? First off, there's Pablo and Juanita. You fill up her little noodle with the notion that----"

Dick interrupted amiably. "Go to grass, you old granny. I've been putting in my spare time since I came back letting Juanita understand the facts. If she had any wrong notions she ain't got them any longer. She's all ready to kiss and make up with Pablo first chance she gets."

"Then there's Miss Valdés and this Pesky fellow, who's the whitest brown man I ever did see. Didn't he run his fool laigs off getting you free so you could go back and make love to his girl?"

"He's the salt of the earth. I'm for Don Manuel strong. But I don't reckon Miss Valdés would work well in harness with him," explained Dick.

Steve Davis snorted. "No, you reckon Dick Gordon would, though. Don't you see she's of his people--same customs, same ways, same----"

"She's no more of his people than she is of mine. Her mother was an American girl. She was educated in Washington. New Mexico is in America, not in Spain. Don't forget that, you old croaker."

"Well, she's engaged, ain't she? And to a good man. It ain't your put in."

"A good one, but the wrong one. It's a woman's privilege to change her mind. I'm here to help her change it," announced the young man calmly. "Say, look at Jimmie Corbett hitting the high spots this way."

Jimmie, not yet recovered from a severe fright, stopped to explain the adventure that had befallen him while he had been night fishing.

"I seen spooks, Mr. Gordon--hundreds of 'em--coming down the river bank on horseback--honest to goodness, I did."

"Jimmie, if I had your imagination----"

But Davis cut into Dick's smiling incredulity:

"Did you say on horseback, Jimmie?"

"Yes, sir, on horseback. Hope to die if they weren't--'bout fifty of them."

"You better run along home before they catch you, Jimmie," advised the old miner gravely.

The boy went like a streak of light. Davis turned quietly to his partner.

"I reckon it's come, Dick."

"You believe the boy did see some men on horseback? It might have been only shadows."

"No, sir. His imagination wouldn't have put spooks on horseback. We got no time to argue. You going to hold the fort here or take to the hills?"

"You think they mean to attack us in the open?"

"They're hoping to surprise us, I reckon. That's why they're coming along the creek instead of the road. Hadn't 'a' been for Jimmie, they would have picked us off from the porch before we could say 'Jack Robinson.'"

Both men had at once stepped within the log cabin, and, as they talked, were strapping on ammunition belts and looking to their rifles and revolvers.

"There are too many doors and windows to this cabin. We can't hold it against them. We'll take the trail from the back door that leads up to the old spring. From up there we'll keep an eye on them," said Dick.

"I see 'em coming," cried the older man softly from the front window. "They ain't on the trail, but slipping up through the rocks. One--two--three--four--Lord, there's no end to the beggars! They're on foot now. Left their hawsses, I expect, down by the river."

Quietly the two men stepped from the back door of the cabin and swiftly ascended the little trail that rose at a sharp acclivity to the spring. At some height above the cabin, they crouched behind boulders and watched the cautious approach of the enemy.

"Not taking any chances, are they?" murmured Gordon.

Steve laughed softly.

"Heard about that chicken-killing affair, mebbe, and none of them anxious to add a goose to the exhibit."

"It would be right easy to give that surprise party a first-class surprise," chuckled Dick. "Shall I drop a pill or two down among them, just to let them know we're on the premises?"

"Now, don't you, Dick. We'll have to put half of 'em out of biz, and get shot up by the rest, if you do."

"All right. I'll be good, Steve. I was only joking, anyhow. But it ce'tainly is right funny to sit up here and watch them snake up to the empty cabin. See that fellow with the Mexican hat? I believe it's my jealous friend Pablo. He's ce'tainly anxious to get one Gringo's scalp. I could drop a stone down on him so he'd jump about 'steen feet."

"There's one reached the window. He's looking in mighty careful, you bet. Now he's beckoning the other fellows. I got a notion he's made a discovery."

"Got on to the fact that the nest's empty. They're pouring in like bees. Can you make out how many there are? I count nine," said Dick.

"They're having a powwow now. All talking with their hands, the way greasers do. Go to it, boys. A regular debating society, ain't you?"

"Hello! What's that mean?" broke in Gordon.

One of the Mexicans had left the rest, and was running toward the Corbett house.

"Gone to find whether we're on the porch with the family, up there," continued the young man, answering his own question.

"What's the matter with beating it while we've got a chanct?"

"I'm going to stay right here. You can go if you like, Steve?"

"Oh, well. I just suggested it." Davis helped himself to a chew of tobacco placidly.

"Fellow coming back from the house already," he presently added.

"Got the wrong address again. They'll be happening on the right one pretty soon."

"Soon as they're amply satisfied we ain't under the beds, or hid between the covers of some of them magazines. Blamed if they ain't lit a lamp."

Gordon gave a sudden exclamation of dismay. A Mexican had appeared at the back door of the cottage with a tin box in his hand.

"I'm the blamedest idiot out of an asylum," he cried bitterly. "All the proofs of my claim are in that box. You know I brought it back from Santa Fé with me."

"Ain't that too bad?"

Gordon rose, the lines of his mouth set fast and hard.

"I'm going down after it. If I lose those papers, the whole game's spoilt for me. I've got to have them, and I'm going to."

"Don't be a goat. How can you take it from a whole company of them?"

"I'll watch my chance. It may be the fellow will hide it somewhere till he wants it again."

"I'm going, too, then."

"See here, Steve. Be sensible. If we both go down, it's a sure thing they will stumble on us."

"Too late, anyhow. They're coming up after us."

"So much the better. We'll cut across to the left, slip down, and take them in the rear. Likely as not we'll find it there."

"All right. Whatever you say, Dick."

They slipped away into the semi-darkness, taking advantage of every bit of cover they could find. Not until they were a long stone's throw from the trail did the young miner begin the descent.

Occasionally they could hear voices over to the right as they silently slipped down. It was no easy thing to negotiate that stiff mountainside in the darkness, where a slip would have sent one of them rolling down into the sharp rock-slide beneath. Presently they came to a rockrim, a sheer descent of twenty-five feet down the perpendicular face of a cliff.

They followed the ledge to the left, hoping to find a trough through which they might discover a way down. But in this they were disappointed.

"We'll have to go back. There's a place we passed where perhaps it may be done. We've got to try it, anyhow," said Gordon, in desperation.

Retracing their steps, they came to the point Dick had meant. It looked bad enough, in all conscience, but from the rocks there jutted halfway down a dwarf oak that had found rooting in a narrow cleft.

The young man worked his body over the edge, secured a foothold in some tiny scarp that broke the smoothness of the face, and groped, with one hand and then the other, for some hold that would do to brace his weight. He found one, lowered himself gingerly, and tested another foothold in a little bunch of dry moss.

"All right. My rifle, Steve."

It was handed down. At that precise moment there came to them the sound of approaching voices.

"Your gun, Steve! Quick. Now, then, over you come. That's right--no, the other hand--your foot goes there--easy, now."

They stood together on a three-inch ledge, their heels projecting over space. Nor had they reached this precarious safety any too soon, for already their pursuers were passing along the rim above.

One of them stopped on the edge, scarce eight feet above them.

"They must have come this way," he said to a companion. "But I expect they're hitting the trail about a mile from here."

"Si, Pablo. Can you feed me a cigareet?" the other asked.

The men below, scarce daring to breathe, waited, while the matches glimmered and the cigarettes puffed to a glow. Every instant they anticipated discovery; and they were in such a position that, if it came, neither of them could use his weapons. For they were cramped against the wall with their rifles by their sides, so bound by the situation that to have lifted them to aim would have been impossible.

"The American--he has escaped us this time," one of them said as they moved off.

"Maldito, the devil has given him wings to fly away," replied Pablo.

After the sound of their footsteps had died, Gordon resumed his descent. He reached the stunted oak in safety, and was again joined by his friend.

"Looks like we're caught here, Steve. There ain't a sign of a foothold below," the younger man whispered.

"Mebbe the branches of that tree will bend over."

"We'll have to try it, anyhow. If it breaks with me, I'll get to the bottom, just the same. Here goes."

Catching hold of the branches, he swung down and groped with his feet for a resting-place.

"Nothing doing, Steve."

"What blamed luck!"

"Hold on! Here's a cleft, away over to the right. Let me get a hold on that gun to steady me. That's all right. The rest's easy. I'll give you a hand across--that's right. Now we're there."

At the very foot of the cliff an unexplainable accident occurred. Dick's rifle went off with noise enough to wake the seven sleepers.

"Come on, Steve. We got to get out of here," he called to his partner, and began to run down the hill toward their cabin.

He covered ground so fast that the other could not keep up with him. From above there came the crack of a rifle, then another and another, as the men on the ridge sighted their prey. A spatter of bullets threw up the dirt around them. Dick felt a red-hot flame sting his leg, but, though he had been hit, to his surprise he was not checked.

Topping the brow of a little rise, he caught sight of the cabin, and, to his consternation, saw that smoke was pouring from the door and that within it was alight with flames.

"The beggars have set fire to it," he cried aloud.

So far as he could see, four men had been left below. They did not at first catch sight of him as he dodged forward in the shadows of the alders at the foot of the hill. Nor did they see him even when he stopped among the rocks at the rear, for their eyes were on Davis and their attention focused upon him.

He had come puffing to the brow of the hillock Gordon had already passed, when a shout from the ridge apprised those below of his presence. Cut off above and below, there was nothing left for Steve but a retreat down the road. He could not possibly advance in the face of four rifles, and he knew, too, that the best aid he could offer his friend was to deflect the attention of the watchers from him.

He fell back promptly, running from boulder to boulder in his retreat, pursued cautiously by the enemy. His ruse would have succeeded admirably, so far as Dick was concerned, except for that young man himself. He could not sit quiet and see his friend the focus of the fire.

Wherefore, it happened that the attackers of Davis were halted momentarily by a disconcerting fusillade from the rear. The "American devil" had come out into the open, and was dropping lead among them.

At this juncture a rider galloped into view from the river gorge along which wound the road. He pulled his jaded horse to a halt beside the old miner and leaped to the ground.

Without waiting an instant for their fire to cease, he ran straight forward toward the pursuing Mexicans.

As he came into the moonlight, Dick saw with surprise that the newcomer was Don Manuel Pesquiera. He was hatless, apparently too unarmed. But not for a second did this stop him as he sprinted forward.

Straight for the spitting rifles Don Manuel ran, face ablaze with anger. He had covered half the distance before the weapons wavered groundward.

"Don Manuel!" cried Sebastian, perturbed by this apparition flying through the night toward them.

Dick waited only long enough to make sure that hostilities had for the moment ceased against his friend before beginning his search for the tin box.

He quartered back and forth over the ground behind the burning house without result, circled it rapidly, his eyes alert to catch the shine of the box in the moonbeams, and examined the space among the rocks at the base of the hill. Nowhere did he see what he wanted.

"I'll have to take a whirl at the house. Some of them may have carried it back inside," he told himself.

As he stepped toward the door, Don Manuel came round the corner. At his heels were Steve and the four Mexicans who had but a few minutes before been trying industriously to exterminate the miner.

Don Manuel bowed punctiliously to Gordon.

"I beg to express my very great regrettance at this untimely attack," he said.

"Don't mention it, don. This business of chasing over the hills in the moonlight is first-class for the circulation of the blood, I expect. Most of us got quite a bit of exercise, first and last."

Dick spoke with light irony; but one distraught half of his attention was upon the burning house.

"Nevertheless, you will permeet me to regret, señor," returned the young Spaniard stiffly.

"Ce'tainly. You're naturally sore that you didn't get first crack at me. Don't blame you a bit," agreed Dick cheerfully but absently. "Funny thing is that one of your friends happened to send his message to my address, all right. Got me in the left laig, just before you butted in and spoiled their picnic so inconsiderate."

"You are then wounded, sir?"

"Not worth mentioning, don. Just a little accident. Wouldn't happen again in a thousand years. Never did see such poor shots as your valley lads. Say, will you excuse me just a minute? I got some awful important business to attend to."

"Most entirely, Señor Gordon."

"Thanks. Won't be a minute."

To Pesquiera's amazement, he dived through the door, from which smoke poured in clouds, and was at once lost to sight within.

"He is a madman," the Spaniard murmured.

"Or devil," added Sebastian significantly. "You will see, señor, he will come out safe and unharmed."

But he did not come out at all, though the minutes dragged themselves away one after another.

"I'm going after him," cried Davis, starting forward.

But Don Manuel flung strong arms about him, and threw the miner back into the hands of the Mexicans.

"Hold him," he cried in Spanish.

"Let me go. Let me go, I say!" cried the miner, struggling with those who detained him.

But Pesquiera had already gone to the rescue. He, too, plunged through the smoke. Blinded unable to breathe, he groped his way across the door lintel into the blazing hut.

The heat was intense. Red tongues of flame licked out from all sides toward him. But he would not give up, though he was gasping for breath and could not see through the dense smoke.

A sweep of wind brushed the smoke aside for an instant, and he saw the body of his enemy lying on the floor before him. He stooped, tried to pick it up, but was already too far gone himself.

Almost overcome, he sank to his knees beside Gordon. Close to the floor the air was still breathable. He filled his lungs, staggered to his feet, and tried to drag the unconscious man across the threshold with him.

A hundred fiery dragons sprang unleashed at him. The heat, the stifling smoke were more than flesh and blood could endure. He stumbled over a fallen chair, got up and plowed forward again, still with that dead weight in his arms; collapsed again, and yet once more pulled himself to his feet by the sheer strength of the dogged will in him.

So, at last, like a drunken man, he reeled into safety, the very hair and clothes of the man on fire from the inferno he had just left.

A score of eager hands were ready to relieve him of his burden, to support his lurching footsteps. Two of them were the strong brown hands of the woman he loved more than any other on earth, the woman who had galloped into sight just in time to see him come staggering from that furnace with the body of the man who was his hated rival. It was her soft hands that smothered the fire in his hair, that dragged the burning coat from his back.

He smiled wanly, murmured "Valencia," and fainted in her arms.

Gordon clutched in his stiffened fingers a tin box blistered by the heat.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE TIN BOX

Dick Gordon lay on a bed in a sunny south room at the Corbett place.

He was swathed in bandages, and had something the appearance of a relic of the Fourth of July, as our comic weeklies depict Young America the day after that glorious occasion. But, except for one thing which he had on his mind, the Coloradoan was as imperturbably gay as ever.

He had really been a good deal less injured than his rescuer; for, though a falling rafter had struck him down as he turned to leave the hut, this very accident had given him the benefit of such air as there had been in the cabin. Here and there he had been slightly burned, but he had not been forced to inhale smoke.

Wound in leg and all, the doctor had considered him out of danger long before he felt sure of Don Manuel.

The young Spaniard lay several days with his life despaired of. The most unremitting nursing on the part of his cousin alone pulled him through.

She would not give up; would not let his life slip away. And, in the end, she had won her hard fight. Don Manuel, too, was on the road to recovery.

While her cousin had been at the worst, Valencia Valdés saw the wounded Coloradoan only for a minute of two each day; but, with Pesquiera's recovery, she began to divide her time more equitably.

"I've been wishing I was the bad case," Dick told her whimsically when she came in to see him. "I'll bet I have a relapse so the head nurse won't always be in the other sick room."

"Manuel is my cousin, and he has been very, very ill," she answered in her low, sweet voice, the color in her olive cheeks renewed at his words.

The eyes of the Anglo-Saxon grew grave.

"How is Don Manuel to-night?"

"Better. Thank Heaven."

"That's what the doctor told me."

Dick propped himself on an elbow and looked directly at her, that affectionate smile of his on his face.

"Miss Valdés, do you know, ever since I've been well enough, I've been hoping that if one of us had to cross the Great Divide it would be me?"

Her troubled eyes studied him.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it would seem more right that way. I came here and made all this trouble in the valley. I insulted him. I had in mind another hurt to him that we won't discuss just now. Then, when it comes to a showdown, he just naturally waltzes into Hades and saves my life for me at the risk of his own. No, ma'am, I sure couldn't have stood it if he had died."

"I'm glad you feel that way," she answered softly, her eyes dim.

"How else could I feel, and be a white man? I tell you, it makes me feel mean to think about that day I threw him in the water. Just because I'm a great big husky, about the size of two of him, I abused my strength and----"

"Just a moment," the girl smiled. "You are forgetting he struck you first."

"Oh, well! I reckon I could have stood that."

"Will you be willing to tell him how you feel about it?"

"Will I? Well, I guess yes."

The young woman's eyes were of starry radiance. "I'm so glad--so happy. I'm sure everything will come right, now."

He nodded, smiling.

"That's just the way I feel, Miss Valencia. They couldn't go wrong, after this--that is, they couldn't go clear wrong."

"I'm quite certain of that."

"I want to go on record as saying that Manuel Pesquiera is the gamest man I know. That isn't all. He's a thoroughbred on top of it. If I live to be a hundred I'll never be as fine a fellow. My hat's off to him."

There was a mist in her soft eyes as she poured a glass of ice water for him. "I'm so glad to hear you say that. He is such a splendid fellow."

He observed she was no longer wearing the solitaire and thought it might be to spare his feelings. So he took the subject as a hunter does a fence.

"I wish you all the joy in the world, Miss Valdés. I know you're going to be very happy. I've got my wedding present all picked out for you," he said audaciously.

She was busy tidying up his dresser, but he could see the color flame into her cheeks.

"You have a very vivid imagination, Mr. Gordon."

"Not necessary in this case," he assured her.

"You're quite sure of that, I suppose," she suggested with a touch of ironic mockery.

"I haven't read any announcement in the paper," he admitted.

"It is always safe to wait for that."

"Which is another way of saying that it is none of my business. But then you see it is." He offered no explanation of this statement, nor did he give her time to protest. "Now about that wedding present, Miss Valdés. It's in a tin box I had in the cabin before the fire. Can you tell me whether it was saved? My recollection is that I had it at the time the rafter put me to sleep. But of course I don't remember anything more till I found myself in bed here."

"A tin box? Yes; you had it in your hands when Manuel brought you out. They could hardly pry your fingers from it."

"Would you mind having that box brought to me, Miss Valdés? I want to be sure the present hasn't been injured by fire."

"Of course not. I don't just know where it is, but it must be somewhere about the place."

She was stepping toward the door, with that fine reaching grace of a fawn that distinguished her, when his voice stopped her. She stopped, delicate head poised and half turned, apparently waiting for further directions.

"Not just this minute, please. I've been lying here all day, with nobody but Steve. Finally he got so restless I had to turn him out to pasture. It wouldn't be right hospitable to send you away so soon. That box can wait till you have had all of me you can stand. What I need is good nursing, and I need it awful bad," he explained plaintively.

"Has Mrs. Corbett been neglecting you?"

"Mrs. Corbett--no!" he shouted with a spirit indomitable, but a voice still weak. "She's on earth merely to cook me chicken broth and custard. It's you that's been neglecting me."

The gleam of a strange fire was in her dark, bright eyes; in her cheeks the soft glow of beating color.

"And my business on earth is to fight you, is it not? But I can't do that till you are on your feet again, sir."

He gave her back her debonair smile.

"I'm not so sure of that. Women fight with the weapons of their sex--and often win, I'm told."

"You mean, perhaps, tears and appeals for pity. They are weapons I cannot use, sir. I had liefer lose."

"I dare say there are other weapons in your arsenal. I know you're too game to use those you've named."

"What others?" she asked quietly.

He let his eyes rest on her, sweep over her, and come back to the meeting with hers. But he did not name them. Instead, he came to another angle of the subject.

"You never know when you are licked, do you? Why don't you ask me to compromise this land grant business?"

"What sort of a compromise have you to offer, sir?" she said after a pause.

"Have your lawyers told you yet that you have no chance?"

"Would it be wise for me to admit I have none, before I go to discuss the terms of the treaty?" she asked, and put it so innocently that he acknowledged the hit with a grin.

"I thought that, if you knew you were going to lose, you might be easier to deal with. I'm such a fellow to want the whole thing in my bargains."

"If that's how you feel, I don't think I'll compromise."

"Well, I didn't really expect you would. I just mentioned it."

"It was very good of you. Now I think I'll go back to my cousin."

"If you must I'm coming over to his room as soon as the doc will let me, and as soon as he'll see me."

She gave him a sudden flash of happy eyes. "I hope you will. There must be no more trouble between him and you. There couldn't be after this, could there?"

He shook his head.

"Not if it takes two to make a quarrel. He can say what he wants to, make a door-mat out of me, go gunning after me till the cows come home, and I won't do a thing but be a delegate to a peace conference. No, ma'am. I'm through."

"You don't know how glad I am to hear it."

"Are you as anxious I should make up my quarrel with you as the ones with your friends?" he asked boldly.

The effrontery of this lean, stalwart young American--if effrontery it was, and no other name seemed to define it--surprised another dash of roses into the olive.

"The way to make up your quarrel with me is to make up those with my friends," she answered.

"All right. Suits me. I'll call those deputies off and send them home. Pablo and Sebastian will never go to the pen on my evidence. They're in the clear so far as I'm concerned."

She gave him both her hands. "Thank you. Thank you. I'm so glad."

The tears rose to her eyes. She bit her lip, turned and left the room.

He called after her:

"Please don't forget my tin box."

"I'll remember your precious box," she called back with a pretense of scorn.

He laughed to himself softly. There was sunshine in his eyes.

She had resolved to leave him to Mrs. Corbett in future, but within the hour she was back.

"I came about your tin box. Nobody seems to know where it is. Everybody remembers having seen it in your hands. I suppose we left it on the ground when we brought you to the house, but I can't find anybody that removed it. Perhaps some of my people have seen it. I'll send and ask them."

He smiled disconsolately.

"I may as well say good-bye to it."

"If you mean that my boys are thieves," she retorted hotly.

"I didn't say that, ma'am; but mebbe I did imply they wouldn't return that particular box, when they found what was in it. I shouldn't blame them if they didn't."

"I should. Very much. This merely shows you don't understand us at all, Mr. Gordon."

"I wish I had that box. It ce'tainly disarranges my plans to have it gone," he said irritably.

"I assure you I didn't take it."

"I don't lay it to you, though it would ce'tainly be to your advantage to take it," he laughed, already mollified.

"Will you please explain that?"

"All my claims of title to this land grant are in that box, Miss Valdés," he remarked placidly, as if it were a matter of no consequence.

She went white at his words.

"And it is lost--probably in the hands of my people. We must get it back."

"But you're on the other side of the fence," he reminded her gaily.

With dignity she turned on him.

"Do you think I want to beat you that way? Do you think I am a highwayman, or that I shall let my people be?"

"You make them draw the line between murder and robbery," he suggested pleasantly.

"I couldn't stop them from attacking you, but I can see they don't keep your papers--all the more, that it is to their interest and mine to keep them."

She said it with such fine girlish pride, her head thrown a little back, her eyes gleaming, scorn of his implied distrust in her very carriage. For long he joyfully carried the memory of it.

Surely, she was the rarest creature it had ever been his fortune to meet. Small wonder the gallant Spaniard Don Manuel loved her. Small wonder her people fed on her laughter, and were despondent at her frowns.

Dick Gordon was awake a good deal that night, for the pain and the fever were still with him; but the hours were short to him, full of joy and also of gloom. Shifting pictures of her filled the darkness. His imagination saw her in many moods, in many manners. And when from time to time he dropped into light sleep, it was to carry her into his dreams.

CHAPTER XXIV

DICK GORDON APOLOGIZES

Don Manuel was at first too spent a man even to wish to get well. As his cousin's nursing dragged him farther and farther back into this world from which he had so nearly slipped, he was content to lie still and take the goods the gods provided.

She was with him for the present. That sufficed. Whether he lived or died he did not care a hand's turn; but the while Fate flipped a coin to determine whether it should be life or death for him, he had Valencia's love as he feared he would never have it in case he recovered.

For these days she lived for him alone. Her every thought and desire had been for him. On this his soul fed, since he felt that, as they slipped back into the ordinary tide of life, she would withdraw herself gently but surely from him.

He had fought against the conviction that she loved his rival, the Colorado claimant to the valley. He had tried to persuade himself that her interest in the miner was natural under the circumstances and entirely independent of sentiment. But in the bottom of his heart such assurances did not convince.

"You will be able to sit up in a few days. It's wonderful how you have improved," she told him one day as she finished changing his pillow.

"Yes, I shall be well soon. You will be relieved of me," he said with a kind of gentle sadness.

"As if I wanted to be," she reproved softly, her hand smoothing down his hair.

"No. You're very good to me. You don't want to be rid of me. But it's best you should be. I have had all of you that's good for me, my cousin, unless I could have more than I dare hope."

She looked through the window at the sunlit warmth of the land, and, after a long time, said:

"Must we talk of that, Manuel?"

"No, niña--not if I am once sure. I have guessed; but I must be certain beyond the possibility of mistake. Is my guess right? That it can never be."

She turned dim eyes on him and nodded. A lump had risen to her throat that forbade speech.

"I can still say, dearest, that I am glad to have loved you," he answered cheerfully, after an instant's silence. "And I can promise that I shall trouble you no more. Shall we talk of something else?"

"There is one thing I should like to tell you first," she said with pretty timidity. "How proud I am that such a man could have loved me. You are the finest man I know. I must be a foolish girl not to--care for you--that way."

"No. A woman's heart goes where it must. If a man loses, he loses."

She choked over her words. "It doesn't seem fair. I promised. I wore your ring. I said that if you saved ... him ... I would marry you. Manuel, I ... I'll keep faith if you'll take me and be content to wait for ... that kind of love to grow."

"No, my cousin. I have wooed and lost. Why should you be bound by a pledge made at such a time? As your heart tells you to do, so you must do." He added after a pause: "It is this American, is it not?"

Again she nodded twice, not looking at him lest she see the pain in his eyes.

"I wish you joy, Valencia--a world full of it, so long as life lasts."

He took her fingers in his, and kissed them before he passed lightly to another subject:

"Have you heard anything yet of the tin box of Mr. Gordon's?"

She accepted the transition gratefully, for she was so moved she was afraid lest she break down.

"Not yet. It is strange, too, where it has gone. I have had inquiries made every where."

"For me, I hope it is never found. Why should you feel responsibility to search for these papers that will ruin you and your tenants?"

"If my men had not attacked and tried to murder him he would still have his evidence. I seek only to put him in the position he was in before we injured him."

"You must judge for yourself, Valencia. But, if you don't mind, I shall continue to wish you failure in your search," he replied.

It was now that Jimmie Corbett came into the room to say that Mr. Gordon would like to call on Don Manuel, if the latter felt able to receive him.

Pesquiera did not glance at his cousin. He answered the boy at once.

"Tell Mr. Gordon I shall be very glad to see him," he said quietly.

Nor did he look at her after the boy had left the room, lest his gaze embarrass her, but gave his attention wholly to propping himself up on his elbow.

Dick stood a moment filling the doorway before he came limping into the room. From that point he bowed to Miss Valdés, then moved forward to the bed.

He did not offer to shake hands, but stood looking down at his rival, with an odd look of envy on his face. But it was the envy of a brave and generous man, who acknowledged victory to his foe.

"I give you best, Don Manuel," he finally said. "You've got me beat at every turn of the road. You saved my life again, and mighty near paid with your own. There ain't anything to say that will cover that, I reckon."

The Spaniard's eyes met his steadily, but Pesquiera did not say a word. He was waiting to see what the other meant.

"You're a gamer man than I am, and a better one. All I can say is that I'm sorry and ashamed of myself for the way I treated you. If you still want to fight me, I'll stand up and give you a chance to pepper me. Anything you think right."

"If you put it so, sir, I have no choice but to join you in regrets and hopes of future amity."

"I can understand that you'd like to spill me over a ten-acre lot, and that you don't listen to my apologies with any joy," said the Coloradoan, smiling whimsically down at his former foe.

"I do not forget that the first offense was mine, Señor Gordon," the Spaniard answered.

Then came Jimmie Corbett again with a message for Miss Valdés.

"Pablo wants to see you, ma'am. Just rode over from the ranch. Says it's important."

The hands of the two men met in a strong grip as Valencia left the room, and so, too, did their steady gazes. Each of them knew that the other was his rival for the heart of the girl. Oddly enough, each thought the other was the successful suitor. But there was in each some quality of manliness that drew them together in spite of themselves.

Valencia found Pablo sitting on the porch. A rifle lay across his knees ready for emergencies. The deputies had ridden away to the other end of the valley that morning, but Menendez did not intend to be caught napping in case of their unexpected return.

Miss Valdés smiled. "You needn't be so careful, Pablo. I bring you good news--better than you deserve. Mr. Gordon has promised to drop the cases against you and Sebastian. Even if the officers arrest you, nothing can come of it except a trip to Santa Fé for a few days. If I were you I would give myself up. The rewards have been withdrawn, so it is not likely your friends will betray you."

"But, Doña, are you sure? Will this Americano keep his word? Is it certain they will not hold me in prison?"

"I tell you it is sure. Is that not enough? Did you find Mr. Gordon so ready to give you his word and break it when he was your prisoner?"

"True, Doña. He laughed at us and told us to kill him. He is a brave man."

"And brave men do not lie."

Pablo turned to his horse and took down from the horn of the saddle a gunny sack tied to it. This he opened. From it he drew a tin box that had been badly blistered with heat.

"It is Señor Gordon's tin box. After you carried him to the house here the other night I found it under a cottonwood. So I took it home with me. They are papers. Important---- Is it not so?"

"Yes. I have been looking everywhere for them. You did right to bring them back to me."

"Perhaps they may help you win the land. Eh, Doña?"

"Perhaps. You know I offered a reward of twenty-five dollars for the box. It is yours. Buy some furniture with it when you and Juanita go to housekeeping."

"That is all past, alas, Señorita. Juanita looks down her nose when I am near. She does not speak to me."

"Foolish boy! That is a sign she thinks much of you. Tell her you did wrong to accuse her. Beg her to forgive you. Do not sulk, but love her and she will smile on you."

"But--this Señor Gordon?"

"All nonsense, Pablo. I have talked with Juanita. It is you she loves. Go to her and be good to her. She is back there in the milkhouse churning. But remember she is only a girl--so young, and motherless, too. It is the part of a man to be kind and generous and forbearing to a woman. He must be gentle--always gentle, if he would hold her love. Can you do that, Pablo? Or are you only a hot-headed, selfish, foolish boy?"

"I will try, Doña," he answered humbly. "For always have I love' her since she was such a little muchacha."

"Then go. Don't tell her I sent you. She must feel you have come because you could no longer stay away."

Pablo flashed his teeth in a smile of understanding and took the path that led round the house. He followed it to the sunken cellar that had been built for a milkhouse. Noiselessly he tiptoed down the steps and into the dark room. The plop-plop of a churn dasher told him Juanita was here even before his eyes could make her out in the darkness.

Presently he saw more clearly the slender figure bent a little wearily over the churn. Softly he trod forward. His hand went out and closed on the handle above hers. In startled surprise she turned.

"You--Pablo!" she cried faintly.

"I have so longed to see you--to come to you and tell you I was wrong, niña---- Oh, you don't know how I have wanted to come. But my pride--my hard, foolish pride--it held me back. But no longer, heart of my heart, can I wait. Tell me that you forgive--that you will love me again--in spite of what I said and have done. I cannot get along without my little Juanita," he cried in the soft Spanish that was native to them both.

She was in his arms, crying softly, nestling close to him so that his love might enfold her more warmly. Always Juanita had been a soft, clinging child, happy only in an atmosphere of affection. She responded to caresses as a rose does to the sunlight. Pablo had been her first lover, the most constant of them all. She had relied upon him as a child does upon its mother. When he had left her in anger and not returned she had been miserably unhappy. Now all was well again, since Pablo had come back to her.

CHAPTER XXV

THE PRINCE CONSORT

Valencia returned to Don Manuel's room carrying a gunny sack. She found Dick Gordon sitting beside his rival's bed amiably discussing with him the respective values of the Silver Doctor and the Jock Scott for night fishing. Dick rose at her entrance to offer a chair.

She was all fire and animation. Her eyes sparkled, reflecting light as little wavelets of a sun-kissed lake.

"Supreme Court decision just come down in your favor?" asked the other claimant to the valley with genial irony.

"No, but--guess what I've got here."

"A new hat," hazarded Gordon, furrowing his brow in deep thought.

"Treason!" protested Manuel. "Does the lady live who would put her new hat in a gunny sack?"

"You may have three guesses, each of you," replied Miss Valdés, dimpling.

The miner guessed two guinea pigs, a million dollars, and a pair of tango slippers. Pesquiera went straight to the mark.

"A tin box," he said.

"Right, Manuel. Pablo brought it. He had just heard I was looking for the box--says he found it the night of the fire and took it home with him. His idea was that we might use the papers to help our fight."

"Good idea," agreed the Cripple Creek man, with twinkling eyes. "What are you going to do with the papers now you have them, Miss Valdés?"

"Going to give them to their owner," she replied, and swung the sack into his lap.

He took out a bunch of keys from his pocket, fitted one to the lock of the box, and threw up the lid. Carefully he looked the papers over.

"They are all here--every last one. I'm still lord of the Rio Chama Valley--unless my lawyers are fooling me mighty bad."

"It's a difference of opinion that makes horse races, Señor," retorted Manuel gaily from his pillows.

"I'll bet one of Mrs. Corbett's cookies there's no difference of opinion between my lawyers and those of Miss Valdés. What do you honestly think yourself about the legal end, ma'am?"

"I think that law and justice were divorced a good many years ago," she answered promptly.

"Which is another way of saying that you expect me to win out."

"By advice of counsel we decline to make any admissions, sir."

"You don't have to say a word. The facts do all the talking that is necessary." Gordon glanced in a business-like fashion over several papers. "This would be a fine time for friend Pablo to attack me again. Here are several of the original papers--deed of the grant, map of it with the first survey made, letters showing that old Moreño lived several years in the valley after your people were driven out at the time of the change in government. By the way, here's a rather interesting document. Like to look at it, Miss Valdés?"

He handed to her a paper done up in a blue cover after the fashion of modern legal pleadings. Valencia glanced it over. Her eye caught at a phrase which interested her and ran rapidly down the page.

"But--I don't understand what this means--unless----"

She looked up quickly at Gordon, an eager question in her face.

"It means what it says, though it's all wrapped up in dictionary words the way all law papers are."

Valencia passed the document to Pesquiera. "Read that, and tell me what you think it means, Manuel." Her face was flushed with excitement, and in her voice there was a suggestion of tremulousness.

The Spaniard read, and as he read his eyes, too, glowed.

"It means, my cousin, that you have to do with a very knightly foe. By this paper he relinquishes all claim, title and interest in the Moreño grant to Valencia Valdés, who he states to be in equity the rightful owner of same. Valencia, I congratulate you. But most of all I congratulate Mr. Gordon. Few men have the courage to make a gift of a half million acres of land merely because they have no moral title to it."

"Sho! I never did want the land, anyhow. I got interested in the scrap. That's all." The miner looked as embarrassed as if he had been caught stealing a box of cigars.

The young woman had gone from pink to white. The voice in which she spoke was low and unsteady.

"It's a splendid thing to do--the gift of a king. I don't know--that I can accept it--even for the sake of my people. I know now you would be fair to them. You wouldn't throw them out. You would give new deeds to those who have bought land, wouldn't you?"

"How are you going to keep from accepting it, Miss Valdés? That paper is a perfectly legal document."

She smiled faintly. "I could light a cigarette, Mr. Gordon, as you once did."

"Not a bit of use. I wired to Santa Fé by Steve to have that paper--the original of it--put on record this afternoon. By this time I expect you're the princess of the Rio Chama all right."

She still hesitated, the tide of feeling running full in her heart. It was all very well for this casual youth to make her a present of a half million acres of land in this debonair way, but she could not persuade herself to accept so munificent a gift.

"I don't know--I'll have to think--if you are the legal owner----"

"You're welching," he told her amiably. "I make a legal deed of conveyance because we are all agreed that my title isn't morally good. We're not a bunch of pettifoggers. All of us are aiming to get at what's right in settling this thing. You know what is right. So do I. So does Mr. Pesquiera. Enough said. All we have to do then is to act according to the best we know. Looks simple to me."

"Maybe it wouldn't look so simple if you were at the other end of the bargain, Mr. Gordon. To give is more blessed than to receive, you know."

"Sure. I understand that. I get the glory and do all the grand-standing. But you'll have to stand for it, I reckon."

"I'm going to think it over. Then I'll let you know what I can do." She looked at him sharply, a new angle of the situation coming home to her. "You meant to do this from the first, Mr. Gordon."

"Not quite from the first. After you had taken me to your ranch and I had seen how things stood between you and the folks in the valley I did. You've smoked me, ma'am. I'm a born grand-stander." He laughed in amusement at himself. "I wanted to be it, the hero of the piece, the white-haired boy. But that wasn't the way it panned out. I was elected villain most unanimous, and came mighty near being put out of business a few times before I could make the public sabe I was only play acting. Funny how things work out. Right at the last when I've got the spotlight all trained for me to star and the music playing soft and low, Don Manuel here jumps in and takes the stage from me by rescuing the villain from a fiery furnace. I don't get any show," he complained whimsically.

Valencia smiled. "The action of the play has all revolved around you, anyhow. That ought to satisfy you. Without you there wouldn't have been any entertainment at all."

"I've had plenty of fun for my money. I'm not making any complaint at all. When a pretender invades a country to put the reigning queen out of business he has a license to expect a real warm welcome. Well, I got it."

Once again Jimmie Corbett appeared in the doorway, this time with a yellow envelope which he handed to Gordon.

Dick read the enclosed telegram and passed it to Pesquiera.

The Spaniard waved his hand and made a feeble attempt at a cheer.

"Am I to hear the good news?" Valencia asked.

"Read it, Mr. Pesquiera."

Manuel read:

"Relinquishment of claim to Moreño grant in favor of Valencia Valdés filed ten minutes ago. Have you taken my advice in regard to consolidation?

KATE UNDERWOOD."

"What does she mean about a consolidation?" asked Miss Valdés.

Dick flushed. "Oh, that was just something we were talking over--some foolishness or other, I reckon. Nothing to it. The important point is that the legal fight is over. You're now the owner of both the Valdés and the Moreño claims."

"Le roi est mort! Vive la reine!" cried Manuel gaily.

"I can't be said to have had a very peaceful reign. Wish you better luck, ma'am." He let his eyes rest drolly on the invalid for a moment. "And I hope when you take a prince consort to share the throne he'll meet all expectations--which I'm sure he will."

Dick shook hands with the bright-eyed flushing girl.

She laughed in the midst of her blushes. "Gracias, señor! I'll save your good wishes till they are needed."

"Adios, Don Manuel. See you to-morrow if you're up to it. I expect you've had enough excitement for one day."

"I'll let you know then whether I can accept your gift, Mr. Gordon," Valencia told him.

"That's all settled," he assured her as he left.

* * * * *

It was in the evening that he saw her again. Dick had stopped in the hall on the way to his room to examine a .303 Savage carbine he found propped against the wall. He had picked the weapon up when a voice above hailed him. He looked up. Valencia was leaning across the balustrade of the stairway.

"I want to talk with you, Mr. Gordon."

"Same here," he answered promptly. "I mean I want to talk with you. Let's take a walk."

"No. You're not up to a walk. We'll drive. My rig is outside."

Ten minutes later they were flying over the hard roads packed with rubble from decomposed sandstone. Neither of them spoke for some time. He was busy with the reins, and she was content to lean back and watch him. To her there was something very attractive about the set of his well-modeled head upon the broad shoulders. He had just been shaved, and the scent of the soap wafted to her a pleasant sense of intimacy with his masculinity. She could see the line above which the tiny white hairs grew thick on the bronzed cheeks. A strange delight stirred in her maiden heart, a joy in his physical well-being that longed for closer contact.

None of this reached the surface when she spoke at last.

"I can't let things go the way you have arranged them, Mr. Gordon. It isn't fair. After the way I and my people have treated you I can't be the object of such unlimited generosity at your hands."

"Justice," he suggested by way of substitution.

"No, generosity," she insisted. "Why should you be forced to give way to me? What have I done any more than you to earn all this?"

"Now you know we've all agreed----"

"Agreed!" she interrupted sharply. "We've taken it for granted that I had some sort of divine right. When I look into it I see that's silly. We're living in America, not in Spain of the seventeenth century. I've no right except what the law gives me."

"Well, the law's clear now. I'm tired of being shot at and starved and imprisoned and burned to make a Mexican holiday. I'm fed up with the excitement your friends have offered me. Honest, I'm glad to quit. I don't want the grant, anyhow. I'm a miner. We've just made a good strike in the Last Dollar. I'm going back to look after it."

"You can't make me believe anything of the kind, Mr. Gordon. I know you've made a strike, but you had made it before you ever came to the valley. Mr. Davis told me so. We simply couldn't drive you out. That's all humbug. You want me to have it--and I'm not going to take it. That's all there is to it, sir."

He smiled down upon her. "I never did see anyone so obstinate and so changeable. As long as I wanted the land you were going to have it; now I don't want it you won't take it. Isn't that just like a woman?"

"You know why I won't take it. From the very first you've played the better part. We've mistreated you in every way we could. Now you want to drown me in a lake of kindness. I just can't accept it. If you want to compromise on a fair business basis I'll do that."

"You've got a first-rate chance to be generous, too, Miss Valdés. I'm like a kid. I want to put this thing over my way so that I'll look big. Be a nice girl and let me have my own way. You know I said my wedding present was in that tin box. Don't spoil everything. Show me that you do think we're friends at last."

"We're friends--if you're sure you forgive me," she said shyly.

"Nothing in the world to forgive," he retorted cheerfully. "I've had the time of my life. Now I must go home and get to work."

"Yes," she agreed quietly, looking straight in front of her.

He drove in silence for a mile or two before he resumed the conversation.

"Of course I'll want to come back for the wedding if you send me an invitation. I think a good deal of the prince consort, you know. He's one man from the ground up."

"Yes?"

"He's the only man I know that's good enough for you. The more I see of him the better I like him. He's sure the gamest ever, a straight-up man if ever there was one."

"I'm glad of that." She flashed a little sidelong look at him and laughed tremulously. "It's good of you to pick me a husband you can endorse so heartily. Would you mind telling me his name--if it isn't a secret?"

"You know mighty well, but I reckon all girls play the game of making believe it isn't so for a while. All right. You don't have to admit it till the right time. But you'll send me a card, won't you?"

Her eyes, shyly daring, derided him. "That's no fair, Mr. Gordon. You go out of your way to pick a prince consort for me--a perfect paragon I'm given to understand--and then you expect me to say 'Thank you kindly, sir,' without even being told his name."

He smiled. "Oh, well, you can laugh at me all you like."

"But I'm not laughing at you," she corrected, her eyes dancing. "I'm trying to find out who this Admirable Crichton is. Surely I'm within my rights. This isn't Turkey, you know. Perhaps I mayn't like him. Or, more important still, he may not like me."

"Go right ahead with your fun. Don't mind me."

"I don't believe you've got a prince consort for me at all. If you had you wouldn't dodge around like this."

At that instant he caught sight by chance of her ungloved left hand. Again he observed that the solitaire was missing. His eyes flashed to hers. A sudden hope was born in his heart. He drew the horse to a halt.

"Are you telling me that----? What about Don Manuel?" he demanded.

Now that the crisis was upon her, she would have evaded it if she could. Her long lashes fluttered to the hot cheeks.

"He is my cousin and my friend--the best friend I have," she answered in a low voice.

"No more than that?"

"No more." She lifted her eyes and tried to meet his boldly. "And now I really think you've been impudent enough, don't you?"

He imprisoned her hands in his. "If it isn't Don Manuel who is it?"

She knew her eyes had failed her, that they had told him too much. An agony of shyness drenched her from head to foot, but there was no escape from his masterful insistence.

"Will you let me go ... please?"

"No--not till you tell me that you love me, Valencia, not till you've made me the happiest man alive."

"But ..."

He plunged forward, an insurgent hope shaking his imperturbability.

"Is it yes, dear? Don't keep me waiting. Do I win or lose, Valencia?"

Bravely her eyes lifted to his. "I love you with all my heart and soul. I always have from the first. I always shall as long as life lasts," she murmured.

Swept away by the abandon of her adorable confession, he caught her in his arms and drew her to him. Close as breathing he held her, her heart beating against his like a fluttering bird. A delicious faintness overcame her. She lay in his embrace, wonderfully content.

The dewy eyes lifted again to his. Of their own volition almost their lips met for the first kiss.

THE END

Contents

STEVE YEAGER

BY WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

CHAPTER I

STEVE MAKES A MISTAKE

Steve Yeager held his bronco to a Spanish trot. Somewhere in front of him, among the brown hill swells that rose and fell like waves of the sea, lay Los Robles and breakfast. One solitary silver dollar, too lonesome even to jingle, lay in his flatulent trouser pocket. After he and Four Bits had eaten, two quarters would take the place of the big cartwheel. Then would come dinner, a second transfer of capital, and his pocket would be empty as a cow's stomach after a long drive.

Being dead broke, according to the viewpoint of S. Yeager, is right and fitting after a jaunt to town when one has a good job back in the hills. But it happened he had no more job than a rabbit. Wherefore, to keep up his spirits he chanted the endless metrical version of the adventures of Sam Bass, who

"... started out to Texas a cowboy for to be, And a kinder-hearted fellow you scarcely ever'd see."

Steve had not quit his job. It had quit him. A few years earlier the Lone Star Cattle Company had reigned supreme in Dry Sandy Valley and the territory tributary thereto. Its riders had been kings of the range. That was before the tide of settlement had spilled into the valley, before nesters had driven in their prairie schooners, homesteaded the water-holes, and strung barb-wire fences across the range. Line-riders and dry farmers and irrigators had pushed the cowpuncher to one side. Sheep had come bleating across the desert to wage war upon the cattle. Finally Uncle Sam had sliced off most of the acreage still left and called it a forest reserve.

Wherefore the Lone Star outfit had thrown up its hands, sold its holdings, and moved to Los Angeles to live. Wherefore also Steve Yeager, who did not know Darwin from a carburetor, had by process of evolution been squeezed out of the occupation he had followed all of his twenty-three years since he could hang on to a saddle-horn. He had mournfully foreseen the end when the schoolhouse was built on Pine Knob and little folks went down the road with their arms twined around the waist of teacher. After grizzled Tim Sawyer made bowlegged tracks straight for that schoolmarm and matrimony, his friends realized that the joyous whoop of the puncher would not much longer be heard in the land. The range-rider must dwindle to a farmer or get off the earth. Steve was getting off the earth.

Since Steve was of the sunburnt State, still a boy, and by temperament incurably optimistic, he sang cheerfully. He wanted to forget that he had eaten neither supper nor breakfast. So he carried Mr. Bass through many adventures till that genial bandit

"... sold out at Custer City and there got on a spree, And a tougher lot of cowboys you never'd hope to see."

Four Bits had topped a rise and followed the road down in its winding descent. After the nomadic fashion of Arizona the trail circled around a tongue of a foothill which here jutted out. Voices from just beyond the bend startled Yeager. One of them was raised impatiently.

"Won't do, Harrison. Be rougher. Throw her on her knees and tie her hands."

The itinerant road brought Steve in another moment within view. He saw a girl picking poppies. Two men rode up and swung from their saddles. They talked with her threateningly. She shrank back in fear. One of them seized her wrists and threw her down.

"Lively, now. Into the pit with her. Get the stuff across," urged a short fat man with a cigar in his mouth who was standing ten or fifteen yards back from the scene of action.

Steve had put his horse at a gallop the moment the girl had been seized. It struck him there was something queer about the affair,--something not quite natural to which he could not put a name. But he did not stop to reason out the situation. Dragging his pony to a slithering halt, he leaped to the ground.

"Get busy, Jackson. You ain't in a restaurant waiting for a meal," the little fat man reminded one of his tools irritably. Then, as he caught sight of Steve, "What the hell!"

Yeager's left shot forward, all the weight and muscle of one hundred and seventy pounds of live cowpuncher behind it. Villain Number One went to the ground as if a battering-ram had hit him between the eyes.

"Lay hands on a lady, will you?"

Steve turned to Villain Number Two, who backed away rapidly in alarm.

"What's eatin' you? We ain't hurtin' her any, you mutt."

The girl, still crouched on the ground, turned with a nervous little laugh to the man who had been directing operations:--

"What d'you know about that, Billie? The rube swallowed it all. You gotta raise my salary."

The cowpuncher felt in the pit of his stomach the same sensation he had known when an elevator in Denver had dropped beneath his feet too suddenly. The young woman was rouged and painted to the ears. Never in its palmiest days had the 'Dobe Dollar's mirrors reflected a costume more gaudy than the one she was wearing. The men too were painted and dolled up extravagantly in vaqueros' costumes that were the limit of absurdity. Had they all escaped from a madhouse? Or was he, Steve Yeager, in a pipe-dream?

From a near grove of cottonwoods half a dozen men in chaps came running. Assured of their proximity, the fat little fellow pawed the air with rage.

"Ever see such rotten luck? Spoiled the whole scene. Say, you Rip Van Winkle, think we came out here for the ozone?"

One of the men joined the young woman, who was assisting the villain Yeager had knocked out. The others crowded around him in excitement, all expostulating at once. They were dressed wonderfully and amazingly as cowpunchers, but they were painted frauds in spite of the careful ostentation of their costumes. Steve's shiny leathers and dusty hat missed the picturesque, but he looked indigenous and they did not. He was at his restful ease, this slender, brown man, negligent, careless, eyes twinkling but alert. The brand of the West was stamped indelibly on him.

"I ce'tainly must 'a' spilled the beans. Looks like I done barked up the wrong tree," he drawled amiably.

A man who had been standing on a box behind some kind of a masked battery jumped down and joined the group.

"Gee! I've got a bully picture of our anxious friend laying out Harrison. Nothing phony about that, Threewit. Won't go in this reel, but she'll make a humdinger in some other. Say, didn't Harrison hit the dust fine! Funny you lads can't ever pull off a fall like that."

An annoyed voice, both raucous and sneering, interrupted his enthusiasm. "Just stick around, Mr. Camera Man, and you'll get a chance to do another bit of real life that ain't faked. I'm goin' to hammer the head off Buttinski presently."

The camera man, an alert, boyish fellow as thin as a lath, turned and grinned. Harrison was sitting up a little unsteadily. Burning black eyes, set in sockets of extraordinary depths, blazed from a face sinister enough to justify Steve's impression of him as a villain. The shoulders of the man were very broad and set with the gorilla hunch; he was deep-chested and lean-loined. His eyes shifted with a quick, furtive menace. His companions might be imitation cowpunchers, but if Yeager was any judge this was no imitation bad man.

"Going to eat him alive, are you?" the camera man wanted to know pleasantly.

Steve pushed through to Harrison. A whimsical little smile of apology crinkled the boyish face.

"It's on me, compadre. I'm a rube, and anything else you like. And I sure am sorry for going off half-cocked."

A wintry frost was in the jet bead eyes that looked up at the puncher. The sitting man did not recognize the extended hand.

"You'll be a heap sorrier before I'm through with you," he growled. "I'm goin' to beat your head off and learn you to mind your own business."

"Interesting if true," retorted Steve lightly. "And maybeso you're right. A man can't always most likely tell. Take a watermelon now. You can't tell how good it is till you thump it. Same way with a man, I've heard say."

He turned to the young woman, whose bright brown eyes were lingering upon him curiously. This was no novel experience to him. He wore his splendid youth so jauntily and yet so casually that the gaze of a girl was likely to be drawn in his direction a second and a third time. In spite of his youthfulness there was in his face a certain sun-and-wind-bitten maturity, a steadiness of the quiet eye that promised efficiency. The film actress sensed the same competent strength in the brown, untorn hand that assisted her to rise to her feet. His friendly smile showed the flash of white, regular teeth.

"The rube apologizes, ma'am. He's just in from Cactus Center and never did see one of those moving-picture outfits before. Thirty-eleven things were in sight as I happened round that bend, but the only one I glimmed was you being mistreated. Corking chance for a grandstand play. So I sailed in pronto. 'Course I should've known better, but I didn't."

Maisie Winters was the name of the young woman. She played the leads in one of the Southwest companies of the Lunar Film Manufacturers. Her charming face was known and liked on the screens of several continents. Now it broke into lines of mischievous amusement.

"I don't mind if Mr. Harrison doesn't." She flashed a gay, inquiring look toward that discomfited villain, who was leaning for support on his accomplice Jackson and glaring at Yeager. Impudently she tilted her chin back toward the puncher. "Are you always so--so impetuous? If so, there's a fortune waiting for you in the moving-picture field."

Yeager did not object to having so attractive a young woman as this one poke fun at him. He grinned joyfully.

"Me! I'm open to an engagement, ma'am."

The short fat man whom Maisie Winters had called Billie looked sharply at the cowpuncher out of shrewd gray eyes.

"Where you been working?" he demanded abruptly.

"With the Lone Star outfit."

"Get fired?"

"Company gone out of business--country getting too popular, what with homesteaders, forest rangers, and Mary's little lamb," explained Steve.

"Hm! Can you ride a bucker?"

"I can pull leather and kinder stick on."

"I'll try you out for a week at two-fifty a day if you like."

"You've hired Steve Yeager," promptly announced the owner of that name.

CHAPTER II

"ENOUGH'S A-PLENTY"

While driving his car back to Los Robles, Billie Threewit, producing director at the border studio of the Lunar Film Manufacturers, indulged in caustic comment on his own idiocy.

"Now, what in hell did I take on this Yeager rube for? He had just finished crabbing one scene. Wasn't that enough without me paying him good money to spoil more? Harrison's sore on him too. There's going to be trouble there. He ain't going to stand for that roughhouse stuff a little bit."

Frank Farrar, the camera man, took a more cheerful view of the situation.

"He's a find, if you ask me--the real thing in cowpunchers. And I don't know as this outfit has to be run to please Harrison. The big bully has got us all stepping sideways and tiptoeing so as not to offend him. I'm about fed up with the brute. Wish this rube would mop the earth up with him when Harrison gets gay."

"No chance. Harrison's a bully all right, but he's one grand little fighter too. You saw him clean up that bunch of greasers. He's there with both feet on the Marquis of Q. business, and don't you forget it. I put up with more from him than I ever did from a dozen other actors because he's so mean when he's sulky."

"Here too," agreed Farrar. "It's take your hat off when you speak to Mr. Chad Harrison. I can't yell at him that he's getting out of the picture; I've got to pull the Alphonse line of talk.--'Mr. Harrison, if you'd be so kind as to get that left hind hoof of yours six inches more to the right.' He makes me good and weary."

"He gets his stuff across good. Wasn't for that I wouldn't stand for him a minute. But we're down here, son, to get this three-reel Mexican war dope. As long as Harrison delivers the goods we'll have to put up with him."

"Well, I'm going to give this Yeager lad a tip what he's up against. Then if he wants to he can light out before Harrison gets to him."

Farrar was as good as his word. As soon as he reached the hotel he dropped around to the room where the new extra was staying. His knock brought no answer, but as the door was ajar the camera man stepped across the threshold.

Steve lay on the bed asleep, his lithe, compact figure stretched at negligent ease. The flannel shirt was open at the throat, the strong muscles of which sloped beautifully into the splendid shoulders. There was strength in the clean-cut jaw of the brown face. It was an easy guess that he had wandered by paths crooked as well as straight, that he had taken the loose pleasures of his kind joyously. But when he had followed forbidden trails it had been from the sheer youthful exuberance of life in him and not from weakness. Farrar judged that the heart of the young vagabond was sound, that the desert winds and suns had kept his head washed clean of shameful thoughts.

The cowpuncher opened his eyes. He looked at his visitor without speaking.

"Didn't expect to find you asleep," apologized the camera man.

Yeager got up and stretched his supple body in a yawn. "That's all right. Just making up the sleep I lost last night on the road. No matter a-tall."

He was in blue overalls, the worn shiny chaps tossed across the back of a chair. On the table lay the dusty, pinched-in hat, through the disreputable crown of which Farrar had lately seen a lock of his brindle hair rising like an aigrette.

"Glad to have you join us. We need riders like you. Say, it was worth five dollars to me to see the way you laid out Harrison."

The cowpuncher's boyish face clouded.

"I'm right sorry about that. It ce'tainly was a fool play. I don't blame Harrison for getting sore."

"He's sore all right. That's what I came to see you about. He's a rowdy, Harrison is. And he'll make you trouble."

"Most generally I don't pack a gun," Yeager observed casually.

"It won't be a gun play; not to start with, anyhow. He used to be a prizefighter. He'll beat you up."

"Well, it don't hurt a man's system to absorb a licking once in a blue moon."

The cowpuncher said it smilingly, with a manner of negligent competence that came from an experience of many dangers faced, of many perilous ways safely trodden.

Farrar had not yet quite discharged his mind. "There's nothing to prevent you from slipping round to the stable and pulling your freight quietly."

"Except that I don't want to," added the new extra. "No, sir. I've got a job and I'm staying with it. I'll sit here like a horned toad till the boss gives me my time."

The camera man beamed. To meet so debonair and care-free a specimen of humanity warmed the cockles of his heart.

"I'll bet you're some scrapper yourself," he suggested.

"Oh, no. He'll lick me, I reckon. Say, what do they hold you up for at this hacienda?"

The lank camera man supplied information, adding that he knew of a good cheap boarding-place where one or two of the company put up.

"If you say so, I'll take you right round there."

Yeager reached promptly for his hat. "You talk like a dollar's worth of nickels rattling out of a slot machine--right straight to the point."

They walked together down the white, dusty street, crossed the outskirts of the old Mexican adobe town, and came to a suburb of bungalows. In front of one of these Farrar stopped. He unlatched the gate.

"Here we are."

There was an old-fashioned garden of roses and mignonettes and hollyhocks, with crimson ramblers rioting over the wire trellis in front of the broad porch. A girl with soft, thick, blue-black hair was bending over a rosebush. She was snipping dead shoots with a pair of scissors. At the sound of their feet crunching the gravel of the walk, her slender figure straightened and she turned to them. The ripe lips parted above pearly teeth in a smile of welcome to the camera man.

"I've come begging again, Miss Ruth," explained Farrar. "This is Mr. Yeager, a new member of our company. He wants to find a good boarding-place, so of course I thought of your mother. Don't tell me that you can't take him."

A little frown of doubt furrowed her forehead. "I don't know, Mr. Farrar. Our tables are about full. I'll ask mother."

The eyes of the girl rested for an instant on the brown-faced youth whose application the camera man was backing. He had taken off his hat, and the sun-pour was on his tawny hair, on the lean, bronzed face and broad, muscular shoulders. In his torn, discolored hat, his stained and travel-worn clothes, he looked a very prince of tramps. But in his quiet, steady gaze was the dynamic spark of self-respect that forebade her to judge him by his garb.

A faint flush burned in the dusky cheeks to which the long lashes drooped because of a touch of embarrassment. He had seemed to read her hesitation with an inner amusement that found expression in his gray-blue eyes.

"Tell her I'll be much obliged if she'll take me," Yeager said in his gentle drawl.

Considering his request, she stripped the gauntlet without purpose from one of her little brown hands. A solitaire sparkled on the third finger. Again she murmured, "I'll ask mother"; then turned and flashed up the steps, her slender limbs carrying with fluent grace the pliant young body.

Presently appeared on the porch a plump, matronly woman of a wholesome cleanness without and within. Judging by fugitive dabs of flour which decorated her temple and her forehead, she had been making bread or pies at the time she had been called by her daughter. Much of her life she had lived in the Southwest, and one glance at Yeager was enough to satisfy her. Through the dust and tarnished clothes of him youth shone resplendent. The sun was still in his brindle hair, in his gay eyes. She had a boy of her own, and the heart of her warmed to him.

In five sentences they had come to an arrangement. The barn behind the house had been remodeled so that it contained several bedrooms. Into one of these Yeager was to move his scant effects at once.

He and Farrar walked back to the hotel together. Harrison was waiting for them on the porch. As soon as he caught sight of the cowpuncher he strode forward. The straight line of his set mouth looked like a gash in a melon.

"Will you have it here or back of the garage?" he demanded, getting straight to business.

"Any place that suits you," agreed Steve affably. "Won't the bulls pinch us if we do a roughhouse here?"

Harrison turned with triumphant malice to Farrar.

"Get your camera. You say you don't like phony stuff. Good enough. I'll pull off the real goods for you in licking a rube. There's plenty of room back of the garage."

The camera man protested. "See here, Harrison. Yeager ain't looking for trouble. He told you he was sorry. It was an accident. What's the use of bearing a grudge?"

The heavy glared at him. "You in this, Mr. Farrar? You're liable to have a heluvatime if you butt into my business without an invite. Shack--and git that camera."

Yeager nodded to his new friend. "Go ahead and get it. We'll be waiting back of the garage."

Farrar hesitated, the professional instinct in him awake and active.

"If you're dead keen on a mix-up, Harrison, why not come over to the studio where I can get the best light? We'll make an indoor set of it."

"Go you," promptly agreed Harrison. His vanity craved a picture of him thrashing the extra, a good one that the public could see and that he could afterwards gloat over himself.

Yeager laughed in his slow way. "I'm to be massa-creed to make a Roman holiday, am I? All right. Might as well begin earning that two-fifty per I've been promised."

The news spread, as if on the wings of the wind. Before Farrar had a stage arranged to suit him and his camera ready, a dozen members of the company drifted in with a casual manner of having arrived accidentally. Fleming Lennox, leading man, appeared with Cliff Manderson, chief comedian for the Lunar border company. Baldy Cummings, the property man, strolled leisurely in to look over some costumes. But Steve observed that he was panting rapidly.

As he sat on a soap box waiting for Farrar to finish his preparations, Yeager became aware that Lennox was watching him closely. He did not know that the leading man would cheerfully have sacrificed a week's salary to see Harrison get the trimming he needed. The handsome young film actor was an athlete, a trained boxer, but the ex-prizefighter had given him the thrashing of his life two months before. He simply had lacked the physical stamina to weather the blows that came from those long, gorilla-like arms with the weight of the heavy, rounded shoulders back of them. The fight had not lasted five minutes.

"Shapes well," murmured Manderson, nodding toward the new extra.

The leading man agreed without much hope. He conceded the boyish cowpuncher a beautiful trim figure, with breadth of shoulder, grace of poise, and long, flowing muscles that rippled under the healthy skin like those of a panther in motion. But these would serve him little unless he was an experienced boxer. Harrison had tremendous strength and power; moreover, he knew the game from years of battle in the ring.

"He'll lose--won't be able to stand the gaff," Lennox replied gloomily, his eyes fixed on Yeager as the young fellow rose lightly and moved forward to meet his opponent.

The extra was as tall as Harrison, but he looked like a boy beside him, so large and massive did the heavy bulk. The contrast between them was so great that Yeager was scarcely conceded a fighting chance. Steve himself knew quite well that he was in for a licking at the hands of this wall-eyed Hercules with the leathery brown face.

He got it, efficiently and scientifically, but not before Harrison had found out he was in a fight. The big man disdained any defense except that which went naturally with his crouch. He had a tremendously long reach and knew how to get the weight of his shoulders behind his punishing blows. Usually Harrison did all the fighting. The other man was at the receiving end.

It was a little different this time. Yeager met his first rush with a straight left that got home and jarred the prizefighter to his heels. To see the look on the face of the heavy, compound of blank astonishment and chagrin, was worth the price of admission.

Lennox sang out encouragement. "Good boy. Go to him."

Harrison put his head down and rushed. His arms worked like flails. They beat upon Steve's body and face as a hammer does upon an anvil. Only by his catlike agility and the toughness born of many clean years in the saddle did the cowpuncher weather for the time the hurricane that lashed at him. He dodged and ducked and parried by instinct, smothering what blows he could, evading those he might, absorbing the ones he must. Out of that first mêlée he came reeling and dizzy, quartering round and round before the panting professional.

The bully enraged was not a sight pleasant to see. He was too near akin to the primeval brute. He glared savagely at his victim, who grinned back at him with an indomitable jauntiness.

"This is the life," the cowpuncher assured his foe cheerfully after dodging a blow that was like the kick of a mule.

Harrison rocked him with a short stiff uppercut. "Glad you like it," he jeered.

Yeager crossed with his right, catching him flush on the cheek. "Here's your receipt for the same," he beamed.

Like a wild bull the prizefighter was at him again. He beat down the cowpuncher's defense and mauled him savagely with all the punishing skill of his craft. Steve was a man of his hands. He had held his own in many a rough-and-tumble bout. But he had no science except that which nature had given him. As long as a man could, he stood up to Harrison's trained skill. When at last he was battered to the ground it was because the strength had all oozed out of him.

Harrison stood over him, swaggering. "Had enough?"

Where he had been flung, against one of the studio walls, Steve sat dizzily, his head reeling. He saw things through a mist in a queer jerky way. But still a smile beamed on his disfigured face.

"Surest thing you know."

"Don't want some more of the same?" jeered the victor.

"Didn't hear me ask for more, did you? No, an' you won't either. Me, I love a scrap, but I don't yearn for no encore after I've been clawed by a panther and chewed up by a threshing-machine and kicked by an able-bodied mule into the middle o' next week. Enough's a-plenty, as old Jim Butts said when his second wife died."

The prizefighter looked vindictively down at him. He was not satisfied, though he had given the range-rider such a whaling as few men could stand up and take. For the conviction was sifting home to him that he had not beaten the man at all. His pile-driver blows had hammered down his body, but the spirit of him shone dauntless out of the gay, unconquerable eyes.

With a sullen oath Harrison turned away. His sulky glance fell upon Lennox, who was clapping his hands softly.

"You'd be one grand little fighter, Yeager, if you only knew how," the leading man said with enthusiasm.

"Mebbe you'd like to teach him, Mr. Lennox," sneered Harrison.

The star flushed. "Maybe I would, Mr. Harrison."

"Or perhaps you'd rather show him how it's done."

Lennox looked, straight at him. "Nothing doing. And I serve notice right here that I'll have no more trouble with you. If it's got to come to that either you or I will quit the company."

The bully's eyes narrowed. "Which one of us?"

"It'll be up to Threewit to pass on that."

Harrison put on his coat and slouched sulkily out of the building. He knew quite well that if it came to a choice between him and Lennox the director would sacrifice him without a moment's consideration.

Farrar, who had been grinding out pictures since the beginning of hostilities, came forward to greet Yeager with a little whoop of joy.

"Say, you sure go some, Cactus Center. I never did see a fellow eat up such a licking and come up smiling. You're certainly one Mellin's Food baby. I'm for you--strong."

One of Steve's eyes was closing rapidly, but the other had not lost its twinkle.

"Does a fellow's system good to assimilate a tanning oncet in a while--sort o' corrects any mistaken notions he's liable to collect. Gentlemen, hush! Ain't Harrison the boss eat-em-alive white hope that ever turkey-trotted down the pike?"

The melancholy Manderson smiled. "You make a hit with me, Arizona. If I were in your place I'd be waiting for the undertaker. You look like you'd out come of a railroad wreck, two fires, and a cattle stampede over your carcass. Here, boys, hustle along first aid to our friend the punching-bag."

They got him water and towels and a sponge. Steve, protesting humorously, submitted to their ministrations. He was grateful for the friendliness that prompted their kindness. The atmosphere had subtly changed. During the afternoon he had sensed a little aloofness, an intention on the part of the company members to stand off until they knew him better. Now the ice was melted. They had taken him into the family. He had passed with honors his preliminary examination.

CHAPTER III

CHAD HARRISON

As soon as Steve stepped into the dining-room he knew that the story of his fight with Harrison had preceded him. His battered face became an immediate focus of curious veiled glances. These exhibited an animated interest rather than surprise.

Mrs. Seymour introduced him in turn to each of the other boarders, and the furtive looks stared for a moment their frank questions at him. As he drew in his chair beside a slender, tanned young woman, he knew with some amusement that his arrival had interrupted a conversation of which he had been the theme.

The film actress seated beside Yeager must have been in her very early twenties, but her pretty face, finely modeled, had the provocative effrontery that is the note of twentieth-century young womanhood. Its audacity, which was the quintessence of worldliness, held an alert been-through-it-all expression.

"I hope you like Los Robles, Mr. Yeager. Some of us don't, you know," she suggested.

"Like it fine, Miss Ellington," he answered with enthusiasm, accepting from Ruth Seymour a platter of veal croquettes.

Daisy Ellington slanted mischievous eyes toward him. "Not much doing here. It's a dead little hole. You'll be bored to death--if you haven't been already."

"Me! I've found it right lively," retorted Steve, his eyes twinkling. "Had all the excitement I could stand for one day. You see I come from way back in the cow country, ma'am."

"And I came from New York," she sighed. "When it comes to little old Broadway I'm there with bells on. What d'you mean, cow country? Ain't this far enough off the map? Say, were you ever in New York?"

"Oncet. With a load of steers my boss was shipping to England. Lemme see. It was three years ago come next October."

"Three years ago. Why, that was when I was in the pony ballet with 'Adam, Eve, and the Apple.' Did you see the show?"

"Bet I did."

Her eyes sparkled. "I was in the first row, third from the left in the 'Good-Night' chorus. Some kick to that song, wasn't there?"

"I should say yes. We're old friends, then, aren't we?" exclaimed Yeager promptly. He buried her little hand in his big brown paw, a friendly smile beaming through the disfigurements of his bruised face.

"He didn't do a thing to you, did he?" she commented, looking him over frankly.

"Not a thing--except run me through a sausage-grinder, drop me out of one of these aeroplanes, hammer my haid with a pile-driver, and jounce me up and down on a big pile of sharp rocks. Outside of trifles like that I had it all my own way."

"I don't see any alfalfa in your hair," she laughed. Then, lowering her voice discreetly, she added: "Harrison's a brute. I'll tell you about him some time when Ruth isn't round."

"Ruth!" Steve glanced at the young girl who moved about the room with such rhythmic grace helping the Chinese waiter serve her mother's guests. "What has she got to do with Harrison?"

"Engaged to him--that's all. See that sparkler on her finger? Wouldn't it give you a jolt that a nice little girl like her would take up with a stiff like Harrison?"

"What's her mother thinking about?" asked the cowpuncher under cover of the conversation that was humming briskly all around the tables.

Daisy lifted her shoulders in a careless little shrug. "Oh, her mother! What's she got to do with it? Harrison has hypnotized the kid, I guess. He throws a big chest, and at that he ain't bad-looking. He's one man too, if he is a rotten bad lot."

The young woman breezed on to another subject in the light, inconsequent fashion she had, and presently deserted Yeager to meet the badinage of an extra sitting at an adjoining table.

After dinner Steve went to his new quarters to get a cigar he had left on the table. It was one Farrar had given him. He was cherishing it because his financial assets had become reduced to twenty cents and he did not happen to know when pay-day was.

Yeager climbed the barn stairs humming a range song:--

"Black Jack Davy came a-riding along, Singing a song so gayly, He laughed and sang till the merry woods rang And he charmed the heart of a lady, And he charmed--"

Abruptly he pulled up in his stride and in his song. Ruth Seymour was in the room putting new sheets and pillow-cases on the bed.

"I haven't had time before. I didn't think you would be through dinner so soon," she explained in a voice soft and low.

"That's all right. I only dropped up to get a cigar I left on the table. Don't let me disturb you."

Her troubled eyes rested on the strong, lean face that went so well with the strong, lean body. One eye was swollen and almost shut. Red bruises glistened on the forehead and the cheeks. A bit of plaster stretched diagonally above the right cheekbone where the prizefighter's knuckles had cut a deep gash. Little ridges covered his countenance as if it had been a contour map of a mountainous country. But through all the havoc that had been wrought flashed his white teeth in a cheerful smile.

The girl's lip trembled. "I'm sorry you--were hurt."

He flashed a quick look at her. "Sho! Forget it, Miss Seymour. I wasn't hurt any--none to speak of. It don't do a big husky like me any harm to be handed a licking."

"You--hit him first, didn't you?"

"Yes, ma'am,--knocked him out cold before he knew where he was at. He was entitled to a come-back. I'm noways hos-tile to him because he's a better man than I am."

She stood with the pillow in her hands, shy as a fawn, but with a certain resolution, too, the trouble of her soul still reflected on the sweet face.

"Why do men--do such things?" she asked with a catch of her breath.

He scratched his curly head in apologetic perplexity. "Search me. I reckon the cave man is lurking around in most of us. We hadn't ought to. That's a fact."

"It was all a mistake, Miss Ellington says. You thought he was hurting Miss Winters. Why didn't you tell him you were sorry? Then it would have been all right."

The cowpuncher did not bat an eye at this innocent suggestion.

"That's right. Why didn't I think of that? Then of course he would have laid off o' me."

"He--Mr. Harrison--is quick-tempered. I suppose all brave men are. But he's generous, too. If you had explained--"

"I reckon you're right. He sure is generous, even in the whalings he gives. But don't worry about me. I'm all right, and much obliged for your kindness in asking."

Steve found his cigar and retired. He carried with him in memory a picture of a troubled young creature with soft, tender eyes gleaming starlike from beneath waves of dark hair.

Yeager met Harrison swaggering up the gravel walk toward the house. A malevolent gleam lit in the cold black eyes of the bully.

"How you feeling, young fella?"

"A hundred and eighty years old," answered the cowpuncher promptly with a grin. "Every time I open my mouth my face cracks. You ce'tainly did give me a proper trimming. I don't know sic-'em about this scientific fight game."

Harrison scowled. "There's more at the same address any time you need it."

"Not if I see you coming in time to make a getaway," retorted Steve with a laugh.

As the range-rider passed lightly down the walk there drifted back to the prizefighter the words of a cowboy song:--

"Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee, In a narrow grave just six by three, Where the wild coyotes will howl o'er me-- Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee."

Harrison ripped out an oath. There was a note of gentle irony about the minor strain of the song that he resented. He had given this youth the thrashing of his life, but he had apparently left his spirit quite uncrushed. What he liked was to have men walk in fear of him.

The song presently died on the lips of Steve. Harrison was on his way to call on Ruth. The man had somehow won her promise to marry him. It was impossible for Yeager to believe that the child knew what she was doing. To think of her as the future wife of Chad Harrison moved him to resentment at life's satiric paradoxes. To give this sweet young innocent to such a man was to mate a lamb with a tiger or a wolf. The outrage of it cried to Heaven. What could her mother be thinking of to allow such a wanton sacrifice?

CHAPTER IV

THE EXTRA

From the first Yeager enjoyed his work with the Lunar Company. Young and full-blooded, he liked novelty and adventure, life in the open, new scenes and faces. As a film actor he did not have to seek sensations. They came to him unsought. He had the faculty of projecting himself with all his mind into the business of the moment, so that he soon knew what it was to be a noble and self-conscious hero as well as an unmitigated villain.

One day he was a miner making his last stand against a band of Mexican banditti, the next he was crawling through the mesquite to strike down an intrepid ranger who laughed at death. He fought desperate single combats, leaped from cliffs into space or across bridgeless chasms, took part in dozens of sets illustrating scenes of frontier life as Billy Threewit conceived these. Sometimes Steve smiled. The director's ideas had largely been absorbed in New York from reading Western fiction. But so long as he drew down his two-fifty a day and had plenty of fun doing it, Steve was no stickler for naked realism. The "bad men" of Yeager's acquaintance had usually been quiet, soft-spoken citizens, notable chiefly for a certain chilliness of the eye and an efficient economy of expression that eliminated waste. Those that Threewit featured were of a different type. They strutted and bragged and made gun plays on every possible occasion.

Perhaps this was why Harrison's stuff got across. By nature a swaggering bully, he had only to turn loose his real impulses to register what the director wanted of a bad man. In the rough-and-tumble life he had led, it had been Yeager's business to know men. He made no mistake about Harrison. The fellow might be a loud-mouthed braggart; none the less he would go the limit. The man was game.

Lennox met Steve one day as the latter was returning from the property room with a saddle Threewit had asked him to adjust. The star stopped him good-naturedly.

"Care to put the gloves on with me some time, Yeager?"

The cowpuncher's face brightened. "I sure would. The boys say you're the best ever with the mitts."

"I'm a pretty good boxer, but I don't trail in your class as a fighter. What you need is to take some lessons. If you'd care to have me show you what I know--"

"Say, you've rung the bell first shot."

"Come up to the hotel to-night, then. No need advertising it. Harrison might pick another quarrel with you to show you what you don't know."

Steve laughed. "He's ce'tainly one tough citizen. He can look at a pine board so darned sultry it begins to smoke. All right. Be up there to-night, Mr. Lennox."

From that day the boxing lessons became a regular thing. The claim Lennox had made for himself had scarcely done him justice. He was one of the best amateur boxers in the West. In Yeager he had a pupil quick to learn. The extra was a perfect specimen physically, narrow of flank, broad of shoulder, with the well-packed muscles of one always trained to the minute. Fifteen years in the saddle had given him a toughness of fiber no city dweller could possibly equal. Nights under the multiple stars in the hills, cool, invigorating mornings with the pine-filled air strong as wine in his clean blood, long days of sunshine full of action, had all contributed to make him the young Hermes that he was. Cool and wary, supple as a wildcat, light as a dancing schoolgirl on his feet, he had the qualities which go to help both the fighter and the boxer. Lennox had never seen a man with more natural aptitude for the sport.

Sometimes Farrar was present at these lessons. Often Baldy Cummings, who liked the cowpuncher because Steve was always willing to help him get the properties ready for the required sets, would put on the gloves with him and try him out for a round or two. Manderson, the melancholy comedian, occasionally dropped in with some other member of the company.

The same thought was in the mind of all of them except Yeager himself. The extra was being trained to meet Harrison. It was apparent to all of them that the prizefighter was nursing a grudge. The jaunty insouciance of the young range-rider irritated him as a banderilla goads a bull in the ring.

"Steve gets under his hide. Some day he's going to break loose again," Farrar told Manderson as they watched Lennox and Yeager box.

"The kid shapes fine. If Mr. Chad Harrison waits long enough he's liable to find himself in trouble when he tackles that young tiger cub," answered the comedian. "Ever see anybody quicker on his feet? Reminds me of Jim Corbett when he was a youngster."

The news of the boxing lessons traveled to Harrison. He set his heavy jaw and waited. He intended that Yeager should go to the hospital after their next mix-up.

Meanwhile he found other causes for disliking the new man. Always a vain man, his jealousy was inflamed because Steve was a better rider than he. At any time he was ready with a sneer for what he called the cowpuncher's "grandstanding."

"It gets across, Harrison," Threewit told him bluntly one day. "We've never had a rider whose work was so snappy. He's doing fine."

"Watch him blow up one of these days--nothing to him," growled the heavy.

"There's a whole lot to him," disagreed the producing director as he walked away to superintend the arrangement of a set.

Several days after this some new horses were added to the remuda of the Lunar Company. Harrison picked a young mustang to ride in a chase scene they were going to pull off. The pony was a wiry buckskin with powerful flanks and withers. The prizefighter was no sooner in the saddle than it developed that the animal had not been half broken. It took to pitching at once and presently spilled the rider.

Steve, sitting on the corral fence with Jackson and Orman, two other riders for the company, called across cheerfully,--

"Not hurt, are you?"

The heavy got up swearing. "Any of your damned business, is it?"

He caught at the pony bridle, jerked it violently, and hammered the lifted head of the dancing mustang with his fist. After several attempts he succeeded in kicking its ribs. Yeager said nothing, but his eyes gleamed. In the cow country men interfere rarely when a vicious rider abuses his mount, but such a man soon finds himself under an unvoiced ban.

Harrison backed the mustang to a corner, swung to the saddle, and tugged savagely at the reins. Two minutes later he took the dust again. The horse had spent the interval in a choice variety of pitching that included sun-fishing, fence-rowing, and pile-driving.

To Jackson Steve made comment. "Most generally it don't pay to beat up a horse. A man's liable to get piled, and if he gets tromped on folks don't go into mourning."

Harrison could not hear the words, but he made a fair guess at their meaning. He turned toward Yeager with a snarl.

"Got anything to say out loud, young fella?"

"Only that any horse is likely to act that way when it gets its back up. I wouldn't ride a horse without any spirit."

"Think you can ride this one, mebbe?"

Without speaking Yeager slid down from the fence and approached the mustang. The animal backed away, muscles a-tremble and eyes full of fear. Steve's movements were slow, but not doubtful. He stroked the pony's neck and gentled it. His low voice murmured soft words into the alert ear cocked back suspiciously. Then, without any haste or unevenness of motion, he swung up and dropped gently into the saddle.

For an instant the horse stood trembling. Yeager leaned forward and patted the neck of the colt softly. His soothing voice still comforted and reassured. Gradually its terror subsided.

"Open the gate," Steve called to Orman.

He rode out to the creosote flats and cantered down the road. A quarter of an hour later he swung from the saddle beside Threewit.

"Plumb gentle. You can make any horse a devil when you're one yourself."

They were standing in front of the stable. Threewit started to reply, but the words were taken out of his mouth. From out of the stable strode Harrison, a cold anger in his eyes.

"That's your opinion, is it?"

Yeager's light blue eyes met his steadily. "You've heard it."

"I've heard other things, too. You're taking boxing lessons. You're going to need them, my friend."

"The sooner the quicker," answered Steve evenly.

"You'll cut that out, both of you," ordered Threewit curtly. "I'll fire you both if you don't behave."

"I'm no school-kid, Threewit. I play my own hand. Sabe?" Harrison turned his cold eyes on the range-rider. "And I serve notice right here that next time my young rube friend and me mixes you'd better bring a basket to gather up the pieces."

Yeager brushed a fly languidly from his gauntlet. "That's twice he's used the word 'friend.' I reckon he don't know I'm some particular who calls me that."

"That'll be enough, Yeager. Don't start anything here. We're a moving-picture outfit, not a bunch of pugs." Briskly the director changed the subject. "I want you to choose a couple of the boys and go down to Yarnell's after a herd of cattle we're going to need in that Tapidero Jim picture. If you need more help the old man will let you have one or two of his riders."

Harrison had turned to leave, but he stopped to examine the conchas on a pair of leathers. Steve had a fleeting thought that the man was listening; also that he was covering the fact with a manner of elaborate carelessness.

"Want I should start right away?"

"Yep. Can you get back by to-morrow night?"

"I reckon. Has Yarnell got 'em rounded up?" asked Yeager.

"He telephoned me this morning they were ready."

"Then we'd ought to reach Los Robles late to-morrow night if we hit the trail steady."

"Good enough. Who do you want to take with you?"

"I'll take Shorty and Orman."

The details were arranged on the spot. Harrison was still giving his attention to the conchas on the chaps. They were made of 'dobe dollars. He had seen Jackson wear them fifty times and had never before showed the least interest in them.

CHAPTER V

YEAGER ASKS ADVICE

Though Yeager had enjoyed immensely his month with the Lunar people, he tasted again the dust of the drag-driver with a keen pleasure. He had not yet been able to get it out of his mind that he was only playing at work with the film company. When he heard some of the others complain about long hours and dangerous stunts he wished they could have ridden on the roundup for the Lone Star outfit about a week. Arizona had tanned the complexions of the actors, but it had left most of them still soft of muscle and fiber. The flabbiness of Broadway cannot be washed out of the soul in a month.

But to-day he felt he had done a man's work. It had been like old times. The white dust of the desert had enwrapped them in clouds. The untempered sun had beat down a palpitating heat upon dry sand wastes. The hill cattle he was driving were as wild as deer. A dozen times some lean steer had bolted and gone racing down a precipitous hillside like a rabbit. As often Four Bits had wheeled in its tracks and pounded through clutching cholla and down breakneck inclines after the escaping three-year-old. Fierce cactus thorns had torn at the leather chaps as horse and rider had ripped through them, zigzagging across the steep mountain slope at a gallop, the pony now slithering down the shale with braced forelegs, now taking washes and inclines with the surefooted litheness of a cat.

Now stars by millions roofed the velvet night. A big moon had climbed out of a crotch of the purple hills and poured a silvery light into a valley green and beautiful with the magic touch of spring. A grove of suhuaro rose like ghostly candelabra from the hillside opposite. The mesquite carried a wealth of dainty foliage. Even the flat-leafed prickly pear blended into the soft harmony of the mellow night.

Los Robles was still half a dozen miles away and the cattle were weary from the long drive. For an hour they had seemed to smell water and the leaders made a bee-line for it, bellowing with stretched necks as they hurried forward. It was late when at last they reached the water-hole.

"Time to throw off. We'll make camp in the cool of the morning," Yeager called to Shorty.

They built a fire of dead ironwood upon which they boiled coffee and fried bacon. Bread they had brought with them. After eating, they lay at ease and smoked.

There was little danger of the tired cattle straying, but Yeager divided his party so that they should take turn about night-herding. He took the first watch himself.

The stillness of the desert night was a thing to wonder at. The silence of the great outdoors, of vast empty space, subdued the restlessness of the cattle. Many a time before the range-rider had felt the fascination of it creep into his blood as he had circled the sleeping herd murmuring softly a Spanish love-song. By day the desert was often a place of desolation and death, but under the mystic charm of night it was transformed to a panorama of soft loveliness.

He thought of many episodes in his short, turbid life. They flashed upon the screen of his memory as did the pictures of the Lunar Company upon the canvas. In his time he had mushed in Alaska, fought in Mexico, driven stage at the Nevada gold-fields, and wandered into many a lawless camp. Always he had answered the call of adventure regardless of where it led.

His thoughts were fugitive, inconsequent. Now they had to do with Daisy Ellington, the New York chorus girl whose mobile, piquant face was helping to make the Lunar reels popular. Steve was engaged in a whirlwind flirtation with her which both of them were enjoying extremely. He liked her slangy audacity, the frank good-fellowship with which she had met him. Daisy was a good sport. She might pretend to sigh for the lights of Manhattan, but she was having a tremendously good time in Arizona.

"Reach for the roof, friend. No, I wouldn't rock the boat if I was you. Sit steady and don't move."

The words came to Yeager low but imperative. Automatically his hands went into the air even as he slewed his head to find out who was voicing the curt command. A rope dropped over his arms and was jerked tight just below the knees. Very cautiously a man emerged from behind a clump of cholla. The first thing he did was to remove the automatic revolver from the cowpuncher's chaps, the second to wind the rope tightly around his legs.

Steve made no comment, asked no questions. He knew that he would find out all about it in time. Just now he was not running the show.

"I expect your arms must be tired grabbin' at the stars. Drop 'em down clost to your sides. That's fine. Lucky you didn't start anything coarse, my friend."

The man gave a low whistle, evidently a signal, then moved for the first time within range of his prisoner's eyes. He was masked and wore a soft black hat pulled well down over his forehead. A Mexican serape had been flung carelessly across his well-built shoulders.

Adroitly he bound Yeager's arms to his side by winding the rope round and round his body, after which he knotted it tightly several times at a point just between the shoulder blades.

The range-rider observed that he was a heavy-set, powerful man of about his own height. He wore plain shiny leather chaps and the usual high-heeled boots of a cowpuncher.

Presently three other men appeared out of the darkness, bringing with them Orman and Shorty, both of whom, wakened out of a sound sleep, were plainly surprised and disturbed.

Shorty was protesting plaintively. "This here ain't no way to treat a man. I ain't done nothin'. There ain't no occasion whatever for a gun play. What d'you want, anyhow? I'm no bad hombre. And me sleepin' so peaceable, too, when you shoved the hardware into my pantry, doggone it."

The three men in charge of Yeager's assistants were also masked. One of them in particular drew Steve's eyes. He was a slight, short person with the walk and bearing of a youth. He wore for a mask a red bandanna handkerchief with figures, into which holes had been cut for the eyes. The other two were Mexicans.

The heavy-set man drew them aside and gave orders in a low voice. What these were Yeager could not hear, but from the gesturing he judged the leader of the band was giving explicit directions which he expected to be obeyed to the letter. After tying up Shorty and Yeager, the Mexicans and the younger man disappeared. The steady bawling of cattle that began shortly after told what they were doing. The herd was being moved slowly toward the south from its bedding-ground.

Already Steve had suspected the true state of affairs. He needed nobody to tell him now that the cattle were to be driven across the line into Sonora to supply some of the guerilla insurgents operating in the wilds of that state. Once they were safe in Mexico the cattle would be sold to old Pasquale for a fraction of their real value, the money received in exchange for them having been wrung by that old ruffian from some prisoner he had put to the torture to give up his honest earnings.

The man who had stayed to watch Yeager and his riders finished one cigar and lit another. He held to a somber silence, smoking moodily, a vigilant eye on his prisoners. Two or three times he looked at his watch impatiently. It must have been close to midnight when he rose as if to go.

"I'm going back into the bushes," he announced. "If any of you fellas make a move to free yourself inside of half an hour I'll guarantee you die of lead poisoning sudden."

They heard him moving away in the mesquite.

Shorty swore softly. "What d' you know about this? Me, I've had buck-ague for most three hours expecting that doggoned holdup to blow the roof of my head off. I don't sabe his game, unless he's on the rustle."

"Hell! He's runnin' these cows into Sonora. It don't take any wiz to guess that," answered Orman.

Steve was already busy trying to free himself. He gave no credit to the man's assertion that they would be watched from the bushes. The leader of the rustlers was already half a mile away, lengthening the distance between them at every stride of his galloping horse. The range-rider knew that their horses had probably been driven away, but he knew, too, that if Four Bits was within hearing of his whistle he could be depended upon to answer.

The cowpuncher had offered no resistance to being tied except a passive one. He had kept his chest expanded as much as possible when the ropes had been tightened and he had braced the muscles of his arm against the pressure of the folds. Ten minutes of steady work released one arm. The rest was a matter of a few moments. With his knife he slashed the ropes that bound Shorty and Orman.

Already his whistle had brought an answer from Four Bits. Five minutes later Steve was astride the barebacked horse galloping across country toward Los Robles. His friends he had left to follow on foot as best they could. He had a very particular reason why he wanted to reach the hotel as soon as possible. A suspicion had bitten into his mind. He wanted to verify or dismiss it.

An hour later Four Bits pounded down the main street of Los Robles. Almost simultaneously Yeager brought the horse slithering to a halt and with one lithe swing of his body landed on the ground in front of the hotel porch. He ran up the steps and into the lobby. Behind his cage the night clerk was drowsing.

"Anybody come into the hotel the last thirty minutes?" Yeager asked sharply.

The clerk thought. "No, I reckon not. There was Mr. Simmons--but that was most an hour since."

"Nobody else?"

"No. Why?"

The range-rider turned to the stairs, took them three at a time, and followed the corridor to Room 217. He hammered on the door with his fist.

A sleepy voice wanted to know who was there.

"It's Steve Yeager, Mr. Threewit. I wanta see you."

"You've got all to-morrow to see me in, haven't you?"

"My business won't wait."

Grumbling, the producing director got up. Presently he opened the door and stood revealed in a dressing-gown over his pajamas.

"What do you want, my anxious friend?"

"We've been held up."

"Held up!" A slow grin spread over Threewit's fat good-natured face. "Well, I'll bet Mr. Holdup didn't get a mint off you lads."

"He didn't bother with us. It was the cattle he wanted. They've driven them across the line. At least, I reckon so."

Threewit woke up instantly. "That's different. Unload your story, Yeager."

The extra told it in six sentences.

"Of course you didn't know any of the holdups. They were masked, you say?"

"Yep." Steve's cool, steady eyes held those of the director. "But I've got a fool notion just the same that I do know one of them. Come with me to Harrison's room."

"But--"

"I'll do all the talking. Come along."

"Now, see here, Yeager. Just because you and Harrison are at outs--"

"Have I made any charges against him? Maybe I want to ask his advice. Maybe he could help us straighten out this thing. Got to pull together, haven't we?" A cynical light in the eyes of the young man contradicted his words.

Reluctantly the director followed the extra to the room of the heavy on the third floor. Yeager knocked. He rapped again, and a third time.

Drowsily a voice demanded what was wanted. Presently the door was flung open and Harrison stood blinking in the doorway, heavy-eyed and slumberous.

"What's the row?" he growled, scowling at Yeager.

"We were held up on the way from Yarnell's by rustlers. They drove the cattle away and left us tied up."

"That any reason why you should wake me in the middle of the night? I ain't got your cattle under the bed." The heavy jaw of the prizefighter stood out saliently. Unconsciously his figure had drooped to the crouch of defense. His small black eyes were wary and defiant.

The cowpuncher laughed, lightly and easily. "I'm only a kid. Mr. Threewit comes from the East and don't know anything about this rustling game. We thought of you right away."

"What do you mean you thought of me?"

Yeager's eyes were innocent and steady. "Why, o' course we came to you for advice--to ask you what we'd better do."

"Oh! That's it, eh?" Was there the faintest flitter of relief on the lowering face? Steve could not be sure. "Well, I'll dress and join you downstairs, Mr. Threewit. With you in a minute."

"We got no time to lose. Mind if we talk here, Harrison?" Without waiting for permission the extra pushed into the room and began his story. "Must 'a' been about six miles back that we threw off the trail and camped. I figured on getting in early in the forenoon. Well, I was night-herding when I got orders to punch a hole in the atmosphere with my fists. I didn't do a thing but reach for the sky. A big masked guy come out from the mesquite and helped himself to my gun. Then he tied me up."

"Would you know him again if you saw him?" interrupted the prizefighter harshly.

The gaze of Yeager met his blandly. There was the least possible pause, and with it a certain tension. The younger man smiled. "Why, how could I, seeing he was masked? He was a big sulky brute. I've a notion I'd know his voice again if I heard it, though."

"Think so?" In Harrison's voice was a jeer, derision in the half-shuttered eyes that watched the other man vigilantly.

"His hair was about the same color as yours," added Steve in a matter-of-fact voice.

The underhung jaw of the prizefighter shot out. "Meaning anything particular?"

"Why, no," replied Steve in amiable surprise. "What could I mean?"

"How do I know what every buzzard-head's got in his cocoanut?"

Steve continued his story, giving fuller details. His casual glances wandered about the room. They found no mask, no Mexican serape, no black felt hat. Since he had not expected to see these in plain view he was not disappointed. A belt with a scabbarded revolver lay on the table. The extra wondered whether it was the same weapon that had been pressed against the back of his neck a few hours earlier. The boots lying half under the bed were white with the dust of travel, but this was nothing unusual.

"You can have my advice gratis if you want it." Harrison addressed himself pointedly to Threewit. "Send back to old man Yarnell's and you'll find the cattle straying in about day after to-morrow."

"But, if rustlers took them--"

The big man laughed unpleasantly. "Forget it, Mr. Threewit. A fairy tale to explain how-come your faithful cowboys to drap asleep and let the bunch stray. I reckon a little too much redeye in camp is the c'rect explanation."

Yeager smiled, saying nothing.

"And now I'm going to beat it for the hay again, Mr. Threewit. If you recollect, I told you some one was going to blow up pretty soon. Good-night."

As they walked back down the corridor Steve asked one question of the director. "Did it strike you he was a leetle too sleepy at first and just a leetle too quick to get that chip on his shoulder?"

"No, it didn't," snapped Threewit. Nobody likes to be dragged out of bed at two A.M., to hear bad news, and the director was merely human. "It makes me tired the way you two fellows shoot off about each other."

"He's a pretty slick proposition," Yeager went on, unmoved. "He hit the high spots back to town so as to have his alibi ready--didn't leave any evidence floating around loose in his room. He must have come up the back way so as to slip in without being noticed by the night clerk. At that he couldn't have reached here more than a few minutes before me."

"Quite a Sherlock Holmes, aren't you?"

"Bet you a week's salary that if we go out to the stables we find one of the horses still wet with sweat from a long run."

"Go you once," retorted Threewit promptly. "Wait just a jiffy till I get more clothes on."

Steve's prediction was verified. White Stockings, one of the fastest mounts in the remuda of the company, had been brought in from a long hard run within the past half-hour. Its flanks were stained with sweat and the marks of the saddle chafed its still moist back.

"You win," admitted Threewit. "But that doesn't prove Harrison was on its back."

"No. Say, what about giving me a week off, Mr. Threewit?"

"What for?"

"I've just taken a notion to travel some. Mebbe I might run acrost those cattle that strayed back to Yarnell's whilst I was sleeping."

The director looked at him sharply. "All right. Go to it, son."

CHAPTER VI

PLUCKING A PIGEON

Steve slept almost around the clock. He lost breakfast, but was there promptly for luncheon with the appetite of a harvest hand. During the two days' drive he had missed the good home cooking of Mrs. Seymour and he intended to make up for it.

Orman and Shorty had reached town some time about daylight and had spread the story of the holdup, so that the dining-room was humming with excitement. A dozen questions were flung at Steve before he had well taken his seat. He threw up his hands in surrender.

Before he had finished telling his edited story, Shorty drifted in and divided the interest. The little extra promptly took the stage away from Yeager, whereupon Daisy Ellington absorbed the attention of Steve. She asked a sharp question or two which he answered blandly. It was not his intention to communicate any suspicions he happened to have.

They were waiting for the dessert. Daisy put her lean, pretty elbows on the table and her chin in her little doubled fists. A provocative audacity was in the tilted smile she flashed at him.

"Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Breeze on, Steve. You're doin' fine. Next scene."

"That's all."

"Say, do I look like I was born yesterday? See any green in my eye, Cactus Center?"

He grinned. "You're sure wise, compadre. But the rest is mostly suspicions."

"I'm listening," she nodded.

"You're such a Sherlock Holmes I'd hate to go out with the boys if I was married to you."

"I'm your friend and wouldn't wish any such bad luck on you," she countered gayly. Then, in a lower voice, with a sudden gravity: "Is it Harrison, Steve?"

Amazement sparkled for a moment in his eyes. "With your imagination, Daisy,--" he was beginning when she cut him short.

"You gotta tell me what's on your chest, you transparent kid."

He knew she could keep a secret like a well. Looking round guardedly, his voice fell to a whisper. "If I'd reached town ten minutes earlier I'd 'a' beat him in and showed him up. Threewit won't hear to it, of course, but the man that held me up was Chad Harrison. Take it or leave it. Just the same it's a fact."

Daisy nodded rapidly several times. "I take it, Steve. Always did know there was something shady about the big stiff. And I'll tell you something else you don't know. It's through that wild young colt brother of hers that he's got a strangle hold on Ruth."

Yeager set his lips to a noiseless whistle. "You mean--?"

She flung his question aside with an impatient wave of her hand. "I can't tell you what I mean. I've got no evidence. But it's true. She's ridiculously fond of that young scamp Phil. Somehow--in some way--Harrison has got the whip hand over him."

His eyes fell on the slender girl waiting on the table at the other end of the room. Her look met his. It almost seemed as if she knew they had been talking about her, for the milky cheek took on a shell-pink tinge. The long lashes fluttered down and she busied herself at once about her work.

"If she was my sister--"

Daisy did not need a completed sentence to understand his meaning. "Can you beat it?" she asked with a shrug. "Any gink that knows enough to come in out of the rain could tell that Chad Harrison is a bad egg. Give him the once over and you can see that."

After Ruth had arranged the tables for dinner she stole out to the porch for a breath of fresh air. Already the approach of an Arizona summer was beginning to make itself felt during the middle of the day. Yeager sat beneath the wild cucumber vines pleating a horsehair hatband for Daisy Ellington.

Ruth liked this brown, lithe cowpuncher, all sinew and bone and muscle. His smile was so warm and friendly, his manner so boyish and yet so competent. To look into his kind, steady eyes was to know that he could be trusted.

She moved in his direction shyly, a touch of pink blooming in her soft cheeks. Ruth was charmingly unsure of herself. It was always easy to disturb her composure. Even a casual encounter with the slim, brown-faced range-rider was an adventure for her. Now her pansy eyes deepened in color with excitement, with the tremulous fear of what she was to learn.

"Mr. Yeager, I--wanted to ask you about--about the holdup."

"What about it, Miss Ruth?"

"Did you--know any of them?"

"How could I? They were masked." His eyes had taken on a film of wariness that blotted out for the moment their kindness.

"I didn't know--I thought, perhaps,--" She tried a new start. "Did you say that three of them were Mexicans?"

"Two of them," he corrected.

There was the least quiver of her lip. "The others were--both big men, didn't you say?"

"I didn't say."

A footstep sounded on the crisp gravel walk. Steve looked up, in time to catch the flash of warning menace Harrison sent toward the girl.

"Mr. Yeager has been having a pipe-dream, Ruth. Don't wake him up," jeered the heavy.

Ruth fled unobtrusively and left the men alone.

"Hear you're going on a vacation," said Harrison gruffly.

"You've heard correct." Yeager pleated his hatband with steady fingers. His voice was even and placid.

Harrison looked him over with indolent insolence. "Some folks find this climate don't agree with them. Some folks find it better to drift out, casual-like, y' understand?"

"Yes?"

"I'm tellin' it to you straight."

"That you're going to leave? The Lunar Company will miss you," suggested the range-rider politely.

"Think you're darned clever, don't you? It's you that's leaving the company, Mr. Yeager."

"For a week."

"For good."

"Hadn't heard of it. News to me," answered Steve lightly.

"I'm givin' you the tip. See?"

"Oncet I knew a fellow who lived to be 'most ninety minding his own business," observed the cowpuncher to the world in general as he held up and examined his work.

"It ain't considered safe to get gay with me. I'm liable to lam your head off," threatened the big man sullenly.

"And then again you're liable not to. I'm not freightin' with your outfit, Mr. Harrison. Kindly lay off of me and you'll find we get along fine."

Steve rose and passed on his way to the street. Harrison was in two minds whether to force an issue again with him, but something in the contour of that close-gripped jaw, in the gleam of the steady eyes, was more potent than the dull rage surging in him. He let the opportunity pass.

Four Bits carried Yeager away from Los Robles at a road gait. Horse and rider were taking the border trail. It led them through a desolate country of desert where the flat-leafed prickly pear and the occasional pudgy creosote were the chief forms of vegetable life. Now and again a swift might be seen basking on a rock or a Gila monster motionless on the hillside. The ominous buzz of a rattler more than once made the pony sidestep. Mesa and flat and wash succeeded each other monotonously.

It was after sunset when they drew up at a feed corral in Arixico. Steve looked after his horse and sauntered down the little adobe street to a Chinese restaurant which ostentatiously announced itself as the "New York Cafe." This side of the business street was in the territory of Uncle Sam, the other half floated the Mexican flag. After he had eaten, the young man drifted across to one of the gambling-houses that invited the patronage of Americans and natives alike.

He found within the heterogeneous gathering usually to be observed in such a place. Vaqueros brushed shoulders with Chinese laundrymen, cowpunchers with soldiers, peons with cattlemen from Arizona and Texas. Here were miners and soldiers of fortune and plain tramps. More than one of the shining-eyed gamblers had a price upon his head. Several were outlaws. A score or more had taken part in the rapine and the pillage of the guerrilla warfare that has of late years been the curse of the country. It would have been hard in a day's travel to find an assembly where human life was held at less value.

Among these lawless, turbulent siftings of the continent Yeager was very much at home. He merged inconspicuously into the picture, a quiet, brown-faced man with cool, alert eyes. Nobody paid the least attention to him. He might be a horse-thief or an honest cowpuncher. It was a matter of supreme indifference to those present. Experience in that outdoor frontier school which always keeps open session had taught them that a man lived longer here when he minded his own business.

Steve stood close to the bar. A prospector leaned against it and talked to an acquaintance while they drank their beer.

"This here's how I figure it," he was saying. "I had a little dough when I begun digging gopher holes in these here hills. Not much--say fifteen hundred, mebbe. I sure ain't got it now. Lost it in a hole in the ground. Well; I reckon I'll go on looking for it where I lost it."

Casually Yeager sauntered over to the roulette table. A fat man in duck trousers--he was the agent for a firm of rifle manufacturers, Steve learned later--was bucking the wheel hard. In front of him lay a pile of gold-pieces and several stacks of chips. He was very red in the face from excitement and cocktails. The range-rider put a half-dollar on the red and won. He let it ride, won again, and shifted the chips to the black. Once more the goddess of luck favored him. He divided his pile. Half went on the red, the rest on the first number his eye caught. It happened to be seventeen. The croupier spun the wheel again. The ball whirled round, dipped down once or twice, and plumped into the compartment numbered seventeen.

"Enough's a-plenty. Here's where I cash in," announced Steve cheerfully.

He stuffed the bills carelessly into his pocket and strolled over to the faro table. Yeager had come on business, not for pleasure. He intended to play just enough to give a colorable reason for his presence.

His roving eye settled upon the poker table at the rear of the room. Five men were playing. Two were Mexicans, three white. Two of the Americans were dismissed from Steve's mind with a casual glance. They were negligible factors. The third had his back to the observer, but the figure had a slender, boyish trimness that spoke of youth. The Mexican sitting to his right was a square-built fellow of forty with a scar on the cheek running from mouth to ear. There was on his face a certain ugliness of expression, a furtive cruelty. That there was an understanding between him and the man opposite soon became apparent to Yeager. They cross-raised the boy, working together to mulct him of the pile of chips in front of him.

It was the Mexican who sat with his back to the wall that drew and held the cowpuncher's eye. He too was slender, not much past thirty, but with the youth long since stamped out of his face. Sleek and black, a dominant personality, he sat there warily as a rattlesnake, dark eyes gleaming from a masked, smiling countenance.

The boy was the pigeon, and it was the Mexicans that were plucking him. So much Steve learned within two minutes. He had cut his eye teeth at poker, and he saw at a glance that this was no game for a youngster. Quietly he moved a step or two closer along the wall. He observed the play without appearing to do so.

The tension of the game was relieved with casual conversation. The two negligibles, playing about even, contributed mostly to it. The bulky Mexican added his quota. The boy, a heavy loser, concealed his feelings under the bravado expected of a good sport.

They were playing jack pots with a stripped deck, the joker going as a fifth ace or to fill a straight or a flush. Several hands were dealt without any stayers. The slender Mexican was dealing when the sensation of the game was handed out.

One of the negligibles opened the pot. The bulky Mexican stayed.

In the slow, easy drawl of the Southwest the boy spoke. "Me, I reckon I'll have to tilt it. Got to protect your hand from these wolves, Dave." He pushed in a stack of blue chips.

The third American did not stay. It was now up to the dealer--his name, it appeared, was Ramon Culvera. After a moment's hesitation he measured a stack of blues by those the boy had put in the pot and added to it another pile of yellows. With a grunt of protest the older Mexican stayed. The man who had opened the pot dropped out.

"Enough's a-plenty. Me, I got no business trailing along with you hyenas," he explained.

"Different here," commented the boy. "My cards look good enough for another hike."

Culvera examined his hand carefully, met the raise, and picked up the deck.

The Mexican with the scar interposed. "But one moment, señor. Let us make it a good pot." He pushed in all the chips in front of him.

Yeager, standing against the wall, caught the swift flash of surprise in the eyes of the boy. He counted the chips of the Mexican and then his own. These he added to the small fortune in the center of the table.

"Call it. I'm fifty-three shy," he said in an even voice.

The range-rider knew without being told that this hand had been dealt from a cold deck for the express purpose of cleaning out the boy. From the tenseness of the lithe body, which had become, as it were, a coiled spring, he knew that the lad's suspicions were stirring to life.

The greedy little eyes of Culvera fastened on the boy. He made his first mistake. "How much you play back, Pheelip?"

The youngster answered. "I said a hundred bucks. I've got fifty-three in the pot now. That leaves forty-seven."

Culvera's raise was forty-seven dollars. The big Mexican shrugged. "Too steep for Jesus Mendoza." He threw his cards into the discard.

The boy who had been called Philip laid his cards face down on the table in front of him.

"Call it," he announced hoarsely. His eyes were fastened steadily on the nimble brown fingers of the dealer.

"Cards?" asked Culvera with an indolent lift of his eyebrows.

Philip hesitated. He had the nine, ten, and jack of clubs, the queen of hearts, and the joker. This counted as a king-high straight. Steve, standing back and to one side of him, guessed the boy's dilemma. Should he stand pat on his straight or discard the heart and draw to his straight flush? Culvera's play had shown great strength and would probably beat the pat hand. The lad took a chance and called for one card.

Culvera drew two. He left them lying on the table while he discarded leisurely.

"You're all in, Pheelip. It's a showdown. What you got?"

Philip had drawn the six of clubs. He spread his hand with a sweeping gesture. "All blue."

The Mexican shrugged. "Beats me unless I helped." He showed three eights, then faced the two cards he had drawn. The first was a king of diamonds, the second the fourth eight.

"Hard luck, Pheelip," he said, and all his teeth flashed in a friendly smile as he opened both arms to rake in the chips.

Philip sat silent, his mind seething with suspicions. Culvera had played his hand very strangely, unless--unless he had known that a fourth eight was waiting for him in the deck. The boy looked up, in time to catch a vanishing smile on the face of Mendoza.

"Just a moment, Ramon," he called sharply, covering the chips with his hands. "That play--it don't look good to me. A man don't play threes so strong as that."

Culvera still smiled blandly, though his eyes were very watchful. "Me, I have what you call a hunch, Pheelip."

Yeager took two steps forward. "You bet he did. Cold deck, kid. The other one is in his right-hand coat pocket."

The suavity went out of Culvera's face as a light does from a blown candle. Snarling, he rose from his seat and faced the cowpuncher.

"Liar! Cabrone!" he hissed, reaching for his gun.

Already the revolver of Mendoza was flashing in the air.

Like a streak Steve's arm swept up. Twice his revolver sounded. There was a crash of breaking glass from the incandescent lights. Yeager flung himself against the table and drove it against Culvera who reeled back against the wall and dropped his weapon. The sound of more shots, of men dodging their way to safety, of a sharp cry followed by groans, had trodden so swiftly on the heels of the range-rider's action that when he turned a moment later he saw in the semi-darkness a smoke-filled room in the confusion of chaotic movement.

Philip stood close to him, a smoking .38 in his hand, while Mendoza, clutching at his chair for support, sank slowly to the ground.

Close to the boy's ear spoke Steve. "Beat it. Make your getaway through that door. Meet me at Johanson's corral."

The boy plunged through the doorway into the darkness outside. Toward the exit after him backed the cowpuncher. Already scattered shots were being flung in his direction, but the dim light served him well. The last thing he saw before he vanished through the door was Culvera groping for his weapon.

CHAPTER VII

STEVE TELLS TOO MUCH TRUTH

Yeager ducked into the night. From the door through which he had just come bullets spat aimlessly. He crouched as he ran, dodging in zigzag little rushes. Voices pursued him, fierce and threatening. Men poured from the gambling-house as seeds are squirted from a squeezed lemon.

Into a vacant lot behind a store Steve swerved, finding shelter among some empty drygoods boxes. He was none too soon, for as he sank to cover, the rush of feet padded down the sidewalk. Stealthily he crept to the fence, vaulted it lightly, and found a more secure hiding-place in the lumber yard beyond. From the top of a pile of two by fours he watched, every sense alert to catch any warning of danger.

Soon his pursuers returned in little groups to their interrupted games. Now that the first excitement of the chase was over, few of them wanted to risk a battle with desperate men in the dark. That was what the rurales and the rangers were for.

The cowpuncher slid down cautiously and left the lumber yard by way of the alley in the rear. He followed a barb-wire fence which bounded a pasture, and at the next corner crossed the street warily into United States territory. By alleys and back ways his feet took him to Johanson's stable. Noiselessly he crept toward it from the rear. Some one was inside saddling a horse. So much he could gather from the sounds. Was it Phil? Or was it some one getting ready for the pursuit? He moved a step nearer. A stick cracked beneath his foot.

The man saddling the bronco whirled, revolver in hand. "Who is it?" demanded a tense voice.

"All right, Phil." Steve moved forward, breathing easier. "Glad you made it. We'd better light a shuck out of here. They'll stir up the rurales to get after us, I reckon."

Already he was busy saddling Four Bits.

"Do you ... do you think I killed him?" jerked out the boy, a strangled sob of over-strained emotion in his throat.

"Don't know. He was asking for it, wasn't he?" answered Yeager in a matter-of-fact voice. He did not intend by an expression of sympathy to aid in any breakdown here. That could come later when they had put many miles between them and Arixico.

They led their horses out of the stable and swung to the saddles not a minute too soon. A man came running toward them.

"Hold on," he called. "Just a moment. I'm the sheriff. They say a man has been killed."

The fugitives put spurs to their broncos. The animals jumped to a canter. Over his shoulder Steve looked back. The sheriff was standing undecided. Before it penetrated his brain that these were the men he wanted they were out of range.

For a time they rode in silence except for the clicking of the hoofs. Yeager turned, his hand on the rump of his pony.

"Don't hear anything of them. We've made a clean getaway, looks like. But they'll keep the wires warm after us--if Mendoza is dead."

The boy broke down, sobbing. "My God, I couldn't help it. What else could I do? He was shooting when I fired."

"Sure he was, but that won't help you if they take you back to Mexico. My advice is for you to get into a hole and draw it in after you, for a few days anyhow. Where do you live?"

"At Los Robles--when I'm at home."

"Then you are Phil Seymour?"

"Who told you?" flashed the boy.

"I board with your mother. I'm a rider for the Lunar Company."

"Then you know Chad Harrison. Chad will get me out of this. He'll fix it."

"How'll he fix it?" demanded Yeager bluntly. "Back there across the line they're going to call this by an ugly name--if Mendoza cashes in his checks. Harrison can't fix murder, can he?"

A film of hard wariness covered the eyes of the boy as he looked across in the darkness at the other man. "He's got friends," was the dry, noncommittal answer that came to the range-rider after a moment's distinct pause.

Yeager asked no more questions. There had been a "No trespass" sign in Phil's manner. But as they rode silently toward Los Robles Steve's mind groped again with the problem of Harrison's relation to those in power across the border. Was the man tied up with old Pasquale? Or was he an agent of the Huerta Government? Just now the Federals had control of this part of the border. Did the boy mean that it was among them that Harrison had friends? It looked that way, and yet--The cowpuncher could not get it out of his head that the stolen cattle had been for old Pasquale. Huerta's lieutenants were too wary to stock their pantry from the United States in that fashion.

They rode into Los Robles in the first gray stirrings of dawn, long before anybody in the little town was afoot.

"Where are you going to hide? First place they'll look for you will be at home," suggested Yeager.

"There's a haystack out in the Lunar pastures. I'll lay low there. Tell Chad when you see him, and have Ruth fix me up something to eat."

They parted, each of them to get in what sleep was possible before day. When Steve was awakened by the sound of some one stirring in the next room it seemed as though he had been in bed only a few minutes.

He walked up to the hotel before breakfast and saw Harrison as the actor was going into the dining-room. The big man stopped in his tracks and shot out a heavy jaw at him.

"Thought you was giving our eyes a rest for a while," he growled.

Yeager declined to exchange compliments with him. "There's a friend of yours on the haystack in the pasture. He wants to see you soon as it's convenient."

The eyes of the pugilist narrowed. "Put a name to him."

"Phil Seymour."

"What's he doing here?" demanded Harrison blackly.

"Perhaps you'd better ask him." Steve turned on his heel and walked back to his boarding-house.

His arrival at the breakfast table was greeted with a chorus of exclamations. What was he doing back so soon? Had he got homesick? Had he run out of money already?

He let them worm out of him that he had ridden away and forgotten his purse and that upon discovering this he had come back for the supplies of war. They joked him unmercifully, even Daisy,--who was manifestly incredulous about his explanation,--and he accepted their hilarious repartee with the proper amount of sheepish resentment.

After the meal was over he lingered to see Ruth, who had just sat down to eat.

"Can I see you alone, Miss Ruth?"

She flashed a quick look at him, doubtful and apprehensive. "In the pergola, almost right away."

The girl reached the vine-draped entrance of the pergola shortly after Yeager. Manifestly her fears had been growing in the interval since he had left her.

"What is it?" And swift on the heels of that, "Is it about Phil?"

"Yes."

"He's in trouble ... again?" she breathed.

He nodded assent. "The boy's out in the pasture. He wants you to send him breakfast."

The dread that was always lying banked in the hearts of herself and her mother found voice. "What has he done now?"

The range-rider chose his words carefully. "There was some trouble--just across the border. He had to shoot ... and a man fell."

Her face mirrored terror. "You mean ... dead?"

"I don't know," he answered gravely.

"Tell me all about it, please,--the circumstances, everything."

"He will tell you himself. I'll just say this--the shooting was forced on him. He fired in self-defense."

She wrung her hands. "I knew ... I knew something dreadful would happen. Mr. Harrison promised me--he said he would look out for Phil."

Steve looked her straight in the eyes. "Harrison's a crook. He's been using your love for Phil as a lever. It's up to you and the boy to shake him off."

A swift, upblazing anger leaped to her face. "How dare you say that! How dare you!"

His blue eyes met her dark, stormy ones quietly and steadily. "I'm telling you the truth. Can't you see he's been leading Phil into deviltry? You're afraid of him, afraid of his influence over the boy. That's why you knuckle down to him."

"I'm not afraid. He's Phil's friend. You're against him just because he--he--"

"Say it, Miss Ruth. Just because he gave me the whaling of my young life. Nothing to that, nothing a-tall. My system can absorb a licking without bearing a grudge. But he ain't on the level. 'Course you'll hate me for saying it, but some one's got to tell you."

"It's none of your business. I dare say it was you that was with Phil when he--when he--got into trouble."

"Yes."

"I thought so." A sob swelled up in her throat. "You come here and make trouble. I do hate you if you want to know."

With that she turned tempestuously and went flying back to the house.

Steve smiled ruefully. He did not know much about women, but he had read somewhere that they were capable of injustice. She had plenty of spirit, anyhow, for all that she looked so demure and shy.

CHAPTER VIII

THE HEAVY GETS HIS TIME

Threewit came to Steve while Cummings was preparing the stage set for a dissolve.

"Wish you'd look over this scenario, Yeager. The old man sent it out to me to see if we can pull off the riding end of it. Scene twenty-seven is the sticker. Here's the idea: You've been thrown from your horse and your foot's caught in the stirrup. You draw your gat to shoot the bronch and it's bumped out of your hand as you're dragged over the rough ground. See? You save your life by wriggling your foot out of your boot. Can it be done without taking too many chances?"

The rider considered. "I reckon it could if a fellow's boot was fixed so he could slip his foot out at the right time. I'll take a whirl at it."

"There's another scene where you save Maisie by jumping from your horse to a wild steer that's pursuing her. You'll have to twist its head and throw the brute after you straddle it."

"All right. When you want to pull it off?"

"We can do the stirrup one to-day, before you go--if you still want to go."

"Got an answer yet from Arixico?"

"Just got it. Mendoza's still alive, but mighty badly hurt. I've sent the kid out to the animal farm. He'll lie low, and they won't find him there."

"I'm still curious about that bunch of cattle we lost. If you can spare me I'll run down and see if old Pasquale hasn't got 'em. It ain't likely we'll ever get hide or hair of 'em, but there's one thing I'd like to find out."

"Still got that notion about Harrison?"

"Maybe I have. Maybe I haven't. Anyhow, folks that are blind can't see. I'll keep my notions in my own fool haid for a while."

"Harrison has some friends across the line. He's going to try and fix it for the kid if they run him down."

"That's fine," commented Yeager dryly. "He sure must have influential friends."

"All ready, Mr. Threewit," called out Cummings.

The director lit a cigar and moved forward to the stage. "Lennox, you're too far up stage. Register fear, Daisy. That's the idea. Now, then, Miss Winters. Keep your eyes on Daisy as you come into the room. No--no--no! That won't do at all."

Yeager left them to their rehearsal troubles and strolled back to his boarding-house. He would not be needed till afternoon.

He spent a half-hour softening the leather of his right boot around the ankle. A man cannot tumble from a running horse, let himself be dragged forty yards, and then slip his foot from the stirrup of a cowpony that has become frightened without taking a big chance. But it was his business to take chances. He always had taken them. And he knew that they could be minimized by careful preparation, expertness, and cool skill of execution.

As it turned out, Yeager had to make his fall twice. The ground selected for the set was a bit of level space just at the foot of a hillside. The rider went down hard on his shoulder at exactly the spot selected, but he had miscalculated slightly and the force of the fall dragged his foot from the boot at once. His calculations worked better at the second attempt. Hanging on by a toe-hold, he was dragged bumping over the rough ground. His revolver came out on schedule time and flew into the air. When Farrar gave the word,--which was at the moment the galloping horse was opposite the camera,--Steve worked his foot free, leaving the boot still clinging to the stirrup.

Yeager got to his feet rather unsteadily. The fall had been an unusually hard one, and it had not helped any to be dragged at full speed over the bumpy ground. Maisie Winters ran forward and slipped an arm around his waist to support him.

"You dandy man! I never did see one so game as you, Steve."

The cowpuncher grinned. He liked Maisie Winters. There was about her a boyish, slangy camaraderie that made for popularity.

"Says the extra to the star, 'Much obliged, ma'am.'"

"You're no extra. In your own line you're as big a star as we've got. I know there isn't a rider in the country like you. You're a jim-dandy."

"He's quite a family pet," contributed Harrison sourly.

Farrar came forward from the camera, his eyes shining. "Some picture, I'll bet. Good boy! You pulled it fine, Steve. Didn't he, Threewit?"

The director nodded. He was wondering how much he would have to raise this young man's salary to hold him from rival companies.

"Sho! I just fell out of the saddle, Frank. Most any one can fall off a horse."

Harrison laughed spitefully. "I saw him do a better fall than that oncet."

Farrar was on the spot. "I saw you do a mighty good one the same day."

"Don't get fresh, young fella, or you'll do more than see one," snarled the heavy.

"Want to beat me up, Chad?" asked Farrar with innocent impudence. "I weigh one hundred and thirty-one pounds when I'm hog fat. How much do you weigh?"

"Cut it out, Frank," ordered Threewit. "I've had about enough of this jangling. If it isn't stopped, some one's going to lose a job. We're here to take pictures. Any one who's got any other idea had better call at the office for his time."

"Meaning me, Mr. Director?" demanded Harrison menacingly.

"Meaning you or anybody else that won't keep the rules I set for the company I run," retorted the director sharply.

"Forget it, Threewit. I'm no kid. Nobody runs me with rules. I do as I please."

"You'll not make trouble in my company."

"You ain't any little tin god on wheels. Don't run away with that idee in your bean. I haven't seen any man yet that can lay onto me without getting his hair curled for him. Me, I play my own hand, by God; and I don't care whether it's against Mr. Yeager or Mr. Farrar--or Mr. Threewit. See?"

"Your pay is waiting for you, Harrison."

"What? How's that?" he snarled.

"You're discharged--no longer working for the Lunar Company."

Harrison's face became an apoplectic purple. He stood with clenched fists glaring at the director, ready to explode with rage. It was a part of his vanity that he had not supposed for an instant that Threewit would let him go.

But it happened that the director had a temper of his own. He had chafed long enough under the domineering ways of the ex-prizefighter. Moreover, Harrison was no longer so essential to the company. Yeager was a far better rider and could register more effectively the feats of horsemanship that were a feature of the Lunar films. Billie Threewit had known for some time that this man was an element of disorganization in the company. Therefore he was letting him go.

Steve stood quietly in the background, one arm thrown carelessly across the neck of his pony. But his gaze did not lift from the heavy, who stood glaring at the director, his fingers working and head thrust low on the deep chest so that the gorilla hunch was emphasized. The man's black eyes snapped with a blazing fire that seemed ready to leap like a crouched tiger.

"Through with me, are you? Going to use that grand-stander Yeager instead, I reckon. That's the game, is it?"

"I'm not discussing my plans with you."

"Ain't you? Well, I'll discuss mine to this extent. I'll make you sick of this day's work all right before I'm through with you. Get that? Plumb sick." His eyes traveled around the half-circle till they met those of Yeager. "You'll get yours too, my friend. Believe me. Get it a-plenty. You're going to sweat blood when I git you hog-tied."

He turned away, flung himself on his horse, and dug the rowels into the sides of the animal savagely.

Farrar laughed nervously. "Exit Mr. Chad Harrison, some annoyed."

Steve looked gravely at his employer. "Sorry you tied that can on him, Mr. Threewit. He's not just the man I'd choose for an enemy if I was picking one."

"Had to do it sometime. The sooner the quicker. Anyhow, he hasn't got it in for me as much as he has for you."

Yeager shrugged. "Oh, me. That's different. 'Course he hates me thorough, but I'm sorry you got mixed in it."

"What difference does it make? He can't hurt me any." The director clapped his hands briskly. "All over at the willows for the kid-finding scene. Got your location picked, Farrar?"

CHAPTER IX

GABRIEL PASQUALE

A red-hot cannon ball was flaming high in the heavens when Yeager drew out of Los Robles at a road gait. The desert winds were whispering good-night to the sun as he crossed Dry Sandy just above the Sinks. Many dusty miles in Sonora had been clipped off by Four Bits before the chill moon rose above the black line of the distant hills and flooded a transformed land with magical light, touching a parched and arid earth to a vibrant and mysterious beauty of whispering yucca and fantastic cactus and weird outline of mesquite.

Twice he unsaddled the bronco, hobbled it, and lay on his back with his face to the million stars of night. The first time he gave Four Bits an hour's rest and grazing. It was midnight when he dismounted at a water-hole gone almost dry under many summer suns. Here he slept the heavy, restful sleep of healthy, fatigued youth, arms and legs sprawling, serene and peaceful, unmoving as a lifeless log.

With the first faint streaks of dawn that came flooding into the eastern sky he was afoot, knocking together such breakfast as a rider of the plains needs. Presently he was once more in the saddle, pushing across the tawny, empty desert toward the hills that hid Noche Buena, the village where Pasquale had his headquarters.

The smell of breakfast and the smoke of it were in the air when he rode into the street lined with brown adobe huts. The guards paid no attention to him. Gringos evidently were no unusual sight to the troopers of the insurgent chief. Most of these were wearing blue denim suits of overall stuff, though a few were clad in khaki. All carried bright-colored handkerchiefs around their necks. Serapes, faded and bright, of all hues and textures, were in evidence everywhere.

He stopped a boy in riding-boots reaching to his hips, down the sides of which were conchas of silver dollars. Like most of those in camp the face upturned to that of Yeager was of a strong Indian cast.

The American inquired where the general might be found.

The boy--Steve judged him not over fifteen, and he was to find many soldiers in camp younger even than this--pointed to a square two-story house near the center of the town.

Two sentries were on guard outside. One of these went inside with the message of Yeager. Presently he returned, relieved the American of his revolver, and announced that the general would see him.

Pasquale was at breakfast with one of his lieutenants, a slender young man with black sleek hair who sat with his back to the door. From the first moment that his eyes fell upon that lithe, graceful figure the American knew that presently he would be looking into the face of Ramon Culvera. A chill shudder passed through him for an instant. If the gambler recognized him he was lost.

But as yet Culvera had not taken the trouble to turn. He was eating a banana indolently and stray Gringos did not greatly interest him.

"You want to see me, señor," demanded Pasquale in Spanish.

"I'm out of a job--thought maybe you could give me something to do. I met Tom Neal. He figured you might."

"In the army? Do you want to fight?"

Pasquale leaned back in his chair and looked at his guest from narrowed eyes that expressed intelligent energy and brutality. He was smiling, but there was something menacing even about his smile. It struck Steve that he was as simple, as natural, and about as humane as a wolf. He was not tall, but there was unusual breadth and depth to his shoulders. Something of the Indian was in the high cheekbones of his rough, unshaven, coffee-colored face. The old ruffian looked what he was, a terrible man, one who could brush out a human life as lightly as he did the ash from his cigar.

"I don't know. Perhaps. Can you give me a commission?"

"Hmp!" The beadlike eyes of the bandit took in shrewdly the competence of this quiet, brown-faced man. He might be a thief and a murderer,--very likely was since he had crossed the border to join the insurgents,--but it was a safe bet that he had the fighting edge. Men of this particular stripe were needed to lick his tattered, nondescript recruits into shape. "Where you from? Who knows you?"

Culvera slewed round in his seat and glanced at the man standing behind his chair. The indifference did not fade out of his eyes.

"I've been with the Lunar Film Company. Before that I was riding for the Lone Star cattle outfit," answered Yeager.

The younger Mexican showed a flicker of interest. "The Lunar Film Company? Do you know a man named Harrison, señor?"

"Yes."

"And a boy named Pheelip Seymour?"

"I've just met him. He doesn't work for the company."

Culvera turned to his chief. "It is this Pheelip that shot Mendoza, he and another Gringo."

Pasquale nodded, still watching Yeager.

"Know any military tactics?" he asked.

"None--except to hit the other fellow first and hit him hardest."

"And to hit him when he isn't looking. Those three things are all there is to know about war--those three, and to keep your men fat." Pasquale's momentary grin faded. "I'll give you a try-out for a week. If we like each other we'll talk turkey about a commission. Eh, señor?"

"Go you one. If we ain't suited we part company at the end of a week."

The noted insurgent leader spoke English as well as he did Spanish. Sometimes he talked in one language, sometimes in the other. Now he relapsed into Spanish and asked Yeager to join them at breakfast.

The cowpuncher sat down promptly. It had been three hours since he had eaten lightly and he was as hungry as a Yukon husky. He observed that Culvera's table manners were nice and particular, whereas those of his chief, though they ate off silver taken from the home of a Federal supporter during a raid, were uncouth in the extreme. He wolfed his food, throwing it into his mouth from knife or fork as rapidly as he could.

Glancing up from his steak, Steve observed the brooding eye of Culvera upon him. Faint suspicions, recollections too vague as yet for definiteness, were beginning to stir in the mind of the man. He had taken on the look of wariness, masked by a surface smile, that his face had worn the night of the shooting.

Yeager's talk flowed on, easy, careless, unperturbed. His stories were amusing Pasquale, and the old ruffian had a fondness for anybody that could entertain him. But back of his debonair gayety Steve nursed a growing unease. He was no longer dressed in the outfit of a cowpuncher, but wore a gray street suit and a Panama straw hat. Culvera had caught only a momentary glance at him the night they had faced each other revolver in hand. Yet the American was morally convinced that given time recognition would flash upon the young Mexican. Some gesture or expression would betray him. Then the fat would be in the fire. And Steve--where would he be?

After breakfast Yeager rode out with Pasquale to review the troops. It was an entirely informal proceeding. The youthful army was happily engaged in loafing and in play. A bugle blew. There was an instant scurry for horses. They swung into line, stood at attention, and at a second blast charged yelling across the plain, serapes flying wild.

Pasquale turned to Yeager with a gesture of his hand. "They are mine, body and soul. They eat, sleep, starve, and die at my word. Is it not so?"

The charging line had wheeled and was coming back like the distant roll of thunder. "Viva Pasquale!" they shouted as they galloped. Steve had a momentary qualm lest they charge over him and their chief, but the tough little horses were dragged to a halt five yards from them in a great cloud of dust. Bullets zipped into the air in their wild enthusiasm. Wild whoops and cheers increased the tumult.

"Looks that way," agreed the American.

Returning to the village, Steve observed a bunch of cattle a hundred yards from the trail. A Mexican lad, half asleep, was herding them. Immediately a devouring curiosity took hold of the cowpuncher. He wanted to see the brand on those cattle. It struck him that the shortest way was the quickest. He borrowed the field-glasses of Pasquale.

As he lowered the glasses after looking through them, Yeager laughed. "Funny how things come out. In this country cattle are like chips in a poker game. They ain't got any home, I reckon."

"Meaning, señor?" suggested the insurgent chief.

"Meaning that less than a week ago I paid a perfectly good check of the Lunar Company for that bunch of steers. We did aim to use them in some roundup sets, but I expect you've got another use for them."

"Si, señor."

"Hope Harrison held you up for a good price," suggested the American casually.

Pasquale showed his teeth in a grin. "He was some anxious to unload in a hurry--had to take the market he could find handy."

"Looks like he was afraid the goods might spoil on his hands," Steve commented dryly.

"Maybeso. I didn't ask any questions and he didn't offer any explanations. Fifteen gold on the hoof was what I agreed to pay. Were you in on this with Harrison?"

"I was and I wasn't. Me, I drove that bunch 'most forty miles, then he held me up and took the whole outfit from me."

Pasquale saw he had made a mistake and promptly lied. "It wasn't Harrison I got them from at all--just wanted to see what you'd say."

"Well, they didn't cost me a red cent. You're welcome to 'em as far as I'm concerned. Slow elk suits me fine. I'll help you eat them while I'm here, and that will be a week anyhow."

"You're a good sport, Yeager, as you Gringos say. We'll get along like brothers. Not so?"

The revolutionary chief was an incessant card-player. He had a greasy pack out as soon as they reached camp. Steve was invited to take a hand, also Ramon Culvera and a fat, bald-headed Mexican of fifty named Ochampa. Culvera, playing in luck, won largely from his chief, who accepted his run of ill fortune grouchily. Pasquale had been a peon in his youth, an outlaw for twenty years, and a czar for three. He was as much the subject of his own unbridled passions as is a spoiled and tyrannous child. Yeager, studying him, was careful to lose money with a laugh to the old despot and equally careful to see that the chips came back to him from Ochampa's side of the table.

The cowpuncher knew fairly well the political rumors that were afloat in regard to the situation in northern Mexico. Pasquale as yet was dictator of the revolutionary forces, but there had been talk to the effect that Ramon Culvera was only biding his time. Other ambitious men had aspired to supplant Pasquale. They had died sudden, violent deaths. Ramon had been a great favorite of the dictator, but it was claimed signs were not lacking to show that a rupture between them was near. Watching them now, Yeager could well believe that this might be true. Culvera was suave, adroit, deferential as he raked in his chief's gold, but the irritability of the older man needed only an excuse to blaze.

A blue-denim trooper came into the room and stood at attention.

Pasquale nodded curtly.

"Señor Harrison to see the general," said the private in Spanish.

A chill ran down the spine of the American. This was the last place in the world that he wanted to meet Chad Harrison. A swift vision of himself standing with his back to a wall before a firing line flashed into his brain.

But he was in for it now. He knew that the ex-prizefighter would denounce him. A daredevil spirit of recklessness flooded up in his heart. A smile both gay and sardonic danced in his eyes. Thus does untimely mirth in the hour of danger drive away a sober, prayerful gravity from the mien of such light-hearted sons of nature as Stephen Yeager.

CHAPTER X

A NIGHT VISIT

Harrison stood blinking in the doorway, having just come out from the untempered sunlight in the street. He shook hands with the general, with Culvera, and then his glance fell upon the American.

"Fine glad day, ain't it?" Yeager opened gayly. "Great the way friends meet in this little old world."

"What are you doing here?" demanded the prizefighter, his chin jutting forward and down.

"Me! I'm losing my wad at stud. Want to stake me?"

Harrison turned to Pasquale. "Know who he is? Know anything about him, general?"

"Only what he has told me, señor."

"And that is?"

"That he worked for the moving-picture company at Los Robles, that he is out of a job, and that he wants to try the revolutionary game, as you Americans say."

"Don't you believe it. Don't believe a word of it," broke out Harrison stormily. "He's a spy. That's what he is."

Smiling, Steve cut in. "What have I come to spy about, Harrison?"

"You told Threewit that you thought General Pasquale had those cattle. You may deny it, but--"

"Why should I deny it?" Yeager turned genially to the insurgent chief. "You don't deny it, do you, general?"

Pasquale laughed. He liked the cheek of this young man. "I deny nothing and I admit nothing." He swept his hand around in a gesture of indifference. "My vaqueros herd cattle I have bought. Possibly rustlers sold them to me. Maybeso. I ask no questions."

"Nor I," added Yeager promptly. "At least, not many. I eat the beef and find it good. You ought to have got a good price for a nice fat bunch like that, Harrison."

"What d'you mean by that?" The man's fists were clenched. The rage was mounting in him.

"Forget it, Harrison! You've quit the company. You're across the line and among friends. No use keeping up the bluff. I know who held me up. If I'm not hos-tile about it, you don't need to be."

The prizefighter flung at him the word of insult that no man in the fighting West brooks. Before Steve could speak or move, Pasquale hammered the table with his heavy, hairy fist.

"Maldito!" he roared. "Is it so you talk to my friends in my own house, Señor Harrison?"

The rustler, furious, turned on him. But even in his rage he knew better than to let his passion go. The insurgent chief was more dangerous than dynamite in a fire. Purple with anger, Harrison choked back the volcanic eruption.

"Friend! I tell you he's a spy, general. This man killed Mendoza. He's here to sell you out."

The sleek black head of Culvera swung quickly round till his black eyes met the blue ones of Yeager. He flung his hand straight out toward the Anglo-Saxon.

"Mil diablos! What a dolt I am. It's the very man, and I've been racking my brain to think where I met him before."

Yeager laughed hardily. "I've got a better memory, señor. Knew you the moment I set eyes on you, though it was some smoky when we last met."

Culvera rose, his knuckles pressing against the table. There was a faint smile of triumph, on his masked, immobile face.

"Farewell, Señor Yeager," he said softly. "After all, it's a world full of hardship and unpleasantness. You're well rid of it."

Steve knew his sole appeal lay in Pasquale. Ochampo was a nonentity. Both Harrison and Culvera had already condemned him to death. He turned quietly to the insurgent leader.

"How about it, general? Do I get a pass to Kingdom Come--because I stood by a half-grown kid when two blacklegs were robbing him?"

"You shot Mendoza, eh?" demanded Pasquale, his heavy brows knit in a frown.

"No; I helped the boy escape who did."

"You were both employed by the enemy to murder him and Culvera--not so?"

"Nothing of the sort. Young Seymour was in a poker game with Culvera and Mendoza. They were cross-lifting him--and playing with a cold deck at that. I warned the kid. They began shooting. I could have killed either of them, but I blew out the lights instead. In self-defense the boy shot Mendoza. We escaped through the door. The trouble was none of our seeking."

Culvera shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands in a gesture of bland denial. "Lies! All lies, general. Have I not already told you the truth?"

Coldly Pasquale pronounced judgment. "What matter which one shot Mendoza. Both were firing. Both escaped together. Both are equally guilty." He clapped his hands. A trooper entered. "'Tonio, get a guard and take this man to prison. See that he is kept safe. To-morrow at dawn he will be shot."

The trooper withdrew. Pasquale continued evenly. "We have one rule, Señor Yeager. He who kills one of us is our enemy. If we capture him, that man dies. Fate has shaken the dice and they fall against you. So be it. You pay forfeit."

Yeager nodded. He wasted no breath in useless protest against the decision of this man of iron. What must be, must. A plea for mercy or for a reversal of judgment would be mere weakness.

"If that's the way you play the game there's no use hollering. I'll take my medicine, because I must. But I'll just take one little flyer of a guess at the future, general. If you don't put friend Culvera out of business, it will presently be, 'Good-night, Pasquale.' He's a right anxious and ambitious little lieutenant, I shouldn't wonder."

Harrison triumphed openly. He followed out of the house the file of soldiers who took his enemy away.

"Told you I'd git even a-plenty, didn't I?" he jeered. "Told you I'd make you sweat blood, Mister Yeager. Good enough. You'll see me in a box right off the stage to-morrow morning when the execution set is pulled off. Adios, my friend!"

The cowpuncher was thrust into a one-room, flat-roofed adobe hut. The door was locked and a guard set outside. The prison had for furniture a three-legged stool and a rough, home-made table. In one corner lay a couple of blankets upon some straw to serve for a bed. The walls of the house, probably a hundred years old at least, were of plain, unplastered adobe. The fireplace was large, but one glance up the narrow chimney proved the futility of any hope of escape in that direction.

He was caught, like a rat in a trap. Yet somehow he did not feel as if it could be true that he was to be taken out at daybreak and shot. It must be some ridiculous joke Fate was playing on him. Something would turn up yet to save him.

But as the hours wore away the grim reality of his position came nearer home to him. He had only a few hours left. From his pocket he took a notebook and a pencil. It was possible that Pasquale would let him send a letter through to Threewit if it gave some natural explanation of his death, one that would relieve him of any responsibility. Steve tore out a page and wrote, standing under the little shaft of moonlight that poured through the small barred window:--

Fifteen minutes ago [so he wrote] I accidentally shot myself while target-practicing here in camp. They say I won't live more than a few hours. By the courtesy of General Pasquale I am getting a letter through to you, which is to be sent after my death. Give bearer ten dollars in gold.

Say good-bye for me to Frank, Daisy, and the rest. Bust up that marriage if you can.

Adios, my friend. STEVE YEAGER.

He was searching in his pocket for an envelope when there came a sound that held him rigid. Some one was very carefully unlocking the door of his prison from the outside. Stealthily he drew back into the deep shadow at the farther end of the room, picking up noiselessly by one leg the stool by the table. It was possible that some one had been sent to murder him.

The grinding of the key ceased. Slowly the door opened inch by inch. A man's head was thrust through the opening. After a long time of silence a figure followed the head and the door was closed again.

"You may put down that weapon, Señor Yeager. I have not come to knife you."

The lower half of the man's face was covered by a fold of his serape, the upper part was shaded by his sombrero. Only the glittering eyes could be plainly seen.

"Why have you come?"

"To talk with you--perhaps to save you. Quien sabe?"

Yeager put down the stool and gave it a shove across the floor. "Will you take a seat, general? Sorry I can't offer you refreshments, but the truth is I'm not exactly master in my own house."

Pasquale dropped the serape from his face and moved forward. "So you knew me?"

"Yes."

"How much will you give for your life?" demanded the Mexican abruptly, sitting down on the stool with his back to the table.

"As much as any man."

The general eyed him narrowly. One sinewy brown hand caressed the butt of a revolver hanging at his hip.

"Who paid you to murder Culvera and Mendoza--not Farrugia, surely?" Pasquale shot at him, eyes gleaming under shaggy brows.

Garcia Farrugia was the Federal governor of the province, the general with whom Pasquale had been fighting for a year.

"No--not Farrugia."

The insurrecto chief, sprawling in the moonlight with his back against the table, nodded decisively.

"I thought as much. He's no fool. Garcia knows it would not weaken me to lose both of them, that my grief would not be inconsolable. Who, then, if not Farrugia?"

"Nobody. I'm not an assassin. The story I told you is the truth, general."

"If that is true, Ramon Culvera's lies have brought you to your death."

The Mexican still sprawled with an arm flung across the table. Not a muscle of his lax body had grown more taut. But the eyes of the man--the terrible eyes that condemned men to their graves without a flicker of ruth--were fixed on the range-rider with a steady compulsion filled with hidden significance.

"Yes." Steve waited, alert and watchful. Presently he would understand what this grim, virile old scoundrel was driving at.

"You fought him in the open. You played your cards above the table. He comes back at you with a cold deck. Señor, do you love Ramon like a brother?"

"Of course not. If I could get at him before--"

The rigor of the black eyes boring into those of Yeager did not relax. The impact of them was like steel grinding on steel.

"Yes? If you could get at him? What, then, señor?"

The words were hissed across the room at the American. Pasquale was no longer lounging. He leaned forward, body tense and rigid. His prisoner understood that an offer for his life was being made him. But what kind of an offer? Just what was he to do?

"Say it right out in plain United States talk, general. What is it you want me to do?"

"Would you kill Ramon Culvera--to save your own life?"

After barely an instant's hesitation Steve answered. "Yep. I'll fight him to a finish--any time, any place."

"Bueno! But there will be no risk for you. He will be summoned from his house to-night. You will stand in the darkness outside. One thrust of the knife and--you will be avenged. A saddled horse is waiting for you now in the cottonwood grove opposite. Before we get the pursuit started you will be lost in the darkness miles away."

The heart of Yeager sank. The thing he was being asked to do was plain murder. Even to save his own life he could not set his hand to such a contract.

"I can't do that, general. But I'll pick a quarrel with him. I'll take a chance on even terms."

"No--no!" Pasquale's voice was harsh and imperative. "The dog is plotting my murder. But first he wants to make sure he is strong enough to succeed me. So he waits. But I--Gabriel Pasquale--I wait for no man's knife. I strike first--and sure. You execute the traitor and save your own life which is forfeit. Caramba! Are you afraid?"

"Not afraid, but--"

"You walk out of that door a free man. You give the password for to-night. It is 'Gabriel.' You settle with the traitor and then ride away to safety. Maldito! Why hesitate?"

"Because I'm a white man, general. We don't kill in the dark and run away. When I offer to fight him to a finish I go the limit--and then some. For I don't hate Culvera that bad. But I think a heap of Steve Yeager's life, so I'll stand pat on my proposition."

"Am I a fool, señor?" asked the Mexican harshly. "How do I know you would keep faith, that you would not ride away--what you call laugh in your sleeve at me? No! You will strike under my own eye--with my revolver at your heart. Then I make sure."

"I'll bet you'd make sure. You'd shoot me down and explain it all fine when your men came running. 'The Gringo dog escaped and killed my dear friend Ramon, but by good luck I shot him before he made his getaway.' Nothing doing."

"Then you refuse?" Pasquale's narrowed eyes glittered in the moonshine.

"You're right I do."

The Mexican rose. "Die like a dog, then, you pigheaded Gringo."

"Just a moment, general. I've got a letter here I wish you'd send north for me. It explains that I shot myself accidentally--lets you out fine in case Uncle Sam begins to ask inconvenient whys about my disappearance."

"And why so much care to save me trouble?" inquired the insurgent leader suspiciously.

"I have to put that in to get you to forward the letter, I reckon. What I want is that my friends should know I'm dead."

As a soldier Pasquale could understand that desire. He hesitated. The sudden death of Americans had of late stirred a good deal of resentment across the line. Why not take the alibi Yeager so conveniently offered him?

"Let's see your letter. But remember I promise nothing," said the Mexican roughly.

Steve moved forward and gave it to him. His heart was pounding against his ribs as does that of a frightened rabbit in the hand. If Pasquale looked at the letter now he had a chance. If he put it in his pocket the chance vanished.

The rebel chief glanced at the sheet of paper, opened it, and stepped back into the moonlight. For just an instant his eyes left Yeager and fell upon the paper. That moment belonged to Steve. Like a tiger he leaped for the hairy throat of the man.

Pasquale, with a half-articulate cry, stumbled back. But the American was on top of him, his strong, brown fingers were tightening on the sinewy throat. They went down together, the Mexican underneath. As he fell, the head of the general struck the edge of the table. The steel grip of Steve's hand did not relax, for a single sharp cry would mean death to him.

Just once Pasquale rolled half over before his body went slack and motionless. He had fainted.

The first thing Yeager did was to take the bandanna handkerchief from his neck and use it as a gag for his prisoner. He dragged the blankets from their corner and tore one of them into strips. With these he bound the hands of Pasquale behind him and tied his feet together. He unloosened the revolver belt of the Mexican and strapped it about his own waist. The silver-trimmed sombrero he put on his head and the serape he flung round his shoulders and across the lower part of his face in the same way the garment had been worn by its owner.

Steve glanced around to see that he had everything he needed.

"They's no manner o' doubt but you're taking a big chancet, son," he drawled to himself after the manner of an old range-rider he knew. "But we sure gotta take a long shot and gamble with the lid off. Any man who stops S. Yeager to-night is liable to find him a bad hombre. So-long, general."

He opened the door and stepped out. His heart was jumping queerly. The impulse was on him to cut across to the cottonwood grove on the dead run, but he knew this would never do. Instead, he sauntered easily into the moonlight with the negligence of one who has all night before his casual steps.

The sharp command of the guard outside slackened his stride.

"Gabriel," he called back over his shoulder without stopping.

"Si, señor. Buenos tardes."

"Buenos."

He moved at a leisurely pace down the street until he was opposite the cottonwoods. Here he diverged from the dusty road.

"Hope the old scalawag wasn't lying about that cavallo waiting for Steve. I'm plumb scairt to death till I get out of this here wolf's den. Me, I'm too tender to monkey with any revolutions. I've knowed it happen frequent that a man got his roof blowed off for buttin' in where he wasn't invited." He was still impersonating the old cowman as a vent to his excitement, which found no expression in the cool, deliberate motions of his lithe body.

He found the horse in the cottonwoods as Pasquale had promised. Swinging to the saddle, he cantered down the road to the outskirts of the village. A sentinel stopped him, and a second time he gave the countersign. He was just moving forward again when some one emerged from the darkness back of the sentry and sharply called to him to stop.

Steve knew that voice, would have known it among a thousand. Since he had no desire at this moment to hold a conversation with Ramon Culvera he drove his heels into the side of the cow pony. The horse leaped forward just as a revolver rang out. So close did the shot come to Yeager that it lifted the sombrero from his head as he dodged.

After he was out of range Yeager laughed. "Pasquale gets his hat back again--ventilated. Oh, well, it's bad enough to be a horse-thief without burglarizing a man's haberdashery. You're sure welcome to it, Gabriel."

He kept the horse at a gallop, for he knew he would be pursued. But his heart was lifted in him, for he was leaving behind him a shameful death. All Sonora lay before him in which to hide, and in front of him stretched a distant line beyond which was the U.S.A. and safety.

The bench upon which he was riding dropped to a long roll of hills stretching to the horizon. The chances were a hundred to one that among these he would be securely hidden from the pursuit inside of an hour.

"Git down in yore collar to it, you buckskin," he urged his pony cheerfully. "This ain't no time to dream. You got to travel some, believe me. Steve played a bum hand for all it was worth and I can see where he's right to hit the grit some lively. Burn the wind, you buzzard-haid."

An hour later he drew his pony to a road gait and lifted his head to the first faint flush of a dawning day. He sang softly, because by a miracle of good fortune that coming sun brought him life and not death. The song he caroled was, "When Gabriel blows his horn in the mawnin'."

CHAPTER XI

CHAD DECIDES TO GET BUSY

After his failure to stop Yeager's escape, Culvera lost no time before starting a party in pursuit. He knew there was small chance of finding the American in that rolling sea of hills, but there was at least no harm in making the attempt.

As he walked to Pasquale's headquarters to make a report of the affair, Culvera's mind was full of vague suspicions. How had this man escaped? Had the old general freed him for some purpose of his own? Ramon had seen condemned prisoners released by his chief before. Always within a short time some enemy or doubtful friend of Pasquale had died a violent death. Was it his turn now? Could it be that Pasquale was anticipating his treachery?

To learn that the general was out at three o'clock in the morning lent no reassurance to his fears. After a moment's consideration the young man turned his steps toward the house where Yeager had been confined. But before starting he stopped in the shadow of a barn to see that his revolvers were loose in the scabbards and in good working order. Nor did he cross the moonlit open direct, but worked to his destination by a series of tacks that kept him almost all the time in the darkness.

The seventeen-year-old sentry was still doing duty outside the prison. At sight of Culvera he stopped rolling a cigarette to snatch up his rifle and fling a challenge at him.

"How is it that you have let your prisoner escape?" demanded the officer in Spanish after he had given the countersign.

"Escape? No, señor. Listen. Do you not hear him move?" replied in the boy in the same tongue. "I think the Gringo is having a fit. For ten--twenty--minutes he has beat on the floor and kicked at the walls. To die at daybreak is not to his liking."

"Mil diablos! I tell you I saw him ride away. It is some one else in there."

"Some one else! But, no--that is impossible. Who else could it be?" As he asked the question the boy's jaw fell slack. A horrible suspicion pushed itself into his mind.

"Estupido!" he continued in growing terror. "Can it be--the general?"

"We shall see."

Culvera stepped to the door. It was locked and the key gone. He called aloud. His only answer was a strange, muffled sound like a groan and the beating of feet upon the floor.

With the butt of the sentry's rifle he hammered in the door at the lock and by exerting all his strength forced the fastening. Lying in the middle of the room, bound hand and foot, with his furious face upturned to the moonlight, was Gabriel Pasquale. Culvera asked no foolish questions, wasted no time. Kneeling beside his superior officer, he cut the handkerchief that gagged him and the ropes that tied his limbs. Together Ramon and the guard lifted him to his feet and held him for a moment until his legs regained their power.

"What devil has done this outrage?" asked Ramon.

For a time Pasquale could only swallow and grunt. When the power of speech returned, he broke into fierce and terrible maledictions. His lieutenant listened in silence, extreme concern in his respectful face, an unholy amusement bubbling up behind the deferential exterior.

"Then it was the Gringo?" he asked when his chief ran out of breath and for the moment ceased cursing.

The insurgent leader went off into another explosion of rage. He would cut his heart out while the American devil was still alive. He would stake him out on the desert to broil to death beneath a Mexican sun.

Culvera showed the hat that he had punctured with his bullet. "Thus near I came to avenging you, general. See! One inch lower and I would have taken off the top of his head. Already Fuentes is pursuing him. Perhaps this Yeager may be dragged back to justice."

Culvera asked no questions as to why the general was alone with a condemned man at such an hour nor as to how the American had succeeded in overpowering him. He understood that his chief's wounded vanity was torturing the man enough to render curiosity unsafe. But the boyish sentry did not know this. He ventured on a sympathetic question.

"But, señor, Your Excellency, how did this Gringo devil, who was unarmed, take away your revolver and tie you?"

Pasquale, teeth clenched, whirled upon him. "You--dog of a peon--let your prisoner walk away without a challenge and then dare to question me!"

The old soldier's fist shot out like a pile-driver. The blow lifted the boy from his feet and flung him like a sack of meal against the wall. His body hung there a moment, then dropped to the ground. A faint groan was the only sound that showed he was not unconscious.

The general strode from the room, Culvera at his heels. The brown mask of his face told no stories of how the younger man was enjoying himself.

Before he slept, Ramon had one more pleasant task before him. He roused Harrison to tell him the news. He sat smiling on the foot of the bed, his eyes mocking the startled face of the prizefighter.

"I come to bring you good news, señor," he jeered. "Your countryman has escaped."

Harrison sat up in bed. "What's that? Escaped, did you say? Where to?"

The Mexican swept one arm around airily. "How should I know? He's gone--broke out. He's taken a horse with him."

"A horse!" repeated Harrison stupidly.

"Just so--a horse. To ride upon, doubtless, since he was in somewhat of a hurry. Odd that a horse happened to be waiting saddled for him at two in the morning. Not so?"

The American groped toward the point. "You mean--that he had friends, that some one helped him to get away?"

The other man shrugged his shoulders. "Do I? Quien sabe? Anyhow, he's gone. Must be very disappointing to you, since you had promised yourself to see his translation to heaven at sunrise."

Harrison expressed himself bitterly in language emphatic and profane.

Meanwhile Culvera smiled pleasantly and sympathetically. "You run Pasquale a close second. He cursed the roof off when he found breath."

"I'm not through with Yeager yet. Believe me, he'll have one heluvatime before I'm done," boasted the prizefighter savagely.

"You're still in entire accord with the chief. Yet our friend the Gringo rides away in safety and laughs at you both. Ramon Culvera takes his hat off to Señor Yeager. He has played a winning game with courage and brains."

"I beat his fool head off when he joined the Lunar Company--the very day he joined. When I meet up with him again, I'll repeat," Harrison bragged, hammering the pillow with his clenched fist.

The Mexican looked politely incredulous. "Maybeso. This I say only. Yeager has played one game with Pasquale, one with you, and one with me. He comes out best each time. Of a sureness he is a strong man, wise, cool, resourceful. Is it not so?"

The prizefighter sputtered with wounded vanity. "Him! The boob's nothing but a lucky guy. You'd ought to 'a' seen him after I fixed his map that first day. Down and out he was, take my word for it."

"If Señor Harrison says so," assented Culvera with polite mockery. "But as you say, he laughs best who laughs last. And that reminds me. He left a note to be forwarded a friend. Pasquale was too crazy mad to see it, so I put it in my pocket."

He handed to the other man the note Steve had written for Threewit. The prizefighter read it in the dim light laboriously.

"It was written, you perceive, before Pasquale shoved his big head into a trap and gave him a chance to escape," explained the insurgent officer.

As Harrison read, certain phases of the situation arranged themselves before his dull mind. He was acutely disappointed at the escape of his enemy, since it was not likely the man would ever be caught again so neatly. But now he forced himself to look beyond this to the consequences. Yeager would tell all he knew when he reached Los Robles. With the troopers warned against him Harrison knew he could no longer move to and fro as freely on the American side. The very fact that he was a suspect would greatly hamper his dealings. The Seymours would probably turn against him for betraying the man who had risked his life to save Phil from the effects of his folly. And what about Ruth? He knew he held her by fear of trouble to Phil and by means of a sort of magnetic clamp he had always imposed upon her will. Would she throw him over now after she heard the story of the cowpuncher?

His eyes were still fastened sulkily on the note while he was slowly realizing these things. One line seemed to stand out from the rest.

Bust up that marriage if you can.

Harrison ground his teeth with impotent rage. This range-rider always had interfered with his affairs from the first moment he had met him. If ever he got the chance again to stamp him out--! The strong fingers of the man worked with the nervous longing to tighten on the throat of the gay youth who had worsted him in the duel the prizefighter had forced upon him. The cowpuncher had introduced himself by knocking him down. A few hours later he had turned a bruised and bleeding face up to him and laughed without fear as if it were of no consequence.

Yeager had stolen from him his reputation as a daring rider and a good shot. He had driven him from the Lunar Company. Now he was going back to spoil his plans for making money by rustling American stock and sending contraband goods across the line. Not only that; he was going to take from him the girl he was engaged to marry.

"By God! I'll give him a run for it," the prizefighter announced savagely and suddenly.

"For what?" asked Culvera maliciously.

"My business," retorted Harrison harshly, reaching for his clothes.

Half an hour later he was galloping toward the north. If he could reach Los Robles before Yeager did, he would turn a trick that would still leave the odds in his favor.

CHAPTER XII

INTO THE DESERT

Ruth was baking apple pies in the kitchen. In her eyes there was a smile and there were little dimples near the corners of her mouth. Evidently she was thinking of something pleasant. Her nimble fingers ran around the edge of the upper crust with a fork and scalloped a design. At odd moments she would burst into a little rhapsody of song that appeared to bubble out of her heart.

Some one stepped into the doorway and shut out the sunlight. Her questioning glance lifted, to meet the heavy frown of the man to whom she was engaged. At sight of him the sunshine was extinguished from her face, just as it had seemed to be from the room when his broad shoulders had filled the opening.

"You--Chad!" she cried. "I thought--"

"Well, I ain't. I'm here," he broke in roughly. "And you don't look glad to death to see me either."

Her gentle eyes reproached him. "You're always welcome. You know that."

His harsh face softened a little as he stepped forward and kissed her. "Maybe I do, but maybe I like to hear you say so. Girl, I've come to take you with me."

"With you? Where?" Alarm was in the eyes that flashed to meet his.

"To Noche Buena."

"But--what for?"

"Ain't it reason enough that I want you to go? We can get married at Arixico to-night."

She broke into protest disjointed and a little incoherent. "You promised me that--that I could have all the time I wanted. You said--you said--"

"That was when I was here to look after you. But I'll be staying in Sonora quite a while the way my business affairs look. I need you--and what's the sense of waiting, anyhow?"

"No--no! I don't want to--not now. Please don't ask it, Chad, I--I don't want to get married--yet."

Sobs began to choke up her voice. Tears welled up in her eyes.

"I don't see why you don't," he insisted sullenly. "Ain't trying to back out, are you?"

"No, but--"

"You better not," he retorted with a threatening look. "I ain't the kind of man it's safe to jilt."

"You promised me all the time I wanted," she repeated. "You wouldn't hurry me. That was what you said," she sobbed, breaking down suddenly.

"All right," he conceded ungraciously. "I'm not forcing you to marry me now. But I thought it best, seeing as I've got to ask you to go with me, anyhow. O' course I can put you in charge of Carmen to chaperon you. She's the woman that keeps house for Pasquale. But it kinder seemed to me it would be better if you went as my wife. Then I could take care of you."

"Go with you--now? What do you mean, Chad?"

"It's this fellow Yeager. He's shot himself, and he wants to see you before he dies." From his pocket he took the note Steve had written to Threewit and handed it to Ruth. "You don't have to go, but I hate to turn down a fellow when he's all in and ready to quit the game."

She read the note, her face like chalk. Not for a moment did she doubt that the cowpuncher had written it. Even if her mind had harbored any vague suspicions one line in the letter would have swept them away. Bust up that marriage if you can. She knew to what marriage he referred. Nobody but Yeager could have written those words.

"But he says--he says"--her voice shook, but she forced herself to go on--"that this letter isn't to be sent until his death."

"Yep. So it does. But he got to asking for you. So I just lit out to give you a chance to go if you want to. It's up to you. Do just as you please."

"Of course I'll go. Is he--is he as bad as he says?"

"Pretty bad, the doc says. But I reckon he's good for a day or two. My advice would be to start right away, though, if you want to see him alive."

"Yes. That would be best. I'll see mother now." She stopped at the door and leaned against the jamb a little faintly, then turned toward him. "It was fine of you to come, Chad. I know you don't like him. But--I won't forget."

"Oh, tha's all right," he mumbled.

"Have you seen Mr. Threewit yet?" she asked.

"Threewit--no." He was for a moment puzzled at her question. "No--he's out getting a set somewheres in the hills."

Ruth came back and took the note from Harrison's reluctant fingers. "He ought to get this at once. I'll send Billie Brown out with it. He'll explain to Mr. Threewit about us going on ahead and not waiting for him."

The prizefighter did not quite like the idea. He would rather have kept the note himself and burnt it later. But it was out of his charge now. Without stirring doubts he could not make any objection. Anyhow, he would be in Sonora and safely married to Ruth long before the deception was discovered.

Mrs. Seymour made her protest against such an unconventional trip, but Ruth rode her objections down after the fashion of American girls.

"Why can't I go for a ride with the man to whom I'm engaged? What's wrong with it? I'll stay with the lady that keeps house for General Pasquale. In two or three days I'll be back. Don't say no, mommsie." Her voice broke a little as she pleaded the cause. "He's dying--Mr. Yeager is--and he wants to see me. I'd always blame myself if I didn't go. I've just got to go."

"I don't see why you have to go riding all over the country to see one man when you're engaged to another. In my time--"

"If Chad doesn't object, why should you?"

"Oh, I know you'll go. I suppose it's all right, but I wish Phil could go with you too."

"So do I, but of course he can't. Chad says that affairs are so disturbed across the line that probably the Government won't make Phil any trouble, but that if he showed himself in Sonora some of the friends of that man Mendoza would be sure to kill him."

"I suppose so." Mrs. Seymour sighed. Her harum-scarum young son was on her mind a good deal. "Now, don't you fret, honey, about Steve Yeager. He's the kind of man that will take a lot of killing. A man who has lived outdoors in the saddle for a dozen years is liable to get over a wound that would finish some one else."

In his haste to reach Los Robles before Yeager the prizefighter had ruined the horse he rode. He picked up another one cheap and got for Ruth her brother's pony. Within an hour of his arrival the two animals were brought round for the start.

The mother, still a little troubled in her mind, took Harrison aside for a last word.

"Chad Harrison, you look after my little girl and see no harm comes to her. If anything happens to her I'll never forgive you."

"Rest easy about that, Mrs. Seymour. You don't think any more of Ruth than I do. If I thought there was any danger I sure wouldn't take her. She'll come back to you safe and sound," he promised.

They rode away in the afternoon sunlight toward the south. It had been understood that they were to spend the night at the Lazy B Ranch, but at the point where the road for the ranch deflected from the main pike Harrison drew rein.

"Too bad there isn't another ranch farther on. It's a little better than six o'clock now. We'll lose a heap of time by stopping here. Soon the moon will be out and we could keep going till we reach Lone Tree Spring. Stopping there for two or three hours' rest, we could ride in to Noche Buena by breakfast time. But I reckon you're tired, ain't you?"

"I'm not--not a bit," she answered eagerly. "Let's go on. It's cooler traveling in the evening, anyhow."

He appeared to hesitate, then shook his head. "No--o, I expect that wouldn't be proper. If you was a boy instead of a girl I'd say sure."

"Don't let's be silly, Chad," she pleaded. "We want to get there as soon as we can. It makes no difference if I am a girl."

"I promised your maw I'd take good care of you. Would it be doing that to let you stay up 'most all night?"

"Of course it would. We can sleep some at Lone Tree. I want to go on, Chad."

"All right," he conceded with a manner of reluctance.

This was what Harrison desired. If Yeager reached Los Robles before night a search party would be sent out. It would go straight toward the Lazy B. Chad wanted to get across the line and put as many miles as possible between him and the pursuit.

Deep into the desert they struck, keeping for the most part to a rapid road gait. The dusty miles spun out behind them as they covered white sunbaked levels, cut across rough hillsides of rubble, dipped into sandy washes, and wound forward through wastes of cactus and zacaton.

By the time the moon was riding high in the heavens Ruth was very tired. Her shoulders drooped and she clung to the pommel of the saddle. But she did not ask Chad to stop and let her rest. She would rather have been whipped than have confessed exhaustion. Whenever she thought he might be looking at her, the weary shoulders straightened with a pathetic attempt at jauntiness.

The man knew how completely fagged she was. Riding behind her through the silver night, his greedy eyes noted her game struggle not to give in. He saw the flowing lines of the girlish figure relax with fatigue. No longer was the gallant little dusky head poised lightly above the flat straight back. But he made no offer to rest. It was essential that they should get beyond any chance of capture by her friends. Once he had her safely in his hands she might sleep round the clock undisturbed.

It was midnight before they rode into the cottonwoods of Lone Tree Spring. Chad lifted her, stiff and cold from lack of circulation, to the ground. She clung to his coat sleeve for a moment dizzily before she limped forward to the live-oak that gave the place its name. The girl sank down beside the water-hole with her back to the trunk of the tree.

There was faint, humorous apology in the tired smile she lifted to the man.

"I guess I'm what the boys call a quitter, Chad," she decided.

"You're a game little thoroughbred," he blurted out. "You're all in. That's what's the matter with you. Never mind, little girl. I'll fix the tarps so as you can get some sleep. When you wake you'll be good as ever."

"Don't let me sleep too long. Perhaps I'd better just rest."

"No; take a couple of hours' sleep. I'll wake you when it's time to go."

He brought the saddle blankets, spread them on the ground, and covered them with his slicker. His coat served for a pillow. Above her he spread a tarp and tucked the edges under.

"You're good to me, Chad," she told him with a sleepy little smile.

"I aim to be." He stooped and kissed her with a sudden passionate impulse.

Startled at his roughness, she drew back. "Don't ... please!"

He rose abruptly. "Go to sleep," was his harsh command.

A vague uneasiness that was almost fear stirred in her mind. She did not know this man at all. Except for the merest surface commonplaces he was a stranger to her. Yet she had promised to give her life into his keeping. They were alone together in this moonlit night of stars, a thousand miles from all the safeguards that had always hedged her soft youth. After she had married him they would always be together. Even her mother and Phil would be outsiders. So would all her friends--Daisy Ellington and Frank Farrar ... and Steve Yeager if he lived. And he must live. She affirmed that passionately, clung to the thought of it as a drowning man does to a plank. He would get well--of course he would....

And so she fell asleep.

CHAPTER XIII

THE NIGHT TRAIL

Yeager rode into Los Robles an hour after Harrison and Ruth had left. He turned in at the Lunar stables the pony Pasquale had so kindly donated to his use and walked across town to the Seymour bungalow. Passing through the garden and round the house, he disappeared without being seen into the remodeled barn where he lodged.

He felt bully. After an adventure that had been a close call he was back home among friends who would be glad to see him. As he took his bath and shaved and dressed he broke occasionally into a whistle of sheer exuberant joy of life. He intended to surprise the folks by walking down and taking his place with the others when the dinner bell rang. Daisy Ellington would clap her hands and sparkle in her enthusiastic way. Shorty would begin to poke fun at him. Mrs. Seymour would probably just smile in her slow, motherly fashion and see that he got one of the choice steaks. And Ruth--would she flash at him her swift dimpled smile of pleasure? Or would she still be harboring malice toward him for having warned her against Harrison?

Steve waited until he thought they would be seated before he opened the door and stepped into the dining-room. The effect was not at all what he had expected. Daisy was the first to see him. She dropped her knife on the plate with a clatter and gave a little scream. Shorty stopped a spoonful of soup halfway to his mouth, as if he were waiting to have a still picture of himself taken. His eyes stared and his jaw fell. Mrs. Seymour, who was bringing a platter from the kitchen, stood stock-still in the doorway. The expression, on her face arrested Yeager's smile.

"What's the matter with you all? Looks like you were seeing a ghost," he said.

"Where did you come from, Steve Yeager?" demanded Mrs. Seymour.

"Me? Why, I came from my room--reached town an hour or so ago."

Something cold clutched at the heart of the mother. "Where from? Weren't you in Sonora?"

"Sure I was. At Noche Buena. And I want to tell you that I've had enough of that burg for quite some time."

Daisy broke in. "Isn't it true that you were shot?"

He turned to her, surprised. "How did you hear that story already. No, it ain't true. I was to have been shot this mawnin', but I broke jail and made a getaway."

"But--your letter said you had shot yourself and couldn't live long. I read it myself. Mr. Threewit showed it to me before he left."

"And Mr. Harrison told us it was true," corroborated Mrs. Seymour. She knew something was wrong, but as yet she could not guess what.

"Harrison! Has he been here?" asked Yeager sharply.

"He and Ruth left this afternoon for Noche Buena. He said you wanted to see her before you died and he showed us the letter you had written."

The range-rider stood paralyzed. The truth flashed numbingly over his brain.

"Ruth--gone with Harrison--to Noche Buena," was all he could say.

Again Daisy cut in, this time sharply. "Tell us your story, Steve. What is it that's wrong?"

In a dozen sentences he told it. They listened tensely. The mother was the first to break the silence after he had finished. She began to sob. Steve put an arm across her shoulder awkwardly.

"Now, don't you, Mrs. Seymour. Don't you take on. We'll get right on his trail." He turned abruptly to Orman. "Get horses saddled. We'll hit the road right away. Daisy, call up Threewit and let him know. I'll take your gat, Shorty."

The edge of decision was in his voice. Nobody disputed the orders of this lean, brown, sunbaked youth with the alert, quiet, masterful eyes. In his manner was something more deadly than threats. More than one of those present thought he would not like to be Harrison.

"Mr. Threewit has gone. He and Frank started for Noche Buena almost an hour ago. They went because of your letter," explained Miss Ellington.

"Good. We'll probably catch them. Jackson, find out if they went armed and see that we all have rifles as well as six-guns. Get a move on you. We'll start in ten minutes from the hotel."

Within the stipulated time they were in the saddle. Steve looked his posse over with an eye competent and vigilant. "Orman, you and Bob ride straight to the Lazy B. Harrison gave it out he was going to stop there for the night. Me, I think he was lying. If he hasn't been there, cut acrost to Gila Creek and follow the bed. Jackson and Dan, you go straight south for the old Pima water-hole and sweep along below the edge of the mesa. I'll have a try more to the east. Mind, no slip-up, boys. And don't forget Harrison wears his guns low. If you have to shoot, aim to kill."

Phil Seymour came running down the road. "What's this they're telling about Ruth and Harrison?" he demanded.

Yeager had no time for explanations. He turned the boy over to one of the others. "Tell him about it, Jackson. If he wants to go along, take him with you and Dan. We'll all meet to-morrow noon at Sieber's Pass."

He shot down the road at a gallop, leaving behind him a cloud of gray dust. The others followed at a canter. Their horses had to cover many miles before morning and there was no use in running them off their legs at the start.

Jackson, waiting for Phil to rope and saddle a pony, yelled a caution to the others.

"Keep yore shirts on, boys. This ain't no hundred-yard dash. Steve's burnin' the wind because he's got to haid off Harrison from Pasquale's camp. All we got to do is to drive him up to Steve."

Phil cut out and roped a pony, then slapped on a saddle. Presently he and Jackson were following the others down the dust-filled road.

The boy spoke his fears aloud, endeavoring to reassure himself.

"Chad won't hurt Ruth any. He wouldn't dare. This country won't stand for that kind of a play with a girl. Arizona would hang him to the first telegraph pole that was handy."

The cowpuncher looked at him and spoke dryly. "I reckon the skunk's been out of Arizona quite some time. He's in greaser land now, and I never heard tell that Pasquale was so darned particular what his men did. Just tie a knot in this: if Harrison reaches the insurrecto camp with yore sister, she'll come back as his wife--or not at all."

"By God! I'll kill Harrison at sight if he hurts a hair of her head," the boy cried, a lump in his throat.

"Mebbe you will, mebbe you won't. Chad ain't just what you'd call a white man. He'll shoot out of the chaparral if he's pressed. Someone's going to git hurt if we bump into Mr. Harrison. It won't be no picnic a-tall to take him. He's liable to be more hos-tile than a nest of yellow jackets."

"Leave him to me if we come up with him. I'll shoot it out with him," the boy cried wildly.

Jackson grinned. "You're crazy with the heat, boy. What do you reckon I bought chips in this game for? I want a crack at the coyote myself."

Phil and Jackson caught up with old Dan a mile or so beyond the point where the road to the Lazy B left the main traveled trail.

"The other boys hitting the dust for the ranch?" asked Jackson.

"Yep."

"Yeager's got it right. They won't find Harrison there. He'll go through with his play. Chad's no quitter."

Dan nodded. He was a reticent man of about fifty-five with a bald head and a face of wrinkled leather.

"We'll git him sure," Phil spoke up, announcing his hope rather than his conviction. "Steve knows what he's doing, you bet."

Yeager himself was not so sure. Doubts tortured him as to the destination of Harrison. Perhaps, after all, he might be making for some refuge in the hills and not for Pasquale's headquarters. He knew that as soon as word reached them the Lazy B riders would begin to comb the desert in pursuit. But what were a dozen riders among these thousand hill pockets of the desert? The best chance was to catch the man at some one of the few water-holes. But if he pushed on at full speed the chances were all in his favor considering the long start he had.

The range-rider was astride the fastest horse in the Lunar stables. Steve had taken his pick of the mounts, for his work was cut out for him. Hitherto the luck had all been with Harrison. If Yeager had not met one of the old Lone Star boys, now riding for the Hashknife outfit, and stopped to join him in a long talk over their cigarettes, Steve would have reached Los Robles in time to spoil the man's plan. Or if he had gone direct to Mrs. Seymour instead of fooling away a good hour and a half in his room, he would have cut down his enemy's start by so much golden time.

Now all he could do was to get every foot of speed from his horse that could be coaxed. He rode like a Centaur, giving with his lithe, supple body to every motion of the animal. But though he took steep hillsides of shale on the run, the pony slithering down in a slide of rubble like a cat, the rider's alert eyes watched the footing keenly. He could afford if necessary to break a leg himself, but he could not afford to have the horse suffer such an accident. Not for nothing had he ridden on the roundup for many years. Few men even in Arizona could have negotiated safely such a bit of daredevil travel as he was doing this night.

His brains were busy, too, on the problem before him. Times and distances he figured, took into account the animals Harrison and Ruth were riding, estimated her strength and her companion's feverish haste to reach safety with her. They would have to stop at a water-hole somewhere, either on Gila Creek, or the old Pima camping-ground, or else at Lone Tree Spring. The most direct route to Noche Buena was by Lone Tree. Harrison was in a deuce of a hurry. Therefore he would choose the shortest way. So Yeager guessed and hoped.

His watch told him it was an hour past midnight when Steve drew close to Lone Tree Spring. He was following a sandy wash into the soft bed of which the hoofs of his horse sank without noise. They were perhaps two hundred yards from the spring when the ears of his pony lifted. That was enough for Yeager. He dismounted and trailed the reins, guessing that the wind had brought the scent of other horses to his own. Quietly he moved forward, rifle in hand ready for action.

The heart of him jumped when he caught sight of two picketed horses grazing on the bench above. He worked forward with infinite care along the bank of the wash till he reached the first of the cottonwoods. From here he could catch a glimpse of something huddled lying under the live-oak. This no doubt was the sleeping girl. The figure of a heavy-set man stood with his back to Yeager in silhouette against the skyline.

Yeager crawled forward another fifteen yards. A twig snapped under his knee. The figure in silhouette whirled. Steve rose at the same instant, rifle raised to his shoulder.

"Don't move," he advised quietly.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CAVE MEN

Harrison stared at him dumfounded, chin down and jutting, his hand hovering longingly close to the butt of a revolver. He stood so for an instant in silence, crouched and tense.

"Damn you, so you're here," he said at last in a low, hoarse voice.

"Don't make another pass like that or I'll plug you. Unbuckle that belt and drop it. That's right. Now, kick it from you."

"What do you want?" demanded the man under the gun savagely after he had obeyed instructions.

"You know what I want, you wolf." Steve moved forward till he was about fifteen feet from the other. His eyes did not lift for a moment from the man he covered.

They glared at each other, two savage, primeval men with the murder lust in their hearts. All that centuries of civilization had brought them was just now quenched.

Then the woman, the third factor in the triangle, stirred restlessly and awoke. She looked at them incuriously from innocent eyes still heavy with slumber. Gradually the meaning of the scene came home to her, and with it a realization that Steve Yeager was standing before her in the flesh.

"You--here!" she cried, scarce believing.

"The cur lied," explained the cowpuncher. "It was a frame-up to get you in his power."

"But your letter said--"

"Never mind about that now. Go down into the wash and bring up my horse. It needs water."

She hesitated. "You're not going to hurt him, Steve?"

"That's between him and me. Do as I say."

Ruth scarcely recognized in this grim, hard-faced man with the blazing eyes the gay youth whom she knew at home. She felt in his manner the steel of compulsion. Without further protest she moved to obey him. She was fearful of what was about to take place, but her heart leaped with gladness. Steve was alive and strong. It was not true that he lay with the life ebbing out of him, all the supple strength stolen from his well-knit body. For the moment that was happiness enough.

Harrison, watching with narrowed eyes the stone-wall face of his captor, jeered at him hardily.

"Now you got a strangle holt on me, what you aim to do?"

"I'm going to take you back to the boys that are combing these hills for you. They'll do all that's done."

The prisoner's sneer went out of commission. He did not need to ask what Arizona cowpunchers would do to him under the circumstances.

"I figured your size was about a twenty-two--not big enough to fight it out alone with me. Once is a-plenty."

The cave man's desire to beat down his enemy with his naked hands smouldered fiercely in the cowpuncher's heart.

"Step out in front of me and saddle those horses," he ordered.

Harrison looked at him murderously. His mouth was an ugly, crooked gash. Boiling with rage, he saddled, cinched, and watered the horses.

Ruth had returned with Steve's pony. Her heart beat fast with excitement. An instinct told her they were about to come to grips in epic struggle.

"You're mighty high-heeled now when you got a gun thrown on me. Put it in the discard and I'll beat the life out o' you," threatened the prizefighter.

Not releasing the other man with his eyes, Yeager lent one hand to help Ruth mount. He gave clear, curt instructions in a level voice.

"Take all three horses and ride to the edge of the mesa. Wait there. One of us--either him or me--will come up there after a while. If it's him, take all the horses and light out. Keep the moon on your left and ride straight forward till daybreak. You'll see a gash in the hills about where the sun rises. That's Sieber's Pass. The boys will be waiting for you. Understand?"

"Yes, but--What are you going to do, Steve?" she cried almost in a whisper.

"That's my business--and I'm going to attend to it. Keep your mind on the directions I've given. If it's Harrison that comes up over the hill, get right out with all the horses. Gimme your promise on that."

Trembling, she gave it to him.

"Don't you be afraid. No need of that. It won't be him. It'll be me that comes. But if it should be him, don't let him get close. Shoot him first. It will be to save you from worse than death. Have you got the nerve to do it?"

Something in his manner, in his voice, rang a bell in her heart. She nodded, her throat too dry for speech.

"All right. Go now. And don't make any mistake whatever you do. Follow out exactly what I've told you."

Again she promised. He handed to her the rifle. She rode away, taking the other horses with her.

When she was out of sight in a dip of the draw, Harrison spoke.

"Well, what is it to be? I see you got your gats yet. Going to shoot me down like a coyote?"

"That's what you deserve. That's what you'd get if the Lazy B boys got hold of you. But I'm going to kill you with my bare hands, you wolf."

With what seemed a single motion of his hands he unbuckled the revolver belt from his waist and flung it from him. Crouched like a tiger, he moved slowly forward, the flow of his muscles rhythmic and graceful.

The prizefighter could scarce believe his luck. He threw out his salient chin and laughed triumphantly. "You damned fool! I've got you at last. I've got you."

Light as a panther, Yeager lashed out with his left and caught flush the point of that protruding chin. The grinning head went back as if it had been on hinges. Shoulders, buttocks, and heels hit the ground together. The range-rider was on him as a terrier lights on a rat. Jarred though his brains were, the instinct of self-preservation served the man underneath. He half turned, flung an arm around the neck of his foe, and clung tightly even while he covered up. Steve's fist hammered at the back of the close-cropped head. The prizefighter swung over, face down, rose to his hands and knees by sheer strength, then reached for his neck grip again.

Yeager eluded him, throwing all his weight forward to force his opponent down again. Harrison gave suddenly. They rolled over and over, fighting and clawing like wild cats, two bipeds in a death struggle as fierce and ruthless as that between wolves or grizzlies. No words were spoken. They were back in the primitive Stone Age before speech was invented. Snarling and growling, they fought with an appalling fury.

Presently they were back on their feet again. Toe to toe they stood, rocking each other with sledgehammer blows. Blood poured from the beaten faces of both. Harrison clinched. They staggered to and fro before they went down heavily, Yeager underneath. The prizefighter thrust his right forearm under the chin of his enemy and with his left thumb and middle finger gouged at the eyes of the man beneath him. Steve's legs moved up, encircled those of the rustler, and swiftly straightened. With a bellow of pain Harrison flung himself free and clambered to his feet. The legs of his trousers had been ripped open for a foot. Blood streamed from his calves where the sharp rowels of the range-rider's spurs had torn the flesh.

They quartered over the ground many times as they fought. Sometimes they were on their feet slogging hard. Once, at least, they crouched knee to knee. Lying on the ground, they struck no less furiously and desperately. All sense of fair play, of sportsmanship, was gone. They struggled to kill and not be killed.

Their lungs labored heavily. They began to stagger as they moved. The muscles of their arms lost their resilience. Their legs dragged as though weighted. Harrison was, if a choice might be made, in worse case. He was the stronger man, but he lacked the tireless endurance of the other. Watching him with animal wariness, Yeager knew that the man who went down first would stay down. His enemy was sagging at the knees. He could with difficulty lift his arms. He fought only in spurts. All this was true of himself, too. But somewhere in him was that dynamic will not to be beaten that counted heavily as a reserve.

The prizefighter called on himself for the last attack. He stumbled forward, head down, in a charge. An aimless blow flung Steve against the trunk of the live-oak. His arms thrashing wildly, Harrison plunged forward to finish him. The cowpuncher ducked, lurched to one side. Against the bark of the tree crashed the fist of the other, swinging him half round.

Yeager flung himself on the back of his foe. Human bone and flesh and muscle could do no more. The knees of Harrison gave and he sank to the ground, his head falling in the spring. His opponent, breathless and exhausted, lay motionless on top of him. For a time both lay without stirring. The first to move was Steve. He noticed that the nose and mouth of the senseless man lay beneath the water. By exerting all his strength he pulled the battered head almost out of the water. Very slowly and painfully he got to his feet. Leaning against the tree for support, he looked down at the helpless white face of the man he had hated so furiously only a few minutes earlier. That emotion had entirely vanished. It was impossible to feel any resentment against that bruised and bleeding piece of clay. Steve was conscious only of a tremendous desire to lie down and go to sleep.

He laved his face with water as best he could, picked up the belt he had thrown away, and drunkenly climbed the hill toward Ruth.

She cried out at sight of him with a heart of joy, but as he lurched nearer she slid from the horse and ran toward him. Could this be the man she had left but half an hour since so full of vital strength and youth? His vest and shirt were torn to ribbons so that they did not cover the mauled and bruised flesh at all. Every exposed inch of his head and body had its wounds to show. He was drenched with blood. The sight of his face wrung her heart.

"What did he do to you?" she cried with a sob, slipping an arm round his waist to support him.

"I said I'd be the one to come," he told her as he leaned against the neck of his pony.

"Oh, why did you do it?" And swiftly on the heels of that cry came the thought of relief for him. "I'll get you water. I'll bathe your wounds."

"No. We've got to get out of here. Any time some of Pasquale's men may come. His camp is not far."

"But you can't go like that. You're hurt."

"That's all right. Nothing the matter with me. Can you get on alone?"

"Can you?" she asked in turn, after she had swung to the saddle.

He had to try it three times before he succeeded in getting into the seat. So weak was he that as the horse moved he had to cling with both hands to the pommel of the saddle to steady himself. Ruth rode close beside him, all solicitude and anxiety.

"You ought not to be riding. I know your wounds hurt you cruelly," she urged in a grave and troubled voice.

"I reckon I can stand the grief. When I've had a bath and a good sleep I'll be good as new."

She asked timidly the question that filled her mind. "Did you--What about him?"

"Did I kill him? Is that what you mean?"

"Yes," she murmured.

"No, I reckon not. He was lying senseless when I left, but I expect he'll come to."

"Oh, I hope so ... I do hope so."

He looked at her, asking no questions. Some men would have broken into denunciation of the scoundrel, would have defended the course they had followed. This man did neither the one nor the other. She might think what she pleased. He had fought from an inner compulsion, not to win her applause. No matter how she saw it he could offer no explanations or apologies.

"I hope so because--because of you," she continued. "Now I know him for what he is. I'm through with him for always." Then, in a sudden burst of frankness: "I never did trust him, really."

"You've had good luck. Some women find out things too late," he commented simply.

After that they rode in silence, except at long intervals when she asked him if he was in pain or too tired to travel. The lightening of the sky for the coming dawn found them still in the saddle with the jagged mountain line rising vaguely before them in the darkness like a long shadow. Presently they could make out the gash in the range that was Sieber's Pass.

"Some of the boys will be waiting there for us, I reckon," Steve said. "They'll be glad to see you safe."

"If I'm safe, they'll know who brought it about." Her voice trembled as she hurried on: "I can't thank you. All I can say is that I understand from what you saved me."

He looked away at the distant hills. "That's all right. I had the good luck to be in the right place. Any of the boys would have been glad of the chance."

After a time they saw smoke rising from a hollow in the hills. They were climbing steadily now by way of a gulch trail. This opened into a draw. A little back from the stream a man was bending over a camp-fire. He turned his head to call to a second man and caught sight of them. It was Orman. He let out a whoop of gladness when he recognized Ruth. Others came running from a little clump of timber.

Phil lifted his sister from the saddle and kissed her. He said nothing, since he could not speak without breaking down.

Jackson looked at Steve in amazement. "You been wrastling with a circular saw?" he asked.

It hurt Yeager's broken face to smile, but he attempted it. "Had a little difference of opinion with Chad. We kind o' talked things over."

Nobody asked anything further. It is the way of outdoor Arizona to take a good deal for granted. This man was torn and tattered and bruised. His face was cut open in a dozen places. Purple weals and discolorations showed how badly his body had been punished. He looked a fit subject for a hospital. But every one who looked into his quiet, unconquered eyes knew that he had come off victor.

"First off, a bath in the creek to get rid of these souvenirs Chad sent to my address. Then it's me for the hay," he announced.

Ruth watched him go, lean, sinewy, and wide-shouldered. His stride was once more light and strong, for with the passing hours power had flowed back into his veins. She sighed. He was a man that would go the limit for his friends. He was gentle, kindly, full of genial and cheerful courage. But she knew now there was another side to him, a quality that was tigerish, that snarled like a wolf in battle. Why was it that men must be so?

Old Dan chuckled. "Ain't he the lad? Stove up to beat all get-out. But I'd give a dollar Mex to see the other man. He's sure a pippin to see this glad mawnin'."

Something of what was groping in her mind broke from Ruth into words. "Why do men fight like that? It's dreadful."

Dan scratched his shiny bald head. "It straightens out a heap of things in this little old world. My old man used to say to me when I was a kid, 'Son, don't start trouble, but when it's going, play yore hand out.' That's how it is with Steve. He ain't huntin' trouble anywhere, but he ce'tainly plays his hand out."

Phil took charge of his sister. He gave her coffee and breakfast, then arranged blankets so that she could get a few hours' sleep in comfort. Orman rode back to Los Robles to carry the word to Mrs. Seymour that Ruth had been rescued and was all right. The others lounged about camp while Yeager and the girl slept.

At noon they were wakened. Coffee was served again, after which they rode down from the pass and started home. Before supper-time they were back in Los Robles.

CHAPTER XV

STEVE WINS A HAM SANDWICH

Yeager was roused from sleep next morning by a knock at the door. His visitor was Fleming Lennox, leading man of the company.

"Say, Steve, what about Threewit and Farrar? I just telephoned to the Lazy B Ranch and the foreman says his boys did not run across them. You know what that means. They've reached old Pasquale's camp."

Yeager sat up in bed and whistled softly to himself. This was a contingency he had not foreseen. What would the Mexican chief do to two of the range-rider's friends who delivered themselves into his hands so opportunely? Steve did not think he would kill them offhand, but he was very sure they would not be at liberty to return home. Moreover, Harrison would be on the ground, eager for revenge. The prizefighter never had liked Farrar. He had sworn to get even with Threewit. An added incentive to this course was the fact that he knew them both to be on very good terms with his chief enemy. Without doubt Chad would do his best to stimulate the insurgent leader to impulsive violence.

The man in bed concealed his apprehension under a comical grin. "This life's just one damned thing after another, looks like," he commented. "I didn't figure on that. I thought sure the boys would bump into Threewit. That slip-up surely spills the beans."

"You don't think even Pasquale would dare hurt them, do you?" asked Lennox anxiously.

"Search me. Pasquale's boiled in p'ison, especially when he is drunk. He'd do whatever he had a mind to do."

"What's the matter with us sending a messenger down there with a fake wire from the old man to Threewit telling him to hustle up and get busy right away on a feature film? Pasquale would have to show his hand, anyhow. We'd know where we were at."

Yeager assented. "He'd have to turn them loose or hold them. But even if he turned them loose, he might arrange to have them accidentally killed by bandits before they reached home. Still, it would put one thing right up to him--that their friends know where they are and are ready to sick Uncle Sam on him if he don't act proper."

Manderson, Miss Winters, and Daisy Ellington were called into council after breakfast. The situation was canvassed from all sides, but in the end they stood where they had been at the beginning. Nobody felt sure what Pasquale would do or knew whether the visitors at his camp would be detained as prisoners. The original suggestion of Lennox seemed the best under the circumstances.

Old Juan Yuste was brought in from the stables and given the telegram. He was told nothing except that it was urgent that Threewit get the message as soon as possible. The five-dollar gold-piece which Lennox tossed to the Mexican drew a grin that exposed a mouth half empty of teeth.

In the absence of both Threewit and Farrar the business of producing films was at a standstill. The members of the company took an enforced holiday. Manderson read a novel. Daisy wrote letters. Lennox and Miss Winters went for a long stroll. Steve helped Baldy Cummings mend broken saddles and other property stuff. The extras played poker.

Juan returned late in the evening on the second day. He brought with him a letter addressed to Lennox. It was from Pasquale. The message was written in English. It said:--

Greetings, señor. Your friends are the guests of General Pasquale. They came to Noche Buena to find one Señor Yeager. They are resolved to stay here until he is found by them, even though they remain till the day of their death.

The note was signed, "Siempre, Gabriel Pasquale."

After reading, it, Yeager handed the note back to Lennox and spoke quietly.

"Pasquale passes the buck up to me. I've been thinking he might do that."

"You mean--?"

"--That he serves notice he's going to kill our friends if I don't give myself up to him."

"But would he? Dare he?"

Yeager shrugged. "It will happen in the usual Mexican way--killed by accident while trying to escape, or else ambushed by Federals on the desert while coming home, according to the story that will be dished up to the papers. He will be full of regrets and apologies to our Government, but that won't help Threewit or Frank any."

"Don't you think he's bluffing? Pasquale hasn't a thing against either of them. He surely wouldn't murder them in cold blood."

"I don't know whether he is or not. But it's up to me to sit in and take cards. They went down to Noche Buena on my account. I'm going down on theirs."

Lennox stared incredulously at him. "You don't mean you're going to give yourself up. Pasquale would hang up your hide to dry."

"That's just what he would do, after he had boiled me in oil or given me some other pleasant diversion. No, I reckon I'll not give myself up. I'll join his army again."

"I give it up, Steve. Tell me the answer."

"As a private this time."

"Fat chance you'll have, with Friend Harrison there to spot you, not to mention the old boy himself and Culvera."

"It won't be Steve Yeager that joins. It will be a poor peon from the hills named Pedro or Juan or Pablo."

"You're going to rig up as a Mexican?"

"Some guesser, Lennox."

"You can't put it over, not with your face looking like a pounded beefsteak. I judge you don't know what an Exhibit A you are at present. The first time Chad looked at you, he would recognize the result of his uppercuts and swings."

"So he would. I'll have to wait a week or so. Send Juan back to Pasquale and tell him you hear I'm in the Lone Star country where I used to punch. Say you've sent for me with an offer to take Harrison's place in the company, and that if I come you'll arrange with him to have me taken by his men while we're doing a set near the line. He'll fall for that because he'll be so keen to get me that any chance will look good to him. You'll have to give Juan a tip not to let it out I'm here."

"What can you do if you get into Pasquale's camp as one of his men?"

"I don't know. Something will turn up."

"You're taking a big chance, Steve."

"Not because I want to. But I've got to do what I can for the boys. This ain't just the time for a 'watchful waiting' policy, seems to me. If you've got anything better to offer, I'm agreeable to listen."

"The only thing I can think of is to appeal to Uncle Sam."

"That won't get us much. But there's no harm in trying. Have the old man stir up a big dust at Washington. After plenty of red tape an official representation will be made to Pasquale. He will lie himself black in the face. More correspondence. More explanations. Finally, if the prisoners are still alive, they will start home. Mebbe they'll get here. Mebbe they won't."

"Then you don't think it's worth trying?"

"Sure I do. Every little helps. It might make Pasquale sit steady in the boat till I get a chance to pull off something."

When Daisy Ellington heard of the plan she went straight to Yeager.

"What's this I hear about you committing suicide?" she demanded.

"News to me, compadre," smiled the puncher.

"You're not really going down there to shove your head into that den of wolves, are you?" Without waiting for an answer she pushed on to a prediction. "Because if you do, they'll surely snap it off."

"Wish you'd change your brand of prophecy, niña. You see, this is the only head I've got. I'm some partial to it."

"Then you had better keep away from that old Pasquale and Chad Harrison. Don't be foolish, Steve." She caught the lapels of his coat and shook him fondly. "If you don't know when you're well off, your friends do. We're not going to let you go."

"Threewit and Farrar," he reminded her.

"They'll have to take their chance. Besides, Pasquale isn't going to hurt them. There wouldn't be any sense in it. So there's no use us getting panicky."

"I don't reckon I'm exactly panicky, Daisy. But it won't do to forget that Pasquale is one bad hombre. Harrison is another, and he's got it in for the boys. We can't lie down and quit on them, can we? I notice they didn't do that with me."

"What good will it do for you to go and get trapped too? It's different with you. They've got it in for you down there. It's just foolhardiness for you to go back," she told him sharply.

"You're sure some little boss," he laughed. "I'm willing to be reasonable. If I can prove to you that I stand a good chance to pull it off down at Noche Buena, will you feel different about it?"

"Yes, if you can--but you can't," she agreed, flashing at him the provocative little smile that was one of her charms.

"Bet you a box of chocolates against a ham sandwich I can."

"You're on," she nodded airily.

"Better order that ham sandwich," he advised, mocking her lazily with his friendly eyes.

"Oh, I don't know. You're not so much, Cactus Center. I expect to be eating chocolates soon."

Her gay audacity always pleased him. He settled himself for explanations soberly, but back of his gravity lay laughter.

"You've got the wrong hunch on me. I ain't any uneducated sheepherder. Don't run away with that notion. Me, I went through the first year of the High School at Tucson. I know all about amo, amas, amat, and how to make a flying tackle. Course oncet in a while I slip up in grammar. There's heap too much grammar in the world, anyhow. It plumb chokes up a man's language."

"All right, Steve. Show me. I'm from Joplin, Missouri. When are you going to do all this proving?"

"We won't set a date. Some time before I leave."

Yeager walked from the studio to his rooming-place. Ruth Seymour met him on the porch and stopped him. It was the first time he had seen her since their return.

"Is it true--what Mr. Manderson says--that you are going back to Noche Buena?" she flung at him.

"I'm certainly getting on the society page," he laughed. "Manderson has a pretty good reputation. I shouldn't wonder if what he says is true."

The face beneath the crown of soft black hair was colorless except for the trembling lips.

"Why? Why must you go? You've just escaped from there with your life. Are you mad?"

"Look here, Miss Ruth. I've just had a roundup with Miss Ellington about this. I'm going to take a whirl at rescuing our friends. Pasquale can't put over such a raw deal without getting a run for his money from me. I'm going back there because it's up to me to go. There are some things a man can't do. He can't quit when his friends need him."

She was standing in the doorway, her head leaning against the jamb so that the fine curve of the throat line showed a beating pulse. Something in the pose of the slim, graceful figure told him of repressed emotion.

"That is absurd, Mr. Yeager. You can't do anything for them if you go."

"Everybody sizes me up for a buzzard-head," he complained whimsically.

The gravity did not lift from her young, quick eyes.

"If you go they'll kill you," she said in a voice as dry as a whisper.

"Sho! Nothing to that. I'm going down disguised. I'll be safe enough."

"I suppose ... nothing can keep you from going." A sob choked up in her throat as she spoke.

"No. I've got to go."

"You think you have a right to play at dice with your life! Don't your friends count with you at all?"

"It's because they do that I'm going," he answered gently.

Her troubled eyes rested on his. The protest in her heart was still urgent, but she dared go no further. Some instinct of maidenly reticence curbed the passionate rebellion against his decision. If she said more, she might say too much. With a swift, sinuous turn of the slender body she ran into the house and left him standing there.

* * * * *

Daisy sat at one end of the pergola mending a glove. It was in the pleasant cool of the evening just as dusk was beginning to fall. A light breeze rustled the rose-leaves and played with the tendrils of her soft, wavy hair. The coolness was grateful after the heat of an Arizona day.

The front gate creaked. A man was coming in, a Mexican of the peon class. He moved up the walk toward her with a slight limp. As he drew closer, she observed negligently that he was of early middle age, ragged, and of course dirty. Age and lack of soap had so dyed his serape that the original color was quite gone.

He bowed to her with the native courtesy that belongs to even the peons of his race. A swift patter of Spanish fell from his lips.

Miss Ellington shook her head. "No sabe Español."

The man gushed into a second eruption of liquid vowels, accompanied this time by gestures which indicated that he wanted food.

The young woman nodded, went into the house, and secured from Mrs. Seymour a plate of broken fragments left over from supper. With this and a cup of coffee she returned to the pergola.

"Gracias, señorita." The shining black poll of the man bowed over the donation as he accepted it.

He sat cross-legged among the roses and ate what had been given him. Daisy observed critically that his habit of eating was not at all nice. He discarded the fork she had brought, using only the knife and his fingers. The meat he tore apart and devoured ravenously, cramming it wolfishly into his mouth as fast as he could. A few days before she had fallen into an argument with Steve Yeager about the civilization of the Mexicans. She wished he could see this specimen.

The man spoke, after he had cleaned the plate, licked up the gravy, and gulped down the coffee. His words fell in a slow drawl, not in Spanish, but in English.

"Don't you reckon mebbe I could get a ham sandwich too?"

The actress jumped. "Steve, you fraud!" she screamed, and flew at him.

"Do I win?" he asked, protecting himself as he backed away.

"Of course you do. Why haven't we been using you up stage in the Mexican sets? You're perfect. How did you ever get your hair so slick and black?"

"I've been studying make-ups since I joined the Lunar Company," he told her.

"How about your Spanish? Is it good enough to pass muster?"

"I learned to jabber it when I was a year old before I did English."

"Then you'll do. I defy even Harrison to recognize you."

He gave her his Mexican bow. "Gracias, señorita."

CHAPTER XVI

THE HEAVY PAYS A DEBT

When Threewit and Farrar reached Noche Buena, Pasquale was absent from camp, but Culvera made them suavely welcome.

"Señor Yeager has recovered and was called away unexpectedly on business," he explained; adding with his lip smile, "He will be desolated to have missed you."

"He is better, then?"

"Indeed, quite his self. He nearly died from gunshot wounds, but unless he suffers a relapse he is entirely out of present danger."

"Shouldn't have thought it would have been safe to travel yet," Farrar returned.

He was uneasy in his mind, sensing something of mocking irony in the manner of the Mexican. It was strange that Yeager, wounded to death as his letter had said, was able in two days to be up and around again.

"We were anxious to have him stop, but he was in a hurry. Personally I did my best to get him to stay." Culvera's smile glittered reminiscently: "The truth is that he thought our climate unhealthy. He was afraid of heart failure."

Threewit scoffed openly. "Absurd. The man is the finest physical specimen I ever saw. If you had ever seen him on the back of an outlaw bronc, you'd know his heart was all right."

The door of the room opened and Harrison came in. He stopped, mouth open with surprise at sight of the Americans.

"Some of Mr. Yeager's anxious friends come down to inquire about his health, Harrison. Did he seem to you healthy last time you saw him?" the Mexican asked maliciously.

Like a thunderclap the prizefighter broke loose in a turbid stream of profanity. It boiled from his lips like molten lava from a crater. The raucous words poured forth from a heart furious with rage. The man was beside himself. He raved like a madman--and the object of his invective was Stephen Yeager.

And all the time the man cursed he stamped painfully about the room, a sight to wonder at. His face was so swollen, so bruised and discolored, that he was hardly recognizable. He had managed to creep into another suit of clothes after the doctor had dressed his wounds and sewed up his cuts, but these could not hide the fact that every step was a torment to his pummeled ribs and lacerated flesh. He was game. Another man in his condition would have been in the hospital. Harrison dragged himself about because he would not admit that he was badly hurt.

Culvera turned to the Americans and explained the situation in a few sentences. He was enjoying himself extremely because the vanity of his companion writhed at the position in which he was placed.

"Your friend Yeager was not pleasing to our general and was sentenced to be shot. He escaped in the night. Our companion Harrison, also I believe a compatriot and friend of yours, is a charmer of ladies' hearts, as you will perceive with one glance at his handsome face. Behold, then, an elopement, romance, and moonshine. 'Linda de mi alma, amor mia, come,' he cries. The lady comes. But, alas! for true love, the brutal vaquero follows. They meet, and--I draw a merciful curtain over the result."

Harrison was off again in crisp and crackling language. When at last his vocabulary was exhausted, he turned savagely upon Threewit and Farrar.

"I'll see Pasquale gets the right dope on you fellows too. You're a pair of damned fools for coming here, believe me. If the old man can't get Yeager, he'll take his friends instead. Didn't I tell you I'd make you sick of what you did to me, Threewit? Good enough. I've got you both where I want you now. You'll get plenty of hell, take my word for it."

Threewit turned with dignity to the Mexican. "I have nothing to say to this man, Major Culvera. But you are a gentleman. We have been deceived. I ask for an escort as far as the border to see us safely back."

Culvera was full of bland hospitality. "Really I can't permit you to leave before the general returns. He would never forgive me. When friends travel so far, they must be entertained. Not so?"

"Are we prisoners? Is that what you mean?" demanded Farrar bluntly.

The major shook his finger toward him with smiling deprecation. "Prisoners! Fie, what a word among friends? Let us rather say guests of honor. If I give you a guard it is as a precaution, to make sure that no rash peon makes the mistake of injuring you as an enemy."

"We understand," Threewit answered. "But I'll just tell you one thing, major. Our friends know where we are, and Uncle Sam has a long arm. It will reach easily to Noche Buena."

"So, señor? Perhaps. Maybe. Who knows? Accidents happen--regrettable ones. A thousand apologies to your Uncle Sam. Oh, yes! Ver' sorry. Too late to mend, but then have we not shot the foolish peon who made the mistake in regard to Señors Farrar and Threewit? Yes, indeed."

Culvera tossed off his genial prophecy with the politest indifference. The prisoners read in his words a threat, sinister and scarcely veiled.

"You're talking murder, which is absurd," answered Threewit. "We've done no harm to you or General Pasquale. We came here by mistake. He'll let us go, of course."

"You sent Yeager down here to spy about those cattle you lost. Now you've come down here buttin' in to see for yourself. I don't expect Pasquale is going to stand for any such thing," broke in Harrison.

Farrar looked the prizefighter straight in the eye.

"You're a liar and you know it, Harrison. Let me tell you something else. You've stood here and cursed Yeager to the limit. Why? Because he's a better man than you are. I don't know just what's happened, but I can see that he has given you the beating of your life. And he did it in fair fight too."

Harrison interrupted with a scream of rage. "I'll cave his head in when we meet sure as he's a foot high."

"No, you won't. He's got your goat. What I've got to say about Yeager is this. If you put over any of your sculduggery on us, he'll wipe you off the map no matter in what lonesome hole you hide. Just stick a pin in that."

The bully moved slowly toward Farrar. His head had sunk down and his shoulders fallen to the gorilla hunch.

"You've said enough--too much, damn you," he roared.

With catlike swiftness Culvera sprang from where he sat, flung his weight low at the furious man from an angle, and tipped him from his feet so that he fell staggering into a chair.

"None of that, amigo," said the Mexican curtly. "These gentlemen are guests of General Pasquale. Till he passes judgment they shall be treated with ver' much courtesy."

Panting heavily, Harrison glared at him. Some day he intended to take a fall out of this supercilious young Spanish aristocrat, but just now he was not equal to the task. He mumbled incoherent threats.

"I don't quite catch your remarks. Is it that they are to my address, Señor Harrison?" asked the young officer silkily.

Heavily Harrison rose and passed from the room without looking at any of them. For the present he was beaten and he knew it.

The Mexican smiled confidentially at his prisoners. "Between friends, it's ver' devilish unpleasant to do business with such a--what you call--ruffian. But ver' necessar'. Oh, yes! Quite so."

"Depends on one's business, I expect," replied Farrar.

"You have said it, señor. A patriot can't be too particulair. He uses the tools that come to his hands. But pardon! My tongue is like a woman's. It runs away with time."

He called the guard and had the prisoners removed. They were put in the same adobe hut where Yeager had been confined a few days earlier.

Threewit lit a cigar and paced up and down gloomily. "This is a hell of a fix we're in. Before we get out of here the old man will be hollering his head off for that 'Retreat of the Bandits' three-reeler."

The camera man laughed ruefully. "I ain't worrying any about the old man. He's back there safe in little old New York. It's Frank Farrar that's on my mind. How is he going to get out of here?"

The director stopped, took the cigar from his mouth, and looked across questioningly at him.

"You don't really think Pasquale will hurt us, do you?"

"No; not unless the breaks go against us. I don't reckon Pasquale has anything much against Yeager any more than he has against us. Of course, Harrison will do his darndest to make him sore at us. Notice how he tried to put it over that we had come about that bunch of cattle he stole?"

"Sure I did. But it is not likely that Harrison is ace high in this pack. What I'm afraid of is that the old general will soak us for a ransom. He's nothing but an outlaw, anyhow."

Within the hour they were taken before Pasquale. He was still covered with the dust of travel. His riding-gloves lay on the table where he had tossed them. His soft white hat was on his head. As rapidly as possible he was devouring a chicken dinner.

It was his discourteous whim to keep them waiting in the back of the room until he had finished. They were offered no seats, but stood against the wall under the eye of the guard who had brought them.

The general finished his bottle of wine before he turned savagely upon them.

"You are friends of the Gringo Yeager. Not so?" he accused.

It was too late for a denial now. Threewit admitted the charge.

"So. Maldito! What are you doing here? I've had enough of you Yankees!" he exploded.

Before Threewit had more than begun his explanations he brushed aside the director's words.

"This Yeager is a devil. Did he not crawl up on me unexpect' and strike me here with an axe?" He touched the back of his head, across which a wide bandage ran. "Be sure I will cut his heart out some day. Gabriel Pasquale has said it. And you--you come here to spy what we have. You claim my cattle. Am I a fool that I do not know?"

"We are sorry--"

The Mexican struck the table with his hairy brown fist so that the dishes rang. "Sorry! Jesu Cristo! In good time I shall see to that. If I do not lay hands upon this devil Yeager, his friends will do instead. Am I one to be laughed at by Gringos?"

Threewit spoke as firmly as he could, though the fear of this big, unshaven savage was in his heart. "We are not spies, general. We were brought here by the lie that Yeager lay here dying and had sent for us. In no way have we harmed you. Before you go too far, remember that our Government will not tolerate any foul play. We are not stray sheepherders. Our friends are close to the President. They have his ear and--"

Pasquale leaned forward and snapped his fingers in the face of Threewit. "That for your President and your Government. Pouf! I snap my fingers. I spit on them. Mexico for the Mexicans. To the devil with all foreigners."

He nodded to the guard. "Away with them!"

As they left they could hear him roaring for another bottle.

CHAPTER XVII

PEDRO CABENZA

The Patriotic Legion of the Northern States was drinking mescal and gambling for the paper money Pasquale had issued and rolling about in the dust with joyous whoops from each squirming mass. It was a happy Legion, though a dirty one. It let its chief do all the worrying about how it was to be fed and transported. Cheerfully it went its ragged way, eating, drinking, sleeping, card-playing, rolling in the dust of its friendly wrestling. What matter that many members of the Legion were barefoot, that its horses were scarecrows, that gunnysacks and ends of wires from baled hay and bits of frazzled rope all made contribution to the saddles and bridles of the cavalry! Was Pasquale not going to take them straight to Mexico City, where all of them would be made rich at the expense of the accursed Federals who had trodden upon the face of the poor? Caramba! Soon now the devil would have his own.

A burro appeared at one end of the hot and dusty street. Beside the burro limped a man, occasionally beating the animal on the rump with a switch he carried. The Legion took a languid interest. This was some farmer from a hill valley bringing supplies to sell to the patriotic army. Would his wares turn out to be mescal or vegetables or perhaps a leggy steer that he had butchered?

As he drew nearer it was to be seen that a crate hung from one side of the burro. In it were chickens. Balancing this, on the other side, were two gunnysacks. Through a hole in one of these pushed the green face of a cabbage. Interest in the new arrival declined. The chickens would go to the quarters of the officers, and cabbage was an old story.

When the burro was opposite the corral one of the sacks gave way with a rip. From out of the hole poured a stream of apples upon the dusty road. That part of the Legion which was nearest pounced upon the fruit with shouts of laughter. The owner tried to fight the half-grown soldiers from his property. He might as well have tried to sweep back an ocean tide with a broom. In ten seconds every apple had been gleaned from the dust. Within thirty more everything but the cores had gone to feed the Legion.

The vendor of food wailed and flung imprecations at his laughing tormentors. He cursed them fluently and shook a dirty brown fist at the circle of troopers. He threatened to tell Pasquale what they had done.

A harsh voice interrupted him. "What is it you will tell Pasquale?"

The army began to melt unobtrusively away. The general himself, accompanied by Major Ochampa, sat in the saddle and scowled at the farmer. The latter told his story, almost in tears. This was all he had, these chicken, cabbages, and apples. He had brought them down to sell and was going to enlist. His Excellency would understand that he, Pedro Cabenza, was a patriot, but, behold! he had been robbed.

He was at any rate a very ragged patriot. There was a hole in his cotton trousers through which four inches of coffee-colored leg showed. His shoes were in the last stages. The hat he doffed was an extremely ventilated one.

Pasquale passed judgment instantly. It would never do for word to get out that those bringing supplies to feed his army were not paid fairly.

"Buy the chickens and the cabbage, Ochampa. Pay the man for his apples. Enlist him and find him a mount."

He rode away, leaving his subordinate to deal with the details. Major Ochampa was the paymaster for the army as well as Secretary of the Treasury for the Government of which Pasquale was the chief. His name was on the very much-depreciated currency the insurgents had issued.

Until recently Ochampa had been a small farmer himself. He bargained shrewdly for the supplies, but in Cabenza he found a match. The man haggled to the last cent and then called on Heaven to witness that he had practically given away the goods for nothing. But when the sergeant led him away to enlist he was beaming at the bargain he had made.

Cabenza became at once an unobtrusive unit in the army. He could lie for hours and bask in the sunshine with the patient content of the Mexican peon. He could eat frijoles and tortillas week in and week out, offering no complaint at the monotony of his diet. He was as lazy, as hopeful, and as unambitious as several thousand other riders of the Legion. Nobody paid the least attention to him except to require of him the not very arduous duties of camp service. Presently Pasquale would move south and renew the campaign. Meanwhile his troopers had an indolent, easy time of it.

On the evening of the day after his enlistment Pedro Cabenza strolled across toward the prison where he had been told two Americans were held captive. Two guards sat outside in front of the door and gossiped. Cabenza, moved apparently by a desire for companionship, indifferently drifted toward them. He sat down. Presently he produced a bottle furtively. All three drank, to good health, to the success of the revolution, a third time to the day when they should march, victorious into the great city in the south.

They became exhilarated. Cabenza found it necessary to work off his excitement upon the prisoners. He stood on tiptoe, holding the window bars in his hands, and jeered at the men within.

"Ho, ho, Gringos! May the devil fly away with you! Food for powder--food for powder! Some fine morning the general will give orders and--we shall bury you in the sand by the river. Not so?" he scoffed in his own language.

One of the Americans within drew near the window.

"Listen," he said. "Do you want to earn some money--ten--twenty--one hundred dollars in gold? Will you take a letter for me to Los Robles?"

"No. The general would skin me alive. I spit upon your offer. I throw dirt upon you."

Cabenza stooped, in his hand scooped up some dust from the ground, and flung it between the bars.

One of the guards pulled him back savagely.

"Icabron! Know you not the orders of the general? None are to talk with the Gringos. Away, fool! Because of the drink Pablo and I will forget. Away!"

Cabenza showed a face ludicrously terror-stricken. The punishments of Pasquale were notoriously severe. If it were known he had broken the command he would at least be beaten with whips.

"I did not know. I did not know," he explained humbly, thrusting the liquor bottle at one of them. "Here, compañero, drink and forget that I have spoken."

He turned and scurried away into the darkness.

CHAPTER XVIII

HARRISON OVERPLAYS HIS HAND

Through the barred window Farrar watched the guard drag Cabenza back. He was very despondent. They had been prisoners now nearly a week and could see no termination of their jail sentence in sight. The food given them was wretched. They were anxious, dirty, and unkempt. Though he would not admit it even to himself, the camera man was oppressed by the shadow of a possible impending fate. The whim of a tyrant regardless of human life might at any hour send them to a firing squad.

Threewit sat gloomily on the stool, elbows on knees and chin resting on his fists. He could have wept for himself almost without shame. For forty-five years he had gone his safe way, a policeman always within call. Not once had life in the raw reached out and gripped him. Not once had he faced the stark probability of sudden, violent death. Clubs and after-theater suppers and poker and golf had offered him pleasant diversion. And now--a cruel fate had thrown him in the way of a barbarian with no sense of either justice or kindness. He felt himself too soft of fiber to cope with such elemental forces.

"Look! What is that, Threewit?"

Farrar was pointing to something on the table that gleamed white in the moonlight. He stepped forward and picked it up. The article was a stone around which was wrapped a paper tied by a string.

"The Mexican must have thrown it in with the dirt. It wasn't there before," replied the director quickly.

Farrar untied the string and smoothed out the paper, holding it toward the moonlight. "There's writing on it, but I can't make it out. Strike a match for me."

His companion struck on his trousers a match and the camera man read by its glowing flame.

Keep a stiff upper lip. Cactus Center is on the job. Don't know when my chance will come, but I'm looking for it. Chew this up.

S. Y.

Farrar gave a subdued whoop of joy. "It's old Steve. He hasn't forgotten us, good old boy. I'll bet he has got something up his sleeve."

"Hope that greaser doesn't give us away to Pasquale or Harrison."

"He won't. Trust Cactus Center. He's bridle-wise, that lad is. I feel a lot better just to know he has got us on his mind."

"What do you suppose he is planning?"

"Don't know. Of course he has to lie low. But he pulled off his own getaway and I'll back him to figure out ours." The camera man was nothing if not a loyal admirer of the range-rider.

They talked in whispers, eager and excited with the possibility of rescue that had come. Somehow, of all the men they had known, they banked more on Steve Yeager in such an emergency than any other. It was not alone his physical vigor, though that counted, since it gave him so complete a mastery over himself. Farrar had seen him once stripped in a swimming-pool and been stirred to wonder. Beneath the satiny skin the muscles moved in ripples. The biceps crawled back and forth like living things, beautiful in the graceful flow of their movement. Whatever he had done had been done easily, apparently without effort. This reserve power was something more than a combination of bone and sinew and flesh. It was a product of the spirit, a moral force to be reckoned with. It helped to make impossible things easy of accomplishment.

* * * * *

The panic of Cabenza vanished as soon as he was out of sight of the guards. As he turned down toward the sandy river-bed a little smile lay in his eyes.

From the place where it was buried beneath the root of a cottonwood, he dug out a bandanna handkerchief containing several bottles, little brushes, and a looking-glass. Sitting there in the moonlight, he worked busily renewing the tints of his hands and face and also of the coffee-colored patch of skin that peeped through his torn trouser leg.

This done, he sauntered back to the little town and down the adobe street. A horseman cantered up to the headquarters of the general just as Pasquale stepped out with Culvera. The latter snapped his fingers toward Cabenza and that trooper ran forward.

"Hold the horse," ordered the officer in Mexican.

Cabenza relieved the messenger, who stepped forward and delivered what had been given him to say. The hearing of the man holding the horse was acute and he listened intently.

"Señor Harrison sends greeting to the general. He is in touch with the play-actor Lennox and hopes soon to get the Gringo Yeager. If Lennox plays false...."

The words ran into a murmur and Cabenza could hear no more.

The messenger was dismissed. Cabenza stooped to tie a loose lace in his shoe. Pasquale and Culvera passed back from the end of the porch into the house. As they went the trooper heard another stray fragment in the voice of the general.

"If Harrison crosses the line after him at night...."

That was all, but it told Cabenza that Harrison was negotiating with Lennox for the delivery of Yeager in exchange for Threewit and Farrar. The leading man was, of course, playing for time until Steve, under the guise of Cabenza, could arrange to win the freedom of the prisoners.

This would take time, for success would depend upon several dove-tailing factors. To attempt a rescue and to fail would be practically to sign the death-warrant of Farrar and Threewit.

Yeager, alias Cabenza, returned to the stable where he and a score of patriots of the Northern Legion had sleeping-quarters. He would much have preferred to take his blankets out into the pure night air and to bed under the stars. But he was playing his part thoroughly. He could not afford to be nice or scrupulous, for fear of calling special attention to himself.

As for the peons beside him, they snored peacefully without regard to the lack of cleanliness of their bedroom. The first day of his arrival Yeager had knocked a hole in the flimsy wall and had given it out as the result of a chance kick of a bronco. This served to let air into a building which had no other means of ventilation. It also allowed some small percentage of the various concentrated odors to escape.

The Arizonian was a light sleeper. But like some men in perfect trim he had the faculty of going to sleep whenever he desired. Often he had taken a nap in the saddle while night-herding. Fatigued from eighteen hours of wrestling the cattle to safety through a bitter storm, he had learned to fall easily into rest the instant his head hit the pillow. It was a heritage that had come to him from his rugged, outdoor life. So he slept now, a gentle, untroubled slumber, until daylight sifted through the hole in the wall at his side.

He was on duty that day herding the remuda, and it was not until late afternoon that he returned to camp. From a distance, dropping down into the draw which formed the location of the town, he saw a dust cloud moving down the street. At the apex of it rode a little bunch of travelers, evidently just in from the desert. Incuriously his eyes watched the party as it moved toward the headquarters of Pasquale. Some impulse led him to put his scarecrow of a pony at a canter.

The party reached the house of Pasquale and the two leaders dismounted. Yeager was still at some distance, but he had an uncertain impression that one of them was a woman. They stood on the porch talking. The larger one seemed to be overruling the protest of the other, so far as Steve could tell at that distance. The two passed together into the house.

It was not at all unusual for women to go into that house, according to the camp-fire stories that were whispered in the army. Pasquale was an unmoral old barbarian. If he liked women and wine the Legion made no complaint. The women were either camp-followers or visitors from the nearest town. In either case they were not of a sort whose reputation was likely to suffer.

Yeager cooked his simple supper and ate it. He sat down with his back to an adobe wall and rolled a cigarette. The peons, loafing in the cool of the evening, naturally fell into gossip. Steve, intent on his own thoughts, did not hear what was said until a word snatched him out of his indifference. The word was the name of Harrison.

"This afternoon?" asked one.

"Not an hour ago."

"Brought a woman with him, Pablo says," said a third indifferently.

"Yes." The first speaker laughed with an implication he did not care to express.

One of the others leaned forward and spoke in a lower tone. "This Harrison promised the general to bring back with him the Gringo Yeager. Old Gabriel is crazy to get the Yankee devil in his hands. Not so? Harrison brings him a woman instead to soften his bad temper, maybe."

The American gave no sign of interest. His fingers finished rolling the cigarette. Not another muscle of the inert body moved.

"A white woman this time, Pablo says."

The first speaker shrugged. "Look you, brother. All is grist that comes to the mill of Gabriel. As for these Gringo women"--He whispered a bit of slander that brought the blood to the face of Steve.

The peons guffawed with delight. This kind of joke was adapted both to their prejudices and their lack of intelligence. They were as ignorant of the world as children, fully as gay, irresponsible, and kindhearted. But they had, too, a capacity for cruelty and frank sensuousness that belongs only to the childhood of a race.

Presently Yeager arose, yawned, and drifted inconspicuously toward the stable that had been converted into a bedroom by the simple process of throwing a lot of blankets on the floor. But as soon as he was out of sight, Steve doubled across the road into the alley that ran back of the house where Pasquale was putting up.

The news about Harrison's return was disquieting. Ever since Yeager's second arrival at Noche Buena he had been gone. What did his appearance now mean? Who was the American woman he had brought back with him? Steve was inclined to think she was probably some one of the man's dubious acquaintances from Arixico. But of this he intended to make sure.

He passed quietly up the alley and into the yard back of the big house the insurgent general had appropriated for his headquarters. A light was shining from one of the back upper rooms. From it, too, there came faintly the sound of a voice, high and frightened, in which sobs and hysteria struggled.

By means of a post the Arizonian climbed to the top of the little back porch. Leaning as far as he could toward the window of the lighted room, he could see Pasquale and Harrison. The woman, whoever she might be, was in the corner of the room beyond his vision. The prizefighter showed both in face and manner a certain stiff sullenness. He was insisting upon some point to which there was determined opposition. As the general turned half toward him once, the range-rider saw in his little black eyes an alert and greedy cunning he did not understand.

The woman broke out into violent protest.

"I won't do it. I won't. If you are a liberator, as they say you are, you won't let him force me to it, general, will you?"

At the sound of that voice Yeager's heart jumped. He would have known it among ten thousand. Little beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead. The primitive instinct to kill seared across his brain and left him for the moment dizzy and trembling.

There was a grin on Pasquale's ugly mug. His tobacco-stained teeth showed behind the lifted lips.

"If young ladies will insist on running away with officers of mine--"

"I didn't. Ask the men. I fought. See where I bit his hand," she protested, fighting against hysterical fears.

"So? But Señor Harrison says you were engaged to him."

"I hate him. I've found him out. I'd rather die than--"

Yeager caught the arm fling that concluded her sentence of passionate protest.

Pasquale, little black eyes twinkling, shrugged broad shoulders and turned to Harrison.

"You see. The lady has changed her mind, señor. What will you?"

"What's that got to do with it? She's mine. Send for a priest and have us married," the other man demanded bluntly.

"Not so fast, amigo," remonstrated Pasquale softly. "Give her time--a few days--quien sabe?--she may change her mind again."

Harrison choked on his anger. He was suspicious of this suavity, of this sudden respect for a girl's wishes. Since when had the old despot become so scrupulous as to risk offending one who had served him a good deal and might aid him in more serious matters? The prizefighter could guess only one reason for the general's attitude. His jealousy began to smoke at once.

"She can change her mind afterward just as well. If we're married now, then I'm sure of her," the prizefighter insisted doggedly.

Impulsively the girl swept into that part of the room within the view of Steve. She knelt in front of Pasquale and caught at his hand.

"Send me home--back to my mother. I'm only a girl. You don't make war on girls, do you?" she pleaded.

Had she only known it, the very sweetness of her troubled youth, the shadows under the starry eyes edging the wild-rose cheeks, the allure of her lines and soft flesh, fought potently against her desire for a safe-conduct home. The greedy, treacherous little eyes of the insurgent chief glittered.

He shook his head. "No, señorita. That is not possible. But you shall stay here--under the protection of Gabriel Pasquale himself. You shall have choice--Señor Harrison if you wish, another if you prefer it so. Take time. Perhaps--who knows?" He smiled and bowed with the gallantry of a bear as he kissed her hand.

"No--no. I want to go home," she sobbed.

"Young ladies don't always know what is best for them. Behold, we shall marry you to a soldier, one of rank. From the general down, you shall have choice," Pasquale promised largely.

Harrison scowled. He did not at all like the turn things were taking. "Not as long as I'm alive," he said savagely. "She's mine, I tell you."

The Mexican looked directly at him with a face as hard as jade. "So you don't expect to live long, señor. Is that it? We shall all mourn. Yes, indeed." He turned decisively to the white-faced girl. "Go to sleep, muchacha. To-morrow we shall talk. Gabriel Pasquale is your friend. All shall be well with you. None shall insult you on peril of his life. Buenos!"

With a gesture of his hand he pointed the door to Harrison.

The eyes of the two men clashed stormily. It was those of the American that finally gave way sulkily. Pasquale had power to enforce his commands and the other knew he would not hesitate to use it.

The prizefighter slouched out of the room with the general at his heels.

With a little gesture that betrayed the despair of her sick heart the girl turned and flung herself face down on the bed. Sobs shook her slender body. Her fingers clutched unconsciously at the rough weave of the blanket upon which she lay.

CHAPTER XIX

THE TEXAN

Steve tapped gently on the window pane with the ball of his middle finger. Instantly the sobbing was interrupted. The black head of hair lifted from the pillow to listen the better. He could guess how fearfully the heart of the girl was beating.

Again he tapped on the glass. With a lithe twist of her body the girl sat up on the bed. She waited tensely for a repetition of the sound, not quite sure from where it had come.

Her questing eyes found at last the source of it, a warning forefinger close to the pane that seemed to urge for silence. Rising, she moved slowly to the window, uneasy, doubtful, yet with hope beginning to stir at her heart. She formed a cup for her eyes with her palms so as to hold back the light while she peered through the glass into the darkness without.

Over to the left she made out the contour of a face, a brown Mexican face with quick, eager eyes that spoke comfort to her. Her first thought was that it belonged to a friend. Hard on the heels of that she gave a little cry of joy and began with trembling fingers to raise the window.

"Steve!" she cried, laughing and crying together.

And as soon as she had adjusted the window she caught his hand between both of hers and pressed it hard. Steve was here. He would save her as he had before. She was all right now.

"Ruth! Little Ruth!" he cried softly, in a whisper.

"Did you hear? Do you know?" she asked.

"Only that he brought you here, the hellhound, and that Pasquale--"

He stopped, his sentence unfinished. There was no need to alarm her about that old philanderer. Time enough for that if she scratched the surface and found the savage beneath.

"--Won't let me go home," she finished for him.

"But what are you doing here? How did Harrison trap you?"

"I had been strolling with Daisy Ellington after supper. It was not late--hardly dark yet. She stopped at the hotel to talk with Miss Winters and I started to walk home alone. I took the short cut across the empty block just below Brinker's. He was waiting among the cottonwoods there--he and two Mexicans. As soon as he stepped into the light I was afraid."

"Why didn't you cry out?"

"I didn't like to make a scene about nothing. And after that first moment I had no time. He caught hold of me and put his hand across my mouth. Horses were there ready saddled. He lifted me in front of him and kept my mouth covered till we were clear of the town. It didn't matter how much I screamed when we had reached the desert."

"I didn't think even Harrison had the nerve to kidnap an Arizona girl and bring her across the line. If he had happened to meet a bunch of cowpunchers--"

"He didn't start after me. It was you he wanted. But he found out you weren't in town and took me instead. All the way down he talked about you--boasted how he would marry me in spite of you and how he would take you and have Pasquale flay you alive."

Yeager lifted a warning finger. "Remember you have a friend here. Good-night."

He lowered himself quickly, slid down the porch post, and disappeared into the darkness almost instantly.

Ruth heard voices. One gave commands, the others answered mildly with "Si, Excellency." Dim figures moved about below, one heavy, bulky, dominating. He gestured, snapped out curt directions, and presently vanished. Two guards were left. They paced up and down beneath her window. She understood that Pasquale was providing against any chance of escape. Half an hour ago she would have shuddered. Now she could even smile faintly at his precautions. Steve would evade them when the right time came.

Her confidence in him, since it looked only to the results, was greater than that he felt in his own power. The range-rider saw the difficulties before him. He was alone in a camp of wild, ignorant natives who moved at the nod of Pasquale. When he let himself think of Ruth as a prisoner at the mercy of that savage old outlaw's whim, the heart of Steve failed him. What could one man do against so many?

He felt that she was perfectly safe for the present, but Yeager found it impossible to sleep in the stable. Taking his blankets with him, he slipped noiselessly out to the cottonwood clump back of Pasquale's headquarters. Here, at least, he could see the light in her window and be sure that all was well with her.

As he moved noiselessly from one tree to another which gave a better view of the window, Steve stumbled against the prostrate body of a man.

Some one ripped out a sullen oath and a grip of steel caught at the ankle of the cowpuncher.

Taken by surprise, Yeager was dragged to the ground.

"What are you doing here?" demanded a voice Steve recognized instantly as belonging to Harrison.

The prisoner made no resistance. He ran into a patter of frightened, apologetic Spanish.

"What's your name?"

"Pedro Cabenza, señor," replied the owner of that name. "It is so hot in the stable. So I bring my blankets here and sleep."

"Hmp!" Harrison took time for reflection. "Know where I put up?"

"Si, señor."

The prizefighter gave him a dollar. "Stay here. Keep an eye on that lighted window upstairs. If anything happens--if you hear a noise--if a woman screams, come and knock me up right away. Understand?"

The docile Cabenza repeated his instructions like a parrot.

"Good enough," Harrison nodded. "I'll give you another dollar when you come. But don't wake me for nothing."

"No, señor."

"And you'd better keep your mouth shut unless you want your head beat off," advised the white man as he left.

The one who had given his name as Cabenza grinned to himself. He was now Harrison's hired watcher. Both of them were in league to frustrate any deviltry on the part of Pasquale. He wondered what the prizefighter would give to know that he had his enemy so wholly in his power, that he had only to lay hands on him and cry out to doom him to a painful and a violent death.

Yeager dozed and wakened and dozed again. Always when he looked the light was still burning. Toward morning he saw the figure of Ruth in the window. When she turned away the light went out. He judged she had put her anxieties from her and given herself to sleep at last. But not until the camp began to stir with the renewal of life for another day did he leave his post and return to the stable.

During the morning he slept under a cottonwood and made up arrears of rest lost while on guard. About noon Harrison came down the street and stopped at sight of him. The man was livid with anger. Yeager could guess the reason. He had spent a stormy ten minutes with old Pasquale demanding his rights and had issued from the encounter without profit. From the place where Steve was sitting he had heard the high, excited voices. It had occurred to him that the protest of Harrison had gone about as far as it could be safely carried, for Gabriel was both a ruthless and a hot-tempered despot.

Harrison sat down sullenly without speaking and stared straight in front of him. He was boiling with impotent fury. Pasquale had the whip hand and meant to carry things his own way. Of that he no longer had any doubt. In bringing Ruth to Noche Buena he had made a great mistake.

"Do you want to make some money, you--what's your name?" he presently rasped out.

Yeager answered with the universal formula of the land. "Si, señor. And my name is Cabenza--Pedro Cabenza."

The prizefighter glanced warily around, then lowered his voice. "I mean a lot of money--twenty dollars, maybe."

"Gold?" asked the peon, wide-eyed.

"Gold. How far would you go to earn that much?"

"A long way, señor."

Harrison caught him by the wrist with a grip that drove the blood back. "Listen, Cabenza. Would you go as far as the camp of Garcia Farrugia?" The close-gripped, salient jaw was thrust forward. Black eyes blazed from a set, snarling face.

So, after all, the man was trafficking with the Federal governor all the time just as he was with the Constitutionalists. Yeager had once or twice suspected as much.

"To the camp of Governor Farrugia," gasped Cabenza. "But--what for, señor?"

"To carry him a letter. Never mind what for. You will get your pay. Is it not enough?"

"And--Pasquale?"

"Need never know. You can slip away this afternoon and be back by to-morrow night."

Cabenza shook his head regretfully. "No. I am one of the horse wranglers. My boss would miss me if I was not here. I cannot go."

The other man swore. At the same time he recognized the argument as effective. He must find a messenger who could absent himself without stirring up questions.

"Then keep your mouth clamped," ordered Harrison. "I may be able to use you here. Anyhow, I want you to be ready to help if I need you."

He slipped a dollar into the brown palm of the peon and left him.

Steve looked after him with narrowed eyes. "Mr. Harrison is liable to bump into trouble if he don't look out. He's gone crazy with the heat, looks like. First thing, he'll pick on the wrong greaser and Mr. Messenger will take the letter to Pasquale instead of Farrugia. That's about what'll happen."

Something else happened first, however, that distracted the attention of Mr. Yeager, alias Cabenza, from this regrettable possibility. A man rode into camp, followed by a Mexican leading a pack-horse. The first rider was straight, tall, and wide-shouldered; also he was deep-chested and lean-loined, forty-five or thereabout, and had "Texan" written all over his weather-beaten face and costume. At sight of him Steve gave a silent whoop of joy. A white man had come to Noche Buena, a Texan (he was ready to swear), and he wore his big serviceable six-guns low. Also, he carried on his face and in his bearing the look of reckless competence that comes only from death faced in the open fearlessly and often.

Inside of five minutes Cabenza had gathered information as follows: Adam Holcomb was a soldier of fortune who had fought all over South America and Mexico. During the Spanish War he had been a Rough Rider in Cuba and later had been a volunteer officer in the Philippines. The army routine had no attraction for him. What he liked was actual fighting. So the outbreak of the Revolution had drawn him across the border, where he had done much to lick the Constitutionalist troops into shape. Now he had come to Noche Buena to teach the artillery of the Legion how to shoot straight, after which they would all march south and take the great city with the golden gates. Personally this Gringo was a devil, of course, but Pasquale was a prince of devils whose business it was to keep all lesser ones in order. So, in the Spanish equivalent of our American slang, they should worry. Thus a comrade explained the Texan and his presence to Pedro.

Cabenza contrived to be in the way when someone was wanted to fill the water-jug of Holcomb. Ochampa, who for the moment had charge of the artillery officer, swooped down upon the peon and put him temporarily at the service of his guest to fetch and carry at his orders. So Pedro unpacked the belongings of the American officer and prepared what had to serve as the substitute for a bath. He was so adept at this that the captain privately decided to requisition him for his servant.

Having finished this and laid out towels, Cabenza brushed the boots of the captain outside while that gentleman splashed within the cabin. He chose the time while he was arranging the shaving-outfit on the table to convey a piece of information to Holcomb.

"What's that? An American woman--held captive at his house by Pasquale," repeated the soldier of fortune, astonished.

"A girl, not a woman. About eighteen, maybe," supplemented Cabenza, in Mexican, of course.

"A woman from the street, I reckon. And if you look into it you'll find she's here of her own free will."

Steve was now stropping a razor. His back was toward the officer, but without turning he could see him by looking in the glass.

"You've got the wrong steer, captain. She's as straight a girl as ever lived," answered Yeager in perfectly good English.

Holcomb sat up straight. "Turn round, my man," he ordered crisply.

The range-rider did as he was told. The light, blue-gray eyes of the officer bored into his.

"You're no Mexican," charged the Texan.

"No. Arizona is where I hang up my hat."

"What are you, then? A spy?"

"I reckon, maybeso." Steve admitted the thrust lightly. "Got time to hear all about it, captain?"

"Go ahead."

The range-rider told it, the whole story, so far as it could be related by him. Such details as his modesty omitted Holcomb's imagination was easily able to supply.

The Texan paced up and down the room with the long, light, military stride.

"And you say Pasquale has been with her all day--that he ate lunch with her and is riding with her now?"

"Yes. Just watch his eyes when he looks at her if you're in doubt about the old villain. There's a tiger look in them, and something else that's worse." Yeager chanced to glance out of the window. "Here they come now back from their ride. Why not meet them as they alight?"

The captain reached for his hat and led the way down the street. Cabenza followed him, a step or two in the rear. They reached headquarters just as Pasquale lifted Ruth from the saddle. He held her for a moment in his strong arms and grinned down at her frightened, fascinated eyes.

"Adios, chatita!" he murmured, his little eyes dancing with triumph.

She fled from him into the house, terror giving speed to her limbs.

Upon Holcomb the dictator turned eyes that had grown cold and harsh again.

"Welcome, captain, welcome, to the Northern Legion," he said brusquely, offering a gauntleted hand.

They went into the house together, Pasquale's arm across the shoulder of the Texan.

"Dios, I'm glad to see you, captain," the insurgent chief ran on quickly. "This riff-raff of mine can't hit a hillside. Hammer the artillery into shape and I'll say gracias."

"Yes. I see you have a countrywoman of mine visiting you," the American said quietly.

"From Arizona." The Mexican laughed harshly. "We should get together more, your country and mine. We should bind the States and the Republic together by closer ties. A man without a wife is but a half man. Captain, I shall marry."

It was common knowledge of the camp that in his outlaw days Pasquale had a wife and family. The sons were grown up now. The rumor ran that the wife had found a more congenial mate and was separated from Gabriel by common agreement. Holcomb made no reference to this free-and-easy arrangement.

"Congratulations, general. Is the lady some high-born señorita?"

"The lady you have just seen is my choice--the young woman from Arizona," answered Pasquale, flashing from under his heavy grizzled brows a sharp, questioning look at the Texan.

"Indeed! I shall be happy to meet the lady and wish her joy," replied Holcomb lightly.

"You shall, captain. She's a little reluctant yet, but Gabriel has a way of overcoming that. I shall be married on Saturday."

"Ah!"

The face of the Texan had as much expression as a piece of flint. Pasquale, watching him warily, wondered what he was thinking behind those hard, steel-gray eyes.

CHAPTER XX

NEAR THE END OF HIS TRAIL

Harrison strode up and down the room furiously. "Who in Mexico is this Pasquale?" he demanded, and then answered his own question: "Scum of the earth, a peon whipped for stealing whiskey, a hill robber and murderer. In my country they'd take the scoundrel and hang him by the neck."

"True, amigo,--all true," assented Culvera suavely, examining his cigarette as he spoke. "But it is well to remember that walls have ears, and therefore to whisper--when one speaks of Gabriel."

"I'm not afraid of him," boasted the American, but his voice fell.

"I am," differed Culvera frankly. "Ramon is fond of Ramon, so he chooses a safe time to pay his debts--and he does not advertise in advance that he is going to settle."

"Bah! You sit still and do nothing. But I--By God! I'll not stand it. He has given it out he will be married Saturday. We'll see about that. Maybe he'll be buried that day instead."

The dark eyes of the Mexican swept him with a sidelong glance. If he could do it without incurring responsibility himself, he was very willing to spur on the fierce passion of this man.

"Be careful, señor. Pasquale is dangerous."

"You know he is dangerous--to Ramon Culvera. Why don't you strike and be done with it?"

"The time is not ripe. Some day--perhaps--" He let a shrug of his shoulders finish the sentence for him.

"It's always mañana with you Mexicans," sneered Harrison with a savage lift of the lip. "You want to play it safe all the time. Why don't you take a chance?"

"I play my own cards, señor," returned Ramon equably.

"You play 'em darned close to your stomach. Me, I go out on a limb oncet in a while."

"Be sure you don't stay out there--at the end of a rope," smiled the Mexican.

"They haven't grown the hemp yet that will hang Chad Harrison." The prizefighter leaned toward him, eyes shining. "If I pull it off and make my getaway--what then? Will you send the girl to me, wherever I am?"

"You mean, if you--"

"--Give Pasquale what's been coming to him for a long time."

The eyes of Culvera were slits of light. His face was a brown mask that covered an alert and wary attention.

"I didn't hear what you said, amigo. It is better that I shouldn't. But if I had charge of the army instead of General Pasquale my policy would be different. I would return this Arizona girl to her home."

"To her home!" broke in Harrison harshly.

"To her husband," amended the Mexican significantly, adding after an instant--"who is a good friend of mine."

"You'll stand pat on that, will you?"

"It would be my purpose to reward my friends--those who have helped the cause--if by any chance command of the Legion should fall to me."

Harrison glared at him suspiciously. "You're so smooth I don't know whether I can believe you or not. You'd sell your own father out for the right price."

"I pay my debts, señor--both kinds," suggested the Mexican, unmoved at this outburst.

"See that you do."

"Be sure I shall, amigo," returned Culvera, looking straight at him from narrowed eyes that told nothing.

The prizefighter took another turn up and down the room. He was anxious and harassed as well as driven hard by hatred and jealousy.

"The wolf is having me watched. His orders are that I'm not to be allowed to leave camp. I don't get any chance to see him alone. If you ask me, I think he's fixing to have me knifed in the dark," Harrison burst out.

"Shouldn't wonder," agreed the young officer with a pleasant smile. He lived in an atmosphere where such things were not uncommon, and on occasion could take a hand himself.

"Fat lot you care," complained the photoplay actor sullenly. "You wouldn't lift a hand to save your pardner."

Culvera patted him on the shoulder cheerfully. "What can I do? Do I not live under the shadow myself? Can I tell when the knife will fall on me? He is without bowels of mercy, this son of a thief. But this I know: if you are watched, you must not stay here. Gabriel will be suspicious lest we are plotting something against him. Good luck, amigo."

The heavyweight took away with him a heavy heart. He had reached the stage where his hand was against that of every man. Culvera he did not trust at all out of his sight beyond the point where the interests of the young Mexican were parallel to his. In the whole camp he had no friend, not even the girl for whom he fought. As for Pasquale, Harrison had told the truth. He believed the general had doomed him. Unless he struck first, he was a lost man. Why had he been fool enough to boast to the old scoundrel what he would do? His temper had robbed him of the chance to kill and then escape.

He passed down the street toward the river. A dozen boys and young men sat in the shadow of the adobe wall that fronted the road opposite one of the corrals. It chanced that Harrison dropped his handkerchief at this point and stooped to pick it up.

Thirty minutes later a barefooted youth came down to the river carrying an olla for water. Harrison lay sleeping under a cottonwood that edged the trail. One arm was outstretched so that the closed fist lay almost across the path.

The soldier boy whistled gayly as he walked. Oddly enough, just as he reached the sleeping Gringo, the outflung arm lifted abruptly from the ground for an inch or two. A little package shot four feet up into the air and was caught deftly by the barefoot trooper as it descended.

The lips of Harrison barely moved. "Ride to-night, Enrique. Colonel Farrugia will also reward you well."

"Si, señor," nodded Enrique, and went on his way.

The face of the boy was toward the camp on the return journey. The American was still fast asleep. The lad went whistling past him without any sign of recognition.

Several times during the next hour Harrison took a long pull from a bottle he carried in his coat pocket. After a time he rose and walked heavily down the main street of the village until he came to the house where Captain Holcomb had been put up.

The Texan was sitting on his porch smoking a pipe. Behind him, a few feet away, Cabenza was cleaning a rifle for his new master.

"I wanta talk to you about something, Captain Holcomb," announced the film actor.

The soldier looked at him steadily. "Go to it," he ordered curtly.

"This is private business."

Holcomb did not turn his head or raise his voice. "Pedro, vamos."

The feet of Cabenza could be heard hitting the dust as he vanished around the corner of the house.

Without beating around the bush Harrison came to his subject. He jerked a thumb over his right shoulder.

"It's that girl up at the house there I want to talk about."

"What about her?"

"He's got no business keeping her there. She's a straight girl."

"Is she?"

"Yes, sir. She is."

"Then why did you bring her here?" Holcomb's question was like the thrust of a sword.

"Because I was a fool."

"Better give things their right names. You were a damned villain."

A dull flush rose to the cheeks of the prizefighter. "All right. Let it go at that. I guess you're right. What I want to know now is whether you're going to stand for Pasquale's play. He's got one wife already--half a dozen, far as I know. You going to let him put this wedding farce over without a kick?"

"Can I stop it?"

"You can register a roar, can't you?"

"Would it do any good? Did yours?"

"You're different. He needs you to drill this ragged bunch of hoboes he calls an army. Pasquale has a lot of respect for you. He talked a lot about you before you came."

"If you want to know, I've already spoken to him about it."

"What did he say?"

"Gave me to understand that if I'd attend to my business he'd mind his. And I'm going to do it," concluded Holcomb with sharp decision.

"You mean you're going to lie down like a yellow dog and quit, that you'll let this wolf take that lamb and ruin her life! Is that what you mean?"

Holcomb sat forward in his chair, so that his strong, lean, sunburnt face was as close to the other man as possible. "You talk both like a coward and a fool. You brought the girl here against her will. If Pasquale had been willing to let you force her into a marriage with you, I wouldn't have heard a squeal out of you. But he butted in. He took her from you. Now you come hollering to me, you quitter. Instead of fighting it out to a finish, you run to me. Talk about yellow curs. Faugh!"

"What can I do?" exploded Harrison in a rage. "He has four men watching her room at night now. Every time I move his cursed spies follow me. There are two of them over there now. Pasquale won't even let me see him. He's aimin' to have me killed, I believe."

"Serve you right," the soldier of fortune flung at him as he rose from his chair. "Killing is none too good for your kind. Pity some one didn't stamp you out before you brought that little girl down here to this sink of perdition."

Harrison swallowed down his anger. "That's all right. I'll stand for it. If I didn't believe it myself, you'd have a heluvatime getting away with such talk. But it goes just as you lay it down. I'm a skunk and all the rest of it. Now, listen! I ain't such a four-flusher as to lay down my hand before I've played it out. See! I'm not through with Gabriel Pasquale. Watch my smoke. Him and me hasn't come to a settlement yet."

"Sounds to me like whiskey talk," answered the Texan scornfully. "Men who do the kind of things you have done don't have the guts to play out a losing game."

"Some do, some don't. By your reputation you're game. All right. Keep your eyes open, captain."

Snarling, the man turned away and walked down the street. Holcomb watched him go. There was something purposeful in the way the heavyweight moved. Perhaps, after all, he would make a fighting finish of it. The captain fervently hoped he would drag old Pasquale down with him before they wiped him off the map. But he knew the betting odds were all the other way.

CHAPTER XXI

A STAGE PREPARED FOR TRAGEDY

Not knowing when his opportunity might come, Harrison kept his horse saddled most of the time. He knew that extra mounted patrols were kept at the ends of the streets and at other points on the mesa surrounding the town, and that he would have to take a chance of being able to run the gauntlet in safety. If luck favored him, he might win past these. For one thing the Mexicans were very poor shots, a little the worst he had ever seen. It might be, too, that he would have darkness in his favor, though he could not count on this.

By Enrique he had sent to Governor Farrugia a map of the camp, giving detailed information as to the number and position of the troops and showing from what direction the camp could best be attacked. In his letter he had urged immediate action, on the ground that a part of the men were absent with Major Ochampa on a foraging expedition. If Farrugia rose to the occasion, he hoped in the confusion of the assault to escape with Ruth.

Meanwhile he waited, and the hours slipped away. It was now Friday noon, and the wedding was to be Saturday morning.

Four denim-clad troopers and a sergeant marched raggedly down the street and stopped in front of Harrison's adobe house.

"The general wishes to see the señor," explained the sergeant.

The American knew the crucial hour had come. This was the first move of Pasquale in the programme to destroy him. He made no protest, but stepped forward at once, leading his horse by the bridle. The sergeant was a little dubious about the horse, but his orders did not cover the point and he made no objection.

Pasquale was standing in front of his house on the porch, bow legs wide apart and hands crossed behind his back. Harrison stopped directly in front of him. The soldiers moved back a dozen yards.

"Well," demanded the heavyweight.

"I sent for you to explain something to me, sir," said the Mexican general harshly.

"What is it?"

"This letter and map."

Pasquale stepped forward, handed two papers to Harrison, and quickly stepped back till his back was against the wall of the house. Something in his manner stirred the banked suspicions of the American. Already his nerves were keyed to unusual tension, for he knew the moment of crux was hurrying toward him. Why had the troopers fallen back so far? Why was Pasquale so anxious to put a wide space between himself and his prisoner?

The eyes of the film actor, clouded with doubt of what was about to take place, fell to the papers in his hand. He was looking at the letter and the map he had sent to Governor Farrugia.

Instantly his mind was made up. But as the blue barrel of his revolver flashed into sight there came the simultaneous roar of a volley. The force of it seemed to lift Harrison from his feet. Before his sagging knees had touched the dust the man was dead.

Pasquale drew a forty-five and fired three times into the lax and huddled body. He nodded to the men in the smoke-filled windows upstairs.

"Come down and bury this Gringo dog's body," he ordered.

They trooped down noisily. Pasquale kicked the body carelessly with his toe. "He was a traitor to the cause. The proof is in that paper. Hand it to me, Juan."

The general read the letter aloud. "He would have betrayed us all but for the patriotism of a messenger who would not be bribed. The man deserved death. Not so?"

They shouted approval and added, "Viva Pasquale!" in an enthusiastic roar. Ramon Culvera, who had just arrived on the scene, led the cheering with much vigor.

From every house men, boys, and women poured. The streets filled with noisy patriots. Guns popped here and there to ventilate the energy of their owners. Troopers galloped up and down the road in clouds of dust shooting into the air as they rode. Boys who would have run their legs off to obey a whim of Harrison spat contemptuously upon the face of the "Gringo cabrone."

Drawn by the hubbub, Captain Holcomb hurried from his house. He looked down at the lifeless body four soldiers were carrying away and turned to Pasquale for an explanation.

The general handed him the papers that proved Harrison's guilt. "I have executed a traitor, captain. The dog would have sold us out to Farrugia. Is his punishment not just?"

Holcomb looked the papers over and handed them back to his chief. "He got what was coming to him," he answered quietly.

"I have witnesses to show that he was drawing his revolver to assassinate me at the very moment he was shot. My men were just in time."

"It was fortunate for you your men happened to be so handy," replied the American officer with just a suggestion of dryness.

For Holcomb knew, just as Yeager did, that the scene had been set by Pasquale for the killing. His men had been stationed in the windows above, unknown to the victim. The heavyweight had been tempted to reach for his weapon by the certainty that he had come to the end of the passage. Doing so, he had given the signal for his own death. Had he failed to do this, the Mexican general would have sprung the trap himself in another minute. Fortunately this had not been necessary. Pasquale was in a position to prove to the United States Government, in case it became inquisitive, that when the man had been confronted with his guilt he had tried to kill him and had been shot down red-handed.

Half an hour later Holcomb came into his house and found Steve cleaning a pair of revolvers. The captain tossed his hat on the bed and sat down.

"Up to us, looks like," he commented.

Yeager nodded silently.

"Harrison hadn't a look-in. The old scoundrel had the cards stacked," continued the officer.

"Yep. Chad sat in against a cold deck. He made a big mistake when he let the old man take the play."

"Everything fixed for to-night?"

"Far as it can be. We've just got to take a big chance and trust to luck being with us," answered Steve.

"Guess you'll have to make your own luck. I spoke to Pasquale about a game here to-night. He grabbed at the bait. Said he would bring Culvera and Ochampa. I'll make a long session of it so as to give you all the time you need."

"Better have a boy here to serve the liquor and cigars. If you should hear shooting, and Gabriel gets anxious about it, you can send the boy to find out what it's about. That will give us a few minutes more to get away."

"Sure your dope is strong enough?"

"The man who fixed it ought to know. He's a registered druggist at Phoenix," replied the range-rider.

Yeager had never before sat in the anxious seat as nervously as he did during the next few hours. His nature was not of the kind to borrow trouble. Usually he could accept responsibility without letting it worry him. But to-night he was playing for big stakes--his own life certainly was in the hazard, probably those of Farrar and Threewit, possibly that of the Texan. And what weighed with him more than all these was the fate of the young girl in the back room upstairs waiting with a leaden heart for this dreadful thing that was to befall her. It was in the game that a man must take his fighting chance. But a girl--and above all girls Ruth--the thought of it stabbed his heart like a knife.

CHAPTER XXII

A CONSPIRACY

In settling accounts with Harrison the Mexican general had prepared the scene, had arranged every detail of it carefully so as to eliminate any possible chance the heavyweight might otherwise have. Yeager had no intention of letting Pasquale fix the conditions against him as he had against the prizefighter.

"Old Gabriel was holding four aces and Chad only a busted flush. Pasquale knew it all the time. Harrison must 'a' guessed it too. But if he did, I don't see why he waited for the old man to spring his trap," said Steve.

"It's a matter of temperament, I reckon. Some fellows are game enough when you put 'em up against trouble good and hard, but they hang back and wait for it to come to 'em. I expect Harrison didn't know how to play his hand. Looked that way to me when he talked with me. Likely he figured he had better wait and see what happened," surmised the captain.

"He waited too long."

"Till it was too late to call for a new deal. He had to play those dealt him."

"Different here. We'll do the dealing ourselves, captain. Pasquale has been through the deck and taken out all the big picture cards, but I expect I can rustle up a six-full that will come handy." Yeager smiled as he spoke at the .45 he was bestowing about his person.

Together they set the table for poker, putting on it two new decks, one blue and one red, and a box of chips that had seen service in many a midnight fray. On a side table were cigars, cigarettes, and liquor in plenty. Holcomb intended to see that his guests were properly entertained while Steve played the bigger and more dangerous game outside.

The range-rider knew that the odds were against him, that any one of fifty trifling accidents might bring to failure the plan he had made. All he could do was to make his preparations as skillfully as he could and then try to carry them out coolly and with determination.

The Mexican boy who had been hired to act as an attendant on the card-players arrived and Yeager took his leave. The captain followed him to the porch.

"Good luck, Steve," he said quietly.

"Same to you, captain. We'll talk this all over across the line in God's country some time."

"Sure," nodded Holcomb. "Well, so-long."

The younger man answered the nod casually and turned away down the street. Neither of them thought of shaking hands. Whatever was to happen was all in the day's work. Both of them belonged to that type of Westerner which sees a thing through without any dramatics. That this happened to be a particularly critical thing had no effect on their manner.

Holcomb lit a cigar and sat down on the porch to wait for his guests. They came presently. First were Pasquale and Ochampa, rough and ready as to clothes, unshaven, betraying continually the class from which they had risen. Culvera dropped in after a few minutes. He had discarded his uniform and was in the picturesque regalia of the young Mexican cavalier. From jingling silver spurs to the costly gold-laced sombrero he was every inch the dandy. His manners were the pink of urbanity. Nothing was lacking in particular to the affectionate deference he showed his chief. It suggested somehow the love of a son and the admiration of a devoted admirer.

The general was riding a wave of exhilaration. He had trodden down another of his enemies and was about to take to himself the spoils of the battle. Still in his vigorous prime, he was assured the stars were beckoning him to take the place in Mexico City that neither Madero nor Huerta had been strong enough to hold. He promised himself to settle down to moderation, to have done with the wild drinking-bouts that still occasionally interfered with his efficiency. Meanwhile, to-night he was again saying farewell to his bachelor days. He drank liberally but not excessively.

Ochampa proposed the health and happiness of the bride. It was drunk with enthusiasm. The general gave them the United States, the sister republic to the north, and spoke affectingly of his desire to promote a better feeling between the countries by this marriage. The host had not expected his poker party to develop so much oratory, but he rose briefly to the occasion. The subject of his remarks was, "A United Mexico."

But it was Culvera who capped the climax. He rose, wineglass in hand, and waited impressively for silence. For five minutes his tongue flowed on in praises of the Liberator of the people. He heaped superlatives on extravagant approval after the fashion of our political orators.

"Need I put a name to this patriot and hero who has won the unbounded love and loyalty of my youth?" he asked rotundly. "Need I name the Bolivar, the Washington of Mexico, the next president of this great republic? If so, I but repeat the name that is on the lips of all the thousands of our people to whom he is as a father--Gabriel Pasquale."

Holcomb smiled behind the hand that stroked his mustache. There was nobody present who did not know pretty accurately how far Ramon's attachment to his chief went. Gabriel himself, who embraced him affectionately in thanks, had not the least doubt. But if he had no illusions in the matter, he did not intend on that account to warn his lieutenant prematurely that he was next on the list to Harrison.

Poker presently absorbed their attention. Holcomb was the genial host, watchful of their wants and solicitous that they should be supplied. No sign of anxiety betrayed that he was keyed up to a high nervous tension. He told stories, laughed at those of the others, high spaded for drinks (though as a matter of fact he was as host furnishing the liquor), made post-mortem examinations of the deck, and otherwise showed a proper interest. It was quite necessary that when Pasquale looked back over the evening with later developments in mind he should not be able to find any intimations that his host was accessory to the plan to escape.

Hour after hour slipped away. The captain began to let himself hope that the forlorn hope of Yeager had brought safety to his friends. Surely by this time he must either have won or lost his throw for liberty.

A single shot broke the stillness of the night.

Pasquale, dealing, stopped with a card in his hand.

"Funny thing how the guns of sentries are always going off accidentally," remarked Holcomb casually. "Boy, look to the glasses of these gentlemen."

The deal was finished. Culvera opened the pot. The captain stayed. Ochampa hesitated.

One shot, a second, and then a fusillade of them shattered the quiet.

Pasquale flung down his cards and rose hurriedly, overturning his chair. "Mil diablos! What's to pay?" he cried.

The others followed him out of the room and house. He ran down the street as fast as a boy. Already men were emerging from houses half dressed. The sound of shots came from back of the general's headquarters. Pasquale doubled around the house and vaulted a fence. He butted into an excited group and flung men to right and left.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

A soldier pointed to the open window of the room that had been occupied by Ruth Seymour. "She's gone, Your Excellency."

"Gone! Gone where?" roared Gabriel.

"Heaven knows. Her friends have rescued her."

Pasquale broke into a storm of curses.

CHAPTER XXIII

TRAPPED

After leaving Holcomb, Yeager walked down to the river-bed, followed the bank for a couple of hundred yards, and crept forward on all fours through the alfalfa pasture to the barb-wire fence that paralleled the road at some distance. He crawled beneath the lowest wire and moved through the mesquite to a point from which he could see the building where Farrar and Threewit were held prisoners. Two guards with rifles across their shoulders paced up and down outside.

Here Steve lay motionless for about half an hour. He believed that before the poker game began some one of the party would drop around to see that all was quiet and regular in the camp. His guess was a good one. Pasquale himself, arm in arm with Ochampa, made the rounds and stopped for a moment to speak to the sentries in front of the prison. The man crouched in the bear grass could tell that Gabriel was in high good-humor. He jested with the men and clapped them on the shoulder jovially. He laughed as heartily at his own witticisms as they did.

"There shall be mescal to-morrow for the whole army to drink the health of the Liberator and his bride. See to it, Ochampa," he ordered as they walked away.

"Viva Pasquale the Liberator," cried the sentries in a fine fervor of enthusiasm.

Presently the man in hiding stole quietly to the road and advanced down it at a leisurely pace.

"Promising them mescal, eh?" he murmured. "Well, I'll bet a bird in the hand is worth twenty or most sixteen in the bush." He patted affectionately a bottle that lay snug in his pocket.

"Who goes?" demanded one of the prison guards as he approached.

"Pedro Cabenza."

Steve chatted with them for a few moments before he produced his bird in the hand. They told him of what Pasquale had promised. Slyly he looked around to see that they were alone and drew from his pocket the bottle.

"Ho, compañero! Behold what I have. Gringo whiskey--better far than mescal," he cried softly as he handed the treasure to one of the guards.

The man glanced around hurriedly, even as had Cabenza, then tilted the mouth of the bottle over his lips and let a long stiff drink gurgle down his throat. He patted his fat paunch contentedly and handed the bottle to his companion. The second guard also drank deeply.

Cabenza put an arm across the shoulders of each and drew their heads close while he whispered confidential scandal about Pasquale and Ramon Culvera. The two men listened greedily, eager for more. It happened that there was no truth in the salacious tidbits which Pedro retailed, but he invented glibly and that did just as well.

The heads of his listeners began to nod. They murmured drowsy interjections and leaned more heavily upon his arms. Ineffectually they tried to shake off the lassitude that was creeping over their senses.

"Keep watch, brother, while I take just forty winks," begged one, and fairly thrust his rifle into the hand of Yeager.

The soldier staggered to the adobe wall and slumped down beside the door. His eyes closed, fluttered open again, shut a second time. They did not open. He was fast asleep.

The second guard sat down beside him and smiled up sleepily at the standing man. "Manuel sleeps on duty. He is--a fool. I do--not--sleep. No, I--I--"

His head drooped on his chest. Steve took the rifle that fell from his relaxed hand.

Instantly the American was tapping gently on the door. "Threewit--Farrar!" he called softly. "This is Steve."

There was the sound of quick footsteps. A voice within answered in a whisper.

"Yes, Steve. This is Frank."

From his pocket the range-rider took a bunch of skeleton keys. It was no trouble to find one that would unlock the door, but in addition to this fastening there was a padlock. With a hatchet which he had brought Yeager pried the staple out. In another moment the door was open.

"Help me drag these fellows inside," ordered the cowpuncher, taking command promptly. "Frank, tear one of those blankets into strips. We've got to tie their hands and feet and gag them. Shuck your coat, Threewit. You've got to wear this fellow's blouse and sombrero. You, too, Frank. It's Manuel's castaways for you. Move lively, boys. This is surely going to be our busy evening."

"What's the programme?" asked Farrar, doing what he was told to do.

Steve explained briefly. "Old Pasquale has got Ruth Seymour here at his house. He intends to marry her to-morrow. I don't mean he shall. A good friend of mine is entertaining the old scoundrel to-night and some of the other high moguls in camp. My notion is to slip into old Gabriel's headquarters and rescue Ruth."

"Has Ruth been here ever since she came down with Harrison that time he lied to her about you being wounded?" asked Threewit. "We were told you butted in and took her home."

"I did. Harrison went to Los Robles later and brought her by force. He was looking for me and bumped into her by chance. His idea was to marry her as soon as they reached camp. But Pasquale balked. He took a fancy to Ruth himself."

While Yeager talked his fingers were busy every moment. From long usage he was expert at roping and tying. Many a time he had thrown the diamond hitch while packing on mountain trails. His skill served him well now. He trussed the guards as if they had been packs for the saddle, binding them hand and feet so that they could not move.

"We heard that an American had been killed in camp to-day. We've been worried for fear it might have been you, Steve," said the camera man.

"It was Harrison. He tried to sell Pasquale out to Farrugia and the old fox got his letter. Pasquale accused him of his treachery and had him assassinated on the spot. Better pull that sombrero lower over your face, Threewit. And keep your hands out of the light as much as you can. They're too white for this section of the country."

"What if some one talks to me? I can't put over their lingo."

"Just grunt. I'll do what talking is necessary. All right. We'll make tracks, boys."

They stepped outside. Yeager relocked the door and drove the staple back into the wood with the end of his rifle by steady pressure and not by blows.

Steve led them through the bear grass into the pasture and across it to the river-bank. Here, under the heavy shadows of the overhanging cottonwoods, he outlined his plans.

Threewit spoke aloud his fears. "But, good Lord! what chance have we got? It's a cinch we can't put four more guards out of business without being seen. And if we are caught--" His voice failed him.

The cowpuncher looked at him, and then at Farrar. The camera man was pale, but his eyes met those of his friend steadily. Steve judged he would do to tie to, that his nerve would pull him through. But the director was plainly shaken with fears. He was not a coward, but the privations and anxieties of the past ten days had got on his nerves. His lips twitched and his fat hand trembled. His life had fallen in too soft and easy places for this sort of thing.

The cowboy reassured him gently, even as he rearranged his plans on the spot. "We're going to pull it off, but as you say there is a chance we won't make it. I'm going to leave you in the corral with the horses. If Frank and I should slip up and get caught you'll still have a chance to get away."

"I'm going through with it just the same as you boys," insisted the director shakily.

"You're going to do as I say, Threewit. I'm elected boss of this rodeo. One of us has got to stay by the horses to make sure they're ready when we need 'em. That's going to be you. You're to sit right steady on the job till we come. If you hear shooting,--and if we don't show up in a reasonable time after that,--light out and save your hide. Keep that star--see, the bright one close down to the horizon--keep it right in front of you all night. By daybreak you ought to be across the line."

"I'm not going to ride away and leave you boys and Ruth here. What do you take me for?" demanded Threewit huskily.

Steve put a hand on the shoulder of the little man. "You're all right, Billie," he said, with the affectionate smile that men as well as women loved. "We all know you'll do to take along any time when we need a man that's on the level. You wait there at the corral. If we show up, good. If we don't--well, we'll be beyond help. There'll be nothing left for you to do but burn the wind."

Frank swallowed hard. "What Steve says goes with me, Billie."

"Good." Yeager turned briskly to the business in hand. "We might as well be on our way, boys. There's no hurry, because I want Pasquale and Culvera to get settled at their game. But I reckon we'll drift along easy like."

They waded the river, which at its deepest did not reach to their calves, and scrambled up the opposite bank to a bench of shale. Yeager, after a short search, found hidden under the foliage of a prickly pear the rope he had left there some hours earlier. They were in a large fenced pasture where were kept the horses of the officers. At one end could be seen dimly the outline of a little corral.

"You boys head across that way and wait for me. The remuda is at the other end of the pasture under the care of a boy," explained the cowpuncher.

"Hadn't I better go along with you in case of trouble?" asked Farrar.

"There isn't going to be any trouble. I'm getting the horses for Pasquale. See?"

After the others had left him, Steve lit a cigarette and sauntered to the far end of the field. Presently he gave a call that brought an answer. The horses were grazing in a loose herd that covered perhaps a third of an acre. From behind them emerged a youth on horseback.

"I want four horses in a hurry," announced the range-rider.

"What for?"

"Never mind what for, compadre. I didn't ask old Gabriel what for when he sent me," grumbled the messenger.

"Why didn't you say for Pasquale?" The young man was preparing his rope swiftly and efficiently. "Did the general say what horses?"

"He named the roan with the white stockings and the white-nosed buckskin."

"Then he's going to travel fast and far. Why, in the devil's name, since he is going to be married in the morning?"

"Why does the general always do what isn't expected? The saints know. I don't," growled Steve.

Both of them were expert ropers. In five minutes the American was swallowed in the darkness. He was astride the bare back of the buckskin and was leading the other ponies. As soon as he knew he was safely out of sight and hearing, he deflected toward the corral.

His friends were waiting for him anxiously. Steve dropped lightly to the ground.

"Hold the horses a minute, Frank," he said.

Striding to a feed-stall filled with alfalfa, he tossed the hay aside and dragged to the light a saddle. Presently he uncovered a second, a third, and a fourth.

"Brought them here last night--stole them from the storehouse," he explained casually.

"You didn't overlook any bets--thought of everything, even to saddle-blankets and water-bags already full," contributed Farrar, digging up these supplies from the alfalfa.

Steve cinched the saddles himself, though Farrar was a fair horseman. If it came to a pinch the turning of a saddle might spoil everything, and so far as he could the range-rider was forestalling any accidents that might be due to carelessness.

"How long am I to wait for you?" asked Threewit.

"We'd ought to be back inside of an hour and a half--if luck's with us. But we may be delayed by some one hanging around. Give us two hours or even two and a half--unless hell begins to pop." Steve looked at his watch in the moonlight. "Say till twelve o'clock. Of course, when you go, you'll leave the other horses here on the chance that we come later. You'd better ride that round-bellied bay."

"Am I to follow the star right up the hill?"

"No. Better take the draw. The sentinels will be on the hill. Likely they'll see you and shoot at you. But don't stop, even if they're close. Keep a-going. They can't hit a barn door."

"Neither can I," lamented the director.

"Then you'll all be safe." Yeager turned to Farrar. "Come on, Frank."

The two crossed the pasture to the river and waded through the shallow stream to the other side. They remained in the shadows of the bank, following the bend of the river as it circled the village. Through the cottonwoods they crept toward the rear of the two-story house where Pasquale lived and Ruth was held prisoner.

From a sandy spot at the foot of a cotton wood tree Yeager dug a rope ladder.

"Been making it while I was night-herding the remuda," he told Farrar in answer to a surprised question.

"Beats me you didn't make an auto for us to get away in," answered his admiring friend with a grin.

"Wait here," whispered Steve. "I'm going forward to look the ground over. Keep your eyes open in case I give a signal."

The range-rider snaked his way toward the house, moving so slowly and noiselessly that Farrar lost sight of him entirely and began to wonder where he had gone. It must have been nearly twenty minutes later that he caught a glimpse of him without his rifle. Yeager was engaged in confidential talk with a guard in uniform. Frank saw the bottle pass from his friend to the Mexican, who took a pull at it. A second guard joined the two presently. He also took a drink.

The three disappeared together into the shadowy darkness of the house wall. Farrar was wondering what had happened when a single figure emerged into the moonlight and made a signal for him to come forward.

Yeager did not wait for him, but climbed up the post of the back porch as he had done once before. The camera man was on hand by the time Steve reached the roof. He looked up silently while his friend reached across and rapped on the window of a lighted room. The sash was raised very gently.

Ruth leaned out. "Is it you, Steve?" Her voice was tremulous and tearful. It was a safe guess she had been sobbing her misery into a pillow.

"Yes."

He caught hold of the edge of the window and swung across, working himself up and in by sheer power of muscle. Rapidly he fastened the end of the rope ladder to the head of the bed, which he first half lifted and half dragged to the window. The rest of the ladder he threw out.

"Ready, Ruth?" he asked, turning to her.

She nodded. He was offering his arm to help her through the window when a frightened call came from below.

"Steve!"

He looked down. A Mexican trooper, one of those set to guard the front of the house, was approaching. A glance was enough to show that he knew something to be wrong. His startled eyes passed from Farrar to the rope ladder. They followed it from the ground to the window. He stopped, almost under the window. The camera man, taken aback, did not know what to do. Was he to run the risk of a shot? Even while he hesitated the man in uniform reached for a revolver.

Yeager knew what to do, and he did it promptly. Sweeping Ruth back from the window, he clambered through himself and poised his body for the leap. The sentry looked up again, saw what was about to happen, and let out a startled scream at the same instant that he flung up an arm and fired. Steve felt a sharp sting in his leg as he descended through the air. He landed astride on the shoulders of the Mexican. The man went to earth, hammered down so hard that the breath was driven from his body.

The arm of the range-rider rose and fell once. In his hand was the blue barrel of a revolver. The corrugated butt of the .45 had crashed into the thick matted hair of the Mexican. But it had done its work. Yeager rose quickly. The soldier lay still.

Already Ruth was coming down the swaying ladder. She dropped the last few rounds with a rush, plump into the arms of Steve.

"Let us hurry--hurry," she cried.

It was time to be gone, if not too late. Already men were converging upon them from different sides. Others were bawling orders for soldiers to turn out.

Steve went down almost as quickly as he had risen. His leg had given way unexpectedly.

Before he reached his feet again his revolver was out and doing business.

"Fire at their legs, Frank. All we want to do is to stop them. Ruth, you run ahead, straight for the trees. We'll be with you in a minute," Yeager gave orders quietly.

The girl flashed one look at him, found assurance in his strong, lean face, and obeyed without a word.

Farrar's rifle was already scattering bullets rather wildly into the night. Lead spattered against the adobe wall behind them. But the attackers were checked. Their fire was of a desultory character. There was such a thing as being too impetuous. Who were these men they were assailing? Perhaps they were acting under orders of Pasquale. Better not be too rash. So the mind of the peon soldiers decided.

As soon as Ruth had reached the shelter of the grove her friends moved to join her. They were halfway across the open when the cowpuncher plunged to the ground again.

The camera man turned and ran back to him. "What is it, Steve? Have they hit you?" he asked anxiously.

"Plugged a pill into my laig as I took the elevator down from the second story. Gimme a hand up."

Frank put an arm around his waist as a support and they reached cover just as the leg failed for a third time. Yeager crawled forward a few yards on his knees into the underbrush.

Soft arms slid around his neck and shoulder as someone plumped down beside him.

"You're wounded. You've been shot," Ruth breathed tremulously.

"Yes," assented Yeager. "Hand me your rifle, Frank."

They exchanged weapons. Steve had already made up his mind exactly what was best to do.

"I'm going to stay here awhile and hold them back. You go on with Ruth, Frank. Leave a horse for me. I'll be along later," he explained.

"We're not going away to leave you here," protested Ruth indignantly.

His voice was so matter of fact and his manner so competent that she had already drawn back, half ashamed, from the caressing support to which her feelings had driven her.

He turned on her eyes cool and steely. "You're going to do as I say, girl. You're wasting time for all of us every moment you stay. Take her, Frank."

Farrar spoke in a low voice of troubled doubt. "But what are you going to do, Steve? We can't leave you here."

The bullets of the Mexicans were searching the grove for them. Any moment one might find a mark.

The range-rider made a gesture of angry impatience. "You obey orders fine, don't you?" His face flashed sudden anger. "Get out. I know my plans, don't I? Pull your freight. Vamos!"

"And you'll be along later, will you?"

"Of course I will. I've got it all arranged. Hurry, or it will be too late."

Ruth half guessed his purpose. She began to sob, but let herself be hurried away by Farrar.

"He's going to stay there. He's not coming at all," she wailed as she ran.

"Sho! Of course he's coming. You know Steve, don't you? He's always got something good up his sleeve."

But though her friend reassured her, he could not still his own fears. Something in him cried out against the desertion of a wounded ally, one who had risked his life to save them all. Still, there was the girl to be considered. If Yeager wanted to give his life for hers he had the right. Many a good man of the Southwest would have done what Steve was doing, given the same circumstances. It was up to him, Farrar, to back his friend's play and see it through.

Yeager crawled on his hands and knees into a mesquite thicket from which he could command a view of the open space back of Pasquale's house. He broke carefully half a dozen twigs that interfered with the free play of his rifle. Then he placed his revolver beside him ready for action. After which he waited, tense and watchful.

Mexicans were swarming about the back of the house. One climbed the rope ladder, looked in the window, and explained with much gesturing to those below that the room was empty. Random shots were thrown toward the river and into the grove. But nobody headed the pursuit. They were waiting for a leader.

Then Pasquale burst furiously into sight around the house. Culvera, Ochampa, and Holcomb followed him. The general flung himself into an excited group, tossing to right and left those who were in his way. He snapped out questions, gave orders, and stamped over the ground like a madman.

Called by Culvera, he strode forward to one of the drugged guards. In an impotent fury he shook the man, trying to waken him from his sleep; then, raging at his failure, he flung the helpless body against the wall and turned on his heel.

Order began to evolve out of the mob. Pasquale himself organized the pursuit. He spread the line out so that as it advanced it would sweep the whole space to the river. There was no longer any wild firing. Men brought from the stables eight or ten horses for the officers.

As the line moved forward, Yeager thought it time to let the enemy know where he was. He drew a bead on the general, moved his rifle slightly to the left, and fired. Pasquale drew his sword and waved it.

"Take the girl alive. Shoot down the traitor dogs with her," he cried savagely. "One hundred pesos to the man who kills either of them or captures her."

Steve answered this by firing twice, once with his revolver and almost immediately afterward with his rifle. Ochampa sat down suddenly. He had been hit in the leg.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE PRISONER

Pasquale changed his tactics. Having located his prey with fair accuracy, he spread his men so as to converge upon the fugitives as the spokes of a wheel do toward the hub. His instructions were that the men were not to fire unless they were within close enough range to be sure not to hit the girl.

His courage had been tested often enough to be beyond doubt, so Gabriel contented himself with waiting behind his horse for the captives to be brought to him. He had no intention of being killed in a skirmish of this kind as long as he had peons to send forward in his place.

"Bet five dollars gold I have them inside of a quarter of an hour, captain," the Mexican general said, peering across his saddle toward the grove.

"Yes," assented Major Ochampa in a depressed voice. He objected to having camp vagrants take liberties with his leg. "Hope you make an example of them, general."

Pasquale turned, his eyes like cold lights on a frosty night. "They'll pray for death a hundred times before it comes to them," he promised brutally. Then, with quick surprise, "Where's Holcomb?"

"He went forward with the men."

"Just like him," replied Gabriel, shrugging his shoulders. "The madman must always be in the thick of it. It's the Gringo way."

From his mesquite thicket Yeager kept up as rapid a fire as possible, using rifle and revolver alternately so as to deceive the enemy into believing the whole party was there. His object was merely to gain time for his escaping friends. Ochampa had been wounded as an object lesson, but he did not intend to kill any of those who were surrounding him. If there had been a dozen of them he would have fought it out to a finish, but with one against a thousand he felt it would be useless murder to kill.

Steve fired into the air, knowing that would do just as well to delay the attackers. Each time he fired his revolver he called aloud softly to himself the number of the shot. It was essential to his plan that there should be one bullet left the moment before they took him.

He could hear them stumbling toward him through the brush and could make out the dark figures as they crawled forward.

"Four," he counted as he fired his revolver into the air and cut off a twig.

His rifle sang out twice. He waited, listening. Bushes crackled a few yards behind him. Snatching up his revolver, he turned.

"Don't fire, Steve," said a low voice in perfectly good English.

Holcomb came out of the thicket toward him.

"Hello, captain. Nice large warm evening. You out taking the air?" asked the cowpuncher.

"Did the rest get away?"

"Hope so. I had rotten luck. One of the guards plugged me in the leg, so I thought I'd kinder keep the Legion busy while our friends make their getaway."

"Can't you run?"

"Can't even walk." Yeager raised the revolver and fired. "Five. One left now."

His eye met that of the captain. Each of them understood perfectly.

"That first shot of yours just missed Pasquale. Pity you didn't shoot straighter."

"I had a dead beat on the old scamp, but I didn't want him. If Ruth gets away, that's all I ask. He's all kinds of a wolf, but Mexico needs him, I reckon."

"You're right about that, Steve. It wouldn't have done you any good to lay him out. Here they come."

A man ploughed through the brush toward them. Another appeared to the left. The face of a third peered around the trunk of an adjacent cottonwood. Of a sudden the grove seemed alive with them.

Raising his gun, Steve nodded farewell to his friend.

A moment before Holcomb had had no intention of interfering, but an impulse that was almost an inspiration gave springs to his muscles. He leaped.

The fling of his arm sent the shot flying wildly into the night. Yeager turned on him furiously as he picked himself up to his knees.

"What did you do that for?"

"I don't know--had no intention of it a moment before. Maybe I've done you a bad turn, Steve. It came over me as a hunch that you were coming out of this all right."

"The devil it did. Gimme your gun. Quick!"

It was too late. The Mexicans were closing with him. They flung him down and pegged him to the ground with their weight. He made no attempt to struggle.

"Get off of him. He's my prisoner," roared Holcomb, flinging one of the Mexicans back.

They poured on him a flood of protesting Spanish. They had taken him while he was still at large. The reward was theirs.

"Confound the reward. You may have it, but the man belongs to me. Get up. He's wounded. Two of you will have to carry him."

"But if he tries to escape, señor--"

"Don't be a fool," snapped Holcomb curtly.

The captain was troubled in his heart. Had he saved this fine young fellow to be the plaything of old Pasquale's vengeance? He knew well enough what would happen to the Arizonian if Ruth escaped. But as long as there was life there was a chance. Something might turn up yet to save him.

When Pasquale found that only an insignificant peon Pedro Cabenza had been taken in his dragnet, he exploded with fury. He ordered the man shot against the nearest wall at once.

Culvera turned the prisoner so that the moon fell full upon his face. He looked searchingly at him. Yeager knew that he was discovered. He spoke in English.

"Good-evening, Colonel Culvera. You've guessed right, but you've guessed it a little too late."

"What is this? Who is this man?" demanded Pasquale harshly.

"The man Yeager, who escaped from you two weeks since," explained Ramon. "He has been in camp with us over a week arranging this girl's escape."

The old general let out a bellow of rage. He strode forward to make sure for himself. Roughly he seized his prisoner by the hair of the head and twisted the face toward him.

"Sorry I had to leave you so abruptly last time, general. Did you have a pleasant night?" taunted Yeager.

Gabriel choked. He was beyond words.

"I see you haven't been able to get anybody else to assassinate your friend Culvera yet," he said pleasantly.

The American had given up hope of life. He was trying to spur Pasquale into such an uncontrollable anger that his death would be a swift and easy one.

"Tie him hand and foot. Let a dozen men armed with rifles stay in the room with him till I return. Ochampa, I hold you responsible. If he escapes--"

"He won't escape," answered the major. "I'll see to that myself."

"See that you do." Pasquale swung to the saddle and looked around. "Ramon, you're not a fool. Where shall we look for this girl and those with her?" he demanded, scowling.

"They must have horses to escape, general. Except in the stable here, which is guarded heavily, the nearest are across the river in the direction they must be moving."

"Of course. Juan, have the remuda driven up and let every man saddle his horse. We'll comb these hills if we must. Maldito! She shan't escape me."

He galloped off at the head of his troop, taking the short cut to the pasture.

The prisoner was dragged into the house where Ochampa was staying. A doctor presently arrived and took care of the wounded leg of the major. After he had finished dressing it, he turned to Yeager.

"No use bothering with mine. I'll have worse wounds soon," the man from Arizona told him calmly.

The little doctor smiled genially because his heart was good. "Quien sabe, señor? Yet it is my duty," he reminded his patient gently.

"Old Gabriel might not say so," demurred Steve.

Yet he conceded the point and let the surgeon minister to him. There was no anaesthetic. The patient had to set his teeth and bear the pain while the bullet was removed and the wound washed and dressed. Little beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. The lean muscles of his cheeks stood out like ropes. But no sound escaped his lips.

"You are a brave man," said the doctor when he had finished. "I wish you good fortune, sir."

A faint smile rested in the eyes of the cowpuncher. "I'm right likely to have it, don't you think?" he asked ironically.

Whether Ochampa suspected Holcomb of being in collusion with his countryman or was merely taking no chances, the prisoner had no way of telling. But the major refused flatly to let the artillery officer into the room.

"Tell him he can see the man after the general returns--if the general wants him to see him," he told the messenger.

They could hear the voice of Holcomb, angry and insistent, protesting against such treatment. But a file of soldiers stood between him and the room. He had to retire defeated.

Slate-colored dawn rolled up without the return of Pasquale. With every passing hour Steve gathered hope. It was certain that Ruth and her friends had escaped through the lines or they must have been brought back long ago. And if they once reached the hills and became lost among them, they would surely be safe from pursuit.

The prisoner was drinking a cup of coffee the doctor had brought him when the sound of horses' hoofs came to him through the open window.

The voice of Pasquale rang out, and at the sound of it Steve's heart grew chill. For there was in the timbre of it a brutal, jovial triumph.

"Take these horses, boys,--feed them, water them. Let the girl go to her room, Ramon, but see that she is watched every minute. Garcia, attend to the Gringos."

He strode into the room where Yeager was detained. His greedy little eyes sparkled; his face exuded malice and self-conceit.

"Ho, ho, amigo! Who laughs now?" he jeered. "I found your friends--stumbled on them in a pocket of the hills while we were returning. They had lost their way, of course, since Señor Yeager was unfortunately not able to go along. So I brought them home to breakfast. Was I not kind?"

He threw back his head and laughed. Steve said nothing. His heart was sick. He had thrown the dice for his great chance and lost.

"First, to breakfast," repeated the Mexican. "And afterward--the young lady shall have love. Por Dios, you shall be at the wedding," decided Pasquale on malicious impulse, hammering on the table with his great fist.

"If I had only had the sense to pull the trigger last night when I had you at my mercy," Yeager commented aloud.

"Yes, you and all her friends--you shall all be there to wish her joy--even Holcomb, who wearies me with his protests. Maldito! Is Gabriel Pasquale not good enough for a kitchen wench from Arizona?"

"It's an outrage beyond belief."

"And afterward--while the little chatita makes love to Gabriel--her friend Steve whom she loves will suffer his punishment with what fortitude he can."

"And her other friends?"

"Behold, it is a great day, señor. Not so? If the chatita, linda de mi alma (pugnosed one, pretty creature of my love), asks for their freedom, she shall have it. I, Gabriel, will send them home under safe escort. Am I not generous? A kind lover? Not so?"

Steve turned his head away and looked through the window at the sun rising behind the distant hills. There was nothing to be said.

CHAPTER XXV

THE TEXAN TAKES A LONG JOURNEY

Pasquale was as good as his word. He arranged that Yeager should see the function from first to last. The wounded man, his hands tied behind his back, heavily guarded, was in the front row of the crowd which lined the short walk between the headquarters of the general and the little adobe church. The petty officer in command told him that after the bridal procession had passed he was to be taken into the balcony of the church for the ceremony.

"And afterward, while Gabriel makes love to the muchacha, the Gringo Yeager will learn what it means to displease the Liberator," promised the brown man with a twinkle of cruel little eyes.

Steve gave no sign that he heard. He understood perfectly that the ingenuity of Pasquale would make the day one long succession of tortures for him. It was up to him to mask his face and manner with the stoicism of an Apache.

At a little distance he saw Farrar and Threewit, both of them very anxious and pale. He would have called a greeting to them except that he was afraid it might prejudice their chances.

Captain Holcomb passed in front of him and stopped.

"Mornin', Steve," he said.

"Mornin', captain." The haggard eyes of the cowpuncher asked a question before his lips framed it. "Can't you do anything for the little girl? Has this hellish thing got to go through?"

"The prisoner will keep silent," snapped the Mexican sergeant.

Holcomb looked at the man with eyes of chill authority. "When I speak to the prisoner he answers. Understand?"

"Si, señor," muttered the sergeant, taken aback. "But the general said--"

"Forget it," cut in the Texan crisply. He turned to Yeager and spoke deliberately, looking straight at him. "Pasquale is going through with this thing. Just as sure as the old reprobate is alive the padre will marry your little friend to him within half an hour."

Was Captain Holcomb giving him a message? Steve did not know. It seemed to him that there was some hidden meaning in the long look of the steady eyes.

The soldier nodded curtly and turned away. The Texan was dressed with unusual care. He was wearing tanned boots newly polished and the trim khaki uniform of an officer of the United States Army. Looking at him, Yeager thought he had never seen a finer figure of a man. He carried himself with the light firmness of a trained soldier.

The cowpuncher was puzzled. Had Holcomb an ace up his sleeve? If so, what could it be? He had said that the marriage would be pushed through just as sure as Pasquale was alive. Had there been the slightest emphasis on that part of the sentence? Steve was not certain. It had struck him that the captain's soft voice had lingered on the words, but that might have been fancy. Yet he could not escape the feeling that something tragic was impending.

The chattering of the peons crowded in the road died away as if at a signal. From the other end of the line rose a shout. "Viva Pasquale! Viva Pasquale!"

Troopers pushed through and opened up a lane.

The general was for once in full uniform. Evidently he had just come from the hands of a barber. His fierce mustache and eyebrows had been trimmed and subdued. He smiled broadly as he bowed to the plaudits of his men.

Then he turned and Steve caught sight of the bride. Colorless to the lips, she trembled as she moved forward, her eyes on the ground.

It was as if some bell rang within her to tell of the presence of her lover. Ruth raised her big sad eyes and they met those of Steve. Her lips framed his name soundlessly. She seemed to lean toward him, straining from Pasquale, whose arm supported her.

Somehow she broke free and flung herself toward the man she loved. Her arms fastened around his neck. With a shivering sob she clung tightly to him.

Pasquale, his eyes stabbing with brutal rage, dragged her back and held her wrist in his sinewy brown hand. His teeth were clenched, the veins in his temples swollen. He glared at the cowpuncher as if he would like to murder him on the spot.

The padre touched Gabriel on the arm. With a start the Liberator came to himself. The procession moved forward again. Not a word had been spoken, but Pasquale's golden smile had vanished. The fingernails of his clenched fist bit savagely into the palm of his hand.

From the procession Culvera saluted Yeager ironically. "Buenos and adios, señor."

The man to whom he spoke did not even know the Mexican was there. His eyes and his mind were following the girl who was being driven to her doom.

From out of the crowd edging the walk a man stepped. It was Adam Holcomb. He stood directly in front of Pasquale and his bride, blocking the way. There was a strange light in his eyes. It was as if he looked from the present far into the future, as if somehow he were a god, an Olympian who held in his hand the shears of destiny.

The general, still furious, flung an angry look at him. "Well?" he demanded harshly.

"I want to ask the lady a question, general."

Impatient rage boiled out of Pasquale in an imperious gesture of his arm. "Afterward, captain. You shall ask her a hundred. Move aside."

"I'll ask it now. This wedding doesn't go on until I hear from the young lady that she is willing," he announced.

Ruth tried to run forward to him, but the iron grip of the Mexican stayed her. "Save me," she cried.

"By God! I will."

"Arrest that man," ordered Pasquale in a passion.

At the same time he pushed Ruth from him into the crowd that lined the path. The brown fingers of the Mexican chief closed upon the handle of his revolver.

"Here's where I go on a long journey," the Texan cried.

He dragged out an army forty-five. Pasquale and he fired at the same instant. The Mexican clutched at his heart and swayed back into the crowd. Holcomb staggered, but recovered himself. He faced the other Mexican officers, tossed away his revolver, and folded his arms.

"Whenever you are ready, gentlemen," he said quietly.

Ramon Culvera was the first to recover. From his automatic revolver he flung a bullet into the straight, erect figure facing him. The others crowded forward and fired into the body as it began to sink. The Texan gave a sobbing sigh. Before his knees reached the ground he was dead.

The suddenness of the tragedy, its unexpectedness, held the crowd with suspended breath. What was to follow? Was this the beginning of a massacre? Each man looked at his neighbor. Another moment might bring forth anything.

With a bound Ramon vaulted to the saddle of a horse standing near. His sword made a half-circle of steel as it swept through the air. From where he sat he could be seen by all.

"Brothers of the Legion, patriots all, let none become excited. I have killed with my own hand the traitor who shot our beloved leader. Gabriel Pasquale is dead, but our country lives. Viva Mexico!"

The answer came from thousands of brown, upturned faces. "Viva Mexico! Viva Culvera!"

The young officer swung the sword around his head. His eyes flashed. "Gracias. Friends, I solemnly pledge my life to the great cause of the people. Our hero is dead. We mourn him and devote ourselves anew to the principles for which he fought. Never shall I lay down this sword until I have won for you the rights of a free nation. I promise you land for all, wealth for all, freedom from tyranny. Down with all the foes of the poor."

Again the shouts rang out, this time louder and clearer. Already these simple, childlike peons were answering the call of their new master. Old Pasquale, who for years had held their lives in the hollow of his hand, lay crumpled on the ground almost forgotten. A new star was shining in their firmament.

"We shall march to Mexico, down the usurper, and distribute the stolen wealth of him and his pampered minions among the people to whom it belongs. Every Mexican shall have a house, land, cattle. He shall be the slave of none. His children shall be fed. We shall have peace and plenty. I, Ramon Culvera, swear it. Mexico for the Mexicans."

Culvera was an orator. His resonant voice stirred the emotions of this ragged mob that under the leadership of Pasquale had been hammered into an army efficient enough to defeat well-armed regulars. The men pressed closer to listen. Their primitive faces reflected the excitement the speaker stirred in them. They interrupted with shouts and cheers.

Others among the officers had ambitions for leadership, but they knew now that Ramon had made the moment his and forestalled them. He had won the army over to him.

He spoke briefly, but he took pains to see that no other speaker followed him. The plaudits for "General Culvera" rang like sweet music in his ears. They told him that he had at a bound passed the officers who ranked him and was already in effect chief of the Army of the North.

Briefly he gave directions for the care of the body of the dead general and for the safety of the American prisoners pending a disposition of their cases. Before dismissing the army, he called an immediate conference of the officers.

Resolved to strike while the iron was hot, Culvera took charge of the meeting of officers and proposed at once the election of a general to succeed Pasquale. His associates were taken by surprise. They looked out of the windows and saw pacing up and down the armed sentries Ramon had set. They heard still an occasional distant cheer for the new leader. Given time, they might have organized an opposition. But Culvera drove them to instant decision. They faced the imperious will of a man who would stick at nothing to satisfy his ambition.

Moreover, Ramon was popular. He was of a good family, democratic in manner, never arrogant on the surface to his equals. It had been his object to make friends against the possibility of just such a contingency. Most of the officers liked, even though they did not fully trust him. They recognized that he had the necessary confidence in himself for success and also the touch of dramatic genius that may make of a soldier a public idol.

For which reasons they submitted to his domination and elected him successor of Pasquale as commander of the Legion of the North. Whereupon Ramon unburdened himself of another fiery oration of patriotism full of impossible pledges.

The newly chosen general sent an orderly out to proclaim the day a holiday and to see that mescal was served to all the men in honor of the event. After which the conference discussed the fate of the American prisoners.

CHAPTER XXVI

AT SUNSET

Steve, in solitary confinement, with only his throbbing leg for company, was under no illusions as to what his punishment would be. Pasquale had been killed by an American who had been seen talking with Yeager five minutes before he had shot the general. The charge against him would probably be conspiracy, but it did not much matter what the excuse was. His life would be snuffed out certainly.

There were several reasons why Culvera should sacrifice him and not one why he should be spared. Ramon had a personal grudge against him, and the new commander was not a man to forget to pay debts of this kind. Moreover, the easiest way to still any whispered doubts of his own loyalty to Pasquale was to show sharp severity in punishing those charged with being implicated in his death.

Yeager accepted it as settled that he was doomed.

But what about his friends? What of Threewit and Farrar? And, above all, what of Ruth? Would Culvera think it necessary to extend his vengeance to them? Or would prudence stay his hand after he had executed the chief offender?

Culvera was a good politician. The chances were that he would not risk stirring up a hornet's nest by shooting a man as well known in the United States as Threewit. Since Farrar was in the same case, he would probably stand or fall by the Lunar director. As for Ruth--her life would be safe enough. There was no doubt of that. But--what of her future?

Ramon was a known libertine. No scruples would restrain him if he thought the game was a safe quarry. And Steve knew with a sinking heart that he could offer to any official inquiry of the United States Government a plausible story of an abandoned woman who had come to camp to sell her charms to the highest bidder. It would be easy to show that she had ridden down with a man suspected of being a rustler and known to be a bad character, that she had jilted him for Pasquale who was already married and a good deal more than twice her age, and that after the death of Gabriel she had turned at once to his successor. To twist the facts in support of such an interpretation of her conduct would require only a little distortion here and there. The truth, twisted, makes the most damnable lies.

Without any heroics Holcomb had given his life to save her because she was an American woman. Yeager counted himself a dead man in the same cause. What wrung his heart now, and set him limping up and down his cell regardless of the pain from his wounded leg, was the fear that the price had been paid in vain. Little Ruth! Little Ruth! His heart went out to her in an agony of despair.

While he clung rigid to the window bars of his prison the rusty lock in the door creaked. The sergeant with the cruel little eyes entered with three men.

"Ho, ho! The general wants the Gringo to cut out his heart and liver. Come! Let us not keep him waiting. He is sharpening the knife and it may lose the edge."

A horse was waiting outside and the prisoner was assisted to the saddle. One man led the horse by the bridle and on either side of Yeager rode a second and a third. All of them were armed. The new general was taking no chances of an escape.

At sight of the American the young Mexican at the head of the long table where Pasquale had held his councils showed a flash of fine teeth in a glittering smile.

"Welcome, Señor Yeager. How is the wounded leg?"

Steve nodded casually. "It's talking to me, general, but I reckon it's good enough to do all the walking I'll ask of it," he answered quietly.

Culvera turned with a laugh to Ochampa. "He is what the Gringoes call game. Is it not so, major?"

Ochampa, his wounded leg on a chair, grunted.

"Turn about is fair play. How is your leg, major?" asked Steve.

The major glared at him. "Is it that I must put up with the insolence of this scoundrel, general?" he demanded.

"Not for long," replied Culvera suavely. "Pedro Cabenza, or Yeager, or whatever you call yourself, you have been tried for rebellion, insubordination, and conspiracy to kill General Pasquale. You have been sentenced to be shot at sunset. The order of the military court will be carried out as decreed."

The cowpuncher took it without the twitching of a muscle in the brown face. He knew there was no use of an appeal for mercy and he made none.

"So I've been tried and convicted without even being present. Fine business. I reckon you've got an explanation handy when Uncle Sam comes asking whyfor you murdered an American citizen."

Culvera lifted in mock surprise his eyebrows. "An American citizen! Surely not. I execute Pedro Cabenza, a peon, enlisted in the Army of the North, because he plotted with the foes of the Republic and helped prisoners escape, and because he conspired to assassinate our glorious chief, General Pasquale." Ramon put his forearm on the table and leaned forward with an ironic smile. "But your point is well made, Pedro. Lies spread on the wings of the wind. I shall forestall any slanderous untruths by having a photograph taken of you before the execution, and another of your body afterward. I thank you for the suggestion."

Though it told against him the American knew this was a bull's-eye hit. A photograph of him in his rags, with his serape and his ventilated sombrero, face as brown as a berry, would be sufficient proof to exonerate Culvera of the charge of having shot an American. Steve had made up too well for the part. At worst Culvera could plead a regrettable mistake.

"You make out a good case against Pedro Cabenza, general," admitted the condemned man evenly. "Good enough. We'll put him in the discard. I suppose you won't deny that Threewit and Farrar and Miss Seymour are Americans."

With a confidential grin Ramon nodded. "You've put your finger on the pulse of my difficulty. You see, I talk to you frankly because I have the best of reasons for knowing you will never betray me. No doubt you recall your proverb about dead men telling tales. Just so. Well, I don't know what the devil to do with your friends Farrar and Threewit. I have nothing against them, but if I send them home they will talk. Would it be best, do you think, to arrange an accident for them while on the way back to Arizona?"

"Not at all. I'll make a written confession, and they can sign it as witnesses, that I plotted against Pasquale and was implicated in his murder. That will let you out nicely, general. Then you can send them home, and the young lady in their care. So you will even scores with me quite safely to yourself."

The Mexican commander looked steadily out of the window at a dog scratching himself in the street. "I don't recall mentioning the young lady. Her future is arranged."

The temples of the cowpuncher throbbed. He pretended to misunderstand the meaning of the other man. "Of course. I understand that you can do nothing else but send her home. The one thing that would bring our army across the line on the jump would be for you to hurt a hair of this girl's head. You could kill a dozen men and get away with it quicker than you could to insult one little girl. But, of course, you know that."

The fingers of Culvera drummed absently on the table. "I think the señorita and I will be able to adjust the matter without any help from you. If you have any last messages for her I'll be glad to carry them, since I expect to see her this evening."

Steve had disdained to beg for himself, but now he begged for the girl he loved.

"You're a man, Ramon Culvera. Nobody ever claimed there is any yellow in you. Your father was a gentleman and so is his son. You fight with men and not with timid girls. You wouldn't do this girl dirt because she is alone and has no friends near. Think of your own sisters, man."

Ochampa moved restlessly in his chair. "We had better send the girl home. She will bring us trouble else."

His superior officer flashed a quick look at him. "That is a bridge we shall cross when we come to it. Meanwhile I say adios, Señor Yeager. Shall I send you the padre?"

"Thanks, no! But remember this. You stake your whole future on the treatment you give Miss Seymour. If you don't play fair with her, you lose."

Ramon clapped his hands three times. A soldier entered the room.

"Take the Gringo back to his prison," ordered Culvera.

"The order stands, general? At sunset?" asked the man.

"It stands," assented Ramon; and turned to Ochampa: "Have you agreed on a price for that bunch of cattle with the Flying D rustlers, major?"

CHAPTER XXVII

CULVERA RECONSIDERS

Spurred by Daisy Ellington, the star of the border Lunar Company had kept the wires hot with messages to "the old man" in New York. To do him justice the president of the company rose to the occasion as soon as it was impressed upon his mind that Threewit and the others were in serious danger. He telegraphed for Lennox to meet him in Washington and hurried to the Capitol himself to lay the case before the senior Senator from New York, a statesman who happened to be under political obligations to him.

The Arizona congressional delegation was called into conference and an appointment made to meet the President of the United States. As soon as Lennox reached the city, he was hurried to the White House, where he told the story before the President and the Secretary of State.

The case called for prompt action. Instructions were wired to Captain Girard, stationed with his company at Bisbee, Arizona, to act as a special envoy from the President to General Pasquale.

Girard, with a corporal, two saddle-horses, and a pack-horse, entrained at once. Four hours later he was dropped at a tank station, from which point he and the corporal struck straight into the barren desert. The glare of the afternoon sun was slanting down upon them when they started. Their shadows grew longer as they rode. The sun, a ball of fire, dropped below the distant horizon edge and left a sky of wonder to drive a painter to despair.

The gold and crimson and purple softened as the minutes passed. The distant ridges were no longer flamed with edgings of fire. A deep purple predominated and was lightened presently to a velvet violet haze. Then the stars came out, close and cold and innumerable.

Still Girard rode, taking advantage of the cool breath of night. Toward morning he stopped at a sand-wash where three or four dusty cottonwoods relieved the vegetation of mesquite, palo verde, and cacti. Among the rocks a spring rose hesitant to the surface and struggled faintly for life against the palpitating heat and thirsty drought of the desert.

The corporal hobbled the horses. The men stretched themselves in the sand and fell into deep sleep. It was noon when they awoke. They ate, lounged in such shade as the cottonwoods offered from the quivering heat, and waited till mid-afternoon. Having saddled and repacked, they struck again across the dreary roll of sandhills and washes. When Noche Buena lay at their feet the sun was low in the sky.

Into the dusty main street of the village the two men rode at a walk. A sentinel with a rifle stopped them. Girard explained that he wanted to see Pasquale.

"He is dead--shot by a Gringo who has gone to hell already. And another Gringo will be shot when the sun falls below the hills, and perhaps another to-morrow. Who knows? You, too, may pay for the death of the Liberator," jeered the sentry.

"Pasquale dead--and shot by an American?" asked the captain in surprise.

"As I have said. But General Culvera killed the dog in his tracks. Ho, Manuel! Call an officer. A Gringo wants to see the general," he shouted to a barefoot trooper crouched in the shade of an adobe house.

Girard explained to the officer that he was a messenger from the President of the United States. He and the corporal were searched and their arms removed.

The Mexican officer apologized. "Since Pasquale was murdered, we take no chances," he explained. "You understand I do not at all doubt you are what you say. But we search all strangers to make sure."

After Culvera had glanced over the credentials of Girard, he was all suavity. "I offer you a hundred welcomes; first for yourself, as an officer of the army of our sister Republic, and second as an envoy from your President, for whom I have a most profound respect. But not a word of your mission until we have dined. You will want first of all a bath after your long dusty trip. May I offer you my own quarters for the present till arrangements can be made?"

Captain Girard bowed. "You are very kind, general. Believe me, I appreciate your courtesy. But first I must raise one point. I have been told that an American is to be executed at sunset, which is almost immediately. You will understand that as a representative of the United States it is necessary that I should investigate the facts."

Swiftly Culvera considered. If the American officer had arrived an hour later, Yeager would have been safely out of the way. How had he discovered already that an American was to be shot? Was it worth while denying it? But what if Girard insisted on seeing the execution? What if he asked to see Yeager? Ramon's glance swept the obstinate face of the captain. He decided it better to acknowledge the truth.

"It is to me a matter of profound regret," he sighed. "The man enlisted in our army as a spy, disguised as a peon. He is guilty of the murder of one of our men in a gambling-house. He attempted to kill General Pasquale a short time ago. He was undoubtedly in league with the man Holcomb, the assassin of our great general. He shot Major Ochampa, but fortunately the major is recovering. The man is a border ruffian of the worst stamp."

"May I talk with him, general?"

"But certainly--if the man is still living," assented the Mexican.

The American officer looked straight at Ramon. His steady eyes made no accusation, mirrored no suspicion. Culvera could not tell what he was thinking. But he recognized resentfully a compulsion in them that he could not safely ignore.

"With your permission I should like to talk also with Miss Seymour and the two moving-picture men," said Captain Girard.

The Mexican adventurer announced a decision he had come to that very instant, one to which the inconvenient arrival of the envoy from the President of the United States had driven him.

"I am making arrangements to have them all three taken safely back to Arixico. Between you and me, captain, old Pasquale was something of a savage. It is my purpose to win and hold the friendship of the United States. I don't underestimate Pasquale. He was my friend and chief. He made a free Mexico possible. But he was primitive. He did not understand international relations. He treated the citizens of your great country according to his whims. That was a mistake. I shall so act as to win the approval of your great President."

"I am very glad to hear that. The surest foundation upon which you can build for a free Mexico is justice for all, general. And now, if I may see Yeager."

A messenger was sent to bring the prisoner. He found an officer with a firing party already crossing the plaza to the place of execution. The prisoner was bareheaded, ragged, unkempt. His arms were tied by the elbows behind his back. But the spirit of the unbeaten spoke in his eyes and trod in his limping step.

"The general wishes to see the prisoner," explained the messenger to the officer.

The party wheeled at a right angle, toward the headquarters of Culvera.

Steve thought he understood what this meant. Culvera had sent for him to gloat over him, to taunt him. The man wanted to hear him beg for his life. The teeth of the cowpuncher clenched tightly till the muscles of the jaw stood out like ropes. He would show this man that an American did not face a firing squad with a whine.

At sight of the captain of cavalry sitting beside Culvera the heart of Yeager leaped. The long arm of Uncle Sam had reached across the border in the person of this competent West Pointer. It meant salvation for Ruth, for his friends, possibly even for himself.

"Captain Girard wants to ask you a few questions," Culvera explained.

Without waiting for questions Yeager spoke. "Do you know that an American girl is held prisoner here, captain,--that Pasquale was driving her to a forced marriage when Holcomb shot him to save her?"

Girard turned toward the general, a question in his eyes.

Ramon shrugged his shoulders. "I told you Pasquale was a barbarian. The trouble is he was a peon. He took what he wanted."

"Her name is Ruth Seymour. She's a fine girl, captain. You'll save her, of course, and see that she gets home," continued Steve.

"I have the promise of General Culvera to see her and your friends safe to Arixico," replied Girard.

"You'll ride with them yourself all the way," urged the prisoner.

"No doubt. But, of course, the word of General Culvera--"

"--Is worth what it is worth," Yeager finished for him.

"The man stands in the shadow of death. Let him say what he likes," said the Mexican contemptuously to the officer beside him.

"You are charged with being a spy, Mr. Yeager. I am told you were captured in disguise after having plotted to help prisoners escape," said Girard.

Yeager nodded quietly. "Technically I am a spy. I came here to try to save Miss Seymour and my friends. The attempt failed and I was captured."

"Are you a spy in the sense that you were in the employ of the enemies of General Pasquale and his armies?"

"No. Culvera understands that perfectly well. I came only to look out for my friends."

Girard knew what manner of man Yeager was. He intended to save his life if it could be done. This would be possible only if Culvera could be made to feel that it would cost too much to punish him.

"It is claimed that you attempted the life of General Pasquale once."

"Nothing to that. I was a prisoner, condemned to be shot in the morning. He came to my cell and offered me my life if I would knife Culvera in the back. I couldn't see the proposition. But I got a chance, knocked him down, tied him up, and slipped out in his serape. Then I made my getaway on the horse he had left for me in case I came through with the knifing."

Instantly Culvera knew the story to be true. It cannot be said that he was grateful to Yeager, but the edge of his resentment against him was dulled.

"Sounds like a plausible story, doesn't it?" he suggested ironically. "Why should Pasquale want the death of his friend, his lieutenant, the man who was closest to him among all his followers?"

"Send for Juan Garcia. He was on sentry duty that night. Ask him as to the facts," the cowpuncher proposed.

Girard turned to his host and spoke to him in a low voice. "General, this man has a good reputation at home. He has a host of friends in Arizona. I believe he is speaking the truth. Perhaps General Pasquale may have been too hasty. Let us send for all the witnesses and make a thorough investigation of the charges against him. I shall be called to Washington after I have wired my report. The President, no doubt, will question me. Make it possible for me to tell him that under the rule of General Culvera a régime begins that is founded on justice for all."

Culvera was far from a fool. He had lived in the United States and understood something of the temper of its people. The fall of Huerta was potent proof that no ruler could survive in Mexico if the Government at Washington was set in opposition to him. After all, the life of Yeager was only a small matter. Why not use him as a pawn in the game to win the approval of the big Republic to the north?

With his most engaging smile Ramon offered his hand to Captain Girard. "You are right. Pasquale was a child, a creature of moods, of foolish suspicions and tempestuous passions. Perhaps this man tells the truth. It may be he has been condemned unjustly. You and I, my friend, shall sit in judgment on him. If he be guilty, we shall condemn; if innocent, acquit. Meanwhile I will remand him to prison and order the execution postponed. Does that satisfy you, captain?"

The American officer shook hands warmly. "General, it is a pleasure to meet a man like you. Mexico is fortunate in having such a son."

Culvera beamed. "Gracias. And now, captain, first a bath, then dinner. Afterwards you shall talk with the moving-picture men." He turned affably to Yeager. "I shall give orders that you be given a good dinner to-night. To-morrow we shall pass judgment on you."

Steve nodded to the West Pointer. "Much obliged, captain."

CHAPTER XXVIII

AS LONG AS LIFE

Breakfast was served to Yeager next morning by a guard who either knew nothing or would tell nothing of what was going on in the camp. After he had eaten, nobody came near the prisoner for hours. Through the barred window he could see a sentry pacing up and down or squatting in the shade of the deserted building opposite. No other sign of human life reached him.

His nerves were keyed to a high tension. Culvera was an opportunist. Perhaps something had occurred to make him change his mind. Perhaps he had decided, after all, not to play for the approval of the United States. In revolutionary Mexico much can happen in a few hours.

Steve was a man of action. It did not suit his temperament to sit cooped up in a prison while things were being done that affected the happiness of Ruth and his own life. He tried to persuade himself that all was going well, but as the fever of his anxiety mounted, he found himself limping up and down the short beat allowed him from wall to wall.

It was noon before he was taken from his cell. Steve counted it a good augury that a saddle horse was waiting for him to ride. Last night he had limped across the plaza on his wounded leg.

He and his little procession of guards cut straight across to headquarters. Culvera sat on the porch smoking a cigarette. He was dressed immaculately in a suit of white linen with a blue sash. His gold-trimmed sombrero was a work of art.

At sight of Yeager the Mexican general smiled blandly.

"Are you ready to take a long journey, Señor Yeager?" he asked.

The heart of the cowpuncher lost a beat, but he did not bat an eye. "What journey? The same one that Holcomb took?" he demanded bluntly.

Culvera showed a face of pained surprise. "Am I a barbarian? Do you think me another Pasquale? No, no, señor. You and I have had our disagreements. But they are past. To tell the truth, I always did like the way you see a thing through to a fighting finish. Now that I know you are not the ruffian I had been led to think you, it is a pleasure to me to tell you that you have been tried and acquitted. I offer regrets for the inconvenience to which you have been put. You will pardon, is it not so, and do me the honor to dine with me before you leave?"

The heels of the Mexican came together, he bowed, and offered a hand to the range-rider.

"Just one moment, general. All that listens fine to me, but--what are the conditions?"

Ramon made a gesture of regret at being so sadly misunderstood. "Conditions! There are none."

"None at all?"

"None. Is it that you think me a peddler instead of a gentleman?" The face of the young Mexican expressed sorrow rather than anger.

Still Steve doubted. "Let's understand each other, general. Are you telling me that I can walk out of that door, climb into a saddle, and keep going till I get back into old Arizona?"

"I tell you that--and more. You will be furnished an escort to see you safely across the line. You may choose your own guard if you doubt."

"And my friends?"

"They go, too, of course."

"All of them?"

The Mexican smiled. "You're the most suspicious man I ever knew. All of them, Señor Yeager."

"Including Miss Seymour?" The range-rider spoke quietly, but his eyes were like swords.

"Naturally she will not wish to stay here when her friends leave."

Steve leaned against the porch post with a deep breath of relaxation. "If I'm sleeping, don't let any one wake me, general," he implored, smiling for the first time.

"I confess your amazement surprises me," said Culvera suavely. "Did you think all Mexicans were like Pasquale? He was a great man, but he was a savage. Also, he was a child at statecraft. I used to warn him to coöperate with the United States if he wished to succeed. But he was ignorant and eaten up with egotism."

"You're right he was, general."

"A new policy is now in operation. In freeing you I ask only that you set me and my army right with your people. Let them understand that we stand for a free Mexico and for justice."

The hands of the two men gripped.

"I'll sure do my share, general."

"We're to have a little luncheon before you go. Captain Girard and your friends are to be my guests. You will join us; not so?"

"Gracias, general. Count me in."

The black eyes of the Mexican twinkled. "Your wound--does it greatly trouble you, señor?"

"Some. When I walk."

"Too bad. I was going to ask you to step upstairs and tell Señorita Seymour that General Culvera will be delighted to have her join us at luncheon. But, of course, since your leg troubles you--"

"It's a heap better already, general. You're giving me good medicine."

"Ah! I think you know the lady's room. But perhaps I had better call a peon."

The eyes of the cowpuncher were bright. "Now, don't you, general. Keep on talking and you're liable to spoil what you've said," answered Steve with his old gay laugh.

He hobbled out of the room and up the stairs.

The door of Ruth's room was open. She sat huddled in a chair looking straight before her. There were shadows under her young eyes that never should have been there. Her lissome figure had lost its gallantry, the fine poise that had given her a note of wild freedom. Steve had come up so quietly that she evidently had not heard, for she did not turn her weary head to see who it was.

He stood a moment, hesitating on the threshold. She sat without moving, a pathetic picture of despair and grief. A man had died for her yesterday. Another man was to die to-day because he had tried to save her. She herself was in danger still. The tragedy of life had carried her beyond tears.

When he moved forward a step she turned. Her lips parted in surprise. The dark eyes under her tumbled, blue-black hair stared in astonishment. Slowly she rose, never lifting her gaze from him. With a little cry of wonder she stretched her arms toward this man who had come to her as if from the dead.

In two strides he reached her and swept the girl into his arms. He kissed the tired eyes, the tousled hair, the soft cheeks into which the color began to flow. She clung to him, afraid to let him go, uncertain whether it was a reality.

At last she spoke. "It is you, isn't it? I thought ... they told me ... that you...."

He laughed softly with the joy of it all. "I'm free--free to go home with you, Ruth,--back to God's country, to friends and life and love."

"Are you going to take me, too?" she asked with naïve simplicity.

"Is it likely I'd go without you? Yes, we're all going. Culvera has seen the light. Soon all this will be like a nightmare from which we have escaped. That's right, honey. Cry if you want to. Little girl, little girl, how am I ever going to tell you how much I love you?"

She wept with gladness and relief while he held her tightly in his arms and promised to keep her against all harm as long as life lasted.

And afterward, when smiles came again, they fell into the inarticulate babblings that from the beginning of time have been the expression of lovers.

They forgot time, so that neither knew how long it had been before a denim-clad soldier stood saluting in the doorway.

Steve, over his shoulder, fired a question at the man. "What do you want?"

"The compliments of General Culvera, señor and señorita, and I was to remind you that luncheon has been waiting twenty minutes."

Steve and Ruth looked at each other and laughed. They went downstairs hand in hand.

THE END

Contents

THE HIGHGRADER

BY WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE

PRELUDE

A young idealist, ætat four, was selling stars to put in the sky. She had cut them with her own scissors out of red tissue paper, so that she was able to give a guarantee.

"But you'll have to get the ladder out of our bedroom to put 'em up wiv," she told purchasers honestly.

The child was a wild dark creature, slim and elfish, with a queer little smile that flashed sudden as an April sun.

It was evening, on the promenade deck of an ocean liner. The sea was like glass and the swell hardly perceptible. Land was in sight, a vague uneven line rising mist-like on the horizon. Before morning the Victorian would be running up the St. Lawrence. Even for the most squeamish the discomforts of the voyage lay behind. A pleasant good fellowship was in the air. In some it took the form of an idle contentment, a vague regret that ties newly formed must so soon be broken. In others it found an expression more buoyant. Merry voices of shuffleboard players drifted forward. Young couples paced the deck and leaned over the rail to watch the phosphorescent glow. The open windows of the smoking-room gave forth the tinkle of glasses and the low rattle of chips. All sounds blended into a mellow harmony.

"What's your price on a whole constellation with a lovers' moon thrown in?" inquired a young man lounging in a deck chair.

The vendor of stars looked at him in her direct serious fashion. "I fink I tan't sell you all 'at, but I'll make you a moon to go wiv the stars--not a weally twuly one, jus' a make-believe moon," she added in a whisper.

An irritated voice made itself heard. "Steward, have you seen that child anywhere? The naughty little brat has run away again--and I left her only a minute."

The dealer in celestial supplies came to earth.

"I'm goin' to be smacked," she announced with grave conviction.

An unvoiced conspiracy formed itself instantly in her behalf. A lady in a steamer chair gathered the child under the shelter of her rug. An eight-year-old youngster knotted his fists valiantly. The young man who had priced a constellation considered the chances of a cutting-out expedition.

"She should have been in bed long ago. I just stepped out to speak to our room steward and when I came back she was gone," the annoyed governess was explaining.

Discovery was imminent. The victim prepared herself for the worst.

"I don't care," she protested to her protector. "It's ever so nicer to stay up, an' if it wasn't runnin' away it would be somefing else."

At this bit of philosophy the lounger chuckled, rose swiftly, and intercepted the dragon.

"When do I get that walk you promised me, Miss Lupton? What's the matter with right now?"

The governess was surprised, since it was the first she had heard of any walk. Flattered she was, but still faithful to duty.

"I'm looking for Moya. She knows she must always go to her room after tea and stay there. The naughty child ran away."

"She's all right. I saw her snuggled under a rug with Mrs. Curtis not two minutes ago. Just a turn or two in this lovely night."

Drawn by the magnet of his manhood, Moya slipped into the chair beside the eight-year-old.

"I'd kick her darned shins if she spanked me," boasted he of the eight years.

Moya admired his courage tremendously. Her dark eyes followed the retreating figure of her governess. "I'm 'fraid."

"Hm! Bet I wouldn't be. Course, you're only a girl."

His companion pleaded guilty with a sigh and slipped her hand into his beneath the steamer rug.

"It's howwid to be a dirl," she confided.

"Bet I wouldn't be one."

"You talk so funny."

"Don't either. I'm a Namerican. Tha's how we all talk."

"I'm Irish. Mith Lupton says 'at's why I'm so naughty," the sinner confessed complacently.

Confidences were exchanged. Moya explained that she was a norphan and had nobody but a man called Guardy, and he was not her very own. She lived in Sussex and had a Shetland pony. Mith Lupton was horrid and was always smacking her. When she said her prayers she always said in soft to herself, "But pleathe, God, don't bless Mith Lupton." They were taking a sea voyage for Moya's health, and she had been seasick just the teentiest weentiest bit. Jack on his part could proudly affirm that he had not missed a meal. He lived in Colorado on a ranch with his father, who had just taken him to England and Ireland to visit his folks. He didn't like England one little bit, and he had told his cousin Ned so and they had had a fight. As he was proceeding to tell details Miss Lupton returned from her stroll.

She brought Moya to her feet with a jerk. "My goodness! Who will you pick up next? Now walk along to your room, missie."

"Yes, Mith Lupton."

"Haven't I told you not to talk to strangers?"

"He isn't stwanger. He's Jack," announced Moya stanchly.

"I'll teach you to run away as soon as my back is turned. You should have been in bed an hour ago."

"I tan't unbutton myself."

"A likely reason. Move along, now."

Having been remiss in her duty, Miss Lupton was salving her conscience by being extra severe now. She hurried her charge away.

Suddenly Moya stopped. "Pleathe, my han'erchif."

"Have you lost it? Where is it?"

"I had it in the chair."

"Then run back and get it."

Moya's thin white legs flashed along the deck. Like a small hurricane she descended upon the boy. Her arms went around his neck and for an instant he was smothered in her embrace, dark ringlets flying about his fair head.

"Dood-night, Jack."

A kiss fell helter-skelter on his cheek and she was gone, tugging a little handkerchief from her pocket as she ran.

The boy did not see her again. Before she was up he and his father left the boat at Quebec. Jack wondered whether she had been smacked, after all. Once or twice during the day he thought of her, but the excitement of new sights effaced from his mind the first romance his life had known.

But for nearly a week Moya added a codicil silently to her prayer. "And, God, pleathe bless Jack."

CHAPTER I

THE CAMPERS

Inside the cabin a man was baking biscuits and singing joyously, "It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary." Outside, another whistled softly to himself while he arranged his fishing tackle. From his book he had selected three flies and was attaching them to the leader. Nearest the rod he put a royal coachman, next to it a blue quill, and at the end a ginger quill.

The cook, having put his biscuits in the oven, filled the doorway. He was a big, strong-set man, with a face of leather. Rolled-up sleeves showed knotted brown arms white to the wrists with flour. His eyes were hard and steady, but from the corners of them innumerable little wrinkles fell away and crinkled at times to mirth.

"First call to dinner in the dining-car," he boomed out in a heavy bass.

Two men lounging under a cottonwood beside the river showed signs of life. One of them was scarcely more than a boy, perhaps twenty, a pleasant amiable youth with a weak chin and eyes that held no steel. His companion was nearer forty than thirty, a hard-faced citizen who chewed tobacco and said little.

"Where you going to fish to-night, Crumbs?" the cook asked of the man busy with the tackle.

"Think I'll try up the river, Colter--start in above the Narrows and work down, mebbe. Where you going?"

"Me for the Meadows. I'm after the big fellows. Going to hang the Indian sign on them with a silver doctor and a Jock Scott. The kid here got his three-pounder on a Jock Scott."

The man who had been called Crumbs put his rod against the side of the house and washed his hands in a tin pan resting on a stump. He was a slender young fellow with lean, muscular shoulders and the bloom of many desert suns on his cheeks and neck.

"Going to try a Jock Scott myself after it gets dark."

The boy who had come up from the river's bank grinned. "Now I've shown you lads how to do it you'll all be catching whales."

"Once is a happenstance, twice makes a habit. Do it again, Curly, and we'll hail you king of the river," Colter promised, bringing to the table around which they were seating themselves a frying pan full of trout done to a crisp brown. "Get the coffee, Mosby. There's beer in the icebox, kid."

They ate in their shirtsleeves, camp fashion, on an oil cloth scarred with the marks left by many hot dishes. They brought to dinner the appetites of outdoors men who had whipped for hours a turbid stream under an August sun. Their talk was strong and crisp, after the fashion of the mining West. It could not be printed without editing, yet in that atmosphere it was without offense. There is a time for all things, even for the elemental talk of frontiersmen on a holiday.

Dinner finished, the fishermen lolled on the grass and smoked.

A man cantered out of the patch of woods above and drew up at the cabin, disposing himself for leisurely gossip.

"Evening, gentlemen. Heard the latest?" He drew a match across his chaps and lit the cigarette he had rolled.

"We'll know after you've told us what it is," Colter suggested.

"The Gunnison country ce'tainly is being honored, boys. A party of effete Britishers are staying at the Lodge. Got in last night. I seen them when they got off the train--me lud and me lady, three young ladies that grade up A1, a Johnnie boy with an eyeglass, and another lad who looks like one man from the ground up. Also, and moreover, there's a cook, a hawss wrangler, a hired girl to button the ladies up the back, and a valley chap to say 'Yes, sir, coming, sir,' to the dude."

"You got it all down like a book, Steve," grinned Curly.

"Any names?" asked Colter.

"Names to burn," returned the native. "A whole herd of names, honest to God. Most any of 'em has five or six, the way the Denver Post tells it. Me, I can't keep mind of so many fancy brands. I'll give you the A B C of it. The old parties are Lord James and Lady Jim Farquhar, leastways I heard one of the young ladies call her Lady Jim. The dude has Verinder burnt on about eight trunks, s'elp me. Then there's a Miss Dwight and a Miss Joyce Seldon--and, oh, yes! a Captain Kilmeny, and an Honorable Miss Kilmeny, by ginger."

Colter flashed a quick look at Crumbs. A change had come over that young man's face. His blue eyes had grown hard and frosty.

"It's a plumb waste of money to take a newspaper when you're around, Steve," drawled Colter, in amiable derision. "Happen to notice the color of the ladies' eyes?"

The garrulous cowpuncher was on the spot once more. "Sure, I did, leastways one of them. I want to tell you lads that Miss Joyce Seldon is the prettiest skirt that ever hit this neck of the woods--and her eyes, say, they're like pansies, soft and deep and kinder velvety."

The fishermen shouted. Their mirth was hearty and uncontained.

"Go to it, Steve. Tell us some more," they demanded joyously.

Crumbs, generally the leader in all the camp fun, had not joined in the laughter. He had been drawing on his waders and buckling on his creel. Now he slipped the loop of the landing net over his head.

"We want a full bill of particulars, Steve. You go back and size up the eyes of the lady lord and the other female Britishers," ordered Curly gayly.

"Go yore own self, kid. I ain't roundin' up trouble for no babe just out of the cradle," retorted the grinning rider. "What's yore hurry, Crumbs?"

The young man addressed had started away but now turned. "No hurry, I reckon, but I'm going fishing."

Steve chuckled. "You're headed in a bee line for Old Man Trouble. The Johnnie boy up at the Lodge is plumb sore on this outfit. Seems that you lads raised ructions last night and broken his sweet slumbers. He's got the kick of a government mule coming. Why can't you wild Injuns behave proper?"

"We only gave Curly a chapping because he let the flapjacks burn," returned Crumbs with a smile. "You see, he's come of age most, Curly has. He'd ought to be responsible now, but he ain't. So we gave him what was coming to him."

"Well, you explain that to Mr. Verinder if he sees you. He's sure on his hind laigs about it."

"I expect he'll get over it in time," Crumbs said dryly. "Well, so-long, boys. Good fishing to-night."

"Same to you," they called after him.

"Some man, Crumbs," commented Steve.

"He'll stand the acid," agreed Colter briefly.

"What's his last name? I ain't heard you lads call him anything but Crumbs. I reckon that's a nickname."

Curly answered the question of the cowpuncher. "His name 's Kilmeny--Jack Kilmeny. His folks used to live across the water. Maybe this Honorable Miss Kilmeny and her brother are some kin of his."

"You don't say!"

"Course I don't know about that. His dad came over here when he was a wild young colt. Got into some trouble at home, the way I heard it. Bought a ranch out here and married. His family was high moguls in England--or, maybe, it was Ireland. Anyhow, they didn't like Mrs. Kilmeny from the Bar Double C ranch. Ain't that the way of it, Colter?"

The impassive gaze of the older man came back from the rushing river. "You know so much about it, Curly, I'll not butt in with any more misinformation," he answered with obvious sarcasm.

Curly flushed. "I'd ought to know. Jack's father and mine were friends, so's he and me."

"How come you to call him Crumbs?"

"That's a joke, Steve. Jack's no ordinary rip-roaring, hell-raisin' miner. He knows what's what. That's why we call him Crumbs--because he's fine bred. Pun, see. Fine bred--crumbs. Get it?"

"Sure I get it, kid. I ain't no Englishman. You don't need a two-by-four to pound a josh into my cocoanut," the rider remonstrated.

CHAPTER II

MR. VERINDER COMPLAINS

Jack Kilmeny followed the pathway which wound through the woods along the bank of the river. Occasionally he pushed through a thick growth of young willows or ducked beneath the top strand of a neglected wire fence.

Beyond the trees lay a clearing. At the back of this, facing the river, was a large fishing lodge built of logs and finished artistically in rustic style. It was a two-story building spread over a good deal of ground space. A wide porch ran round the front and both sides. Upon the porch were a man in an armchair and a girl seated on the top step with her head against the corner post.

A voice hailed Kilmeny. "I say, my man."

The fisherman turned, discovered that he was the party addressed, and waited.

"Come here, you!" The man in the armchair had taken the cigar from his mouth and was beckoning to him.

"Meaning me?" inquired Kilmeny.

"Of course I mean you. Who else could I mean?"

The fisherman drew near. In his eyes sparkled a light that belied his acquiescence.

"Do you belong to the party camped below?" inquired he of the rocking chair, one eyeglass fixed in the complacent face.

The guilty man confessed.

"Then I want to know what the deuce you meant by kicking up such an infernal row last night. I couldn't sleep a wink for hours--not for hours, dash it. It's an outrage--a beastly outrage. What!"

The man with the monocle was smug with the self-satisfaction of his tribe. His thin hair was parted in the middle and a faint straw-colored mustache decorated his upper lip. Altogether, he might measure five feet five in his boots. The miner looked at him gravely. No faintest hint of humor came into the sea-blue eyes. They took in the dapper Britisher as if he had been a natural history specimen.

"So kindly tell them not to do it again," Dobyans Verinder ordered in conclusion.

"If you please, sir," added the young woman quietly.

Kilmeny's steady gaze passed for the first time to her. He saw a slight dark girl with amazingly live eyes and a lift to the piquant chin that was arresting. His hat came off promptly.

"We didn't know anybody was at the Lodge," he explained.

"You wouldn't, of course," she nodded, and by way of explanation: "Lady Farquhar is rather nervous. Of course we don't want to interfere with your fun, but----"

"There will be no more fireworks at night. One of the boys had a birthday and we were ventilating our enthusiasm. If we had known----"

"Kindly make sure it doesn't happen again, my good fellow," cut in Verinder.

Kilmeny looked at him, then back at the girl. The dapper little man had been weighed and found wanting. Henceforth, Verinder was not on the map.

"Did you think we were wild Utes broke loose from the reservation? I reckon we were some noisy. When the boys get to going good they don't quite know when to stop."

The eyes of the young woman sparkled. The fisherman thought he had never seen a face more vivid. Such charm as it held was too irregular for beauty, but the spirit that broke through interested by reason of its hint of freedom. She might be a caged bird, but her wings beat for the open spaces.

"Were they going good last night?" she mocked prettily.

"Not real good, ma'am. You see, we had no town to shoot up, so we just punctured the scenery. If we had known you were here----"

"You would have come and shot us up," she charged gayly.

Kilmeny laughed. "You're a good one, neighbor. But you don't need to worry." He let his eyes admire her lazily. "Young ladies are too seldom in this neck of the woods for the boys to hurt any. Give them a chance and they would be real good to you, ma'am."

His audacity delighted Moya Dwight. "Do you think they would?"

"In our own barbaric way, of course."

"Do you ever scalp people?" she asked with innocent impudence.

"It's a young country," he explained genially.

"It has that reputation."

"You've been reading stories about us," he charged. "Now we'll be on our good behavior just to show you."

"Thank you--if it isn't too hard."

"They're good boys, though they do forget it sometimes."

"I'm glad they do. They wouldn't interest me if they were too good. What's the use of coming to Colorado if it is going to be as civilized as England?"

Verinder, properly scandalized at this free give and take with a haphazard savage of the wilds, interrupted in the interest of propriety. "I'll not detain you any longer, my man. You may get at your fishing."

The Westerner paid not the least attention to him. "My gracious, ma'am, we think we're a heap more civilized than England. We ain't got any militant suffragettes in this country--at least, I've never met up with any."

"They're a sign of civilization," the young woman laughed. "They prove we're still alive, even if we are asleep."

"We've got you beat there, then. All the women vote here. What's the matter with you staying and running for governor?"

"Could I--really?" she beamed.

"Really and truly. Trouble with us is that we're so civilized we bend over backward with it. You're going to find us mighty tame. The melodramatic romance of the West is mostly in storybooks. What there was of it has gone out with the cowpuncher."

"What's a cowpuncher?"

"He rides the range after cattle."

"Oh--a cowboy. But aren't there any cowboys?"

"They're getting seldom. The barb wire fence has put them out of business. Mostly they're working for the moving picture companies now," he smiled.

Mr. Verinder prefaced with a formal little cough a second attempt to drive away this very assured native. "As I was saying, Miss Dwight, I wouldn't mind going into Parliament, you know, if it weren't for the bally labor members. I'm rather strong on speaking--that sort of thing, you know. Used to be a dab at it. But I couldn't stand the bounders that get in nowadays. Really, I couldn't."

"And I had so counted on the cowboys. I'm going to be disappointed, I think," Miss Dwight said to the Westerner quietly.

Verinder had sense enough to know that he was being punished. He had tried to put the Westerner out of the picture and found himself eliminated instead. An angry flush rose to his cheeks.

"That's the mistake you all make," Kilmeny told her. "The true romance of the West isn't in its clothes and its trappings."

"Where is it?" she asked.

"In its spirit--in the hope and the courage born of the wide plains and the clean hills--in its big democracy and its freedom from convention. The West is a condition of mind."

Miss Dwight was surprised. She had not expected a philosophy of this nature from her chance barbarian. He had the hands of a working man, brown and sinewy but untorn; yet there was the mark of distinction in the lean head set so royally on splendid shoulders. His body, spare of flesh and narrow of flank, had the lithe grace of a panther. She had seen before that look of competence, of easy self-reliance. Some of the men of her class had it--Ned Kilmeny, for instance. But Ned was an officer in a fighting regiment which had seen much service. Where had this tanned fisherman won the manner that inheres only in a leader of men?

"And how long does it take to belong to your West?" asked the young woman, with the inflection of derision.

But her mockery was a fraud. In both voice and face was a vivid eagerness not to be missed.

"Time hasn't a thing to do with it. Men live all their lives here and are never Westerners. Others are of us in a day. I think you would qualify early."

She knew that she ought to snub his excursion into the personal, but she was by nature unconventional.

"How do you know?" she demanded quickly.

"That's just a guess of mine," he smiled.

A musical voice called from within the house. "Have you seen my Graphic, Moya?"

A young woman stood in the doorway, a golden-white beauty with soft smiling eyes that showed a little surprise at sight of the fisherman. A faint murmur of apology for the interruption escaped her lips.

Kilmeny could not keep his eyes from her. What a superb young creature she was, what perfection in the animal grace of the long lines of the soft rounded body! Her movements had a light buoyancy that was charming. And where under heaven could a man hope to see anything lovelier than this pale face with its crown of burnished hair so lustrous and abundant?

Miss Dwight turned to her friend. "I haven't seen the Graphic, Joyce, dear."

"Isn't it in the billiard room? Thought I saw it there. I'll look," Verinder volunteered.

"Good of you," Miss Joyce nodded, her eyes on the stranger who had turned to leave.

Kilmeny was going because he knew that he might easily outwear his welcome. He had punished Verinder, and that was enough. The miner had met too many like him not to know that the man belonged to the family of common or garden snob. No doubt he rolled in wealth made by his father. The fellow had studied carefully the shibboleths of the society with which he wished to be intimate and was probably letter-perfect. None the less, he was a bounder, a rank outsider tolerated only for his money. He might do for the husband of some penniless society girl, but he would never in the world be accepted by her as a friend or an equal. The thought of him stirred the gorge of the fisherman. Very likely the man might capture for a wife the slim dark girl with the quick eyes, or even her friend, Joyce, choicest flower in a garden of maidens. Nowadays money would do anything socially.

"Cheekiest beggar I ever saw," fumed Verinder. "Don't see why you let the fellow stay, Miss Dwight."

The girl's scornful eyes came round to meet his. She had never before known how cordially she disliked him.

"Don't you?"

She rose and walked quickly into the house.

Verinder bit his mustache angrily. He had been cherishing a fiction that he was in love with Miss Dwight and more than once he had smarted beneath the lash of her contempt.

Joyce sank gracefully into the easiest chair and flashed a dazzling smile at him. "Has Moya been very unkind, Mr. Verinder?"

He had joined the party a few days before at Chicago and this was the first sign of interest Miss Seldon had shown in him. Verinder was grateful.

"Dashed if I understand Miss Dwight at all. She blows hot and cold," he confided in a burst of frankness.

"That's just her way. We all have our moods, don't we? I mean we poor women. Don't all the poets credit us with inconstancy?" The least ripple of amusement at her sex swelled in her throat and died away.

"Oh, by Jove, if that's all! I say, do you have moods too, Miss Joyce?"

Her long thick lashes fluttered down to the cheeks. Was she embarrassed at his question? He felt a sudden lift of the heart, an access of newborn confidence. Dobyans Verinder had never dared to lift his hopes as high as the famous beauty Joyce Seldon. Now for the first time his vanity stirred. Somehow--quite unexpectedly to him--the bars between them were down. Was it possible that she had taken a fancy to him? His imagination soared.

For a moment her deep pansy eyes rested in his. He felt a sudden intoxication of the senses. Almost with a swagger he drew up a chair and seated himself beside her. Already he was the conquering male in headlong pursuit. Nor was he disturbed by the least suspicion of having been filled with the sensations and the impulses that she had contrived.

Miss Seldon had that morning incidentally overheard Lady Farquhar tell her husband that Dobyans Verinder's fortune must be nearer two million pounds than one million. It was the first intimation she had been given that he was such a tremendous catch.

CHAPTER III

NIGHT FISHING

Jack Kilmeny crossed the river by the rope ferry and followed the trail that ran up. He took the water above the Narrows, about a mile and a half from camp. The mosquitoes were pretty bad near the willows along the shore, but as he got out farther they annoyed him less and with the coming of darkness they ceased to trouble.

The fish were feeding and he had a few strikes. Half a dozen eight and nine-inch trout went into his creel, but though he was fishing along the edge of the deep water, the big fellows would not be tempted. His watch showed a quarter to ten by the moon when at last he hooked one worth while.

He was now down by the riffles not far from the Lodge. A long cast brought him what fishermen along the Gunnison call a bump. Quietly he dropped his fly in exactly the same spot. There was a tug, a flash of white above the water, and, like an arrow, the trout was off. The reel whirred as the line unwound. Kilmeny knew by the pressure that he had hooked a good one and he played it carefully, keeping the line taut but not allowing too much strain on it. After a short sharp fight he drew the fish close enough to net the struggler. Of the Lochleven variety, he judged the weight of the trout to be about two pounds.

He would have liked to try another cast, but it was ten o'clock, the limit set by law. He waded ashore, resolved to fish the riffles again to-morrow.

Next day brought Kilmeny the office of camp cook, which was taken in turn by each of the men. Only two meals a day were eaten in camp, so that he had several hours of leisure after the breakfast things were cleared away. In a desultory fashion he did an hour or two of fishing, though his mind was occupied with other things.

The arrival of the party at the Lodge brought back to him vividly some chapters of his life that had long been buried. His father, Archibald Kilmeny, had married the daughter of a small cattleman some years after he had come to Colorado. Though she had died while he was still a child, Jack still held warmly in his heart some vivid memories of the passionate uncurbed woman who had been his mother.

She had been a belle in the cow country, charming in her way, beautiful to the day of her death, but without education or restraint. Her husband had made the mistake of taking her back to Ireland on a visit to his people. The result had been unfortunate. She was unconquerably provincial, entirely democratic, as uncultured as her native columbine. Moreover, her temper was of the whirlwind variety. The staid life of the old country, with its well-ordered distinctions of class and rutted conventions, did not suit her at all. At traditions which she could not understand the young wife scoffed openly. Before she left, veiled dislike became almost open war. The visit had never been repeated, nor, indeed, had she ever been invited again. This she had bitterly resented and she had instilled into Jack the antagonism she herself felt. When he was eight years old Jack's father had insisted on taking him back to meet his relatives. Immediately upon his return the youngster's mother had set about undermining any fondness he might have felt for his British kindred. Three years later she had died.

She had been a doting mother, with fierce gusts of passionate adoration for her boy. Jack remembered these after he forgot her less amiable qualities. He had grown up with an unreasonable feeling of dislike toward those of his father's family who had failed to get along with her. Some instinct of loyalty which he could hardly define set him unconsciously in antagonism to his cousins at the Lodge. He had decided not to make himself known to them. In a few days their paths would diverge again for all time.

Dusk found him again in the river just above the riffles. He fished down the stream slowly, shortening his line as darkness settled over the hills. His luck was rather worse than usual. The trout were nosing the flies rather than striking with any appetite.

He was nearly opposite the Lodge when he noticed a fisherman in front of him. Working steadily forward, Kilmeny found himself gaining on the other. In order not to pass too near he struck out into the deeper water toward the center of the river. When almost opposite the other he heard a splash not twenty feet away, followed by the whirr of the reel as the trout made for the deep water. From the shadows where his unknown companion was obscured came the click of the line being wound up. There was a flash of silver in the moonlight, and again the rapid whirl of the reel.

"You've hooked a whale, neighbor," Kilmeny called across.

The voice that came back to him across the water was eager and glad. Jack would have known its throb of youthful zest among a thousand. "Must I let him have all the line he wants?"

Kilmeny waded toward her as he gave counsel. "Don't make it too easy for him, but don't jerk. Keep his nose up if you can."

The humming of the reel and the steady click-click-click of the winding alternated. The trout fought gamely and strongly, but the young woman stuck to her work and would not give him any rest. Jack watched her carefully. He saw that she was tiring, but he did not offer any help, for he knew that she was a sportsman. She would want to win alone or not at all.

Yet he moved closer. The water was up to her hips, and no river in the Rockies has a swifter current than the Gunnison. The bottom too is covered with smooth slippery stones and bowlders, so that a misstep might send her plunging down. Deprived of the use of her landing pole, she could make less resistance to the tug of the stream, and the four or five pounds of dynamic energy at the end of her line would give her all she could do to take care of for the next few minutes. Her pole was braced against her body, which made reeling difficult. The man beside her observed that except for a tendency to raise the pole too much she was playing her trout like a veteran.

The thing that he had anticipated happened. Her foot slipped from its insecure rock hold and she stumbled. His arm was round her waist in an instant.

"Steady! Take your time."

"Thanks. I'm all right now."

His right arm still girdled her slight figure. It met with his approval that she had not cried out or dropped her pole, but he would not take the chance of an accident.

[Illustration: "HE'S HOOKED PRETTY FAST. TAKE YOUR TIME ABOUT GETTING HIM INTO YOUR NET. THESE BIG FELLOWS ARE LIKELY TO SQUIRM AWAY." (p. 33)]

The trout was tiring. Inch by inch she brought him nearer. Sometimes he would dart away again, but each dash for liberty was shorter and weaker than the last.

Presently she panted, "My landing net."

It was caught in the creel. Kilmeny unfastened the net and brought it round where it would be ready for instant use.

"Tell me what I must do now."

"He's hooked pretty fast. Take your time about getting him into your net, and be careful then. These big fellows are likely to squirm away."

It was a ticklish moment when she let go of the rod with her left hand to slip the net under the trout, but she negotiated it in safety.

"Isn't he a whopper?" she cried in delight. "He won't go into the creel at all."

"Then let me have him. The glory is yours. I'll be your gillie to carry the game bag."

He got his fingers through its gill before he took the hook from the mouth of the fish. Carrying the trout in one hand and his pole in the other, he waded slowly through the swift water to the shore.

The girl's vibrant voice came to him as she splashed at his heels toward the bank. "He's such a ripping good one. I'm so pleased. How much do you think he will weigh?"

The young man took the catch far enough back from the river, so that they could examine him in safety.

"My guess is six pounds. He's the biggest taken this year so far. I congratulate you, Miss Dwight."

"I would never have got him if you hadn't been there to help me with advice. But I really did it all myself, didn't I? If you had touched the rod before I had him netted I'd never have forgiven you," she confessed, eyes glowing with the joy of her achievement.

"It's no joke to land one of these big fellows. I saw you were tired. But it's the sporting thing to play your own fish."

Her dark eyes flashed a questioning glance at him. She had been brought up in a society where class lines were closely drawn, but her experience gave her no data for judging this young man's social standing. Casual inquiries of old Ballard, the caretaker at the Lodge, had brought her the information that the party of fishermen were miners from the hills. This one went by the name of Crumbs and sometimes Jack. What puzzled Miss Dwight was the difficulty of reconciling him with himself. Sometimes he used the speech and the slow drawl of the plainsman, and again he spoke with the correctness of one who has known good society. In spite of his careless garb he had the look of class. The well-shaped, lightly poised head, the level blue eyes of a man unafraid, the grace with which he carried himself, all denied that he was an uncouth rustic.

A young woman of impulse, she yielded to an audacious one now. "I'm glad you let me do the sporting thing, Mr.--Crumbs."

His gentle laughter welled out. "Where did you get that?"

"Isn't it your name?" she asked, with a lift of the dark eyebrows.

He hesitated, barely an instant. Of course she knew perfectly well that it was not his name. But it suited him not to give one more definite.

"I reckon it's a name good enough to bring me to dinner by," he drawled, smiling.

He was back again in the Western idiom and manner. She wondered why. The change had come when she had spoken his name. A certain wariness had settled over his face like a mask. She could see that he was purposely taking refuge in the class distinctions that presumably separated them. Yet she could have sworn that nothing had been farther from his mind during the exciting ten minutes in the water while voice and presence and arm had steadied her for the battle.

They walked together up the slope to the big house. A fishing costume is not a thing of grace, but the one this girl wore could not eclipse the elastic suppleness of the slender figure or the joy in life that animated the vivid face with the black curls straying from beneath the jaunty cap. The long hip waders she wore so briskly gave her the look of a modern Rosalind. To deny her beauty was easy, but in the soft sifted moonlight showered down through the trees it was impossible for Kilmeny's eyes to refuse her an admission of charm. There was a hint of pleasant adventure in the dusky eyes of this clean-limbed young nymph, a plastic energy in the provoking dainty face, that stung his reluctant admiration. She had the gift for comradeship, and with it a freedom of mind unusual in one of her class.

She ran up the steps of the Lodge lightly and thanked him with a pleasant "Good-night." As he turned away Kilmeny came face to face with another fisherman returning from the sport of the night. The man opposite him was rather short and thickset. In his eyes was a look of kind shrewd wisdom. Red-faced and white-bearded, he was unmistakably an Englishman of the upper class.

Miss Dwight introduced him as Lord Farquhar, and the men shook hands.

"Guess what I've got," demanded the young woman, her hands behind her.

"Heaven only knows. It might be anything from the measles to a new lover," smiled Farquhar.

She flashed upon him the fish that had been hidden behind her waders.

"By Jove! Catch him yourself?"

She nodded, her eyes shining.

Farquhar, very much a sportsman, wanted to know all about it, after which he insisted on weighing the trout. Jack was dragged into the Lodge to join in this function, and presently found himself meeting Lady Farquhar, a pleasant plump lady who did not at all conform to the usual stage conception of her part. Her smile was warm for this supple blue-eyed engaging Westerner, but the latter did not need to be told that behind her friendliness the instinct of the chaperone was alert. The one swift glance she had thrown at Miss Dwight told him as much.

Into the room drifted presently Miss Seldon, a late novel in her hand. In contrast with her sheathed loveliness Miss Dwight looked like a young girl. There was something very sweet and appealing in Moya's slim indefinite figure of youth, with its suggestion of developing lines, but most men ceased to look at her when Joyce swam within the orbit of their vision.

Joyce Seldon was frankly a beauty in every line and feature. Her exquisite coloring, the soft amber hair so extravagant in quantity, the long lashes which shaded deep lovely eyes, satisfied the senses no less than the supple rounded young body which was carried with such light grace. Kilmeny was not very impressionable, but in her presence the world seemed somehow shot through with a new radiance. She laid upon him the spell of women.

Presently Dobyans Verinder dropped in with an empty creel and opened wide supercilious eyes at sight of Jack. He was followed presently by Captain Kilmeny and his sister, the latter a pretty Irish girl, quick of tongue, quicker of eye, and ready for anything from flirting to fishing.

From the talk, Jack gathered that Lord Farquhar and Miss Dwight had bet their catch would outweigh that of the other three, Farquhar and she to fish opposite the Lodge and the others half a mile below. The minority party had won easily, thanks to the big trout and Verinder's obstinacy in sticking to the flies he had used in England with success. There is a type of Englishman that goes through life using the flies he was brought up on and trying to make them fit all places and times. Any divergence is a form of treason. Neither Farquhar nor Kilmeny happened to be of that kind. They besieged the American with questions and soon had a pretty fair idea of fishing on the Gunnison.

"I should think you would ask me. I thought I was the one that catches the big fish," suggested Miss Dwight, who had just returned from having changed into more conventional attire.

"Make a habit of it, my dear, and we will," Lord Farquhar assured her.

"Once is enough, Moya. I can't afford a pair of gloves every evening," India Kilmeny protested.

"By Jove, leave some of the big ones for us, Miss Dwight," implored the captain. He was a spare wiry man, with the long clean build one expects to see in soldiers. Long residence in India had darkened his skin to an almost coffee brown, except for a wintry apple red where the high cheek bones seemed about to push through.

Supper, to which Lady Farquhar had insisted that the American stay, was being served informally in the living-room. Verinder helped himself to a sandwich, ogling Moya the while with his eyeglass.

"I say, you know, I believe in you, Miss Dwight," he asserted.

That young woman did not know why she resented more than usual his wheedling attentions. Lady Jim had invited the millionaire to join their party, as the girl very well knew, in order to give her charges a chance at him. Not that Lady Farquhar liked the man. She knew him quite well for an ill-bred little snob at heart. But he would pass muster in a crowd, and none of the young women of the party could afford to sniff at two millions sterling. It was entirely probable that Joyce, with her beauty and her clear vision of the need of money in the scheme of things, would marry as well as if she had a mother to look out for her. But Lady Jim felt it her duty to plan for India and Moya. She was more anxious about Miss Dwight than the other Irish girl, for Moya was likely to bolt the traces. Her friendships with men were usually among ineligibles. Verinder had shown a decided drift in her direction, but the girl had not encouraged him in the least. If she had been possessed of an independent fortune she could not have been more airily indifferent to his advances.

Since Captain Kilmeny had joined the party in Denver the plans of Lady Farquhar had been modified. The soldier had taken an early opportunity to tell her that he meant to ask Moya Dwight to marry him. He had been in love with her for years and had asked her just before his regiment left for India the last time. The captain was not rich, but he had enough. It happened too that he was a clean honest gentleman who had made a reputation for efficiency and gallantry in the army. If he was not brilliant, he was at least thorough. Lady Farquhar was quite willing to back his suit so far as she could.

"He's our kind, Ned Kilmeny is," she had told her husband. "I gave Moya her chance with Verinder but I should have been disappointed in her if she had taken him. If she will only fall in love with Ned I'll forgive her all the queer things she is always doing."

Farquhar had chuckled. "It's an odds-on chance she'll not fancy him, Di."

"For Heaven's sake, why not?" his wife had asked impatiently. "Does she expect to marry an emperor?"

"I don't know what she expects. The subject of matrimony is not all-important to Moya yet. But some day it will be--and then may I be there to see!"

"You're so ridiculously wrapped up in her," Lady Jim accused with a smile. "Why do you expect her love affair to be so interesting? For my part, I think Ned quite good enough for her."

"Oh, he's good enough. That isn't quite the point, is it? Moya wants to be stormed, to be swept from her feet into the arms of the man she is ready to love. A sort of a Lochinvar business--full of thrills and great moments. Ned can't give her those."

"No, I suppose not. Pity she can't be sensible."

"There are enough of us sensible, Di. We can spare her a few years yet for romance. When she grows sensible she'll have to give up something she can't afford to lose."

His wife looked at him and smiled fondly. "You haven't quite lost it yourself, Jim."

It was true enough that Lord Farquhar retained an interest in life that was refreshing. This evening his eyes gleamed while the Westerner told of the frontier day program to be held at the little town of Gunnison next day.

"You and your friends are miners, I understand. You'll not take part, then?" he asked.

"I used to punch cows. My name is entered for the riding. The boys want me to take a turn."

India Kilmeny sat up straight. "Let's go. We can ride up in the morning. It will be jolly. All in favor of going eat another sandwich."

"It will be pretty woolly--quite different from anything you have seen," the miner suggested.

"Thought we came here to fish," Verinder interposed. "Great bore looking at amateur shows--and it's a long ride."

"Move we go. What say, Lady Farquhar?" put in Captain Kilmeny.

"Do let's go," Moya begged.

"I don't see why we shouldn't," Lady Farquhar smiled. "But I'm like Mr. Verinder about riding. If he'll drive me up the rest of you can go on horseback."

"Delighted, 'm sure."

Verinder came to time outwardly civil but inwardly fuming. What the deuce did Lady Farquhar mean? Captain Kilmeny would have five hours clear with Miss Dwight and Miss Seldon during the ride back and forth. Ever since the soldier had joined the party things had been going badly.

"If we're going it's time you girls were in bed. You've had a hard day and to-morrow will be another," Lady Jim pronounced.

The Westerner rose to go.

"Night's young yet. Stop and sit in with us to a game of poker. What!" Farquhar invited.

"My pocketbook is at the camp," the American demurred.

"I'll be your banker," his host volunteered.

The ladies said good-night and departed. Chairs were drawn to the card table, chips sold, and hands dealt. The light of morning was breaking before Kilmeny made his way back to camp. He had in his pockets one hundred seventy three dollars, most of which had recently been the property of Dobyans Verinder.

An early start for Gunnison had been agreed upon by the fishermen at the camp. To go to bed now was hardly worth while. Jack took a towel from the willow bush upon which it was hanging, went down to the river, stripped, and from a rock ten feet above a deep pool dived straight as an arrow into the black water. The swirl of the current swept him into the shallower stream below. He waded ashore, beautiful in his supple slimness as an Apollo, climbed the rock a second time, and again knew the delightful shock of a dive into icy water fresh from the mountain snows.

Ten minutes later he wakened the camp by rattling the stove lids.

"Oh, you sluggards! Time to hit the floor," he shouted.

CHAPTER IV

FUGITIVES FROM JUSTICE

At the Lodge too an early breakfast was held, though it was five hours later than the one at the camp. The whole party was down by nine-thirty and was on the road within the hour. The morning was such a one as only the Rockies can produce. The wine of it ran through the blood warm and stimulating. A blue sky flecked with light mackerel clouds stretched from the fine edge of the mountains to the ragged line of hills that cut off the view on the other side.

The horses were keen for the road and the pace was brisk. It was not until half the distance had been covered that Joyce, who was riding beside the captain, found opportunity for conversation.

"You sat up late, didn't you?"

"Early," the soldier laughed.

"How did the savage behave himself?"

"He went the distance well. We all contributed to the neat little roll he carried away." Kilmeny smiled as he spoke. He was thinking of Verinder, who had made a set against the miner and had tried to drive him out by the size of his raises. The result had been unfortunate for the millionaire.

"He has a good deal of assurance, hasn't he?" she asked lightly.

The captain hesitated. "Do you think that's quite the word? He fitted in easily--wasn't shy or awkward--that sort of thing, you know--but he wasn't obtrusive at all. Farquhar likes him."

"He's rather interesting," Joyce admitted.

She thought of him as a handsome untamed young barbarian, but it was impossible for her to deny a certain amount of regard for any virile man who admired her. The Westerner had not let his eyes rest often upon her, but the subtle instinct of her sex had told her that he was very much taken with her. Since Joyce Seldon was the center and circumference about which most of her thoughts revolved, it followed that the young man had chosen the sure way to her favor.

Moya Dwight too found that the young fisherman flitted in and out of her mind a good deal. He had told her, with that sardonic smile, that he was a workingman. Indeed, there had been something almost defiant in the way he had said it, as if he would not for a moment accept their hospitality on false pretenses. But, surely, he was worlds apart from any laborer she had ever seen. Last evening he had been as much at his ease as Lord Farquhar himself. A little uncertainty about the use of the spoons and forks had not disturbed him at all. In spite of the soft vocal elisions of the West, his speech had a dignity that suggested breeding. It was quite likely he was not a gentleman, according to the code in which she had been brought up, but it was equally sure there burned in him that dynamic spark of self-respect which is at the base of all good manners.

The little town of Gunnison rioted with life. Born and brought up as she had been in the iron caste of modern super-civilization, Moya found the barbaric color of the occasion very appealing. As she looked down on the arena from the box her party occupied, the heart of the girl throbbed with the pure joy of it all. She loved this West, with its picturesque chap-clad brown-faced riders. They were a hard-bitten lot, burned to a brick red by the untempered sun of the Rockies. Cheerful sons of mirth they were, carrying their years with a boyish exuberance that was delightful.

Most of the competitors for the bucking broncho championship had been eliminated before the arrival of the party from the Lodge. Among the three who had reached the finals was their guest of the previous evening.

"Jack Kilmeny will ride Teddy Roosevelt," blared the megaphone man.

The English officer turned to Farquhar. "Didn't quite catch the name. Sounded like my own."

"That's what I thought," contributed his sister. A moment later, she added: "Why, it's Mr. Crumbs."

That young man sauntered forward lazily, dragging his saddle by its horn. He saddled the trembling animal warily, then swung lightly to the seat. The broncho stood for an instant motionless, then humped itself from the earth, an incarnate demon of action. As a pitcher, a weaver, a sunfisher, this roan had no equal. Its ill-shaped nose and wicked red eyes were enough to give one bad dreams. But the lean-flanked young miner appeared clamped to the saddle. Lithe and sinuous as a panther, he rode with a perfect ease that was captivating. Teddy tried all its tricks. It went up into the air and came down with all four legs stiff as iron posts. It shot forward in a series of quick sharp bucks. It flung itself against the wall of the arena to crush the leg of this rider who held the saddle with such perfect poise. But Jack Kilmeny was equal to the occasion and more. When the brute went over backward, in a somersault, he was out of the saddle and in again before the vicious outlaw had staggered to its feet. Even the frontier West had never seen a more daring and magnificent piece of horsemanship.

Captain Kilmeny clapped his hands enthusiastically. "Bravo! Well done!" He turned to Moya, who sat beside him. "Finest bit of rough-riding I ever saw. Not one man in a million could have done it."

"It's all in getting the hang of the thing, you know," drawled Verinder complacently.

Moya, who was leaning forward with her dark eyes fixed on the two superb animals fighting for mastery in the arena, thought both comments characteristic. The captain was a sportsman and a gentleman, the millionaire was neither.

India whispered in the ear of Moya. "He's as broadminded as a crab, just about."

The reference was of course to Verinder. "I think we ought to be fair, even to a crab, dear," Miss Dwight answered dryly.

The battle between the outlaw broncho and its rider was over. The confidence of Teddy Roosevelt as well as its strength had been shaken. The bucks of the pony were easy to foresee. Presently they ceased. The horse stood with drooping head, foam dripping from its mouth, flanks flecked with sweat stains.

Kilmeny swung from the saddle, and at the same time Colter stepped into the arena. He drew Jack aside and whispered in his ear. India, watching the rough-rider through field glasses, saw the face of the young man grow grim and hard. Without the delay of a moment he pushed through the crowd that gathered to congratulate him and walked out of the grounds with Colter.

The other two riders who had reached the finals were both experts in the saddle. One of them, however, had been traveling with a Wild West show and was too soft to hold his own against the bit of incarnate deviltry he was astride. To save himself he had to clutch at the horn of the saddle.

"He's pulling leather," shouted one of the judges, and the man was waved aside.

The third cowpuncher made a good showing, but his horse lacked the energy and spirit of Teddy Roosevelt. The unanimous decision of the judges was in favor of Kilmeny. But when they sought for him to award the prize the new champion was nowhere to be found.

Moya Dwight felt with genuine disappointment that the man's courtesy had failed. She and her friends had applauded his exploits liberally. The least he could have done would have been to have made a short call at their box. Instead, he had ignored them. She resolved to bear herself more coldly if they met again.

The early shadows of sunset were stretching down the rough mountain sides by the time the visitors from the Lodge reached the river cañon on their homeward way. Soon after this the champion rider and his friend Colter passed them on a stretch of narrow road cut in the steep wall of the gulch. The leathery face of the latter took them in impassively as he gave them a little nod of recognition, but the younger man reined in for a few words. He accepted their congratulations with a quiet "Glad you enjoyed it," but it was plain that he was in a hurry. In his eyes there was a certain hard wariness that seemed hardly to fit the occasion. Moya could not avoid the impression that he was anxious about something. As soon as he well could he put spurs to his horse and cantered after his companion.

"I don't like your savage as well as I thought I was going to. If he can't be pleasanter than that you may keep him yourself, Moya," Joyce announced with a smile.

It was perhaps a quarter of an hour later that the sound of hard riding reached them from the rear. Five dusty, hard-bitten men, all armed with rifles and revolvers, drew level with them. The leader threw a crisp question at Lord Farquhar.

"Two riders pass you lately?"

"Yes."

"One on a big sorrel and the other on a roan with white stockings on the front feet?"

"Yes."

"Say anything?"

"The younger one stopped for a few words. He is a Mr. Crumbs, camped on the river just below us."

The lank man with the rifle across his saddle bow laughed grimly. "Yes, he is--not. His name is Kilmeny--Jack Kilmeny. I'm the sheriff of Gunnison County--and I want him bad."

"Did you say Kilmeny?" asked the captain sharply.

"That's what I said--the man that won the broncho busting contest to-day."

To Moya, looking around upon the little group of armed men, there was a menacing tenseness in their manner. Her mind was groping for an explanation, but she understood this much--that the law was reaching out for the devil-may-care youth who had so interested her.

"What do you want with him? What has he done?" she cried quickly.

"He and his friend held up the gatekeeper of the fair association and got away with three thousand dollars."

"Held up! Do you mean robbed?"

"That's what I mean--vamoosed with the whole proceeds of the show. How long since they passed?"

"Between a quarter and half an hour," answered Farquhar.

The sheriff nodded. "All ready, boys."

The clattering hoofs disappeared in a cloud of dust down the road.

The rough places of life had been padded for all these young women. Never before had they come so close to its raw, ugly seams. The shadow of the law, the sacredness of caste, had always guarded them.

India turned upon her brother big dilated eyes. "He said Kilmeny. Who can the man be?"

"I don't know." He was silent a moment in frowning thought, struck by an unwelcome idea. "You remember Uncle Archie. He had a son named Jack who lives somewhere in Colorado. D'ye remember he came home when you were a little kiddie? Stopped at granddad's."

The girl nodded. "He fought you once, didn't he?"

The captain nodded. The doubt began to grow into certainty. "Thought I had seen his face before. He's our cousin Jack. That's who he is."

"And now he's a highwayman. By Jove, he doesn't look it," contributed Farquhar.

"I don't believe it. Such nonsense!" flamed Moya.

"Fancy! A real live highwayman to supper with us," Joyce reminded them with sparkling eyes.

"I'm sure he isn't. There must be a mistake."

"He was troubled about something, Moya," Lord Farquhar suggested. "He and his friend were riding fast and plainly in a hurry."

"Didn't he stop to talk?"

"He had to do that to avoid suspicion. I could see his mind wasn't on what he was saying. The man was anxious."

"I thought you liked him," Moya charged scornfully.

Her guardian smiled. "I did, but that isn't evidence that will acquit him in court of being a road agent."

"He's India's cousin--maybe. How could he be a criminal? Shall we have to cut her and Captain Kilmeny now?" Miss Dwight demanded hotly.

The captain laughed, but there was no mirth in his laughter. "You're a stanch friend, Miss Dwight. By Jove, I hope you're right about him."

Deep in her heart Moya was not at all sure. What did she know of him? And why should she care what he was? The man was a stranger to her. Forty-eight hours ago she had never seen him. Why was it that every good looking vagabond with a dash of the devil in him drew on her sympathies? She recalled now that he had hesitated when she had mentioned his name, no doubt making up his mind to let her think him other than he was. The sheriff must know what he was talking about when he said the man was an outlaw. But the appearance of him pleaded potently. Surely those clear unflinching eyes were not the homes of villainy. Nor could she find it possible to think his gallant grace of bearing the possession of a miscreant.

Before the day was out her faith in him had sunk to zero. Captain Kilmeny returned from the camp of the miners with the news that it was deserted except for two of the deputies who had stayed to guard it against the possible return of the robbers. He brought with him the detailed story of the hold-up.

Two masked men on horseback had robbed the treasurer of the Gunnison County Fair association as he was driving to the bank to deposit the receipts of the day. The men had not been recognized, but the description of the horses corresponded closely to those ridden by Kilmeny and Colter. It was recalled that these two men had disappeared as soon as the bucking broncho contest was over, not half an hour before the robbery. This would allow them just time to return to the corral on the outskirts of the town, where they had left their mounts, and to saddle so as to meet the treasurer on his way to the bank. It happened that the corral was deserted at the time, the boy in charge having left to see the finals of the contest. Cumulative evidence of guilt lay in the disappearance from the fishing camp not only of the two men suspected, but also of their companions, Curly and Mosby.

"Think he really did it, Ned?" India asked her brother.

"Can't say, sis. Looks like it," he answered gloomily.

Of the party at the Lodge only one member was pleased at the turn events had taken. Verinder's manner was as openly triumphant as he dared allow it to become. It cried offensively, "I told you so!"

CHAPTER V

"I'M HERE, NEIGHBOR"

Moya still rode afternoons with her friends, fished occasionally, and took her regular hand at bridge. But it was unaccountably true that her zest in these amusements was gone. She could give no satisfactory reason for it, but she felt as if something had passed out of her life forever. It was as if the bubbling youth in her were quenched. The outstanding note of her had been the eagerness with which she had run out to meet new experiences. Now she found herself shrinking from them. Whenever she could the girl was glad to slip away by herself. To the charge that she was in love with this young vagabond she would have given a prompt denial. Nevertheless, Lady Farquhar recognized the symptoms as dangerous.

On the fifth day after the Gunnison trip the young people at the Lodge made a party to fish Sunbeam Creek. They followed the stream far into the hills, riding along the trail which bordered it. Kilmeny and Verinder carried lunch baskets, for they were to make a day of it and return only in time for a late dinner.

Moya made her brave pretense of gayety. With alacrity she responded to Verinder's challenge of a bet on the relative sizes of their catches. But as soon as the rest were out of sight she sat down in a shady spot and fell to musing.

How long she sat there, a sun-dappled nymph upon whom gleams of light filtered through the leaves of the aspens, she had not the least idea. The voice of a grizzled rider startled her from her dreams. Her lifted eyes took in the grim look of the man, garnished with weapons ready to his hands.

"Mornin', miss," he nodded amiably.

"Good-morning." And swift on the heels of it, "You are a deputy sheriff, are you not?"

"Rung the bell, ma'am. You belong to the English outfit, I reckon."

She smiled. "I suppose so, though I don't know what an outfit is."

"I mean to Lord What's-his-name's party."

"Yes, I think I do. I'm rather sure of it."

"Funny about some members of your crowd having the same name as the man we're looking for."

"Mr. Kilmeny, you mean?"

"Jack Kilmeny! Yes, ma'am."

"He introduced himself to us, but I don't think the name he went by was Kilmeny. I was told it was Crumbs."

"That's just a joke. His friends call him that because his people are 'way up in G. Fine bred--crumbs. Get the idea?"

"I think so."

"Came from the old country, his father did--son of some big gun over there. Likely he's some kin to your friends."

He put the last observation as a question, with a sharp glance from under his heavy gray eyebrows. Moya chose to regard it as a statement.

"Are you still searching for him?" she asked.

"You bet we are. The sheriff's got a notion he's up in these hills somewheres. A man answering his description was seen by some rancher. But if you ask me, I'd say he was busy losing himself 'way off in Routt County, clear off the map. He used to punch cows up there and he knows all kinds of holes to hide in. It don't stand to reason he'd still be fooling around here. He's bridle-wise and saddle-broke--knows every turn of the road."

"Yes," Moya assented listlessly.

"He had his getaway all planned before ever he came down here. That's a cinch. The fishing was all a bluff. The four of them had the hold-up arranged weeks ago. They've gone into a hole and drawn it in after them."

"Don't you think there's a chance he didn't do it?" she asked in a forlorn way.

"Not a chance. Jack Kilmeny and Colter pulled off the play. What the others had to do with it I don't know."

The deputy passed to the fishing in his conversation, hoped she would have luck, stroked his white goatee, and presently departed.

The man had scarcely disappeared around a bend in the gulch before a sound startled her. Moya turned quickly, to see a man drop down the face of a large rock to the ground. Even before he turned she recognized that pantherine grace and her heart lost a beat.

He came straight toward her, with the smile in his blue eyes that claimed comradeship as a matter of course.

"You--here," she gasped.

"I'm here, neighbor. Where ought I to be--in Routt County losing myself?"

Her little hand was lost in his big brown fist, her gaze locked in his.

"You heard him?"

"Couldn't help it. I was working down through that grove of pines to the river when I saw him."

"He may come back." Her quick glance went up the gulch into which the deputy had disappeared.

"I reckon not. Let's sit down and talk."

Her first thought had been of his danger, but she remembered something else now. "No, I think not, Mr. Kilmeny."

The deep eyes that met his steadily had in them the rapier flash. He smiled.

"Because I am a miscreant, I reckon," he drawled.

"You say it, not I."

"Now you're dodging, neighbor. You think it."

"If so, do I think more than the truth?"

A ripple of sardonic laughter stirred in him. "I see you have me convicted and in the penitentiary already."

"Your actions convict you."

"So you think. Isn't it just possible you don't understand them?" There was the faintest hint of derision in his polite inquiry.

A light flashed in her dusky eyes, a shining hope newborn in her eager heart. "Are you telling me that you are innocent?"

"You've been thinking me guilty, then," he countered swiftly.

"What else could I think?"

"You might have waited to hear the defense."

"If you had stayed to make one, but you ran away."

"How do you know I did?"

"You were gone when the officers reached your camp."

His smile was grim and his voice defiant. "There was a man up in the hills I wanted to see in a hurry."

By the look in her eyes it was as if he had struck her. With fine contempt her answer came. "Was there another man up there in the rocks just now that you had to see until the deputy left?"

"Anyhow, there was a young woman down by the banks of Sunbeam I wanted to see after he was gone," the fugitive claimed boldly.

A faint angry flush glowed delicately beneath the olive of her cheeks. "Evasions--nothing but evasions."

She turned away, sick at heart. He had treated with flippancy the chance she had given him. Would an innocent man have done that?

Swift as an arrow his hand shot out, caught her shoulder, and held her firmly. The eyes that lifted to his flamed with proud resentment.

"I'm not going to let you go like this. Don't think it."

"Sir."

"You'll do me justice first." His hand dropped from her shoulder, but the masterful look of him stayed her steps. "You'll tell me what evidence you've got against me."

Again an insurgent hope warmed her heart. Wild he might be, but surely no criminal--if there was any truth in faces.

What she had heard against him she told. "The robbers were riding horses like yours. You left the fair grounds early. You and your friend were seen going into the corral where you had stabled the animals. This was less than half an hour before the robbery. When you passed us on the road you were anxious about something. You looked back two or three times. Both you and Mr. Colter showed you were in a hurry. Then you ran away before the sheriff reached your camp. Does an innocent man do that?" She put her question as an accusation, but in the voice was a little tremble that asked to be refuted.

"Sometimes he does. Now listen to me. The horses ridden by the robbers were Colter's and mine. We certainly were worried about the time we met you. And we did break camp in a hurry so as to miss the sheriff. Does this prove me guilty?"

She brushed away the soft waves of dark hair that had fallen over her forehead in little escaping tendrils. The fearless level eyes of the outdoors West were looking straight at her.

"I don't know. Does it?"

"We'll say this evidence had piled up against Captain Kilmeny instead of against me. Would you have believed him guilty?"

"No. He couldn't have done it."

"On the same evidence you would acquit him and condemn me. Is that fair?"

"I have known him for years--his standards, his ways of thinking. All his life he has schooled himself to run a straight course."

"Whereas I----" He waited, the sardonic frosty smile on his lean strong face.

Moya knew that the flutter of her pulses was telling tales in the pink of her cheeks. "I don't know you."

"I'm only a workingman, and an American at that--so it follows that I must be a criminal," he answered with a touch of bitterness.

"No--no! But you're--different. There's something untamed about you. I don't quite know how to put it--as if you had been brought up without restraints, as if you didn't care much for law."

"Why should I? Law is a weapon to bolster up the rich and keep down the poor," he flung back with an acid smile. "But there's law and law. Even in our class we have our standards, such as they are."

"Now it's you that isn't fair," she told him quietly. "You know I meant nothing like that. The point is that I don't know what your standards are. Law doesn't mean so much to people here. Your blood runs freer, less evenly than ours. You don't let the conventions hamper you."

"The convention of honesty, for instance. Thanks, Miss Dwight."

"I didn't want to believe it, but----"

The penitence in her vivid face pleaded for her. He could not refuse the outstretched hand of this slender lance-straight girl whose sweet vitality was at once so delicate and so gallant. Reluctantly his palm met hers.

"You're quite sure now that I didn't do it?"

"Quite sure."

"Even though I've been brought up badly?"

"Oh, I didn't say badly--really. You know I didn't."

"And though I'm wild and lawless?"

"Aren't you?" she flashed back with a smile that took from the words any sting they might otherwise have had.

Mirth overflowed in his eyes, from which now many little creases radiated. "You're a good one, neighbor. But, since you will have it, I am. I reckon my standards even of honesty wouldn't square with yours. I live in a rough mining camp where questions have two sides. It's up to me to play the game the way the other fellow plays it. But we'll not go into that now."

Strong, clear-eyed and masterful, she knew him a man among ten thousand. He might be capable of great sin, but what he did would be done with his eyes wide open and not from innate weakness. Her heart sang jubilantly. How could she ever have dreamed this crime of him? Her trust was now a thing above any evidence.

"And you'll sit down with me now if I ask you, neighbor," he laughed.

She did not wait to be asked, but sat down, tailor fashion, and looked expectantly up with a humorous little twist of the eyebrows. Flakes of dappled sunlight played on her through the moving leaves and accented the youthful bloom of her.

With a sigh of content he stretched himself on the sun-warmed loam. His glance swept up the gulch, a sword cleft in the hills, passed over the grove of young pines through which he had recently descended, and came back to the slim Irish girl sitting erectly on the turf.

"It's sometimes a mighty good world, neighbor," he said.

"I'm thinking that myself," she admitted, laughter welling softly out of her.

The sun lit the tips of the pines, so that they looked like burnished lances in battle array, poured its beams over the scarred hillside, and bathed the little valley in effulgent glory.

"You can always find it somewhere," he said with deep content, leaning on an elbow indolently.

She asked for no antecedent to his pronoun. What he meant was not ambiguous to her.

"If one knows where to look for it," she added softly.

"That's the trouble. We get so busy with our little everyday troubles that we forget to look. But the joy of life is always there if we'll forget our grouch and see it."

"Yes--if having eyes we see."

"I'm comforted a heap to know that you believe in me--even if I'm not Captain Kilmeny," he assured her with his slow rippling laugh.

Had he been looking at her he would have seen the telltale color tide her cheeks. "If that is a comfort you are welcome to it. I might have known the idea of connecting you with such a thing was folly."

He glanced whimsically at her. "Don't be too sure of me, neighbor. I'm likely to disappoint you. What one person thinks is right another knows is wrong. You'd have to make a heap of allowances for me if I were your friend."

"Isn't that what friendship is for--to make allowances?"

"You've found that out already, have you?"

The long-lashed lids fell to her cheeks in self-defense. Not for worlds would she have had him guess the swift message ready to leap out toward him. He seemed to be drawing her soul to his unconsciously. Tingling in every nerve, athrob with an emotion new and inexplicable, she drew a long slow breath and turned her head away. A hot shame ran like quicksilver through her veins. She whipped herself with her own scorn. Was she the kind of girl that gave her love to a man who did not want it?

His next words brought to her the shock she needed, the effect of a plunge into icy water on a warm day.

"What about your friends--what about Miss Seldon--did she believe me guilty too?" He could not quite keep the self-consciousness out of his voice.

"Hadn't you better ask her that?" she suggested.

In spite of his interest in their talk, Kilmeny's alert eyes had swept again and again the trail leading up the gulch. He did not intend to be caught napping by the officers. Now he rose and offered her a hand up.

"Your friends are coming."

Swiftly Moya came to earth from her emotions. In another moment she was standing beside the fugitive, her gaze on the advancing group. Captain Kilmeny was in the lead and was the first to recognize her companion. If he was surprised, his voice failed to show it.

"No, no, Verinder. I had him hooked all right," he was saying. "Dashed poor generalship lost him. He went into the rushes like a shot. I persuaded him out--had him in the open water. Looked to me like a two to one shot, hang it. Mr. Trout develops a bad break to the off and heads under a big log. Instead of moving down the bank I'm ass enough to reel from where I hooked him. Leader snaps, and Mr. Trout has the laugh on me."

To the sound of that high cheerful voice Moya roused at once. The rapt expression died from her face.

"How many?" called India, holding up her string.

"I haven't been fishing," Moya answered; then gave herself away. "It surely isn't time for luncheon already."

She took a step toward her friends, so that for the first time Jack Kilmeny stood plainly revealed. India's pretty piquant face set to a red-lipped soundless whistle. Joyce stared in frank amusement. Verinder, rutted in caste and respectability as only a social climber dubious of his position can be, ejaculated a "God bless my soul!" and collapsed beyond further articulation. Captain Kilmeny nodded to the Westerner without embarrassment.

"Mornin', Mr. Crumbs."

"Good-morning. But you have the name wrong, sir."

"Beg pardon." The captain's eyebrows lifted in inquiry.

"Kilmeny," the American corrected.

Nonchalantly the captain came to time. "Same name as ours. Wonder if by any chance we're of the same family. Happen to be any relation of Archibald Kilmeny, who died in Colorado fifteen years ago?"

Jack looked at him quietly. "A son."

"Makes us cousins. He was my father's brother."

The Westerner nodded coolly, not in the least impressed. "Yes."

It would have been easy to read hostility in his bearing, but India sailed past her brother with hand extended. "Glad to meet you, Cousin Jack. 'Member me? Last time you saw me I was a squalling five-year-old."

The American warmed a trifle. "I remember you, all right. Never saw a kid before so fond of currant jam."

"Still am. You've improved in your personal appearance. Last time I saw your eye it had been beautifully blacked, kindness of Ned."

"Fortune of war. My lip was swollen for a week," her brother laughed as he extended his hand.

"Ned got caned for fighting with a guest. Served him jolly well right," Miss Kilmeny said.

Joyce sailed forward into the picture gracefully. Her radiant beauty took the Westerner's breath.

"You'll stay with us for luncheon," she said with soft animation. "For, of course, this is an occasion. Long-lost cousins do not meet every day."

Verinder, making speechless sounds of protest at this indiscretion, grew very red in the face. Would he have to sit down to eat with a criminal at large?

Jack hesitated scarcely a second. He could not take his gaze from this superb young creature, whose every motion charmed, whose deep eyes glowed with such a divine warmth of molten gold.

"Thanks awf'lly, but I really can't stay."

He bowed to one and another, turned upon Joyce that look of dumb worship she had seen on the faces of many men, and swung off into the pines, as elastic-heeled, confident, and competent a youth as any of them had seen in many a day.

India's eyes danced. She was Irish enough to enjoy a situation so unusual. "Snubbed, Joyce, by a highwayman," she laughed.

But Joyce merely smiled. She knew what she knew.

"If you ask me, he's got the deuce of a cheek, you know," Verinder fumed.

Miss Kilmeny pounced instantly upon him. "Referring to our cousin, Mr. Verinder?" she demanded sweetly.

"But--er--you said yourself----"

"That was all in the family," she informed him promptly.

Joyce came to the assistance of Verinder with one confidential glance of her incredibly deep eyes of velvet. "Of course he's cheeky. How could he be India's cousin and not be that?" she asked with a rippling little laugh. "Come and help me spread the tablecloth, Mr. Verinder."

Deeply grateful, the millionaire flew to assist.

CHAPTER VI

LORD FARQUHAR GIVES MOYA A HINT

Verinder's man, Biggs, who had been a fascinated spectator of the Wild West sports at Gunnison, was describing them to Fisher, maid to Lady Farquhar and general buttoner-up-the-back to the entire feminine contingent of the party.

"What do you mean when you say a horse bucks?" she wanted to know.

"'E throws down 'is 'ead and 'e throws up 'is 'eels and you cawn't remain," he explained, without entire originality.

"Fancy now!"

"Consequence is the rider lands himpromptu on terra firma, so to hexpress it."

"Dear me. But doesn't it make him dusty, Mr. Biggs?"

"A bit."

"Couldn't Captain Kilmeny ride one of the bronchos?"

"I've 'eard that the captain is a crack rider, none better in the harmy, Miss Fisher. 'E could ride the blawsted brute if it wouldn't 'ide its bloomin' 'ead between its legs."

Moya, patrolling the willow walk in front of the Lodge, took this in with a chuckle.

It was a still night, save only for the rushing waters of the river. The lamps of the sky had all been lit and were gleaming coldly millions of miles away. The shadowed moonlight in the trees offered a stage set to lowered lights.

The thoughts of the girl had drifted to speculation about the transplanted countryman of hers whose personality had come to interest her so greatly. He had challenged her trust in him and she had responded with a pledge. He had not explained a single one of the suspicious circumstances against him. He had not taken her into his confidence, nor had he in so many words declared his innocence. She was glad he had told her nothing, had demanded her faith as a matter of course. It was part of her pride in him that she could believe without evidence. All the world would know he was not guilty after he had shown his proofs. It would be no test of friendship to stand by him then.

A step sounded on the gravel behind her and an arm opened to let her hand slip round the elbow.

"May I stroll out this dance with you, Miss Dwight?" Lord Farquhar asked formally, dropping into step with her.

Moya and her guardian were kindred spirits. They never needed to explain themselves to each other. Both knew how to make-believe.

"If you're not afraid of a scandal at being alone with me so far from a chaperone," the girl answered lightly.

He burlesqued a sigh. "I'm only afraid there won't be any. It's the penalty of age, my dear. I can claim all sorts of privileges without making Verinder jealous."

"Oh, Verinder," she scoffed.

"Should I have said Kilmeny?" he asked.

"I'll tell you a secret, guardy," whispered Moya gayly. "You're a hundred years younger than either of them."

"I wish my glass told me so."

"Fiddlesticks! Youth is in the heart. Mr. Verinder has never been young and Captain Kilmeny has forgotten how to be."

"I fancy Ned would be willing to learn how again if he had the proper teacher."

She gave his arm a little squeeze. "You dear old matchmaker."

"Heaven forbid! I'm merely inquiring, my dear."

"Oh, I see--your in-loco-parentis duty."

"Exactly. So it isn't going to be Ned?"

She looked across the turbid moonlit river before she answered. "I don't think so."

"Nor Verinder?"

"Goodness, no!" A little ripple of laughter flowed from her lips before she added: "He's changed his mind. It's Joyce he wants now."

Farquhar selected a cigar from the case. "Hm! Sure you didn't change it for him?"

A dimple flashed into her cheeks. "I may have helped a little, but not half as much as Joyce."

"That young woman is a born flirt," Lord Farquhar announced, his beard and the lower part of his face in the sudden glow of the lighted match. "Upon my word, I saw her making eyes at your highwayman the night we had him here."

There was a moment's silence before she answered. "Anybody could see that he was interested in her."

"It doesn't matter to me who interests him, but I can't have any of my wards being romantic over a Dick Turpin," he replied lightly.

She was standing in the shadow, so that he could not see the dye sweep into her cheeks.

"I'm afraid he is going to disappoint you. He's not a highwayman at all."

"Did he tell you so?"

"No. But I know it."

"Looks to me as if he might make a good one. The fellow is cool as a cucumber and afraid of nothing on two legs or four."

"You forget he is India's cousin."

"No, I'm remembering that. His father had a devil of a temper and his mother was as wild as an unbroken colt when I met her."

"They weren't thieves, were they?" she flashed.

He gave her his frank smile. "You like this young man, Moya?"

"Yes. Why shouldn't I?"

"Why not--if you don't like him too well?"

"So that's why you came out here--sent by Lady Farquhar to scold me--and I thought you had come because you like to be with me."

"One reason doesn't preclude the other."

"I've known for several days she had it on her mind--ever since we saw Mr. Kilmeny on Sunbeam Creek."

"Come; let us reason together," he invited cheerfully. "We'll sit on the end of the wharf and dangle our legs while your guardian finishes his cigar and does his duty by you."

They compromised on a wire-woven seat under a cottonwood. Across the river two fishermen could be seen working down stream close to the opposite shore. The two were Verinder and Captain Kilmeny, though at that distance they were not recognizable.

Lord Farquhar seemed in no hurry to begin, nor did Moya attempt to hasten him. His cigar glowed and ashed and glowed again before he spoke.

"Odd how things work out, my dear. There across the river are two men who would like to marry you. Both are good matches. One is by way of being a bit of a bounder perhaps, but the other is as fine a fellow as any girl could look for--not brilliant, but no fool either, and as steady as a clock."

A breath of wind lifted the edge of her white skirt. She followed the woman's instinct to tuck it safely under her before making demure answer. "Captain Kilmeny is his own certificate of merit. Any praise is surplusage."

He shrugged. "That's the perversity of it. You see all his merits and they don't touch you."

With a vivacious little turn that was wholly charming she turned merrily upon him. "Are you by any chance proposing for him, Lord Farquhar?"

"Hasn't he proposed for himself?" her guardian asked bluntly.

"I believe he has."

"And you--didn't see it?"

"I couldn't."

"Sorry." He looked at the tip of his cigar and brushed away the ash. "Because he's a no end good sort."

"You don't know that any better than I do. Don't think I can't see all the advantages of it. I do. I want to say 'Yes,' but--well, I can't. That's all."

"On account of the other man?" he questioned gently.

"I haven't mentioned any other man," she cried, her face in a flame.

"No, I mentioned him. Devilish impudent of me, if you want to take it that way, Moya. But, then, as you've said, I'm in loco. Got to grub around and find out how you feel."

"Lady Jim has been poking you up and telling you it's your duty," she told him in derision.

"I daresay. I'm a lazy beggar. Always shirking when I can."

"Lady Jim isn't lazy."

"Di does her duty even when it isn't pleasant. Pity more of us don't."

"Meaning that it is my unpleasant duty to marry Mr. Verinder's money?"

"Hang Verinder and his money. I'm no end glad you can't stand him. Fact is, we didn't quite know how bad he was when we asked him to join us."

"What then?"

"Well, sure your money isn't on the wrong horse, Moya? Mind, I don't say it is. I ask."

"If you mean Mr. Kilmeny, there hasn't been a word between us you couldn't have heard yourself," the girl told him stiffly.

"If my memory serves it didn't use to be so much a matter of words. What about your feelings? Di fancies----"

"Of course she does. She's always fancying. That's the business of a chaperone. It's perfectly absurd," Moya flung back hotly.

"Glad you see it that way. It wouldn't do, of course."

She looked directly at him, a challenge in her stormy eyes. "The whole thing is ridiculous. The man hasn't given me a second thought. If you're going to warn anyone, it ought to be Joyce."

Lord Farquhar looked straight at her. "Joyce has her eyes wide open. She can look out for herself."

"And I can't?"

"No, you can't--not when your feelings are involved. You're too impulsive, too generous."

"It's all a storm in a teacup. I've only met him three times to talk with. He's been friendly--no more. But if he and I wanted to--not that there's the ghost of a chance of it, but if we did--I don't see why it wouldn't do."

"Any number of reasons why it wouldn't. Marriage nowadays isn't entirely a matter of sentiment. You're an Englishwoman. He's an American, and will be to the end of the chapter."

"I'm not English; I'm Irish--and the Irish make the best Americans," she told him sturdily.

Farquhar ignored her protest. "His ways of thinking are foreign to yours, so are his habits of life. You're a delightful rebel, my dear, but you've got to come to heel in the end. All girls do. It's a rule of the game, and you'll have to accept it. No matter how captivating your highwayman may be--and upon my word I admire him tremendously--he is not your kind. He makes his own laws, and yours are made for you."

"You're making one for me now, aren't you?" she demanded rebelliously.

"Let's not put it so strong as that. I'm trying to persuade you to something of which you are fully persuaded already."

"I'm not--not in the least. It's absurd to talk about it because the man hasn't the least idea of making love to me. But suppose he wanted to. Why shouldn't I listen to him? You tell me he doesn't have the same little conventions as we do. Thank heaven he hasn't. His mind is free. If that condemns him----"

She broke off from sheer passionate inadequacy to express herself.

"Those conventions are a part of your life, little girl. Can you imagine yourself sitting opposite him at breakfast for the rest of your natural days?"

"You mean because he is a workingman, I suppose."

"If you like. You would miss all the things to which you were used. Love in a cottage isn't practicable for young women brought up as you have been."

"Then I've been brought up wrong. If I were fond enough of the man--but that's absurd. We're discussing an impossible case. I'll just say this, though. I've never met a man who would be as little likely to bore one."

"Does his cousin bore you?"

"No. Captain Kilmeny is interesting in his way too, but----"

"Well?"

"His thoughts are all well regulated ones. He keeps to the proper beaten track." She flung up a hand impatiently. "Oh, I know he's perfect. I've never been allowed to forget that. He's too perfect. He would let me do anything I wanted to do. I would want a husband--if I ever have one--who would be strong enough to make me want to do whatever he said."

Farquhar smiled as he flung his cigar into the river. "That works out better in theory than in practice, my dear. It's the little things that count in married life. What we need is a love well under control and friction eliminated."

"That's not what I want. Give me my great moments, even if I have to pay for them."

He understood perfectly her eager desire for the best life has to offer. What he was proposing for her was a tame second best. But it was safe, and the first rule of the modern marriage mart is to play the game safe. Yet he had a boyish errant impulse to tell her to cut loose and win happiness if she could. What restrained him, in addition to what he owed Lady Jim in the matter, was his doubt as to this young man's character.

"There would be another thing to consider. Kilmeny is under a cloud--a pretty serious one. All the evidence connects him with this robbery. Grant that you believe him innocent. Still, a nice girl can't let her name be connected with that of a man suspected of a crime."

"I'm sure he isn't guilty. I don't care what the evidence is."

"'Fraid that's sentiment. It has a bad look for him."

"Do we desert our friends when things have a bad look for them?"

"Hm! Friends!"

"I used that word," she told him stanchly.

"But you've only talked with the man three times," he answered with a gleam of friendly malice in his eyes.

"I've talked with Mr. Verinder forty times and I'm less his friend after each talk," she returned with energy.

"Well, I daresay I've exaggerated the whole matter, my dear. I was just to give you a hint--no more."

"You've done it, then."

"Strikes me that I've done my duty in the matter."

"You have--admirably," she scoffed.

"It's up to Di now--if you should take a fancy for entertaining your highwayman again while you're fishing."

"It's not likely that I'll ever see him again."

"I daresay not." He rose and looked across the rushing water. "There's just one thing I stick out for. Regardless of your interest in him--no matter what might happen--you wouldn't let things get on another footing until he has proved his innocence--absolutely and beyond question."

"Isn't that rather an unnecessary condition? I'm not in the habit of throwing myself at the heads of strangers who are merely casually polite to me."

He took in her sweet supple slimness, the fine throat line beneath the piquant lifted chin which mocked his caution, the little imps of raillery that flashed from the dark live eyes. In spite of a passionate craving for the adventure of life she had a good deal of reticence and an abundant self-respect. He felt that he had said more than enough already.

"Quite right, my dear. I withdraw my condition."

"It's one I would insist upon myself--if there were any likelihood of any need of it--which there isn't."

An easy-going man, he did not cross bridges till he came to them. His wife had persuaded him that Moya needed a talking to, but he was glad to be through with it.

"Hang the scamp, anyhow!" he laughed. "Maybe he'll break his neck on one of those outlaw bronchos he's so fond of riding. Maybe they'll put him safely away in prison, where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. Maybe, as you say, he'll have the bad taste to prefer Joyce to my little Irish wild rose, in which case he'll be put in his place at the proper time."

"It's even possible," she added with a murmur of half-embarrassed laughter, "that if he honored one with an offer--which it has never entered his head to do--one might regretfully decline with thanks."

"Amen! In the meantime God lead your grace by the hand, as old Bacon says." He brought his heels together, bowed over her fingers, and kissed them with exaggerated old-fashioned gallantry.

"Who's being romantic now?" she wanted to know gayly.

CHAPTER VII

MOYA'S HIGHWAYMAN

Dinner at the Lodge was just finished. It was the one hour of the day when anything like formality obtained. Each one dropped into breakfast when he or she pleased. Luncheon rarely found them together. But Lady Jim insisted that dinner should be a civilized function. Unless there was to be night fishing the whole party usually adjourned from the dining-room to the river-front porch, where such members of it as desired might smoke the postprandial cigar or cigarette. To-night nobody cared to get out rod and line. In an hour or so they would return to the living-room for bridge.

Voices drifted up the trail and presently riders came into sight. They halted among the trees, where one dismounted and came forward, his trailing spurs jingling as he walked.

He bowed to his audience in general, and again and more particularly to Lady Farquhar.

"Evening, ma'am. My name's Gill--sheriff of this county. I hate to trouble you, but my men haven't had a bite to eat since early this mo'ning. Think we could get a snack here? We'll not get to Gunnison till most eleven."

Lady Farquhar rose. "I'll have the cook make something for you. How many?"

"Six. Much obliged. Just anything that's handy."

Sheriff Gill beckoned to the men in the trees, who tied their horses and presently came forward. All but one of them were heavily armed. That one walked between a 30-30 and a 32 special carbine. It was observable that the men with the rifles did not lift their eyes from him.

Moya felt her heart flutter like that of a caged bird. The blood ebbed from her lips and she swayed in her seat. The prisoner was Jack Kilmeny. Farquhar, sitting beside the girl, let his hand fall upon hers with a comforting little pressure.

"Steady!" his voice murmured so that she alone heard.

Yet his own pulse stirred with the sheer melodrama of the scene. For as the man came forward it chanced that the luminous moonbeams haloed like a spotlight the blond head and splendid shoulders of the prisoner. Never in his gusty lifetime had he looked more the vagabond enthroned. He was coatless, and the strong muscles sloped beautifully from the brown throat. A sardonic smile was on the devil-may-care face, and those who saw that smile labeled it impudent, debonair, or whimsical, as fancy pleased.

"By Jove, the fellow's a natural-born aristocrat," thought Farquhar, the most democratic of men.

Jack Kilmeny nodded with cool equality toward Farquhar and the captain, ignored Verinder, and smiled genially at India. For Moya his look had a special meaning. It charged her with the duty of faith in him. Somehow too it poured courage into her sinking heart.

"Afraid an engagement at Gunnison with Sheriff Gill won't let me stop for any poker to-night," he told his host.

Farquhar was on the spot to meet him in the same spirit. "Verinder will be glad of that. I fancy my pocketbook too will be fatter to-morrow morning."

Biggs appeared to take the newly arrived party in charge. As they started to follow him the prisoner came face to face with Joyce, who was just coming out of the house. She looked at the young miner and at the rifles, and her eyes dilated. Under the lowered lights of evening she seemed to swim in a tide of beauty rich and mellow. The young man caught his breath at the sheer pagan loveliness of her.

"What is it?" she asked in a low, sweet, tremulous voice.

His assurance fled. The bravado was sponged from his face instantly. He stared at her in silence from fascinated eyes until he moved forward at the spur of an insistent arm at his elbow.

India wondered how Lady Jim would dispose of the party. Jack Kilmeny might be a criminal, but he happened to be their cousin. It would hardly do to send him to the servants' quarters to eat. And where he ate the sheriff and his posse would likewise have to dine.

The young woman need not have concerned herself. Lady Farquhar knew enough of the West and its ways not to make a mistake. Such food as could be prepared at short notice was served in the dining-room.

Having washed the dust of travel from himself, the sheriff returned to the porch to apologize once more for having made so much trouble.

Farquhar diverted him from his regrets by asking him how they had made the capture.

"I ain't claiming much credit for getting him," Gill admitted. "This here was the way of it. A kid had been lost from Lander's ranch--strayed away in the hills, y'understand. She was gone for forty-eight hours, and everybody in the district was on the hunt for her. Up there the mountains are full of pockets. Looked like they weren't going to git her. Soon it would be too late, even if they did find her. Besides, there are a heap of mountain lions up in that country. I tell you her folks were plumb worried."

Moya, listening to every word as she leaned forward, spoke vividly. "And Mr. Kilmeny found her."

The sheriff's surprised eyes turned to her. "That's right, ma'am. He did. I dunno how you guessed it, but you've rung the bell. He found her and brought her down to the ranch. It just happened we had drapped in there ten minutes before. So we gathered him in handy as the pocket in your shirt. Before he could move we had the crawl on him."

The sheriff retired to the dining-room, whence came presently snatches of cheerful talk between the prisoner and his captors. In their company Jack Kilmeny was frankly a Western frontiersman.

"You passed close to me Wednesday night at the fork of Rainbow above the J K ranch. I was lying on a ledge close to the trail. You discussed whether to try Deer Creek or follow Rainbow to its headwaters," the miner said.

"That was sure one on us. Hadn't been for the kid, I don't reckon we ever would have took you," a deputy confessed.

"What beats me is why you weren't a hundred miles away in Routt County over in yore old stamping ground," another submitted.

"I had my reasons. I wasn't looking to be caught anyhow. Now you've got me you want to watch me close," the prisoner advised.

"We're watching you. Don't make any mistake about that and try any fool break," Gill answered, quite undisturbed.

"He's the coolest hand I ever heard," Farquhar said to the party on the porch. "If I were a highwayman I'd like to have him for a partner."

"He's not a highwayman, I tell you," corrected Moya.

"I hope he isn't, but I'm afraid he is," India confided in a whisper. "For whatever else he is, Jack Kilmeny is a man."

"Very much so," the captain nodded, between troubled puffs of his pipe.

"And I'm going to stand by him," announced his sister with a determined toss of her pretty head.

Moya slipped an arm quickly around her waist. She was more grateful for this support than she could say. It meant that India at least had definitely accepted the American as a relative with the obligation that implied. Both girls waited for Ned Kilmeny to declare himself, for, after all, he was the head of the family. He smoked in silence for a minute, considering the facts in his stolid deliberate fashion.

The excitement of the girl he loved showed itself in the dusky eyes sparkling beneath the soft mass of blue-black hair, in the glow of underlying blood that swept into her cheeks. She hoped--oh, how she hoped!--that the officer would stand by his cousin. In her heart she knew that if he did not--no matter how right his choice might be in principle--she never would like him so well again. He was a man who carried in his face and in his bearing the note of fineness, of personal distinction, but if he were to prove a formalist at heart, if he were going to stickle for an assurance of his kinsman's innocence before he came to the prisoner's aid, Moya would have no further use for him.

When the sheriff presently came out Captain Kilmeny asked him if he might have a word with the prisoner.

"Sure. Anything you want to say to him."

The English officer drew his cousin aside and with some embarrassment tendered to his cousin the use of his purse in the event it might be needed for the defense.

Jack looked at him steadily with hard unflinching eyes. "Why are you offering this, captain?"

"I don't quite take you."

"I mean, what's your reason? Don't like it to get out that you have a cousin in the pen, is that it? Anxious to avoid a family scandal?" he asked, almost with a sneer.

The captain flushed, but before he could answer India flamed out. "You might have the decency to be ashamed of that, Jack Kilmeny."

Her cousin looked at the girl gravely, then back at her lean, clean-faced brother. "I am. Beg your pardon, captain. As for your offer, I would accept it if there were any need. But there isn't. The charges against me will fall flat."

"Deuced glad to hear it. Miss Dwight has just been telling us it would be all right."

India looked straight at Jack out of the steel-blue eyes that were so like his own. "I wasn't so sure of it myself, but Moya was. Nothing could shake her. She's a good friend."

"I had it sized up about that way," the miner replied. "But I've a notion Miss Kilmeny will stand the acid too. Anyhow, I'm much obliged to her."

The prisoner shook hands with both of his cousins, lifted a broad-brimmed gray felt hat from the rack, and delivered himself to the sheriff.

"All right, Gill."

India gave a little exclamation and moved toward the hatrack. Her hand fell upon a second hat, similar in appearance to the first, but much more worn and dust-stained. She opened her lips to speak and closed them without saying a word. For her eyes had met those of Moya and read there a warning.

Jack Kilmeny nodded a brisk farewell to Farquhar, smiled at Miss Dwight, and moved with his guards to the clump of trees where the horses had been left. His eyes had looked for Joyce, but she was not at that moment in sight.

The last faint beat of the retreating hoofs died away. An awkward constraint settled upon the party left at the Lodge. It was impossible to discuss the situation openly, yet it was embarrassing to ignore the subject in the thoughts of all. After a decent interval they began to drop away, one by one, from the group. India followed Moya, and found that young woman in her room.

"What are you hiding?" Miss Kilmeny asked quickly.

Moya produced from her hatbox a gray sombrero and put it on the table. "I didn't know it was you--thought it might be Lady Jim," she explained.

"Why wasn't I to tell Jack Kilmeny that he had taken Ned's hat by mistake?" India wanted to know.

"Because it wasn't by mistake."

"Not by mistake! What would he want with another man's hat?"

"I'm not sure about that. Perhaps he didn't want his own. You see, I had started myself to tell him about the mistake, but his eyes asked me plain as words not to speak."

"But why--why?" India frowned at the hat, her active brain busy. "It would be absurd for him to want Ned's hat. He must have had some reason, though."

"Don't they search prisoners before they lock them up?" Moya asked abruptly.

India shook her head. "I don't know. Do they?"

"Of course they do." Moya's eyes began to shine. "Now suppose there is something about that hat he didn't want them to see."

"How do you mean?" India picked up the hat and turned it round slowly. "It's worn and a bit disreputable, but he wouldn't care for that."

Moya found a pair of scissors in her work basket. With these she ripped off the outer ribbon. This told her nothing. Next she examined the inside. Under the sweat pad was a folded slip of paper. She waved it in excitement.

"What did I tell you?"

"But--if he is innocent--what could there be he wanted to hide?"

"I don't know." Moya unfolded the paper enough to see that there was writing in it. "Do you think we ought to read this?"

"I don't know," India repeated in her turn. "Perhaps it may be a message to you."

Moya's face lighted. "Of course that's it. He wanted to tell us something when the rest were not there, so he used this method."

Three cramped lines were penciled on the torn fragment of paper.

At wharf above camp. Twelve steps below big rock. In gunny sack three yards from shore.

Two pairs of puzzled eyes looked into each other.

"What can it mean?" India asked.

"I don't know, unless----"

"Unless what?"

"Can it be a direction for finding something?"

"But what? And why should it be hidden in his hat? Besides, he would have no chance to put it in there after he was captured."

"Then perhaps it isn't a message to me at all."

"That's what we must find out. 'At wharf above camp.' That probably means his fishing camp."

"What are you going to do, India?"

"I'm going to get Ned to help me find that gunny sack."

Moya found herself trembling. She did not know why. It was not doubt of her reckless friend, but none the less she was in a panic.

"Do you think we'd better?"

Miss Kilmeny looked at her in surprise. In general nobody came to decision more quickly than Moya.

"Of course. How else can we tell whether it is something he wants us to do for him?"

"When shall we look?"

"The sooner the better--to-night," answered the other girl immediately. "The wharf above the camp. It's not a quarter of an hour from here. I'll not sleep till I know what he means."

"Lady Jim," Moya reminded her.

"She needn't know. She can't object if we take Ned and go fishing for an hour."

Moya consulted her watch. "They'll be gathering for bridge pretty soon. Let's go now. We can be back in time for supper."

"Get into your fishing togs. I'll get Ned and we'll meet you on the west porch in a quarter of an hour."

Within the appointed time the three slipped away down the river bank trail as silently as conspirators. The captain was rather inclined to pooh-pooh the whole thing, but he was not at all sorry to share an adventure that brought him into a closer relationship with Moya Dwight.

"Must be this wharf," India said presently, as a bulky shadow loomed out of the darkness.

"Shouldn't wonder. Here's a big rock just below it. Didn't the paper say something about a rock?" asked the captain.

"Twelve steps below big rock, it says."

The soldier paced off the distance. "What now?"

"Three yards from the shore," called his sister. "There should be a gunny sack, whatever that is."

"Afraid he's spoofing us," Kilmeny said with a laugh as he moved out in his waders against the current. "Here I am. What's the next direction?"

India giggled. She was Irish enough to get the humorous side of things and could not help being frivolous even when she was greatly interested. "Now you look over your left shoulder at the moon and wish."

Her brother's high voice cut in. "I say. My foot's kicking something. Wait a jiff."

He braced his feet, dived suddenly down with one arm till his face touched the water, and grappled with his fingers for a hold on something lying between two rocks at the bottom. When he straightened again it was with an effort. He did not attempt to raise his burden from the stream, but waded ashore with it. Using both hands, he dragged his find to land.

"It's a sack," India cried excitedly.

The captain's eyes met those of Moya. His face was grave, but she was white to the lips. Both of them felt sure of what they would find in the sack.

"Open it," she told him tensely.

With his pocketknife Kilmeny cut the string that tied the sack. He drew out a heavy valise so full that it gaped. Silver and gold coins, as well as bills, filled it to the mouth. They had found the money stolen from the treasurer of the Gunnison County Fair association.

All three of them were sick at heart. Jack Kilmeny then was guilty, after all. The message in the hat had not been intended for them, but had been merely a note of identification of the spot. He had taken the captain's hat merely because he did not want the officers to find the directions under the sweat pad. He had in essence lied to Moya and to the cousins who had offered to stand shoulder to shoulder with him in his trouble.

To Moya the next hour was a nightmare. They returned to the Lodge and slipped into the house by way of a French window opening upon the deserted north porch. Kilmeny hid the sack of treasure in his trunk and divested himself of his fishing clothes. Presently he joined Moya and his sister on the front porch, where shortly they were discovered by Verinder in search of a fourth at bridge.

India, knowing how greatly her friend was shaken, volunteered to fill the table and maneuvered Verinder back into the living-room with her. The millionaire had vaguely the sense of a conspiracy against him and resented it, even though of late he had been veering from Moya to Joyce in his attentions.

Captain Kilmeny, left alone with the girl of his dreams, wisely said nothing. He was himself indignant, his family pride stung to the quick. His cousin was not only a thief but a liar. Born of a race of soldiers, with the traditions of family and of the army back of him for generations, the latter offense was the greater of the two. He understood something of how Miss Dwight felt. She had let herself become greatly interested in this vagabond cousin of his. Openly she had championed his cause. Now her feelings were wounded, her pride hurt, and her anger ablaze. The fellow's offense against her had been flagrant.

So far the captain had guessed correctly. Moya writhed like a bruised woodland creature. Her friendship had been abused. She had been as credulous as a simple country wench, while he no doubt had been laughing up his sleeve at her all the time. No longer had she any doubt as to his guilt. She visualized the hurried run for safety to camp, the swift disposal of the treasure in the river because of the close pursuit. When she lived over again that scene on Sunbeam the girl flogged her soul like a penitent. As one grinds defiantly on an ulcerated tooth, so she crushed her pride and dragged it in the dust.

But the wound was deeper even than this. To give herself in friendship impulsively was her temperament, though not many were judged worthy of such giving. This blue-eyed scamp had won her as no man ever had before. She had seen him through a glamour. Now his character stood stripped in its meanness. Her sweet trust was crushed. In the reaction that was upon her she craved rest and safety. No longer had she any confidence in her own judgment. Against the advice of her friends she had been wayward and headstrong, so sure that she knew best.

Kilmeny, sitting beside her in the deep shadows cast by the wild cucumber vines, became aware that she was weeping silently. His heart bled for her. He had known her always buoyant, gallant as Galahad, vibrant of joy to the finger tips.

"I say, don't," he pleaded. It was impossible for him to voice adequately his feelings. Greatly daring, he let an arm rest across the shoulders that were being racked by suppressed pianissimo sobs.

"You mustn't, you know. I can't stand it." And, again, "Please don't."

She gulped down the lump in her throat and turned upon him filmy eyes, the lashes of which were tangled with tears. This fine strong soldier represented the haven of rest toward which she was being driven. Had she never met his American cousin she knew that she would probably have accepted him in the end. The swift impulse swept her to anchor her craft for life in a safe harbor. She had tried rebellion, and that had left her spent and beaten. What she wanted now was safety, a rest from the turmoil of emotion.

"Do you still ... want me?" she asked lifelessly.

He could not on the instant take her meaning. Then, "Want you!" he cried in a low voice no words could have expressed fully. "Want you? Oh, my dear!"

"You know I don't love you ... not in one way," she told him naïvely. "Lady Jim says that will come. I don't know. Perhaps you won't want to take the risk."

She could see the desire of her leap to his honest eyes. "By God, I'll take my chance," he cried.

"You'll give me all the time I want--not push me too hard?"

"You shall set your own time."

Her dusky head was leaning wearily against the back of a wicker porch chair. From sheer fatigue her eyes fluttered shut. Her lover could see the round bird-like throat swell as she swallowed the lump that had gathered. Pity for her and love of her rose in him like a flood. He would have given anything to wrap her in his arms and fight away her troubles. But he knew it would be months before he could win the right to do this.

"Would you mind if ... if we didn't tell the others just yet?"

"It shall be as you say, Moya, dear."

She nodded languid thanks. "You're good. I ... I think I'll go to bed. I'm so tired."

He kissed the tips of her fingers and she vanished round the corner of the house.

Kilmeny sat down again and looked for long across the moonlit river. His sweetheart had promised to marry him, but in how strange a fashion. He was to be her husband some day, but he was not yet her lover by a good deal. His imagination fitted another man to that rôle, and there rose before him the strong brown face of his cousin with its mocking eyes and devil-may-care smile.

His promised wife! He had despaired of winning her, and she had crept to him as a hurt child does to its mother. There was no exultation in his heart. Poor child! How sad and tired her eyes had been.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BAD PENNY AGAIN

Verinder strolled down to the river bank, where Joyce was fishing from the shore in a tentative fashion.

"I say, Miss Seldon, aren't you breaking the Sabbath?" he asked from the bank above, smiling down upon her with an attempt at archness.

She flashed at him over her shoulder a smile that had all the allure of lovely youth. "I'm only bending it. I haven't caught a single fish."

"Bending it! Oh, I say, that's rather rippin', you know."

She nodded her golden head. "Thanks."

"Casting is a horrid bore. You should be a fisher of men," he told her fatuously.

"If I could be sure I wouldn't catch one. But if I happened to, what would I do with him?"

"Do with him! Why, it depends on who you catch. If he's undersize unhook him gently and throw him back into the river. What!"

The gay smile, flashed sideways at him, was a challenge. "But it isn't always so easy to unhook them, I'm told."

"Not if one doesn't want to."

"You're telling me that I'm a flirt, aren't you?" she said suspiciously.

"I can't tell you anything along that line you don't know already."

"I've a good mind to get angry," she flung back, laughing.

"Don't do that. If it would help I can tell you a lot of nice things I think about you. My word, yes!"

Joyce shot one swift glance at him and saw that he was on the verge of waxing sentimental. That would never do. It was on the cards that she might have to marry Dobyans Verinder but she did not want him making love to her.

"Please don't take the trouble. It's really a matter of no moment."

The young woman made another cast.

"To you."

"I was thinking about me."

"You usually are, aren't you?"

She looked up with surprised amusement. Resentment had made him bold. This was the first spark of spirit she had shaken out of him and she had made him the victim of many moods.

"But I don't blame you for thinking about the most interesting person you know. I think about you a lot myself. You're really rippin', you know."

Joyce groaned in spirit. He did that sort of thing as gracefully as a bear danced. To create a diversion she whipped back her line for a cast so that the flies snapped close to his ear.

"I say, be a bit careful," Verinder suggested.

"Oh, did I hook you?" she asked carelessly.

"I've been on your line for weeks."

"You'd better whisper it. Moya might hear," she advised roguishly.

Verinder flushed. The transfer of his attentions was still a sore subject with him. He hoped it would be generally understood that he had given up Miss Dwight of his own choice. He did not want it to get out that he had been jilted.

"The whole world is welcome to hear it. I'd advertise it in the Times if it would do any good."

"I believe you are impudent," laughed the beauty.

"I know I'm imprudent."

"Oh!" She carefully dropped her leader in the riffles. "There's no law keeping you in this neighborhood, you know. Try India for a change."

"There's nothing to keep the trout on the line--except the hook."

Her smile told of lazy but amiable derision. "It's a great pity about you."

"Awf'ly glad you feel so. Some poet chap said that pity is akin to love."

"I think it would do you good to take a long walk, Mr. Verinder."

"With Miss Seldon?" he wanted to know cautiously.

"Alone," she told him severely. "It would be a rest."

"A rest for me--or for you?"

The dimples flashed into her soft cheeks again. "For both of us, perhaps."

"Thanks. It's rather jolly here." He put his hands in his trousers pockets and leaned against a tree.

"Hope you'll enjoy it. I'm going to find Moya." Miss Seldon reeled up, put her rod against the tree, and sauntered off with the lissom grace that was hers.

Verinder woke up. "Let me come too. On second thoughts I find I do need a walk."

She looked back at him saucily over her shoulder. "You may come if you won't talk until you're spoken to."

"Done, by Jove!"

They followed the trail a stone's throw in silence.

"Miss Dwight's always going off by herself. Seems to me she's a bit off her feed," Verinder suggested.

Joyce was amused. For a man who wanted it understood that only one girl in the world mattered to him he still appeared to take a good deal of interest in Moya.

"Seems dreamy and--er--depressed. What!" he continued.

"Perhaps she is in love," Joyce let herself suggest wickedly.

"I've thought of that, but 'pon my word! I can't think of a man."

"Why not Mr. Verinder?"

His eyeglass ogled her to make sure he was not being made game of, but the lovely face was very innocent.

"Can't be," he demurred with conventional denial.

"Captain Kilmeny, then."

"Hardly. I don't think he's quite her style of man."

"Perhaps with his cousin, the highwayman."

"Good heavens, no!"

She took on a look of horrified suspicion. "You don't think--surely it couldn't be--Oh, I do hope it isn't Lord Farquhar."

He stared at her through his monocle with his mouth open, then discovered that he had been sold as the laughter rippled into her face.

"Oh, I say! Jolly good one, that. Lord Farquhar, by Jove!" Yet his laughter rang flat. It always made him angry to find that they were "spoofing" him. He didn't like to be "got" in the beastly traps these girls were always laying for him.

"There's Moya now--and there's a man with her," Joyce announced.

"By Gad, it's the highwayman!" Verinder gasped.

It was, though strictly speaking Jack Kilmeny was not yet with her, since she was still unaware of his presence. Moya was sitting on a mossy rock with a magazine in her hand, but she was not reading. By the look of her she was daydreaming, perhaps of the man who was moving noiselessly toward her over the bowlders.

Before she heard him he was close upon her. She looked around, and with a little cry got to her feet and stared at him, her hand on her fast beating heart.

Joyce waited to see no more.

"No business of ours," she announced to Verinder, and, without regard to his curiosity or her own, turned heel and marshaled him from the field.

"You!" Moya cried.

Kilmeny bowed. "The bad penny turned up again, Miss Dwight."

Scorn of him flashed in her dark eyes. She stood straight and rigid, but in spite of herself she breathed fast.

"You've forgotten your promise. You've lost faith again," he charged.

His impudence stirred contemptuous anger. "I know you now, sir," she told him with fine contempt.

"And you promised to believe in me." He said it quietly, with just a touch of bitterness in the reproach of his wistful voice.

The first hint of startled doubt came into her eyes. It was as if he had breathed into a marble statue the pulse of life. He had known her vivid as a thrush in song, a dainty creature of fire and dew. She stood now poised as it were on the edge of hope.

"How could I believe when I found your guilt on you? What right have you to ask it?"

"So you found the paper in the hat, did you?"

"Yes."

"Certain about my guilt this time, are you?"

He said it almost with a sneer, but nothing could crush the resurgent glow in her heart. Against the perilous and emotional climax which was growing on her she set her will in vain. Why was it that the mere presence of this man called to her so potently and shook her confidence in his guilt?

"We found the money," she explained, thinking to confound him.

"I guessed that. It was gone when I went to look for it this morning. I've come for it now."

His assurance amazed her. "Come for it!" she repeated. "It isn't here."

"No, I didn't expect to find it in your purse. But it is at the Lodge."

"No."

"Where, then?"

"I shan't tell you. The money will be returned to those from whom it was stolen."

He looked at her with hard, narrowed eyes. "It will be returned, will it? When?"

"To-day. Within a few hours."

"Who is going to return it?"

Moya had it on the tip of her tongue to tell, but pulled up in time. "I think we'll not go into that."

The American looked at his watch. The hands showed the hour to be 2:30. If the money was to be returned that day someone must already be on the way with it. He had seen his cousin, Captain Kilmeny, take the Gunnison road in a trap not half an hour earlier.

"So the captain is taking it back to-day?" he mused aloud, wary eyes on Moya's face.

A startled expression leaped to her countenance. She had told more than she had intended. "I didn't say so."

"I say so."

Beneath his steady gaze her lashes fell. He nodded, sure that he had guessed correctly.

"I intended to have a talk with you and straighten out some things," he went on. "But I find I haven't time now. We'll postpone it till to-morrow. I'll meet you here at ten o'clock in the morning."

"No," she told him.

The wave of hope had ebbed in her. Given the opportunity to explain the evidence against him, he had cared more to find out what they were doing with the stolen money. He had no time to save his good name.

"Ten in the morning. Remember. It's important. I want to see you alone. If I'm not on time wait for me."

That was his last word. He bowed, turned away almost at a run, and was lost in the small willows. Presently she heard the sound of a galloping horse. A minute later she caught a glimpse of it disappearing up Red Rock cañon. He was following the cutoff trail that led to Gunnison.

She wondered what was taking him away so abruptly. He had meant to stop, then had changed his mind. He had told her calmly she must meet him here to-morrow, and if he were late for the appointment she must wait. His impudence was enough to stagger belief. She would show him about that. If he wanted to see her he must come to the Lodge and face Lady Jim. Even then she would not see him. Why should she, since he was what he was?

Ah, but that was the crux of the whole matter! To look at him was to feel that whatever his faults they were not despicable ones. He was alive, so very much alive, and the look of him was that which an honest man should have. Had he proved his innocence and been released? Or had he broken prison, an alternative of which he was quite capable? And, guilty or innocent, what could be the explanation of his extraordinary demand that she should turn over to him the stolen money?

He had found her dumb and stricken with many hours of brooding over his guilt. At least he left her quick with questionings. She divined again the hint of a mystery. Something deeper than reason told her that the unraveling of it would prove him no villain.

One immediate duty alone confronted her. She must confess to Lady Farquhar that she had met and talked with him again. It was likely that she would be well scolded, but it was characteristic of her that she preferred to walk straight to punishment and get it over with. No doubt she had been too free with this engaging scamp. The rules of her set prescribed a straight and narrow road in which she must walk. The open fields beyond the hedges might blossom with flowers, but there could be no dalliance in them for her. She was to know only such people as had the password, only those trimmed and trained till there was no individuality left in them. From birth she had been a rebel, but an impotent one. Each revolt had ended in submission to the silken chains of her environment. Fret as she might, none the less she was as much a caged creature as Lady Jim's canary.

CHAPTER IX

"AN OUT AND OUT ROTTER"

Jack strode through the young alders to his horse, swung to the saddle without touching the stirrups, and was off instantly at a canter. He rode fast, evidently with a direct driving purpose to reach a particular destination. The trail was a rough and rocky one, but he took it recklessly. His surefooted broncho scrambled catlike up steep inclines and slid in clouds of dust down breakneck hillsides of loose rubble. In and out he wound, across gulches and over passes, following always as nearly a bee line as was possible.

An hour of rapid travel brought him to the Gunnison road. He swung to the ground and examined the dusty roadbed. Apparently he was satisfied, for he took his sweat-stained horse back into the brush and tied it to a cottonwood. From its case beside the saddle he drew a rifle. He retraced his own steps and selected carefully a place among the thick bushes by the roadside. With his pocketknife he cut eye-holes in the bandanna handkerchief that had been round his neck and tied it over his face in such a way as to conceal his features entirely. Then he carefully emptied from the rifle all the cartridges it contained and dropped them into his pocket.

These preparations made, he sat down and waited. There came to him very soon the rumble of wheels. Presently a one-horse trap appeared at a curve of the road. Captain Kilmeny was the driver.

Jack rose noiselessly and thrust the barrel of his rifle through the bushes. He was within six feet of the road and he waited until his cousin was almost abreast of him.

"Throw up your hands!"

The captain knew in an instant what he was up against. A masked man with a rifle in his hands could mean only one thing. Ned Kilmeny was no fool. He knew when to fight and when to surrender. His hands went into the air.

"Kick that rifle into the road--with your foot, not with your hands."

The Englishman did as he was told.

"What do you want?" he demanded, looking sharply at the masked bandit.

"I want that satchel beside you. Drop it out."

Again the officer obeyed orders. He asked no questions and made no comment.

"There's room to turn here by backing. Hit the grit for the Lodge."

After he had faced about, Ned Kilmeny had one word to say before leaving.

"I know who you are, and there's just one name for your kind--you're an out and out rotter."

"It's a difference of opinion that makes horse races, captain," answered the masked man promptly.

Ned Kilmeny, as he drove back to the Lodge, was sick at heart. He came of a family of clean, honest gentlemen. Most of them had been soldiers. Occasionally one had gone to the devil as this young cousin of his had done. But there was something in this whole affair so contemptible that it hurt his pride. The theft itself was not the worst thing. The miner had traded on their faith in him. He had lied to them, had made a mock of their friendly offers to help him. Even the elements of decency seemed to be lacking in him.

India and Moya were on the veranda when the captain drove up. One glance at his grim face told them something had gone wrong.

"I've been held up," he said simply.

"Held up!"

"Robbed--with a rifle within reach of my hand all the time."

"But--how?" gasped India.

Moya, white to the lips, said nothing. A premonition of the truth clutched icily at her heart.

"A masked man stopped me just as I swung round a bend about three miles from Gunnison. He ordered me to throw out the satchel with the money. I did as I was told."

"He had you covered with a weapon?" asked India.

"With a rifle--yes."

"Did you--recognize him?" Moya's throat was dry, so that her question came almost in a whisper.

The captain's eyes met hers steadily. "He stayed in the bushes, so that I didn't see his body well. He was masked."

"But you know who it was. Tell me."

Ned Kilmeny was morally certain of the identity of the robber. He could all but swear to the voice, and surely there were not two men in the county with such a free and gallant poise of the head.

"I couldn't take oath to the man."

"It was your cousin." Moya was pale to the lips.

The officer hesitated. "I'm not prepared to say who the man was."

The pulse in her throat beat fast. Her hand was clutching the arm of a chair so tightly that the knuckles stood out white and bloodless.

"You know better. It was Jack Kilmeny," she charged.

"I could tell you only my opinion," he insisted.

"And I know all about it." Moya came to time with her confession promptly, in the fearless fashion characteristic of her. "It was I that sent him to you. It was I that betrayed you to him."

India set her lips to a soundless whistle. Her brother could not keep out of his brown face the amazement he felt.

"I don't wonder you look like that," Moya nodded, gulping down her distress. "You can't think any worse of me than I do of myself."

"Nonsense! If you told him you had a reason. What was it?" India asked, a little sharply.

"No reason that justifies me. He took me by surprise. He had come to get the stolen money and I told him we were returning it to the Fair association. He guessed the rest. Almost at once he left. I saw him take the cañon road for Gunnison."

"You weren't to blame at all," the captain assured her, adding with a rueful smile: "He didn't take you any more by surprise than he did me. I hadn't time to reach for the rifle."

India's Irish eyes glowed with contemptuous indignation. She used the same expression that Ned had. "He must be an out and out rotter. To think he'd rob Ned after what he offered to do for him. I'm through with him."

Her brother said nothing, but in his heart he agreed. There was nothing to be done for a fellow whose sense of decency was as far gone as that.

Moya too kept silence. Her heart was seething with scorn for this handsome scamp who had put this outrage upon them all. It was bad enough to be a thief, but to this he had added deception, falsehood, and gross ingratitude. Nor did the girl's contempt spare herself. Neither warning nor advice--and Lady Jim had been prodigal of both--had availed to open her eyes about the Westerner. She had been as foolish over him as a schoolgirl in the matter of a matinée idol. That she would have to lash herself for her folly through many sleepless hours of the night was a certainty.

Meanwhile she went through the part required of her. At dinner she tossed the conversational ball back and forth as deftly as usual, and afterward she played her accustomed game of bridge. Fortunately, Kilmeny was her partner. Sometimes when her thoughts wandered the game suffered, but the captain covered her mistakes without comment. She could almost have loved him for the gentle consideration he showed. Why must she needs be so willful? Why couldn't she have given her heart to this gallant gentleman instead of to the reckless young scoundrel whom she hardly knew?

Before the party broke up a ride was arranged for next morning to the Devil's Slide, a great slab of rock some miles away. The young people were to have an early breakfast and get started before the sun was hot. For this reason the sitting at auction was short.

But though Moya reached her room before midnight, it was not until day was beginning to break that she fell into a troubled sleep. She tossed through the long hours and lived over every scene that had passed between her and Jack Kilmeny. It was at an end. She would never see him again. She would ride with the others to the Devil's Slide and he would come to the appointment he had made to find her not there. He would go away, and next day she would leave with the rest of her party for the Big Bend mining country, where Verinder and Lord Farquhar were heavily interested in some large gold producers. That chapter of her life would be closed. She told herself that it was best so. Her love for a man of this stamp could bring no happiness to her. Moreover, she had taken an irretrievable step in betrothing herself to Captain Kilmeny. Over and over again she went over the arguments that marshaled themselves so strongly in favor of the loyal lover who had waited years to win her. Some day she would be glad of the course she had chosen. She persuaded herself of this while she sobbed softly into the hot pillows.

When Fisher wakened her to dress in time for the early breakfast Moya felt very reluctant to join the others. She would have to laugh and talk and make merry, and all the time she would be miserably unhappy. It would be impossible for her to stand Verinder to-day without screaming. A sheer physical lassitude weighted her limbs. In the end she went back to bed and sent for India.

"I'm not feeling fit, dear. Would you mind if I beg off?" she asked with a wan smile.

Her friend took in keenly the big deep-pupiled eyes ringed with weariness. "I don't believe you've slept a wink, Moya. Of course you needn't go. Shall I stay with you? I don't really care about going. I'm about fed up with Dobyans Verinder."

But Moya would not hear of this. She protested so much that India saw it would be a greater kindness to leave her alone.

"You must try to sleep again, dear." India moved about, darkening the windows and shaking up the pillows.

"Yes, I will. I'm all right, you know."

Left to herself, Moya tried to sleep. It was no use. She was wide awake, beyond hope of another nap. No sooner had the voices of the riders died in the distance than she was dressing feverishly. She told herself that she would go outdoors somewhere with a book and rest. Otherwise Lady Farquhar would be asking questions.

Fisher brought her some fruit, a cup of coffee, and a roll. Moya drank the coffee and ate the fruit, after which she went out into the crisp Colorado sunlight. By her watch it was now 9:50.

She made an elaborate pretense with herself of hesitating which way to go. Her thoughts, her eyes, and at last her footsteps turned toward the grove where yesterday Jack Kilmeny had surprised her. But she was too used to being honest with herself to keep up the farce. Stopping on the trail, she brought herself to time.

"You're going to meet that outlaw, Moya Dwight. You said you wouldn't, but you are going. That's why you got out of that ride. No use fibbing to yourself. You've no more will power than a moth buzzing around a candle flame."

So she put it to herself, frankly and contemptuously. But no matter how she scorned herself for it there was not in her the strength to turn her back on her temptation. She had always prided herself on knowing her own mind and following it, but the longing in her to hear this man's justification was more potent than pride. Slowly her reluctant steps moved toward the grove.

Long slants of morning sunlight filtered through the leaves of the cottonwoods so that her figure was flaked with a shifting checkerboard of shadow and shine. She sauntered forward, looking neither to the right nor the left, expecting every instant to hear his cheery impudent greeting.

It did not come. She stole sidelong looks here and there through the dappled woods. They were empty of life save for the chipmunk sitting on its hind legs and watching her light approach. A breeze swept across the river, caught her filmy skirts, and blew them about her ankles. She frowned, brushing down the wind-swept draperies with that instinct for modesty all women share. Shy and supple, elastic-heeled, in that diaphanous half light her slim long body might have been taken for that of a wood nymph had there been eyes to follow her through the umbrageous glade.

Of human eyes there were none. She reached her flat rock and sank upon its moss ungreeted. Her disappointment was keen, even though reason had told her he dared not show himself here after adding a second crime to the first, and this time against her friend, the man who had offered to stand by him in his trouble. An instinct deeper than logic--some sure understanding of the man's reckless courage--had made her feel certain that he would be on the spot.

Mingled with her disappointment was a sharp sense of shame. He had told her to come here and wait for him, as if she had been a country milk-maid--and here she was meekly waiting. Could degradation take her lower than this, that she should slip out alone to keep an assignation with a thief and a liar who had not taken the trouble to come? At any rate, she was spared one humiliation. He would never know she had gone to meet him.

CHAPTER X

OLD FRIENDS

Into the depths of her scorching self-contempt came his blithe "Good-morning, neighbor."

Her heart leaped, but before she looked around Moya made sure no tales could be read in her face. Her eyes met his with quiet scorn.

"I was wondering if you would dare come." The young woman's voice came cool and aloof as the splash of a mountain rivulet.

"Why shouldn't I come, since I wanted to?"

"You can ask me that--now."

Her manner told him that judgment had been passed, but it did not shake the cheerful good humor of the man.

"I reckon I can."

"Of course you can. I might have known you could. You will probably have the effrontery to deny that you are the man who robbed Captain Kilmeny."

"Did he say I was the man?" There was amusement and a touch of interest in his voice.

"He didn't deny it. I knew it must be you. I told him everything--how you found out from me that he was going to Gunnison with the money and hurried away to rob him of it. Because you are his cousin he wouldn't accuse you. But I did. I do now. You stole the money a second time." Her words were low, but in them was an extraordinary vehemence, the tenseness of repressed feeling.

"So he wouldn't accuse me, nor yet wouldn't deny that I was the man. Well, I'll not deny it either, since you're so sure."

"You are wise, sir. You can't delude me a second time. Your denial would count for nothing. And now I think there is nothing more to be said."

She had risen and was about to turn away. A gesture of his hand stopped her.

"If you were so sure about me why didn't you have the officers here to arrest me?"

"Because--because you are a relative of my friends."

"That was the only reason, was it?"

"What other reason could there be?" she asked, a flash of warning in her eyes.

"There might be this reason--that at the bottom of your heart you know I didn't do it."

"Can you tell me you didn't hold up Captain Kilmeny? Dare you tell me that?"

He shrugged his broad shoulders. "No, I held him up."

"And robbed him."

"If you like to put it that way. I had to do it."

"Had to rob your friend, the man who had offered to stand by you. Oh, I don't want to hear any of your excuses."

"Yes, you do," he told her quietly. "What's more, you are going to hear them--and right now. You're entitled to an explanation, and it's my right to make you listen."

"Can you talk away facts? You robbed your cousin when he was trying to be your friend. That may mean nothing to you. It means a great deal to me," she cried passionately.

"Sho! An opera bouffe hold-up. I'll make it right with him when I see Captain Kilmeny."

"You admit you took the money?"

"Sure I took it. Had to have it in my business. If you'll sit down again and listen, neighbor, I'll tell you the whole story."

The amused assurance in his manner stirred resentment.

"No."

"Yes."

The clash of battle was in the meeting of their eyes. She had courage, just as he had, but she was fighting against her own desire.

"I have listened too often already," she protested.

"It hasn't hurt you any, has it?"

"Lady Farquhar thinks it has." The words slipped out before she could stop them, but as their import came home to her the girl's face flamed. "I mean that--that----"

"I know what you mean," he told her easily, a smile in his shrewd eyes. "You're a young woman--and I'm an ineligible man. So Lady Farquhar thinks we oughtn't to meet. That's all bosh. I'm not intending to make love to you, even though I think you're a mighty nice girl. But say I was. What then? Your friends can't shut you up in a glass cage if you're going to keep on growing. Life was made to be lived."

"Yes.... Yes.... That's what I think," she cried eagerly. "But it isn't arranged for girls that way--not if they belong to the class I do. We're shut in--chaperoned from everything that's natural. You don't know how I hate it."

"Of course you do. You're a live wire. That's why you're going to sit down and listen to me."

She looked him straight between the eyes. "But I don't think morality is only a convention, Mr. Kilmeny. 'Thou shalt not steal,' for instance."

"Depends what you steal. If you take from a man what doesn't belong to him you're doing the community a service. But we won't go into that now, though I'll just say this. What is right for me wouldn't be for Captain Kilmeny. As I told you before, our standards are different."

"Yes, you explained that to me just after you--while you were hiding from the officers after the first robbery," she assented dryly.

He looked at her and laughed. "You're prosecuting attorney and judge and jury all in one, aren't you?"

She held her little head uncompromisingly erect. Not again was she going to let her sympathy for him warp her judgment.

"I'm ready to hear what you have to say, Mr. Kilmeny."

"Not guilty, ma'am."

His jaunty insouciance struck a spark from her. "That is what you told us before, and within half an hour we found out that you knew where the booty was hidden. Before that discrepancy was cleared up you convinced us of your innocence by stealing the money a second time."

"What did I do with it?" he asked.

"How should I know?"

From his pocket he drew a note book. Between two of its leaves was a slip of paper which he handed to Moya. It was a receipt in full from the treasurer of the Gunnison County Fair association to John Kilmeny for the sum previously taken from him by parties unknown.

The girl looked at him with shining eyes. "You repented and took the money back?"

"No. I didn't repent, but I took it back."

"Why?"

"That's a long tale. It's tied up with the story of my life--goes back thirty-one years, before I was born, in fact. Want to hear it?"

"Yes."

"My father was a young man when he came to this country. The West wasn't very civilized then. My father was fearless and outspoken. This made him enemies among the gang of cattle thieves operating in the country where his ranch lay. He lost calves. One day he caught a brand blotter at work. The fellow refused to surrender. There was a fight, and my father killed him."

"Oh!" cried the girl softly in fascinated horror.

"Such things had to be in those days. Any man that was a man had sometimes to fight or else go to the wall."

"I can see that. I wasn't blaming your father. Only ... it must have been horrible to have to do."

"The fellow thieves of the man swore vengeance. One night they caught the chief--that's what I used to call my father--caught him alone in a gambling hell in the cow town where the stockmen came to buy provisions. My father had gone there by appointment to meet a man--lured to his death by a forged note. He knew he had probably come to the end of the passage as soon as he had stepped into the place. His one chance was to turn and run. He wouldn't do that."

"I love him for it," the girl cried impetuously.

"The story goes that he looked them over contemptuously, the whole half dozen of them, and laughed in a slow irritating way that must have got under their hides."

Moya, looking at the son, could believe easily this story of the father. "Go on," she nodded tensely.

"The quarrel came, as of course it would. Just before the guns flashed a stranger rose from a corner and told the rustlers they would have to count him in the scrap, that he wouldn't stand for a six to one row."

"Wasn't that fine? I suppose he was a friend of your father he had helped some time."

"No. He had never seen him before. But he happened to be a man."

The eyes of the girl were shining. For the moment she was almost beautiful. A flame seemed to run over her dusky face, the glow of her generous heart finding expression externally. It was a part of her charm that her delight in life bubbled out in little spasms of laughter, in impetuous movements wholly unpremeditated.

"I'm glad there are such men," she cried softly.

"The story of that fight is a classic to-day in the hills. When it ended two of the rustlers were dead, two badly wounded, and the others galloping away for their lives. The chief and his unknown friend were lying on the floor shot to pieces."

"But they lived--surely they didn't die?"

"Yes, they lived and became close friends. A few years later they were partners. Both of them are dead now. Sam Lundy--that was the name of my father's rescuer--left two children, a boy and a girl. We call the boy Curly. He was down at the camp fishing with me."

She saw the truth then--knew in a flash that the man beside her had run the risk of prison to save his friend. And her heart went out to him in such a rush of feeling that she had to turn her face away.

"You paid back the debt to the son that your father owed his. Oh, I'm glad--so glad."

"Guessed it, have you?"

"Your friend was the thief."

"He took the money, but he's no thief--not in his heart. In England only a criminal would do such a thing, but it's different here. A hold-up may be a decent fellow gone wrong through drink and bad company. That's how it was this time. My friend is a range rider. His heart is as open and clean as the plains. But he's young yet--just turned twenty--and he's easily led. This thing was sprung on him by an older man with whom he had been drinking. Before they were sober he and Mosby had taken the money."

"I am sorry," the girl said, almost under her breath.

There was still some hint of the child in the naïve nobility of her youth. Joyce Seldon would have had no doubts about what to think of this alien society where an honest man could be a thief and his friend stand ready to excuse him. Moya found it fresh and stimulating.

He explained more fully. "Colter by chance got a line on what the kid and Mosby were planning to pull off. Knowing I had some influence with Curly, he came straight to me. That was just after the finals in the riding."

"I remember seeing him with you. We all thought you should have come up for a few words with us."

"I intended to, but there wasn't any time. We hurried out to find Curly. Well, we were too late. Our horses were gone by the time we had reached the corral where we were stabling, but those of the other boys were waiting in the stalls already saddled. We guessed the hold-up would be close to the bank, because the treasurer of the association might take any one of three streets to drive in from the fair grounds. That's where we went wrong. The boys were just drunk enough not to remember this. Well, while we were looking for our friends so as to stop this crazy play they were going to pull off, Colter and I met the president of the bank. We had known him in the mining country and he held us there talking. While we were still there news comes of the robbery."

"And then?"

"We struck straight back to the corral. Our horses were there. The boys had ridden back, swapped them for their own, and hit the trail. Mosby's idea had been to throw suspicion on us for an hour or two until they could make their getaway. We rode back to the crowd, learned the particulars, and followed the boys. My thought was that if we could get the money from them we might make terms with the association."

"That's why you were in a hurry when you passed us."

"That's why."

"And of course the sheriff thought you were running away from him."

"He couldn't think anything else, could he?"

"How blind I was--how lacking in faith! And all the time I knew in my heart you couldn't have done it," she reproached herself.

His masterful eyes fastened on her. "Did your friends know it? Did Miss Joyce think I couldn't have done it?"

"You'll have to ask her what she thought. I didn't hear Joyce give an opinion."

"Is she going to marry that fellow Verinder?"

"I don't know."

"He'll ask her, won't he?"

She smiled at his blunt question a little wanly. "You'll have to ask Mr. Verinder that. I'm not in his confidence."

"You're quibbling. You know well enough."

"I think he will."

"Will she take him?"

"It's hard to tell what Joyce will do. I'd rather not discuss the subject, please. Tell me, did you find your friends?"

"We ran them down in the hills at last. I knew pretty well about where they would be and one morning I dropped in on them. We talked it all over and I put it up to them that if they would turn the loot over to me I'd try to call off the officers. Curly was sick and ashamed of the whole business and was willing to do whatever I thought best. Mosby had different notions, but I persuaded him to see the light. They told me where they had hidden the money in the river. I was on my way back to get it when I found little Bess Landor lost in the hills. Gill nabbed me as I took her to the ranch."

"And after you were taken back to Gunnison--Did you break prison?"

"I proved an alibi--one the sheriff couldn't get away from. We had gilt-edged proof we weren't near the scene of the robbery. The president of the bank had been talking to us about ten minutes when the treasurer of the association drove up at a gallop to say he had just been robbed."

"So they freed you."

"I made a proposition to the district attorney and the directors of the association--that if I got the money back all prosecutions would be dropped. They agreed. I came back for the money and found it gone."

"If you had only told me that then."

"I had no time. My first thought was to tell my cousin the truth, but I was afraid to take a chance on him. The only way to save Curly was to take back the money myself. I couldn't be sure that Captain Kilmeny would believe my story. So I played it safe and helped myself."

"You must think a lot of your friend to go so far for him."

"His mother turned him over to me to make a man of him, and if she hadn't I owed it to his father's son."

Her eyes poured upon him their warm approving light. "Yes, you would have to help him, no matter what it cost."

He protested against heroics with a face crinkled to humor. "It wasn't costing me a cent."

"It might have cost you a great deal. Suppose that Captain Kilmeny had picked up his gun. You couldn't have shot him."

"I'd have told him who I was and why I must have the money. No, Miss Dwight, I don't fit the specifications of a hero."

Moya's lips curved to the sweet little derisive twist that was a smile in embryo. "I know about you, sir."

Kilmeny took his eyes from her to let them rest upon a man and a woman walking the river trail below. The man bowed and the Westerner answered the greeting by lifting his hat. When he looked back at his companion he was smiling impishly. For the two by the river bank were Lord and Lady Farquhar.

"Caught! You naughty little baggage! I wonder whether you'll be smacked this time."

Her eyes met his in a quick surprise that was on the verge of hauteur.

"Sir."

"Yes, I think you'll be smacked. You know you've been told time and again not to take up with strange boys--and Americans, at that. Mith Lupton warned you on the Victorian--and Lady Farquhar has warned you aplenty."

Her lips parted to speak, but no sound came from them. She was on the verge of a discovery, and he knew it.

"Hope you won't mind the smacking much. Besides, it would be somefing else if it wasn't this," he continued, mimicking a childish lisp he had never forgotten.

"Miss Lupton!"

A fugitive memory flashed across her mind. What she saw was this: a glassy sea after sunset, the cheerful life on the deck of an ocean liner, a little girl playing at--at--why, at selling stars of her own manufacture. The picture began to take form. A boy came into it, and vaguely other figures. She recalled impending punishment, intervention, two children snuggled beneath a steamer rug, and last the impulsive kiss of a little girl determined to exact the last morsel of joy before retribution fell.

"Are you that boy?" she asked, eyes wide open and burning.

"It's harder to believe you're that long-legged little fairy in white socks."

"So you knew me ... all the time ... and I didn't know you at all."

Her voice trembled. The look she flung toward him was shy and diffident. She had loved him then. She loved him now. Somehow he was infinitely nearer to her than he had been.

"Yes, I knew you. I've always known you. That's because you're a dream friend of mine. In the daytime I've had other things to think about, but at night you're a great pal of mine."

"You mean ... before ... we met again?"

"That's what I mean."

The pink surged into her cheeks. "I've dreamed about you too," she confessed with an adorable shyness. "How strange it is--to meet again after all these years."

"Not strange to me. Somehow I expected to meet you. Wasn't that in your dreams too--that some day we should meet again?"

"I was always meeting you. But--why didn't I know you?"

"I'll confess that I wouldn't have known you if it hadn't been for your name."

"You think I've changed, then?"

"No, you haven't changed. You've only grown up. You're still a little rebel. Sometimes you still think it's howwid to be a dirl."

"Only when they won't let me do things," she smiled. "And you really remember even my lisp."

"You have a faint hint of it yet sometimes when you are excited."

"I'm excited now--tremendously." She laughed to belie her words, but the note of agitation was not to be concealed. Her mouth was strangely dry and her heart had a queer uncertain beat. "Why shouldn't I be--with my baby days popping out at me like this when I thought they were dead and buried? It's ... it's the strangest thing...."

His blood too responded to a quickened beat. He could not understand the reason for it. Since he had no intention of being sentimental he was distinctly annoyed at himself. If it had been Joyce Seldon now--well, that would have been another tale.

Over the brow of a hillock appeared Lord and Lady Farquhar walking toward them. One glance told Moya that her chaperone had made up her mind to drive Jack Kilmeny from the field. The girl ran forward quickly.

"We've just found out the oddest thing, Lady Farquhar. Mr. Kilmeny and I are old friends. We met when we were children," she cried quickly.

Lady Jim looked at her husband. He cleared his throat in some embarrassment.

"Mornin', Mr. Kilmeny. If you have time I'd like to have you look over some ore samples sent from our mine."

The American smiled. He understood perfectly. "I've got all the time there is."

Moya intervened again. "First let me tell you the news. Mr. Kilmeny has been freed of all suspicion in connection with the robbery. The money has been returned and the whole thing dropped."

Farquhar's face cleared. "Glad to hear it." He emphasized his words, by adding a moment later: "By Jove, I am glad. Congratulations, Mr. Kilmeny."

His wife added hers, but there was a note of reserve in her manner. Plainly she was not fully satisfied.

Eagerly Moya turned to the young man. "May I tell all about it?"

He hesitated, then nodded shortly. "If you like."

Her voice vibrant with sympathy, Moya told the story in her ardent way. Kilmeny said nothing, but the corners of his mouth suggested amusement. Something of humorous derision in his blue eyes told Farquhar that the Coloradoan did not take the girl's admiration as his due. Rather, he seemed to regard it merely as an evidence of her young enthusiasm.

Lord Farquhar shook hands frankly with Kilmeny. "We've done you an injustice. If I had a son I would want him to have played the part you did under the same circumstances."

His wife backed him up loyally but with misgivings. The character of this young man might be cleared but that did not make him any more eligible. Her smile had in it some suggestion of the reserve of the chaperone.

"I'm glad to know the truth, Mr. Kilmeny. It does you credit. Your cousins won't be back to lunch but if you can stay----"

"I can't, Lady Farquhar. Thanks just the same. I've got to ride up into the hills to let the boys know it's all right. We'll be leaving to-morrow to go back to work."

"We go to-morrow too. I suppose this will be good-by, then." Lady Farquhar offered her hand.

Kilmeny turned last to Moya. "Good-by, neighbor."

Her eyes did not shrink as the small hand was buried for an instant in his brown palm, but the youth in her face was quenched.

"Good-by," she repeated in a colorless voice.

"Sorry I wasn't able to say good-by to my cousins and Miss Seldon. I understand you're all going up to the mines. Tell Captain Kilmeny I'll try to see him at Goldbanks and make all proper apologies for my bad manners yesterday."

Moya's face lit up. "Do you live at Goldbanks?"

"Sometimes."

He bowed and turned away.

The girl was left wondering. There had been a note of reservation in his manner when she had spoken of Goldbanks. Was there after all some mystery about him or his occupation, something he did not want them to know? Her interest was incredibly aroused.

CHAPTER XI

A BLIZZARD

Moya found in Goldbanks much to interest her. Its helter-skelter streets following the line of least resistance, its slapdash buildings, the scarred hillsides dotted with red shaft-houses beneath which straggled slate-colored dumps like long beards, were all indigenous to a life the manner of which she could only guess. Judged by her Bret Harte, the place ought to be picturesque. Perhaps it was, but Moya was given little chance to find out. At least it was interesting. Even from an outside point of view she could see that existence was reduced to the elemental. Men fought for gold against danger and privation and toil. No doubt if she could have seen their hearts they fought too for love.

Miss Seldon was frankly bored by the crude rawness of the place. One phase of it alone interested her. Of all this turbid activity Dobyans Verinder was the chief profiter. Other capitalists had an interest in the camp. Lord Farquhar held stock in the Mollie Gibson and Moya's small inheritance was invested mostly in the mine. The Kilmenys owned shares in two or three paying companies. But Verinder was far and away the largest single owner. His holdings were scattered all over the camp. In the Mollie Gibson and the Never Quit, the two biggest properties at Goldbanks, he held a controlling vote.

It was impossible for Joyce to put her nose out of the hotel without being confronted with the wealth of her suitor. This made a tremendous appeal to the imagination of the young woman. All these thousands of men were toiling to make him richer. If Verinder could have known it, the environment was a potent ally for him. In London he was a social climber, in spite of his gold; here he was a sole autocrat of the camp. As the weeks passed he began to look more possible. His wealth would give an amplitude, a spaciousness that would make the relationship tolerable. As a man of moderate means he would not have done at all, but every added million would help to reduce the intimacy of the marital tie. To a certain extent she would go her way and he his. Meanwhile, she kept him guessing. Sometimes her smiles brought him on the run. Again he was made to understand that it would be better to keep his distance.

The days grew shorter and the mornings colder. As the weeks passed the approach of winter began to push autumn back. Once or twice there was an inch of snow in the night that melted within a few hours. The Farquhar party began to talk of getting back to London, but there was an impending consolidation of properties that held the men at Goldbanks. For a month it had been understood that they would be leaving in a few days now, but the deal on hand was of such importance that it was felt best to stay until it was effected.

One afternoon Moya and Joyce rode out from the cañon where the ugly little town lay huddled and followed the road down into the foothills. It was a day of sunshine, but back of the mountains hung a cloud that had been pushing slowly forward. In it the peaks were already lost. The great hills looked as if the knife of a Titan had sheered off their summits.

The young women came to a bit of level and cantered across the mesa in a race. They had left the road to find wild flowers for Lady Jim.

Joyce, in a flush of physical well-being, drew up from the gallop and called back in gay derision to her friend.

"Oh, you slow-pokes! We win. Don't we, Two Step?" And she patted the neck of her pony with a little gloved hand.

Moya halted beside the dainty beauty and laughed slowly, showing in two even rows the tips of small strong teeth.

"Of course you win. You're always off with a hurrah before one knows what's on. Nobody else has a chance."

The victor flashed a saucy glance at her. "I like to win. It's more fun."

"Yes, it's more fun, but----"

"But what?"

"I was thinking that it's no fun for the loser."

"That's his lookout," came the swift retort. "Nobody makes him play."

Moya did not answer. She was thinking how Joyce charged the batteries of men's emotions by the slow look of her deep eyes, by the languorous turn of her head, by the enthralment of her grace.

"I wouldn't have your conscience for worlds, Moya. I don't want to be so dreadfully proper until I'm old and ugly," Joyce continued, pouting.

"Lady Jim is always complaining because I'm not proper enough," laughed Moya. "She's forever holding you up to me as an example."

"So I am. Of course I flirt. I always shall. But I'll not come a cropper. I'll never let my flirtations interfere with business. Lady Jim knows that."

Moya looked straight at her. "Were you ever in love in your life?"

Her friend laughed to cover a faint blush. "What an enfant terrible you are, my dear! Of course I've been--hundreds of times."

"No, but--really?"

"If you mean the way they are in novels, a desperate follow-to-the-end-of-the-world, love-in-a-cottage kind--no. My emotions are quite under control, thank you. What is it you're driving at?"

"I just wondered. Look how cloudy the sky is getting. It's going to storm. We'd better be going home."

"Let's get our flowers first."

They wandered among the hills, searching for the gorgeous blossoms of fall. Not for half an hour did they remount.

"Which way for home?" Joyce asked briskly, smoothing her skirt.

Moya looked around before she answered. "I don't know. Must be over that way, don't you think?"

Joyce answered with a laugh, using a bit of American slang she had heard the day before. "Search me! Wouldn't it be jolly if we were lost?"

"How dark the sky is getting. I believe a flake of snow fell on my hand."

"Yes. There's one on my face. The road must be just around this hill."

"I daresay you're right. These hills are like peas in a pod. I can't tell one from another."

They rode around the base of the hill into a little valley formed by other hills. No sign of the road appeared.

"We're lost, Moya, They'll have to send out search parties for us. We'll get in the dreadful Sunday papers again," Joyce laughed.

An anxious little frown showed on Moya's forehead. She was not frightened, but she was beginning to get worried. A rising wind and a falling temperature were not good omens. Moreover, one of those swift changes common to the Rockies had come over the country. Out of a leaden sky snow was falling fast. Banked clouds were driving the wintry sunshine toward the horizon. It would soon be night, and if the signs were true a bitter one of storm.

"It's getting cold. We must find the road and hurry home," Joyce said.

"Yes." Moya's voice was cheerful, but her heart had sunk. An icy hand seemed to have clutched it and tightened. She had heard the dreadful things that happened during Rocky Mountain blizzards. They must find the road. They must find it.

She set herself searching for it, conscious all the time that they might be going in the wrong direction. For this unfeatured roll of hills offered no guide, no landmark that stood out from the surrounding country.

Moya covered her anxiety with laughter and small jokes, but there came a time when these did not avail, when Joyce faced the truth too--that they were lost in the desert, two helpless girls, with night upon them and a storm driving up. Somewhere, not many miles from them, lay Goldbanks. There were safety, snug electric-lighted rooms with great fires blazing from open chimneys, a thousand men who would gladly have gone into the night to look for them. But all of these might as well be a hundred leagues away, since they did not know the way home.

The big deep eyes of Joyce shone with fear. Never before in her sheltered life had she been brought close to Nature in one of her terrible moods.

From her soft round throat sobbing words leaped. "We're lost, Moya. We're going to die."

"Nonsense. Don't be a goosie," her downright friend answered sharply.

"But--what shall we do?"

Scudding clouds had leaped across the sky and wiped out the last narrow line of sunlight along the eastern horizon. Every minute it was getting colder. The wind had a bitter sting to it.

"We must find the trail," Moya replied.

"And if we don't?"

"But we shall," the Irish girl assured with a finality that lacked conviction. "You wait here. Don't move from the spot. I'm going to ride round you at a little distance. There must be a trail here somewhere."

Moya gave her pony the quirt and cantered off. Swiftly she circled, but before she had completed the circumference the snow, now falling heavily, had covered the ground and obliterated any path there might be. With a heavy heart she started to return to her friend.

Owing both to the lie of the ground and the increasing density she could not see Joyce. Thrice she called before a faint answer reached her ears. Moya rode toward the voice, stopping now and again to call and wait for a reply. Her horizon was now just beyond the nose of her pony, so that it was not until they were only a few yards apart that she saw Two Step and its rider. Both broncho and girl were sheeted with snow.

"Oh, I thought you were gone. I thought you were never coming," Joyce reproached in a wail of despair. "Did you find the road?"

"No, but I've thought of something. They say horses will find their own way home if you let them. Loosen the reins, dear."

Moya spoke with a business-like cheerfulness meant to deceive her friend. She knew it must be her part to lead. Joyce was as soft and about as competent as a kitten to face a crisis like this. She was a creature all curves and dimples, sparkling with the sunshine of life like the wavelets of a glassy sea. But there was in her an instinctive shrinking from all pain and harshness. When her little world refused to smile, as very rarely it did for her, she shut her eyes, stopped her ears, and pouted. Against the implacable condition that confronted them now she could only whimper her despair.

They waited with loose reins for the ponies to move. The storm beat upon them, confining their vision to a space within reach of their outstretched arms. Only the frightened wails of Joyce and the comforting words of her friend could be heard in the shriek of the wind. The ponies, feeling themselves free, stirred restlessly. Moya clucked to her roan and patted his neck encouragingly.

"Good old Billy. Take us home, old fellow," she urged.

Presently the horse began to move, aimlessly at first, but soon with a steadiness that suggested purpose. Moya unloosed with her chill fingers the rope coiled to her saddle, and threw one end to her friend.

"Tie it tight to the saddle horn, Joyce--with a double knot," she ordered. "And keep your hand on it to see that it doesn't come undone."

"I can't tie it. My hands are frozen ... I'm freezing to death."

Moya made fast one end of the rope and then slipped from the saddle. The other end she tied securely to the saddle horn of her friend. She stripped from her hands the heavy riding gauntlets she wore and gave them to Joyce.

"Pull these on and your hands will be warmer. Don't give up. Sit tight and buck up. If you do we'll be all right."

"But I can't.... It's awful.... How far do we have to go?"

"We'll soon hit the road. Then we can go faster."

Moya swung to her saddle again stiffly, and Billy took up the march in the driving storm, which was growing every minute more fierce and bitter. The girl did not dare give way to her own terror, for she felt if she should become panic-stricken all would be lost. She tried to remember how long people could live in a blizzard. Had she not read of some men who had been out two days in one and yet reached safety?

The icy blast bit into her, searched through to her bones and sapped her strength. More than once she drew up the rope with her icy hands to make sure that Joyce was still in the saddle. She found her there blue from exposure, almost helpless, but still faintly responsive to the call of life.

The horses moved faster, with more certainty, so that Moya felt they had struck a familiar trail. But in her heart she doubted whether either of the riders would come to shelter alive. The ponies traveled upward into the hills.

Joyce, lying forward helpless across the saddle horn, slid gently to the ground. Her friend stopped. What could she do? Once she had descended, it would be impossible to get back into the saddle.

Searching the hillside, the girl's glance was arrested by a light. She could not at first believe her good fortune. From the saddle she slipped to the ground in a huddle, stiffly found her feet again, and began to clamber up the stiff incline. Presently she made out a hut. Stumblingly, she staggered up till she reached the door and fell heavily against it, clutching at the latch so that it gave to her hand and sent her lurching into the room. Her knees doubled under her and she sank at the feet of one of two men who sat beside a table playing cards.

The man leaped up as if he had seen a ghost. "Goddlemighty, it's a woman!"

"My friend ... she's outside ... at the foot of the hill ... save her," the girl's white lips framed.

They slipped on mackinaw coats and disappeared into the white swirling night. Moya crouched beside the red-hot stove, and life slowly tingled through her frozen veins, filling her with sharp pain. To keep back the groans she had to set her teeth. It seemed to her that she had never endured such agony.

After a time the men returned, carrying Joyce between them. They put her on the bed at the far corner of the room, and one of the men poured from a bottle on the table some whisky. This they forced between her unconscious lips. With a shivering sigh she came back to her surroundings.

Moya moved across to the group by the bed.

"I'll take care of her if you'll look after the horses," she told the men.

One of them answered roughly. "The horses will have to rough it. This ain't any night for humans to be hunting horses."

"They can't be far," Moya pleaded.

Grudgingly the second man spoke. "Guess we better get them, Dave. They were down where we found the girl. We can stable them in the tunnel."

Left to herself, Moya unlaced the shoes of Miss Seldon. Vigorously she rubbed the feet and limbs till the circulation began to be restored. Joyce cried and writhed with the pain, while the other young woman massaged and cuddled her in turn. The worst of the suffering was past before the men returned, stamping snow from their feet and shaking it from their garments over the floor.

"A hell of a night to be out in," the one called Dave growled to his fellow.

"Did you get the horses?" Moya asked timidly.

"They're in the tunnel." The ungracious answer was given without a glance in her direction.

They were a black-a-vised, ill-favored pair, these miners upon whose hospitality fate had thrown them. Foreigners of some sort they were, Cornishmen, Moya guessed. But whatever their nationality they were primeval savages untouched by the fourteen centuries of civilizing influences since their forbears ravaged England. To the super-nervous minds of these exhausted young women there was a suggestion of apes in the huge musclebound shoulders and the great rough hands at the ends of long gnarled arms. Small shifty black eyes, rimmed with red from drink, suggested cunning, while the loose-lipped heavy mouths added more than a hint of bestiality. It lent no comfort to the study of them that the large whisky bottle was two-thirds empty.

They slouched back to their cards and their bottle. It had been bad enough to find them sullen and inhospitable, but as the liquor stimulated their unhealthy imaginations it was worse to feel the covert looks stealing now and again toward them. Joyce, sleeping fitfully in the arms of Moya, woke with a start to see them drinking together at the table.

"I don't like them. I'm afraid of them," she whispered.

"We mustn't let them know it," Moya whispered in her ear.

For an hour she had been racked by fears, had faced unflinchingly their low laughs and furtive glances.

Now one of the men spoke. "From Goldbanks?"

"Yes."

"You don't live there."

"No. We belong to the English party--Mr. Verinder's friends."

"Oh, Verinder's friends. And which of you is his particular friend?" The sneer was unmistakable.

"We started out this afternoon for wild flowers and the storm caught us," Moya hurried on.

"So you're Verinder's friends, are you? Well, we don't think a whole lot of Mr. Verinder out here."

Moya knew now that the mention of Verinder's name had been a mistake. The relations between the mine owners and the workmen in the camp were strained, and as a foreign non-resident capitalist the English millionaire was especially obnoxious. Moreover, his supercilious manners had not helped to endear him since his arrival.

The man called Dave got to his feet with a reckless laugh. "No free lodgings here for Mr. Verinder's friends. You'n got to pay for your keep, my dears."

Miss Dwight looked at him with unflinching eyes which refused to understand his meaning. "We'll pay whatever you ask and double the amount after we reach camp."

"Don't want your dirty money. Gi' us a kiss, lass. That's fair pay. We ain't above kissing Verinder's friends if he is a rotten slave driver."

Moya rose to her slender height, and the flash of courage blazed in her eyes.

"Sit down," she ordered.

The man stopped in his tracks, amazed at the resolution of the slim tall girl.

"Go on, Dave. Don't let her bluff you," his companion urged.

The miner laughed and moved forward.

"You coward, to take advantage of two girls driven to you by the storm. I didn't think the man lived that would do it," panted Moya.

"You'n got a bit to learn, miss. Whad's the use of gettin' your Dutch up. I ain't good enough for 'ee, like enough."

The girl held up a hand. "Listen!"

They could hear only the wild roar of the storm outside and the low sobs of Joyce as she lay crouched on the bed.

"Well?" he growled. "I'm listenin'. What, then?"

"I'd rather go out into that white death than stay here with such creatures as you are."

"Doan't be a fool, lass. Us'n won't hurt 'ee any," the second man reassured roughly.

"You'll stay here where it's warm. But you'll remember that we're boss in this shack. You'n came without being asked. I'm domned if you'll ride your high horse over me."

"Go on, Dave. Tak' your kiss, man."

Then the miracle happened. The door opened, and out of the swirling wind-tossed snow came a Man.

CHAPTER XII

OUT OF THE STORM A MAN

He stood blinking in the doorway, white-sheeted with snow from head to heel. As his eyes became accustomed to the light they passed with surprise from the men to the young women. A flash of recognition lit in them, but he offered no word of greeting.

Plainly he had interrupted a scene of some sort. The leer on the flushed face of Dave, the look of undaunted spirit in that of the girl facing him, the sheer panic-stricken terror of her crouching companion, all told him as much. Nor was it hard to guess the meaning of that dramatic moment he had by chance chosen for his entrance. His alert eyes took in every detail, asked questions but answered none, and in the end ignored much.

"What are you doing here?" demanded one of the miners.

"Been out to the Jack Pot and was on my way back to town. Got caught in the storm and struck for the nearest shelter. A bad night out, Trefoyle." He closed the door, moved forward into the room, and threw off his heavy overcoat.

Moya had recognized him from the first instant. Now Joyce too saw who he was. She twisted lithely from the bed, slipped past Moya, past the miners, and with the sob of a frightened child caught at his hand and arm.

"Oh, Mr. Kilmeny, save us ... save us!"

Jack nodded reassuringly. "It's all right. Don't worry."

She clung to him, shivering back to self-control. This man's presence spelled safety. In the high-laced boots of a mining man, he showed a figure well-knit and graceful, springy with youth, but carrying the poise of power. His clean-cut bronzed face backed the promise; so too did the ease of his bearing.

Moya gave a deep sigh of relief and sat down on the edge of the bed, grown suddenly faint. At last her burden was lifted to stronger shoulders.

"You ain't wanted here, Jack Kilmeny," the standing miner said sourly. He was undecided what to do, perplexed and angry at this unexpected hindrance.

"Seems to be a difference of opinion about that, Peale," retorted the newcomer lightly, kicking snow from the spurs and the heels of his boots.

"Trefoyle and me own this cabin. You'll sing small, by Goad, or you'll get out."

"You wouldn't put a dog out on a night like this, let alone a man. It would be murder," Kilmeny answered mildly.

"There's horses in the tunnel. You can bed wi' them."

Jack glanced around, took in the whisky bottle and their red-rimmed eyes. He nodded agreement.

"Right you are, boys. We three will move over to the tunnel and leave the house to the women."

"You ain't got the say here, not by a domned sight, Jack Kilmeny. This'll be the way of it. You'll git out. We'll stay. Understand?" Peale ground out between set teeth.

Jack smiled, but his eyes were like steel. "Suppose we go over to the shaft-house and talk it over, boys. We'll all understand it better then."

Kilmeny still stood close to the red-hot stove. He was opening and closing his fingers to take the stiffness of the frost out of them.

"By Goad, no! You go--we stay. See?"

The young man was now rubbing industriously the thumb and forefinger of his right hand with the palm of his left.

"No, I don't see that, Peale. Doesn't sound reasonable to me. But I'll talk it over with you both--in the shaft-house."

Jack's eyes were fastened steadily on Peale. The man was standing close to a shelf in a corner of the cabin. The shelf was in the shadow, but Kilmeny guessed what lay upon it. He was glad that though his legs were still stiff and cold the fingers of his right hand had been massaged to a supple warmth.

"You be warm now, lad. Clear out," warned the big Cornishman.

"Build 'ee a fire in the tunnel, mon," suggested Trefoyle.

"We'll all go or we'll all stay. Drop that, Peale."

The last words rang out in sharp command. Quicker than the eye could follow Kilmeny's hand had brushed up past his hip and brought with it a shining thirty-eight.

Taken by surprise, Peale stood stupidly, his hand still on the shelf. His fingers had closed on a revolver, but they had found the barrel instead of the butt.

"Step forward to the table, Peale--with your hand empty. That's right. Now listen. These young women have got to sleep. They're fagged to exhaustion. We three are going over to the shaft-house. Anything you've got to say to me can be said there. Understand?"

The man stood in a stubborn sullen silence, but his partner spoke up.

"No guns along, Kilmeny, eh?"

"No. We'll leave them here."

"Good enough, eh, Peale?"

Trefoyle's small eyes glittered. Slyly he winked to his partner to agree, then got a lantern, lit it clumsily, and shuffled out with Peale at his heels.

Joyce clung to Jack's arm, bewitchingly helpless and dependent. A queer thrill went through him at the touch of her soft finger tips.

"You won't leave us," she implored. "You wouldn't, would you?"

"Only for a little while. Bolt the door. Don't open it unless I give the word." He stepped across to Moya and handed her his revolver. In a very low voice he spoke to her. "Remember. You're not to open unless I tell you to let me in. If they try to break the door shoot through it at them waist high. Shoot to kill. Promise me that."

Her dark eyes met and searched his. The faintest quiver of the lip showed that she knew what was before him. "I promise," she said in the same low voice.

Moya bolted the door after him and sat down trembling by the table, the revolver in her shaking hand. She knew he had gone to fight for them and that he had left his weapon behind according to agreement. He was going against odds just as his father had done before him in that memorable fight years ago. If they beat him they would probably kill him. And what chance had one slender man against two such giants. She shuddered.

"What are they going to do, Moya?" whispered Joyce.

Her friend looked at her steadily. "Didn't you hear? They said they wanted to talk over the arrangements."

"Yes, but--didn't it seem to you----? Why did he give you that pistol?"

"Oh, just so that we wouldn't be afraid."

Hand in hand they sat. Their hearts beat like those of frightened rabbits. The wail of the wind screaming outside seemed the cry of lost souls. Was murder being done out there while they waited?

Kilmeny strode after the Cornishmen with the light-footed step of a night nurse. Beside the huge miners he looked slight, but the flow of his rippling muscles was smooth and hard as steel. He had been in many a rough and tumble fray. The saying went in Goldbanks that he "had the guts" and could whip his weight in wildcats. There was in him the fighting edge, that stark courage which shakes the nerve of a man of lesser mettle. He knew that to-night he needed it if ever he did. For these men were strong as bears and had as little remorse.

Inside the shaft-house, his quick glance swept the dimly lighted room and took in every detail.

Trefoyle put the lantern down on a shelf and turned to the man who had interfered with them. "Is't a fight ye want, mon?"

Kilmeny knew the folly of attempting argument or appeal to their sense of right. Straight to business he cut. "I'm not hunting one. But I reckon this is up to me. I'll take you one at a time--unless you'd rather try it two to one and make sure."

His sneer stung. Peale tore off his coat with an angry roar.

"By Goad, I'm good enough for you."

Head down like a bull, he rushed at his foe. Jack sidestepped and lashed out at him as he shot past. Peale went down heavily, but scrambled awkwardly to his feet and flung himself forward again. This time Kilmeny met him fairly with a straight left, tilted back the shaggy head, and crossed with the right to the point of the jaw.

As the fellow went to the floor the second time Jack was struck heavily on the side of his face and knocked from his feet upon the body of the Cornishman. Even as he fell Kilmeny knew that Trefoyle had broken faith. He rolled over quickly, so that the latter, throwing himself heavily on top of him, kneed his partner instead of Jack.

His great hands gripped the young man as he wriggled away. By sheer strength they dragged him back. Kilmeny wrapped his legs around Trefoyle to turn over. He heard a groan and guessed the reason. The muscular legs clenched tighter the man above him, moved slowly up and down those of his foe. With a cry of pain the Cornishman flung himself to one side and tore loose. His trouser legs were ripped from thigh to calf and blood streamed down the limb. The sharp rowels of Kilmeny's spurs had sunk into the flesh and saved their owner.

Jack staggered to his feet half dazed. Peale was slowly rising, his murderous eyes fixed on the young man. The instinct of self-preservation sent the latter across the room to a pile of steel drills. As the two men followed he stooped, caught up one of the heavy bars, and thrust with a short-arm movement for Trefoyle's head. The man threw out his hands and keeled over like a stuck pig.

Kilmeny threw away his drill and fought it out with Peale. They might have been compared to a rapier and a two-handed broadsword. Jack was more than a skilled boxer. He was a cool punishing fighter, one who could give as well as take. Once Peale cornered him, bent evidently on closing and crushing his ribs with a terrific bear hug. It would have been worth a dozen lessons from a boxing master to see how the young man fought him back with jabs and uppercuts long enough to duck under the giant's arm to safety.

The wild swinging blows of the Cornishman landed heavily from time to time, but his opponent's elbow or forearm often broke the force. The lighter man was slippery as an eel, as hard to hit as a Corbett. Meanwhile, he was cutting his foe to ribbons, slashing at him with swift drives that carried the full force of one hundred seventy-five pounds, sending home damaging blows to the body that played the mischief with his wind. The big miner's face was a projection map with wheals for mountains and with rivers represented by red trickles of blood.

Quartering round the room they came again to the drills. Peale, panting and desperate, stooped for one of them. As he rose unsteadily Kilmeny closed, threw him hard, and fell on top. Jack beat savagely the swollen upturned face with short arm jolts until the fellow relaxed his hold with a moan.

"Doan't 'ee kill me, mon. I've had enough," he grunted.

Kilmeny sprang to his feet, caught up the bar of steel, and poked the prostrate man in the ribs with it.

"Get up," he ordered. "You're a pair of cowardly brutes. Can't be decent to a couple of helpless women in your power. Can't play fair in a fight with a man half the size of one of you. Get up, I say, and throw a dipperful of water in Trefoyle's face. He's not dead by a long shot, though he deserves to be."

Peale clambered to his feet in sulky submission and did as he was told. Slowly Trefoyle's eyelids flickered open.

"What be wrong wi' un?" he asked, trying to sit up.

"You got what was coming to you. Is it enough, or do you want more?"

"Did 'ee hit me, lad. Fegs, it's enough. I give you best."

"Then get up. We'll go back to the house for blankets and fuel. You'll sleep to-night with the horses in the tunnel."

The two girls shivering in the hot room heard the footsteps of the returning men as they crunched the snow. Moya sat opposite the door, white to the lips, her hand resting on the table and holding the revolver. Joyce had sunk down on the bed and had covered her face with her hands.

A cheerful voice called to them from outside.

"All right. Everything settled. Let us in, please."

Moya flew to the door and unbolted it. The Cornishmen came in first, and after them Kilmeny. At sight of the ravages of war Joyce gave a little cry of amazement. The big miners were covered with blood. They had the cowed hangdog look of thoroughly beaten men. Jack's face too was a sight, but he still walked springily.

He gave curt commands and the others obeyed him without a word. Almost the first thing he did was to step to the table and fling the whisky bottle through the door into the storm.

"We'll not need that," he said.

One of the miners gathered up their extra blankets while the other took a load of firewood.

As soon as they had gone Joyce cried breathlessly, "You fought them."

Jack looked at her and his eyes softened. All men answered to the appeal of her beauty. "We had a little argument. They couldn't see it my way. But they're satisfied now."

Moya bit her lower lip. Her eyes were shining with tears. A queer emotion welled up in her heart. But it was Joyce who put their thanks into words.

"You saved us. You're the bravest man I ever saw," she cried.

A deeper color rose to the embarrassed face of the young man. "I expect you didn't need any saving to speak of. The boys got too ambitious. That's about all." He was thinking that she was the most beautiful creature he had ever set eyes upon and thanking his lucky stars that he had come along in the nick of time.

"You can say that, Mr. Kilmeny, but we know," she answered softly.

"All right. Have it your own way, Miss Seldon," he returned with a smile.

"You'll let us doctor your wounds, won't you?" Moya asked shyly.

He laughed like a boy. "You're making me ashamed. I haven't any wounds. I ought to have washed the blood off before I came in, but I didn't have a chance. All I need is a basin of water and a towel."

The girl ran to get them for him. He protested, laughing, but was none the less pleased while they hovered about him.

"Such a dirty towel. Don't you suppose there's a clean one somewhere," Joyce said with a little moue of disgust as she handed it to him.

He shook his head. "It's like the one in 'The Virginian'--been too popular."

Moya gave him the scarf that had been around her head while she was riding. "Take this. No.... I want you to use it ... please."

After he had dried his face Jack explained their disposition for the night.

"We'll stay in the tunnel. You'll be alone here--and quite safe. No need to be in the least nervous. Make yourselves comfortable till morning if you can."

"And you--do you mean that you're going back ... to those men?" Moya asked.

"They're quite tame--ready to eat out of my hand. Don't worry about me."

"But I don't want you to go. I'm afraid to be alone. Stay here with us, Mr. Kilmeny. I don't care about sleeping," Joyce begged.

"There's nothing to be afraid of--and you need your sleep. I'll not be far away. You couldn't be safer in Goldbanks. I'll be on guard all night, you know," he reassured.

It escaped him for the moment that Joyce was thinking about her own safety, while Moya was anxious about his, but later he was to remember it.

He had not been gone ten minutes before Joyce was sound asleep. She trusted him and she trusted Moya, and for her that was enough. All her life she had relied on somebody else to bear the brunt of her troubles. But the girl with the powdered freckles beneath the dusky eyes carried her own burdens. She too had implicit confidence in the champion who had come out of the storm to help them and had taken his life in hand to do it. Her heart went out to him with all the passionate ardor of generous youth. She had never met such a man, so strong, so masterful, and yet so boyish.

Her brain was far too active for slumber. She sat before the stove and went over the adventures of the past two hours. How strange that they had met him again in this dramatic fashion. Perhaps he lived at Goldbanks now and they would see more of him. She hoped so mightily, even though there persisted in her mind a picture of his blue-gray eyes paying homage to Joyce.

CHAPTER XIII

SHOT TO THE CORE WITH SUNLIGHT

The storm had blown itself out before morning. A white world sparkled with flashes of sunlight when Moya opened the door of the cabin and gazed out. Looking down into the peaceful valley below, it was hard to believe that death had called to them so loudly only a few hours earlier.

Kilmeny emerged from the shaft-house and called a cheerful good-morning across to her.

"How did you sleep?" he shouted as he crunched across the snow toward her.

"Not so very well. Joyce slept for both of us."

Their smiles met. They had been comrades in the determination to shield her from whatever difficulties the situation might hold.

"I'm glad. Is she quite herself this morning? Last night she was very tired and a good deal alarmed."

"Yes. After you came Joyce did not worry any more. She knew you would see that everything came right."

The color crept into his bronzed face. "Did she say so?"

"Yes. But it was not what she said. I could tell."

"I'm glad I could do what I did."

The eyes that looked at him were luminous. Something sweet and mocking glowed in them inscrutably. He knew her gallant soul approved him, and his heart lifted with gladness. The beauty of her companion fascinated him, but he divined in this Irish girl the fine thread of loyalty that lifted her character out of the commonplace. Her slender, vivid personality breathed a vigor of the spirit wholly engaging.

Joyce joined her friend in the doorway. With her cheeks still flushed from sleep and her hair a little disheveled, she reminded Jack of a beautiful crumpled rose leaf. Since her charm was less an expression of an inner quality, she needed more than Moya the adventitious aids of dress.

The young woman's smile came out warmly at sight of Kilmeny. It was her custom always to appropriate the available man. Toward this bronzed young fellow with the splendid throat sloping into muscular shoulders she felt very kindly this morning. He had stood between her and trouble. He was so patently an admirer of Joyce Seldon. And on his own merits the virility and good looks of him drew her admiration. At sight of the bruises on his face her heart beat a little fast with pleasurable excitement. He had fought for her like a man. She did not care if he was a workingman. His name was Kilmeny. He was a gentleman by birth, worth a dozen Verinders.

"Mr. Kilmeny, how can we ever thank you?"

He looked at her and nodded gayly. "Forget it, Miss Seldon. I couldn't have done less."

"Or more," she added softly, her lovely eyes in his.

No change showed in the lean brown face of the man, but his blood moved faster. It was impossible to miss the appeal of sex that escaped at every graceful movement of the soft sensuous body, that glowed from the deep still eyes in an electric current flashing straight to his veins. He would have loved to touch the soft flushed cheek, the crisp amber hair clouding the convolutions of the little ears. His eyes were an index of the man, bold and possessive and unwavering. They announced him a dynamic American, one who walked the way of the strong and fought for his share of the spoils. But when she looked at him they softened. Something fine and tender transfigured the face and wiped out its sardonic recklessness.

"The pressing question before the house is breakfast. There are bacon and flour and coffee here. Shall I make a batch of biscuits and offer you pot luck? Or do you prefer to wait till we can get to Goldbanks?"

"What do you think?" Moya asked.

"I think whatever you think. We'll not reach town much before noon. If you can rough it for a meal I should advise trying out the new cook. It really depends on how hungry you are."

"I'm hungry enough to eat my boots," the Irish girl announced promptly.

"So am I. Let's stay--if our hosts won't object," Joyce added.

"I'm quite sure they won't," Kilmeny replied dryly. "All right. A camp breakfast it is."

"I'm going to help you," Moya told him.

"Of course. You'd better wash the dishes as soon as we get hot water. They're probably pretty grimy."

He stepped into the cabin and took off his coat. Moya rolled up her sleeves to the elbows of her plump dimpled arms. Miss Seldon hovered about helplessly and wanted to know what she could do.

The miner had not "batched" in the hills for years without having learned how to cook. His biscuits came to the table hot and flaky, his bacon was done to a turn. Even the chicory coffee tasted delicious to the hungry guests.

With her milk-white skin, her vivid crimson lips so exquisitely turned, and the superb vitality of her youth, Joyce bloomed in the sordid hut like a flower in a rubbage heap. To her bronzed vis-a-vis it seemed that the world this morning was shimmering romance. Never before had he enjoyed a breakfast half as much. He and Miss Seldon did most of the talking, while Moya listened, the star flash in her eyes and the whimsical little smile on her lips.

Joyce was as gay as a lark. She chattered with the childish artlessness that at times veiled her sophistication. Jack was given to understand that she loved to be natural and simple, that she detested the shams of social convention to which she was made to conform. Her big lovely eyes were wistful in their earnestness as they met his. It was not wholly a pose with her. For the moment she meant all she said. A delightful excitement fluttered her pulses. She was playing the game she liked best, moving forward to the first skirmishes of that sex war which was meat and drink to her vanity. The man attracted her as few men ever had. That nothing could come of it beyond the satisfaction of the hour did not mitigate her zest for the battle.

They were still at breakfast when one of the Cornishmen pushed open the door and looked in. He stood looking down on them sullenly without speaking.

"Want to see me, Peale?" asked Kilmeny.

"Did I say I wanted to see 'ee?" demanded the other roughly.

"Better come in and shut the door. The air's chilly."

The battered face of his companion loomed over the shoulder of Peale. To Kilmeny it was plain that they had come with the idea of making themselves disagreeable. Very likely they had agreed to force their company upon the young women for breakfast. But the sight of their dainty grace, together with Jack's cheerful invitation, was too much for their audacity. Peale grumbled something inaudible and turned away, slamming the door as he went.

The young miner laughed softly. If he had shown any unwillingness they would have pushed their way in. His urbanity had disarmed them.

"They're not really bad men, you know--just think they are," he explained casually.

"I'm afraid of them. I don't trust them," Joyce shuddered.

"Well, I trust them while they're under my eye. The trouble with men of that stripe is that they're yellow. A game man gives you a fighting chance, but fellows of this sort hit while you're not looking. But you needn't worry. They're real tame citizens this morning."

"Yes, they looked tame," Moya answered dryly. "So tame I'm sure they'd like to crucify you."

"I daresay they would, but in this world a man can't get everything he would like. I've wanted two or three pleasures myself that I didn't get."

His gaze happened to turn toward Joyce as he was speaking. He had been thinking of nothing definite, but at the meeting of their eyes something flashed into birth and passed from one to the other like an electric current. Jack knew now something that he wanted, but he did not admit that he could not get it. If she cared for him--and what else had her eyes told him in the golden glow of that electric moment?--a hundred Verinders and Lady Farquhar could not keep them apart.

His heart sang jubilantly. He rose abruptly and left the room because he was afraid he could not veil his feeling.

Joyce smiled happily. "Where is he going?" she asked innocently.

Moya looked at her and then turned her eyes away. She had understood the significance of what she had seen and a door in her heart that had been open for weeks clanged shut.

"I don't know, unless to get the horses," she said quietly.

A few minutes later he returned, leading the animals. From the door of the shaft-house the Cornishmen watched them mount and ride away. The men smoked in sullen silence.

[Illustration: THEY RODE THROUGH A WORLD SHOT TO THE CORE WITH SUNLIGHT. THE SNOW SPARKLED AND GLEAMED WITH IT. (p. 177)]

Before they had ridden a hundred yards Joyce was in gay talk with Kilmeny. She had forgotten the very existence of the miners. But Moya did not forget. She had seen the expression of their faces as the horses had passed. If a chance ever offered itself they would have their revenge.

It was a day winnowed from a lifetime of ordinary ones. They rode through a world shot to the core with sunlight. The snow sparkled and gleamed with it. The foliage of the cottonwoods, which already had shaken much of their white coat to the ground, reflected it in greens and golds and russets merged to a note of perfect harmony by the Great Artist. Though the crispness of early winter was in the air, their nostrils drew in the fragrance of October, the faint wafted perfume of dying summer.

Beneath a sky of perfect blue they pushed along the shoulder of the hill, avoiding the draw into which snow had drifted deep. Life stormed in their veins, glowed in their flushed cheeks, rang in the care-free laughter of at least two of them. Jack broke trail, turning often in the saddle with a lithe twist of his lean muscular body, to suggest a word of caution at the bad places. Always then he discovered the deep violet eyes of Joyce Seldon with their smoldering fire. To let himself dwell upon her loveliness of fine-textured satiny skin, set off by the abundant crown of lustrous bronze hair, was to know again a quickened pulse of delight.

When he spoke it was with the languid drawl of the Western plainsman. In humor he feigned to conceal his passion, but Joyce knew him to be alertly conscious of her every word, every turn of her pliant body.

They reached the road, where two could ride abreast. Sometimes he was with the one, again with the other. Moya, who had not much to say this morning, made it easy for him to be with Joyce. She did not need to be told that he was under the allure of that young woman's beauty; and not alone of her beauty, but of that provocative stimulating something that can be defined only as the drag of sex. All men responded to it when Joyce chose to exert herself, many when she did not.

Once he turned to point out to Moya some snow-covered mounds above the road.

"Graves of a dozen mule-skinners killed by Indians nearly thirty years ago. My father was the only one of the party that escaped."

Half a mile from town they met two men on horseback and exchanged news. All Goldbanks had been searching for them through the night. The Farquhar party were wild with anxiety about them.

Kilmeny gave prompt quiet orders. "Get back to town, boys, and tell Lady Farquhar that it's all right. We'll be along in a few minutes."

The news of their safety spread as by magic. Men and women and children poured into the streets to welcome them. It was as much as Kilmeny could do to keep back the cheering mob long enough to reach the hotel. Verinder, Lady Jim, and India came down the steps to meet them, Captain Kilmeny and Lord Farquhar both being away at the head of search parties. India and Lady Farquhar broke down without shame and cried as they embraced the returned wanderers.

"We thought ... we thought...." India could not finish in words, but Moya knew what she meant.

"It was very nearly that way, dear, but everything is all right now," her friend smiled through a film of tears.

"It was Moya saved us--and afterward Mr. Kilmeny," Joyce explained between sobs.

The crowd below cheered again and Moya borrowed India's handkerchief to wave. It touched her to see how glad these people were to know they had been rescued.

Lady Farquhar thanked Kilmeny with a gulp in her throat. "We'll want to hear all about it and to get a chance to thank you properly. Will you come to dinner this evening? Joyce and Moya should be rested by then."

Jack accepted promptly. "I'll be very glad to come."

CHAPTER XIV

"PROVE IT!... PROVE IT!"

Sam Bleyer, superintendent of the big Verinder mines, had been up to see his chief at the hotel and was passing the private sitting-room of the Farquhar party when a voice hailed him. He bowed inclusively to Lady Farquhar, Miss Seldon, and Miss Dwight.

"You called me?"

"I did. Are you in a very great hurry?" Joyce flashed her most coquettish smile at him.

"You are never to be in a hurry when Miss Seldon wants you, Bleyer," announced Verinder, following the superintendent into the room.

Bleyer flushed. He was not "a lady's man," as he would have phrased it, but there was an arresting loveliness about Joyce that held the eye.

"You hear my orders, Miss Seldon," he said.

"Awfully good of you, Mr. Verinder," Joyce acknowledged with a swift slant smile toward the mine owner. "Just now I want Mr. Bleyer to be an information bureau."

"Anything I can do," murmured Bleyer.

He was a thin little man with a face as wrinkled as a contour map of South America. Thick glasses rested on a Roman nose in front of nearsighted eyes. Frequently he peered over these in an ineffective manner that suggested a lost puppy in search of a friend. But in spite of his appearance Bleyer was a force in Goldbanks. He knew his business and gave his whole energies to it.

"We're all so interested in Mr. Kilmeny. Tell us all about him, please."

"That's a rather large order, isn't it?" The wrinkles in his leathery face broke into a smile. "What in particular do you want to know?"

"Everything. What does he do? How does he live? How long has he been here?"

"He has been around here about five years. He has a lease in a mine." There was a flinty dryness in the manner of the superintendent that neither Joyce nor Moya missed.

"And he makes his living by it?"

Above his spectacles the eyes of Bleyer gleamed resentfully. "You'll have to ask Mr. Kilmeny how he makes his living. I don't know."

"You're keeping something from us. I believe you do know, Mr. Bleyer." With a swift turn of her supple body Joyce appealed to Verinder. "Make him tell us, please."

Moya did not lift the starlike eyes that were so troubled from the face of Bleyer. She knew the man implied something discreditable to Kilmeny. The look that had flashed between him and Verinder told her so much. Red signals of defiance blazed on both cheeks. Whatever it was, she did not intend to believe him.

Verinder disclosed a proper reluctance. "Bleyer says he doesn't know."

"Oh, he says! I want him to tell what he thinks."

"You won't like it," the mine owner warned.

"I'll be the best judge of that." Joyce swung upon Bleyer. "You hear, sir. You're to tell me what you mean."

"I don't mean anything." He paused, then looked straight at Joyce with a visible harshness. "I'll tell you what the common gossip is if you want to know, Miss Seldon. They say he is a highgrader."

"And what is a highgrader?" demanded Moya.

"A highgrader is one who steals rich ore from the mine where he works," answered Verinder smugly.

Moya, eyes hot and shining, flashed her challenge at him. "I don't believe it--not a word of it, so far as Mr. Kilmeny is concerned."

"Afraid that doesn't change the facts, Miss Dwight. It's a matter of general knowledge." Beneath Verinder's bland manner there lurked a substratum of triumph.

"General fiddlesticks! Don't believe it, Joyce," cried Moya stormily. "He doesn't even work as a miner. He owns his own lease."

"He used to work in the mines, even if he doesn't now. There are stories----"

"Ridiculous to think it of Mr. Kilmeny," exploded Moya. "We've done nothing but insult him ever since we've known him. First he was a highwayman. Now he is a thief. Anything else, Mr. Verinder?"

"Everybody knows it," retorted Verinder sulkily.

"Then prove it. Put him in prison. Aren't there any laws in the state? If everybody knows it, why isn't he arrested?" the Irish girl flamed.

"Moya," chided Lady Farquhar gently.

Her ward turned upon Lady Jim a flushed face stirred by anger to a vivid charm. "Can't you see how absurd it is? He owns his own lease. Mr. Bleyer admits it. Is he robbing himself, then?"

The muscles stood out on the cheeks of the superintendent like cords. He stuck doggedly to his guns. "I didn't say he stole the ore himself. The charge is that he buys it from the men who do take it. His lease is an excuse. Of course he pretends to get the ore there."

"It's the common talk of the camp," snapped Verinder contemptuously. "The man doesn't even keep it under decent cover."

"Then prove it ... prove it! That ought to be easy--since everybody knows it." Moya's voice was low, but her scornful passion lashed the Englishman as with a whip.

"By Jove, that's just what I'm going to do. I'm going to put our friend behind the bars for a few years," the smug little man cried triumphantly.

The red spots on Moya's cheeks burned. The flashing eyes of the girl defied her discarded lover.

"If you can," she amended with quiet anger.

The soft laugh of Joyce saved for the moment the situation. "Dear me, aren't we getting a little excited? Mr. Bleyer, tell me more. How does a--a highgrader, didn't you call him?--how does he get a chance to steal the ore?"

"He picks out the best pieces while he is working--the nuggets that are going to run a high per cent. of gold--and pockets them. At night he carries them away."

"But--haven't you any policemen here? Why don't you stop them and search them?"

"The miners' union is too strong. There would be a strike if we tried it. But it has got to come to that soon. The companies will have to join hands for a finish fight. They can't have men hoisted up from their work with a hundred dollars' worth of ore stowed away on them."

"Is it as bad as that, Mr. Bleyer?" asked Lady Farquhar in surprise.

"Sometimes they take two or three hundred dollars' worth at once."

"They don't all steal, do they?" demanded Moya with an edge of sarcasm in her clear voice.

Bleyer laughed grimly. "I'd like to know the names of even a few that don't. I haven't been introduced to them."

"One hundred per cent. dishonest," murmured Moya without conviction.

"I don't guarantee the figures, Miss Dwight." The superintendent added grudgingly: "They don't look at it that way. Bits of high-grade ore are their perquisite, they pretend to think."

Verinder broke in. "They say your friend Kilmeny took ore to the value of two thousand dollars from the Never Quit on one occasion. It ran to that amount by actual smelter test, the story goes. I've always rather doubted it."

"Why--since he is so dishonest?" Moya flung at him.

"Don't think a man could carry away so much at one time. What d'ye think, Bleyer?"

"Depends on how high-grade ore the mine carries. At Cripple Creek we found nearly four thousand on a man once. He was loaded down like a freight car--looked like the fat boy in 'Pickwick Papers.'"

"Should think he'd bulge out with angles where the rock projected," Lady Farquhar suggested.

"The men have it down to a system there. We used to search them as they left work. They carry the ore in all sorts of unexpected places, such as the shoulder padding of their coats, their mouths, their ears, and in slings scattered over the body. The ore is pounded so that it does not bulge."

"Perhaps I'm doing Mr. Kilmeny an injustice, then. Very likely he did get away with two thousand at one time," Verinder jeered with an unpleasant laugh.

"Yes, let's think the worst of everybody that we can, Mr. Verinder," came Moya's quick scornful retort.

The Croesus of Goldbanks stood warming himself with his back to the grate, as smug and dapper a little man as could be found within a day's journey.

"Very good, Miss Dwight. Have it your own way. I'm not a bally prophet, you know, but I'll go this far. Your little tin hero is riding for a fall. It's all very well for him to do the romantic and that sort of piffle, by Jove, but when you scrape the paint off he's just a receiver of stolen property and a common agitator. Don't take my word for it. Ask Bleyer." Without looking at him he gave a little jerk of the head toward his superintendent. "Who is the most undesirable citizen here, Bleyer? Who makes all the trouble for the companies?"

Bleyer shook his head. "I can't back my opinion with proof."

"You know what people say. Whom do the men rely on to back them whenever they have trouble with us? Out with it."

"Kilmeny is their king pin--the most influential man in camp."

"Of course he is. Anybody could tell to look at him that he is a leader. Does it follow he must be a criminal?" Moya demanded abruptly.

The superintendent smiled. He understood what was behind that irritation. "You're a good friend, Miss Dwight."

"It's absurd that I am. He did nothing for Joyce and me--except fight for us and see that we were sheltered and fed and brought home safely. Why shouldn't we sit still and let his reputation be torn to tatters?"

Blücher bore down upon the field of Waterloo. "Of course we're 'for' Mr. Kilmeny, as you Yankees say. I don't care whether he is a highgrader or not. He's a gentleman--and very interesting." Joyce nodded decisively, tilting a saucy chin toward Verinder. "We're for him, aren't we, Moya?"

Lady Farquhar smiled and let her embroidery drop to the table as she rose. "I like him myself. There's something about him that's very attractive. I do hope you are wrong, Mr. Bleyer. He does not look like an anarchist and a thief."

"That is not the way he would define himself. In this community highgrading isn't looked on as theft. Last year our sheriff was suspected of buying ore from miners and shipping it to the smelters. Public opinion does not greatly condemn the practice." Bleyer, bowing as he spoke, excused himself and withdrew.

Verinder appealed to Lady Farquhar. The indignation of the newly rich sat heavily upon him. With all his little soul he disliked Jack Kilmeny. Since the man had done so signal a service for Joyce, jealousy gnawed at his heart.

"Of course we've got to be decent to the man, I suppose. He had a big slice of luck in getting the chance to help Miss Seldon and Miss Dwight. And I don't forget that he is a cousin to our friends. If it wasn't for that I'd say to mail him a check and wipe the slate clean. But of course----"

"You'd never dare," breathed Moya tensely. "I won't have him insulted."

"Of course not, under the circumstances. No need to get volcanic, Miss Dwight. I merely suggested what I'd like to do. Now the burden is off my shoulders. I have given you the facts."

"You've given us only suspicions, Mr. Verinder. I don't think it would be fair to assume them correct," the chaperone answered.

But Moya knew that Verinder had dropped his seed in fruitful soil. Lady Farquhar would not forget. Jack Kilmeny's welcome would be something less than cordial henceforth.

CHAPTER XV

A HIGHGRADER--IN PRINCIPLE

In spite of the warm defense she had made of Kilmeny, the heart of Moya was troubled. She knew him to be reckless. The boundaries of ethical conduct were not the same for him as for Lord Farquhar, for instance. He had told her as much in those summer days by the Gunnison when they were first adventuring forth to friendship. His views on property and on the struggle between capital and labor were radical. Could it be that they carried him as far as this, that he would take ore to which others had title?

The strange phase of the situation was that nobody in Goldbanks seemed to give any consideration to the moral issue. If rumor were true, the district attorney and a good many of the business men of the town were engaged in disposing of this ore for the miners on a percentage basis. Between the miners and the operating companies was war. If a workman could get the better of the owners by taking ore that was a point to his credit. Even Verinder and Bleyer at bottom regarded the matter as a question of strength and not as one of equity.

Moya was still in process of thinking herself and life out. It was to her an amazing thing that a whole community should so lose its sense of values as to encourage even tacitly what was virtually theft. She did not want to pass judgment upon Goldbanks, for she distrusted her horizon as narrow. But surely right was right and wrong wrong. Without a stab of pain she could not think of Jack Kilmeny as engaged in this illicit traffic.

In her heart she was afraid. Bleyer was a man to be trusted, and in effect he had said that her friend was a highgrader. Even to admit a doubt hurt her conscience as a disloyalty, but her gropings brought no certainty of his innocence. It would be in keeping with the man's character, as she read it, not to let fear of the consequences hold him from any course upon which he was determined. Had he not once warned her in his whimsical smiling way that she would have to make "a heap of allowances" for him if she were to remain his friend? Was it this to which he had referred when he had told her he was likely to disappoint her, that a man must live by the code of his fellows and judge right and wrong by the circumstances? Explicitly he had given her to understand that his standards of honesty would not square with hers, since he lived in a rough mining camp where questions had two sides and were not to be determined by abstract rule.

As for Joyce, the charges against Kilmeny did not disturb her in the least. He might be all they said of him and more; so long as he interested her that was enough. Just now her head was full of the young man. In the world of her daydreams many suitors floated nebulously. Past and present she had been wooed by a sufficient number. But of them all not one had moved her pulses as this impossible youth of the unmapped desert West had done. Queer errant impulses tugged at her well-disciplined mind and stormed the creed of worldliness with which she had fenced her heart.

A stroll to view the sunset had been arranged by the young people up what was known as Son-of-a-Gun Hill. Moya walked of course with Captain Kilmeny, her betrothed. Joyce saw to it that Verinder was paired with India, Jack Kilmeny falling to her lot. Since India knew that her escort was eager to get with Miss Seldon, she punished his impatience by loitering far behind the others.

During the past few days Jack had pushed his tentative suit boldly but lightly. He understood that Joyce was flirting with him, but he divined that there had been moments when the tide of her emotion had swept the young woman from her feet. She was a coquette, of course, but when his eyes fell like a plummet into hers they sounded depths beneath the surface foam. At such times the beat of the surf sounded in his blood. The spell of sex, with all its fire and passion, drew him to this lovely creature so prodigal of allure.

The leading couples stood for a moment's breathing space near the summit. Beneath them the squalid little town huddled in the draw and ran sprawling up the hillsides. Shaft-houses and dumps disfigured even the business street.

Joyce gave a laughing little shudder. "Isn't it a horrid little hole?"

Jack looked at her in surprise, but it was Moya that answered.

"Oh, I don't think so, Joyce. Of course it's not pretty, but--doesn't it seem to stand for something big and--well, indomitable? Think of all the miles of tunnels and stopes, of all the work that has gone into making them." She stopped to laugh at her own enthusiasm before she added: "Goldbanks stands to me for the hope in the human heart that rises in spite of everything. It is the product of an idea."

Miss Seldon gave a little lift to her superb shoulders. "You're incurably romantic, Moya. It's only a scramble for money, after all."

"Don't know about that, Miss Seldon," disagreed Captain Kilmeny. "Of course it's gold they all want. But gold stands for any number of good things, tangible and abstract--success, you know, and home, and love, and kiddies, the better development of the race--all that sort of thing."

"Is that what it means to the highgraders too?" Joyce let her smiling eyes rest with innocent impudence in those of the miner.

Kilmeny showed no sign of discomfiture. His gaze met hers fully and steadily. "Something of that sort, I suppose."

"Just what is a highgrader?"

Moya held her breath. The debonair lightness of the question could not rob it of its significance. Nobody but Joyce would have dared such a home thrust.

Jack laughed dryly. "A highgrader is a miner who saves the company for which he works the trouble of having valuable ore smelted."

"But doesn't the ore belong to the company?"

"There's a difference of opinion about that. Legally it does, morally it doesn't--not all of it. The man who risks his life and the support of his family by working underground is entitled to a share of the profit, isn't he?"

"He gets his wages, doesn't he?"

"Enough to live on--if he doesn't want to live too high. But is that all he is entitled to? Your friend"--he waved a hand toward Verinder, puffing up the trail a hundred yards below--"draws millions of dollars in dividends from the work of these men. What does he do to earn it?"

"You're a socialist," charged Joyce gayly. "Or is it an anarchist that believes such dreadful things?"

"Mr. Kilmeny doesn't quite believe all he says," suggested Moya quietly.

"Don't I?" Behind Jack's quizzical smile there was a hint of earnestness. "I believe that Dobyans Verinder is a parasite in Goldbanks. He gobbles up the product of others' toil."

Joyce flashed at him a swift retort. "Then if you believe that, you ought to be a highgrader yourself."

"Joyce," reproved Moya, aghast.

"I mean, of course, in principle," her friend amended, blushing slightly at her own audacity.

Her impudence amused the miner. "Perhaps I am--in principle."

"But only in principle," she murmured, tilting a radiant challenge at him.

"Exactly--in principle," he agreed. There was humor in his saturnine face.

Joyce ventured one daring step further. "But of course in practice----"

"You should have been a lawyer, Miss Seldon," he countered. "If you were, my reply would be that by advice of counsel I must decline to answer."

"Oh, by advice of counsel! Dear me, that sounds dreadfully legal, doesn't it, Moya? Isn't that what criminals say when----?"

"----When they don't want to give themselves away. I believe it is," he tossed back with the same lightness. "Before I make confession I shall want to know whether you are on my side--or Verinder's."

Under the steady look of his bold, possessive eyes the long silken lashes fell to the soft cheeks. Joyce understood the unvoiced demand that lay behind the obvious one. He had thrown down the gage of battle. Was she for Verinder or for him? If he could have offered her one-half the advantages of his rival, her answer would not have been in doubt. But she knew she dared not marry a poor man, no matter how wildly his presence could set her pulses flying or how great her longing for him. Not the least intention of any romantic absurdity was in her mind. When the time came for choice she would go to Verinder and his millions. But she did not intend to let Jack Kilmeny go yet.

She lifted to him a face flushed and excited, answering apparently his words and not his thoughts. "I haven't decided yet. How can I tell till I hear what you have to say for yourself?"

"You couldn't find a more charming sister confessor for your sins," the captain told his cousin.

"I'll do my best," Joyce promised. Then, with a flash of friendly malice: "But I haven't had the experience of Moya. She is just perfect in the rôle. I know, because she hears all mine."

Moya flushed resentfully. She did not intend to set up for a prude, but she certainly did not mean to treat highgrading as if it were a joke. If Jack Kilmeny was innocent, why did he not indignantly deny the charge?

"Afraid I'll have to be excused," she said, a little stiffly.

"Miss Dwight doesn't approve of me," explained the miner. "If I confessed to her she would probably turn me over to the sheriff."

The girl's quick eyes flashed into his. "I don't approve of taking ore that doesn't belong to one--if that's what you mean, Mr. Kilmeny."

Jack liked the flare of temper in her. She was very human in her impulses. At bottom, too, he respected the integrity of mind that refused to compromise with what she thought was wrong.

But no admission of this showed in his strong brown face. His mordant eyes mocked her while he went into a whimsical argument to show that highgrading was really a virtue, since it tended to keep the rich from growing richer and the poor poorer. He wanted to know by what moral right Verinder owned the Mollie Gibson and the Never Quit any more than he did.

The mine owner, puffing from the exertions of the last bit of ascent, exclaimed indignantly: "Own 'em, by Jove! Doesn't a Johnny own what he buys and pays for?"

"You don't suppose that when God or Nature or the First Cause created that ore vein a million years ago he had Dobyans Verinder in mind as the owner," derided Kilmeny.

"That's all anarchistic rot, you know. Those mines are my property, at least a commanding interest. They're mine because I bought the shares. Government is founded on a respect for property rights."

"So I've observed," retorted Jack dryly. "I'd back that opinion, too, if I owned half of Goldbanks."

"I suppose Mr. Kilmeny's highgrading friends are superior to law. It isn't necessary for them to abide by the rules society has found best for its protection," Moya suggested.

The engaging smile of the accused rested upon Miss Dwight. "I met you and your friends in a motor car yesterday. I'll bet that speedometer said twenty-five miles, but the town ordinance puts the speed limit at fifteen. What about that?"

"You know that's different. No moral question was involved. But when it comes to taking what belongs to another--well, a thief is a thief."

"Right as a rivet, Miss Dwight. But you're begging the question. Does that ore belong to Dobyans Verinder any more than it does to--well, to Jack Kilmeny, say for the sake of argument? I go down there and risk my life blasting it out. He----"

"But you don't," interrupted Moya.

"Not to-day perhaps--or yesterday. But I did last year and the year before that. I've brought up in my arms the bodies of men torn to pieces and carried them to their wives and kiddies. How about those women and children? Haven't they earned an interest in the mine? Isn't their moral claim greater than that of Mr. Verinder, who sits in London and draws the dividends?"

"They are pensioned, aren't they?"

"They are not," returned Jack curtly. "The mine owners of Goldbanks don't believe in encouraging negligence. If these workmen hadn't taken chances they probably would not have been killed, you see. But if they didn't take chances none of the men could earn a living for their families. It is plain how very much to blame they are."

Moya looked across the summits of the hills into the brilliant sunset that lay like a wonderful canvas in the crotch of the peaks. A troubled little frown creased her forehead. For the first time there had come home to her the injustice of the social system under which she and her friends thrived. No adequate answer came to her. Verinder and Joyce joined in argument against the young miner, but Moya did not hear what they said.

She was unusually silent on the way home. Once she looked up and asked Captain Kilmeny a question.

"After all, two wrongs don't make a right, do they?"

"No, dear girl. Life's full of injustice. I dare say some of the men I lead are better than Ned Kilmeny, but I've got to forget that and sit tight in the seat that's been dealt me by the cards. If Jack is trying to justify highgrading, he hasn't a leg to stand on."

She sighed. "You don't think, do you, that----?"

He answered her broken sentence. "Don't know. He doesn't play the game by the same rules we do, but my judgment is that the gossip about him has no basis of fact."

The girl he loved gave him one grateful look and fell again into silence. She wished she felt more sure. Only that morning she had read an editorial in one of the local papers warning the men that the operators were determined to suppress highgrading at any cost, even if some of the more flagrant offenders had to be sent to the penitentiary. That such a fate could befall Jack Kilmeny was unthinkable. Yet what more likely than that the managers should choose him for an example if they could prove him guilty?

The dusk had fallen over the hills and the lights were glimmering out from the town below through the growing darkness. Captain Kilmeny walked beside his slim, tall, worshipful sweetheart with a heavy heart. She was his promised bride. That she would keep faith he did not doubt. But the progress that he made in winning her love was so little that he seemed to himself to be marking time. The shadow of his vagabond cousin still lay between them.

CHAPTER XVI

ONE MAID--TWO MEN

Jack saw to it that he and Joyce followed the others down the trail at a very leisurely pace. The early night of the Rockies was already cutting them off from the rest of the world. Captain Kilmeny and his betrothed could be seen as shadows growing every minute more tenuous. India and her escort were already lost in the descending darkness.

It was the first time that the Goldbanks miner had ever been alone with Miss Seldon. He meant to make the most of his chance. Her loveliness sang its way through his alert, masterful eyes into the blood of the man. Where else under heaven could a woman be found with such a glory of amber extravagance for hair, with such exquisitely turned scarlet lips in so fine-textured colorless a skin of satin? She moved with the lightness of perfect health, the long, graceful lines of her limbs breaking into new curves at every step. Sinuous and supple, she was exquisitely feminine to the finger tips.

They talked little, and that irrelevantly. In both of them the tide of emotion ran full. Each was drawn by the subtle irresistible magnet of sex attraction. When their eyes met it was but for an instant. A shyness, delirious and delightful, ran like a golden thread through the excitement which burned their blood.

"We ... must hurry." Joyce breathed deep, as if she had been running.

"Why must we?" he demanded. "This is my hour. I claim it."

"But ... they're getting ahead of us."

"Let them." He gave her his hand to help her down a steep place in the trail. Their fingers laced, palm clinging to palm.

"You ... mustn't," she protested.

"Mustn't I?"

"No-o."

The note of faintness was in her voice. Courage flooded him in triumphant waves. A moment and his arms were about her, the velvet of her cheek against his. She lay still for an instant, pulses throbbing wildly. But when his lips found hers the woman in her awoke. In an ecstasy of tenderness her arms crept around his neck, and she clung to him. A distant sea surf roared in her ears. For the first time in her life passion had drowned coquetry.

They spoke in kisses, in caresses, in little murmured nothings, as lovers will till the end of time. Something sweet and turbulent swelled in her bosom, an emotion new and inexplicable. For the first time in many experiences of the sex duel she was afraid of herself, of the strength of this impassioned feeling that was sweeping her. She disengaged herself from his embrace and stood back.

Beneath the quick probe of his eyes a faint tremor passed through her body. The long lashes fell to the hot cheeks and curtained lambent windows of light.

"What are we doing?" she cried softly.

"Doing? I'm making love to you, sweetheart, and you're telling me you love me for it," he answered, capturing her hands.

"Yes, but ... I don't want you to ... make love to me ... that way."

"You do." He laughed aloud, and with a swift motion drew her to him again. "We belong, you witch."

His ardent kisses smothered her and drew the color into her lovely face. She yearned toward him, faint with a sweet, exquisite longing. Was this love then? Had it at last trapped her in spite of her cool wariness? She did not know. All she was sure of was that she wanted to be in his strong arms and to feel forever this champagne leap of the blood.

* * * * *

With the excuse that she must dress for dinner, Joyce went at once to her room and locked the door. Discarding the walking suit she was wearing, she slipped into a negligee gown and seated herself before the glass. She liked, while thinking things over, to look at herself in the mirror. The picture that she saw always evoked pleasant fugitive memories. It was so now. Never had her beauty seemed so radiant and vital, so much an inspiration of the spirit in her. Joyce could have kissed the parted scarlet lips and the glowing pansy eyes reflected back to her. It was good to be young and lovely, to know that men's hearts leaped because of her, especially that of the untamed desert son who had made love to her so masterfully.

How had he dared? She was a rare imperious queen of hearts. No man before had ever ravished kisses from her in such turbulent fashion. When she thought of the abandon with which she had given herself to his lips and his embrace, the dye deepened on her cheeks. What was this shameless longing that had carried her to him as one looking down from a high tower is drawn to throw himself over the edge? He had trampled under foot the defenses that had availed against many who had a hundred times his advantages to offer.

It was of herself, not him, that she was afraid. She had wanted his kisses. She had rejoiced in that queer, exultant stir of the blood when his eyes stabbed fathoms deep into hers. What was the matter with her? Always she had felt a good-natured contempt for girls who threw away substantial advantages for what they called love. After steering a course as steady as a mariner's compass for years was she going to play the fool at last? Was she going to marry a pauper, a workingman, one accused of crime, merely because of the ridiculous emotion he excited in her?

The idea was of course absurd. The most obvious point of the situation to her was that she dared not marry him. In her sober senses she would not want to do such a ruinous thing. Already she was beginning to escape from the thrill of his physical presence. He had taken the future for granted, and during that mad quarter of an hour she had let him. Carried away by his impetuosity and her own desire, she had consented to his preposterous hopes. But of a certainty the idea was absurd. Joyce Seldon was the last woman in the world to make a poor man's wife.

To-morrow she must have a serious talk with him and set the matter on a proper footing. She must not let herself be swept away by any quixotic sentiment. The trouble was that she liked him so well. When they met, her good resolutions would be likely to melt in the air. She would safeguard herself from her weakness by telling him during a ride that had been planned. With her friends a few yards in front of them there could be no danger of yielding to her febrile foolishness.

Or perhaps it would be better to wait. It was now only ten days till the time set for leaving. She might write him her decision. It would be sweet to hold him as long as she could....

A knock at the door aroused her from revery. She let Fisher in and made preparations to have her hair dressed. This was always one of the important duties of the day. India and Moya might scamp such things on the plea that they were thousands of miles from civilization, but Joyce knew what was due her lovely body and saw that the service was paid rigorously. She chose to wear to-night a black gown that set off wonderfully the soft beauty of her face and the grace of her figure. Jack Kilmeny was to be there later for bridge, and before he came she had to dazzle and placate Verinder, who had been for several days very sulky at having to play second fiddle.

When Joyce sailed down the corridor to the parlor which adjoined the private dining-room of the party, she caught a glimpse of Verinder turning a corner of the passage toward his room. Lady Farquhar was alone in the parlor.

"Didn't I see Mr. Verinder going out?" asked Joyce, sinking indolently into the easiest chair and reaching for a magazine.

"Yes. At least he was here." After a moment Lady Farquhar added quietly, "He leaves to-morrow."

Joyce looked up quickly. "Leaves where?"

"Goldbanks. He is starting for London."

"But.... What about the reorganization of the companies? I thought...."

"He has changed his plans. James is to have his proxies and to arrange the consolidation. Mr. Verinder is anxious to get away at once."

After an instant's consideration Joyce laughed scornfully. She was dismayed by this sudden move, but did not intend to show it. "Isn't this rather ... precipitous? We're all going in a few days. Why can't he wait?"

Her chaperone looked at Joyce as she answered. "Urgent business, he says."

"Urgent fiddlesticks!" Joyce stifled a manufactured yawn. "I dare say we bore him as much as he does us. Wish we were all back in grimy old London."

"It won't be long now." Lady Jim answered with a smile at the other suggestion. "No, I don't think business calls him, and I don't think he is bored."

Joyce understood the significance of the retort. Verinder at last had revolted against being played with fast and loose. He was going because of her violent flirtation with Jack Kilmeny. This was his declaration of independence.

Miss Seldon was alarmed. She had not for a minute intended to let the millionaire escape. The very possibility of it frightened her. It had not occurred to her that the little man had spirit enough to resent her course so effectively. With the prospect of losing it in sight, his great wealth loomed up to dwarf the desire of the hour. She blamed herself because in the excitement of her affair with Kilmeny she had for the first time in her life let herself forget real values.

But Joyce was too cool a hand to waste time in repining so long as there was a chance to repair the damage. Was the lost prize beyond recovery? Two points were in her favor. Verinder had not yet gone, and he was very much infatuated with her. No doubt his vanity was in arms. He would be shy of any advances. His intention was to beat a retreat in sulky dignity, and he would not respond to any of the signals which in the past had always brought him to heel. It all rested on the fortuity of her getting five minutes alone with him. Granted this, she would have a chance. There are ways given to women whereby men of his type can be placated. She would have to flatter him by abasing herself, by throwing herself upon his mercy. But since this must be done, she was prepared to pay the price.

It appeared that Dobyans Verinder did not intend to give her an opportunity. From the soup to the walnuts the topic of conversation had to do with the impending departure of the mine owner. Joyce was prepared to be very kind to him, but he did not for an instant let his eyes dwell in hers. Behind the curtain of her dark silken lashes she was alertly conscious of the man without appearing to be so. He meant to snub her, to leave without seeing her alone. That was to be her punishment for having cut too deep into his self-esteem. He was going to jilt her.

During dinner and during that subsequent half hour while the ladies waited for the men to rejoin them, Joyce was in a tremor of anxiety. But she carried herself with an indifference that was superb. She had taken a chair at the far end of the long parlor close to a French window opening upon a porch. Apparently she was idly interested in a new novel, but never had she been more watchful. If she had a chance to play her hand she would win; if the luck broke against her she would lose.

Most of her friends had mothers to maneuver for them. Joyce had none, but she was not one to let that stand in her way. Already she had made her first move by asking Lord Farquhar in a whisper not to linger long over the cigars. He had nodded silently, and she knew he would keep his word. If Jack would only stay away until she could see Verinder....

She called the mine owner to her the instant that the men reappeared. He looked across the room sullenly and appeared for one dubious moment to hesitate. But before he could frame an excuse she had spoken again.

"I want you to see this ridiculous illustration. It is the most amusing...."

Without any hesitation she had summoned him before them all. He could not rudely refuse her the ordinary civilities that pass current in society. Sulkily he moved to her side.

She held up the book to him. No illustration met the eyes of the surprised man. Joyce was pointing to a sentence in the story heavily underscored by a pencil.

"Why are you so cruel to me?"

His chin dropped with amazement. Then slowly an angry flush rose to his face. His jaw set firmly as he looked at her.

"Yes, it's certainly ridiculous ... and amusing," he said aloud.

"There's another, too," she went on quickly, recovering the book.

Her fingers turned a page or two swiftly. On the margin was a penciled note.

"I must see you alone, Dobyans. I must."

She lifted to him a face flushed and eager, from which wounded eyes filmy with tears appealed to him. Her shyness, her diffidence, the childlike call upon his chivalry were wholly charming. She was a distractingly pretty woman, and she had thrown herself upon his mercy. Verinder began insensibly to soften, but he would not give up his grievance.

"It's amusing, too--and unnecessary, I think," he said.

The long lashes fluttered tremulously to her cheeks. It seemed to him that she was on the verge of unconsciousness, that the pent emotion was going to prove too much for her.

"I--I think the story calls for it," she answered, a little brokenly.

He retorted, still carrying on the conversation that was to mean one thing to the others in case they heard and another to them. "Depends on the point of view, I suppose. The story is plain enough--doesn't need any more to carry its meaning."

He was standing between her and the rest of the party. Joyce laid an appealing hand on his coat sleeve. Tears brimmed over from the soft eyes. She bit her lip and turned her head away. If ever a woman confessed love without words Joyce was doing it now. Verinder's inflammable heart began to quicken.

"Where?" he asked grudgingly, lowering his voice.

A glow of triumphant relief swept through her. She had won. But the very nearness of her defeat tempered pride to an emotion still related to gratitude. The warm eyes that met his were alive with thanks. She moved her head slightly toward the window.

In another moment they stood outside, alone in the darkness. The night was chill and she shivered at the change from the warm room. Verinder stepped back into the parlor, stripped from the piano the small Navajo rug that draped it, and rejoined Joyce on the porch. He wrapped it about her shoulders.

She nodded thanks and led him to the end of the porch. For a few moments she leaned on the railing and watched the street lights. Then, abruptly, she shot her question at him.

"Why are you going away?"

Stiff as a poker, he made answer. "Business in London, Miss Seldon. Sorry to leave and all that, but----"

She cut him off sharply. "I want the truth. What have I done that you should ... treat me so?"

Anger stirred in him again. "Did I say you had done anything?"

"But you think I'm to blame. You know you do."

"Do I?" His vanity and suspicion made him wary, though he knew she was trying to win him back. He told himself that he had been made a fool of long enough.

"Yes, you do ... and it's all your fault." She broke down and turned half from him. Deep sobs began to rack her body.

"I'd like to know how it's my fault," he demanded resentfully. "Am I to blame because you broke your engagement to walk with me and went with that thief Kilmeny?"

"Yes." The word fell from her lips so low that he almost doubted his ears.

"What? By Jove, that's rich!"

Her luminous eyes fell full into his, then dropped. "If ... if you can't see----"

"See what? I see you threw me overboard for him. I see you've been flirting a mile a minute with the beggar and playing fast and loose with me. I'm hanged if I stand it."

"Oh, Dobyans! Don't you see? I ... I ... You made me."

"Made you?"

She was standing in profile toward him. He could see the quiver of her lip and the shadows beneath her eyes. Already he felt the lift of the big wave that was to float him to success.

"I ... have no mother."

"Don't take the point."

She spoke as a troubled child, as if to the breezes of the night. "I have to be careful. You know how people talk. Could I let them say that I ... ran after you?" The last words were almost in a whisper.

"Do you mean...?"

"Oh, couldn't you see? How blind men are!"

The little man, moved to his soul because this proud beauty was so deeply in love with him, took her in his arms and kissed her.

A little shudder went through her blood. It had not been two hours since Jack Kilmeny's kisses had sent a song electrically into her veins. But she trod down the momentary nausea with the resolute will that had always been hers. Verinder had paid for the right to caress her. He had offered his millions for the privilege. She too must pay the price for what she received.

"We must go in," she told him presently. "They will wonder."

"They won't wonder long, by Jove," he replied, a surge of triumph in his voice.

Joyce looked at him quickly. "You're not going to tell them to-night?"

He nodded. "To-night, my beauty."

"Oh, no. Please not to-night. Let's ... keep it to ourselves for a few days, dear." The last word was a trifle belated, but that might be because she was not used to it.

Verinder shot a look of quick suspicion at her. "I'm going to tell them to-night--as soon as we get back into the room."

"But ... surely it's for me to say that, Dobyans. I want to keep our little secret for awhile." She caught with her hands the lapels of his dinner jacket and looked pleadingly at him.

"No--to-night." He had a good deal of the obstinacy characteristic of many stupid men, but this decision was based on shrewd sense. He held the upper hand. So long as they were in the neighborhood of Jack Kilmeny he intended to keep it.

"Even though I want to wait?"

"Why do you want to wait?" he demanded sullenly. "Because of that fellow Kilmeny?"

She knew that she had gone as far as she dared. "How absurd. Of course not. Tell them if you like, but--it's the first favor I've asked of you since----"

Her voice faltered and broke. It held a note of exquisite pathos. Verinder felt like a brute, but he did not intend to give way.

"You haven't any real reason, Joyce."

"Isn't it a reason that ... I want to keep our engagement just to ourselves for a few days? It's our secret--yours and mine--and I don't want everybody staring at us just yet, Dobyans. Don't you understand?"

"Different here," he answered jauntily. "I want to shout it from the house-top." He interrupted himself to caress her again and to kiss the little pink ear that alone was within reach. "I'll make it up to you a hundred times, but I'm jolly well set on telling them to-night, dear."

She gave up with a shrug, not because she wanted to yield but because she must. Her face was turned away from him, so that he did not see the steely look in her eyes and the hard set of the mouth. She was thinking of Jack Kilmeny. What would he say or do when he was told? Surely he would protect her. He would not give her away. If he were a gentleman, he couldn't betray a woman. But how far would the code of her world govern him? He was primeval man. Would the savagery in him break bounds?

Within five minutes she found out. Jack Kilmeny, in evening dress, was jesting in animated talk with India when the engaged couple reëntered the room. He turned, the smile still on his face, to greet Joyce as she came forward beside Verinder. The little man was strutting pompously toward Lady Farquhar, the arm of the young woman tucked under his.

The eyes of Joyce went straight to Kilmeny in appeal for charity. In them he read both fear and shame, as well as a hint of defiant justification.

Even before the mine owner spoke everybody in the room knew what had happened on the veranda.

"Congratulate me, Lady Farquhar. Miss Seldon has promised to be my wife," Verinder sang out chirpily.

There was a chorus of ejaculations, of excited voices. Joyce disappeared into the arms of her friends, while Farquhar and Captain Kilmeny shook hands with the beaming millionaire and congratulated him. Jack's hands were filled with sheet music, but he nodded across to his successful rival.

"You're a lucky man to have won so true a heart, Mr. Verinder," he said composedly.

Joyce heard the words and caught the hidden irony. Her heart was in her throat. Did he mean to tell more?

Presently it came his turn to wish her joy. Jack looked straight at her. There was a hard smile on his sardonic face.

"I believe the right man has won you, Miss Seldon. All marriages aren't made in Heaven, but---- I've been hoping Mr. Verinder would lose out because he wasn't good enough for you. But I've changed my mind. He's just the man for you. Hope you'll always love him as much as you do now."

Joyce felt the color beat into her cheeks. She knew now that Kilmeny was not going to betray her, but she knew too that he understood and despised her.

CHAPTER XVII

A WARNING

Joyce, a lover of luxury, usually had a roll and coffee in bed as a substitute for breakfast. Sometimes she varied this by appearing late at the table and putting the attendants to unnecessary trouble. This she always paid for with murmurs of apology and sweet smiles of thanks.

On the second morning after the announcement of her engagement to Dobyans Verinder she came down to find the dining-room empty except for the omnibus.

She opened wide eyes of surprise. "Dear me! Am I late?"

"Yes'm."

She glanced at the watch on her wrist. "How inconsiderate of me! I didn't realize the time. Would you mind calling a waiter?"

Meanwhile Joyce began on her grape fruit. Almost simultaneously a sound of voices reached her. Men were coming into the parlor that adjoined the breakfast room.

The high-pitched voice of her affianced lover was the first she recognized. "----to-night! Sure he said to-night?"

Joyce judged that the rough tones of the answer came from a workingman. "That's right. To-night, Bell said. He was to bring his wagon round to Kilmeny's at eleven and they were going to haul the ore to Utah Junction."

A third speaker, evidently Bleyer, the superintendent, cut in quietly. "Bell said it was to be a big shipment, didn't he?"

"Yep. Worth sixty or seventy thousand, he figured."

"Was Bell drunk?"

"I wouldn't say drunk. He had been drinking a good deal. Talkative like. He let it out as a secret, y'understand."

"Anyone there beside you?"

"A miner by the name of Peale."

"Know the man?"

It was Verinder that asked the question and Bleyer that answered.

"Yes. A bad lot. One of those that insulted the young ladies."

"Anyhow, he won't warn Kilmeny."

"Not after the mauling that young man gave him. He's still carrying the scars," Bleyer replied with a low laugh. He added briskly, after a moment, "What do you expect to get out of this, Rollins?"

The workman seemed to answer with some embarrassment. "Thought you might give me that lease in the Mollie Gibson I spoke to you about, Mr. Bleyer."

"It's yours--if this comes out as you say, my man. I'd give more than that to call the turn on Mr. Highgrader Kilmeny," Verinder promised.

"And, o' course, you won't give it away that I told."

"Certainly not."

The arrival of a waiter eliminated Joyce as a listener, for the first thing the man did was to close the door between the parlor and the dining-room.

But she had heard enough to know that Jack Kilmeny was in danger of falling into a trap that was being set for him. Verinder had him at last, just as he had promised that he would get him. No doubt they would have witnesses and would send him to prison as they had threatened.

No more than forty-eight hours earlier Joyce would have been on Kilmeny's side instantly. Now her feelings were mixed. It was still impossible for her to think of him without a flare of passion. She was jealous and resentful because she had lost him, but deeper than these lay the anger born of his scornful surrender of her. It was as if his eyes for the first time had seen the real woman stripped of the glamour lent by her beauty. His contemptuous withdrawal from the field had cut like a knife thrust. She wanted to pay him with usury for his cool, hard disdain. And she had the chance. All she had to do was to be silent and he would fall a victim to his own folly.

There was a hard glitter in the eyes of the young woman. Perhaps Mr. Highgrader Kilmeny, as Verinder had called him, would not be so prodigal of contempt for other people when he stood in the criminal dock. He had been brutally unkind to her. Was she to blame because he was too poor to support her properly? He ought to thank her for having the good sense not to tie herself like a millstone about his neck. They could not live on love just because for the moment passion had swept them from their feet. Instead of being angry at her, he should sympathize with her for being the victim of a pressure which had driven her to a disagreeable duty.

Her simmering anger received a fillip from an accidental meeting with Kilmeny, the first since the night of her engagement. Joyce and Moya were coming out of a stationer's when they came face to face with the miner.

The eyes of the young man visibly hardened. He shook hands with them both and exchanged the usual inane greetings as to the weather. It was just as they were parting that he sent his barbed shot into Joyce.

"I mustn't keep you longer, Miss Seldon. One can guess how keen you must be to get back to Verinder. Love's young dream, and that sort of thing, eh?"

The jeer that ran through his masked insolence brought the angry color to the cheeks of Joyce. She bit her lip to keep back tears of vexation, but it was not until she was in her room with Moya that the need for a confidant overflowed into speech.

"Did you ever hear anything so hateful? He made love to me on the hill.... I let him.... He knows I ... am fond of him. I told him that I loved him. And now...."

Moya stared at her in amaze. "Do you mean that you let Mr. Kilmeny make love to you an hour or two before you became engaged to Mr. Verinder?"

"For Heaven's sake, don't be a prude, Moya," Joyce snapped irritably. "I told you I was fond of him, didn't I? How could I help his kissing me ... or help liking to have him? He ought to be glad. Instead, he insults me." Miss Seldon's self-pity reached the acute stage of sobs. "I was in love with him. Why is he so hard?"

"Perhaps he thinks that since he is in love with you and you with him that gives him some claim," Moya suggested dryly.

"Of course that's what he thinks. But it's absurd. I'm not going to marry Dobyans Verinder because I want to. He knows that as well as you do. Why does he blame me, then? Goodness knows, it's hard enough to marry the man without having my friends misunderstand."

Moya asked an unnecessary question. "Why do you marry him, then?"

"You know perfectly well," flashed Joyce petulantly. "I'm taking him because I must."

"Like a bad-tasting dose of medicine?"

Her friend nodded. "I can't let him go. I just can't. Jack Kilmeny ought to see that."

"Oh, he sees it, but you can't blame him for being bitter."

At the recollection of his impudence anger flared up in Joyce.

"Let him be as bitter as he pleases, then. I happen to know something he would give a good deal to learn. Mr. Jack Kilmeny is going to get into trouble this very night. They've laid a plot----"

She stopped, warned by the tense stillness of Moya.

"Yes?" asked the Irish girl.

"Oh, well! It doesn't matter."

"Who has laid a plot?"

"I've no business to tell. I just happened to overhear something."

"What did you overhear?"

"Nothing much."

"I want to know just what you heard."

Against the quiet steadfast determination of this girl Joyce had no chance. A spirit that did not know defeat inhabited the slender body.

Bit by bit Moya forced out of her the snatch of conversation she had overheard while at breakfast.

"It's a secret. You're not to tell anyone," Joyce protested.

Her friend drummed on the arm of the chair with the tips of her fingers. She was greatly troubled at what she had learned. She was a young woman, singularly stanch to her friends, and certainly she owed something to Verinder. The whole party were his guests at Goldbanks. He had brought them in a private car and taken care of them munificently. There were times when Moya disliked him a good deal, but that would not justify an act of treachery. If she warned Jack Kilmeny--and Moya did not pretend to herself for an instant that she was not going to do this--she would have to make confession to Verinder later. This would be humiliating, doubly so because she knew the man believed she was in love with the Goldbanks miner.

In her heart the Irish girl did not doubt that Jack was guilty, but this would not prevent her from saving him if she could. There came to her a swift vision of two helpless girls in a cabin with drinking ruffians, of the entry of a man into the picture, of his fight against odds to save her and Joyce from insult. Beside this abstract justice became a pale and misty virtue.

"Of course you'll not tell anyone," Joyce repeated.

Moya brought her gaze back from the window. "I shall tell Mr. Kilmeny."

"But it isn't your secret. You have no right to."

"Have you forgotten that night in the cabin?" asked Moya in a low, clear voice. "If you have, I haven't."

"I don't care," Joyce answered petulantly. "He's so hard. Why can't he be nice about this? Why can't he understand--instead of sneering at me? It's a good deal harder for me than for him. Think of fifty years of Dobyans Verinder."

"Would you care to write Mr. Kilmeny a note? I'll take it to him if you like," Moya suggested gently.

Joyce considered. "No, I couldn't put it on paper. But--you might tell him."

"I don't think I could quite do that."

"If it came up right; just show him how I'm placed."

"Perhaps. Shall I tell him that you asked me to warn him?"

Joyce nodded, eyes shining. She was a young woman capable of changing her mind in the snap of a finger. Dainty and exquisite as apple blossoms, she was like a young plant with delicate tendrils forever reaching out. Love she must have and ever more of it. To admiration she was sensitive in every fiber. Whenever she thought of Jack Kilmeny's contempt tears scorched her eyes.

It was like Moya that she carried her warning immediately and directly. Kilmeny was not easy to find. He had been seen entering the office of a lawyer, but had left before she arrived. The attorney understood Jack to say that he was going to an assayer's office, and the young woman learned there that he had not been seen yet by the assayer. From here she walked toward his boarding house, thinking that she might catch him at lunch.

A quick step on the boardwalk behind her caught the girl's attention. Almost at the same moment a voice hailed her.

"Whither away, Miss Dwight?"

She turned, heart beating fast. "I was looking for you, Mr. Kilmeny."

"And you've found me. What luck--for Jack Kilmeny!" His friendly smile--the same one that had claimed comradeship on the Gunnison--beamed upon her with its hint of irony.

A miner with a dinner bucket was coming toward them. Moya spoke quickly.

"I want to see you ... alone. I've something important to tell you."

His cool eyes searched her face alertly. "Come up with me to the old Pandora dump."

They took a side street that ran up the hill, presently came to the end of it, and stopped at the foot of a trail leading to the abandoned shaft-house.

The girl fired her news at him point blank. "Mr. Verinder has found out what you mean to do to-night and you are to be trapped."

"What I mean to do?" he repeated.

"About the ore--shipping it or something. I don't know exactly--somebody was drinking and talked, I think."

Moya, watching Kilmeny's face, saw only the slightest change. The eyes seemed to harden and narrow the least in the world.

"Tell me all you know about it."

She repeated what Joyce had overheard, adding that her friend had asked her to tell him.

The faintest ironic smile touched his face. "Will you thank Miss Seldon for me, both for this and many other favors?"

"You don't understand Joyce. You're not fair to her," Moya said impulsively.

"Perhaps not." A sudden warmth kindled in his eyes. "But I know who my real friends are. I'm fair to them, neighbor."

The color beat into her face, but she continued loyally. "May I ... assume you have a kindly interest in Joyce?"

"I'll listen to anything you care to tell me. I owe my friend, Miss Dwight, that much."

"She told me ... a little about you and her. Be fair to her. Remember how she has been brought up. All her life it has been drilled into her that she must make a good match. It's a shameful thing. I hate it. But ... what can a girl like Joyce do?"

"You justify her?"

"I understand her. A decision was forced on her. She had no time to choose. And--if you'll forgive my saying so--I think Joyce did wisely, since she is what she is."

"Of course she did," he answered bitterly.

"Think of her. She doesn't love him, but she sacrifices her feeling to what she considers her duty."

"Shall we substitute ambition for duty?"

"If you like. Her position is not a happy one, but she must smile and be gay and hide her heartache. You can afford to be generous, Mr. Kilmeny."

"I've been a fool," he admitted dryly. "The turn that things have taken is the best possible one for me. But I'm not quite prepared to thank Miss Seldon yet for having awakened me."

She saw that his vanity was stung more than his heart. His infatuation for her had been of the senses. The young woman shifted to another issue.

"You'll be careful to-night, won't you?"

"Very. Mr. Verinder will have to wait for his coup, thanks to you."

"You mean...?" The question hung fire on her lips.

"Go on, neighbor."

"No. It was something I had no business to ask." The cheeks beneath the dusky eyes held each a patch of color burning through the tan.

"Then I'll say it for you. You were going to ask if they would really have caught me with the goods. Wasn't that it?"

She nodded, looking straight at him with the poise of lithe, slim youth he knew so well. Her very breathing seemed for the moment suspended while she waited, tremulous lips apart, for his answer.

"Yes."

"You mean that ... you are a highgrader?"

"Yes."

"I ... was afraid so."

His eyes would not release her. "You made excuses for Miss Seldon. Can you find any for me?"

"You are a man. You are strong. It is different with you."

"My sin is beyond the pale, I suppose?"

"How do I know? I'm only a girl. I've never seen anything of real life. Can I judge you?"

"But you do."

The troubled virginal sweetness of the girl went to his soul. She was his friend, and her heart ached because of his wrongdoing.

"I can't make myself think wrong is right."

"You think the profits from these mines should all go to Verinder and his friends, that none should belong to the men who do the work?"

"I don't know.... That doesn't seem fair.... But I'm not wise enough to know how to make that right. The law is the law. I can't go back of that."

"Can't you? I can. Who makes the laws?" He asked it almost harshly.

"The people, I suppose."

"Nothing of the kind. The operators control the legislatures and put through whatever bills they please. I went to the legislative assembly once and we forced through an eight hour law for underground workers. The state Supreme Court, puppets of capital, declared the statute unconstitutional. The whole machinery of government is owned by our masters. What can we do?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I--except what I am doing. It is against the law, all right, but I try to see that the workmen get some of the profits they earn."

"Would the operators--what would they do if they proved you guilty of highgrading?"

"It is hard to prove. Ore can't easily be identified."

"But if they did?" she persisted.

"I'd go over the road quick as their courts could send me." A sardonic flicker of amusement moved him to add: "Would you obey the Scriptural injunction and visit me in prison, Miss Dwight?"

"I wouldn't be here. We're going back to England next week."

"But if you were. Would your friendship stand the test?"

Once again she answered, "I don't know," her heart beating wildly as her glance fell away from his.

"I shan't have to try you out this time, neighbor. I'm not going to the pen if I can help it."

"Are you sure of that? The mine owners are quite determined to punish some of the highgraders. Suppose I hadn't come to you to-day. What then?"

He smiled down upon her with the easy recklessness that distinguished him. "I don't think it would have run quite to a prison sentence. The burden of proof lies on the accuser. Because I am in possession of rich ore, it does not follow that I did not come by it legitimately. Ore can't be sworn to like bric-a-brac. I may have shipped this in from South Africa, so far as the law knows. Bleyer knows that. I figure he would have played his hand in the Goldbanks way."

"And how would that be?"

"He would forget the law too, just as we've done on our side. A posse of men would have fallen on me maybe after I had got out of town, and they would have taken that ore from me. They would have been masked so that I could not swear to them."

"Why, that is highway robbery."

He laughed. "We don't use such big words out here, ma'am. Just a hold-up--a perfectly legitimate one, from Bleyer's viewpoint--and it would have left me broke."

"Broke!"

He nodded. "Dead broke. I've got twenty thousand dollars invested in that ore--every cent I've got in the world."

"You paid that to the miners for it?"

"We pay fifty per cent. of what is coming to the men as soon as a rough assay is made, the other fifty after we get the smelter returns. That wagon load of ore is worth--unless I miss my guess badly--about sixty thousand dollars."

"Dear me. So much as that?" She could not quite keep a note of sarcasm out of her voice. "And have you it in a safety deposit vault?"

His cool gaze took her in quietly. He was willing to bet his last dollar on her loyalty, and it was like him to back his judgment in one wild throw. "Not exactly. It is lying in a pile of hay in my barn, all sacked up ready for shipment."

"Waiting there for anybody that wants it," she suggested.

"For anybody that wants it worse than I do," he corrected, the fighting gleam in his eyes.

"I've a right to ask one thing of you--that there will be no bloodshed to-night because of what I have told you."

"There will be none of my seeking," he replied grimly.

"No. That's not enough. You must find a way to avoid it."

"By handing over my hard-earned dishonest profits to the virtuous Verinder?" he asked dryly.

"I don't care how. But I won't have on my shoulders ... murder."

"That's a right hard word, neighbor," he said, falling again into the Western drawl he sometimes used as a mark of his friendship for her. "But have it your own way. I'll not even tote a gat."

"Thank you." She gave him a brisk little nod, suddenly choked up in her throat, and turned to go.

Jack fell into step beside her. "Have I lost my little friend--the one who used to come to me in my dreams and whisper with a lisp that I wasn't a 'stwanger'?" he asked, very gently.

She swallowed twice and walked on without looking at him. But every nerve of her was conscious of his stimulating presence. Since the inner man found expression in that lithe body with the undulating flow of well-packed muscles, in the spare head set so finely on the perfect shoulders, in the steady eyes so frank and self-reliant, surely he was not unworthy the friendship of any woman. But he had just confessed himself a thief. What right had he to ask or she to give so much?

Her hand went out in an impetuous little gesture of despair. "How do I know? You are doing wrong, but ... Oh, why do you do such things?"

"It's in my blood not to let prudence stop me when I've made up my mind to a thing. My father was that way. I'm trying in a rough way to right an injustice--and I like the excitement--and I daresay I like the loot too," he finished with a reckless laugh.

"I wish I could show you how wrong you are," she cried in a low voice.

"You can't. I'll go my own way. But you are still going to let me come and visit you in your dreams, aren't you?"

The glow in her quick live eyes was not a reflection of the sun. She felt the color flood her cheeks in waves. She dared not look at him, but she was poignantly aware that his gaze was fixed on her, that it seemed to bore to the soul and read the hidden secret there. A queer lightheadedness affected her. It was as if her body might float away into space. She loved him. Whatever he was, the man held her heart in the hollow of his careless, reckless hand. To him she would always deny it--or would have if he had thought enough of her to ask--but she knew the truth about herself from many a passionate hour of despair.

Dry as a whisper came her answer, in a voice which lacked the nonchalance she tried to give it. "I daresay I'll be as friendly ... as you deserve."

"You've got to be a heap more friendly than that, partner."

They had come back to the boardwalk which marked the parting of the ways for them. She had won control of herself again and offered him a steady hand.

"I suppose we'll not see each other again.... Good-by."

He was suddenly conscious that he desired very greatly her regard and her approval.

"Is that all you have to say? Are you going to leave me like this?"

"What more is there to be said?" She asked it quietly, with the calm courage that had its birth in hopelessness.

"This much, at least. I don't release you from ... the old tie that used to bind us. We're still going to be dream friends. I haven't forgotten little Moya, who kissed me one night on the deck of the Victorian."

"She was a baby at the time," answered the girl.

He had not released her hand. Now, as he looked straight into the sweet face with eyes like troubled stars, it came to him on a flood of light that he had made a fatal mistake.

He dropped her fingers abruptly. "Good-by."

His crisp footfalls seemed to print themselves on a heart of lead. How could she know that he carried away with him a vision of sweet youth that was to endure!

CHAPTER XVIII

TWO AMBUSHES

The clock at the new Verinder Building showed ten minutes past eleven as Jack Kilmeny took the Utah Junction road out of Goldbanks with his loaded ore wagon. It was a night of scudding clouds, through which gleamed occasionally a fugitive moon. The mountain road was steep and narrow, but both the driver and the mules were used to its every turn and curve. In early days the highgrader had driven a stage along it many a night when he could not have seen the ears of the bronchos.

His destination was the Jack Pot, a mine three miles from town, where intermittently for months he had been raising worthless rock in the hope of striking the extension of the Mollie Gibson vein. It was not quite true, as Bleyer had intimated, that his lease was merely a blind to cover ore thefts, though undoubtedly he used it for that purpose incidentally.

Bleyer had guessed shrewdly that Kilmeny would drive out to the Jack Pot, put up in the deserted bunk-house till morning, and then haul the ore down to the junction to ship to the smelter on the presumption that it had been taken from the leased property. This was exactly what Jack had intended to do. Apparently his purpose was unchanged. He wound steadily up the hill trail, keeping the animals at a steady pull, except for breathing spells. The miner had been a mule skinner in his time, just as he had tried his hand at a dozen other occupations. In the still night the crack of his whip sounded clear as a shot when it hissed above the flanks of the leaders without touching them.

He ran into the expected ambush a half mile from the mine, at a point where the road dipped down a wooded slope to a sandy wash.

"Hands up!" ordered a sharp voice.

A horseman loomed up in the darkness beside the wagon. A second appeared from the brush. Other figures emerged dimly from the void.

Jack gave his mules the whip and the heavy wagon plowed into the deep sand. Before the wheels had made two revolutions the leaders were stopped. Other men swarmed up the side of the wagon, dragged the driver from his seat, and flung him to the ground.

Even though his face was buried in the sand and two men were spread over his body, the captive was enjoying himself.

"This is no way to treat a man's anatomy--most unladylike conduct I ever saw," he protested.

He was sharply advised to shut up.

After the pressure on his neck was a little relieved, Jack twisted round enough to see that his captors were all masked.

"What is this game, boys--a hold-up?" he asked.

"Yes. A hold-up of a hold-up," answered one.

Three of the men busied themselves moving the ore sacks from his wagon to another that had been driven out of the brush. A fourth, whom he judged to be Bleyer, was directing operations, while the fifth menaced him with a revolver shoved against the small of his back.

The situation would have been a serious one--if it had not happened to be amusing instead. Kilmeny wanted to laugh at the bustling energy of the men, but restrained himself out of respect for what was expected of him.

"I'll have the law on you fellows," he threatened, living up to the situation. "You'd look fine behind the bars, Bleyer."

"All those sacks transferred yet, Tim?" barked the superintendent.

"Yep."

"Good. Hit the trail."

The wagon passed out of the draw toward Goldbanks. For some minutes the sound of the wheels grinding against the disintegrated granite of the roadbed came back to Jack and the two guards who remained with him.

"Hope this will be a lesson to you," said the superintendent presently. "Better take warning. Next time you'll go to the pen sure."

"Wait till I get you into court, Bleyer."

"What'll you do there?" jeered the other man. "You'd have a heluvatime swearing to him and making it stick. You're sewed up tight this time, Jack."

"Am I? Bet you a new hat that by this time to-morrow night you fellows won't be cracking your lips laughing."

"Take you. Just order the hat left at Goldstein's for the man who calls for it."

For an hour by the superintendent's watch Kilmeny was held under guard. Then, after warning the highgrader not to return to town before daybreak, the two men mounted and rode swiftly away. Jack was alone with his mules and his empty wagon.

He restrained himself no longer. Mirth pealed in rich laughter from his throat, doubled him up, shook him until he had to hang on to a wagon wheel for support. At last he wiped tears from his eyes, climbed into the wagon, and continued on the way to the Jack Pot. At intervals his whoop of gayety rang out boyishly on the night breeze. Again he whistled cheerfully. He was in the best of humor with himself and the world. For he had played a pretty good joke on Bleyer and Verinder, one they would appreciate at its full within a day or two. He would have given a good deal to be present when they made a certain discovery. Would Moya smile when Verinder told her how the tables had been turned? Or would she think it merely another instance of his depravity?

The road wound up and down over scarred hillsides and through gorges which cut into the range like sword clefts. From one of these it crept up a stiff slope toward the Jack Pot. One hundred and fifty yards from the mine Jack drew up to give the mules a rest.

His lips framed themselves to whistle the first bars of a popular song, but the sound died stillborn. Sharply through the clear night air rang a rifle shot.

Jack did not hear it. A bolt of jagged lightning seared through his brain. The limp hands of the driver fell away from the reins and he fell to the ground, crumpling as a dry leaf that is crushed in the palm.

From the shadow of the bunk-house two men stole into the moonlight heavily like awkward beasts of prey. They crept stealthily forward, rifles in hand, never once lifting their eyes from the huddled mass beside the wagon.

The first looked stolidly down upon the white face and kicked the body with his heavy boot.

"By Goad, Dave, us be quits wi' Jack Kilmeny."

The other--it was Peale, the Cornish miner--had stepped on a spoke of the wheel and pulled himself up so that he could look down into the bed of the wagon. Now he broke out with an oath.

"The wagon's empty."

"What!" Trefoyle straightened instantly, then ran to see for himself. For a moment he could not speak for the rage that surged up in him. "The dommed robber has made fool of us'n," he cried savagely.

In their fury they were like barbarians, cursing impotently the man lying with a white face shining in the moonlight. They had expected to pay a debt of vengeance and to win a fortune at the same stroke. The latter they had missed. The disappointment of their loss stripped them to stark primeval savagery. It was some time before they could exult in their revenge.

"He'll interfere wi' us no more--not this side o' hell anyway," Peale cried.

"Not he. An' we'll put him in a fine grave where he'll lie safe."

They threw the body into the wagon and climbed to the seat. Peale drove along an unused road that deflected from the one running to the Jack Pot.

CHAPTER XIX

MR. VERINDER IS TREATED TO A SURPRISE

The morning after the seizing of the ore Verinder came to breakfast in a mood so jubilant that he could not long keep to himself the cause of his exultation. Kilmeny and Farquhar were away on a hunting trip, and none of the ladies except Moya was yet up. He was especially eager to tell his news to her, because she had always been such an open defender of the highgrader. She gave him his opening very promptly, for she was anxious to know what had occurred.

"Has some distant connection passed away and left you a fortune, Mr. Verinder? Or have you merely found a new gold mine since I saw you last?" she asked.

"By Jove, you're a good guesser, Miss Dwight. I found a gold mine last night. Wonder if you could think where."

Her heart beat faster. "You're so pleased about it I fancy the quartz must have been sacked up for you ready for the smelter," she said carelessly.

Verinder flashed a quick look at her. "Eh, what? How's that?"

Moya opened her lips to confess what she had done, but the arrival of a waiter delayed this. Before he had left, Lady Farquhar entered and the girl's chance was temporarily gone.

"I was just telling Miss Dwight that we've found another gold mine, Lady Farquhar--and of all places in the world located in the bed of a wagon."

"In the bed of a wagon! How could that be?"

"Fact, 'pon my word! High-grade ore too, we fancy; but we'll know more about that when we hear from the assayer."

The matron intercepted the look of triumph--it was almost a jeer--that the mine owner flung toward Miss Dwight. She did not understand what he was talking about, but she saw that Moya did.

"If you'd tell us just what happened we'd be able to congratulate you more intelligently," the latter suggested, masking her anxiety.

"Jove, I wish I could--like to tell you the whole story. We pulled off a ripping surprise on one of your friends. But--the deuce of it is I'm sworn to secrecy. We played the highgraders' game and stepped a bit outside the law for once. Let it go at this, that the fellow had to swallow a big dose of his own medicine."

Moya pushed one more question home. "Nobody hurt, I suppose?"

"Only his feelings and his pocketbook. But I fancy one highgrader has learned that Dobyans Verinder knows his way about a bit, you know."

The subject filled Moya's thoughts all day. Had Kilmeny after all failed to take advantage of her warning? Or had his opponents proved too shrewd for him? From what Verinder had told her she surmised that Jack had tried to reach the railroad with his ore and been intercepted. But why had he not changed his plans after her talk with him? Surely he was not the kind of man to walk like a lamb into a trap baited for him.

Late in the afternoon Moya, dressed in riding costume, was waiting on the hotel porch for India and her brother when she saw Verinder coming down the street. That he was in a sulky ill humor was apparent.

"Lord Farquhar and Captain Kilmeny came back a couple of hours ago," she said by way of engaging him in talk.

"Any luck?" he asked morosely and with obvious indifference.

"A deer apiece and a bear for the captain."

"That fellow Kilmeny outwitted us, after all," he broke out abruptly. "We've been had, by Jove! Must have been what Bleyer calls a plant."

"I don't understand."

"The rock we took from him was refuse stuff--not worth a dollar."

The girl's eyes gleamed. "Your gold mine was salted, then."

"Not even salted. He had gathered the stuff from some old dump."

"He must have profited by my warning, after all," Moya said quietly.

The little man's eyes narrowed. "Eh? How's that? Did you say your warning?"

In spite of herself she felt a sense of error at having played the traitor to her host. "Sorry. I didn't like to do it, but----"

"What is it you did?" he asked bluntly.

"I told Mr. Kilmeny that his plan was discovered."

"You--told him." He subdued his anger for the moment. "If it isn't asking too much--how did you know anything about it?"

She felt herself flushing with shame, but she answered lightly enough. "You shouldn't discuss secrets so near the breakfast-room, Mr. Verinder."

"I see. You listened ... and then you ran to your friend, the highgrader, with the news. That was good of you, Miss Dwight. I appreciate it--under the circumstances."

She knew he referred to the fact that she was his guest. To hear him put into words his interpretation of the thing she had done, with implications of voice and manner that were hateful, moved her to a disgust that included both him and herself.

"Thank you, Mr. Verinder--for all the kind things you mean and can't say."

She turned on her heel and walked to the end of the veranda. After a moment's thought he followed her.

"Have I said a word too much, Miss Dwight? You did listen to a private conversation you weren't meant to hear, didn't you? And you ran to your friend with it? If I'm wrong, please correct me."

"I daresay you're right. We'll let it go at that, if you please."

Verinder was irritated. Clearly in the right, he had allowed her to put him in the wrong.

"I'll withdraw listened, Miss Dwight. Shall we substitute overheard?"

Her angry eyes flashed into his cold, hard ones. "What would you expect me to do? You know what he did for Joyce and me. And he is Captain Kilmeny's cousin. Could I let him go to prison without giving even a warning?"

"Evidently not. So you sacrifice me for him."

"You think I wasn't justified?"

"You'll have to settle that with your conscience," he said coldly. "Don't think I would have been justified in your place."

"You would have let him go to prison--the man who had fought for you against odds?"

"Does that alter the fact that he is a thief?" Verinder demanded angrily.

"It alters my relation to the fact--and it ought to alter yours. He did a great service to the woman you are engaged to marry. Does that mean nothing to you?"

"The fellow was playing off his own bat, wasn't he? I don't see I owe him anything," the mine owner sulkily answered. "Truth is, I'm about fed up with him. He's a bad lot. That's the long and short of him. I don't deny he's a well-plucked daredevil. What of it? This town is full of them. There was no question of his going to prison. I intended only to get back some of the ore he and his friends have stolen from me."

"I didn't know that."

"Would it have made any difference if you had?"

She considered. "I'm not sure."

Captain Kilmeny and India emerged from the hotel and bore down upon them.

"All ready, Moya," cried India.

"Ready here." Moya knew that it must be plain to both Captain Kilmeny and his sister that they had interrupted a disagreement of some sort. Characteristically, she took the bull by the horns. "Mr. Verinder and I are through quarreling. At least I'm through. Are you?" she asked the mine owner with a laugh.

"Didn't know I'd been quarreling, Miss Dwight," Verinder replied stiffly.

"You haven't. I've been doing it all." She turned lightly to her betrothed. "They didn't send up the pinto, Ned. Hope he hasn't really gone lame."

Verinder had been put out of the picture. He turned and walked into the lobby of the hotel, suddenly resolved to make a complaint to Lady Farquhar about the way Moya Dwight had interfered with his plans. He would show that young lady whether she could treat him so outrageously without getting the wigging she deserved.

Lady Farquhar listened with a contempt she was careful to veil. It was not according to the code that a man should run with the tale of his injuries to a young woman's chaperon. Yet she sympathized with him even while she defended Moya. No doubt if Captain Kilmeny had been at hand his fiancée would have taken the matter to him for decision. In his absence she had probably felt that it was incumbent on her to save his cousin from trouble.

The mine owner received Lady Farquhar's explanations in skeptical silence. In his opinion, Moya's interest in Jack Kilmeny had nothing to do with the relationship between that scamp and the captain. He would have liked to say so flatly, but he felt it safer to let his manner convey the innuendo. In her heart Lady Farquhar was of the same belief. She resolved to have a serious talk with Moya before night.

CHAPTER XX

COLTER TAKES A HAND

Moya combed her long rippling hair while Lady Farquhar laid down the law that hedges a young woman from the satisfaction of her generous impulses. For the most part the girl listened in silence, a flush burning through each of her dusky cheeks. There was nothing to be said that would avail. She might defend the thing she had done, but not the feelings that had inspired her action.

"It is all very well to be independent within limits, my dear, but young women of our class are subject to the penalties that go with our privileges. When I was a girl I rebelled but had to obey. So must you." Lady Farquhar interrupted herself to admire the vivid rebel she was admonishing. "What wonderful hair you have--so long and thick and wavy. It must take a great deal of care."

"Yes," Moya admitted absently.

She did not resent the rebuke Lady Jim had come to give her while she was undressing. No doubt she deserved it. She had been unmaidenly, and all for love of this light-hearted vagabond who did not care the turn of a hand for her. All day her thoughts had been in chaotic ferment. At times she lashed herself with the whip of her own scorn because she cared for a self-confessed thief, for a man who lived outside the law and was not ashamed of it. Again it was the knowledge of her unwanted love that flayed her, or of the injustice to her betrothed in so passionate a feeling for another man. With all her strong young will she fought against this devouring flame that possessed her--and she knew that she fought in vain.

In the shipwreck of her self-respect she clung to one spar. Soon they would be on their way back to that well-ordered world where she would be entirely in the groove of convention. Her engagement to Captain Kilmeny would be announced. Surely among the many distractions of London she would forget this debonair scamp who had bewitched her.

"You should have come to me--or to India for that matter. She is his cousin and is in a different position from you. Don't you see that, my dear?" Lady Farquhar asked gently.

And again Moya said "Yes" wearily.

"James and I understand you--how impulsive you are--and how generous. But Mr. Kilmeny--and Mr. Verinder--what do you suppose they think?"

"I don't care what Mr. Verinder thinks." And Moya began to coil her hair loosely for the night.

"But that's just it--a girl must care. She can't afford to allow anyone an opportunity to think unpleasant things about her. She has to guard her reputation very jealously."

"And I suppose I've been playing ducks and drakes with mine," Moya said, pushing home a hairpin.

"I don't say that, dear. What I say is that Mr. Kilmeny may misunderstand your interest in him."

"He may think I'm in love with him. Is that it?" flashed the girl.

"He might. Give a man's vanity the least chance and----"

A reckless impulse to hurt herself--the same which leads a man to grind on an aching tooth in heady rage--swept Moya like a flame.

"Then he would think the truth," she interrupted. "What's the use of denying it? I ... I'm in love with him."

"Moya." Lady Farquhar's protest came in a horrified gasp.

The young woman turned her slim body in the chair with supple grace so as to face her chaperon. Beneath the dark eyes spots of color burned through the tan.

"It's true. I've cared ... ever since we met him."

"And he--has he ever made love to you?"

"Never. He's thought only of Joyce. That's what makes it more shameless."

Lady Farquhar took a moment to absorb the unwelcome news. "I never dreamed it was as bad as this. Of course I knew he interested you a good deal, but----"

Moya could not keep scorn of herself out of her voice. "But you didn't think I was so lost to decency as to throw myself at his head. You see I am."

"Nonsense," cut in her chaperon with sharp common sense. "You're not the first girl that has fancied a man who won't do. It's imagination--a good deal of it. Make yourself forget him. That's all you can do."

"I can't do that. I've tried," confessed Moya miserably.

"Then try again--and again--and still again. Remember that you are engaged to a man worth a dozen of him. Call your pride to help you."

"It seems that I have none. I've told myself forty times that he's a highgrader and that doesn't help."

Her friend was alarmed. "You don't mean that you would marry a man who is a--a man who steals ore."

"No. I wouldn't marry him ... even if he wanted me--which he doesn't. I haven't fallen that far."

"Glad to hear you say that," answered Lady Farquhar with a sigh of relief. She took the girl in her arms and patted one of the shoulders over which the hair cascaded. "My dear, it's hard. You're intense and emotional. But you've got to--to buck up, as James says. You're brave--and you're strong-willed. Make a winning fight."

"What about ... Ned?"

"Does he suspect?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I think he does. But you know how generous he is. He never says anything, or avoids the subject of his cousin in any way." She added, after an instant: "Ned knows that I don't ... love him--that is, in one way. He says he is ready to wait till that comes."

"Ned Kilmeny is a man out of a million."

Moya nodded. "Yes. That's why this is so unfair to him. What ought I to do? Shall I break the engagement? That's what I want to do, but it will hurt him a good deal."

"Wait. Give yourself and him a chance. In a few days we'll be started home."

"That's what I've been telling myself. Everything here reminds me of--him. It will be different then, I try to think. But--down in my heart I don't think it will."

"And I know it will," the matron told her promptly. "Time, my dear, heals all our woes. Youth has great recuperative power. In a year you will wonder how he ever cast such a spell over you."

Moya heard the last belated reveler pass down the corridor to his room before she fell asleep. When she awoke it was to see a long shaft of early sunshine across the bed.

She rose, took her bath, and dressed for walking. Her desire drew the steps of the young woman away from the busy street toward the suburb. She walked, as always, with the elastic resilience of unfettered youth. But the weight that had been at her heart for two days--since she had learned from Jack Kilmeny's lips that he was a highgrader--was still tied there too securely to be shaken away by the wonder of the glorious newborn day.

Returning to the hotel, she met a man on the porch whose face stirred instantly a fugitive memory. He came to her at once, a big leather-skinned man with the weatherbeaten look of the West.

"Aren't you the Miss Dwight I've heard Jack Kilmeny mention?"

"Yes. This is Mr. Colter, isn't it?"

He nodded, watching her with hard narrowed eyes. "Something's wrong. Can you tell me what it is? Jack's mules--two of them, anyhow--came back to the barn during the night with bits of broken harness still attached to them. Looks like there had been a runaway and the wagon had come to grief. The keeper of the livery stable says Bell took the wagon around to Jack's place and left it with him. He was seen driving out of town soon after. He has not been seen since."

Her heart flew to alarm. "You mean ... you think he has been hurt?"

"Don't know. He's not in town. That's a cinch. I've raked Goldbanks with a toothcomb. Where is he?"

"Couldn't he be at his mine?"

"I sent a boy out there. He's not at the Jack Pot."

"What is it that you think? Tell me," she cried softly.

"You're his friend, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"There's some talk around town that he was held up by Bleyer. I came up here to see him or Verinder. Foul play of some kind, that's my guess."

"But--you surely don't think that Mr. Bleyer or Mr. Verinder would ... hurt him."

The look of dogged resolution on the man's granite face did not soften. "They'll have to show me--and by God! if they did----"

Her mind flew with consternation to the attack upon Kilmeny that had been made by Bleyer. But Verinder had told her nobody had been hurt. Could they have taken the highgrader prisoner? Were they holding him for some purpose?

"Mr. Verinder gets up about this time usually," she said.

"I'm waiting for him. He said he would be down at once."

"Will you tell me anything you find out, please? I'll be on the veranda upstairs."

Colter joined her a quarter of an hour later. "I saw both Bleyer and Verinder. They've got something up their sleeve, but I don't think they know where Jack is or what has become of him. They pretended to think I was trying to put one over on them."

"What will you do now?"

"I'll go out to the Jack Pot myself. I've reason to believe he intended to go there."

"If you find out anything----"

"Yes, I'll let you know."

Moya went directly from Colter to Bleyer. The superintendent entered a curt denial to her implied charge.

"Miss Dwight, I don't know what you do or do not know. I see someone has been blabbing. But I'll just say this. When I last saw Jack Kilmeny he was as sound as I am this minute. I haven't the least idea where he is. You don't need to worry about him at all. When he wants to turn up he'll be on deck right side up. Don't ask me what his play is, for I don't know. It may be to get me and Verinder in bad with the miners. Just be sure of one thing: he's grandstanding."

She was amazingly relieved. "I'm so glad. I thought perhaps----"

"----that Mr. Verinder and I had murdered him. Thanks for your good opinion of us, but really we didn't," he retorted in his dryest manner.

She laughed. "I did think perhaps you knew where he was."

"Well, I don't--and I don't want to," he snapped. "The less I see of him the better I'll be satisfied."

The superintendent of the Verinder properties had found a note addressed to him in one of the sacks of quartz taken from Kilmeny. The message, genial to the point of impudence, had hoped he had enjoyed his little experience as a hold-up. To Bleyer, always a serious-minded man, this levity had added insult to injury. Just now the very mention of the highgrader's name was a red rag to his temper. It was bad enough to be bested without being jeered at by the man who had set a trap for him.

It was well on toward evening before Colter paid his promised visit to Miss Dwight. She found him waiting for her upon her return from a ride with Captain Kilmeny, Verinder, and Joyce.

Moya, as soon as she had dismounted, walked straight to him.

"What have you found out, Mr. Colter?"

"Not much. It rained during the night and wiped out the tracks of wagon wheels. Don't know how far Jack got or where he went, but the remains of the wagon are lying at the bottom of a gulch about two miles from the Jack Pot."

"How did it get there?"

"I wish you could tell me that. Couldn't have been a runaway or the mules would have gone over the edge of the road too." He stepped forward quickly as Verinder was about to pass into the hotel. "I want to have a talk with you."

The little man adjusted his monocle. "Ye-es. What about, my man?"

"About Jack Kilmeny. Where is he? What do you know? I'm going to find out if I have to tear it from your throat."

Verinder was no coward, but he was a product of our modern super-civilization. He glanced around hastily. The captain had followed Joyce into the lobby. Moya and he were alone on the piazza, with this big savage who looked quite capable of carrying out his threat.

"Don't talk demned nonsense," the mine owner retorted, flushing angrily.

Colter did not answer in words. The strong muscular fingers of his left hand closed on the right arm of Verinder just below the shoulder with a pressure excruciatingly painful. Dobyans found himself moving automatically toward the end of the porch. He had to clench his teeth to keep from crying out.

"Let me alone, you brute," he gasped.

Colter paid no attention until his victim was backed against the rail in a corner. Then he released the millionaire he was manhandling.

"You're going to tell me everything you know. Get that into your head. Or, by God, I'll wring your neck for you."

The Englishman had never before been confronted with such a situation. He was a citizen of a country where wealth hedges a man from such assaults. The color ebbed from his face, then came back with a rush.

"Go to the devil, you big bully," he flung out sharply.

Moya, taken by surprise at Colter's abrupt desertion of her, had watched with amazement the subsequent flare-up. Now she crossed the porch toward them.

"What are you doing, Mr. Colter?"

"None of your funeral, ma'am," the miner answered bluntly, not for a moment lifting his hard eyes from Verinder. "Better unload what you know. I've had a talk with Quint Saladay. I know all he knows, that Bleyer and you and him with two other lads held up Jack and took his ore away. The three of them left you and Bleyer guarding Jack. What did you do with him?"

"It's a bally lie. I didn't stay with Bleyer to guard him."

"That's right. You didn't. You came back with the others. But you know what Bleyer did. Out with it."

"I don't admit a word of what you say," said Verinder doggedly.

Colter had trapped him into a half admission, but he did not intend to say any more.

Moya spoke, a little timidly. "Wait a minute please, Mr. Colter. Let me talk with Mr. Verinder alone. I think he'll tell me what you want to know."

Jack's friend looked at her with sharp suspicion. Was she trying to make a dupe of him? Her candid glance denied it.

"All right. Talk to him all you like, but you'll do your talking here," he agreed curtly before he turned on his heel and walked away a few steps.

"You must tell him what he wants to know, Mr. Verinder," urged the young woman in a low voice. "Something has happened to his friend. We must help clear it up."

"I'm not responsible for what has happened to his friend. What do you want me to do? Peach on Bleyer, is that it?"

"No. Send for him and tell Mr. Colter the truth."

"I'll see him hanged and quartered first," he replied angrily.

"If you don't, I'll tell what I know. There's a life at stake," Moya cried, a trace of agitation in her voice.

"Fiddlesticks!" he shrugged. "The fellow's full of tricks. He worked one on us the other night. I'm hanged if I let him play me again."

"You must. I'll tell Captain Kilmeny and Lord Farquhar. I'll not let it rest this way. The matter is serious."

"I'm not going to be bullied into saying a word. That's the long and short of it," he repeated in disgust. "Let Bleyer tell the fellow if he wants to. I'll have nothing to do with it. We're not responsible for what has happened--if anything has."

"Then I'll go and get Mr. Bleyer."

"Just as you please. I'd see this ruffian at Halifax first, if you ask me." The angry color flushed his face again as he thought of the insult to which he had been subjected.

To Colter Moya explained her purpose. He nodded agreement without words.

After two or three attempts she got the superintendent on the telephone at the Mollie Gibson mine and arranged with him that he was to come to the hotel at once. A few minutes later he drove up in his car.

Moya put the case to him.

Bleyer turned to his employer. "You want me to tell Colter what I know?"

"I don't care a turn of my hand whether you tell the fellow or not," drawled Verinder, ignoring the presence of Colter.

The superintendent peered at Moya in his nearsighted fashion over the glasses on his nose. "Can't see that it matters much, Miss Dwight. I'm not worrying a bit about Jack Kilmeny, but, if Colter and you are, I'm willing to tell what I know on condition that you keep the facts to yourselves."

"I'll keep quiet if you haven't injured Jack in any way," Colter amended.

"We haven't. He was sound as a new dollar when I left him Tuesday night. Want to hear the particulars?"

"That's what I'm here for," snapped Colter.

Bleyer told the whole story so far as he knew it.

CHAPTER XXI

SPIRIT RAPPING?

Farquhar and Captain Kilmeny left next day for another short hunting trip. The captain had offered to give it up, but Moya had urged upon him that it would not be fair to disappoint his companion. He had gone reluctantly, because he saw that his fiancée was worried. His own opinion was that his cousin Jack had disappeared for reasons of his own.

Colter did not relax in his search. But as the days passed hope almost died within him. Jack had plenty of enemies, as an aggressive fighter in a new country always must have. His friend's fear was that some of them had decoyed Kilmeny to his death. The suspicions of the miner centered upon Peale and Trefoyle, both because Jack had so recently had trouble with them and because they knew beforehand of his intention to remove the ore. But he could find no evidence upon which to base his feeling, though he and Curly, in company with a deputy sheriff, had put the Cornishmen through a grilling examination.

It had been understood that the young women should take a trip through the Never Quit before they left Goldbanks, but for one reason or another this had been postponed until after the captain and Farquhar had started on their final hunting expedition. The second afternoon after their departure was the one decided upon for the little adventure.

Verinder, with the extravagance that went hand in hand with an occasional astonishing parsimony, had ordered oilskin suits and waterproof boots made especially for his guests. A room was reserved for the young ladies at the mine, equipped for this one occasion to serve as a boudoir where they might dress in comfort.

The mine owner's guests donned, with a good deal of hilarious merriment, the short skirts, the boots, and the rubber helmets. The costumes could not have been called becoming, but they were eminently suited for the wet damp tunnels of the Never Quit.

After they had entered the cage it was a little terrifying to be shot so rapidly down into the blackness of the mine.

"Don't be afraid. It's quite safe," Bleyer told them cheerfully.

At the tenth level the elevator stopped and they emerged into an open space.

"We're going to follow this drift," explained the superintendent.

They seated themselves in ore cars and were wheeled into a cavern lighted at intervals by electric bulbs. Presently the cars slowed down and the occupants descended.

"This way," ordered Bleyer.

They followed in single file into a hot, damp tunnel, which dripped moisture in big drops from the roof upon a rough, uneven floor of stone and dirt where pools of water had occasionally gathered. The darkness increased as they moved forward, driven back by the candles of the men for a space scarce farther than they could reach with outstretched hands.

Moya, bringing up the rear, could hear Bleyer explain the workings to those at his heel. He talked of stopes, drifts, tunnels, wage scales, shifts, high-grade ore, and other subjects that were as Greek to Joyce and India. The atmosphere was oppressively close and warm, and the oilskins that Moya wore seemed to weigh heavily upon her. She became aware with some annoyance at herself that a faintness was stealing over her brain and a mistiness over her eyes. To steady herself she stopped, catching at the rough wall for support. The others, unaware that she was not following, moved on. With a half articulate little cry she sank to the ground.

When she came to herself the lights had disappeared. She was alone in the most profound darkness she had ever known. It seemed to press upon her so ponderably as almost to be tangible. The girl was frightened. Her imagination began to conjure all sorts of dangers. Of cave-ins and explosions she had heard and read a good deal. Anything was possible in this thousand-foot deep grave. In a frightened, ineffective little voice she cried out to her friends.

Instantly there came an answer--a faint tapping on the wall almost at her ear. She listened breathlessly, and caught again that faint far tap--tap--tap--tap--tap--tap--tap. Instinctively her hand went out, groping along the wall until it fell upon a pipe. Even as she touched this the sound came again, and along with it the faintest of vibrations. She knew that somebody at a distance was hitting the pipe with a piece of quartz or metal.

Stooping, she found a bit of broken rock. Three times she tapped the pipe. An answer came at once.

Tap--tap--tap--tap--tap--tap--tap!

She tried two knocks. Again the response of seven taps sounded. Four blows brought still seven. Why always seven? She did not know, but she was greatly comforted to know that her friends were in communication with her. After all she was not alone.

A light glimmered at the end of the tunnel and moved slowly toward her. Bleyer's voice called her name. Presently the whole party was about her with sympathetic questions and explanations.

She made light of her fainting attack, but Verinder insisted on getting her back to the upper air in spite of her protests. He had discovered that Joyce was quite ready to return to the sunlight, now that her curiosity was satisfied. A very little of anything that was unpleasant went a long way with Miss Seldon, and there was something about this underground tomb that reminded her strongly of an immense grave.

At dinner Verinder referred to the attack of vertigo. "Feel quite fit again, Miss Dwight?"

"Quite, thank you." Moya was a little irritated at the reference, because she was ashamed of having given way to physical weakness. "It was nothing. I was a goose. That's all."

Bleyer, a guest for the evening, defended the young woman from her own scorn. "It often takes people that way the first time, what with the heat and the closeness. I once knew a champion pugilist to keel over while he was going through a mine."

"Were you afraid when you found yourself alone?" Joyce asked.

"I was until you tapped."

India looked puzzled. "Tapped. What do you mean?"

"On the pipe."

"What pipe?"

"The one that ran through the tunnel."

Miss Kilmeny shook her head. "I didn't see anybody tap. Perhaps one of us touched it by chance."

"No. That couldn't be. The tap came seven times together, and after I had answered it seven times more."

"Seven times?" asked Bleyer quickly.

"Yes--seven. But, if you didn't tap, who did?"

"Sure it wasn't imagination?" Verinder suggested.

"Imagination! I tell you it was repeated again and again," Moya said impatiently.

"Spirit rapping," surmised Joyce lightly. "It doesn't matter, anyhow, since it served its work of comforting Moya."

"It might have been some of the workmen," Lady Farquhar guessed.

"Must have been," agreed Bleyer. "And yet--we're not working that end of the mine now. The men had no business there. Odd that it was seven raps. That is a call for help. It means danger."

A bell of warning began to toll in Moya's heart. It rang as yet no clear message to her brain, but the premonition of something sinister and deadly sent a sinking sensation through her.

Verinder sat up with renewed interest. "I say, you know--spirit rapping. Weren't you telling me, Bleyer, that there was a big accident there some years ago? Perhaps the ghosts of some of the lost miners were sending a message to their wives. Eh, what?"

"The accident was in the Golden Nugget, an adjoining mine. The property was pretty well worked out and has never been opened since the disaster."

The color had ebbed from Moya's lips. She was a sane young woman not given to nerves. But she had worried a great deal over the disappearance of Jack Kilmeny. This, coming on top of it, shook her composure. For she was fighting with the dread that the spirit of the man she loved had been trying to talk with her.

Joyce chattered gayly. "How weird! Moya, you must write an account of your experience for the Society for Psychical Research. Put me in it, please."

"Of course, it must have been some of the men, but I don't see----"

Moya interrupted the superintendent sharply. An intuition, like a flash of light, had illumined her brain. "Where does that pipe run, Mr. Bleyer?"

"Don't know. Maps of the workings at the office would show."

"Will you please find out?"

"Glad to look it up for you, Miss Dwight. I'm a little curious myself."

"I mean now--at once."

He glanced at her in quick surprise. Was she asking him to leave the dinner table to do it? Lady Farquhar saw how colorless Moya was and came to the rescue.

"My dear, you are a little unstrung, aren't you?" she said gently. "I think we might find something more cheerful to talk about. We always have the weather."

Moya rose, trembling. "No. I know now who called for help. It was Jack Kilmeny."

Verinder was the first to break the strained silence. "But that's nonsense, you know."

"It's the truth. He was calling for help."

"Where from? What would he be doing down in a mine?"

"I don't know.... Yes, I do, too," Moya corrected herself, voice breaking under the stress of her emotion. "He has been put down there to die."

"To die." Joyce echoed the words in a frightened whisper.

Dobyans laughed. "This is absurd. Who under heaven would put him there?"

A second flash of light burned in upon the girl. "That man, Peale--and the other ruffian. They knew about the shipment just as you did. They waylaid him ... and buried him in some old mine." Moya faced them tensely, a slim wraith of a girl with dark eyes that blazed. She had forgotten all about conventions, all about what they would think of her. The one thing she saw was Jack Kilmeny in peril, calling for help.

But Lady Farquhar remembered what Moya did not. It was her duty to defend her charge against the errant impulses of the heart, to screen them from the callous eyes of an unsympathetic world.

"You jump to conclusions, my dear. Sit down and we'll talk it over."

"No. He called for help. I'm going to take it to him."

Again Verinder laughed unpleasantly. Moya did not at that moment know the man was in existence. One sure purpose flooded her whole being. She was going to save her lover.

India wavered. She, too, had lost color. "But--you're only guessing, dear."

"You'll find it's true. We must follow that pipe and rescue him. To-night."

"Didn't know you were subject to nerve attacks, Miss Dwight," derided Verinder uneasily.

Moya put her hands in front of her eyes as if to shut out the picture of what she saw. "He's been there for five days ... starving, maybe." She shuddered.

"You're only guessing, Miss Dwight. What facts have you to back it?" Bleyer asked.

"We must start at once--this very hour." Moya had recovered herself and spoke with quiet decision. "But first we must find where the pipe leads."

Bleyer answered the appeal in Lady Farquhar's eyes by rising. He believed it to be a piece of hysterical folly, just as she did. But some instinct of chivalry in him responded to the call made upon him. He was going, not to save Kilmeny from an imaginary death, but to protect the girl that loved him from showing all the world where her heart was.

"I'll be back inside of an hour--just as soon as I can trace that pipe for you, Miss Dwight," he said.

"After all, Moya may be right," India added, to back her friend.

"It's just possible," Bleyer conceded.

CHAPTER XXII

THE ACID TEST

Jack Kilmeny opened his eyes to find himself in darkness utter and complete except for a pinpoint of light gleaming from far above. His head was whirling and throbbing painfully. Something warm and moist dropped into his eyes, and when he put his hand up to investigate the cause he knew it must be blood from a wound.

Faintly the sound of voices and of harsh laughter drifted down to him. Presently this died away. The stillness was almost uncanny.

"Something laid me out, I reckon. Must have been a bad whack." His finger found a ridge above the temple which had been plowed through the thick curly hair. "Looks as though a glancing bullet hit me. Golden luck it didn't finish the job."

He moved. A sharp pain shot through his lower right leg. Trying to rise, he slipped down at once from a badly sprained ankle. Every muscle in his body ached, as if he had been jarred by a hard fall.

"Better have a look around first," he told himself.

Groping in his pocket, he found a match case and struck a light. What he saw made him shudder. From the ledge upon which he lay fell away a gulf, the bottom of which could be only guessed. His eyes, becoming accustomed to the darkness, made out that he was in some sort of shaft, thirty feet or more below the surface. Rotten from age, the timberings had slipped and become jammed. Upon some of these he was resting. The sprained ankle, by preventing him from moving, had saved him from plunging down the well.

He held out a silver dollar and dropped it. From the time the coin took to strike Jack judged he was a hundred feet from the bottom.

The flare of a second match showed him a wall ladder leading down, but unfortunately it did not extend above him except in rotting fragments. What had happened he could guess. Supposing him to be dead, his enemies had dropped the body down this deserted shaft. Not for a moment did he doubt who they were. The voices had been unmistakably Cornish, and even without that evidence he would have guessed Peale and his partner as the guilty ones.

Since he could not go up he went down, moving warily so as not to jar loose the timbers upon which he lay. Every rung of the ladder he tested with great care before he put his weight upon it. Each step of the journey down sent a throb of pain from the ricked ankle, even though he rested his weight on his hands while he lowered himself. From the last rung--it was by actual count the one hundred forty-third--he stepped to the ground.

Another match showed him a drift running from the foot of the shaft. Along this he dragged himself slowly, uncertain of direction but determined to find out what possibility of escape his prison offered. For two hundred yards the tunnel led forward and brought him up sharply at an impasse. A cave-in blocked farther advance.

"Check," Jack told himself aloud grimly.

He knew now that his situation was a very serious one, for he had been flung alive into a grave that offered only a slight prospect of escape. He was without food, effectually cut off from the surface of the earth, and none but those who had assaulted him knew that he was buried.

The alternatives that lay before him were plain. He might climb the ladder again to the timber ledge and keep calling for help, or he might attempt to dig a way over the cave-in with his hands and his pocketknife, trusting that the tunnel led to another shaft. The former was a chance pure and simple, and a slender one at that. It was not likely that anybody would pass the mouth of a deserted shaft far up in the hills at this season of the year. But it was quite within the probabilities that the tunnel led to some of the workings of a live property. Many miles of underground drifts were connected by intercepting stopes of adjoining mines. If he could force a way through the cave-in there might be safety beyond. To go moling into such a place without timbering would be a dangerous business, but the crisis was one that justified any risk.

He took stock of his assets. Fortunately he had bought at a lunch counter a ham sandwich to stay his appetite during the night trip. This was still in his pocket, badly mashed but still edible. Five cigars were in the case he carried and upon his person all told he found eleven matches. A little trickle of water ran through the tunnel and gave assurance that he would not die of thirst. His pocketknife was a serviceable one and he had plenty of physical strength.

Jack decided that he would eat half of the sandwich that day and reserve the rest for the second one. His cigars were precious luxuries to be indulged in once every twenty-four hours after he had knocked off work.

He attacked the cave-in with the cool energy that characterized him. Out of a piece of board he fashioned a kind of shovel with his knife. Bits of broken timbering lay at the foot of the shaft. These he dragged into the tunnel for fuel to feed a small fire which he built to give light for the work. All through the night and till noon the following day he dug among the fallen rocks and dirt, cleaning this débris away after he had loosened it with his bare hands.

The impact of the fall when he had been thrown down the shaft had jarred him greatly. With the slightest movement of the body his back and shoulders ached, sending shoots of pain in protest to his brain. The sprained ankle he had bound tightly in a wet handkerchief, but every time his weight rested on that leg he had to grit his teeth. But it was not in him to quit. He stuck to his job till he had done the shift set himself.

At noon he crawled back to the foot of the shaft. He was fagged to exhaustion. For half an hour he lay stretched on his back with every muscle relaxed.

Presently he cut from his coat the pocket that contained the sandwich and divided the mash of ham and bread into two parts. One of these he ate. The other he returned to the coat.

Favoring his ricked ankle as best he could, Jack climbed the wall ladder to the ledge upon which he had found himself lying the previous night. Five minutes' examination of the walls showed him that there was no chance to reach the top of the shaft unaided. He tested the jammed timbers to make sure they were secure before he put his weight upon them. During the next six hours he called aloud every few minutes to attract the attention of anyone who might chance to be passing near.

Toward evening he treated himself to his first cigar, making the most of the comfort that it gave him. When the stub grew short he held it on the small blade of his knife so as not to miss a puff. What was left he wrapped in a pocket handkerchief for later use.

As the stars began to come out in the little patch of blue sky he could see just above his prison Jack lowered himself again to the foot of the shaft. Here he lay down a second time and within five minutes had fallen into a deep sleep.

About midnight he awakened and was aware at once of a ravenous hunger. He was still resolute to win a way out, though the knowledge pressed on him that his chances were slender at the best. Till morning he worked without a moment's rest. The fever in his ankle and the pain of the sprain had increased, but he could not afford to pay any attention to them. Blood from his scarred, torn hands ran down his wrists. Every muscle in his abused body ached. Still he stabbed with his knife into the earth that filled the tunnel and still he pulled great rocks back with his shovel. All his life he had fought for his own hand. He would not let himself believe fate had played so scurvy a trick as to lock him alive into a tomb closed so tightly that he could not pry a way out.

When his watch told him it was eight o'clock he staggered to the shaft again and lay down on his back to rest. Before climbing to the platform above he finished the sandwich. He was very hungry and could have eaten enough for two men had he been given the opportunity. Again for hours he called every few minutes at the top of his voice.

In his vest pocket were a pencil and a notebook used for keeping the accounts of the highgraders with whom he did business. To pass the time he set down the story of the crime which had brought him here and his efforts to free himself.

After darkness fell he let himself down to the foot of the shaft and slept. Either from hunger or from fever in his ankle he slept brokenly. He was conscious of a little delirium in his waking spells, but the coming of midnight found him master of himself, though a trifle lightheaded.

It was impossible to work as steadily as he had done during the two previous nights. Hunger and pain and toil were doing their best to wear out his strength. His limbs moved laggardly. Once he fell asleep in the midst of his labor. He dreamed of Moya, and after he awakened--as he presently did with a start--she seemed so near that it would scarce have surprised him if in the darkness his hands had come in contact with the soft flesh of her vivid face. Nor did it strike him as at all odd that it was Moya and not Joyce who was visiting him when he was in prison. Sometimes she came to him as the little girl of the Victorian, but more often the face he saw was the mocking one of the young woman, in which gayety overran the tender sadness of the big, dusky eyes beneath which tiny freckles had been sprinkled. More than once he clearly heard her whisper courage to him.

Next day the notes in his diary were more fragmentary.

"Broke my rule and smoked two cigars to-day. Just finished my fourth. Leaves one more. I drink a great deal. It helps me to forget I'm hungry. Find a cigar goes farther if I smoke it in sections. I chew the stubs while I'm working.

"Have tunneled in about seventeen feet. No sign that I'm near the end of the cave-in. There's a lot of hell in being buried alive.

"Think I'm losing my voice from shouting so much when I'm in the shaft. Gave it up to-day and let little Moya call for me. She's a trump. Wish she'd stay here all the time and not keep coming and going."

The jottings on the fourth day show the increase of the delirium. Sometimes his mind appears to be quite clear, then it wanders to queer fancies.

"Last cigar gone. Got sick from eating the stub. Violent retchings. Kept falling asleep while working. Twenty-nine feet done--surely reach the end to-morrow.... Another cave-in just after I crawled out from my tunnel. All my work wiped out. Moya, the little devil, laughed and said it served a highgrader right....

"Have telegraphed for help. Can't manage alone. Couldn't make it up the shaft and had to give up the climb. Ordered a big breakfast at the Silver Dollar--steak and mushrooms and hot cakes. The telegraph wires run through pipe along floor of tunnel. Why don't the operator stay on his job? I tap my signals and get no answer."

He began to talk to himself in a rambling sort of way. Sometimes he would try to justify himself for highgrading in jerky half-coherent phrases, sometimes he argued with Peale that he had better let him out. But even in his delirious condition he stuck to his work in the tunnel, though he was scarce able to drag himself about.

As the sickness grew on him, the lightheaded intervals became more frequent. In one of these it occurred to him that he had struck high grade ore and he filled his pockets with samples taken from the cave-in. He spent a good deal of time explaining to Moya patiently over and over again that the business of highgrading was justified by the conditions under which the miners lived. There was no sequence to his thoughts. They came in flashes without logical connection. It became, for instance, a firm obsession that the pipe running through the tunnel was a telegraph wire by means of which he could communicate with the outside world if the operator would only stay on duty. But his interest in the matter was intermittent.

It is suggestive of his condition that when Moya's answer came to his seven taps he took it quite as a matter of course.

"The son of a Greaser is back on the job at last," he said aloud without the least excitement. "Now, I'll get that breakfast I ordered."

He crawled back to the foot of the shaft in a childish, absurd confidence that the food he craved would soon be sent down to him. While he waited, Jack fell into light sleep where he lost himself in fancies that voiced themselves in incoherent snatches of talk.

CHAPTER XXIII

CAPTAIN KILMENY RETIRES

A voice calling his name from the top of the shaft brought Jack Kilmeny back to consciousness. He answered.

A shout of joy boomed down to him in Colter's heavy bass. He could hear, too, the sweet troubled tones of a woman.

"Hurry, please, hurry.... Thank God, we're in time."

"Got that breakfast with you, little neighbor," Jack called up weakly. He did not need to be told that Moya Dwight was above, and, since she was there, of course she had brought him the breakfast that he had ordered from the Silver Dollar.

"Get back into the tunnel, Jack," Colter presently shouted.

"What for?"

"We're lowering someone to you. The timberings are rotten and they might fall on you. Get back."

"All right."

Five minutes later the rescuer reached the foot of the shaft. He stood for a moment with a miner's lamp lifted above his head and peered into the gloom.

"Where away, Jack?"

The man was Ned Kilmeny. He and Lord Farquhar had returned to the hotel just after dinner. The captain had insisted--all the more because there was some danger in it--that he should be the man lowered to the aid of his cousin.

"Bring that breakfast?" Jack snapped, testily.

"Yes, old man. It's waiting up above. Brought some soup down with me."

"I ordered it two hours ago. What's been keeping you? I'm going to complain of the service."

The captain saw at once that Jack was lightheaded and he humored him.

"Yes, I would. Now drink this soup."

The imprisoned man drained the bucket to the last drop.

Ned loosened the rope from his own body and fastened it about that of his cousin. He gave the signal and Jack was hauled very carefully to the surface in such a way as not to collide with the jammed timbers near the top. Colter and Bleyer lifted the highgrader over the edge of the well, where he collapsed at once into the arms of his friend.

Moya, a flask in her hand, stooped over the sick man where he lay on the grass. Her fine face was full of poignant sympathy.

Kilmeny's mind was quite clear now. The man was gaunt as a famished wolf. Bitten deep into his face were the lines that showed how closely he had shaved death. But in his eye was the gay inextinguishable gleam of the thoroughbred.

"Ain't I the quitter, Miss Dwight? Keeling over just like a sick baby."

The young woman choked over her answer. "You mustn't talk yet. Drink this, please."

He drank, and later he ate sparingly of the food she had hastily gathered from the dinner table and brought with her. In jerky little sentences he sketched his adventure, mingling fiction with fact as the fever grew on him again.

Bleyer, himself a game man, could not withhold his admiration after he had heard Captain Kilmeny's story of what he had found below. The two, with Moya, were riding behind the wagon in which the rescued man lay.

"Think of the pluck of the fellow--boring away at that cave-in when any minute a million tons of rock and dirt might tumble down and crush the life out of him. That's a big enough thing. But add to it his game leg and his wound and starvation on top of that. I'll give it to him for the gamest fellow that ever went down into a mine."

"That's not all," the captain added quietly. "He must have tunneled in about twenty-five feet when the roof caved again. Clean bowled out as he was, Jack tackled the job a second time."

Moya could not think of what had taken place without a film coming over her eyes and a sob choking her throat. A vagabond and worse he might be, but Jack Kilmeny held her love beyond recall. It was useless to remind herself that he was unworthy. None the less, she gloried in the splendid courage of the man. It flooded her veins joyously even while her heart was full to overflowing with tender pity for his sufferings. Whatever else he might be, Jack Kilmeny was every inch a man. He had in him the dynamic spark that brought him smiling in his weakness from the presence of the tragedy that had almost engulfed him.

There was a little discussion between Colter and Captain Kilmeny as to which of them should take care of the invalid. The captain urged that he would get better care at the hotel, where Lady Farquhar and India could look after him. Colter referred the matter to Jack.

"I'm not going to burden Lady Farquhar or India. Colter can look out for me," the sick man said.

"It's no trouble. India won't be satisfied unless you come to the hotel," Moya said in a low voice.

He looked at her, was about to decline, and changed his mind. The appeal in her eyes was too potent.

"I'm in the hands of my friends. Settle it any way you like, Miss Dwight. Do whatever you want with me, except put me back in that hell."

After a doctor had seen Jack and taken care of his ankle, after the trained nurse had arrived and been put in charge of the sick room, Captain Kilmeny made a report to Moya and his sister.

"He's gone to sleep already. The doctor says he'll probably be as well as ever in a week, thanks to you, Moya."

"Thanks to you, Ned," she amended.

"He sent to you this record of how he spent his time down there--said it might amuse you."

The Captain looked straight at her as he spoke.

"I'll read it."

"Do. You'll find something on the last page that will interest you. Now, I'm going to say good-night. It's time little girls were in bed."

He kissed his sister and Moya, rather to the surprise of the latter, for Captain Kilmeny never insisted upon the rights of a lover. There was something on his face she did not quite understand. It was as if he were saying good-by instead of good-night.

She understood it presently. Ned had written a note and pinned it to the last page of the little book. She read it twice, and then again in tears. It told her that the soldier had read truly the secret her anxiety had flaunted in the face of all her friends.

"It's no go, dear girl. You've done your best, but you don't love me. You never will. Afraid there's no way left but for me to release you. So you're free again, little sweetheart.

"I know you won't misunderstand. Never in my life have I cared for you so much as I do to-night. But caring isn't enough. I've had my chance and couldn't win out. May you have good hunting wherever you go."

The note was signed "Ned."

Her betrothed had played the game like the gentleman he was to a losing finish. She knew he would not whimper or complain, that he would meet her to-morrow cheerfully and easily, hiding even from her the wound in his heart. He was a better man than his cousin. She could not deny to herself that his gallantry had a finer edge. His sense of right was better developed and his courage quite as steady. Ned Kilmeny had won his V. C. before he was twenty-five. He had carried to a successful issue one of the most delicate diplomatic missions of recent years. Everybody conceded that he had a future. If Jack had never appeared on her horizon she would have married Ned and been to him a loving wife. But the harum-scarum cousin had made this impossible.

Why? Why had her roving heart gone out to this attractive scamp who did not want her love or care for it? She did not know. The thing was as unexplainable as it was inescapable. All the training of her life had shaped her to other ends. Lady Farquhar would explain it as a glamour cast by a foolish girl's fancy. But Moya knew the tide of feeling which raced through her was born not of fancy but of the true romance.

CHAPTER XXIV

TWO IN A BUCKET

Jack heard the story of his rescue from India. He surprised her alone in the breakfast room by hobbling in one morning after the rest had gone.

She popped a question directly at him. "Did the doctor say you could get up?"

"Didn't ask him," he answered with a laugh, and dropped into a seat across the table.

Shaven and dressed in a clean freshly pressed suit, he looked a different man from the haggard grimy vagabond Captain Kilmeny had brought back with him three days earlier. The eyes were still rather sunken and the face a bit drawn, but otherwise he was his very competent and debonair self. His "Good mornin', India," was as cheery and matter of fact as if those five days of horror had never existed.

"Don't believe it will hurt you." Her bright eyes were warm in their approval of him. "You look a lot fitter than you did even yesterday. It's awfully jolly to see you around again, Cousin Jack."

"I'm enjoying it myself," he conceded. "Anything of importance in that covered dish over there?"

"Tell me all about it," she ordered, handing him the bacon. Then, with a shudder, she added: "Must have been rather awful down there."

"Bad enough," he admitted lightly.

"Tell me." She leaned forward, chin in hand.

"What's the use? Those fellows put me down. Your brother took me up. That's all."

"It isn't all. Ned says it is perfectly marvelous the way you dug that tunnel and escaped from being crushed, and then dug it again after it had caved."

"Couldn't lie down and quit, could I? A man in the hole I was can't pick and choose." He smiled lazily at her and took a muffin from a plate handed him by the waiter. "My turn to ask questions. I want the full story of how you guessed I was in the west shaft of the Golden Nugget."

"Haven't you heard? It was Moya guessed it--from the tapping on the pipe, you know."

"So I've been told. Now let's have the particulars." His eyes went arrow-straight into hers and rested there.

India told him. She knew that Ned would make a safer husband for Moya than this forceful adventurer. It was quite likely to be on the cards that he cared nothing for her friend. Indeed, his desperate flirtation with Joyce indicated as much. Moreover, Moya would not marry a man whom she could not respect, one who made his living by dishonest practices. But in spite of all these objections Miss Kilmeny told her cousin how Moya had fought for his life against ridicule and unbelief, regardless of what any of them might think of her.

He made one comment when she had finished. "So I have to thank Moya Dwight for my life."

"Moya alone. They laughed at her, but she wouldn't give up. I never saw anybody so stubborn. There's something splendid in her. She didn't care what any of us thought. The one thing in her mind was that she was going to save you. So Mr. Bleyer had to get up from dinner and find out from the maps where that pipe went. He traced it to the old west shaft of the Golden Nugget."

"And what did you think?" he asked, watching her steadily.

"I admired her pluck tremendously."

"Did Verinder--and Bleyer--and Lady Farquhar?"

"How do I know what they thought?" flamed the girl. "If Mr. Verinder is cad enough----" She stopped, recalling certain obligations she was under to that gentleman.

"Why did she do it?"

She flashed a look of feminine scorn at him. "You'll have to ask Moya that--if you want to know."

He nodded his head slowly. "That's just what I'm going to do."

"You'll have more time to talk with her--now that Joyce is engaged and daren't flirt with you," his cousin suggested maliciously.

Though he tried to carry this off with a laugh, the color mounted to his face. "I've been several kinds of an idiot in my time."

"Don't you dare try any nonsense with Moya," her friend cried, a little fiercely.

"No," he agreed.

"She's not Joyce."

He had an answer for that. "I'd marry her to-morrow if she'd take me."

"You mean you...?"

"Yes. From the first day I met her again. And I didn't know it till I was down in that hell hole. Shall I tell you something?" He put his arms on the table and leaned toward her with shining eyes. "She was with me down there most of the time. Any time I stopped to listen I could hear her whisper courage in that low, sweet voice of hers."

"You know about her and Ned?"

"Yes."

"He's a better man than you are, Jack."

"Yes."

"But you won't let him have her."

"No, by God, not unless she loves him."

"She would have loved him if it hadn't been for you."

"You mean she loves me?"

"She won't marry you. She can't."

"Why not? Because I don't belong to her social set?"

"No. That would be reason enough for Joyce or me, but I don't think it would stop Moya."

"You mean--highgrading?"

"Yes."

Joyce interrupted further confidences by making her usual late appearance for breakfast. At sight of Kilmeny her eyes brightened. Life always became more interesting for her when a possible man was present. Instantly she came forward with a touch of reluctant eagerness that was very effective.

"I'm glad to see you up again--so glad, Mr. Kilmeny."

In the pretty breakfast gown which displayed her soft curves and the ripe roundness of throat and arm she made a picture wholly charming. If Jack was overpowered he gave no sign of it.

"Glad to meet you, Miss Seldon."

Her eyes rained sweet pity on him, a tenderness potent enough to disturb the serenity of any young man not in armor.

"We--we've been so worried about you."

He laughed, genially and without resentment. "Awfully good of you. Shall I ring for the waiter?"

India rose. "I'm going riding with Ned and Moya," she explained.

Alone with the Westerner, Joyce felt her blood begin to quicken.

"Are you quite ... recovered?" she asked.

Their eyes met. In his there was a faint cynical smile of amusement.

"Quite."

She understood the double meaning in his words. Her lashes fell to the soft cheeks, then lifted again. "I thought perhaps there might be ... that you might still be...."

He shook his head vigorously. "It was only a dream. I can laugh at it now--and at myself for taking it seriously."

Joyce bit her lip with vexation. There was something not quite decent in so prompt a recovery from her charms. He did not appear to hold even any resentment.

Nor did he. Kilmeny had been brought too near the grim realities to hold any petty pique. He found this young woman still charming, but his admiration was tinctured with amusement. No longer did his imagination play upon her personality. He focused it upon the girl who had fought for his life against the ridicule and the suspicions of her friends. It was impossible for him to escape the allure of her fine sweet courage so gallantly expressed in every look and motion.

But Moya let him severely alone. Her pride was suffering because she had showed to all her little world too keen an interest in him. In her anxiety to repudiate any claim he might think she felt she had upon him the girl was scornfully indifferent to his advances. Almost rudely she rejected his gratitude.

"The man does not owe me anything. Can't he see that honors are easy?" she said impatiently to Lady Farquhar.

Jack Kilmeny was no quitter. He set that lean jaw of his and would not accept repulse. In four days now the Farquhar party was going to leave Goldbanks and he made the most of his time.

Moya never saw him coming toward her without having her pulses stirred, but her look met his always quietly and steadily. Not once did she give him a chance to see her alone. Even Lady Farquhar, who had been a severe critic of her vagaries, commended now her discretion. Jack rebelled against it in vain. He could not find a chance to speak. It was characteristic of him that he made one.

By shrewd maneuvering he arranged an expedition to the Silent Sam mine. The property itself was of no particular interest. The attractive feature was a descent in ore buckets from the shaft-house, perched far up on the edge of a precipitous cliff, to the mill in the valley below. This was made by means of heavy cables to which the buckets were suspended. After Jack had explained how the men rode back and forth by this means between the mill and the mine India was seized with the inspiration he had hoped for.

"Let's go down in the buckets, dear people."

Lady Farquhar protested and was overruled by a chorus of votes. The miner assured her that it was entirely safe. Reluctantly she gave permission for her flock to make the trip if they desired.

They rode on horseback to the mill. Jack paired with India, making no attempt to ride beside Moya, who brought up the rear with the captain. The Westerner, answering the questions of his cousin, was at his debonair best. Occasionally there drifted back to the couple in the rear fragmentary snatches of his talk. He was telling of the time he had been a mule skinner in New Mexico, of how he had ridden mail near Deming, and of frontier days at Tombstone. Casual anecdotes were sprinkled through his explanations to liven them. He spoke in the slurring drawl of the Southwest, which went so well with the brown lean face beneath the pinched-in felt hat and the well-packed vigor of the man.

"And what is 'bucking a sample'?" India wanted to know after one of his stories.

"You just pound some rock up and mix it to get a sample. Once when I was drag-driver of a herd in a round-up...."

Moya heard no more. She turned her attention resolutely to her companion and tried to detach her mind from the man in front. She might as well have tried to keep her heart from beating.

After they had arrived at the mill Jack quietly took charge of the disposition of the party. Verinder and Joyce were sent up in the first bucket. When this was halfway up to the mine the cable stopped to let another couple enter a bucket. Joyce, fifty feet up in the air, waved her hand to those below.

"You next, India," ordered her cousin.

The young woman stepped into the bucket. "I'm 'fraid," she announced promptly.

"No need to be. Captain, your turn."

The eyes of the two men met. Ned Kilmeny guessed instantly that the other had arranged this so as to get a few minutes alone with Moya. He took a place beside his sister immediately.

The cable did not stop again until the second pair of passengers had reached the mine.

Moya, followed by Jack, stepped into the basket, which began to rise steadily as it moved across the valley.

Kilmeny did not lose a minute.

"Why don't you let me see you alone? Why do you run away from me?" he demanded.

Little patches of color burned beneath the shadows of her eyes. A sound as of a distant surf began to beat in her ears.

"What nonsense! Why should I run from you?" she asked, meeting with difficulty the attack of his masterful gaze.

"Because you're afraid to let me tell you that I love you," he charged.

"Thought it was Joyce you ... fancied," she retorted quietly, her pulse hammering.

"So it was. I fancied her. I love you. I'm asking you to marry me."

"You don't have to ask me to marry you because you exaggerate the service I did you."

"I ask you because I love you."

"Thank you very much for the compliment. Sorry I must decline." She did not dare look at him. Her eyes were fixed on the mill far below.

"Why must you--since you love me?"

The telltale pink stained her cheeks. "You take that for granted, do you?"

"It's true, I believe. How can I make love to you as other men do? Lady Farquhar won't let me see you alone--even if you were willing to give me a chance. In two days you are going out of my life. I must speak the truth ... bluntly. I love you. It has been that way with me ever since you came into my life again, little Moya. But I was blind and didn't see it till ... till I was alone in the mine with death."

"I ... am sorry."

"That is not enough. I'm going to have the truth. You saved my life. What for? It is yours ... if you will take it."

She looked straight at him. "I can't marry you."

"Why can't you? Can you say that you don't love me?"

In the full-charged silence that followed a stifling emotion raced through her blood. The excitement in her set a pulse beating in her throat. Womanlike, she evaded the issue.

"The cable has stopped. What has happened?"

"Nothing has happened. It has stopped because I arranged with the engineer at the hoist to have it stop. When I give the signal it will start again."

"But...."

He brushed aside her futile protest. "I'm going to have this out with you. Dare you tell me that you don't love me, Moya?"

He forced her to meet his eyes, and in that moment she felt weak and faint. The throb of passion beat tumultuously against her will.

"Please ... be generous. What will they think? Let us start," she begged.

"They will think something is wrong with the machinery. But it doesn't matter in the least what they think. It's my last chance, and I'll not give it up. You've got to answer me."

The point where the bucket had stopped was a hundred feet above the ground below. She looked down, and shuddered.

"It's so far down ... please."

"Then don't look down. Look at me, Moya. It won't take you a moment to answer me."

"I have. I said I couldn't marry you."

"Tell me that you don't love me and I'll give the signal."

"I ... don't."

"Look straight at me and say it."

She tried to look at him and repeat it, but her eyes betrayed the secret she was fighting to keep from him. The long lashes fell to the hot cheeks an instant too late.

His hand found hers. "My little Irish wild rose, all sweetness and thorns," he murmured.

Above the tumult of her heart she heard her voice say, as if it were that of a stranger, "It's no use ... I can't ... marry you."

"Because I'm a highgrader?"

She nodded.

"Do you think I'm worse than other men? Down in the bottom of your heart do you believe that?"

She smiled wanly. "Other men are not ... making love to me."

"Am I nothing but a thief to you?"

"I have told you that you are the man I ... love. Isn't that a good deal?"

The desire of her, pure as a flame, swept through him. "It's the greatest thing that ever came into my life. Do you think I'm going to let it end there? I'm going to fight for our happiness. I'm going to beat down the things that come between us."

"You can't. It's too late," she cried wistfully.

"It's never too late for love so long as we're both alive."

"Not for love, but...."

"You've got to see this as I see it, sweetheart. I'm a man--primitive, if you like. I've done wild and evil things--plenty of them. What of that? I slough them off and trample them down. The heart of me is clean, isn't it?"

"Yes."

To look at him was enough to clear away all doubt. He had the faults that go with full-blooded elemental life, but at bottom this virile American was sound.

"Well! Isn't that enough?"

The little movement of her hands toward him seemed to beg for pity. "Jack! I can't help it. Maybe I'm a little prig, but ... mustn't we guide our lives by principle and not by impulse?"

"Do I guide mine by impulse?"

"Don't you?" She hurried on to contradict, or at least to modify, her reluctant charge. "Oh, I know you are a great influence here. You're known all over the state. Men follow you wherever you lead. Why should I criticize you--I, who have done nothing all my life but lean on others?"

"Go ahead. When I ask you to marry me I invite your criticism."

"I have to take little steps and to keep in well-worn paths. I can't make laws for myself as you do. Those that have been made may be wrong, but I must obey them."

"Why? Why should you? If they're wrong, fight against them."

"I can't argue with you ... dear. But I know what I think right. I want to think as you do. Oh, you don't know how I long to throw my Puritan conscience overboard and just trust your judgment. I ... admire you tremendously. But I can't give in ... I can't."

The muscles stood out on his lean cheeks as he set his teeth. "You've got to, Moya. Our love has been foreordained. Do you think it is for nothing that we met again after all these years? You're mine--the one woman in the world I want and am going to have."

She shook her head sadly. "No ... no!"

"Is it the money I have made highgrading? Is that what stands between us? If I were able to come to you without a dollar but with clean hands--would you marry me then?"

He leaned toward her, eager, ardent, passionate, the color in his cheeks burning to a dull brick tint beneath the tan. Body and soul she swayed toward him. All her vital love of life, of things beautiful and good and true, fused in a crescendo of emotion.

"My dear ... my dear, I'm only a girl--and I love you." Somehow her hands were buried in the strong grip of his. "But ... I can't live on the profits of what I think is wrong. If it weren't for that ... Jack, I'd marry you if you were a pauper--and thank God for the chance."

He faced her doggedly. "I'm not a pauper. I've fought for my share of the spoils. You've been brought up in a hot-house. Out in the world a man wins because he's strong. Do you think it's all been play with me? By God, no! I've ridden night herd in a blizzard when the temperature was below zero. I've done my shift on the twelfth level of the Never Quit many a month. I've mushed in Alaska and fought against Castro in Venezuela. Do you think I'm going to give up my stake now I've won it at last?"

She looked at him tremulously. "I don't ask you to give it up. You'll have to decide that for yourself."

"Don't you see I can't give it up? If I do, I lose you. How can I take care of you without money?"

"I'd do my best, Jack."

"You don't understand. It would be for years--until I had made another start. I wouldn't let you give up everything unless I had something to offer. I wouldn't consider it."

"Isn't that putting pride before love, Jack? You know I have a little money of my own. We could live--in very decent poverty. I would love to feel that we were fighting ... together. We both know you'll win in the end. Wouldn't it be fine to work out your success in partnership? Dear, I'd rather marry you while you're still a poor man."

For a moment the vision of it tempted him, but he put the dream away. "No. It won't do. Of course I'm going to win out in the end, but it might take a dozen years to set me on Easy street. For a woman brought up as you have been poverty is hell."

"Then you think I'm only a doll," she flashed. "You want to put me back in that hot-house you mentioned. I'm just an ornament to dress up and look at and play with."

"I think you're a little tinder-box," he said, smiling ruefully.

"Don't you see how it is with me, Jack? I've always craved life. I've wanted to take hold of it with both hands and without gloves. But they would never let me. I've got my chance now ... if you really love me more than you do your pride and your money. I want to live close to the people--as you do."

"What did that suit cost you?" he asked abruptly.

"Don't remember. Twenty-five pounds, maybe. Why?"

"One hundred twenty dollars, say. And you need dozens of dresses in a season. I'll make a guess that it takes five thousand a year to clothe you. That is nearly twice as much as I'll earn altogether next year if I throw away my stake."

She waved his argument aside. "Stupid boy! I have dresses enough to last me for five years--if you'll let me be that poor man's wife. I can make them over myself later and still be the best dressed woman in camp."

From above came Captain Kilmeny's shout. "We telephoned down. The engineer has the trouble arranged."

The cable began to move.

"When shall I see you alone again, Moya?" Jack demanded.

"I don't know."

"I'm going to see you. We've got to fight this out. I'll not let Lady Farquhar keep me from seeing you alone. It's serious business."

"Yes," she admitted. "I'll tell Lady Jim. But ... there's no use in letting you think I'll give up. I can't."

"You've got to give up. That's all there is to it." His jaw was set like a vise.

The party above fell upon them as they landed.

"Were you frightened, Moya?" exclaimed Joyce above the chorus of questions.

"Just for a moment." Moya did not look at Jack. "Mr. Kilmeny told me it would be all right."

Jack's eyes danced. "I told her we would work out of the difficulty if she would trust me."

Moya blushed. It happened that Captain Kilmeny was looking directly at her when his cousin spoke.

CHAPTER XXV

HOMING HEARTS

Jack Kilmeny had not been brought up in the dry sunbaked West for nothing. The winds of the Rockies had entered into his character as well as into his physique. He was a willful man, with a good deal of granite in his make-up. A fighter from his youth, he did not find it easy to yield the point upon which he differed from Moya. There was in her so much of impulsive generosity that he had expected to overpower her scruples. But she stood like a rock planted in the soil.

It came to him as he walked home after a long fight with her that in his heart he did not want her to yield. She was the Moya Dwight he loved because she would not compromise with her conviction. Yet, though he wanted her to stand firm, he hated the thought of giving way himself. It galled his pride that he must come to her without a penny, knowing that she had the means to keep them both modestly. Nor could he, without a pang, think of surrendering the twenty-eight thousand dollars he had fought for and won. He was no visionary. The value of money he understood perfectly. It stood for power, place, honor, the things that were worth having. Given what he had, Jack knew he could double it in Goldbanks within the year. There were legitimate opportunities for investment that were bound to make rich returns. But without a dollar he would be like Samson shorn of his locks.

All through the night he was joined in battle with himself, but when at early dawn he stood on the top of Son-of-a-Gun hill and faced a sky faintly pink with the warning of a coming sun his decision had been made.

On his way back he met Moya and Miss Seldon. Joyce pounced upon him with a grievance.

"You haven't told me yet how much you're going to give for the new hospital, Mr. Kilmeny. You know we're leaving to-morrow, and you'll have to decide at once. Be generous, please. You said yourself it was a good cause."

He nodded agreement. "The most worthy charity I know. I've often wondered why some Andrew Carnegie didn't set the fashion of endowing hospitals by wholesale. They ought to be free to all poor folks out of health. When a man is losing his wages and his family is scrimping he ought not to be facing a thirty-dollar-a-week hospital charge. Yes, I'm for the new hospital, Miss Seldon."

"How strong are you for it?" Joyce asked, laughing at her newly acquired American slang. "Mr. Verinder has promised to give me two dollars for every one I can raise among my other friends. So don't be a--a----"

"A tightwad," supplied Moya with a smile. She could do a little in the native slang herself.

Jack went into his pocket for a checkbook and a fountain pen. He wrote for a few seconds, tore the check from the stub, and handed it to Joyce.

That young woman gasped.

"Why--you don't really mean--it's for twenty-eight thousand two hundred and fourteen dollars," she cried.

"And seventeen cents. Please don't forget that," he added.

"But--what on earth do you mean?"

Jack was looking at Moya, and she at him with shining eyes in which joy swam.

"It's a little thank offering, Miss Seldon."

"Because you were rescued from the mine, I suppose. Still...."

"Because I'm engaged to be married to the best woman in the world," he corrected.

Joyce whirled upon Moya with instant divination. "You little wretch, and you never told me."

If Miss Dwight had not known it herself till this moment she gave no sign to that effect. "We're telling you now, dear," she explained.

"How long have you been engaged? Was it yesterday in the bucket?"

Jack laughed. "Nothing so romantic. We've been engaged a little less than half a minute. You get the first chance to wish Moya joy on having won so great a catch. She's marrying a pauper, you know."

"I think we're very rich," differed his sweetheart shyly.

Joyce looked from one to the other suspiciously. "I haven't a notion what either of you mean, but I know I'm going to hang on to this check, Mr. Millionaire Pauper."

Imps of mischief sparkled in the highgrader's eyes. "Don't forget that Verinder has to write one for twice as much."

Miss Seldon could not help laughing. "I'll see to that. He's not a welcher, but ... I wonder how he'll look when I tell him."

"You ought to tell him as soon as you can," Jack hinted boldly.

"Oh, ought I? Did you say you had been engaged less than a minute, Mr. Kilmeny? How much will you give me to go down now and tell him?"

"I've nothing left to give--except my gratitude."

"You're the first man who ever was so ungallant as to tell me he would be grateful to have me leave him."

"I'm the first who ever proposed to another girl in your presence. The circumstance is unusual," he flung back gayly.

"I didn't hear you propose. All you did was to announce it," she replied saucily.

"That's true too," admitted Kilmeny. "Well, I'm going to propose now if it isn't too late. You may stay if you like."

"Thanks, no." Joyce kissed her friend. "I hope you'll be very happy, dear. I ... I believe you will."

Moya choked on her words. "I know I shall, Joy."

Miss Seldon looked at Jack with an expression in which embarrassment and audacity were blended. "I've always rather liked your pauper," she confided aloud to Moya.

Her confidences had their limits. She omitted to mention what had just popped into her mind, that within the fortnight he had proposed to her too on the same spot.

Jack bowed with exaggerated deference when she shook hands with him. He was just now riding the seventh wave of happiness and felt friendly to the whole world.

"Thanks very much. You're a good scout, Joyce."

"Good gracious! What may that be? Some more of your American slang, I suppose." She broke away from persiflage to add seriously: "You're right about one thing, though. You've got the best girl in the world. Be good to her, Jack Kilmeny."

With that she turned and walked down the hill.

The other two walked up.

"I'm so proud of you, Jack, boy," whispered one of them.

He laughed happily. "I'm proud of myself. I've done the best day's work I ever did for myself when I won Moya Dwight."

"You know what I mean, Jack. What other man would have thrown away a small fortune--all he had--just for me?"

"I can name one other," suggested Kilmeny.

"Ned! But he's a saint."

"And I'm a sinner," her lover replied blithely.

"You're the sinner I love, then."

They had reached a clump of firs. Without knowing how it happened she found herself in his arms. There were both tears and laughter in her eyes as her lips turned slowly to meet his.

"The first time since we were kiddies on the Victorian, sweetheart," he told her.

"Yes, it's true. I loved you then. I love you now.... Jack, boy, I'm just the happiest girl alive."

A mist-like veil of old rose hung above the mountain tops. Hand in hand they watched the rising sun pierce through it and flood the crotches of the hills with God's splendid canvases. It was a part of love's egoism that all this glory of the young day seemed an accompaniment to the song of joy that pulsed through them.

Later they came to earth and babbled the nonsense that is the highest wisdom of lovers. They built air castles and lived in them, seeing life through a poetic ambient as a long summer day in which they should ride and work and play together.

At last she remembered Lady Farquhar and began to laugh.

"We must go down and tell her at once, Jack."

He agreed. "Yes, let's go back and have it out. If you like you may go to your room and I'll tackle her alone."

"I'd rather go with you."

He delighted in her answer.

Farquhar was taking an early morning stroll, arm in arm with Lady Jim, when he caught sight of them.

"Look, Di!"

Both of the lovers knew how to walk. Lady Farquhar, watching them, thought she had never seen as fine a pair of untamed human beings. In his step was the fine free swing of the hillman, and the young woman breasted the slope lightly as a faun.

The Englishman chuckled. "You're beaten, Di. The highwayman wins."

"Nonsense," she retorted sharply, but with anxiety manifest in her frown.

"Fact, just the same. He's coming to tell us he means to take our little girl to his robber den."

"I believe you'd actually let him," she said scornfully.

"Even you can't stop him. It's written in the books. Not sure I'd interfere if I could. For a middle-aged Pharisee with the gout I'm incurably romantic. It's the child's one great chance for happiness. But I wish to the deuce he wasn't a highgrader."

"She shan't sacrifice herself if I can prevent it," Lady Farquhar insisted stanchly.

"I 'member a girl who sacrificed herself for a line lieutenant without a shilling to call his own," he soliloquized aloud. "Would have him, and did, by Jove! Three deaths made him Lord Farquhar later, but she married the penniless subaltern."

"I've always been glad I did." She squeezed his arm fondly. "But this is different, James."

Kilmeny and Moya stopped. The young man doffed his gray felt hat and bowed.

"Mornin', Lady Farquhar--Lord Farquhar. We've come to ask your permission for our marriage."

"Mornin', rebels. Fancy I'll have to refuse it," cut back Farquhar, eyes twinkling. For this bold directness pleased and amused him.

"That would distress us extremely," answered Kilmeny with a genial smile.

"But would not affect your plans, I understand you to mean."

"You catch the idea exactly, sir."

Lady Farquhar entered the conversation. "Are you planning to go to prison with him, Moya, when he is convicted of highgrading?" she asked pleasantly.

Moya told in three sentences of what her lover had done. The Englishman wrung Kilmeny's hand cordially.

"By Jove, you reform thoroughly when you go about it. Don't think I'd have enjoyed writing that check for Miss Joyce. Leaves you strapped, does it?"

"Dead broke," came the very cheerful reply.

"But of course Moya has some money," said Lady Farquhar quietly.

The Westerner winced. "Wish she hadn't. It's the only thing I have to forgive her."

Farquhar lifted his eyebrows. "Di," he remonstrated.

His wife came to time with a frank apology. "That was downright nasty of me, Mr. Kilmeny. I withdraw it. None the less, I think Moya would be throwing herself away. Do you realize what you are proposing? She's been used to the best ever since she was born. Have you the means to supply her needs? Or are you considering a Phyllida and Corydon idyll in a cottage?"

"It will have to be something of that sort at first. I've told her all this too, Lady Farquhar."

"What does that matter if we love each other?" Moya asked.

"You'll find it matters a good deal," said Lady Jim dryly. "When poverty comes in love is likely to wink out any day. Of course I realize that yours is of a quality quite unusual. It always is, my dear. Every lover has thought that since time began."

"We'll have to take our fighting chance of that," Jack replied.

Moya, her eyes shining, nodded agreement. No great gain can be won without risk. She knew there was a chance that she might not find happiness in her love. But where it called her she must follow--to a larger life certainly, to joy and to sorrow, to the fuller experiences that must come to every woman who fulfills her destiny.

A voice hailed Jack. Colter was hurrying up the street, plainly excited. Kilmeny moved a few steps toward him.

Lady Jim took advantage of his absence to attack Moya from another angle. "My dear, I wish I could show you how much depends on a similarity of tastes, of habits, of standards. Matrimony means more than love. It means adjustment."

"I've thought of that too. But ... when you love enough that doesn't help the adjustment?" asked the girl naïvely.

She had appealed to Farquhar. That gentleman came to her assistance. "It does."

"This isn't a matter to be decided merely by personal preference," urged the older woman. "There may be--consequences."

The color beat into the face of the young woman in a wave, but her eyes held steadily to those of Lady Farquhar.

"I ... hope so."

"Bravo, Moya!" applauded her guardian, clapping his hands softly.

"Don't you think they--the consequences--deserve a better chance than you will give them?"

"I'll answer that, Di," spoke up Farquhar. "When a girl chooses for the father of her children a man who is clean and strong and virile, and on top of that her lover, she is giving them the best possible chance in life."

Moya's gratitude shone through the eyes that met those of her guardian.

Kilmeny swung back to the group he had left. "I've good news, friends. This is my lucky day. You remember that when I was rescued from the Golden Nugget my pockets were full of ore samples I had picked up as I was tunneling."

"Yes ... picked them up while you were delirious, didn't you?" Farquhar replied.

"Must have, I reckon. Well, you know how miners are always having pieces of quartz assayed. Colter took these to the man we employ. He's just learned that it is high-grade stuff."

"You've made a strike?"

"Looks like it. Colter wasn't taking any chances, anyhow. He hiked right around to the owners of the mine and signed up a five-year lease in his name and mine."

Farquhar shook hands with him cordially. "Hope you make a fortune, Kilmeny."

Moya's chaperon, facing the inevitable, capitulated as graceful as she could. After all, the girl might have done worse. The man she had chosen was well born, good looking, forceful, and a leader in his community. If this fortunate strike was going to leave him well off, clearly she must make the best of him.

"You're a lucky man. I hope you know you don't deserve a girl like Moya," she told him as she shook hands.

"I know it, all right. Can you tell me who does?" he flung back, with a gay insouciant smile.

At that moment Ned Kilmeny stepped out upon the hotel porch. Lady Jim nodded toward him.

"Perhaps," his cousin conceded. "But in this little old world a man doesn't get what he deserves."

"I see he doesn't. Ned is a better man than you."

"Yes," he admitted.

Captain Kilmeny, coming down the porch steps, saw in a flash what had happened. He came forward with the even stride and impassive face that seldom deserted him. In two sentences Lady Farquhar told him the facts.

"You lucky dog," he said to his cousin as their hands gripped.

Jack had never liked him better than in this moment when he was giving up so cheerfully the thing he wanted most in the world.

"It isn't always the best man that wins, captain. I take off my hat to the better men who have tried and failed. Perhaps it may be a comfort to them to know that I'm the man that needs her most."

The captain turned to Moya. "So you've found that good hunting already," he said to her in a low voice.

"Yes, I think I have ... I'm sure of it, Ned." Her eyes were full of tender sympathy for him. She wished she could tell him how much she admired his fine spirit.

"God keep you happy," he said wistfully.

Jack joined them and slipped Moya's arm into his. "Amen to that, captain. And since Jack Kilmeny has been appointed deputy on the job I'm going to see your wish comes true."

Moya looked at her lover and smiled.

Contents

THE YUKON TRAIL

A Tale of the North

by WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE

CHAPTER I

GOING "IN"

The midnight sun had set, but in a crotch between two snow-peaks it had kindled a vast caldron from which rose a mist of jewels, garnet and turquoise, topaz and amethyst and opal, all swimming in a sea of molten gold. The glow of it still clung to the face of the broad Yukon, as a flush does to the soft, wrinkled cheek of a girl just roused from deep sleep.

Except for a faint murkiness in the air it was still day. There was light enough for the four men playing pinochle on the upper deck, though the women of their party, gossiping in chairs grouped near at hand, had at last put aside their embroidery. The girl who sat by herself at a little distance held a magazine still open on her lap. If she were not reading, her attitude suggested it was less because of the dusk than that she had surrendered herself to the spell of the mysterious beauty which for this hour at least had transfigured the North to a land all light and atmosphere and color.

Gordon Elliot had taken the boat at Pierre's Portage, fifty miles farther down the river. He had come direct from the creeks, and his impressions of the motley pioneer life at the gold-diggings were so vivid that he had found an isolated corner of the deck where he could scribble them in a notebook while still fresh.

But he had not been too busy to see that the girl in the wicker chair was as much of an outsider as he was. Plainly this was her first trip in. Gordon was a stranger in the Yukon country, one not likely to be over-welcome when it became known what his mission was. It may have been because he was out of the picture himself that he resented a little the exclusion of the young woman with the magazine. Certainly she herself gave no evidence of feeling about it. Her long-lashed eyes looked dreamily across the river to the glowing hills beyond. Not once did they turn with any show of interest to the lively party under the awning.

From where he was leaning against the deckhouse Elliot could see only a fine, chiseled profile shading into a mass of crisp, black hair, but some quality in the detachment of her personality stimulated gently his imagination. He wondered who she could be. His work had taken him to frontier camps before, but he could not place her as a type. The best he could do was to guess that she might be the daughter of some territorial official on her way in to join him.

A short, thick-set man who had ridden down on the stage with Elliot to Pierre's Portage drifted along the deck toward him. He wore the careless garb of a mining man in a country which looks first to comfort.

"Bound for Kusiak?" he asked, by way of opening conversation.

"Yes," answered Gordon.

The miner nodded toward the group under the awning. "That bunch lives at Kusiak. They've got on at different places the last two or three days--except Selfridge and his wife, they've been out. Guess you can tell that from hearing her talk--the little woman in red with the snappy black eyes. She's spillin' over with talk about the styles in New York and the cabarets and the new shows. That pot-bellied little fellow in the checked suit is Selfridge. He is Colby Macdonald's man Friday."

Elliot took in with a quickened interest the group bound for Kusiak. He had noticed that they monopolized as a matter of course the best places on the deck and in the dining-room. They were civil enough to outsiders, but their manner had the unconscious selfishness that often regulates social activities. It excluded from their gayety everybody that did not belong to the proper set.

"That sort of thing gets my goat," the miner went on sourly. "Those women over there have elected themselves Society with a capital S. They put on all the airs the Four Hundred do in New York. And who the hell are they anyhow?--wives to a bunch of grafting politicians mostly."

From the casual talk that had floated to him, with its many little allusions punctuating the jolly give-and-take of their repartee, Elliot guessed that their lives had the same background of tennis, dinners, hops, official gossip, and business. They evidently knew one another with the intimacy that comes only to the segment of a small community shut off largely from the world and forced into close social relations. No doubt they had loaned each other money occasionally, stood by in trouble, and gossiped back and forth about their shortcomings and family skeletons even as society on the outside does.

"That's the way of the world, isn't it? Our civilization is built on the group system," suggested Elliot.

"Maybeso," grumbled the miner. "But I hate to see Alaska come to it. Me, I saw this country first in '97--packed an outfit in over the Pass. Every man stood on his own hind legs then. He got there if he was strong--mebbe; he bogged down on the trail good and plenty if he was weak. We didn't have any of the artificial stuff then. A man had to have the guts to stand the gaff."

"I suppose it was a wild country, Mr. Strong."

The little miner's eyes gleamed. "Best country in the world. We didn't stand for anything that wasn't on the level. It was a poor man's country--wages fifteen dollars a day and plenty of work. Everybody had a chance. Anybody could stake a claim and gamble on his luck. Now the big corporations have slipped in and grabbed the best. It ain't a prospector's proposition any more. Instead of faro banks we've got savings banks. The wide-open dance hall has quit business in favor of moving pictures. And, as I said before, we've got Society."

"All frontier countries have to come to it."

"Hmp! In the days I'm telling you about that crowd there couldn't 'a' hustled meat to fill their bellies three meals. Parasites, that's what they are. They're living off that bunch of roughnecks down there and folks like 'em."

With a wave of his hand Strong pointed to a group of miners who had boarded the boat with them at Pierre's Portage. There were about a dozen of the men, for the most part husky, heavy-set foreigners. They had been drinking, and were in a sullen humor. Elliot gathered from their talk that they had lost their jobs because they had tried to organize an incipient strike in the Frozen Gulch district.

"Roughnecks and booze-fighters--that's all they are. But they earn their way. Not that I blame Macdonald for firing them, mind you," continued the miner.

"Were they working for Macdonald?"

"Yep. His superintendent up there was too soft. These here Swedes got gay. Mac hit the trail for Frozen Gulch. He hammered his big fist into the bread-basket of the ringleader and said, 'Git!' That fellow's running yet, I'll bet. Then Mac called the men together and read the riot act to them. He fired this bunch on the boat and was out of the camp before you could bat an eye. It was the cleanest hurry-up job I ever did see."

"From what I've heard about him he must be a remarkable man."

"He's the biggest man in Alaska, bar none."

This was a subject that interested Gordon Elliot very much. Colby Macdonald and his activities had brought him to the country.

"Do you mean personally--or because he represents the big corporations?"

"Both. His word comes pretty near being law up here, not only because he stands for the Consolidated, but because he's one man from the ground up. I ain't any too strong for that New York bunch of capitalists back of Mac, but I've got to give it to him that he's all there without leaning on anybody."

"I've heard that he's a domineering man--rides roughshod over others. Is that right, Mr. Strong?"

"He's a bear for getting his own way," grinned the little miner. "If you won't get out of his road he peels your hide off and hangs it up to dry. But I can't help liking him. He's big every way you take him. He'll stand the acid, Mac will."

"Do you mean that he's square--honest?"

"You've said two things, my friend," answered Strong dryly. "He's square. If he tells you anything, don't worry because he ain't put down his John Hancock before a notary. He'll see it through to a finish--to a fighting finish if he has to. Don't waste any time looking for fat or yellow streaks in Mac. They ain't there. Nobody ever heard him squeal yet and what's more nobody ever will."

"No wonder men like him."

"But when you say honest--Hell, no! Not the way you define honesty down in the States. He's a grabber, Mac is. Better not leave anything valuable around unless you've got it spiked to the floor. He takes what he wants."

"What does he look like?" asked Gordon.

"Oh, I don't know." Strong hesitated, while he searched for words to show the picture in his mind. "Big as a house--steps out like a buck in the spring--blue-gray eyes that bore right through you."

"How old?"

"Search me. You never think of age when you're looking at him. Forty-five, mebbe--or fifty--I don't know."

"Married?"

"No-o." Hanford Strong nodded in the direction of the Kusiak circle. "They say he's going to marry Mrs. Mallory. She's the one with the red hair."

It struck young Elliot that the miner was dismissing Mrs. Mallory in too cavalier a fashion. She was the sort of woman at whom men look twice, and then continue to look while she appears magnificently unaware of it. Her hair was not red, but of a lustrous bronze, amazingly abundant, and dressed in waves with the careful skill of a coiffeur. Half-shut, smouldering eyes had met his for an instant at dinner across the table and had told him she was a woman subtle and complex. Slightest shades of meaning she could convey with a lift of the eyebrow or an intonation of the musical voice. If she was already fencing with the encroaching years there was little evidence of it in her opulent good looks. She had manifestly specialized in graceful idleness and was prepared to meet with superb confidence the competition of débutantes. The elusive shadow of lost illusions, of knowledge born of experience, was the only betrayal of vanished youth in her equipment.

CHAPTER II

ENTER A MAN

The whistle of the Hannah blew for the Tatlah Cache landing while Strong and Elliot were talking. Wally Selfridge had just bid three hundred seventy and found no help in the widow. He pushed toward each of the other players one red chip and two white ones.

"Can't make it," he announced. "I needed a jack of clubs."

The men counted their chips and settled up in time to reach the deck rail just as the gangplank was thrown out to the wharf. The crew transferred to the landing a pouch of mail, half a ton of sacked potatoes, some mining machinery, and several boxes containing provisions and dry goods.

A man came to the end of the wharf carrying a suitcase. He was well-set, thick in the chest, and broad-shouldered. He came up the gangplank with the strong, firm tread of a man in his prime. Looking down from above, Gordon Elliot guessed him to be in the early thirties.

Mrs. Mallory was the first to recognize him, which she did with a drawling little shout of welcome. "Oh you, Mr. Man. I knew you first. I speak for you," she cried.

The man on the gangplank looked up, smiled, and lifted to her his broad gray Stetson in a wave of greeting.

"How do you do, Mrs. Mallory? Glad to see you."

The miners from Frozen Gulch were grouped together on the lower deck. At sight of the man with the suitcase a sullen murmur rose among them. Those in the rear pushed forward and closed the lane leading to the cabins. One of the miners was flung roughly against the new passenger. With a wide, powerful sweep of his arm the man who had just come aboard hurled the miner back among his companions.

"Gangway!" he said brusquely, and as he strode forward did not even glance in the direction of the angry men pressing toward him.

"Here. Keep back there, you fellows. None of that rough stuff goes," ordered the mate sharply.

The big Cornishman who had been tossed aside crouched for a spring. He launched himself forward with the awkward force of a bear. The suitcase described a whirling arc of a circle with the arm of its owner as the radius. The bag and the head of the miner came into swift impact. Like a bullock which has been pole-axed the man went to the floor. He turned over with a groan and lay still.

The new passenger looked across the huge, sprawling body at the group of miners facing him. They glared in savage hate. All they needed was a leader to send them driving at him with the force of an avalanche. The man at whom they raged did not give an inch. He leaned forward slightly, his weight resting on the balls of his feet, alert to the finger tips. But in his eyes a grim little smile of derisive amusement rested.

"Next," he taunted.

Then the mate got busy. He hustled his stevedores forward in front of the miners and shook his fist in their faces as he stormed up and down. If they wanted trouble, by God! it was waiting for 'em, he swore in apoplectic fury. The Hannah was a river boat and not a dive for wharf rats. No bunch of roughnecks could come aboard a boat where he was mate and start anything. They could not assault any passengers of his and make it stick.

The man with the suitcase did not wait to hear out his tirade. He followed the purser to his stateroom, dropped his baggage beside the berth, and joined the Kusiak group on the upper deck.

They greeted him eagerly, a little effusively, as if they were anxious to prove themselves on good terms with him. The deference they paid and his assured acceptance of it showed him to be a man of importance. But apart from other considerations, he dominated by mental and physical virility the circle of which he instantly became the center. Only Mrs. Mallory held her own, and even she showed a quickened interest. Her indolent, half-disdainful manner sheathed a soft sensuousness that held the provocation of sex appeal.

"What was the matter?" asked Selfridge. "How did the trouble start?"

The big man shrugged his shoulders. "It didn't start. Some of the outfit thought they were looking for a row, but they balked on the job when Trelawney got his." Turning to Mrs. Mallory, he changed the subject abruptly. "Did you have a good time down the river?"

Gordon, as he watched from a little distance, corrected earlier impressions. This man had passed the thirties. Salt and pepper sprinkled the temples of his strong, lean head. He had the thick neck and solid trunk of middle life, but he carried himself so superbly that his whole bearing denied that years could touch his splendid physique. The suit he wore was a wrinkled corduroy, with trouser legs thrust into high-laced boots. An outdoor tan had been painted upon his face and neck, from the point where the soft flannel shirt fell away to show the fine slope of the throat line to the shoulders.

Strong had stepped to the wharf to talk with an old acquaintance, but when the boat threw out a warning signal he made a hurried good-bye and came on board. He rejoined Elliot.

"Well, what d'you think of him? Was I right?"

The young man had already guessed who this imperious stranger was. "I never saw anybody get away with a hard job as easily as he did that one. You could see with half an eye that those fellows meant fight. They were all primed for it--and he bluffed them out."

"Bluffed them--huh! If that's what you call bluffing. I was where I could see just what happened. Colby Macdonald wasn't even looking at Trelawney, but you bet he saw him start. That suitcase traveled like a streak of light. You'd 'a' thought it weighed about two pounds. That ain't all either. Mac used his brains. Guess what was in that grip."

"The usual thing, I suppose."

"You've got another guess--packed in among his socks and underwear was about twenty pounds of ore samples. The purser told me. It was that quartz put Trelawney to sleep so thorough that he'd just begun to wake up when I passed a minute ago."

The young man turned his eyes again upon the big Canadian Scotchman. He was talking with Mrs. Mallory, who was leaning back luxuriously in a steamer chair she had brought aboard at St. Michael's. It would have been hard to conceive a contrast greater than the one between this pampered heiress of the ages and the modern business berserk who looked down into her mocking eyes. He was the embodiment of the dominant male,--efficient to the last inch of his straight six feet. What he wanted he had always taken, by the sheer strength that was in him. Back of her smiling insolence lay a silken force to match his own. She too had taken what she wanted from life, but she had won it by indirection. Manifestly she was of those women who conceive that charm and beauty are tools to bend men to their wills. Was it the very width of the gulf between them that made the appeal of the clash in the sex duel upon which they had engaged?

The dusky young woman with the magazine was the first of those on the upper deck to retire for the night. She flitted so quietly that Gordon did not notice until she had gone. Mrs. Selfridge and her friends disappeared with their men folks, calling gay good-nights to one another as they left.

Macdonald and Mrs. Mallory still talked. After a time she too vanished.

The big promoter leaned against the deck rail, where he was joined by Selfridge. For a long time they talked in low voices. The little man had most to say. His chief listened, but occasionally interrupted to ask a sharp, incisive question.

Elliot, sitting farther forward with Strong, judged that Selfridge was making a report of his trip. Once he caught a fragment of their talk, enough to confirm this impression.

"Did Winton tell you that himself?" demanded the Scotchman.

The answer of his employee came in a murmur so low that the words were lost. But the name used told Gordon a good deal. The Commissioner of the General Land Office at Washington signed his letters Harold B. Winton.

Strong tossed the stub of his cigarette overboard and nodded good-night. A glance at his watch told Elliot that it was past two o'clock. He rose, stretched, and sauntered back to his stateroom.

The young man had just taken off his coat when there came the hurried rush of trampling feet upon the hurricane deck above. Almost instantly he heard a cry of alarm. Low voices, quick with suppressed excitement, drifted back to him. He could hear the shuffling of footsteps and the sound of heavy bodies moving.

Some one lifted a frightened shout. "Help! Help!" The call had come, he thought, from Selfridge.

Gordon flung open the door of his room, raced along the deck, and took the stairs three at a time. A huddle of men swayed and shifted heavily in front of him. So close was the pack that the motion resembled the writhing of some prehistoric monster rather than the movements of individual human beings. In that half-light tossing arms and legs looked like tentacles flung out in agony by the mammoth reptile. Its progress was jerky and convulsive, sometimes tortuous, but it traveled slowly toward the rail as if by the impulsion of an irresistible pressure.

Even as he ran toward the mass, Elliot noticed that the only sounds were grunts, stertorous breathings, and the scraping of feet. The attackers wanted no publicity. The attacked was too busy to waste breath in futile cries. He was fighting for his life with all the stark energy nature and his ancestors had given him.

Two men, separated from the crowd, lay on the deck farther aft. One was on top of the other, his fingers clutching the gullet of his helpless opponent. The agony of the man underneath found expression only in the drumming heels that beat a tattoo on the floor. The spasmodic feet were shod in Oxford tans of an ultra-fashionable cut. No doubt the owner of the smart footwear had been pulled down as he was escaping to shout the alarm.

The runner hurdled the two in his stride and plunged straight at the struggling tangle. He caught one man by the shoulders from behind and flung him back. He struck hard, smashing blows as he fought his way to the heart of the mêlée. Heavy-fisted miners with corded muscles landed upon his face and head and neck. The strange excitement of the battle lust surged through his veins. He did not care a straw for the odds.

The sudden attack of Elliot had opened the pack. The man battling against a dozen was Colby Macdonald. The very number of his foes had saved him so far from being rushed overboard or trampled down. In their desire to get at him they hindered each other, struck blows that found the wrong mark. His coat and shirt were in rags. He was bruised and battered and bleeding from the chest up. But he was still slogging hard.

They had him pressed to the rail. A huge miner, head down, had his arms around the waist of the Scotchman and was trying to throw him overboard. Macdonald lashed out and landed flush upon the cheek of a man attempting to brain him with a billet of wood. He hammered home a short-arm jolt against the ear of the giant who was giving him the bear grip.

The big miner grunted, but hung on like a football tackler. With a jerk he raised Macdonald from the floor just as three or four others rushed him again. The rail gave way, splintered like kindling wood. The Scotchman and the man at grips with him went over the side together.

Clear and loud rang the voice of Elliot. "Man overboard!"

The wheelsman had known for some minutes that there was trouble afoot. He signaled to the engine room to reverse and blew short, sharp shrieks of warning. Already deckhands and officers, scantily clad, were appearing from fore and aft.

"Men overboard--two of 'em!" explained Elliot in a shout from the boat which he was trying to lower.

The first mate and another man ran to help him. The three of them lowered and manned the boat. Gordon sat in the bow and gave directions while the other two put their backs into the stroke. Quite casually Elliot noticed that the man in the waist had a purple bruise on his left cheek bone. The young man himself had put it there not three minutes since.

Across the water came a call for help. "I'm sinking--hurry!"

The other man in the river was a dozen yards from the one in distress. With strong, swift, overhand strokes he shot through the water.

"All right," he called presently. "I've got him."

The oarsmen drew alongside the swimmer. With one hand Macdonald caught hold of the edge of the boat. The other clutched the rescued man by the hair of his head.

"Look out. You're drowning him," the mate warned.

"Am I?" Macdonald glanced with mild interest at the head that had been until that moment submerged. "Shows how absent-minded a man gets. I was thinking about how he tried to drown me, I expect."

They dragged the miner aboard.

"Go ahead. I'll swim down," Macdonald ordered.

"Better come aboard," advised the mate.

"No. I'm all right."

The Scotchman pushed himself back from the boat and fell into an easy stroke. Nevertheless, there was power in it, for he reached the Hannah before the rescued miner had been helped to the deck.

A dozen passengers, crowded on the lower deck, pushed forward eagerly to see. Among them was Selfridge, his shirt and collar torn loose at the neck and his immaculate checked suit dusty and disheveled. He was wearing a pair of up-to-date Oxford tans.

The Scotch-Canadian shook himself like a Newfoundland dog. He looked around with sardonic amusement, a grin on his swollen and disfigured face.

"Quite a pleasant welcome home," he said ironically, his cold eyes fixed on a face that looked as if it might have been kicked by a healthy mule. "Eh, Trelawney?"

The Cornishman glared at him, and turned away with a low, savage oath.

"Are you hurt, Mr. Macdonald?" asked the captain.

"Hurt! Not at all, Captain. I cut myself while I was shaving this morning--just a scratch," was the ironic answer.

"There's been some dirty work going on. I'll see the men are punished, sir."

"Forget it, Captain. I'll attend to that little matter." His jaunty, almost insolent glance made the half-circle again. "Sorry you were too late for the party, gentlemen,--most of you. I see three or four of you who were 'among those present.' It was a strictly exclusive affair. And now, if you don't mind, I'll say good-night."

He turned on his heel, went up the stairway to the deck above, and disappeared into his stateroom.

The rescued miner, propped against the cabin wall where he had been placed, broke into sudden excited protest. "Ach! He tried to drown me. Mein head--he hold it under the water."

"Ain't that just like a Swede?" retorted the mate in disgust. "Mac saves his life. Then the roughneck kicks because he got a belly full of Yukon. Sure Mac soused him some. Why shouldn't he?"

"I ain't no Swede," explained the big miner sullenly.

The mate did not think it worth his while to explain that "Swede" was merely his generic term of contempt for all foreigners.

CHAPTER III

THE GIRL FROM DROGHEDA

Gordon Elliot was too much of a night owl to be an early riser, but next morning he was awakened by the tramp of hurried feet along the deck to the accompaniment of brusque orders, together with frequent angry puffing and snorting of the boat. From the quiver of the walls he guessed that the Hannah was stuck on a sandbar. The mate's language gave backing to this surmise. Divided in mind between his obligation to the sleeping passengers and his duty to get the boat on her way, that officer spilled a good deal of subdued sulphurous language upon the situation.

"All together now. Get your back into it. Why are you running around like a chicken without a head, Reeves?" he snapped.

Evidently the deck hands were working to get the Hannah off by poling.

Elliot tried to settle back to sleep, but after two or three ineffectual efforts gave it up. He rose and did one or two setting-up exercises to limber his joints. The first of these flashed the signal to his brain that he was stiff and sore. This brought to mind the fight on the hurricane deck, and he smiled. His face was about as mobile as if it were in a plaster cast. It hurt every time he twitched a muscle.

The young man stepped to the looking-glass. Both eyes were blacked, his lip had been cut, and there was a purple weal well up on his left cheek. He stopped himself from grinning only just in time to save another twinge of pain.

"Some party while it lasted. I never saw more willing mixers. Everybody seemed anxious to sit in except Mr. Wally Selfridge," he explained to his reflection. "But Macdonald is the class. He's there with both right and left. That uppercut of his is vicious. Don't ever get in the way of it, Gordon Elliot." He examined his injuries more closely in the glass. "Some one landed a peach on my right lamp and the other is in mourning out of sympathy. Oh, well, I ain't the only prize beauty on board this morning." The young man forgot and smiled. "Ouch! Don't do that, Gordon. Yes, son. 'There's many a black, black eye, they say, but none so bright as mine.' Now isn't that the truth?"

He bathed, dressed, and went out on the deck.

Early though he was, one passenger at least was up before him. The young woman he had noticed last evening with the magazine was doing a constitutional. A slight breeze was stirring, and as she moved against it the white skirt clung first to one knee and then the other, moulding itself to the long lines of her limbs with exquisite grace of motion. It was as though her walk were the expression of a gallant and buoyant personality.

Irish he guessed her when the deep-blue eyes rested on his for an instant as she passed, and fortified his conjecture by the coloring of the clear-skinned face and the marks of the Celtic race delicately stamped upon it.

The purser came out of his room and joined Elliot. He smiled at sight of the young man's face.

"Your map's a little out of plumb this morning, sir," he ventured.

"But you ought to see the other fellow," came back Gordon boyishly.

"I've seen him--several of him. We've got the best collection of bruises on board I ever clapped eyes on. I've got to give it to you and Mr. Macdonald. You know how to hit."

"Oh, I'm not in his class."

Gordon Elliot meant what he said. He was himself an athlete, had played for three years left tackle on his college eleven. More than one critic had picked him for the All-America team. He could do his hundred in just a little worse than ten seconds. But after all he was a product of training and of the gymnasiums. Macdonald was what nature and a long line of fighting Highland ancestors had made him. His sinewy, knotted strength, his massive build, the breadth of shoulder and depth of chest--mushing on long snow trails was the gymnasium that had contributed to these.

The purser chuckled. "He's a good un, Mac is. They say he liked to have drowned Northrup after he had saved him."

Elliot was again following with his eyes the lilt of the girl's movements. Apparently he had not heard what the officer said. At least he gave no answer.

With a grin the purser opened another attack. "Don't blame you a bit, Mr. Elliot. She's the prettiest colleen that ever sailed from Dublin Bay."

The young man brought his eyes home. They answered engagingly the smile of the purser.

"Who is she?"

"The name on the books is Sheba O'Neill."

"From Dublin, you say."

"Oh, if you want to be literal, her baggage says Drogheda. Ireland is Ireland to me."

"Where is she bound for?"

"Kusiak."

The young woman passed them with a little nod of morning greeting to the purser. Fine and dainty though she was, Miss O'Neill gave an impression of radiant strength.

"Been with you all the way up the river?" asked Elliot after she had passed.

"Yep. She came up on the Skagit from Seattle."

"What is she going to do at Kusiak?"

Again the purser grinned. "What do they all do--the good-looking ones?"

"Get married, you mean?"

"Surest thing you know. Girls coming up ask me what to bring by way of outfit. I used to make out a long list. Now I tell them to bring clothes enough for six weeks and their favorite wedding march."

"Is this girl engaged?"

"Can't prove it by me," said the officer lightly. "But she'll never get out of Alaska a spinster--not that girl. She may be going in to teach, or to run a millinery store, or to keep books for a trading company. She'll stay to bring up kiddies of her own. They all do."

Three children came up the stairway, caught sight of Miss O'Neill, and raced pell-mell across the deck to her.

The young woman's face was transformed. It was bubbling with tenderness, with gay and happy laughter. Flinging her arms wide, she waited for them. With incoherent cries of delight they flung themselves upon her. Her arms enveloped all three as she stooped for their hugs and kisses.

The two oldest were girls. The youngest was a fat, cuddly little boy with dimples in his soft cheeks.

"I dwessed myself, Aunt Sheba. Didn't I, Gwen?"

"Not all by yourself, Billie?" inquired the Irish girl, registering a proper amazement.

He nodded his head slowly and solemnly up and down. "Honeth to goodness."

Sheba stooped and held him off to admire. "All by yourself--just think of that."

"We helped just the teeniest bit on the buttons," confessed Janet, the oldest of the small family.

"And I tied his shoes," added Gwendolen, "after he had laced them."

"Billie will be such a big man Daddie won't know him." And Sheba gave him another hug.

Gwendolen snuggled close to Miss O'Neill. "You always smell so sweet and clean and violety, Aunt Sheba," she whispered in confidence.

"You're spoiling me, Gwen," laughed the young woman. "You've kissed the blarney stone. It's a good thing you're leaving the boat to-day."

Miss Gwen had one more confidence to make in the ear of her friend. "I wish you'd come too and be our new mamma," she begged.

A shell-pink tinge crept into the milky skin of the Irish girl. She was less sure of herself, more easily embarrassed, than the average American of her age and sex. Occasionally in her manner was that effect of shyness one finds in the British even after they have escaped from provincialism.

"Are all your things gathered ready for packing, Janet?" she asked quietly.

The purser gave information to Elliot. "They call her Aunt Sheba, but she's no relative of theirs. The kids are on their way in to their father, who is an engineer on one of the creeks back of Katma. Their mother died two months ago. Miss O'Neill met them first aboard the Skagit on the way up and she has mothered them ever since. Some women are that way, bless 'em. I know because I've been married to one myself six months. She's back there at St. Michael's, and she just grabs at every baby in the block."

The eyes of Elliot rested on Miss O'Neill. "She loves children."

"She sure does--no bluff about that." An imp of mischief sparkled in the eye of the supercargo. "Not married yourself, are you, Mr. Elliot?"

"No."

"Hmp!"

That was all he said, but Gordon felt the blood creep into his face. This annoyed him, so he added brusquely,--

"And not likely to be."

When the call for breakfast came Miss O'Neill took her retinue of youngsters with her to the dining-room. Looking across from his seat at an adjoining table, Elliot could see her waiting upon them with a fine absorption in their needs. She prepared an orange for Billie and offered to the little girls suggestions as to ordering that were accepted by them as a matter of course. Unconsciously the children recognized in her the eternal Mother.

Before they had been long in the dining-room Macdonald came in carrying a sheaf of business papers. He glanced around, recognized Elliot, and made instantly for the seat across the table from him. On his face and head were many marks of the recent battle.

"Trade you a cauliflower ear for a pair of black eyes, Mr. Elliot," he laughed as he shook hands with the man whose name he had just learned from the purser.

The grip of his brown, muscular hand was strong. It was in character with the steady, cool eyes set deep beneath the jutting forehead, with the confident carriage of the deep, broad shoulders. He looked a dynamic American, who trod the way of the forceful and fought for his share of the spoils.

"You might throw in several other little souvenirs to boot and not miss them," suggested Elliot with a smile.

Macdonald nodded indifferently. "I gave and I took, which was as it should be. But it's different with you, Mr. Elliot. This wasn't your row."

"I hadn't been in a good mix-up since I left college. It did me a lot of good."

"Much obliged, anyhow." He turned his attention to a lady entering the dining-room. "'Mornin', Mrs. Selfridge. How's Wally?"

She threw up her hands in despair. "He's on his second bottle of liniment already. I expect those ruffians have ruined his singing voice. It's a mercy they didn't murder both him and you, Mr. Macdonald. When I think of how close you both came to death last night--"

"I don't know about Wally, but I had no notion of dying, Mrs. Selfridge. They mussed us up a bit. That was all."

"But they meant to kill you, the cowards. And they almost did it too. Look at Wally--confined to his bed and speaking in a whisper. Look at you--a wreck, horribly beaten up, almost drowned. We must drive the villains out of the country or send them to prison."

Mrs. Selfridge always talked in superlatives. She had an enthusiasm for the dramatics of conversation. Her supple hands, her shrill, eager voice, the snapping black eyes, all had the effect of startling headlines to the story she might be telling.

"Am I a wreck?" the big Scotchman wanted to know. "I feel as husky as a well-fed malamute."

"Oh, you talk. But we all know you--how brave and strong you are. That's why this outrage ought to be punished. What would Alaska do if anything happened to you?"

"I hadn't thought of that," admitted Macdonald. "The North would have to go out of business, I suppose. But you're right about one thing, Mrs. Selfridge. I'm brave and strong enough at the breakfast table. Steward, will you bring me a double order of these shirred eggs--and a small steak?"

"Well, I'm glad you can still joke, Mr. Macdonald, after such a terrible experience. All I can say is that I hope Wally isn't permanently injured. He hasn't your fine constitution, and one never can tell about internal injuries." Mrs. Selfridge sighed and passed to her place.

The eyes of the big man twinkled. "Our little fracas has been a godsend to Mrs. Selfridge. Wally and I will both emerge as heroes of a desperate struggle. You won't even get a mention. But it's a pity about Wally's injuries--and his singing voice."

The younger man agreed with a gravity back of which his amusement was apparent. The share of Selfridge in the battle had been limited to leg work only, but this had not been good enough to keep him from being overhauled and having his throat squeezed.

Elliot finished breakfast first and left Macdonald looking over a long typewritten document. He had it propped against a water-bottle and was reading as he ate. The paper was a report Selfridge had brought in to him from a clerk in the General Land Office. The big Canadian and the men he represented were dealing directly with the heads of the Government departments, but they thought it the part of wisdom to keep in their employ subordinates in the capacity of secret service agents to spy upon the higher-ups.

CHAPTER IV

THE CREVASSE

For an hour before the Hannah reached Katma Miss O'Neill was busy getting her little brood ready. In that last half-day she was a creature of moods to them. They, too, like Sheba herself, were adventuring into a new world. Somehow they represented to her the last tie that bound her to the life she was leaving. Her heart was tender as a Madonna to these lambs so ill-fitted to face a frigid waste. Their mother had been a good woman. She could tell that. But she had no way of knowing what kind of man their father might be.

Sheba gave Janet advice about where to keep her money and when to wear rubbers and what to do for Billie's cold. She put up a lunch for them to take on the stage. When they said their sniffling good-byes at Katma she was suspiciously bright and merry. Soon the children were laughing again with her.

One glance at their father, who introduced himself to Miss O'Neill as John Husted, relieved her mind greatly. His spontaneous delight at seeing them again and his choking gratitude to her for having looked after them were evidence enough that this kind-eyed man meant to be both father and mother to his recovered little folks. His emotion was too poignant for him to talk about his wife, but Sheba understood and liked him better for it.

Her temporary family stood on the end of the wharf and called good-byes to the girl.

"Tum soon and see us, Aunt Sheba," Billie shouted from his seat on the shoulder of his father.

The children waved handkerchiefs as long as she could be distinguished by them. When they turned away she went directly to her room.

Elliot was passing forward when Miss O'Neill opened her stateroom door to go in. The eyes of the young woman were blind with tears and she was biting her lip to keep back the emotion that welled up. He knew she was very fond of the motherless children, but he guessed at an additional reason for her sobs. She too was as untaught as a child in the life of this frontier land. Whatever she found here--how much of hardship or happiness, of grief or woe--she knew that she had left behind forever the safe harborage of quiet waters in which her life craft had always floated.

It came on to rain in the afternoon. Heavy clouds swept across from the mountains, and the sodden sky opened like a sluice-box. The Kusiak contingent, driven indoors, resorted to bridge. Miss O'Neill read. Gordon Elliot wrote letters, dawdled over magazines, and lounged alternately in the ladies' parlor and the smoking-room, where Macdonald, Strong, a hardware merchant from Fairbanks, and a pair of sour-dough miners had settled themselves to a poker game that was to last all night and well into the next day.

Of the two bridge tables all the players were old-timers except Mrs. Mallory. Most of them were young enough in years, but they had been of the North long enough to know the gossip of the country and its small politics intimately. They shared common hopes of the day when Alaska would be thrown open to industry and a large population.

But Mrs. Mallory had come in over the ice for the first time last winter. The other women felt that she was a bird of passage, that the frozen Arctic could be no more than a whim to her. They deferred a little to her because she knew the great world--New York, Vienna, London, Paris. Great names fell from her lips casually and carelessly. She referred familiarly to princes and famous statesmen, as if she had gossiped with them tête-à-tête over the teacups. She was full of spicy little anecdotes about German royalty and the British aristocracy. It was no wonder, Gordon Elliot thought, that she had rather stunned the little social set of Kusiak.

Through Northrup and Trelawney a new slant on Macdonald was given to Gordon. He had fallen into casual talk with them after dinner on the fore deck. It was still raining, but all three were equipped with slickers or mackintoshes. To his surprise the young man discovered that they bore him no grudge at all for his interference the night before.

"But we ain't through with Colby Macdonald yet," Trelawney explained. "Mind, I don't say we're going to get him. Nothing like that. He knocked me cold with that loaded suitcase of his. By the looks of him I'm even for that. Good enough. But here's the point. We stand for Labor. He stands for Capital. See? Things ain't what they used to be in Alaska, and it's because of Colby Macdonald and his friends. They're grabbers--that's what they are. They want the whole works. A hell of a roar goes up from them when the Government stops their combines, but all the time they're bearing down a little harder on us workingmen. Understand? It's up to us to fight, ain't it?"

Later Elliot put this viewpoint before Strong.

"There's something in it," the miner agreed. "Wages have gone down, and it's partly because the big fellows are consolidating interests. Alaska ain't a poor man's country the way it was. But Mac ain't to blame for that. He has to play the game the way the cards are dealt out."

The sky was clear again when the Hannah drew in to the wharf at Moose Head to unload freight, but the mud in the unpaved street leading to the business section of the little frontier town was instep deep. Many of the passengers hurried ashore to make the most of the five-hour stop. Macdonald, with Mrs. Mallory and their Kusiak friends, disappeared in a bus. Elliot put on a pair of heavy boots and started uptown.

At the end of the wharf he passed Miss O'Neill. She wore no rubbers and she had come to a halt at the beginning of the mud. After a momentary indecision she returned slowly to the boat.

The young man walked up into the town, but ten minutes later he crossed the gangplank of the Hannah again with a package under his arm. Miss O'Neill was sitting on the forward deck making a pretense to herself of reading. This was where Elliot had expected to find her, but now that the moment of attack had come he had to take his fear by the throat. When he had thought of it first there seemed nothing difficult about offering to do her a kindness, yet he found himself shrinking from the chance of a rebuff.

He moved over to where she sat and lifted his hat. "I hope you won't think it a liberty, Miss O'Neill, but I've brought you some rubbers from a store uptown. I noticed you couldn't get ashore without them."

Gordon tore the paper wrapping from his package and disclosed half a dozen pairs of rubbers.

The girl was visibly embarrassed. She was not at all certain of the right thing to do. Where she had been brought up young men did not offer courtesies of this sort so informally.

"I--I think I won't need them, thank you. I've decided not to leave the boat," she answered shyly.

Elliot had never been accused of being a quitter. Having begun this, he proposed to see it out. He caught sight of the purser superintending the discharge of cargo and called to him by name. The officer joined them, a pad of paper and a pencil in his hand.

"I'm trying to persuade Miss O'Neill that she ought to go ashore while we're lying here. What was it you told me about the waterfall back of the town?"

"Finest thing of its kind in Alaska. They're so proud of it in this burg that they would like to make it against the law for any one to leave without seeing it. Every one takes it in. We won't get away till night. You've plenty of time if you want to see it."

"Now, will you please introduce me to Miss O'Neill formally?"

The purser went through the usual formula of presentation, adding that Elliot was a government official on his way to Kusiak. Having done his duty by the young man, the busy supercargo retired.

"I'm sure it would do you good to walk up to the waterfall with me, Miss O'Neill," urged Elliot.

She met a little dubiously the smile that would not stay quite extinguished on his good-looking, boyish face. Why shouldn't she go with him, since it was the American way for unchaperoned youth to enjoy itself naturally?

"If they'll fit," the girl answered, eyeing the rubbers.

Gordon dropped to his knee and demonstrated that they would.

As they walked along the muddy street she gave him a friendly little nod of thanks. "Good of you to take the trouble to look out for me."

He laughed. "It was myself I was looking out for. I'm a stranger in the country and was awfully lonesome."

"Is it that this is your first time in too?" she asked shyly.

"You're going to Kusiak, aren't you? Do you know anybody there?" replied Elliot.

"My cousin lives there, but I haven't seen her since I was ten. She's an American. Eleven years ago she visited us in Ireland."

"I'm glad you know some one," he said. "You'll not be so lonesome with some of your people living there. I have two friends at Kusiak--a girl I used to go to school with and her husband."

"Are you going to live at Kusiak?"

"No; but I'll be stationed in the Territory for several months. I'll be in and out of the town a good deal. I hope you'll let me see something of you."

The fine Irish coloring deepened in her cheeks. He had a way of taking in his stride the barriers between them, but it was impossible for her to feel offended at this cheery, vigorous young fellow with the winning smile and the firm-set jaw. She liked the warmth in his honest brown eyes. She liked the play of muscular grace beneath his well-fitting clothes. The sinuous ease of his lean, wide-shouldered body stirred faintly some primitive instinct in her maiden heart. Sheba did not know, as her resilient muscles carried her forward joyfully, that she was answering the call of youth to youth.

Gordon respected her shyness and moved warily to establish his contact. He let the talk drift to impersonal topics as they picked their way out from the town along the mossy trail. The ground was spongy with water. On either side of them ferns and brakes grew lush. Sheba took the porous path with a step elastic. To the young man following she seemed a miracle of supple lightness.

The trail tilted up from the lowlands, led across dips, and into a draw. A little stream meandered down and gurgled over rocks worn smooth by ages of attrition. Alders brushed the stream and their foliage checkered the trail with sunlight and shadow.

They were ascending steadily now along a pathway almost too indistinct to follow. The air was aromatic with pine from a grove that came straggling down the side of a gulch to the brook.

"Do you know, I have a queer feeling that I've seen all this before," the Irish girl said. "Of course I haven't--unless it was in my dreams. Naturally I've thought about Alaska a great deal because my father lived here."

"I didn't know that."

"Yes. He came in with the Klondike stampeders." She added quietly: "He died on Bonanza Creek two years later."

"Was he a miner?"

"Not until he came North. He had an interest in a claim. It later turned out worthless."

A bit of stiff climbing brought them to a boulder field back of which rose a mountain ridge.

"We've got off the trail somehow," Elliot said. "But I don't suppose it matters. If we keep going we're bound to come to the waterfall."

Beyond the boulder field the ridge rose sharply. Gordon looked a little dubiously at Sheba.

"Are you a good climber?"

As she stood in the sunpour, her cheeks flushed with exercise, he could see that her spirit courted adventure.

"I'm sure I must be," she answered with a smile adorable. "I believe I could do the Matterhorn to-day."

Well up on the shoulder of the ridge they stopped to breathe. The distant noise of falling water came faintly to them.

"We're too far to the left--must have followed the wrong spur," Elliot explained. "Probably we can cut across the face of the mountain."

Presently they came to an impasse. The gulch between the two spurs terminated in a rock wall that fell almost sheer for two hundred feet.

The color in the cheeks beneath the eager eyes of the girl was warm. "Let's try it," she begged.

The young man had noticed that she was as sure-footed as a mountain goat and that she could stand on the edge of a precipice without dizziness. The surface of the wall was broken. What it might be beyond he could not tell, but the first fifty feet was a bit of attractive and not too difficult rock traverse.

Now and again he made a suggestion to the young woman following him, but for the most part he trusted her to choose her own foot and hand holds. Her delicacy was silken strong. If she was slender, she was yet deep-bosomed. The movements of the girl were as certain as those of an experienced mountaineer.

The way grew more difficult. They had been following a ledge that narrowed till it ran out. Jutting knobs of feldspar and stunted shrubs growing from crevices offered toe-grips instead of the even foothold of the rock shelf. As Gordon looked down at the dizzy fall beneath them his judgment told him they had better go back. He said as much to his companion.

The smile she flashed at him was delightfully provocative. It served to point the figure she borrowed from Gwen. "So you think I'm a 'fraid-cat, Mr. Elliot?"

His inclination marched with hers. It was their first adventure together and he did not want to spoil it by undue caution. There really was not much danger yet so long as they were careful.

Gordon abandoned the traverse and followed an ascending crack in the wall. The going was hard. It called for endurance and muscle, as well as for a steady head and a sure foot. He looked down at the girl wedged between the slopes of the granite trough.

She read his thought. "The old guard never surrenders, sir," was her quick answer as she brushed in salute with the tips of her fingers a stray lock of hair.

The trough was worse than Elliot had expected. It had in it a good deal of loose rubble that started in small slides at the least pressure.

"Be very careful of your footing," he called back anxiously.

A small grassy platform lay above the upper end of the trough, but the last dozen feet of the approach was a very difficult bit. Gordon took advantage of every least projection. He fought his way up with his back against one wall and his knees pressed to the other. Three feet short of the platform the rock walls became absolutely smooth. The climber could reach within a foot of the top.

"Are you stopped?" asked Sheba.

"Looks that way."

A small pine projected from the edge of the shelf out over the precipice. It might be strong enough to bear his weight. It might not. Gordon unbuckled his belt and threw one end over the trunk of the dwarf tree. Gingerly he tested it with his weight, then went up hand over hand and worked himself over the edge of the little plateau.

"All right?" the girl called up.

"All right. But you can't make it. I'm coming down again."

"I'm going to try."

"I wouldn't, Miss O'Neill. It's really dangerous."

"I'd like to try it. I'll stop if it's too hard," she promised.

The strength of her slender wrists surprised him. She struggled up the vertical crevasse inch by inch. His heart was full of fear, for a misstep now would be fatal. He lay down with his face over the ledge and lowered to her the buckled loop of his belt. Twice she stopped exhausted, her back and her hands pressed against the walls of the trough angle for support.

"Better give it up," he advised.

"I'll not then." She smiled stubbornly as she shook her head.

Presently her fingers touched the belt.

[Illustration: "SO YOU THINK I'M A 'FRAID-CAT, MR. ELLIOT?"]

Gordon edged forward an inch or two farther. "Put your hand through the loop and catch hold of the leather above," he told her.

She did so, and at the same instant her foot slipped. The girl swung out into space suspended by one wrist. The muscles of Elliot hardened into steel as they responded to the strain. His body began to slide very slowly down the incline.

In a moment the acute danger was past. Sheba had found a hold with her feet and relieved somewhat the dead pull upon Elliot.

She had not voiced a cry, but the face that looked up into his was very white.

"Take your time," he said in a quiet, matter-of-fact way.

With his help she came close enough for him to reach her hand. After that it was only a moment before she knelt on the plateau beside him.

"Touch and go, wasn't it?" Sheba tried to smile, but the colorless lips told the young man she was still faint from the shock.

He knew he was going to reproach himself bitterly for having led her into such a risk, but he could not just now afford to waste his energies on regrets. Nor could he let her mind dwell on past dangers so long as there were future ones to be faced.

"You might have sprained your wrist," he said lightly as he rose to examine the cliff still to be negotiated.

Her dark eyes looked at him with quick surprise. "So I might," she answered dryly.

But his indifferent tone had the effect upon her of a plunge into cold water. It braced and stiffened her will. If he wanted to ignore the terrible danger through which she had passed, certainly she was not going to remind him of it.

Between where they stood and the summit of the cliff was another rock traverse. A kind of rough, natural stairway led down to a point opposite them. But before this could be reached thirty feet of granite must be crossed. The wall looked hazardous enough in all faith. It lay in the shade, and there were spots where a thin coating of ice covered the smooth slabs. But there was no other way up, and if the traverse could be made the rest was easy.

Gordon was mountaineer enough to know that the climb up is safer than the one back. The only possible way for them to go down the trough was for him to lower her by the belt until she found footing enough to go alone. He did not quite admit it to himself, but in his heart he doubted whether she could make it safely.

The alternative was the cliff face.

CHAPTER V

ACROSS THE TRAVERSE

Elliot took off his shoes and turned toward the traverse.

"Think I'll see if I can cross to that stairway. You had better wait here, Miss O'Neill, until we find out if it can be done."

His manner was casual, his voice studiously light.

Sheba looked across the cliff and down to the boulder bed two hundred feet below. "You can never do it in the world. Isn't there another way up?"

"No. The wall above us slopes out. I've got to cross to the stairway. If I make it I'm going to get a rope."

"Do you mean you're going back to town for one?"

"Yes."

Her eyes fastened to his in a long, unspoken question. She read the answer. He was afraid to have her try the trough again. To get back to town by way of their roundabout ascent would waste time. If he was going to rescue her before night, he must take the shortest cut, and that was across the face of the sheer cliff. For the first time she understood how serious was their plight.

"We can go back together by the trough, can't we?" But even as she asked, her heart sank at the thought of facing again that dizzy height. The moment of horror when she had thought herself lost had shaken her nerve.

"It would be difficult."

The glance of the girl swept again the face of the wall he must cross. It could not be done without a rope. Her fear-filled eyes came back to his.

"It's my fault. I made you come," she said in a low voice.

"Nonsense," he answered cheerfully. "There's no harm done. If I can't reach the stairway I can come back and go down by the trough."

Sheba assented doubtfully.

It had come on to drizzle again. The rain was fine and cold, almost a mist, and already it was forming a film of ice on the rocks.

"I can't take time to go back by the trough. The point is that I don't want you camped up here after night. There has been no sun on this side of the spur and in the chill of the evening it must get cold even in summer."

He was making his preparations as he talked. His coat he took off and threw down. His shoes he tied by the laces to his belt.

"I'll try not to be very long," he promised.

"It's God's will then, so it is," she sighed, relapsing into the vernacular.

Her voice was low and not very steady, for the heart of the girl was heavy. She knew she must not protest his decision. That was not the way to play the game. But somehow the salt had gone from their light-hearted adventure. She had become panicky from the moment when her feet had started the rubble in the trough and gone flying into the air. The gayety that had been the note of their tramp had given place to fears.

Elliot took her little hand in a warm, strong grip. "You're not going to be afraid. We'll work out all right, you know."

"Yes."

"It's not just the thing to leave a lady in the rain when you take her for a walk, but it can't be helped. We'll laugh about it to-morrow."

Would they? she wondered, answering his smile faintly. Her courage was sapped. She wanted to cry out that he must not try the traverse, but she set her will not to make it harder for him.

He turned to the climb.

"You've forgotten your coat," she reminded.

"I'm traveling light this trip. You'd better slip it on before you get chilled."

Sheba knew he had left it on purpose for her.

Her fascinated eyes followed him while he moved out from the plateau across the face of the precipice. His hand had found a knob of projecting feldspar and he was feeling with his right foot for a hold in some moss that grew in a crevice. He had none of the tools for climbing--no rope, no hatchet, none of the support of numbers. All the allies he could summon were his bare hands and feet, his resilient muscles, and his stout heart. To make it worse, the ice film from the rain coated every jutting inch of quartz with danger.

But he worked steadily forward, moving with the infinite caution of one who knows that there will be no chance to remedy later any mistake. A slight error in judgment, the failure in response of any one of fifty muscles, would send him plunging down.

Occasionally he spoke to Sheba, but she volunteered no remarks. It was her part to wait and watch while he concentrated every faculty upon his task. He had come to an impasse after crossing a dozen feet of the wall and was working up to get around a slab of granite which protruded, a convex barrier, from the surface of the cliff. It struck the girl that from a distance he must look like a fly on a pane of glass. Even to her, close as she was, that smooth rock surface looked impossible.

Her eye left him for an instant to sweep the gulf below. She gave a little cry, ran to his coat, and began to wave it. For the first time since Elliot had begun the traverse she took the initiative in speech.

"I see some people away over to the left, Mr. Elliot. I'm going to call to them." Her voice throbbed with hope.

But it was not her shouts or his, which would not have carried one tenth the distance, that reached the group in the valley. One of them caught a glimpse of the wildly waving coat. There was a consultation and two or three fluttered handkerchiefs in response. Presently they moved on.

Sheba could not believe her eyes. "They're not leaving us surely?" she gasped.

"That's what they're doing," answered Gordon grimly. "They think we're calling to them out of vanity to show them where we climbed."

"Oh!" She strangled a sob in her throat. Her heart was weighted as with lead.

"I'm going to make it. I think I see my way from here," her companion called across to her. "A fault runs to the foot of the stairway, if I can only do the next yard or two."

He did them, by throwing caution to the winds. An icy, rounded boulder projected above him out of reach. He unfastened his belt again and put the shoes, tied by the laces, around his neck. There was one way to get across to the ledge of the fault. He took hold of the two ends of the belt, crouched, and leaned forward on tiptoes toward the knob. The loop of the belt slid over the ice-coated boss. There was no chance to draw back now, to test the hold he had gained. If the leather slipped he was lost. His body swung across the abyss and his feet landed on the little ledge beyond.

His shout of success came perhaps ten minutes later. "I've reached the stairway, Miss O'Neill. I'll try not to be long, but you'd better exercise to keep up the circulation. Don't worry, please. I'll be back before night."

"I'm so glad," she cried joyfully. "I was afraid for you. And I'll not worry a bit. Good-bye."

Elliot made his way up to the summit and ran along a footpath which brought him to a bridge across the mountain stream just above the falls. The trail zigzagged down the turbulent little river close to the bank. Before he had specialized on the short distances Gordon had been a cross-country runner. He was in fair condition and he covered the ground fast.

About a mile below the falls he met two men. One of them was Colby Macdonald. He carried a coil of rope over one shoulder. The big Alaskan explained that he had not been able to get it out of his head that perhaps the climbers who had waved at his party had been in difficulties. So he had got a rope from the cabin of an old miner and was on his way back to the falls.

The three climbed to the falls, crossed the bridge, and reached the top of the cliff.

"You know the lay of the land down there, Mr. Elliot. We'll lower you," decided Macdonald, who took command as a matter of course.

Gordon presently stood beside Sheba on the little plateau. She had quite recovered from the touch of hysteria that had attacked her courage. The wind and the rain had whipped the color into her soft cheeks, had disarranged a little the crinkly, blue-black hair, wet tendrils of which nestled against her temples. The health and buoyancy of the girl were in the live eyes that met his eagerly.

"You weren't long," was all she said.

"I met them coming," he answered as he dropped the loop of the rope over her head and arranged it under her shoulders.

He showed her how to relieve part of the strain of the rope on her flesh by using her hands to lift.

"All ready?" Macdonald called from above.

"All ready," Elliot answered. To Sheba he said, "Hold tight."

The girl was swung from the ledge and rose jerkily in the air. She laughed gayly down at her friend below.

"It's fun."

Gordon followed her a couple of minutes later. She was waiting to give him a hand over the edge of the cliff.

"Miss O'Neill, this is Mr. Macdonald," he said, as soon as he had freed himself from the rope. "You are fellow passengers on the Hannah."

Macdonald was looking at her straight and hard. "Your father's name--was it Farrell O'Neill?" he asked bluntly.

"Yes."

"I knew him."

The girl's eyes lit. "I'm glad, Mr. Macdonald. That's one reason I wanted to come to Alaska--to hear about my father's life here. Will you tell me?"

"Sometime. We must be going now to catch the boat--after I've had a look at the cliff this young man crawled across."

He turned away, abruptly it struck Elliot, and climbed down the natural stairway up which the young man had come. Presently he rejoined those above. Macdonald looked at Elliot with a new respect.

"You're in luck, my friend, that we're not carrying you from the foot of the cliff," he said dryly. "I wouldn't cross that rock wall for a hundred thousand dollars in cold cash."

"Nor I again," admitted Gordon with a laugh. "But we had either to homestead that plateau or vacate it. I preferred the latter."

Miss O'Neill's deep eyes looked at him. She was about to speak, then changed her mind.

CHAPTER VI

SHEBA SINGS--AND TWO MEN LISTEN

Elliot did not see Miss O'Neill next morning until she appeared in the dining-room for breakfast. He timed himself to get through so as to join her when she left. They strolled out to the deck together.

"Did you sleep well?" he asked.

"After I fell asleep. It took me a long time. I kept seeing you on the traverse."

He came abruptly to what was on his mind. "I have an apology to make, Miss O'Neill. If I made light of your danger yesterday, it was because I was afraid you might break down. I had to seem unsympathetic rather than risk that."

She smiled forgiveness. "All you said was that I might have sprained my wrist. It was true too. I might have--and I did." Sheba showed a white linen bandage tied tightly around her wrist.

"Does it pain much?"

"Not so much now. It throbbed a good deal last night."

"Your whole weight came on it with a wrench. No wonder it hurt."

Sheba noticed that the Hannah was drawing up to a wharf and the passengers were lining up with their belongings. "Is this where we change?"

"Those of us going to Kusiak transfer here. But there's no hurry. We wait at this landing two hours."

Gordon helped Sheba move her baggage to the other boat and joined her on deck. They were both strangers in the land. Their only common acquaintance was Macdonald and he was letting Mrs. Mallory absorb his attention just now. Left to their own resources the two young people naturally drifted together a good deal.

This suited Elliot. He found his companion wholly delightful, not the less because she was so different from the girls he knew at home. She could be frank, and even shyly audacious on occasion, but she held a little note of reserve he felt bound to respect. Her experience of the world had clearly been limited. She was not at all sure of herself, of the proper degree of intimacy to permit herself with a strange and likable young man who had done her so signal a service.

Macdonald left the boat twenty miles below Kusiak with Mrs. Mallory and the Selfridges. A chauffeur with a motor-car was waiting on the wharf to run them to town, but he gave the wheel to Macdonald and took the seat beside the driver.

The little miner Strong grinned across to Elliot, who was standing beside Miss O'Neill at the boat rail.

"That's Mac all over. He hires a fellow to run his car--brings him up here from Seattle--and then takes the wheel himself every time he rides. I don't somehow see Mac sitting back and letting another man run the machine."

It was close to noon before the river boat turned a bend and steamed up to the wharf at Kusiak. The place was an undistinguished little log town that rambled back from the river up the hill in a hit-or-miss fashion. Its main street ran a tortuous course parallel to the stream.

Half of the town, it seemed, was down to meet the boat.

"Are you going to the hotel or direct to your cousin's?" Gordon asked Miss O'Neill.

"To my cousin's. I fancy she's down here to meet me. It was arranged that I come on this boat."

There was much waving of handkerchiefs and shouting back and forth as the steamer slowly drew close to the landing.

Elliot caught a glimpse of the only people in Kusiak he had known before coming in, but though he waved to them he saw they did not recognize him. After the usual delay about getting ashore he walked down the gangway carrying the suitcases of the Irish girl. Sheba followed at his heels. On the wharf he came face to face with a slender, well-dressed young woman.

"Diane!" he cried.

She stared at him. "You! What in Heaven's name are you doing here, Gordon Elliot?" she demanded, and before he could answer had seized both hands and turned excitedly to call a stocky man near. "Peter--Peter! Guess who's here?"

"Hello, Paget!" grinned Gordon, and he shook hands with the husband of Diane.

Elliot turned to introduce his friend, but she anticipated him.

"Cousin Diane," she said shyly. "Don't you know me?"

Mrs. Paget swooped down upon the girl and smothered her in her embrace.

"This is Sheba--little Sheba that I have told you so often about, Peter," she cried. "Glory be, I'm glad to see you, child." And Diane kissed her again warmly. "You two met on the boat, of course, coming in, I hope you didn't let her get lonesome, Gordon. Look after Sheba's suitcases, Peter. You'll come to dinner to-night, Gordon--at seven."

"I'm in the kind hands of my countrywoman," laughed Gordon. "I'll certainly be on hand."

"But what in the world are you doing here? You're the last man I'd have expected to see."

"I'm in the service of the Government, and I've been sent in on business."

"Well, I'm going to say something original, dear people," Mrs. Paget replied. "It's a small world, isn't it?"

While he was dressing for dinner later in the day, Elliot recalled early memories of the Pagets. He had known Diane ever since they had been youngsters together at school. He remembered her as a restless, wiry little thing, keen as a knife-blade. She had developed into a very pretty girl, alive, ambitious, energetic, with a shrewd eye to the main chance. Always popular socially, she had surprised everybody by refusing the catch of the town to marry a young mining engineer without a penny. Gordon was in college at the time, but during the next long vacation he had fraternized a good deal with the Peter Pagets. The young married people had been very much in love with each other, but not too preoccupied to take the college boy into their happiness as a comrade. Diane always had been a manager, and she liked playing older sister to so nice a lad. He had been on a footing friendly enough to drop in unannounced whenever he took the fancy. If they were out, or about to go out, the freedom of the den, a magazine, and good tobacco had been his. Then the Arctic gold-fields had claimed Paget and his bride. That had been more than ten years ago, and until to-day Gordon had not seen them since.

While Elliot was brushing his dinner coat before the open window of the room assigned him at the hotel, somebody came out to the porch below. The voice of a woman floated faintly to him.

"Seen Diane's Irish beauty yet, Ned?"

"Yes," a man answered.

The woman laughed softly. "Mrs. Mallory came up on the same boat with her." The inflection suggested that the words were meant not to tell a fact, but some less obvious inference.

"Oh, you women!" the man commented good-naturedly.

"She's wonderfully pretty, and of course Diane will make the most of her. But Mrs. Mallory is a woman among ten thousand."

"I'd choose the girl if it were me," said the man.

"But it isn't you. We'll see what we'll see."

They were moving up the street and Gordon heard no more. What he had heard was not clear to him. Why should any importance attach to the fact that Mrs. Mallory and Sheba O'Neill had come up the river on the same boat? Yet he was vaguely disturbed by the insinuation that in some way Diane was entering her cousin as a rival of the older woman. He resented the idea that the fine, young personality of the Irish girl was being cheapened by management on the part of Diane Paget.

Elliot was not the only dinner guest at the Paget home that evening. He found Colby Macdonald sitting in the living-room with Sheba. She came quickly forward to meet the newly arrived guest.

"Mr. Macdonald has been telling me about my father. He knew him on Frenchman Creek where they both worked claims," explained the girl.

The big mining man made no comment and added nothing to what she said. There were times when his face was about as expressive as a stone wall. Except for a hard wariness in the eyes it told nothing now.

The dinner went off very well. Diane and Peter had a great many questions to ask Gordon about old friends. By the time these had been answered Macdonald was chatting easily with Sheba. The man had been in many out-of-the-way corners of the world, had taken part in much that was dramatic and interesting. If the experience of the Irish girl had been small, her imagination had none the less gone questing beyond the narrow bars of her life upon amazing adventure. She listened with glowing eyes to the strange tales this man of magnificent horizons had to tell. Never before had she come into contact with any one like him.

The others too succumbed to his charm. He dominated that little dining-room because he was a sixty-horse-power dynamo. For all his bulk he was as lean as a panther and as sinewy. There was virility in the very economy of his motions, in the reticence of his speech. Not even a fool could have read weakness there. When he followed Sheba into the living-room, power trod in his long, easy stride.

Paget was superintendent of the Lucky Strike, a mine owned principally by Macdonald. The two talked business for a few minutes over their cigars, but Diane interrupted gayly to bring them back into the circle. Adroitly she started Macdonald on the account of a rescue of two men lost in a blizzard the year before. He had the gift of dramatizing his story, of selecting only effective details. There was no suggestion of boasting. If he happened to be the hero of any of his stories the fact was of no importance to him. It was merely a detail of the picture he was sketching.

Gordon interrupted with a question a story he was telling of a fight he had seen between two bull moose.

"Did you say that was while you were on the way over to inspect the Kamatlah coal-fields for the first time?"

The eyes of the young man were quick with interest.

"Yes."

"Four years ago last spring?"

Macdonald looked at him with a wary steadiness. Some doubt had found lodgment in his mind. Before he could voice it, if, indeed, he had any such intention, Elliot broke in swiftly,--

"Don't answer that question. I asked it without proper thought. I am a special agent of the General Land Office sent up to investigate the Macdonald coal claims and kindred interests."

Slowly the rigor of the big Scotchman's steely eyes relaxed to a smile that was genial and disarming. If this news hit him hard he gave no sign of it. And that it was an unexpected blow there could be no doubt.

"Glad you've come, Mr. Elliot. We ask nothing but fair play. Tell the truth, and we'll thank you. The men who own the Macdonald group of claims have nothing to conceal. I'll answer that question. I meant to say two years ago last spring."

His voice was easy and his gaze unwavering as he made the correction, yet everybody in the room except Sheba knew he was deliberately lying to cover the slip. For the admission that he had inspected the Kamatlah field just before his dummies had filed upon it would at least tend to aggravate suspicion that the entries were not bona-fide.

It was rather an awkward moment. Diane blamed herself because she had brought the men together socially. Why had she not asked Gordon more explicitly what his business was? Peter grinned a little uncomfortably. It was Sheba who quite unconsciously relieved the situation.

"But what about the big moose, Mr. Macdonald? What did it do then?"

The Alaskan went back to his story. He was talking for Sheba alone, for the young girl with eager, fascinated eyes which flashed with sympathy as they devoured selected glimpses of his wild, turbulent career. Her clean, brave spirit was throwing a glamour over the man. She saw him with other eyes than Elliot's. The Government official admired him tremendously. Macdonald was an empire-builder. He blazed trails for others to follow in safety. But Gordon could guess how callously his path was strewn with brutality, with the effects of an ethical color-blindness largely selfish, though even he did not know that the man's primitive jungle code of wolf eat wolf had played havoc with Sheba's young life many years before.

Diane, satisfied that Macdonald had scored, called upon Sheba.

"I want you to sing for us, dear, if you will."

Sheba accompanied herself. The voice of the girl had no unusual range, but it was singularly sweet and full of the poignant feeling that expresses the haunting pathos of her race.

"It's well I know ye, Shevè Cross, ye weary, stony hill, An' I'm tired, och, I'm tired to be looking on ye still. For here I live the near side an' he is on the far, An' all your heights and hollows are between us, so they are. Och anee!"

Gordon, as he listened, felt the strange hunger of that homesick cry steal through his blood. He saw his own emotions reflected in the face of the Scotch-Canadian, who was watching with a tense interest the slim, young figure at the piano, the girl whose eyes were soft and dewy with the mysticism of her people, were still luminous with the poetry of the child in spite of the years that heralded her a woman.

Elliot intercepted the triumphant sweep of Diane's glance from Macdonald to her husband. In a flash it lit up for him the words he had heard on the hotel porch. Diane, an inveterate matchmaker, intended her cousin to marry Colby Macdonald. No doubt she thought she was doing a fine thing for the girl. He was a millionaire, the biggest figure in the Northwest. His iron will ran the town and district as though the people were chattels of his. Back of him were some of the biggest financial interests in the United States.

But the gorge of Elliot rose. The man, after all, was a law-breaker, a menace to civilization. He was a survivor by reason of his strength from the primitive wolf-pack. Already the special agent had heard many strange stories of how this man of steel had risen to supremacy by trampling down lesser men with whom he had had dealings, of terrible battles from which his lean, powerful body had emerged bloody and battered, but victorious. The very look of his hard, gray eyes was dominant and masterful. He would win, no matter how. It came to Gordon's rebel heart that if Macdonald wanted this lovely Irish girl,--and the young man never doubted that the Scotchman would want her,--he would reach out and gather in Sheba just as if she were a coal mine or a placer prospect.

All this surged through the mind of the young man while the singer was on the first line of the second stanza.

"But if 't was only Shevè Cross to climb from foot to crown, I'd soon be up an' over that, I'd soon be runnin' down. Then sure the great ould sea itself is there beyont the bar, An' all the windy wathers are between us, so they are. Och anee!"

The rich, soft, young voice with its Irish brogue died away. The little audience paid the singer the tribute of silence. She herself was the first to speak.

"'Divided' is the name of it. A namesake of mine, Moira O'Neill, wrote it," she explained.

"It's a beautiful song, and I thank ye for singing it," Macdonald said simply. "It minds me of my own barefoot days by the Tay."

Later in the evening the two dinner guests walked back to the hotel together. The two subjects uppermost in the minds of both were not mentioned by either. They discussed casually the cost of living in the North, the raising of strawberries at Kusiak, and the best way to treat the mosquito nuisance, but neither of them referred to the Macdonald coal claims or to Sheba O'Neill.

CHAPTER VII

WALLY GETS ORDERS

Macdonald, from his desk, looked up at the man in the doorway. Selfridge had come in jauntily, a cigar in his mouth, but at sight of the grim face of his chief the grin fled.

"Come in and shut the door," ordered the Scotchman. "I sent for you to congratulate you, Wally. You did fine work outside. You told me, didn't you, that it was all settled at last--that our claims are clear-listed for patent?"

The tubby little man felt the edge of irony in the quiet voice. "Sure. That's what Winton told me," he assented nervously.

"Then you'll be interested to know that a special field agent of the Land Department sat opposite me last night and without batting an eye came across with the glad news that he was here to investigate our claims."

Selfridge bounced up like a rubber ball from the chair into which he had just settled. "What!"

"Pleasant surprise, isn't it? I've been wondering what you were doing outside. Of course I know you had to take in the shows and cabarets of New York. But couldn't you edge in an hour or two once a week to attend to business?"

Wally's collar began to choke him. The cool, hard words of the big Scotchman pelted like hail.

"Must be a bluff, Mac. The muckrake magazines have raised such a row about the Guttenchild crowd putting over a big steal on the public that the party leaders are scared stiff. I couldn't pick up a newspaper anywhere without seeing your name in the headlines. It was fierce." Selfridge had found his glib tongue and was off.

"I understand that, Wally. What I don't get is how you came to let them slip this over on you without even a guess that it was going to happen."

That phase of the subject Selfridge did not want to discuss.

"Bet you a hat I've guessed it right--just a grand-stand play of the Administration to fool the dear people. This fellow has got his orders to give us a clean bill of health. Sure. That must be it. I suppose it's this man Elliot that came up on the boat with us."

"Yes."

"Well, that's easy. If he hasn't been seen we can see him."

Macdonald looked his man Friday over with a scarcely veiled contempt. "You have a beautiful, childlike faith in every man's dishonesty, Wally. Did it ever occur to you that some people are straight--that they won't sell out?"

"All he gets is a beggarly two thousand or so a year. We can fix him all right."

"You've about as much vision as a breed trader. Unless I miss my guess Elliot isn't that kind. He'll go through to a finish. What I'd like to know is how his mind works. If he sees straight we're all right, but if he is a narrow conservation fanatic he might go ahead and queer the whole game."

"You wouldn't stand for that." The quick glance of Selfridge asked a question.

The lips of the Scotchman were like steel traps and his eyes points of steel. "We'll cross that bridge if we come to it. Our first move is to try to win him to see this thing our way. I'll have a casual talk with him before he leaves for Kamatlah and feel him out."

"What's he doing here at all? If he's investigating the Kamatlah claims, why does he go hundreds of miles out of his way to come in to Kusiak?" asked Selfridge.

Macdonald smiled sardonically. "He's doing this job right. Elliot as good as told me that he's on the job to look up my record thoroughly. So he comes to Kusiak first. In a few days he'll leave for Kamatlah. That's where you come in, Wally."

"How do you mean?"

"You're going to start for Kamatlah to-morrow. You'll arrange the stage before he gets there--see all the men and the foremen. Line them up so they'll come through with the proper talk. If you have any doubts about whether you can trust some one, don't take any chances. Fire him out of the camp. Offer Elliot the company hospitality. Load him down with favors. Take him everywhere. Show him everything. But don't let him get any proofs that the claims are being worked under the same management."

"But he'll suspect it."

"You can't help his suspicions. Don't let him get proof. Cover all the tracks that show company control."

"I can fix that," he said. "But what about Holt? The old man won't do a thing but tell all he knows, and a lot more that he suspects. You know how bitter he is--and crazy. He ought to be locked away with the flitter-mice."

"You mustn't let Elliot meet Holt."

"How the deuce can I help it? No chance to keep them apart in that little hole. It can't be done."

"Can't it?"

Something in the quiet voice rang a bell of alarm in the timid heart of Selfridge.

"You mean--"

"A man who works for me as my lieutenant must have nerve, Wally. Have you got it? Will you take orders and go through with them?"

His hard eyes searched the face of the plump little man. This was a job he would have liked to do himself, but he could not get away just now. Selfridge was the only man about him he could trust with it.

Wally nodded. His lips were dry and parched. "Go to it. What am I to do?"

"Get Holt out of the way while Elliot is at Kamatlah."

"But, Good Lord, I can't keep the man tied up a month," protested the leading tenor of Kusiak.

"It isn't doing Holt any good to sit tight clamped to that claim of his! He needs a change. Besides, I want him away so that we can contest his claim. Run him up into the hills. Or send him across to Siberia on a whaler. Or, better still, have him arrested for insanity and send him to Nome. I'll get Judge Landor to hold him a while."

"That would give him an alibi for his absence and prevent a contest."

"That's right. It would."

"Leave it to me. The old man is going on a vacation, though he doesn't know it yet."

"Good enough, Wally. I'll trust you. But remember, this fight has reached an acute stage. No more mistakes. The devil of it is we never seem to land the knockout punch. We've beaten this bunch of reform idiots before Winton, before the Secretary of the Interior, before the President, and before Congress. Now they're beginning all over again. Where is it to end?"

"This is their last kick. Probably Guttenchild agreed to it so as to let the party go before the people at the next election without any apologies. Entirely formal investigation, I should say."

This might be true, or it might not. Macdonald knew that just now the American people, always impulsive in its thinking, was supporting strongly the movement for conservation. A searchlight had been turned upon the Kamatlah coal-fields. Magazines and newspapers had hammered it home to readers that the Guttenchild and allied interests were engaged in a big steal from the people of coal, timber, and power-site lands to the value of more than a hundred million dollars.

The trouble had originated in a department row, but it had spread until the Macdonald claims had become a party issue. The officials of the Land Office, as well as the National Administration, were friendly to the claimants. They had no desire to offend one of the two largest money groups in the country. But neither did they want to come to wreck on account of the Guttenchilds. They found it impossible to ignore the charge that the entries were fraudulent and if consummated would result in a wholesale robbery of the public domain. Superficial investigations had been made and the claimants whitewashed. But the clamor had persisted.

Though he denied it officially, Macdonald made a present to the public of the admission that the entries were irregular. Laws, he held, were made for men and should be interpreted to aid progress. Bad ones ought to be evaded.

The facts were simple enough. Macdonald was the original promoter of the Kamatlah coal-field. He had engaged dummy entrymen to take up one hundred and sixty acres each under the Homestead Act. Later he intended to consolidate the claims and turn them over to the Guttenchilds under an agreement by which he was to receive one eighth of the stock of the company formed to work the mines. The entries had been made, the fee accepted by the Land Office, and receipts issued. In course of time Macdonald had applied for patents.

Before these were issued the magazines began to pour in their broadsides, and since then the papers had been held up.

The conscience of Macdonald was quite clear. The pioneers in Alaska were building out of the Arctic waste a new empire for the United States, and he held that a fair Government could do no less than offer them liberal treatment. To lock up from present use vast resources needed by Alaskans would be a mistaken policy, a narrow and perverted application of the doctrine of conservation. The Territory should be thrown open to the world. If capital were invited in to do its share of the building, immigration would flow rapidly northward. Within the lives of the present generation the new empire would take shape and wealth would pour inevitably into the United States from its frozen treasure house.

The view held by Macdonald was one common to the whole Pacific Coast. Seattle, Portland, San Francisco were a unit in the belief that the Government had no right to close the door of Alaska and then put a padlock upon it.

Feminine voices drifted from the outer office. Macdonald opened the door to let in Mrs. Selfridge and Mrs. Mallory.

The latter lady, Paris-shod and gloved, shook hands smilingly with the Scotch-Canadian. "Of course we're intruders in business hours, though you'll tell us we're not," she suggested.

He was not a man to surrender easily to the spell of woman, but when he looked into her deep-lidded, smouldering eyes something sultry beat in his blood.

"Business may fly out of the window when Mrs. Mallory comes in at the door," he answered.

"How gallant of you, especially when I've come with an impertinent question." Her gay eyes mocked him as she spoke.

"Then I'll probably tell you to mind your own business," he laughed. "Let's have your question."

"I've just been reading the 'Transcontinental Magazine.' A writer there says that you are a highway robber and a gambler. I know you're a robber because all the magazines say so. But are you only a big gambler?"

He met her raillery without the least embarrassment.

"Sure I gamble. Every time I take a chance I'm gambling. So does everybody else. When you walk past the Flatiron Building you bet it won't fall down and crush you. We've got to take chances to live."

"How true, and I never thought of it," beamed Mrs. Selfridge. "What a philosopher you are, Mr. Macdonald."

The Scotchman went on without paying any attention to her effervescence. "I've gambled ever since I was a kid. I bet I could cross Death Valley and get out alive. That time I won. I bet it would rain once down in Arizona before my cattle died. I lost. Another time I took a contract to run a tunnel. In my bid I bet I wouldn't run into rock. My bank went broke that trip. When I joined the Klondike rush I was backing my luck to stand up. Same thing when I located the Kamatlah field. The coal might be a poor quality. Maybe I couldn't interest big capital in the proposition. Perhaps the Government would turn me down when I came to prove up. I was betting my last dollar against big odds. When I quit gambling it will be because I've quit living."

"And I suppose I'm a gambler too?" Mrs. Mallory demanded with a little tilt of her handsome head.

He looked straight at her with the keen eyes that had bored through her from the first day they had met, the eyes that understood the manner of woman she was and liked her none the less.

"Of all the women I know you are the best gambler. It's born in you."

"Why, Mr. Macdonald!" screamed Mrs. Selfridge in her high staccato. "I don't think that's a compliment."

Mrs. Mallory did not often indulge in the luxury of a blush, but she changed color now. This big, blunt man sometimes had an uncanny divination. Did he, she asked herself, know what stake she was gambling for at Kusiak?

"You are too wise," she laughed with a touch of embarrassment very becoming. "But I suppose you are right. I like excitement."

"We all do. The only man who doesn't gamble is the convict in stripes, and the only reason he doesn't is that his chips are all gone. It's true that men on the frontier play for bigger stakes. They back their bets with all they have got and put their lives on top for good measure. But kids in the cradle all over the United States are going to live easier because of the gamblers at the dropping-off places. That writer fellow hit the nail on the head about me. My whole life is a gamble."

She moved with slow grace toward the door, then over her shoulder flashed a sudden invitation at him. "Mrs. Selfridge and I are doing a little betting to-day, Big Chief Gambler. We're backing our luck that you two men will eat lunch with us at the Blue Bird Inn. Do we win?"

Macdonald reached for his hat promptly. "You win."

CHAPTER VIII

THE END OF THE PASSAGE

Wally Selfridge was a reliable business subordinate, even though he had slipped up in the matter of the appointment of Elliot. But when it came to facing the physical hardships of the North he was a malingerer. The Kamatlah trip had to be taken because his chief had ordered it, but the little man shirked the journey in his heart just as he knew his soft muscles would shrink from the aches of the trail.

His idea of work was a set of tennis on the outdoor wooden court of the Kusiak clubhouse, and even there his game was not a hard, smashing one, but an easy foursome with a girl for partner. He liked better to play bridge with attendants at hand to supply drinks and cigars. By nature he was a sybarite. The call of the frontier found no response in his sophisticated soul.

The part of the journey to be made by water was not so bad. Left to his own judgment, he would have gone to St. Michael's by boat and chartered a small steamer for the long trip along the coast through Bering Sea. But this would take time, and Macdonald did not mean to let him waste a day. He was to leave the river boat at the big bend and pack across country to Kamatlah. It would be a rough, heavy trail. The mosquitoes would be a continual torment. The cooking would be poor. And at the end of the long trek there awaited him monotonous months in a wretched coal camp far from all the comforts of civilization. No wonder he grumbled.

But though he grumbled at home and at the club and on the street about his coming exile, Selfridge made no complaints to Macdonald. That man of steel had no sympathy with the yearnings for the fleshpots. He was used to driving himself through discomfort to his end, and he expected as much of his deputies. Wherefore Wally took the boat at the time scheduled and waved a dismal farewell to wife and friends assembled upon the wharf.

Elliot said good-bye to the Pagets and Miss O'Neill ten days later. Diane was very frank with him.

"I hear you've been sleuthing around, Gordon, for facts about Colby Macdonald. I don't know what you have heard about him, but I hope you've got the sense to see how big a man he is and how much this country here owes him."

Gordon nodded agreement. "Yes, he's a big man."

"And he's good," added Sheba eagerly. "He never talks of it, but one finds out splendid things he has done."

The young man smiled, but not at all superciliously. He liked the stanch faith of the girl in her friend, even though his investigations had not led him to accept goodness as the outstanding quality of the Scotchman.

"I don't know what we would do without him," Diane went on. "Give him ten years and a free hand and Alaska will be fit for white people to live in. These attacks on him by newspapers and magazines are an outrage."

"It's plain that you are a partisan," charged Gordon gayly.

"I'm against locking up Alaska and throwing away the key, if that is what you mean by a partisan. We need this country opened up--the farms settled, the mines worked, the coal-fields developed, railroads built. It is one great big opportunity, the country here, and the narrow little conservation cranks want to shut it up tight from the people who have energy and foresight enough to help do the building."

"The Kusiak Chamber of Commerce ought to send you out as a lecturer to change public opinion, Diane. You are one enthusiastic little booster for freedom of opportunity," laughed the young man.

"Oh, well!" Diane joined in his laughter. It was one of her good points that she could laugh at herself. "I dare say I do sound like a real estate pamphlet, but it's all true anyhow."

Gordon left Kusiak as reluctantly as Wally Selfridge had done, though his reasons for not wanting to go were quite different. They centered about a dusky-eyed young woman whom he had seen for the first time a fortnight before. He would have denied even to himself that he was in love, but whenever he was alone his thoughts reverted to Sheba O'Neill.

At the big bend Gordon left the river boat for his cross-country trek. Near the roadhouse was an Indian village where he had expected to get a guide for the journey to Kamatlah. But the fishing season had begun, and the men had all gone down river to take part in it.

The old Frenchman who kept the trading-post and roadhouse advised Gordon not to attempt the tramp alone.

"The trail it ees what you call dangerous. Feefty-Mile Swamp ees a monster that swallows men alive, Monsieur. You wait one week--two week--t'ree week, and some one will turn up to take you through," he urged.

"But I can't wait. And I have an official map of the trail. Why can't I follow it without a guide?" Elliot wanted to know impatiently.

The post-trader shrugged. "Maybeso, Monsieur--maybe not. Feefty-Mile--it ees one devil of a trail. No chechakoes are safe in there without a guide. I, Baptiste, know."

"Selfridge and his party went through a week ago. I can follow the tracks they left."

"But if it rains, Monsieur, the tracks will vaneesh, n'est ce pas? Lose the way, and the little singing folk will swarm in clouds about Monsieur while he stumbles through the swamp."

Elliot hesitated for the better part of a day, then came to an impulsive decision. He knew the evil fame of Fifty-Mile Swamp--that no trail in Alaska was held to be more difficult or dangerous. He knew too what a fearful pest the mosquitoes were. Peter had told him a story of how he and a party of engineers had come upon a man wandering in the hills, driven mad by mosquitoes. The traveler had lost his matches and had been unable to light smudge fires. Day and night the little singing devils had swarmed about him. He could not sleep. He could not rest. Every moment for forty-eight hours he had fought for his life against them. Within an hour of the time they found him the man had died a raving maniac.

But Elliot was well equipped with mosquito netting and with supplies. He had a reliable map, and anyhow he had only to follow the tracks left by the Selfridge party. He turned his back upon the big river and plunged into the wilderness.

There came a night when he looked up into the stars of the deep, still sky and knew that he was hundreds of miles from any other human being. Never in all his life had he been so much alone. He was not afraid, but there was something awesome in a world so empty of his kind. Sometimes he sang, and the sound of his voice at first startled him. It was like living in a world primeval, this traverse of a land so void of all the mechanism that man has built about him.

The tracks of the Selfridge party grew fainter after a night of rain. More rain fell, and they were obliterated altogether.

Gordon fished. He killed fresh game for his needs. Often he came on the tracks of moose and caribou. Sometimes, startled, they leaped into view quite close enough for a shot, but he used his rifle only to meet his wants. A huge grizzly faced him on the trail one afternoon, growled its menace, and went lumbering into the big rocks with awkward speed.

The way led through valley and morass, across hills and mountains. It wandered in a sort of haphazard fashion through a sun-bathed universe washed clean of sordidness and meanness. Always, as he pushed forward, the path grew more faint and uncertain. Elk runs crossed it here and there, so that often Gordon went astray and had to retrace his steps.

The maddening song of the mosquitoes was always with him. Only when he slept did he escape from it. The heavy gloves, the netting, the smudge fires were at best an insufficient protection.

It was the seventh night out that Elliot suspected he was off the trail. Rain sluiced down in torrents and next day continued to pour from a dun sky. His own tracks were blotted out and he searched for the trail in vain. Before the rain stopped, he was thoroughly disturbed in mind. It would be a serious business if he should be lost in the bad lands of the bogs. Even though he knew the general direction he must follow, there was no certainty that he would ever emerge from this swamp into which he had plunged.

Before he knew it he was entangled in Fifty-Mile. His map showed him the morass stretched for fifty miles to the south, but he knew that it had been charted hurriedly by a surveying party which had made no extensive explorations. A good deal of this country was terra incognita. It ran vaguely into a No Man's Land unknown to the prospector.

The going was heavy. Gordon had to pick his way through the mossy swamp, leading the pack-horse by the bridle. Sometimes he was ankle-deep in water of a greenish slime. Again he had to drag the animal from the bog to a hummock of grass which gave a spongy footing. This would end in another quagmire of peat through which they must plough with the mud sucking at their feet. It was hard, wearing toil. There was nothing to do but keep moving. The young man staggered forward till dusk. Utterly exhausted, he camped for the night on a hillock of moss that rose like an island in the swamp.

After he had eaten he fed his fire with green boughs that raised a dense smoke. He lay on the leeward side where the smoke drifted over him and fought mosquitoes till a shift of the wind lessened the plague. Toward midnight he rigged up a net for protection and crawled into his blankets. Instantly he fell sound asleep.

Elliot traveled next day by the compass. He had food for three days more, but he knew that no living man had the strength to travel for so long in such a morass. It was near midday when he lost his horse. The animal had bogged down several times and Gordon had wasted much time and spent a good deal of needed energy in dragging it to firmer footing. This time the pony refused to answer the whip. Its master unloaded pack and saddle. He tried coaxing; he tried the whip.

"Come, Old-Timer. One plunge, and you'll make it yet," he urged.

The pack-horse turned upon him dumb eyes of reproach, struggled to free its limbs from the mud, and sank down helplessly. It had traveled its last yard on the long Alaska trails.

After the sound of the shot had died away, Gordon struggled with the pack to the nearest hummock. He cut holes in a gunny-sack to fit his shoulders and packed into it his blankets, a saucepan, the beans, the coffee, and the diminished handful of flour. Into it went too the three slices of bacon that were left.

He hoisted the pack to his back and slipped his arms through the slits he had made. Painfully he labored forward over the quivering peat. Every weary muscle revolted at the demands his will imposed upon it. He drew on the last ounce of his strength and staggered forward. Sometimes he stumbled and went down into the oozing mud, minded to stay there and be done with the struggle. But the urge of life drove him to his feet again. It sent him pitching forward drunkenly. It carried him for weary miles after he despaired of ever covering another hundred yards.

With old, half-forgotten signals from the football field he spurred his will. Perhaps his mind was already beginning to wander, though through it all he held steadily to the direction that alone could save him.

He clapped his hands feebly and stooped for the plunge at the line of the enemy. "'Attaboy, Gord--'attaboy--nine, eleven, seventeen. Hit 'er low, you Elliot."

When at last he went down to stay it was in an exhaustion so complete that not even his indomitable will could lash him to his feet again. For an hour he lay in a stupor, never stirring even to fight the swarm of mosquitoes that buzzed about him.

Toward evening he sat up and undid the pack from his back. The matches, in a tin box wrapped carefully with oilskin, were still perfectly dry. Soon he had a fire going and coffee boiling in the frying-pan. From the tin cup he carried strung on his belt he drank the coffee. It went through him like strong liquor. He warmed some beans and fried himself a slice of bacon, sopping up the grease with a cold biscuit left over from the day before.

Again he slept for a few hours. He had wound his watch mechanically and it showed him four o'clock when he took up the trail once more. In Seattle and San Francisco people were still asleep and darkness was heavy over the land. Here it had been day for a long time, ever since the summer sun, hidden for a while behind the low, distant hills, had come blazing forth again in a saddle between two peaks.

Gordon had reduced his pack by discarding a blanket, the frying-pan, and all the clothing he was not wearing. His rifle lay behind him in the swamp. He had cut to a minimum of safety what he was carrying, according to his judgment. But before long his last blanket was flung aside. He could not afford to carry an extra pound, for he knew he was running a race, the stakes of which were life and death.

A cloud of mosquitoes moved with him. He carried in his hand a spruce bough for defense against them. His hands were gloved, his face was covered with netting. But in spite of the best he could do they were an added torture.

Afternoon found him still staggering forward. The swamps were now behind him. He had won through at last by the narrowest margin possible. The ground was rising sharply toward the mountains. Across the range somewhere lay Kamatlah. But he was all in. With his food almost gone, a water supply uncertain, reserve strength exhausted, the chances of getting over the divide to safety were practically none.

He had come, so far as he could see, to the end of the passage.

CHAPTER IX

GID HOLT GOES PROSPECTING

As soon as Selfridge reached Kamatlah he began arranging the stage against the arrival of the Government agent. His preparations were elaborate and thorough. A young engineer named Howland had been in charge of the development work, but Wally rearranged his forces so as to let each dummy entryman handle the claim entered in his name. One or two men about whom he was doubtful he discharged and hurried out of the camp.

Selfridge had been given a free hand as to expenses and he oiled his way by liberal treatment of the men and by a judicious expenditure. He let them know pretty plainly that if the agent on his way to Kamatlah suspected corporate ownership of the claims, the Government would close down all work and there would be no jobs for them.

The company boarding-house became a restaurant, above which was suspended a newly painted sign with the legend, "San Francisco Grill, J. Glynn, Proprietor." The store also passed temporarily into the hands of its manager. Miners moved from the barracks that had been built by Macdonald into hastily constructed cabins on the individual claims. Wally had always fancied himself as a stage manager for amateur theatricals. Now he justified his faith by transforming Kamatlah outwardly from a company camp to a mushroom one settled by wandering prospectors.

Gideon Holt alone was outside of all these activities and watched them with suspicion. He was an old-timer, sly but fearless, who hated Colby Macdonald with a bitter jealousy that could not be placated and he took no pains to hide the fact. He had happened to be in the vicinity prospecting when Macdonald had rushed his entries. Partly out of mere perversity and partly by reason of native shrewdness, old Holt had slipped in and located one of the best claims in the heart of the group. Nor had he been moved to a reasonable compromise by any amount of persuasion, threats, or tentative offers to buy a relinquishment. He was obstinate. He knew a good thing when he had it, and he meant to sit tight.

The adherents of the company might charge that Holt was cracked in the upper story, but none of them denied he was sharp as a street Arab. He guessed that all this preparation was not for nothing. Kamatlah was being dressed up to impress somebody who would shortly arrive. The first thought of Holt was that a group of big capitalists might be coming to look over their investment. But he rejected this surmise. There would be no need to try any deception upon them.

Mail from Seattle reached camp once a month. Holt sat down before his stove to read one of the newspapers he had brought from the office. It was the "P.-I." On the fifth page was a little boxed story that gave him his clue.

ELLIOT TO INVESTIGATE MACDONALD COAL CLAIMS

The reopening of the controversy as to the Macdonald claims, which had been clear-listed for patent by Harold B. Winton, the Commissioner of the General Land Office, takes on another phase with the appointment of Gordon Elliot as special field agent to examine the validity of the holdings. The new field agent won a reputation by his work in unearthing the Oklahoma "Gold Brick" land frauds.

Elliot leaves Seattle in the Queen City Thursday for the North, where he will make a thorough investigation of the whole situation with a view to clearing up the matter definitely. If his report is favorable to the claimants, the patents will be granted without further delay.

This was too good to keep. Holt pulled on his boots and went out to twit such of the enemy as he might meet. It chanced that the first of them was Selfridge, whom he had not seen since his arrival, though he knew the little man was in camp.

"How goes it, Holt? Fine and dandy, eh?" inquired Wally with the professional geniality he affected.

The old miner shook his head dolefully. "I done bust my laig, Mr. Selfish," he groaned. It was one of his pleasant ways to affect a difficulty of hearing and a dullness of understanding, so that he could legitimately call people by distorted versions of their names. "The old man don't amount to much nowadays. Onct a man or a horse gits stove up I don't reckon either one pans out much pay dust any more."

"Nothing to that, Gid. You're younger than you ever were, judging by your looks."

"Then my looks lie to beat hell, Mr. Selfish."

"My name is Selfridge," explained Wally, a trifle irritated.

Holt put a cupped hand to his ear anxiously. "Shellfish, did you say? Tha' 's right. Howcome I to forget? The old man's going pretty fast, Mr. Shellfish. No more memory than a jackrabbit. Say, Mr. Shellfish, what's the idee of all this here back-to-the-people movement, as the old sayin' is?"

"I don't know what you mean. And my name is Selfridge, I tell you," snapped the owner of that name.

"'Course I ain't got no more sense than the law allows. I'm a buzzard haid, but me I kinder got to millin' it over and in respect to these here local improvements, as you might say, I'm doggoned if I sabe the whyfor." There was an imp of malicious deviltry in the black, beady eyes sparkling at Selfridge from between narrowed lids.

"Just some business changes we're making."

Holt showed his tobacco-stained teeth in a grin splenetic. "Oh. That's all. I didn't know but what you might be expecting a visitor."

Selfridge flashed a sharp sidelong glance at him. "What do you mean--a visitor?"

"I just got a notion mebbe you might be looking for one, Mr. Pelfrich. But I don't know sic' 'em. Like as not you ain't fixing up for this Gordon Elliot a-tall."

Wally had no come-back, unless it was one to retort in ironic admiration. "You're a wonder, Holt. Pity you don't start a detective bureau."

The old man went away cackling dryly.

If Selfridge had held any doubts before, he discarded them now. Holt would wreck the whole enterprise, were he given a chance. It would never do to let Elliot meet and talk with him. He knew too much, and he was eager to tell all he knew.

Macdonald's lieutenant got busy at once with plans to abduct Holt. That it was very much against the law did not disturb him much so long as his chief stood back of him. The unsupported word of the old man would not stand in court, and if he became obstreperous they could always have him locked up as a lunatic. The very pose of the old miner--the make-believe pretension that he was half a fool--would lend itself to such a charge.

"We'll send the old man off on a prospecting trip with some of the boys," explained Selfridge to Rowland. "That way we'll kill two birds. He's back on his assessment work. The time limit will be up before he returns and we'll start a contest for the claim."

Howland made no comment. He was an engineer and not a politician. In his position it was impossible for him not to know that a good deal about the legal status of the Macdonald claims was irregular. But he was a firm believer in a wide-open Alaska, in the use of the Territory by those who had settled it. The men back of the big Scotchman were going to spend millions in development work, in building railroads. It would help labor and business. The whole North would feel a healthful reaction from the Kamatlah activities. So, on the theory that the end sometimes justifies doubtful means, he shut his eyes to many acts that in his own private affairs he would not have countenanced.

"Better arrange it with Big Bill, then, but don't tell me anything about it. I don't want to know the details," he told Selfridge.

Big Bill Macy accepted the job with a grin. There was double pay in it both for him and the men he chose as his assistants. He had never liked old Holt anyhow. Besides, they were not going to do him any harm.

Holt was baking a batch of sour-dough bread that evening when there came a knock at the cabin door. At sight of Big Bill and his two companions the prospector closed the oven and straightened with alert suspicion. He was not on visiting terms with any of these men. Why had they come to see him? He asked point-blank the question in his mind.

"We're going prospecting up Wild-Goose Creek, and we want you to go along, Gid," explained Macy. "You're an old sour-dough miner, and we-all agree we'd like to have you throw-in with us. What say?"

The old miner's answer was direct but not flattering. "What do I want to go on a wild-goose mush with a bunch of bums for?" he shrilled.

Bill Macy scratched his hook nose and looked reproachfully at his host. At least Holt thought he was looking at him. One could not be sure, for Bill's eyes did not exactly track.

"That ain't no kind o' way to talk to a fellow when he comes at you with a fair proposition, Gid."

"You tell Selfridge I ain't going to leave Kamatlah--not right now. I'm going to stay here on the job till that Land Office inspector comes--and then I'm going to have a nice, long, confidential chat with him. See?"

"What's the use of snapping at me like a turtle? Durden says Wild-Goose looks fine. There's gold up there--heaps of it."

"Let it stay there, then. I ain't going. That's flat." Holt turned to adjust the damper of his stove.

"Oh, I don't know. I wouldn't say that," drawled Bill insolently.

The man at the stove caught the change in tone and turned quickly. He was too late. Macy had thrown himself forward and the weight of his body flung Holt against the wall. Before the miner could recover, the other two men were upon him. They bore him to the floor and in spite of his struggles tied him hand and foot.

Big Bill rose and looked down derisively at his prisoner. "Better change your mind and go with us, Holt. We'll spend a quiet month up at the headquarters of Wild-Goose. Say you'll come along."

"You'll go to prison for this, Bill Macy."

"Guess again, Gid, and mebbe you'll get it right this time." Macy turned to his companions. "George, you bring up the horses. Dud, see if that bread is cooked. Might as well take it along with us--save us from baking to-morrow."

"What are you going to do with me?" demanded Holt.

"I reckon you need a church to fall on you before you can take a hint. Didn't I mention Wild-Goose Creek three or four times?" jeered his captor.

"Every step you take will be one toward the penitentiary. Get that into your cocoanut," the old miner retorted sharply.

"Nothing to that idee, Gid."

"I'll scream when you take me out."

"Go to it. Then we'll gag you."

Holt made no further protest. He was furious, but at present quite helpless. However it went against the grain, he might as well give in until rebellion would do some good.

Ten minutes later the party was moving silently along the trail that led to the hills. The pack-horses went first, in charge of George Holway. The prisoner walked next, his hands tied behind him. Big Bill followed, and the man he had called Dud brought up the rear.

They wound up a rising valley, entering from it a cañon with precipitous walls that shut out the late sun. It was by this time past eleven o'clock and dusk was gathering closer. The winding trail ran parallel with the creek, sometimes through thickets of young fir and sometimes across boulder beds that made traveling difficult and slow. They went in single file, each of them with a swarm of mosquitoes about his head.

Macy had released the hands of his prisoner so that he might have a chance to fight the singing pests, but he kept a wary eye upon him and never let him move more than a few feet from him. The trail grew steeper as it neared the head of the cañon till at last it climbed the left wall and emerged from the gulch to an uneven mesa.

The leader of the party looked at his watch. "Past midnight. We'll camp here, George, and see if we can't get rid of the 'skeeters."

They built smudge fires of green wood and on the lee side of these another one of dry sticks. Dud made coffee upon this and cooked bacon to eat with the fresh bread they had taken from the oven of Holt. While George chopped wood for the fires and boughs of small firs for bedding, Big Bill sat with a rifle across his knees just back of the prisoner.

"Gid's a shifty old cuss, and I ain't taking any chances," he explained aloud to Dud.

Holt was beginning to take the outrage philosophically. He sat close to a smudge and smoked his pipe.

"I wouldn't either if I were you. Sometime when you ain't watching, I'm liable to grab that gun and shoot a hole in the place where your brains would be if you had any," countered the old man.

He slept peacefully while they took turns watching him. Just now there would be no chance to escape, but in a few days they would become careless. The habit of feeling that they had him securely would grow upon them. Then, reasoned Holt, his opportunity would come. One of the guards would take a chance. Perhaps he might even fall asleep on duty. It was not reasonable to suppose that in the next week or two he would not catch them napping once for a short ten seconds.

There was, of course, just the possibility that they intended to murder him, but Holt could not associate Selfridge with anything so lawless. The man was too soft of fiber to carry through such a programme, and as yet there was need of nothing so drastic. No, this little kidnapping expedition would not run to murder. He would be set free in a few weeks, and if he told the true story of where he had been his foes would spread the report that he was insane in his hatred of Macdonald and imagined all sorts of persecutions.

They followed Wild-Goose Creek all next day, getting always closer to its headwaters near the divide. On the third day they crossed to the other side of the ridge and descended into a little mountain park. They were in a country where prospectors never came, one deserted even by trappers at this season of the year.

The country was so much a primeval wilderness that a big bull moose stalked almost upon their camp before discovering the presence of a strange biped. Big Bill snatched up a rifle and took a shot which sent the intruder scampering.

From somewhere in the distance came a faint sound.

"What was that?" asked George.

"Sounded like a shot. Mebbe it was an echo," returned Dud.

"Came too late for an echo," Big Bill said.

Again faintly from some far corner of the basin the sound drifted. It was like the pop of a scarcely heard firecracker.

The men looked at one another and at their prisoner. Their eyes consulted once more.

"Think we better break camp and drift?" asked Dud.

"No. We're in a little draw here--as good a hiding-place as we'd be likely to find. Drive the horses into the brush, George. We'll sit tight."

"Got the criminals guessing," Holt contributed maliciously. "You lads want to take the hide offen Macy if he lands you in the pen through that fool shot of his. Wonder if I hadn't better yell."

"I'll stop your clock right then if you do," threatened Big Bill with a scowl.

Dud had been busy stamping out the camp-fire while Holway was driving the horses into the brush.

"Mebbe you had better get the camp things behind them big rocks," Macy conceded.

Even as he spoke there came the crack of a revolver almost at the entrance to the draw.

One of the men swore softly. The gimlet eyes of the old miner fastened on the spot where in another moment his hoped-for rescuers would appear.

A man staggered drunkenly into view. He reeled halfway across the mouth of the draw and stopped. His eyes, questing dully, fell upon the camp. He stared, as if doubtful whether they had played him false, then lurched toward the waiting group.

"Lost, and all in," Holway said in a whisper to Dud.

The other man nodded. Neither of them made a move toward the stranger, who stopped in front of their camp and looked with glazed eyes from one to another. His face was drawn and haggard and lined. Extreme exhaustion showed in every movement. He babbled incoherently.

"Seven--eighteen--ninety-nine. 'Atta-boy," he said thickly.

"Don't you see he's starving and out of his head?" snapped Holt brusquely. "Get him grub, pronto."

The old man rose and moved toward the suffering man. "Come, pard. Tha' 's all right. Sit down right here and go to it, as the old sayin' is." He led the man to a place beside Big Bill and made him sit down. "Better light a fire, boys, and get some coffee on. Don't give him too much solid grub at first."

The famished man ate what was given him and clamored for more.

"Coming up soon, pardner," Holt told him soothingly. "Now tell us howcome you to get lost."

The man nodded gravely. "Hit that line low, Gord. Hit 'er low. Only three yards to gain."

"Plumb bughouse," commented Dud, chewing tobacco stolidly.

"Out of his head--that's all. He'll be right enough after he's fed up and had a good sleep. But right now he's sure some Exhibit A. Look at the bones sticking through his cheeks," Big Bill commented.

"Come, Old-Timer. Get down in your collar to it. Once more now. Don't lie down on the job. All together now." The stranger clucked to an imaginary horse and made a motion of lifting with his hands.

"Looks like his hawss bogged down in Fifty-Mile Swamp," suggested Holt.

"Looks like," agreed Dud.

The old miner said no more. But his eyes narrowed to shining slits. If this man had come through Fifty-Mile Swamp he must have started from the river. That probably meant that he had come from Kusiak. He was a young man, talking the jargon of a college football player. Without doubt he was, in the old phrasing of the North, a chechako. His clothing, though much soiled and torn, had been good. His voice held the inflections of the cultured world.

Gideon Holt's sly brain moved keenly to the possibility that he could put a name to this human derelict they had picked up. He began to see it as more than a possibility, as even a probability, at least as a fifty-fifty chance. A sardonic grin hovered about the corners of his grim mouth. It would be a strange freak of irony if Wally Selfridge, to prevent a meeting between him and the Government land agent, had sent him a hundred miles into the wilderness to save the life of Gordon Elliot and so had brought about the meeting that otherwise would never have taken place.

CHAPTER X

THE RAH-RAH BOY FUNCTIONS

Big Bill grumbled a good deal at the addition to the party. It would be decidedly awkward if this stranger should become rational and understand the status of the camp he had joined. The word of old Holt alone might be negligible, but supported by that of a disinterested party it would be a very different matter. Still, there was no help for it. They would have to take care of the man until he was able to travel. Perhaps he would go in with them as an additional guard. At the worst Big Bill could give him a letter to Selfridge explaining things and so pass the buck to that gentleman.

Gid Holt had, with the tacit consent of his guards, appointed himself as a sort of nurse to the stranger. He lit a smudge fire to the windward side of him, fed him small quantities of food at intervals, and arranged a sleeping-place for him with mosquito netting for protection.

Early in the evening the sick man fell into a sound sleep from which he did not awake until morning. George was away looking after the pack-horses, Dud was cooking breakfast, and Big Bill, his rifle close at hand, was chopping young firs fifty feet back of the camp. The cook also had a gun, loaded with buckshot, lying on a box beside him, so that they were taking no chances with their prisoner. He could not have covered twenty yards without being raked by a cross-fire.

The old miner turned from rearranging the boughs of green fir on the smudge to see that his patient was awake and his mind normal. The quiet, steady eyes resting upon him told that the delirium had passed.

"Pretty nearly all in, wasn't I?" the young man said.

The answer of Gid Holt was an odd one. "Yep. Seven--eleven--fifteen. Take 'er easy, old man," he said in his shrill, high voice as he moved toward the man in the blankets. Then, in a low tone, while he pretended to arrange the bedding over the stranger, he asked a quick question.

"Are you Elliot?"

"Yes."

"Don't tell them. Talk football lingo as if you was still out of your haid." Holt turned and called to Dud. "Says he wants some breakfast."

"On the way," the cook answered.

Holt seemed to be soothing the delirious man. What he really said was this. "Selfridge has arranged a plant for you at Kamatlah. The camp has been turned inside out to fool you. They've brought me here a prisoner so as to keep me from telling you the truth. Pst! Tune up now."

Big Bill had put down his axe and was approaching. He was not exactly suspicious, but he did not believe in taking unnecessary chances.

"I tell you I'm out of training. Played the last game, haven't we? Come through with a square meal, you four-flusher," demanded Elliot in a querulous voice. He turned to Macy. "Look here, Cap. Haven't I played the game all fall? Don't I get what I want now we're through?"

The voice of the young man was excited. His eyes had lost their quiet steadiness and roved restlessly to and fro. If Big Bill had held any doubts one glance dissipated them.

"Sure you do. Hustle over and help Dud with the breakfast, Holt. I'll look out for our friend."

Elliot and Holt found no more chance to talk together that morning. Sometimes the young Government official lay staring straight in front of him. Sometimes he appeared to doze. Again he would talk in the disjointed way of one not clear in the head.

An opportunity came in the afternoon for a moment.

"Keep your eyes skinned for a chance to lay out the guard to-night and get his gun," Holt said quickly.

Gordon nodded. "I don't know that I've got to do everything just as you say," he complained aloud for the benefit of George, who was passing on his way to the place where the horses were hobbled.

"Now--now! There ain't nobody trying to boss you," Holt explained in a patient voice.

"They'd better not," snapped the invalid.

"Some scrapper--that kid," said the horse wrangler with a grin.

Macy took the first watch that night. He turned in at two after he had roused Dud to take his place. The cook had been on duty about an hour when Elliot kicked Holt, who was sleeping beside him, to make sure that he was ready. The old man answered the kick with another.

Presently Gordon got up, yawned, and strolled toward the edge of the camp.

"Don't go and get lost, young fellow," cautioned Dud.

Gordon, on his way back, passed behind the guard, who was sitting tailor fashion before a smudge with a muley shotgun across his knees.

"This ain't no country for chechakoes to be wandering around without a keeper," the cook continued. "Looks like your folks would have better sense than to let their rah-rah boy--"

He got no farther. Elliot dropped to one knee and his strong fingers closed on the gullet of the man so tightly that not even a groan could escape him. His feet thrashed to and fro as he struggled, but he could not shake off the grip that was strangling him. The old miner, waiting with every muscle ready and every nerve under tension, flung aside his blanket and hurled himself at the guard. It took him less time than it takes to tell to wrest the gun from the cook.

He got to his feet just as Big Bill, his eyes and brain still fogged with sleep, sat up and began to take notice of the disturbance.

"Don't move," warned Holt sharply. "Better throw your hands up. You reach for the stars, too, Holway. No monkey business, do you hear? I'd as lief blow a hole through you as not."

Big Bill turned bitterly upon Elliot. "So you were faking all the time, young fellow. We save your life and you round on us. You're a pretty slick proposition as a double-crosser."

"And that ain't all," chirped up Holt blithely. "Let me introduce our friend to you, Mr. Big Bill Macy. This is Gordon Elliot, the land agent appointed to look over the Kamatlah claims. Selfridge gave you lads this penitentiary job so as I wouldn't meet Elliot when he reached the camp. If he hadn't been so darned anxious about it, our young friend would have died here on the divide. But Mr. Selfridge kindly outfitted a party and sent us a hundred miles into the hills to rescue the perishing, as the old sayin' goes. Consequence is, Elliot and me meet up and have that nice confidential talk after all. The ways of Providence is strange, as you might say, Mr. Macy."

"Your trick," conceded Big Bill sullenly. "Now what are you going to do with us?"

"Not a thing--going to leave you right here to prospect Wild-Goose Creek," answered Holt blandly. "Durden says there's gold up here--heaps of it."

Bill Macy condemned Durden in language profane and energetic. He didn't stop at Durden. Holt came in for a share of it, also Elliot and Selfridge.

The old miner grinned at him. "You'll feel better now you've got that out of your system. But don't stop there if you'd like to say a few more well-chosen words. We got time a-plenty."

"Cut it out, Bill. That line o' talk don't buy you anything," said Holway curtly. "What's the use of beefing?"

"Now you're shouting, my friend," agreed old Gideon. "I guess, Elliot, you can loosen up on the chef's throat awhile. He's had persuading enough, don't you reckon? I'll sit here and sorter keep the boys company while you cut the pack-ropes and bring 'em here. But first I'd step in and unload all the hardware they're packing. If you don't one of them is likely to get anxious. I'd hate to see any of them commit suicide with none of their friends here to say, 'Don't he look natural?'"

Elliot brought back the pack-ropes and cut them into suitable lengths. Holt's monologue rambled on. He was garrulous and affable. Not for a long time had he enjoyed himself so much.

"Better begin with Chief Big Bill," he suggested. "No, I wouldn't make that move if I was you, Mr. Macy. This old gun is liable to go off accidental in your direction and she spatters like hell. That's the idee. Be reasonable. Not that I give a hoot, but a man hadn't ought to let his impulses run away with his judgment, as the old sayin' is."

Gordon tied the hands of Big Bill behind him, then roped his feet together, after which he did the same for Holway. The old miner superintended the job and was not satisfied till he had added a few extra knots on his own behalf.

"That'll hold them for awhile, I shouldn't wonder. Now if you'll just cover friend chef with this sawed-off gat, Elliot, I'll throw the diamond hitch over what supplies we'll need to get back to Kamatlah. I'll take one bronch and leave the other to the convicts," said Holt cheerfully.

"Forget that convict stuff," growled Macy. "With Macdonald back of us and the Guttenchilds back of him, you'll have a hectic time getting anything on us."

"That might be true if these folks were back of you. But are they? Course I ain't any Sherlock Holmes, but it don't look to me like they'd play any such fool system as this."

Big Bill opened his mouth to answer--and said nothing. He had caught a look flashed at him by Holway, a look that warned him he was talking too much.

After Holt had packed one of the animals he turned to Elliot.

"I reckon we're ready."

Under orders from Elliot, Dud fixed up the smudges and arranged the mosquito netting over the bound men so as to give them all the protection possible.

"We're going to take Dud with us for a part of the trip. We'll send him back to you later in the day. You'll have to fast till he gets back, but outside of that you'll do very well if you don't roll around trying to get loose. Do that, and you'll jar loose the mosquito netting. You know what that means," explained Gordon.

"It ain't likely any grizzlies will come pokin' their noses into camp. But you never can tell. Any last words you want sent to relatives?" asked Gideon Holt.

The last words they heard from Big Bill as they moved down the draw were sulphuric.

"Macy he ain't wearin' any W. J. Bryan smile this glad mo'nin'," mused old Holt aloud.

It was three o'clock in the morning by the watch when they started. About nine they threw off for breakfast. By this time they were just across the divide and were ready to take the down trail.

"I think we'll let Dud go now," Elliot told his partner in the adventure.

"Better hold him till afternoon. Then they can't possibly reach us till we get to Kamatlah."

"What does it matter if they do? We have both rifles and have left them only one revolver. Besides, I don't like to leave two bound men alone in so wild a district for any great time. No, we'll start Dud on the back trail. That grizzly you promised Big Bill might really turn up."

The two men struck the headwaters of Wild-Goose Creek about noon and followed the stream down. They traveled steadily without haste. So long as they kept a good lookout there was nothing to be feared from the men they had left behind. They had both a long start and the advantage of weapons.

If Elliot had advertised for a year he could not have found a man who knew more of Colby Macdonald's past than Gideon Holt. The old man had mushed on the trail with him in the Klondike days. He had worked a claim on Frenchman Creek with him and had by sharp practice--so at least he had come to believe--been lawed out of his rights by the shrewd Scotchman. For seventeen years he had nursed a grudge against Macdonald, and he was never tired of talking about him. He knew many doubtful things charged to the account of the big man as he had blazed a way to success over the failures of less fortunate people. One story in particular interested Gordon. It came out the second day, as they were getting down into the foothills.

"There was Farrell O'Neill. He was a good fellow, Farrell was, but he had just one weakness. There was times when he liked the bottle too well. He'd let it alone for months and then just lap the stuff up. It was the time of the stampede to Bonanza Creek. Men are just like sheep. They wear wool on their backs like them and have their habits. You can start 'em any fool way for no cause a-tall. Don't you know it? Well, the news of the strike on Bonanza reached Dawson and we all burnt up the trail to get to the new ground first. O'Neill was one of the first. He got in about twenty below discovery, if I remember. Mac wasn't in Dawson, but he got there next mo'nin' and heard the news. He lit out for Bonanza pronto."

The old miner stopped, took a chew of tobacco, and looked down into the valley far below where Kamatlah could just be seen, a little huddle of huts.

"Well?" asked Elliot. It was occasionally necessary to prompt Holt when he paused for his dramatic effects. He would pretend to forget that he was telling a yarn which might interest his hearer.

"Mac draps in and joins O'Neill at night. They knew each other, y' understand, so o' course it was natural Mac would put up at his camp. O'Neill had a partner and they had located together. Fellow named Strong."

"Not Hanford Strong, a little, heavy-set man somewhere around fifty?" Gordon asked quickly.

"You've tagged the right man. Know him?"

"I've met him."

"Well, I never heard anything against Han Strong. Anyway, he was off that night packing grub up while Farrell held down the claim. Mac had a jug of booze with him. He got Farrell tanked up. You know Mac--how he can put it across when he's a mind to. He's a forceful devil, and he can be a mighty likable one."

Elliot nodded understanding. "He's always the head of the table no matter where he sits. And there is something wonderfully attractive about him."

"Sure there is. But when he is friendliest you want to watch out he don't slip an upper cut at you that'll put you out of biz. He done that to Farrell--and done it a-plenty."

"How?"

"O'Neill got mellowed up till he thought Mac was his best friend. He was ready to eat out of his hand. So Mac works him up to sign a contract--before witnesses too; trust Mac for that--exchanging his half-interest in the claim for five hundred dollars in cash and Mac's no-'count lease on Frenchman Creek. Inside of a week Mac and Strong struck a big pay streak. They took over two hundred thousand from the spring clean-up."

"It was nothing better than robbery."

"Call it what you want to. Anyhow, it stuck. O'Neill kicked, and that's all the good it did him. He consulted lawyers at Dawson. Finally he got so discouraged that he plumb went to pieces--got on a long bat and stayed there till his money ran out. Then one bitter night he starts up to Bonanza to have it out with Mac. The mercury was so low it had run into the ground a foot. Farrell slept in a deserted cabin without a fire and not enough bedding. He caught pneumony. By the time he reached the claim he was a mighty sick man. Next week he died. That's all Mac done to O'Neill. Not a thing that wasn't legal either."

Gordon thought of Sheba O'Neill as she sat listening to the tales of Macdonald in Diane's parlor and his gorge rose at the man.

"But Mac had fell on his feet all right," continued Holt. "He got his start off that claim. Now he's a millionaire two or three times over, I reckon."

They reached the outskirts of Kamatlah about noon of the third day. Gordon left Holt at his cabin after they had eaten and went in alone to look the ground over. He met Selfridge at the post-office. That gentleman was effusive in his greeting.

"This is a pleasant surprise, Mr. Elliot. When did you get in? Had no idea you were coming or I'd have asked you for the pleasure of your company. I'm down on business, of course. No need to tell you that--nobody would come to this hole for any other reason. Howland and his wife are the only possible people here. Hope you play bridge."

Elliot played it, but he did not say so. It was his business not to be drawn into entangling alliances.

"Of course you'll put up with me as my guest," Selfridge flowed on. "I've wanted to meet you again ever since we were on the Hannah together."

This was a little too cheeky. Gordon recalled with some amusement how this tubby little man and his friends had ignored the existence of Sheba O'Neill and himself for several days.

He answered genially. "Pleasant time we had on the river, didn't we? Thanks awfully for your invitation, but I've already made arrangements for putting up."

"Where? There's no decent place in camp except at Howland's. He keeps open house for our friends."

"I couldn't think of troubling him," countered Gordon.

"No trouble at all. We'll send for your things. Where are they?"

The land agent let him have it right between the eyes. "At Gideon Holt's. I'm staying with him on his claim."

Wally had struck a match to light a cigarette, but this simple statement petrified him. His jaw dropped and his eyes bulged. Not till the flame burned his fingers did he come to life.

"Did you say you were staying--with Gid Holt?" he floundered weakly.

Gordon noticed that his florid face had lost its color. The jaunty cock-sureness of the man had flickered out like the flame of the charred match.

"Yes. He offered to board me," answered the young man blandly.

"But--I didn't know he was here--seems to me I had heard--somewhere--that he was away."

"He was away. But he has come back." Gordon gave the information without even a flash of mirth in his steady eyes.

Selfridge could not quite let the subject alone. "Seems to me I heard he went prospecting."

"He did. Up Wild-Goose Creek, with Big Bill Macy and two other men. But I asked him to come back with me--and he did."

Feebly Wally groped for the clue without finding it. Had Big Bill sold him out? And how had Elliot got into touch with him?

"Just so, Mr. Elliot. But really, you know, Howland can make you a great deal more comfortable than Holt. His wife is a famous cook. I'll have a man go get your traps."

"It's very good of you, but I think I won't move."

"Oh, but you must. Holt's nutty--nobody at home, you know. Everybody knows that."

"Is he? The old man struck me as being remarkably clear-headed. By the way, I want to thank you for sending a relief party out to find me, Mr. Selfridge. Except for your help I would have died in the hills."

This was another facer for Wally. What the devil did the fellow mean? The deuce of it was that he knew all the facts and Wally did not. He talked as if he meant it, but behind those cool eyes there might lie either mockery or irony. One thing alone stood out to Selfridge like a sore thumb. His plans had come tumbling down like a house of cards. Either Big Bill had blundered amazingly, or he had played traitor. In either case Wally could guess pretty shrewdly whose hide Macdonald would tan for the failure. The chief wanted results. He did not ask of his subordinates how they got them. And this was the second time in succession that Selfridge had come to grief.

CHAPTER XI

GORDON INVITES HIMSELF TO DINNER--AND DOES NOT ENJOY IT

Big Bill and his companions reached Kamatlah early next day. They reported at once to Selfridge. It had been the intention of Wally to vent upon them the bad temper that had been gathering ever since his talk with Elliot. But his first sarcastic question drew such a snarl of anger that he reconsidered. The men were both sullen and furious. They let him know roundly that if Holt made them any trouble through the courts, they would tell all they knew.

The little man became alarmed. Instead of reproaches he gave them soft words and promises. The company would see them through. It would protect them against criminal procedure. But above all they must stand pat in denial. A conviction would be impossible even if the State's attorney filed an indictment against them. Meanwhile they would remain on the company pay-roll.

Gordon Elliot was a trained investigator. Even without Holt at his side he would probably have unearthed the truth about the Kamatlah situation. But with the little miner by his side to tell him the facts, he found his task an easy one.

Selfridge followed orders and let him talk with the men freely. All of them had been drilled till they knew their story like parrots. They were suspicious of the approaches of Elliot, but they had been warned that they must appear to talk candidly. The result was that some talked too much and some not enough. They contradicted themselves and one another. They let slip admissions under skillful examination that could be explained on no other basis than that of company ownership.

Both Selfridge and Howland outdid themselves in efforts to establish close social relations. But Gordon was careful to put himself under no obligations. He called on the Howlands, but he laughingly explained why he could not accept the invitations of Mrs. Howland to dinner.

"I have to tell things here as I see them, and may not have your point of view. How can I accept your hospitality and then report that I think your husband ought to be sent up for life?"

She was a good, motherly woman and she laughed with him. But she did wish this pleasant young fellow could be made to take the proper view of things.

Within two weeks Elliot had finished his work at Kamatlah.

"Off for Kusiak to-morrow," he told Holt that night.

The old miner went with him as a guide to the big bend. Gordon had no desire to attempt again Fifty-Mile Swamp without the help of some one who knew every foot of the trail. Holt had taken the trip a dozen times. With him to show the way the swamp became merely a hard, grueling mush through boggy lowlands.

Weary with the trail, they reached the river at the end of a long day. An Indian village lay sprawled along the bank, and through this the two men tramped to the roadhouse where they were to put up for the night.

Holt called to the younger man, who was at the time in the lead.

"Wait a minute, Elliot."

Gordon turned. The old Alaskan was offering a quarter to a little half-naked Indian boy. Shyly the four-year-old came forward, a step at a time, his finger in his mouth. He held out a brown hand for the coin.

"What's your name, kid?" Holt flashed a look at Elliot that warned him to pay attention.

"Colmac," the boy answered bashfully.

His fist closed on the quarter, he turned, and like a startled caribou he fled to a comely young Indian woman standing near the trail.

With gleaming eyes Holt turned to Elliot. "Take a good look at the squaw," he said in a low voice.

Elliot glanced at the woman behind whose skirts the youngster was hiding. He smiled and nodded pleasantly to her.

"She's not bad looking if that's what you mean," he said after they had taken up the trail again.

"You ain't the only white man that has thought that," retorted the old miner significantly.

"No?" Gordon had learned to let Holt tell things at his leisure. It usually took less time than to try to hurry him.

"Name of the kid mean anything to you?"

"Can't say it did."

"Hm! Named for his dad. First syllable of each of his names."

The land inspector stopped in his stride and wheeled upon Holt. His eyes asked eagerly a question. "You don't mean Colby Macdonald?"

"Why don't I?"

"But--Good Lord, he isn't a squawman, is he?"

"Not in the usual meaning of the word. She never cooked and kept house for him. Just the same, little Colmac is his kid. Couldn't you see it sticking out all over him? He's the spit'n' image of his dad."

"I see it now you've pointed it out. I was trying to think who he reminded me of. Of course it was Macdonald."

"Mac met up with Meteetse when he first scouted this country for coal five years ago. So far's I know he was square enough with the girl. She never claimed he made any promises or anything like that. He sends a check down once a quarter to the trader here for her and the kid."

But young Elliot was not thinking about Meteetse. His mind's eye saw another picture--the girl at Kusiak, listening spellbound to the tales of a man whose actions translated romance into life for her, a girl swept from the quiet backwaters of an Irish village to this land of the midnight sun with its amazing contrasts.

And all the way up on the boat she continued to fill his mind. The slowness of the steamer fretted him. He paced up and down the deck for hours at a time worried and anxious. Sometimes the jealousy in his heart flamed up like a prairie fire when it comes to a brush heap. The outrage of it set him blazing with indignation. Diane ought to be whipped, he told himself, for her part in the deception. It was no less than a conspiracy. What could an innocent young girl like Sheba know of such a man as Colby Macdonald? Her imagination conceived, no doubt, an idealized vision of him. But the real man was clear outside her ken.

Gordon set his jaw grimly. He would have it out with Diane. He would let her see she was not going to have it all her own way. By God, he would put a spoke in her wheel.

Sometimes, when the cool, evening breezes blew on his bare, fevered head, he laughed at himself for an idiot. How did he know that Macdonald wanted Sheba O'Neill. All the evidence he had was that he had once seen the man watch her while she sang a sentimental song. Whereas it was common talk that he would probably marry Mrs. Mallory, that for months he had been her almost daily companion. If the older woman had lost the sweet, supple slimness of her first youth, she had won in exchange a sophisticated grace, a seductive allure that made her the envy of all the women with whom she associated. She held at command a warm, languorous charm which had stirred banked fires in the hearts of many men. Why should not Macdonald woo her? Gordon himself admitted her attractiveness.

And why should he take it for granted that Sheba was ready to drop into the arms of the big Alaskan whenever he said the word? At the least he was twenty years older than she. Surely she might admire him without falling in love with the man. Was there not something almost insulting in the supposition that Macdonald had only to speak to her in order to win?

But in spite of reason he was on fire to come to his journey's end. No sooner had he reached his hotel than he called up Mrs. Paget. Quite clearly she understood that he wanted an invitation to dinner. Yet she hesitated.

"My 'phone can't be working well," Gordon told her gayly. "You must have asked me to dinner, but I didn't just hear it. Never mind. I'll be there. Seven o'clock, did you say?"

Diane laughed. "You're just as much a boy as you were ten years ago, Gord. All right. Come along. But you're to leave at ten. Do you understand?"

"No, I can't hear that. My 'phone has gone bad again. And if I had heard, I shouldn't think of doing anything so ridiculous as leaving at that hour. It would be an insult to your hospitality. I know when I'm well off."

"Then I'll have to withdraw my invitation. Perhaps some other day--"

"I'll leave at ten," promised Elliot meekly.

He could almost hear the smile in her voice as she answered. "Very well. Seven sharp. I'll explain about the curfew limit sometime."

Macdonald was with Miss O'Neill in the living-room when Gordon arrived at the Paget home.

Sheba came forward to greet the new guest. The welcome in her eyes was very genuine.

"You and Mr. Macdonald know each other, of course," she said after her handshake.

The Scotchman nodded his lean, grizzled head, looking straight into the eyes of the field agent. There was always a certain deliberation about his manner, but it was the slowness of strength and not of weakness.

"Yes, I know Mr. Elliot--now. I'm not so sure that he knows me--yet."

"I'm beginning to know you rather well, Mr. Macdonald," answered Gordon quietly, but with a very steady look.

If the Alaskan wanted to declare war he was ready for it. The field agent knew that Selfridge had sent reports detailing what had happened at Kamatlah. Up to date Macdonald had offered him the velvet glove. He wondered if the time had come when the fist of steel was to be doubled.

Paget was frankly pleased to see Gordon again. He was a simple, honest man who moved always in a straight line. He had liked Elliot as a boy and he still liked him. So did Diane, for that matter, but she was a little on her guard against him. She had certain plans under way that she intended to put through. She was not going to let even Gordon Elliot frustrate them.

"Did you have a successful trip, Mr. Elliot?" asked Sheba innocently.

Paget grinned behind his hand. The girl's question was like a match to powder, and every one in the room knew it but she. The engineer's interests and his convictions were on the side of Macdonald, but he recognized that Elliot had been sent in to gather facts for the Government and not to give advice to it. If he played fair, he could only tell the truth as he saw it.

The eyes of Diane held a spark of hostility as she leaned forward. The word had already been passed among the faithful that this young man was not taking the right point of view.

"Did you, Gordon?" echoed his hostess.

"I think so," he answered quietly.

"I hear you put up with old Gideon Holt. Is he as cracked as he used to be?" asked Macdonald.

"Was he cracked when you used to know him on Frenchman Creek?" countered the young man.

Macdonald shot a quick, slant look at him. The old man had been talking, had he?

"He was cracked and broke too," laughed the mine-owner hardily. "Cracked when he came, broke when he left."

"Yes, that was one of the stories he told me." Gordon turned to Sheba. "You should meet the old man, Miss O'Neill. He knew your father at Dawson and on Bonanza."

The girl was all eagerness. "I'd like to. Does he ever come to Kusiak?"

"Nonsense!" cut in Diane sharply. She flashed at Gordon a look of annoyance. "He's nothing but a daft old idiot, my dear."

The dinner had started wrong, and though Paget steered the conversation to safer ground, it did not go very well. At least three of those present were a little on edge. Even Sheba, who had missed entirely the point of the veiled thrusts, knew that Elliot was not in harmony with either Diane or Macdonald.

Gordon was ashamed of himself. He could not quite have told what were the impulses that had moved him to carry the war into the camp of the enemy. Perhaps, more than anything else, it had been a certain look of quiet assurance in the eyes of his rival when he looked at Sheba.

He rose promptly at ten.

"Must you go so soon?" Diane asked. She was smiling at him with bland mockery.

"I really must," answered Elliot.

His hostess followed him into the hall. She watched him get into his coat before saying what was on her mind.

"What did you mean by telling Sheba that old Holt knew her father? What is he to tell her if they meet--that her father died of pneumonia brought on by drink? Is that what you want?"

Gordon was honestly contrite. "I didn't think of that."

"No, you were too busy thinking of something mean to say to Mr. Macdonald."

He agreed, yet could not forbear one dig more. "I suppose I wanted Holt to tell her that Macdonald robbed her father and indirectly was the cause of his death."

"Absurd!" exploded Diane. "You're so simple that you accept as true the gossip of every crack-brained idiot--when it suits your purpose."

He smiled, boyishly, engagingly, as he held out his hand. "Don't let's quarrel, Di. I admit I forgot myself."

"All right. We won't. But don't believe all the catty talk you hear, Gordon."

"I'll try to believe only the truth." He smiled, a little ruefully. "And it isn't necessary for you to explain why the curfew law applies to me and not to Macdonald."

She was on her dignity at once. "You're quite right. It isn't necessary. But I'm going to tell you anyhow. Mr. Macdonald is going away to-morrow for two or three days and he has some business he wants to talk over with Sheba. He had made an appointment with her, and I didn't think it fair to let your coming interfere with it."

Gordon took this facer with his smile still working.

"I've got a little business I want to talk over with you, Di."

She had always been a young woman of rather a hard finish. Now she met him fairly, eye to eye. "Any time you like, Gordon."

Elliot carried away with him one very definite impression. Diane intended Sheba to marry Macdonald if she could bring it about. She had as good as served notice on him that the girl was spoken for.

The young man set his square jaw. Diane was used to having her own way. So was Macdonald. Well, the Elliots had a will of their own too.

CHAPTER XII

SHEBA SAYS "PERHAPS"

Obeying the orders of the general in command, Peter took himself to his den with the excuse that he had blue-prints to work over. Presently Diane said she thought she heard one of the children crying and left to investigate.

The Scotchman strode to the fireplace and stood looking down into the glowing coals. He seemed in no hurry to break the silence and Sheba glanced at his strong, brooding face a little apprehensively. Her excitement showed in the color that was beating into her cheeks. She knew of only one subject that would call for so formal a private talk between her and Macdonald, and any discussion of this she would very much have liked to postpone.

He turned from the fire to Sheba. It was characteristic of him that he plunged straight at what he wanted to say.

"I've asked to see you alone, Miss O'Neill, because I want to make a confession and restitution--to begin with," he told her abruptly.

She had a sense of suddenly stilled pulses. "That sounds very serious." The young woman smiled faintly.

His face of chiseled granite masked all emotion. It kept under lock and key the insurgent impulses that moved him when he looked into the sloe eyes charged with reserve. Back of them, he felt, was the mystery of purity, of maidenhood. He longed to know her better, to find out and to appropriate for himself the woman that lay behind the fine veil of flesh. She seemed to him delicate as a flame and as vivid. There would come a day when her innocent, passional nature would respond to the love of a man as a waiting harp does to skillful fingers.

"My story goes away back to the Klondike days. I told you that I knew your father on Frenchman Creek, but I didn't say much about knowing him on Bonanza."

"Mr. Strong has told me something about the days on Bonanza, and I knew you would tell me more some day--when you wanted to speak about it." She was seated in a low chair and the white throat lifted toward him was round as that of a bird.

"Your father was among the first of those who stampeded to Bonanza. He and Strong took up a claim together. I bought out the interest of your father."

"You told me that."

His masterful eyes fastened to hers. "I didn't tell you that I took advantage of him. He was--not well. I used that against him in the bargaining. He wanted ready money, and I tempted him."

"Do you mean that you--wronged him?"

"Yes. I cheated him." He was resolved to gloss over nothing, to offer no excuses. "I didn't know there was gold on his claim, but I had what we call a hunch. I took his claim without giving value received."

It was her turn now to look into the fire and think. From the letters of her father, from talks with old-timers she knew how in the stampedes every man's hand had been for himself, how keen-edged had been the passion for gold, a veritable lust that corroded the souls of men.

"But--I don't understand." Her brave, steady eyes looked directly into those of Macdonald. "If he felt you had--done him a wrong--why did he come to you when he was ill?"

"He was coming to demand justice of me. On the way he suffered exposure and caught pneumonia. The word reached us, and Strong and I brought him to our cabin."

"You faced a blizzard to bring him in. Mr. Strong told me how you risked your life by carrying him through the storm--how you wouldn't give up and leave him, though you were weak and staggering yourself. He says it was a miracle you ever got through."

The big mine-owner brushed this aside as of no importance. "We don't leave sick men to die in a blizzard up North. But that's not the point."

"I think it has a bearing on the matter--that you saved him from the blizzard--and took him in--and nursed him like a brother till he died."

"I'm not heartless," said Macdonald impatiently. "Of course I did that. I had to do it. I couldn't do less."

"Or more," she suggested. "You may have made a hard bargain with him, but you wiped that out later."

"That's just what I didn't do. Don't think my conscience is troubling me. I'm not such a mush-brained fool. If it had not been for you I would never have thought of it again. But you are his daughter. What I cheated him out of belongs to you--and you are my friend."

"Don't use that word about what you did, please. He wasn't a child. If you got the best of him in a bargain, I don't think father would think of it that way."

The difficulty was that he could not tell her the truth about her father's weakness for drink and how he had played upon it. He bridged all explanations and passed to the thing he meant to do in reparation.

"The money I cleaned up from that claim belongs to you, Miss O'Neill. You will oblige me by taking it."

From his pocket he took a folded paper and handed it to her. Sheba opened it doubtfully. The paper contained a typewritten statement and to it was attached a check by means of a clip. The check was made out to her and signed by Colby Macdonald. The amount it called for was one hundred and eighty-three thousand four hundred and thirty-one dollars.

"Oh, I couldn't take this, Mr. Macdonald--I couldn't. It doesn't belong to me," she cried.

"It belongs to you--and you're going to take it."

"I wouldn't know what to do with so much."

"The bank will take care of it for you until you decide. So that's settled." He passed definitely from the subject. "There's something else I want to say to you, Miss O'Neill."

Some change in his voice warned her. The girl slanted a quick, shy glance at him.

"I want to know if you'll marry me, Miss O'Neill," he shot at her abruptly. Then, without giving her time to answer, he pushed on: "I'm older than you--by twenty-five years. Always I've lived on the frontiers. I've had to take the world by the throat and shake from it what I wanted. So I've grown hard and willful. All the sweet, fine things of life I've missed. But with you beside me I'm not too old to find them yet--if you'll show me the way, Sheba."

A wave of color swept into her face, but her eyes never faltered from his. "I'm not quite sure," she said in a low voice.

"You mean--whether you love me?"

She nodded. "I--admire you more than any man I ever met. You are a great man, strong and powerful,--and I am so insignificant beside you. I--am drawn to you--so much. But--I am not sure."

Afterward, when she thought of it, Sheba wondered at the direct ease of his proposal. In the romances she had read, men were shy and embarrassed and fearful of the issue. But Colby Macdonald had known what he wanted to say and had said it as coolly and as readily as if it had been a business detail. She was the one that had blushed and stammered and found a difficulty in expressing herself.

"I'm going away for two days. Perhaps when I come back you will know, Sheba. Take your time. Marriage is serious business. I want you to remember that my life has been very different from yours. You'll hear all sorts of things about me. Some of them are true. There is this difference between a man and a good woman. He fights and falls and fights again and wins. But a good woman is finer. She has never known the failure that drags one through slime and mud. Her goodness is born in her; she doesn't have to fight for it."

The girl smiled a little tremulously. "Doesn't she? We're not all angel, you know."

"I hope you're not. There will need to be a lot of the human in you to make allowances for Colby Macdonald," he replied with an answering smile.

When he said good-bye it was with a warm, strong handshake.

"I'll be back in two days. Perhaps you'll have good news for me then," he suggested.

The dark, silken lashes of her eyes lifted shyly to meet his.

"Perhaps," she said.

CHAPTER XIII

DIANE AND GORDON DIFFER

During the absence of Macdonald the field agent saw less of Sheba than he had expected, and when he did see her she had an abstracted manner he did not quite understand. She kept to her own room a good deal, except when she took long walks into the hills back of the town. Diane had a shrewd idea that the Alaskan had put his fortune to the test, and she not only let her cousin alone herself, but fended Gordon from her adroitly.

The third day after the dinner Elliot dropped around to the Pagets with intent to get Sheba into a set of tennis. Diane sat on the porch darning socks.

"Sheba is out walking with Mr. Macdonald," she explained in answer to a question as to the whereabouts of her guest.

"Oh, he's back, is he?" remarked Gordon moodily.

Mrs. Paget was quite cheerful on that subject. "He came back this morning. Sheba has gone up with him to see the Lucky Strike."

"You're going to marry her to that man if you can, aren't you?" he charged.

"If I can, Gordon." She slipped a darning-ball into one of little Peter's stockings and placidly trimmed the edges of the hole.

"It's what I call a conspiracy."

"Is it?" Diane smiled.

Gordon understood her smile to mean that he was jealous.

"Maybe I am. That's not the point," he answered, just as if she had made her accusation in words.

"Suppose you tell me what the point is," she suggested, both amused and annoyed.

"He isn't good enough for her. You know that perfectly well."

"Good enough!" She shrugged her shoulders. "What man is good enough for a nice girl if you come to that? There are other things beside sugary goodness. Any man who is strong can make himself good enough for the woman he loves."

"Generally speaking, yes. But Colby Macdonald is different."

"Thank Heaven he is," she retorted impatiently. Then added after a moment: "He isn't a Sunday-School superintendent if that's what you mean."

"That isn't what I mean at all. But there's such a thing as a difference between right and wrong, isn't there?"

"Oh, yes. For instance, Mr. Macdonald is right about the need of developing Alaska and the way to do it, and you are wrong."

He could not help smiling a little at the adroit way she tried to sidetrack him, even though he was angry at her. But he had no intention of letting her go without freeing his mind.

"I'm talking about essential right and wrong. Miss O'Neill is idealizing Macdonald. I don't suppose you've told her, for instance, that he made his first money in the North running a dance hall."

"No, I haven't told her any such thing, because it isn't true," she replied scornfully. "He owned an opera house and brought in a company of players. I dare say they danced. That's very different, as you'd know if you didn't have astigmatism of the mind."

"Not the way the story was told me. But let that pass. Does she know that Macdonald beat her father out of one of the best claims on Bonanza and was indirectly responsible for his death?"

"What's the use of talking nonsense, Gordon. You know you can't prove that," his friend told him sharply.

"I think I can--if it is necessary."

Diane looked across at him with an impudent little tilt of the chin. "I don't think I like you as well as I used to."

"Sorry, because I'd like you just as well, Diane, if you would stop trying to manage your cousin into a marriage that will spoil her life," he answered gravely.

"How dare you say that! How dare you, Gordon Elliot!" she flung back, furious at him. "I won't have you here talking that way to me. It's an insult."

The fearless, level eyes of her friend looked straight at her. "I say it because the happiness of Miss O'Neill is of very great importance to me."

"Do you mean--?" Wide-eyed, she looked her question straight at him.

"That's just what I mean, Diane."

She darned for a minute in silence. It had occurred to Diane before that perhaps Gordon might be in love with Sheba, but she had put the thought from her because she did not want to believe it.

"That's different, Gordon. It explains--and in a way excuses--your coming here and trying to bully me." She stopped her work to flash a question at him. "Don't you think that maybe it's only a fancy of yours? I remember you used--"

He shook his head. "No chance, Diane. I'm hard hit. She's the only girl I ever met that suited me. Everything she does is right. Every move she makes is wonderful."

The eyes with which she looked at him were softer, as those of women are wont to be for the true romance.

"You poor boy," she murmured, and let her hand for a moment rest on his.

"Meaning that I lose?" he asked quickly.

"I think you do. I'm not sure."

Elliot leaned forward impulsively. "Be a good sport, Diane. Let me have my chance too. Why do you make it easy for Macdonald and hard for me? Isn't it because the glamour of his millions blinds you?"

"He's a big, splendid man, but I don't like him any the less because he has the power to make life easy and comfortable for Sheba," she defended sturdily.

"Yet you turned down Arthur West, the best catch in your set, to marry Peter, who was the worst," he reminded her. "Have you ever been sorry for it?"

"That's different. Peter and I fit. It was one case out of a million." She gave him her old, friendly smile. "But I don't want to be hard on you, Gord. I'll be neutral. Come and see Sheba as often as she'll let you."

Gordon beamed as he shook hands with her. "That sounds like the Di Paget I used to know."

She recurred to the previous question. "Sheba knows more about Mr. Macdonald than you think. And about how he got her father's claim, for instance,--she has heard all that."

"You told her?"

"No. Colby Macdonald told her. He said he practically robbed her father, and he gave her a check for nearly two hundred thousand to cover the clean-up from the claim and interest."

"Bully for him." On the heel of this he flung a question at her. "Did Macdonald ask her to marry him the night of the dinner?"

A flash of whimsical amusement lit her dainty face. "You'd better ask him that. Here he comes now."

They were coming down the walk together, Macdonald and Sheba. The young woman was absorbed in his talk, and she did not know that her cousin and Elliot were on the porch until she was close upon them. But at sight of the young man her eyes became warm and kind.

"I'm sorry I was out yesterday when you called," she told him.

"And you were out again to-day. My luck isn't very good, is it?"

He laughed pleasantly, but his heart was bitter. He believed Macdonald had won. Some hint of proprietorship in his manner, together with her slight confusion when she saw them on the porch, had weighted his heart with lead.

"We've had such a good walk." Sheba went on quickly. "I wish you could have heard Mr. Macdonald telling me how he once had a chance to save a small Esquimaux tribe during a hard winter. He carried food five hundred miles to them. It was a thrilling experience."

"Mr. Macdonald has had a lot of very interesting experiences. You must get him to tell you about all of them," answered Gordon quietly.

The eyes of the two men met. The steel-gray ones of the older man answered the challenge of his rival with a long, steady look. There was in it something of triumph, something of scornful insolence. If this young fellow wanted war, he did not need to wait long for it.

"Time enough for that, man. Miss O'Neill and I have the whole Arctic winter before us for stories."

The muscles in the lean jaws of Gordon Elliot stood out like steel ropes. He turned to Sheba. "Am I to congratulate Mr. Macdonald?"

The color in her cheeks grew warmer, but her shy glance met his fairly. "I think it is I that am to be congratulated, Mr. Elliot."

Diane took her cousin in her arms. "My dear, I wish you all the happiness in the world," she said softly.

The Irish girl fled into the house as soon as she could, but not before making an announcement.

"We're to be married soon, very quietly. If you are still at Kusiak we want you to be one of the few friends present, Mr. Elliot."

Macdonald backed her invitation with a cool, cynical smile. "Miss O'Neill speaks for us both, of course, Elliot."

The defeated man bowed. "Thanks very much. The chances are that I'll be through my business here before then."

As soon as his fiancée had gone into the house, the Scotchman left. Gordon sat down in a porch chair and stared straight in front of him. The suddenness of the news had brought his world tumbling about his ears. He felt that such a marriage would be an outrage against Sheba's innocence. But he was not yet far enough away from the blow to ask himself how much the personal hurt influenced his opinion.

Though she was sorry for him, Diane did not think it best to say so yet.

Presently he spoke thickly. "I suppose you have heard that he was a squawman."

His friend joined battle promptly with him. "That's ridiculous. Don't be absurd, Gordon."

"It's the truth. I've seen the woman. She was pointed out to me."

"By old Gideon Holt, likely," she flashed.

"One could get evidence and show it to Miss O'Neill," he said aloud, to himself rather than to her.

Diane put her point of view before him with heated candor. "You couldn't. Nobody but a cad would rake up old scandals about the man who has beaten him fairly for a woman's love."

"You beg the question. Has he won fairly?"

"Of course he has. Be a good sport, Gordon. Don't kick on the umpire's decision. Play the game."

"That's all very well. But what about her? Am I to sit quiet while she is sacrificed to a code of honor that seems to me rooted in dishonor?"

"She is not being sacrificed. I'm her cousin. I'm very fond of her. And I'd trust her with Colby Macdonald."

"Play fair, Diane. Tell her the truth about this Indian woman and let your cousin decide for herself. You can't do less, can you?"

Mrs. Paget was distinctly annoyed. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Gordon Elliot. You take all the gossip of a crack-brained old idiot for gospel truth just because you want to believe the worst about Mr. Macdonald. Don't you know that people will say anything about a man who succeeds? Colby Macdonald is too big and too aggressive not to have made hundreds of enemies. His life has been threatened dozens of times. But he pays no attention to it--goes right on building-up this country. Yet you'd think he had a cloven hoof to hear some people talk. I've no patience with them."

"The woman's name is Meteetse," Gordon said in an even voice, just as if he were answering a question. "She is young and good-looking for an Indian. Her boy is four or five years old. Colmac, they call him, and he looks just like Macdonald."

"People are always tracing resemblances. There's nothing to that. But suppose his life was irregular--years ago. This isn't Boston. It used to be the fringe of civilization. Men did as they pleased in the early days. We don't ask a man up here what he has been, but what he is. You ought to know that by this time."

"This wasn't in the early days. It was five years ago, when Macdonald was examining the Kamatlah coal-field. I'm told he sends a check down the river once a month for the woman."

"All the more credit to him if he does." Diane rose and looked stormily down at her friend. "You're about as broad as a clam, Gordon. Can't you see that even if it's true, all that is done with? It is a part of his past--and it's finished--trodden under foot. It hasn't a thing to do with Sheba."

"I don't agree with you. A man can't cut loose entirely from his past. It is a part of him--and Macdonald's past isn't good enough for Sheba O'Neill."

Diane tapped her little foot impatiently on the floor. "Do you know many men whose pasts are good enough for their wives? Are you a plaster-cast saint yourself? You know perfectly well that men trample down their pasts and begin again when they are married. Colby Macdonald is good enough for any woman alive if he loves her enough."

"You don't know him."

"I know him far better than you do. He is the biggest man I know, and now that he is in love with a good woman he'll rise to his chance."

"She ought to be told the truth about Meteetse and her boy," he insisted doggedly.

"I'm not going to disturb her with a lot of old maids' gossip. That's flat."

"But if I prove to you that it isn't gossip."

Mrs. Paget lost her temper completely. "Does the Government pay you to mind other people's business, Gordon?" she snapped.

"I wouldn't be working for the Government then, but for Sheba O'Neill."

"And for Gordon Elliot. You'd be doing underhand work for him too. Don't forget that. You can't do it. You're not that kind of a man. It isn't in you to go muckraking in the past of the man Sheba is going to marry."

Elliot rose and looked across at the blue-ribbed mountains. His square jaw was set when he turned it back toward Diane.

"She isn't going to marry him if I can help it," he said quietly.

He walked out of the gate and down the walk toward his hotel.

A message was waiting for him there from his chief in Seattle. It called him down the river on business.

CHAPTER XIV

GENEVIEVE MALLORY TAKES A HAND

Inside of an hour the news of the engagement of Macdonald was all over Kusiak. It was through a telephone receiver that the gossip was buzzed to Mrs. Mallory by a friend who owed her a little stab. The voice of Genevieve Mallory registered faint amusement, but as soon as she had hung up, her face fell into haggard lines. She had staked a year of her waning youth on winning the big mining man of Kusiak, together with all the money that she had been able to scrape up for a campaign outfit. Moreover, she liked him.

It was not in the picture that she should fall desperately in love with any man. A woman of the world, she was sheathed in the plate armor of selfishness. But she was as near to loving Macdonald as was possible for her. She had a great deal of admiration for his iron strength, for the grit of the man. No woman could twist him around her finger, yet it was possible to lead him a long way in the direction one wanted.

Mrs. Mallory sat down in the hall beside the telephone, her fingers laced about one crossed knee. She knew that if Sheba O'Neill had not come on the scene, Macdonald would have asked her to marry him. He had been moving slowly toward her for months. They understood each other and were at ease together. Between them was a strong physical affinity. Both were good-tempered and were wise enough to expect human imperfection.

Then Diane Paget had brought in this slim, young cousin of hers and Colby Macdonald had been fascinated by the mystery of her innocent youth. Mrs. Mallory was like steel beneath the soft and indolent surface. Swiftly she mapped her plan of attack. The Alaskan could not be moved, but it might be possible to startle the girl into breaking the engagement. Genevieve Mallory would have used the weapon at hand without scruple in any case, but she justified herself on the ground that such a marriage could result only in unhappiness.

But before she made any move Mrs. Mallory intended to be sure of her facts. It was like her to go to headquarters for information. She got Macdonald on the wire.

"I've just heard something nice about you. Do tell me it's true," she said, her voice warm with sympathy.

Macdonald laughed with an almost boyish embarrassment. "It's true, I reckon."

"I'm so glad. She's a lovely girl. The sweetest thing that ever lived. I'm sure you'll be happy. I always did think you would make a perfect husband. Of course, I'm simply green with envy of her."

Her little ripple of laughter was gay and care-free. The man at the other end of the line never had liked her better. Since he was not a fool he had guessed pretty closely how things stood with her. She was a game little sport, he told himself approvingly. It appealed to him immensely that she could take such a facer and come up smiling.

There were no signs of worry wrinkles on her face when the maid admitted a caller half an hour later. Oliver Dustin was the name on the card. He was a remittance man, a tame little parlor pet whose vocation was to fetch and carry for pretty women, and by some odd trick of fate he had been sifted into the Northland. Mrs. Mallory had tolerated him rather scornfully, but to-day she smiled upon him.

Propped up by pillows, she reclined luxuriously on a lounge. A thin spiral of smoke rose like incense to the ceiling from her lips. The slow, regular rise and fall of her breathing beneath the filmy lace of her gown accented the perfect fullness of bust and throat.

Dustin helped himself to a cigarette and made himself comfortable.

She set herself to win him. He was immensely flattered at her awakened interest. When she called him by his first name, he wagged all over like a pleased puppy.

It came to him after a time that she was considering him for a confidential mission. He assured her eagerly that there was no trouble too great for him to take if he could be of any service to her. She hesitated and doubted and at last as a special favor to him accepted his offer. Their heads were close in whispered talk for a few minutes, at the end of which Dustin left the room with his chin in the air. He was a knight errant in the employ of the most attractive woman north of fifty-three.

When Elliot took the down-river boat he found Oliver Dustin was a fellow passenger. The little man smoked an occasional cigar with the land agent and aired his views on politics and affairs social. He left the boat at the big bend. Without giving him much of his thought Gordon was a little surprised that the voluble remittance man had not told him where he was going.

Not till a week later did Elliot return up the river. He was asleep at the time the Sarah passed the big bend, but next morning he discovered that Selfridge and Dustin had come aboard during the night. In the afternoon he came upon a real surprise when he found Meteetse and her little boy Colmac seated upon a box on the lower deck where freight for local points was stored.

His guess was that they were local passengers, but wharf after wharf slipped behind them and the two still remained on board. They appeared to know nobody else on the Sarah, though once Gordon met Dustin just as he was hurrying away from the Indian woman. The little remittance man took the pains to explain to Elliot later that he was trying to find out whether the Indians knew any English.

Meteetse transferred with the other Kusiak passengers at the river junction. The field agent was not the only one on board who wondered where she was going. Selfridge was consumed with curiosity, and when she and the boy got off at Kusiak, he could restrain himself no longer. Gordon saw Wally talking with her. Meteetse showed him an envelope which evidently had an address written upon it, for the little man pointed out to her the direction in which she must go.

Since leaving Kusiak nearly two weeks before, no word had reached Gordon of Sheba. As soon as he had finished dinner at the hotel, he walked out to the Paget house and sent in his card.

Sheba came into the hall to meet him from the living-room where she had been sitting with the man she expected to marry next week. She gave a little murmur of pleasure at sight of him and held out both hands.

"I was afraid you weren't going to get back in time. I'm so glad," she told him warmly.

He managed to achieve a smile. "When is the great day?"

"Next Thursday. Of course, we're as busy as can be, but Diane says--"

A ring at the door interrupted her. Sheba stepped forward and let in an Indian woman with a little boy clinging to her hand.

"You Miss O'Neill?" she asked.

"Yes."

From the folds of her shawl she drew a letter. The girl glanced at the address, then opened and read what was written. She looked up, puzzled, first at the comely, flatfooted Indian woman and afterward at the handsome little brown-faced papoose. She turned to Gordon.

"This letter says I am to ask this woman who is the father of her boy. What does it mean?"

Gordon knew instantly what it meant, though he could not guess who had dealt the blow. He hesitated for an answer, and in his embarrassment she felt that which began to ring a bell of warning in her heart.

The impulse to spare her pain was stronger in him than the desire that she should know the truth.

"Send her away," he urged. "Don't ask any questions. She has been sent to hurt you."

A fawnlike fear flashed into the startled eyes. "To hurt me?"

"I am afraid so."

"But--why? I have done nobody any harm." She seemed to hold even her breathing in suspense. Only a pulse beat wildly in her white throat like the heart of an imprisoned thrush.

"Perhaps some of Macdonald's enemies," he suggested.

And at that there came a star-flash into the soft eyes and a lifted tilt to the chin cut fine as a cameo. She turned proudly to the Indian woman.

"What is it that you have to tell me about this boy's father?"

Meteetse began to speak. At the first mention of Macdonald's name Sheba's eyes dilated. Her smile, her sweet, glad pleasure at Gordon's arrival, were already gone like the flame of a blown candle. Clearly her heart was a-flutter, in fear of she knew not what. When the Indian woman told how she had first crossed the path of Macdonald, the color flamed into the cheeks of the Irish girl, but as the story progressed, the blood ebbed even from her lips.

With a swift movement of her fingers she flashed on the hall light. Her gaze searched the brown, shiny face of the little chap. She read there an affidavit of the truth of his mother's tale. The boy had his father's trick of squinting a slant look at anything he found interesting. It was impossible to see him and not recognize Colby Macdonald reincarnated.

"What is your name?" asked Sheba suddenly.

The youngster hung back shyly among the folds of the Indian woman's skirt. "Colmac," he said at last softly.

"Come!" Sheba flung open the door of the living-room and ushered them in.

Macdonald, pacing restlessly up and down the room during her absence, pulled up in his stride. He stood frowning at the native woman, then his eyes passed to Elliot and fastened upon him. The face of the Scotchman might have been chipped from granite. It was grim as that of a hanging judge.

Gordon started to explain, then stopped with a shrug. What was the use? The man would never believe him in the world.

"I'll remember this," the Alaskan promised his rival. There was a cold glitter in his eyes, a sudden flare of the devil that was blood-chilling.

"It's true, then," broke in Sheba. "You're a--a squawman. You belong to this woman."

"Nothing of the kind," he cried roughly. "That's been ended for years."

"Ended?" Sheba drew Colmac forward by the wrist. "Do you deny that this is your boy?"

The big Alaskan brushed this aside as of no moment. "I dare say he is. Anyhow I'm paying for his keep. What of it? That's all finished and done with."

"How can it be done with when--when she's the mother of your child, your wife before God?" The live eyes attacked him from the dusk that framed the oval of her pale face. Standing there straight as an aspen, the beautiful bosom rising and falling quickly while the storm waves beat through her blood, Sheba O'Neill had never made more appeal to the strong, lawless man who desired her for his wife.

"You don't understand." Macdonald's big fists were clenched so savagely that the knuckles stood out white from the brown tan of the flesh. "This is a man's country. It's new--close to nature. What he wants he takes--if he's strong enough. I'm elemental. I--"

"You wanted her--and you took her. Now you want me--and I suppose you'll take me too." Her scornful words had the sting of a whiplash.

"I've lived as all men live who have red blood in them. This woman is an incident. I've been aboveboard. She can't say I ever promised more than I've given. I've kept her and the boy. It's been no secret. If you had asked, I would have told you the whole story."

"Does that excuse you?"

"I don't need any excuse. I'm a man. That's excuse enough. You've been brought up among a lot of conventions and social lies. The one big fact you want to set your teeth into now is that I love you, that there isn't another woman on God's earth for me, and that there never will be again."

Her eyes flashed battle. "The one big fact I'm facing is that you have insulted me--that you insult me again when you mention love with that woman and boy in the room. You belong to them--go to them--and leave me alone." She had been fighting for self-control, to curb her growing resentment, but now it flamed passionately into words. "I hate the sight of you. Why don't you go--all of you--and leave me in peace?"

It was a cry of bruised pride and wounded love. Elliot touched the Indian woman on the shoulder. Meteetse turned stolidly and walked out of the room, still leading Colmac by the hand. The young man followed.

Macdonald closed the door behind them, then strode frowning up and down the room. The fear was growing on him that for all his great driving power he could not shake this slim girl from the view to which she clung. If the situation had not been so serious, it would have struck him as ridiculous. His relation with Meteetse had been natural enough. He believed that he had acted very honorably to her. Many a man would have left her in the lurch to take care of the youngster by herself. But he had acknowledged his obligation. He was paying his debt scrupulously, and because of it the story had risen to confront him. He felt that it was an unjust blow of fate. Punishment was falling upon him, not for what he had done, but because he had scorned to make a secret of it.

He knew that he must justify himself before Sheba or lose her. As she stood in the dusk so tall and rigid, he knew her heart was steel to him. Her finely chiseled face had the look of race. Never had the spell of her been more upon him. He crushed back a keen-edged desire to take her supple young body into his arms and kiss her till the scarlet ran into her cheeks like splashes of wine.

"You haven't the proper slant on this, Sheba. Alaska is the last frontier. It's the dropping-off place. You're north of fifty-three."

"Am I north of the Ten Commandments?" she demanded with the inexorable judgment of youth. "Did you leave the moral code at home when you came in over the ice?"

He smiled a little. "Morality is the average conduct of the average man at a given time and place. It is based on custom and expediency. The rules made for Drogheda won't fit Dawson or Nome. The laws made to protect young women in Ireland would be absurd if applied to half-breed squaws in Alaska. Meteetse does not hold herself disgraced but honored. She counts her boy far superior to the other youngsters of the village, and he is so considered by the tribe. I am told she lords it over her sisters."

A faint flush of anger had crept into her cheeks. "Your view of morality puts us on a level with the animals. I will not discuss the subject, if you please."

"We must discuss it. I must get you to see that Meteetse and what she stood for in my life have nothing to do with us. They belong to my past. She doesn't exist for either of us--isn't in any way a part of my present or future."

"She exists for me," answered Sheba listlessly. She felt suddenly old and weary. "But I can't talk about it. Please go. I want to be alone."

Again Macdonald paced restlessly down the room and back. He moved with a long, easy, tireless stride. The man was one among ten thousand, dominant, virile, every ounce of him strong as tested steel. But he felt as if all his energy were caged.

"Why don't you go?" the girl pleaded. "It's no use to stay."

He stopped in front of her. "I'm going to marry you, Sheba. Don't think I'll let that meddler interfere with our happiness. You're mine."

"No. Never!" she cried. "I'll take the boat and go home first."

"You've promised to marry me. You're going to keep your word and be glad of it all your life."

She shook her head. "No."

"Yes." Macdonald had always shown remarkable restraint with her. He had kissed her seldom, and always with a kind of awe at her young purity. Now he caught her by the shoulders. His eyes, deep in their sockets, mirrored the passionate desire of his heart.

The color flamed into her face. She looked hot to the touch, an active volcano ready to erupt. There was an odd feeling in her mind that this big man was a stranger to her.

"Take your hands from me," she ordered.

"Do you think I'm going to give you up now--now, after I've won you--because of a damfool scruple in your pretty head? You don't know me. It's too late. I love you--and I'm going to protect both of us from your prudishness."

His arms closed on her and he crushed her to him, looking down hungrily into the dark, little face.

"Let me go," she cried fiercely, struggling to free herself.

For answer he kissed the red lips, the flaming cheeks, the angry eyes. Then, coming to his senses, he pushed her from him, turned, and strode heavily from the room.

CHAPTER XV

GORDON BUYS A REVOLVER

Selfridge was not eager to meet his chief, but he knew he must report at once. He stopped at his house only long enough to get into fresh clothes and from there walked down to the office. Over the Paget telephone he had got into touch with Macdonald who told him to wait at headquarters until he came.

It had been the intention of Macdonald to go direct from Sheba to his office, but the explosion brought about by Meteetse had sent him out into the hills for a long tramp. He was in a stress of furious emotion, and until he had worked off the edge of it by hard mushing, the cramped civilization of the town stifled him.

Hours later he strode into the office of the company. He was dust-stained and splashed with mud. Fifteen miles of stiff heel-and-toe walking had been flung behind him.

Wally lay asleep in a swivel chair, his fat body sagging and his head fallen sideways in such a way as to emphasize the plump folds of his double chin. His eyes opened. They took in his chief slowly. Then, in a small panic, he jumped to his feet.

"Must 'a' been taking thirty winks," he explained. "Been up nights a good deal."

"What doing?" demanded the Scotchman harshly.

In a hurried attempt to divert the anger of Macdonald, his assistant made a mistake. "Say, Mac! Who do you think came up on the boat with me? I wondered if you knew. Meteetse and her kid--"

He stopped. The big man was glaring savagely at him. But Macdonald said nothing. He waited, and under the compulsion of his forceful silence Wally stumbled on helplessly.

"--They got off here. 'Course I didn't know whether you'd sent for her or not, so I stopped and kinder gave her the glad hand just to size things up."

"Yes."

"She had the address of Miss O'Neill, that Irish girl staying at the Pagets, the one that came in--"

"Go on," snapped his chief.

"So I directed her how she could get there and--"

Wally found himself lifted from the chair and hammered down into it again. His soft flesh quaked like a jelly. As he stared pop-eyed at the furious face above him, the fat chin of the little man drooped.

"My God, Mac, don't do that!" he whined.

Macdonald wheeled abruptly away, crossed the room in long strides, and came back. He had a grip on himself again.

"What's the use?" he said aloud. "You're nothing but a spineless putterer. Haven't you enough sense even to give me a chance to decide for myself? Why didn't you keep the woman with you till you could send for me, you daft donkey?"

"I swear I never thought of that."

"What have you got up there in your head instead of brains? I send you outside to look after things and you fall down on the job. I give you plain instructions what to do at Kamatlah and you let Elliot make a monkey of you. You see him on the boat with a woman coming to make trouble for me, and the best you can do is to help her on the way. Man, man, use your gumption."

"If I had known--"

"D'ye think you've got sense enough to take a plain, straight message as far as the hotel? Because if you have, I've got one to send."

Wally caressed tenderly his bruised flesh. He had a childlike desire to weep, but he was afraid Macdonald would kick him out of the office.

"'Course I'll do whatever you say, Mac," he answered humbly.

The Scotch-Canadian brushed the swivel chair and its occupant to one side, drew up another chair in front of the desk, and faced Selfridge squarely. The eyes that blazed at the little man were the grimmest he had ever looked into.

"Go to the hotel and see this man Elliot alone. Tell him he's gone too far--butted into my affairs once too often. There's not a man alive I'd stand it from. My orders are for him to get out on the next boat. If he's here after that, I'll kill him on sight."

The color ebbed out of the florid face of Wally. He moistened his lips to speak. "Good God, Mac, you can't do that. He'll go out and report--"

"To hell with his report. Let him say what he likes. Put this to him straight: that he and I can't stay in this town--and both of us live."

Wally had lapped up too many highballs in the past ten years to relish this kind of a mission. He had depressed his nerves with overmuch tobacco and spurred them with liquors, had dissipated his force in many small riotings. His nerve was gone. He had not the punch any more. Yet Mac was always expecting him to help out with his rough stuff, he reflected fretfully. This was the third time in a month that he had been flung headlong into trouble. Take this message now. There was no sense in it. Selfridge plucked up his courage to say so.

"That won't buy us anything but trouble, Mac. In the old days you could put over--"

The little man never guessed how close he came to being flung through the transom over the door, but his instinct warned him to stop. His objection died away in a mumble.

"O' course I'll do whatever you say," he added a second time.

"See you do," advised his chief, an ugly look in his eyes. "Tell him he gets till the next boat. If he's here after that, he'd better go heeled, for I'll shoot on sight wherever we meet."

Selfridge went on his errand with lagging feet. On the way he stopped at the Pay-Streak Saloon to fortify himself with a cocktail. He found Elliot sitting moodily alone on the porch of the hotel.

In Gordon's pocket there was a note to Macdonald explaining that he had nothing to do with the coming of Meteetse. He had expected to send it by the hotel porter that evening, but the curt order to leave town filled him with a chill anger. The dictator of affairs at Kusiak might think what he pleased for all the explanation he would get from him. As for taking the next boat, Elliot did not even give that consideration.

"Tell your master I don't take orders from him," he told Wally quietly. "I'll stay till my work here is done."

They had moved a few yards down the street. Now Gordon turned, lean-loined and active, and trod with crisp, confident step back to the hotel. He had said all that was necessary to say.

Two men standing on the porch nodded a good-evening to him. Gordon, about to pass, glanced at them again. They were Northrup and Trelawney, two of the miners who had had trouble with Macdonald on the boat.

On impulse he stopped. "Found work yet?" he asked.

"Found a job and lost it again," Northrup answered sullenly.

"Too bad."

"Macdonald passed the word along that we weren't to get work. So our boss fired us. The whole district is closed to us. We been blacklisted," explained Trelawney.

"And we're busted," added his mate.

Elliot was always free-handed. Perhaps he felt just now unusually sympathetic towards these victims of the high-handed methods of Macdonald. From his pocket he took a small leather purse and gave a piece of gold to each of them.

"Just as a loan to carry you for a couple of days till you get something to do," he suggested.

Northrup demurred, but after a little pressure accepted the accommodation.

"I pay you soon back," he promised.

Trelawney laughed recklessly. He had been drinking.

"You bet. Me too."

His companion flashed a look of warning at him and explained that they were going down the river to look for work outside of the district.

Suddenly Trelawney broke loose and began to curse Macdonald with a bitterness that surprised the Government agent. What struck him most, though, was the obvious anxiety of Northrup to quiet his partner and to gloss over what he had said. Thinking of it later, Gordon wondered why the Dane, who had as much cause to hate Macdonald as the other, should be at such pains to smooth down the man and explain away his threats.

Elliot bought an automatic revolver next morning and a box of cartridges. He was not looking for trouble, but he intended to be prepared for it when trouble came looking for him. With a rifle he was a fair shot, but he lacked experience with the revolver. In the afternoon he walked out of town and practiced shooting at tin cans for a half an hour. On his way back he met Peter Paget.

The engineer came straight to the subject in his mind.

"Selfridge came to see me last night. He told me about the trouble between you and Macdonald, Gordon. You must leave town till he cools down. Macdonald is a bad man with a gat."

"Is he?"

"You can drop down the river on business for a few weeks. After a while--"

His friend looked at him coolly. "I can, but I'm not going to. Where do you get this stuff about me being a quitter, Pete?"

Peter laid a hand on his shoulder. "Now, look here, Gordon. Don't be a kid and foolhardy. Duck. I'm your friend--"

"You're his, too, aren't you?"

"Yes, of course, but--"

"All right. Tell him to duck. There'll be no trouble of my making. But if he starts any I'll be there. Macdonald doesn't own the earth, you know. I've been sent up here by Uncle Sam on business, and you can bet your last dollar I'll stay on the job till I'm through."

"Of course you've got to finish your job. But it doesn't all have to be done right here. Just for a week or two--"

"Tell your friend something else while you're on the subject. If I drop him, I go scot free because he is interfering with me in my duty. I'll put Selfridge on the stand to prove it. But if he should kill me, his last chance for getting the Macdonald claims patented would be gone. The public would raise such a howl that the Administration would have to throw your friend and the Guttenchilds overboard to save itself. I know that--and Macdonald knows it. So he stands to lose either way."

Paget knew this was true. He knew, too, there was no use in arguing with this young athlete. That close-gripped jaw and salient chin did not belong to a slacker. Gordon would stick and see the thing out. But Peter could not drop the subject without one more appeal.

"He's not sore at you about the claims. You know that. It's because you brought the squaw up the river to see Sheba."

"I didn't bring her--hadn't a thing to do with that. I don't know who brought her, though I could give a good guess."

A gleam of hope showed in the eye of the engineer. "You didn't bring her? Diane said you threatened--"

"Maybe I did say I would. Anyhow, I thought better of it. But I'm glad some one had the sense to tell Miss O'Neill the truth."

"Who do you think brought her?"

"I'm not thinking on that subject out loud."

"But if we could show Mac--"

"That's up to you. I'll not lift a finger. Your king of Kusiak has to learn some time that everybody isn't going to sidestep him and pussyfoot when he's around. I didn't start this war and I'm not making any peace overtures."

"You're as obstinate as the devil," smiled Peter, but in his heart he admired the dourness of his friend.

The engineer went to Macdonald and gave a deleted version of his talk with Elliot. The Scotchman listened, a bitter, incredulous smile on his face.

"Says he didn't bring her, does he? Tell him from me that he lies. Your wife let out to me by accident that he threatened to bring her. Meteetse and he came up on the boat together. He was with her at your house when she told her story. He's trying to save his hide. No chance."

"Elliot isn't a liar. When he says he didn't bring the woman, that satisfies me. I know he didn't do it," insisted Paget stiffly.

"Different here. Who else had any interest in bringing her except him? Nobody. Use your brains, Peter. He takes the first boat down the river. He comes back on the next one. She comes back, too. They couldn't figure I'd be at your house when they showed up there to tell the story. That's where Mr. Elliot slipped up."

Peter was of different stuff from Selfridge. He had something to say. So he said it.

"Times have changed, Mac. You can't shoot down this young fellow without making all kinds of trouble. First thing we'd lose the claims. The Administration would drop you like a hot potato if you did a thing like that. Sheba would never speak to you again. Your friends would know in their hearts it was murder. You can't do it."

Macdonald's jaw clamped. "Then let him get out. That's my last word to him."

CHAPTER XVI

AMBUSHED

Colby Macdonald, in miner's boots and corduroy working suit, stood beside his horse with one arm thrown carelessly across its rump. He was about to start for Seven-Mile Creek Camp with twenty-seven hundred dollars in the saddlebags to pay the men there.

Diane was talking with him. "She's young and fine and spirited. Of course it was a great shock to her. She had been idealizing you. But I think she is beginning to understand things better. At any rate, she does not hate you any more. Give the girl time."

"You think she will--be reasonable?"

Mrs. Paget finished the pattern she was punching in the soft ground beside the board walk with the ferrule of her umbrella. Her eyes met his frankly.

"I don't know. But I'm sure of one thing. She'll not be reasonable, as you call it, unless you are reasonable."

"You mean--Elliot?"

"Yes. She likes him very much. Do you know that when the Indian woman came he urged Sheba not to listen to her story?"

"Sounds likely--after he had spent his good money bringing her here," sneered the mine-owner.

"He didn't. Gordon is a splendid fellow. He wouldn't lie," answered Diane hotly. "And one thing is sure--if you lay a finger on him for this, it will be fatal with Sheba. She will be through with you."

Macdonald had thought of this before. It had been coming to him from several different angles that he could not afford to gratify his desire to wipe this meddlesome young official from his path. He made a slow, sulky promise.

"All right. I'll let him alone. Peter can tell him."

Swinging to the saddle, he spurred his horse and cantered away. With a little smile Diane watched his flat, muscular back and the arrogant set of his strong shoulders. There was not his match in the territory, she thought, but sometimes a clever woman could manage him.

His mind was full of the problem that had come into his life. He rode abstractedly, so that he was at the lower ford of the creek almost before he knew it. A bilberry thicket straggled down to the opposite bank of the stream on both sides of the road.

The horse splashed through the ford and took the little rise beyond with a rush. Just before reaching the brow of the hill, the animal stumbled and fell. As its rider went headlong, he caught a glimpse of a cord drawn taut across the path.

Macdonald, shaken by the fall, began slowly to rise. From the shadows of the bilberry bushes two stooping figures rushed at him. He threw up an arm to ward off the club aimed at his head, but succeeded only in breaking the force of the blow. As he staggered back, stunned, a bullet glanced along his forehead and ridged a furrow through the thick hair. A second stroke of the club jarred him to the heels.

Though his mind was not clear, his body answered automatically the instinct that told him to close with his assailants. He lurched forward and gripped one, wrestling with him for the revolver. Vaguely he knew by the sharp, jagged shoots of pain that the second man was beating his head with a club. The warm blood dripped through his hair and blinded his eyes. Dazed and shaken, he yet managed to get the revolver from the man who had it. But it was his last effort. He was too far gone to use it. A blow on the forehead brought him unconscious to the ground bleeding from a dozen wounds.

On his way back from Seven-Mile Creek Camp Gordon Elliot rode down to the ford. In the dusk he was almost upon them before the robbers heard him. For a moment the two men stood gazing at him and he at the tragedy before him. One of the men moved toward his horse.

"Stop there!" ordered Gordon sharply, and he reached for his revolver.

The man--it was the miner Northrup--jumped for Elliot and the field agent fired. Another moment, and he was being dragged from the saddle. What happened next was never clear to him. He knew that both of the bandits closed in on him and that he was fighting desperately against odds. The revolver had been knocked from his hand and he fought with bare fists just as they did. Twice he emptied his lungs in a cry for help.

They quartered over the ground, for Gordon would not let either of them get behind him. They were larger than he, heavy, muscle-bound giants of great strength, but he was far more active on his feet. He jabbed and sidestepped and retreated. More than once their heavy blows crashed home on his face. His eyes dared not wander from them for an instant, but he was working toward a definite plan. As he moved, his feet were searching for the automatic he had dropped.

One of his feet, dragging over the ground, came into contact with the steel. With a swift side kick Gordon flung the weapon a dozen feet to the left. Presently, watching his chance, he made a dive for it.

Trelawney, followed by Northrup, turned and ran. One of them caught Macdonald's horse by the bridle. He swung to the saddle and the other man clambered on behind. There was a clatter of hoofs and they were gone.

Elliot stooped over the battered body that lay huddled at the edge of the water. The man was either dead or unconscious, he was not sure which. So badly had the face been beaten and hammered that it was not until he had washed the blood from the wounds that Gordon recognized Macdonald.

Opening the coat of the insensible man, Gordon put his hand against the heart. He could not be sure whether he felt it beating or whether the throbbing came from the pulses in his finger tips. As well as he could he bound up the wounds with handkerchiefs and stanched the bleeding. With ice-cold water from the stream he drenched the bruised face. A faint sigh quivered through the slack, inert body.

Gordon hoisted Macdonald across the saddle and led the horse through the ford. He walked beside the animal to town, and never had two miles seemed to him so far. With one hand he steadied the helpless body that lay like a sack of flour balanced in the trough of the saddle.

Kusiak at last lay below him, and when he descended the hill to the suburbs almost the first house was the one where the Pagets lived.

Elliot threw the body across his shoulder and walked up the walk to the porch. He kicked upon the door with his foot. Sheba answered the knock, and at sight of what he carried the color faded from her face.

"Macdonald has been hurt--badly," he explained quickly.

"This way," the girl cried, and led him to her own room, hurrying in advance to throw back the bedclothes.

"Get Diane--and a doctor," ordered Gordon after he had laid the unconscious man on the white sheet.

While he and Diane undressed the mine-owner Sheba got a doctor on the telephone. The wounded man opened his eyes after a long time, but there was in them the glaze of delirium. He recognized none of them. He did not know that he was in the house of Peter Paget, that Diane and Sheba and his rival were fighting with the help of the doctor to push back the death that was crowding close upon him. All night he raved, and his delirious talk went back to the wild scenes of his earlier life. Sometimes he swore savagely; again he made quiet deadly threats; but always his talk was crisp and clean and vigorous. Nothing foul or slimy came to the surface in those hours of unconscious babbling.

The doctor had shaken his head when he first saw the wounds. He would make no promises.

"He's a mighty sick man. The cuts are deep, and the hammering must have jarred his brain terribly. If it was anybody but Macdonald, I wouldn't give him a chance," he told Diane when he left in the morning to get breakfast. "But Macdonald has tremendous vitality. Of course if he lives it will be because Mr. Elliot brought him in so soon."

Gordon walked with the doctor as far as the hotel. A brown, thin, leathery man undraped himself from a chair in the lobby when Elliot opened the door. He was officially known as the chief of police of Kusiak. Incidentally he constituted the whole police force. Generally he was referred to as Gopher Jones on account of his habit of spasmodic prospecting.

"I got to put you under arrest, Mr. Elliot," he explained.

The loafers in the hotel drew closer.

"What for?" demanded Gordon, surprised.

"Doc thinks it will run to murder, I reckon."

The field agent was startled. "You mean--Macdonald?"

The brown man chewed his quid steadily. "You done guessed it."

"That's absurd, you know. What evidence have you got?"

"First off, you'd had trouble with him. It was common talk that when you and Mac met, guns were going to pop. You bought an automatic revolver at the Seattle & Kusiak Emporium two days ago. You was seen practising with it."

"He had threatened me."

"You want to be careful what you say, Mr. Elliot. It will be used against you." Gopher shot a squirt of tobacco unerringly at the open door of the stove. "You was seen talking with Trelawney and Northrup. Money passed from you to them."

"I gave them a loan of ten dollars each because they were broke. Is that criminal?" demanded Gordon angrily.

"That's your story. You'll git a chance to tell it to the jury, I shouldn't wonder. Mebbe they'll believe it. You never can tell."

"Believe it! Why, you muttonhead, I found him where he was bleeding to death and brought him in."

"That's what I heard say. Kinder queer, ain't it, you happened to be the man that found him?"

"Nothing queer about it. I was riding in from Seven-Mile Creek Camp." Gordon was exasperated, but not at all alarmed.

"So you was. While you was out at the camp, you asked one of the boys how big the pay-roll would be."

"Does that prove I was planning a hold-up? Isn't that the last thing I would have asked if I had intended robbery?"

"Don't ask me. I ain't no psychologist. All I know is you took an interest in the bank-roll on the way."

"I'm here for the Government investigating Macdonald. I was getting information--earning my pay. Can you understand that?"

Gopher chewed his cud impassively. "Sure I can, and I been earning mine. By the way, howcome you to be beat up so bad, Mr. Elliot?"

"I had a fight with the robbers."

"Sure it wasn't with the robbed. That split lip of yours looks to me plumb like Mac's John Hancock."

Elliot flushed angrily. "Of course if you intend to believe me guilty--"

"Now, there ain't no manner o' use in gettin' het up, young fellow. Mebbe you did it; mebbe you didn't. Anyhow, you'll gimme that gat you been toting these last few days."

Gordon's hand moved toward his hip. Then he remembered.

"I haven't it. I left it--"

"You left it at the ford--with one shell empty. That's where you left it," interrupted the officer.

"Yes. I fired at Northrup as he rushed me."

"Um-hu," assented Jones, impudent unbelief in his eye. "At Northrup or at Macdonald."

"What do you think I did with the money, then? Did I eat it?"

"Not so you could notice it. Since you put it to me flat-foot, you gave it to your pardners. You didn't want it. They did. They have got the horse too--and they're hitting the high spots to make their get-away."

Elliot was locked up in the flimsy jail without breakfast. He was furious, but as he paced up and down the narrow beat beside the bed his anger gave way to anxiety. Surely the Pagets could not believe he had done such a thing. And Sheba--would she accept as true this weight of circumstantial evidence that was piling up against him?

It could all be explained so easily. And yet--the facts fitted like links of a chain to condemn him. He went over them one by one. The babbling tongue of Selfridge that had made common gossip of the impending tragedy in which he and Macdonald were the principals--his purchase of the automatic--his public meeting with two known enemies of the Scotchman, during which he had been seen to give them money--his target practice with the new revolver--the unhappy chance that had taken him out to Seven-Mile Creek Camp the very day of the robbery--his casual questions of the miners--even the finding of the body by him. All of these dovetailed with the hypothesis that his partners in crime were to escape and bear the blame, while he was to bring the body back to town and assume innocence.

Paget was admitted to his cell later in the morning by Gopher Jones. He shook hands with the prisoner. Jones retired.

"Tough luck, Gordon," the engineer said.

"What does Sheba think?" asked the young man quickly.

"We haven't told her you have been arrested. I heard it only a little while ago."

"And Diane?"

"Yes, she knows."

"Well?" demanded Gordon brusquely.

Peter looked at him in questioning surprise. "Well, what?" He caught the meaning of his friend. "Try not to be an ass, Gordon. Of course she knows the charge is ridiculous."

The chip dropped from the young man's shoulder. "Good old Diane. I might have known," he said with a new cheerfulness.

"I think you might have," agreed Peter dryly. "By the way, have you had any breakfast?"

"No. I'm hungry, come to think of it."

"I'll have something sent in from the hotel."

"How's Macdonald?"

"He's alive--and while there's life there is hope."

"Any news of the murderers?" asked Gordon.

"Posses are combing the hills for them. They stole a packhorse from a truck gardener up the valley. It seems they bought an outfit for a month yesterday--said they were going prospecting."

They talked for a few minutes longer, mainly on the question of a lawyer and the chances of getting out on bond. Peter left the prisoner in very much better spirits than he had found him.

CHAPTER XVII

"GOD SAVE YOU KINDLY"

A nurse from the hospital had relieved Diane and Sheba at daybreak. They slept until the middle of the afternoon, then under orders from the doctor walked out to take the air. They were to divide the night watch between them and he said that he wanted them fit for service. The fever of the patient was subsiding. He slept a good deal, and in the intervals between had been once or twice quite rational.

The thoughts of the cousins drew their steps toward the jail. Sheba looked at Diane.

"Will they let us see him, do you think?"

"Perhaps. We can try."

Gopher Jones was not proof against the brisk confidence with which Mrs. Paget demanded admittance. He stroked his unshaven chin while he chewed his quid, then reluctantly got his keys.

The prisoner was sitting on the bed. His heart jumped with gladness when he looked up.

Diane shook hands cheerfully. "How is the criminal?"

"Better for hearing your kind voice," he answered.

His eyes strayed to the ebon-haired girl in the background. They met a troubled smile, grave and sweet.

"Awfully good of you to come to see me," he told Sheba gratefully. "How is Macdonald?"

"Better, we hope. He knew Diane this afternoon."

Mrs. Paget did most of the talking, but Gordon contributed his share. Sheba did not say much, but it seemed to the young man that there was a new tenderness in her manner, the expression of a gentle kindness that went out to him because he needed it. The walk had whipped the color into her cheeks and she bloomed in that squalid cell like a desert rose. There was in the fluent grace of the slender, young body a naïve, virginal sweetness that took him by the throat. He knew that she believed in him and the trouble rolled from his heart like a cold, heavy wave.

"We haven't talked to Mr. Macdonald yet about the attack on him," Diane explained. "But he must have recognized the men. There are many footprints at the ford, showing how they moved over the ground as they fought. So he could not have been unconscious from the first blow."

"Unless they were masked he must have known them. It was light enough," agreed Elliot.

"Peter is still trying to get the officers to accept bail, but I don't think he will succeed. There is a good deal of feeling in town against you."

"Because I am supposed to be an enemy to an open Alaska, I judge."

"Mainly that. Wally Selfridge has been talking a good deal. He takes it for granted that you are guilty. We'll have to wait in patience till Mr. Macdonald speaks and clears you. The doctor won't let us mention the subject to him until he comes to it of his own free will."

Gopher stuck his head in at the door. "You'll have to go, ladies. Time's up."

When Sheba bade the prisoner good-bye it was with a phrase of the old Irish vernacular. "God save you kindly."

He knew the peasant's answer to the wish and gave it. "And you too."

The girl left the prison with a mist in her eyes. Her cousin looked at her with a queer, ironic little smile of affection. To be in trouble was a sure passport to the sympathy of Sheba. Now both her lovers were in a sad way. Diane wondered which of them would gain most from this new twist of fate.

Sheba turned to Mrs. Paget with an impulsive little burst of feminine ferocity. "Why do they put him in prison when they must know he didn't do it--that he couldn't do such a thing?"

"They don't all know as well as you do how noble he is, my dear," answered Diane dryly.

"But it's just absurd to think that he would plan the murder of a man he has broken bread with for a few hundred dollars."

Diane flashed another odd little glance in the direction of her cousin. Probably Sheba was the one woman in Kusiak who did not know that Macdonald had served an ultimatum on Elliot to get out or fight and that their rivalry over her favor was at the bottom of the difficulty between them.

"It will work out all right," promised the older cousin.

Returning from their walk, they met Wally Selfridge coming out of the Paget house.

"Did you see Mr. Macdonald?" asked Diane.

"Yes. He's quite rational now." There was a jaunty little strut of triumph in Wally's cock-sure manner.

Mrs. Paget knew he had made himself very busy securing evidence against Gordon. He was probably trying to curry favor with his chief. The little man always had been jealous of Peter. Perhaps he was attempting to rap him over the shoulder of Elliot because the Government official was a friend of Paget. Just now his insolent voice suggested a special cause for exultation.

The reason Wally was so pleased with himself was that he had dropped a hint into the ear of the wounded man not to clear Elliot of complicity in the attack upon him. The news that the special investigator had been arrested for robbery and attempted murder, flashed all over the United States, would go far to neutralize any report he might make against the validity of the Macdonald claims. If to this could be added later reports of an indictment, a trial, and possibly a conviction, it would not matter two straws what Elliot said in his official statement to the Land Office.

Since the attack upon his chief, Selfridge had moved on the presumption that Elliot had been in a conspiracy to get rid of him. He accepted the guilt of the field agent because this theory jumped with the interest of Wally and his friends. As a politician he intended to play this new development for all it was worth.

He had been shocked at the sight of Macdonald. The terrible beating and the loss of blood had sapped all the splendid, vital strength of the Scotchman. His battered head was swathed in bandages, but the white face was bruised and disfigured. The wounded man was weak as a kitten; only the steady eyes told that he was still strong and unconquered.

"I want to talk business for a minute, Miss Sedgwick. Will you please step out?" said Macdonald to his nurse.

She hesitated. "The doctor says--"

"Do as I say, please."

The nurse left them alone. Wally told the story of the evidence against Elliot in four sentences. His chief caught the point at once.

After Selfridge had gone, the wounded man lay silent thinking out his programme. Not for a moment did he doubt that he was going to live, and his brain was already busy planning for the future. By some freak of luck the cards had been stacked by destiny in his favor. He knew now that in the violence of his anger against Elliot he had made a mistake. To have killed his rival would have been fatal to the Kamatlah coal claims, would have alienated his best friends, and would have prejudiced hopelessly his chances with Sheba. Fate had been kind to him. He had been in the wrong and it had put him in the right. By the same cut of the cards young Elliot had been thrust down from an impregnable position to one in which he was a discredited suspect. With all this evidence to show that he had conspired against Macdonald, his report to the Department would be labor lost.

Diane came into the sick-room stripping her gloves after the walk. Macdonald smiled feebly at her and fired the first shot of his campaign to defeat the enemy.

"Has Elliot been captured yet?" he asked weakly.

The keen eyes of his hostess fastened upon him. "Captured! What do you mean? It was Gordon Elliot that brought you in and saved your life."

"Brought me from where?"

"From where he found you unconscious--at the ford."

"That's his story, is it?"

Macdonald shut his eyes wearily, but his incredulous voice had suggested a world of innuendo.

The young woman stood with her gloves crushed tight in both hands. It was her nature to be always a partisan. Without any reserve she was for Gordon in this new fight upon him. What had Wally Selfridge been saying to Macdonald? She longed mightily to ask the sick man some questions, but the orders of the doctor were explicit. Did the mine-owner mean to suggest that he had identified Elliot as one of his assailants? The thing was preposterous.

And yet--that was plainly what he had meant to imply. If he told such a story, things would go hard with Gordon. In court it would clinch the case against him by supplying the one missing link in the chain of circumstantial evidence.

Diane, in deep thought, frowned down upon the wounded man, who seemed already to have fallen into a light sleep. She told herself that this was some of Wally Selfridge's deviltry. Anyhow, she would talk it over with Peter.

CHAPTER XVIII

GORDON SPENDS A BUSY EVENING

Paget smoked placidly, but the heart within him was troubled. It looked as if Selfridge had made up his mind to frame Gordon for a prison sentence. The worst of it was that he need not invent any evidence or take any chances. If Macdonald came through on the stand with an identification of Elliot as one of his assailants, the young man would go down the river to serve time. There was enough corroborative testimony to convict St. Peter himself.

It all rested with Macdonald--and the big Scotch-Canadian was a very uncertain quantity. His whole interests were at one in favor of getting Elliot out of the way. On the other hand--how far would he go to save the Kamatlah claims and to remove this good-looking rival from his path? Peter could not think he would stoop to perjury against an innocent man.

"I'm just telling you what he said," Diane explained. "And it worried me. His smile was cynical. I couldn't help thinking that if he wants to get even with Gordon--"

Mrs. Paget stopped. The maid had just brought into the room a visitor. Diane moved forward and shook hands with him. "How do you do, Mr. Strong? Take this big chair."

Hanford Strong accepted the chair and a cigar. Though a well-to-do mine-owner, he wore as always the rough clothes of a prospector. He came promptly to the object of his call.

"I don't know whether this is where I should have come or not. Are you folks for young Elliot or are you for Selfridge?" he demanded.

"If you put it that way, we're for Elliot," smiled Peter.

"All right. Let me put it another way. You work for Mac. Are you on his side or on Elliot's in this matter of the coal claims?"

Diane looked at Peter. He took his time to answer.

"We hope the coal claimants will win, but we've got sense enough to see that Gordon is in here to report the facts. That's what he is paid for. He'll tell the truth as he sees it. If his superior officers decide on those facts against Macdonald, I don't see that Elliot is to blame."

"That's how it looks to me," agreed Strong. "I'm for a wide-open Alaska, but that don't make it right to put this young fellow through for a crime he didn't do. Lots of folks think he did it. That's all right. I know he didn't. Fact is, I like him. He's square. So I've come to tell you something."

He smoked for a minute silently before he continued.

"I've got no evidence in his favor, but I bumped into something a little while ago that didn't look good to me. You know I room next him at the hotel. I heard a noise in his room, and I thought that was funny, seeing as he was locked up in jail. So I kinder listened and heard whispers and the sound of some one moving about. There's a door between his room and mine that is kept locked. I looked through the keyhole, and in Elliot's room there was Wally Selfridge and another man. They were looking through papers at the desk. Wally put a stack of them in his pocket and they went out locking the door behind them."

"They had no business doing that," burst out Diane. "Wally Selfridge isn't an officer of the law."

Strong nodded dryly to her. "Just what I thought. So I followed them. They went to Macdonald's offices. After awhile Wally came out and left the other man there. Then presently the lights went out. The man is camped there for the night. Will you tell me why?"

"Why?" repeated Diane with her sharp eyes on the miner.

"Because Wally has some papers there he don't want to get away from him."

"Some of Gordon's papers, of course."

"You've said it."

"All his notes and evidence in the case of the coal claims probably," contributed Peter.

"Maybe. Wally has stole them, but he hasn't nerve enough to burn them till he gets orders from Mac. So he's holding them safe at the office," guessed Strong.

"It's an outrage," Diane decided promptly.

"Surest thing you know. Wally has fixed it to frame him for prison and to play safe about his evidence on the coal claims."

"What are you going to do about it?" Diane asked her husband sharply.

Peter rose. "First I'm going to see Gordon and hear what he has to say. Come on, Strong. We may be gone quite a while, Diane. Don't wait up for me if you get through your stint of nursing."

Roused from sleep, Gopher Jones grumbled a good deal about letting the men see his prisoner. "You got all day, ain't you, without traipsing around here nights. Don't you figure I'm entitled to any rest?"

But he let them into the ramshackle building that served as a jail, and after three dollars had jingled in the palm of his hand he stepped outside and left the men alone with his prisoner. The three put their heads together and whispered.

"I'll meet you outside the house of Selfridge in half an hour, Strong," was the last thing that Gordon said before Jones came back to order out the visitors.

As soon as the place was dark again, Gordon set to work on the flimsy framework of his cell window. He knew already it was so decrepit that he could escape any time he desired, but until now there had been no reason why he should. Within a quarter of an hour he lifted the iron-grilled sash bodily from the frame and crawled through the window.

He found Paget and Strong waiting for him in the shadows of a pine outside the yard of Selfridge.

"To begin with, you walk straight home and go to bed, Peter," the young man announced. "You're not in this. You're not invited to our party. I don't have to tell you why, do I?"

The engineer understood the reason. He was an employee of Macdonald, a man thoroughly trusted by him. Even though Gordon intended only to right a wrong, it was better that Paget should not be a party to it. Reluctantly Peter went home.

Gordon turned to Strong. "I owe you a lot already. There's no need for you to run a risk of getting into trouble for me. If things break right, I can do what I have to do without help."

"And if they don't?" Strong waved an impatient hand. "Cut it out, Elliot. I've taken a fancy to go through with this. I never did like Selfridge anyhow, and I ain't got a wife and I don't work for Mac. Why the hell shouldn't I have some fun?"

Gordon shrugged his shoulders. "All right. Might as well play ball and get things moving, then."

The little miner knocked at the door. Wally himself opened. Elliot, from the shelter of the pine, saw the two men in talk. Selfridge shut the door and came to the edge of the porch. He gave a gasp and his hands went trembling into the air. The six-gun of the miner had been pressed hard against his fat paunch. Under curt orders he moved down the steps and out of the yard to the tree.

At sight of Gordon the eyes of Wally stood out in amazement. Little sweat beads burst out on his forehead, for he remembered how busy he had been collecting evidence against this man.

"W-w-what do you want?" he asked.

"Got your keys with you?"

"Y-yes."

"Come with us."

Wally breathed more freely. For a moment he had thought this man had come to take summary vengeance on him.

They led him by alleys and back streets to the office of the Macdonald Yukon Trading Company. Under orders he knocked on the door and called out who he was. Gordon crouched close to the log wall, Strong behind him.

"Let me in, Olson," ordered Selfridge again.

The door opened, and a man stood on the threshold. Elliot was on top of him like a panther. The man went down as though his knees were oiled hinges. Before he could gather his slow wits, the barrel of a revolver was shoved against his teeth.

"Take it easy, Olson," advised Gordon. "Get up--slowly. Now, step back into the office. Keep your hands up."

Strong closed and locked the door behind them.

"I want my papers, Selfridge. Dig up your keys and get them for me," Elliot commanded.

Wally did not need any keys. He knew the combination of the safe and opened it. From an inner drawer he drew a bunch of papers. Gordon looked them over carefully. Strong sat on a table and toyed with a revolver which he jammed playfully into the stomach of his fat prisoner.

"All here," announced the field agent.

The safe-robbers locked their prisoners in the office and disappeared into the night. They stopped at the house of the collector of customs, a genial young fellow with whom Elliot had played tennis a good deal, and left the papers in his hands for safe-keeping. After which they returned to the hotel and reached the second floor by way of the back stairs used by the servants.

Here they parted, each going to his own room. Gordon slept like a schoolboy and woke only when the sun poured through the window upon his bed in a broad ribbon of warm gold.

He got up, bathed, dressed, and went down into the hotel dining-room. The waiters looked at him in amazement. Presently the cook peered in at him from the kitchen and the clerk made an excuse to drop into the room. Gordon ate as if nothing were the matter, apparently unaware of the excitement he was causing. He paid not the least attention to the nudging and the whispering. After he had finished breakfast, he lit a cigar, leaned back in his chair, and smoked placidly.

Presently an eruption of men poured into the room. At the head of them was Gopher Jones. Near the rear Wally Selfridge lingered modestly. He was not looking for hazardous adventure.

"Whad you doing here?" demanded Gopher, bristling up to Elliot.

The young man watched a smoke wreath float ceilingward before he turned his mild gaze on the chief of police.

"I'm smoking."

"Don't you know we just got in from hunting you--two posses of us been out all night?" Gopher glared savagely at the smoker.

Gordon looked distressed. "That's too bad. There's a telephone in my room, too. Why didn't you call up? I've been there all night."

"The deuce you have," exploded Jones. "And us combing the hills for you. Young man, you're mighty smart. But I want to tell you that you'll pay for this."

"Did you want me for anything in particular--or just to get up a poker game?" asked Elliot suavely.

The leader of the posse gave himself to a job of scientific profanity. He was spurred on to outdo himself because he had heard a titter or two behind him. When he had finished, he formed a procession. He, with Elliot hand-cuffed beside him, was at the head of it. It marched to the jail.

CHAPTER XIX

SHEBA DOES NOT THINK SO

The fingers of Sheba were busy with the embroidery upon which she worked, but her thoughts were full of the man who lay asleep on the lounge. His strong body lay at ease, relaxed.

Already health was flowing back into his veins. Beneath the tan of the lean, muscular cheeks a warmer color was beginning to creep. Soon he would be about again, vigorous and forceful, striding over obstacles to the goal he had set himself.

Just now she was the chief goal of his desire. Sheba did not deceive herself into thinking that he had for a moment accepted her dismissal of him.

He still meant to marry her, and he had told her so in characteristic way the day after their break.

Sheba had sent him a check for the amount he had paid her and had refused to see him or anybody else.

Shamed and humiliated, she had kept to her room. The check had come back to her by mail.

Across the face of it he had written in his strong handwriting:--

I don't welsh on my bets. You can't give to me what is not mine.

Do not think for an instant that I shall not marry you.

Watching him now, she wondered what manner of man he was. There had been a day or two when she had thought she understood him. Then she had learned, from the story of Meteetse, how far his world of thought was from hers. That which to her had put a gulf between them was to him only an incident.

She moved to adjust a window blind and when she returned found that his steady eyes were fixed upon her.

"You're getting better fast," she said.

"Yes."

The girl had a favor to ask of him and lest her courage fail she plunged into it.

"Mr. Macdonald, if you say the word Mr. Elliot will be released on bail. I am thinking you will be so good as to say it."

His narrowed eyes held a cold glitter. "Why?"

"You must know he is innocent. You must--"

"I know only what the evidence shows," he cut in, warily on his guard. "He may or may not have been one of my attackers. From the first blow I was dazed. But everything points to it that he hired--"

"Oh, no!" interrupted the Irish girl, her dark eyes shining softly. "The way of it is that he saved your life, that he fought for you, and that he is in prison because of it."

"If that is true, why doesn't he bring some proof of it?"

"Proof!" she cried scornfully. "Between friends--"

"He's no friend of mine. The man is a meddler. I despise him."

The scarlet flooded her cheeks. "And I am liking him very, very much," she flung back stanchly.

Macdonald looked up at the vivid, flushed face and found it wholly charming. He liked her none the less because her fine eyes were hot and defiant in behalf of his rival.

"Very well," he smiled. "I'll get him out if you'll do me a good turn too."

"Thank you. It's a bargain."

"Then sing to me."

She moved to the piano. "What shall I sing?"

"Sing 'Divided.'"

The long lashes veiled her soft eyes while she considered. In a way he had tricked her into singing for him a love-song she did not want to sing. But she made no protest. Swiftly she turned and slid along the bench. Her fingers touched the keys and she began.

He watched the beauty and warmth of her dainty youth with eyes that mirrored the hunger of his heart. How buoyantly she carried her dusky little head! With what a gallant spirit she did all things! He was usually a frank pagan, but when he was with her it seemed to him that God spoke through her personality all sorts of brave, fine promises.

Sheba paid her pledge in full. After the first two stanzas were finished she sang the last ones as well:--

"An' what about the wather when I'd have ould Paddy's boat, Is it me that would be feared to grip the oars an' go afloat? Oh, I could find him by the light of sun or moon or star: But there's caulder things than salt waves between us, so they are. Och anee!

"Sure well I know he'll never have the heart to come to me, An' love is wild as any wave that wanders on the sea, 'Tis the same if he is near me, 'tis the same if he is far: His thoughts are hard an' ever hard between us, so they are. Och anee!"

Her hands dropped from the keys and she turned slowly on the end of the seat. The dark lashes fell to her hot cheeks. He did not speak, but she felt the steady insistence of his gaze. In self-defense she looked at him.

The pallor of his face lent accent to the fire that smouldered in his eyes.

"I'm going to marry you, Sheba. Make up your mind to that, girl," he said harshly.

There was infinite pity in the look she gave him. "'There's caulder things than salt waves between us, so they are,'" she quoted.

"Not if I love you and you love me. By God, I trample down everything that comes between us."

He swung to a sitting position on the lounge. Through the steel-gray eyes in the brooding face his masterful spirit wrestled with hers. A lean-loined Samson, with broad, powerful shoulders and deep chest, he dominated his world ruthlessly. But this slim Irish girl with the young, lissom body held her own.

"Must we go through that again?" she asked gently.

"Again and again until you see reason."

She knew the tremendous driving power of the man and she was afraid in her heart that he would sweep her from the moorings to which she clung.

"There is something else I haven't told you." The embarrassed lashes lifted bravely from the flushed cheeks to meet steadily his look. "I don't think--that I--care for you. 'Tis I that am shamed at my--fickleness. But I don't--not with the full of my heart."

His bold, possessive eyes yielded no fraction of all they claimed. "Time enough for that, Sheba. Truth is that you're afraid to let yourself love me. You're worried because you can't measure me by the little two-by-four foot-rule you brought from Ireland with you."

Sheba nodded her dusky little head in naïve candor. "I think there will be some truth in that, Mr. Macdonald. You're lawless, you know."

"I'm a law to myself, if that's what you mean. It is my business to help hammer out an empire in this Northland. If I let my work be cluttered up by all the little rules made by little men for other little ones, my plans would come to a standstill. I am a practical man, but I keep sight of the vision. No need for me to brag. What I have done speaks for me as a guidepost to what I mean to do."

"I know," the girl admitted with the impetuous generosity of her race. "I hear it from everybody. You have built towns and railroads and developed mines and carried the twentieth century into new outposts. You have given work to thousands. But you go so fast I can't keep step with you. I am one of the little folks for whom laws were made."

"Then I'll make a new code for you," he said, smiling. "Just do as I say and everything will come out right."

Faintly her smile met his. "My grandmother might have agreed to that. But we live in a new world for women. They have to make their own decisions. I suppose that is a part of the penalty we pay for freedom."

Diane came into the room and Macdonald turned to her.

"I have just been telling Sheba that I am going to marry her--that there is no escape for her. She had better get used to the idea that I intend to make her happy."

The older cousin glanced at Sheba and laughed with a touch of embarrassment. "Whether she wants to be happy or not, O Cave Man?"

"I'm going to make her want to."

Sheba fled, but from the door she flung back her challenge. "I don't think so."

CHAPTER XX

GORDON FINDS HIMSELF UNPOPULAR

Macdonald kept his word to Sheba. He used his influence to get Elliot released, and with a touch of cynicism quite characteristic went on the bond of his rival. An information was filed against the field agent of the Land Department for highway robbery and attempted murder, but Gordon went about his business just as if he were not under a cloud.

None the less, he walked the streets a marked man. Women and children looked at him curiously and whispered as he passed. The sullen, hostile eyes of miners measured him silently. He was aware that feeling had focused against him with surprising intensity of resentment, and he suspected that the whispers of Wally Selfridge were largely responsible for this.

For Wally saw to it that in the minds of the miners Elliot in his own person stood for the enemies of the open-Alaska policy. He scattered broadcast garbled extracts from the first preliminary report of the field agent, and in the coal camps he spread the impression that the whole mining activities of the Territory would be curtailed if Elliot had his way.

In the States the fight between the coal claimants and their foes was growing more bitter. The muckrakers were busy, and the sentiment outside had settled so definitely against granting the patents that the National Administration might at any time jettison Macdonald and his backers as a sop to public opinion.

It was not hard for Gordon to guess how unpopular he was, but he did not let this interfere with his activities. He moved to and fro among the mining camps with absolute disregard of the growing hatred against him.

Paget came to him at last with a warning.

"What's this I hear about you being almost killed up on Bonanza?" Peter wanted to know.

"Down in the None Such Mine, you mean? It did seem to be raining hammers as I went down the shaft," admitted his friend.

"Were the hammers dropped on purpose?"

Gordon looked at him with a grim smile. "Your guess is just as good as mine, Peter. What do you think?"

Peter answered seriously. "I think it isn't safe for you to take the chances you do, Gordon. I find a wrong impression about you prevalent among the men. They are blaming you for stirring up all this trouble on the outside, and they are worried for fear the mines may close and they will lose their jobs. I tell you that they are in a dangerous mood."

"Sorry, but I can't help that."

"You can stay around town and not go out alone nights, can't you?"

"I dare say I can, but I'm not going to."

"Some of these men are violent. They don't think straight about you--"

"Kindness of Mr. Selfridge," contributed Gordon.

"Perhaps. Anyhow, there's a lot of sullen hate brewing against you. Don't invite an explosion. That would be just kid foolhardiness."

"You think I'd better buy another automatic gat," said Elliot with a grin.

"I think you had better use a little sense, Gordon. I dare say I am exaggerating the danger. But when you go around with that jaunty, devil-may-care way of yours, the men think you are looking for trouble--and you're likely to get it."

"Am I?"

"I know what I'm talking about. Nine out of ten of the men think you tried to murder Macdonald after you had robbed him and that your nerve weakened on the job. This seems to some of the most lawless to give them a moral right to put you out of the way. Anyhow, it is a kind of justification, according to their point of view. I'm not defending it, of course. I'm telling you so that you can appreciate your danger."

"You have done your duty, then, Peter."

"But you don't intend to take my advice?"

"I'll tell you what I told you last time when you warned me. I'm going through with the job I've been hired to do, just as you would stick it out in my place. I don't think I'm in much danger. Men in general are law-abiding. They growl, but they don't go as far as murder."

Peter gave him up. After all, the chances were that Gordon was right. Alaska was not a lawless country. And it might be that the best way to escape peril was to walk through it with a grin as if it did not exist.

The next issue of the Kusiak "Sun" contained a bitter editorial attack upon Elliot. The occasion for it was a press dispatch from Washington to the effect that the pressure of public opinion had become so strong that Winton, Commissioner of the General Land Office, might be forced to resign his place. This was a blow to the coal claimants, and the "Sun" charged in vitriolic language that the reports of Elliot were to blame. He was, the newspaper claimed, an enemy to all those who had come to Alaska to earn an honest living there. Under indictment for attempted murder and for highway robbery, this man was not satisfied with having tried to kill from ambush the best friend Alaska had ever known. In every report that he sent to Washington he was dealing underhanded blows at the prosperity of Alaska. He was a snake in the grass, and as such every decent man ought to hold him in scorn.

Elliot read this just as he was leaving for the Willow Creek Camp. He thrust the paper impatiently into his coat pocket and swung to the saddle. Why did they persecute him? He had told nothing but the truth, nothing not required of him by the simplest, elemental honesty. Yet he was treated as an outcast and a criminal. The injustice of it was beginning to rankle.

He was temperamentally an optimist, but depression rode with him to the gold camp and did not lift from his spirits till he started back next day for Kusiak. The news had been flashed by wire all over the United States that he was a crook. His friends and relatives could give no adequate answer to the fact that an indictment hung over his head. In Alaska he was already convicted by public opinion. Even the Pagets were lined up as to their interests with Macdonald. Sheba liked him and believed in him. Her loyal heart acquitted him of all blame. But it was to the wooing of his enemy that she had listened rather than to his. The big Scotchman had run against a barrier, but his rival expected him to trample it down. He would wear away the scruples of Sheba by the pressure of his masterful will.

In the late afternoon, while Gordon was still fifteen miles from Kusiak, his horse fell lame. He led it limping to the cabin of some miners.

There were three of them, and they had been drinking heavily from a jug of whiskey left earlier in the day by the stage-driver. Gordon was in two minds whether to accept their surly permission to stay for the night, but the lameness of his horse decided him.

Not caring to invite their hostility, he gave his name as Gordon instead of Elliot. He was to learn within the hour that this was mistake number two.

From a pocket of the coat he had thrown on a bed protruded the newspaper Gordon had brought from Kusiak. One of the men, a big red-headed fellow, pulled it out and began sulkily to read.

While he read the other two bickered and drank and snarled at each other. All three of the men were in that stage of drunkenness when a quarrel is likely to flare up at a moment's notice.

"Listen here," demanded the man with the newspaper. "Tell you what, boys, I'm going to wring the neck of that pussyfooting spy Elliot if I ever get a chanct."

He read aloud the editorial in the "Sun." After he had finished, the others joined him in a chorus of curses.

"I always did hate a spy--and this one's a murderer too. Why don't some one fill his hide with lead?" one of the men wanted to know.

Redhead was sitting at the table. He thumped a heavy fist down so hard that the tin cups jumped. "Gimme a crack at him and I'll show you, by God."

A shadow fell across the room. In the doorway stood a newcomer. Gordon had a sensation as if a lump of ice had been drawn down his spine. For the man who had just come in was Big Bill Macy, and he was looking at the field agent with eyes in which amazement, anger, and triumph blazed.

"I'm glad to death to meet up with you again, Mr. Elliot," he jeered. "Seems like old times on Wild-Goose."

"Whad you say his name is?" cut in the man with the newspaper.

"Hasn't he introduced himself, boys?" Macy answered with a cruel grin. "Now, ain't that modest of him? You lads are entertaining that well-known deteckative and spy Gordon Elliot, that renowned king of hold-ups--"

The red-headed man interrupted with a howl of rage. "If you're telling it straight, Bill Macy, I'll learn him to spy on me."

Elliot was sitting on one of the beds. He had not moved an inch since Macy had appeared, but the brain behind his live eyes was taking stock of the situation. Big Bill blocked the doorway. The table was in front of the window. Unless he could fight his way out, there was no escape for him. He was trapped.

Quietly Gordon looked from one to another. He read no hope in the eyes of any.

"I'm not spying on you. My horse is lame. You can see that for yourself. All I asked was a night's lodging."

"Under another name than your own, you damned sneak."

The field agent did not understand the fury of the man, because he did not know that these miners were working the claim under a defective title and that they had jumped to the conclusion that he had come to get evidence against them. But he knew that never in his life had he been in a tighter hole. In another minute they would attack him. Whether it would run to murder he could not tell. At the best he would be hammered helpless.

But no evidence of this knowledge appeared in his manner.

"I didn't give my last name because there is a prejudice against me in this country," he explained in an even voice.

He wondered as he spoke if he had better try to fling himself through the window sash. There might be a remote chance that he could make it.

The miner at the table killed this possibility by rising and standing squarely in the road.

"Look out! He's got a gat," warned Macy.

Gordon fervently wished he had. But he was unarmed. While his eyes quested for a weapon he played for time.

"You can't get away with this, you know. The United States Government is back of me. It's known I left the Willow Creek Camp. I'll be traced here."

Through Gordon's mind there flashed a word of advice once given him by a professional prize-fighter: "If you get in a rough house, don't wait for the other fellow to hit first."

They were crouching for the attack. In another moment they would be upon him. Almost with one motion he stooped, snatched up by the leg a heavy stool, and sprang to the bed upon which he had been sitting.

The four men closed with him in a rush. They came at him low, their heads protected by uplifted arms. His memory brought to him a picture of the whitewashed gridiron of a football field, and in it he saw a vision of safety.

The stool crashed down upon Big Bill Macy's head. Gordon hurdled the crumpling figure, plunged between hands outstretched to seize him, and over the table went through the window, taking the flimsy sash with him.

CHAPTER XXI

A NEW WAY OF LEAVING A HOUSE

The surge of disgust with which Sheba had broken her engagement to marry Macdonald ebbed away as the weeks passed. It was impossible for her to wait upon him in his illness and hold any repugnance toward this big, elemental man. The thing he had done might be wrong, but the very openness and frankness of his relation to Meteetse redeemed it from shame. He was neither a profligate nor a squawman.

This was Diane's point of view, and in time it became to a certain extent that of Sheba. One takes on the color of one's environment, and the girl from Drogheda knew in her heart that Meteetse and Colmac were no longer the real barriers that stood between her and the Alaskan. She had been disillusioned, saw him more clearly; and though she still recognized the quality of bigness that set him apart, her spirit did not now do such complete homage to it. More and more her thoughts contrasted him with another man.

Macdonald did not need to be told that he had lost ground, but with the dogged determination that had carried him to success he refused to accept the verdict. She was a woman, therefore to be won. The habit of victory was so strong in him that he could see no alternative.

He embarrassed her with his downright attentions, hemmed her in with courtesies she could not evade. If she appealed to her cousin, Diane only laughed.

"My dear, you might as well make up your mind to him. He is going to marry you, willy-nilly."

Sheba herself began to be afraid he would. There was something dominant and masterful about the man that swept opposition aside. He had a way of getting what he wanted.

The motor-car picnic to the Willow Creek Camp was a case in point. Sheba did not want to go, but she went. She would much rather have sat in the rear seat with Diane,--at least, she persuaded herself that she would,--yet she occupied the place beside Macdonald in front. The girl was a rebel. Still, in her heart, she was not wholly reluctant. He made a strong appeal to her imagination. She felt that it would have been impossible for any girl to be indifferent to the wooing of such a man.

The picnic was a success. Macdonald was an outdoor man rather than a parlor one. He took charge of the luncheon, lit the fire, and cooked the coffee without the least waste of effort. In his shirt-sleeves, the neck open at the throat, he looked the embodiment of masculine vigor. Diane could not help mentioning it to her cousin.

"Isn't he a splendid human animal?"

Sheba nodded. "He's wonderful."

"If I were a little Irish colleen and he had done me the honor to care for me, I'd have fallen fathoms deep in love with him."

The Irish colleen's eyes grew reflective. "Not if you had seen Peter first, Di. There's nothing reasonable about a girl, I do believe. She loves--or else she just doesn't."

Diane fired a question at her point-blank. "Have you met your Peter? Is that why you hang back?"

The color flamed into Sheba's face. "Of course not. You do say the most outrageous things, Di."

They had driven to Willow Creek over the river road. They returned by way of the hills. Macdonald drew up in front of a cabin to fill the radiator.

He stood listening beside the car, the water bucket in his hand. Something unusual was going on inside the house. There came the sound of a thud, of a groan, and then the crash of breaking glass. The whole window frame seemed to leap from the side of the house. The head and shoulders of a man projected through the broken glass.

The man swept himself free of the débris and started to run. Instantly he pulled up in his stride, as amazed to see those in the car as they were to see him.

"Gordon!" cried Diane.

Out of the house poured a rush of men. They too pulled up abruptly at sight of Macdonald and his guests.

A sardonic mirth gleamed in the eyes of the Scotchman. "Do you always come out of a house through the wall, Mr. Elliot?" he asked.

"Only when I'm in a hurry." Gordon pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at some glass-cuts on his face.

"Don't let us detain you," said the Alaskan satirically. "We'll excuse you, since you must go."

"I'm not in such a hurry now. In fact, if you're going to Kusiak, I think I'll ask you for a lift," returned the field agent coolly.

"And your friends-in-a-hurry--do they want a lift too?"

Big Bill Macy came swaying forward, both hands to his bleeding head. "He's a spy, curse him. And he tried to kill me."

"Did he?" commented Macdonald evenly. "What were you doing to him?"

"He can't sneak around our claim under a false name," growled one of the miners. "We'll beat his damn head off."

"I've had notions like that myself sometimes," assented the big Scotchman. "But I think we had all better leave Mr. Elliot to the law. He has Uncle Sam back of him in his spying, and none of us are big enough to buck the Government." Crisply Macdonald spoke to Gordon, turning upon him cold, hostile eyes. "Get in if you're going to."

Elliot met him eye to eye. "I've changed my mind. I'm going to walk."

"That's up to you."

Gordon shook hands with Diane and Sheba, went into the house for his coat, and walked to the stable. He brought out his horse and turned it loose, then took the road himself for Kusiak.

A couple of miles out the car passed him trudging townward. As they flashed down the road he waved a cheerful and nonchalant greeting.

Sheba had been full of gayety and life, but her mood was changed. All the way home she was strangely silent.

CHAPTER XXII

GID HOLT COMES TO KUSIAK

The days grew short. In sporting circles the talk was no longer of the midnight Fourth of July baseball game, but of preparation for the Alaska Sweepstakes, since the shadow of the cold Arctic winter had crept down to the Yukon and touched its waters to stillness. Men, gathered around warm stoves, spoke of the merits of huskies and Siberian wolf-hounds, of the heavy fall of snow in the hills, of the overhauling of outfits and the transportation of supplies to distant camps.

The last river boat before the freeze-up had long since gone. A month earlier the same steamer had taken down in a mail sack the preliminary report of Elliot to his department chief. One of the passengers on that trip had been Selfridge, sent out to counteract the influence of the evidence against the claimants submitted by the field agent. An information had been filed against Gordon for highway robbery and attempted murder. Wally was to see that the damning facts against him were brought to the attention of officials in high places where the charges would do most good. The details of the story were to be held in reserve for publicity in case the muckrake magazines should try to make capital of the report of Elliot.

Kusiak found much time for gossip during the long nights. It knew that Macdonald had gone on the bond of Elliot in spite of the scornful protest of the younger man. The two gave each other chilly nods of greeting when they met, but friends were careful not to invite them to the same social affairs. The case against the field agent was pending. Pursuit of the miners who had robbed the big mine-owner had long ago been dropped. Somewhere in the North the outlaws lay hidden, swallowed up by the great white waste of snow.

The general opinion was that Mac was playing politics about the trial of his rival. He would not let the case come to a jury until the time when a conviction would have most effect in the States, the gossips predicted. They did not know that he was waiting for the return of Wally Selfridge.

The whispers touched closely the personal affairs of Macdonald. The report of his engagement to Sheba O'Neill had been denied, but it was noticed that he was a constant guest at the home of the Pagets. Young Elliot called there too. Almost any day one or other of the two men could be seen with Sheba on the street. Those who wanted to take a sporting chance on the issue knew that odds were offered sub rosa at the Pay Streak saloon of three to one on Mac.

As for Sheba, she rebelled impotently at the situation. The mine-owner would not take "No" for an answer. He wooed her with a steady, dominant persistence that shook even her strong, young will. There was something resistless in the way he took her for granted. Gordon Elliot had not mentioned love to her, though there were times when her heart fluttered for fear he would. She did not want any more complications. She wanted to be let alone. So when an invitation came from her little friends the Husteds, signed by all three of the children, asking her to come and visit them at the camp back of Katma, the Irish girl jumped at the chance to escape for a time from the decision being forced upon her.

Sheba pledged her cousin to secrecy until after she had gone, so that Miss O'Neill was able to slip away on the stage unnoticed either by Macdonald or Elliot. The only other passenger was an elderly woman going up to the Katma camp to take a place as cook.

Later on the same day Wally Selfridge, coming in over the ice, reached Kusiak with important news for his chief. He brought with him an order from Winton, Commissioner of the General Land Office, suspending Elliot pending an investigation of the charges against him. The field agent was to forward by mail all documents in his possession and for the time, at least, drop the matter of the coal claims.

Oddly enough, it was to Genevieve Mallory that Macdonald went for consolation when he learned that Sheba had left town. He had always found it very pleasant to drop in for a chat with her, and she saw to it that he met the same friendly welcome now that a rival had annexed his scalp to her slender waist. For Mrs. Mallory did not concede defeat. If the Irish girl could be eliminated, she believed she would yet win.

His hostess laced her fingers behind her beautiful, tawny head, quite well aware that the attitude set off the perfect modeling of the soft, supple body. She looked up at him with a mocking little smile.

"Rumor says that she has run away, my lord. Is it true?"

"Yes. Slipped away on the stage this morning."

"That's a good sign. She was afraid to stay."

It was a part of the fiction between them that Mrs. Mallory was to give him the benefit of her advice in his wooing of her rival. She seemed to take it for granted that he would at last marry Sheba after wearing away the rigid Puritanism of her resentment.

Macdonald had never liked her so well as now. Her point of view was so sane, so reasonable. It asked for no impossible virtues in a man. There was something restful in her genial, derisive understanding of him. She had a silent divination of his moods and ministered indolently to them.

"Do you think so? Ought I to follow her?" he asked.

She showed a row of perfect teeth in a low ripple of amusement. The situation at least was piquant, even though it was at her expense.

"No. Give the girl time. Catch her impulse on the rebound. She'll be bored to death at Katma and she will come back docile."

Her scarlet lips, the long, unbroken lines of the sinuous, opulent body, the challenge of the smouldering eyes, the warmth of her laughter, all invited him to forget the charms of other women. The faint feminine perfume of her was wafted to his brain. He felt a besieging of the blood.

Stepping behind the chair in which she sat, he tilted back the head of lustrous bronze, and very deliberately kissed her on the lips.

For a moment she gave herself to his embrace, then pushed him back, rose, and walked across the room to a little table. With fingers that trembled slightly she lit a cigarette. Sheathed in her close-fitting gown, she made a strong carnal appeal to him, but there was between them, too, a close bond of the spirit. He made no apologies, no explanation.

Presently she turned and looked at him. Only the deeper color beneath her eyes betrayed any excitement.

"Unless I'm a bad prophet you'll get the answer you want when she comes back, Colby."

He thought her reply to his indiscretion superb. It admitted complicity, reproached, warned, and at the same time ignored. Never before had she called him by his given name. He took it as a token of forgiveness and renunciation.

Why was it not Genevieve Mallory that he wanted to marry? It would be the wise thing to do. She would ask nothing of him that he could not give, and she would bring to him many things that he wanted. But he was under the spell of Sheba's innocence, of the mystery of her youth, of the charm she had brought with her from the land of fairies and banshees. The reasonable course made just now not enough appeal to him. He craved the rapture of an impossible adventure into a world wonderful.

The mine-owner carried with him back to his office a sense of the futile irony of life. A score of men would have liked to marry Mrs. Mallory. She had all the sophisticated graces of life and much of the natural charm of an unusually attractive personality. He had only to speak the word to win her, and his fancy had flown in pursuit of a little Puritan with no knowledge of the world.

In front of the Seattle & Kusiak Emporium the Scotchman stopped. A little man who had his back to him was bargaining for a team of huskies. The man turned, and Macdonald recognized him.

"Hello, Gid. Aren't you off your usual beat a bit?" he asked.

The little miner looked him over impudently. "Well--well! If it ain't the Big Mogul himself--and wantin' to know if I've got permission to travel off the reservation."

Macdonald laughed tolerantly. He had that large poise which is not disturbed by the sand stings of life.

"I reckon you travel where you want to, Gid,--same as I do."

"Maybeso. I shouldn't wonder if you'd find out quite soon enough what I'm doing here. You never can tell," the old man retorted with a manner that concealed volumes.

Those who were present remembered the words and in the light of what took place later thought them significant.

"Anyhow, it is quite a social event for Kusiak," Macdonald suggested with a smile of irony.

[Illustration: THE SITUATION AT LEAST WAS PIQUANT, EVEN THOUGH IT WAS AT HER EXPENSE]

Without more words Holt turned back to his bargaining. The big Scotchman went on his way, remembered that he wanted to see the cashier of the bank which he controlled, and promptly forgot that old Gid existed.

The old man concluded his purchase and drove up to the hotel behind one of the best dog teams in Alaska. He had paid one hundred dollars down and was to settle the balance next day.

Gideon asked a question of the porter.

"Second floor. That's his room up there," the man answered, pointing to a window.

"Oh, you, seven--eighteen--ninety-nine," the little miner shouted up.

Elliot appeared at the window. "Well, I'll be hanged! What are you doing here, Old-Timer?"

"Onct I knew a man lived to be a grandpa minding his own business," grinned the little man. "Come down and I'll tell you all about it, boy."

In half a minute Gordon was beside him. After the first greetings the young man nodded toward the dog team.

"How did you persuade Tim Ryan to lend you his huskies?"

"Why don't you take a paper and keep up with the news, son? These huskies don't belong to Tim."

"Meaning that Mr. Gideon Holt is the owner?"

"You've done guessed it," admitted the miner complacently.

He had a right to be proud of the team. It was a famous one even in the North. It had run second for two years in the Alaska Sweepstakes to Macdonald's great Siberian wolf-hounds. The leader Butch was the hero of a dozen races and a hundred savage fights.

"What in Halifax do you want with the team?" asked Elliot, surprised. "The whole outfit must have cost a small fortune."

"Some dust," admitted Gideon proudly. He winked mysteriously at Gordon. "I got a use for this team, if any one was to ask you."

"Haven't taken the Government mail contract, have you?"

"Not so you could notice it. I'll tell you what I want with this team, as the old sayin' is." Holt lowered his voice and narrowed slyly his little beadlike eyes. "I'm going to put a crimp in Colby Macdonald. That's what I aim to do with it."

"How?"

The miner beckoned Elliot closer and whispered in his ear.

CHAPTER XXIII

IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT

While Kusiak slept that night the wind shifted. It came roaring across the range and drove before it great scudding clouds heavily laden with sleety snow. The howling storm snuffed out the moonlight as if it had been a tallow dip and fought and screamed around the peaks, whirling down the gulches with the fury of a blizzard.

From dark till dawn the roar of the wind filled the night. Before morning heavy drifts had wiped out the roads and sheeted the town in virgin white unbroken by trails or furrows.

With the coming of daylight the tempest abated. Kusiak got into its working clothes and dug itself out from the heavy blanket of white that had tucked it in. By noon the business of the town was under way again. That which would have demoralized the activities of a Southern city made little difference to these Arctic Circle dwellers. Roads were cleared, paths shoveled, stores opened. Children in parkas and fur coats trooped to school and studied through the short afternoon by the aid of electric light.

Dusk fell early and with it came a scatter of more snow. Mrs. Selfridge gave a dinner-dance at the club that night and her guests came in furs of great variety and much value. The hostess outdid herself to make the affair the most elaborate of the season. Wally had brought the favors in from Seattle and also the wines. Nobody in Kusiak of any social importance was omitted from the list of invited except Gordon Elliot. Even the grumpy old cashier of Macdonald's bank--an old bachelor who lived by himself in rooms behind those in which the banking was done--was persuaded to break his custom and appear in a rusty old dress suit of the vintage of '95.

The grizzled cashier--his name was Robert Milton--left the clubhouse early for his rooms. It was snowing, but the wind had died down. Contrary to his custom, he had taken two or three glasses of wine. His brain was excited so that he knew he could not sleep. He decided to read "Don Quixote" by the stove for an hour or two. The heat and the reading together would make him drowsy.

Arrived at the bank, he let himself into his rooms and locked the door. He stooped to open the draft of the stove when a sound stopped him halfway. The cashier stood rigid, still crouched, waiting for a repetition of the noise. It came once more--the low, dull rasping of a file.

Shivers ran down the spine of Milton and up the back of his head to the roots of his hair. Somebody was in the bank--at two o'clock in the morning--with tools for burglary. He was a scholarly old fellow, brought up in New England and cast out to the uttermost frontier by the malign tragedy of poverty. Adventure offered no appeal to him. His soul quaked as he waited with slack, feeble muscles upon the discovery that only a locked door stood between him and violent ruffians.

But though his knees trembled beneath him and the sickness of fear was gripping his heart, Robert Milton had in him the dynamic spark that makes a man. He tiptoed to his desk and with shaking fingers gripped the revolver that lay in a drawer.

The cashier stood there for a moment, moistening his dry lips with his tongue and trying to swallow the lump that rose to his throat and threatened to stop his breathing. He braced himself for the plunge, then slowly trod across the room to the inner, locked door. The palsied fingers of his left hand could scarce turn the key.

It seemed to him that the night was alive with the noise he made in turning the lock and opening the door. The hinges grated and the floor squeaked beneath the fall of his foot as he stood at the threshold.

Two men were in front of the wire grating which protected the big safe that filled the alcove to the right. One held a file and the other a candle. Their blank, masked faces were turned toward Milton, and each of them covered him with a weapon.

"W-what are you doing here?" quavered the cashier.

"Drop that gun," came the low, sharp command from one of them.

Under the menace of their revolvers the heart of Milton pumped water instead of blood. The strength oozed out of him. His body swayed and he shut his eyes. A hand groped for the casement of the door to steady him.

"Drop it--quick."

Some old ancestral instinct in the bank cashier rose out of his panic to destroy him. He wanted to lie down quietly in a faint. But his mind asserted its mastery over the weakling body. In spite of his terror, of his flaccid will, he had to keep the faith. He was guardian of the bank funds. At all costs he must protect them.

His forearm came up with a jerk. Two shots rang out almost together. The cashier sagged back against the wall and slowly slid to the floor.

* * * * *

The guests of Mrs. Selfridge danced well into the small hours. The California champagne that Wally had brought in stimulated a gayety that was balm to his wife's soul. She wanted her dinner-dance to be smart, to have the atmosphere she had found in the New York cabarets. If everybody talked at once, she felt they were having a good time. If nobody listened to anybody else, it proved that the affair was a screaming success.

Mrs. Wally was satisfied as she bade her guests good-bye and saw them pass into the heavy snow that was again falling. They all assured her that there had not been so hilarious a party in Kusiak. One old-timer, a trifle lit up by reason of too much hospitality, phrased his enjoyment a little awkwardly.

"It's been great, Mrs. Selfridge. Nothing like it since the days of the open dance hall."

Mrs. Mallory hastily suppressed an internal smile and stepped into the breach. "How do you do it?" she asked her hostess enviously.

"My dear, if you say it was a success--"

"What else could one say?"

Genevieve Mallory always preferred to tell the truth when it would do just as well. Now it did better, since it contributed to her own ironic sense of amusement. Macdonald had once told her that Mrs. Selfridge made him think of the saying, "Monkey sees, monkey does." The effervescent little woman had never had an original idea in her life.

Most of those who had been at the dance slept late. They were oblivious of the fact that the storm had quickened again into a howling gale. Nor did they know the two bits of news that were passing up and down the main street and being telephoned from house to house. One of the items was that the stage for Katma had failed to reach the roadhouse at Smith's Crossing. The message had come over the long-distance telephone early in the morning. The keeper of the roadhouse added his private fears that the stage, crawling up the divide as the blizzard swept down, must have gone astray and its occupants perished. The second bit of news was local. For the first time since Robert Milton had been cashier the bank had failed to open on the dot. The snow had not been cleared from the walk in front and no smoke was pouring from the chimney of the building.

CHAPTER XXIV

MACDONALD FOLLOWS A CLUE

Macdonald was no sluggard. It was his habit not to let the pleasure of the night before interfere with the business of the morning after. But in the darkness he overslept and let the town waken before him. He was roused by the sound of knocking on his door.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"It's me--Jones--Gopher Jones. Say, Mac, the bank ain't open and we can't rouse Milton. Thought I'd come to you, seeing as you're president of the shebang."

The mine-owner got up and began to dress. "Probably overslept, same as I did."

"That's the point. We looked through the window of his bedroom and his bed ain't been slept in."

In three minutes Macdonald joined the marshal and walked down with him to the bank. He unlocked the front door and turned to the little crowd that had gathered.

"Better wait here, boys. Gopher and I will go in. I expect everything is all right, but we'll let you know about that as soon as we find out."

The bank president opened the door, let the officer enter, and followed himself.

The sun had not yet risen and the blinds were down. Macdonald struck a match and held it up. The wood burned and the flame flickered out.

"Bank's been robbed," he announced quietly.

"Looks like," agreed Jones. His voice was uneven with excitement.

The Scotch-Canadian lit another match. In the flare of it they saw that the steel grill cutting off the alcove was open and that the door had been blown from the safe. It lay on the floor among a litter of papers, silver, fragments of steel, and bits of candle.

The marshal clutched at the arm of the banker. "Did you see--that?" he whispered.

His finger pointed through the darkness to the other end of the room. In the faint gray light of coming day Macdonald could see a huddled mass on the floor.

"There has been murder done. I'll get a light. Don't move from here, Jones. I want to look at things before we disturb them. There's no danger. The robbers have been gone for hours."

Gopher had as much nerve as the next man--when the sun was shining and he could see what danger he was facing. But there was something sinister and nerve-racking here. He wanted to throw open the door and shout the news to those outside.

By the light of another match the mine-owner crossed the room into the sitting-room of the cashier. Presently he returned with a lamp and let its light fall upon the figure lying slumped against the wall. A revolver lay close to the inert fingers. The head hung forward grotesquely upon the breast.

The dead man was Milton. His employer saw nothing ridiculous in the twisted neck and sprawling limbs. The cashier had died to save the money entrusted to his care.

Macdonald handed the lamp to the marshal and picked up the revolver. Every chamber was loaded.

"They beat him to it. They were probably here when he reached home. My guess is he heard them right away, got his gun, and came in. He's still wearing his dress suit. That gives us the time, for he left the club about midnight. Soon as they saw him they dropped him. Likely they heard him and were ready. I wouldn't have had this happen for all the money in the safe."

"How much was there in it?"

"I don't know exactly. The books will show. I'll send Wally down to look them over."

"Shot right spang through the heart, looks like," commented Jones, following with his eye the course of the wound.

"Wish I'd been here instead of him," Macdonald said grimly. His eyes softened as he continued to look down at the employee who had paid with his life for his faithfulness. "It wasn't an even break. Poor old fellow! You weren't built for a job like this, Robert Milton, but you played your hand out to a finish. That's all any man can do."

He turned abruptly away and began examining the safe. The silver still stood sacked in one large compartment. The bank-notes had escaped the hurried search of the robbers, but the gold was practically all gone. One sack had been torn by the explosion and single pieces of gold could be found all over the safe.

Macdonald glanced over the papers rapidly. The officer picked up one of dozens scattered over the floor. It was a mortgage note made out to the bank by a miner. He collected the others. Evidently the bandits had torn off the rubber, glanced over one or two to see if they had any cash value, and tossed the package into the air as a disgusted gambler does a pack of cards.

The bank president stepped to the door and threw it open. He explained the situation in three sentences.

"I can't let you in now, boys, until the coroner has been here," he went on to tell the crowd. "But there is one way you can all help. Keep your eyes open. If you have seen any suspicious characters around, let me know. Or if any one has left town in a hurry--or been seen doing anything during the night that you did not understand at the time. Men can't do a thing like this without leaving some clue behind them even though the snow has wiped away their trail."

A man named Fred Tague pushed to the front. He kept a feed corral near the edge of town. "I can tell you one man who mushed out before five o'clock this morning--and that's Gid Holt."

The eyes of Macdonald, cold and hard as jade, fastened to the man. "How do you know?"

"That dog team he bought from Tim Ryan--Well, he's been keeping it in my corral. When I got there this morning it was gone. The snow hadn't wiped out the tracks of the runners yet, so he couldn't have left more than fifteen minutes before."

"What time was it when you reached the corral?"

"Might have been six--maybe a little later."

"You don't know that Holt took the team himself?"

"Come to that, I don't. But he had a key to the barn where the sled was. Holt has been putting up at the hotel. I reckon it is easy to find out if he's still there."

Macdonald's keen brain followed the facts as the nose of a bloodhound does a trail. Holt, an open enemy of his, had reached town only two days before. He had bought one of the best and swiftest dog teams in the North and had let slip before witnesses the remark that Macdonald would soon find out what he wanted with the outfit. The bank had been robbed after midnight. To file open the grill and to blow up the safe must have taken several hours. Before morning the dogs of Holt had taken the trail. If their owner were with them, it was a safe bet that the sled carried forty thousand dollars in Alaska gold dust.

So far the mind of the Scotchman followed the probabilities logically, but at this point it made a jump. There were at least two robbers. He was morally sure of that, for this was not a one-man job. Now, if Holt had with him a companion, who of all those in Kusiak was the most likely man? He was a friendless, crabbed old fellow. Since coming to Kusiak old Gideon had been seen constantly with one man. Together they had driven out the day before and tried his new team. They had been with each other at dinner and had later left the hotel together. The name of the man who had been so friendly with old Holt was Gordon Elliot--and Elliot not only was another enemy of Macdonald, but had very good reasons for getting out of the country just now.

The strong jaw of the mine-owner stood out saliently as he gave short, sharp orders to men in the crowd. One was to get the coroner, a second Wally Selfridge, another the United States District Attorney. He divided the rest into squads to guard the roads leading out of town and to see that nobody passed for the present.

As soon as the men he had sent for arrived, Macdonald went over the scene of the crime with them. It was plain that the dynamiting had been done by an old-time miner who knew his business, but there had been brains in the planning of the robbery.

"There is no ivory above the ears of the man who bossed this job," Macdonald told the others. "He picks a night when we're all at the club, more than half a mile from here, a stormy night when folks are not wandering the streets. He knows that the wind will deaden the sound of the dynamite and that the snow will wipe out any tracks that might help to identify him and his pal or show which way they have gone."

The coroner took charge of the body and Wally of the bank. The mine-owner and the district attorney walked up to the hotel together. As soon as they had explained what they wanted, the landlord got a passkey and took them to the room Holt had used.

Apparently the bed had been slept in. In the waste-paper basket the district attorney found something which he held up in a significant silence. Macdonald stepped forward and took from him a small cloth sack.

"One of those we keep our gold in at the bank," said the Scotchman after a close examination. "This definitely ties up Holt with the robbery. Now for Elliot."

"He left the hotel with Holt about five this morning the porter says." This was the contribution of the landlord.

The room of Gordon Elliot was in great disorder. Garments had been tossed on the bed and on every chair and had been left to lie wherever they had chanced to fall. Plainly their owner had been in great haste.

Macdonald looked through the closet where clothes hung. "His new fur coat is not here--nor his trail boots. Looks to me as though Mr. Gordon had hit the trail with his friend Holt."

This opinion was strengthened when it was learned from a store-owner in town that Holt and Elliot had routed him out of bed in the early morning to sell them two weeks' supplies. These they had packed upon the sled outside the store.

"It's a cinch bet that Elliot took the trail with him," the lawyer conceded.

All doubt of this was removed when a prospector reached town with the news that he had met Holt and Elliot traveling toward the divide as fast as they could drive the dogs.

The big Scotchman ordered his team of Siberian wolf-hounds made ready for the trail. As he donned his heavy furs, Colby Macdonald smiled with deep satisfaction. He had Elliot on the run at last.

Just as he closed the door of his room, Macdonald heard the telephone bell ring. He hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders and strode out into the storm. If he had answered the call he would have learned from Diane, who was at the other end of the line, that the stage upon which Sheba had started for Katma had not reached the roadhouse at Smith's Crossing.

Five minutes later the winners of the great Alaska Sweepstakes were flying down the street in the teeth of the storm. Armed with a rifle and a revolver, their owner was mushing into the hills to bring back the men who had robbed his bank and killed the cashier. He traveled alone because he could go faster without a companion. It never occurred to him that he was not a match for any two men he might face.

CHAPTER XXV

IN THE BLIZZARD

"Swiftwater" Pete, the driver of the stage between Kusiak and Katma, did not like the look of the sky as his ponies breasted the long uphill climb that ended at the pass. It was his habit to grumble. He had been complaining ever since they had started. But as he studied the heavy billows of cloud banked above the peaks and in the saddle between, there was real anxiety in his red, apoplectic face.

"Gittin' her back up for a blizzard, looks like. Doggone it, if that wouldn't jest be my luck," he murmured fretfully.

Sheba hoped there would be one, not, of course, a really, truly blizzard such as Macdonald had told her about, but the tail of a make-believe one, enough to send her glowing with exhilaration into the roadhouse with the happy sense of an adventure achieved. The girl had got out to relieve the horses, and as her young, lissom body took the hill scattering flakes of snow were already flying.

To-day she was buoyed up by a sense of freedom. For a time, at least, she was escaping Macdonald's driving energy, the appeal of Gordon Elliot's warm friendliness, and the unvoiced urging of Diane. Good old Peter and the kiddies were the only ones that let her alone.

She looked back at the horses laboring up the hill. Swiftwater had got down and was urging them forward, his long whip crackling about the ears of the leaders. He waddled as he walked. His fat legs were too short for the round barrel body. A big roll of fat bulged out over the collar of his shirt. Whenever he was excited--and he always was on the least excuse--he puffed and snorted and grew alarmingly purple.

"Fat chance," he exploded as soon as he got within hearing. "Snow in those clouds--tons of it. H'm! And wind. Wow! We're in for an honest-to-God blizzard, sure as you're a foot high."

Swiftwater was worried. He would have liked to turn and run for it. But the last roadhouse was twenty-seven miles back. If the blizzard came howling down the slope they would have a sweet time of it reaching safety. Smith's Crossing was on the other side of the divide, only nine miles away. They would have to worry through somehow. Probably those angry clouds were half a bluff.

The temperature was dropping rapidly. Already snow fell fast in big thick flakes. To make it worse, the wind was beginning to rise. It came in shrill gusts momentarily increasing in force.

The stage-driver knew the signs of old and cursed the luck that had led him to bring the stage. It was to have been the last trip with horses until spring. His dogs were waiting for him at Katma for the return journey. He did not blame himself, for there was no reason to expect such a storm so early in the season. None the less, it was too bad that his lead dog had been ailing when he left the gold camp eight days before.

Miss O'Neill knew that Swiftwater Pete was anxious, and though she was not yet afraid, the girl understood the reason for it. The road ran through the heart of a vast snow-field, the surface of which was being swept by a screaming wind. The air was full of sifted white dust, and the road furrow was rapidly filling. Soon it would be obliterated. Already the horses were panting and struggling as they ploughed forward. Sheba tramped behind the stage-driver and in her tracks walked Mrs. Olson, the other passenger.

Through the muffled scream of the storm Swiftwater shouted back to Sheba. "You wanta keep close to me."

She nodded her head. His order needed no explanation. The world was narrowing to a lane whose walls she could almost touch with her fingers. A pall of white wrapped them. Upon them beat a wind of stinging sleet. Nothing could be seen but the blurred outlines of the stage and the driver's figure.

The bitter cold searched through Sheba's furs to her soft flesh and the blast of powdered ice beat upon her face. The snow was getting deeper as the road filled. Once or twice she stumbled and fell. Her strength ebbed, and the hinges of her knees gave unexpectedly beneath her. How long was it, she asked herself, that Macdonald had said men could live in a blizzard?

Staggering blindly forward, Sheba bumped into the driver. He had drawn up to give the horses a moment's rest before sending them plunging at the snow again.

"No chance," he called into the young woman's ear. "Never make Smith's in the world. Goin' try for miner's cabin up gulch little way."

The team stuck in the drifts, fought through, and was blocked again ten yards beyond. A dozen times the horses gave up, answered the sting of the whip by diving head first at the white banks, and were stopped by fresh snow-combs.

Pete gave up the fight. He began unhitching the horses, while Sheba and Mrs. Olson, clinging to each other's hands, stumbled forward to join him. The words he shouted across the back of a horse were almost lost in the roar of the shrieking wind.

"... heluvatime ... ride ... gulch," Sheba made out.

He flung Mrs. Olson astride one of the wheelers and helped Sheba to the back of the right leader. Swiftwater clambered upon its mate himself.

The girl paid no attention to where they were going. The urge of life was so faint within her that she did not greatly care whether she lived or died. Her face was blue from the cold; her vitality was sapped. She seemed to herself to have turned to ice below the hips. Outside the misery of the moment her whole attention was concentrated on sticking to the back of the horse. Numb though her fingers were, she must keep them fastened tightly in the frozen mane of the animal. She recited her lesson to herself like a child. She must stick on--she must--she must.

Whether she lost consciousness or not Sheba never knew. The next she realized was that Swiftwater Pete was pulling her from the horse. He dragged her into a cabin where Mrs. Olson lay crouched on the floor.

"Got to stable the horses," he explained, and left them.

After a time he came back and lit a fire in the sheet-iron stove. As the circulation that meant life flooded back into her chilled veins Sheba endured a half-hour of excruciating pain. She had to clench her teeth to keep back the groans that came from her throat, to walk the floor and nurse her tortured hands with fingers in like plight.

The cabin was empty of furniture except for a home-made table, rough stools, and the frame of a bed. The last occupant had left a little firewood beside the stove, enough to last perhaps for twenty-four hours. Sheba did not need to be told that if the blizzard lasted long enough, they would starve to death. In the handbag left in the stage were a box of candy and an Irish plum pudding. She had brought the latter from the old country with her and was taking it and the chocolates to the Husted children. But just now the stage was as far from them as Drogheda.

Like many rough frontiersmen, Swiftwater Pete was a diamond in the raw. He had the kindly, gentle instincts that go to the making of a good man. So far as could be he made a hopeless and impossible situation comfortable. His judgment told him that they were caught in a trap from which there was no escape, but for the sake of the women he put a cheerful face on things.

"Lucky we found this cabin," he growled amiably. "By this time we'd 'a' been up Salt Creek if we hadn't. Seeing as our luck has stood up so far, I reckon we'll be all right. Mighty kind of Mr. Last Tenant to leave us this firewood. Comes to a showdown we've got one table, four stools, and a bed that will make first-class fuel. We ain't so worse off."

"If we only had some food," Mrs. Olson suggested.

"Food!" Pete looked at her in assumed surprise. "Huh! What about all that live stock I got in the stable? I've heard tell, ma'am, that broncho tenderloin is a favorite dish with them there French chiefs that do the cooking. They kinder trim it up so's it's 'most as good as frawgs' legs."

Sheba had never before slept on bare boards with a sealskin coat for a sleeping-bag. But she was very tired and dropped off almost instantly. Twice she woke during the night, disturbed by the stiffness and the pain of her body. It seemed to her that the hard, whipsawed planks were pushing through the soft flesh to the bones. She was cold, too, and crept closer to the stout Swedish woman lying beside her. Presently she fell asleep again to the sound of the blizzard howling outside. When she wakened for the third time it was morning.

In the afternoon the blizzard died away. As far as she could see, Sheba looked out upon a waste of snow. Her eyes turned from the desolation without to the bare and cheerless room in which they had found shelter. In spite of herself a little shiver ran down the spine of the girl. Had she come into this Arctic solitude to find her tomb?

Resolutely she brushed the gloomy thought from her mind and began to chat with Mrs. Olson. In a corner of the cabin Sheba had found a torn and disreputable copy of "Vanity Fair." The covers and the first forty pages were gone. A splash of what appeared to be tobacco juice defiled the last sheet. But the fortunes of Becky and Amelia had served to make her forget during the morning that she was hungry and likely to be much hungrier before another day had passed.

As soon as the storm had moderated enough to let him go out with safety, Swiftwater Pete had taken one of the horses for an attempt at trail-breaking.

"Me, I'm after that plum pudding. I gotta get a feed of oats from the stage for my bronchs too. The scenery here is sure fine, but it ain't what you would call nourishing. Huh! Watch our smoke when me and old Baldface git to bucking them drifts."

He had been gone two hours and the early dusk was already descending over the white waste when Sheba ventured out to see what had become of the stage-driver. But the cold was so bitter that she soon gave up the attempt to fight her way through the drifts and turned back to the cabin.

Sometime later Swiftwater Pete came stumbling into their temporary home. He was fagged to exhaustion but triumphant. Upon the table he dropped from the crook of his numbed arm two packages.

"The makings for a Christmas dinner," he said with a grin.

After he had taken off his mukluks and his frozen socks they wrapped him in their furs while he toasted before the stove. Mrs. Olson thawed out the pudding and the chocolates in the oven and made a kind of mush out of some oats Pete had saved from the horse feed. They ate their one-sided meal in high spirits. The freeze had saved their lives. If it held clear till to-morrow they could reach Smith's Crossing on the crust of the snow.

Swiftwater broke up the chairs for fuel and demolished the legs of the table, after which he lay down before the stove and fell at once into a sodden sleep.

Presently Mrs. Olson lay down on the bed and began to snore regularly. Sheba could not sleep. The boards tired her bones and she was cold. Sometimes she slipped into cat naps that were full of bad dreams. She thought she was walking on the snow-comb of a precipice and that Colby Macdonald pushed her from her precarious footing and laughed at her as she slid swiftly toward the gulf below. When she wakened with a start it was to find that the fire had died down. She was shivering from lack of cover. Quietly the girl replenished the fire and lay down again.

When she wakened with a start it was morning. A faint light sifted through the single window of the shack. Sheba whispered to the older woman that she was going out for a little walk.

"Be careful, dearie," advised Mrs. Olson. "I wouldn't try to go too far."

Sheba smiled to herself at the warning. It was not likely that she would go far enough to get lost with all these millions of tons of snow piled up around her in every direction.

She had come out because she was restless and was tired of the dingy and uncomfortable room. Without any definite intentions, she naturally followed the trail that Swiftwater had broken the day before. No wind stirred and the sky was clear. But it was very cold. The sun would not be up for half an hour.

As she worked her way down the gulch Sheba wondered whether the news of their loss had reached Kusiak. Were search parties out already to rescue them? Colby Macdonald had gone out into the blizzard years ago to save her father. Perhaps he might have been out all night trying to save her father's daughter. Peter would go, of course,--and Gordon Elliot. The work in the mines would stop and men would volunteer by scores. That was one fine thing about the North. It responded to the unwritten law that a man must risk his own life to save others.

But if the wires had come down in the storm Kusiak would not know they had not got through to Smith's Crossing. Swiftwater Pete spoke cheerfully about mushing to the roadhouse. But Sheba knew the snow would not bear the horses. They would have to walk, and it was not at all certain that Mrs. Olson could do so long a walk with the thermometer at forty or fifty below zero.

From a little knoll Sheba looked down upon the top of the stage three hundred yards below her, and while she stood there the promise of the new day was blazoned on the sky. It came with amazing beauty of green and primrose and amethyst, while the stars flickered out and the heavens took on the blue of sunrise. In a crotch between two peaks a faint golden glow heralded the sun. A circle of lovely rose-pink flushed the horizon.

Sheba had this much of the poet in her, that every sunrise was still a miracle. She drew a deep, slow breath of adoration and turned away. As she did so her eyes dilated and her body grew rigid.

Across the snow waste a man was coming. He was moving toward the cabin and must cross the trench close to her. The heart of the girl stopped, then beat wildly to make up the lost stroke. He had come through the blizzard to save her.

At that very instant, as if the stage had been set for it, the wonderful Alaska sun pushed up into the crotch of the peaks and poured its radiance over the Arctic waste. The pink glow swept in a tide of delicate color over the snow and transmuted it to millions of sparkling diamonds. The Great Magician's wand had recreated the world instantaneously.

CHAPTER XXVI

HARD MUSHING

Elliot and Holt left Kusiak in a spume of whirling, blinding snow. They traveled light, not more than forty pounds to the dog, for they wanted to make speed. It was not cold for Alaska. They packed their fur coats on the sled and wore waterproof parkas. On their hands were mittens of moosehide with duffel lining, on their feet mukluks above "German" socks. Holt had been a sour-dough miner too long to let his partner perspire from overmuch clothing. He knew the danger of pneumonia from a sudden cooling of the heat of the body.

Old Gideon took seven of his dogs, driving them two abreast. Six were huskies, rangy, muscular animals with thick, dense coats. They were in the best of spirits and carried their tails erect like their Malemute leader. Butch, though a Malemute, had a strong strain of collie in him. It gave him a sense of responsibility. His business was to see that the team kept strung out on the trail, and Butch was a past-master in the matter of discipline. His weight was ninety-three fighting pounds, and he could thrash in short order any dog in the team.

The snow was wet and soft. It clung to everything it touched. The dogs carried pounds of it in the tufts of hair that rose from their backs. An icy pyramid had to be knocked from the sled every half-hour. The snowshoes were heavy with white slush. Densely laden spruce boughs brushed the faces of the men and showered them with unexpected little avalanches.

They took turns in going ahead of the team and breaking trail. It was heavy, muscle-grinding work. Before noon they were both utterly fatigued. They dragged forward through the slush, lifting their laden feet sluggishly. They must keep going, and they did, but it seemed to them that every step must be the last.

Shortly after noon the storm wore itself out. The temperature had been steadily falling and now it took a rapid drop. They were passing through timber, and on a little slope they built with a good deal of difficulty a fire. By careful nursing they soon had a great bonfire going, in front of which they put their wet socks, mukluks, scarfs, and parkas to dry. The toes of the dogs had become packed with little ice balls. Gordon and Holt had to go carefully over the feet of each animal to dig these out.

The old-timer thawed out a slab of dried salmon till the fat began to frizzle and fed each husky a pound of the fish and a lump of tallow. He and Gordon made a pot of tea and ate some meat sandwiches they had brought with them to save cooking until night.

When they took the trail again it was in moccasins instead of mukluks. The weather was growing steadily colder and with each degree of fall in the thermometer the trail became easier.

"Mushing at fifty below zero is all right when it is all right," explained Holt in the words of the old prospector. "But when it isn't right it's hell."

"It is not fifty below yet, is it?"

"Nope. But she's on the way. When your breath makes a kinder crackling noise she's fifty."

Travel was much easier now. There was a crust on the snow that held up the dogs and the sled so that trail-breaking was not necessary. The little party pounded steadily over the barren hills. There was no sign of life except what they brought with them out of the Arctic silence and carried with them into the greater silence beyond. A little cloud of steam enveloped them as they moved, the moisture from the breath of nine moving creatures in a waste of emptiness.

Each of the men wrapped a long scarf around his mouth and nose for protection, and as the part in front of his face became a sheet of ice shifted the muffler to another place.

Night fell in the middle of the afternoon, but they kept traveling. Not till they were well up toward the summit of the divide did they decide to camp. They drove into a little draw and unharnessed the weary dogs. It was bitterly cold, but they were forced to set up the tent and stove to keep from freezing. Their numbed fingers made a slow job of the camp preparations. At last the stove was going, the dogs fed, and they themselves thawed out. They fell asleep shortly to the sound of the mournful howling of the dogs outside.

Long before daybreak they were afoot again. Holt went out to chop some wood for the stove while Gordon made breakfast preparations. The little miner brought in an armful of wood and went out to get a second supply. A few moments later Elliot heard a cry.

He stepped out of the tent and ran to the spot where Holt was lying under a mass of ice and snow. The young man threw aside the broken blocks that had plunged down from a ledge above.

"Badly hurt, Gid?" he asked.

"I done bust my laig, son," the old man answered with a twisted grin.

"You mean that it is broken?"

"Tell you that in a minute."

He felt his leg carefully and with Elliot's help tried to get up. Groaning, he slid back to the snow.

"Yep. She's busted," he announced.

Gordon carried him to the tent and laid him down carefully. The old miner swore softly.

"Ain't this a hell of a note, boy? You'll have to get me to Smith's Crossing and leave me there."

It was the only thing to be done. Elliot broke camp and packed the sled. Upon the load he put his companion, well wrapped up in furs. He harnessed the dogs and drove back to the road.

Two miles farther up the road Gordon stopped his team sharply. He had turned a bend in the trail and had come upon an empty stage buried in the snow.

The fear that had been uppermost in Elliot's mind for twenty-four hours clutched at his throat. Was it tragedy upon which he had come after his long journey?

Holt guessed the truth. "They got stalled and cut loose the horses. Must have tried to ride the cayuses to shelter."

"To Smith's Crossing?" asked Gordon.

"Expect so." Then, with a whoop, the man on the sled contradicted himself. "No, by Moses, to Dick Fiddler's old cabin up the draw. That's where Swiftwater would aim for till the blizzard was over."

"Where is it?" demanded his friend.

"Swing over to the right and follow the little gulch. I'll wait till you come back."

Gordon dropped the gee-pole and started on the instant. Eagerness, anxiety, dread fought in his heart. He knew that any moment now he might stumble upon the evidence of the sad story which is repeated in Alaska many times every winter. It rang in him like a bell that where tough, hardy miners succumbed a frail girl would have small chance.

He cut across over the hill toward the draw, and at what he saw his pulse quickened. Smoke was pouring out of the chimney of a cabin and falling groundward, as it does in the Arctic during very cold weather. Had Sheba found safety there? Or was it the winter home of a prospector?

As he pushed forward the rising sun flooded the earth with pink and struck a million sparkles of color from the snow. The wonder of it drew the eyes of the young man for a moment toward the hills.

A tumult of joy flooded his veins. The girl who held in her soft hands the happiness of his life stood looking at him. It seemed to him that she was the core of all that lovely tide of radiance. He moved toward her and looked down into the trench where she waited. Swiftly he kicked off his snowshoes and leaped down beside her.

The gleam of tears was in her eyes as she held out both hands to him. During the long look they gave each other something wonderful to both of them was born into the world.

When he tried to speak his hoarse voice broke. "Sheba--little Sheba! Safe, after all. Thank God, you--you--" He swallowed the lump in his throat and tried again. "If you knew--God, how I have suffered! I was afraid--I dared not let myself think."

A live pulse beat in her white throat. The tears brimmed over. Then, somehow, she was in his arms weeping. Her eyes slowly turned to his, and he met the touch of her surrendered lips.

Nature had brought them together by one of her resistless and unpremeditated impulses.

CHAPTER XXVII

TWO ON THE TRAIL

A stress of emotion had swept her into his arms. Now she drew away from him shyly. The conventions in which she had been brought up asserted themselves. Sheba remembered that they had been carried by the high wave of their emotion past all the usual preliminaries. He had not even told her that he loved her. An absurd little fear obtruded itself into her happiness. Had she rushed into his arms like a lovesick girl, taking it for granted that he cared for her?

"You--came to look for us?" she asked, with the little shy stiffness of embarrassment.

"For you--yes."

He could not take his eyes from her. It seemed to him that a bird was singing in his heart the gladness he could not express. He had for many hours pushed from his mind pictures of her lying white and rigid on the snow. Instead she stood beside him, her delicate beauty vivid as the flush of a flame.

"Did they telephone that we were lost?"

"Yes. I was troubled when the storm grew. I could not sleep. So I called up the roadhouse by long distance. They had not heard from the stage. Later I called again. When I could stand it no longer, I started."

"Not on foot?"

"No. With Holt's dog team. He is back there. His leg is broken. A snow-slide crushed him this morning where we camped."

"Bring him to the cabin. I will tell the others you are coming."

"Have you had any food?" he asked.

A tired smile lit up the shadows of weariness under her soft, dark eyes. "Boiled oats, plum pudding, and chocolates," she told him.

"We have plenty of food on the sled. I'll bring it at once."

She nodded, and turned to go to the cabin. He watched for a moment the lilt in her walk. An expression from his reading jumped to his mind. Melodious feet! Some poet had said that, hadn't he? Surely it must have been Sheba of whom he was thinking, this girl so virginal of body and of mind, free and light-footed as a caribou on the hills.

Gordon returned to the sled and drove the team up the draw to the cabin. The three who had been marooned came to meet their rescuer.

"You must 'a' come right through the storm lickitty split," Swiftwater said.

"You're right we did. This side pardner of mine was hell-bent on wrestling with a blizzard," Holt answered dryly.

"Sorry you broke your laig, Gid."

"Then there's two of us sorry, Swiftwater. It's one of the best laigs I've got."

Sheba turned to the old miner impulsively. "If you could be knowing what I am thinking of you, Mr. Holt,--how full our hearts are of the gratitude--" She stopped, tears in her voice.

"Sho! No need of that, Miss. He dragged me along." His thumb jerked toward the man who was driving. "I've seen better dog punchers than Elliot, but he's got the world beat at routin' old-timers out of bed and persuadin' them to kick in with him and buck a blizzard. Me, o' course, I'm an old fool for comin'--"

The dark eyes of the girl were like stars in a frosty night. "Then you're the kind of a fool I love, Mr. Holt. I think it was just fine of you, and I'll never forget it as long as I live."

Mrs. Olson had cooked too long in lumber and mining camps not to know something about bone-setting. Under her direction Gordon made splints and helped her bandage the broken leg. Meanwhile Swiftwater Pete fed his horses from the grain on the sled and Sheba cooked an appetizing breakfast. The aroma of coffee and the smell of frying bacon stimulated appetites that needed no tempting.

Holt, propped up by blankets, ate with the others. For a good many years he had taken his luck as it came with philosophic endurance. Now he wasted no time in mourning what could not be helped. He was lucky the ice slide had not hit him in the head. A broken leg would mend.

While they ate, the party went into committee of the whole to decide what was best to be done. Gordon noticed that in all the tentative suggestions made by Holt and Swiftwater the comfort of Sheba was the first thing in mind.

The girl, too, noticed it and smilingly protested, her soft hand lying for the moment on the gnarled one of the old miner.

"It doesn't matter about me. We have to think of what will be best for Mr. Holt, of how to get him to the proper care. My comfort can wait."

The plan at last decided upon was that Gordon should make a dash for Smith's Crossing on snowshoes, where he was to arrange for a relief party to come out for the injured man and Mrs. Olson. He was to return at once without waiting for the rescuers. Next morning he and Sheba would start with Holt's dog team for Kusiak.

Macdonald had taught Sheba how to use snowshoes and she had been an apt pupil. From her suitcase she got out her moccasins and put them on. She borrowed the snowshoes of Holt, wrapped herself in her parka, and announced that she was going with Elliot part of the way.

Gordon thought her movements a miracle of supple lightness. Her lines had the swelling roundness of vital youth, her eyes were alive with the eagerness that time dulls in most faces. They spoke little as they swept forward over the white snow-wastes. The spell of the great North was over her. Its mystery was stirring in her heart, just as it had been when her lips had turned to his at the sunrise. As for him, love ran through his veins like old wine. But he allowed his feelings no expression. For though she had come to him of her own accord for that one blessed minute at dawn, he could not be sure what had moved her so deeply. She was treading a world primeval, the wonder of it still in her soft eyes. Would she waken to love or to disillusion?

He took care to see that she did not tire. Presently he stopped and held out his hand to say good-bye.

"Will you come back this way?" she asked.

"Yes. I ought to get here soon after dark. Will you meet me?"

She gave him a quick, shy little nod, turned without shaking hands, and struck out for the cabin. All through the day happiness flooded her heart. While she waited on Holt or helped Mrs. Olson cook or watched Swiftwater while he put up the tent in the lee of the cabin, little snatches of song bubbled from her lips. Sometimes they were bits of old Irish ballads that popped into her mind. Once, while she was preparing some coffee for her patient, it was a stanza from Burns:--

"Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi' the sun: I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o' life shall run."

She caught old Gideon looking at her with a queer little smile on his weather-tanned face and she felt the color beat into her cheeks.

"I haven't bought a wedding present for twenty years," he told her presently, apropos of nothing that had been said. "I won't know what's the proper thing to get, Miss Sheba."

"If you talk nonsense like that I'll go out and talk to Mr. Swiftwater Pete," she threatened, blushing.

Old Gid folded his hands meekly. "I'll be good--honest I will. Let's see. I got to make safe and sane conversation, have I? Hm! Wonder when that lazy, long-legged, good-for-nothing horsethief and holdup that calls himself Gordon Elliot will get back to camp."

Sheba looked into his twinkling eyes suspiciously as she handed him his coffee. For a moment she bit her lip to keep back a smile, then said with mock severity,--

"Now, I am going to leave you to Mrs. Olson."

When sunset came it found Sheba on the trail. Swiftwater Pete had offered to go with her, but she had been relieved of his well-meant kindness by the demand of Holt.

"No, you don't, Pete. You ain't a-goin' off gallivantin' with no young lady. You're a-goin' to stay here and fix my game laig for me. What do you reckon Miss Sheba wants with a fat, lop-sided lummox like you along with her?"

Pete grew purple with embarrassment. He had not intended anything more than civility and he wanted this understood.

"Hmp! Ain't you got no sense a-tall, Gid? If Miss Sheba's hell-bent on goin' to meet Elliot, I allowed some one ought to go along and keep the dark offen her. 'Course there ain't nothin' going to harm her, unless she goes and gets lost--"

Sheba's smile cooled the heat of the stage-driver. "Which she isn't going to do. Good of you to offer to go with me. Don't mind Mr. Holt. Everybody knows he doesn't mean half of what he says. I'd be glad to have you come with me, but it isn't necessary at all. So I'll not trouble you."

Darkness fell quickly, but Sheba still held to the trail. There was no sign of Elliot, but she felt sure he would come soon. Meanwhile she followed steadily the tracks he had made earlier in the day.

She stopped at last. It was getting much colder. She was miles from the camp. Reluctantly she decided to return. Then, out of the darkness, he came abruptly upon her, the man whom she had come out to meet.

Under the magic of the Northern stars they found themselves again in each other's arms for that brief moment of joyful surprise. Then, as it had been in the morning, Sheba drew herself shyly away.

"They are waiting supper for us," she told him irrelevantly.

He did not shout out his happiness and tell her to let them wait. For Gordon, too, felt awed at this wonderful adventure of love that had befallen them. It was enough for him that they were moving side by side, alone in the deep snows and the biting cold, that waves of emotion crashed through his pulses when his swinging hand touched hers.

They were acutely conscious of each other. Excitement burned in the eyes that turned to swift, reluctant meetings. She was a woman, and he was her lover. Neither of them dared quite accept the fact yet, but it filled the background of all their thoughts with delight.

Sheba did not want to talk of this new, amazing thing that had come into her life. It was too sacred a subject to discuss just yet even with him. So she began to tell him odd fancies from childhood that lingered in her Celtic heart, tales of the "little folk" that were half memories and half imaginings, stirred to life by some odd association of sky and stars. She laughed softly at herself as she told them, but Gordon did not laugh at her.

Everything she did was for him divinely done. Even when his eyes were on the dark trail ahead he saw only the dusky loveliness of curved cheek, the face luminous with a radiance some women are never privileged to know, the rhythm of head and body and slender legs that was part of her individual, heaven-sent charm.

The rest had finished supper before Gordon and Sheba reached camp, but Mrs. Olson had a hot meal waiting for them.

"I fixed up the tent for the women folks--stove, sleeping-bags, plenty of wood. Touch a match to the fire and it'll be snug as a bug in a rug," explained Swiftwater to Gordon.

Elliot and Sheba were to start early for Kusiak and later the rescue party would arrive to take care of Holt and Mrs. Olson.

"Time to turn in," Holt advised. "You better light that stove, Elliot."

The young man was still in the tent arranging the sleeping-bags when Sheba entered. He tried to walk out without touching her, intending to call back his good-night. But he could not do it. There was something flamey about her to-night that went to his head. Her tender, tremulous little smile and the turn of the buoyant little head stirred in him a lover's rhapsody.

"It's to be a long trail we cover to-morrow, Sheba. You must sleep. Good-night."

"Good-night--Gordon."

There was a little flash of audacity in the whimsical twist of her mouth. It was the first time she had ever called him by his given name.

Elliot threw away prudence and caught her by the hands.

"My dear--my dear!" he cried.

She trembled to his kiss, gave herself to his embrace with innocent passion. Tendrils of hair, fine as silk, brushed his cheeks and sent strange thrills through him.

They talked the incoherent language of lovers that is compounded of murmurs and silences and the touch of lips and the meetings of eyes. There were to be other nights in their lives as rich in memories as this, but never another with quite the same delight.

Presently Sheba reminded him with a smile of the long trail he had mentioned. Mrs. Olson bustled into the tent, and her presence stressed the point.

"Good-night, neighbors," Gordon called back from outside the tent.

Sheba's "Good-night" echoed softly back to him.

The girl fell asleep to the sound of the light breeze slapping the tent and to the doleful howling of the huskies.

CHAPTER XXVIII

A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD

Macdonald drove his team into the teeth of the storm. The wind came in gusts. Sometimes the gale was so stiff that the dogs could scarcely crawl forward against it; again there were moments of comparative stillness, followed by squalls that slapped the driver in the face like the whipping of a loose sail on a catboat.

High drifts made the trail difficult. Not once but fifty times Macdonald left the gee-pole to break a way through snow-waves for the sled. The best he could get out of his dogs was three miles an hour, and he knew that there was not another team or driver in the North could have done so well.

It was close to noon when he reached a division of the road known as the Fork. One trail ran down to the river and up it to the distant creeks. The other led across the divide, struck the Yukon, and pointed a way to the coast. White drifts had long since blotted out the track of the sled that had preceded him. Had the fugitives gone up the river to the creeks with intent to hole themselves up for the winter? Or was it their purpose to cross the divide and go out over the ice to the coast?

The pursuer knew that Gid Holt was wise as a weasel. He could follow blindfolded the paths that led to every creek in the gold-fields. It might be taken as a certainty that he had not plunged into such a desperate venture without having a plan well worked out beforehand. Elliot had a high grade of intelligence. Would they try to reach the coast and make their get-away to Seattle? Or would they dig themselves in till the heavy snows were past and come back to civilization with the story of a lucky strike to account for the gold they brought with them? Neither gold-dust nor nuggets could be identified. There would be no way of proving the story false. The only evidence against them would be that they had left at Kusiak and this was merely of a corroborative kind. There would be no chance of convicting them upon it.

But to strike for Seattle was to throw away all pretense of innocence. Fugitives from justice, they would have to disappear from sight in order to escape. The hunt for them would continue until at last they were unearthed.

One fork of the road led to comparative safety; the other went by devious windings to the penitentiary and perhaps the gallows. The Scotchman put himself in the place of the men he was trailing. Given the same conditions, he knew which path he would follow.

Macdonald took the trail that led down to the river, to the distant gold-creeks which offered a refuge from man-hunters in many a deserted cabin marooned by the deep snows.

Even the iron frame and steel muscles of the Scotch-Canadian protested against the task he had set them that day. It was a time to sit snugly inside by a stove and listen to the howling of the wind as it hurled itself down from the divide. But from daylight till dark Colby Macdonald fought with drifts and breasted the storm. He got into the harness with the dogs. He broke trail for them, cheered them, soothed, comforted, punished. Long after night had fallen he staggered into the hut of two prospectors, his parka so stiff with frozen snow that it had to be beaten with a hammer before the coat could be removed.

"How long since a dog team passed--seven huskies and two men?" was his first question.

"No dog team has passed for four days," one of the men answered.

"You mean you haven't seen one," Macdonald corrected.

"I mean none has passed--unless it went by in the night while we slept. And even then our dogs would have warned us."

Macdonald flung his ice-coated gloves to a table and stooped to take off his mukluks. His face was blue with the cold, but the bleak look in the eyes came from within. He said nothing more until he was free of his wet clothes. Then he sat down heavily and passed a hand over his frozen eyebrows.

"Get me something to eat and take care of my dogs. There is food for them on the sled," he said.

While he ate he told them of the bank robbery and the murder. Their resentment against the men who had done it was quite genuine. There could be no doubt they told the truth when they said no sled had preceded his. They were honest, reliable prospectors. He knew them both well.

The weary man slept like a log. He opened his eyes next morning to find one of his hosts shaking him.

"Six o'clock, Mr. Macdonald. Your breakfast is ready. Jim is looking out for the huskies."

Half an hour later the Scotchman gave the order, "Mush!" He was off again, this time on the back trail as far as the Narrows, from which point he meant to strike across to intersect the fork of the road leading to the divide.

The storm had passed and when the late sun rose it was in a blue sky. Fine enough the day was overhead, but the slushy snow, where it was worn thin on the river by the sweep of the wind, made heavy travel for the dogs. Macdonald was glad enough to reach the Narrows, where he could turn from the river and cut across to hit the trail of the men he was following. He had about five miles to go before he would reach the Smith Crossing road and every foot of it he would have to break trail for the dogs. This was slow business, since he had no partner at the gee-pole. Back and forth, back and forth he trudged, beating down the loose snow for the runners. It was a hill trail, and the drifts were in most places not very deep. But the Scotchman was doing the work of two, and at a killing pace.

Over a ridge the team plunged down into a little park where the snow was deeper. Macdonald, breaking trail across the mountain valley, found his feet weighted with packed ice slush so that he could hardly move them. When at last he had beaten down a path for his dogs he stood breathing deep at the summit of the slope. Before him lay the main road to Smith's Crossing, scarce fifty yards away. He gave a deep whoop of triumph, for along it ran the wavering tracks left by a sled. He was on the heels of his enemy at last.

As he turned back to his Siberian hounds, the eyes of Macdonald came to abrupt attention. On the hillside, not ten yards from him, something stuck out of the snow like a signpost. It was the foot of a man.

Slowly Macdonald moved toward it. He knew well enough what he had stumbled across--one of the tragedies that in the North are likely to be found in the wake of every widespread blizzard. Some unfortunate traveler, blinded by the white swirl, had wandered from the trail and had staggered up a draw to his death.

With a little digging the Alaskan uncovered a leg. The man had died where he had fallen, face down. Macdonald scooped away the snow and found a pack strapped to the back of the buried man. He cut the thongs and tried to ease it away. But the gunnysack had frozen to the parka. When he pulled, the rotten sacking gave way under the strain. The contents of the pack spilled out.

The eyes in the grim face of Macdonald grew hard and steely. He had found, by some strange freak of chance, much more than he had expected, to find. Using his snowshoe as a shovel, he dug the body free and turned it over. At sight of the face he gave a cry of astonishment.

CHAPTER XXIX

"DON'T TOUCH HIM! DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH HIM!"

Gordon overslept. His plan had been to reach Kusiak at the end of a long day's travel, but that had meant getting on the trail with the first gleam of light. When he opened his eyes Mrs. Olson was calling him to rise.

He dressed and stepped out into the cold, crisp morning. From the hill crotch the sun was already pouring down a great, fanlike shaft of light across the snow vista. Swiftwater Pete passed behind him on his way to the stable and called a cheerful good-morning in his direction.

Mrs. Olson had put the stove outside the tent and Gordon lifted it to the spot where they did the cooking.

"Good-morning, neighbor," he called to Sheba. "Sleep well?"

The little rustling sounds within the tent ceased. A face appeared in the doorway, the flaps drawn discreetly close beneath the chin.

"Never better. Is my breakfast ready yet?"

"Come and help me make it. Mrs. Olson is waiting on Holt."

"When I'm dressed." The smiling face disappeared. "Dublin Bay" sounded in her fresh young voice from the tent. Gordon joined in the song as he lit the fire and sliced bacon from a frozen slab of it.

The howling of the huskies interrupted the song. They had evidently heard something that excited them. Gordon listened. Was it in his fancy only that the breeze carried to him the faint jingle of sleigh-bells? The sound, if it was one, died away. The cook turned to his job.

He stopped sawing at the meat, knife and bacon both suspended in the air. On the hard snow there had come to him the crunch of a foot behind him. Whose? Sheba was in the tent, Swiftwater at the stable, Mrs. Olson in the house. Slowly he turned his head.

What Elliot saw sent the starch through his body. He did not move an inch, still sat crouched by the fire, but every nerve was at tension, every muscle taut. For he was looking at a rifle lying negligently in brown, steady hands. They were very sure hands, very competent ones. He knew that because he had seen them in action. The owner of the hands was Colby Macdonald.

The Scotch-Canadian stood at the edge of a willow grove. His face was grim as the day of judgment.

"Don't move," he ordered.

Elliot laughed irritably. He was both annoyed and disgusted.

"What do you want?" he snapped.

"You."

"What's worrying you now? Do you think I'm jumping my bond?"

"You're going back to Kusiak with me--to give a life for the one you took."

"What's that?" cried Gordon, surprised.

"Just as I'm telling you. I've been on your heels ever since you left town. You and Holt are going back with me as my prisoners."

"But what for?"

"For robbing the bank and murdering Robert Milton, as you know well enough."

"Is this another plant arranged for me by you and Selfridge?" demanded Elliot.

Macdonald ignored the question and lifted his voice. "Come out of that tent, Holt,--and come with your hands up unless you want your head blown off."

"Holt isn't in that tent, you damned idiot. If you want to know--"

"Come now, if you expect to come alive," cut in the Scotchman ominously. He raised the rifle to his shoulder and covered the shadow thrown by the sun on the figure within.

Gordon flung out a wild protest and threw the frozen slab of bacon at the head of Macdonald. With the same motion he launched his own body across the stove. A fifth of a second earlier the tent flap had opened and Sheba had come out.

The sight of her paralyzed Macdonald and saved her lover's life. It distracted the mine-owner long enough for him to miss his chance. A bullet struck the stove and went off at a tangent through the tent canvas not two feet from where Sheba stood. A second went speeding toward the sun. For Gordon had followed the football player's instinct and dived for the knees of his enemy.

They went down together. Each squirming for the upper place, they rolled over and over. The rifle was forgotten. Like cave men they fought, crushing and twisting each other's muscles with the blind lust of primordials to kill. As they clinched with one arm, they struck savagely with the other. The impact of smashing blows on naked flesh sounded horribly cruel to Sheba.

She ran forward, calling on each by name to stop. Probably neither knew she was there. Their whole attention was focused on each other. Not for an instant did their eyes wander, for life and death hung on the issue. Chance had lit the spark of their resentment, but long-banked passions were blazing fiercely now.

They got to their feet and fought toe to toe. Sledge-hammer blows beat upon bleeding and disfigured faces. No thought of defense as yet was in the mind of either. The purpose of each was to bruise, maim, make helpless the other. But for the impotent little cries of Sheba no sound broke the stillness save the crunch of their feet on the hard snow, the thud of heavy fists on flesh, and the throaty snarl of their deep, irregular breathing.

Gid Holt, from the window of the cabin, watched the battle with shining eyes. He exulted in every blow of Gordon; he suffered with him when the smashing rights and lefts of Macdonald got home. He shouted jeers, advice, threats, encouragement. If he had had ten thousand dollars wagered on the outcome he could not have been more excited.

Swiftwater Pete, drawn by the cries of Sheba, came running from the stable. As he passed the window, Holt caught him by the arm.

"What are you aimin' to do, Pete? Let 'em alone. Let 'em go to it. They got to have it out. Stop 'em now and they'll get at it with guns."

Sheba ran up, wringing her hands. "Stop them, please. They're killing each other."

"Nothing of the kind, girl. You let 'em alone, Pete. The kid's there every minute, ain't he? Gee, that's a good one, boy. Seven--eleven--ninety-two. 'Attaboy!"

Macdonald had slipped on the snow and gone down to his hands and knees. Swift as a wildcat the younger man was on top of him. Hampered though he was by his parka, the Scotchman struggled slowly to his feet again. He was much the heavier man, and in spite of his years the stronger. The muscles stood out in knots on his shoulders and across his back, whereas on the body of his more slender opponent they flowed and rippled in rounded symmetry. Active as a heather cat, Elliot was far the quicker of the two.

Half-blinded by the hammering he had received, Gordon changed his method of fighting. He broke away from the clinch and sidestepped the bull-like rush of his foe, covering up as well as he could from the onset. Macdonald pressed the attack and was beaten back by hard, straight lefts and rights to the unprotected face.

The mine-owner shook the matted hair from his swollen eyes and rushed again. He caught an uppercut flush on the end of the chin. It did not even stop him. The weight of his body was in the blow he lashed up from his side.

The knees of Elliot doubled up under him like the blade of a jackknife. He sank down slowly, turned, got to his hands and knees, and tried to shake off the tons of weight that seemed to be holding him down.

Macdonald seized him about the waist and flung him to the ground. Upon the inert body the victor dropped, his knees clinching the torso of the unconscious man.

"Now, Pete. Go to him," urged Holt wildly.

But before Swiftwater could move, before the great fist of Macdonald could smash down upon the bleeding face upturned to his, a sharp blow struck the flesh of the raised forearm and for the moment stunned the muscles. The Scotch-Canadian lifted a countenance drunk with rage, passion-tossed.

Slowly the light of reason came back into his eyes. Sheba was standing before him, his rifle in her hand. She had struck him with the butt of it.

"Don't touch him! Don't you dare touch him!" she challenged.

He looked at her long, then let his eyes fall to the battered face of his enemy. Drunkenly he got to his feet and leaned against a willow. His forces were spent, his muscles weighted as with lead. But it was not this alone that made his breath come short and raggedly.

Sheba had flung herself down beside her lover. She had caught him tightly in her arms so that his disfigured face lay against her warm bosom. In the eyes lifted to those of the mine-owner was an unconquerable defiance.

"He's mine--mine, you murderer," she panted fiercely. "If you kill him, you must kill me first."

The man she had once promised to marry was looking at a different woman from the girl he had known. The soft, shy youth of her was gone. She was a forest mother of the wilds ready to fight for her young, a wife ready to go to the stake for the husband of her choice. An emotion primitive and poignant had transformed her.

His eyes burned at her the question his parched lips and throat could scarcely utter. "So you ... love him?"

But though it was in form a question he knew already the answer. For the first time in his life he began to taste the bitterness of defeat. Always he had won what he coveted by brutal force or his stark will. But it was beyond him to compel the love of a girl who had given her heart to another.

"Yes," she answered.

Her hair in two thick braids was flung across her shoulders, her dark head thrown back proudly from the rounded throat.

Macdonald smiled, but there was no mirth in his savage eyes. "Do you know what I want with him--why I have come to get him?"

"No."

"I've come to take him back to Kusiak to be hanged because he murdered Milton, the bank cashier."

The eyes of the woman blazed at him. "Are you mad?"

"It's the truth." Macdonald's voice was curt and harsh. "He and Holt were robbing the bank when Milton came back from the dance at the club. The cowards shot down the old man like a dog. They'll hang for it if it costs me my last penny, so help me God."

"You say it's the truth," she retorted scornfully. "Do you think I don't know you now--how you twist and distort facts to suit your ends? How long is it since your jackal had him arrested for assaulting you--when Wally Selfridge knew--and you knew--that he had risked his life for you and had saved yours by bringing you to Diane's after he had bandaged your wounds?"

"That was different. It was part of the game of politics we were playing."

"You admit that you and your friends lied then. Is it like you could persuade me that you're telling the truth now?"

The big Alaskan shrugged. "Believe it or not as you like. Anyhow, he's going back with me to Kusiak--and Holt, too, if he's here."

An excited cackle cut into the conversation, followed by a drawling announcement from the window. "Your old tillicum is right here, Mac. What's the use of waiting? Why don't you have your hanging-bee now?"

CHAPTER XXX

HOLT FREES HIS MIND

Macdonald whirled in his tracks.

Old Gid Holt was leaning on his elbow with his head out of the window. "You better come and beat me up first, Mac," he jeered. "I'm all stove up with a busted laig, so you can wollop me good. I'd come out there, but I'm too crippled to move."

"You're not too crippled to go back to Kusiak with me. If you can't walk, you'll ride. But back you go."

"Fine. I been worrying about how to get there. It's right good of you to bring one of these here taxis for me, as the old sayin' is."

"Where is the rest of the gold you stole?"

"I ain't seen the latest papers, Mac. What is this stuff about robbin' a bank and shootin' Milton?"

"You're under arrest for robbery and murder."

"Am I? Unload the particulars. When did I do it all?"

"You know when. Just before you left town."

Holt shook his head slowly. "No, sir. I can't seem to remember it. Sure it ain't some one else you're thinking about? Howcome you to fix on me as one of the bold, bad bandits?"

"Because you had not sense enough to cover your tracks. You might just as well have left a note saying you did it. First, you come to town and buy one of the fastest dog teams in Alaska. Why?"

"That's an easy one. I bought that team to win the Alaska Sweepstakes from you. And I'm goin' to do it. The team wasn't handled right or it would have won last time. I got to millin' it over and figured that old Gid Holt was the dog puncher that could land those huskies in front. See?"

"You bought it to make your getaway after the robbery," retorted Macdonald.

"It's a difference of opinion makes horse-races. What else have you got against us?"

"We found in your room one of the sacks that had held the gold you took from the bank."

"That's right. I took it from the bank in the afternoon, where I had had it on deposit, to pay for the team I bought. Milton's books will show that. But you didn't find any sack I took when your bank was robbed--if it was robbed," added the old man significantly.

"Of course, I knew you would have an alibi. Have you got one to explain why you left town so suddenly the night the bank was robbed? Milton was killed after midnight. Before morning you and your friend Elliot routed out Ackroyd and bought a lot of supplies from him for a hurry-up trip. You slipped around to the corral and hit the trail right into the blizzard. Will you tell me why you were in such a hurry to get away, if it wasn't to escape from the town where you had murdered a decent old fellow who never had harmed a soul?"

"Sure I'll tell you." The black eyes of the little man snapped eagerly. "I came so p. d. q. because that side pardner of mine Gordon Elliot wouldn't let me wait till mornin'. He had a reason for leavin' town that wouldn't wait a minute, one big enough to drive him right into the heart of the blizzard. Me, I tagged along."

"I can guess his reason," jeered the Scotchman. "But I'd like to hear you put a name to it."

Holt grinned maliciously and waved a hand toward the girl who was pillowing the head of her lover. "The name of his reason is Sheba O'Neill, but it's goin' to be Sheba Elliot soon, looks like."

"You mean--"

The little miner took the words triumphantly out of his mouth. He leaned forward and threw them into the face of the man he hated. "I mean that while you was dancin' and philanderin' with other women, Gordon Elliot was buckin' a blizzard to save the life of the girl you both claimed to love. He was mushin' into fifty miles of frozen hell while you was fillin' up with potted grouse and champagne. Simultaneous with the lame goose and the monkey singlestep you was doin,' this lad was windjammin' through white drifts. He beat you at your own game, man. You're a bear for the outdoor stuff, they tell me. You chew up a blizzard for breakfast and throttle a pack of wolves to work up an appetite for dinner. It's your specialty. All right. Take your hat off to that chechacko who has just whaled you blind. He has outgamed you, Colby Macdonald. You don't run in his class. I see he is holding his haid up again. Give him another half-hour and he'd be ready to go to the mat with you again."

The big Alaskan pushed away a fear that had been lingering in his mind ever since he had stumbled on that body buried in the snow yesterday afternoon. Was his enemy going to escape him, after all? Could Holt be telling the true reason why they had left town so hurriedly? He would not let himself believe it.

"You ought to work up a better story than that," he said contemptuously. "You can throw a husky through the holes in it. How could Elliot know, for instance, that Miss O'Neill was not safe?"

"The same way you could' a' known it," snapped old Gideon. "He 'phoned to Smith's Crossin' and found the stage hadn't got in and that there was a hell of a storm up in the hills."

Macdonald set his face. "You're lying to me. You stumbled over the stage while you were making your getaway. Now you're playing it for an alibi."

Elliot had risen. Sheba stood beside him, her hand in his. She spoke quietly.

"It's the truth. Believe it or not as you please. We care nothing about that."

The stab of her eyes, the carriage of the slim, pliant figure with its suggestion of fine gallantry, challenged her former lover to do his worst.

On the battered face of Gordon was a smile. So long as his Irish sweetheart stood by him he did not care if he were charged with high treason. It was worth all it cost to feel the warmth of her brave, impulsive trust.

The deep-set eyes of Macdonald clinched with those of his rival. "You cached the rest of the gold, I suppose," he said doggedly.

With a lift of his shoulders the younger man answered lightly. "There are none so blind as those who will not see, Mr. Macdonald." He turned to Sheba. "Come. We must make breakfast."

"You're going to Kusiak with me," his enemy said bluntly.

"After we have eaten, Mr. Macdonald," returned Elliot with an ironic bow. "Perhaps, if you have not had breakfast yet, you will join us."

"We start in half an hour," announced the mine-owner curtly, and he turned on his heel.

The rifle lay where Sheba had dropped it when she ran to gather her stricken lover into her arms. Macdonald picked it up and strode over the brow of the hill without a backward look. He was too proud to stay and watch them. It was impossible to escape him in the deep snow that filled the hill trails, and he was convinced they would attempt nothing of the kind.

The Scotchman felt for the first time in his life old and spent. Under tremendous difficulty he had mushed for two days and had at last run his men down. The lust of vengeance had sat on his shoulders every mile of the way and had driven him feverishly forward. But the salt that had lent a savor to his passion was gone. Even though he won, he lost. For Sheba had gone over to the enemy.

With the fierce willfulness of his temperament he tried to tread under foot his doubts about the guilt of Holt and Elliot. Success had made him arrogant and he was not a good loser. He hated the man who had robbed him of Sheba, but he could not escape respecting him. Elliot had fought until he had been hammered down into unconsciousness and he had crawled to his feet and stood erect with the smile of the unconquered on his lips. Was this the sort of man to murder in cold blood a kindly old gentleman who had never harmed him?

The only answer Macdonald found was that Milton had taken him and his partners by surprise. They had been driven to shoot the cashier to cover up their crime. Perhaps Holt or another had fired the actual shots, but Elliot was none the less guilty. The heart of the Scotchman was bitter within him. He intended to see that his enemies paid to the last ounce. He would harry them to the gallows if money and influence could do it.

None the less, his doubts persisted. If they had planned the bank robbery, why did they wait so long to buy supplies for their escape? Why had they not taken the river instead of the hill trail? The story that his enemies told hung together. It had the ring of truth. The facts supported it.

One piece of evidence in their favor Macdonald alone knew. It lay buried in the deep snows of the hills. He shut his strong teeth in the firm resolve that it should stay there.

CHAPTER XXXI

SHEBA DIGS

The weather had moderated a good deal, but the trail was a protected forest one. The two teams now going down had come up, so that the path was packed fairly hard and smooth. Holt lay propped on his own sled against the sleeping-bags. Sheba mushed behind Gordon. She chatted with them both, but ignored entirely the existence of Macdonald, who followed with his prize-winning Siberian dogs.

Though she tried not to let her lover know it, Sheba was troubled at heart. Gordon was practically the prisoner of a man who hated him bitterly, who believed him guilty of murder, and who would go through fire to bring punishment home to him. She knew the power of Macdonald. With the money back of him, he had for two years fought against and almost prevailed over a strong public opinion in the United States. He was as masterful in his hatred as in his love. The dominant, fighting figure in the Northwest, he trod his sturdy way through opposition like a Colossus.

Nor did she any longer have any illusions about him. He could be both ruthless and unscrupulous when it suited his purpose. As the day wore toward noon, her spirits drooped. She was tired physically, and this reacted upon her courage.

The warmer weather was spoiling the trail. It became so soft and mushy that though snowshoes were needed, they could not be worn on account of the heavy snow which clung to them every time a foot was lifted. They wore mukluks, but Sheba was wet to the knees. The spring had gone from her step. Her shoulders began to sag.

For some time Gordon's eye had been seeking a good place for a day camp. He found it in a bit of open timber above the trail, and without a word he swung his team from the path.

"Where are you going?" demanded Macdonald.

"Going to rest for an hour," was Elliot's curt answer.

Macdonald's jaw clamped. He strode forward through the snow beside the trail. "We'll see about that."

The younger man faced him angrily. "Can't you see she is done, man? There is not another mile of travel in her until she has rested."

The hard, gray eyes of the Alaskan took in the slender, weary figure leaning against the sled. On a soft and mushy trail like this, where every footstep punched a hole in the loose snow, the dogs could not travel with any extra weight. A few miles farther down they would come to a main-traveled road and the going would be better. But till then she must walk. Macdonald gave way with a gesture of his hand and turned on his heel.

At the camp-fire Sheba dried her mukluks, stockings, caribou mitts, and short skirts. Too tired to eat, she forced herself to swallow a few bites and drank eagerly some tea. Gordon had brought blankets from the sled and he persuaded her to lie down for a few minutes.

"You'll call me soon if I should sleep," she said drowsily, and her eyes were closed almost before the words were off her lips.

When Macdonald came to order the start half an hour later, she was still asleep. "Give her another thirty minutes," he said gruffly.

Youth is resilient. Sheba awoke rested and ready for work.

While Gordon was untangling the dogs she was left alone for a minute with the mine-owner.

The hungry look in his eyes touched her. Impulsively she held out her hand.

"You're going to be fair, aren't you, Mr. Macdonald? Because you--don't like him--you won't--?"

He looked straight into the dark, appealing eyes. "I'm going to be fair to Robert Milton," he told her harshly. "I'm going to see his murderers hanged if it costs me every dollar I have in the world."

"None of us object to justice," she told him proudly. "Gordon has nothing to fear if only the truth is told."

"Then why come to me?" he demanded.

She hesitated; then with a wistful little smile, spoke what was in her heart. "I'm afraid you won't do justice to yourself. You're good--and brave--and strong. But you're very willful and set. I don't want to lose my friend. I want to know that he is all I have believed him--a great man who stands for the things that are fine and clean and just."

"Then it is for my sake and not for his that you want me to drop the case against Elliot?" he asked ironically.

"For yours and for his, too. You can't hurt him. Nobody can really be hurt from outside--not unless he is a traitor to himself. And Gordon Elliot isn't that. He couldn't do such a thing as this with which you charge him. It is not in his nature. He can explain everything."

"I don't doubt that. He and his friend Holt are great little explainers."

In spite of his bitterness Sheba felt a change in him. She seemed to have a glimpse of his turbid soul engaged in battle. He turned away without shaking hands, but it struck her that he was not implacable.

While they were at luncheon half a dozen pack-mules laden with supplies for a telephone construction line outfit had passed. Their small, sharp-shod hoofs had punched sink-holes in the trail at every step. Instead of a smooth bottom the dogs found a slushy bog cut to pieces.

At the end of an hour of wallowing Macdonald called a halt.

"There is a cutoff just below here. It will save us nearly two miles, but we'll have to break trail. Swing to the right just below the big willow," he told Elliot. "I'll join you presently and relieve you on the job. But first Miss O'Neill and I are going for a little side trip."

All three of them looked at him in sharp surprise. Gordon opened his lips to answer and closed them again without speaking. Sheba had flashed a warning to him.

"I hope this trip isn't very far off the trail," she said quietly. "I'm just a wee bit tired."

"It's not far," the mine-owner said curtly.

He was busy unpacking his sled. Presently he found the dog moccasins for which he had been looking, repacked his sled, and fitted the shoes to the bleeding feet of the team leader. Elliot, suspicious and uncertain what to do, watched him at work, but at a signal from Sheba turned reluctantly away and drove down to the cutoff.

Macdonald turned his dogs out of the trail and followed a little ridge for perhaps a quarter of a mile. Sheba trudged behind him. She was full of wonder at what he meant to do, but she asked no questions. Some wise instinct was telling her to do exactly as he said.

From the sled he took a shovel and gave it to the young woman. "Dig just this side of the big rock--close to the root of the tree," he told her.

Sheba dug, and at the second stroke of the spade struck something hard. He stooped and pulled out a sack.

"Open it," he said. "Rip it with this knife."

She ran the knife along the coarse weave of the cloth. Fifteen or twenty smaller sacks lay exposed. Sheba looked up at Macdonald, a startled question in her eyes.

He nodded. "You've guessed it. This is part of the gold for which Robert Milton was murdered."

"But--how did it get here?"

"I buried it there yesterday. Come."

He led her around the rock. Back of it lay something over which was spread a long bit of canvas. The heart of Sheba was beating wildly.

The Scotchman looked at her from a rock-bound face. "Underneath this canvas is the body of one of the men who murdered Milton. He died more miserably than the man he shot. Half the gold stolen from the bank is in that gunnysack you have just dug up. If you'll tell me who has the other half, I'll tell you who helped him rob the bank."

"This man--who is he?" asked Sheba, almost in a whisper. She was trembling with excitement and nervousness.

Macdonald drew back the cloth and showed the rough, hard face of a workingman.

"His name was Trelawney. I kicked him out of our camps because he was a trouble-maker."

"He was one of the men that robbed you later!" she exclaimed.

"Yes. And now he has tried to rob me again and has paid for it with his life."

Her mind flashed back over the past. "Then his partner in this last crime must have been the same man--what's his name?--that was with him last time."

"Northrup." He nodded slowly. "I hate to believe it, but it is probably true. And he, too, is lying somewhere in this park covered with snow--if our guess is right."

"And Gordon--you admit he didn't do it?"

Again he nodded, sulkily. "No. He didn't do it."

Joy lilted in her voice. "So you've brought me here to tell me. Oh, I am glad, my friend, that you were so good. And it is like you to do it. You have always been the good friend to me."

The Scotchman smiled, a little wistfully. "You take a mean advantage of a man. You nurse him when he is ill--and are kind to him when he is well--and try to love him, though he is twice your age and more. Then, when his enemy is in his power, he finds he can't strike him down without striking you too. Take your young man, Sheba O'Neill, and marry him, and for God's sake, get him out of Alaska before I come to grips with him again. I'm not a patient man, and he's tried me sair. They say I'm a good hater, and I always thought it true. But what's the use of hating a man when your soft arms are round him for an armor?"

The fine eyes of the girl were wells of warm light. Her gladness was not for herself and her lover only, but for the friend that had been so nearly lost and was now found. He believed he had done it for her, but Sheba was sure his reasons lay deeper. He was too much of a man to hide evidence and let his rival be falsely accused of murder. It was not in him to do a cheap thing like that. When it came to the pinch, he was too decent to stab in the back. But she was willing to take him on his own ground.

"I'll always be thanking you for your goodness to me," she told him simply.

He brushed that aside at once. "There's one thing more, lass. I'll likely not be seeing you again alone, so I'll say it now. Don't waste any tears on Colby Macdonald. Don't fancy any story-book foolishness about spoiling his life. That may be true of halfling boys, maybe, but a man goes his ain gait even when he gets a bit facer."

"Yes," she agreed. And in a flash she saw what would happen, that in the reaction from his depression he would turn to Genevieve Mallory and marry her.

"You're too young for me, anyhow,--too soft and innocent. Once you told me that you couldn't keep step with me. It's true. You can't. It was a daft dream."

He took a deep breath, seemed to shake himself out of it, and smiled cheerfully upon her.

"We'll put our treasure-trove on the sled and go back to your friends," he continued briskly. "To-morrow I'll send men up to scour the hills for Northrup's body."

Sheba drew the canvas back over the face of the dead man. As she followed Macdonald back to the trail, tears filled her eyes. She was remembering that the white, stinging death that had crept upon these men so swiftly had missed her by a hair's breadth. The strong, lusty life had been stricken out of the big Cornishman and probably of his partner in crime. Perhaps they had left mothers or wives or sweethearts to mourn them.

Macdonald relieved Elliot at breaking trail and the young man went back to the gee-pole. They had discarded mukluks and wore moccasins and snowshoes. It was hard, slow work, for the trail-breaker had to fight his way through snow along the best route he could find. The moon was high when at last they reached the roadhouse.

CHAPTER XXXII

DIANE CHANGES HER MIND

The news of Sheba's safety had been telephoned to Diane from the roadhouse, so that all the family from Peter down were on the porch to welcome her with mingled tears and kisses. Since Gordon had to push on to the hospital to have Holt taken care of, it was Macdonald who brought the girl home. The mine-owner declined rather brusquely an invitation to stay to dinner on the plea that he had business at the office which would not wait.

Impulsively Sheba held out both her hands to him. "Believe me, I am thanking you with the whole of my heart, my friend. And I'm praying for you the old Irish blessing, 'God save you kindly.'"

The deep-set, rapacious eyes of the Scotchman burned into hers for an instant. Without a word he released her hands and turned away.

Her eyes followed him, a vital, dynamic American who would do big, lawless things to the day of his death. She sighed. He had been a great figure in her life, and now he had passed out of it.

[Illustration: FOR HIM THE BEAUTY OF THE NIGHT LAY LARGELY IN HER PRESENCE]

As soon as she was alone with Diane, her Irish cousin dropped the little bomb she had up her sleeve.

"I'm going to be married Thursday, Di."

Mrs. Paget embraced her for the tenth time within the hour. She was very fond of Sheba, and she had been on a great strain concerning her safety. That out of her danger had resulted the engagement Diane had hoped for was surplusage of good luck.

"You lucky, sensible girl."

Sheba assented demurely. "I do think I'm sensible as well as lucky. It isn't every girl that knows the right man for her even when he wants her. But I know at last. He's the man for me out of ten million."

"I'm sure of it, dear. Oh, I am so glad." Diane hugged her again. She couldn't help it.

"One gets to know a man pretty well on a trip like that. I wouldn't change mine for any one that was ever made. I like everything about him, Di. I am the happiest girl."

"I'm so glad you see it that way at last." Diane passed to the practical aspect of the situation. "But Thursday. Will that give us time, my dear? And who are you going to have here?"

"Just the family. I've invited two guests, but neither of them can come. One has a broken leg and the other says he doesn't want to see me married to another man," Sheba explained with a smile.

"So Gordon won't come."

"Yes. He'll have to be here. We can't get along without the bridegroom. It wouldn't be a legal marriage, would it?"

Diane looked at her, for the moment dumb. "You little wretch!" she got out at last. "So it's Gordon, is it? Are you quite sure this time? Not likely to change your mind before Thursday?"

"I suppose, to an outsider, I do seem fickle," Miss O'Neill admitted smilingly. "But Gordon and I both understand that."

"And Colby Macdonald--does he understand it too?"

"Oh, yes." Her smile grew broader. "He told me that he didn't think I would quite suit him, after all. Not enough experience for the place."

Diane flashed a suspicious look of inquiry. "Of course that's nonsense. What did he tell you?"

"Something like that. He will marry Mrs. Mallory, I think, though he doesn't know it yet."

"You mean she will get him on the rebound," said Diane bluntly.

"That isn't a nice way to put it. He has always liked her very much. He is fond of her for what she is. What attracted him in me were the things his imagination gave to me."

"And Gordon likes you, I suppose, for what you are?"

Sheba did not resent the little note of friendly sarcasm. "I suppose he has his fancies about me, too, but by the time he finds out what I am he'll have to put up with me."

The arrival of Elliot interrupted confidences. He had come, he said, to receive congratulations.

"What in the world have you been doing with your face?" demanded Diane. As an afterthought she added: "Mr. Macdonald is all cut up too."

"We've been taking massage treatment." Gordon passed to a subject of more immediate interest. "Do I get my congratulations, Di?"

She kissed him, too, for old sake's sake. "I do believe you'll suit Sheba better than Colby Macdonald would. He's a great man and you are not. But it isn't everybody that is fit to be the wife of a great man."

"That's a double, left-handed compliment," laughed Gordon. "But you can't say anything that will hurt my feelings to-day, Di. Isn't that your baby I heap crying? What a heartless mother you are!"

Diane gave him the few minutes alone with Sheba that his gay smile had asked for. "Get out with you," she said, laughing. "Go to the top of the hill and look at the lovers' moon I've ordered there expressly for you; and while you are there forget that there are going to be crying babies and nursemaids with evenings out in that golden future of yours."

"Come along, Sheba. We'll start now on the golden trail," said Elliot.

She walked as if she loved it. Her long, slender legs moved rhythmically and her arms swung true as pendulums.

The moon was all that Diane had promised. Sheba drank it in happily.

"I believe I must be a pagan. I love the sun and the moon and I know it's all true about the little folk and the pied piper and--"

"If it's paganism to be in love with the world, you are a thirty-third degree pagan."

"Well, and was there ever a more beautiful night before?"

He thought not, but he had not the words to tell her that for him its beauty lay largely in her presence. Her passionate love of things fine and brave transformed the universe for him. It was enough for him to be near her, to hear the laughter bubbling in her throat, to touch her crisp, blue-black hair as he adjusted the scarf about her head.

"God made the night," he replied. "So that's a Christian thought as well as a pagan one."

They were no exception to the rule that lovers are egoists. The world for them to-night divided itself into two classes. One included Sheba O'Neill and Gordon Elliot; the other took in the uninteresting remnant of humanity. No matter how far afield their talk began, it always came back to themselves. They wanted to know all about each other, to compare experiences and points of view. But time fled too fast for words. They talked--as lovers will to the end of time--in exclamations and the meeting of eyes and little endearments.

When Diane and Peter found them on the hilltop, Sheba protested, with her half-shy, half-audacious smile, that it could not be two hours since she and Gordon had left the living-room. Peter grinned. He remembered a hilltop consecrated to his own courtship of Diane.

The only wedding present that Macdonald sent Sheba was a long envelope with two documents attached by a clip. One was from the Kusiak "Sun." It announced that the search party had found the body of Northrup with the rest of the stolen gold beside him. The other was a copy of a legal document. Its effect was that the district attorney had dismissed all charges pending against Gordon Elliot.

Although Macdonald lost the coal claims at Kamatlah by reason of the report of Elliot, all Alaska still believes that he was right. In that country of strong men he stands head and shoulders above his fellows. He has the fortunate gift of commanding the admiration of friend and foe alike. The lady who is his wife is secretly the greatest of his slaves, but she tries not to let him know how much he has captured her imagination. For Genevieve Macdonald cannot quite understand, herself, how so elemental an emotion as love can have pierced the armor of her sophistication.

Contents

THE SHERIFF'S SON

by WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

Foreword

Through the mesquite a horse moved deviously, following the crooked trail of least resistance. A man was in the saddle and in front of him a little boy nodding with sleep. The arm of the rider cradled the youngster against the lurches of the pony's gait.

The owner of the arm looked down at the tired little bundle it was supporting. A wistful tenderness was in the leathery face. To the rest of the world he was a man of iron. To this wee bit of humanity he was a nurse, a playmate, a slave.

"We're 'most to the creek now, son. Onc't we get there, we'll throw off and camp. You can eat a snack and tumble right off to bye-low land," he promised.

The five-year-old smiled faintly and snuggled closer. His long lashes drooped again to the soft cheeks. With the innocent selfishness of a child he accepted the love that sheltered him from all troubles.

A valley opened below the mesa, the trail falling abruptly almost from the hoofs of the horse. Beaudry drew up and looked down. From rim to rim the meadow was perhaps half a mile across. Seen from above, the bed of it was like an emerald lake through which wound a ribbon of silver. This ribbon was Big Creek. To the right it emerged from a draw in the foothills where green reaches of forest rose tier after tier toward the purple mountains. Far up among these peaks Big Creek had its source in Lost Lake, which lay at the foot of a glacier near the top of the world.

The saw-toothed range lifted its crest into a sky of violet haze. Half an hour since the sun had set in a blaze of splendor behind a crotch of the hills, but dusk had softened the vivid tints of orange and crimson and scarlet to a faint pink glow. Already the mountain silhouette had lost its sharp edge and the outlines were blurring. Soon night would sift down over the roof of the continent.

The eyes of the man searched warily the valley below. They rested closely on the willows by the ford, the cottonwood grove to the left, and the big rocks beyond the creek. From its case beneath his leg he took the sawed-off shotgun loaded with buckshot. It rested on the pommel of the saddle while his long and careful scrutiny swept the panorama. The spot was an ideal one for an ambush.

His unease communicated itself to the boy, who began to whimper softly. Beaudry, distressed, tried to comfort him.

"Now, don't you, son--don't you. Dad ain't going to let anything hurt you-all."

Presently he touched the flank of his roan with a spur and the animal began to pick its way down the steep trail among the loose rubble. Not for an instant did the rider relax his vigilance as he descended. At the ford he examined the ground carefully to make sure that nobody had crossed since the shower of the afternoon. Swinging to the saddle again, he put his horse to the water and splashed through to the opposite shore. Once more he dismounted and studied the approach to the creek. No tracks had written their story on the sand in the past few hours. Yet with every sense alert he led the way to the cottonwood grove where he intended to camp. Not till he had made a tour of the big rocks and a clump of prickly pears adjoining was his mind easy.

He came back to find the boy crying. "What's the matter, big son?" he called cheerily. "Nothing a-tall to be afraid of. This nice camping-ground fits us like a coat of paint. You-all take forty winks while dad fixes up some supper."

He spread his slicker and rolled his coat for a pillow, fitting it snugly to the child's head. While he lit a fire he beguiled the time with animated talk. One might have guessed that he was trying to make the little fellow forget the alarm that had been stirred in his mind.

"Sing the li'l' ole hawss," commanded the boy, reducing his sobs.

Beaudry followed orders in a tuneless voice that hopped gayly up and down. He had invented words and music years ago as a lullaby and the song was in frequent demand.

"Li'l' ole hawss an' li'l' ole cow, Amblin' along by the ole haymow, Li'l' ole hawss took a bite an' a chew, 'Durned if I don't,' says the ole cow, too."

Seventeen stanzas detailed the adventures of this amazing horse and predatory cow. Somewhere near the middle of the epic little Royal Beaudry usually dropped asleep. The rhythmic tale always comforted him. These nameless animals were very real friends of his. They had been companions of his tenderest years. He loved them with a devotion from which no fairy tale could wean him.

Before he had quite surrendered to the lullaby, his father aroused him to share the bacon and the flapjacks he had cooked.

"Come and get it, big son," Beaudry called with an imitation of manly roughness.

The boy ate drowsily before the fire, nodding between bites.

Presently the father wrapped the lad up snugly in his blankets and prompted him while he said his prayers. No woman's hands could have been tenderer than the calloused ones of this frontiersman. The boy was his life. For the girl-bride of John Beaudry had died to give this son birth.

Beaudry sat by the dying fire and smoked. The hills had faded to black, shadowy outlines beneath a night of a million stars. During the day the mountains were companions, heaven was the home of warm friendly sunshine that poured down lance-straight upon the traveler. But now the black, jagged peaks were guards that shut him into a vast prison of loneliness. He was alone with God, an atom of no consequence. Many a time, when he had looked up into the sky vault from the saddle that was his pillow, he had known that sense of insignificance.

To-night the thoughts of John Beaudry were somber. He looked over his past with a strange feeling that he had lived his life and come to the end of it. He was not yet forty, a well-set, bow-legged man of medium height, in perfect health, sound as to every organ. From an old war wound he had got while raiding with Morgan he limped a little. Two more recent bullet scars marked his body. But none of these interfered with his activity. He was in the virile prime of life; yet a bell rang in his heart the warning that he was soon to die. That was why he was taking his little son out of the country to safety.

He took all the precautions that one could, but he knew that in the end these would fail him. The Rutherfords would get him. Of that he had no doubt. They would probably have killed him, anyhow, but he had made his sentence sure when he had shot Anse Rutherford and wounded Eli Schaick ten days ago. That it had been done by him in self-defense made no difference.

Out of the Civil War John Beaudry had come looking only for peace. He had moved West and been flung into the wild, turbulent life of the frontier. In the Big Creek country there was no peace for strong men in the seventies. It was a time and place for rustlers and horse-thieves to flourish at the expense of honest settlers. They elected their friends to office and laughed at the law.

But the tide of civilization laps forward. A cattlemen's association had been formed. Beaudry, active as an organizer, had been chosen its first president. With all his energy he had fought the rustlers. When the time came to make a stand the association nominated Beaudry for sheriff and elected him. He had prosecuted the thieves remorselessly in spite of threats and shots in the dark. Two of them had been put by him behind bars. Others were awaiting trial. The climax had come when he met Anse Rutherford and his companion at Battle Butte, had defeated them both single-handed, and had left one dead on the field and the other badly wounded.

Men said that John Beaudry was one of the great sheriffs of the West. Perhaps he was, but he would have to pay the price that such a reputation exacts. The Rutherford gang had sworn his death and he knew they would keep the oath.

The man sat with one hand resting on the slim body of the sleeping boy. His heart was troubled. What was to become of little Royal without either father or mother? After the manner of men who live much alone in the open he spoke his thoughts aloud.

"Son, one of these here days they're sure a-goin' to get yore dad. Maybe he'll ride out of town and after a while the hawss will come galloping back with an empty saddle. A man can be mighty unpopular and die of old age, but not if he keeps bustin' up the plans of rampageous two-gun men, not if he shoots them up when they're full of the devil and bad whiskey. It ain't on the cyards for me to beat them to the draw every time, let alone that they'll see to it all the breaks are with them. No, sir. I reckon one of these days you're goin' to be an orphan, little son."

He stooped over the child and wrapped the blankets closer. The muscles of his tanned face twitched. Long he held the warm, slender body of the boy as close to him as he dared for fear of wakening him.

The man lay tense and rigid, his set face staring up into the starry night. It was his hour of trial. A rising tide was sweeping him away. He had to clutch at every straw to hold his footing. But something in the man--his lifetime habit of facing the duty that he saw--held him steady.

"You got to stand the gaff, Jack Beaudry. Can't run away from your job, can you? Got to go through, haven't you? Well, then!"

Peace came at last to the tormented man. He fell asleep. Hours later he opened his eyes upon a world bathed in light. It was such a brave warm world that the fears which had gripped him in the chill night seemed sinister dreams. In this clear, limpid atmosphere only a sick soul could believe in a blind alley from which there was no escape.

But facts are facts. He might hope for escape, but even now he could not delude himself with the thought that he might win through without a fight.

While they ate breakfast he told the boy about the mother whom he had never seen. John Beaudry had always intended to tell Royal the story of his love for the slender, sweet-lipped girl whose grace and beauty had flooded his soul. But the reticence of shyness had sealed his lips. He had cared for her with a reverence too deep for words.

She was the daughter of well-to-do people visiting in the West. The young cattleman and she had fallen in love almost at sight and had remained lovers till the day of her death. After one year of happiness tragedy had stalked their lives. Beaudry, even then the object of the rustlers' rage, had been intercepted on the way from Battle Butte to his ranch. His wife, riding to meet him, heard shots and galloped forward. From the mesa she looked down into a draw and saw her husband fighting for his life. He was at bay in a bed of boulders, so well covered by the big rocks that the rustlers could not easily get at him. His enemies, scattered fanshape across the entrance to the arroyo, were gradually edging nearer. In a panic of fear she rode wildly to the nearest ranch, gasped out her appeal for help, and collapsed in a woeful little huddle. His friends arrived in time to save Beaudry, damaged only to the extent of a flesh wound in the shoulder, but the next week the young wife gave premature birth to her child and died four days later.

In mental and physical equipment the baby was heir to the fears which had beset the last days of the mother. He was a frail little fellow and he whimpered at trifles. But the clutch of the tiny pink fingers held John Beaudry more firmly than a grip of steel. With unflagging patience he fended bogies from the youngster.

But the day was at hand when he could do this no longer. That was why he was telling Royal about the mother he had never known. From his neck he drew a light gold chain, at the end of which was a small square folding case. In it was a daguerreotype of a golden-haired, smiling girl who looked out at her son with an effect of shy eagerness.

"Give Roy pretty lady," demanded the boy.

Beaudry shook his head slowly. "I reckon that's 'most the only thing you can ask your dad for that he won't give you." He continued unsteadily, looking at the picture in the palm of his hand. "Lady-Bird I called her, son. She used to fill the house with music right out of her heart. . . . Fine as silk and true as gold. Don't you ever forget that your mother was a thoroughbred." His voice broke. "But I hadn't ought to have let her stay out here. She belonged where folks are good and kind, where they love books and music. Yet she wouldn't leave me because . . . because . . . Maybe you'll know why she wouldn't some day, little son."

He drew a long, ragged breath and slipped the case back under his shirt.

Quickly Beaudry rose and began to bustle about with suspicious cheerfulness. He whistled while he packed and saddled. In the fresh cool morning air they rode across the valley and climbed to the mesa beyond. The sun mounted higher and the heat shimmered on the trail in front of them. The surface of the earth was cracked in dry, sun-baked tiles curving upward at the edges. Cat's-claw clutched at the legs of the travelers. Occasionally a swift darted from rock to rock. The faint, low voices of the desert were inaudible when the horse moved. The riders came out of the silence and moved into the silence.

It was noon when Beaudry drew into the suburbs of Battle Butte. He took an inconspicuous way by alleys and side streets to the corral. His enemies might or might not be in town. He wanted to take no chances. All he asked was to postpone the crisis until Royal was safe aboard a train. Crossing San Miguel Street, the riders came face to face with a man Beaudry knew to be a spy of the Rutherfords. He was a sleek, sly little man named Chet Fox.

"Evening sheriff. Looks some like we-all might have rain," Fox said, rasping his unshaven chin with the palm of a hand.

"Looks like," agreed Beaudry with a curt nod and rode on.

Fox disappeared around a corner, hurried forward for half a block, and turned in at the Silver Dollar Saloon. A broad-shouldered, hawk-nosed man of thirty was talking to three of his friends. Toward this group Fox hurried. In a low voice he spoke six words that condemned John Beaudry to death.

"Beaudry just now rode into town."

Hal Rutherford forgot the story he was telling. He gave crisp, short orders. The men about him left by the back door of the saloon and scattered.

Meanwhile the sheriff rode into the Elephant Corral and unsaddled his horse. He led the animal to the trough in the yard and pumped water for it. His son trotted back beside him to the stable and played with a puppy while the roan was being fed.

Jake Sharp, owner of the corral, stood in the doorway and chatted with the sheriff for a minute. Was it true that a new schoolhouse was going to be built on Bonito? And had the sheriff heard whether McCarty was to be boss of Big Creek roundup?

Beaudry answered his questions and turned away. Royal clung to one hand as they walked. The other held the muley gun.

It was no sound that warned the sheriff. The approach of his enemies had been noiseless. But the sixth sense that comes to some fighting men made him look up quickly. Five riders were moving down the street toward the stable, Hal Rutherford in the lead. The alert glance of the imperiled man swept the pasture back of the corral. The glint of the sun heliographed danger from the rifle barrels of two men just topping the brow of the hill. Two more were stealing up through a draw to the right. A bullet whistled past the head of the officer.

The father spoke quietly to his little boy. "Run, son, to the stable."

The little chap began to sob. Bullets were already kicking up the dust behind them. Roy clung in terror to the leg of his father.

Beaudry caught up the child and made a dash for the stable. He reached it, just as Sharp and his horse-wrangler were disappearing into the loft. There was no time to climb the ladder with Royal. John flung open the top of the feed-bin, dropped the boy inside, and slammed down the lid.

The story of the fight that followed is still an epic in the Southwest. There was no question of fair play. The enemies of the sheriff intended to murder him.

The men in his rear were already clambering over the corral fence. One of them had a scarlet handkerchief around his neck. Beaudry fired from his hip and the vivid kerchief lurched forward into the dust. Almost at the same moment a sharp sting in the fleshy part of his leg told the officer that he was wounded.

From front and rear the attackers surged into the stable. The sheriff emptied the second barrel of buckshot into the huddle and retreated into an empty horse-stall. The smoke of many guns filled the air so that the heads thrust at him seemed oddly detached from bodies. A red-hot flame burned its way through his chest. He knew he was mortally wounded.

Hal Rutherford plunged at him, screaming an oath. "We've got him, boys."

Beaudry stumbled back against the manger, the arms of his foe clinging to him like ropes of steel. Twice he brought down the butt of his sawed-off gun on the black head of Rutherford. The grip of the big hillman grew lax, and as the man collapsed, his fingers slid slackly down the thighs of the officer.

John dropped the empty weapon and dragged out a Colt's forty-four. He fired low and fast, not stopping to take aim. Another flame seared its way through his body. The time left him now could be counted in seconds.

But it was not in the man to give up. The old rebel yell of Morgan's raiders quavered from his throat. They rushed him. With no room even for six-gun work he turned his revolver into a club. His arm rose and fell in the mêlée as the drive of the rustlers swept him to and fro.

So savage was the defense of their victim against the hillmen's onslaught that he beat them off. A sudden panic seized them, and those that could still travel fled in terror.

They left behind them four dead and two badly wounded. One would be a cripple to the day of his death. Of those who escaped there was not one that did not carry scars for months as a memento of the battle.

The sheriff was lying in the stall when Sharp found him. From out of the feed-bin the owner of the corral brought his boy to the father whose life was ebbing. The child was trembling like an aspen leaf.

"Picture," gasped Beaudry, his hand moving feebly toward the chain.

A bullet had struck the edge of the daguerreo-type case.

"She . . . tried . . . to save me . . . again," murmured the dying man with a faint smile.

He looked at the face of his sweetheart. It smiled an eager invitation to him. A strange radiance lit his eyes.

Then his head fell back. He had gone to join his Lady-Bird.

Chapter I

Dingwell Gives Three Cheers

Dave Dingwell had been in the saddle almost since daylight had wakened him to the magic sunshine of a world washed cool and miraculously clean by the soft breath of the hills. Steadily he had jogged across the desert toward the range. Afternoon had brought him to the foothills, where a fine rain blotted out the peaks and softened the sharp outlines of the landscape to a gentle blur of green loveliness.

The rider untied his slicker from the rear of the saddle and slipped into it. He had lived too long in sun-and-wind-parched New Mexico to resent a shower. Yet he realized that it might seriously affect the success of what he had undertaken.

If there had been any one to observe this solitary traveler, he would have said that the man gave no heed to the beauty of the day. Since he had broken camp his impassive gaze had been fixed for the most part on the ground in front of him. Occasionally he swung his long leg across the rump of the horse and dismounted to stoop down for a closer examination of the hoofprints he was following. They were not recent tracks. He happened to know that they were about three days old. Plain as a printed book was the story they told him.

The horses that had made these tracks had been ridden by men in a desperate hurry. They had walked little and galloped much. Not once had they fallen into the easy Spanish jog-trot used so much in the casual travel of the South-west. The spur of some compelling motive had driven this party at top speed.

Since Dingwell knew the reason for such haste he rode warily. His alert caution suggested the panther. The eye of the man pounced surely upon every bit of cactus or greasewood behind which a possible foe might be hidden. His lean, sun-tanned face was an open letter of recommendation as to his ability to take care of himself in a world that had often glared at him wolfishly. A man in a temper to pick a quarrel would have looked twice at Dave Dingwell before choosing him as the object of it--and then would have passed on to a less competent citizen.

The trail grew stiffer. It circled into a draw down which tumbled a jocund little stream. Trout, it might be safely guessed, lurked here in the riffles and behind the big stones. An ideal camping-ground this, but the rider rejected it apparently without consideration. He passed into the cañon beyond, and so by a long uphill climb came to the higher reaches of the hills.

He rode patiently, without any hurry, without any hesitation. Here again a reader of character might have found something significant in the steadiness of the man. Once on the trail, it would not be easy to shake him off.

By the count of years Dingwell might be in the early forties. Many little wrinkles radiated fanlike from the corners of his eyes. But whatever his age time had not tamed him. In the cock of those same steel-blue eyes was something jaunty, something almost debonair, that carried one back to a youth of care-free rioting in a land of sunshine. Not that Mr. Dingwell was given to futile dissipations. He had the reputation of a responsible ranchman. But it is not to be denied that little devils of mischief at times danced in those orbs.

Into the hills the trail wound across gulches and along the shoulders of elephant humps. It brought him into a country of stunted pines and red sandstone, and so to the summit of a ridge which formed part of the rim of a saucer-shaped basin. He looked down into an open park hedged in on the far side by mountains. Scrubby pines straggled up the slopes from arroyos that cleft the hills. By divers unknown paths these led into the range beyond.

A clump of quaking aspens was the chief landmark in the bed of the park. Though this was the immediate destination of Mr. Dingwell, since the hoofprints he was following plunged straight down toward the grove, yet he took certain precautions before venturing nearer. He made sure that the 45-70 Winchester that lay across the saddle was in working order. Also he kept along the rim of the saucer-shaped park till he came to a break where a creek tumbled down in a white foam through a ravine.

"It's a heap better to be safe than to be sorry," he explained to himself cheerfully. "They call this Lonesome Park, and maybe so it deserves its name to-day. But you never can tell, Dave. We'll make haste slowly if you don't mind."

Along the bank of the creek he descended, letting his sure-footed cowpony pick its own way while he gave strict attention to the scenery. At a bend of the stream he struck again the trail of the riders he had been following and came from there directly to the edge of the aspen clump.

Apparently his precautions were unnecessary. He was alone. There could be no doubt of that. Only the tracks of feet and the ashes of a dead fire showed that within a few days a party had camped here.

Dingwell threw his bridle to the ground and with his rifle tucked under his arm examined the tracks carefully. Sometimes he was down on hands and knees peering at the faint marks of which he was reading the story. Foot by foot he quartered over the sand, entirely circling the grove before he returned to the ashes of the dead fire. Certain facts he had discovered. One was that the party which had camped here had split up and taken to the hills by different trails instead of as a unit. Still another was that so far as he could see there had been no digging in or near the grove.

It was raining more definitely now, so that the distant peaks were hidden in a mist. In the lee of the aspens it was still dry. Dingwell stood there frowning at the ashes of the dead campfire. He had had a theory, and it was not working out quite as he had hoped. For the moment he was at a mental impasse. Part of what had happened he could guess almost as well as if he had been present to see it. Sweeney's posse had given the fugitives a scare at Dry Gap and driven them back into the desert. In the early morning they had tried the hills again and had reached Lonesome Park. But they could not be sure that Sweeney or some one of the posses sent out by the railroad was not close at hand. Somewhere in the range back of them the pursuers were combing the hills, and into those very hills the bandits had to go to disappear in their mountain haunts.

Even before reaching the park Dingwell had guessed the robbers would separate here and strike each for individual safety. But what had they done with the loot? That was the thing that puzzled him.

They had divided the gold here. Or one of them had taken it with him to an appointed rendezvous in the hills. Or they had cached it, One of these three plans had been followed. But which?

Dingwell rubbed the open fingers of one hand slowly through his sunburnt thatch of hair. "Doggone my hide, if it don't look like they took it with them," he murmured. "But that ain't reasonable, Dave. The man in charge of this hold-up knew his business. It was smooth work all the way through. If it hadn't been for bad luck he would have got away with the whole thing fine. They still had the loot with them when they got here. No doubt about that. Well, then! He wouldn't divvy up here, because, if they separated, and any one of them got caught with the gold on him, it would be a give-away. But if they didn't have the dough on them, it would not matter if some of the boys were caught. You can't do anything with a man riding peaceable through the hills looking for strays, no matter how loaded to the guards with suspicions you may be. So they would cache the loot. Wouldn't they? Sure they would if they had any sense. But tell me where, Dave."

His thoughtful eyes had for some moments been resting on something that held them. He stooped and picked up a little chip of sealing-wax. Instantly he knew how it had come here. The gold sacks had been sealed by the express company with wax. At least one of the sacks had been opened here by the robbers.

Did this mean they had divided their treasure here? It might mean that. Or it might mean that before they cached it they had opened one sack to see how much it held. Dingwell clung to the opinion that the latter was the truth, partly because this marched with his hopes and partly because it seemed to him more likely. There would be a big risk in taking their haul with them farther. There was none at all in caching it.

It was odd how that little heap of ashes in the center of the camp-fire drew his eye. Ashes did not arrange themselves that way naturally. Some one had raked these into a pile. Why? And who?

He could not answer those questions offhand. But he had a large bump of curiosity about some things. Otherwise he would not have been where he was that afternoon. With his boot he swept the ashes aside. The ground beneath them was a little higher than it was in the immediate neighborhood. Why should the bandits have built their fire on a small hillock when there was level ground adjacent? There might be a reason underneath that little rise of ground or there might not. Mr. Dingwell got out his long hunting-knife, fell on his knees, and began to dig at the center of the spot where the campfire had been.

The dirt flew. With his left hand he scooped it from the hole he was making. Presently the point of his knife struck metal. Three minutes later he unearthed a heavy gunnysack. Inside of it were a lot of smaller sacks bearing the seal of the Western Express Company. He had found the gold stolen by the Rutherford gang from the Pacific Flyer.

Dave was pleased with himself. It had been a good day's work. He admitted cheerfully that there was not another man in New Mexico who could have pulled off successfully the thing he had just done. The loot had been well hidden. It had been a stroke of genius to cache it in the spot where the camp-fire was afterward built. But he had outguessed Jess Tighe that time. His luck had sure stood up fine. The occasion called for a demonstration.

He took off his broad-rimmed gray hat. "Three rousing cheers, Mr. Dingwell," he announced ceremoniously. "Now, all together."

Rising to his toes, he waved his hat joyously, worked his shoulders like a college cheer leader, and gave a dumb pantomime of yelling. He had intended to finish off with a short solo dance step, for it is not every day that a man finds twenty thousand dollars in gold bars buried in the sand.

But he changed his mind. As he let himself slowly down to his heels there was a sardonic grin on his brown face. In outguessing Tighe he had slipped one little mental cog, after all, and the chances were that he would pay high for his error. A man had been lying in the mesquite close to the creek watching him all the time. He knew it because he had caught the flash of light on the rifle barrel that covered him.

The gold-digger beckoned with his hat as he called out. "Come right along to the party. You're welcome as a frost in June."

A head raised itself cautiously out of the brush. "Don't you move, or I'll plug lead into you."

"I'm hog-tied," answered Dingwell promptly. His mind worked swiftly. The man with the drop on him was Chet Fox, a hanger-on of the Rutherford gang, just as he had been seventeen years before when he betrayed John Beaudry to death. Fox was shrewd and wily, but no gunman. If Chet was alone, his prisoner did not propose to remain one. Dave did not intend to make any fool breaks, but it would be hard luck if he could not contrive a chance to turn the tables.

"Reach for the roof."

Dingwell obeyed orders.

Fox came forward very cautiously. Not for an instant did his beady eyes lift from the man he covered.

"Turn your back to me."

The other man did as he was told.

Gingerly Fox transferred the rifle to his left hand, then drew a revolver. He placed the rifle against the fork of a young aspen and the barrel of the six-gun against the small of Dingwell's back.

"Make just one break and you're a goner," he threatened.

With deft fingers he slid the revolver of the cattleman from its holster. Then, having collected Dingwell's rifle, he fell back a few steps.

"Now you can go on with those health exercises I interrupted if you've a mind to," Fox suggested with a sneer.

His prisoner turned dejected eyes upon him. "That's right. Rub it in, Chet. Don't you reckon I know what a long-eared jackass I am?"

"There's two of us know it then," said Fox dryly. "Now, lift that gunnysack to your saddle and tie it on behind."

This done, Fox pulled himself to the saddle, still with a wary eye on his captive.

"Hit the trail along the creek," he ordered.

Dingwell moved forward reluctantly. It was easy to read chagrin and depression in the sag of his shoulders and the drag of his feet.

The pig eyes of the fat little man on horseback shone with triumph. He was enjoying himself hugely. It was worth something to have tamed so debonair a dare-devil as Dingwell had the reputation of being. He had the fellow so meek that he would eat out of his hand.

Chapter II

Dave Caches a Gunnysack

Fox rode about ten yards behind his prisoner, who plodded without spirit up the creek trail that led from the basin.

"You're certainly an accommodating fellow, Dave," he jeered. "I've seen them as would have grumbled a heap at digging up that sack, and then loaning me their horse to carry it whilst they walked. But you're that cheerful. My own brother wouldn't have been so kind."

Dingwell grunted sulkily. He may have felt cheerful, but he did not look it. The pudgy round body of Fox shook with silent laughter.

"Kind is the word, Dave. Honest, I hate to put myself under obligations to you like this. If I hadn't seen with my own eyes how you was feeling the need of them health exercises, I couldn't let you force your bronc on me. But this little walk will do you a lot of good. It ain't far. My horse is up there in the pines."

"What are you going to do with me?" growled the defeated man over his shoulder.

"Do with you?" The voice of Fox registered amiable surprise. "Why, I am going to ask you to go up to the horse ranch with me so that the boys can thank you proper for digging up the gold."

Directly in front of them a spur of the range jutted out to meet the brown foothills. Back of this, forty miles as the crow flies, nestled a mountain park surrounded by peaks. In it was the Rutherford horse ranch. Few men traveled to it, and these by little-used trails. Of those who frequented them, some were night riders. They carried a price on their heads, fugitives from localities where the arm of the law reached more surely.

Through the dry brittle grass the man on horseback followed Dingwell to the scant pines where his cowpony was tethered. Fox dismounted and stood over his captive while the latter transferred the gunnysack and its contents to the other saddle. Never for an instant did the little spy let the other man close enough to pounce upon him. Even though Dingwell was cowed, Chet proposed to play it safe. Not till he was in the saddle himself did he let his prisoner mount.

Instantly Dave's cowpony went into the air.

"Whoa, you Teddy! What's the matter with you?" cried the owner of the horse angrily. "Quit your two-stepping, can't you?"

The animal had been gentle enough all day, but now a devil of unrest seemed to have entered it. The sound of trampling hoofs thudded on the hard, sun-baked earth as the bronco came down like a pile-driver, camel-backed, with legs stiff and unjointed. Skyward it flung itself again, whirled in the air, and jarred down at an angle. Wildly flapped the arms of the cattleman. The quirt, wrong end to, danced up and down clutched in his flying fist. Each moment it looked as if Mr. Dingwell would take the dust.

The fat stomach of Fox shook with mirth. "Go it, you buckaroo," he shouted. "You got him pulling leather. Sunfish, you pie-faced cayuse."

The horse in its lunges pounded closer. Fox backed away, momentarily alarmed. "Here ---- you, hold your brute off. It'll be on top of me in a minute," he screamed.

Apparently Dingwell had lost all control of the bucker. Somehow he still stuck to the saddle, by luck rather than skill it appeared. His arms, working like windmills, went up as Teddy shot into the air again. The hump-backed weaver came down close to the other horse. At the same instant Dingwell's loose arm grew rigid and the loaded end of the quirt dropped on the head of Fox.

The body of Fox relaxed and the rifle slid from his nerveless fingers. Teddy stopped bucking as if a spring had been touched. Dingwell was on his own feet before the other knew what had happened. His long arm plucked the little man from the saddle as if he had been a child.

Still jarred by the blow, Fox looked up with a ludicrous expression on his fat face. His mind was not yet adjusted to what had taken place.

"I told you to keep the brute away," he complained querulously. "Now, see what you've done."

Dave grinned. "Looks like I spilled your apple cart. No, don't bother about that gun. I'll take care of it for you. Much obliged."

Chet's face registered complex emotion. Incredulity struggled with resentment. "You made that horse buck on purpose," he charged.

"You're certainly a wiz, Chet," drawled the cattleman.

"And that business of being sore at yourself and ashamed was all a bluff. You were laying back to trick me," went on Fox venomously.

"How did you guess it? Well, don't you care. We're born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. As for man, his days are as grass. He diggeth a pit and falleth into it his own self. Likewise he digs a hole and buries gold, but beholds another guy finds it. See, Second Ananias, fourteen, twelve."

"That's how you show your gratitude, is it? I might 'a' shot you safe and comfortable from the mesquite and saved a lot of trouble."

"I don't wonder you're disgusted, Chet. But be an optimist. I might 'a' busted you high and wide with that quirt instead of giving you a nice little easy tap that just did the business. There's no manner of use being regretful over past mistakes," Dave told him cheerfully.

"It's easy enough for you to say that," groaned Fox, his hand to an aching head. "But I didn't lambaste you one on the nut. Anyhow, you've won out."

"I had won out all the time, only I hadn't pulled it off yet," Dingwell explained with a grin. "You didn't think I was going up to the horse ranch with you meek and humble, did you? But we can talk while we ride. I got to hustle back to Battle Butte and turn in this sack to the sheriff so as I can claim the reward. Hate to trouble you, Chet, but I'll have to ask you to transfer that gunnysack back to Teddy. He's through bucking for to-day, I shouldn't wonder."

Sourly Fox did as he was told. Then, still under orders, he mounted his own horse and rode back with his former prisoner to the park. Dingwell gathered up the rifle and revolver that had been left at the edge of the aspen grove and headed the horses for Battle Butte.

"We'll move lively, Chet," he said. "It will be night first thing we know."

Chet Fox was no fool. He could see how carefully Dingwell had built up the situation for his coup, and he began at once laying the groundwork for his own escape. There was in his mind no intention of trying to recover the gold himself, but if he could get away in time to let the Rutherfords know the situation, he knew that Dave would have an uneasy life of it.

"'Course I was joking about shooting you up from the mesquite, Dave," he explained as the horses climbed the trail from the park. "I ain't got a thing against you--nothing a-tall. Besides, I'm a law-abiding citizen. I don't hold with this here gunman business. I never was a killer, and I don't aim to begin now."

"Sure, I know how tender-hearted you are, Chet. I'm that way, too. I'm awful sorry for myself when I get in trouble. That's why I tapped you on the cocoanut with the end of my quirt. That's why I'd let you have about three bullets from old Tried and True here right in the back if you tried to make your getaway. But, as you say, I haven't a thing against you. I'll promise you one of the nicest funerals Washington County ever had."

The little man laughed feebly. "You will have your joke, Dave, but I know mighty well you wouldn't shoot me. You got no legal right to detain me."

"I'd have to wrastle that out with the coroner afterward, I expect," replied Dingwell casually. "Not thinking of leaving me, are you?"

"Oh, no! No. Not at all. I was just kinder talking."

It was seven miles from Lonesome Park to Battle Butte. Fox kept up a kind of ingratiating whine whenever the road was so rough that the horses had to fall into a walk. He was not sure whether when it came to the pinch he could summon nerve to try a bolt, but he laid himself out to establish friendly relations. Dingwell, reading him like a primer, cocked a merry eye at the man and grinned.

About a mile from Battle Butte they caught up with another rider, a young woman of perhaps twenty. The dark, handsome face that turned to see who was coming would have been a very attractive one except for its look of sulky rebellion. From the mop of black hair tendrils had escaped and brushed the wet cheeks flushed by the sting of the rain. The girl rode splendidly. Even the slicker that she wore could not disguise the flat back and the erect carriage of the slender body.

Dingwell lifted his hat. "Good-evenin', Miss Rutherford."

She nodded curtly. Her intelligent eyes passed from his to those of Fox. A question and an answer, neither of them in words, flashed forth and back between Beulah Rutherford and the little man.

Dave took a hand in the line-up as they fell into place beside each other. "Hold on, Fox. You keep to the left of the road. I'll ride next you with Miss Rutherford on my right." He explained to the girl with genial mockery his reason. "Chet and I are such tillicums we hate to let any one get between us."

Bluntly the girl spoke out, "What's the matter?"

The cattleman lifted his eyebrows in amused surprise. "Why, nothing at all, I reckon. There's nothing the matter, is there, Chet?"

"I've got an engagement to meet your father and he won't let me go," blurted out Fox.

"When did you make that hurry-up appointment, Chet?" laughed Dingwell. "You didn't seem in no manner of hurry when you was lying in the mesquite back there at Lonesome Park."

"You've got no business to keep him here. He can go if he wants to," flashed the young woman.

"You hear that, Chet. You can go if you want to," murmured Dave with good-natured irony.

"Said he'd shoot me in the back if I hit the trail any faster," Fox snorted to the girl.

"He wouldn't dare," flamed Beulah Rutherford.

Her sultry eyes attacked Dingwell.

He smiled, not a whit disturbed. "You see how it is, Chet. Maybe I will; maybe I won't. Be a sport and you'll find out."

For a minute the three rode in silence except for the sound of the horses moving. Beulah did not fully understand the situation, but it was clear to her that somehow Dingwell was interfering with a plan of her people. Her untamed youth resented the high-handed way in which he seemed to be doing it. What right had he to hold Chet Fox a prisoner at the point of a rifle?

She asked a question flatly. "Have you got a warrant for Chet's arrest?"

"Only old Tried and True here." Dave patted the barrel of his weapon.

"You're not a deputy sheriff?"

"No-o. Not officially."

"What has Chet done?"

Dingwell regarded the other man humorously. "What have you done, Chet? You must 'a' broke some ordinance in that long career of disrespectability of yours. I reckon we'll put it that you obstructed traffic at Lonesome Park."

Miss Rutherford said no more. The rain had given way to a gentle mist. Presently she took off her slicker and held it on the left side of the saddle to fold. The cattleman leaned toward her to lend a hand.

"Lemme roll it up," he said.

"No, I can."

With the same motion the girl had learned in roping cattle she flung the slicker over his head. Her weight on the left stirrup, she threw her arms about him and drew the oil coat tight.

"Run, Chet!" she cried.

Fox was off like a flash.

Hampered by his rifle, Dave could use only one hand to free himself. The Rutherford girl clung as if her arms had been ropes of steel. Before he had shaken her off, the runaway was a hundred yards down the road galloping for dear life.

Dave raised his gun. Beulah struck the barrel down with her quirt. He lowered the rifle, turned to her, and smiled. His grin was rueful but friendly.

"You're a right enterprising young lady for a schoolmarm, but I wouldn't have shot Chet, anyhow. The circumstances don't warrant it."

She swung from the saddle and picked her coat out of the mud where it had fallen. Her lithe young figure was supple as that of a boy.

"You've spoiled my coat," she charged resentfully.

The injustice of this tickled him. "I'll buy you a new one when we get to town," he told her promptly.

Her angry dignity gave her another inch of height. "I'll attend to that, Mr. Dingwell. Suppose you ride on and leave me alone. I won't detain you."

"Meaning that she doesn't like your company, Dave," he mused aloud, eyes twinkling. "She seemed kinder fond of you, too, a minute ago."

Almost she stamped her foot. "Will you go? Or shall I?"

"Oh, I'm going, Miss Rutherford. If I wasn't such an aged, decrepit wreck I'd come up and be one of your scholars. Anyhow, I'm real glad to have met you. No, I can't stay longer. So sorry. Good-bye."

He cantered down the road in the same direction Fox had taken. It happened that he, too, wanted to be alone, for he had a problem to solve that would not wait. Fox had galloped in to warn the Rutherford gang that he had the gold. How long it would take him to round up two or three of them would depend on chance. Dave knew that they might be waiting for him before he reached town. He had to get rid of the treasure between that spot and town, or else he had to turn on his tired horse and try to escape to the hills. Into his mind popped a possible solution of the difficulty. It would depend on whether luck was for or against him. To dismount and hide the sack was impossible, both because Beulah Rutherford was on his heels and because the muddy road would show tracks where he had stopped. His plan was to hide it without leaving the saddle.

He did. At the outskirts of Battle Butte he crossed the bridge over Big Creek and deflected to the left. He swung up one street and down another beside which ran a small field of alfalfa on one side. A hundred yards beyond it he met another rider, a man called Slim Sanders, who worked for Buck Rutherford as a cow-puncher.

The two men exchanged nods without stopping. Apparently the news that Fox had brought was unknown to the cowboy. But Dingwell knew he was on his way to the Legal Tender Saloon, which was the hang-out of the Rutherford followers. In a few minutes Sanders would get his orders.

Dave rode to the house of Sheriff Sweeney. He learned there that the sheriff was downtown. Dingwell turned toward the business section of the town and rode down the main street. From a passer-by he learned that Sweeney had gone into the Legal Tender a few minutes before. In front of that saloon he dismounted.

Fifty yards down the street three men were walking toward him. He recognized them as Buck Rutherford, Sanders, and Chet Fox. The little man walked between the other two and told his story excitedly. Dingwell did not wait for them. He had something he wanted to tell Sweeney and he passed at once into the saloon.

Chapter III

The Old-Timer Sits into a Big Game

The room into which Dingwell had stepped was as large as a public dance-hall. Scattered in one part or another of it, singly or in groups, were fifty or sixty men. In front, to the right, was the bar, where some cowmen and prospectors were lined up before a counter upon which were bottles and glasses. A bartender in a white linen jacket was polishing the walnut top with a cloth.

Dave shook his head in answer to the invitation to drink that came to him at once. Casually he chatted with acquaintances as he worked his way toward the rear. This part of the room was a gambling resort. Among the various methods of separating the prodigal from his money were roulette, faro, keno, chuckaluck, and poker tables. Around these a motley assemblage was gathered. Rich cattlemen brushed shoulders with the outlaws who were rustling their calves. Mexicans without a nickel stood side by side with Eastern consumptives out for their health. Chinese laundrymen played the wheel beside miners and cowpunchers. Stolid, wooden-faced Indians in blankets from the reservation watched the turbid life of the Southwest as it eddied around them. The new West was jostling the old West into the background, but here the vivid life of the frontier was making its last stand.

By the time that Dave had made a tour of two thirds of the room he knew that Sheriff Sweeney was not among those present. His inquiries brought out the fact that he must have just left. Dingwell sauntered toward the door, intending to follow him, but what he saw there changed his mind. Buck Rutherford and Slim Sanders were lounging together at one end of the bar. It took no detective to understand that they were watching the door. A glance to the rear showed Dave two more Rutherfords at the back exit. That he would have company in case he left was a safe guess.

The cattleman chuckled. The little devils of mischief already mentioned danced in his eyes. If they were waiting for him to go, he would see that they had a long session of it. Dave was in no hurry. The night was young yet, and in any case the Legal Tender never closed. The key had been thrown away ten years before. He could sit it out as long as the Rutherfords could.

Dingwell was confident no move would be made against him in public. The sentiment of the community had developed since that distant day when the Rutherford gang had shot down Jack Beaudry in open daylight. Deviltry had to be done under cover now. Moreover, Dave was in the peculiar situation of advantage that the outlaws could not kill him until they knew where he had hidden the gold. So far as the Rutherfords went, he was just now the goose that laid the golden egg.

He stood chatting with another cattleman for a few moments, then drifted back to the rear of the hall again. Underneath an elk's head with magnificent antlers a party sat around a table playing draw poker with a skinned deck. Two of them were wall-eyed strangers whom Dingwell guessed to be professional tinhorns. Another ran a curio store in town. The fourth was Dan Meldrum, one of the toughest crooks in the county. Nineteen years ago Sheriff Beaudry had sent him to the penitentiary for rustling calves. The fifth player sat next to the wall. He was a large, broad-shouldered man close to fifty. His face had the weather-beaten look of confidence that comes to an outdoor Westerner used to leading others.

While Dave was moving past this table, he noticed that Chet Fox was whispering in the ear of the man next the wall. The poker-player nodded, and at the same moment his glance met that of Dingwell. The gray eyes of the big fellow narrowed and grew chill. Fox, starting to move away, recognized the cattleman from whom he had escaped half an hour before. Taken by surprise, the little spy looked guilty as an urchin caught stealing apples.

It took no clairvoyant to divine what the subject of that whispered colloquy had been. The cheerful grin of Dave included impartially Fox, Meldrum, and the player beneath the elk's head.

The ex-convict spoke first. "Come back to sit in our game, Dave?" he jeered.

Dingwell understood that this was a challenge. It was impossible to look on the ugly, lupine face of the man, marked by the ravages of forty years of vice and unbridled passion, without knowing that he was ready for trouble now. But Meldrum was a mere detail of a situation piquant enough even for so light-hearted a son of the Rockies as this cattleman. Dave had already invited himself into a far bigger game of the Rutherford clan than this. Moreover, just now he was so far ahead that he had cleared the table of all the stakes. Meldrum knew this. So did Hal Rutherford, the big man sitting next the wall. What would be their next move? Perhaps if he joined them he would find out. This course held its dangers, but long experience had taught him that to walk through besetting perils was less risk than to run from them.

"If that's an invitation, Dan, you're on," he answered gayly. "Just a minute, and I'll join you. I want to send a message to Sweeney."

Without even looking at Meldrum to see the effect of this, Dave beckoned a Mexican standing near. "Tell the sheriff I want to see him here pronto. You win a dollar if he is back within an hour."

The Mexican disappeared. Fox followed him.

The cattleman drew in his chair and was introduced to the two strangers. The quick, searching look he gave each confirmed his first impression. These men were professional gamblers. It occurred to him that they had made a singularly poor choice of victims in Dan Meldrum and Hal Rutherford. Either of them would reach for his gun at the first evidence of crooked play.

No man in Battle Butte was a better poker psychologist than Dingwell, but to-night cards did not interest him. He was playing a bigger game. His subconscious mind was alert for developments. Since only his surface attention was given to poker he played close.

While Rutherford dealt the cards he talked at Dave. "So you're expecting Sweeney, are you? Been having trouble with any one?"

"Or expect to have any?" interjected Meldrum, insolence in his shifty pig eyes.

"No, not looking for any," answered Dingwell amiably. "Fact is, I was prospecting around Lonesome Park and found a gold mine. Looks good, so I thought I'd tell Sweeney about it. . . . Up to me? I've got openers." He pushed chips to the center of the table.

Rutherford also pushed chips forward. "I'll trail along. . . . You got an idea of taking in Sweeney as a partner? I'm looking for a good investment. It would pay you to take me in rather than Sweeney."

Three of those at the table accepted this talk at its face value. They did not sense the tension underneath the apparently casual give-and-take. Two of them stayed and called for cards. But Dave understood that he had been offered a compromise. Rutherford had proposed to divide the gold stolen from the express car, and the proffer carried with it a threat in case of refusal.

"Two when you get to me. . . . No, I reckon I'll stick to the sheriff. I've kinda arranged the deal."

As Rutherford slid two cards across to him the eyes of the men met. "Call it off. Sweeney is not the kind of a partner to stay with you to the finish if your luck turns bad. When I give my word I go through."

Dingwell looked at his cards. "Check to the pat hand. . . . Point is, Hal, that I don't expect my luck to turn bad."

"Hmp! Go in with Sweeney and you'll have bad luck all right. _I'll promise you that_. Better talk this over with me and put a deal through." He rapped on the table to show that he too passed without betting.

The curio dealer checked and entered a mild protest. "Is this a poker game or a conversazione, gentlemen? It's stuck with Meldrum. I reckon he's off in Lonesome Park gold-mining the way he's been listening."

Meldrum brought his attention back to the game and bet his pat hand. Dave called. After a moment's hesitation Rutherford threw down his cards.

"There's such a thing as pushing your luck too far," he commented. "Now, take old man Crawford. He was mightily tickled when his brother Jim left him the Frying Pan Ranch. But that wasn't good enough as it stood. He had to try to better it by marrying the Swede hash-slinger from Los Angeles. Later she fed him arsenic in his coffee. A man's a fool to overplay his luck."

At the showdown Meldrum disclosed a four-card flush and the cattleman three jacks.

As Dave raked in the pot he answered Rutherford casually. "Still, he hadn't ought to underplay it either. The other fellow may be out on a limb."

"Say, is it any of your business how I play my cards?" demanded Meldrum, thrusting his chin toward Dingwell.

"Absolutely none," replied Dave evenly.

"Cut that out, Dan," ordered Rutherford curtly.

The ex-convict mumbled something into his beard, but subsided.

Two hours had slipped away before Dingwell commented on the fact that the sheriff had not arrived. He did not voice his suspicion that the Mexican had been intercepted by the Rutherfords.

"Looks like Sweeney didn't get my message," he said lazily. "You never can tell when a Mexican is going to get too tired to travel farther."

"Better hook up with me on that gold-mine proposition, Dave," Hal Rutherford suggested again.

"No, I reckon not, Hal. Much obliged, just the same."

Dave began to watch the game more closely. There were points about it worth noticing. For one thing, the two strangers had a habit of getting the others into a pot and cross-raising them exasperatingly. If Dave had kept even, it was only because he refused to be drawn into inviting pots when either of the strangers was dealing. He observed that though they claimed not to have met each other before there was team work in their play. Moreover, the yellow and blue chips were mostly piled up in front of them, while Meldrum, Rutherford, and the curio dealer had all bought several times. Dave waited until his doubts of crooked work became certainty before he moved.

"The game's framed. Blair has rung in a cold deck on us. He and Smith are playing in cahoots."

Dingwell had risen. His hands rested on the table as an assurance that he did not mean to back up his charge with a gunplay unless it became necessary.

The man who called himself Blair wasted no words in denial. His right hand slid toward his hip pocket. Simultaneously the fingers of Dave's left hand knotted to a fist, his arm jolted forward, and the bony knuckles collided with the jaw of the tinhorn. The body of the cattleman had not moved. There seemed no special effort in the blow, but Blair went backward in his chair heels over head. The man writhed on the floor, turned over, and lay still.

From the moment that he had launched his blow Dave wasted no more attention on Blair. His eyes fastened upon Smith. The man made a motion to rise.

"Don't you," advised the cattleman gently. "Not till I say so, Mr. Smith. There's no manner of hurry a-tall. Meldrum, see what he's got in his right-hand pocket. Better not object, Smith, unless you want to ride at your own funeral."

Meldrum drew from the man's pocket a pack of cards.

"I thought so. They've been switching decks on us. The one we're playing with is marked. Run your finger over the ace of clubs there, Hal. . . . How about it?"

"Pin-pricked," announced Rutherford. "And they've garnered in most of the chips. What do you think?"

"That I'll beat both their heads off," cut in Meldrum, purple with rage.

"Not necessary, Dan," vetoed Dingwell. "We'll shear the wolves. Each of you help yourself to chips equal to the amount you have lost. . . . Now, Mr. Smith, you and your partner will dig up one hundred and ninety-three dollars for these gentlemen."

"Why?" sputtered Smith. "It's all a frame-up. We've been playing a straight game. But say we haven't. They have got their chips back. Let them cash in to the house. What more do you want?"

"One hundred and ninety-three dollars. I thought I mentioned that already. You tried to rob these men of that amount, but you didn't get away with it. Now you'll rob yourself of just the same sum. Frisk yourself, Mr. Smith."

"Not on your life I won't. It. . . it's an outrage. It's robbery. I'll not stand for it." His words were brave, but the voice of the man quavered. The bulbous, fishy eyes of the cheat wavered before the implacable ones of the cattleman.

"Come through."

The gambler's gaze passed around the table and found no help from the men he had been robbing. A crowd was beginning to gather. Swiftly he decided to pay forfeit and get out while there was still time. He drew a roll of bills from his pocket and with trembling fingers counted out the sum named. He shoved it across the table and rose.

"Now, take your friend and both of you hit the trail out of town," ordered the cattleman.

Blair had by this time got to his feet and was leaning stupidly on a chair. His companion helped him from the room. At the door he turned and glared at Dingwell.

"You're going to pay for this--and pay big," he spat out, his voice shaking with rage.

"Oh, that's all right," answered Dingwell easily.

The game broke up. Rutherford nodded a good-night to the cattleman and left with Meldrum. Presently Dave noticed that Buck and the rest of the clan had also gone. Only Slim Sanders was left, and he was playing the wheel.

"Time to hit the hay," Dave yawned.

The bartender called "Good-night" as Dingwell went out of the swinging doors. He said afterward that he thought he heard the sound of scuffling and smothered voices outside. But his interest in the matter did not take him as far as the door to find out if anything was wrong.

Chapter IV

Royal Beaudry Hears a Call

A bow-legged little man with the spurs still jingling on his heels sauntered down one side of the old plaza. He passed a train of fagot-laden burros in charge of two Mexican boys from Tesuque, the sides and back of each diminished mule so packed with firewood that it was a comical caricature of a beruffed Elizabethan dame. Into the plaza narrow, twisted streets of adobe rambled carelessly. One of these led to the San Miguel Mission, said to be the oldest church in the United States.

An entire side of the square was occupied by a long, one-story adobe structure. This was the Governor's Palace. For three hundred years it had been the seat of turbulent and tragic history. Its solid walls had withstood many a siege and had stifled the cries of dozens of tortured prisoners. The mail-clad Spanish explorers Penelosa and De Salivar had from here set out across the desert on their search for gold and glory. In one of its rooms the last Mexican governor had dictated his defiance to General Kearny just before the Stars and Stripes fluttered from its flagpole. The Spaniard, the Indian, the Mexican, and the American in turn had written here in action the romance of the Southwest.

The little man was of the outdoors. His soft gray creased hat, the sun-tan on his face and neck, the direct steadiness of the blue eyes with the fine lines at the corners, were evidence enough even if he had not carried in the wrinkles of his corduroy suit about seven pounds of white powdered New Mexico.

He strolled down the sidewalk in front of the Palace, the while he chewed tobacco absent-mindedly. There was something very much on his mind, so that it was by chance alone that his eye lit on a new tin sign tacked to the wall. He squinted at it incredulously. His mind digested the information it contained while his jaws worked steadily.

The sign read:--

DESPACHO

DE

ROYAL BEAUDRY, LICENDIADO.

For those who preferred another language, a second announcement appeared below the first:--

ROYAL BEAUDRY.

ATTORNEY AT LAW.

"Sure, and it must be the boy himself," said the little man aloud.

He opened the door and walked in.

A young man sat reading with his heels crossed on the top of a desk. A large calf-bound volume was open before him, but the book in the hands of the youth looked less formidable. It bore the title, "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes." The budding lawyer flashed a startled glance at his caller and slid Dr. Watson's hero into an open drawer.

The visitor grinned and remarked with a just perceptible Irish accent: "'Tis a good book. I've read it myself."

The embryo Blackstone blushed. "Say, are you a client?" he asked.

"No-o."

"Gee! I was afraid you were my first. I like your looks. I'd hate for you to have the bad luck to get me for your lawyer." He laughed, boyishly. There was a very engaging quality about his candor.

The Irishman shot an abrupt question at him. "Are you John Beaudry's son--him that was fighting sheriff of Washington County twenty years ago?"

A hint of apprehension flickered into the eyes of the young man. "Yes," he said.

"Your father was a gr-reat man, the gamest officer that ever the Big Creek country saw. Me name is Patrick Ryan."

"Glad to meet any friend of my father, Mr. Ryan." Roy Beaudry offered his hand. His fine eyes glowed.

"Wait," warned the little cowpuncher grimly. "I'm no liar, whativer else I've been. Mebbe you'll be glad you've met me--an' mebbe you won't. First off, I was no friend of your father. I trailed with the Rutherford outfit them days. It's all long past and I'll tell youse straight that he just missed me in the round-up that sent two of our bunch to the pen."

In the heart of young Beaudry a dull premonition of evil stirred. His hand fell limply. Why had this man come out of the dead past to seek him? His panic-stricken eyes clung as though fascinated to those of Ryan.

"Do you mean . . . that you were a rustler?"

Ryan looked full at him. "You've said it. I was a wild young colt thim days, full of the divil and all. But remimber this. I held no grudge at Jack Beaudry. That's what he was elected for--to put me and my sort out of business. Why should I hate him because he was man enough to do it?"

"That's not what some of your friends thought."

"You're right, worse luck. I was out on the range when it happened. I'll say this for Hal Rutherford. He was full of bad whiskey when your father was murdered. . . . But that ended it for me. I broke with the Huerfano gang outfit and I've run straight iver since."

"Why have you come to me? What do you want?" asked the young lawyer, his throat dry.

"I need your help."

"What for? Why should I give it? I don't know you."

"It's not for mysilf that I want it. There's a friend of your father in trouble. When I saw the sign with your name on it I came in to tell you."

"What sort of trouble?"

"That's a long story. Did you iver hear of Dave Dingwell?"

"Yes. I've never met him, but he put me through law school."

"How come that?"

"I was living in Denver with my aunt. A letter came from Mr. Dingwell offering to pay the expenses of my education. He said he owed that much to my father."

"Well, then, Dave Dingwell has disappeared off the earth."

"What do you mean--disappeared?" asked Roy.

"He walked out of the Legal Tender Saloon one night and no friend of his has seen him since. That was last Tuesday."

"Is that all? He may have gone hunting--or to Denver--or Los Angeles."

"No, he didn't do any one of the three. He was either murdered or else hid out in the hills by them that had a reason for it."

"Do you suspect some one?"

"I do," answered Ryan promptly. "If he was killed, two tinhorn gamblers did it. If he's under guard in the hills, the Rutherford gang have got him."

"The Rutherfords, the same ones that--?"

"The ver-ry same--Hal and Buck and a brood of young hellions they have raised."

"But why should they kidnap Mr. Dingwell? If they had anything against him, why wouldn't they kill him?"

"If the Rutherfords have got him it is because he knows something they want to know. Listen, and I'll tell you what I think."

The Irishman drew up a chair and told Beaudry the story of that night in the Legal Tender as far as he could piece it together. He had talked with one of the poker-players, the man that owned the curio store, and from him had gathered all he could remember of the talk between Dingwell and Rutherford.

"Get these points, lad," Ryan went on. "Dave comes to town from a long day's ride. He tells Rutherford that he has been prospecting and has found gold in Lonesome Park. Nothing to that. Dave is a cattleman, not a prospector. Rutherford knows that as well as I do. But he falls right in with Dingwell's story. He offers to go partners with Dave on his gold mine--keeps talking about it--insists on going in with him."

"I don't see anything in that," said Roy.

"You will presently. Keep it in mind that there wasn't any gold mine and couldn't have been. That talk was a blind to cover something else. Good enough. Now chew on this awhile. Dave sent a Mexican to bring the sheriff, but Sweeney didn't come. He explained that he wanted to go partners with Sweeney about this gold-mine proposition. If he was talking about a real gold mine, that is teetotally unreasonable. Nobody would pick Sweeney for a partner. He's a fathead and Dave worked against him before election. But Sweeney is sheriff of Washington County. Get that?"

"I suppose you mean that Dingwell had something on the Rutherfords and was going to turn them over to the law."

"You're getting warm, boy. Does the hold-up of the Pacific Flyer help you any?"

Roy drew a long breath of surprise. "You mean the Western Express robbery two weeks ago?"

"Sure I mean that. Say the Rutherford outfit did that job."

"And that Dingwell got evidence of it. But then they would kill him." The heart of the young man sank. He had a warm place in it for this unknown friend who had paid his law-school expenses.

"You're forgetting about the gold mine Dave claimed to have found in Lonesome Park. Suppose he was hunting strays and saw them cache their loot somewhere. Suppose he dug it up. Say they knew he had it, but didn't know where he had taken it. They couldn't kill him. They would have to hold him prisoner till they could make him tell where it was."

The young lawyer shook his head. "Too many ifs. Each one makes a weak joint in your argument. Put them all together and it is full of holes. Possible, but extremely improbable."

An eager excitement flashed in the blue eyes of the Irishman.

"You're looking at the thing wrong end to. Get a grip on your facts first. The Western Express Company was robbed of twenty thousand dollars and the robbers were run into the hills. The Rutherford outfit is the very gang to pull off that hold-up. Dave tells Hal Rutherford, the leader of the tribe, that he has sent for the sheriff. Hal tries to get him to call it off. Dave talks about a gold mine he has found and Rutherford tries to fix up a deal with him. There's no if about any of that, me young Sherlock Holmes."

"No, you've built up a case. But there's a stronger case already built for us, isn't there? Dingwell exposed the gamblers Blair and Smith, knocked one of them cold, made them dig up a lot of money, and drove them out of town. They left, swearing vengeance. He rides away, and he is never seen again. The natural assumption is that they lay in wait for him and killed him."

"Then where is the body?"

"Lying out in the cactus somewhere--or buried in the sand."

"That wouldn't be a bad guess--if it wasn't for another bit of testimony that came in to show that Dave was alive five hours after he left the Legal Tender. A sheepherder on the Creosote Flats heard the sound of horses' hoofs early next morning. He looked out of his tent and saw three horses. Two of the riders carried rifles. The third rode between them. He didn't carry any gun. They were a couple of hundred yards away and the herder didn't recognize any of the men. But it looked to him like the man without the gun was a prisoner."

"Well, what does that prove?"

"If the man in the middle was Dave--and that's the hunch I'm betting on to the limit--it lets out the tinhorns. Their play would be to kill and make a quick getaway. There wouldn't be any object in their taking a prisoner away off to the Flats. If this man was Dave, Blair and Smith are eliminated from the list of suspects. That leaves the Rutherfords."

"But you don't know that this was Dingwell."

"That's where you come in, me brave Sherlock. Dave's friends can't move to help him. You see, they're all known men. It might be the end of Dave if they lifted a finger. But you're not known to the Rutherfords. You slip in over Wagon Wheel Gap to Huerfano Park, pick up what you can, and come out to Battle Butte with your news."

"You mean--spy on them?"

"Of coorse."

"But what if they suspected me?"

"Then your heirs at law would collect the insurance," Ryan told him composedly.

Excuses poured out of young Beaudry one on top of another. "No, I can't go. I won't mix up in it. It's not my affair. Besides, I can't get away from my business."

"I see your business keeps you jumping," dryly commented the Irishman. "And you know best whether it's your affair."

Beaudry could have stood it better if the man had railed at him, if he had put up an argument to show why he must come to the aid of the friend who had helped him. This cool, contemptuous dismissal of him stung. He began to pace the room in rising excitement.

"I hate that country up there. I've got no use for it. It killed my mother just as surely as it did my father. I left there when I was a child, but I'll never forget that dreadful day seventeen years ago. Sometimes I wake in bed out of some devil's nightmare and live it over. Why should I go back to that bloody battleground? Hasn't it cost me enough already? It's easy for you to come and tell me to go to Huerfano Park--"

"Hold your horses, Mr. Beaudry. I'm not tellin' you to go. I've laid the facts before ye. Go or stay as you please."

"That's all very well," snapped back the young man. "But I know what you'll think of me if I don't go."

"What you'll think of yourself matters more. I haven't got to live with ye for forty years."

Roy Beaudry writhed. He was sensitive and high-strung. Temperamentally he coveted the good opinion of those about him. Moreover, he wanted to deserve it. No man had ever spoken to him in just the tone of this little Irish cowpuncher, who had come out of nowhere into his life and brought to him his first big problem for decision. Even though the man had confessed himself a rustler, the young lawyer could not escape his judgment. Pat Ryan might have ridden on many lawless trails in his youth, but the dynamic spark of self-respect still burned in his soul. He was a man, every inch of his five-foot three.

"I want to live at peace," the boy went on hotly. "Huerfano Park is still in the dark ages. I'm no gunman. I stand for law and order. This is the day of civilization. Why should I embroil myself with a lot of murderous outlaws when what I want is to sit here and make friends--?"

The Irishman hammered his fist on the table and exploded. "Then sit here, damn ye! But why the hell should any one want to make friends with a white-livered pup like you? I thought you was Jack Beaudry's son, but I'll niver believe it. Jack didn't sit on a padded chair and talk about law and order. By God, no! He went out with a six-gun and made them. No gamer, whiter man ever strapped a forty-four to his hip. He niver talked about what it would cost him to go through for his friends. He just went the limit without any guff."

Ryan jingled out of the room in hot scorn and left one young peace advocate in a turmoil of emotion.

Young Beaudry did not need to discuss with himself the ethics of the situation. A clear call had come to him on behalf of the man who had been his best friend, even though he had never met him. He must answer that call, or he must turn his back on it. Sophistry would not help at all. There were no excuses his own mind would accept.

But Royal Beaudry had been timid from his childhood. He had inherited fear. The shadow of it had always stretched toward him. His cheeks burned with shame to recall that it had not been a week since he had looked under the bed at night before getting in to make sure nobody was hidden there. What was the use of blinking the truth? He was a born coward. It was the skeleton in the closet of his soul. His schooldays had been haunted by the ghost of dread. Never in his life had he played truant, though he had admired beyond measure the reckless little dare-devils who took their fun and paid for it. He had contrived to avoid fights with his mates and thrashings from the teachers. On the one occasion when public opinion had driven him to put up his fists, he had been saved from disgrace only because the bully against whom he had turned proved to be an arrant craven.

He remembered how he had been induced to go out and try for the football team at the university. His fellows knew him as a fair gymnast and a crack tennis player. He was muscular, well-built, and fast on his feet, almost perfectly put together for a halfback. On the second day of practice he had shirked a hard tackle, though it happened that nobody suspected the truth but himself. Next morning he turned in his suit with the plea that he had promised his aunt not to play.

Now trepidation was at his throat again, and there was no escape from a choice that would put a label on him. It had been his right to play football or not as he pleased. But this was different. A summons had come to his loyalty, to the fundamental manhood of him. If he left David Dingwell to his fate, he could never look at himself again in the glass without knowing that he was facing a dastard.

The trouble was that he had too much imagination. As a child he had conjured dragons out of the darkness that had no existence except in his hectic fancy. So it was now. He had only to give his mind play to see himself helpless in the hands of the Rutherfords.

But he was essentially stanch and generous. Fate had played him a scurvy trick in making him a trembler, but he knew it was not in him to turn his back on Dingwell. No matter how much he might rebel and squirm he would have to come to time in the end.

After a wretched afternoon he hunted up Ryan at his hotel.

"When do you want me to start?" he asked sharply.

The little cowpuncher was sitting in the lobby reading a newspaper. He took one look at the harassed youth and jumped up.

"Say, you're all right. Put her there."

Royal's cold hand met the rough one of Ryan. The shrewd eyes of the Irishman judged the other.

"I knew youse couldn't be a quitter and John Beaudry's son," he continued. "Why, come to that, the sooner you start the quicker."

"I'll have to change my name."

"Sure you will. And you'd better peddle something--insurance, or lightning rods, or 'The Royal Gall'ry of Po'try 'n Art' or--"

"'Life of the James and Younger Brothers.' That ought to sell well with the Rutherfords," suggested Roy satirically, trying to rise to the occasion.

"Jess Tighe and Dan Meldrum don't need any pointers from the James Boys."

"Tighe and Meldrum-- Who are they?"

"Meldrum is a coyote your father trapped and sent to the pen. He's a bad actor for fair. And Tighe--well, if you put a hole in his head you'd blow out the brains of the Rutherford gang. For hiven's sake don't let Jess know who you are. All of sivinteen years he's been a cripple on crutches, and 't was your father that laid him up the day of his death. He's a rivingeful divil is Jess."

Beaudry made no comment. It seemed to him that his heart was of chilled lead.

Chapter V

The Hill Girl

The Irish cowpuncher guided young Royal Beaudry through Wagon Wheel Gap himself. They traveled in the night, since it would not do for the two to be seen together. In the early morning Ryan left the young man and turned back toward Battle Butte. The way to Huerfano Park, even from here, was difficult to find, but Roy had a map drawn from memory by Pat.

"I'll not guarantee it," the little rider had cautioned. "It's been many a year since I was in to the park and maybe my memory is playing tricks. But it's the best I can do for you."

Beaudry spent the first half of the day in a pine grove far up in the hills. It would stir suspicion if he were seen on the road at dawn, for that would mean that he must have come through the Gap in the night. So he unsaddled and stretched himself on the sun-dappled ground for an hour or two's rest. He did not expect to sleep, even though he had been up all night. He was too uneasy in mind and his nerves were too taut.

But it was a perfect day of warm spring sunshine. He looked up into a blue unflecked sky. The tireless hum of insects made murmurous music all about him. The air was vocal with the notes of nesting birds. His eyes closed drowsily.

When he opened them again, the sun was high in the heavens. He saddled and took the trail. Within the hour he knew that he was lost. Either he had mistaken some of the landmarks of Ryan's sketchy map or else the cowpuncher had forgotten the lay of the country.

Still, Roy knew roughly the general direction of Huerfano Park. If he kept going he was bound to get nearer. Perhaps he might run into a road or meet some sheepherder who would put him on the right way.

He was in the heart of the watershed where Big Creek heads. Occasionally from a hilltop he could see the peaks rising gaunt in front of him. Between him and them were many miles of tangled mesquite, wooded cañons, and hills innumerable. Somewhere among the recesses of these land waves Huerfano Park was hidden.

It was three o'clock by Royal's watch when he had worked to the top of a bluff which looked down upon a wooded valley. His eyes swept the landscape and came to rest upon an object moving slowly in the mesquite. He watched it incuriously, but his interest quickened when it came out of the bushes into a dry water-course and he discovered that the figure was that of a human being. The person walked with an odd, dragging limp. Presently he discerned that the traveler below was a woman and that she was pulling something after her. For perhaps fifty yards she would keep going and then would stop. Once she crouched down over her load.

Roy cupped his hands at his mouth and shouted. The figure straightened alertly and looked around. He called to her again. His voice must have reached her very faintly. She did not try to answer in words, but fired twice with a revolver. Evidently she had not yet seen him.

That there was something wrong Beaudry felt sure. He did not know what, nor did he waste any time speculating about it. The easiest descent to the valley was around the rear of the bluff, but Roy clambered down a heavily wooded gulch a little to the right. He saved time by going directly.

When Roy saw the woman again he was close upon her. She was stooped over something and her back and arms showed tension. At sound of his approach she flung up quickly the mass of inky black hair that had hidden her bent face. As she rose it became apparent that she was tall and slender, and that the clear complexion, just now at least, was quite without color.

Moving forward through the underbrush, Beaudry took stock of this dusky nymph with surprise. In her attitude was something wild and free and proud. It was as if she challenged his presence even though she had summoned him. Across his mind flashed the thought that this was woman primeval before the conventions of civilization had tamed her to its uses.

Her intent eyes watched him steadily as he came into the open.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"I was on the bluff and saw you. I thought you were in trouble. You limped as if--"

He stopped, amazed. For the first time he saw that her foot was caught in a wolf trap. This explained the peculiarity of gait he had noticed from above. She had been dragging the heavy Newhouse trap and the clog with her as she walked. One glance at her face was enough to show how greatly she was suffering.

Fortunately she was wearing a small pair of high-heeled boots such as cowpunchers use, and the stiff leather had broken the shock of the blow from the steel jaws. Otherwise the force of the released spring must have shattered her ankle.

"I can't quite open the trap," she explained. "If you will help me--"

Roy put his weight on the springs and removed the pressure of the jaws. The girl drew out her numb leg. She straightened herself, swayed, and clutched blindly at him. Next moment her body relaxed and she was unconscious in his arms.

He laid her on the moss and looked about for water. There was some in his canteen, but that was attached to the saddle on the top of the bluff. For present purposes it might as well have been at the North Pole. He could not leave her while she was like this. But since he had to be giving some first aid, he drew from her foot the boot that had been in the steel trap, so as to relieve the ankle.

Her eyelids fluttered, she gave a deep sigh, and looked with a perplexed doubt upon the world to which she had just returned.

"You fainted," Roy told her by way of explanation.

The young woman winced and looked at her foot. The angry color flushed into her cheeks. Her annoyance was at herself, but she visited it upon him.

"Who told you to take off my boot?"

"I thought it might help the pain."

She snatched up the boot and started to pull it on, but gave this up with a long breath that was almost a groan.

"I'm a nice kind of a baby," she jeered.

"It must hurt like sixty," he ventured. Then, after momentary hesitation: "You'd better let me bind up your ankle. I have water in my canteen. I'll run up and get some as soon as I'm through."

There was something of sullen suspicion in the glance her dark eyes flashed at him.

"You can get me water if you want to," she told him, a little ungraciously.

He understood that his offer to tie up the ankle had been refused. When he returned with his horse twenty minutes later, he knew why she had let him go for the water. It had been the easiest way to get rid of him for the time. The fat bulge beneath her stocking showed that she had taken advantage of his absence to bind the bruised leg herself.

"Is it better now--less painful?" he asked.

She dismissed his sympathy with a curt little nod. "I'm the biggest fool in Washington County. We've been setting traps for wolves. They've been getting our lambs. I jumped off my horse right into this one. Blacky is a skittish colt and when the trap went off, he bolted."

He smiled a little at the disgust she heaped upon herself.

"You'll have to ride my horse to your home. How far is it?"

"Five miles, maybe." The girl looked at her ankle resentfully. It was plain that she did not relish the idea of being under obligations to him. But to attempt to walk so far was out of the question. Even now when she was not using the foot she suffered a good deal of pain.

"Cornell isn't a bit skittish. He's an old plug. You'll find his gait easy," Beaudry told her.

If she had not wanted to keep her weight from the wounded ankle, she would have rejected scornfully his offer to help her mount, for she was used to flinging her lithe body into the saddle as easily as her brothers did. The girl had read in books of men aiding women to reach their seat on the back of a horse, but she had not the least idea how the thing was done. Because of her ignorance she was embarrassed. The result was that they boggled the business, and it was only at the third attempt that he got her on as gracefully as if she had been a sack of meal.

"Sorry. I'm awfully awkward," he apologized.

Again an angry flush stained her cheeks. The stupidity had been hers, not his. She resented it that he was ready to take the blame,--read into his manner a condescension he did not at all feel.

"I know whose fault it was. I'm not a fool," she snapped brusquely.

It added to her irritation at making such an exhibition of clumsiness that she was one of the best horsewomen in the Territory. Her life had been an outdoor one, and she had stuck to the saddle on the back of many an outlaw bronco without pulling leather. There were many things of which she knew nothing. The ways of sophisticated women, the conventions of society, were alien to her life. She was mountain-bred, brought up among men, an outcast even from the better class of Battle Butte. But the life of the ranch she knew. That this soft-cheeked boy from town should think she did not know how to get on a horse was a little too humiliating. Some day, if she ever got a chance, she would let him see her vault into the saddle without touching the stirrups.

The young man walking beside the horse might still be smooth-cheeked, but he had the muscles of an athlete. He took the hills with a light, springy step and breathed easily after stiff climbing. His mind was busy making out what manner of girl this was. She was new to his experience. He had met none like her. That she was a proud, sulky creature he could easily guess from her quickness at taking offense. She resented even the appearance of being ridiculous. Her acceptance of his favors carried always the implication that she hated him for offering them. It was a safe guess that back of those flashing eyes were a passionate temper and an imperious will.

It was evident that she knew the country as a teacher knows the primer through which she leads her children. In daylight or in darkness, with or without a trail, she could have followed almost an air-line to the ranch. The paths she took wound in and out through unsuspected gorges and over divides that only goats or cow-ponies could have safely scrambled up and down. Hidden pockets had been cached here so profusely by nature that the country was a maze. A man might have found safety from pursuit in one of these for a lifetime if he had been provisioned.

"Where were you going when you found me?" the young woman asked.

"Up to the mountain ranches of Big Creek. I was lost, so we ought to put it that you found me," Beaudry answered with the flash of a pleasant smile.

"What are you going to do up there?" Her keen suspicious eyes watched him warily.

"Sell windmills if I can. I've got the best proposition on the market."

"Why do you come away up here? Don't you know that the Big Creek headwaters are off the map?"

"That's it exactly," he replied. "I expect no agents get up here. It's too hard to get in. I ought to be able to sell a whole lot easier than if I took the valleys." He laughed a little, by way of taking her into his confidence. "I'll tell the ranchers that if they buy my windmills it will put Big Creek on the map."

"They won't buy them," she added with a sudden flare of temper. "This country up here is fifty years behind the times. It doesn't want to be modern."

Over a boulder bed, by rock fissures, they came at last to a sword gash in the top of the world. It cleft a passage through the range to another gorge, at the foot of which lay a mountain park dotted with ranch buildings. On every side the valley was hemmed in by giant peaks.

"Huerfano Park?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You live here?"

"Yes." She pointed to a group of buildings to the left. "That is my father's place. They call it the 'Horse Ranch.'"

He turned startled eyes upon her. "Then you are--?"

"Beulah Rutherford, the daughter of Hal Rutherford."

Chapter VI

"Cherokee Street"

She was the first to break the silence after her announcement.

"What's the matter? You look as if you had seen a ghost."

He had. The ghost of a dreadful day had leaped at him out of the past. Men on murder bent were riding down the street toward their victim. At the head of that company rode her father; the one they were about to kill was his. A wave of sickness shuddered through him.

"It--it's my heart," he answered in a smothered voice. "Sometimes it acts queer. I'll be all right in a minute."

The young woman drew the horse to a halt and looked down at him. Her eyes, for the first time since they had met, registered concern.

"The altitude, probably. We're over nine thousand feet high. You're not used to walking in the clouds. We'll rest here."

She swung from the saddle and trailed the reins.

"Sit down," the girl ordered after she had seated herself tailor-fashion on the moss.

Reluctantly he did as he was told. He clenched his teeth in a cold rage at himself. Unless he conquered that habit of flying into panic at every crisis, he was lost.

Beulah leaned forward and plucked an anemone blossom from a rock cranny. "Isn't it wonderful how brave they are? You wouldn't think they would have courage to grow up so fine and delicate among the rocks without any soil to feed them."

Often, in the days that followed, he thought of what she had said about the anemones and applied it to herself. She, too, had grown up among the rocks spiritually. He could see the effect of the barren soil in her suspicious and unfriendly attitude toward life. There was in her manner a resentment at fate, a bitterness that no girl of her years should have felt. In her wary eyes he read distrust of him. Was it because she was the product of heredity and environment? Her people had outlawed themselves from society. They had lived with their hands against the world of settled order. She could not escape the law that their turbulent sins must be visited upon her.

Young Beaudry followed the lead she had given him. "Yes, that is the most amazing thing in life--that no matter how poor the soil and how bad the conditions fine and lovely things grow up everywhere."

The sardonic smile on her dark face mocked him. "You find a sermon in it, do you?"

"Don't you?"

She plucked the wild flower out by the roots. "It struggles--and struggles--and blooms for a day--and withers. What's the use?" she demanded, almost savagely. Then, before he could answer, the girl closed the door she had opened for him. "We must be moving. The sun has already set in the valley."

His glances swept the park below. Heavily wooded gulches pushed down from the roots of the mountains that girt Huerfano to meet the fences of the ranchers. The cliffs rose sheer and bleak. The panorama was a wild and primitive one. It suggested to the troubled mind of the young man an eagle's nest built far up in the crags from which the great bird could swoop down upon its victims. He carried the figure farther. Were these hillmen eagles, hawks, and vultures? And was he beside them only a tomtit? He wished he knew.

"Were you born here?" he asked, his thoughts jumping back to the girl beside him.

"Yes."

"And you've always lived here?"

"Except for one year when I went away to school."

"Where?"

"To Denver."

The thing he was thinking jumped into words almost unconsciously.

"Do you like it here?"

"Like it?" Her dusky eyes stabbed at him. "What does it matter whether I like it? I have to live here, don't I?"

The swift parry and thrust of the girl was almost ferocious.

"I oughtn't to have put it that way," he apologized. "What I meant was, did you like your year outside at school?"

Abruptly she rose. "We'll be going. You ride down. My foot is all right now."

"I wouldn't think of it," he answered promptly. "You might injure yourself for life."

"I tell you I'm all right," she said, impatience in her voice.

To prove her claim she limped a few yards slowly. In spite of a stubborn will the girl's breath came raggedly. Beaudry caught the bridle of the horse and followed her.

"Don't, please. You might hurt yourself," he urged.

She nodded. "All right. Bring the horse close to that big rock."

From the boulder she mounted without his help. Presently she asked a careless question.

"Why do you call him Cornell? Is it for the college?"

"Yes. I went to school there a year." He roused himself to answer with the proper degree of lightness. "At the ball games we barked in chorus a rhyme: 'Cornell I yell--yell--yell--Cornell.' That's how it is with this old plug. If I want to get anywhere before the day after to-morrow, I have to yell--yell--yell."

The young woman showed in a smile a row of white strong teeth. "I see. His real name is Day-After-To-Morrow, but you call him Cornell for short. Why not just Corn? He would appreciate that, perhaps."

"You've christened him, Miss Rutherford. Corn he shall be, henceforth and forevermore."

They picked their way carefully down through the cañon and emerged from it into the open meadow. The road led plain, and straight to the horse ranch. Just before they reached the house, a young man cantered up from the opposite direction.

He was a black-haired, dark young giant of about twenty-four. Before he turned to the girl, he looked her companion over casually and contemptuously.

"Hello, Boots! Where's your horse?" he asked.

"Bolted. Hasn't Blacky got home yet?"

"Don't know. Haven't been home. Get thrown?"

"No. Stepped into one of your wolf traps." She turned to include Beaudry. "This gentleman--Mr.--?"

Caught at advantage, Roy groped wildly for the name he had chosen. His mind was a blank. At random he snatched for the first that came. It happened to be his old Denver address.

"Cherokee Street," he gasped.

Instantly he knew he had made a mistake.

"That's odd," Beulah said. "There's a street called Cherokee in Denver. Were you named for it?"

He lied, not very valiantly. "Yes, I--I think so. You see, I was born on it, and my parents--since their name was Street, anyhow,--thought it a sort of distinction to give me that name. I've never much liked it."

The girl spoke to the young man beside her. "Mr. Street helped me out of the trap and lent me his horse to get home. I hurt my leg." She proceeded to introductions. "Mr. Street, this is my brother, Jeff Rutherford."

Jeff nodded curtly. He happened to be dismounting, so he did not offer to shake hands. Over the back of the horse he looked at his sister's guest without comment. Again he seemed to dismiss him from his mind as of no importance. When he spoke, it was to Beulah.

"That's a fool business--stepping into wolf traps. How did you come to do it?"

"It doesn't matter how. I did it."

"Hurt any?"

She swung from the saddle and limped a few steps. "Nothing to make any fuss about. Dad home?"

"Yep. Set the trap again after you sprung it, Boots?"

"No. Set your own traps," she flung over her shoulder. "This way, Mr. Street."

Roy followed her to the house and was ushered into a room where a young man sat cleaning a revolver with one leg thrown across a second chair. Tilted on the back of his head was a cowpuncher's pinched-in hat. He too had black hair and a black mustache. Like all the Rutherfords he was handsome after a fashion, though the debonair recklessness of his good looks offered a warning of temper.

"'Lo, Boots," he greeted his sister, and fastened his black eyes on her guest.

Beaudry noticed that he did not take off his hat or lift his leg from the chair.

"Mr. Street, this is my brother Hal. I don't need to tell you that he hasn't been very well brought up."

Young Rutherford did not accept the hint. "My friends take me as they find me, sis. Others can go to Guinea."

Beulah flushed with annoyance. She drew one of the gauntlets from her hand and with the fingers of it flipped the hat from the head of her brother. Simultaneously her foot pushed away the chair upon which his leg rested.

He jumped up, half inclined to be angry. After a moment he thought better of it, and grinned.

"I'm not the only member of the family shy on manners, Boots," he said. "What's the matter with you? Showing off before company?"

"I'd have a fine chance with you three young rowdies in the house," she retorted derisively. "Where's dad?"

As if in answer to her question the door opened to let in a big, middle-aged rancher with a fine shock of grizzled hair and heavy black eyebrows. Beulah went through the formula of introduction again, but without it Beaudry would have known this hawk-nosed man whose gaze bored into his. The hand he offered to Hal Rutherford was cold and clammy. A chill shiver passed through him.

The young woman went on swiftly to tell how her guest had rescued her from the wolf trap and walked home beside her while she rode his horse.

"I'll send for Doc Spindler and have him look at your ankle, honey," the father announced at once.

"Oh, it's all right--bruised up a bit--that's all," Beulah objected.

"We'll make sure, Boots. Slap a saddle on and ride for the Doc, Hal." When the young man had left the room, his father turned again to Roy. His arm gathered in the girl beside him. "We're sure a heap obliged to you, Mr. Street. It was right lucky you happened along."

To see the father and daughter together was evidence enough of the strong affection that bound them. The tone in which he had spoken to his son had been brusque and crisp, but when he addressed her, his voice took on a softer inflection, his eyes betrayed the place she held in his heart.

The man looked what he was--the chief of a clan, the almost feudal leader of a tribe which lived outside the law. To deny him a certain nobility of appearance was impossible. Young Beaudry guessed that he was arrogant, but this lay hidden under a manner of bluff frankness. One did not need a second glance to see from whom the younger Rutherfords had inherited their dark, good looks. The family likeness was strong in all of them, but nature had taken her revenge for the anti-social life of the father. The boys had reverted toward savagery. They were elemental and undisciplined. This was, perhaps, true of Beulah also. There were moments when she suggested in the startled poise of her light body and the flash of her quick eyes a wild young creature of the forest set for night. But in her case atavism manifested itself charmingly in the untamed grace of a rich young personality vital with life. It was an interesting speculation whether in twenty years she would develop into a harridan or a woman of unusual character.

The big living-room of the ranch house was a man's domain. A magnificent elk head decorated one of the walls. Upon the antlers rested a rifle and from one of the tines depended a belt with a six-shooter in its holster. A braided leather quirt lay on the table and beside it a spur one of the boys had brought in to be riveted. Tossed carelessly into one corner were a fishing-rod and a creel. A shotgun and a pair of rubber waders occupied the corner diagonally opposite.

But there were evidences to show that Beulah had modified at least her environment. An upright piano and a music-rack were the most conspicuous. Upon the piano was a padded-covered gift copy of "Aurora Leigh." A similar one of "In Memoriam" lay on the mantel next to a photograph of the girl's dead mother framed in small shells. These were mementoes of Beulah's childhood. A good copy of Del Sarto's John the Baptist hanging from the wall and two or three recent novels offered an intimation that she was now beyond shell frames and padded-leather editions.

Miss Rutherford hobbled away to look after her ankle and to give orders for supper to the ranch cook. Conversation waned. The owner of the place invited Roy out to look over with him a new ram he had just imported from Galloway. The young man jumped at the chance. He knew as much about sheep as he did of Egyptian hieroglyphics, but he preferred to talk about the mange rather than his reasons for visiting Huerfano Park.

Just at present strangers were not welcome in the park. Rutherford himself was courteous on account of the service he had done Beulah, but the boys were frankly suspicious. Detectives of the express company had been poking about the hills. Was this young fellow who called himself Street a spy sent in by the Western? While Beaudry ate supper with the family, he felt himself under the close observation of four pairs of watchful eyes.

Afterward a young man rode into the ranch and another pair of eyes was added to those that took stock of the guest. Brad Charlton said he had come to see Ned Rutherford about a gun, but Ned's sister was the real reason for his call. This young man was something of a dandy. He wore a Chihuahua hat and the picturesque trappings with which the Southwest sometimes adorns itself. The fine workmanship of the saddle, bridle, and stirrups was noticeable. His silk handkerchief, shirt, and boots were of the best. There was in his movements an easy and graceful deliberation, but back of his slowness was a chill, wary strength.

Roy discovered shortly that Charlton was a local Admirable Crichton. He was known as a crack rider, a good roper, and a dead shot. Moreover, he had the reputation of being ready to fight at the drop of the hat. To the Rutherford boys he was a hero. Whether he was one also to Beulah her guest had not yet learned, but it took no wiseacre to guess that he wanted to be.

As soon as the eyes of Charlton and Beaudry met there was born between them an antagonism. Jealousy sharpened the suspicions of the young rancher. He was the sort of man that cannot brook rivalry. That the newcomer had been of assistance to Miss Rutherford was enough in itself to stir his doubts.

He set himself to verify them.

Chapter VII

Jess Tighe Spins a Web

"Then you left Denver, did you?" asked Charlton suavely.

Roy laughed. "Yes, then I left Denver and went to college and shouted, 'Rah, rah, rah, Cornell.' In time I became a man and put away childish things. Can I sell you a windmill, Mr. Charlton, warranted to raise more water with less air pressure than any other in the market?"

"Been selling windmills long?" the rancher asked casually.

It was his ninth question in fifteen minutes. Beaudry knew that he was being cross-examined and his study of law had taught him that he had better stick to the truth so far as possible. He turned to Miss Rutherford.

"Your friend is bawling me out," he gayly pretended to whisper. "I never sold a windmill in my life. But I'm on my uppers. I've got a good proposition. This country needs the Dynamo Aermotor and I need the money. So I took the agency. I have learned a fifteen minutes' spiel. It gives seven reasons why Mr. Charlton will miss half the joy of life until he buys a Dynamo. Do you think he is a good prospect, Miss Rutherford?"

"Dad has been talking windmill," she said. "Sell him one."

"So has Jess Tighe," Charlton added. He turned to Jeff Rutherford. "Couldn't you take Mr. Street over to see Jess to-morrow morning?"

Jeff started promptly to decline, but as his friend's eyes met his he changed his mind. "I guess I could, maybe."

"I don't want to trouble you, Mr. Rutherford," objected Roy.

Something in the manner of Charlton annoyed Beulah. This young man was her guest. She did not see any reason why Brad should bombard him with questions.

"If Jeff is too busy I'll take you myself," she told Beaudry.

"Oh, Jeff won't be too busy. He can take a half-day off," put in his father.

When Charlton left, Beulah followed him as far as the porch.

"Do you think Mr. Street is a horse-thief that you ask him so many questions?" she demanded indignantly.

He looked straight at her. "I don't know what he is, Beulah, but I'm going to find out."

"Isn't it possible that he is what he says he is?"

"Sure it's possible, but I don't believe it."

"Of course, I know you like to think the worst of a man, but when you meet him in my house I'll thank you to treat him properly. I vouch for him."

"You never met him before this afternoon."

"That's my business. It ought to be enough for you that he is my guest."

Charlton filled in the ellipsis. "If it isn't I can stay away, can't I? Well, I'm not going to quarrel with you, Beulah. Good-night."

As soon as he was out of sight of the ranch, Charlton turned the head of his horse, not toward his own place, but toward that of Jess Tighe.

Dr. Spindler drove up while Beulah was still on the porch. He examined the bruised ankle, dressed it, and pronounced that all it needed was a rest. No bones were broken, but the ligaments were strained. For several days she must give up riding and walking.

The ankle pained a good deal during the night, so that its owner slept intermittently. By morning she was no longer suffering, but was far too restless to stay in the house.

"I'm going to drive Mr. Street over to the Tighe place in the buggy," she announced at breakfast.

Her brothers exchanged glances.

"Think you'd better go so far with your bad ankle, honey?" Hal Rutherford, senior, asked.

"It doesn't make any difference, dad, so long as I don't put my weight on it."

She had her way, as she usually did. One of the boys hitched up and brought the team to the front of the house. Beaudry took the seat beside Beulah.

The girl gathered up the reins, nodded good-bye to her father, and drove off.

It was such a day as comes not more than a dozen times a season even in New Mexico. The pure light from the blue sky and the pine-combed air from the hills were like wine to their young blood. Once when the road climbed a hilltop the long saw-toothed range lifted before them, but mostly they could not see beyond the bastioned ramparts that hemmed in the park or the nearer wooded gulches that ran down from them.

Beulah had brought her camera. They took pictures of each other. They gathered wild flowers. They talked as eagerly as children. Somehow the bars were down between them. The girl had lost the manner of sullen resentment that had impressed him yesterday. She was gay and happy and vivid. Wild roses bloomed in her cheeks. For this young man belonged to the great world outside in which she was so interested. Other topics than horses and cattle and drinking-bouts were the themes of his talk. He had been to theaters and read books and visited large cities. His coming had enriched life for her.

The trail took them past a grove of young aspens which blocked the mouth of a small cañon by the thickness of the growth.

"Do you see any way in?" Beulah asked her companion.

"No. The trees are like a wall. There is not an open foot by which one could enter."

"Isn't there?" She laughed. "There's a way in just the same. You see that big rock over to the left. A trail drops down into the aspens back of it. A man lives in the gulch, an ex-convict. His name is Dan Meldrum."

"I expect he isn't troubled much with visitors."'

"No. He lives alone. I don't like him. I wish he would move away. He doesn't do the park any good."

A man was sitting on the porch of the Tighe place as they drove up. Beside him lay a pair of crutches.

"That is Jess," the girl told Beaudry. "Don't mind if he is gruff or bad-tempered. He is soured."

But evidently this was not the morning for Tighe to be gruff. He came to meet them on his crutches, a smile on his yellow, sapless face. That smile seemed to Roy more deadly than anger. It did not warm the cold, malignant eyes nor light the mordant face with pleasure. Only the lips and mouth responded mechanically to it.

"Glad to see you, Miss Beulah. Come in."

He opened the gate and they entered. Presently Beaudry, his blood beating fast, found himself shaking hands with Tighe. The man had an odd trick of looking at one always from partly hooded eyes and at an angle.

"Mr. Street is selling windmills," explained Miss Rutherford. "Brad Charlton said you were talking of buying one, so here is your chance."

"Yes, I been thinking of it." Tighe's voice was suave. "What is your proposition, Mr. Street?"

Roy talked the Dynamo Aermotor for fifteen minutes. There was something about the still look of this man that put him into a cold sweat.

It was all he could do to concentrate his attention on the patter of a salesman, but he would not let his mind wander from the single track upon which he was projecting it. He knew he was being watched closely. To make a mistake might be fatal.

"Sounds good. I'll look your literature over, Mr. Street. I suppose you'll be in the park a few days?"

"Yes."

"Then you can come and see me again. I can't come to you so easy, Mr.--er--"

"Street," suggested Beulah.

"That's right--Street. Well, you see I'm kinder tied down." He indicated his crutches with a little lift of one hand. "Maybe Miss Beulah will bring you again."

"Suits me fine if she will," Beaudry agreed promptly.

The half-hooded eyes of the cripple slid to the girl and back again to Roy. He had a way of dry-washing the backs of his hands like Uriah Heep.

"Fine. You'll stay to dinner, now, of course. That's good. That's good. Young folks don't know how it pleasures an old man to meet up with them sometimes." His low voice was as smooth as oil.

Beaudry conceived a horror of the man. The veiled sneer behind the smile on the sapless face, the hooded hawk eyes, the almost servile deference, held a sinister threat that chilled the spine of his guest. The young man thought of him as of a repulsive spider spinning a web of trouble that radiated from this porch all over the Big Creek country.

"Been taking pictures of each other, I reckon. Fine. Fine. Now, I wonder, Miss Beulah, if you'd do an old man a favor. This porch is my home, as you might say, seeing as how I'm sorter held down here. I'd kinder like a picture of it to hang up, providing it ain't asking too much of you."

"Of course not. I'll take it now," answered the girl.

"That's right good of you. I'll jest sit here and be talking to Mr. Street, as you might say. Wouldn't that make a good picture--kinder liven up the porch if we're on it?"

Roy felt a sudden impulse to protest, but he dared not yield to it. What was it this man wanted of the picture? Why had he baited a trap to get a picture of him without Beulah Rutherford knowing that he particularly wanted it? While the girl took the photograph, his mind was racing for Tighe's reason.

"I'll send you a copy as soon as I print it, Mr. Tighe," promised Beulah.

"I'll sure set a heap of store by it, Miss Beulah. . . . If you don't mind helping me set the table, we'll leave Mr. Street this old newspaper for a few minutes whilst we fix up a snack. You'll excuse us, Mr. Street? That's good."

Beulah went into the house the same gay and light-hearted comrade of Beaudry that she had been all morning. When he was called in to dinner, he saw at once that Tighe had laid his spell upon her. She was again the sullen, resentful girl of yesterday. Suspicion filmed her eyes. The eager light of faith in him that had quickened them while she listened for his answers to her naïve questions about the great world was blotted out completely.

She sat through dinner in cold silence. Tighe kept the ball of conversation rolling and Beaudry tried to play up to him. They talked of stock, crops, and politics. Occasionally the host diverted the talk to outside topics. He asked the young man politely how he liked the park, whether he intended to stay long, how long he had lived in New Mexico, and other casual questions.

Roy was glad when dinner was over. He drew a long breath of relief when they had turned their backs upon the ranch. But his spirits did not register normal even in the spring sunshine of the hills. For the dark eyes that met his were clouded with doubt and resentment.

Chapter VIII

Beulah Asks Questions

A slim, wiry youth in high-heeled boots came out of the house with Brad Charlton just as the buggy stopped at the porch of the horse ranch. He nodded to Beulah.

"'Lo, sis."

"My brother Ned--Mr. Street." The girl introduced them a little sulkily.

Ned Rutherford offered Roy a coffee-brown hand and looked at him with frank curiosity. He had just been hearing a lot about this good-looking stranger who had dropped into the park.

"See Jess Tighe? What did he say about the windmill?" asked Charlton.

"Wanted to think it over," answered Beaudry.

Beulah had drawn her brother to one side, but as Roy talked with Charlton he heard what the other two said, though each spoke in a low voice.

"Where you going, Ned?" the sister asked.

"Oh, huntin' strays."

"Home to-night?"

"Reckon not."

"What deviltry are you and Brad up to now? This will be the third night you've been away--and before that it was Jeff."

"S-sh!" Ned flashed a warning look in the direction of her guest.

But Beulah was angry. Tighe had warned her to be careful what she told Street. She distrusted the cripple profoundly. Half the evil that went on in the park was plotted by him. There had been a lot of furtive whispering about the house for a week or more. Her instinct told her that there was in the air some discreditable secret. More than once she had wondered whether her people had been the express company robbers for whom a reward was out. She tried to dismiss the suspicion from her mind, for the fear of it was like a leaden weight at her heart. But many little things contributed to the dread. Rutherford had sent her just at that time to spend the week at Battle Butte. Had it been to get her out of the way? She remembered that her father had made to her no explanation of that scene in which she and Dave Dingwell had played the leading parts. There had been many journeyings back and forth on the part of the boys and Charlton and her uncle, Buck Rutherford. They had a way of getting off into a corner of the corral and talking low for hours at a time. And now Street had come into the tangle. Were they watching him for fear he might be a detective?

Her resentment against him and them boiled over into swift wrath. "You're a fine lot--all of you. I'd like to wash my hands clean of the whole outfit." She turned on her heel and strode limping to the house.

Ned laughed as he swung to the back of one of the two broncos waiting with drooped heads before the porch. He admired this frank, forthright sister who blazed so handsomely into rage. He would have fought for her, even though he pretended to make a joke of her.

"Boots sure goes some. You see what you may be letting yourself in for, Brad," he scoffed good-naturedly.

Charlton answered with cool aplomb. "Don't you worry about me, Ned. I travel at a good lick myself. She'll break to double harness fine."

Without touching the stirrup this knight of the chaparreras flung himself into the saddle, the rowels of his spurs whirring as he vaulted. It was a spectacular but perfect mount. The horse was off instantly at a canter.

Roy could not deny the fellow admiration, even though he despised him for what he had just said. It was impossible for him to be contemptuous of Charlton. The man was too virile, too game for that. In the telling Western phrase, he would go through. Whatever he did was done competently.

Yet there was something detestable in the way he had referred to Beulah Rutherford. In the first place, Roy believed it to be a pure assumption that he was going to marry her. Then, too, he had spoken of this high-spirited girl as if she were a colt to be broken and he the man to wield the whip. Her rebellion against fate meant nothing more to him than a tantrum to be curbed. He did not in the least divine the spiritual unrest back of her explosion.

Beaudry shrugged his shoulders. He was lucky for once. It had been the place of Ned Rutherford to rebuke Charlton for his slighting remark. A stranger had not the least right to interfere while the brother of the girl was present. Roy did not pursue the point any further. He did not want to debate with himself whether he had the pluck to throw down the gauntlet to this fighting vaquero if the call had come to him.

As he walked into the house and up to his room, his mind was busy with another problem. Where had Ned Rutherford been for three nights and his brother Jeff before that? Why had Beulah flared into unexpected anger? He, too, had glimpsed furtive whisperings. Even a fool would have understood that he was not a welcome guest at the horse ranch, and that his presence was tolerated only because here the boys could keep an eye on him. He was under surveillance. That was plain. He had started out for a little walk before breakfast and Jeff joined him from nowhere in particular to stroll along. What was it the Huerfano Park settlers were trying to hide from him? His mind jumped promptly to the answer. Dave Dingwell, of course.

Meanwhile Miss Rutherford lay weeping in the next room face down upon the bed. She rarely indulged in tears. It had not happened before since she was seventeen. But now she sobbed into a pillow, softly, so that nobody might hear. Why must she spend her life in such surroundings? If the books she read told the truth, the world was full of gentle, kindly people who lived within the law and respected each other's rights. Why was it in her horoscope to be an outcast? Why must she look at everybody with bitterness and push friendship from her lest it turn to poison at her touch? For one hour she had found joy in comradeship with this stranger. Then Tighe had whispered it that he was probably a spy. She had returned home only to have her doubts about her own family stirred to life again. Were there no good, honest folk in the world at all?

She washed her telltale eyes and ventured downstairs to look after supper. The Mexican cook was already peeling the potatoes. She gave him directions about the meal and went out to the garden to get some radishes and lettuce. On the way she had to pass the corral. Her brother Hal, Slim Sanders, and Cherokee Street were roping and branding some calves. The guest of the house had hung his coat and hat on a fence-post to keep them from getting soiled, but the hat had fallen into the dust.

Beulah picked up the hat and brushed it. As she dusted with her handkerchief the under side of the rim her eyes fell upon two initials stamped into the sweat pad. The letters were "R.B." The owner of the hat called himself Cherokee Street. Why, then, should he have these other initials printed on the pad? There could be only one answer to that question. He was passing under a name that was not his own.

If so, why? Because he was a spy come to get evidence against her people for the express company.

The eyes of the girl blazed. The man had come to ruin her father, to send her brothers to prison, and he was accepting their hospitality while he moled for facts to convict them. To hear the shout of his gay laughter as a calf upset him in the dust was added fuel to the fire of her anger. If he had looked as villainous as Dave Meldrum, she could have stood it better, but any one would have sworn that he was a clean, decent young fellow just out of college.

She called to him. Roy glanced up and came across the corral. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows and the shirt open at the throat. Flowing muscles rippled under the white skin of his forearms as he vaulted the fence to stand beside her. He had the graceful poise of an athlete and the beautiful, trim figure of youth.

Yet he was a spy. Beulah hardened her heart.

"I found your hat in the dust, Mr. Street." She held it out to him upside down, the leather pad lifted by her finger so that the letters stood out.

The rigor of her eyes was a challenge. For a moment, before he caught sight of the initials, he was puzzled at her stiffness. Then his heart lost a beat and hammered wildly. His brain was in a fog and he could find no words of explanation.

"It is your hat, isn't it, Mr.--Street?"

"Yes." He took it from her, put it on, and gulped "Thanks."

She waited to give him a chance to justify himself, but he could find no answer to the charge that she had fixed upon him. Scornfully she turned from him and went to the house.

Miss Rutherford found her father reading a week-old newspaper.

"I've got fresher news than that for you, dad," she said. "I can tell you who this man that calls himself Cherokee Street isn't."

Rutherford looked up quickly. "You mean who he is, Boots."

"No, I mean who he isn't. His name isn't Cherokee Street at all."

"How do you know?"

"Because he is wearing a hat with the initials 'R.B.' stamped in it. I gave him a chance to explain and he only stammered and got white. He hadn't time to think up a lie that would fit."

"Dad burn it, Jess Tighe is right, then. The man is a spy." The ranchman lit a cigar and narrowed his eyes in thought.

"What is he spying here for?"

"I reckon he's a detective of the express company nosing around about that robbery. Some folks think it was pulled off by a bunch up in the hills somewhere."

"By the Rutherford gang?" she quoted.

He looked at her uneasily. The bitterness in her voice put him on the defensive. "Sho, Boots! That's just a way folks have of talking. We've got our enemies. Lots of people hate us because we won't let any one run over us."

She stood straight and slender before him, her eyes fixed in his. "Do they say we robbed the express company?"

"They don't say it out loud if they do--not where I can hear them," he answered grimly.

"Did we?" she flung at him.

His smile was forced. The question disturbed him. That had always been her way, even when she was a small child, to fling herself headlong at difficulties. She had never been the kind to be put off with anything less than the truth.

"I didn't. Did you?" he retorted.

"How about the boys--and Uncle Buck--and Brad Charlton?" she demanded.

"Better ask them if you want to know." With a flare of temper he contradicted himself. "No, you'd better mind your own business, girl. Forget your foolishness and 'tend to your knitting."

"I suppose it isn't my business if my kin go to the penitentiary for train robbery."

"They're not going any such place. If you want to know, I give you my word that none of us Rutherfords have got the gold stolen from the Western Express Company."

"And don't know where it is?"

"Haven't the least idea--not one of us."

She drew a deep breath of relief. More than once her father had kept from her secrets of the family activities, but he had never lied to her.

"Then it doesn't matter about this detective. He can find out nothing against us," she reflected aloud.

"I'm not so sure about that. We've had our troubles and we don't want them aired. There was that shooting scrape Hal got into down at Battle Butte, for instance. Get a little more evidence and the wrong kind of a jury would send him up for it. No, we'll keep an eye on Mr. Cherokee Street, or whatever his name is. Reckon I'll ride over and have a talk with Jess about it."

"Why not tell this man Street that he is not wanted and so be done with it?"

"Because we wouldn't be done with it. Another man would come in his place. We'll keep him here where we can do a little detective work on him, too."

"I don't like it. The thing is underhanded. I hate the fellow. It's not decent to sit at table with a man who is betraying our hospitality," she cried hotly.

"It won't be for long, honey. Just leave him to us. We'll hang up his pelt to dry before we're through with him."

"You don't mean--?"

"No, nothing like that. But he'll crawl out of the park like a whipped cur with its tail between its legs."

The cook stood in the doorway. "Miss Beulah, do you want that meat done in a pot roast?" he asked.

"Yes. I'll show you." She turned at the door. "By the way, dad, I took a snapshot of Mr. Tighe on his porch. I'll develop it to-night and you can take it to him in the morning."

"All right. Don't mention to anybody that matter we were discussing. Act like you've forgotten all about what you found out, Boots."

The girl nodded. "Yes."

Chapter IX

The Man on the Bed

Beulah Rutherford found it impossible to resume a relation of friendliness toward her guest. By nature she was elemental and direct. A few months earlier she had become the teacher of the Big Creek school, but until that time life had never disciplined her to repress the impulses of her heart. As a child she had been a fierce, wild little creature full of savage affections and generosities. She still retained more feminine ferocity than social usage permits her sex. It was not in her to welcome an enemy with smiles while she hated him in her soul. The best she could do was to hold herself to a brusque civility whenever she met Beaudry.

As for that young man, he was in a most unhappy frame of mind. He writhed at the false position in which he found himself. It was bad enough to forfeit the good opinion of this primitive young hill beauty, but it was worse to know that in a measure he deserved it. He saw, too, that serious consequences were likely to follow her discovery, and he waited with nerves on the jump for the explosion.

None came. When he dragged himself to dinner, Beulah was stiff as a ramrod, but he could note no difference in the manner of the rest. Was it possible she had not told her father? He did not think this likely, and his heart was in panic all through the meal.

Though he went to his room early, he spent a sleepless night full of apprehension. What were the Rutherfords waiting for? He was convinced that something sinister lay behind their silence.

After breakfast the ranchman rode away. Jeff and Slim Sanders jogged off on their cowponies to mend a broken bit of fence. Hal sat on the porch replacing with rivets the torn strap of a stirrup.

Beaudry could stand it no longer. He found his hostess digging around the roots of some rosebushes in her small garden. Curtly she declined his offer to take the spade. For a minute he watched her uneasily before he blurted out his intention of going.

"I'll move up to the other end of the park and talk windmill to the ranchers there, Miss Rutherford. You've been awfully good to me, but I won't impose myself on your hospitality any longer," he said.

He had dreaded to make the announcement for fear of precipitating a crisis, but the young woman made no protest. Without a word of comment she walked beside him to the house.

"Hal, will you get Mr. Street's horse?" she asked her brother. "He is leaving this morning."

Young Rutherford's eyes narrowed. It was plain that he had been caught by surprise and did not know what to do.

"Where you going?" he asked.

"What do you care where he is going? Get the horse--or I will," she ordered imperiously.

"I'm going to board at one of the ranches farther up the park," explained Roy.

"Better wait till dad comes home," suggested Hal.

"No, I'll go now." Royal Beaudry spoke with the obstinacy of a timid man who was afraid to postpone the decision.

"No hurry, is there?" The black eyes of Rutherford fixed him steadily.

His sister broke in impatiently. "Can't he go when he wants to, Hal? Get Mr. Street's horse." She whirled on Beaudry scornfully. "That is what you call yourself, isn't it--Street?"

The unhappy youth murmured "Yes."

"Let him get his own horse if he wants to hit the trail in such a hurry," growled Hal sulkily.

Beulah walked straight to the stable. Awkwardly Beaudry followed her after a moment or two. The girl was leading his horse from the stall.

"I'll saddle him, Miss Rutherford," he demurred, the blanket in his hand.

She looked at him a moment, dropped the bridle, and turned stiffly away. He understood perfectly that she had been going to saddle the horse to justify the surface hospitality of the Rutherfords to a man they despised.

Hal was still on the porch when Roy rode up, but Beulah was nowhere in sight. The young hillman did not look up from the rivet he was driving. Beaudry swung to the ground and came forward.

"I'm leaving now. I should like to tell Miss Rutherford how much I'm in her debt for taking a stranger in so kindly," he faltered.

"I reckon you took her in just as much as she did you, Mr. Spy." Rutherford glowered at him menacingly. "I'd advise you to straddle that horse and git."

Roy controlled his agitation except for a slight trembling of the fingers that grasped the mane of his cowpony. "You've used a word that isn't fair. I didn't come here to harm any of your people. If I could explain to Miss Rutherford--"

She stood in the doorway, darkly contemptuous. Fire flashed in her eyes, but the voice of the girl was coldly insolent.

"It is not necessary," she informed him.

Her brother leaned forward a little. His crouched body looked like a coiled spring in its tenseness. "Explain yourself down that road, Mr. Street--pronto," he advised.

Beaudry flashed a startled glance at him, swung to the saddle, and was away at a canter. The look in Rutherford's glittering eyes had sent a flare of fear over him. The impulse of it had lifted him to the back of the horse and out of the danger zone.

But already he was flogging himself with his own contempt. He had given way to panic before a girl who had been brought up to despise a quitter. She herself had nerves as steady as chilled steel. He had seen her clench her strong white little teeth without a murmur through a long afternoon of pain. Gameness was one of the fundamentals of her creed, and he had showed the white feather. It added to his punishment, too, that he worshiped pluck with all the fervor of one who knew he had none. Courage seemed to him the one virtue worth while; cowardice the unpardonable sin. He made no excuses for himself. From his father he inherited the fine tradition of standing up to punishment to a fighting finish. His mother, too, had been a thoroughbred. Yet he was a weakling. His heart pumped water instead of blood whenever the call to action came.

In dejection he rode up the valley, following the same hilly trail he had taken two days before with Miss Rutherford. It took him past the aspen grove at the mouth of the gulch which led to the Meldrum place. Beyond this a few hundred yards he left the main road and went through the chaparral toward a small ranch that nestled close to the timber. Beulah had told him that it belonged to an old German named Rothgerber who had lived there with his wife ever since she could remember.

Rothgerber was a little wrinkled old man with a strong South-German accent. After Beaudry had explained that he wanted board, the rancher called his wife out and the two jabbered away excitedly in their native tongue. The upshot of it was that they agreed to take the windmill agent if he would room in an old bunkhouse about two hundred yards from the main ranch building. This happened to suit Roy exactly and he closed the matter by paying for a week in advance.

The Rothgerbers were simple, unsuspecting people of a garrulous nature. It was easy for Beaudry to pump information from them while he ate supper. They had seen nothing of any stranger in the valley except himself, but they dropped casually the news that the Rutherfords had been going in and out of Chicito Cañon a good deal during the past few days.

"Chicito Cañon. That's a Mexican name, isn't it? Let's see. Just where is this gulch?" asked Beaudry.

The old German pointed out of the window. "There it iss, mein friend. You pass by on the road and there iss no way in--no arroyo, no gulch, no noddings but aspens. But there iss, shust the same, a trail. Through my pasture it leads."

"Anybody live up Chicito? I want everybody in the park to get a chance to buy a Dynamo Aermotor before I leave."

"A man named Meldrum. My advice iss--let him alone."

"Why?"

Rothgerber shook a pudgy forefinger in the air. "Mein friend--listen. You are a stranger in Huerfano Park. Gut. But do not ask questions about those who lif here. Me, I am an honest man. I keep the law. Also I mind my own pusiness. So it iss with many. But there are others--mind, I gif them no names, but--" He shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands, palm up. "Well, the less said the petter. If I keep my tongue still, I do not talk myself into trouble. Not so, Berta?"

The pippin-cheeked little woman nodded her head sagely.

In the course of the next few days Roy rode to and fro over the park trying to sell his windmill to the ranchers. He secured two orders and the tentative promise of others. But he gained no clue as to the place where Dingwell was hidden. His intuition told him that the trail up Chicito Cañon would lead him to the captive cattleman. Twice he skirted the dark gash of the ravine at the back of the pasture, but each time his heart failed at the plunge into its unknown dangers. The first time he persuaded himself that he had better make the attempt at night, but when he stood on the brink in the darkness the gulf at his feet looked like a veritable descent into Avernus. If he should be caught down here, his fate would be sealed. What Meldrum and Tighe would do to a spy was not a matter of conjecture. The thought of it brought goose-quills to his flesh and tiny beads of perspiration to his forehead.

Still, the peril had to be faced. He decided to go up the cañon in the early morning before the travel of the day had begun. The night before he made the venture he prepared an alibi by telling Mrs. Rothgerber that he would not come to breakfast, as he wanted to get an early start for his canvassing. The little German woman bustled about and wrapped up for him a cold lunch to eat at his cabin in the morning. She liked this quiet, good-looking young man whose smile was warm for a woman almost old enough to be his grandmother. It was not often she met any one with the charming deference he showed her. Somehow he reminded her of her own Hans, who had died from the kick of a horse ten years since.

Roy slept in broken cat-naps full of fearful dreams, from which he woke in terror under the impression that he was struggling helplessly in the net of a great spider which had the cruel, bloodless face of Tighe. It was three o'clock when he rose and began to dress. He slipped out of the cabin into the wet pasture. His legs were sopping wet from the long grass through which he strode to the edge of the gulch. On a flat boulder he sat shivering in the darkness while he waited for the first gray streaks of light to sift into the dun sky.

In the dim dawn he stumbled uncertainly down the trail into the cañon, the bottom of which was still black as night from a heavy growth of young aspens that shut out the light. There was a fairly well-worn path leading up the gulch, so that he could grope his way forward slowly. His feet moved reluctantly. It seemed to him that his nerves, his brain, and even his muscles were in revolt against the moral compulsion that drove him on. He could feel his heart beating against his ribs. Every sound startled him. The still darkness took him by the throat. Doggedly he fought against the panic impulse to turn and fly.

If he quit now, he told himself, he could never hold his self-respect. He thought of all those who had come into his life in connection with the Big Creek country trouble. His father, his mother, Dave Dingwell, Pat Ryan, Jess Tighe, the whole Rutherford clan, including Beulah! One quality they all had in common, the gameness to see out to a finish anything they undertook. He could not go through life a confessed coward. The idea was intolerably humiliating.

Then, out of the past, came to him a snatch of nonsense verse:--

"Li'l' ole hawss an' li'l' ole cow, Amblin' along by the ole haymow, Li'l' ole hawss took a bite an' a chew, 'Durned if I don't,' says the ole cow, too."

So vivid was his impression of the doggerel that for an instant he thought he heard the sing-song of his father's tuneless voice. In sharp, clean-cut pictures his memory reproduced the night John Beaudry had last chanted the lullaby and that other picture of the Homeric fight of one man against a dozen. The foolish words were a bracer to him. He set his teeth and ploughed forward, still with a quaking soul, but with a kind of despairing resolution.

After a mile of stiff going, the gulch opened to a little valley on the right-hand side. On the edge of a pine grove, hardly a stone's throw from where Roy stood, a Mexican jacal looked down into the cañon. The hut was a large one. It was built of upright poles daubed with clay. Sloping poles formed the roof, the chinks of which were waterproofed with grass. A wolf pelt, nailed to the wall, was hanging up to dry.

He knew that this was the home of Meldrum, the ex-convict.

Beaudry followed a bed of boulders that straggled toward the pine grove. It was light enough now, and he had to move with caution so as to take advantage of all the cover he could find. Once in the grove, he crawled from tree to tree. The distance from the nearest pine to the jacal was about thirty feet. A clump of cholla grew thick just outside the window. Roy crouched behind the trunk for several minutes before he could bring himself to take the chance of covering that last ten yards. But every minute it was getting lighter. Every minute increased the likelihood of detection. He crept fearfully to the hut, huddled behind the cactus, and looked into the window.

A heavy-set man, with the muscle-bound shoulders of an ape, was lighting a fire in the stove. At the table, his thumbs hitched in a sagging revolver belt, sat Ned Rutherford. The third person in the room lay stretched at supple ease on a bed to one of the posts of which his right leg was bound. He was reading a newspaper.

"Get a move on you, Meldrum," young Rutherford said jauntily, with an eye on his prisoner to see how he took it. "I've got inside information that I need some hot cakes, a few slices of bacon, and a cup of coffee. How about it, Dave? Won't you order breakfast, too?"

The man on the bed shook his head indifferently. "Me, I'm taking the fast cure. I been reading that we all eat too much, anyhow. What's the use of stuffing--gets yore system all clogged up. Now, take Edison--he don't eat but a handful of rice a day."

"That's one handful more than you been eating for the past three days. Better come through with what we want to know. This thing ain't going to get any better for you. A man has got to eat to live."

"I'm trying out another theory. Tell you-all about how it works in a week or so. I reckon after a time I'll get real hungry, but it don't seem like I could relish any chuck yet." The cattleman fell to perusing his paper once more.

Royal Beaudry had never met his father's friend, Dave Dingwell, but he needed no introduction to this brown-faced man who mocked his guard with such smiling hardihood. They were trying to starve the secret out of him. Already his cheek showed thin and gaunt, dark circles shadowed the eyes. The man, no doubt, was suffering greatly, yet his manner gave no sign of it. He might not be master of his fate; at least, he was very much the captain of his soul. Pat Ryan had described him in a sentence. "One hundred and ninety pounds of divil, and ivery ounce of ivery pound true gold." There could not be another man in the Big Creek country that this description fitted as well as it did this starving, jocund dare-devil on the bed.

The savory odor of bacon and of coffee came through the open window to Beaudry where he crouched in the chaparral. He heard Meldrum's brusque "Come and get it," and the sound of the two men drawing up their chairs to the table.

"What's the use of being obstinate, Dave?" presently asked Rutherford from amid a pleasant chink of tin cups, knives, and forks. "I'd a heap rather treat you like a white man. This 'Pache business doesn't make a hit with me. But I'm obeying orders. Anyhow, it's up to you. The chuck-wagon is ready for you whenever you say the word."

"I don't reckon I'll say it, Ned. Eating is just a habit. One man wants his eggs sunny side up; another is strong for them hard-boiled. But eggs is eggs. When Dan went visitin' at Santa Fe, he likely changed his diet. For two or three days he probably didn't like the grub, then--"

With a raucous curse the former convict swung round on him. A revolver seemed to jump to his hand, but before he could fire, young Rutherford was hanging to his wrist.

"Don't you, Dan. Don't you," warned Ned.

Slowly Meldrum's eyes lost their savage glare. "One o' these days I'll pump lead into him unless he clamps that mouth of his'n. I won't stand for it." His voice trailed into a string of oaths.

Apparently his host's fury at this reference to his convict days did not disturb in the least the man on the bed. His good-natured drawl grew slightly more pronounced. "Wall yore eyes and wave yore tail all you've a mind to, Dan. I was certainly some indiscreet reminding you of those days when you was a guest of the Government."

"That's enough," growled Meldrum, slamming his big fist down on the table so that the tinware jumped.

"Sure it's enough. Too much. Howcome I to be so forgetful? If I'd wore a uniform two years for rustling other folks' calves, I reckon I wouldn't thank a guy--"

But Meldrum had heard all he could stand. He had to do murder or get out. He slammed the coffee-pot down on the floor and bolted out of the open door. His arms whirled in violent gestures as he strode away. An unbroken stream of profanity floated back to mark his anabasis.

Meldrum did not once look round as he went on his explosive way to the gulch, but Roy Beaudry crouched lower behind the cactus until the man had disappeared. Then he crawled back to the grove, slipped through it, and crept to the shelter of the boulder bed.

It would not do for him to return down the cañon during daylight, for fear he might meet one of the Rutherfords coming to relieve Ned. He passed from one boulder to another, always working up toward the wall of the gulch. Behind a big piece of sandstone shaped like a flatiron he lay down and waited for the hours to pass.

It was twilight when he stole down to the trail and began his return journey.

Chapter X

Dave Takes a Ride

Dave Dingwell had sauntered carelessly out of the Legal Tender on the night of his disappearance. He was apparently at perfect ease with a friendly world. But if any one had happened to follow him out of the saloon, he would have seen an odd change in the ranchman. He slid swiftly along the wall of the building until he had melted into the shadows of darkness. His eyes searched the neighborhood for lurking figures while he crouched behind the trunk of a cottonwood. Every nerve of the man was alert, every muscle ready for action. One brown hand lingered affectionately close to the butt of his revolver.

He had come out of the front door of the gambling-house because he knew the Rutherfords would expect him, in the exercise of ordinary common sense, to leave by the rear exit. That he would be watched was certain. Therefore, he had done the unexpected and walked boldly out through the swinging doors.

As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he made out a horse in the clump of trees about twenty yards to the left. Whether it was Teddy he could not be sure, but there was no time to lose. Already a signal whistle had shrilled out from the other side of the street. Dave knew this was to warn the guards at the rear of the Legal Tender that their prey was in the open.

He made a dash for the tree clump, but almost as he reached it, he swung to the left and circled the small grove so as to enter it from the other side. As he expected, a man whirled to meet him. The unforeseen tactics of Dingwell had interfered with the ambush.

Dave catapulted into him head first and the two went down together. Before Dingwell could grip the throat of the man beneath him, a second body hurled itself through space at the cattleman. The attacked man flattened under the weight crushing him, but his right arm swept around and embraced the neck of his second assailant. He flexed his powerful forearm so as to crush as in a vice the throat of his foe between it and the hard biceps. The breath of the first man had for the moment been knocked out of him and he was temporarily not in the fight. The ranchman gave his full attention to the other.

The fellow struggled savagely. He had a gun in his right hand, but the fingers of Dave's left had closed upon the wrist above. Stertorous breathing gave testimony that the gunman was in trouble. In spite of his efforts to break the hold that kept his head in chancery, the muscles of the arm tightened round his neck like steel ropes drawn taut. He groaned, sighed in a ragged expulsion of breath, and suddenly collapsed.

Before he relaxed his muscles, Dingwell made sure that the surrender was a genuine one. His left hand slid down and removed the revolver from the nerveless fingers. The barrel of it was jammed against the head of the man above him while the rancher freed himself from the weight of the body. Slowly the cattleman got to his feet.

Vaguely he had been aware already that men were running toward the tree clump. Now he heard the padding of their feet close at hand. He ran to the horse and flung himself into the saddle, but before the animal had moved two steps some one had it by the bridle. Another man caught Dingwell by the arm and dragged him from the saddle. Before Dave could scramble to his feet again, something heavy fell upon his head and shook him to the heels. A thousand lights flashed in zigzags before his eyes. He sank back into unconsciousness.

The cowman returned to a world of darkness out of which voices came as from a distance hazily. A groan prefaced his arrival.

"Dave's waking up," one of the far voices said.

"Sure. When you tap his haid with a six-gun, you're liable to need repairs on the gun," a second answered.

The next words came to Dingwell more distinctly. He recognized the speaker as Hal Rutherford of the horse ranch.

"Too bad the boy had to hand you that crack, Dave. You're such a bear for fighting a man can't take any chances. Glad he didn't bust your haid wide open."

"Sure he didn't?" asked the injured man. "I feel like I got to hold it on tight so as to keep the blamed thing from flying into fifty pieces."

"Sorry. We'll take you to a doc and have it fixed up. Then we'll all go have a drunk. That'll fix you."

"Business first," cut in Buck Rutherford.

"That's right, Dave," agreed the owner of the horse ranch. "How about that gunnysack? Where did you hide it?"

Dingwell played for time. He had not the least intention of telling, but if he held the enemy in parley some of his friends might pass that way.

"What gunnysack, Hal? Jee-rusalem, how my head aches!" He held his hands to his temples and groaned again.

"Your head will mend--if we don't have to give it another crack," Buck told him grimly. "Get busy, Dave. We want that gold--pronto. Where did you put it?"

"Where did I put it? That willing lad of yours has plumb knocked the answer out of my noodle. Maybe you're thinking of some one else, Buck." Dingwell looked up at him with an innocent, bland smile.

"Come through," ordered Buck with an oath.

The cattleman treated them to another dismal groan. "Gee! I feel like the day after Christmas. Was it a cannon the kid hit me with?"

Meldrum pushed his ugly phiz to the front. "Don't monkey away any time, boys. String him to one of these cottonwoods till he spits out what we want."

"Was it while you was visiting up at Santa Fe you learnt that habit of seeing yore neighbors hanged, Dan?" drawled Dingwell in a voice of gentle irony.

Furious at this cool reference to his penitentiary days, Meldrum kicked their captive in the ribs. Hal Rutherford, his eyes blazing, caught the former convict by the throat.

"Do that again and I'll hang yore hide up to dry." He shook Meldrum as if he were a child, then flung the gasping man away. "I'll show you who's boss of this rodeo, by gum!"

Meldrum had several notches on his gun. He was, too, a rough-and-tumble fighter with his hands. But Hal Rutherford was one man he knew better than to tackle. He fell back, growling threats in his throat.

Meanwhile Dave was making discoveries. One was that the first two men who had attacked him were the gamblers he had driven from the Legal Tender earlier in the evening. The next was that Buck Rutherford was sending the professional tinhorns about their business.

"Git!" ordered the big rancher. "And keep gitting till you've crossed the border. Don't look back any. Jest burn the wind. Adios."

"They meant to gun you, Dave," guessed the owner of the horse ranch. "I reckon they daren't shoot with me loafing there across the road. You kinder disarranged their plans some more by dropping in at their back door. Looks like you'd 'a' rumpled up their hair a few if you hadn't been in such a hurry to make a get-away. Which brings us back to the previous question. The unanimous sense of the meeting is that you come through with some information, Dave. Where is that gunnysack?"

Dave, still sitting on the ground, leaned his back against a tree and grinned amiably at his questioner. "Sounds like you-all been to school to a parrot. You must 'a' quituated after you learned one sentence."

"We're waiting for an answer, Dave."

The cool, steady eyes of Dingwell met the imperious ones of the other man in a long even gaze. "Nothing doing, Hal."

"Even split, Dave. Fifty-fifty."

The sitting man shook his head. "I'll split the reward with you when I get it. The sack goes back to the express company."

"We'll see about that." Rutherford turned to his son and gave brisk orders. "Bring up the horses. We'll get out of here. You ride with me, Jeff. We'll take care of Dingwell. The rest of you scatter. We're going back to the park."

The Rutherfords and their captive followed no main road, but cut across country in a direction where they would be less likely to meet travelers. It was a land of mesquite and prickly pear. The sting of the cactus bit home in the darkness as its claws clutched at the riders winding their slow way through the chaparral.

Gray day was dawning when they crossed the Creosote Flats and were seen by a sheep-herder at a distance. The sun was high in the heavens before they reached the defile which served as a gateway between the foothills and the range beyond. It had passed the meridian by the time they were among the summits where they could look back upon rounded hills numberless as the billows of a sea. Deeper and always deeper they plunged into the maze of cañons which gashed into the saddles between the peaks. Blue-tinted dusk was enveloping the hills as they dropped down through a wooded ravine into Huerfano Park.

"Home soon," Dave suggested cheerfully to his captors. "I sure am hungry enough to eat a government mailsack. A flank steak would make a big hit with me."

Jeff looked at him in the dour, black Rutherford way. "This is no picnic, you'll find."

"Not to you, but it's a great vacation for me. I feel a hundred per cent better since I got up into all this ozone and scenery." Dingwell assured him hardily. "A man ought to take a trip like this every once in a while. It's great for what ails him."

Young Rutherford grunted sulkily. Their prisoner was the coolest customer he had ever met. The man was no fool. He must know he was in peril, but his debonair, smiling insouciance never left him for a moment. He was grit clear through.

Chapter XI

Tighe Weaves his Web Tighter

The hooded eyes of Jess Tighe slanted across the table at his visitor. Not humor but mordant irony had given birth to the sardonic smile on his thin, bloodless lips.

"I reckon you'll be glad to know that you've been entertaining an angel unawares, Hal," he jeered. "I've been looking up your handsome young friend, and I can tell you what the 'R.B.' in his hat stands for in case you would be interested to know."

The owner of the horse ranch gave a little nod. "Unload your information, Jess."

Tighe leaned forward for emphasis and bared his teeth. If ever malevolent hate was written on a face it found expression on his now.

"'R.B.' stands for Royal Beaudry."

Rutherford flashed a question at him from startled eyes. He waited for the other man to continue.

"You remember the day we put John Beaudry out of business?" asked Tighe.

"Yes. Go on." Hal Rutherford was not proud of that episode. In the main he had fought fair, even though he had been outside the law. But on the day he had avenged the death of his brother Anson, the feud between him and the sheriff had degenerated to murder. A hundred times since he had wished that he had gone to meet the officer alone.

"He had his kid with him. Afterward they shipped him out of the country to an aunt in Denver. He went to school there. Well, I've had a little sleuthing done."

"And you've found out--?"

"What I've told you."

"How?"

"He said his name was Cherokee Street, but Jeff told me he didn't act like he believed himself. When yore girl remembered there was a street of that name in Denver, Mr. Cherokee Street was plumb rattled. He seen he'd made a break. Well, you saw that snapshot Beulah took of him and me on the porch. I sent it to a detective agency in Denver with orders to find out the name of the man that photo fitted. My idea was for the manager to send a man to the teachers of the high schools, beginning with the school nearest Cherokee Street. He done it. The third schoolmarm took one look at the picture and said the young fellow was Royal Beaudry. She had taught him German two years. That's howcome I to know what that 'R.B.' in the hat stands for."

"Perhaps it is some other Beaudry."

"Take another guess," retorted the cripple scornfully. "Right off when I clapped eyes on him, I knew he reminded me of somebody. I know now who it was."

"But what's he doing up here?" asked the big man.

The hawk eyes of Tighe glittered. "What do you reckon the son of John Beaudry would be doing here?" He answered his own question with bitter animosity. "He's gathering evidence to send Hal Rutherford and Jess Tighe to the penitentiary. That's what he's doing."

Rutherford nodded. "Sure. What else would he be doing if he is a chip of the old block? That's where his father's son ought to put us if he can."

Tighe beat his fist on the table, his face a map of appalling fury and hate. "Let him go to it, then. I've been a cripple seventeen years because Beaudry shot me up. By God! I'll gun his son inside of twenty-four hours. I'll stomp him off'n the map like he was a rattlesnake."

"No," vetoed Rutherford curtly.

"What! What's that you say?" snarled the other.

"I say he'll get a run for his money. If there's any killing to be done, it will be in fair fight."

"What's ailing you?" sneered Tighe. "Getting soft in your upper story? Mean to lie down and let that kid run you through to the pen like his father did Dan Meldrum?"

"Not in a thousand years," came back Rutherford. "If he wants war, he gets it. But I'll not stand for any killing from ambush, and no killing of any kind unless it has to be. Understand?"

"That sounds to me," purred the smaller man in the Western slang that phrased incredulity. Then, suddenly, he foamed at the mouth. "Keep out of this if you're squeamish. Let me play out the hand. I'll bump him off pronto."

"No, Jess."

"What do you think I am?" screamed Tighe. "Seventeen years I've been hog-tied to this house because of Beaudry. Think I'm going to miss my chance now? If he was Moody and Sankey rolled into one, I'd go through with it. And what is he--a spy come up here to gather evidence against you and me! Didn't he creep into your house so as to sell you out when he got the goods? Hasn't he lied from start to finish?"

"Maybe so. But he has no proof against us yet. We'll kick him out of the park. I'm not going to have his blood on my conscience. That's flat, Jess."

The eyes in the bloodless face of the other man glittered, but he put a curb on his passion. "What about me, Hal? I've waited half a lifetime and now my chance has come. Have you forgot who made me the misshaped thing I am? I haven't. I'll go through hell to fix Beaudry's cub the way he did me." His voice shook from the bitter intensity of his feeling.

Rutherford paced up and down the room in a stress of sentiency. "No, Jess. I know just how you feel, but I'm going to give this kid his chance. We gunned Beaudry because he wouldn't let us alone. Either he or a lot of us had to go. But I'll say this. I never was satisfied with the way we did it. When Jack Beaudry shot you up, he was fighting for his life. We attacked him. You got no right to hold it against his son."

"I don't ask you to come in. I'll fix his clock all right."

"Nothing doing. I won't have it." Rutherford, by a stroke of strategy, carried the war into the country of the other. "I gave way to you about Dingwell, though I hated to try that Indian stuff on him. He's a white man. I've always liked him. It's a rotten business."

"What else can you do? We daren't turn him loose. You don't want to gun him. There is nothing left but to tighten the thumbscrews."

"It won't do any good," protested the big man with a frown. "He's game. He'll go through. . . . And if it comes to a showdown, I won't have him starved to death."

Tighe looked at him through half-hooded, cruel eyes. "He'll weaken. Another day or two will do it. Don't worry about Dingwell."

"There's not a yellow streak in him. You haven't a chance to make him quit." Rutherford took another turn up and down the room diagonally. "I don't like this way of fighting. It's--damnable, man! I won't have any harm come to Dave or to the kid either. I stand pat on that, Jess."

The man with the crutches swallowed hard. His Adam's apple moved up and down like an agitated thermometer. When he spoke it was in a smooth, oily voice of submission, but Rutherford noticed that the rapacious eyes were hooded.

"What you say goes, Hal. You're boss of this round-up. I was jest telling you how it looked to me."

"Sure. That's all right, Jess. But you want to remember that public sentiment is against us. We've pretty near gone our limit up here. If there was no other reason but that, it would be enough to make us let this young fellow alone. We can't afford a killing in the park now."

Tighe assented, almost with servility. But the cattleman carried away with him a conviction that the man had yielded too easily, that his restless brain would go on planning destruction for young Beaudry just the same.

He was on his way up Chicito Cañon and he stopped at Rothgerber's ranch to see Beaudry. The young man was not at home.

"He start early this morning to canfass for his vindmill," the old German explained.

After a moment's thought Rutherford left a message. "Tell him it isn't safe for him to stay in the park; that certain parties know who 'R.B.' is and will sure act on that information. Say I said for him to come and see me as soon as he gets back. Understand? Right away when he reaches here."

The owner of the horse ranch left his mount in the Rothgerber corral and passed through the pasture on foot to Chicito. Half an hour later he dropped into the jacal of Meldrum.

He found the indomitable Dingwell again quizzing Meldrum about his residence at Santa Fe during the days he wore a striped uniform. The former convict was grinding his teeth with fury.

"I reckon you won't meet many old friends when you go back this time, Dan. Maybe there will be one or two old-timers that will know you, but it won't be long before you make acquaintances," Dave consoled him.

"Shut up, or I'll pump lead into you," he warned hoarsely.

The cattleman on the bed shook his head. "You'd like to fill me full of buckshot, but it wouldn't do at all, Dan. I'm the goose that lays the golden eggs, in a way of speaking. Gun me, and it's good-bye to that twenty thousand in the gunnysack." He turned cheerfully to Rutherford, who was standing in the doorway. "Come right in, Hal. Glad to see you. Make yourself at home."

"He's deviling me all the time," Meldrum complained to the owner of the horse ranch. "I ain't a-going to stand it."

Rutherford looked at the prisoner, a lean, hard-bitten Westerner with muscles like steel ropes and eyes unblinking as a New Mexico sun. His engaging recklessness had long since won the liking of the leader of the Huerfano Park outlaws.

"Don't bank on that golden egg business, Dave," advised Rutherford. "If you tempt the boys enough, they're liable to forget it. You've been behaving mighty aggravating to Dan."

"Me!" Dave opened his eyes in surprise. "I was just asking him how he'd like to go back to Santa Fe after you-all turn me loose."

"We're not going to turn you loose till we reach an agreement. What's the use of being pigheaded? We're looking for that gold and we're going to find it mighty soon. Now be reasonable."

"How do you know you're going to find it?"

"Because we know you couldn't have taken it far. Here's the point. You had it when Fox made his getaway. Beulah was right behind you, so we know you didn't get a chance to bury it between there and town. We covered your tracks and you didn't leave the road in that half-mile. That brings you as far as Battle Butte. You had the gunnysack when you crossed the bridge. You didn't have it when Slim Sanders met you. So you must have got rid of it in that distance of less than a quarter of a mile. First off, I figured you dropped the sack in Hague's alfalfa field. But we've tramped that all over. It's not there. Did you meet some one and give it to him? Or how did you get rid of it?"

"I ate it," grinned Dingwell confidentially.

"The boys are getting impatient, Dave. They don't like the way you butted in."

"That's all right. You're responsible for my safety, Hal. I'll let you do the worrying."

"Don't fool yourself. We can't keep you here forever. We can't let you go without an agreement. Figure out for yourself what's likely to happen?"

"Either my friends will rescue me, or else I'll escape."

"Forget it. Not a chance of either." Rutherford stopped, struck by an idea. "Ever hear of a young fellow called Cherokee Street?"

"No. Think not. Is he a breed?"

"White man." Rutherford took a chair close to Dingwell. He leaned forward and asked another question in a low voice. "Never happened to meet the son of John Beaudry, did you?"

Dingwell looked at him steadily out of narrowed eyes. "I don't get you, Hal. What has he got to do with it?"

"Thought maybe you could tell me that. He's in the park now."

"In the park?"

"Yes--and Jess Tighe knows it."

"What's he doing here?"

But even as he asked the other man, Dingwell guessed the answer. Not an hour before he had caught a glimpse of a white, strained face at the window. He knew now whose face it was.

"He's spying on us and sleuthing for evidence to send us to the pen. Think he'd be a good risk for an insurance company?"

Dave thought fast. "I don't reckon you're right. I put the kid through law school. My friends have likely sent him up here to look for me."

Rutherford scoffed. "Nothing to that. How could they know you are here? We didn't advertise it."

"No-o, but--" Dingwell surrendered the point reluctantly. He flashed a question at Rutherford. "Tighe will murder him. That's sure. You going to let him?"

"Not if I can help it. I'm going to send young Beaudry out of the park."

"Fine. Don't lose any time about it, Hal."

The Huerfano Park rancher made one more attempt to shake his prisoner. His dark eyes looked straight into those of Dingwell.

"Old-timer, what about you? I ain't enjoying this any more than you are. But it's clear out of my hands."

"Then why worry?" asked Dingwell, a little grin on his drawn face.

"Hell! What's the use of asking that? I'm no Injun devil," barked Rutherford irritably.

"Turn me loose and I'll forget all I've seen. I won't give you the loot, but I'll not be a witness against you."

The Huerfano Park ranchman shook his head. "No, we want that gold, Dave. You butted into our game and we won't stand for that."

"I reckon we can't make a deal, Hal."

The haggard eyes of the starving man were hard as tungsten-washed steel. They did not yield a jot.

A troubled frown dragged together the shaggy eyebrows of Rutherford as he snapped out his ultimatum.

"I like you, Dave. Always have. But you're in one hell of a hole. Don't feed yourself any fairy tales. Your number is chalked up, my friend. Unless you come through with what we want, you'll never leave here alive. I can't save you. There's only one man can--and that is your friend David Dingwell."

The other man did not bat an eyelid. "Trying to pass the buck, Hal? You can't get away with it--not for a minute." A gay little smile of derision touched his face. "I'm in your hands completely. I'll not tell you a damn thing. What are you going to do about it? No, don't tell me that Meldrum and Tighe will do what has to be done. You're the high mogul here. If they kill me, Hal Rutherford will be my murderer. Don't forget that for a second."

Rutherford carried home with him a heavy heart. He could see no way out of the difficulty. He knew that neither Meldrum nor Tighe would consent to let Dingwell go unless an agreement was first reached. There was, too, the other tangle involving young Beaudry. Perhaps he also would be obstinate and refuse to follow the reasonable course.

Beulah met him on the road. Before they had ridden a hundred yards, her instinct told her that he was troubled.

"What is it, dad?" she asked.

He compromised with himself and told her part of what was worrying him. "It's about your friend Street. Jess had him looked up in Denver. The fellow turns out to be a Royal Beaudry. You've heard of a sheriff of that name who used to live in this country? . . . Well, this is his son."

"What's he doing here?"

"Trying to get us into trouble, I reckon. But that ain't the point. I'm not worrying about what he can find out. Fact is that Tighe is revengeful. This boy's father crippled him. He wants to get even on the young fellow. Unless Beaudry leaves the park at once, he'll never go. I left word at Rothgerber's for him to come down and see me soon as he gets home."

"Will he come?" she asked anxiously.

"I don't know. If not I'll go up and fetch him. I don't trust Jess a bit. He'll strike soon and hard."

"Don't let him, dad," the girl implored.

The distressed eyes of the father rested on her. "You like this young fellow, honey?" he asked.

She flamed. "I hate him. He abused our hospitality. He lied to us and spied on us. I wouldn't breathe the same air he does if I could help it. But we can't let him be killed in cold blood."

"That's right, Boots. Well, he'll come down to-day and I'll pack him back to Battle Butte. Then we'll be shet of him."

Beulah passed the hours in a fever of impatience. She could not keep her mind on the children she was teaching. She knew Tighe. The decision of her father to send Beaudry away would spur the cripple to swift activity. Up at Rothgerber's Jess could corner the man and work his vengeance unhampered. Why did not the spy come down to the horse ranch? Was it possible that his pride would make him neglect the warning her father had left? Perhaps he would think it only a trap to catch him.

Supper followed dinner, and still Beaudry had not arrived. From the porch Beulah peered up the road into the gathering darkness. Her father had been called away. Her brothers were not at home. The girl could stand it no longer. She went to the stable and saddled Blacky.

Five minutes later she was flying up the road that led to the Rothgerber place.

Chapter XII

Stark Fear

When Beaudry climbed the cañon wall to the Rothgerber pasture he breathed a deep sigh of relief. For many hours he had been under a heavy strain, nerves taut as fiddle-strings. Fifty times his heart had jumped with terror. But he had done the thing he had set out to do.

He had stiffened his flaccid will and spurred his trembling body forward. If he had been unable to control his fear, at least he had not let it master him. He had found out for Ryan where Dingwell was held prisoner. It had been his intention to leave the park as soon as he knew this, report the facts to the friends of Dave, and let them devise a way of escape. He had done his full share. But he could not follow this course now.

The need of the cattleman was urgent. Somehow it must be met at once. Yet what could he do against two armed men who would not hesitate to shoot him down if necessary? There must be some way of saving Dingwell if he could only find it.

In spite of his anxiety, a fine spiritual exaltation flooded him. So far he had stood the acid test, had come through without dishonor. He might be a coward; at least, he was not a quitter. Plenty of men would have done his day's work without a tremor. What brought comfort to Roy's soul was that he had been able to do it at all.

Mrs. Rothgerber greeted him with exclamations of delight. The message of Rutherford had frightened her even though she did not entirely understand it.

"Hermann iss out looking for you. Mr. Rutherford--the one that owns the horse ranch--he wass here and left a message for you."

"A message for me! What was it?"

With many an "Ach!" she managed to tell him.

The face of her boarder went white. Since Rutherford was warning him against Tighe, the danger must be imminent. Should he go down to the horse ranch now? Or had he better wait until it was quite dark? While he was still debating this with himself, the old German came into the house.

"Home, eh? Gut, gut! They are already yet watching the road."

Roy's throat choked. "Who?"

This question Rothgerber could not answer. In the dusk he had not recognized the men he had seen. Moreover, they had ridden into the brush to escape observation. Both of them had been armed with rifles.

The old woman started to light a lamp, but Roy stopped her. "Let's eat in the dark," he proposed. "Then I'll slip out to the bunkhouse and you can have your light."

His voice shook. When he tried to eat, his fingers could scarcely hold a knife and fork. Supper was for him a sham. A steel band seemed to grip his throat and make the swallowing of food impossible. He was as unnerved as a condemned criminal waiting for the noose.

After drinking a cup of coffee, he pushed back his chair and rose.

"Petter stay with us," urged the old German. He did not know why this young man was in danger, but he read in the face the stark fear of a soul in travail.

"No. I'll saddle and go down to see Rutherford. Good-night."

Roy went out of the back door and crept along the shadows of the hill. Beneath his foot a dry twig snapped. It was enough. He fled panic-stricken, pursued by all the demons of hell his fears could evoke. A deadly, unnerving terror clutched at his throat. The pounding blood seemed ready to burst the veins at his temples.

The bunkhouse loomed before him in the darkness. As he plunged at the door a shot rang out. A bolt of fire burned into his shoulder. He flung the door open, slammed it shut behind him, locked and bolted it almost with one motion. For a moment he leaned half swooning against the jamb, sick through and through at the peril he had just escaped.

But had he escaped it? Would they not break in on him and drag him out to death? The acuteness of his fright drove away the faintness. He dragged the bed from its place and pushed it against the door. Upon it he piled the table, the washstand, the chairs. Feverishly he worked to barricade the entrance against his enemies.

When he had finished, his heart was beating against his ribs like that of a wild rabbit in the hands of a boy. He looked around for the safest place to hide. From the floor he stripped a Navajo rug and pulled up the trapdoor that led to a small cellar stairway. Down into this cave he went, letting the door fall shut after him.

In that dark blackness he waited, a crumpled, trembling wretch, for whatever fate might have in store for him.

How long he crouched there Beaudry never knew. At last reason asserted itself and fought back the panic. To stay where he was would be to invite destruction. His attackers would come to the window. The barricaded door, the displaced rug, the trapdoor, would advertise his terror. The outlaws would break in and make an end of him.

Roy could hardly drag his feet up the stairs, so near was he to physical collapse. He listened. No sound reached him. Slowly he pushed up the trapdoor. Nobody was in the room. He crept up, lowered the door, and replaced the carpet. With his eyes on the window he put back the furniture where it belonged. Then, revolver in hand, he sat in one corner of the room and tried to decide what he must do.

Down in the cellar he had been vaguely aware of a dull pain in his shoulder and a wet, soggy shirt above the place. But the tenseness of his anxiety had pushed this into the background of his thoughts. Now again the throbbing ache intruded itself. The fingers of his left hand searched under his waistcoat, explored a spot that was tender and soppy, and came forth moist.

He knew he had been shot, but this gave him very little concern. He had no time to worry about his actual ills, since his whole mind was given to the fear of those that were impending.

Upon the window there came a faint tapping. The hand with the revolver jerked up automatically. Every muscle of Beaudry's body grew rigid. His senses were keyed to a tense alertness. He moistened his lips with his tongue as he crouched in readiness for the attack about to break.

Again the tapping, and this time with it a quick, low, imperious call.

"Mr. Street. Are you there? Let me in!"

He knew that voice--would have known it among a thousand. In another moment he had raised the window softly and Beulah Rutherford was climbing in.

She panted as if she had been running. "They're watching the entrance to the arroyo. I came up through the cañon and across the pasture," she explained.

"Did they see you?"

"No. Think not. We must get out of here."

"How?"

"The same way I came."

"But--if they see us and shoot?"

The girl brushed his objection aside. "We can't help that. They know you're here, don't they?"

"Yes."

"Then they'll rush the house. Come."

Still he hesitated. At least they had the shelter of the house. Outside, if they should be discovered, they would be at the mercy of his foes.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked sharply, and she moved toward the window.

But though he recoiled from going to meet the danger, he could not let a girl lead the way. Beaudry dropped to the ground outside and stood ready to lend her a hand. She did not need one. With a twist of her supple body Beulah came through the opening and landed lightly beside him.

They crept back to the shadows of the hill and skirted its edge. Slowly they worked their way from the bunkhouse, making the most of such cover as the chaparral afforded. Farther up they crossed the road into the pasture and by way of it reached the orchard. Every inch of the distance Roy sweated fear.

She was leading, ostensibly because she knew the lay of the land better. Through the banked clouds the moon was struggling. Its light fell upon her lithe, slender figure, the beautifully poised head, the crown of soft black hair. She moved with the grace and the rhythm of a racing filly stepping from the paddock to the track.

Beaudry had noticed, even in his anxiety, that not once since the tapping on the window had her hand touched his or the sweep of her skirt brushed against his clothes. She would save him if she could, but with an open disdain that dared him to misunderstand.

They picked their course diagonally through the orchard toward the cañon. Suddenly Beulah stopped. Without turning, she swept her hand back and caught his. Slowly she drew him to the shadow of an apple tree. There, palm to palm, they crouched together.

Voices drifted to them.

"I'd swear I hit him," one said.

"Maybe you put him out of business. We got to find out," another answered.

"I'll crawl up to the window and take a look," responded the first.

The voices and the sound of the man's movements died. Beulah's hand dropped to her side.

"We're all right now," she said coldly.

They reached the gulch and slowly worked their way down its precipitous sides to the bottom.

The girl turned angrily on Roy. "Why didn't you come after father warned you?"

"I didn't get his warning till night. I was away."

"Then how did you get back up the arroyo when it was watched?"

"I--I wasn't out into the park," he told her.

"Oh!" Her scornful gypsy eyes passed over him and wiped him from the map. She would not even comment on the obvious alternative.

"You think I've been up at Dan Meldrum's spying," he protested hotly.

"Haven't you?" she flung at him.

"Yes, if that's what you want to call it," came quickly his bitter answer. "The man who has been my best friend is lying up there a prisoner because he knows too much about the criminals of Huerfano Park. I heard Meldrum threaten to kill him unless he promised what was wanted of him. Why shouldn't I do my best to help the man who--"

Her voice, sharpened by apprehension, cut into his. "What man? Who are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about David Dingwell."

"What do you mean that he knows too much? Too much about what?" she demanded.

"About the express robbery."

"Do you mean to say that--that my people--?" She choked with anger, but back of her indignation was fear.

"I mean to say that one of your brothers was guarding Dingwell and that later your father went up to Meldrum's place. They are starving him to get something out of him. I serve warning on you that if they hurt my friend--"

"Starving him!" she broke out fiercely. "Do you dare say that my people--my father--would torture anybody? Is that what you mean, you lying spy?"

Her fury was a spur to him. "I don't care what words you use," he flung back wildly. "They have given him no food for three days. I didn't know such things were done nowadays. It's as bad as what the old Apaches did. It's devilish--"

He pulled himself up. What right had he to talk that way to the girl who had just saved his life? Her people might be law-breakers, but he felt that she was clean of any wrongdoing.

Her pride was shaken. A more immediate issue had driven it into the background.

"Why should they hurt him?" she asked. "If they had meant to do that--"

"Because he won't tell what he knows--where the gold is--won't promise to keep quiet about it afterward. What else can they do? They can't turn him loose as a witness against them."

"I don't believe it. I don't believe a word of it." Her voice broke. "I'm going up to see right away."

"You mean--to-night?"

"I mean now."

She turned up the gulch instead of down. Reluctantly he followed her.

Chapter XIII

Beulah Interferes

They felt their way up in the darkness. The path was rough and at first pitch-black. After a time they emerged from the aspens into more open travel. Here were occasional gleams of light, as if the moon stood tip-toe and peered down between the sheer walls of Chicito to the obscure depths below.

Beulah led. Mountain-born and bred, she was active as a bighorn. Her slenderness was deceptive. It concealed the pack of her long rippling muscles, the deep-breasted strength of her torso. One might have marched a long day's journey without finding a young woman more perfectly modeled for grace and for endurance.

"What are you going to try to do?" Beaudry asked of her timidly.

She turned on him with a burst of feminine ferocity. "Is that any of your business? I didn't ask you to come with me, did I? Go down to the horse ranch and ask dad to help you out of the park. Then, when you're safe with your friends, you can set the officers on him. Tell them he is a criminal--just as you told me."

Her biting tongue made him wince. "If I told you that I'm sorry. I had no right. You've saved my life. Do you think it likely I would betray your people after that?"

"How do I know what a spy would do? Thank God, I can't put myself in the place of such people," she answered disdainfully.

He smiled ruefully. She was unjust, of course. But that did not matter. Roy knew that she was wrought up by what he had told her. Pride and shame and hatred and distrust spoke in her sharp words. Was it not natural that a high-spirited girl should resent such a charge against her people and should flame out against the man who had wounded her? Even though she disapproved of what they had done, she would fly to their defense when attacked.

From the dark gash of the ravine they came at last to the opening where Meldrum lived.

The young woman turned to Beaudry. "Give me your revolver belt."

He hesitated. "What are you going to do?"

Plainly she would have liked to rebuff him, but just now he had the whip hand. Her sullen answer came slowly.

"I'm going to tell my brother that father needs him. When he has gone, I'll see what I can do."

"And what am I to do while you are inside?"

"Whatever you like." She held out her hand for his belt.

Not at all willingly he unbuckled it. "You'll be careful," he urged. "Meldrum is a bad man. Don't try any tricks with him."

"He knows better than to touch a hair of my head," she assured him with proud carelessness. Then, "Hide in those trees," she ordered.

Ned Rutherford answered her knock on the door of the jacal. At sight of her he exclaimed:--

"What are you doing here, Boots? At this time of night? Anything wrong?"

"Dad needs you, Ned. It seems there is trouble about that young man Street. Jess Tighe has sworn to kill him and dad won't have it. There's trouble in the air. You're to come straight home."

"Why didn't he send Jeff?"

"He needed him. You're to keep on down through the cañon to the mouth. Jess has the mouth of the arroyo guarded to head off Street."

"But--what's broke? Why should Tighe be so keen on bumping off this pink-ear when dad says no?"

"They've found out who he is. It seems Street is an alias. He is really Royal Beaudry, the son of the man who used to be sheriff of the county, the one who crippled Jess the day he was killed."

The slim youth in the high-heeled boots whistled. He understood now why Tighe dared to defy his father.

"All right, Boots. With you in a minute, soon as I get my hat and let Dan know."

"No. I'm to stay here till dad sends for me. He doesn't want me near the trouble."

"You mean you're to stay at Rothgerber's."

"No, here. Tighe may attack Rothgerber's any time to get this young Beaudry. I heard shooting as I came up."

"But--you can't stay here. What's dad thinking about?" he frowned.

"If you mean because of Mr. Dingwell, I know all about that."

"Who told you?" he demanded.

"Dad can't keep secrets from me. There's no use his trying."

"Hm! I notice he loaded us with a heap of instructions not to let you know anything. He'd better learn to padlock his own tongue."

"Isn't there a room where I can sleep here?" Beulah asked.

"There's a cot in the back room," he admitted sulkily. "But you can't--"

"That's another thing," she broke in. "Dad doesn't want Dan left alone with Mr. Dingwell."

"Who's that out there, Ned?" growled a heavy voice from inside.

Beulah followed her brother into the hut. Two men stared at her in amazement. One sat on the bed with a leg tied to the post. The other was at the table playing solitaire, a revolver lying beside the cards. The card-player was Meldrum. He jumped up with an oath.

"Goddlemighty! What's she doing here?" he demanded in his hoarse raucous bass.

"That's her business and mine," Rutherford answered haughtily.

"It's mine too, by God! My neck's in the noose, ain't it?" screamed the former convict. "Has everybody in the park got to know we're hiding Dingwell here? Better put it in the paper. Better--"

"Enough of that, Dan. Dad is running this show. Obey orders, and that lets you out," retorted the young man curtly. "You've met my sister, haven't you, Dave?"

The cattleman smiled at the girl. "Sure. We had a little ride together not long since. I owe you a new raincoat. Don't I, Miss Beulah?"

She blushed a little. "No, you don't, Mr. Dingwell. The mud came off after it dried."

"That's good." Dave turned to Rutherford. The little devils of mischief were in his eyes. "Chet Fox was with us, but he didn't stay--had an engagement, he said. He was in some hurry to keep it, too."

But though he chatted with them gayly, the ranchman's mind was subconsciously busy with the new factor that had entered into the problem of his captivity. Why had Rutherford allowed her to come? He could not understand that. Every added one who knew that he was here increased the danger to his abductors. He knew how fond the owner of the horse ranch was of this girl. It was odd that he had let her become incriminated in his lawless plans. Somehow that did not seem like Hal Rutherford. One point that stood out like the Map of Texas brand was the effect of her coming upon his chances. To secure their safety neither Tighe nor Meldrum would stick at murder. Ten minutes ago the prudent way out of the difficulty would have been for them to arrange his death by accident. Now this was no longer feasible. When the Rutherford girl had stepped into the conspiracy, it became one of finesse and not bloodshed. Was this the reason that her father had sent her--to stay the hands of his associates already reaching toward the prisoner? There was no question that Meldrum's finger had been itching on the trigger of his revolver for a week. One of the young Rutherfords had been beside him day and night to restrain the man.

Dave was due for another surprise when Ned presently departed after a whispered conference with Meldrum and left his sister in the hut. Evidently something important was taking place in another part of the park. Had it to do with young Beaudry?

From his reflections the cattleman came to an alert attention. Miss Rutherford was giving Meldrum instructions to arrange her bed in the back room.

The convict hesitated. "I can't leave him here alone with you," he remonstrated surlily.

"Why can't you?" demanded Beulah incisively. "He's tied to the bedpost and I have my gun. I can shoot as straight as you can. What harm can he do me in five minutes? Don't be an idiot, Dan."

Meldrum, grumbling, passed into the back room.

In an instant Beulah was at the table, had drawn out a drawer, and had seized a carving knife. She turned on Dingwell, eyes flashing.

"If I help you to escape, will you swear to say nothing that will hurt my father or anybody else in the park?" she demanded in a low voice.

"Yes--if young Beaudry has not been hurt."

"You swear it."

"Yes."

She tossed him the knife, and moved swiftly back to the place where she had been standing. "Whatever my father wants you to do you'd better do," she said out loud for the benefit of Meldrum.

Dingwell cut the ropes that bound his leg. "I'm liable to be Dan's guest quite awhile yet. Rutherford and I don't quite agree on the terms," he drawled aloud.

Beulah tossed him her revolver. "I'll call Dan, but you're not to hurt him," she whispered.

When Meldrum came in answer to her summons, he met the shock of his life. In Dingwell's competent hand was a revolver aimed at his heart.

The man turned savagely to Beulah. "So I'm the goat," he said with a curse. "Rutherford is going to frame me, is he? I'm to go to the pen in place of the whole bunch. Is that it?"

"No, you've guessed wrong. Yore hide is safe this time, Meldrum," the cattleman explained. "Reach for the roof. No, don't do that. . . . Now, turn yore face to the wall."

Dave stepped forward and gathered in the forty-four of the enemy. He also relieved him of his "skinning" knife. With the deft hands of an old roper he tied the man up and flung him on the bed.

This done, Dingwell made straight for the larder. Though he was ravenous, the cattleman ate with discretion. Into his pockets he packed all the sandwiches they would hold.

"Is it true that you--that they didn't give you anything to eat?" asked Beulah.

He looked at her--and lied cheerfully.

"Sho, I got cranky and wouldn't eat. Yore folks treated me fine. I got my neck bowed. Can't blame them for that, can I?"

"We must be going," she told him. "If you don't get over the pass before morning, Tighe might catch you."

He nodded agreement. "You're right, but I've got to look out for young Beaudry. Do you know where he is?"

"He is waiting outside," the girl said stiffly. "Take him away with you. I'll not be responsible for him if he comes back. We don't like spies here."

They found Roy lying against the wall of the hut, his white face shining in the moonlight.

"What's the matter with you?" demanded Miss Rutherford sharply.

"I'm all right." Roy managed to rise and lean against the jacal. "I see you made it. Mr. Dingwell, my name is Beaudry."

"Glad to know you." The cattleman's strong hand gripped his limp one. "Yore father was the gamest man I ever knew and one of my best friends."

The keen eyes of Beulah had been fastened on Roy. She recalled what she had heard the man say in the orchard. In her direct fashion she flung a question at the young man.

"Are you wounded? Did that man hit you when he fired?"

"It's in my shoulder--just a flesh wound. The bleeding has stopped except when I move."

"Why didn't you say something about it?" she asked impatiently. "Do you think we're clairvoyants? We'd better get him into the house and look at it, Mr. Dingwell."

They did as she suggested. A bullet had ploughed a furrow across the shoulder. Except for the loss of blood, the wound was not serious. With the help of Miss Rutherford, which was given as a matter of course and quite without embarrassment, Dave dressed and bandaged the hurt like an expert. In his adventurous life he had looked after many men who had been shot, and had given first aid to a dozen with broken bones.

Roy winced a little at the pain, but he made no outcry. He was not a baby about suffering. That he could stand as well as another. What shook his nerve was the fear of anticipation, the dread of an impending disaster which his imagination magnified.

"You'd better hurry," he urged two or three times. "Some one might come any minute."

Dave looked at him, a little surprised. "What's the urge, son? We've got two six-guns with us if anybody gets too neighborly."

But Beulah was as keen for the start as Beaudry. She did not want the men escaping from the park to meet with her people. To avoid this, rapid travel was necessary.

As soon as Roy was patched up they started.

Chapter XIV

Personally Escorted

Before they reached the mouth of the cañon, Dave was supporting the slack body of his friend. When the party came to the aspens, Beulah hurried forward, and by the time the two men emerged she was waiting for them with Blacky.

Roy protested at taking the horse, but the girl cut short his objections imperiously.

"Do you think we've only your silly pride to consider? I want you out of the park--where my people can't reach you. I'm going to see you get out. After that I don't care what you do."

Moonlight fell upon the sardonic smile on the pitifully white face of the young man. "I'm to be personally conducted by the Queen of Huerfano. That's great. I certainly appreciate the honor."

With the help of Dingwell he pulled himself to the saddle. The exertion started a spurt of warm blood at the shoulder, but Roy clenched his teeth and clung to the pommel to steady himself. The cattleman led the horse and Beulah walked beside him.

"I can get another pony for you at Cameron's," she explained. "Just above there is a short cut by way of Dolores Sinks. You ought to be across the divide before morning. I'll show you the trail."

What story she told to get the horse from Cameron her companions did not know, but from where they waited in the pines they saw the flickering light of a lantern cross to the stable. Presently Beulah rode up to them on the hillside above the ranch.

By devious paths she led them through chaparral and woodland. Sometimes they followed her over hills and again into gulches. The girl "spelled" Dingwell at riding the second horse, but whether in the saddle or on foot her movements showed such swift certainty that Dave was satisfied she knew where she was going.

Twice she stopped to rest the wounded man, who was now clinging with both hands to the saddle-horn. But the hard gleam of her dark eyes served notice that she was moved by expediency and not sympathy.

It was midnight when at last she stopped near the entrance to the pass.

"The road lies straight before you over the divide. You can't miss it. Once on the other side keep going till you get into the foothills. All trails will take you down," she told Dingwell.

"We're a heap obliged to you, Miss Rutherford," answered Dingwell. "I reckon neither one of us is liable to forget what you've done for us."

She flamed. "I've nothing against you, Mr. Dingwell, but you might as well know that what I've done was for my people. I don't want them to get into trouble. If it hadn't been for that--"

"You'd 'a' done it just the same," the cattleman finished for her with a smile. "You can't make me mad to-night after going the limit for us the way you have."

Beaudry, sagging over the horn of the saddle, added his word timidly, but the Rutherford girl would have none of his thanks.

"You don't owe me anything, I tell you. How many times have I got to say that it is nothing to me what becomes of you?" she replied, flushing angrily. "All I ask is that you don't cross my path again. Next time I'll let Jess Tighe have his way."

"I didn't go into the park to spy on your people, Miss Rutherford. I went to--"

"I care nothing about why you came." The girl turned to Dingwell, her chin in the air. "Better let him rest every mile or two. I don't want him breaking down in our country after all the trouble I've taken."

"You may leave him to me. I'll look out for him," Dave promised.

"Just so that you don't let him get caught again," she added.

Her manner was cavalier, her tone almost savage. Without another word she turned and left them.

Dingwell watched her slim form disappear into the night.

"Did you ever see such a little thoroughbred?" he asked admiringly. "I take off my hat to her. She's the gamest kid I ever met--and pretty as they grow. Just think of her pulling off this getaway to-night. It was a man-size job, and that little girl never turned a hair from start to finish. And loyal! By Gad! Hal Rutherford hasn't earned fidelity like that, even if he has been father and mother to her since she was a year old. He'd ought to send her away from that hell-hole and give her a chance."

"What will they do to her when she gets back?"

Dave chuckled. "They can't do a thing. That's the beauty of it. There'll be a lot of tall cussing in Huerfano for a while, but after Hal has onloaded what's on his chest he'll stand between her and the rest."

"Sure of that?"

"It's a cinch." The cattleman laughed softly. "But ain't she the little spitfire? I reckon she sure hates you thorough."

Roy did not answer. He was sliding from the back of his horse in a faint.

When Beaudry opened his eyes again, Dingwell was pouring water into his mouth from a canteen that had been hanging to the pommel of Miss Rutherford's saddle.

"Was I unconscious?" asked the young man in disgust.

"That's whatever. Just you lie there, son, whilst I fix these bandages up for you again."

The cattleman moistened the hot cloths with cold water and rearranged them.

"We ought to be hurrying on," Roy suggested, glancing anxiously down the steep ascent up which they had ridden.

"No rush a-tall," Dave assured him cheerfully. "We got all the time there is. Best thing to do is to loaf along and take it easy."

"But they'll be on our trail as soon as they know we've gone. They'll force Miss Rutherford to tell which way we came."

Dingwell grinned. "Son, did you ever look into that girl's eyes? They look right at you, straight and unafraid. The Huerfano Park outfit will have a real merry time getting her to tell anything she doesn't want to. When she gets her neck bowed, I'll bet she's some sot. Might as well argue with a government mule. She'd make a right interesting wife for some man, but he'd have to be a humdinger to hold his end up--six foot of man, lots of patience, and sense enough to know he'd married a woman out of 'steen thousand."

Young Beaudry was not contemplating matrimony. His interest just now was centered in getting as far from the young woman and her relatives as possible.

"When young Rutherford finds he has been sold, there will be the deuce to pay," urged Roy.

"Will there? I dunno. Old man Rutherford ain't going to be so awfully keen to get us back on his hands. We worried him a heap. Miss Beulah lifted two heavy weights off'n his mind. I'm one and you're the other. O' course, he'll start the boys out after us to square himself with Tighe and Meldrum. He's got to do that. They're sure going to be busy bees down in the Huerfano hive. The Rutherford boys are going to do a lot of night-riding for quite some time. But I expect Hal won't give them orders to bring us in dead or alive. There is no premium on our pelts."

Roy spent a nervous half-hour before his friend would let him mount again--and he showed it. The shrewd eyes of the old cattleman appraised him. Already he guessed some of the secrets of this young man's heart.

Dave swung to the left into the hills so as to get away from the beaten trails after they had crossed the pass. He rode slowly, with a careful eye upon his companion. Frequently he stopped to rest in spite of Roy's protests.

Late in the afternoon they came to a little mountain ranch owned by a nester who had punched cattle for Dave in the old days. Now he was doing a profitable business himself in other men's calves. He had started with a branding-iron and a flexible conscience. He still had both of them, together with a nice little bunch of cows that beat the world's records for fecundity.

It was not exactly the place Dingwell would have chosen to go into hiding, but he had to take what he could get. Roy, completely exhausted, was already showing a fever. He could not possibly travel farther.

With the casual confidence that was one of his assets Dave swung from his horse and greeted the ranchman.

"'Lo, Hart! Can we roost here to-night? My friend got thrown and hurt his shoulder. He's all in."

The suspicious eyes of the nester passed over Beaudry and came back to Dingwell.

"I reckon so," he said, not very graciously. "We're not fixed for company, but if you'll put up with what we've got--"

"Suits us fine. My friend's name is Beaudry. I'll get him right to bed."

Roy stayed in bed for forty-eight hours. His wound was only a slight one and the fever soon subsided. The third day he was sunning himself on the porch. Dave had gone on a little jaunt to a water-hole to shoot hooters for supper. Mrs. Hart was baking bread inside. Her husband had left before daybreak and was not yet back. He was looking for strays, his wife said.

In the family rocking-chair Roy was reading a torn copy of "Martin Chuzzlewit." How it had reached this haven was a question, since it was the only book in the house except a Big Creek bible, as the catalogue of a mail-order house is called in that country. Beaudry resented the frank, insolent observations of Dickens on the manners of Americans. In the first place, the types were not true to life. In the second place--

The young man heard footsteps coming around the corner of the house. He glanced up carelessly--and his heart seemed to stop beating.

He was looking into the barrel of a revolver pointed straight at him. Back of the weapon was the brutal, triumphant face of Meldrum. It was set in a cruel grin that showed two rows of broken, tobacco-stained teeth.

"By God! I've got you. Git down on yore knees and beg, Mr. Spy. I'm going to blow yore head off in just thirty seconds."

Not in his most unbridled moments had Dickens painted a bully so appalling as this one. This man was a notorious "killer" and the lust of murder was just now on him. Young Beaudry's brain reeled. It was only by an effort that he pulled himself back from the unconsciousness into which he was swimming.

Chapter XV

The Bad Man

The eyes of Beaudry, held in dreadful fascination, clung to the lupine face behind the revolver. To save his life he could have looked nowhere else except into those cold, narrow pupils where he read death. Little beads of sweat stood on his forehead. The tongue in his mouth was dry. His brain seemed paralyzed. Again he seemed to be lifted from his feet by a wave of deadly terror.

Meldrum had been drinking heavily, but he was not drunk. He drew from his pocket a watch and laid it on the arm of the chair. Roy noticed that the rim of the revolver did not waver. It was pointed directly between his eyes.

"Git down on yore knees and beg, damn you. In less 'n a minute hell pops for you."

The savage, exultant voice of the former convict beat upon Roy like the blows of a hammer. He would have begged for his life,--begged abjectly, cravenly,--but his teeth chattered and his parched tongue was palsied. He would have sunk to his knees, but terror had robbed his muscles of the strength to move. He was tied to his chair by ropes stronger than chains of steel.

The watch ticked away the seconds. From the face of Meldrum the grin was snuffed out by a swift surge of wolfish anger.

"Are you deef and dumb?" he snarled. "It's Dan Meldrum talking--the man yore dad sent to the penitentiary. I'm going to kill you. Then I'll cut another notch on my gun. Understand?"

The brain of the young lawyer would not function. His will was paralyzed. Yet every sense was amazingly alert. He did not miss a tick of the watch. Every beat of his heart registered.

"You butted in and tried to spy like yore dad, did you?" the raucous voice continued. "Thought you could sell us out and git away with it. Here's where you learn different. Jack Beaudry was a man, anyhow, and we got him. You're nothing but a pink-ear, a whey-faced baby without guts to stand the gaff. Well, you've come to the end of yore trail. Beg, you skunk!"

From the mind of Beaudry the fog lifted. In the savage, malignant eyes glaring at him he read that he was lost. The clutch of fear so overwhelmed him that suspense was unbearable. He wanted to shriek aloud, to call on this man-killer to end the agony. It was the same impulse, magnified a hundred times, that leads a man to bite on an ulcerated tooth in a weak impotence of pain.

The tick-tick-tick of the watch mocked him to frenzied action. He gripped the arms of the chair with both hands and thrust forward his face against the cold rim of the revolver barrel.

"Shoot!" he cried hoarsely, drunk with terror. "Shoot, and be damned!"

Before the words were out of his mouth a shot echoed. For the second time in his life Roy lost consciousness. Not many seconds could have passed before he opened his eyes again. But what he saw puzzled him.

Meldrum was writhing on the ground and cursing. His left hand nursed the right, which moved up and down frantically as if to escape from pain. Toward the house walked Dingwell and by his side Beulah Rutherford. Dave was ejecting a shell from the rifle he carried. Slowly it came to the young man that he had not been shot. The convict must have been hit instead by a bullet from the gun of the cattleman. He was presently to learn that the forty-four had been struck and knocked from the hand of its owner.

"Every little thing all right, son?" asked the cowman cheerily. "We sure did run this rescue business fine. Another minute and--But what's the use of worrying? Miss Beulah and I were Johnny-on-the-spot all right."

Roy said nothing. He could not speak. His lips and cheeks were still bloodless. By the narrowest margin in the world he had escaped.

Disgustedly the cattleman looked down at Meldrum, who was trying to curse and weep from pain at the same time.

"Stung you up some, did I? Hm! You ought to be singing hymns because I didn't let you have it in the haid, which I'd most certainly have done if you had harmed my friend. Get up, you bully, and stop cursing. There's a lady here, and you ain't damaged, anyhow."

The eyes of Beaudry met those of Beulah. It seemed to him that her lip curled contemptuously. She had been witness of his degradation, had seen him show the white feather. A pulse of shame beat in his throat.

"W-w-what are you doing here?" he asked wretchedly.

Dave answered for her. "Isn't she always on the job when she's needed? Yore fairy godmother--that's what Miss Beulah Rutherford is. Rode hell-for-leather down here to haid off that coyote there--and done it, too. Bumped into me at the water-hole and I hopped on that Blacky hawss behind her. He brought us in on the jump and Sharp's old reliable upset Meldrum's apple cart."

Still nursing the tips of his tingling fingers, the ex-convict scowled venomously at Beulah. "I'll remember that, missie. That's twice you've interfered with me. I sure will learn you to mind yore own business."

Dingwell looked steadily at him. "We've heard about enough from you. Beat it! Hit the trail! Pull yore freight! Light out! Vamos! Git!"

The man-killer glared at him. For a moment he hesitated. He would have liked to try conclusions with the cattleman to a fighting finish, but though he had held his own in many a rough-and-tumble fray, he lacked the unflawed nerve to face this man with the cold gray eye and the chilled-steel jaw. His fury broke in an impotent curse as he slouched away.

"I don't understand yet," pursued Roy. "How did Miss Rutherford know that Meldrum was coming here?"

"Friend Hart rode up to tell Tighe we were here. He met Meldrum close to the school-house. The kids were playing hide-and-go-seek. One of them was lying right back of a big rock beside the road. He heard Dan swear he was coming down to stop yore clock, son. The kid went straight to teacher soon as the men had ridden off. He told what Meldrum had said. So, of course, Miss Beulah she sent the children home and rode down to the hawss ranch to get her father or one of her brothers. None of them were at home and she hit the trail alone to warn us."

"I knew my people would be blamed for what this man did, so I blocked him," explained the girl with her habitual effect of hostile pride.

"You said you would let Tighe have his way next time, but you don't need to apologize for breaking yore word, Miss Beulah," responded Dingwell with his friendly smile. "All we've got to say is that you've got chalked up against us an account we'll never be able to pay."

The color beat into her cheeks. She was both embarrassed and annoyed. With a gesture of impatience she turned away and walked to Blacky. Lithely she swung to the saddle.

Mrs. Hart had come to the porch. In her harassed countenance still lingered the remains of good looks. The droop at the corners of her mouth suggested a faint resentment against a fate which had stolen her youth without leaving the compensations of middle life.

"Won't you light off'n yore bronc and stay to supper, Miss Rutherford?" she invited.

"Thank you, Mrs. Hart. I can't. Must get home."

With a little nod to the woman she swung her horse around and was gone.

Hart did not show up for supper nor for breakfast. It was an easy guess that he lacked the hardihood to face them after his attempted betrayal. At all events, they saw nothing of him before they left in the morning. If they had penetrated his wife's tight-lipped reserve, they might have shared her opinion, that he had gone off on a long drinking-bout with Dan Meldrum.

Leisurely Beaudry and his friend rode down through the chaparral to Battle Butte.

On the outskirts of the town they met Ned Rutherford. After they had passed him, he turned and followed in their tracks.

Dingwell grinned across at Roy. "Some thorough our friends are. A bulldog has got nothing on them. They're hanging around to help me dig up that gunnysack when I get ready."

The two men rode straight to the office of the sheriff and had a talk with him. From there they went to the hotel where Dave usually put up when he was in town. Over their dinner the cattleman renewed an offer he had been urging upon Roy all the way down from Hart's place. He needed a reliable man to help him manage the different holdings he had been accumulating. His proposition was to take Beaudry in as a junior partner, the purchase price to be paid in installments to be earned out of the profits of the business.

"Course I don't want to take you away from the law if you're set on that profession, but if you don't really care--" Dave lifted an eyebrow in a question.

"I think I'd like the law, but I know I would like better an active outdoor life. That's not the point, Mr. Dingwell. I can't take something for nothing. You can get a hundred men who know far more about cattle than I do. Why do you pick me?"

"I've got reasons a-plenty. Right off the bat here are some of them. I'm under obligations to Jack Beaudry and I'd like to pay my debt to his son. I've got no near kin of my own. I need a partner, but it isn't one man out of a dozen I can get along with. Most old cowmen are rutted in their ways. You don't know a thing about the business. But you can learn. You're teachable. You are not one of these wise guys. Then, too, I like you, son. I don't want a partner that rubs me the wrong way. Hell, my why-fors all simmer down to one. You're the partner I want, Roy."

"If you find I don't suit you, will you let me know?"

"Sure. But there is no chance of that." Dave shook hands with him joyously. "It's a deal, boy."

"It's a deal," agreed Beaudry.

Chapter XVI

Roy is Invited to Take a Drink

Dingwell gave a fishing-party next day. His invited guests were Sheriff Sweeney, Royal Beaudry, Pat Ryan, and Superintendent Elder, of the Western Express Company. Among those present, though at a respectable distance, were Ned Rutherford and Brad Charlton.

The fishermen took with them neither rods nor bait. Their flybooks were left at home. Beaudry brought to the meeting-place a quarter-inch rope and a grappling-iron with three hooks. Sweeney and Ryan carried rifles and the rest of the party revolvers.

Dave himself did the actual fishing. After the grappling-hook had been attached to the rope, he dropped it into Big Creek from a large rock under the bridge that leads to town from Lonesome Park. He hooked his big fish at the fourth cast and worked it carefully into the shallow water. Roy waded into the stream and dragged the catch ashore. It proved to be a gunnysack worth twenty thousand dollars.

Elder counted the sacks inside. "Everything is all right. How did you come to drop the money here?"

"I'm mentioning no names, Mr. Elder. But I was so fixed that I couldn't turn back. If I left the road, my tracks would show. There were reasons why I didn't want to continue on into town with the loot. So, as I was crossing the bridge, without leaving the saddle or even stopping, I deposited the gold in the Big Creek safety deposit vault," Dingwell answered with a grin.

"But supposing the Rutherfords had found it?" The superintendent put his question blandly.

The face of the cattleman was as expressive as a stone wall. "Did I mention the Rutherfords?" he asked, looking straight into the eye of the Western Express man. "I reckon you didn't hear me quite right."

Elder laughed a little. He was a Westerner himself. "Oh, I heard you, Mr. Dingwell. But I haven't heard a lot of things I'd like to know."

The cattleman pushed the sack with his toe. "Money talks, folks say."

"Maybe so. But it hasn't told me why you couldn't go back along the road you came, why you couldn't leave the road, and why you didn't want to go right up to Sweeney's office with the sack. It hasn't given me any information about where you have been the past two weeks, or how--"

"My gracious! He bubbles whyfors and howfors like he had just come uncorked," murmured Dave, in his slow drawl. "Just kinder effervesces them out of the mouth."

"I know you're not going to tell me anything you don't want me to know, still--"

"You done guessed it first, crack. Move on up to the haid of the class."

"Still, you can't keep me from thinking. You can call the turn on the fellows that robbed the Western Express Company whenever you feel like it. Right now you could name the men that did it."

Dave's most friendly, impudent smile beamed upon the superintendent. "I thank you for the compliment, Mr. Elder. Honest, I didn't know how smart a haid I had in my hat till you told me."

"It's good ye've got an air-tight alibi yoursilf, Dave," grinned Pat Ryan.

"I've looked up his alibi. It will hold water," admitted Elder genially. "Well, Dingwell, if you won't talk, you won't. We'll move on up to the bank and deposit our find. Then the drinks will be on me."

The little procession moved uptown. A hundred yards behind it came young Rutherford and Charlton as a rear guard. When the contents of the sack had been put in a vault for safe-keeping, Elder invited the party into the Last Chance. Dave and Roy ordered buttermilk.

Dingwell gave his partner a nudge. "See who is here."

The young man nodded gloomily. He had recognized already the two men drinking at a table in the rear.

"Meldrum and Hart make a sweet pair to draw to when they're tanking up. They're about the two worst bad men in this part of the country. My advice is to take the other side of the street when you see them coming," Ryan contributed.

The rustlers glowered at Elder's party, but offered no comment other than some sneering laughter and ribald whispering. Yet Beaudry breathed freer when he was out in the open again lengthening the distance between him and them at every stride.

Ryan walked as far as the hotel with Dave and his partner.

"Come in and have dinner with us, Pat," invited the cattleman.

The Irishman shook his head. "Can't, Dave. Got to go round to the Elephant Corral and look at my horse. A nail wint into its foot last night."

After they had dined, Dingwell looked at his watch. "I want you to look over the ranch today, son. We'll ride out and I'll show you the place. But first I've got to register a kick with the station agent about the charges for freight on a wagon I had shipped in from Denver. Will you stop at Salmon's and order this bill of groceries sent up to the corral? I'll meet you here at 2.30."

Roy walked up Mission Street as far as Salmon's New York Grocery and turned in the order his friend had given him. After he had seen it filled, he strolled along the sunny street toward the plaza. It was one of those warm, somnolent New Mexico days as peaceful as old age. Burros blinked sleepily on three legs and a hoof-tip. Cowponies switched their tails indolently to brush away flies. An occasional half-garbed Mexican lounged against a door jamb or squatted in the shade of a wall. A squaw from the reservation crouched on the curb beside her display of pottery. Not a sound disturbed the siesta of Battle Butte.

Into this peace broke an irruption of riot. A group of men poured through the swinging doors of a saloon into the open arcade in front. Their noisy disputation shattered the sunny stillness like a fusillade in the desert. Plainly they were much the worse for liquor.

Roy felt again the familiar clutch at his throat, the ice drench at his heart, and the faint slackness of his leg muscles. For in the crowd just vomited from the Silver Dollar were Meldrum, Fox, Hart, Charlton, and Ned Rutherford.

Charlton it was that caught sight of the passing man. With an exultant whoop he leaped out, seized Beaudry, and swung him into the circle of hillmen.

"Tickled to death to meet up with you, Mr. Royal-Cherokee-Beaudry-Street. How is every little thing a-coming? Fine as silk, eh? You'd ought to be laying by quite a bit of the mazuma, what with rewards and spy money together," taunted Charlton.

To the center of the circle Meldrum elbowed his drunken way. "Lemme get at the pink-ear. Lemme bust him one," he demanded.

Ned Rutherford held him back. "Don't break yore breeching, Dan. Brad has done spoke for him," the young man drawled.

Into the white face of his victim Charlton puffed the smoke of his cigar. "If you ain't too busy going fishing maybe you could sell me a windmill to-day. How about that, Mr. Cornell-I-Yell?"

"Where's yore dry nurse Dingwell?" broke in the ex-convict bitterly. "Thought he tagged you everywhere. Tell the son-of-a-gun for me that next time we meet I'll curl his hair right."

Roy said nothing. He looked wildly around for a way of escape and found none. A half ring of jeering faces walled him from the street.

"Lemme get at him. Lemme crack him one on the bean," insisted Meldrum as he made a wild pass at Beaudry.

"No hurry a-tall," soothed Ned. "We got all evening before us. Take yore time, Dan."

"Looks to me like it's certainly up to Mr. Cherokee-What's-his-name-Beaudry to treat the crowd," suggested Chet Fox.

The young man clutched at the straw. "Sure. Of course, I will. Glad to treat, even though I don't drink myself," he said with a weak, forced heartiness.

"You _don't_ drink. The hell you don't!" cut in Meldrum above the Babel of voices.

"He drinks--hic--buttermilk," contributed Hart.

"He'll drink whiskey when I give the word, by Gad!" Meldrum shook himself free of Rutherford and pressed forward. He dragged a bottle from his pocket, drew out the cork, and thrust the liquor at Roy. "Drink, you yellow-streaked coyote--and drink a-plenty."

Roy shook his head. "No!--no," he protested. "I--I--never touch it." His lips were ashen. The color had fled from his cheeks.

The desperado pushed his cruel, vice-scarred face close to that of the man he hated.

"Sa-ay. Listen to me, young fellow. I'm going to bump you off one o' these days sure. Me, I don't like yore name nor the color of yore hair nor the map you wear for a face. I'm a killer. Me, Dan Meldrum. And I serve notice on you right now." With an effort he brought his mind back to the issue on hand. "But that ain't the point. When I ask a man to drink he drinks. See? You ain't deef, are you? Then drink, you rabbit!"

Beaudry, his heart beating like a triphammer, told himself that he was not going to drink that they could not make him--that he would die first. But before he knew it the flask was in his trembling fingers. Apparently, without the consent of his flaccid will, the muscles had responded to the impulse of obedience to the spur of fear. Even while his brain drummed the refrain, "I won't drink--I won't--I won't," the bottle was rising to his lips.

He turned a ghastly grin on his tormentors. It was meant to propitiate them, to save the last scrap of his self-respect by the assumption that they were all good fellows together. Feebly it suggested that after all a joke is a joke.

From the uptilted flask the whiskey poured into his mouth. He swallowed, and the fiery liquid scorched his throat. Before he could hand the liquor back to its owner, the ex-convict broke into a curse.

"Drink, you pink-ear. Don't play 'possum with me," he roared. Roy drank. Swallow after swallow of the stuff burned its way into his stomach. He stopped at last, sputtering and coughing.

"M--much obliged. I'll be going now," he stammered.

"Not quite yet, Mr. R. C. Street-Beaudry," demurred Charlton suavely. "Stay and play with us awhile, now you're here. No telling when we'll meet again." He climbed on the shoe-shining chair that stood in the entry. "I reckon I'll have my boots shined up. Go to it, Mr. Beaudry-Street."

With a whoop of malice the rest of them fell in with the suggestion. To make this young fellow black their boots in turn was the most humiliating thing they could think of at the moment. They pushed Roy toward the stand and put a brush into his hand. He stood still, hesitating.

"Git down on yore knees and hop to it," ordered Charlton. "Give him room, boys."

Again Beaudry swore to himself that he would not do it. He had an impulse to smash that sneering, cruel face, but it was physically impossible for him to lift a hand to strike. Though he was trembling violently, he had no intention of yielding. Yet the hinges of his knees bent automatically. He found himself reaching for the blacking just as if his will were paralyzed.

Perhaps it was the liquor rushing to his head when he stooped. Perhaps it was the madness of a terror-stricken rat driven into a corner. His fear broke bounds, leaped into action. Beaudry saw red. With both hands he caught Charlton's foot, twisted it savagely, and flung the man head over heels out of the chair. He snatched up the bootblack's stool by one leg and brought it crashing down on the head of Meldrum. The ex-convict went down as if he had been pole-axed.

There was no time to draw guns, no time to prepare a defense. His brain on fire from the liquor he had drunk and his overpowering terror, Beaudry was a berserk gone mad with the lust of battle. He ran amuck like a maniac, using the stool as a weapon to hammer down the heads of his foes. It crashed first upon one, now on another.

Charlton rushed him and was struck down beside Meldrum. Hart, flung back into the cigar-case, smashed the glass into a thousand splinters. Young Rutherford was sent spinning into the street.

His assailants gave way before Beaudry, at first slowly, then in a panic of haste to escape. He drove them to the sidewalk, flailing away at those within reach. Chet Fox hurdled in his flight a burro loaded with wood.

Then, suddenly as it had swept over Roy, the brain-storm passed. The mists cleared from his eyes. He looked down at the leg of the stool in his hand, which was all that remained of it. He looked up--and saw Beulah Rutherford in the street astride a horse.

She spoke to her brother, who had drawn a revolver from his pocket. "You don't need that now, Ned. He's through."

Her contemptuous voice stung Roy. "Why didn't they leave me alone, then?" he said sullenly in justification.

The girl did not answer him. She slipped from the horse and ran into the arcade with the light grace that came of perfect health and the freedom of the hills. The eyes of the young man followed this slim, long-limbed Diana as she knelt beside Charlton and lifted his bloody head into her arms. He noticed that her eyes burned and that her virginal bosom rose and fell in agitation.

None the less she gave first aid with a business-like economy of motion. "Bring water, Ned,--and a doctor," she snapped crisply, her handkerchief pressed against the wound.

To see what havoc he had wrought amazed Roy. The arcade looked as if a cyclone had swept through it. The cigar-stand was shattered beyond repair, its broken glass strewn everywhere. The chair of the bootblack had been splintered into kindling wood. Among the debris sat Meldrum groaning, both hands pressing a head that furiously ached. Brad Charlton was just beginning to wake up to his surroundings.

A crowd had miraculously gathered from nowhere. The fat marshal of Battle Butte was puffing up the street a block away. Beaudry judged it time to be gone. He dropped the leg of the stool and strode toward the hotel.

Already his fears were active again. What would the hillmen do to him when they had recovered from the panic into which his madness had thrown them? Would they start for him at once? Or would they mark one more score against him and wait? He could scarcely keep his feet from breaking into a run to get more quickly from the vicinity of the Silver Dollar. He longed mightily to reach the protection of Dave Dingwell's experience and debonair sang froid.

The cattleman had not yet reached the hotel. Roy went up to their room at once and locked himself in. He sat on the bed with a revolver in his hand. Now that it was all over, he was trembling like an aspen leaf. For the hundredth time in the past week he flung at himself his own contemptuous scorn. Why was the son of John Beaudry such an arrant coward? He knew that his sudden madness and its consequences had been born of panic. What was there about the quality of his nerves that differed from those of other men? Even now he was shivering from the dread that his enemies might come and break down the door to get at him.

He heard the jocund whistle of Dingwell as the cattleman came along the corridor. Swiftly he pocketed the revolver and unlocked the door. When Dave entered, Roy was lying on the bed pretending to read a newspaper.

If the older man noticed that the paper shook, he ignored it.

"What's this I hear, son, about you falling off the water-wagon and filling the hospital?" His gay grin challenged affectionately the boy on the bed. "Don't you know you're liable to give the new firm, Dingwell & Beaudry, a bad name if you pull off insurrections like that? The city dads are talking some of building a new wing to the accident ward to accommodate your victims. Taxes will go up and--"

Roy smiled wanly. "You've heard about it, then?"

"Heard about it! Say, son, I've heard nothing else for the last twenty minutes. You're the talk of the town. I didn't know you was such a bad actor." Dave stopped to break into a chuckle. "Wow! You certainly hit the high spots. Friend Meldrum and Charlton and our kind host Hart--all laid out at one clatter. I never was lucky. Here I wouldn't 'a' missed seeing you pull off this Samson encore for three cows on the hoof, and I get in too late for the show."

"They're not hurt badly, are they?" asked Beaudry, a little timidly.

Dave looked at him with a curious little smile. "You don't want to go back and do the job more thorough, do you? No need, son. Meldrum and Charlton are being patched up in the hospital and Hart is at Doc White's having the glass picked out of his geography. I've talked with some of the also rans, and they tell me unanimous that it was the most thorough clean-up they have participated in recently."

"What will they do--after they get over it?"

Dingwell grinned. "Search me! But I'll tell you what they won't do. They'll not invite you to take another drink right away. I'll bet a hat on that. . . . Come on, son. We got to hit the trail for home."

Chapter XVII

Roy Improves the Shining Hours

The tender spring burnt into crisp summer. Lean hill cattle that had roughed through the winter storms lost their shaggy look and began to fill out. For there had been early rains and the bunch grass was succulent this year.

Roy went about learning his new business with an energy that delighted his partner. He was eager to learn and was not too proud to ask questions. The range conditions, the breeding of cattle, and transportation problems were all studied by him. Within a month or two he had become a fair horseman and could rope a steer inexpertly.

Dingwell threw out a suggestion one day in his characteristic casual manner. The two men were riding a line fence and Roy had just missed a shot at a rabbit.

"Better learn to shoot, son. Take an hour off every day and practice. You hadn't ought to have missed that cottontail. What you want is to fire accurately, just as soon as yore gun jumps to the shoulder. I can teach you a wrinkle or two with a six-gun. Then every time you see a rattler, take a crack at it. Keep in form. You might need to bend a gun one of these days."

His partner understood what that last veiled allusion meant. The weeks had slipped away since the fracas in front of the Silver Dollar. The enemy had made no move. But cowpunchers returning to the ranch from town reported that both Meldrum and Charlton had sworn revenge. It was an even bet that either one of them would shoot on sight.

Beaudry took Dave's advice. Every day he rode out to a wash and carried with him a rifle and a revolver. He practiced for rapidity as well as accuracy. He learned how to fire from the hip, how to empty a revolver in less than two seconds, how to shoot lying down, and how to hit a mark either from above or below.

The young man never went to town alone. He stuck close to the ranch. The first weeks had been full of stark terror lest he might find one of his enemies waiting for him behind a clump of prickly pear or hidden in the mesquite of some lonely wash. He was past that stage, but his nerves were still jumpy. It was impossible for him to forget that at least three men were deadly enemies of his and would stamp out his life as they would that of a wolf. Each morning he wakened with a little shock of dread. At night he breathed relief for a few hours of safety.

Meanwhile Dave watched him with an indolent carelessness of manner that masked his sympathy. If it had been possible, he would have taken the burden on his own broad, competent shoulders. But this was not in Dingwell's code. He had been brought up in that outdoor school of the West where a man has to game out his own feuds. As the cattleman saw it, Roy had to go through now just as his father had done seventeen years before.

In town one day Dave met Pat Ryan and had a talk with him over dinner. A remark made by the little cowpuncher surprised his friend. Dingwell looked at him with narrowed, inquiring eyes.

The Irishman nodded. "Ye thought you were the only one that knew it? Well, I'm on, too, Dave."

"That's not what I hear everywhere else, Pat," answered the cattleman, still studying the other. "Go down the street and mention the same of Royal Beaudry--ask any one if he is game. What will you get for a reply?"

Without the least hesitation Ryan spoke out. "You'll hear that he's got more guts than any man in Washington County--that he doesn't know what fear is. Then likely you'll be told it's natural enough, since he's the son of Jack Beaudry, the fighting sheriff. Ever-rybody believes that excipt you and me, Dave. We know better."

"What do we know, Pat?"

"We know that the bye is up against a man-size job and is scared stiff."

"Hmp! Was he scared when he licked a dozen men at the Silver Dollar and laid out for repairs three of the best fighters in New Mexico?"

"You're shouting right he was, Dave. No man alive could 'a' done it if he hadn't been crazy with fright."

Dingwell laughed. "Hope I'm that way, then, when I get into my next tight place." He added after a moment: "The trouble with the boy is that he has too much imagination. He makes his own private little hell beforehand."

"I reckon he never learned to ride herd on his fears."

"Jack Beaudry told me about him onc't. The kid was born after his mother had been worrying herself sick about Jack. She never could tell when he'd be brought home dead. Well, Roy inherited fear. I've noticed that when a sidewinder rattles, he jumps. Same way, when any one comes up and surprises him. It's what you might call constitootional with him."

"Yep. That's how I've got it figured. But--" Pat hesitated and looked meditatively out of the window.

"All right. Onload yore mind. Gimme the run of the pen just as yore thoughts happen," suggested the cattleman.

"Well, I'm thinking--that he's been lucky, Dave. But soon as Tighe's tools guess what we know, something's going to happen to Beaudry. He's got them buffaloed now. But Charlton and Meldrum ain't going to quit. Can you tell me how your frind will stand the acid next time hell pops?"

Dave shook his head. "I cannot. That's just what is worrying me. There are men that have to be lashed on by ridicule to stand the gaff. But Roy is not like that. I reckon he's all the time flogging himself like the penitentes. He's sick with shame because he can't go out grinning to meet his troubles. . . . There ain't a thing I can do for him. He's got to play out his hand alone."

"Sure he has, and if the luck breaks right, I wouldn't put it past him to cash in a winner. He's gamer than most of us because he won't quit even when the divvle of terror is riding his back."

"Another point in his favor is that he learns easily. When he first came out to the Lazy Double D, he was afraid of horses. He has got over that. Give him another month and he'll be a pretty fair shot. Up till the time he struck this country, Roy had lived a soft city life. He's beginning to toughen. The things that scare a man are those that are mysteries to him. Any kid will fight his own brother because he knows all about him, but he's plumb shy about tackling a strange boy. Well, that's how it is with Roy. He has got the notion that Meldrum and Charlton are terrors, but now he has licked them onc't, he won't figure them out as so bad."

"He didn't exactly lick them in a stand-up fight, Dave."

"No, he just knocked them down and tromped on them and put them out of business," agreed Dingwell dryly.

The eyes of the little Irishman twinkled. "Brad Charlton is giving it out that it was an accident."

"That's what I'd call it, too, if I was Brad," assented the cattleman with a grin. "But if we could persuade Roy to put over about one more accident like that, I reckon Huerfano Park would let him alone."

"While Jess Tighe is living?"

Dingwell fell grave. "I'd forgotten Tighe. No, I expect the kid had better keep his weather eye peeled as long as that castor-oil smile of Jess is working."

Chapter XVIII

Rutherford Answers Questions

Beulah Rutherford took back with her to Huerfano Park an almost intolerable resentment against the conditions of her life. She had the family capacity for sullen silence, and for weeks a kind of despairing rage simmered in her heart. She was essentially of a very direct, simple nature, clear as Big Creek where it tumbled down from the top of the world toward the foothills. An elemental honesty stirred in her. It was necessary to her happiness that she keep her own self-respect and be able to approve those she loved.

Just now she could do neither. The atmosphere of the ranch seemed to stifle her. When she rode out into a brave, clean world of sunshine, the girl carried her shame along. Ever since she could remember, outlaws and miscreants had slipped furtively about the suburbs of her life. The Rutherfords themselves were a hard and savage breed. To their door had come more than one night rider flying for his life, and Beulah had accepted the family tradition of hospitality to those at odds with society.

A fierce, untamed girl of primitive instincts, she was the heritor of the family temperament. But like threads of gold there ran through the warp of her being a fineness that was her salvation. She hated passionately cruelty and falsehood and deceit. All her life she had walked near pitch and had never been defiled.

Hal Rutherford was too close to her not to feel the estrangement of her spirit. He watched her anxiously, and at last one morning he spoke. She was standing on the porch waiting for Jeff to bring Blacky when Rutherford came out and put his arm around her shoulder.

"What is it, honey?" he asked timidly.

"It's--everything," she answered, her gaze still on the distant hills.

"You haven't quarreled with Brad?"

"No--and I'm not likely to if he'll let me alone."

Her father did not press the point. If Brad and she had fallen out, the young man would have to make his own amende.

"None of the boys been deviling you?"

"No."

"Aren't you going to tell dad about it, Boots?"

Presently her dark eyes swept round to his.

"Why did you say that you didn't know anything about the Western Express robbery?"

He looked steadily at her. "I didn't say that, Beulah. What I said was that I didn't know where the stolen gold was hidden--and I didn't."

"That was just an evasion. You meant me to think that we had had nothing to do with the--the robbery."

"That's right. I did."

"And all the time--" She broke off, a sob choking her throat.

"I knew who did it. That's correct. But I wasn't a party to the robbery. I knew nothing about it till afterward."

"I've always believed everything you've told me, dad. And now--"

He felt doubt in her shaken voice. She did not know what to think now. Rutherford set himself to clear away her suspicions. He chose to do it by telling the exact truth.

"Now you may still believe me, honey. The robbery was planned by Tighe. I'll not mention the names of those in it. The day after it was pulled off, I heard of it for the first time. Dave Dingwell knew too much. To protect my friends I had to bring him up here. Legally I'm guilty of abduction and of the train robbery, too, because I butted in after the hold-up and protected the guilty ones. I even tried to save for them the gold they had taken."

"Were--any of the boys in it, dad?" she quavered.

"One of them. I won't tell you which."

"And Brad?"

"We're not giving names, Boots."

"Oh, well! I know he was one of them." She slipped her arm within her father's and gave his hand a little pressure. "I'm glad you told me, just the same, dad. I'd been thinking--worse things about you."

"That's all right, honey. Now you won't worry any more, will you?"

"I don't know. . . . That's not all that troubles me. I feel bad when the boys drink and brawl. That attack on Mr. Beaudry at Battle Butte was disgraceful," she flamed. "I don't care if he did come up here spying. Why can't they let him alone?"

He passed a hand in a troubled fashion through his grizzled hair. "You can bet our boys won't touch him again, Boots. I've laid the law down. But I can't answer for Tighe. He'll do him a meanness if he can, and he'll do it quicker since I've broken off with him because you helped Dingwell and Beaudry to escape. I don't know about Brad."

"I told Brad if he touched him again, I would never speak to him."

"Maybe that will hold him hitched, then. Anyhow, I'm not going to make the young fellow trouble. I'd rather let sleeping dogs lie."

Beulah pressed her arm against his. "I haven't been fair to you, dad. I might have known you would do right."

"I aim to stay friends with my little girl no matter what happens. Yore mother gave you into my hands when she was dying and I promised to be mother and father to you. Yore own father was my brother Anse. He died before you were born. I've been the only dad you ever had, and I reckon you know you've been more to me than any of my own boys."

"You shouldn't say that," she corrected quickly. "I'm a girl, and, of course, you spoil me more. That's all."

She gave him a ferocious little hug and went quickly into the house. Happiness had swept through her veins like the exquisite flush of dawn. Her lustrous eyes were wells of glad tears.

The owner of the horse ranch stood on the porch and watched a rider coming out of the gulch toward him. The man descended heavily from his horse and moved down the path. Rutherford eyed him grimly.

"Well, I'm back," the dismounted horseman said surlily.

"I see you are."

"Got out of the hospital Thursday."

"Hope you've made up yore mind to behave, Dan."

"It doesn't hurt a man to take a drink onc't in a while."

"Depends on the man. It put you in the hospital."

Meldrum ripped out a sudden oath. "Wait. Just wait till I get that pink-ear. I'll drill him full of holes right."

"By God, you'll not!" Rutherford's voice was like the snap of a whip. "Try it. Try it. I'll hunt you down like a wolf and riddle yore carcass."

In amazement the ex-convict stared at him. "What's ailin' you, Rutherford?"

"I'm through with you and Tighe. You'll stop making trouble or you'll get out of here. I'm going to clean up the park--going to make it a place where decent folks can live. You've got yore warning now, Dan. Walk a straight chalk-line or hit the trail."

"You can't talk that way to me, Rutherford. I know too much," threatened Meldrum, baring his teeth.

"Don't think it for a minute, Dan. Who is going to take yore word against mine? I've got the goods on you. I can put you through for rustling any time I have a mind to move. And if you don't let young Beaudry alone, I'll do it."

"Am I the only man that ever rustled? Ain't there others in the park? I reckon you've done some night-riding yore own self."

"Some," drawled Rutherford, with a grim little smile. "By and large, I've raised a considerable crop of hell. But I'm reforming in my old age. New Mexico has had a change of heart. Guns are going out, Meldrum, and little red schoolhouses are coming in. We've got to keep up with the fashions."

"Hmp! Schoolhouses! I know what's ailin' you. Since Anse Rutherford's girl--"

"You're off the reservation, Dan," warned the rancher, and again his low voice had the sting of cactus thorns in it.

Meldrum dropped that subject promptly. "Is Buck going to join this Sunday-School of yours?" he jeered. "And all the boys?"

"That's the programme. Won't you come in, too?"

"And Jess Tighe. He'll likely be one of the teachers."

"You'd better ask him. He hasn't notified me."

"Hell! You and yore kin have given the name to deviltry in this country. Mothers scare their kids by telling them the Rutherfords will git them."

"Fact. But that's played out. My boys are grown up and are at the turn of the trail. It hit me plumb in the face when you fools pulled off that express robbery. It's a piece of big luck you're not all headed for the penitentiary. I know when I've had enough. So now I quit."

"All right. Quit. But we haven't all got to go to the mourner's bench with you, have we? You can travel yore trail and we can go ours, can't we?"

"Not when we're on the same range, Dan. What I say goes." The eyes of Rutherford bored into the cruel little shifty ones of the bad man. "Take yore choice, Dan. It's quit yore deviltry or leave this part of the country."

"Who elected you czar of Huerfano Park?" demanded Meldrum, furious with anger.

He glared at the ranchman impotently, turned away with a mumbled oath, and went back with jingling spurs to his horse.

Chapter XIX

Beaudry Blows a Smoke Wreath

Royal Beaudry carried about with him in his work on the Lazy Double D persistent memories of the sloe-eyed gypsy who had recently played so large a part in his life. Men of imagination fall in love, not with a woman, but with the mystery they make of her. The young cattleman was not yet a lover, but a rumor of the future began to murmur in his ears. Beulah Rutherford was on the surface very simple and direct, but his thoughts were occupied with the soul of her. What was the girl like whose actions functioned in courage and independence and harsh hostility?

Life had imposed on her a hard finish. But it was impossible for Roy to believe that this slender, tawny child of the wind and the sun could at heart be bitter and suspicious. He had seen the sweet look of her dark-lashed eyes turned in troubled appeal upon her father. There had been one hour when he had looked into her face and found it radiant, all light and response and ecstasy. The emotion that had pulsed through her then had given the lie to the sullen silence upon which she fell back as a defense. If the gods were good to her some day, the red flower of passion would bloom on her cheeks and the mists that dulled her spirit would melt in the warm sunshine of love.

So the dreamer wove the web of his fancy about her, and the mystery that was Beulah Rutherford lay near his thoughts when he walked or rode or ate or talked.

Nor did it lessen his interest in her that he felt she despised him. The flash of her scornful eyes still stung him. He was beyond caring whether she thought him a spy. He knew that the facts justified him in his attempt to save Dingwell. But he writhed that she should believe him a coward. It came too close home. And since the affray in the arcade, no doubt she set him down, too, as a drunken rowdy.

He made the usual vain valorous resolutions of youth to show her his heroic quality. These served at least one good purpose. If he could not control his fears, he could govern his actions. Roy forced himself by sheer will power to ride alone into Battle Butte once a week. Without hurry he went about his business up and down Mission Street.

The town watched him and commented. "Got sand in his craw, young Beaudry has," was the common verdict. Men wondered what would happen when he met Charlton and Meldrum. Most of them would have backed John Beaudry's son both in their hopes and in their opinion of the result.

Into saloons and gambling-houses word was carried, and from there to the hillmen of the park by industrious peddlers of trouble, that the young cattleman from the Lazy Double D could be found by his enemies heeled for business whenever they wanted him.

Charlton kept morosely to the park. If he had had nothing to consider except his own inclination, he would have slapped the saddle upon a cowpony and ridden in to Battle Butte at once. But Beulah had laid an interdict upon him. For a year he had been trying to persuade her to marry him, and he knew that he must say good-bye to his hopes if he fought with his enemy.

It was fear that kept Meldrum at home. He had been a killer, but the men he had killed had been taken at advantage. It was one thing to shoot this Beaudry cub down from ambush. It was another to meet him in the open. Moreover, he knew the Rutherfords. The owner of the horse ranch had laid the law down to him. No chance shot from the chaparral was to cut down Dingwell's partner.

The ex-convict listened to the whispers of Tighe. He brooded over them, but he did not act on them. His alcohol-dulled brain told him that he had reached the limit of public sufferance. One more killing by him, and he would pay the penalty at the hands of the law. When he took his revenge, it must be done so secretly that no evidence could connect him with the crime. He must, too, have an alibi acceptable to Hal Rutherford.

Meldrum carried with him to Battle Butte, on his first trip after the arcade affair, a fixed determination to avoid Beaudry. In case he met him, he would pass without speaking.

But all of Meldrum's resolutions were apt to become modified by subsequent inhibitions. In company with one or two cronies he made a tour of the saloons of the town. At each of them he said, "Have another," and followed his own advice to show good faith.

On one of these voyages from port to port the bad man from Chicito Cañon sighted a tall, lean-flanked, long-legged brown man. He was crossing the street so that the party came face to face with him at the apex of a right angle. The tanned stranger in corduroys, hickory shirt, and pinched-in hat of the range rider was Royal Beaudry. It was with a start of surprise that Meldrum recognized him. His enemy was no longer a "pink-ear." There was that in his stride, his garb, and the steady look of his eye which told of a growing confidence and competence. He looked like a horseman of the plains, fit for any emergency that might confront him.

Taken at advantage by the suddenness of the meeting, Meldrum gave ground with a muttered oath. The young cattleman nodded to the trio and kept on his way. None of the others knew that his heart was hammering a tattoo against his ribs or that queer little chills chased each other down his spine.

Chet Fox ventured a sly dig at the ex-convict. "Looks a right healthy sick man, Dan."

"Who said he was sick?" growled Meldrum.

"Didn't you-all say he was good as dead?"

"A man can change his mind, Chet, can't he?" jeered Hart.

The blotched face of the bad man grew purple. "That'll be about enough from both of you. But I'll say this: when I get ready to settle with Mr. Beaudry you can order his coffin."

Nevertheless, Meldrum had the humiliating sense that he had failed to live up to his reputation as a killer. He had promised Battle Butte to give it something to talk about, but he had not meant to let the whisper pass that he was a four-flusher. His natural recourse was to further libations. These made for a sullen, ingrowing rage as the day grew older.

More than one well-meaning citizen carried to Roy the superfluous warning that Meldrum was in town and drinking hard. The young man thanked them quietly without comment. His reticence gave the impression of strength.

But Beaudry felt far from easy in mind. A good deal of water had flowed under the Big Creek bridge since the time when he had looked under the bed at nights for burglars. He had schooled himself not to yield to the impulses of his rabbit heart, but the unexpected clatter of hoofs still set his pulses a-flutter. Why had fate snatched so gentle a youth from his law desk and flung him into such turbid waters to sink or swim? All he had asked was peace--friends, books, a quiet life. By some ironic quirk be found himself in scenes of battle and turmoil. As the son of John Beaudry he was expected to show an unflawed nerve, whereas his eager desire was to run away and hide.

He resisted the first panicky incitement to fly back to the Lazy Double D, and went doggedly about the business that had brought him to Battle Butte. Roy had come to meet a cattle-buyer from Denver and the man had wired that he would be in on the next train. Meanwhile Beaudry had to see the blacksmith, the feed-store manager, the station agent, and several others.

This kept him so busy that he reached the Station only just in time to meet the incoming train. He introduced himself to the buyer, captured his suitcase, and turned to lead the way to the rig.

Meldrum lurched forward to intercept him. "Shus' a moment."

Roy went white. He knew the crisis was upon him. The right hand of the hillman was hidden under the breast of his coat. Even the cattle-buyer from Denver knew what was in that hand and edged toward the train. For this ruffian was plainly working himself into a rage sufficient to launch murder.

"Yore father railroaded me to the penitentiary--cooked up testimony against me. You bust me with a club when I wasn't looking. Here's where I git even. See?"

The imminence of tragedy had swept the space about them empty of people. Roy knew with a sinking heart that it was between him and the hillman to settle this alone. He had been caught with the suitcase in his right hand, so that he was practically trapped unarmed. Before he could draw his revolver, Meldrum would be pumping lead.

Two months ago under similar circumstances terror had paralyzed Roy's thinking power. Now his brain functioned in spite of his fear. He was shaken to the center of his being, but he was not in panic. Immediately he set himself to play the poor cards he found in his hand.

"Liar!" Beaudry heard a chill voice say and knew it was his own. "Liar on both counts! My father sent you up because you were a thief. I beat your head off because you are a bully. Listen!" Roy shot the last word out in crescendo to forestall the result of a convulsive movement of the hand beneath his enemy's coat. "_Listen, if you want to live the day out_, you yellow coyote!"

Beaudry had scored his first point--to gain time for his argument to get home to the sodden brain. Dave Dingwell had told him that most men were afraid of something, though some hid it better than others; and he had added that Dan Meldrum had the murderer's dread lest vengeance overtake him unexpectedly. Roy knew now that his partner had spoken the true word. At that last stinging sentence, alarm had jumped to the blear eyes of the former convict.

"Whadjamean?" demanded Meldrum thickly, the menace of horrible things in his voice.

"Mean? Why, this. You came here to kill me, but you haven't the nerve to do it. You've reached the end of your rope, Dan Meldrum. You're a killer, but you'll never kill again. Murder me, and the law would hang you high as Haman--if it ever got a chance."

The provisional clause came out with a little pause between each word to stress the meaning. The drunken man caught at it to spur his rage.

"Hmp! Mean you're man enough to beat the law to it?"

Beaudry managed to get out a derisive laugh. "Oh, no! Not when I have a suitcase in my right hand and you have the drop on me. I can't help myself--and twenty men see it."

"Think they'll help you?" Meldrum swept his hand toward the frightened loungers and railroad officials. His revolver was out in the open now. He let its barrel waver in a semi-circle of defiance.

"No. They won't help me, but they'll hang you. There's no hole where you can hide that they won't find you. Before night you'll be swinging underneath the big live-oak on the plaza. That's a prophecy for you to swallow, you four-flushing bully."

It went home like an arrow. The furtive eyes of the killer slid sideways to question this public which had scattered so promptly to save itself. Would the mob turn on him later and destroy him?

Young Beaudry's voice flowed on. "Even if you reached the hills, you would be doomed. Tighe can't save you--and he wouldn't try. Rutherford would wash his hands of you. They'll drag you back from your hole."

The prediction rang a bell in Meldrum's craven soul. Again he sought reassurance from those about him and found none. In their place he knew that he would revenge himself for present humiliation by cruelty later. He was checkmated.

It was an odd psychological effect of Beaudry's hollow defiance that confidence flowed in upon him as that of Meldrum ebbed. The chill drench of fear had lifted from his heart. It came to him that his enemy lacked the courage to kill. Safety lay in acting upon this assumption.

He raised his left hand and brushed the barrel of the revolver aside contemptuously, then turned and walked along the platform to the building. At the door he stopped, to lean faintly against the jamb, still without turning. Meldrum might shoot at any moment. It depended on how drunk he was, how clearly he could vision the future, how greatly his prophecy had impressed him. Cold chills ran up and down the spinal column of the young cattleman. His senses were reeling.

To cover his weakness Roy drew tobacco from his coat-pocket and rolled a cigarette with trembling fingers. He flashed a match. A moment later an insolent smoke wreath rose into the air and floated back toward Meldrum. Roy passed through the waiting-room to the street beyond.

Young Beaudry knew that the cigarette episode had been the weak bluff of one whose strength had suddenly deserted him. He had snatched at it to cover his weakness. But to the score or more who saw that spiral of smoke dissolving jauntily into air, no such thought was possible. The filmy wreath represented the acme of dare-devil recklessness, the final proof of gameness in John Beaudry's son. He had turned his back on a drunken killer crazy for revenge and mocked the fellow at the risk of his life.

Presently Roy and the cattle-buyer were bowling down the street behind Dingwell's fast young four-year-olds. The Denver man did not know that his host was as weak from the reaction of the strain as a child stricken with fear.

Chapter XX

At the Lazy Double D

Dingwell squinted over the bunch of cattle in the corral. "Twenty dollars on the hoof, f.o.b. at the siding," he said evenly. "You to take the run of the pen, no culls."

"I heard you before," protested the buyer. "Learn a new song, Dingwell. I don't like the tune of that one. Make it eighteen and let me cull the bunch."

Dave garnered a straw clinging to the fence and chewed it meditatively. "Couldn't do it without hurting my conscience. Nineteen--no culls. That's my last word."

"I'd sure hate to injure your conscience, Dingwell," grinned the man from Denver. "Think I'll wait till you go to town and do business with your partner."

"Think he's easy, do you?"

"Easy!" The cattle-buyer turned the conversation to the subject uppermost in his mind. He had already decided to take the cattle and the formal agreement could wait. "Easy! Say, do you know what I saw that young man put over to-day at the depot?"

"I'll know when you've told me," suggested Dingwell.

The Denver man told his story and added editorial comment. "Gamest thing I ever saw in my life, by Jiminy--stood there with his back to the man-killer and lit a cigarette while the ruffian had his finger on the trigger of a six-gun ready to whang away at him. Can you beat that?"

The eyes of the cattleman gleamed, but his drawling voice was still casual. "Why didn't Meldrum shoot?"

"Triumph of mind over matter, I reckon. He wanted to shoot--was crazy to kill your friend. But--he didn't. Beaudry had talked him out of it."

"How?"

"Bullied him out of it--jeered at him and threatened him and man-called him, with that big gun shining in his eyes every minute of the time."

Dingwell nodded slowly. He wanted to get the full flavor of this joyous episode that had occurred. "And the kid lit his cigarette while Meldrum, crazy as a hydrophobia skunk, had his gun trained on him?"

"That's right. Stood there with a kind o' you-be-damned placard stuck all over him, then got out the makings and lit up. He tilted back that handsome head of his and blew a smoke wreath into the air. Looked like he'd plumb wiped Mr. Meldrum off his map. He's a world-beater, that young fellow is--doesn't know what fear is," concluded the buyer sagely.

"You don't say!" murmured Mr. Dingwell.

"Sure as you're a foot high. While I was trying to climb up the side of a railroad car to get out of range, that young guy was figuring it all out. He was explaining thorough to the bad man what would happen if he curled his fore-finger another quarter of an inch. Just as cool and easy, you understand."

"You mean that he figured out his chances?"

"You bet you! He figured it all out, played a long shot, and won. The point is that it wouldn't help him any if this fellow Meldrum starred in a subsequent lynching. The man had been drinking like a blue blotter. Had he sense enough left to know his danger? Was his brain steady enough to hold him in check? Nobody could tell that. But your partner gambled on it and won."

This was meat and drink to Dave. He artfully pretended to make light of the whole affair in order to stir up the buyer to more details.

"I reckon maybe Meldrum was just bluffing. Maybe--"

"Bluffing!" The Coloradoan swelled. "Bluffing! I tell you there was murder in the fellow's eye. He had come there primed for a killing. If Beaudry had weakened by a hair's breadth, that forty-four would have pumped lead into his brain. Ask the train crew. Ask the station agent. Ask any one who was there."

"Maybeso," assented Dave dubiously. "But if he was so game, why didn't Beaudry go back and take Meldrum's gun from him?"

The buyer was on the spot with an eager, triumphant answer. "That just proves what I claim. He just brushed the fellow's gun aside and acted like he'd forgot the killer had a gun. 'Course, he could 'a' gone back and taken the gun. After what he'd already pulled off, that would have been like stealing apples from a blind Dutchman. But Beaudry wasn't going to give him that much consideration. Don't you see? Meldrum, or whatever his name is, was welcome to keep the revolver to play with. Your friend didn't care how many guns he was toting."

"I see. It he had taken the gun, Meldrum might have thought he was afraid of him."

"Now you're shouting. As it is the bad man is backed clear off the earth. It's like as if your partner said, 'Garnish yourself with forty-fours if you like, but don't get gay around me.'"

"So you think--"

"I think he's some bear-cat, that young fellow. When you 're looking for something easy to mix with, go pick a grizzly or a wild cat, but don't you monkey with friend Beaudry. He's liable to interfere with your interior geography. . . . Say, Dingwell. Do I get to cull this bunch of longhorn skeletons you're misnaming cattle?"

"You do not."

The Denver man burlesqued a sigh. "Oh, well! I'll go broke dealing with you unsophisticated Shylocks of the range. The sooner the quicker. Send 'em down to the siding. I'll take the bunch."

Roy rode up on a pinto.

"Help! Help!" pleaded the Coloradoan of the young man.

"He means that I've unloaded this corral full of Texas dinosaurs on him at nineteen a throw." explained Dave.

"You've made a good bargain," Beaudry told the buyer.

"'Course he has, and he knows it." Dingwell opened on Roy his gay smile. "I hear you've had a run-in with the bad man of Chicito Cañon, son."

Roy looked at the Denver man reproachfully. Ever since the affair on the station platform he had been flogging himself because he had driven away and left Meldrum in possession of the field. No doubt all Battle Butte knew now how frightened he had been. The women were gossiping about it over their tea, probably, and men were retailing the story in saloons and on sidewalks.

"I didn't want any trouble," he said apologetically. "I--I just left him."

"That's what I've been hearing," assented Dave dryly. "You merely showed him up for a false alarm and kicked him into the discard. That's good, and it's bad. We know now that Meldrum won't fight you in the open. You've got him buffaloed. But he'll shoot you in the back if he can do it safely. I know the cur. After this don't ride alone, Roy, and don't ride that painted hoss at all. Get you a nice quiet buckskin that melts into the atmosphere like a patch of bunch grass. Them's my few well-chosen words of advice, as Mañana Bill used to say."

Three days later Beaudry, who had been superintending the extension of an irrigation ditch, rode up to the porch of the Lazy Double D ranch house and found Hal Rutherford, senior, with his chair tilted back against the wall. The smoke of his pipe mingled fraternally with that of Dingwell's cigar. He nodded genially to Roy without offering to shake hands.

"Mr. Rutherford dropped in to give us the latest about Meldrum," explained Dave. "Seems he had warned our friend the crook to lay off you, son. When Dan showed up again at the park, he bumped into Miss Beulah and said some pleasant things to her. He hadn't noticed that Jeff was just round the corner of the schoolhouse fixing up some dingus as a platform for the last day's speaking. Jeff always was hot-headed. Before he had got through with Mr. Meldrum, he had mussed his hair up considerable. Dan tried to gun him and got an awful walloping. He hit the trail to Jess Tighe's place. When Mr. Rutherford heard of it, he was annoyed. First off, because of what had happened at the depot. Second, and a heap more important, because the jailbird had threatened Miss Beulah. So he straddled a horse and called on Dan, who shook the dust of Huerfano Park from his bronco's hoofs poco tiempo."

"Where has he gone?" asked Roy.

"Nobody knows, and he won't tell. But, knowing Meldrum as we do, Rutherford and I have come to a coincidentical opinion, as you might say. He's a bad actor, that bird. We figure that he's waiting in the chaparral somewhere to pull off a revenge play, after which he means pronto to slide his freight across the line to the land of old Porf. Diaz."

"Revenge--on Jeff Rutherford--or who?"

"Son, that's a question. But Jeff won't be easily reached. On the whole, we think you're elected."

Roy's heart sank. If Meldrum had been kicked out of Huerfano Park, there was no room for him in New Mexico. Probably the fear of the Rutherfords had been a restraint upon him up to this time. But now that he had broken with them and was leaving the country, the man was free to follow the advice of Tighe. He was a bully whose prestige was tottering. It was almost sure that he would attempt some savage act of reprisal before he left. Beaudry had no doubt that he would be the victim of it.

"What am I to do, then?" he wanted to know, his voice quavering.

"Stay right here at the ranch. Don't travel from the house till we check up on Meldrum. Soon as he shows his hand, we'll jump him and run him out of the country. All you've got to do is to sit tight till we locate him."

"I'll not leave the house," Roy vowed fervently.

Chapter XXI

Roy Rides his Paint Hoss

But he did.

For next day Pat Ryan rode up to the Lazy Double D with a piece of news that took Roy straight to his pinto. Beulah Rutherford had disappeared. She had been out riding and Blacky had come home with an empty saddle. So far as was known, Brad Charlton had seen her last. He had met her just above the Laguna Sinks, had talked with her, and had left the young woman headed toward the mountains.

The word had reached Battle Butte through Slim Sanders, who had been sent down from Huerfano Park for help. The Rutherfords and their friends were already combing the hills for the lost girl, but the owner of the horse ranch wanted Sheriff Sweeney to send out posses as a border patrol. Opinion was divided. Some thought Beulah might have met a grizzly, been unhorsed, and fallen a victim to it. There was the possibility that she might have stumbled while climbing and hurt herself. According to Sanders, her father held to another view. He was convinced that Meldrum was at the bottom of the thing.

This was Roy's instant thought, too. He could not escape the sinister suggestion that through the girl the ruffian had punished them all. While he gave sharp, short orders to get together the riders of the ranch, his mind was busy with the situation. Had he better join Sweeney's posse and patrol the desert? Or would he help more by pushing straight into the hills?

Dingwell rode up and looked around in surprise. "What's the stir, son?"

His partner told him what he had heard and what he suspected.

Before he answered, Dave chewed a meditative cud. "Maybeso you're right--and maybe 'way off. Say you're wrong. Say Meldrum has nothing to do with this. In that case it is in the hills that we have got to find Miss Beulah."

"But he has. I feel sure he has. Mr. Ryan says Rutherford thinks so, too."

"Both you and Hal have got that crook Meldrum in yore minds. You've been thinking a lot about him, so you jump to the conclusion that what you're afraid of has happened. The chances are ten to one against it. But we'll say you're right. Put yourself in Meldrum's place. What would he do?"

Beaudry turned a gray, agonized face on his friend. "I don't know. What--what would he do?"

"The way to get at it is to figure yourself in his boots. Remember that you're a bad, rotten lot, cur to the bone. You meet up with this girl and get her in yore power. You've got a grudge against her because she spoiled yore plans, and because through her you were handed the whaling of yore life and are being hounded out of the country. You're sore clear through at all her people and at all her friends. Naturally, you're as sweet-tempered as a sore-headed bear, and you've probably been drinking like a sheepherder on a spree."

"I know what a devil he is. The question is how far would he dare go?"

"You've put yore finger right on the point, son. What might restrain him wouldn't be any moral sense, but fear. He knows that once he touched Miss Rutherford, this country would treat him like a rattlesnake. He could not even be sure that the Rutherfords would not hunt him down in Mexico."

"You think he would let her alone, then?"

The old-timer shook his head. "No, he wouldn't do that. But I reckon he'd try to postpone a decision as long as he could. Unless he destroyed her in the first rush of rage, he wouldn't have the nerve to do it until he had made himself crazy drunk. It all depends on circumstances, but my judgment is--if he had a chance and if he didn't think it too great a risk--that he would try to hold her a prisoner as a sort of hostage to gloat over."

"You mean keep her--unharmed?"

They were already in the saddle and on the road. Dave looked across at his white-faced friend.

"I'm only guessing, Roy, but that's the way I figure it," he said gently.

"You don't think he would try to take her across the desert with him to Mexico."

Ryan shook his head.

"No chance. He couldn't make it. When he leaves the hills, Miss Rutherford will stay there."

"Alive?" asked Beaudry from a dry throat.

"Don't know."

"God!"

"So that whether Miss Beulah did or did not meet Meldrum, we have to look for her up among the mountains of the Big Creek watershed," concluded Dingwell. "I believe we'll find her safe and sound. Chances are Meldrum isn't within forty miles of her."

They were riding toward Lonesome Park, from which they intended to work up into the hills. Just before reaching the rim of the park, they circled around a young pine lying across the trail. Roy remembered the tree. It had stood on a little knoll, strong and graceful, reaching straight toward heaven with a kind of gallant uprightness. Now its trunk was snapped, its boughs crushed, its foliage turning sere. An envious wind had brought it low. Somehow that pine reminded Beaudry poignantly of the girl they were seeking. She, too, had always stood aloof, a fine and vital personality, before the eyes of men sufficient to herself. But as the evergreen had stretched its hundred arms toward light and sunshine, so Beulah Rutherford had cried dumbly to life for some vague good she could not formulate.

Were her pride and courage abased, too? Roy would not let himself believe it. The way of youth is to deny the truth of all signposts which point to the futility of beauty and strength. It would be a kind of apostasy to admit that her sweet, lissom grace might be forever crushed and bruised.

They rode hard and steadily. Before dusk they were well up toward the divide among the wooded pockets of the hills. From one of these a man came to meet them.

"It's Hal Rutherford," announced Ryan, who was riding in front with Dingwell.

The owner of the horse ranch nodded a greeting as he drew up in front of them. He was unshaven and gaunt. Furrows of anxiety lined his face.

"Anything new, Hal?" asked Dave.

"Not a thing. We're combing the hills thorough."

"You don't reckon that maybe a cougar--?" Ryan stopped. It occurred to him that his suggestion was not a very cheerful one.

Rutherford looked at the little Irishman from bleak eyes. The misery in them was for the moment submerged in a swift tide of hate. "A two-legged cougar, Pat. If I meet up with him, I'll take his hide off inch by inch."

"Meaning Meldrum?" asked Roy.

"Meaning Meldrum." A spasm of pain shot across the face of the man. "If he's done my little girl any meanness, he'd better blow his head off before I get to him."

"Don't believe he'd dare hurt Miss Beulah, Rutherford. Meldrum belongs to the coyote branch of the wolf family. I've noticed it's his night to howl only when hunters are liable to be abed. If he's in this thing at all, I'll bet he's trying to play both ends against the middle. We'll sure give him a run for his white alley," Dingwell concluded.

"Hope you're right, Dave," Rutherford added in a voice rough with the feeling he could not suppress: "I appreciate it that you boys from the Lazy Double D came after what has taken place."

Dave grinned cheerfully. "Sho, Hal! Maybe Beaudry and I aren't sending any loving-cups up to you and yours, but we don't pull any of that sulk-in-the-tent stuff when our good friend Beulah Rutherford is lost in the hills. She went through for us proper, and we ain't going to quit till we bring her back to you as peart and sassy as that calf there."

"What part of the country do you want us to work?" asked Ryan.

"You can take Del Oro and Lame Cow Creeks from the divide down to the foothills," Rutherford answered. "I'll send one of the boys over to boss the round-up. He'll know the ground better than you lads. Make camp here to-night and he'll join you before you start. To-morrow evening I'll have a messenger meet you on the flats. We're trying to keep in touch with each other, you understand."

Rutherford left them making camp. They were so far up in the mountains that the night was cool, even though the season was midsummer. Unused to sleeping outdoors as yet, Roy lay awake far into the night. His nerves were jumpy. The noises of the grazing horses and of the four-footed inhabitants of the night startled him more than once from a cat-nap. His thoughts were full of Beulah Rutherford. Was she alive or dead to-night, in peril or in safety?

At last, in the fag end of the night, he fell into sound sleep that was untroubled. From this he was wakened in the first dim dawn by the sound of his companions stirring. A fire was already blazing and breakfast in process of making. He rose and stretched his stiff limbs. Every bone seemed to ache from contact with the hard ground.

While they were eating breakfast, a man rode up and dismounted. A long, fresh zigzag scar stretched across his forehead. It was as plain to be seen as the scowl which drew his heavy eyebrows together.

"'Lo, Charlton. Come to boss this round-up for us?" asked Dingwell cheerily.

The young man nodded sulkily. "Hal sent me. The boys weren't with him." He looked across the fire at Beaudry, and there was smouldering rage in his narrowed eyes.

Roy murmured "Good-morning" in a rather stifled voice. This was the first time he had met Charlton since they had clashed in the arcade of the Silver Dollar. That long deep scar fascinated him. He felt an impulse to apologize humbly for having hit him so hard. To put such a mark on a man for life was a liberty that might well be taken as a personal affront. No wonder Charlton hated him--and as their eyes met now, Roy had no doubt about that. The man was his enemy. Some day he would even the score. Again Beaudry's heart felt the familiar drench of an icy wave.

Charlton did not answer his greeting. He flushed to his throat, turned abruptly on his heel, and began to talk with Ryan. The hillman wanted it clearly understood that the feud he cherished was only temporarily abandoned. But even Roy noticed that the young Admirable Crichton had lost some of his debonair aplomb.

The little Irishman explained this with a grin to Dave as they were riding together half an hour later. "It's not so easy to get away with that slow insolence of his while he's wearing that forgit-me-not young Beaudry handed him in the mix-up."

"Sort of spoils the toutensemble, as that young Melrose tenderfoot used to say--kinder as if a bald-haided guy was playing Romeo and had lost his wig in the shuffle," agreed Dave.

By the middle of the forenoon they were well up in the headwaters of the two creeks they were to work. Charlton divided the party so as to cover both watersheds as they swept slowly down. Roy was on the extreme right of those working Del Oro.

It was a rough country, with wooded draws cached in unexpected pockets of the hills. Here a man might lie safely on one of a hundred ledges while the pursuit drove past within fifty feet of him. As Roy's pinto clambered up and down the steep hills, he recalled the advice of Dave to ride a buckskin "that melts into the atmosphere like a patch of bunch grass." He wished he had taken that advice. A man looking for revenge could crouch in the chaparral and with a crook of his finger send winged death at his enemy. A twig crackling under the hoof of his horse more than once sent an electric shock through his pulses. The crash of a bear through the brush seemed to stop the beating of his heart.

Charlton had made a mistake in putting Beaudry on the extreme right of the drive. The number of men combing the two creeks was not enough to permit close contact. Sometimes a rider was within hail of his neighbor. More often he was not. Roy, unused to following the rodeo, was deflected by the topography of the ridge so far to the right that he lost touch with the rest.

By the middle of the afternoon he had to confess to himself with chagrin that he did not even know how to reach Del Oro. While he had been riding the rough wooded ridge above, the creek had probably made a sharp turn to the left. Must he go back the way he had come? Or could he cut across country to it? It was humiliating that he could not even follow a small river without losing the stream and himself. He could vision the cold sneer of Charlton when he failed to appear at the night rendezvous. Even his friends would be annoyed at such helplessness.

After an hour's vain search he was more deeply tangled in the web of hills. He was no longer even sure how to get down from them into the lower reaches of country toward which he was aiming.

While he hesitated on a ridge there came to him a faint, far cry. He gave a shout of relief, then listened for his answer. It did not come. He called again, a third time, and a fourth. The wind brought back no reply. Roy rode in the direction of the sound that had first registered itself on his ears, stopping every minute or two to shout. Once he fancied he heard again the voice.

Then, unexpectedly, the cry came perfectly clear, over to the right scarcely a hundred yards. A little arroyo of quaking aspens lay between him and the one who called. He dismounted, tied his horse to a sapling, and pushed through the growth of young trees. Emerging from these, he climbed the brow of the hill and looked around. Nobody was in sight.

"Where are you?" he shouted.

"Here--in the prospect hole."

His pulses crashed. That voice--he would have known it out of a million.

A small dirt dump on the hillside caught his eye. He ran forward to the edge of a pit and looked down.

The haggard eyes of Beulah Rutherford were lifted to meet his.

Chapter XXII

Miss Rutherford Speaks her Mind

For the first time in over a year an itinerant preacher was to hold services in the Huerfano Park schoolhouse. He would speak, Beulah Rutherford knew, to a mere handful of people, and it was to mitigate his disappointment that she rode out into the hills on the morning of her disappearance to find an armful of columbines for decorating the desk-pulpit. The man had written Miss Rutherford and asked her to notify the community. She had seen that the news was carried to the remotest ranch, but she expected for a congregation only a scatter of patient women and restless children with three or four coffee-brown youths in high-heeled boots on the back row to represent the sinners.

It was a brave, clean world into which she rode this summer morning. The breeze brought to her nostrils the sweet aroma of the sage. Before her lifted the saw-toothed range into a sky of blue sprinkled here and there with light mackerel clouds. Blacky pranced with fire and intelligence, eager to reach out and leave behind him the sunny miles.

Near the upper end of the park she swung up an arroyo that led to Big Flat Top. A drawling voice stopped her.

"Oh, you, Beulah Rutherford! Where away this glad mo'ning?"

A loose-seated rider was lounging in the saddle on a little bluff fifty yards away. His smile reminded her of a new copper kettle shining in the sun.

"To find columbines for church decorations," she said with an answering smile.

"Have you been building a church since I last met up with you?"

"There will be services in the schoolhouse tomorrow at three P.M., conducted by the Reverend Melancthon Smith. Mr. Charlton is especially invited to attend."

"Maybe I'll be there. You can't sometimes 'most always tell. I'm going to prove I've got nothing against religion by going with you to help gather the pulpit decorations."

"That's very self-sacrificing of you." She flashed a look of gay derision at him as he joined her. "Sure you can afford to waste so much time?"

"I don't call it wasted. But since you've invited me so hearty to your picnic, I'd like to be sure you've got grub enough in the chuck wagon for two," he said with a glance at her saddle-bags.

"I'm not sure. Maybe you had better not come."

"Oh, I'm coming if you starve me. Say, Beulah, have you heard about Jess Tighe?"

"What about him?"

"He had a stroke last night. Doc Spindler thinks he won't live more than a few hours."

Beulah mused over that for a few moments without answer. She had no liking for the man, but it is the way of youth to be shocked at the approach of death. Yet she knew this would help to clear up the situation. With the evil influence of Tighe removed, there would be a chance for the park to develop along more wholesome lines. He had been like a sinister shadow that keeps away the sunlight.

She drew a deep breath. "I don't wish him any harm. But it will be a good thing for all of us when he can't make us more sorrow and trouble."

"He never made me any," Charlton answered.

"Didn't he?" She looked steadily across at him. "You can't tell me he didn't plan that express robbery, for instance."

"Meaning that I was in the party that pulled it off?" he asked, flushing.

"I know well enough you were in it--knew it all along. It's the sort of thing you couldn't keep out of."

"How about Ned? Do you reckon he could keep out of it?" She detected rising anger beneath his controlled voice.

"Not with you leading him on." Her eyes poured scorn on him. "And I'm sure he would appreciate your loyalty in telling me he was in it."

"Why do you jump on me, then?" he demanded sulkily. "And I didn't say Ned was in that hold-up--any more than I admit having been in it myself. Are you trying to make trouble with me? Is that it?"

"I don't care whether I make trouble with you or not. I'm not going to pretend and make-believe, if that's what you want. I don't have to do it."

"I see you don't," he retorted bluntly. "I suppose you don't have to mind your own business either."

"It is my business when Ned follows you into robbery."

"Maybe I followed him," he jeered.

She bit back the tart answer on her tongue. What was the use of quarreling? It used to be that they were good friends, but of late they jangled whenever they met. Ever since the Western Express affair she had held a grudge at him. Six months ago she had almost promised to marry him. Now nothing was farther from her thoughts.

But he was still very much of the mind that she should.

"What's the matter with you, Boots?" he wanted to know roughly. "You used to have some sense. You weren't always flying out at a fellow. Now there's no way of pleasing you."

"I suppose it is odd that I don't want my friends to be thieves," she flung out bitterly.

"Don't use that word if you mean me," he ordered.

"What word shall I substitute?"

He barely suppressed an oath. "I know what's ailing you? We're not smooth enough up here for you. We're not educated up to your standard. If I'd been to Cornell, say--"

"Take care," she warned with a flash of anger in her black eyes.

"Oh, I don't know. Why should I cull my words so careful? I notice yours ain't hand-picked. Ever since this guy Beaudry came spying into the park, you've had no use for me. You have been throwing yourself at his head and couldn't see any one else."

She gasped. "How dare you, Brad Charlton?"

His jealousy swept away the prudence that had dammed his anger. "Didn't you take him out driving? Didn't you spend a night alone with him and Dave Dingwell? Didn't you hot-foot it down to Hart's because you was afraid yore precious spy would meet up with what he deserved?"

Beulah drew up Blacky abruptly. "Now you can leave me. Don't stop to say good-bye. I hate you. I don't ever want to see you again."

He had gone too far and he knew it. Sulkily he began to make his apology. "You know how fond I am of you, Boots. You know--"

"Yes, I ought to. I've heard it often enough," she interrupted curtly. "That's probably why you insult me?"

Her gypsy eyes stabbed him. She was furiously angry. He attempted to explain. "Now, listen here, Beulah. Let's be reasonable."

"Are you going up or down?" she demanded. "I'm going the other way. Take one road or the other, you--you scandalmonger."

Never a patient man, he too gave rein to his anger. "Since you want to know, I'm going down--to Battle Butte, where I'll likely meet yore friend Beaudry and settle an account or two with him. I reckon before I git through with him he'll yell something besides Cornell."

The girl laughed scornfully. "Last time I saw him he had just beaten a dozen or so of you. How many friends are you going to take along this trip?"

Already her horse was taking the trail. She called the insult down to him over her shoulder. But before she had gone a half-mile her eyes were blind with tears. Why did she get so angry? Why did she say such things? Other girls were ladylike and soft-spoken. Was there a streak of commonness in her that made possible such a scene as she had just gone through? In her heart she longed to be a lady--gentle, refined, sweet of spirit. Instead of which she was a bad-tempered tomboy. "Miss Spitfire" her brothers sometimes called her, and she knew the name was justified.

Take this quarrel now with Brad. She had had no intention of breaking with him in that fashion. Why couldn't she dismiss a lover as girls in books do, in such a way as to keep him for a friend? She had not meant, anyhow, to bring the matter to issue to-day. One moment they had been apparently the best of comrades. The next they had been saying hateful things to each other. What he had said was unforgivable, but she had begun by accusing him of complicity in the train robbery. Knowing how arrogant he was, she might have guessed how angry criticism would make him.

Yet she was conscious of a relief that it was over with at last. Charlton was proud. He would leave her alone unless she called him to her side. Her tears were for the humiliating way in which they had wrenched apart rather than for the fact of the break.

She knew his temper. Nothing on earth could keep him from flying at the throat of Roy Beaudry now. Well, she had no interest in either of them, she reminded herself impatiently. It was none of her business how they settled their differences. Yet, as Blacky followed the stiff trail to Big Flat Top, her mind was wretchedly troubled.

Beulah had expected to find her columbines in a gulch back of Big Flat Top, but the flowers were just past their prime here. The petals fell fluttering at her touch. She hesitated. Of course, she did not have to get columbines for the preaching service. Sweet-peas would do very well. But she was a young woman who did not like to be beaten. She had plenty of time, and she wanted an excuse to be alone all day. Why not ride over to Del Oro Creek, where the season was later and the columbines would be just coming on?

The ayes had it, and presently Miss Rutherford was winding deeper into the great hills that skirted Flat Top. Far in the gulches, dammed by the small thick timber, she came on patches of snow upon which the sun never shone. Once a ptarmigan started from the brush at her feet. An elk sprang up from behind a log, stared at her, and crashed away through the fallen timber.

Her devious road took Beulah past a hill flaming with goldenrod and Indian paint-brushes. A wealth of color decorated every draw, for up here at the roots of the peaks blossoms rioted in great splashes that ran to the snowbanks.

After all, she had to go lower for her favorite blooms. On Del Oro she found columbines, but in no great profusion. She wandered from the stream, leading Blacky by the bridle. On a hillside just above an aspen grove the girl came upon scattered clumps of them. Tying the pony loosely to a clump of bushes, she began to gather the delicate blue wild flowers.

The blossoms enticed her feet to the edge of a prospect hole long since abandoned. A clump of them grew from the side of the pit about a foot below the level of the ground. Beulah reached for them, and at the same moment the ground caved beneath her feet. She clutched at a bush in vain as she plunged down.

Jarred by the fall, Beulah lay for a minute in a huddle at the bottom of the pit. She was not quite sure that no bones were broken. Before she had time to make certain, a sound brought her rigidly to her feet. It was a light loose sound like the shaking of dried peas in their pods. No dweller of the outdoors Southwest could have failed to recognize it, and none but would have been startled by it.

The girl whipped her revolver from its scabbard and stood pressed against the rock wall while her eyes searched swiftly the prison into which she had fallen. Again came that light swift rattle with its sinister menace.

The enemy lay coiled across the pit from her, head and neck raised, tongue vibrating. Beulah fired--once--twice--a third time. It was enough. The rattlesnake ceased writhing.

The first thing she did was to examine every inch of her prison to make sure there were no more rattlers. Satisfied as to this, she leaned faintly against the wall. The experience had been a shock even to her sound young nerves.

Chapter XXIII

In the Pit

Beulah shut her eyes to steady herself. From the impact of her fall she was still shaken. Moreover, though she had shot many a rattlesnake, this was the first time she had ever been flung head first into the den of one. It would have been easy to faint, but she denied herself the luxury of it and resolutely fought back the swimming lightness in her head.

Presently she began to take stock of her situation. The prospect hole was circular in form, about ten feet across and nine feet deep. The walls were of rock and smooth clay. Whatever timbering had been left by the prospector was rotted beyond use. It crumbled at the weight of her foot.

How was she to get out? Of course, she would find some way, she told herself. But how? Blacky was tied to a bush not fifty yards away, and fastened to the saddle horn was the rope that would have solved her problem quickly enough. If she had it here--But it might as well be at Cheyenne for all the good it would do her now.

Perhaps she could dig footholds in the wall by means of which she could climb out. Unbuckling the spur from her heel, she used the rowel as a knife to jab a hole in the clay. After half an hour of persistent work she looked at the result in dismay. She had gouged a hollow, but it was not one where her foot could rest while she made steps above.

Every few minutes Beulah stopped work to shout for help. It was not likely that anybody would be passing. Probably she had been the only person on this hill for months. But she dared not miss any chance.

For it was coming home to her that she might die of starvation in this prison long before her people found the place. By morning search parties would be out over the hills looking for her. But who would think to find her away over on Del Oro? If Brad had carried out his threat immediately and gone down to Battle Butte, nobody would know even the general direction in which to seek.

With every hour Beulah grew more troubled. Late in the afternoon she fired a fourth shot from her revolver in the hope that some one might hear the sound and investigate. The sun set early for her. She watched its rays climb the wall of her prison while she worked half-heartedly with the spur. After a time the light began to fade, darkness swept over the land, and she had to keep moving in order not to chill.

Never had she known such a night. It seemed to the tortured girl that morning would never come. She counted the stars above her. Sometimes there were more. Sometimes fewer. After an eternity they began to fade out in the sky. Day was at hand.

She fired the fifth shot from her revolver. Her voice was hoarse from shouting, but she called every few minutes. Then, when she was at the low ebb of hope, there came an answer to her call. She fired her last shot. She called and shouted again and again. The voice that came back to her was close at hand.

"I'm down in the prospect hole," she cried. Another moment, and she was looking up into the face of a man, Dan Meldrum. In vacant astonishment he gazed down at her.

"Whad you doing here?" he asked roughly.

"I fell in. I've been here all night." Her voice broke a little. "Oh, I'm so glad you've come."

It was of no importance that he was a man she detested, one who had quarreled with her father and been thrashed by her brother for insulting her. All she thought of was that help had come to her at last and she was now safe.

He stared down at her with a kind of drunken malevolence.

"So you fell in, eh?"

"Yes. Please help me out right away. My riata is tied to Blacky's saddle."

He looked around. "Where?"

"Isn't Blacky there? He must have broken loose, then. Never mind. Pass me down the end of a young sapling and you can pull me up."

"Can I?"

For the first time she felt a shock of alarm. There was in his voice something that chilled her, something inexpressibly cruel.

"I'll see my father rewards you. I'll see you get well paid," she promised, and the inflection of the words was an entreaty.

"You will, eh?"

"Anything you want," she hurried on. "Name it. If we can give it to you, I promise it."

His drunken brain was functioning slowly. This was the girl who had betrayed him up in Chicito Cañon, the one who had frustrated his revenge at Hart's. On account of her young Rutherford had given him the beating of his life and Hal had driven him from Huerfano Park. First and last she was the rock upon which his fortunes had split. Now chance had delivered her into his hands. What should he do with her? How could he safely make the most of the opportunity?

It did not for an instant occur to him to haul her from the pit and send her rejoicing on the homeward way. He intended to make her pay in full. But how? How get his revenge and not jeopardize his own safety?

"Won't you hurry, please?" she pleaded. "I'm hungry--and thirsty. I've been here all night and most of yesterday. It's been . . . rather awful."

He rubbed his rough, unshaven cheek while his little pig eyes looked down into hers. "That so? Well, I dunno as it's any business of mine where you spend the night or how long you stay there. I had it put up to me to lay off 'n interfering with you. Seems like yore family got notions I was insulting you. That young bully Jeff jumped me whilst I wasn't looking and beat me up. Hal Rutherford ordered me to pull my freight. That's all right. I won't interfere in what don't concern me. Yore family says 'Hands off!' Fine. Suits me. Stay there or get out. It's none of my business. See?"

"You don't mean you'll . . . leave me here?" she cried in horror.

"Sure," he exulted. "If I pulled you out of there, like as not you'd have me beat up again. None o' my business! That's what yore folks have been drilling into me. I reckon they're right. Anyhow, I'll play it safe."

"But--Oh, you can't do that. Even you can't do such a thing," she cried desperately. "Why, men don't do things like that."

"Don't they? Watch me, missie." He leaned over the pit, his broken, tobacco-stained teeth showing in an evil grin. "Just keep an eye on yore Uncle Dan. Nobody ever yet done me a meanness and got away with it. I reckon the Rutherfords won't be the first. It ain't on the cyards," he boasted.

"You're going away . . . to leave me here . . . to starve?"

"Who said anything about going away? I'll stick around for a while. It's none of my business whether you starve or live high. Do just as you please about that. I'll let you alone, like I promised Jeff I would. You Rutherfords have got no call to object to being starved, anyhow. _Whad you do to Dave Dingwell in Chicito_?"

After all, she was only a girl in spite of her little feminine ferocities and her pride and her gameness. She had passed through a terrible experience, had come out of it to apparent safety and had been thrown back into despair. It was natural that sobs should shake her slender body as she leaned against the quartz wall of her prison and buried her head in her forearm.

When presently the sobs grew fewer and less violent, Beulah became aware without looking up that her tormentor had taken away his malignant presence. This was at first a relief, but as the hours passed an acute fear seized her. Had he left her alone to die? In spite of her knowledge of the man, she had clung to the hope that he would relent. But if he had gone--

She began again to call at short intervals for help. Sometimes tears of self-pity choked her voice. More than once she beat her brown fists against the rock in an ecstasy of terror.

Then again he was looking down at her, a hulk of venom, eyes bleared with the liquor he had been drinking.

"Were you calling me, missie?" he jeered.

"Let me out," she demanded. "When my brothers find me--"

"If they find you," he corrected with a hiccough.

"They'll find me. By this time everybody in Huerfano Park is searching for me. Before night half of Battle Butte will be in the saddle. Well, when they find me, do you think you won't be punished for this?"

"For what?" demanded the man. "You fell in. I haven't touched you."

"Will that help you, do you think?"

His rage broke into speech. "You're aimin' to stop my clock, are you? Take another guess, you mischief-making vixen. What's to prevent me from emptying my forty-four into you when I get good and ready, then hitting the trail for Mexico?"

She knew he was speaking the thoughts that had been drifting through his mind in whiskey-lit ruminations. That he was a wanton killer she had always heard. If he could persuade himself it could be done with safety, he would not hesitate to make an end of her.

This was the sort of danger she could fight against--and she did.

"I'll tell you what's to prevent you," she flung back, as it were in a kind of careless scorn. "Your fondness for your worthless hide. If they find me shot to death, they will know who did it. You couldn't hide deep enough in Chihuahua to escape them. My father would never rest till he had made an end of you."

Her argument sounded appallingly reasonable to him. He knew the Rutherfords. They would make him pay his debt to them with usury.

To stimulate his mind he took another drink, after which he stared down at her a long time in sullen, sulky silence. She managed at the same time to irritate him and tempt him and fill his coward heart with fear of consequences. Through the back of his brain from the first there had been filtering thoughts that were like crouching demons. They reached toward her and drew back in alarm. He was too white-livered to go through with his villainy boldly.

He recorked the bottle and put it in his hip pocket. "'Nough said," he blustered. "Me, I'll git on my hawss and be joggin' along to Mex. I'll take chances on their finding you before you're starved. After that it won't matter to me when they light on yore body."

"Oh, yes, it will," she corrected him promptly, "I'm going to write a note and tell just what has happened. It will be found beside me in case they . . . don't reach here in time."

The veins in his blotched face stood out as he glared down at her while he adjusted himself to this latest threat. Here, too, she had him. He had gone too far. Dead or alive, she was a menace to his safety.

Since he must take a chance, why not take a bigger one, why not follow the instigation of the little crouching devils in his brain? He leered down at her with what was meant to be an ingratiating smile.

"Sho! What's the use of we 'uns quarreling, Miss Beulah? I ain't got nothing against you. Old Dan he always liked you fine. I reckon you didn't know that, did you?"

Her quick glance was in time to catch his face napping. The keen eyes of the girl pounced on his and dragged from them a glimpse of the depraved soul of the ruffian. Silently and warily she watched him.

"I done had my little joke, my dear," he went on. "Now we'll be heap good friends. Old Dan ain't such a bad sort. There's lots of folks worse than Dan. That's right. Now, what was that you said a while ago about giving me anything I wanted?"

"I said my father would pay you anything in reason." Her throat was parched, but her eyes were hard and bright. No lithe young panther of the forest could have been more alert than she.

"Leave yore dad out of it. He ain't here, and, anyway, I ain't having any truck with him. Just say the word, Miss Beulah, and I'll git a pole and haul you up in a jiffy."

Beulah made a mistake. She should have waited till she was out of the pit before she faced the new issue. But her horror of the man was overpowering. She unscabbarded swiftly the revolver at her side and lifted it defiantly toward him.

"I'll stay here."

Again he foamed into rage. The girl had stalemated him once more. "Then stay, you little wild cat. You've had yore chance. I'm through with you." He bared his teeth in a snarling grin and turned his back on her.

Beulah heard him slouching away. Presently there came the sound of a furiously galloping horse. The drumming of the hoofbeats died in the distance.

During the rest of the day she saw no more of the man. It swept over her toward evening in a wave of despair that he had left her to her fate.

Chapter XXIV

The Bad Man Decides not to Shoot

Beulah woke from a sleep of exhaustion to a world into which the morning light was just beginning to sift. The cold had penetrated to her bones. She was stiff and cramped and sore from the pressure of the rock bed against her tender young flesh. For nearly two days she had been without food or drink. The urge of life in her was at low tide.

But the traditions among which she had been brought up made pluck a paramount virtue. She pushed from her the desire to weep in self-pity over her lot. Though her throat was raw and swollen, she called at regular intervals during the morning hours while the sun climbed into view of her ten-foot beat. Even when it rode the heavens a red-hot cannon ball directly above her, the hoarse and lonely cry of the girl echoed back from the hillside every few minutes. There were times when she wanted to throw herself down and give up to despair, but she knew there would be opportunity for that when she could no longer fight for her life. The shadow was beginning to climb the eastern wall of the pit before Beaudry's shout reached her ears faintly. Her first thought was that she must already be delirious. Not till she saw him at the edge of the prospect hole was she sure that her rescuer was a reality.

At the first sight of her Roy wanted to trumpet to high heaven the joy that flooded his heart. He had found her--alive. After the torment of the night and the worry of the day he had come straight to her in his wandering, and he had reached her in time.

But when he saw her condition pity welled up in him. Dark hollows had etched themselves into her cheeks. Tears swam in her eyes. Her lips trembled weakly from emotion. She leaned against the side of the pit to support her on account of the sudden faintness that engulfed her senses. He knelt and stretched his hands toward her, but the pit was too deep.

"You'll have to get a pole or a rope," she told him quietly.

Beaudry found the dead trunk of a young sapling and drew the girl up hand over hand. On the brink she stumbled and he caught her in his arms to save her from falling back into the prospect hole.

For a moment she lay close to him, heart beating against heart. Then, with a little sobbing sigh, she relaxed and began to weep. Her tears tugged at his sympathy, but none the less the pulses pounded in his veins. He held her tight, with a kind of savage tenderness, while his body throbbed with the joy of her. She had come to him with the same sure instinct that brings a child to its mother's arms. All her pride and disdain and suspicion had melted like summer mists in her need of the love and comfort he could give her.

"It's all right now. You're safe. Nothing can hurt you," he promised.

"I know, but you don't know--what--what--" She broke off, shuddering.

Still with his arm about her, he led Beulah to his horse. Here he made her sit down while he gave her water and food. Bit by bit she told him the story of her experience. He suffered poignantly with her, but he could not be grateful enough that the finger-tip of destiny had pointed him to her prison. He thanked his rather vague gods that it had been his footsteps rather than those of another man that had wandered here to save her.

What surprised and wholly delighted him was the feminine quality of her. He had thought of her before as a wild young creature full of pride and scorn and anger, but with a fine barbaric loyalty that might yet redeem her from her faults. He had never met a young woman so hard, so self-reliant. She had asked no odds because of her sex. Now all this harshness had melted. No strange child could have been more shy and gentle. She had put herself into his hands and seemed to trust him utterly. His casual opinions were accepted by her as if they had been judgments of Solomon.

Roy spread his blankets and put the saddle-bags down for a pillow.

"We're not going to stay here to-night, are we?" she asked, surprised.

He smiled. "No, you're going to lie down and sleep for an hour. When you wake, supper will be ready. You're all in now, but with a little rest you will be fit to travel."

"You won't go away while I sleep," she said.

"Do you think it likely? No, you can't get rid of me that easy. I'm a regular adhesive plaster for sticking."

"I don't want to get rid of you," she answered naïvely. "I'd be afraid without you. Will you promise to stay close all the time I sleep?"

"Yes."

"I know I won't sleep, but if you want me to try--"

"I do."

She snuggled down into the blankets and was asleep in five minutes.

Beaudry watched her with hungry eyes. What was the use of denying to himself that he loved her? If he had not known it before, the past half-hour had made it clear to him. With those wan shadows below her long eye-lashes and that charming manner of shy dependence upon him, she was infinitely more attractive to him than she had ever been before.

Beulah Rutherford was not the kind of girl he had thought of as a sweetheart in his daydreams. His fancies had hovered hazily about some imaginary college girl, one skilled in the finesse of the rules that society teaches young women in self-defense. Instead, he had fallen in love with a girl who could not play the social game at all. She was almost the only one he had known who never used any perfume; yet her atmosphere was fragrant as one of the young pines in her own mountain park. The young school-teacher was vital, passionate, and--he suspected--fiercely tender. For her lover there would be rare gifts in her eyes, wonderful largesse in her smile. The man who could qualify as her husband must be clean and four-square and game from the soles of his feet up--such a man as Dave Dingwell, except that the cattleman was ten years too old for her.

Her husband! What was he thinking about? Roy brought his bolting thoughts up with a round turn. There could be no question of marriage between her father's daughter and his father's son. Hal Rutherford had put that out of doubt on the day when he had ridden to the Elephant Corral to murder Sheriff Beaudry. No decent man could marry the daughter of the man who had killed his father in cold blood. Out of such a wedding could come only sorrow and tragedy.

And if this were not bar enough between them, there was another. Beulah Rutherford could never marry a man who was a physical coward. It was a dear joy to his soul that she had broken down and wept and clung to him. But this was the sex privilege of even a brave woman. A man had to face danger with a nerve of tested iron, and that was a thing he could never do.

Roy was stretched on the moss face down, his chin resting on the two cupped palms of his hands. Suddenly he sat up, every nerve tense and alert. Silently he got to his feet and stole down into the aspen grove. With great caution he worked his way into the grove and peered through to the hillside beyond. A man was standing by the edge of the prospect hole. He was looking down into it. Young Beaudry recognized the heavy, slouch figure at the first glance.

Not for an instant did he hesitate about what he meant to do. The hour had come when he and Dan Meldrum must have an accounting. From its holster he drew his revolver and crept forward toward the bad man. His eyes were cold and hard as chilled steel. He moved with the long, soft stride of a panther crouched for the kill. Not till the whole thing was over did he remember that for once the ghost of fear had been driven from his soul. He thought only of the wrongs of Beulah Rutherford, the girl who had fallen asleep in the absolute trust that he would guard her from all danger. This scoundrel had given her two days of living hell. Roy swore to pay the fellow in full.

Meldrum turned. He recognized Beaudry with a snarl of rage and terror. Except one of the Rutherfords there was no man on earth he less wanted to meet. The forty-four in his hand jerked up convulsively. The miscreant was in two minds whether to let fly or wait.

Roy did not even falter in his stride. He did not raise the weapon in his loosely hanging hand. His eyes bored as steadily as gimlets into the craven heart of the outlaw.

Meldrum, in a panic, warned him back. His nerve was gone. For two days he had been drinking hard, but the liquor had given out at midnight. He needed a bracer badly. This was no time for him to go through with a finish fight against such a man as Beaudry.

"Keep yore distance and tell me what you want," the ex-convict repeated hoarsely. "If you don't, I'll gun you sure."

The young cattleman stopped about five yards from him. He knew exactly what terms he meant to give the enemy.

"Put your gun up," he ordered sharply.

"Who's with you?"

"Never mind who is with me. I can play this hand alone. Put up that gun and then we'll talk."

That suited Meldrum. If it was a question of explanations, perhaps he could whine his way out of this. What he had been afraid of was immediate battle. One cannot talk bullets aside.

Slowly he pushed his revolver into its holster, but the hand of the man rested still on the butt.

"I came back to help Miss Rutherford out of this prospect hole," he whimperingly complained. "When onc't I got sober, I done recalled that she was here. So I hit the trail back."

Meldrum spoke the exact truth. When the liquor was out of him, he became frightened at what he had done. He had visions of New Mexico hunting him down like a wild dog. At last, unable to stand it any longer, he had come back to free her.

"That's good. Saves me the trouble of looking for you. I'm going to give you a choice. You and I can settle this thing with guns right here and now. That's one way out for you. I'll kill you where you stand."

"W--what's the other way?" stammered the outlaw.

"The other way is for you to jump into that prospect hole. I'll ride away and leave you there to starve."

"Goddlemighty! You wouldn't do that," Meldrum wheedled. "I didn't go for to hurt Miss Rutherford any. Didn't I tell you I was drunk?"

"Dead or alive, you're going into that prospect hole. Make up your mind to that."

The bad man moistened his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. He stole one furtive glance around. Could he gun this man and make his getaway?

"Are any of the Rutherfords back of that clump of aspens?" he asked in a hoarse whisper.

"Yes."

"Do . . . do they know I'm here?"

"Not yet."

Tiny beads of sweat stood out on the blotched face of the rustler. He was trapped. Even if he fired through the leather holster and killed Beaudry, there would be no escape for him on his tired horse.

"Gimme a chanc't," he pleaded desperately. "Honest to God, I'll clear out of the country for good. I'll quit belling around and live decent. I'll--"

"You'll go into the pit."

Meldrum knew as he looked into that white, set face that he had come to his day of judgment. But he mumbled a last appeal.

"I'm an old man, Mr. Beaudry. I ain't got many years--"

"Have you made your choice?" cut in Roy coldly.

"I'd do anything you say--go anywhere--give my Bible oath never to come back."

"Perhaps I'd better call Rutherford."

The bad man made a trembling clutch toward him. "Don't you, Mr. Beaudry. I'll--I'll go into the pit," he sobbed.

"Get in, then."

"I know you wouldn't leave me there to starve. That would be an awful thing to do," the killer begged.

"You're finding that out late. It didn't worry you when Dave Dingwell was being starved."

"I hadn't a thing to do with that--not a thing, Mr. Beaudry. Hal Rutherford, he give the order and it was up to me to go through. Honest, that was the way of it."

"And you could starve a girl who needed your help. That was all right, of course."

"Mr. Beaudry, I--I was only learning her a lesson--just kinder playing, y' understand. Why, I've knowed Miss Beulah ever since she was a little bit of a trick. I wouldn't do her a meanness. It ain't reasonable, now, is it?"

The man fawned on Roy. His hands were shaking with fear. If it would have done any good, he would have fallen on his knees and wept. The sight of him made Roy sick. Was this the way he looked when the yellow streak was showing?

"Jump into that pit," he ordered in disgust. "That is, unless you'd rather I would call Rutherford."

Meldrum shambled to the edge, sat down, turned, and slid into the prospect hole.

"I know it's only yore little joke, Mr. Beaudry," he whined. "Mebbe I ain't jest been neighborly with you-all, but what I say is let bygones be bygones. I'm right sorry. I'll go down with you to Battle Butte and tell the boys I done wrong."

"No, you'll stay here."

Beaudry turned away. The muffled scream of the bad man followed him as far as the aspens.

Chapter XXV

Two and a Camp-Fire

Roy worked his way through the aspens and returned to the place where he had left Beulah. She was still sleeping soundly and did not stir at his approach. Quietly he built a fire and heated water for coffee. From his saddlebags he took sandwiches wrapped in a newspaper. Beside the girl he put his canteen, a pocket comb, a piece of soap, and the bandanna he wore around his neck. Then, reluctantly, he awakened her.

"Supper will be served in just five minutes," he announced with a smile.

She glanced at the scant toilet facilities and nodded her head decisively. "Thank you, kind sir. I'll be on hand."

The young woman rose, glanced in the direction of the aspens, gathered up the supplies, and fled to the grove. The eyes of Beaudry followed her flight. The hour of sleep had been enough to restore her resilience. She moved with the strong lightness that always reminded him of wild woodland creatures.

In spite of her promise Beulah was away beyond the time limit. Beaudry became a little uneasy. It was not possible, of course, that Meldrum could have escaped from the pit. And yet--

He called to her. "Is every little thing all right, neighbor?"

"All right," she answered.

A moment later she emerged from the aspens and came toward the camp. She was panting a little, as if she had been running.

"Quite a hill," he commented.

She gave him a quick glance. There was in it shy curiosity, but her dark eyes held, too, an emotion more profound.

"Yes," she said. "It makes one breathe fast."

Miss Rutherford had improved her time. The disorderly locks had been hairpinned into place. From her face all traces of the dried tears were washed. Pit clay no longer stained the riding-skirt.

Sandwiches and coffee made their meal, but neither of them had ever more enjoyed eating. Beulah was still ravenously hungry, though she restrained her appetite decorously.

"I forgot to tell you that I am lost," he explained. "Unless you can guide me out of this labyrinth of hills, we'll starve to death."

"I can take you straight to the park."

"But we're not going to the park. Everybody is out looking for you. We are to follow Del Oro down to the flats. The trouble is that I've lost Del Oro," he grinned.

"It is just over the hill."

After refreshments he brought up his pinto horse and helped her to the saddle. She achieved the mount very respectably. With a confidential little laugh she took him into the secret of her success.

"I've been practicing with dad. He has to help me up every time I go riding."

They crossed to Del Oro in the dusk and followed the trail by the creek in the moonlight. In the starlight night her dusky beauty set his pulses throbbing. The sweet look of her dark-lashed eyes stirred strange chaos in him. They talked little, for she, too, felt a delicious emotion singing in the currents of her blood. When their shy eyes met, it was with a queer little thrill as if they had kissed each other.

It was late when they reached the flats. There was no sign of Charlton's party.

"The flats run for miles each way. We might wander all night and not find them," Beulah mentioned.

"Then we'll camp right here and look for them in the morning," decided Roy promptly.

Together they built a camp-fire. Roy returned from picketing the horse to find her sitting on a blanket in the dancing light of the flickering flames. Her happy, flushed face was like the promise of a summer day at dawn.

In that immensity of space, with night's million candles far above them and the great hills at their backs, the walls that were between them seemed to vanish.

Their talk was intimate and natural. It had the note of comradeship, took for granted sympathy and understanding.

He showed her the picture of his mother. By the fire glow she studied it intently. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

"She's so lovely and so sweet--and she had to go away and leave her little baby when she was so young. I don't wonder you worship her. I would, too."

Roy did not try to thank her in words. He choked up in his throat and nodded.

"You can see how fine and dainty she was," the girl went on. "I'd rather be like that than anything else in the world--and, of course, I never can be."

"I don't know what you mean," he protested warmly. "You're as fine as they grow."

She smiled, a little wistfully. "Nice of you to say so, but I know better. I'm not a lady. I'm just a harum-scarum, tempery girl that grew up in the hills. If I didn't know it, that wouldn't matter. But I do know it, and so like a little idiot I pity myself because I'm not like nice girls."

"Thank Heaven, you're not!" he cried. "I've never met a girl fit to hold a candle to you. Why, you're the freest, bravest, sweetest thing that ever lived."

The hot blood burned slowly into her cheek under its dusky coloring. His words were music to her, and yet they did not satisfy.

"You're wrapping it up nicely, but we both know that I'm a vixen when I get angry," she said quietly. "We used to have an old Indian woman work for us. When I was just a wee bit of a thing she called me Little Cactus Tongue."

"That's nothing. The boys were probably always teasing you and you defended yourself. In a way the life you have led has made you hard. But it is just a surface hardness nature has provided as a protection to you."

"Since it is there, I don't see that it helps much to decide why it is a part of me," she returned with a wan little smile.

"But it does," he insisted. "It matters a lot. The point is that it isn't you at all. Some day you'll slough it the way a butterfly does its shell."

"When?" she wanted to know incredulously.

He did not look at her while he blurted out his answer. "When you are happily married to a man you love who loves you."

"Oh! I'm afraid that will be never." She tried to say it lightly, but her face glowed from the heat of an inward fire.

"There's a deep truth in the story of the princess who slept the years away until the prince came along and touched her lips with his. Don't you think lots of people are hampered by their environment? All they need is escape." He suggested this with a shy diffidence.

"Oh, we all make that excuse for ourselves," she answered with a touch of impatient scorn. "I'm all the time doing it. I say if things were different I would be a nice, sweet-tempered, gentle girl and not fly out like that Katherine in Shakespeare's play. But I know all the time it isn't true. We have to conquer ourselves. There is no city of refuge from our own temperaments."

He felt sure there was a way out from her fretted life for this deep-breasted, supple daughter of the hills if she could only find it. She had breathed an atmosphere that made for suspicion and harshness. All her years she had been forced to fight to save herself from shame. But Roy, as he looked at her, imaged another picture of Beulah Rutherford. Little children clung to her knees and called her "Mother." She bent over them tenderly, her face irradiated with love. A man whose features would not come clear strode toward her and the eyes she lifted to his were pools of light.

Beaudry drew a deep breath and looked away from her into the fire. "I wish time would solve my problem as surely as it will yours," he said.

She looked at him eagerly, lips parted, but she would not in words invite his confession.

The young man shaded his eyes with his hand as if to screen them from the fire, but she noticed that the back of his hand hid them from her, too. He found a difficulty in beginning. When at last he spoke, his voice was rough with feeling.

"Of course, you'll despise me--you of all people. How could you help it?"

Her body leaned toward him ever so slightly. Love lit her face like a soft light.

"Shall I? How do you know?"

"It cuts so deep--goes to the bottom of things. If a fellow is wild or even bad, he may redeem himself. But you can't make a man out of a yellow cur. The stuff isn't there." The words came out jerkily as if with some physical difficulty.

"If you mean about coming up to the park, I know about that," she said gently. "Mr. Dingwell told father. I think it was splendid of you."

"No, that isn't it. I knew I was right in coming and that some day you would understand." He dropped the hand from his face and looked straight at her. "Dave didn't tell your father that I had to be flogged into going, did he? He didn't tell him that I tried to dodge out of it with excuses."

"Of course, you weren't anxious to throw up your own affairs and run into danger for a man you had never met. Why should you be wild for the chance. But you went."

"Oh, I went. I had to go. Ryan put it up to me so that there was no escape," was his dogged, almost defiant, answer.

"I know better," the girl corrected quickly. "You put it up to yourself. You're that way."

"Am I?" He flashed a questioning look at her. "Then, since you know that, perhaps you know, too, what--what I'm trying to tell you."

"Perhaps I do," she whispered softly to the fire.

There was panic in his eyes. "--That . . . that I--"

"--That you are sensitive and have a good deal of imagination," the girl concluded gently.

"No, I'll not feed my vanity with pleasant lies to-night." He gave a little gesture of self-scorn as he rose to throw some dry sticks on the fire. "What I mean and what you mean is that--that I'm an arrant coward." Roy gulped the last words out as if they burned his throat.

"I don't mean that at all," she flamed. "How can you say such a thing about yourself when everybody knows that you're the bravest man in Washington County?"

"No--no. I'm a born trembler." From where he stood beyond the fire he looked across at her with dumb anguish in his eyes. "You say yourself you've noticed it. Probably everybody that knows me has."

"I didn't say that." Her dark eyes challenged his very steadily. "What I said was that you have too much imagination to rush into danger recklessly. You picture it all out vividly beforehand and it worries you. Isn't that the way of it?"

He nodded, ashamed.

"But when the time comes, nobody could be braver than you," she went on. "You've been tried out a dozen times in the last three months. You have always made good."

"Made good! If you only knew!" he answered bitterly.

"Knew what? I saw you down at Hart's when Dan Meldrum ordered you to kneel and beg. But you gamed it out, though you knew he meant to kill you."

He flushed beneath the tan. "I was too paralyzed to move. That's the simple truth."

"Were you too paralyzed to move down at the arcade of the Silver Dollar?" she flashed at him.

"It was the drink in me. I wasn't used to it and it went to my head."

"Had you been drinking that time at the depot?" she asked with a touch of friendly irony.

"That wasn't courage. If it would have saved me, I would have run like a rabbit. But there was no chance. The only hope I had was to throw a fear into him. But all the time I was sick with terror."

She rose and walked round the camp-fire to him. Her eyes were shining with a warm light of admiration. Both hands went out to him impulsively.

"My friend, that is the only kind of courage really worth having. That kind you earn. It is yours because it is born of the spirit. You have fought for it against the weakness of the flesh and the timidity of your own soul. Some men are born without sense or imagination. They don't know enough to be afraid. But the man who tramples down a great fear wins his courage by earning it." She laughed a little, to make light of her own enthusiasm. "Oh, I know I'm preaching like a little prig. But it's the truth, just the same."

At the touch of her fingers his pulses throbbed. But once more he tried to make her understand.

"No, I've had luck all the way through. Do you remember that night at the cabin--before we went up the cañon?"

"Yes."

"Some one shot at me as I ran into the cabin. I was so frightened that I piled all the furniture against the door and hid in the cellar. It was always that way with me. I used to jump if anybody rode up unexpectedly at the ranch. Every little thing set my nerves fluttering."

"But it isn't so now."

"No, not so much."

"That's what I'm telling you," she triumphed. "You came out here from a soft life in town. But you've grown tough because you set your teeth to go through no matter what the cost. I wish I could show you how much I . . . admire you. Dad feels that way, too. So does Ned."

"But I don't deserve it. That's what humiliates me."

"Don't you?" She poured out her passionate protest. "Do you think I don't know what happened back there at the prospect hole? Do you think I don't know that you put Dan Meldrum down in the pit--and him with a gun in his hand? Was it a coward that did that?"

"So you knew that all the time," he cried.

"I heard him calling you--and I went close. Yes, I knew it. But you would never have told me because it might seem like bragging."

"It was easy enough. I wasn't thinking of myself, but of you. He saw I meant business and he wilted."

"You were thinking about me--and you forgot to be afraid," the girl exulted.

"Yes, that was it." A wave of happiness broke over his heart as the sunlight does across a valley at dawn. "I'm always thinking of you. Day and night you fill my thoughts, hillgirl. When I'm riding the range--whatever I do--you're with me all the time."

"Yes."

Her lips were slightly parted, eyes eager and hungry. The heart of the girl drank in his words as the thirsty roots of a rosebush do water. She took a long deep breath and began to tremble.

"I think of you as the daughter of the sun and the wind. Some day you will be the mother of heroes, the wife of a man--"

"Yes," she prompted again, and the face lifted to his was flushed with innocent passion.

The shy invitation of her dark-lashed eyes was not to be denied. He flung away discretion and snatched her into his arms. An inarticulate little sound welled up from her throat, and with a gesture wholly savage and feminine her firm arms crept about his neck and fastened there.

Chapter XXVI

The Sins of the Fathers

They spoke at first only in that lovers' Esperanto which is made up of fond kisses and low murmurs and soft caresses. From these Beulah was the first to emerge.

"Would you marry a girl off the range?" she whispered. "Would you dare take her home to your people?"

"I haven't any people. There are none of them left but me."

"To your friends, then?"

"My friends will be proud as punch. They'll wonder how I ever hypnotized you into caring for me."

"But I'm only a hillgirl," she protested. "Are you sure you won't be ashamed of me, dear?"

"Certain sure. I'm a very sensible chap at bottom, and I know when I have the best there is."

"Ah, you think that now because--"

"Because of my golden luck in winning the most wonderful girl I ever met." In the fling of the fire glow he made a discovery and kissed it. "I didn't know before that you had dimples."

"There are lots of things you don't know about me. Some of them you won't like. But if you love me, perhaps you'll forgive them, and then--because I love you--maybe I'll grow out of them. I feel to-night as if anything were possible. The most wonderful thing that ever happened to me has come into my life."

"My heart is saying that, too, sweetheart."

"I love to hear you say that I'm--nice," she confided. "Because, you know, lots of people don't think so. The best people in Battle Butte won't have anything to do with me. I'm one of the Rutherford gang."

The light was full on his face, so that she saw the dawning horror in his eyes.

"What is it? What are you thinking?" she cried.

He gave a little groan and his hands fell slackly from her. "I'd forgotten." The words came in a whisper, as if he spoke to himself rather than to her.

"Forgotten what?" she echoed; and like a flash added: "That I'm a Rutherford. Is that what you mean?"

"That you are the daughter of Hal Rutherford and that I'm the son of John Beaudry."

"You mean that you would be ashamed to marry a Rutherford," she said, her face white in the fire glow.

"No." He brushed her challenge aside and went straight to what was in his mind. "I'm thinking of what happened seventeen years ago," he answered miserably.

"What did happen that could come between you and me to-night?"

"Have you forgotten, too?" He turned to the fire with a deep breath that was half a sob.

"What is it? Tell me," she demanded.

"Your father killed mine at Battle Butte."

A shiver ran through her lithe, straight body. "No . . . No! Say it isn't true, Roy."

"It's true. I was there . . . Didn't they ever tell you about it?"

"I've heard about the fight when Sheriff Beaudry was killed. Jess Tighe had his spine injured in it. But I never knew that dad . . . You're sure of it?" she flung at him.

"Yes. He led the attackers. I suppose he thought of it as a feud. My father had killed one of his people in a gun fight."

She, too, looked into the fire. It was a long time before she spoke, and then in a small, lifeless voice. "I suppose you . . . hate me."

"Hate you!" His voice shook with agitation. "That would make everything easy. But--there is no other woman in the world for me but you."

Almost savagely she turned toward him. "Do you mean that?"

"I never mean anything so much."

"Then what does it matter about our fathers? We have our own lives to live. If we've found happiness we've a right to it. What happened seventeen years ago can't touch us--not unless we let it."

White-lipped, drear-eyed, Roy faced her hopelessly. "I never thought of it before, but it is true what the Bible says about the sins of the fathers. How can I shake hands in friendship with the man who killed mine? Would it be loyal or decent to go into his family and make him my father by marrying his daughter?"

Beulah stood close to him, her eyes burning into his. She was ready to fight for her love to a finish. "Do you think I'm going to give you up now . . . now . . . just when we've found out how much we care . . . because of any reason under heaven outside ourselves? By God, no! That's a solemn oath, Roy Beaudry. I'll not let you go."

He did not argue with her. Instead, he began to tell her of his father and his mother. As well as he could remember it he related to her the story of that last ride he had taken with John Beaudry. The girl found herself visioning the pathetic tenderness of the father singing the "li'l'-ole-hawss" song under the stars of their night camp. There flashed to her a picture of him making his stand in the stable against the flood of enemies pouring toward him.

When Roy had finished, she spoke softly. "I'm glad you told me. I know now the kind of man your father was. He loved you more than his own life. He was brave and generous and kind. Do you think he would have nursed a grudge for seventeen years? Do you think he would have asked you to give up your happiness to carry on a feud that ought never to have been?"

"No, but--"

"You are going to marry me, not Hal Rutherford. He is a good man now, however wild he may have been once. But you needn't believe that just because I say so. Wait and see. Be to him just as much or as little as you like. He'll understand, and so shall I. My people are proud. They won't ask more of you than you care to give. All they'll ask is that you love me--and that's all I ask, dear."

"All you ask now, but later you will be unhappy because there is a gulf between your father and me. You will try to hide it, but I'll know."

"I'll have to take my chance of that," she told him. "I don't suppose that life even with the man you love is all happiness. But it is what I want. It's what I'm not going to let your scruples rob me of."

She spoke with a low-voiced, passionate intensity. The hillgirl was fighting to hold her lover as a creature of the woods does to protect its young. So long as she was sure that he loved her, nothing on earth should come between them. For the moment she was absorbed by the primitive idea that he belonged to her and she to him. All the vital young strength in her rose to repel separation.

Roy, yearning to take into his arms this dusky, brown-cheeked sweetheart of his, became aware that he did not want her to let his arguments persuade her. The fierce, tender egoism of her love filled him with exultant pride.

He snatched her to him and held her tight while his lips found her hot cheeks, her eager eyes, her more than willing mouth.

Chapter XXVII

The Quicksands

Beulah was too perfect of body, too sound of health, not to revel in such a dawn as swept across the flats next morning. The sun caressed her throat, her bare head, the uplifted face. As the tender light of daybreak was in the hills, so there was a lilt in her heart that found expression in her voice, her buoyant footsteps, and the shine of her eyes. She had slept soundly in Beaudry's blankets while he had lain down in his slicker on the other side of the fire. Already she was quite herself again. The hours of agony in the pit were obliterated. Life was a wholly joyous and beautiful adventure.

She turned back to the camp where Roy was making coffee.

"Am I not to do any of the work?"

At the sound of that deep, sweet voice with its hint of a drawl the young man looked up and smiled. "Not a bit. All you have to do is to drink my coffee and say I'm the best cook you know."

After they had drunk the coffee and finished the sandwiches, Roy saddled.

"They're probably over to the left. Don't you think so?" Beaudry suggested.

"Yes."

There drifted to them the sound of two shots fired in rapid succession.

Roy fired twice in answer. They moved in the direction of the shooting. Again the breeze brought revolver shots. This time there were three of them.

Beaudry bad an odd feeling that this was a call for help from somebody in difficulties. He quickened their pace. The nature of the ground, a good deal of which was deep sand, made fast travel impossible.

"Look!" Beulah pointed forward and to the right.

At the same moment there came a shout. "Help! I'm in the quicksands."

They made out the figure of a man buried to his waist in the dry wash of a creek. A horse stood on the farther bank of the wash. Roy deflected toward the man, Beulah at his heels.

"He must be caught in Dead Man's Sink," the girl explained. "I've never seen it, but I know it is somewhere near here. All my life I've heard of it. Two Norwegians were caught here five years ago. Before help reached them, they were lost."

"Get me a rope--quick," the man in the sand called.

"Why, it's Brad," cried Beulah.

"Yep. Saw the smoke of yore fire and got caught trying to reach you. Can't make it alone. Thought I sure was a goner. You'll have to hurry."

Already Roy was taking the riata from its place below the saddle-horn. From the edge of the wash he made a cast toward the man in the quicksands. The loop fell short.

"You'll have to get into the bed of the stream," suggested Beulah.

Beaudry moved across the sand a few steps and tried again. The distance was still too great.

Already he was beginning to bog down. The soles of his shoes disappeared in the treacherous sand. When he moved it seemed to him that some monster was sucking at him from below. As he dragged his feet from the sand the sunken tracks filled with mud. He felt the quiver of the river-bed trembling at his weight.

Roy turned to Beulah, the old familiar cold chill traveling up his spine to the roots of his hair. "It won't bear me up. I'm going down," he quavered.

"Let me go, then. I'm lighter," she said eagerly.

She made the proposal in all good faith, with no thought of reflecting on his courage, but it stung her lover like a slap in the face.

"Hurry with that rope!" Charlton sang across. "I'm sinking fast."

"Is there any way for Miss Rutherford to get over to your horse?" asked Roy quickly.

"She can cross the wash two hundred yards below here. It's perfectly safe."

As Roy plunged forward, he gave Beulah orders without turning his head. "You hear, dear. Run down and get across. But go over very carefully. If you come to a bad place, go back at once. When you get over tie Charlton's rope to his saddle-horn and throw him the looped end. The horse will drag him out."

The young woman was off on the run before he had half finished.

Once more Roy coiled and threw the rope. Charlton caught the loop, slipped it over his head, and tightened it under his arms.

"All right. Pull!" he ordered.

Beaudry had no footing to brace himself. Already he was ankle-deep in the quicksand. It flashed across his mind that he could not fight his own way out without abandoning Charlton. For one panicky moment he was mad to get back to solid ground himself. The next he was tugging with all the strength of his arms at the rope.

"Keep on the job!" encouraged Charlton. "You're pulling my body over a little so that the weight is on new sand. If Beulah gets here in time, I'll make it."

Roy pulled till his muscles ached. His own feet were sliding slowly from under him. The water-bubbles that oozed out of the sand were now almost at his high boot-tops. It was too late to think of retreat. He must go through whether he wanted to or not.

He cast one look down the dry river-bed. Beulah was just picking her way across. She might get over in time to save Charlton, but before they made it back across to him, he would be lost.

He wanted to scream aloud to her his urgent need, to beg her, for Heaven's sake, to hurry. The futility of it he knew. She was already running with the knowledge to wing her feet that a man's life hung in the balance. Besides, Charlton was not shrieking his fears out. He was calling cheerful words of hope across the quaking morass of sand that separated them. There was no use in making a gibbering idiot of one's self. Beaudry clenched his jaws tight on the cries that rose like a thermometer of terror in his throat.

With every ounce of strength that was in him he fought, meanwhile, for the life of the man at the other end of the rope. Before Beulah reached Charlton, Roy was in deeper than his knees. He shut his eyes and pulled like a machine. It seemed an eternity before Charlton called to him to let go the rope.

A new phase of his danger seared like a flame across the brain of Beaudry. He had dragged himself from a perpendicular position. As soon as he let loose of the rope he would begin to sink forward. This would reduce materially the time before his face would sink into the sand.

Why not hang on and let the horse drag him out, too? He had as much right to live as Charlton. Was there any law of justice that forced him to throw away the rope that was his only hope?

But he knew the tough little cowpony could not drag two heavy men from the quicksands at the same time. If he held tight, Charlton, too, would be sacrificed. His fingers opened.

Roy watched the struggle on the opposite side of the wash. Charlton was in almost to his arm-pits. The horse braced its feet and pulled. Beulah, astride the saddle, urged it to the task again and again. At first by imperceptible gains, then inch by inch, the man was dragged from the mire that fought with a thousand clinging tentacles for its prey.

Not till Charlton was safe on the bank did Beulah realize the peril of Beaudry. One glance across the river showed her that he was sliding face downward to a shifting grave. With an anguished little cry she released the rope from Charlton's body, flung herself to the saddle again, and dashed down the bank of the creek.

Roy lost count of time. His face was sliding down toward the sand. Soon his mouth and nostrils would be stopped. He believed that it was a question of minutes with him.

Came the swift pounding of hoofs and Beulah's clear, ringing voice.

"Hold your hands straight out, Roy."

His back was toward her, so that he did not see what she meant to do. But he obeyed blindly. With a wrench first one hand and then the other came free from the sand and wavered into the air heavily. A rope sang, dropped over his arms and head, tightened with a jerk around his waist.

Two monsters seemed to be trying to tear him in two. A savage wrench of pain went through him jaggedly. At short intervals this was repeated.

In spite of the suction of the muddy sand he felt its clutch giving way. It loosened a little here, a little there. His body began to move. After a long tug he came out at last with a rush. But he left his high cowpuncher's boots behind. They remained buried out of sight in the sand. He had literally been dragged out of them.

Roy felt himself pulled shoreward. From across the quicksands came Charlton's whoop of triumph. Presently Beulah was stooping over him with tender little cries of woe and joy.

He looked at her with a wan, tired smile. "I didn't think you'd make it in time." In a moment he added: "I was horribly afraid. God, it was awful!"

"Of course. Who wouldn't have been?" She dismissed his confession as of no importance. "But it's all over now. I want to hug you tight to make sure you're here, boy."

"There's no law against it," he said with feeble humor.

"No, but--" With a queer little laugh she glanced across the river toward her former lover. "I don't think I had better."

Charlton joined them a few minutes later. He went straight to Roy and offered his hand.

"The feud stuff is off, Mr. Beaudry. Beulah will tell you that I started in to make you trouble. Well, there's nothing doing in that line. I can't fight the man who saved my life at the risk of his own."

"Oh, well!" Roy blushed. "I just threw you a rope."

"You bogged down some," Charlton returned dryly. "I've known men who would have thought several times before throwing that rope from where you did. They would have hated to lose their boots."

Beulah's eyes shone. "Oh, Brad, I'm so glad. I do want you two to be friends."

"Do you?" As he looked at her, the eyes of the young hillman softened. He guessed pretty accurately the state of her feelings. Beaudry had won and he had lost. Well, he was going to be a good loser this time. "What you want goes with me this time, Boots. The way you yanked me out of the sinks was painful, but thorough. I'll be a friend to Mr. Beaudry if he is of the same opinion as you. And I'll dance at his wedding when it comes off."

She cried out at that, but Charlton noticed that she made no denial. Neither did Roy. He confined his remarks to the previous question, and said that he would be very glad of Charlton's friendship.

"Good enough. Then I reckon we better light out for camp with the glad news that Beulah has been found. You can tell me all about it on the way," the hillman suggested.

Beulah dropped from her horse ten minutes later into the arms of Ned Rutherford. Quite unexpectedly to himself, that young man found himself filled with emotion. He caught his sister in his arms and held her as if he never intended to let the sobbing girl go. His own voice was not at all steady.

"Boots--Boots . . . Honey-bug . . . Where you-all been?" he asked, choking up suddenly.

Chapter XXVIII

Pat Ryan Evens an Old Score

Dingwell, the coffee-pot in one hand and a tin cup in the other, hailed his partner cheerfully. "Come over here, son, and tell me who you traded yore boots to."

"You and Brad been taking a mud bath, Mr. Beaudry?" asked one of the Lazy Double D riders.

Roy told them, with reservations, the story of the past twenty-four hours. Dave listened, an indifferent manner covering a quick interest. His young friend had done for himself a good stroke of business. There could no longer be any question of the attitude of the Rutherfords toward him, since he had been of so great service to Beulah. Charlton had renounced his enmity, the ground cut from beneath his feet. Word had reached camp only an hour before of the death of Tighe. This left of Beaudry's foes only Hart, who did not really count, and Dan Meldrum, at the present moment facing starvation in a prospect hole. On the whole, it had been a surprisingly good twenty-four hours for Roy. His partner saw this, though he did not know the best thing Roy had won out of it.

"Listens fine," the old-timer commented when the young man had finished.

"Can you rustle me a pair of boots from one of the boys, Dave? Size number eight. I've got to run back up Del Oro to-day."

"Better let me go, son," Dave proposed casually.

"No. It's my job to turn the fellow loose."

"Well, see he doesn't get the drop on you. I wouldn't trust him far as I could throw a bull by the tail."

Dingwell departed to borrow the boots and young Rutherford came over to Beaudry. Out of the corner of his eye Roy observed that Beulah was talking with the little Irish puncher, Pat Ryan.

Rutherford plunged awkwardly into his thanks. His sister had made only a partial confidant of him, but he knew that she was under obligations to Beaudry for the rescue from Meldrum. The girl had not dared tell her brother that the outlaw was still within his reach. She knew how impulsively his anger would move to swift action.

"We Rutherfords ain't liable to forget this, Mr. Beaudry. Dad has been 'most crazy since Boots disappeared. He'll sure want to thank you himself soon as he gets a chance," blurted Ned.

"I happened to be the lucky one to find her; that's all," Roy depreciated.

"Sure. I understand. But you did find her. That's the point. Dad won't rest easy till he's seen you. I'm going to take sis right home with me. Can't you come along?"

Roy wished he could, but it happened that he had other fish to fry. He shook his head reluctantly.

Dingwell returned with a pair of high-heeled cowpuncher's boots. "Try these on, son. They belong to Dusty. The lazy hobo wasn't up yet. If they fit you, he'll ride back to the ranch in his socks."

After stamping about in the boots to test them, Roy decided that they would do. "They fit like a coat of paint," he said.

"Say, son, I'm going to hit the trail with you on that little jaunt you mentioned," his partner announced definitely.

Roy was glad. He had of late been fed to repletion with adventure. He did not want any more, and with Dingwell along he was not likely to meet it. Already he had observed that adventures generally do not come to the adventurous, but to the ignorant and the incompetent. Dave moved with a smiling confidence along rough trails that would have worried his inexperienced partner. To the old-timer these difficulties were not dangers at all, because he knew how to meet them easily.

They rode up Del Oro by the same route Roy and Beulah had followed the previous night. Before noon they were close to the prospect hole where Roy had left the rustler. The sound of voices brought them up in their tracks.

They listened. A whine was in one voice; in the other was crisp command.

"Looks like some one done beat us to it," drawled Dingwell. "We'll move on and see what's doing."

They topped the brow of a hill.

A bow-legged little man with his back to them was facing Dan Meldrum.

"I'm going along with yez as far as the border. You'll keep moving lively till ye hit the hacienda of old Porf. Diaz. And you'll stay there. Mind that now, Dan. Don't--"

The ex-convict broke in with the howl of a trapped wolf. "You've lied to me. You brought yore friends to kill me."

The six-gun of the bad man blazed once--twice. In answer the revolver of the bandy-legged puncher barked out, fired from the hip. Meldrum staggered, stumbled, pitched forward into the pit. The man who had killed him walked slowly forward to the edge and looked down. He stood poised for another shot if one should prove necessary.

Dave joined him.

"He's dead as a stuck shote, Pat," the cattleman said gravely.

Ryan nodded. "You saw he fired first, Dave."

"Yes." After a moment he added: "You've saved the hangman a job, Pat. I don't know anybody Washington County could spare better. There'll be no complaint, I reckon."

The little Irishman shook his head. "That would go fine if you had shot him, Dave, or if Mr. Beaudry here had. But with me it's different. I've been sivinteen years living down a reputation as a hellion. This ain't going to do me any good. Folks will say it was a case of one bad man wiping out another. They'll say I've gone back to being a gunman. I'll be in bad sure as taxes."

Dingwell looked at him, an idea dawning in his mind. Why not keep from the public the name of the man who had shot Meldrum? The position of the wound and the revolver clenched in the dead man's hand would show he had come to his end in fair fight. The three of them might sign a statement to the effect that one of them had killed the fellow in open battle. The doubt as to which one would stimulate general interest. No doubt the gossips would settle on Beaudry as the one who had done it. This would still further enhance his reputation as a good man with whom not to pick trouble.

"Suits me if it does Roy," the cattleman said, speaking his thoughts aloud. "How about it, son? Pat is right. This will hurt him, but it wouldn't hurt you or me a bit. Say the word and all three of us will refuse to tell which one shot Meldrum."

"I'm willing," Roy agreed. "And I've been looking up ancient history, Mr. Ryan. I don't think you were as bad as you painted yourself to me once. I'm ready to shake hands with you whenever you like."

The little Irishman flushed. He shook hands with shining eyes.

"That's why I was tickled when Miss Beulah asked me to come up and turn loose that coyote. It's a God's truth that I hoped he'd fight. I wanted to do you a good bit of wolf-killing if I could. And I've done it . . . and I'm not sorry. He had it coming if iver a man had."

"Did you say that Beulah Rutherford sent you up here?" asked Roy.

"She asked me to come. Yis."

"Why?"

"I can only guess her reasons. She didn't want you to come and she couldn't ask Ned for fear he would gun the fellow. So she just picked on a red-headed runt of an Irishman."

"While we're so close, let's ride across to Huerfano Park," suggested Dave. "I haven't been there in twenty years."

That suited Roy exactly. As they rode across the hills his mind was full of Beulah. She had sent Ryan up so that he could get Meldrum away before her lover arrived. Was it because she was afraid Roy might show the white feather? Or was it because she feared for his safety? He wished he knew.

Chapter XXIX

A New Leaf

Hal Rutherford himself met the three riders as they drew up at the horse ranch. He asked no verbal questions, but his eyes ranged curiously from one to another.

"'Light, gentlemen. I been wanting to see you especially, Mr. Beaudry," he said.

"I reckon you know where we've been, Hal," answered Dave after he had dismounted.

"I reckon."

"We got a little news for public circulation. You can pass the word among the boys. Dan Meldrum was shot three hours ago beside the pit where Miss Beulah was imprisoned. His body is in the prospect hole now. You might send some lads with spades to bury him."

"One of you shot him."

"You done guessed it, Hal. One of us helped him out of that pit intending to see he hit the dust to Mexico. Dan was loaded to the guards with suspicions. He chose to make it a gun-play. Fired twice. The one of us that took him out of the pit fired back and dropped him first crack. All of us saw the affair. It happened just as I've told you."

"But which of you--?"

"That's the only point we can't remember. It was one of us, but we've forgotten which one."

"Suits me if it does you. I'll thank all three of you, then." Rutherford cleared his throat and plunged on. "Boys, to-day kinder makes an epoch in Huerfano Park. Jess Tighe died yesterday and Dan Meldrum to-day. They were both bad citizens. There were others of us that were bad citizens, too. Well, it's right-about face for us. We travel broad trails from now on. Right now the park starts in to make a new record for itself."

Dave offered his hand, and with it went the warm smile that made him the most popular man in Washington County. "Listens fine, Hal. I sure am glad to hear you say so."

"I niver had any kick against the Rutherfords. They were open and aboveboard, anyhow, in all their diviltry," contributed Ryan to the pact of peace.

Nobody looked at Roy, but he felt the weight of their thoughts. All four of them bore in mind the death of John Beaudry. His son spoke quietly.

"Mr. Rutherford, I've been thinking of my father a good deal these last few days. I want to do as he would have me do about this thing. I'm not going to chop my words. He gave his life to bring law and order into this country, The men who killed him were guilty of murder. That's an ugly word, but it's the true one."

The grim face of the big hillman did not twitch. "I'll take the word from you. Go on."

"But I've been thinking more and more that he would want me to forget that. Tighe and Meldrum are gone. Sheriff Beaudry worked for the good of the community. That is all he asked. It is for the best interest of Washington County that we bury the past. If you say so, I'll shake hands on that and we'll all face to the future. Just as you say."

Dingwell grinned. "Hooray! Big Chief Dave will now make oration. You've got the right idea, son. I knew Jack Beaudry. There wasn't an atom of revenge in his game body. His advice would have been to shake hands. That's mine, too."

The hillman and Roy followed it.

Upon the porch a young woman appeared.

"I've written those letters for you, dad," she called.

Roy deserted the peace conference at once and joined her.

"Oh! I didn't know it was you," she cried. "I'm so glad you came this way. Was it . . . all right?"

"Right as the wheat. Why did you send Pat up Del Oro?"

She looked at him with eyes incredibly kind and shy. "Because I . . . didn't want to run any chance of losing my new beau."

"Are you sure that was your only reason?"

"Certain sure. I didn't trust Meldrum, and . . . I thought you had taken chances enough with him. So I gave Mr. Ryan an opportunity."

"He took it," her lover answered gravely.

She glanced at him quickly. "You mean--?"

"Never mind what I mean now. We've more important things to talk about. I haven't seen you for eight hours, and thirty-three minutes."

Rutherford turned his guests over to Ned, who led the way to the stable. The ranchman joined the lovers. He put an arm around Beulah.

"Boots has done told me about you two, Mr. Beaudry. I'm eternally grateful to you for bringing back my little girl to me, and if you all feel right sure you care for each other I've got nothing to say but 'God bless you.' You're a white man. You're decent. I believe you'll be kind to her."

"I'm going to try to the best I know, Mr. Rutherford."

"You'd better, young man." The big rancher swallowed a lump in his throat and passed to another phase of the subject. "Boots was telling me about how it kinder stuck in yore craw to marry the daughter of Hal Rutherford, seeing as how things happened the way they did. Well, I'm going to relieve yore mind. She's the one that has got the forgiving to do, not you. She knew it all the time, too, but she didn't tell it. Beulah is the daughter of my brother Anse. I took her from the arms of her dying mother when she was a little trick that couldn't crawl. She's not the daughter of the man that shot yore father. She's the daughter of the man yore father shot."

"Oh!" gasped Roy.

Beulah went to her lover arrow-swift.

"My dear . . . my dear! What does it matter now? Dad says my father was killed in fair fight. He had set himself against the law. It took his life. Your father didn't."

"But--"

"Oh, his was the hand. But he was sheriff. He did only his duty. That's true, isn't it, dad?"

"I reckon."

Her strong young hands gripped tightly those of her lover. She looked proudly into his eyes with that little flare of feminine ferocity in hers.

"I won't have it any other way, Roy Beaudry. You're the man I'm going to marry, the man who is going to be the father of my children if God gives me any. No blood stands between us--nothing but the memory of brave men who misunderstood each other and were hurt because of it. Our marriage puts an end forever to even the memory of the wrong they did each other. That is the way it is to me--and that's the way it has got to be to you, too."

Roy laughed softly, tears in his eyes. As he looked at her eager young beauty the hot life in his pulses throbbed. He snatched her to him with an ardor as savage as her own.

THE END

OF THE BEGINNING

Contents

A MAN FOUR-SQUARE

BY WILLIAM MAC LEOD RAINE

Prologue

A girl sat on the mossy river-bank in the dappled, golden sunlight. Frowning eyes fixed on a sweeping eddy, she watched without seeing the racing current. Her slim, supple body, crouched and tense, was motionless, but her soul seethed tumultuously. In the bosom of her coarse linsey gown lay hidden a note. Through it destiny called her to the tragic hour of decision.

The foliage of the young pawpaws stirred behind her. Furtively a pair of black eyes peered forth and searched the opposite bank of the stream, the thicket of rhododendrons above, the blooming laurels below. Very stealthily a handsome head pushed out through the leaves.

"'Lindy," a voice whispered.

The girl gave a start, slowly turned her head. She looked at the owner of the voice from steady, deep-lidded eyes. The pulse in her brown throat began to beat. One might have guessed her with entire justice a sullen lass, untutored of life, passionate, and high-spirited, resentful of all restraint. Hers was such beauty as lies in rich blood beneath dark coloring, in dusky hair and eyes, in the soft, warm contours of youth. Already she was slenderly full, an elemental daughter of Eve, primitive as one of her fur-clad ancestors. No forest fawn could have been more sensuous or innocent than she.

Again the man's glance swept the landscape cautiously before he moved out from cover. In the country of the Clantons there was always an open season on any one of his name.

"What are you doin' here, Dave Roush?" the girl demanded. "Are you crazy?"

"I'm here because you are, 'Lindy Clanton," he answered promptly. "That's a right good reason, ain't it?"

The pink splashed into her cheeks like spilled wine.

"You'd better go. If dad saw you--"

He laughed hardily. "There'd be one less Roush--or one less Clanton," he finished for her.

Dave Roush was a large, well-shouldered man, impressive in spite of his homespun. If he carried himself with a swagger there was no lack of boldness in him to back it. His long hair was straight and black and coarse, a derivative from the Indian strain in his blood.

"Git my note?" he asked.

She nodded sullenly.

'Lindy had met Dave Roush at a dance up on Lonesome where she had no business to be. At the time she had been visiting a distant cousin in a cove adjacent to that creek. Some craving for adventure, some instinct of defiance, had taken her to the frolic where she knew the Roush clan would be in force. From the first sight of her Dave had wooed her with a careless bravado that piqued her pride and intrigued her interest. The girl's imagination translated in terms of romance his insolence and audacity. Into her starved existence he brought color and emotion.

Did she love him? 'Lindy was not sure. He moved her at times to furious anger, and again to inarticulate longings she did not understand. For though she was heritor of a life full-blooded and undisciplined, every fiber of her was clean and pure. There were hours when she hated him, glimpsed in him points of view that filled her with vague distrust. But always he attracted her tremendously.

"You're goin' with me, gal," he urged.

Close to her hand was a little clump of forget-me-nots which had pushed through the moss. 'Lindy feigned to be busy picking the blossoms.

"No," she answered sulkily.

"Yes. To-night--at eleven o'clock, 'Lindy,--under the big laurel."

While she resented his assurance, it none the less coerced her. She did not want a lover who groveled in the dust before her. She wanted one to sweep her from her feet, a young Lochinvar to compel her by the force of his personality.

"I'll not be there," she told him.

"We'll git right across the river an' be married inside of an hour."

"I tell you I'm not goin' with you. Quit pesterin' me."

His devil-may-care laugh trod on the heels of her refusal. He guessed shrewdly that circumstances were driving her to him. The girl was full of resentment at her father's harsh treatment of her. Her starved heart craved love. She was daughter of that Clanton who led the feud against the Roush family and its adherents. Dave took his life in his hands every time he crossed the river to meet her. Once he had swum the stream in the night to keep an appointment. He knew that his wildness, his reckless courage and contempt of danger, argued potently for him. She was coming to him as reluctantly and surely as a wild turkey answers the call of the hunter.

The sound of a shot, not distant, startled them. He crouched, wary as a rattlesnake about to strike. The rifle seemed almost to leap forward.

"Hit's Bud--my brother Jimmie." She pushed him back toward the pawpaws. "Quick! Burn the wind!"

"What about to-night? Will you come?"

"Hurry. I tell you hit's Bud. Are you lookin' for trouble?"

He stopped stubbornly at the edge of the thicket. "I ain't runnin' away from it. I put a question to ye. When I git my answer mebbe I'll go. But I don't 'low to leave till then."

"I'll meet ye there if I kin git out. Now go," she begged.

The man vanished in the pawpaws. He moved as silently as one of his Indian ancestors.

'Lindy waited, breathless lest her brother should catch sight of him. She knew that if Jimmie saw Roush there would be shooting and one or the other would fall.

A rifle shot rang out scarce a hundred yards from her. The heart of the girl stood still. After what seemed an interminable time there came to her the sound of a care-free whistle. Presently her brother sauntered into view, a dead squirrel in his hand. The tails of several others bulged from the game bag by his side. The sister did not need to be told that four out of five had been shot through the head.

"Thought I heard voices. Was some one with you, sis?" the boy asked.

"Who'd be with me here?" she countered lazily.

A second time she was finding refuge in the for-get-me-nots.

He was a barefoot little fellow, slim and hard as a nail. In his hand he carried an old-fashioned rifle almost as long as himself. There was a lingering look of childishness in his tanned, boyish face. His hands and feet were small and shapely as those of a girl. About him hung the stolid imperturbability of the Southern mountaineer. Times were when his blue eyes melted to tenderness or mirth; yet again the cunning of the jungle narrowed them to slits hard, as jade. Already, at the age of fourteen, he had been shot at from ambush, had wounded a Roush at long range, had taken part in a pitched battle. The law of the feud was tempering his heart to implacability.

The keen gaze of the boy rested on her. Ever since word had reached the Clantons of how 'Lindy had "carried on" with Dave Roush at the dance on Lonesome her people had watched her suspiciously. The thing she had done had been a violation of the hill code and old Clay Clanton had thrashed her with a cowhide till she begged for mercy. Jimmie had come home from the still to find her writhing in passionate revolt. The boy had been furious at his father; yet had admitted the substantial justice of the punishment. Its wisdom he doubted. For he knew his sister to be stubborn as old Clay himself, and he feared lest they drive her to the arms of Bad Dave Roush.

"I reckon you was talkin' to yo'self, mebbe," he suggested.

"I reckon."

They walked home together along a path through the rhododendrons. The long, slender legs of the girl moved rhythmically and her arms swung like pendulums. Life in the open had given her the litheness and the grace of a woodland creature. The mountain woman is cheated of her youth almost before she has learned to enjoy it. But 'Lindy was still under eighteen. Her warm vitality still denied the coming of a day when she would be a sallow, angular snuff-chewer.

Within sight of the log cabin the girl lingered for a moment by the sassafras bushes near the spring. Some deep craving for sympathy moved her to alien speech. She turned upon him with an imperious, fierce tenderness in her eyes.

"You'll never forgit me, Bud? No matter what happens, you'll--you'll not hate me?"

Her unusual emotion embarrassed and a little alarmed him. "Oh, shucks! They ain't anything goin' to happen, sis. What's ailin' you?"

"But if anything does. You'll not hate me--you'll remember I allus thought a heap of you, Jimmie?" she insisted.

"Doggone it, if you're still thinkin' of that scalawag Dave Roush--" He broke off, moved by some touch of prescient tragedy in her young face. "'Course I ain't ever a-goin' to forgit you none, sis. Hit ain't likely, is it?"

It was a comfort to him afterward to recall that he submitted to her impulsive caress without any visible irritability.

'Lindy busied herself preparing supper for her father and brother. Ever since her mother died when the child was eleven she had been the family housekeeper.

At dusk Clay Clanton came in and stood his rifle in a corner of the room. His daughter recognized ill-humor in the grim eyes of the old man. He was of a tall, gaunt figure, strongly built, a notable fighter with his fists in the brawling days before he "got religion" at a camp meeting. Now his Calvinism was of the sternest. Dancing he held to be of the devil. Card-playing was a sin. If he still drank freely, his drinking was within bounds. But he did not let his piety interfere with the feud. Within the year, pillar of the church though he was, he had been carried home riddled with bullets. Of the four men who had waylaid him two had been buried next day and a third had kept his bed for months.

He ate for a time in dour silence before he turned harshly on 'Lindy.

"You ain't havin' no truck with Dave Roush are you? Not meetin' up with him on the sly?" he demanded, his deep-set eyes full of menace under the heavy, grizzled brows.

"No, I ain't," retorted the girl, and her voice was sullen and defiant.

"See you don't, lessen yo' want me to tickle yore back with the bud again. I don't allow to put up with no foolishness." He turned in explanation to the boy. "Brad Nickson seen him this side of the river to-day. He says this ain't the fustest time Roush has been seen hangin' 'round the cove."

The boy's wooden face betrayed nothing. He did not look at his sister. But suspicions began to troop through his mind. He thought again of the voices he had heard by the river and he remembered that it had become a habit of the girl to disappear for hours in the afternoon.

'Lindy went to her room early. She nursed against her father not only resentment, but a strong feeling of injustice. He would not let her attend the frolics of the neighborhood because of his scruples against dancing. Yet she had heard him tell how he used to dance till daybreak when he was a young man. What right had he to cut her off from the things that made life tolerable?

She was the heritor of lawless, self-willed, passionate ancestors. Their turbulent blood beat in her veins. All the safeguards that should have hedged her were gone. A wise mother, an understanding father, could have saved her from the tragedy waiting to engulf her. But she had neither of these. Instead, her father's inhibitions pushed her toward that doom to which she was moving blindfold.

Before her cracked mirror the girl dressed herself bravely in her cheap best. She had no joy in the thing she was going to do. Of her love she was not sure and of her lover very unsure. A bell of warning rang faintly in her heart as she waited for the hours to slip away.

A very little would have turned the tide. But she nursed her anger against her father, fed her resentment with the memory of all his wrongs to her. When at last she crept through the window to the dark porch trellised with wild cucumbers, she persuaded herself that she was going only to tell Dave Roush that she would not join him.

Her heart beat fast with excitement and dread. Poor, undisciplined daughter of the hills though she was, a rumor of the future whispered in her ears and weighted her bosom.

Quietly she stole past the sassafras brake to the big laurel. Her lover took her instantly into his arms and kissed the soft mouth again and again. She tried to put him from her, to protest that she was not going with him. But before his ardor her resolution melted. As always, when he was with her, his influence was paramount.

"The boat is under that clump of bushes," he whispered.

"Oh, Dave, I'm not goin'," she murmured.

"Then I'll go straight to the house an' have it out with the old man," he answered.

His voice rang gay with the triumph of victory. He did not intend to let her hesitations rob him of it.

"Some other night," she promised. "Not now--I don't want to go now. I--I'm not ready."

"There's no time like to-night, honey. My brother came with me in the boat. We've got horses waitin'--an' the preacher came ten miles to do the job."

Then, with the wisdom born of many flirtations, he dropped argument and wooed her ardently. The anchors that held the girl to safety dragged. The tug of sex, her desire of love and ignorance of life, his eager and passionate demand that she trust him: all these swelled the tide that beat against her prudence.

She caught his coat lapels tightly in her clenched fists.

"If I go I'll be givin' up everything in the world for you, Dave Roush. My folks'll hate me. They'd never speak to me again. You'll be good to me. You won't cast it up to me that I ran away with you. You'll--you'll--" Her voice broke and she gulped down a little sob.

He laughed. She could not see his face in the darkness, but the sound of his laughter was not reassuring. He should have met her appeal seriously.

The girl drew back.

He sensed at once his mistake. "Good to you!" he cried. "'Lindy, I'm a-goin' to be the best ever."

"I ain't got any mother, Dave." Again she choked in her throat. "You wouldn't take advantage of me, would you?"

He protested hotly. Desiring only to be convinced, 'Lindy took one last precaution.

"Swear you'll do right by me always."

He swore it.

She put her hand in his and he led her to the boat.

Ranse Roush was at the oars. Before he had taken a dozen strokes a wave of terror swept over her. She was leaving behind forever that quiet, sunny cove where she had been brought up. The girl began to shiver against the arm of her lover. She heard again the sound of his low, triumphant laughter.

It was too late to turn back now. No hysterical request to be put back on her side of the river would move these men. Instinctively she knew that. From to-night she was to be a Roush.

They found horses tied to saplings in a small cove close to the river. The party mounted and rode into the hills. Except for the ring of the horses' hoofs there was no sound for miles. 'Lindy was the first to speak.

"Ain't this Quicksand Creek?" she asked of her lover as they forded a stream.

He nodded. "The sands are right below us--not more'n seven or eight steps down here Cal Henson was sucked under."

After another stretch ridden in silence they turned up a little cove to a light shining in a cabin window. The brothers alighted and Dave helped the girl down. He pushed open the door and led the way inside.

A man sat by the fireside with his feet on the table. He was reading a newspaper. A jug of whiskey and a glass were within reach of his hand. Without troubling to remove his boots from the table, he looked up with a leer at the trembling girl.

Dave spoke at once. "We'll git it over with. The sooner the quicker."

'Lindy's heart was drenched with dread. She shrank from the three pairs of eyes focused upon her as if they had belonged to wolves. She had hoped that the preacher might prove a benevolent old man, but this man with the heavy thatch of unkempt, red hair and furtive eyes set askew offered no comfort. If there had been a single friend of her family present, if there had been any woman at all! If she could even be sure of the man she was about to marry!

It seemed to her that the preacher was sneering when he put the questions to which she answered quaveringly. Vaguely she felt the presence of some cruel, sinister jest of which she was the sport.

After the ceremony had been finished the three men drank together while she sat white-faced before the fire. When at last Ranse Roush and the red-headed preacher left the cabin, both of them were under the influence of liquor. Dave had drunk freely himself.

'Lindy would have given her hopes of heaven to be back safely in the little mud-daubed bedroom she had called her own.

Three days later 'Lindy wakened to find a broad ribbon of sunshine across the floor of the cabin. Her husband had not come home at all the night before. She shivered with self-pity and dressed slowly. Already she knew that her life had gone to wreck, that it would be impossible to live with Dave Roush and hold her self-respect.

But she had cut herself off from retreat. All of her friends belonged to the Clanton faction and they would not want to have anything to do with her. She had no home now but this, no refuge against the neglect and insults of this man with whom she had elected to go through life. To her mind came the verdict of old Nance Cunningham on the imprudent marriage of another girl: "Randy's done made her bed; I reckon she's got to lie on it."

A voice hailed the cabin from outside. She went to the door. Ranse Roush and the red-haired preacher had ridden into the clearing and were dismounting. They had with them a led horse.

"Fix up some breakfast," ordered Ranse.

The young wife flushed. She resented his tone and his manner. Like Dave, he too assumed that she had come to be a drudge for the whole drunken clan, a creature to be sneered at and despised.

Silently she cooked a meal for the men. The girl was past tears. She had wept herself out.

While they ate the men told of her father's fury when he had discovered the elopement, of how he had gone down to the mill and cast her off with a father's curse, renouncing all relationship with her forever. It was a jest that held for them a great savor. They made sport of him and of the other Clantons till she could keep still no longer.

"I won't stand this! I don't have to! Where's Dave?" she demanded, eyes flashing with contempt and anger.

Ranse grinned, then turned to his companion with simulated perplexity. "Where is Dave, Brother Hugh?"

"Damfino," replied the red-headed man, and the girl could see that he was gloating over her. "Last night he was at a dance on God Forgotten Crick. Dave's soft on a widow up there, you know."

The color ebbed from the face of the wife. One of her hands clutched at the back of a chair till the knuckles stood out white and bloodless. Her eyes fastened with a growing horror upon those of the red-headed man. She had come to the edge of an awful discovery.

"You're no preacher. Who are you?"

"Me?" His smile was cruel as death. "You done guessed it, sister. I'm Hugh Roush--Dave's brother."

"An'--an'--my marriage was all a lie?"

"Did ye think Dave Roush would marry a Clanton? He's a bad lot, Dave is, but he ain't come that low yet."

For the first and last time in her life 'Lindy fainted.

Presently she floated back to consciousness and the despair of a soul mortally stricken. She saw it all now. The lies of Dave Roush had enticed her into a trap. He had been working for revenge against the family he hated, especially against brave old Clay Clanton who had killed two of his kin within the year. With the craft inherited from savage ancestors he had sent a wound more deadly than any rifle bullet could carry. The Clantons were proud folks, and he had dragged their pride in the mud.

If the two brothers expected her to make a scene, they were disappointed. Numb with the shock of the blow, she made no outcry and no reproach.

"Git a move on ye, gal," ordered Ranse after he had finished eating. "You're goin' with us, so you better hurry."

"What are you goin' to do with me?" she asked dully.

"Why, Dave don't want you any more. We're goin' to send you home."

"I reckon yore folks will kill the fatted calf for you," jeered Hugh Roush. "They tell me you always been mighty high-heeled, 'Lindy Clanton. Mebbe you won't hold yore head so high now."

The girl rode between them down from the hills. Who knows into what an agony of fear and remorse and black despair she fell? She could not go home a cast-off, a soiled creature to be scorned and pointed at. She dared not meet her father. It would be impossible to look her little brother Jimmie in the face. Would they believe the story she told? And if they were convinced of its truth, what difference would that make? She was what she was, no matter how she had become so.

On the pike they met old Nance Cunningham returning from the mill with a sack of meal. The story of that meeting was one the old gossip told after the tragedy to many an eager circle of listeners,

"She jes' lifted her han' an' stopped me, an' if death was ever writ on a human face it shorely wuz stomped on hers. 'I want you to tell my father I'm sorry,' she sez. 'He swore he'd marry me inside of an hour. This man hyer--his brother--made out like he wuz a preacher an' married us. Tell my father that an' ask him to forgive me if he can.' That wuz all she said. Ranse Roush hit her horse with a switch an' sez, 'Yo' kin tell him all that yore own self soon as you git home.' I reckon I wuz the lastest person she spoke to alive."

They left the old woman staring after them with her mouth open. It could have been only a few minutes later that they reached Quicksand Creek.

'Lindy pulled up her horse to let the men precede her through the ford. They splashed into the shallows on the other side of the creek and waited for her to join them. Instead, she slipped from the saddle, ran down the bank, and plunged into the quicksand.

"Goddlemighty!" shrieked Ranse. "She's a-drowndin' herself in the sands."

They spurred their horses back across the creek and ran to rescue the girl. But she had flung herself forward face down far out of their reach. They dared not venture into the quivering bog after her. While they still stared in a frozen horror, the tragedy was completed. The victim of their revenge had disappeared beneath the surface of the morass.

Chapter I

"Call Me Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em"

The boy had spent the night at a water-hole in a little draw near the foot of the mesa. He had supped on cold rations and slept in his blanket without the comfort of glowing piñon knots. For yesterday he had cut Indian signs and after dark had seen the shadow of Apache camp-fires reflected in the clouds.

After eating he swung to the bare back of his pony and climbed to the summit of the butte. His trained eyes searched the plains. A big bunch of antelope was trailing down to water almost within rifle-shot. But he was not looking for game.

He sniffed the smoke from the pits where the renegades were roasting mescal and judged the distance to the Apache camp at close to ten miles. His gaze swept toward the sunrise horizon and rested upon a cloud of dust. That probably meant a big herd of cattle crossing to the Pecos Valley on the Chisum Trail that led to Fort Stanton. The riders were likely just throwing the beeves from the bed-ground to the trail. The boy waited to make sure of their line of travel.

Presently he spoke aloud, after the fashion of the plainsman who spends much time alone in the saddle. "Looks like they'll throw off to-night close to the 'Pache camp. If they do hell's a-goin' to pop just before sunup to-morrow. I reckon I'll ride over and warn the outfit."

From a trapper the boy had learned that a band of Mescalero Apaches had left the reservation three weeks before, crossed into Mexico, gone plundering down the Pecos, and was now heading back toward the Staked Plains. Evidently the drover did not know this, since he was moving his cattle directly toward the Indian camp.

The young fellow let his cowpony pick its way down the steep shale hill to the draw. He saddled without a waste motion, packed his supplies deftly, mounted, and was off. In the way he cut across the desert toward the moving herd was the certainty of the frontiersman. He did not hurry, but he wasted no time. His horse circled in and out among the sand dunes, now topped a hill, now followed a wash. Every foot of the devious trail was the most economical possible.

At the end of nearly an hour's travel he pulled up, threw down his bridle reins, and studied the ground carefully. He had cut Indian sign. What he saw would have escaped the notice of a tenderfoot, and if it had been pointed out to him none but an expert trailer would have understood its significance. Yet certain facts were printed here on the desert for this boy as plainly as if they had been stenciled on a guide-post. He knew that within forty-eight hours a band of about twenty Mescalero bucks had returned to camp this way from an antelope hunt and that they carried with them half a dozen pronghorns. It was a safe guess that they were part of the large camp the smoke of which he had seen.

Long before the young man struck the drive, he knew he was close by the cloud of dust and the bawling of the cattle. His course across country had been so accurate that he hit the herd at the point without deflecting.

An old Texan drew up, changed his weight on the saddle to rest himself, and hailed the youngster.

"Goin' somewheres, kid, or just ridin'?" he asked genially.

"Just takin' my hawss out for a jaunt so's he won't get hog-fat," grinned the boy.

The Texan chewed tobacco placidly and eyed the cowpony. The horse had been ridden so far that he was a bag of bones.

"Looks some gaunted," he commented.

"Four Bits is so thin he won't throw a shadow," admitted the boy.

"Come a right smart distance, I reckon?"

"You done said it."

"Where you headin' for?"

"For Deaf Smith County. I got an uncle there. Saw your dust an' dropped over to tell you that a big bunch of 'Paches are camped just ahead of you."

The older man looked at him keenly. "How do you know, son?"

"Smelt their smoke an' cut their trail."

"Know Injuns, do you?"

"I trailed with Al Sieber 'most two years."

To have served with Sieber for any length of time was a certificate of efficiency. He was the ablest scout in the United States Army. Through his skill and energy Geronimo and his war braves were later forced to give themselves up to the troops.

"'Nuff said. Are these 'Paches liable to make us any trouble?"

"Yes, sir. I think they are. They're a bunch of broncos from the reservation an' they have been across the line stealin' horses an' murderin' settlers. They will sure try to stampede your cattle an' run off a lot of 'em."

"Hmp! You better go back an' see old man Webb about it. What's yore name, kid?"

For just an eye-beat the boy hesitated. "Call me Jim Thursday."

A glimmer of a smile rested in the eyes of the Texan. He was willing to bet that this young fellow would not have given him that name if to-day had not happened to be the fifth day of the week. But it was all one to the cowpuncher. To question a man too closely about his former residence and manner of life was not good form on the frontier.

"I'll call you Jim from Sunday to Saturday," he said, pulling a tobacco pouch from his hip pocket. "My name is Wrayburn--Dad Wrayburn, the boys call me."

The Texan shouted to the man riding second on the swing. "Oh, you, Billie Prince!"

A tanned, good-looking young fellow cantered up.

"Meet Jimmie Thursday, Billie," the old-timer said by way of introduction. "This boy says there's heap many Injuns on the war-path right ahead of us. I reckon I'll let you take the point while I ride back with him an' put it up to the old man."

The "old man" turned out to be a short, heavy-set Missourian who had served in the Union Army and won a commission by intelligence and courage. Wherever the name of Homer Webb was known it stood for integrity and square-dealing. His word was as good as a signed bond.

Webb had come out of the war without a cent, but with a very definite purpose. During the last year of the Confederacy, while it was tottering to its fall, he had served in Texas. The cattle on the range had for years been running wild, the owners and herdsmen being absent with the Southern army. They had multiplied prodigiously, so that many thousands of mavericks roamed without brand, the property of any one who would round them up and put an iron on their flanks. The money value of them was very little. A standard price for a yearling was a plug of tobacco. But Webb looked to the future. He hired two riders, gathered together a small remuda of culls, and went into the cattle business with energy. To-day the Flying V Y was stamped on forty thousand longhorns.

The foreman of the Flying V Y was riding with the owner of the brand at the drag end of the herd. He was a hard-faced citizen known as Joe Yankie. When Wrayburn had finished his story, the foreman showed a row of tobacco-stained teeth in an unpleasant grin.

"Same old stuff, Dad. There always is a bunch of bucks off the reservation an' they're always just goin' to run our cattle away. If you ask me there's nothin' to it."

Young Thursday flushed. "If you'll ride out with me I'll show you their trail."

Yankie looked at him with a sneer. He guessed this boy to be about eighteen. There was a suggestion of effeminacy about the lad's small, well-shaped hands and feet. He was a slender, smooth-faced youth with mild blue eyes. It occurred to Webb, too, that the stranger might have imagined the Apaches. But in his motions was something of the lithe grace of the puma. It was part of the business of the cattleman to judge men and he was not convinced that this young fellow was as inoffensive as he looked.

"Where you from?" asked the drover.

"From the San Carlos Agency."

"Ever meet a man named Micky Free out there?"

"I've slept under the same tarp with him many's the time when we were followin' Chiricahua 'Paches. He's the biggest dare-devil that ever forked a horse."

"Describe him."

"Micky's face is a map of Ireland. He's got only one eye; a buck punched the other out when he was a kid. His hair is red an' he wears it long."

"Any beard?"

"A bristly little red mustache."

"That's Micky to a T." Webb made up his mind swiftly. "The boy's all right, Yankie. He'll do to take along."

"It's your outfit. Suits me if he does you." The foreman turned insolently to the newcomer. "What'd you say your name was, sissie?"

The eyes of the boy, behind narrowed lids, grew hard as steel.

"Call me Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em," he drawled in a soft voice, every syllable distinct.

There was a moment of chill silence. A swift surprise had flared into the eyes of the foreman. The last thing in the world he had expected was to have his bad temper resented so promptly by this smooth-faced little chap. Since Yankie was the camp bully he bristled up to protect his reputation.

"Better not get on the prod with me, young fellow me lad. I'm liable to muss up your hair. Me, I'm from the Strip, where folks grow man-size."

The youngster smiled, but there was no mirth in that thin-lipped smile. He knew, as all men did, that the Cherokee Strip was the home of desperadoes and man-killers. The refuse of the country, driven out by the law of more settled communities, found here a refuge from punishment. But if the announcement of the foreman impressed him, he gave no sign of it.

"Why didn't you stay there?" he asked with bland innocence.

Yankie grew apoplectic. He did not care to discuss the reasons why he had first gone to the Strip or the reasons why he had come away. This girl-faced boy was the only person who had asked for a bill of particulars. Moreover, the foreman did not know whether the question had been put in child-like ignorance of any possible offense or with an impudent purpose to enrage him.

"Don't run on the rope when I'm holdin' it, kid," he advised roughly. "You're liable to get thrown hard."

"And then again I'm liable not to," lisped the youth from Arizona gently.

The bully looked the slim newcomer over again, and as he looked there rang inside him some tocsin of warning. Thursday sat crouched in the saddle, wary as a rattlesnake ready to strike. A sawed-off shotgun lay under his leg within reach of his hand, the butt of a six-gun was even closer to those smooth, girlish fingers. In the immobility of his figure and the steadiness of the blue eyes was a deadly menace.

Yankie was no coward. He would go through if he had to. But there was still time to draw back if he chose. He was not exactly afraid; on the other hand, he did not feel at all easy.

He contrived a casual, careless laugh. "All right, kid. I don't have to rob the cradle to fill my private graveyard. Go get your Injuns. It will be all right with me."

Webb drew a breath of relief. There was to be no gunplay after all. He had had his own reasons for not interfering sooner, but he knew that the situation had just grazed red tragedy.

"I'm goin' to take the boy's advice," he announced to Yankie. "Ride forward an' swing the herd toward that big red butte. We'll give our Mescalero friends a wide berth if we can."

The foreman hung in the saddle a moment before he turned to go. He had to save his face from a public back-down, "Bet you a week's pay there's nothin' to it, Webb."

"Hope you're right, Joe," his employer answered.

As soon as Yankie had cantered away, Dad Wrayburn, ex-Confederate trooper, slapped his hand on his thigh and let out a modulated rebel yell.

"Dad burn my hide, Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em, you're all right. Fustest time I ever saw Joe take water, but he shorely did splash some this here occasion. I wouldn't 'a' missed it for a bunch of hog-fat yearlin's."

Webb had not been sorry to see his arrogant foreman brought up with a sharp turn, but in the interest of discipline he did not care to say so.

"Why can't you boys get along peaceable with Joe, I'd like to know? This snortin' an' pawin' up the ground don't get you anything."

"I reckon Joe does most of the snortin' that's done," Wrayburn answered dryly. "I ain't had any trouble with him, because he spends a heap of time lettin' me alone. But there's no manner of doubt that Joe rides the boys too hard."

The drover dismissed the subject and turned to Thursday.

"Want a job?"

"Mebbe so."

"I need another man. Since you sabe the ways of the 'Paches I can use you to scout ahead for us."

"What you payin'?"

"Fifty a month."

"You've hired a hand."

"Good enough. Better pick one of the boys to ride with you while you are out scoutin'."

"I'll take Billie Prince," decided the new rider at once.

"You know Billie?"

"Never saw him before to-day. But I like his looks. He's a man to tie to."

"You're right he is."

The drover looked at his new employee with a question in his shrewd eyes. The boy was either a man out of a thousand or he was a first-class bluffer. He claimed to have cut Indian sign and to know exactly what was written there. At a single glance he had sized up Prince and knew him for a reliable side partner. Without any bluster he had served notice on Yankie that it would be dangerous to pick on him as the butt of his ill-temper.

In those days, on the Pecos, law lay in a holster on a man's thigh. The individual was a force only so far as his personality impressed itself upon his fellows. If he made claims he must be prepared to back them to a fighting finish.

Was this young Thursday a false alarm? Or was he a good man to let alone when one was looking for trouble? Webb could not be sure yet, though he made a shrewd guess. But he knew it would not he long before he found out.

Chapter II

Shoot-a-Buck Cañon

Webb sent for Billie Prince.

"Seems there's a bunch of bronco 'Paches camped ahead of us, Billie. Thursday here trailed with Sieber. I want you an' him to scout in front of us an' see we don't run into any ambush. You're under his orders, y' understand."

Prince was a man of few words. He nodded.

"You know the horses that the boys claim. Well, take Thursday to the remuda an' help him pick a mount from the extras in place of that broomtail he's ridin'," continued the drover. "Look alive now. I don't want my cattle stampeded because we haven't got sense enough to protect 'em. No 'Paches can touch a hoof of my stock if I can help it."

"If they attack at all it will probably be just before daybreak, but it is just as well to be ready for 'em," suggested Thursday.

"I brought along some old Sharps an' some Spencers. I reckon I'll have 'em loaded an' distribute 'em among the boys. Billie, tell Yankie to have that done. The rifles are racked up in the calf wagon."

Billie delivered the orders of the drover to the foreman as they passed on their way to the remuda. Joe gave a snort of derision, but let it go at that. When Homer Webb was with one of his trail outfits he was always its boss.

While Thursday watched him, Prince roped out a cinnamon horse from the remuda. The cowpuncher was a long-bodied man, smooth-muscled and lithe. The boy had liked his level eye and his clean, brown jaw before, just as now he approved the swift economy of his motions.

Probably Billie was about twenty years of age, but in that country men ripened young. Both of these lads had been brought up in that rough-and-ready school of life which holds open session every day of the year. Both had already given proofs of their ability to look out for themselves in emergency. A wise, cool head rested on each of these pairs of young shoulders. In this connection it is worth mentioning that the West's most famous outlaw, Billie the Kid, a killer with twenty-one notches on his gun, had just reached his majority when he met his death some years later at the hands of Pat Garrett.

The new rider for the Flying V Y outfit did not accept the judgment of Prince without confirming it. He examined the hoofs of the horse and felt its legs carefully. He looked well to its ears to make sure that ticks from the mesquite had not infected the silky inner flesh.

"A good bronc, looks like," he commented.

"One of the fastest in the remuda--not very gentle, though."

Thursday picked the witches' bridles from its mane before he saddled. As his foot found the stirrup the cinnamon rose into the air, humped its back, and came down with all four legs stiff. The quirt burned its flank, and the animal went up again to whirl round in the air. The boy stuck to the saddle and let out a joyous whoop. The battle was on.

Suddenly as it had begun the contest ended. With the unreasoning impulse of the half-broken cowpony the cinnamon subsided to gentle obedience.

The two riders cantered across the prairie in the direction of the Indian camp. That the Apaches were still there Thursday thought altogether likely, for he knew that it takes a week to make mescal. No doubt the raiders had stopped to hold a jamboree over the success of their outbreak.

The scouts from the cattle herd deflected toward a butte that pushed out as a salient into the plain. From its crest they could get a sweeping view of the valley.

"There's a gulch back of it that leads to old man Roubideau's place," explained Prince. "Last time we were on this Pecos drive the boss stopped an' bought a bunch of three-year-olds from him. He's got a daughter that's sure a pippin, old man Roubideau has. Shoot, ride, rope--that girl's got a lot of these alleged bullwhackers beat a mile at any one of 'em."

Thursday did not answer. He had left the saddle and was examining the ground carefully. Billie joined him. In the soft sand of the wash were tracks of horses' hoofs. Patiently the trailer followed them foot by foot to the point where they left the dry creek-bed and swung up the broken bank to a swale.

"Probably Roubideau and his son Jean after strays," suggested Prince.

"No. Notice this track here, how it's broken off at the edge. When I cut Indian sign yesterday, this was one of those I saw."

"Then these are 'Paches too?"

"Yes."

"Goin' to the Roubideau place." The voice of Billie was low and husky. His brown young face had been stricken gray. Bleak fear lay in the gray eyes. His companion knew he was thinking of the girl. "How many of 'em do you make out?"

"Six or seven. Not sure which."

"How old?"

"They passed here not an hour since."

It was as if a light of hope had been lit in the face of the young man. "Mebbe there's time to help yet. Kid, I'm goin' in."

Jim Thursday made no reply, unless it was one to vault to the saddle and put his horse to the gallop. They rode side by side, silently and alertly, rifles across the saddle-horns in their hands. The boy from Arizona looked at his new friend with an increase of respect. This was, of course, a piece of magnificent folly. What could two boys do against half a dozen wily savages? But it was the sort of madness that he loved. His soul went out in a gush of warm, boyish admiration to Billie Prince. It was the beginning of a friendship that was to endure, in spite of rivalry and division and misunderstanding, through many turbid years of trouble. This was no affair of theirs. Webb had sent them out to protect the cattle drive. They were neglecting his business for the sake of an adventure that might very well mean the death of both of them. But it was characteristic of Thursday that it never even occurred to him to let Prince take the chance alone. Even in the days to come, when his name was anathema in the land, nobody ever charged that he would not go through with a comrade.

There drifted to them presently the faint sound of a shot. It was followed by a second and a third.

"The fight's on," cried Thursday.

Billie's quirt stung the flank of his pony. Near the entrance to the cañon his companion caught up with him. From the rock walls of the gulch came to them booming echoes of rifles in action.

"Roubideau must be standin' 'em off," shouted Prince.

"Can we take the 'Paches by surprise? Is there any other way into the cañon?"

"Don't know. Can't stop to find out. I'm goin' straight up the road."

The younger man offered no protest. It might well be that the ranchman was in desperate case and in need of immediate help to save his family. Anyhow, the decision was out of his hands.

The horses pounded forward and swept round a curve of the gulch into sight of the ranch. In a semicircle, crouched behind the shelter of boulders and cottonwoods, the Indian line stretched across the gorge and along one wall. The buildings lay in a little valley, where an arroyo ran down at a right angle and broke the rock escarpment. A spurt of smoke came from a window of the stable as the rescuers galloped into view.

One of the Apaches caught sight of them and gave a guttural shout of warning. His gun jumped to the shoulder and simultaneously the bullet was on its way. But no living man could throw a shot quicker than Jim Thursday, if the stories still told of him around camp-fires are true. Now he did not wait to take sight, but fired from his hip. The Indian rose, half-turned, and fell forward across the boulder, his naked body shining in the sun. By a hundredth part of a second the white boy had out-speeded him.

The riders flung themselves from their horses and ran for cover.

The very audacity of their attack had its effect. The Indians guessed these two were the advance guard of a larger party which had caught them in a trap. Between two fires, with one line of retreat cut off, the bronco Apaches wasted no time in deliberation. They made a rush for their horses, mounted, and flew headlong toward the arroyo, their bodies lying low on the backs of the ponies.

The Indians rode superbly, their bare, sinewy legs gripping even to the moccasined feet the sides of the ponies. Without saddle or bridle, except for the simple nose rope, they guided their mounts surely, the brown bodies rising and falling in perfect accord with the motion of the horses.

A shot from the stable hit one as he galloped past. While his horse was splashing through the creek the Mescalero slid slowly down, head first, into the brawling water.

Billie took a long, steady aim and fired. A horse stumbled and went down, flinging the rider over its head. With a "Yip--Yip!" of triumph Thursday drew a bead on the man as he rose and dodged forward. Just as the boy fired a sharp pain stung his foot. One of the escaping natives had wounded him.

The dismounted man ran forward a few steps and pulled himself to the back of a pony already carrying one rider. Something in the man's gait and costume struck Prince.

"That fellow's no Injun," he called to his friend.

"Look!" Thursday was pointing to the saddle-back between two peaks at the head of the arroyo.

A girl on horseback had just come over the summit and stood silhouetted against the sky. Even in that moment while they watched her she realized for the first time her danger. She turned to fly, and she and her horse disappeared down the opposite slope. The Mescaleros swept up the hill toward her.

"They'll git her! They'll sure git her!" cried Billie, making for his horse.

The younger man ran limping to his cinnamon. At every step he winced, and again while his weight rested on the wounded foot as he dragged himself to the saddle. A dozen yards behind his companion he sent his horse splashing through the creek.

The cowponies, used to the heavy going in the hills, took the slope in short, quick plunges. Neither of the young men used the spur, for the chase might develop into a long one with stamina the deciding factor. The mesquite was heavy and the hill steep, but presently they struck a cattle run which led to the divide.

Two of the Apaches stopped at the summit for a shot at their pursuers, but neither of the young men wasted powder in answer. They knew that close-range work would prove far more deadly and that only a chance hit could serve them now.

From Billie, who had reached the crest first, came a cry of dismay. His partner, a moment later, knew the reason for it. One of the Apaches, racing across the valley below, was almost at the heels of the girl.

The cowpunchers flung their ponies down the sharp incline recklessly. The animals were sure-footed as mountain goats. Otherwise they could never have reached the valley right side up. It was a stretch of broken shale with much loose rubble. The soft sandstone farther along had eroded and there was a great deal of slack débris down which the horses slipped and slid, now on their haunches and again on all fours.

The valley stretched for a mile before them and terminated at a rock wall into which, no doubt, one or more cañons cut like sword clefts. The cowpunchers had picked mounts, but it was plain they could not overhaul the Apaches before the Indians captured the girl.

Billie, even while galloping at full speed, began a long-distance fire upon the enemy. One of the Mescaleros had caught the bridle of the young woman's horse and was stopping the animal. It looked for a moment as if the raiders were going to make a stand, but presently their purpose became clear to those in pursuit. The one that Billie had picked for a renegade white dropped from the horse upon which he was riding double and swung up behind the captive. The huddle of men and ponies opened up and was in motion again toward the head of the valley.

But though the transfer had been rapid, it had taken time. The pursuers, thundering across the valley, had gained fast. Rifles barked back and forth angrily.

The Indians swerved sharply to the left for the mouth of a cañon. Here they pulled up to check the cowboys, who slid from their saddles to use their ponies for protection.

"That gorge to the right is called Escondido Cañon," explained Prince. "We combed it for cattle last year. About three miles up it runs into the one where the 'Paches are! Don't remember the name of that one."

"I'll give it a new name," answered the boy. He raised his rifle, rested it across the back of his pony, and took careful aim. An Indian plunged from his horse. "Shoot-a-Buck Cañon--how'll that do for a name?" inquired Thursday with a grin.

Prince let out a whoop. "You got him right. He'll never smile again. Shoot-a-Buck Cañon goes."

The Indians evidently held a hurried consultation and changed their minds about holding the gorge against such deadly shooting as this.

"They're gun-shy," announced Thursday. "They don't like the way we fog 'em and they're goin' to hit the trail, Billie."

After one more shot Prince made the mistake of leaving the shelter of his horse too soon. He swung astride and found the stirrup. A puff of smoke came from the entrance to the gulch. Billie turned to his friend with a puzzled, sickly smile on his face. "They got me, kid."

"Bad?"

The cowboy began to sag in the saddle. His friend helped him to the ground. The wound was in the thigh.

"I'll tie it up for you an' you'll be good as new," promised his friend.

The older man looked toward the gorge. No Indians were in sight.

"I can wait, but that little girl in the hands of those devils can't. Are you game to play a lone hand, kid?" he asked.

"I reckon."

"Then ride hell-for-leather up Escondido. It's shorter than the way they took. Where the gulches come together be waitin' an' git 'em from the brush. There's just one slim chance you'll make it an' come back alive."

The boy's eyes were shining. "Suits me fine. I'll go earn that name I christened myself--Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em."

Billie, his face twisted with pain, watched the youngster disappear at a breakneck gallop into Escondido.

Chapter III

Ranse Roush Pays

Jim Thursday knew that his sole chance of success lay in reaching the fork of the cañons before the Indians. So far he had been lucky. Three Apaches had gone to their happy hunting ground, and though both he and Billie were wounded, his hurt at least did not interfere with accurate rifle-fire. But it was not reasonable to expect such good fortune to hold. In the party he was pursuing were four men, all of them used to warfare in the open. Unless he could take them at a disadvantage he could not by any possibility defeat them and rescue their captive.

His cinnamon pony took the rising ground at a steady gallop. Its stride did not falter, though its breathing was labored. Occasionally the rider touched its flank with the sharp rowel of a spur. The boy was a lover of horses. He had ridden too many dry desert stretches, had too often kept night watch over a sleeping herd, not to care for the faithful and efficient animal that served him and was a companion to his loneliness. Like many plainsmen he made of his mount a friend.

But he dared not spare his pony now. He must ride the heart out of the gallant brute for the sake of that life he had come to save. And while he urged it on, his hand patted the sweat-stained neck and his low voice sympathized.

"You've got to go to it, old fellow, if it kills you," he said aloud. "We got to save that girl for Billie, ain't we? We can't let those red devils take her away, can we?"

It was a rough cattle trail he followed, strewn here with boulders and there tilted down at breakneck angle of slippery shale. Sometimes it fell abruptly into washes and more than once rose so sharply that a heather cat could scarce have clambered up. But Thursday flung his horse recklessly at the path, taking chances of a fall that might end the mad race. He could not wait to pick a way. His one hope lay in speed, in reaching the fork before the enemy. He sacrificed everything to that.

From the top of a sharp pitch he looked down into the twin cañon of Escondido. A sharp bend cut off the view to the left, so that he could see for only seventy-five or a hundred yards. But his glance followed the gulch up for half a mile and found no sign of life. He was in time.

Swiftly he made his preparations. First he led the exhausted horse back to a clump of young cottonwoods and tied it safely. From its place beside the saddle he took the muley gun and with the rifle in his other hand he limped swiftly back to the trail. Every step was torture, but he could not stop to think of that now. His quick eye picked a perfect spot for an ambush where a great rock leaned against another at the edge of the bluff. Between the two was a narrow opening through which he could command the bend in the trail below. To enlarge this he scooped out the dirt with his fingers then reloaded the rifle and thrust it into the crevice. The sawed-off shotgun lay close to his hand.

Till now he had found no time to get nervous, but as the minutes passed he began to tremble violently and to whimper. In spite of his experience he was only a boy and until to-day had never killed a man.

"Doggone it, if I ain't done gone an' got buck fever," he reproached himself. "I reckon it's because Billie Prince ain't here that I'm so scairt. I wisht I had a drink, so as I'd be right when the old muley gun gits to barkin'."

A faint sound, almost indistinguishable, echoed up the gulch to him. Miraculously his nervousness vanished. Every nerve was keyed up, every muscle tense, but he was cool as water in a mountain stream.

The sound repeated itself, a faint tinkle of gravel rolling from a trail beneath the hoof of a horse. At the last moment Thursday changed his mind and substituted the shotgun for the rifle.

"Old muley she spatters all over the State of Texas. I might git two at once," he muttered.

The light, distant murmur of voices reached him. His trained ear told him just how far away the speakers were.

An Apache rounded the bend, a tall, slender young brave wearing only a low-cut breech-cloth and a pair of moccasins. Around his waist was strapped a belt full of cartridges and from it projected the handle of a long Mexican knife. The brown body of the youth was lithe and graceful as that of a panther. He was smiling over his shoulder at the next rider in line, a heavy-set, squat figure on a round-bellied pinto. That smile was to go out presently like the flame of a blown candle. A third Mescalero followed. Like that of the others, his coarse, black hair fell to the shoulders, free except for a band that encircled the forehead.

Still the boy did not fire. He waited till the last of the party appeared, a man in fringed buckskin breeches and hickory shirt riding pillion behind a young woman. Both of these were white.

The sawed-off gun of Thursday covered the second rider carefully. Before the sound of the shot boomed down the gorge the Apache was lifted from the bare back of the pony. The heavy charge of buckshot had riddled him through and through.

Instantly the slim, young brave in the lead dug his heels into the flank of his pony, swung low to the far side so that only a leg was visible, and flew arrow-straight up the cañon for safety. Thursday let him go.

Twice his rifle rang out. At that distance it was impossible for a good shot to miss. One bullet passed through the head of the third Mescalero. The other brought down the pony upon which the whites were riding.

The fall of the horse flung the girl free, but the foot of her captor was caught between the saddle and the ground. Thursday drew a bead on him while he lay there helpless, but some impulse of mercy held his hand. The man was that creature accursed in the border land, a renegade who has turned his face against his own race and must to prove his sincerity to the tribe out-Apache an Apache at cruelty. Still, he was white after all--and Jim Thursday was only eighteen.

Rifle in hand the boy clambered down the jagged rock wall to the dry river-bed below. The foot of his high-heeled boot was soggy with blood, but for the present he had to ignore the pain messages that throbbed to his brain. The business on hand would not wait.

While Thursday was still slipping down from one outcropping ledge of rock to another, a plunge of the wounded horse freed the renegade. The man scrambled to his feet and ran shakily for the shelter of a boulder. In his hurry to reach cover he did not stop to get the rifle that had been flung a few yards from him when he fell.

The boy caught one glimpse of that evil, fear-racked face. The blood flushed his veins with a surge of triumph. He was filled with the savage, primitive exultation of the head-hunter. For four years he had slept on the trail of this man and had at last found him. The scout had fought the Apaches impersonally, without rancor, because a call had come to him that he could not ignore. But now the lust of blood was on him. He had become that cold, implacable thing known throughout the West as a "killer."

The merciless caution that dictates the methods of a killer animated his movements now. Across the gulch, nearly one hundred and fifty yards from him, the renegade lay crouched. A hunched shoulder was just visible.

Thursday edged carefully along the ledge. He felt for holds with his hand and feet, for not once did his gaze lift from that patch of hickory shirt. The eyes of the boy had narrowed to slits of deadly light. He was wary as a hungry wolf and as dangerous. That the girl had disappeared around the bend he did not know. His brain functioned for just one purpose--to get the enemy with whom he had come at last to grips.

As the boy crept along the rock face for a better view of his victim, the minutes fled. Five of them--ten--a quarter of an hour passed. The renegade lay motionless. Perhaps he hoped that his location was unknown.

The man-hunter on the ledge flung a bullet against the protecting boulder. His laugh of cruel derision drifted across the cañon.

"Run to earth at last, Ranse Roush!" he shouted, "I swore I'd camp on your trail till I got you--you an' the rest of yore poison tribe."

From the trapped wretch quavered back a protest.

"Goddlemighty, I ain't done nothin' to you-all. Lemme explain."

"Before you do any explainin' mebbe you'd better guess who it is that's goin' to send yore cowardly soul to hell inside of five minutes."

"If you're some kin to that gal on the hawss with me, why, I'll tell you the honest-to-God truth. I was aimin' to save her from the 'Paches when I got a chanct. Come on down an' let's we-uns talk it over reasonable."

The boy laughed again, but there was something very far from mirth in the sound of that chill laughter. "If you won't guess I'll have to tell you Ever hear of the Clantons, Ranse Roush? I'm one of 'em. Now you know what chance you got to talk yoreself out of this thing."

"I--I'm glad to meet up with you-all. I got to admit that the Roush clan is dirt mean. Tha's why I broke away from 'em. Tha's why I come out here. You Clantons is all right. I never did go in for this bushwhackin' with Dave an' Hugh. I never--"

"You're a born liar like the rest of yore wolf tribe. You come out here because the country got too hot to hold you after what you did to 'Lindy Clanton. I might 'a' knowed I'd find you with the 'Paches. You allus was low-mixed Injun." The boy had fallen into the hill vernacular to which he had been born. He was once more a tribal feudist of the border land.

"I swear I hadn't a thing to do with that," the man cried eagerly. "You shore done got that wrong. Dave an' Hugh done that. They're a bad lot. When I found out about 'Lindy Clanton I quarreled with 'em an' we-all split up company. Tha's the way of it."

"You're ce'tainly in bad luck then," the boy shouted back tauntingly. "For I aim to stomp you out like I would a copperhead." Very distinctly he added his explanation. "I'm 'Lindy Clanton's brother."

Roush begged for his life. He groveled in the dust. He promised to reform, to leave the country, to do anything that was asked of him.

"Go ahead. It's meat an' drink to me to hear a Roush whine. I got all day to this job, but I aim to do it thorough," jeered Clanton.

A bullet flattened itself against the rock wall ten feet below the boy. In despair the man was shooting wildly with his revolver. He knew there was no use in pleading, that his day of judgment had come.

Young Clanton laughed in mockery. "Try again, Roush. You ain't quite got the range."

The man made a bolt for the bend in the cañon a hundred yards away. Instantly the rifle leaped to the shoulder of the boy.

"Right in front of you, Roush," he prophesied.

The bullet kicked up the dust at the feet of the running man. The nerve of Roush failed him and he took cover again behind a scrub live-oak. A memory had flashed to him of the day when he had seen a thirteen-year-old boy named Jim Clanton win a turkey shoot against the best marksmen of the hill country.

The army Colt spit out once more at the boy on the ledge. Before the echo had died away the boom of an explosion filled the cañon. Roush pitched forward on his face.

Jim Clanton lowered his rifle with an exclamation. His face was a picture of amazement. Some one had stolen his vengeance from him by a hair's breadth.

Two men came round the bend on horseback. Behind them rode a girl. She was mounted on the barebacked pinto of the Indian Clanton had killed with the shotgun.

The boy clambered down to the bed of the gulch and limped toward them. The color had ebbed from his lips. At every step a pain shot through his leg. But in spite of his growing weakness anger blazed in the light-blue eyes.

"I waited four years to git him. I kept the trail hot from Tucson to Vegas an' back to Santone. An' now, doggone it, when my finger was on the trigger an' the coyote as good as dead, you cut in an' shoot the daylights out of him. By gum, it ain't fair!"

The older man looked at him in astonishment. "But he is only a child, Polly! Cela me passe!"

"Mebbe I am only a kid," the boy retorted resentfully. "But I reckon I'm man enough to handle any Roush that ever lived. I wasn't askin' for help from you-uns that I heerd tell of."

The younger man laughed. He was six or seven years older than the girl, who could not have been more than seventeen. Both of them bore a marked likeness to the middle-aged man who had spoken. Jim guessed that this was the Roubideau family of whom Billie Prince had told him.

"Just out of the cradle, by Christmas, and he's killed four 'Paches inside of an hour an' treed a renegade to boot," said young Roubideau. "I'd call it a day's work, kid, for it sure beats all records ever I knew hung up by one man."

The admiration of the young rancher was patent. He could not take his eyes from the youthful phenomenon.

"He's wounded, father," the girl said in a low voice.

The boy looked at her and his anger died away. "Billie sent me up the gulch when he was shot. He 'lowed it was up to me to git you back from those devils, seein' as he couldn't go himself."

Polly nodded. She seemed to be the kind of girl that understands without being told in detail.

Before Thursday could protect himself, Roubideau, senior, had seized him in his arms, embraced him, and kissed first one cheek and then the other. "Eh bien! But you are the brave boy! I count it honor to know you. My little Polly, have you not save her? Ah! But I forget the introductions. Myself, I am Pierre Roubideau, à tout propos at your service. My son Jean. Pauline--what you call our babie."

"My real name is Jim Clanton," answered the boy. "I've been passin' by that of 'Thursday' so that none of the Roush outfit would know I was in the country till I met up face to face with 'em."

"Clanton! It is a name we shall remember in our prayers, n'est-ce pas, Polly?" Pierre choked up and wrung fervently the hand of the youngster.

Clanton was both embarrassed and wary. He did not know at what moment Roubideau would disgrace him by attempting another embrace. There was something in the Frenchman's eye that told of an emotion not yet expended fully.

"Oh, shucks; you make a heap of fuss about nothin'," he grumbled. "Didn't I tell you it was Billie Prince sent me? An' say, I got a pill in my foot. Kindness of one of them dad-gummed Mescaleros. I hate to walk on that laig. I wish yore boy would go up on the bluff an' look after my horse. I 'most rode it to death, I reckon, comin' up the cañon. An' there's a sawed-off shotgun. He'll find it..."

For a few moments the ground had been going up and down in waves before the eyes of the boy. Now he clutched at a stirrup leather for support, but his fingers could not seem to find it. Before he could steady himself the bed of the dry creek rose up and hit him in the head.

Chapter IV

Pauline Roubideau Says "Thank You."

Jimmie Clanton slid back from unconsciousness to a world the center of which was a girl sitting on a rock with his rifle across her knees. The picture did not at first associate itself with any previous experience. She was a brown, slim young thing in a calico print that fitted snugly the soft lines of her immature figure. The boy watched her shyly and wondered at the quiet self-reliance of her. She was keeping guard over him, and there was about her a cool vigilance that went oddly with the small, piquant face and the tumbled mass of curly chestnut hair that had fallen in a cascade across her shoulders.

"Where are yore folks?" he asked presently.

She turned her head slowly and looked at him. Southern suns had sprinkled beneath her eyes a myriad of powdered freckles. She met his gaze fairly, with a boyish directness and candor.

"Jean has ridden out to tell your friends about you and Mr. Prince. Father has gone back to the house to fix up a travois to carry you."

"Sho! I can ride."

"There's no need of it. You must have lost a great deal of blood."

He looked down at his foot and saw that the boot had been cut away. A bandage of calico had been tied around the wound. He guessed that the girl had sacrificed part of a skirt.

"And you stayed here to see the 'Paches didn't play with me whilst yore father was gone," he told her.

"There wasn't any danger, of course. The only one that escaped is miles away from here. But we didn't like to leave you alone."

"That's right good of you."

Her soft, brown eyes met his again. They poured upon him the gift of passionate gratitude she could not put into words. It was from something much more horrible than death that he had snatched her. One moment she had been a creature crushed, leaden despair in her heart. Then the miracle had flashed down from the sky. She was free, astride the pinto, galloping for home.

"Yes, you owe us much." There was a note of light sarcasm in her clear, young voice, but the feeling in her heart swept it away in an emotional rush of words from the tongue of her father. "Vous avez pris le fait et cause pour moi. Sans vous j'étais perdu."

"You're French," he said.

"My father is, not my mother. She was from Tennessee."

"I'm from the South, too."

"You didn't need to tell me that," she answered with a little smile.

"Oh, I'm a Westerner now, but you ought to have heerd me talk when I first came out." He broached a grievance. "Say, will you tell yore dad not to do that again? I'm no kid."

"Do what?"

"You know." The red flamed into his face. "If it got out among the boys what he'd done, I'd never hear the last of it."

"You mean kissed you?"

"Sure I do. That ain't no way to treat a fellow. I'm past eighteen if I am small for my age. Nobody can pull the pat-you-on-the-head-sonny stuff on me."

"But you don't understand. That isn't it at all. My father is French. That makes all the difference. When he kissed you it meant--oh, that he honored and esteemed you because you fought for me."

"I been tellin' you right along that Billie Prince is to blame. Let him go an' kiss Billie an' see if he'll stand for it."

A flash of roguishness brought out an unexpected dimple near the corner of her insubordinate mouth. "We'll be good, all of us, and never do it again. Cross our hearts."

Young Clanton reddened beneath the tan. Without looking at her he felt the look she tilted sideways at him from under the long, curved lashes. Of course she was laughing at him. He knew that much, even though he lacked the experience to meet her in kind. Oddly enough, there pricked through his embarrassment a delicious little tingle of delight. So long as she took him in as a partner of her gayety she might make as much fun of him as she pleased.

But the owlish dignity of his age would not let him drop the subject without further explanation. "It's all right for yore dad to much you. I reckon a girl kinder runs to kisses an' such doggoned foolishness. But a man's different. He don't go in for it."

"Oh, doesn't he?" asked Polly demurely. She did not think it necessary to mention that every unmarried man who came to the ranch wanted to make love to her before he left. "I'm glad you told me, because I'm only a girl and I don't know much about it. And since you're a man, of course you know."

"That's the way it is," he assured her, solemn as a pouter.

She bit her lip to keep from laughing out, but on the heels of her mirth came a swift reproach. In his knowledge of life he might be a boy, but in one way at least he had proved himself a man. He had taken his life in his hands and ridden to save her without a second thought. He had fought a good fight, one that would be a story worth telling when she had become an old woman with grandchildren at her knee.

"Does your foot hurt you much?" she asked gently.

"It sort o' keeps my memory jogged up. It's a kind of forget-me-not souvenir, for a good boy, compliments of a Mescalero buck, name unknown, probably now permanently retired from his business of raisin' Cain. But it might be a heap worse. They would've been glad to collect our scalps if it hadn't been onconvenient, I expect."

"Yes," she agreed gravely.

He sat up abruptly. "Say, what about Billie? I left him wounded outside. Did yore folks find him?"

"Yes. It seems the Apaches trapped them in the stable. They roped horses and came straight for the cañon. They found Mr. Prince, but they had no time to stop then. Father is looking after him now. He said he was going to take him to the house in the buckboard."

"Is he badly hurt?"

"Jean thinks he will be all right. Mr. Prince told him it was only a flesh wound, but the muscles were so paralysed he couldn't get around."

"The bullet did not strike an artery, then?"

"My brother seemed to think not."

"I reckon there's no doctor near."

Her eyes twinkled. "Not very near. Our nearest neighbor lives on the Pecos one hundred land seventeen miles away. But my father is as good as a doctor any day of the week."

"Likely you don't borrow coffee next door when you run out of it onexpected. But don't you get lonesome?"

"Haven't time," she told him cheerfully. "Besides, somebody going through stops off every three or four months. Then we learn all the news."

Jimmie glanced at her shyly and looked quickly away. This girl was not like any woman he had known. Most of them were drab creatures with the spirit washed out of them. His sister had been an exception. She had had plenty of vitality, good looks and pride, but the somber shadow of her environment had not made for gayety. It was different with Pauline Roubideau. Though she had just escaped from terrible danger, laughter bubbled up in her soft throat, mirth rippled over her mobile little face. She expressed herself with swift, impulsive gestures at times. Then again she suggested an inheritance of slow grace from the Southland of her mother.

He did not understand the contradictions of her and they worried him a little. Billie had told him that she could rope and shoot as well as any man. He had seen for himself that she was an expert rider. Her nerves were good enough to sit beside him at quiet ease within a stone's throw of three sprawling bodies from which she had seen the lusty life driven scarce a half-hour since. Already he divined the boyish camaraderie that was so simple and direct an expression of good-will. And yet there was something about her queer little smile he could not make out. It hinted that she was really old enough to be his mother, that she was heiress of wisdom handed down by her sex through all the generations. As yet he had not found out that he was only a boy and she was a woman.

***

Chapter V

No Four-Flusher

Pauline Roubideau knew the frontier code. She evinced no curiosity about the past of this boy-man who had come into her life at the nick of time. None the less she was eager to know what connection lay between him and the renegade her brother had killed. She had heard Jim Clanton say that he had waited four years for his revenge and had followed the man all over the West. Why? What motive could be powerful enough with a boy of fourteen to sway so completely his whole life toward vengeance?

She set herself to find out without asking. Inside of ten minutes the secret which had been locked so long in his warped soul had been confided to her. The boy broke down when he told her the story of his sister's death. He was greatly ashamed of himself for his emotion, but the touch of her warm sympathy melted the ice in his heart and set him sobbing.

Quickly she came across to him and knelt down by his side.

"You poor boy! You poor, poor boy!" she murmured.

Her arm crept round his shoulders with the infinitely tender caress of the mother that lies, dormant or awake, in all good women.

"I--I--I'm nothing but a baby," he gulped, trying desperately to master his sobs.

"Don't talk foolishness," she scolded to comfort him. "I wouldn't think much of you if you didn't love your sister enough to cry for her."

There were tears in her own eyes. Her lively young imagination pictured vividly the desolation of the young hill girl betrayed so cruelly, the swift decline of her stern, broken-hearted father. The thought of the half-grown boy following the betrayers of his sister across the continent, his life dedicated for years to vengeance, was a dreadful thing to contemplate. It shocked her sense of all that was fitting. No doubt his mission had become a religion with him. He had lain down at night with that single purpose before him. He had risen with it in the morning. It had been his companion throughout the day. From one season to another he had cherished it when he should have been filled with the happy, healthy play impulses natural to his age.

The boy told the story of that man-hunt without a suspicion that there was anything in it to outrage the feelings of the girl.

"If it hadn't been for old Nance Cunningham, I reckon Devil Dave an' his brothers would have fixed up some cock an' bull story about how 'Lindy was drowned by accident. But folks heard Nance an' then wouldn't believe a word they said. Dad swore us Clantons to wipe out the whole clan of 'em. Every last man in the hills that was decent got to cussin' the Roush outfit. Their own friends turned their backs on all three. Then the sheriff come up from the settlemint an' they jest naturally lit out.

"I heerd tell they were in Arizona an' after dad died I took after 'em. But seemed like I had no luck. When I struck their trail they had always just gone. To-day I got Ranse--leastways I would'a' got him if yore brother hadn't interfered. I'll meet up with the others one o' these times. I'll git 'em too."

He spoke with quiet conviction, as if it were a business matter that had to be looked after.

"Did you ever hear this: 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord'?"

He nodded. "Dad used to read that to me. There's a heap in the Bible about killin' yore enemies. Dad said that vengeance verse meant that we-all was the Lord's deputies, like a sheriff has folks to help him, an' we was certainly to repay the Roushes an' not to forgit interest neither."

The girl shook her head vigorously. "I don't think that's what it means at all. If you'll read the verses above and below, you'll see it doesn't. We're to feed our enemies when they are hungry. We're to do them good for evil."

"That's all right for common, every-day enemies, but the Roush clan ain't that kind," explained the boy stubbornly. "It shore is laid on me to destroy 'em root an' branch, like the Bible says."

By the way he wagged his head he might have been a wise little old man. The savage philosophy of the boy had been drawn in with his mother's milk. It had been talked by his elders while as a child he drowsed before the big fireplace on winter nights. After his sister's tragic death it had been driven home by Bible texts and by a solemn oath of vengeance. Was it likely that anything she could say would have weight with him? For the present the girl gave up her resolve to convert him to a more Christian point of view.

The sun had sunk behind the cañon wall when Pierre Roubideau arrived with a travois which he had hastily built. There was no wagon-road up the gulch and it would have been difficult to get the buckboard in as far as the fork over the broken terrain. As a voyageur of the North he had often seen wounded men carried by the Indians in travois across the plains. He knew, too, that the tribes of the Southwest use them. This one was constructed of two sixteen-foot poles with a canvas lashed from one bar to the other. The horse was harnessed between the ends of the shafts, the other ends dragging on the ground.

Clanton looked at this device distastefully. "I'm no squaw. Whyfor can't I climb on its back an' ride?"

"Because you are seeck. It iss of the importance that you do not exert yourself. Voyons! You will be comfortable here. N'est-ce pas, Polly?" Pierre gesticulated as he explained volubly. He even illustrated the comfort by lying down in the travois himself and giving a dramatic representation of sleep.

The young man grumbled, but gave way reluctantly.

"How's Billie Prince?" he asked presently from the cot where he lay.

"He will hafe a fever, but soon he will be well again. I, Pierre, promise it. For he iss of a good strength and sound as a dollar."

Pauline, rifle in hand, scouted ahead of the travois and picked the smoothest way down the rough ravine. The horse that Roubideau drove was an old and patient one. Its master held it to a slow, even pace, so that the wounded boy was jolted as little as possible. When they had reached the entrance to the gorge, travel across the valley became less bumpy.

The young girl walked as if she loved it. The fine, free swing of the hill woman was in her step. She breasted the slope with the light grace of a forest faun. Presently she dropped back to a place beside the conveyance and smiled encouragement at him.

"Pretty bad, is it?"

He grinned back. "It's up to me to play the hand I've been dealt."

That he was in a good deal of pain was easy to guess.

"We're past the worst of it," Pauline told him, "Up this hill--down the other side--and then we're home."

The bawling of thirsty cattle and the blatting of calves could be heard now.

"It iss that Monsieur Webb has taken my advice to drive the herd up the cañon and into the park for the night," explained Roubideau. "There iss one way in, one way out. Guard the entrances and the 'Paches cannot stampede the cattle. Voilà!"

From the hill-top the leaders of the herd could be seen drinking at the creek. Cattle behind were pushing forward to get at the water, while the riders on the point and at the swing were directing the movement of the beeves, now checking the steady pressure from the rear and now hastening the pace of those dawdling in the stream. To add to the confusion cows were mooing loudly for their off-spring not yet unloaded from the calf wagon.

Near the summit Jean with the buckboard met the party from the cañon. He helped Clanton to the seat and drove to the house.

Webb cantered up. "What's this I hear about you, Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em? They tell me you've made four good Injuns to-day, shot up a renegade, rescued this young lady here, 'most rode one of my horses to death, an' got stove up in the foot yore own self. It certainly must have been yore busy afternoon."

The drover looked at him with a new respect. He had found the answer to the question he had put himself a few hours earlier. This boy was no four-flusher. He not only knew how and when to shoot, was game as a bulldog, and keen as a weasel; he possessed, too, that sixth sense so necessary to a gun-fighter, the instinct which shows him how to take advantage of every factor in the situation so as to come through safely.

"I didn't do it all," answered Clanton, flushing. "Billie helped, and the Roubideaus got two of 'em."

"That's not the way Billie tells it. Anyhow, you-all made a great gather between you. Six 'Paches that will never smile again ought to give the raiders a pain."

"Don't you think we'd better get him to bed?" said Pauline gently.

"You're shoutin', ma'am," agreed Webb. "Roubideau, the little boss says Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em is to be put to bed. I'll tote him in if you'll give my boys directions about throwin' the herd into yore park and loose-herdin' 'em there."

The Missourian picked up the wounded boy and followed Pauline into the house. She led the way to her own little bedroom. It was the most comfortable in the house and that was the one she wanted Jim Clanton to have.

Chapter VI

Billie Asks a Question

Roubideau rounded up next day his beef stock and sold two hundred head to the drover. During the second day the riders were busy putting the road brand on the cattle just bought.

"Don't bust yore suspenders on this job, boys," Webb told his men. "I'd just as lief lie up here for a few days while Uncle Sam is roundin' up his pets camped out there. Old man Roubideau says we're welcome to stick around. The feed's good. Our cattle are some gaunted with the drive. It won't hurt a mite to let 'em stay right here a spell."

But on the third day came news that induced the Missourian to change his mind. Jean, who had been out as a scout, returned with the information that a company of cavalry had come down from the fort and that the Apaches had hastily decamped for parts unknown.

"I reckon we'll throw into the trail again tomorrow, Joe," the drover told Yankie. "No use wastin' time here if we don't have to stay. We'll mosey along toward the river. Kinder take it easy an' drift the herd down slow so as to let the cattle put on flesh. Billie an' the kid can join us soon as they're fit to travel."

The decision was announced on the porch of the Roubideau house. Its owner and his daughter were present. So was Dad Wrayburn. The Texan old-timer snorted as he rolled a cigarette.

"Hm! Soft thing those two boys have got sittin' around an' bein' petted by Miss Polly here. I've a notion to go an' bust my laig too. Will you nurse me real tender, ma'am, if I get stove up pullin' off a grand-stand play like they done?"

"The hospital is full. We haven't got room for more invalids, Mr. Wrayburn," laughed the girl.

"Well, you let me know when there's a vacancy, Miss Polly. My sister gave me a book to read onct. It was 'most twenty years ago. The name of it was 'Ivanhoe.' I told her I would save it to read when I broke my laig. Looks like I never will git that book read."

By daybreak the outfit was on the move. Yankie trailed the cattle out to the plain and started them forward leisurely. Webb had allowed himself plenty of time for the drive. The date set for delivery at the fort was still distant and he wanted the beeves to be in first-class condition for inspection. To reach the Pecos he was allowing three weeks, a programme that would let him bed the herd down early and would permit of drifting it slowly to graze for an hour or two a day.

The weeks that followed were red-letter ones in the life of Jim Clanton. They gave him his first glimpse of a family life which had for its basis not only affection, but trust and understanding. He had never before seen a household that really enjoyed little jokes shared in common, whose members were full of kind consideration the one for the other. The Roubideaus had more than a touch of the French temperament. They took life gayly and whimsically, and though they poked all kinds of fun at each other there was never any sting to their wit.

Pauline was a famous little nurse. It was not long before she was offering herself as a crutch to help young Clanton limp to the sunny porch. Two or three days later Billie joined his fellow invalid. From where they sat the two young men could hear the girl as she went about her work singing. Often she came out with a plate of hot, new-baked cookies for them and a pitcher of milk. Or she would dance out without any excuse except that of her own frank interest in the youth she shared with her patients.

One of the Roubideau jokes was that Polly was the mother of the family and her father and Jean two mischievous little boys she had to scold and pet alternately. Temporarily she took the two cowpunchers into her circle and browbeat them shamefully with an impudent little twinkle in her eyes. Whatever the state of Billie's mind may have been before, there can be no doubt that now he was fathoms deep in love. With hungry eyes he took in her laughter and raillery, her boyish high spirits, the sweet tenderness of the girl for her father. He loved her wholly--the charm of her comradeship, of her swift, generous impulses, of that touch of coquetry she could not entirely subdue.

Pierre had been a chasseur in the Franco-Prussian War. His daughter was very proud of it, but one of her games was to mock him fondly by swaggering back and forth while she sang:

"Allons, enfants de la patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrivé."

When she came to the chorus, nothing would do but all of them must join. She taught the words and tune to Prince and Jimmie so that they could fall into line behind the old soldier and his son:

"Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons! Marchons! Marchons! Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons."

It always began in pretended derision, but as she swept her little company down the porch all the gallant, imperishable soul of France spoke in her ringing voice and the flash of her brown eyes. Surely her patriotism was no less sound because the blood of Alsace and that of Tennessee were fused in her ardent veins.

The wounds of the young men healed rapidly, and both of them foresaw that the day of their departure could no longer be postponed. Neither of them was yet in condition to walk very far, but on horseback they were fit to travel carefully.

"We got all the time there is. No need of pushin' on the reins, but I reckon the old man isn't payin' us fifty dollars a month to hold down the Roubideau porch," said Prince regretfully.

"No, we gotta light a shuck," admitted Jim, with no noticeable alacrity. He was in no hurry to leave himself, even if he did not happen to be in love.

Billie put his fortune to the touch while he was out with Polly rounding up some calves. They were riding knee to knee in the dust of the drag through a small arroyo.

The cowpuncher swallowed once or twice in a dry throat and blurted out, "I got something to tell you before I go, Polly."

The girl flashed a look at him. She recognized the symptoms. Her gaze went back to the wavelike motion of the backs of the moving yearlings.

"Don't, Billie," she said gently.

Before he spoke again he thought over her advice. He knew he had his answer. But he had to go through with it now.

"I reckoned it would be that way. I'm nothin' but a rough vaquero. Whyfor should you like me?"

"Oh, but I do!" she cried impulsively. "I like you a great deal. You're one of the best men I know--brave and good and modest. It isn't that; Billie."

"Is there--some one else? Or oughtn't I to ask that?"

"No, there's nobody else. I'm awfully glad you like me. The girl that gets you will be lucky. But I don't care about men that way. I want to stay with dad and Jean."

"Mebbe some day you may feel different about it."

"Mebbe I will," she agreed. "Anyhow, I want you to stay friends with me. You will, won't you?"

"Sure. I'll be there just as long as you want me for a friend," he said simply.

She gave him her little gauntleted hand. They were close to a bend in the draw. Soon they would be within sight of the house.

"I'd say 'Yes' if I could, Billie. I'd rather it would be you than anybody else. You won't feel bad, will you?"

"Oh, that's all right." He smiled, and there was something about the pluck of the eyes in the lean, tanned face that touched her. "I'm goin' to keep right on carin' for my little pal even if I can't get what I want."

She had not yet fully emerged from her childhood. There was in her a strong desire to comfort him somehow, to show by a mark of special favor how high she held him in her esteem.

"Would you--would you like to kiss me?" she asked simply.

He felt a clamor of the blood and subdued it before he answered. It was in accord with the charm she held for him that her frank generosity enhanced his respect for her. If she gave a royal gift it was out of the truth of her heart.

Without need of words she read acceptance in his eyes and leaned toward him in the saddle. Their lips met.

"You're the first--except dad and Jean," she told him.

The feeling in his primitive heart he could not have analyzed. He did not know that his soul was moved to some such consecration as that of a young knight taking his vow of service, though he was aware that all the good in him leaped to instant response in her presence, that by some strange spiritual alchemy he had passed through a refining process.

"I'm comin' back to see you some day. Mebbe you'll feel different then," he said.

"I might," she admitted.

They rounded the bend. Clanton, on horseback, caught sight of them. He waved his hat and cantered forward.

"Say, Billie, how much bacon do you reckon we need to take with us?"

In front of the house Pauline slipped from her horse and left them discussing the commissary.

Chapter VII

On the Trail

The convalescents rode away into a desert green with spring. The fragrant chaparral thickets were bursting into flower. Spanish bayonets studded the plains. Everywhere about them was the promise of a new life not yet burnt by hot summer suns to a crisp.

During the day they ran into a swamp country and crossed a bayou where cypress knees and blue gums showed fantastic in the eerie gloom of the stagnant water. From this they emerged to a more wooded region and made an early camp on the edge of a grove of ash trees bordering a small stream where pecans grew thick.

Shortly after daybreak they were jogging on at a walk-trot, the road gait of the Southwest, into the treeless country of the prairie. They nooned at an arroyo seco, and after they had eaten took a siesta during the heat of the day. Night brought with it a thunderstorm and they took refuge in a Mexican hut built of palisades and roofed with grass sod. A widow lived alone in the jacal, but she made them welcome to the best she had. The young men slept in a corner of the hut on a dry cowskin spread upon the mud floor, their saddles for pillows and their blankets rolled about them.

While she was cooking their breakfast, Prince noticed the tears rolling down her cheeks. She was a comely young woman and he asked her gallantly in the bronco Spanish of the border if there was anything he could do to relieve her distress.

She shook her head mournfully. "No, señor," she answered in her native tongue. "Only time can do that. I mourn my husband. He was a drunken ne'er-do-well, but he was my man. So I mourn a fitting period. He died in that corner of the room where you slept."

"Indeed! When?" asked Billie politely.

"Ten days ago. Of smallpox."

The young men never ate that breakfast. They fled into the sunlight and put many hurried miles between them and their amazed hostess. At the first stream they stripped, bathed, washed their clothes, dipped the saddles, and lay nude in the warm sand until their wearing apparel was dry.

For many days they joked each other about that headlong flight, but underneath their gayety was a dread which persisted.

"I'm like Doña Isabel with her grief. Only time can heal me of that scare she threw into Billie Prince," the owner of that name confessed.

"Me too," assented Clanton, helping himself to pinole. "I'll bet I lost a year's growth, and me small at that."

Prince had been in the employ of Webb for three years. During the long hours when they rode side by side he told his companion much about the Flying V Y outfit and its owner.

"He's a straight-up man, Homer Webb is. His word is good all over Texas. He'll sure do to take along," said Billie by way of recommendation.

"And Joe Yankie--does he stack up A 1 too?" asked the boy dryly.

"I never liked Joe. It ain't only that he'll run a sandy on you if he can or that he's always ridin' any one that will stand to be picked on. Joe's sure a bully. But then he's game enough, too, for that matter. I've seen him fight like a pack of catamounts. Outside of that I've got a hunch that he's crooked as a dog's hind leg. Mebbe I'm wrong, I'm tellin' you how he strikes me. If I was Homer Webb, right now when trouble is comin' up with the Snaith-McRobert outfit, I'd feel some dubious about Joe. He's a sulky, revengeful brute, an' the old man has pulled him up with a tight rein more'n once."

"What do you mean--trouble with the Snaith-McRobert outfit?"

"That's a long story. The bad feelin' started soon after the war when Snaith an' the old man were brandin' mavericks. It kind of smouldered along for a while, then broke out again when both of them began to bid on Government beef contracts. There's been some shootin' back an' forth an' there's liable to be a whole lot more. The Lazy S M--that's the Snaith-McRobert brand--claims the whole Pecos country by priority. The old man ain't recognizin' any such fool title. He's got more 'n thirty thousand head of cattle there an' he'll fight for the grass if he has to. O' course there's plenty of room for everybody if it wasn't for the beef contracts an' the general bad feelin'."

"Don't you reckon it will be settled peaceably? They'll get together an' talk it over like reasonable folks."

Billie shook his head. "The Lazy S M are bringin' in a lot of bad men from Texas an' the Strip. Some of our boys ain't exactly gun-shy either. One of these days there's sure goin' to be sudden trouble."

"I'm no gunman," protested Clanton indignantly. "I hired out to the old man to punch cows. Whyfor should I take any chances with the Snaith-McRobert outfit when I ain't got a thing in the world against them?"

"No, you're no gunman," grinned his friend in amiable derision. "Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em is a quiet little Sunday-go-to-meetin' kid. It was kinder by accident that he bumped off four Apaches an' a halfbreed the other day."

"Now don't you blame me for that, Billie. You was hell-bent on goin' into the Roubideau place an' I trailed along. When you got yore pill in the laig you made me ride up the gulch alone. I claim I wasn't to blame for them Mescaleros. I wasn't either."

Prince had made his prophecy about the coming trouble lightly. He could not guess that the most terrible feud in the history of the West was to spring out of the quarrel between Snaith and Webb, a border war so grim and deadly that within three years more than a hundred lusty men were to fall in battle and from assassination. It would have amazed him to know that the bullet which laid low the renegade in Shoot-a-Buck Cañon had set the spark to the evil passions which resulted in what came to be called the Washington County War. Least of all could he tell that the girl-faced boy riding beside him was to become the best-known character of all the desperate ones engaged in the trouble.

Chapter VIII

The Fight

Half a dozen cowboys cantered up the main street of Los Portales in a cloud of dust. One of them, older than the rest, let out the wild yell he had known in the days when he rode with Quantrell's guerrillas on the infamous raids of that bandit. A second flung into the blue sky three rapid revolver shots. Plainly they were advertising the fact that they had come to paint the town red and did not care who knew it.

The riders pulled up abruptly in front of Tolleson's Gaming Palace & Saloon, swung from their horses, and trailed with jingling spurs into that oasis of refreshment. Each of them carried in his hand a rope. The other end of the rawhide was tied to the horn of a saddle.

A heavy-set, bow-legged man led the procession to the bar. He straddled forward with a swagger. The bartender was busy dusting his stock. Before the man had a chance to turn, the butt of a revolver hammered the counter.

"Get busy here! Set 'em up, Mike. And jump!" snarled the heavy man.

The barkeeper took one look at him and filed no demurrer. "Bad man" was writ on every line of the sullen, dissipated face of the bully. It was a safe bet that he was used to having his own way, or failing that was ready to fight at the drop of the hat.

Swiftly the drinks were prepared.

"Here 'show!"

"How!"

Every glass was tilted and emptied.

It was high noon by the sun and Tolleson's was practically deserted. No devotees sat round the faro, roulette, and keno tables. The dealers were asleep in bed after their labors. So too were the dance girls. The poker rooms upstairs held only the stale odor of tobacco and whiskey. Except for a sleepy negro roustabout attendant and two young fellows at a table well back from the bar, the cowboys had the big hall all to themselves.

The bay was near the front of the barnlike room and to the right. To the left, along the wall, were small tables. Farther back were those used for gaming. In the rear one corner of the floor held a rostrum with seats for musicians. The center of the hall was kept clear for dancing. Three steps led to a door halfway back on the left-hand side of the building. They communicated with an outer stairway by means of which one could reach the poker rooms.

The older of the two young men at the table nodded toward the roisterers and murmured information. "Some of the Snaith-McRobert crowd."

His companion was seated with his back to the bar. He had riot turned his head to look at those lined up in front of the mirrors for drinks, but a curious change had come over him. The relaxed body had grown rigid. No longer was he lounging against the back of his chair. From his eyes the laughter had been wiped out, as a wet sponge obliterates writing on a slate. All his forces were gathered as if for instant action. He was tense as a coiled spring. His friend noticed that the boy was listening intently, every faculty concentrated at attention.

A man leaning against the other end of the bar was speaking. He had a shock of long red hair and a squint to his eyes.

"Sure you're right. A bunch of Webb's gunmen got Ranse--caught him out alone and riddled him. When Webb drove through here two days ago with a herd, his killers bragged of it. Ask Harsha up at the Buffalo Corral if youse don't believe me. Sure as hell's hot we got to go on the war-path. Here, you Mike! Set 'em up again."

The boy at the table had drawn back his lips so that the canine teeth stood out like tusks. There was something wolfish about the face, from which all the color had been driven. It expressed something so deadly, so menacing, that the young man across from him felt a shock almost of fear. "We'd better get out of here," he said, glancing toward the group near the front door.

The other young man did not answer, but he made no move to leave. He was still taking in every syllable of what the drinkers were saying.

The ex-guerrilla was talking. "Tha's sure sayin' something, Hugh. There ain't room in New Mexico for Webb's outfit an' ours too."

"Better go slow, boys," advised another. He was a thick-set man in the late thirties, tight-lipped and heavy-jawed. His eyes were set so close together that it gave him a sinister expression. "Talkin' don't get us anywhere. If we're goin' to sit in a game with Homer Webb an' his punchers we got to play our hand close."

"Buck Sanders, segundo of the Lazy S M ranches," explained again the young man at the table in a low voice. "Say, kid, let's beat it while the goin' is good."

The big bow-legged man answered the foreman. "You're right, Buck. So's Hugh. So's the old rebel. I'm jus' servin' notice that no bunch of shorthorn punchers can kill a brother of mine an' get away with it. Un'erstand? I'll meet up with them some day an' I'll sure fog 'em to a fare-you-well." He interlarded his speech with oaths and foul language.

"I'll bet you do, Dave," chipped in the man next him, who had had a run-in with the Texas Rangers and was on the outskirts of civilization because the Lone Star State did not suit his health. "I would certainly hate to be one of them when yore old six-gun begins to pop. It sure will be Glory-hallelujah for some one."

Dave Roush ordered another drink on the strength of the Texan's admiration. "Mind, I don't say Ranse wasn't a good man. Mebbe I'm a leetle mite better 'n him with a hogleg. Mebbe--"

"Ranse was good with a revolver all right, but sho! you make him look like a plugged nickel when you go to makin' smoke, Dave," interrupted the toady.

"Well, mebbe I do. Say I do. I ain't yet met up with a man can beat me when I'm right. But at that Ranse was a mighty good man. They bushwhacked him, I'll bet a stack of blues. I aim to git busy soon as I find out who done it."

The red-headed man raised his voice a trifle. "Say, you kid--there at the table--come here an' hold these ropes! See you don't let the hawses at the other end of 'em git away!"

Slowly the boy turned, pushing his chair round so that he half-faced the group before the bar. He neither rose nor answered.

"Cayn't you-all hear?" demanded the man with the shock of unkempt, red hair.

"I hear, but I'm not comin' right away. When I do, you'll wish I hadn't."

If a bomb had exploded at his feet Hugh Roush could not have been more surprised. He was a big, rough man, muscular and sinewy, and he had been the victor of many a rough-and-tumble fight. On account of his reputation for quarrelsomeness men chose their words carefully when they spoke to him. That this little fellow with the smooth, girlish face and the small, almost womanish hands and feet should defy him was hard to believe.

"Come a-runnin', kid, or I'll whale the life out of you!" he roared.

"You didn't get me right," answered the boy in a low, clear voice. "I'm not comin' till I get ready, Hugh Roush."

The wolf snap of the boy's jaw, the cold glitter in his eyes, might have warned Roush and perhaps did. He wondered, too, how this stranger knew his name so well.

"Where are you from?" he demanded.

"From anywhere but here,"

"Meanin' that you're here to stay?"

"Meanin' that I'm here to stay."

"Even if I tell you to git out of the country?"

"You won't be alive to tell me unless you talk right sudden."

They watched each other, the man and the boy. Neither as yet made any motion to draw his gun, the younger one because he was not ready, Roush because he did not want to show any premature alarm before the men taking in the scene. Nor could he yet convince himself, in spite of the challenge that rang in the words of the boy, of serious danger from so unlikely a source.

Dave Roush had been watching the boy closely. A likeness to someone whom he could not place stirred faintly his memory.

"Who are you? What's yore name?" he snapped out.

The boy had risen from the chair. His hand rested on his hip as if casually. But Dave had observed the sureness of his motions and he accepted nothing as of chance. The experience of Roush was that a gunman lives longer if he is cautious. His fingers closed on the butt of the revolver at his side.

"My name is James Clanton."

Roush let fall a surprised oath. "It's 'Lindy Clanton you look like! You're her brother--the kid, Jimmie."

"You've guessed it, Devil Dave."

The eyes of the two crossed like rapiers.

"Howcome you here? Whad you want?" asked Roush thickly.

Already he had made up his mind to kill, but he wanted to choose his own moment. The instinct of the killer is always to take his enemy at advantage. Clanton, with that sixth sense which serves the fighter, read his purpose as if he had printed it on a sign.

"You know why I'm here--to stomp the life out of you an' yore brother for what you done to my sister. I've listened to yore brags about what you would do when you met up with them that killed Ranse Roush. Fine! Now let's see you make good. I'm the man that ran him down an' put an end to him. Go through, you four-flushin' coward! Come a-shootin' whenever you're ready."

The young Southerner had a definite motive in his jeering. He wanted to drive his enemies to attack him before they could come at him from two sides.

"You--you killed Ranse?"

"You heard me say it once." The eyes of the boy flashed for a moment to the red-headed man. "Whyfor are you dodgin' back of the bar, Hugh Roush? Ain't odds of two to one good enough for you--an' that one only a kid--without you runnin' to cover like the coyote you are? Looks like you'll soon be whinin' for me not to shoot, just like Ranse did."

If any one had cared to notice, the colored roust-about might have been seen at that moment vanishing out of the back door to a zone of safety. He showed no evidence whatever of being sleepy.

The silence that followed the words of the boy was broken by Quantrell's old grayback. Dave Roush was a bad man--a killer. He had three notches on his gun. Perhaps he had killed others before coming West. At any rate, he was no fair match for this undersized boy.

"He's a kid, Dave. You don't want to gun a kid. You, Clanton--whatever you call yourself--light a shuck pronto--git out!"

It is the habit of the killer to look for easy game. Out of the corner of his eye the man who had betrayed 'Lindy Clanton saw that Hugh was edging back of the bar and dragging out his gun. This boy could be killed safely now, since they were two to one, both of them experts with the revolver. To let him escape would be to live in constant danger for the future.

"He's askin' for it, Reb. He's goin' to get it."

Dave Roush pulled his gun, but before he could use it two shots rang out almost simultaneously. The man at the corner of the bar had the advantage. His revolver was in the clear before that of Clanton, but Jim fired from the hip without apparent aim. The bullet was flung from the barrel an imperceptible second before that of Roush. The gunman, hit in the wrist of the right hand, gave a grunt and took shelter back of the bar.

The bystanders scurried for safety while explosion followed explosion. Young Clanton, light-footed as a cat, side-stepped and danced about as he fired. The first shot of the red-headed man had hit him and the shock of it interfered with his accuracy. Hugh had disappeared, but above the smoke the youngster still saw the cruel face of Devil Dave leering triumphantly at him behind the pumping gun.

The boy kept moving, so that his body did not offer a static target. He concentrated his attention on Dave, throwing shot after shot at him. That he would kill his enemy Clanton never had a doubt. It was firmly fixed in his mind that he had been sent as the appointed executioner of the man.

It was no surprise to Jim when the face of his sister's betrayer lurched forward into the smoke. He heard Roush fall heavily to the floor and saw the weapon hurled out of reach. The fellow lay limp and still.

Clanton did not waste a second look at the fallen man. He knew that the other Roush, crouched behind the bar, had been firing at him through the woodwork. Now a bullet struck the wall back of his head. The red-headed man had fired looking through a knot-hole.

The boy's weapon covered a spot three inches above this. He fired instantly. A splinter flew from a second hole just above the first. Three long, noiseless strides brought Clanton to the end of the bar. The red-headed man lay dead on the floor. The bullet had struck him just above and between the eyes.

"I reckon that ends the job."

It was Jim's voice that said the words, though he hardly recognized it. Overcome by a sudden nausea, he leaned against the bar for support. He felt sick through and through.

Chapter IX

Billie Stands Pat

Clanton came back out of the haze to find his friend's arm around his waist, the sound of his strong, cheerful voice in his ears.

"Steady, old fellow, steady. Where did they hit you, Jim?"

"In the shoulder. I'm sick."

Billie supported him to a chair and called to the bartender, who was cautiously rising from a prone position behind the bar. "Bring a glass of water, Mike."

The wounded man drank the water, and presently the sickness passed. He saw a little crowd gather. Some of them carried out the body of Hugh Roush. They returned for that of his brother.

"Dave ain't dead yet. He's still breathing," one of the men said.

"Not dead!" exclaimed Clanton. "Did you say he wasn't dead?"

"Now, don't you worry about that," cautioned Prince. "Looks to me like you sure got him. Anyhow, it ain't your fault. You were that quiet and game and cool. I never saw the beat."

The admiration of his partner did not comfort Jim. He was suspiciously near a breakdown. "Why didn't I take another crack at him when I had the chance?" he whimpered. "I been waitin' all these years, an' now--"

"I tell you he hasn't a chance in a thousand, Jim. You did the job thorough. He's got his,"

Prince had been intending to say more, but he changed his mind. Half a dozen men were coming toward them from the front door. Buck Sanders was one of them, Quantrell's trooper another. Their manner looked like business.

Sanders was the spokesman. "You boys ride for the Flying V Y, don't you?" he asked curtly.

"We do," answered Billie, and his voice was just as cold. It had in it the snap of a whiplash.

"You came in here to pick trouble with us. Your pardner--Clanton, whatever his name is--gave it out straight that he was goin' to kill Roush."

"He didn't mention you, did he?"

"The Roush brothers were in our party. We ride for the Lazy S M. We don't make distinctions."

"Don't you? Listen," advised Prince. In five sentences he sketched the cause of the trouble between Jim Clanton and the Roush brothers. "My bunkie didn't kill any of the Roush clan because they worked for Snaith and McRobert. He shot them for the reason I've just given you. That's his business. It was a private feud of his own. You heard what was said before the shootin' began," he concluded.

"Tha's what you say. You'll tell us, too, that he got Ranse Roush in a fair fight. But you've got to show us proof," Sanders said with a sneer.

"I expect just now you'll have to take my word and his. I'll tell you this. Ranse Roush was a renegade. He was ridin' with a bunch of bronco bucks. They attacked the Roubideau place an' we rode--Jim an' I did--to help Pierre an' his family. We drove the 'Paches off, but they picked up Miss Pauline while she was out ridin' alone. We took after 'em. I got wounded an' Jim here went up a gulch lickety-split to catch the red devils. He got four 'Paches an' one hell-hound of a renegade. Is there a white man here that blames him for it?"

When all is said, the prince of deadly weapons at close range is the human eye. Billie was standing beside his friend, one hand resting lightly on his shoulder. The cowpuncher was as lithe and clean of build as a mastiff, but it was the steady candor of his honest eye that spoke most potently.

"Naturally you tell a good story," retorted the foreman with dry incredulity. "It's up to you to come through with an explanation of why Webb's men have just gunned three of our friends. Your story doesn't make any hit with me. I don't believe a word of it."

"You can take it or let it alone. It goes as I've told it," Prince cut back shortly.

Another man spoke up. He was a tinhorn gambler of Los Portales and for reasons of his own foregathered with the Snaith-McRobert faction. "Look here, young fellow. You may or may not be in this thing deep. I'm willin' to give you the benefit of the doubt if my friends are. I'd hate to see you bumped off when you didn't do any of the killin'. All we want is justice. This is a square town. When bad men go too far we plant 'em on Boot Hill. Understand? Now you slide out of the back door, slap a saddle on your bronc, an' hit the high spots out of here,"

"And Clanton?" asked Billie.

"We'll attend to Clanton's case,"

A faint smile touched the sardonic face of Prince. "What did you ever see me do to give you the notion that I was yellow, Bancock?"

"This ain't your affair. You step aside an' let justice--"

"If those that holler for justice loudest had it done to them there would be a lot of squealin' outside of hogpens."

"You won't take that offer, then?"

"Not this year of our Lord, thank you."

"You've had your chance. If you turn it down you're liable to go out of here feet first."

Not a muscle twitched in the lean, brown face of the young cowpuncher. "Cut loose whenever you're ready."

"Hold yore hawsses, friend," advised the ex-guerrilla, not unkindly. "There's no occasion whatever for you to run on the rope. We are six to two, countin' the kid, who's got about all he can carry for one day. We're here askin' questions, an' it's reasonable for you to answer 'em."

"I have answered 'em. I'll answer all you want to ask. But I'd think you would feel cheap to come kickin' about that fight. My friend fought fair. You know best whether your friends did. He took 'em at odds of two to one, an' at that one of your gunmen hunted cover. What's troublin you, anyhow? Didn't you have all the breaks? Do you want an open an' shut cinch?"

"You're quite a lawyer," replied Dumont, the man who found the climate of Texas unhealthy. "I reckon it would take a good one to talk himself out of the hole you're in."

Billie looked at the man and Dumont decided that he did not have a speaking part in the scene. He was willing to remain one of the mob. In point of fact, after what he had seen in the last few minutes, he was not at all anxious to force the issue to actual battle. A good strong bluff would suit him a great deal better. Even odds of six to two were not good enough considering the demonstration he had witnessed.

"What is it you want? Another showdown?" asked Clanton unexpectedly.

Quantrell's man laughed. "I never did see such a fire-eater."

He turned to his companions. "I told you how it would be. We can't prove a thing against the kid except that he was lookin' for a fight an' got it. He played the hand that was dealt him an' he played it good. I reckon we'll have to let him go this time, boys."

"We'll make a mistake if we do," differed Sanders.

"You'll make one if you don't," said Prince pointedly.

He stood poised, every nerve and muscle set to a hair-trigger for swift action. Of those facing him not one of the six but knew they would have to pay the price before they could exact vengeance for the death of the Roush brothers.

"What's the use of beefing?" grumbled a one-armed puncher in the rear. "They shot up three of our friends. What more do you want?"

"Don't be in a hurry, Albeen," advised Billie. "It's easy to start something. We all know you burn powder quick. You're a sure-enough bad man. But I've got a hunch it's goin' to be your funeral as well as mine if once the band begins to play."

"That so?" replied Albeen with heavy sarcasm. "You talk like you was holdin' a royal flush, my friend."

"I'm holdin' a six-full an' Clanton has another. We're sittin' in strong."

Dumont proposed a compromise. "Why not just arrest 'em an' hold 'em at Bluewater till we find whether their story is true?"

"Bring a warrant along before you try that," Billie countered. "Think we were born yesterday? No Lazy S M sheriff, judge, an' jury for me, if you please."

The old guerrilla nodded. "That's reasonable, too. We haven't got a leg to stand on, boys. This young fellow's story may be true an' it may not. All we know is what we've seen. Clanton here took a mighty slim chance of comin' through alive when he tackled Dave an' Hugh Roush. I wouldn't have give a chew of tobacco against a week's pay for it. He fought fair, didn't he? Now he's come through I'll be doggoned if I want to jump on him again."

"You're too soft for this country, Reb," sneered Albeen. "Better go back to Arkansas or wherever you come from."

"When I get ready. You don't mean right away, Albeen, do you?" demanded the old-timer sharply.

"Well, don't hang around all day," said Prince, his eye full in that of the foreman. "Make up your minds whether you want to jump one man an' a wounded boy. If you don't mean business I'd like to have a doctor look at my friend's shoulder."

Sanders's eyes fell at last before the quiet steadiness of that gaze. With an oath he turned on his heel and strode from the gambling-hall. His party straggled morosely after him. The old raider lingered for a last word.

"Take a fool's advice, Prince. There's a gunbarrel road leads out of town for the north. Hit it pronto. Stay with it till you come up with Webb's herd. You won't see his dust any too soon."

"I guess you're right, Reb," agreed Prince.

"You know I'm right. Just now you've got the boys bluffed, but it isn't going to last. They'll get busy lappin' up drinks. Quite a crowd of town toughs will join 'em. By night they'll be all primed up for a lynching. I'd spoil their party if I was you by bein' distant absentees."

"Soon as I can get Jim's shoulder fixed up we'll be joggin' along if he's able to travel," promised Billie.

"Good enough. And I'd see he was able if it was me."

Chapter X

Bud Proctor Lends a Hand

After the doctor had dressed the wounded shoulder he ordered Clanton to go to bed at once and stay there. "What he needs is rest, proper food, and sleep. See he gets them."

"I'll try," said Billie dryly. "Sometimes a fellow can't sleep when he's got a lead pill in him, doctor. Could you give me something to help him forget the pain an' the fever?"

The doctor made up some powders. "One every two hours till he gets to sleep. I'll come and see him in the morning. You're at the Proctor House, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Is Roush goin' to live?" asked Jim.

The professional man looked at the boy speculatively. He wondered whether the young fellow was suffering qualms of conscience. Since he did not believe in the indiscriminate shooting in vogue on the frontier, he was willing this youngster should worry a bit.

"Not one chance for him in a hundred," he replied brusquely.

"That's good. I'd hate to have to do it all over again. Have you got the makin's with you, Billie?" Clanton asked evenly.

"I've got a plain and simple word for such killings," the doctor said, flushing. "I find it in my Bible."

"That's where my dad found it too, doctor."

With which cryptic utterance Clanton led the way out of the office to the hotel.

Jimmie lay down dressed on the bed of their joint room while his friend went down to the porch to announce to sundry loafers, from whom the news would spread over town shortly, that Clanton had gone to sleep and was on no account to be disturbed till morning.

Later in the afternoon Billie might have been seen fixing a stirrup leather for Bud Proctor, the fourteen-year-old heir of the hotel proprietor. He and the youngster appeared to be having a bully time on the porch, but it was noticeable that the cowpuncher, for all his manner of casual carelessness, sat close to the wall in the angle of an L so that nobody could approach him unobserved.

In an admiring trance Bud had followed the two friends from the office of the doctor. Now he was in the seventh heaven at being taken into friendship by one of these heroes. At last he screwed up his courage to refer to the affair at Tolleson's.

"Say, Daniel Boone ain't got a thing on yore friend, has he? Jiminy, I'd like to go with you both when you leave town."

Billie spoke severely. "Get that notion right out of your haid, Bud. You're goin' to stay right here at home. I'll tell you another thing while we're on that subject. Don't you get to thinkin' that killers are fine people. They ain't. Some of 'em aren't even game. They take all kinds of advantage an' they're a cruel, cold-blooded lot. Never forget that. I'm not talkin' about Jim Clanton, understand. He did what he thought he had to do. I don't say he was right. I don't say he was wrong. But I will say that this country would be a whole lot better off if we'd all put our guns away."

Bud sniffed. "If you hadn't had yore guns this mornin' I'd like to know where you'd 'a' been."

"True enough. I can't travel unarmed because of Indians an' bad men. What I say is that some day we'll all be brave enough to go without our hog-legs. I'll be glad when that day comes."

"An' when you two went up Escondido Cañon after the Mescaleros that had captured Miss Roubideau? I heard Dad Wrayburn tellin' all about it at supper here one night. Well, what if you hadn't had any guns?" persisted Bud.

"That would have been tough luck," admitted Prince, holding up the leather to examine his work. "Learn to shoot if you like, Bud, but remember that guns aren't made to kill folks with. They're for buffaloes an' antelope an' coyotes."

"Didn't you ever kill any one?"

"Haven't you had any bringin' up?" Billie wanted to know indignantly "I've a good mind to put you across my knee an' whale you with this leather. I've a notion to quit you here an' now. Don't you know better than to ask such questions?"

"It--it slipped out," whimpered Bud. "I'll never do it again."

"See you don't. Now I'm goin' to give you a chance to make good with me an' my friend, Bud. Can you keep a secret?"

The eyes of the boy began to shine. "Crickey. You just try me, Mr. Prince."

"All right. I will. But first I must know that you are our friend."

"Cross my heart an' hope to die. Honest, I am."

"I believe you, Bud. Well, the Snaith-McRobert outfit intend to lynch me an' my friend to-night."

The face of the boy became all eyes. He was too astonished to speak.

"Our only chance is to get out of town. Jim is supposed to be so bad I can't move him. But if you can find an' saddle horses for us we'll slip out the back door at dusk an' make our get-away. Do you think you can get us horses an' some food without tellin' anybody what for?" asked the cowboy.

"I'll get yore own horses from the corral."

"No. That won't do. If you saddled them, that would arouse suspicion at once. You must bring two horses an' tie 'em to the back fence just as if you were goin' ridin' yourself. Then we'll take 'em when you come into the house. Make the tie with a slip knot. We may be in a hurry."

"Gee! This beats 'Hal Hiccup, the Boy Demon,'" crowed Bud, referring to a famous hero of Nickel Library fame. "I'll sure get you horses all right."

"I'll make arrangements to have the horses sent back. Bring 'em round just as it begins to get dark an' whistle a bar of 'Yankee Doodle' when you get here. Now cut your stick, Bud. Don't be seen near me any more."

The boy decamped. His face, unable to conceal his excitement at this blessed adventure which had fallen from heaven upon him, was trying to say "Golly!" without the use of words.

During the next hour or two Bud was a pest. Twenty times he asked different men mysteriously what o'clock it was. When he was sent to the store for pickles he brought back canned tomatoes. Set to weeding onions, he pulled up weeds and vegetables impartially. A hundred times he cast a longing glance at the westering sun.

So impatient was he that he could not quite wait till dusk. He slipped around to the Elephant Corral by a back way and picked out two horses that suited him. Then he went boldly to the owner of the stable.

"Mr. Sanders sent me to bring to him that sorrel and the white-foot bay. Said you'd know his saddle. It doesn't matter which of the other saddles you use."

Ten minutes later Bud was walking through the back yard of the hotel whistling shrilly "Yankee Doodle." It happened that his father was an ex-Confederate and "Dixie" was more to the boy's taste, but he enjoyed the flavor of the camouflage he was employing. It fitted into his new role of Bud Proctor, Scout of the Pecos.

The fugitives slipped down the back stairway of the Proctor House and into the garden. In another moment they were astride and moving out to the sparsely settled suburbs of town.

"Did you notice the brand on the horse you're ridin', Jim?" asked Prince with a grin.

"Same brand's on your bay, Billie--the Lazy S M. Did you tell that kid to steal us two horses?"

"No, but you've said it. I'm on the bronc Sanders rides, and you an' I are horse-thieves now as well as killers. This certainly gets us in bad."

"I've a notion to turn back yet," said Jim, with the irritability of a sick man. "How in Mexico did he happen to light on Snaith-McRobert stock? Looks like he might have found somethin' else for us."

"Bud has too much imagination," admitted Prince ruefully. "I'd bet a stack of blues he picked these hawsses on purpose--probably thought it would be a great joke on Sanders an' his crew."

"Well, I don't like it. They've got us where they want us now."

Billie did not like it either. To kill a man on the frontier then in fair fight was a misdemeanor. To steal a horse was a capital offense. Many a bronco thief ended his life at the end of a rope in the hands of respectable citizens who had in the way of business snuffed out the lives of other respectable citizens. Both of the Flying VY riders knew that if they were caught with the stock, it would be of no avail with Sanders to plead that they had no intention of stealing. Possession would be prima facie evidence of guilt.

"It's too late to go back now," Prince decided.

"We'll travel night an' day till we reach the old man an' have him send the bones back. I hate to do it, but we have no choice. Anyhow, we might as well be hanged for stealin' a horse as for anything else."

They topped a hill and came face to face with a rider traveling town ward. His gaze took in the animals carrying the fugitives and jumped to the face of Billie. In the eyes of the man was an expression blended of suspicion and surprise. He passed with a nod and a surly "'Evenin'."

"Fine luck we're havin', Billie," commented his friend with a little laugh. "I give Sanders twenty minutes to be on our trail."

Chapter XI

The Fugitives

Through the gathering darkness Prince watched the figure of his companion droop. The slim, lithe body sagged and the shoulders were heavy with exhaustion. Both small hands clung to the pommel of the saddle. It took no prophet to see that in his present condition the wounded man would never travel the gun-barrel road as far as the dust of the Flying V Y herd. Even by easy stages he could not do it, and with pursuit thundering at their heels the ride would be a cruel, grilling one.

"How about pullin' a little strategy on Sanders, Jim? Instead of hittin' the long trail, let's circle back around the town, strike the river, make camp, an' lie low in the chaparral. Does that listen good to you?"

Young Clanton looked at his friend suspiciously. The younger man was fagged out and in a good deal of pain. The jolting of the pony's movements jarred the bandages on the wound. Already his fever was high and he had moments of light-headedness. He knew that his partner was proposing to jeopardize his own chances of escape in order to take care of him.

"No, sir. We'll keep goin' right ahead," he said irritably. "Think I'm a quitter? Think I'm goin' to lie down on you?"

"Would I be likely to think that?" asked Billie gently. "What I'm thinking is that both of us would be better for a good night's rest. Why not throw off an' camp in the darkness? While we're sleepin' Sanders an' his posse will be ridin' the hearts out of their horses. It looks like good business to me to let 'em go to it."

"No," said Jim obstinately. "No. We'll keep ridin'."

Prince knew that the other understood what he was trying to do, and that his pride--and perhaps something better than pride--would not accept such a sacrifice. Billie said no more, but his mind still wrestled with the problem before him. It was impossible, while his comrade was so badly hurt, to hold a pace that would keep them ahead of the Lazy S M riders. Already Sanders must be gaining on them, and to make matters worse Clanton drew down to a walk. His high-pitched voice and disjointed expressions told the older man that he was at the beginning of delirium.

"What do you mean, standing there and grinnin' at me like a wolf, Dave Roush? I killed you once. You're dead an' buried. How come you alive again? Then shoot, both of you! Come out from cover, Hugh Roush." He stopped, and took the matter up from another angle. "You're a liar, you coyote. I'm not runnin' away. Two to one ... two to one ... I'll ride back an' gun you both. I'm a-comin' now."

He pulled up and turned his horse. Faintly there came to Billie the thudding of horses' hoofs. In five minutes it would be too late to save either the sick man or himself. It never occurred to him for a moment to desert Clanton. Somehow he must get him into the chaparral, and without an instant's delay. His mind seized on the delirious fancy of the young fellow.

"You're sure right, Jim," he said quietly. "I'd go an' gun them too. I'll ride with you an' see fair play. They're out here in the brush. Come on."

"No. They're back in town. Leave 'em to me. Don't you draw, Billie."

"All right. But they're over here to our right. I saw 'em there. Come. We'll sneak up on 'em so that they can't run when they hear you."

Billie turned. He swung his horse into the mesquite. His heart was heavy with anxiety. Would the wounded man accept his lead? Or would his obstinacy prevail?

"Here they are. Right ahead here," continued Prince.

Followed a moment of suspense, then came the crashing of brush as Clanton moved after him.

"S-sh! Ride softly, Jim. We don't want 'em to hear us an' get away."

"Tha's right. Tha's sure right. You said somethin' then, Billie. But they'll not get away. Haven't I slept on their trail four years? They're mine at last."

Prince was drawing him farther from the road. But the danger was not yet over. As the posse passed, some member of it might hear them, or young Clanton might hear it and gallop out to the road under the impression he was going to meet Dave Roush. Billie twisted in and out of the brush, never for an instant letting his friend pull up. On a moving horse one cannot hear so distinctly as on one standing still.

At last Billie began to breathe more easily. The pursuers must have passed before this. He could give his attention to the sick man.

Jim was clutching desperately to the saddle-horn. The fever was gaining on him and the delirium worse. He talked incessantly, sometimes incoherently. From one subject to another he went, but always he came back to Dave Roush and his brother. He dared them to stand up and fight. He called on them to stop running, to wait for him. Then he trailed off into a string of epithets usually ending in sobs of rage.

The sickness of the young man tore the heart of his companion. Every instinct of kindness urged him to stop, make up a bed for the wounded boy, and let him rest from the agony of travel. But he dared not stop yet. He had to keep going till they reached a place of temporary safety.

With artful promises of immediate vengeance upon his enemies, by means of taunts at him as a quitter, through urgent proddings that reached momentarily the diseased mind, Prince kept him moving through the brush. The sweat stood out on the white face of the young fellow shining ghastly in the moonlight.

After what seemed an interminable time they could see from a mesa the lights of Los Portales. Billie left the town well to his right, skirted the pastures on the outskirts, and struck the river four miles farther down.

While they were still a long way from it the boy collapsed completely and slid from the saddle to which he had so long clung. His friend uncinched and freed the sorrel, lifted the slack body to his own horse, and walked beside the animal to steady the lurching figure.

At the bank of the river he stopped and lifted the body to the ground. It lay limp and slack where the cowpuncher set it down. Through the white shoulder dressings a stain of red had soaked. For a moment Billie was shaken by the fear that the Arizonian might be dead, but he rejected it as not at all likely. Yet when he held his hand against the heart of the wounded man he was not sure that he could detect a beating.

From the river he brought water in his hat and splashed it into the white face. He undid the shoulder bandages, soaked them in cold water, and rebound the wound. Between the clenched teeth he forced a few drops of whiskey from his flask.

The eyelids fluttered and slowly opened.

"Where are we, Billie?" the sick man asked; then added: "How did we get away from 'em?"

"Went into the brush an' doubled back to the river. I'm goin' to hunt a place where we can lie hid for a few days."

"Oh, I'll be all right by mornin'. Did I fall off my hawss?"

"Yes. I had to turn your sorrel loose. Soon as I've picked a permanent camp I'll have to let mine go too. Some one would be sure to stumble on it an' go to guessin'."

After a moment the sick man spoke quietly. "You're a good pal, Billie. I haven't known many men would take a long chance like this for a fellow they hadn't met a month ago."

"I'm not forgettin' how you rode up Escondido when I asked you to go."

"You got a lot of sabe, too. You don't go bullin' Into a fight when there's a good reason for stayin' out. At Tolleson's if you had drawn yore gun when the shootin' was on, the whole Lazy S M would have pitched in an' riddled us both. They kept out because you did. That gave me a chance to come through alive."

The Texan registered embarrassment with a grin. "Yes, I'm the boy wonder of the Brazos," he admitted.

A faint, unexpected gleam of humor lay for a moment in the eyes of the sick man. "I got you where the wool's short, Billie. I can throw bouquets at you an' you got to stand hitched because I'm sick. Doc says to humor me. If I holler for the moon you climb up an' get it."

"I'll rope it for you," assented the cowpuncher. "How's the game shoulder?"

"Hurts like Heligoland. Say, ain't I due for one of them sleep powders Doc fixed up so careful?"

His companion gave him one, after which he folded his coat and put it under the head of Clanton, Over him he threw a saddle blanket.

"Back soon," he promised.

The sick man nodded weakly.

Billie swung to the saddle and turned down the river. Unfortunately the country here was an open one. Along the sandy shore of the stream the mesquite was thin. There was no soapweed and very little cactus. The terrain of the hill country farther back was rougher, more full of pockets, and covered with heavier brush. But it was necessary for the fugitives to remain close to water.

What Prince hoped to find was some sort of cave or overhanging ledge of shale under which they could lie hidden until Jim's strength returned sufficiently to permit of travel. The problem would be at best a difficult one. They had little food, scarce dared light a fire, and Clanton was in no condition to stand exposure in case the weather grew bad. Even if the boy weathered the sickness, it would not be possible for him to walk hundreds of miles in his weakened condition. But this was a matter which did not press for an answer. Billie intended to cross no bridges until he came to them. Just now he must focus his mind on keeping the wounded man alive and out of the hands of his enemies.

Beyond a bend he came upon a jutting bank that for lack of better might serve his purpose. He could scoop out a cave in which his partner might lie protected from the hot midday sun. If he filled the mouth with tumble weeds during the day they might escape observation for a time.

When the Texan returned to his friend, he found him in restless slumber. He tossed to and fro, muttering snatches of incoherent talk. The wound seemed to pain him even in his sleep, for he moved impatiently as though trying to throw off some weight lying heavy upon it.

But when he awoke his mind was apparently clear. He met Billie's anxious look with a faint, white-lipped smile. To his friend the young fellow had the signs of a very sick man. It was a debatable question whether to risk moving him now or take the almost hopeless chance of escaping detection where they were.

Prince put the decision on Jim himself. The answer came feebly, but promptly.

"Sure, move me. What's one little--bullet in the shoulder, Billie? Gimme some sleep--an' I'll be up an' kickin'."

Yet the older man noticed that his white lips could scarcely find strength to make the indomitable boast.

Very gently Billie lifted the wounded man and put him on the back of the cowpony. He held him there and guided the animal through the sand to the bend. Clanton hung on with clenched teeth, calling on the last ounce of power in his exhausted body with his strong will.

"Just a hundred yards more," urged the walking man as they rounded the bend. "We're 'most there now."

He lifted the slack body down and put it in the sand. The hands of the boy were ice cold. The sap of life was low in him. Prince covered him with the blankets and his coat. He gave him a sup or two of whiskey, then gathered buffalo chips and made a fire in which he heated some large rocks. These he tucked in beneath the blankets beside the shivering body. Slowly the heat warmed the invalid. After a time he fell once more into troubled sleep.

Billie drove his horse away and pelted it with stones to a trot. He could not keep it with him without risking discovery, but he was almost as much afraid that its arrival in Los Portales might start a search for the hidden fugitives. There was always a chance, of course, that the bay would stop to graze on the plains and not be found for a day or two.

The rest of the night the Texan put in digging a cave with a piece of slaty shale. The clay of the bank was soft and he made fair progress. The dirt he scooped out was thrown by him into the river.

Chapter XII

The Good Samaritan

A girl astride a buckskin pony rode down to the river to water her mount. She carried across the pommel of her saddle a small rifle. Hanging from the cantle strings was a wild turkey she had shot.

It was getting along toward evening and she was on her way back to Los Portales. The girl was a lover of the outdoors and she had been hunting alone. In the clear, amber light of afternoon the smoke of the town rose high into the sky, though the trading post itself could not be seen until she rounded the bend.

As her horse drank, a strange thing happened. At a point directly opposite her a bunch of tumble weeds had gathered against the bank of the shrunken stream. Something agitated them, and from among the brush the head and shoulders of a man projected.

Without an instant of delay the girl slipped from the pony and led it behind a clump of mesquite. Through this she peered intently, watching every move of the man, who had by this time come out into the open. He went down to the river, filled his hat with water, and disappeared among the tumble weeds, gathering them closely to conceal the entrance of his cave.

The young woman remounted, rode downstream an eighth of a mile, splashed through to the other side, and tied her pony to a stunted live-oak. Rifle in hand she crept cautiously along the bank and came to a halt behind a cottonwood thirty yards from the cave. Here she waited, patiently, silently, as many a time she had done while stalking the game she was used to hunting.

The minutes passed, ran into an hour. The westering sun slid down close to the horizon's edge. Still the girl held her vigil. At last the brush moved once more and the man reappeared. His glance swept the landscape, the river-bank, the opposite shore. Apparently satisfied, he came out from his hiding-place, and began to gather brush for a fire.

He was stooped, his back toward her, when the voice of the girl startled him to rigidity.

"Hands in the air!"

He did not at once obey. His head turned to see who this Amazon might be.

"Can't you hear? Reach for the sky!" she ordered sharply.

She had risen and stepped from behind the tree. He could see that she was dark, of a full, fine figure, and that her steady black eyes watched him without the least fear. The rifle in her hands covered him very steadily.

His hands went up, but he could not keep a little, sardonic smile from his face. The young woman lowered the rifle from her shoulder and moved warily forward.

"Lie down on the sand, face to the ground, hands outstretched!" came her next command.

Billie did as he was told. A little tug at his side gave notice to him that she had deftly removed his revolver.

"Sit up!"

The cowpuncher sat up and took notice. Stars of excitement snapped in the eyes of this very competent young woman. The color beat warmly through her dark skin. She was very well worth looking at.

"What's your name?" she demanded.

"My road brand is Billie Prince," he answered.

"Thought so. Where's the other man?"

He nodded toward the cave.

"Call him out," she said curtly.

"I hate to wake him. He's been wounded. All day he's been in a high fever and he's asleep at last."

For the first time her confidence seemed a little shaken. She hesitated. "Is he badly hurt?"

"He'd get well if he could have proper attention, but a wounded man can't stand to be jolted around the way he's been since he was shot."

"Do you mean that you think he's going to die?"

"I don't know." After a moment he added: "He's mighty sick."

"He ought never to have left town."

"Oughtn't he?" said Prince dryly. "If you'll inquire you'll find we had a good reason for leavin'."

"Well, you're going to have another good reason for going back," she told him crisply. "I'll send a buckboard for him."

"Aren't you takin' a heap of trouble on our account?" he inquired ironically.

"That's my business."

"And mine. Are you the sheriff of Washington County, ma'am?"

A pulse of anger beat in her throat. Her long-lashed eyes flashed imperiously at him. "It doesn't matter who I am. You'll march to town in front of my horse."

"Maybe so."

The voice of the sick man began to babble querulously. Both of those outside listened.

"He's awake," the girl said. "Bring him out here and let me see him."

Billie had an instinct that sometimes served him well. He rose promptly.

"Para sirvir usted" ("At your service"), he murmured.

"Don't try to start anything. I'll have you covered every second."

"I believe you. It won't be necessary to demonstrate, ma'am."

The cowpuncher carried his friend out from the cave and put him down gently in the sand.

"Why, he's only a boy!" she cried in surprise.

"He was man enough to go up against half a dozen 'Paches alone to save Pauline Roubideau," Billie said simply.

She looked up with quick interest. "I've heard that story. Is it true?"

"It's true. And he was man enough to fight it out to a finish against two bad men yesterday."

"But he can't be more than eighteen." She watched for a moment the flush of fever in his soft cheeks. "Did he really kill Dave and Hugh Roush? Or was it you?"

"He did it."

"I hate a killer!" she blazed unexpectedly.

"Does he look like a killer?" asked Prince gently.

"No, he doesn't. That makes it worse."

"Did you know that Dave Roush ruined his sister's life in a fiendish way?"

"I expect there's another side to that story," she retorted.

"This boy was fourteen at the time. His father swore him to vengeance an' Jim followed his enemies for years. He never had a doubt but that he was doin' right."

She put her rifle down impulsively. "Why don't you keep his face sponged? Bring me water."

The Texan put his hat into requisition again for a bucket. With her handkerchief the girl sponged the face and the hands. The cold water stopped for a moment the delirious muttering of the young man. But the big eyes that stared into hers did not associate his nurse with the present.

"I done remembered you, 'Lindy, like I promised. I'm a-followin' them scalawags yet," he murmured.

"His sister's name was Melindy," explained Prince.

The girl nodded. She was rubbing gently the boy's wrist with her wet handkerchief.

"It's getting dark," she told Billie in her sharp, decisive way. "Get your fire lit--a big one. I've got some cooking to do."

Further orders were waiting for him as soon as he had the camp-fire going. "You'll find my horse tied to a live-oak down the river a bit. Bring it up."

Billie smiled as he moved away into the darkness. This imperious girl belonged, of course, in the camp of the enemy. She had held him up with the intention of driving them back to town before her in triumph. But she was, after all, a very tender-hearted foe to a man stricken with sickness. It occurred to the Texan that through her might lie a way of salvation for them both.

Until he saw the turkey the cowpuncher wondered what cooking she could have in mind, but while he cantered back through the sand he guessed what she meant to do.

"Draw the turkey. Don't pick it," she gave instructions. Her own hands were busy trying to make her patient comfortable.

After he had drawn the bird, which was a young, plump one, he made under direction of the young woman a cement of mud. This he daubed in a three-inch coating over the turkey, then prepared the fire to make of it an oven. He covered the bird with ashes, raked live coals over these, and piled upon the red-hot coals piñon knots and juniper boughs.

"Keep your fire going till about two or three o'clock, then let it die out. In the morning the turkey will be baked," the young Diana gave assurance.

The cowpuncher omitted to tell her that he had baked a dozen more or less and knew all about it.

She rose and drew on her gauntlets in a business-like manner.

"I'm going home now. After the fever passes keep him warm and let him sleep if he will."

"Yes, ma'am," promised Billie with suspicious meekness.

The girl looked at him sharply, as if she distrusted his humility. Was he laughing at her? Did he dare to find amusement in her?

"I haven't changed my mind about you. Folks that come to town and start killing deserve all they get. But I'd look after a yellow dog if it was sick," she said contemptuously, little devils of defiance in her eyes.

"I'm not questionin' your motives, ma'am, so long as your actions are friendly,"

"I haven't any use for any of Homer Webb's outfit. He's got no business here. If he runs into trouble he has only himself to blame."

"I'll mention to him that you said so."

Picking up the rifle, she turned and walked to the horse. There was a little devil-may-care touch to her walk, just as in her manner, that suggested a girl spoiled by over-much indulgence. She was imperious, high-spirited, full of courage and insolence, because her environment had moulded her to independence. It was impossible for the young cow puncher to help admiring the girl.

"I'll be back," she called over her shoulder.

The pony jumped to a canter at the touch of her Jaeel. She disappeared in a gallop around the bend.

Already the fever of the boy was beginning to pass. He shivered with the chill of night. Billie wrapped around him his own coat, a linsey-woolen one lined with yellow flannel. He packed him up in the two blankets and heated stones for his feet and hands. Presently the boy fell into sound sleep for the first time since he was wounded. He had slept before, but always uneasily and restlessly. Now he did not mutter between clenched teeth nor toss to and fro.

His friend accepted it as a good omen. Since he had not slept a wink himself for forty hours, he lay down before the fire and made himself comfortable His eyes closed almost immediately.

Chapter XIII

A Friendly Enemy

"Law sakes, Miss Bertie Lee, yo' suppah done been ready an hour. Hit sure am discommodin' the way you go gallumphin' around. Don't you-all nevah git tired?"

Aunt Becky was large and black and bulgy. To say that she was fat fails entirely of doing her justice. She overflowed from her clothes in waves at all possible points. When she moved she waddled.

Just now she was trying to be cross, but the smile of welcome on the broad face would have its way.

"Set down an' rest yo' weary bones, honey. I'll have yo' suppah dished up in no time a-tall. Yore paw was axin' where is you awhile ago."

"Where's dad?" asked Miss Bertie Lee Snaith carelessly as she flung her gloves on a chair.

"He done gone down to the store to see if anything been heerd o' them vilyainous killers of Mr. Webb."

When Bertie Lee returned from washing her hands and face and giving a touch or two to her hair, she sat down and did justice to the fried chicken and biscuits of Aunt Becky. She had had a long day of it and she ate with the keen appetite of youth.

Her father returned while she was still at the table. He was a big sandy man dressed in a corduroy suit. He was broad of shoulder and his legs were bowed.

"Any news, dad?" she asked.

"Not a thing, Lee. I reckon they've made their get-away. They must have slipped off the road somewhere. The wounded one never could have traveled all night. Maybe we'll git 'em yet."

"What will you do with them, if you do?"

"Hang 'em to a sour apple tree," answered Wallace Snaith promptly.

His daughter made no comment. She knew that her father's resentment was based on no abstract love of law and order. It had back of it no feeling that crime had been committed or justice outraged. The frontier was in its roistering youth, full of such effervescing spirits that life was the cheapest thing it knew. Every few days some unfortunate was buried on Boot Hill, a victim of his own inexpertness with the six-shooter. The longhorned cattle of Texas were wearing broad trails to the north and the northwest and such towns as Los Portales were on the boom. Chap-clad punchers galloped through the streets at all hours of the day and night letting out their joyous "Eee-yip-eee." The keys of Tolleson's and half a dozen other gambling places had long since been lost, for the doors were never closed to patrons. At games of chance the roof was the limit, in the expressive phrase of the country. Guns cracked at the slightest difference of opinion. It was bad form to use the word "murder." The correct way to speak of the result of a disagreement was to refer to it as "a killing."

Law lay for every man in a holster on his own hip. Snaith recognized this and accepted it. He was ready to "bend a gun" himself if occasion called for it. What he objected to in this particular killing was the personal affront to him. One of Webb's men had deliberately and defiantly killed two of his riders when the town was full of his employees. The man had walked into Tolleson's--a place which he, Snaith, practically owned himself--and flung down the gauntlet to the whole Lazy S M outfit. It was a flagrant insult and Wallace Snaith proposed to see that it was avenged.

"I'm going duck-hunting to-morrow, dad," Lee told him. "I'll likely be up before daylight, but I'll try not to disturb you. If you hear me rummaging around in the pantry, you'll know what for."

He grunted assent, full of the grievance that was rankling in his mind. Lee came and went as she pleased. She was her own mistress and he made no attempt to chaperon her activities.

The light had not yet begun to sift into the sky next morning when Lee dressed and tiptoed to the kitchen. She carried saddlebags with her and into the capacious pockets went tea, coffee, flour, corn meal, a flask of brandy, a plate of cookies, and a slab of bacon. An old frying-pan and a small stew kettle joined the supplies; also a little package of "yerb" medicine prepared by Aunt Becky as a specific for fevers.

Lee walked through the silent, pre-dawn darkness to the stable and saddled her pony, blanketing and cinching as deftly as her father could have done it. With her she carried an extra blanket for the wounded man.

The gray light of dawn was beginning to sift into the sky when she reached the camp of the fugitives. Prince came forward to meet her. She saw that the fire was now only a bed of coals from which no smoke would rise to betray them.

The girl swung from the saddle and gave a little jerk of her head toward Clanton.

"How is he?"

"Slept like a log all night. Feels a heap better this mo'nin'. Wants to know if he can't have somethin' to eat."

"I killed a couple of prairie plover on the way. We'll make some soup for him."

The girl walked straight to her patient and looked down at him with direct and searching eyes. She found no glaze of fever in the ones that gazed back into hers.

"Hungry, are you?"

"I could eat a mail sack, ma'am."

She stripped the gauntlets from her hands and set about making breakfast. Jim watched her with alert interest. He was still weak, but life this morning began to renew itself in him. The pain and the fever had gone and left him at peace with a world just emerging from darkness into a rosily flushed dawn. Not the least attractive feature of it was this stunning, dark-eyed girl who was proving such a friendly enemy.

Her manner to Billie was crisp and curt. She ordered him to fetch and carry. Something in his slow drawl--some hint of hidden amusement in his manner--struck a spark of resentment from her quick eye. But toward Jim she was all kindness. No trouble was too much to take for his comfort. If he had a whim it must be gratified. Prince was merely a servant to wait upon him.

The education of Jim Clanton was progressing. As he ate his plover broth he could not keep his eyes from her. She was so full of vital life. The color beat through her dark skin warm and rich. The abundant blue-black hair, the flashing eyes, the fine poise of the head, the little jaunty swagger of her, so wholly a matter of unconscious faith in her place in the sun: all of these charmed and delighted him. He had never dreamed of a girl of such spirit and fire.

It was inevitable that both he and Billie should recall by contrast another girl who had given them generously of her service not long since. There were in the country then very few women of any kind. Certainly within a radius of two hundred miles there was no other girl so popular and so attractive as these two. Many a puncher would have been willing to break an arm for the sake of such kindness as had been lavished upon these boys.

By sunup the three of them had finished breakfast. Billie put out the fire and scattered the ashes in the river. He went into a committee of ways and means with Lee Snaith just before she returned to town.

"You can't stay here long. Some one is sure to stumble on you just as I did. What plan have you to get away?"

"If I could get our horses in three or four days mebbe Jim could make out to ride a little at a time."

"He couldn't--and you can't get your horses," she vetoed.

"Then I'll have to leave him, steal another horse, and ride through to Webb for help."

"No. You mustn't leave him. I'll see if I can get a man to take a message to your friends."

A smile came out on his lean, strong face. "You're a good friend."

"I'm no friend of yours," she flashed back. "But I won't have my father spoiling the view by hanging you where I might see you when I ride."

"You're Wallace Snaith's daughter, I reckon."

"Yes. And no man that rides for Homer Webb can be a friend of mine."

"Sorry. Anyhow, you can't keep me from being mighty grateful to my littlest enemy."

He did not intend to smile, but just a hint of it leaped to his eyes. She flushed angrily, suspecting that he was mocking her, and swung her pony toward town.

On the way she shot a brace of ducks for the sake of appearances. The country was a paradise for the hunter. On the river could be found great numbers of ducks, geese, swans, and pelicans. Of quail and prairie chicken there was no limit. Thousands of turkeys roosted in the timber that bordered the streams. There were times when the noise of pigeons returning to their night haunt was like thunder and the sight of them almost hid the sky. Bands of antelope could be seen silhouetted against the skyline. As for buffalo, numbers of them still ranged the plains, though the day of their extinction was close at hand. No country in the world's history ever offered such a field for the sportsman as the Southwest did in the days of the first great cattle drives.

Miss Bertie Lee dismounted at a store which bore the sign

SNAITH & McROBERT General Merchandise

Though a large building, it was not one of the most recent in town. It was what is known as a "dugout" in the West, a big cellar roofed over, with side walls rising above the level of the ground. In a country where timber was scarce and the railroad was not within two hundred miles, a sod structure of this sort was the most practicable possible.

The girl sauntered in and glanced carelessly about her. Two or three chap-clad cowboys were lounging against the counter watching another buy a suit of clothes. The wide-brimmed hats of all of them came off instantly at sight of her. The frontier was rampantly lawless, but nowhere in the world did a good woman meet with more unquestioning respect.

"What's this hyer garment?" asked the brick-red customer of the clerk, holding up the waistcoat that went with the suit.

"That's a vest," explained the salesman. "You wear it under the coat."

"You don't say!" The vaquero examined the article curiously and disdainfully. "I've heard tell of these didoes, but I never did see one before. Well, I'll take this suit. Wrap it up. You keep the vest proposition and give it to a tenderfoot."

No cowpuncher ever wore a waistcoat. The local dealers of the Southwest had been utterly unable to impress this fact upon the mind of the Eastern manufacturer. The result was that every suit came in three parts, one of which always remained upon the shelf of the store. Some of the supply merchants had several thousand of these articles de luxe in their stock. In later years they gave them away to Indians and Mexicans.

"Do you know where Jack Goodheart is?" asked Lee of the nearest youth.

"No, ma'am, but I'll go hunt him for you," answered the puncher promptly.

"Thank you."

Ten minutes later a bronzed rider swung down in front of the Snaith home. Miss Bertie Lee was on the porch.

"You sent for me," he said simply.

"Do you want to do something for me?"

"Try me."

"Will you ride after Webb's outfit and tell him that two of his men are in hiding on the river just below town. One of them is wounded and can't sit a horse. So he'd better send a buckboard for him. Let Homer Webb know that if dad or Sanders finds these men, the cottonwoods will be bearing a new kind of fruit. Tell him to burn the wind getting here. The men are in a cave on the left-hand side of the river going down. It is just below the bend."

Jack Goodheart did not ask her how she knew this or what difference it made to her whether Webb rescued his riders or not. He said, "I'll be on the road inside of twenty minutes."

Goodheart was a splendid specimen of the frontiersman. He was the best roper in the country, of proved gameness, popular, keen as an Italian stiletto, and absolutely trustworthy. Since the first day he had seen her Jack had been devoted to the service of Bertie Lee Snaith. No dog could have been humbler or less critical of her shortcomings. The girl despised his wooing, but she was forced to respect the man. As a lover she had no use for Goodheart; as a friend she was always calling upon him.

"I knew you'd go, Jack," she told him.

"Yes, I'd lie down and make of myself a door-mat for you to trample on," he retorted with a touch of self-contempt. "Would you like me to do it now?"

Lee looked at him in surprise. This was the first evidence he had ever given that he resented the position in which he stood to her.

"If you don't want to go I'll ask some one else," she replied.

"Oh, I'll go."

He turned and strode to his horse. For years he had been her faithful cavalier and he knew he was no closer to his heart's desire than when he began to serve. The first faint stirrings of rebellion were moving in him. It was not that he blamed her in the least. She was scarcely nineteen, the magnet for the eyes of all the unattached men in the district. Was it reasonable to suppose that she would give her love to a penniless puncher of twenty-eight, lank as a shad, with no recommendation but honesty? None the less, Jack began to doubt whether eternal patience was a virtue.

Chapter XIV

The Gun-Barrel Road

Jack Goodheart followed the gun-barrel road into a desert green and beautiful with vegetation. Now he passed a blooming azalea or a yucca with clustering bellflowers. The prickly pear and the cat-claw clutched at his chaps. The arrowweed and the soapweed were everywhere, as was also the stunted creosote. The details were not lovely, but in the sunset light of late afternoon the silvery sheen of the mesquite had its own charm for the rider.

Back of the saddle he carried a "hot roll" of blankets and supplies, for he would have to camp out three or four nights. Flour, coffee, and a can of tomatoes made the substance of his provisions. His rifle would bring him all the meat he needed. The one he used was a seventy-three because the bullets fired from it fitted the cylinder of his forty-four revolver.

Solitude engulfed him. Once a mule deer stared at him in surprise from an escarpment back of the mesa. A rattlesnake buzzed its ominous warning.

He left the road to follow the broad trail made by the Flying V Y herd. A horizon of deep purple marked the afterglow of sunset and preceded a desert night of stars. Well into the evening he rode, then hobbled his horse before he built a camp-fire.

Darkness was still thick over the plains when he left the buffalo wallow in which he had camped. All day he held a steady course northward till the stars were out again. Late the next afternoon he struck the dust of the drag in the ground swells of a more broken country.

The drag-driver directed Goodheart to the left point. He found there two men, One of them--Dad Wrayburn--he knew. The other was a man of sandy complexion, hard-faced, and fishy of eye.

"Whad you want?" the second demanded.

"I want to see Webb."

"Can't see him. He ain't here."

"Where is he?"

"He's ridden on to the Fort to make arrangements for receiving the herd," answered the man sulkily.

"Who's the big auger left?"

"I'm the foreman, if that's what you mean?"

"Well, I've come to tell you that two of yore men are hidin' in the chaparral below Los Portales. There was trouble at Tolleson's. Two of the Lazy S M men were gunned an' one of yours was wounded."

"Which one was wounded?"

"I heard his name was Clanton."

"Suits me fine," grinned the foreman, showing two rows of broken, stained teeth. "Hope the Lazy S M boys gunned him proper."

Dad Wrayburn broke in softly. "Chicto, compadre!" ("Hush, partner!") He turned to Goodheart. "The other man with Clanton must be Billie Prince."

"Yes."

"I reckon the Lazy S M boys are lookin' for 'em."

"You guessed right first crack out of the box."

"Where are our boys holed up?"

"In a cave the other side of town. They're just beyond the big bend of the river. I'll take you there."

"You've seen 'em."

"No." Goodheart hesitated just a moment before he went on. "I was sent by the person who has seen 'em."

"Listens to me like a plant," jeered Yankie.

"Meanin' that I'm a liar?" asked Goodheart coldly.

"I wasn't born yesterday. Come clean. Who is yore friend that saw the boys?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Then yore story doesn't interest me a whole lot."

"Different here," dissented Wrayburn. "Do you know how badly Clanton is hurt, Jack?"

"No. He was able to ride out of town, but my friend told me to say he wasn't able to ride now. You'll have to send a wagon for him."

Wrayburn turned to the foreman. "Joe, we've got to go back an' help the boys."

"Not on yore topknot, Dad. I'm here to move these beeves along to the Fort. Prince an' that Clanton may have gone on a tear an' got into trouble or they may not. I don't care a plugged nickel which way it is. I'm not keepin' herd on them, an' what's more I don't intend to."

"We can't leave 'em thataway. Dad gum it, we got to stand by the boys, Joe. That's what Webb would tell us if he was here."

"But he ain't here, Dad. An' while he's gone I'm major-domo of this outfit. We're headed north, not south."

"You may be. I'm not. An' I reckon you'll find several of the boys got the same notion I have. I taken a fancy to both those young fellows, an' if I hadn't I'd go help 'em just the same."

"You ain't expectin' to ride our stock on this fool chase, are you?"

"I'll ride the first good bronc I get my knees clamped to, Joe."

"As regards that, you'll get my answer like shot off'n a shovel. None of the Flyin' V Y remuda is goin'."

Wrayburn cantered around the point of the herd to the swing, from the swing back to the drag, and then forward to the left point. In the circuit he had stopped to sound out each rider.

"We all have decided that ten of us will go back, Joe," he announced serenely. "That leaves enough to loose-herd the beeves whilst we're away."

Yankie grew purple with rage. "If you go you'll walk. I'll show you who's foreman here."

"No use raisin' a rookus, Joe," replied the old Confederate mildly. "We're goin'. Yore authority doesn't stretch far enough to hold us here."

"I'll show you!" stormed the foreman. "Some of you will go to sleep in smoke if you try to take any of my remuda."

"Now don't you-all be onreasonable, Joe. We got to go. Cayn't you get it through yore cocoanut that we've got to stand by our pardners?"

"That killer Clanton is no pardner of mine. I meant to burn powder with him one of these days myself. If Wally Snaith beats me to it I'm not goin' to wear black," retorted Yankie.

"Sho! The kid's got good stuff in him. An' nobody could ask for a squarer pal than Billie Prince. You know that yore own self."

"You heard what I said, Dad. The Flyin' V Y horses don't take the back trail to-day," insisted the foreman stubbornly.

The wrinkled eyes of Wrayburn narrowed a little. He looked straight at Yankie.

"Don't get biggety, Joe. I'm not askin' you or any other man whether I can ride to rescue a friend when he's in trouble. You don't own these broncs, an' if you did we'd take 'em just the same."

The voice of Wrayburn was still gentle, but it no longer pleaded for understanding. The words were clean-cut and crisp.

"I'll show you!" flung back the foreman with an oath.

When the little group of cavalry was gathered for the start, Yankie, rifle in hand, barred the way. His face was ugly with the fury of his anger.

Dad Wrayburn rode forward in front of his party. "Don't git promiscuous with that cannon of yours, Joe. You've done yore level best to keep us here. But we're goin' just the same. We-all will tell the old man how tender you was of his remuda stock. That will let you out."

"Don't you come another step closeter, Dad Wrayburn!" the foreman shouted. "I'll let you know who is boss here."

Wrayburn did not raise his voice. The drawl in it was just as pronounced, but every man present read in it a warning.

"This old sawed-off shotgun of mine spatters like hell, Joe. It always did shoot all over the United States an' Texas."

There was an instant of dead silence. Each man watched the other intently, the one cool and determined, the other full of a volcanic fury. The curtain had been rung up for tragedy.

A man stepped between them, twirling carelessly a rawhide rope.

"Just a moment, gentlemen. I think I know a way to settle this without bloodshed." Jack Goodheart looked first at the ex-Confederate, then at the foreman. He was still whirling as if from absent-minded habit the loop of his reata.

"We're here to listen, Jack. That would suit me down to the ground," answered Wrayburn.

The loop of the lariat snaked forward, whistled through the air, dropped over the head of Yankie, and tightened around his neck. A shot went wildly into the air as the rifle was jerked out of the hands of its owner, who came to the earth with sprawling arms. Goodheart ran forward swiftly, made a dozen expert passes with his fingers, and rose without a word.

Yankie had been hog-tied by the champion roper of the Southwest.

Chapter XV

Lee Plays a Leading Rôle

A man on horseback clattered up the street and drew up at the Snaith house. He was a sandy-complexioned man with a furtive-eyed, apologetic manner. Miss Bertie Lee recognized him as one of the company riders named Dumont.

"Is yore paw home, Miss Lee?" he asked breathlessly.

"Some one to see you, dad," called the girl over her shoulder.

Wallace Snaith sauntered out to the porch. "'Lo, Dumont!"

"I claim that hundred dollars reward. I done found 'em, Mr. Snaith."

Lee, about to enter the house, stopped in her tracks.

"Where?" demanded the cattleman jubilantly.

"Down the river--hid in a dugout they done built. I'll take you-all there."

"I knew they couldn't be far away when that first hawss came in all blood-stained. Hustle up four or five of the boys, Dumont. Get 'em here on the jump." In the face of the big drover could be read a grim elation.

His daughter confronted him. "What are you going to do, dad?"

"None o' yore business, Lee. You ain't in this," he answered promptly.

"You're going out to kill those men," she charged, white to the lips.

"They'll git a trial if they surrender peaceable."

"What kind of a trial?" she asked scornfully. "They know better than to surrender. They'll fight."

"That'll suit me too."

"Don't, dad. Don't do it," the girl begged. "They're game men. They fought fair. I've made inquiries. You mustn't kill them like wolves."

"Mustn't I?" he said stubbornly. "I reckon that's just what I'm goin' to do. I'll learn Homer Webb to send his bad men to Los Portales lookin' for trouble. He can't kill my riders an' get away with it."

"You know he didn't do that. This boy--Clanton, if that's his name--had a feud with the Roush family. One of them betrayed his sister. Far as I can find out these Roush brothers were the scum of the earth," Her bosom rose and fell fast with excitement.

"Howcome you to know so much about it, girl? Not that it makes any difference. They may have been hellhounds, but they were my riders. These gunmen went into my own place an' shot 'em down. They picked the fight. There's no manner o' doubt about that."

"They didn't do it on your account. I tell you there was an old feud."

"Webb thinks he's got the world by the tail for a downhill pull. I'll show him."

"Dad, you're starting war. Don't you see that? If you shoot these men he'll get back by killing some of yours. And so it will go on."

"I reckon. But I'm not startin' the war. He did that. It was the boldest piece of cheek I ever heard tell of--those two gunmen goin' into Tolleson's and shootin' up my riders. They got to pay the price."

Lee cried out in passionate protest. "It'll be just plain murder, dad. That's all."

"What's got into you, girl?" he demanded, seizing her by the arms. The chill of anger and suspicion filmed his light-blue eyes. "I won't stand for this kind of talk. You go right into the house an' 'tend to yore own knittin'. I've heard about enough from you."

He swung her round by the shoulders and gave a push.

Lee did not go to her room and fling herself upon the bed in an impotent storm of tears. She stood thinking, her little fists clenched and her eyes flashing. Civilization has trained women to feebleness of purpose, but this girl stood outside of conventional viewpoints. It was her habit to move directly to the thing she wanted. Her decision was swift, the action following upon it immediate.

She lifted her rifle down from the deer-horn rack where it rested and buckled the ammunition belt around her waist. Swiftly she ran to the corral, roped her bronco, saddled it, and cinched. As she galloped away she saw her father striding toward the stable. His shout reached her, but she did not wait to hear what he wanted.

The hoofs of her pony drummed down the street. She flew across the desert and struck the river just below town. The quirt attached to her wrist rose and fell. She made no allowance for prairie-dog holes, but went at racing speed through the rabbit weed and over the slippery salt-grass bumps.

In front of the cave she jerked the horse to a halt.

"Hello, in there!"

The tumble weeds moved and the head of Prince appeared. He pushed the brush aside and came out.

"Buenos tardes, señorita. Didn't know you were comin' back again to-day."

"You've been seen," she told him hurriedly as she dismounted. "Dad's gathering his men. He means to make you trouble."

Billie looked away in the direction of the town. A mile or more away he saw a cloud of dust. It was moving toward them.

"I see he does," he answered quietly.

"Quick! Get your friend out. Take my horse."

He shook his head slowly. "No use. They would see us an' run us down. We'll make a stand here."

"But you can't do that. They'll surround you. They'll send for more men if they need 'em."

"Likely. But Jim couldn't stand such a ride even if there was a chance--and there isn't, not with yore horse carryin' double. We'll hold the fort, Miss Lee, while you make yore get-away into the hills. An' thank you for comin'. We'll never forget all you've done for us these days."

"I'm not going."

"Not goin'?"

"I'm going to stay right here. They won't dare to shoot at you if I'm here."

"I never did see such a girl as you," admitted Prince, smiling at her. "You take the cake. But we can't let you do that for us. We can't skulk behind a young lady's skirts to save our hides. It's not etiquette on the Pecos."

The red color burned through her dusky skin. "I'm not doing it for you," she said stiffly. "It's dad I'm thinking about. I don't want him mixed up in such a business. I won't have it either."

"You'd better go to him and talk it over, then."

"No. I'll stay here. He wouldn't listen to me a minute."

Billie was still patient with her. "I don't think you'd better stay, Miss Lee. I know just how you feel. But there are a lot of folks won't understand howcome you to take up with yore father's enemies. They'll talk a lot of foolishness likely."

The cowpuncher blushed at his own awkward phrasing of the situation, yet the thing had to be said and he knew no other way to say it.

She flashed a resentful glance at him. Her cheeks, too, flamed.

"I don't care what they say since it won't be true," she answered proudly. "You needn't argue. I've staked out a claim here."

"I wish you'd go. There's still time."

The girl turned on him angrily with swift, animal grace. "I tell you it's none of your business whether I go or stay. I'll do just as I please."

Prince gave up his attempt to change her mind. If she would stay, she would. He set about arranging the defense.

Young Clanton crept out to the mouth of the cave and lay down with his rifle beside him. His friend piled up the tumble weeds in front of him.

"We're right enough in front--easy enough to stand 'em off there," reflected Billie, aloud. "But I'd like to know what's to prevent us from being attacked in the rear. They can crawl up through the brush till they're right on top of the bank. They can post sharpshooters in the mesquite across the river so that if we come out to check those snakin' forward, the snipers can get us."

"I'll sit on the bank above the cave and watch 'em," announced Lee.

"An' what if they mistook you for one of us?" asked Prince dryly.

"They can't, with me wearing a red coat."

"You're bound to be in this, aren't you?" His smile was more friendly than the words. It admitted reluctant admiration of her.

The party on the other side of the river was in plain sight now. Jim counted four--five--six of them as they deployed. Presently Prince threw a bullet into the dust at the feet of one of the horses as they moved forward. It was meant as a warning not to come closer and accepted as one.

After a minute of consultation a single horseman rode to the bank of the stream.

"You over there," he shouted.

"It's dad," said Lee.

"You'd better surrender peaceable. We've come to git you alive or dead," shouted Snaith.

"What do you want us for?" asked Prince.

"You know well enough what for. You killed one of my punchers."

Clanton groaned. "Only one?"

"An' another may die any day. Come out with yore hands up."

"We'd rather stay here, thank you," Billie called back.

Snaith leaned forward in the saddle. "Is that you over there, Lee?"

"Yes, dad."

"Gone back on yore father and taken up with Webb's scalawags, have you?"

"No, I haven't," she called back. "But I'm going to see they get fair play."

"You git out of there, girl, and on this side of the river!" Snaith roared angrily. "Pronto! Do you hear?"

"There's no use shouting yourself hoarse, dad. I can hear you easily, and I'm not coming."

"Not comin'! D'ye mean you've taken up with a pair of killers, of outlaws we 're goin' to put out of business? You talk like a--like a--"

"Go slow, Snaith!" cut in Prince sharply. "Can't you see she's tryin' to save you from murder?"

"We're goin' to take those boys back to Los Portales with us--or their bodies. I don't care a whole lot which. You light a shuck out of there, Lee."

"No," she answered stubbornly. "If you're so bent on shooting at some one you can shoot at me."

The cattleman stormed and threatened, but in the end he had to give up the point. His daughter was as obstinate as he was. He retired in volcanic humor.

"I never could get dad to give up swearing," his daughter told her new friends by way of humorous apology. "Wonder what he'll do now."

"Wait till night an' drive us out of our hole, I expect," replied Prince.

"Will he wait? I'm not so sure of that," said Jim. "See. His men are scattering. They're up to somethin'."

"They're going down to cross the river to get behind us just as you said they would," predicted Lee.

She was right. Half an hour later, from her position on the bank above the cave, she caught a glimpse of a man slipping forward through the brush. She called to Prince, who crept out from behind the tumble weeds to join her. A bullet dug into the soft clay not ten inches from his head. He scrambled up and lay down behind a patch of soapweed a few yards from the girl. Another bullet from across the river whistled past the cowpuncher.

Lee rose and walked across to the bushes where he lay crouched. Very deliberately she stood there, shading her eyes from the sun as she looked toward the sharpshooters. Twice they had taken a chance, because of the distance between her and Prince. She intended they should know how close she was to him now.

Billie could not conceal his anxiety for her. "Why don't you get back where you were? I got as far as I could from you on purpose. What's the sense of you comin' right up to me when you see they're shootin' at me?"

"That's why I came up closer. They'll have to stop it as long as I'm here."

"You can't stay there the rest of yore natural life, can you?" he asked with manifest annoyance. Even if he got out of his present danger alive--and Billie had to admit to himself that the chances did not look good--he knew it would be cast up to him some day that he had used Lee Snaith's presence as a shield against his enemies. "Why don't you act reasonable an' ride back to town, like a girl ought to do? You've been a good friend to us. There's nothin' more you can do. It's up to us to fight our way out."

He took careful aim and fired. A man in the bushes two hundred yards back of them scuttled to his feet and ran limping off. Billie covered the dodging man with his rifle carefully, then lowered his gun without firing.

"Let him go," said Prince aloud. "Mr. Dumont won't bother us a whole lot. He's gun-shy anyhow."

From across the river came a scatter of bullets.

"They've got to hit closeter to that before they worry me," Jim called to the two above.

"I don't think they shot to hit. They're tryin' to scare Miss Lee away," called down Billie.

"As if I didn't know dad wouldn't let 'em take any chances with me here," the girl said confidently "If we can hold out till night I can stay here and keep shooting while you two slip away and hide. Before morning your friends ought to arrive."

"If they got yore message."

"Oh, they got it. Jack Goodheart carried it."

The riflemen across the river were silent for a time. When they began sniping again, it was from such an angle that they could aim at the cave without endangering those above. Both Clanton and Prince returned the fire.

Presently Lee touched on the shoulder the man beside her.

"Look!"

She pointed to a cloud of smoke behind them. From it tongues of fire leaped up into the air. Farther to the right a second puff of smoke could be seen, and beyond it another and still a fourth jet.

After a moment of dead silence Prince spoke. "They've fired the prairie. The wind is blowin' toward us. They mean to smoke us out."

"Yes."

"We'll be driven down into the open bed of the river where they can pick us off."

The girl nodded.

"Now, will you leave us?" Billie turned on her triumphantly. He could at least choose the conditions of the last stand they must make. "They've called our bluff. It's a showdown."

"Now I'll go less than ever," she said quietly.

Chapter XVI

Three Modern Musketeers

The fierce crackling of the flames rolled toward them. The wind served at least the one purpose of lifting the smoke so that it did not stifle those on the river-bank. Clanton crept up from the cave and joined them.

"Looks like we're goin' out with fireworks, Billie," he grinned.

"That's nonsense," said Lee sharply. "There's a way of escape, if only we can find it."

"Blamed if I see it," the young fellow answered. As he looked at her the eyes in his pale face glowed. "But I see one thing. You're the best little pilgrim that ever I met up with."

The heat of the flames came to them in waves.

"You walk out, climb on yore horse, an' ride down the river, Miss Lee. Then we'll make a break for cover. You can't do anything more for us," insisted Prince.

"That's right," agreed the younger man. "We'll play this out alone. You cut yore stick an' drift. If we git through I'll sure come back an' thank you proper some day."

Recently Lee had read "The Three Musketeers." From it there flashed to her a memory of the picture on the cover.

"I know what we'll do," she said, coughing from a swallow of smoke. She stepped between them and tucked an arm under the elbow of each. "All for one, and one for all. Forward march!"

They moved down the embankment side by side to the sand-bed close to the stream, each of the three carrying a rifle tucked close to the side. From the chaparral keen eyes watched them, covering every step they took with ready weapons. Miss Lee's party turned to the right and followed the river-bed in the direction of Los Portales. For the wind was driving the fire down instead of up. Those in the mesquite held a parallel course to cut off any chance of escape.

Some change of wind currents swept the smoke toward them in great billows. It enveloped the fugitives in a dense cloud.

"Get yore head down to the water," Billie called into the ear of the girl.

They lay on the rocks in the shallow water and let the black smoke waves pour over them. Lee felt herself strangling and tried to rise, but a heavy hand on her shoulder held her face down. She sputtered and coughed, fighting desperately for breath. A silk handkerchief was slipped over her face and knotted behind. She felt sick and dizzy. The knowledge flashed across her mind that she could not stand this long. In its wake came another dreadful thought. Was she going to die?

The hand on her shoulder relaxed. Lee felt herself lifted to her feet. She caught at Billie's arm to steady herself, for she was still queer in the head. For a few moments she stood there coughing the smoke out of her lungs. His arm slipped around her shoulder.

"Take yore time," he advised.

A second shift of the breeze had swept the smoke away. This had saved their lives, but it had also given Snaith's men another chance at them A bullet whistled past the head of Clanton, who was for the time a few yards from his friends. Instantly he whipped the rifle up and fired.

"No luck" he grumbled. "My eyes are sore from the smoke. I can't half see."

Lee was not yet quite herself. The experience through which she had just passed had shaken her nerves.

"Let's get out of here quick!" she cried.

"Take yore time. There's no hurry," Prince iterated. "They won't shoot again, now Jim's close to us."

The younger man grinned, as he had a habit of doing when the cards fell against him. "Where'd we go? Look, they've headed us off. We can't travel forward. We can't go back. I expect we'll have to file on the quarter-section where we are," he drawled.

A rider had galloped forward and was dismounting close to the river. He took shelter behind a boulder.

Billie swept with a glance the plain to their right. A group of horsemen was approaching. "More good citizens comin' to be in at the finish of this man hunt. They ought to build a grand stand an' invite the whole town," he said sardonically.

A water-gutted arroyo broke the line of liver-bank. Jim, who was limping heavily, stopped and examined it.

"Let's stay here, Billie, an' fight it out. No use foolin' ourselves. We're trapped. Might as well call for a showdown here as anywhere."

Prince nodded. "Suits me. We'll make our stand right at the head of the arroyo." He turned abruptly to the girl. "It's got to be good-bye here, Miss Lee."

"That's whatever, littlest pilgrim," agreed Clanton promptly. "If you get a chance send word to Webb an' tell him how it was with us."

Her lip trembled. She knew that in the shadow of the immediate future red tragedy lurked. She had done her best to avert it and had failed. The very men she was trying to save had dismissed her.

"Must I go?" she begged.

"You must, Miss Lee. We're both grateful to you. Don't you ever doubt that!" Billie said, his earnest gaze full in hers.

The girl turned away and went up through the sand, her eyes filmed with tears so that she could not see where she was going. The two men entered the arroyo. Before they reached the head of it she could hear the crack of exploding rifles. One of the men across the river was firing at them and they were throwing bullets back at him. She wondered, shivering, whether it was her father.

It must have been a few seconds later that she heard the joyous "Eee-yip-eee!" of Prince. Almost at the same time a rider came splashing through the shallow water of the river toward her.

The man was her father. He swung down from the saddle and snatched her into his arms. His haggard face showed her how anxious he had been. She began to sob, overcome, perhaps, as much by his emotion as her own.

"I'll blacksnake the condemned fool that set fire to the prairie!" he swore, gulping down a lump in his throat. "Tell me you-all aren't hurt, Bertie Lee.... God! I thought you was swallowed up in that fire."

"Daddie, daddie I couldn't help it. I had to do it," she wept. "And--I thought I would choke to death, but Mr. Prince saved me. He kept my face close to the water and made me breathe through a handkerchief."

"Did he?" The man's face set grimly again. "Well, that won't save him. As for you, miss, you're goin' to yore room to live on bread an' water for a week. I wish you were a boy for about five minutes so's I could wear you to a frazzle with a cowhide."

Snaith's intentions toward Clanton and Prince had to be postponed for the present, the cattleman discovered a few minutes later. When he and Lee emerged from the river-bed to the bank above, the first thing he saw was a group of cowpunchers shaking hands gayly with the two fugitives. His jaw dropped.

"Where in Mexico did they come from?" he asked himself aloud.

"I expect they're Webb's riders," his daughter answered with a little sob of joy. "I thought they'd never come."

"You thought.... How did you know they were comin'?"

"Oh, I sent for them," The girl's dark eyes met his fearlessly. A flicker of a smile crept into them. "I've had the best of you all round, dad. You'd better make that two weeks on bread and water."

Wallace Snaith gathered his forces and retreated from the field of battle. A man on a spent horse met him at his own gate as he dismounted. He handed the cattleman a note.

On the sheet of dirty paper was written:

The birds you want are nesting in a dugout on the river four miles below town. You got to hurry or they'll be flown.

J.Y.

Snaith read the note, tore it in half, and tossed the pieces away. He turned to the messenger.

"Tell Joe he's just a few hours late. His news isn't news any more."

Chapter XVII

"Peg-Leg" Warren

Webb drove his cattle up the river, the Staked Plains on his right. The herd was a little gaunt from the long journey and he took the last part of the trek in easy stages. Since he had been awarded the contract for beeves at the Fort, by Department orders the old receiving agent had been transferred. The new appointee was a brother-in-law of McRobert and the owner of the Flying V Y did not want to leave any loophole for rejection of the steers.

With the clean blood of sturdy youth in him Clanton recovered rapidly from the shoulder wound. In order to rest him as much as possible, Webb put him in charge of the calf wagon which followed the drag and picked up any wobbly-legged bawlers dropped on the trail. During the trip Jim discovered for himself the truth of what Billie had said, that the settlers with small ranches were lined up as allies of the Snaith-McRobert faction. These men, owners of small bunches of cows, claimed that Webb and the other big drovers rounded up their cattle in the drive, ran the road brand of the traveling outfit on these strays, and sold them as their own. The story of the drovers was different. They charged that these "nesters" were practically rustlers preying upon larger interests passing through the country to the Indian reservations. Year by year the feeling had grown more bitter, That Snaith and McRobert backed the river settlers was an open secret. A night herder had been shot from the mesquite not a month before. The blame had been laid upon a band of bronco Mescaleros, but the story was whispered that a "bad man" in the employ of the Lazy S M people, a man known as "Mysterious Pete Champa," boasted later while drunk that he had fired the shot.

Jim had heard a good deal about this Mysterious Pete. He was a killer of the most deadly kind because he never gave warning of his purpose. The man was said to be a crack shot, quick as chain lightning, without the slightest regard for human life. He moved furtively, spoke little when sober, and had no scruples against assassination from ambush. Nobody in the Southwest was more feared than he.

This man crossed the path of Clanton when the herd was about fifty miles from the Fort.

The beeves had been grazing forward slowly all afternoon and were loose-bedded early for the night. Cowpunchers are as full of larks as schoolboys on a holiday. Now they were deciding a bet as to whether Tim McGrath, a red-headed Irish boy, could ride a vicious gelding that had slipped into the remuda. Billie Prince roped the front feet of the horse and threw him. The animal was blindfolded and saddled.

Doubtful of his own ability to stick to the seat, Tim maneuvered the buckskin over to the heavy sand before he mounted. The gelding went sun-fishing into the air, then got his head between his legs and gave his energy to stiff-legged bucking. He whirled as he plunged forward, went round and round furiously, and unluckily for Tim reached the hard ground. The jolts jerked the rider forward and back like a jack-knife without a spring. He went flying over the head of the bronco to the ground.

The animal, red-eyed with hate, lunged for the helpless puncher. A second time Billie's rope snaked forward. The loop fell true over the head of the gelding, tightened, and swung the outlaw to one side so that his hoofs missed the Irishman. Tim scrambled to his feet and fled for safety.

The cowpunchers whooped joyously. In their lives near-tragedy was too frequent to carry even a warning. Dad Wrayburn hummed a stanza of "Windy Bill" for the benefit of McGrath:

"Bill Garrett was a cowboy, an' he could ride, you bet; He said the bronc he couldn't bust was one he hadn't met. He was the greatest talker that this country ever saw Until his good old rim-fire went a-driftin' down the draw."

Two men had ridden up unnoticed and were watching with no obvious merriment the contest. Now one of them spoke.

"Where can I find Homer Webb?"

Dad turned to the speaker, a lean man with a peg-leg, brown as a Mexican, hard of eye and mouth. The gray bristles on the unshaven face advertised him as well on into middle age. Wrayburn recognized the man as "Peg-Leg" Warren, one of the most troublesome nesters on the river.

"He's around here somewhere." Dad turned to Canton. "Seen anything of the old man, Jim?"

"Here he comes now."

Webb rode up to the group. At sight of Warren and his companion the face of the drover set.

"I've come to demand an inspection of yore herd," broke out the nester harshly.

"Why demand it? Why not just ask for it?" cut back Webb curtly.

"I'm not splittin' words. What I'm sayin' is that if you've got any of my cattle here I want 'em."

"You're welcome to them." Webb turned to his segundo. "Joe, ride through the herd with this man. If there's any stock there with his brand, cut 'em out for him. Bring the bunch up to the chuck wagon an' let me see 'em before he drives 'em away."

The owner of the Flying V Y brand wasted no more words. He swung his cowpony around and rode back to the chuck wagon to superintend the jerking of the hind quarters of a buffalo.

He was still busy at this when the nester returned with half a dozen cattle cut out from the herd. In those days of the big drives many strays drifted by chance into every road outfit passing through the country. It was no reflection on the honesty of a man to ask for an inspection and to find one's cows among the beeves following the trail.

Webb walked over to the little bunch gathered by Warren and looked over each one of the steers.

"That big red with the white stockin's goes with the herd. The rest may be yours," the drover said.

"The roan's mine too. My brand's the Circle Diamond. See here where it's been blotted out."

"I bought that steer from the Circle Lazy H five hundred miles from here. You'll find a hundred like it in the herd," returned Webb calmly.

Warren turned to his companion. "Pete, you know this steer. Ain't it mine?"

"Sure." The man to whom Warren had turned for confirmation was a slight, trim, gray-eyed man. Sometimes the gray of the eyes turned almost black, but always they were hard as onyx. There was about the man something sinister, something of eternal wariness. His glance had a habit of sweeping swiftly from one person to another as if it questioned what purpose might lie below the unruffled surface.

Homer Webb called to Prince and to Wrayburn. "Billie--Dad, know anything about this big red steer?"

"Know it? We'd ought to," answered Wrayburn promptly. "It's the ladino beef that started the stampede on the Brazos--made us more trouble than any ten critters of the bunch."

"You bought it from the Circle Lazy H," supplemented Billie.

Peg-Leg Warren laughed harshly. "O' course they'll swear to it. You're givin' them their job, ain't you?"

The drover looked at him steadily. "Yes, I'm givin' the boys a job, but I haven't bought 'em body an' soul, Warren."

The eyes of the nester were a barometer of his temper. "That's my beef, Webb."

"It never was yours an' it never will be."

"Raw work, Webb. I'll not stand for it."

"Don't overplay yore hand," cautioned the owner of the trail herd.

Clanton had ridden up and was talking to the cook. A couple of other punchers had dropped up to the chuck wagon, casually as it were.

Warren glared at them savagely, but swallowed his rage. "It's yore say-so right now, but I'll collect what's comin' to me one of these days. You're liable to find this trail hotter 'n hell with the lid on."

"I'm not lookin' for trouble, but I'm not runnin' away from it," returned Webb evenly.

"You're sure goin' to find it--a heap more of it than you can ride herd on. That right, Pete?"

The gray-eyed man nodded slightly. Mysterious Pete had the habit of taciturnity. His gaze slid in a searching, sidelong fashion from Webb to Prince, on to Wrayburn, across to Clanton, and back to the drover. No wolf in the encinal could have been warier.

"Cut out the roan," ordered Webb.

The ladino was separated from the bunch of Circle Diamond cattle. Warren and his satellite drove the rest from the camp.

"War, looks like," commented Dad Wrayburn.

"Yes," agreed the drover. "I wish it didn't have to be. But Peg-Leg called for a showdown. He came here to force my hand. As regards the beef, he might have had it an' welcome. But that wouldn't have satisfied him. He'd have taken it for a sign of weakness if I had given way."

"What will he do?" asked young McGrath.

"I don't know. We'll have to keep our eyes open every minute of the day an' night. Are you with me, boys?"

Tim threw his hat into the air and let out a yell. "Surest thing you know."

"Damfidon't sit in an' take a hand," said Wrayburn.

One after another agreed to back the boss.

"But don't think it will be a picnic," urged Webb. "We'll know we've been in a fight before we get through. With a crowd of gunmen like Mysterious Pete against us we'll have hard travelin'. I'd side-step this if I could, but I can't."

Chapter XVIII

A Stampede

Clanton took his turn at night herding for the first time the day of Warren's visit to the camp. Under a star-strewn sky he circled the sleeping herd, humming softly a stanza of a cowboy song. Occasionally he met Billie Prince or Tim McGrath circling in the opposite direction. The scene was peaceful as old age and beautiful as a fairy tale. For under the silvery light of night the Southwest takes on a loveliness foreign to it in the glare of the sun. The harsh details of day are lost in a luminous glow of mystic charm.

Jim had just ridden past Billie when the silence was shattered by a sudden fury of sound. The popping of revolvers, the clanging of cow bells, the clash of tin boilers--all that medley of discord which lends volume to the horror known as a charivari--tore to shreds the harmony of the night.

"What's that?" called Billie.

The hideous dissonance came from the side of the herd farthest from the camp. Together the two riders galloped toward it.

"Peg-Leg Warren's work," guessed Clanton.

"Sure," agreed Billie. "Trying to stampede the herd."

Already the cattle were bawling in wild terror, surging toward the camp to escape this unknown danger. Both of the punchers drew their revolvers and fired rapidly into the herd. It was impossible to check the rush, but they succeeded in deflecting it from the sleeping men. Before the weapons were empty, the ground shook with a thunder of hoofs as the herd fled into the darkness.

Billie found himself in the van of the stampede. He was caught in the rush and to save himself from being trampled down was forced to join the flight. He was the center of a moving sea of backs, so hemmed in that if his pony stumbled life would be trodden out of him in an instant. Except for occasional buffalo wallows the ground was level, but at any moment his mount might break a leg in a prairie-dog hole.

For the first mile or two the cattle were packed in a dense mass, shoulder to shoulder, all lumbering forward in wild-eyed panic. The noise of their hoofs was like the continuous roll of thunder and the cloud of dust so thick that the throat of Prince was swollen with it. It was only after the stampeded cattle had covered several miles that the formation of their aimless charge grew looser. The pace slackened as the steers became leg-weary. Now and again small bunches dropped from the drag or from one of the flanks. Gradually Billie was able to work toward the outskirts. His chance came when the herd poured into a swale and from it emerged into a more broken terrain. Directly in front of the leaders was a mesa with a sharp incline. Instead of taking the hill, the stampede split, part flowing to the right and part to the left. The cow-puncher urged his flagged horse straight up the hill.

He had escaped with his life, but the bronco was completely exhausted. Billie unsaddled and freed the cowpony. He knew it would not wander far now. Stretched out at full length on the buffalo grass, the cowboy drank into his lungs the clean, cold night air. His tongue was swollen, his lips cracked and bleeding. The alkali dust, sifting into His eyes, had left them red and sore. Every inch of his unshaven face, his hands, and his clothes was covered with a fine, white powder. For a long drink of mountain water he would gladly have given a month's pay.

Within the hour Billie resaddled and took the back trail. There was no time to lose. He must get back to camp, notify Webb where the stampede was moving, and join the other riders in an all-night and all-day round-up of the scattered herd. Since daybreak he had been in the saddle, and he knew that for at least twenty-four hours longer he would not leave it except to change from a worn-out horse to a fresh one.

When Prince reached camp shortly after midnight he found that the stampede of the cattle had for the moment fallen into second place in the minds of his companions. They were digging a grave for the body of Tim McGrath. The young Irishman had been shot down just as the attack on the herd began. It was a reasonable guess to suppose that he had come face to face with the raiders, who had shot him on the theory that dead men tell no tales.

But the cowpuncher had lived till his friends reached him. He had told them with his dying breath that Mysterious Pete had shot him without a word of warning and that after he fell from his horse Peg-Leg Warren rode up and fired into his body.

Jim Clanton called his friend to one side. "I'm goin' to sneak out an' take a lick at them fellows, Billie. Want to go along?"

"What's yore notion? How're you goin' to manage it?"

"Me, I'm goin' to bushwhack Warren or some of his killers from the chaparral."

Prince had seen once before that cold glitter in the eyes of the hill man. It was the look that comes into the face of the gunman when he is intent on the kill.

"I wouldn't do that if I was you, Jim," Billie advised. "This ain't our personal fight. We're under orders. We'd better wait an' see what the old man wants us to do. An? I don't reckon I would shoot from ambush anyhow."

"Wouldn't you? I would," The jaw of the younger man snapped tight. "What chance did they give poor Tim, I'd like to know? He was one of the best-hearted pilgrims ever rode up the trail, an' they shot him down like a coyote. I'm goin' to even the score."

"Don't you, Jim; don't you." Billie laid a hand on the shoulder of his partner in adventure. "Because they don't fight in the open is no reason for us to bushwhack too. That's no way for a white man to attack his enemies."

But the inheritance from feudist ancestors was strong in young Clanton. He had seen a comrade murdered in cold blood. All the training of his primitive and elemental nature called for vengeance.

"No use beefin', Billie. You don't have to go if you don't want to. But I'm goin'. I didn't christen myself Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em for nothin'."

"Put it up to Webb first. Let's hear what he has got to say about it," urged Prince. "We've all got to pull together. You can't play a lone hand in this."

"I'll put it up to Webb when I've done the job. He won't be responsible for it then. He can cut loose from me if he wants to. So long, Billie. I'll sleep on Peg-Leg Warren's trail till I git him."

"Give up that fool notion, Jim. I can't let you go. It wouldn't be fair to you or to Webb either. We're all in this together."

"What'll you do to prevent my goin'?"

"I'll tell the old man if I have to. Sho, kid! Let's not you an' me have trouble." Billie's gentle smile pleaded for their friendship. "We've been pals ever since we first met up. Don't go off on this crazy idea like a half-cocked hogleg."

"We're not goin' to quarrel, Billie. Nothin' to that. But I'm goin' through." The boyish jaw clamped tight again. The eyes that looked at his friend might have been of tempered steel for hardness.

"No."

"Yes."

Clanton was leaning against the rump of his horse. He turned, indolently, gathered his body suddenly, and vaulted to the saddle. Like a shot he was off into the night.

Billie, startled at the swiftness of his going, could only stare after him impotently. He knew that it would be impossible to find one lone rider in the darkness.

Slowly he walked back to the grave. The riders of the Flying V Y were gathered round in a quiet and silent group. They were burying the body of him who had been the gayest and lightest-hearted of their circle only a few hours before.

As soon as the last shovelful of earth had been pressed down upon the mound, Webb turned to business. The herd scattered over thirty miles of country must be gathered at once and he set about the round-up. He had had bad runs on the trail before and he knew the job before his men was no easy one.

They jogged out on a Spanish trot in the trail of the stampede. The chuck wagon was to meet them at Spring River next morning, where the first gather of beeves would be brought and held. All night they rode, tough as hickory, strong as whip-cord. Into the desert sky sifted the gray light which preceded the coming of day. Banners of mauve and amethyst and topaz were flung across the horizon, to give place to glorious splashes of purple and pink and crimson. The sun, a flaming ball of fire, rose big as a washtub from the edge of the desert.

In that early morning light crept over the plain little bunches of cattle followed by brown, lithe riders. Like spokes of a wheel each group moved to a hub. Old Black Ned, the cook, was the focus of their travel. For at Spring River he had waiting for them hot coffee, flaky biscuits, steaks hot from the coals. Each rider seized a tin cup, a tin plate, a knife and fork, and was ready for the best Uncle Ned had to offer.

The remuda had been brought up by the wranglers. While the horses milled about in a cloud of dust, each puncher selected another mount. He moved forward, his loop trailing, eye fixed on the one pony, out of one hundred and fifty, that he wanted for the day's work. Suddenly a rope would snake forward past half a dozen broncos and drop about the neck of an animal near the heart of the herd. The twisting, dodging cowpony would surrender instantly and submit to being cut out from the band. Saddles were slapped on in a hurry and the riders were again on their way.

Through the mesquite they rode, slackening speed for neither gullies nor barrancas. Webb gave orders crisply, disposed of his men in such a way as to make of them a drag-net through which no cattle could escape, and began to tighten the loops for the drive back to camp.

By the middle of the afternoon the chuck wagon was in sight. The ponies were fagged, the men weary. For thirty-six hours these riders, whose muscles seemed tough as whalebone, had been almost steadily in the saddle. They slouched along now easily, always in a gray cloud of dust raised by the bellowing cattle.

The new gather of cattle was thrown in with those that had been rounded up during the night. The punchers unsaddled their worn mounts and drifted to the camp-fire one by one. Ravenously they ate, then rolled up in their blankets and fell asleep at once. To-night they had neither heart nor energy for the gay badinage that usually flew back and forth.

Night was still heavy over the land when Uncle Ned's gong wakened them. The moon was disappearing behind a scudding cloud, but stars could be seen by thousands. Across the open plain a chill wind blew.

All was bustle and confusion, but out of the turmoil emerged order. The wranglers, already fed, moved into the darkness to bring up the remuda. Tin cups and plates rattled merrily. Tongues wagged. Bits of repartee, which are the salt of the cowpuncher's life, were flung across the fire from one; to another. Already the death of Tim McGrath was falling into the background of their swift, turbulent lives. After all the cowboy dies young. Tim's soul had wandered out across the great divide only a few months before that of others among them.

Out of the mist emerged the desert, still gray and vague and without detail. The day's work was astir once more. With the nickering of horses, the bawling of cattle, and the shouts of men as an orchestral accompaniment, light filtered into the valley for the drama of the new sunrise. Once more the tireless riders swept into the mesquite through the clutching cholla to comb another segment of country in search of the beeves not yet reclaimed.

That day's drive brought practically the entire herd together again. A few had not been recovered, but Webb set these down to profit and loss. What he regretted most was that the cattle were not in as good condition as they had been before the stampede.

The drover spent the next day cutting out the animals that did not belong to him. Of these a good many had been collected in the round-up. It was close to evening before the job was finished and the outfit returned to camp.

Billie rode up to the wagon with the old man. Leaning against a saddle on the ground, a flank steak in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, lounged Jim Clanton.

Webb, hard-eyed and stiff, looked at the young man, "Had a pleasant vacation, Clanton?"

"I don't know as I would call it a vacation, Mr. Webb. I been attending to some business," explained Jim.

"Yours or mine?"

"Yours an' mine."

"You've been gone forty-eight hours. The rest of us have worked our heads off gettin' together the herd. I reckon you can explain why you weren't with us."

Yellow with dust, unshaven, mud caked in his hair, hands torn by the cat-claw, Homer Webb was red-eyed from lack of sleep and from the irritation of the alkali powder. This young rider had broken the first law of the cowpuncher, to be on the job in time of trouble and to stay there as long as he could back a horse. The owner of the Flying V Y was angry clear through at his desertion and he intended to let the boy know it.

"I went out to look for Peg-Leg Warren" said Clanton apologetically.

Webb stopped in his stride. "You did? Who told you to do that?"

"I didn't need to be told. I've got horse sense myself." Jim spoke a little sulkily. He knew that he ought to have stayed with his employer.

"Well, what did you do when you found Peg-Leg--make him a visit for a couple of days?" demanded the drover with sarcasm.

"No, I don't know him well enough to visit--only well enough to shoot at."

"What's that?" asked Webb sharply.

"Think I was goin' to let 'em plug Tim McGrath an' get away with it?" snapped Jim.

"That's my business--not yours. What did you do? Come clean."

"Laid out in the chaparral till I got a chance to gun him," the young fellow answered sullenly.

"And then?"

"Plugged a hole through him an' made my get-away."

"You mean you've killed Peg-Leg Warren?"

"He'll never be any deader," said Clanton coolly.

The dark blood flushed into Webb's face. He wasted no pity on Warren. The man was a cold-hearted murderer and had reaped only what he had sowed. But this was no excuse for Clanton, who had deliberately dragged the Flying V Y into trouble without giving its owner a chance to determine what form retribution should take. The cowpuncher had gone back to primitive instincts and elected the blood feud as the necessary form of reprisal. He had plunged Webb and the other drovers into war without even a by-your-leave. His answer to murder had been murder. To encourage this sort of thing would be subversive of all authority and would lead to anarchy.

"Get yore time from Yankie, Clanton," said his employer harshly. "Sleep in camp to-night if you like, but hit the trail in the mornin'. I can't use men like you."

He turned away and left the two friends alone.

Prince was sick at heart. He had warned the young fellow and it had done no good. His regret was for Jim, not for Warren. He blamed himself for not having prevented the killing of Peg-Leg. Yet he knew he had done all that he could.

"I'm sorry, Jim," he said at last.

"Oh, well! What's done is done."

But Billie could not dismiss the matter casually. He saw clearly that Clanton had come to the parting of the ways and had unconsciously made his choice for life. From this time he would be known as a bad man. The brand of the killer would be on him and he would have to make good his reputation. He would have to live without friends, without love, in the dreadful isolation of one who is watched and feared by all. Prince felt a great wave of sympathy for him, of regret for so young a soul gone so totally astray. Surely the cards had been marked against Jim Clanton.

Chapter XIX

A Two-Gun Man

Webb delivered his beeves at the Fort and endured with what fortitude he could the heavy cut which the inspector chose to inflict on him. He paid off his men and let them shift for themselves. Billie secured a wood contract at the reservation, employed half a dozen men and teams, cleaned up a thousand dollars in a couple of months, and rode back to Los Portales in the late fall.

He had money in his pocket and youth in his heart. The day was waning as he rode up the street and in the sunlight the shadows of himself and his horse were attenuated to farcical lengths. Little dust whirls rose in the road, spun round in inverted cones like huge tops, and scurried out of sight across the prairie. Horses drowsed lazily in front of Tolleson's, anchored to the spot by the simple process of throwing the bridle to the ground. It all looked good to Billie. He had been hard at work for many months and he wanted to play.

A voice hailed him from across the street. "Hello, you Billie!"

Jim Clanton and Pauline Roubideau were coming out of a store. He descended from his horse and they fell upon him gayly.

"'Jour, monsieur," the girl cried, and she gave him warmly both her hands.

The honest eyes of Billie devoured her. "Didn't know you were within a hundred miles of here. This is great."

"We've moved. We live about twenty miles from town now. But I'm in a good deal because Jean has bought the livery stable," she explained.

"I'm sure glad to hear that."

"You're to come and see us to-night. Supper will be ready in an hour. You bring him, Jim," ordered the girl. "I'll leave you boys alone now. You must have heaps to talk about."

The gaze of the cowpuncher followed her as she went down the street light and graceful as a fawn. Not since spring had he seen her, though in the night watches he had often heard the sound of her gay voice, seen the flash of her bright eyes, and recalled the sweet and gallant buoyancy that was the dear note of her comradeship.

Billie looked after his horse and walked with Jim to the Proctor House. His mind was already busy appraising the changes in his friend. Clanton was now a "two-gun" man. From each hip hung a heavy revolver, the lower ends of the holsters tied down in order not to interfere with lightning rapidity of action. The young man showed no signs of nervousness, but his chill eyes watched without ceasing the street, doors and windows of buildings, the faces of passers-by and corner loafers. What Prince had foreseen was coming to pass. He was paying the penalty of his reputation as a bad man. Already incessant wariness was the price of life for him.

A second surprise awaited Billie at the Roubideau house. Polly was in the kitchen and looked out of the door only to wave a big spoon at them as they approached. Another young woman welcomed them. At sight of Billie a deep flush burned under her dark skin. It was, perhaps, because of this sign of emotion that her greeting was very cavalier.

"You're back, I see!"

Prince ignored the hint of hostility in her manner. His big hand gripped her little one firmly.

"Yes, I'm back, Miss Lee, and right glad to see you lookin' so well. I'll never forget the last time we met."

Neither would she, but she did not care to tell him so. The memory of the adventure by the river-bank recurred persistently. This lean, sunbaked cowpuncher with the kind eyes and quiet efficiency of bearing had impressed himself upon her as no other man had. There was a touch of scorn in her feeling for herself, because she knew she wanted him for her mate more than anything else on earth. In the night, alone in the friendly darkness, her hot face pressed into the cool pillows, she confessed to herself that she loved him and longed for the sight of his strong, good-looking face with its smile of whimsical humor. But that was when she was safe from the eyes of the world. Now, to punish herself and to prevent him from suspecting the truth, she devoted her attention mainly to Clanton.

Jim was openly her admirer. He wanted Lee to know it and did not care who else observed his devotion. Pauline for one guessed the boy's state of mind and smiled at it, but Billie wondered whether the smile hid an aching heart. He knew that little Polly had a very tender feeling for the boy who had saved her life. More than once during supper it seemed to him that her soft eyes yearned for the reckless young fellow talking so gayly to Miss Snaith. The conviction grew in Prince--it found lodgment in his mind with a pang of despair--that the girl he cared for had given her love to his friend. He fought against the thought, tried resolutely to push it from him, but again and again it returned.

Not until supper was well under way did Jean Roubideau come in from the corral. He shook hands with Billie and at the same time explained to Polly his tardiness.

"Billie is not the only stranger in town to-night. Two or three blew in just before I left and kept me a few minutes. That Mysterious Pete Champa was one. You know him, don't you, Jim?"

The question was asked carelessly, casually, but Prince read in it a warning to his friend. It meant that he was to be ready for any emergency which might arise.

After they had eaten Billie went out to the porch to smoke with Jean.

"Is there goin' to be trouble between Mysterious Pete an' Jim?" he asked.

"Don't know. Wouldn't wonder if that was why Champa came to town. If I was Jim I'd keep an eye in the back of my head when I walked. It's a cinch Pete will try to get him--if he tries it at all--with all the breaks in his favor."

"Is it generally known that Jim was the man who killed Warren?"

"Yes." Jean stuffed and lit his pipe before he, said anything more. "The kid can't get away from it now. Folks think of him as a killer. They watch him when he comes into a bar-room an' they're careful not to cross him. He's a bad man whether he wants to be or not."

Billie nodded. "I was afraid it would be that way, but I'm more afraid of somethin' else. The worst thing that can happen to any man, except to get killed himself, is to shoot another in cold blood. 'Most always it gives the fellow a cravin' to kill again. Haven't you noticed it? A kind of madness gets into the veins of a killer."

"Sure I've noticed it. He has to be watchin'--watchin'--watchin' all the time to make sure nobody gits him. His mind is on that one idea every minute. Consequence is, he's always ready to shoot. So as not to take any chances, he makes it a habit to be sudden death with a six-gun."

"That's it. Most of 'em are sure-thing killers. Jim's not like that. He's game as they make 'em. But I'd give every cent I'm worth if he hadn't gone out an' got Peg-Leg,"

"He never had any bringin' up, or at least he had the wrong kind." He listened a moment with a little smile. From the kitchen, where Jim was helping the young women wash the dishes, came a murmur of voices and occasionally a laugh. "Funny how all good women are mothers in their hearts. Polly's tryin' to save that boy from himself, an' I reckon maybe Miss Lee is too. In a way they got no business to have him here at all. I like him. That ain't the point. But he's got off wrong foot first. He's declared himself out of their class."

"And yore sister won't see it that way?"

"Not a bit of it. She's goin' to fight for his soul, as you might say, an' bring him back if she can do it. Polly's a mighty loyal little friend, if I am her brother that tells it."

"She's right," decided Prince. "It can't hurt her any. Nothin' that's wrong can do her any harm, because she's so fine she sees only the good. An' it's certainly goin' to do the kid good to know her."

"If he'd git out of here he might have a chance yet. But he won't. An' when he meets up with Champa or Dave Roush he's got to forget mighty prompt everything that Polly has told him."

"I heard Roush was on the mend. Is he up again?"

"Yes. He had a narrow squeak, but pulled through. Roush rode into town with Mysterious Pete to-night."

"Then they've probably come to gun Jim. I'll stay right with him for a day or two if I can."

"What for?" demanded Roubideau bluntly. "You're not in this thing. You've got no call to mix up in it. The boy saved Polly, an' I'll go this far. If I'm on the spot when he meets Champa or Roush--an' I'll try to be there--I won't let'em both come at him without takin' a hand. But he has got to choose his own way in life. I can't stand between him an' the consequences of his acts. He's got to play his own hand."

"Did Dave Roush an' Mysterious Pete seem pretty friendly?"

"Thicker than three in a bed."

"Looks bad." Billie came to another phase of the situation. "How does it happen that Snaith's outfit have let Jim stay here without gettin' after him? Nothin' but a necktie party would suit 'em when we left in the spring."

"Times have changed," explained Roubideau. "This is quite a trail town now. The big outfits are bringin' in a good deal of money. Snaith can't run things with so high a hand as he did. Besides, there are a good many of the trail punchers in town now. I reckon Wally Snaith has given orders not to start anything."

"Maybe Roush an' Champa have been given orders to take care of Jim."

Jean doubted this and said so. "Snaith doesn't play his hand under the table. But, of course, Sanders may have tipped 'em off to do it."

Clanton joined them presently and the three men walked downtown. The gay smile dropped from Jim's face the moment he stepped down from the porch. Already his eyes had narrowed and over them had come a kind of film. They searched every dark spot on the road.

"Let's go to Tolleson's," he proposed abruptly.

There was a moment of silence before Billie made a counter-proposition. "No, let's go back to the hotel."

"All right. You fellows go to the hotel. Meet you there later."

The eyes of Prince and Roubideau met. Not another word was spoken. Both of them knew that Clanton intended to show himself in public where any one that wanted him might find him. They turned toward Tolleson's, but took the precaution to enter by the back door.

The sound of shuffling feet, of tinkling piano and whining fiddle, gave notice in advance that the dancers were on the floor. Clanton took the precaution to ease the guns in their holsters in order to make sure of a swift draw.

His forethought was unnecessary. Neither Roush nor Mysterious Pete was among the dancers, the gamblers, or at the bar. The three friends passed out of the front door and walked to the Proctor House. Clanton had done all that he felt was required of him and was willing to drop the matter for the night.

Chapter XX

Exit Mysterious Pete

In the cold, gray dawn of the morning after, Mysterious Pete straddled down the main street of Los Portales with a dark-brown taste in his mouth. He was feeling ugly. For he had imbibed a large quantity of liquor. He had gambled and lost. He had boasted of what he intended to do to one James Clanton, now generally known as "Go-Get-'Em Jim,"

This last in particular was a mistake. Moreover, it was quite out of accord with the usual custom of Mr. Champa. When he made up his mind to increase by one the number of permanent residents upon Boot Hill he bided his time, waited till the suspicions of his victim were lulled, and shot down his man without warning. The one fixed rule of his life was never to take an unnecessary chance. Now he was taking one.

Every chain has its weakest link. Mr. Champa drunk was a rock upon which Mr. Champa sober had more than once come to shipwreck. No doubt some busybody, seeking to curry favor with him, had run to this Clanton with the tale of how Mysterious Pete had sworn to kill him on sight.

The bad man was sour on the world this morning. He prided himself on being always a dead shot, but such a night as he had spent would not help his chances. There could be no doubt that his nerves were jumpy. What he needed was a few hours' sleep.

He would have taken a back street if he had dared, but to do so would have been a confession of doubt. The killer can afford to let nobody guess that he is afraid. When such a suspicion becomes current he might as well order his coffin. The men whom he holds in the subjection of fear will all be taking a chance with him.

So Mysterious Pete, bad man and murderer, coward at heart to the marrow, strutted toward his rooming-house with a heart full of hate to everybody. The pleasant morning sunshine was an offense to him. A care-free laugh on the breeze made him grit his teeth irritably. Particularly he hated Dave Roush. For Roush had led him into this cunningly by bribery and flattery. He had fed the jealousy of Pete, who could not brook the thought of a rival bad man in his own territory. He had hinted that perhaps Champa had better steer clear of this youth, whose reputation as a killer had grown so amazingly. Ever since Clanton had killed Warren the bad man had intended to "get him." But he had meant to do it without taking any risk. His idea was to pretend to be his friend, push a gun into his stomach, and down him before he could move. Now by his folly he had to take a fighting chance. Dave Roush, to save his own skin, had pushed him into danger. All this was quite clear to him now, and he raged at the knowledge.

Champa, too, was at another disadvantage. He was not sure that he would know Clanton when he saw him. He had set eyes on the young fellow once, on that occasion when he had gone with Warren to demand an inspection of the Flying V Y herd. But he had seen him only as one of a group of cowpunchers and not as an individual enemy, whereas it was quite certain that Go-Get-'Em Jim would recognize him.

From out of a doorway stepped a young fellow with his hand on his hip. Pete's six-gun flashed upward in a quarter curve even as the bullet crashed on its way. The youth staggered against the wall and sank together into a heap. Champa, every sense alert, fired again, then waited warily to make sure this was not a ruse of his victim.

Some one--a woman--darted from a building opposite, flew across the street, and dropped beside the crumpled figure. Her white skirt covered the body like a protecting flag.

The dark eyes in the white face lifted toward Champa were full of horror, "You murderer! You've killed little Bud Proctor!" cried the young woman.

He took an uncertain step or two toward her. Mysterious Pete knew that if this were true, his race was run.

"Goddlemighty, Miss Snaith! I swear I thought it was Clanton. He was drawing a gun on me."

Lee drew the boy to her bosom so that her body was between the killer and his victim. A swift, up-blazing, maternal fury seemed to leap from her face.

"Don't come any nearer! Don't you dare!" she cried.

The man's covert glance swept round. Already men were peering out of doors and windows to see what the shooting was about. Soon the street would be full of them, all full of deadly fury at him. He backed away, snarling, cut across a vacant lot, and ran to his room. The bolt in his door was no sooner closed than he knew it could not protect him. There comes a time in the career of a large percentage of bad men when some other hard citizen on behalf of the public puts a period to it. He is wiped out, not for what he has done only, but for fear also of what he may do. The only safety for him now was to get out of the country as fast as a house could carry him. Instinctively Mysterious Pete recognized this now and cursed his folly for not going straight to a corral.

If he hurried he might still make his get-away, He reloaded his revolver, opened the door of his room, and listened. Cautiously he stole downstairs and out the back door of the building. A little girl was playing at keeping house in a corner of the yard. Scarcely more than a baby herself, she was vigorously spanking a doll.

"Be dood. You better had be dood," she admonished.

A crafty idea came into the cunning brain of the outlaw. She would serve as a protection against the bullets of his enemies. He caught her up and carried her, kicking and screaming, while he ran to the Elephant Corral.

"Saddle me a horse. Jump!" ordered the fugitive, his revolver out.

The trembling wrangler obeyed. He did not know the cause of Mysterious Pete's urgency fact was enough. He knew that this man with the bad record was flying in fear of his life. Tiny sweat beads stood out on his forehead. The fellow was in a blue funk and would shoot at the least pretext.

The saddle that the wrangler flung on the horse he had roped was a Texas one with double cinches. In desperate haste to be gone, Champa released the child a moment to tighten one of the bands.

A voice called to her. "Run, Kittie."

To the casual eye the child was all knobby legs and hair ribbons. She scudded for the stable, sobbing as she ran.

At sound of that voice Mysterious Pete leaped to the saddle and whirled his horse. He was too late. The man who had called to Kittie slammed shut the gate of the corral and laughed tauntingly.

"Better 'light, Mr. Champa. That caballo you're on happens to be mine."

Pete needed no introduction. This slight, devil-may-care young fellow at the gate was Clanton. He was here to fight. The only road of escape was over his body.

The gunman slid from the saddle. His instinct for safety still served him, for he came to the ground with the horse as a shield between him and his foe. The nine-inch barrel of his revolver rested on the back of the bronco as he blazed away. A chip flew from the cross-bar of the corral gate.

Clanton took no chances. The first shot from his forty-four dropped the cowpony. Pete backed away, firing as he moved. He flung bullet after bullet at the figure behind the gate. In his panic he began to think that his enemy bore a charmed life. Three times his lead struck the woodwork of the gate.

The retreating man whirled and dropped, his weapon falling to the dust. Clanton fired once more to make sure that his work was done, then moved slowly forward, his eyes focused on the body. A thin wisp of smoke rose from the revolver lying close to the still hand.

Mysterious Pete had died with his boots on after the manner of his kind.

Chapter XXI

Jim Receives and Declines an Offer

From the moment that Clanton walked out of the corral and left the dead gunman lying in the dust his reputation was established. Up till that time he had been on probation. Now he was a full-fledged killer. Nobody any longer spoke of him by his last name, except those friends who still hoped he might escape his destiny. "Go-Get-'em Jim" was his title at large. Those on more familiar terms called him "Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em."

It was unfortunate for Clanton that the killing of Champa lifted him into instant popularity. Mysterious Pete had been too free with his gun. The community had been afraid of him. The irresponsible way in which he had wounded little Bud Proctor, whose life had been saved only by the courage of Lee Snaith, was the climax of a series of outrages committed by the man.

That Jim had incidentally saved Kittie McRobert from the outlaw was a piece of clean luck. Snaith came to him at once and buried the hatchet. In the war just starting, the cattleman needed men of nerve to lead his forces. He offered a place to Clanton, who jumped at the chance to get on the pay-roll of Lee's father.

"Bring yore friend Billie Prince to the store," suggested Snaith. "He's not workin' for Webb now. I can make a place for him, too."

Billie came, listened to the proposition of the grim old-timer, and declined quietly.

"Goin' to stick by Webb, are you?" demanded the chief of the opposite faction.

"Anything wrong with that? I've drawn a pay-check from him for three seasons."

"Oh, if it's a matter of sentiment."

As a matter of fact, Billie did not intend to go on the trail any more, though Webb had offered him a place as foreman of one of his herds. He had discovered in himself unsuspected business capacity and believed he could do better on his own. Moreover, he was resolved not to let himself become involved in the lawless warfare that was engulfing the territory.

It must be remembered that Washington County was at this time as large as the average Atlantic Coast State. It had become a sink for the riff-raff driven out of Texas by the Rangers, for all that wild and adventurous element which flocks to a new country before the law has established itself. The coming of the big cattle herds had brought money into the country, and in its wake followed the gambler and the outlaw. Gold and human life were the cheapest commodities at Los Portales. The man who wore a gun on his hip had to be one hundred per cent efficient to survive.

Lawlessness was emphasized by the peculiar conditions of the country. The intense rivalry to secure Government contracts for hay, wood, and especially cattle, stimulated unwholesome competition. The temptation to "rustle" stock, to hold up outfits carrying pay to the soldiers, to live well merely as a gunman for one of the big interests on the river, made the honest business of every-day life a humdrum affair.

None the less, the real heroes among the pioneers were the quiet citizens who went about their business and refused to embroil themselves in the feuds that ran rife. The men who made the West were the mule-skinners, the storekeepers, the farmers who came out in white-topped movers' wagons. For a time these were submerged by the more sensational gunman, but in the end they pushed to the top and wiped the "bad man" from the earth. It was this prosaic class that Billie Prince had resolved to join.

To that resolve he stuck through all the blood-stained years of the notorious Washington County War. He went about his private affairs with quiet energy that brought success. He took hay and grain contracts, bought a freighting outfit, acquired a small but steadily increasing bunch of cattle. Gradually he bulked larger in the public eye, became an anchor of safety to whom the people turned after the war had worn itself out and scattered bands of banditti infested the chaparral to prey upon the settlers.

This lean, brown-faced man walked the way of the strong. Men recognized the dynamic force of his close-gripped jaw, the power of his quick, steady eye, the patience of his courage. The eyes of women followed him down the street, for there was some arresting quality in the firm, crisp tread that carried the lithe, smooth-muscled body. With the passage of years he had grown to a full measure of mental manhood. It was inevitable that when Washington County set itself to the task of combing the outlaws from the mesquite it should delegate the job to Billie Prince.

The evening after his election as sheriff, Billie called at the home of Pauline Roubideau, who was keeping house for her brother. Jack Goodheart was leaving just as Prince stepped upon the porch. It had been two years now since Jack had ceased to gravitate in the direction of Lee Snaith. His eyes and his footsteps for many months had turned often toward Polly.

The gaze of the sheriff-elect followed the lank figure of the retreating man.

"I've a notion to ask that man to give up a good business to wear a deputy's star for me," he told Pauline.

"Oh, I wouldn't," she said quickly.

"Why not? He'd be a good man for the job. I want some one game--some one who will go through when he starts."

His questioning eyes rested on hers. She felt a difficulty in justifying her protest.

"I don't know--I just thought--"

"I'm waiting," said Prince with a smile.

"He wouldn't take it, would he?" she fenced.

"If it was put up to him right I think he would. Of course, it would be a sacrifice for him to make, but good citizens have to do that these days."

"He's had so much hard luck and been so long getting a start I don't think you ought to ask him." The color spilled over her cheeks like wine shaken from a glass upon a white cloth. Polly was always ardent on behalf of a friend.

"I can't help that. There's another man I have in mind, but if I don't get him it will be up to Jack."

"Will it be dangerous?"

"No more than smoking a cigarette above an open keg of powder. But you don't suppose that would keep him from accepting the job, do you?"

"No," she admitted. "He would take it if he thought he ought. But I hope you get the other man."

Billie dismissed the subject and drew up a chair beside the hammock in which she was leaning back.

"This is my birthday, Polly," he told her. "I'm twenty-four years old."

"Good gracious! What a Methuselah!"

"I want a present, so I've come to ask for it."

With a sidelong tilt of her chin she flashed a look of quick eyes at him. Her voice did not betray the pulse, of excitement that was beginning to beat in her blood.

"You've just been elected sheriff. Isn't that enough?" she evaded.

"That's a fine present to hand a man," he answered grimly. "An' I didn't notice you bubble with enthusiasm when I spoke of givin' half the glory to Goodheart."

"But I haven't a thing you'd care for. If I'd only known in time I'd have sent to Vegas and got you something nice."

"You don't have to send to Vegas for it, Polly. The present I want is right here," he said simply.

She reached out a little hand impulsively. "Billie, I believe you 're the best man I know--the very best."

"I hate to hear that. You're tryin' to let me down easy."

"I'm an ungrateful little idiot. Any other girl in town would jump at the chance to say, 'Thank you, kind sir.'"

"But you can't," he said gently.

"No, I can't."

He was not sure whether there was a flash of tears in her brown eyes, but he knew by that little trick of biting the lower lip that they were not far away. She was a tender-hearted little comrade, and it always hurt her to hurt others.

Billie drew a long breath. "That's settled, too, then. I asked you once before if there was some one else. I ask you again, but don't tell me if you'd rather not."

"Yes."

"You mean there is."

Again the scarlet splashed into her cheeks. She nodded her head three or four times quickly in assent.

"Not Jim Clanton?" he said, alarmed.

A faint, tender smile flashed on her lips. "I don't think I'll tell you who he is, Billie."

He hesitated. "That's all right, Polly. I don't want to pry into yore secret. But--don't do anything foolish. Don't marry a man with the notion of reformin' him or because he seems to you romantic. You have lots of sense. You'll use it, won't you?" he pleaded.

"I'll try to use it, Billie," she promised. Then, the soft eyes shining and the color still high in her cheeks, she added impulsively: "I don't know anybody that needs some one to love him more than that poor boy does."

"Mebbeso. But don't you be that some one, Polly." He hesitated, divided between loyalty to his friend and his desire for this girl's good. His brown, unscarred hand caught hers in a firm grip. "Don't you do it, little girl. Don't you. The woman that marries Jim Clanton is doomed to be miserable. There's no escape for her. She's got to live with her heart in her throat till the day they bring his dead body back to her."

She leaned toward him, and now there was no longer any doubt that her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "Perhaps a woman doesn't marry for happiness alone, Billie. That may come to her, or it may not. But she has to fulfill her destiny. I don't know how to say what I mean, but she must go on and live her life and forget herself."

Prince rejected this creed flatly. "No! No! The best way to fulfill yore life is to be happy. That's what you've always done, an' that's why you've made other people happy. Because you go around singin' an' dancin', we all want to tune up with you. When I was out bossin' a freight outfit I used to think of you at night under the stars as a little Joybird. Now you've got it in that curly head of yours that you 'd ought to be some kind of a missionary martyr for the sake of a man's soul. That's all wrong."

"Is it?" she asked him with a crooked, little, wistful smile. "How about you? Do you want to be sheriff? Is it going to make you so awfully happy to spend your time running down outlaws for the good of the country? Aren't you doing it because you've been called to it and not because you like it?"

"That's different," he protested. "When the community needs him a man's got to come through or be a yellow hound. But you've got no right to toss away yore life plumb foolishly just because you've got a tender heart." Billie stopped again, then threw away any scruples he might have on the score of friendship. "Jim is goin' to be what he is to the end of the chapter. You can't change him. Nobody can. In this Washington County War he's been a terror to the other side. You know that. For such a girl as you he's outside the pale."

"I heard Jean say once that Jim had never killed a man that didn't need killing," she protested.

"That may be true, too. But it wasn't up to him to do it. It isn't only killin' either. He's on the wrong track."

The young man could say no more. He could not tell her that Clanton was suspected of rustling and that his name had been mentioned in connection with robbery of the mail. These charges were not proved. Prince himself still loyally denied their truth, though evidence was beginning to pile up against the young gunman. He had warned Clanton, and Jim had clapped him on the shoulder, laughed, and invited him to take a drink with him. This was not quite the way in which Billie felt an innocent man would receive news that he was being furtively accused of crime.

"Yes, he's going wrong," agreed Pauline. "But we can't desert him, can we? You're his best friend. You know how brave he is, how generous, how at the bottom of his heart he loves people that are fine and true. If we stand by him we'll save him yet."

The young man's common sense told him that Clanton's future lay with himself and his attitude toward his environment, but he loved the spirit of this girl's gift of faith in her friends. It was so wholly like her to reject the external evidence and accept her own conviction of his innate goodness.

"I hope yore faith will work a miracle."

"I hate the things he does more than you do, Billie. It is horrible to me that he can take human life. I don't justify him at all, even though usually he is on the right side. But in spite of everything he has done Jim is only a wild boy. And he's so splendid some ways. Any day he would give his life for you or for me or for Lee Snaith. You feel that about him, don't you?"

"Yes."

He was not satisfied to let the subject drop, but for the present it had to be postponed. For a young man and a young woman were turning in at the gate. They were a handsome pair physically. Each of them moved with the lithe grace of a young puma. Pauline rose to meet them.

"I'm glad you came, Lee. Didn't know you were in town, Jim,"

Clanton smiled. "I rode up from the Hondo to congratulate our new sheriff. Don't you let any of them outlaws escape, Billie."

Prince looked directly into his audacious eyes as he shook hands with him.

"Not if I can help it, Jim. I want you to be my chief deputy in cleanin' up the county. If you'll help me we'll make such a gather of bad men that it won't be safe for a crook to show his head here."

Pauline clapped her hands. "What a splendiferous idea! It's a great chance for you, Jim. You and Billie can do it too. I know you can."

The other young woman had recognized Prince only by a casual nod. It was her custom to ignore him as much as possible. Now her dark, velvety eyes jumped to meet his, then passed to Clanton. She recognized the significance of the moment. It was Jim's last opportunity to line up on the side of law and order. Lee, with Billie and Pauline, had stood his loyal friend against a growing public opinion. Would he justify their faith in him?

After a long silence Jim spoke. "No, I reckon not, Billie. I've got interests that will take all my time. Much obliged, old scout. I'd like to ride in couples with you like we used to do. I sure would, but I can't."

"That's all nonsense. It's no excuse at all," broke out Lee in her direct fashion. "Mr. Prince has more important affairs than you a good deal. He is dropping his to serve the people. You'll have to give a better reason than that to convince me."

Billie knew and Lee suspected what lay back of the spoken word. The duty of the sheriff would be to hunt down the men with whom Clanton had lately been consorting. He felt that he could not desert his friends to line up against them. Some of these were a bad lot, the riff-raff of a wild country, but this would not justify him in his own mind for using his knowledge of their habits to run them to earth.

"No, I can't talk business with you, Billie," the young fellow said decisively.

"Why can't you?" demanded Lee.

Jim Clanton smiled. "You're certainly a right persistent young lady, but by advice of counsel I decline to answer."

Chapter XXII

The Rustlers' Camp

From Live-Oaks a breakneck trail runs up the side of the mountain, drops down into the valley beyond, and twists among the hills and through cañons to the Ruidosa. In the darkness a man followed this precarious path. His horse climbed it like a cat, without the least uncertainty or doubt. Both mount and rider had covered this ground often during the Washington County War. Joe Yankie expected to continue to use it as long as he found a profit in other men's cattle.

When he had reached the summit he swung to the right, dipped abruptly into a narrow gulch, skirted a clump of junipers, and looked down upon a little basin hidden snugly in the gorge. A wisp of pungent smoke rose to his nostrils. The pony began cautiously the sharp descent. The escarpment was of disintegrated granite which rang beneath the hoofs of the animal. A pebble rolled to the edge of the bluff and dropped into the black pit below.

From the gulf a challenging voice rose. "Hello, up there!"

"It's me--Joe," answered the rider.

"Time you were gettin' here," growled the other, as yet only a voice in the darkness.

Slowly the horse slid forward to a ribbon of trail that led less precipitously to the camp.

"'Lo, Joe. Fall off an' rest," a one-armed man invited. By the light of the camp-fire he was a hard-faced, wall-eyed citizen with a jaw like a steel trap.

Yankie dismounted and straddled to the fire. "How-how; I'm heap hungry, boys. Haven't et since mornin'."

"We're 'most out of grub. Got nothin' but jerked beef an' hard-tack. How are things a-stackin', Joe?" asked a heavy-set, bow-legged man with a cold, fishy eye.

"Looks good, Dave. I'll lead the cattle to you. It'll be up to you an' Albeen an' Dumont to make a get-away with 'em."

"Don't you worry none about that. Once I get these beeves on the trail there can't no shorthorn cattleman take 'em away from me."

"Oh, you're doin' this thing, are you?" drawled Albeen offensively. "There's been a heap of big I talk around here lately. First off, I want to tell you that when you call Homer Webb a shorthorn cattleman you've got another guess comin'. He's a sure enough old-timer. Webb knocked the bark off'n this country when it was green, an' you got to rise up early an' travel fast if you want to slip over anything on him,"

"That's whatever," agreed Yankie. "I don't love the old man a whole lot. I've stood about all from him I'm intendin' to. One of these days it's goin' to be him or me. But the old man's there every jump of the road. He knew New Mexico when Los Portales was a whistlin' post in the desert. He's fought through this war an' come through richer than when he started. If I was lookin' for an easy mark I'd sure pass up Webb."

"He's got you lads buffaloed," jeered Roush. "Webb looks like anybody else to me. I don't care if he's worth a million. If he fools with me he'll find I fog him quick."

"I've known fellows before that got all filled up with talk an' had to steam off about every so often," commented Albeen to the world at large.

"Meanin' me?"

Albeen carefully raked a live coal from the fire and pressed it down into the bowl of his pipe. The eyes in his leathery, brown face had grown hard as jade. For some time he and Dave Roush had been ready for an explosion. It could not come any too soon to suit the one-armed man.

"Meanin' you if you want to take it that way." Albeen looked straight at him with an unwinking gaze. "You're not the only man on the reservation that wears his gun low, Roush. Maybe you're a wolf for fair. I've sure heard you claim it right often. You're a two-gun man. I pack only one, seem' as I'm shy a wing. But don't git the notion you can ride me. I won't stand for it a minute."

"Sho! Dave didn't mean anything like that. Did you, Dave?" interposed Dumont hastily. "You was just kind o' jokin', wasn't you?"

"Well, I'm servin' notice right now that when any one drops around any jokes about me bein' buffaloed, he's foolin' with dynamite. No man alive can run a sandy on me an' git away with it."

The chill eyes of Albeen, narrowed to shining slits, focused on Roush menacingly. All present understood that he was offering Devil Dave a choice. He could draw steel, or he could side-step the issue.

The campers had been playing poker with white navy beans for chips. Roush, undecided, gathered up in his fingers the little pile of them in front of him and let them sift down again to the blanket on the edge of which he sat. Some day he and Albeen would have to settle this quarrel once for all. But not to-night. Dave wanted the breaks with him when that hour came. He intended to make a sure thing of it. Albeen was one of those fire-eaters who would play into his hand by his reckless courage. Better have patience and watch for his chance against the one-armed gunman.

"I ain't aimin' to ride you any, Albeen," he said sulkily.

"Lay off'n me, then," advised the other curtly.

Roush grumbled something inaudible. It might have been a promise. It might have been a protest. Yankie jumped into the breach and began to talk.

"I couldn't git away from the old man yesterday. I think he's suspicious about me. Anyhow, he acts like he is. I came in to Live-Oaks to-night without notifyin' him an' I got to be back in camp before mornin'. Here's my plan. I've got a new rider out from Kansas for his health. He's gun-shy. I'll leave him in charge of this bunch of stock overnight on. the berrendo. He'll run like a scared deer at the first shot. Hustle the beeves over the pass an' keep 'em movin' till you come to Lost Cache."

Crouched over the blanket, they discussed details and settled them. Yankie rose to leave and Roush followed him to his horse.

"Don't git a notion I'm scared of Albeen, Joe," he explained. "No one-armed, hammered-down little runt can bluff me for a second. When I'm good an' ready I'll settle with him, but I'm not goin' to wreck this business we're on by any personal difficulty."

"That's right, Dave," agreed the foreman of the Flying V Y. "We all understand how you feel."

Yankie, busy fastening a cinch, had his forehead pressed against the saddle and could afford a grin. He knew that the courage of a killer is largely dependent on his physical well-being. If he is cold or hungry or exhausted, his nerve is at low ebb; if life is running strong in his arteries his grit is above par. For years Roush had been drinking to excess. He had reached the point where he dared not face in the open a man like Albeen with nerves of unflawed steel. The declension of a gunman, if once it begins, is rapid and sure. One of those days, unless Roush were killed first, some mild-looking citizen would take his gun from him and kick him out of a bar-room.

The foreman traveled fast, but the first streaks of morning were already lighting the sky when he reached Rabbit Ear Creek, upon which was the Flying V Y Ranch No. 3 of which he was majordomo. He unsaddled, threw the bronco into the corral, and walked to the foreman's bunkhouse. Without undressing, he flung himself upon the bed and fell asleep at one. He awoke to see a long slant of sunshine across the bare planks of the floor.

Some one was hammering on the door. Webb opened it and put in his head just as the Segundo jumped to his feet.

"Makin' up some lost sleep, Joe?" inquired the owner of the ranch amiably.

"I been out nights a good deal tryin' to check the rustlers," answered Yankie sullenly. He had been caught asleep in his clothes and it annoyed him. Would the old man guess that he had been in the saddle all night?

"Glad to hear you're gettin' busy on that job. They've got to be stopped. If you can't do it I'll have to try to find a man that can, Joe."

"Mebbe you think it's an easy job, Webb," retorted the other, a chip on his shoulder. "If you do it costs nothin' Mex to fire me an' try some other guy."

"I don't say you're to blame, Joe. Perhaps you're just unlucky. But the fact stands that I'm losin' more cattle on this range than at any one of my other three ranches or all of 'em put together."

"We're nearer the hills than they are," the foreman replied sulkily.

"I don't want excuses, but results, Joe. However, I came to talk about that gather of beeves for Major Strong."

Webb talked business in his direct fashion for a few minutes, then strolled away. The majordomo watched him walk down to the corral. He could not swear to it, but he was none the less sure that the Missourian's keen eye was fixed upon a sweat-stained horse that had been traveling the hills all night.

Chapter XXIII

Murder from the Chaparral

Webb was just leaving for one of his ranches lower down the river when a horseman galloped up. The alkali dust was caked on his unshaven face and the weary bronco was dripping with sweat.

The owner of the Flying V Y, giving some last instructions to the foreman, turned to listen to the sputtering rider.

"They--they done run off that bunch of beeves on the berrendo," he explained, trembling with excitement.

"Who?"

"I don't know. A bunch of rustlers. About a dozen of 'em. They tried to kill me."

Webb turned to Yankie. "You didn't leave this man alone overnight with that bunch of beeves for Major Strong?"

"Sure I did. Why not?" demanded the foreman boldly.

"We'll not argue that," said the boss curtly, "Go hunt you another job. You'll draw yore last pay-check from the Flying V Y to-day."

"If you're loaded up with a notion that some one else could do better--"

"It's not yore ability I object to, Yankie" cut in the ranchman.

"Say, what are you insinuatin'?" snarled the segundo.

"Not a thing, Yankie. I'm tellin' you to yore face that I think you're a crook. One of these days I'm goin' to land you behind the bars at Santa Fé. No, don't make another pass like that, Joe. I'll sure beat you to it."

Wrayburn had ridden up and now asked the foreman a question about some calves.

"Don't ask me. Ask yore boss," growled Yankie, his face dark with fury.

"Don't ask me either," said Webb. "You're foreman of this ranch, Dad."

"Since when?" asked the old Confederate.

"Since right this minute. I've fired Yankie."

Dad chewed his cud of tobacco without comment. He knew that Webb would tell him all he needed to know.

"Says I'm a waddy! Says I'm a crook!" burst out the deposed foreman. "Wish you joy of yore job, Wrayburn. You'll have one heluva time."

"You will if Yankie can bring it about," amended the cattleman. He spoke coldly and contemptuously just as if the man were not present. "I've made up my mind, Dad, that he's in cahoots with the rustlers."

"Prove it! Prove it!" demanded the accused man, furious with anger at Webb's manner.

The ranch-owner went on talking to Wrayburn in an even voice. "I've suspected it for some time. Now I'm convinced. Yesterday mornin' I found him asleep in bed with his clothes on. His horse looked like it had been travelin' all night. I made inquiries. He went to Live-Oaks an' was seen to take the trail to the Ruidosa. Why?"

"You've been spyin' on me," charged Yankie. He was under a savage desire to draw his gun but he could not shake off in a moment the habit of subordination bred by years of service with this man.

"To let his fellow thieves know that he meant to leave a bunch of beef steers on the berrendo practically unguarded. That's why. I'd bet a stack of blues on it. You'll have to watch this fellow, Dad."

The new foreman took his cue from the boss. None the less, he meant just what he said. "You better believe I'll watch him. I've had misgivin's about him for a right smart time."

"He'll probably ride straight to his gang of rustlers. Well, he can't do us half as much harm there as here."

"I'll git you both. Watch my smoke. Watch it." With a curse the rustler swung his horse round and gave it the spur. Poison hate churned in his heart. At the bend of the road he turned and shook a fist at them both.

"There goes one good horse an' saddle belongin' to me," said Webb, smiling ruefully. "But if I never get them back it's cheap at the price. I'm rid of one scoundrel."

"I wonder if you are, Homer," mused his friend. "Maybe you'd better have let him down easy. Joe Yankie is as revengeful as an Injun."

"Let him down easy!" exploded the cattleman. "When he's just pulled off a raw deal by which I lose a bunch of forty fat three-year-olds. I ought to have gunned him in his tracks."

"If you had proof, but you haven't. It's a right doubtful policy for a man to stir up a rattler till it's crazy, then to turn it loose in his bedroom."

The Missourian turned to the business of the hour. "We'll get a posse out after the rustlers right away. Dad. I'll see the boys an' you hustle up some rifles and ammunition."

Half an hour later they saw the dust of the cowpunchers taking the trail for the berrendo.

"I'll ride down an' get Billie Prince started after 'em. I can go with his posse as a deputy," suggested the ranchman.

To save Webb's time, Dad rode a few miles with him while the cattleman outlined to him the policy he wanted pursued.

The sun was high in the heavens when they met, not far from Ten Sleep, a rider. The cattleman looked at him grimly. In the Washington County War just ended, this young fellow had been the leading gunman of the Snaith-McRobert faction. If the current rumors were true he was now making an easy living in the chaparral.

The rider drew up, nodded a greeting to Wrayburn, and grinned with cool nonchalance at Webb. He knew from report in what esteem he was held by the owner of the Flying V Y brand.

"Yankie up at the ranch?" he asked.

"What do you want with him?" demanded Webb brusquely.

"I got a message for him."

"Who from?"

Clanton was conscious of some irritation against this sharp catechism. In point of fact Billie Prince had asked him to notify Yankie that he had heard of the rustling on the berrendo and was taking the trail at once. But Go-Get-'Em Jim was the last man in the world to be driven by compulsion. He had been ready to tell Webb the message Billie had given him for Yankie, but he was not ready to tell it until the Missourian moderated his tone.

"Mebbe that's my business--an' his, Mr. Webb," he said.

"An' mine too--if you've come to tell him how slick you pulled that trick on the berrendo."

Jim stiffened at once. "To Halifax with you an' yore cattle, Webb. Do you claim I rustled that bunch of beeves last night?"

"I see you know all about it?" retorted Webb with heavy sarcasm.

"Mebbeso. I'm not askin' yore permission to live--not just yet."

Webb flushed dark with anger. "You've got a nerve, young fellow, to go up to my ranch after last night's business. Unless you want to have yore pelt hung up to dry, keep away from any of the Flying V Y ranges. As for Yankie, if you go back to yore hole you'll likely find him. I kicked the hound out two hours ago."

"Like you did me three years ago," suggested Clanton, looking straight at the grizzled cowman. "Webb, you're the high mogul here since you fixed it up with the Government to send its cavalry to back yore play against our faction. You act like we've got to knock our heads in the dust three times when we meet up with you. Don't you think it. Don't you think it for a minute. If I've rustled yore cattle, prove it. Until then padlock yore tongue, or you an' me'll mix it."

"You're threatenin' me, eh?"

"If that's what you want to call it."

"You're a killer, I'm told," flashed back Webb hotly. "Now listen to me. You an' yore kind belong in the penitentiary, an' that's where the honest folks of Washington County are goin' to send you soon. Give me half a chance an' I'll offer a reward of ten thousand dollars for you alive or dead. That's the way to get rid of gunmen."

"Is it?" Clanton laughed mockingly. "You advise the fellow that tries to collect that reward to get his life insured heavy for his widow."

If this was a boast, it was also a warning. Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em may not have been the best target shot on the border, but give him a man behind a spitting revolver as his mark and he could throw bullets with swifter, deadlier accuracy than any old-timer of them all. He did not take the time to aim; it was enough for him to look at his opponent as he fired.

The young fellow swung his horse expertly and cantered into the mesquite.

"I'll give you two months before you're wiped off the map," the cattleman called after him angrily.

At the edge of a heavy growth of brush Clanton pulled up, flashed a six-shooter, and dropped two bullets in the dust at the feet of the horses in the road. Then, with a wave of his hand, he laughed derisively and plunged into the chaparral.

Webb, stung to irritable action, fired into the cholla and the arrowweed thickets. Shot after shot he sent at the man who had disappeared in the maze.

"Let him go. Homer. You're well quit of him," urged Wrayburn.

The words were still on his lips when out of the dense tangle of vegetation rang a shot. The owner of the Flying VY clutched at his saddle-horn. A spasmodic shudder shook the heavy body and it began to sink.

Wrayburn ran to help. He was in time to catch his friend as he fell, but before he could lower the inert weight to the ground the life of Homer Webb had flickered out.

Chapter XXIV

Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em Leaves a Note

Prince and his posse were camped in a little park near the headquarters of Saco de Oro Creek when a trapper brought word to Billie of the death of Webb. The heart of the young sheriff sank at the news. It was not only that he had always liked and admired the bluff cattleman. What shocked him more was that Jim Clanton had killed him. Webb was one of the most popular ranchmen on the river. There would be an instant, widespread demand for the arrest and conviction of his slayer. Billie had taken an oath to uphold the law. His clear duty was to go out and capture Jim alive or dead.

Not for a moment did Billie doubt what he would do. He had pledged himself to blot out the "bad man," and he would go through no matter what the cost to his personal feelings.

A slow anger at Clanton burned in him. Why had he done this wanton and lawless thing? The boy he had known three years ago would never have shot down from cover a man like Webb. That he could have done it now marked the progress of the deterioration of his moral fiber. What right had he to ask those who remained loyal to him to sacrifice so often their sense of right in his favor?

The old intimacy between Billie and Jim had long since waned. They were traveling different roads these days. But though they were no longer chums their friendship endured. When they met, a warm affection lit the eyes of both. It had survived the tug of diverse interests, the intervention of long separations, the conflict born of the love of women. Would it stand without breaking this new test of its strength?

With a little nod to Goodheart the sheriff retired from the camp-fire. His deputy joined him presently on a hillside overlooking the creek.

"I'm goin' back to Live-Oaks to-night, Jack," announced Prince. "You'd better stay here a few days an' hunt through these gulches. Since that rain yesterday there's not one chance in fifty of runnin' down the rustlers, but you might happen to stumble on the place where they've got the cattle cached."

"You're goin' down about this Webb murder?"

"Yes. I'm goin' to work out some plans. It will take some strategy to land Clanton. He's lived out in the hills for years and he knows every foot of cover in the country."

Goodheart assented. To go blindly out into the mesquite after the young outlaw would have been as futile as to reach a hand toward the stars with the hope of plucking a gold-piece from the air.

"Watch the men he trains with. Keep an eye on the Elephant Corral an' check up on him when he rides in to Los Portales. Spot the tendejon at Point o' Rocks where he has a hang-out. Unless he has left the country he'll show up one of these days."

"That's what I think, Jack, an' I'm confident he hasn't gone. He has a reason for stayin' here."

Goodheart could have put a name to the reason. It was a fair enough reason to have held either him or the sheriff under the same circumstances.

"How about a reward? He trains with a crowd I'd hate to trust farther than I could throw a bull by the tail. Some of 'em would sell their own mothers for gold."

"I'll get in touch with Webb's family an' see if they won't offer a big reward for information leading to the arrest of the murderer."

Within the week every crossroads store in the county had tacked to it a placard offering a reward of five thousand dollars for the man who had killed Homer Webb.

No applications for it came in at first.

"Wait," said Goodheart, smiling. "More than one yellow dog has licked its jaws hungrily before that poster. Some dark night the yellowest one will sneak in here to see you."

On the main street of Los Portales one evening Billie met Pauline Roubideau. She came at him with a direct frontal attack.

"I've had a letter from Jim Clanton."

The sheriff did not ask her where it was post-marked. He did not want any information from Polly as to the whereabouts of her friend.

"You're one ahead of me then. I haven't," answered Prince.

"He says he didn't do it."

"Do what?"

"Shoot Mr. Webb. And I know he didn't if he says he didn't."

The grave eyes of the young man met hers. "But Dad Wrayburn was there. He saw the whole affair."

Pauline brushed this aside with superb faith. "I don't care. Jim never lied to me in his life. I know he didn't do it--and it makes me so glad."

The young man envied her the faith that could reject evidence as though it did not exist. The Jim Clanton she had once known would not have lied to her. Therefore the Jim Clanton she knew now was worthy of perfect trust. If there was any flaw in that logic the sweet and gallant heart of the girl did not find it.

But Billie had talked with Dad Wrayburn. He had ridden out and gone over the ground with a fine-tooth comb. Webb had been killed by a bullet from a forty-four. Of his own knowledge Prince knew that Clanton was carrying a weapon of this caliber only three hours before the killing. There was no escape from the conviction of the guilt of his friend.

The sheriff walked back to the hotel where he was staying. On the way his mind was full of the young woman he had just left. He had never liked her better, never admired her more. But, somehow--and for the first time he realized it--there was no longer any sting in the thought of her. He did not have to fight against any unworthy jealousy because of her interest in Clanton. Of late he had been very busy. It struck him now that his mind had been much less preoccupied with the thought of her than it used to be. He supposed there was such a thing as falling out of love. Perhaps he was in process of doing that now.

Bud Proctor, a tall young stripling, met Prince on the porch of the hotel.

"Buck Sanders was here to see you, sheriff," the boy said.

Since the days when he had been segundo of the Snaith-McRobert outfit Sanders had declined in the world. Like many of his kind he had taken to drink, become bitten with the desire to get rich without working, and operated inconspicuously in the chaparral with a branding iron. Much water had poured down the bed of the Pecos in the past three years. The disagreement between him and Clanton had long since been patched up and they had lately been together a great deal.

Prince went up to his room, threw off his coat, and began to prepare some papers he had to send to the Governor. He was interrupted by a knock at the door.

Sanders opened at the sheriff's invitation, shoved in his head, looked around the room warily, and sidled in furtively. He closed the door.

"Mind if I lock it?" he asked.

The sheriff nodded. His eyes fixed themselves intently on the man. "Go as far as you like."

The visitor hung his hat over the keyhole and moved forward to the table. His close-set eyes gripped those of the sheriff.

"What about this reward stuff?" he asked harshly.

An instant resentment surged up in Billie's heart. He knew now why this fellow had come to see him secretly. It was his duty to get all the information he could about Clanton. He had to deal with this man who wanted to sell his comrade, but he did not relish the business.

"You can read, can't you, Sanders?" he asked ungraciously.

"Where's the money?" snarled his guest.

"It's in the bank."

"Sure?"

From his pocket-book Billie took a bank deposit slip. He put it on the table where the other man could look it over.

"Would a man have to wait for the reward until Clanton was convicted?" the traitor asked roughly.

"A thousand would be paid as soon as the arrest was made, the rest when he was convicted," said Prince coldly.

"Will you put that in writin', Mr. Sheriff?"

The chill eyes of the officer drilled into those of the rustler. He drew a pad toward him and wrote a few lines, then shoved the tablet of paper toward Sanders. The latter tore off the sheet and put it in his pocket.

Sanders spoke again, abruptly. "Understand one thing, Prince. I don't have to take part in the arrest. I only tell you where to find him."

"And take me to the spot," added the sheriff, "I'll do the arrestin'."

"Whyfor must I take you there if I tell you where to go?"

"You want a good deal for your white alley, Sanders," returned the other contemptuously. "I'm to take all the chances an' you are to drag down the reward. That listens good. Nothin' to it. You'll ride right beside me; then if anything goes wrong, you'll be where I can ask you questions."

"Do you think I'm double-crossin' you? Is that it?" flushed the ex-foreman of the Lazy S M.

"I don't know. It might be Clanton you're double-crossin', or it might be me," said the sheriff with cynical insolence. "But if I'm the bird you've made a poor choice. In case we're ambushed, you'll be in nice, easy reach of my gun."

"Do I look like a fool?" snapped Sanders. "I'm out for the dough. I'm takin' you to Clanton because I need the money."

"Mebbeso. You won't need it long if you throw me down." Then abruptly, the sheriff dropped into the manner of dry business. "Get down to tacks, man. Where is Clanton's hang-out?"

Buck sat down and drew a sketch roughly on the tablet. "Cross the river at Blazer's Ford, cut over the hills to Ojo Caliente, an' swing to the east. He's about four miles from Round Top in an old dugout. Maybe you've heard of Saguaro Cañon. Well, he's holed up in a little gulch runnin' into it."

By daybreak next morning the sheriff's posse was in the saddle. In addition to Sanders, who rode beside Billie unarmed, Goodheart and two special deputies made up the party.

The sun was riding high when they reached Ojo Caliente. The party bore eastward, following a maze of washes, arroyos, and gorges. It was well into the afternoon when the informer ventured a suggestion.

"We're close enough. Better light here an' sneak forward on foot," the man said gruffly.

As he swung from the horse Billie smiled grimly. He had a plan of his own which he meant to try. Buck Sanders might not like it, but he was not in a position to make any serious objection.

They crept forward to a rim rock above a heavily wooded slope. A tongue-shaped grove ran down close to the edge of a narrow gulch.

Prince explained what he meant to do. "We'll all snake down closer. When I give the word you'll go forward alone, Sanders, an' call Jim out. Ask him to come forward an' look at yore bronco's hoof. That's all you'll have to do."

Sanders voiced a profane and vigorous protest. "Have you forgot who this guy is you're arrestin'? Go-Get-'Em Jim is no tenderfoot kid. He's chain lightnin' on the shoot. If he suspects me one steenth part of a second, that will be long enough for him to gun me good."

"He'll not have a chance. We'll have him covered all the time."

"Say, we agreed you was goin' to make this arrest, not me."

"I'll make it. All you've got to do is to call him out."

"All!" shrieked Sanders. "You know damned well I'm takin' the big risk."

"That's the way I intended it to be," the sheriff assured him coolly. "You're to get the reward, aren't you?"

The rustler balked. He polluted the air with low, vicious curses, but in the end he had to come to time.

They slipped through the grove till they could see on the edge of the ravine a dug-out. Prince flashed a handkerchief as a signal and Sanders rode down in the open skirting the timber. He swung from the saddle and shouted a "Hello, in the house!"

No answer came. Buck called a second and a third time. He waited, irresolute. He could not consult with Prince. At last he moved toward the house and entered. Presently he returned to the door and waved to the sheriff to come forward.

Very cautiously the posse accepted the invitation, but every foot of the way Billie kept the man covered.

Sanders ripped out a furious oath. "He's done made his get-away. Some one must 'a' warned him."

He held out to Prince a note scrawled on a piece of wrapping-paper. It was in Clanton's pell-mell, huddled chirography:--

Sorry I can't stay to entertain you, Billie. Make yourself at home. Bacon and other grub in a lard can by the creek. Help yourself.

Crack Sanders one on the bean with your six-gun on account for me.

JIMMIE-GO-GET-'EM.

Chapter XXV

The Mal-Pais

Billie Prince laughed. The joke was on him, but he was glad of it. As sheriff of Washington County it had been his duty to accept any aid that might come from the treachery of Sanders; but as a friend of Jim Clanton he did not want to win over him by using such weapons.

"Tickled to death, ain't you?" snapped the ex-foreman sourly. "Looks to me like you didn't want to make this arrest, Mr. Sheriff. Looks to me like some one else has been doin' some double-crossin' besides me."

"Naturally _you'd_ think that," cut in Goodheart dryly. "The facts probably are that Go-Get-'Em Jim, knowin' his friends pretty well, had you watched, found out you called on the sheriff, an' guessed the rest. He's not a fool, you know."

"That's right. Git ready an alibi," Sanders snarled.

Casually Goodheart picked up the piece of wrapping-paper upon which the note had been written. He read aloud the last sentence.

"'Crack Sanders one on the bean with your six-gun on account for me.' Seems to me if I was you, Buck, I'd alibi myself down the river into Texas as quick as I could jog a bronco along. But, of course, I don't know yore friend Go-Get-'Em as well as you do. Mebbe you'll be able to explain it to him. Tell him you were hard up an' needed the money."

The eyes of the rustler flashed from Goodheart to the sheriff. They were full of sinister suspicion. Had these men arranged to deliver him into the hands of Clanton? Was he himself going to fall into the pit he had dug?

"Gimme back my gun an' I'm not afraid of him or any of you," he bluffed.

"You'll get yore gun when we reach Los Portales," Prince told him. "I left it in my office."

"I ain't goin' to Los Portales."

"All right. Leave yore address and I'll send the gun by the buckboard driver."

All the baffled hate and cupidity of Sanders glared out of his wolfish face. "I'll let you know later where I'm at."

He straddled out of the house, pulled himself astride the waiting horse, and rode up the hill. Presently he disappeared over the crest.

"Much obliged, Jack," said Prince, smiling. "Exit Mr. Buck Sanders from New Mexico. Our loss is Texas's gain. Chalk up one bad man emigrated from Washington County."

"He's sure goin' to take my advice," agreed the lank deputy. A little chuckle of amusement escaped from his throat. "To the day of his death he'll think we sent word to Go-Get-'Em Jim. I'll bet my next pay-check against a dollar Mex that he forgets to send you that address."

Billie availed himself of the invitation of Clanton to make himself at home. He and his posse spent the night in the dug-out and returned to Los Portales next day. For the better part of a week he was detained there on business, after which he took the stage to Live-Oaks.

News was waiting for Prince at the county seat that led him for a time to forget the existence of Clanton. The buckboard driver from El Paso reported the worst sand-storm he had ever encountered. It had struck him a mile or two this side of the Mal-Pais, as the great lava beds in the Tularosa Basin are commonly called. He had unhitched the horses, overturned the buckboard, and huddled in the shelter of the bed. There he had lain crouched for ten hours while the drifting sand, fine as powder, blotted out the world and buried him in drifts. He was an old plainsman, tough as leather, and he had weathered the storm safely. A full day late he staggered into Live-Oaks a sorry sight.

The news that shook Live-Oaks into swift activity had to do with Lee Snaith. Just before the storm hit him the buckboard driver had met her riding toward the Mal-Pais.

Prince arrived to find the town upside down with the confusion of preparation. Swiftly he brought order out of the turmoil. He organized the rescue party, assigned leaders to the divisions, saw that each man was properly outfitted, and mapped off the territory to be covered by each posse. Outwardly he was cool, efficient, full of hopeful energy. But at his heart Billie felt an icy clutch of despair. What chance was there for Lee, caught unsheltered in the open, when the wiry, old Indian fighter, protected by his wagon, had barely won through alive?

Every horse in Live-Oaks that could be ridden was in the group that melted into the night to find Lee Snaith. Every living soul left in the little town was on the street to cheer the rescuers.

The sheriff divided his men. Most of them were to spend the night, and if necessary the next day and night, in combing the sand desert east of the Mal-Pais. Here Lee had last been seen, and here probably she had wandered round and round until the storm had beaten her down. It took little imagination to vision the girl, flailed by the sweeping sand, bewildered by it, choked at every gasping breath, hopelessly lost in the tempest.

Yet some bell of hope rang in Billie's breast. She might have reached the lava. If so, there was a chance that she might be alive. For though the wind had sweep enough here, the fine dust-sand of the alluvial plain could not be carried so densely into this rock-sea. Perhaps she had slipped into a fissure and found safety.

For fifty miles this great igneous bed stretches, a rough and broken sea of stone, across the thirsty desert. Its texture is like that of slag from a furnace. Once, in the morning of the world, it flowed from the crater along the line of least resistance, a vitreous river of fire. In a great molten mass it swept into the valleys, crawling like a great snake here and there, pushing fiery tongues into every crevice of the hills.

The margin of its flow is a cliff or steep slope varying in height from a few feet to that of a good-sized tree. Between the silt plain and the general level of its bed rises a terrace. In front of it Prince stopped and distributed the men he had reserved to search the lava bed. He gave definite, peremptory orders.

"We'll keep about two hundred yards apart. Every twenty minutes each of you will fire his revolver. If any of you find Miss Snaith or any evidence of her, shoot three times in rapid succession. Each of you pass the signal down the line by firing four shots. Those who hear the three shots go in as fast as you can to the rescue. The others--those farther away, who hear the four shots only--will turn an' work back to the plain, continuing to fire once every twenty minutes. Do exactly as I tell you, boys. If you don't, some one will be lost an' may never get out alive. If any one of you gets out of touch with the rest of us, stay right where you are till mornin', then come out by the sun."

The horses were left in charge of a Mexican boy. The surface of the deposit is so broken that even a man on foot has difficulty in traversing it. Prince crawled forward from the terrace up the rough slope of the cliff which at this point bounded it. At the top of the rim he rose and came face to face with another man.

"A good deal like frozen hell, Billie," the other said casually.

"Where did you come from?" demanded the sheriff, amazed.

Jim Clanton laughed grimly. "I've been with yore party half an hour. Why shouldn't I be here when Lee Snaith is lost?"

"You were hiding in Live-Oaks?"

"Mebbeso. Anyway, I'm here. I'll take the right flank, Billie."

"Do you think there's a chance, Jim?" The voice of Prince shook with emotion. It was the first sign of distress he had given.

Clanton reflected just a moment before he answered. "I think there's just a chance. She saved our lives once, Billie. If she's alive we'll find her, you an' me."

"By God, yes." Prince turned away. He could not talk about it without breaking down.

In the stress of a great shock Billie had made a vital discovery. The most important thing that would ever come to him in life was to find Lee Snaith alive. How blind he had been! He could see her now in imagination, as in reality he had seen her a hundred times, moving in the sun-pour with elastic tread, full-throated and deep-chested, athrob with life in every generous vein. How passionately she had loved things brave and true! How anger had flamed up in her like fire among tow at meanness and hypocrisy. Surely all the beauty of her person, the fineness of her character, could not be blotted out so wantonly. If there was any economy in his world God would never permit waste like that.

He wanted her. His soul cried out for her. and stormily he prayed that he might find her alive and well, that the chance might still be given him to tell her how much he loved her.

Sometimes he covered small distances where the flow structure was comparatively smooth, broken only by minor irregularities. Again he came to abrupt pits, deep caverns, tumbled heaps of broken slabs, or jagged chunks of lava twisted into strange shapes. No doubt the volcanic flow had hardened to a crust on top, cracked, and sunk into the furnace below. This process must have gone on indefinitely.

He crept from slab to slab, pulled himself across chasms, worked slowly forward in the darkness. At intervals he fired and listened for an answer. Occasionally there drifted to him the sound of a shot from one of the other searchers. As the hours passed and brought to him no signal that the girl had been found, his hopes ebbed. It was very unlikely that she could have wandered so far into the bad lands as this.

He shuddered to think of her alone in this vast tomb of death. Suppose she were here and they never found her. Suppose she were asleep when he passed, worn out by terror and exhaustion. His voice grew hoarse from shouting. Sometimes, when the thought of her fate would become an agony to him, he could hardly keep his shout from rising to a scream.

Billie struck a match and looked at his watch. It was five minutes past three. A faint gray was beginning to sift into the sky. He had been nearly seven hours in the Mal-Pais. Out in God's country the world would soon be shaking sleep from its eyes. In this death zone there was neither waking nor sleeping. "Frozen hell," Clanton had called it. Prince shuddered.

The flare of the match had showed him that he was standing close to the edge of a fissure. In the darkness he could not see to the bottom of it.

A faint breath of a whimper floated to him. He grew rigid, every nerve taut. He dared not let himself believe it could be real. Of course he was imagining sounds. Presently, no doubt, he would hear voices. In this devil's caldron a man could not stay quite sane.

Again, as if from below his feet, was lifted a strangled, little sob.

"Lee!" he called huskily with what was left of his voice.

Something in the cavern moved. By means of outcropping spars of rock he lowered himself swiftly.

The darkness was Stygian. He struck another match.

From the gloom beyond the space lit by the small flame came the rustle of something stirring. The match burned out. He lit another and groped forward. His foot struck an impediment.

He looked down into the startled eyes and white face of Lee Snaith.

Chapter XXVI

A Dust-Storm

It had been a beautiful day of sunshine when Lee left Live-Oaks to ride to the Ninety-Four Ranch. Not a breath of wind stirred. The desert slept in a warm, golden bath. It was peaceful as old age.

But as the sun slipped past the meridian, gusts swept across the sands and whipped into the air inverted cones that whirled like vast tops in a wild race to nowhere. The air waves became more frequent and more furious. When Lee passed the buckboard driver, the whole desert seemed alive with stinging sand.

He called something to her that was lost in the wind. The girl waved at him a gauntleted hand. She had been out in dust-storms before and was not in the least alarmed. Across the lower part of her face she had tied a silk handkerchief to protect her mouth and nostrils from the sand.

The mail carrier had scarcely disappeared before the fury of the wind increased. It lashed the ground with heavy whips, raging and screaming in shrill, whistling frenzy, until the desert rose in terror and began to shift.

Lee bent her head to escape the sand that filled her eyes and nostrils and beat upon her cheeks so unmercifully. She thought perhaps the tempest would abate soon and she slipped from the saddle to crouch close to the body of the horse for protection. Instead of decreasing, the gale rose to a hurricane. It was as if the whole sand plain was in continuous, whirling motion.

The horse grew frightened and restless. It was a young three-year-old Jim Clanton had broken for her. Somehow--Lee did not know quite the way it happened--the bridle rein slipped from her fingers and the colt was gone.

She ran after the pony--called to it frantically--fought in pursuit against the shrieking blasts. The animal disappeared, swallowed in the whirl-wind that encompassed her and it. Lee sank down, sheltering her face with her arms against the pelting sand sleet.

But years in the outdoor West had given Lee the primal virtue, courage. She scorned a quitter, one who lay down or cried out under punishment. Now she got to her feet and faced the storm. The closeness of her horizon--her outstretched arms could almost touch the limit of it--confused the mind of the girl. She no longer knew east from west, north from south. With a sudden sinking of the heart she realized that she was lost in this gray desert blizzard.

Blindly she chose a direction and plunged forward. At times the wind hit her like a moving wall and flung her to the ground. She would lie there panting for a few moments, struggle to her knees, and creep on till in a lull she could again find her feet.

How much of this buffeting, she wondered, could one endure and live? The air was so filled with dust that it was almost impossible to get a breath. Her muscles ached with the flogging they were receiving. She was so exhausted, her forces so spent, that the hinges of her knees buckled under her.

One of her feet struck against a rise in the ground and she stumbled. She lay there motionless for what seemed a long time before it penetrated her consciousness that one of her palms pained from a jagged cut the fall had caused. Her body lay on sharp-pointed rocks. As far as they could reach, the groping fingers of the girl found nothing but hard, rough stone. Then, in a flash, the truth came to her. She had reached the Mal-Pais.

She crept across the lava in an effort to escape the strangling wind. Its rage followed her, drove the girl deeper into the bad lands. A renewal of hope urged her on. In its rough terrain she might find shelter from the tornado. In short stages, with rests between, she pushed into the vitreous lake, dragged herself up from the terrace, fought forward doggedly for what seemed to her an age.

A crevice barred the way. The fissure was too wide to step across and was perhaps ten feet deep. Lee slid into it, slipped, and fell the last step or two of the descent. She lay where she had fallen, too worn out to move.

It must have been almost at once that she fell asleep.

The stars were out when she awakened, her muscles stiff and aching from the pressure of her weight upon the rock. The girl lay for a minute wondering where she was. Above was a narrow bar of starlit sky. The walls of her pit of refuge were within touch of her finger tips. Then memory of the storm and her escape from it flashed back to her.

She climbed easily the rough side of the cavern and looked around. The wind had died so that not even a murmur of it remained. As far as the eye could see the lava flow extended without a break. But she knew the cavern in which she had slept lay at a right angle to the line of her advance. All site had to do was to face forward and keep going till she reached the plain. The reasoning was sound, but it was based on a wrong premise. Lee had clambered out of the fissure on the opposite side from that by which she had entered. Every step she took now carried her farther into the bad lands.

Morning broke to find her completely at sea. Even the boasted weather of the Southwest played false. A drizzle of rain was in the air. Not until late in the afternoon did the sun show at all and by that time the wanderer was so deep in the Mal-Pais that when night closed down again she was still its prisoner.

She was hungry and fagged. The soles of her boots were worn out and her feet were badly blistered. Again she took refuge in a deep crevice for the night.

The loneliness appalled her. No living creature was to be seen. In all this awful desolation she was alone. Her friends at Live-Oaks would think she was at the Ninety-Four Ranch. Even if they searched for her she would never be found. After horrible suffering she would die of hunger and thirst. She broke down at last and wept herself to sleep.

Chapter XXVII

"A Lucky Guy"

Lee had the affrighted look of one roused suddenly from troubled dreams. The whimper that had drawn the attention of Prince must have come from her restless, tortured sleep. Not till his second match flared had she been really awake.

"Thank God!" he cried brokenly, all the pent emotion of the long night vibrant in his tremulous voice.

She began to sob, softly, pitifully.

The match went out, but even in the blackness of the pit he could not escape the look of suffering he had seen on her face. Her habit was to do all things with high spirit. He could guess how much she had endured to bring those hollow shadows under her dusky eyes. The woe of the girl touched his heart sharply, as if with the point of a rapier.

He stooped, lifted her gently, and gathered her like a hurt child into his arms. "You poor lost lamb," he murmured. And again he cried, "Thank God, I came in time."

Her arms crept round his neck. She clung to him for safety, fearfully, lest even now he might vanish from her sight. Long, ragged sobs shook the body resting in his arms. He whispered words of comfort, stroked gently the dark head of blue-black hair, held her firmly so that she might know she had found a sure refuge from the fate that had so nearly devoured her.

The spasmodic quivering of the body died away. She dabbed at her eyes with a rag of a handkerchief and withdrew herself from his arms.

"I'm a nice baby," she explained with a touch of self-contempt. "But it's been rather awful, Billie. I ... I didn't know whether ..."

"It's been the worst night of my life," he agreed. "I've been in hell for hours, dear. If--if anything had happened to you--"

The heart of the girl beat fast. She told herself he did not mean--could not mean what, with a sudden warmth of joy, her soul hunger had read into his words.

Prince uncorked his canteen and she drank. He gave her sandwiches and she devoured them. After he had helped her from the fissure he fired three shots. Faintly from the left came the answering bark of a revolver. What might almost have been an echo of it drifted from the right.

Lee Snaith was the most competent young woman the sheriff had ever met. He knew her self-reliant and had always guessed her sufficient to herself. Toward him especially he had sensed a suggestion of cool hostility. They had been friends, but with a distinct note of reservation on her part.

To-night the mask was off. She had come too close to raw reality to think of her pride. The morning light was sifting into the sky now. Billie could see the girl more clearly as she sat on a slab of rock waiting for the other searchers to join them. Was it his imagination that found in her an unwonted shyness of the dark eyes, a gentle timidity of manner when she looked at him?

His emotion still raced at high tide. What an incomparable mate she would be for any man! The rich contralto of her voice, the slow, graceful turn of the exquisite head, the vividness she brought to all her activities! How easy it was to light in her fine eyes laughter, indignation, the rare smile of understanding! Life with her would be an adventure into the hill-tops. With all his heart he yearned to take it beside her.

There were strange flashes in his eyes to-night that signaled to her a message she had despaired of ever receiving. The long lashes of the girl fell to the hot cheeks. A pulse of excitement beat in her blood. A few minutes before she had clung to him despairingly. Now she wanted to run away and hide.

He stepped close to her and let his hand fall lightly on her arm.

"I've been blind all these years, Lee," he told her. "It's you I love."

She stole a little look at him with shy, incredulous eyes. "Have you forgotten--Polly?"

"I haven't been in love with her for years, but I didn't know it till about the Christmas holidays. She was a habit with me. There never was a sweeter girl than Polly Roubideau. I'll always think a heap of her. But--well, she had more sense than I had--knew all the time we weren't cut out for each other." He laughed a little, flushing with embarrassment. It is not the easiest thing in the world to explain to a girl why you have neglected her in favor of another.

Lee trembled. The desire was strong in her to seize her happiness while she could. Surely she had waited long enough for it. But some impulse of fair play to him or of justice to herself held back the tide of love she longed to release.

"I think ... you are impulsive," she said at last. "If you have anything you want to tell me, better wait until ..."

"Not another moment!" he cried. "I've been in torment all night. I ... I thought I'd lost you forever. You don't care for me, of course. You never have liked me very well, but--"

"Haven't I?" she breathed softly, not looking at him.

Love irradiated and warmed her. She forgot all she had suffered during the years she had waited for him to know his mind. She forgot the privations of the past two days. Her eyes were tender with the mist of unshed tears.

"It's going to be the biggest thing in my life. If there's any chance at all I'll wait as long as you like. Of course, the idea's new to you because you haven't ever thought of me that way--"

"You know so much about it," she replied, a faint smile in her dark eyes that had in it something of wistfulness, something of self-mockery. She looked directly at him and let him have it full in the face. "I ought to be ashamed of it, I suppose, but I'm not. I've thought of you--that way--lots of times. All girls do, when they meet a man they like."

"You like me?"

She might have told him that her heart had been his ever since that first week when she had met him and Clanton on the river. She might have added that all he had needed to do was to whisper "Come" and she would have galloped across New Mexico to meet him. But she made no such confession.

"Yes, I ... like you," she said, a little tremor in her voice.

He noticed that she did not look at him. Her eyes had fallen to the fingers laced together on her lap. Under compulsion of his steady gaze she lifted her lashes at last. What he read there was beyond belief. The wonder of it lifted his feet from the earth.

"Lee!" he cried, joy and fear in the balance.

She answered his unspoken question with a little nod.

His hand shook. "I've been a blind idiot, dear. I never guessed such a thing."

"You were thinking about Polly all the time. I don't blame you. She's the sweetest thing I ever knew."

Billie sat down on the spar of rock beside her. His hand slipped down her arm till it covered hers. With the contact there came to him a flood of courage. He took her in his arms and kissed her with infinite tenderness.

Still unstrung from her adventures, she wept a little into his shoulder out of a full heart.

"D--don't mind me," she urged. "It's just because I'm so happy."

If Clanton, when he found them together a few minutes afterward, guessed what had happened, he gave no evidence of it but a grin, unless his later comment had a cryptic meaning. "I'll bet Billie is the glad lad at findin' you. He always was a lucky guy."

"I think I'm a little lucky too," Lee said with a grave smile.

Before starting, Prince examined the soles of the girl's boots. Out of his hat he fashioned a pair of overshoes and fastened them with strings to her feet.

"They'll help some," he promised. "I reckon you're not goin' to do much walkin' anyhow with three husky men along."

By this time the searcher on the other flank had joined them. The return trip was a long, hard one, but with Billie on one side of her, and Jim on the other, Lee found it easy travelling. They aided her over the sharp rocks and lifted her across the rougher stretches of lava.

At the edge of the lava bed a buggy was waiting to take Lee to Live-Oaks in case she should be found. Prince helped Lee in and took the place of the boy who had driven it out.

Clanton put his foot on the hub of the wheel. "Just a minute, Billie. I'm wanted for the killin' of Homer Webb. I didn't shoot him an' I don't know who did. Somebody must have been lyin' there in the chaparral waitin' for him. I'll give myself up an' stand trial if you'll guarantee me fair play. No lynchin' bee. No packed jury. All the cards dealt fair an' honest above the table."

The sheriff had smiled at Pauline Roubideau's implicit faith in Jim Clanton's word. But now, face to face with his friend, he too believed and felt a load lift from his heart.

"That's a deal, Jim. You won't have to reckon with any mob or any hand-picked jury, I'll tell you the truth. I thought you did it. But if you say you didn't, that goes with me. I'll see you through."

"Good enough. I'll drop in to-morrow an' we can fix things up. I'd like to be tried outside of Washington County. There's too much prejudice here one way an' another. Well, take this little lady home an' scold her good for the way she's been actin'. She'd ought to get married to a man that will look after her an' not let her go buckin' into cyclones."

Billie smiled. "I'll talk to her about that, old scout."

Miss Snaith blushed furiously, but the best she could do was a bit of weak repartee. "I used to have hopes that you would ask me, Jim."

Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em laughed with friendly malice. "I used to have hopes, too, in that direction, Lee, but I haven't any more. You be good to her or we also-rans will boil you in oil, Billie."

Chapter XXVIII

Sheriff Prince Functions

"Yippy yip yip yip!"

Old Reb, Quantrell's ex-guerrilla, now boss of mule-skinners for Prince, galloped down the street waving an old dusty white hat. Women and children and old men dribbled out from the houses, all eager for the news.

"Billie he found Miss Lee in the Mal-Pais. That boy sure had his lucky pants on to-day. She's all right too. I done seen her myself--just a mite tuckered out, as you might say," explained the former cowpuncher.

Live-Oaks shook hands with itself in exuberant joy. For an hour the school bell pealed out the good news. A big bonfire blazed in the court-house square. Wise dames busied themselves baking bread and frying doughnuts and roasting beef for the rescue party now homeward bound. It was a certainty that their men-folks would all be hungry and ready for a big feed.

By noon most of the searchers were back in town and the saloons were doing big business. When Prince drove down the main street of Live-Oaks an hour later, the road was jammed as for a Fourth-of-July celebration. Tired though she was, Lee had not the heart to disappoint these good friends. She went to the picnic ground at Fremont's Grove and was hugged and kissed by all the woman at the dinner. She wept and was wept over till her lover decided she had had all the emotion that was good for her, whereupon he took her back to the home of her aunt and with all the newborn authority of his position ordered her to bed.

"But it's only three o'clock in the afternoon," Lee protested.

"Good-night," answered Billie inexorably.

She surrendered meekly. "If you say I must, my lord. I am awf'lly tired." Little globes of gladness welled up in her eyes. "Everybody's so good to me, Billie. I didn't know folks were so kind. I can't think what I can ever do to pay them back."

"I'll tell you how. You be good to yourself, honey," he told her with a sudden wave of emotion as he caught and held her tight in his arms. "You quit takin' chances with blizzards an' crazy gunmen an'--"

"--And horsethieves hidden in the chaparral?" she asked with a flash of demure eyes.

"You're goin' to take an awful big chance with one ex-horsethief. Lee, I'm the luckiest fellow on earth."

She nestled closer to him. Her lips trembled to his kiss.

"Billie, you're sure, aren't you?" she whispered. "It wasn't just pity for me."

He chose to reassure her after the fashion of a lover, in that wordless language which is as old as Eden.

His heart was full of her as he swung down the street buoyantly. He had known her saucy, scornful, and imperious. He had known her gay and gallant, had been the victim of her temper. Occasionally he had seen glimpses of tenderness toward Pauline and of motherliness toward Jim Clanton. But never until last night had he found her dependent and clinging. Her defense against him had been a manner of cool self-reliance. In the stress of her need that had been swept aside to show her flamy and yet shy, quick with innocent passion. She wanted him for a mate, just as he wanted her, and she made no concealment of it. In the candor of her love he exulted.

Lee slept round the clock almost twice and appeared for a late breakfast. Her aunt told her some news with which Live-Oaks was buzzing.

Go-Get-'Em Jim had ridden into town, stopped at the sheriff's office, and demanded cynically the thousand dollars offered by the Webb estate for his arrest.

"He'll come to no good end," prophesied Miss Snaith, senior.

"You don't quite understand him, aunt," protested Lee. "That's just his way. He likes to grand-stand, and he does it rather well. But he isn't half so bad as he makes out. He says he did not shoot Mr. Webb, and we feel sure he didn't."

"Of course he says so," replied the older woman indignantly. "Why wouldn't he say so? But Dad Wrayburn was there and saw it all. There has been a lot too much promiscuous killing and he's one of the worst of the lot, your Jim Clanton is. Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em, indeed! I hope the law goes and gets him now it has a chance."

The opinion of Lee's aunt was in accord with the general sentiment. Washington County had within the past year suffered a change of heart. It had put behind its back the wild and reckless days of its youth when every man was a law to himself. Bar-room orators talked virtuously of law and order. They said it behooved the county to live down its evil reputation as the worst in the United States. Times had changed. The watchword now should be progress. It ought no longer to be a recommendation to a man that he could bend a six-gun surer and quicker than other folks. "Movers" in white-topped wagons were settling up the country. A railroad had pushed in to Live-Oaks. There was a lot of talk about Eastern capital becoming interested in irrigation and mining. It was high time to remember that Live-Oaks and Los Portales were not now frontier camps, but young cities.

Since Live-Oaks had been good for so short a time it wanted to prove by a shining example how it abhorred the lawlessness of its youth. At this inopportune moment Clanton gave himself up to be tried for the murder of Homer Webb.

When the news spread that Clanton had been given a change of venue and was to be tried at Santa Fe, the citizens of Live-Oaks were distinctly annoyed. It was known that the sheriff had always been a good friend of the accused man. The whisper passed that if he ever took Go-Get-'Em Jim out of the county the killer would be given a chance to escape.

Into town from the chaparral drifted the enemies Clanton had made during his career as a gunman. Yankie and Albeen and Dumont and Bancock moved to and fro in the crowds at the different gambling places and saloons. Even Roush, who in the past three years had never given young Clanton an opportunity to meet him face to face, stole furtively into the tendejons of the Mexican quarter and spent money freely in treating. Among the natives Go-Get-'Em Jim was in ill-repute for shooting a bad man named Juan Ortez who had attempted to terrorize the town while on a spree.

"We're spendin' a lot of good money on this job. We'd ought to pull it off," Dumont whispered to Albeen.

"Whose money?" asked the one-armed man cynically.

It struck him as an ironic jest that the money they had got from the sale of Homer Webb's cattle should be spent to bring about the lynching of the man who had killed him.

Both the sheriff and his deputy were out of town rounding up a half-breed Mexican who had stabbed another at a dance. They reached Live-Oaks with their prisoner about the middle of the afternoon. Lee was waiting for them impatiently at the court-house.

"They're planning to lynch Jim," she told Prince abruptly.

"Who's goin' to do all that?" he asked.

"The riff-raff of the county are back of it, but the worst of it is that they've got a lot of good people in with them. Some of the Flying V Y riders are in town too. I never saw so much drinking before."

"When is it to be?"

"I don't know."

"Who told you?"

"Bud Proctor. He says Yankie and Albeen and that crowd are spending hundreds of dollars at the bars."

"I knew there was somethin' on foot soon as we hit town--felt it in the air." The sheriff looked at his watch. "We can just catch the afternoon train, Jack. Take this bird downstairs an' lock him up. I'll join you in a minute."

"What are you going to do?" asked Lee as soon as they were alone.

"Goin' to slip Jim aboard the train an' take him to Santa Fe."

"Can you do it without being seen?"

"I'll tell you that later," he answered with a grim smile. "Much obliged, honey. I'm goin' to be right busy now, but I'll see you soon as I get back to town."

Lee nodded good-bye and wait out. She liked it in him that just now he had no time even for her. From the door she glanced back. Already he was busy getting his guns ready.

Prince got his keys and unlocked the room where Clanton was. Jim was on the bed reading an old newspaper.

"Hello, Billie," he grinned.

"We're leaving on the afternoon train, Jim. Get a move on you an' hustle yore things together."

"Thought you weren't goin' till next week."

"Changed my mind. Jim, there's trouble afoot. Yore enemies are all in town. I want to get you away."

Clanton did not bat an eye. "Plannin' a necktie party, are they?"

"They've got notions. Mine are different." "Do I get a gun if it comes to a showdown, Billie?"

"You do. I'll appoint you a deputy."

Jim laughed. "That sounds reasonable."

Goodheart joined them. The three men left the back door of the court-house and cut across the square. The station was three blocks distant. Before they had covered a hundred yards a boy on the other side of the street stopped, stared at them, and disappeared into the nearest saloon.

The prisoner looked at his friend and grinned gayly. "Somethin' stirrin' soon. We're liable to have a breeze in this neighborhood, looks like."

They reached the station without being molested, but down the street could be seen much bustle of men running to and fro. Prince looked at them anxiously.

"The clans are gathering," murmured Clanton nonchalantly, his hands in his pockets. "Don't you reckon maybe you'll have to feed me to the wolves after all, Billie?"

A saddled horse blinked in the sun beside the depot, the bridle rein trailing on the ground. Its owner sat on a dry-goods box and whittled. Jim glanced at the bronco casually. Jack Goodheart also observed the cowpony. He whispered to the sheriff.

Prince turned to his prisoner. "Jim, you can take that horse an' hit the dust, if you like."

"Meanin' that you can't protect me?"

The salient jaw of the sheriff tightened. He looked what he was, a man among ten thousand, quiet and forceful, strong as tested steel.

"You'll have exactly the same chance to weather this that we will."

A mob of men was moving down the street in loose formation. There was still time for a man to fling himself into the saddle and gallop away.

"You'd rather I'd stay, Billie."

"Yes. I'm sheriff. I'd like to show this drunken outfit they can't take a prisoner from me."

Clanton gave a little whoop of delight. "Go to it, son. You're law west of the Pecos. Let's see you make it stick."

Live-Oaks was as yet the terminus of the railroad. The train backed into the station just as the first of the mob arrived.

"Nothin' doin', Prince," announced Yankie, swaggering forward. "You're not goin' to take this fellow Clanton away. We've come to get him."

"That's right," agreed Albeen.

Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em grinned. "Makes twice now you've come to get me."

"We didn't make it go last time. Different now," said Bancock, moving forward.

"That's near enough," ordered Prince. "You've made a mistake, boys. I'm sheriff of Washington County, and this man's my prisoner."

"He's yore old side kick, too, ain't he?" jeered Yankie.

Goodheart, following the orders he had received, moved forward to the engine and climbed into the cab beside the engineer and fireman. The sheriff and his prisoner backed to the steps of the smoking-car. Billie had had a word with the brakeman, his young friend Bud Proctor, who had at once locked the door at the other end of the smoker.

"Now," said Prince in a low voice.

Jim ran up lightly to the platform of the coach and passed inside. A howl of anger rose from the mob. There was a rush forward. Billie was on the lower step. His long leg lifted, the toe caught Yankie on the point of the chin, and the rustler went back head first into the crowd as though he had been shot from a catapult.

Instantly Prince leaped for the platform and whirled on the mob. He held now a gun in each hand. His eyes glittered dangerously as they swept the upturned faces. They carried to every man in the crowd the message that his prisoner could not be taken as long as the sheriff was alive.

Clanton threw open a window of the coach, rested his arms on the sill, and looked out. Again there was a roar of rage and a forward surge of the dense pack on the station platform.

"He ain't even got irons on the man's hands!" a voice shouted. "It's a frame-up to git him away from us!"

"Don't hide back there in the rear, Roush. Come right up to the front an' tell me that," called back Prince. "You're right about one thing. I don't need to handcuff Clanton. He has surrendered for trial, an' I'm here to see he gets a fair one. I'll do it if I have to put irons in his hands--shootin' irons."

Jim Clanton, his head framed in the window, laughed insolently. He was a picture of raffish, devil-may-care ease.

"Don't let Billie bluff you, boys. We can't bump off more'n a dozen or so of you. Hop to it."

"You won't laugh so loud when the rope's round yore gullet," retorted Albeen.

"That rope ain't woven, yet," flung back the young fellow coolly.

Even as he spoke a lariat whistled through the air. Jim threw up a hand and the loop slid harmlessly down the side of the car. One of the riders of the Flying V Y had tried to drag the prisoner out with a reata.

"You mean well, but you'll never win a roping contest, Syd," jeered Clanton. "Good of you an' all my old friends to gather here to see me off, I see you back there, Roush. It's been some years since we met, an' me always lookin' for you to say to you a few well-chosen words. I'll shoot straighter next time."

The vigilantes raised a howl of fury. They were like a wolf pack eager for the kill. Between them and their prey stood one man, cool, indomitable, steady as a rock. He held death in each hand, every man present knew it. They could get Clanton if they were willing to pay the price, but though there were game men in the mob, not one of them wanted to be the first to put his foot on the lower step of the coach.

From the other end of the car came the sudden noise of hammering. Some one had found a sledge in the baggage-room and with a dozen armed men back of him was trying to break down the door.

Prince called to his prisoner. "You've got to get in this, Jim. I appoint you deputy sheriff. Unstrap this belt from my waist. Take the other end of the car an' hold it. No shootin' unless it comes to a showdown. Understand?"

Clanton nodded. His eyes gleamed. "I'll behave proper, Billie."

Five seconds later the beating on the door stopped. The eyes of the big blacksmith with the hammer popped out with a ludicrous terror. Go-Get-'Em Jim was standing in the aisle grinning at him with a six-gun in each hand. With a wild whoop the horseshoer dropped the sledge and turned. He flung himself down the steps carrying with him half a dozen others. Not till he was safe in his own shop two blocks away did he stop running.

A shrill whistle rang out from the side of the train farthest from the station. The wheels began to move slowly. There was a rush for the engine. Jack Goodheart stood in the door of the cab ready for business.

"No passengers allowed here, boys," he announced calmly. "Take the coaches in the rear."

A dozen revolvers cracked. There was a rattle of breaking windows. The engine, baggage-car, and smoker moved forward, leaving the rest of the train on the track.

Men, swarming like ants, had climbed to the top of the cars, evidently with some idea of getting at their victim from above. Some of these were on the forward coaches. They began to drop off hurriedly as the station fell to the rear.

The wheels turned faster. Bud Proctor swung aboard and joined the sheriff.

"I cut off the other cars and gave the signal to start," he explained triumphantly.

"Good boy, Bud. Knew I could tie to you," Prince answered with the warm smile that always won him friends.

They passed into the car together. Clanton was leaning far out of the window waving a mocking hand of farewell to the crowd on the platform. He drew his head in and handed the weapons back to his friend.

"Don't I make a good deputy, Billie? I didn't fire even once."

Chapter XXIX

"They Can't Hang Me If I ain't There"

The jury brought in a verdict of murder in the first degree. Clanton was sentenced to be hanged at Live-Oaks four weeks after the day the trial ended. Prince himself had been called back to Washington County to deal with a band of rustlers who had lately pulled off a series of bold, wholesale cattle thefts. He left Goodheart to bring the prisoner back with him in case of a conviction.

The deputy sheriff left the train at Los Vegas, to which point Prince had sent a man with horses to meet Jack and the convicted murderer. It was not likely that the enemies of Clanton would make another attempt to frustrate the law, but there was a chance that they would. Goodheart did not take the direct road to Live-Oaks, but followed the river valley toward Los Portales.

The party reached the Roubideau ranch at dusk of the third night. Pauline had been at the place three months keeping house for her father. She flew to meet Jim, her eyes filled with a divine pity. Both hands went out to his manacled ones impulsively. Her face glowed with a soft, welcoming warmth.

"You poor boy! You poor, poor boy!" she cried. Then, flaming, she turned on Goodheart: "Bel et bien! Why do you load him down with chains? Are you afraid of him?"

The deputy flushed. "I have no right to take any chances of an escape. You know that."

"I know he is innocent. Why did they find him guilty?"

"I had no evidence," explained Jim simply. "Dad Wrayburn swore I shot twice at Webb just before I disappeared in the brush. Then a shot came out of the chaparral. It's not reasonable to suppose some one else fired it, especially when the bullet was one that fitted a forty-four."

"But you didn't fire it. You told me so in your letter."

"My word didn't count with the jury. I'd have to claim that, anyhow, to save my life. My notion is that the bullet didn't come from a six-gun at all, but from a seventy-three rifle. But I can't prove that either."

"It isn't fair. It--it's an outrage." Polly burst into tears and took the slim young fellow into her arms. "They ought to know you wouldn't do that. Why didn't your friends tell them so?"

He smiled, a little wistfully. "A gunman doesn't have friends, Polly. Outside of you an' Lee an' Billie I haven't any. All the newspapers in the territory an' all the politicians an' most of the decent people have been pullin' for a death sentence. Well, they've got it." He stroked her hair softly. "Don't you worry, girl. They won't get a chance to hang me."

Pauline released him, dabbed at her eyes, and ran, choking, into the house.

"You've got to be in trouble to make a real hit with Miss Roubideau," suggested the lank deputy, a little bitterly. "I'll take those bracelets off now, Clanton. You can wash for supper."

Polly saw to it, anyhow, that the prisoner had the best to eat there was in the house. She made a dinner of spring chicken, mashed potatoes, hot biscuits, jelly, and apple pie.

A rider for the Flying V Y dropped in after they had eaten and bridled like a turkey cock at sight of Clanton.

"Don't you let him git away from you, Jack," he warned the officer. "We're allowin' to have a holiday on the sixth up at our place so as to go to the show. It is the sixth, ain't it?" he jeered, turning to the handcuffed man on the lounge.

"The sixth is correct," answered Jim coolly, meeting him eye to eye.

"You wouldn't talk that way if Clanton was free," said Goodheart. "You're taggin' yoreself a bully an' a cheap skate when you do it."

"Say, is that any of yore business, Mr. Deputy Sheriff?"

"It is when you talk to my prisoner. Cut it out, Swartz."

"All right."

The cowpuncher turned to Pauline, who had come to the door and stood there. "You'll be goin' to the big show on the sixth, Miss Roubideau. Live-Oaks will be a sure-enough live town that day."

The young woman walked straight up to the big cowpuncher. Her eyes blazed. "Get out of this house. Don't ever come here again. Don't speak to me if you meet me."

The Flying V Y rider was taken aback. Like a good many young fellows within a radius of a hundred miles, he was a candidate for the favor of Pierre Roubideau's daughter.

"Why, I--I--" he stammered. "I didn't aim for to offend you. This fellow bushwhacked my boss. He--"

"That isn't true," she interrupted. "He didn't do it."

"Sure he did it. Go-Get-'Em Jim is a killer. A girl like you, Miss Roubideau, has got no business stickin' up for a bad man who--"

"Didn't you hear me? I told you to go."

"You've been invited to remove yoreself from the place an' become a part of the outdoor scenery, Swartz," cut in Goodheart, a snap to his jaw. "I'd take that invite pronto if I was you."

The cowpuncher picked up his hat and walked out. The drawling voice of the prisoner followed him.

"Don't you worry, Polly. They can't hang me if I ain't there, can they?"

The deputy guessed that Pauline wished to talk alone with Clanton. Presently he arose and sauntered to the door. "I want to see yore father about some horses Billie needs. Back soon."

He gave them a half-hour, but he took pains to see that his assistant covered the back door while he watched the front of the house. The prisoner was handcuffed, but Jack did not intend to take any chances. Personally he believed that Clanton was guilty, but whether he was or not it was his duty to bring the convicted man safely to Live-Oaks. This he meant to do.

Chapter XXX

Polly has a Plan

Pauline moved across the room and sat down beside Jim. An eager light shone in her soft, brown eyes.

"Listen!" she ordered in a low voice. "I've got a plan. There's a chance that it will work, I think. But tell me first about your sleeping arrangements. Does Jack or the other guard sit up and watch you all the time?"

"No. The champion roper of New Mexico, Arizona, an' Texas throws the diamond hitch on yours truly. He does an expert job, tucks me up, an' says good-night. He knows I'm perfectly safe till mornin', especially since both he an' Brad sleep in the same room with me."

"Well, I'm going to give you dad's room." She leaned forward and whispered to him steadily for five minutes.

The sardonic mockery had vanished from the face of the prisoner. He listened, every nerve and fiber of him at alert attention. Occasionally he asked a question. Carefully she explained the plan, going over each detail of it again and again.

Jim Clanton was efficient. In those days it was a necessary quality for a bad man if he wished to continue to function. He offered a suggestion or two which Pauline incorporated in her proposed campaign of action. At best her scheme was hazardous. It depended upon all things dovetailing properly. But he was in no place to pick and choose. All he asked was a chance and an even break of luck.

"You dandy girl!" he cried softly, and took her two hands between the palms of his fettered ones. "I'm a scalawag, Polly. But if you pull this off for me, I'll right-about-face. That's a promise. Somehow I've never acted like I wanted to. I've done a heap of wild an' foolish things, an' I've killed whenever it was put up to me. I don't reckon any woman that married me would be real happy. But if you'll take a chance 111 go away from here an' well Make a fresh start. You're the only girl there is for me."

A faint smile lay in her eyes. "You used to think Lee was the only girl, didn't you?"

"Well, I don't now. I like Polly Roubideau better."

Abruptly she flung at him a statement that was a question. "You didn't kill Mr. Webb."

"No. I never killed but one man without givin' him an even break. That was Peg-Leg Warren, an' he was a cold-blooded murderer."

A troubled little frown creased her forehead. "I've thought for more than a year now that you--liked me that way. And I've had it in my mind a great deal as to what I ought to do if you spoke to me about it. I wish you had a good wife, Jim. Maybe she could save you from yourself."

"Mebbe she could, Polly."

The lashes of her eyelids fell. She looked down at the bands of iron around his small wrists. "I--I've prayed over it, Jim. But I'm not clear that I've found an answer." Her low voice broke a little. "I don't know what to say."

"Is it that you are afraid of what I'm goin' to be? Can't you trust yore life with me? I shouldn't think you could."

Her eyes lifted and met his bravely. "I think that wouldn't stop me if--if I cared for you that way."

"It's Billie Prince, then, is it?"

"No, it isn't Billie Prince. Never mind who it is. What I must decide is whether I can make you the kind of wife you need without being exactly--"

"In love with me," he finished for her.

"Yes. I've always liked you very much. You've been good to me. I love you like a brother, I think. Oh, I don't know how to say it."

"Let's get this straight, Polly. Is there some one else you love?"

A tide of color flooded her face to the roots of the hair. She met his steady look reluctantly.

"We needn't discuss that, Jim."

"Needn't we?" He laughed a little, but his voice was rough with feeling. "You're the blamedest little pilgrim ever I did see. What kind of a fellow do you think I am? I ain't good enough for you--not by a thousand miles. Even if you felt about me the way I do about you, it would be a big risk for you to marry me. But now--Sho, little missionary, I ain't so selfish as to let you sacrifice yore life for me."

"If I marry you it will be because I want to, Jim."

"You'll want to because you're such a good little Christian you think it's up to you to save a brand from the burning. But I won't let you do any such foolishness. You go marry that other man. If he's a good, square, decent fellow, you'll be a whole lot better off than if you tied up with a ne'er-do-well like me."

They heard a step on the porch.

"Don't forget. Three taps if you're alone in the room," she said in a whisper.

Goodheart came into the parlor with Pierre Roubideau. "Expect we'd better turn in, Clanton. We've got to make an early start to-morrow."

The prisoner rose at once. Pauline had drawn her father aside and was giving him some instructions. The old Frenchman nodded, smiling. He understood her little feminine devices and was a cheerful victim of them.

The young woman found a chance for a word alone with the deputy.

"I want to see you to-night, Jack, about--something." Her eyes were very bright and the color in the soft cheeks high. She spoke almost in a whisper.

The lank young sheriff had the soul of an inarticulate poet. Beneath the tan of his leathery face the blood burned. This was the first really kind word he had had from her since their arrival. All her solicitation had been for the condemned youth in his care. Perhaps all she wanted now was to ask some favor for Clanton, but hope leaped in his heart.

He made arrangements for the night in his usual careful way. It was not pleasant to have to watch the prisoner as a cat does a mouse, but Goodheart was thorough in whatever he undertook. Skillfully he tied Clanton in such a way as to allow him enough freedom of motion to change position without giving him enough to make it possible for him to untie himself.

"Back after a while" he told Jim.

The young man on the bed grunted sleepily and the deputy returned to the parlor.

Pauline, still in her kitchen apron, smiled in at the door upon him and her father.

"You two go out on the porch and smoke your pipes," she said. "I have to finish my work in the kitchen, then I have to go down to the cellar and take care of the milk. Ill not be long."

Pierre, an obedient parent, rose and moved toward the porch. Before he left the room Goodheart took the precaution to lock the bedroom door and pocket the key. He was a little ashamed of this, but he knew that Go-Get-'Em Jim was a very competent and energetic person. Convicted and sentenced though he was, Clanton still boasted with cool aplomb that there would be no hanging on the sixth. The deputy strolled round to the back of the house to make sure his assistant was still on the job. After a few words with the man he returned to the porch. He was satisfied there was no possible chance of an escape. The prisoner lay handcuffed and tied to a bed by the champion roper of the Southwest. The door of the room was locked Both exits from the house were guarded. Jack felt that he could safely enjoy a smoke.

Chapter XXXI

Goodheart Makes a Promise and Breaks It

Pauline was a singularly honest little soul, but she now discovered in herself unsuspected capacity for duplicity. She went singing about her work, apparently care-free as a lark. Presently, still humming a French chanson, she appeared on the porch swinging a key, passed the two men with a gay little nod, and disappeared around the corner of the house to the cellar.

The rancher apologized for the key. "We've had to lock the cellar lately since so many movers have been going through on this road. Eh bien! Our hams--they took wings and flew."

Polly rattled the milk pans for a moment or two and then listened. From above there came to her the sound of three faint raps on the woodwork of the bed. She crept up the stairs that led from the cellar into the house. At the top of them was a trapdoor. Very slowly and carefully she pushed this up. Through the opening she passed into a bedroom.

Softly the girl stole to the bed. From the cellar she had brought a butcher knife and with this she sawed at the rope which bound the prisoner.

"But your handcuffs. What can we do about them?" she whispered.

Clanton stretched his stiff muscles. He made no answer in words. For a moment or two his arms writhed, then from out of the iron bracelet his long slender hand slowly twisted. Soon the second wrist was also free.

"I've had a lot of fun poked at my girl hands, but they come in useful sometimes," he murmured.

"I'll have to hurry back or I'll be missed," she told him. "You'll find a saddled horse in the aspens."

He caught her by the shoulders and held her fast. "You've been the truest little friend ever a man had. You've stuck by me an' believed in me even when I didn't believe in myself any longer. No matter what folks said about me or about you for takin' an interest in such a scamp, you never quit fightin' to keep me decent. I've heard tell of guardian angels--well, that's what you've been to me, little pilgrim."

"I haven't forgotten the boy who rode up Escondido Cañon to save me from death and dishonor," Pauline cried softly.

"You've paid that debt fifty times. I owe you more than I can tell. I wisht I knew a way to pay it."

Her soft and dusky eyes clung to his pleadingly. "If you get away, Jim, you will be good, won't you?"

"I'll be as good as I've got it in me to be. I don't know how good that is, Polly. But I'll do my level best."

"Oh, I'm so glad," she whispered. "Good luck--heaps of it."

He was not quite sure whether it was his privilege to kiss the parted red lips upturned to him, but he took a chance and was not rebuked.

Pauline went noiselessly down the steps again into the cellar while Clanton held the trapdoor. He lowered it inch by inch so that it would not creak, then spread over it the Navajo rug that had been there before the entrance of the girl.

Pierre Roubideau was still on his first pipe when Polly came round the corner of the house and stopped at the porch steps.

"I want to show you our new colt, Jack," she said to the deputy. This matter-of-fact statement came a little shyly and a little tremulously from her lips. Her heart was beating furiously.

The officer rose at once. "Just a minute," he said, and went into the house.

He unlocked the door of the room where Clanton was and glanced in. The prisoner lay on the bed in the moonlight, the blankets drawn over him. From his deep, regular breathing Jack judged him to be asleep. He relocked the door and joined Pauline.

The face of the girl was very white in the moonlight. Her big eyes flashed at him a question. Had he discovered that his prisoner was free?

They walked slowly toward the corral. From it Goodheart could see the front of the house, but not the cellar entrance at the side. Neither of them spoke until they reached the fence. He turned and leaned his elbows against it, facing the house.

Pauline was under great nervous tension. Her lips were dry and her throat parched. If the guard at the rear caught sight of the prisoner while he was escaping, Clanton would certainly be shot down. She knew Jim better than to hope that he would let himself be taken again alive.

The conscience of the girl troubled her too. She was doing this to save the life of a friend, but it was impossible not to feel a sense of treachery toward this other friend whose approval was so much more vital to her happiness. Would Jack think that she had conspired against his honor in an underhanded way? He was a man of strict principles. Would he cast her off and have no more to do with her?

She woke from her worries to discover that an emotional climax was imminent. Jack was telling her, in awkward, broken phrases, of his love for her. Polly had waited a long time for his confession, but coming at this hour it filled/her with shame and distress. What an evil chance that he should be blurting out the story of his faith and trust in her while she was in the act of betraying him!

"Don't, Jack, don't!" she begged.

"It's all right," he said gently. "I know you don't care for me. But I had to tell you. Just had to do it. Couldn't keep still any longer. It's all right, Polly. I can stand it. I didn't go for to worry you."

She wept.

Her tears distressed him. He urged her to forget his presumption. She had been so good to him that he had spoken in spite of himself.

Pauline found she could not let him deceive himself. If she let him go now, perhaps he might never come back.

"You goose!"

Though the words came smothered through her handkerchief, he gained incredible comfort from them.

"Polly!" he cried.

"Don't you say a word, Jack," she ordered. "Let me do the talking."

"If you'll tell me that--that--you care anything for--for--"

"--For a big stupid who is too modest ever to think enough of himself," she completed. "Well, I do. I care a great deal for him."

"You don't mean--"

"I do, too. That's just what I mean. No, you keep back there till I'm through, Jack. I want to find out if you love me as much as I do you."

"Polly!" he cried a second time.

Her small face was very serious and white in the moonshine.

"Suppose we don't agree about something. Say I do a thing that seems right to me, but it doesn't seem right to you. What then?"

"It'll seem right to me if you do it," he answered.

"That's just a compliment."

"No, it's the truth. Whatever you do seems right to me."

"But suppose I do something that you think is wrong. Perhaps it may seem to you disloyal."

"If you do it because you think you ought to I'll not find it disloyal."

"Sure, Jack?"

"Certain sure," he answered.

"It's a promise?"

"It's a promise."

Little imps of mischief bubbled into the brown eyes. "Then why don't you kiss me, goose?"

He caught her to him with a fierce rapture.

There came to them the sudden sound of drumming hoofs. A shot rang out in the night. Goodheart, with the first kiss of his sweetheart almost on his lips, flung Pauline aside and ran to the house.

The other guard met him at the front steps. "By God, he's gone!" the man cried.

"Clanton?"

"Yep."

"Can't be. He was handcuffed, tied to the bed, and locked in. I've got the key in my pocket."

The deputy sheriff took the steps at one bound, flung himself across the parlor, and unlocked the door. One glance showed him the empty bed, the displaced rug, and the trapdoor. He stepped forward and picked up the bits of rope and the handcuffs.

"Some one cut the rope and freed him," he said, confounded at the impossibility of the thing that had occurred.

"Must of slipped his hands out of the cuffs, looks like," the guard suggested.

"He got me to give him a bigger size--complained they chafed his wrists."

"Some trick that, if he has got kid hands."

The chill eyes of Goodheart gimleted into those of his assistant. "Did you do this, Brad? God help you if you did."

A light step sounded on the threshold. Pauline came into the room. "I did it, Jack," she said.

"You!"

"I came up through the trapdoor when I was in the cellar. I cut the rope and told him there was a horse saddled in the aspens."

Thoughts raced in his bewildered mind. She had planned all this carefully. Almost under his very eyes she had done it. Then she had lured him from the house to give Clanton a better chance. She had let him make love to her so that she could keep him at the corral while the prisoner escaped. It was all a trick. Even now she was laughing up her sleeve at the way she had made a fool of him.

"You saddled the horse and left it there." His statement was a question, too.

"Yes. I had to save him. I knew he was innocent."

All the explanations she had intended shriveled up before the scorn in his eyes. He brushed past her without a word and strode out of the house.

Pauline went to her room and flung herself on the bed. After a time her father came in and sat down beside the girl. He put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"I know what you think, dad," she said without turning her head. "But I couldn't help it, I had to do it."

"It may make you trouble, ma petite."

"I can't help that. Jim didn't kill Mr. Webb. I know it."

"After a fair trial a jury said he did, Polly. We have to take their word for it."

"You think I did wrong then."

"You did what you think was right. In my heart is no blame for you."

He comforted her as best he could and left her to sleep. But she did not sleep. All through the night she lay and listened. She was miserably unhappy. Her head and her heart ached. Jack had promised that she should be the judge of what was right for her to do, and at the first test he had failed her. She made excuses for him, but the hurt of her disappointment could not be assuaged.

In the early morning she heard the clatter of horses' hoofs in the yard. During the night she had not undressed. Now she rose and went out to meet her lover. He was at the stable, a gaunt figure, hollow-eyed, dusty, and stern. He had failed to recapture his prisoner.

"Jack," she pleaded, reaching out a hand timidly toward him.

Again he rejected her advance in grim silence. Swinging to the saddle, he rode out of the gate and down the road toward Live-Oaks.

With a little whimper Polly moved blindly to the house through her tears.

Chapter XXXII

Jim Takes a Prisoner

After Goodheart left the room where his prisoner was confined, Clanton waited a few moments till the sound of his footsteps had died away. He rose, moved noiselessly across the floor, and raised the trapdoor slowly. The creaking of the rusty hinges seemed to Jim to be shouting aloud the news of his escape. The young fellow descended into the cellar and stood there without moving till his eyes became accustomed to the darkness. He groped his way to the door, which Pauline had left open an inch or two. Carefully he edged through and crouched in the gloom at the foot of the steps.

Not far away some one was whistling cheerfully. Clanton recognized the tune as the usual musical offertory of Brad. He was giving "Uncle Ned" to an unappreciative world.

The fugitive crept up the steps and peered over the top. Brad was sitting on a bench against the wall. Evidently he was quite comfortable and had no intention of moving. The guard was so near that it would not be a fair risk to try to make a dash across the moonlit open for the aspen grove. He was so far that before the prisoner could reach him his gun would be in action. There was nothing to do but wait. Jim huddled against the sustaining wall while with the passing minutes his chance of escape dipped away.

Pierre Roubideau came round the corner of the house and joined Brad. The guard made room for him on the bench. If Roubideau sat down, the man in the shadow knew he was lost. They would sit there and chat till Goodheart came back and discovered his absence.

The rancher hesitated while he felt for his pipe. "Reckon I left it in the kitchen," he said.

Brad followed him round the corner of the house. Clanton waited no longer. They might return, or they might not. He did not intend to stay to find out.

Swiftly he ran toward the aspens. Half the distance he had covered when a voice called sharply to halt. The guard had turned and caught sight of him.

The feet of the running man slapped the ground faster. As he dodged into the trees a bullet flew past him. Yet a moment, and he had flung himself astride the bronco waiting there and had electrified that sleepy animal into life.

The pony struck its stride immediately. It took the rising ground at a gallop, topped the hill, and disappeared over the brow. The rider plunged into the thick mesquite. He knew that Goodheart would pursue, but he knew, too, that the odds were a hundred to one against capture if he could put a mile or two between him and the Roubideau ranch. A man could vanish in any one of fifty draws. He could find a temporary hiding-place up any gulch under cover of the matted brush. Therefore he turned toward the mountains.

Since he was unarmed, it was essential that Clanton should get into touch with his associates of the chaparral at once. Until he had a six-gun strapped to his side and a carbine under his leg he would not feel comfortable. All night he traveled, winding in and out of cañons, crossing divides, and dipping down into little mountain parks. He knew exactly where he wanted to go, and he moved toward his destination in the line of greatest economy.

Morning found him descending from a mountain pass to the Ruidosa.

"Breakfast soon, you wall-faced old Piute," Jim told his mount. "You're sure a weary caballo, but we got to keep hitting the trail till we cross that hogback."

A thin film of smoke rose from a little valley to the left. Clanton drew up abruptly. He had no desire to meet now any strangers whose intentions had not been announced.

Swiftly, with a pantherish smoothness of motion, he slid from the cowpony and moved to the edge of a bluff that looked down into the arroyo below. He crept forward and peered through a clump of cactus growing at the edge of the escarpment.

The camp-fire was at the very foot of the bluff. A man was stooped over it cooking breakfast.

The heart of the fugitive lost a beat, then raced wildly. The camper was Devil Dave Roush. A rifle lay beside him. His revolver was in a cartridge belt that had been tossed on a boulder within reach of his hand.

Clanton wriggled back without a sound from the edge of the cliff and rose to his feet. A savage light of triumph blazed in his eyes. The enemy for whom he had long sought was delivered into his hands. He ran back to the bronco and untied the reata from the tientos. Deftly he coiled the rope and adjusted the loop to suit him. Again he stole to the rim rock and waited with the stealthy, deadly patience of the crouched cougar.

Roush rose. His arms fell to his sides. Instantly the rope dropped, uncoiling as it flew. With perfect accuracy the loop descended upon its victim and tightened about his waist, pinning the arms close to the body.

Clanton, hauled in the rawhide swiftly. Dragged from his feet, Roush could make no resistance. Before he could gather his startled wits, he found himself dangling in midair against the face of the rock wall.

The man above fastened the end of the rope to the roots of a scrub oak and ran down the slope at full speed. In less than half a minute he was standing breathless in front of his prisoner.

Already shaken with dread, Roush gave way to panic fear at sight of him.

"Goddlemighty! It's Clanton!" he cried.

Jim buckled on the belt and appropriated the rifle. His grim face told Roush all he needed to know.

There had been a time when Roush, full of physical life and energy, had boasted that he feared no living man. In his cups he still bragged of his bad record, of his accuracy as a gunman, of his gameness. But he knew, and his associates suspected, that Devil Dave had long since drunk up his courage. His nerves were jumpy and his heart bad. Now he begged for his life abjectly. If he had been free from the rope that held him dangling against the wall, he would have crawled like a whipped cur to the feet of his enemy.

At a glance Clanton saw Roush had been camping alone. The hobbled horse, the blankets, the breakfast dishes, all told him this. But he took no chances. First he saddled the horse and brought it close to the camp-fire. When he sat down to eat the breakfast the rustler had cooked, it was with his back to the bluff and the rifle across his knees.

"This here rope hurts tur'ble--seems like my wrists are on fire," whined the man. "You let me down, Mr. Clanton, and I'll explain eve'ything. I want to be yore friend. I sure do. I don't feel noways onfriendly to you. Mebbe I used to be a bad lot, but I'm a changed man now."

Go-Get-'Em Jim said nothing. He had not spoken once, and his silence filled the roped man with terror. The shifting eyes of Devil Dave read doom in the cold, still ones of his enemy.

Sometimes Roush argued in a puling whimper. Sometimes his terror rose to the throat and his entreaties became shrieks. He died a dozen deaths while his foe watched him with a chill stillness more menacing than any threats.

The first impulse of Clanton had been to stamp out the life of this man just as he would that of a diamond-backed rattlesnake; but he meant to take his time about it and to see that the fellow suffered. Not until he was halfway through the meal did the memory of his pledge to Pauline jump to his mind. Quickly he pushed it from him. He had not meant to include Roush in his promise. As soon as he had made an end of this ruffian he would turn over a new leaf. But not yet. Roush was outside the pale. His life belonged to Jim. He would be a traitor to the memory of his sister if he let the villain go.

The lust for vengeance swelled in the young man's blood like a tide. It was his right to kill; more, it was his duty. So he tried to persuade himself. But deep within him a voice was making itself heard. It whispered that if he killed Roush now, he could never look Pauline Roubideau in the face again. She had fought gallantly for his soul, and at last he had pledged his honor to a new course. Not twelve hours ago she had risked her reputation to save his life. If he failed her now, it would be a betrayal of all the desires and purposes that had of late been stirring in him.

Clammy beads of sweat stood on his forehead. He had been given a new chance, and it warred with every inherited instinct of his nature. The fight within was cruel and bitter. But when he rose, his breakfast forgotten, it was won. He would let Roush go unhurt. He would do it for the sake of Polly Roubideau, who had been such a good friend to him.

Devil Dave, ghastly with fear, was still pleading for his life. Clanton, who had heard nothing of what the fellow had been saying in the past ten minutes, came to a sudden alert attention.

"I'll go into court an' swear it if you'll let me be. I'll tell the jedge an' the jury that Joe Yankie told me an' Albeen an' Dumont that he bushwhacked Webb an' then cut his stick so that you-all got the blame. Honest to God, I will, Mr. Clanton. Jest you trust me an' see."

"When did Yankie tell you that?"

"He done told us at the camp-fire one night. He made his brags how you got the blame for it an' would have to hang."

"Albeen heard him say it--an' Dumont too?"

"Tha's right, Mr. Clanton. An' I'll sure take my Bible oath on it."

Go-Get-'Em Jim whipped out the forty-five from its holster and fired. Roush dropped screaming to the ground. He thought he had been shot. The bullet had cut the rope above his head.

"Get up," ordered Clanton in disgust.

Roush rose stiffly.

Jim swung to the saddle of the horse beside him. "Hit the dust," he told his captive.

The rider followed the footman to the top of the bluff. Here Roush was instructed to mount the horse Clanton had been astride all night. Riding behind the tame bad man, Jim cut across the hills to a gulch and followed it till the ravine ran out in a little valley. He crossed this and climbed a stiff pass from the other side of which he looked down on Live-Oaks a thousand feet below.

The young man tied the hands of his prisoner behind him. From a coat pocket he drew a looking-glass, caught the sun's rays, and flung them upon a house in the suburbs of the town.

Out of the house there presently came a man. He stood in the doorway a moment before going down the street. A flash of hot sunlight caught him full in the face. He moved. The light danced after him. Then be woke up. From the cliff far above friends of his had been wont to heliograph signals during the late Washington County War.

He read the light flashes and at once saddled a horse. A few minutes later he might have been seen on the breakneck trail that leads across the mountains to the Ruidosa. After a stiff climb he reached the summit and swung sharply along the ridge to the right. A voice hailed him.

"Hello, Reb!"

"Hello, Go-Get-'Em! Thought Goodheart was bringin' you back a prisoner." Quantrell's old guerrilla looked with unconcealed surprise at the bound man. He knew the story of Clanton's deep-rooted hatred of the Roush clan.

"I didn't sign any bond to stay his prisoner," Jim answered dryly. Then, sharply, he turned upon Roush. "Spill out yore story about Yankie."

Reluctantly Roush told once more his tale. He spoke only under the pressure of imminent peril, for he knew that if this ever got back to the men in the chaparral they would kill him with no more compunction than they would a coyote.

"Take this bird down to Billie Prince, Reb. Tell him I jumped Roush on the Ruidosa, an' he peached to save his hide. This fellow is a born liar, but I reckon he's tellin' the truth this time. If he rues back on his story, tell Billie to put an advertisement in the Live-Oaks 'Round-Up' and I'll drop in to town an' have a stance with Mr. Roush."

Reb scratched his sunburnt head. "I don't aim to be noways inquisitive, Go-Get-'Em, but how come you to wait long enough to take this hawss-thief captive? I'd 'a' bet my best mule team against a dollar Mex that you'd have gunned him on sight."

"I'll tell you why, Reb. He had one rifle an' one six-gun. I didn't have either the one or the other, so I had to borrow his guns before I talked turkey. By that time I'd changed my mind about bumpin' him off right now. When Yankie finds out what he's been sayin' he'll do the trick for me."

"You're right he will. Good job, too. I hate a sneak like I do a side-winder." Reb turned to his prisoner. "Git a move on you, Roush. I want this job over with. I'm no coyote herder."

Chapter XXXIII

The Round-Up

Dumont had been on the grill for three hours. He had taken refuge in dogged silence. He had been badgered into lies. He had broken down at last and told the truth. Sheriff Billie Prince, keen as a hound on the scent, persistent as a bulldog, peppered the man's defense with a machine-gun fire of questions. Back of these loomed the shadow of a long term in the penitentiary.

For Dumont had been caught with his iron hot. The acrid smell of burnt flesh was still in the air when an angry cattleman and two of his riders came on the man and the rustled calf. Fortunately for the thief the sheriff happened to be in the neighborhood. He had rescued the captured waddy from the hands of the incensed ranchers and brought him straight to Live-Oaks.

The rustler was frightened. There had been a bad quarter of an hour when it looked as though he might be the central figure in a lynching. Even after this danger had been weathered, the outlook was full of gloom. He had to choose between a long prison sentence and the betrayal of his comrades. Dumont had no iron in his blood. He dodged and evaded and bluffed--and at last threw up his hands. If the sheriff would protect him from the vengeance of the gang, he would give any information wanted or do anything he was told to do.

The arrival of Reb and his prisoner interrupted the quiz. Prince had Dumont returned to his cell and took up the new business of Roush and his story. The sheriff knew he would be blamed for the escape of Clanton and he thought it wise to have the whole matter opened up before witnesses. Wallace Snaith and Dad Wrayburn both happened to be in town and Billie sent the boss mule-skinner to bring them. To these men he turned over the examination of Roush.

They wrung from him, a scrap at a time, the story Yankie had told his confederates at the camp-fire. A statement of the facts was drawn up and signed by Roush under protest. It was witnessed by the four men present.

Devil Dave was locked up and Dumont brought back to the office of the sheriff. Taken by surprise at the new form of the questionnaire, already broken in spirit and therefore eager to conciliate these powerful citizens, the rustler at once corroborated the story of Roush. He, too, signed a statement drawn up by Prince.

"Just shows, doggone it, how a man can be too blamed sure," commented Wrayburn. "I'd 'a' bet my life Go-Get-'Em Jim killed Webb. But he didn't. It's plain enough now. After his rookus with the old man, Yankie must have got a seventy-three an' waited in the chaparral. It just happened he was lyin' hid close to where we met Clanton. It beats the Dutch."

"An' if Jim hadn't escaped he'd have been hanged for killin' Webb."

"That's right, sheriff. On my testimony, too. Say, let me go to the Governor with these papers an' git the pardon. I'd like to give it to the boy myself, jest to show him there's no hard feelin's," urged Wrayburn.

"That's all right, Dad. I'm goin' to be right busy this next week, I shouldn't wonder. I've got business up in the hills."

"If you're goin' on a round-up, I hope you make a good gather, Prince," said Snaith, smiling.

Not in the history of Washington County had there been another such a round-up as this one of which Sheriff Prince was the boss. He made his plans swiftly and thoroughly. His posses were to sweep the country between Saco de Oro Creek and Caballero Cañon. Every gap was to be stopped, every exit guarded. Dumont, much against his will, rode beside the sheriff as guide. Goodheart had charge of the first party that went out. His duty was to swing round and close the gulches to the north. Here he would wait until the hunted men were driven into the trap he had set. Old Reb, with a second posse, started next morning for the head-waters of Seven-Mile Creek. An hour later the sheriff himself took the road. He left town sooner than he had intended because Roush had escaped during the night and was probably on his way into the hills to warn the rustlers.

Get them in a talkative mood and old-timers who took part in it will still tell the story of that man-drive in the mountains. Riders combed the draws and the buttes, eyes and ears alert for those who might lie hidden on the rim rocks or in the cactus. It was grim business. Driven out of their holes, the rustlers fought savagely. One, trapped in a hill pocket, stood off a posse till he was shot to death. A second was wounded, captured, and sent back with two other suspects to Live-Oaks. At the end of a week Prince had the remnant of the band surrounded in a mountain park close to Caballero Cañon.

The country into which the outlaws had been driven was an ideal terrain for defense. The brush was thick and tall. Two wooded arroyos gashed the rim of the valley and ran down into the basin. An attack against determined men here was bound to prove costly.

Billie knew that three men lay in the chaparral and he believed that one of them at least was wounded. Old Reb had jumped them up from a fireless camp, and in their hurry to escape the outlaws had left all their provisions and two of their horses. They left, too, one of the posse with a bullet hole in his forehead. The sheriff's plan was to tighten the lines gradually and starve out the rustlers.

But though Prince would not let his men advance to a general assault, he made up his mind to find out more as to the condition of the men he had surrounded. He wanted to make sure they had not slipped past his guards into Caballero Cañon. In the back of his head, too, was the feeling that if he could get into touch with them, perhaps he might arrange for a surrender.

He called Goodheart to one side. "As soon as it's dark I'm goin' in to find out what's doin'. We haven't heard a murmur from these birds for hours. Perhaps they've flown. Anyhow, I'm goin' to find out."

"How many of us are goin'?"

"Just one of us--Billie Prince."

"If two of us went--"

"It would double the chances of discovery. No, I'm goin' alone. Maybe I can have a talk with Albeen or Yankie. I don't want to take 'em dead, but alive."

"They'll probably get you while you're in there, Prince."

"I don't think it. But if I'm not back by mornin' you are in charge of this hunt. Use yore judgment."

The deputy ventured one more protest, but his chief vetoed it. Billie had decided what to do and argument did not touch him.

He did not take a rifle. In the thick brush it would be hard to handle noiselessly and the snapping of a twig might mean the difference between life and death. The sheriff slipped into the tangle of cat-claw, prickly pear, and mesquite, vanishing into the gloom from the sight of Goodheart.

On the back of an envelope Dumont had drawn for him a rough map of the valley. It showed that the wooded arroyos ran together like the spokes of a wheel. The judgment of Prince was that he must look for the men he wanted close to the angle of intersection. Up one or the other of these draws it was likely they would make their dash for freedom, since otherwise they would have to emerge into the open. Therefore, they would hold the base of the V in order not to be cut off from the chance of getting out of the trap.

The sheriff snaked forward, most of the time on his stomach or on hands and knees, for what seemed an interminable period. Each least movement had to be planned and executed with precision. He dared not risk the cracking of a dead branch or the rustle of dry foliage. As silently as an Apache he wriggled through the grass.

Billie became aware of a sound to the left. He listened. It presently defined itself as a wheezing rattle halfway between a cough and a groan.

Toward it Prince deflected. He knew himself to be now in the acute danger zone, and he increased if possible his precautions. The moaning continued intermittently. Billie wondered why, if this were the camp of the outlaws, no other sound broke the stillness. Closer, inch by inch, making the most of every bunch of yucca and cholla, the officer slowly crept.

The figure of a man lay in the sand, the head resting on a folded slicker. From time to time it moved slightly, and always the restlessness was accompanied by the little throat rattle that had first attracted the attention of the sheriff. The face, lying full in the moonlight, was of a ghastly pallor.

Prince lay crouched behind a piñon till he was sure the man was alone. It was possible that his confederates might return at any moment, but Billie could not let him suffer without aid. He stepped forward, revolver in hand, every sense ready for instant response.

The wounded man was Joe Yankie. The experienced eyes of Prince told him that the rustler had not long to live. He was already in that twilight region which is the border land between the known and the unknown. Billie spoke his name, and for a moment the eyes of the man cleared.

"Yore boys got me when they jumped our camp," he explained feebly.

"Sorry, Joe. You were firin' when they hit you."

The wounded man nodded. "'S all right. Streak o' bad luck. Gimme water. I'm on fire," The officer unbuckled his canteen, lifted the head of the dying man, and let the water trickle down his throat. Gently he lowered the head again to the pillow.

Then he asked a question. "Where are Albeen and--Roush?"

The last name was a shot in the dark, but it hit the bull's eye.

"Left--hours ago,"

Yankie closed his eyes wearily, but by sheer strength of will Prince recalled him from the doze into which he was slipping.

"Did you kill Homer Webb?"

"Yes."

"Had Clanton anything to do with it?"

"No."

A film gathered over the eyes of the dying man. The lids closed. Billie adjusted the pillow a little more comfortably and rose. He could do no more for him at present and he must set about his work. For though the net of the round-up had gathered hundreds of stolen cattle and most of those engaged in the business of brand-blotting, Prince knew his job would not be finished if Roush and Albeen escaped.

He quartered over the ground foot by foot. The camp of the rustlers had been here and the footsteps showed there had been three. Yankie was accounted for. That left Roush and Albeen. The sheriff discovered the place where they had been sleeping.

His eyes lit with the eagerness of the hunter who has come on the spoor. He had found two sets of tracks leading from the bed-ground. One of these showed no heel marks and the deep impress of toes in the soft sand. The other presented a more sharply defined print with a greater distance between the steps. They told Billie a story of a man tiptoeing away in breathless silence, and of another man, wakened by some sound or by some premonition, pursuing him in reckless haste.

The imagination of the trailer built up a web of cause and effect. Two men, with only one horse, were caught in a trap from which both were in a desperate hurry to escape. Each, no doubt, was filled with suspicion of the other while they waited for darkness to fall that they might try to slip through the cordon of watchers. One of the at least, was unknown. If he could make a get-away, and leave no witness behind, there would be no proof positive that he was one of the rustlers. The situation was ripe for tragedy.

In the back of the sheriff's mind rose thoughts of something sinister that had happened in the early hours of darkness. A chill ran down his spine. He expected presently to stumble across something cold and chill that only a little while ago had been warm with life.

Prince recognized a weakness in his theory. If Roush was the man who had tiptoed toward the horse in the pines, why had he not made sure first by shooting Albeen while he slept? There was no absolute answer to that. But it might be that the one-armed man had been dozing lightly and that Roush had not the nerve to take a chance. For if his first shot failed to kill, the betrayed man could still drop him.

The trailer had no doubt in his mind that Roush was the man who had tried to slip away to the horse. Albeen was a gun-fighter, quick on the shoot, hasty of temper, but with the reputation of being both game and stanch. It would not be in character for him to leave a companion in the lurch.

In the scrub pines at the foot of the arroyo Prince found the place where a horse had been tied. The footprints had diverged sharply toward a duster of big boulders that rose in the grove. Billie did not at once follow them. He wanted to make sure of another point first.

Every sense alert against a possible surprise, he studied the ground around the spot where the bronco had been fastened. One set of tracks came straight from the big rocks to the hitching tree. Here all tracks ended, except those of a galloping horse and the ones made by the man who had originally left the animal here.

One man had gone up the arroyo to slip through or to fight his way out of the trap. The other man had stayed here. The officer knew what he would find lying among the big rocks.

The body lay face down, a revolver close to the still hand. Three chambers of it had been fired. Prince turned over the heavy torso and looked into the contorted face of Dave Roush.

The man had fallen a victim to his own treachery.

Chapter XXXIV

Primrose Paths

When Billie Prince had finished the job that had been given him to do, he went back quietly to Live-Oaks without knowing that he had led the last campaign of a revolution in the social life of Washington County. Because a strong, determined man had carried law into the mesquite, citizens could henceforth go about their business without fear or dread.

The rule of the "bad man" was over. Revolvers were no longer a part of the necessary wearing apparel of gentlemen of spirit. Life became safe and humdrum. The frontier world gave itself to ploughing fields and building fences and digging irrigation ditches and planting orchards. As a corollary it married and reared children and built little red schoolhouses.

But before all this came to pass some details had to be arranged in the lives of certain young people of the country. In one instance, at least, Lee Snaith appointed herself adjuster in behalf of Cupid.

Goodheart reached town a few hours earlier than his chief. Lee met him just before supper in front of the court-house.

"Where's Billie?" she asked with characteristic directness.

"He's on his way back. A wounded man couldn't be moved an' he had to stay with him a while. The man was Joe Yankie. A messenger just got in to say he died."

"Billie isn't wounded?"

"No. Not his fault, though. When we had the rustlers cornered, he crawled in through the brush to their camp. Fool business, I told him. Never saw anything gamer. Lucky for him Albeen had made his get-away."

The eyes of the girl thanked the deputy for this indirect praise. Little patches of red burned in her dusky cheeks. The way to make a life friend of her was to be fond of Billie.

Lee changed the subject abruptly. "Jack, you haven't half the sense I thought you had."

"Much obliged," he answered sardonically. She was looking straight at him and he knew what was in her mind.

"If I was a man--and if the nicest girl in the world was in love with me--I'd try not to be as stiff as a poker."

"I'm as stiff as a poker, am I?"

"Yes." The dark eyes of the young woman were eager pools of light. "She's the truest-hearted girl I ever saw--the best friend, the loyalest comrade. I should think you'd be ashamed to set yourself up to judge her."

"Of course, you're not settin' yourself up to judge me, Lee?"

"I'm going to tell you what I think. The others are afraid of you because you can put on that high-and-mighty, stand-offish air. Well, I'm not."

"I see you're not."

"She told me all about it. Since she was Polly Roubideau she had to help Jim escape. Can't you see that? She knew he was innocent, and it turned out she was right. Suppose she made a mistake--and I don't admit it for a minute. Can't you make allowance for other folks' judgment being different from yours? Are you never wrong yourself?"

"It isn't a question of judgment."

He hesitated and decided to say no more. How could he tell Lee that Pauline had deliberately misled him to give Clanton a better chance of escape? He had fought it out a hundred times in his mind, but he could not escape the conviction that she had made a tool of his love.

The girl went to the heart of the matter. "Polly loves you, and she is breaking her heart because of your wretched pride. If you don't go straight to her and beg her pardon for your want of faith in her, you're not half the man I think you are, Jack Goodheart."

A warm glow of hope flushed through his blood.

"How do you know she loves me?"

"Because--because--" Lee stopped. She did not intend to betray any confidences. "I know it. That's enough."

He threw away impulsively the prudent pride that he had been nourishing. "Where can I find Polly?"

"You're being invited to supper at my aunt's this evening. I'll not be home for half an hour, but if you go right up, maybe you can find some one to entertain you."

He buried her little hand in his big paw and strode away. She watched him, a soft tenderness shining in her eyes. Lee was a lover herself, and she wanted everybody in the world to be as happy as she was.

Two horsemen rode down the street toward her. She looked up. One of them was Billie Prince, the other Jim Clanton.

The younger man gave a shout of gay greeting. "Yip-ee yippy yip." He leaned from the cowpony and gave her his gloved hand. "I've brought him back to you. He sure did make a good clean-up. I'm the only bad man left in Washington County."

She met his impudent little smile with friendly eyes. "Dad Wrayburn's back from Santa Fe with the pardon, Jim. I'm so glad."

"I'm some glad myself. Do you want me to shut my eyes whilst you an' Billie--"

The sheriff knocked the rest of the sentence out of him with a vigorous thump on the back.

While Lee and her lover shook hands their eyes held fast to each other.

"Good to see you, Billie," she said.

"Same here, Lee."

"When you and Jim have put up your horses I want you to come up to aunt's for supper."

"We'll be there."

It was not a very gay little supper. Pauline and Jack Goodheart had very little to say for themselves, but in their eyes were bright pools of happiness. Clanton sustained the burden of the talk, assisted in a desultory fashion by Lee and Billie. But there was so much quiet joy at the table that for years the hour was one fenced off from all the others of their lives. Even Jim, who for the first time felt himself almost an outsider, since he did not belong to the close communion of lovers, could find plenty for which to be thankful.

He made an announcement before he left. "There's no room here for me now that you lads are marryin' all my girls. I'm goin' to hit the trail. It's Texas for me. I've got a letter in my pocket offerin' me a job as a Ranger an' I'm goin' to take it."

They shook hands with him in warm congratulation. Their friend was no longer a killer. He had definitely turned his back on lawlessness and would henceforth walk with the law. The problem of what was to become of Go-Get-'Em Jim was solved.

As to the problem of their own futures, that did not disturb these happy egoists in the least. Life beckoned them to primrose paths. It is the good fortune of lovers that their vision never pierces the shadows in which lie the sorrows of the years and the griefs that wear them gray.

THE END

Contents

OH, YOU TEX!

By WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

CHAPTER I

THE LINE-RIDER

Day was breaking in the Panhandle. The line-rider finished his breakfast of buffalo-hump, coffee, and biscuits. He had eaten heartily, for it would be long after sunset before he touched food again.

Cheerfully and tunelessly he warbled a cowboy ditty as he packed his supplies and prepared to go.

"Oh, it's bacon and beans most every day, I'd as lief be eatin' prairie hay."

While he washed his dishes in the fine sand and rinsed them in the current of the creek he announced jocundly to a young world glad with spring:

"I'll sell my outfit soon as I can, Won't punch cattle for no damn' man."

The tin cup beat time against the tin plate to accompany a kind of shuffling dance. Jack Roberts was fifty miles from nowhere, alone on the desert, but the warm blood of youth set his feet to moving. Why should he not dance? He was one and twenty, stood five feet eleven in his socks, and weighed one hundred and seventy pounds of bone, sinew, and well-packed muscle. A son of blue skies and wide, wind-swept spaces, he had never been ill in his life. Wherefore the sun-kissed world looked good to him.

He mounted a horse picketed near the camp and rode out to a remuda of seven cow-ponies grazing in a draw. Of these he roped one and brought it back to camp, where he saddled it with deft swiftness.

The line-rider swung to the saddle and put his pony at a jog-trot. He topped a hill and looked across the sunlit mesas which rolled in long swells far as the eye could see. The desert flowered gayly with the purple, pink, and scarlet blossoms of the cacti and with the white, lilylike buds of the Spanish bayonet. The yucca and the prickly pear were abloom. He swept the panorama with trained eyes. In the distance a little bunch of antelope was moving down to water in single file. On a slope two miles away grazed a small herd of buffalo. No sign of human habitation was written on that vast solitude of space.

The cowboy swung to the south and held a steady road gait. With an almost uncanny accuracy he recognized all signs that had to do with cattle. Though cows, half hidden in the brush, melted into the color of the hillside, he picked them out unerringly. Brands, at a distance so great that a tenderfoot could have made of them only a blur, were plain as a primer to him.

Cows that carried on their flanks the A T O, he turned and started northward. As he returned, he would gather up these strays and drive them back to their own range. For in those days, before the barbed wire had reached Texas and crisscrossed it with boundary lines, the cowboy was a fence more mobile than the wandering stock.

It was past noon when Roberts dropped into a draw where an immense man was lying sprawled under a bush. The recumbent man was a mountain of flesh; how he ever climbed to a saddle was a miracle; how a little cow-pony carried him was another. Yet there was no better line-rider in the Panhandle than Jumbo Wilkins.

"'Lo, Texas," the fat man greeted.

The young line-rider had won the nickname of "Texas" in New Mexico a year or two before by his aggressive championship of his native State. Somehow the sobriquet had clung to him even after his return to the Panhandle.

"'Lo, Jumbo," returned the other. "How?"

"Fat like a match. I'm sure losin' flesh. Took up another notch in my belt yestiddy."

Roberts shifted in the saddle, resting his weight on the horn and the ball of one foot for ease. He was a slim, brown youth, hard as nails and tough as whipcord. His eyes were quick and wary. In spite of the imps of mischief that just now lighted them, one got an impression of strength. He might or might not be, in the phrase of the country, a "bad hombre," but it was safe to say he was an efficient one.

"Quick consumption, sure," pronounced the younger man promptly. "You don't look to me like you weigh an ounce over three hundred an' fifty pounds. Appetite kind o' gone?"

"You're damn whistlin'. I got an ailment, I tell you, Tex. This mo'nin' I didn't eat but a few slices of bacon an' some lil' steaks an' a pan or two o' flapjacks an' mebbe nine or ten biscuits. Afterward I felt kind o' bloated like. I need some sa'saparilla. Now, if I could make out to get off for a few days--"

"You could get that sarsaparilla across the bar at the Bird Cage, couldn't you, Jumbo?" the boy grinned.

The whale of a man looked at him reproachfully. "You never seen me shootin' up no towns or raisin' hell when I was lit up. I can take a drink or leave it alone."

"That's right too. Nobody lets it alone more than you do when it can't be got. I've noticed that."

"You cayn't devil me, boy. I was punchin' longhorns when yore mammy was paddlin' you for stealin' the sugar. Say, that reminds me. I'm plumb out o' sugar. Can you loan me some till Pedro gits around? I got to have sugar or I begin to fall off right away," the big man whined.

The line-riders chatted casually of the topics that interest men in the land of wide, empty frontiers. Of Indians they had something to say, of their diminishing grub supply more. Jumbo mentioned that he had found an A T O cow dead by a water-hole. They spoke incidentally of the Dinsmore gang, a band of rustlers operating in No Man's Land. They had little news of people, since neither of them had for three weeks seen another human being except Quint Sullivan, the line-rider who fenced the A T O cattle to the east of Roberts.

Presently Roberts nodded a good-bye and passed again into the solitude of empty spaces. The land-waves swallowed him. Once more he followed draws, crossed washes, climbed cow-backed hills, picking up drift-cattle as he rode.

It was late afternoon when he saw a thin spiral of smoke from a rise of ground. Smoke meant that some human being was abroad in the land, and every man on the range called for investigation. The rider moved forward to reconnoiter.

He saw a man, a horse, a cow, a calf, and a fire. When these five things came together, it meant that somebody was branding. The present business of Roberts was to find out what brand was on the cow and what one was being run on the flank of the calf. He rode forward at a slow canter.

The man beside the fire straightened. He took off his hat and swept it in front of him in a semicircle from left to right. The line-rider understood the sign language of the plains. He was being "waved around." The man was serving notice upon him to pass in a wide circle. It meant that the dismounted man did not intend to let himself be recognized. The easy deduction was that he was a rustler.

The cowboy rode steadily forward. The man beside the fire picked up a rifle lying at his feet and dropped a bullet a few yards in front of the advancing man.

Roberts drew to a halt. He was armed with a six-shooter, but a revolver was of no use at this distance. For a moment he hesitated. Another bullet lifted a spurt of dust almost at his horse's feet.

The line-rider waited for no more definite warning. He waved a hand toward the rustler and shouted down the wind: "Some other day." Quickly he swung his horse to the left and vanished into an arroyo. Then, without an instant's loss of time, he put his pony swiftly up the draw toward a "rim-rock" edging a mesa. Over to the right was Box Cañon, which led to the rough lands of a terrain unknown to Roberts. It was a three-to-one chance that the rustler would disappear into the cañon.

The young man rode fast, putting his bronco at the hills with a rush. He was in a treeless country, covered with polecat brush. Through this he plunged recklessly, taking breaks in the ground without slackening speed in the least.

Near the summit of the rise Roberts swung from the saddle and ran forward through the brush, crouching as he moved. With a minimum of noise and a maximum of speed he negotiated the thick shrubbery and reached the gorge.

He crept forward cautiously and looked down. Through the shin-oak which grew thick on the edge of the bluff he made out a man on horseback driving a calf. The mount was a sorrel with white stockings and a splash of white on the nose. The distance was too great for Roberts to make out the features of the rider clearly, though he could see the fellow was dark and slender.

The line-rider watched him out of sight, then slithered down the face of the bluff to the sandy wash. He knelt down and studied intently the hoofprints written in the soil. They told him that the left hind hoof of the animal was broken in an odd way.

Jack Roberts clambered up the steep edge of the gulch and returned to the cow-pony waiting for him with drooping hip and sleepy eyes.

"Oh, you Two Bits, we'll amble along and see where our friend is headin' for."

He picked a way down into the cañon and followed the rustler. At the head of the gulch the man on the sorrel had turned to the left. The cowboy turned also in that direction. A sign by the side of the trail confronted him.

THIS IS PETE DINSMORE'S ROAD-- TAKE ANOTHER

"The plot sure thickens," grinned Jack. "Reckon I won't take Pete's advice to-day. It don't listen good."

He spoke aloud, to himself or to his horse or to the empty world at large, as lonely riders often do on the plains or in the hills, but from the heavens above an answer dropped down to him in a heavy, masterful voice:

"Git back along that trail pronto!"

Roberts looked up. A flat rock topped the bluff above. From the edge of it the barrel of a rifle projected. Behind it was a face masked by a bandana handkerchief. The combination was a sinister one.

If the line-rider was dismayed or even surprised, he gave no evidence of it.

"Just as you say, stranger. I reckon you're callin' this dance," he admitted.

"You'll be lucky if you don't die of lead-poisonin' inside o' five minutes. No funny business! Git!"

The cowboy got. He whirled his pony in its tracks and sent it jogging down the back trail. A tenderfoot would have taken the gulch at breakneck speed. Most old-timers would have found a canter none too fast. But Jack Roberts held to a steady road gait. Not once did he look back--but every foot of the way till he had turned a bend in the cañon there was an ache in the small of his back. It was a purely sympathetic sensation, for at any moment a bullet might come crashing between the shoulders.

Once safely out of range the rider mopped a perspiring face.

"Wow! This is your lucky day, Jack. Ain't you got better sense than to trail rustlers with no weapon but a Sunday-School text? Well, here's hopin'! Maybe we'll meet again in the sweet by an' by. You never can always tell."

CHAPTER II

"I'LL BE SEVENTEEN, COMING GRASS"

The camper looked up from the antelope steak he was frying, to watch a man cross the shallow creek. In the clear morning light of the Southwest his eyes had picked the rider out of the surrounding landscape nearly an hour before. For at least one fourth of the time since this discovery he had been aware that his approaching visitor was Pedro Menendez, of the A T O ranch.

"Better 'light, son," suggested Roberts.

The Mexican flashed a white-toothed smile at the sizzling steak, took one whiff of the coffee and slid from the saddle. Eating was one of the things that Pedro did best.

"The ol' man--he sen' me," the boy explained. "He wan' you at the ranch."

Further explanation waited till the edge of Pedro's appetite was blunted. The line-rider lighted a cigarette and casually asked a question.

"Whyfor does he want me?"

It developed that the Mexican had been sent to relieve Roberts because the latter was needed to take charge of a trail herd. Not by the flicker of an eyelash did the line-rider show that this news meant anything to him. It was promotion--better pay, a better chance for advancement, an easier life. But Jack Roberts had learned to take good and ill fortune with the impassive face of a gambler.

"Keep an eye out for rustlers, Pedro," he advised before he left. "You want to watch Box Cañon. Unless I'm 'way off, the Dinsmore gang are operatin' through it. I 'most caught one red-handed the other day. Lucky for me I didn't. You an' Jumbo would 'a' had to bury me out on the lone prairee."

Nearly ten hours later Jack Roberts dismounted in front of the whitewashed adobe house that was the headquarters of the A T O ranch. On the porch an old cattleman sat slouched in a chair tilted back against the wall, a run-down heel of his boot hitched in the rung. The wrinkled coat he wore hung on him like a sack, and one leg of his trousers had caught at the top of the high boot. The owner of the A T O was a heavy-set, powerful man in the early fifties. Just now he was smoking a corncob pipe.

The keen eyes of the cattleman watched lazily the young line-rider come up the walk. Most cowboys walked badly; on horseback they might be kings of the earth, but out of the saddle they rolled like sailors. Clint Wadley noticed that the legs of this young fellow were straight and that he trod the ground lightly as a buck in mating-season.

"He'll make a hand," was Wadley's verdict, one he had arrived at after nearly a year of shrewd observation.

But no evidence of satisfaction in his employee showed itself in the greeting of the "old man." He grunted what might pass for "Howdy!" if one were an optimist.

Roberts explained his presence by saying: "You sent for me, Mr. Wadley."

"H'm! That durned fool York done bust his laig. Think you can take a herd up the trail to Tascosa?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's the way all you brash young colts talk. But how many of 'em will you lose on the way? How sorry will they look when you deliver the herd? That's what I'd like to know."

Jack Roberts was paying no attention to the grumbling of his boss--for a young girl had come out of the house. She was a slim little thing, with a slender throat that carried the small head like the stem of a rose. Dark, long-lashed eyes, eager and bubbling with laughter, were fixed on Wadley. She had slipped out on tiptoe to surprise him. Her soft fingers covered his eyes.

"Guess who!" she ordered.

"Quit yore foolishness," growled the cattleman. "Don't you-all see I'm talkin' business?" But the line-rider observed that his arm encircled the waist of the girl.

With a flash of shy eyes the girl caught sight of Roberts, who had been half hidden from her behind the honeysuckle foliage.

"Oh! I didn't know," she cried.

The owner of the A T O introduced them. "This is Jack Roberts, one of my trail foremen. Roberts--my daughter Ramona. I reckon you can see for yoreself she's plumb spoiled."

A soft laugh welled from the throat of the girl. She knew that for her at least her father was all bark and no bite.

"It's you that is spoiled, Dad," she said in the slow, sweet voice of the South. "I've been away too long, but now I'm back I mean to bring you up right. Now I'll leave you to your business."

The eyes of the girl rested for a moment on those of the line-rider as she nodded good-bye. Jack had never before seen Ramona Wadley, nor for that matter had he seen her brother Rutherford. Since he had been in the neighborhood, both of them had been a good deal of the time in Tennessee at school, and Jack did not come to the ranch-house once in three months. It was hard to believe that this dainty child was the daughter of such a battered hulk as Clint Wadley. He was what the wind and the sun and the tough Southwest had made him. And she--she was a daughter of the morning.

But Wadley did not release Ramona. "Since you're here you might as well go through with it," he said. "What do you want?"

"What does a woman always want?" she asked sweetly, and then answered her own question. "Clothes--and money to buy them--lots of it. I'm going to town to-morrow, you know."

"H'm!" His grunt was half a chuckle, half a growl. "Do you call yoreself a woman--a little bit of a trick like you? Why, I could break you in two."

She drew herself up very straight. "I'll be seventeen, coming grass. And it's much more likely, sir, that I'll break you--as you'll find out when the bills come in after I've been to town."

With that she swung on her heel and vanished inside the house.

The proud, fond eyes of the cattleman followed her. It was an easy guess that she was the apple of his eye.

But when he turned to business again his manner was gruffer than usual. He was a trifle crisper to balance the effect of his new foreman having discovered that he was as putty in the hands of this slip of a girl.

"Well, you know where you're at, Roberts. Deliver that herd without any loss for strays, fat, an' in good condition, an' you won't need to go back to line-ridin'. Fall down on the job, an' you'll never get another chance to drive A T O cows."

"That's all I ask, Mr. Wadley," the cowboy answered. "An' much obliged for the chance."

"Don't thank me. Thank York's busted laig," snapped his chief. "We'll make the gather for the drive to-morrow an' Friday."

CHAPTER III

TEX TAKES AN INTEREST

Jack Roberts was in two minds whether to stop at the Longhorn saloon. He needed a cook in his trail outfit, and the most likely employment agency in Texas during that decade was the barroom of a gambling-house. Every man out of a job naturally drifted to the only place of entertainment.

The wandering eye of the foreman decided the matter for him. It fell upon a horse, and instantly ceased to rove. The cow-pony was tied to a hitching-rack worn shiny by thousands of reins. On the nose of the bronco was a splash of white. Stockings of the same color marked its legs. The left hind hoof was gashed and broken.

The rider communed with himself. "I reckon we'll 'light and take an interest, Jack. Them that looks for, finds."

He slid from the saddle and rolled a cigarette, after which he made friends with the sorrel and examined carefully the damaged foot.

"It's a li'l bit of a world after all," he commented. "You never can tell who you're liable to meet up with." The foreman drew from its scabbard a revolver and slid it back into place to make sure that it lay easy in its case. "You can't guess for sure what's likely to happen. I'd a heap rather be too cautious than have flowers sent me."

He sauntered through the open door into the gambling-house. It was a large hall, in the front part of which was the saloon. In the back the side wall to the next building had been ripped out to give more room. There was a space for dancing, as well as roulette, faro, chuckaluck, and poker tables. In one corner a raised stand for the musicians had been built.

The Longhorn was practically deserted. Not even a game of draw was in progress. The dance-girls were making up for lost sleep, and the patrons of the place were either at work or still in bed.

Three men were lined up in front of the bar. One was a tall, lank person, hatchet-faced and sallow. He had a cast in his eye that gave him a sinister expression. The second was slender and trim, black of hair and eye and mustache. His clothes were very good and up to date. The one farthest from the door was a heavy-set, unwieldy man in jeans, slouchy as to dress and bearing. Perhaps it was the jade eyes of the man that made Roberts decide instantly he was one tough citizen.

The line-rider ordered a drink.

"Hardware, please," said the bartender curtly.

"Enforcin' that rule, are they?" asked Roberts casually as his eyes swept over the other men.

"That's whatever. Y'betcha. We don't want no gay cowboys shootin' out our lights. No reflections, y'understand."

The latest arrival handed over his revolver, and the man behind the bar hung the scabbard on a nail. Half a dozen others were on a shelf beside it. For the custom on the frontier was that each rider from the range should deposit his weapons at the first saloon he entered. They were returned to him when he called for them just before leaving town. This tended to lessen the number of sudden deaths.

"Who you ridin' for, young fellow?" asked the sallow man of Roberts.

"For the A T O."

The dark young man turned and looked at the cowboy.

"So? How long have you been riding for Wadley?"

"Nine months."

"Don't think I've seen you before."

"I'm a line-rider--don't often get to the ranch-house."

"What ground do you cover?"

"From Dry Creek to the rim-rock, and south past Box Cañon."

Three pair of eyes were focused watchfully on Roberts. The sallow man squirted tobacco at a knot in the floor and rubbed his bristly chin with the palm of a hand.

"Kinda lonesome out there, ain't it?" he ventured.

"That's as how you take it. The country is filled with absentees," admitted Roberts.

"Reckoned it was. Never been up that way myself. A sort of a bad-lands proposition, I've heard tell--country creased with arroyos, packed with rocks an' rattlesnakes mostly."

The heavy-set man broke in harshly. "Anybody else run cattle there except old man Wadley?"

"Settlers are comin' in on the other side of the rim-rock. Cattle drift across. I can count half a dozen brands 'most any day."

"But you never see strangers."

"Don't I?"

"I'm askin', do you?" The voice of the older man was heavy and dominant. It occurred to Roberts that he had heard that voice before.

"Oh!" Unholy imps of mirth lurked in the alert eyes of the line-rider. "Once in a while I do--last Thursday, for instance."

The graceful, dark young man straightened as does a private called to attention. "A trapper, maybe?" he said.

The cowboy brought his level gaze back from a barefoot negro washing the floor. "Not this time. He was a rustler."

"How do you know?" The high voice of the questioner betrayed excitement.

"I caught him brandin' a calf. He waved me round. I beat him to the Box Cañon and saw him ridin' through."

"You saw him ridin' through? Where were you?" The startled eyes of the dark young man were fixed on him imperiously.

"From the bluff above."

"You don't say!" The voice of the heavy man cut in with jeering irony. The gleam of his jade eyes came through narrow-slitted lids. "Well, did you take him back to the ranch for a necktie party, or did you bury him in the gulch?"

The dark young man interrupted irritably. "I'm askin' these questions, Dinsmore. Now you, young fellow--what's your name?"

"Jack Roberts," answered the cowboy meekly.

"About this rustler--would you know him again?"

The line-rider smiled inscrutably. He did not intend to tell all that he did not know. "He was ridin' a sorrel with a white splash on its nose, white stockin's, an' a bad hoof, the rear one--"

"You're a damn' liar." The words, flung out from some inner compulsion, as it were, served both as a confession and a challenge.

There was a moment of silence, tense and ominous. This was fighting talk.

The lank man leaned forward and whispered some remonstrance in the ear of the young fellow, but his suggestion was waved aside. "I'm runnin' this, Gurley."

The rider for the A T O showed neither surprise nor anger. He made a business announcement without stress or accent. "I expect it's you or me one for a lickin'. Hop to it, Mr. Rustler!"

Roberts did not wait for an acceptance of his invitation. He knew that the first two rules of battle are to strike first and to strike hard. His brown fist moved forward as though it had been shot from a gun. The other man crashed back against the wall and hung there dazed for a moment. The knuckles of that lean fist had caught him on the chin.

"Give him hell, Ford. You can curry a li'l' shorthorn like this guy with no trouble a-tall," urged Dinsmore.

The young man needed no urging. He gathered himself together and plunged forward. Always he had prided himself on being an athlete. He was the champion boxer of the small town where he had gone to school. Since he had returned to the West, he had put on flesh and muscle. But he had dissipated a good deal too, and no man not in the pink of condition had any right to stand up to tough Jack Roberts.

While the fight lasted, there was rapid action. Roberts hit harder and cleaner, but the other was the better boxer. He lunged and sidestepped cleverly, showing good foot-work and a nice judgment of distance. For several minutes he peppered the line-rider with neat hits. Jack bored in for more. He drove a straight left home and closed one of his opponent's eyes. He smashed through the defense of his foe with a power that would not be denied.

"Keep a-comin', Ford. You shore have got him goin' south," encouraged Gurley.

But the man he called Ford knew it was not true. His breath was coming raggedly. His arms were heavy as though weighted with lead. The science upon which he had prided himself was of no use against this man of steel. Already his head was singing so that he saw hazily.

The finish came quickly. The cowboy saw his chance, feinted with his left and sent a heavy body blow to the heart. The knees of the other sagged. He sank down and did not try to rise again.

Presently his companions helped him to his feet. "He--he took me by surprise," explained the beaten man with a faint attempt at bluster.

"I'll bet I did," assented Jack cheerfully. "An' I'm liable to surprise you again if you call me a liar a second time."

"You've said about enough, my friend," snarled the man who had been spoken to as Dinsmore. "You get away with this because the fight was on the square, but don't push yore luck too far."

The three men passed out of the front door. Roberts turned to the barkeeper.

"I reckon the heavy-set one is Pete Dinsmore. The cock-eyed guy must be Steve Gurley. But who is the young fellow I had the mixup with?"

The man behind the bar gave information promptly. "He's Rutherford Wadley--son of the man who signs yore pay-checks. Say, I heard Buck Nelson needs a mule-skinner, in case you're lookin' for a job."

Jack felt a sudden sinking of the heart. He had as good as told the son of his boss that he was a rustler, and on top of that he had given him a first-class lacing. The air-castles he had been building came tumbling down with a crash. He had already dreamed himself from a trail foreman to the majordomo of the A T O ranch. Instead of which he was a line-rider out of a job.

"Where can I find Nelson?" he asked with a grin that found no echo in his heart. "Lead me to him."

CHAPTER IV

TEX GRANDSTANDS

Clint Wadley, massive and powerful, slouched back in his chair with one leg thrown over an arm of it. He puffed at a corncob pipe, and through the smoke watched narrowly with keen eyes from under heavy grizzled brows a young man standing on the porch steps.

"So now you know what I expect, young fellow," he said brusquely. "Take it or leave it; but if you take it, go through."

Arthur Ridley smiled. "Thanks, I'll take it."

The boy was not so much at ease as his manner suggested. He knew that the owner of the A T O was an exacting master. The old cattleman was game himself. Even now he would fight at the drop of the hat if necessary. In the phrase which he had just used, he would "go through" anything he undertook. Men who had bucked blizzards with him in the old days admitted that Clint would do to take along. But Ridley's awe of him was due less to his roughness and to the big place he filled in the life of the Panhandle than to the fact that he was the father of his daughter. It was essential to Arthur's plans that he stand well with the old-timer.

Though he did not happen to know it, young Ridley was a favorite of the cattle king. He had been wished on him by an old friend, but there was something friendly and genial about the boy that won a place for him. His smile was modest and disarming, and his frank face was better than any letter of recommendation.

But though Wadley was prepared to like him, his mind held its reservations. The boy had come from the East, and the standards of that section are not those of the West. The East asks of a man good family, pleasant manners, a decent reputation, and energy enough to carry a man to success along conventional lines. In those days the frontier West demanded first that a man be game, and second that he be one to tie to. He might be good or bad, but whichever he was, he, must be efficient to make any mark in the turbulent country of the border. Was there a hint of slackness in the jaw of this good-looking boy? Wadley was not sure, but he intended to find out.

"You'll start Saturday. I'll meet you at Tascosa two weeks from to-day. Understand?" The cattleman knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose. The interview was at an end.

Young Ridley nodded. "I'll be there, sir--with the six thousand dollars safe as if they were in a vault."

"H'm! I see you carry a six-shooter. Can you shoot?" Wadley flung at him abruptly.

Arthur Ridley had always fancied himself as a shot. He had belonged to a gun-club at home, and since coming to the Southwest he had practiced a good deal with the revolver.

"Pretty well, sir."

"Would you--if it was up to you?"

The youngster looked into the steel-gray eyes roofed by the heavy thatch of brow. "I think so. I never have had to yet. In the East--"

Wadley waved the East back to where it belonged. "Yes, I know. But we're talkin' about Texas. Still, I reckon you ought not to have any trouble on this trip. Don't let anybody know why you are at the fort. Don't gamble or drink. Get the money from Major Ponsford and melt away inconspicuous into the brush. Hit the trail hard. A day and a night ought to bring you to Tascosa."

The cattleman was leading the way with long strides into an open space back of the house. A pile of empty cans, symbol of the arid lands, lay beside the path. He picked up one and put it on a post. Then he stepped off fifteen paces.

"Ventilate it," he ordered.

The boy drew his revolver, took a long, steady aim, and fired. The bullet whistled past across the prairie. His second shot scored a clean hit. With pardonable pride he turned to the cattleman.

"Set up another can," commanded Wadley.

From the pile of empties the young man picked another and put it on the post. Wadley, known in Texas as a two-gun man, flashed into sight a pair of revolvers almost quicker than the eye could follow. Both shots came instantly and together. The cattleman had fired from the hips. Before the can had reached the ground the weapons barked again.

Ridley ran forward and picked up the can. It was torn and twisted with jagged holes, but the evidence was written there that all four bullets had pierced the tin. The Easterner could hardly believe his eyes. Such shooting was almost beyond human skill.

The owner of the A T O thrust into place his two forty-fives.

"If you're goin' to wear six-shooters, learn to use 'em, son. If you don't, some bad-man is liable to bump you off for practice."

As the two men stepped around the corner of the house a girl came down the steps of the porch. She was dressed in summer white, but she herself was spring. Slim and lissome, the dew of childhood was still on her lips, and the mist of it in her eyes. But when she slanted her long lashes toward Arthur Ridley, it was not the child that peeped shyly and eagerly out from beneath them. Her heart was answering the world-old call of youth to youth.

"I'm going downtown, Dad," she announced.

Ridley stepped forward and lifted his hat. "May I walk with you, Miss Ramona?"

"Stop at the post-office and see if the buckboard driver is in with the mail, 'Mona," her father said.

The boy and the girl made a couple to catch and hold the eye.

They went down the street together chattering gayly. One of the things young Ridley knew how to do well was to make himself agreeable to girls. He could talk nonsense charmingly and could hold his own in the jolly give-and-take of repartee. His good looks were a help. So too was the little touch of affectionate deference he used. He had the gift of being bold without being too bold.

It was a beautiful morning and life sang in the blood of Ramona. It seemed to her companion that the warm sun caressed the little curls at her temples as she moved down the street light as a deer. Little jets of laughter bubbled from her round, birdlike throat. In her freshly starched white dress, with its broad waistband of red and purple ribbon, the girl was sweet and lovely and full of mystery to Ridley.

A little man with a goatee, hawk-nosed and hawk-eyed, came down the street with jingling spurs to meet them. At sight of Ramona his eyes lighted. From his well-shaped gray head he swept in a bow a jaunty, broad-brimmed white hat.

The young girl smiled, because there were still a million unspent smiles in her warm and friendly heart.

"Good-morning, Captain Ellison," she called.

"Don't know you a-tall, ma'am." He shook his head with decision. "Never met up with you before."

"Good gracious, Captain, and you've fed me candy ever since I was a sticky little kid."

He burlesqued a business of recognizing her with much astonishment. "You ain't little 'Mona Wadley. No! Why, you are a young lady all dressed up in go-to-meet-him clothes. I reckon my little side-partner has gone forever."

"No, she hasn't, Uncle Jim," the girl cried. "And I want you to know I still like candy."

He laughed with delight and slapped his thigh with his broad-brimmed ranger hat. "By dog, you get it, 'Mona, sure as I'm a foot high."

Chuckling, he passed down the street.

"Captain Jim Ellison of the Rangers," explained Ramona to her companion. "He isn't really my uncle, but I've known him always. He's a good old thing and we're great friends."

Her soft, smiling eyes met those of Arthur. He thought that it was no merit in Ellison to be fond of her. How could he help it?

"He's in luck," was all the boy said.

A little flag of color fluttered in her cheek. She liked his compliments, but they embarrassed her a little.

"Did you fix it all up with Dad?" she asked, by way of changing the subject.

"Yes. I'm to go to Fort Winston to get the money for the beeves, and if I fall down on the job I'll never get another from him."

"I believe you're afraid of Dad," she teased.

"Don't you believe it--know it. I sure enough am," he admitted promptly.

"Why? I can twist him round my little finger," she boasted.

"Yes, but I'm not his only daughter and the prettiest thing in West Texas."

She laughed shyly. "Are you sure you're taking in enough territory?"

"I'll say south of Mason and Dixon's line, if you like."

"Really, he likes you. I can tell when Dad is for any one."

A sound had for some minutes been disturbing the calm peace of the morning. It was the bawling of thirsty cattle. The young people turned a corner into the main street of the town. Down it was moving toward them a cloud of yellow dust stirred up by a bunch of Texas longhorns. The call of the cattle for drink was insistent. Above it rose an occasional sharp "Yip yip!" of a cowboy.

Ramona stopped, aghast. The cattle blocked the road, their moving backs like the waves of a sea. The dust would irreparably soil the clean frock fresh from the hands of her black mammy. She made as if to turn, and knew with a flash of horror that it was too late.

Perhaps it was the gleam of scarlet in her sash that caught the eye of the bull leading the van. It gave a bellow of rage, lowered its head, and dashed at her.

Ramona gave a horror-stricken little cry of fear and stood motionless. She could not run. The fascination of terror held her paralyzed. Her heart died away in her while the great brute thundered toward her.

Out of the dust-cloud came a horse and rider in the wake of the bull. Frozen in her tracks, Ramona saw with dilated eyes all that followed. The galloping horse gained, was at the heels of the maddened animal, drew up side by side. It seemed to the girl that in another moment she must be trampled underfoot. Nothing but a miracle from God's blue could save her.

For what registered as time without end to the girl's fear-numbed brain, horse and bull raced knee to knee. Then the miracle came. The rider leaned far out from the saddle, loosened his feet from the stirrups, and launched himself at the crazed half-ton of charging fury.

His hands gripped the horns of the bull. He was dragged from the saddle into the dust, but his weight deflected the course of the animal. With every ounce of strength given by his rough life in the open the cowboy hung on, dragging the head of the bull down with him toward the ground. Man and beast came to a slithering halt together in a great cloud of dust not ten feet from Ramona.

Even now terror held her a prisoner. The brute would free itself and stamp the man to death. A haze gathered before her eyes. She swayed, then steadied herself. Man and bull were fighting desperately, one with sheer strength, the other with strength plus brains and skill. The object of the animal was to free itself. The bull tossed wildly in frantic rage to shake off this incubus that had fastened itself to its horns. The man hung on for life. All his power and weight were centered in an effort to twist the head of the bull sideways and back. Slowly, inch by inch, by the steady, insistent pressure of muscles as well packed as any in Texas, the man began to gain. The bull no longer tossed and flung him at will. The big roan head went down, turned backward, yielded to the pressure on the neck-muscles that never relaxed.

The man put at the decisive moment his last ounce of strength into one last twist. The bull collapsed, went down heavily to its side.

A second cowboy rode up, roped the bull, and deftly hogtied it.

The bulldogger rose and limped forward to the girl leaning whitely against a wall.

"Sorry, Miss Wadley. I hadn't ought to have brought the herd through town. We was drivin' to water."

"Are you hurt?" Ramona heard her dry, faint voice ask.

"Me!" he said in surprise. "Why, no, ma'am."

He was a tall, lean youth, sunburned and tough, with a face that looked sardonic. Ramona recognized him now as her father's new foreman, the man she had been introduced to a few days before. Hard on that memory came another. It was this same Jack Roberts who had taken her brother by surprise and beaten him so cruelly only yesterday.

"It threw you around so," she murmured.

"Sho! I reckon I can curry a li'l ol' longhorn when I have it to do, ma'am," he answered, a bit embarrassed.

"Are--are you hurt?" another voice quavered.

With a pang of pain Ramona remembered Arthur Ridley. Where had he been when she so desperately needed help?

"No. Mr. Roberts saved me." She did not look at Ridley. A queer feeling of shame for him made her keep her eyes averted.

"I--went to get help for you," the boy explained feebly.

"Thank you," she said.

The girl was miserably unhappy. For the boy to whom she had given the largesse of her friendship had fled in panic; the one she hated for bullying and mistreating her brother had flung himself in the path of the furious bull to save her.

Captain Ellison came running up. He bristled at the trail foreman like a bantam. "What do you mean by drivin' these wild critters through town? Ain't you got a lick o' sense a-tall? If anything had happened to this little girl--"

The Ranger left his threat suspended in midair. His arms were round Ramona, who was sobbing into his coat.

The red-headed foreman shifted his weight from one foot to another. He was acutely uncomfortable at having made this young woman weep. "I ain't got a word to say, Captain. It was plumb thoughtless of me," he apologized.

"You come to my office this mo'nin' at twelve o'clock, young fellow. Hear me? I've got a word to say to you."

"Yes," agreed the bulldogger humbly. "I didn't go for to scare the young lady. Will you tell her I'm right sorry, Captain?"

"You eat yore own humble pie. You've got a tongue, I reckon," snorted Ellison, dragging at his goatee fiercely.

The complexion of Roberts matched his hair. "I--I--I'm turrible sorry, miss. I'd ought to be rode on a rail."

With which the range-rider turned, swung to the saddle of his pony without touching the stirrups, and fairly bolted down the street after his retreating herd.

CHAPTER V

CAPTAIN ELLISON HIRES A HAND

Captain Ellison was preparing for the Adjutant-General a report of a little affair during which one of his men had been obliged to snuff out the lives of a couple of Mexican horsethieves and seriously damage a third. Writing was laborious work for the Captain of Rangers, though he told no varnished tale. His head and shoulders were hunched over the table and his fingertips were cramped close to the point of the pen. Each letter as it was set down had its whispered echo from his pursed lips.

"Doggone these here reports," he commented in exasperation. "Looks like a man hadn't ought to make out one every time he bumps off a rustler."

He tugged at his goatee and read again what he had just written:

Then this José Barela and his gang of skoundrels struck out for the Brazos with the stolen stock. Ranger Cullom trailed them to Goose Creek and recovered the cattle. While resisting arrest Barela and another Mexican were killed and a third wounded. Cullom brought back the wounded man and the rustled stock.

A short noontime shadow darkened the sunny doorway of the adobe office. Ellison looked up quickly, his hand falling naturally to the handle of his forty-five. Among the Rangers the price of life was vigilance. A tall, lean, young man with a sardonic eye and a sunburned face jingled up the steps.

"Come in," snapped the Captain. "Sit down. With you in a minute."

The cowboy lounged in, very much at his ease. Roberts had been embarrassed before Ramona Wadley that morning, but he was not in the least self-conscious now. In the course of a short and turbid life he had looked too many tough characters in the eye to let any mere man disturb his poise.

"Do you spell scoundrel with a k?" the Ranger chief fired abruptly at him.

"Nary a k, Captain. I spell it b-a-d m-a-n."

"H'mp!" snorted the little man. "Ain't you got no education? A man's got to use a syllogism oncet in a while, I reckon."

"Mebbeso. What kind of a gun is it?" drawled Jack Roberts.

"A syllogism is a word meanin' the same as another word, like as if I was to say caballo for horse or six-shooter for revolver."

"I see--or tough guy for Texas ranger."

"Or durn fool for Jack Roberts," countered Ellison promptly.

"Now you're shoutin', Cap. Stomp on me proper. I certainly need to be curried."

Again the Ranger snorted. "H'mp! Been scarin' any more young ladies to death?"

"No more this mo'nin', Captain," answered Jack equably.

"Nor grandstandin' with any more ladino steers?"

"I exhibit only once a day."

"By dog, you give a sure-enough good show," exploded Ellison. "You got yore nerve, boy. Wait around till the prettiest girl in Texas can see you pull off the big play--run the risk of havin' her trampled to death, just so's you can grin an' say, 'Pleased to meet you, ma'am.' When I call you durn fool, I realize it's too weak a name."

"Hop to it, Captain. Use up some real language on me. Spill out a lot of those syllogisms you got bottled up inside you. I got it comin'," admitted Roberts genially as he rolled a cigarette.

The Captain had been a mule-skinner once, and for five glorious minutes he did himself proud while the graceless young cowpuncher beamed on him.

"You sure go some, Cap," applauded the young fellow. "I'd admire to have your flow of talk."

Ellison subsided into anticlimax. "Well, don't you ever drive yore wild hill-critters through town again. Hear me, young fellow?"

"You'll have to speak to Wadley about that. I'm not his trail boss any longer."

"Since when?"

"Since five o'clock yesterday evenin'. I was turnin' over the herd this mo'nin' when the little lady showed up an' I had to pull off the bulldoggin'."

"Wadley fire you?"

"That's whatever."

"Why?"

"Didn't like the way I mussed up son Rutherford, I kind o' gathered."

"Another of yore fool plays. First you beat up Wadley's boy; then you 'most massacree his daughter. Anything more?"

"That's all up to date--except that the old man hinted I was a brand-burner."

"The deuce he did!"

"I judge that son Rutherford had told him I was one of the Dinsmore gang. Seems I'm all right except for bein' a rowdy an' a bully an' a thief an' a bad egg generally."

"H'mp! Said you was a rustler, did he?" The Ranger caressed his goatee and reflected on this before he pumped a question at the line-rider. "Are you?"

"No more than Rutherford Wadley."

The Captain shot a swift slant look at this imperturbable young man. Was there a hidden meaning in that answer?

"What's the matter with Wadley? Does he expect you to let Ford run it over you? That ain't like Clint."

"He's likely listened to a pack o' lies."

"And you haven't heard from him since?"

"Yes, I have. He sent me my check an' a hundred-dollar bill."

Ellison sat up. "What for?"

"For my fancy bulldoggin'." The hard eyes of the young fellow smouldered with resentment.

"By dog, did Clint send you money for savin' 'Mona?"

"He didn't say what it was for--so I rolled up the bill an' lit a cigarette with it."

"You take expensive smokes, young man," chuckled the officer.

"It was on Wadley. I burned only half the bill. He can cash in the other half, for I sent it back to him. When he got it, he sent for me."

"And you went?"

"You know damn well I didn't. When he wants me, he knows where to find me."

"Most young hill-billies step when Clint tells 'em to."

"Do they?" asked the range-rider indifferently.

"You bet you. They jump when he whistles. What are you figurin' to do?"

"Haven't made up my mind yet. Mebbe I'll drift along the trail to the Pecos country."

"What was Clint payin' you?"

"Sixty a month an' found."

"How'd you like to have yore wages lowered?"

"Meanin'--"

"That I'll give you a job."

Young Roberts had a capacity for silence. He asked no questions now, but waited for Ellison to develop the situation.

"With the Rangers. Dollar a day an' furnish yore own bronc," explained the Captain.

"The State of Texas is liberal," said the cowboy with dry sarcasm.

"That's as you look at it. If you're a money-grubber, don't join us. But if you'd like to be one of the finest fightin' force in the world with somethin' doin' every minute, then you'd better sign up. I'll promise that you die young an' not in yore bed."

"Sounds right attractive," jeered the red-haired youngster with amiable irony.

"It is, for men with red blood in 'em," retorted the gray-haired fire-eater hotly.

"All right. I'll take your word for it, Captain. You've hired a hand."

CHAPTER VI

CLINT WADLEY'S MESSENGER

Outside the door of the commandant's office Arthur Ridley stood for a moment and glanced nervously up and down the dirt road. In a hog-leather belt around his waist was six thousand dollars just turned over to him by Major Ponsford as the last payment for beef steers delivered at the fort according to contract some weeks earlier.

Arthur had decided not to start on the return journey until next morning, but he was not sure his judgment had been good. It was still early afternoon. Before nightfall he might be thirty miles on his way. The trouble with that was that he would then have to spend two nights out, and the long hours of darkness with their flickering shadows cast by the camp-fires would be full of torture for him. On the other hand, if he should stay till morning, word might leak out from the officers' quarters that he was carrying a large sum of money.

A drunken man came weaving down the street. He stopped opposite Ridley and balanced himself with the careful dignity of the inebriate. But the gray eyes, hard as those of a gunman, showed no trace of intoxication. Nor did the steady voice.

"Friend, are you Clint Wadley's messenger?"

The startled face of Ridley flew a flag of confession. "Why--what do you mean?" he stammered. Nobody was to have known that he had come to get the money for the owner of the A T O.

"None of my business, you mean," flung back the man curtly. "Good enough! It ain't. What's more, I don't give a damn. But listen: I was at the Buffalo Hump when two fellows came in. Me, I was most asleep, and they sat in the booth next to me. I didn't hear all they said, but I got this--that they're aimin' to hold up some messenger of Clint Wadley after he leaves town to-morrow. You're the man, I reckon. All right. Look out for yourself. That's all."

"But--what shall I do?" asked Ridley.

"Do? I don't care. I'm tellin' you--see? Do as you please."

"What would you do?" The danger and the responsibility that had fallen upon him out of a sky of sunshine paralyzed the young man's initiative.

The deep-set, flinty eyes narrowed to slits. "What I'd do ain't necessarily what you'd better do. What are you, stranger--high-grade stuff, or the run o' the pen?"

"I'm no gun-fighter, if that's what you mean."

"Then I'd make my get-away like a jackrabbit hell-poppin' for its hole. I got one slant at these fellows in the Buffalo Hump. They're bully-puss kind o' men, if you know what I mean."

"I don't. I'm from the East."

"They'll run it over you, bluff you off the map, take any advantage they can."

"Will they fight?"

"They'll burn powder quick if they get the drop on you."

"What are they like?"

The Texan considered. "One is a tall, red-headed guy; the other's a sawed-off, hammered-down little runt--but gunmen, both of 'em, or I'm a liar."

"They would probably follow me," said the messenger, worried.

"You better believe they will, soon as they hear you've gone."

Arthur kicked a little hole in the ground with the toe of his shoe. What had he better do? He could stay at the fort, of course, and appeal to Major Ponsford for help. But if he did, he would probably be late for his appointment with Wadley. It happened that the cattleman and the army officer had had a sharp difference of opinion about the merits of the herd that had been delivered, and it was not at all likely that Ponsford would give him a military guard to Tascosa. Moreover, he had a feeling that the owner of the A T O would resent any call to the soldiers for assistance. Clint Wadley usually played his own hand, and he expected the same of his men.

But the habit of young Ridley's life had not made for fitness to cope with a frontier emergency. Nor was he of stiff enough clay to fight free of his difficulty without help.

"What about you?" he asked the other man. "Can I hire you to ride with me to Tascosa?"

"As a tenderfoot-wrangler?" sneered the Texan.

Arthur flushed. "I've never been there. I don't know the way."

"You follow a gun-barrel road from the fort. But I'll ride with you--if the pay is right."

"What do you say to twenty dollars for the trip?"

"You've hired me."

"And if we're attacked?"

"I pack a six-shooter."

The troubled young man looked into the hard, reckless face of this stranger who had gone out of his way to warn him of the impending attack. No certificate was necessary to tell him that this man would fight.

"I don't know your name," said Ridley, still hesitating.

"Any more than I know yours," returned the other. "Call me Bill Moore, an' I'll be on hand to eat my share of the chuck."

"We'd better leave at once, don't you think?"

"You're the doc. Meet you here in an hour ready for the trail."

The man who called himself Bill Moore went his uncertain way down the street. To the casual eye he was far gone in drink. Young Ridley went straight to the corral where he had put up his horse. He watered and fed the animal, and after an endless half-hour saddled the bronco.

Moore joined him in front of the officers' quarters, and together they rode out of the post. As the Texan had said, the road to Tascosa ran straight as a gun-barrel. At first they rode in silence, swiftly, leaving behind them mile after mile of dusty trail. It was a brown, level country thickly dotted with yucca. Once Moore shot a wild turkey running in the grass. Prairie-chicken were abundant, and a flight of pigeons numbering thousands passed at one time over their heads and obscured the sky.

"Goin' down to the encinal to roost," explained Moore.

"A man could come pretty near living off his rifle in this country," Arthur remarked.

"Outside o' flour an' salt, I've done it many a time. I rode through the Pecos Valley to Fort Sumner an' on to Denver oncet an' lived off the land. Time an' again I've done it from the Brazos to the Canadian. If he gets tired of game, a man can jerk the hind quarters of a beef. Gimme a young turkey fed on sweet mast an' cooked on a hackberry bush fire, an' I'll never ask for better chuck," the Texan promised.

In spite of Ridley's manifest desire to push on far into the night, Moore made an early camp.

"No use gauntin' our broncs when we've got all the time there is before us. A horse is a man's friend. He don't want to waste it into a sorry-lookin' shadow. Besides, we're better off here than at Painted Rock. It's nothin' but a whistlin'-post in the desert."

"Yes, but I'd like to get as far from the fort as we can. I--I'm in a hurry to reach Tascosa," the younger man urged.

Moore opened a row of worn and stained teeth to smile. "Don't worry, young fellow. I'm with you now."

After they had made camp and eaten, the two men sat beside the flickering fire, and Moore told stories of the wild and turbulent life he had known around Dodge City and in the Lincoln County War that was still waging in New Mexico. He had freighted to the Panhandle from El Moro, Colorado, from Wichita Falls, and even from Dodge. The consummate confidence of the man soothed the unease of the young fellow with the hogskin belt. This plainsman knew all that the Southwest had to offer of danger and was equal to any of it.

Presently Arthur Ridley grew drowsy. The last that he remembered before he fell asleep was seeing Moore light his pipe again with a live coal from the fire. The Texan was to keep the first watch.

It was well along toward morning when the snapping of a bush awakened Ridley. He sat upright and reached quickly for the revolver by his side.

"Don't you," called a voice sharply from the brush.

Two men, masked with slitted handkerchiefs, broke through the shin-oak just as Arthur whipped up his gun. The hammer fell once--twice, but no explosion followed. With two forty-fives covering him, Ridley, white to the lips, dropped his harmless weapon.

Moore came to life with sleepy eyes, but he was taken at a disadvantage, and with a smothered oath handed over his revolver.

"Wha-what do you want?" asked Ridley, his teeth chattering.

The shorter of the two outlaws, a stocky man with deep chest and extraordinarily broad shoulders, growled an answer.

"We want that money of Clint Wadley's you're packin'."

The camp-fire had died to ashes, and the early-morning air was chill. Arthur felt himself trembling so that his hands shook. A prickling of the skin went goose-quilling down his back. In the dim light those masked figures behind the businesslike guns were sinister with the threat of mystery and menace.

"I--haven't any money," he quavered.

"You'd better have it, young fellow, me lad!" jeered the tall bandit. "We're here strictly for business. Dig up."

"I don't reckon he's carryin' any money for Clint," Moore argued mildly. "Don't look reasonable that an old-timer like Clint, who knocked the bark off'n this country when I was still a kid, would send a tenderfoot to pack gold 'cross country for him."

The tall man swung his revolver on Moore. "'Nuff from you," he ordered grimly.

The heavy-set outlaw did not say a word. He moved forward and pressed the cold rim of his forty-five against the forehead of the messenger. The fluttering heart of the young man beat hard against his ribs. His voice stuck in his throat, but he managed to gasp a surrender.

"It's in my belt. For God's sake, don't shoot."

"Gimme yore belt."

The boy unbuckled the ribbon of hogskin beneath his shirt and passed it to the man behind the gun. The outlaw noticed that his fingers were cold and clammy.

"Stand back to back," commanded the heavy man.

Deftly he swung a rope over the heads of his captives, jerked it tight, wound it about their bodies, knotted it here and there, and finished with a triple knot where their heels came together.

"That'll hold 'em hitched a few minutes," the lank man approved after he had tested the rope.

"I'd like to get a lick at you fellows. I will, too, some day," mentioned Moore casually.

"When you meet up with us we'll be there," retorted the heavy-weight. "Let's go, Steve."

The long man nodded. "Adiós, boys."

"See you later, and when I meet up with you, it'll be me 'n' you to a finish," the Texan called.

The thud of the retreating, hoofs grew faint and died. Already Moore was busy with the rope that tied them together.

"What's the matter, kid? You shakin' for the drinks? Didn't you see from the first we weren't in any danger? If they'd wanted to harm us, they could have shot us from the brush. How much was in that belt?"

"Six thousand dollars," the boy groaned.

"Well, it doesn't cost you a cent. Cheer up, son."

By this time Moore had both his arms free and was loosening one of the knots.

"I was in charge of it. I'll never dare face Mr. Wadley."

"Sho! It was his own fault. How in Mexico come he to send a boy to market for such a big stake?"

"Nobody was to have known what I came for. I don't see how it got out."

"Must 'a' been a leak somewhere. Don't you care. Play the hand that's dealt you and let the boss worry. Take it from me, you're lucky not to be even powder-burnt when a shot from the chaparral might have done yore business."

"If you only hadn't fallen asleep!"

"Reckon I dozed off. I was up 'most all last night." Moore untied the last knot and stepped out from the loop. "I'm goin' to saddle the broncs. You ride in to Tascosa and tell Wadley. I'll take up the trail an' follow it while it's warm. We'll see if a pair of shorthorns can run a sandy like that on me." He fell suddenly into the violent, pungent speech of the mule-skinner.

"I'll go with you," announced Ridley. He had no desire to face Clint Wadley with such a lame tale.

The cold eyes of the Texan drilled into his. "No, you won't. You'll go to town an' tell the old man what's happened. Tell him to send his posse across the malpais toward the rim-rock. I'll meet him at Two Buck Crossin' with any news I've got."

A quarter of an hour later the hoofs of his horse flung back faint echoes from the distance. The boy collapsed. His head sank into his hands and his misery found vent in sobs.

CHAPTER VII

THE DANCE

Long since the sun had slid behind the horizon edge and given place to a desert night of shimmering moonlight and far stars. From the enchanted mesa Rutherford Wadley descended to a valley draw in which were huddled a score of Mexican jacals, huts built of stakes stuck in a trench, roofed with sod and floored with mud. Beyond these was a more pretentious house. Originally it had been a log "hogan," but a large adobe addition had been constructed for a store. Inside this the dance was being held.

Light filtered through the chinks in the mud. From door and windows came the sounds of scraping fiddles and stamping feet. The singsong voice of the caller and the occasional whoop of a cowboy punctuated the medley of noises.

A man whose girth would have put Falstaff to shame greeted Rutherford wheezily. "Fall off and 'light, Ford. She's in full swing and the bridle's off."

The man was Jumbo Wilkins, line-rider for the A T O.

Young Wadley swung to the ground. He did not trouble to answer his father's employee. It was in little ways like this that he endeared himself to those at hand, and it was just this spirit that the democratic West would not tolerate. While the rider was tying his horse to the hitch-rack, Jumbo Wilkins, who was a friendly soul, made another try at conversation.

"Glad you got an invite. Old man Cobb hadn't room for everybody, so he didn't make his bid wide open."

The young man jingled up the steps. "That so? Well, I didn't get an invite, as you call it. But I'm here." He contrived to say it so offensively that Jumbo flushed with anger.

Wadley sauntered into the room and stood for a moment by the door. His trim, graceful figure and dark good looks made him at once a focus of eyes. Nonchalantly he sunned himself in the limelight, with that little touch of swagger that captures the imagination of girls. No man in the cow-country dressed like Rutherford Wadley. In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed are kings, and to these frontier women this young fellow was a glass of fashion. There was about him, too, a certain dash, a spice of the devil more desirable in a breaker of hearts than any mere beauty.

His bold, possessive eyes ranged over the room to claim what they might desire. He had come to the dance at Tomichi Creek to make love to Tony Alviro's betrothed sweetheart Bonita.

She was in the far corner with her little court about her. If Bonita was a flirt, it must be admitted she was a charming one. No girl within a day's ride was so courted as she. Compact of fire and passion, brimming with life and health, she drew men to her as the flame the moth.

Presently the music started. Bonita, in the arms of Tony, floated past Rutherford, a miracle of supple lightness. A flash of soft eyes darted at the heir of the A T O ranch. In them was a smile adorable and provocative.

As soon as the dance was over, Wadley made his way indolently toward her. He claimed the next waltz.

She had promised it to Tony, the girl said--and the next.

"Tony can't close-herd you," laughed Rutherford. "His title ain't clear yet--won't be till the priest has said so. You'll dance the second one with me, Bonita."

"We shall see, señor," she mocked.

But the Mexican blood in the girl beat fast. In her soft, liquid eyes lurked the hunger for sex adventure. And this man was a prince of the blood--the son of Clint Wadley, the biggest cattleman in West Texas.

There were challenging stars of deviltry in Bonita's eyes when they met those of Rutherford over the shoulder of Alviro while she danced, but the color was beating warm through her dark skin. The lift of her round, brown throat to an indifferent tilt of the chin was mere pretense. The languorous passion of the South was her inheritance, and excitement mounted in her while she kept time to the melodious dance.

Alviro was master of ceremonies, and Wadley found his chance while the young Mexican was of necessity away from Bonita. Rutherford bowed to her with elaborate mockery.

"Come. Let us walk in the moonlight, sweetheart," he said.

Bonita turned to him with slow grace. The eyes of the man and the woman met and fought. In hers there was a kind of savage fierceness, in his an insolent confidence.

"No," she answered.

"Ah! You're afraid of me--afraid to trust yourself with me," he boasted.

She was an untutored child of the desert, and his words were a spur to her quick pride. She rose at once, her bosom rising and falling fast. She would never confess that--never.

The girl walked beside him with the fluent grace of youth, beautiful as a forest fawn. In ten years she would be fat and slovenly like her Mexican mother, but now she carried her slender body as a queen is supposed to but does not. Her heel sank into a little patch of mud where some one had watered a horse. Under the cottonwoods she pulled up her skirt a trifle and made a moue of disgust at the soiled slipper.

"See what you've done!" Small, even teeth, gleamed in a coquettish smile from the ripe lips of the little mouth. He understood that he was being invited to kneel and clean the mud-stained shoe.

"If you're looking for a doormat to wipe your feet on, I'll send for Tony," he jeered.

The father of Bonita was Anglo-Saxon. She flashed anger at his presumption.

"Don't you think it. Tony will never be a doormat to anybody. Be warned, señor, and do not try to take what is his."

Again their eyes battled. Neither of them saw a man who had come out from the house and was watching them from the end of the porch.

"I take what the gods give, my dear, and ask leave of no man," bragged Wadley.

"Or woman?"

"Ah! That is different. When the woman is Bonita, muchacha, I am her slave."

He dropped to one knee and with his handkerchief wiped the mud from the heel of her slipper. For a moment his fingers touched lightly the trim little ankle; then he rose quickly and caught her in his arms.

"Sometime--soon--it's going to be me and you, sweetheart," he whispered.

"Don't," she begged, struggling against herself and him. "If Tony sees--"

His passion was too keen-edged to take warning. He kissed her lips and throat and eyes. The eyes of the watcher never wavered. They were narrowed to shining slits of jet.

"Why do you come and--and follow me?" the girl cried softly. "It is not that you do not know Tony is jealous. This is not play with him. He loves me and will fight for me. You are mad."

"For love of you!" he laughed triumphantly.

She knew he lied. The instinct that served her for a conscience had long since told her as much. But her vanity, and perhaps something deeper, craved satisfaction. She wanted to believe he meant it. Under his ardent gaze the long lashes of the girl drooped to her dusky cheeks. It was Tony she loved, but Tony offered her only happiness and not excitement.

A moment later she gave a startled little cry and pushed herself free. Her dilated eyes were fixed on something behind the cattleman.

Rutherford, warned by her expression, whirled on his heel.

Tony Alviro, knife in hand, was close upon him. Wadley lashed out hard with his left and caught the Mexican on the point of the chin.

The blow lifted Tony from his feet and flung him at full length to the ground. He tried to rise, groaned--rolled over.

Bonita was beside him in an instant. From where she knelt, with Tony's dark head in her arms pressed close to her bosom, she turned fiercely on Wadley.

"I hate you, dog of a gringo! You are all one big lie through and through--what they call bad egg--no good!"

Already half a dozen men were charging from the house. Jumbo pinned Wadley's arms by the elbows to prevent him from drawing a revolver.

"What's the rumpus?" he demanded.

"The fellow tried to knife me in the back," explained Rutherford. "Jealous, because I took his girl."

"So?" grunted Wilkins. "Well, you'd better light a shuck out o' here. You came on yore own invite. You can go on mine."

"Why should I go? I'll see you at Tombstone first."

"Why?" Jumbo's voice was no longer amiable and ingratiating. "Because you gave Tony a raw deal, an' he's got friends here. Have you?"

Wadley looked round and saw here and there Mexican faces filled with sullen resentment. It came to him swiftly that this was no place for his father's son to linger.

"I don't push my society on any one," he said haughtily. "If I ain't welcome, I'll go. But I serve notice right here that any one who tries to pull a knife on me will get cold lead next time."

Jumbo, with his arm tucked under that of Wadley, led the way to the house. He untied the rein of Rutherford's horse and handed it to the son of his boss.

"Vamos!" he said.

The young man pulled himself to the saddle. "You're a hell of a friend," he snarled.

"Who said anything about bein' a friend? I'm particular about when I use that word," replied Wilkins evenly, with hard eyes.

Wadley's quirt burned the flank of the cow-pony and it leaped for the road.

When five minutes later some one inquired for Tony he too had disappeared.

CHAPTER VIII

RUTHERFORD MAKES A MISTAKE

Rutherford Wadley struck across country toward the rim-rock. Anger burned high in him, and like the bully he was he took it out of his good horse by roweling its sides savagely. He plunged into the curly mesquite, driving forward straight as an arrow. Behind him in the darkness followed a shadow, sinister and silent, out of sight, but within sound of the horse's footfall. It stopped when Wadley stopped; when he moved, it moved.

Midnight found young Wadley still moving straight forward, the moon on his left. Painted Rock was ten miles to the west. Except for the stage station there, and the settlement he had left, there was no other habitation for fifty miles. It was a wilderness of silence.

Yet in that waste of empty space Rutherford "jumped up" a camper. The man was a trader, carrying honey and pecans to Fort Worth. He was awakened by the sound of a raucous curse, he testified later, and in the bright moonlight saw the young cattleman beating his horse. Evidently the young animal had been startled at sight of his white-topped wagon.

An angry sentence or two passed between the men before the cattleman moved over the hill-brow. As the trader rolled up again in his sugun, there came to him faintly the sound of another horse. He was not able to explain later why this struck him as ominous, beyond the strangeness of the fact that two men, not in each other's company, should be traveling so close together in the desert. At any rate, he rose, crept forward to a clump of Spanish bayonet, and from behind it saw a young Mexican pass along the swale. He was close enough almost to have touched him, and in the rich moonlight saw the boyish face clearly.

By the time Wadley reached the rough country of the cap-rock, the young day was beginning to awaken. A quail piped its morning greeting from the brush. A gleam of blue in the dun sky flashed warning of a sun soon to rise. He had struck the rim-rock a little too far to the right, and deflected from his course to find the pocket he was seeking. For half a mile he traveled parallel to the ridge, then turned into a break in the wall. At the summit of a little rise he gave a whistle.

Presently, from above a big boulder, a head appeared cautiously.

"Hello, out there! Who is it?"

"Ford."

The rider swung to the ground stiffly and led his horse forward down a sharply descending path to a little draw. A lank, sallow man with a rifle joined him. With his back to a flat rock, a heavy-set, broad-shouldered fellow was lounging.

"'Lo, Ford. Didn't expect you to-night," he grumbled.

"Drifted over from the dance at Tomichi Creek. Beat up a young Mexican and had to get out."

"You're such a sullen brute! Why can't you let folks alone?" Pete Dinsmore wanted to know.

He was annoyed. Rutherford Wadley was not a partner in the business on hand to-night, and he would rather the man had been a hundred miles away.

"He got jealous and tried to knife me," explained the heir of the A T O sulkily.

"You durn fool! Won't you ever learn sense? Who was it this time?"

"Tony Alviro. His girl's crazy about me."

The keen, hard eyes of Dinsmore took in the smug complacency of the handsome young cad. He knew that this particular brand of fool would go its own way, but he wasted a word of advice.

"I don't guess you want any pearls o' wisdom from me, but I'll onload some gratis. You let Bonita Menendez alone or Tony will camp on yore trail till he gits you."

"Sure will," agreed Gurley, setting down his rifle. "Them Mexicans hang together, too. We need their friendship in our business. Better lay off them."

"I don't remember askin' your advice, Gurley."

"Well, I'm givin' it. See?"

Another sharp whistle cut the air. Gurley picked up the rifle again and climbed the lookout rock. Presently he returned with a dismounted horseman. The man was the one who had introduced himself to Arthur Ripley a few hours earlier as Bill Moore.

"Howdy, boys. Got the stuff all safe?" he asked cheerfully.

From behind Wadley Pete Dinsmore was making a series of facial contortions. Unfortunately the new arrival did not happen to be looking at him, and so missed the warning.

"Never saw anything work prettier," Moore said with a grin as he put down his saddle on a boulder. "Ridley hadn't ought to be let out without a nurse. He swallowed my whole yarn--gobbled down bait, sinker an' line. Where's the gold, Pete?"

"In a sack back of the big rock." Pete was disgusted with his brother Homer, alias Bill Moore. They would probably have to divide with young Wadley now, to keep his mouth shut.

Rutherford jumped at the truth. His father had told him that he was going to give Art Ridley a try-out by sending him to the fort for a payment of gold. Probably he, Rutherford, had mentioned this to one of the gang when he was drunk. They had held up the messenger, intending to freeze him out of any share of the profits. All right--he would show them whether he was a two-spot.

"Bring out the sack. Let's have a look at it," he ordered.

Gurley handed the sack to Pete Dinsmore, and the men squatted in a circle tailor-fashion.

"Smooth work, I call it," said Homer Dinsmore. He explained to Wadley why he was of this opinion. "Steve heard tell of a wagon-train goin' to Tascosa to-day. If Ridley slept overnight at the fort he would hear of it an' stay with the freight outfit till he had delivered the gold to yore dad. We had to get him started right away. So I pulled on him a story about hearin' the boys intended to hold him up. He hired me as a guard to help him stand off the bad men. Whilst I was keepin' watch I fixed up his six-shooter so's it wouldn't do any damage if it went off. Best blamed piece of work I ever did pull off. I'd ought to get a half of what we took off'n him instead of a third."

"A third! Who says you get a third?" asked Wadley.

"Three of us did this job, didn't we?" cut in Gurley.

"Sure. You took what belongs to me--or at least to my dad," protested young Wadley. "Tried to slip one over on me. Guess again, boys. I won't stand for it."

The jade eyes of the older brother narrowed. "Meanin' just what, Ford?"

"What do you take me for, Pete? Think I'm goin' to let you rob me of my own money an' never cheep? I'll see you all in blazes first," cried Wadley wildly.

"Yes, but--just what would you do about it?"

"Do? I'll ride to town an' tell Cap Ellison. I'll bust you up in business, sure as hell's hot."

There was a moment of chill silence. Three of the four men present knew that Rutherford Wadley had just passed sentence of death upon himself. They had doubted him before, vaguely, and without any definite reason. But after this open threat the fear that he would betray them would never lift until he was where he could no longer tell tales.

"How much of this money do you think is comin' to you, Ford?" asked Pete quietly.

"It's all mine, anyhow. You boys know that." Rutherford hesitated; then his greed dominated. He had them where they had to eat out of his hand. "Give me two thirds, an' you fellows divide the other third for your trouble. That's fair."

"Goddlemighty, what's eatin' you?" Gurley exploded. "Think we're plumb idjits? You 'n' me will mix bullets first, you traitor!"

The Dinsmores exchanged one long, significant look. Then Pete spoke softly.

"Don't get on the prod, Steve. Ford sure has got us where the wool's short, but I reckon he aims to be reasonable. Let's say half for you, Ford, an' the other half divided among the rest of us."

Wadley had refreshed himself out of a bottle several times during the night. Ordinarily he would have accepted the proposed compromise, but the sullen and obstinate side of him was uppermost.

"You've heard my terms, Pete. I stand pat."

Again a significant look passed, this time between Pete Dinsmore and Gurley.

"All right," said Homer Dinsmore shortly. "It's a raw deal you're givin' us, but I reckon you know yore own business, Wadley."

The money was emptied from the pigskin belt and divided. Rutherford repacked his two thirds in the belt and put it on next his shirt.

"I don't know what you fellows are goin' to do, but I'm goin' to strike for town," he said. "I aim to get back in time to join one of the posses in their hunt for the outlaws."

His jest did not win any smiles. The men grimly watched him saddle and ride away. A quarter of an hour later they too were in the saddle.

CHAPTER IX

MURDER IN THE CHAPARRAL

To Jack Roberts, engaged at the Delmonico restaurant in the serious business of demolishing a steak smothered in onions, came Pedro Menendez with a strange story of a man lying dead in the rim-rock, a bullet-hole in the back of his head.

The Mexican vaquero came to his news haltingly. He enveloped it in mystery. There was a dead man lying at the foot of Battle Butte, out in the rim-rock country, and there was this wound in the back of his head. That was all. Pedro became vague at once as to detail. He took refuge in shrugs and a poor memory when the Ranger pressed him in regard to the source of his information.

Roberts knew the ways of the Mexicans. They would tell what they wanted to tell and no more. He accepted the news given him and for the moment did not push his questions home.

For twenty-four hours the Ranger had been in the saddle, and he was expecting to turn in for a round-the-clock sleep. But Pedro's tale changed his mind. Captain Ellison was at Austin, Lieutenant Hawley at Tascosa. Regretfully Roberts gave up his overdue rest and ordered another cup of strong coffee. Soon he was in the saddle again with a fresh horse under him.

The Panhandle was at its best. Winter snows and spring rains had set it blooming. The cacti were a glory of white, yellow, purple, pink, and scarlet blossoms. The white, lilylike flowers of the Spanish bayonet flaunted themselves everywhere. Meadowlarks chirruped gayly and prairie-hens fluttered across the path in front of the rider.

Battle Butte had received its name from an old tradition of an Indian fight. Here a party of braves had made a last stand against an overwhelming force of an enemy tribe. It was a flat mesa rising sharply as a sort of bastion from the rim-rock. The erosions of centuries had given it an appearance very like a fort.

Jack skirted the base of the butte. At the edge of a clump of prickly pear he found the evidence of grim tragedy which the circling buzzards had already warned him to expect. He moved toward it very carefully, in order not to obliterate any footprints. The body lay face down in a huddled heap, one hand with outstretched finger reaching forth like a sign-post. A bullet-hole in the back of the head showed how the man had come to his death. He had been shot from behind.

The Ranger turned the body and recognized it as that of Rutherford Wadley. The face was crushed and one of the arms broken. It was an easy guess that the murder had been done on the butte above and the body flung down.

Jack, on all fours, began to quarter over the ground like a bloodhound seeking a trail. Every sense in him seemed to quicken to the hunt. His alert eyes narrowed in concentration. His fingertips, as he crept forward, touched the sand soft as velvet. His body was tense as a coiled spring. No cougar stalking its prey could have been more lithely wary.

For the Ranger had found a faint boot-track, and with amazing pains he was following this delible record of guilt. Some one had come here and looked at the dead body. Why? To make sure that the victim was quite dead? To identify the victim? Roberts did not know why, but he meant to find out.

The footprint was alone. Apparently none led to it or led from it. On that one impressionable spot alone had been written the signature of a man's presence.

But "Tex" Roberts was not an old plainsman for nothing. He knew that if he were patient enough he would find other marks of betrayal.

He found a second track--a third, and from them determined a course to follow. It brought him to a stretch of soft ground at the edge of a wash. The footprints here were sharp and distinct. They led up an arroyo to the bluff above.

The Ranger knelt dose to the most distinct print and studied it for a long time. All its details and peculiarities were recorded in his mind. The broken sole, the worn heel, the beveled edge of the toe-cap--all these fastened themselves in his memory. With a tape-line he measured minutely the length of the whole foot, of the sole and of the heel. These he jotted down in his notebook, together with cross-sections of width. He duplicated this process with the best print he could find of the left foot.

His investigation led him next to the summit of the bluff. A little stain of blood on a rock showed him where Wadley had probably been standing when he was shot. The murder might have been done by treachery on the part of one of his companions. If so, probably the bullet had been fired from a revolver. In that case the man who did it would have made sure by standing close behind his victim. This would have left powder-marks, and there had been none around the wound. The chances were that the shooting had been done from ambush, and if this was a true guess, it was a fair deduction that the assassin had hidden behind the point of rocks just back of the bluff. For he could reach that point by following the rim-rock without being seen by his victim.

Roberts next studied the ground just back of the point of rocks. The soil here was of disintegrated granite, so that there were no footprints to betray anybody who might have been hidden there. But Jack picked up something that was in its way as decisive as what he had been seeking. It was a cartridge that had been ejected from a '73[1] rifle. The harmless bit of metal in his hand was the receptacle from which death had flashed across the open toward Ford Wadley.

At the foot of the rim-rock the Ranger found signs where horses had been left. He could not at first make sure whether there were three or four. From that spot he back-tracked for miles along the edge of the rim-rock till he came to the night-camp where Wadley had met the outlaws. This, too, he studied for a long time.

He had learned a good deal, but he did not know why Ford Wadley had been shot. The young fellow had not been in Texas more than six or eight months, and he could not have made many enemies. If he had nothing about him worth stealing--and in West Texas men were not in the habit of carrying valuables--the object could not have been robbery.

He rode back to Battle Butte and carried to town with him the body of the murdered man. There he heard two bits of news, either of which might serve as a cause for the murder: Young Wadley had quarreled with Tony Alviro at a dance and grossly insulted him; Arthur Ridley had been robbed of six thousand dollars by masked men while on his way to Tascosa.

Ranger Roberts decided that he would like to have a talk with Tony.

[Footnote 1: The '73 rifle was not a seventy-three-caliber weapon, but was named from the year it was got out. Its cartridges could be used for a forty-four revolver.]

CHAPTER X

"A DAMNED POOR APOLOGY FOR A MAN"

The big cattleman from New Mexico who was talking with the owner of the A T O threw his leg across the arm of the chair. "The grass is good on the Pecos this year. Up in Mexico[2] the cattle look fine."

"Same here," agreed Wadley. "I'm puttin' ten thousand yearlin's on the Canadian."

A barefoot negro boy appeared at his elbow with a note. The owner of the A T O ripped open the envelope and read:

Dear Mr. Wadley:

I was held up last night by masked men and robbed. They took the gold. I'm too sick to go farther. Arthur Ridley.

The jaw of the Texas cattleman clamped. He rose abruptly. "I got business on hand. A messenger of mine has been robbed of six thousand dollars." He turned to the colored boy. "Where's the man who gave you this?"

"At the Buffalo Corral, sah."

Wadley strode from the hotel, flung himself on a horse, and galloped down the street toward the corral.

Young Ridley was lying on a pile of hay when his employer entered. His heart was sick with fear and worry. For he knew now that his lack of boldness had led him into a serious mistake. He had by his indecision put himself in the power of Moore, and the chances were that the man was in collusion with the gang that had held him up. He had made another mistake in not going directly to Wadley with the news. The truth was that he had not the nerve to face his employer. It was quite on the cards that the old-timer might use a blacksnake whip on him. So he had taken refuge in a plea of illness.

The cattleman took one look at him and understood. He reached down and jerked the young fellow from the hay as if he had been a child. The stomach muscles of the boy contracted with fear and the heart died within him. Clint Wadley in anger was dangerous. In his youth he had been a gun-fighter and the habit had never entirely been broken.

"I--I'm ill," the young fellow pleaded.

"You'll be sure enough ill if you don't watch out. I'll gamble on that. Onload yore tale like shot off'n a shovel. Quit yore whinin'. I got no time for it."

Arthur told his story. The cattleman fired at him crisp, keen questions. He dragged from the trembling youth the when, where, and how of the robbery. What kind of pilgrim was this fellow Moore? Was he tall? Short? Dark? Bearded? Young? Old? What were the masked men like? Did they use any names? Did he see their horses? Which way did they go?

The messenger made lame answers. Mostly he could only say, "I don't know."

"You're a damned poor apology for a man--not worth the powder to blow you up. You hadn't the sand to fight for the money entrusted to you, nor the nerve to face me after you had lost it. Get out of here. Vamos! Don't ever let me hear yore smooth, glib tongue again."

The words of Wadley stung like hail. Arthur was thin-skinned; he wanted the good opinion of all those with whom he came in contact, and especially that of this man. Like a whipped cur he crept away and hid himself in the barn loft, alone with his soul-wounds.

From its window he watched the swift bustle of preparation for the pursuit. Wadley himself, big and vigorous to the last masculine inch of him, was the dominant figure. He gave curt orders to the members of the posse, arranged for supplies to be forwarded to a given point, and outlined plans of action. In the late afternoon the boy in the loft saw them ride away, a dozen lean, long-bodied men armed to the limit. With all his heart the watcher wished he could be like one of them, ready for any emergency that the rough-and-tumble life of the frontier might develop.

In every fiber of his jarred being he was sore. He despised himself for his failure to measure up to the standard of manhood demanded of him by his environment. Twice now he had failed. The memory of his first failure still scorched his soul. During ghastly hours of many nights he had lived over that moment when he had shown the white feather before Ramona Wadley. He had run for his life and left her alone to face a charging bull. It was no excuse to plead with himself that he could have done nothing for her if he had stayed. At least he could have pushed her to one side and put himself in the path of the enraged animal. The loss of the money was different. It had been due not wholly to lack of nerve, but in part at least to bad judgment. Surely there was something to be said for his inexperience. Wadley ought not to have sent him alone on such an errand, though of course he had sent him because he was the last man anybody was likely to suspect of carrying treasure....

Late that night Ridley crept out, bought supplies, saddled his horse, and slipped into the wilderness. He was still writhing with self- contempt. There was a futile longing in his soul for oblivion to blot out his misery.

[Footnote 2: In western Texas when one speaks of Mexico he means New Mexico. If he refers to the country Mexico, he says Old Mexico.]

CHAPTER XI

ONE TO FOUR

Through the great gray desert with its freakish effects of erosion a rider had moved steadily in the hours of star-strewn darkness. He had crossed the boundary of that No Man's Land which ran as a neutral strip between Texas and its neighbor and was claimed by each. Since the courts had as yet recognized the rights of neither litigant there was properly no State jurisdiction here. Therefore those at outs with the law fled to this strip and claimed immunity.

In the Panhandle itself law was a variable quantity. Its counties had been laid out and named, but not organized. For judicial purposes they were attached to Wheeler County. Even the Rangers did not pretend to police this district. When they wanted a man they went in and got him.

The rider swung at last from his saddle and dropped the bridle reins to the ground. He crept forward to some long, flat sheep-sheds that bulked dimly in the night shadows. Farther back, he could just make out the ghost of a dwelling-hut. Beyond that, he knew, was a Mexican village of three or four houses. A windmill reared its gaunt frame in the corral. A long trough was supplied by it with water for the sheep.

The night-rider dipped a bucket of water from the tank that fed the trough. He carried it to the gate of the corral and poured it slowly into the fine dust made by the sharp feet of the sheep, mixing the water and dust to a thick paste with the end of an old branding-iron. He brought bucket after bucket of water until he had prepared a bed of smooth mud of the proper consistency.

Before he had quite finished his preparation a dog inside the adobe hut began to bark violently. The interloper slipped over the fence and retreated to the darkness of the barranca.

From the direction of the hut men poured. The one crouching in the chaparral heard voices. He made out a snatch or two of talk in Spanish. The men were explaining to themselves that the dog must have been barking at a wolf or a coyote. Presently they trooped back into the house. Silence fell again over the night.

The man in the chaparral once more crept forward and climbed the fence. He made straight for the entrance of the corral. Carefully he examined the footprints written in the bed of mud he had prepared. One after another he studied them. Some had been crossed out or blotted by subsequent prints, but a few were perfect. One of these he scrutinized for a long time, measuring its dimensions with a tape-line from toe to heel, across the ball of the foot, the instep, and the heel. When at last he straightened up his eyes were shining with satisfaction. He had found what he wanted.

Once more the dog was uneasy with growlings. The man retreated from the corral, returned to his horse, and rode away across the mesa. A quarter of an hour later he unsaddled, hobbled his horse, and rolled up in a blanket. Immediately he fell into sound sleep.

It was broad day when he wakened. The young morning sun bathed him in warmth. He lighted a fire of mesquite and boiled coffee. In his frying- pan he cooked flapjacks, after he had heated the jerked beef which he carried in his saddlebags. When he had eaten, he washed his pan with clean, fine sand, repacked his supplies, and rode forward past the sheep-corral to the village.

In front of a mud-and-log tendejón two Mexicans lounged. They watched him with silent hostility as he dismounted, tied his horse to a snubbing-post worn shiny as a razor-strap, and sauntered into the tendejón. This stranger wore the broad-rimmed felt hat and the buckskin suit of a Ranger, and none of that force was welcome here.

Back of a flimsy counter was a shelf upon which were half a dozen bottles and some glasses. One could buy here mescal, American whiskey, and even wine of a sort. The owner of the place, a white man, was talking to a young Mexican at the time the Ranger entered. The proprietor looked hard at the Ranger with dislike he did not try to veil. The Mexican in front of the bar was a slim young man with quick eyes and an intelligent face. The Ranger recognized him at once as Tony Alviro.

"Buenos!" the Ranger said with the most casual of nods. "I've come to take you back with me, Tony."

The other two Mexicans had followed the Ranger into the room. The Texan stood sideways at the end of the bar, quite at his ease, the right forearm resting on the counter lightly. Not far from his fingers the butt of a revolver projected from a holster. In his attitude was no threat whatever, but decidedly a warning.

The four men watched him steadily.

"No, Señor Roberts," answered Alviro. "You can touch me not. I'm out of Texas."

"Mebbeso, Tony. But till I get further orders, this is Texas for me. You're goin' back with me."

Rangers and outlaws held different views about this strip of land. To the latter it was a refuge; law ended at its border; they could not be touched here by State constabulary. But the Ranger did not split hairs. He was law in the Panhandle, and if the man he wanted fled to disputed territory the Ranger went after him.

"Not so," argued Alviro. "If you arrest me in Texas, I say 'Bad luck,' but I go wiz you. There you are an offizer, an' I am oblige' surrender. But in thees No Man's Land, we are man to man. I refuse."

The lift of excitement was in the voice of the young Mexican. He knew the record of the Texas Rangers. They took their men in dead or alive. This particular member of the force was an unusually tough nut to crack. In the heart of Tony was the drench of a chill wave. He was no coward, but he knew he had no such unflawed nerve as this man. Through his mind there ran a common laconic report handed in by Rangers returning from an assignment--"Killed while resisting arrest." Alviro did not want Ranger Roberts to write that about him.

"Better not, Alviro. I have a warrant for your arrest."

The Texan did not raise his voice. He made no movement to draw a gun. But to Tony, fascinated by his hard, steel-gray eyes, came the certainty that he must go or fight. They were four to one against the Ranger, but that would not make the least difference. In the curt alternative of this clean-jawed young officer was cold finality.

The worried eyes of the fugitive referred to his companions. They had agreed to stand by him, and he knew that if it came to a fight they would. But he wanted more than that. His glance was an appeal for one of them to make his decision for him.

The voice of the tendejón-keeper interjected itself smoothly. "You've played yore hand out, friend. We're four to one. You go back an' report nothin' doin'."

Roberts looked at the man, and a little shiver ran down the barkeeper's spine. "There won't be four of you when we get through arguin' this, amigo, if we ever start," the Ranger suggested gently.

The proprietor of the place dropped his hand to the butt of his gun. But he did not draw. Some deep, wise instinct warned him to go slow. He knew the others would take their cue from him. If he threw down the gage of battle the room would instantly become a shambles. How many of them would again pass alive through the door nobody knew. He was a man who had fought often, but he could not quite bring himself to such a decision while those chilled-steel eyes bored into his. Anyhow, the game was not worth the candle.

"What is it you want Tony for?" he temporized, playing for time and any chance that might arise.

"For killin' Rutherford Wadley last month."

"A mistake. Tony has been here since the full of the moon."

"Oh, no. He was at the dance on Tomichi Creek. He tried to knife young Wadley. He left the house right after him."

"I left--sí, señor--but to come here," cried the accused man.

"To follow Wadley, Tony. You jumped a camper that night an' didn't know it. He saw you."

"Wadley was a dog, but I did not kill him," Alviro said gloomily.

"That so? You were on the spot. You left tracks. I measured 'em. They were the same tracks you left out in the corral five hours ago."

Tony's eyes flashed with a sudden discovery. "The mud--you meex it to get my footprints."

"You're a good guesser."

Alviro threw up his hands. "I was there. It iss true. But I did not kill the gringo dog. I was too late."

"You can tell me all about that on the way back."

"If I go back they will hang me."

"You'll get a fair trial."

"By a gringo jury before a gringo judge." The tone of Alviro was more than skeptical. It was bitter with the sense of racial injustice.

"I can't argue that with you, Tony. My business is to take you to Tascosa. That's what I'm here for."

The American behind the bar spoke again. "Listens fine! He's a Mexican, ain't he? They claim he killed a white man. Well, then, the mob would take him from you an' lynch him sure."

"The Rangers don't give up their prisoners, my friend. They take 'em an' they keep 'em. You'd ought to know that."

The tendejón-keeper flushed. He had been dragged to justice once by one of the force.

The eyes of the four consulted again. They were still hesitant. The shame of letting this youth take from them their companion without a fight was like a burr under a saddle-blanket to a bronco. But after all, the Ranger stood for law. If they killed him, other Rangers would come to avenge his death.

When men are in doubt the one who is sure dominates the situation. The eye of Roberts carried the compulsion of a deadly weapon. His voice was crisp.

"Come here, Tony," he ordered, and his fingers slipped into the pocket of his coat.

Alviro looked at him for a long second--swore to himself that he would not come--and came.

"Hold out yore hands."

The Mexican set his will to refuse. There was still time to elect to fight. He told himself that was what he was going to do. But he could not hold his own in that steady battle of the eyes. His hands moved forward--empty.

A moment, and the Ranger had slipped and fastened the handcuffs on his wrists.

Roberts had won. Psychologically it was now too late for the others to resort to arms. The tendejón-keeper recognized this with a shrug that refused responsibility for the outcome. After all, Tony had made his own decision. He had chosen to take his chances in Tascosa rather than on the spot with the Ranger.

"Saddle Tony's horse," ordered Roberts, looking at one of the Mexicans.

The man growled something in his native tongue, but none the less he moved toward the corral.

Within a quarter of an hour the Ranger and his prisoner were on their way. Two days later Roberts delivered his man to the deputy sheriff who had charge of the sod-house jail in the little town.

"There's a message here for you from Cap Ellison," the deputy said. "He wants you to go to Clarendon. Says you were to jog on down soon as you show up here."

"All right, Snark."

He rode down next day, changed horses at the halfway station, and reached Clarendon early in the morning. Ellison had been called to Mobeetie, but left instructions for him to await his return.

The semi-weekly stage brought two days later a letter, to Captain Ellison from Snark. Jack Roberts, obeying office instructions, opened the mail. The letter said:

Dere Cap,

They are aiming to lynch that Mexican Roberts brought in. The Dinsmore outfit is stirring up the town. Send a company of your Rangers, for God's sake, quick.

Respectably yours Jim Snark

Jack Roberts was the only Ranger in town. He glanced at the clock. There was just time to catch the stage to Tascosa. He reached for his guns and his hat.

CHAPTER XII

TEX REARRANGES THE SEATING

The Tascosa stage was full. Its passengers were "packed like Yanks at Libby Prison," according to one of them, an ex-Confederate who had drifted West after the war. They were of the varied types common to the old Southwest--a drover, a cattle-buyer, a cowpuncher looking for a job, a smart salesman from St. Louis, and one young woman. Beside the driver on the box sat a long-bodied man in buckskin with a clean brown jaw and an alert, sardonic eye.

The salesman, a smooth, good-looking fellow whose eye instinctively rested on attractive women, made inquiries of Joe Johnson's old trooper.

"Who's the damsel?"

"Which?"

"The girl. She's a pippin." His possessive eye gloated on the young woman in front. "She didn't learn how to dress in this neck of the woods, either. Betcha she's from New Orleans or St. Louis."

The old warrior helped himself to a chew of tobacco. "You lose. She's Clint Wadley's daughter, an' he's an old-timer. Knocked the bark off'n this country, Clint did. I used to know him when he was takin' the hides off the buffaloes. Got his start that way, I reckon. Clint's outfit got six thousand tongues in six months oncet. Pickled the tongues an' sold 'em for three cents apiece, by gum. Delivered the hides at Clarendon for one-fifty straight on contract."

"I've heard of Wadley," the salesman said. "What's the kid going to Tascosa for?"

"Goin' to stay awhile with her aunt, I 'low. Her brother was killed recent."

"I've heard about that, too. They caught the fellow, didn't they--the one that did it?"

"They got a Mexican jailed for it. I dunno whether he done it or not. That young Ranger on the box run him down."

"That kid in buckskin?" sneered the city man.

The ex-Confederate bristled at the tone rather than the words. He happened to be a friend of the youth mentioned.

"I'll follow Jack's dust any day of the week. He's one hell-poppin' rooster. No better man rides leather. When I druv a wagon oncet gatherin' bones--"

"Gathering bones?"

"Sure--buffalo-bones, for fertilizer. Well, that same Jack Roberts yanked me out o' the Canadian when I was drowndin'. Took a big chance, too."

"What about this Mexican? Are they going to hang him?"

"I reckon. He's in a soddy up at Tascosa. I done heard they're aimin' to tear it down and hang him to a wagon-tongue."[3]

The black-haired traveling man caressed his little mustache and watched the girl boldly. Her face was a little wan, and in the deep eyes was shadowed a heartache. But it had been impossible even for grief to submerge the sweet youth in her. There were lights in her soft, wavy hair, and the line of her exquisite throat would have delighted a sculptor. The slim figure was exquisitely poised, though just now it suggested weariness.

When the stage stopped at noon for dinner the salesman made it a point to sit beside her at the long table. His persistent attentions to the girl made the delicate color of her cheek deepen. She was too shy, too unused to the world, to know how to suppress his audacities effectively. But it was plain to one young man sitting at the opposite end of the table that the familiarities of the man were unwelcome.

While they were waiting outside for the change-horses to be hitched, the Ranger made a request of the old soldier.

"Wish you'd swap places with me, Sam."

"Sure. I'd a heap ruther sit outside. Say, that drummer hadn't ought to worry Miss Ramona. She's not feelin' very peart, anyhow. I reckon she set the world an' all by that scalawag brother of hers."

"He's not goin' to trouble her any more, Sam."

The ex-Confederate looked at the narrow-flanked young man with an alert question in his eye. If "Tex" Roberts was going to take a hand, the salesman was certainly riding for a fall.

The salesman had made up his mind to sit beside Miss Wadley for the rest of the journey. He emerged from the dining-room at her heels and was beside her to offer a hand into the stage.

Ramona gave him a look of reproach and entreaty. She was near tears. The man from St. Louis smiled confidently.

"I know a good thing when I see it," he whispered. "I'll ride beside you and keep off the rough-necks, Miss Wadley."

A heavy heel smashed down on the toes of his neat shoe and crunched round. A hard elbow bumped up forcefully against his chin as if by accident. A muscular hand caught the loose fat of his plump stomach and tightened like a vise. The dapper salesman opened his mouth in a shriek of pain.

"Indigestion?" asked the Ranger sympathetically, and his sinewy fingers twisted in the cushion of flesh they gripped. "I'll get you somethin' good for it in a minute."

Roberts flung the man back and rearranged the seating inside so that the drover sat beside Ramona as before dinner. Then he tucked an arm under that of the St. Louis man and led him back into the stage station. The salesman jerked along beside him unhappily. His wrist, wrenched by Roberts in a steady pressure of well-trained muscles, hurt exquisitely. When at last he was flung helplessly into a chair, tears of pain and rage filled his eyes. Never in the course of a cushioned and pampered life had he been so manhandled.

"My God, you brute, you've killed me!" he sobbed.

"Sho! I haven't begun yet. If you take the stage to-day to Tascosa I'm goin' to sit beside you real friendly, an' we'll play like we been doin' all the way in to town. It's just my way of bein' neighborly."

"I'll have the law of you for this," the city man howled, uncertain which of his injuries to nurse first.

"I would," agreed the Texan. "Well, so long, if you ain't comin'."

Roberts moved back with long, easy stride to the stage. He nodded to the driver.

"All ready, Hank. The drummer ain't feelin' well. He'll stay here overnight. I reckon I'll keep my own seat outside, Sam." And Roberts swung himself up.

The old soldier climbed in, chuckling to himself. It had been the neatest piece of work he had ever seen. The big body of the cowboy had been between Ramona and her tormentor, so that she did not know what had taken place. She did know, however, that the woman-killer had been obliterated swiftly from her path.

"Did you ever see anything like the way he got shet o' that drummer?" Sam asked his neighbor in a whisper. "I'll bet that doggoned masher will be hard to find when Jack's on the map. He's some go-getter boy, Jack Roberts is."

Meanwhile Jack was flagellating himself. It was his bad luck always to be associated in the mind of Miss Wadley with violence. He had beaten up the brother whom she was now mourning. He had almost been the cause of her own death. Now a third time she saw him in the role of a trouble-maker. To her, of course, he could be nothing but a bully and a bad lot. The least he could do was to make himself as inconspicuous as possible for the rest of the journey.

Man may shuffle the pack, but when all is done woman is likely to cut the cards. The driver stopped at Tin Cup Creek to water the horses. To Jack, sitting on the box, came the cattle-drover with orders.

"The young lady has somethin' to say to you, Tex. You're to swap seats with me."

The lean, bronzed young man swung down. He had, when he wished, a wooden face that told no tales. It said nothing now of a tide of blood flushing his veins.

By a little gesture the girl indicated the seat beside her. Not till the creaking of the moving stage drowned her words did she speak. Her eyes were dilated with excitement.

"I overheard them talking in the back seat," she said. "They think there's going to be a lynching at Tascosa--that the mob is going to hang the Mexican who killed my brother. Are you going to let them do it?"

"Not in this year of our Lord, Miss Wadley," he answered evenly.

"Can you stop them?"

"That's what I draw a dollar a day for."

"You mustn't let them do it!" she cried, a little wildly. "Let the law punish him!"

"Suits me. I'll try to persuade the boys to look at it that way."

"But what can you do? You're only a boy."

With a grim little smile he paraphrased Roy Bean's famous phrase: "I'm law east of the Pecos right now, Miss Wadley. Don't you worry. The Dinsmores won't get him if I can help it."

"I might speak to my father," she went on, thinking aloud. "But he's so bitter I'm afraid he won't do anything."

"He will after I've talked with him."

Her anxious young eyes rested in his clear, steady gaze. There was something about this youth that compelled confidence. His broad-shouldered vigor, the virile strength so confidently reposeful, were expressions of personality rather than accidentals of physique.

The road dipped suddenly into a deep wash that was almost a little gulch. There was a grinding of brakes, then a sudden lurch that threw Ramona against the shoulder of the Ranger.

"The brake's done bust," she heard the ex-Confederate say.

Another violent swing flung Ramona outward. The horses were off the road, and the coach swayed ominously on two wheels. The girl caught at the Ranger's hand and clung to it. Gently he covered her hand with his other one, released his fingers, and put a strong arm round her shoulders.

Hank's whip snaked out across the backs of the wheelers. He flung at his horses a torrent of abuse. The stage reached the bottom of the wash in a succession of lurches. Then, as suddenly as the danger had come upon them, it had passed; the stage was safely climbing the opposite side of the ravine.

The Ranger's arm slipped from the shoulders of the girl. Her hand crept from under his. He did not look at her, but he knew that a shell-pink wave had washed into the wan face.

The slim bosom of the girl rose and fell fast. Already she was beginning to puzzle over the difficulties of a clear-cut right and wrong, to discover that no unshaded line of cleavage differentiates them sometimes. Surely this young fellow could not be all bad. Of course she did not like him. She was quite sure of that. He was known as a tough citizen. He had attacked and beaten brutally her brother Rutherford--the wild brother whose dissipations she had wept and prayed over, and whose death she was now mourning. Yet Fate kept throwing him in her way to do her services. He had saved her life. He had adroitly--somehow, she did not quite know in what way--rid her of an offensive fellow traveler. She had just asked a favor of him, and there was yet another she must ask.

Ramona put off her request to the last moment. At Tascosa she left her purse in the stage seat and discovered it after the coach had started to the barn.

"My purse. I left it in the seat," she cried.

The announcement was made to the world at large, but it was intended for a particular pair of ears set close to a small head of wavy, sun-reddened hair. The owner of them ran to the stage and recovered the purse. By the time he reached Ramona, the rest of the party were inside the post-office.

She thanked him, then looked at him quickly with an effect of shy daring.

"You travel a good deal, don't you--about the country?"

"Considerable."

"I--I wonder if--" She took courage from his friendly smile. "I'm worried about Mr. Ridley--for fear something has happened to him."

"You mean an accident?" he asked gently.

"I don't know." Her cheeks flew color-signals of embarrassment. "My father was harsh to him. He's very sensitive. I feel--sort of responsible. He might do something foolish."

"I don't reckon he will. But I'll sure keep an eye out for him."

She gave him her little hand gratefully, then remembered what he had done to her brother and withdrew it hastily from his grip. In another moment she had passed into the post-office and left him alone.

[Footnote 3: There was no timber in the Panhandle. The first man ever hanged in the short-grass country was suspended from a propped-up wagon-tongue.]

CHAPTER XIII

"ONLY ONE MOB, AIN'T THERE?"

After Miss Wadley had disappeared in the post-office a man touched Roberts on the shoulder.

"Where are the Rangers I sent for?" he asked.

"Here I am, Snark."

"You didn't come alone?"

"Captain Ellison was out of town. The rest of the force was away on assignment. I couldn't reach any of 'em."

The deputy sheriff broke out in excited annoyance. "All right! I wash my hands of it. They can lynch the Mexican soon as they've a mind to. Let 'em go to it. Here I send for a company of Rangers, an' one kid shows up. What in Mexico can you do alone?"

"I wouldn't say alone. You're here, Snark."

"I'm not goin' to lift a hand--not a hand."

"Sure it's necessary? What makes you think they're goin' to lynch Alviro?"

"They don't make any bones of it. Everybody knows it. The Dinsmore gang is in town stirrin' up feelin'. You might as well have stayed away. There's not a thing you can do."

"I reckon mebbe we can figure a way to save Tony," answered the Ranger easily.

The deputy voiced his impatience. "Yore talk sounds plumb foolish to me. Don't you get it? We're not dealin' with one or two men. Half the town is in this thing."

"I promised Tony there would be nothin' of that sort."

"You can't handle a mob all by yoreself, can you?" asked Snark sarcastically. "There's only one of you, I reckon."

The little flicker in the Ranger's eye was not wholly amusement. "There's goin' to be only one mob, too, ain't there?" he drawled.

"You can't slip him out unnoticed, if that's yore idee. They've got watchers round the jail," the deputy went on.

"I shan't try."

"Then you'll let 'em hang him?"

"Oh, no!"

"What in hell do you mean to do, then?"

Roberts told him, in part. The deputy shook his head vehemently.

"Can't be done. First place, you can't get Wadley to do it. He won't lift a hand to stop this hangin'. Second place, he couldn't stop it if he wanted to. Folks in Tascosa ain't a bit gun-shy, an' right now they've got their necks bowed. An' this Dinsmore gang--they'll eat you alive if you get in their way."

"Mebbeso. You can't always be sure. I've got one card up my sleeve I haven't mentioned to you."

"If you want my opinion--"

The Ranger cut him off short. "I don't, Snark. Not right now. I'm too busy to listen to it. I want to know just one thing of you. Will you have the horses right where I want 'em when I want 'em?"

"You're the doc," acknowledged the deputy grudgingly. "They'll be there, but just the same I think it's a fool play. You can't get away with it."

Jack asked a question. "Where am I most likely to find Wadley?"

"At McGuffey's store. It's a block this-a-way and a block that-a-way." He indicated directions with his hand.

Wadley was not among those who sat on the porch of the general store known as McGuffey's Emporium. He had just gone to his sister's house to meet his daughter Ramona, of whose arrival he had received notice by a boy. Roberts followed him.

In answer to the Ranger's "Hello, the house!" the cattleman came out in his shirt-sleeves.

Jack cut straight to business.

"I've come to see you about that Mexican Alviro, Mr. Wadley. Is it true they're goin' to lynch him?"

The hard eyes of the grizzled Texan looked full at Roberts. This young fellow was the one who had beaten his son and later had had the impudence to burn as a spill for a cigarette the hundred-dollar bill he had sent him.

"Whyfor do you ask me about it?" he demanded harshly.

"Because you've got to help me stop this thing."

The cattleman laughed mirthlessly. "They can go as far as they like for me. Suits me fine. Hangin' is too good for him. That's all I've got to say."

Already he had refused the pleadings of his daughter, and he had no intention of letting this young scalawag change his mind.

"Are you sure this Mexican is guilty--sure he's the man who killed yore son, Mr. Wadley?"

"He's as guilty as hell."

"I don't think it. Hasn't it ever struck you as strange that yore son was killed an' yore messenger Ridley held up the same night, an' that the two things happened not many miles from each other?"

"Of course it has. I'm no fool. What of it?"

"I've always thought the same men did both."

"Young fellow, have you ever thought that Ridley never was held up, that it was a fake robbery pulled off to deceive me? Where is Ridley? He lit out mighty sudden when he saw how I took it. He couldn't even tell me where the hold-up happened. I never did hit the trail of the robbers."

"It wasn't a fake. I can prove that."

"I'm here to be shown," said the cattleman skeptically.

"But first about Tony. It looks bad for him on the surface. I'll admit that. But--"

"Don't talk to me about my boy's murderer, Roberts!" cried Wadley, flushing angrily. "I'll not do a thing for him. I'll help those that aim to do justice on him."

"He didn't kill yore son."

"What! Didn't you arrest him yoreself for it?"

"When I arrested him, I didn't believe he had done it. I know it now. He's my star witness, an' I knew he would skip across the border if I let him out."

"You can't convince me, but let's hear yore fairy tale. I got to listen, I reckon."

Jack told his story in few words. He explained what he had found at the scene of the murder and how he had picked up the trail of the three horsemen who had followed Rutherford to the place of his death. He had back-tracked to the camp of the rendezvous at the rim-rock, and he had found there corroborative evidence of the statement Tony Alviro had made to him.

"What was it he told you, and what did you find?"

The big cattleman looked at him with a suspicion that was akin to hostility. His son had been a ne'er-do-well. In his heart Wadley was not sure he had not been worse. But he was ready to fight at the drop of the hat any man who dared suggest it. He did not want to listen to any evidence that would lead him to believe ill of the son who had gone wrong.

"Tony admits all the evidence against him. He did follow Rutherford intendin' to kill him. But when he saw yore son strike straight across country to the cap-rock, he trailed him to see where he was goin'. Alviro had heard stories."

"You can't tell me anything against my boy. I won't stand for it," broke out the tortured father.

The Ranger looked straight at him. "I'm goin' to tell you no harm of him except that he kept bad company," he said gently. "I reckon you know that already."

"Go on," commanded the father hoarsely.

"Tony followed him to the rim-rock, an' on the way they jumped up the camper, though Alviro did not know it. At the rim-rock Rutherford met two men. Presently another man joined them."

"Who were they?"

"Alviro isn't dead sure. He climbed up to a rock bluff back of them, but it was still dark an' he couldn't make them out. Pretty soon Rutherford found out they had a sack of gold. He must have found out where they got it, too."

Underneath the deep tan of his cheeks the old-timer whitened. "So you're tryin' to tell me that my boy was one of the gang that robbed my messenger! An' you're askin' me to believe it on the word of a greaser with a rope around his neck. Is that it?"

"No. They had a quarrel, but yore son bluffed 'em out. They gave the gold to him. He saddled an' rode away with it. On his way back to town he was murdered. So he never got a chance to turn it back to you."

The father of the man who had been killed drew a long, sobbing breath of relief. His clenched fists slowly opened.

"Tony saw all this, did he?"

"Not all of it. Day was comin' on, an' he couldn't follow Rutherford right away. Before he got goin' the three men saddled. They trailed along after yore son, an' Tony a mile or so behind 'em. After awhile he heard a shot. He took his time investigatin', because he didn't want to stop any bullets himself. At the foot of Battle Butte he found Rutherford. He had been shot from behind an' flung over the bluff."

The face of the cattleman twitched. "If I can lay my hands on the man or men that did it--"

"Mebbe you can, if you'll give me time. I checked up Tony's story, an' everywhere there was evidence to back it. He had no rifle with him, but I picked up a shell back of some rocks a hundred yards from where yore son must have been standin' when he was shot. The shell came from a '73. I back-tracked to the night-camp, an' it was just like Tony had said. Four men had been there. One left before the others. You could see the signs where they had trailed him. Once or twice they missed his tracks an' found 'em again. Same way with the single man followin' them. He had taken short-cuts too. Sometimes he blotted out the hoofprints of the three in front, so I know he was not ahead of 'em."

"You think the Dinsmores did this, Jack?"

"I want more evidence before I say so publicly. But Tony didn't. Here's another point in his favor. If Tony shot him on the bluff an' flung the body over, why did he have to go down below an' look at it? No need a-tall of that. No; Tony went down to make sure who it was that had been killed. Soon as he knew that he guessed he would be accused of it, an' he lit out for No Man's Land. I found him there three weeks later."

The cattleman apologized after a fashion for some hard things he had said and thought about his former employee. "I don't spend any of my time likin' yore style, Roberts. You're too high-heeled for me. But I'll say this for you: Ellison picked a good man when he got you. You're a straight-up rider, an' you'll do to take along. What's yore programme?"

He told it. The cattleman looked at him with increased respect. He gave a short, barking laugh.

"If it was anybody else I'd say it was crazy, but you're such a doggoned hellion of a go-getter mebbe you can put it over."

"Looks to me like a good bet," said Roberts mildly.

"Well, I an' my friends will be right there if we're needed. I'll see you through. Can't afford to have my best witness strung up to a wagon-tongue yet awhile."

They talked over the details; then the Ranger started for the jail, and the cattleman breezed around to give a little tip to some reliable friends. Wadley was quite of a mind with Roberts. There was going to be no lynching at Tascosa if he could help it.

CHAPTER XIV

JACK SERVES NOTICE

Jack Roberts liked to get his information first hand. On his way to the jail he deflected, passed up the wide, dusty main street, and stopped at a log "hogan" made of bois d'arc timber and cedar from the brakes. Across the front of it was printed roughly a sign:

THE SILVER DOLLAR

The Ranger took a little hitch at his guns to make sure they would slide easily from the holsters in case of need, then strolled into the saloon, a picture of negligent indifference.

A tall man, lank as a shad, was master of ceremonies. Steve Gurley was in high feather. He was treating the crowd and was availing himself of his privilege as host to do the bulk of the talking. His theme was the righteousness of mob law, with particular application to the case of Tony Alviro. He talked loudly, as befits one who is a leader of public opinion.

Some wandering of attention in his audience brought him to a pause. He turned, to see the Ranger leaning indolently against the door-jamb. Jack was smiling in the manner of one quietly amused.

"Who invited you here?" demanded Gurley, taken aback, but unwilling to show it.

"Me, I just dropped in to hear yore big talk. Reminds me of old Geronimo. Like you, he gets all filled up with words about every so often and has to steam off. Go ahead, Gurley. Don't let me interrupt you. Make heap oration."

But Gurley's fluency was gone. His cross-eyed glance slid round the room to take stock of his backers. Was this fellow Roberts alone, or had he a dozen Rangers in town with him? He decided to bluff, though with no very great confidence. For into the picture had walked a man, a personality, dynamic and forceful. The outlaw had seen him in action once, and he had been on that occasion as easy to handle as a cageful of panthers.

"Come to see the hangin', have you, Mr. Ranger?"

"Is there goin' to be a hangin'?"

"You betcha--to-night! Git around early, an' you can have a front seat." Gurley added a word of explanation. "No greaser can git biggity an' shoot up our friends without hangin' from the end of a wagon-tongue pronto."

"We'll see what a judge an' jury say about it," suggested the Ranger mildly.

"That so? No brindle-thatched guy in buckskin can interfere without sleepin' in smoke. Understand?" The long, sallow man nervously stroked his hair, which was flattened down on his forehead in a semicircle in the absurd fashion of the day.

"Don't pull on yore picket-pin, Gurley," observed Roberts. "What I say goes. There's goin' to be no hangin' till the courts say so."

A man had come into the saloon by the back door. He was a heavy-set, slouchy man in jeans, broad-shouldered and bowlegged. He laughed grimly. "I don't reckon you can put that over on folks of the short-grass country, young fellow, me lad. We grow man-size, an' I don't expect we'll ask yore say-so when we're ready for business."

Pete Dinsmore had the advantage of his colleague. He knew that Roberts was the only Ranger in town. Also he was of tougher stuff. The leader of the Dinsmore gang would go through.

Into the gray-blue eye of the young man came a look that chilled. "Dinsmore, I'm not here to get into a rookus with you. But I'll serve notice on you right now to keep yore mind off Alviro. He's in the hands of the Texas Rangers. You know what that means."

Dinsmore met the warning with a sneer. "I was hittin' my heels on this range when you was knee-high to a duck, kid. Don't make a mistake. Folks don't make 'em with me twice." He thrust the head on his bull neck forward and dropped a hand to the gun by his side.

The Ranger shook his head. "Not just now, Pete. You're a bad hombre; I know that. Some day we're liable to tangle. But it will be in the way of business. While I'm workin' for the State I've got no private feuds."

Jack turned and walked out of the place as casually as he had entered. He knew now that Snark was right. Tascosa meant to hang the Mexican within a few hours.

Evidently Tony had heard the news. He looked up with quick apprehension when Snark opened the door of his cell to admit the Ranger.

"You promise' me fair trial, señor. Yet to-day they mean to hang me. Not so?" he cried. The young Mexican was sweating drops of fear.

"That's why I'm here, Tony," answered Jack cheerfully. "The hangin' programme won't go through if you do exactly as I say. I'll stand by you. They'll not get you unless they get me. Is that fair?"

Confidence is born of confidence. Alviro felt himself buttressed by the quiet strength of this vigorous youth. Broader shoulders than his had assumed the responsibility.

"What is it that I am to do?" he asked, his liquid eyes filled with the dumb worship of a dog.

"You're to walk right beside me. No matter how the crowd presses--no matter what it does--stick right there. If you try to run, you're gone. I can't save you. Understand?"

"Sí, señor."

Roberts looked at his watch. "'Most time for the fireworks to begin. You'll wait here till I come back, Tony. I'm goin' to give a little exhibition first. Be with you pronto."

Little beads of sweat gathered again on the forehead of the prisoner. The palms of his hands were hot and moist. He glanced nervously out of the window. Ten minutes before there had been a few lookouts in sight; now there were a hundred men or more. The mob was beginning to gather for the storming of the sod-house. Soon the affairs of Tony Alviro would reach a crisis.

"I--I'll nev' get out alive," said the Mexican in a dry whisper.

The Ranger grinned at him. "Don't worry. If the luck breaks right we'll camp to-night under the stars. If it doesn't they'll bury us both, Tony."

In that smile was life for Alviro. It expressed a soul unperturbed, ready for anything that might come up. With this man beside him Tony felt courage flowing back into his heart.

CHAPTER XV

A CLOSE SHAVE

The Ranger opened the door of the "soddy," stepped through, and closed it behind him. Jeers, threats, bits of advice greeted him from those in front of the jail.

"Better p'int for the hills, Mr. Ranger." ... "A whole passel of sheriffs can't save the greaser." ... "Don't you-all try an' stop us if you know what's good for you." ... "Skedaddle while yore skin's whole." ... "It's the Mexican, anyhow; it's him an' you too, if you show fight."

The lean-flanked young Ranger looked them over coolly. Men were coming in driblets from the main street. Already perhaps there were a hundred and fifty men and boys in sight. They were the advance guard of the gathering mob.

Never in his gusty lifetime had Jack Roberts been more master of himself. He had that rare temperament which warms to danger. He stood there bareheaded, his crisp, curly bronze hair reflecting the glow of the setting sun, one hand thrust carelessly into his trousers pocket.

"Give up yore prisoner, an' we won't hurt you. We got nothin' against you," a voice cried.

Jack did not answer. His left hand came out of the pocket bringing with it half a dozen silver dollars. Simultaneously the nose of his revolver flashed into sight. A dollar went up into the air. The revolver cracked. The coin, struck by the bullet in its descent, was flung aside at an angle. Dollar after dollar went up and was hurled from its course as the weapon barked. Out of six shots the Ranger missed only one.

It was marvelous marksmanship, but it did not in the least cow those who saw the exhibition. They were frontiersmen themselves, many of them crack shots, and they knew that one man could do nothing against several hundred. Their taunts followed Roberts as he stepped back into the sod-house.

Jack reloaded his revolver and joined the Mexican. "All ready, Tony. We're off soon as I've put the cuffs on you," he said briskly.

"Don' handcuff me, señor. Give me a gun an' a chance for my life," begged Alviro. He was trembling like an aspen leaf in a summer breeze.

The Ranger shook his head. "No, Tony. If you weren't wearin' cuffs they'd think I meant to turn you loose. You wouldn't have a chance. I'm the law, an' you're my prisoner. That's goin' to help pull us through. Brace up, boy. I've got an ace up my sleeve you don't know about."

A minute later a great yell of triumph rose in the air. The door of the sod-house had opened, and the Ranger and his prisoner stood in front of it. The mob pushed closer, uncertain as to what its next move would be. Had Roberts brought out the Mexican with the intention of making a merely formal resistance?

Pete Dinsmore, just arrived on the scene at the head of a group from the saloons, shouldered his way to the front.

"We'll take care of yore prisoner now, Mr. Ranger. Much obliged for savin' us the trouble of tearin' down the soddy," he called jubilantly.

"You got more sense an' less grit than I figured you had," jeered Gurley. "Now light a shuck back to Mobeetie an' write a report on it."

Roberts waited, silent and motionless, for the tumult to die. Only his eyes and his brain were active. Homer Dinsmore was in the crowd, well to the front. So were Jumbo Wilkins, Clint Wadley, and half a dozen other line-riders and cowmen, all grouped together to the left. Fifty yards back of them a group of saddled horses waited.

The shouting spent itself. The motionless figure beside the pallid Mexican excited curiosity. Did he mean to give up his prisoner without a fight? That was not the usual habit of the Texas Ranger.

With his left hand Jack drew from a coat-pocket some dark sticks a few inches long. A second time his six-shooter leaped from its scabbard.

"Look out for his cutter!"[4] yelled Gurley.

The voice of Wadley boomed out harsh and strong, so that every man present heard what he said. "Gad, he's got dynamite!"

The revolvers of the two Dinsmores were already out. They had moved forward a step or two, crouching warily, eyes narrowed and steady. If this brash young Ranger wanted a fight he could have it on the jump. But at Wadley's shout they stopped abruptly. The owner of the A T O was right. The fool officer had several sticks of dynamite in his hand tied together loosely by a string.

The crowd had been edging forward. There was no break in it now, but one could see a kind of uneasy ripple, almost as though it held its mob breath tensely and waited to see what was to come.

"He's got no fuse!" screamed Gurley.

"Here's my fuse," retorted the Ranger. He held up his revolver so that all could see. "I'm goin' to fling this dynamite at the first man who tries to stop me an' hit it while it's in the air close to his head. Come on, Tony. We're on our way."

He moved slowly forward. The Dinsmores stood fast, but the crowd sagged. As the Ranger got closer there was a sudden break. Men began to scramble for safety.

"Look out, Dinsmore," an excited voice cried. It belonged to Jumbo Wilkins. "He'll blow you to hell an' back."

Both of the Dinsmores had a reputation for gameness in a country where the ordinary citizen was of proved courage. With revolvers or rifles they would have fought against odds, had done it more than once. But dynamite was a weapon to which they were not used. It carried with it the terror of an instant death which would leave them no chance to strike back. Very slowly at first, a step at a time, they gave ground.

Roberts, as he moved with his prisoner, edged toward Wadley and his group. He knew he had won, that the big cattleman and his friends would close behind him in apparent slow pursuit, so adroitly as to form a shield between him and the mob and thus prevent a rifle-shot from cutting him down. The horses were in sight scarce half a hundred yards away.

And in the moment of victory he shaved disaster. From the right there came the pad of light, running feet and the rustle of skirts.

"Goddlemighty, it's 'Mona!" cried Wadley, aghast.

It was. Ramona had known that something was in the air when the Ranger and her father held their conference in front of the house. Her aunt had commented on the fact that Clint had taken from the wall a sawed-off shotgun he sometimes carried by his saddle. The girl had waited, desperately anxious, until she could stand suspense no longer. Bareheaded, she had slipped out of the house and hurried toward the jail in time to see the Ranger facing alone an angry mob. Without thought of danger to herself she had run forward to join him.

Homer Dinsmore gave a whoop of triumph and rushed forward. The Ranger could not play with dynamite when the life of Wadley's daughter was at stake. His brother, Gurley, a dozen others, came close at his heels, just behind Ramona.

The Ranger dropped the black sticks into his pocket and backed away, screening his prisoner as he did so. The ex-Confederate who had come up on the stage was standing beside Wadley. He let out the old yell of his war days and plunged forward.

The Dinsmores bumped into the surprise of their lives. Somehow the man upon whom they had almost laid clutches was out of reach. Between him and them was a line of tough old-timers with drawn guns.

The owner of the A T O handed his sawed-off shotgun to Jumbo Wilkins, caught Ramona round the shoulders with one arm, and ran her hurriedly out of the danger-zone.

Joe Johnston's old trooper pushed the end of his rifle urgently against Homer Dinsmore's ribs. "Doggone it, don't be so rampageous! Keep back ther! This gun's liable to go off."

"What's ailin' you?" snarled Gurley. "Ain't you goin' to help us string up the Mexican?"

"No, Steve. Our intentions is otherwise," replied Jumbo with a grin. "An' don't any of you-all come closeter. This sawed-off shotgun of Clint's is loaded with buckshot, an' she spatters all over the State of Texas."

The little posse round the prisoner backed steadily to the left. Not till they were almost at the horses did Dinsmore's mob guess the intentions of the Ranger.

Pete gave a howl of rage and let fly a bullet at Alviro. Before the sound of the shot had died away, the outlaw dropped his revolver with an oath. The accurate answering fire of Roberts had broken his wrist.

"No use, Pete," growled his brother. "They've got the deadwood on us to-day. But I reckon there are other days comin'."

Homer Dinsmore was right. The mob had melted away like a small snowbank in a hot sun. It was one thing to help lynch a defenseless Mexican; it was quite another to face nine or ten determined men backing the law. Scarce a score of the vigilantes remained, and most of them were looking for a chance to save their faces "without starting anything," as Jumbo put it later.

The lynching-party stood sullenly at a distance and watched the Ranger, his prisoner, and three other men mount the horses. The rest of the posse covered the retreat of the horsemen.

Just before the riders left, Jumbo asked a question that had been disturbing him. "Say, Tex, honest Injun, would you 'a' fired off that dynamite if it had come to a showdown?"

Roberts laughed. He drew from his pocket the sticks, tossed them into the air, and took a quick shot with his revolver.

For a moment not a soul in the posse nor one of Dinsmore's watching vigilantes drew a breath. Not one had time to move in self-defense.

The bullet hit its mark. All present saw the little spasmodic jerk of the bundle in the air. But there was no explosion. The dynamite fell harmlessly to the ground.

The old Confederate stepped forward and picked up the bundle. He examined it curiously, then let out a whoop of joyous mirth.

"Nothin' but painted sticks! Son, you're sure a jim-dandy! Take off yore hats, boys, to the man that ran a bluff on the Dinsmore outfit an' made a pair of deuces stick against a royal flush."

He tossed the bits of wood across to Pete Dinsmore, who caught the bundle and looked down at it with a sinister face of evil. This boy had out-maneuvered, outgamed, and outshot him. Dinsmore was a terror in the land, a bad-man known and feared widely. Mothers, when they wanted to frighten their children, warned them to behave, or the Dinsmore gang would get them. Law officers let these outlaws alone on one pretext or another. But lately a company of the Texas Rangers had moved up into the Panhandle. This young cub had not only thrown down the gauntlet to him; he had wounded him, thwarted him, laughed at him, and made a fool of him. The prestige he had built up so carefully was shaken.

The black eyes of the outlaw blazed in their deep sockets. "By God, young fellow, it's you or me next time we meet. I'll learn you that no scrub Ranger can cross Pete Dinsmore an' get away with it. This ain't the first time you've run on the rope with me. I've had more 'n plenty of you."

The riders were moving away, but Jack Roberts turned in the saddle, one hand on the rump of the bronco.

"It won't be the last time either, Dinsmore. You look like any other cheap cow-thief to me. The Rangers are going to bring law to this country. Tell yore friends they'll live longer if they turn honest men."

The Ranger put spurs to his horse and galloped after his posse.

[Footnote 4: In the early days in Texas a revolver was sometimes called a "cutter."]

CHAPTER XVI

WADLEY GOES HOME IN A BUCKBOARD

Clint Wadley took his daughter to the end of the street where his sister lived, blowing her up like a Dutch uncle every foot of the way. The thing she had done had violated his sense of the proprieties and he did not hesitate to tell her so. He was the more unrestrained in his scolding because for a few moments his heart had stood still at the danger in which she had placed herself.

"If you was just a little younger I'd sure enough paddle you. Haven't you been brought up a-tall? Did you grow up like Topsy, without any folks? Don't you know better than to mix up in men's affairs an' git yoreself talked about?" he spluttered.

Ramona hung her head and accepted his reproaches humbly. It was easy for her to believe that she had been immodest and forward in her solicitude. Probably Mr. Roberts--and everybody else, for that matter--thought she could not be a nice girl, since she had been so silly.

"You go home an' stay there," continued Clint severely. "Don't you poke yore head outside the door till I come back. I'll not have you traipsing around this-a-way. Hear me, honey?"

"Yes, Dad," she murmured through the tears that were beginning to come.

"I reckon, when it comes to standin' off a crowd o' hoodlums, I don't need any help from a half-grown little squab like you. I been too easy on you. That's what ails you."

Ramona had not a word to say for herself. She crept into the house and up to her room, flung herself on the bed and burst into a passion of weeping. Why had she made such an exhibition of herself? She was ashamed in every fiber of her being. Not only had she disgraced herself, but also her father and her aunt.

Meanwhile her father was on his way back downtown. In spite of his years the cattleman was hot-headed. He had something to say to Pete Dinsmore. If it led to trouble Wadley would be more than content, for he believed now that the Dinsmore gang--or some one of them acting in behalf of all--had murdered his son, and he would not rest easy until he had avenged the boy.

The Dinsmores were not at the Silver Dollar nor at the Bird Cage. A lounger at the bar of the latter told the owner of the A T O that they had gone to the corral for their horses. He had heard them say they were going to leave town.

The cattleman followed them to the corral they frequented. Pete Dinsmore was saddling his horse in front of the stable. The others were not in sight, but a stable boy in ragged jeans was working over some harness near the door.

Dinsmore sulkily watched Wadley approach. He was in a sour and sullen rage. One of the privileges of a "bad-man" is to see others step softly and speak humbly in his presence. But to-day a young fellow scarcely out of his teens had made him look like a fool. Until he had killed Roberts, the chief of the outlaws would never be satisfied, nor would his prestige be what it had been. It had been the interference of Wadley and his crowd that had saved the Ranger from him, and he was ready to vent his anger on the cattleman if he found a good chance.

The outlaw knew well enough that he could not afford to quarrel with the owner of the A T O. There was nothing to gain by it and everything to lose, for even if the cattleman should be killed in a fair fight, the Rangers would eventually either shoot the Dinsmores or run them out of the country. But Pete was beyond reason just now. He was like a man with a toothache who grinds on his sore molar in the intensity of his pain.

"I've come to tell you somethin', Dinsmore," said Wadley harshly.

"Come to apologize for throwin' me down, I reckon. You needn't. I'm through with you."

"I'm not through with you. What I want to say is that you're a dog. No, you're worse than any hound I ever knew; you're a yellow wolf."

"What's that?" cried the bad-man, astounded. His uninjured hand crept to a revolver-butt.

"I believe in my soul that you murdered my boy."

"You're crazy, man--locoed sure enough. The Mexican--"

"Is a witness against you. When you heard that he had followed Ford that night, you got to worryin'. You didn't know how much he had seen. So you decided to play safe an' lynch him, you hellhound."

"Where did you dream that stuff, Wadley?" demanded Dinsmore, eyes narrowed wrathfully.

"I didn't dream it, any more than I dreamed that you followed Ford from the cap-rock where you hole up, an' shot him from behind at Battle Butte."

"That's war talk, Wadley. I've just got one word to say to it. You're a liar. Come a-shootin', soon as you're ready."

"That's now."

The cattleman reached for his forty-five, but before he could draw, a shot rang out from the corral. Wadley staggered forward a step or two and collapsed.

Pete did not relax his wariness. He knew that one of the gang had shot Wadley, but he did not yet know how badly the man was hurt. From his place behind the horse he took a couple of left-handed shots across the saddle at the helpless man. The cattleman raised himself on an elbow, but fell back with a grunt.

The position of Dinsmore was an awkward one to fire from. Without lifting his gaze from the victim, he edged slowly round the bronco.

There was a shout of terror, a sudden rush of hurried feet. The stableboy had flung himself down on Wadley in such a way as to protect the prostrate body with his own.

"Git away from there!" ordered the outlaw, his face distorted with the lust for blood that comes to the man-killer.

"No. You've done enough harm. Let him alone!" cried the boy wildly.

The young fellow was gaunt and ragged. A thin beard straggled over the boyish face. The lips were bloodless, and the eyes filled with fear. But he made no move to scramble for safety. It was plain that in spite of his paralyzing horror he meant to stick where he was.

Dinsmore's lip curled cruelly. He hesitated. This boy was the only witness against him. Why not make a clean job of it and wipe him out too? He fired--and missed; Pete was not an expert left-hand shot.

"Look out, Pete. Men comin' down the road," called the other Dinsmore from the gate of the corral.

Pete looked and saw two riders approaching. It was too late now to make sure of Wadley or to silence the wrangler. He shoved his revolver back into its place and swung to the saddle.

"Was it you shot Wadley?" he asked his brother.

"Yep, an none too soon. He was reachin' for his six-shooter."

"The fool would have it. Come, let's burn the wind out of here before a crowd gathers."

Gurley and a fourth man joined them. The four galloped down the road and disappeared in a cloud of white dust.

A moment later Jumbo Wilkins descended heavily from his horse. Quint Sullivan, another rider for the A T O, was with him.

The big line-rider knelt beside his employer and examined the wound. "Hit once--in the side," he pronounced.

"Will--will he live?" asked the white-faced stableboy.

"Don't know. But he's a tough nut, Clint is. He's liable to be cussin' out the boys again in a month or two."

Wadley opened his eyes. "You're damn' whistlin', Jumbo. Get me to my sister's."

Quint, a black-haired youth of twenty, gave a repressed whoop. "One li'l' bit of a lead pill can't faze the boss. They took four or five cracks at him an' didn't hit but once. That's plumb lucky."

"It would 'a' been luckier if they hadn't hit him at all, Quint," answered Jumbo dryly. "You fork yore hawss, son, an' go git Doc Bridgman. An' you--whatever they call you, Mr. Hawss--rustler--harness a team to that buckboard."

Jumbo, with the expertness of an old-timer who had faced emergencies of this kind before, bound up the wound temporarily. The stable-rustler hitched a team, covered the bottom of the buckboard with hay, and helped Wilkins lift the wounded man to it.

Clint grinned faintly at the white-faced boy beside him. A flicker of recognition lighted his eyes. "You look like you'd seen a ghost, Ridley. Close call for both of us, eh? Lucky that Ranger plugged Dinsmore in the shootin' arm. Pete's no two-gun man. Can't shoot for sour apples with his left hand. Kicked up dust all around us, an' didn't score once."

"Quit yore talkin', Clint," ordered Jumbo.

"All right, Doc." The cattleman turned to Ridley. "Run ahead, boy, an' prepare' Mona so's she won't be scared plumb to death. Tell her it's only a triflin' flesh-wound. Keep her busy fixin' up a bed for me--an' bandages. Don't let her worry. See?"

Ridley had come to town only two days before. Ever since the robbery he had kept a lone camp on Turkey Creek. There was plenty of game for the shooting, and in that vast emptiness of space he could nurse his wounded self-respect. But he had run out of flour and salt. Because Tascosa was farther from the A T O ranch than Clarendon he had chosen it as a point to buy supplies. The owner of the corral had offered him a job, and he had taken it. He had not supposed that Ramona was within a hundred miles of the spot. The last thing in the world he wanted was to meet her, but there was no help for it now.

Her aunt carried to Ramona the word that a man was waiting outside with a message from her father. When she came down the porch steps, there were still traces of tear-stains on her cheeks. In the gathering dusk she did not at first recognize the man at the gate. She moved forward doubtfully, a slip of a slender-limbed girl, full of the unstudied charm and grace of youth.

Halfway down the path she stopped, her heart beating a little faster. Could this wan and ragged man with the unkempt beard be Art Ridley, always so careful of his clothes and his personal appearance? She was a child of impulse. Her sympathy went out to him with a rush, and she streamed down the path to meet him. A strong, warm little hand pressed his. A flash of soft eyes irradiated him. On her lips was the tender smile that told him she was still his friend.

"Where in the world have you been?" she cried. "And what have you been doing to yourself?"

His blood glowed at the sweetness of her generosity.

"I've been--camping."

With the shyness and the boldness of a child she pushed home her friendliness. "Why don't you ever come to see a fellow any more?"

He did not answer that, but plunged at his mission. "Miss Ramona, I've got bad news for you. Your father has been hurt--not very badly, I think. He told me to tell you that the wound was only a slight one."

'Mona went white to the lips. "How?" she whispered.

"The Dinsmores shot him. The men are bringing him here."

He caught her in his arms as she reeled. For a moment her little head lay against his shoulder and her heart beat against his.

"A trifling flesh-wound, your father called it," went on Ridley. "He said you were to get a bed ready for him, and fix bandages."

She steadied herself and beat back the wave of weakness that had swept over her.

"Yes," she said. "I'll tell Aunt. Have they sent for the doctor?"

"Quint Sullivan went."

A wagon creaked. 'Mona flew into the house to tell her aunt, and out again to meet her father. Her little ankles flashed down the road. Agile as a boy, she climbed into the back of the buckboard.

"Oh, Dad!" she cried in a broken little voice, and her arms went round him in a passion of love.

He was hurt worse than he was willing to admit to her.

"It's all right, honeybug. Doc Bridgman will fix me up fine. Yore old dad is a mighty live sinner yet."

Ridley helped Jumbo carry the cattleman into the house. As he came out, the doctor passed him going in.

Ridley slipped away in the gathering darkness and disappeared.

CHAPTER XVII

OLD-TIMERS

As soon as Captain Ellison heard of what had happened at Tascosa, he went over on the stage from Mobeetie to look at the situation himself. He dropped in at once to see his old friends the Wadleys. Ramona opened the door to him.

"Uncle Jim!" she cried, and promptly disappeared in his arms for a hug and a kiss.

The Ranger Captain held her off and examined the lovely flushed face.

"Dog it, you get prettier every day you live. I wisht I was thirty years younger. I'd make some of these lads get a move on 'em."

"I wish you were," she laughed. "They need some competition to make them look at me. None of them would have a chance then--even if they wanted it."

"I believe that. I got to believe it to keep my self-respect. It's all the consolation we old-timers have got. How's Clint?"

"Better. You should hear him swear under his breath because the doctor won't let him smoke more than two pipes a day, and because we won't let him eat whatever he wants to. He's worse than a sore bear," said Ramona proudly.

"Lead me to him."

A moment later the Ranger and the cattleman were shaking hands. They had been partners in their youth, had fought side by side in the Civil War, and had shot plains Indians together at Adobe Walls a few years since. They were so close to each other that they could quarrel whenever they chose, which they frequently did.

"How, old-timer!" exclaimed the Ranger Captain.

"Starved to death. They feed me nothin' but slops--soup an' gruel an' custard an' milk-toast. Fine for a full-grown man, ain't it? Jim, you go out an' get me a big steak an' cook it in boilin' grease on a camp-fire, an' I'll give you a deed to the A T O."

"To-morrow, Clint. The Doc says--"

"Mañana! That's what they all say. Is this Mexico or God's country? What I want, I want now."

"You always did--an' you 'most always got it too," said Ellison, his eyes twinkling reminiscently.

'Mona shook a warning finger at her father. "Well, he won't get it now. He'll behave, too, or he'll not get his pipe to-night."

The sick man grinned. "See how she bullies a poor old man, Jim. I'm worse than that Lear fellow in the play--most henpecked father you ever did see."

"Will she let you talk?"

"He may talk to you, Uncle Jim."

"What did I tell you?" demanded the big cattleman from the bed with the mock bitterness that was a part of the fun they both enjoyed. "You see, I got to get her permission. I'm a slave."

"That's what a nurse is for, Clint. You want to be glad you got the sweetest one in Texas." The Captain patted Ramona affectionately on the shoulder before he passed to the business of the day. "I want to know about all these ructions in Tascosa. Tell me the whole story."

They told him. He listened in silence till they had finished, asked a question or two, and made one comment.

"That boy Roberts of mine is sure some go-getter."

"He'll do," conceded the cattleman. "That lucky shot of his--the one that busted Dinsmore's arm--certainly saved my life later."

"Lucky shot!" exploded Ellison. "And you just through tellin' me how he plugged the dollars in the air! Doggone it, I want you to know there was no darned luck about it! My boys are the best shots in Texas."

"I'll take any one of 'em on soon as I'm out--any time, any place, any mark," retorted Wadley promptly.

"I'll go you. Roberts is a new man an' hasn't had much experience. I'll match him with you."

"New man! H'mp! He's the best you've got, an' you know it."

"I don't know whether he is, but he's good enough to make any old-timer like you look like a plugged nickel."

The cattleman snorted again, disdaining an answer.

"Dad is the best shot in Texas," pronounced Ramona calmly, rallying to her father's support. For years she had been the umpire between the two.

The Captain threw up his hands. "I give up."

"And Mr. Roberts is just about as good."

"That's settled, then," said Ellison. "But what I came to say is that I'm goin' to round up the Dinsmore bunch. We can't convict 'em of murder on the evidence we have, but I'll arrest 'em for shootin' you an' try to get a confession out of one of 'em. Does that look reasonable, Clint?"

Wadley considered this.

"It's worth a try-out. The Dinsmores are game. They won't squeal. But I've a sneakin' notion Gurley is yellow. He might come through--or that other fellow Overstreet might. I don't know him. You want to be careful how you try to take that outfit, though, Jim. They're dangerous as rattlesnakes."

"That's the kind of outfit my boys eat up," answered the chipper little officer as he rose to leave. "Well, so long, Clint. Behave proper, an' mebbe this young tyrant will give you a nice stick o' candy for a good boy."

He went out chuckling.

The cattleman snorted. "Beats all how crazy Jim is about those Ranger boys of his. He thinks the sun rises an' sets by them. I want to tell you they've got to sleep on the trail a long time an' get up early in the mo'nin' to catch the Dinsmores in bed. That bird Pete always has one eye open. What's more, he an' his gang wear their guns low."

"I don't think Uncle Jim ought to send boys like Jack Roberts out against such desperadoes. It's not fair," Ramona said decisively.

"Oh, ain't it?" Her father promptly switched to the other side. "You give me a bunch of boys like young Roberts, an' I'd undertake to clean up this whole country, an' Lincoln County too. He's a dead shot. He's an A-1 trailer. He can whip his weight in wildcats. He's got savvy. He uses his brains. An' he's game from the toes up. What more does a man need?"

"I didn't know you liked him," his daughter said innocently.

"Like him? Jumpin' snakes, no! He's too darned fresh to suit me. What's likin' him got to do with it? I'm just tellin' you that no better officer ever stood in shoe-leather."

"Oh, I see."

Ramona said no more. She asked herself no questions as to the reason, but she knew that her father's words of praise were sweet to hear. They sent a warm glow of pride through her heart. She wanted to think well of this red-haired Ranger who trod the earth as though he were the heir of all the ages. In some strange way Fate had linked his life with hers from that moment when he had literally flung himself in her path to fight a mad bull for her life.

CHAPTER XVIII

A SHOT OUT OF THE NIGHT

Ramona sat on the porch in the gathering darkness. She had been reading aloud to her father, but he had fallen asleep beside her in his big armchair. During these convalescent days he usually took a nap after dinner and after supper. He called it forty winks, but to an unprejudiced listener the voice of his slumber sounded like a sawmill in action.

The gate clicked, and a man walked up the path. He did not know that the soft eyes of the girl, sitting in the porch shadows, lit with pleasure at sight of him. Nothing in her voice or in her greeting told him so.

He took off his hat and stood awkwardly with one booted foot on the lowest step.

"I came to see Mr. Wadley," he presently explained, unaccountably short of small talk.

She looked at her father and laughed. The saw was ripping through a series of knots in alternate crescendo and diminuendo. "Shall I wake him? He likes to sleep after eating. I think it does him good."

"Don't you! I'll come some other time."

"Couldn't you wait a little? He doesn't usually sleep long." The girl suggested it hospitably. His embarrassment relieved any she might otherwise have felt.

"I reckon not."

At the end of that simple sentence he stuck, and because of it Jack Roberts blushed. It was absurd. There was no sense in it, he told himself. It never troubled him to meet men. He hadn't felt any shyness when there had been a chance to function in action for her. But now he was all feet and hands before this slip of a girl. Was it because of that day when she had come flying between him and the guns of Dinsmore's lynching-party? He wanted to thank her, to tell her how deeply grateful he had been for the thought that had inspired her impulse. Instead of which he was, he did not forget to remind himself later, as expressive as a bump on a log.

"Have you seen anything of Mr. Ridley?" she asked.

"No, miss. He saved yore father's life from Pete Dinsmore. I reckon you know that."

"Yes. I saw him for a moment. Poor boy! I think he is worrying himself sick. If you meet him will you tell him that everything's all right. Dad would like to see him."

Their voices had dropped a note in order not to waken her father. For the same reason she had come down the steps and was moving with him toward the gate.

If Jack had known how to say good-bye they would probably have parted at the fence, but he was not socially adequate for the business of turning his back gracefully on a young woman and walking away. As he backed from her he blurted out what was in his mind.

"I gotta thank you for--for buttin' in the other day, Miss Ramona."

She laughed, quite at her ease now. Why is it that the most tender-hearted young women like to see big two-fisted men afraid of them?

"Oh, you thought I was buttin' in," she mocked, tilting a gay challenge of the eyes at him.

"I roped the wrong word, miss. I--I thought--"

What he thought was never a matter of record. She had followed him along the fence to complete his discomfiture and to enjoy her power to turn him from an efficient man into a bashful hobbledehoy.

"Father gave me an awful scolding. He said I didn't act like a lady."

"He's 'way off," differed Jack hotly.

She shook her head. "No. You see I couldn't explain to everybody there that I did it for--for Rutherford--because I didn't want anything so dreadful as that poor Mexican's death on his account. Dad said some of the men might think I did it--oh, just to be showing off," she finished untruthfully.

"Nobody would think that--nobody but a plumb idjit. I think you did fine."

Having explained satisfactorily that she had not interfered for his sake, there was really no occasion for Ramona to linger. But Jack had found his tongue at last and the minutes slipped away.

A sound in the brush on the far side of the road brought the Ranger to attention. It was the breaking of a twig. The foot that crushed it might belong to a cow or a horse. But Roberts took no chances. If some one was lying in wait, it was probably to get him.

"Turn round an' walk to the house," he ordered the girl crisply. "Sing 'Swanee River' as you go. Quick!"

There was a note in his voice that called for obedience. Ramona turned, a flurry of fear in her heart. She did not know what there was to be afraid of, but she was quite sure her companion had his reason. The words of the old plantation song trembled from her lips into the night.

A dozen yards behind her Jack followed, backing toward the house. His six-shooter was in his hand, close to his side.

He flashed one look backward. The parlor was lit up and Clint Wadley was lying on a lounge reading a paper. He was a tempting mark for anybody with a grudge against him.

Jack took the last twenty yards on the run. He plunged into the parlor on the heels of Ramona.

Simultaneously came the sound of a shot and of breaking glass. Wadley jumped up, in time to see the Ranger blow out the lamp. Jack caught Ramona by the shoulders and thrust her down to her knees in a corner of the room.

"What in blue blazes--?" Clint began to demand angrily.

"Keep still," interrupted Jack. "Some one's bushwhackin' either you or me."

He crept to the window and drew down the blind. A small hole showed where the bullet had gone through the window and left behind it a star of shattered glass.

Ramona began to whimper. Her father's arm found and encircled her. "It's all right, honey. He can't git us now."

"I'm goin' out by the back door. Mebbe I can put salt on this bird's tail," said Jack. "You stay right where you are, Mr. Wadley. They can't hit either of you in that corner."

"Oh, don't! Please don't go!" wailed the girl.

Her words were a fillip to the Ranger. They sent a glow through his blood. He knew that at that moment she was not thinking of the danger to herself.

"Don't you worry. I'll swing round on him wide. Ten to one he's already hittin' the dust fast to make his get-away."

He slipped out of the room and out of the house. So slowly did he move that it was more than an hour before he returned to them.

"I guessed right," he told the cattleman. "The fellow hit it up at a gallop through the brush. He's ten miles from here now."

"Was he after me or you?"

"Probably me. The Rangers ain't popular with some citizens. Looks to me like Steve Gurley's work."

"I wouldn't be a Ranger if I was you. I'd resign," said Ramona impulsively.

"Would you?" Jack glanced humorously at Wadley. "I don't expect yore father would indorse them sentiments, Miss Ramona. He'd tell me to go through."

Clint nodded. "'Mona said you wanted to see me about somethin'."

The young man showed a little embarrassment. The cattleman guessed the reason. He turned to his daughter.

"Private business, honey."

Ramona kissed her father good-night and shook hands with Jack. When they were alone the Ranger mentioned the reason for his call.

"It's goin' around that Pete Dinsmore claims to have somethin' on Rutherford. The story is that he says you'd better lay off him or he'll tell what he knows."

The eyes of the cattleman winced. Otherwise he gave no sign of distress.

"I've got to stand the gaff, Jack. He can't blackmail me, even if the hound cooks up some infernal story about Ford. I hate it most on 'Mona's account. It'll hurt the little girl like sixty."

Jack was of that opinion too, but he knew that Wadley's decision not to throw his influence to shield the Dinsmores was the right one.

"She thought a heap o' Ford, 'Mona did," the cattleman went on. "He was all she had except me. The boy was wild. Most young colts are. My fault. I made things too easy for him--gave him too much money to spend. But outside of bein' wild he was all right. I'd hate to have her hear anything against him." He sighed. "Well, I reckon what must be must."

"Stories the Dinsmores tell won't count with honest folks. Pete is one bad hombre. Everybody will know why he talks--if he does. That's a big if too. He knows we've got evidence to tie his gang up with the killin' of Ford. He doesn't know how much. Consequence is he'll not want to raise any question about the boy. We might come back at him too strong."

"Mebbeso." Wadley looked at the Ranger and his gaze appraised Roberts a man among men. He wished that he had been given a son like this. "Boy, you kept yore wits fine to-night. That idea of makin' 'Mona walk alone to the house an' keepin' her singin' so's a bushwhacker couldn't make any mistake an' think she was a man was a jim-dandy."

The Ranger rose. He had not the same difficulty in parting from Wadley or any other man that he found in making his adieux to a woman. He simply reached for his hat, nodded almost imperceptibly, and walked out of the house.

CHAPTER XIX

TRAPPED

The territory which Captain Ellison had to cover to find the Dinsmore gang was as large as Maine. Over this country the buffalo-hunter had come and gone; the cattleman was coming and intended to stay. Large stretches of it were entirely uninhabited; here and there sod or adobe houses marked where hardy ranchers had located on the creeks; and in a few places small settlements dotted the vast prairies.

There were in those days three towns in the Panhandle. If you draw a line due east from Tascosa, it will pass very close to Mobeetie, a hundred miles away. Clarendon is farther to the south. In the seventies Amarillo was only what Jumbo Wilkins would have called "a whistlin'-post in the desert," a place where team outfits camped because water was handy. The official capital of the Panhandle was Mobeetie, the seat of government of Wheeler County, to which were attached for judicial purposes more than a score of other counties not yet organized or even peopled.

To the towns of the Panhandle were drifting in cowboys, freighters, merchants, gamblers, cattle outfits, and a few rustlers from Colorado, New Mexico, and the more settled parts of Texas. They were the hardier sons of an adventurous race, for each man had to make good his footing by his own strength. At first there had been no law except that which lay in the good-will of men, and the holster by their side. The sheriff of Wheeler County had neither the deputies nor the financial backing to carry justice into the mesquite. Game gunmen served as marshals in the towns, but these had no authority on the plains. Until Captain Ellison and his little company of Rangers moved into the district there had been no way of taking law into the chaparral. The coming of these quiet men in buckskin was notice to the bad-man that murder and robbery were not merely pleasant pastimes.

Yet it would be easy to overstate the lawlessness of the Panhandle. There were bad men. Every frontier of civilization has them. But of all the great cattle country which stretched from Mexico to the Canadian line none had a finer or more orderly citizenry than this. The country was notably free of the bloodshed which drenched such places as Dodge City to the east or Lincoln County, New Mexico, to the west of the Panhandle.

Ellison wanted the Dinsmores, not because he believed he could yet hang any serious crime on them but for the moral effect upon them and the community. Clint Wadley had gone looking for trouble and had been wounded in consequence. No Texas jury would convict on that count. But it was not a conviction the fire-eating little Captain wanted just now. He intended to show that his boys could go out and arrest the Dinsmores or any other lawbreakers, whenever the occasion called for it. It might take them a week or a month or six months, but they would bag their game in the end. The rule of the Texas Rangers was to sleep on a man's trail until they found him.

The Captain stationed a man at each of the three towns. He sent two on a scouting-trip through No Man's Land, and two more to search Palo Duro Cañon. He watched the stages as they went and came, questioned mule-skinners with freight outfits, kept an eye on tendejóns and feed-corrals. And at the end of three weeks he had no results whatever to show, except a sarcastic note from Pete Dinsmore complimenting him on his force of Rangers.

The Captain was furious, but not a whit discouraged.

"Dog it, we'll fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," he told Lieutenant Hawley, his second in command.

To them came Jack Roberts with a proposition. "I've found out that Homer Dinsmore has a girl in Tascosa. She's a Mexican. I know about her through Tony Alviro. It seems she's a cousin of Bonita, the girl Tony is going to marry. About once a week Dinsmore rides into town at night, ties his horse in the brush back of her house, and goes in to see her. If you say so, Chief, I'll make it my business to be there when he comes."

"Need any help, do you reckon?"

"No. I'll have to hide out in the mesquite. One man will be better on that job than two."

"All right, son. You know yore job. Get him."

That was all the warrant Jack wanted or needed. He returned to Tascosa and made his preparations.

Every night after dark he slipped out of town by the north road till he was on the open prairie, then swung round in a semicircle skirting the lights of the settlement. He had arranged a blind in the brush from which he could see the back of the Menendez "soddy." Occasionally he comforted himself with a cautiously smoked cigarette, but mostly he lay patiently watching the trap that was to lure his prey. At one o'clock each morning he rose, returned on his beat, went to bed, and fell instantly asleep.

On the fifth night there was a variation of the programme.

It was between nine and ten o'clock that Jack heard the hoot of an owl. He sat up instantly, eyes and ears keyed for action.

The back door of the sod-house opened, and through the night stillness floated the faint strumming of a guitar. Jack did not doubt that it was the answering signal to show that all was safe.

A man crept forward from the mesquite and disappeared inside the house.

Through the brush the Ranger snaked his way to the point from which the hooting of the owl had come. A bronco was tethered to a bush. An examination showed that the horse had been ridden far, but not too fast.

Jack was satisfied the man had come alone.

A faint trail wound in and out among the mesquite and the cactus to the house. Beside this trail, behind a clump of prickly pear, the Ranger sat down and waited. The hour-hand of his watch crept to ten, to eleven, to twelve. Roberts rose occasionally, stretched himself to avoid any chance of cramped muscles, and counted stars by way of entertainment. He had spent more diverting evenings, but there was a good chance that the fag end of this one would be lively enough to compensate.

Shortly after midnight a shaft of light reached out from the house into the desert. The back door had opened. A woman came out, took a few steps forward, peered about her, and called that all was clear. A man followed. The two stood talking for a minute in low tones; then the man kissed her and turned briskly toward the brush. According to the Ranger's programme the girl should have returned to the house, but instead she waited in the moonlight to see the last of her lover. When he waved an arm to her and cried "Buenos noches, chachita," she threw him a kiss across the starlit prairie.

Intent on his good-night, the man missed the ill-defined trail that led to his horse and zigzagged through the brush at another angle. The Ranger, light-footed as a cat, moved forward noiselessly to intercept him, crouching low and taking advantage of all the cover he could find. Luck was with him. Dinsmore strode within a yard of the kneeling man without a suspicion of danger.

A powerful forearm slid out from the brush. Sinewy fingers caught the far ankle of the moving man. One strong pull sent Dinsmore off his balance. The outlaw clutched wildly at the air and came crashing down. He fell into a bush of catclaw cactus.

The Ranger was on him like a wildcat. Before his victim could make a move to defend himself, Jack had the man handcuffed with his arms behind him.

Dinsmore, his face in the catclaw, gave a smothered cry for help. From where he was, the Ranger could not see the house, but he heard the excited voice of the woman, the sound of a commotion, and the beat of rapid footsteps.

An excited voice called: "Quién es?"

The trapped man wanted to explain, but his captor rubbed the face of the outlaw deeper into the torturing spines of the cactus.

"Don't ask any questions," advised Roberts. "Get back into the house pronto. The Rangers have taken Dinsmore. Unless you're lookin' for trouble, you'd better vamos."

Evidently two or three Mexicans had run out to the rescue. Jack could hear them discussing the situation in whispers. He had them at a double disadvantage. They did not know how many Rangers lay in the mesquite; nor did they want to fall foul of them in any case. The men drew back slowly, still in excited talk among themselves, and disappeared inside the house. The woman protested volubly and bitterly till the closing of the door stifled her voice.

Jack pulled his prisoner to a more comfortable position.

"Sorry you fell into the catclaw, Dinsmore," he said. "If you'll stand hitched, I'll draw the spine from your face."

The man cursed him savagely.

"All right," said the Ranger amiably. "If you want 'em as souvenirs, I'll not object. Suits me if it does you. We'll go now."

He tied to the handcuffs the end of the lariat which was attached to the saddle. The other end he fastened to the pommel.

"I'll not go a step with you," growled Dinsmore.

"Oh, yes, you'd better step along. I'd hate to have to drag you through this brush. It's some rough."

The Ranger swung to the saddle. The bronco answered the pressure of the rider's knee and began to move. The lariat jerked tight. Sullenly Dinsmore yielded.

But his spirit was unbroken. As he stumbled along in front of the horse, he filled the night with raucous oaths.

"Take these cuffs off'n me and come down from that horse," he stormed. "Do that, and I'll beat off yore head."

The man on horseback smiled. "You're the laziest fellow I ever did see, Dinsmore," he drawled. "The last fellow that licked me pulled me from the saddle."

"Just let me get a lick at you," pleaded the outlaw. "I'll give you that bronc you're ridin' if you'll stand up to me man to man."

"Can't do it. I'm here for business an' not for pleasure. Sorry."

"You've got no right to arrest me. What's the charge?"

"I've forgot whether it's brand-burning, highway robbery, murder, or mayhem--any old crime would fit you."

"You've got no evidence."

"Mebbeso, mebbe not," answered the Ranger lightly. "Cap Ellison said he'd like to have a squint at you, anyhow, so I said I'd fetch you along. No trouble a-tall to show goods."

The outlaw bared his tobacco-stained teeth in a sudden fury of rage. "Some day I'll gun you right for this."

The narrow-loined youth with the well-packed shoulders looked down at him, and the eyes of the officer were hard and steady as steel.

"Dinsmore," he said, "we're goin' to put you an' yore outfit out o' business in the Panhandle. Your day is done. You've run on the rope long enough. I'll live to see you hanged--an' soon."

CHAPTER XX

KIOWAS ON THE WARPATH

Jack Roberts did not leave town inconspicuously with his prisoner in the middle of the night. He made instead a public exit, for Captain Ellison wanted to show the Panhandle that the law could reach out and get the Dinsmores just as it could any other criminals. With his handcuffed captive on a horse beside him, the Ranger rode down to the post-office just before the stage left. Already the word had spread that one of the Dinsmores had been taken by an officer. Now the town gathered to see the notorious "bad-man" and his tamer.

Dinsmore faced the curious crowd with a defiant sneer, but he was burning with rage and humiliation. He and his crowd had carried things with a high hand. They were not only outlaws; they were "bad-men" in the frontier sense of the word. They had shot down turbulent citizens who disputed their sway. Pete and Homer especially had won reputations as killers, and game men sidestepped them rather than deny their claims. Yet twice within a month this smooth-faced boy had crossed their path and bested them. The pride of Homer Dinsmore was galled to the quick. He would have given all he had to "get a lick at" the Ranger now before all these people.

Tascosa watched the young officer and his captive from a distance. The townsfolk offered no audible comment on the situation, either by way of approval or disapproval. The fear of the outlaws had been too long over them. This was not the end of the matter. It was still a good betting proposition that some one of the gang would "get" this jaunty youth before he was much older.

But it is certain that the arrest he had made single-handed had its effect. It is inevitable that a frontier camp shall some day discard its wild youth and put on the sobriety of a settled community. Was this time at hand for the Panhandle?

A rider galloped out of town after the horsemen. The Ranger turned to face him and made sure that the rifle beneath his leg would slip easily from its scabbard. An attempt at a rescue was always a possibility on the cards.

The man drew his cow-pony up beside them.

"'Evenin', Mr. Man-in-a-Hurry. Lookin' for anybody in particular?" asked the red-haired Ranger, his chill eyes fixed on the stranger.

"For you. I want to help guard your prisoner to Mobeetie."

"Much obliged," answered Roberts dryly. "Am I needin' help?"

"You may. You've got to sleep. Let me ride with you."

The brain of Jack Roberts began to register a memory. This young fellow was in ragged jeans and a butternut shirt. His hair was long and unkempt. He looked haggard and ill-fed. But he was the same youth the Ranger had glimpsed for a moment in the bravery of fine clothes and gay address on the day of the bulldogging. Jack remembered his promise to Ramona Wadley.

"Fine! Come along. We'll take watch and watch through the night," he told the boy.

Homer Dinsmore's teeth drew back in a derisive snarl. "Want company again on the trip so's you won't be robbed, Mr. Ridley?"

The Easterner did not answer, but color flushed his face at the taunt.

Roberts offered a comment on his behalf:

"Ridley was young then. He's gettin' older every day. I notice he didn't ask for company when he flung himself down over Clint Wadley's body to protect it from the bullets of a killer."

All afternoon they followed the Canadian River as it wound to the east. They made camp beside it at night, cooking the coffee on a fire of buffalo chips. Jerked beef and hardtack, washed down with coffee, was their fare.

Dinsmore had fallen into a sullen silence, but the other two carried on desultory talk. The two young fellows were not very comfortable in each other's society; they did not understand the mental habits of each other. But Jack maintained a cheerful friendliness to which Arthur responded gratefully. Behind the curtain of their talk was a girl. The spell of her was on them both. Each of them could see her in the coals of the fire, light-footed and slim, with shy eyes tender and shining. But neither of them drew the curtain to their deeper thoughts.

After they had eaten, the Ranger handcuffed his prisoner and pegged him down loosely. He put out the fire, for he did not want the location of the camp to be betrayed by smoke. He gave Ridley the first watch--because it was the easier of the two. With a saddle for a pillow and a slicker for a blanket, he lay down beneath the stars and fell asleep. Once, in his dreams, he thought he heard the sound of beating drums. When he wakened at the time set, the night was still. The prisoner was sound asleep, and Ridley, propped against his saddle, was keeping vigilant watch.

Robert mentioned his fancy about the drums.

Arthur smiled. "Before Dinsmore turned over he was snoring like a far-away thunder-storm. I expect that's what you heard."

Jack roused the others as soon as the promise of day was in the sky. By sunup they were ready to travel.

There was a bluff back of the camp that gave an outlook over the country. The Ranger left his prisoner in the care of Arthur while he climbed to its summit for a glance up and down the river. He knew that the Mexican girl would get word to the friends of her sweetheart that he had been arrested. There was a chance that they might already be close. Anyhow, it would do no harm to see. If he had not taken that precaution undoubtedly all three of the party would have been dead inside of half an hour.

For the first sweeping glance of the Ranger showed him a tragedy. The valley was filled with Indians. Apparently as yet they did not know that any white men were in the neighborhood, for the smoke was beginning to rise from morning fires. In a little pocket, just off from the camp, their ponies were herded. At the opposite side were a dozen ox-wagons grouped together in a circle to form a corral. The tongue of the nearest wagon was propped up by a yoke, and across it was the naked body of a man who had been crucified and tortured. The other drivers of the freight outfit were nowhere in sight. Either they were lying dead behind the wagons, or they had escaped on horseback.

The Ranger drew back at once from the bluff. He knew that probably he had been seen by the Indian lookouts; if he and his party were going to get away, it must be done quickly. He ran down the hill to his companions.

"Indians--Kiowas--hundreds of them," he explained. "They've captured a freight outfit and killed the drivers. We'll cross the river below their camp if we can." As he spoke, he was busy unlocking the handcuffs of the prisoner. To Dinsmore he gave a revolver.

It seemed to Ridley that his heart was pumping water. Death with torture was the punishment given captives by the plains Indians. He knew he must be ghastly white, but he said nothing.

The three men rode out of the ravine to the river. Already they could hear the yelling of the Kiowas a few hundred yards above. A moment later they caught sight of the savages pouring down the bank. Those in front were on foot. Others farther back, on the round-bellied Indian ponies, were galloping to catch up.

Half a mile farther down, there was a break in the river-bank which offered a better chance for crossing. The stream there broadened, cut in two by a little island. The three riders gained on their pursuers. Bullets whistled past them, but they did not stop to exchange shots. When they reached the place Jack had chosen to cross, they were four or five hundred yards ahead of the leading Indians.

They splashed into the water. Here it was shallow, but along the edge of the island the current was running swift. The Kiowas, following the fugitives down the bank, kept up a scattering fire. The bullets struck the water on all sides of the three moving targets. Arthur was on the right, closest to the Indians. A little ahead of him was Dinsmore. Farther over, the Ranger's horse was already breasting the deep water.

Roberts heard young Ridley cry: "He's hit!"

The Ranger turned his head. His prisoner was sagging in the saddle. Arthur was riding beside the wounded man and trying to support him.

Jack drew up his horse, holding it strongly against the current, until the others were abreast of him.

"We've got to swim for it," he called across to Ridley. "I'll get him if he slips out of the saddle before we reach shore."

The horses swam side by side. Roberts encouraged Dinsmore, riding knee to knee with him. "Just a little way now. Stick it out.... We're right close to the bank.... Grab the horn tight."

As Dinsmore slid into the water Jack caught him by the hair of the head. The swift water, racing fast round the shoulder of the island, tugged mightily at him. But the body of the Ranger's horse was a barrier to keep the unconscious man from being swept downstream, and the fingers of the rider clung to the thick black hair like steel clamps.

They reached shallow water. The Ranger swung from the saddle and carried Dinsmore up through the thicket that edged the bank. The horses clambered up without guidance, and Ridley drove them into the big rocks, where they would be better protected from the shots of the Indians.

The Ranger chose the best cover available near the head of the island and put the wounded man down gently on the ground. Already the Kiowas were halfway across the river. Jack counted twenty of them on horseback in the water.

"Can you shoot?" he asked his companion.

Ridley was behind a rock around which bushes grew thick. "B-better than I could." He was shaking with excitement.

"You can't miss 'em. We've got 'em right this time."

Jack fired. An Indian plunged headfirst into the water like a stone from a sling. A moment later his body could be seen swirling in the swift current. A second shot shook the death scream from the throat of another brave.

Twice Arthur missed.

"You've got buck-fever. Try for the horses," suggested the Texan. A moment later he gave a little whoop of encouragement. The naked shining body of a Kiowa had collapsed on the bare back of a pony. Ridley at last had scored.

Instantly the nervousness of the Easterner disappeared. His shooting had not the deadly accuracy of Roberts, but he was a good marksman, and at this close-range work his forty-five-seventy did clean work.

The Texan did not miss a shot. He picked the leaders and took his time. A third, a fourth, and a fifth brave went sliding from the backs of the swimming ponies.

The Kiowas broke under the deadly fire. Those not yet in the deep water turned and made for the shore from which they had come. The others gave with the current and drifted past the island, their bodies hanging from the far side of the ponies.

The whites on the island shot at the horses. More than one redskin, unable to get out of the current after his pony had been shot, floated down the river for miles before the body was found by his tribe.

"We got either nine or ten," said the Ranger. "They'll never try another attack from that bank. Probably they'll surround the island to starve us."

He put down his rifle and opened the shirt of the wounded man. Dinsmore had been shot in the back, above the heart. Jack washed out the wound and bound it up as best he could. The outlaw might live, or he might not--assuming that the party would escape from the savages.

Jack knew that this was an assumption not likely to be fulfilled. His guess was that there were four or five hundred of the Kiowas. They would immediately post a line of guards on both sides of the river. There was a chance that a man on a fast horse might make a get-away if he left at once. He proposed to Ridley that he try this.

"Will you go too?" asked Arthur.

The Ranger shook his head. "Got to stay with my prisoner."

"I'll stay too."

"If you were to make it, you could send me help."

"Think I could get away?"

The Westerner pointed to two Indians who were swimming the river below out of rifle-shot. "I doubt it. You might fight yore way through, but they'd likely get you."

"I'll stick it out here, then."

In his heart Arthur knew that he was not staying to face the danger with the Texan. When once he had got over his panic, he had fought coolly enough under the eye of his companion, but he lacked the stark courage to face the chances of that long ride alone for help.

"I reckon it's too late, anyhow," agreed Roberts. He shrugged his shoulders. "It's a toss-up, either way. But we'll sure send a few to their happy hunting-grounds before we take our long journey."

"You think--" Arthur let his fear-filled eyes finish the question.

The Ranger smiled wryly. "Yore guess is as good as mine. I'll say this: I've been in tight holes before an' came through O. K. I'll back my luck to stand up this time too."

Arthur looked into the brown face of this spare, clear-eyed youth and felt that he would give his hopes of heaven for such gameness. They had not one chance in ten thousand to escape, but the sheer nerve of the boy held him as cool and easy as though he were sauntering down the main street at Clarendon.

CHAPTER XXI

TEX TAKES A LONG WALK

Except for desultory firing the Kiowas left the islanders alone for the rest of the day. The fever of the wounded man mounted. Most of the time he was out of his head, and in tossing to and fro was continually disturbing the cold-water bandages applied by the Texan.

As soon as night had fallen, Roberts put a proposition to his companion. "One of us has got to go for help. Take yore choice, Ridley. Will you go or stay?"

The Easterner felt as though his heart had been drenched in ice-water. "Can't we wait until some one comes?" he asked timidly.

"Who's likely to come? You got any friends on the way? I haven't. There's another thing: the stage will be along to-morrow. We've got to get warnin' to it that the Kiowas are on the warpath. If we don't--well, you know what happened to the freight outfit."

"If one of us goes, how can he get away?"

"I've thought of that. It will be dark for an hour before the moon gets up. The one that goes will have to drop off the bank an' swim down with the current for a quarter of a mile or so, then get to the shore, crawl across the prairie till he's clear of the sentries, an' make a bee-line for Tascosa."

"I couldn't find my way in the dark," faltered Arthur.

Jack nodded. "I doubt if you could. I'm elected, then."

"Why--why can't we both go?"

"We couldn't take Dinsmore fifty yards. He's too sick a man."

"He's going to die anyhow. If I stay, we'll both die--horribly. It's every man for himself now."

Jack shook his head. "If you feel that way, you go an' I'll stay."

"I--I can't go alone." He pushed his plea one step farther. "He's a criminal--a murderer. He'd kill you if he could, and he's already betrayed me. There's no call for us to wait for certain death on his account."

The Ranger spoke gently. "None for you, but he's in my hands. I'll see it out. Mebbe you can get through the lines. Crawl through the grass. Keep yore nerve an' lie low if you hear 'em comin'. Once you're through, you'll be all right."

"I tell you I can't go alone. If it has to be that one goes and one stays, then I'll stay."

"That's how it has to be. It's about an even break, I reckon. They're liable to get me if I go. They're liable to get you if you stay. Then again, they're liable to get neither of us if I can get through."

"What if they rush me?"

"Don't lose yore head. You can stand 'em off. They'll never make as strong an attack as they did this mo'nin'. If they make any real rush, it will likely be just before daybreak. Indians don't do business at night."

Jack made his preparations swiftly. He took off his boots and tied them to his belt. His hat he left behind.

"How will I know whether you get through the sentries?" asked Ridley.

"If you hear any shootin', you'll know I probably didn't. But I'm sure figurin' on gettin' through. Don't you forget for a minute that every hour brings help nearer. So long, old man. Best of luck!"

The Ranger grinned cheerfully at the other boy as he crept into the brush at the edge of the water. Presently Arthur heard a faint plop and knew that the Texan had begun his journey.

The swift current carried the swimmer downstream rapidly. He used his arms just enough to keep himself up, and let the power of the water do the rest. As a small boy he had lived on the Brazos. He knew the tricks of the expert, so that he was able now to swim with only his nose showing. For it was certain that the Indians had set watchers on the river to guard against an escape.

The island vanished behind him. Now and then he caught from one bank or the other the glow of camp-fires. Once he was sure he heard the beating of a tom-tom.

And once he gave himself up for lost. The rapid current had swept him close to the right bank. Across his vision flashed a picture of a brave armed with bow and arrow standing above him on the shore. He dived instantly. When he came up for air, only a bit of his red topknot showed. The swimmer heard the twang of an arrow and dived a second time. He was in the deep shadows of overhanging brush when he shook the water out of his eyes next time. For a dozen seconds he drew his breath in fear. But there came no shout of warning to other watchers, no shot or outcry to shatter the stillness. He guessed that the Kiowa had taken him for a log drifting downstream and had aimed wantonly to test his accuracy.

Several hundred yards below the island Jack caught at a bush projecting into the water. He swung close to the bank and very cautiously drew himself out of the river.

He listened. Except for the sound of the rushing water the night was still. Very carefully he wormed his way forward into the prairie. His progress was slow, for he had to make sure of each foot of his advance. Under cover of a mesquite-bush he put on his water-soaked boots. He crept fifty yards--one hundred. To his right a camp-fire was burning. It seemed to him once or twice that he heard voices.

An old trail worn nearly a foot deep by buffaloes served his need. In this trench he was partly hidden and could make better progress. He traveled on all fours, still alert in every sense for danger.

Suddenly he sank full length into the trench. On the other side of a cactus-bush two Indians were squatting. They sat and talked.

The heart of the Ranger sank. At any moment they might discover his presence, or they might sit there the whole night and hold him prisoner in his ditch.

For an hour he lay there, wondering each moment whether the ticking of his watch might not betray him. Then, in a leisurely way, the sentries got up and sauntered toward the river. The moon was up now, and he could see their naked bodies shining in the light.

The two Kiowas stopped a moment on the bank and talked before they separated. One moved up the river; the other turned and came back directly toward Roberts. The Ranger lay in the buffalo-trail hoping that in the darkness he might escape observation. He was helpless. Even if he had brought a gun with him he dared not shoot, for if the alarm were given he would be driven out of cover in a few minutes.

The brave came forward to the very edge of the wallow. His moccasin touched the body of the prostrate man. Some slight shift of his attitude precipitated the crisis. He turned to listen to some sound, and his foot pressed upon the leg of the Ranger.

There was an instant volcanic upheaval. The Indian, startled, leaped back. Jack was upon him like a wildcat. They struggled, their bodies so close that the Kiowa could not use his rifle. The Texan had a double advantage, that of surprise and of a more muscular body. Moreover, the redskin made the mistake of trying to cling to his gun. He was flung down to the ground hard, the white man on top of him.

Jack became aware that the Indian was going to shout, and knew that if he did all was lost. His strong, brown fingers closed on the throat of the brave. There was a wild thrashing of limbs in a struggle to escape. The grip tightened, cut off a gurgle of escaping air. The naked arms and legs jerked more feebly....

When Roberts crept away into the darkness he carried with him the knife of the Kiowa. The rifle would only have hampered him, since he had to travel fast and light.

With every yard gained now he was nearer safety. He knew he was leaving the camp behind. Presently he rose to his feet and traveled faster. For the safety of the two on the island depended upon the speed with which he covered the distance between him and Tascosa.

The plainsman seldom walks. His high-heeled boots would be torture on a long tramp. When he wants to reach a place, he rides on horseback. Jack had not walked five miles at a time within a dozen years. Now his long legs reached for the ground in a steady stride that ate up the leagues. He guided his course by the stars until he struck the river far above the camp. Once he stopped for a drink, but the thought of Ridley on the island drove his tired limbs on. Heel and toe, heel and toe, the steady march continued, till the Ranger, lithe and strong though the wind and sun and outdoor life had made him, was ready to drop with fatigue. His feet, pushed forward in the boots by the height of the heels, burned as with fire from the pain of outraged flesh rubbing against stiff leather.

But it was not in him to quit. He set his teeth in his exhaustion and ploughed on up the trail. At last he saw the far, faint lights of Tascosa. The last mile or two were interminable, but he walked into the Bird Cage just as the clock on the wall was striking three.

The music had started for a dance. A girl in a spangled dress ran up to him.

"Come on. Let's dance," she cried; then stopped and looked at him in surprise: "What's the matter with you?"

The Ranger climbed up on the bar and beat upon it with the heel of his boot. The dancers stopped in their tracks as the music died.

"The Kiowas are on the warpath. They've got two white men trapped on the big island below the bend. Gather all the horses, guns, and men you can. We start in twenty minutes."

Cowboys left their partners standing in the middle of the floor. The musicians dropped their bows and fiddles. Bar-tenders left unfilled the orders they had just taken. For Indians in their war-paint were a fact always very near to the frontiersman, and whatever faults the Southwest may have had in those days, its warm heart answered instantly the call for help.

The dancers scattered in all directions to get ready. A gong, beaten by the owner of the Bird Cage, rang out stridently into the quiet night to rally sleeping citizens. Children, wakened by the clamor, began to wail. Dogs barked. Excited men flung out questions and hurried away without waiting for answers.

But out of the confusion came swift action. Each man looked to his own ammunition, weapons, horse. Women hurriedly put up lunches and packed saddlebags with supplies. In an incredibly short time a company of fifty riders had gathered in front of the Bird Cage.

With the Ranger at their head, they went out of town at a fast trot. If there had been anybody there to notice it, he would have seen that the clock on the wall at the Bird Cage registered the time as twenty-seven minutes past three.

CHAPTER XXII

THE TEST

When Ridley heard the faint plop of the Ranger's body as it dropped into the water, his heart died under the fifth rib. He was alone--alone with a wounded man in his care, and five hundred fiends ravenous for his blood. For a moment the temptation was strong in him to follow Roberts into the water. Why should he stay to let these devils torture him? Dinsmore had betrayed him, to the ruination of his life. He owed the fellow nothing but ill-will. And the man was a triple-notch murderer. It would be a good riddance to the country if he should be killed.

But the arguments of the young fellow did not convince him. He had showed the white feather once on impulse, without a chance to reason out the thing. But if he deserted this wounded man now he would be a yellow coyote--and he knew it. There was something in him stronger than fear that took him back to the helpless outlaw babbling disjointed ravings.

He bathed the man's fevered body with cold water from the river and changed the bandages on the wound. He listened, in an agony of apprehension, for the sound of a shot. None came, but this did not bring certainty that the Ranger had escaped. He had left behind all his arms, and it was quite possible that they had captured him without first wounding him.

Arthur reasoned with himself about his terror. Of what use was it? Why fear, since he had to face the danger anyhow? But when he thought of the morning and what it would bring forth he was sick with the dread he could not crush.

The hours lagged endlessly. He had his watch out a thousand times trying to read its face. Occasionally he crept around the island to make sure the Kiowas were not trying to surprise him. Hope began to grow in him as the night grew old, and this alternated with terror; for he knew that with the coming of dawn, the redskins would begin an attack.

His mind followed the Ranger on his journey. By this time he must surely be halfway to Tascosa if he had escaped the Kiowas.... Now he might have reached the cottonwood clump beyond Big Ford.... Perhaps he might jump up a camp outfit with horses. If so, that would cut down the time needed to reach town.

Five o'clock by Ridley's watch! He made another circuit of his little island, and at the head of it stopped to peer into the lessening darkness. A log, traveling down the river from some point near its headwaters in New Mexico, was drifting toward the island. His attention was arrested by the way it traveled. A log in a stream follows the line of least resistance. It floats in such a way as to offer the smallest surface to the force of the current. But this log was going down at a right angle to the bank instead of parallel to it. Was it being propelled by the current alone, or by some living power behind it?

Ridley posted himself behind a cottonwood, his repeater ready for action. In another moment he would know, because if the log was adrift in the river, it would miss the point of the island and keep on its way.

Straight to the point of land the log came. There it stuck against the nose of the island. A head followed by a naked body drew itself from behind the log and climbed across it to the bank above. A second head and body appeared, a third and a fourth.

Ridley's fear was gone. He had a job to do, and he went at it in a workmanlike manner. His first shot dropped the brave on the bank. His second missed, his third went hissing up the river. But the fourth caught full in the throat one of the Kiowas on the log. The painted warrior shot headfirst into the water and dropped as though he had been a stone. Before Arthur could fire again, the passengers astride the dead tree dived into the stream. Slowly the log swung around and was sucked into the current. Here and there a feathered head bobbed up. The boy fired at them from a sense of duty, but he did not flatter himself that he had scored another hit.

But the immediate danger of being rushed was past. Ridley circled the island again to make sure that the attack at the head had not been a feint to cover one in the rear.

During the night Arthur had not been idle. Behind a large rock he had scooped out a small cave in which he and the wounded man might lie protected. Now the Indians, in the full light of day, were spraying the spot with bullets. Fortunately they were notoriously poor shots, and their guns were the worst ever made. For hours the fusillade continued. Occasionally the defender answered with a shot or two to discourage any further attempt at storming his position.

The most welcome sound in Ridley's life was a scattering volley of shots that came from back of the Kiowa camp. There was a sudden rush for horses by the braves and the scurry of pounding hoofs as they fled across the prairie. A moment later came the whoop of the cowboys in the rescue party.

Arthur, in an ecstasy of relief, ran to the edge of the water and waved his hat. Across the river came in answer the "Yip-yip, yippy-yip-yip" of the line-riders in the company. Several of them plunged into the stream and swam their horses across to the island. Among these were Jumbo Wilkins and Tex Roberts.

"I see you done held the fort, son," said the fat man. "Fine and dandy! How's Dinsmore?"

"Quieter. He slept a good deal in the night. How are we going to get him across the river?"

The Ranger joined them. He nodded a friendly greeting at Ridley.

"Our luck held up all right. I see you been doin' some fancy shootin'."

Arthur looked at him. The eyes of the Easterner were full of timid doubt. What did this game Texan think of him who had proposed to leave a wounded man to his fate? The Ranger beamed a kindly comradeship, but the other young fellow wondered what was passing in the back of his mind.

They held a committee on ways and means about Dinsmore.

"We can't stay here--got to get him to town where he can be fixed up," Jumbo said.

"We'll take him over to the other bank and send for a buckboard," decided Jack.

The wounded man was carried to the head of the island, and strapped to the back of a horse. Jumbo, Roberts, and Ridley guided the horse into the current and helped it fight through to the shallow water beyond.

Twenty-four hours later Dinsmore was in bed in Tascosa. Dr. Bridgman said, with the usual qualification about complications, that the man probably would get well. The bullet had not punctured his lungs.

CHAPTER XXIII

A SHY YOUNG MAN DINES

Ramona met Arthur Ridley face to face just outside of the post-office.

"You dandy boy!" she cried, and held out both hands to him. Her eyes were shining. The gifts of friendship and admiration were in them.

He could not find a word to say. A lump rose in his throat and choked him.

"It was just fine of you--fine!" she told him. "I was so glad to hear that a friend of mine did it. You are still my friend, aren't you?"

"If you'll let me be," he said humbly. "But--I haven't done anything to deserve it."

"Everybody's praising you because you stayed with that Dinsmore man and saved his life at the risk of your own--after he had treated you so mean too. I'm so proud of you."

"You needn't be," he answered bluntly. "I wanted to slip away and leave him. I--I proposed it to Jack Roberts. But he wouldn't have it. He laid the law down. One of us had to go, one stay. I hadn't the nerve to go, so I stayed."

"I don't believe it--not for a minute," came her quick, indignant response. "And if you did--what of it? It isn't what we want to do that counts. It's what we really do!"

He shook his head wistfully. He would have liked to believe her, but he felt there was no credit due him.

"I fought because I had to if I was going to save my own skin. I haven't told any one else this, but I can't have you thinking me game when I know I'm not."

"Was it to save yourself you flung yourself down in front of father and let that awful man Dinsmore shoot at you?" she demanded, eyes flashing.

"A fellow can't stand by and see some one murdered without lifting a hand. I didn't have time to get frightened that time."

"Well, all I've got to say is that you're the biggest goose I ever saw, Art Ridley. Here you've done two fine things and you go around trying to show what a big coward you are."

He smiled gravely. "I'm not advertising it. I told you because--"

"--Because you're afraid I'll think too well of you."

"Because I want you to know me as I am."

"Then if I'm to know you as you are I'll have to get a chance to see what you really are. Dad and Auntie and I will expect you to supper to-morrow night."

"Thank you. I'll be there."

Casually she enlarged her invitation. "I don't suppose you'll see that very shy young man, Mr. Roberts."

"I might."

"Then, will you ask him to come too? I'm going to find out whether you acted as scared as you say you did."

"Jack knows how scared I was, but he won't tell. Sure I'll get word to him."

He did. At precisely six o'clock the two young men appeared at the home of Clint Wadley's sister. The Ranger was a very self-conscious guest. It was the first time he had dined with ladies at their home since he had lost his own mother ten years earlier. He did not know what to do with his hands and feet. The same would have been true of his hat if Ramona had not solved that problem by taking it from him. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He felt a good deal warmer than the actual temperature of the room demanded.

But Ramona noticed from the background that as soon as she and her aunt retired from the scene his embarrassment vanished. This slim, brown young man was quite at his ease with Clint Wadley, much more so than young Ridley. He was essentially a man's man, and his young hostess liked him none the less for that.

She made a chance to talk with him alone after supper. They were standing in the parlor near the window. Ramona pressed the end of her little finger against a hole in the pane.

"I wonder if you'd like me to sing 'Swanee River' for you, Mr. Roberts?" she asked.

He did not mind being teased. By this time he had regained his confidence. He had discovered that she would not bite even though she might laugh at him in a friendly way.

"You sing it fine," he said.

"I wasn't singing it for you the other time, but for Mr.--what's-his-name, Gurley?"

"I couldn't very well have you keep shoutin' out, 'I'm a girl,' so I figured--?"

"I know what you figured, sir. You wanted to take all the chances that were taken. Father says it was the quickest-witted thing he ever knew." She shot another dart at him, to his confusion. "Do you like my voice?"

"Well, ma'am, I--"

"You don't have to tell any stories. I see you don't."

Jack took heart. "If you're fishin' for a compliment--"

"What a tactful thing to tell a girl," she said, smiling.

"--I'll tell you that I never heard you sing better."

"Or worse, for that matter," she added; and with one of her swift changes of mood switched the topic of conversation. "How do you like Art Ridley?"

"He'll do to take along."

"That's not the way he talks. He says he--he wanted to run away from the island and leave that man Dinsmore, but you wouldn't let him." Her eyes met his very directly.

"He's a great lad for imaginin' things. I never want to see any one hold up his end better."

"You mean that he didn't say he wanted to leave Dinsmore?"

With her gaze searching him so steadily, it had to be an out-and-out lie to serve. Jack lied competently. "Not a word."

Her little finger tapped the hole in the pane gently while she reflected. "He told me--"

"That boy's still worryin' about losin' that money for Mr. Wadley, don't you reckon? He's got it tucked in his mind that a game man never would have been robbed. So he's decided he must be yellow. Nothin' to it a-tall. No quitter ever would have stood off those Kiowas like he did."

"That's what I think." She turned to the Ranger again, nodding agreement. "You've relieved my mind. I shouldn't like to think that--"

She let her sentence trail out to nothing. Jack Roberts guessed its conclusion. She wouldn't like to think that the man she loved was not game.

CHAPTER XXIV

TEX BORROWS A BLACKSNAKE

Dinsmore recovered from his wound and was held prisoner by Captain Ellison for a month after he was well. Then the ranger captain dismissed the man with a warning.

"Skedaddle, you damn jayhawker," was his cavalier farewell. "But listen. If ever I get the deadwood on you an' yore outfit, I'll sure put you through. You know me, Dinsmore. I went through the war. For two years I took the hides off'n 'em.[5] I'm one of the lads that knocked the bark off this country. An' I've got the best bunch of man-hunters you ever did see. I'm not braggin'. I'm tellin' you that my boys will make you look like a plugged nickel if you don't get shet of yore meanness. They're a hell-poppin' bunch of jim-dandies, an' don't you ever forget it."

Homer Dinsmore spat tobacco-juice on the floor by way of expressing his contempt. "Hell!" he sneered. "We were doin' business in this neck of the woods before ever you come, an' we'll be here after you've gone."

The Ranger Captain gave a little shrug to his shoulders. "Some folks ain't got any more sense than that hog rootin' under the pecan tree, Dinsmore. I've seen this country when you could swap a buffalo-bull hide for a box of cartridges or a plug o' tobacco. You cayn't do it now, can you? I had thirty wagons full of bales of hides at old Fort Griffin two years ago. Now I couldn't fill one with the best of luck. In five years the buffaloes will be gone absolutely--mebbe in less time. The Indians are goin' with the buffaloes-an' the bad-men are a-goin' to travel the same trail. Inside of three years they'll sure be hard to find outside of jails. But you got to go yore own way. You're hard to curry, an' you wear 'em low. Suits me if it does you. We'll plant you with yore boots on, one of these days."

Dinsmore swaggered from the jail and presently rode out of town to join his companions. Three days later an acquaintance stopped Jack Roberts on the street.

"Seen Cap Ellison this mo'nin'? He was down at the shippin'-pen an' wanted to see you. The old man's hot as a ginger-mill about somethin'."

The Ranger strolled down toward the cattle-yards. On the way he met Arthur Ridley. They had come to be pretty good friends in the past month. The standards of the Texan were undergoing revision. He had been brought up in an outdoor school which taught that the rock-bottom factor of a man's character is gameness. Without it nothing else counted. This was as vital for a man as virtue for a woman. But it had begun to reach him that pluck is largely a matter of training. Arthur had lived soft, and his nerve, like his muscles, needed toughening. Were his gayety, his loyalty, his fundamental decency, the affectionate sweetness of his disposition, to count for nothing? He had a dozen advantages that Jack had not, and the cowboy admired him even though he was not hard as a rock.

"Have you spoken to Captain Ellison yet?" asked Ridley eagerly.

"Says he's thinkin' about it, Art. There's goin' to be a vacancy on the force soon. My notion is that you'll get the appointment."

It was a part of Ridley's charm for the Texan that he would not give up to his timidity. The young fellow meant to fight it out to a finish. That was one of the reasons why he wanted to join the Rangers, to be put in places that would force him to go through to a fighting finish. He had one other reason. Arthur wanted to settle a score with the Dinsmores.

Captain Ellison was listening to the complaint of a drover.

"I aim to drive a clean herd, Cap, but you know how it is yore own self. I start to drive in the spring when the hair's long an' the brand's hard to read. By the time I get here, the old hair is fallin' out an' the brand is plain. But what's a fellow to do? I cayn't drop those off-brands by the way, can I? The inspector--"

"That's all right, Steel. The inspector knows you're on the level. Hello, Jack! I been lookin' for you."

The Captain drew his man to one side. "Steve Gurley's in town. He came as a spokesman for the Dinsmores an' went to see Clint Wadley. The damn scoundrel served notice on Clint that the gang had written evidence which tied Ford up with their deviltry. He said if Clint didn't call me off so's I'd let 'em alone, they would disgrace his son's memory. Of course Wadley is all broke up about it. But he's no quitter. He knows I'm goin' through, an' he wouldn't expect me not to do the work I'm paid for."

"Do you want me to arrest Gurley?"

"Wouldn't do any good. No; just keep tabs on the coyote till he leaves town. He ought to be black-snaked, but that's not our business, I reckon."

Ridley walked back with the Ranger toward the main street of the town. From round a corner there came to them a strident voice.

"You stay right here, missy, till I'm through. I'm tellin' you about yore high-heeled brother. See? He was a rustler. That's what he was--a low-down thief and brand-blotter."

"Let me pass. I won't listen to you." The clear young voice was expressive of both indignation and fear.

"Not a step till I'm through tellin' you. Me, I'm Steve Gurley, the curly-haired terror of the Panhandle. When I talk, you listen. Un'erstand?"

The speech of the man was thick with drink. He had spent the night at the Bird Cage and was now on his way to the corral for his horse.

"You take Miss Ramona home. I'll tend to Gurley," said Roberts curtly to his friend. Into his eyes had come a cold rage Arthur had never before seen there.

At sight of them the bully's brutal insolence vanished. He tried to pass on his way, but the Ranger stopped him.

"Just a moment, Gurley. You're goin' with me," said Jack, ominously quiet.

White and shaken, 'Mona bit her lip to keep from weeping. She flashed one look of gratitude at her father's former line-rider, and with a little sob of relief took Ridley's offered arm.

"You got a warrant for me?" bluffed the outlaw.

At short range there is no weapon more deadly than the human eye. Jack Roberts looked at the bully and said: "Give me yore gun."

Steve Gurley shot his slant look at the Ranger, considered possibilities--and did as he was told.

"Now right about face and back-track uptown," ordered the officer.

At McGuffey's store Jack stopped his prisoner. A dozen punchers and cattlemen were hanging about. Among them was Jumbo Wilkins. He had a blacksnake whip in his hand and was teasing a pup with it. The Ranger handed over to Jumbo his guns and borrowed the whip.

Gurley backed off in a sudden alarm. "Don't you touch me! Don't you dass touch me! I'll cut yore heart out if you do."

The lash whistled through the air and wound itself cruelly round the legs of the bully. The man gave a yell of rage and pain. He lunged forward to close with Roberts, and met a driving left that caught him between the eyes and flung him back. Before he could recover the Ranger had him by the collar at arm's length and the torture of the whip was maddening him. He cursed, struggled, raved, threatened, begged for mercy. He tried to fling himself to the ground. He wept tears of agony. But there was no escape from the deadly blacksnake that was cutting his flesh to ribbons.

Roberts, sick at the thing he had been doing, flung the shrieking man aside and leaned up against the wall of the store.

Jumbo came across to him and offered his friend a drink.

"You'll feel better if you take a swallow of old forty-rod," he promised.

The younger man shook his head. "Much obliged, old-timer. I'm all right now. It was a kind of sickenin' job, but I had to do it or kill him."

"What was it all about?" asked Jumbo eagerly. The fat line-rider was a good deal of a gossip and loved to know the inside of every story.

Jack cast about for a reason. "He--he said I had red hair."

"Well, you old son of a mule-skinner, what's the matter with that? You have, ain't you?" demanded the amazed Wilkins.

"Mebbe I have, but he can't tell me so."

That was all the satisfaction the public ever got. It did a good deal of guessing, however, and none of it came near the truth.

[Footnote 5: To "take the hides off'n 'em" was the expressive phraseology in which the buffalo-hunter described his business.]

CHAPTER XXV

"THEY'RE RUNNIN' ME OUTA TOWN"

Jumbo Wilkins came wheezing into the Sunset Trail corral, where Jack Roberts was mending a broken bridle. "'Lo, Tex. Looks like you're gittin' popular, son. Folks a-comin' in fifty miles for to have a little talk with you."

The eyes of the Ranger grew intelligent. He knew Jumbo's habit of mind. The big line-rider always made the most of any news he might have.

"Friends of mine?" asked Jack casually.

"Well, mebbe friends ain't just the word. Say acquaintances. You know 'em well enough to shoot at and to blacksnake 'em, but not well enough to drink with."

"Did they say they wanted to see me?"

"A nod is as good as a wink to a blind bronc. They said they'd come to make you hard to find."

The Ranger hammered down a rivet carefully. "Many of 'em?"

"Two this trip. One of 'em used to think yore topknot was red. I dunno what he thinks now."

"And the other?"

"Carries the brand of Overstreet."

"Where are these anxious citizens, Jumbo?"

"Last I saw of 'em they were at the Bird Cage lappin' up another of the same. They've got business with Clint Wadley, too, they said."

Jack guessed that business was blackmail. It occurred to him that since these visitors had come to town to see him, he had better gratify their desire promptly. Perhaps after they had talked with him they might not have time to do their business with Wadley.

As Jumbo waddled uptown beside him, Roberts arranged the details of his little plan. They separated at the corner of the street a block from the Bird Cage. Wilkins had offered to lend a hand, but his friend defined the limit of the help he might give.

"You come in, shake hands with me, an' ask that question. Then you're through. Understand, Jumbo?"

"Sure. But I want to tell you again Overstreet is no false-alarm bad-man. He'll fight at the drop of the hat. That's his reputation, anyhow--wears 'em low an' comes a-shootin'."

"I'll watch out for him. An' I'll look for you in about three minutes."

"Me, I'll be there, son, and I wish you the best of luck."

Gurley was at the bar facing the door when the Ranger walked into the Bird Cage. He had been just ready to gulp down another drink, but as his eyes fell on this youth who came forward with an elastic step the heart died within him. It had been easy while the liquor was in his brain to brag of what he meant to do. It was quite another thing to face in battle this brown, competent youth who could hit silver dollars in the air with a revolver.

His companion read in Gurley's sallow face the dismay that had attacked him. Overstreet turned and faced the newcomer. The outlaw was a short, heavy-set man with remarkably long arms. He had come from Trinidad, Colorado, and brought with him the reputation of a killer. His eyes looked hard at the red-haired youngster, but he made no comment.

Jack spoke to the bartender. He looked at neither of the bad-men, but he was very coolly and alertly on guard.

"Joe, I left my blacksnake at home," he said. "Have you got one handy?"

"Some guys are lucky, Steve," jeered Overstreet, taking his cue from the Ranger. "Because you fell over a box and this fellow beat you up while you was down, he thinks he's a regular go-getter. He looks to me like a counterfeit four-bit piece, if anybody asks you."

Jumbo Wilkins puffed into the place and accepted the Ranger's invitation to take a drink.

"What makes you so gaunted, Jack? You look right peaked," he commented as they waited for their drinks.

"Scared stiff, Jumbo. I hear two wild an' woolly bad-men are after me. One is a tall, lopsided, cock-eyed rooster, an' the other is a hammered-down sawed-off runt. They sure have got me good an' scared. I've been runnin' ever since I heard they were in town."

Gurley gulped down his drink and turned toward the door hastily. "Come, let's go, Overstreet. I got to see a man."

The Texan and the Coloradoan looked at each other with steel-cold eyes. They measured each other in deadly silence, and while one might have counted twenty the shadow of death hovered over the room. Then Overstreet made his choice. The bragging had all been done by Gurley. He could save his face without putting up a fight.

"Funny how some folks are all blown up by a little luck," he sneered, and he followed his friend to the street.

"You got 'em buffaloed sure, Jack. Tell me how you do it," demanded Jumbo with a fat grin.

"I'm the law, Jumbo."

"Go tell that to the Mexicans, son. What do you reckon a killer like Overstreet cares for the law? He figured you might down him before he could gun you--didn't want to risk an even break with you."

The Ranger poured his untasted liquor into the spittoon and settled the bill. "Think I'll drop around to the Silver Dollar an' see if my birds have lit again."

At the Silver Dollar Jack found his friend the ex-Confederate doing business with another cattleman.

"I'd call that a sorry-lookin' lot, Winters," he was saying. "I know a jackpot bunch of cows when I see 'em. They look to me like they been fed on short grass an' shin-oak." His face lighted at sight of the Ranger. "Hello, brindle-haid! Didn't know you was in town."

The quick eye of the officer had swept over the place and found the two men he wanted sitting inconspicuously at a small table.

"I'm not here for long, Sam. Two genuwine blown-in-the-bottle bad-men are after my scalp. They're runnin' me outa town. Seen anything of 'em? They belong to the Dinsmore outfit."

The old soldier looked at him with a sudden startled expression. He knew well what men were sitting against the wall a few steps from him. This was talk that might have to be backed by a six-shooter. Bullets were likely to be flying soon.

"You don't look to me like you're hittin' yore heels very fast to make a get-away, Jack," he said dryly.

"I'm sure on the jump. They're no bully-puss kind of men, but sure enough terrors from the chaparral. If I never get out o' town, ship my saddle in a gunny-sack to my brother at Dallas."

"Makin' yore will, are you?" inquired Joe Johnston's former trooper.

The red-haired man grinned. "I got to make arrangements. They came here to get me. Two of 'em--bad-men with blood in their eyes." He hummed, with jaunty insolence:

"He's a killer and a hater! He's the great annihilator! He's a terror of the boundless prai-ree.

"That goes double. I'm certainly one anxious citizen. Don't you let 'em hurt me, Sam."

There was a movement at the table where the two men were sitting. One of them had slid from his chair and was moving toward the back door.

The Ranger pretended to catch sight of him for the first time. "Hello, Gurley! What's yore hurry? Got to see another man, have you?"

The rustler did not wait to answer. He vanished through the door and fled down the alley in the direction of the corral. Overstreet could do as he pleased, but he intended to slap a saddle on his horse and make tracks for the cap-rock country.

Overstreet himself was not precisely comfortable in his mind, but he did not intend to let a smooth-faced boy run him out of the gambling-house before a dozen witnesses. If he had to fight, he would fight. But in his heart he cursed Gurley for a yellow-backed braggart. The fellow had got him into this and then turned tail. The man from Colorado wished devoutly that Pete Dinsmore were beside him.

"You're talkin' at me, young fellow. Listen: I ain't lookin' for any trouble with you--none a-tall. But I'm not Steve Gurley. Where I come from, folks grow man-size. Don't lean on me too hard. I'm liable to decrease the census of red-haired guys."

Overstreet rose and glared at him, but at the same time one hand was reaching for his hat.

"You leavin' town too, Mr. Overstreet?" inquired the Ranger.

"What's it to you? I'll go when I'm ready."

"'We shall meet, but we shall miss you--there will be one vacant chair,'" murmured the young officer, misquoting a song of the day. "Seems like there's nothin' to this life but meetin' an' partin'. Here you are one minute, an' in a quarter of an hour you're hittin' the high spots tryin' to catch up with friend Steve."

"Who said so? I'll go when I'm good an' ready," reiterated the bad-man.

"Well, yore bronc needs a gallop to take the kinks out of his legs. Give my regards to the Dinsmores an' tell 'em that Tascosa is no sort of place for shorthorns or tinhorns."

"Better come an' give them regards yore own self."

"Mebbe I will, one of these glad mo'nin's. So long, Mr. Overstreet. Much obliged to you an' Steve for not massacreein' me."

The ironic thanks of the Ranger were lost, for the killer from Colorado was already swaggering out of the front door.

The old Confederate gave a whoop of delight. "I never did see yore match, you doggoned old scalawag. You'd better go up into Mexico and make Billy the Kid[6] eat out of yore hand. This tame country is no place for you, Jack."

Roberts made his usual patient explanation. "It's the law. They can't buck the whole Lone Star State. If he shot me, a whole passel of Rangers would be on his back pretty soon. So he hits the trail instead." He turned to Ridley, who had just come into the Silver Dollar. "Art, will you keep cases on Overstreet an' see whether he leaves town right away?"

A quarter of an hour later Ridley was back with information.

"Overstreet's left town--lit out after Gurley."

The old Rebel grinned. "He won't catch him this side of the cap-rock."

[Footnote 6: Billy The Kid was the most notorious outlaw of the day. He is said to have killed twenty-one men before Sheriff Pat Garrett killed him at the age of twenty-one years.]

CHAPTER XXVI

FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

Mr. Peter Dinsmore was of both an impulsive and obstinate disposition. He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. Somewhere he had heard that if a man desired his business well done, he must do it himself. Gurley had proved a poor messenger. Peter would call upon Clint Wadley in person and arrange an armistice.

He had another and a more urgent reason for getting to town promptly. A jumping toothache had kept him awake all night. After he reached Tascosa, Dinsmore was annoyed to find that Dr. Bridgman had ridden down the river to look after the fractured leg of a mule-skinner.

"Isn't there any one else in this condemned burg can pull teeth?" he demanded irritably of the bartender at the Bird Cage.

"There certainly is. Buttermilk Brown is a sure-enough dentist. He had to take to bull-whackin' for to make a livin', but I reckon he's not forgot how. You'll probably find him sleepin' off a hang-over at the Four-Bit Corral."

This prophecy proved true, but Dinsmore was not one to let trifles turn him aside. He led the reluctant ex-dentist to a water-trough and soused his head under the pump.

"Is that a-plenty?" he asked presently, desisting from his exercise with the pump-handle.

Buttermilk sputtered a half-drowned assent. His nerves were still jumpy, and his head was not clear, but he had had enough cold water. Heroic treatment of this sort was not necessary to fit him for pulling a tooth.

They adjourned to the room where Buttermilk had stored his professional tools. Dinsmore indicated the back tooth that had to come out. The dentist peered at it, inserted his forceps and set to work. The tooth came out hard, but at last he exhibited its long prongs to the tortured victim.

"We get results," said Buttermilk proudly.

"How much?" asked Pete.

It happened that the dentist did not know his patient. He put a price of five dollars on the job. Dinsmore paid it and walked with Buttermilk to the nearest saloon for a drink.

Pete needed a little bracer. The jumping pain still pounded like a piledriver at his jaw. While the bartender was handing him a glass and a bottle, Dinsmore caressed tenderly the aching emptiness and made a horrible discovery. Buttermilk Brown had pulled the wrong tooth.

Considering his temperament, Pete showed remarkable self-restraint. He did not slay Buttermilk violently and instantly. Instead he led him back to the room of torture.

"You pulled the wrong tooth, you drunken wreck," he said in effect, but in much more emphatic words. "Now yank out the right one, and if you make another mistake--"

He did not finish the threat, but it is possible that Buttermilk understood. The dentist removed with difficulty the diseased molar.

"Well, we're through now," he said cheerfully. "I don't know as I ought to charge you for that last one. I'll leave that to you to say."

"We're not quite through," corrected the patient. "I'm goin' to teach you to play monkey-shines with Pete Dinsmore's teeth." He laid a large revolver on the table and picked up the forceps. "Take that chair, you bowlegged, knock-kneed, run-down runt."

Buttermilk protested in vain. He begged the bad-man for mercy with tears in his eyes.

"I'm goin' to do Scripture to you, and then some," explained Dinsmore. "It says in the Bible a tooth for a tooth, but I aim to pay good measure."

The amateur dentist pulled four teeth and played no favorites. A molar, a bicuspid, a canine, and an incisor were laid in succession on the table.

Buttermilk Brown wept with rage and pain.

"Four times five is twenty. Dig up twenty dollars for professional services," said Pete.

His tearful patient paid the fee. This was the most painful, violent, and high-handed episode of Buttermilk's young life. Never in Shelbyville, Indiana, from which town he had migrated hopefully westward with his diploma, had such outrages been heard of.

The instruments of Providence are sometimes strange ones. Nobody would have picked Pete Dinsmore for a reformer, but he changed the course of one young dentist's life. Buttermilk fled from the Southwest in horror, took the pledge eagerly, returned to Shelbyville and married the belle of the town. He became a specialist in bridge-work, of which he carried a golden example in his own mouth. His wife has always understood that Dr. Brown--nobody ever called him Buttermilk in his portly, prosperous Indiana days--lost his teeth trying to save a child from a runaway. Be that as it may, there is no record that he ever again pulled the wrong tooth for a patient.

Having completed his deed of justice, Dinsmore in high good humor with himself set out to call on Clint Wadley. He had made an inoffensive human being suffer, and that is always something to a man's credit. If he could not do any better, Pete would bully a horse, but he naturally preferred humans. They were more sensitive to pain.

CHAPTER XXVII

CLINT FREES HIS MIND

Wadley was sitting on the porch with Ramona. He was still a semi-invalid, and when he exercised too much his daughter scolded him like the little mother she was.

"Keep me here much longer, an' I'll turn into a regular old gossip in breeches," he complained. "I'll be Jumbo Wilkins Number Two, like as not."

"Is Jumbo a specialist in gossip?" asked Ramona. She liked to get her father at reminiscences. It helped to pass time that hung heavy on his hands.

"Is he? Girl, he could talk a hind leg off'n a buckskin mule, Jumbo could." He stopped to chuckle. "Oncet, when we were drivin' a bunch of yearlin's on the Brazos, one of the boys picked up an old skull. Prob'ly some poor fellow killed by the Indians. Anyhow, that night when Jumbo was wound up good, one of the lads pretended to discover that skull an' brought it into the camp-fire light. Some one had wrote on it: 'Talked to death by Jumbo Wilkins.'"

'Mona rather missed the point. She was watching a man slouching down the road toward them. He was heavy-set and unwieldy, and he wore a wrinkled suit of butternut jeans.

The eyes of the cattleman chilled. "You go into the house, 'Mona. That fellow's Pete Dinsmore. I don't want you to meet him."

"Don't you, Dad?" The heart of the girl fluttered at sight of this man who had nearly killed her father, but it was not fear but anger that burned in her eyes. "I'm going to sit right here. What does he want? He's not coming--to make trouble, is he?"

"No. We've got business to settle. You run along in."

"I know what your business is. It's--about Ford."

He looked at her in surprised dismay. "Who told you that, honey?"

"I'll tell you about that after he's gone. I want to stay, Dad, to show him that I know all about it, and that we're not going to let him carry out any blackmailing scheme against us."

Dinsmore nodded grouchily as he came up the walk to the house. Wadley did not ask him to sit down, and since there were no unoccupied chairs the rustler remained standing.

"I got to have a talk with you, Clint," the outlaw said. "Send yore girl into the house."

"She'll listen to anything you have to say, Dinsmore. Get through with it soon as you can, an' hit the trail," said the cattleman curtly.

The other man flushed darkly. "You talk mighty biggity these days. I remember when you wasn't nothin' but a busted line-rider."

"Mebbeso. And before that I was a soldier in the army while you was doin' guerrilla jayhawkin'."

"Go ahead. Say anything you've a mind to, Clint. I'll make you pay before I'm through with you," answered the bad-man venomously.

"You will if you can; I know that. You're a bad lot, Dinsmore, you an' yore whole outfit. I'm glad Ellison an' his Rangers are goin' to clear you out of the country. A sure-enough good riddance, if any one asks me."

The cattleman looked hard at him. He too had been a fighting man, but it was not his reputation for gameness that restrained the ruffian. Wadley was a notch too high for him. He could kill another bad-man or some drunken loafer and get away with it. But he had seen the sentiment of the country when his brother had wounded the cattleman. It would not do to go too far. Times were changing in the Panhandle. Henceforth lawlessness would have to travel by night and work under cover. With the coming of the Rangers, men who favored law were more outspoken. Dinsmore noticed that they deferred less to him, partly, no doubt, because of what that fool boy Roberts had done without having yet had to pay for it.

"That's what I've come to see you about, Wadley. I'm not lookin' for trouble, but I never ran away from it in my life. No livin' man can lay on me without hell poppin'. You know it."

"Is that what you came to tell me, Dinsmore?" asked the owner of the A T O, his mouth set grim and hard.

There was an ugly look on the face of the outlaw, a cold glitter of anger in his deep-set eyes. "I hear you set the world an' all by that girl of yours there. Better send her in, Wadley. I'm loaded with straight talk."

The girl leaned forward in the chair. She looked at him with a flash of disdainful eyes in which was a touch of feminine ferocity. But she let her father answer the man.

"Go on," said the old Texan. "Onload what you've got to say, an' then pull yore freight."

"Suits me, Clint. I'm here to make a bargain with you. Call Ellison off. Make him let me an' my friends alone. If you don't, we're goin' to talk--about yore boy Ford." The man's upper lip lifted in a grin. He looked first at the father, then at the daughter.

There was a tightening of the soft, round throat, but she met his look without wincing. The pallor of her face lent accent to the contemptuous loathing of the slender girl.

"What are you goin' to say--that you murdered him, shot him down from behind?" demanded Wadley.

"That's a lie, Clint. You know who killed him--an' why he did it. Ford couldn't let the girls alone. I warned him as a friend, but he was hell-bent on havin' his own way."

The voice of the cattleman trembled. "Some day--I'm goin' to hunt you down like a wolf for what you did to my boy."

A lump jumped to Ramona's throat. She slipped her little hand into the big one of her father, and with it went all her sympathy and all her love.

"You're 'way off, Wadley. The boy was our friend. Why should we shoot him?" asked the man from the chaparral.

"Because he interfered with you when you robbed my messenger."

The startled eyes of the outlaw jumped to meet those of the cattleman. For a fraction of a second he was caught off his guard. Then the film of wary craftiness covered them again.

"That's plumb foolishness, Clint. The Mexican--what's his name?--killed Ford because he was jealous, an' if it hadn't been for you, he'd 'a' paid for it long ago. But that ain't what I came to talk about. I'm here to tell you that I've got evidence to prove that Ford was a rustler an' a hold-up. If it comes to a showdown, we're goin' to tell what we know. Mebbe you want folks to know what kind of a brother yore girl had. That's up to you."

Wadley exploded in a sudden fury of passion. "I'll make no bargain with the murderer of my boy. Get out of here, you damned yellow wolf. I don't want any truck with you at all till I get a chance to stomp you down like I would a rattler."

The bad-man bared his fangs. For one moment of horror Ramona thought he was going to strike like the reptile to which her father had compared him. He glared at the cattleman, the impulse strong in him to kill and be done with it. But the other side of him--the caution that had made it possible for him to survive so long in a world of violent men--held his hand until the blood-lust passed from his brain.

"You've said a-plenty," he snarled thickly. "Me, I've made my last offer to you. It's war between me 'n' you from now on."

He turned away and went slouching down the path to the road.

The two on the porch watched him out of sight. The girl had slipped inside her father's arm and was sobbing softly on his shoulder.

"There, honeybug, now don't you--don't you," Clint comforted. "He cayn't do us any harm. Ellison's hot on his trail. I'll give him six months, an' then he's through. Don't you fret, sweetheart. Daddy will look out for you all right."

"I--I wasn't thinking about me," she whispered.

Both of them were thinking of the dead boy and the threat to blacken his memory, but neither of them confessed it to the other. Wadley cast about for something to divert her mind and found it in an unanswered question of his own.

"You was goin' to tell me how come you to know what he wanted to talk with me about," the father reminded her.

"You remember that day when Arthur Ridley brought me home?"

He nodded assent.

"One of the Dinsmore gang--the one they call Steve Gurley--met me on the street. He was drunk, an' he stopped me to tell me about--Ford. I tried to pass, an' he wouldn't let me. He frightened me. Then Arthur an' Mr. Roberts came round the corner. Arthur came home with me, an'--you know what happened in front of McGuffey's store."

The face of the girl had flushed a sudden scarlet. Her father stared at her in an amazement that gave way to understanding. Through his veins there crashed a wave of emotion. If he had held any secret grudge against Tex Roberts, it vanished forever that moment. This was the kind of son he would have liked to have himself.

"By ginger, that was what he beat Gurley up for! Nobody knows why, an' Roberts kept the real reason under his hat. He's a prince, Jack Roberts is. I did that boy a wrong, 'Mona, an' guessed it all the time, just because he had a mixup with Ford. He wasn't to blame for that, anyhow, I've been told."

Ramona felt herself unaccountably trembling. There was a queer little lump in her throat, but she knew it was born of gladness.

"He's been good to me," she said, and told of the experience with the traveling salesman on the stage.

Clint Wadley laughed. "I never saw that boy's beat. He's got everything a fellow needs to win. I can tell you one thing; he's goin' to get a chance to run the A T O for me before he's forty-eight hours older. He'll be a good buy, no matter what salary he sticks me for."

'Mona became aware that she was going to break down--and "make a little fool of herself," as she would have put it.

"I forgot to water my canary," she announced abruptly.

The girl jumped up, ran into the house and to her room. But if the canary was suffering from thirst, it remained neglected. Ramona's telltale face was buried in a pillow. She was not quite ready yet to look into her own eyes and read the message they told.

CHAPTER XXVIII

ON A COLD TRAIL

"Dog it, Jack, we got to go after the Dinsmores," said Ellison, pounding the table with his fist. "I've just had a letter from the old man wantin' to know why we don't get results. It's not the Ranger policy to wait for outlaws to come to us. We go after 'em."

Tex smiled cheerfully. "Suits me fine. What are your instructions, Captain? Want me to arrest Homer Dinsmore again?"

"What would I do with him if you got him?" snapped the old-timer.

"You could turn him loose again," suggested Roberts, not entirely without sarcasm.

"If you boys were worth the powder to blow you-all up--!" exploded the veteran.

"Instead of bein' a jackpot bunch of triflin' no-account scalawags," murmured Jack.

"--You'd hustle out an' get evidence against 'em."

"Sounds reasonable." The Ranger lifted his heels to the seat of a second chair and rolled him a cigarette.

"You'd find out where they're hidin' the cattle they rustle."

"Are you givin' me an assignment, Captain?"

"You done said it, son. There's a bunch of rustled stock up in the rocks somewheres. You know it. Question is, can you find the cache?"

"I can try."

"Wasn't it you told me once about bumpin' into a rustler doin' business whilst you was ridin' the line?"

"At the mouth of Box Cañon--yes."

"Well, wha's the matter with you scoutin' up Box Cañon an' seein' what you find?"

"They're roostin' up there somewheres. I'll bet a hat on that."

"How many boys you want with you?"

Jack considered. "One. I'll take Ridley if you don't mind."

"He's a tenderfoot," suggested Ellison doubtfully. "Won't be of any help to you a-tall in cutting sign. If you leave him he's liable to get lost. Better take Moser, hadn't you?"

"Rather have Ridley. He doesn't claim to know it all. Besides, we've got to break him in sometime."

"Suits me if he does you. It's yore party."

"We'll start in the mo'nin'."

"The sooner the quicker," agreed the Captain. "I want the old man to know we're not spendin' our time settin' around a office. He's got no call to crawl my hump when you boys are doin' the best you can. Well, go to it, son. See if you-all can get evidence that will stand up so's we can collect that bunch of hawss-thieves."

Before daybreak the two Rangers were on their way. They drove a pack-horse, their supplies loaded on a sawbuck saddle with kyacks. Jack had been brought up in the Panhandle. He knew this country as a seventh-grade teacher does her geography. Therefore he cut across the desert to the cap-rock, thence to Dry Creek, and so by sunset to Box Cañon. At the mouth of the gulch they slept under the stars. As soon as they had cooked their coffee and bacon Roberts stamped out the fire.

"We don't want to advertise we're here. I'm some particular about my health. I'd hate to get dry-gulched[7] on this job," said Jack.

"Would the Dinsmores shoot us if they found us?" asked Ridley, searching with his head for the softest spot in his saddle for a pillow.

"Would a calf milk its mother? They're sore as a toad at me, an' I expect that goes for any other Ranger too. Homer might give us an even break because we stayed with him on the island, but I'd hate to bet my head on that."

"If we get any evidence against them they can't afford to let us go," agreed Arthur.

"An' if they jump us up, how're they goin' to know how much we've seen? There's one safe way, an' they would ce'tainly take it."

"Dead men tell no tales, it's said."

"Some of 'em do an' some don't. I never met up with a proverb yet that wasn't 'way off about half the time. For instance, that one you quoted. Rutherford Wadley's body told me considerable. It said that he'd been killed on the bluff above an' flung down; that he'd been shot by a rifle in the hands of a man standin' about a hundred an' fifty yards away; that he'd been taken by surprise an' probably robbed."

"It wouldn't have told me all that."

"Not till you learn to read sign closer than you do. An outdoor education is like a school-book one. You can't learn it in a day or a week or a year."

"You're no Methuselah. There's still hope for me."

"Lots o' hope. It's mostly keepin' yore eyes open an' yore brain workin'. I'm still only in the A B C class, but a fellow learns somethin' every day if he's that kind."

"If it's a matter of brains, why do Indians make the best trailers? You wouldn't say their brains are as good as a white man's, would you?"

"No; an' I'd say there's nothin' on earth an Indian can do as well as a white man, given the same chance to learn it. Indians know the outdoors because they have to know it to live. The desert's no prodigal mother. Her sons have to rustle right smart to keep their tummies satisfied. If the 'Paches and the Kiowas didn't know how to cut sign an' read it, how to hunt an' fish an' follow a trail, they'd all be in their happy huntin' grounds long ago. They're what old Nature has made 'em. But I'll tell you this. When a white man gives his mind to it he understands the life of the plains better than any Indian does. His brains are better, an' he goes back an' looks for causes. The best trailers in the world are whites, not redskins."

"I didn't know that," Arthur said.

"Ask any old-timer if it ain't so."

They were eating breakfast when the light on the horizon announced a new day on the way. Already this light was saturating the atmosphere and dissolving shadows. The vegetation of the plains, the wave rolls of the land, the distant horizon line, became more distinct. By the time the sun pushed into sight the Rangers were in the saddle.

Roberts led through the polecat brush to the summit of a little mesa which overlooked the gulch. Along the edge of the ravine he rode, preferring the bluff to the sandy wash below because the ground was less likely to tell the Dinsmores a story of two travelers riding up Box Cañon. At the head of the gorge a faint trail dipped to the left. Painted on a rock was a sign that Jack had seen before.

THIS IS PETE DINSMORE'S ROAD-- TAKE ANOTHER.

He grinned reminiscently. "I did last time. I took the back trail under orders."

"Whose orders?" asked Ridley.

"Pete's, I reckon."

"If there's a story goes with that grin--" suggested Arthur.

"No story a-tall. I caught a fellow brandin' a calf below the cañon. He waved me around. Some curious to see who the guy was that didn't want to say 'How?' to me, I followed him into Box."

That seemed to be the end of the yarn. At any rate, Jack stopped.

"Well, did you find out who he was?"

"No, but I found this sign, an' above it a rifle slantin' down at me, an' back of the rifle a masked face. The fellow that owned the face advised me about my health."

"What about it?"

"Why, that this rough country wasn't suited to my disposition, temperament, an' general proclivities. So I p'inted back to where I had come from."

"And you never satisfied your curiosity about who the rustler was?"

"Didn't I?" drawled Jack.

"Did you?"

"Mebbe I did. I'm not tellin' that yarn--not to-day."

The country was rougher and hillier. The trail they had been following died away in the hills, but they crossed and recrossed others, made by buffaloes, antelopes, and coyotes driven by the spur of their needs in the years that had passed. Countless generations of desert life had come and gone before even the Indians drifted in to live on the buffalo.

"Why is it that there's more warfare on the desert than there is back East? The cactus has spines. The rattlesnake, the centipede, the Gila monster, the tarantula, all carry poison. Even the toad has a horn. Everywhere it is a fight to survive. The vegetation, as well as the animal life, fights all the time against drought. It's a regular hell on earth," Arthur concluded.

Jack eased himself in the saddle. "Looks kinda like Nature made the desert an' grinned at life, much as to say, 'I defy you to live there,' don't it? Sure there's warfare, but I reckon there's always war between different forms of life. If there wasn't, the world would be rank with all sorts of things crowdin' each other. The war would have to come then after all. Me, I like it. I like the way life came back with an answer to the challenge. It equipped itself with spines an' stings an' horns an' tough hides because it had to have 'em. It developed pores an' stomachs that could get along without much water. Who wants to live in a land where you don't have to rustle for a livin'?"

"You belong to the West. You're of it," Ridley said. "If you'd seen the fine grasslands of the East, the beautiful, well-kept farms and the fat stock, you'd understand what I mean. A fellow gets homesick for them."

Roberts nodded. "I've seen 'em an' I understand. Oncet I went back East an' spent three months there. I couldn't stand it. I got sick for the whinin' of a rope, wanted to hump over the hills after cows' tails. The nice little farms an' the nice little people with their nice little ways kinda cramped me. I reckon in this ol' world it's every one to his own taste." His eye swept the landscape. "Looks like there's water down there. If so, we'll fall off for a spell an' rest the hawsses."

[Footnote 7: A man is said to be "dry-gulched" when he mysteriously disappears,--killed by his enemies and buried under a pile of rocks.]

CHAPTER XXIX

BURNT BRANDS

At the end of the third day of scouting Jack came back to camp late, but jubilant.

"I've found what we're lookin' for, Art. I drifted across a ridge an' looked down into a draw this evenin'. A fellow was ridin' herd on a bunch of cows. They looked to me like a jackpot lot, but I couldn't be sure at that distance. I'm gonna find out what brands they carry."

"How?"

"The only way I know is to get close enough to see."

"Can you do that without being noticed?"

"Mebbe I can. The fellow watchin' the herd ain't expectin' visitors. Probably he loafs on the job some of the time. I'm gamblin' he does."

Roberts unloaded from the saddle the hindquarters of a black-tail deer he had shot just before sunset. He cut off a couple of steaks for supper and Ridley raked together the coals of the fire.

"Throw these into a fry-pan, Art, while I picket old Ten-Penny," said Jack. "I'm sure hungry enough to eat a mail sack. I lay up there in the brush 'most two hours an' that fellow's cookin' drifted to me till I was about ready to march down an' hold him up for it."

"What's the programme?" asked Arthur later, as they lay on their tarpaulins smoking postprandial cigarettes.

"I'll watch for a chance, then slip down an' see what's what. I want to know who the man is an' what brand the stock are carryin'. That's all. If it works out right mebbe we'll gather in the man an' drive the herd back to town."

"Then I go along, do I?"

"Yes, but probably you stay back in the brush till I signal for you to come down. We'll see how the thing works out."

Ridley lay awake for hours beneath a million stars, unable to get his alert nerves quiet enough for sleep. The crisis of his adventure was near and his active imagination was already dramatizing it vividly. He envied his friend, who had dropped into restful slumber the moment his head touched the saddle. He knew that Roberts was not insensitive. He, too, had a lively fancy, but it was relegated to the place of servant rather than master.

In the small hours Arthur fell into troubled sleep and before his eyes were fully shut--as it seemed to the drowsy man--he was roused by his companion pulling the blankets from under him. Ridley sat up. The soft sounds of the desert night had died away, the less subdued ones of day showed that another life was astir.

"Time to get up, Sleepy Haid. Breakfast is ready. Come an' get it," called Jack.

They packed their supplies on the extra horse and saddled their mounts. The day was still young when they struck across the plains to the north. The way they took was a circuitous one, for Roberts was following the draws and valleys as far as possible in order to escape observation.

The sun was high in the heavens when he drew up in the rim-rock.

"We'll 'light here an' picket the broncs," he said.

This done, both men examined their rifles and revolvers carefully to guard against any hitch in the mechanism. Then, still following the low country, they worked forward cautiously for another half-mile.

Jack fell back to give the other Ranger final instructions. "There's a clump of cactus on the summit. We'll lie back o' there. You stay right there when I go forward. If I get the breaks I'll wave you on later. If I don't get 'em you may have to come a-shootin' to help me."

They crept up an incline, wriggling forward on their stomachs the last few yards to the shelter of the cactus on the crest. Before them lay a little valley. On the cactus-covered slope opposite a herd of cattle was grazing. No guard was in sight.

For two hours they lay there silently, watching intently.

"I'll slip down right now an' take a look at the brands," said Jack.

"Hadn't I better come too?"

"You stick right where you're at, Art. I might need a friend under cover to do some fancy shootin' for me if the Dinsmores arrived unexpected."

There was no cover on the near slope. Jack made no attempt to conceal himself, but strode swiftly down into the valley. Goosequills ran up and down his spine, for he did not know at what moment a bullet might come singing down at him.

He reached the outgrazers of the herd and identified the A T O brand on half a dozen cows. The brand had been changed by an adroit touch or two of a running-iron. Probably the cattle were being held here until the hair had grown again enough to conceal the fact of a recent burn.

The Ranger circled the herd, moving toward the brow of the land swell. He made the most of the cactus, but there was an emptiness about the pit of his stomach. If some one happened to be watching him, a single shot would make an end of Tex Roberts. His scalp prickled and drew tight, as though some unseen hand were dragging at it.

From one clump to another he slipped, every sense keyed to alertness. The rifle in his hand, resting easily against the right hip, could be lifted instantly.

At the top of the rise the Ranger waited behind a prickly pear to search the landscape. It rolled away in long low waves to the horizon. A mile or more away, to the left, a faint, thin film of smoke hung lazily in the air. This meant a camp. The rustlers, to play safe, had located it not too near the grazing herd. It was a place, no doubt, where water was handy and from which the outlaws, if caught by surprise, could make a safe and swift retreat to the rim-rock.

Again, in a wide circuit in order not to meet anybody who might be riding from the camp to the herd, the Ranger moved forward warily. The smoke trickle was his guide and his destination.

He took his time. He was in no hurry. Speed was the least part of his programme. Far more important was secrecy. With that patience which the frontiersman has learned from the Indian he followed a tortuous course through the brush.

His trained eye told him the best direction for approach, the side from which he could get nearest to the camp with the least risk of being seen. Through the curly mesquite he crawled, hiding behind the short bushlike clumps until he had chosen the next line of advance. At last, screened by a Spanish bayonet, he commanded a view of the camp.

So far as he could tell it was deserted. Camp equipment lay scattered about. A frying-pan, a coffee-pot, tin cups and plates, had been dropped here and there. The coals of the fire still smouldered and gave forth a wisp of smoke. Fifty yards away a horse was picketed. It was an easy guess that the campers had not gone permanently, but were away from home for a few hours.

Where were they? Recalling the horses he and his companion had left picketed not far away, Jack felt a momentary qualm. If the Dinsmores should happen to stumble on them the situation would be an awkward one. The hunters would become the hunted. Deprived of their horses and supplies, the Rangers would be at a decided disadvantage. The only option left them would be to come to close quarters with the rustlers or to limp back home discouraged and discredited. Roberts preferred not to have his hand forced. He wanted to wait on opportunity and see what it brought him.

He moved forward to the camp and made a swift examination of it. Several men had slept here last night and four had eaten breakfast a few hours since. He could find no extra supplies, which confirmed his opinion that this was only a temporary camp of a night or two. A heavy buzzing of flies in a buffalo wallow not far away drew his steps. The swarm covered a saddle of deer from which enough for a meal had been slashed before it was thrown away.

The Ranger moved nothing. He left no signs other than his tracks to show that a stranger had been at the camp. As soon as he had inspected it he withdrew.

He had decided that the first thing to do was to join Ridley, make sure of their horses, and leave his companion in charge of them. Afterward he could return alone and watch the rustlers.

Since he knew that the rustlers were away from their camp, the Ranger did not feel the need of taking such elaborate precautions against discovery during the return journey. He made a wide circuit, but his long, easy stride carried him swiftly over the ground. Swinging round the valley in which the herd was grazing, he came up from the rear to the brush-covered summit where he had left Ridley.

Arthur had gone. He was nowhere in sight. Nor was there any sign to show where he had gone.

It was possible that some alarm might have sent him back to look after the horses. Jack ran down the incline to the little draw where the animals had been picketed. The broncos were safe, but Ridley was not with them.

CHAPTER XXX

ROGUES DISAGREE

With a heart that pounded queerly Arthur watched his friend cross the valley and work his way to the ridge beyond. Even after Jack had disappeared, he waited, nerves jumpy, for the crack of a rifle to carry news of death in the mesquite.

No tidings of tragedy came. The minutes fulfilled the hour. The many small sounds of the desert were shattered by no report. At last, drowsing in the warmth of the sunlit land, the Ranger's eyes closed, opened, and shut again. He nodded, fell asleep.

When he awakened it was with a shock of dread. His heart died. Four men were watching him. Two of them had him covered with revolvers. A third was just removing noiselessly his rifle and six-shooter from reach of his hand.

He jumped to his feet. The consternation in his eyes showed how completely he had been caught napping.

One of the men--a long, lank, cross-eyed fellow--laughed mockingly, and the sound of his mirth was evil.

"Whatta you doin' here?" demanded one whom he recognized as Pete Dinsmore.

For a moment the Ranger's mind was a blank. He could not make it serve his needs. Words were out of reach of his tongue. Then, "I'm lost," he stammered.

"Are you alone?"

"Yes." Out of his confusion one idea stood up imperatively. He must not betray Jack.

"Where's yore hawss?"

"It--it got away from me."

"When?"

"Last night." It seemed to him that he could keep just one jump ahead of this dominant man's menacing questions.

"Howcome that?"

"I shot a prairie-hen, and when I got down to get it--I don't know--my horse got frightened and jerked away. I tried to catch it. The brute wouldn't let me. Then night came."

"What were you doin' so far from town?" cut in one of the two who were covering him. He was a short, heavy-set man.

"That's right, Dave. Looks funny to me." Gurley seemed fairly to ooze malice. "Just happened to drift here to this herd, I reckon. It sure was yore unlucky day."

Arthur looked from one to another despairingly. He found no hope anywhere, not even in the expressionless face of Homer Dinsmore, who as yet had not spoken a word. There came over the boy what he afterward described as a "gone" feeling. It was the sensation, intensified many times, felt when an elevator drops from under one in swift descent.

"I--don't know what you mean," he faltered.

"You will," said Gurley brutally.

"Been across the valley to the herd yet?" asked Overstreet, elaborately careless.

Here was one question Ridley could answer with the truth. He spoke swiftly, eagerly. "No."

His questioner exchanged looks with Homer Dinsmore and laughed. The Ranger had betrayed himself. He had been so quick to deny that he had been near the herd that his anxiety gave him away. They knew he suspected them of having rustled the stock grazing on the slope. Very likely he had already verified his doubts as to burnt brands.

Homer Dinsmore spoke for the first time. His voice was harsh. "Why don't you tell the truth? You came to get evidence against us."

"Evidence?" repeated Arthur dully.

"To prove we're rustlin' stock. You know damn well."

"Why, I--I--"

"And you didn't come alone. Ellison never sent a tenderfoot like you out except with others. Where are the rest of yore party? Come through."

"I'm alone." Arthur stuck to that doggedly.

"If he's got a bunch of Rangers back of him we better burn the wind outa here," suggested Gurley, looking around uneasily.

Overstreet looked at him with scorn and chewed tobacco imperturbably. "Keep yore shirt on, Steve. Time enough to holler when you're hurt."

"I haven't got a bunch of Rangers with me," cried Ridley desperately, beads of sweat on his brow. It had come to him that if he persuaded these men he had no companions with him he would be sealing his doom. They could murder him with impunity. But he could not betray Jack. He must set his teeth to meet the worst before he did that. "I tell you I'm alone. I don't know what you mean about the cattle. I haven't been across the valley. I came here, and I hadn't slept all night. So I was all worn out. And somehow I fell asleep."

"All alone, eh?" Pete Dinsmore murmured it suavely. His crafty mind was weighing the difference this made in the problem before the outlaws--the question as to what to do with this man. They could not let him go back with his evidence. It would not be safe to kill him if he had merely strayed from a band of Rangers. But assuming he told the truth, that he had no companions, then there was a very easy and simple way out for the rustlers. The Ranger could not tell what he knew--however much or little that might be--if he never returned to town.

"I keep telling you that I'm alone, that I got lost," Arthur insisted. "What would I be doing here without a horse if I had friends?"

"Tha's right," agreed Gurley. "I reckon he got lost like he said."

He, too, by the same process of reasoning as Pete Dinsmore, had come to a similar conclusion. He reflected craftily that Ridley was probably telling the truth. Why should he persist in the claim that he was alone if he had friends in the neighborhood, since to persuade his captors of this was to put himself wholly in their power?

"You're easily fooled, Steve," sneered Homer. "I've camped with this bird, an' I tell you he's got a passel of Rangers with him somewheres. We're standin' here jawin' waitin' for them to round us up, I reckon."

Overstreet looked at Homer. His eyebrows lifted in a slight surprise. He and the younger Dinsmore had been side partners for years. Homer was a cool customer. It wasn't like him to scare. There was something in this he did not understand. Anyhow, he would back his pal's play till he found out.

"I expect you're right. We can easy enough prove it. Let's light out for the cap-rock an' hole up for a coupla days. Then one of us will slip out an' see if the herd's still here an' no Rangers in sight. We'll keep this gent a prisoner till we know where we're at? How's that?"

"You talk like we was the United States Army, Dave," growled Pete Dinsmore. "We got no way to take care o' prisoners. I'm for settlin' this thing right here."

The outlaws drew closer together and farther from Ridley. He was unarmed and wholly in their power. If he tried to run he could not get twenty yards. The voices of the men fell.

Arthur began to tremble. His face grew gray, his lips bloodless. On the issue of that conference his life hung. The easiest thing to do would be to make an end of him now. Would they choose that way out of the difficulty? He could see that Gurley had, for the moment at least, joined forces with Homer and Dave Overstreet against Pete, but he could hear none of the arguments.

"You're wrong, Pete. We're playin' safe. That's all. My notion is this guy's tellin' the truth. There's only one thing to do. I don't reckon any of us want him to go back to town. But if we do anything with him here, the Rangers are liable to find his body. Oncet up in the cap-rock we can dry-gulch him."

The older Dinsmore gave way with an oath. "All right. Have yore own way, boys. Majority rules. We'll postpone this discussion till later."

Gurley brought the horses. Arthur was mounted behind him, his feet tied beneath the belly of the horse. The rustlers rode in pairs, Homer Dinsmore and Overstreet in the rear.

"What makes you think this fellow has friends near, Homer?" asked his companion.

"He doesn't know enough to ride alone. But I don't care whether he's alone or not. I'm not goin' to have the boy killed. He stood by me on the island to a finish. Of course that wouldn't go with Steve an' Pete, so I put it on the other ground."

"Want to turn him loose, do you?"

"I'd swear him first to padlock his mouth. He'd do it, too, if he said so."

"Some risk that, old-timer."

"I got to do it, Dave. Can't throw him down, can I?"

"Don't see as you can. Well, make yore play when you get ready. I'll shove my chips in beside yours. I never yet killed a man except in a fight an' I've got no fancy for beginnin' now."

"Much obliged, Dave."

"How far do you 'low to go? If Pete gets ugly like he sometimes does, he'll be onreasonable."

"I'll manage him. If he does get set there'll be a pair of us. Mebbe I'm just about as stubborn as he is."

"I believe you. Well, I'll be with you at every jump of the road," Overstreet promised.

The discussion renewed itself as soon as the outlaws had hidden themselves in a pocket of the cap-rock. Again they drew apart from their prisoner and talked in excited but reduced voices.

"The Rangers have got no evidence we collected this fellow," argued Gurley. "Say he disappears off'n the earth. Mebbe he died of thirst lost on the plains. Mebbe a buffalo bull killed him. Mebbe--"

"Mebbe he went to heaven in a chariot of fire," drawled Overstreet, to help out the other's imagination.

"The point is, why should we be held responsible? Nobody knows we were within fifty miles of him, doggone it."

"That's where you're wrong. The Rangers know it. They're right on our heels, I tell you," differed Homer Dinsmore.

"We'll get the blame. No manner o' doubt about that," said Overstreet.

"Say we do. They can't prove a thing--not a thing."

"You talk plumb foolish, Steve. Why don't you use yore brains?" answered Homer impatiently. "We can go just so far. If we overstep the limit this country will get too hot for us. There'll be a grand round-up, an' we'd get ours without any judge or jury. The folks of this country are law-abidin', but there's a line we can't cross."

"That's all right," agreed Pete. "But there's somethin' in what Steve says. If this tenderfoot wandered off an' got lost, nobody's goin' to hold us responsible for him."

"He didn't no such thing get lost. Listen. Tex Roberts was with him the day Steve--fell over the box. Tex was with him when we had the rumpus with the Kiowas on the Canadian. Those lads hunt together. Is it likely this Ridley, who don't know sic' 'em, got so far away from the beaten trails alone? Not in a thousand years. There's a bunch of Rangers somewheres near. We got to play our hands close, Pete."

"We're millin' around in circles, Homer. Why does this fellow Ridley claim he's alone? He must know it's up to him to persuade us his friends are about two jumps behind us."

"One guess is as good as another. Here's mine," said Overstreet. "He wants to throw us off our guard. He's hopin' we'll pull some fool break an' the Rangers will make a gather of our whole bunch."

"Good enough," said Homer, nodding agreement. "Another thing. This lad Ridley's not game. But he's a long way from bein' yellow. He's not gonna queer the campaign of the Rangers by tellin' what he knows."

"Betcha I can make him talk," boasted Gurley. "Put a coupla sticks between the roots of his fingers an' press--"

"Think we're a bunch of 'Paches, Steve?" demanded Homer roughly. "Come to that, I'll say plain that I'm no murderer, let alone torture. I've killed when I had to, but the other fellow had a run for his money. If I beat him to the draw that was his lookout. He had no holler comin'. But this kid--not for me."

"Different here," said Pete evenly. "He knew what he was up against when he started. If it was us or him that had to go, I wouldn't hesitate a minute. Question is, what's safest for us?"

"The most dangerous thing for us is to harm him. Do that, an' we won't last a month in this country."

"What's yore idea, then, Homer? We can't hold him till Christmas. Soon as we let him go, he'll trot back an' tell all he knows," protested his brother irritably.

"What does he know? Nothin' except that we found him when he claimed to be lost an' that we looked after him an' showed him how to get home. Even if he's seen those cattle he can't prove we burned the brands, can he?"

"No-o."

"In a day or two we'll take the trail. I'll put it to Ridley that we haven't time to take him back to town an' that he'd sure get lost if we turned him loose here. We'll drop him somewheres on the trail after we've crossed the line."

"Fine an' dandy," jeered Gurley. "We'll introduce him to the herd an' take him along so's he'll be sure we're the rustlers."

They wrangled back and forth, covering the same ground time and again. At last they agreed to postpone a decision till next day.

Homer reported the issue of their debate, colored to suit his purpose, to the white-faced Ranger. "I reckon we'll have to look out for you, Ridley. It wouldn't do to turn you loose. You'd get lost sure. Mebbe in a day or two some of us will be driftin' in to town an' can take you along."

"If you'd start me in the right direction I think I could find my way back," Arthur said timidly.

"No chance, young fellow. You'll stay right here till we get good an' ready for you to go. See?"

The Ranger did not push the point. He knew very well it would not be of the least use. His fears were temporarily allayed. He felt sure that Homer Dinsmore would put up a stiff argument before he would let him be sacrificed.

CHAPTER XXXI

A PAIR OF DEUCES

From the lookout point among the rocks where he was stationed Overstreet shouted a warning to his companions below.

"Fellow with a white flag ridin' in. Looks like he might be a Ranger."

Pete Dinsmore dropped a coffee-pot and took three strides to his rifle. His brother Homer and Steve Gurley garnished themselves promptly with weapons. They joined the lookout, and from the big rocks could see without being seen.

The man coming to their hang-out had a handkerchief or a flour sack tied to the barrel of his rifle and was holding it in the air. He jogged along steadily without any haste and without any apparent hesitation. He was leading a saddled riderless horse.

A rifle cracked.

Pete Dinsmore whirled on Gurley angrily. "What you do that for?"

Malice, like some evil creature, writhed in Gurley's face. "It's that fellow Roberts. We got him right at last. Leggo my arm."

"I'll beat yore head off if you shoot again. Lucky for you you missed. Don't you see he comes here as a messenger. Ellison musta sent him."

"I don' care how he comes. He'll never go away except feet first." The man who had been horsewhipped by the Ranger was livid with rage.

Dinsmore swung him round by the shoulder savagely. "Who elected you boss of this outfit, Steve? Don't ride on the rope or you'll sure git a fall."

The eyes of Pete were blazing. Gurley gave way sullenly.

"Tha's all right. I ain't aimin' noways to cross you. I can wait to git this fellow if you say so."

The Ranger had pulled up his horse and was waving the improvised flag. Pete gave directions.

"Homer, you an' Dave go down an' find out what he wants. Don't bring him in unless you blindfold him first. We don't wanta introduce him to the place so as he can walk right in again any time."

The two men named walked out to meet the Ranger. They greeted him with grim little nods, which was exactly the salutation he gave them. The hard level eyes of the men met without yielding an eyebeat.

"Don't you know a flag of truce when you see it, Dinsmore?" demanded Roberts.

"Excuse that shot, Mr. Ranger," said Homer evenly. "It was a mistake."

"Gurley does make 'em," returned Jack, guessing shrewdly. "Some day he'll make one too many."

"I take it you came on business."

"Why, yes. Captain Ellison sent me with his compliments to get Ranger Ridley."

"Lost him, have you?"

"You can't exactly call him lost when we know where he is."

"Meanin' that he's here?"

"You ring the bell first shot."

Overstreet broke in, to mark time. "You think we've got him?"

"We do. Don't you?"

"And Ellison wants him, does he?"

"Wants him worse 'n a heifer cow does her calf." Roberts laughed softly, as though from some fund of inner mirth. "He's kinda hopin' you'll prove stubborn so as to give him a chance to come an' get him."

"Where is Ellison?"

The Ranger smiled. "He didn't give me any instructions about tellin' you where he is."

"H'mp! You can come in an' talk with Pete. We'll have to blindfold you," said Dinsmore.

The envoy made no objections. He dismounted. A bandana was tied across his eyes, and the men led him into the pocket of rock. The handkerchief was removed.

Jack told again what he had come for.

"How did you know we were here?" demanded Pete.

"It's our business to know such things." Jack did not think it wise to mention that he had been here once before, the same day he found Rutherford Wadley's body a few miles away at the foot of a bluff.

"Ridley told us he was alone--no Rangers a-tall with him, he said."

"Did he?" Jack showed amusement. "What did you expect him to tell you? He draws pay as a Ranger."

"What's Ellison's proposition?"

"Captain Ellison hasn't any proposition to make, if by that you mean compromise. You're to turn Ridley over to me. That's all."

"An' where do we get off?" snorted Pete. "What does that buy us?"

"It buys you six hours' time for a get-away. I've got no business to do it, but I'll promise to loaf around an' not report to Captain Ellison till after noon. I'll go that far."

"I don' know's we want to make any get-away. We could hold the fort right here against quite a few Rangers, I reckon."

"Suit yourself," said Jack indifferently.

Pete chewed tobacco slowly and looked down sullenly at a flat rock without seeing it. Anger burned in him like a smouldering fire in peat. He hated this man Roberts, and Ellison he regarded as a natural enemy. Nothing would have pleased him more than to settle his feud with the Ranger on the spot with a six-shooter. But that meant a hurried exit from the Panhandle at a sacrifice of his accumulated profits. This did not suit Dinsmore's plans. His purpose was to leave Texas with enough money to set him up in business in Colorado or Wyoming. It would not do to gratify his revenge just now. Nor did he dare to carry out his threat and let the Rangers attack him. His policy was to avoid any conflict if possible.

"Have to talk it over with the other boys," he said abruptly. "You wait here."

Jack sat down on a rock while the rustlers retired and discussed the situation. There was not room for much difference of opinion. The Rangers had forced their hand. All they could do was to slip out of the rim-rock and make for another zone of safety. This would involve losing the stock they had rustled, but their option was a choice of two evils and this was decidedly the lesser.

Pete announced their decision truculently, his chin thrust out.

"One of these days we'll tangle, you 'n' me, young fellow. But not to-day. Take Ridley an' git out pronto before I change my mind. For a plug of tobacco I'd go to foggin' the air right now."

The prisoner was brought forward. His weapons were restored to him. With the long strain of fear lifted at last from his mind, it was hard for him to keep down a touch of hysterical joy. But he managed to return Jack's casual greeting with one as careless to all appearance.

He had caught the drift of the talk and he played up to his friend promptly. "I was rather lookin' for you or one of the other boys about now, Jack," he said. "Mighty careless of me to get nabbed asleep."

Ten minutes later the two Rangers were outside the pocket riding across the plain.

"Hope Pete won't change his mind an' plump a few bullets at us. He's a right explosive proposition," said Roberts.

It was all Arthur could do to keep from quickening the pace. His mind wouldn't be easy until several miles lay between him and his late captors.

"Where's Captain Ellison waiting?" asked Ridley.

"He's probably at Tascosa or Mobeetie. I haven't seen him since you have."

"Didn't he send you to the Dinsmores after me?"

"Why, no."

Arthur drew a deep breath of relief. If he had weakened in his story that he was alone and had told the truth, he would have brought ruin upon both himself and his friend.

"You mean you went in there on a pure bluff, knowing how they hated you and what a big chance there was that they would murder you?"

"I took a chance, I reckon. But it looked good to me."

"If I had told them you and I were alone--"

"I figured you wouldn't do that. I had a notion my bluff would stick. They wouldn't think I'd come to them unless I had strong backin'. The bigger the bluff the better the chance of its workin'."

"Unless I had told that there were only two of us."

"That was one of the risks I had to gamble on, but I felt easy in my mind about that. You'll notice one thing if you stay with the Rangers, Art. They can get away with a lot of things they couldn't pull off as private citizens. The law is back of us, and back of the law is the State of Texas. When it comes to a showdown, mighty few citizens want to get us after them good and hard. We always win in the end. The bad-men all know that."

"Just the same, for cold nerve I never saw the beat of what you did now."

"Sho! Nothin' to that. A pair of deuces is good as a full house when your hand ain't called. We'll swing over to the left here an' gather up that bunch of rustled stock, Art."

Late that afternoon, as they were following the dust of the drive, Ridley voiced a doubt in his heart.

"Isn't there a chance that the Dinsmores will follow us and find out we're alone?"

"Quite a chance," agreed Jack cheerfully. "If so, we're liable to swap bullets yet. But I don't reckon they'll do that hardly. More likely they're hittin' the trail for Palo Duro to hole up."

The outlaws did not molest them during the drive. Four days later they reached town with their thirsty, travel-worn herd.

Captain Ellison was at the hotel and Jack reported to him at once.

The eyes of the little Ranger Chief gleamed. "Good boys, both of you. By dog, the old man won't write me any more sassy letters when he reads what you done. I always did say that my boys--"

"--Were a bunch of triflin' scalawags," Jack reminded him.

The Captain fired up, peppery as ever. "You light outa here and see if a square meal won't help some, you blamed impudent young rascal."

CHAPTER XXXII

THE HOLD-UP

When Wadley made to Jack Roberts the offer he had spoken of to his daughter, the face of that young man lighted up at once. But without hesitation he refused the chance to manage the A T O ranch.

"Sorry, but I can't work for you, Mr. Wadley."

The big Texan stiffened. "All right," he said huffily. "Just as you please. I'm not goin' to beg you on my knees to take the best job in the Panhandle. Plenty of good men want it."

The frank smile of the Ranger was disarming. "They don't want it any worse than I do, Mr. Wadley. I'm not a fool. Just because we had a difference oncet, I'm not standin' on my dignity. Nothin' like that. You're offerin' me a big chance--the biggest I'm ever likely to get. When you pick me to boss the A T O under yore orders, you pay me a sure-enough compliment, an' I'd be plumb glad to say yes."

"Well, why don't you?"

"Because the Rangers have got an unfinished job before them here, an' I'm not goin' to leave Captain Ellison in the lurch. I'll stick to my dollar a day till we've made a round-up."

The cattleman clapped him on the shoulder. "That's right, boy. That's the way to talk. Make yore clean-up, then come see me. I won't promise to hold this job open, but I want you to talk with me before you sign up with any one else."

But the weeks passed, and the Dinsmores still operated in the land. They worked under cover, less openly than in the old days, but still a storm-center of trouble. It was well known that they set the law at defiance, but no man who could prove it would produce evidence.

Meanwhile spring had made way for summer, and summer was beginning to burn into autumn. The little force of Rangers rode the land and watched for that false move which some day the Dinsmores would make to bring them within reach of the law.

On one of its trips in the early fall, the Clarendon stage left town almost half an hour late. It carried with it a secret, but everybody on board had heard a whisper of it. There was a gold shipment in the box consigned to Tascosa. A smooth-faced Ranger sat beside the driver with a rifle across his knees. He had lately been appointed to the force, and this was one of his first assignments. Perhaps that was why Arthur Ridley was a little conscious of his new buckskin suit and the importance of his job.

The passengers were three. One was a jolly Irish mule-skinner with a picturesque vocabulary and an inimitable brogue. The second wore the black suit and low-crowned hat of a clergyman, and yellow goggles to protect his eyes from the sun. He carried a roll of Scriptural charts such as are used in Sunday-Schools. The third was an angular and spectacled schoolmarm, for Tascosa was going to celebrate by starting a school.

Most of those on board were a trifle nervous. The driver was not quite at his ease; nor was the shotgun messenger. For somehow word had got out a day or two in advance of the gold shipment that it was to be sent on that date. The passengers, too, had faint doubts about the wisdom of going to Tascosa on that particular trip.

The first twenty miles of the journey were safely covered. The stage drew near to the place where now is located the famous Goodnight cattalo ranch.

From the farther side of a cut in the road came a sharp order to the driver. Two men had ridden out from the brush and were moving beside the stage. Each of them carried a rifle.

The driver leaned backward on the reins with a loud "Whoa!" It was an article of faith with him never to argue with a road-agent.

Ridley swung round to fire. From the opposite side of the road a shot rang out. Two more horsemen had appeared. The reins slid from the hands of the driver, and he himself from the seat. His body struck the wheel on the way to the ground. The bullet intended for the armed guard had passed through his head.

In the packed moments that followed, a dozen shots were fired, most of them by the outlaws, two by the man on the box. A bullet struck Arthur in the elbow, and the shock of it for a time paralyzed his arm. The rifle clattered against the singletree in its fall. But the shortest of the outlaws was sagging in his saddle and clutching at the pommel to support himself.

From an unexpected quarter there came a diversion. With one rapid gesture the man in the clergyman's garb had brushed aside his yellow goggles; with another he had stripped the outer cover of charts from his roll and revealed a sawed-off shotgun. As he stepped down to the road, he fired from his hip. The whole force of the load of buckshot took the nearest outlaw in the vitals and lifted him from his horse. Before he struck the ground he was dead.

In the flash of an eye the tide of battle had turned. The surprise of seeing the clergyman galvanized into action tipped the scale. One moment the treasure lay unguarded within reach of the outlaws; the next saw their leader struck down as by a bolt from heaven.

The lank bandit ripped out a sudden oath of alarm from behind the handkerchief he wore as a mask and turned his horse in its tracks. He dug home his spurs and galloped for the brow of the hill. The other unwounded robber backed away more deliberately, covering the retreat of his injured companion. Presently they, too, had passed over the top of the hill and disappeared.

The ex-clergyman turned to the treasure-guard. "How bad is it with you, Art?" he asked gently.

That young man grinned down a little wanly at Jack Roberts. He felt suddenly nauseated and ill. This business of shooting men and being shot at filled him with horror.

"Not so bad. I got it in the arm, Jack. Poor old Hank will never drive again."

The Ranger who had been camouflaged as a clergyman stooped to examine the driver. That old-timer's heart had stopped beating. "He's gone on his last long trip, Art."

"This schoolmarm lady has fainted," announced the mule-skinner.

"She's got every right in the world to faint. In Iowa, where she comes from, folks live in peace. Better sprinkle water on her face, Mike."

Jack moved over to the dead outlaw and lifted the bandana mask from the face. "Pete Dinsmore, just like I thought," he told Ridley. "Well, he had to have it--couldn't learn his lesson any other way."

Roberts drove the stage with its load of dead and wounded back to Clarendon. As quickly as possible he gathered a small posse to follow the bandits. Hampered as the outlaws were with a badly wounded man, there was a good chance of running them to earth at last. Before night he and his deputies were far out on the plains following a trail that led toward Palo Duro Cañon.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE MAN WITH THE YELLOW STREAK

Night fell on both a dry and fireless camp for the outlaws who had tried to rob the Clarendon-Tascosa stage. They had covered a scant twenty miles instead of the eighty they should have put behind them. For Dave Overstreet had been literally dying in the saddle every step of the way.

He had clenched his teeth and clung to the pommel desperately. Once he had fainted and slid from his seat. But the bandits could not stop and camp, though Dinsmore kept the pace to a walk.

"Once we reach Palo Duro, we'll hole up among the rocks an' fix you up fine, Dave," his companion kept promising.

"Sure, Homer. I'm doin' dandy," the wounded man would answer from white, bloodless lips.

The yellow streak in Gurley was to the fore all day. It evidenced itself in his precipitate retreat from the field of battle--a flight which carried him miles across the desert before he dared wait for his comrades. It showed again in the proposal which he made early in the afternoon to Dinsmore.

The trio of outlaws had been moving very slowly on account of the suffering of the wounded man. Gurley kept looking back nervously every few minutes to see if pursuers were visible. After a time he sidled up to Dinsmore and spoke low.

"They'll get us sure if we don't move livelier, Homer."

"How in Mexico can we move faster when Dave can't stand it?" asked Dinsmore impatiently.

"He's a mighty sick man. He hadn't ought to be on horseback at all. He needs a doctor."

"Will you go an' get him one?" demanded Homer with sour sarcasm.

"What I say is, let's fix him up comfortable, an' after a while mebbe a posse will come along an' pick him up. They can look after him better than we got a chance to do," argued Gurley.

"And mebbe a posse won't find him--what then?" rasped Dinsmore.

"They will. If they don't, he'll die easy. This is sure enough hell for him now."

"All right. Shall we stop right here with him?"

"That wouldn't do any good, Homer. The Rangers would get us too."

"I see. Yore idea is to let Dave die easy while we're savin' our hides. Steve, you've got a streak in you a foot wide."

"Nothin' like that," protested the man with the eyes that didn't track. "I'd stay by him if it was any use. But it ain't. Whyfor should you an' me stretch a rope when we can't help Dave a mite? It ain't reasonable."

Overstreet could not hear what was said, but he guessed the tenor of their talk. "Go ahead, boys, an' leave me. I'm about done anyhow," he said.

"If Gurley has a mind to go, he can. I'll stick," answered Dinsmore gruffly.

But Gurley did not want to go alone. There were possible dangers to be faced that two men could meet a good deal more safely than one. It might be that they would have to stand off a posse. They might meet Indians. The sallow outlaw felt that he could not afford just now to break with his companion. It was not likely that the Rangers would reach them that night, and he guessed craftily that Overstreet would not live till morning. The wound was a very serious one. The man had traveled miles before Dinsmore could stop to give him such slight first aid as was possible, and the jolting of the long horseback ride had made it difficult to stop the bleeding which broke out again and again.

After Dinsmore had eased the wounded man from his horse at dusk and laid him on a blanket with a saddle for a pillow, Overstreet smiled faintly up at him.

"It won't be for long, Homer. You'll be shet of me right soon now," he murmured.

"Don't you talk that-a-way, Dave. I don't want to be shet of you. After a good night's rest you'll feel a new man."

"No, I've got more than I can pack. It won't be long now. I'm right comfortable here. Steve's in a hurry. You go on an' hit the trail with him."

"Where did you get the notion I was yellow, old-timer? I've hunted in couples with you for years. Do you reckon I'm goin' to run like a cur now you've struck a streak o' bad luck?" asked Dinsmore huskily.

The dying man smiled his thanks. "You always was a stubborn son-of-a-gun, Homer. But Steve, he wants--"

"Steve can go to--Hell Creek, if he's so set on travelin' in a hurry. Here, drink some of this water."

The blanket of darkness fell over the land. Stars came out, at first one or two, then by thousands, till the night was full of them. The wounded man dozed and stirred and dozed again. It was plain that the sands of his life were running low. Dinsmore, watching beside him, knew that it was the ebb tide.

A little after midnight Overstreet roused himself, recognized the watcher, and nodded good-bye.

"So long, Homer. I'm hittin' the home trail now."

His hand groped feebly till it found that of his friend. A few minutes later he died, still holding the strong warm hand of the man who was nursing him.

Dinsmore crossed the hands of the dead outlaw and covered him with a blanket.

"Saddle up, Steve," he told Gurley.

While he waited for the horses, he looked down with a blur over his eyes. He had ridden hard and crooked trails all his life, but he had lost that day his brother and his best friend. The three of them had been miscreants. They had broken the laws of society and had fought against it because of the evil in them that had made them a destructive force. But they had always played fair with each other. They had at least been loyal to their own bad code. Now he was alone, for Gurley did not count.

Presently the other man stood at his elbow with the saddled horses. Dinsmore swung to the saddle and rode away. Not once did he look back, but he had no answer for Gurley's cheerful prediction that now they would reach Palo Duro Cañon all right and would hole up there till the pursuit had spent itself, after which they could amble down across the line to Old Mexico or could strike the Pecos and join Billy the Kid. Only one idea was fixed definitely in his mind, that as soon as he could, he would part company with the man riding beside him.

When day came, it found them riding westward in the direction of Deaf Smith County. The Cañon was not far south of them, but there was no need of plunging into it yet. The pursuit must be hours behind them, even if their trail had not been lost altogether. They rode easily, prepared to camp at the first stream or water-hole they reached.

"We'll throw off here," Dinsmore decided at the first brook they reached.

They unsaddled and hobbled their horses. While Gurley lighted a fire for the coffee, the other man strolled up the creek to get a shot at any small game he might find. Presently a brace of prairie-chickens rose with a whir of wings. The rifle cracked, and one of them fell fluttering to the ground. Dinsmore moved forward to pick up the bird.

Abruptly he stopped in his stride. He fancied he heard a faint cry. It came again, carried on the light morning breeze. He could have sworn that it was the call of a woman for help.

Dinsmore grew wary. He knew the tricks of the Indians, the wily ways with which they lured men into ambush. There had been rumors for days that the Indians were out again. Yet it was not like Indians to announce their presence before they pounced upon their prey. He moved very slowly forward under cover of the brush along the bed of the stream.

The voice came to him again, closer this time, and in spite of the distance clear as a bell. It was surely that of a white woman in trouble. Still he did not answer as he crept forward up the stream.

Then he caught sight of her--a girl, slim and young, stumbling forward through the grass, exhaustion showing in every line of the body.

She stretched out her hands to him across the space between, with a little despairing cry.

CHAPTER XXXIV

RAMONA GOES DUCK-HUNTING

"I'm going duck-hunting, Daddy," announced Ramona one evening at supper. "Quint Sullivan is going with me. We're to get up early in the morning and leave before daybreak."

They had been back at the ranch several weeks, and 'Mona was tired of practicing on the piano and reading Scott's novels after her work about the house was done. She was restless. Her father had noticed it and wondered why. He would have been amazed to learn that the longing to see or hear about a certain brindle-haired former line-rider of his had anything to do with her unrest. Indeed, Ramona did not confess this even to herself. She tried to think that she had been cooped up in the house too long. Hence the duck-hunting as an escape.

"All right, honey. I'll give Quint notice who his boss is to-morrow."

"I've already given him his orders, Dad," his daughter said, with a saucy little moue at her father.

Clint chuckled. "'Nough said. When you give orders I take a back seat. Every rider on the place knows that. I'm the most henpecked dad in Texas."

By daybreak Ramona and her escort were several miles from the ranch on their way to the nearest lake. Quint was a black-haired, good-looking youth who rode the range for the A T O outfit. Like most of the unmarried men about her between the ages of fifteen and fifty, he imagined himself in love with the daughter of the boss. He had no expectation whatever of marrying her. He would as soon have thought of asking Wadley to give him a deed to the ranch as he would of mentioning to Ramona the state of his feelings. But that young woman, in spite of her manner of frank innocence, knew quite accurately how matters stood, just as she knew that in due time Quint would transfer his misplaced affections to some more reciprocal object of them.

Her particular reason for selecting Quint as her companion of the day was that he happened to be a devoted admirer of Jack Roberts. All one needed to do was to mention the Ranger to set him off on a string of illustrative anecdotes, and Ramona was hungry for the very sound of his name. One advantage in talking to young Sullivan about his friend was that the ingenuous youth would never guess that the subject of their conversation had been chosen by her rather than by him.

"Did I ever tell you, Miss Ramona, about the time Texas an' me went to Denver? Gentlemen, hush! We ce'tainly had one large time."

"You boys ought not to spend your time in the saloons whenever you go to town. It isn't good for you," reproved the sage young woman who was "going-on seventeen."

She was speaking for a purpose, and Quint very innocently answered the question in her mind.

"No, ma'am. I reckon you're right. But we didn't infest the saloons none that time. Texas, he's one of these here good bad-men. He's one sure-enough tough nut, an' I'd hate to try to crack him, but the queer thing is he don't drink or chew or go hellin' around with the boys. But, say, he's some live lad, lemme tell you. What do you reckon he pulled off on me whilst we was in Denver?"

"Some foolishness, I suppose," said Ramona severely, but she was not missing a word.

"He meets up with a newspaper guy an' gets to fillin' him plumb full o' misinformation about me. To hear him tell it I was the white-haired guy from the Panhandle an' had come to Denver for to hunt a girl to marry. Well, that reporter he goes back an' writes a piece in his paper about how it was the chance of a lifetime for any onmarried fe-male, of even disposition an' pleasin' appearance, between the ages of twenty an' thirty-five, to marry a guaranteed Texas cowpuncher, warranted kind an' sound an' to run easy in double harness. An' would the ladies please come early to the St. Peter hotel an' inquire for Mr. Quint Sullivan."

"Did any of them come?" asked Ramona, her eyes dancing.

"Did they? Wow! They swarmed up the stairs an' crowded the elevators, while that doggoned Tex sicked 'em on me. Honest, I didn't know there was so many onmarried ladies in the world."

"How did you escape?" asked the girl, well aware that he was drawing the long bow.

"Ma'am, the fire department rescued me. But I ce'tainly did lie awake the balance of the trip tryin' to get even with Jack Roberts. But it's no manner of use. He lands right-side up every time."

After they had reached Crane Lake the cowpuncher tied the horses while Ramona started around to the far side, following the shore line and keeping her eyes open for ducks. The girl made a half-circuit of the lake without getting a shot. There were ducks enough to be seen, but as yet none of them were within range.

It might have been half an hour after Ramona left Sullivan that there came a shot from the other side of the lake. It was followed almost immediately by a second, a third, and a fourth. 'Mona caught sight of Quint running fast toward the horses. Her heart felt a sudden constriction as of an iron band tightening upon it, for half a dozen mounted Indians were in hot pursuit. She saw the boy reach the nearest bronco, jerk loose the bridle rein, vault to the saddle, and gallop away, lying low on the back of the horse. The Indians fired from their horses as they rode, but the man flying for his life did not take time to shoot.

For a moment 'Mona stood in plain view by the lake shore. Then she dropped among the rushes, her heart fluttering wildly like that of a forest bird held captive in the hand. She was alone, at the mercy of twoscore of hostile Indians. They would know that the cowboy had a companion because of the second bronco, and as soon as they returned from the pursuit they would begin a search for her. Perhaps they might not even wait till then. 'Mona lay there in despair while one might have counted a hundred. During that time she gave herself up for lost. She could neither move nor think. But presently there flowed back into her heart a faint hope. Perhaps she had not yet been seen. There was a little arroyo farther to the left. If she could reach it, still unnoticed, at least she could then run for her life.

She crept through the rushes on hands and knees, sinking sometimes wrist-deep in water. There was one stretch of perhaps thirty yards at the end of the rushes that had to be taken without cover. She flew across the open, a miracle of supple lightness, reached the safety of the little gulch, and ran as she had never run before. Every moment she expected to hear the crash of the pursuers breaking through the brush.

On the ranch she had lived largely an outdoor life, and in spite of her slenderness was lithe and agile. Beneath her soft flesh hard muscles flowed, for she had known the sting of sleet and the splash of sun. But the rapid climb had set her heart pumping fast. Her speed began to slacken.

Near the summit was a long, uptilted stratum of rock which led to the left and dipped over the ridge. She followed this because no tracks would here betray where she had escaped. For almost a quarter of a mile she descended on the outcropping quartz, flying in an ecstasy of terror from the deadly danger that might at any instant appear on the crest of the divide behind her.

Ramona came to a cleft in the huge boulder, a deep, narrow gash that looked as if it might have been made by a sword stroke of the gods. She peered into the shadowy gulf, but could not see the bottom of the fissure. A pebble dropped by her took so long to strike that she knew the chasm must be deep.

If she could get down into it, perhaps she might hide from the savages. It was her one possible chance of escape. The girl moved along the edge of the precipice trying to find a way down that was not sheer. An arrowweed thicket had struggled up from a jutting spar of rock. Below this was a ridge where her foot might find a support. Beyond was a rock wall that disappeared into empty space. But 'Mona could not choose. She must take this or nothing.

By means of the arrowweed she lowered herself over the edge while her foot groped for the spar of quartz. Her last look up the hill showed Indians pouring across the ridge in pursuit. Without hesitation she chose the chances of death in the cavern to the certainty of the torture waiting for her outside. Foot by foot she lowered herself, making the most of every irregularity in the rock wall that offered a grip for hand or foot. The distance down seemed interminable. She worked herself into a position where she could move neither up nor down. While her foot was searching for a brace one of her hands slipped and she went the rest of the way with a rush.

For a time she lay there in the darkness, shaken and bruised by the fall, a sharp pain shooting through one of her legs just above the ankle. During those minutes of daze voices came to her from the slit of light above. The painted face of an Apache leaned over the edge of the wall and looked into the gulf.

The girl made not the least movement. She did not stir to relieve the pain of her leg. Scarcely did she dare breathe lest the sound of it might reach those above.

The Apaches began to fire into the fissure. Ramona noiselessly dragged herself close to the overhanging wall. Shot after shot was flung into the cavern at random. Fortunately for Ramona the strain of the situation relaxed abruptly. A wave of light-headedness seemed to carry her floating into space. She fainted.

When she came to herself no sound reached the girl from above. The Indians had no doubt concluded that their victim was not in the cavern and taken up the pursuit again. But she knew the cunning of the Apache. Probably one or two braves had been left to watch the cleft. She lay quite still and listened. All she could hear was the fearful beating of her heart.

For hours she lay there without making a sound. The patience of the Apache is proverbial. It was possible they knew where she was and were waiting for her to deliver herself to them.

'Mona had one ghastly comfort. The little revolver she had brought along with which to shoot rattlesnakes was still in its scabbard by her side. If they would give her only a moment or two of warning, she would never fall alive into the hands of the redskins.

Time was unmarked for her in the darkness of the cavern. She could not tell whether it was still morning or whether the afternoon was nearing an end. Such a day, so full of dreadful horrors, so long from morning till night, she had never before passed. It seemed to her that a week of hours had come and gone before the light above began to fade.

CHAPTER XXXV

THE DESERT

It was only recently that Clint Wadley had become a man of wealth, and life in the Panhandle was even yet very primitive according to present-day standards. There was no railroad within one hundred and fifty miles of the A T O ranch. Once in two weeks one of the cowboys rode to Clarendon to get the mail and to buy small supplies. Otherwise contact with the world was limited to occasional visits to town.

As a little girl Ramona had lived in a one-room house built of round logs, with a stick-and-mud chimney, a door of clapboards daubed with mud at the chinks, and a dirt floor covered with puncheons. She had slept in a one-legged bedstead fitted into the wall, through the sides and ends of which bed, at intervals of eight inches, holes had been bored to admit of green rawhide strips for slats. She had sat on a home-made three-legged stool at a home-made table in homespun clothes and eaten a dish of cush[8] for her supper. She had watched her aunt make soap out of lye dripping from an ash-hopper. The only cooking utensils in the house had been a Dutch oven, a three-legged skillet, a dinner-pot, a tea-kettle, a big iron shovel, and a pair of pot-hooks suspended from an iron that hung above the open fire.

But those were memories of her childhood in southern Texas. With the coming of prosperity Clint had sent his children to Tennessee to school, and Ramona had been patiently trained to the feebleness of purpose civilization in those days demanded of women of her class and section. She had been taught to do fancy needlework and to play the piano as a parlor accomplishment. It had been made plain to her that her business in life was to marry and keep the home fires burning, and her schooling had been designed, not to prepare her as a mate for her future husband, but to fit her with the little graces that might entice him into choosing her for a wife.

Upon her return to the ranch Ramona had compromised between her training and her inheritance. She took again to horseback riding and to shooting, even though she read a good deal and paid due attention to her pink-and-white complexion.

So that when she looked up from the cavern in which she was buried and caught a gleam of a star in the slit of blue sky above, she was not so helpless as her schooling had been designed to make her. The girl was compact of supple strength. Endurance and a certain toughness of fiber had come to her from old Clint Wadley.

She began the climb, taking advantage of every bit of roughness, of every projection in the almost sheer wall. A knob of feldspar, a stunted shrub growing from a crevice, a fault in the rock structure, offered here and there toe-or hand-holds. She struggled upward, stopped more than once by the smooth surface against which her soft warm body was pressing. On such occasions she would lower herself again, turn to the right or the left, and work toward another objective.

Ramona knew that the least slip, the slightest failure of any one of her muscles, would send her plunging down to the bottom of the crevasse. The worst of it was that she could not put any dependence upon her injured leg. It might see her through or it might not.

It was within a few feet of the top, just below the arrowweed bush, that she came to an impasse. The cold wall offered no hand-hold by which she could gain the few inches that would bring her within reach of the bunched roots. She undid her belt, threw one end of it over the body of the bush, and worked it carefully down until she could buckle it. By means of this she went up hand over hand till she could reach the arrowweed. Her knee found support in the loop of the belt, and in another moment she had zigzagged herself inch by inch over the edge to the flat surface above.

No sign of the Apaches was to be seen. 'Mona recovered her belt and began to move up the rock spur toward the summit of the hill. A sound stopped her in her tracks. It was the beating of a tom-tom.

She knew the Indians must be camped by the lake. They were probably having a feast and dances. In any case she could not strike direct for home. She must keep on this side of the hill, make a wide circuit, and come in from the west.

Already her leg was paining her a good deal. Since five o'clock in the morning she had eaten nothing. Her throat was parched with thirst. But these were details that must be forgotten. She had to tramp more than twenty miles through the desert regardless of her physical condition.

The girl went at it doggedly. She limped along, getting wearier every mile of the way. But it was not until she discovered that she was lost to all sense of direction that she broke down and wept. The land here was creased by swales, one so like another that in the darkness she had gone astray and did not know north from south.

After tears came renewed resolution. She tried to guide herself by the stars, but though she could hold a straight course there was no assurance in her mind that she was going toward the A T O. Each step might be taking her farther from home. A lime kiln burned in her throat. She was so worn out from lack of food and the tremendous strain under which she had been carrying on that her knees buckled under her weight as she stumbled through the sand. The bad ankle complained continuously.

In this vast solitude there was something weird and eerie that shook her courage. Nor was the danger all fantastic imaginings. The Indians might yet discover her. She might wander far from beaten trails of travel and die of thirst as so many newcomers had done. Possibilities of disaster trooped through her mind.

She was still a child, on the sunny side of seventeen. So it was natural that when she sat down to rest her ankle she presently began to sob again, and that in her exhaustion she cried herself to sleep.

When her eyes opened, the sun was peeping over the desert horizon. She could tell directions now. The A T O ranch must be far to the northeast of where she was. But scarcely a mile from her ran a line of straggling brush. It must be watered by a stream. She hobbled forward painfully to relieve the thirst that was already a torment to her.

She breasted the rise of a little hill and looked down a gentle slope toward the thicket. For a moment her heart lost a beat. A trickle of smoke was rising from a camp-fire and a man was bending over it. He was in the clothes of a white man. Simultaneously there came to her the sound of a shot.

From her parched throat there came a bleating little cry. She hurried forward, and as she went she called again and still again. She was pitifully anxious lest the campers ride away before they should discover her.

A man with a gun in his hand moved toward her from the creek. She gave a little sobbing cry and stumbled toward him.

[Footnote 8: Cush is made of old corn bread and biscuits in milk, beaten to a batter and fried in bacon grease with salt.]

CHAPTER XXXVI

HOMER DINSMORE ESCORTS RAMONA

"I'm lost!" cried Ramona.

"Where from?" asked Dinsmore.

"From the A T O."

"You're Clint Wadley's daughter, then?"

She nodded. "We met Indians. I ... got away."

The girl knelt beside the brook, put her hands on two stones that jutted up from the water, and drank till her thirst was assuaged.

"I'm hungry," she said simply, after she had risen.

He led her back to the camp-fire and on the way picked up the bird he had shot. 'Mona saw that he noticed her limp, though he said nothing about it.

"I had an accident," she explained. "Fell down a rock wall while I was getting away from the 'Paches."

"They're out again, are they--the devils?" He asked another question. "You said 'we.' Who was with you when the Indians took after you?"

"Quint Sullivan. I was on the other side of Crane Lake from him and heard shots. I saw Quint running for the horses with the 'Paches after him."

"Did he get away?"

She shuddered. "He reached the horses. They rode after him. I don't know whether...." Her voice thinned away.

The man at the camp-fire turned, and at sight of them dropped a sudden, startled oath.

Ramona looked at him, then at Dinsmore. A faint tremor passed through her slight body. She knew now who these men were.

"What's she doin' here?" demanded Gurley.

"She's lost. The 'Paches are out, Steve."

"Where are they?"

"Up at Crane Lake last night."

"Are they headed this way?"

"Don't know. She"--with a jerk of his thumb toward Ramona--"bumped into 'em an' got away."

"We'd better light a shuck out o' here," said Gurley, visibly disturbed.

"Why? They ain't liable to come this way more than any other. We'll have breakfast an' talk things over. Fix up this bird, Steve. Cook it in the skillet. She's hungry."

Ramona observed that both the men referred to her as she whenever any reference was made to her.

While they ate breakfast the girl told the story of her experience. Dinsmore watched her with a reluctant admiration. The lines of her figure drooped with weariness, but fatigue could not blot out the grace of her young vitality.

"When can we start for home?" Ramona asked after she had eaten.

"For the A T O?" asked the lank, sallow outlaw brutally. "What's ailin' you? Think we're goin' to take you home with the 'Paches between us an' there? We ain't plumb crazy."

"But I must get home right away. My father--he'll be frightened about me."

"Will he?" jeered Gurley. "If he knew you was in such good company he'd be real easy in his mind." The man flashed a look at her that made the girl burn with shame.

"We could go round an' miss the 'Paches," suggested Ramona timidly.

"Forget that notion," answered Gurley, and there was a flash of cruelty in his eyes. "Mebbe you misremember that I'm obligated to you, miss, for what that condemned Ranger Roberts did to me when I fell over the box in front of the store. We'll settle accounts whilst you're here, I reckon."

The girl appealed to Dinsmore. "You're not going to let him ... mistreat me, are you?"

The pathos of her situation, the slim, helpless, wonderful youth of the girl, touched the not very accessible heart of Dinsmore.

"You bet I'm not. He'll cut out that kind o' talk right now," he said.

The eyes of Ramona met his, and she knew she was safe. This man had the respect for a good woman that was characteristic of the turbulent West in its most lawless days. He might be a miscreant and a murderer, but he would fight at the drop of a hat in response to the appeal of any woman who was "straight."

"Playin' up to Clint, are you, Homer?" sneered the other man. "You better take her straight home like she wants, since you're so friendly to the family."

"That's exactly what I'm goin' to do," retorted Dinsmore. "Any objections?"

Gurley dropped his sneer instantly. His alarm voiced itself in a wheedling apology. "I didn't go for to rile you, Homer. O' course you cayn't do that. We got to stick together. The Indians is one reason. An' there's another. No need for me to tell you what it is."

"You'll have to wait for me in the cañon till I get back. It's not far from here to you-know-where. I'm goin' to take the horses an' see this girl back to her home."

"You're good," Ramona said simply.

"You're not figurin' on takin' my horse, are you?" Gurley burst out with an oath.

"You've done guessed it, Steve. You'll have to hoof it into the cañon."

"Like hell I will. Take another think, my friend."

The eyes of the men clashed, one pair filled with impotent rage, the other cold and hard as polished steel on a frosty morning.

Gurley yielded sullenly. "It's no square deal, Homer. We didn't bring her here. Why cayn't she go along with us an' hole up till the 'Paches are gone an' till ... things kinda settle down?"

"Because she's got no business with folks like us. Her place is back at the A T O, an' that's where I aim to take her. She's had one hell of a time, if you ask me. What that kid needs is for her home folks to tuck her up in bed an' send her to sleep. She's had about all the trouble a li'l' trick like her can stand, I shouldn't wonder."

"You ain't her nurse," growled Gurley.

"That's why I'm goin' to take her home to those that are. 'Nuff said, Steve. What I say goes."

"You act mighty high-heeled," grumbled the other man.

"Mebbeso," replied Dinsmore curtly. "Saddle the horses, Steve."

"I dunno as I'm yore horse-rustler," mumbled Gurley, smothering his sullen rage. None the less he rose slowly and shuffled away toward the hobbled horses.

'Mona touched Dinsmore on the sleeve. Her soft eyes poured gratitude on him. "I'll remember this as long as I live. No matter what anybody says I'll always know that you're good."

The blood crept up beneath the tan of the outlaw's face. It had been many years since an innocent child had made so naïve a confession of faith in him. He was a bad-man, and he knew it. But at the core of him was a dynamic spark of self-respect that had always remained alight. He had ridden crooked trails through all his gusty lifetime. His hand had been against every man's, but at least he had fought fair and been loyal to his pals. And there had never been a time when a good woman need be afraid to look him in the face.

"Sho! Nothin' to that. I gotta take you home so as you won't be in the way," he told her with a touch of embarrassed annoyance.

No man alive knew this country better than Homer Dinsmore. Every draw was like its neighbor, every rolling rise a replica of the next. But the outlaw rode as straight a course as if his road had been marked out for him by stakes across the plains. He knew that he might be riding directly toward a posse of Rangers headed for Palo Duro to round up the stage robbers. He could not help that. He would have to take his chance of an escape in case they met such a posse.

The sun climbed high in the heavens.

"How far do you think we are now from the ranch?" asked Ramona.

"Most twenty miles. We've been swingin' well to the left. I reckon we can cut in now."

They climbed at a walk a little hill and looked across a wide sweep of country before them. Ramona gave a startled cry and pointed an outstretched finger at some riders emerging from a dry wash.

"'Paches!" cried Dinsmore. "Back over the hill, girl."

They turned, but too late. On the breeze there came to them a yell that sent the blood from 'Mona's heart.

CHAPTER XXXVII

ON A HOT TRAIL

Roberts picked up from the fort a Mescalero Apache famous as a trailer. He reckoned to be rather expert in that line himself, but few white men could boast of such skill as old Guadaloupe had.

Jumbo Wilkins was one of the posse Jack had hastily gathered. "I'm good an' glad I was in town an' not out herdin' vacas, Tex. A fellow kinda needs a little excitement oncet in a while. I got a hunch we're goin' to git these birds this time."

"You're the greatest little optimist I ever did see, Jumbo," answered the Ranger with a smile. "We're goin' to strike a cold trail of men who know every inch of this country an' are ridin' hell-for-leather to make a get-away. We're liable to ride our broncs to shadows an' never see hair or hide of the fellows we want. I'd like to know what license you've got for yore hunch."

"You're such a lucky guy, Tex. If you was lookin' for a needle in a haystack you'd find it in yore mouth when you picked up a straw to chew on."

"Lucky, nothin'. A man makes his own luck, I always did tell you, an' I haven't bumped into any yet. You don't see any big bunch of fat cows with my brand on 'em, do you? I'm pluggin' along for a dollar a day with a promise from Cap Ellison that I'll probably cash in soon with my boots on. Old Man Luck always hides behind the door when I pass, if there's any such Santa Claus in the business."

"All the way you look at it. Didn't Clint Wadley offer you the job of bossin' the best cow-ranch in the Panhandle?"

"An' didn't I have to turn down his offer an' hang on to a dollar-a-day job?"

"Then you saved Miss 'Mona from that bull an' made a friend of her."

"Yes, an' then I butted in an' kept the Kiowas from mussin' up Art Ridley, who is liable to ask me to stand up with him when he marries Miss Ramona," added the Ranger.

"Shucks! She'll never marry Ridley so long as you're runnin' around unbranded, son."

"A lot you know about girls, Jumbo," said Roberts with a rueful grin. "I don't know sic' 'em about the things they like. I'm one chaparral-raised roughneck. That little lady never wasted two thoughts on me. But Art--he knows a lot about books an' style an' New York's four hundred. He's good to look at, clean, knows how to talk, an' makes a sure-enough hit with the girls."

"He's a sissy boy beside you. No Texas girl would look twice--"

"Nothin' a-tall to that. Didn't he save Clint Wadley's life? Didn't he stay by Dinsmore when the Kiowas had 'em holed? He fought good enough to get shot up this mo'nin', didn't he? No, sir. You'll find he's got me backed off the map so far as Miss Ramona goes. I know it, old-timer."

"Where do you get that notion you're a roughneck, Tex?" asked Jumbo. "You've read more books than any man on the range. You don't hell around like most of the boys. You don't drink. Mebbe you ain't exactly pretty, but yore face doesn't scare critters when they see it onexpected. An' when the band begins to play--Gentlemen, watch Tex."

"If the girls would only let you do the pickin' for 'em, Jumbo," suggested Roberts with his sardonic smile.

Through rabbit weed and curly mesquite, among the catclaw and the prickly pear, they followed the faint ribbon trail left by the outlaws in their retreat from the scene of the hold-up.

When it was too late to cut sign any longer, the Ranger gave orders to throw in to a small draw where the grass was good. At daybreak they were on the trail again and came within the hour to the body of Overstreet. They dug a grave in a buffalo run with their knives and buried the body as well as they could before they picked up again the tracks of two horses now traveling much faster.

"They're headin' for Palo Duro, looks like,'" commented Roberts.

"Looks like," agreed his friend.

Early in the afternoon the posse reached the little creek where the outlaws had breakfasted. Old Guadaloupe crisscrossed the ground like a bloodhound as he read what was written there. But before he made any report Roberts himself knew that a third person had joined the fugitives and that this recruit was a woman. The Ranger followed the Apache upstream, guessed by some feathers and some drops of blood that one of the outlaws had shot a prairie-hen, and read some hint of the story of the meeting between the woman and the bandit.

Was this woman some one who had been living in Palo Duro Cañon with the outlaws? Or was this meeting an accidental one? The odd thing about it was that there was no sign of her horse. She had come on foot, in a country where nobody ever travels that way.

Roberts told Guadaloupe to find out where the party had gone from the camp. He himself followed into the desert the footsteps of the woman who had come across it toward the creek. He was puzzled and a little disturbed in mind. She had not come from the cañon. What was a woman doing alone and on foot in this desert empty of human life for fifty miles or more?

He found no answer to his questions and reluctantly returned to the camp-fire. Guadaloupe was ready with his report. One man had started out on foot along the edge of the cañon. The other man and the woman had struck on horseback across the plain.

"We'll follow those on horseback," decided the Ranger at once. He could not have told why the urgent impulse was on him to do this, nor why he did not split his party and send part of his men in pursuit of the foot traveler. Later he laid it to what Jumbo would have called a hunch.

He was puzzled by the direction the two riders were taking. It led neither to the A T O nor to Tascosa, and was making no account of the streams where the travelers would have to find water. They seemed to be plunging ignorantly into the desert, but since Gurley or Dinsmore was one of the two this could not be. Either of these men could have traveled the Panhandle blindfolded.

They followed the tracks for hours. The line of travel was so direct that it told of purpose. Dinsmore--if the man were Dinsmore--evidently knew just what he was doing. Then, abruptly, the tracks pointed to the right, straight for the A T O.

But not for long. At the summit of a little rise the riders had plainly stopped for a few moments, then had turned and galloped fast for the southwest. The lengthening tracks, the sharpness of them, the carelessness with which the riders took the rougher ground to follow a straight line, all suggested an urgent and imperative reason.

That reason became plain to Roberts in another minute. A great number of tracks swept in from the left and blotted out those of the two flying riders.

"Chiricahua Apaches," grunted Guadaloupe. The scout had a feud with that branch of the tribe and was at war with them.

"How many?" questioned Jack.

The Indian held up the fingers of both hands, closed them, opened them, and a third time shut and lifted the fingers.

"Thirty?" asked the Ranger.

The Apache nodded.

"Dinsmore 's makin' for Palo Duro," remarked Wilkins as they followed at a canter the plain trail marked for them. "I'll bet he don't throw down on himself none on that race either. He's sure hell-bent on gettin' there."

One of the riders called to the Rangers. "Look over to the left, Tex. We got company."

A little group of riders--three, four, five of them--emerged from behind a clump of Spanish bayonet and signaled with a bandana handkerchief. As they rode closer the heart of the Ranger died under his ribs. His stomach muscles tightened, and he felt a prickling of the skin run down his back. For Clint Wadley rode at the head of these men, and like a flash of lightning the truth had seared across the brain of Jack Roberts. His daughter was the woman riding to escape from the savages.

The face of Wadley confirmed the guess of the Ranger. On the unshaven face of the cattleman dust was caked. His eyes were red and inflamed from the alkali and the tears he had fought back fifty times. The expression of the man was that of one passing through the torments of hell.

In five broken sentences he told his story. Quint Sullivan, escaping from his pursuers after a thirty-mile run, had reached the ranch in the middle of the night. Clint had gathered together such men as were at hand and started at once. At Crane Lake he had found no trace of her. He could not escape the conviction that the Apaches had captured Ramona and taken her with them.

On this last point the Ranger offered him comfort, though it was sorry comfort at that. Five hours ago she was still safe, but in terrible danger.

"Dinsmore's a man--none gamer in Texas, Mr. Wadley. He won't desert her," said Jumbo. "You couldn't 'a' picked a better man to look out for her."

"How do you know it's Dinsmore? Perhaps it's that yellow wolf Gurley," answered the father out of his tortured heart.

Jack was riding on the other side of Wadley. He, too, carried with him a private hell of fear in his heart, but he knew that the big cattleman was nearly insane with anxiety.

"Because the man with Miss Ramona was takin' her back to the ranch when they bumped into the 'Paches. You know Steve Gurley would never have taken her home in the world," replied the Ranger.

"What can one man do against thirty? He'll do what Quint here did--run to save his own hide."

Young Sullivan winced. It was the truth. He had run and left the girl to the mercy of these devils. But his one chance of helping her had been to run. He tried to say as much.

"I know that, Quint. I'm not blamin' you," broke out the father in his agony. "But my little lamb--in the hands of 'Paches--God!" Wadley covered his eyes with his hand and tried to press back from his brain the horrible visions he kept seeing.

Jumbo stuck to his one valid point. "Bite yore teeth into this, Clint. She's got ridin' beside her as game a man as ever threw his leg over leather. He knows this country like you do yore ranch. He'll hole up in Palo Duro where the 'Paches won't find 'em, an' if the devils do he'll sure stand 'em off till we blow in."

His friend on the other side of the cattleman backed him up strongly, but the heart of the Ranger was heavy with dread.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

DINSMORE TO THE RESCUE

If 'Mona lives to be eighty the high-lights of that wild ride will never fade from her memory. The mesas rolled in long swells as far as the eye could see. Through the chaparral the galloping horses plunged while the prickly pear and the cholla clutched at their flanks and at the legs of the riders. Into water-gutted arroyos they descended, slid down breakneck shale ridges, climbed like heather cats the banks of dry washes, pounded over white porous malpais on which no vegetation grew.

Now Dinsmore was in front of her picking out the best way, now he was beside her with cool, easy words of confidence, now he rode between her and the naked Apaches, firing with deliberate and deadly accuracy.

"Don't look back," he warned her more than once. "My job is to look out for them. Yours is to see yore horse don't throw you or break a leg in a prairie-dog hole. They cayn't outrun us. Don't worry about that."

The man was so easy in manner, apparently so equal to the occasion, that as the miles slid behind them her panic vanished. She felt for the small revolver in her belt to make sure it was safe. If she should be thrown, or if her horse should be shot, one thing must be done instantly. She must send a bullet crashing into her brain.

To the right and to the left of her jets of dirt spat up where the shots of the Indians struck the ground. Once or twice she looked back, but the sight of the bareback riders at their heels so unnerved her that she obeyed the orders of her companion and resisted the dreadful fascination of turning in her saddle.

It had seemed to 'Mona at first with each backward glance that the Indians were gaining fast on them, but after a time she knew this was not true. The sound of their shots became fainter. She no longer saw the spitting of the dust from their bullets and guessed they must be falling short.

Her eyes flashed a question at the man riding beside her. "We're gaining?"

"That's whatever. We'll make the cañon all right an' keep goin'. Don't you be scared," he told her cheerfully.

Even as he spoke, Ramona went plunging over the head of her horse into a bunch of shin-oak. Up in an instant, she ran to remount. The bronco tried to rise from where it lay, but fell back helplessly to its side. One of its fore legs had been broken in a prairie-dog hole.

Dinsmore swung round his horse and galloped back, disengaging one foot from the stirrup. The girl caught the hand he held down to her and leaped up beside the saddle, the arch of her foot resting lightly on the toe of his boot. Almost with the same motion she swung astride the cow-pony. It jumped to a gallop and Ramona clung to the waist of the man in front of her. She could hear plainly now the yells of the exultant savages.

The outlaw knew that it would be nip and tuck to reach Palo Duro, close though it was. He abandoned at once his hopes of racing up the cañon until the Apaches dropped the pursuit. It was now solely a question of speed. He must get into the gulch, even though he had to kill his bronco to do it. After that he must trust to luck and hold the redskins off as long as he could. There was always a chance that Ellison's Rangers might be close. Homer Dinsmore knew how slender a thread it was upon which to hang a hope, but it was the only one they had.

His quirt rose and fell once, though he recognized that his horse was doing its best. But the lash fell in the air and did not burn the flank of the animal. He patted its neck. He murmured encouragement in its ear.

"Good old Black Jack, I knew you wouldn't throw down on me. Keep a-humpin', old-timer.... You're doin' fine.... Here we are at Palo Duro.... Another half-mile, pal."

Dinsmore turned to the left after they had dropped down a shale slide into the cañon. The trail wound through a thick growth of young foliage close to the bed of the stream.

The man slipped down from the back of the laboring horse and followed it up the trail. Once he caught a glimpse of the savages coming down the shale slide and took a shot through the brush.

"Got one of their horses," he told 'Mona. "That'll keep 'em for a while and give us a few minutes. They'll figure I'll try to hold 'em here."

'Mona let the horse pick its way up the rapidly ascending trail. Presently the cañon opened a little. Its walls fell back from a small, grassy valley containing two or three acres. The trail led up a ledge of rock jutting out from one of the sheer faces of cliff. Presently it dipped down behind some great boulders that had fallen from above some time in the ages that this great cleft had been in the making.

A voice hailed them. "That you, Homer?"

"Yep. The 'Paches are right on our heels, Steve."

Gurley let out a wailing oath. "Goddlemighty, man, why did you come here?"

"Driven in. They chased us ten miles. Better 'light, ma'am. We're liable to stay here quite a spell." Dinsmore unsaddled the horse and tied it to a shrub. "You're sure all in, Black Jack. Mebbe you'll never be the same bronc again. I've got this to say, old pal. I never straddled a better hawss than you. That goes without copperin'." He patted its sweat-stained neck, fondled its nose for a moment, then turned briskly to the business in hand. "Get behind that p'int o' rocks, Steve. I'll cover the trail up. Girl, you'll find a kind of cave under that flat boulder. You get in there an' hunt cover."

'Mona did as she was told. Inside the cave were blankets, a saddle, the remains of an old camp-fire, and a piece of jerked venison hanging from a peg driven between two rocks. There were, too, a rifle leaning against the big boulder and a canvas bag containing ammunition.

The rifle was a '73. She busied herself loading it. Just as she finished there came to her the crack of Dinsmore's repeater.

The outlaw gave a little whoop of exultation.

"Tally one."

CHAPTER XXXIX

A CRY OUT OF THE NIGHT

Night fell before the rescue party reached Palo Duro. The cañon was at that time a terra incognita to these cattlemen of the Panhandle. To attempt to explore it in the darkness would be to court disaster. The Apaches might trap the whole party.

But neither the Ranger nor Wadley could endure the thought of waiting till morning to push forward. The anxiety that weighed on them both could find relief only in action.

Jack made a proposal to Ramona's father. "We've got to throw off and camp here. No two ways about that. But I'm goin' to ride forward to Palo Duro an' see what I can find out. Want to go along?"

"Boy, I had in mind that very thing. We'll leave Jumbo in charge of the camp with orders to get started soon as he can see in the mo'nin'."

The two men rode into the darkness. They knew the general direction of Palo Duro and were both plainsmen enough to follow a straight course even in the blackest night. They traveled at a fast road gait, letting the horses pick their own way through the mesquite. Presently a star came out--and another. Banked clouds scudded across the sky in squadrons.

At last, below their feet, lay the great earth rift that made Palo Duro. It stretched before them an impenetrable black gulf of silence.

"No use trying to go down at random," said Jack, peering into its bottomless deeps. "Even if we didn't break our necks we'd get lost down there. My notion is for me to follow the bank in one direction an' for you to take the other. We might hear something."

"Sounds reasonable," agreed Wadley.

The cattleman turned to the left, the Ranger to the right. Roberts rode at a slow trot, stopping every few minutes to listen for any noise that might rise from the gulch.

His mind was full of pictures of the girl, one following another inconsequently. They stabbed him poignantly. He had a white dream of her moving down the street at Tascosa with step elastic, the sun sparkling in her soft, wavy hair. Another memory jumped to the fore of her on the stage, avoiding with shy distress the advances of the salesman he had jolted into his place. He saw her grave and gay, sweet and candid and sincere, but always just emerging with innocent radiance from the chrysalis of childhood.

Her presence was so near, she was so intimately close, that more than once he pulled up under an impression that she was calling him.

It was while he was waiting so, his weight resting easily in the saddle, that out of the night there came to him a faint, far-away cry of dreadful agony. The sound of it shook Jack to the soul. Cold beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. Gooseflesh ran down his spine. His hand trembled. The heart inside his ribs was a heavy weight of ice. Though he had never heard it before, the Ranger knew that awful cry for the scream of a man in torment. The Apaches were torturing a captured prisoner.

If Dinsmore had been captured by them the chances were that 'Mona had been taken, too, unless he had given her the horse and remained to hold the savages back.

Roberts galloped wildly along the edge of the rift. Once again he heard that long-drawn wail of anguish and pulled up his horse to listen, the while he shook like a man with a heavy chill.

Before the sound of it had died away a shot echoed up the cañon to him. His heart seemed to give an answering lift of relief. Some one was still holding the Apaches at bay. He fired at once as a message that help was on the way.

His trained ear told him that the rifle had been fired scarcely a hundred yards below him, apparently from some ledge of the cliff well up from the bottom of the gulch. It might have come from the defenders or it might have been a shot fired by an Apache. Jack determined to find out.

He unfastened the tientos of his saddle which held the lariat. A scrub oak jutted up from the edge of the cliff and to this he tied securely one end of the rope. Rifle in hand, he worked over the edge and lowered himself foot by foot. The rope spun round like a thing alive, bumped him against the rock wall, twisted in the other direction, and rubbed his face against the harsh stone. He had no assurance that the lariat would reach to the foot of the cliff, and as he went jerkily down, hand under hand, he knew that at any moment he might come to the end of it and be dashed against the boulders below.

His foot touched loose rubble, and he could see that the face of the precipice was rooted here in a slope that led down steeply to another wall. The ledge was like a roof pitched at an extremely acute angle. He had to get down on hands and knees to keep from sliding to the edge of the second precipice. At every movement he started small avalanches of stone and dirt. He crept forward with the utmost caution, dragging the rifle by his side.

A shot rang out scarcely fifty yards from him, fired from the same ledge upon which he was crawling.

Had that shot been fired by an Apache or by those whom he had come to aid?

CHAPTER XL

GURLEY'S GET-AWAY

The boulder cave to which the Apaches had driven Dinsmore and Ramona had long since been picked out by the outlaws as a defensible position in case of need. The ledge that ran up to it on the right offered no cover for attackers. It was scarcely three feet wide, and above and below it the wall was for practical purposes perpendicular. In anticipation of a day when his gang might be rounded up by a posse, Pete Dinsmore had gone over the path and flung down into the gulch every bit of quartz big enough to shelter a man.

The contour of the rock face back of the big boulders was concave, so that the defenders were protected from sharpshooters at the edge of the precipice above.

Another way led up from the bed of the creek by means of a very rough and broken climb terminating in the loose rubble about the point where the ledge ran out. This Dinsmore had set Gurley to watch, but it was not likely that the Indians would reach here for several hours a point dangerous to the attacked.

Of what happened that day Ramona saw little. She loaded rifles and pushed them out to Dinsmore from the safety of the cave. Once he had shouted out to her or to Gurley news of a second successful shot.

"One more good Indian. Hi-yi-yi!" The last was a taunt to the Apaches hidden below.

There came a time late in the afternoon when the serious attack of the redskins developed. It came from the left, and it was soon plain that a number of Apaches had found cover in the rough boulder bed halfway up from the creek. Ramona took Dinsmore's place as guard over the pathway while he moved across to help Gurley rout the sharpshooters slowly edging forward.

One hour of sharp work did it. Man for man there never was any comparison between the Indians and the early settlers as fighting men. Dinsmore and Gurley, both good shots, better armed and better trained than the Apaches, drove the bucks back from the boulder bed where they were deployed. One certainly was killed, another probably. As quickly as they could with safety disengage themselves the braves drew down into the shelter of the brush below.

But Dinsmore knew that the temporary victory achieved could not affect the end of this one-sided battle. The Apaches would wipe all three of them out--unless by some miracle help reached them from outside. Ramona, too, knew it. So did Gurley.

As the darkness fell the fingers of 'Mona crept often to the little revolver by her side. Sometime soon--perhaps in three hours, perhaps in twelve, perhaps in twenty-four--she must send a bullet into her brain. She decided quite calmly that she would do it at the last possible moment that would admit of certainty. She must not make any mistake, must not wait till it was too late. It would be a horrible thing to do, but--she must not fall alive into the hands of the Apaches.

Crouched behind his boulder in the darkness, Gurley too knew that the party was facing extinction. He could not save the others by staying. Was it possible to save himself by going? He knew that rough climb down through the boulder beds to the cañon below. The night was black as Egypt. Surely it would be possible, if he kept well to the left, to dodge any sentries the Indians might have set.

He moistened his dry lips with his tongue. Furtively he glanced back toward the cave where the girl was hidden. She could not see him. Nor could Dinsmore. They would know nothing about it till long after he had gone. Their stupidity had brought the Apaches upon them. If they had taken his advice the savages would have missed them by ten miles. Why should he let their folly destroy him too? If he escaped he might meet some freight outfit and send help to them.

The man edged out from his rock, crept noiselessly into the night. He crawled along the steep rubble slide, wary and soft-footed as a panther. It took him a long half-hour to reach the boulder bed. Rifle in hand, he lowered himself from rock to rock, taking advantage of every shadow....

An hour later Dinsmore called to 'Mona. "Asleep, girl?"

"No," she answered in a small voice.

"Slip out with these cartridges to Steve and find out if anythin's doin'. Then you'd better try to sleep. 'Paches don't attack at night."

Ramona crept along the ledge back of the big boulders. Gurley had gone--vanished completely. Her heart stood still. There was some vague thought in her mind that the Indians had somehow disposed of him. She called to Dinsmore in a little stifled shout that brought him on the run.

"He's gone!" she gasped.

The eyes of Dinsmore blazed. He knew exactly how to account for the absence of the man. "I might 'a' known it. The yellow coyote! Left us in the lurch to save his own hide!"

"Perhaps he's gone for help," the girl suggested faintly.

"No chance. He's playin' a lone hand--tryin' for a get-away himself," her companion said bitterly. "You'll have to take his place here. If you see anything move, no matter what it is, shoot at it."

"If I call you will you come?" she begged.

"On the jump," he promised. "Don't go to sleep. If they should come it will be up through the boulder bed. I'm leavin' you here because you can watch from cover where you can't possibly be seen. It's different on the other side."

She knew that, but as soon as he had left her the heart of the girl sank. She was alone, lost in a night of howling savages. The horrible things they did to their captives--she recalled a story whispered to her by a girl friend that it had been impossible to shake out of her mind. In the middle of the night she had more than once found herself sitting bolt upright in bed, wakened from terrible dreams of herself as a prisoner of the Apaches.

'Mona prayed, and found some comfort in her prayers. They were the frank, selfish petitions of a little child.

"God, don't let me die. I'm so young, and so frightened. Send Daddy to save me ... or Jack Roberts."

She recited the twenty-third Psalm aloud in a low voice. The fourth verse she went back to, repeating it several times.

"'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.'"

And the last verse:

"'Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.'"

Somehow she felt less lonely afterward. God was on her side. He would send her father or Jack Roberts.

Then, into her newborn calm, there came a far cry of agony that shattered it instantly. Her taut nerves gave way like a broken bow-string. Her light body began to shake. She leaned against the cold rock wall in hysterical collapse.

The voice of Dinsmore boomed along the passageway. "It's a cougar, girl. They've got a yell like the scream of lost souls. I've often heard it here."

Ramona knew he was lying, but the sound of his cheerful voice was something. She was not utterly alone.

Again that shriek lifted into the night and echoed up the cañon. The girl covered her ears with her hands and trembled violently. A shot rang out from the other end of the passage.

"Saw one of 'em movin' down below," the outlaw called to her.

But Ramona did not hear him. She had fainted.

CHAPTER XLI

HOMING HEARTS

Jack crept closer, very carefully. He was morally certain that the defenders held the ledge, but it would not do to make a mistake. Lives were at stake--one life much more precious than his own.

He drew his revolver and snaked forward. There was nothing else to do but take a chance. But he meant at least to minimize it, and certainly not to let himself be captured alive.

It was strange that nobody yet had challenged him. He was close enough now to peer into the darkness of the tunnel between the boulders and the wall. There seemed to be no one on guard.

He crept forward to the last boulder, and his boot pressed against something soft lying on the ground. It moved. A white, startled face was lifted to his--a face that held only the darkness of despair.

He knelt, put down his revolver, and slipped an arm around the warm young body.

"Thank God!" he cried softly. He was trembling in every limb. Tears filled his voice. And over and over again he murmured, "Thank God!... Thank God!"

The despair in the white face slowly dissolved. He read there doubt, a growing certainty, and then a swift, soft radiance of joy and tears.

"I prayed for you, and you've come. God sent you to me. Oh, Jack, at last!"

Her arms crept round his neck. He held her close and kissed the sweet lips salt with tears of happiness.

He was ashamed of himself. Not since he had been a little boy had he cried till now. His life had made for stoicism. But tears furrowed down his lean, brown cheeks. The streak in him that was still tender-hearted child had suddenly come to the surface. For he had expected to find her dead at best; instead, her warm, soft body was in his arms, her eyes were telling him an unbelievable story that her tongue as yet could find no words to utter. There flamed in him, like fire in dead tumbleweeds, a surge of glad triumph that inexplicably blended with humble thankfulness.

To her his emotion was joy without complex. The Ranger was tough as a hickory withe. She knew him hard as tempered steel to those whom he opposed, and her heart throbbed with excitement at his tears. She alone among all women could have touched him so. It came to her like a revelation that she need never have feared. He was her destined mate. Across that wide desert space empty of life he had come straight to her as to a magnet.

And from that moment, all through the night, she never once thought of being afraid. Her man was beside her. He would let no harm come to her. Womanlike, she exulted in him. He was so lithe and brown and slender, so strong and clean, and in all the world there was nothing that he feared.

With her hand in his she walked through the passage to where Dinsmore held watch. The outlaw turned and looked at the Ranger. If anybody had told him that a time would come when he would be glad to see Tex Roberts for any purpose except to fight him, the bandit would have had a swift, curt answer ready. But at sight of him his heart leaped. No hint of this showed in his leathery face.

"Earnin' that dollar a day, are you?" he jeered.

"A dollar a day an' grub," corrected Jack, smiling.

"Much of a posse with you?"

"Dropped in alone. My men are camped a few miles back. Mr. Wadley is with us."

"They got Gurley, I reckon. He tried to sneak away." Dinsmore flashed a quick look toward Ramona and back at Jack. "Leastways I'm not bettin' on his chances. Likely one of the 'Paches shot him."

"Mebbeso."

The girl said nothing. She knew that neither of the men believed Gurley had been shot. Those horrible cries that had come out of the night had been wrung from him by past-masters in the business of torture.

"You'd better get back an' hold the other end of the passage," suggested Dinsmore. He jerked his head toward 'Mona. "She'll show you where."

Ramona sat beside her lover while he kept watch, her head against his shoulder, his arm around her waist. Beneath the stars that were beginning to prick through the sky they made their confessions of love to each other. She told him how she had tried to hate him because of her brother and could not, and he in turn told her how he had thought Arthur Ridley was her choice.

"I did think so once--before I knew you," she admitted, soft eyes veiled beneath long lashes. "Then that day you fought with the bull to save me: I began to love you then."

They talked most of the night away, but in the hours toward morning he made her lie down and rest. She protested that she couldn't sleep; she would far rather sit beside him. But almost as soon as her head touched the saddle she was asleep.

A little before dawn he went to waken her. For a moment the soft loveliness of curved cheek and flowing lines touched him profoundly. The spell of her innocence moved him to reverence. She was still a child, and she was giving her life into his keeping.

The flush of sleep was still on her wrinkled cheek when she sat up at his touch.

"The Apaches are climbing up the boulder field," he explained. "I didn't want to waken you with a shot."

She stood before him in shy, sweet surrender, waiting for him to kiss her before he took his post. He did.

"It's goin' to be all right," he promised her. "We'll drive 'em back an' soon yore father will be here with the men."

"I'm not afraid," she said--"not the least littlest bit. But you're not to expose yourself."

"They can't hit a barn door--never can. But I'll take no chances," he promised.

During the night the Apaches had stolen far up the boulder bed and found cover behind quartz slabs which yielded them protection as good as that of the white man above. They took no chances, since there was plenty of time to get the imprisoned party without rushing the fort. Nobody knew they were here. Therefore nobody would come to their rescue. It was possible that they had food with them, but they could not have much water. In good time--it might be one sleep, perhaps two, possibly three--those on the ledge must surrender or die. So the Indians reasoned, and so the Ranger guessed that they would reason.

Jack lay behind his rocks as patiently as the savages did. Every ten or fifteen minutes he fired a shot, not so much with the expectation of hitting one of the enemy as to notify his friends where he was. Above the cañon wall opposite the sun crept up and poured a golden light into the misty shadows of the gulch. Its shaft stole farther down the hillside till it touched the yellowing foliage of the cottonwoods.

Up the cañon came the sudden pop--pop--pop of exploding rifles. Drifted up yells and whoops. The Indians hidden in the rock slide began to appear, dodging swiftly down toward the trees. Jack let out the "Hi-yi-yi" of the line-rider and stepped out from the boulders to get a better shot. The naked Apaches, leaping like jack-rabbits, scurried for cover. Their retreat was cut off from the right, and they raced up the gorge to escape the galloping cowboys who swung round the bend. One of the red men, struck just as he was sliding from a flat rock, whirled, plunged down headfirst like a diver, and disappeared in the brush.

Jack waited to see no more. He turned and walked back into the cave where his incomparable sweetheart was standing with her little fingers clasped tightly together.

"It's all over. The 'Paches are on the run," he told her.

She drew a deep, long breath and trembled into his arms.

There Clint Wadley found her five minutes later. The cattleman brushed the young fellow aside and surrounded his little girl with rough tenderness. Jack waited to see no more, but joined Dinsmore outside.

After a long time Wadley, his arm still around Ramona, joined them on the ledge.

"Boys, I'm no hand at talkin'," he said huskily. "I owe both of you a damned sight more than I can ever pay. I'll talk with you later, Jack. What about you, Dinsmore? You're in one hell of a fix. I'll get you out of it or go broke."

"What fix am I in?" demanded the outlaw boldly. "They ain't got a thing on me--not a thing. Suspicions aren't proof."

The Ranger said nothing. He knew that the evidence he could give would hang Dinsmore before any Panhandle jury, and now his heart was wholly on the side of the ruffian who had saved the life of his sweetheart. None the less, it was his duty to take the man in charge and he meant to do it.

"Hope you can make yore side of the case stick, Dinsmore. I sure hope so. Anyway, from now on I'm with you at every turn of the road," the cattleman promised.

"Much obliged," answered the outlaw with a lift of his lip that might have been either a smile or a sneer.

"You've been trailin' with a bad outfit. You're a sure-enough wolf, I've heard tell. But you're a man all the way, by gad."

"Did you figure I was yellow like Steve, Clint? Mebbe I'm a bad hombre all right. But you've known me twenty years. What license have you ever had to think I'd leave a kid like her for the 'Paches to play with?" The hard eyes of the outlaw challenged a refutation of his claim.

"None in the world, Homer. You're game. Nobody ever denied you guts. An' you're a better man than I thought you were."

Dinsmore splattered the face of a rock with tobacco juice and his stained teeth showed in a sardonic grin.

"I've got a white black heart," he jeered.

CHAPTER XLII

A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION

Rescued and rescuers rode out of the cañon as soon as the Apaches had been driven away. Nobody suggested that the Indians who had been killed in the surprise attack be buried. The bodies were left lying where they had fallen. For in those days no frontiersman ever buried a dead redskin. If the body happened to be inconveniently near a house, a mounted cowboy roped one foot and dragged it to a distance. Those were the years when all settlers agreed that the only good Indian was a dead Indian. The Indian wars are over now, and a new generation can safely hold a more humane view; but old-timers in the Panhandle will tell you to-day that the saying was literally true.

The little group of riders drew out of the gorge and climbed the shale slide to the plain above. Roberts rode knee to knee with Dinsmore. On the other side of the outlaw was Jumbo. The man between them still carried his rifle and his revolver, but he understood without being told that he was a prisoner.

Wadley dropped back from his place beside Ramona and ranged up beside the officer.

"What are you aimin' to do with him, Jack?" he asked in a low voice.

"I'm goin' to turn him over to Cap Ellison."

The cattleman pondered that awhile before he continued. "'Mona has been tellin' me about you an' her, Jack. I ain't got a word to say--not a word. If you're the man she wants, you're sure the man she'll get. But I want to tell you that you're a lucky young scamp. You don't deserve her. I've got to see the man yet that does."

"We're not goin' to quarrel about that, Mr. Wadley," agreed Jack. "I'm nothin' but a rough cowboy, an' she's the salt of the earth. I don't see what she sees in me."

"H'm!" grunted the owner of the A T O, and looked at the lithe, brown, young fellow, supple as a whip and strong as tested steel. It was not hard to understand what a girl saw in him. "Glad you got sense enough to know that."

"I'm not a plumb fool, you know."

Clint changed the subject apparently. "Boy, I've been in hell ever since Sullivan rode in with the bad news. My God! how I suffered till I saw my little trick standing there alive and well."

The Ranger nodded. He thought he knew what Wadley was driving toward. But he was resolved to give him no help. He must make his own plea.

"You helped save her, Jack. That's all right. I reckon you care for her too. Any man would 'a' done what you did. But Dinsmore, he did a whole lot more 'n you. When he was hotfooting it to escape from you, he turned round an' started to bring her back to the ranch. Steve Gurley, he said to take 'Mona along with 'em to the cañon. You know what that hellhound meant. But Dinsmore wouldn't stand for that. He said she was entitled to be took home. Well, you know how the 'Paches cut 'em off."

"Yes. That's how we figured it out," said Roberts.

"Her hawss stepped into a prairie-dog hole an' broke its leg. Dinsmore stopped an' swung her up behind him, the 'Paches gainin' every jump of the road. Oncet they reached Palo Duro he stood off the devils till she reached the ledge. Jack, we're lucky that a man like Homer Dinsmore was beside her yesterday, don't you reckon?"

"I reckon." Tiny beads of sweat stood on the forehead of the boy. He knew now what was coming.

"Good enough. Well, Jack, I reckon we cayn't take Dinsmore in to be hanged. That wouldn't be human, would it?"

The roof of the Ranger's mouth was dry. He looked away across the rolling waves of prairie while the cattleman waited for his answer. Every impulse of desire in him leaned toward the argument Wadley was making. His love for Ramona, his gratitude to Dinsmore, his keen desire to meet halfway the man who was to be his father-in-law and had accepted the prospect so generously, his boyish admiration for the thing that the outlaw had done, all tugged mightily at him.

"An' look a-here," went on the cattleman, "you got to keep in mind that you never would 'a' got Dinsmore this trip in kingdom come if he hadn't stopped to save 'Mona. He'd 'a' kep' right up the cañon till he was sure enough lost. It would be a damned mean trick for you to take a man in to be hanged because he had risked his life to save the girl you claim to love."

"You make me feel like a yellow hound, Mr. Wadley," admitted Roberts. "But what am I to do? When I joined the Rangers I swore to enforce the law. You know how it is in the force. We've got no friends when we're sent out to get a man. I'd bring in my own brother if he was wanted. That's why the Texas Rangers stack up so high. They play no favorites an' they let no prisoners escape. You're askin' me to throw down Cap Ellison who trusts me, the State that pays me, the boys on the force that pal with me, an' my loyalty to the people. You want me to do it because I've got a personal reason to wish Dinsmore to get away. If I don't take him in to town I'm a traitor. That's the long an' the short of it."

"Hell's blazes!" broke in the cattleman. "I thought you was a man an' not a machine. You want to marry my li'l' girl, but you're not willin' to do a favor to the man who has just saved her from a hundred horrible deaths. Haven't you any guts in you a-tall?"

The muscles stood out on the lean, set face of the Ranger like rawhide ropes. "I can't lie down on my job. Ramona wouldn't ask it of me. I've got to go through. That's what I'm paid for."

"She's askin' it right now. Through me."

"Then she doesn't understand what she's askin'. Let me talk with her. Let me explain--"

"We don't want any of yore damned explanations," interrupted Wadley roughly. "Talk turkey. Will you or won't you? Me, I ain't plumb crazy about law. It's justice I want done. I'll be doggoned if I'm goin' to stand by an' let any harm come to Dinsmore--not this here year of our Lord."

"I'll do all I can for him--"

"Except that you're bound an' determined to see him hanged. You sure beat my time. I'd think you would be right anxious to tell him to cut his stick--kinda slide out inconspicuous when we ain't watchin'. Be reasonable, Roberts. That's all I ask. I want to be yore friend if you'll let me. My bank's behind you to back any business proposition you want to start. Or that job I offered you before is open to you. After a little we can fix up some kind of a partnership."

The dark color burned under the tan of the Ranger's face. His lips were like a steel trap, and in his eyes there was a cold glitter. "It doesn't get you anywhere to talk that-a-way to me, Mr. Wadley. I'd want to marry Miss Ramona just the same if she was the poorest girl in the Panhandle. Offer me a deed to the A T O an' it wouldn't make any difference to me. I'm not goin' to turn Dinsmore loose because it's to my advantage."

"Don't get on the prod, young fellow. I wasn't tryin' to bribe you. I was showin' you how I felt. But you're so damned high-headed a plain man can't talk sense to you." The impulsive anger of the old Texan suddenly ripped out. "Hell, I'm not goin' to beg you to do what yore own decency ought to tell you right away. But I'll say this right off the reel: neither 'Mona nor I want to have a thing to do with a man who's so selfish he can't yield the first favor she ever asked of him. We're through with you."

The two men had fallen back of the others and were riding alone. Now the young Texan looked hard at the old-timer. The eyes of neither of them gave way even for a beat of the lashes.

"I'll have to hear Miss Ramona say that before it goes with me," answered Roberts steadily.

"All right. You can hear it right this minute." The cattleman touched his horse with the spur and cantered forward.

The Ranger was with him when they drew up beside Ramona. The smile in the eyes of the girl died away as she looked first at one and then at the other of them. She was sensitive to atmospheres, and if she had not been the harsh surface of both of them would have been evidence enough of a clash.

"Ramona," began her father, "this fellow here is a Ranger first an' a human bein' afterward. He's hell-bent on takin' Dinsmore to prison so as to make a big name for himself. I've told him how we feel, an' he says that doesn't make any difference a-tall, that Dinsmore's got to hang."

"That isn't what I meant a-tall," explained Jack. "I've been tryin' to tell yore father that I'd give an arm to turn him loose. But I can't. It wouldn't be right."

The soft eyes of the girl pleaded with her lover. "I think we ought to free him, Jack. He saved my life. He fought for me. Nobody could have done more for me. He ... he was so good to me." Her voice broke on the last sentence.

The young man swallowed a lump in his throat. "I wish I could. But don't you see I can't? I'm not Jack Roberts, the man who ... who cares for you. I'm an officer of the State sent out to bring in this man wanted for a crime. I've got to take him in."

"But he saved my life," she said gently, puzzled at his queer point of view. "He stayed with me when he could easily have escaped. You wouldn't ... take advantage of that, Jack?"

"I'll give every dollar I've got in the world to clear him, 'Mona. I'll fight for him to a finish. But I've got to take him to town an' put him in jail. If I don't I can't ever hold up my head again," he told her desperately.

"I thought you loved me, Jack," she murmured, through gathering tears.

"What kind of a man would I be for you to marry if I threw down on what was right just because you asked me to an' I wanted to do it?" he demanded.

"He's got his neck bowed, 'Mona. I told him how we felt, but he wouldn't believe me. I reckon he knows now," her father said.

"You're not goin' to throw me over because I've got to do what I think right, 'Mona?" asked Jack miserably.

"I ... I'm not throwing you over. It's you. You're throwing me over. Don't you see that we've got to help Mr. Dinsmore because he did so much for me?"

"Certainly I see that. I'll resign from the Rangers, and then we'll all pull together for him, 'Mona."

"After you've pulled on the rope that hangs him," added Clint angrily. "Nothin' to that, 'Mona. He's for us or he's against us. Let him say which right now."

The girl nodded, white to the lips.

"Do you mean that you'll give me up unless I let Dinsmore escape before we reach town?" asked the young man.

"I ... I've got to save him as he did me. If you won't help, it's because you don't love me enough," she faltered.

"I can't," the boy cried.

"'Nough said," cut in Wadley. "You've got yore answer, 'Mona, an' he's got his."

Jack stiffened in the saddle. His hard eyes bored straight into those of his sweetheart. "Have I?" he asked of her.

The girl nodded and turned her head away with a weak, little gesture of despair. Her heart was bleeding woe.

The Ranger wheeled on his horse and galloped back to his place beside Dinsmore.

CHAPTER XLIII

TEX RESIGNS

Jack Roberts, spurs jingling, walked into the office of his chief.

Ellison looked up, leaned back in his chair, and tugged at his goatee. "Well, Tex, you sure were thorough. Four men in the Dinsmore outfit, an' inside o' two days three of 'em dead an' the fourth a prisoner. You hit quite a gait, son."

"I've come to resign," announced the younger man.

"Well, I kinda thought you'd be resignin' about now," said the Captain with a smile. "Weddin' bells liable to ring right soon, I reckon."

"Not mine," replied Roberts.

Somehow, in the way he said it, the older man knew that the subject had been closed.

"Goin' to take that job Clint offered you?"

"No." Jack snapped out the negative curtly, explosively.

Another topic closed.

"Just quittin'. No reasons to offer, son?"

"Reasons a-plenty. I've had man-huntin' enough to last me a lifetime. I'm goin' to try law-breakin' awhile for a change."

"Meanin'?"

"You can guess what I mean, Captain, an' if you're lucky you'll guess right. Point is, I'm leavin' the force to-day."

"Kinda sudden, ain't it, Tex?"

"At six o'clock to-night. Make a note of the time, Captain. After that I'm playin' my own hand. Understand?"

"I understand you're sore as a thumb with a bone felon. Take yore time, son. Don't go off half-cocked." The little Captain rose and put his hand on the shoulder of the boy. "I reckon things have got in a sort of kink for you. Give 'em time to unravel, Tex."

The eyes of the Ranger softened. "I've got nothin' against you, Captain. You're all there. We won't go into any whyfors, but just let it go as it stands. I want to quit my job--right away. This round-up of the Dinsmores about cleans the Panhandle anyhow."

"You're the doctor, Tex. But why not take yore time? It costs nothin' Tex to wait a day or two an' look around you first."

"I've got business--to-night. I'd rather quit when I said."

"What business?" asked Ellison bluntly. "You mentioned law-breakin'. Aimin' to shoot up the town, are you?"

"At six to-night, Captain, my resignation takes effect."

The little man shrugged. "I hear you, Jack. You go off the pay-roll at six. I can feel it in my bones that you're goin' to pull off some fool business. Don't run on the rope too far, Jack. Everybody that breaks the law looks alike to my boys, son."

"I'll remember."

"Good luck to you." Ellison offered his hand.

Roberts wrung it. "Same to you, Cap. So long."

The young man walked downtown, ate his dinner at the hotel, and from there strolled down to the largest general store in town. Here he bought supplies enough to last for a week--flour, bacon, salt, sugar, tobacco, and shells for rifle and revolvers. These he carried to his room, where he lay down on the bed and read a month-old Trinidad paper.

Presently the paper sagged. He began to nod, fell asleep. When he opened his eyes again it was late in the afternoon. His watch told him that it was just six o'clock.

He got up, took off the buckskin suit that had served him for a uniform, and donned once more the jeans and chaps he had worn as a line-rider.

"Good-bye, Mr. Ranger," he told himself. "I reckon you can't have much worse luck as a citizen than as an officer."

He buckled round his waist the belt that held his revolvers, and from the corner of the room where it stood took his rifle. Carrying the supplies he had that afternoon bought, he directed his steps to the Elephant Corral and saddled his horse. With motions of deft economy he packed the provisions for travel, then swung to the saddle and cantered down the street.

At the post-office corner he swung to the left for a block and dismounted in front of a rather large dugout.

A wrinkled little man with a puzzled, lost-puppy look on his face sat on a bench in front mending a set of broken harness.

"'Lo, Tex. How they comin'?" he asked.

"'Lo, Yorky. Hope I see you well," drawled the horseman, a whimsical twitch of humor at the corner of his mouth. He was swinging his lariat carelessly as cowboys do.

"Jes' tol'able. I got a misery in my left shoulder I'm a-goin' to try some yerbs I done had recommended." Yorky was the kind of simple soul who always told you just how he was when you asked him.

Roberts passed him and led the way into the house. "Come inside, Yorky, I want to talk with you," he said.

The room into which the cowboy had passed was a harness shop. It was littered with saddles and bridles and broken bits of traces. A workman's bench and tools were in one corner of the shop. A door, bolted and padlocked, led to a rear room.

Jack put down his rifle and his belt on a shelf and sat down on the bench.

"Yore prisoner's in there all right," said the saddler with a jerk of his thumb over his left shoulder.

Since no one else in town would take the place, Yorky had been unanimously chosen jailer. He did not like the job, but it gave him an official importance that flattered his vanity.

"He's not my prisoner any more, Yorky. He's yours. I quit being a Ranger just twenty-five minutes ago."

"You don't say! Well, I reckon you done wise. A likely young fellow--"

"Where's yore six-shooter?" demanded Jack.

Yorky was a trifle surprised. "You're sittin' on it," he said, indicating the work bench.

Roberts got up and stood aside. "Get it."

The lank jaw of the jailer hung dolefully. He rubbed its bristles with a hand very unsure of itself.

"Now, you look a-hyer, Tex. I'm jailer, I am. I don't allow to go with you to bring in no bad-man. Nothin' of that sort. It ain't in the contract."

"I'm not askin' it. Get yore gat."

The little saddler got it, though with evident misgivings.

The brown, lean young man reseated himself on the bench. "I've come here to get yore prisoner," he explained.

"Sure," brightened the jailer. "Wait till I get my keys." He put the revolver down on the table and moved toward the nail on which hung two large keys.

"I'm just through tellin' you that I'm no longer a Ranger, but only a private citizen."

Yorky was perplexed. He felt he was not getting the drift of this conversation. "Well, an' I done said, fine, a young up 'n' comin' fellow like you--"

"You've got no business to turn yore prisoner over to me, Yorky. I'm not an officer."

"Oh, tha's all right. Anything you say, Tex."

"I'm goin' to give him my horse an' my guns an' tell him to hit the trail."

The puzzled lost-dog look was uppermost on the wrinkled little face just now. Yorky was clearly out of his depth. But of course Jack Roberts, the best Ranger in the Panhandle, must know what he was about.

"Suits me if it does you, Tex," the saddler chirped.

"No, sir. You've got to make a fight to hold Dinsmore. He's wanted for murder an' attempted robbery. You're here to see he doesn't get away."

"Make a fight! You mean ... fight you?"

"That's just what I mean. I'm out of reach of my gats. Unhook yore gun if I make a move toward you."

Yorky scratched his bewildered head. This certainly did beat the Dutch. He looked helplessly at this brown, lithe youth with the well-packed muscles.

"I'll be doggoned if I know what's eatin' you, Tex. I ain't a-goin' to fight you none a-tall."

"You bet you are! I've warned you because I don't want to take advantage of you, since I've always had the run of the place. But you're jailer here. You've got to fight--or have everybody in town say you're yellow."

A dull red burned into the cheeks of the little man. "I don't aim for to let no man say that, Tex."

"That's the way to talk, Yorky. I've got no more right to take Dinsmore away than any other man." Jack was playing with his lariat. He had made a small loop at one end and with it was swinging graceful ellipses in the air. "Don't you let me do it."

Yorky was nervous, but decided. "I ain't a-goin' to," he said, and the revolver came to a businesslike position, its nose pointed straight for Roberts.

The gyrations of the rope became more active and the figures it formed more complex.

"Quit yore foolin', Tex, an' get down to cases. Dad-gum yore hide, a fellow never can tell what you honest-to-God mean."

The rope snaked forward over the revolver and settled on the wrist of the jailer. It tightened, quicker than the eye could follow. Jack jerked the lariat sideways and plunged forward. A bullet crashed into the wall of the dugout.

The cowboy's shoulder pinned the little man against the bolted door. One hand gave a quick wrench to the wrist of the right arm and the revolver clattered to the puncheon floor. The two hands of the jailer, under pressure, came together. Round them the rope wound swiftly.

"I've got you, Yorky. No use strugglin'. I don't want to start that misery in yore shoulder," warned Jack.

The little saddler, tears of mortification in his eyes, relaxed from his useless efforts. Jack had no intention of humiliating him and he proceeded casually to restore his self-respect.

"You made a good fight, Yorky,--a blamed good fight. I won out by a trick, or I never could 'a' done it. Listen, old-timer. I plumb had to play this low-down trick on you. Homer Dinsmore saved Miss Wadley from the 'Paches. He treated her like a white man an' risked his life for her. She's my friend. Do you reckon I'd ought to let him hang?"

"Whyn't you tell me all that?" complained the manhandled jailer.

"Because you're such a tender-hearted old geezer, Yorky. Like as not you would 'a' thrown open the door an' told me to take him. You had to make a fight to keep him so they couldn't say you were in cahoots with me. I'm goin' to jail for this an' I don't want comp'ny."

Jack trussed up his friend comfortably with the slack of the rope so that he could move neither hands nor feet.

From the nail upon which the two keys hung the jail-breaker selected one. He shot back the bolts of the inner door and turned the key.

CHAPTER XLIV

DINSMORE GIVES INFORMATION

The inner room was dark, and for a moment Jack stood blinking while his eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom.

A voice growled a question at him. "What do you want now, Mr. Grandstander?"

"I want you."

"What for?"

"You'll find out presently. Come along."

For a moment Dinsmore did not move. Then he slouched forward. He noticed that the Ranger was not armed. Another surprise met him when he stepped into the outer room. The jailer lay on the floor bound.

The outlaw looked quickly at Roberts, a question in his eyes. Jack unlocked his handcuffs. They had been left on him because the jail was so flimsy.

"My rifle an' six-shooters are on the shelf there, Dinsmore. A horse packed with grub is waitin' outside for you. Make for the short-grass country an' cross the line about Deaf Smith County to the Staked Plains. I reckon you'll find friends on the Pecos."

"Yes?" asked Dinsmore, halfway between insolence and incredulity.

"That's my advice. You don't need to take it if you don't want to."

"Oh, it listens good to me. I'll take it all right, Mr. Ranger. There are parties in Mexico that can use me right now at a big figure. The Lincoln County War is still goin' good." The bad-man challenged Roberts with bold eyes. "But what I'm wonderin' is how much Clint Wadley paid you to throw down Cap Ellison."

The anger burned in Jack's face. "Damn you, Dinsmore, I might 'a' known you'd think somethin' like that. I'll tell you this. I quit bein' a Ranger at six o'clock this evenin', an' I haven't seen or heard from Wadley since I quarreled with him about you."

"So you're turnin' me loose because you're so fond of me. Is that it?" sneered the outlaw.

"I'll tell you just why I'm turnin' you loose, Dinsmore. It's because for twenty-four hours in yore rotten life you were a white man. When I was sleepin' on yore trail you turned to take Miss Wadley back to the A T O. When the 'Paches were burnin' the wind after you an' her, you turned to pick her up after she had fallen. When you might have lit out up the cañon an' left her alone, you stayed to almost certain death. You were there all the time to a fare-you-well. From that one good day that may take you to heaven yet, I dragged you in here with a rope around yore neck. I had to do it, because I was a Ranger. But Wadley was right when he said it wasn't human. I'm a private citizen now, an' I'm makin' that wrong right."

"You'd ought to go to Congress. You got the gift," said Dinsmore with dry irony. Five minutes earlier he had been, as Roberts said, a man with a rope around his neck. Now he was free, the wide plains before him over which to roam. He was touched, felt even a sneaking gratitude to this young fellow who was laying up trouble for himself on his account; and he was ashamed of his own emotion.

"I'll go to jail; that's where I'll go," answered Jack grimly. "But that's not the point."

"I'll say one thing, Roberts. I didn't kill Hank. One of the other boys did. It can't do him any harm to say so now," muttered Dinsmore awkwardly.

"I know. Overstreet shot him."

"That was just luck. It might have been me."

Jack looked straight and hard at him. "Will you answer me one question? Who killed Rutherford Wadley?"

"Why should I?" demanded the bad-man, his eyes as hard and steady as those of the other man.

"Because an innocent man is under a cloud. You know Tony didn't kill him. He's just been married. Come clean, Dinsmore."

"As a favor to you, because of what you're doin' for me?"

"I'm not doin' this for you, but to satisfy myself. But if you want to put it that way--"

"Steve Gurley shot Ford because he couldn't be trusted. The kid talked about betrayin' us to Ellison. If Steve hadn't shot him I would have done it."

"But not in the back," said Jack.

"No need o' that. I could 'a' gunned him any time in a fair fight. We followed him, an' before I could stop him Gurley fired."

The line-rider turned to the jailer. "You heard what he said, Yorky."

"I ain't deef," replied the little saddler with sulky dignity. His shoulder was aching and he felt very much outraged.

"Ford Wadley was a bad egg if you want to know. He deserved just what he got," Dinsmore added.

"I don't care to hear about that. Yore horse is waitin', Dinsmore. Some one might come along an' ask inconvenient whyfors. Better be movin' along."

Dinsmore buckled the belt round his waist and picked up the rifle.

"Happy days," he said, nodding toward Jack, then turned and slouched out of the door.

A moment, and there came the swift clatter of hoofs.

CHAPTER XLV

RAMONA DESERTS HER FATHER

Arthur Ridley, seated on the porch between Clint Wadley and Ramona, was annoying one and making himself popular with the other. For he was maintaining, very quietly but very steadily, that Jack Roberts had been wholly right in refusing to release Dinsmore.

"Just as soon as you lads get to be Rangers you go crazy with the heat," said the cattleman irritably. "Me, I don't go down on my ham bones for the letter of the law. Justice! That's what I aim for to do. I don't say you boys haven't got a right to sleep on Dinsmore's trail till you get him. That's yore duty. But out here in Texas we'd ought to do things high, wide, an' handsome. Roberts, by my way of it, should have shook Homer's hand. 'Fine! You saved 'Mona's life. Light a shuck into a chaparral pronto. In twelve hours I'm goin' to hit the trail after you again.' That's what he had ought to have said."

"You're asking him to be generous at the expense of the State, Mr. Wadley. Jack couldn't do that. Dinsmore's liberty wasn't a gift of his to give. He was hired by the State--sent out to bring in that particular man. He hadn't any choice but to do it," insisted Arthur.

Ramona sat in the shadow of the honeysuckle vines. She did not say anything and Ridley could not see her face well. He did not know how grateful she was for his championship of his friend. She knew he was right and her heart throbbed gladly because of it. She wanted to feel that she and her father were wrong and had done an injustice to the man she loved.

Captain Ellison came down the walk, his spurs jingling. In spite of his years the little officer carried himself jauntily, his wide hat tilted at a rakish angle. Just now he was worried.

As soon as he knew the subject of conversation, he plunged in, a hot partisan, eager for battle. Inside of two minutes he and Wadley were engaged in one of their periodical semi-quarrels.

"You're wrong, Clint," the Captain announced dogmatically. "You're wrong, like you 'most always are. You're that bullheaded you cayn't see it. But I'm surprised at you, 'Mona. If Jack had been a private citizen, you wouldn't needed to ask him to turn loose Dinsmore. But he wasn't. That's the stuff my Rangers are made of. They play the hand out. The boy did just right."

"That's what you say, Jim. You drill these boys of yours till they ain't hardly human. I'm for law an' order. You know that. But I don't go out of my head about them the way you do. 'Mona an' I have got some sense. We're reasonable human bein's." To demonstrate his possession of this last quality Clint brought his fist down on the arm of the chair so hard that it cracked.

From out of the darkness Ramona made her contribution in a voice not quite steady.

"We're wrong, Dad. We've been wrong all the time. I didn't see it just at first, and then I didn't want to admit it even to myself. But I'm glad now we are." She turned to Captain Ellison a little tremulously. "Will you tell him, Uncle Jim, that I want to see him?"

"You're a little gentleman, 'Mona. I always said you were." The Captain reached out and pressed her hand. "I'll tell him when I see him. No tellin' when that'll be. Jack resigned to-day. He's got some fool notion in his head. I'm kinda worried about him."

The girl's heart fluttered. "Worried? What ... what do you think he's going to do?"

The Captain shook his head. "Cayn't tell you, because I don't know. But he's up to somethin'. He acted kinda hard an' bitter."

A barefooted negro boy called in from the gate. "Cap'n Ellison there, sah?"

He brought a note in and handed it to the officer of Rangers. The Captain ripped open the envelope and handed the sheet inside to Ramona.

"Run along in an' read it for me, honey. It's too dark to see here."

The girl ran into the house and lit a lamp. The color washed out of her face as she read the note.

Come up to the hotel and arrest me, Captain. I held up Yorky, took his keys, and freed Dinsmore. JACK ROBERTS

Then, in jubilant waves, the blood beat back into her arteries. That was why he had resigned, to pay the debt he owed Homer Dinsmore on her account. He had put himself within reach of the law for her sake. Her heart went out to him in a rush. She must see him. She must see him at once.

From the parlor she called to Captain Ellison. "You'd better come in and read the note yourself, Uncle Jim. It's important."

It was so important to her that before the Captain of Rangers was inside the house, she was out the back door running toward the hotel as fast as her lithe limbs could carry her. She wanted to see Jack before his chief did, to ask his forgiveness for having failed him at the first call that came upon her faith.

She caught up with the colored boy as he went whistling up the road. The little fellow took a message for her into the hotel while she waited in the darkness beside the post-office. To her there presently came Roberts. He hesitated a moment in front of the store and peered into the shadows. She had not sent her name, and it was possible that enemies had decoyed him there.

"Jack," she called in a voice that was almost a whisper.

In half a dozen long strides he was beside her. She wasted no time in preliminaries.

"We were wrong, Dad and I. I told Uncle Jim to tell you to come to me ... and then your note to him came. Jack, do you ... still like me?"

He answered her as lovers have from the beginning of time--with kisses, with little joyous exclamations, with eyes that told more than words. He took her into his arms hungrily in an embrace of fire and passion. She wept happily, and he wiped away her tears.

They forgot time in eternity, till Ellison brought them back to earth. He was returning from the hotel with Wadley, and as he passed they heard him sputtering.

"Why did he send for me, then, if he meant to light out? What in Sam Hill--?"

Jack discovered himself to the Captain, and incidentally his sweetheart.

"Well, I'll be doggoned!" exclaimed Ellison. "You youngsters sure beat my time. How did you get here, 'Mona?"

Clint made prompt apologies. "I was wrong, boy. I'd ought to know it by this time, for they've all been dinnin' it at me. Shake, an' let's make a new start."

In words it was not much, but Jack knew by the way he said it that the cattleman meant a good deal more than he said. He shook hands gladly.

"Looks to me like Jack would make that new start in jail," snapped the Captain. "I don't expect he can go around jail-breaking with my prisoners an' get away with it."

"I'll go to jail with him, then," cried 'Mona quickly.

"H'mp!" The Ranger Captain softened. "It wouldn't be a prison if you were there, honey."

Jack slipped his hand over hers in the semi-darkness. "You're whistlin', Captain."

"I reckon you 'n' me will take a trip down to Austin to see the Governor, Jim," Wadley said. "Don't you worry any about that prison, 'Mona."

The girl looked up into the eyes of her lover. "We're not worrying any, Dad," she answered, smiling.

CHAPTER XLVI

LOOSE THREADS

The Governor had been himself a cattleman. Before that he had known Ellison and Wadley during the war. Therefore he lent a friendly ear to the tale told him by his old-time friends.

Clint did most of the talking, one leg thrown across the arm of a leather-bound chair in the library of the Governor's house. The three men were smoking. A mint julep was in front of each.

The story of Jack Roberts lost nothing in the telling. Both of the Panhandle men were now partisans of his, and when the owner of the A T O missed a point the hawk-eyed little Captain was there to stress it.

"That's all right, boys," the Governor at last broke in. "I don't doubt he's all you say he is, but I don't see that I can do anything for him. If he's in trouble because he deliberately helped a murderer to escape--"

"You don't need to do a thing, Bob," interrupted Wadley. "That's just the point. He's in no trouble unless you make it for him. All you've got to do is shut yore eyes. I spent three hours with a pick makin' a hole in the jail wall so as it would look like the prisoner escaped. I did a real thorough job. Yorky, the jailer, won't talk. We got that all fixed. There'll be no trouble a-tall unless you want the case against Jack pushed."

"What was the use of comin' to me at all, then? Why didn't you boys keep this under your hats?" the Governor asked.

Wadley grinned. "Because of Jim's conscience. You see, Bob, he fills his boys up with talk about how the Texas Rangers are the best police force in the world. That morale stuff! Go through an' do yore duty. Play no favorites an' have no friends when you're on the trail of a criminal. Well, he cayn't ignore what young Roberts has done. So he passes the buck to you."

The Governor nodded appreciation of Ellison's difficulty. "All right, Jim. You've done your duty in reporting it. Now I'll forget all about it. You boys go home and marry those young people soon as they're ready."

The Panhandle cattleman gave a whoop. "That'll be soon as I can draw up partnership papers for me 'n' Jack as a weddin' present for him an' Mona."

* * * * *

They were married at Clarendon. All the important people of the Panhandle attended the wedding, and it was generally agreed that no better-looking couple ever faced the firing line of a marriage ceremony.

There was a difference of opinion as to whether the ex-line-rider deserved his good luck. Jumbo Wilkins was one of those who argued mightily that there was no luck about it.

"That doggoned Tex wore his bronc to a shadow waitin' on Miss 'Mona an' rescuin' her from trouble. She plumb had to marry him to git rid of him," he explained. "I never saw the beat of that boy's gall. Six months ago he was ridin' the line with me. Now he's the segundo of the whole outfit an' has married the daughter of the boss to boot."

Jumbo was on hand with a sack of rice and an old shoe when the bride and groom climbed into the buckboard to drive to the ranch. His admiration found vent in one last shout as the horses broke into a run:

"Oh, you Tex! Let 'em go, son!"

THE END

Contents

THE BIG-TOWN ROUND-UP

by WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

FOREWORD

The driver of the big car throttled down. Since he had swung away from the dusty road to follow a wagon track across the desert, the speedometer had registered many miles. His eyes searched the ground in front to see whether the track led up the brow of the hill or dipped into the sandy wash.

On the breeze there floated to him the faint, insistent bawl of thirsty cattle. The car leaped forward again, climbed the hill, and closed in upon a remuda of horses watched by two wranglers.

The chauffeur stopped the machine and shouted a question at the nearest rider, who swung his mount and cantered up. He was a lean, tanned youth in overalls, jumper, wide sombrero, high-heeled boots, and shiny leather chaps. A girl in the tonneau appraised with quick, eager eyes this horseman of the plains. Perhaps she found him less picturesque than she had hoped. He was not there for moving-picture purposes. Nothing on horse or man held its place for any reason except utility. The leathers protected the legs of the boy from the spines of the cactus and the thorns of the mesquite, the wide flap of the hat his face from the slash of catclaws when he drove headlong through the brush after flying cattle. The steel horn of the saddle was built to check a half-ton of bolting hill steer and fling it instantly. The rope, the Spanish bit, the tapaderas, all could justify their place in his equipment.

"Where's the round-up?" asked the driver.

The coffee-brown youth gave a little lift of his head to the right. He was apparently a man of few words. But his answer sufficed. The bawling of anxious cattle was now loud and persistent.

The car moved forward to the edge of the mesa and dropped into the valley. The girl in the back seat gave a little scream of delight. Here at last was the West she had read about in books and seen on the screen.

This was Cattleland's hour of hours. The parada grounds were occupied by two circles of cattle, each fenced by eight or ten horsemen. The nearer one was the beef herd, beyond this--and closer to the mouth of the cañon from which they had all recently been driven--was a mass of closely packed cows and calves.

The automobile swept around the beef herd and drew to a halt between it and the noisier one beyond. In a fire of mesquite wood branding-irons were heating. Several men were busy branding and marking the calves dragged to them from the herd by the horsemen who were roping the frightened little blatters.

It was a day beautiful even for Arizona. The winey air called potently to the youth in the girl. Such a sky, such atmosphere, so much life and color! She could not sit still any longer. With a movement of her wrist she opened the door and stepped down from the car.

A man sitting beside the chauffeur turned in his seat. "You'd better stay where you are, honey." He had an idea that this was not exactly the scene a girl of seventeen ought to see at close range.

"I want to get the kinks out of my muscles, Dad," the girl called back. "I'll not go far."

She walked along a ridge that ran from the mesa into the valley like an outstretched tongue. Her hands were in the pockets of her fawn-colored coat. There was a touch of unstudied jauntiness in the way the tips of her golden curls escaped from beneath the little brown toque she wore. A young man guarding the beef herd watched her curiously. She moved with the untamed, joyous freedom of a sun-worshiper just emerging from the morning of the world. Something in the poise of the light, boyish figure struck a spark from his imagination.

A vaquero was cantering toward the fire with a calf in his wake. Another cowpuncher dropped the loop of his lariat on the ground, gave it a little upward twist as the calf passed over it, jerked taut the riata, and caught the animal by the hind leg. In a moment the victim lay stretched on the ground. In the gathering gloom the girl could not quite make out what the men were doing. To her sensitive nostrils drifted an acrid odor of burnt hair and flesh, the wail of an animal in pain. One of the men was using his knife on the ears of the helpless creature. She heard another say something about a crop and an underbit. Then she turned away, faint and indignant. Three big men torturing a month-old calf--was this the brave outdoor West she had read about and remembered from her childhood days? Tears of pity and resentment blurred her sight.

As she stood on the spit of the ridge, a slim, light figure silhouetted against the skyline, the young man guarding the beef herd called something to her that was lost in the bawling of the cattle. From the motion of his hand she knew that he was telling her to get back to the car. But the girl saw no reason for obeying the orders of a range-rider she had never seen before and never expected to see again. Nobody had ever told her that a rider is fairly safe among the wildest hill cattle, but a man on foot is liable to attack at any time when a herd is excited.

She turned her shoulder a little more definitely to the man who had warned her and looked across the parada grounds to the hills swimming in a haze of violet velvet. Her heart throbbed to a keen delight in them, as it might have done at the touch of a dear friend's hand long absent. For she had been born in the Rockies. They belonged to her and she to them. Long years in New York had left her still an alien.

A shout of warning startled her. Above the bellowing of the herd she heard another yell.

"Hi-yi-ya-a!"

A red-eyed steer, tail up, was crashing through the small brush toward the branders. There was a wild scurry for safety. The men dropped iron and ropes and fled to their saddles. Deflected by pursuers, the animal turned. By chance it thundered straight for the girl on the sand spit.

She stood paralyzed for a moment.

Out of the gathering darkness a voice came to her sharp and clear. "Don't move!" It rang so vibrant with crisp command that the girl, poised for flight, stood still and waited in white terror while the huge steer lumbered toward her.

A cowpony, wheeled as on a dollar, jumped to an instant gallop. The man riding it was the one who had warned her back to the car. Horse and ladino pounded over the ground toward her. Each stride brought them closer to each other as they converged toward the sand spit. It came to her with a gust of panicky despair that they would collide on the very spot where she stood. Yet she did not run.

The rider, lifting his bronco forward at full speed, won by a fraction of a second. He guided in such a way as to bring his horse between her and the steer. The girl noticed that he dropped his bridle rein and crouched in the saddle, his eyes steadily upon her. Without slackening his pace in the least as he swept past, the man stooped low, caught the girl beneath the armpits, and swung her in front of him to the back of the horse. The steer pounded past so close behind that one of its horns grazed the tail of the cowpony.

It was a superb piece of horsemanship, perfectly timed, as perfectly executed.

The girl lay breathless in the arms of the man, her heart beating against his, her face buried in his shoulder. She was dazed, half fainting from the reaction of her fear. The next she remembered clearly was being lowered into the arms of her father.

He held her tight, his face tortured with emotion. She was the very light of his soul, and she had shaved death by a hair's breadth. A miracle had saved her, but he would never forget the terror that had gripped him. Naturally, shaken, as he was, his relief found vent in scolding.

"I told you to stay by the car, honey. But you're so willful. You've got to have your own way. Thank God you're safe. If . . . if . . ." His voice broke as he thought of what had so nearly been.

The girl snuggled closer to him, her arms round his neck. His anxiety touched her nearly, and tears flooded her eyes.

"I know, Dad. I . . . I'll be good."

A young man descended from the car, handsome, trim, and well got up. He had been tailored by the best man's outfitter in New York. Nobody on Broadway could order a dinner better than he. The latest dances he could do perfectly. He had the reputation of knowing exactly the best thing to say on every occasion. Now he proceeded to say it.

"Corking bit of riding--never saw better. I'll give you my hand on that, my man."

The cowpuncher found a bunch of manicured fingers in his rough brown paw. He found something else, for after the pink hand had gone there remained a fifty-dollar bill. He looked at it helplessly for a moment; then, beneath the brown outdoor tan, a flush of anger beat into his face. Without a word he leaned forward and pressed the note into the mouth of the bronco.

The buckskin knew its master for a very good friend. If he gave it something to eat--well, there was no harm in trying it once. The buckskin chewed placidly for a few seconds, decided that this was a practical joke, and ejected from its mouth a slimy green pulp that had recently been a treasury note.

The father stammered his thanks to the rescuer of the girl. "I don't know what I can ever do to let you know . . . I don't know how I can ever pay you for saving . . ."

"Forget it!" snapped the brown man curtly. He was an even-tempered youth, as genial and friendly as a half-grown pup, but just now the word "pay" irritated him as a red rag does a sulky bull.

"If there's anything at all I can do for you--"

"Not a thing."

The New Yorker felt that he was not expressing himself at all happily. What he wanted was to show this young fellow that he had put him under a lifelong obligation he could never hope to wipe out.

"If you ever come to New York--"

"I'm not liable to go there. I don't belong there any more than you do here. Better drift back to Tucson, stranger. The parada is no place for a tenderfoot. You're in luck you're not shy one li'l' girl tromped to death. Take a fool's advice and hit the trail for town pronto before you bump into more trouble."

The rider swung round his pony and cantered back to the beef herd.

He left behind him a much-annoyed clubman, a perplexed and distressed father, and a girl both hurt and indignant at his brusque rejection of her father's friendly advances. The episode of the fifty-dollar bill had taken place entirely under cover. The man who had given the note and the one who had refused to accept it were the only ones who knew of it. The girl saw only that this splendid horseman who had snatched her from under the very feet of the ladino had shown a boorish discourtesy. The savor had gone out of her adventure. Her heart was sick with disappointment and indignation.

CHAPTER I

CONCERNING A STREET TWELVE MILES LONG

"I like yore outfit," Red Hollister grumbled. "You're nice boys, and good to yore mothers--what few of you ain't wore their gray hairs to the grave with yore frolicsome ways. You know yore business and you got a good cook. But I'm darned if I like this thing of two meals a day, one at a quarter to twelve at night and the other a quarter past twelve, also and likewise at night."

A tenderfoot might have thought that Hollister had some grounds for complaint. For weeks he had been crawling out of his blankets in the pre-dawn darkness of 3 A.M. He had sat shivering down beside a camp-fire to swallow a hurried breakfast and had swung into the saddle while night was still heavy over the land. He had ridden after cattle wild as deer and had wrestled with ladino steers till long after the stars were up. In the chill night he had eaten another meal, rolled up in his blankets, and fallen into instant heavy sleep. And five minutes later--or so at least it seemed to him--the cook had pounded on the triangle for him to get up.

None the less Red's grumbling was a pretense. He would not have been anywhere else for twice the pay. This was what he lived for.

Johnnie Green, commonly known as "the Runt," helped himself to another flank steak. He was not much of a cow-hand, but when it came to eating Johnnie was always conscientiously on the job.

"These here New Yorkers must be awful hardy," he ventured, apropos of nothing. "Seems like they're night birds for fair. Never do go to bed, far as I can make out. They tromp the streets all day and dance at them cabby-rets all night. My feet would be all wore out."

Stace Wallis grinned. "So would my pocketbook. I've heard tell how a fellow can pay as high as four or five dollars for an eat at them places."

"Nothin' to it--nothin' a-tall," pronounced Red dogmatically. Hollister always knew everything. Nothing in the heavens above or the earth below could stump him. The only trouble with his knowledge was that he knew so much that wasn't true. "Can't be did. Do you reckon any o' them New Yorkers could get away with five dollars' worth of ham and aigs? Why, the Runt here couldn't eat more'n a dollar's worth."

"Sure," assented Johnnie. It was the habit of his life to agree with the last speaker. "You're damn whistlin', Red. Why, at the Harvey House they only charge a dollar for a square, and a man couldn't get a better meal than that."

"Onct in Denver, when I went to the stock show, I blowed myself for a meal at the Cambridge Hotel that set me back one-fifty," said Slim Leroy reminiscently. "They et dinner at night."

"They did?" scoffed Johnnie. "Don't they know a fellow eats dinner at noon and supper at night?"

"I ain't noticed any dinner at noon for se-ve-real weeks," Hollister contributed.

"Some feed that," ruminated Leroy, with memories of the Cambridge Hotel still to the fore.

"With or without?" questioned Red.

"I reckon I had one li'l' drink with it. No more."

"Then they stung you," pronounced Hollister.

"Mebbeso, and mebbe not. I ain't kickin' none. I sure was in tony society. There was fellows sittin' at a table near us that had on them swallow-tail coats."

Johnnie ventured a suggestion. "Don't you reckon if a fellow et a couple o' plates of this here cavi-eer stuff and some ice cream and cake, he might run it up to two bucks or two and a half? Don't you reckon he might, Clay?"

Clay Lindsay laughed. "You boys know a lot about New York, just about as much as I do. I've read that a guy can drop a hundred dollars a night in a cabaret if he has a friend or two along, and never make a ripple on Broadway."

"Does that look reasonable to you, Clay?" argued Red. "We're not talkin' about buckin' the tiger or buyin' diamonds for no actresses. We're figurin' on a guy goin' out with some friends to eat and take a few drinks and have a good time. How could he spend fifty dollars--let alone a hundred--if he let the skirts and the wheel alone and didn't tamper with no straight flushes?"

"I'm tellin' you what I read. Take it or leave it," said Clay amiably.

"Well, I read there's a street there twelve miles long. If a fellow started at one end of that street with a thirst he'd sure be salivated before he reached the other end of it," Stace said with a grin.

"Wonder if a fellow could get a job there. They wouldn't have no use for a puncher, I reckon," Slim drawled.

"Betcha Clay could get a job all right," answered Johnnie Green promptly. "He'd be top hand anywhere, Clay would."

Johnnie was the lost dog of the B-in-a-Box ranch. It was his nature to follow somebody and lick his hand whenever it was permitted. The somebody he followed was Clay Lindsay. Johnnie was his slave, the echo of his opinions, the booster of his merits. He asked no greater happiness than to trail in the wake of his friend and get a kind word occasionally.

The Runt had chosen as his Admirable Crichton a most engaging youth. It never had been hard for any girl to look at Clay Lindsay. His sun-tanned, good looks, the warmth of his gay smile, the poise and the easy stride of him, made Lindsay a marked man even in a country where men of splendid physique were no exception.

"I'd take a li'l' bet that New York ain't lookin' for no champeen ropers or bronco-busters," said Stace. "Now if Clay was a cabby-ret dancer or a Wall Street wolf--"

"There's no street in the world twelve miles long where Clay couldn't run down and hogtie a job if he wanted to," insisted Johnnie loyally. "Ain't that right, Clay?"

Clay was not listening. His eyes were watching the leap of the fire glow. The talk of New York had carried him back to a night on the round-up three years before. He was thinking about a slim girl standing on a sand spit with a wild steer rushing toward her, of her warm, slender body lying in his arms for five immortal seconds, of her dark, shy eyes shining out of the dusk at him like live coals. He remembered--and it hurt him to recall it--how his wounded pride had lashed out in resentment of the patronage of these New Yorkers. The younger man had insulted him, but he knew in his heart now that the girl's father had meant nothing of the kind. Of course the girl had forgotten him long since. If he ever came to her mind as a fugitive memory it would be in the guise of a churlish boor as impossible as his own hill cattle.

"Question is, could you land a job in New York if you wanted one," explained Stace to the dreamer.

"If it's neck meat or nothin' a fellow can 'most always get somethin' to do," said Lindsay in the gentle voice he used. The vague impulses of many days crystallized suddenly into a resolution. "Anyhow I'm goin' to try. Soon as the rodeo is over I'm goin' to hit the trail for the big town."

"Tucson?" interpreted Johnnie dubiously.

"New York."

The bow-legged little puncher looked at his friend and gasped. Denver was the limit of Johnnie's imagination. New York was terra incognita, inhabited by a species who were as foreign to him as if they had dwelt in Mars.

"You ain't really aimin' to go to New York sure enough?" he asked.

Clay flashed on him the warm smile that endeared him to all his friends. "I'm goin' to ride down Broadway and shoot up the town, Johnnie. Want to come along?"

CHAPTER II

CLAY APPOINTS HIMSELF CHAPERON

As he traveled east Clay began to slough the outward marks of his calling. He gave his spurs to Johnnie before he left the ranch. At Tucson he shed his chaps and left them in care of a friend at the Longhorn Corral. The six-gun with which he had shot rattlesnakes he packed into his suitcase at El Paso. His wide-rimmed felt hat flew off while the head beneath it was stuck out of a window of the coach somewhere south of Denver. Before he passed under the Welcome Arch in that city the silk kerchief had been removed from his brown neck and retired to the hip pocket which formerly held his forty-five.

The young cattleman began to flatter himself that nobody could now tell he was a wild man from the hills who had never been curried. He might have spared himself the illusion. Everybody he met knew that this clean-cut young athlete, with the heavy coat of tan on his good-looking face, was a product of the open range. The lightness of his stride, the breadth of the well-packed shoulders, the frankness of the steady eyes, all advertised him a son of Arizona.

It was just before noon at one of the small plains towns east of Denver that a girl got on the train and was taken by the porter to a section back of Clay Lindsay. The man from Arizona noticed that she was refreshingly pretty in an unsophisticated way.

A little later he had a chance to confirm this judgment, for the dining-car manager seated her opposite him at a table for two. When Clay handed her the menu card she murmured "Thank you!" with a rush of color to her cheeks and looked helplessly at the list in her hand. Quite plainly she was taking her first long journey.

"Do I have to order everything that is here?" she presently asked shyly after a tentative and furtive glance at her table companion.

Clay felt no inclination to smile at her naïveté. He was not very much more experienced than she was in such things, but his ignorance of forms never embarrassed him. They were details that seemed to him to have no importance.

The cowpuncher helped her fill the order card. She put herself entirely in his hands and was willing to eat whatever he suggested unbiased by preferences of her own. He included chicken salad and ice cream. From the justice she did her lunch he concluded that his choice had been a wise one.

She was a round, soft, little person with constant intimations of a childhood not long outgrown. Dimples ran in and out her pink cheeks at the slightest excuse. The blue eyes were innocently wide and the Cupid's-bow mouth invitingly sweet. The girl from Brush, Colorado, was about as worldly-wise as a plump, cooing infant or a fluffy kitten, and instinctively the eye caressed her with the same tenderness.

During the course of lunch she confided that her name was Kitty Mason, that she was an orphan, and that she was on her way to New York to study at a school for moving-picture actresses.

"I sent my photograph and the manager wrote back that my face was one hundred per cent perfect for the movies," the girl explained.

It was clear that she was expecting to be manufactured into a film star in a week or two. Clay doubted whether the process was quite so easy, even with a young woman who bloomed in the diner like a rose of the desert.

After they had finished eating, the range-rider turned in at the smoking compartment and enjoyed a cigar. He fell into casual talk with an army officer who had served in the Southwest, and it was three hours later when he returned to his own seat in the car.

A hard-faced man in a suit of checks more than a shade too loud was sitting in the section beside the girl from Brush. He was making talk in an assured, familiar way, and the girl was listening to him shyly and yet eagerly. The man was a variation of a type known to Lindsay. That type was the Arizona bad-man. If this expensively dressed fellow was not the Eastern equivalent of the Western gunman, Clay's experience was badly at fault. The fishy, expressionless eyes, the colorless face, the tight-lipped jaw, expressed a sinister personality and a dangerous one. Just now a suave good-humor veiled the evil of him, but the cowpuncher knew him for a wolf none the less.

Clay had already made friends with the Pullman conductor. He drifted to him now on the search for information.

"The hard-faced guy with the little girl?" he asked casually after the proffer of a cigar. "The one with the muscles bulging out all over him--who is he?"

"He comes by that tough mug honestly. That's Jerry Durand."

"The prize-fighter?"

"Yep. Used to be. He's a gang leader in New York now. On his way back from the big fight in 'Frisco."

"He was some scrapper," admitted the range-rider. "Almost won the championship once, didn't he?"

"Lost on a foul. He always was a dirty fighter. I saw him the time he knocked out Reddy Moran."

"What do you mean gang leader?"

"He's boss of his district, they say. Runs a gambling-house of his own, I've heard. You can't prove it by me."

When Lindsay returned to his place he settled himself with a magazine in a seat where he could see Kitty and her new friend. The very vitality of the girl's young life was no doubt a temptation to this man. The soft, rounded throat line, the oval cheek's rich coloring so easily moved to ebb and flow, the carmine of the full red lips: every detail helped to confirm the impression of a sensuous young creature, innocent as a wild thing of the forests and as yet almost as unspiritual. She was a child of the senses, and the man sitting beside her was weighing and appraising her with a keen and hungry avidity.

Durand took the girl in to dinner with him and they sat not far from Lindsay. Kitty was lost to any memory of those about her. She was flirting joyously with a sense of newly awakened powers. The man from Graham County, Arizona, felt uneasy in his mind. The girl was flushed with fife. In a way she was celebrating her escape from the narrow horizon in which she had lived. It was in the horoscope of her temperament to run forward gayly to meet adventure, but when the man opposite her ordered wine and she sipped it reluctantly with a little grimace, the cowpuncher was of opinion that she was likely to get more of this adventure than was good for her. In her unsophistication danger lay. For she was plainly easily influenced, and in the beat of her healthy young blood probably there was latent passion.

They left the diner before Clay. He passed them later in the vestibule of the sleeper. They were looking out together on the moonlit plain through which the train was rushing. The arm of the man was stretched behind her to the railing and with the motion of the car the girl swayed back slightly against him.

Again Clay sought the smoking compartment and was led into talk by the officer. It was well past eleven when he rose, yawned, and announced, "I'm goin' to hit the hay."

Most of the berths were made up and it was with a little shock of surprise that his eyes fell on Kitty Mason and her new friend, the sleek black head of the man close to her fair curls, his steady eyes holding her like a charmed bird while his caressing voice wove the fairy tale of New York to which she yielded herself in strange delight.

"Don't you-all want yo' berth made up, lady?"

It was the impatient porter who interrupted them. The girl sprang up tremulously to accept.

"Oh, please. Is it late?" Her glance swept down the car and took in the fact that her section alone was not made up. "I didn't know--why, what time is it?"

"Most twelve, ma'am," replied the aggrieved porter severely.

She flashed a look of reproach at her companion and blushed again as she fled with her bag to the ladies' dressing-room. As for the man, Lindsay presently came on him in the smoking-room where he sat with an unlit cigar between his teeth and his feet on a chair. Behind half-shuttered lids his opaque eyes glittered with excitement. Clearly he was reviewing in his mind the progression of his triumph. Clay restrained a good, healthy impulse to pick a row with him and go to the mat with the ex-prize-fighter. But after all it was none of his business.

The train was rolling through the cornfields of the Middle West when the Arizonan awoke. He was up early, but not long before Kitty Mason, who was joined at once by Durand.

"Shucks! Nothin' to it a-tall," the range-rider assured himself. "That li'l' girl sure must have the number of this guy. She's flirtin' with him to beat three of a kind, but I'll bet a dogie she knows right where she's at."

Clay did not in the least believe his own argument. If he had come from a city he would have dismissed the matter as none of his business. But he came from the clean Southwest where every straight girl is under the protection of every decent man. If she was in danger because of her innocence it was up to him to look after her. There was no more competent man in Graham County than Clay Lindsay, but he recognized that this was a delicate affair in which he must move warily.

On his way to the diner at noon the range-rider passed her again. She was alone for the moment and as she leaned back her soft round throat showed a beating pulse. Her cheeks were burning and her starry eyes were looking into the future with a happy smile.

"You pore little maverick," the man commented silently.

The two had the table opposite him. As the wheels raced over a culvert to the comparative quiet of the ballasted track beyond, the words of the man reached Clay.

". . . and we'll have all day to see the city, kid."

Kitty shook her head. There was hesitation in her manner, and the man was quick to make the most of it. She wanted to stay, wanted to skip a train and let this competent guide show her Chicago. But somewhere, deep in her consciousness, a bell of warning was beginning to ring. Some uneasy prescience of trouble was sifting into her light heart. She was not so sure of her fairy tale, a good deal less sure of her prince.

A second time the song of the rails lifted from a heavy, rumbling bass to a lighter note, and again a snatch of words drifted across the diner.

". . . the time of your young life, honey."

The girl was crumbling a bread ball with her fingers as a vent to her restless excitement. The heavy hand of the man moved across the table and rested on hers. "And it won't cost you a cent, girlie," the New Yorker added.

But the long lashes of the girl lifted and her baby-blue eyes met his with shy reproach. "I don't think I ought," she breathed, color sweeping her face in a vivid flame.

"You should worry," he scoffed.

The chant of the wheels rose again, increased to a dull roar, and deadened the sound of all talk. But Lindsay knew the girl was weakening. She was no match for this big, dominant, two-fisted man.

The jaw of the cowpuncher set. This child was not fair game for a man like Durand. When Clay rose to leave the diner he knew that he meant to sit in and take a hand.

Either the Limited was ahead of its time schedule or the engineer had orders to run into the city very slowly. The train was creeping through the thickly settled quarter where the poorer people are herded when Clay touched Durand on the shoulder.

"Like to see you a moment in the vestibule," he said in his gentle voice.

The eyes of the two men met and the gambler knew at once that this man and he were destined to be enemies. Some sixth sense of safety, cultivated by a lifetime of battle, flashed him sure warning of this. The fellow meant to make trouble of some kind. The former near-champion of the ring had not the least idea what about or in what way. Nor did he greatly care. He had supreme confidence in his ability to look after himself. It was one factor of the stock in trade that had made him a dominant figure in the underworld of New York. He was vain enough to think that if it came to the worst there were few men living who could best him in a rough-and-tumble fight. Certainly no hill-billy from Arizona could do it.

No man had ever said that Jerry Durand was not game. He rose promptly and followed the Westerner from the car, swinging along with the light, catlike tread acquired by many pugilists.

The floor of the vestibule had been raised and the outer door of the car opened. Durand found time to wonder why.

The cowpuncher turned on him with an abrupt question. "Can you swim?"

The eyes of the ward boss narrowed. "What's that to you?" he demanded truculently.

"Nothin' to me, but a good deal to you. I'm aimin' to drop you in the river when we cross."

"Is that so?" snarled Durand. "You're quite a joker, ain't you? Well, you can't start somethin' too soon to suit me. But let's get this clear so we'll know where we're at. What's ailin' you, rube?"

"I don't like the color of yore hair or the cut of yore clothes," drawled Lindsay. "You've got a sure-enough bad eye, and I'm tired of travelin' in yore company. Let's get off, me or you one."

In the slitted eyes of the Bowery graduate there was no heat at all. They were bleak as a heavy winter morn. "Suits me fine. You'll not travel with me much farther. Here's where you beat the place."

The professional lashed out suddenly with his left. But Clay was not at the receiving end of the blow. Always quick as chain lightning, he had ducked and clinched. His steel-muscled arms tightened about the waist of the other. A short-arm jolt to the cheek he disregarded.

Before Durand had set himself to meet the plunge he found himself flying through space. The gambler caught at the rail, missed it, landed on the cinders beside the roadbed, was flung instantly from his feet, and rolled over and over down an incline to a muddy gully.

Clay, hanging to the brass railing, leaned out and looked back. Durand had staggered to his feet, plastered with mud from head to knees, and was shaking furiously a fist at him. The face of the man was venomous with rage.

The cowpuncher waved a debonair hand and mounted the steps again. The porter was standing in the vestibule looking at him with amazement.

"You throwed a man off'n this train, mistah," he charged.

"So I did," admitted Clay, and to save his life he could not keep from smiling.

The porter sputtered. This beat anything in his previous experience. "But--but--it ain't allowed to open up the cah. Was you-all havin' trouble?"

"No trouble a-tall. He bet me a cigar I couldn't put him off."

Clay palmed a dollar and handed it to the porter as he passed into the car. The eyes of that outraged official rolled after him. The book of rules did not say anything about wrestling-matches in the vestibule. Besides, it happened that Durand had called him down sharply not an hour before. He decided to brush off his passengers and forget what he had seen.

Clay stopped in front of Kitty and said he hoped she would have no trouble making her transfer in the city. The girl was no fool. She had sensed the antagonism that had flared up between them in that moment when they had faced each other five minutes before.

"Where's Mr. Durand?" she asked.

"He got off."

"But the train hasn't stopped."

"It's just crawlin' along, and he was in a hurry."

Her gaze rested upon an angry bruise on his cheek. It had not been there when last she saw him. She started to speak, then changed her mind.

Clay seated himself beside her. "Chicago is a right big town, I reckon. If I can help you any, Miss Kitty, I'd be glad to do what I can."

The girl did not answer. She was trying to work out this puzzle of why a man should get off before the train reached the station.

"I'm a stranger myself, but I expect I can worry along somehow," he went on cheerfully.

"Mr. Durand didn't say anything to me about getting off," she persisted.

"He made up his mind in a hurry. Just took a sudden notion to go."

"Without saying anything about his suitcases?"

"Never mentioned 'em."

"You didn't have--any trouble with him?" she faltered.

"Not a bit," he told her genially. "Sorry our tickets take us by different roads to New York. Maybe we'll meet up with each other there, Miss Kitty."

"I don't understand it," she murmured, half to herself. "Why would he get off before we reach the depot?"

She was full of suspicions, and the bruise on the Westerner's cheek did not tend to allay them. They were still unsatisfied when the porter took her to the end of the car to brush her clothes.

The discretion of that young man had its limits. While he brushed the girl he told her rapidly what he had seen in the vestibule.

"Was he hurt?" she asked breathlessly.

"No 'm. I looked out and seen him standin' beside the track j'es' a-cussin' a blue streak. He's a sho-'nough bad actor, that Jerry Durand."

Kitty marched straight to her section. The eyes of the girl flashed anger.

"Please leave my seat, sir," she told Clay.

The Arizonan rose at once. He knew that she knew. "I was intendin' to help you off with yore grips," he said.

She flamed into passionate resentment of his interference. "I'll attend to them. I can look out for myself, sir."

With that she turned her back on him.

CHAPTER III

THE BIG TOWN

When Clay stepped from the express into the Pennsylvania Station he wondered for a moment if there was a circus or a frontier-day show in town. The shouts of the porters, the rush of men and women toward the gates, the whirl and eddy of a vast life all about him, took him back to the few hours he had spent in Chicago.

As he emerged at the Thirty-Fourth Street entrance New York burst upon him with what seemed almost a threat. He could hear the roar of it like a river rushing down a cañon. Clay had faced a cattle stampede. He had ridden out a blizzard hunched up with the drifting herd. He had lived rough all his young and joyous life. But for a moment he felt a chill drench at his heart that was almost dread. He did not know a soul in this vast populace. He was alone among seven or eight million crazy human beings.

He had checked his suitcase to be free to look about. He had no destination and was in no hurry. All the day was before him, all of many days. He drifted down the street and across to Sixth Avenue. He clung to the safety of one of the L posts as the traffic surged past. The clang of surface cars and the throb of motors filled the air constantly. He wondered at the daring of a pink-cheeked slip of a girl driving an automobile with sure touch through all this tangle of traffic. While he waited to plunge across the street there came a roar overhead that reminded him again of a wall of water he had once heard tearing down a cañon in his home land.

Instinctively one arm clutched at the post. A monster went flying through the air with a horrible, grinding menace. It was only the Elevated on its way uptown. Clay looked around in whimsical admiration of the hurrying people about him. None of them seemed aware either of the noise or the crush of vehicles. They went on their preoccupied way swiftly and surely.

"I never did see such a town, and me just hittin' the fringes of it yet," Clay moaned aloud in comic despair, unaware that even New York has no noisier street than Sixth Avenue.

Chance swept him up Sixth to Herald Square. He was caught in the river of humanity that races up Broadway. His high-heeled boots clicked on the pavement of one of the world's great thoroughfares as far as Forty-Second Street. Under the shadow of the Times Building he stopped to look about him. Motor-cars, street-cars, and trucks rolled past in endless confusion. Every instant the panorama shifted, yet it was always the same. He wondered where all this rush of people was going. What crazy impulses sent them surging to and fro? And the girls--Clay surrendered to them at discretion. He had not supposed there were so many pretty, well-dressed girls in the world.

"I reckon money grows on trees in New York," he told himself aloud with a grin.

Broadway fascinated him. He followed it uptown toward Longacre Circle. The street was as usual in a state of chronic excavation. His foot slipped and he fell into a trench while trying to cross. When he emerged it was with a pound or two of Manhattan mud on his corduroy suit. He looked at himself again with a sense that his garb did not quite measure up to New York standards.

"First off I'm goin' to get me a real city suit of clothes," he promised himself. "This here wrinkled outfit is some too woolly for the big town. It's a good suit yet--'most as good as when I bought it at the Boston Store in Tucson three years ago. But I reckon I'll save it to go home in."

To a policeman directing traffic at a crossing he applied for information.

"Can you tell me where there's a dry-goods store in this man's town?" he asked. "I fell into this here Broadway and got kinda messed up."

"Watchawant?"

"Suit o' clothes."

The traffic cop sized him up in one swift glance. "Siventh Avenue," he said, and pointed in that direction.

Clay took his advice. He stopped in front of a store above which was the legend "I. Bernstein, Men's Garments." A small man with sharp little eyes and well-defined nose was standing in the doorway.

"Might you would want a good suit of qvality clothes, my friendt," he suggested.

"You've pegged me right," agreed the Westerner with his ready smile. "Lead me to it."

Mr. Bernstein personally conducted his customer to the suit department. "I wait on you myself on account you was a stranger to the city," he explained.

The little man took a suit from a rack and held it at arm's length to admire it. His fingers caressed the woof of it lovingly. He evidently could bring himself to part with it only after a struggle.

"Worsted. Fine goods." He leaned toward the range-rider and whispered a secret. "Imported."

Clay shook his head. "Not what I want." His eyes ranged the racks. "This is more my notion of the sort of thing I like." He pointed to a blue serge with a little stripe in the pattern.

The eyes of Mr. Bernstein marveled at the discrimination of his customer. "If you had taken an advice from me, it would have been to buy that suit. A man gets a chance at a superior garment like that, understan' me, only once in a while occasionally."

"How much?" asked Lindsay.

The dealer was too busy to hear this crass question. That suit, Clay gathered, had been the pride of his heart ever since he had seen it first. He detached the coat lovingly from the hanger and helped his customer into it. Then he fell back, eyes lit with enthusiastic amazement. Only fate could have brought together this man and this suit, so manifestly destined for each other since the hour when Eve began to patch up fig leaves for Adam.

"Like a coat of paint," he murmured aloud.

The cowpuncher grinned. He understood the business that went with selling a suit in some stores. But it happened that he liked this suit himself. "How much?" he repeated.

The owner of the store dwelt on the merits of the suit, its style, its durability, the perfect fit. He covered his subject with artistic thoroughness. Then, reluctantly, he confided in a whisper the price at which he was going to sacrifice this suit among suits.

"To you, my friendt, I make this garment for only sixty-five dollars." He added another secret detail. "Below wholesale cost."

A little devil of mirth lit in Lindsay's eye. "I'd hate to have you rob yoreself like that. And me a perfect stranger to you too."

"Qvality, y' understan' me. Which a man must got to live garments like I done to appreciate such a suit. All wool. Every thread of it. Unshrinkable. This is a qvality town. If you want the best it costs a little more, but you got anyhow a suit which a man might be married in without shame, understan' me."

The Arizonan backed off in apparent alarm. "Say, is this a weddin' garment you're onload'n' on me? Do I have to sashay down a church aisle and promise I do?"

Mr. Bernstein explained that this was not obligatory. All he meant was that the suit was good enough to be married in, or for that matter to be buried in.

"Or to be born anew in when Billy Sunday comes to town and I hit the sawdust trail," suggested the purchaser.

Mr. Bernstein caressed it again. "One swell piece of goods," he told himself softly, almost with tears in his eyes.

"All wool, you say?" asked Clay, feeling the texture. He had made up his mind to buy it, though he thought the price a bit stiff.

Mr. Bernstein protested on his honor that there was not a thread of cotton in it. "Which you could take it from me that when I sell a suit of clothes it is like I am dealing with my own brother," he added. "Every garment out of this store takes my personal guarantee."

Clay tried on the trousers and looked at himself in the glass. So far as he could tell he looked just like any other New Yorker.

The dealer leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. Apparently he was ashamed of his softness of heart. "Fifty-five dollars--to you."

"I'll take it," the Westerner said.

The clothier called his tailor from the rear of the store to make an adjustment in the trousers. Meanwhile he deftly removed the tags which told him in cipher that the suit had cost him just eleven dollars and seventy-five cents.

Half an hour later Clay sat on top of a Fifth-Avenue bus which was jerking its way uptown. His shoes were shined to mirror brightness. He was garbed in a blue serge suit with a little stripe running through the pattern. That suit just now was the apple of his eye. It proved him a New Yorker and not a wild man from the Arizona desert.

CHAPTER IV

A NEW USE FOR A WATER HOSE

The motor-bus ran up Fifth Avenue, cut across to Broadway, passed Columbus Circle, and swept into the Drive. It was a day divinely young and fair. The fragrance of a lingering spring was wafted to the nostrils. Only the evening before the trees had been given a bath of rain and the refreshment of it showed in every quivering leaf. From its little waves the Hudson reflected a million sparkles of light. Glimpses of the Park tempted Clay. Its winding paths! The children playing on the grass while their maids in neat caps and aprons gossiped together on the benches near! This was the most human spot the man from Arizona had seen in the metropolis.

Somewhere in the early three-figure streets he descended from the top of the bus and let his footsteps follow his inclinations into the Park. A little shaver in a sailor suit ran across the path and fell sprawling at the feet of Clay. He picked up and began to comfort the howling four-year-old.

"That sure was a right hard fall, sonny, but you're not goin' to make any fuss about it. You're Daddy's little man and--"

A sharp, high voice cut into his consolation.

"Cedric, come here!"

The little boy went, bawling lustily to win sympathy. The nursemaid shook him impatiently. "How many times have I told you to look where you're going? Serves you just right. Now be still."

There was a deep instinct in Clay to stand by those in trouble when they were weak. A child or a woman in distress always had a claim on him.

"I reckon the li'l' fellow was in a hurry, Miss," he said, smiling. "I 'most always was at his age. But he ain't hurt much."

The maid looked Clay up and down scornfully before she turned her back on him and began to talk with another nurse.

Beneath the tan of the range-rider's cheeks the color flamed. This young woman had not mistaken the friendliness of the West for the impudence of a street masher. The impulse of snobbery had expressed itself in her action.

The cowpuncher followed a path that took him back to the street. He grinned, but there was no smile in his heart. He was ashamed of this young woman who could meet good-will with scorn, and he wanted to get away from her without any unnecessary delay. What were the folks like in this part of the country that you couldn't speak to them without getting insulted?

He struck across the Drive into a side street. An apartment house occupied the corner, but from the other side a row of handsome private dwellings faced him.

The janitor of the apartment house was watering the parking beyond the sidewalk. The edge of the stream from the nozzle of the hose sprayed the path in front of Clay. He hesitated for a moment to give the man time to turn aside the hose.

But the janitor on this particular morning had been fed up with trouble. One of the tenants had complained of him to the agent of the place. Another had moved away without tipping him for an hour's help in packing he had given her. He was sulkily of the opinion that the whole world was in a conspiracy to annoy him. Just now the approaching rube typified the world.

A little flirt of the hose deluged Clay's newly shined boots and the lower six inches of his trousers.

"Look out what you're doing!" protested the man from Arizona.

"I tank you better look where you're going," retorted the one from Sweden. He was a heavy-set, muscular man with a sullen, obstinate face.

"My shoes and trousers are sopping wet."

"Yust you bate it oop street. I ant look for no trouble with no rubes."

"I believe you did it on purpose."

"Tank so? Val, yust one teng I lak to tell you. I got no time for damn fule talk."

The Westerner started on his way. There was no use having a row with a sulky janitor.

But the Swede misunderstood his purpose. At Clay's first step forward he jerked round the nozzle and let the range-rider have it with full force.

Clay was swept back to the wall by the heavy pressure of water that played over him. The stream moved swiftly up and down him from head to foot till it had drenched every inch of the perfect fifty-five-dollar suit. He drowned fathoms deep in a water spout. He was swept over Niagara Falls. He came to life again to find himself the choking center of a world flood. He sputtered furiously while his arms flailed like windmills to keep back the river of water that engulfed him.

The thought that brought him back to action was one that had to do with the blue serge. The best fifty-five-dollar suit in New York was ruined in this submarine disaster.

He gave a strangled whoop and charged straight at the man behind the hose. The two clinched. While they struggled, the writhing hose slapped back and forth between them like an agitated snake. Clay had one advantage. He was wet through anyhow. It did not matter how much of the deluge struck him. The janitor fought to keep dry and he had not a chance on earth to succeed.

For one hundred and seventy-five pounds of Arizona bone and muscle, toughened by years of hard work in sun and wind, had clamped itself upon him. The nozzle twisted toward the janitor. He ducked, went down, and was instantly submerged. When he tried to rise, the stream beat him back. He struggled halfway up, slipped, got again to his feet, and came down sitting with a hard bump when his legs skated from under him.

A smothered "Vat t'ell!" rose out of the waters. It was both a yelp of rage and a wail of puzzled chagrin. The janitor could not understand what was happening to him. He did not know that he was being treated to a new form of the water cure.

Before his dull brain had functioned to action an iron grip had him by the back of the neck. He was jerked to his feet and propelled forward to the curb. Every inch of the way the heavy stream from the nozzle broke on his face and neck. It paralyzed his resistance, jarred him so that he could not gather himself to fight. He was still sputtering "By damn," when Clay bumped him up against a hitching-post, garroted him, and swung the hose around the post in such a way as to encircle the feet of the man.

The cowpuncher drew the hose tight, slipped the nozzle through the iron ring, and caught the flapping arms of the man to his body. With the deft skill of a trained roper Clay swung the rubber pipe round the body of the man again and again, drawing it close to the post and knotting it securely behind. The Swede struggled, but his furious rage availed him nothing. He was in the hands of the champion roper of Graham County, a man who had hogtied a wild hill steer in thirty-three seconds by the watch.

It took longer than this to rope up the husky janitor with a squirming hose, but when Clay stepped back to inspect his job he knew he was looking at one that had been done thoroughly.

"I keel you, by damn, ef you don't turn me loose!" roared the big man in a rage.

The range-rider grinned gayly at him. He was having the time of his young life. He did not even regret his fifty-five-dollar suit. Already he could see that Arizona had nothing on New York when it came to getting action for your money.

"Life's just loaded to the hocks with disappointment, Olie," he explained, and his voice was full of genial sympathy. "I'll bet a dollar Mex you'd sure like to beat me on the haid with a two by four. But I don't reckon you'll ever get that fond wish gratified. We're not liable to meet up with each other again pronto. To-day we're here and to-morrow we're at Yuma, Arizona, say, for life is short and darned fleeting as the poet fellow says."

He waved a hand jauntily and turned to go. But he changed his mind. His eye had fallen on a young woman standing at a French window of the house opposite. She was beckoning to him imperiously.

The young woman disappeared as he crossed the street, but in a few moments the door opened and she stood there waiting for him. Clay stared. He had never before seen a girl dressed like this. She was in riding-boots, breeches, and coat. Her eyes dilated while she looked at him.

"Wyoming?" she asked at last in a low voice.

"Arizona," he answered.

"All one. Knew it the moment I saw you tie him. Come in." She stood aside to let him pass.

That hall, with its tapestried walls, its polished floors, and Oriental rugs, was reminiscent of "the movies" to Clay. Nowhere else had he seen a home so stamped with the mark of ample means.

"Come in," she ordered again, a little sharply.

He came in and she closed the door.

"I'm sopping wet. I'll drip all over the floor."

"What are you going to do? You'll be arrested, you know." She stood straight and slim as a boy, and the frank directness of her gaze had a boy's sexless unconsciousness.

"Thought I'd give myself up to the marshal."

She laughed outright at this. "Not in this town. A stranger like you would have no chance. Listen." There came to them from outside the tap-tap-tap-tap of a policeman's night stick rattling on the curbstone. "He's calling help."

"I can explain how it happened."

"No. He wouldn't understand. They'd find you guilty."

He moved from the rug where he was standing to let the water drip on the hardwood floor.

"Sho! Folks are mostly reasonable. I'd tell the judge how it come about."

"No."

"Well, I can't stay here."

"Yes--till they've gone."

Her imperative warmed his heart, but he tried to explain gently why he could not. "I can't drag you into this. Like as not the Swede saw me come in."

To a manservant standing in the background the young woman spoke. "Jenkins, have Nora clean up the floor and the steps outside. And remember--I don't want the police to know this gentleman is here."

"Yes, Miss."

"Come!" said the girl to her guest. She led Clay to the massive stairway, but stopped at the first tread to call back an order over her shoulder. "Refer the officers to me if they insist on coming into the house."

"I'll see to it, Miss."

Clay followed his hostess to the stairs and went up them with her, but he went protesting, though with a chuckle of mirth. "He sure ruined my clothes a heap. I ain't fit to be seen."

The suit he had been so proud of was shrinking so that his arms and legs stuck out like signposts. The color had run and left the goods a peculiar bilious-looking overall blue.

She lit a gas-log in a small library den.

"Just a minute, please."

She stepped briskly from the room. In her manner was a crisp decision, in her poise a trim gallantry that won him instantly.

"I'll bet she'd do to ride with," he told himself in a current Western idiom.

When she came back it was to take him to a dressing-room. A complete change of clothing was laid out for him on a couch. A man whom Clay recognized as a valet--he had seen his duplicate in the moving-picture theaters at Tucson--was there to supply his needs and attend to the temperature of his bath.

"Stevens will look after you," she said; "when you are ready come back to Dad's den."

His eyes followed to the door her resilient step. Once, when he was a boy, he had seen Ada Rehan play in "As You Like It." Her acting had entranced him. This girl carried him back to that hour. She was boyish as Rosalind, woman in every motion of her slim and lissom body.

At the head of the stairway she paused. Jenkins was moving hurriedly up to meet her.

"It's a policeman, Miss. 'E's come about the--the person that came in, and 'e's talkin' to Nora on the steps. She's a-jollyin' 'im, as you might say, Miss."

His young mistress nodded. She swept the hall with the eye of a general. Swiftly she changed the position of a Turkish rug so as to hide a spot on the polished floor that had been recently scrubbed and was still moist. It seemed best to discover Nora's plan of campaign before taking over the charge of affairs.

"Many's the time I've met yuh goin' down the Avenoo with your heels clickin' an' your head high," came the rich brogue of Nora O'Flannigan. "An' I've said to myself, sez I, who's the handsome officer that sets off his uniform so gr-rand?"

The girl leaned on her mop and gave the policeman a slant glance out of eyes of Irish brown. It was not Nora's fault that she was as pretty a colleen as ever came out of Limerick, but there was no law that made her send such a roguish come-hither look at the man in blue.

He beamed. He was as pleased as a cat that has been stroked and fed cream.

"Well, an' yuh 're not the only wan that notices, Miss Nora. I'm a noticin' lad mesilf. An' it's the truth that I'd be glad enough to meet yuh some fine evenin' when I'm off duty. But about this strong-arm guy that tied up the janitor. The Swede says he went into wan av these houses. Now here's the wet color from his suit that ran over the steps. He musta come up here."

"Before he ran down the street. Sure, an' that's just what he done. Yuh're a janious, officer."

"Maybe he got into the house somehow."

"Now, how could he do that? With all av us upstairs and down."

"I don't say he did. But if I was to just take a look inside so as to report that I'd searched--"

"Och! Yuh 'd be wastin' your time, officer."

"Sure, I know that. But for the report--"

The young woman in the riding costume chose this moment to open the door and saunter out.

"Does the officer want something, Nora?" she asked innocently, switching the end of a crop against her riding-boots.

"Yes, Miss. There's been a ruffian batin' up Swedes an' tyin' 'em to posts. This officer thinks he came here," explained Nora.

"Does he want to look in the house?"

"Yes, Miss."

"Then let him come in." The young mistress took the responsibility on her own shoulders. She led the policeman into the hall. "I don't really see how he could have got in here without some of us seeing him, officer."

"No, ma'am. I don't see how he could." The patrolman scratched his red head. "The janitor's a Swede, anyhow. He jist guessed it. I came to make sure av it. I'll be sorry for troubling yuh, Miss."

The smile she gave him was warm and friendly. "Oh, that's all right. If you'd care to look around. . . . But there really is no use."

"No." The forehead under the red thatch wrinkled in thought. "He said he seen him come in here or next door, an' he came up the steps. But nobody could have got in without some of youse seein' him. That's a lead pipe." The officer pushed any doubt that remained from his mind. "Only a muddle-headed Swede."

"It was good of you to come. It makes us feel safer to have officers like you. If you'll give me your name I'll call up the precinct captain and tell him so."

The man in uniform turned beet red. "McGuffey, Miss, and it's a pleasure to serve the likes of yuh," he said, pleased and embarrassed.

He bowed himself out backward, skidded on the polished floor, and saved himself from going down by a frantic fling of arms and some fancy skating. When he recovered, his foot caught in a rug and wadded it to a knot.

Nora giggled behind her fingers, but her mistress did not even smile at the awkwardness of Patrolman McGuffey.

"Thank you so much," she said sweetly.

CHAPTER V

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE SALVATION ARMY

While Beatrice Whitford waited in the little library for the Arizonan to join her, she sat in a deep chair, chin in hand, eyes fixed on the jetting flames of the gas-log. A little flush had crept into the oval face. In her blood there tingled the stimulus of excitement. For into her life an adventure had come from faraway Cattleland.

A crisp, strong footstep sounded in the hall. Her fingers flew to pat into place the soft golden hair coiled low at the nape of the neck. At times she had a boylike unconcern of sex; again, a spirit wholly feminine.

The clothes of her father fitted Lindsay loosely, for Colin Whitford had begun to take on the flesh of middle age and Clay was lean and clean of build as an elk. But the Westerner was one of those to whom clothes are unimportant. The splendid youth of him would have shone through the rags of a beggar.

"My name is Clay Lindsay," he told her by way of introduction.

"Mine is Beatrice Whitford," she answered.

They shook hands.

"I'm to wait here till my clothes dry, yore man says."

"Then you'd better sit down," she suggested.

Within five minutes she knew that he had been in New York less than three hours. His impressions of the city amused and entertained her. He was quite simple. She could look into his mind as though it were a deep, clear well. There was something inextinguishably boyish and buoyant about him. But in his bronzed face and steady, humorous eyes were strength and shrewdness. He was the last man in the world a bunco-steerer could play for a sucker. She felt that. Yet he made no pretenses of a worldly wisdom he did not have.

A voice reached them from the top of the stairs.

"Do you know where Miss Whitford is, Jenkins?"

"Hin the Red Room, sir." The answer was in the even, colorless voice of a servant.

The girl rose at once. "If you'll excuse me," she said, and stepped out of the room.

"Hello, Bee. What do you think? I never saw such idiots as the police of this town are. They're watching this house for a desperado who assaulted some one outside. I met a sergeant on our steps. Says he doesn't think the man's here, but there's just a chance he slipped into the basement. It's absurd."

"Of course it is." There was a ripple of mirth in the girl's voice. "He didn't come in by the basement at all, but walked in at the front door."

"Who are you talking about?"

"The desperado, Dad."

"The front door!" exploded her father. "What do you mean? Who let him in?"

"I did. He came as my guest, at my invitation."

"What?"

"Don't shout, Dad," she advised. "I thought I had brought you up better."

"But--but--but--what do you mean?" he sputtered. "Is this ruffian in the house now?"

"Oh, yes. He's in the Red Room here--and unless he's very deaf he hears everything we are saying," the girl answered calmly, much amused at the amazement of her father. "Won't you come in and see him? He doesn't seem very desperate."

Clay rose, pinpoints of laughter dancing in his eyes. He liked the gay audacity of this young woman, just as he liked the unconventional pluck with which she had intruded herself into his affairs as a rescuer and the businesslike efficiency that had got him out of his wet rags into comfortable clothes.

A moment later he was offering a brown hand to Colin Whitford, who took it reluctantly, with the same wariness a boxer does that of his opponent in the ring. His eyes said plainly, "What the deuce are you doing here, sitting in my favorite chair, smoking one of my imported cigars, wearing my clothes, and talking to my daughter?"

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Whitford. Yore daughter has just saved my life from the police," the Westerner said, and his friendly smile was very much in evidence.

"You make yourself at home," answered the owner of a large per cent of the stock of the famous Bird Cage mine.

"My guests do, Dad. It's the proof that I'm a perfect hostess," retorted Beatrice, her dainty, provocative face flashing to mirth.

"Hmp!" grunted her father dryly. "I'd like to know, young man, why the police are shadowing this house?"

"I expect they're lookin' for me."

"I expect they are, and I'm not sure I won't help them find you. You'll have to show cause if I don't."

"His bark is much worse than his bite," the girl explained to Clay, just as though her father were not present.

"Hmp!" exploded the mining magnate a second time. "Get busy, young fellow."

Clay told the story of the fifty-five-dollar suit that I. Bernstein had wished on him with near-tears of regret at parting from it. The cowpuncher dramatized the situation with some native talent for mimicry. His arms gestured like the lifted wings of a startled cockerel. "A man gets a chance at a garment like that only once in a while occasionally. Which you can take it from me that when I. Bernstein sells a suit of clothes it is shust like he is dealing with his own brother. Qvality, my friendts, qvality! Why, I got anyhow a suit which I might be married in without shame, un'erstan' me."

Colin Whitford was of the West himself. He had lived its rough-and-tumble life for years before he made his lucky strike in the Bird Cage. He had moved from Colorado to New York only ten years before. The sound of Clay's drawling voice was like a message from home. He began to grin in spite of himself. This man was too good to be true. It wasn't possible that anybody could come to the big town and import into it so naïvely such a genuine touch of the outdoor West. It was not possible, but it had happened just the same. Of course Manhattan would soon take the color out of him. It always did out of everybody. The city was so big, so overpowering, so individual itself, that it tolerated no individuality in its citizens. Whitford had long since become a conformist. He was willing to bet a hat that this big brown Arizonan would eat out of the city's hand within a week. In the meantime he wanted to be among those present while the process of taming the wild man took place. Long before the cowpuncher had finished his story of hog-tying the Swede to a hitching-post with his own hose, the mining man was sealed of the large tribe of Clay Lindsay's admirers. He was ready to hide him from all the police in New York.

Whitford told Stevens to bring in the fifty-five-dollar suit so that he could gloat over it. He let out a whoop of delight at sight of its still sodden appearance. He examined its sickly hue with chuckles of mirth.

"Guaranteed not to fade or shrink," murmured Clay sadly.

He managed to get the coat on with difficulty. The sleeves reached just below his elbows.

"You look like a lifer from Sing Sing," pronounced Whitford joyously. "Get a hair-cut, and you won't have a chance on earth to fool the police."

"The color did run and fade some," admitted Clay.

"Worth every cent of nine ninety-eight at a bargain sale before the Swede got busy with it--and he let you have it at a sacrifice for fifty-five dollars!" The millionaire wept happy tears as a climax of his rapture. He swallowed his cigar smoke and had to be pounded on the back by his daughter.

"Would you mind getting yore man to wrop it up for me? I'm goin' to have a few pleasant words with I. Bernstein," said Clay with mock mournfulness.

"When?" asked Whitford promptly.

"Never you mind when, sah. I'm not issuin' any tickets of admission. It's goin' to be a strictly private entertainment."

"Are you going to take a water hose along?"

"That's right," reproached Clay. "Make fun of me because I'm a stranger and come right from the alfalfa country." He turned to Beatrice cheerfully. "O' course he bit me good and proper. I'm green. But I'll bet he loses that smile awful quick when he sees me again."

"You're not going to--"

"Me, I'm the gentlest citizen in Arizona. Never in trouble. Always peaceable and quiet. Don't you get to thinkin' me a bad-man, for I ain't."

Jenkins came to the door and announced "Mr. Bromfield."

Almost on his heels a young man in immaculate riding-clothes sauntered into the room. He had the assured ease of one who has the run of the house. Miss Whitford introduced the two young men and Bromfield looked the Westerner over with a suave insolence in his dark, handsome eyes.

Clay recognized him immediately. He had shaken hands once before with this well-satisfied young man, and on that occasion a fifty-dollar bill had passed from one to the other. The New Yorker evidently did not know him.

It became apparent at once that Bromfield had called to go riding in the Park with Miss Whitford. That young woman came up to say good-bye to her new acquaintance.

"Will you be here when I get back?"

"Not if our friends outside give me a chance for a getaway," he told her.

Her bright, unflinching eyes looked into his. "You'll come again and let us know how you escaped," she invited.

"I'll ce'tainly do that, Miss Whitford."

"Then we'll look for you Thursday afternoon, say."

"I'll be here."

"If the police don't get you."

"They won't," he promised serenely.

"When you're quite ready, Bee," suggested Bromfield in a bored voice.

She nodded casually and walked out of the room like a young Diana, straight as a dart in her trim slenderness.

Clay slipped out of the house by the back way, cut across to the subway, and took a downtown train. He got out at Forty-Second Street and made his way back to the clothing establishment of I. Bernstein.

That gentleman was in his office in the rear of the store. Lindsay walked back to it, opened and closed the door, locked it, and put the key in his pocket.

The owner of the place rose in alarm from the stool where he was sitting. "What right do you got to lock that door?" he demanded.

"I don't want to be interrupted while I'm sellin' you this suit, Mr. Bernstein," the cowpuncher told him easily, and he proceeded to unwrap the damp package under his arm. "It's a pippin of a suit. The color won't run or fade, and it's absolutely unshrinkable. You won't often get a chance at a suit like this. Notice the style, the cut, the quality of the goods. And it's only goin' to cost you fifty-five dollars."

The clothing man looked at the misshapen thing with eyes that bulged. "Where is it you been with this suit--in the East River, my friendt?" he wanted to know.

"I took a walk along Riverside Drive. That's all. I got a strong guarantee with this suit when I bought it. I'm goin' to give you the same one I got. It won't shrink or fade and it will wear to beat a 'Pache pup. Oh, you won't make any mistake buyin' this suit."

"You take from me an advice. Unlock that door and get out."

"I can give you better advice than that. Buy this suit right away. You'll find it's a bargain."

The steady eyes of the Westerner daunted the merchant, but he did not intend to give up fifty-five dollars without a murmur.

"If you don't right avay soon open that door I call the police. Then you go to jail, ain't it?"

"How's yore heart, Mr. Bernstein?" asked Clay tenderly.

"What?"

"I'm askin' about yore heart. I don't know as you're hardly strong enough to stand what I'll do to you if you let a single yelp out of you. I kinda hate to hurry yore funeral," he added regretfully, still in his accustomed soft drawl.

The man beside the stool attempted one shout. Instantly Clay filled his mouth with a bunch of suit samples that had been lying on the desk. With one arm he held the struggling little man close to his body. With his foot and the other hand he broke in two a yardstick and fitted the two parts together.

"Here's the programme," he said by way of explanation. "I'm goin' to put you over my knee and paddle you real thorough. When you make up yore mind that you want to buy that suit for fifty-five dollars, it will be up to you to let me know. Take yore own time about it. Don't let me hurry you."

Before the programme had more than well started, the victim of it signified his willingness to treat with the foe. To part with fifty-five dollars was a painful business, but not to part with it was going to hurt a good deal more. He chose the lesser of two evils.

While he was counting out the bills Clay bragged up the suit. He praised its merits fluently and cheerfully. When he left he locked the door of the office behind him and handed the key to one of the clerks.

"I've got a kinda notion Mr. Bernstein wants to get out of his office. He's actin' sort o' restless, seems like."

Restless was hardly the word. He was banging on the door like a wild man. "Police! Murder! Help!" he shouted in a high falsetto.

Clay wasted no time. He and the fifty-five dollars vanished into the street. In his haste he bumped into a Salvation Army lassie with a tambourine.

She held it out to him for a donation, and was given the shock of her life. For into that tambourine the big brown man crammed a fistful of bills. He waited for no thanks, but cut round the corner toward Broadway in a hurry.

When the girl reached headquarters and counted the contribution she found it amounted to just fifty-five dollars.

CHAPTER VI

CLAY TAKES A TRANSFER

From the top of a bus Clay Lindsay looked down a cañon which angled across the great city like a river of light.

He had come from one land of gorges to another. In the walls of this one, thousands and tens of thousands of cliff-dwellers hid themselves during the day like animals of some queer breed and poured out into the cañon at sunset.

Now the river in its bed was alive with a throbbing tide. Cross-currents of humanity flowed into it from side streets and ebbed out of it into others. Streams of people were swept down, caught here and there in swirling eddies. Taxis, private motors, and trolley-cars struggled in the raceway.

Electric sky-signs flashed and changed. From the foyer of theaters and moving-picture palaces thousands of bulbs flung their glow to the gorge. A mist of light hung like an atmosphere above the Great White Way.

All this Clay saw in a flash while his bus crossed Broadway on its way to the Avenue. His eyes had become accustomed to this brilliance in the weeks that had passed since his descent upon New York, but familiarity had not yet dulled the wonder of it.

The Avenue offered a more subdued picture. This facet showed a glimpse of the city lovelier and more leisurely, though not one so feverishly gay. It carried his mind to Beatrice Whitford. Some touch of the quality of Fifth Avenue was in her soul. It expressed itself in the simple elegance of her dress and in the fineness of the graceful, vital body. Her gayety was not at all the high spirits of Broadway, but there were times when her kinship to Fifth Avenue knifed the foolish hopes in his heart.

He had become a fast friend of Miss Whitford. Together they had tramped through Central Park and motored up the Hudson in one of her father's cars. They had explored each other's minds along with the country and each had known the surprise and delight of discoveries, of finding in the other a quality of freshness and candor.

Clay sensed in this young woman a spirit that had a way of sweeping up on gay young wings to sudden joys stirred by the simplest causes. Her outlook on life was as gallant as that of a fine-tempered schoolboy. A gallop in the Park could whip the flag of happiness into her cheeks. A wild flower nestling in a bed of moss could bring the quick light to her eyes. Her responsiveness was a continual delight to him just as her culture was his despair. Of books, pictures, and music she knew much more than he.

The bus jerked down Fifth Avenue like a boat in heavy seas, pausing here and there at the curb to take on a passenger. While it was getting under way after one such stop, another downtown bus rolled past.

Clay came to a sudden alert attention. His eyes focused on a girl sitting on a back seat. In the pretty, childish face he read a wistful helplessness, a pathetic hint of misery that called for sympathy.

Arizona takes short cuts to its ends. Clay rose instantly, put his foot on the railing, and leaped across to the top of the bus rolling parallel with the one he was on. In another second he had dropped into the seat beside the girl.

"Glad to meet you again, Miss Kitty," he said cheerfully. "How's the big town been using you?"

The girl looked at him with a little gasp of surprise. "Mr. Lindsay!" Sudden tears filmed her eyes. She forgot that she had left him with the promise never again to speak to him. She was in a far country, and he was a friend from home.

The conductor bustled down the aisle. "Say, where do you get this movie-stunt stuff? You can't jump from the top of one bus to another."

Clay smiled genially. "I can't, but I did."

"That ain't the system of transfers we use in this town. You might 'a' got killed."

"Oh, well, let's not worry about that now."

"I'd ought to have you pulled. Three years I've been on this run and--"

"Nice run. Wages good?"

"Don't get gay, young fellow. I can tell you one thing. You've got to pay another fare."

Clay paid it.

The conductor retired to his post. He grinned in spite of his official dignity. There was something about this young fellow he liked. After he had been in New York awhile he would be properly tamed.

"What about that movie job? Is it pannin' out pay gold?" Lindsay asked Kitty.

Bit by bit her story came out. It was a common enough one. She had been flim-flammed out of her money by the alleged school of moving-picture actors, and the sharpers had decamped with it.

As she looked at her recovered friend, Kitty gradually realized an outward transformation in his appearance. He was dressed quietly in clothes of perfect fit made for him by Colin Whitford's tailor. From shoes to hat he was a New Yorker got up regardless of expense. But the warm smile, the strong, tanned face, the grip of the big brown hand that buried her small one--all these were from her own West. So too had been the nonchalance with which he had stepped from the rail of one moving bus to that of the other, just as though this were his usual method of transfer.

"I've got a job at last," she explained to him. "I couldn't hardly find one. They say I'm not trained to do anything."

"What sort of a job have you?"

"I'm working downtown in Greenwich Village, selling cigarettes. I'm Sylvia the Cigarette Girl. At least that's what they call me. I carry a tray of them evenings into the cafés."

"Greenwich Village?" asked Clay.

Kitty was not able to explain that the Village is a state of mind which is the habitat of long-haired men and short-haired women, the brains of whom functioned in a way totally alien to all her methods of thought. The meaning of Bohemianism was quite lost on her simple soul.

"They're jist queer," she told him. "The women bob their hair and wear smocks and sandals. The men are long-haired softies. They all talk kinda foolish." Kitty despaired of making the situation clear to him and resorted to the personal. "Can't you come down to-night to The Purple Pup or The Sea Siren and see for yourself?" she proposed, and gave him directions for finding the classic resorts.

"I reckon they must be medicine fakirs," decided Clay. "I've met up with these long-haired guys before. Sure I'll come."

"To-night?"

"You betcha, little pardner, I'll be there."

"I'm dressed silly--in bare feet and sandals and what they call a smock. You won't mind that, will you?"

"You'll look good to me, no matter what you wear, little Miss Colorado," he told her with his warm, big brother's smile.

"You're good," the girl said simply. "I knew that on the train even when I--when I was mean to you." There came into her voice a small tremor of apprehension. "I'm afraid of this town. It's so--so kinda cruel. I've got no friends here."

He offered instant reassurance with a strong grip of his brown hand. "You've got one, little pardner. I'll promise that one big husky will be on the job when you need him. Don't you worry."

She gave him her shy eyes gratefully. There was a mist of tears in them.

"You're good," she said again naïvely.

CHAPTER VII

ARIZONA FOLLOWS ITS LAWLESS IMPULSE

When Clay two hours later took the Sixth Avenue L for a plunge into Bohemianism he knew no more about Greenwich Village than a six-months-old pup does about Virgil. But it was characteristic of him that on his way downtown he proceeded to find out from his chance seat-mate something about this unknown terrain he was about to visit.

The man he sat beside was a patrolman off duty, and to this engaging Westerner he was quite ready to impart any information he might have.

"Fakirs," he pronounced promptly. "They're a bunch of long-haired nuts, most of 'em--queer guys who can't sell their junk and kid themselves into thinking they're artists and writers. They pull a lot of stuff about socialism and anarchy and high art."

"Just harmless cranks--gone loco, mebbe?"

"Some of 'em. Others are there for the mazuma. Uptown the Village is supposed to be one hell of a place. The people who own the dumps down there have worked up that rep to draw the night trade. They make a living outa the wickedness of Greenwich. Nothin' to it--all fake stuff. They advertise September Morn balls with posters something fierce, and when you go they are just like any other dances. Bum drawings of naked women on the walls done by artist yaps, decorations of purple cows, pirates' dens--that's the kind of dope they have."

The Sea Siren was already beginning to fill up when Clay descended three steps to a cellar and was warily admitted. A near-Hawaiian orchestra was strumming out a dance tune and a few couples were on the floor. Waitresses, got up as Loreleis, were moving about among the guests delivering orders for refreshments.

The Westerner sat down in a corner and looked about him. The walls were decorated with crude purple crayons of underfed sirens. A statue of a nude woman distressed Clay. He did not mind the missing clothes, but she was so dreadfully emaciated that he thought it wise for her to cling to the yellow-and-red draped barber pole that rose from the pedestal. On the base was the legend, "The Weeping Lady." After he had tasted the Sea Siren fare the man from Arizona suspected that both her grief and her anaemia arose from the fact that she had been fed on it.

A man in artist's velveteens, minus a haircut, with a large, fat, pasty face, sat at an adjoining table and discoursed to his friends. Presently, during an intermission of the music, he rose and took the rest of those present into his confidence. With rapt eyes on the faraway space of distant planets he chanted his apologia.

"I believe in the Cosmic Urge, in the Sublimity of my Ego. I follow my Lawless Impulse where the Gods of Desire shall drive. I am what I Am, Son of the Stars, Lord of my Life. With Unleashed Love I answer the psychic beat of Pulse to Pulse, Laughter, Tears and Woe, the keen edge of Passion, the Languor of Satiety: all these are life. Open-armed, I embrace them. I drink and assuage my thirst. For Youth is here to-day. To-morrow, alas, it has gone. Now I am. In the Then I shall not be. Kismet!"

The poet's fine frenzy faded. He sank back into his chair, apparently worn out by his vast mental effort.

Clay gave a deep chuckle of delight. This was good.

"Heap much oration," he murmured. "Go to it, old-timer. Steam off again. Git down in yore collar to it."

To miss none of the fun he hitched a little closer on the bench. But the man without the haircut was through effervescing. He began to talk in a lower voice on world politics to admiring friends who were basking in his reflected glory.

"Bourgeois to the core," he announced with finality, speaking of the United States, in answer to a question. "What are the idols we worship? Law, the chain which binds an enslaved people; thrift, born of childish fear; love of country, which is another name for crass provincialism. I--I am a Cosmopolite, not an American. Bohemia is my land, and all free souls are my brothers. Why should I get wrinkles because Germany sunk the Lusitania a month or two ago? That's her business, not mine."

Clay leaned forward on a search for information. "Excuse me for buttin' in, and me a stranger. But isn't it yore business when she murders American women and children?"

The pasty-faced man looked at him with thinly disguised contempt. "You wouldn't understand if I explained."

"Mebbeso I wouldn't, but you take a whirl at it and I'll listen high, wide, and handsome."

The man in velveteens unexpectedly found himself doing as he was told. There was a suggestion of compulsion about the gray-blue eyes fastened on his, something in the clamp of the strong jaw that brought him up for a moment against stark reality.

"The intelligentsia of a country knows that there can be no freedom until there is no law. Every man's duty is to disregard duty. So, by faring far on the wings of desire, he helps break down the slavery that binds us. Obey the Cosmic Urge of your soul regardless of where it leads you, young man."

It was unfortunate for the poet of Bohemia that at this precise moment Kitty Mason, dressed in sandals and a lilac-patterned smock, stood before him with a tray of cigarettes asking for his trade. The naïve appeal in her soft eyes had its weight with the poet. What is the use of living in Bohemia if one cannot be free to follow impulse? He slipped an arm about the girl and kissed the crimson lips upturned to him.

Kitty started back with a little cry of distress.

The freedom taken by the near-poet was instantly avenged.

A Cosmic Urge beat in the veins of the savage from Arizona. He took the poet's advice and followed his Lawless Impulse where it led. Across the table a long arm reached. Sinewy fingers closed upon the flowing neckwear of the fat-faced orator and dragged him forward, leaving overturned glasses in the wake of his course.

The man in velveteens met the eyes of the energetic manhandler and quailed. This brown-faced barbarian looked very much like business.

"Don't you touch me! Don't you dare touch me!" the apostle of anarchy shrilled as the table crashed down. "I'll turn you over to the police!"

Clay jerked him to his feet. Hard knuckles pressed cruelly into the soft throat of the Villager. "Git down on yore ham bones and beg the lady's pardon, Son of the Stars, or I'll sure make you see a whole colony of yore ancestors. Tell her you're a yellow pup, but you don't reckon you'll ever pull a bone like that again. Speak right out in meetin' pronto before you bump into the tears and woe you was makin' heap much oration about."

The proprietor of the café seized the cowpuncher by the arm hurriedly. "Here, stop that! You get out of the place! I'll not stand for any rough-house." And he murmured something about getting in bad with the police. Clay tried to explain. "Me, I'm not rough-housing. I'm tellin' this here Lord of Life to apologize to the little lady and let her know that he's sorry he was fresh. If he don't I'll most ce'tainly muss up the Sublimity of his Ego."

The companions of the poet rushed forward to protest at the manhandling of their leader. Those in the rear jammed the front ones close to Clay and his captive. The cowpuncher gently but strongly pushed them back.

"Don't get on the prod," he advised in his genial drawl. "The poet he's got an important engagement right now."

A kind of scuffle developed. The proprietor increased it by his hysterical efforts to prevent any trouble. Men joined themselves to the noisy group of which Clay was the smiling center. The excitement increased. Distant corners of the room became the refuge of the women. Some one struck at the cowpuncher over the heads of those about him. The mass of closely packed human beings showed a convulsive activity. It became suddenly the most popular indoor sport at the Sea Siren to slay this barbarian from the desert who had interfered with the amusements of Bohemia.

But Clay took a lot of slaying. In the rough-and-tumble life of the outdoor West he had learned how to look out for his own hand. The copper hair of his strong lean head rose above the tangle of the mêlée like the bromidic Helmet of Navarre. A reckless light of mirth bubbled in his dare-devil eyes. The very number of the opponents who interfered with each other trying to get at him was a guarantee of safety. The blows showered at him lacked steam and were badly timed as to distance.

The pack rolled across the room, tipped over a table, and deluged an artist and his affinity with hot chocolate before they could escape from the avalanche. Chairs went over like ninepins. Stands collapsed. Men grunted and shouted advice. Girls screamed. The Sea Siren was being wrecked by a cyclone from the bad lands.

Against the wall the struggling mob brought up with a crash. The velveteen poet caught at "The Weeping Lady" to save himself from going down. She descended from her pedestal into his arms and henceforth waltzed with him as a part of the subsequent proceedings.

The writhing mass caromed from the wall and revolved toward the musicians. A colored gentleman jumped up in alarm and brandished his instrument as a weapon.

"Keep away from this heah niggah!" he warned, and simultaneously he aimed the drum of the mandolin at the red head which was the core of the tangle. His aim was deflected and the wood crashed down upon the crown of "The Weeping Lady." For the rest of the two-step it hung like a large ruff around her neck.

Arms threshed wildly to and fro. The focal point of their destination was the figure at the center of the disturbance. Most of the blows found other marks. Four or five men could have demolished Clay. Fifteen or twenty found it a tough job because they interfered with each other at every turn. They were packed too close for hard hitting. Clay was not fighting but wrestling. He used his arms to push with rather than to strike blows that counted.

The Arizonan could not afterward remember at exactly what stage of the proceedings the face of Jerry Durand impinged itself on his consciousness. Once, when the swirl of the crowd flung him close to the door, he caught a glimpse of it, tight-lipped and wolf-eyed, turned to him with relentless malice. The gang leader was taking no part in the fight.

The crowd parted. Out of the pack a pair of strong arms and lean broad shoulders ploughed a way for a somewhat damaged face that still carried a debonair smile. With pantherish litheness the Arizonan ducked a swinging blow. The rippling muscles of the plunging shoulders tossed aside a little man in evening dress clawing at him. Yet a moment, and he was outside taking the three steps that led to the street.

Into his laboring lungs he drew deliciously the soft breath of the night. It cooled the fever of his hammered face, was like an icy bath to his hot body. A little dizzy from the blows that had been rained on him, he stood for a moment uncertain which way to go. From his throat there rippled a low peal of joyous mirth. The youth in him delighted in the free-for-all from which he had just emerged.

Then again he became aware of Durand. The man was not alone. He had with him a hulking ruffian whose heavy, hunched shoulders told of strength. There was a hint of the gorilla in the way the long arms hung straight from the shoulders as he leaned forward. Both of the men were watching the cowpuncher as steadily as alley cats do a housefinch.

"Hell's going to pop in about three seconds," announced Clay to himself.

Silently, without lifting their eyes from their victim for an instant, the two men moved apart to take him on both sides. He clung to the wall, forcing a frontal attack. The laughter had gone out of his eyes now. They had hardened to pinpoints. This time it was no amateur horseplay. He was fighting for his life. No need to tell Clay Lindsay that the New York gangster meant to leave him as good as dead.

The men rushed him. He fought them back with clean hard blows. Jerry bored in like a wild bull. Clay caught him off his balance, using a short arm jolt which had back of it all that twenty-three years of clean outdoors Arizona could give. The gangster hit the pavement hard.

He got up furious and charged again. The Arizonan, busy with the other man, tried to sidestep. An uppercut jarred him to the heel. In that instant of time before his knees began to sag beneath him his brain flashed the news that Durand had struck him on the chin with brass knucks. He crumpled up and went down, still alive to what was going on, but unable to move in his own defense. Weakly he tried to protect his face and sides from the kicks of a heavy boot. Then he floated balloon-like in space and vanished into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER VIII

"THE BEST SINGLE-BARRELED SPORT IVER I MET"

Clay drifted back to a world in which the machinery of his body creaked. He turned his head, and a racking pain shot down his neck. He moved a leg, and every muscle in it ached. From head to foot he was sore.

Voices somewhere in space, detached from any personal ownership, floated vaguely to him. Presently these resolved themselves into words and sentences.

"We're not to make a pinch, Tim. That's the word he gave me before he left. This is wan av Jerry's private little wars and he don't want a judge askin' a lot of unnicessary questions, y' understand."

"Mother av Moses, if this he-man from Hell's Hinges hadn't the luck av the Irish, there'd be questions a-plenty asked. He'd be ready for the morgue this blissed minute. Jerry's a murderin' divvle. When I breeze in I find him croakin' this lad proper and he acts like a crazy man when I stand him and Gorilla Dave off till yuh come a-runnin'. At that they may have given the bye more than he can carry. Maybe it'll be roses and a nice black carriage for him yet."

The other policeman, a sergeant--by this time the voices had localized themselves in persons--laughed with reluctant admiration.

"Him! He's got siven lives like a cat. Take a look at the Sea Siren, Tim. 'T is kindling the lad has made of the place. The man that runs the dump put up a poor mouth, but I told him and the nuts that crowded round squawkin' for an arrest that if they hollered the police would close the place and pull the whole bunch for disorderly conduct. They melted away, believe me." He added, with an access of interest, "Yuh've heard the byes tell the story of the rube that tied up the Swede janitor on the Drive into a knot with his own hose. This'll be the same lad, I'm thinkin'."

The other nodded. He was bending over Clay and sprinkling water on his face. "He'll be black and blue ivery inch of him, but his eyelids are flickering. Jerry's an ill man to cross, I've heard tell. Yuh'd think this lad had had enough. But Jerry's still red-eyed about him and swears they can't both live in the same town. You'll remember likely how Durand did for Paddy Kelly? It was before my time."

"Yuh're a chump copper, Tim Muldoon, else yuh'd know we don't talk about that in the open street. Jerry has long ears," the older man warned, lowering his voice.

Clay opened his eyes, flexed his arm muscles, and groaned. He caressed tenderly his aching ribs.

"Some wreck," he gasped weakly. "They didn't do a thing to me--outside of beatin' me up--and stompin' on me--and runnin' a steam roller--over the dear departed."

"Whose fault will that be? Don't yuh know better than to start a fight with a rigiment?" demanded the sergeant of police severely.

"That wasn't a fight. It was a waltz." The faint, unconquered smile of brown Arizona, broke through the blood and bruises of the face. "The fight began when Jerry Durand and his friend rushed me--and it ended when Jerry landed on me with brass knucks. After that I was a football." The words came in gasps. Every breath was drawn in pain.

"We'd ought to pinch yuh," the sergeant said by way of reprimand. "Think yuh can come to New York and pull your small-town stuff on us? We'll show youse. If yuh wasn't alfalfa green I'd give yuh a ride."

"You mean if Durand hadn't whispered in yore ear. I'll call that bluff, sheriff. Take me to yore calaboose. I've got one or two things to tell the judge about this guy Durand."

The officer dropped his grumbling complaint to a whisper. "Whisht, bye. Take a straight tip from a man that knows. Beat it out of town. Get where the long arm of--of a friend of ours--can't reach yuh. Yuh may be a straight guy, but that won't help yuh. Yuh'll be framed the same as if yuh was a greengoods man or a gopher or a porch-climber. He's a revingeful inemy if ever there was wan."

"You mean that Durand--"

"I'm not namin' names," the officer interrupted doggedly. "I'm tellin' yuh somethin' for your good. Take it or leave it."

"Thanks, I'll leave it. This is a free country, and no man livin' can drive me away," answered Clay promptly. "Ouch, I'm sore. Give me a lift, sergeant."

They helped the cowpuncher to his feet. He took a limping step or two. Every move was torture to his outraged flesh.

"Can you get me a taxi? That is, if you're sure you don't want me in yore calaboose," the range-rider said, leaning against the wall.

"We'll let yuh go this time."

"Much obliged--to Mr. Jerry Durand. Tell him for me that maybe I'll meet up with him again sometime--and hand him my thanks personal for this first-class wallopin'." From the bruised, bleeding face there beamed again the smile indomitable, the grin still gay and winning. Physically he had been badly beaten, but in spirit he was still the man on horseback.

Presently he eased himself into a taxi as comfortably as he could. "Home, James," he said jauntily.

"Where?" asked the driver.

"The nearest hospital," explained Clay. "I'm goin' to let the doctors worry over me for a while. Much obliged to both of you gentlemen. I always did like the Irish. Friend Jerry is an exception."

The officers watched the cab disappear. The sergeant spoke the comment that was in the mind of them both.

"He's the best single-barreled sport that iver I met in this man's town. Not a whimper out of the guy and him mauled to a pulp. Game as they come. Did youse see that spark o' the divvle in his eye, and him not fit to crawl into the cab?"

"Did I see it? I did that. If iver they meet man to man, him and Jerry, it'll be wan grand little fight."

"Jerry's the best rough-and-tumble fighter on the island."

"Wan av the best. I wouldn't put him first till after him and this guy had met alone in a locked room. S'long, Mike."

"S'long, Tim. No report on this rough-house, mind yuh."

"Sure, Mike."

CHAPTER IX

BEATRICE UP STAGE

If you vision Clay as a man of battles and violent deaths you don't see him as he saw himself. He was a peaceful citizen from the law-abiding West. It was not until he had been flung into the whirlpool of New York that violent and melodramatic mishaps befell this innocent. The Wild East had trapped him into weird adventure foreign to his nature.

This was the version of himself that he conceived to be true and the one he tried to interpret to Bee Whitford when he emerged from the hospital after two days of seclusion and presented himself before her.

It was characteristic of Beatrice that when she looked at his battered face she asked no questions and made no exclamations. After the first startled glance one might have thought from her expression that he habitually wore one black eye, one swollen lip, one cauliflower ear, and a strip of gauze across his check.

The dark-lashed eyes lifted from him to take on a business-like directness. She rang for the man.

"Have the runabout brought round at once, Stevens. I'll drive myself," she gave orders.

With the light ease that looked silken strong she swept the car into the Park. Neither she nor Clay talked. Both of them knew that an explanation of his appearance was due her and in the meantime neither cared to fence with small talk. He watched without appearing to do so the slender girl in white at the wheel. Her motions delighted him. There was a very winning charm in the softly curving contours of her face, in that flowerlike and precious quality in her personality which lay back of her boyish comradeship.

She drew up to look at some pond lilies, and they talked about them for a moment, after which her direct eyes questioned him frankly.

He painted with a light brush the picture of his adventure into Bohemia. The details he filled in whimsically, in the picturesque phraseology of the West. Up stage on his canvas was the figure of the poet in velveteens. That Son of the Stars he did full justice. Jerry Durand and Kitty Mason were accessories sketched casually.

Even while her face bubbled with mirth at his story of the improvised tango that had wrecked the Sea Siren, the quick young eyes of the girl were taking in the compelling devil-may-care charm of Lindsay. Battered though he was, the splendid vigor of the man still showed in a certain tigerish litheness that sore, stiff muscles could not conceal. No young Greek god's head could have risen more superbly from the brick-tanned column of his neck than did this bronzed one.

"I gather that Mr. Lindsay of Arizona was among those present," Beatrice said, smiling.

"I was givin' the dance," he agreed, and his gay eyes met hers.

Since she was a woman, one phase of his story needed expansion for Miss Whitford. She made her comment carelessly while she adjusted the mileage on the speedometer.

"Queer you happened to meet some one you knew down there. You did say you knew the girl, didn't you?"

"We were on the same train out of Denver. I got acquainted with her."

Miss Whitford asked no more questions. But Clay could not quite let the matter stand so. He wanted her to justify him in her mind for what he had done. Before he knew it he had told her the story of Kitty Mason and Durand.

Nor did this draw any criticism of approval or the reverse.

"I couldn't let him hypnotize that little girl from the country, could I?" he asked.

"I suppose not." Her whole face began to bubble with laughter in the way he liked so well. "But you'll be a busy knight errant if you undertake to right the wrongs of every girl you meet in New York." A dimple flashed near the corner of her mouth. "Of course she's pretty."

"Well, yes. She is right pretty."

"Describe her to me."

He made a lame attempt. Out of his tangled sentences she picked on some fragments. ". . . blooms like a cherokee rose . . . soft like a kitten."

"I'm glad she's so charming. That excuses any indiscretion," the girl said with a gleam of friendly malice. "There's no fun in rescuing the plain ones, is there?"

"They don't most usually need so much rescuin'," Clay admitted.

"Don't you think it possible that you rescued her out of a job?"

The young man nodded his head ruefully. "That's exactly what I did. After all her trouble gettin' one I've thrown her out again. I'm a sure-enough fathead."

"You've been down to find out?" she asked with a sidelong tilt of her quick eyes.

"Yes. I went down this mawnin' with Tim Muldoon. He's a policeman I met down there. Miss Kitty hasn't been seen since that night. We went out to the Pirate's Den, the Purple Pup, Grace Godwin's Garret, and all the places where she used to sell cigarettes. None of them have seen anything of her."

"So that really your championship hasn't been so great a help to her after all, has it?"

"No."

"And I suppose it ruined the business of the man that owns the Sea Siren."

"I don't reckon so. I've settled for the furniture. And Muldoon says when it gets goin' again the Sea Siren will do a big business on account of the fracas. It's Kitty I'm worried about."

"She's a kind of cuddly little girl who needs the protection of some nice man, you say?"

"That's right."

The eyes of Miss Whitford were unfathomable. "Fluffy and--kind of helpless."

"Yes."

"I wouldn't worry about her if I were you. She'll land on her feet," the girl said lightly.

Her voice had not lost its sweet cadences, but Clay sensed in it something that was almost a touch of cool contempt. He felt vaguely that he must have blundered in describing Kitty. Evidently Miss Whitford did not see her quite as she was.

The young woman pressed the starter button. "We must be going home. I have an engagement to go riding with Mr. Bromfield."

The man beside the girl kept his smile working and concealed the little stab of jealousy that dirked him. Colin Whitford had confided to Lindsay that his daughter was practically engaged to Clarendon Bromfield and that he did not like the man. The range-rider did not like him either, but he tried loyally to kill his distrust of the clubman. If Beatrice loved him there must be good in the fellow. Clay meant to be a good loser anyhow.

There had been moments when the range-rider's heart had quickened with a wild, insurgent hope. One of these had been on a morning when they were riding in the Park, knee to knee, in the dawn of a new clean world. It had come to him with a sudden clamor of the blood that in the eternal rightness of things such mornings ought to be theirs till the youth in them was quenched in sober age. He had looked into the eyes of this slim young Diana, and he had throbbed to the certainty that she too in that moment of tangled glances knew a sweet confusion of the blood. In her cheeks there had been a quick flame of flying color. Their talk had fallen from them, and they had ridden in a shy, exquisite silence from which she had escaped by putting her horse to a canter.

But in the sober sense of sanity Clay knew that this wonderful thing was not going to happen to him. He was not going to be given her happiness to hold in the hollow of his hand. Bee Whitford was a modern young woman, practical-minded, with a proper sense of the values that the world esteems. Clarendon Bromfield was a catch even in New York. He was rich, of a good family, assured social position, good-looking, and manifestly in love with her. Like gravitates to like the land over. Miracles no longer happen in this workaday world. She would marry the man a hundred other girls would have given all they had to win, and perhaps in the long years ahead she might look back with a little sigh for the wild colt of the desert who had shared some perfect moments with her once upon a time.

Bromfield, too, had no doubt that Bee meant to marry him. He was in love with her as far as he could be with anybody except himself. His heart was crusted with selfishness. He had lived for himself only and he meant to continue so to live. But he had burned out his first youth. He was coming to the years when dissipation was beginning to take its toll of him. And as he looked into the future it seemed to him an eminently desirable thing that the fresh, eager beauty of this girl should belong to him, that her devotion should stand as a shield between him and that middle age with which he was already skirmishing. He wanted her--the youth, the buoyant life, the gay, glad comradeship of her--and he had always been lucky in getting what he desired. That was the use of having been born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

But though Clarendon Bromfield had no doubt of the issue of his suit, the friendship of Beatrice for this fellow from Arizona stabbed his vanity. It hurt his class pride and his personal self-esteem that she should take pleasure in the man's society. Bee never had been well broken to harness. He set his thin lips tight and resolved that he would stand no nonsense of this sort after they were married. If she wanted to flirt it would have to be with some one in their own set.

The clubman was too wise to voice his objections now except by an occasional slur. But he found it necessary sometimes to put a curb on his temper. The thing was outrageous--damnably bad form. Sometimes it seemed to him that the girl was gratuitously irritating him by flaunting this bounder in his face. He could not understand it in her. She ought to know that this man did not belong to her world--could not by any chance be a part of it.

Beatrice could not understand herself. She knew that she was behaving rather indiscreetly, though she did not fathom the cause of the restlessness that drove her to Clay Lindsay. The truth is that she was longing for an escape from the empty life she was leading, had been seeking one for years without knowing it. Her existence was losing its savor, and she was still so young and eager and keen to live. Surely this round of social frivolities, the chatter of these silly women and smug tailor-made men, could not be all there was to life. She must have been made for something better than that.

And when she was with Clay she knew she had been. He gave her a vision of life through eyes that had known open, wide spaces, clean, wholesome, and sun-kissed. He stood on his own feet and did his own thinking. Simply, with both hands, he took hold of problems and examined them stripped of all trimmings. The man was elemental, but he was keen and broad-gauged. He knew the value of the things he had missed. She was increasingly surprised to discover how wide his information was. It amazed her one day to learn that he had read William James and understood his philosophy much better than she did.

There was in her mind no intention whatever of letting herself do anything so foolish as to marry him. But there were moments when the thought of it had a dreadful fascination for her. She did not invite such thoughts to remain with her.

For she meant to accept Clarendon Bromfield in her own good time and make her social position in New York absolutely secure. She had been in the fringes too long not to appreciate a chance to get into the social Holy of Holies.

CHAPTER X

JOHNNIE SEES THE POSTMASTER

A bow-legged little man in a cheap, wrinkled suit with a silk kerchief knotted loosely round his neck stopped in front of a window where a girl was selling stamps.

"I wantta see the postmaster."

"Corrid'y'right. Takel'vatorthir'doorleft," she said, just as though it were two words.

The freckle-faced little fellow opened wider his skim-milk eyes and his weak mouth. "Come again, ma'am, please."

"Corrid'y'right. Takel'vatorthir'doorleft," she repeated. "Next."

The inquirer knew as much as he did before, but he lacked the courage to ask for an English translation. A woman behind was prodding him between the shoulder-blades with the sharp edge of a package wrapped for mailing. He shuffled away from the window and wandered helplessly, swept up by the tide of hurrying people that flowed continuously into the building and ebbed out of it. From this he was tossed into a backwater that brought him to another window.

"I wantta see the postmaster of this burg," he announced again with a plaintive whine.

"What about?" asked the man back of the grating.

"Important business, amigo. Where's he at?"

The man directed him to a door upon which was printed the legend, "Superintendent of Complaints." Inside, a man was dictating a letter to a stenographer. The bow-legged man in the wrinkled suit waited awkwardly until the letter was finished, twirling in his hands a white, broad-rimmed hat with pinched-in crown. He was chewing tobacco. He wondered whether it would be "etiquette" to squirt the juice into a waste-paper basket standing conveniently near.

"Well, sir! What can I do for you?" the man behind the big desk snapped.

"I wantta see the postmaster."

"What about?"

"I got important business with him."

"Who are you?"

"Me, I'm Johnnie Green of the B-in-a-Box Ranch. I just drapped in from Arizona and I wantta see the postmaster."

"Suppose you tell your troubles to me."

Johnnie changed his weight to the other foot. "No, suh, I allow to see the postmaster himself personal."

"He's busy," explained the official. "He can't possibly see anybody without knowing his business."

"Tha's all right. I've lost my pal. I wantta see--"

The Superintendent of Complaints cut into his parrot-like repetition. "Yes, you mentioned that. But the postmaster doesn't know where he is, does he?"

"He might tell me where his mail goes, as the old sayin' is."

"When did you lose your friend?"

"I ain't heard from him since he come to New York. So bein' as I got a chanct to go from Tucson with a jackpot trainload of cows to Denver, I kinda made up my mind to come on here the rest of the way and look him up. I'm afraid some one's done him dirt."

"Do you know where he's staying?"

"No, suh, I don't."

The Superintendent of Complaints tapped with his fingers on the desk. Then he smiled. The postmaster was fond of a joke. Why not let this odd little freak from the West have an interview with him?

Twenty minutes later Johnnie was telling his story to the postmaster of the City of New York. He had written three times to Clay Lindsay and had received no answer. So he had come to look for him.

"And seein' as I was here, thinks I to myself thinks I it costs nothin' Mex to go to the postmaster and ask where Clay's at," explained Johnnie with his wistful, ingratiating, give-me-a-bone smile. "Thinks I, it cayn't be but a little ways down to the office."

"Is your friend like you?" asked the postmaster, interested in spite of himself.

"No, suh." Johnnie, alias the Runt, began to beam. "He's a sure-enough go-getter, Clay is, every jump of the road. I'd follow his dust any day of the week. You don't never need to think he's any shorthorn cattleman, for he ain't. He's the livest proposition that ever come out of Graham County. You can ce'tainly gamble on that."

The postmaster touched a button. A clerk appeared, received orders, and disappeared.

Johnnie, now on the subject of his hero, continued to harp on his points. "You're damn whistlin' Clay ain't like me. He's the best hawss-buster in Arizona. The bronco never was built that can pile him, nor the man that can lick him. Clay's no bad hombre, you understand, but there can't nobody run it over him. That's whatever. All I'm afraid of is some one's gave him a raw deal. He's the best blamed old son-of-a-gun I ever did meet up with."

The clerk presently returned with three letters addressed to Clay Lindsay, General Delivery, New York. The postmaster handed them to the little cowpuncher.

"Evidently he never called for them," he said.

Johnnie's chin fell. He looked a picture of helpless woe. "They're the letters I set down an' wrote him my own se'f. Something has sure happened to that boy, looks like," he bemoaned.

"We'll try Police Headquarters. Maybe we can get a line on your friend," the postmaster said, reaching for the telephone. "But you must remember New York is a big place. It's not like your Arizona ranch. The city has nearly eight million inhabitants."

"I sure found that out already, Mr. Postmaster. Met every last one of 'em this mo'nin', I'll bet. Never did see so many humans millin' around. I'll say they're thick as cattle at a round-up."

"Then you'll understand that when one man gets lost it isn't always possible to find him."

"Why not? We got some steers down in my country--about as many as you got men in this here town of yourn. Tha's what we ride the range for, so's not to lose 'em. We've traced a B-in-a-Box steer clear from Tucson to Denver, done it more'n onct or twice too. I notice you got a big bunch of man-punchers in uniform here. Ain't it their business to rustle up strays?"

"The police," said the postmaster, amused. "That is part of their business. We'll pass the buck to them anyhow."

After some delay and repeated explanations of who he was, the postmaster got at the other end of the wire his friend the commissioner. Their conversation was brief. When the postmaster hung up he rang for a stenographer and dictated a letter of introduction. This he handed to Johnnie, with explicit instructions.

"Go to Police Headquarters, Center Street, and take this note to Captain Luke Byrne. He'll see that the matter is investigated for you."

Johnnie was profuse, but somewhat incoherent in his thanks. "Much obliged to meet you, Mr. Postmaster. An'--an' if you ever hit the trail for God's Country I'll sure--I'll sure--Us boys at the B-in-a-Box we'd be right glad to--to meet up with you. Tha's right, as the old sayin' is. We sure would. Any ol' time."

The cowpuncher's hat was traveling in a circle propelled by red, freckled hands. The official cut short Johnnie's embarrassment.

"Do you know the way to Police Headquarters?"

"I reckon I can find it. Is it fur?" The man from Arizona looked down at the high-heeled boots in which his tortured feet had clumped over the pavements of the metropolis all morning.

"I'll send you in a taxi." The postmaster was thinking that this babe in the woods of civilization never would be able to find his way alone.

As the driver swept the car in and out among the traffic of the narrow streets Johnnie clung to the top of the door fearfully. Every moment he expected a smash. His heart was in his throat. The tumult, the rush of business, the intersecting cross-town traffic, the hub-bub of the great city, dazed his slow brain. The hurricane deck of a bronco had no terrors for him, but this wild charge through the humming trenches shook his nerve.

"I come mighty nigh askin' you would you just as lief drive slower," he said with a grin to the chauffeur as he descended to the safety of the sidewalk. "I ain't awful hardy, an' I sure was plumb scared."

A sergeant took Johnnie in tow and delivered him at length to the office waiting-room of Captain Anderson, head of the Bureau of Missing Persons. The Runt, surveying the numbers in the waiting-room and those passing in and out, was ready to revise his opinion about the possible difficulty of the job. He judged that half the population of New York must be missing.

After a time the captain's secretary notified Johnnie that it was his turn. As soon as he was admitted the puncher began his little piece without waiting for any preliminaries.

"Say, Captain, I want you to find my friend Clay Lindsay. He--"

"Just a moment," interrupted the captain. "Who are you? Don't think I got your name."

Johnnie remembered the note of introduction and his name at the same time. He gave both to the big man who spent his busy days and often part of the nights looking for the lost, strayed, and stolen among New York's millions.

The captain's eyes swept over the note. "Sit down, Mr. Green, and let's get at your trouble."

As soon as it permeated Johnnie's consciousness that he was Mr. Green he occupied precariously the front three inches of a chair. His ever-ready friend the cow-boy hat began to revolve.

"This note says that you're looking for a man named Clay Lindsay who came to New York several months ago. Have you or has anybody else heard from him in that time?"

"We got a letter right after he got here. He ain't writ since."

"Perhaps he's dead. We'd better look up the morgue records."

"Morgue!" The Runt grew excited instantly. "That place where you keep folks that get drowned or bumped off? Say, Captain, I'm here to tell you Clay was the livest man in Arizona, which is the same as sayin' anywheres. Cowpunchers don't take naturally to morgues. No, sir. Clay ain't in no morgue. Like as not he's helped fill this yere morgue if any crooks tried their rough stuff on him. Don't get me wrong, Cap. Clay is the squarest he-man ever God made. All I'm sayin' is--"

The captain interrupted. He asked sharp, incisive questions and got busy. Presently he reached for a 'phone, got in touch with a sergeant at the police desk in the upper corridor, and sent an attendant with Johnnie to the Police Department.

The Irish sympathies of the sergeant were aroused by the naïve honesty of the little man. He sent for another sergeant, had card records brought, consulted a couple of patrolmen, and then turned to Johnnie.

"We've met your friend all right," he said with a grin. "He's wan heluva lad. Fits the description to a T. There can't be but one like him here." And he went on to tell the story of the adventure of the janitor and the hose and that of its sequel, the resale of the fifty-five-dollar suit to I. Bernstein, who had reported his troubles to the police.

The washed-out eyes of the puncher lit up. "That's him. That's sure him. If the' was two of him they'd ce'tainly be a hell-poppin' team. Clay he's the best-natured fellow you ever did see, but there can't nobody run a whizzer on him, y' betcha. Tell me where he's at?"

"We don't know. We can show you the place where he tied the janitor, but that's the best we can do." The captain hesitated. "If you find him, give him a straight tip from me. Tell him to buy a ticket for Arizona and take the train for home. This town is no healthy place for him."

"Because he hogtied a Swede," snorted Johnnie indignantly.

"No. He's got into more serious trouble than that. Your friend has made an enemy--a powerful one. He'll understand if you tell him."

"Who is this here enemy?"

"Never mind. He hit up too fast a pace."

"You can't tell me a thing against Clay--not a thing," protested Johnnie hotly. "He'll sure do to take along, Clay will. There can't any guy knock him to me if he does wear a uniform."

"I'm not saying a thing against him," replied the officer impatiently. "I'm giving him a friendly tip to beat it, if you see him. Now I'm going to send you up-town with a plain-clothes man. He'll show you where your friend made his New York debut. That's all we can do for you."

An hour later the little cowpuncher was gazing wistfully at the hitching-post. His face was twisted pathetically to a question mark. It was as though he thought he could conjure from the post the secret of Clay's disappearance. Where had he gone from here? And where was he now?

In the course of the next two days the Runt came back to that post many times as a starting-point for weary, high-heeled tramps through streets within a circuit of a mile. He could not have explained why he did so. Perhaps it was because this was the only spot in the city that held for him any tangible relationship to Clay. Some one claimed to have seen him vanish into one of these houses. Perhaps he might come back again. It was a very tenuous hope, but it was the only one Johnnie had. He clumped over the pavements till his feet ached in protest.

His patience was rewarded. On the second day, while he was gazing blankly at the post a groom brought two horses to the curb in front of the house opposite. One of the horses had a real cowboy's saddle. Johnnie's eyes gleamed. This was like a breath of honest-to-God Arizona. The door opened, and out of it came a man and a slim young woman. Both of them were dressed for riding, she in the latest togs of the town, he in a well-cut sack suit and high tan boots.

Johnnie threw up his hat and gave a yell. "You blamed old horn-toad! Might 'a' knowed you was all right! Might 'a' knowed you wouldn't bite off more'n you could chew! Oh, you Arizona!"

Clay gave one surprised look--and met him in the middle of the street. The little cowpuncher did a war dance of joy while he clung to his friend's hand. Tears brimmed into his faded eyes.

"Hi yi yi, doggone yore old hide, if it ain't you big as coffee, Clay. Thinks I to myse'f, who is that pilgrim? And, by gum, it's old hell-a-mile jes' a-hittin' his heels. Where you been at, you old skeezicks?"

"How are you, Johnnie? And what are you doin' here?"

The Runt was the kind of person who tells how he is when any one asks him. He had no imagination, so he stuck to the middle of the road for fear he might get lost.

"I'm jes' tol'able, Clay. I got a kinda misery in my laigs from trompin' these hyer streets. My feet are plumb burnin' up. You didn't answer my letters, so I come to see if you was all right."

"You old scalawag. You came to paint the town red."

Johnnie, highly delighted at this charge, protested. "Honest I didn't, Clay. I wasn't feelin' so tur'ble peart. Seemed like the boys picked on me after you left. So I jes' up and come."

If Clay was not delighted to have his little Fidus Achates on his hands he gave no sign of it. He led him across the road and introduced him to Miss Whitford.

Clay blessed her for her kindness to this squat, snub-nosed adherent of his whose lonely heart had driven him two thousand miles to find his friend. It would have been very easy to slight him, but Beatrice had no thought of this. The loyalty of the little man touched her greatly. Her hand went out instantly. A smile softened her eyes and dimpled her cheeks.

"I'm very glad to meet any friend of Mr. Lindsay. Father and I will want to hear all about Arizona after you two have had your visit out. We'll postpone the ride till this afternoon. That will be better, I think."

Clay agreed. He grudged the loss of his hour with her, but under the circumstances it had to be. For a moment he and Beatrice stood arranging the time for their proposed ride. Then, with a cool little nod that included them both, she turned and ran lightly up the steps into the house.

"Some sure-enough queen," murmured Johnnie in naïve admiration, staring after her with open mouth.

Clay smiled. He had an opinion of his own on that point.

CHAPTER XI

JOHNNIE GREEN--MATCH-MAKER

Johnnie Green gave an upward jerk to the frying-pan and caught the flapjack deftly as it descended.

"Fust and last call for breakfast in the dining-cyar. Come and get it, old-timer," he sang out to Clay.

That young man emerged from his bedroom glowing. He was one or two shades of tan lighter than when he had reached the city, but the paint of Arizona's untempered sun still distinguished him from the native-born, if there are any such among the inhabitants of upper New York.

"You're one sure-enough cook," he drawled to his satellite. "Some girl will ce'tainly have a good wife when she gets you. I expect I'd better set one of these suffragette ladies on yore trail."

"Don't you, Clay," blushed Johnnie. "I ain't no ladies' man. They make me take to the tall timber when I see 'em comin'."

"That ain't hardly fair to them, and you the best flapjack artist in Graham County."

"Sho! I don't make no claims, old sock. Mebbe I'm handy with a fry-pan, mebbe I ain't. Likely you're jest partial to my flapjacks," the little man said in order to have his modest suggestion refuted.

"They suit me, Johnnie." And Clay reached for the maple syrup. "Best flapjacks ever made in this town."

The Runt beamed all over. If he had really been a puppy he would have wagged his tail. Since he couldn't do that he took it out in grinning. Any word of praise from Clay made the world a sunshiny one for him.

"This here place ain't Arizona, but o' course we got to make the best of it. You know I can cook when I got the fixin's," he agreed.

The two men were batching it. They had a little apartment in the Bronx and Johnnie looked after it for his friend. One of Johnnie's vices--according to the standard of the B-in-a-Box boys--was that he was as neat as an old maid. He liked to hang around a mess-wagon and cook doughnuts and pies. His talent came in handy now, for Clay was no housekeeper.

After the breakfast things were cleared away Johnnie fared forth to a certain house adjoining Riverside Drive, where he earned ten dollars a week as outdoors man. His business was to do odd jobs about the place. He cut and watered the lawn. He made small repairs. Beatrice had a rose garden, and under her direction he dug, watered, and fertilized.

Incidentally, the snub-nosed little puncher with the unfinished features adored his young mistress in the dumb, uncritical fashion a schoolboy does a Ty Cobb or an Eddie Collins. For him the queen could do no wrong. He spent hours mornings and evenings at their rooms telling Clay about her. She was certainly the finest little lady he ever had seen. In his heart he had hopes that Clay would fall in love with and marry her. She was the only girl in the world that deserved his paragon. But her actions worried him. Sometimes he wondered if she really understood what a catch Clay was.

He tried to tell her his notions on the subject the morning Clay praised his flapjacks.

She was among the rose-bushes, gloved and hatted, clipping American Beauties for the dining-room, a dainty but very self-reliant little personality.

"Miss Beatrice, I been thinkin' about you and Clay," he told her, leaning on his spade.

"What have you been thinking about us?" the girl asked, snipping off a big rose.

She liked Johnnie and listened often with amusement to his point of view. It was so different from that of anybody else she had ever met. Perhaps this was why she encouraged him to talk. There may have been another reason. The favorite theme of his conversation interested her.

"How you're the best-lookin' couple that a man would see anywheres."

Into her clear cheeks the color flowed. "If I thought nonsense like that I wouldn't say it," she said quietly. "We're not a couple. He's a man. I'm a woman. I like him and want to stay friends with him if you'll let me."

"Sure. I know that, but--" Johnnie groped helplessly to try to explain what he had meant. "Clay he likes you a heap," he finished inadequately.

The eyes of the girl began to dance. There was no use taking offense at this simple soul. After all he was not a servant, but a loyal follower whose brain was not quite up to the job of coping with the knotty problem of bringing two of his friends together in matrimony. "Does he? I'm sure I'm gratified," she murmured, busy with her scissors among the roses.

"Yep. I never knowed Clay to look at a girl before. He sure thinks a heap of you."

She gave a queer little bubbling laugh. "You're flattering me."

"Honest, I ain't." Johnnie whispered a secret across the rose-bushes. "Say, if you work it right I believe you can get him."

The girl sparkled. Here was a new slant on matrimonial desirability. Clearly the view of the little cow-puncher was that Clay had only to crook his fingers to summon any girl in the world that he desired.

"Do you think so--with so many attractive girls in New York?" she pleaded.

"He don't pay no 'tention to them. Honest, I believe you can if you don't spill the beans."

"What would you advise me to do?" she dimpled.

"Sho! I dunno." He shyly unburdened himself of the warning he had been leading up to. "But I'd tie a can to that dude fellow that hangs around--the Bromfield guy. O' course I know he ain't one two three with you while Clay's on earth, but I don't reckon I'd take any chances, as the old sayin' is. No, ma'am, I'd ce'tainly lose him pronto. Clay might get sore. Better get shet of the dude."

Miss Whitford bit her lip to keep from exploding in a sudden gale of mirth. But the sight of her self-appointed chaperon set her off into peals of laughter in spite of herself. Every time she looked at Johnnie she went off into renewed chirrups. He was so homely and so deadly earnest. The little waif was staring at her in perplexed surprise, mouth open and chin fallen. He could see no occasion for gayety at his suggestion. There was nothing subtle about the Runt. In his social code wealth did not figure. A forty-dollar-a-month bronco buster was free to offer advice to the daughter of a millionaire about her matrimonial prospects if it seemed best.

And just now it seemed to Johnnie decidedly best. He scratched his tow head, for he had mulled the whole thing over and decided reluctantly to do his duty by the girl. So far as he could make out, Beatrice Whitford played no favorites in her little court of admirers. Clay Lindsay and Clarendon Bromfield were with her more than any of the others. If she inclined to either of the two, Johnnie could see no evidence of it. She was gay and frank with both, a jolly comrade for a ride, a dinner dance, or a theater party.

This was what troubled Johnnie. Of course she must be in love with Clay and want to marry him, since she was a normal human being. But if she continued to play with Bromfield the Westerner might punish her by sheering off. That was the reason why the Runt was doing his conscientious duty this fine morning.

"Clay ain't one o' the common run of cowpunchers, ma'am. You bet you, by jollies, he ain't. Clay he owns a half-interest in the B-in-a-Box. O' course it ain't what he's got, but what he is that counts. He's the best darned pilgrim ever I did see."

"He's all right, Johnnie," the girl admitted with an odd little smile. "Do you want me to tell him that I'll be glad to drop our family friends to meet his approval? I don't suppose he asked you to speak to me about it, did he?"

The little range-rider missed the irony of this. "No, ma'am, I jest butted in. Mebbe I hadn't ought to of spoke."

The frank eyes of the girl met his fairly. A patch of heightened color glowed in her soft cheeks. "That would have been better, Johnnie. But since you have introduced the subject, I'll tell you that Mr. Lindsay and I are friends. Neither of us has the slightest intention of being anything more. You may not understand such things."

"No'm," he admitted humbly. "I reckon I'm a plumb idjit."

His attitude was so dejected that she relented.

"You needn't feel badly, Johnnie. There's no harm done--if you don't say anything about it to Mr. Lindsay. But I don't think you were intended for a match-maker. That takes quite a little finesse, doesn't it?"

The word "finesse" was not in Johnnie's dictionary, but he acquiesced in her verdict.

"I reckon, ma'am, you're right."

CHAPTER XII

CLAY READS AN AD AND ANSWERS IT

Clay was waiting for lunch at a _rôtisserie_ on Sixth Avenue, and in order to lose no time--of which he had more just now than he knew what to do with--was meanwhile reading a newspaper propped against a water-bottle. From the personal column there popped out at him three lines that caught his attention:

If this meets the eye of C. L. of Arizona please write me. Box M-21, The Herald. Am in trouble. KITTY M.

He read it again. There could be no doubt in the world. It was addressed to him, and from Kitty. While he ate his one half spring chicken Clay milled the situation over in his mind. She had been on the lookout for him, just as he had been searching for her. By good luck her shot at a venture had reached him. He remembered now that on the bus he had casually mentioned to her that he usually read the "Herald."

After he had eaten, Clay walked down Broadway and left a note at the office of the "Herald" for Kitty.

The thought of her was in his mind all day. He had worried a good deal over her disappearance. It was not alone that he felt responsible for the loss of her place as cigarette girl. One disturbing phase of the situation was that Jerry Durand must have seen her. What more likely than that he had arranged to have her spirited away? Lindsay had read that hundreds of girls disappeared every year in the city. If they ever came to the surface again it was as dwellers in that underworld in the current of which they had been caught.

Jerry was a known man in New York. It had been easy for Clay to find out the location of his saloon and the hotel where he lived. The cattleman had done some quiet sleuthing, but he had found no trace of Kitty. Now he knew that she had turned to him in her need and cried for help.

That she was in trouble did not surprise him. The girl was born for it as naturally as the sparks fly upward. She was a provocation to those who prey. In her face there was a disturbing quality quite apart from her prettiness. Back of the innocence lay some hint of slumberous passion. Kitty was one of those girls who have the misfortune to stir the imaginations of men without the ability to keep them at arm's length. Just what her present difficulty was Clay did not know, but he was quite sure it had to do with a man. Already he had decided to rescue her. He had promised to be her friend. It never occurred to him to stand back when she called.

He had an engagement that afternoon to walk with Beatrice Whitford. She was almost the only girl in her set who knew how to walk and had the energy for it. In her movement there was the fluent, untamed grace that expressed a soul not yet stunted by the claims of convention. The golden little head was carried buoyantly. In her step was the rhythm of perfect ease. The supple resilience of her was another expression of the spiritual quality that spoke in the vivid face.

Clay, watching her as she moved, thought of a paragraph from Mark Twain's "Eve's Diary":

She is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world is to her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can't speak for delight when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it and smell it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it. And she is color mad: brown rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage, blue sky; the pearl of the dawn, the purple shadow on the mountains, the golden islands floating in crimson seas at sunset, the pallid moon sailing through the shredded cloud-rack, the star-jewels glittering in the waste of space. . . .

But the thing that tantalized him about her and filled him with despair was that, though one moment she might be the first woman in the birthday of the world filled with the primitive emotions of the explorer, the next she was a cool, Paris-gowned-and-shod young modern, about as competent to meet emergencies as anything yet devised by heaven and a battling race.

They crossed to Morningside Park and moved through it to the northern end where the remains of Fort Laight, built to protect the approach to the city during the War of 1812, can still be seen and traced.

Beatrice had read the story of the earthworks. In the midst of the telling of it she stopped to turn upon him with swift accusation, "You're not listening."

"That's right, I wasn't," he admitted.

"Have you heard something about your cigarette girl?"

Clay was amazed at the accuracy of her center shot.

"Yes." He showed her the newspaper.

She read. The golden head nodded triumphantly. "I told you she could look out for herself. You see when she had lost you she knew enough to advertise."

Was there or was there not a faint note of malice in the girl's voice? Clay did not know. But it would have neither surprised nor displeased him. He had long since discovered that his imperious little friend was far from an angel.

At his rooms he found a note awaiting him.

Come to-night after eleven. I am locked in the west rear room of the second story. Climb up over the back porch. Don't make any noise. The window will be unbolted. A friend is mailing this. For God's sake, don't fail me.

The note was signed "Kitty." Below were given the house and street number. Clay studied the letter a long time--the wording of it, the formation of the letters, the spirit that had actuated the writer. It was written upon a sheet of cheap lined paper torn from a pad. The envelope was one of those sold at the post-office already stamped.

Was the note genuine? Or did it lead to a trap? He could not tell. It might be a plant or it might be a wail of real distress. There was only one way to find out unless he went to the police. That way was to go through with the adventure. The police! Clay went back to the thought of them several times. The truth was that he had put himself out of court there. He was in bad with the bluecoats and would probably be arrested if he showed up at headquarters.

He decided to play a lone hand except for such help as Johnnie could give him.

Clay took a downtown car and rode to the cross-street mentioned in the letter for a preliminary tour of investigation. The street designated was one of plain brownstone fronts with iron-grilled doors. The blank faces of the houses invited no confidence. It struck him that there was something sinister about the neighborhood, but perhaps the thought was born of the fear. Number 121 had windows barred with ornamental grilles. This might be to keep burglars out. It would serve equally well to keep prisoners in.

At the nearest grocery store Clay made inquiries. He was looking, he said, for James K. Sanger. He did not know the exact address. Could the grocery man help him run down his party? How about the folks living at Number 121?

"Don't know 'em. They've been in only for a few days. They don't trade here."

Clay tried the telephone, but Information could tell him only that there was no 'phone at 121.

On the whole Clay inclined to think that the letter was not a forgery. In his frank, outdoor code there was no reason why Durand should hate him enough to go to such trouble to trap him. The fellow had more than squared accounts when he had beaten him up outside the Sea Siren. Why should he want to do anything more to him? But he had had two warnings that the ex-prize-fighter was not through with him--both of them from members of the police force, one direct from the sergeant who had helped rescue him, the other by way of the Runt from headquarters. When he recalled the savage hatred of that flat, pallid face he did not feel so sure of immunity. Clay had known men in the West, wolf-hearted killers steeped in a horrible lust for revenge, who never forgot or forgave an injury--until their enemy had paid the price in full. Jerry Durand might be one of this stamp. He was a man of a bad reputation, one about whom evil murmurs passed in secret. Not many years ago he had been tried for the murder of one Paddy Kelly, a rival gangsman in his neighborhood, and had been acquitted on the ground of self-defense. But there had been a good deal of talk about evidence framed in his behalf. Later he had been arrested for graft, but the case somehow had never been acted upon by the district attorney's office. The whisper was that his pull had saved him from trial.

The cattleman did not linger in that street lined with houses of sinister faces. He did not care to call attention to his presence by staying too long. Besides, he had some arrangements to make for the night at his rooms.

These were simple and few. He oiled and loaded his revolver carefully, leaving the hammer on the one chamber left empty to prevent accidents after the custom of all careful gunmen. He changed into the wrinkled suit he had worn when he reached the city, and substituted for his shoes a pair of felt-soled gymnasium ones.

The bow-legged little puncher watched his friend, just as a faithful dog does his master. He asked no questions. In good time he knew he would be told all it was necessary for him to know.

As they rode from the Bronx, Clay outlined the situation and told his plans so far as he had any.

"So I'm goin' to take a whirl at it, Johnnie. Mebbe they're lyin' low up in that house to get me. Mebbe the note's the real thing. You can search me which it is. The only way to find out is to go through with the thing. Yore job is to stick around in front of the hacienda and wait for me. If I don't show up inside of thirty minutes, get the police busy right away breakin' into the place. Do you get me, Johnnie?"

"Lemme go with you into the house, Clay," the little man pleaded.

"No, this is a one-man job. If the note is straight goods I've got to work on the Q.T. Do exactly as I say. That's how you can help me best."

"What's the matter with me goin' into the house instead o' you? It don't make no difference much if they do gun me. I'm jest the common run of the pen. But you--you're graded stock," argued the Runt.

"Nothin' doin', old-timer. This is my job, and I don't reckon I'll let anybody else tackle it. Much obliged, just the same. You're one sure-enough white man, Johnnie."

The little fellow knew that the matter was settled. Clay had decided and what he said was final. But Johnnie worried about it all the way. At the last moment, when they separated at the street corner, he added one last word.

"Don't you be too venturesome, son. If them guys got you it sure would break me all up."

Clay smiled cheerfully. "They're not goin' to get me, Johnnie. Don't forget to remember not to forget yore part. Keep under cover for thirty minutes; then if I haven't shown up, holler yore head off for the cops."

They were passing an alley as Clay finished speaking. He slipped into its friendly darkness and was presently lost to sight. It ran into an inner court which was the center of tortuous passages. The cattleman stopped to get his bearings, selected the likeliest exit, and brought up in the shelter of a small porch. This, he felt sure, must be the rear of the house he wanted.

A strip of lattice-work ran up the side of the entrance. Very carefully, testing every slat with his weight before trusting himself to it, he climbed up and edged forward noiselessly upon the roof. On hands and knees he crawled to the window and tried to peer in.

The blind was down, but he could see that the room was dark. What danger lurked behind the drawn blind he could not guess, but after a moment, to make sure that the revolver beneath his belt was ready for instant use, he put his hand gently on the sash.

His motions were soundless as the fall of snowflakes. The window moved slowly, almost imperceptibly, under the pressure of his hands. It gave not the faintest creak of warning. His fingers found the old-fashioned roller blind and traveled down it to the bottom. With the faintest of clicks he released the spring and guided the blind upward.

Warily he lifted one leg into the room. His head followed, then the rest of his body. He waited, every nerve tensed.

There came to him a sound that sent cold finger-tips laying a tattoo up and down his spine. It was the intake of some one's cautious breathing.

His hand crept to the butt of the revolver. He crouched, poised for either attack or retreat.

A bath of light flooded the room and swallowed the darkness. Instantly Clay's revolver leaped to the air.

CHAPTER XIII

A LATE EVENING CALL

A young woman in an open-neck nightgown sat up in bed, a cascade of black hair fallen over her white shoulders. Eyes like jet beads were fastened on him. In them he read indignation struggling with fear.

"Say, what are you anyhow--a moll buzzer? If you're a porch-climber out for the props you've sure come to the wrong dump. I got nothin' but bum rocks."

This was Greek to Clay. He did not know that she had asked him if he were a man who robs women, and that she had told him he could get no diamonds there since hers were false.

The Arizonan guessed at once that he was not in the room mentioned in the letter. He slipped his revolver back into its place between shirt and trousers.

"Is this house number 121?" he asked.

"No, it's 123. What of it?"

"It's the wrong house. I'm ce'tainly one chump."

The black eyes lit with sardonic mockery. The young woman knew already that she had nothing to fear from this brown-faced man. His face was not that of a thug. It carried its own letter of recommendation written on it. Instinctively she felt that he had not come to rob. A lively curiosity began to move in her.

"Say, do I look like one of them born-every-minute kind?" she asked easily. "Go ahead and spring that old one on me about how you got tanked at the club and come in at the window on account o' your wife havin' a temper somethin' fierce."

"No, I--I was lookin' for some one else. I'm awful sorry I scared you. I'd eat dirt if it would do any good, but it won't. I'm just a plumb idiot. I reckon I'll be pushin' on my reins." He turned toward the window.

"Stop right there where you're at," she ordered sharply. "Take a step to that window and I'll holler for a harness bull like a Bowery bride gettin' a wallopin' from friend husband. I gotta have an explanation. And who told you I was scared? Forget that stuff. Take it from Annie that she ain't the kind that scares."

The girl sat up in bed, fingers laced around the knees beneath the blanket. There was an insouciance about her he did not understand. She did not impress him in the least as a wanton, but if he read that pert little face aright she was a good deal less embarrassed than he.

"I came to see some one else, but I got in the wrong house," he explained again lamely.

"That's twice I heard both them interestin' facts. Who is this goil you was comin' through a window to see in the middle o' the night. And what's that gat for if it ain't to croak some other guy? You oughtta be ashamed of yourself for not pullin' a better wheeze than that on me."

Clay blushed. In spite of the slangy impudence that dropped from the pretty red lips the girl was slim and looked virginal.

"You're 'way off. I wasn't callin' on her to--" He stuck hopelessly.

"Whadya know about that?" she came back with obvious sarcasm. "You soitainly give me a pain. I'll say you weren't callin' to arrange no Sunday School picnic. Listen. Look at that wall a minute, will you?"

When he turned again at her order she was sitting on the side of the bed wrapped in a kimono, her feet in bedroom slippers. He saw now that she was a slender-limbed slip of a girl. The lean forearm, which showed bare to the elbow when she raised it to draw the kimono closer round her, told Clay that she was none too well nourished.

"I'll listen now to your fairy tale, Mr. Gumshoe Guy, but I wantta wise you that I'm hep to men. Doncha try to string me," she advised.

Clay did not. It had occurred to him that she might give him information of value. There was something friendly and kindly about the humorous little mouth which parroted worldly wisdom so sagely and the jargon of criminals so readily. He told her the story of Kitty Mason. He could see by the girl's eyes that she had jumped to the conclusion that he was in love with Kitty. He did not attempt to disturb that conviction. It might enlist her sympathy.

"Honest, Annie, I believe this guy's on the level," the young woman said aloud as though to herself. "If he ain't, he's sure a swell mouthpiece. He don't look to me like no flat-worker--not with that mug of his. But you never can tell."

"I'm not, Miss. My story's true." Eyes clear as the Arizona sky in a face brown as the Arizona desert looked straight at her.

Annie Millikan had never seen a man like this before, so clean and straight and good to look at. From childhood she had been brought up on the fringe of that underworld the atmosphere of which is miasmic. She was impressed in spite of herself.

"Say, why don't you go into the movies and be one of these here screen ideals? You'd knock 'em dead," she advised flippantly, crossing her bare ankles.

Clay laughed. He liked the insolent little twist to her mouth. She made one strong appeal to him. This bit of a girl, so slim that he could break her in his hands, was game to the core. He recognized it as a quality of kinship.

"This is my busy night. When I've got more time I'll think of it. Right now--"

She took the subject out of his mouth. "Listen, how do you know the girl ain't a badger-worker?"

"You'll have to set 'em up on the other alley, Miss," the Westerner said. "I don't get yore meanin'."

"Couldn't she 'a' made this date to shake you down? Blackmail stuff."

"No chance. She's not that kind."

"Mebbe you're right. I meet so many hop-nuts and dips and con guys and gun-molls that I get to thinkin' there's no decent folks left," she said with a touch of weariness.

"Why don't you pull yore picket-pin and travel to a new range?" he asked. "They're no kind of people for you to be knowin'. Get out to God's country where men are white and poor folks get half a chance."

The girl shrugged her shoulders. "Little old New York is my beat. It's the biggest puddle in the world and I'll do my kickin' here." Abruptly she switched the talk back to his affairs. "You wantta go slow when you tackle Jerry Durand. I can tell you one thing. He's in this business up to the neck. I seen his shadow Gorilla Dave comin' outa the house next door twice to-day."

"Seen anything of the girl?"

"Nope. But she may be there. Honest, you're up against a tough game. There's no use rappin' to the bulls. They'd tip Jerry off and the girl wouldn't be there when they pulled the house."

"Then I must work this alone."

"Why don't you lay down on it?" she asked, her frank eyes searching his. "You soitainly will if you've got good sense."

"I'm goin' through."

Her black eyes warmed. "Say, I'll bet you're some guy when you get started. Hop to it and I hope you get Jerry good."

"I don't want Jerry. He's too tough for me. Once I had so much of him I took sick and went to the hospital. It's the girl I want."

"Say, listen! I got a hunch mebbe it's a bum steer, but you can't be sure till you try it. Why don't you get in through the roof instead o' the window?"

"Can I get in that way?"

"Surest thing you know--if the trapdoor ain't latched. Say, stick around outside my room half a sec, will you?"

The cattleman waited in the darkness of the passage. If his enemies were trying to ambush him in the house next door the girl's plan might save him. He would have a chance at least to get them unexpectedly in the rear.

It could have been scarcely more than two minutes later that the young woman joined him.

Her small hand slipped into his to guide him. They padded softly along the corridor till they came to a flight of stairs running up. The girl led the way, taking the treads without noise in her stockinged feet. Clay followed with the utmost caution.

Again her hand found his in the darkness of the landing. She took him toward the rear to a ladder which ended at a dormer half-door leading to the roof. Clay fumbled with his fingers, found a hook, unfastened it, and pushed open the trap. He looked up into a starlit night and a moment later stepped out upon the roof. Presently the slim figure of the girl stood beside him.

They moved across to a low wall, climbed it and came to the dormer door of the next house. Clay knelt and lifted it an inch or two very slowly. He lowered it again and rose.

"I'm a heap obliged to you, Miss," he said in a low voice. "You're a game little gentleman."

She nodded. "My name is Annie Millikan."

"Mine is Clay Lindsay. I want to come and thank you proper some day."

"I take tickets at Heath's Palace of Wonders two blocks down," she whispered.

"You'll sure sell me a ticket one of these days," Clay promised.

"Look out for yourself. Don't let 'em get you. Give 'em a chance, and that gang would croak you sure."

"I'll be around to buy that ticket. Good-night, Miss Annie. Don't you worry about me."

"You will be careful, won't you?"

"I never threw down on myself yet."

The girl's flippancy broke out again. "Say, lemme know when the weddin' is and I'll send you a salad bowl," she flashed at him saucily as he turned to go.

Clay was already busy with the door.

CHAPTER XIV

STARRING AS A SECOND-STORY MAN

Darkness engulfed Clay as he closed the trapdoor overhead. His exploring feet found each tread of the ladder with the utmost caution. Near the foot of it he stopped to listen for any sound that might serve to guide him. None came. The passage was as noiseless as it was dark.

Again he had that sense of cold finger-tips making a keyboard of his spine. An impulse rose in him to clamber up the ladder to the safety of the open-skyed roof. He was a son of the wide outdoors. It went against his gorge to be blotted out of life in this trap like some foul rodent.

But he trod down the panic and set his will to carry on. He crept forward along the passage. Every step or two he stopped to listen, nerves keyed to an acute tension.

A flight of stairs brought him to what he knew must be the second floor. To him there floated a murmur of sounds. They came vague and indistinct through a closed door. The room of the voices was on the left-hand side of the corridor.

He soft-footed it closer, reached the door, and dropped noiselessly to a knee. A key was in the lock on the outside. With infinite precaution against rattling he turned it, slid it out, and dropped it in his coat pocket. His eye fastened to the opening.

Three men were sitting round a table. They were making a bluff at playing cards, but their attention was focused on a door that evidently led into another room. Two automatic revolvers were on the table close to the hands of their owners. A blackjack lay in front of the third man. Clay recognized him as Gorilla Dave. The other two were strangers to him.

They were waiting. Sometimes they talked in low voices. For the most part they were silent, their eyes on the door of the trap that had been baited for a man Clay knew and was much interested in. Something evil in the watchfulness of the three chilled momentarily his veins. These fellows were the gunmen of New York he had read about--paid assassins whose business it was to frame innocent men for the penitentiary or kill them in cold blood. They were of the underworld, without conscience and without honor. As he looked at them through the keyhole, the watcher was reminded by their restless patience of mountain wolves lying in wait for their kill. Gorilla Dave sat stolidly in his chair, but the other two got up from time to time and paced the room silently, always with an eye to the door of the other room.

Then things began to happen. A soft step sounded in the corridor behind the man at the keyhole. He had not time to crawl away nor even to rise before a man stumbled against him.

Clay had one big advantage over his opponent. He had been given an instant of warning. His right arm went up around the neck of his foe and tightened there. His left hand turned the doorknob. Next moment the two men crashed into the room together, the Westerner rising to his feet as they came, with the body of the other lying across his back from hip to shoulder.

Gorilla Dave leaped to his feet. The other two gunmen, caught at disadvantage a few feet from the table, dived for their automatics. They were too late. Clay swung his body downward from the waist with a quick, strong jerk. The man on his back shot heels over head as though he had been hurled from a catapult, crashed face up on the table, and dragged it over with him in his forward plunge to the wall.

Before any one else could move or speak, Lindsay's gun was out.

"Easy now." His voice was a gentle drawl that carried a menace. "Lemme be boss of the rodeo a while. No, Gorilla, I wouldn't play with that club if I was you. I'm sure hell-a-mile on this gun stuff. Drop it!" The last two words came sharp and crisp, for the big thug had telegraphed an unintentional warning of his purpose to dive at the man behind the thirty-eight.

Gorilla Dave was thick-headed, but he was open to persuasion. Eyes hard as diamonds bored into his, searched him, dominated him. The barrel of the revolver did not waver a hair-breadth. His fingers opened and the blackjack dropped from his hand to the floor.

"For the love o' Mike, who is this guy?" demanded one of the other men.

"I'm the fifth member of our little party," explained Clay.

"Wot t'ell do youse mean? And what's the big idea in most killin' the chief?"

The man who had been flung across the table turned over and groaned. Clay would have known that face among a thousand. It belonged to Jerry Durand.

"I came in at the wrong door and without announcin' myself," said the cattleman, almost lazily, the unhurried indolence of his manner not shaken. "You see I wanted to be on time so as not to keep you waitin'. I'm Clay Lindsay."

The more talkative of the gunmen from the East Side flashed one look at the two automatics lying on the floor beside the overturned table. They might as well have been in Brazil for all the good they were to him.

"For the love o' Mike," he repeated again helplessly. "You're the--the--"

"--the hick that was to have been framed for house-breaking. Yes, I'm him," admitted Clay idiomatically. "How long had you figured I was to get on the Island? Or was it yore intention to stop my clock for good?"

"Say, how did youse get into de house?" demanded big Dave.

"Move over to the other side of the room, Gorilla, and join yore two friends," suggested the master of ceremonies. "And don't make any mistake. If you do you won't have time to be sorry for it. I'll ce'tainly shoot to kill."

The big-shouldered thug shuffled over. Clay stepped sideways, watching the three gunmen every foot of the way, kicked the automatics into the open, and took possession of them. He felt safer with the revolvers in his coat pocket, for they had been within reach of Durand, and that member of the party was showing signs of a return to active interest in the proceedings.

"When I get you right I'll croak you. By God, I will," swore the gang leader savagely, nursing his battered head. "No big stiff from the bushes can run anything over on me."

"I believe you," retorted Clay easily. "That is, I believe you're tellin' me yore intentions straight. There's no news in that to write home about. But you'd better make that if instead of when. This is three cracks you've had at me and I'm still a right healthy rube."

"Don't bank on fool luck any more. I'll get you sure," cried Durand sourly.

The gorge of the Arizonan rose. "Mebbeso. You're a dirty dog, Jerry Durand. From the beginning you were a rotten fighter--in the ring and out of it. You and yore strong-arm men! Do you think I'm afraid of you because you surround yoreself with dips and yeggmen and hop-nuts, all scum of the gutter and filth of the earth? Where I come from men fight clean and out in the open. They'd stomp you out like a rattlesnake."

Clay moved back to the door and looked around from one to another, a scorching contempt in his eyes. "Rats--that's what you are, vermin that feed on offal. You haven't got an honest fight in you. All you can do is skulk behind cover to take a man when he ain't lookin'."

He whipped open the door, stepped out, closed it, and took the key from his pocket. A moment, and he had turned the lock.

From within there came a rush that shook the panels. Clay was already busy searching for Kitty. He tore open door after door, calling her loudly by name. Even in the darkness he could see that the rooms were empty of furniture.

There was a crash of splintering panels, the sound of a bursting lock. Almost as though it were an echo of it came a heavy pounding upon the street door. Clay guessed that the thirty minutes were up and that the Runt was bringing the police. He dived back into one of the empty rooms just in time to miss a rush of men pouring along the passage to the stairs.

Cut off from the street, Clay took to the roof again. It would not do for him to be caught in the house by the police. He climbed the ladder, pushed his way through the trapdoor opening, and breathed deeply of the night air.

But he had no time to lose. Already he could hear the trampling of feet up the stairs to the second story.

Lightly he vaulted the wall and came to the roof door leading down to number 123. He found it latched.

The eaves of the roof projected so far that he could not from there get a hold on the window casings below. He made a vain circuit of the roof, then passed to the next house.

Again he was out of luck. The tenants had made safe the entrance against prowlers of the night. He knew that at any moment now the police might appear in pursuit of him. There was no time to lose.

He crossed to the last house in the block--and found himself barred out. As he rose from his knees he heard the voices of men clambering through the scuttle to the roof. At the same time he saw that which brought him to instant action. It was a rope clothes-line which ran from post to post, angling from one corner of the building to another and back to the opposite one.

No man in Manhattan's millions knew the value of a rope or could handle one more expertly than this cattleman. His knife was open before he had reached the nearest post. One strong slash of the blade severed it. In six long strides he was at the second post unwinding the line. He used his knife a second time at the third post.

Through the darkness he could see the dim forms of men stopping to examine the scuttle. Then voices came dear to him in the still night.

"If he reached the roof we've got him."

"Unless he found an open trap," a second answered.

With deft motions Clay worked swiftly. He was fastening the rope to the chimney of the house. Every instant he expected to hear a voice raised in excited discovery of him crouched in the shadows. But his fingers were as sure and as steady as though he had minutes before him instead of seconds.

"There's the guy--over by the chimney."

Clay threw the slack of the line from the roof. He had no time to test the strength of the rope nor its length. As the police rushed him he slid over the edge and began to lower himself hand under hand.

Would they cut the rope? Or would they take pot shots at him. He would know soon enough.

The wide eaves protected him. A man would have to hang out from the wall above the ledge to see him.

Clay's eyes were on the gutter above while he jerked his way down a foot at a time. A face and part of a body swung out into sight.

"We've got yuh. Come back or I'll shoot," a voice called down.

A revolver showed against the black sky.

The man from Arizona did not answer and did not stop. He knew that shooting from above is an art that few men have acquired.

A bullet sang past his ear just as he swung in and crouched on the window-sill. Another one hit the bricks close to his head.

The firing stopped. A pair of uniformed legs appeared dangling from the eaves. A body and a head followed these. They began to descend jerkily.

Clay took a turn at the gun-play. He fired his revolver into the air. The spasmodic jerking of the blue legs abruptly ceased.

"He's got a gun!" the man in the air called up to those above.

The fact was obvious. It could not be denied.

"Yuh'd better give up quietly. We're bound to get yuh," an officer shouted from the roof by way of parley.

The cattleman did not answer except by the smashing of glass. He had forced his way into two houses within the past hour. He was now busy breaking into a third. The window had not yielded to pressure. Therefore he was knocking out the glass with the butt of his revolver.

He crawled through the opening just as some one sat up in bed with a frightened exclamation.

"Who--is--s--s--s it?" a masculine voice asked, teeth chattering.

Clay had no time to gratify idle curiosity. He ran through the room, reached the head of the stairs, and went down on the banister to the first floor. He fled back to the rear of the house and stole out by the kitchen door.

The darkness of the alley swallowed him, but he could still hear the shouts of the men on thereof and answering ones from new arrivals below.

Five minutes later he was on board a street car. He was not at all particular as to its destination. He wanted to be anywhere but here. This neighborhood was getting entirely too active for him.

CHAPTER XV

THE GANGMAN SEES RED

Exactly thirty minutes after Clay had left him to break into the house, Johnnie lifted his voice in a loud wail for the police. He had read somewhere that one can never find an officer when he is wanted, but the Bull-of-Bashan roar of the cowpuncher brought them running from all directions.

Out of the confused explanations of the range-rider the first policeman to reach him got two lucid statements.

"They're white-slavin' a straight girl. This busher says his pal went in to rescue her half an hour ago and hasn't showed up since," he told his mates.

With Johnnie bringing up the rear they made a noisy attack on the front door of Number 121. Almost immediately it was opened from the inside. Four men had come down the stairs in a headlong rush to cut off the escape of one who had outwitted and taunted them.

Those who wanted to get in and those who wanted to get out all tried to talk at once, but as soon as the police recognized Jerry Durand they gave him the floor.

"We're after a flat-worker," explained the ex-pugilist. "He must be tryin' for a roof getaway." He turned and led the joint forces back up the stairs.

Thugs and officers surged up after him, carrying with them in their rush the Runt. He presently found himself on the roof with those engaged in a man-hunt for his friend. When Clay shattered the window and disappeared inside after his escape from the roof, Johnnie gave a deep sigh of relief. This gun-play got on his nerves, since Lindsay was the target of it.

The bandy-legged range-rider was still trailing along with the party ten minutes later when its scattered members drew together in tacit admission that the hunted man had escaped.

"Did youse get a look at his mug, Mr. Durand?" asked one of the officers. "It's likely we've got it down at headquarters in the gall'ry."

Durand had already made up his mind on that point.

"We didn't see his face in the light, Pete. No, I wouldn't know him again."

His plug-uglies took their cue from him. So did the officers. If Durand did not want a pinch there would, of course, not be one.

The gang leader was in a vile temper. If this story reached the newspapers all New York would be laughing at him. He could appeal to the police, have Clay Lindsay arrested, and get him sent up for a term on the charge of burglary. But he could not do it without the whole tale coming out. One thing Jerry Durand could not stand was ridicule. His vanity was one of his outstanding qualities, and he did not want it widely known that the boob he had intended to trap had turned the tables on him, manhandled him, jeered at him, and locked him in a room with his three henchmen.

Johnnie Green chose this malapropos moment for reminding the officers of the reason for the coming to the house.

"What about the young lady?" he asked solicitously.

Durand wheeled on him, looked him over with an insolent, malevolent eye, and jerked a thumb in his direction. "Who is this guy?"

"He's the fellow tipped us off his pal was inside," answered one of the patrolmen. He spoke in a whisper close to the ear of Jerry. "Likely he knows more than he lets on. Shall I make a pinch?"

The eyes of the gang leader narrowed. "So he's a friend of this second-story bird, is he?"

"Y'betcha!" chirped up Johnnie, "and I'm plumb tickled to take his dust too. Now about this yere young lady--"

Jerry caught him hard on the side of the jaw with a short arm jolt. The range-rider hit the pavement hard. Slowly he got to his feet nursing his cheek.

"What yuh do that for, doggone it?" he demanded resentfully. "Me, I wasn't lookin' for no trouble. Me, I--"

Durand leaped at him across the sidewalk. His strong fingers closed on the throat of the bow-legged puncher. He shook him as a lion does his kill. The rage of the pugilist found a vent in punishing the friend of the man he hated. Johnnie grew black in the face. His knees sagged and his lips foamed.

The officers pried Jerry loose from his victim with the greatest difficulty. He tried furiously to get at him, lunging from the men who were holding his arms.

The puncher sank helplessly against the wall.

"He's got all he can carry, Mr. Durand," one of the bluecoats said soothingly. "You don't wantta croak the little guy."

The ex-prize-fighter returned to sanity. "Says I'm white-slavin' a girl, does he? I'll learn him to lie about me," he growled.

Johnnie strangled and sputtered, fighting for breath to relieve his tortured lungs.

"Gimme the word, an' I'll run him in for a drunk," the policeman suggested out of the corner of a whispering mouth.

Jerry shook his head. "Nope. Let him go, Pete."

The policeman walked up to the Runt and caught him roughly by the arm. "Move along outa here. I'd ought to pinch you, but I'm not gonna do it this time. See? You beat it!"

Durand turned to one of his followers. "Tail that fellow. Find out where he's stayin' and report."

Helplessly Johnnie went staggering down the street. He did not understand why he had been treated so. His outraged soul protested at such injustice, but the instinct of self-preservation carried him out of the danger zone without argument about it. Even as he wobbled away he was looking with unwavering faith to his friend to right his wrongs. Clay would fix this fellow Durand for what he had done to him. Before Clay got through with him the bully would wish he had never lifted a hand to him.

CHAPTER XVI

A FACE IN THE NIGHT

Clay did his best under the handicap of a lack of entente between him and the authorities to search New York for Kitty. He used the personal columns of the newspapers. He got in touch with taxicab drivers, ticket-sellers, postmen, and station guards. So far as possible he even employed the police through the medium of Johnnie. The East Side water-front and the cheap lodging-houses of that part of the city he combed with especial care. All the time he knew that in such a maze as Manhattan it would be a miracle if he found her.

But miracles are made possible by miracle-workers. The Westerner was a sixty-horse-power dynamo of energy. He felt responsible for Kitty and he gave himself with single-minded devotion to the job of discovering her.

His rides and walks with Beatrice were rare events now because he was so keen on the business of looking for his Colorado protégée. He gave them up reluctantly. Every time they went out together into the open Miss Whitford became more discontented with the hothouse existence she was living. He felt there was just a chance that if he were constant enough, he might sweep her off her feet into that deeper current of life that lay beyond the social shallows. But he had to sacrifice this chance. He was not going to let Kitty's young soul be ship-wrecked if he could help it, and he had an intuition that she was not wise enough nor strong enough to keep off the rocks alone.

A part of his distress lay in the coolness of his imperious young friend who lived on the Drive. Beatrice resented his divided allegiance, though her own was very much in that condition. Clay and she had from the first been good comrades. No man had ever so deeply responded to her need of friendship. All sorts of things he understood without explanations. A day with him was one that brought the deep content of happiness. That, no doubt, she explained to herself, was because he was such a contrast to the men of cramped lives she knew. He was a splendid tonic, but of course one did not take tonics except occasionally.

Yet though Beatrice intended to remain heart-whole, she wanted to be the one woman in Clay's life until she released him. It hurt her vanity, and perhaps something deeper than her vanity, that such a girl as she conceived Kitty Mason to be should have first claim on the time she had come to consider her own. She made it plain to him, in the wordless way expert young women have at command, that she did not mean to share with him such odd hours as he chose to ask for. He had to come when she wanted him or not at all. Without the name of Kitty having been mentioned, he was given to understand that if he wished to remain in the good graces of Beatrice Whitford he must put the cigarette girl out of his mind.

For all his good nature Clay was the last man in the world to accept dictation of this sort. He would go through with anything he started, and especially where it was a plain call of duty. Beatrice might like it or not as she pleased. He would make his own decisions as to his conduct.

He did.

Bee was furious at him. She told herself that there was either a weak streak in him or a low one, else he would not be so obsessed by the disappearance of this flirtatious little fool who had tried to entrap him. But she did not believe it. A glance at this brown-faced man was sufficient evidence that he trod with dynamic force the way of the strong. A look into his clear eyes was certificate enough of his decency.

When Clay met Kitty at last it was quite by chance. As it happened Beatrice was present at the time.

He had been giving a box party at the Empire. The gay little group was gathered under the awning outside the foyer while the limousine that was to take them to Shanley's for supper was being called. Colin Whitford, looking out into the rain that pelted down, uttered an exclamatory "By Jove!"

Clay turned to him inquiringly.

"A woman was looking out of that doorway at us," he said. "If she's not in deep water I'm a bad guesser. I thought for a moment she knew me or some one of us. She started to reach out her hands and then shrank back."

"Young or old?" asked the cattleman.

"Young--a girl."

"Which door?"

"The third."

"Excuse me." The host was off in an instant, almost on the run.

But the woman had gone, swallowed in the semi-darkness of a side street. Clay followed.

Beatrice turned to her father, eyebrows lifted. There was a moment's awkward silence.

"Mr. Lindsay will be back presently," Whitford said. "We'll get in and wait for him out of the way a little farther up the street."

When Clay rejoined them he was without his overcoat. He stood in the heavy rain beside the car, a figure of supple grace even in his evening clothes, and talked in a low voice with Beatrice's father. The mining man nodded agreement and Lindsay turned to the others.

"I'm called away," he explained aloud. "Mr. Whitford has kindly promised to play host in my place. I'm right sorry to leave, but it's urgent."

His grave smile asked Beatrice to be charitable in her findings. The eyes she gave him were coldly hostile. She, too, had caught a glimpse of the haggard face in the shadows and she hardened her will against him. The bottom of his heart went out as he turned away. He knew Beatrice did not and would not understand.

The girl was waiting where Clay had left her, crouched against a basement milliner's door under the shelter of the steps. She was wearing the overcoat he had flung around her. In its pallid despair her face was pitiable.

A waterproofed policeman glanced suspiciously at them as he sloshed along the sidewalk in the splashing rain.

"I--I've looked for you everywhere," moaned the girl. "It's been--awful."

"I know, but it's goin' to be all right now, Kitty," he comforted. "You're goin' home with me to-night. To-morrow we'll talk it all over."

He tucked an arm under hers and led her along the wet, shining street to a taxicab. She crouched in a corner of the cab, her body shaken with sobs.

The young man moved closer and put a strong arm around her shoulders. "Don't you worry, Kitty. Yore big brother is on the job now."

"I--I wanted to--to kill myself," she faltered. "I tried to--in the river--and--it was so black--I couldn't." The girl shivered with cold. She had been exposed to the night rain for hours without a coat.

He knew her story now in its essentials as well as he did later when she wept it out to him in confession. And because she was who she was, born to lean on a stronger will, he acquitted her of blame.

They swung into Broadway and passed taxis and limousines filled with gay parties just out of the theaters. Young women in rich furs, wrapped from the cruelty of life by the caste system in which wealth had encased them, exchanged badinage with sleek, well-dressed men. A ripple of care-free laughter floated to him across the gulf that separated this girl from them. By the cluster lights of Broadway he could see how cruelly life had mauled her soft youth. The bloom of her was gone, all the brave pride and joy of girlhood. It would probably never wholly return.

He saw as in a vision the infinite procession of her hopeless sisters who had traveled the road from which he was rescuing her, saw them first as sweet and merry children bubbling with joy, and again, after the world had misused them for its pleasure, haggard and tawdry, with dragging steps trailing toward the oblivion that awaited them. He wondered if life must always be so terribly wasted, made a bruised and broken thing instead of the fine, brave adventure for which it was meant.

CHAPTER XVII

JOHNNIE MAKES A JOKE

As Kitty stepped from the cab she was trembling violently.

"Don't you be frightened, li'l' pardner. You've come home. There won't anybody hurt you here."

The soft drawl of Clay's voice carried inexpressible comfort. So too did the pressure of his strong hand on her arm. She knew not only that he was a man to trust, but that so far as could be he would take her troubles on his broad shoulders. Tears brimmed over her soft eyes.

The Arizonan ran her up to his floor in the automatic elevator.

"I've got a friend from home stayin' with me. He's the best-hearted fellow you ever saw. You'll sure like him," he told her without stress as he fitted his key to the lock.

He felt her shrink beneath his coat, but it was too late to draw back now. In another moment Lindsay was introducing her casually to the embarrassed and astonished joint proprietor of the apartment.

The Runt was coatless and in his stockinged-feet. He had been playing a doleful ditty on a mouth-organ. Caught so unexpectedly, he blushed a beautiful brick red to his neck.

Johnnie ducked his head and scraped the carpet with his foot in an attempt at a bow. "Glad to meet up with you-all, Miss. Hope you're feelin' tol'able."

Clay slipped the coat from her shoulders and saw that the girl was wet to the skin.

"Heat some water, Johnnie, and make a good stiff toddy. Miss Kitty has been out in the rain."

He lit the gas-log and from his bedroom brought towels, a bathrobe, pajamas, a sweater, and woolen slippers. On a lounge before the fire he dumped the clothes he had gathered. He drew up the easiest armchair in the room.

"I'm goin' to the kitchen to jack up Johnnie so he won't lay down on his job," he told her cheerily. "You take yore time and get into these dry clothes. We'll not disturb you till you knock. After that we'll feed you some chuck. You want to brag on Johnnie's cookin'. He thinks he's it when it comes to monkeyin' 'round a stove."

When her timid knock came her host brought in a steaming cup. "You drink this. It'll warm you good."

"What is it?" she asked shyly.

"Medicine," he smiled. "Doctor's orders."

While she sipped the toddy Johnnie brought from the kitchen a tray upon which were tea, fried potatoes, ham, eggs, and buttered toast.

The girl ate ravenously. It was an easy guess that she had not before tasted food that day.

Clay kept up a flow of talk, mostly about Johnnie's culinary triumphs. Meanwhile he made up a bed on the couch.

Once she looked up at him, her throat swollen with emotion. "You're good."

"Sho! We been needin' a li'l' sister to brace up our manners for us. It's lucky for us I found you. Now I expect you're tired and sleepy. We fixed up yore bed in here because it's warmer. You'll be able to make out with it all right. The springs are good." Clay left her with a cheerful smile. "Turn out the light before you go to bed, Miss Colorado. Sleep tight. And don't you worry. You're back with old home folks again now, you know."

They heard her moving about for a time. Presently came silence. Tired out from tramping the streets with out food and drowsy from the toddy she had taken, Kitty fell into deep sleep undisturbed by troubled dreams.

The cattleman knew he had found her in the nick of time. She had told him that she had no money, no room in which to sleep, no prospect of work. Everything she had except the clothes on her back had been pawned to buy food and lodgings. But she was young and resilient. When she got back home to the country where she belonged, time would obliterate from her mind the experiences of which she had been the victim.

It was past midday when Kitty woke. She heard a tuneless voice in the kitchen lifted up in a doleful song:

"There's hard times on old Bitter Creek That never can be beat. It was root hog or die Under every wagon sheet. We cleared up all the Indians, Drank all the alkali, And it's whack the cattle on, boys-- Root hog or die."

Kitty found her clothes dry. After she dressed she opened the door that led to the kitchen. Johnnie was near the end of another stanza of his sad song:

"Oh, I'm goin' home Bull-whackin' for to spurn; I ain't got a nickel, And I don't give a dern. 'T is when I meet a pretty girl, You bet I will or try, I'll make her my little wife-- Root hog--"

He broke off embarrassed. "Did I wake you-all, ma'am, with my fool singin'? I'm right sorry if I did."

"You didn't." Kitty, clinging shyly to the side of the doorway, tried to gain confidence from his unease. "I was already awake. Is it a range song you were singing?"

"Yes'm. Cattle range, not kitchen range."

A wan little smile greeted his joke. The effect on Johnnie himself was more pronounced. It gave him confidence in his ability to meet the situation. He had not known before that he was a wit and the discovery of it tickled his self-esteem.

"'Course we didn't really clean up no Indians nor drink all the alkali. Tha's jes' in the song, as you might say." He began to bustle about in preparation for her breakfast.

"Please don't trouble. I'll eat what you've got cooked," she begged.

"It's no trouble, ma'am. If the's a thing on earth I enjoy doin' it's sure cookin'. Do you like yore aigs sunny side up or turned?"

"Either way. Whichever you like, Mr. Green."

"You're eatin' them," Johnnie reminded her with a grin.

"On one side, then, please. Mr. Lindsay says you're a fine cook."

"Sho! I'm no great shakes. Clay he jes' brags on me."

"Lemme eat here in the kitchen. Then you won't have to set the table in the other room," she said.

The puncher's instinct was to make a spread on the dining-table for her, but it came to him with a flash of insight that it would be wise to let her eat in the kitchen. She would feel more as though she belonged and was not a guest of an hour.

While she ate he waited on her solicitously. Inside, he was a river of tears for her, but with it went a good deal of awe. Even now, wan-eyed and hollow-cheeked, she was attractive. In Johnnie's lonesome life he had never before felt so close to a girl as he did to this one. Moreover, for the first time he felt master of the situation. It was his business to put their guest at her ease. That was what Clay had told him to do before he left.

"You're the doctor, ma'am. You'll eat where you say."

"I--I don't like to be so much bother to you," she said again. "Maybe I can go away this afternoon."

"No, ma'am, we won't have that a-tall," broke in the range-rider in alarm. "We're plumb tickled to have you here. Clay he feels thataway too."

"I could keep house for you while I stay," she suggested timidly. "I know how to cook--and the place does need cleaning."

"Sure it does. Say, wha's the matter with you bein' Clay's sister, jes' got in last night on the train? Tha's the story we'll put up to the landlord if you'll gimme the word."

"I never had a brother, but if I'd had one I'd 'a' wanted him to be like Mr. Lindsay," she told his friend.

"Say, ain't he a go-getter?" cried Johnnie eagerly. "Clay's sure one straight-up son-of-a-gun. You'd ought to 'a' seen how he busted New York open to find you."

"Did he?"

Johnnie told the story of the search with special emphasis on the night Clay broke into three houses in answer to her advertisement.

"I never wrote it. I never thought of that. It must have been--"

"It was that scalawag Durand, y'betcha. I ain't still wearin' my pinfeathers none. Tha's who it was. I'm not liable to forget him. He knocked me hell-west and silly whilst I wasn't lookin'. He was sore because Clay had fixed his clock proper."

"So you've fought on account of me too. I'm sorry." There was a little break in her voice. "I s'pose you hate me for--for bein' the way I am. I know I hate myself." She choked on the food she was eating.

Johnnie, much distressed, put down the coffee-pot and fluttered near. "Don't you take on, ma'am. I wisht I could tell you how pleased we-all are to he'p you. I hope you'll stay with us right along. I sure do. You'd be right welcome," he concluded bashfully.

"I've got no place to go, except back home--and I've got no folks there but a second cousin. She doesn't want me. I don't know what to do. If I had a woman friend--some one to tell me what was best--"

Johnnie slapped his hand on his knee, struck by a sudden inspiration. "Say! Y'betcha, by jollies, I've got 'er--the very one! You're damn--you're sure whistlin'. We got a lady friend, Clay and me, the finest little pilgrim in New York. She's sure there when the gong strikes. You'd love her. I'll fix it for you--right away. I got to go to her house this afternoon an' do some chores. I'll bet she comes right over to see you."

Kitty was doubtful. She did not want to take any strange young women into her confidence until she had seen them. More than one good Pharisee had burned her face with a look of scornful contempt in the past weeks.

"Maybe we better wait and speak to Mr. Lindsay about it," she said.

"No, ma'am, you don't know Miss Beatrice. She's the best friend." He passed her the eggs and a confidence at the same time. "Why, I shouldn't wonder but what she and Clay might get married one o' these days. He thinks a lot of her."

"Oh." Kitty knew just a little more of human nature than the puncher. "Then I wouldn't tell her about me if I was you. She wouldn't like my bein' here."

"Sho! You don't know Miss Beatrice. She grades 'way up. I'll bet she likes you fine."

When Johnnie left to go to work that afternoon he took with him a resolution to lay the whole case before Beatrice Whitford. She would fix things all right. No need for anybody to worry after she took a hand and began to run things. If there was one person on earth Johnnie could bank on without fail it was his little boss.

CHAPTER XVIII

BEATRICE GIVES AN OPTION

It was not until Johnnie had laid the case before Miss Whitford and restated it under the impression that she could not have understood that his confidence ebbed. Even then he felt that he must have bungled it in the telling and began to marshal his facts a third time. He had expected an eager interest, a quick enthusiasm. Instead, he found in his young mistress a spirit beyond his understanding. Her manner had a touch of cool disdain, almost of contempt, while she listened to his tale. This was not at all in the picture he had planned.

She asked no questions and made no comments. What he had to tell met with chill silence. Johnnie's guileless narrative had made clear to her that Clay had brought Kitty home about midnight, had mixed a drink for her, and had given her his own clothes to replace her wet ones. Somehow the cattleman's robe, pajamas, and bedroom slippers obtruded unduly from his friend's story. Even the Runt felt this. He began to perceive himself a helpless medium of wrong impressions. When he tried to explain he made matters worse.

"I suppose you know that when the manager of your apartment house finds out she's there he'll send her packing." So Beatrice summed up when she spoke at last.

"No, ma'am, I reckon not. You see we done told him she is Clay's sister jes' got in from the West," the puncher explained.

"Oh, I see." The girl's lip curled and her clean-cut chin lifted a trifle. "You don't seem to have overlooked anything. No, I don't think I care to have anything to do with your arrangements."

"She's an awful pretty cute little thing," the puncher added, hoping to modify her judgment.

"Indeed!"

Beatrice turned and walked swiftly into the house. A pulse of anger was beating in her soft throat. She felt a sense of outrage. To Clay Lindsay she had given herself generously in spirit. She had risked something in introducing him to her friends. They might have laughed at him for his slight social lapses. They might have rejected him for his lack of background. They had done neither. He was so genuinely a man that he had won his way instantly. In this City of Bluff, as O. Henry dubs New York, his simplicity had rung true as steel. Still, she had taken a chance and felt she deserved some recognition of it on his part. This he had never given. He had based their friendship on equality simply. She liked it in him, though her vanity had resented it a little. But this was different. She was still young enough, still so little a woman of the world, that she set a rigid standard which she expected her friends to meet. She had believed in Clay, and now he was failing her.

Pacing up and down her room, little fists clenched, her soul in passionate turmoil, Beatrice went over it all again as she had done through a sleepless night. She had given him so much, and he had seemed to give her even more. Hours filled with a keen-edged delight jumped to her memory, hours that had carried her away from the falseness of social fribble to clean, wind-swept, open spaces of the mind. And after this--after he had tacitly recognized her claim on him--he had insulted her before her friends by deserting his guests to go off with this hussy he had been spending weeks to search for.

Now his little henchman had the imbecility to ask her help while this girl was living at Clay Lindsay's apartment, passing herself off as his sister, and proposing to stay there ostensibly as the housekeeper. She felt degraded, humiliated, she told herself. Not for a moment did she admit, perhaps she did not know, that an insane jealousy was flooding her being, that her indignation was based on personal as well as moral grounds.

Something primitive stirred in her--a flare of feminine ferocity. She felt hot to the touch, an active volcano ready for eruption. If only she could get a chance to strike back in a way that would hurt, to wound him as deeply as he had her!

Pat to her desire came the opportunity. Clay's card was brought in to her by Jenkins.

"Tell Mr. Lindsay I'll see him in a few minutes," she told the man.

The few minutes stretched to a long quarter of an hour before she descended. To the outward eye at least Miss Whitford looked a woman of the world, sheathed in a plate armor of conventionality. As soon as his eyes fell on her Clay knew that this pale, slim girl in the close-fitting gown was a stranger to him. Her eyes, star-bright and burning like live coals, warned him that the friend whose youth had run out so eagerly to meet his was hidden deep in her to-day.

"I reckon I owe you and Mr. Whitford an apology," he said. "No need to tell you how I happened to leave last night. I expect you know."

"I know why you left--yes."

"I'd like to explain it to you so you'll understand."

"Why take the trouble? I think I understand." She spoke in an even, schooled voice that set him at a distance.

"Still, I want you to know how I feel."

"Is that important? I see what you do. That is enough. Your friend Mr. Green has carefully brought me the details I didn't know."

Clay flushed. Her clear voice carried an edge of scorn. "You mustn't judge by appearances. I know you wouldn't be unfair. I had to take her home and look after her."

"I don't quite see why--unless, of course, you wanted to," the girl answered, tapping the arm of her chair with impatient finger-tips, eyes on the clock. "But of course it isn't necessary I should see."

Her cavalier treatment of him did not affect the gentle imperturbability of the Westerner.

"Because I'm a white man, because she's a little girl who came from my country and can't hold her own here, because she was sick and chilled and starving. Do you see now?"

"No, but it doesn't matter. I'm not the keeper of your conscience, Mr. Lindsay," she countered, with hard lightness.

"You're judging me just the same."

Her eyes attacked him. "Am I?"

"Yes." The level gaze of the man met hers calmly. "What have I done that you don't like?"

She lost some of her debonair insolence that expressed itself in indifference.

"I'd ask that if I were you," she cried scornfully. "Can you tell me that this--friend of yours--is a good girl?"

"I think so. She's been up against it. Whatever she may have done she's been forced to do."

"Excuses," she murmured.

"If you'd ever known what it was to be starving--"

Her smoldering anger broke into a flame. "Good of you to compare me with her! That's the last straw!"

"I'm not comparing you. I'm merely saying that you can't judge her. How could you, when your life has been so different?"

"Thank Heaven for that."

"If you'd let me bring her here to see you--"

"No, thanks."

"You're unjust."

"You think so?"

"And unkind. That's not like the little friend I've come to--like so much."

"You're kind enough for two, Mr. Lindsay. She really doesn't need another friend so long as she has you," she retorted with a flash of contemptuous eyes. "In New York we're not used to being so kind to people of her sort."

Clay lifted a hand. "Stop right there, Miss Beatrice. You don't want to say anything you'll be sorry for."

"I'll say this," she cut back. "The men I know wouldn't invite a woman to their rooms at midnight and pass her off as their sister--and then expect people to know her. They would be kinder to themselves--and to their own reputations."

She was striking out savagely, relentlessly, in spite of the better judgment that whispered restraint. She wanted desperately to hurt him, as he had hurt her, even though she had to behave badly to do it.

"Will you tell me what else there was to do? Where could I have taken her at that time of night? Are reputable hotels open at midnight to lone women, wet and ragged, who come without baggage either alone or escorted by a man?"

"I'm not telling you what you ought to have done, Mr. Lindsay," she answered with a touch of hauteur. "But since you ask me--why couldn't you have given her money and let her find a place for herself?"

"Because that wouldn't have saved her."

"Oh, wouldn't it?" she retorted dryly.

He walked over to the fireplace and put an elbow on the corner of the mantel. The blood leaped in the veins of the girl as she looked at him, a man strong as tested steel, quiet and forceful, carrying his splendid body with the sinuous grace that comes only from perfectly synchronized muscles. At that moment she hated him because she could not put him in the wrong.

"Lemme tell you a story, Miss Beatrice," he said presently. "Mebbe it'll show you what I mean. I was runnin' cattle in the Galiuros five years ago and I got caught in a storm 'way up in the hills. When it rains in my part of Arizona, which ain't often, it sure does come down in sheets. The clay below the rubble on the slopes got slick as ice. My hawss, a young one, slipped and fell on me, clawed back to its feet, and bolted. Well, there I was with my laig busted, forty miles from even a whistlin' post in the desert, gettin' wetter and colder every blessed minute. Heaps of times in my life I've felt more comfortable than I did right then. I was hogtied to that shale ledge with my broken ankle, as you might say. And the weather and my game laig and things generally kept gettin' no better right along hour after hour.

"There wasn't a chance in a million that anybody would hear, but I kept firin' off my forty-five on the off hope. And just before night a girl on a pinto came down the side of that uncurried hill round a bend and got me. She took me to a cabin hidden in the bottom of a cañon and looked after me four days. Her father, a prospector, had gone into Tucson for supplies and we were alone there. She fed me, nursed me, and waited on me. We divided a one-room twelve-by-sixteen cabin. Understand, we were four days alone together before her dad came back, and all the time the sky was lettin' down a terrible lot of water. When her father showed up he grinned and said, 'Lucky for you Myrtle heard that six-gun of yore's pop!' He never thought one evil thing about either of us. He just accepted the situation as necessary. Now the question is, what ought she to have done? Left me to die on that hillside?"

"Of course not. That's different," protested Beatrice indignantly.

"I don't see it. What she did was more embarrassing for her than what I did for Kitty. At least it would have been mightily so if she hadn't used her good hawss sense and forgot that she was a lone young female and I was a man. That's what I did the other night. Just because there are seven or eight million human beings here the obligation to look out for Kitty was no less."

"New York isn't Arizona."

"You bet it ain't. We don't sit roostin' on a fence when folks need our help out there. We go to it."

"You can't do that sort of thing here. People talk."

"Sure, and hens cackle. Let 'em!"

"There are some things men don't understand," she told him with an acid little smile of superiority. "When a girl cries a little they think she's heartbroken. Very likely she's laughing at them up her sleeve. This girl's making a fool of you, if you want the straight truth."

"I don't think so."

His voice was so quietly confident it nettled her.

"I suppose, then, you think I'm ungenerous," she charged.

The deep-set gray-blue eyes looked at her steadily. There was a wise little smile in them.

"Is that what you think?" she charged.

"I think you'll be sorry when you think it over."

She was annoyed at her inability to shake him, at the steadfastness with which he held to his point of view.

"You're trying to put me in the wrong," she flamed. "Well, I won't have it. That's all. You may take your choice, Mr. Lindsay. Either send that girl away--give her up--have nothing to do with her, or--"

"Or--?"

"Or please don't come here to see me any more."

He waited, his eyes steadily on her. "Do you sure enough mean that, Miss Beatrice?"

Her heart sank. She knew she had gone too far, but she was too imperious to draw back now.

"Yes, that's just what I mean."

"I'm sorry. You're leavin' me no option. I'm not a yellow dog. Sometimes I'm 'most a man. I'm goin' to do what I think is right."

"Of course," she responded lightly. "If our ideas of what that is differ--"

"They do."

"It's because we've been brought up differently, I suppose." She achieved a stifled little yawn behind her hand.

"You've said it." He gave it to her straight from the shoulder. "All yore life you've been pampered. When you wanted a thing all you had to do was to reach out a hand for it. Folks were born to wait on you, by yore way of it. You're a spoiled kid. You keep these manicured lah-de-dah New York lads steppin'. Good enough. Be as high-heeled as you're a mind to. I'll step some too for you--when you smile at me right. But it's time to serve notice that in my country folks grow man-size. You ask me to climb up the side of a house to pick you a bit of ivy from under the eaves, and I reckon I'll take a whirl at it. But you ask me to turn my back on a friend, and I've got to say, 'Nothin' doin'.' And if you was just a few years younger I'd advise yore pa to put you in yore room and feed you bread and water for askin' it."

The angry color poured into her cheeks. She clenched her hands till the nails bit her palms. "I think you're the most hateful man I ever met," she cried passionately.

His easy smile taunted her. "Oh, no, you don't. You just think you think it. Now, I'm goin' to light a shuck. I'll be sayin' good-bye, Miss Beatrice, until you send for me."

"And that will be never," she flung at him.

He rose, bowed, and walked out of the room.

The street door closed behind him. Beatrice bit her lip to keep from breaking down before she reached her room.

CHAPTER XIX

A LADY WEARS A RING

Clarendon Bromfield got the shock of his life that evening. Beatrice proposed to him. It was at the Roberson dinner-dance, in the Palm Room, within sight but not within hearing of a dozen other guests.

She camouflaged what she was doing with occasional smiles and ripples of laughter intended to deceive the others present, but her heart was pounding sixty miles an hour.

Bromfield was not easily disconcerted. He prided himself on his aplomb. It was hard to get behind his cynical, decorous smile, the mask of a suave and worldly-wise Pharisee of the twentieth century. But for once he was amazed. The orchestra was playing a lively fox trot and he thought that perhaps he had not caught her meaning.

"I beg your pardon."

Miss Whitford laced her fingers round her knee and repeated. It was as though rose leaves had brushed the ivory of her cheeks and left a lovely stain there. Her eyes were hard and brilliant as diamonds.

"I was wondering when you are going to ask me again to marry you."

Since she had given a good deal of feminine diplomacy to the task of keeping him at a reasonable distance, Bromfield was naturally surprised.

"That's certainly a leading question," he parried, "What are you up to, Bee? Are you spoofing me?"

"I'm proposing to you," she explained, with a flirt of her hand and an engaging smile toward a man and a girl who had just come into the Palm Room. "I don't suppose I do it very well because I haven't had your experience. But I'm doing the best I can."

The New Yorker was a supple diplomatist. If Beatrice had chosen this place and hour to become engaged to him, he had no objection in the world. The endearments that usually marked such an event could wait. But he was not quite sure of his ground.

His lids narrowed a trifle. "Do you mean that you've changed your mind?"

"Have you?" she asked quickly with a sidelong slant of eyes at him.

"Do I act as though I had?"

"You don't help a fellow out much, Clary," she complained with a laugh not born of mirth. "I'll never propose to you again."

"I'm still very much at your service, Bee."

"Does that mean you still think you want me?"

"I don't think. I know it."

"Quite sure?"

"Quite sure."

"Then you're on," she told him with a little nod. "Thank you, kind sir."

Bromfield drew a deep breath. "By Jove, you're a good little sport, Bee. I think I'll get up and give three ringing cheers."

"I'd like to see you do that," she mocked.

"Of course you know I'm the happiest man in the world," he said with well-ordered composure.

"You're not exactly what I'd call a rapturous lover, Clary. But I'm not either for that matter, so I dare say we'll hit it off very well."

"I'm a good deal harder hit than I've ever let on, dear girl. And I'm going to make you very happy. That's a promise."

Nevertheless he watched her warily behind a manner of graceful eagerness. There had been a suggestion almost of bitterness in her voice. A suspicious little thought was filtering through the back of his mind. "What the deuce has got into the girl? Has she been quarreling with that bounder from Arizona?"

"I'm glad of that. I'll try to make you a good wife, even if--" She let the sentence die out unfinished.

Beneath her fan their hands met for a moment.

"May I tell everybody how happy I am?"

"If you like," she agreed.

"A short engagement," he ventured.

"Yes," she nodded. "And take me away for a while. I'm tired of New York, I think."

"I'll take you to a place where the paths are primrose-strewn and where nightingales sing," he promised rashly.

She smiled incredulously, a wise old little smile that had no right on her young face.

The report of the engagement spread at once. Bromfield took care of that. It ran like wildfire upstairs and down in the Whitford establishment. Naturally Johnnie, who was neither one of the servants nor a member of the family, was the last to hear of it. One day the word was carried to him, and a few hours later he read the confirmation of it on the hand of his young mistress.

The Runt had the clairvoyance of love. He knew that Clay was not now happy, though the cattleman gave no visible sign of it except a certain quiet withdrawal into himself. He ate as well as usual. His talk was cheerful. He joked the puncher and made Kitty feel at home by teasing her. In the evenings he shooed out the pair of them to a moving-picture show and once or twice went along. But he had a habit of falling into reflection, his deep-set eyes fixed on some object he could not see. Johnnie worried about him.

The evening of the day the Runt heard of the engagement he told his friend about it while Kitty was in the kitchen.

"Miss Beatrice she's wearing a new ring," he said by way of breaking the news gently.

Clay turned his head slowly and looked at Johnnie. He waited without speaking.

"I heerd it to-day from one of the help. Then I seen it on her finger," the little man went on reluctantly.

"Bromfield?" asked Clay.

"Yep. That's the story."

"The ring was on the left hand?"

"Yep."

Clay made no comment. His friend knew enough to say no more to him. Presently the cattleman went out. It was in the small hours of the morning when he returned. He had been tramping the streets to get the fever out of his blood.

But Johnnie discussed with Kitty at length this new development, just as he had discussed with her the fact that Clay no longer went to see the Whitfords. Kitty made a shrewd guess at the cause of division. She had already long since drawn from the cowpuncher the story of how Miss Beatrice had rejected his proposal that she take an interest in her.

"They must 'a' quarreled--likely about me being here. I'm sorry you told her."

"I don't reckon that's it." Johnnie scratched his head to facilitate the process of thinking. He wanted to remain loyal to all of his three friends. "Miss Beatrice she's got too good judgment for that."

"I ought to go away. I'm only bringing Mr. Lindsay trouble. If he just could hear from his friends in Arizona about that place he's trying to get me, I'd go right off."

He looked at her wistfully. The bow-legged range-rider was in no hurry to have her go. She was the first girl who had ever looked twice at him, the first one he had ever taken out or talked nonsense with or been ordered about by in the possessive fashion used by the modern young woman. Hence he was head over heels in love.

Kitty had begun to bloom again. Her cheeks were taking on their old rounded contour and occasionally dimples of delight flashed into them. She was a young person who lived in the present. Already the marks of her six-weeks misery among the submerged derelicts of the city was beginning to be wiped from her mind like the memory of a bad dream from which she had awakened. Love was a craving of her happy, sensuous nature.

She wanted to live in the sun, among smiles and laughter. She was like a kitten in her desire to be petted, made much of, and admired. Almost anybody who liked her could win a place in her affection.

Johnnie's case was not so hopeless as he imagined it.

CHAPTER XX

THE CAUTIOUS GUY SLIPS UP

Over their good-night smoke Clay gave a warning. "Keep yore eyes open, Johnnie. I was trailed to the house to-day by one of the fellows with Durand the night I called on him. It spells trouble. I reckon the 'Paches are going to leave the reservation again."

"Do you allow that skunk is aimin' to bushwhack you?"

"He's got some such notion. It's a cinch he ain't through with me yet."

"Say, Clay, ain't you gettin' homesick for the whinin' of a rawhide? Wha's the matter with us hittin' the dust for good old Tucson? I'd sure like to chase cowtails again."

"You can go, Johnnie. I'm not ready yet--quite. And when I go it won't be because of any rattlesnake in the grass."

"Whadyou mean I can go?" demanded his friend indignantly. "I don't aim to go and leave you here alone."

"Perhaps I'll be along, too, after a little. I'm about fed up on New York."

"Well, I'll stick around till you come. If this Jerry Durand's trying to get you I'll be right there followin' yore dust, old scout."

"There's more than one way to skin a cat. Mebbe the fellow means to strike at me through you or Kitty. I've a mind to put you both on a train for the B-in-a-Box Ranch."

"You can put the li'l' girl on a train. You can't put me on none less'n you go too," answered his shadow stoutly.

"Then see you don't get drawn into any quarrels while you and Kitty are away from the house. Stick to the lighted streets. I think I'll speak to her about not lettin' any strange man talk to her."

"She wouldn't talk to no strange man. She ain't that kind," snorted Johnnie.

"Keep yore shirt on," advised Clay, smiling. "What I mean is that she mustn't let herself believe the first story some one pulls on her. I think she had better not go out unless one of us is with her."

"Suits me."

"I thought that might suit you. Well, stick to main-traveled roads and don't take any chances. If you get into trouble, yell bloody murder poco pronto."

"And don't you take any, old-timer. That goes double. I'm the cautious guy in this outfit, not you."

Within twenty-four hours Clay heard some one pounding wildly on the outer door of the apartment and the voice of the cautious guy imploring haste.

"Lemme in, Clay. Hurry! Hurry!" he shouted.

Lindsay was at the door in four strides, but he did not need to see the stricken woe of his friend's face to guess what had occurred. For Johnnie and Kitty had started together to see a picture play two hours earlier.

"They done took Kitty--in an auto," he gasped. "Right before my eyes. Claimed a lady had fainted."

"Who took her?"

"I dunno. Some men. Turned the trick slick, me never liftin' a hand. Ain't I a heluva man?"

"Hold yore hawsses, son. Don't get excited. Begin at the beginnin' and tell me all about it," Clay told him quietly.

Already he was kicking off his house slippers and was reaching for his shoes.

"We was comin' home an' I took Kitty into that Red Star drug-store for to get her some ice cream. Well, right after that I heerd a man say how the lady had fainted--"

"What lady?"

"The lady in the machine."

"Were you in the drug-store?"

"No. We'd jes' come out when this here automobile drew up an' a man jumped out hollerin' the lady had fainted and would I bring a glass o' water from the drugstore. 'Course I got a jump on me and Kitty she moved up closeter to the car to he'p if she could. When I got back to the walk with the water the man was hoppin' into the car. It was already movin'. He' slammed the door shut and it went up the street like greased lightnin'."

"Was it a closed car?"

"Uh-huh."

"Can you describe it?"

"Why, I dunno--"

"Was it black, brown, white?"

"Kinda roan-colored, looked like."

"Get the number?"

"No, I--I plumb forgot to look."

Clay realized that Johnnie's powers of observation were not to be trusted.

"Sure the car wasn't tan-colored?" he asked to test him.

"It might 'a' been tan, come to think of it."

"You're right certain Kitty was in it?"

"I heerd her holler from inside. She called my name. I run after the car, but I couldn't catch it."

Clay slipped a revolver under his belt. He slid into a street coat. Then he got police headquarters on the wire and notified the office of what had taken place. He knew that the word would be flashed in all directions and that a cordon would be stretched across the city to intercept any suspicious car. Over the telephone the desk man at headquarters fired questions at him, most of which he was unable to answer. He promised fuller particulars as soon as possible.

It had come on to rain and beneath the street lights the asphalt shone like a river. The storm had driven most people indoors, but as the Westerner drew near the drugstore Clay saw with relief a taxicab draw up outside. Its driver, crouched in his seat behind the waterproof apron as far back as possible from the rain, promptly accepted Lindsay as a fare.

"Back in a minute," Clay told him, and passed into the drug-store.

The abduction was still being discussed. There was a disagreement as to whether the girl had stepped voluntarily into the car or been lifted in by the man outside. This struck the cattleman as unimportant. He pushed home questions as to identification. One of the men in the drug-store had caught a flash of the car number. He was sure the first four figures were 3967. The fifth he did not remember. The car was dark blue and it looked like a taxi. This information Clay got the owner of the car to forward to the police.

He did not wait to give it personally, but joined Johnnie in the cab. The address he gave to the driver with the waterproof hat pulled down over his head was that of a certain place of amusement known as Heath's Palace of Wonders. A young woman he wanted to consult was wont to sit behind a window there at the receipt of customs.

"It's worth a fiver extra if you make good time," Lindsay told the driver.

"You're on, boss," answered the man gruffly.

Johnnie, in a fever of anxiety, had trotted along beside his chief to the drug-store in silence. Now, as they rushed across the city, he put a timid question with a touch of bluff bravado he did not feel.

"We'll get her back sure, don't you reckon?"

"We'll do our best. Don't you worry. That won't buy us anything."

"No--no, I ain't a-worryin' none, but--Clay, I'd hate a heap for any harm to come to that li'l' girl." His voice quavered.

"Sho! We're right on their heels, Johnnie. So are the cops. We'll make a gather and get Kitty back all right."

Miss Annie Millikan's pert smile beamed through the window at Clay when he stepped up.

"Hello, Mr. Flat-Worker," she sang out. "How many?"

"I'm not going in to see the show to-night. I want to talk with you if you can get some one to take yore place here."

"Say, whatta you think I am--one o' these here Fift' Avenoo society dames? I'm earnin' my hot dogs and coffee right at this window. . . . Did you say two, lady?" She shoved two tickets through the window in exchange for dimes.

Clay explained that his business was serious. "I've got to see you alone--now," he added.

"If you gotta you gotta." The girl called an usher, who found a second usher to take her place.

Annie walked down the street a few steps beside Clay. The little puncher followed them dejectedly. His confidence had gone down to chill zero.

"What's the big idea in callin' me from me job in the rush hours?" asked Miss Millikan. "And who's this gumshoe guy from the bush league tailin' us? Breeze on and wise Annie if this here business is so important."

Clay told his story.

"Some of Jerry's strong-arm work," she commented.

"Must be. Can you help me?"

Annie looked straight at him, a humorous little quirk to her mouth. "Say, what're you askin' me to do--t'row down my steady?"

Which remark carries us back a few days to one sunny afternoon after Clay's midnight call when he had dropped round to see Miss Annie. They had walked over to Gramercy Park and sat down on a bench as they talked. Most men and all women trusted Clay. He had in him some quality of unspoken sympathy that drew confidences. Before she knew it Annie found herself telling him the story of her life.

Her father had been a riveter in a shipyard and had been killed while she was a baby. Later her mother had married unhappily a man who followed the night paths of the criminal underworld. Afterward he had done time at Sing Sing. Through him Annie had been brought for years into contact with the miserable types that make an illicit living by preying upon the unsuspecting in big cities. Always in the little Irish girl there had been a yearning for things clean and decent, but it is almost impossible for the poor in a great city to escape from the environment that presses upon them.

She was pretty, and inevitably she had lovers. One of these was "Slim" Jim Collins, a confidential follower of Jerry Durand. He was a crook, and she knew it. But some quality in him--his good looks, perhaps, or his gameness--fascinated her in spite of herself. She avoided him, even while she found herself pleased to go to Coney with an escort so well dressed and so glibly confident. Another of her admirers was a policeman, Tim Muldoon by name, the same one that had rescued Clay from the savagery of Durand outside the Sea Siren. Tim she liked. But for all his Irish ardor he was wary. He had never asked her to marry him. She thought she knew the reason. He did not want for a wife a woman who had been "Slim" Jim's girl. And Annie--because she was Irish too and perverse--held her head high and went with Collins openly before the eyes of the pained and jealous patrolman.

Clay had come to Annie Millikan now because of what she had told him about "Slim" Jim. This man was one of Durand's stand-bys. If there was any underground work to be done it was an odds-on chance that he would be in charge of it.

"I'm askin' you to stand by a poor girl that's in trouble," he said in answer to her question.

"You've soitainly got a nerve with you. I'll say you have. You want me to throw the hooks into Jim for a goil I never set me peepers on. I wisht I had your crust."

"You wouldn't let Durand spoil her life if you could stop it."

"Wouldn't I? Hmp! Soft-soap stuff. Well, what's my cue? Where do I come in on this rescue-the-be-eutiful heroine act?"

"When did you see 'Slim' Jim last?"

"I might 'a' seen him this afternoon an' I might not," she said cautiously, looking at him from under a broad hat-brim.

"When?"

"I didn't see him after I got behind that 'How Many?' sign. If I seen him must 'a' been before two."

"Did he give you any hint of what was in the air?"

"Say, what's the lay-out? Are you framin' Jim for up the river?"

"I'm tryin' to save Kitty."

"Because she's your goil. Where do I come in at? What's there in it for me to go rappin' me friend?" demanded Annie sharply.

"She's not my girl," explained Clay. Then, with that sure instinct that sometimes guided him, he added, "The young lady I--I'm in love with has just become engaged to another man."

Miss Millikan looked at him, frankly incredulous. "For the love o' Mike, where's her eyes? Don't she know a real man when she sees one? I'll say she don't."

"I'm standin' by Kitty because she's shy of friends. Any man would do that, wouldn't he? I came to you for help because--oh, because I know you're white clear through."

A flush beat into Annie's cheeks. She went off swiftly at a tangent. "Wouldn't it give a fellow a jar? This guy Jim Collins slips it to me confidential that he's off the crooked stuff. Nothin' doin' a-tall in gorilla work. He kids me that he's quit goin' out on the spud and porch-climbin' don't look good to him no more. A four-room flat, a little wifie, an' the straight road for 'Slim' Jim. I fall for it, though I'd orta be hep to men. An' he dates me up to-night for the chauffeurs' ball."

"But you didn't go?"

"No; he sidesteps it this aft with a fairy tale about drivin' a rich old dame out to Yonkers. All the time he' was figurin' on pinchin' this goil for Jerry. He's a rotten crook."

"Why don't you break with him, Annie? You're too good for that sort of thing. He'll spoil your life if you don't."

"Listens fine," the girl retorted bitterly. "I take Jim like some folks do booze or dope. He's a habit."

"Tim's worth a dozen of him."

"Sure he is, but Tim's got a notion I'm not on the level. I dunno as he needs to pull that stuff on me. I'm not strong for a harness bull anyhow." She laughed, a little off the key.

"What color is 'Slim' Jim's car?"

"A dirty blue. Why?"

"That was the car."

Annie lifted her hands in a little gesture of despair. "I'm dead sick of this game. What's there in it? I live straight and eat in a beanery. No lobster palaces in mine. Look at me cheap duds. And Tim gives me the over like I was a street cat. What sort of a chance did I ever have, with toughs and gunmen for me friends?"

"You've got yore chance now, Annie. Tim will hop off that fence he's on and light a-runnin' straight for you if he thinks you've ditched 'Slim' Jim."

She shook her head slowly. "No, I'll not t'row Jim down. I'm through with him. He lied to me right while he knew this was all framed up. But I wouldn't snitch on him, even if he'd told me anything. And he didn't peep about what he was up to."

"Forget Jim while you're thinkin' about this. You don't owe Jerry Durand anything, anyhow. Where would he have Kitty taken? You can give a guess."

She had made her decision before she spoke. "Gimme paper and a pencil."

On Clay's notebook she scrawled hurriedly an address.

"Jim'd croak me if he knew I'd given this," she said, looking straight at the cattleman.

"He'll never know--and I'll never forget it, Annie."

Clay left her and turned to the driver. From the slip of paper in his hand he read aloud an address. "Another five if you break the speed limit," he said.

As Clay slammed the door shut and the car moved forward he had an impression of something gone wrong, of a cog in his plans slipped somewhere. For Annie, standing in the rain under a sputtering misty street light, showed a face stricken with fear.

Her dilated eyes were fixed on the driver of the taxi-cab.

CHAPTER XXI

AT THE HEAD OF THE STAIRS

The cab whirled round the corner and speeded down a side street that stretched as far as they could see silent and deserted in the storm.

The rain, falling faster now, beat gustily in a slant against the left window of the cab. It was pouring in rivulets along the gutter beside the curb. Some sixth sense of safety--one that comes to many men who live in the outdoors on the untamed frontier--warned Clay that all was not well. He had felt that bell of instinct ring in him once at Juarez when he had taken a place at a table to play poker with a bad-man who had a grudge at him. Again it had sounded when he was about to sit down on a rock close to a crevice where a rattler lay coiled.

The machine had swung to the right and was facing from the wind instead of into it. Clay was not very well acquainted with New York, but he did know this was not the direction in which he wanted to go.

He beat with his knuckles on the front of the cab to attract the attention of the driver. In the swishing rain, and close to the throb of the engine, the chauffeur either did not or would not hear.

Lindsay opened the door and swung out on the running-board. "We're goin' wrong. Stop the car!" he ordered.

The man at the wheel did not turn. He speeded up.

His fare wasted no time in remonstrances. A moment, and the chauffeur threw on the brake sharply. His reason was a good one. The blue nose of a revolver was jammed hard against his ribs. He had looked round once to find out what it was prodding him. That was enough to convince him he had better stop.

Under the brake the back wheels skidded and brought up against the curb. Clay, hanging on by one hand, was flung hard to the sidewalk. The cab teetered, regained its equilibrium, gathered impetus with a snort, and leaped forward again.

As the cattleman clambered to his feet he caught one full view of the chauffeur's triumphant, vindictive face. He had seen it before, at a reception especially arranged for him by Jerry Durand one memorable night. It belonged to the more talkative of the two gunmen he had surprised at the pretended poker game. He knew, too, without being told that this man and "Slim" Jim Collins were one and the same. The memory of Annie's stricken face carried this conviction home to him.

The Arizonan picked up his revolver in time to see the car sweep around the next corner and laughed ruefully at his own discomfiture. He pushed a hand through the crisp, reddish waves of his hair.

"I don't reckon I'll ride in that taxi any farther. Johnnie will have to settle the bill. Hope he plays his hand better than I did," he said aloud.

The rain pelted down as he moved toward the brighter lighted street that intersected the one where he had been dropped. The lights of a saloon caught his eye at the corner. He went in, got police headquarters on the wire, and learned that a car answering the description of the one used by his abductor had been headed into Central Park by officers and that the downtown exits were being watched.

He drew what comfort he could from that fact.

Presently he picked up another taxi. He hesitated whether to go to the address Annie had given him or to join the chase uptown. Reluctantly, he decided to visit the house. His personal inclination was for the hunt rather than for inactive waiting, but he sacrificed any immediate chance of adventure for the sake of covering the possible rendezvous of the gang.

Clay paid his driver and looked at the house numbers as he moved up the street he wanted. He was in that part of the city from which business years ago marched up-town. Sometime in decades past people of means had lived behind these brownstone fronts. Many of the residences were used to keep lodgers in. Others were employed for less reputable purposes.

His overcoat buttoned to his neck, Clay walked without hesitation up the steps of the one numbered 243. He rang the bell and waited, his right hand on the pocket of his overcoat.

The door opened cautiously a few inches and a pair of close-set eyes in a wrinkled face gimleted Clay.

"Whadya want?"

"The old man sent me with a message," answered the Arizonan promptly.

"Spill it."

"Are you alone?"

"You know it."

"Got everything ready for the girl?"

"Say, who the hell are youse?"

"One of Slim's friends. Listen, we got the kid--picked her up at a drug-store."

"I don' know watcher fairy tale's about. If you gotta message come through with it."

Clay put his foot against the door to prevent it from being closed and drew his hand from the overcoat pocket. In the hand nestled a blue-nosed persuader.

Unless the eyes peering into the night were bad barometers of their owner's inner state, he was in a panic of fear.

"Love o' Gawd, d-don't shoot!" he chattered. "I ain't nobody but the caretaker."

He backed slowly away, followed by Lindsay. The barrel of the thirty-eight held his eyes fascinated. By the light of his flash Clay discovered the man to be a chalk-faced little inconsequent.

"Say, don't point that at me," the old fellow implored.

"Are you alone?"

"I told you I was."

"Is Jerry comin' himself with the others?"

"They don't none of them tell me nothin'. I'm nobody. I'm only Joey."

"Unload what you know. Quick. I'm in a hurry."

The man began a rambling, whining tale.

The Arizonan interrupted with questions, crisp and incisive. He learned that a room had been prepared on the second floor for a woman. Slim had made the arrangements. Joe had heard Durand's name mentioned, but knew nothing of the plans.

"I'll look the house over. Move along in front of me and don't make any mistakes. This six-gun is liable to permeate yore anatomy with lead."

The cattleman examined the first floor with an especial view to the exits. He might have to leave in a hurry. If so, he wanted to know where he was going. The plan of the second story was another point he featured as he passed swiftly from room to room. From the laundry in the basement he had brought up a coil of clothes-line. With this he tied Joe hand and foot. After gagging him, he left the man locked in a small rear room and took the key with him.

Clay knew that he was in a precarious situation. If Durand returned with Kitty and captured him here he was lost. The man would make no more mistakes. Certainly he would leave no evidence against him except that of his own tools. The intruder would probably not be killed openly. He would either simply disappear or he would be murdered with witnesses framed to show self-defense. The cattleman was as much outside the law as the criminals were. He had no legal business in this house. But one thing was fixed in his mind. He would be no inactive victim. If they got him at all it would be only after a fighting finish.

To Clay, standing at the head of the stairs, came a sound that stiffened him to a tense wariness. A key was being turned in the lock of the street door below. He moved back into the deeper shadows as the door swung open.

Two men entered. One of them cursed softly as he stumbled against a chair in the dark hall.

"Where's that rat Joe?" he demanded in a subdued voice.

Then came a click of the lock. The sound of the street rain ceased. Clay knew that the door had been closed and that he was shut in with two desperate criminals.

What have they done with Kitty? Why was she not with them? He asked himself that question even as he slipped back into a room that opened to the left.

He groped his way through the darkness, for he dared not flash his light to guide him. His fingers found the edge of a desk. Round that he circled toward a closet he remembered having noted. Already the men were tramping up the stairs. They were, he could tell, in a vile humor. From this he later augured hopefully that their plans had not worked out smoothly, but just now more imperative business called him.

His arm brushed the closet door. Next moment he was inside and had closed it softly behind him.

And none too soon. For into the room came the gunmen almost on his heels.

CHAPTER XXII

TWO MEN IN A LOCKED ROOM

"Jerry'll raise hell," a heavy voice was saying as they entered the room. "And that ain't all. We'll land in stir if we don't look out. We just ducked a bad fall. The bulls pretty near had us that time we poked our nose out from the Park at Seventy-Second Street."

Some one pressed a button and the room leaped to light. Through the open crack of the closed door Clay recognized Gorilla Dave. The second of the gunmen was out of range of his vision.

From the sound of creaking furniture Clay judged that the unseen man had sat down heavily. "It was that blowout queered us. And say--how came the bulls so hot on our trail? Who rapped to 'em?"

"Must 'a' been that boob wit' the goil. He got busy quick. Well, Jerry won't have to salve the cops this time. We made our getaway all right," said Dave.

"Say, where's Joey?"

"Pulled a sneak likely. Wha's it matter? Listen! What's that?"

Some one was coming up the stairs.

The men in the room moved cautiously to the door. The hall light was switched on.

"'Lo, Jerry," Gorilla Dave called softly.

He closed the room door and the sound of the voices was shut off instantly.

The uninvited guest dared not step out of the closet to listen, for at any instant the men might reënter. He crouched in his hiding-place, the thirty-eight in his hand.

The minutes dragged interminably. More than once Clay almost made up his mind to steal out to learn what the men were doing. But his judgment told him he must avoid a brush with so many if possible.

The door opened again.

"Now beat it and do as I say if you know what's good for you," a bullying voice was ordering.

The owner of the voice came in and slammed the door behind him. He sat down at the desk, his back to the closet. Through the chink Clay saw that the man was Jerry Durand.

From his vest pocket he took a fat black cigar, struck a match and lit it. He slumped down in the swivel chair. It took no seer to divine that his mind was busy working out a problem.

Clay stepped softly from his place of refuge, but not so noiselessly that the gangman did not detect his presence. Jerry swung round in the chair and leaped up with cat-like activity. He stood without moving, poised on the balls of his feet, his deep-set eyes narrowed to shining slits. It was in his thought to hurl himself headlong on the man holding steadily the menacing revolver.

"Don't you! I've got the dead wood on you," said the Arizonan, a trenchant saltness in his speech. "I'll shoot you down sure as hell's hot."

The eyes of the men clashed, measuring each the other's strength of will. They were warily conscious even of the batting of an eyelid. Durand's face wore an ugly look of impotent malice, but his throat was dry as a lime kiln. He could not estimate the danger that confronted him nor what lay back of the man's presence.

"What you doin' here?" he demanded.

"Makin' my party call," retorted Clay easily.

Jerry cursed him with a low, savage stream of profanity. The gangman enraged was not a sight pleasing to see.

"I reckon heaven, hell, and high water couldn't keep you from cussin' now. Relieve yore mind proper, Mr. Durand. Then we'll talk business," murmured Clay in the low, easy drawl that never suggested weakness.

The ex-prize-fighter's flow of language dried up. He fell silent and stood swallowing his furious rage. It had come home to him that this narrow-flanked young fellow with the close-gripped jaw and the cool, steady eyes was entirely unmoved by his threats.

"Quite through effervescing?" asked Clay contemptuously.

The gang leader made no answer. He chose to nurse his venom silently.

"Where's Kitty Mason?"

Still no answer.

"I asked you what you've done with Kitty Mason?"

"What's that to you?"

"I'm close-herdin' that li'l' girl and I'll not have yore dirty hands touch her. Where is she?"

"That's my business."

"By God, you'll tell, or I'll tear it out of you!"

Clay backed to the door, found the key, transferred it to the inner side of the lock, turned it, and put it in his pocket.

The cornered gangman took a chance. He ducked for the shelter of the desk, tore open a drawer, and snatched out an automatic.

Simultaneously the cowpuncher pressed the button beside the door and plunged the room in darkness. He side-stepped swiftly and without noise.

A flash of lightning split the blackness.

Clay dropped to his knees and crawled away. Another bolt, with its accompanying roar, flamed out.

Still the Westerner did not fire in answer, though he knew just where the target for his bullet was. A plan had come to him. In the blackness of that room one might empty his revolver and not score a hit. To wait was to take a chance of being potted, but he did not want the death of even such a ruffian as Durand on his soul.

The crash of the automatic and the rattle of glass filled the room. Jerry, blazing away at some fancied sound, had shattered the window.

Followed a long silence. Durand had changed his tactics and was resolved to wait until his enemy grew restless and betrayed himself.

The delay became a test of moral stamina. Each man knew that death was in that room lying in wait for him. The touch of a finger might send it flying across the floor. Upon the mantel a clock ticked maddeningly, the only sound to be heard.

The contest was not one of grit, but of that unflawed nerve which is so much the result of perfect physical fitness. Clay's years of clean life on the desert counted heavily now. He was master of himself, though his mouth was dry as a whisper and there were goose quills on his flesh.

But Durand, used to the fetid atmosphere of bar-rooms and to the soft living of the great city, found his nerve beginning to crack under the strain. Cold drops stood out on his forehead and his hands shook from excitement and anxiety. What kind of a man was his enemy to lie there in the black silence and not once give a sign of where he was, in spite of crashing bullets? There was something in it hardly human. For the first time in his life Jerry feared he was up against a better man.

Was it possible that he could have killed the fellow at the first shot? The comfort of this thought whispered hope in the ear of the ex-prize-fighter.

A chair crashed wildly. Durand fired again and yet again, his nerves giving way to a panic that carried him to swift action. He could not have stood another moment without screaming.

There came the faint sound of a hand groping on the wall and immediately after a flood of light filled the room.

Clay stood by the door. His revolver covered the crouching gang leader. His eyes were hard and pitiless.

"Try another shot," he advised ironically.

Jerry did. A harmless click was all the result he got. He knew now that the cowman had tempted him to waste his last shots at a bit of furniture flung across the room.

"You'll tell me what you did with Kitty Mason," said Clay in his low, persuasive voice, just as though there had been no intermission of flying bullets since he had mentioned the girl before.

"You can't kill me, when I haven't a loaded gun," Durand answered between dry lips.

The other man nodded an admission of the point. "That's an advantage you've got of me. You could kill me if I didn't have a gun, because you're a yellow wolf. But I can't kill you. That's right. But I can beat hell out of you, and I'm sure goin' to do it."

"Talk's cheap, when you've got a loaded six-gun in your fist," jeered Jerry.

With a flirt of his hand Clay tossed the revolver to the top of a book-case, out of easy reach of a man standing on the floor. He ripped open the buttons of his overcoat and slipped out of it, then moved forward with elastic step.

"It's you or me now, Jerry Durand."

The prize-fighter gave a snort of derisive triumph. "You damn fool! I'll eat you alive."

"Mebbeso. I reckon my system can assimilate any whalin' you're liable to hand me. Go to it."

Durand had the heavy shoulders and swelling muscles that come from years of training for the ring. Like most pugilists out of active service he had taken on flesh. But the extra weight was not fat, for Jerry kept always in good condition. He held his leadership partly at least because of his physical prowess. No tough in New York would willingly have met him in rough-and-tumble fight.

The younger man was more slightly built. He was a Hermes rather than a Hercules. His muscles flowed. They did not bulge. But when he moved it was with the litheness of a panther. The long lines of shoulder and loin had the flow of tigerish grace. The clear eyes in the brown face told of a soul indomitable in a perfectly synchronized body.

Durand lashed out with a swinging left, all the weight of his body behind the blow. Clay stepped back, shot a hard straight right to the cheek, and ducked the counter. Jerry rushed him, flailing at his foe blow on blow, intending to wear him out by sheer hard hammering. He butted with head and knee, used every foul trick he had learned in his rotten trade of prize-fighting. Active as a wild cat, the Arizonan side-stepped, scored a left on the eye, ducked again, and fought back the furious attack.

The gangman came out of the rally winded, perplexed, and disturbed. His cheek was bleeding, one eye was in distress, and he had hardly touched his agile opponent.

He rushed again. Nothing but his temper, the lack of self-control that made him see red and had once put him at the mercy of a first-class ring general with stamina and a punch, had kept Jerry out of a world championship. He had everything else needed, but he was the victim of his own passion. It betrayed him now. His fighting was that of a wild cave man, blind, furious, damaging. He threw away his science and his skill in order to destroy the man he hated. He rained blows on him--fought him with head and knee and fist, was on top of him every moment, controlled by one dominating purpose to make that dancing figure take the dust.

How Clay weathered the storm he did not know. Some blows he blocked, others he side-stepped, a few he took on face and body. He was cool, quite master of himself. Before the fight had gone three minutes he knew that, barring a chance blow, some foul play, or a bit of bad luck, he would win. He was covering up, letting the pugilist wear himself out, and taking only the punishment he must. But he was getting home some heavy body blows that were playing the mischief with Jerry's wind.

The New Yorker, puffing like a sea lion, came out of a rally winded and spent. Instantly Clay took the offensive. He was a trained boxer as well as a fighter, and he had been taught how to make every ounce of his weight count. Ripping in a body blow as a feint, he brought down Durand's guard. A straight left crashed home between the eyes and a heavy solar plexus shook the man to the heels.

Durand tried to close with him. An uppercut jolted him back. He plunged forward again. They grappled, knocking over chairs as they threshed across the room. When they went down Clay was underneath, but as they struck the floor he whirled and landed on top.

The man below fought furiously to regain his feet. Clay's arm worked like a piston rod with short-arm jolts against the battered face.

A wild heave unseated the Arizonan. They clinched, rolled over and bumped against the wall, Clay again on top. For a moment Durand got a thumb in his foe's eye and tried to gouge it out. Clay's fingers found the throat of the gang leader and tightened. Jerry struggled to free himself, catching at the sinewy wrist with both hands. He could not break the iron grip. Gasping for breath, he suddenly collapsed.

Clay got to his feet and waited for Durand to rise. His enemy rolled over and groaned.

"Had enough?" demanded the Westerner.

No answer came, except the heavy, irregular breathing of the man on the floor who was clawing for air in his lungs.

"I'll ask you once more where Kitty Mason is. And you'll tell me unless you want me to begin on you all over again."

The beaten pugilist sat up, leaning against the wall. He spoke with a kind of heavy despair, as though the words were forced out of him. He felt ashamed and disgraced by his defeat. Life for him had lost its savor, for he had met his master.

"She--got away."

"How?"

"They turned her loose, to duck the bulls," came the slow, sullen answer.

"Where?"

"In Central Park."

Probably this was the truth, Clay reflected. He could take the man's word or not as he pleased. There was no way to disprove it now.

He recovered his revolver, threw the automatic out of the window, and walked to the door.

"Joe's tied up in a back room," he said over his shoulder.

Thirty seconds later Clay stepped into the street. He walked across to a subway station and took an uptown train.

Men looked at him curiously. His face was bruised and bleeding, his clothes disheveled, his hat torn. Clay grinned and thought of the old answer:

"They'd ought to see the other man."

One young fellow, apparently a college boy, who had looked upon the wine when it was red, was moved to come over and offer condolence.

"Say, I don't want to butt in or anything, but--he didn't do a thing to you, did he?"

"I hit the edge of a door in the dark," explained Clay solemnly.

"That door must have had several edges." The youth made a confidential admission. "I've got an edge on myself, sort of."

"Not really?" murmured Clay politely.

"Surest thing you know. Say, was it a good scrap?"

"I'd hate to mix in a better one."

"Wish I'd been there." The student fumbled for a card. "Didn't catch your name?"

Clay had no intention of giving his name just now to any casual stranger. He laughed and hummed the chorus of an old range ditty:

"I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, And a long way from home."

CHAPTER XXIII

JOHNNIE COMES INTO HIS OWN

When Clay shot off at a tangent from the car and ceased to function as a passenger, Johnnie made an effort to descend and join his friend, but already the taxi was traveling at a speed that made this dangerous. He leaned out of the open door and shouted to the driver.

"Say, lemme out, doggone you. I wantta get out right here."

The chauffeur paid not the least attention to him. He skidded round a corner, grazing the curb, and put his foot on the accelerator. The car jumped forward.

The passenger, about to drop from the running-board, changed his mind. He did not want to break a bone or two in the process of alighting.

"'F you don't lemme off right away I'll not pay you a cent for the ride," Johnnie shouted. "You got no right to pack me off thisaway."

The car was sweeping down the wet street, now and again skidding dangerously. The puncher felt homesick for the security of an outlaw bronco's back. This wild East was no place for him. He had been brought up in a country where life is safe and sane and its inhabitants have a respect for law. Tame old Arizona just now made a big appeal to one of its sons.

The machine went drunkenly up the street, zigzagging like a homeward-bound reveler. It swung into Fourth Avenue, slowing to take the curve. At the widest sweep of the arc Johnnie stepped down. His feet slid from under him and he rolled to the curb across the wet asphalt. Slowly he got up and tested himself for broken bones. He was sure he had dislocated a few hips and it took him some time to persuade himself he was all right, except for some bruises.

But Johnnie free had no idea what to do. He was as helpless as Johnnie imprisoned in the flying cab. Of what Clay's plan had been he had not the remotest idea. Yet he could not go home and do nothing. He must keep searching. But where? One thing stuck in his mind. His friend had mentioned that he would like to get a chance to call the police to find out whether Kitty had been rescued. He was anxious on that point himself. At the first cigar-store he stopped and was put on the wire with headquarters. He learned that a car supposed to be the one wanted had been driven into Central Park by the police a few minutes earlier.

Johnnie's mind carried him on a straight line to the simplest decision. He ran across to Fifth Avenue and climbed into a bus going uptown. If Kitty was in Central Park that was the place to search for her. It did not occur to him that by the time he reached there the car of the abductors would be miles away, nor did he stop to think that his chances of finding her in the wooded recesses of the Park would not be worth the long end of a hundred to one bet.

At the Seventy-Second Street entrance Johnnie left the bus and plunged into the Park. He threaded his way along walks beneath the dripping trees. He took a dozen shower baths under water-laden shrubbery. Sometimes he stopped to let out the wild war-whoop with which he turned cattle at the point in the good old days a month or so ago.

The gods are supposed to favor fools, children, and drunken men. Johnnie had been all of these in his day. To-night he could claim no more than one at most of these reasons for a special dispensation. He would be twenty-three "comin' grass," as he would have expressed it, and he hadn't taken a drink since he came to New York, for Clay had voted himself dry years ago and just now he carried his follower with him.

But the impish gods who delight in turning upside down the best-laid plans of mice and men were working overtime to-night. They arranged it that a girl cowering among the wet bushes bordering an unfrequented path heard the "Hi--yi--yi" of Arizona and gave a faint cry for help. That call reached Johnnie and brought him on the run.

A man beside the girl jumped up with a snarl, gun in hand.

But the Runt had caught a sight of Kitty. A file of fixed bayonets could not have kept him from trying to rescue her. He dived through the brush like a football tackler.

A gun barked. The little man did not even know it. He and the thug went down together, rolled over, clawed furiously at each other, and got to their feet simultaneously. But the cowpuncher held the gun now. The crook glared at him for a moment, and bolted for the safety of the bushes in wild flight.

Johnnie fired once, then forgot all about the private little war he had started. For his arms were full of a sobbing Kitty who clung to him while she wept and talked and exclaimed all in a breath.

"I knew you'd come, Johnnie. I knew you would--you or Clay. They left me here with him while they got away from the police. . . . Oh, I've been so scared. I didn't know--I thought--"

"'S all right. 'S all right, li'l' girl. Don't you cry, Kitty. Me 'n' Clay won't let 'em hurt you none. We sure won't."

"They said they'd come back later for me," she wept, uncertain whether to be hysterical or not.

"I wisht they'd come now," he bragged valorously, and for the moment he did.

She nestled closer, and Johnnie's heart lost a beat. He had become aware of a dull pain in the shoulder and of something wet trickling down his shoulder. But what is one little bullet in your geography when the sweetest girl in the world is in your arms?

"I ain't nothin' but a hammered-down li'l' hayseed of a cowpuncher," he told her, his voice trembling, "an' you're awful pretty an'--an'--"

A flag of color fluttered to her soft cheeks. The silken lashes fell shyly. "I think you're fine and dandy, the bravest man that ever was."

"Do you--figure you could--? I--I--I don't reckon you could ever--"

He stopped, abashed. To him this creature of soft curves was of heaven-sent charm. All the beauty and vitality of her youth called to him. It seemed to Johnnie that God spoke through her. Which is another way of saying that he was in love with her.

She made a rustling little stir in his arms and lifted a flushed face very tender and appealing. In the darkness her lips slowly turned to his.

Johnnie chose that inopportune moment to get sick at the stomach.

"I--I'm goin' to faint," he announced, and did. When he returned to his love-story Johnnie's head was in Kitty's lap and a mounted policeman was in the foreground of the scene. His face was wet from the mist of fine rain falling.

"Don't move. Some one went for a car," she whispered, bending over him so that flying tendrils of her hair brushed his cheek. "Are you--badly hurt?"

He snorted. "I'm a false alarm. Nothin' a-tall. He jes' creased me."

"You're so brave," she cried admiringly.

He had never been told this before. He suspected it was not true, but to hear her say it was manna to his hungry soul.

The policeman helped him into a taxicab after first aid had been given and Johnnie's diagnosis verified. On the way home the cowpuncher made love. He discovered that this can be done quite well with one arm, both parties being willing.

The cab stopped at the house of a doctor and the shoulder was dressed. The doctor made one pardonable mistake.

"Get your wife to give you this sleeping powder if you find you can't sleep," he said.

"Y'betcha," answered Johnnie cheerfully.

Kitty looked at him reproachfully and blushed. She scolded him about it after they reached the apartment where they lived.

Her new fiancé defended himself. "He's only a day or two prema-chure, honey. It wasn't hardly worth while explainin'," he claimed.

"A day or two. Oh, Johnnie!"

"Sure. I ain't gonna wait. Wha's the matter with to-morrow?"

"I haven't any clothes made," she evaded, and added by way of diversion, "I always liked that kinda golden down on your cheeks."

"The stores are full of 'em. An' we ain't talkin' about my whiskers--not right now."

"You're a nice old thing," she whispered, flashing into unexpected dimples, and she rewarded him for his niceness in a way he thought altogether desirable.

A crisp, strong step sounded outside. The door opened and Clay came into the room.

He looked at Kitty. "Thank Heaven, you're safe," he said.

"Johnnie rescued me," she cried. "He got shot--in the shoulder."

The men looked at each other.

"Bad, Johnnie?"

"Nope. A plumb li'l' scratch. Wha's the matter with you?"

A gleam of humor flitted into the eyes of the cattleman. "I ran into a door."

"Say, Clay," Johnnie burst out, "I'll betcha can't guess."

His friend laughed in amiable derision, "Oh, you kids in the woods. I knew it soon as I opened the door."

He walked up to the girl and took her hand. "You got a good man, Kitty. I'm wishin' you all the joy in the world."

Her eyes flashed softly. "Don't I know I've got a good man, and I'm going to be happier than I deserve."

CHAPTER XXIV

CLAY LAYS DOWN THE LAW

Tim Muldoon, in his shirt-sleeves, was busy over a late breakfast when his mother opened the door of the flat to let in Clay Lindsay.

The policeman took one look at the damaged face and forgot the plate of ham and eggs that had just been put before him.

"Yuh've been at it again!" he cried, his Irish eyes lighting up with anticipatory enjoyment.

"I had a little set-to with friend Jerry last night," the Westerner explained.

"Another?"

"Now don't you blame me. I'm a peaceful citizen--not lookin' for trouble a li'l' bit. But I don't aim to let this Durand comb my hair with a rake."

"What's the trouble now?"

"You heard about the girl abducted in an auto from the Bronx?"

"Uh-huh! Was Jerry in that?"

"He was. I'll tell you the whole story, Tim."

"Meet my mother first. Mother--Mr. Lindsay. Yuh've heard me talk av him."

Mrs. Muldoon's blue Irish eyes twinkled. She was a plump and ample woman, and her handshake was firm and strong.

"I have that. Tim thinks yuh a wonder, Mr. Lindsay."

"Oh, he's prejudiced. You see he doesn't like the Big Mogul Jerry."

"Well, he's sure a booster for yuh."

Clay told the story of his encounter with Durand on the train and of his subsequent meetings with him at the Sea Siren and on the night of the poker party. He made elisions and emendations that removed the bedroom scene from the tale.

"So that's when yuh met Annie Millikan," Tim said. "I was wonderin' how yuh knew her."

"That's when I met her. She's one fine girl, Tim, a sure-enough thoroughbred. She has fought against heavy odds all her life to keep good and honest. And she's done it."

"She has that," agreed Mrs. Muldoon heartily. "Annie is a good girrl. I always liked her."

"I'd bet my last chip on Annie. So last night I went straight to her. She wouldn't throw down 'Slim' Jim, but she gave me an address. I went there and met Durand."

"With his gang?" asked Tim.

"No; I waited till they had gone. I locked myself in a room alone with him. He took eight shots at me in the dark and then we mixed."

"Mother o' Moses!" exclaimed the policeman. "In the dark?"

"No. I had switched the lights on."

"You bate him! I can see it in your eye!" cried Muldoon, pounding the table so that the dishes jumped.

"You'll have to ask him about that." Clay passed to more important facts. "When I reached home Kitty was there. They had dropped her in the Park to make a safe getaway."

"That's good."

"But Tim--when Annie Millikan gave me the address where Jerry Durand was, the driver of my taxi saw her. The man was 'Slim' Jim."

Muldoon sat up, a serious look on his face. "Man, yuh spilt the beans that time. How'd you ever come to do it? They'll take it out on Annie, the dogs." The eyes of the policeman blazed.

"Unless we stand by her."

"Sure, and we'll do that. But how?"

"First we've got to get her away from there to some decent place where she'll be safe."

Mrs. Muldoon spoke up. "And that's easy. She'll just take our spare bedroom and welcome."

Tim put an arm caressingly over his mother's shoulders. "Ain't she the best little sport ever, Mr. Lindsay?" he said proudly.

Clay smiled. "She sure enough grades 'way up."

"It's blarney yuh're both talkin'," snorted Mrs. Muldoon. "Sure the girrl needs a mother and a home. An' I don't doubt she'll pay her way."

"Then that's settled. Will you see Annie, Tim? Or shall I?"

"We'll both see her. But there's another thing. Will she be safe here?"

"I'm goin' to have a talk with 'Slim' Jim and try to throw a scare into him. I'll report to you what he says."

They took a trolley to the lodging-house where Annie lived.

The girl looked pale and tired. Clay guessed she slept little. The memory of "Slim" Jim's snarling had stood out in the darkness at the foot of her bed.

"Is this a pinch?" she asked Tim with a pert little tilt to her chin.

"Yuh can call it that, Annie. Mother wants yuh to come and stay with us."

"And what would I do that for, Mr. Tim Muldoon?" she asked promptly, the color flushing her cheeks.

"Because you're not safe here. That gang will make yuh pay somehow for what yuh did."

"And if your mother took me in they'd make her pay. You'd maybe lose your job."

"I'd find another. I'm thinkin' of quittin' anyhow."

"Say, whadya think I am? I'll not go. I can look out for myself."

"I don't think they'd get Tim," put in Clay. "I'm goin' to see Collins and have a talk with him."

"You can't salve Jim with soft soap."

"Did I mention soft soap?"

"I heard some one most killed Jerry Durand last night," said Annie abruptly, staring at Lindsay's bruised face. "Was it you?"

"Yes," said the Arizonan simply.

"Did you get the girl?"

"They dropped her to save themselves. My friend found her with a man and took her from him."

"I hope you did up Jerry right!" cried Annie, a vindictive flash in her dark eyes.

"I haven't called him up this mo'nin' to see how he's feelin'," said Clay whimsically. "Miss Annie, we're worried some about you. Mrs. Muldoon is right anxious for us to get you to come and stay awhile with her. She's honin' to have a li'l' girl to mother. Don't you reckon you can go?"

"I--I wish yuh'd come, Annie," blurted out Tim, looking down his nose.

Tears brimmed in Annie's eyes. To Clay it seemed there was something hungry in the look the girl gave Muldoon. She did not want his pity alone. She would not have their hospitality if they were giving it to a girl they despised and wanted to reform.

"I'm an alley cat you're offerin' to take in and feed, Tim Muldoon," she charged suspiciously.

"Yuh're the girl--my mother loves." He choked on the impulsive avowal he had almost made and finished the sentence awkwardly. It was impossible for him to escape the natural male instinct to keep his feelings out of words.

The girl's face softened. Inside, she was a river of tenderness flowing toward the Irishman. "I'll go to your mother, Tim, if she really wants me," she cried almost in a murmur.

"You're shoutin' now, Miss Annie," said Clay, smiling. "She sure wants you. I'll hit the trail to have that talk with Jim Collins."

He found "Slim" Jim at his stand. That flashily dressed young crook eyed him with a dogged and wary defiance. He had just come from a call at the bedside of Jerry Durand and he felt a healthy respect for the man who could do what this light-stepping young fellow had done to the champion rough-houser of New York. The story Jerry had told was of an assault from behind with a club, but this Collins did not accept at par. There were too many bruises on his sides and cuts on his face to be accounted for in any way except by a hard toe-to-toe fight.

"Mo'nin', Mr. Collins. I left you in a hurry last night and forgot to pay my bill. What's the damage?" asked Clay in his gently ironic drawl.

"Slim" Jim growled something the meaning of which was drowned in an oath.

"You say it was a free ride? Much obliged. That's sure fair enough," Clay went on easily. "Well, I didn't come to talk to you about that. I've got other business with you this mo'nin'."

The chauffeur looked at him sullenly and silently.

"Suppose we get inside the cab where we can talk comfortably," Clay proposed.

"Say, I'll stay right where I'm at," announced "Slim" Jim.

The cattleman opened the cab door. "Oh, no, we'll go inside," he said softly.

The men looked at each other and battled. The eye is a more potent weapon than the rapier. The shallow, shifty ones of the gunman fell before the deep, steady ones of the Arizonan. "Slim" Jim, with a touch of swagger to save his face, stepped into the cab and sat down. Clay followed him, closing the door.

"Have you seen Jerry Durand this sunny mo'nin'?" asked Lindsay with surface amiability.

"Wot's it to you?" demanded Collins.

"Not a thing. Nothin' a-tall," agreed Clay. "But it may be somethin' to you. I'm kinda wonderin' whether I'll have to do to you what I did to him."

"Slim" Jim was not a man of his hands. He could use a gun on occasion, if the advantage was all in his favor, but he strictly declined personal encounters at closer quarters. Now he reached for the door hastily.

A strong, sinewy hand fell on his arm and tightened, slightly twisting the flesh as the fingers sank deeper.

Collins let out a yell. "Gawd! Don't do that. You're killin' me."

"Beg yore pardon. An accident. If I get annoyed I'm liable to hurt without meanin' to," apologized Clay suavely. "I'll come right down to brass tacks, Mr. Collins. You're through with Annie Millikan. Understand?"

"Say, wot t'ell's this stuff you're pipin'? Who d' you t'ink youse are?"

"Never mind who I am. You'll keep away from Annie from now on--absolutely. If you bother her--if anything happens to her--well, you go and take a good long look at Durand before you make any mistakes."

"You touch me an' I'll croak you. See!" hissed Collins. "It won't be rough-house stuff with me. I'll fix youse so the gospel sharks'll sing gather-at-the-river for you."

"A gun-play?" asked Clay pleasantly. "Say, there's a shootin'-gallery round the corner. Come along. I wantta show you somethin'."

"Aw, go to hell!"

The sinewy hand moved again toward the aching muscles of the gunman. Collins changed his mind hurriedly.

"All right. I'll come," he growled.

Clay tossed a dollar down on the counter, took a .32, and aimed at the row of ducks sailing across the gallery pool. Each duck went down as it appeared. He picked up a second rifle and knocked over seven or eight mice as they scampered across the target screen. With a third gun he snuffed the flaming eye from the right to the left side of the face that grinned at him, then with another shot sent it back again. He smashed a few clay pipes by way of variety. To finish off with he scored six center shots in a target and rang a bell each time. Not one single bullet had failed to reach its mark.

The New York gunman had never seen such speed and accuracy. He was impressed in spite of the insolent sneer that still curled his lip.

"Got a six-shooter--a fohty-five?" asked Clay of the owner of the gallery.

"No."

"Sorry. I'm not much with a rifle, but I'm a good average shot with a six-gun. I kinda take to it natural."

They turned and walked back to the cab. Collins fell into the Bowery strut.

"Tryin' to throw a scare into me," he argued feebly.

"Me? Oh, no. You mentioned soft music and the preacher. Mebbeso. But it's liable to be for you if you monkey with the buzz-saw. I'm no gun-sharp, but no man who can't empty a revolver in a shade better than two seconds and put every bullet inside the rim of a cup at fifteen yards wants to throw lead at me. You see, I hang up my hat in Arizona. I grew up with a six-gun by my side."

"I should worry. This is little old New York, not Arizona," the gangman answered.

"That's what yore boss Durand thought. What has it brought him but trouble? Lemme give you something to chew on. New York's the biggest city of the biggest, freest country on God's green footstool. You little sewer rats pull wires and think you run it. Get wise, you poor locoed gink. You run it about as much as that fly on the wheel of yore taxi drives the engine. Durand's the whole works by his way of it, but when some one calls his bluff see where he gets off."

"He ain't through with you yet," growled "Slim" Jim sulkily.

"Mebbe not, but you--you're through with Annie." Clay caught him by the shoulder and swung him round. His eyes bored chilly into the other man. "Don't you forget to remember not to forget that. Let her alone. Don't go near her or play any tricks to hurt her. Lay off for good. If you don't--well, you'll pay heavy. I'll be on the job personal to collect."

Clay swung away and strode down the street, light-heeled and lithe, the sap of vital youth in every rippling muscle.

"Slim" Jim watched him, snarling hatred. If ever he got a good chance at him it would be curtains for the guy from Arizona, he swore savagely.

CHAPTER XXV

JOHNNIE SAYS HE IS MUCH OBLIGED

Beatrice, just back from riding with Bromfield, stood on the steps in front of the grilled door and stripped the gloves from her hands.

"I'm on fire with impatience, Bee," he told her. "I can hardly wait for that three weeks to pass. The days drag when I'm not with you."

He was standing a step or two below her, a graceful, well-groomed figure of ease, an altogether desirable catch in the matrimonial market. His dark hair, parted in the middle, was beginning to thin, and tiny crow's-feet radiated from the eyes, but he retained the light, slim figure of youth. It ought not to be hard to love Clarendon Bromfield, his fiancée reflected. Yet he disappointingly failed to stir her pulses.

She smiled with friendly derision. "Poor Clary! You don't look like a Vesuvius ready to erupt. You have such remarkable self-control."

His smile met hers. "I can't go up and down the street ringing a bell like a town crier and shouting it out to everybody I meet."

Round the corner of the house a voice was lifted in tuneless song.

"Oh, I'm goin' home Bull-whackin' for to spurn; I ain't got a nickel, And I don't give a dern. 'T is when I meet a pretty girl, You bet I will or try, I'll make her my little wife, Root hog or die."

"You see Johnnie isn't ashamed to shout out his good intentions," she said.

"Johnnie isn't engaged to the loveliest creature under heaven. He doesn't have to lie awake nights for fear the skies will fall and blot him out before his day of bliss."

Beatrice dropped a little curtsy. She held out her hand in dismissal. "Till to-morrow, Clary."

As Bromfield turned away, Johnnie came round a corner of the house dragging a garden hose. He was attacking another stanza of the song:

"There's hard times on old Bitter Creek That never can be beat. It was root hog or die Under every wagon sheet. We cleared up all the Indians, Drank . . ."

The puncher stopped abruptly at sight of his mistress.

"What did you drink that has made you so happy this morning, Johnnie?" she asked lightly.

The cowpuncher's secret burst from him. "I done got married, Miss Beatrice."

"You--what?"

"I up and got married day before yesterday," he beamed.

"And who's the happy girl?"

"Kitty Mason. We jes' walked to the church round the corner. Clay he stood up with us and give the bride away. It's me 'n' her for Arizona poco pronto."

Beatrice felt a queer joyous lift inside her as of some weight that had gone. In a single breath Johnnie had blown away the mists of misunderstanding that for weeks had clouded her vision. Her heart went out to Clay with a rush of warm emotion. The friend she had distrusted was all she had ever believed him. He was more--a man too stanch to desert under pressure any one who had even a slight claim on him.

"I want to meet her. Will you bring her to see me this afternoon, Johnnie?" she asked.

His face was one glad grin. "I sure will. Y'betcha, by jollies."

He did.

To Beatrice, busy writing a letter, came Jenkins some hours later.

"A young--person--to see you, Miss Whitford."

He said it with a manner so apologetic that it stressed his opinion of the social status of the visitor.

"What kind of a person?"

"A young woman, Miss. From the country, I tyke it."

"She didn't give you a card?"

"No, Miss. She came with the person Mr. Whitford took on to 'elp with the work houtside."

"Oh! Show them both up. And have tea sent in, Jenkins."

Kitty's shy eyes lifted apprehensively to those of this slim young patrician so beautifully and simply gowned. Instantly her fears fled. Beatrice moved swiftly to her with both hands outstretched.

"I'm so glad to meet you."

She kissed the young wife with unaccustomed tenderness. For the Colorado girl had about her a certain modesty that was disarming, an appeal of helplessness Beatrice could not resist.

Kitty, in the arms of her hostess, wept a few tears. She had been under a strain in anticipating the ordeal of meeting Johnnie's mistress, and she had discovered her to be a very sweet, warm-hearted girl.

As for Johnnie, he had a miserably happy half-hour. He had brought his hat in with him and he did not know how to dispose of it. What he did do was to keep it revolving in his hands. This had to be abandoned when Miss Whitford handed him a quite unnecessary cup of tea and a superfluous plate of toasted English muffins. He wished his hands had not been so big and red and freckled. Also he had an uncomfortable suspicion that his tow hair was tousled and uncombed in spite of his attempts at home to plaster it down.

He declined sugar and cream because for some reason it seemed easier to say "No'm" than "Yes," though he always took both with tea. And he disgraced himself by scalding his tongue and failing to suppress the pain. Finally the plate, with his muffin, carefully balanced on his knee, from some devilish caprice plunged over the precipice to the carpet and the bit of china broke.

Whereupon Kitty gently reproved him, as was her wifely duty.

"I ain't no society fellow," the distressed puncher explained to his hostess, tiny beads of perspiration on his forehead.

Beatrice had already guessed as much, but she did not admit it to Johnnie. She and Kitty smiled at each other in that common superiority which their sex gives them to any mere man upon such an occasion. For Mrs. John Green, though afternoon tea was to her too an alien custom, took to it as a duck does to water.

Miss Whitford handed Johnnie an envelope. "Would it be too much trouble for you to take a letter to Mr. Lindsay?" she asked very casually as they rose to go.

The bridegroom said he was much obliged and he would be plumb tickled to take a message to Clay.

When Clay read the note his blood glowed. It was a characteristic two-line apology:

I've been a horrid little prig, Clay [so the letter ran]. Won't you come over to-morrow and go riding with me?

BEATRICE

CHAPTER XXVI

A LOCKED GATE

Colin Whitford had been telling Clay the story of how a young cowpuncher had snatched Beatrice from under the hoofs of a charging steer. His daughter and the Arizonan listened without comment.

"I've always thought I'd like to explain to that young man I didn't mean to insult him by offering money for saving Bee. But you see he didn't give me any chance. I never did learn his name," concluded the mining man.

"And of course we'd like him to know that we appreciate what he did for me," Beatrice added. She looked at Clay, and a pulse beat in her soft throat.

"I reckon he knows that," Lindsay suggested. "You must 'a' thought him mighty rude for to break away like you say he did."

"We couldn't understand it till afterwards. Mr. Bromfield had slipped him a fifty-dollar bill and naturally he resented it." Miss Whitford's face bubbled with reminiscent mirth. She looked a question at Clay. "What do you suppose that impudent young scalawag did with the fifty?"

"Got drunk on it most likely."

"He fed it to his horse. Clary was furious."

"He would be," said the cattleman dryly, in spite of the best intentions to be generous to his successful rival. "But I reckon I know why yore grand-stand friend in chaps pulled such a play. In Arizona you can't square such things with money. So far as I can make out the puncher didn't do anything to write home about, but he didn't want pay for it anyhow."

"Of course, Bromfield doesn't understand the West," said Whitford. "I wouldn't like that young puncher half so well if he'd taken the money."

"He didn't need to spoil a perfectly good fifty-dollar bill, though," admitted Clay.

"Yes, he did," denied Beatrice. "That was his protest against Clarendon's misjudgment of him. I've always thought it perfectly splendid in its insolence. Some day I'm going to tell him so."

"It happened in your corner of Arizona, Lindsay. If you ever find out who the chap was I wish you'd let us know," Whitford said.

"I'll remember."

"If you young people are going riding--"

"--We'd better get started. Quite right, Dad. We're off. Clarendon will probably call up. Tell him I'll be in about four-thirty."

She pinched her father's ear, kissed him on one ruddy cheek, then on the other, and joined Clay at the door.

They were friends again, had been for almost half an hour, even though they had not yet been alone together, but their friendship was to hold reservations now. The shadow of Clarendon Bromfield rode between them. They were a little stiff with each other, not so casual as they had been. A consciousness of sex had obtruded into the old boyish camaraderie.

After a brisk canter they drew their horses together for a walk.

Beatrice broke the ice of their commonplaces. She looked directly at him, her cheeks flushing. "I don't know how you're going to forgive me, Clay. I've been awf'ly small and priggish. I hate to think I'm ungenerous, but that's just what I've been."

"Let's forget it," he said gently.

"No, I don't want to forget--not till I've told you how humble I feel to-day. I might have trusted you. Why didn't I? It would have been easy for me to have taken your little friend in and made things right for her. That's what I ought to have done. But, instead of that--Oh, I hate myself for the way I acted."

Her troubled smile, grave and sweet, touched him closely. It was in his horoscope that the spell of this young Diana must be upon him.

He put his hand on hers as it rested on the pommel of the saddle and gave it a slight pressure. "You're a good scout, li'l' pardner."

But it was Beatrice's way to step up to punishment and take what was coming. As a little girl, while still almost a baby, she had once walked up to her mother, eyes flashing with spirit, and pronounced judgment on herself. "I've tum to be spanked. I broke Claire's doll an' I'm glad of it, mean old fing. So there!" Now she was not going to let the subject drop until she had freed her soul.

"No, Clay, I've been a poor sportsman. When my friend needed me I failed him. It hurts me, because--oh, you know. When the test came I wasn't there. One hates to be a quitter."

Her humility distressed him, though he loved the spirit of her apology.

"It's all right, Bee. Don't you worry. All friends misunderstand each other, but the real ones clear things up."

She had not yet told him the whole truth and she meant to make clean confession.

"I've been a miserable little fool." She stopped with a little catch of the breath, flamed red, and plunged on. Her level eyes never flinched from his. "I've got to out with it, Clay. You won't misunderstand, I know. I was jealous. I wanted to keep your friendship to myself--didn't want to share it with another girl. That's how mean I am."

A warm smile lit his face. "I've sure enough found my friend again this mo'nin'."

Her smile met his. Then, lest barriers fall too fast between them, she put her horse to a gallop.

As they moved into the Park a snorting automobile leaped past them with muffler open. The horse upon which Beatrice rode was a young one. It gave instant signals of alarm, went sunfishing on its hind legs, came down to all fours, and bolted.

Beatrice kept her head. She put her weight on the reins with all the grip of her small, strong hands. But the horse had the bit in its teeth. She felt herself helpless, flying wildly down the road at incredible speed. Bushes and trees, the reeling road, a limousine, a mounted policeman, all flew by her with blurred detail.

She became aware of the rapid thud of hoofs behind, of a figure beside her riding knee to knee, of a brown hand taking hold of the rein close to the bit. The speed slackened. The horses pounded to a halt.

The girl found herself trembling. She leaned back in a haze of dizziness against an arm which circled her shoulder and waist. Memory leaped across the years to that other time when she had rested in his arms, his heart beating against hers. In that moment of deep understanding of herself, Beatrice knew the truth beyond any doubt. A new heaven and a new earth were waiting for her, but she could not enter them. For she herself had closed the gate and locked it fast.

His low voice soothed and comforted her.

"I'm all right," she told him.

Clay withdrew his arm. "I'd report that fellow if I had his number," he said. "You stick to yore saddle fine. You're one straight-up rider."

"I'll ask Mr. Bromfield to give you fifty dollars' again," she laughed nervously.

That word again stuck in his consciousness.

"You've known me all along," he charged.

"Of course I've known you--knew you when you stood on the steps after you had tied the janitor."

"I knew you, too."

"Why didn't you say so?"

"Did you expect me to make that grand-stand play on the parada a claim on yore kindness? I didn't do a thing for you that day any man wouldn't have done. I happened to be the lucky fellow that got the chance. That's all. Come to that, it was up to you to do the recognizing if any was done. I had it worked out that you didn't know me, but once or twice from things you said I almost thought you did."

"I meant to tell you sometime, but--well, I wanted to see how long you could keep from telling me. Now you've done it again."

"I'd like to ride with you the rest of yore life," he said unexpectedly.

They trembled on the edge of self-revelation. It was the girl who rescued them from the expression of their emotions.

"I'll speak to Clary about it. Maybe he'll take you on as a groom," she said with surface lightness.

As soon as they reached home Beatrice led the way into the library. Bromfield was sitting there with her father. They were talking over plans for the annual election of officers of the Bird Cage Mining Company. Whitford was the largest stockholder and Bromfield owned the next biggest block. They controlled it between them.

"Dad, Rob Roy bolted and Mr. Lindsay stopped him before I was thrown."

Whitford rose, the color ebbing from his cheeks. "I've always told you that brute was dangerous. I'll offer him for sale to-day."

"And I've discovered that we know the man who saved me from the wild steer in Arizona. It was Mr. Lindsay."

"Lindsay!" Whitford turned to him. "Is that right?"

"It's correct."

Colin Whitford, much moved, put a hand on the younger man's shoulder. "Son, you know what I'd like to tell you. I reckon I can't say it right."

"We'll consider it said, Mr. Whitford," answered Clay with his quick, boyish smile. "No use in spillin' a lot of dictionary words."

"Why didn't you tell us?"

"It was nothin' to brag about."

Bromfield came to time with a thin word of thanks. "We're all greatly in your debt, Mr. Lindsay."

As the days passed the malicious jealousy of the New York clubman deepened to a steady hatred. A fellow of ill-controlled temper, his thin-skinned vanity writhed at the condition which confronted him. He was engaged to a girl who preferred another and a better man, one against whom he had an unalterable grudge. He recognized in the Westerner an eager energy, a clean-cut resilience, and an abounding vitality he would have given a great deal to possess. His own early manhood had been frittered away in futile dissipations and he resented bitterly the contrast between himself and Lindsay that must continually be present in the mind of the girl who had promised to marry him. He had many adventitious things to offer her--such advantages as modern civilization has made desirable to hothouse women--but he could not give the clean, splendid youth she craved. It was the price he had paid for many sybaritic pleasures he had been too soft to deny himself.

With only a little more than two weeks of freedom before her, Beatrice made the most of her days. For the first time in her life she became a creature of moods. The dominant ones were rebellion, recklessness, and repentance. While Bromfield waited and fumed she rode and tramped with Clay. It was not fair to her affianced lover. She knew that. But there were times when she wanted to shriek as dressmakers and costumers fussed over her and wore out her jangled nerves with multitudinous details. The same hysteria welled up in her occasionally at the luncheons and dinners that were being given in honor of her approaching marriage.

It was not logical, of course. She was moving toward the destiny she had chosen for herself. But there was an instinct in her, savage and primitive, to hurt Bromfield because she herself was suffering. In the privacy of her room she passed hours of tearful regret for these bursts of fierce insurrection.

Ten days before the wedding Beatrice wounded his vanity flagrantly. Clarendon was giving an informal tea for her at his rooms. Half an hour before the time set, Beatrice got him on the wire and explained that her car was stalled with engine trouble two miles from Yonkers.

"I'm awf'ly sorry, Clary," she pleaded. "We ought not to have come so far. Please tell our friends I've been delayed, and--I won't do it again."

Bromfield hung up the receiver in a cold fury. He restrained himself for the moment, made the necessary explanations, and went through with the tea somehow. But as soon as his guests were gone he gave himself up to his anger. He began planning a revenge on the man who no doubt was laughing in his sleeve at him. He wanted the fellow exposed, discredited, and humiliated.

But how? Walking up and down his room like a caged panther, Bromfield remembered that Lindsay had other enemies in New York, powerful ones who would be eager to cooperate with him in bringing about the man's downfall. Was it possible for him to work with them under cover? If so, in what way?

Clarendon Bromfield was not a criminal, but a conventional member of society. It was not in his mind or in his character to plot the murder or mayhem of his rival. What he wanted was a public disgrace, one that would blare his name out to the newspapers as a law-breaker. He wanted to sicken Beatrice and her father of their strange infatuation for Lindsay.

A plan began to unfold itself to him. It was one which called for expert assistance. He looked up Jerry Durand, got him on the telephone, and made an appointment to meet him secretly.

CHAPTER XXVII

"NO VIOLENCE"

The ex-pugilist sat back in the chair, chewing an unlighted black cigar, his fishy eyes fixed on Bromfield. Scars still decorated the colorless face, souvenirs of a battle in which he had been bested by a man he hated. Durand had a capacity for silence. He waited now for this exquisite from the upper world to tell his business.

Clarendon discovered that he had an unexpected repugnance to doing this. A fastidious sense of the obligations of class served him for a soul and the thing he was about to do could not be justified even in his loose code of ethics. He examined the ferule of his Malacca cane nervously.

"I've come to you, Mr. Durand, about--about a fellow called Lindsay."

The bulbous eyes of the other narrowed. He distrusted on principle all kid gloves. Those he had met were mostly ambitious reformers. Furthermore, any stranger who mentioned the name of the Arizonan became instantly an object of suspicion.

"What about him?"

"I understand that you and he are not on friendly terms. I've gathered that from what's been told me. Am I correct?"

Durand thrust out his salient chin. "Say! Who the hell are you? What's eatin' you? Whatta you want?"

"I'd rather not tell my name."

"Nothin' doin'. No name, no business. That goes."

"Very well. My name is Bromfield. This fellow Lindsay--gets in my way. I want to--to eliminate him."

"Are you askin' me to croak him?"

"Good God, no! I don't want him hurt--physically," cried Bromfield, alarmed.

"Whatta you want, then?" The tight-lipped mouth and the harsh voice called for a showdown.

"I want him discredited--disgraced."

"Why?"

"Some friends of mine are infatuated by him. I want to unmask him in a public way so as to disgust them with him."

"I'm hep. It's a girl."

"We'll not discuss that," said the clubman with a touch of hauteur. "As to the price, if you can arrange the thing as I want it done, I'll not haggle over terms."

The ex-pugilist listened sourly to Bromfield's proposition. He watched narrowly this fashionably dressed visitor. His suspicions still stirred, but not so actively. He was inclined to believe in the sincerity of the fellow's hatred of the Westerner. Jealousy over a girl could easily account for it. Jerry did not intend to involve himself until he had made sure.

"Whatta you want me to do? Come clean."

"Could we get him into a gambling-house, arrange some disgraceful mixup with a woman, get the place raided by the police, and have the whole thing come out in the papers?"

Jerry's slitted eyes went off into space. The thing could be arranged. The trouble in getting Lindsay was to draw him into a trap he could not break through. If Bromfield could deliver his enemy into his hands, Durand thought he would be a fool not to make the most of the chance. As for this soft-fingered swell's stipulation against physical injury, that could be ignored if the opportunity offered.

"Can you bring this Lindsay to a gambling-dump? Will he come with you?" demanded the gang politician.

"I think so. I'm not sure. But if I do that, can you fix the rest?"

"It'll cost money."

"How much will you need?"

"A coupla thousand to start with. More before I've finished. I've got to salve the cops."

Bromfield had prepared for this contingency. He counted out a thousand dollars in bills of large denominations.

"I'll cut that figure in two. Understand. He's not to be hurt. I won't have any rough work."

"Leave that to me."

"And you've got to arrange it so that when the house is raided I escape without being known."

"I'll do that, too. Leave your address and I'll send a man up later to wise you as to the scheme when I get one fixed up."

On a sheet torn from his memorandum book Bromfield wrote the name of the club which he most frequented.

"Don't forget the newspapers. I want them to get the story," said the clubman, rising.

"I'll see they cover the raid."

Bromfield, massaging a glove on to his long fingers, added another word of caution. "Don't slip up on this thing. Lindsay's a long way from being a soft mark."

"Don't I know it?" snapped Durand viciously. "There'll be no slip-up this time if you do your part. We'll get him, and we'll get him right."

"Without any violence, of course."

"Oh, of course."

Was there a covert but derisive jeer concealed in that smooth assent? Bromfield did not know, but he took away with him an unease that disturbed his sleep that night.

Before the clubman was out of the hotel, Jerry was snapping instructions at one of his satellites.

"Tail that fellow. Find where he goes, who he is, what girl he's mashed on, all about him. See if he's hooked up with Lindsay. And how? Hop to it! Did you get a slant at him as he went out?"

"Sure I did. He's my meat."

The tailer vanished.

Jerry stood at the window, still sullenly chewing his unlighted cigar, and watched his late visitor and the tailer lose themselves in the hurrying crowds.

"White-livered simp. 'No violence, Mr. Durand.' Hmp! Different here."

An evil grin broke through on the thin-lipped, cruel face.

CHAPTER XXVIII

IN BAD

When Bromfield suggested to Clay with a touch of stiffness that he would be glad to show him a side of New York night life probably still unfamiliar to him, the cattleman felt a surprise he carefully concealed. He guessed that this was a belated attempt on the part of Miss Whitford's fiancé to overcome the palpable dislike he had for her friend. If so, the impulse that inspired the offer was a creditable one. Lindsay had no desire to take in any of the plague spots of the city with Bromfield. Something about the society man set his back up, to use his own phrase. But because this was true he did not intend to be outdone in generosity by a successful rival. Promptly and heartily he accepted the invitation. If he had known that a note and a card from Jerry Durand lay in the vest pocket of his cynical host while he was holding out the olive branch, it is probable the Arizonan would have said, "No, thank you, kind sir."

The note mentioned no names. It said, "Wednesday, at Maddock's, 11 P.M. Show this card."

And to Maddock's, on Wednesday, at an hour something earlier than eleven, the New Yorker led his guest after a call at one or two clubs.

Even from the outside the place had a dilapidated look that surprised Lindsay. The bell was of that brand you keep pulling till you discover it is out of order. Decayed gentility marked the neighborhood, though the blank front of the houses looked impeccably respectable.

As a feeble camouflage of its real reason for being, Maddock's called itself the "Omnium Club." But when Clay found how particular the doorkeeper was as to those who entered he guessed at once it was a gambling-house.

From behind a grating the man peered at them doubtfully. Bromfield showed a card, and after some hesitation on the part of his inquisitor, passed the examination. Toward Clay the doorkeeper jerked his head inquiringly.

"He's all right," the clubman vouched.

Again there was a suspicious and lengthy scrutiny.

The door opened far enough to let them slide into a scantily furnished hall. On the first landing was another guard, a heavy, brutal-looking fellow who was no doubt the "chucker-out." He too looked them over closely, but after a glance at the card drew aside to let them pass.

Through a door near the head of the stairs they moved into a large room, evidently made from several smaller ones with the partitions torn down and the ceilings pillared at intervals.

Clay had read about the magnificence of Canfield's in the old days, and he was surprised that one so fastidious as Bromfield should patronize a place so dingy and so rough as this. At the end of one room was a marble mantelpiece above which there was a defaced, gilt-frame mirror. The chandeliers, the chairs, the wall-paper, all suggested the same note of one-time opulence worn to shabbiness.

A game of Klondike was going. There were two roulette wheels, a faro table, and one circle of poker players.

The cold eyes of a sleek, slippery man sliding cards out of a faro-box looked at the Westerner curiously. Among the suckers who came to this den of thieves to be robbed were none of Clay's stamp. Lindsay watched the white, dexterous hands of the dealer with an honest distaste. All along the border from Juarez to Calexico he had seen just such soft, skilled fingers fleecing those who toiled. He knew the bloodless, impassive face of the professional gambler as well as he knew the anxious, reckless ones of his victims. His knowledge had told him little good of this breed of parasites who preyed upon a credulous public.

The traffic of this room was crooked business by day as well as by night. A partition ran across the rear of the back parlor which showed no opening but two small holes with narrow shelves at the bottom. Back of that was the paraphernalia of the pool-room, another device to separate customers from their money by playing the "ponies."

As Clay looked around it struck him that the personnel of this gambling-den's patrons was a singularly depressing one. All told there were not a dozen respectable-looking people in the room. Most of those present were derelicts of life, the failures of a great city washed up by the tide. Some were pallid, haggard wretches clinging to the vestiges of a prosperity that had once been theirs. Others were hard-faced ruffians from the underworld. Not a few bore the marks of the drug victim. All of those playing had a manner of furtive suspicion. They knew that if they risked their money the house would rob them. Yet they played.

Bromfield bought a small stack of chips at the roulette table.

"Won't you take a whirl at the wheel?" he asked Lindsay.

"Thanks, no, I believe not," his guest answered.

The Westerner was a bit disgusted at his host's lack of discrimination. "Does he think I'm a soft mark too?" he wondered. "If this is what he calls high life I've had more than enough already."

His disgust was shared by the clubman. Bromfield had never been in such a dive before. His gambling had been done in gilded luxury. While he touched shoulders with this motley crew his nostrils twitched with fastidious disdain. He played, but his interest was not in the wheel. Durand had promised that there would be women and that one of them should be bribed to make a claim upon Clay at the proper moment. He had an unhappy feeling that the gang politician had thrown him down in this. If so, what did that mean? Had Durand some card up his sleeve? Was he using him as a catspaw to rake in his own chestnuts?

Clarendon Bromfield began to weaken. He and Clay were the only two men in the room in evening clothes. His questing eye fell on tough, scarred faces that offered his fears no reassurance. Any one or all of them might be agents of Durand.

He shoved all of his chips out, putting half of them on number eight and the rest on seventeen. His object was to lose his stack immediately and be free to go. To his annoyance the whirling ball dropped into the pocket labeled eight.

"Let's get out of this hole," he said to Lindsay in a low voice. "I don't like it."

"Suits me," agreed the other.

As Bromfield was cashing his chips Clay came rigidly to attention. Two men had just come into the room. One of them was "Slim" Jim Collins, the other Gorilla Dave. As yet they had not seen him. He did not look at them, but at his host. There was a question in his mind he wanted solved. The clubman's gaze passed over both the newcomers without the least sign of recognition.

"I didn't know what this joint was like or I'd never have brought you," apologized Clarendon. "A friend of mine told me about it. He's got a queer fancy if he likes this frazzled dive."

Clay acquitted Bromfield of conspiracy. He must have been tailed here by Durand's men. His host had nothing to do with it. What for? They could not openly attack him.

"Slim" Jim's eyes fell on him. He nudged Dave. Both of them, standing near the entrance, watched Lindsay steadily.

Some one outside the door raised the cry, "The bulls are comin'."

Instantly the room leaped to frenzied excitement. Men dived for the doors, bets forgotten and chips scattered over the floor. Chairs were smashed as they charged over them, tables overturned. The unwary were trodden underfoot.

Bromfield went into a panic. Why had he been fool enough to trust Durand? No doubt the fellow would ruin him as willingly as he would Lindsay. The raid was fifteen minutes ahead of schedule time. The ward politician had betrayed him. He felt sure of it. All the carefully prepared plans agreed upon he jettisoned promptly. His sole thought was to save himself, not to trap his rival.

Lindsay caught him by the arm. "Let's try the back room."

He followed Clay, Durand's gangmen at his heels.

The lights went out.

The Westerner tried the window. It was heavily barred outside. He turned to search for a door.

Brought up by the partition, Bromfield was whimpering with fear as he too groped for a way of escape. A pale moon shone through the window upon his evening clothes.

In the dim light Clay knew that tragedy impended. "Slim" Jim had his automatic out.

"I've got you good," the chauffeur snarled.

The gun cracked. Bromfield bleated in frenzied terror as Clay dashed forward. A chair swung round in a sweeping arc. As it descended the spitting of the gun slashed through the darkness a second time.

"Slim" Jim went down, rolled over, lay like a log.

Some one dived for Lindsay and drove him against the wall, pinning him by the waist. A second figure joined the first and caught the cattleman's wrist.

Then the lights flashed on again. Clay saw that the man who had flung him against the partition was Gorilla Dave. A plain-clothes man with a star had twisted his wrist and was clinging to it. Bromfield was nowhere to be seen, but an open door to the left showed that he had found at least a temporary escape.

A policeman came forward and stooped over the figure of the prostrate man.

"Some one's croaked a guy," he said.

Gorilla Dave spoke up quickly. "This fellow did it. With a chair. I seen him."

There was a moment before Lindsay answered quietly. "He shot twice. The gun must be lying under him where he fell."

Already men had crowded forward to the scene of the tragedy, moved by the morbid curiosity a crowd has in such sights. Two policemen pushed them back and turned the still body over. No revolver was to be seen.

"Anybody know who this is?" one of the officers asked.

"Collins--'Slim' Jim," answered big Dave.

"Well, he's got his this time," the policeman said. "Skull smashed."

Clay's heart sank. In that noise of struggling men and crashing furniture very likely the sound of the shots had been muffled. The revolver gone, false testimony against him, proof that he had threatened Collins available, Clay knew that he was in desperate straits.

"There was another guy here with him in them glad rags," volunteered one of the gamblers captured in the raid.

"Who was he?" asked the plain-clothes man of his prisoner.

Clay was silent. He was thinking rapidly. His enemies had him trapped at last with the help of circumstance, Why bring Bromfield into it? It would mean trouble and worry for Beatrice.

"Better speak up, young fellow, me lad," advised the detective. "It won't help you any to be sulky. You're up against the electric chair sure."

The Arizonan looked at him with the level, unafraid eyes of the hills.

"I reckon I'll not talk till I'm ready," he said in his slow drawl.

The handcuffs clicked on his wrists.

CHAPTER XXIX

BAD NEWS

Colin Whitford came into the room carrying a morning paper. His step was hurried, his eyes eager. When he spoke there was the lift of excitement in his voice.

"Bee, I've got bad news."

"Is the Bird Cage flooded?" asked Beatrice. "Or have the miners called a strike again?"

"Worse than that. Lindsay's been arrested. For murder."

The bottom fell out of her heart. She caught at the corner of a desk to steady herself. "Murder! It can't be! Must be some one of the same name."

"I reckon not, honey. It's Clay sure enough. Listen." He read the headlines of a front-page story.

"It can't be Clay! What would he be doing in a gambling-dive?" She reached for the paper, but when she had it the lines blurred before her eyes. "Read it, please."

Whitford read the story to the last line. Long before he had finished, his daughter knew the one arrested was Clay. She sat down heavily, all the life stricken from her young body.

"It's that man Durand. He's done this and fastened it on Clay. We'll find a way to prove Clay didn't do it."

"Maybe, in self-defense--"

Beatrice pushed back her father's hesitant suggestion, and even while she did it a wave of dread swept over her. The dead man was the same criminal "Slim" Jim Collins whom the cattleman had threatened in order to protect the Millikan girl. The facts that the man had been struck down by a chair and that her friend claimed, according to the paper, that the gunman had fired two shots, buttressed the solution offered by Whitford. But the horror of it was too strong for her. Against reason her soul protested that Clay could not have killed a man. It was too horrible, too ghastly, that through the faults of others he should be put in such a situation.

And why should her friend be in such a place unless he had been trapped by the enemies who were determined to ruin him? She knew he had a contempt for men who wasted their energies in futile dissipations. He was too clean, too much a son of the wind-swept desert, to care anything about the low pleasures of indecent and furtive vice. He was the last man she knew likely to be found enjoying a den of this sort.

"Dad, I'm going to him," she announced with crisp decision.

Her father offered no protest. His impulse, too, was to stand by the friend in need. He had no doubt Clay had killed the man, but he had a sure conviction it had been done in self-defense.

"We'll get the best lawyers in New York for him, honey," he said. "Nobody will slip anything over on Lindsay if we can help it."

"Will they let us see him? Or shall we have to get permission from some one?"

"We'll have to get an order. I know the district attorney. He'll do what he can for me, but maybe it'll take time."

Beatrice rose, strong again and resilient. Her voice was vibrant with confidence. "Then after you've called up the district attorney, we'll drive to Clay's flat in Harlem and find out from Johnnie what he can tell us. Perhaps he knows what Clay was doing in that place they raided."

It was not necessary to go to the Runt. He came to them. As Beatrice and her father stepped into the car Johnnie and Kitty appeared round the corner. Both of them had the news of a catastrophe written on their faces. A very little encouragement and they would be in tears.

"Ain't it tur'ble, Miss Beatrice? They done got Clay at last. After he made 'em all look like plugged nickels they done fixed it so he'll mebbe go to the electric chair and--"

"Stop that nonsense, Johnnie," ordered Miss Whitford sharply, a pain stabbing her heart at his words. "Don't begin whining already. We've got to see him through. Buck up and tell me what you know."

"That's right, Johnnie,"' added the mining man. "You and Kitty quit looking like the Atlantic Ocean in distress. We've got to endure the grief and get busy. We'll get Lindsay out of this hole all right."

"You're dawg-goned whistlin'. Y'betcha, by jollies!" agreed the Runt, immensely cheered by Whitford's confidence. "We been drug into this an' we'll sure hop to it."

"When did you see Clay last? How did he come to be in that gambling-house? Did he say anything to you about going there?" The girl's questions tumbled over each other in her hurry.

"Well, ma'am, it must 'a' been about nine o'clock that Clay he left last night. I recollect because--"

"It doesn't matter why. Where was he going?"

"To meet Mr. Bromfield at his club," said Kitty.

"Mr. Bromfield!" cried Beatrice, surprised. "Are you sure?"

"Tha's what Clay said," corroborated the husband. "Mr. Bromfield invited him. We both noticed it because it seemed kinda funny, him and Clay not bein'--"

"Johnnie," his wife reproved, mindful of the relationship between this young woman and the clubman.

"Did he say which club?"

"Seems to me he didn't, not as I remember. How about that, Kitty?"

"No, I'm sure he didn't. He said he wouldn't be back early. So we went to bed. We s'posed after we got up this mo'nin' he was sleepin' in his room till the paper come and I looked at it." Johnnie gave way to lament. "I told him awhile ago we had orto go back to Arizona or they'd git him. And now they've gone and done it sure enough."

Keen as a hawk on the hunt, Beatrice turned to her father quickly. "I'm going to get Clarendon on the 'phone. He'll know all about it."

"Why will he know all about it?"

"Because he was with Clay. He's the man the paper says the police are looking for--the man with Clay when it happened."

Her father's eyes lit. "That's good guessing, Bee."

It was her fiancé's man who answered the girl's call. She learned that Clarendon was still in his room.

"He's quite sick this morning, Miss," the valet added.

"Tell him I want to talk with him. It's important."

"I don't think, Miss, that he's able--"

"Will you please tell him what I say?"

Presently the voice of Bromfield, thin and worried, came to her over the wire. "I'm ill, Bee. Absolutely done up. I--I can't talk."

"Tell me about Clay Lindsay. Were you with him when--when it happened?"

There was a perceptible pause before the answer came.

"With him?" She could feel his terror throbbing over the wire. Though she could not see him, she knew her question had stricken him white. "With him where?"

"At this gambling-house--Maddock's?"

"No, I--I--Bee, I tell you I'm ill."

"He went out last night to join you at your club. I know that. When did you see him last?"

"I--we didn't--he didn't come."

"Then didn't you see him at all?"

There was another pause, significant and telling, followed by a quavering "No-o."

"Clary, I want to see you--right away."

"I'm ill, I tell you--can't leave my bed." He gave a groan too genuine to doubt.

Beatrice hung up the receiver. Her eyes sparked. For all her slimness, she looked both competent and dangerous.

"What does he say?" her father asked.

"Says he didn't meet Clay at all--that he didn't show up. Dad, there's something wrong about it. Clary's in a panic about something. I'm going to see him, no matter whether he can leave his room or not."

Whitford looked dubious. "I don't see--"

"Well, I do," his daughter cut him off decisively. "We're going to his rooms--now. Why not? He says he's ill. All right. I'm engaged to be married to him and I've a right to see how ill he is."

"What's in your noodle, honey? You've got some kind of a suspicion. What is it?"

"I think Clary knows something. My notion is that he was at Maddock's and that he's in a blue funk for fear he'll be found and named as an accessory. I'm going to find out all he can tell me."

"But--"

She looked at her father directly, a deep meaning in the lovely eyes. A little tremor ran through her body. "Dad, I'm going to save Clay. That's the only thing that counts."

Her words were an appeal, a challenge. They told him that her heart belonged to the friend in prison, and they carried him back somehow to the hour when the nurse first laid her, a tiny baby, in his arms.

His heart was very tender to her. "Whatever you say, sweetheart."

CHAPTER XXX

BEE MAKES A MORNING CALL

Their chauffeur broke the speed laws getting them to the apartment house for bachelors where Bromfield lived.

His valet for once was caught off guard when he opened the door to them. Beatrice was inside before he could quite make up his mind how best to meet this frontal attack.

"We came to see Mr. Bromfield," she said.

"Sorry, Miss. He's really quite ill. The doctor says--"

"I'm Miss Whitford. We're engaged to be married. It's very important that I see him."

"Yes, Miss, I know."

The man was perfectly well aware that his master wanted of all things to avoid a meeting with her. For some reason or other, Bromfield was in a state of collapse this morning the valet could not understand. The man's business was to protect him until he had recovered. But he could not flatly turn his master's fiancée out of the apartment. His eye turned to Whitford and found no help there. He fell back on the usual device of servants.

"I don't really think he can see you, Miss. The doctor has specially told me to guard against any excitement. But I'll ask Mr. Bromfield if--if he feels up to it."

The valet passed into what was evidently a bedroom and closed the door behind him. There was a faint murmur of voices.

"I'm going in now," Beatrice announced abruptly to her father.

She moved forward quickly, before Whitford could stop her, whipped open the door, and stepped into the room. Her father followed her reluctantly.

Clarendon, in a frogged dressing-gown, lay propped up by pillows. Beside the bed was a tray, upon which was a decanter of whiskey and a siphon of soda. His figure seemed to have fallen together and his seamed face was that of an old man. But it was the eyes that held her. They were full of stark terror. The look in them took the girl's breath. They told her that he had undergone some great shock.

He shivered at sight of her.

"What is it, Clary?" she cried, moving toward him. "Tell me--tell me all about it."

"I--I'm ill." He quaked it from a burning throat.

"You were all right, yesterday. Why are you ill now?"

He groaned unhappily.

"You're going to tell me everything--everything."

His fascinated, frightened eyes clung to this straight, slim girl whose look stabbed into him and shook his soul. Why had she come to trouble him this morning while he was cowering in fear of the men who would break in to drag him away to prison?

"Nothing to tell," he got out with a gulp.

"Oh, yes, you have. Are you ill because of what happened at Maddock's?"

He tried to pull himself together, to stop the chattering of his teeth.

"N-nonsense, my dear. I'm done up completely. Delighted to see you and all that, but--Won't you go home?" His appealing eyes passed to Whitford. "Can't you take her away?"

"No, I won't go home--and he can't take me away." Her resolution was hard as steel. It seemed to crowd inexorably upon the shivering wretch in the frogged gown. "What is it you're so afraid to tell me, Clarendon?"

He quailed at her thrust. "What--what do you mean?"

She knew now, beyond any question or doubt, that he had been present when "Slim" Jim Collins had been killed. He had seen a man's life snuffed out, was still trembling for fear he might be called in as a party to the crime.

"You'd better tell me before it's too late. How did you and Clay Lindsay come to go to that den?"

"We went out to--to see the town."

"But why to that place? Are you in the habit of going there?"

He shuddered. "Never was there before. I had a card. Some one gave it to me. So we went in for a few minutes--to see what it was like. The police raided the place." He dropped his sentences reluctantly, as though they were being forced from him in pain.

"Well?"

"Everybody tried to escape. The lights went out. I found a back door and got away. Then I came home."

"What about Clay?"

Bromfield told the truth. "I didn't see him after the lights went out, except for a moment. He was running at the man with the gun."

"You saw the gun?"

He nodded, moistened his dry lips with the tip of his tongue.

"And the--the shooting? Did you see that?"

Twice the words he tried to say faded on his lips. At last he managed a "No."

"Why not?"

"I--found a door and escaped."

"You must have heard shooting."

"I heard shots as I ran down the stairs. This morning I read that--that a man was--" He swallowed down a lump and left the sentence unfinished.

"Then you know that Clay is accused of killing this man, and that the police are looking for you because you were with him."

"Yes." His answer was a dry whisper.

"Did you see this man Collins in the room?"

"No. I shouldn't know him if I saw him."

"But you heard shots. You're sure of that!" cried Beatrice.

"Y-yes."

The girl turned triumphantly to her father. "He saw the gun and he heard shots. That proves self-defense at the worst. They were shooting at Clay when he struck with the chair--if he did. Clarendon's testimony will show that."

"My testimony!" screamed Bromfield. "My God, do you think I'm going to--to--go into court? They would claim I--I was--"

She waited, but he did not finish. "Clay's life may depend upon it, and of course you'll tell the truth," she said quietly.

"Maybe I didn't hear shots," he hedged. "Maybe it was furniture falling. There was a lot of noise of people stamping and fighting."

"You--heard--shots."

The eyes of the girl were deadly weapons. They glittered like unscabbarded steel. In them was a contained fire that awed him.

He threw out his hand in a weak, impotent gesture of despair. "My God, how did I ever come to get into such a mix-up? It will ruin me."

"How did you come to go?" she asked.

"He wanted to see New York. I suppose I had some notion of taking him slumming."

Beatrice went up to him and looked straight into his eyes. "Then testify to that in court. It won't hurt you any. Go down to the police and say you have read in the paper that they want you. Tell the whole truth. And Clary--don't weaken. Stick to your story about the shots." Her voice shook a little. "Clay's life is at stake. Remember that."

"Do you think it would be safe to go to the police?" he asked doubtfully.

Whitford spoke up. "That's the only square and safe thing to do, Bromfield. They'll find out who you are, of course. If you go straight to them you draw the sting from their charge that you were an accomplice of Clay. Don't lose your nerve. You'll go through with flying colors. When a man has done nothing wrong he needn't be afraid."

"I dare say you're right," agreed Bromfield miserably.

The trouble was that Whitford was arguing from false premises. He was assuming that Clarendon was an innocent man, whereas the clubman knew just how guilty he was. Back of the killing lay a conspiracy which might come to light during the investigation. He dared not face the police. His conscience was not clean enough.

"Of course Dad's right. It's the only way to save your reputation," Beatrice cried. "I'm not going to leave you till you promise to go straight down there to headquarters. If you don't you'll be smirched for life--and you'd be doing something absolutely dishonorable."

He came to time with a heart of heavy dread. "All right, Bee. I'll go," he promised. "It's an awful mess, but I've got to go through with it, I suppose."

"Of course you have," she said with complete conviction. "You're not a quitter, and you can't hide here like a criminal."

"We'll have to be moving, Bee," her father reminded her. "You know we have an appointment to meet the district attorney."

Beatrice nodded. With a queer feeling of repulsion she patted her fiancé's cheek with her soft hand and whispered a word of comfort to him.

"Buck up, old boy. It won't be half as bad as you think. Nobody is going to blame you."

They were shown out by the valet.

"You don't want to be hard on Bromfield, honey," Whitford told his daughter after they had reëntered their car. "He's a parlor man. That's the way he's been brought up. Never did a hard day's work in his life. Everything made easy for him. If he'd ever ridden out a blizzard like Clay or stuck it out in a mine for a week without food after a cave-in, he wouldn't balk on the job before him. But he's soft. And he's afraid of his reputation. That's natural, I suppose."

Beatrice knew he was talking to save her feelings. "You don't need to make excuses for him, Dad," she answered gently, with a wry smile. "I've got to give up. I don't think I can go through with it."

"You mean--marry him?"

"Yes." She added, with a flare of passionate scorn of herself: "I deserve what I've got. I knew all the time I didn't love him. It was sheer selfishness in me to accept him. I wanted what he had to give me."

Her father drew a deep breath of relief. "I'm glad you see that, Bee. I don't think he's good enough for you. But I don't know anybody that is, come to that."

"That's just your partiality. I'm a mean little bounder or I never should have led him on," the girl answered in frank disgust.

Both of them felt smirched. The behavior of Bromfield had been a reflection on them. They had picked him for a thoroughbred, and he had failed them at the first test.

"Well, I haven't been proud of you in that affair," conceded Colin. "It didn't seem like my girl to--"

He broke off in characteristic fashion to berate her environment. "It's this crazy town. The spirit of it gets into a person and he accepts its standards. Let's get away from here for a while, sweetheart."

"After Clay is out of trouble, Dad, I'll go with you back to Denver or to Europe or anywhere you say."

"That's a deal," he told her promptly. "We'll stay till after the annual election of the company and then go off on a honeymoon together, Bee."

CHAPTER XXXI

INTO THE HANDS OF HIS ENEMY

Durand waited alone for word to be flashed him that the debt he owed Clay Lindsay had been settled in full. A telephone lay on the desk close at hand and beside it was a watch. The second-hand ticked its way jerkily round and round the circle. Except for that the stillness weighed on him unbearably. He paced up and down the room chewing nervously the end of an unlit cigar. For the good tidings which he was anxious to hear was news of the death of the strong young enemy who had beaten him at every turn.

Why didn't Collins get to the telephone? Was it possible that there had been a slip-up, that Lindsay had again broken through the trap set for him? Had "Slim's" nerve failed him? Or had Bromfield been unable to bring the victim to the slaughter?

His mind went over the details again. The thing had been well planned even to the unguarded door through which Collins was to escape. In the darkness "Slim" could do the job, make his getaway along with Dave, and be safe from any chance of identification. Bromfield, to save his own hide, would keep still. If he didn't, Durand was prepared to shift the murder upon his shoulders.

The minute-hand of the watch passed down from the quarter to the half and from the half to the three quarters. Still the telephone bell did not ring. The gang leader began to sweat blood. Had some one bungled after all the care with which he had laid his plans?

A door slammed below. Hurried footsteps sounded on the stair treads. Into the room burst a man.

"'Slim' 's been croaked," he blurted.

"What!" Durand's eyes dilated.

"At Maddock's."

"Who did it?"

"De guy he was to gun."

"Lindsay."

"Dat's de fellow."

"Did the bulls get Lindsay?"

"Pinched him right on de spot."

"Gun 'Slim,' did he?"

"Nope. Knocked him cold wit' a chair. Cracked his skull."

"Is he dead?"

"He'll never be deader. Dave grabbed this sucker Lindsay and yelled that he done it. The bulls pinched him like I said right there."

"Did it happen in the dark?"

"Sure as you're a foot high. My job was dousin' the glims, and I done it right."

"What about 'Slim'? Was he shooting when he got it?"

The other man shook his head. "This Lindsay man claims he was. I talked wit' a bull afterward. Dey didn't find no gun on 'Slim.' The bull says there was no gun-play."

"What became of 'Slim's' gun?"

"Search me."

Durand slammed a big fist exultantly down on the desk. "Better than the way I planned it. If the gun's gone, I'll frame Lindsay for the chair. It's Salt Creek for his."

He lost no time in getting into touch with Gorilla Dave, who was under arrest at the station house. From him he learned the story of the killing of Collins. One whispered detail of it filled him with malicious glee.

"The boob! He'll go to the death chair sure if I can frame him. We're lucky Bromfield ran back into the little room. Up in front a dozen guys might have seen the whole play even in the dark."

Durand spent the night strengthening the web he had spun to destroy his enemy. He passed to and fro among those who had been arrested in the raid and he arranged the testimony of some of them to suit his case. More than one of the men caught in the dragnet of the police was willing to see the affray from the proper angle in exchange for protection from prosecution.

After breakfast Durand went to the Tombs, where Clay had been transferred at daybreak.

"You needn't bring the fellow here," he told the warden. "I'll go right to his cage and see him. I wantta have a talk with him."

CHAPTER XXXII

MR. LINDSAY RECEIVES

Between two guards Clay climbed the iron steps to an upper tier of cages at the Tombs. He was put into a cell which held two beds, one above the other, as in the cabin of an ocean liner. By the side of the bunks was a narrow space just long enough for a man to take two steps in the same direction.

An unshaven head was lifted in the lower bunk to see why the sleep of its owner was being disturbed.

"I've brought you a cell mate, Shiny," explained one of the guards. "You want to be civil to him. He's just croaked a friend of yours."

"For de love o' Gawd. Who did he croak?"

"'Slim' Jim Collins. Cracked him one on the bean and that was a-plenty. Hope you'll enjoy each other's society, gents." The guard closed the door and departed.

"Is that right? Did youse do up 'Slim,' or was he kiddin' me?"

"I don't reckon we'll discuss that subject," said Clay blandly, but with a note of finality in his voice.

"No offense, boss. It's an honor to have so distinguished a gent for a cell pal. For that matter I ain't no cheap rat myself. Dey pinched me for shovin' de queer. I'd ought to get fifteen years," he said proudly.

This drew a grin from Lindsay, though not exactly a merry one. "If you're anxious for a long term you can have some of mine," he told the counterfeiter.

"Maybe youse'll go up Salt Creek," said Shiny hopefully.

Afraid the allusion might not be understood, he thoughtfully explained that this was the underworld term for the electric chair.

Clay made no further comment. He found the theme a gruesome one.

"Anyhow, I'm glad dey didn't put no hoister nor damper-getter wit' me. I'm partickler who I meet. De whole profesh is gettin' run down at de heel. I'm dead sick of rats who can't do nothin' but lift pokes," concluded the occupant of the lower berth with disgust.

Though Clay's nerves were of the best he did very little sleeping that night. He was in a grave situation. Even if he had a fair field his plight would be serious enough. But he guessed that during the long hours of darkness Durand was busy weaving a net of false evidence from which he could scarcely disentangle himself. Unless Bromfield came forward at once as a witness for him, his case would be hopeless--and Clay suspected that the clubman would prove only a broken reed as a support. The fellow was selfish to the core. He had not, in the telling Western phrase, the guts to go through. He would take the line of least resistance.

Beatrice was in his thoughts a great deal. What would she think of him when the news came that he was a murderer, caught by the police in a den of vice where he had no business to be? Some deep instinct of his soul told him that she would brush through the evidence to the essential truth. She had failed him once. She would never do it again. He felt sure of that.

The gray morning broke, and brought with it the steaming smell of prison cooking, the sounds of the caged underworld, the sense of life all around him dwarfed and warped to twisted moral purposes. A warden came with breakfast--a lukewarm, muddy liquid he called coffee and a stew in which potatoes and bits of fat beef bobbed like life buoys--and Clay ate heartily while his cell mate favored him, between gulps, with a monologue on ethics, politics, and the state of society, as these related especially to Shiny the Shover. Lindsay was given to understand that the whole world was "on de spud," but the big crooks had fixed the laws so that they could wear diamonds instead of stripes.

Presently a guard climbed the iron stairway with a visitor and led the way along the deck outside the tier of cells where Clay had been put.

"He's in seventy-four, Mr. Durand," the man said as he approached. "I'll have to beat it. Come back to the office when you're ready."

The ex-pugilist had come to gloat over him. Clay knew it at once. His pupils narrowed.

He was lying on the bed, his supple body stretched at graceful ease. Not by the lift of an eyelid did he recognize the presence of his enemy.

Durand stood in front of the cell, hands in pockets, the inevitable unlit black cigar in his mouth. On his face was a sneer of malevolent derision.

Shiny the Shover bustled forward, all complaisance.

"Pleased to meet youse, Mr. Durand."

The gang politician's insolent eyes went up and down him. "I didn't come to see you."

"'S all right. Glad to see youse, anyhow," the counterfeit passer went on obsequiously. "Some day, when you've got time I'd like to talk wit' youse about gettin' some fall money."

"Nothin' doin', Shiny. I'm not backin' you," said Jerry coldly. "You've got to go up the river."

"Youse promised--"

"Aw, what the hell's eatin' you?"

Shiny's low voice carried a plaintive whine. "If you'd speak to de judge--"

"Forget it." Durand brushed the plea away with a motion of his hand. "It's your cell pal I've come to take a look at--the one who's goin' to the chair."

With one lithe movement Clay swung down to the floor. He sauntered forward to the grating, his level gaze full on the ward boss.

"Shiny, this fellow's rotten," he said evenly and impersonally. "He's not only a crook, but he's a crooked crook. He'd throw down his own brother if it paid him."

Durand's cruel lips laughed. "Your pal's a little worried this mornin', Shiny. He ain't slept much. You see the bulls got him right. It's the death chair for him and no lifeboat in sight."

Clay leaned against the bars negligently. He spoke with a touch of lazy scorn. "See those scars on his face, Shiny--the one on the cheek bone and the other above the eye. Ask him where he got 'em and how."

Jerry cursed. He broke into a storm of threats, anger sweeping over him in furious gusts. He had come to make sport of his victim and Lindsay somehow took the upper hand at once. He had this fellow where he wanted him at last. Yet the man's soft voice still carried the note of easy contempt. If the Arizonan was afraid, he gave no least sign of it.

"You'll sing another tune before I'm through with you," the prize-fighter prophesied savagely.

The Westerner turned away and swung back to his upper berth. He knew, what he had before suspected, that Durand was going to "frame" him if he could. That information gained, the man no longer interested him.

Sullenly Jerry left. There was no profit in jeering at Lindsay. He was too entirely master of every situation that confronted him.

Within the hour Clay was wakened from sleep by another guard with word that he was wanted at the office of the warden. He found waiting him there Beatrice and her father. The girl bloomed in that dingy room like a cactus in the desert.

She came toward him with hands extended, in her eyes gifts of friendship and faith.

"Oh, Clay!" she cried.

"Much obliged, little pardner." Her voice went to his heart like water to the thirsty roots of prickly pears. A warm glow beat through his veins. The doubts that had weighed on him during the night were gone. Beatrice believed in him. All was well with the world.

He shook hands with Whitford. "Blamed good of you to come, sir."

"Why wouldn't we come?" demanded the mining man bluntly. "We're here to do what we can for you."

Little wells of tears brimmed over Beatrice's lids. "I've been so worried."

"Don't you. It'll be all right." Strangely enough he felt now that it would. Her coming had brought rippling sunshine into a drab world.

"I won't now. I'm going to get evidence for you. Tell us all about it."

"Why, there isn't much to tell that you haven't read in the papers probably. He came a-shootin' and was hit by a chair."

"Was it you that hit him?"

"Wouldn't I be justified?" he asked gently.

"But did you?"

For a moment he hesitated, then made up his mind swiftly. "Yes," he told her gravely.

She winced. "You couldn't help it. How did you come to be there?"

"I just dropped in."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

He had burned the bridges behind him and was lying glibly. Why bring Bromfield into it? She was going to marry him in a few days. If her fiancé was man enough to come forward and tell the truth he would do so anyhow. It was up to him. Clay was not going to betray him to Beatrice.

"The paper says there was some one with you."

"Sho! Reporters sure enough have lively imaginations."

"Johnnie told me you had an engagement with Mr. Bromfield."

"Did you ever know Johnnie get anything right?"

"And Clarendon says he was with you at Maddock's."

Clay had not been prepared for this cumulative evidence. He gave a low laugh of relief. "I'm an awful poor liar. So Bromfield says he was with me, does he?"

"Yes."

He intended to wait for a lead before showing his hand. "Then you know all about it?" he asked carelessly.

Their eyes were on each other, keen and watchful. She knew he was concealing something of importance. He had meant not to tell her that Bromfield had been with him. Why? To protect the man to whom she was engaged. She jumped to the conclusion that he was still shielding him.

"Yes, you're a poor liar, Clay," she agreed. "You stayed to keep back Collins so as to give Clarendon a chance to escape."

"Did I?"

"Can you deny it? Clarendon heard the shots as he was running downstairs."

"He told you that, did he?"

"Yes."

"That ought to help a lot. If I can prove Collins was shootin' at me I can plead self-defense."

"That's what it was, of course."

"Yes. But Durand doesn't mean to let it go at that. He was here to see me this mo'nin'." Clay turned to the mining man, his voice low but incisive. His brain was working clear and fast. "Mr. Whitford, I have a hunch he's going to destroy the evidence that's in my favor. There must be two bullet holes in the partition of the rear room where Collins was killed. See if you can't find those bullet holes and the bullets in the wall behind."

"I'll do that, Lindsay."

"And hire me a good lawyer. Send him to me. I won't use a smart one whose business is to help crooks escape. If he doesn't believe in me, I don't want him. I'll have him get the names of all those pulled in the raid and visit them to see if he can't find some one who heard the shots or saw shooting. Then there's the gun. Some one's got that gun. It's up to us to learn who."

"That right."

"Tim Muldoon will do anything he can for me. There's a girl lives with his mother. Her name's Annie Millikan. She has ways of finding out things. Better talk it over with her too. We've got to get busy in a hurry."

"Yes," agreed Whitford. "We'll do that, boy."

"Oh, Clay, I'm sure it's going to be all right!" cried Beatrice, in a glow of enthusiasm. "We'll give all our time. We'll get evidence to show the truth. And we'll let you know every day what we are doing."

"How about my going bail for you?" asked her father.

Clay shook his head. "No chance, just yet. Let's make our showing at the coroner's inquest. I'll do fine and dandy here till then."

He shook hands with them both and was taken back to his cell. But hope was in his heart now. He knew his friends would do their best to get the evidence to free him. It would be a battle royal between the truth and a lie.

CHAPTER XXXIII

BROMFIELD MAKES AN OFFER

A youth with a face like a fox sidled up to Durand in the hotel lobby and whispered in his ear. Jerry nodded curtly, and the man slipped away as furtively as he had come.

Presently the ex-prize-fighter got up, sauntered to the street, and hailed a taxi. Twenty minutes later he paid the driver, turned a corner, and passed into an apartment house for bachelors. He took the elevator to the third floor and rang an electric bell at a door which carried the name "Mr. Clarendon Bromfield."

From the man who came to the door Mr. Bromfield's visitor learned that he was not well and could receive no callers.

"Just mention the Omnium Club, and say I'm here on very important business," said Jerry with a sour grin.

The reference served as a password. Jerry was admitted to meet a host quite unable to control his alarm. At sight of his visitor Bromfield jumped up angrily. As soon as his man had gone he broke out in a subdued scream.

"You rotten traitor! Get out of my room, or I'll call the police."

Durand found a comfortable chair, drew a case from his pocket, and selected a cigar. He grinned with evil mirth.

"You will, eh? Like hell you will. You're hidin' from the cops this blessed minute. I've just found out myself where you live."

"You took my money and threw me down. You hired a gunman to kill me."

"Now, what would I do that for? I hadn't a thing in the world against you, an' I haven't now."

"That damned ruffian shot at me. He was still shooting when I struck him with the chair," cried Bromfield, his voice shaking.

"He didn't know it was you--mistook you for Lindsay in the darkness."

"My God, I didn't mean to kill him. I had to do something."

"You did it all right."

"I told you there wasn't to be any violence. It was explicitly stated. You promised. And all the time you were planning murder. I'll tell all I know. By God, I will."

"Go easy, Mr. Bromfield," snarled Jerry. "If you do, where do ye think you'll get off at?"

"I'll go to the police and tell them your hired gunman was shooting at us."

"Will you now? An' I'll have plenty of good witnesses to swear he wasn't." Durand bared his teeth in a threat. "That's not all either. I'll tie you up with the rube from the West and send you up to Sing Sing as accessory. How'd you like that?"

"If I tell the truth--"

"You'll be convicted of murder in place of him and he'll go up as accessory. I don't care two straws how it is. But you'd be a damned fool. I'll say that for you."

"I'm not going to let an innocent man suffer in my place. It wouldn't be playing the game."

Durand leaned forward and tapped the table with his finger-tips. His voice rasped like a file. "You can't save him. He's goin' to get it right. But you can hurt yourself a hell of a lot. Get out of the country and stay out till it's over with. That's the best thing you can do. Go to the Hawaiian Islands, man. That's a good healthy climate an' the hotel cooking's a lot better than it is at Sing Sing."

"I can't do it," moaned the clubman. "My God, man, if it ever came out--that I'd paid you money to--to--ruin his reputation, and that I'd run away when I could have saved an innocent man--I'd be done for. I'd be kicked out of every club I'm in."

"It won't ever come out if you're not here. But if you force my hand--well, that's different." Again Jerry's grin slit his colorless face. He had this poor devil where he wanted him, and he was enjoying himself.

"What do you want me to do, then?" cried Bromfield, tiny beads of perspiration on his forehead.

"You'll do as I say--beat it outa the country till the thing's over with."

"But Lindsay will talk."

"The boob's padlocked his mouth. For some fool reason he's protectin' you. Get out, an' you're safe."

Bromfield sweated blood as he walked up and down the room looking for a way out of his dilemma. He had come to the parting of the road again. If he did this thing he would be a yellow cur. It was one thing to destroy Lindsay's influence with Beatrice by giving her a false impression. From his point of view their friendship was pernicious anyhow and ought to be wiped out. At most the cattleman would have gone back unhurt to the Arizona desert he was always talking about. Nobody there would care about what had happened to him in New York. But to leave him, an innocent man, to go to his death because he was too chivalrous to betray his partner in an adventure--this was something that even Bromfield's atrophied conscience revolted at. Clay was standing by him, according to Durand's story. The news of it lifted a weight from his soul. But it left him too under a stronger moral obligation to step out and face the music.

The clubman made the only decision he could, and that was to procrastinate, to put off making any choice for the present.

"I'll think it over. Give me a day to make up my mind," he begged.

Jerry shrugged his heavy shoulders. He knew that every hour counted in his favor, would make it more difficult for the tortured man to come forward and tell the truth. "Sure. Look it over upside and down. Don't hurry. But, man, what's there to think about? I thought you hated this guy--wanted to get rid of him."

"Not that way. God, no! Durand, I'll give you any sum in reason to let him go without bringing me into it. You can arrange it."

Jerry slammed down a fist heavily on the table. "I can, but I won't. Not if you was to go fifty-fifty with me to your last cent. I'm goin' to get this fellow. See? I'm goin' to get him good. He'll be crawlin' on his hands and knees to me before I'm through with him."

"What good will that do you? I'm offering you cold cash just to let the truth get out--that Collins was trying to kill him when he got hit."

"Nothin' doin'. I've been layin' for this boob. I've got him now. I'm goin' to turn the screws on and listen to him holler."

Bromfield's valet stepped into the room. "Mr. and Miss Whitford to see you, sir."

CHAPTER XXXIV

BEATRICE QUALIFIES AS A SHERLOCK HOLMES

Annie Millikan nodded her wise little head. "Jerry's gonna frame him if he can. He's laid the wires for it. That's a lead pipe."

"Sure," agreed Muldoon. "I'll bet he's been busy all night fixin' up his story. Some poor divvies he'll bully-rag into swearin' lies an' others he'll buy. Trust Jerry for the crooked stuff."

"We've got to get the truth," said Beatrice crisply, pulling on her gloves. "And we'll do it too. A pack of lies can't stand against four of us all looking for the truth."

Annie looked curiously at this golden-haired girl with the fine rapture of untamed youth, so delicate and yet so silken strong. By training and tradition they were miles apart, yet the girl who had lived on the edge of the underworld recognized a certain kinship. She liked the thorough way this young woman threw herself into the business of the day. The wireless telegraphy of the eyes, translated through the medium of her own emotions, told her that no matter whose ring Beatrice Whitford was wearing Clay Lindsay held her happiness in the cup of his strong brown hand.

"You're shoutin', Miss." Annie rose briskly. "I'll get busy doin' some sleuthin' myself. I liked your friend from the minute he stepped through--from the minute I set me peepers on him. He's one man, if anybody asks you. I'm soitainly for him till the clock strikes twelve. And say, listen! Jerry's liable not to get away with it. I'm hep to one thing. The gang's sore on him. He rides the boys too hard. Some of 'em will sure t'row him down hard if they think they'll be protected."

"The district attorney will stand by us," said Whitford. "He told me himself Durand was a menace and that his days as boss were numbered. Another thing, Miss Millikan. If you need to spend any money in a legitimate way, I'm here to foot the bills."

Muldoon, who was on night duty this month and therefore had his days free, guided Whitford and his daughter to Maddock's. As they reached the house an express wagon was being driven away. Automatically the license number registered itself in Tim's memory.

The policeman took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. The three went up the stairs to the deserted gambling-hall and through it to the rear room.

"From what Lindsay says the bullet holes ought to be about as high as his arm pits," said Whitford.

"'Slim' must 'a' been standin' about here," guessed Muldoon, illustrating his theory by taking the position he meant. "The bullets would hit the partition close to the center, wouldn't they?"

Beatrice had gone straight to the plank wall. "They're not here," she told them.

"Must be. According to Lindsay's story the fellow was aiming straight at it."

"Well, they're not here. See for yourself."

She was right. There was no evidence whatever that any bullets had passed through the partition. They covered every inch of the cross wall in their search.

"Lindsay must have been mistaken," decided Whitford, hiding his keen disappointment. "This man Collins couldn't have been firing in this direction. Of course everything was confusion. No doubt they shifted round in the dark and--"

He stopped, struck by an odd expression on the face of his daughter. She had stooped and picked up a small fragment of shaving from the floor. Her eyes went from it to a plank in the partition and then back to the thin crisp of wood.

"What is it, honey?" asked Whitford.

The girl turned to Muldoon, alert in every quivering muscle. "That express wagon--the one leaving the house as we drove up--Did you notice it?"

"Number 714," answered Tim promptly.

"Can you have it stopped and the man arrested? Don't you see? They've rebuilt this partition. They were taking away in that wagon the planks with the bullet holes."

Muldoon was out of the room and going down the stairs before she had finished speaking. It was a quarter of an hour later when he returned. Beatrice and her father were not to be seen.

From back of the partition came an eager, vibrant voice. "Is that you, Mr. Muldoon? Come here quick. We've found one of the bullets in the wall."

The policeman passed out of the door through which Bromfield had made his escape and found another small door opening from the passage. It took him into the cubby-hole of a room in which were the wires and instruments used to receive news of the races.

"What about the express wagon?" asked Whitford.

"We'll get it. Word is out for those on duty to keep an eye open for it. Where's the bullet?"

Beatrice pointed it out to him. There it was, safely embedded in the plaster, about five feet from the ground.

"Durand wasn't thorough enough. He quit too soon," said the officer with a grin. "Crooks most always do slip up somewhere and leave evidence behind them. Yuh'd think Jerry would have remembered the bullet as well as the bullet hole."

They found the mark of the second bullet too. It had struck a telephone receiver and taken a chip out of it.

They measured with a tape-line the distance from the floor and the side walls to the place where each bullet struck. Tim dug out the bullet they had found.

They were back in the front room again when a huge figure appeared in the doorway and stood there blocking it.

"Whatta youse doin' here?" demanded a husky voice.

Muldoon nodded a greeting. "'Lo, Dave. Just lookin' around to see the scene of the scrap. How about yuh?"

"Beat it," ordered Gorilla Dave, his head thrust forward in a threat. "Youse got no business here."

"Friends av mine." The officer indicated the young woman and her father. "They wanted to see where 'Slim' was knocked out. So I showed 'em. No harm done."

Dave moved to one side. "Beat it," he ordered again.

In the pocket of Muldoon was a request of the district attorney for admission to the house for the party, with an O.K. by the captain of police in the precinct, but Tim did not show it. He preferred to let Dave think that he had been breaking the rules of the force for the sake of a little private graft. There was no reason whatever for warning Durand that they were aware of the clever trick he had pulled off in regard to the partition.

CHAPTER XXXV

TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR

From Maddock's the Whitfords drove straight to the apartment house of Clarendon Bromfield. For the third time that morning the clubman's valet found himself overborne by the insistence of visitors.

"We're coming in, you know," the owner of the Bird Cage told him in answer to his explanation of why his master could not be seen. "This is important business and we've got to see Bromfield."

"Yes, sir, but he said--"

"He'll change his mind when he knows why we're here." Whitford pushed in and Beatrice followed him. From the adjoining room came the sound of voices.

"I thought you told us Mr. Bromfield had gone to sleep and the doctor said he wasn't to be wakened," said Beatrice with a broad, boyish smile at the man's discomfiture.

"The person inside wouldn't take no, Miss, for an answer."

"He was like us, wasn't he? Did he give his name?" asked the young woman.

"No, Miss. Just said he was from the Omnium Club."

Whitford and his daughter exchanged glances. "Same business we're on. Announce us and we'll go right in."

They were on his heels when he gave their names.

Bromfield started up, too late to prevent their entrance. He stood silent for a moment, uncertain what to do, disregarding his fiancée's glance of hostile inquiry lifted toward the other guest.

The mining man forced his hand. "Won't you introduce us, Clarendon?" he asked bluntly.

Reluctantly their host went through the formula. He was extremely uneasy. There was material for an explosion present in this room that would blow him sky-high if a match should be applied to it. Let Durand get to telling what he knew about Clarendon and the Whitfords would never speak to him again. They might even spread a true story that would bar every house and club in New York to him.

"We've heard of Mr. Durand," said Beatrice.

Her tone challenged the attention of the gang leader. The brave eyes flashed defiance straight at him. A pulse of anger was throbbing in the soft round throat.

Inscrutably he watched her. It was his habit to look hard at attractive women. "Most people have," he admitted.

"Mr. Lindsay is our friend," she said. "We've just come from seeing him."

The man to whom she was engaged had been put through so many flutters of fear during the last twelve hours that a new one more or less did not matter. But he was still not shock-proof. His fingers clutched a little tighter the arm of the chair.

"W-what did he tell you?"

Beatrice looked into his eyes and read in them once more stark fear. Again she had a feeling that there was something about the whole affair she had not yet fathomed--some secret that Clay and Clarendon and perhaps this captain of thugs knew.

She tried to read what he was hiding, groped in her mind for the key to his terror. What could it be that he was afraid Clay had told her? What was it they all knew except Lindsay's friends? And why, since Clarendon was trembling lest it be discovered, should the Arizonan too join the conspiracy of silence? At any rate she would not uncover her hand.

"He told us several things," she said significantly. "You've got to make open confession, Clary."

The ex-pugilist chewed his cigar and looked at her.

"What would he confess? That the man with him murdered Collins?"

"That's not true," said the girl quickly.

"So Lindsay's your friend, eh? Different here, Miss." Jerry pieced together what the clubman had told him and what he had since learned about her. He knew that this must be the girl to whom his host was engaged. "How about you, Bromfield?" he sneered.

The clubman stiffened. "I've nothing against Mr. Lindsay."

"Thought you had."

"Of course he hasn't. Why should he?" asked Beatrice, backing up Clarendon.

Durand looked at her with a bold insolence that was an insult. His eyes moved up and down the long, slim curves of her figure. "I expect he could find a handsome reason if he looked around for it, Miss."

The girl's father clenched his fist. A flush of anger swept his ruddy cheeks. He held himself, however, to the subject.

"You forget, Mr. Durand, that Lindsay was his guest last night."

Jerry's laugh was a contemptuous jeer. "That's right. I'd forgot that. He was your guest, wasn't he, Bromfield?"

"What's the good of discussing it here?" asked the tortured host.

"Not a bit," admitted Whitford. "Actions talk, not words. Have you seen the police yet, Bromfield?"

"N-not yet."

"What's he gonna see the police about?" Jerry wanted to know, his chin jutting out.

"To tell them that he saw Collins draw a gun and heard shots fired," retorted the mining man instantly.

"Not what he's been tellin' me. He'll not pull any such story--not unless he wants to put himself in a cell for life."

"Talk sense. You can't frighten Bromfield. He knows that's foolishness."

"Does he?" The crook turned derisive eyes on the victim he was torturing.

Certainly the society man did not look a picture of confidence. The shadow of a heavy fear hung over him.

The telephone rang. Bromfield's trembling fingers picked up the transmitter. He listened a moment, then turned it over to Beatrice.

"For you."

Her part of the conversation was limited. It consisted of the word "Yes" repeated at intervals and a concluding, "Oh, I'm so glad. Thank you." Her eyes were sparkling when she hung up.

"Good news, Dad," she said. "I'll tell you later."

Durand laughed brutally as he rose. "Good news, eh? Get all you can. You'll need it. Take that from me. It's straight. Your friend's in trouble up to the neck." He swaggered to the door and turned. "Don't forget, Bromfield. Keep outa this or you'll be sorry." His voice was like the crack of a trainer's whip to animals in a circus.

For once Bromfield did not jump through the hoop. "Oh, go to the devil," he said in irritation, flushing angrily.

"Better not get gay with me," advised Durand sourly.

After the door had closed on him there was a momentary pause. The younger man spoke awkwardly. "You can tell me now what it was Mr. Lindsay told you."

"We'd like to know for sure whether you're with us or with Durand," said Whitford mildly. "Of course we know the answer to that. You're with us. But we want to hear you say it, flat-foot."

"Of course I'm with you. That is, I'd like to be. But I don't want to get into trouble, Mr. Whitford. Can you blame me for that?"

"You wouldn't get into trouble," argued the mine owner impatiently. "I keep telling you that."

Beatrice, watching the younger man closely, saw as in a flash the solution of this mystery--the explanation of the tangle to which various scattered threads had been leading her.

"Are you sure of that, Dad?"

"How could he be hurt, Bee?"

The girl let Bromfield have it straight from the shoulder. "Because Clay didn't kill that man Collins. Clarendon did it."

"My God, you know!" he cried, ashen-faced. "He told you."

"No, he didn't tell us. For some reason he's protecting you. But I know it just the same. You did it."

"It was in self-defense," he pleaded.

"Then why didn't you say so? Why did you let Clay be accused instead of coming forward at once?"

"I was waiting to see if he couldn't show he was innocent without--"

"Without getting you into it. You wanted to be shielded at any cost." The scorn that intolerant youth has for moral turpitude rang in her clear voice.

"I thought maybe we could both get out of it that way," he explained weakly.

"Oh, you thought! As soon as you saw this morning's paper you ought to have hurried to the police station and given yourself up."

"I was ill, I keep telling you."

"Your man could telephone, couldn't he? He wasn't ill, too, was he?"

Whitford interfered. "Hold on, honey. Don't rub it in. Clarendon was a bit rattled. That's natural. The question is, what's he going to do now?"

Their host groaned. "Durand'll see I go to the chair--and I only struck the man to save my own life. I wasn't trying to kill the fellow. He was shooting at me, and I had to do it."

"Of course," agreed Whitford. "We've got proof of that. Lindsay is one witness. He must have seen it all. I've got in my pocket one of the bullets Collins shot. That's more evidence. Then--"

Beatrice broke in excitedly. "Dad, Mr. Muldoon just told me over the 'phone that they've got the express wagon. The plank with the bullet holes was in it. And the driver has confessed that he and a carpenter, whose name he had given, changed the partition for Durand."

Whitford gave a subdued whoop. "We win. That lets you out, Clarendon. The question now isn't whether you or Clay will go to the penitentiary, but whether Durand will. We can show he's been trying to stand in the way of justice, that he's been cooking up false evidence."

"Let's hurry! Let's get to the police right away!" the girl cried, her eyes shining with excitement. "We ought not to lose a minute. We can get Clay out in time to go home to dinner with us."

Bromfield smiled wanly. He came to time as gallantly as he could. "All right. I'm elected to take his place, I see."

"Only for a day or two, Clarendon," said the older man. "As soon as we can get together a coroner's jury we'll straighten everything out."

"Yes," agreed the clubman lifelessly.

It was running through his mind already that if he should be freed of the murder charge, he would only have escaped Scylla to go to wreck on Charybdis. For it was a twenty to one bet that Jerry would go to Whitford with the story of his attempt to hire the gang leader to smirch Lindsay's reputation.

CHAPTER XXXVI

A BOOMERANG

It must be admitted that when Bromfield made up his mind to clear Lindsay he did it thoroughly. His confession to the police was quiet and businesslike. He admitted responsibility for the presence of the Westerner at the Omnium Club. He explained that his guest had neither gambled nor taken any liquors, that he had come only as a spectator out of curiosity. The story of the killing was told by him simply and clearly. After he had struck down the gunman, he had done a bolt downstairs and got away by a back alley. His instinct had been to escape from the raid and from the consequences of what he had done, but of course he could not let anybody else suffer in his place. So he had come to give himself up.

The late afternoon papers carried the story that Clarendon Bromfield, well-known man about town, had confessed to having killed "Slim" Collins and had completely exonerated Lindsay. It was expected that the latter would be released immediately.

He was. That evening he dined at the home of the Whitfords. The mine owner had wanted to go on the bond of Bromfield, but his offer had been rejected.

"We'll hear what the coroner's jury has to say," the man behind the desk at headquarters had decided. "It'll not hurt him to rest a day or two in the cooler."

After dinner the committee of defense met in the Red Room and discussed ways and means. Johnnie and his bride were present because it would have been cruel to exclude them, but for the most part they were silent members. Tim Muldoon arrived with Annie Millikan, both of them somewhat awed by the atmosphere of the big house adjoining the Drive. Each of them brought a piece of information valuable to the cause.

The man in charge of the blotter at the station had told Tim that from a dip called Fog Coney, one of those arrested in the gambling-house raid, an automatic gun with two chambers discharged had been taken and turned in by those who searched him. It had required some maneuvering for Tim to get permission to see Fog alone, but he had used his influence on the force and managed this.

Fog was a sly dog. He wanted to make sure on which side his bread was buttered before he became communicative. At first he had been willing to tell exactly nothing. He had already been seen by Durand, and he had a very pronounced respect for that personage. It was not until he had become convinced that Jerry's star was on the wane that he had "come through" with what Muldoon wanted. Then he admitted that he had picked the automatic up from the floor where Collins had dropped it when he fell. His story still further corroborated that of the defense. He had seen "Slim" fire twice before he was struck by the chair.

Through an admirer Annie had picked up a lead that might develop into something worth while. Her friend had told her that Durand had made a flat offer to one of the dope fiends caught in the raid to look after him if he would swear that "Slim" had not drawn a gun. Though the story had not come at first hand, she believed it was true, and thought from her knowledge of him that the man would weaken under a mild third degree.

Clay summed up in a sentence the result of all the evidence they had collected. "It's not any longer a question of whether Bromfield goes to prison, but of Durand. The fellow has sure overplayed his hand."

Before twelve hours more had passed Durand discovered this himself. He had been too careless, too sure that he was outside of and beyond the law. At first he had laughed contemptuously at the advice of his henchmen to get to cover before it was too late.

"They can't touch me," he bragged. "They daren't."

But it came to him with a sickening realization that the district attorney meant business. He was going after him just as though he were an ordinary crook.

Jerry began to use his "pull." There reached him presently that same sinking at the pit of the stomach he had known when Clay had thrashed him. He learned that when a lawbreaker is going strong, friends at court who are under obligations to him are a bulwark of strength, but when one's power is shaken politicians prefer to take no risks. No news spreads more rapidly than that of the impending fall of a chieftain. The word was passing among the wise that Jerry Durand was to be thrown overboard.

The active center of the attack upon him was the group around Clay Lindsay. To it was now allied the office of the district attorney and all the malcontent subordinates of the underworld who had endured his domination so long only because they must. The campaign was gathering impetus like a snowslide. Soon it would be too late to stop it even if he could call off the friends of the Westerner.

Durand tried to make an appointment with Whitford. That gentleman declined to see him. Jerry persisted. He offered to meet him at one of his clubs. He telephoned to the house, but could not get any result more satisfactory than the cold voice of a servant saying, "Mr. Whitford does not wish to talk with you, sir." At last he telegraphed.

The message read:

I'll come to your house at eight this evening. Better see me for Missie's sake.

It was signed by Durand.

When Jerry called he was admitted.

Whitford met him with chill hostility. He held the telegram in his hand. "What does this message mean?" he asked bluntly.

"Your daughter's engaged to Bromfield, ain't she?" demanded the ex-prize-fighter, his bulbous eyes full on his host.

"That's our business, sir."

"I got a reason for asking. She is or she ain't. Which is it?"

"We'll not discuss my daughter's affairs."

"All right, since you're so damned particular. We'll discuss Bromfield's. I warned him to keep his mouth shut or he'd get into trouble."

"He was released from prison this afternoon."

"Did I say anything about prison?" Durand asked. "There's other kinds of grief beside being in stir. I've got this guy right."

"Just what do you mean, Mr. Durand?"

"I mean that he hired me to get Lindsay in bad with you and the girl. He was to be caught at the Omnium Club with a woman when the police raided the place, and it was to get into the papers."

"I don't believe it," said Whitford promptly.

"You will. I had a dictagraph in the room when Bromfield came to see me. You can hear it all in his own voice."

"But there wasn't any woman with Lindsay at Maddock's when the raid was pulled off."

"Sure there wasn't. I threw Bromfield down."

"You arranged to have Lindsay killed instead."

"Forget that stuff. The point is that if you don't call off the district attorney, I'll tell all I know about son-in-law Bromfield. He'll be ruined for life."

"To hear you tell it."

"All right. Ask him."

"I shall."

"Conspiracy is what the law calls it. Maybe he can keep outa stir. But when his swell friends hear it they'll turn their backs on Bromfield. You know it."

"I'll not know it unless Mr. Bromfield tells me so himself. I don't care anything for your dictagraph. I'm no eavesdropper."

"You tell him what he's up against and he'll come through all right. I'll see that every newspaper in New York carries the story if you don't notify me to-day that this attack on me is off. I'll learn you silk stockings you can't make Jerry Durand the goat."

"You can't implicate him without getting yourself into trouble--even if your story is true, and I still don't believe it."

"You believe it all right," jeered the crook. "And the story don't hurt me a bit. I pretended to fall in with his plans, but I didn't do it. The results show that."

"They show me that you tried to do murder instead."

"That's all bunk. The evidence won't prove it."

Whitford announced his decision sharply. "If you'll leave me your telephone number, I'll let you know later in the day what we'll do."

He had told Durand that he did not believe his story. He had tried to reject it because he did not want to accept it, but after the man had gone and he thought it over, his judgment was that it held some germ of truth. If so, he was bound to protect Bromfield as far as he could. No matter what Clarendon had done, he could not throw overboard to the sharks the man who was still engaged to his daughter. He might not like him. In point of fact he did not. But he had to stand by him till he was out of his trouble.

Colin Whitford went straight to his daughter.

"Honey, this man Durand has just brought me a story about Clarendon. He says he paid him to get Clay into trouble at the Omnium Club in order to discredit him with us."

"Oh, Dad!"

"I'm going to see Clarendon. If it's true I don't want you to see him again. Authorize me to break the engagement for you."

They talked it over for a few minutes. Beatrice slipped the engagement ring from her finger and gave it to her father with a sigh.

"You can't do wrong without paying for it, Dad."

"That's right. Bromfield--"

"I'm not thinking of Clarendon. I'm thinking about me. I feel as if I had been dragged in the dust," she said wearily.

CHAPTER XXXVII

ON THE CARPET

The question at issue was not whether Beatrice would break with her fiancé, but in what way it should be done. If her father found him guilty of what Durand had said, he was to dismiss him brusquely; if not, Beatrice wanted to disengage herself gently and with contrition.

Whitford summoned Bromfield to his office where the personal equation would be less pronounced. He put to him plainly the charge made by Jerry and demanded an answer.

The younger man was between the devil and the deep sea. He would have lied cheerfully if that would have availed. But a denial of the truth of Durand's allegations would be a challenge for him to prove his story. He would take it to the papers and spread it broadcast. From that hour Clarendon Bromfield would be an outcast in the city. Society would repudiate him. His clubs would cast him out. All the prestige that he had built up by a lifetime of effort would be swept away.

No lie could save him. The only thing he could do was to sugarcoat the truth. He set about making out a case for himself as skillfully as he could.

"I'm a man of the world, Mr. Whitford," he explained. "When I meet an ugly fact I look it in the face. This man Lindsay was making a great impression on you and Bee. Neither of you seemed able quite to realize his--his deficiencies, let us say. I felt myself at a disadvantage with him because he's such a remarkably virile young man and he constantly reminded you both of the West you love. It seemed fair to all of us to try him out--to find out whether at bottom he was a decent fellow or not. So I laid a little trap to find out."

Bromfield was sailing easily into his version of the affair. It was the suavest interpretation of his conduct that he had been able to prepare, one that put him in the rôle of a fair-minded man looking to the best interests of all.

"Not the way Durand tells it," answered the miner bluntly. "He says you paid him a thousand dollars to arrange a trap to catch Lindsay."

"Either he misunderstood me or he's distorting the facts," claimed the clubman with an assumption of boldness.

"That ought to be easy to prove. We'll make an appointment with him for this afternoon and check up by the dictagraph."

Bromfield laughed uneasily. "Is that necessary, Mr. Whitford? Surely my word is good. I have the honor to tell you that I did nothing discreditable."

"It would have been good with me a week ago," replied the Coloradoan gravely. "But since then--well, you know what's happened since then. I don't want to hurt your feelings, Clarendon, but I may as well say frankly that I can't accept your account without checking up on it. That, however, isn't quite the point. Durand has served notice that unless we call off the prosecution of him he's going to ruin you. Are you satisfied to have us tell him he can go to the devil?"

"I wouldn't go that far." Bromfield felt for his words carefully. "Maybe in cold type what I said might be misunderstood. I wouldn't like to push the fellow too far."

Whitford leaned back in his swivel chair and looked steadily at the man to whom his daughter was engaged. "I'm going to the bottom of this, Bromfield. That fellow Durand ought to go to the penitentiary. We're gathering the evidence to send him there. Now he tells me he'll drag you down to ruin with him it he goes. Come clean. Can he do it?"

"Well, I wouldn't say--"

"Don't evade, Bromfield. Yes or no."

"I suppose he can." The words came sulkily after a long pause.

"You did hire him to destroy Lindsay's reputation."

"Lindsay had no business here in New York. He was disturbing Bee's peace of mind. I wanted to get rid of him and send him home."

"So you paid a crooked scoundrel who hated him to murder his reputation."

"That's not what I call it," defended the clubman.

"It doesn't matter what you call it. The fact stands."

"I told him explicitly--again and again--that there was to be no violence. I intended only to show him up. I had a right to do it."

Whitford got up and walked up and down the room. He felt like laying hands on this well-dressed scamp and throwing him out of the office. He tasted something of his daughter's sense of degradation at ever having been connected with a man of so little character. The experience was a bitterly humiliating one to him. For Bee was, in his opinion, the cleanest, truest little thoroughbred under heaven. The only questionable thing he had ever known her to do was to engage herself to this man.

Colin came to a halt in front of the other.

"We've got to protect you, no matter how little you deserve it. I can't have Bee's name dragged into all the papers of the country. The case against Durand will have to be dropped. He's lost his power anyhow and he'll never get it back."

"Then it doesn't matter much whether he's tried or not."

That phase of the subject Whitford did not pursue. He began to feel in his vest pocket for something.

"Of course you understand that we're through with you, Bromfield. Neither Beatrice nor I care to have anything more to do with you."

"I don't see why," protested Bromfield. "As a man of the world--"

"If you don't see the reason I'm not able to explain it to you." Whitford's fingers found what they were looking for. He fished a ring from his pocket and put it on the desk. "Beatrice asked me to give you this."

"I don't think that's fair. If she wants to throw me over she ought to tell me her reasons herself."

"She's telling them through me. I don't want to be more explicit unless you force me."

"Of course I'm not good enough. I know that. No man's good enough for a good woman. But I'm as good as other fellows. We don't claim to be angels. New York doesn't sprout wings."

"I'm not going to argue this with you. And I'm not going to tell you what I think of you beyond saying that we're through with you. The less said about it the better. Man, don't you see I don't want to have any more talk about it? The engagement was a mistake in the first place. Bee never loved you. Even if you'd been what we thought you, it wouldn't have done. She's lucky to have found out in time."

"Is this a business rupture, too, Mr. Whitford?"

"Just as you say about that, Bromfield. As an investor in the Bird Cage you're entitled to the same consideration that any other stockholder is. Since you're the second largest owner you've a right to recognition on the board of directors. I'm not mixing my private affairs with business."

"Good of you, Mr. Whitford." The younger man spoke with a hint of gentle sarcasm. He flicked a speck of dirt from his coat-sleeve and returned to the order of the day. "I understand then that you'll drop the case against Durand on condition that he'll surrender anything he may have against me and agree to keep quiet."

"Yes. I think I can speak for Lindsay. So far most of the evidence is in our hands. It is not yet enough to convict him. We can probably arrange it with the district attorney to have the thing dropped. You can make your own terms with Durand. I'd rather not have anything to do with it myself."

Bromfield rose, pulled on the glove he had removed, nodded good-bye without offering to shake hands, and sauntered out of the office. There was a look on his face the mining man did not like. It occurred to Whitford that Clarendon, now stripped of self-respect by the knowledge of the regard in which they held him, was in a position to strike back hard if he cared to do so. The right to vote the proxies of the small stockholders of the Bird Cage Company had been made out in his name at the request of the president of the corporation.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

A CONVERSATION ABOUT STOCK

The case against Durand was pigeon-holed by the district attorney without much regret. All through the underworld where his influence had been strong, it was known that Jerry had begged off. He was discredited among his following and was politically a down-and-outer. But he knew too much to permit him to be dragged into court safely. With his back to the wall he might tell of many shady transactions implicating prominent people. There were strong influences which did not want him pressed too hard. The charge remained on the docket, but it was set back from term to term and never brought to trial.

Colin Whitford found his attention pretty fully absorbed by his own affairs. Bromfield had opened a fight against him for control of the Bird Cage Company. The mine had been developed by the Coloradoan from an unlikely prospect into a well-paying concern. It was the big business venture of his life and he took a strong personal interest in running it. Now, because of Bromfield's intention to use for his own advantage the proxies made out in his name, he was likely to lose control. With Bromfield in charge the property might be wrecked before he could be ousted.

"Dad's worrying," Beatrice told Lindsay. "He's afraid he'll lose control of the mine. There's a fight on against him."

"What for? I thought yore father was a mighty competent operator. Don't the stockholders know when they're well off?"

She looked at him enigmatically. "Some one he trusted has turned out a traitor. That happens occasionally in business, you know."

It was from Colin himself that Clay learned the name of the traitor.

"It's that fellow Bromfield," he explained. "He's the secretary and second largest stockholder in the company. The annual election is to be to-morrow afternoon. He's got me where the wool's short. I was fool enough to ask the smaller stockholders to make out their proxies in his name. At that time he was hand in glove with us. Now I'm up against it. He's going to name the board of directors and have himself made president."

Clay ventured on thin ice. The name of Bromfield had not been mentioned to him before in the last twenty-four hours by either Beatrice or her father. "Surely Bromfield wouldn't want to offend you."

"That's exactly what he would want to do."

"But--"

"He's got his reasons."

"Isn't there some way to stop him, then?"

"I've been getting a wrinkle trying to figure out one. I'd certainly be in your debt if you could show me a way."

"When is the election?"

"At three o'clock."

"Where?"

"At the company offices."

"Perhaps if I talked with Bromfield--"

Whitford laughed shortly. "I'd talk an arm off him if it would do any good. But it won't. He's out for revenge."

Clay's eyes alighted swiftly on the older man. They asked gravely a question and found an answer that set his heart singing. Beatrice had broken her engagement with Bromfield.

"He won't do, Clay. He's off color." Whitford did a bit of mental acrobatics. "Why do you suppose he took you to Maddock's?"

Again Lindsay's appraising gaze rested on his friend. "I've never worked that out to my satisfaction. It wasn't the kind of place he would be likely to go for pleasure. But I don't think he'd arranged a trap for me, if that's what you mean. It doesn't look reasonable that he would want me killed."

Whitford told him all he knew about the affair. The story told him banished any doubts Clay may have had about a certain step he had begun during the last few minutes to hold in consideration. It did more. It hardened a fugitive impulse to a resolution. Bromfield was fair game for him.

It was a little after eleven o'clock next morning when the cattleman walked into an apartment house for bachelors, took the elevator, and rang the bell at Bromfield's door.

Clarendon, fresh from the hands of his valet, said he was glad to see Lindsay, but did not look it. He offered his guest a choice of liquors and selected for himself a dry martini. Cigars and cigarettes were within reach on a tabouret.

Clay discovered that one difficulty he had expected to meet did not complicate the problem. The valet had left to select the goods for half a dozen custom-made shirts, Bromfield explained apologetically, apropos of the lack of service. He would not return till late in the afternoon.

"I've come to see about that Bird Cage business, Mr. Bromfield," his visitor explained. "I've been millin' it over in my mind, and I thought I'd put the proposition up to you the way it looks to me."

Bromfield's eyebrows lifted. His face asked with supercilious politeness what the devil business it was of his.

"Mr. Whitford has put in twenty years of his life building up the Bird Cage into a good property. It's a one-man mine. He made it out of a hole in the ground, developed it, expanded it, gave it a market value. He's always protected the stockholders and played the game square with them. Don't it look like he ought to stay in control of it?"

"Did he send you here to tell me that?"

"No, he didn't. But he's gettin' along in years, Bromfield. It don't look hardly right to me for you to step in and throw him out. What do you think about it, yourself?"

The clubman flushed with anger. "I think that it's damned impertinent of you to come here meddling in my business. I might have expected it. You've always been an impertinent meddler."

"Mebbeso," agreed Clay serenely, showing no surprise at this explosion. "But I'm here. And I put a question. Shall I ask it again?"

"No need. I'm going to take what the law allows me--what I and my friends have bought and paid for in the open market. The more it hurts Whitford the better I'll be pleased," answered Bromfield, his manner of cynical indifference swept away by gathering rage. The interference of this "bounder" filled him with a passion of impotent hate.

"Is that quite correct? Did you buy control in the market? In point of fact, aren't you holdin' a bunch of proxies because Whitford wrote and asked the stockholders to sign them for you to vote? What you intend doing is a moral fraud, no matter what its legal aspect is. You'd be swindling the very stockholders you claim to represent, as well as abusing the confidence of Whitford."

"What you think isn't of the least importance to me, Mr. Lindsay. If you're here merely to offer me your advice, I suppose I shall now have regretfully to say good-day." The New Yorker rose, a thin lip smile scarcely veiling his anger at this intruder who had brought his hopes to nothing.

"I reckon I'll not hurry off, Mr. Bromfield," Clay replied easily. "You might think I was mad at you. I'll stick around awhile and talk this over."

"Unfortunately I have an engagement," retorted the other icily.

"When?"

"I really think, Mr. Lindsay, that is my business."

"I'm makin' it mine," said Clay curtly.

Bromfield stared. "I beg your pardon?"

"I said it was mine too. You see I bought a coupla shares of Bird Cage stock yesterday. I'd hate to see Whitford ousted from control. I've got confidence in him."

"It's your privilege to vote that stock this afternoon. At least it would be if it had been transferred to you on the books. I'll vote my stock according to my own views."

"I wonder," murmured Clay aloud.

"What's that?" snapped Bromfield.

"I was just figurin' on what would happen if you got sick and couldn't attend that annual meeting this afternoon," drawled the Westerner. "I reckon mebbe some of the stockholders you've got lined up would break away and join Whitford."

The New Yorker felt a vague alarm. What idea did this fellow have in the back of his head. Did he intend to do bodily violence to him? Without any delay Bromfield reached for the telephone.

The large brown hand of the Westerner closed over his.

"I'm talkin' to you, Mr. Bromfield. It's not polite for you to start 'phoning, not even to the police, whilst we're still engaged in conversation."

"Don't you try to interfere with me," said the man who paid the telephone bill. "I'll not submit to such an indignity."

"I'm not the only one that interferes. You fixed up quite an entertainment for me the other night, didn't you? Wouldn't you kinda call that interferin' some? I sure ought to comb yore hair for it."

Bromfield made a hasty decision to get out. He started for the door. Clay traveled in that direction too. They arrived simultaneously. Clarendon backed away. The Arizonan locked the door and pocketed the key.

His host grew weakly violent. From Whitford he had heard a story about two men in a locked room that did not reassure him now. One of the men had been this cattleman. The other--well, he had suffered. "Let me out! I'll not stand this! You can't bully me!" he cried shrilly.

"Don't pull yore picket-pin, Bromfield," advised Lindsay. "I've elected myself boss of the rodeo. What I say goes. You'll save yorese'f a heap of worry if you make up yore mind to that right away."

"What do you want? What are you trying to do? I'm not a barroom brawler like Durand. I don't intend to fight with you."

"You've ce'tainly relieved my mind," murmured Clay lazily. "What's yore own notion of what I ought to do to you, Bromfield? You invited me out as a friend and led me into a trap after you had fixed it up. Wouldn't a first-class thrashin' with a hawsswhip be about right?"

Bromfield turned pale. "I've got a weak heart," he faltered.

"I'll say you have," agreed Clay. "It's pumpin' water in place of blood right now, I'll bet. Did you ever have a real honest-to-God lickin' when you was a boy?"

The New Yorker knew he was helpless before this clear-eyed, supple athlete who walked like a god from Olympus. One can't lap up half a dozen highballs a day for an indeterminate number of years, without getting flabby, nor can he spend himself in feeble dissipations and have reserves of strength to call upon when needed. The tongue went dry in his mouth. He began to swallow his Adam's apple.

"I'm not well to-day," he said, almost in a whisper.

"Let's look at this thing from all sides," went on Clay cheerfully. "If we decide by a majority of the voting stock--and I'm carryin' enough proxies so that I've got control--that you'd ought to have a whalin', why, o' course, there's nothin' to it but get to business and make a thorough job."

"Maybe I didn't do right about Maddock's."

"No mebbe about that. You acted like a yellow hound."

"I'm sorry. I apologize."

"I don't reckon I can use apologies. I might make a bargain with you."

"I'll be glad to make any reasonable bargain."

"How'd this do? I'll vote my stock and proxies in the Bromfield Punishment Company, Limited, against the whalin', and you vote yore stock and proxies in the Bird Cage Company to return the present board and directorate."

"That's coercion."

"Well, so it is."

"The law--"

"Did you go hire a lawyer for an opinion before you paid Durand to do me up?"

"You've got no right to hold me a prisoner here to help Whitford."

"All right, I won't. I'll finish my business with you and when I'm through, you can go to the annual meetin'--if you feel up to travelin' that far."

"I'll give you a thousand dollars to let me alone."

"That'd be a thousand and fifty you had given me, wouldn't it?" returned Lindsay gayly.

Tears of vexation stood in Bromfield's eyes. "All right. Let me go. I'll be fair to Whitford and arrange a deal with him."

"Get the stockholders who're with you on the 'phone and tell 'em to vote their stock as Whitford thinks best. Get Whitford and tell him the fight's off."

"If I do, will you let me go?"

"If you don't, we'll return to the previous question--the annual meeting of the Bromfield Punishment Company, Limited."

Bromfield got busy with the telephone.

When he had finished. Clay strolled over to a bookcase, cast his eyes over the shelves, and took out a book. It was "David Harum." He found an easy-chair, threw a leg over one arm, and presently began to chuckle.

"Are you going to keep me here all day?" asked his host sulkily.

"Only till about four o'clock. We're paired, you and me, so we'll both stay away from the election. Why don't you pick you a good book and enjoy yoreself? There's a lot of A 1 readin' in that case over there. It'll sure improve yore mind."

Clarendon ground his teeth impotently.

His guest continued to grin over the good stories of the old horse-trader. When he closed the book at last, he had finished it. His watch told him that it was twenty minutes to five. Bromfield's man was at the door trying to get in. He met Lindsay going out.

"No, I can't stay to tea to-day, Mr. Bromfield," the Arizonan was saying, a gleam of mirth in his eyes. "No use urging me. Honest, I've really got to be going. Had a fine time, didn't we? So long."

Bromfield used bad language.

CHAPTER XXXIX

IN CENTRAL PARK

Johnnie burst into the kitchen beaming. "We're gonna p'int for the hills, Kitty. Clay he's had a letter callin' him home."

"When are you going?"

"Thursday. Ain't that great?"

She nodded, absently. Her mind was on another tack already. "Johnnie, I'm going to ask Miss Whitford here for dinner to-night."

"Say, you ce'tainly get the best notions, honeybug," he shouted.

"Do you think she'll come?"

"Sure she'll come."

"I'll fix up the bestest dinner ever was, and maybe--"

Her conclusion wandered off into the realm of unvoiced hopes, but her husband knew what it was as well as it she had phrased it.

When Clay came home that evening he stopped abruptly at the door. The lady of his dreams was setting the table in the dining-room and chatting gayly with an invisible Kitty in the kitchen. Johnnie was hovering about her explaining some snapshots of Clay he had gathered.

"Tha's the ol' horn-toad winnin' the ropin' championship at Tucson. He sure stepped some that day," the Runt boasted.

The delicate fragrance of the girl's personality went to Clay's head like wine as he stepped forward and shook hands. To see her engaged in this intimate household task at his own table quickened his pulse and sent a glow through him.

"You didn't know you had invited me to dinner, did you?" she said, little flags a-flutter in her cheeks.

They had a gay dinner, and afterward a pleasant hour before Clay took her home.

Neither of them was in a hurry. They walked through Central Park in the kindly darkness, each acutely sensitive to the other's presence.

Her gayety and piquancy had given place to a gentle shyness. Clay let the burden of conversation fall upon her. He knew that he had come to his hour of hours and his soul was wrapped in gravity.

She had never before known a man like him, a personality so pungent, so dynamic. He was master of himself. He ran a clean race. None of his energy was wasted in futile dissipation. One could not escape from his strength, and she had already discovered that she did not want to escape it. If she gave herself to him, it might be for her happiness or it might not. She must take her chance of that. But it had come to her that a woman's joy is to follow her heart--and her heart answered "Here" when he called.

She too sensed what was coming, and the sex instinct in her was on tiptoe in flight. She was throbbing with excitement. Her whole being longed to hear what he had to tell her. Yet she dodged for a way of escape. Silences were too significant, too full-pulsed. She made herself talk. It did not much matter about what.

"Why didn't you tell us that it was Mr. Bromfield who struck down that man Collins? Why did you let us think you did it?" she queried.

"Well, folks in New York don't know me. What was the use of gettin' him in bad?"

"You know that wasn't the reason. You did it because--" She stopped in the midst of the sentence. It had occurred to her that this subject was more dangerous even than silence.

"I did it because he was the man you were goin' to marry," he said.

They moved side by side through the shadows. In the faint light he could make out the fine line of her exquisite throat. After a moment she spoke. "You're a good friend, Clay. It was a big thing to do. I don't know anybody else except Dad that would have done it for me."

"You don't know anybody else that loves you as much as I do."

It was out at last, quietly and without any dramatics. A flash of soft eyes darted at him, then veiled the shining tenderness beneath long lashes. She paced a little faster, chin up, nerves taut.

"I've had an attack of common sense," he went on, and in his voice was a strength both audacious and patient. "I thought at first I couldn't hope to win you because of your fortune and what it had done for you. Even when I knew you liked me I felt it wouldn't be fair for me to ask you. I couldn't offer you the advantages you'd had. But I've changed my mind. I've been watching what money does to yore friends. It makes them soft. They flutter around like butterflies. They're paupers--a good many of them--because they don't pay their way. A man's a tramp if he doesn't saw wood for his breakfast. I don't want you to get like that, and if you stay here long enough you sure will. It's in my heart that if you'll come with me we'll live."

In the darkness she made a rustling movement toward him. A little sob welled up in her throat as her hands lifted to him. "Oh, Clay! I've fought against it. I didn't want to, but--I love you. Oh, I do love you!"

He took her lissom young body in his arms. Her lips lifted to his.

Presently they walked forward slowly. Clay had never seen her more lovely and radiant, though tears still clung to the outskirts of her joy.

"We're going to live--oh, every how!" she cried to the stars, her lover's hand in hers.

CHAPTER XL

CLAY PLAYS SECOND FIDDLE

Johnnie felt that Kitty's farewell dinner had gone very well. It was her first essay as a hostess, and all of them had enjoyed themselves. But, so far as he could see, it had not achieved the results for which they had been hoping.

Clay came home late and next morning was full of plans about leaving. He discussed the packing and train schedules and affairs at the B-in-a-Box. But of Beatrice Whitford he made not even a casual mention.

"Two more days and we'll hit the trail for good old Tucson," he said cheerfully.

"Y'betcha, by jollies," agreed his bandy-legged shadow.

None the less Johnnie was distressed. He believed that his friend was concealing an aching heart beneath all this attention to impending details. As a Benedict he considered it his duty to help the rest of the world get married too. A bachelor was a boob. He didn't know what was best for him. Same way with a girl. Clay was fond of Miss Beatrice, and she thought a heap of him. You couldn't fool Johnnie. No, sirree! Well, then?

Mooning on the sad plight of these two friends who were too coy or too perverse to know what was best for them, Johnnie suddenly slapped himself a whack on the thigh. A brilliant idea had flashed into his cranium. It proceeded to grow until he was like to burst with it.

When Lindsay rose from breakfast he was mysteriously beckoned into another room. Johnnie outlined sketchily and with a good deal of hesitation what he had in mind. Clay's eyes danced with that spark of mischief his friends had learned to recognize as a danger signal.

"You're some sure-enough wizard, Johnnie," he admitted. "I expect you're right about girls not knowin' their own minds. You've had more experience with women than I have. If you say the proper thing to do is to abduct Miss Whitford and take her with us, why--"

"That's whatever. She likes you a heap more than she lets on to you. O' course it would be different if I wasn't married, but Kitty she can chaperoon Miss Beatrice. It'll be all accordin' to Hoyle."

The cattleman gazed at the puncher admiringly. "Don't rush me off my feet, old-timer," he said gayly. "Gimme a coupla hours to think of it, and I'll let you know what I'll do. This is real sudden, Johnnie. You must 'a' been a terror with the ladies when you was a bachelor. Me, I never kidnaped one before."

"Onct in a while you got to play like you're gonna treat 'em rough," said Mr. Green sagely, blushing a trifle nevertheless.

"All right. I'll let you engineer this if I can make up my mind to it after I've milled it over. I can see you know what you're doin'."

When Johnnie returned from a telephone call at the office two hours later, Kitty had a suspicion he was up to something. He bubbled mystery so palpably that her curiosity was piqued. But the puncher for once was silent as a clam. He did not intend to get Kitty into trouble if his plan miscarried. Moreover, he had an intuition that if she knew what was under way she would put her small, competent foot through the middle of the project.

The conspirators arranged details. Johnnie was the brains of the kidnaping. Clay bought the tickets and was to take charge of the prisoner after the train was reached. They decided it would be best to get a stateroom for the girl.

"We wantta make it as easy as we can for her," said Johnnie. "O' course it's all for her own good, but we don't figure to treat her noways but like the princess she is."

"Yes," agreed Clay humbly.

According to programme, carefully arranged by Johnnie, Beatrice rode down to the train with him and Kitty in their taxicab. She went on board for the final good-byes and chatted with them in their section.

The chief conspirator was as easy as a toad in a hot skillet. Now that it had come down to the actual business of taking this young woman with them against her will, he began to weaken. His heart acted very strangely, but he had to go through with it.

"C-can I see you a minute in the next car, Miss Beatrice?" he asked, his voice quavering.

Miss Whitford lifted her eyebrows, but otherwise expressed no surprise.

"Certainly, Johnnie."

"What do you want to see Miss Whitford about, Johnnie?" his spouse asked. There were times when Kitty mistrusted Johnnie's judgment. She foresaw that he might occasionally need a firm hand.

"Oh, nothin' much. Tell you about it later, honey." The kidnaper mopped the perspiration from his forehead. At that moment he wished profoundly that this brilliant idea of his had never been born.

He led the way down the aisle into the next sleeper and stopped at one of the staterooms. Shakily he opened the door and stood aside for her to pass first.

"You want me to go in here?" she asked.

"Yes'm."

Beatrice stepped in. Johnnie followed.

Clay rose from the lounge and said, "Glad to see you, Miss Whitford."

"Did you bring me here to say good-bye, Johnnie?" asked Beatrice.

The Runt's tongue stuck to the root of his mouth, His eyes appealed dumbly to Clay.

"Better explain to Miss Whitford," said Clay, passing the buck.

"It's for yore good, Miss Beatrice," stammered the villain who had brought her. "We--we--I--I done brought you here to travel home with us."

"You--what?"

Before her slender, outraged dignity Johnnie wilted. "Kitty, she--she can chaperoon you. It's all right, ma'am. I--we--I didn't go for to do nothin' that wasn't proper. We thought--"

"You mean that you brought me here expecting me to go along with you--without my consent--without a trunk--without--"

Clay took charge of the kidnaping. "Johnnie, if I were you I'd light a shuck back to the other car. I see I'll have to treat this lady rough as you advised."

Johnnie wanted to expostulate, to deny that he had ever given such counsel, to advise an abandonment of the whole project. But his nerve unexpectedly failed him. He glanced helplessly at Clay and fled.

He was called upon the carpet immediately on joining Kitty.

"What are you up to, Johnnie? I'm not going to have you make a goose of yourself if I can help it. And where's Mr. Lindsay? You said he'd meet us here."

"Clay, he's in the next car."

"You took Miss Beatrice in there to say good-bye to him?"

"No--she--she's goin' along with us."

"Going along with us? What do you mean, Johnnie Green?"

He told her his story, not at all cheerfully. His bold plan looked very different now from what it had two days before.

Already the chant of the wheels had begun. The train was in the sub-Hudson darkness of the tunnel.

Kitty rose with decision. "Well, of all the foolishness I ever heard, Johnnie, this is the limit. I'm going right to that poor girl. You've spoiled everything between you. She'll hate Mr. Lindsay for the rest of her life. How could he be so stupid?"

Her husband followed her, crestfallen. He wanted to weep with chagrin.

Beatrice opened the door of the stateroom. She had taken off her hat and Clay was hanging it on a hook.

"Come in," she said cordially, but faintly.

Kitty did not quite understand. The atmosphere was less electric than she had expected. She stopped, taken aback at certain impressions that began to register themselves on her brain.

"Johnnie was tellin' me--"

"About how he abducted me. Yes. Wasn't it dear of him?"

"But--"

"I've decided to make the best of it and go along."

"I--your father, Mr. Whitford--" Kitty bogged down.

Beatrice blushed. Little dimples came out with her smile. "I think I'd better let Clay explain."

"We were married two days ago, Kitty."

"What!" shouted the Runt.

"We intended to ask you both to the wedding, but when Johnnie proposed to abduct Miss Whitford, I thought it a pity not to let him. So we--"

Johnnie fell on him and beat him with both fists. "You daw-goned ol' scalawag! I never will help you git married again!" he shouted gleefully.

Clay sat down on the seat and gave way to mirth. He rocked with glee. Beatrice began to chuckle. She, too, yielded to laughter. Kitty, and then Johnnie, added to the chorus.

"Oh, Johnnie--Johnnie--you'll be the death of me!" cried Clay. "It'll never be a dull old world so long as you stay a bandit."

"Did you really advise him to beat me, Johnnie?" asked Beatrice sweetly. "I never would have guessed you were such a cave man."

Johnnie flamed to the roots of his hair. "Now, ma'am, if you're gonna believe that--"

Beatrice repented and offered him her hand.

"We'll not believe anything of you that isn't good? even if you did want to kidnap me," she said.

CHAPTER XLI

THE NEW DAY

The slapping of the wind against the tent awakened Beatrice. She could hear it soughing gently through the branches of the live oaks. An outflung arm discovered Clay missing.

Presently she rose, sleep not yet brushed fully from her eyes, drew the tent flaps together modestly under her chin, and looked out upon a world which swam in the enchanted light of a dawn primeval. The eastern sky was faintly pink with the promise of a coming sun. The sweet, penetrating lilt of the lark flung greeting at her.

Her questing glance found Clay, busy over the mesquite fire upon which he was cooking breakfast. She watched him move about, supple and light and strong, and her heart lifted with sheer joy of the mate she had chosen. He was such a man among men, this clear-eyed, bronzed husband of a week. He was so clean and simple and satisfying. As she closed the flaps she gave a deep sigh of content.

Every minute till she joined him was begrudged. For Beatrice had learned the message of her heart. She knew that she was wholly and completely in love with what life had brought her.

The hubbub of the city seemed to her now so small and so petty. Always she had known a passionate love of things fine and good. But civilization had thwarted her purposes, belittled her expression of them. Environment had driven her into grooves of convention. Here at last she was free.

And she was amazingly, radiantly happy. What did motor-cars or wine-suppers or Paris gowns matter? They were the trappings that stressed her slavery. Here she moved beside her mate without fear or doubt in a world wonderful. Eye to eye, they spoke the truth to each other after the fashion of brave, simple souls.

Glowing from the ice-cold bath of water from a mountain stream, she stepped down the slope into a slant of sunshine to join Clay. He looked up from the fire and waved a spoon gayly at her. For he too was as jocund as the day which stood tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops. They had come into the hills to spend their honeymoon alone together, and life spoke to him in accents wholly joyous.

The wind and sun caressed her. As she moved toward him, a breath of the morning flung the gown about her so that each step modeled anew the slender limbs.

Her husband watched the girl streaming down the slope. Love swift as old wine flooded his veins. He rose, caught her to him, and looked down into the deep, still eyes that were pools of happiness.

"Are you glad--glad all through, sweetheart?" he demanded.

A little laugh welled from her throat. She gave him a tender, mocking smile.

"I hope heaven's like this," she whispered.

"You don't regret New York--not a single, hidden longing for it 'way down deep in yore heart?"

She shook her head. "I always wanted to be rescued from the environment that was stifling me, but I didn't know a way of escape till you came," she said.

"Then you knew it?"

"From the moment I saw you tie the janitor to the hitching-post. You remember I was waiting to go riding with Mr. Bromfield. Well, I was bored to death with correct clothes and manners and thinking. I knew just what he would say to me and how he would say it and what I would answer. Then you walked into the picture and took me back to nature."

"It was the hitching-post that did it, then?"

"The hitching-post began it, anyhow." She slipped her arms around his neck and held him fast. "Oh, Clay, isn't it just too good to be true?"

A ball of fire pushed up into the crotch between two mountain-peaks and found them like a searchlight, filling their little valley with a golden glow.

The new day summoned them to labor and play and laughter, perhaps to tears and sorrow too. But the joy of it was that the call came to them both. They moved forward to life together.

Contents

GUNSIGHT PASS

How Oil Came To The Cattle Country And Brought A New West

BY WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

CHAPTER I

"CROOKED AS A DOG'S HIND LAIG"

It was a land of splintered peaks, of deep, dry gorges, of barren mesas burnt by the suns of a million torrid summers. The normal condition of it was warfare. Life here had to protect itself with a tough, callous rind, to attack with a swift, deadly sting. Only the fit survived.

But moonlight had magically touched the hot, wrinkled earth with a fairy godmother's wand. It was bathed in a weird, mysterious beauty. Into the crotches of the hills lakes of wondrous color had been poured at sunset. The crests had flamed with crowns of glory, the cañons become deep pools of blue and purple shadow. Blurred by kindly darkness, the gaunt ridges had softened to pastels of violet and bony mountains to splendid sentinels keeping watch over a gulf of starlit space.

Around the camp-fire the drivers of the trail herd squatted on their heels or lay sprawled at indolent ease. The glow of the leaping flames from the twisted mesquite lit their lean faces, tanned to bronzed health by the beat of an untempered sun and the sweep of parched winds. Most of them were still young, scarcely out of their boyhood; a few had reached maturity. But all were products of the desert. The high-heeled boots, the leather chaps, the kerchiefs knotted round the neck, were worn at its insistence. Upon every line of their features, every shade of their thought, it had stamped its brand indelibly.

The talk was frank and elemental. It had the crisp crackle that goes with free, unfettered youth. In a parlor some of it would have been offensive, but under the stars of the open desert it was as natural as the life itself. They spoke of the spring rains, of the Crawford-Steelman feud, of how they meant to turn Malapi upside down in their frolic when they reached town. They "rode" each other with jokes that were familiar old friends. Their horse play was rough but good-natured.

Out of the soft shadows of the summer night a boy moved from the remuda toward the camp-fire. He was a lean, sandy-haired young fellow, his figure still lank and unfilled. In another year his shoulders would be broader, his frame would take on twenty pounds. As he sat down on the wagon tongue at the edge of the firelit circle the stringiness of his appearance became more noticeable.

A young man waved a hand toward him by way of introduction. "Gents of the D Bar Lazy R outfit, we now have with us roostin' on the wagon tongue Mr. David Sanders, formerly of Arizona, just returned from makin' love to his paint hoss. Mr. Sanders will make oration on the why, wherefore, and how-come-it of Chiquito's superiority to all other equines whatever."

The youth on the wagon tongue smiled. His blue eyes were gentle and friendly. From his pocket he had taken a knife and was sharpening it on one of his dawn-at-the-heel-boots.

"I'd like right well to make love to that pinto my own se'f, Bob," commented a weather-beaten puncher. "Any old time Dave wants to saw him off onto me at sixty dollars I'm here to do business."

"You're sure an easy mark, Buck," grunted a large fat man leaning against a wheel. His white, expressionless face and soft hands differentiated him from the tough range-riders. He did not belong with the outfit, but had joined it the day before with George Doble, a half-brother of the trail foreman, to travel with it as far as Malapi. In the Southwest he was known as Ad Miller. The two men had brought with them in addition to their own mounts a led pack-horse.

Doble backed up his partner. "Sure are, Buck. I can get cowponies for ten and fifteen dollars--all I want of 'em," he said, and contrived by the lift of his lip to make the remark offensive.

"Not ponies like Chiquito," ventured Sanders amiably.

"That so?" jeered Doble.

He looked at David out of a sly and shifty eye. He had only one. The other had been gouged out years ago in a drunken fracas.

"You couldn't get Chiquito for a hundred dollars. Not for sale," the owner of the horse said, a little stiffly.

Miller's fat paunch shook with laughter. "I reckon not--at that price. I'd give all of fohty for him."

"Different here," replied Doble. "What has this pinto got that makes him worth over thirty?"

"He's some bronc," explained Bob Hart. "Got a bagful of tricks, a nice disposition, and sure can burn the wind."

"Yore friend must be valuin' them parlor tricks at ten dollars apiece," murmured Miller. "He'd ought to put him in a show and not keep him to chase cow tails with."

"At that, I've seen circus hosses that weren't one two three with Chiquito. He'll shake hands and play dead and dance to a mouth-organ and come a-runnin' when Dave whistles."

"You don't say." The voice of the fat man was heavy with sarcasm. "And on top of all that edjucation he can run too."

The temper of Sanders began to take an edge. He saw no reason why these strangers should run on him, to use the phrase of the country. "I don't claim my pinto's a racer, but he can travel."

"Hmp!" grunted Miller skeptically.

"I'm here to say he can," boasted the owner, stung by the manner of the other.

"Don't look to me like no racer," Doble dissented. "Why, I'd be 'most willin' to bet that pack-horse of ours, Whiskey Bill, can beat him."

Buck Byington snorted. "Pack-horse, eh?" The old puncher's brain was alive with suspicions. On account of the lameness of his horse he had returned to camp in the middle of the day and had discovered the two newcomers trying out the speed of the pinto. He wondered now if this precious pair of crooks had been getting a line on the pony for future use. It occurred to him that Dave was being engineered into a bet.

The chill, hard eyes of Miller met his. "That's what he said, Buck--our pack-horse."

For just an instant the old range-rider hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders. It was none of his business. He was a cautious man, not looking for trouble. Moreover, the law of the range is that every man must play his own hand. So he dropped the matter with a grunt that expressed complete understanding and derision.

Bob Hart helped things along. "Jokin' aside, what's the matter with a race? We'll be on the Salt Flats to-morrow. I've got ten bucks says the pinto can beat yore Whiskey Bill."

"Go you once," answered Doble after a moment's apparent consideration. "Bein' as I'm drug into this I'll be a dead-game sport. I got fifty dollars more to back the pack-horse. How about it, Sanders? You got the sand to cover that? Or are you plumb scared of my broomtail?"

"Betcha a month's pay--thirty-five dollars. Give you an order on the boss if I lose," retorted Dave. He had not meant to bet, but he could not stand this fellow's insolent manner.

"That order good, Dug?" asked Doble of his half-brother.

The foreman nodded. He was a large leather-faced man in the late thirties. His reputation in the cattle country was that of a man ill to cross. Dug Doble was a good cowman--none better. Outside of that his known virtues were negligible, except for the primal one of gameness.

"Might as well lose a few bucks myself, seeing as Whiskey Bill belongs to me," said Miller with his wheezy laugh. "Who wants to take a whirl, boys?"

Inside of three minutes he had placed a hundred dollars. The terms of the race were arranged and the money put in the hands of the foreman.

"Each man to ride his own caballo," suggested Hart slyly.

This brought a laugh. The idea of Ad Miller's two hundred and fifty pounds in the seat of a jockey made for hilarity.

"I reckon George will have to ride the broomtail. We don't aim to break its back," replied Miller genially.

His partner was a short man with a spare, wiry body. Few men trusted him after a glance at the mutilated face. The thin, hard lips gave warning that he had sold himself to evil. The low forehead, above which the hair was plastered flat in an arc, advertised low mentality.

An hour later Buck Byington drew Sanders aside.

"Dave, you're a chuckle-haided rabbit. If ever I seen tinhorn sports them two is such. They're collectin' a livin' off'n suckers. Didn't you sabe that come-on stuff? Their pack-horse is a ringer. They tried him out this evenin', but I noticed they ran under a blanket. Both of 'em are crooked as a dog's hind laig."

"Maybeso," admitted the young man. "But Chiquito never went back on me yet. These fellows may be overplayin' their hand, don't you reckon?"

"Not a chanct. That tumblebug Miller is one fishy proposition, and his sidekick Doble--say, he's the kind of bird that shoots you in the stomach while he's shakin' hands with you. They're about as warm-hearted as a loan shark when he's turnin' on the screws--and about as impulsive. Me, I aim to button up my pocket when them guys are around."

Dave returned to the fire. The two visitors were sitting side by side, and the leaping flames set fantastic shadows of them moving. One of these, rooted where Miller sat, was like a bloated spider watching its victim. The other, dwarfed and prehensile, might in its uncanny silhouette have been an imp of darkness from the nether regions.

Most of the riders had already rolled up in their blankets and fallen asleep. To a reduced circle Miller was telling the story of how his pack-horse won its name.

"... so I noticed he was actin' kinda funny and I seen four pin-pricks in his nose. O' course I hunted for Mr. Rattler and killed him, then give Bill a pint of whiskey. It ce'tainly paralyzed him proper. He got salivated as a mule whacker on a spree. His nose swelled up till it was big as a barrel--never did get down to normal again. Since which the ol' plug has been Whiskey Bill."

This reminiscence did not greatly entertain Dave. He found his blankets, rolled up in them, and promptly fell asleep. For once he dreamed, and his dreams were not pleasant. He thought that he was caught in a net woven by a horribly fat spider which watched him try in vain to break the web that tightened on his arms and legs. Desperately he struggled to escape while the monster grinned at him maliciously, and the harder he fought the more securely was he enmeshed.

CHAPTER II

THE RACE

The coyotes were barking when the cook's triangle brought Dave from his blankets. The objects about him were still mysterious in the pre-dawn darkness. The shouting of the wranglers and the bells of the remuda came musically as from a great distance. Hart joined his friend and the two young men walked out to the remuda together. Each rider had on the previous night belled the mount he wanted, for he knew that in the morning it would be too dark to distinguish one bronco from another. The animals were rim-milling, going round and round in a circle to escape the lariat.

Dave rode in close and waited, rope ready, his ears attuned to the sound of his own bell. A horse rushed jingling past. The rope snaked out, fell true, tightened over the neck of the cowpony, brought up the animal short. Instantly it surrendered, making no further, attempt to escape. The roper made a half-hitch round the nose of the bronco, swung to its back, and cantered back to camp.

In the gray dawn near details were becoming visible. The mountains began to hover on the edge of the young world. The wind was blowing across half a continent.

Sanders saddled, then rode out upon the mesa. He whistled sharply. There came an answering nicker, and presently out of the darkness a pony trotted. The pinto was a sleek and glossy little fellow, beautiful in action and gentle as a kitten.

The young fellow took the well-shaped head in his arms, fondled the soft, dainty nose that nuzzled in his pocket for sugar, fed Chiquito a half-handful of the delicacy in his open palm, and put the pony through the repertoire of tricks he had taught his pet.

"You wanta shake a leg to-day, old fellow, and throw dust in that tinhorn's face," he murmured to his four-footed friend, gentling it with little pats of love and admiration. "Adios, Chiquito. I know you won't throw off on yore old pal. So long, old pie-eater."

Across the mesa Dave galloped back, swung from the saddle, and made a bee-line for breakfast. The other men were already busy at this important business. From the tail of the chuck wagon he took a tin cup and a tin plate. He helped himself to coffee, soda biscuits, and a strip of steak just forked from a large kettle of boiling lard. Presently more coffee, more biscuits, and more steak went the way of the first helping. The hard-riding life of the desert stimulates a healthy appetite.

The punchers of the D Bar Lazy R were moving a large herd to a new range. It was made up of several lots bought from smaller outfits that had gone out of business under the pressure of falling prices, short grass, and the activity of rustlers. The cattle had been loose-bedded in a gulch close at hand, the upper end of which was sealed by an impassable cliff. Many such cañons in the wilder part of the mountains, fenced across the face to serve as a corral, had been used by rustlers as caches into which to drift their stolen stock. This one had no doubt more than once played such a part in days past.

Expertly the riders threw the cattle back to the mesa and moved them forward. Among the bunch one could find the T Anchor brand, the Circle Cross, the Diamond Tail, and the X-Z, scattered among the cows burned with the D Bar Lazy R, which was the original brand of the owner, Emerson Crawford.

The sun rose and filled the sky. In a heavy cloud of dust the cattle trailed steadily toward the distant hills.

Near noon Buck, passing Dave where he rode as drag driver in the wake of the herd, shouted a greeting at the young man. "Tur'ble hot. I'm spittin' cotton."

Dave nodded. His eyes were red and sore from the alkali dust, his throat dry as a lime kiln. "You done, said it, Buck. Hotter 'n hell or Yuma."

"Dug says for us to throw off at Seven-Mile Hole."

"I won't make no holler at that."

The herd leaders, reading the signs of a spring close at hand, quickened the pace. With necks outstretched, bawling loudly, they hurried forward. Forty-eight hours ago they had last satisfied their thirst. Usually Doble watered each noon, but the desert yesterday had been dry as Sahara. Only such moisture was available as could be found in black grama and needle grass.

The point of the herd swung in toward the cottonwoods that straggled down from the draw. For hours the riders were kept busy moving forward the cattle that had been watered and holding back the pressure of thirsty animals.

Again the outfit took the desert trail. Heat waves played on the sand. Vegetation grew scant except for patches of cholla and mesquite, a sand-cherry bush here and there, occasionally a clump of shining poison ivy.

Sunset brought them to the Salt Flats. The foreman gave orders to throw off and make camp.

A course was chosen for the race. From a selected point the horses were to run to a clump of mesquite, round it, and return to the starting-place. Dug Doble was chosen both starter and judge.

Dave watched Whiskey Bill with the trained eyes of a horseman. The animal was an ugly brute as to the head. Its eyes were set too close, and the shape of the nose was deformed from the effects of the rattlesnake's sting. But in legs and body it had the fine lines of a racer. The horse was built for speed. The cowpuncher's heart sank. His bronco was fast, willing, and very intelligent, but the little range pony had not been designed to show its heels to a near-thoroughbred.

"Are you ready?" Doble asked of the two men in the saddles.

His brother said, "Let 'er go!" Sanders nodded. The revolver barked.

Chiquito was off like a flash of light, found its stride instantly. The training of a cowpony makes for alertness, for immediate response. Before it had covered seventy-five yards the pinto was three lengths to the good. Dave, flying toward the halfway post, heard his friend Hart's triumphant "Yip yip yippy yip!" coming to him on the wind.

He leaned forward, patting his horse on the shoulder, murmuring words of encouragement into its ear. But he knew, without turning round, that the racer galloping at his heels was drawing closer. Its long shadow thrown in front of it by the westering sun, reached to Dave's stirrups, crept to Chiquito's head, moved farther toward the other shadow plunging wildly eastward. Foot by foot the distance between the horses lessened to two lengths, to one, to half a length. The ugly head of the racer came abreast of the cowpuncher. With sickening certainty the range-rider knew that his Chiquito was doing the best that was in it. Whiskey Bill was a faster horse.

Simultaneously he became aware of two things. The bay was no longer gaining. The halfway mark was just ahead. The cowpuncher knew exactly how to make the turn with the least possible loss of speed and ground. Too often, in headlong pursuit of a wild hill steer, he had whirled as on a dollar, to leave him any doubt now. Scarce slackening speed, he swept the pinto round the clump of mesquite and was off for home.

Dave was halfway back before he was sure that the thud of Whiskey Bill's hoofs was almost at his heels. He called on the cowpony for a last spurt. The plucky little horse answered the call, gathered itself for the home stretch, for a moment held its advantage. Again Bob Hart's yell drifted to Sanders.

Then he knew that the bay was running side by side with Chiquito, was slowly creeping to the front. The two horses raced down the stretch together, Whiskey Bill half a length in the lead and gaining at every stride. Daylight showed between them when they crossed the line. Chiquito had been outrun by a speedier horse.

CHAPTER III

DAVE RIDES ON HIS SPURS

Hart came up to his friend grinning. "Well, you old horn-toad, we got no kick comin'. Chiquito run a mighty pretty race. Only trouble was his laigs wasn't long enough."

The owner of the pony nodded, a lump in his throat. He was not thinking about his thirty-five dollars, but about the futile race into which he had allowed his little beauty to be trapped. Dave would not be twenty-one till coming grass, and it still hurt his boyish pride to think that his favorite had been beaten.

Another lank range-rider drifted up. "Same here, Dave. I'll kiss my twenty bucks good-bye cheerful. You 'n' the li'l hoss run the best race, at that. Chiquito started like a bullet out of a gun, and say, boys! how he did swing round on the turn."

"Much obliged, Steve. I reckon he sure done his best," said Sanders gratefully.

The voice of George Doble cut in, openly and offensively jubilant. "Me, I'd ruther show the way at the finish than at the start. You're more liable to collect the mazuma. I'll tell you now that broomtail never had a chance to beat Whiskey Bill."

"Yore hoss can run, seh," admitted Dave.

"I know it, but you don't. He didn't have to take the kinks out of his legs to beat that plug."

"You get our money," said Hart quietly. "Ain't that enough without rubbin' it in?"

"Sure I get yore money--easy money, at that," boasted Doble. "Got any more you want to put up on the circus bronc?"

Steve Russell voiced his sentiments curtly. "You make me good and tired, Doble. There's only one thing I hate more'n a poor loser--and that's a poor winner. As for putting my money on the pinto, I'll just say this: I'll bet my li'l' pile he can beat yore bay twenty miles, a hundred miles, or five hundred."

"Not any, thanks. Whiskey Bill is a racer, not a mule team," Miller said, laughing.

Steve loosened the center-fire cinch of his pony's saddle. He noted that there was no real geniality in the fat man's mirth. It was a surface thing designed to convey an effect of good-fellowship. Back of it lay the chill implacability of the professional gambler.

The usual give-and-take of gay repartee was missing at supper that night. Since they were of the happy-go-lucky, outdoor West it did not greatly distress the D Bar Lazy R riders to lose part of their pay checks. Even if it had, their spirits would have been unimpaired, for it is written in their code that a man must take his punishment without whining. What hurt was that they had been tricked, led like lambs to the killing. None of them doubted now that the pack-horse of the gamblers was a "ringer." These men had deliberately crossed the path of the trail outfit in order to take from the vaqueros their money.

The punchers were sulky. Instead of a fair race they had been up against an open-and-shut proposition, as Russell phrased it. The jeers of Doble did not improve their tempers. The man was temperamentally mean-hearted. He could not let his victims alone.

"They say one's born every minute, Ad. Dawged if I don't believe it," he sneered.

Miller was not saying much himself, but his fat stomach shook at this sally. If his partner could goad the boys into more betting he was quite willing to divide the profits.

Audibly Hart yawned and murmured his sentiments aloud. "I'm liable to tell these birds what I think of 'em, Steve, if they don't spend quite some time layin' off'n us."

"Don't tell us out loud. We might hear you," advised Doble insolently.

"In regards to that, I'd sure worry if you did."

Dave was at that moment returning to his place with a cup of hot coffee. By some perverse trick of fate his glance fell on Doble's sinister face of malignant triumph. His self-control snapped, and in an instant the whole course of his life was deflected from the path it would otherwise have taken. With a flip he tossed up the tin cup so that the hot coffee soused the crook.

"Goddlemighty!" screamed Doble, leaping to his feet. He reached for his forty-five, just as Sanders closed with him. The range-rider's revolver, like that of most of his fellows, was in a blanket roll in the wagon.

Miller, with surprising agility for a fat man, got to his feet and launched himself at the puncher. Dave flung the smaller of his opponents back against Steve, who was sitting tailor fashion beside him. The gunman tottered and fell over Russell, who lost no time in pinning his hands to the ground while Hart deftly removed the revolver from his pocket.

Swinging round to face Miller, Dave saw at once that the big man had chosen not to draw his gun. In spite of his fat the gambler was a rough-and-tumble fighter of parts. The extra weight had come in recent years, but underneath it lay roped muscles and heavy bones. Men often remarked that they had never seen a fat man who could handle himself like Ad Miller. The two clinched. Dave had the under hold and tried to trip his bulkier foe. The other side-stepped, circling round. He got one hand under the boy's chin and drove it up and back, flinging the range-rider a dozen yards.

Instantly Dave plunged at him. He had to get at close quarters, for he could not tell when Miller would change his mind and elect to fight with a gun. The man had chosen a hand-to-hand tussle, Dave knew, because he was sure he could beat so stringy an opponent as himself. Once he got the grip on him that he wanted the big gambler would crush him by sheer strength. So, though the youngster had to get close, he dared not clinch. His judgment was that his best bet was his fists.

He jabbed at the big white face, ducked, and jabbed again. Now he was in the shine of the moon; now he was in darkness. A red streak came out on the white face opposite, and he knew he had drawn blood. Miller roared like a bull and flailed away at him. More than one heavy blow jarred him, sent a bolt of pain shooting through him. The only thing he saw was that shining face. He pecked away at it with swift jabs, taking what punishment he must and dodging the rest.

Miller was furious. He had intended to clean up this bantam in about a minute. He rushed again, broke through Dave's defense, and closed with him. His great arms crushed into the ribs of his lean opponent. As they swung round and round, Dave gasped for breath. He twisted and squirmed, trying to escape that deadly hug. Somehow he succeeded in tripping his huge foe.

They went down locked together, Dave underneath. The puncher knew that if he had room Miller would hammer his face to a pulp. He drew himself close to the barrel body, arms and legs wound tight like hoops.

Miller gave a yell of pain. Instinctively Dave moved his legs higher and clamped them tighter. The yell rose again, became a scream of agony.

"Lemme loose!" shrieked the man on top. "My Gawd, you're killin' me!"

Dave had not the least idea what was disturbing Miller's peace of mind, but whatever it was moved to his advantage. He clamped tighter, working his heels into another secure position. The big man bellowed with pain. "Take him off! Take him off!" he implored in shrill crescendo.

"What's all this?" demanded an imperious voice.

Miller was torn howling from the arms and legs that bound him and Dave found himself jerked roughly to his feet. The big raw-boned foreman was glaring at him above his large hook nose. The trail boss had been out at the remuda with the jingler when the trouble began. He had arrived in time to rescue his fat friend.

"What's eatin' you, Sanders?" he demanded curtly.

"He jumped George!" yelped Miller.

Breathing hard, Dave faced his foe warily. He was in a better strategic position than he had been, for he had pulled the revolver of the fat man from its holster just as they were dragged apart. It was in his right hand now, pressed close to his hip, ready for instant use if need be. He could see without looking that Doble was still struggling ineffectively in the grip of Russell.

"Dave stumbled and spilt some coffee on George; then George he tried to gun him. Miller mixed in then," explained Hart.

The foreman glared. "None of this stuff while you're on the trail with my outfit. Get that, Sanders? I won't have it."

"Dave he couldn't hardly he'p hisse'f," Buck Byington broke in. "They was runnin' on him considerable, Dug."

"I ain't askin' for excuses. I'm tellin' you boys what's what," retorted the road boss. "Sanders, give him his gun."

The cowpuncher took a step backward. He had no intention of handing a loaded gun to Miller while the gambler was in his present frame of mind. That might be equivalent to suicide. He broke the revolver, turned the cylinder, and shook out the cartridges. The empty weapon he tossed on the ground.

"He ripped me with his spurs," Miller said sullenly. "That's howcome I had to turn him loose."

Dave looked down at the man's legs. His trousers were torn to shreds. Blood trickled down the lacerated calves where the spurs had roweled the flesh cruelly. No wonder Miller had suddenly lost interest in the fight. The vaquero thanked his lucky stars that he had not taken off his spurs and left them with the saddle.

The first thing that Dave did was to strike straight for the wagon where his roll of bedding was. He untied the rope, flung open the blankets, and took from inside the forty-five he carried to shoot rattlesnakes. This he shoved down between his shirt and trousers where it would be handy for use in case of need. His roll he brought back with him as a justification for the trip to the wagon. He had no intention of starting anything. All he wanted was not to be caught at a disadvantage a second time.

Miller and the two Dobles were standing a little way apart talking together in low tones. The fat man, his foot on the spoke of a wagon wheel, was tying up one of his bleeding calves with a bandanna handkerchief. Dave gathered that his contribution to the conversation consisted mainly of fervent and almost tearful profanity.

The brothers appeared to be debating some point with heat. George insisted, and the foreman gave up with a lift of his big shoulders.

"Have it yore own way. I hate to have you leave us after I tell you there'll be no more trouble, but if that's how you feel about it I got nothin' to say. What I want understood is this"--Dug Doble raised his voice for all to hear--"that I'm boss of this outfit and won't stand for any rough stuff. If the boys, or any one of 'em, can't lose their money without bellyachin', they can get their time pronto."

The two gamblers packed their race-horse, saddled, and rode away without a word to any of the range-riders. The men round the fire gave no sign that they knew the confidence men were on the map until after they had gone. Then tongues began to wag, the foreman having gone to the edge of the camp with them.

"Well, my feelin's ain't hurt one li'l' bit because they won't play with us no more," Steve Russell said, smiling broadly.

"Can you blame that fat guy for not wantin' to play with Dave here?" asked Hart, and he beamed at the memory of what he had seen. "Son, you ce'tainly gave him one surprise party when yore rowels dug in."

"Wonder to me he didn't stampede the cows, way he hollered," grinned a third. "I don't grudge him my ten plunks. Not none. Dave he give me my money's worth that last round."

"I had a little luck," admitted Dave modestly.

"Betcha," agreed Steve. "I was just startin' over to haul the fat guy off Dave when he began bleatin' for us to come help him turn loose the bear. I kinda took my time then."

"Onct I went to a play called 'All's Well That Ends Well,'" said Byington reminiscently. "At the Tabor Grand the-á-ter, in Denver."

"Did it tell how a freckled cow-punch rode a fat tinhorn on his spurs?" asked Hart.

"Bet he wears stovepipes on his laigs next time he mixes it with Dave," suggested one coffee-brown youth. "Well, looks like the show's over for to-night. I'm gonna roll in." Motion carried unanimously.

CHAPTER IV

THE PAINT HOSS DISAPPEARS

Wakened by the gong, Dave lay luxuriously in the warmth of his blankets. It was not for several moments that he remembered the fight or the circumstances leading to it. The grin that lit his boyish face at thought of its unexpected conclusion was a fleeting one, for he discovered that it hurt his face to smile. Briskly he rose, and grunted "Ouch!" His sides were sore from the rib squeezing of Miller's powerful arms.

Byington walked out to the remuda with him. "How's the man-tamer this glad mo'nin'?" he asked of Dave.

"Fine and dandy, old lizard."

"You sure got the deadwood on him when yore spurs got into action. A man's like a watermelon. You cayn't tell how good he is till you thump him. Miller is right biggity, and they say he's sudden death with a gun. But when it come down to cases he hadn't the guts to go through and stand the gaff."

"He's been livin' soft too long, don't you reckon?"

"No, sir. He just didn't have the sand in his craw to hang on and finish you off whilst you was rippin' up his laigs."

Dave roped his mount and rode out to meet Chiquito. The pinto was an aristocrat in his way. He preferred to choose his company, was a little disdainful of the cowpony that had no accomplishments. Usually he grazed a short distance from the remuda, together with one of Bob Hart's string. The two ponies had been brought up in the same bunch.

This morning Dave's whistle brought no nicker of joy, no thud of hoofs galloping out of the darkness to him. He rode deeper into the desert. No answer came to his calls. At a canter he cut across the plain to the wrangler. That young man had seen nothing of Chiquito since the evening before, but this was not at all unusual.

The cowpuncher returned to camp for breakfast and got permission of the foreman to look for the missing horses.

Beyond the flats was a country creased with draws and dry arroyos. From one to another of these Dave went without finding a trace of the animals. All day he pushed through cactus and mesquite heavy with gray dust. In the late afternoon he gave up for the time and struck back to the flats. It was possible that the lost broncos had rejoined the remuda of their own accord or had been found by some of the riders gathering up strays.

Dave struck the herd trail and followed it toward the new camp. A horseman came out of the golden west of the sunset to meet him. For a long time he saw the figure rising and falling in the saddle, the pony moving in the even fox-trot of the cattle country.

The man was Bob Hart.

"Found 'em?" shouted Dave when he was close enough to be heard.

"No, and we won't--not this side of Malapi. Those scalawags didn't make camp last night. They kep' travelin'. If you ask me, they're movin' yet, and they've got our broncs with 'em."

This had already occurred to Dave as a possibility. "Any proof?" he asked quietly.

"A-plenty. I been ridin' on the point all day. Three-four times we cut trail of five horses. Two of the five are bein' ridden. My Four-Bits hoss has got a broken front hoof. So has one of the five."

"Movin' fast, are they?"

"You're damn whistlin'. They're hivin' off for parts unknown. Malapi first off, looks like. They got friends there."

"Steelman and his outfit will protect them while they hunt cover and make a getaway. Miller mentioned Denver before the race--said he was figurin' on goin' there. Maybe--"

"He was probably lyin'. You can't tell. Point is, we've got to get busy. My notion is we'd better make a bee-line for Malapi right away," proposed Bob.

"We'll travel all night. No use wastin' any more time."

Dug Doble received their decision sourly. "It don't tickle me a heap to be left short-handed because you two boys have got an excuse to get to town quicker."

Hart looked him straight in the eye. "Call it an excuse if you want to. We're after a pair of shorthorn crooks that stole our horses."

The foreman flushed angrily. "Don't come bellyachin' to me about yore broomtails. I ain't got 'em."

"We know who's got 'em," said Dave evenly. "What we want is a wage check so as we can cash it at Malapi."

"You don't get it," returned the big foreman bluntly. "We pay off when we reach the end of the drive."

"I notice you paid yore brother and Miller when we gave an order for it," Hart retorted with heat.

"A different proposition. They hadn't signed up for this drive like you boys did. You'll get what's comin' to you when I pay off the others. You'll not get it before."

The two riders retired sulkily. They felt it was not fair, but on the trail the foreman is an autocrat. From the other riders they borrowed a few dollars and gave in exchange orders on their pay checks.

Within an hour they were on the road. Fresh horses had been roped from the remuda and were carrying them at an even Spanish jog-trot through the night. The stars came out, clear and steady above a ghostly world at sleep. The desert was a place of mystery, of vast space peopled by strange and misty shapes.

The plain stretched vaguely before them. Far away was the thin outline of the range which enclosed the valley. The riders held their course by means of that trained sixth sense of direction their occupation had developed.

They spoke little. Once a coyote howled dismally from the edge of the mesa. For the most part there was no sound except the chuffing of the horses' movements and the occasional ring of a hoof on the baked ground.

The gray dawn, sifting into the sky, found them still traveling. The mountains came closer, grew more definite. The desert flamed again, dry, lifeless, torrid beneath a sky of turquoise. Dust eddies whirled in inverted cones, wind devils playing in spirals across the sand. Tablelands, mesas, wide plains, desolate lava stretches. Each in turn was traversed by these lean, grim, bronzed riders.

They reached the foothills and left behind the desert shimmering in the dancing heat. In a deep gorge, where the hill creases gave them shade, the punchers threw off the trail, unsaddled, hobbled their horses, and stole a few hours' sleep.

In the late afternoon they rode back to the trail through a draw, the ponies wading fetlock deep in yellow, red, blue, and purple flowers. The mountains across the valley looked in the dry heat as though made of _papier-mâché_. Closer at hand the undulations of sand hills stretched toward the pass for which they were making.

A mule deer started out of a dry wash and fled into the sunset light. The long, stratified faces of rock escarpments caught the glow of the sliding sun and became battlemented towers of ancient story.

The riders climbed steadily now, no longer engulfed in the ground swell of land waves. They breathed an air like wine, strong, pure, bracing. Presently their way led them into a hill pocket, which ran into a gorge of piñons stretching toward Gunsight Pass.

The stars were out again when they looked down from the other side of the pass upon the lights of Malapi.

CHAPTER V

SUPPER AT DELMONICO'S INTERRUPTED

The two D Bar Lazy R punchers ate supper at Delmonico's. The restaurant was owned by Wong Chung. A Cantonese celestial did the cooking and another waited on table. The price of a meal was twenty-five cents, regardless of what one ordered.

Hop Lee, the waiter, grinned at the frolicsome youths with the serenity of a world-old wisdom.

"Bleef steak, plork chop, lamb chop, hlam'neggs, clorn bleef hash, Splanish stew," he chanted, reciting the bill of fare.

"Yes," murmured Bob.

The waiter said his piece again.

"Listens good to me," agreed Dave. "Lead it to us."

"You takee two--bleef steak and hlam'neggs, mebbe," suggested Hop helpfully.

"Tha's right. Two orders of everything on the me-an-you, Charlie."

Hop did not argue with them. He never argued with a customer. If they stormed at him he took refuge in a suddenly acquired lack of understanding of English. If they called him Charlie or John or One Lung, he accepted the name cheerfully and laid it to a racial mental deficiency of the 'melicans. Now he decided to make a selection himself.

"Vely well. Bleef steak and hlam'neggs."

"Fried potatoes done brown, John."

"Flied plotatoes. Tea or cloffee?"

"Coffee," decided Dave for both of them. "Warm mine."

"And custard pie," added Bob. "Made from this year's crop."

"Aigs sunny side up," directed his friend.

"Fry mine one on one side and one on the other," Hart continued facetiously.

"Vely well." Hop Lee's impassive face betrayed no perplexity as he departed. In the course of a season he waited on hundreds of wild men from the hills, drunk and sober.

Dave helped himself to bread from a plate stacked high with thick slices. He buttered it and began to eat. Hart did the same. At Delmonico's nobody ever waited till the meal was served. Just about to attack a second slice, Dave stopped to stare at his companion. Hart was looking past his shoulder with alert intentness. Dave turned his head. Two men, leaving the restaurant, were paying the cashier.

"They just stepped outa that booth to the right," whispered Bob.

The men were George Doble and a cowpuncher known as Shorty, a broad, heavy-set little man who worked for Bradley Steelman, owner of the Rocking Horse Ranch, what time he was not engaged on nefarious business of his own. He was wearing a Chihuahua hat and leather chaps with silver conchas.

At this moment Hop Lee arrived with dinner.

Dave sighed as he grinned at his friend. "I need that supper in my system. I sure do, but I reckon I don't get it."

"You do not, old lizard," agreed Hart. "I'll say Doble's the most inconsiderate guy I ever did trail. Why couldn't he 'a' showed up a half-hour later, dad gum his ornery hide?"

They paid their bill and passed into the street. Immediately the sound of a clear, high voice arrested their attention. It vibrated indignation and dread.

"What have you done with my father?" came sharply to them on the wings of the soft night wind.

A young woman was speaking. She was in a buggy and was talking to two men on the sidewalk--the two men who had preceded the range-riders out of the restaurant.

"Why, Miss, we ain't done a thing to him--nothin' a-tall." The man Shorty was speaking, and in a tone of honeyed conciliation. It was quite plain he did not want a scene on the street.

"That's a lie." The voice of the girl broke for an instant to a sob. "Do you think I don't know you're Brad Steelman's handy man, that you do his meanness for him when he snaps his fingers?"

"You sure do click yore heels mighty loud, Miss." Dave caught in that soft answer the purr of malice. He remembered now hearing from Buck Byington that years ago Emerson Crawford had rounded up evidence to send Shorty to the penitentiary for rebranding through a blanket. "I reckon you come by it honest. Em always acted like he was God Almighty."

"Where is he? What's become of him?" she cried.

"Is yore paw missin'? I'm right sorry to hear that," the cowpuncher countered with suave irony. He was eager to be gone. His glance followed Doble, who was moving slowly down the street.

The girl's face, white and shining in the moonlight, leaned out of the buggy toward the retreating vaquero. "Don't you dare hurt my father! Don't you dare!" she warned. The words choked in her tense throat.

Shorty continued to back away. "You're excited, Miss. You go home an' think it over reasonable. You'll be sorry you talked this away to me," he said with unctuous virtue. Then, swiftly, he turned and went straddling down the walk, his spurs jingling music as he moved.

Quickly Dave gave directions to his friend. "Duck back into the restaurant, Bob. Get a pocketful of dry rice from the Chink. Trail those birds to their nest and find where they roost. Then stick around like a burr. Scatter rice behind you, and I'll drift along later. First off, I got to stay and talk with Miss Joyce. And, say, take along a rope. Might need it."

A moment later Hart was in the restaurant commandeering rice and Sanders was lifting his dusty hat to the young woman in the buggy.

"If I can he'p you any, Miss Joyce," he said.

Beneath dark and delicate brows she frowned at him. "Who are you?"

"Dave Sanders my name is. I reckon you never heard tell of me. I punch cows for yore father."

Her luminous, hazel-brown eyes steadied in his, read the honesty of his simple, boyish heart.

"You heard what I said to that man?"

"Part of it."

"Well, it's true. I know it is, but I can't prove it."

Hart, moving swiftly down the street, waved a hand at his friend as he passed. Without turning his attention from Joyce Crawford, Dave acknowledged the signal.

"How do you know it?"

"Steelman's men have been watching our house. They were hanging around at different times day before yesterday. This man Shorty was one."

"Any special reason for the feud to break out right now?"

"Father was going to prove up on a claim this week--the one that takes in the Tularosa water-holes. You know the trouble they've had about it--how they kept breaking our fences to water their sheep and cattle. Don't you think maybe they're trying to keep him from proving up?"

"Maybeso. When did you see him last?"

Her lip trembled. "Night before last. After supper he started for the Cattleman's Club, but he never got there."

"Sure he wasn't called out to one of the ranches unexpected?"

"I sent out to make sure. He hasn't been seen there."

"Looks like some of Brad Steelman's smooth work," admitted Dave. "If he could work yore father to sign a relinquishment--"

Fire flickered in her eye. "He'd ought to know Dad better."

"Tha's right too. But Brad needs them water-holes in his business bad. Without 'em he loses the whole Round Top range. He might take a crack at turning the screws on yore father."

"You don't think--?" She stopped, to fight back a sob that filled her soft throat.

Dave was not sure what he thought, but he answered cheerfully and instantly. "No, I don't reckon they've dry-gulched him or anything. Emerson Crawford is one sure-enough husky citizen. He couldn't either be shot or rough-housed in town without some one hearin' the noise. What's more, it wouldn't be their play to injure him, but to force a relinquishment."

"That's true. You believe that, don't you?" Joyce cried eagerly.

"Sure I do." And Dave discovered that his argument or his hopes had for the moment convinced him. "Now the question is, what's to be done?"

"Yes," she admitted, and the tremor of the lips told him that she depended upon him to work out the problem. His heart swelled with glad pride at the thought.

"That man who jus' passed is my friend," he told her. "He's trailin' that duck Shorty. Like as not we'll find out what's stirrin'."

"I'll go with you," the girl said, vivid lips parted in anticipation.

"No, you go home. This is a man's job. Soon as I find out anything I'll let you know."

"You'll come, no matter what time o' night it is," she pleaded.

"Yes," he promised.

Her firm little hand rested a moment in his brown palm. "I'm depending on you," she murmured in a whisper lifted to a low wail by a stress of emotion.

CHAPTER VI

BY WAY OF A WINDOW

The trail of rice led down Mission Street, turned at Junipero, crossed into an alley, and trickled along a dusty road to the outskirts of the frontier town.

The responsibility Joyce had put upon him uplifted Dave. He had followed the horse-race gamblers to town on a purely selfish undertaking. But he had been caught in a cross-current of fate and was being swept into dangerous waters for the sake of another.

Doble and Miller were small fish in the swirl of this more desperate venture. He knew Brad Steelman by sight and by reputation. The man's coffee-brown, hatchet face, his restless, black eyes, the high, narrow shoulders, the slope of nose and chin, combined somehow to give him the look of a wily and predacious wolf. The boy had never met any one who so impressed him with a sense of ruthless rapacity. He was audacious and deadly in attack, but always he covered his tracks cunningly. Suspected of many crimes, he had been proved guilty of none. It was a safe bet that now he had a line of retreat worked out in case his plans went awry.

A soft, low whistle stayed his feet. From behind a greasewood bush Bob rose and beckoned him. Dave tiptoed to him. Both of them crouched behind cover while they whispered.

"The 'dobe house over to the right," said Bob. "I been up and tried to look in, but they got curtains drawn. I would've like to 've seen how many gents are present. Nothin' doin'. It's a strictly private party."

Dave told him what he had learned from the daughter of Emerson Crawford.

"Might make a gather of boys and raid the joint," suggested Hart.

"Bad medicine, Bob. Our work's got to be smoother than that. How do we know they got the old man a prisoner there? What excuse we got for attacktin' a peaceable house? A friend of mine's brother onct got shot up makin' a similar mistake. Maybe Crawford's there. Maybe he ain't. Say he is. All right. There's some gun-play back and forth like as not. A b'ilin' of men pour outa the place. We go in and find the old man with a bullet right spang through his forehead. Well, ain't that too bad! In the rookus his own punchers must 'a' gunned him accidental. How would that story listen in court?"

"It wouldn't listen good to me. Howcome Crawford to be a prisoner there, I'd want to know."

"Sure you would, and Steelman would have witnesses a-plenty to swear the old man had just drapped in to see if they couldn't talk things over and make a settlement of their troubles."

"All right. What's yore programme, then?" asked Bob.

"Darned if I know. Say we scout the ground over first."

They made a wide circuit and approached the house from the rear, worming their way through the Indian grass toward the back door. Dave crept forward and tried the door. It was locked. The window was latched and the blind lowered. He drew back and rejoined his companion.

"No chance there," he whispered.

"How about the roof?" asked Hart.

It was an eight-roomed house. From the roof two dormers jutted. No light issued from either of them.

Dave's eyes lit.

"What's the matter with takin' a whirl at it?" his partner continued. "You're tophand with a rope."

"Suits me fine."

The young puncher arranged the coils carefully and whirled the loop around his head to get the feel of the throw. It would not do to miss the first cast and let the rope fall dragging down the roof. Some one might hear and come out to investigate.

The rope snaked forward and up, settled gracefully over the chimney, and tightened round it close to the shingles.

"Good enough. Now me for the climb," murmured Hart.

"Don't pull yore picket-pin, Bob. Me first."

"All right. We ain't no time to debate. Shag up, old scout."

Dave slipped off his high-heeled boots and went up hand over hand, using his feet against the rough adobe walls to help in the ascent. When he came to the eaves he threw a leg up and clambered to the roof. In another moment he was huddled against the chimney waiting for his companion.

As soon as Hart had joined him he pulled up the rope and wound it round the chimney.

"You stay here while I see what's doin'," Dave proposed.

"I never did see such a fellow for hoggin' all the fun," objected Bob. "Ain't you goin' to leave me trail along?"

"Got to play a lone hand till we find out where we're at, Bob. Doubles the chances of being bumped into if we both go."

"Then you roost on the roof and lemme look the range over for the old man."

"Didn't Miss Joyce tell me to find her paw? What's eatin' you, pard?"

"You pore plugged nickel!" derided Hart. "Think she picked you special for this job, do you?"

"Be reasonable, Bob," pleaded Dave.

His friend gave way. "Cut yore stick, then. Holler for me when I'm wanted."

Dave moved down the roof to the nearest dormer. The house, he judged, had originally belonged to a well-to-do Mexican family and had later been rebuilt upon American ideas. The thick adobe walls had come down from the earlier owners, but the roof had been put on as a substitute for the flat one of its first incarnation.

The range-rider was wearing plain shiny leather chaps with a gun in an open holster tied at the bottom to facilitate quick action. He drew out the revolver, tested it noiselessly, and restored it carefully to its place. If he needed the six-shooter at all, he would need it badly and suddenly.

Gingerly he tested the window of the dormer, working at it from the side so that his body would not be visible to anybody who happened to be watching from within. Apparently it was latched. He crept across the roof to the other dormer.

It was a casement window, and at the touch of the hand it gave way. The heart of the cowpuncher beat fast with excitement. In the shadowy darkness of that room death might be lurking, its hand already outstretched toward him. He peered in, accustoming his eyes to the blackness. A prickling of the skin ran over him. The tiny cold feet of mice pattered up and down his spine. For he knew that, though he could not yet make out the objects inside the room, his face must be like a framed portrait to anybody there.

He made out presently that it was a bedroom with sloping ceiling. A bunk with blankets thrown back just as the sleeper had left them filled one side of the chamber. There were two chairs, a washstand, a six-inch by ten looking-glass, and a chromo or two on the wall. A sawed-off shotgun was standing in a corner. Here and there were scattered soiled clothing and stained boots. The door was ajar, but nobody was in the room.

Dave eased himself over the sill and waited for a moment while he listened, the revolver in his hand. It seemed to him that he could hear a faint murmur of voices, but he was not sure. He moved across the bare plank floor, slid through the door, and again stopped to take stock of his surroundings.

He was at the head of a stairway which ran down to the first floor and lost itself in the darkness of the hall. Leaning over the banister, he listened intently for any sign of life below. He was sure now that he heard the sound of low voices behind a closed door.

The cowpuncher hesitated. Should he stop to explore the upper story? Or should he go down at once and try to find out what those voices might tell him? It might be that time was of the essence of his contract to discover what had become of Emerson Crawford. He decided to look for his information on the first floor.

Never before had Dave noticed that stairs creaked and groaned so loudly beneath the pressure of a soft footstep. They seemed to shout his approach, though he took every step with elaborate precautions. A door slammed somewhere, and his heart jumped at the sound of it. He did not hide the truth from himself. If Steelman or his men found him here looking for Crawford he would never leave the house alive. His foot left the last tread and found the uncarpeted floor. He crept, hand outstretched, toward the door behind which he heard men talking. As he moved forward his stomach muscles tightened. At any moment some one might come out of the room and walk into him.

He put his eye to the keyhole, and through it saw a narrow segment of the room. Ad Miller was sitting a-straddle a chair, his elbows on the back. Another man, one not visible to the cowpuncher, was announcing a decision and giving an order.

"Hook up the horses, Shorty. He's got his neck bowed and he won't sign. All right. I'll get the durn fool up in the hills and show him whether he will or won't."

"I could 'a' told you he had sand in his craw." Shorty was speaking. He too was beyond the range of Dave's vision. "Em Crawford won't sign unless he's a mind to."

"Take my advice, Brad. Collect the kid, an' you'll sure have Em hogtied. He sets the world an' all by her. Y'betcha he'll talk turkey then," predicted Miller.

"Are we fightin' kids?" the squat puncher wanted to know.

"Did I ask your advice, Shorty?" inquired Steelman acidly.

The range-rider grumbled an indistinct answer. Dave did not make out the words, and his interest in the conversation abruptly ceased.

For from upstairs there came the sudden sounds of trampling feet, of bodies thrashing to and fro in conflict. A revolver shot barked its sinister menace.

Dave rose to go. At the same time the door in front of him was jerked open. He pushed his forty-five into Miller's fat ribs.

"What's yore hurry? Stick up yore hands--stick 'em up!"

The boy was backing along the passage as he spoke. He reached the newel post in that second while Miller was being flung aside by an eruption of men from the room. Like a frightened rabbit Dave leaped for the stairs, taking them three at a time. Halfway up he collided with a man flying down. They came together with the heavy impact of fast-moving bodies. The two collapsed and rolled down, one over the other.

Sanders rose like a rubber ball. The other man lay still. He had been put out cold. Dave's head had struck him in the solar plexus and knocked the breath out of him. The young cowpuncher found himself the active center of a cyclone. His own revolver was gone. He grappled with a man, seizing him by the wrist to prevent the use of a long-barreled Colt's. The trigger fell, a bullet flying through the ceiling.

Other men pressed about him, trying to reach him with their fists and to strike him with their weapons. Their high heels crushed cruelly the flesh of his stockinged feet. The darkness befriended Dave. In the massed mêlée they dared not shoot for fear of hitting the wrong mark. Nor could they always be sure which shifting figure was the enemy.

Dave clung close to the man he had seized, using him as a shield against the others. The pack swayed down the hall into the wedge of light thrown by the lamp in the room.

Across the head of the man next him Shorty reached and raised his arm. Dave saw the blue barrel of the revolver sweeping down, but could not free a hand to protect himself. A jagged pain shot through his head. The power went out of his legs. He sagged at the hinges of his knees. He stumbled and went down. Heavy boots kicked at him where he lay. It seemed to him that bolts of lightning were zigzagging through him.

The pain ceased and he floated away into a sea of space.

CHAPTER VII

BOB HART TAKES A HAND

Bob Hart waited till his friend had disappeared into the house before he moved.

"Thought he'd run it over me, so I'd roost here on the roof, did he? Well, I'm after the ol' horn-toad full jump," the puncher murmured, a gay grin on his good-looking face.

He, too, examined his gun before he followed Dave through the dormer window and passed into the frowsy bedchamber. None of the details of it escaped his cool, keen gaze, least of all the sawed-off shotgun in the corner.

"That scatter gun might come handy. Reckon I'll move it so's I'll know just where it's at when I need it," he said to himself, and carried the gun to the bed, where he covered it with a quilt.

At the top of the stairs Bob also hesitated before passing down. Why not be sure of his line of communications with the roof before going too far? He did not want to be in such a hurry that his retreat would be cut off.

With as little noise as possible Bob explored the upper story. The first room in which he found himself was empty of all furniture except a pair of broken-backed chairs. One casual glance was enough here.

He was about to try a second door when some one spoke. He recognized the voice. It belonged to the man who wrote his pay checks, and it came from an adjoining room.

"Always knew you was crooked as a dog's hind laigs Doble. Never liked you a lick in the road. I'll say this. Some day I'll certainly hang yore hide up to dry for yore treachery."

"No use to get on the peck, Em. It don't do you no good to make me sore. Maybe you'll need a friend before you're shet of Brad."

"It relieves my mind some to tell you what a yellow coyote you are," explained the cattleman. "You got about as much sand as a brush rabbit and I'd trust you as far as I would a rattler, you damned sidewinder."

Bob tried the door. The knob turned in his hand and the door slowly opened inward.

The rattle of the latch brought George Doble's sly, shifty eye round. He was expecting to see one of his friends from below. A stare of blank astonishment gave way to a leaping flicker of fear. The crook jumped to his feet, tugging at his gun. Before he could fire, the range-rider had closed with him.

The plunging attack drove Doble back against the table, a flimsy, round-topped affair which gave way beneath this assault upon it. The two men went down in the wreck. Doble squirmed away like a cat, but before he could turn to use his revolver Bob was on him again. The puncher caught his right arm, in time and in no more than time. The deflected bullet pinged through a looking-glass on a dresser near the foot of the bed.

"Go to it, son! Grab the gun and bust his haid wide open!" an excited voice encouraged Hart.

But Doble clung to his weapon as a lost cow does to a 'dobe water-hole in the desert. Bob got a grip on his arm and twisted till he screamed with pain. He did a head spin and escaped. One hundred and sixty pounds of steel-muscled cowpuncher landed on his midriff and the six-shooter went clattering away to a far corner of the room.

Bob dived for the revolver, Doble for the door. A moment, and Hart had the gun. But whereas there had been three in the room there were now but two.

A voice from the bed spoke in curt command. "Cut me loose." Bob had heard that voice on more than one round-up. It was that of Emerson Crawford.

The range-rider's sharp knife cut the ropes that tied the hands and feet of his employer. He worked in the dark and it took time.

"Who are you? Howcome you here?" demanded the cattleman.

"I'm Bob Hart. It's quite a story. Miss Joyce sent me and Dave Sanders," answered the young man, still busy with the ropes.

From below came the sound of a shot, the shuffling of many feet.

"Must be him downstairs."

"I reckon. They's a muley gun in the hall."

Crawford stretched his cramped muscles, flexing and reflexing his arms and legs. "Get it, son. We'll drift down and sit in."

When Bob returned he found the big cattleman examining Doble's revolver. He broke the shotgun to make sure it was loaded.

Then, "We'll travel," he said coolly.

The battle sounds below had died away. From the landing they looked down into the hall and saw a bar of light that came through a partly open door. Voices were lifted in excitement.

"One of Em Crawford's riders," some one was saying. "A whole passel of 'em must be round the place."

Came the thud of a boot on something soft. "Put the damn spy outa business, I say," broke in another angrily.

Hart's gorge rose. "Tha's Miller," he whispered to his chief. "He's kickin' Dave now he's down 'cause Dave whaled him good."

Softly the two men padded down the stair treads and moved along the passage.

"Who's that?" demanded Shorty, thrusting his head into the hall. "Stay right there or I'll shoot."

"Oh, no, you won't," answered the cattleman evenly. "I'm comin' into that room to have a settlement. There'll be no shootin'--unless I do it."

His step did not falter. He moved forward, brushed Shorty aside, and strode into the midst of his enemies.

Dave lay on the floor. His hair was clotted with blood and a thin stream of it dripped from his head. The men grouped round his body had their eyes focused on the man who had just pushed his way in. All of them were armed, but not one of them made a move to attack.

For there is something about a strong man unafraid more potent than a company of troopers. Such a man was Emerson Crawford now. His life might be hanging in the balance of his enemies' fears, but he gave no sign of uncertainty. His steady gray eyes swept the circle, rested on each worried face, and fastened on Brad Steelman.

The two had been enemies for years, rivals for control of the range and for leadership in the community. Before that, as young men, they had been candidates for the hand of the girl that the better one had won. The sheepman was shrewd and cunning, but he had no such force of character as Crawford. At the bottom of his heart, though he seethed with hatred, he quailed before that level gaze. Did his foe have the house surrounded with his range-riders? Did he mean to make him pay with his life for the thing he had done?

Steelman laughed uneasily. An option lay before him. He could fight or he could throw up the hand he had dealt himself from a stacked deck. If he let his enemy walk away scot free, some day he would probably have to pay Crawford with interest. His choice was a characteristic one.

"Well, I reckon you've kinda upset my plans, Em. 'Course I was a-coddin' you. I didn't aim to hurt you none, though I'd 'a' liked to have talked you outa the water-holes."

The big cattleman ignored this absolutely. "Have a team hitched right away. Shorty will 'tend to that. Bob, tie up yore friend's haid with a handkerchief."

Without an instant's hesitation Hart thrust his revolver back into its holster. He was willing to trust Crawford to dominate this group of lawless foes, every one of whom held some deep grudge against him. One he had sent to the penitentiary. Another he had actually kicked out of his employ. A third was in his debt for many injuries received. Almost any of them would have shot him in the back on a dark night, but none had the cold nerve to meet him in the open. For even in a land which bred men there were few to match Emerson Crawford.

Shorty looked at Steelman. "I'm waitin', Brad," he said.

The sheepman nodded sullenly. "You done heard your orders, Shorty."

The ex-convict reached for his steeple hat, thrust his revolver back into its holster, and went jingling from the room. He looked insolently at Crawford as he passed.

"Different here. If it was my say-so I'd go through."

Hart administered first aid to his friend. "I'm servin' notice, Miller, that some day I'll bust you wide and handsome for this," he said, looking straight at the fat gambler. "You have give Dave a raw deal, and you'll not get away with it."

"I pack a gun. Come a-shootin' when you're ready," retorted Miller.

"Tha's liable to be right soon, you damn horsethief. We've rid 'most a hundred miles to have a li'l' talk with you and yore pardner there."

"Shoutin' about that race yet, are you? If I wasn't a better loser than you--"

"Don't bluff, Miller. You know why we trailed you."

Doble edged into the talk. He was still short of wind, but to his thick wits a denial seemed necessary. "We ain't got yore broncs."

"Who mentioned our broncs?" Hart demanded, swiftly.

"Called Ad a horsethief, didn't you?"

"So he is. You, too. You've got our ponies. Not in yore vest pockets, but hid out in the brush somewheres. I'm servin' notice right now that Dave and me have come to collect."

Dave opened his eyes upon a world which danced hazily before him. He had a splitting headache.

"Wha's the matter?" he asked.

"You had a run-in with a bunch of sheep wranglers," Bob told him. "They're going to be plumb sorry they got gay."

Presently Shorty returned. "That team's hooked up," he told the world at large.

"You'll drive us, Steelman," announced Crawford.

"Me!" screamed the leader of the other faction. "You got the most nerve I ever did see."

"Sure. Drive him home, Brad," advised Shorty with bitter sarcasm. "Black his boots. Wait on him good. Step lively when yore new boss whistles." He cackled with splenetic laughter.

"I dunno as I need to drive you home," Steelman said slowly, feeling his way to a decision. "You know the way better'n I do."

The eyes of the two leaders met.

"You'll drive," the cattleman repeated steadily.

The weak spot in Steelman's leadership was that he was personally not game. Crawford had a pungent personality. He was dynamic, strong, master of himself in any emergency. The sheepman's will melted before his insistence. He dared not face a showdown.

"Oh, well, what's it matter? We can talk things over on the way. Me, I'm not lookin' for trouble none," he said, his small black eyes moving restlessly to watch the effect of this on his men.

Bob helped his partner out of the house and into the surrey. The cattleman took the seat beside Steelman, across his knees the sawed-off shotgun. He had brought his enemy along for two reasons. One was to weaken his prestige with his own men. The other was to prevent them from shooting at the rig as they drove away.

Steelman drove in silence. His heart was filled with surging hatred. During that ride was born a determination to have nothing less than the life of his enemy when the time should be ripe.

At the door of his house Crawford dismissed him contemptuously. "Get out."

The man with the reins spoke softly, venomously, from a dry throat. "One o' these days you'll crawl on your hands and knees to me for this."

He whipped up the team and rattled away furiously into the night.

CHAPTER VIII

THE D BAR LAZY R BOYS MEET AN ANGEL

Joyce came flying to her father's arms. The white lace of a nightgown showed beneath the dressing-robe she had hurriedly donned. A plait of dark hair hung across her shoulder far below the waist. She threw herself at Crawford with a moaning little sob.

"Oh Dad ... Dad ... Dad!" she cried, and her slender arms went round his neck.

"'T's all right, sweetheart. Yore old dad's not even powder-burnt. You been worryin' a heap, I reckon." His voice was full of rough tenderness.

She began to cry.

He patted her shoulder and caressed her dark head drawing it close to his shoulder. "Now--now--now sweetheart, don't you cry. It's all right, li'l' honey bug."

"You're not ... hurt," she begged through her tears.

"Not none. Never was huskier. But I got a boy out here that's beat up some. Come in, Dave--and you, Bob. They're good boys, Joy. I want you to meet 'em both."

The girl had thought her father alone. She flung one startled glance into the night, clutched the dressing-gown closer round her throat, and fled her barefoot way into the darkness of the house. To the boys, hanging back awkwardly at the gate, the slim child-woman was a vision wonderful. Their starved eyes found in her white loveliness a glimpse of heaven.

Her father laughed. "Joy ain't dressed for callers. Come in, boys."

He lit a lamp and drew Dave to a lounge. "Lemme look at yore haid, son. Bob, you hot-foot it for Doc Green."

"It's nothin' a-tall to make a fuss about," Dave apologized. "Only a love tap, compliments of Shorty, and some kicks in the slats, kindness of Mr. Miller."

In spite of his debonair manner Dave still had a bad headache and was so sore around the body that he could scarcely move without groaning. He kept his teeth clamped on the pain because he had been brought up in the outdoor code of the West which demands of a man that he grin and stand the gaff.

While the doctor was attending to his injuries, Dave caught sight once or twice of Joyce at the door, clad now in a summer frock of white with a blue sash. She was busy supplying, in a brisk, competent way, the demands of the doctor for hot and cold water and clean linen.

Meanwhile Crawford told his story. "I was right close to the club when Doble met me. He pulled a story of how his brother Dug had had trouble with Steelman and got shot up. I swallowed it hook, bait, and sinker. Soon as I got into the house they swarmed over me like bees. I didn't even get my six-gun out. Brad wanted me to sign a relinquishment. I told him where he could head in at."

"What would have happened if the boys hadn't dropped along?" asked Dr. Green as he repacked his medicine case.

The cattleman looked at him, and his eyes were hard and bleak. "Why, Doc, yore guess is as good as mine." he said.

"Mine is, you'd have been among the missing, Em. Well, I'm leaving a sleeping-powder for the patient in case he needs it in an hour or two. In the morning I'll drop round again," the doctor said.

He did, and found Dave much improved. The clean outdoors of the rough-riding West builds blood that is red. A city man might have kept his bed a week, but Dave was up and ready to say good-bye within forty-eight hours. He was still a bit under par, a trifle washed-out, but he wanted to take the road in pursuit of Miller and Doble, who had again decamped in a hurry with the two horses they had stolen.

"They had the broncs hid up Frio Cañon way, I reckon," explained Hart. "But they didn't take no chances. When they left that 'dobe house they lit a-runnin' and clumb for the high hills on the jump. And they didn't leave no address neither. We'll be followin' a cold trail. We're not liable to find them after they hole up in some mountain pocket."

"Might. Never can tell. Le's take a whirl at it anyhow," urged Dave.

"Hate to give up yore paint hoss, don't you?" said Bob with his friendly grin. "Ain't blamin' you none whatever, I'd sleep on those fellows' trail if Chiquito was mine. What say we outfit in the mornin' and pull our freights? Maybeso we'll meet up with the thieves at that. Yo no se (I don't know)."

When Joyce was in the room where Dave lay on the lounge, the young man never looked at her, but he saw nobody else. Brought up in a saddle on the range, he had never before met a girl like her. It was not only that she was beautiful and fragrant as apple-blossoms, a mystery of maidenhood whose presence awed his simple soul. It was not only that she seemed so delicately precious, a princess of the blood royal set apart by reason of her buoyant grace, the soft rustle of her skirts, the fine texture of the satiny skin. What took him by the throat was her goodness. She was enshrined in his heart as a young saint. He would have thought it sacrilege to think of her as a wide-awake young woman subject to all the vanities of her sex. And he could have cited evidence. The sweetness of her affection for rough Em Crawford, the dear, maternal tenderness with which she ruled her three-year-old brother Keith, motherless since the week of his birth, the kindness of the luminous brown eyes to the uncouth stranger thrown upon her hospitality: Dave treasured them all as signs of angelic grace, and they played upon his heartstrings disturbingly.

Joyce brought Keith in to say good-bye to Dave and his friend before they left. The little fellow ran across the room to his new pal, who had busied himself weaving horsehair playthings for the youngster.

"You turn back and make me a bwidle, Dave," he cried.

"I'll sure come or else send you one," the cowpuncher promised, rising to meet Joyce.

She carried her slender figure across the room with perfect ease and rhythm, head beautifully poised, young seventeen as self-possessed as thirty. As much could not be said for her guests. They were all legs and gangling arms, red ears and dusty boots.

"Yes, we all want you to come back," she said with a charming smile. "I think you saved Father's life. We can't tell you how much we owe you. Can we, Keith?"

"Nope. When will you send the bwidle?" he demanded.

"Soon," the restored patient said to the boy, and to her: "That wasn't nothin' a-tall. From where I come from we always been use to standin' by our boss."

He shifted awkwardly to the other foot, flushing to the hair while he buried her soft little hand in his big freckled one. The girl showed no shyness. Seventeen is sometimes so much older than twenty.

"Tha's what us D Bar Lazy R boys are ridin' with yore paw's outfit for, Miss--to be handy when he needs us," Bob added in his turn. "We're sure tickled we got a chanct to go to Brad Steelman's party. I'm ce'tainly glad to 'a' met you, Miss Joyce." He ducked his head and scraped back a foot in what was meant to be a bow.

Emerson Crawford sauntered in, big and bluff and easy-going. "Hittin' the trail, boys? Good enough. Hope you find the thieves. If you do, play yore cards close. They're treacherous devils. Don't take no chances with 'em. I left an order at the store for you to draw on me for another pair of boots in place of those you lost in the brush, Dave. Get a good pair, son. They're on me. Well, so long. Luck, boys. I'll look for you-all back with the D Bar Lazy R when you've finished this job."

The punchers rode away without looking back, but many times in the days that followed their hearts turned to that roof which had given the word home a new meaning to them both.

CHAPTER IX

GUNSIGHT PASS

The pursuit took the riders across a wide, undulating plain above which danced the dry heat of the desert. Lizards sunned themselves on flat rocks. A rattlesnake slid toward the cover of a prickly pear. The bleached bones of a cow shone white beside the trail.

The throats of the cowpunchers filled with alkali dust and their eyes grew red and sore from it. Magnificent mirages unfolded themselves: lakes cool and limpid, stretching to the horizon, with inviting forests in the distance; an oasis of lush green fields that covered miles; mesquite distorted to the size of giant trees and cattle transformed into dinosaurs. The great gray desert took on freakish shapes of erosion. Always, hour after hour beneath a copper sky, they rode in palpitating heat through sand drifts, among the salt bushes and the creosote, into cowbacked hills beyond which the stark mountains rose.

Out of the fiery furnace of the plain they came in late afternoon to the uplands, plunging into a land of deep gorges and great chasms. Here manzanita grew and liveoaks flourished. They sent a whitetail buck crashing through the brush into a cañon.

When night fell they built a fire of niggerheads and after they had eaten found its glow grateful. For they were well up in the hills now and the night air was sharp.

In the sandy desert they had followed easily the trail of the thieves, but as they had got into the hills the tracks had become fainter and fewer. The young men discussed this while they lay in their blankets in a water-gutted gulch not too near the fire they had built.

"Like huntin' for a needle in a haystack," said Bob. "Their trail's done petered out. They might be in any one of a hundred pockets right close, or they may have bore 'way off to the right. All they got to do is hole up and not build any fires."

"Fat chance we got," admitted Dave. "Unless they build a fire like we done. Say, I'd a heap rather be sleepin' here than by that niggerhead blaze to-night. They might creep up and try to gun us."

Before they had been in the saddle an hour next day the trail of the thieves was lost. The pursuers spent till sunset trying to pick it up again. The third day was wasted in aimless drifting among the defiles of the mountains.

"No use, Bob," said his friend while they were cooking supper. "They've made their getaway. Might as well drift back to Malapi, don't you reckon?"

"Looks like. We're only wastin' our time here."

Long before day broke they started.

The cañons below were filled with mist as they rode down out of the mountains toward the crystal dawn that already flooded the plain. The court-house clock at Malapi said the time was midnight when the dust-covered men and horses drew into the town.

The tired men slept till noon. At the Delmonico Restaurant they found Buck Byington and Steve Russell. The trail herd had been driven in an hour before.

"How's old Alkali?" asked Dave of his friend Buck, thumping him on the back.

"Jes' tolable," answered the old-timer equably, making great play with knife and fork. "A man or a hawss don't either one amount to much after they onct been stove up. Since that bronc piled me at Willow Creek I been mighty stiff, you might say."

"Dug's payin' off to-day, boys," Russell told them. "You'll find him round to the Boston Emporium."

The foreman settled first with Hart, after which he, turned to the page in his pocket notebook that held the account of Sanders.

"You've drew one month's pay. That leaves you three months, less the week you've fooled away after the pinto."

"C'rect," admitted Dave.

"I'll dock you seven and a half for that. Three times thirty's ninety. Take seven and a half from that leaves eighty-two fifty."

"Hold on!" objected Dave. "My pay's thirty-five a month."

"First I knew of it," said the foreman, eyes bleak and harsh. "Thirty's what you're gettin'."

"I came in as top hand at thirty-five."

"You did not," denied Doble flatly.

The young man flushed. "You can't run that on me, Dug. I'll not stand for it."

"Eighty-two fifty is what you get," answered the other dogmatically. "You can take it or go to hell."

He began to sort out a number of small checks with which to pay the puncher. At that time the currency of the country consisted largely of cattlemen's checks which passed from hand to hand till they were grimy with dirt. Often these were not cashed for months later.

"We'll see what the old man says about that," retorted Dave hotly. It was in his mind to say that he did not intend to be robbed by both the Doble brothers, but he wisely repressed the impulse. Dug would as soon fight as eat, and the young rider knew he would not have a chance in the world against him.

"All right," sneered the foreman. "Run with yore tale of grief to Crawford. Tell him I been pickin' on you. I hear you've got to be quite a pet of his."

This brought Dave up with a short turn. He could not take advantage of the service he had done the owner of the D Bar Lazy R to ask him to interfere in his behalf with the foreman. Doble might be cynically defrauding him of part of what was due him in wages. Dave would have to fight that out with him for himself. The worst of it was that he had no redress. Unless he appealed to the cattleman he would have to accept what the foreman offered.

Moreover, his pride was touched. He was young enough to be sensitive on the subject of his ability to look out for himself.

"I'm no pet of anybody," he flung out. "Gimme that money. It ain't a square deal, but I reckon I can stand it."

"I reckon you'll have to. It's neck meat or nothin'," grunted the foreman.

Doble counted him out eighty dollars in cattlemen's checks and paid him two-fifty in cash. While Dave signed a receipt the hook-nosed foreman, broad shoulders thrown back and thumbs hitched in the arm-holes of his vest, sat at ease in a tilted chair and grinned maliciously at his victim. He was "puttin' somethin' over on him," and he wanted Dave to know it. Dug had no affection for his half-brother, but he resented the fact that Sanders publicly and openly despised him as a crook. He took it as a personal reflection on himself.

Still smouldering with anger at this high-handed proceeding, Dave went down to the Longhorn Corral and saddled his horse. He had promised Byington to help water the herd.

This done, he rode back to town, hitched the horse back of a barber shop, and went in for a shave. Presently he was stretched in a chair, his boots thrown across the foot rest in front of him.

The barber lathered his face and murmured gossip in his ear. "George Doble and Miller claim they're goin' to Denver to run some skin game at a street fair. They're sure slick guys."

Dave offered no comment.

"You notice they didn't steal any of Em Crawford's stock. No, sirree! They knew better. Hopped away with broncs belongin' to you boys because they knew it'd be safe."

"Picked easy marks, did they?" asked the puncher sardonically.

The man with the razor tilted the chin of his customer and began to scrape. "Well, o'course you're only boys. They took advantage of that and done you a meanness."

Dug Doble came into the shop, very grim about the mouth. He stopped to look down sarcastically at the new boots Sanders was wearing.

"I see you've bought you a new pair of boots," he said in a heavy, domineering voice.

Dave waited without answering, his eyes meeting steadily those of the foreman.

The big fellow laid a paper on the breast of the cowpuncher. "Here's a bill for a pair of boots you charged to the old man's account--eighteen dollars. I got it just now at the store. You'll dig up."

It was the custom for riders who came to town to have the supplies they needed charged to their employers against wages due them. Doble took it for granted that Sanders had done this, which was contrary to the orders he had given his outfit. He did not know the young man had lost his boots while rescuing Crawford and had been authorized by him to get another pair in place of them.

Nor did Dave intend to tell him. Here was a chance to even the score against the foreman. Already he had a plan simmering in his mind that would take him out of this part of the country for a time. He could no longer work for Doble without friction, and he had business of his own to attend to. The way to solve the immediate difficulty flashed through his brain instantly, every detail clear.

It was scarcely a moment before he drawled an answer. "I'll 'tend to it soon as I'm out of the chair."

"I gave orders for none of you fellows to charge goods to the old man," said Doble harshly.

"Did you?" Dave's voice was light and careless.

"You can go hunt a job somewheres else. You're through with me."

"I'll hate to part with you."

"Don't get heavy, young fellow."

"No," answered Dave with mock meekness.

Doble sat down in a chair to wait. He had no intention of leaving until Dave had settled.

After the barber had finished with him the puncher stepped across to a looking-glass and adjusted carefully the silk handkerchief worn knotted loosely round the throat.

"Get a move on you!" urged the foreman. His patience, of which he never had a large supply to draw from, was nearly exhausted. "I'm not goin' to spend all day on this."

"I'm ready."

Dave followed Doble out of the shop. Apparently he did not hear the gentle reminder of the barber, who was forced to come to the door and repeat his question.

"Want that shave charged?"

"Oh! Clean forgot." Sanders turned back, feeling in his pocket for change.

He pushed past the barber into the shop, slapped a quarter down on the cigar-case, and ran out through the back door. A moment later he pulled the slip-knot of his bridle from the hitching-bar, swung to the saddle and spurred his horse to a gallop. In a cloud of dust he swept round the building to the road and waved a hand derisively toward Doble.

"See you later!" he shouted.

The foreman wasted no breath in futile rage. He strode to the nearest hitching-post and flung himself astride leather. The horse's hoofs pounded down the road in pursuit.

Sanders was riding the same bronco he had used to follow the horsethieves. It had been under a saddle most of the time for a week and was far from fresh. Before he had gone a mile he knew that the foreman would catch up with him.

He was riding for Gunsight Pass. It was necessary to get there before Doble reached him. Otherwise he would have to surrender or fight, and neither of these fitted in with his plans.

Once he had heard Emerson Crawford give a piece of advice to a hotheaded and unwise puncher. "Never call for a gun-play on a bluff, son. There's no easier way to commit suicide than to pull a six-shooter you ain't willin' to use." Dug Doble was what Byington called "bull-haided." He had forced a situation which could not be met without a showdown. This meant that the young range-rider would either have to take a thrashing or draw his forty-five and use it. Neither of these alternatives seemed worth while in view of the small stakes at issue. Because he was not ready to kill or be killed, Dave was flying for the hills.

The fugitive had to use his quirt to get there in time. The steepness of the road made heavy going. As he neared the summit the grade grew worse. The bronco labored heavily in its stride as its feet reached for the road ahead.

But here Dave had the advantage. Doble was a much heavier man than he, and his mount took the shoulder of the ridge slower. By the time the foreman showed in silhouette against the skyline at the entrance to the pass the younger man had disappeared.

The D Bar Lazy R foreman found out at once what had become of him. A crisp voice gave clear directions.

"That'll be far enough. Stop right where you're at or you'll notice trouble pop. And don't reach for yore gun unless you want to hear the band begin to play a funeral piece."

The words came, it seemed to Doble, out of the air. He looked up. Two great boulders lay edge to edge beside the path. Through a narrow rift the blue nose of a forty-five protruded. Back of it glittered a pair of steady, steely eyes.

The foreman did not at all like the look of things. Sanders was a good shot. From where he lay, almost entirely protected, all he had to do was to pick his opponent off at his leisure. If his hand were forced he would do it. And the law would let him go scot free, since Doble was a fighting man and had been seen to start in pursuit of the boy.

"Come outa there and shell out that eighteen dollars," demanded Doble.

"Nothin' doin', Dug."

"Don't run on the rope with me, young fellow. You'll sure be huntin' trouble."

"What's the use o' beefin'? I've got the deadwood on you. Better hit the dust back to town and explain to the boys how yore bronc went lame," advised Dave.

"Come down and I'll wallop the tar outa you."

"Much obliged. I'm right comfortable here."

"I've a mind to come up and dig you out."

"Please yoreself, Dug. We'll find out then which one of us goes to hell."

The foreman cursed, fluently, expertly, passionately. Not in a long time had he had the turn called on him so adroitly. He promised Dave sudden death in various forms whenever he could lay hands upon him.

"You're sure doin' yoreself proud, Dug," the young man told him evenly. "I'll write the boys how you spilled language so thorough."

"If I could only lay my hands on you!" the raw-boned cattleman stormed.

"I'll bet you'd massacree me proper," admitted Dave quite cheerfully.

Suddenly Doble gave up. He wheeled his horse and began to descend the steep slope. Steadily he jogged on to town, not once turning to look back. His soul was filled with chagrin and fury at the defeat this stripling had given him. He was ready to pick a quarrel with the first man who asked him a question about what had taken place at the pass.

Nobody asked a question. Men looked at him, read the menace of his sullen, angry face, and side-stepped his rage. They did not need to be told that his ride had been a failure. His manner advertised it. Whatever had taken place had not redounded to the glory of Dug Doble.

Later in the day the foreman met the owner of the D Bar Lazy R brand to make a detailed statement of the cost of the drive. He took peculiar pleasure in mentioning one item.

"That young scalawag Sanders beat you outa eighteen dollars," he said with a sneer of triumph.

Doble had heard the story of what Dave and Bob had done for Crawford and of how the wounded boy had been taken to the cattleman's home and nursed there. It pleased him now to score off what he chose to think was the soft-headedness of his chief.

The cattleman showed interest. "That so, Dug? Sorry. I took a fancy to that boy. What did he do?"

"You know how vaqueros are always comin' in and chargin' goods against the boss. I give out the word they was to quit it. Sanders he gets a pair of eighteen-dollar boots, then jumps the town before I find out about it."

Crawford started to speak, but Doble finished his story.

"I took out after him, but my bronc went lame from a stone in its hoof. You'll never see that eighteen plunks, Em. It don't do to pet cowhands."

"Too bad you took all that trouble, Dug," the old cattleman began mildly. "The fact is--"

"Trouble. Say, I'd ride to Tombstone to get a crack at that young smart Aleck. I told him what I'd do to him if I ever got my fists on him."

"So you did catch up with him."

Dug drew back sulkily within himself. He did not intend to tell all he knew about the Gunsight Pass episode. "I didn't say when I told him."

"Tha's so. You didn't. Well, I'm right sorry you took so blamed much trouble to find him. Funny, though, he didn't tell you I gave him the boots."

"You--what?" The foreman snapped the question out with angry incredulity.

The ranchman took the cigar from his mouth and leaned back easily. He was smiling now frankly.

"Why, yes. I told him to buy the boots and have 'em charged to my account. And the blamed little rooster never told you, eh?"

Doble choked for words with which to express himself. He glared at his employer as though Crawford had actually insulted him.

In an easy, conversational tone the cattleman continued, but now there was a touch of frost in his eyes.

"It was thisaway, Dug. When he and Bob knocked Steelman's plans hell west and crooked after that yellow skunk George Doble betrayed me to Brad, the boy lost his boots in the brush. 'Course I said to get another pair at the store and charge 'em to me. I reckon he was havin' some fun joshin' you."

The foreman was furious. He sputtered with the rage that boiled inside him. But some instinct warned him that unless he wanted to break with Crawford completely he must restrain his impulse to rip loose.

"All right," he mumbled. "If you told him to get 'em, 'nough said."

CHAPTER X

THE CATTLE TRAIN

Dave stood on the fence of one of the shipping pens at the Albuquerque stockyards and used a prod-pole to guide the bawling cattle below. The Fifty-Four Quarter Circle was loading a train of beef steers and cows for Denver. Just how he was going to manage it Dave did not know, but he intended to be aboard that freight when it pulled out for the mile-high town in Colorado.

He had reached Albuquerque by a strange and devious route of zigzags and back-trackings. His weary bronco he had long since sold for ten dollars at a cow town where he had sacked his saddle to be held at a livery stable until sent for. By blind baggage he had ridden a night and part of a day. For a hundred miles he had actually paid his fare. The next leg of the journey had been more exciting. He had elected to travel by freight. For many hours he and a husky brakeman had held different opinions about this. Dave had been chased from the rods into an empty and out of the box car to the roof. He had been ditched half a dozen times during the night, but each time he had managed to hook on before the train had gathered headway. The brakeman enlisted the rest of the crew in the hunt, with the result that the range-rider found himself stranded on the desert ten miles from a station. He walked the ties in his high-heeled boots, and before he reached the yards his feet were sending messages of pain at every step. Reluctantly he bought a ticket to Albuquerque. Here he had picked up a temporary job ten minutes after his arrival.

A raw-boned inspector kept tally at the chute while the cattle passed up into the car.

"Fifteen, sixteen--prod 'em up, you Arizona--seventeen, eighteen--jab that whiteface along--nineteen--hustle 'em in."

The air was heavy with the dust raised by the milling cattle. Calves stretched their necks and blatted for their mothers, which kept up in turn a steady bawling for their strayed offspring. They were conscious that something unusual was in progress, something that threatened their security and comfort, and they resented it in the only way they knew.

Car after car was jammed full of the frightened creatures as the men moved from pen to pen, threw open and shut the big gates, and hustled the stock up the chutes. Dave had begun work at six in the morning. A glance at his watch showed him that it was now ten o'clock.

A middle-aged man in wrinkled corduroys and a pinched-in white hat drove up to the fence. "How're they coming, Sam?" he asked of the foreman in charge.

"We'd ought to be movin' by noon, Mr. West."

"Fine. I've decided to send Garrison in charge. He can pick one of the boys to take along. We can't right well spare any of 'em now. If I knew where to find a good man--"

The lean Arizona-born youth slid from the fence on his prod-pole and stepped forward till he stood beside the buckboard of the cattleman.

"I'm the man you're lookin' for, Mr. West."

The owner of the Fifty-Four Quarter Circle brand looked him over with keen eyes around which nets of little wrinkles spread.

"What man?" he asked.

"The one to help Mr. Garrison take the cattle to Denver."

"Recommend yoreself, can you?" asked West with a hint of humor.

"Yes, sir."

"Who are you?"

"Dave Sanders--from Arizona, first off."

"Been punchin' long?"

"Since I was a kid. Worked for the D Bar Lazy R last."

"Ever go on a cattle train?"

"Twice--to Kansas City."

"Hmp!" That grunt told Dave just what the difficulty was. It said, "I don't know you. Why should I trust you to help take a trainload of my cattle through?"

"You can wire to Mr. Crawford at Malapi and ask him about me," the young fellow suggested.

"How long you ride for him?"

"Three years comin' grass."

"How do I knew you you're the man you say you are?"

"One of yore boys knows me--Bud Holway."

West grunted again. He knew Emerson Crawford well. He was a level-headed cowman and his word was as good as his bond. If Em said this young man was trustworthy, the shipper was willing to take a chance on him. The honest eye, the open face, the straightforward manner of the youth recommended his ability and integrity. The shipper was badly in need of a man. He made up his mind to wire.

"Let you know later," he said, and for the moment dropped Dave out of the conversation.

But before noon he sent for him.

"I've heard from Crawford," he said, and mentioned terms.

"Whatever's fair," agreed Dave.

An hour later he was in the caboose of a cattle train rolling eastward. He was second in command of a shipment consigned to the Denver Terminal Stockyards Company. Most of them were shipped by the West Cattle Company. An odd car was a jackpot bunch of pickups composed of various brands. All the cars were packed to the door, as was the custom of those days.

After the train had settled down to the chant of the rails Garrison sent Dave on a tour of the cars. The young man reported all well and returned to the caboose. The train crew was playing poker for small stakes. Garrison had joined them. For a time Dave watched, then read a four-day-old newspaper through to the last advertisement. The hum of the wheels made him drowsy. He stretched out comfortably on the seat with his coat for a pillow.

When he awoke it was beginning to get dark. Garrison had left the caboose, evidently to have a look at the stock. Dave ate some crackers and cheese, climbed to the roof, and with a lantern hanging on his arm moved forward.

Already a few of the calves, yielding to the pressure in the heavily laden cars, had tried to escape it by lying down. With his prod Dave drove back the nearest animal. Then he used the nail in the pole to twist the tails of the calves and force them to their feet. In those days of crowded cars almost the most important thing in transit was to keep the cattle on their legs to prevent any from being trampled and smothered to death.

As the night grew older both men were busier. With their lanterns and prod-poles they went from car to car relieving the pressure wherever it was greatest. The weaker animals began to give way, worn out by the heavy lurching and the jam of heavy bodies against them. They had to be defended against their own weakness.

Dave was crossing from the top of one car to another when he heard his name called. He knew the voice belonged to Garrison and he listened to make sure from which car it came. Presently he heard it a second time and localized the sound as just below him. He entered the car by the end door near the roof.

"Hello! Call me?" he asked.

"Yep. I done fell and bust my laig. Can you get me outa here?"

"Bad, is it?"

"Broken."

"I'll get some of the train hands. Will you be all right till I get back?" the young man asked.

"I reckon. Hop along lively. I'm right in the jam here."

The conductor stopped the train. With the help of the crew Dave got Garrison back to the caboose. There was no doubt that the leg was broken. It was decided to put the injured man off at the next station, send him back by the up train, and wire West that Dave would see the cattle got through all right. This was done.

Dave got no more sleep that night. He had never been busier in his life. Before morning broke half the calves were unable to keep their feet. The only thing to do was to reload.

He went to the conductor and asked for a siding. The man running the train was annoyed, but he did not say so. He played for time.

"All right. We'll come to one after a while and I'll put you on it," he promised.

Half an hour later the train rumbled merrily past a siding without stopping. Dave walked back along the roof to the caboose.

"We've just passed a siding," he told the trainman.

"Couldn't stop there. A freight behind us has orders to take that to let the Limited pass," he said glibly.

Dave suspected he was lying, but he could not prove it. He asked where the next siding was.

"A little ways down," said a brakeman.

The puncher saw his left eyelid droop in a wink to the conductor. He knew now that they were "stalling" for time. The end of their run lay only thirty miles away. They had no intention of losing two or three hours' time while the cattle were reloaded. After the train reached the division point another conductor and crew would have to wrestle with the problem.

Young Sanders felt keenly his inexperience. They were taking advantage of him because he was a boy. He did not know what to do. He had a right to insist on a siding, but it was not his business to decide which one.

The train rolled past another siding and into the yards of the division town. At once Dave hurried to the station. The conductor about to take charge of the train was talking with the one just leaving. The range-rider saw them look at him and laugh as he approached. His blood began to warm.

"I want you to run this train onto a siding," he said at once.

"You the train dispatcher?" asked the new man satirically.

"You know who I am. I'll say right now that the cattle on this train are suffering. Some won't last another hour. I'm goin' to reload."

"Are you? I guess not. This train's going out soon as we've changed engines, and that'll be in about seven minutes."

"I'll not go with it."

"Suit yourself," said the officer jauntily, and turned away to talk with the other man.

Dave walked to the dispatcher's office. The cowpuncher stated his case.

"Fix that up with the train conductor," said the dispatcher. "He can have a siding whenever he wants it."

"But he won't gimme one."

"Not my business."

"Whose business is it?"

The dispatcher got busy over his charts. Dave became aware that he was going to get no satisfaction here.

He tramped back to the platform.

"All aboard," sang out the conductor.

Dave, not knowing what else to do, swung on to the caboose as it passed. He sat down on the steps and put his brains at work. There must be a way out, if he could only find what it was. The next station was fifteen miles down the line. Before the train stopped there Dave knew exactly what he meant to do. He wrote out two messages. One was to the division superintendent. The other was to Henry B. West.

He had swung from the steps of the caboose and was in the station before the conductor.

"I want to send two telegrams," he told the agent. "Here they are all ready. Rush 'em through. I want an answer here to the one to the superintendent."

The wire to the railroad official read:

Conductor freight number 17 refuses me siding to reload stock in my charge. Cattle down and dying. Serve notice herewith I put responsibility for all loss on railroad. Will leave cars in charge of train crew.

DAVID SANDERS

Representing West Cattle Company The other message was just as direct.

Conductor refuses me siding to reload. Cattle suffering and dying. Have wired division superintendent. Will refuse responsibility and leave train unless siding given me.

DAVE SANDERS

The conductor caught the eye of the agent.

"I'll send the wires when I get time," said the latter to the cowboy.

"You'll send 'em now--right now," announced Dave.

"Say, are you the president of the road?" bristled the agent.

"You'll lose yore job within forty-eight hours if you don't send them telegrams now. I'll see to that personal." Dave leaned forward and looked at him steadily.

The conductor spoke to the agent, nodding his head insolently toward Dave. "Young-man-heap-swelled-head," he introduced him.

But the agent had had a scare. It was his job at stake, not the conductor's. He sat down sulkily and sent the messages.

The conductor read his orders and walked to the door. "Number 17 leaving. All aboard," he called back insolently.

"I'm stayin' here till I hear from the superintendent," answered Dave flatly. "You leave an' you've got them cattle to look out for. They'll be in yore care."

The conductor swaggered out and gave the signal to go. The train drew out from the station and disappeared around a curve in the track. Five minutes later it backed in again. The conductor was furious.

"Get aboard here, you hayseed, if you're goin' to ride with me!" he yelled.

Dave was sitting on the platform whittling a stick. His back was comfortably resting against a truck. Apparently he had not heard.

The conductor strode up to him and looked down at the lank boy. "Say, are you comin' or ain't you?" he shouted, as though he had been fifty yards away instead of four feet.

"Talkin' to me?" Dave looked up with amiable surprise. "Why, no, not if you're in a hurry. I'm waitin' to hear from the superintendent."

"If you think any boob can come along and hold my train up till I lose my right of way you've got another guess comin'. I ain't goin' to be sidetracked by every train on the division."

"That's the company's business, not mine. I'm interested only in my cattle."

The conductor had a reputation as a bully. He had intended to override this young fellow by weight of age, authority, and personality. That he had failed filled him with rage.

"Say, for half a cent I'd kick you into the middle of next week," he said, between clamped teeth.

The cowpuncher's steel-blue eyes met his steadily. "Do you reckon that would be quite safe?" he asked mildly.

That was a question the conductor had been asking himself. He did not know. A good many cowboys carried six-shooters tucked away on their ample persons. It was very likely this one had not set out on his long journey without one.

"You're more obstinate than a Missouri mule," the railroad man exploded. "I don't have to put up with you, and I won't!"

"No?"

The agent came out from the station waving two slips of paper. "Heard from the super," he called.

One wire was addressed to Dave, the other to the conductor. Dave read:

Am instructing conductor to put you on siding and place train crew under your orders to reload.

Beneath was the signature of the superintendent.

The conductor flushed purple as he read the orders sent by his superior.

"Well," he stormed at Dave. "What do you want? Spit it out!"

"Run me on the siding. I'm gonna take the calves out of the cars and tie 'em on the feed-racks above."

"How're you goin' to get 'em up?"

"Elbow grease."

"If you think I'll turn my crew into freight elevators because some fool cattleman didn't know how to load right--"

"Maybe you've got a kick comin'. I'll not say you haven't. But this is an emergency. I'm willin' to pay good money for the time they help me." Dave made no reference to the telegram in his hand. He was giving the conductor a chance to save his face.

"Oh, well, that's different. I'll put it up to the boys."

Three hours later the wheels were once more moving eastward. Dave had had the calves roped down to the feed-racks above the cars.

CHAPTER XI

THE NIGHT CLERK GETS BUSY PRONTO

The stars were out long before Dave's train drew into the suburbs of Denver. It crawled interminably through squalid residence sections, warehouses, and small manufactories, coming to a halt at last in a wilderness of tracks on the border of a small, narrow stream flowing sluggishly between wide banks cut in the clay.

Dave swung down from the caboose and looked round in the dim light for the stockyards engine that was to pick up his cars and run them to the unloading pens. He moved forward through the mud, searching the semi-darkness for the switch engine. It was nowhere to be seen.

He returned to the caboose. The conductor and brakemen were just leaving.

"My engine's not here. Some one must 'a' slipped up on his job, looks like. Where are the stockyards?" Sanders asked.

The conductor was a small, middle-aged man who made it his business to get along with everybody he could. He had distinctly refused to pick up his predecessor's quarrel with Dave. Now he stopped and scratched his head.

"Too bad. Can't you go uptown and 'phone out to the stockyards? Or if you want to take a street-car out there you'll have time to hop one at Stout Street. Last one goes about midnight."

In those days the telephone was not a universal necessity. Dave had never used one and did not know how to get his connection. He spent several minutes ringing up, shouting at the operator, and trying to understand what she told him. He did not shout at the girl because he was annoyed. His idea was that he would have to speak loud to have his voice carry. At last he gave up, hot and perspiring from the mental exertion.

Outside the drug-store he just had time to catch the last stockyards car. His watch told him that it was two minutes past twelve.

He stepped forty-five minutes later into an office in which sat two men with their feet on a desk. The one in his shirt-sleeves was a smug, baldish young man with clothes cut in the latest mode. He was rather heavy-set and looked flabby. The other man appeared to be a visitor.

"This the office of the Denver Terminal Stockyards Company?" asked Dave.

The clerk looked the raw Arizonan over from head to foot and back again. The judgment that he passed was indicated by the tone of his voice.

"Name's on the door, ain't it?" he asked superciliously.

"You in charge here?"

The clerk was amused, or at least took the trouble to seem so. "You might think so, mightn't you?"

"Are you in charge?" asked Dave evenly.

"Maybeso. What you want?"

"I asked you if you was runnin' this office."

"Hell, yes! What're your eyes for?"

The clerk's visitor sniggered.

"I've got a train of cattle on the edge of town," explained Dave. "The stockyards engine didn't show up."

"Consigned to us?"

"To the Denver Terminal Stockyards Company."

"Name of shipper?"

"West Cattle Company and Henry B. West."

"All right. I'll take care of 'em." The clerk turned back to his friend. His manner dismissed the cowpuncher. "And she says to me, 'I'd love to go with you, Mr. Edmonds; you dance like an angel.' Then I says--"

"When?" interrupted Dave calmly, but those who knew him might have guessed his voice was a little too gentle.

"I says, 'You're some little kidder,' and--"

"When?"

The man who danced like an angel turned halfway round, and looked at the cowboy over his shoulder. He was irritated.

"When what?" he snapped.

"When you goin' to onload my stock?"

"In the morning."

"No, sir. You'll have it done right now. That stock has been more'n two days without water."

"I'm not responsible for that."

"No, but you'll be responsible if the train ain't onloaded now," said Dave.

"It won't hurt 'em to wait till morning."

"That's where you're wrong. They're sufferin'. All of 'em are alive now, but they won't all be by mo'nin' if they ain't 'tended to."

"Guess I'll take a chance on that, since you say it's my responsibility," replied the clerk impudently.

"Not none," announced the man from Arizona. "You'll get busy pronto."

"Say, is this my business or yours?"

"Mine and yours both."

"I guess I can run it. If I need any help from you I'll ask for it. Watch me worry about your old cows. I have guys coming in here every day with hurry-up tales about how their cattle won't live unless I get a wiggle on me. I notice they all are able to take a little nourishment next day all right, all right."

Dave caught at the gate of the railing which was between him and the night clerk. He could not find the combination to open it and therefore vaulted over. He caught the clerk back of the neck by the collar and jounced him up and down hard in his chair.

"You're asleep," he explained. "I got to waken you up before you can sabe plain talk."

The clerk looked up out of a white, frightened face. "Say, don't do that. I got heart trouble," he said in a voice dry as a whisper.

"What about that onloadin' proposition?" asked the Arizonan.

"I'll see to it right away."

Presently the clerk, with a lantern in his hand, was going across to the railroad tracks in front of Dave. He had quite got over the idea that this lank youth was a safe person to make sport of.

They found the switch crew in the engine of the cab playing seven-up.

"Got a job for you. Train of cattle out at the junction," the clerk said, swinging up to the cab.

The men finished the hand and settled up, but within a few minutes the engine was running out to the freight train.

Day was breaking before Dave tumbled into bed. He had left a call with the clerk to be wakened at noon. When the bell rang, it seemed to him that he had not been asleep five minutes.

After he had eaten at the stockyards hotel he went out to have a look at his stock. He found that on the whole the cattle had stood the trip well. While he was still inspecting them a voice boomed at him a question.

"Well, young fellow, are you satisfied with all the trouble you've made me?"

He turned, to see standing before him the owner of the Fifty-Four Quarter Circle brand. The boy's surprise fairly leaped from his eyes.

"Didn't expect to see me here, I reckon," the cattleman went on. "Well, I hopped a train soon as I got yore first wire. Spill yore story, young man."

Dave told his tale, while the ranchman listened in grim silence. When Sanders had finished, the owner of the stock brought a heavy hand down on his shoulder approvingly.

"You can ship cattle for me long as you've a mind to, boy. You fought for that stock like as if it had been yore own. You'll do to take along."

Dave flushed with boyish pleasure. He had not known whether the cattleman would approve what he had done, and after the long strain of the trip this endorsement of his actions was more to him than food or drink.

"They say I'm kinda stubborn. I didn't aim to lie down and let those guys run one over me," he said.

"Yore stubbornness is money in my pocket. Do you want to go back and ride for the Fifty-Four Quarter Circle?"

"Maybe, after a while, Mr. West. I got business in Denver for a few days."

The cattleman smiled. "Most of my boys have when they hit town, I notice."

"Mine ain't that kind. I reckon it's some more stubbornness," explained Dave.

"All right. When you've finished that business I can use you."

If Dave could have looked into the future he would have known that the days would stretch into months and the months to years before his face would turn toward ranch life again.

CHAPTER XII

THE LAW PUZZLES DAVE

Dave knew he was stubborn. Not many men would have come on such a wild-goose chase to Denver in the hope of getting back a favorite horse worth so little in actual cash. But he meant to move to his end intelligently.

If Miller and Doble were in the city they would be hanging out at some saloon or gambling-house. Once or twice Dave dropped in to Chuck Weaver's place, where the sporting men from all over the continent inevitably drifted when in Denver. But he had little expectation of finding the men he wanted there. These two rats of the underworld would not attempt to fleece keen-eyed professionals. They would prey on the unsophisticated.

His knowledge of their habits took him to that part of town below Lawrence Street. While he chatted with his foot on the rail, a glass of beer in front of him, he made inconspicuous inquiries of bartenders. It did not take him long to strike the trail.

"Two fellows I knew in the cattle country said they were comin' to Denver. Wonder if they did. One of 'em's a big fat guy name o' Miller--kinda rolls when he walks. Other's small and has a glass eye. Called himself George Doble when I knew him."

"Come in here 'most every day--both of 'em. Waitin' for the Festival of Mountain and Plain to open up. Got some kinda concession. They look to yours truly like--"

The bartender pulled himself up short and began polishing the top of the bar vigorously. He was a gossipy soul, and more than once his tongue had got him into trouble.

"You was sayin'--" suggested the cowboy.

"--that they're good spenders, as the fellow says," amended the bartender, to be on the safe side.

"When I usta know 'em they had a mighty cute little trick pony--name was Chiquito, seems to me. Ever hear 'em mention it?"

"They was fussin' about that horse to-day. Seems they got an offer for him and Doble wants to sell. Miller he says no."

"Yes?"

"I'll tell 'em a friend asked for 'em. What name?"

"Yes, do. Jim Smith."

"The fat old gobbler's liable to drop in any time now."

This seemed a good reason to Mr. Jim Smith, alias David Sanders, for dropping out. He did not care to have Miller know just yet who the kind friend was that had inquired for him.

But just as he was turning away a word held him for a moment. The discretion of the man in the apron was not quite proof against his habit of talk.

"They been quarrelin' a good deal together. I expect the combination is about ready to bust up," he whispered confidentially.

"Quarrelin'? What about?"

"Oh, I dunno. They act like they're sore as a boil at each other. Honest, I thought they was goin' to mix it yesterday. I breezed up wit' a bottle an' they kinda cooled off."

"Doble drunk?"

"Nope. Fact is, they'd trimmed a Greeley boob and was rowin' about the split. Miller he claimed Doble held out on him. I'll bet he did too."

Dave did not care how much they quarreled or how soon they parted after he had got back his horse. Until that time he preferred that they would give him only one trail to follow instead of two.

The cowpuncher made it his business to loaf on Larimer Street for the rest of the day. His beat was between Fifteenth and Sixteenth Streets, usually on the other side of the road from the Klondike Saloon.

About four o'clock his patience was rewarded. Miller came rolling along in a sort of sailor fashion characteristic of him. Dave had just time to dive into a pawnbroker's shop unnoticed.

A black-haired, black-eyed salesman came forward to wait on him. The puncher cast an eye helplessly about him. It fell on a suitcase.

"How much?" he asked.

"Seven dollars. Dirt sheap, my frient."

"Got any telescope grips?"

The salesman produced one. Dave bought it because he did not know how to escape without.

He carried it with him while he lounged up and down the sidewalk waiting for Miller to come out of the Klondike. When the fat gambler reappeared, the range-rider fell in behind him unobserved and followed uptown past the Tabor Opera House as far as California Street. Here they swung to the left to Fourteenth, where Miller disappeared into a rooming-house.

The amateur detective turned back toward the business section. On the way he dropped guiltily the telescope grip into a delivery wagon standing in front of a grocery. He had no use for it, and he had already come to feel it a white elephant on his hands.

With the aid of a city directory Dave located the livery stables within walking distance of the house where Miller was staying. Inspired perhaps by the nickel detective stories he had read, the cowboy bought a pair of blue goggles and a "store" collar. In this last, substituted for the handkerchief he usually wore loosely round his throat, the sleuth nearly strangled himself for lack of air. His inquiries at such stables as he found brought no satisfaction. Neither Miller nor the pinto had been seen at any of them.

Later in the evening he met Henry B. West at the St. James Hotel.

"How's that business of yore's gettin' along, boy?" asked the cattleman with a smile.

"Don' know yet. Say, Mr. West, if I find a hawss that's been stole from me, how can I get it back?"

"Some one steal a hawss from you?"

Dave told his story. West listened to a finish.

"I know a lawyer here. We'll ask him what to do," the ranchman said.

They found the lawyer at the Athletic Club. West stated the case.

"Your remedy is to replevin. If they fight, you'll have to bring witnesses to prove ownership."

"Bring witnesses from Malapi! Why, I can't do that," said Dave, staggered. "I ain't got the money. Why can't I just take the hawss? It's mine."

"The law doesn't know it's yours."

Dave left much depressed. Of course the thieves would go to a lawyer, and of course he would tell them to fight. The law was a darned queer thing. It made the recovery of his property so costly that the crooks who stole it could laugh at him.

"Looks like the law's made to protect scalawags instead of honest folks," Dave told West.

"I don't reckon it is, but it acts that way sometimes," admitted the cattleman. "You can see yoreself it wouldn't do for the law to say a fellow could get property from another man by just sayin' it was his. Sorry, Sanders. After all, a bronc's only a bronc. I'll give you yore pick of two hundred if you come back with me to the ranch."

"Much obliged, seh. Maybe I will later."

The cowpuncher walked the streets while he thought it over. He had no intention whatever of giving up Chiquito if he could find the horse. So far as the law went he was in a blind alley. He was tied hand and foot. That possession was nine points before the courts he had heard before.

The way to recover flashed to his brain like a wave of light. He must get possession. All he had to do was to steal his own horse and make for the hills. If the thieves found him later--and the chances were that they would not even attempt pursuit if he let them know who he was--he would force them to the expense of going to law for Chiquito. What was sauce for the goose must be for the gander too.

Dave's tramp had carried him across the Platte into North Denver. On his way back he passed a corral close to the railroad tracks. He turned in to look over the horses.

The first one his eyes fell on was Chiquito.

CHAPTER XIII

FOR MURDER

Dave whistled. The pony pricked up its ears, looked round, and came straight to him. The young man laid his face against the soft, silky nose, fondled it, whispered endearments to his pet. He put the bronco through its tricks for the benefit of the corral attendant.

"Well, I'll be doggoned," that youth commented. "The little pinto sure is a wonder. Acts like he knows you mighty well."

"Ought to. I trained him. Had him before Miller got him."

"Bet you hated to sell him."

"You know it." Dave moved forward to his end, the intention to get possession of the horse. He spoke in a voice easy and casual. "Saw Miller a while ago. They're talkin' about sellin' the paint hawss, him and his pardner Doble. I'm to saddle up and show what Chiquito can do."

"Say, that's a good notion. If I was a buyer I'd pay ten bucks more after you'd put him through that circus stuff."

"Which is Miller's saddle?" When it was pointed out to him, Dave examined it and pretended to disapprove. "Too heavy. Lend me a lighter one, can't you?"

"Sure. Here's three or four. Help yourself."

The wrangler moved into the stable to attend to his work.

Dave cinched, swung to the saddle, and rode to the gate of the corral. Two men were coming in, and by the sound of their voices were quarreling. They stepped aside to let him pass, one on each side of the gate, so that it was necessary to ride between them.

They recognized the pinto at the same moment Dave did them. On the heels of that recognition came another.

Doble ripped out an oath and a shout of warning. "It's Sanders!"

A gun flashed as the pony jumped to a gallop. The silent night grew noisy with shots, voices, the clatter of hoofs. Twice Dave fired answers to the challenges which leaped out of the darkness at him. He raced across the bridge spanning the Platte and for a moment drew up on the other side to listen for sounds which might tell him whether he would be pursued. One last solitary revolver shot disturbed the stillness.

The rider grinned. "Think he'd know better than to shoot at me this far."

He broke his revolver, extracted the empty shells, and dropped them to the street. Then he rode up the long hill toward Highlands, passed through that suburb of the city, and went along the dark and dusty road to the shadows of the Rockies silhouetted in the night sky.

His flight had no definite objective except to put as much distance between himself and Denver as possible. He knew nothing about the geography of Colorado, except that a large part of the Rocky Mountains and a delectable city called Denver lived there. His train trip to it had told him that one of its neighbors was New Mexico, which was in turn adjacent to Arizona. Therefore he meant to get to New Mexico as quickly as Chiquito could quite comfortably travel.

Unfortunately Dave was going west instead of south. Every step of the pony was carrying him nearer the roof of the continent, nearer the passes of the front range which lead, by divers valleys and higher mountains beyond, to the snowclad regions of eternal white.

Up in this altitude it was too cold to camp out without a fire and blankets.

"I reckon we'll keep goin', old pal," the young man told his horse. "I've noticed roads mostly lead somewheres."

Day broke over valleys of swirling mist far below the rider. The sun rose and dried the moisture. Dave looked down on a town scattered up and down a gulch.

He met an ore team and asked the driver what town it was. The man looked curiously at him.

"Why, it's Idaho Springs," he said. "Where you come from?"

Dave eased himself in the saddle. "From the Southwest."

"You're quite a ways from home. I reckon your hills ain't so uncurried down there, are they?"

The cowpuncher looked over the mountains. He was among the summits, aglow in the amber light of day with the many blended colors of wild flowers. "We got some down there, too, that don't fit a lady's boodwar. Say, if I keep movin' where'll this road take me?"

The man with the ore team gave information. It struck Dave that he had run into a blind alley.

"If you're after a job, I reckon you can find one at some of the mines. They're needin' hands," the teamster added.

Perhaps this was the best immediate solution of the problem. The puncher nodded farewell and rode down into the town.

He left Chiquito at a livery barn, after having personally fed and watered the pinto, and went himself to a hotel. Here he registered, not under his own name, ate breakfast, and lay down for a few hours' sleep. When he awakened he wrote a note with the stub of a pencil to Bob Hart. It read:

Well, Bob, I done got Chiquito back though it sure looked like I wasn't going to but you never can tell and as old Buck Byington says its a hell of a long road without no bend in it and which you can bet your boots the old alkali is right at that. Well I found the little pie-eater in Denver O K but so gaunt he wont hardly throw a shadow and what can you expect of scalawags like Miller and Doble who don't know how to treat a horse. Well I run Chiquito off right under their noses and we had a little gun play and made my getaway and I reckon I will stay a spell and work here. Well good luck to all the boys till I see them again in the sweet by and by.

Dave

P.S. Get this money order cashed old-timer and pay the boys what I borrowed when we hit the trail after Miller and Doble. I lit out to sudden to settle. Five to Steve and five to Buck. Well so long.

Dave

The puncher went to the post-office, got a money order, and mailed the letter, after which he returned to the hotel. He intended to eat dinner and then look for work.

Three or four men were standing on the steps of the hotel talking with the proprietor. Dave was quite close before the Boniface saw him.

"That's him," the hotel-keeper said in an excited whisper.

A brown-faced man without a coat turned quickly and looked at Sanders. He wore a belt with cartridges and a revolver.

"What's your name?" he demanded.

Dave knew at once this man was an officer of the law. He knew, too, the futility of trying to escape under the pseudonym he had written on the register.

"Sanders--Dave Sanders."

"I want you."

"So? Who are you?"

"Sheriff of the county."

"Whadjawant me for?"

"Murder."

Dave gasped. His heart beat fast with a prescience of impending disaster. "Murder," he repeated dully.

"You're charged with the murder of George Doble last night in Denver."

The boy stared at him with horror-stricken eyes. "Doble? My God, did I kill him?" He clutched at a porch post to steady himself. The hills were sliding queerly up into the sky.

CHAPTER XIV

TEN YEARS

All the way back to Denver, while the train ran down through the narrow, crooked cañon, Dave's mind dwelt in a penumbra of horror. It was impossible he could have killed Doble, he kept telling himself. He had fired back into the night without aim. He had not even tried to hit the men who were shooting at him. It must be some ghastly joke.

None the less he knew by the dull ache in his heart that this awful thing had fastened on him and that he would have to pay the penalty. He had killed a man, snuffed out his life wantonly as a result of taking the law into his own hands. The knowledge of what he had done shook him to the soul.

It remained with him, in the background of his mind, up to and through his trial. What shook his nerve was the fact that he had taken a life, not the certainty of the punishment that must follow.

West called to see him at the jail, and to the cattleman Dave told the story exactly as it had happened. The owner of the Fifty-Four Quarter Circle walked up and down the cell rumpling his hair.

"Boy, why didn't you let on to me what you was figurin' on pullin' off? I knew you was some bull-haided, but I thought you had a lick o' sense left."

"Wisht I had," said Dave miserably.

"Well, what's done's done. No use cryin' over the bust-up. We'd better fix up whatever's left from the smash. First off, we'll get a lawyer, I reckon."

"I gotta li'l' money left--twenty-six dollars," spoke up Dave timidly. "Maybe that's all he'll want."

West smiled at this babe in the woods. "It'll last as long as a snowball in you-know-where if he's like some lawyers I've met up with."

It did not take the lawyer whom West engaged long to decide on the line the defense must take. "We'll show that Miller and Doble were crooks and that they had wronged Sanders. That will count a lot with a jury," he told West. "We'll admit the killing and claim self-defense."

The day before the trial Dave was sitting in his cell cheerlessly reading a newspaper when visitors were announced. At sight of Emerson Crawford and Bob Hart he choked in his throat. Tears brimmed in his eyes. Nobody could have been kinder to him than West had been, but these were home folks. He had known them many years. Their kindness in coming melted his heart.

He gripped their hands, but found himself unable to say anything in answer to their greetings. He was afraid to trust his voice, and he was ashamed of his emotion.

"The boys are for you strong, Dave. We all figure you done right. Steve he says he wouldn't worry none if you'd got Miller too," Bob breezed on.

"Tha's no way to talk, son," reproved Crawford. "It's bad enough right as it is without you boys wantin' it any worse. But don't you get downhearted, Dave. We're allowin' to stand by you to a finish. It ain't as if you'd got a good man. Doble was a mean-hearted scoundrel if ever I met up with one. He's no loss to society. We're goin' to show the jury that too."

They did. By the time Crawford, Hart, and a pair of victims who had been trapped by the sharpers had testified about Miller and Doble, these worthies had no shred of reputation left with the jury. It was shown that they had robbed the defendant of the horse he had trained and that he had gone to a lawyer and found no legal redress within his means.

But Dave was unable to prove self-defense. Miller stuck doggedly to his story. The cowpuncher had fired the first shot. He had continued to fire, though he must have seen Doble sink to the ground immediately. Moreover, the testimony of the doctor showed that the fatal shot had taken effect at close range.

Just prior to this time there had been an unusual number of killings in Denver. The newspapers had stirred up a public sentiment for stricter enforcement of law. They had claimed that both judges and juries were too easy on the gunmen who committed these crimes. Now they asked if this cowboy killer was going to be allowed to escape. Dave was tried when this wave of feeling was at its height and he was a victim of it.

The jury found him guilty of murder in the second degree. The judge sentenced him to ten years in the penitentiary.

When Bob Hart came to say good-bye before Dave was removed to Cañon City, the young range-rider almost broke down. He was greatly distressed at the misfortune that had befallen his friend.

"We're gonna stay with this, Dave. You know Crawford. He goes through when he starts. Soon as there's a chance we'll hit the Governor for a pardon. It's a damn shame, old pal. Tha's what it is."

Dave nodded. A lump in his throat interfered with speech.

"The ol' man lent me money to buy Chiquito, and I'm gonna keep the pinto till you get out. That'll help pay yore lawyer," continued Bob. "One thing more. You're not the only one that's liable to be sent up. Miller's on the way back to Malapi. If he don't get a term for hawss-stealin', I'm a liar. We got a dead open-and-shut case against him."

The guard who was to take Dave to the penitentiary bustled in cheerfully. "All right, boys. If you're ready we'll be movin' down to the depot."

The friends shook hands again.

CHAPTER XV

IN DENVER

The warden handed him a ticket back to Denver, and with it a stereotyped little lecture of platitudes.

"Your future lies before you to be made or marred by yourself, Sanders. You owe it to the Governor who has granted this parole and to the good friends who have worked so hard for it that you be honest and industrious and temperate. If you do this the world will in time forget your past mistakes and give you the right hand of fellowship, as I do now."

The paroled man took the fat hand proffered him because he knew the warden was a sincere humanitarian. He meant exactly what he said. Perhaps he could not help the touch of condescension. But patronage, no matter how kindly meant, was one thing this tall, straight convict would not stand. He was quite civil, but the hard, cynical eyes made the warden uncomfortable. Once or twice before he had known prisoners like this, quiet, silent men who were never insolent, but whose eyes told him that the iron had seared their souls.

The voice of the warden dropped briskly to business. "Seen the bookkeeper? Everything all right, I suppose."

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Well, wish you luck."

"Thanks."

The convict turned away, grave, unsmiling.

The prison officer's eyes followed him a little wistfully. His function, as he understood it, was to win these men back to fitness for service to the society which had shut them up for their misdeeds. They were not wild beasts. They were human beings who had made a misstep. Sometimes he had been able to influence men strongly, but he felt that it had not been true of this puncher from the cow country.

Sanders walked slowly out of the office and through the door in the wall that led back to life. He was free. To-morrow was his. All the to-morrows of all the years of his life were waiting for him. But the fact stirred in him no emotion. As he stood in the dry Colorado sunshine his heart was quite dead.

In the earlier days of his imprisonment it had not been so. He had dreamed often of this hour. At night, in the darkness of his cell, imagination had projected picture after picture of it, vivid, colorful, set to music. But his parole had come too late. The years had taken their toll of him. The shadow of the prison had left its chill, had done something to him that had made him a different David Sanders from the boy who had entered. He wondered if he would ever learn to laugh again, if he would ever run to meet life eagerly as that other David Sanders had a thousand years ago.

He followed the road down to the little station and took a through train that came puffing out of the Royal Gorge on its way to the plains. Through the crowd at the Denver depot he passed into the city, moving up Seventeenth Street without definite aim or purpose. His parole had come unexpectedly, so that none of his friends could meet him even if they had wanted to do so. He was glad of this. He preferred to be alone, especially during these first days of freedom. It was his intention to go back to Malapi, to the country he knew and loved, but he wished to pick up a job in the city for a month or two until he had settled into a frame of mind in which liberty had become a habit.

Early next morning he began his search for work. It carried him to a lumber yard adjoining the railroad yards.

"We need a night watchman," the superintendent said. "Where'd you work last?"

"At Cañon City."

The lumberman looked at him quickly, a question in his glance.

"Yes," Dave went on doggedly. "In the penitentiary."

A moment's awkward embarrassment ensued.

"What were you in for?"

"Killing a man."

"Too bad. I'm afraid--"

"He had stolen my horse and I was trying to get it back. I had no intention of hitting him when I fired."

"I'd take you in a minute so far as I'm concerned personally, but our board of directors--afraid they wouldn't like it. That's one trouble in working for a corporation."

Sanders turned away. The superintendent hesitated, then called after him.

"If you're up against it and need a dollar--"

"Thanks. I don't. I'm looking for work, not charity," the applicant said stiffly.

Wherever he went it was the same. As soon as he mentioned the prison, doors of opportunity closed to him. Nobody wanted to employ a man tarred with that pitch. It did not matter why he had gone, under what provocation he had erred. The thing that damned him was that he had been there. It was a taint, a corrosion.

He could have picked up a job easily enough if he had been willing to lie about his past. But he had made up his mind to tell the truth. In the long run he could not conceal it. Better start with the slate clean.

When he got a job it was to unload cars of fruit for a commission house. A man was wanted in a hurry and the employer did not ask any questions. At the end of an hour he was satisfied.

"Fellow hustles peaches like he'd been at it all his life," the commission man told his partner.

A few days later came the question that Sanders had been expecting. "Where'd you work before you came to us?"

"At the penitentiary."

"A guard?" asked the merchant, taken aback.

"No. I was a convict." The big lithe man in overalls spoke quietly, his eyes meeting those of the Market Street man with unwavering steadiness.

"What was the trouble?"

Dave explained. The merchant made no comment, but when he paid off the men Saturday night he said with careful casualness, "Sorry, Sanders. The work will be slack next week. I'll have to lay you off."

The man from Cañon City understood. He looked for another place, was rebuffed a dozen times, and at last was given work by an employer who had vision enough to know the truth that the bad men do not all go to prison and that some who go may be better than those who do not.

In this place Sanders lasted three weeks. He was doing concrete work on a viaduct job for a contractor employed by the city.

This time it was a fellow-workman who learned of the Arizonan's record. A letter from Emerson Crawford, forwarded by the warden of the penitentiary, dropped out of Dave's coat pocket where it hung across a plank.

The man who picked it up read the letter before returning it to the pocket. He began at once to whisper the news. The subject was discussed back and forth among the men on the quiet. Sanders guessed they had discovered who he was, but he waited for them to move. His years in prison had given him at least the strength of patience. He could bide his time.

They went to the contractor. He reasoned with them.

"Does his work all right, doesn't he? Treats you all civilly. Doesn't force himself on you. I don't see any harm in him."

"We ain't workin' with no jail bird," announced the spokesman.

"He told me the story and I've looked it up since. Talked with the lawyer that defended him. He says the man Sanders killed was a bad lot and had stolen his horse from him. Sanders was trying to get it back. He claimed self-defense, but couldn't prove it."

"Don't make no difference. The jury said he was guilty, didn't it?"

"Suppose he was. We've got to give him a chance when he comes out, haven't we?"

Some of the men began to weaken. They were not cruel, but they were children of impulse, easily led by those who had force enough to push to the front.

"I won't mix cement with no convict," the self-appointed leader announced flatly. "That goes."

The contractor met him eye to eye. "You don't have to, Reynolds. You can get your time."

"Meanin' that you keep him on the job and let me go?"

"That's it exactly. Long as he does his work well I'll not ask him to quit."

A shadow darkened the doorway of the temporary office. The Arizonan stepped in with his easy, swinging stride, a lithe, straight-backed Hermes showing strength of character back of every movement.

"I'm leaving to-day, Mr. Shields." His voice carried the quiet power of reserve force.

"Not because I want you to, Sanders."

"Because I'm not going to stay and make you trouble."

"I don't think it will come to that. I'm talking it over with the boys now. Your work stands up. I've no criticism."

"I'll not stay now, Mr. Shields. Since they've complained to you I'd better go."

The ex-convict looked around, the eyes in his sardonic face hard and bitter. If he could have read the thoughts of the men it would have been different. Most of them were ashamed of their protest. They would have liked to have drawn back, but they did not know how to say so. Therefore they stood awkwardly silent. Afterward, when it was too late, they talked it over freely enough and blamed each other.

From one job to another Dave drifted. His stubborn pride, due in part to a native honesty that would not let him live under false pretenses, in part to a bitterness that had become dogged defiance, kept him out of good places and forced him to do heavy, unskilled labor that brought the poorest pay.

Yet he saved money, bought himself good, cheap clothes, and found energy to attend night school where he studied stationary and mechanical engineering. He lived wholly within himself, his mental reactions tinged with morose scorn. He found little comfort either in himself or in the external world, in spite of the fact that he had determined with all his stubborn will to get ahead.

The library he patronized a good deal, but he gave no time to general literature. His reading was of a highly specialized nature. He studied everything that he could find about the oil fields of America.

The stigma of his disgrace continued to raise its head. One of the concrete workers was married to the sister of the woman from whom he rented his room. The quiet, upstanding man who never complained or asked any privileges had been a favorite of hers, but she was a timid, conventional soul. Visions of her roomers departing in a flock when they found out about the man in the second floor back began to haunt her dreams. Perhaps he might rob them all at night. In a moment of nerve tension, summoning all her courage, she asked the killer from the cattle country if he would mind leaving.

He smiled grimly and began to pack. For several days he had seen it coming. When he left, the expressman took his trunk to the station. The ticket which Sanders bought showed Malapi as his destination.

CHAPTER XVI

DAVE MEETS TWO FRIENDS AND A FOE

In the early morning Dave turned to rest his cramped limbs. He was in a day coach, and his sleep through the night had been broken. The light coming from the window woke him. He looked out on the opalescent dawn of the desert, and his blood quickened at sight of the enchanted mesa. To him came that joyous thrill of one who comes home to his own after years of exile.

Presently he saw the silvery sheen of the mesquite when the sun is streaming westward. Dust eddies whirled across the barranca. The prickly pear and the palo verde flashed past, green splashes against a background of drab. The pudgy creosote, the buffalo grass, the undulation of sand hills were an old story, but to-day his eyes devoured them hungrily. The wonderful effect of space and light, the cloud skeins drawn out as by some invisible hand, the brown ribbon of road that wandered over the hill: they brought to him an emotion poignant and surprising.

The train slid into a narrow valley bounded by hills freakishly eroded to fantastic shapes. Piñon trees fled to the rear. A sheep corral fenced with brush and twisted roots, in which were long, shallow feed troughs and flat-roofed sheds, leaped out of nowhere, was for a few moments, and vanished like a scene in a moving picture. A dim, gray mass of color on a hillside was agitated like a sea wave. It was a flock of sheep moving toward the corral. For an instant Dave caught a glimpse of a dog circling the huddled pack; then dog and sheep were out of sight together.

The pictures stirred memories of the acrid smoke of hill camp-fires, of nights under a tarp with the rain beating down on him, and still others of a road herd bawling for water, of winter camps when the ropes were frozen stiff and the snow slid from trees in small avalanches.

At the junction he took the stage for Malapi. Already he could see that he was going into a new world, one altogether different from that he had last seen here. These men were not cattlemen. They talked the vocabulary of oil. They had the shrewd, keen look of the driller and the wildcatter. They were full of nervous energy that oozed out in constant conversation.

"Jackpot Number Three lost a string o' tools yesterday. While they're fishin', Steelman'll be drillin' hell-a-mile. You got to sit up all night to beat that Coal Oil Johnny," one wrinkled little man said.

A big man in boots laced over corduroy trousers nodded. "He's smooth as a pump plunger, and he sure has luck. He can buy up a dry hole any old time and it'll be a gusher in a week. He'll bust Em Crawford high and dry before he finishes with him. Em had ought to 'a' stuck to cattle. That's one game he knows from hoof to hide."

"Sure. Em's got no business in oil. Say, do you know when they're expectin' Shiloh Number Two in?"

"She's into the sand now, but still dry as a cork leg. That's liable to put a crimp in Em's bank roll, don't you reckon?"

"Yep. Old Man Hard Luck's campin' on his trail sure enough. The banks'll be shakin' their heads at his paper soon."

The stage had stopped to take on a mailsack. Now it started again, and the rest of the talk was lost to Dave. But he had heard enough to guess that the old feud between Crawford and Steelman had taken on a new phase, one in which his friend was likely to get the worst of it.

At Malapi Dave descended from the stage into a town he hardly knew. It had the same wide main street, but the business section extended five blocks instead of one. Everywhere oil dominated the place. Hotels, restaurants, and hardware stores jostled saloons and gambling-houses. Tents had been set up in vacant lots beside frame buildings, and in them stores, rooming-houses, and lunch-counters were doing business. Everybody was in a hurry. The street was filled with men who had to sleep with one eye open lest they miss the news of some new discovery.

The town was having growing-pains. One contractor was putting down sidewalks in the same street where another laid sewer pipe and a third put in telephone poles. A branch line of a trans-continental railroad was moving across the desert to tap the new oil field. Houses rose overnight. Mule teams jingled in and out freighting supplies to Malapi and from there to the fields. On all sides were rustle, energy, and optimism, signs of the new West in the making.

Up the street a team of half-broken broncos came on the gallop, weaving among the traffic with a certainty that showed a skilled pair of hands at the reins. From the buckboard stepped lightly a straight-backed, well-muscled young fellow. He let out a moment later a surprised shout of welcome and fell upon Sanders with two brown fists.

"Dave! Where in Mexico you been, old alkali? We been lookin' for you everywhere."

"In Denver, Bob."

Sanders spoke quietly. His eyes went straight into those of Bob Hart to see what was written there. He found only a glad and joyous welcome, neither embarrassment nor any sign of shame.

"But why didn't you write and let us know?" Bob grew mildly profane in his warmth. He was as easy as though his friend had come back from a week in the hills on a deer hunt. "We didn't know when the Governor was goin' to act. Or we'd 'a' been right at the gate, me or Em Crawford one. Whyn't you answer our letters, you darned old scalawag? Dawggone, but I'm glad to see you."

Dave's heart warmed to this fine loyalty. He knew that both Hart and Crawford had worked in season and out of season for a parole or a pardon. But it's one thing to appear before a pardon board for a convict in whom you are interested and quite another to welcome him to your heart when he stands before you. Bob would do to tie to, Sanders told himself with a rush of gratitude. None of this feeling showed in his dry voice.

"Thanks, Bob."

Hart knew already that Dave had come back a changed man. He had gone in a boy, wild, turbulent, untamed. He had come out tempered by the fires of experience and discipline. The steel-gray eyes were no longer frank and gentle. They judged warily and inscrutably. He talked little and mostly in monosyllables. It was a safe guess that he was master of his impulses. In his manner was a cold reticence entirely foreign to the Dave Sanders his friend had known and frolicked with. Bob felt in him a quality of dangerous strength as hard and cold as hammered iron.

"Where's yore trunk? I'll take it right up to my shack," Hart said.

"I've rented a room."

"Well, you can onrent it. You're stayin' with me."

"No, Bob. I reckon I won't do that. I'll live alone awhile."

"No, sir. What do you take me for? We'll load yore things up on the buckboard."

Dave shook his head. "I'm much obliged, but I'd rather not yet. Got to feel out my way while I learn the range here."

To this Bob did not consent without a stiff protest, but Sanders was inflexible.

"All right. Suit yoreself. You always was stubborn as a Missouri mule," Hart said with a grin. "Anyhow, you'll eat supper with me. Le's go to the Delmonico for ol' times' sake. We'll see if Hop Lee knows you. I'll bet he does."

Hart had come in to see a contractor about building a derrick for a well. "I got to see him now, Dave. Go along with me," he urged.

"No, see you later. Want to get my trunk from the depot."

They arranged an hour of meeting at the restaurant.

In front of the post-office Bob met Joyce Crawford. The young woman had fulfilled the promise of her girlhood. As she moved down the street, tall and slender, there was a light, joyous freedom in her step. So Ellen Terry walked in her resilient prime.

"Miss Joyce, he's here," Bob said.

"Who--Dave?"

She and her father and Bob had more than once met as a committee of three to discuss the interests of Sanders both before and since his release. The week after he left Cañon City letters of thanks had reached both Hart and Crawford, but these had given no address. Their letters to him had remained unanswered nor had a detective agency been able to find him.

"Yes, ma'am, Dave! He's right here in town. Met him half an hour ago."

"I'm glad. How does he look?"

"He's grown older, a heap older. And he's different. You know what an easy-goin' kid he was, always friendly and happy as a half-grown pup. Well, he ain't thataway now. Looks like he never would laugh again real cheerful. I don't reckon he ever will. He's done got the prison brand on him for good. I couldn't see my old Dave in him a-tall. He's hard as nails--and bitter."

The brown eyes softened. "He would be, of course. How could he help it?"

"And he kinda holds you off. He's been hurt bad and ain't takin' no chances whatever, don't you reckon?"

"Do you mean he's broken?"

"Not a bit. He's strong, and he looks at you straight and hard. But they've crushed all the kid outa him. He was a mighty nice boy, Dave was. I hate to lose him."

"When can I see him?" she asked.

Bob looked at his watch. "I got an appointment to meet him at Delmonico's right now. Maybe I can get him to come up to the house afterward."

Joyce was a young woman who made swift decisions. "I'll go with you now," she said.

Sanders was standing in front of the restaurant, but he was faced in the other direction. His flat, muscular back was rigid. In his attitude was a certain tenseness, as though his body was a bundle of steel springs ready to be released.

Bob's eye traveled swiftly past him to a fat man rolling up the street on the opposite sidewalk. "It's Ad Miller, back from the pen. I heard he got out this week," he told the girl in a low voice.

Joyce Crawford felt the blood ebb from her face. It was as though her heart had been drenched with ice water. What was going to take place between these men? Were they armed? Would the gambler recognize his old enemy?

She knew that each was responsible for the other's prison sentence. Sanders had followed the thieves to Denver and found them with his horse. The fat crook had lied Dave into the penitentiary by swearing that the boy had fired the first shots. Now they were meeting for the first time since.

Miller had been drinking. The stiff precision of his gait showed that. For a moment it seemed that he would pass without noticing the man across the road. Then, by some twist of chance, he decided to take the sidewalk on the other side. The sign of the Delmonico had caught his eye and he remembered that he was hungry.

He took one step--and stopped. He had recognized Sanders. His eyes narrowed. The head on his short, red neck was thrust forward.

"Goddlemighty!" he screamed, and next moment was plucking a revolver from under his left armpit.

Bob caught Joyce and swept her behind him, covering her with his body as best he could. At the same time Sanders plunged forward, arrow-straight and swift. The revolver cracked. It spat fire a second time, a third. The tiger-man, head low, his whole splendid body vibrant with energy, hurled himself across the road as though he had been flung from a catapult. A streak of fire ripped through his shoulder. Another shot boomed almost simultaneously. He thudded hard into the fat paunch of the gunman. They went down together.

The fingers of Dave's left hand closed on the fat wrist of the gambler. His other hand tore the revolver away from the slack grasp. The gun rose and fell. Miller went into unconsciousness without even a groan. The corrugated butt of the gun had crashed down on his forehead.

Dizzily Sanders rose. He leaned against a telephone pole for support. The haze cleared to show him the white, anxious face of a young woman.

"Are you hurt?" she asked.

Dave looked at Joyce, wondering at her presence here. "He's the one that's hurt," he answered quietly.

"I thought--I was afraid--" Her voice died away. She felt her knees grow weak. To her this man had appeared to be plunging straight to death.

No excitement in him reached the surface. His remarkably steady eyes still held their grim, hard tenseness, but otherwise his self-control was perfect. He was absolutely imperturbable.

"He was shootin' wild. Sorry you were here, Miss Crawford." His eyes swept the gathering crowd. "You'd better go, don't you reckon?"

"Yes.... You come too, please." The girl's voice broke.

"Don't worry. It's all over." He turned to the crowd. "He began shootin 'at me. I was unarmed. He shot four times before I got to him."

"Tha's right. I saw it from up street," a stranger volunteered. "Where do you take out yore insurance, friend? I'd like to get some of the same."

"I'll be in town here if I'm wanted," Dave announced before he came back to where Bob and Joyce were standing. "Now we'll move, Miss Crawford."

At the second street corner he stopped, evidently intending to go no farther. "I'll say good-bye, for this time. I'll want to see Mr. Crawford right soon. How is little Keith comin' on?"

She had mentioned that the boy frequently spoke of him.

"Can you come up to see Father to-night? Or he'll go to your room if you'd rather."

"Maybe to-morrow--"

"He'll be anxious to see you. I want you and Bob to come to dinner Sunday."

"Don't hardly think I'll be here Sunday. My plans aren't settled. Thank you just the same, Miss Crawford."

She took his words as a direct rebuff. There was a little lump in her throat that she had to get rid of before she spoke again.

"Sorry. Perhaps some other time." Joyce gave him her hand. "I'm mighty glad to have seen you again, Mr. Sanders."

He bowed. "Thank you."

After she had gone, Dave turned swiftly to his friend. "Where's the nearest doctor's office? Miller got me in the shoulder."

CHAPTER XVII

OIL

"I'll take off my hat to Dave," said Hart warmly. "He's chain lightnin'. I never did see anything like the way he took that street in two jumps. And game? Did you ever hear tell of an unarmed man chargin' a guy with a gun spittin' at him?"

"I always knew he had sand in his craw. What does Doc Green say?" asked Crawford, lighting a corncob pipe.

"Says nothin' to worry about. A flesh wound in the shoulder. Ought to heal up in a few days."

Miss Joyce speaking, with an indignant tremor of the voice: "It was the most cowardly thing I ever saw. He was unarmed, and he hadn't lifted a finger when that ruffian began to shoot. I was sure he would be ... killed."

"He'll take a heap o' killin', that boy," her father reassured. "In a way it's a good thing this happened now. His enemies have showed their hand. They tried to gun him, before witnesses, while he was unarmed. Whatever happens now, Dave's got public sentiment on his side. I'm always glad to have my enemy declare himself. Then I can take measures."

"What measures can Dave take?" asked Joyce.

A faint, grim smile flitted across the old cattleman's face. "Well, one measure he'll take pronto will be a good six-shooter on his hip. One I'll take will be to send Miller back to the pen, where he belongs, soon as I can get court action. He's out on parole, like Dave is. All the State has got to do is to reach out and haul him back again."

"If it can find him," added Bob dryly. "I'll bet it can't. He's headed for the hills or the border right now."

Crawford rose. "Well, I'll run down with you to his room and see the boy, Bob. Wisht he would come up and stay with us. Maybe he will."

To the cattleman Dave made light of his wound. He would be all right in a few days, he said. It was only a scratch.

"Tha's good, son," Crawford answered. "Well, now, what are you aimin' to do? I got a job for you on the ranch if tha's what you want. Or I can use you in the oil business. It's for you to say which."

"Oil," said Dave without a moment of hesitation. "I want to learn that business from the ground up. I've been reading all I could get on the subject."

"Good enough, but don't you go to playin' geology too strong, Dave. Oil is where it's at. The formation don't amount to a damn. You'll find it where you find it."

"Mr. Crawford ain't strong for the scientific sharps since a college professor got him to drill a nice straight hole on Round Top plumb halfway to China," drawled Bob with a grin.

"I suppose it's a gamble," agreed Sanders.

"Worse'n the cattle market, and no livin' man can guess that," said the owner of the D Bar Lazy R dogmatically. "Bob, you better put Dave with the crew of that wildcat you're spuddin' in, don't you reckon?"

"I'll put him on afternoon tower in place of that fellow Scott. I've been intendin' to fire him soon as I could get a good man."

"Much obliged to you both. Hope you've found that good man," said Sanders.

"We have. Ain't either of us worryin' about that." With a quizzical smile Crawford raised a point that was in his mind. "Say, son, you talk a heap more like a book than you used to. You didn't slip one over on us and go to college, did you?"

"I went to school in the penitentiary," Dave said.

He had been immured in a place of furtive, obscene whisperings, but he had found there not only vice. There was the chance of an education. He had accepted it at first because he dared not let himself be idle in his spare time. That way lay degeneration and the loss of his manhood. He had studied under competent instructors English, mathematics, the Spanish grammar, and mechanical drawing, as well as surveying and stationary engineering. He had read some of the world's best literature. He had waded through a good many histories. If his education in books was lopsided, it was in some respects more thorough than that of many a college boy.

Dave did not explain all this. He let his simple statement of fact stand without enlarging on it. His life of late years had tended to make him reticent.

"Heard from Burns yet about that fishin' job on Jackpot Number Three?" Bob asked Crawford.

"Only that he thinks he hooked the tools and lost 'em again. Wisht you'd run out in the mo'nin', son, and see what's doin'. I got to go out to the ranch."

"I'll drive out to-night and take Dave with me if he feels up to it. Then we'll know the foreman keeps humpin'."

"Fine and dandy." The cattleman turned to Sanders. "But I reckon you better stay right here and rest up. Time enough for you to go to work when yore shoulder's all right."

"Won't hurt me a bit to drive out with Bob. This thing's going to keep me awake anyhow. I'd rather be outdoors."

They drove out in the buckboard behind the half-broken colts. The young broncos went out of town to a flying start. They raced across the plain as hard as they could tear, the light rig swaying behind them as the wheels hit the high spots. Not till they had worn out their first wild energy was conversation possible.

Bob told of his change of occupation.

"Started dressin' tools on a wildcat test for Crawford two years ago when he first begun to plunge in oil. Built derricks for a while. Ran a drill. Dug sump holes. Shot a coupla wells. Went in with a fellow on a star rig as pardner. Went busted and took Crawford's offer to be handy man for him. Tha's about all, except that I own stock in two-three dead ones and some that ain't come to life yet."

The road was full of chuck holes and very dusty, both faults due to the heavy travel that went over it day and night. They were in the oil field now and gaunt derricks tapered to the sky to right and left of them. Occasionally Dave could hear the kick of an engine or could see a big beam pumping.

"I suppose most of the D Bar Lazy R boys have got into oil some," suggested Sanders.

"Every man, woman, and kid around is in oil neck deep," Bob answered. "Malapi's gone oil crazy. Folks are tradin' and speculatin' in stock and royalty rights that never could amount to a hill o' beans. Slick promoters are gettin' rich. I've known photographers to fake gushers in their dark-rooms. The country's full of abandoned wells of busted companies. Oil is a big man's game. It takes capital to operate. I'll bet it ain't onct in a dozen times an investor gets a square run for his white alley, at that."

"There are crooks in every game."

"Sure, but oil's so darned temptin' to a crook. All the suckers are shovin' money at a promoter. They don't ask his capitalization or investigate his field. Lots o' promoters would hate like Sam Hill to strike oil. If they did they'd have to take care of it. That's a lot of trouble. They can make more organizin' a new company and rakin' in money from new investors."

Bob swung the team from the main road and put it at a long rise.

"There ain't nothin' easier than to drop money into a hole in the ground and call it an oil well," he went on. "Even if the proposition is absolutely on the level, the chances are all against the investor. It's a fifty-to-one shot. Tools are lost, the casin' collapses, the cable breaks, money gives out, shootin' is badly done, water filters in, or oil ain't there in payin' quantities. In a coupla years you can buy a deskful of no-good stock for a dollar Mex."

"Then why is everybody in it?"

"We've all been bit by this get-rich-quick bug. If you hit it right in oil you can wear all the diamonds you've a mind to. That's part of it, but it ain't all. The West always did like to take a chance, I reckon. Well, this is gamblin' on a big scale and it gets into a fellow's blood. We're all crazy, but we'd hate to be cured."

The driver stopped at the location of Jackpot Number Three and invited his friend to get out.

"Make yoreself to home, Dave. I reckon you ain't sorry that fool team has quit joltin' yore shoulder."

Sanders was not, but he did not say so. He could stand the pain of his wound easily enough, but there was enough of it to remind him pretty constantly that he had been in a fight.

The fishing for the string of lost tools was going on by lamplight. With a good deal of interest Dave examined the big hooks that had been sent down in an unsuccessful attempt to draw out the drill. It was a slow business and a not very interesting one. The tools seemed as hard to hook as a wily old trout. Presently Sanders wandered to the bunkhouse and sat down on the front step. He thought perhaps he had not been wise to come out with Hart. His shoulder throbbed a good deal.

After a time Bob joined him. Faintly there came to them the sound of an engine thumping.

"Steelman's outfit," said Hart gloomily. "His li'l' old engine goes right on kickin' all the darned time. If he gets to oil first we lose. Man who makes first discovery on a claim wins out in this country."

"How's that? Didn't you locate properly?"

"Had no time to do the assessment work after we located. Dug a sump hole, maybe. Brad jumps in when the field here began to look up. Company that shows oil first will sure win out."

"How deep has he drilled?"

"We're a li'l' deeper--not much. Both must be close to the sands. We were showin' driller's smut when we lost our string." Bob reached into his hip pocket and drew out "the makings." He rolled his cigarette and lit it. "I reckon Steelman's a millionaire now--on paper, anyhow. He was about busted when he got busy in oil. He was lucky right off, and he's crooked as a dawg's hind laig--don't care how he gets his, so he gets it. He sure trimmed the suckers a-plenty."

"He and Crawford are still unfriendly," Dave suggested, the inflection of his voice making the statement a question.

"Onfriendly!" drawled Bob, leaning back against the step and letting a smoke ring curl up. "Well, tha's a good, nice parlor word. Yes, I reckon you could call them onfriendly." Presently he went on, in explanation: "Brad's goin' to put Crawford down and out if it can be done by hook or crook. He's a big man in the country now. We haven't been lucky, like he has. Besides, the ol' man's company's on the square. This business ain't like cows. It takes big money to swing. You make or break mighty sudden."

"Yes."

"And Steelman won't stick at a thing. Wouldn't trust him or any one of his crowd any further than I could sling a bull by the tail. He'd blow Crawford and me sky high if he thought he could get away with it."

Sanders nodded agreement. He hadn't a doubt of it.

With a thumb jerk toward the beating engine, Bob took up again his story. "Got a bunch of thugs over there right now ready for business if necessary. Imported plug-uglies and genuwine blown-in-the-bottle home talent. Shorty's still one of the gang, and our old friend Dug Doble is boss of the rodeo. I'm lookin' for trouble if we win out and get to oil first."

"You think they'll attack."

A gay light of cool recklessness danced in the eyes of the young oilman. "I've a kinda notion they'll drap over and pay us a visit one o' these nights, say in the dark of the moon. If they do--well, we certainly aim to welcome them proper."

CHAPTER XVIII

DOBLE PAYS A VISIT

"Hello, the Jackpot!"

Out of the night the call came to the men at the bunkhouse.

Bob looked at his companion and grinned. "Seems to me I recognize that melojious voice."

A man stepped from the gloom with masterful, arrogant strides.

"'Lo, Hart," he said. "Can you lend me a reamer?"

Bob knew he had come to spy out the land and not to borrow tools.

"Don't seem to me we've hardly got any reamers to spare, Dug," drawled the young man sitting on the porch floor. "What's the trouble? Got a kink in yore casin'?"

"Not so you could notice it, but you never can tell when you're goin' to run into bad luck, can you?" He sat down on the porch and took a cigar from his vest pocket. "What with losin' tools and one thing an' 'nother, this oil game sure is hell. By the way, how's yore fishin' job comin' on?"

"Fine, Dug. We ain't hooked our big fish yet, but we're hopeful."

Dave was sitting in the shadow. Doble nodded carelessly to him without recognition. It was characteristic of his audacity that Dug had walked over impudently to spy out the camp of the enemy. Bob knew why he had come, and he knew that Bob knew. Yet both ignored the fact that he was not welcome.

"I've known fellows angle a right long time for a trout and not catch him," said Doble, stretching his long legs comfortably.

"Yes," agreed Bob. "Wish I could hire you to throw a monkey wrench in that engine over there. Its chuggin' keeps me awake."

"I'll bet it does. Well, young fellow, you can't hire me or anybody else to stop it," retorted Doble, an edge to his voice.

"Well, I just mentioned it," murmured Hart. "I don't aim to rile yore feelin's. We'll talk of somethin' else.... Hope you enjoyed that reunion this week with yore old friend, absent far, but dear to memory ever."

"Referrin' to?" demanded Doble with sharp hostility.

"Why, Ad Miller, Dug."

"Is he a friend of mine?"

"Ain't he?"

"Not that I ever heard tell of."

"Glad of that. You won't miss him now he's lit out."

"Oh, he's lit out, has he?"

"A li'l bird whispered to me he had."

"When?"

"This evenin', I understand."

"Where'd he go?"

"He didn't leave any address. Called away on sudden business."

"Did he mention the business?"

"Not to me." Bob turned to his friend. "Did he say anything to you about that, Dave?"

In the silence one might have heard a watch tick, Doble leaned forward, his body rigid, danger written large in his burning eyes and clenched fist.

"So you're back," he said at last in a low, harsh voice.

"I'm back."

"It would 'a' pleased me if they had put a rope round yore neck, Mr. Convict."

Dave made no comment. Nobody could have guessed from his stillness how fierce was the blood pressure at his temples.

"It's a difference of opinion makes horse-races, Dug," said Bob lightly.

The big ex-foreman rose snarling. "For half a cent I'd gun you here and now like you did George."

Sanders looked at him steadily, his hands hanging loosely by his sides.

"I wouldn't try that, Dug," warned Hart. "Dave ain't armed, but I am. My hand's on my six-shooter right this minute. Don't make a mistake."

The ex-foreman glared at him. Doble was a strong, reckless devil of a fellow who feared neither God nor man. A primeval savagery burned in his blood, but like most "bad" men he had that vein of caution in his make-up which seeks to find its victim at disadvantage. He knew Hart too well to doubt his word. One cannot ride the range with a man year in, year out, without knowing whether the iron is in his arteries.

"Declarin' yoreself in on this, are you?" he demanded ominously, showing his teeth.

"I've always been in on it, Dug. Took a hand at the first deal, the day of the race. If you're lookin' for trouble with Dave, you'll find it goes double."

"Not able to play his own hand, eh?"

"Not when you've got a six-shooter and he hasn't. Not after he has just been wounded by another gunman he cleaned up with his bare hands. You and yore friends are lookin' for things too easy."

"Easy, hell! I'll fight you and him both, with or without guns. Any time. Any place."

Doble backed away till his figure grew vague in the darkness. Came the crack of a revolver. A bullet tore a splinter from the wall of the shack in front of which Dave was standing. A jeering laugh floated to the two men, carried on the light night breeze.

Bob whipped out his revolver, but he did not fire. He and his friend slipped quietly to the far end of the house and found shelter round the corner.

"Ain't that like Dug, the damned double-crosser?" whispered Bob. "I reckon he didn't try awful hard to hit you. Just sent his compliments kinda casual to show good-will."

"I reckon he didn't try very hard to miss me either," said Dave dryly. "The bullet came within a foot of my head."

"He's one bad citizen, if you ask me," admitted Hart, without reluctance. "Know how he came to break with the old man? He had the nerve to start beauin' Miss Joyce. She wouldn't have it a minute. He stayed right with it--tried to ride over her. Crawford took a hand and kicked him out. Since then Dug has been one bitter enemy of the old man."

"Then Crawford had better look out. If Doble isn't a killer, I've never met one."

"I've got a fool notion that he ain't aimin' to kill him; that maybe he wants to help Steelman bust him so as he can turn the screws on him and get Miss Joyce. Dug must 'a' been makin' money fast in Brad's company. He's on the inside."

Dave made no comment.

"I expect you was some surprised when I told Dug who was roostin' on the step so clost to him," Hart went on. "Well, I had a reason. He was due to find it out anyhow in about a minute, so I thought I'd let him know we wasn't tryin' to keep him from knowin' who his neighbor was; also that I was good and ready for him if he got red-haided like Miller done."

"I understood, Bob," said his friend quietly.

CHAPTER XIX

AN INVOLUNTARY BATH

Jackpot Number Three hooked its tools the second day after Sanders's visit to that location. A few hours later its engine was thumping merrily and the cable rising and falling monotonously in the casing. On the afternoon of the third day Bob Hart rode up to the wildcat well where Dave was building a sump hole with a gang of Mexicans.

He drew Sanders to one side. "Trouble to-night, Dave, looks like. At Jackpot Number Three. We're in a layer of soft shale just above the oil-bearin' sand. Soon we'll know where we're at. Word has reached me that Doble means to rush the night tower and wreck the engine."

"You'll stand his crowd off?"

"You're whistlin'."

"Sure your information is right?"

"It's c'rect." Bob added, after a momentary hesitation: "We got a spy in his camp."

Sanders did not ask whether the affair was to be a pitched battle. He waited, sure that Bob would tell him when he was ready. That young man came to the subject indirectly.

"How's yore shoulder, Dave?"

"Doesn't trouble me any unless something is slammed against it."

"Interfere with you usin' a six-shooter?"

"No."

"Like to take a ride with me over to the Jackpot?"

"Yes."

"Good enough. I want you to look the ground over with me. Looks now as if it would come to fireworks. But we don't want any Fourth-of-July stuff if we can help it. Can we? That's the point."

At the Jackpot the friends walked over the ground together. Back of the location and to the west of it an arroyo ran from a cañon above.

"Follow it down and it'll take you right into the location where Steelman is drillin'," explained Bob. "Dug's gonna lead his gang up the arroyo to the mesquite here, sneak down on us, and take our camp with a rush. At least, that's what he aims to do. You can't always tell, as the fellow says."

"What's up above?"

"A dam. Steelman owns the ground up there. He's got several acres of water backed up there for irrigation purposes."

"Let's go up and look it over."

Bob showed a mild surprise. "Why, yes, if you want to take some exercise. This is my busy day, but--"

Sanders ignored the hint. He led the way up a stiff trail that took them to the mouth of the cañon. Across the face of this a dam stretched. They climbed to the top of it. The water rose to within about six feet from the rim of the curved wall.

"Some view," commented Bob with a grin, looking across the plains that spread fanlike from the mouth of the gorge. "But I ain't much interested in scenery to-day somehow."

"When were you expectin' to shoot the well, Bob?"

"Some time to-morrow. Don't know just when. Why?"

"Got the nitro here yet?"

"Brought it up this mo'nin' myself."

"How much?"

"Twelve quarts."

"Any dynamite in camp?"

"Yes. A dozen sticks, maybe."

"And three gallons of nitro, you say."

"Yep."

"That's enough to do the job," Sanders said, as though talking aloud to himself.

"Yep. Tha's what we usually use."

"I'm speaking of another job. Let's get down from here. We might be seen."

"They couldn't hit us from the Steelman location. Too far," said Bob. "And I don't reckon any one would try to do that."

"No, but they might get to wondering what we're doing up here."

"I'm wonderin' that myself," drawled Hart. "Most generally when I take a pasear it's on the back of a bronc. I ain't one of them that believes the good Lord made human laigs to be walked on, not so long as any broomtails are left to straddle."

Screened by the heavy mesquite below, Sanders unfolded his proposed plan of operations. Bob listened, and as Dave talked there came into Hart's eyes dancing imps of deviltry. He gave a subdued whoop of delight, slapped his dusty white hat on his thigh, and vented his enthusiasm in murmurs of admiring profanity.

"It may not work out," suggested his friend. "But if your information is correct and they come up the arroyo--"

"It's c'rect enough. Lemme ask you a question. If you was attacktin' us, wouldn't you come that way?"

"Yes."

"Sure. It's the logical way. Dug figures to capture our camp without firin' a shot. And he'd 'a' done it, too, if we hadn't had warnin'."

Sanders frowned, his mind busy over the plan. "It ought to work, unless something upsets it," he said.

"Sure it'll work. You darned old fox, I never did see yore beat. Say, if we pull this off right, Dug's gonna pretty near be laughed outa the county."

"Keep it quiet. Only three of us need to know it. You stay at the well to keep Doble's gang back if we slip up. I'll give the signal, and the third man will fire the fuse."

"Buck Byington will be here pretty soon. I'll get him to set off the Fourth-of-July celebration. He's a regular clam--won't ever say a word about this."

"When you hear her go off, you'd better bring the men down on the jump."

Byington came up the road half an hour later at a cowpuncher's jog-trot. He slid from the saddle and came forward chewing tobacco. His impassive, leathery face expressed no emotion whatever. Carelessly and casually he shook hands. "How, Dave?"

"How, Buck?" answered Sanders.

The old puncher had always liked Dave Sanders. The boy had begun work on the range as a protégé of his. He had taught him how to read sign and how to throw a rope. They had ridden out a blizzard together, and the old-timer had cared for him like a father. The boy had repaid him with a warm, ingenuous affection, an engaging sweetness of outward respect. A certain fineness in the eager face had lingered as an inheritance from his clean youth. No playful pup could have been more friendly. Now Buck shook hands with a grim-faced man, one a thousand years old in bitter experience. The eyes let no warmth escape. In the younger man's consciousness rose the memory of a hundred kindnesses flowing from Buck to him. Yet he could not let himself go. It was as though the prison chill had encased his heart in ice which held his impulses fast.

After dusk had fallen they made their preparations. The three men slipped away from the bunkhouse into the chaparral. Bob carried a bulging gunnysack, Dave a lantern, a pick, a drill, and a hammer. None of them talked till they had reached the entrance to the cañon.

"We'd better get busy before it's too dark," Bob said. "We picked this spot, Buck. Suit you?"

Byington had been a hard-rock Colorado miner in his youth. He examined the dam and came back to the place chosen. After taking off his coat he picked up the hammer. "Le's start. The sooner the quicker."

Dave soaked the gunnysack in water and folded it over the top of the drill to deaden the sound. Buck wielded the hammer and Bob held the drill.

After it grew dark they worked by the light of the lantern. Dave and Bob relieved Buck at the hammer. They drilled two holes, put in the dynamite charges, tamped them down, and filled in again the holes. The nitroglycerine, too, was prepared and set for explosion.

Hart straightened stiffly and looked at his watch. "Time to move back to camp, Dave. Business may get brisk soon now. Maybe Dug may get in a hurry and start things earlier than he intended."

"Don't miss my signal, Buck. Two shots, one right after another," said Dave.

"I'll promise you to send back two shots a heap louder. You sure won't miss 'em," answered Buck with a grin.

The younger men left him at the dam and went back down the trail to their camp.

"No report yet from the lads watchin' the arroyo. I expect Dug's waitin' till he thinks we're all asleep except the night tower," whispered the man who had been left in charge by Hart.

"Dave, you better relieve the boys at the arroyo," suggested Bob. "Fireworks soon now, I expect."

Sanders crept through the heavy chaparral to the liveoaks above the arroyo, snaking his way among cactus and mesquite over the sand. A watcher jumped up at his approach. Dave raised his hand and moved it above his head from right to left. The guard disappeared in the darkness toward the Jackpot. Presently his companion followed him. Dave was left alone.

It seemed to him that the multitudinous small voices of the night had never been more active. A faint trickle of water came up from the bed of the stream. He knew this was caused by leakage from the reservoir in the gulch. A tiny rustle stirred the dry grass close to his hand. His peering into the thick brush did not avail to tell him what form of animal life was palpitating there. Far away a mocking-bird throbbed out a note or two, grew quiet, and again became tunefully clamorous. A night owl hooted. The sound of a soft footfall rolling a pebble brought him to taut alertness. Eyes and ears became automatic detectives keyed to finest service.

A twig snapped in the arroyo. Indistinctly movements of blurred masses were visible. The figure of a man detached itself from the gloom and crept along the sandy wash. A second and a third took shape. The dry bed became filled with vague motion. Sanders waited no longer. He crawled back from the lip of the ravine a dozen yards, drew his revolver, and fired twice.

His guess had been that the attacking party, startled at the shots, would hesitate and draw together for a whispered conference. This was exactly what occurred.

An explosion tore to shreds the stillness of the night. Before the first had died away a second one boomed out. Dave heard a shower of falling rock and concrete. He heard, too, a roar growing every moment in volume. It swept down the walled gorge like a railroad train making up lost time.

Sanders stepped forward. The gully, lately a wash of dry sand and baked adobe, was full of a fury of rushing water. Above the noise of it he caught the echo of a despairing scream. Swiftly he ran, dodging among the catclaw and the prickly pear like a half-back carrying the ball through a broken field. His objective was the place where the arroyo opened to a draw. At this precise spot Steelman had located his derrick.

The tower no longer tapered gauntly to the sky. The rush of waters released from the dam had swept it from its foundation, torn apart the timbers, and scattered them far and wide. With it had gone the wheel, dragging from the casing the cable. The string of tools, jerked from their socket, probably lay at the bottom of the well two thousand feet down.

Dave heard a groan. He moved toward the sound. A man lay on a sand hummock, washed up by the tide.

"Badly hurt?" asked Dave.

"I've been drowned intirely, swallowed by a flood and knocked galley-west for Sunday. I don't know yit am I dead or not. Mither o' Moses, phwat was it hit us?"

"The dam must have broke."

"Was the Mississippi corked up in the dom cañon?"

Bob bore down upon the scene at the head of the Jackpot contingent. He gave a whoop at sight of the wrecked derrick and engine. "Kindlin' wood and junk," was his verdict. "Where's Dug and his gang?"

Dave relieved the half-drowned man of his revolver. "Here's one. The rest must be either in the arroyo or out in the draw."

"Scatter, boys, and find 'em. Look out for them if they're hurt. Collect their hardware first off."

The water by this time had subsided. Released from the walls of the arroyo, it had spread over the desert. The supply in the reservoir was probably exhausted, for the stream no longer poured down in a torrent. Instead, it came in jets, weakly and with spent energy.

Hart called. "Come here and meet an old friend, Dave."

Sanders made his way, ankle deep in water, to the spot from which that irrepressibly gay voice had come. He was still carrying the revolver he had taken from the Irishman.

"Meet Shorty, Dave. Don't mind his not risin' to shake. He's just been wrastlin' with a waterspout and he's some wore out."

The squat puncher glared at his tormentor. "I done bust my laig," he said at last sullenly.

He was wet to the skin. His lank, black hair fell in front of his tough, unshaven face. One hand nursed the lacerated leg. The other was hooked by the thumb into the band of his trousers.

"That worries us a heap, Shorty," answered Hart callously. "I'd say you got it comin' to you."

The hand hitched in the trouser band moved slightly. Bob, aware too late of the man's intention, reached for his six-shooter. Something flew past him straight and hard.

Shorty threw up his hands with a yelp and collapsed. He had been struck in the head by a heavy revolver.

"Some throwin', Dave. Much obliged," said Hart. "We'll disarm this bird and pack him back to the derrick." They did. Shorty almost wept with rage and pain and impotent malice. He cursed steadily and fluently. He might as well have saved his breath, for his captors paid not the least attention to his spleen.

Weak as a drowned rat, Doble came limping out of the ravine. He sat down on a timber, very sick at the stomach from too much water swallowed in haste. After he had relieved himself, he looked up wanly and recognized Hart, who was searching him for a hidden six-shooter.

"Must 'a' lost yore forty-five whilst you was in swimmin', Dug. Was the water good this evenin'? I'll bet you and yore lads pulled off a lot o' fancy stunts when the water come down from Lodore or wherever they had it corralled." Dancing imps of mischief lit the eyes of the ex-cowpuncher. "Well, I'll bet the boys in town get a great laugh at yore comedy stuff. You ce'tainly did a good turn. Oh, you've sure earned yore laugh."

If hatred could have killed with a look Bob would have been a dead man. "You blew up the dam," charged Doble.

"Me! Why, it ain't my dam. Didn't Brad give you orders to open the sluices to make you a swimmin' hole?"

The searchers began to straggle in, bringing with them a sadly drenched and battered lot of gunmen. Not one but looked as though he had been through the wars. An inventory of wounds showed a sprained ankle, a broken shoulder blade, a cut head, and various other minor wounds. Nearly every member of Doble's army was exceedingly nauseated. The men sat down or leaned up against the wreckage of the plant and drooped wretchedly. There was not an ounce of fight left in any of them.

"They must 'a' blew the dam up. Them shots we heard!" one ventured without spirit.

"Who blew it up?" demanded one of the Jackpot men belligerently. "If you say we did, you're a liar."

He was speaking the truth so far as he knew. The man who had been through the waters did not take up the challenge. Officers in the army say that men will not fight on an empty stomach, and his was very empty.

"I'll remember this, Hart," Doble said, and his face was a thing ill to look upon. The lips were drawn back so that his big teeth were bared like tusks. The eyes were yellow with malignity.

"Y'betcha! The boys'll look after that, Dug," retorted Bob lightly. "Every time you hook yore heel over the bar rail at the Gusher, you'll know they're laughin' at you up their sleeves. Sure, you'll remember it."

"Some day I'll make yore whole damned outfit sorry for this," the big hook-nosed man threatened blackly. "No livin' man can laugh at me and get away with it."

"I'm laughin' at you, Dug. We all are. Wish you could see yoreself as we see you. A little water takes a lot o' tuck outa some men who are feelin' real biggity."

Byington, at this moment, sauntered into the assembly. He looked around in simulated surprise. "Must be bath night over at you-all's camp, Dug. You look kinda drookid yore own self, as you might say."

Doble swore savagely. He pointed with a shaking finger at Sanders, who was standing silently in the background. "Tha's the man who's responsible for this. Think I don't know? That jail bird! That convict! That killer!" His voice trembled with fury. "You'd never a-thought of it in a thousand years, Hart. Nor you, Buck, you old fathead. Wait. Tha's what I say. Wait. It'll be me or him one day. Soon, too."

The paroled man said nothing, but no words could have been more effective than the silence of this lean, powerful man with the close-clamped jaw whose hard eyes watched his enemy so steadily. He gave out an impression of great vitality and reserve force. Even these hired thugs, dull and unimaginative though they were, understood that he was dangerous beyond most fighting men. A laugh snapped the tension. The Jackpot engineer pointed to a figure emerging from the arroyo. The man who came dejectedly into view was large and fat and dripping. He was weeping curses and trying to pick cactus burrs from his anatomy. Dismal groans punctuated his profanity.

"It stranded me right on top of a big prickly pear," he complained. "I like never to 'a' got off, and a million spines are stickin' into me."

Bob whooped. "Look who's among us. If it ain't our old friend Ad Miller, the human pincushion. Seein' as he drapped in, we'll collect him right now and find out if the sheriff ain't lookin' for him to take a trip on the choo-choo cars."

The fat convict looked to Doble in vain for help. His friend was staring at the ground sourly in a huge disgust at life and all that it contained. Miller limped painfully to the Jackpot in front of Hart. Two days later he took the train back to the penitentiary. Emerson Crawford made it a point to see to that.

CHAPTER XX

THE LITTLE MOTHER FREES HER MIND

If some one had made Emerson Crawford a present of a carload of Herefords he could not have been more pleased than he was at the result of the Jackpot crew's night adventure with the Steelman forces. The news came to him at an opportune moment, for he had just been served notice by the president of the Malapi First National Bank that Crawford must prepare to meet at once a call note for $10,000. A few hours earlier in the day the cattleman had heard it rumored that Steelman had just bought a controlling interest in the bank. He did not need a lawyer to tell him that the second fact was responsible for the first. In fact the banker, personally friendly to Crawford, had as good as told him so.

Bob rode in with the story of the fracas in time to cheer the drooping spirits of his employer. Emerson walked up and down the parlor waving his cigar while Joyce laughed at him.

"Dawggone my skin, if that don't beat my time! I'm settin' aside five thousand shares in the Jackpot for Dave Sanders right now. Smartest trick ever I did see." The justice of the Jackpot's vengeance on its rival and the completeness of it came home to him as he strode the carpet. "He not only saves my property without havin' to fight for it--and that was a blamed good play itself, for I don't want you boys shootin' up anybody even in self-defense--but he disarms Brad's plug-uglies, humiliates them, makes them plumb sick of the job, and at the same time wipes out Steelman's location lock, stock, and barrel. I'll make that ten thousand shares, by gum! That boy's sure some stemwinder."

"He uses his haid," admitted Bob admiringly.

"I'd give my best pup to have been there," said the cattleman regretfully.

"It was some show," drawled the younger man. "Drowned rats was what they reminded me of. Couldn't get a rise out of any of 'em except Dug. That man's dangerous, if you ask me. He's crazy mad at all of us, but most at Dave."

"Will he hurt him?" asked Joyce quickly.

"Can't tell. He'll try. That's a cinch."

The dark brown eyes of the girl brooded. "That's not fair. We can't let him run into more danger for us, Dad. He's had enough trouble already. We must do something. Can't you send him to the Spring Valley Ranch?"

"Meanin' Dug Doble?" asked Bob.

She flashed a look of half-smiling, half-tender reproach at him. "You know who I mean, Bob. And I'm not going to have him put in danger on our account," she added with naïve dogmatism.

"Joy's right. She's sure right," admitted Crawford.

"Maybeso." Hart fell into his humorous drawl. "How do you aim to get him to Spring Valley? You goin' to have him hawg-tied and shipped as freight?"

"I'll talk to him. I'll tell him he must go." Her resolute little face was aglow and eager. "It's time Malapi was civilized. We mustn't give these bad men provocation. It's better to avoid them."

"Yes," admitted Bob dryly. "Well, you tell all that to Dave. Maybe he's the kind o' lad that will pack up and light out because he's afraid of Dug Doble and his outfit. Then again maybe he ain't."

Crawford shook his head. He was a game man himself. He would go through when the call came, and he knew quite well that Sanders would do the same. Nor would any specious plea sidetrack him. At the same time there was substantial justice in the contention of his daughter. Dave had no business getting mixed up in this row. The fact that he was an ex-convict would be in itself a damning thing in case the courts ever had to pass upon the feud's results. The conviction on the records against him would make a second conviction very much easier.

"You're right, Bob. Dave won't let Dug's crowd run him out. But you keep an eye on him. Don't let him go out alone nights. See he packs a gun."

"Packs a gun!" Joyce was sitting in a rocking-chair under the glow of the lamp. She was darning one of Keith's stockings, and to the young man watching her--so wholly winsome girl, so much tender but business-like little mother--she was the last word in the desirability of woman. "That's the very way to find trouble, Dad. He's been doing his best to keep out of it. He can't, if he stays here. So he must go away, that's all there is to it."

Her father laughed. "Ain't it scandalous the way she bosses us all around, Bob?"

The face of the girl sparkled to a humorous challenge. "Well, some one has got to boss you-all boys, Dad. If you'd do as I say you wouldn't have any trouble with that old Steelman or his gunmen."

"We wouldn't have any oil wells either, would we, honey?"

"They're not worth having if you and Dave Sanders and Bob have to live in danger all the time," she flashed.

"Glad you look at it that way, Joy," Emerson retorted with a rueful smile. "Fact is, we ain't goin' to have any more oil wells than a jackrabbit pretty soon. I'm at the end of my rope right now. The First National promised me another loan on the Arizona ranch, but Brad has got a-holt of it and he's called in my last loan. I'm not quittin'. I'll put up a fight yet, but unless things break for me I'm about done."

"Oh, Dad!" Her impulse of sympathy carried Joyce straight to him. Soft, rounded arms went round his neck with impassioned tenderness. "I didn't dream it was as bad as that. You've been worrying all this time and you never let me know."

He stroked her hair fondly. "You're the blamedest little mother ever I did see--always was. Now don't you fret. It'll work out somehow. Things do."

CHAPTER XXI

THE HOLD-UP

To Sanders, working on afternoon tower at Jackpot Number Three, the lean, tanned driller in charge of operations was wise with an uncanny knowledge the newcomer could not fathom. For eight hours at a stretch he stood on the platform and watched a greasy cable go slipping into the earth. Every quiver of it, every motion of the big walking-beam, every kick of the engine, told him what was taking place down that narrow pipe two thousand feet below the surface. He knew when the tools were in clay and had become gummed up. He could tell just when the drill had cut into hard rock at an acute angle and was running out of the perpendicular to follow the softer stratum. His judgment appeared infallible as to whether he ought to send down a reamer to straighten the kink. All Dave knew was that a string of tools far underground was jerking up and down monotonously.

This spelt romance to Jed Burns, superintendent of operations, though he would never have admitted it. He was a bachelor; always would be one. Hard-working, hard-drinking, at odd times a plunging gambler, he lived for nothing but oil and the atmosphere of oil fields. From one boom to another he drifted, as inevitably as the gamblers, grafters, and organizers of "fake" companies. Several times he had made fortunes, but it was impossible for him to stay rich. He was always ready to back a drilling proposition that looked promising, and no independent speculator can continue to wildcat without going broke.

He was sifting sand through his fingers when Dave came on tower the day after the flood. To Bob Hart, present as Crawford's personal representative, he expressed an opinion.

"Right soon now or never. Sand tastes, feels, looks, and smells like oil. But you can't ever be sure. An oil prospect is like a woman. She will or she won't, you never can tell which. Then, if she does, she's liable to change her mind."

Dave sniffed the pleasing, pungent odor of the crude oil sands. His friend had told him that Crawford's fate hung in the balance. Unless oil flowed very soon in paying quantities he was a ruined man. The control of the Jackpot properties would probably pass into the hands of Steelman. The cattleman would even lose the ranches which had been the substantial basis of his earlier prosperity.

Everybody working on the Jackpot felt the excitement as the drill began to sink into the oil-bearing sands. Most of the men owned stock in the company. Moreover, they were getting a bonus for their services and had been promised an extra one if Number Three struck oil in paying quantities before Steelman's crew did. Even to an outsider there is a fascination in an oil well. It is as absorbing to the drillers as a girl's mind is to her hopeful lover. Dave found it impossible to escape the contagion of this. Moreover, he had ten thousand shares in the Jackpot, stock turned over to him out of the treasury supply by the board of directors in recognition of services which they did not care to specify in the resolution which authorized the transfer. At first he had refused to accept this, but Bob Hart had put the matter to him in such a light that he changed his mind.

"The oil business pays big for expert advice, no matter whether it's legal or technical. What you did was worth fifty times what the board voted you. If we make a big strike you've saved the company. If we don't the stock's not worth a plugged nickel anyhow. You've earned what we voted you. Hang on to it, Dave."

Dave had thanked the board and put the stock in his pocket. Now he felt himself drawn into the drama represented by the thumping engine which continued day and night.

After his shift was over, he rode to town with Bob behind his team of wild broncos.

"Got to look for an engineer for the night tower," Hart explained as he drew up in front of the Gusher Saloon. "Come in with me. It's some gambling-hell, if you ask me."

The place hummed with the turbulent life that drifts to every wild frontier on the boom. Faro dealers from the Klondike, poker dealers from Nome, roulette croupiers from Leadville, were all here to reap the rich harvest to be made from investors, field workers, and operators. Smooth grafters with stock in worthless companies for sale circulated in and out with blue-prints and whispered inside information. The men who were ranged in front of the bar, behind which half a dozen attendants in white aprons busily waited on their wants, usually talked oil and nothing but oil. To-day they had another theme. The same subject engrossed the groups scattered here and there throughout the large hall.

In the rear of the room were the faro layouts, the roulette wheels, and the poker players. Around each of these the shifting crowd surged. Mexicans, Chinese, and even Indians brushed shoulders with white men of many sorts and conditions. The white-faced professional gambler was in evidence, winning the money of big brown men in miner's boots and corduroys. The betting was wild and extravagant, for the spirit of the speculator had carried away the cool judgment of most of these men. They had seen a barber become a millionaire in a day because the company in which he had plunged had struck a gusher. They had seen the same man borrow five dollars three months later to carry him over until he got a job. Riches were pouring out of the ground for the gambler who would take a chance. Thrift was a much-discredited virtue in Malapi. The one unforgivable vice was to be "a piker."

Bob found his man at a faro table. While the cards were being shuffled, he engaged him to come out next evening to the Jackpot properties. As soon as the dealer began to slide the cards out of the case the attention of the engineer went back to his bets.

While Dave was standing close to the wall, ready to leave as soon as Bob returned to him, he caught sight of an old acquaintance. Steve Russell was playing stud poker at a table a few feet from him. The cowpuncher looked up and waved his hand.

"See you in a minute, Dave," he called, and as soon as the pot had been won he said to the man shuffling the cards, "Deal me out this hand."

He rose, stepped across to Sanders, and shook hands with a strong grip. "You darned old son-of-a-gun! I'm sure glad to see you. Heard you was back. Say, you've ce'tainly been goin' some. Suits me. I never did like either Dug or Miller a whole lot. Dug's one sure-enough bad man and Miller's a tinhorn would-be. What you did to both of 'em was a-plenty. But keep yore eye peeled, old-timer. Miller's where he belongs again, but Dug's still on the range, and you can bet he's seein' red these days. He'll gun you if he gets half a chance."

"Yes," said Dave evenly.

"You don't figure to let yoreself get caught again without a six-shooter." Steve put the statement with the rising inflection.

"No."

"Tha's right. Don't let him get the drop on you. He's sudden death with a gun."

Bob joined them. After a moment's conversation Russell drew them to a corner of the room that for the moment was almost deserted.

"Say, you heard the news, Bob?"

"I can tell you that better after I know what it is," returned Hart with a grin.

"The stage was held up at Cottonwood Bend and robbed of seventeen thousand dollars. The driver was killed."

"When?"

"This mo'nin'. They tried to keep it quiet, but it leaked out."

"Whose money was it?"

"Brad Steelman's pay roll and a shipment of gold for the bank."

"Any idea who did it?"

Steve showed embarrassment. "Why, no, I ain't, if that's what you mean."

"Well, anybody else?"

"Tha's what I wanta tell you. Two men were in the job. They're whisperin' that Em Crawford was one."

"Crawford! Some of Steelman's fine work in that rumor, I'll bet. He's crazy if he thinks he can get away with that. Tha's plumb foolish talk. What evidence does he claim?" demanded Hart.

"Em deposited ten thousand with the First National to pay off a note he owed the bank. Rode into town right straight to the bank two hours after the stage got in. Then, too, seems one of the hold-ups called the other one Crawford."

"A plant," said Dave promptly.

"Looks like." Bob's voice was rich with sarcasm. "I don't reckon the other one rose up on his hind laigs and said, 'I'm Bob Hart,' did he?"

"They claim the second man was Dave here."

"Hmp! What time d'you say this hold-up took place?"

"Must 'a' been about eleven."

"Lets Dave out. He was fifteen miles away, and we can prove it by at least six witnesses."

"Good. I reckon Em can put in an alibi too."

"I'll bet he can." Hart promised this with conviction.

"Trouble is they say they've got witnesses to show Em was travelin' toward the Bend half an hour before the hold-up. Art Johnson and Clem Purdy met him while they was on their way to town."

"Was Crawford alone?"

"He was then. Yep."

"Any one might'a' been there. You might. I might. That don't prove a thing."

"Hell, I know Em Crawford's not mixed up in any hold-up, let alone a damned cowardly murder. You don't need to tell me that. Point is that evidence is pilin' up. Where did Em get the ten thousand to pay the bank? Two days ago he was tryin' to increase the loan the First National had made him."

Dave spoke. "I don't know where he got it, but unless he's a born fool--and nobody ever claimed that of Crawford--he wouldn't take the money straight to the bank after he had held up the stage and killed the driver. That's a strong point in his favor."

"If he can show where he got the ten thousand," amended Russell. "And of course he can."

"And where he spent that two hours after the hold-up before he came to town. That'll have to be explained too," said Bob.

"Oh, Em he'll be able to explain that all right," decided Steve cheerfully.

"Where is Crawford now?" asked Dave. "He hasn't been arrested, has he?"

"Not yet. But he's bein' watched. Soon as he showed up at the bank the sheriff asked to look at his six-shooter. Two cartridges had been fired. One of the passengers on the stage told me two shots was fired from a six-gun by the boss hold-up. The second one killed old Tim Harrigan."

"Did they accuse Crawford of the killing?"

"Not directly. He was asked to explain. I ain't heard what his story was."

"We'd better go to his house and talk with him," suggested Hart. "Maybe he can give as good an alibi as you, Dave."

"You and I will go straight there," decided Sanders. "Steve, get three saddle horses. We'll ride out to the Bend and see what we can learn on the ground."

"I'll cash my chips, get the broncs, and meet you lads at Crawford's," said Russell promptly.

CHAPTER XXII

NUMBER THREE COMES IN

Joyce opened the door to the knock of the young men. At sight of them her face lit.

"Oh, I'm so glad you've come!" she cried, tears in her voice. She caught her hands together in a convulsive little gesture. "Isn't it dreadful? I've been afraid all the time that something awful would happen--and now it has."

"Don't you worry, Miss Joyce," Bob told her cheerfully. "We ain't gonna let anything happen to yore paw. We aim to get busy right away and run this thing down. Looks like a frame-up. If it is, you betcha we'll get at the truth."

"Will you? Can you?" She turned to Dave in appeal, eyes starlike in a face that was a white and shining oval in the semi-darkness.

"We'll try," he said simply.

Something in the way he said it, in the quiet reticence of his promise, sent courage flowing to her heart. She had called on him once before, and he had answered splendidly and recklessly.

"Where's Mr. Crawford?" asked Bob.

"He's in the sitting-room. Come right in."

Her father was sitting in a big chair, one leg thrown carelessly over the arm. He was smoking a cigar composedly.

"Come in, boys," he called. "Reckon you've heard that I'm a stage rustler and a murderer."

Joyce cried out at this, the wide, mobile mouth trembling.

"Just now. At the Gusher," said Bob. "They didn't arrest you?"

"Not yet. They're watchin' the house. Sit down, and I'll tell it to you."

He had gone out to see a homesteader about doing some work for him. On the way he had met Johnson and Purdy near the Bend, just before he had turned up a draw leading to the place in the hills owned by the man whom he wanted to see. Two hours had been spent riding to the little valley where the nester had built his corrals and his log house, and when Crawford arrived neither he nor his wife was at home. He returned to the road, without having met a soul since he had left it, and from there jogged on back to town. On the way he had fired twice at a rattlesnake.

"You never reached the Bend, then, at all," said Dave.

"No, but I cayn't prove I didn't." The old cattleman looked at the end of his cigar thoughtfully. "Nor I cayn't prove I went out to Dick Grein's place in that three-four hours not accounted for."

"Anyhow, you can show where you got the ten thousand dollars you paid the bank," said Bob hopefully.

A moment of silence; then Crawford spoke. "No, son, I cayn't tell that either."

Faint and breathless with suspense, Joyce looked at her father with dilated eyes. "Why not?"

"Because the money was loaned me on those conditions."

"But--but--don't you see, Dad?--if you don't tell that--"

"They'll think I'm guilty. Well, I reckon they'll have to think it, Joy." The steady gray eyes looked straight into the brown ones of the girl. "I've been in this county boy and man for 'most fifty years. Any one that's willin' to think me a cold-blooded murderer at this date, why, he's welcome to hold any opinion he pleases. I don't give a damn what he thinks."

"But we've got to prove--"

"No, we haven't. They've got to do the proving. The law holds me innocent till I'm found guilty."

"But you don't aim to keep still and let a lot of miscreants blacken yore good name!" suggested Hart.

"You bet I don't, Bob. But I reckon I'll not break my word to a friend either, especially under the circumstances this money was loaned."

"He'll release you when he understands," cried Joyce.

"Don't bank on that, honey," Crawford said slowly.

"You ain't to mention this. I'm tellin' you three private. He cayn't come out and tell that he let me have the money. Understand? You don't any of you know a thing about how I come by that ten thousand. I've refused to answer questions about that money. That's my business."

"Oh, but, Dad, you can't do that. You'll have to give an explanation. You'll have to--"

"The best explanation I can give, Joy, is to find out who held up the stage and killed Tim Harrigan. It's the only one that will satisfy me. It's the only one that will satisfy my friends."

"That's true," said Sanders.

"Steve Russell is bringin' hawsses," said Bob. "We'll ride out to the Bend to-night and be ready for business there at the first streak of light. Must be some trail left by the hold-ups."

Crawford shook his head. "Probably not. Applegate had a posse out there right away. You know Applegate. He'd blunder if he had a chance. His boys have milled all over the place and destroyed any trail that was left."

"We'll go out anyhow--Dave and Steve and I. Won't do any harm. We're liable to discover something, don't you reckon?"

"Maybeso. Who's that knockin' on the door, Joy?"

Some one was rapping on the front door imperatively. The girl opened it, to let into the hall a man in greasy overalls.

"Where's Mr. Crawford?" he demanded excitedly.

"Here. In the sitting-room. What's wrong?"

"Wrong! Not a thing!" He talked as he followed Joyce to the door of the room. "Except that Number Three's come in the biggest gusher ever I see. She's knocked the whole superstructure galley-west an' she's rip-r'arin' to beat the Dutch."

Emerson Crawford leaped to his feet, for once visibly excited. "What?" he demanded. "Wha's that?"

"Jus' like I say. The oil's a-spoutin' up a hundred feet like a fan. Before mornin' the sump holes will be full and she'll be runnin' all over the prairie."

"Burns sent you?"

"Yep. Says for you to get men and teams and scrapers and gunnysacks and heavy timbers out there right away. Many as you can send."

Crawford turned to Bob, his face aglow. "Yore job, Bob. Spread the news. Rustle up everybody you can get. Arrange with the railroad grade contractor to let us have all his men, teams, and scrapers till we get her hogtied and harnessed. Big wages and we'll feed the whole outfit free. Hire anybody you can find. Buy a coupla hundred shovels and send 'em out to Number Three. Get Robinson to move his tent-restaurant out there."

Hart nodded. "What about this job at the Bend?" he asked in a low voice.

"Dave and I'll attend to that. You hump on the Jackpot job. Sons, we're rich, all three of us. Point is to keep from losin' that crude on the prairie. Keep three shifts goin' till she's under control."

"We can't do anything at the Bend till morning," said Dave. "We'd better put the night in helping Bob."

"Sure. We've got to get all Malapi busy. A dozen business men have got to come down and open up their stores so's we can get supplies," agreed Emerson.

Joyce, her face flushed and eager, broke in. "Ring the fire bell. That's the quickest way."

"Sure enough. You got a haid on yore shoulders. Dave, you attend to that. Bob, hit the dust for the big saloons and gather men. I'll see O'Connor about the railroad outfit; then I'll come down to the fire-house and talk to the crowd. We'll wake this old town up to-night, sons."

"What about me?" asked the messenger.

"You go back and tell Jed to hold the fort till Hart and his material arrives."

Outside, they met Russell riding down the road, two saddled horses following. With a word of explanation they helped themselves to his mounts while he stared after them in surprise.

"I'll be dawggoned if they-all ain't three gents in a hurry," he murmured to the breezes of the night. "Well, seein' as I been held up, I reckon I'll have to walk back while the hawss-thieves ride."

Five minutes later the fire-bell clanged out its call to Malapi. From roadside tent and gambling-hall, from houses and camp-fires, men and women poured into the streets. For Malapi was a shell-town, tightly packed and inflammable, likely to go up in smoke whenever a fire should get beyond control of the volunteer company. Almost in less time than it takes to tell it, the square was packed with hundreds of lightly clad people and other hundreds just emerging from the night life of the place.

The clangor of the bell died away, but the firemen did not run out the hose and bucket cart. The man tugging the rope had told them why he was summoning the citizens.

"Some one's got to go out and explain to the crowd," said the fire chief to Dave. "If you know about this strike you'll have to tell the boys."

"Crawford said he'd talk," answered Sanders.

"He ain't here. It's up to you. Go ahead. Just tell 'em why you rang the bell."

Dave found himself pushed forward to the steps of the court-house a few yards away. He had never before attempted to speak in public, and he had a queer, dry tightening of the throat. But as soon as he began to talk the words he wanted came easily enough.

"Jackpot Number Three has come in a big gusher," he said, lifting his voice so that it would carry to the edge of the crowd.

Hundreds of men in the crowd owned stock in the Jackpot properties. At Dave's words a roar went up into the night. Men shouted, danced, or merely smiled, according to their temperament. Presently the thirst for news dominated the enthusiasm. Gradually the uproar was stilled.

Again Dave's voice rang out clear as the bell he had been tolling. "The report is that it's one of the biggest strikes ever known in the State. The derrick has been knocked to pieces and the oil's shooting into the air a hundred feet."

A second great shout drowned his words. This was an oil crowd. It dreamed oil, talked oil, thought oil, prayed for oil. A stranger in the town was likely to feel at first that the place was oil mad. What else can be said of a town with derricks built through its front porches and even the graveyard leased to a drilling company?

"The sump holes are filling," went on Sanders. "Soon the oil will the running to waste on the prairie. We need men, teams, tools, wagons, hundreds of slickers, tents, beds, grub. The wages will be one-fifty a day more than the run of wages in the camp until the emergency has been met, and Emerson Crawford will board all the volunteers who come out to dig."

The speaker was lost again, this time in a buzz of voices of excited men. But out of the hubbub Dave's shout became heard.

"All owners of teams and tools, all dealers in hardware and groceries, are asked to step to the right-hand side of the crowd for a talk with Mr. Crawford. Men willing to work till the gusher is under control, please meet Bob Hart in front of the fire-house. I'll see any cooks and restaurant-men alive to a chance to make money fast. Right here at the steps."

"Good medicine, son," boomed Emerson Crawford, slapping him on the shoulder. "Didn't know you was an orator, but you sure got this crowd goin'. Bob here yet?"

"Yes. I saw him a minute ago in the crowd. Sorry I had to make promises for you, but the fire chief wouldn't let me keep the crowd waiting. Some one had to talk."

"Suits me. I'll run you for Congress one o' these days." Then, "I'll send the grocery-men over to you. Tell them to get the grub out to-night. If the restaurant-men don't buy it I'll run my own chuck wagon outfit. See you later, Dave."

For the next twenty-four hours there was no night in Malapi. Streets were filled with shoutings, hurried footfalls, the creaking of wagons, and the thud of galloping horses. Stores were lit up and filled with buyers. For once the Gusher and the Oil Pool and other resorts held small attraction for the crowds. The town was moving out to see the big new discovery that was to revolutionize its fortunes with the opening of a new and tremendously rich field. Every ancient rig available was pressed into service to haul men or supplies out to the Jackpot location. Scarcely a minute passed, after the time that the first team took the road, without a loaded wagon, packed to the sideboards, moving along the dusty road into the darkness of the desert.

Three travelers on horseback rode in the opposite direction. Their destination was Cottonwood Bend. Two of them were Emerson Crawford and David Sanders. The third was an oil prospector who had been a passenger on the stage when it was robbed.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE GUSHER

Jackpot number three had come in with a roar that shook the earth for half a mile. Deep below the surface there was a hiss and a crackle, the shock of rending strata giving way to the pressure of the oil pool. From long experience as a driller, Jed Burns knew what was coming. He swept his crew back from the platform, and none too soon to escape disaster. They were still flying across the prairie when the crown box catapulted into the sky and the whole drilling superstructure toppled over. Rocks, clay, and sand were hurled into the air, to come down in a shower that bombarded everything within a radius of several hundred yards.

The landscape next moment was drenched in black petroleum. The fine particles of it filled the air, sprayed the cactus and the greasewood. Rivulets of the viscid stuff began to gather in depressions and to flow in gathering volume, as tributaries joined the stream, into the sump holes prepared for it. The pungent odor of crude oil, as well as the touch and the taste of it, penetrated the atmosphere.

Burns counted noses and discovered that none of his crew had been injured by falling rocks or beams. He knew that his men could not possibly cope with this geyser on a spree. It was a big strike, the biggest in the history of the district, and to control the flow of the gusher would necessitate tremendous efforts on a wholesale plan.

One of his men he sent in to Malapi on horseback with a hurry-up call to Emerson Crawford, president of the company, for tools, machinery, men, and teams. The others he put to salvaging the engine and accessories and to throwing up an earth dike around the sump hole as a barrier against the escaping crude. All through the night he fought impotently against this giant that had burst loose from its prison two thousand feet below the surface of the earth.

With the first faint streaks of day men came galloping across the desert to the Jackpot. They came at first on horseback, singly, and later by twos and threes. A buckboard appeared on the horizon, the driver leaning forward as he urged on his team.

"Hart," decided the driller, "and comin' hell-for-leather."

Other teams followed, buggies, surreys, light wagons, farm wagons, and at last heavily laden lumber wagons. Business in Malapi was "shot to pieces," as one merchant expressed it. Everybody who could possibly get away was out to see the big gusher.

There was an immediate stampede to make locations in the territory adjacent. The wildcatter flourished. Companies were formed in ten minutes and the stock subscribed for in half an hour. From the bootblack at the hotel to the banker, everybody wanted stock in every company drilling within a reasonable distance of Jackpot Number Three. Many legitimate incorporations appeared on the books of the Secretary of State, and along with these were scores of frauds intended only to gull the small investor and separate him from his money. Saloons and gambling-houses, which did business with such childlike candor and stridency, became offices for the sale and exchange of stock. The boom at Malapi got its second wind. Workmen, investors, capitalists, and crooks poured in to take advantage of the inflation brought about by the new strike in a hitherto unknown field. For the fame of Jackpot Number Three had spread wide. The production guesses ranged all the way from ten to fifty thousand barrels a day, most of which was still going to waste on the desert.

For Burns and Hart had not yet gained control over the flow, though an army of men in overalls and slickers fought the gusher night and day. The flow never ceased for a moment. The well steadily spouted a stream of black liquid into the air from the subterranean chamber into which the underground lake poured.

The attack had two objectives. The first was to check the outrush of oil. The second was to save the wealth emerging from the mouth of the well and streaming over the lip of the reservoir to the sandy desert.

A crew of men, divided into three shifts, worked with pick, shovel, and scraper to dig a second and a third sump hole. The dirt from the excavation was dumped at the edge of the working to build a dam for the fluid. Sacks filled with wet sand reinforced this dirt.

Meanwhile the oil boiled up in the lake and flowed over its edges in streams. As soon as the second reservoir was ready the tarry stuff was siphoned into it from the original sump hole. By the time this was full a third pool was finished, and into it the overflow was diverted. But in spite of the great effort made to save the product of the gusher, the sands absorbed many thousands of dollars' worth of petroleum.

This end of the work was under the direction of Bob Hart. For ten days he did not take off his clothes. When he slept it was in cat naps, an hour snatched now and again from the fight with the rising tide of wealth that threatened to engulf its owners. He was unshaven, unbathed, his clothes slimy with tar and grease. He ate on the job--coffee, beans, bacon, cornbread, whatever the cooks' flunkies brought him--and did not know what he was eating. Gaunt and dominating, with crisp decision and yet unfailing good-humor, he bossed the gangs under him and led them into the fight, holding them at it till flesh and blood revolted with weariness. Of such stuff is the true outdoor Westerner made. He may drop in his tracks from exhaustion after the emergency has been met, but so long as the call for action lasts he will stick to the finish.

At the other end Jed Burns commanded. One after another he tried all the devices he had known to succeed in capping or checking other gushers. The flow was so continuous and powerful that none of these were effective. Some wells flow in jets. They hurl out oil, die down like a geyser, and presently have another hemorrhage. Jackpot Number Three did not pulse as a cut artery does. Its output was steady as the flow of water in a pipe. The heavy timbers with which he tried to stop up the outlet were hurled aside like straws. He could not check the flow long enough to get control.

On the evening of the tenth day Burns put in the cork. He made elaborate preparations in advance and assigned his force to the posts where they were to work. A string of eight-inch pipe sixty feet long was slid forward and derricked over the stream. Above this a large number of steel rails, borrowed from the incoming road, were lashed to the pipe to prevent it from snapping. The pipe had been fitted with valves of various sizes. After it had been fastened to the well's casing, these were gradually reduced to check the flow without causing a blowout in the pipe line.

Six hours later a metropolitan newspaper carried the headline:

BIG GUSHER HARNESSED; AFTER WILD RAMPAGE

Jackpot No. 3 at Malapi Tamed Long Battle Ended

CHAPTER XXIV

SHORTY

It was a surprise to Dave to discover that the horse Steve had got for him was his own old favorite Chiquito. The pinto knew him. He tested this by putting him through some of his old tricks. The horse refused to dance or play dead, but at the word of command his right foreleg came up to shake hands. He nuzzled his silky nose against the coat of his master just as in the days of old.

Crawford rode a bay, larger than a bronco. The oil prospector was astride a rangy roan. He was no horseman, but as a perpetual-motion conversationalist the old wildcatter broke records. He was a short barrel of a man, with small eyes set close together, and he made a figure of fun perched high up in the saddle. But he permitted no difficulties of travel to interfere with his monologue.

"The boss hold-up wasn't no glad-hand artist," he explained. "He was a sure-enough sulky devil, though o'course we couldn't see his face behind the mask. Blue mask it was, made outa a bandanna handkerchief. Well, rightaway I knew somethin' was liable to pop, for old Harrigan, scared to death, kep' a-goin' just the same. Maybe he hadn't sense enough to stop, as the fellow says. Maybe he didn't want to. Bang-bang! I reckon Tim was dead before he hit the ground. They lined us up, but they didn't take a thing except the gold and one Chicago fellow's watch. Then they cut the harness and p'int for the hills."

"How do you know they made for the hills?" asked Dave.

"Well, they naturally would. Anyhow, they lit out round the Bend. I hadn't lost 'em none, and I wasn't lookin' to see where they went. Not in this year of our Lord. I'm right careless at times, but not enough so to make inquiries of road agents when they're red from killin'. I been told I got no terminal facilities of speech, but it's a fact I didn't chirp from start to finish of the hold-up. I was plumb reticent."

Light sifted into the sky. The riders saw the colors change in a desert dawn. The hilltops below them were veiled in a silver-blue mist. Far away Malapi rose out of the caldron, its cheapness for once touched to a moment of beauty and significance. In that glorified sunrise it might have been a jeweled city of dreams.

The prospector's words flowed on. Crystal dawns might come and go, succeeding mist scarfs of rose and lilac, but a great poet has said that speech is silver.

"No, sir. When a man has got the drop on me I don't aim to argue with him. Not none. Tim Harrigan had notions. Different here. I've done some rough-housin'. When a guy puts up his dukes I'm there. Onct down in Sonora I slammed a fellow so hard he woke up among strangers. Fact. I don't make claims, but up at Carbondale they say I'm some rip-snorter when I get goin' good. I'm quiet. I don't go around with a chip on my shoulder. It's the quiet boys you want to look out for. Am I right?"

Crawford gave a little snort of laughter and covered it hastily with a cough.

"You know it," went on the quiet man who was a rip-snorter when he got going. "In regards to that, I'll say my observation is that when you meet a small man with a steady gray eye it don't do a bit of harm to spend a lot of time leavin' him alone. He may be good-natured, but he won't stand no devilin', take it from me."

The small man with the gray eye eased himself in the saddle and moistened his tongue for a fresh start. "But I'm not one o' these foolhardy idiots who have to have wooden suits made for 'em because they don't know when to stay mum. You cattlemen have lived a quiet life in the hills, but I've been right where the tough ones crowd for years. I'll tell you there's a time to talk and a time to keep still, as the old sayin' is."

"Yes," agreed Crawford.

"Another thing. I got an instinct that tells me when folks are interested in what I say. I've seen talkers that went right on borin' people and never caught on. They'd talk yore arm off without gettin' wise to it that you'd had a-plenty. That kind of talker ain't fit for nothin' but to wrangle Mary's little lamb 'way off from every human bein'."

In front of the riders a group of cottonwoods lifted their branches at a sharp bend in the road. Just before they reached this turn a bridge crossed a dry irrigating lateral.

"After Harrigan had been shot I came to the ditch for some water, but she was dry as a whistle. Ever notice how things are that way? A fellow wants water; none there. It's rainin' rivers; the ditch is runnin' strong. There's a sermon for a preacher," said the prospector.

The cattleman nodded to Dave. "I noticed she was dry when I crossed higher up on my way out. But she was full up with water when I saw her after I had been up to Dick Grein's."

"Funny," commented Sanders. "Nobody would want water to irrigate at this season. Who turned the water in? And why?"

"Beats me," answered Crawford. "But it don't worry me any. I've got troubles of my own."

They reached the cottonwoods, and the oil prospector pointed out to them just where the stage had been when the bandits first appeared. He showed them the bushes from behind which the robbers had stepped, the place occupied by the passengers after they had been lined up, and the course taken by the hold-ups after the robbery.

The road ran up a long, slow incline to the Bend, which was the crest of the hill. Beyond it the wheel tracks went down again with a sharp dip. The stage had been stopped just beyond the crest, just at the beginning of the down grade.

"The coach must have just started to move downhill when the robbers jumped out from the bushes," suggested Dave.

"Sure enough. That's probably howcome Tim to make a mistake. He figured he could give the horses the whip and make a getaway. The hold-up saw that. He had to shoot to kill or lose the gold. Bein' as he was a cold-blooded killer he shot." There were pinpoints of light in Emerson Crawford's eyes. He knew now the kind of man they were hunting. He was an assassin of a deadly type, not a wild cowboy who had fired in excitement because his nerves had betrayed him.

"Yes. Tim knew what he was doing. He took a chance the hold-ups wouldn't shoot to kill. Most of 'em won't. That was his mistake. If he'd seen the face behind that mask he would have known better," said Dave.

Crawford quartered over the ground. "Just like I thought, Dave. Applegate and his posse have been here and stomped out any tracks the robbers left. No way of tellin' which of all these footprints belonged to them. Likely none of 'em. If I didn't know better I'd think some one had been givin' a dance here, the way the ground is cut up."

They made a wide circle to try to pick up the trail wanted, and again a still larger one. Both of these attempts failed.

"Looks to me like they flew away," the cattleman said at last. "Horses have got hoofs and hoofs make tracks. I see plenty of these, but I don't find any place where the animals waited while this thing was bein' pulled off."

"The sheriff's posse has milled over the whole ground so thoroughly we can't be sure. But there's a point in what you say. Maybe they left their horses farther up the hill and walked back to them," Dave hazarded.

"No-o, son. This job was planned careful. Now the hold-ups didn't know whether they'd have to make a quick getaway or not. They would have their horses handy, but out of sight."

"Why not in the dry ditch back of the cotton woods?" asked Dave with a flash of light.

Crawford stared at him, but at last shook his head, "I reckon not. In the sand and clay there the hoofs would show too plain."

"What if the hold-ups knew the ditch was going to be filled before the pursuit got started?"

"You mean--?"

"I mean they might have arranged to have the water turned into the lateral to wipe out their tracks."

"I'll be dawged if you ain't on a warm trail, son," murmured Crawford. "And if they knew that, why wouldn't they ride either up or down the ditch and leave no tracks a-tall?"

"They would--for a way, anyhow. Up or down, which?"

"Down, so as to reach Malapi and get into the Gusher before word came of the hold-up," guessed Crawford.

"Up, because in the hills there's less chance of being seen," differed Dave. "Crooks like them can fix up an alibi when they need one. They had to get away unseen, in a hurry, and to get rid of the gold soon in case they should be seen."

"You've rung the bell, son. Up it is. It's an instinct of an outlaw to make for the hills where he can hole up when in trouble."

The prospector had been out of the conversation long enough.

"Depends who did this," he said. "If they come from the town, they'd want to get back there in a hurry. If not, they'd steer clear of folks. Onct, when I was in Oklahoma, a nigger went into a house and shot a white man he claimed owed him money. He made his getaway, looked like, and the whole town hunted for him for fifty miles. They found him two days later in the cellar of the man he had killed."

"Well, you can go look in Tim Harrigan's cellar if you've a mind to. Dave and I are goin' up the ditch," said the old cattleman, smiling.

"I'll tag along, seein' as I've been drug in this far. All I'll say is that when we get to the bottom of this, we'll find it was done by fellows you'd never suspect. I know human nature. My guess is no drunken cowboy pulled this off. No, sir. I'd look higher for the men."

"How about Parson Brown and the school superintendent?" asked Crawford.

"You can laugh. All right. Wait and see. Somehow I don't make mistakes. I'm lucky that way. Use my judgment, I reckon. Anyhow, I always guess right on presidential elections and prize fights. You got to know men, in my line of business. I study 'em. Hardly ever peg 'em wrong. Fellow said to me one day, 'How's it come, Thomas, you most always call the turn?' I give him an answer in one word--psycho-ology."

The trailers scanned closely the edge of the irrigation ditch. Here, too, they failed to get results. There were tracks enough close to the lateral, but apparently none of them led down into the bed of it. The outlaws no doubt had carefully obliterated their tracks at this place in order to give no starting-point for the pursuit.

"I'll go up on the left-hand side, you take the right, Dave," said Crawford. "We've got to find where they left the ditch."

The prospector took the sandy bed of the dry canal as his path. He chose it for two reasons. There was less brush to obstruct his progress, and he could reach the ears of both his auditors better as he burbled his comments on affairs in general and the wisdom of Mr. Thomas in particular.

The ditch was climbing into the hills, zigzagging up draws in order to find the most even grade. The three men traveled slowly, for Sanders and Crawford had to read sign on every foot of the way.

"Chances are they didn't leave the ditch till they heard the water comin'," the cattleman said. "These fellows knew their business, and they were playin' safe."

Dave pulled up. He went down on his knees and studied the ground, then jumped down into the ditch and examined the bank.

"Here's where they got out," he announced.

Thomas pressed forward. With one outstretched hand the young man held him back.

"Just a minute. I want Mr. Crawford to see this before it's touched."

The old cattleman examined the side of the canal. The clay showed where a sharp hoof had reached for a footing, missed, and pawed down the bank. Higher up was the faint mark of a shoe on the loose rubble at the edge.

"Looks like," he assented.

Study of the ground above showed the trail of two horses striking off at a right angle from the ditch toward the mouth of a box cañon about a mile distant. The horses were both larger than broncos. One of them was shod. One of the front shoes, badly worn, was broken and part of it gone on the left side. The riders were taking no pains apparently to hide their course. No doubt they relied on the full ditch to blot out pursuit.

The trail led through the cañon, over a divide beyond, and down into a small grassy valley.

At the summit Crawford gave strict orders. "No talkin', Mr. Thomas. This is serious business now. We're in enemy country and have got to soft-foot it."

The foothills were bristling with chaparral. Behind any scrub oak or cedar, under cover of an aspen thicket or even of a clump of gray sage, an enemy with murder in his heart might be lurking. Here an ambush was much more likely than in the sun-scorched plain they had left.

The three men left the footpath where it dipped down into the park and followed the rim to the left, passing through a heavy growth of manzanita to a bare hill dotted with scrubby sage, at the other side of which was a small gulch of aspens straggling down into the valley. Back of these a log cabin squatted on the slope. One had to be almost upon it before it could be seen. Its back door looked down upon the entrance to a cañon. This was fenced across to make a corral.

The cattleman and the cowpuncher looked at each other without verbal comment. A message better not put into words flashed from one to the other. This looked like the haunt of rustlers. Here they could pursue their nefarious calling unmolested. Not once a year would anybody except one of themselves enter this valley, and if a stranger did so he would know better than to push his way into the cañon.

Horses were drowsing sleepily in the corral. Dave slid from the saddle and spoke to Crawford in a low voice.

"I'm going down to have a look at those horses," he said, unfastening his rope from the tientos.

The cattleman nodded. He drew from its case beneath his leg a rifle and held it across the pommel. It was not necessary for Sanders to ask, nor for him to promise, protection while the younger man was making his trip of inspection. Both were men who knew the frontier code and each other. At a time of action speech, beyond the curtest of monosyllables, was surplusage.

Dave walked and slid down the rubble of the steep hillside, clambered down a rough face of rock, and dropped into the corral: He wore a revolver, but he did not draw it. He did not want to give anybody in the house an excuse to shoot at him without warning.

His glance swept over the horses, searched the hoofs of each. It found one shod, a rangy roan gelding.

The cowpuncher's rope whined through the air and settled down upon the shoulders of the animal. The gelding went sun-fishing as a formal protest against the lariat, then surrendered tamely. Dave patted it gently, stroked the neck, and spoke softly reassuring words. He picked up one of the front feet and examined the shoe. This was badly worn, and on the left side part of it had broken off.

A man came to the back door of the cabin and stretched in a long and luxuriant yawn. Carelessly and casually his eyes wandered over the aspens and into the corral. For a moment he stood frozen, his arms still flung wide.

From the aspens came down Crawford's voice, cool and ironic. "Much obliged, Shorty. Leave 'em right up and save trouble."

The squat cowpuncher's eyes moved back to the aspens and found there the owner of the D Bar Lazy R. "Wha'dya want?" he growled sullenly.

"You--just now. Step right out from the house, Shorty. Tha's right. Anybody else in the house?"

"No."

"You'll be luckier if you tell the truth."

"I'm tellin' it."

"Hope so. Dave, step forward and get his six-shooter. Keep him between you and the house. If anything happens to you I'm goin' to kill him right now."

Shorty shivered, hardy villain though he was. There had been nobody in the house when he left it, but he had been expecting some one shortly. If his partner arrived and began shooting, he knew that Crawford would drop him in his tracks. His throat went dry as a lime kiln. He wanted to shout out to the man who might be inside not to shoot at any cost. But he was a game and loyal ruffian. He would not spoil his confederate's chance by betraying him. If he said nothing, the man might come, realize the situation, and slip away unobserved.

Sanders took the man's gun and ran his hand over his thick body to make sure he had no concealed weapon.

"I'm going to back away. You come after me, step by step, so close I could touch you with the gun," ordered Dave.

The man followed him as directed, his hands still in the air. His captor kept him in a line between him and the house door. Crawford rode down to join them. The man who claimed not to be foolhardy stayed up in the timber. This was no business of his. He did not want to be the target of any shots from the cabin.

The cattleman swung down from the saddle. "Sure we'll 'light and come in, Shorty. No, you first. I'm right at yore heels with this gun pokin' into yore ribs. Don't make any mistake. You'd never have time to explain it."

The cabin had only one room. The bunks were over at one side, the stove and table at the other. Two six-pane windows flanked the front door.

The room was empty, except for the three men now entering.

"You live here, Shorty?" asked Crawford curtly.

"Yes." The answer was sulky and reluctant.

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"Why?" snapped the cattleman.

Shorty's defiant eyes met his. "My business."

"Mine, too, I'll bet a dollar. If you're nestin' in these hills you cayn't have but one business."

"Prove it! Prove it!" retorted Shorty angrily.

"Some day--not now." Crawford turned to Sanders. "What about the horse you looked at, Dave?"

"Same one we've been trailing. The one with the broken shoe."

"That yore horse, Shorty?"

"Maybeso. Maybe not."

"You've been havin' company here lately," Crawford went on. "Who's yore guest?"

"You seem to be right now. You and yore friend the convict," sneered the short cowpuncher.

"Don't use that word again, Shorty," advised the ranchman in a voice gently ominous.

"Why not? True, ain't it? Doesn't deny it none, does he?"

"We'll not discuss that. Where were you yesterday?"

"Here, part o' the day. Where was you?" demanded Shorty impudently. "Seems to me I heard you was right busy."

"What part of the day? Begin at the beginnin' and tell us what you did. You may put yore hands down."

"Why, I got up in the mo'nin' and put on my pants an' my boots," jeered Shorty. "I don't recolleck whether I put on my hat or not. Maybe I did. I cooked breakfast and et it. I chawed tobacco. I cooked dinner and et it. Smoked and chawed some more. Cooked supper and et it. Went to bed."

"That all?"

"Why, no, I fed the critters and fixed up a busted stirrup."

"Who was with you?"

"I was plumb lonesome yesterday. This any business of yours, by the way, Em?"

"Think again, Shorty. Who was with you?"

The heavy-set cowpuncher helped himself to a chew of tobacco. "I told you onct I was alone. Ain't seen anybody but you for a week."

"Then how did you hear yesterday was my busy day?" Crawford thrust at him.

For a moment Shorty was taken aback. Before he could answer Dave spoke.

"Man coming up from the creek."

Crawford took crisp command. "Back in that corner, Shorty. Dave, you stand back, too. Cover him soon as he shows up."

Dave nodded.

CHAPTER XXV

MILLER TALKS

A man stood in the doorway, big, fat, swaggering. In his younger days his deep chest and broad shoulders had accompanied great strength. But fat had accumulated in layers. He was a mountain of sagging flesh. His breath came in wheezy puffs.

"Next time you get your own--"

The voice faltered, died away. The protuberant eyes, still cold and fishy, passed fearfully from one to another of those in the room. It was plain that the bottom had dropped out of his heart. One moment he had straddled the world a Colossus, the next he was collapsing like a punctured balloon.

"Goddlemighty!" he gasped. "Don't shoot! I--I give up."

He was carrying a bucket of water. It dropped from his nerveless fingers and spilt over the floor.

Like a bullet out of a gun Crawford shot a question at him. "Where have you hidden the money you got from the stage?"

The loose mouth of the convict opened. "Why, we--I--we--"

"Keep yore trap shut, you durn fool," ordered Shorty.

Crawford jabbed his rifle into the ribs of the rustler. "Yours, too, Shorty."

But the damage had been done. Miller's flabby will had been braced by a stronger one. He had been given time to recover from his dismay. He moistened his lips with his tongue and framed his lie.

"I was gonna say you must be mistaken, Mr. Crawford," he whined.

Shorty laughed hardily, spat tobacco juice at a knot in the floor, and spoke again. "Third degree stuff, eh? It won't buy you a thing, Crawford. Miller wasn't in that hold-up any more'n I--"

"Let Miller do his own talkin', Shorty. He don't need any lead from you."

Shorty looked hard at the cattleman with unflinching eyes. "Don't get on the peck, Em. You got no business coverin' me with that gun. I know you got reasons a-plenty for tryin' to bluff us into sayin' we held up the stage. But we don't bluff worth a cent. See?"

Crawford saw. He had failed to surprise a confession out of Miller by the narrowest of margins. If he had had time to get Shorty out of the room before the convict's appearance, the fellow would have come through. As it was, he had missed his opportunity.

A head followed by a round barrel body came in cautiously from the lean-to at the rear.

"Everything all right, Mr. Crawford? Thought I'd drap on down to see if you didn't need any help."

"None, thanks, Mr. Thomas," the cattleman answered dryly.

"Well, you never can tell." The prospector nodded genially to Shorty, then spoke again to the man with the rifle. "Found any clue to the hold-up yet?"

"We've found the men who did it," replied Crawford.

"Knew 'em all the time, I reckon," scoffed Shorty with a harsh laugh.

Dave drew his chief aside, still keeping a vigilant eye on the prisoners. "We've got to play our hand different. Shorty is game. He can't be bluffed. But Miller can. I found out years ago he squeals at physical pain. We'll start for home. After a while we'll give Shorty a chance to make a getaway. Then we'll turn the screws on Miller."

"All right, Dave. You run it. I'll back yore play," his friend said.

They disarmed Miller, made him saddle two of the horses in the corral, and took the back trail across the valley to the divide. It was here they gave Shorty his chance of escape. Miller was leading the way up the trail, with Crawford, Thomas, Shorty, and Dave in the order named. Dave rode forward to confer with the owner of the D Bar Lazy R. For three seconds his back was turned to the squat cowpuncher.

Shorty whirled his horse and flung it wildly down the precipitous slope. Sanders galloped after him, fired his revolver three times, and after a short chase gave up the pursuit. He rode back to the party on the summit.

Crawford glanced around at the heavy chaparral. "How about off here a bit, Dave?"

The younger man agreed. He turned to Miller. "We're going to hang you," he said quietly.

The pasty color of the fat man ebbed till his face seemed entirely bloodless. "My God! You wouldn't do that!" he moaned.

He clung feebly to the horn of his saddle as Sanders led the horse into the brush. He whimpered, snuffling an appeal for mercy repeated over and over. The party had not left the road a hundred yards behind when a man jogged past on his way into the valley. He did not see them, nor did they see him.

Underneath a rather scrubby cedar Dave drew up. He glanced it over critically. "Think it'll do?" he asked Crawford in a voice the prisoner could just hear.

"Yep. That big limb'll hold him," the old cattleman answered in the same low voice. "Better let him stay right on the horse, then we'll lead it out from under him."

Miller pleaded for his life abjectly. His blood had turned to water. "Honest, I didn't shoot Harrigan. Why, I'm that tender-hearted I wouldn't hurt a kitten. I--I--Oh, don't do that, for God's sake."

Thomas was almost as white as the outlaw. "You don't aim to--you wouldn't--"

Crawford's face was as cold and as hard as steel. "Why not? He's a murderer. He tried to gun Dave here when the boy didn't have a six-shooter. We'll jes' get rid of him now." He threw a rope over the convict's head and adjusted it to the folds of his fat throat.

The man under condemnation could hardly speak. His throat was dry as the desert dust below. "I--I done Mr. Sanders a meanness. I'm sorry. I was drunk."

"You lied about him and sent him to the penitentiary."

"I'll fix that. Lemme go an' I'll make that right."

"How will you make it right?" asked Crawford grimly, and the weight of his arm drew the rope so tight that Miller winced. "Can you give him back the years he's lost?"

"No, sir, no," the man whispered eagerly. "But I can tell how it was--that we fired first at him. Doble did that, an' then--accidental--I killed Doble whilst I was shootin' at Mr. Sanders."

Dave strode forward, his eyes like great live coals. "What? Say that again!" he cried.

"Yessir. I did it--accidental--when Doble run forward in front of me. Tha's right. I'm plumb sorry I didn't tell the cou't so when you was on trial, Mr. Sanders. I reckon I was scairt to."

"Will you tell this of yore own free will to the sheriff down at Malapi?" asked Crawford.

"I sure will. Yessir, Mr. Crawford." The man's terror had swept away all thought of anything but the present peril. His color was a seasick green. His great body trembled like a jelly shaken from a mould.

"It's too late now," cut in Dave savagely. "We came up about this stage robbery. Unless he'll clear that up, I vote to finish the job."

"Maybe we'd better," agreed the cattleman. "I'll tie the rope to the trunk of the tree and you lead the horse from under him, Dave."

Miller broke down. He groveled. "I'll tell. I'll tell all I know. Dug Doble and Shorty held up the stage. I don' know who killed the driver. They didn't say when they come back."

"You let the water into the ditch," suggested Crawford.

"Yessir. I did that. They was shelterin' me and o' course I had to do like they said."

"When did you escape?"

"On the way back to the penitentiary. A fellow give the deputy sheriff a drink on the train. It was doped. We had that fixed. The keys to the handcuffs was in the deputy's pocket. When he went to sleep we unlocked the cuffs and I got off at the next depot. Horses was waitin' there for us."

"Who do you mean by us? Who was with you?"

"I don' know who he was. Fellow said Brad Steelman sent him to fix things up for me."

Thomas borrowed the field-glasses of Crawford. Presently he lowered them. "Two fellows comin' hell-for-leather across the valley," he said in a voice that expressed his fears.

The cattleman took the glasses and looked. "Shorty's found a friend. Dug Doble likely. They're carryin' rifles. We'll have trouble. They'll see we stopped at the haid of the pass," he said quietly.

Much shaken already, the oil prospector collapsed at the prospect before him. He was a man of peace and always had been, in spite of the valiant promise of his tongue.

"None of my funeral," he said, his lips white. "I'm hittin' the trail for Malapi right now."

He wheeled his horse and jumped it to a gallop. The roan plunged through the chaparral and soon was out of sight.

"We'll fix Mr. Miller so he won't make us any trouble during the rookus," Crawford told Dave.

He threw the coiled rope over the heaviest branch of the cedar, drew it tight, and fastened it to the trunk of the tree.

"Now you'll stay hitched," he went on, speaking to their prisoner. "And you'd better hold that horse mighty steady, because if he jumps from under you it'll be good-bye for one scalawag."

"If you'd let me down I'd do like you told me, Mr. Crawford," pleaded Miller. "It's right uncomfortable here."

"Keep still. Don't say a word. Yore friends are gettin' close. Let a chirp outa you, and you'll never have time to be sorry," warned the cattleman.

The two men tied their horses behind some heavy mesquite and chose their own cover. Here they crouched down and waited.

They could hear the horses of the outlaws climbing the hill out of the valley to the pass. Then, down in the cañon, they caught a glimpse of Thomas in wild flight. The bandits stopped at the divide.

"They'll be headin' this way in a minute," Crawford whispered.

His companion nodded agreement.

They were wrong. There came the sound of a whoop, a sudden clatter of hoofs, the diminishing beat of horses' feet.

"They've seen Thomas, and they're after him on the jump," suggested Dave.

His friend's eyes crinkled to a smile. "Sure enough. They figure he's the tail end of our party. Well, I'll bet Thomas gives 'em a good run for their money. He's right careless sometimes, but he's no foolhardy idiot and he don't aim to argue with birds like these even though he's a rip-snorter when he gets goin' good and won't stand any devilin'."

"He'll talk them to death if they catch him," Dave answered.

"Back to business. What's our next move, son?"

"Some more conversation with Miller. Probably he can tell us where the gold is hidden."

"Whoopee! I'll bet he can. You do the talkin'. I've a notion he's more scared of you."

The fat convict tried to make a stand against them. He pleaded ignorance. "I don' know where they hid the stuff. They didn't tell me."

"Sounds reasonable, and you in with them on the deal," said Sanders. "Well, you're in hard luck. We don't give two hoots for you, anyhow, but we decided to take you in to town with us if you came through clean. If not--" He shrugged his shoulders and glanced up at the branch above.

Miller swallowed a lump in his throat. "You wouldn't treat me thataway, Mr. Sanders. I'm gittin' to be an old man now. I done wrong, but I'm sure right sorry," he whimpered.

The eyes of the man who had spent years in prison at Cañon City were hard as jade. The fat man read a day of judgment in his stern and somber face.

"I'll tell!" The crook broke down, clammy beads of perspiration all over his pallid face. "I'll tell you right where it's at. In the lean-to of the shack. Southwest corner. Buried in a gunnysack."

They rode back across the valley to the cabin. Miller pointed out the spot where the stolen treasure was cached. With an old axe as a spade Dave dug away the dirt till he came to a bit of sacking. Crawford scooped out the loose earth with his gauntlet and dragged out a gunnysack. Inside it were a number of canvas bags showing the broken wax seals of the express company. These contained gold pieces apparently fresh from the mint.

A hurried sum in arithmetic showed that approximately all the gold taken from the stage must be here. Dave packed it on the back of his saddle while Crawford penciled a note to leave in the cache in place of the money.

The note said:

This is no safe place to leave seventeen thousand dollars, Dug. I'm taking it to town to put in the bank. If you want to make inquiries about it, come in and we'll talk it over, you and me and Applegate.

EMERSON CRAWFORD

Five minutes later the three men were once more riding rapidly across the valley toward the summit of the divide. The loop of Crawford's lariat still encircled the gross neck of the convict.

CHAPTER XXVI

DAVE ACCEPTS AN INVITATION

Crawford and Dave, with their prisoner, lay out in the chaparral for an hour, then made their way back to Malapi by a wide circuit. They did not want to meet Shorty and Doble, for that would result in a pitched battle. They preferred rather to make a report to the sheriff and let him attempt the arrest of the bandits.

Reluctantly, under the pressure of much prodding, Miller repeated his story to Sheriff Applegate. Under the circumstances he was not sorry that he was to be returned to the penitentiary, for he recognized that his life at large would not be safe so long as Shorty and Doble were ranging the hills. Both of them were "bad men," in the usual Western acceptance of the term, and an accomplice who betrayed them would meet short shrift at their hands.

The sheriff gave Crawford a receipt for the gold after they had counted it and found none missing.

The old cattleman rose from the table and reached for his hat.

"Come on, son," he said to Dave. "I'll say we've done a good day's work. Both of us were under a cloud. Now we're clear. We're goin' up to the house to have some supper. Applegate, you'll get both of the confessions of Miller fixed up, won't you? I'll want the one about George Doble's death to take with me to the Governor of Colorado. I'm takin' the train to-morrow."

"I'll have the district attorney fix up the papers," the sheriff promised.

Emerson Crawford hooked an arm under the elbow of Sanders and left the office.

"I'm wonderin' about one thing, boy," he said. "Did Miller kill George Doble accidentally or on purpose?"

"I'm wondering about that myself. You remember that Denver bartender said they had been quarreling a good deal. They were having a row at the very time when I met them at the gate of the corral. It's a ten-to-one shot that Miller took the chance to plug Doble and make me pay for it."

"Looks likely, but we'll never know. Son, you've had a rotten deal handed you."

The younger man's eyes were hard as steel. He clamped his jaw tight, but he made no comment.

"Nobody can give you back the years of yore life you've lost," the cattleman went on. "But we'll get yore record straightened out, anyhow, so that won't stand against you. I know one li'l' girl will be tickled to hear the news. Joy always has stuck out that you were treated shameful."

"I reckon I'll not go up to your house to-night," Dave said in a carefully modulated voice. "I'm dirty and unshaven, and anyhow I'd rather not go to-night."

Crawford refused to accept this excuse. "No, sir. You're comin' with me, by gum! I got soap and water and a razor up at the house, if that's what's troublin' you. We've had a big day and I'm goin' to celebrate by talkin' it all over again. Dad gum my hide, think of it, you solemn-faced old owl! This time last night I was 'most a pauper and you sure were. Both of us were under the charge of havin' killed a man each. To-night we're rich as that fellow Crocus; anyhow I am, an' you're haided that way. And both of us have cleared our names to boot. Ain't you got any red blood in that big body of yore's?"

"I'll drop in to the Delmonico and get a bite, then ride out to the Jackpot."

"You will not!" protested the cattleman. "Looky here, Dave. It's a showdown. Have you got anything against me?"

Dave met him eye to eye. "Not a thing, Mr. Crawford. No man ever had a better friend."

"Anything against Joyce?"

"No, sir."

"Don't hate my boy Keith, do you?"

"How could I?"

"Then what in hell ails you? You're not parlor-shy, are you? Say the word, and we'll eat in the kitchen," grinned Crawford.

"I'm not a society man," said Sanders lamely.

He could not explain that the shadow of the prison walls was a barrier he could not cross; that they rose to bar him from all the joy and happiness of young life.

"Who in Mexico's talkin' about society? I said come up and eat supper with me and Joy and Keith. If you don't come, I'm goin' to be good and sore. I'll not stand for it, you darned old killjoy."

"I'll go," answered the invited man.

He went, not because he wanted to go, but because he could not escape without being an ungracious boor.

Joyce flew to meet her father, eyes eager, hands swift to caress his rough face and wrinkled coat. She bubbled with joy at his return, and when he told her that his news was of the best the long lashes of the brown eyes misted with tears. The young man in the background was struck anew by the matronly tenderness of her relation to her father. She hovered about him as a mother does about her son returned from the wars.

"I've brought company for supper, honey," Emerson told her.

She gave Dave her hand, flushed and smiling. "I've been so worried," she explained. "It's fine to know the news is good. I'll want to hear it all."

"We've got the stolen money back, Joy," exploded her father. "We know who took it--Dug Doble and that cowboy Shorty and Miller."

"But I thought Miller--"

"He escaped. We caught him and brought him back to town with us." Crawford seized the girl by the shoulders. He was as keen as a boy to share his pleasure. "And Joy--better news yet. Miller confessed he killed George Doble. Dave didn't do it at all."

Joyce came to the young man impulsively, hand outstretched. She was glowing with delight, eyes kind and warm and glad. "That's the best yet. Oh, Mr. Sanders, isn't it good?"

His impassive face gave no betrayal of any happiness he might feel in his vindication. Indeed, something almost sardonic in its expression chilled her enthusiasm. More than the passing of years separated them from the days when he had shyly but gayly wiped dishes for her in the kitchen, when he had worshiped her with a boy's uncritical adoration.

Sanders knew it better than she, and cursed the habit of repression that had become a part of him in his prison days. He wanted to give her happy smile for smile. But he could not do it. All that was young and ardent and eager in him was dead. He could not let himself go. Even when emotions flooded his heart, no evidence of it reached his chill eyes and set face.

After he had come back from shaving, he watched her flit about the room while she set the table. She was the competent young mistress of the house. With grave young authority she moved, slenderly graceful. He knew her mind was with the cook in the kitchen, but she found time to order Keith crisply to wash his face and hands, time to gather flowers for the center of the table from the front yard and to keep up a running fire of talk with him and her father. More of the woman than in the days when he had known her, perhaps less of the carefree maiden, she was essentially unchanged, was what he might confidently have expected her to be. Emerson Crawford was the same bluff, hearty Westerner, a friend to tie to in sunshine and in storm. Even little Keith, just escaping from his baby ways, had the same tricks and mannerisms. Nothing was different except himself. He had become arid and hard and bitter, he told himself regretfully.

Keith was his slave, a faithful admirer whose eyes fed upon his hero steadily. He had heard the story of this young man's deeds discussed until Dave had come to take on almost mythical proportions.

He asked a question in an awed voice. "How did you get this Miller to confess?"

The guest exchanged a glance with the host. "We had a talk with him."

"Did you--?"

"Oh, no! We just asked him if he didn't want to tell us all about it, and it seems he did."

"Maybe you touched his better feelin's," suggested Keith, with memories of an hour in Sunday School when his teacher had made a vain appeal to his.

His father laughed. "Maybe we did. I noticed he was near blubberin'. I expect it's 'Adios, Señor Miller.' He's got two years more to serve, and after that he'll have another nice long term to serve for robbin' the stage. All I wish is we'd done the job more thorough and sent some friends of his along with him. Well, that's up to Applegate."

"I'm glad it is," said Joyce emphatically.

"Any news to-day from Jackpot Number Three?" asked the president of that company.

"Bob Hart sent in to get some supplies and had a note left for me at the post-office," Miss Joyce mentioned, a trifle annoyed at herself because a blush insisted on flowing into her cheeks. "He says it's the biggest thing he ever saw, but it's going to be awf'ly hard to control. Where is that note? I must have put it somewhere."

Emerson's eyes flickered mischief. "Oh, well, never mind about the note. That's private property, I reckon."

"I'm sure if I can find it--"

"I'll bet my boots you cayn't, though," he teased.

"Dad! What will Mr. Sanders think? You know that's nonsense. Bob wrote because I asked him to let me know."

"Sure. Why wouldn't the secretary and field superintendent of the Jackpot Company keep the daughter of the president informed? I'll have it read into the minutes of our next board meetin' that it's in his duties to keep you posted."

"Oh, well, if you want to talk foolishness," she pouted.

"There's somethin' else I'm goin' to have put into the minutes of the next meetin', Dave," Crawford went on. "And that's yore election as treasurer of the company. I want officers around me that I can trust, son."

"I don't know anything about finance or about bookkeeping," Dave said.

"You'll learn. We'll have a bookkeeper, of course. I want some one for treasurer that's level-haided and knows how to make a quick turn when he has to, some one that uses the gray stuff in his cocoanut. We'll fix a salary when we get goin'. You and Bob are goin' to have the active management of this concern. Cattle's my line, an' I aim to stick to it. Him and you can talk it over and fix yore duties so's they won't conflict. Burns, of course, will run the actual drillin'. He's an A1 man. Don't let him go."

Dave was profoundly touched. No man could be kinder to his own son, could show more confidence in him, than Emerson Crawford was to one who had no claims upon him.

He murmured a dry "Thank you"; then, feeling this to be inadequate, added, "I'll try to see you don't regret this."

The cattleman was a shrewd judge of men. His action now was not based solely upon humanitarian motives. Here was a keen man, quick-witted, steady, and wholly to be trusted, one certain to push himself to the front. It was good business to make it worth his while to stick to Crawford's enterprises. He said as much to Dave bluntly.

"And you ain't in for any easy time either," he added. "We've got oil. We're flooded with it, so I hear. Seve-re-al thousand dollars' worth a day is runnin' off and seepin' into the desert. Bob Hart and Jed Burns have got the job of puttin' the lid on the pot, but when they do that you've got a bigger job. Looks bigger to me, anyhow. You've got to get rid of that oil--find a market for it, sell it, ship it away to make room for more. Get busy, son." Crawford waved his hand after the manner of one who has shifted a responsibility and does not expect to worry about it. "Moreover an' likewise, we're shy of money to keep operatin' until we can sell the stuff. You'll have to raise scads of mazuma, son. In this oil game dollars sure have got wings. No matter how tight yore pockets are buttoned, they fly right out."

"I doubt whether you've chosen the right man," the ex-cowpuncher said, smiling faintly. "The most I ever borrowed in my life was twenty-five dollars."

"You borrow twenty-five thousand the same way, only it's easier if the luck's breakin' right," the cattleman assured him cheerfully. "The easiest thing in the world to get hold of is money--when you've already got lots of it."

"The trouble is we haven't."

"Well, you'll have to learn to look like you knew where it grew on bushes," Emerson told him, grinning.

"I can see you've chosen me for a nice lazy job."

"Anything but that, son. You don't want to make any mistake about this thing. Brad Steelman's goin' to fight like a son-of-a-gun. He'll strike at our credit and at our market and at our means of transportation. He'll fight twenty-four hours of the day, and he's the slickest, crookedest gray wolf that ever skulked over the range."

The foreman of the D Bar Lazy R came in after supper for a conference with his boss. He and Crawford got their heads together in the sitting-room and the young people gravitated out to the porch. Joyce pressed Dave into service to help her water the roses, and Keith hung around in order to be near Dave. Occasionally he asked questions irrelevant to the conversation. These were embarrassing or not as it happened.

Joyce delivered a little lecture on the culture of roses, not because she considered herself an authority, but because her guest's conversation was mostly of the monosyllabic order. He was not awkward or self-conscious; rather a man given to silence.

"Say, Mr. Sanders, how does it feel to be wounded?" Keith blurted out.

"You mustn't ask personal questions, Keith," his sister told him.

"Oh! Well, I already ast this one?" the boy suggested ingenuously.

"Don't know, Keith," answered the young man. "I never was really wounded. If you mean this scratch in the shoulder, I hardly felt it at all till afterward."

"Golly! I'll bet I wouldn't tackle a feller shootin' at me the way that Miller was at you," the youngster commented in naïve admiration.

"Bedtime for li'l boys, Keith," his sister reminded him.

"Oh, lemme stay up a while longer," he begged.

Joyce was firm. She had schooled her impulses to resist the little fellow's blandishments, but Dave noticed that she was affectionate even in her refusal.

"I'll come up and say good-night after a while, Keithie," she promised as she kissed him.

To the gaunt-faced man watching them she was the symbol of all most to be desired in woman. She embodied youth, health, charm. She was life's springtime, its promise of fulfillment; yet already an immaculate Madonna in the beauty of her generous soul. He was young enough in his knowledge of her sex to be unaware that nature often gives soft trout-pool eyes of tenderness to coquettes and wonderful hair with the lights and shadows of an autumn-painted valley to giggling fools. Joyce was neither coquette nor fool. She was essential woman in the making, with all the faults and fine brave impulses of her years. Unconsciously, perhaps, she was showing her best side to her guest, as maidens have done to men since Eve first smiled on Adam.

Dave had closed his heart to love. It was to have no room in his life. To his morbid sensibilities the shadow of the prison walls still stretched between him and Joyce. It did not matter that he was innocent, that all his small world would soon know of his vindication. The fact stood. For years he had been shut away from men, a leprous thing labeled "Unclean!" He had dwelt in a place of furtive whisperings, of sinister sounds. His nostrils had inhaled the odor of musty clothes and steamed food. His fingers had touched moisture sweating through the walls, and in his small dark cell he had hunted graybacks. The hopeless squalor of it at times had driven him almost mad. As he saw it now, his guilt was of minor importance. If he had not fired the shot that killed George Doble, that was merely a chance detail. What counted against him was that his soul was marked with the taint of the criminal through association and habit of thought. He could reason with this feeling and temporarily destroy it. He could drag it into the light and laugh it away. But subconsciously it persisted as a horror from which he could not escape. A man cannot touch pitch, even against his own will, and not be defiled.

"You're Keith's hero, you know," the girl told Dave, her face bubbling to unexpected mirth. "He tries to walk and talk like you. He asks the queerest questions. To-day I caught him diving at a pillow on the bed. He was making-believe to be you when you were shot."

Her nearness in the soft, shadowy night shook his self-control. The music of her voice with its drawling intonations played on his heartstrings.

"Think I'll go now," he said abruptly.

"You must come again," she told him. "Keith wants you to teach him how to rope. You won't mind, will you?"

The long lashes lifted innocently from the soft deep eyes, which rested in his for a moment and set clamoring a disturbance in his blood.

"I'll be right busy," he said awkwardly, bluntly.

She drew back within herself. "I'd forgotten how busy you are, Mr. Sanders. Of course we mustn't impose on you," she said, cold and stiff as only offended youth can be.

Striding into the night, Dave cursed the fate that had made him what he was. He had hurt her boorishly by his curt refusal of her friendship. Yet the heart inside him was a wild river of love.

CHAPTER XXVII

AT THE JACKPOT

The day lasted twenty-four hours in Malapi. As Sanders walked along Junipero Street, on his way to the downtown corral from Crawford's house, saloons and gambling-houses advertised their attractions candidly and noisily. They seemed bursting with raw and vehement life. The strains of fiddles and the sound of shuffling feet were pierced occasionally by the whoop of a drunken reveler. Once there rang out the high notes of a woman's hysterical laughter. Cowponies and packed burros drooped listlessly at the hitching-rack. Even loaded wagons were waiting to take the road as soon as the drivers could tear themselves away from the attractions of keno and a last drink.

Junipero Street was not the usual crooked lane that serves as the main thoroughfare for business in a mining town. For Malapi had been a cowtown before the discovery of oil. It lay on the wide prairie and not in a gulch. The street was broad and dusty, flanked by false-front stores, flat-roofed adobes, and corrugated iron buildings imported hastily since the first boom.

At the Stag Horn corral Dave hired a horse and saddled for a night ride. On his way to the Jackpot he passed a dozen outfits headed for the new strike. They were hauling supplies of food, tools, timbers, and machinery to the oil camp. Out of the night a mule skinner shouted a profane and drunken greeting to him. A Mexican with a burro train gave him a low-voiced "Buenos noches, señor."

A fine mist of oil began to spray him when he was still a mile away from the well. It grew denser as he came nearer. He found Bob Hart, in oilskins and rubber boots, bossing a gang of scrapers, giving directions to a second one building a dam across a draw, and supervising a third group engaged in siphoning crude oil from one sump to another. From head to foot Hart and his assistants were wet to the skin with the black crude oil.

"'Lo, Dave! One sure-enough little spouter!" Bob shouted cheerfully. "Number Three's sure a-hittin' her up. She's no cougher--stays right steady on the job. Bet I've wallowed in a million barrels of the stuff since mo'nin'." He waded through a viscid pool to Dave and asked a question in a low voice. "What's the good word?"

"We had a little luck," admitted Sanders, then plumped out his budget of news. "Got the express money back, captured one of the robbers, forced a confession out of him, and left him with the sheriff."

Bob did an Indian war dance in hip boots. "You're the darndest go-getter ever I did see. Tell it to me, you ornery ol' scalawag."

His friend told the story of the day so far as it related to the robbery.

"I could 'a' told you Miller would weaken when you had the rope round his soft neck. Shorty would 'a' gone through and told you-all where to get off at."

"Yes. Miller's yellow. He didn't quit with the robbery, Bob. Must have been scared bad, I reckon. He admitted that he killed George Doble--by accident, he claimed. Says Doble ran in front of him while he was shooting at me."

"Have you got that down on paper?" demanded Hart.

"Yes."

Bob caught his friend's hand. "I reckon the long lane has turned for you, old socks. I can't tell you how damn glad I am. Doble needed killin', but I'd rather you hadn't done it."

The other man made no comment on this phase of the situation. "This brings Dug Doble out into the open at last. He'll come pretty near going to the pen for this."

"I can't see Applegate arrestin' him. He'll fight, Dug will. My notion is he'll take to the hills and throw off all pretense. If he does he'll be the worst killer ever was known in this part of the country. You an' Crawford want to look out for him, Dave."

"Crawford says he wants me to be treasurer of the company, Bob. You and I are to manage it, he says, with Burns doing the drilling."

"Tha's great. He told me he was gonna ask you. Betcha we make the ol' Jackpot hum."

"D' you ever hear of a man land poor, Bob?"

"Sure have."

"Well, right now we're oil poor. According to what the old man says there's no cash in the treasury and we've got bills that have to be paid. You know that ten thousand he paid in to the bank to satisfy the note. He borrowed it from a friend who took it out of a trust fund to loan it to him. He didn't tell me who the man is, but he said his friend would get into trouble a-plenty if it's found out before he replaces the money. Then we've got to keep our labor bills paid right up. Some of the other accounts can wait."

"Can't we borrow money on this gusher?"

"We'll have to do that. Trouble is that oil isn't a marketable asset until it reaches a refinery. We can sell stock, of course, but we don't want to do much of that unless we're forced to it. Our play is to keep control and not let any other interest in to oust us. It's going to take some scratching."

"Looks like," agreed Bob. "Any use tryin' the bank here?"

"I'll try it, but we'll not accept any call loan. They say Steelman owns the bank. He won't let us have money unless there's some nigger in the woodpile. I'll probably have to try Denver."

"That'll take time."

"Yes. And time's one thing we haven't got any too much of. Whoever underwrites this for us will send an expert back with me and will wait for his report before making a loan. We'll have to talk it over with Crawford and find out how much treasury stock we'll have to sell locally to keep the business going till I make a raise."

"You and the old man decide that, Dave. I can't get away from here till we get Number Three roped and muzzled. I'll vote for whatever you two say."

An hour later Dave rode back to town.

CHAPTER XXVIII

DAVE MEETS A FINANCIER

On more careful consideration Crawford and Sanders decided against trying to float the Jackpot with local money except by the sale of enough stock to keep going until the company's affairs could be put on a substantial basis. To apply to the Malapi bank for a loan would be to expose their financial condition to Steelman, and it was certain that he would permit no accommodation except upon terms that would make it possible to wreck the company.

"I'm takin' the train for Denver to-morrow, Dave," the older man said. "You stay here for two-three days and sell enough stock to keep us off the rocks, then you hot-foot it for Denver too. By the time you get there I'll have it all fixed up with the Governor about a pardon."

Dave found no difficulty in disposing of a limited amount of stock in Malapi at a good price. This done, he took the stage for the junction and followed Crawford to Denver. An unobtrusive little man with large white teeth showing stood in line behind him at the ticket window. His destination also, it appeared, was the Colorado capital.

If Dave had been a believer in fairy tales he might have thought himself the hero of one. A few days earlier he had come to Malapi on this same train, in a day coach, poorly dressed, with no job and no prospects in life. He had been poor, discredited, a convict on parole. Now he wore good clothes, traveled in a Pullman, ate in the diner, was a man of consequence, and, at least on paper, was on the road to wealth. He would put up at the Albany instead of a cheap rooming-house, and he would meet on legitimate business some of the big financial men of the West. The thing was hardly thinkable, yet a turn of the wheel of fortune had done it for him in an hour.

The position in which Sanders found himself was possible only because Crawford was himself a financial babe in the woods. He had borrowed large sums of money often, but always from men who trusted him and held his word as better security than collateral. The cattleman was of the outdoors type to whom the letter of the law means little. A debt was a debt, and a piece of paper with his name on it did not make payment any more obligatory. If he had known more about capital and its methods of finding an outlet, he would never have sent so unsophisticated a man as Dave Sanders on such a mission.

For Dave, too, was a child in the business world. He knew nothing of the inside deals by which industrial enterprises are underwritten and corporations managed. It was, he supposed, sufficient for his purpose that the company for which he wanted backing was sure to pay large dividends when properly put on its feet.

But Dave had assets of value even for such a task. He had a single-track mind. He was determined even to obstinacy. He thought straight, and so directly that he could walk through subtleties without knowing they existed.

When he reached Denver he discovered that Crawford had followed the Governor to the western part of the State, where that official had gone to open a sectional fair. Sanders had no credentials except a letter of introduction to the manager of the stockyards.

"What can I do for you?" asked that gentleman. He was quite willing to exert himself moderately as a favor to Emerson Crawford, vice-president of the American Live Stock Association.

"I want to meet Horace Graham."

"I can give you a note of introduction to him. You'll probably have to get an appointment with him through his secretary. He's a tremendously busy man."

Dave's talk with the great man's secretary over the telephone was not satisfactory. Mr. Graham, he learned, had every moment full for the next two days, after which he would leave for a business trip to the East.

There were other wealthy men in Denver who might be induced to finance the Jackpot, but Dave intended to see Graham first. The big railroad builder was a fighter. He was hammering through, in spite of heavy opposition from trans-continental lines, a short cut across the Rocky Mountains from Denver. He was a pioneer, one who would take a chance on a good thing in the plunging, Western way. In his rugged, clean-cut character was much that appealed to the managers of the Jackpot.

Sanders called at the financier's office and sent in his card by the youthful Cerberus who kept watch at the gate. The card got no farther than the great man's private secretary.

After a wait of more than an hour Dave made overtures to the boy. A dollar passed from him to the youth and established a friendly relation.

"What's the best way to reach Mr. Graham, son? I've got important business that won't wait."

"Dunno. He's awful busy. You ain't got no appointment."

"Can you get a note to him? I've got a five-dollar bill for you if you can."

"I'll take a whirl at it. Jus' 'fore he goes to lunch."

Dave penciled a line on a card.

If you are not too busy to make $100,000 to-day you had better see me.

He signed his name.

Ten minutes later the office boy caught Graham as he rose to leave for lunch. The big man read the note.

"What kind of looking fellow is he?" he asked the boy.

"Kinda solemn-lookin' guy, sir." The boy remembered the dollar received on account and the five dollars on the horizon. "Big, straight-standin', honest fellow. From Arizona or Texas, mebbe. Looked good to me."

The financier frowned down at the note in doubt, twisting it in his fingers. A dozen times a week his privacy was assailed by some crazy inventor or crook promoter. He remembered that he had had a letter from some one about this man. Something of strength in the chirography of the note in his hand and something of simple directness in the wording decided him to give an interview.

"Show him in," he said abruptly, and while he waited in the office rated himself for his folly in wasting time.

Underneath bushy brows steel-gray eyes took Dave in shrewdly.

"Well, what is it?" snapped the millionaire.

"The new gusher in the Malapi pool," answered Sanders at once, and his gaze was as steady as that of the big state-builder.

"You represent the parties that own it?"

"Yes."

"And you want?"

"Financial backing to put it on its feet until we can market the product."

"Why don't you work through your local bank?"

"Another oil man, an enemy of our company, controls the Malapi bank."

Graham fired question after question at him, crisply, abruptly, and Sanders gave him back straight, short answers.

"Sit down," ordered the railroad builder, resuming his own seat. "Tell me the whole story of the company."

Dave told it, and in the telling he found it necessary to sketch the Crawford-Steelman feud. He brought himself into the narrative as little as possible, but the grizzled millionaire drew enough from him to set Graham's eye to sparkling.

"Come back to-morrow at noon," decided the great man. "I'll let you know my decision then."

The young man knew he was dismissed, but he left the office elated. Graham had been favorably impressed. He liked the proposition, believed in its legitimacy and its possibilities. Dave felt sure he would send an expert to Malapi with him to report on it as an investment. If so, he would almost certainly agree to put money in it.

A man with prominent white front teeth had followed Dave to the office of Horace Graham, had seen him enter, and later had seen him come out with a look on his face that told of victory. The man tried to get admittance to the financier and failed. He went back to his hotel and wrote a short letter which he signed with a fictitious name. This he sent by special delivery to Graham. The letter was brief and to the point. It said:

Don't do business with David Sanders without investigating his record. He is a horsethief and a convicted murderer. Some months ago he was paroled from the penitentiary at Cañon City and since then has been in several shooting scrapes. He was accused of robbing a stage and murdering the driver less than a week ago.

Graham read the letter and called in his private secretary. "McMurray, get Cañon City on the 'phone and find out if a man called David Sanders was released from the penitentiary there lately. If so, what was he in for? Describe the man to the warden: under twenty-five, tall, straight as an Indian, strongly built, looks at you level and steady, brown hair, steel-blue eyes. Do it now."

Before he left the office that afternoon Graham had before him a typewritten memorandum from his secretary covering the case of David Sanders.

CHAPTER XXIX

THREE IN CONSULTATION

The grizzled railroad builder fixed Sanders with an eye that had read into the soul of many a shirker and many a dishonest schemer.

"How long have you been with the Jackpot Company?"

"Not long. Only a few days."

"How much stock do you own?"

"Ten thousand shares."

"How did you get it?"

"It was voted me by the directors for saving Jackpot Number Three from an attack of Steelman's men."

Graham's gaze bored into the eyes of his caller. He waited just a moment to give his question full emphasis. "Mr. Sanders, what were you doing six months ago?"

"I was serving time in the penitentiary," came the immediate quiet retort.

"What for?"

"For manslaughter."

"You didn't tell me this yesterday."

"No. It has no bearing on the value of the proposition I submitted to you, and I thought it might prejudice you against it."

"Have you been in any trouble since you left prison?"

Dave hesitated. The blazer of railroad trails rapped out a sharp, explanatory question. "Any shooting scrapes?"

"A man shot at me in Malapi. I was unarmed."

"That all?"

"Another man fired at me out at the Jackpot. I was unarmed then."

"Were you accused of holding up a stage, robbing it, and killing the driver?"

"No. I was twenty miles away at the time of the hold-up and had evidence to prove it."

"Then you were mentioned in connection with the robbery?"

"If so, only by my enemies. One of the robbers was captured and made a full confession. He showed where the stolen gold was cached and it was recovered."

The great man looked with chilly eyes at the young fellow standing in front of him. He had a sense of having been tricked and imposed upon.

"I have decided not to accept your proposition to cooperate with you in financing the Jackpot Company, Mr. Sanders." Horace Graham pressed an electric button and a clerk appeared. "Show this gentleman out, Hervey."

But Sanders stood his ground. Nobody could have guessed from his stolid imperturbability how much he was depressed at this unexpected failure.

"Do I understand that you are declining this loan because I am connected with it, Mr. Graham?"

"I do not give a reason, sir. The loan does not appeal to me," the railroad builder said with chill finality.

"It appealed to you yesterday," persisted Dave.

"But not to-day. Hervey, I will see Mr. Gates at once. Tell McMurray so."

Reluctantly Dave followed the clerk out of the room. He had been checkmated, but he did not know how. In some way Steelman had got to the financier with this story that had damned the project. The new treasurer of the Jackpot Company was much distressed. If his connection with the company was going to have this effect, he must resign at once.

He walked back to the hotel, and in the corridor of the Albany met a big bluff cattleman the memory of whose kindness leaped across the years to warm his heart.

"You don't remember me, Mr. West?"

The owner of the Fifty-Four Quarter Circle looked at the young man and gave a little whoop. "Damn my skin, if it ain't the boy who bluffed a whole railroad system into lettin' him reload stock for me!" He hooked an arm under Dave's and led him straight to the bar. "Where you been? What you doin'? Why n't you come to me soon as you ... got out of a job? What'll you have, boy?"

Dave named ginger ale. They lifted glasses.

"How?"

"How?"

"Now you tell me all about it," said West presently, leading the way to a lounge seat in the mezzanine gallery.

Sanders answered at first in monosyllables, but presently he found himself telling the story of his failure to enlist Horace Graham in the Jackpot property as a backer.

The cattleman began to rumple his hair, just as he had done years ago in moments of excitement.

"Wish I'd known, boy. I've been acquainted with Horace Graham ever since he ran a hardware store on Larimer Street, and that's 'most thirty years ago. I'd 'a' gone with you to see him. Maybe I can see him now."

"You can't change the facts, Mr. West. When he knew I was a convict he threw the whole thing overboard."

The voice of a page in the lobby rose in sing-song. "Mister Sa-a-anders. Mis-ter Sa-a-a-anders."

Dave stepped to the railing and called down. "I'm Mr. Sanders. Who wants me?"

A man near the desk waved a paper and shouted: "Hello, Dave! News for you, son. I'll come up." The speaker was Crawford.

He shook hands with Dave and with West while he ejaculated his news in jets. "I got it, son. Got it right here. Came back with the Governor this mo'nin'. Called together Pardon Board. Here 't is. Clean bill of health, son. Resolutions of regret for miscarriage of justice. Big story front page's afternoon's papers."

Dave smiled sardonically. "You're just a few hours late, Mr. Crawford. Graham turned us down cold this morning because I'm a penitentiary bird."

"He did?" Crawford began to boil inside. "Well, he can go right plumb to Yuma. Anybody so small as that--"

"Hold yore hawsses, Em," said West, smiling.

"Graham didn't know the facts. If you was a capitalist an' thinkin' of loanin' big money to a man you found out had been in prison for manslaughter and that he had since been accused of robbin' a stage an' killing the driver--"

"He was in a hurry," explained Dave. "Going East to-morrow. Some one must have got at him after I saw him. He'd made up his mind when I went back to-day."

"Well, Horace Graham ain't one of those who won't change his views for heaven, hell, and high water. All we've got to do is to get to him and make him see the light," said West.

"When are we going to do all that?" asked Sanders. "He's busy every minute of the time till he starts. He won't give us an appointment."

"He'll see me. We're old friends," predicted West confidently.

Crestfallen, he met the two officers of the Jackpot Company three hours later. "Couldn't get to him. Sent word out he was sorry, an' how was Mrs. West an' the children, but he was in conference an' couldn't break away."

Dave nodded. He had expected this and prepared for it. "I've found out he's going on the eight o'clock flyer. You going to be busy to-morrow, Mr. West?"

"No. I got business at the stockyards, but I can put it off."

"Then I'll get tickets for Omaha on the flyer. Graham will take his private car. We'll break in and put this up to him. He was friendly to our proposition before he got the wrong slant on it. If he's open-minded, as Mr. West says he is--"

Crawford slapped an open hand on his thigh. "Say, you get the best ideas, son. We'll do just that."

"I'll check up and make sure Graham's going on the flyer," said the young man. "If we fall down we'll lose only a day. Come back when we meet the night train. I reckon we won't have to get tickets clear through to Omaha."

"Fine and dandy," agreed West. "We'll sure see Graham if we have to bust the door of his car."

CHAPTER XXX

ON THE FLYER

West, his friends not in evidence, artfully waylaid Graham on his way to the private car.

"Hello, Henry B. Sorry I couldn't see you yesterday," the railroad builder told West as they shook hands. "You taking this tram?"

"Yes, sir. Got business takes me East."

"Drop in to see me some time this morning. Say about noon. You'll have lunch with me."

"Suits me. About noon, then," agreed West.

The conspirators modified their plans to meet a new strategic situation. West was still of opinion that he had better use his card of entry to get his friends into the railroad builder's car, but he yielded to Dave's view that it would be wiser for the cattleman to pave the way at luncheon.

Graham's secretary ate lunch with the two old-timers and the conversation threatened to get away from West and hover about financial conditions in New York. The cattleman brought it by awkward main force to the subject he had in mind.

"Say, Horace, I wanta talk with you about a proposition that's on my chest," he broke out.

Graham helped himself to a lamb chop. "Sail in, Henry B. You've got me at your mercy."

At the first mention of the Jackpot gusher the financier raised a prohibitive hand. "I've disposed of that matter. No use reopening it."

But West stuck to his guns. "I ain't aimin' to try to change yore mind on a matter of business, Horace. If you'll tell me that you turned down the proposition because it didn't look to you like there was money in it, I'll curl right up and not say another word."

"It doesn't matter why I turned it down. I had my reasons."

"It matters if you're doin' an injustice to one of the finest young fellows I know," insisted the New Mexican stanchly.

"Meaning the convict?"

"Call him that if you've a mind to. The Governor pardoned him yesterday because another man confessed he did the killin' for which Dave was convicted. The boy was railroaded through on false evidence."

The railroad builder was a fair-minded man. He did not want to be unjust to any one. At the same time he was not one to jump easily from one view to another.

"I noticed something in the papers about a pardon, but I didn't know it was our young oil promoter. There are other rumors about him too. A stage robbery, for instance, and a murder with it."

"He and Em Crawford ran down the robbers and got the money back. One of the robbers confessed. Dave hadn't a thing to do with the hold-up. There's a bad gang down in that country. Crawford and Sanders have been fightin' 'em, so naturally they tell lies about 'em."

"Did you say this Sanders ran down one of the robbers?"

"Yes."

"He didn't tell me that," said Graham thoughtfully. "I liked the young fellow when I first saw him. He looks quiet and strong; a self-reliant fellow would be my guess."

"You bet he is." West laughed reminiscently. "Lemme tell you how I first met him." He told the story of how Dave had handled the stock shipment for him years before.

Horace Graham nodded shrewdly. "Exactly the way I had him sized up till I began investigating him. Well, let's hear the rest. What more do you know about him?"

The Albuquerque man told the other of Dave's conviction, of how he had educated himself in the penitentiary, of his return home and subsequent adventures there.

"There's a man back there in the Pullman knows him like he was his own son, a straight man, none better in this Western country," West concluded.

"Who is he?"

"Emerson Crawford of the D Bar Lazy R ranch."

"I've heard of him. He's in this Jackpot company too, isn't he?"

"He's president of it. If he says the company's right, then it's right."

"Bring him in to me."

West reported to his friends, a large smile on his wrinkled face. "I got him goin' south, boys. Come along, Em, it's up to you now."

The big financier took one comprehensive look at Emerson Crawford and did not need any letter of recommendation. A vigorous honesty spoke in the strong hand-grip, the genial smile, the level, steady eyes.

"Tell me about this young desperado you gentlemen are trying to saw off on me," Graham directed, meeting the smile with another and offering cigars to his guests.

Crawford told him. He began with the story of the time Sanders and Hart had saved him from the house of his enemy into which he had been betrayed. He related how the boy had pursued the men who stole his pinto and the reasoning which had led him to take it without process of law. He told the true story of the killing, of the young fellow's conviction, of his attempt to hold a job in Denver without concealing his past, and of his busy week since returning to Malapi.

"All I've got to say is that I hope my boy will grow up to be as good a man as Dave Sanders," the cattleman finished, and he turned over to Graham a copy of the findings of the Pardon Board, of the pardon, and of the newspapers containing an account of the affair with a review of the causes that had led to the miscarriage of justice.

"Now about your Jackpot Company. What do you figure as the daily output of the gusher?" asked Graham.

"Don't know. It's a whale of a well. Seems to have tapped a great lake of oil half a mile underground. My driller Burns figures it at from twenty to thirty thousand barrels a day. I cayn't even guess, because I know so blamed little about oil."

Graham looked out of the window at the rushing landscape and tapped on the table with his finger-tips absentmindedly. Presently he announced a decision crisply.

"If you'll leave your papers here I'll look them over and let you know what I'll do. When I'm ready I'll send McMurray forward to you."

An hour later the secretary announced to the three men in the Pullman the decision of his chief.

"Mr. Graham has instructed me to tell you gentlemen he'll look into your proposition. I am wiring an oil expert in Denver to return with you to Malapi. If his report is favorable, Mr. Graham will cooperate with you in developing the field."

CHAPTER XXXI

TWO ON THE HILLTOPS

It was the morning after his return. Emerson Crawford helped himself to another fried egg from the platter and shook his knife at the bright-eyed girl opposite.

"I tell you, honey, the boy's a wonder," he insisted. "Knows what he wants and goes right after it. Don't waste any words. Don't beat around the bush. Don't let any one bluff him out. Graham says if I don't want him he'll give him a responsible job pronto."

The girl's trim head tilted at her father in a smile of sweet derision. She was pleased, but she did not intend to say so.

"I believe you're in love with Dave Sanders, Dad. It's about time for me to be jealous."

Crawford defended himself. "He's had a hard row to hoe, and he's comin' out fine. I aim to give him every chance in the world to make good. It's up to us to stand by him."

"If he'll let us." Joyce jumped up and ran round the table to him. They were alone, Keith having departed with a top to join his playmates. She sat on the arm of his chair, a straight, slim creature very much alive, and pressed her face of flushed loveliness against his head. "It won't be your fault, old duck, if things don't go well with him. You're good--the best ever--a jim-dandy friend. But he's so--so--Oh, I don't know--stiff as a poker. Acts as if he doesn't want to be friends, as if we're all ready to turn against him. He makes me good and tired, Dad. Why can't he be--human?"

"Now, Joy, you got to remember--"

"--that he was in prison and had an awful time of it. Oh, yes, I remember all that. He won't let us forget it. It's just like he held us off all the time and insisted on us not forgetting it. I'd just like to shake the foolishness out of him." A rueful little laugh welled from her throat at the thought.

"He cayn't be gay as Bob Hart all at onct. Give him time."

"You're so partial to him you don't see when he's doing wrong. But I see it. Yesterday he hardly spoke when I met him. Ridiculous. It's all right for him to hold back and be kinda reserved with outsiders. But with his friends--you and Bob and old Buck Byington and me--he ought not to shut himself up in an ice cave. And I'm going to tell him so."

The cattleman's arm slid round her warm young body and drew her close. She was to him the dearest thing in the world, a never-failing, exquisite wonder and mystery. Sometimes even now he was amazed that this rare spirit had found the breath of life through him.

"You wanta remember you're a li'l lady," he reproved. "You wouldn't want to do anything you'd be sorry for, honeybug."

"I'm not so sure about that," she flushed, amusement rippling her face. "Someone's got to blow up that young man like a Dutch uncle, and I think I'm elected. I'll try not to think about being a lady; then I can do my full duty, Dad. It'll be fun to see how he takes it."

"Now--now," he remonstrated.

"It's all right to be proud," she went on. "I wouldn't want to see him hold his head any lower. But there's no sense in being so offish that even his friends have to give him up. And that's what it'll come to if he acts the way he does. Folks will stand just so much. Then they give up trying."

"I reckon you're right about that, Joy."

"Of course I'm right. You have to meet your friends halfway."

"Well, if you talk to him don't hurt his feelin's."

There was a glint of mirth in her eyes, almost of friendly malice. "I'm going to worry him about my feelings, Dad. He'll not have time to think of his own."

Joyce found her chance next day. She met David Sanders in front of a drug-store. He would have passed with a bow if she had let him.

"What does the oil expert Mr. Graham sent think about our property?" she asked presently, greetings having been exchanged.

"He hasn't given out any official opinion yet, but he's impressed. The report will be favorable, I think."

"Isn't that good?"

"Couldn't be better," he admitted.

It was a warm day. Joyce glanced in at the soda fountain and said demurely, "My, but it's hot! Won't you come in and have an ice-cream soda on me?"

Dave flushed. "If you'll go as my guest," he said stiffly.

"How good of you to invite me!" she accepted, laughing, but with a tint of warmer color in her cheeks.

Rhythmically she moved beside him to a little table in the corner of the drug-store. "I own stock in the Jackpot. You've got to give an accounting to me. Have you found a market yet?"

"The whole Southwest will be our market as soon as we can reach it."

"And when will that be?" she asked.

"I'm having some hauled to relieve the glut. The railroad will be operating inside of six weeks. We'll keep Number Three capped till then and go on drilling in other locations. Burns is spudding in a new well to-day."

The clerk took their order and departed. They were quite alone, not within hearing of anybody. Joyce took her fear by the throat and plunged in.

"You mad at me, Mr. Sanders?" she asked jauntily.

"You know I'm not."

"How do I know it?" she asked innocently. "You say as little to me as you can, and get away from me as quick as you can. Yesterday, for instance, you'd hardly say 'Good-morning.'"

"I didn't mean to be rude. I was busy." Dave felt acutely uncomfortable. "I'm sorry if I didn't seem sociable."

"So was Mr. Hart busy, but he had time to stop and say a pleasant word." The brown eyes challenged their vis-à-vis steadily.

The young man found nothing to say. He could not explain that he had not lingered because he was giving Bob a chance to see her alone, nor could he tell her that he felt it better for his peace of mind to keep away from her as much as possible.

"I'm not in the habit of inviting young men to invite me to take a soda, Mr. Sanders," she went on. "This is my first offense. I never did it before, and I never expect to again.... I do hope the new well will come in a good one." The last sentence was for the benefit of the clerk returning with the ice-cream.

"Looks good," said Dave, playing up. "Smut's showing, and you know that's a first-class sign."

"Bob said it was expected in to-day or to-morrow.... I asked you because I've something to say to you, something I think one of your friends ought to say, and--and I'm going to do it," she concluded in a voice modulated just to reach him.

The clerk had left the glasses and the check. He was back at the fountain polishing the counter.

Sanders waited in silence. He had learned to let the burden of conversation rest on his opponent, and he knew that Joyce just now was in that class.

She hesitated, uncertain of her opening. Then, "You're disappointing your friends, Mr. Sanders," she said lightly.

He did not know what an effort it took to keep her voice from quavering, her hand from trembling as it rested on the onyx top of the table.

"I'm sorry," he said a second time.

"Perhaps it's our fault. Perhaps we haven't been ... friendly enough." The lifted eyes went straight into his.

He found an answer unexpectedly difficult. "No man ever had more generous friends," he said at last brusquely, his face set hard.

The girl guessed at the tense feeling back of his words.

"Let's walk," she replied, and he noticed that the eyes and mouth had softened to a tender smile. "I can't talk here, Dave."

They made a pretense of finishing their sodas, then walked out of the town into the golden autumn sunlight of the foothills. Neither of them spoke. She carried herself buoyantly, chin up, her face a flushed cameo of loveliness. As she took the uphill trail a small breath of wind wrapped the white skirt about her slender limbs. He found in her a new note, one of unaccustomed shyness.

The silence grew at last too significant. She was driven to break it.

"I suppose I'm foolish," she began haltingly. "But I had been expecting--all of us had--that when you came home from--from Denver--the first time, I mean--you would be the old Dave Sanders we all knew and liked. We wanted our friendship to--to help make up to you for what you must have suffered. We didn't think you'd hold us off like this."

His eyes narrowed. He looked away at the cedars on the hills painted in lustrous blues and greens and purples, and at the slopes below burnt to exquisite color lights by the fires of fall. But what he saw was a gray prison wall with armed men in the towers.

"If I could tell you!" He said it in a whisper, to himself, but she just caught the words.

"Won't you try?" she said, ever so gently.

He could not sully her innocence by telling of the furtive whisperings that had fouled the prison life, made of it an experience degrading and corrosive. He told her, instead, of the externals of that existence, of how he had risen, dressed, eaten, worked, exercised, and slept under orders. He described to her the cells, four by seven by seven, barred, built in tiers, faced by narrow iron balconies, each containing a stool, a chair, a shelf, a bunk. In his effort to show her the chasm that separated him from her he did not spare himself at all. Dryly and in clean-cut strokes he showed her the sordidness of which he had been the victim and left her to judge for herself of its evil effect on his character.

When he had finished he knew that he had failed. She wept for pity and murmured, "You poor boy.... You poor boy!"

He tried again, and this time he drew the moral. "Don't you see, I'm a marked man--marked for life." He hesitated, then pushed on. "You're fine and clean and generous--what a good father and mother, and all this have made you." He swept his hand round in a wide gesture to include the sun and the hills and all the brave life of the open. "If I come too near you, don't you see I taint you? I'm a man who was shut up because--"

"Fiddlesticks! You're a man who has been done a wrong. You mustn't grow morbid over it. After all, you've been found innocent."

"That isn't what counts. I've been in the penitentiary. Nothing can wipe that out. The stain of it's on me and can't be washed away."

She turned on him with a little burst of feminine ferocity. "How dare you talk that way, Dave Sanders! I want to be proud of you. We all do. But how can we be if you give up like a quitter? Don't we all have to keep beginning our lives over and over again? Aren't we all forever getting into trouble and getting out of it? A man is as good as he makes himself. It doesn't matter what outside thing has happened to him. Do you dare tell me that my dad wouldn't be worth loving if he'd been in prison forty times?"

The color crept into his face. "I'm not quitting. I'm going through. The point is whether I'm to ask my friends to carry my load for me."

"What are your friends for?" she demanded, and her eyes were like stars in a field of snow. "Don't you see it's an insult to assume they don't want to stand with you in your trouble? You've been warped. You're eaten up with vain pride." Joyce bit her lip to choke back a swelling in her throat. "The Dave we used to know wasn't like that. He was friendly and sweet. When folks were kind to him he was kind to them. He wasn't like--like an old poker." She fell back helplessly on the simile she had used with her father.

"I don't blame you for feeling that way," he said gently. "When I first came out I did think I'd play a lone hand. I was hard and bitter and defiant. But when I met you-all again--and found you were just like home folks--all of you so kind and good, far beyond any claims I had on you--why, Miss Joyce, my heart went out to my old friends with a rush. It sure did. Maybe I had to be stiff to keep from being mushy."

"Oh, if that's it!" Her eager face, flushed and tender, nodded approval.

"But you've got to look at this my way too," he urged. "I can't repay your father's kindness--yes, and yours too--by letting folks couple your name, even in friendship, with a man who--"

She turned on him, glowing with color. "Now that's absurd, Dave Sanders. I'm not a--a nice little china doll. I'm a flesh-and-blood girl. And I'm not a statue on a pedestal. I've got to live just like other people. The trouble with you is that you want to be generous, but you don't want to give other folks a chance to be. Let's stop this foolishness and be sure-enough friends--Dave."

He took her outstretched hand in his brown palm, smiling down at her. "All right. I know when I'm beaten."

She beamed. "That's the first honest-to-goodness smile I've seen on your face since you came back."

"I've got millions of 'em in my system," he promised. "I've been hoarding them up for years."

"Don't hoard them any more. Spend them," she urged.

"I'll take that prescription, Doctor Joyce." And he spent one as evidence of good faith.

The soft and shining oval of her face rippled with gladness as a mountain lake sparkles with sunshine in a light summer breeze. "I've found again that Dave boy I lost," she told him.

"You won't lose him again," he answered, pushing into the hinterland of his mind the reflection that a man cannot change the color of his thinking in an hour.

"We thought he'd gone away for good. I'm so glad he hasn't."

"No. He's been here all the time, but he's been obeying the orders of a man who told him he had no business to be alive."

He looked at her with deep, inscrutable eyes. As a boy he had been shy but impulsive. The fires of discipline had given him remarkable self-restraint. She could not tell he was finding in her face the quality to inspire in a painter a great picture, the expression of that brave young faith which made her a touchstone to find the gold in his soul.

Yet in his gravity was something that disturbed her blood. Was she fanning to flame banked fires better dormant?

She felt a compunction for what she had done. Maybe she had been unwomanly. It is a penalty impulsive people have to pay that later they must consider whether they have been bold and presumptuous. Her spirits began to droop when she should logically have been celebrating her success.

But Dave walked on mountain-tops tipped with mellow gold. He threw off the weight that had oppressed his spirits for years and was for the hour a boy again. She had exorcised the gloom in which he walked. He looked down on a magnificent flaming desert, and it was good. To-day was his. To-morrow was his. All the to-morrows of the world were in his hand. He refused to analyze the causes of his joy. It was enough that beside him moved with charming diffidence the woman of his dreams, that with her soft hands she had torn down the barrier between them.

"And now I don't know whether I've done right," she said ruefully. "Dad warned me I'd better be careful. But of course I always know best. I 'rush in.'"

"You've done me a million dollars' worth of good. I needed some good friend to tell me just what you have. Please don't regret it."

"Well, I won't." She added, in a hesitant murmur, "You won't--misunderstand?"

His look turned aside the long-lashed eyes and brought a faint flush of pink to her cheeks.

"No, I'll not do that," he said.

CHAPTER XXXII

DAVE BECOMES AN OFFICE MAN

From Graham came a wire a week after the return of the oil expert to Denver. It read:

Report satisfactory. Can you come at once and arrange with me plan of organization?

Sanders was on the next train. He was still much needed at Malapi to look after getting supplies and machinery and to arrange for a wagon train of oil teams, but he dropped or delegated this work for the more important call that had just come.

His contact with Graham uncovered a new side of the state builder, one that was to impress him in all the big business men he met. They might be pleasant socially and bear him a friendly good-will, but when they met to arrange details of a financial plan they always wanted their pound of flesh. Graham drove a hard bargain with him. He tied the company fast by legal control of its affairs until his debt was satisfied. He exacted a bonus in the form of stock that fairly took the breath of the young man with whom he was negotiating. Dave fought him round by round and found the great man smooth and impervious as polished agate.

Yet Dave liked him. When they met at lunch, as they did more than once, the grizzled Westerner who had driven a line of steel across almost impassable mountain passes was simple and frank in talk. He had taken a fancy to this young fellow, and he let him know it. Perhaps he found something of his own engaging, dogged youth in the strong-jawed range-rider.

"Does a financier always hogtie a proposition before he backs it?" Dave asked him once with a sardonic gleam in his eye.

"Always."

"No matter how much he trusts the people he's doing business with?"

"He binds them hard and fast just the same. It's the only way to do. Give away as much money as you want to, but when you loan money look after your security like a hawk."

"Even when you're dealing with friends?"

"Especially when you're dealing with friends," corrected the older man. "Otherwise you're likely not to have your friends long."

"Don't believe I want to be a financier," decided Sanders.

"It takes the hot blood out of you," admitted Graham. "I'm not sure, if I had my life to live over again, knowing what I know now, that I wouldn't choose the outdoors like West and Crawford."

Sanders was very sure which choice he would like to make. He was at present embarked on the business of making money through oil, but some day he meant to go back to the serenity of a ranch. There were times when he left the conferences with Graham or his lieutenants sick at heart because of the uphill battle he must fight to protect his associates.

From Denver he went East to negotiate for some oil tanks and material with which to construct reservoirs. His trip was a flying one. He entrained for Malapi once more to look after the loose ends that had been accumulating locally in his absence. A road had to be built across the desert. Contracts must be let for hauling away the crude oil. A hundred details waited his attention.

He worked day and night. Often he slept only a few hours. He grew lean in body and curt of speech. Lines came into his face that had not been there before. But at his work apparently he was tireless as steel springs.

Meanwhile Brad Steelman moled to undermine the company. Dave's men finished building a bridge across a gulch late one day. It was blown up into kindling wood by dynamite that night. Wagons broke down unexpectedly. Shipments of supplies failed to arrive. Engines were mysteriously smashed.

The sabotage was skillful. Steelman's agents left no evidence that could be used against them. More than one of them, Hart and Sanders agreed, were spies who had found employment with the Jackpot. One or two men were discharged on suspicion, even though complete evidence against them was lacking.

The responsibility that had been thrust on Dave brought out in him unsuspected business capacity. During his prison days there had developed in him a quality of leadership. He had been more than once in charge of a road-building gang of convicts and had found that men naturally turned to him for guidance. But not until Crawford shifted to his shoulders the burdens of the Jackpot did he know that he had it in him to grapple with organization on a fairly large scale.

He worked without nerves, day in, day out, concentrating in a way that brought results. He never let himself get impatient with details. Thoroughness had long since become the habit of his life. To this he added a sane common sense.

Jackpot Number Four came in a good well, though not a phenomenal one like its predecessor. Number Five was already halfway down to the sands. Meanwhile the railroad crept nearer. Malapi was already talking of its big celebration when the first engine should come to town. Its council had voted to change the name of the place to Bonanza.

The tide was turning against Steelman. He was still a very rich man, but he seemed no longer to be a lucky one. He brought in a dry well. On another location the cable had pulled out of the socket and a forty-foot auger stem and bit lay at the bottom of a hole fifteen hundred feet deep. His best producer was beginning to cough a weak and intermittent flow even under steady pumping. And, to add to his troubles, a quiet little man had dropped into town to investigate one of his companies. He was a Government agent, and the rumor was that he was gathering evidence.

Sanders met Thomas on the street. He had not seen him since the prospector had made his wild ride for safety with the two outlaws hard on his heels.

"Glad you made it, Mr. Thomas," said Dave. "Good bit of strategy. When they reached the notch, Shorty and Doble never once looked to see if we were around. They lit out after you on the jump. Did they come close to getting you?"

"It looked like bullets would be flyin'. I won't say who would 'a' got who if they had," he said modestly. "But I wasn't lookin' for no trouble. I don't aim to be one of these here fire-eaters, but I'll fight like a wildcat when I got to." The prospector looked defiantly at Sanders, bristling like a bantam which has been challenged.

"We certainly owe you something for the way you drew the outlaws off our trail," Dave said gravely.

"Say, have you heard how the Government is gettin' after Steelman? He's a wily bird, old Brad is, but he slipped up when he sent out his advertisin' for the Great Mogul. A photographer faked a gusher for him and they sent it out on the circulars."

Sanders nodded, without comment.

"Steelman can make 'em flow, on paper anyhow," Thomas chortled. "But he's sure in a kettle of hot water this time."

"Mr. Steelman is enterprising," Dave admitted dryly.

"Say, Mr. Sanders, have you heard what's become of Shorty and Doble?" the prospector asked, lapsing to ill-concealed anxiety. "I see the sheriff has got a handbill out offerin' a reward for their arrest and conviction. You don't reckon those fellows would bear me any grudge, do you?"

"No. But I wouldn't travel in the hills alone if I were you. If you happened to meet them they might make things unpleasant."

"They're both killers. I'm a peaceable citizen, as the fellow says. O' course if they crowd me to the wall--"

"They won't," Dave assured him.

He knew that the outlaws, if the chance ever came for them, would strike at higher game than Thomas. They would try to get either Crawford or Sanders himself. The treasurer of the Jackpot did not fool himself with any false promises of safety. The two men in the hills were desperate characters, game as any in the country, gun-fighters, and they owed both him and Crawford a debt they would spare no pains to settle in full. Some day there would come an hour of accounting.

CHAPTER XXXIII

ON THE DODGE

Up in the hills back of Bear Cañon two men were camping. They breakfasted on slow elk, coffee, and flour-and-water biscuits. When they had finished, they washed their tin dishes with sand in the running brook.

"Might's well be hittin' the trail," one growled.

The other nodded without speaking, rose lazily, and began to pack the camp outfit. Presently, when he had arranged the load to his satisfaction, he threw the diamond hitch and stood back to take a chew of tobacco while he surveyed his work. He was a squat, heavy-set man with a Chihuahua hat. Also he was a two-gun man. After a moment he circled an arrowweed thicket and moved into the chaparral where his horse was hobbled.

The man who had spoken rose with one lithe twist of his big body. His eyes, hard and narrow, watched the shorter man disappear in the brush. Then he turned swiftly and strode toward the shoulder of the ridge.

In the heavy undergrowth of dry weeds and grass he stopped and tested the wind with a bandanna handkerchief. The breeze was steady and fairly strong. It blew down the cañon toward the foothills beyond.

The man stripped from a scrub oak a handful of leaves. They were very brittle and crumbled in his hand. A match flared out. His palm cupped it for a moment to steady the blaze before he touched it to the crisp foliage. Into a nest of twigs he thrust the small flame. The twigs, dry as powder from a four-months' drought, crackled like miniature fireworks. The grass caught, and a small line of fire ran quickly out.

The man rose. On his brown face was an evil smile, in his hard eyes something malevolent and sinister. The wind would do the rest.

He walked back toward the camp. At the shoulder crest he turned to look back. From out of the chaparral a thin column of pale gray smoke was rising.

His companion stamped out the remains of the breakfast fire and threw dirt on the ashes to make sure no live ember could escape in the wind. Then he swung to the saddle.

"Ready, Dug?" he asked.

The big man growled an assent and followed him over the summit into the valley beyond.

"Country needs a rain bad," the man in the Chihuahua hat commented. "Don't know as I recollect a dryer season."

The big hawk-nosed man by his side cackled in his throat with short, splenetic mirth. "It'll be some dryer before the rains," he prophesied.

They climbed out of the valley to the rim. The short man was bringing up the rear along the narrow trail-ribbon. He turned in the saddle to look back, a hand on his horse's rump. Perhaps he did this because of the power of suggestion. Several times Doble had already swung his head to scan with a searching gaze the other side of the valley.

Mackerel clouds were floating near the horizon in a sky of blue. Was that or was it not smoke just over the brow of the hill?

"Cayn't be our camp-fire," the squat man said aloud. "I smothered that proper."

"Them's clouds," pronounced Doble quickly. "Clouds an' some mist risin' from the gulch."

"I reckon," agreed the other, with no sure conviction. Doble must be right, of course. No fire had been in evidence when they left the camping-ground, and he was sure he had stamped out the one that had cooked the biscuits. Yet that stringy gray film certainly looked like smoke. He hung in the wind, half of a mind to go back and make sure. Fire in the chaparral now might do untold damage.

Shorty looked at Doble. "If tha's fire, Dug--"

"It ain't. No chance," snapped the ex-foreman. "We'll travel if you don't feel called on to go back an' stomp out the mist, Shorty," he added with sarcasm.

The cowpuncher took the trail again. Like many men, he was not proof against a sneer. Dug was probably right, Shorty decided, and he did not want to make a fool of himself. Doble would ride him with heavy jeers all day.

An hour later they rested their horses on the divide. To the west lay Malapi and the plains. Eastward were the heaven-pricking peaks. A long, bright line zig-zagged across the desert and reflected the sun rays. It was the bed of the new road already spiked with shining rails.

"I'm goin' to town," announced Doble.

Shorty looked at him in surprise. "Wanta see yore picture, I reckon. It's on a heap of telegraph poles, I been told," he said, grinning.

"To-day," went on the ex-foreman stubbornly.

"Big, raw-boned guy, hook nose, leather face, never took no prize as a lady's man, a wildcat in a rough-house, an' sudden death on the draw," extemporized the rustler, presumably from his conception of the reward poster.

"I'll lie in the chaparral till night an' ride in after dark."

With the impulsiveness of his kind, Shorty fell in with the idea. He was hungry for the fleshpots of Malapi. If they dropped in late at night, stayed a few hours, and kept under cover, they could probably slip out of town undetected. The recklessness of his nature found an appeal in the danger.

"Damfidon't trail along, Dug."

"Yore say-so about that."

"Like to see my own picture on the poles. Sawed-off li'l runt. Straight black hair. Some bowlegged. Wears two guns real low. Doncha monkey with him onless you're hell-a-mile with a six-shooter. One thousand dollars reward for arrest and conviction. Same for the big guy."

"Fellow that gets one o' them rewards will earn it," said Doble grimly.

"Goes double," agreed Shorty. "He'll earn it even if he don't live to spend it. Which he's liable not to."

They headed their horses to the west. As they drew down from the mountains they left the trail and took to the brush. They wound in and out among the mesquite and the cactus, bearing gradually to the north and into the foothills above the town. When they reached Frio Cañon they swung off into a timbered pocket debouching from it. Here they unsaddled and lay down to wait for night.

CHAPTER XXXIV

A PLEASANT EVENING

Brad Steelman sat hunched before a fire of piñon knots, head drooped low between his high, narrow shoulders. The restless black eyes in the dark hatchet face were sunk deeper now than in the old days. In them was beginning to come the hunted look of the gray wolf he resembled. His nerves were not what they had been, and even in his youth they were not of the best. He had a way of looking back furtively over his shoulder, as though some sinister shadow were creeping toward him out of the darkness.

Three taps on the window brought his head up with a jerk. His lax fingers crept to the butt of a Colt's revolver. He waited, listening.

The taps were repeated.

Steelman sidled to the door and opened it cautiously. A man pushed in and closed the door. He looked at the sheepman and he laughed shortly in an ugly, jeering way.

"Scared, Brad?"

The host moistened his lips. "What of, Dug?"

"Don't ask me," said the big man scornfully. "You always had about as much sand in yore craw as a rabbit."

"Did you come here to make trouble, Dug?"

"No, I came to collect a bill."

"So? Didn't know I owed you any money right now. How much is it?"

Steelman, as the leader of his gang, was used to levies upon his purse when his followers had gone broke. He judged that he would have to let Doble have about twenty-five dollars now.

"A thousand dollars."

Brad shot a quick, sidelong look at him. "Wha's wrong now, Dug?"

The ex-foreman of the D Bar Lazy R took his time to answer. He enjoyed the suspense under which his ally was held. "Why, I reckon nothin' a-tall. Only that this mo'nin' I put a match to about a coupla hundred thousand dollars belongin' to Crawford, Sanders, and Hart."

Eagerly Steelman clutched his arm. "You did it, then?"

"Didn't I say I'd do it?" snapped Doble irritably. "D'ya ever know me rue back on a bargain?"

"Never."

"Wha's more, you never will. I fired the chaparral above Bear Cañon. The wind was right. Inside of twenty-four hours the Jackpot locations will go up in smoke. Derricks, pumps, shacks, an' oil; the whole caboodle's doomed sure as I'm a foot high."

The face of the older man looked more wolfish than ever. He rubbed his hands together, washing one over the other so that each in turn was massaged. "Hell's bells! I'm sure glad to hear it. Fire got a good start, you say?"

"I tell you the whole country'll go up like powder."

If Steelman had not just reached Malapi from a visit to one of his sheep camps he would have known, what everybody else in town knew by this time, that the range for fifty miles was in danger and that hundreds of volunteers were out fighting the menace.

His eyes glistened. "I'll not wear mournin' none if it does just that."

"I'm tellin' you what it'll do," Doble insisted dogmatically.

"Shorty with you?"

"He was, an' he wasn't. I did it while he wasn't lookin'. He was saddlin' his horse in the brush. Don't make any breaks to him. Shorty's got a soft spot in him. Game enough, but with queer notions. Some time I'm liable to have to--" Doble left his sentence suspended in air, but Steelman, looking into his bleak eyes, knew what the man meant.

"What's wrong with him now, Dug?"

"Well, he's been wrong ever since I had to bump off Tim Harrigan. Talks about a fair break. As if I had a chance to let the old man get to a gun. No, I'm not so awful sure of Shorty."

"Better watch him. If you see him make any false moves--"

Doble watched him with a taunting, scornful eye.

"What'll I do?"

The other man's gaze fell. "Why, you got to protect yoreself, Dug, ain't you?"

"How?"

The narrow shoulders lifted. For a moment the small black eyes met those of the big man.

"Whatever way seems best to you, Dug," murmured Steelman evasively.

Doble slapped his dusty hat against his thigh. He laughed, without mirth or geniality. "If you don't beat Old Nick, Brad. I wonder was you ever out an' out straightforward in yore life. Just once?"

"I don't reckon you sure enough feel that way, Dug," whined the older man ingratiatingly. "Far as that goes, I'm not making any claims that I love my enemies. But you can't say I throw off on my friends. You always know where I'm at."

"Sure I know," retorted Doble bluntly. "You're on the inside of a heap of rotten deals. So am I. But I admit it and you won't."

"Well, I don't look at it that way, but there's no use arguin'. What about that fire? Sure it got a good start?"

"I looked back from across the valley. It was travelin' good."

"If the wind don't change, it will sure do a lot of damage to the Jackpot. Liable to spoil some of Crawford's range too."

"I'll take that thousand in cash, Brad," the big man said, letting himself down into the easiest chair he could find and rolling a cigarette.

"Soon as I know it did the work, Dug."

"I'm here tellin' you it will make a clean-up."

"We'll know by mornin'. I haven't got the money with me anyhow. It's in the bank."

"Get it soon as you can. I expect to light out again pronto. This town's onhealthy for me."

"Where will you stay?" asked Brad.

"With my friend Steelman," jeered Doble. "His invitation is so hearty I just can't refuse him."

"You'd be safer somewhere else," said the owner of the house after a pause.

"We'll risk that, me 'n' you both, for if I'm taken it's liable to be bad luck for you too.... Gimme something to eat and drink."

Steelman found a bottle of whiskey and a glass, then foraged for food in the kitchen. He returned with the shank of a ham and a loaf of bread. His fear was ill-disguised. The presence of the outlaw, if discovered, would bring him trouble; and Doble was so unruly he might out of sheer ennui or bravado let it be known he was there.

"I'll get you the money first thing in the mornin'," promised Steelman.

Doble poured himself a large drink and took it at a swallow. "I would, Brad."

"No use you puttin' yoreself in unnecessary danger."

"Or you. Don't hand me my hat, Brad. I'll go when I'm ready."

Doble drank steadily throughout the night. He was the kind of drinker that can take an incredible amount of liquor without becoming helpless. He remained steady on his feet, growing uglier and more reckless every hour.

Tied to Doble because he dared not break away from him, Steelman's busy brain began to plot a way to take advantage of this man's weakness for liquor. He sat across the table from him and adroitly stirred up his hatred of Crawford and Sanders. He raked up every grudge his guest had against the two men, calling to his mind how they had beaten him at every turn.

"O' course I know, Dug, you're a better man than Sanders or Crawford either, but Malapi don't know it--yet. Down at the Gusher I hear they laugh about that trick he played on you blowin' up the dam. Luck, I call it, but--"

"Laugh, do they?" growled the big man savagely. "I'd like to hear some o' that laughin'."

"Say this Sanders is a wonder; that nobody's got a chance against him. That's the talk goin' round. I said any day in the week you had him beat a mile, and they gave me the laugh."

"I'll show 'em!" cried the enraged bully with a furious oath.

"I'll bet you do. No man livin' can make a fool outa Dug Doble, rustle the evidence to send him to the pen, snap his fingers at him, and on top o' that steal his girl. That's what I told--"

Doble leaned across the table and caught in his great fist the wrist of Steelman. His bloodshot eyes glared into those of the man opposite. "What girl?" he demanded hoarsely.

Steelman looked blandly innocent. "Didn't you know, Dug? Maybe I ought n't to 'a' mentioned it."

Fingers like ropes of steel tightened on the wrist, Brad screamed.

"Don't do that, Dug! You're killin' me! Ouch! Em Crawford's girl."

"What about her and Sanders?"

"Why, he's courtin' her--treatin' her to ice-cream, goin' walkin' with her. Didn't you know?"

"When did he begin?" Doble slammed a hamlike fist on the table. "Spit it out, or I'll tear yore arm off."

Steelman told all he knew and a good deal more. He invented details calculated to infuriate his confederate, to inflame his jealousy. The big man sat with jaw clamped, the muscles knotted like ropes on his leathery face. He was a volcano of outraged vanity and furious hate, seething with fires ready to erupt.

"Some folks say it's Hart she's engaged to," purred the hatchet-faced tempter. "Maybeso. Looks to me like she's throwin' down Hart for this convict. Expect she sees he's gonna be a big man some day."

"Big man! Who says so?" exploded Doble.

"That's the word, Dug. I reckon you've heard how the Governor of Colorado pardoned him. This town's crazy about Sanders. Claims he was framed for the penitentiary. Right now he could be elected to any office he went after." Steelman's restless black eyes watched furtively the effect of his taunting on this man, a victim of wild and uncurbed passions. He was egging him on to a rage that would throw away all caution and all scruples.

"He'll never live to run for office!" the cattleman cried hoarsely.

"They talk him for sheriff. Say Applegate's no good--too easy-going. Say Sanders'll round up you an' Shorty pronto when he's given authority."

Doble ripped out a wild and explosive oath. He knew this man was playing on his vanity, jealousy, and hatred for some purpose not yet apparent, but he found it impossible to close his mind to the whisperings of the plotter. He welcomed the spur of Steelman's two-edged tongue because he wanted to have his purpose of vengeance fed.

"Sanders never saw the day he could take me, dead or alive. I'll meet him any time, any way, an' when I turn my back on him he'll be ready for the coroner."

"I believe you, Dug. No need to tell me you're not afraid of him, for--"

"Afraid of him!" bellowed Doble, eyes like live coals. "Say that again an' I'll twist yore head off."

Steelman did not say it again. He pushed the bottle toward his guest and said other things.

CHAPTER XXXV

FIRE IN THE CHAPARRAL

A carpenter working on the roof of a derrick for Jackpot Number Six called down to his mates:

"Fire in the hills, looks like. I see smoke."

The contractor was an old-timer. He knew the danger of fire in the chaparral at this season of the year.

"Run over to Number Four and tell Crawford," he said to his small son.

Crawford and Hart had just driven out from town.

"I'll shag up the tower and have a look," the younger man said.

He had with him no field-glasses, but his eyes were trained to long-distance work. Years in the saddle on the range had made him an expert at reading such news as the landscape had written on it.

"Fire in Bear Cañon!" he shouted down. "Quite a bit of smoke risin'."

"I'll ride right up and look it over," the cattleman called back. "Better get a gang together to fight it, Bob. Hike up soon as you're ready."

Crawford borrowed without permission of the owner the nearest saddle horse and put it to a lope. Five minutes might make all the difference between a winning and a losing fight.

From the tower Hart descended swiftly. He gathered together all the carpenters, drillers, enginemen, and tool dressers in the vicinity and equipped them with shovels, picks, brush-hooks, saws, and axes. To each one he gave also a gunnysack.

The foot party followed Crawford into the chaparral, making for the hills that led to Bear Cañon. A wind was stirring, and as they topped a rise it struck hot on their cheeks. A flake of ash fell on Bob's hand.

Crawford met them at the mouth of the cañon.

"She's rip-r'arin', Bob! Got too big a start to beat out. We'll clear a fire-break where the gulch narrows just above here and do our fightin' there."

The sparks of a thousand rockets, flung high by the wind, were swept down the gulch toward them. Behind these came a curtain of black smoke.

The cattleman set his crew to work clearing a wide trail across the gorge from wall to wall. The undergrowth was heavy, and the men attacked with brush-hooks, shovels, and axes. One man, with a wet gunnysack, was detailed to see that no flying sparks started a new blaze below the safety zone. The shovelers and grubbers cleared the grass and roots off to the dirt for a belt of twenty feet. They banked the loose dirt at the lower edge to catch flying firebrands. Meanwhile the breath of the furnace grew to a steady heat on their faces. Flame spurts had leaped forward to a grove of small alders and almost in a minute the branches were crackling like fireworks.

"I'll scout round over the hill and have a look above," Bob said. "We've got to keep it from spreading out of the gulch."

"Take the horse," Crawford called to him.

One good thing was that the fire was coming down the cañon. A downhill blaze moves less rapidly than one running up.

Runners of flame, crawling like snakes among the brush, struck out at the fighters venomously and tried to leap the trench. The defenders flailed at these with the wet gunnysacks.

The wind was stiffer now and the fury of the fire closer. The flames roared down the cañon like a blast furnace. Driven back by the intense heat, the men retreated across the break and clung to their line. Already their lungs were sore from inhaling smoke and their throats were inflamed. A pine, its pitchy trunk ablaze, crashed down across the fire-trail and caught in the fork of a tree beyond. Instantly the foliage leaped to red flame.

Crawford, axe in hand, began to chop the trunk and a big Swede swung an axe powerfully on the opposite side. The rest of the crew continued to beat down the fires that started below the break. The chips flew at each rhythmic stroke of the keen blades. Presently the tree crashed down into the trail that had been hewn. It served as a conductor, and along it tongues of fire leaped into the brush beyond. Glowing branches, flung by the wind and hurled from falling timber, buried themselves in the dry undergrowth. Before one blaze was crushed half a dozen others started in its place. Flails and gunnysacks beat these down and smothered them.

Bob galloped into the cañon and flung himself from the horse as he pulled it up in its stride.

"She's jumpin' outa the gulch above. Too late to head her off. We better get scrapers up and run a trail along the top o' the ridge, don't you reckon?" he said.

"Yes, son," agreed Crawford. "We can just about hold her here. It'll be hours before I can spare a man for the ridge. We got to get help in a hurry. You ride to town and rustle men. Bring out plenty of dynamite and gunnysacks. Lucky we got the tools out here we brought to build the sump holes."

"Betcha! We'll need a lot o' grub, too."

The cattleman nodded agreement. "And coffee. Cayn't have too much coffee. It's food and drink and helps keep the men awake."

"I'll remember."

"And for the love o' Heaven, don't forget canteens! Get every canteen in town. Cayn't have my men runnin' around with their tongues hangin' out. Better bring out a bunch of broncs to pack supplies around. It's goin' to be one man-sized contract runnin' the commissary."

The cañon above them was by this time a sea of fire, the most terrifying sight Bob had ever looked upon. Monster flames leaped at the walls of the gulch, swept in an eyebeat over draws, attacked with a savage roar the dry vegetation. The noise was like the crash of mountains meeting. Thunder could scarce have made itself heard.

Rocks, loosened by the heat, tore down the steep incline of the walls, sometimes singly, sometimes in slides. These hit the bed of the ravine with the force of a cannon-ball. The workers had to keep a sharp lookout for these.

A man near Bob was standing with his weight on the shovel he had been using. Hart gave a shout of warning. At the same moment a large rock struck the handle and snapped it off as though it had been kindling wood. The man wrung his hands and almost wept with the pain.

A cottontail ran squealing past them, driven from its home by this new and deadly enemy. Not far away a rattlesnake slid across the hot rocks. Their common fear of man was lost in a greater and more immediate one.

Hart did not like to leave the battle-field. "Lemme stay here. You can handle that end of the job better'n me, Mr. Crawford."

The old cattleman, his face streaked with black, looked at him from bloodshot eyes. "Where do you get that notion I'll quit a job I've started, son? You hit the trail. The sooner the quicker."

The young man wasted no more words. He swung to the saddle and rode for town faster than he had ever traveled in all his hard-riding days.

CHAPTER XXXVI

FIGHTING FIRE

Sanders was in the office of the Jackpot Company looking over some blue-prints when Joyce Crawford came in and inquired where her father was.

"He went out with Bob Hart to the oil field this morning. Some trouble with the casing."

"Thought Dad wasn't giving any of his time to oil these days," she said. "He told me you and Bob were running the company."

"Every once in a while he takes an interest. I prod him up to go out and look things over occasionally. He's president of the company, and I tell him he ought to know what's going on. So to-day he's out there."

"Oh!" Miss Joyce, having learned what she had come in to find out, might reasonably have departed. She declined a chair, said she must be going, yet did not go. Her eyes appeared to study without seeing a field map on the desk. "Dad told me something last night, Mr. Sanders. He said I might pass it on to you and Bob, though it isn't to go farther. It's about that ten thousand dollars he paid the bank when it called his loan. He got the money from Buck Byington."

"Buck!" exclaimed the young man. He was thinking that the Buck he used to know never had ten dollars saved, let alone ten thousand.

"I know," she explained. "That's it. The money wasn't his. He's executor or something for the children of his dead brother. This money had come in from the sale of a farm back in Iowa and he was waiting for an order of the court for permission to invest it in a mortgage. When he heard Dad was so desperately hard up for cash he let him have the money. He knew Dad would pay it back, but it seems what he did was against the law, even though Dad gave him his note and a chattel mortgage on some cattle which Buck wasn't to record. Now it has been straightened out. That's why Dad couldn't tell where he got the money. Buck would have been in trouble."

"I see."

"But now it's all right." Joyce changed the subject. There were teasing pinpoints of mischief in her eyes. "My school physiology used to say that sleep was restful. It builds up worn-out tissue and all. One of these nights, when you can find time, give it a trial and see whether that's true."

Dave laughed. The mother in this young woman would persistently out. "I get plenty of sleep, Miss Joyce. Most people sleep too much."

"How much do you sleep?"

"Sometimes more, sometimes less. I average six or seven hours, maybe."

"Maybe," she scoffed.

"Hard work doesn't hurt men. Not when they're young and strong."

"I hear you're trying to work yourself to death, sir," the girl charged, smiling.

"Not so bad as that." He answered her smile with another for no reason except that the world was a sunshiny one when he looked at this trim and dainty young woman. "The work gets fascinating. A fellow likes to get things done. There's a satisfaction in turning out a full day and in feeling you get results."

She nodded sagely, in a brisk, business-like way. "I know. Felt it myself often, but we have to remember that there are other days and other people to lend a hand. None of us can do it all. Dad thinks you overdo. So he told me to ask you to supper for to-morrow night. Bob will be there too."

"I say thanks, Miss Joyce, to your father and his daughter."

"Which means you'll be with us to-morrow."

"I'll be with you."

But he was not. Even as he made the promise a shadow darkened the doorsill and Bob Hart stepped into the office.

His first words were ominous, but before he spoke both of those looking at him knew he was the bearer of bad news. There was in his boyish face an unwonted gravity.

"Fire in the chaparral, Dave, and going strong."

Sanders spoke one word. "Where?"

"Started in Bear Cañon, but it's jumped out into the hills."

"The wind must be driving it down toward the Jackpot!"

"Yep. Like a scared rabbit. Crawford's trying to hold the mouth of the cañon. He's got a man's job down there. Can't spare a soul to keep it from scootin' over the hills."

Dave rose. "I'll gather a bunch of men and ride right out. On what side of the cañon is the fire running?"

"East side. Stop at the wells and get tools. I got to rustle dynamite and men. Be out soon as I can."

They spoke quietly, quickly, decisively, as men of action do in a crisis.

Joyce guessed the situation was a desperate one. "Is Dad in danger?" she asked.

Hart answered. "No--not now, anyhow."

"What can I do to help?"

"We'll have hundreds of men in the field probably, if this fire has a real start," Dave told her. "We'll need food and coffee--lots of it. Organize the women. Make meat sandwiches--hundreds of them. And send out to the Jackpot dozens of coffee-pots. Your job is to keep the workers well fed. Better send out bandages and salve, in case some get burnt."

Her eyes were shining. "I'll see to all that. Don't worry, boys. You fight this fire, and we women will 'tend to feeding you."

Dave nodded and strode out of the room. During the fierce and dreadful days that followed one memory more than once came to him in the fury of the battle. It was a slim, straight girl looking at him, the call to service stamped on her brave, uplifted face.

Sanders was on the road inside of twenty minutes, a group of horsemen galloping at his heels. At the Jackpot locations the fire-fighters equipped themselves with shovels, sacks, axes, and brush-hooks. The party, still on horseback, rode up to the mouth of Bear Cañon. Through the smoke the sun was blood-red. The air was heavy and heated.

From the fire line Crawford came to meet these new allies. "We're holdin' her here. It's been nip an' tuck. Once I thought sure she'd break through, but we beat out the blaze. I hadn't time to go look, but I expect she's just a-r'arin' over the hills. I've had some teams and scrapers taken up there, Dave. It's yore job. Go to it."

The old cattleman showed that he had been through a fight. His eyes were red and inflamed, his face streaked with black, one arm of his shirt half torn from the shoulder. But he wore the grim look of a man who has just begun to set himself for a struggle.

The horsemen swung to the east and rode up to the mesa which lies between Bear and Cattle Cañons. It was impossible to get near Bear, since the imprisoned fury had burst from its walls and was sweeping the chaparral. The line of fire was running along the level in an irregular, ragged front, red tongues leaping ahead with short, furious rushes.

Even before he could spend time to determine the extent of the fire, Dave selected his line of defense, a ridge of rocky, higher ground cutting across from one gulch to the other. Here he set teams to work scraping a fire-break, while men assisted with shovels and brush-hooks to clear a wide path.

Dave swung still farther east and rode along the edge of Cattle Cañon. Narrow and rock-lined, the gorge was like a boiler flue to suck the flames down it. From where he sat he saw it caging with inconceivable fury. The earth rift seemed to be roofed with flame. Great billows of black smoke poured out laden with sparks and live coals carried by the wind. It was plain at the first glance that the fire was bound to leap from the cañon to the brush-covered hills beyond. His business now was to hold the ridge he had chosen and fight back the flames to keep them from pouring down upon the Jackpot property. Later the battle would have to be fought to hold the line at San Jacinto Cañon and the hills running down from it to the plains.

The surface fire on the hills licked up the brush, mesquite, and young cedars with amazing rapidity. If his trail-break was built in time, Dave meant to back-fire above it. Steve Russell was one of his party. Sanders appointed him lieutenant and went over the ground with him to decide exactly where the clearing should run, after which he galloped back to the mouth of Bear.

"She's running wild on the hills and in Cattle Cañon," Dave told Crawford. "She'll sure jump Cattle and reach San Jacinto. We've got to hold the mouth of Cattle, build a trail between Bear and Cattle, another between Cattle and San Jacinto, cork her up in San Jacinto, and keep her from jumping to the hills beyond."

"Can we back-fire, do you reckon?"

"Not with the wind there is above, unless we have check-trails built first. We need several hundred more men, and we need them right away. I never saw such a fire before."

"Well, get yore trail built. Bob oughtta be out soon. I'll put him over between Cattle and San Jacinto. Three-four men can hold her here now. I'll move my outfit over to the mouth of Cattle."

The cattleman spoke crisply and decisively. He had been fighting fire for six hours without a moment's rest, swallowing smoke-filled air, enduring the blistering heat that poured steadily at them down the gorge. At least two of his men were lying down completely exhausted, but he contemplated another such desperate battle without turning a hair. All his days he had been a good fighter, and it never occurred to him to quit now.

Sanders rode up as close to the west edge of Bear Cañon as he could endure. In two or three places the flames had jumped the wall and were trying to make headway in the scant underbrush of the rocky slope that led to a hogback surmounted by a bare rimrock running to the summit. This natural barrier would block the fire on the west, just as the burnt-over area would protect the north. For the present at least the fire-fighters could confine their efforts to the south and east, where the spread of the blaze would involve the Jackpot. A shift in the wind would change the situation, and if it came in time would probably save the oil property.

Dave put his horse to a lope and rode back to the trench and trail his men were building. He found a shovel and joined them.

From out of Cattle Cañon billows of smoke rolled across the hill and settled into a black blanket above the men. This was acrid from the resinous pitch of the pines. The wind caught the dark pall, drove it low, and held it there till the workers could hardly breathe. The sun was under entire eclipse behind the smoke screen.

The heat of the flames tortured Dave's face and hands, just as the smoke-filled air inflamed his nostrils and throat. Coals of fire pelted him from the river of flame, carried by the strong breeze blowing down. From the cañons on either side of the workers came a steady roar of a world afire. Occasionally, at some slight shift of the wind, the smoke lifted and they could see the moving wall of fire bearing down upon them, wedges of it far ahead of the main line.

The movements of the workers became automatic. The teams had to be removed because the horses had become unmanageable under the torture of the heat. When any one spoke it was in a hoarse whisper because of a swollen larynx. Mechanically they dug, shoveled, grubbed, handkerchiefs over their faces to protect from the furnace glow.

A deer with two fawns emerged from the smoke and flew past on the way to safety. Mice, snakes, rabbits, birds, and other desert denizens appeared in mad flight. They paid no attention whatever to their natural foe, man. The terror of the red monster at their heels wholly obsessed them.

The fire-break was from fifteen to twenty feet wide. The men retreated back of it, driven by the heat, and fought with wet sacks to hold the enemy. A flash of lightning was hurled against Dave. It was a red-hot limb of a pine, tossed out of the gorge by the stiff wind. He flung it from him and tore the burning shirt from his chest. An agony of pain shot through his shoulder, seared for half a foot by the blazing branch.

He had no time to attend to the burn then. The fire had leaped the check-trail at a dozen points. With his men he tried to smother the flames in the grass by using saddle blankets and gunnysacks, as well as by shoveling sand upon it. Sometimes they cut down the smouldering brush and flung it back across the break into the inferno on the other side. Blinded and strangling from the smoke, the fire-fighters would make short rushes into the clearer air, swallow a breath or two of it, and plunge once more into the line to do battle with the foe.

For hours the desperate battle went on. Dave lost count of time. One after another of his men retreated to rest. After a time they drifted back to help make the defense good against the plunging fire devil. Sanders alone refused to retire. His parched eyebrows were half gone. His clothes hung about him in shredded rags. He was so exhausted that he could hardly wield a flail. His legs dragged and his arms hung heavy. But he would not give up even for an hour. Through the confused, shifting darkness of the night he led his band, silhouetted on the ridge like gnomes of the nether world, to attack after attack on the tireless, creeping, plunging flames that leaped the trench in a hundred desperate assaults, that howled and hissed and roared like ravenous beasts of prey.

Before the light of day broke he knew that he had won. His men had made good the check-trail that held back the fire in the terrain between Bear and Cattle Cañons. The fire, worn out and beaten, fell back for lack of fuel upon which to feed.

Reinforcements came from town. Dave left the trail in charge of a deputy and staggered down with his men to the camp that had been improvised below. He sat down with them and swallowed coffee and ate sandwiches. Steve Russell dressed his burn with salve and bandages sent out by Joyce.

"Me for the hay, Dave," the cowpuncher said when he had finished. He stretched himself in a long, tired, luxurious yawn. "I've rid out a blizzard and I've gathered cattle after a stampede till I 'most thought I'd drop outa the saddle. But I give it to this here li'l' fire. It's sure enough a stemwinder. I'm beat. So long, pardner."

Russell went off to roll himself up in his blanket.

Dave envied him, but he could not do the same. His responsibilities were not ended yet. He found his horse in the remuda, saddled, and rode over to the entrance to Cattle Cañon.

Emerson Crawford was holding his ground, though barely holding it. He too was grimy, fire-blackened, exhausted, but he was still fighting to throw back the fire that swept down the cañon at him.

"How are things up above?" he asked in a hoarse whisper.

"Good. We held the check-line."

"Same here so far. It's been hell. Several of my boys fainted."

"I'll take charge awhile. You go and get some sleep," urged Sanders.

The cattleman shook his head. "No. See it through. Say, son, look who's here!" His thumb hitched toward his right shoulder.

Dave looked down the line of blackened, grimy fire-fighters and his eye fell on Shorty. He was still wearing chaps, but his Chihuahua hat had succumbed long ago. Manifestly the man had been on the fighting line for some hours.

"Doesn't he know about the reward?"

"Yes. He was hidin' in Malapi when the call came for men. Says he's no quitter, whatever else he is. You bet he ain't. He's worth two of most men at this work. Soon as we get through he'll be on the dodge again, I reckon, unless Applegate gets him first. He's a good sport, anyhow. I'll say that for him."

"I reckon I'm a bad citizen, sir, but I hope he makes his getaway before Applegate shows up."

"Well, he's one tough scalawag, but I don't aim to give him away right now. Shorty is a whole lot better proposition than Dug Doble."

Dave came back to the order of the day. "What do you want me to do now?"

The cattleman looked him over. "You damaged much?"

"No."

"Burnt in the shoulder, I see."

"Won't keep me from swinging a sack and bossing a gang."

"Wore out, I reckon?"

"I feel fine since breakfast--took two cups of strong coffee."

Again Crawford's eyes traveled over his ally. They saw a ragged, red-eyed tramp, face and hands and arms blackened with char and grimed with smoke. Outside, he was such a specimen of humanity as the police would have arrested promptly on suspicion. But the shrewd eyes of the cattleman saw more--a spirit indomitable that would drive the weary, tormented body till it dropped in its tracks, a quality of leadership that was a trumpet call to the men who served with him, a soul master of its infirmities. His heart went out to the young fellow. Wherefore he grinned and gave him another job. Strong men to-day were at a premium with Emerson Crawford.

"Ride over and see how Bob's comin' out. We'll make it here."

Sanders swung to the saddle and moved forward to the next fire front, the one between Cattle and San Jacinto Cañons. Hart himself was not here. There had come a call for help from the man in charge of the gang trying to hold the fire in San Jacinto. He had answered that summons long before daybreak and had not yet returned.

The situation on the Cattle-San Jacinto front was not encouraging. The distance to be protected was nearly a mile. Part of the way was along a ridge fairly easy to defend, but a good deal of it lay in lower land of timber and heavy brush.

Dave rode along the front, studying the contour of the country and the chance of defending it. His judgment was that it could not be done with the men on hand. He was not sure that the line could be held even with reinforcements. But there was nothing for it but to try. He sent a man to Crawford, urging him to get help to him as soon as possible.

Then he took command of the crew already in the field, rearranged the men so as to put the larger part of his force in the most dangerous locality, and in default of a sack seized a spreading branch as a flail to beat out fire in the high grass close to San Jacinto.

An hour later half a dozen straggling men reported for duty. Shorty was one of them.

"The ol' man cayn't spare any more," the rustler explained. "He had to hustle Steve and his gang outa their blankets to go help Bob Hart. They say Hart's in a heluva bad way. The fire's jumped the trail-check and is spreadin' over the country. He's runnin' another trail farther back."

It occurred to Dave that if the wind changed suddenly and heightened, it would sweep a back-fire round him and cut off the retreat of his crew. He sent a weary lad back to keep watch on it and report any change of direction in that vicinity.

After which he forgot all about chances of danger from the rear. His hands and mind were more than busy trying to drive back the snarling, ravenous beast in front of him. He might have found time to take other precautions if he had known that the exhausted boy sent to watch against a back-fire had, with the coming of night, fallen asleep in a draw.

CHAPTER XXXVII

SHORTY ASKS A QUESTION

When Shorty separated from Doble in Frio Cañon he rode inconspicuously to a tendejon where he could be snugly hidden from the public gaze and yet meet a few "pals" whom he could trust at least as long as he could keep his eyes on them. His intention was to have a good time in the only way he knew how. Another purpose was coupled with this; he was not going to drink enough to interfere with reasonable caution.

Shorty's dissipated pleasures were interfered with shortly after midnight. A Mexican came in to the drinking-place with news. The world was on fire, at least that part of it which interested the cattlemen of the Malapi district. The blaze had started back of Bear Cañon and had been swept by the wind across to Cattle and San Jacinto. The oil field adjacent had been licked up and every reservoir and sump was in flames. The whole range would probably be wiped out before the fire spent itself for lack of fuel. Crawford had posted a rider to town calling for more man power to build trails and wield flails. This was the sum of the news. It was not strictly accurate, but it served to rouse Shorty at once.

He rose and touched the Mexican on the arm. "Where you say that fire started, Pedro?"

"Bear Cañon, señor."

"And it's crossed San Jacinto?"

"Like wildfire." The slim vaquero made a gesture all-inclusive. "It runs, señor, like a frightened jackrabbit. Nothing will stop it--nothing. It iss sent by heaven for a punishment."

"Hmp!" Shorty grunted.

The rustler fell into a somber silence. He drank no more. The dark-lashed eyes of the Mexican girls slanted his way in vain. He stared sullenly at the table in front of him. A problem had pushed itself into his consciousness, one he could not brush aside or ignore.

If the fire had started back of Bear Cañon, what agency had set it going? He and Doble had camped last night at that very spot. If there had been a fire there during the night he must have known it. Then when had the fire started? And how? They had seen the faint smoke of it as they rode away, the filmy smoke of a young fire not yet under much headway. Was it reasonable to suppose that some one else had been camping close to them? This was possible, but not likely. For they would probably have seen signs of the other evening camp-fire.

Eliminating this possibility, there remained--Dug Doble. Had Dug fired the brush while his companion was saddling for the start? The more Shorty considered this possibility, the greater force it acquired in his mind. Dug's hatred of Crawford, Hart, and especially Sanders would be satiated in part at least if he could wipe their oil bonanza from the map. The wind had been right. Doble was no fool. He knew that if the fire ran wild in the chaparral only a miracle could save the Jackpot reservoirs and plant from destruction.

Other evidence accumulated. Cryptic remarks of Doble made during the day. His anxiety to see Steelman immediately. A certain manner of ill-repressed triumph whenever he mentioned Sanders or Crawford. These bolstered Shorty's growing opinion that the man had deliberately fired the chaparral from a spirit of revenge.

Shorty was an outlaw and a bad man. He had killed, and might at any time kill again. To save the Jackpot from destruction he would not have made a turn of the hand. But Shorty was a cattleman. He had been brought up in the saddle and had known the whine of the lariat and the dust of the drag drive all his days. Every man has his code. Three things stood out in that of Shorty. He was loyal to the hand that paid him, he stood by his pals, and he believed in and after his own fashion loved cattle and the life of which they were the central fact. To destroy the range feed wantonly was a crime so nefarious that he could not believe Doble guilty of it. And yet--

He could not let the matter lie in doubt. He left the tendejon and rode to Steelman's house. Before entering he examined carefully both of his long-barreled forty-fives. He made sure that the six-shooters were in perfect order and that they rested free in the holsters. That sixth sense acquired by "bad men," by means of which they sniff danger when it is close, was telling him that smoke would rise before he left the house.

He stepped to the porch and knocked. There came a moment's silence, a low-pitched murmur of whispering voices carried through an open window, the shuffling of feet. The door was opened by Brad Steelman. He was alone in the room.

"Where's Dug?" asked Shorty bluntly.

"Why, Dug--why, he's here, Shorty. Didn't know it was you. 'Lowed it might be some one else. So he stepped into another room."

The short cowpuncher walked in and closed the door behind him. He stood with his back to it, facing the other door of the room.

"Did you hire Dug to fire the chaparral?" he asked, his voice ominously quiet.

A flicker of fear shot to the eyes of the oil promoter. He recognized signs of peril and his heart was drenched with an icy chill. Shorty was going to turn on him, had become a menace.

"I--I dunno what you mean," he quavered. "I'll call Dug if you wanta see him." He began to shuffle toward the inner room.

"Hold yore hawsses, Brad. I asked you a question." The cold eyes of the gunman bored into those of the other man. "Howcome you to hire Dug to burn the range?"

"You know I wouldn't do that," the older man whined. "I got sheep, ain't I? Wouldn't be reasonable I'd destroy their feed. No, you got a wrong notion about--"

"Yore sheep ain't on the south slope range." Shorty's mind had moved forward one notch toward certainty. Steelman's manner was that of a man dodging the issue. It carried no conviction of innocence. "How much you payin' him?"

The door of the inner room opened. Dug Doble's big frame filled the entrance. The eyes of the two gunmen searched each other. Those of Doble asked a question. Had it come to a showdown? Steelman sidled over to the desk where he worked and sat down in front of it. His right hand dropped into an open drawer, apparently carelessly and without intent.

Shorty knew at once that Doble had been drinking heavily. The man was morose and sullen. His color was high. Plainly he was primed for a killing if trouble came.

"Lookin' for me, Shorty?" he asked.

"You fired Bear Cañon," charged the cowpuncher.

"So?"

"When I went to saddle."

Doble's eyes narrowed. "You aimin' to run my business, Shorty?"

Neither man lifted his gaze from the other. Each knew that the test had come once more. They were both men who had "gone bad," in the current phrase of the community. Both had killed. Both searched now for an advantage in that steady duel of the eyes. Neither had any fear. The emotions that dominated were cold rage and caution. Every sense and nerve in each focalized to one purpose--to kill without being killed.

"When yore's is mine, Dug."

"Is this yore's?"

"Sure is. I've stood for a heap from you. I've let yore ugly temper ride me. When you killed Tim Harrigan you got me in bad. Not the first time either. But I'm damned if I'll ride with a coyote low-down enough to burn the range."

"No?"

"No."

From the desk came the sharp angry bark of a revolver. Shorty felt his hat lift as a bullet tore through the rim. His eyes swept to Steelman, who had been a negligible factor in his calculations. The man fired again and blew out the light. In the darkness Shorty swept out both guns and fired. His first two shots were directed toward the man behind the desk, the next two at the spot where Doble had been standing. Another gun was booming in the room, perhaps two. Yellow fire flashes ripped the blackness.

Shorty whipped open the door at his back, slid through it, and kicked it shut with his foot as he leaped from the porch. At the same moment he thought he heard a groan.

Swiftly he ran to the cottonwood where he had left his horse tied. He jerked loose the knot, swung to the saddle, and galloped out of town.

The drumming of hoofs came down the wind to a young fellow returning from a late call on his sweetheart. He wondered who was in such a hurry.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

DUG DOBLE RIDES INTO THE HILLS

The booming of the guns died down. The acrid smoke that filled the room lifted to shredded strata. A man's deep breathing was the only sound in the heavy darkness.

Presently came a soft footfall of some one moving cautiously. A match flared. A hand cupped the flame for an instant to steady it before the match moved toward the wick of a kerosene lamp.

Dug Doble's first thought was for his own safety. The house door was closed, the window blinds were down. He had heard the beat of hoofs die away on the road. But he did not intend to be caught by a trick. He stepped forward, locked the door, and made sure the blinds were offering no cracks of light. Satisfied that all was well, he turned to the figure sprawled on the floor with outflung arms.

"Dead as a stuck shote," he said callously after he had turned the body over. "Got him plumb through the forehead--in the dark, too. Some shootin', Shorty."

He stood looking down at the face of the man whose brain had spun so many cobwebs of deceit and treachery. Even in death it had none of that dignity which sometimes is lent to those whose lives have been full of meanness and guile. But though Doble looked at his late ally, he was not thinking about him. He was mapping out his future course of action.

If any one had heard the shots and he were found here now, no jury on earth could be convinced that he had not killed Steelman. His six-shooter still gave forth a faint trickle of smoke. An examination would show that three shots had been fired from it.

He must get away from the place at once.

Doble poured himself half a tumbler of whiskey and drank it neat. Yes, he must go, but he might as well take with him any money Steelman had in the safe. The dead man owed him a thousand dollars he would never be able to collect in any other way.

He stooped and examined the pockets of the still figure. A bunch of keys rewarded him. An old-fashioned safe stood in the corner back of the desk. Doble stooped in front of it, then waited for an instant to make sure nobody was coming. He fell to work, trying the keys one after another.

A key fitted. He turned it and swung open the door. The killer drew out bundles of papers and glanced through them hurriedly. Deeds, mortgages, oil stocks, old receipts: he wanted none of these, and tossed them to the floor as soon as he discovered there were no banknotes among them. Compartment after compartment he rifled. Behind a package of abstracts he found a bunch of greenbacks tied together by a rubber band at each end. The first bill showed that the denomination was fifty dollars. Doble investigated no farther. He thrust the bulky package into his inside coat pocket and rose.

Again he listened. No sound broke the stillness of the night. The silence got on his nerves. He took another big drink and decided it was time to go.

He blew out the light and once more listened. The lifeless body of his ally lying within touch of his foot did not disturb the outlaw. He had not killed him, and if he had it would have made no difference. Very softly for a large man, he passed to the inner room and toward the back door. He deflected his course to a cupboard where he knew Steelman kept liquor and from a shelf helped himself to an unbroken quart bottle of bourbon. He knew himself well enough to know that during the next twenty-four hours he would want whiskey badly.

Slowly he unlocked and opened the back door. His eyes searched the yard and the open beyond to make sure that neither his enemy nor a sheriff's posse was lurking in the brush for him. He crept out to the stable, revolver in hand. Here he saddled in the dark, deftly and rapidly, thrusting the bottle of whiskey into one of the pockets of the saddlebags. Leading the horse out into the mesquite, he swung to the saddle and rode away.

He was still in the saddle when the peaks above caught the morning sun glow in a shaft of golden light. Far up in the gulches the new fallen snow reflected the dawn's pink.

In a pocket of the hills Doble unsaddled. He hobbled his horse and turned it loose to graze while he lay down under a pine with the bottle for a companion.

The man had always had a difficult temper. This had grown on him and been responsible largely for his decline in life. It had been no part of his plan to "go bad." There had been a time when he had been headed for success in the community. He had held men's respect, even though they had not liked him. Then, somehow, he had turned the wrong corner and been unable to retrace his steps.

He could even put a finger on the time he had commenced to slip. It had begun when he had quarreled with Emerson Crawford about his daughter Joyce. Shorty and he had done some brand-burning through a wet blanket. But he had not gone so far that a return to respectability was impossible. A little rustling on the quiet, with no evidence to fasten it on one, was nothing to bar a man from society. He had gone more definitely wrong after Sanders came back to Malapi. The young ex-convict, he chose to think, was responsible for the circumstances that made of him an outlaw. Crawford and Sanders together had exposed him and driven him from the haunts of men to the hills. He hated them both with a bitter, morose virulence his soul could not escape.

Throughout the day he continued to drink. This gave him no refuge from himself. He still brooded in the inferno of his own thought-circle. It is possible that a touch of madness had begun to affect his brain. Certainly his subsequent actions would seem to bear out this theory.

Revenge! The thought of it spurred him every waking hour, roweling his wounded pride cruelly. There was a way within reach of his hand, one suggested by Steelman's whisperings, though never openly advocated by the sheepman. The jealousy of the man urged him to it, and his consuming vanity persuaded him that out of evil might come good. He could make the girl love him. So her punishment would bring her joy in the end. As for Crawford and Sanders, his success would be such bitter medicine to them that time would never wear away the taste of it.

At dusk he rose and resaddled. Under the stars he rode back to Malapi. He knew exactly what he meant to do and how he meant to do it.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE TUNNEL

Dave knew no rest that night. He patrolled his line from San Jacinto to Cattle and back again, stopping always to lend a hand where the attack was most furious. The men of his crew were weary to exhaustion, but the pressure of the fire was so great that they dared not leave the front. As soon as one blaze was beaten out, another started. A shower of sparks close to Cattle Cañon swept over the ridge and set the thick grass afire. This was smothered with saddle blankets and with sand and dirt thrown from shovels.

Nearer to San Jacinto Cañon the danger was more acute. Dave did not dare back-fire on account of the wind. He dynamited the timber to make a trail-break against the howling, roaring wall of fire plunging forward.

As soon as the flames seized the timber the heat grew more intense. The sound of falling trees as they crashed down marked the progress of the fire. The men retreated, staggering with exhaustion, hands and faces flayed, eyes inflamed and blinded by the black smoke that rolled over them.

A stiff wind was blowing, but it was no longer a steady one. Sometimes it bore from the northeast; again in a cross-current almost directly from the east. The smoke poured in, swirling round them till they scarce knew one direction from another.

The dense cloud lifted for a moment, swept away by an air current. To the fire-fighters that glimpse of the landscape told an appalling fact. The demon had escaped below from San Jacinto Cañon and been swept westward by a slant of wind with the speed of an express train. They were trapped by the back-fire in a labyrinth from which there appeared no escape. Every path of exit was blocked. The flames had leaped from hilltop to hilltop.

The men gathered together to consult. Many of them were on the verge of panic.

Dave spoke quietly. "We've got a chance if we keep our heads. There's an old mining tunnel hereabouts. Follow me, and stay together."

He plunged into the heavy smoke that had fallen about them again, working his way by instinct rather than by sight. Twice he stopped, to make sure that his men were all at heel. Several times he left them, diving into the smoke to determine which way they must go.

The dry, salt crackle of a dead pine close at hand would have told him, even if the oppressive heat had not, that the fire would presently sweep over the ground where they stood. He drew the men steadily toward Cattle Cañon.

In that furious, murk-filled world he could not be sure he was moving in the right direction, though the slope of the ground led him to think so. Falling trees crashed about them. The men staggered on in the uncanny light which tinged even the smoke.

Dave stopped and gave sharp, crisp orders. His voice was even and steady. "Must be close to it now. Lie back of these down trees with your faces close to the ground. I'll be back in a minute. Shorty, you're boss of the crew while I'm away."

"You're gonna leave us to roast," a man accused, in a voice that was half a scream.

Sanders did not stop to answer him, but Shorty took the hysterical man in hand. "Git down by that log pronto or I'll bore a hole in you. Ain't you got sense enough to see he'll save us if there's a chance?"

The man fell trembling to the ground.

"Two men behind each log," ordered Shorty. "If yore clothes git afire, help each other put it out."

They lay down and waited while the fire swept above and around them. Fortunately the woods here were not dense. Men prayed or cursed or wept, according to their natures. The logs in front of some of them caught fire and spread to their clothing. Shorty's voice encouraged them.

"Stick it out, boys. He'll be back if he's alive."

It could have been only minutes, but it seemed hours before the voice of Sanders rang out above the fury of the blast.

"All up! I've found the tunnel! Step lively now!"

They staggered after their leader, Shorty bringing up the rear to see that none collapsed by the way. The line moved drunkenly forward. Now and again a man went down, overcome by the smoke and heat. With brutal kicks Shorty drove him to his feet again.

The tunnel was a shallow one in a hillside. Dave stood aside and counted the men as they passed in. Two were missing. He ran along the back trail, dense with smoke from the approaching flames, and stumbled into a man. It was Shorty. He was dragging with him the body of a man who had fainted. Sanders seized an arm and together they managed to get the unconscious victim to the tunnel.

Dave was the last man in. He learned from the men in the rear that the tunnel had no drift. The floor was moist and there was a small seepage spring in it near the entrance.

Some of the men protested at staying.

"The fire'll lick in and burn us out like rats," one man urged. "This ain't no protection. We've just walked into a trap. I'll take my chance outside."

Dave reached forward and lifted one of Shorty's guns from its holster. "You'll stay right here, Dillon. We didn't make it one minute too soon. The whole hill out there's roaring."

"I'll take my chance out there. That's my lookout," said the man, moving toward the entrance.

"No. You'll stay here." Dave's hard, chill gaze swept over his crew. Several of them were backing Dillon and others were wavering. "It's your only chance, and I'm here to see you take it. Don't take another step."

Dillon took one, and went crumpling to the granite floor before Dave could move. Shorty had knocked him down with the butt of his nine-inch-barrel revolver.

Already smoke was filling the cave. The fire had raced to its mouth and was licking in with long, red, hungry tongues. The tunnel timbers were smouldering.

"Lie down and breathe the air close to the ground," ordered Dave, just as though a mutiny had not been quelled a moment before. "Stay down there. Don't get up."

He found an old tomato can and used it to throw water from the seep-spring upon the burning wood. Shorty and one or two of the other men helped him. The heat near the mouth was so intense they could not stand it. All but Sanders collapsed and staggered back to sink down to the fresher air below.

Their place of refuge packed with smoke. A tree crashed down at the mouth and presently a second one. These, blazing, sent more heat in to cook the tortured men inside. In that bakehouse of hell men showed again their nature, cursing, praying, storming, or weeping as they lay.

The prospect hole became a madhouse. A big Hungarian, crazed by the torment he was enduring, leaped to his feet and made for the blazing hill outside.

"Back there!" Dave shouted hoarsely.

The big fellow rushed him. His leader flung him back against the rock wall. He rushed again, screaming in crazed anger. Sanders struck him down with the long barrel of the forty-five. The Hungarian lay where he fell for a few minutes, then crawled back from the mouth of the pit.

At intervals others tried to break out and were driven back.

Dave's eyebrows crisped away. He could scarcely draw a breath through his inflamed throat. His eyes were swollen and almost blinded with smoke. His lungs ached. Whenever he took a step he staggered. But he stuck to his job hardily. The tomato can moved more jerkily. It carried less water. But it still continued to drench the blazing timbers at the mouth of the tunnel.

So Dave held the tunnel entrance against the fire and against his own racked and tortured men. Occasionally he lay down to breathe the air close to the floor. There was no circulation, for the tunnel ended in a wall face. But the smoke was not so heavy close to the ground.

Man after man succumbed to the stupor of unconsciousness. Men choked, strangled, and even died while their leader, his hair burnt and his eyes almost sightless, face and body raw with agonizing wounds, crept feebly about his business of saving their lives.

Fire-crisped and exhausted, he dropped down at last into forgetfulness of pain. And the flames, which had fought with such savage fury to blot out the little group of men, fell back sullenly in defeat. They had spent themselves and could do no more.

The line of fire had passed over them. It left charred trees still burning, a hillside black and smoking, desolation and ruin in its path.

Out of the prospect hole a man crawled over Dave's prostrate body. He drew a breath of sweet, delicious air. A cool wind lifted the hair from his forehead. He tried to give a cowpuncher's yell of joy. From out of his throat came only a cracked and raucous rumble. The man was Shorty.

He crept back into the tunnel and whispered hoarsely the good news. Men came out on all fours over the bodies of those who could not move. Shorty dragged Dave into the open. He was a sorry sight. The shirt had been almost literally burned from his body.

In the fresh air the men revived quickly. They went back into the cavern and dragged out those of their companions not yet able to help themselves. Three out of the twenty-nine would never help themselves again. They had perished in the tunnel.

CHAPTER XL

A MESSAGE

The women of Malapi responded generously to the call Joyce made upon them to back their men in the fight against the fire in the chaparral. They were simple folk of a generation not far removed from the pioneer one which had settled the country. Some of them had come across the plains in white-topped movers' wagons. Others had lain awake in anxiety on account of raiding Indians on the war-path. All had lived lives of frugal usefulness. It is characteristic of the frontier that its inhabitants help each other without stint when the need for service arises. Now they cooked and baked cheerfully to supply the wants of the fire-fighters.

Joyce was in command of the commissary department. She ordered and issued supplies, checked up the cooked food, and arranged for its transportation to the field of battle. The first shipment went out about the middle of the afternoon of the first day of the fire. A second one left town just after midnight. A third was being packed during the forenoon of the second day.

Though Joyce had been up most of the night, she showed no signs of fatigue. In spite of her slenderness, the girl was possessed of a fine animal vigor. There was vitality in her crisp tread. She was a decisive young woman who got results competently.

A bustling old lady with the glow of winter apples in her wrinkled cheeks remonstrated with her.

"You can't do it all, dearie. If I was you I'd go home and rest now. Take a nice long nap and you'll feel real fresh," she said.

"I'm not tired," replied Joyce. "Not a bit. Think of those poor men out there fighting the fire day and night. I'd be ashamed to quit."

The old lady's eyes admired the clean, fragrant girl packing sandwiches. She sighed, regretfully. Not long since--as her memory measured time--she too had boasted a clear white skin that flushed to a becoming pink on her smooth cheeks when occasion called.

"A--well a--well, dearie, you'll never be young but once. Make ye the most of it," she said, a dream in her faded eyes.

Out of the heart of the girl a full-throated laugh welled. "I'll do just that, Auntie. Then I'll grow some day into a nice old lady like you." Joyce recurred to business in a matter-of-fact voice. "How many more of the ham sandwiches are there, Mrs. Kent?"

About sunset Joyce went home to see that Keith was behaving properly and snatched two hours' sleep while she could. Another shipment of food had to be sent out that night and she did not expect to get to bed till well into the small hours.

Keith was on hand when she awakened to beg for permission to go out to the fire.

"I'll carry water, Joy, to the men. Some one's got to carry it, ain't they, 'n' if I don't mebbe a man'll haf to."

The young mother shook her head decisively. "No, Keithie, you're too little. Grow real fast and you'll be a big boy soon."

"You don't ever lemme have any fun," he pouted. "I gotta go to bed an' sleep an' sleep an' sleep."

She had no time to stay and comfort him. He pulled away sulkily from her good-night kiss and refused to be placated. As she moved away into the darkness, it gave Joyce a tug of the heart to see his small figure on the porch. For she knew that as soon as she was out of sight he would break down and wail.

He did. Keith was of that temperament which wants what it wants when it wants it. After a time his sobs subsided. There wasn't much use crying when nobody was around to pay any attention to him.

He went to bed and to sleep. It was hours later that the voice of some one calling penetrated his dreams. Keith woke up, heard the sound of a knocking on the door, and went to the window. The cook was deaf as a post and would never hear. His sister was away. Perhaps it was a message from his father.

A man stepped out from the house and looked up at him. "Mees Crawford, ees she at home maybeso?" he asked. The man was a Mexican.

"Wait a jiffy. I'll get up," the youngster called back.

He hustled into his clothes, went down, and opened the door.

"The señorita. Ees she at home?" the man asked again.

"She's down to the Boston Emporium cuttin' sandwiches an' packin' 'em," Keith said. "Who wants her?"

"I have a note for her from Señor Sanders."

Master Keith seized his opportunity promptly. "I'll take you down there."

The man brought his horse from the hitching-rack across the road. Side by side they walked downtown, the youngster talking excitedly about the fire, the Mexican either keeping silence or answering with a brief "Si, muchacho."

Into the Boston Emporium Keith raced ahead of the messenger. "Joy, Joy, a man wants to see you! From Dave!" he shouted.

Joyce flushed. Perhaps she would have preferred not to have her private business shouted out before a roomful of women. But she put a good face on it.

"A letter, señorita," the man said, presenting her with a note which he took from his pocket.

The note read:

MISS JOYCE:

Your father has been hurt in the fire. This man will take you to him.

DAVE SANDERS

Joyce went white to the lips and caught at the table to steady herself. "Is--is he badly hurt?" she asked.

The man took refuge in ignorance, as Mexicans do when they do not want to talk. He did not understand English, he said, and when the girl spoke in Spanish he replied sulkily that he did not know what was in the letter. He had been told to deliver it and bring the lady back. That was all.

Keith burst into tears. He wanted to go to his father too, he sobbed.

The girl, badly shaken herself in soul, could not refuse him. If his father was hurt he had a right to be with him.

"You may ride along with me," she said, her lip trembling.

The women gathered round the boy and his sister, expressing sympathy after the universal fashion of their sex. They were kinder and more tender than usual, pressing on them offers of supplies and service. Joyce thanked them, a lump in her throat, but it was plain that the only way in which they could help was to expedite her setting out.

Soon they were on the road, Keith riding behind his sister and clinging to her waist. Joyce had slipped a belt around the boy and fastened it to herself so that he would not fall from the saddle in case he slept. The Mexican rode in complete silence.

For an hour they jogged along the dusty road which led to the new oil field, then swung to the right into the low foothills among which the mountains were rooted.

Joyce was a bit surprised. She asked questions, and again received for answers shrugs and voluble Spanish irrelevant to the matter. The young woman knew that the battle was being fought among the cañons leading to the plains. This trail must be a short cut to one of them. She gave up trying to get information from her guide. He was either stupid or sulky; perhaps a little of each.

The hill trail went up and down. It dipped into valleys and meandered round hills. It climbed a mountain spur, slipped through a notch, and plumped sharply into a small mountain park. At the notch the Mexican drew up and pointed a finger. In the dim pre-dawn grayness Joyce could see nothing but a gulf of mist.

"Over there, Señorita, he waits."

"Where?"

"In the arroyo. Come."

They descended, letting the horses pick their way down cautiously through the loose rubble of the steep pitch. The heart of the girl beat fast with anxiety about her father, with the probability that David Sanders would soon come to meet her out of the silence, with some vague prescience of unknown evil clutching at her bosom. There had been growing in Joyce a feeling that something was wrong, something sinister was at work which she did not understand.

A mountain corral took form in the gloom. The Mexican slipped the bars of the gate to let the horses in.

"Is he here?" asked Joyce breathlessly.

The man pointed to a one-room shack huddled on the hillside.

Keith had fallen sound asleep, his head against the girl's back. "Don't wake him when you lift him down," she told the man. "I'll just let him sleep if he will."

The Mexican carried Keith to a pile of sheepskins under a shed and lowered him to them gently. The boy stirred, turned over, but did not awaken.

Joyce ran toward the shack. There was no light in it, no sign of life about the place. She could not understand this. Surely someone must be looking after her father. Whoever this was must have heard her coming. Why had he not appeared at the door? Dave, of course, might be away fighting fire, but someone....

Her heart lost a beat. The shadow of some horrible thing was creeping over her life. Was her father dead? What shock was awaiting her in the cabin?

At the door she raised her voice in a faint, ineffective call. Her knees gave way. She felt her body shaking as with an ague. But she clenched her teeth on the weakness and moved into the room.

It was dark--darker than outdoors. But as her eyes grew accustomed to the absence of light she made out a table, a chair, a stove. From the far side of the room came a gurgle that was half a snore.

"Father," she whispered, and moved forward.

Her outstretched hand groped for the bed and fell on clothing warm with heat transmitted from a human body. At the same time she subconsciously classified a strong odor that permeated the atmosphere. It was whiskey.

The sleeper stirred uneasily beneath her touch. She felt stifled, wanted to shout out her fears in a scream. Far beyond the need of proof she knew now that something was very wrong, though she still could not guess at what the dreadful menace was.

But Joyce had courage. She was what the wind and the sun and a long line of sturdy ancestors had made her. She leaned forward toward the awakening man just as he turned in the bunk.

A hand fell on her wrist and closed, the fingers like bands of iron. Joyce screamed wildly, her nerve swept away in a reaction of terror. She fought like a wildcat, twisting and writhing with all her supple strength to break the grip on her arm.

For she knew now what the evil was that had been tolling a bell of warning in her heart.

CHAPTER XLI

HANK BRINGS BAD NEWS

The change in the wind had cost three lives, but it had saved the Jackpot property and the feed on the range. After the fire in San Jacinto Cañon had broken through Hart's defense by its furious and persistent attack, nothing could have prevented it from spreading over the plains on a wild rampage except a cloudburst or a decided shift of wind. This last had come and had driven the flames back on territory already burnt over.

The fire did not immediately die out, but it soon began to dwindle. Only here and there did it leap forward with its old savage fury. Presently these sporadic plunges wore themselves out for lack of fuel. The devastated area became a smouldering, smoking char showing a few isolated blazes in the barren ruin. There were still possibilities of harm in them if the wind should shift again, but for the present they were subdued to a shadow of their former strength. It remained the business of the fire-fighters to keep a close watch on the red-hot embers to prevent them from being flung far by the breeze.

Fortunately the wind died down soon, reducing the danger to a minimum.

Dave handed back to Shorty the revolver he had borrowed so peremptorily from his holster.

"Much obliged. I won't need this any more."

The cowpuncher spoke grimly. "I'm liable to."

"Mexico is a good country for a cattleman," Sanders said, looking straight at him.

Shorty met him eye to eye. "So I've been told."

"Good range and water-holes. Stock fatten well."

"Yes."

"A man might do worse than go there if he's worn out this country."

"Stage-robbers and rustlers right welcome, are they?" asked Shorty hardily.

"No questions asked about a man's past if his present is O.K."

"Listens good. If I meet anybody lookin' to make a change I'll tell him you recommended Mexico." The eyes of the two men still clashed. In each man's was a deep respect for the other's gameness. They had been tried by fire and come through clean. Shorty voiced this defiantly. "I don't like a hair of yore head. Never did. You're too damned interferin' to suit me. But I'll say this. You'll do to ride the river with, Sanders."

"I'll interfere again this far, Shorty. You're too good a man to go bad."

"Oh, hell!" The outlaw turned away; then thought better of it and came back. "I'll name no names, but I'll say this. Far as I'm concerned Tim Harrigan might be alive to-day."

Dave, with a nod, accepted this as true. "I guessed as much. You've been running with a mighty bad pardner."

"Have I?" asked the rustler blandly. "Did I say anything about a pardner?"

His eye fell on the three still figures lying on the hillside in a row. Not a twitching muscle in his face showed what he was thinking, that they might have been full of splendid life and vigor if Dug Doble had not put a match to the chaparral back of Bear Cañon. The man had murdered them just as surely as though he had shot them down with a rifle. For weeks Shorty had been getting his affairs in order to leave the country, but before he went he intended to have an accounting with one man.

Dillon came up to Sanders and spoke in an awed voice. "What do you aim to do with ... these, Sanders?" His hand indicated the bodies lying near.

"Send horses up for them," Dave said. "You can take all the men back to camp with you except three to help me watch the fire. Tell Mr. Crawford how things are."

The men crept down the hill like veterans a hundred years old. Ragged, smoke-blackened, and grimy, they moved like automatons. So great was their exhaustion that one or two dropped out of line and lay down on the charred ground to sleep. The desire for it was so overmastering that they could not drive their weighted legs forward.

A man on horseback appeared and rode up to Dave and Shorty. The man was Bob Hart. The red eyes in his blackened face were sunken and his coat hung on him in crisped shreds. He looked down at the bodies lying side by side. His face worked, but he made no verbal comment.

"We piled into a cave. Some of the boys couldn't stand it," Dave explained.

Bob's gaze took in his friend. The upper half of his body was almost naked. Both face and torso were raw with angry burns. Eyebrows had disappeared and eyes were so swollen as to be almost closed. He was gaunt, ragged, unshaven, and bleeding. Shorty, too, appeared to have gone through the wars.

"You boys oughtta have the doc see you," Hart said gently. "He's down at camp now. One of Em's men had an arm busted by a limb of a tree fallin' on him. I've got a coupla casualties in my gang. Two or three of 'em runnin' a high fever. Looks like they may have pneumonia, doc says. Lungs all inflamed from swallowin' smoke.... You take my hawss and ride down to camp, Dave. I'll stick around here till the old man sends a relief."

"No, you go down and report to him, Bob. If Crawford has any fresh men I'd like mine relieved. They've been on steady for 'most two days and nights. Four or five can hold the fire here. All they need do is watch it."

Hart did not argue. He knew how Dave stuck to a thing like a terrier to a rat. He would not leave the ground till orders came from Emerson Crawford.

"Lemme go an' report," suggested Shorty. "I wanta get my bronc an' light out pronto. Never can tell when Applegate might drap around an' ask questions. Me, I'm due in the hills."

"All right," agreed Bob. "See Crawford himself, Shorty."

The outlaw pulled himself to the saddle and cantered off.

"Best man in my gang," Dave said, following him with his eyes. "There to a finish and never a whimper out of him. Dragged a man out of the fire when he might have been hustling for his own skin."

"Shorty's game," admitted Hart. "Pity he went bad."

"Yes. He told me he didn't kill Harrigan."

"Reckon Dug did that. More like him."

Half an hour later the relief came. Hart, Dave, and the three fire-fighters who had stayed to watch rode back to camp.

Crawford had lost his voice. He had already seen Hart since the fire had subsided, so his greeting was to Sanders.

"Good work, son," he managed to whisper, a quaver in his throat. "I'd rather we'd lost the whole works than to have had that happen to the boys, a hundred times rather. I reckon it must 'a' been mighty bad up there when the back-fire caught you. The boys have been tellin' me. You saved all their lives, I judge."

"I happened to know where the cave was."

"Yes." Crawford's whisper was sadly ironic. "Well, I'm sure glad you happened to know that. If you hadn't...." The old cattleman gave a little gesture that completed the sentence. The tragedy that had taken place had shaken his soul. He felt in a way responsible.

"If the doc ain't busy now, I reckon Dave could use him," Bob said. "I reckon he needs a li'l' attention. Then I'm ready for grub an' a sleep twice round the clock. If any one asks me, I'm sure enough dead beat. I don't ever want to look at a shovel again."

"Doc's fixin' up Lanier's burnt laig. He'd oughtta be through soon now. I'll have him 'tend to Dave's burns right away then," said Crawford. He turned to Sanders. "How about it, son? You sure look bunged up pretty bad."

"I'm about all in," admitted Dave. "Reckon we all are. Shorty gone yet?"

"Yes. Lit out after he'd made a report. Said he had an engagement to meet a man. Expect he meant he had an engagement not to meet the sheriff. I rec'lect when Shorty was a mighty promisin' young fellow before Brad Steelman got a-holt of him. He punched cows for me twenty years ago. He hadn't took the wrong turn then. You cayn't travel crooked trails an' not reach a closed pocket o' the hills sometime."

For several minutes they had heard the creaking of a wagon working up an improvised road toward the camp. Now it moved into sight. The teamster called to Crawford.

"Here's another load o' grub, boss. Miss Joyce she rustled up them canteens you was askin' for."

Crawford stepped over to the wagon. "Don't reckon we'll need the canteens, Hank, but we can use the grub fine. The fire's about out."

"That's bully. Say, I got news for you, Mr. Crawford. Brad Steelman's dead. They found him in his house, shot plumb through the head. I reckon he won't do you any more meanness."

"Who killed him?"

"They ain't sayin'," returned the teamster cautiously. "Some folks was guessin' that mebbe Dug Doble could tell, but there ain't any evidence far's I know. Whoever it was robbed the safe."

The old cattleman made no comment. From the days of their youth Steelman had been his bitter enemy, but death had closed the account between them. His mind traveled back to those days twenty-five years ago when he and the sheepman had both hitched their horses in front of Helen Radcliff's home. It had been a fair fight between them, and he had won as a man should. But Brad had not taken his defeat as a man should. He had nourished bitterness and played his successful rival many a mean despicable trick. Out of these had grown the feud between them. Crawford did not know how it had come about, but he had no doubt Steelman had somehow fallen a victim in the trap he had been building for others.

A question brought his mind back to the present. The teamster was talking: "... so she started pronto. I s'pose you wasn't as bad hurt as Sanders figured."

"What's that?" asked Crawford.

"I was sayin' Miss Joyce she started right away when the note come from Sanders."

"What note?"

"The one tellin' how you was hurt in the fire."

Crawford turned. "Come here, Dave," he called hoarsely.

Sanders moved across.

"Hank says you sent a note to Joyce sayin' I'd been hurt. What about it?"

"Why would I do that when you're not hurt?"

"Then you didn't?"

"Of course not," answered Dave, perplexed.

"Some one's been stringin' you, Hank," said Crawford, smiling.

The teamster scratched his head. "No, sir. I was there when she left. About twelve o'clock last night, mebbe later."

"But Sanders says he didn't send a note, and Joyce didn't come here. So you must 'a' missed connections somewhere."

"Probably you saw her start for home," suggested Dave.

Hank stuck to his guns. "No, sir. She was on that sorrel of hers, an' Keith was ridin' behind her. I saddled myself and took the horse to the store. They was waitin' there for me, the two young folks an' Juan."

"Juan?"

"Juan Otero. He brought the note an' rode back with her."

The old cattleman felt a clutch of fear at his heart. Juan Otero was one of Dug Doble's men.

"That all you know, Hank?"

"That's all. Miss Joyce said for me to get this wagonload of grub out soon as I could. So I come right along."

"Doble been seen in town lately?" asked Dave.

"Not as I know of. Shorty has."

"Shorty ain't in this."

"Do you reckon--?"

Sanders cut the teamster short. "Some of Doble's work. But I don't see why he sent for Keith too."

"He didn't. Keith begged to go along an' Miss Joyce took him."

In the haggard, unshaven face of the cattleman Dave read the ghastly fear of his own soul. Doble was capable of terrible evil. His hatred, jealousy, and passion would work together to poison his mind. The corners of his brain had always been full of lust and obscenity. There was this difference between him and Shorty. The squat cowpuncher was a clean scoundrel. A child, a straight girl, an honest woman, would be as safe with him as with simple-hearted old Buck Byington. But Dug Doble--it was impossible to predict what he would do. He had a vein of caution in his make-up, but when in drink he jettisoned this and grew ugly. His vanity--always a large factor in determining his actions--might carry him in the direction of decency or the reverse.

"I'm glad Keith's with her," said Hart, who had joined the group. "With Keith and the Mexican there--" His meaning did not need a completed sentence.

"Question is, where did he take her," said Crawford. "We might comb the hills a week and not find his hole. I wish to God Shorty was still here. He might know."

"He's our best bet, Bob," agreed Dave. "Find him. He's gone off somewhere to sleep. Rode away less than half an hour since."

"Which way?"

"Rode toward Bear Cañon," said Crawford.

"That's a lead for you, Bob. Figure it out. He's done--completely worn out. So he won't go far--not more than three-four miles. He'll be in the hills, under cover somewhere, for he won't forget that thousand dollars reward. So he'll be lying in the chaparral. That means he'll be above where the fire started. If I was looking for him, I'd say somewhere back of Bear, Cattle, or San Jacinto would be the likeliest spot."

"Good guess, Dave. Somewheres close to water," said Bob. "You goin' along with me?"

"No. Take as many men as you can get. I'm going back, if I can, to find the place where Otero and Miss Joyce left the road. Mr. Crawford, you'd better get back to town, don't you think? There may be clues there we don't know anything about here. Perhaps Miss Joyce may have got back."

"If not, I'll gather a posse to rake the hills, Dave. If that villain's hurt my li'l' girl or Keith--" Crawford's whisper broke. He turned away to conceal the working of his face.

"He hasn't," said Bob with decision. "Dug ain't crazy even if his actions look like it. I've a notion when Mr. Crawford gets back to town Miss Joyce will be there all right. Like as not Dug brought her back himself. Maybe he sent for her just to brag awhile. You know Dug."

That was the worst of it, so far as any allaying of their fear went. They did know Doble. They knew him for a thorough black-hearted scoundrel who might stop at nothing.

The three men moved toward the remuda. None of them had slept for forty-eight hours. They had been through a grueling experience that had tried soul and body to the limit. But none of them hesitated for an instant. They belonged to the old West which answers the call no matter what the personal cost. There was work to do. Not one of them would quit as long as he could stick to the saddle.

CHAPTER XLII

SHORTY IS AWAKENED

The eyes that looked into those of Joyce in the gloom of the cabin abruptly shook off sleep. They passed from an amazed incredulity to a malicious triumph.

"So you've come to old Dug, have you, my pretty?" a heavy voice jeered.

The girl writhed and twisted regardless of the pain, exerting every muscle of the strong young arm and shoulder. As well she might have tried to beat down an iron door with her bare hands as to hope for escape from his strong grip. He made a motion to draw her closer. Joyce flung herself back and sank down beside the bunk, straining away.

"Let me go!" she cried, terror rampant in her white face. "Don't touch me! Let me go!"

The force of her recoil had drawn him to his side. His cruel, mirthless grin seemed to her to carry inexpressible menace. Very slowly, while his eyes taunted her, he pulled her manacled wrist closer.

There was a swift flash of white teeth. With a startled oath Doble snatched his arm away. Savage as a tigress, Joyce had closed her teeth on his forearm.

She fell back, got to her feet, and fled from the house. Doble was after her on the instant. She dodged round a tree, doubled on her course, then deflected toward the corral. Swift and supple though she was, his long strides brought him closer. Again she screamed.

Doble caught her. She fought in his arms, a prey to wild and unreasoning terror.

"You young hell-cat, I'm not gonna hurt you," he said. "What's the use o' actin' crazy?"

He could have talked to the waves of the sea with as much effect. It is doubtful if she heard him.

There was a patter of rapid feet. A small body hurled itself against Doble's leg and clung there, beating his thigh with a valiant little fist.

"You le' my sister go! You le' my sister go!" the boy shouted, repeating the words over and over.

Doble looked down at Keith. "What the hell?" he demanded, amazed.

The Mexican came forward and spoke in Spanish rapidly. He explained that he could not have prevented the boy from coming without arousing the suspicions of his sister and her friends.

The outlaw was irritated. All this clamor of fear annoyed and disturbed him. This was not the scene he had planned in his drink-inspired reveries. There had been a time when Joyce had admired the virile force of him, when she had let herself be kind to him under the impression she was influencing him for his good. He had misunderstood the reaction of her mind and supposed that if he could get her away from the influence of her father and the rest of his enemies, she would again listen to what he called reason.

"All right. You brought the brat here without orders. Now take him home again," directed Doble harshly.

Otero protested fluently, with gestures eloquent. He had not yet been paid for his services. By this time Malapi might be too hot for him. He did not intend ever to go back. He was leaving the country pronto--muy pronto. The boy could go back when his sister went.

"His sister's not going back. Soon as it gets dark we'll travel south. She's gonna be my wife. You can take the kid back to the road an' leave him there."

Again the Mexican lifted hands and shoulders while he pattered volubly, trying to make himself heard above the cries of the child. Dug had silenced Joyce by the simple expedient of clapping his big hand over her mouth.

Doble's other hand went into his pocket. He drew out a flat package of currency bound together with rubber bands. His sharp teeth drew off one of the rubbers. From the bundle he stripped four fifty-dollar bills and handed them to Otero.

"Peel this kid off'n my leg and hit the trail, Juan. I don' care where you leave him so long as you keep an eye on him till afternoon."

With difficulty the Mexican dragged the boy from his hold on Doble and carried him to a horse. He swung to the saddle, dragged Keith up in front of him, and rode away at a jog-trot. The youngster was screaming at the top of his lungs.

As his horse climbed toward the notch, Otero looked back. Doble had picked up his prisoner and was carrying her into the house.

The Mexican formulated his plans. He must get out of the country before the hue and cry started. He could not count on more than a few hours before the chase began. First, he must get rid of the child. Then he wanted to go to a certain tendejon where he would meet his sweetheart and say good-bye to her.

It was all very well for Doble to speak of taking him to town or to the road. Juan meant to do neither. He would leave him in the hills above the Jackpot and show him the way down there, after which he would ride to meet the girl who was waiting for him. This would give him time enough to get away safely. It was no business of his whether or not Doble was taken. He was an overbearing brute, anyhow.

An hour's riding through the chaparral brought him to the watershed far above the Jackpot. Otero picked his way to the upper end of a gulch.

"Leesten, muchacho. Go down--down--down. First the gulch, then a cañon, then the Jackpot. You go on thees trail."

He dropped the boy to the ground, watched him start, then turned away at a Spanish trot.

The trail was a rough and precipitous one. Stumbling as he walked, Keith went sobbing down the gulch. He had wept himself out, and his sobs had fallen to a dry hiccough. A forlorn little chap, tired and sleepy, he picked his way among the mesquite, following the path along the dry creek bed. The catclaw tore his stockings and scratched him. Stone bruises hurt his tender feet. He kept traveling, because he was afraid to give up.

He reached the junction of the gulch and the cañon. A small stream, which had survived the summer drought, trickled down the bed of the latter. Through tangled underbrush Keith crept to the water. He lay down and drank, after which he sat on a rock and pitied himself. In five minutes he would have been asleep if a sound had not startled him. Some one was snoring on the other side of a mesquite thicket.

Keith jumped up, pushed his way through, and almost stumbled over a sleeping man. He knelt down and began to shake the snorer. The man did not awaken. The foghorn in his throat continued to rumble intermittently, now in crescendo, now in diminuendo.

"Wake up, man!" Keith shouted in his ear in the interval between shakes.

The sleeper was a villainous-looking specimen. His face and throat were streaked with black. There was an angry wheal across his cheek. One of the genus tramp would have scorned his charred clothes. Keith cared for none of these details. He wanted to unload his troubles to a "grown-up."

The youngster roused the man at last by throwing water in his face. Shorty sat up, at the same time dragging out a revolver. His gaze fastened on the boy, after one swift glance round.

"Who's with you, kid?" he demanded.

Keith began to sniffle. "Nobody."

"Whadya doin' here?"

"I want my daddy."

"Who is yore daddy? What's yore name?"

"Keith Crawford."

Shorty bit off an oath of surprise. "Howcome you here?"

"A man brought me."

The rustler brushed the cobwebs of sleep from his eyes and brain. He had come up here to sleep undisturbed through the day and far into the night. Before he had had two hours of rest this boy had dragged him back from slumber. He was prepared to be annoyed, but he wanted to make sure of the facts first.

As far as he understood them, the boy told the story of the night's adventures. Shorty's face grew grim. He appreciated the meaning back of them far better than the little fellow. Keith's answers to his questions told him that the men figuring in the episode must be Doble and Otero. Though the child was a little mixed as to the direction from which Otero had brought him, the man was pretty sure of the valley where Doble was lying hid.

He jumped to his feet. "We'll go, kid."

"To daddy?"

"Not right away. We got hurry-up business first."

"I wanta go to my daddy."

"Sure. Soon as we can. But we'll drift over to where yore sister's at first off. We're both wore to a frazzle, mebbe, but we got to trail over an' find out what's bitin' Dug."

The man saddled and took the up-trail, Keith clinging to his waist. At the head of the gulch the boy pointed out the way he and Otero had come. This confirmed Shorty's opinion as to the place where Doble was to be found.

With the certainty of one who knew these hills as a preacher does his Bible, Shorty wound in and out, always moving by the line of least resistance. He was steadily closing the gap of miles that separated him from Dug Doble.

CHAPTER XLIII

JUAN OTERO IS CONSCRIPTED

Crawford and Sanders rode rapidly toward Malapi. They stopped several times to examine places where they thought it possible Otero might have left the road, but they looked without expectation of any success. They did not even know that the Mexican had started in this direction. As soon as he reached the suburbs, he might have cut back across the plain and followed an entirely different line of travel.

Several miles from town Sanders pulled up. "I'm going back for a couple of miles. Bob was telling me of a Mexican tendejon in the hills kept by the father of a girl Otero goes to see. She might know where he is. If I can get hold of him likely I can make him talk."

This struck Crawford as rather a wild-goose chase, but he had nothing better to offer himself in the way of a plan.

"Might as well," he said gloomily. "I don't reckon you'll find him. But you never can tell. Offer the girl a big reward if she'll tell where Doble is. I'll hustle to town and send out posses."

They separated. Dave rode back up the road, swung off at the place Hart had told him of, and turned up a valley which pushed to the roots of the hills. The tendejon was a long, flat-roofed adobe building close to the trail.

Dave walked through the open door into the bar-room. Two or three men were lounging at a table. Behind a counter a brown-eyed Mexican girl was rinsing glasses in a pail of water.

The young man sauntered forward to the counter. He invited the company to drink with him.

"I'm looking for Juan Otero," he said presently. "Mr. Crawford wanted me to see him about riding for him."

There was a moment's silence. All of those present were Mexicans except Dave. The girl flashed a warning look at her countrymen. That look, Sanders guessed at once, would seal the lips of all of them. At once he changed his tactics. What information he got would have to come directly through the girl. He signaled her to join him outside.

Presently she did so. The girl was a dusky young beauty, plump as a partridge, with the soft-eyed charm of her age and race.

"The señor wants to see me?" she asked.

Her glance held a flash of mockery. She had seen many dirty, poverty-stricken mavericks of humanity, but never a more battered specimen than this gaunt, hollow-eyed tramp, black as a coal-heaver, whose flesh showed grimy with livid wounds through the shreds of his clothing. But beneath his steady look the derision died. Tattered his coat and trousers might be. At least he was a prince in adversity. The head on the splendid shoulders was still finely poised. He gave an impression of indomitable strength.

"I want Juan Otero," he said.

"To ride for Señor Crawford." Her white teeth flashed and she lifted her pretty shoulders in a shrug of mock regret. "Too bad he is not here. Some other day--"

"--will not do. I want him now."

"But I have not got him hid."

"Where is he? I don't want to harm him, but I must know. He took Joyce Crawford into the hills last night to Dug Doble--pretended her father had been hurt and he had been sent to lead her to him. I must save her--from Doble, not from Otero. Help me. I will give you money--a hundred dollars, two hundred."

She stared at him. "Did Juan do that?" she murmured.

"Yes. You know Doble. He's a devil. I must find him ... soon."

"Juan has not been here for two days. I do not know where he is."

The dust of a moving horse was traveling toward them from the hills. A Mexican pulled up and swung from the saddle. The girl called a greeting to him quickly before he could speak. "Buenos dios, Manuel. My father is within, Manuel."

The man looked at her a moment, murmured "Buenos, Bonita," and took a step as though to enter the house.

Dave barred the way. The flash of apprehension in Bonita's face, her unnecessary repetition of the name, the man's questioning look at her, told Sanders that this was the person he wanted.

"Just a minute, Otero. Where did you leave Miss Crawford?"

The Mexican's eyes contracted. To give himself time he fell again into the device of pretending that he did not understand English. Dave spoke in Spanish. The loafers in the bar-room came out to listen.

"I do not know what you mean."

"Don't lie to me. Where is she?"

The keeper of the tendejon asked a suave question. He, too, talked in Spanish. "Who are you, señor? A deputy sheriff, perhaps?"

"No. My name is Dave Sanders. I'm Emerson Crawford's friend. If Juan will help me save the girl he'll get off light and perhaps make some money. I'll stand by him. But if he won't, I'll drag him back to Malapi and give him to a mob."

The sound of his name was a potent weapon. His fame had spread like wildfire through the hills since his return from Colorado. He had scored victory after victory against bad men without firing a gun. He had made the redoubtable Dug Doble an object of jeers and had driven him to the hills as an outlaw. Dave was unarmed. They could see that. But his quiet confidence was impressive. If he said he would take Juan to Malapi with him, none of them doubted he would do it. Had he not dragged Miller back to justice--Miller who was a killer of unsavory reputation?

Otero wished he had not come just now to see Bonita, but he stuck doggedly to his statement. He knew nothing about it, nothing at all.

"Crawford is sending out a dozen posses. They will close the passes. Doble will be caught. They will kill him like a wolf. Then they will kill you. If they don't find him, they will kill you anyhow."

Dave spoke evenly, without raising his voice. Somehow he made what he said seem as inevitable as fate.

Bonita caught her lover by the arm and shoulder. She was afraid, and her conscience troubled her vicariously for his wrongdoing.

"Why did you do it, Juan?" she begged of him.

"He said she wanted to come, that she would marry him if she had a chance. He said her father kept her from him," the man pleaded. "I didn't know he was going to harm her."

"Where is he? Take me to him, quick," said Sanders, relapsing into English.

"Si, señor. At once," agreed Otero, thoroughly frightened.

"I want a six-shooter. Some one lend me one."

None of them carried one, but Bonita ran into the house and brought back a small bulldog. Dave looked it over without enthusiasm. It was a pretty poor concern to take against a man who carried two forty-fives and knew how to use them. But he thrust it into his pocket and swung to the saddle. It was quite possible he might be killed by Doble, but he had a conviction that the outlaw had come to the end of the passage. He was going to do justice on the man once for all. He regarded this as a certainty.

CHAPTER XLIV

THE BULLDOG BARKS

Joyce fainted for the first time in her life.

When she recovered consciousness Doble was splashing water in her face. She was lying on the bunk from which she had fled a few minutes earlier. The girl made a motion to rise and he put a heavy hand on her shoulder.

"Keep your hand off me!" she cried.

"Don't be a fool," he told her irritably. "I ain't gonna hurt you none--if you behave reasonable:"

"Let me go," she demanded, and struggled to a sitting position on the couch. "You let me go or my father--"

"What'll he do?" demanded the man brutally. "I've stood a heap from that father of yore's. I reckon this would even the score even if I hadn't--" He pulled up, just in time to keep from telling her that he had fired the chaparral. He was quite sober enough to distrust his tongue. It was likely, he knew, to let out some things that had better not be told.

She tried to slip by him and he thrust her back.

"Let me go!" she demanded. "At once!"

"You're not gonna go," he told her flatly. "You'll stay here--with me. For keeps. Un'erstand?"

"Have you gone crazy?" she asked wildly, her heart fluttering like a frightened bird in a cage. "Don't you know my father will search the whole country for me?"

"Too late. We travel south soon as it's dark." He leaned forward and put a hand on her knee, regardless of the fact that she shrank back quivering from his touch. "Listen, girl. You been a high-stepper. Yore heels click mighty loud when they hit the sidewalk. Good enough. Go far as you like. I never did fancy the kind o' women that lick a man's hand. But you made one mistake. I'm no doormat, an' nobody alive can wipe their feet on me. You turned me down cold. You had the ol' man kick me outa my job as foreman of the ranch. I told him an' you both I'd git even. But I don't aim to rub it in. I'm gonna give you a chance to be Mrs. Doble. An' when you marry me you git a man for a husband."

"I'll never marry you! Never! I'd rather be dead in my grave!" she broke out passionately.

He went to the table, poured himself a drink, and gulped it down. His laugh was sinister and mirthless.

"Please yorese'f, sweetheart," he jeered. "Only you won't be dead in yore grave. You'll be keepin' house for Dug Doble. I'm not insistin' on weddin' bells none. But women have their fancies an' I aim to be kind. Take 'em or leave 'em."

She broke down and wept, her face in her hands. In her sheltered life she had known only decent, clean-minded people. She did not know how to cope with a man like this. The fear of him rose in her throat and choked her. This dreadful thing he threatened could not be, she told herself. God would not permit it. He would send her father or Dave Sanders or Bob Hart to rescue her. And yet--when she looked at the man, big, gross, dominant, flushed with drink and his triumph--the faith in her became a weak and fluid stay for her soul. She collapsed like a child and sobbed.

Her wild alarm annoyed him. He was angered at her uncontrollable shudders when he drew near. There was a savage desire in him to break through the defense of her helplessness once for all. But his caution urged delay. He must give her time to get accustomed to the idea of him. She had sense enough to see that she must make the best of the business. When the terror lifted from her mind she would be reasonable.

He repeated again that he was not going to hurt her if she met him halfway, and to show good faith went out and left her alone.

The man sat down on a chopping-block outside and churned his hatred of Sanders and Crawford. He spurred himself with drink, under its influence recalling the injuries they had done him. His rage and passion simmered, occasionally exploded into raucous curses. Once he strode into the house, full of furious intent, but the eyes of the girl daunted him. They looked at him as they might have looked at a tiger padding toward her.

He flung out of the house again, snarling at his own weakness. There was something in him stronger than passion, stronger than his reckless will, that would not let him lay a hand on her in the light of day. His bloodshot eyes looked for the sun. In a few hours now it would be dark.

While he lounged sullenly on the chopping-block, shoulders and head sunken, a sound brought him to alert attention. A horseman was galloping down the slope on the other side of the valley.

Doble eased his guns to make sure of them. Intently he watched the approaching figure. He recognized the horse, Chiquito, and then, with an oath, the rider. His eyes gleamed with evil joy. At last! At last he and Dave Sanders would settle accounts. One of them would be carried out of the valley feet first.

Sanders leaped to the ground at the same instant that he pulled Chiquito up. The horse was between him and his enemy.

The eyes of the men crossed in a long, level look.

"Where's Joyce Crawford?" asked Dave.

"That yore business?" Doble added to his retort the insult unmentionable.

"I'm makin' it mine. What have you done with her?" The speech of the younger man took on again the intonation of earlier days. "I'm here to find out."

A swish of skirts, a soft patter of feet, and Joyce was beside her friend, clinging to him, weeping in his arms.

Doble moved round in a wide circumference. When shooting began he did not want his foe to have the protection of the horse's body. Not even for the beat of a lid did the eyes of either man lift from the other.

"Go back to the house, Joyce," said Dave evenly. "I want to talk with this man alone."

The girl clung the tighter to him. "No, Dave, no! It's been ... awful."

The outlaw drew his long-barreled six-shooter, still circling the group. He could not fire without running a risk of hitting Joyce.

"Hidin' behind a woman, are you?" he taunted, and again flung the epithet men will not tolerate.

At any moment he might fire. Dave caught the wrists of the girl, dragged them down from his neck, and flung her roughly from him to the ground. He pulled out his little bulldog.

Doble fired and Dave fell. The outlaw moved cautiously closer, exultant at his marksmanship. His enemy lay still, the pistol in his hand. Apparently Sanders had been killed at the first shot.

"Come to git me with that popgun, did you? Hmp! Fat chance." The bad man fired again, still approaching very carefully.

Round the corner of the house a man had come. He spoke quickly. "Turn yore gun this way, Dug."

It was Shorty. His revolver flashed at the same instant. Doble staggered, steadied himself, and fired.

The forty-fives roared. Yellow flames and smoke spurted. The bulldog barked. Dave's parlor toy had come into action.

Out of the battle Shorty and Sanders came erect and uninjured. Doble was lying on the ground, his revolver smoking a foot or two from the twitching, outstretched hand.

The outlaw was dead before Shorty turned him over. A bullet had passed through the heart. Another had struck him on the temple, a third in the chest.

"We got him good," said Shorty. "It was comin' to him. I reckon you don't know that he fired the chaparral on purpose. Wanted to wipe out the Jackpot, I s'pose. Yes, Dug sure had it comin' to him."

Dave said nothing. He looked down at the man, eyes hard as jade, jaw clamped tight. He knew that but for Shorty's arrival he would probably be lying there himself.

"I was aimin' to shoot it out with him before I heard of this last scullduggery. Soon as the kid woke me I hustled up my intentions." The bad man looked at Dave's weapon with the flicker of a smile on his face. "He called it a popgun. I took notice it was a right busy li'l' plaything. But you got yore nerve all right. I'd say you hadn't a chance in a thousand. You played yore hand fine, keelin' over so's he'd come clost enough for you to get a crack at him. At that, he'd maybe 'a' got you if I hadn't drapped in."

"Yes," said Sanders.

He walked across to the corral fence, where Joyce sat huddled against the lower bars.

She lifted her head and looked at him from wan eyes out of which the life had been stricken. They stared at him in dumb, amazed questioning.

Dave lifted her from the ground.

"I... I thought you... were dead," she whispered.

"Not even powder-burnt. His six-shooter outranged mine. I was trying to get him closer."

"Is he...?"

"Yes. He'll never trouble any of us again."

She shuddered in his arms.

Dave ached for her in every tortured nerve. He did not know, and it was not his place to ask, what price she had had to pay.

Presently she told him, not in words, without knowing what he was suffering for her. A ghost of a smile touched her eyes.

"I knew you would come. It's all right now."

His heart leaped. "Yes, it's all right, Joyce."

She recurred to her fears for him. "You're not ... hiding any wounds from me? I saw you fall and lie there while he shot at you."

"He never touched me."

She disengaged herself from his arms and looked at him, wan, haggard, unshaven, eyes sunken, a tattered wretch scarred with burns.

"What have you done to yourself?" she asked, astonished at his appearance.

"Souvenirs of the fire," he told her. "They'll wash and wear off. Don't suppose I look exactly pretty."

He had never looked so handsome in her eyes.

CHAPTER XLV

JOYCE MAKES PIES

Juan Otero carried the news back to Malapi. He had been waiting on the crest of the hill to see the issue of the adventure and had come forward when Dave gave him a signal.

Shorty brought Keith in from where he had left the boy in the brush. The youngster flew into his sister's arms. They wept over each other and she petted him with caresses and little kisses.

Afterward she made some supper from the supplies Doble had laid in for his journey south. The men went down to the creek, where they bathed and washed their wounds. Darkness had not yet fallen when they went to sleep, all of them exhausted by the strain through which they had passed.

Not until the cold crystal dawn did they awaken. Joyce was the first up. She had breakfast well under way before she had Keith call the still sleeping men. With the power of quick recuperation which an outdoor life had given them, both Shorty and Dave were fit for any exertion again, though Sanders was still suffering from his burns.

After they had eaten they saddled. Shorty gave them a casual nod of farewell.

"Tell Applegate to look me up in Mexico if he wants me," he said.

Joyce would not let it go at that. She made him shake hands. He was in the saddle, and her eyes lifted to his and showered gratitude on him.

"We'll never forget you--never," she promised. "And we do so hope you'll be prosperous and happy."

He grinned down at her sheepishly. "Same to you, Miss," he said; and added, with a flash of audacity, "To you and Dave both."

He headed south, the others north.

From the hilltop Dave looked back at the squat figure steadily diminishing with distance. Shorty was moving toward Mexico, unhasting and with a certain sureness of purpose characteristic of him.

Joyce smiled. It was the first signal of unquenchable youth she had flashed since she had been trapped into this terrible adventure. "I believe you admire him, Dave," she mocked. "You're just as grateful to him as I am, but you won't admit it. He's not a bad man at all, really."

"He's a good man gone bad. But I'll say this for Shorty. He's some man. He'll do to ride the river with."

"Yes."

"At the fire he was the best fighter in my gang--saved one of the boys at the risk of his own life. Shorty's no quitter."

She shut her teeth on a little wave of emotion. Then, "I'm awful sorry for him," she said.

He nodded appreciation of her feeling. "I know, but you don't need to worry any. He'll not worry about himself. He's sufficient, and he'll get along."

They put their horses to the trail again.

Crawford met them some miles nearer town. He had been unable to wait for their arrival. Neither he nor the children could restrain their emotion at sight of each other. Dave felt they might like to be alone and he left the party, to ride across to the tendejon with Bonita's bulldog revolver.

That young woman met him in front of the house. She was eager for news. Sanders told her what had taken place. They spoke in her tongue.

"And Juan--is it all right about him?" she asked.

"Juan has wiped the slate clean. Mr. Crawford wants to know when Bonita is to be married. He has a wedding present for her."

She was all happy smiles when he left her.

Late that afternoon Bob Hart reached town. He and Dave were alone in the Jackpot offices when the latter forced himself to open a subject that had always been closed between them. Sanders came to it reluctantly. No man had ever found a truer friend than he in Bob Hart. The thing he was going to do seemed almost like a stab in the back.

"How about you and Joyce, Bob?" he asked abruptly.

The eyes of the two met and held. "What about us, Dave?"

"It's like this," Sanders said, flushed and embarrassed. "You were here first. You're entitled to first chance. I meant to keep out of it, but things have come up in spite of me. I want to do whatever seems right to you. My idea is to go away till--till you've settled how you stand with her. Is that fair?"

Bob smiled, ruefully. "Fair enough, old-timer. But no need of it. I never had a chance with Joyce, not a dead man's look-in. Found that out before ever you came home. The field's clear far as I'm concerned. Hop to it an' try yore luck."

Dave took his advice, within the hour. He found Joyce at home in the kitchen. She was making pies energetically. The sleeves of her dress were rolled up to the elbows and there was a dab of flour on her temple where she had brushed back a rebellious wisp of hair.

She blushed prettily at sight of her caller. "I didn't know it was you when I called to come in. Thought it was Keith playing a trick on me."

Both of them were embarrassed. She did not know what to do with him in the kitchen and he did not know what to do with himself. The girl was acutely conscious that yesterday she had flung herself into his arms without shame.

"I'll go right on with my pies if you don't mind," she said. "I can talk while I work."

"Yes."

But neither of them talked. She rolled pie-crust while the silence grew significant.

"Are your burns still painful?" she asked at last, to make talk.

"Yes--no. Beg pardon, I--I was thinking of something else."

Joyce flashed one swift look at him. She knew that an emotional crisis was upon her. He was going to brush aside the barriers between them. Her pulses began to beat fast. There was the crash of music in her blood.

"I've got to tell you, Joyce," he said abruptly. "It's been a fight for me ever since I came home. I love you. I think I always have--even when I was in prison."

She waited, the eyes in her lovely, flushed face shining.

"I had no right to think of you then," he went on. "I kept away from you. I crushed down hope. I nursed my bitterness to prove to me there could never be anything between us. Then Miller confessed and--and we took our walk over the hills. After that the sun shone. I came out from the mists where I had been living."

"I'm glad," she said in a low voice. "But Miller's confession made no difference in my thought of you. I didn't need that to know you."

"But I couldn't come to you even then. I knew how Bob Hart felt, and after all he'd done for me it was fair he should have first chance."

She looked at him, smiling shyly. "You're very generous."

"No. I thought you cared for him. It seemed to me any woman must. There aren't many men like Bob."

"Not many," she agreed. "But I couldn't love Bob because"--her steadfast eyes met his bravely--"because of another man. Always have loved him, ever since that night years ago when he saved my father's life. Do you really truly love me, Dave?"

"God knows I do," he said, almost in a whisper.

"I'm glad--oh, awf'ly glad." She gave him her hands, tears in her soft brown eyes. "Because I've been waiting for you so long. I didn't know whether you ever were coming to me."

Crawford found them there ten minutes later. He was looking for Joyce to find him a collar-button that was missing.

"Dawggone my hide!" he fumed, and stopped abruptly, the collar-button forgotten.

Joyce flew out of Dave's arms into her father's.

"Oh, Daddy, Daddy, I'm so happy," she whispered from the depths of his shoulder.

The cattleman looked at Dave, and his rough face worked. "Boy, you're in luck. Be good to her, or I'll skin you alive." He added, by way of softening this useless threat, "I'd rather it was you than anybody on earth, Dave."

The young man looked at her, his Joy-in-life, the woman who had brought him back to youth and happiness, and he answered with a surge of emotion:

"I'll sure try."

THE END

Contents

TANGLED TRAILS

A Western Detective Story

by WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

CHAPTER I

NO ALTRUIST

Esther McLean brought the afternoon mail in to Cunningham. She put it on the desk before him and stood waiting, timidly, afraid to voice her demand for justice, yet too desperately anxious to leave with it unspoken.

He leaned back in his swivel chair, his cold eyes challenging her. "Well," he barked harshly.

She was a young, soft creature, very pretty in a kittenish fashion, both sensuous and helpless. It was an easy guess that unless fortune stood her friend she was a predestined victim to the world's selfish love of pleasure, and fortune, with a cynical smile, had stood aside and let her go her way.

"I . . . I . . ." A wave of color flooded her face. She twisted a rag of a handkerchief into a hard wadded knot.

"Spit it out," he ordered curtly.

"I've got to do something . . . soon. Won't you--won't you--?" There was a wail of despair in the unfinished sentence.

James Cunningham was a grim, gray pirate, as malleable as cast iron and as soft. He was a large, big-boned man, aggressive, dominant, the kind that takes the world by the throat and shakes success from it. The contour of his hook-nosed face had something rapacious written on it.

"No. Not till I get good and ready. I've told you I'd look out for you if you'd keep still. Don't come whining at me. I won't have it."

"But--"

Already he was ripping letters open and glancing over them. Tears brimmed the brown eyes of the girl. She bit her lower lip, choked back a sob, and turned hopelessly away. Her misfortune lay at her own door. She knew that. But-- The woe in her heart was that the man she had loved was leaving her to face alone a night as bleak as death.

Cunningham had always led a life of intelligent selfishness. He had usually got what he wanted because he was strong enough to take it. No scrupulous nicety of means had ever deterred him. Nor ever would. He played his own hand with a cynical disregard of the rights of others. It was this that had made him what he was, a man who bulked large in the sight of the city and state. Long ago he had made up his mind that altruism was weakness.

He went through his mail with a swift, trained eye. One of the letters he laid aside and glanced at a second time. It brought a grim, hard smile to his lips. A paragraph read:

There's no water in your ditch and our crops are burning up. Your whole irrigation system in Dry Valley is a fake. You knew it, but we didn't. You've skinned us out of all we had, you damned bloodsucker. If you ever come up here we'll dry-gulch you, sure.

The letter was signed, "One You Have Robbed." Attached to it was a clipping from a small-town paper telling of a meeting of farmers to ask the United States District Attorney for an investigation of the Dry Valley irrigation project promoted by James Cunningham.

The promoter smiled. He was not afraid of the Government. He had kept strictly within the law. It was not his fault there was not enough rainfall in the watershed to irrigate the valley. But the threat to dry-gulch him was another matter. He had no fancy for being shot in the back. Some crazy fool of a settler might do just that. He decided to let an agent attend to his Dry Valley affairs hereafter. He dictated some letters, closed his desk, and went down the street toward the City Club. At a florist's he stopped and ordered a box of American Beauties to be sent to Miss Phyllis Harriman. With these he enclosed his card, a line of greeting scrawled on it.

A poker game was on at the club and Cunningham sat in. He interrupted it to dine, holding his seat by leaving a pile of chips at the place. When he cashed in his winnings and went downstairs it was still early. As a card-player he was not popular. He was too keen on the main chance and he nearly always won. In spite of his loud and frequent laugh, of the effect of bluff geniality, there was no genuine humor in the man, none of the milk of human kindness.

A lawyer in the reading-room rose at sight of Cunningham. "Want to see you a minute," he said.

"Let's go into the Red Room."

He led the way to a small room furnished with a desk, writing supplies, and a telephone. It was for the use of members who wanted to be private. The lawyer shut the door.

"Afraid I've bad news for you, Cunningham," he said.

The other man's steady eyes did not waver. He waited silently.

"I was at Golden to-day on business connected with a divorce case. By chance I ran across a record that astonished me. It may be only a coincidence of names, but--"

"Now you've wrapped up the blackjack so that it won't hurt, suppose you go ahead and hit me over the head with it," suggested Cunningham dryly.

The lawyer told what he knew. The promoter took it with no evidence of feeling other than that which showed in narrowed eyes hard as diamonds and a clenched jaw in which the muscles stood out like ropes.

"Much obliged, Foster," he said, and the lawyer knew he was dismissed.

Cunningham paced the room for a few moments, then rang for a messenger. He wrote a note and gave it to the boy to be delivered. Then he left the club.

From Seventeenth Street he walked across to the Paradox Apartments where he lived. He found a note propped up against a book on the table of his living-room. It had been written by the Japanese servant he shared with two other bachelors who lived in the same building.

Mr. Hull he come see you. He sorry you not here. He say maybe perhaps make honorable call some other time.

It was signed, "S. Horikawa."

Cunningham tossed the note aside. He had no wish to see Hull. The fellow was becoming a nuisance. If he had any complaint he could go to the courts with it. That was what they were for.

The doorbell rang. The promoter opened to a big, barrel-bodied man who pushed past him into the room.

"What you want, Hull?" demanded Cunningham curtly.

The man thrust his bull neck forward. A heavy roll of fat swelled over the collar. "You know damn well what I want. I want what's comin' to me. My share of the Dry Valley clean-up. An' I'm gonna have it. See?"

"You've had every cent you'll get. I told you that before."

Tiny red capillaries seamed the beefy face of the fat man. "An' I told you I was gonna have a divvy. An' I am. You can't throw down Cass Hull an' get away with it. Not none." The shallow protuberant eyes glittered threateningly.

"Thought you knew me better," Cunningham retorted contemptuously. "When I say I won't, I won't. Go to a lawyer if you think you've got a case. Don't come belly-aching to me."

The face of the fat man was apoplectic. "Like sin I'll go to a lawyer. You'd like that fine, you double-crossin' sidewinder. I'll come with a six-gun. That's how I'll come. An' soon. I'll give you two days to come through. Two days. If you don't--hell sure enough will cough."

Whatever else could be said about Cunningham he was no coward. He met the raving man eye to eye.

"I don't scare worth a cent, Hull. Get out. Pronto. And don't come back unless you want me to turn you over to the police for a blackmailing crook."

Cunningham was past fifty-five and his hair was streaked with gray. But he stood straight as an Indian, six feet in his socks. The sap of strength still rang strong in him. In the days when he had ridden the range he had been famous for his stamina and he was even yet a formidable two-fisted fighter.

But Hull was beyond prudence. "I'll go when I get ready, an' I'll come back when I get ready," he boasted.

There came a soft thud of a hard fist on fat flesh, the crash of a heavy bulk against the door. After that things moved fast. Hull's body reacted to the pain of smashing blows falling swift and sure. Before he knew what had taken place he was on the landing outside on his way to the stairs. He hit the treads hard and rolled on down.

A man coming upstairs helped him to his feet.

"What's up?" the man asked.

Hull glared at him, for the moment speechless. His eyes were venomous, his mouth a thin, cruel slit. He pushed the newcomer aside, opened the door of the apartment opposite, went in, and slammed it after him.

The man who had assisted him to rise was dark and immaculately dressed.

"I judge Uncle James has been exercising," he murmured before he took the next flight of stairs.

On the door of apartment 12 was a legend in Old English engraved on a calling card. It said:

James Cunningham

The visitor pushed the electric bell. Cunningham opened to him.

"Good-evening, Uncle," the younger man said. "Your elevator is not running, so I walked up. On the way I met a man going down. He seemed rather in a hurry."

"A cheap blackmailer trying to bold me up. I threw him out."

"Thought he looked put out," answered the younger man, smiling politely. "I see you still believe in applying direct energy to difficulties."

"I do. That's why I sent for you." The promoter's cold eyes were inscrutable. "Come in and shut the door."

The young man sauntered in. He glanced at his uncle curiously from his sparkling black eyes. What the devil did James, Senior, mean by what he had said? Was there any particular significance in it?

He stroked his small black mustache. "Glad to oblige you any way I can, sir."

"Sit down."

The young Beau Brummel hung up his hat and cane, sank into the easiest chair in the room, and selected a cigarette from a gold-initialed case.

"At your service, sir," he said languidly.

CHAPTER II

WILD ROSE TAKES THE DUST

"Wild Rose on Wild Fire," shouted the announcer through a megaphone trained on the grand stand.

Kirby Lane, who was leaning against the fence chatting with a friend, turned round and took notice. Most people did when Wild Rose held the center of the stage.

Through the gateway of the enclosure came a girl hardly out of her teens. She was bareheaded, a cowboy hat in her hand. The sun, already slanting from the west, kissed her crisp, ruddy gold hair and set it sparkling. Her skin was shell pink, amber clear. She walked as might a young Greek goddess in the dawn of the world, with the free movement of one who loves the open sky and the wind-swept plain.

A storm of hand-clapping swept the grand stand. Wild Rose acknowledged it with a happy little laugh. These dear people loved her. She knew it. And not only because she was a champion. They made over her because of her slimness, her beauty, the aura of daintiness that surrounded her, the little touches of shy youth that still clung to her manner. Other riders of her sex might be rough, hoydenish, or masculine. Wild Rose had the charm of her name. Yet the muscles that rippled beneath her velvet skin were hard as nails. No bronco alive could unseat her without the fight of its life.

Meanwhile the outlaw horse Wild Fire was claiming its share of attention. The bronco was a noted bucker. Every year it made the circuit of the rodeos and only twice had a rider stuck to the saddle without pulling leather. Now it had been roped and cornered. Half a dozen wranglers in chaps were trying to get it ready for the saddle. From the red-hot eyes of the brute a devil of fury glared at the men trying to thrust a gunny sack over its head. The four legs were wide apart, the ears cocked, teeth bared. The animal flung itself skyward and came down on the boot of a puncher savagely. The man gave an involuntary howl of pain, but he clung to the rope snubbed round the wicked head.

The gunny sack was pushed and pulled over the eyes. Wild Fire subsided, trembling, while bridle was adjusted and saddle slipped on. The girl attended to the cinching herself. If the saddle turned it might cost her life, and she preferred to take no unnecessary chances.

She was dressed in green satin riding clothes. A beaded bolero jacket fitted over a white silk blouse. Her boots were of buckskin, silver-spurred. With her hat on, at a distance, one might have taken her for a slim, beautiful boy.

Wild Rose swung to the saddle and adjusted her feet in the stirrups. The gunny sack was whipped from the horse's head. There was a wild scuffle of escaping wranglers.

For a moment Wild Fire stood quivering. The girl's hat swept through the air in front of its eyes. The horse woke to galvanized action. The back humped. It shot into the air with a writhing twist of the body. All four feet struck the ground together, straight and stiff as fence posts.

The girl's head jerked forward as though it were on a hinge. The outlaw went sunfishing, its forefeet almost straight up. She was still in the saddle when it came to all fours again. A series of jarring bucks, each ending with the force of a pile-driver as Wild Fire's hoofs struck earth, varied the programme. The rider came down limp, half in the saddle, half out, righting herself as the horse settled for the next leap. But not once did her hands reach for the pommel of the saddle to steady her.

Pitching and bucking, the animal humped forward to the fence.

"Look out!" a judge yelled.

It was too late. The rider could not deflect her mount. Into the fence went Wild Fire blindly and furiously. The girl threw up her leg to keep it from being jammed. Up went the bronco again before Wild Rose could find the stirrup. She knew she was gone, felt herself shooting forward. She struck the ground close to the horse's hoofs. Wild Fire lunged at her. A bolt of pain like a red-hot iron seared through her.

Through the air a rope whined. It settled over the head of the outlaw and instantly was jerked tight. Wild Fire, coming down hard for a second lunge at the green crumpled heap underfoot, was dragged sharply sideways. Another lariat snaked forward and fell true.

"Here, Cole!" The first roper thrust the taut line into the hands of a puncher who had run forward. He himself dived for the still girl beneath the hoofs of the rearing horse. Catching her by the arms, he dragged her out of danger. She was unconscious.

The cowboy picked her up and carried her to the waiting ambulance. The closed eyes flickered open. A puzzled little frown rested in them.

"What's up, Kirby?" asked Wild Rose.

"You had a spill."

"Took the dust, did I?" He sensed the disappointment in her voice.

"You rode fine. He jammed you into the fence," explained the young man.

The doctor examined her. The right arm hung limp.

"Broken, I'm afraid," he said.

"Ever see such luck?" the girl complained to Lane.

"Probably they won't let me ride in the wild-horse race now."

"No chance, young lady," the doctor said promptly. "I'm going to take you right to the hospital."

"I might get back in time," she said hopefully.

"You might, but you won't."

"Oh, well," she sighed. "If you're going to act like that."

The cowboy helped her into the ambulance and found himself a seat.

"Where do you think you're going?" she asked with a smile a bit twisted by pain.

"I reckon I'll go far as the hospital with you."

"I reckon you won't. What do you think I am--a nice little parlor girl who has to be petted when she gets hurt? You're on to ride inside of fifteen minutes--and you know it."

"Oh, well! I'm lookin' for an alibi so as not to be beaten. That Cole Sanborn is sure a straight-up rider."

"So's that Kirby Lane. You needn't think I'm going to let you beat yourself out of the championship. Not so any one could notice it. Hop out, sir."

He rose, smiling ruefully. "You certainly are one bossy kid."

"I'd say you need bossing when you start to act so foolish," she retorted, flushing.

"See you later," he called to her by way of good-bye.

As the ambulance drove away she waved cheerfully at him a gauntleted hand.

The cowpuncher turned back to the arena. The megaphone man was announcing that the contest for the world's rough-riding championship would now be resumed.

CHAPTER III

FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE WORLD

The less expert riders had been weeded out in the past two days. Only the champions of their respective sections were still in the running. One after another these lean, brown men, chap-clad and bow-legged, came forward dragging their saddles and clamped themselves to the backs of hurricane outlaws which pitched, bucked, crashed into fences, and toppled over backward in their frenzied efforts to dislodge the human clothes-pins fastened to them.

The bronco busters endured the usual luck of the day. Two were thrown and picked themselves out of the dust, chagrined and damaged, but still grinning. One drew a tame horse not to be driven into resistance either by fanning or scratching. Most of the riders emerged from the ordeal victorious. Meanwhile the spectators in the big grand stand, packed close as small apples in a box, watched every rider and snatched at its thrills just as such crowds have done from the time of Caligula.

Kirby Lane, from his seat on the fence among a group of cowpunchers, watched each rider no less closely. It chanced that he came last on the programme for the day. When Cole Sanborn was in the saddle he made an audible comment.

"I'm lookin' at the next champion of the world," he announced.

"Not onless you've got a lookin'-glass with you, old alkali," a small berry-brown youth in yellow-wool chaps retorted.

Sanborn was astride a noted outlaw known as Jazz. The horse was a sorrel, and it knew all the tricks of its kind. It went sunfishing, tried weaving and fence-rowing, at last toppled over backward after a frantic leap upward. The rider, long-bodied and lithe, rode like a centaur. Except for the moment when he stepped out of the saddle as the outlaw fell on its back, he stuck to his seat as though he were glued to it.

"He's a right limber young fellow, an' he sure can ride. I'll say that," admitted one old cattleman.

"They don't grow no better busters," another man spoke up. He was a neighbor of Sanborn and had his local pride. "From where I come from we'll put our last nickel on Cole, you betcha. He's top hand with a rope too."

"Hmp! Kirby here can make him look like thirty cents, top of a bronc or with a lariat either one," the yellow-chapped vaquero flung out bluntly.

Lane looked at his champion, a trifle annoyed. "What's the use o' talkin' foolishness, Kent? I never saw the day I had anything on Cole."

"Beat him at Pendleton, didn't you?"

"Luck. I drew the best horses." To Sanborn, who had finished his job and was straddling wide-legged toward the group, Kirby threw up a hand of greeting. "Good work, old-timer. You're sure hellamile on a bronc."

"Kirby Lane on Wild Fire," shouted the announcer.

Lane slid from the fence and reached for his saddle. As he lounged forward, moving with indolent grace, one might have guessed him a Southerner. He was lean-loined and broad-shouldered. The long, flowing muscles rippled under his skin when he moved like those of a panther. From beneath the band of his pinched-in hat crisp, reddish hair escaped.

Wild Fire was off the instant his feet found the stirrups. Again the outlaw went through its bag of tricks and its straight bucking. The man in the saddle gave to its every motion lightly and easily. He rode with such grace that he seemed almost a part of the horse. His reactions appeared to anticipate the impulses of the screaming fiend which he was astride. When Wild Fire jolted him with humpbacked jarring bucks his spine took the shock limply to neutralize the effect. When it leaped heavenward he waved his hat joyously and rode the stirrups. From first to last he was master of the situation, and the outlaw, though still fighting savagely, knew the battle was lost.

The bronco had one trump card left, a trick that had unseated many a stubborn rider. It plunged sideways at the fence of the enclosure and crashed through it. Kirby's nerves shrieked with pain, and for a moment everything went black before him. His leg had been jammed hard against the upper plank. But when the haze cleared he was still in the saddle.

The outlaw gave up. It trotted tamely back to the grand stand through the shredded fragments of pine in the splintered fence, and the grand stand rose to its feet with a shout of applause for the rider.

Kirby slipped from the saddle and limped back to his fellows on the fence. Already the crowd was pouring out from every exit of the stand. A thousand cars of fifty different makes were snorting impatiently to get out of the jam as soon as possible. For Cheyenne was full, full to overflowing. The town roared with a high tide of jocund life. From all over Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and New Mexico hard-bitten, sunburned youths in high-heeled boots and gaudy attire had gathered for the Frontier Day celebration. Hundreds of cars had poured up from Denver. Trains had disgorged thousands of tourists come to see the festival. Many people would sleep out in automobiles and on the prairie. The late comers at restaurants and hotels would wait long and take second best.

A big cattleman beckoned to Lane. "Place in my car, son. Run you back to town."

One of the judges sat in the tonneau beside the rough rider.

"How's the leg? Hurt much?"

"Not much. I'm noticin' it some," Kirby answered with a smile.

"You'll have to ride to-morrow. It's you and Sanborn for the finals. We haven't quite made up our minds."

The cattleman was an expert driver. He wound in and out among the other cars speeding over the prairie, struck the road before the great majority of the automobiles had reached there, and was in town with the vanguard.

After dinner the rough rider asked the clerk at her hotel if there was any mail for Miss Rose McLean. Three letters were handed him. He put them in his pocket and set out for the hospital.

He found Miss Rose reclining in a hospital chair, in a frame of mind highly indignant. "That doctor talks as though he's going to keep me here a week. Well, he's got another guess coming. I'll not stay," she exploded to her visitor.

"Now, looky here, you better do as the doc says. He knows best. What's a week in your young life?" Kirby suggested.

"A week's a week, and I don't intend to stay. Why did you limp when you came in? Get hurt?"

"Not really hurt. Jammed my leg against a fence. I drew Wild Fire."

"Did you win the championship?" the girl asked eagerly.

"No. Finals to-morrow. Sanborn an' me. How's the arm? Bone broken?"

"Yes. Oh, it aches some. Be all right soon."

He drew her letters from his pocket. "Stopped to get your mail at the hotel. Thought you'd like to see it."

Wild Rose looked the envelopes over and tore one open.

"From my little sister Esther," she explained. "Mind if I read it? I'm some worried about her. She's been writing kinda funny lately."

As she read, the color ebbed from her face. When she had finished reading the letter Kirby spoke gently.

"Bad news, pardner?"

She nodded, choking. Her eyes, frank and direct, met those of her friend without evasion. It was a heritage of her life in the open that in her relations with men she showed a boylike unconcern of sex.

"Esther's in trouble. She--she--" Rose caught her breath in a stress of emotion.

"If there's anything I can do--"

The girl flung aside the rug that covered her and rose from the chair. She began to pace up and down the room. Presently her thoughts overflowed in words.

"She doesn't say what it is, but--I know her. She's crazy with fear--or heartache--or something." Wild Rose was always quick-tempered, a passionate defender of children and all weak creatures. Now Lane knew that the hot blood was rushing stormily to her heart. Her little sister was in danger, the only near relative she had. She would fight for her as a cougar would for its young. "By God, if it's a man--if he's done her wrong--I'll shoot him down like a gray wolf. I'll show him how safe it is to--to--"

She broke down again, clamping tight her small strong teeth to bite back a sob.

He spoke very gently. "Does she say--?"

His sentence hung suspended in air, but the young woman understood its significance.

"No. The letter's just a--a wail of despair. She--talks of suicide. Kirby, I've got to get to Denver on the next train. Find out when it leaves. And I'll send a telegram to her to-night telling her I'll fix it. I will too."

"Sure. That's the way to talk. Be reasonable an' everything'll work out fine. Write your wire an' I'll take it right to the office. Soon as I've got the train schedule I'll come back."

"You're a good pal, Kirby. I always knew you were."

For a moment her left hand fell in his. He looked down at the small, firm, sunbrowned fist. That hand was, as Browning has written, a woman in itself, but it was a woman competent, unafraid, trained hard as nails. She would go through with whatever she set out to do.

As his eyes rested on the fingers there came to him a swift, unreasoning prescience of impending tragedy. To what dark destiny was she moving?

CHAPTER IV

NOT ALWAYS TWO TO MAKE A QUARREL

Kirby put Wild Rose on the morning train for Denver. She had escaped from the doctor by sheer force of will. The night had been a wretched one, almost sleepless, and she knew that her fever would rise in the afternoon. But that could not be helped. She had more important business than her health to attend to just now.

Ordinarily Rose bloomed with vitality, but this morning she looked tired and worn. In her eyes there was a hard brilliancy Kirby did not like to see. He knew from of old the fire that could blaze in her heart, the insurgent impulses that could sweep her into recklessness. What would she do if the worst she feared turned out to be true?

"Good luck," she called through the open window as the train pulled out. "Beat Cole, Kirby."

"Good luck to you," he answered. "Write me soon as you find out how things are."

But as he walked from the station his heart misgave him. Why had he let her go alone, knowing as he did how swift she blazed to passion when wrong was done those she loved? It was easy enough to say that she had refused to let him go with her, though he had several times offered. The fact remained that she might need a friend at hand, might need him the worst way.

All through breakfast he was ridden by the fear of trouble on her horizon. Comrades stopped to slap him on the back and wish him good luck in the finals, and though he made the proper answers it was with the surface of a mind almost wholly preoccupied with another matter.

While he was rising from the table he made a decision in the flash of an eye. He would join Rose in Denver at once. Already dozens of cars were taking the road. There would be a vacant place in some one of them.

He found a party just setting out for Denver and easily made arrangements to take the unfilled seat in the tonneau.

By the middle of the afternoon he was at a boarding-house on Cherokee Street inquiring for Miss Rose McLean. She was out, and the landlady did not know when she would be back. Probably after her sister got home from work.

Lane wandered down to Curtis Street, sat through a part of a movie, then restlessly took his way up Seventeenth. He had an uncle and two cousins living in Denver. With the uncle he was on bad terms, and with his cousins on no terms at all. It had been ten years since he had seen either James Cunningham, Jr., or his brother Jack. Why not call on them and renew acquaintance?

He went into a drug-store and looked the name up in a telephone book. His cousin James had an office in the Equitable Building. He hung the book up on the hook and turned to go. As he did so he came face to face with Rose McLean.

"You--here!" she cried.

"Yes, I--I had business in Denver," he explained.

"Like fun you had! You came because--" She stopped abruptly, struck by another phase of the situation. "Did you leave Cheyenne without riding to-day?"

"I didn't want to ride. I'm fed up on ridin'."

"You threw away the championship and a thousand-dollar prize to--to--"

"You're forgettin' Cole Sanborn," he laughed. "No, honest, I came on business. But since I'm here--say, Rose, where can we have a talk? Let's go up to the mezzanine gallery at the Albany. It's right next door."

He took her into the Albany Hotel. They stepped out of the elevator at the second floor and he found a settee in a corner where they might be alone. It struck him that the shadows in her eyes had deepened. She was, he could see plainly, laboring under a tension of repressed excitement. The misery of her soul leaped out at him when she looked his way.

"Have you anything to tell me?" he asked, and his low, gentle voice was a comfort to her raw nerves.

"It's a man, just as I thought--the man she works for."

"Is he married?"

"No. Going to be soon, the papers say. He's a wealthy promoter. His name's Cunningham."

"What Cunningham?" In his astonishment the words seemed to leap from him of their own volition.

"James Cunningham, a big land and mining man. You must have heard of him."

"Yes, I've heard of him. Are you sure?"

She nodded. "Esther won't tell me a thing. She's shielding him. But I went through her letters and found a note from him. It's signed 'J. C.' I accused him point-blank to her and she just put her head down on her arms and sobbed. I know he's the man."

"What do you mean to do?"

"I mean to have a talk with him first off. I'll make him do what's right."

"How?"

"I don't know how, but I will," she cried wildly. "If he don't I'll settle with him. Nothing's too bad for a man like that."

He shook his head. "Not the best way, Rose. Let's be sure of every move we make. Let's check up on this man before we lay down the law to him."

Some arresting quality in him held her eye. He had sloughed the gay devil-may-care boyishness of the range and taken on a look of strong patience new in her experience of him. But she was worn out and nervous. The pain in her arm throbbed feverishly. Her emotions had held her on a rack for many hours. There was in her no reserve power of endurance.

"No, I'm going to see him and have it out," she flung back.

"Then let me go with you when you see him. You're sick. You ought to be in bed right now. You're in no condition to face it alone."

"Oh, don't baby me, Kirby!" she burst out. "I'm all right. What's it matter if I am fagged. Don't you see? I'm crazy about Esther. I've got to get it settled. I can rest afterward."

"Will it do any harm to take a friend along when you go to see this man?"

"Yes. I don't want him to think I'm afraid of him. You're not in this, Kirby. Esther is my little sister, not yours."

"True enough." A sardonic, mirthless smile touched his face. "But James Cunningham is my uncle, not yours."

"Your uncle?" She rose, staring at him with big, dilated eyes. "He's your uncle, the man who--who--"

"Yes, an' I know him better than you do. We've got to use finesse--"

"I see." Her eyes attacked him scornfully. "You think we'd better not face him with what he's done. You think we'd better go easy on him. Uncle's rich, and he might not like plain words. Oh, I understand now."

Wild Rose flung out a gesture that brushed him from her friendship. She moved past him blazing with anger.

He was at the elevator cage almost as soon as she.

"Listen, Rose. You know better than that. I told you he was my uncle because you'd find it out if I'm goin' to help you. He's no friend of mine, but I know him. He's strong. You can't drive him by threats."

The elevator slid down and stopped. The door of it opened.

"Will you stand aside, sir?" Rose demanded. "I won't have anything to do with any of that villain's family. Don't ever speak to me again."

She stepped into the car. The door clanged shut. Kirby was left standing alone.

CHAPTER V

COUSINS MEET

With the aid of a tiny looking-glass a young woman was powdering her nose. Lane interrupted her to ask if he might see Mr. Cunningham.

"Name, please?" she parroted pertly, and pressed a button in the switchboard before her.

Presently she reached for the powder-puff again. "Says to come right in. Door 't end o' the hall."

Kirby entered. A man sat at a desk telephoning. He was smooth-shaven and rather heavy-set, a year or two beyond thirty, with thinning hair on the top of his head. His eyes in repose were hard and chill. From the conversation his visitor gathered that he was a captain in the Red Cross drive that was on.

As he hung up the receiver the man rose, brisk and smiling, hand outstretched. "Glad to meet you, Cousin Kirby. When did you reach town? And how long are you going to stay?"

"Got in hour an' a half ago. How are you, James?"

"Busy, but not too busy to meet old friends. Let me see. I haven't seen you since you were ten years old, have I?"

"I was about twelve. It was when my father moved to Wyoming."

"Well, I'm glad to see you. Where you staying? Eat lunch with me to-morrow, can't you? I'll try to get Jack too."

"Suits me fine," agreed Kirby.

"Anything I can do for you in the meantime?"

"Yes. I want to see Uncle James."

There was a film of wariness in the eyes of the oil broker as he looked at the straight, clean-built young cattleman. He knew that the strong face, brown as Wyoming, expressed a pungent personality back of which was dynamic force. What did Lane want with his uncle? They had quarreled. His cousin knew that. Did young Lane expect him to back his side of the quarrel? Or did he want to win back favor with James Cunningham, Senior, millionaire?

Kirby smiled. He guessed what the other was thinking. "I don't want to interfere in your friendship with him. All I need is his address and a little information. I've come to have another row with him, I reckon."

The interest in Cunningham's eyes quickened. He laughed. "Aren't you in bad enough already with Uncle? Why another quarrel?"

"This isn't on my own account. There's a girl in his office--"

A rap on the door interrupted Kirby. A young man walked into the room. He was a good-looking young exquisite, dark-eyed and black-haired. His clothes had been made by one of the best tailors in New York. Moreover, he knew how to wear them.

James Cunningham, Junior, introduced him to Kirby as his cousin Jack. After a few moments of talk the broker reverted to the subject of their previous talk.

"Kirby was just telling me that he has come to Denver to meet Uncle James," he explained to his brother. "Some difficulty with him, I understand."

Jack Cunningham's black eyes fastened on his cousin. He waited for further information. It was plain he was interested.

"I'm not quite sure of my facts," Lane said. "But there's evidence to show that he has ruined a young girl in his office. She practically admits that he's the man. I happen to be a friend of her family, an' I'm goin' to call him to account. He can't get away with it."

Kirby chanced to be looking at his cousin Jack. What he saw in that young man's eyes surprised him. There were astonishment, incredulity, and finally a cunning narrowing of the black pupils.

It was James who spoke. His face was grave. "That's a serious charge, Kirby," he said. "What is the name of the young woman?"

"I'd rather not give it--except to Uncle James himself."

"Better write it," suggested Jack with a reminiscent laugh. "He's a bit impetuous. I saw him throw a man down the stairs yesterday. Picked the fellow up at the foot of the flight. He certainly looked as though he'd like to murder our dear uncle."

"What I'd like to know is this," said Lane. "What sort of a reputation has Uncle James in this way? Have you ever heard of his bein' in anything of this sort before?"

"No, I haven't," James said promptly.

Jack shrugged. "I wouldn't pick nunky for exactly a moral man," he said flippantly. "His idea of living is to grab all the easy things he can."

"Where can I see him most easily? At his office?" asked Kirby.

"He drove down to Colorado Springs to-day on business. At least he told me he was going. Don't know whether he expects to get back to-night or not. He lives at the Paradox Apartments," Jack said.

"Prob'ly I'd better see him there rather than at his office."

"Hope you have a pleasant time with the old boy," Jack murmured. "Don't think I'd care to be a champion of dames where he's concerned. He's a damned cantankerous old brute. I'll say that for him."

James arranged a place of meeting for luncheon next day. The young cattleman left. He knew from the fidgety manner of Jack that he had some important business he was anxious to talk over with his brother.

CHAPTER VI

LIGHTS OUT

It was five minutes to ten by his watch when Kirby entered the Paradox Apartments. The bulletin board told him that his uncle's apartment was 12. He did not take the self-serve elevator, but the stairs. The hall on the second floor was dark. Since he did not know whether the rooms he wanted were on this floor or the next he knocked at a door.

Kirby thought he heard the whisper of voices and he knocked again. He had to rap a third time before the door was opened.

"What is it? What do you want?"

If ever Lane had seen stark, naked fear in a human face, it stared at him out of that of the woman in front of him. She was a tall, angular woman of a harsh, forbidding countenance, flat-breasted and middle-aged. Behind her, farther back in the room, the roughrider caught a glimpse of a fat, gross, ashen-faced man fleeing toward the inner door of a bedroom to escape being seen. He was thrusting into his coat pocket what looked to the man in the hall like a revolver.

"Can you tell me where James Cunningham's apartment is?" asked Kirby.

The woman gasped. The hand on the doorknob was trembling violently. Something clicked in her throat when the dry lips tried to frame an answer.

"Head o' the stairs--right hand," she managed to get out, then shut the door swiftly in the face of the man whose simple question had so shocked her.

Kirby heard the latch released from its catch. The key in the lock below also turned.

"She's takin' no chances," he murmured. "Now I wonder why both her an' my fat friend are so darned worried. Who were they lookin' for when they opened the door an' saw me? An' why did it get her goat when I asked where Uncle James lived?"

As he took the treads that brought him to the next landing the cattleman had an impression of a light being flashed off somewhere. He turned to the right as the woman below had directed.

The first door had on the panel a card with his uncle's name. He knocked, and at the same instant noticed that the door was ajar. No answer came. His finger found the electric push button. He could hear it buzzing inside. Twice he pushed it.

"Nobody at home, looks like," he said to himself. "Well, I reckon I'll step in an' leave a note. Or maybe I'll wait. If the door's open he's liable to be right back."

He stepped into the room. It was dark. His fingers groped along the wall for the button to throw on the light. Before he found it a sound startled him.

It was the soft faint panting of some one breathing.

He was a man whose nerves were under the best of control, but the cold feet of mice pattered up and down his spine. Something was wrong. The sixth sense of danger that comes to some men who live constantly in peril was warning him.

"Who's there?" he asked sharply.

No voice replied, but there was a faint rustle of some one or some thing stirring.

He waited, crouched in the darkness.

There came another vague rustle of movement. And presently another, this time closer. Every sense in him was alert, keyed up to closest attention. He knew that some one, for some sinister purpose, had come into this apartment and been trapped here by him.

The moments flew. He thought he could hear his hammering heart. A stifled gasp, a dozen feet from him, was just audible.

He leaped for the sound. His outflung hand struck an arm and slid down it, caught at a small wrist, and fastened there. In the fraction of a second left him he realized, beyond question, that it was a woman he had assaulted.

The hand was wrenched from him. There came a zigzag flash of lightning searing his brain, a crash that filled the world for him--and he floated into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER VII

FOUL PLAY

Lane came back painfully to a world of darkness. His head throbbed distressingly. Querulously he wondered where he was and what had taken place.

He drew the fingers of his outstretched hand along the nap of a rug and he knew he was on the floor. Then his mind cleared and he remembered that a woman's hand had been imprisoned in his just before his brain stopped functioning.

Who was she? What was she doing here? And what under heaven had hit him hard enough to put the lights out so instantly?

He sat up and held his throbbing head. He had been struck on the point of the chin and gone down like an axed bullock. The woman must have lashed out at him with some weapon.

In his pocket he found a match. It flared up and lit a small space in the pit of blackness. Unsteadily he got to his feet and moved toward the door. His mind was quite clear now and his senses abnormally sensitive. For instance, he was aware of a faint perfume of violet in the room, so faint that he had not noticed it before.

There grew on him a horror, an eagerness to be gone from the rooms. It was based on no reasoning, but on some obscure feeling that there had taken place something evil, something that chilled his blood.

Yet he did not go. He had come for a purpose, and it was characteristic of him that he stayed in spite of the dread that grew on him till it filled his breast. Again he groped along the wall for the light switch. A second match flared in his fingers and showed it to him. Light flooded the room.

His first sensation was of relief. This handsome apartment with its Persian rugs, its padded easy-chairs, its harmonious wall tints, had a note of repose quite alien to tragedy. It was the home of a man who had given a good deal of attention to making himself comfortable. Indefinably, it was a man's room. The presiding genius of it was masculine and not feminine. It lacked the touches of adornment that only a woman can give to make a place homelike.

Yet one adornment caught Kirby's eye at once. It was a large photograph in a handsome frame on the table. The picture showed the head and bust of a beautiful woman in evening dress. She was a brunette, young and very attractive. The line of head, throat, and shoulder was perfect. The delicate, disdainful poise and the gay provocation in the dark, slanting eyes were enough to tell that she was no novice in the game of sex. He judged her an expensive orchid produced in the civilization of our twentieth-century hothouse. Across the bottom of the picture was scrawled an inscription in a fashionably angular hand. Lane moved closer to read it. The words were, "Always, Phyllis." Probably this was the young woman to whom, if rumor were true, James Cunningham, Senior, was engaged.

On the floor, near where Kirby had been lying, lay a heavy piece of agate evidently used for a paperweight. He picked up the smooth stone and guessed instantly that this was the weapon which had established contact with his chin. Very likely the woman's hand had closed on it when she heard him coming. She had switched off the light and waited for him. That the blow had found a vulnerable mark and knocked him out had been sheer luck.

Kirby passed into a luxurious bedroom beyond which was a tiled bathroom. He glanced these over and returned to the outer apartment. There was still another door. It was closed. As the man from Wyoming moved toward it he felt once more a strange sensation of dread. It was strong enough to stop him in his stride. What was he going to find behind that door? When he laid his hand on the knob pinpricks played over his scalp and galloped down his spine.

He opened the door. A sweet sickish odor, pungent but not heavy, greeted his nostrils. It was a familiar smell, one he had met only recently. Where? His memory jumped to a corridor of the Cheyenne hospital. He had been passing the operating-room on his way to see Wild Rose. The door had opened and there had been wafted to him faintly the penetrating whiff of chloroform. It was the same drug he sniffed now.

He stood on the threshold, groped for the switch, and flashed on the lights. Sound though Kirby Lane's nerves were, he could not repress a gasp at what he saw.

Leaning back in an armchair, looking up at him with a horrible sardonic grin, was his uncle James Cunningham. His wrists were tied with ropes to the arms of the chair. A towel, passed round his throat, fastened the body to the back of the chair and propped up the head. A bloody clot of hair hung tangled just above the temple. The man was dead beyond any possibility of doubt. There was a small hole in the center of the forehead through which a bullet had crashed. Beneath this was a thin trickle of blood that had run into the heavy eyebrows.

The dead man was wearing a plaid smoking-jacket and oxblood slippers. On the tabouret close to his hand lay a half-smoked cigar. There was a grewsome suggestion in the tilt of the head and the gargoyle grin that this was a hideous and shocking jest he was playing on the world.

Kirby snatched his eyes from the grim spectacle and looked round the room. It was evidently a private den to which the owner of the apartment retired. There were facilities for smoking and for drinking, a lounge which showed marks of wear, and a writing-desk in one corner.

This desk held the young man's gaze. It was open. Papers lay scattered everywhere and its contents had been rifled and flung on the floor. Some one, in a desperate hurry, had searched every pigeon-hole.

The window of the room was open. Perhaps it had been thrown up to let out the fumes of the chloroform. Kirby stepped to it and looked down. The fire escape ran past it to the stories above and below.

The young cattleman had seen more than once the tragedies of the range. He had heard the bark of guns and had looked down on quiet dead men but a minute before full of lusty life. But these had been victims of warfare in the open, usually of sudden passions that had flared and struck. This was different. It was murder, deliberate, cold-blooded, atrocious. The man had been tied up, made helpless, and done to death without mercy. There was a note of the abnormal, of the unhuman, about the affair. Whoever had killed James Cunningham deserved the extreme penalty of the law.

He was a man who no doubt had made many enemies. Always he had demanded his pound of flesh and got it. Some one had waited patiently for his hour and exacted a fearful vengeance for whatever wrong he had suffered.

Kirby decided that he must call the police at once. No time ought to be lost in starting to run down the murderer. He stepped into the living-room to the telephone, lifted the receiver from the hook, and--stood staring down at a glove lying on the table.

As he looked at it the blood washed out of his face. He had a sensation as though his heart had been plunged into cracked ice. For he recognized the glove on the table, knew who its owner was.

It was a small riding-gauntlet with a device of a rose embroidered on the wrist. He would have known that glove among a thousand.

He had seen it, a few hours since, on the hand of Wild Rose.

CHAPTER VIII

BY MEANS OF THE FIRE ESCAPE

Kirby Lane stood with fascinated eyes looking down at the glove, muscles and brain alike paralyzed. The receiver was in his hand, close to his ear.

A voice from the other end of the wire drifted to him. "Number, please."

Automatically he hung the receiver on the hook. Dazed though he was, the rough rider knew that the police were the last people in the world he wanted to see just now.

All his life he had lived the adventure of the outdoors. For twelve months he had served at the front, part of the time with the forces in the Argonne. He had ridden stampedes and fought through blizzards. He had tamed the worst outlaw horses the West could produce. But he had never been so shock-shaken as he was now. A fact impossibly but dreadfully true confronted him. Wild Rose had been alone with his uncle in these rooms, had listened with breathless horror while Kirby climbed the stairs, had been trapped by his arrival, and had fought like a wolf to make her escape. He remembered the wild cry of her outraged heart, "Nothing's too bad for a man like that."

Lane was sick with fear. It ran through him and sapped his supple strength like an illness. It was not possible that Rose could have done this in her right mind. But he had heard a doctor say once that under stress of great emotion people sometimes went momentarily insane. His friend had been greatly wrought up from anxiety, pain, fever, and lack of sleep.

In replacing the telephone he had accidentally pushed aside a book. Beneath it was a slip of paper on which had been penciled a note. He read it, without any interest.

Mr. Hull he come see you. He sorry you not here. He say maybe perhaps make honorable call some other time.

S. HORIKAWA

An electric bell buzzed through the apartment. The sound of it startled Kirby as though it had been the warning of a rattlesnake close to his head. Some one was at the outer door ringing for admission. It would never do for him to be caught here.

He had been trained to swift thought reactions. Quickly but noiselessly he stepped to the door and released the catch of the Yale lock so that it would not open from the outside without a key. He switched off the light and passed through the living-room into the bedchamber. His whole desire now was to be gone from the building as soon as possible. The bedroom also he darkened before he stepped to the window and crept through it to the platform of the fire escape.

The glove was still in his hand. He thrust it into his pocket as he began the descent. The iron ladder ran down the building to the alley. It ended ten feet above the ground. Kirby lowered himself and dropped. He turned to the right down the alley toward Glenarm Street.

A man was standing at the comer of the alley trying to light a cigar. He was a reporter on the "Times," just returning from the Press Club where he had been playing in a pool tournament.

He stopped Lane. "Can you lend me a match, friend?"

The cattleman handed him three or four and started to go.

"Just a mo'," the newspaper-man said, striking a light. "Do you always"--puff, puff--"leave your rooms"--puff, puff, puff--"by the fire escape?"

Kirby looked at him in silence, thinking furiously. He had been caught, after all. There were witnesses to prove he had gone up to his uncle's rooms. Here was another to testify he had left by the fire escape. The best he could say was that he was very unlucky.

"Never mind, friend," the newspaper-man went On. "You don't look like a second-story worker to yours truly." He broke into a little amused chuckle. "I reckon friend husband, who never comes home till Saturday night, happened around unexpectedly and the fire escape looked good to you. Am I right?"

The Wyoming man managed a grin. It was not a mirthful one, but it served.

"You're a wizard," he said admiringly.

The reporter had met a bootlegger earlier in the evening and had two or three drinks. He was mellow. "Oh, I'm wise," he said with a wink. "Chuck Ellis isn't anybody's fool. Beat it, Lothario, while the beating's good." The last sentence and the gesture that accompanied the words were humorous exaggerations of old-time melodrama.

Lane took his advice without delay.

CHAPTER IX

THE STORY IN THE "NEWS"

From a booth in a drug-store on Sixteenth Street Kirby telephoned the police that James Cunningham had been murdered at his home in the Paradox Apartments. He stayed to answer no questions, but hung up at once. From a side door of the store he stepped out to Welton Street and walked to his hotel.

He passed a wretched night. The distress that flooded his mind was due less to his own danger than to his anxiety for Rose. His course of action was not at all clear to him in case he should be identified as the man who had been seen going to and coming from the apartment of the murdered man. He could not explain why he was there without implicating Rose and her sister. He would not betray them. That of course. But he had told his cousins why he was going. Would their story not start a hunt for the woman in the case?

Man is an illogical biped. Before Kirby had seen the glove on the table and associated it with the crime, his feeling had been that the gallows was the proper end of so cruel a murderer. Now he not only intended to protect Rose, but his heart was filled with pity for her. He understood her better than he did any other woman, her loyalty and love and swift, upblazing anger. Even if her hand had fired the shot, he told himself, it was not Wild Rose who had done it--not the little friend he had come to know and like so well, but a tortured woman beside herself with grief for the sister to whom she had always been a mother too.

He slept little, and that brokenly. With the dawn he was out on the street to buy a copy of the "News." The story of the murder had the two columns on the right-hand side of the front page and broke over to the third. He hurried back to his room to read it behind a locked door.

The story was of a kind in which newspapers revel. Cunningham was a well-known character, several times a millionaire. His death even by illness would have been worth a column. But the horrible and grewsome way of his taking off, the mystery surrounding it, the absence of any apparent motive unless it were revenge, all whetted the appetite of the editors. It was a big "story," one that would run for many days, and the "News" played it strong.

As Kirby had expected, he was selected as the probable assassin. A reporter had interviewed Mr. and Mrs. Cass Hull, who occupied the apartment just below that of the murdered man. They had told him that a young man, a stranger to them, powerfully built and dressed like a prosperous ranchman, had knocked on their door about 9.20 to ask the way to the apartment of Cunningham. Hull explained that he remembered the time particularly because he happened to be winding the clock at the moment.

A description of Lane was given in a two-column "box." He read it with no amusement. It was too deadly accurate for comfort.

The supposed assassin of James Cunningham is described by Mrs. Cass Hull as dressed in a pepper-and-salt suit and a white, pinched-in cattleman's hat. He is about six feet tall, between 25 and 30 years old, weighing about 200 or perhaps 210 pounds. His hair is a light brown and his face tanned from the sun.

His age and his weight were overstated, and his clothes were almost a khaki brown. Otherwise Mrs. Hull had given a very close description of him, considering her state of mind at the moment when she had seen him.

There was one sentence of the story he read over two or three times. Hull and his wife agreed that it was about 9.20 when he had knocked on their door, unless it was a printer's error or the reporter had made a mistake. Kirby knew this was wrong. He had looked at his watch just before he had entered the Paradox Apartment. He had stopped directly under a street globe, and the time was 9.55.

Had the Hulls deliberately shifted the time back thirty-five minutes? If so, why? He remembered how stark terror had stared out of both their faces. Did they know more about the murder than they pretended? When he had mentioned his uncle's name the woman had been close to collapse, though, of course, he could not be sure that had been the reason. To his mind there flashed the memory of the note he had seen on the table. The man had called on Cunningham and left word he might call again. Was it possible the Hulls had just come down from the apartment above when he had knocked on their door? If so, how did the presence of Rose fit into the schedule?

Lane pounced on the fear and the evasion of the Hulls as an out for Wild Rose. It was only a morsel of hope, but he made the most of it.

The newspaper was inclined to bring up stage the mysterious man who had called up the police at 10.25 to tell them that Cunningham had been murdered in his rooms. Who was this man? Could he be the murderer? If so, why should he telephone the police and start immediately the hunt after him? If not the killer, how did he know that a crime had been committed less than an hour before?

As soon as he had eaten breakfast, Kirby walked round to the boarding-house on Cherokee Street where Wild Rose was staying with her sister. Rose was out, he learned from the landlady. He asked if he might see her sister. His anxiety was so great he could not leave without a word of her.

Presently Esther came down to the parlor where the young man waited for her. Lane introduced himself as a friend of Rose. He was worried about her, he said. She seemed to him in a highly wrought-up, nervous state. He wondered if it would not be well to get her out of Denver.

Esther swallowed a lump in her throat. She had never seen Rose so jumpy, she agreed. Last night she had gone out for an hour alone. The look in her eyes when she had come back had frightened Esther. She had gone at once to her bedroom and locked the door, but her sister had heard her moving about for hours.

Then, suddenly, Esther's throat swelled and she began to sob. She knew well enough that she was at the bottom of Wild Rose's worries.

"Where is she now?" asked Kirby gently.

"I don't know. She didn't tell me where she was going. There's--there's something queer about her. I--I'm afraid."

"What are you afraid of?"

"She's so--so kinda fierce," Esther wailed.

It was impossible to explain, even to this big brown friend of Rose who looked as though his quiet strength could move mountains. He was a man. Besides, every instinct in her drove to keep hidden the secret that some day would tell itself.

Her eyes fell. They rested on the "News" some boarder had tossed on the table beside which she stood. Her thoughts were of herself and the plight in which she had become involved. She looked at the big headlines of the paper and for the moment did not see them. What she did see was disgrace, the shipwreck of the young life she loved so much.

Her pupils dilated. The words of the headline penetrated to the brain. A hand clutched at her heart. She read again hazily--

JAMES CUNNINGHAM MURDERED

--then collapsed fainting into a chair.

CHAPTER X

KIRBY ASKS A DIRECT QUESTION

The story of the Cunningham mystery, as it was already being called, filled the early editions of the afternoon papers. The "Times" had the scoop of the day. It was a story signed by Chuck Ellis, who had seen the alleged murderer climb down by a fire escape from the window of Cunningham's bedroom and had actually talked with the man as he emerged from the alley. His description of the suspect tallied fairly closely with that of Mrs. Hull, but it corrected errors in regard to weight, age, and color of clothes.

As Kirby walked to the Equitable Building to keep his appointment with his cousins, it would not have surprised him if at any moment an officer had touched him on the shoulder and told him he was under arrest.

Entering the office of the oil broker, where the two brothers were waiting for him, Kirby had a sense of an interrupted conversation. They had been talking about him, he guessed. The atmosphere was electric.

James spoke quickly, to bridge any embarrassment. "This is a dreadful thing about Uncle James. I've never been so shocked before in my life. The crime was absolutely fiendish."

Kirby nodded. "Or else the deed of some insane person. Men in their right senses don't do such things."

"No," agreed James. "Murder's one thing. Such coldblooded deviltry is quite another. There may be insanity connected with it. But one thing is sure. I'll not rest till the villain's run to earth and punished."

His eyes met those of his cousin. They were cold and bleak.

"Do you think I did it?" asked Kirby quietly.

The directness of the question took James aback. After the fraction of a second's hesitation he spoke. "If I did I wouldn't be going to lunch with you."

Jack cut in. Excitement had banished his usual almost insolent indolence. His dark eyes burned with a consuming fire. "Let's put our cards on the table. We think you're the man the police are looking for--the one described in the papers."

"What makes you think that?"

"You told us you were going to see him as soon as he got back from the Springs. The description fits you to a T. You can't get away with an alibi so far as I'm concerned."

"All right," said the rough rider, his low, even voice unruffled by excitement. "If I can't, I can't. We'll say I'm the man who came down the fire escape. What then?"

James was watching his cousin steadily. The pupils of his eyes narrowed. He took the answer out of his brother's mouth. "Then we think you probably know something about this mystery that you'll want to tell us. You must have been on the spot very soon after the murderer escaped. Perhaps you saw him."

Kirby told the story of his night's adventure, omitting any reference whatever to Wild Rose or to anybody else in the apartment when he entered.

After he had finished, James made his comment. "You've been very frank, Kirby. I accept your story. A guilty man would have denied being in the apartment, or he would have left town and disappeared."

The range rider smiled sardonically. "I'm not so sure of that. You've got the goods on me. I can't deny I'm the man the police are lookin' for. Mrs. Hull would identify me. So would this reporter Ellis. All you would have to do would be to hand my name to the nearest officer. An' I can't run away without confessin' guilt. Even if I had killed Uncle James, I couldn't do much else except tell some story like the one I've told you."

"It wouldn't go far in a court-room," Jack said.

"Not far," admitted Kirby. "By the way, you haven't expressed an opinion, Jack. Do you think I shot Uncle James?"

Jack looked at him, almost sullenly, and looked away. He poked at the corner of the desk with the ferrule of his cane. "I don't know who shot him. You had quarreled with him, and you went to have another row with him. A cop told me that some one who knew how to tie ropes fastened the knots around his arms and throat. You beat it from the room by the fire escape. A jury would hang you high as Haman on that evidence. Damn it, there's a bad bruise on your chin wasn't there when we saw you yesterday. For all I know he may have done it before you put him out."

"I struck against a corner in the darkness," Kirby said.

"That's what you say. You've got to explain it somehow. I think your story's fishy, if you ask me."

"Then you'd better call up the police," suggested Lane.

"I didn't say I was going to call the cops," retorted Jack sulkily.

James looked at his cousin. Kirby Lane was strong. You could not deny his strength, audacious yet patient. He was a forty-horsepower man with the smile of a boy. Moreover, his face was a certificate of manhood. It was a recommendation more effective than words.

"I think you're wrong, Jack," the older brother said. "Kirby had no more to do with this than I had."

"Thanks," Kirby nodded.

"Let's investigate this man Hull. What Kirby says fits in with what you saw a couple of evenings ago, Jack. I'm assuming he's the same man Uncle flung downstairs. Uncle told you he was a black-mailer. There's one lead. Let's follow it."

Reluctantly Kirby broached one angle of the subject that must be faced. "What about this girl in Uncle's office--the one in trouble? Are we goin' to bring her into this?"

There was a moment's silence. Jack's black eyes slid from Lane to his brother. It struck Kirby that he was waiting tensely for the decision of James, though the reason for his anxiety was not apparent.

James gave the matter consideration, then spoke judicially. "Better leave her out of it. No need to smirch Uncle's reputation unless it's absolutely necessary. We don't want the newspapers gloating over any more scandals than they need."

The cattleman breathed freer. He had an odd feeling that Jack, too, was relieved. Had the young man, after all, a warmer feeling for his dead uncle's reputation than he had given him credit for?

As the three cousins stepped out of the Equitable Building to Stout Street a newsboy was calling an extra.

"A-l-l 'bout Cunn'n'ham myst'ry. Huxtry! Huxtry!"

Kirby bought a paper. A streamer headline in red flashed at him.

HORIKAWA; VALET OF CUNNINGHAM, DISAPPEARS

The lead of the story below was to the effect that Cunningham had drawn two thousand dollars in large bills from the bank the day of his death. Horikawa could not be found, and the police had a theory that he had killed and robbed his master for this money.

CHAPTER XI

THE CORONER'S INQUEST

If Kirby had been playing his own hand only he would have gone to the police and told them he was the man who had been seen leaving the Paradox Apartments by the fire escape. But he could not do this without running the risk of implicating Wild Rose. Awkward questions would be fired at him that he could not answer. He decided not to run away from arrest, but not to surrender himself. If the police rounded him up, he could not help it; if they did not, so much the better.

He made two more attempts to see Wild Rose during the day, but he could not find her at home. When he at last did see her it was at the inquest, where he had gone to learn all that he could of the circumstances surrounding the murder.

There was a risk in attending. He recognized that. But he was moved by an imperative urge to find out all that was possible of the affair. The force that drove him was the need in his heart to exonerate his friend. Though he recognized the weight of evidence against her, he could not believe her guilty. Under tremendous provocation it might be in character for her to have shot his uncle in self-defense or while in extreme anger. But all his knowledge of her cried out that she could never have chloroformed him, tied him up, then taken his life while he was helpless. She was too fine and loyal to her code, too good a sportsman, far too tender-hearted, for such a thing.

Yet the evidence assaulted this conviction of his soul. If the Wild Rose in the dingy court-room had been his friend of the outdoor spaces, he would have rejected as absurd the possibility that she had killed his uncle. But his heart sank when he looked at this wan-faced woman who came late and slipped inconspicuously into a back seat, whose eyes avoided his, who was so plainly keyed up to a tremendously high pitch. She was dressed in a dark-blue tailored serge and a black sailor hat, beneath the rim of which the shadows on her face were dark.

The room was jammed with people. Every aisle was packed and hundreds were turned away. In the audience was a scattering of fashionably dressed women, for it was possible the inquest might develop a sensation.

The coroner was a short, fat, little man with a highly developed sense of his importance. It was his hour, and he made the most of it. His methods were his own. The young assistant district attorney lounging by the table played second fiddle.

The first witnesses developed the movements of Cunningham during the evening of the twenty-third. He had dined at the City Club, and had left there after dinner to go to his apartment. To a club member dining with him he had mentioned an appointment at his rooms with a lady.

A rustling wave of excitement swept the benches. Those who had come to seek sensations had found their first thrill. Kirby drew in his breath sharply. He leaned forward, not to miss a word.

"Did he mention the name of the lady, Mr. Blanton?" asked the coroner, washing the backs of his hands with the palms.

"No."

"Or his business with her?"

"No. But he seemed to be annoyed." Mr. Blanton also seemed to be annoyed. He had considered not mentioning this appointment, but his conscience would not let him hide it. None the less he resented the need of giving the public more scandal about a fellow club member who was dead. He added an explanation. "My feeling was that it was some business matter being forced on him. He had been at Colorado Springs during the day and probably had been unable to see the lady earlier."

"Did he say so?"

"No-o, not exactly."

"What did he say to give you that impression?"

"I don't recall his words."

"Or the substance of them?"

"No. I had the impression, very strongly."

The coroner reproved him tartly. "Please confine your testimony to facts and not to impressions, Mr. Blanton. Do you know at what time Mr. Cunningham left the City Club?"

"At 8.45."

"Precisely?"

"Precisely."

"That will do."

Exit Mr. Blanton from the chair and from the room, very promptly and very eagerly.

He was followed by a teller at the Rocky Mountain National Bank. He testified to only two facts--that he knew Cunningham and that the promoter had drawn two thousand dollars in bills on the day of his death.

A tenant at the Paradox Apartments was next called to the stand. The assistant district attorney examined him. He brought out only one fact of importance--that he had seen Cunningham enter the building at a few minutes before nine o'clock.

The medical witnesses were introduced next. The police surgeon had reached the apartment at 10.30. The deceased had come to his death, in his judgment, from the effect of a bullet out of a .38 caliber revolver fired into his brain. He had been struck a blow on the head by some heavy instrument, but this in itself would probably not have proved fatal.

"How long do you think he had been dead when you first saw him?"

"Less than an hour." Answering questions, the police surgeon gave the technical medical reasons upon which he based this opinion. He described the wound.

The coroner washed the backs of his hands with his palms. Observing reporters noticed that he did this whenever he intended taking the examination into his own hands.

"Did anything peculiar about the wound impress you?" he asked.

"Yes. The forehead of the deceased was powder-marked."

"Showing that the weapon had been fired close to him?"

"Yes."

"Anything else?"

"One thing. The bullet slanted into the head toward the right."

"Where was the chair in which the deceased was seated? I mean in what part of the room."

"Pushed close to the left-hand wall and parallel to it."

"Very close?"

"Touching it."

"Under the circumstances could the revolver have been fired so that the bullet could have taken the course it did if held in the right hand?"

"Hardly. Not unless it was held with extreme awkwardness."

"In your judgment, then, the revolver was fired by a left-handed person?"

"That is my opinion."

The coroner swelled like a turkey cock as he waved the attorney to take charge again.

Lane's heart drummed fast. He did not look across the room toward the girl in the blue tailored suit. But he saw her, just as clearly as though his eyes had been fastened on her. The detail that stood out in his imagination was the right arm set in splints and resting in a linen sling suspended from the neck.

Temporarily Rose McLean was left-handed.

"Was it possible that the deceased could have shot himself?"

"Do you mean, is it possible that somebody could have tied him to the chair after he was dead?"

"Yes."

The surgeon, taken by surprise, hesitated. "That's possible, certainly."

James Cunningham took the witness chair after the police officers who had arrived at the scene of the tragedy with the surgeon had finished their testimony. One point brought out by the officers was that in the search of the rooms the two thousand dollars was not found. The oil broker gave information as to his uncle's affairs.

"You knew your uncle well?" the lawyer asked presently.

"Intimately."

"And were on good terms with him?"

"The best."

"Had he ever suggested to you that he might commit suicide?"

"Never," answered the oil broker with emphasis. "He was the last man in the world one would have associated with such a thought."

"Did he own a revolver?"

"No, not to my knowledge. He had an automatic."

"What caliber was it?"

"I'm not quite sure--about a .38, I think."

"When did you see it last?"

"I don't recollect."

The prosecuting attorney glanced at his notes.

"You are his next of kin?"

"My brother and I are his nephews. He had no nearer relatives."

"You are his only nephews--his only near relatives?"

Cunningham hesitated, for just the blinking of an eye. He did not want to bring Kirby into his testimony if he could help it. That might ultimately lead to his arrest.

"He had one other nephew."

"Living in Denver?"

"No."

"Where?"

"Somewhere in Wyoming, I think. We do not correspond."

"Do you know if he is there now?"

The witness dodged. "He lives there, I think."

"Do you happen to know where he is at the present moment?"

"Yes." The monosyllable fell reluctantly.

"Where?"

"In Denver."

"Not in this court-room?"

"Yes."

"What is the gentleman's name, Mr. Cunningham?"

"Kirby Lane."

"Will you point him out?"

James did so.

The lawyer faced the crowded benches. "I'll ask Mr. Lane to step forward and take a seat near the front. I may want to ask him a few questions later."

Kirby rose and came forward.

"To your knowledge, Mr. Cunningham, had your uncle any enemies?" asked the attorney, continuing his examination.

"He was a man of positive opinions. Necessarily there were people who did not like him."

"Active enemies?"

"In a business sense, yes."

"But not in a personal sense?"

"I do not know of any. He may have had them. In going through his desk at the office I found a letter. Here it is."

The fat little coroner bustled forward, took the letter, and read it. He handed it to one of the jury. It was read and passed around. The letter was the one the promoter had received from the Dry Valley rancher threatening his life if he ever appeared again in that part of the country.

"I notice that the letter is postmarked Denver," Cunningham suggested. "Whoever mailed it must have been in the city at the time."

"That's very important," the prosecuting attorney said. "Have you communicated the information to the police?"

"Yes."

"You do not know who wrote the letter?"

"I do not."

The coroner put the tips of his fingers and thumbs together and balanced on the balls of his feet. "Do you happen to know the name of the lady with whom your uncle had an appointment on the night of his death at his rooms?"

"No," answered the witness curtly.

"When was the last time you saw the deceased alive?"

"About three o'clock on the day before that of his death."

"Anything occur at that time throwing any light on what subsequently occurred?"

"Nothing whatever."

"Very good, Mr. Cunningham. You may be excused, if Mr. Johns is through with you, unless some member of the jury has a question he would like to ask."

One of the jury had. He was a dried-out wisp of a man wrinkled like a winter pippin. "Was your uncle engaged to be married at the time of his death?" he piped.

There was a mild sensation in the room. Curious eyes swept toward the graceful, slender form of a veiled woman sitting at the extreme left of the room.

Cunningham flushed. The question seemed to him a gratuitous probe into the private affairs of the family. "I do not care to discuss that," he answered quietly.

"The witness may refuse to answer questions if he wishes," the coroner ruled.

Jack Cunningham was called to the stand. James had made an excellent witness. He was quiet, dignified, and yet forceful. Jack, on the other hand, was nervous and irritable. The first new point he developed was that on his last visit to the rooms of his uncle he had seen him throw downstairs a fat man with whom he had been scuffling. Shown Hull, he identified him as the man.

"Had you ever had any trouble with your uncle?" Johns asked him.

"You may decline to answer if you wish," the coroner told the witness.

Young Cunningham hesitated. "No-o. What do you mean by trouble?"

"Had he ever threatened to cut you out of his will?"

"Yes," came the answer, a bit sulkily.

"Why--if you care to tell?"

"He thought I was extravagant and wild--wanted me to buckle down to business more."

"What is your business?"

"I'm with a bond house--McCabe, Foster & Clinton."

"During the past few months have you had any difference of opinion with your uncle?"

"That's my business," flared the witness. Then, just as swiftly as his irritation had come it vanished. He remembered that his uncle's passionate voice had risen high. No doubt people in the next apartments had heard him. It would be better to make a frank admission. "But I don't mind answering. I have."

"When?"

"The last time I went to his rooms--two days before his death."

Significant looks passed from one to another of the spectators.

"What was the subject of the quarrel?"

"I didn't say we had quarreled," was the sullen answer.

"Differed, then. My question was, what about?"

"I decline to say."

"I think that is all, Mr. Cunningham."

The wrinkled little juryman leaned forward and piped his question again. "Was your uncle engaged to be married at the time of his death?"

The startled eyes of Jack Cunningham leaped to the little man. There was in them dismay, almost panic. Then, swiftly, he recovered and drawled insolently, "I try to mind my own business. Do you?"

The coroner asserted himself. "Here, here, none of that! Order in this court, if you please, gentlemen." He bustled in his manner, turning to the attorney. "Through with Mr. Cunningham, Johns? If so, we'll push on."

"Quite." The prosecuting attorney consulted a list in front of him. "Cass Hull next."

Hull came puffing to the stand. He was a porpoise of a man. His eyes dodged about the room in dread. It was as though he were looking for a way of escape.

CHAPTER XII

"THAT'S THE MAN"

"Your name?"

"Cass Hull."

"Business?"

"Real estate, mostly farm lands."

"Did you know James Cunningham, the deceased?" asked Johns.

"Yes. Worked with him on the Dry Valley proposition, an irrigation project."

"Ever have any trouble with him?"

"No, sir--not to say trouble." Hull was already perspiring profusely. He dragged a red bandanna from his pocket and mopped the roll of fat that swelled over his collar. "I--we had a--an argument about a settlement--nothin' serious."

"Did he throw you out of his room and down the stairs?"

"No, sir, nothin' like that a-tall. We might 'a' scuffled some, kinda in fun like. Prob'ly it looked like we was fightin', but we wasn't. My heel caught on a tread o' the stairs an' I fell down." Hull made his explanation eagerly and anxiously, dabbing at his beefy face with the handkerchief.

"When did you last see Mr. Cunningham alive?"

"Well, sir, that was the last time, though I reckon we heard him pass our door."

In answer to questions the witness explained that Cunningham had owed him, in his opinion, four thousand dollars more than he had paid. It was about this sum they had differed.

"Were you at home on the evening of the twenty-third--that is, last night?"

The witness flung out more signals of distress. "Yes, sir," he said at last in a voice dry as a whisper.

"Will you tell what, if anything, occurred?"

"Well, sir, a man knocked at our door. The woman she opened it, an' he asked which flat was Cunningham's. She told him, an' the man he started up the stairs."

"Have you seen the man since?"

"No, sir."

"Didn't hear him come downstairs later?"

"No, sir."

"At what time did this man knock?" asked the lawyer from the district attorney's office.

Kirby Lane did not move a muscle of his body, but excitement grew in him, as he waited, eyes narrowed, for the answer.

"At 9.20."

"How do you know the time so exactly?"

"Well, sir, I was windin' the clock for the night."

"Sure your clock was right?"

"Yes, sir. I happened to check up on it when the court-house clock struck nine. Mebbe it was half a minute off, as you might say."

"Describe the man."

Hull did, with more or less accuracy.

"Would you know him if you saw him again?"

"Yes, sir, I sure would."

The coroner flung a question at the witness as though it were a weapon, "Ever carry a gun, Mr. Hull?"

The big man on the stand dabbed at his veined face with the bandanna. He answered, with an ingratiating whine. "I ain't no gunman, sir. Never was."

"Ever ride the range?"

"Well, yes, as you might say," the witness answered uneasily.

"Carried a six-shooter for rattlesnakes, didn't you?"

"I reckon, but I never went hellin' around with it."

"Wore it to town with you when you went, I expect, as the other boys did."

"Mebbeso."

"What caliber was it?"

"A .38, sawed-off."

"Own it now?"

The witness mopped his fat face. "No, sir."

"Don't carry a gun in town?"

"No, sir."

"Ever own an automatic?"

"No, sir. Wouldn't know how to fire one."

"How long since you sold your .38?"

"Five years or so."

"Where did you carry it?"

"In my hip pocket."

"Which hip pocket?"

Hull was puzzled at the question. "Why, this one--the right one, o' course. There wouldn't be any sense in carryin' it where I couldn't reach it."

"That's so. Mr. Johns, you may take the witness again."

The young lawyer asked questions about the Dry Valley irrigation project. He wanted to know why there was dissatisfaction among the farmers, and from a reluctant witness drew the information that the water supply was entirely inadequate for the needs of the land under cultivation.

Mrs. Hull, called to the stand, testified that on the evening of the twenty-third a man had knocked at their door to ask in which apartment Mr. Cunningham lived. She had gone to the door, answered his question, and watched him pass upstairs.

"What time was this?"

"9.20."

Again Kirby felt a tide of excitement running in his arteries. Why were this woman and her husband setting back the clock thirty-five minutes? Was it to divert suspicion from themselves? Was it to show that this stranger must have been in Cunningham's rooms for almost an hour, during which time the millionaire promoter had been murdered?

"Describe the man."

This tall, angular woman, whose sex the years had seemed to have dried out of her personality, made a much better witness than her husband. She was acid and incisive, but her very forbidding aspect hinted of the "good woman" who never made mistakes. She described the stranger who had knocked at her door with a good deal of circumstantial detail.

"He was an outdoor man, a rancher, perhaps, or more likely a cattleman," she concluded.

"You have not seen him since that time?"

She opened her lips to say "No," but she did not say it. Her eyes had traveled past the lawyer and fixed themselves on Kirby Lane. He saw the recognition grow in them, the leap of triumph in her as the long, thin arm shot straight toward him.

"That's the man!"

A tremendous excitement buzzed in the courtroom. It was as though some one had exploded a mental bomb. Men and women craned forward to see the man who had been identified, the man who no doubt had murdered James Cunningham. The murmur of voices, the rustle of skirts, the shuffling of moving bodies filled the air.

The coroner rapped for order. "Silence in the court-room," he said sharply.

"Which man do you mean, Mrs. Hull?" asked the lawyer.

"The big brown man sittin' at the end of the front bench, the one right behind you."

Kirby rose. "Think prob'ly she means me," he suggested.

An officer in uniform passed down the aisle and laid a hand on the cattleman's shoulder. "You're under arrest," he said.

"For what, officer?" asked James Cunningham.

"For the murder of your uncle, sir."

In the tense silence that followed rose a little throat sound that was not quite a sob and not quite a wail. Kirby turned his head toward the back of the room.

Wild Rose was standing in her place looking at him with dilated eyes filled with incredulity and horror.

CHAPTER XIII

"ALWAYS, PHYLLIS"

"Chuck" Ellis, reporter, testified that on his way home from the Press Club on the night of the twenty-third, he stopped at an alley on Glenarm Street to strike a light for his cigar. Just as he lit the match he saw a man come out from the window of a room in the Paradox Apartments and run down the fire escape. It struck him that the man might be a burglar, so he waited in the shadow of the building. The runner came down the alley toward him. He stopped the man and had some talk with him. At the request of the district attorney's assistant he detailed the conversation and located on a chart shown him the room from which he had seen the fellow emerge.

"Would you know him again?"'

"Yes."

"Do you see him in this room?"

Ellis, just off his run, had reached the court-room only a second before he stepped to the stand. Now he looked around, surprised at the lawyer's question. His wandering eye halted at Lane.

"There he is."

"Which man do you mean?"

"The one on the end of the bench."

"At what time did this take place?"

"Lemme see. About quarter-past ten, maybe."

"Which way did he go when he left you?"

"Toward Fifteenth Street."

"That is all." The lawyer turned briskly toward Kirby. "Mr. Lane, will you take the stand?"

Every eye focused on the range rider. As he moved forward and took the oath the scribbling reporters found in his movements a pantherish lightness, in his compact figure rippling muscles perfectly under control. There was an appearance of sunburnt competency about him, a crisp confidence born of the rough-and-tumble life of the outdoor West. He did not look like a cold-blooded murderer. Women found themselves hoping that he was not. The jaded weariness of the sensation-seekers vanished at sight of him. A man had walked upon the stage, one full of vital energy.

The assistant district attorney led him through the usual preliminaries. Lane said that he was by vocation a cattleman, by avocation a rough rider. He lived at Twin Buttes, Wyoming.

One of the reporters leaned toward another and whispered, "By Moses, he's the same Lane that won the rough-riding championship at Pendleton and was second at Cheyenne last year."

"Are you related to James Cunningham, the deceased?" asked the lawyer.

"His nephew."

"How long since you had seen him prior to your visit to Denver this time?"

"Three years."

"What were your relations with him?"

The coroner interposed. "You need answer no questions tending to incriminate you, Mr. Lane."

A sardonic smile rested on the rough rider's lean, brown face. "Our relations were not friendly," he said quietly.

A ripple of excitement swept the benches.

"What was the cause of the bad feeling between you?"

"A few years ago my father fell into financial difficulties. He was faced with bankruptcy. Cunningham not only refused to help him, but was the hardest of his creditors. He hounded him to the time of my father's death a few months later. His death was due to a breakdown caused by intense worry."

"You felt that Mr. Cunningham ought to have helped him?"

"My father helped him when he was young. What my uncle did was the grossest ingratitude."

"You resented it."

"Yes."

"And quarreled with him?"

"I wrote him a letter an' told him what I thought of him. Later, when we met by chance, I told him again face to face."

"You had a bitter quarrel?"

"Yes."

"That was how long ago?"

"Three years since."

"In that time did your feelings toward him modify at all?"

"My opinion of him did not change, but I had no longer any feelin' in the matter."

"Did you write to him or hear from him in that time?"

"No."

"Had you any expectation of being remembered in your uncle's will?"

"None whatever," answered Kirby, smiling. "Even if he had left me anything I should have declined to accept it. But there was no chance at all that he would."

"Yet when you came to town you called on him at the first opportunity?"

"Yes."

"On what business?"

"I reckon we'll not go into that."

Johns glanced at his notes and passed to another line of questioning. "You have heard the testimony of Mr. and Mrs. Hull and of Mr. Ellis. Is that testimony true?"

"Except in one point. It lacked only three or four minutes to ten when I knocked at the door an' Mrs. Hull opened it."

"You're sure of that?"

"Sure. I looked at my watch just before I went into the Paradox Apartments."

"Will you tell the jury what took place between you and Mrs. Hull?"

"'Soon as I saw her I knew she was scared stiff about somethin'. So was Hull. He was headin' for a bedroom, so I wouldn't see him."

The slender, well-dressed woman in the black veil, sitting far over to the left, leaned forward and seemed to listen intently. All over the room there was a stir of quickened interest.

"How did she show her fear?"

"No color in her face, eyes dilated an' full of terror, hands tremblin'."

"And Mr. Hull?"

"He was yellow. Color all gone from his face. Looked as though he'd had a shock."

"What was said, if anything?"

"I asked Mrs. Hull where my uncle's apartment was. That gave her another fright. At least she almost fainted."

"Did she say anything?"

"She told me where his rooms were. Then she shut the door, right in my face. I went upstairs to Apartment 12."

"Where your uncle lived?"

"Where my uncle lived. I rang the bell twice an' didn't get an answer. Then I noticed the door was ajar. I opened it, called, an' walked in, shuttin' it behind me. I guessed he must be around an' would be back in a few minutes."

"Just exactly what did you do?"

"I waited by the table in the living-room for a few minutes. There was a note there signed by S. Horikawa."

"We have that note. What happened next? Did your uncle return?"

"No. I had a feelin' that somethin' was wrong. I looked into the bedroom an' then opened the door into the small smoking-room. The odor of chloroform met me. I found the button an' flashed on the light."

Except the sobbing breath of an unnerved woman no slightest sound could be heard in the court-room but Lane's quiet, steady voice. It went on evenly, clearly, dominating the crowded room by the drama of its undramatic timbre.

"My uncle was sittin' in a chair, tied to it. His head was canted a little to one side an' he was lookin' up at me. There was a bullet hole in his forehead. He was dead."

The veiled woman in black gasped for air. Her head sank forward and her slender body swayed.

"Look out!" called the witness to the woman beside her.

Before Kirby could reach her, the fainting woman had slipped to the floor. He stooped to lift her head from the dusty planks--and the odor of violet perfume met his nostrils.

"If you'll permit me," a voice said.

The cattleman looked up. His cousin James, white to the lips, was beside him unfastening the veil.

The face of the woman in black was the original of the photograph Kirby had seen in his uncle's room, the one upon which had been written the words, "Always, Phyllis."

CHAPTER XIV

A FRIEND IN NEED

The rest of the coroner's inquest was anticlimax. Those who had come to tickle their palates with excitement tasted only one other moment of it.

"According to your own story you must have been in your uncle's apartment at least a quarter of an hour, Mr. Lane," said the prosecuting attorney. "What were you doing there all that time?"

"Most of the time I was waitin' for him to return."

"Why did you not call up the police at once, as soon as you found the crime had been committed?"

"I suppose I lost my head an' went panicky. I heard some one at the door, an' I did not want to be found there. So I ran into the bedroom, put out the light, an' left by the fire escape."

"Was that the conduct one would expect of an innocent man?"

"It was the action of an innocent man."

"You don't look like a man that would lose his head, Mr. Lane."

A smile lit the brown face of the witness. "Perhaps I wouldn't where I come from, but I'm not used to city ways. I didn't know what to do. So I followed my instinct an' bolted. I was unlucky enough to be seen."

"Carry a gun, Mr. Lane?"

"No." He corrected himself. "Sometimes I do on the range."

"Own one, I suppose?"

"Two. A .45 and a .38."

"Bring either of them to Denver?"

"No, sir."

"Did you see any gun of any kind in your uncle's rooms--either a revolver or an automatic?"

"I did not."

"That's all, sir."

The jury was out something more than an hour. The news of the verdict was brought to Kirby at the city jail by his cousin James.

"Jury finds that Uncle James came to his death from the effect of either a blow on the head by some heavy instrument, or a bullet fired at close quarters by some unknown person," James said.

"Good enough. Might have been worse for me," replied Kirby.

"Yes. I've talked with the district attorney and think I can arrange for bond. We're going to take it up with the court to-morrow. My opinion is that the Hulls did this. All through his testimony the fellow sweated fear. I've put it in the hands of a private detective agency to keep tabs on him."

The cattleman smiled ruefully. "Trouble is I'm the only witness to their panic right after the murder. Wish it had been some one else. I'm a prejudiced party whose evidence won't count for much. You're right. They've somethin' to do with it. In their evidence they shifted the time back thirty-five minutes so as to get me into Apartment 12 that much earlier. Why? If I could answer that question, I could go a long way toward solvin' the mystery of who killed Uncle James an' why he did it."

"Probably. As I see it, we have three leads to go on. One is that the guilty man is Hull. A second possibility is the unknown man from Dry Valley. A third is Horikawa."

"How about Horikawa? Did you know him well?"

"One never knows an Oriental. Perhaps I'm prejudiced because I used to live in California, but I never trust a Japanese fully. His sense of right and wrong is so different from mine. Horikawa is a quiet little fellow whose thought processes I don't pretend to understand."

"Why did he run away if he had nothin' to conceal?"

"Looks bad. By the way, a Japanese house-cleaner was convicted recently of killing a woman for whom he was working. He ran away, too, and was brought back later."

"Well, I don't know a thing about Japs except that they're good workers. But there's one thing about this business that puzzles me. This murder doesn't look to me like a white man's job. An American bad man kills an' is done with it. But whoever did this aimed to torture an' then kill, looks like. If not, why did they tie him up first?"

James nodded, reflectively. "Maybe something in what you say. Orientals strike me as being kind of unhuman, if you know what I mean. Maybe they have the red Indian habit of torture in Japan."

"Never heard of it if they have, but I've got a kinda notion--picked it up in my readin'--that Asiatics will go a long way to square a grudge. If this Horikawa had anything against Uncle James he might have planned this revenge an' taken the two thousand dollars to help his getaway."

"Yes, he might."

"Anyhow, I've made up my mind to one thing. You can 'most always get the truth when you go after it good an' hard. I'm goin' to find out who did this thing an' why."

James Cunningham looked into his cousin's face. A strong man himself, he recognized strength in another. Into the blue-gray eyes of the man from Twin Buttes had come a cold steely temper that transformed the gay, boyish face. The oil broker knew Lane had no love for his uncle. His resolution was probably based on a desire to clear his own name.

"I'm with you in that," he said quietly, and his own dark eyes were hard as jade. "We'll work this out together if you say so, Kirby."

The younger man nodded. "Suits me fine." His face softened. "You mentioned three leads. Most men would have said four. On the face of it, of the evidence at hand, the guilty man is sittin' right here talkin' with you. You know that the dead man an' I had a bitter feelin' against each other. You know there was a new cause of trouble between us, an' that I told you I was goin' to get justice out of him one way or another. I'm the only man known to have been in his rooms last night. Accordin' to the Hulls I must 'a' been there when he was killed. Then, as a final proof of my guilt, I slide out by the fire escape to get away without bein' seen. I'll say the one big lead points straight to Kirby Lane."

"Yes, but there's such a thing as character," James answered. "It's written in your face that you couldn't have done it. That's why the jury said a person unknown."

"Yes, but the jury didn't know what you knew, that I had a fresh cause of quarrel with Uncle James. Do you believe me absolutely? Don't you waver at all?"

"I don't think you had any more to do with it than I had myself," answered the older cousin instantly, with conviction.

Kirby gave him his hand impulsively. "You'll sure do to ride the river with, James."

CHAPTER XV

A GLOVE AND THE HAND IN IT

As Rose saw the hand of the law closing in on Kirby, she felt as though an ironic fate were laughing in impish glee at this horrible climax of her woe. He had sacrificed a pot of gold and his ambition to be the champion rough rider of the world in order to keep her out of trouble. Instead of that he had himself plunged into it head first.

She found herself entangled in a net from which there was no easy escape. Part, at least, of the evidence against Kirby, or at least the implication to be drawn from it, did not fit in with what she knew to be the truth. He had not been in the apartment of James Cunningham from 9.30 until 10.15. He might have been there at both times, but not for the whole interval between. Rose had the best reason in the world for knowing that.

But what was she to do? What ought she to do? If she went with her story to the district attorney, her sister's shame must inevitably be dragged forth to be flaunted before the whole world. She could not do that. She could not make little Esther the scapegoat of her conscience. Nor could she remain silent and let Kirby stay in prison. That was unthinkable. If her story would free him she must tell it. But to whom?

She read in the "Post" that James Cunningham was endeavoring to persuade the authorities to accept bond for his cousin's appearance. Swiftly Rose made up her mind what she would do. She looked up in the telephone book the name she wanted and made connections on the line.

"Is this Mr. Cunningham?" she asked.

"Mr. Cunningham talking," came the answer.

"I want to see you on very important business. Can I come this morning?"

"I think I didn't catch your name, madam."

"My name doesn't matter. I have information about--your uncle's death."

There was just an instant's pause. Then, "Ten o'clock, at the office here," Rose heard.

A dark, good-looking young man rose from a desk in the inner office when Rose entered exactly at ten. In his eyes there sparked a little flicker of surprised appreciation. Jack Cunningham was always susceptible to the beauty of women. This girl was lovely both of feature and of form. The fluent grace of the slender young body was charming, but the weariness of grief was shadowed under the long-lashed eyes.

She looked around, hesitating. "I have an appointment with Mr. Cunningham," she explained.

"My name," answered the young man.

"Mr. James Cunningham?"

"Afraid you've made a mistake. I'm Jack Cunningham. This is my uncle's office. I'm taking charge of his affairs. You called his number instead of my brother's. People are always confusing the two."

"I'm sorry."

"If I can be of any service to you," he suggested.

"I read that your brother was trying to arrange bond for Mr. Lane. I want to see him about that. I am Rose McLean. My sister worked for your uncle in his office."

"Oh!" A film of wary caution settled over his eyes. It seemed to Rose that what she had said transformed him into a potential adversary. "Glad to meet you, Miss McLean. If you'd rather talk with my brother I'll make an appointment with him for you."

"Perhaps that would be best," she said.

"Of course he's very busy. If it's anything I could do for you--"

"I'd like you both to hear what I have to say."

For the beating of a pulse his eyes thrust at her as though they would read her soul. Then he was all smiling urbanity.

"That seems to settle the matter. I'll call my brother up and make an appointment."

Over the wire Jack put the case to his brother. Presently he hung up the receiver. "We'll go right over, Miss McLean."

They went down the elevator and passed through the lower hall of the building to Sixteenth Street. As they walked along Stout to the Equitable Building, Rose made an explanation.

"I saw you and Mr. James Cunningham at the inquest."

His memory stirred. "Think I saw you, too. 'Member your bandaged arm. Is it broken?"

"Yes."

He felt the need of talking against an inner perturbation he did not want to show. What was this girl, the sister of Esther McLean, going to tell him and his brother? What did she know about the murder of his uncle? Excitement grew in him and he talked at random to cover it.

"Fall down?"

"A horse threw me and trod on my arm."

"Girls are too venturesome nowadays." In point of fact he did not think so. He liked girls who were good sportsmen and played the game hard. But he was talking merely to bridge a mental stress. "Think they can do anything a man can. 'Fess up, Miss McLean. You'd try to ride any horse I could, no matter how mettlesome it was. Now wouldn't you?"

"I wouldn't go that far," she said dryly. For an instant the thought flickered through her mind that she would like to get this spick-and-span riding-school model on the back of Wild Fire and see how long he would stick to the saddle.

James Cunningham met Rose with a suave courtesy, but with reserve. Like his brother he knew of only one subject about which the sister of Esther McLean could want to talk with him. Did she intend to be reasonable? Would she accept a monetary settlement and avoid the publicity that could only hurt her sister as well as the reputation of the name of Cunningham? Or did she mean to try to impose impossible conditions? How much did she know and how much guess? Until he discovered that he meant to play his cards close.

Characteristically, Rose came directly to the point after the first few words of introduction.

"You know my sister, Esther McLean, a stenographer of your uncle?" she asked.

The girl was standing. She had declined a chair. She stood straight-backed as an Indian, carrying her head with fine spirit. Her eyes attacked the oil broker, would not yield a thousandth part of an inch to his impassivity.

"I--have met her," he answered.

"You know . . . about her trouble?"

"Yes. My cousin mentioned it. We--my brother and I--greatly regret it. Anything in reason that we can do we shall, of course, hold ourselves bound for."

He flashed a glance at Jack who murmured a hurried agreement. The younger man's eyes were busy examining a calendar on the wall.

"I didn't come to see you about that now," the young woman went on, cheeks flushed, but chin held high. "Nor would I care to express my opinion of the . . . the creature who could take advantage of such a girl's love. I intend to see justice is done my sister, as far as it can now be done. But not to-day. First, I'm here to ask you if you're friends of Kirby Lane. Do you believe he killed his uncle?"

"No," replied James promptly. "I am quite sure he didn't kill him. I am trying to get him out on bond. Any sum that is asked I'll sign for."

"Then I want to tell you something you don't know. The testimony showed that Kirby went to his uncle's apartment about 9.20 and left nearly an hour later. That isn't true."

"How do you know it isn't?"

"Because I was there myself part of the time."

Jack stared at her in blank dismay. Astonishment looked at her, too, from the older brother's eyes.

"You were in my uncle's apartment--on the night of the murder?" James said at last.

"I was. I came to Denver to see him--to get justice for my sister. I didn't intend to let the villain escape scot free for what he had done."

"Pardon me," interrupted Jack, and the girl noticed his voice had a queer note of anxiety in it. "Did your sister ever tell you that my uncle was responsible for--?" He left the sentence in air.

"No, she won't talk yet. I don't know why. But I found a note signed with his initials. He's the man. I know that."

James looked at his brother. "I think we may take that for granted, Jack. We'll accept such responsibilities on us as it involves. Perhaps you'd better not interrupt Miss McLean till she has finished her story."

"I made an appointment with him after I had tried all day to get him on the 'phone or to see him. That was Thursday, the day I reached town."

"He was in Colorado Springs all that day," explained James.

"Yes, he told me so when I reached him finally at the City Club. He didn't want to see me, but I wouldn't let him off till he agreed. So he told me to come to the Paradox and he would give me ten minutes. He told me not to come till nearly ten, as he would be busy. I think he hoped that by putting it so late and at his rooms he would deter me from coming. But I intended to see him. He couldn't get away from me so easily as that. I went."

Jack moistened dry lips. His debonair ease had quite vanished. "When did you go?"

"It was quite a little past a quarter to ten when I reached his rooms."

"Did you meet any one going up or coming down?" asked James.

"A man and a woman passed me on the stairs."

"A man and a woman," repeated Jack, almost in a whisper. His attitude was tense. His eyes burned with excitement.

"Was it light enough to tell who they were?" James asked. His cold eyes did not lift from hers until she answered.

"No. It was entirely dark. The woman was on the other side of the man. I wouldn't have been sure she was a woman except for the rustle of her skirts and the perfume."

"Sure it wasn't the perfume you use yourself that you smelled?"

"I don't use any."

"You stick to it that you met a man and a woman, but couldn't possibly recognize either of them," James Cunningham said, still looking straight at her.

She hesitated an instant. Somehow she did not quite like the way he put this. "Yes," she said steadily.

"You didn't take the elevator up, then?"

"No. I'm not used to automatic elevators. I rang when I got to the door. Nobody answered, but the door was wide open. I rang again, then went in and switched on the light. There didn't seem to be anybody in. I didn't feel right about it. I wanted to go. But I wouldn't because I thought maybe he--your uncle--was trying to dodge me. I looked into the bedroom. He wasn't there. So after a little I went to a door into another room that was shut and knocked on it. I don't know why I opened it when no answer came. Something seemed to move my hand to the knob. I switched the light on there."

"Yes?" James asked, gently.

The girl gulped. She made a weak, small gesture with her hand, as though to push from her mind the horrible sight her eyes had looked upon. "He was dead, in the chair, tied to it. I think I screamed. I'm not sure. But I switched off the light and shut the door. My knees were weak, and I felt awf'lly queer in the head. I was crazy to get away from the place, but I couldn't seem to have the power to move. I leaned against the door, weak and limp as a small puppy. Then I heard some one comin' up the stairs, and I knew I mustn't be caught there. I switched off the lights just as some one came to the landing outside."

"Who was it? Did he come in?" asked Jack.

"He rang and knocked two or three times. Then he came in. I was standing by the table with my hand on some kind of heavy metal paperweight. His hand was groping for the light switch. I could tell that. He must have heard me, for he called out, 'Who's there?' In the darkness there I was horribly frightened. He might be the murderer come back. If not, of course he'd think I had done it. So I tried to slip by him. He jumped at me and caught me by the hand. I pulled away from him and hit hard at his face. The paper-weight was still in my hand and he went down just as though a hammer had hit him. I ran out of the room, downstairs, and out into the street."

"Without meeting anybody?"

"Yes."

"You don't know who it was you struck?"

"Unless it was Kirby."

"Jove! That explains the bruise on his chin," Jack cried out. "Why didn't he tell us that?"

The color flushed the young woman's cheeks. "We're friends, he and I. If he guessed I was the one that struck him he wouldn't tell."

"How would he guess it?" asked James.

"He knew I meant to see your uncle--meant to make him do justice to Esther. I suppose I'd made wild threats. Besides, I left my glove there--on the table, I think. I'd taken it off with some notion of writing a note telling your uncle I had been there and that he had to see me next day."

"The police didn't find a woman's glove in the room, did they?" James asked his brother.

"Didn't hear of it if they did," Jack replied.

"That's it, you see," explained Rose. "Kirby would know my glove. It was a small riding-gauntlet with a rose embroidered on it. He probably took it with him when he left. He kept still about the whole thing because I was the woman and he was afraid of gettin' me into trouble."

"Sounds reasonable," agreed James.

"That's how it was. Kirby's a good friend. He'd never tell on me if they hanged him for it."

"They won't do that, Miss McLean," the older brother assured her. "We're going to find who did this thing. Kirby and I have shaken hands on that. But about your story. I don't quite see how we're going to use it. We must protect your sister, too, as well as my cousin. If we go to the police with your evidence and ask them to release Kirby, they'll want to arrest you."

"I know," she nodded wisely, "and of course they'd find out about Esther then and the papers would get it and scatter the story everywhere."

"Exactly. We must protect her first. Kirby wouldn't want anything done that would hurt her. Suppose we put it up to him and see what he wants to do."

"But we can't have him kept in jail," she protested.

"I'll get him out on bond; if not to-day, tomorrow."

"Well," she agreed reluctantly. "If that's the best we can do."

Rose would have liked to have paid back Kirby's generosity in kind. If her sister had not been a factor of the equation she would have gone straight to the police with her story and suffered arrest gladly to help her friend. But the circumstances did not permit a heroic gesture. She had to take and not give.

CHAPTER XVI

THE LADY WITH THE VIOLET PERFUME

"I won't have it," Kirby said flatly. "If Miss McLean tells her story to the district attorney he'll probably arrest her. It'll come out about her sister an' the papers will run scare-heads. No need of it a-tall. Won't hurt me to stay here a few days if I have to."

Jack, dapper and trim, leaned on his cane and watched his cousin. He felt a reluctant admiration for this virile cousin so picturesquely competent, so clean-cut and four-square of mind. Was he in love with the Wild Rose from Wyoming, whose spirit also was like a breath from the sweet hill pines? Or was his decision only the expression of a native chivalry that went out to all his friends and perhaps to all women?

"They'd certainly arrest her," Jack commented. "From a lawyer's point of view there's every reason why they should. Motive for the crime, sufficient; intention to force the victim to make reparation or punish him, declared openly; opportunity to commit it, confessed; presence on scene and eagerness to escape being seen there, admitted. The case against her is stronger than the one against you." He offered this last with a smile decorously but not wholly concealed.

"Yet she couldn't possibly have done it!" the cattleman replied.

"Couldn't she? I wonder." The Beau Brummel stroked his bit of mustache, with the hint of insolence his manner often suggested.

"Not possible," said Lane forcefully. "Uncle James was a big, two-fisted fighter. No slip of a girl could have overpowered him an' tied him. It's not within reason." He spoke urgently, though still in the low murmur both the cousins were using in order not to be overheard.

Jack put a neat, highly polished boot on the desk of the sergeant of police. "Ever hear of a lady called Delilah?" he asked lightly.

"What about her?" In Kirby's quiet eye there was a warning.

The man-about-town shrugged his well-tailored shoulders. "They have a way, the ladies. Guile, my son, is more potent than force."

"Meaning?"

"Delilah chloroformed Samson's suspicions before she sheared his locks."

Kirby repressed an anger that he knew was worse than futile. "It you knew Miss McLean you couldn't misjudge her so. She thinks an' acts as straight as a man."

"I don't say she did it, old top. I'm merely pointing out that it's possible she did. Point of fact your friend made a hit with me. I'd say she's a game little thoroughbred."

"You an' James will regard what she told you as confidential, of course."

"Of course. We're of your mind, too, though I put her proposition to you. Can't see anything to be gained by airing her story unless it's absolutely necessary on your account. By the way, James wants me to tell you that he thinks you won't have to spend another night at this delightful hotel the city keeps for its guests. Bond has been practically agreed on."

"Fine. Your brother's a brick. We're goin' to run down this business, he an' I, an' drag the truth to light."

A glitter of sardonic mockery shone out of the dark eyes of Cunningham. "You'll work together fine and Sherlock-Holmes this thing till it's as clear as mud," he predicted.

By the middle of the afternoon Kirby was free. After he had talked over with James a plan of campaign, he called Rose up on the telephone and told her he would be right out to Cherokee Street.

She came to meet him in the stuffy parlor of the boarding-house with hand outstretched.

"Oh, Kirby, I'm so glad to see you and so sorry I was such a horrid little beast last time we met. I'm ashamed of myself. My temper explodes so--and after you came to Denver to help me and gave up so much for me. You'll forgive me, won't you?"

"You know it, Rose," he said, smiling.

"Yes, I do know it," she cried quickly. "That makes it worse for me to impose on you. Now you're in trouble because of me. I should think you'd pretty near hate me."

"We're in trouble together," he corrected. "I thought that was supposed to bring friends closer an' not to drive them apart."

She flashed a quick look at him and changed the subject of conversation. Just now she could not afford to be emotional.

"Are you going back to Twin Buttes?"

"No. I'm goin' to find out who killed James Cunningham an' bring the man to justice. That's the only way to clear us both before the world."

"Yes!" she cried eagerly. "Let me help you. Let's be partners in it, Kirby."

He already had one partner, but he threw him overboard instantly. James Cunningham was retired to the position of an adviser.

"Bully! We'll start this very minute. Tell me all you know about what happened the evenin' of the murder."

She told again the story she had confessed to his cousins. He asked questions, pushed home inquiries. When she mentioned the woman who had passed her on the stairs he showed a keen interest.

"You say you knew it was a woman with the man by the perfume. What kind of perfume was it?"

"Violet."

"Did you notice a violet perfume any other place that night?"

"In your uncle's living-room."

"Sure?"

"Yes."

"So did I."

"The woman I met on the stairs, then, had just come from your uncle's rooms."

"Looks like it," he nodded in agreement.

"Then we've got to find her. She must have been in his apartment when he was killed." The thought came to Rose as a revelation.

"Or right after."

"All we've got to do is to find her and the man with her, and we've solved the mystery," the girl cried eagerly.

"That's not quite all," said Kirby, smiling at the way her mind leaped gaps. "We've got to induce them to talk, an' it's not certain they know any more than we do."

"Her skirts rustled like silk and the perfume wasn't cheap. I couldn't really see her, but I knew she was well dressed," Rose told him.

"Well, that's somethin'," he said with the whimsical quirk to his mouth she knew of old. "We'll advertise for a well-dressed lady who uses violet perfume. Supposed to be connected with the murder at the Paradox Apartments. Generous reward an' many questions asked."

His badinage was of the surface only. The subconscious mind of the rough rider was preoccupied with a sense of a vague groping. The thought of violet perfume associated itself with something else in addition to the darkness of his uncle's living-room, but he did not find himself able to localize the nebulous memory. Where was it his nostrils had whiffed the scent more recently?

"Don't you think we ought to see all the tenants at the Paradox and talk with them? Some of them may have seen people going in or out. Or they may have heard voices," she said.

"That's a good idea. We'll make a canvass of the house."

Her eyes sparkled. "We'll find who did it! When two people look for the truth intelligently they're bound to find it. Don't you think so?"

"I think we'll sure round up the wolf that did this killin'," he drawled. "Anyhow, we'll sleep on his trail for a moon or two."

They shook hands on it.

CHAPTER XVII

IN DRY VALLEY

If Kirby had been a properly authenticated detective of fiction he would have gone to his uncle's apartment, locked the door, measured the rooms with a tape-line, found imprints of fingers on a door panel, and carefully gathered into an envelope the ashes from the cigar his uncle had been smoking. The data obtained would have proved conclusively that Cunningham had come to his death at the hands of a Brahmin of high caste on account of priceless gems stolen from a temple in India. An analysis of the cigar ashes would have shown that a subtle poison, unknown to the Western world, had caused the victim's heart to stop beating exactly two minutes and twelve seconds after taking the first puff at the cigar. Thus the fictional ethics of the situation would have been correctly met.

But Kirby was only a plain, outdoors Westerner. He did not know the conventional method of procedure. It did not even occur to him at first that Apartment 12 might still have secrets to tell him after the police and the reporters had pawed over it for several days. But his steps turned back several times to the Paradox as the center from which all clues must emanate. He found himself wandering around in that vicinity trying to pick up some of the pieces of the Chinese puzzle that made up the mystery of his uncle's death.

It was on one of these occasions that he and Rose met his cousin James coming out of the apartment house. Cunningham was a man of admirable self-control, but he looked shaken this morning. His hand trembled as it met that of his cousin. In his eyes was the look of a man who has suffered a shock.

"I've been sitting alone for an hour in the room where Uncle James met his death--been arranging his papers," he explained. "It began to get my nerve. I couldn't stand it any longer. The horrible thing kept jumping to my mind." He drew his right hand heavily across his eyes, as though to shut out and brush away the sight his imagination conjured.

His left arm hung limp. Kirby's quick eyes noticed it.

"You've hurt yourself," Lane said.

"Yes," admitted James. "My heel caught on the top step as I started to walk down. I've wrenched my arm badly. Maybe I've broken it."

"Oh, I hope not," Rose said quickly, a warm sympathy in her vibrant young voice. "A broken arm's no fun. I find it an awful nuisance."

The janitor of the Paradox came out and joined them. He was a little Japanese well on toward middle life, a small-featured man with small, neat feet.

"You feelum all right yes now?" he asked, directing his slant, oval eyes toward Cunningham.

"Yes, I've got over the nausea, thanks, Shibo." James turned to the others. "Shibo was at the foot of the stairs when I caught my heel. He gathered up the pieces. I guess I was all in, wasn't I, Shibo?"

The Japanese nodded agreement. "You heap sick for minute."

"I've been worrying a good deal about this business of Uncle James, I suppose. Anyhow, I've had two or three dizzy spells lately. Nothing serious, though."

"I don't wonder. You sit at a desk too much, James. What you need is exercise. If you'd get in the saddle a couple o' hours a day an' do some stiff ridin' you'd quit havin' dizzy spells. Sorry you're hurt, old man. I'll trail along with you to a doctor's."

"Not necessary. I'll be all right. It's only a few blocks to his office. Fact is, I'm feeling quite myself again."

"Well, if you're sure. Prob'ly you've only sprained your arm. By the way, I'd kinda like to go over Uncle's apartment again. Mind if I do? I don't reckon the police missed anything, but you can never tell."

James hesitated. "I promised the Chief of Police not to let anybody else in. Tell you what I'll do. I'll see him about it and get a permit for you. Say, Kirby, I've been thinking one of us ought to go up to Dry Valley and check things up there. We might find out who wrote that note to Uncle. Maybe some one has been making threats in public. We could see who was in town from there last week. Could you go? To-day? Train leaves in half an hour."

Kirby could and would. He left Rose to talk with the tenants of the Paradox Apartments, entrained for Dry Valley at once, and by noon was winding over the hilltops far up in the Rockies.

He left the train at Summit, a small town which was the center of activities for Dry Valley. Here the farmers bought their supplies and here they marketed their butter and eggs. In the fall they drove in their cattle and loaded them for Denver at the chutes in the railroad yard.

There had been times in the past when Summit ebbed and flowed with a rip-roaring tide of turbulent life. This had been after the round-ups in the golden yesterday when every other store building had been occupied by a saloon and the rattle of chips lasted far into the small hours of night. Now Colorado was dry and the roulette wheel had gone to join memories of the past. Summit was quiet as a Sunday afternoon on a farm. Its busiest inhabitant was a dog which lay in the sun and lazily poked over its own anatomy for fleas.

Kirby registered at the office of the frame building which carried on its false front the word HOTEL. This done, he wandered down to the shack which bore the inscription, "Dry Valley Enterprise." The owner of the paper, who was also editor, reporter, pressman, business manager, and circulator, chanced to be in printing some dodgers announcing a dance at Odd Fellows' Hall. He desisted from his labors to chat with the stranger.

The editor was a fat, talkative little man. Kirby found it no trouble at all to set him going on the subject of James Cunningham, Senior. In fact, during his stay in the valley the Wyoming man could always use that name as an "Open Sesame." It unlocked all tongues. Cunningham and his mysterious death were absorbing topics. The man was hated by scores who had been brought close to ruin by his chicanery. Dry Valley rejoiced openly in the retribution that had fallen upon him.

"Who killed him?" the editor asked rhetorically.

"Well, sir, I'll be dawged if I know. But if I was guessin' I'd say it was this fellow Hull, the slicker that helped him put through the Dry Valley steal. 'Course it might 'a' been the Jap, or it might 'a' been the nephew from Wyoming, but I'll say it was Hull. We know that cuss Hull up here. He's one bad package, that fat man is, believe me. Cunningham held out on him, an' he laid for the old crook an' got him. Don't that look reasonable to you? It sure does to me. Put a rope round Hull's neck an' you'll hang the man that killed old J. C."

Lane put in an hour making himself persona grata, then read the latest issue of the "Enterprise" while the editor pulled off the rest of the dodgers. In the local news column he found several items that interested him. These were:

Jim Harkins is down in Denver on business and won't be home till Monday. Have a good time, Jim.

T. J. Lupton is enjoying a few days vacation in the Queen City. He expects to buy some fancy stock at the yards for breeding purposes. Dry Valley is right in the van of progress.

Art Jelks and Brad Mosely returned from Denver today after a three days' visit in the capital. A good time was had by both. You want to watch them, girls. The boys are both live ones.

Oscar Olson spent a few days in Denver this week. Oscar owns a place three miles out of town on the Spring Creek road.

Casually Kirby gathered information. He learned that Jim Harkins was the town constable and not interested in land; that Lupton was a very prosperous cattleman whose ranch was nowhere near the district promoted by Cunningham; and that Jelks and Mosely were young fellows more or less connected with the garage. The editor knew Olson only slightly.

"He's a Swede--big, fair fellow--got caught in that irrigation fake of Hull and Cunningham. Don't know what he was doin' in Denver," the newspaperman said.

Lane decided that he would see Olson and have a talk with him. Incidentally, he meant to see all the Dry Valley men who had been in Denver at the time Cunningham was killed. But the others he saw only to eliminate them from suspicion. One glance at each of them was enough to give them a clean bill so far as the mystery went. They knew nothing whatever about it.

Lane rode out to Olson's place and found him burning brush. The cattleman explained that he was from Wyoming and wanted to sell some registered Herefords.

Olson looked over his dry, parched crops with sardonic bitterness. "Do I look like I could buy registered stock?" he asked sourly.

Kirby made a remark that set the ranchman off. He said that the crops looked as though they needed water. Inside of five minutes he had heard the story of the Dry Valley irrigation swindle. Olson was not a foreigner. He had been born in Minnesota and attended the public schools. He spoke English idiomatically and without an accent. The man was a tall, gaunt, broad-shouldered Scandinavian of more than average intelligence.

The death of Cunningham had not apparently assuaged his intense hatred of the man or the bitterness which welled out of him toward Hull.

"Cunningham got his! Suits me fine! Now all I ask is that they hang Hull for it!" he cried vindictively.

"Seems to be some doubt whether Hull did it," suggested Kirby, to draw him on.

"That so? Mebbe there's evidence you don't know about." The words had come out in the heat of impulse, shot at Kirby tensely and breathlessly. Olson looked at the man on the horse and Lane could see caution grow on him. A film of suspicion spread over the pupils beneath the heavy, ragged eyebrows. "I ain't sayin' so. All I'm dead sure of is that Hull did it."

Kirby fired a shot point-blank at him. "Nobody can be dead sure of that unless he saw him do it."

"Mebbe some one saw him do it. Folks don't tell all they know." Olson looked across the desert beyond the palpitating heat waves to the mountains in the distance.

"No. That's tough sometimes on innocent people, too."

"Meanin' this nephew of old Cunningham. He'll get out all right."

"Will he? There's a girl under suspicion, too. She had no more to do with it than I had, but she's likely to get into mighty serious trouble just the same."

"I ain't read anything in the papers about any girl," Olson answered sullenly.

"No, it hasn't got to the papers yet. But it will. It's up to every man who knows anything about this to come clean."

"Is it?" The farmer looked bleakly at his visitor. "Seems to me you take a lot of interest in this. Who are you, anyhow?"

"My name is Kirby Lane."

"Nephew of the old man?"

"Yes."

Olson gave a snort of dry, splenetic laughter. "And you're out here sellin' registered Herefords."

"I have some for sale. But that's not why I came to see you."

"Why did you come, then?" asked the Scandinavian, his blue eyes hard and defiant.

"I wanted to have a look at the man who wrote the note to James Cunningham threatenin' to dry-gulch him if he ever came to Dry Valley again."

It was a center shot. Kirby was sure of it. He read it in the man's face before anger began to gather in it.

"I'm the man who wrote that letter, am I?" The lips of Olson were drawn back in a vicious snarl.

"You're the man."

"You can prove that, o' course."

"Yes."

"How?"

"By your handwritin'. I've seen three specimens of it to-day."

"Where?"

"One at the court-house, one at the bank that holds your note, an' the third at the office of the 'Enterprise.' You wrote an article urgin' the Dry Valley people to fight Cunningham. That article, in your own handwritin', is in my pocket right now."

"I didn't tell them to gun him, did I?"

"That's not the point. What I'm gettin' at is that the same man wrote the article that wrote the letter to Cunningham."

"Prove it! Prove it!"

"The paper used in both cases was torn from the same tablet. The writin' is the same."

"You've got a nerve to come out here an' tell me I'm the man that killed Cunningham," Olson flung out, his face flushing darkly.

"I'm not sayin' that."

"What are you sayin', then? Shoot it at me straight."

"If I thought you had killed Cunningham I wouldn't be here now. What I thought when I came was that you might know somethin' about it. I didn't come out here to trap you. My idea is that Hull did it. But I've made up my mind you're hidin' somethin'. I'm sure of it. You as good as told me so. What is it?" Kirby, resting easy in the saddle with his weight on one stirrup, looked straight into the rancher's eyes as he asked the question.

"I'd be likely to tell you if I was, wouldn't I?" jeered Olson.

"Why not? Better tell me than wait for the police to third-degree you. If you're not in this killin' why not tell what you know? I've told my story."

"After they spotted you in the court-room," the farmer retorted. "An' how do I know you told all you know? Mebbe you're keepin' secrets, too."

Kirby took this without batting an eye. "An innocent man hasn't anything to fear," he said.

"Hasn't he?" Olson picked up a stone and flung it at a pile of rocks he had gathered fifty yards away. He was left-handed. "How do you know he hasn't? Say, just for argument, I do know somethin'. Say I practically saw Cunningham killed an' hadn't a thing to do with it. Could I get away with a story like that? You know darned well I couldn't. Wouldn't the lawyers want to know howcome I to be so handy to the place where the killin' was, right at the very time it took place, me who is supposed to have threatened to bump him off myself? Sure they would. I'd be tyin' a noose round my own neck."

"Do you know who killed my uncle?" demanded Lane point-blank. "Did you see it done?"

Olson's eyes narrowed. A crafty light shone through the slitted lids. "Hold yore hawsses. I ain't said I knew a thing. Not a thing. I was stringin' you."

Kirby knew he had overshot the mark. He had been too eager and had alarmed the man. He was annoyed at himself. It would take time and patience and finesse to recover lost ground. Shrewdly he guessed at the rancher's state of mind. The man wanted to tell something, was divided in mind whether to come forward as a witness or keep silent. His evidence, it was clear enough, would implicate Hull; but, perhaps indirectly, it would involve himself, too.

"Well, whatever it is you know, I hope you'll tell it," the cattleman said. "But that's up to you, not me. If Hull is the murderer, I want the crime fastened on him. I don't want him to get off scot free. An' that's about what's goin' to happen. The fellow's guilty, I believe, but we can't prove it."

"Can't we? I ain't sure o' that." Again, through the narrowed lids, wary guile glittered. "Mebbe we can when the right time comes."

"I doubt it." Lane spoke casually and carelessly. "Any testimony against him loses force if it's held out too long. The question comes up, why didn't the witness come right forward at once. No, I reckon Hull will get away with it--if he really did it."

"Don't you think it," Olson snapped out. "They've pretty nearly got enough now to convict him."

The rough rider laughed cynically. "Convict him! They haven't enough against him even to make an arrest. They've got a dozen times as much against me an' they turned me loose. He's quite safe if he keeps his mouth shut--an' he will."

Olson flung a greasewood shrub on a pile of brush. His mind, Kirby could see, was busy with the problem before it. The man's caution and his vindictive desire for vengeance were at war. He knew something, evidence that would tend to incriminate Hull, and he was afraid to bring it to the light of day. He worked automatically, and the man on horseback watched him. On that sullen face Kirby could read fury, hatred, circumspection, suspicion, the lust for revenge.

The man's anger barked at Lane. "Well, what you waitin' for?" he asked harshly.

"Nothin'. I'm goin' now." He wrote his Denver address on a card. "If you find there is any evidence against Hull an' want to talk it over, perhaps you'd rather come to me than the police. I'm like you. If Hull did it I want him found guilty. So long."

He handed Olson his card. The man tossed it away. Kirby turned his horse toward town. Five minutes later he looked back. The settler had walked across to the place where he had thrown the card and was apparently picking it up.

The man from Wyoming smiled. He had a very strong hunch that Olson would call on him within a week or ten days. Of course he was disappointed, but he knew the game had to be played with patience. At least he had learned something. The man had in his possession evidence vitally important. Kirby meant to get that evidence from him somehow by hook or crook.

What was it the man knew? Was it possible he could have killed Cunningham himself and be trying to throw the blame of it on Hull? Was that why he was afraid to come out in the open with what testimony he had? Kirby could not forget the bitter hatred of Cunningham the farmer cherished. That hatred extended to Hull. What a sweet revenge to kill one enemy and let the other one hang for the crime!

A detail jumped to his mind. Olson had picked up a stone and thrown it to the rock pile--with his left hand.

CHAPTER XVIII

"BURNIN' A HOLE IN MY POCKET"

Cole Sanborn passed through the Welcome Arch at the station carrying an imitation-leather suitcase. He did not take a car, but walked up Seventeenth Avenue as far as the Markham Hotel. Here he registered, left his luggage, and made some inquiries over the telephone.

Thirty minutes later he was shaking hands with Kirby Lane.

"You dawg-goned old hellamile, what you mean comin' down here an' gettin' throwed in the calaboose?" he demanded, thumping his friend on the shoulder with a heavy brown fist.

"I'm sure enough glad to see you, Mr. Champeen-of-the-World," Kirby answered, falling into the easy vernacular of the outdoor country. "Come to the big town to spend that thousand dollars you won the other day?"

"Y'betcha; it's burnin' a hole in my pocket. Say, you blamed ol' horntoad, howcome you not to stay for the finals? Folks was plumb disappointed we didn't ride it off."

"Tell you about that later. How long you figurin' to stay in Denver, Cole?"

"I dunno. A week, mebbe. Fellow at the Empress wants me to go on that circuit an' do stunts, but I don't reckon I will. Claims he's got a trained bronc I can show on."

"Me, I'm gonna be busy as a dog with fleas," said Kirby. "I got to find out who killed my uncle. Suspicion rests on me, on a man named Hull, on the Jap servant, an' on Wild Rose."

"On Wild Rose!" exclaimed Cole, in surprise. "Have they gone crazy?"

"The police haven't got to her yet, old-timer. But their suspicions will be headed that way right soon if I don't get busy. She thinks her evidence will clear me. It won't. It'll add a motive for me to have killed him. The detectives will figure out we did it together, Rose an' me."

"Hell's bells! Ain't they got no sense a-tall?"

Kirby looked at his watch. "I'm headed right now for the apartment where my uncle was killed. Gonna look the ground over. Wanta come along?"

"Surest thing you know. I'm in this to a fare-you-well. Go ahead. I'll take yore dust."

The lithe, long-bodied man from Basin, Wyoming, clumped along in his high-heeled boots beside his friend. Both of them were splendid examples of physical manhood. The sun tan was on their faces, the ripple of health in their blood. But there was this difference between them, that while it was written on every inch of Sanborn that he lived astride a cow-pony, Kirby might have been an irrigation engineer or a mining man from the hills. He had neither the bow legs nor the ungraceful roll of the man who rides most of his waking hours. His clothes were well made and he knew how to carry them.

As they walked across to Fourteenth Street, Kirby told as much of the story as he could without betraying Esther McLean's part in it. He trusted Sanborn implicitly, but the girl's secret was not his to tell.

From James Cunningham Kirby had got the key of his uncle's apartment. His cousin had given it to him a little reluctantly.

"The police don't want things moved about," he had explained. "They would probably call me down if they knew I'd let you in."

"All I want to do is to look the ground over a bit. What the police don't know won't worry 'em any," the cattleman had suggested.

"All right." James had shrugged his shoulders and turned over the key. "If you think you can find out anything I don't see any objection to your going in."

Sanborn applied his shrewd common sense to the problem as he listened to Kirby.

"Looks to me like you're overlookin' a bet, son," he said. "What about this Jap fellow? Why did he light out so pronto if he ain't in this thing?"

"He might 'a' gone because he's a foreigner an' guessed they'd throw it on him. They would, too, if they could."

"Shucks! He had a better reason than that for cuttin' his stick. Sure had. He's in this somehow."

"Well, the police are after him. They'll likely run him down one o' these days. Far as I'm concerned I've got to let his trail go for the present. There are possibilities right here on the ground that haven't been run down yet. For instance, Rose met a man an' a woman comin' down the stairs while she was goin' up. Who were they?"

"Might 'a' been any o' the tenants here."

"Yes, but she smelt a violet perfume that both she an' I noticed in the apartment. My hunch is that the man an' the woman were comin' from my uncle's rooms."

"Would she recognize them? Rose, I mean?" asked Sanborn.

"No: it was on the dark stairs."

"Hmp! Queer they didn't come forward an' tell they had met a woman goin' up. That is, if they hadn't anything to do with the crime."

"Yes. Of course there might be other reasons why they must keep quiet. Some love affair, for instance."

"Sure. That might be, an' that would explain why they went down the dark stairs an' didn't take the elevator."

"Just the same I'd like to find out who that man an' woman are," Kirby said. He lifted his hand in a small gesture. "This is the Paradox Apartments."

A fat man rolled out of the building just as they reached the steps. He pulled up and stared down at Kirby.

"What--what--?" His question hung poised.

"What am I doin' out o' jail, Mr. Hull? I'm lookin' for the man that killed my uncle," Kirby answered quietly, looking straight at him.

"But--"

"Why did you lie about the time when you saw me that night?"

Hull got excited at once. His eyes began to dodge. "I ain't got a word to say to you--not a word--not a word!" He came puffing down the steps and went waddling on his way.

"What do you think of that prize package, Cole?" asked Lane, his eyes following the man.

"Guilty as hell," said the bronco buster crisply.

"I'd say so too," agreed Kirby. "I don't know as we need to look much farther. My vote is for Mr. Cass Hull--with reservations."

CHAPTER XIX

A DISCOVERY

The men from Wyoming stepped into the elevator and Kirby pressed the button numbered 3. At the third floor they got out and turned to the right. With the Yale key his cousin had given him Kirby opened the door of Apartment 12.

He knew that there was not an inch of space in the rooms that the police and the newspaper reporters had not raked as with a fine-tooth comb for clues. The desk had been ransacked, the books and magazines shaken, the rugs taken up. There was no chance that he would discover anything new unless it might be by deduction.

Wild Rose had reported to him the result of her canvass of the tenants. One or two of them she had missed, but she had managed to see all the rest. Nothing of importance had developed from these talks. Some did not care to say anything. Others wanted to gossip a whole afternoon away, but knew no more than what the newspapers had told them. The single fact that stood out from her inquiries was that those who lived in the three apartments nearest to Number 12 had all been out of the house on the evening of the twenty-third. The man who rented the rooms next those of Cunningham had left for Chicago on the twenty-second and had not yet returned to Denver.

Cole took in the easy-chairs, the draperies, and the soft rugs with an appreciative eye. "The old boy believed in solid comfort. You wouldn't think to look at this that he'd spent years on a bronc's back buckin' blizzards. Some luxury, I'll say! Looks like one o' them palaces of the vamp ladies the movies show."

Kirby wasted no time in searching the apartment for evidence. What interested him was its entrances and its exits, its relation to adjoining rooms and buildings. He had reason to believe that, between nine o'clock and half-past ten on the night of the twenty-third, not less than eight persons in addition to Cunningham had been in the apartment. How had they all managed to get in and out without being seen by each other?

Lane talked aloud, partly to clear his own thought and partly to put the situation before his friend.

"O' course I don't know every one of the eight was here. I'm guessin' from facts I do know, makin' inferences, as you might say. To begin with, I was among those present. So was Rose. We don't need to guess any about that."

Cole, still almost incredulous at the mention of Rose as a suspect, opened his lips to speak and closed them again with no word uttered. He was one of those loyal souls who can trust without asking for explanations.

"The lady of the violet perfume an' her escort were here," Kirby went on. "At least she was--most prob'ly he was, too. It's a cinch the Hulls were in the rooms. They were scared stiff when I saw 'em a little later. They lied on the witness stand so as to clear themselves an' get me into trouble in their place. Olson backs up the evidence. He good as told me he'd seen Hull in my uncle's rooms. If he did he must 'a' been present himself. Then there's the Jap Horikawa. He'd beat it before the police went to his room to arrest him at daybreak the mornin' after the murder. How did he know my uncle had been killed? It's not likely any one told him between half-past ten an' half-past five the next mo'nin'. No, sir. He knew it because his eyes had told him so."

"I'll say he did," agreed Sanborn.

"Good enough. That makes eight of us that came an' went. We don't need to figure on Rose an' me. I came by the door an' went by the fire escape. She walked upstairs an' down, too. The violet lady an' the man with her took the stairs down. We know that. But how about Hull an' Olson an' the Jap? Here's another point. Say it was 9.50 when Rose got here. My uncle didn't reach his rooms before nine o'clock. He changed his shoes, put on a smokin'-jacket, an' lit a cigar. He had it half smoked before he was tied to the chair. That cuts down to less than three quarters of an hour the time in which he was chloroformed, tied up to the chair, an' shot, an' in which at least six people paid a visit here, one of the six stayin' long enough to go through his desk an' look over a whole lot o' papers. Some o' these people were sure enough treadin' close on each other's heels an' I reckon some were makin' quick getaways."

"Looks reasonable," Cole admitted.

"I'll bet I wasn't the only man in a hurry that night an' not the only one trapped here. The window of the den was open when I came. Don't you reckon some one else beat it by the fire escape?"'

"Might've."

They passed into the small room where James Cunningham had met his death. Broad daylight though it was, Kirby felt for an instant a tightening at his heart. In imagination he saw again the gargoyle grin on the dead face upturned to his. With an effort he pushed from him the grewsome memory.

The chair in which the murdered man had been found was gone. The district attorney had taken it for an exhibit at the trial of the man upon whom evidence should fasten. The littered papers had been sorted and most of them removed, probably by James Cunningham, Junior. Otherwise the room remained the same.

The air was close. Kirby stepped to the window and threw it up. He looked out at the fire escape and at the wall of the rooming-house across the alley. Denver is still young. It offers the incongruities of the West. The Paradox Apartments had been remodeled and were modern and up to date. Adjoining it was the Wyndham Hotel, a survival of earlier days which could not long escape the march of progress.

Lane and his friend stepped out to the platform of the fire escape. Below them was the narrow alleyway, directly in front the iron frame of the Wyndham fire escape.

A discovery flashed across Kirby's brain and startled him. "See here, Cole. If a man was standin' on that platform over there, an' if my uncle had been facin' him in a chair, sittin' in front of the window, he could 'a' rested his hand on that railin' to take aim an' made a dead-center shot."

Cole thought it out. "Yes, he could, if yore uncle had been facin' the window. But the chair wasn't turned that way, you told me."

"Not when I saw it. But some one might 'a' moved the chair afterward."

The champion of the world grinned. "Seems to me, old man, you're travelin' a wide trail this trip. If some one tied up the old man an' chloroformed him an' left him here convenient, then moved him back to the wall after he'd been shot, then some one on the fire escape could 'a' done it. What's the need of all them ifs? Since some one in the room had to be in the thing, we can figure he fired the shot, too, whilst he was doin' the rest. Besides, yore uncle's face was powder-marked, showin' he was shot from right close."

"Yes, that's so," agreed Lane, surrendering his brilliant idea reluctantly. A moment, and his face brightened. "Look, Cole! The corridor of that hotel runs back from the fire escape. If a fellow had been standin' there he could 'a' seen into the room if the blind wasn't down."

"Sure enough," agreed Sanborn. "If the murderer had give him an invite to a grand-stand seat. But prob'ly he didn't."

"No, but it was hot that night. A man roomin' at the Wyndham might come out to get a breath of air, say, an' if he had he might 'a' seen somethin'."

"Some more of them ifs, son. What are you drivin' at, anyhow?"

"Olson. Maybe it was from there he saw what he did."

Sanborn's face lost its whimsical derision. His blue eyes narrowed in concentration of thought. "That's good guessin', Kirby. It may be 'way off; then again it may be absolutely correct. Let's find out if Olson stayed at the Wyndham whilst he was in Denver. He'd be more apt to hang out nearer the depot."

"Unless he chose the Wyndham to be near my uncle."

"Mebbeso. But if he did it wasn't because he meant the old man any good. Prove to me that the Swede stayed there an' I'll say he's as liable as Hull to be guilty. He could 'a' throwed a rope round that stone curlycue stickin' out up there above us, swung acrost to the fire escape here, an' walked right in on Cunningham."

Lane's quick glance swept the abutment above and the distance between the buildings.

"You're shoutin', Cole. He could 'a' done just that. Or he might have been waitin' in the room for my uncle when he came home."

"Yes. More likely that was the way of it'--if we're on a hot trail a-tall."

"We'll check up on that first. Chances are ten to one we're barkin' up the wrong tree. Right away we'll have a look at the Wyndham register."

They did. The Wyndham was a rooming-house rather than a hotel, but the landlady kept a register for her guests. She brought it out into the hall from her room for the Wyoming men to look at.

There, under date of the twenty-first, they found the name they were looking for. Oscar Olson had put up at the Wyndham. He had stayed three nights, checking out on the twenty-fourth.

The friends walked into the street and back toward the Paradox without a word. As they stepped into the elevator again. Lane looked at his friend and smiled.

"I've a notion Mr. Olson had a right interestin' trip to Denver," he said quietly.

"I'll say he had," answered Sanborn. "An' that ain't but half of it either. He's mighty apt to have another interestin' one here one o' these days."

CHAPTER XX

THE BRASS BED

The rough riders gravitated back to the fire escape. Kirby had studied the relation of his uncle's apartment to the building opposite. He had not yet examined it with reference to the adjoining rooms.

"While we're cuttin' trail might as well be thorough," he said to his friend. "The miscreant that did this killin' might 'a' walked out the door or he might 'a' come through the window here. If he did that last, which fork of the road did he take? He could go down the ladder or swing across to the Wyndham an' slip into the corridor. Let's make sure we've got all the prospects figured out at that."

Before he had finished the sentence, Lane saw another way of flight. The apartment in front of Cunningham's was out of reach of the fire escape. But the nearest window of the one to the rear was closer. Beneath it ran a stone ledge. An active man could swing himself from the railing of the platform to the coping and force an entrance into that apartment through the window.

Kirby glanced up and down the alley. A department store delivery auto was moving out of sight. Nobody was in the line of vision except an occasional pedestrian passing on the sidewalk at the entrances to the alley.

"I'm gonna take a whirl at it," Lane said, nodding toward the window.

"How much do they give for burglary in this state?" asked Sanborn, his eyes dancing. "I'd kinda hate to see you do twenty years."

"They have to catch the rabbit before they cook it, old-timer. Here goes. Keep an eye peeled an' gimme the office if any cop shows up."

"Mebbe the lady's at home. I don't allow to rescue you none if she massacrees you," the world's champion announced, grinning.

"Wrong guess, Cole. The boss of this hacienda is a man, an' he's in Chicago right now."

"You're the dawg-gonedest go-getter I ever threw in with," Sanborn admitted. "All right. Go to it. If I gotta go to the calaboose I gotta go, that's all."

Kirby stepped lightly to the railing, edged far out with his weight on the ledge, and swung to the window-sill. The sash yielded to the pressure of his hands and moved up. A moment later he disappeared from Sanborn's view into the room.

It was the living-room of the apartment into which Lane had stepped. The walls were papered with blue and the rug was a figured yellow and blue. The furniture was of fumed oak, the chairs leather-padded.

The self-invited guest met his first surprise on the table. It was littered with two or three newspapers. The date of the uppermost caught his eye. It was a copy of the "Post" of the twenty-fifth. He looked at the other papers. One was the "Times" and another the "News," dated respectively the twenty-fourth and the twenty-sixth. There was an "Express" of the twenty-eighth. Each contained long accounts of the developments in the Cunningham murder mystery.

How did these papers come here? The apartment was closed, its tenant in Chicago. The only other persons who had a key and the right of entry were Horikawa and the Paradox janitor, and the house servant had fled to parts unknown. Who, then, had brought these papers here? And why? Some one, Lane guessed, who was vitally interested in the murder. He based his presumption on one circumstance. The sections of the newspapers which made no reference to the Cunningham affair had been jammed into the waste-paper basket close to an adjoining desk.

The apartment held two rooms, a buffet kitchen and a bathroom. Kirby opened the door into the bedroom.

He stood paralyzed on the threshold. On the bed, fully dressed, his legs stretched in front of him and his feet crossed, was the missing man Horikawa. His torso was propped up against the brass posts of the bedstead. A handkerchief encircled each arm and bound it to the brass upright behind.

In the forehead, just above the slant, oval eyes, was a bullet hole. The man had probably been dead for a day, at least for a good many hours.

The cattleman had no doubt that it was Horikawa. His picture, a good snapshot taken by a former employer at a picnic where the Japanese had served the luncheon, had appeared in all the papers and on handbills sent out by James Cunningham, Junior. There was a scar, Y-shaped and ragged, just above the left eye, that made identification easy.

Kirby stepped to the window of the living-room and called to his friend.

"Want me to help you gather the loot?" chaffed Cole.

"Serious business, old man," Kirby told him, and the look on his face backed the words.

Sanborn swung across to the window and came through.

"What is it?" he asked quickly.

"I've found Horikawa."

"Found him--where?"

The eyes of the men met and Cole guessed that grim tragedy was in the air. He followed Kirby to the bedroom.

"God!" he exclaimed.

His gaze was riveted to the bloodless, yellow face of the Oriental. Presently he broke the silence to speak again.

"The same crowd that killed Cunningham must 'a' done this, too."

"Prob'ly."

"Sure they must. Same way exactly."

"Unless tyin' him up here was an afterthought--to make it look like the other," suggested Lane. He added, after a moment, "Or for revenge, because Horikawa killed my uncle. If he did, fate couldn't have sent a retribution more exactly just."

"Sho, that's a heap unlikely. You'd have to figure there were two men that are Apache killers, both connected with this case, both with minds just alike, one of 'em a Jap an' the other prob'ly a white man. A hundred to one shot, I'd call it. No, sir. Chances are the same man bossed both jobs."

"Yes," agreed Kirby. "The odds are all that way."

He stepped closer and looked at the greenish-yellow flesh. "May have been dead a couple o' days," he continued.

"What was the sense in killin' him? What for? How did he come into it?" Cole's boyish face wrinkled in perplexity. "I don't make head or tail of this thing. Cunningham's enemies couldn't be his enemies, too, do you reckon?"

"More likely he knew too much an' had to be got out of the road."

"Yes, but--" Sanborn stopped, frowning, while he worked out what he had to say. "He wasn't killed right after yore uncle. Where was he while the police were huntin' for him everywhere? If he knew somethin' why didn't he come to bat with it? What was he waitin' for? An' if the folks that finally bumped him off knew he didn't aim to tell what he knew, whyfor did they figure they had to get rid of him?"

"I can't answer your questions right off the reel, Cole. Mebbe I could guess at one or two answers, but they likely wouldn't be right. F'r instance, I could guess that he was here in this room from the time my uncle was killed till he met his own death."

"In this room?"

"In these apartments. Never left 'em, most likely. What's more, some one knew he was here an' kept him supplied with the daily papers."

"Who?"

"If I could tell you that I could tell you who killed him," answered Kirby with a grim, mirthless smile.

"How do you know all that?"

Lane told him of the mute testimony of the newspapers in the living-room. "Some one brought those papers to him every day," he added.

"And then killed him. Does that look reasonable to you?"

"We don't know the circumstances. Say, to make a long shot, that the Jap had been hired to kill my uncle by this other man, and say he was beginnin' to get ugly an' make threats. Or say Horikawa knew about the killin' of my uncle an' was hired by the other man to keep away. Then he learns from the papers that he's suspected, an' he gets anxious to go to the police with what he knows. Wouldn't there be reason enough then to kill him? The other man would have to do it to save himself."

"I reckon." Cole harked back to a preceding suggestion. "The revenge theory won't hold water. If some friend of yore uncle knew the Jap had killed him he'd sick the law on him. He wouldn't pull off any private execution like this."

Kirby accepted this. "That's true. There's another possibility. We've been forgettin' the two thousand dollars my uncle drew from the bank the day he was killed. If Horikawa an' some one else are guilty of the murder an' the theft, they might have quarreled later over the money. Perhaps the accomplice saw a chance to get away with the whole of it by gettin' rid of Horikawa."

"Mebbeso. By what you tell me yore uncle was a big, two-fisted scrapper. It was a two-man job to handle him. This li'l' Jap never in the world did it alone. What it gets back to is that he was prob'ly in on it an' later for some reason his pardner gunned him."

"Well, we'd better telephone for the police an' let them do some of the worryin'."

Kirby stepped into the living-room, followed by his friend. He was about to reach for the receiver when an exclamation stopped him. Sanborn was standing before a small writing-desk, of which he had just let down the top. He had lifted idly a piece of blotting-paper and was gazing down at a sheet of paper with writing on it.

"Looky here, Kirby," he called.

In three strides Lane was beside him. His eyes, too, fastened on the sheet and found there the pot-hooks we have learned to associate with Chinese and Japanese chirography.

"Shows he'd been makin' himself at home," the champion rough rider said.

Lane picked up the paper. There were two or three sheets of the writing. "Might be a letter to his folks--or it might be--" His sentence flickered out. He was thinking. "I reckon I'll take this along with me an' have it translated, Cole."

He put the sheets in his pocket after he had folded them. "You never can tell. I might as well know what this Horikawa was thinkin' about first off as the police. There's just an off chance he might 'a' seen Rose that night an' tells about it here."

A moment later he was telephoning to the City Hall for the police.

There was the sound of a key in the outer door. It opened, and the janitor of the Paradox stood in the doorway.

"What you do here?" asked the little Japanese quickly.

"We came in through the window," explained Kirby. "Thought mebbe the man that killed my uncle slipped in here."

"I hear you talk. I come in. You no business here."

"True enough, Shibo. But we're not burglars an' we're here. Lucky we are too. We've found somethin'."

"Mr. Jennings he in Chicago. He no like you here."

"I want to show you somethin', Shibo. Come."

Kirby led the way into the bedroom. Shibo looked at his countryman without a muscle of his impassive face twitching.

"Some one killum plenty dead," he said evenly.

"Quite plenty," Kirby agreed, watching his imperturbable Oriental face.

The cattleman admitted to himself that what he did not know about Japanese habits of mind would fill a great many books.

CHAPTER XXI

JAMES LOSES HIS TEMPER

Cole grinned whimsically at his friend.

"Do we light out now or wait for the cops?" he asked.

"We wait. They'd probably find out, anyhow, that we'd been here."

Five minutes later a patrol wagon clanged up to the Paradox. A sergeant of police and two plainclothes men took the elevator. The sergeant, heading the party, stopped in the doorway of the apartment and let a hard, hostile eye travel up and down Lane's six feet.

"Oh, it's you," he said suspiciously.

Kirby smiled. "That's right, officer. We've met before, haven't we?"

They had. The sergeant was the man who had arrested him at the coroner's inquest. It had annoyed him that the authorities had later released the prisoner on bond.

"Have you touched the body or moved anything since you came?" the sergeant demanded.

"No, sir, to both questions, except the telephone when I used it to reach headquarters."

The officer made no answer. He and the detectives went into the bedroom, examined the dead valet's position and clothes, made a tour of the rooms, and came back to Lane.

"Who's your friend?" asked the sergeant superciliously.

"His name is Cole Sanborn."

"The champion bronco buster?"

"Yes."

The sergeant looked at Sanborn with increased respect. His eyes went back to Kirby sullenly.

"What you doing here?"

"We were in my uncle's apartment lookin' things over. We stepped out on the fire escape an' happened to notice this window here was open a little. It just came over me that mebbe we might discover some evidence here. So I got in by the window, saw the body of the Jap, an' called my friend."

"Some one hire you to hunt up evidence?" the officer wanted to know with heavy sarcasm.

"I hired myself. My good name is involved. I'm goin' to see the murderer is brought to justice."

"You are, eh?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'll say you could find him if anybody could."

"You're entitled to your opinion, sergeant, just as I am to mine, but before we're through with this case you'll have to admit you've been wrong."

Lane turned to his friend. "We'll go now, Cole, if you're ready."

The sergeant glared at this cool customer who refused to be appalled at the position in which he stood. He had half a mind to arrest the man again on the spot, but he was not sure enough of his ground. Not very long since he had missed a promotion by being overzealous. He did not want to make the same mistake twice.

The Wyoming men walked across to Seventeenth Street and down it to the Equitable Building. James Cunningham was in his office.

He looked up as they entered, a cold smile on his lips.

"Ah, my energetic cousin," he said, with his habitual touch of irony. "What's in the wind now?"

Kirby told him. Instantly James became grave. His irony vanished. In his face was a flicker almost of consternation at this follow-up murder. He might have been asking himself how much more trouble was coming.

"We'll get the writing translated. You have it with you?" he said.

His eyes ran over the pages Lane handed him. "I know a Jap we can get to read it for us, a reliable man, one who won't talk if we ask him not to."

The broker's desk buzzer rang. He talked for a moment over the telephone, then hung up again.

"Sorry," Cunningham said, "I'm going to be busy for an hour or two. Going to lunch with Miss Phyllis Harriman. She was Uncle James's fiancée, perhaps you know. There are some affairs of the estate to be arranged. I wonder if you could come back later this afternoon. Say about four o'clock. We'll take up then the business of the translation. I'll get in touch with a Japanese in the meantime."

"Suits me. Shall I leave the writing here?"

"Yes, if you will. Doesn't matter, of course, but since we have it I'll put it in the safe."

"How's the arm?" Kirby asked, glancing at the sling his cousin wore.

"Only sprained. The doctor thinks I must have twisted it badly as I fell. I couldn't sleep a wink all night. The damned thing pained so."

James looked as though he had not slept well. His eyes were shadowed and careworn.

They walked together as far as the outer office. A slender, dark young woman, beautifully gowned, was waiting there. James introduced her to his cousin and Sanborn as Miss Harriman. She was, Kirby knew at once, the original of the photograph he had seen in his uncle's rooms.

Miss Harriman was a vision of sheathed loveliness. The dark, long-lashed eyes looked out at Kirby with appealing wistfulness. When she moved, the soft lines of her body took on a sinuous grace. From her personality there seemed to emanate an enticing aura of sex mystery.

She gave Kirby her little gloved hand. "I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Lane," she said, smiling at him. "I've heard all sorts of good things about you from James--and Jack."

She did not offer her hand to Sanborn, perhaps because she was busy buttoning one of the long gloves. Instead, she gave him a flash of her eyes and a nod of the carefully coiffured head.

Kirby said the proper things, but he said them with a mind divided. For his nostrils were inhaling again the violet perfume that associated itself with his first visit to his uncle's apartment. He did not start. His eyes did not betray him. His face could be wooden on occasion, and it told no stories now. But his mind was filled with racing thoughts. Had Phyllis Harriman been the woman Rose had met on the stairs? What had she been doing in Cunningham's room? Who was the man with her? What secret connected with his uncle's death lay hidden back of the limpid innocence of those dark, shadowed eyes? She was one of those women who are forever a tantalizing mystery to men. What was she like behind the inscrutable, charming mask of her face?

Lane carried this preoccupation with him throughout the afternoon. It was still in the hinterland of his thoughts when he returned to his cousin's office.

His entrance was upon a scene of agitated storm. His cousin was in the outer office facing a clerk. In his eyes there was a cold fury of anger that surprised Kirby. He had known James always as self-restrained to the point of chilliness. Now his anger seemed to leap out and strike savagely.

"Gross incompetence and negligence, Hudson. You are discharged, sir. I'll not have you in my employ an hour longer. A man I have trusted and found wholly unworthy."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Cunningham," the clerk said humbly. "I don't see how I lost the paper, if I did, sir. I was very careful when I took the deeds and leases out of the safe. It seems hardly possible--"

"But you lost it. Nobody else could have done it. I don't want excuses. You can go, sir." Cunningham turned abruptly to his cousin. "The sheets of paper with the Japanese writing have been lost. This man, by some piece of inexcusable carelessness, took them with a bundle of other documents to my lawyer's office. He must have taken them. They were lying with the others. Now they can't be found anywhere."

"Have you 'phoned to your lawyer?" asked Kirby.

"'Phoned and been in person. They are nowhere to be found. They ought to turn up somewhere. This clerk probably dropped them. I've sent an advertisement to the afternoon papers."

Kirby was taken aback at this unexpected mischance, but there was no use wasting nerve energy in useless fretting. He regretted having left the papers with James, for he felt that in them might be the key to the mystery of the Cunningham case. But he had no doubt that his cousin was more distressed about the loss than he was. He comforted himself with the reflection that a thorough search would probably restore them, anyhow.

He asked Hudson a few questions and had the man show them exactly where he had picked up the papers he took to the lawyer. James listened, his anger still simmering.

Kirby took his cousin by the arm and led him into the inner office.

"Frankly, James, I think you were partly to blame," he said. "You must have laid the writing very close in the safe to the other papers. Hadn't you better give Hudson another chance before you fire him?" His disarming smile robbed both the criticism and the suggestion of any offense they might otherwise have had.

In the end he persuaded Cunningham to withdraw his discharge of the clerk.

"He doesn't deserve it," James grumbled. "He's maybe spoiled our chance of laying hands on the man who killed Uncle. I can't get over my disappointment."

"Don't worry, old man," Lane said quietly. "We're goin' to rope an' hogtie that wolf even if Horikawa can't point him out to us with his dead hand."

Cunningham looked at him, and again the faint, ironic smile of admiration was in evidence. "You're confident, Kirby."

"Why wouldn't I be? With you an' Rose McLean an' Cole Sanborn an' I all followin' the fellow's trail, he can't double an' twist enough to make a getaway. We'll ride him down sure."

"Maybe we will and maybe we won't," the oil broker replied. "I'd give odds that he goes scot free."

"Then you'd lose," Kirby answered, smiling easily.

CHAPTER XXII

"ARE YOU WITH ME OR AGAINST ME?"

Miss Phyllis Harriman had breakfasted earlier than usual. Her luxuriant, blue-black hair had been dressed and she was debating the important question as to what gown she would wear. The business of her life was to make an effective carnal appeal, and she had a very sure sense of how to accomplish this.

A maid entered with a card, at which Miss Harriman glanced indolently. A smile twitched at the corners of her mouth, but it was not wholly one of amusement. In the dark eyes a hint of adventure sparked. Her pulses beat with a little glow of triumph. For this young woman was of the born coquettes. She could no more resist alluring an attractive man and playing with him to his subsequent mental discomfort than she could refrain from bridge drives and dinner dances. This Wild Man from Wyoming, so strong of stride, so quietly competent, whose sardonic glance had taken her in so directly and so keenly, was a foeman worthy of her weapons.

"Good gracious!" she murmured, "does he usually call in the middle of the night, I wonder? And does he really expect me to see him now?"

The maid waited. She had long ago discovered that Miss Phyllis did not always regulate her actions by her words.

"Take him into the red room and tell him I'll be down in a minute," Miss Harriman decided.

After which there was swift action in the lady's boudoir.

The red room was scarcely more than a cozy alcove set off the main reception-room, but it had a note of warmth, of friendly and seductive intimacy. Its walls whispered of tête-à-têtes, the cushions hinted at interesting secrets they were forever debarred from telling. In short, when Miss Harriman was present, it seemed, no less than the clothes she wore, an expression of her personality.

After a very few minutes Miss Phyllis sauntered into the room and gave her hand to the man who rose at her entrance. She was simply but expensively gowned. Her smile was warm for Kirby. It told him, with a touch of shy reluctance, that he was the one man in the world she would rather meet just now. He did not know that it would have carried the same message to any one of half a dozen men.

"I'm so glad you came to see me," she said, just as though she were in the habit of receiving young men at eleven in the morning. "Of course I want to know you better. James thinks so much of you."

"And Jack," added Lane, smilingly.

"Oh, yes. Jack, too," she said, and laughed outright when their eyes met.

"I'm sure Jack's very fond of me. He can't help showing it occasionally."

"Jack's--impulsive," she explained. "But he's amenable to influence."

"Of the right sort. I'm sure he would be."

He found himself the object of a piquant, amused scrutiny under her long lashes. It came to him that this Paris-gowned, long-limbed young sylph was more than willing to let him become intrigued by her charms. But Kirby Lane had not called so early in the day to fall in love.

"I came to see you, Miss Harriman, about the case," he said. "My good name is involved. I must clear it. I want you to help me."

He saw a pulse of excitement flutter in her throat. It seemed to him that her eyes grew darker, as though some shadow of dread had fallen over them. The provocative smile vanished.

"How can I help you?" she asked.

"If you would answer a few questions--"

"What questions?" All the softness had gone from her voice. It had become tense and sharp.

"Personal ones. About you and my uncle. You were engaged to him, were you not?"

"Yes."

"There wasn't any quarrel between you recently, was there?"

A flash of apprehension filled her eyes. Then, resolutely, she banished fear and called to her aid hauteur.

"There was not, though I quite fail to see how this can concern you, Mr. Lane."

"I don't want to distress you," he said gently, "Just now that question must seem to you a brutal one. Believe me, I don't want to hurt you."

Her eyes softened, grew wistful and appealing. "I'm sure you don't. You couldn't. It's all so--so dreadful to think about." There was a little catch in her throat as the voice broke. "Let's talk of something more cheerful. I want to forget it all."

"I'm sure you do. We all want to do that. The surest way to get it out of our minds is to solve the mystery and find out who is guilty. That's why I want you to tell me a few things to clear up my mind."

"But I don't know anything about it--nothing at all. Why should you come to me?"

"When did you last see my uncle alive?"

"What a dreadful question! It was--let me think--in the afternoon--the day before--"

"And you parted from him on the best of terms?"

"Of course."

He leaned toward her ever so little, his eyes level with hers and steadily fastened upon her. "That's the last time you saw him--until you went to his rooms at the Paradox the night he was killed?"

She had lifted her hand to pat into place an escaping tendril of hair. The hand remained lifted. The dark eyes froze with horror. They stared at him, as though held by some dreadful fascination. From her cheeks the color ebbed. Kirby thought she was going to faint.

But she did not. A low moan of despair escaped from the ashen lips. The lifted arm fell heavily to her lap.

Then Kirby discovered that the two in the red room had become three. Jack Cunningham was standing in the doorway.

His glance flashed to Lane accusingly. "What's up? What are you doing here?" he demanded abruptly.

The Wyoming man rose. "I've been asking Miss Harriman a question."

"A question. What business have you to ask her questions?" demanded Jack hotly.

His cousin tried a shot in the dark. "I was asking her," he said, his voice low and even, "about that visit you and she paid to Uncle James's rooms the night he was killed."

Kirby knew instantly he had scored a hit. The insolence, the jaunty confidence, were stricken from him as by a buffet in the face. For a moment body and mind alike were lax and stunned. Then courage flowed back into his veins. He came forward, blustering.

"What do you mean? What visit? It's a damned lie."

"Is it? Then why is the question such a knockout to you and Miss Harriman? She almost fainted, and it certainly crumpled you up till you got second breath."

Jack flushed angrily. "O' course it shocked her for you to make such a charge against her. It would frighten any woman. By God, it's an outrage. You come here and try to browbeat Miss Harriman when she's alone. You ask her impudent questions, as good as tell her she--she--"

Kirby's eyes were like a glittering rapier probing for the weakness of his opponent's defense. "I say that she and you were in the rooms of Uncle James at 9.50 the evening he was killed. I say that you concealed the fact at the inquest. Why?" He shot his question at the other man with the velocity of a bullet.

Cunningham's lip twitched, his eye wavered. How much did his cousin know? How much was he merely guessing?

"Who told you we were there? How do you know it? I don't propose to answer every wild accusation nor to let Miss Harriman be insulted by you. Who are you, anyhow? A man accused of killing my uncle, the man who found his valet dead and is suspected of that crime, too, a fellow who would be lying behind the bars now if my brother hadn't put up the money to save the family from disgrace. If we tell all we know, the police will grab you again double-quick. Yet you have the nerve to come here and make insinuations against the lady who is mourning my uncle's death. I've a good mind to 'phone for the police right now."

"Do," suggested Kirby, smiling. "Then we'll both tell what we know and perhaps things will clear up a bit."

It was a bluff pure and simple. He couldn't tell what he knew any more than his cousin could. The part played by Rose and Esther McLean in the story barred him from the luxury of truth-telling. Moreover, he had no real evidence to back his suspicions. But Jack did not know how strong the restraining influence was.

"I didn't say I was going to 'phone. I said I'd a jolly good mind to," Cunningham replied sulkily.

"I'd advise you not to start anything you can't finish, Jack. I'll give you one more piece of advice, too. Come clean with what you know. I'm goin' to find out, anyhow. Make up your mind to that. I'm goin' through with this job till it's done."

"You'll pull off your Sherlock-Holmes stuff in jail, then, for I'm going to ask James to get off your bond," Jack retorted vindictively.

"As you please about that," Lane said quietly.

"He'll choose between you or me. I'll be damned if I'll stand for his keeping a man out of jail to try and fasten on me a murder I didn't do."

"I haven't said you did it. What I say is that you and Miss Harriman know somethin' an' are concealin' it. What is it? I'm not a fool. I don't think you killed Uncle any more than I did. But you an' Miss Harriman have a secret. Why don't you go to James an' make a clean breast of it? He'll tell you what to do."

"The devil he will! I tell you we haven't any secret. We weren't in Uncle's rooms that night."

"Can you prove an alibi for the whole evening--both of you?" the range rider asked curtly.

"None of your business. We're not in the prisoner's dock. It's you that is likely to be there," Jack tossed out petulantly.

Phyllis Harriman had flung herself down to sob with her head in the pillows. But Kirby noticed that one small pink ear was in the open to take in the swift sentences passing between the men.

"I'm intendin' to make it my business," Lane said, his voice ominously quiet.

"You're laying up trouble for yourself," Jack warned blackly. "If you want me for an enemy you're going at this the right way."

"I'm not lookin' for enemies. What I want is the truth. You're concealin' it. We'll see if you can make it stick."

"We're not concealing a thing."

"Last call for you to show down your cards, Jack. Are you with me or against me?" asked Kirby.

"Against you, you meddling fool!" Cunningham burst out in a gust of fury. "Don't you meddle with my affairs, unless you want trouble right off the bat. I'm not going to have a Paul Pry nosing around and hinting slanders about me and Miss Harriman. What do you think I am? I'll protect my good name and this lady's if I have to do it with a gun. Don't forget that, Mr. Lane."

Kirby's steady gaze appraised him coolly. "You're excited an' talkin' foolishness. I'm not attackin' anybody's good name. I'm lookin' for the man who killed Uncle James. I'm expectin' to find him. If anybody stands in the way, I'm liable to run against him."

The man from Twin Buttes bowed toward the black hair and pink ear of his hostess. He turned on his heel and walked from the room.

CHAPTER XXIII

COUSINS DISAGREE

It was essential to Kirby's plans that he should be at liberty. If he should be locked up in prison even for a few days the threads that he had begun to untangle from the snarl known as the Cunningham mystery would again be ensnared. He was not sure what action James would take at his brother's demand that he withdraw from the bond. But Lane had no desire to embarrass him by forcing the issue. He set about securing a new bond.

He was, ten minutes later, in the law offices of Irwin, Foster & Warren, attorneys who represented the cattle interests in Wyoming with which Kirby was identified. Foster, a stout, middle-aged man with only a few locks of gray hair left, heard what the rough rider had to say.

"I'll wire to Caldwell and to Norman as you suggest, Mr. Lane," he said. "If they give me instructions to stand back of you, I'll arrange a new bond as soon as possible."

"Will it take long? I can't afford to be tied up behind the bars right now."

"Not if I can get it accepted. I'll let you know at once."

Kirby rose. He had finished his business.

"Just a moment, Mr. Lane." Foster leaned back in his swivel-chair and looked out of the window. His eyes did not focus on any detail of the office building opposite. They had the far-away look which denotes a preoccupied mind. "Ever been to Golden?" he asked at last abruptly, swinging back in his seat and looking at his client.

"No. Why?"

"Golden is the Gretna Green of Denver, you know. When young people elope they go to Golden. When a couple gets married and doesn't want it known they choose Golden. Very convenient spot."

"I'm not figuring on gettin' married right now," the cattleman said, smiling.

"Still you might find a visit to the place interesting and useful. I was there on business a couple of weeks ago."

The eyes of the men fastened. Lane knew he was being given a hint that Foster did not want to put more directly.

"What are the interestin' points of the town?" asked the Twin Buttes man.

"Well, sir, there are several. Of course, there's the School of Mines, and the mountains right back of the town. Gold was discovered there somewhere about fifty-seven, I think. Used to be the capital of the territory before Denver found her feet."

"I'm rather busy."

"Wouldn't take you long to run over on the interurban." The lawyer began to gather toward him the papers upon which he had been working when the client was shown in. He added casually: "I found it quite amusing to look over the marriage licenses of the last month or two. Found the names there of some of our prominent citizens. Well, I'll call you up as soon as I know about the bond."

Lane was not entirely satisfied with what he had been told, but he knew that Foster had said all he meant to say. One thing stuck in his mind as the gist of the hint. The attorney was advising him to go to the court-house and check up the marriage licenses.

He walked across to the Equitable Building and dropped in on his cousin James. Cunningham rose to meet him a bit stiffly. The cattleman knew that Jack had already been in to see him or had got him on the wire.

Kirby brushed through any embarrassment there might be and told frankly why he had come.

"I've had a sort of row with Jack. Under the circumstances I don't feel that I ought to let you stay on my bond. It might create ill-feelin' between you an' him. So I'm arrangin' to have some Wyoming friends put up whatever's required. You'll understand I haven't any bad feeling against you, or against him for that matter. You've been bully all through this thing, an' I'm certainly in your debt."

"What's the trouble between you about?" asked James.

"I've found out that he an' Miss Harriman were in Uncle James's rooms the night he was killed. I want them to come through an' tell what they know."

"How did you find that out?"

The eyes of the oil broker were hard as jade. They looked straight into those of his cousin.

"I can't tell you that exactly. Put two an' two together."

"You mean you guess they were there. You don't know it."

A warm, friendly smile lit the brown face of the rough rider. He wanted to remain on good terms with James if he could. "I don't know it in a legal sense. Morally, I'm convinced of it."

"Even though they deny it."

"Practically they admitted rather than denied."

"Do you think it was quite straight, Kirby, to go to Miss Harriman with such a trumped-up charge? I don't. I confess I'm surprised at you." In voice and expression James showed his disappointment.

"It isn't a trumped-up charge. I wanted to know the truth from her."

"Why didn't you go to Jack, then?"'

"I didn't know at that time Jack was the man with her."

"You don't know it now. You don't know she was there. In point of fact the idea is ridiculous. You surely don't think for a moment that she had anything to do with Uncle James's death."

"No; not in the sense that she helped bring it about. But she knows somethin' she's hidin'."

"That's absurd. Your imagination is too active, Kirby."

"Can't agree with you." Lane met him eye to eye.

"Grant for the sake of argument that she was in Uncle's room that night. Your friend Miss Rose McLean was there, too--by her own confession. When she came to Jack and me with her story, we respected it. We did not insist on knowing why she was there, and it was of her own free will she told us. Yet you go to our friend and distress her by implications that must shock and wound her. Was that generous? Was it even fair?"

The cattleman stood convicted at the bar of his own judgment. His cousins had been magnanimous to Esther and Rose, more so than he had been to Miss Harriman. Yet, even while he confessed fault, he felt uneasily that there was a justification he could not quite lay hold of and put into words.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, James. Perhaps I was wrong. But you want to remember that I wasn't askin' about what she knew with any idea of makin' it public or tellin' the police. I meant to keep it under my own hat to help run down a cold-blooded murderer."

"You can't want to run him down any more than we do--and in that 'we' I include Jack and Miss Harriman as well as myself," the older man answered gravely. "But I'm sure you're entirely wrong. Miss Harriman knows nothing about it. If she had she would have confided in us."

"Perhaps she has confided in Jack."

"Don't you think that obsession of yours is rather--well, unlikely, to put it mildly? Analyze it and you'll find you haven't a single substantial fact to base it on."

This was true. Yet Kirby's opinion was not changed. He still believed that Jack and Miss Harriman had been in his uncle's rooms just before Wild Rose had been there.

He returned to the subject of the bond. It seemed to him best, he said, in view of Jack's feeling, to get other bondsmen. He hoped James would not interpret this to mean that he felt less friendly toward him.

His cousin bowed, rather formally. "Just as you please. Would you like the matter arranged this afternoon?"

Lane looked at his watch. "I haven't heard from my new bondsmen yet. Besides, I want to go to Golden. Would to-morrow morning suit you?"

"I dare say." James stifled a yawn. "Did you say you were going to Golden?"

"Yes. Some one gave me a tip. I don't know what there's in it, but I thought I'd have a look at the marriage-license registry."

Cunningham flashed a startled glance at him that asked a peremptory question. "Probably waste of time. I've been in the oil business too long to pay any attention to tips."

"Expect you're right, but I'll trot out there, anyhow. Never can tell."

"What do you expect to find among the marriage licenses?"

"Haven't the slightest idea. I'll tell you tomorrow what I do find."

James made one dry, ironic comment. "I rather think you have too much imagination for sleuthing. You let your wild fancies gallop away with you. If I were you I'd go back to bronco busting."

Kirby laughed. "Dare say you're right. I'll take your advice after we get the man we're after."

CHAPTER XXIV

REVEREND NICODEMUS RANKIN FORGETS AND REMEMBERS

By appointment Kirby met Rose at Graham & Osborne's for luncheon. She was waiting in the tower room for him.

"Where's Esther?" he asked.

Rose mustered a faint smile. "She's eating lunch with a handsomer man."

"You can't throw a stone up Sixteenth Street without hittin' one," he answered gayly.

They followed the head waitress to a small table for two by a window. Rose walked with the buoyant rhythm of perfect health. Her friend noticed, as he had often done before, that she had the grace of movement which is a corollary to muscles under perfect response. Seated across the table from her, he marveled once more at the miracle of her soft skin and the peach bloom of her complexion. Many times she had known the sting of sleet and the splash of sun on her face. Yet incredibly her cheeks did not tan nor lose their fineness.

"You haven't told me who this handsomer man is," Kirby suggested.

"Cole Sanborn." She flushed a little, but looked straight at him. "Have you told him--about Esther?"

"No. But from somethin' he said I think he guesses."

Her eyes softened. "He's awf'ly good to Esther. I can see he likes her and she likes him. Why couldn't she have met him first? She's so lovable." Tears brimmed to her eyes. "That's been her ruin. She was ready to believe any man who said he cared for her. Even when she was a little bit of a trick when people liked her, she was grateful to them for it and kinda snuggled up to them. I never saw a more cuddly baby."

"Have you found out anything more yet about--the man?" he asked, his voice low and gentle.

"No. It's queer how stubborn she can be for all her softness. But she almost told me last night. I'll find out in a day or two now. Of course it was your uncle. The note I found was really an admission of guilt. Your cousins feel that some settlement ought to be made on Esther out of the estate. I've been trying to decide what would be fair. Will you think it over and let me know what seems right to you?"

The waitress came, took their order, and departed.

"I'm goin' out to Golden to-day on a queer wild-goose chase," Kirby said. "A man gave me a hint. He didn't want to tell me the information out an' out, whatever it is. I don't know why. What he said was for me to go to Golden an' look over the list of marriage licenses for the past month or two."

Her eyes flashed an eager question at him. "You don't suppose--it couldn't be that Esther was married to your uncle secretly and that she promised not to tell."

"I hadn't thought of that. It might be." His eyes narrowed in concentration. "And if Jack an' Miss Harriman had just found it out, that would explain why they called on Uncle James the night he was killed. Do you want to go to Golden with me?"

She nodded, eagerly. "Oh, I do, Kirby! I believe we'll find out something there. Shall we go by the interurban?"

"As soon as we're through lunch."

They walked across along Arapahoe Street to the loop and took a Golden car. It carried them by the viaduct over the Platte River and through the North Side into the country. They rushed past truck farms and apple orchards into the rolling fields beyond, where the crops had been harvested and the land lay in the mellow bath of a summer sun. They swung round Table Mountain into the little town huddled at the foot of Lookout.

From the terminus of the line they walked up the steep hill to the court-house. An automobile, new and of an expensive make, was standing by the curb. Just as Kirby and Rose reached the machine a young man ran down the steps of the court-house and stepped into the car. The man was Jack Cunningham. He took the driver's seat. Beside him was a veiled young woman in a leather motoring-coat. In spite of the veil Lane recognized her as Phyllis Harriman.

Cunningham caught sight of his cousin and anger flushed his face. Without a word he reached for the starter, threw in the clutch, and gave the engine gas.

The rough rider watched the car move down the hill. "I've made a mistake," he told his companion. "I told James I was comin' here to-day. He let Jack know, an' he's beat us to it."

"What harm will that do?" asked Rose. "The information will be there for us, too, won't it?"

"Mebbe it will. Mebbe it won't. We'll soon find out."

Rose caught her friend's arm as they were passing through the hall. "Kirby, do you suppose your cousins really know Esther was married to your uncle? Do you think they can be trying to keep it quiet so she can't claim the estate?"

He stopped in his stride. James had deprecated the idea of his coming to Golden and had ridiculed the possibility of his unearthing any information of value. Yet he must have called up Jack as soon as he had left the office. And Jack had hurried to the town within the hour. It might be that. Rose had hit on the reason for the hostility he felt on the part of both cousins to his activities. There was something they did not want brought to the light of day. What more potent reason could there be for concealment than their desire to keep the fortune of the millionaire in their own hands?

"I shouldn't wonder if you haven't rung the bull's-eye, pardner," he told her. "We ought to know right soon now."

The clerk in the recorder's office smiled when Kirby said he wanted to look through the license register. He swung the book round toward them.

"Help yourself. What's the big idea? Another young fellow was in lookin' at the licenses only a minute ago."

The clerk moved over to another desk where he was typewriting. His back was turned toward them. Kirby turned the pages of the book. He and Rose looked them over together. They covered the record for three months without finding anything of interest. Patiently they went over the leaves again.

Kirby stepped over to the clerk. "Do you happen to remember whether you made out any license application for a man named Cunningham any time in the past two months?" he asked.

"For a marriage license?"

"Yes."

"Don't think I have. Can't remember the name. I was on my vacation two weeks. Maybe it was then. Can't you find it in the book?"

"No."

"Know the date?"

Kirby shook his head.

The voice of Rose, high with excitement, came from across the room. "Looky here."

Her finger ran down the book, close to the binding. A page had been cut out with a sharp penknife, so deftly that they had passed it twice without noticing.

"Who did that?" demanded the clerk angrily.

"Probably the young man who was just in here. His name is Jack Cunningham," Lane answered.

"What in time did he want to do that for? If he wanted it why didn't he take a copy? The boss'll give me Hail Columbia. That's what a fellow gets for being accommodating."

"He did it so that we wouldn't see it. Is there any other record kept of the marriages?"

"Sure there is. The preachers and the judges who perform marriages have to turn back to us the certificate within thirty days and we make a record of it."

"Can I see that book?"

"I'll do the lookin'," the clerk said shortly. "Whose marriage is it? And what date?"

Lane gave such information as he could. The clerk mellowed when Rose told him it was very important to her, as officials have a way of doing when charming young women smile at them. But he found no record of any marriage of which they knew either of the contracting parties.

"Once in a while some preacher forgets to turn in his certificate," the clerk said as he closed the book. "Old Rankin is the worst that way. He forgets. You might look him up."

Kirby slipped the clerk a dollar and turned away. Rankin was a forlorn hope, but he and Rose walked out to a little house in the suburbs where the preacher lived.

He was a friendly, white-haired old gentleman, and he made them very much at home under the impression they had come to get married. A slight deafness was in part responsible for this mistake.

"May I see the license?" he asked after Kirby had introduced himself and Rose.

For a moment the cattleman was puzzled. His eye went to Rose, seeking information. A wave of color was sweeping into her soft cheeks. Then Lane knew why, and the hot blood mounted into his own. His gaze hurriedly and in embarrassment fled from Miss McLean's face.

"You don't quite understand," he explained to the Reverend Nicodemus Rankin. "We've come only to--to inquire about some one you married--or rather to find out if you did marry him. His name is Cunningham. We have reason to think he was married a month or two ago. But we're not sure."

The old man stroked his silken white hair. At times his mind was a little hazy. There were moments when a slight fog seemed to descend upon it. His memory in recent years had been quite treacherous. Not long since he had forgotten to attend a funeral at which he was to conduct the services.

"I dare say I did marry your friend. A good many young people come to me. The license clerk at the court is very kind. He sends them here."

"The man's name was Cunningham--James Cunningham," Kirby prompted.

"Cunningham--Cunningham! Seems to me I did marry a man by that name. Come to think of it I'm sure I did. To a beautiful young woman," the old preacher said.

"Do you recall her name? I mean her maiden name," Rose said, excitement drumming in her veins.

"No-o. I don't seem quite to remember it. But she was a charming young woman--very attractive, I might say. My wife and daughter mentioned it afterward."

"May I ask if Mrs. Rankin and your daughter are at present in the house?" asked Lane.

"Unfortunately, no. They have gone to spend a few days visiting in Idaho Springs. If they were here they could reënforce any gaps in my memory, which is not all it once was." The Reverend Nicodemus smiled apologetically.

"Was her name Esther McLean?" asked Rose eagerly.

The old parson brought his mind back to the subject with a visible effort. "Oh, yes! The young lady who was married to your friend--" He paused, at a loss for the name.

"--Cunningham," Kirby supplied.

"Quite so--Cunningham. Well, it might have been McLeod. I--I rather think it did sound like that."

"McLean. Miss Esther McLean," corrected the cattleman patiently.

"The fact is I'm not sure about the young lady's name. Mother and Ellen would know. I'm sorry they're not here. They talked afterward about how pleasant the young lady was."

"Was she fair or dark?"

The old preacher smiled at Rose benevolently. "I really don't know. I'm afraid, my dear young woman, that I'm a very unreliable witness."

"You don't recollect any details. For instance, how did they come and did they bring witnesses with them?"

"Yes. I was working in the garden--weeding the strawberry-patch, I think. They came in an automobile alone. Wife and daughter were the witnesses."

"Do you know when Mrs. Rankin and your daughter will be home?"

"By next Tuesday, at the latest. Perhaps you can call again. I trust there was nothing irregular about the marriage."

"Not so far as we know. We were anxious about the young lady. She is a friend of ours," Kirby said. "By the way, the certificate of the marriage is not on record at the court-house. Are you sure you returned it to the clerk?"

"Bless my soul, did I forget that again?" exclaimed the Reverend Nicodemus. "I'll have my daughter look for the paper as soon as she returns."

"You couldn't find it now, I suppose," Lane suggested.

The old gentleman searched rather helplessly among the papers overflowing his desk. He did not succeed in finding what he looked for.

Kirby and Rose walked back to the court-house. They had omitted to arrange with the license clerk to forward a copy of the marriage certificate when it was filed.

The rough rider left the required fee with the clerk and a bank note to keep his memory jogged up.

"Soon as Mrs. Rankin comes home, will you call her up and remind her about lookin' for the certificate?" he asked.

"Sure I will. I've got to have it, anyhow, for the records. And say, what's the name of that fresh guy who came in here and cut the page from the register? I'm going after him right, believe you me."

Kirby gave his cousin's name and address. He had no animosity whatever toward him, but he thought it just as well to keep Jack's mind occupied with troubles of his own during the next few days. Very likely then he would not get in his way so much.

They were no sooner clear of the court-house than Rose burst out with what was in her mind.

"It's just as I thought. Your uncle married Esther and got her to keep quiet about the marriage for some reason. Your cousins are trying to destroy the evidence so that the estate won't all go to her. I'll bet we get an offer of a compromise right away."

"Mebbe." Kirby's mind was not quite satisfied. Somehow, this affair did not seem to fit in with what he knew of his uncle. Cunningham had been always bold and audacious in his actions, a law to himself. Yet if he were going to marry the stenographer he had wronged, he might do it secretly to conceal the date on account of the unborn child.

The eyes of Rose gleamed with determination. Her jaw set. "I'm gonna get the whole story out of Esther soon as I get back to town," she said doggedly.

But she did not--nor for many days after.

CHAPTER XXV

A CONFERENCE OF THREE

Kirby heard his name being paged as he entered his hotel.

"Wanted at the telephone, sir," the bell-hop told him.

He stepped into a booth and the voice of Rose came excited and tremulous. It was less than ten minutes since he had left her at the door of her boarding-house.

"Something's happened, Kirby. Can you come here--right away?" she begged. Then, unable to keep back any longer the cry of her heart, she broke out with her tidings. "Esther's gone."

"Gone where?" he asked.

"I don't know. She left a letter for me. If you'll come to the house--Or shall I meet you downtown?"

"I'll come. Be there in five minutes."

He more than kept his word. Catching a car on the run at the nearest corner, he dropped from it as it crossed Broadway and walked to Cherokee.

Rose opened the house door when he rang the bell and drew him into the parlor. With a catch of the breath she blurted out again the news.

"She was gone when I got home. I found--this letter." Her eyes sought his for comfort. He read what Esther had written.

I can't stand it any longer, dearest. I'm going away where I won't disgrace you. Don't look for me. I'll be taken care of till--afterward.

And, oh, Rose, don't hate me, darling. Even if I am wicked, love me. And try some time to forgive your little sister.

ESTHER

"Did anybody see her go?" Lane asked.

"I don't know. I haven't talked with anybody but the landlady. She hasn't seen Esther this afternoon, she said. I didn't let on I was worried."

"What does she mean that she'll be taken care of till afterward? Who'll take care of her?"

"I don't know."

"Have you any idea where she would be likely to go--whether there is any friend who might have offered her a temporary home?"

"No." Rose considered. "She wouldn't go to any old friend. You see she's--awf'ly sensitive. And she'd have to explain. Besides, I'd find out she was there."

"That's true."

"I ought never to have left her last spring. I should have found work here and not gone gallumpin' all over the country." Her chin trembled. She was on the verge of tears.

"Nonsense. You can't blame yourself. We each have to live our own life. How could you tell what was comin'? Betcha we find her right away. Mebbe she let out somethin' to Cole. She doesn't look to me like a girl who could play out a stiff hand alone."

"She isn't. She's dependent--always has leaned on some one." Rose had regained control of herself quickly. She stood straight and lissom, mistress of her emotions, but her clear cheeks were colorless. "I'm worried, Kirby, dreadfully. Esther hasn't the pluck to go through alone. She--she might--"

No need to finish the sentence. Her friend understood.

His strong hand went out and closed on hers. "Don't you worry, pardner. It'll be all right. We'll find her an' take her somewhere into the country where folks don't know."

Faintly she smiled. "You're such a comfort."

"Sho! We'll get busy right away. Denver ain't such a big town that we can't find one li'l' girl muy pronto." His voice was steady and cheerful, almost light. "First off, we'll check up an' see if any one saw her go. What did she take with her?"

"One suitcase."

"How much money? Can you make a guess?"

"She had only a dollar or two in her purse. She had money in the bank. I'll find out if she drew any."

"Lemme do that. I'll find Cole, too. You make some inquiries round the house here, kinda easy-like. Meet you here at six o'clock. Or mebbe we'd better meet downtown. Say at the Boston Chop House."

Cole was with Kirby when he met Rose at the restaurant.

"We'll go in an' get somethin' to eat," Lane said. "We'll talk while we're waitin'. That way we'll not lose any time."

They found a booth and Kirby ordered the dinner. As soon as the waiter had gone he talked business.

"Find out anything, Rose?"

"Yes. A girl at the house who works for the telephone company saw Esther get into an automobile a block and a half from the house. A man helped her in. I pretended to laugh and asked her what sort of a lookin' man he was. She said he was a live one, well-dressed and handsome. The car was a limousine."

"Good. Fits in with what I found out," Kirby said. "The bank was closed, but I got in the back door by pounding at it. The teller at the K-R window was still there, working at his accounts. Esther did not draw any money to-day or yesterday."

"Why do you say good?" Cole wanted to know. "Is it good for our li'l' friend to be in the power of this good-lookin' guy with the big car, an' her without a bean of her own? I don't get it. Who is the man? Howcome she to go with him? She sure had no notion of goin' when we was eatin' together an hour before."

"I don't see who he could be. She never spoke of such a man to me," Rose murmured, greatly troubled.

"I don't reckon she was very well acquainted with him," Lane said, shaking out his napkin.

The talk was suspended while he ladled the soup into the plates and the waiter served them. Not till the man's back was turned did Rose fling out her hot challenge to Kirby.

"Why would she go with a man she didn't know very well? Where would she be going with him?" The flame in her cheeks, the stab of her eyes, dared him to think lightly of her sister. It was in her temperament to face all slights with high spirit.

His smile reassured. "Mebbe she didn't know where she was goin'. That was his business. Let's work this out from the beginnin'."

Kirby passed Rose the crackers. She rejected them with a little gesture of impatience.

"I don't want to eat. I'm not hungry."

Lane's kind eyes met hers steadily. "But you must eat. You'll be of no help if you don't keep up your strength."

Rather than fight it out, she gave up.

"We know right off the reel Esther didn't plan this," he continued. "Before we knew the man was in it you felt it wasn't like her to run away alone, Rose. Didn't you?"

"Yes."

"She hadn't drawn any money from her account, So she wasn't makin' any plans to go. The man worked it out an' then persuaded Esther. It's no surprise to me to find a Mr. Man in this thing. I'd begun to guess it before you told me. The question is, what man."

The girl's eyes jumped to his. She began to see what he was working toward. Cole, entirely in the dark, stirred uneasily. His mind was still busy with a possible love tangle.

"What man or men would benefit most if Esther disappeared for a time? We know of two it might help," the man from Twin Buttes went on.

"Your cousins!" she cried, almost in a whisper.

"Yes, if we've guessed rightly that Esther was married to Uncle James. That would make her his heir. With her in their hands and away from us, they would be in a position to drive a better bargain. They know that we're hot on the trail of the marriage. If they're kind to her--and no doubt they will be--they can get anything they want from her in the way of an agreement as to the property. Looks to me like the fine Italian hand of Cousin James. We know Jack wasn't the man. He was busy at Golden right then. Kinda leaves James in the spotlight, doesn't it?"

Rose drew a long, deep breath. "I'm so glad! I was afraid--thought maybe she would do something desperate. But if she's being looked after it's a lot better. We'll soon have her back. Until then they'll be good to her, won't they?"

"They'll treat her like a queen. Don't you see? That's their game. They don't want a lawsuit. They're playin' for a compromise."

Kirby leaned back and smiled expansively on his audience of two. He began to fancy himself tremendously as a detective.

CHAPTER XXVI

CUTTING TRAIL

Kirby's efforts to find James Cunningham after dinner were not successful. He was not at his rooms, at the Country Club, or at his office. Nor was he at a dinner dance where he was among the invited guests, a bit of information Rose had gathered from the society columns of the previous Sunday's "News." His cousin reached him at last next morning by means of his business telephone. An appointment was arranged in five sentences.

If James felt any surprise at the delegation of three which filed in to see him he gave no sign of it. He bowed, sent for more chairs from the outer office, and seated his visitors, all with a dry, close smile hovering on the edge of irony.

Kirby cut short preliminaries. "You know why we're here and what we want," he said abruptly.

"I confess I don't, unless to report on your trip to Golden," James countered suavely. "Was it successful, may I ask?"

"If it wasn't, you know why it wasn't."

The eyes of the two men met. Neither of them dodged in the least or gave to the rigor of the other's gaze.

"Referring to Jack's expedition, I presume."

"You don't deny it, then."

"My dear Kirby, I never waste breath in useless denials. You saw Jack. Therefore he must have been there."

"He was. He brought away with him a page cut from the marriage-license registry."

James lifted a hand of protest. "Ah! There we come to the parting of the ways. I can't concede that."

"No, but you know it's true," said Kirby bluntly.

"Not at all. He surely would not mutilate a public record."

"We needn't go into that. He did. But that didn't keep us from getting the information we wanted."

"No?" James murmured the monosyllable with polite indifference. But he watched, lynx-eyed, the strong, brown face of his cousin.

"We know now the secret you wanted to keep hidden in the court-house at Golden."

"I grant you energy in ferreting out other people's business, dear cousin. If you 're always so--so altruistic, let us say--I wonder how you have time to devote to your own affairs."

"We intend to see justice done Miss Esther McLean--Mrs. James Cunningham, I should say. You can't move us from that intention or--"

The expression on the oil broker's face was either astonishment or the best counterfeit of it Kirby had ever seen.

"I beg pardon. What did you say?"

"I told you, what you already know, that Esther McLean was married to Uncle James at Golden on the twenty-first of last month."

"Miss McLean and Uncle James married--at Golden--on the twenty-first of last month? Are you sure?"

"Aren't you? What did you think we found out?"

Cunningham's eyes narrowed. A film of caution spread over them. "Oh, I don't know. You're so enterprising you might discover almost anything. It's really a pity with your imagination that you don't go into fiction."

"Or oil promotin'," suggested Cole with a grin. "Or is that the same thing?"

"Let's table our cards, James," his cousin said. "You know now why we're here."

"On the contrary, I'm more in the dark than ever."

Kirby was never given to useless movements of his limbs or body. He had the gift of repose, of wonderful poise. Now not even his eyelashes flickered.

"We want to know what you've done with Esther McLean."

"But, my dear fellow, why should I do anything with her?"

"You know why as well as I do. Somehow you've persuaded her to go somewhere and hide herself. You want her in your power, to force or cajole her into a compromise of her right to Uncle James's estate. We won't have it."

A satiric smile touched the face of Cunningham without warming it, "That active imagination of yours again. You do let it run away with you."

"You were seen getting into a car with Miss McLean."

"Did she step in of her own free will?"

"We don't claim an abduction."

"On your own statement of the case, then, you have no ground of complaint whatever."

"Do you refuse to tell us where she is?" Kirby asked.

"I refuse to admit that I know where the young lady is."

"We'll find her. Don't make any mistake about that."

Kirby rose. The interview was at an end. Cole Sanborn strode forward. He leaned over the desk toward the oil broker, his blue eyes drilling into those of the broker.

"We sure will, an' if you've hurt our li'l' friend--if she's got any grievance against you an' the way you treat her--I'll certainly wreck you proper, Mr. Cunningham."

James flushed angrily. "Get out of here--all of you! Or I'll send for the police and have you swept out. I'm fed up on your interference."

"Is it interference for Miss McLean here to want to know where her sister is?" asked Kirby quietly.

"Why should you all assume I know?"

"Because the evidence points to you."

"Absurd. You come down here from Wyoming and do nothing but make trouble for me and Jack even though we try to stand your friend. I've had about enough of you."

"Sorry you look at it that way." Kirby's smile was friendly. It was even wistful. "I appreciate what you did for me, but I've got to go through with what I've started. I can't quit on the job because I'm under an obligation to you. By the way, I've arranged the matter of the bond. We're to take it up at the district attorney's office at eleven this morning."

"Glad to hear it. I want to be quit of you," snapped Cunningham tartly.

Outside, Kirby gave directions to his lieutenants. "It's up to you two to dig up some facts. I'm gonna be busy all mornin' with this bond business so's I can keep outa jail. Rose, you go up to the Secretary of State's office and find the number of the license of my cousin's car and the kind of machine it is. Then you'd better come back an' take a look at all the cars parked within three or four blocks of here. He may have driven it down when he came to work this mornin'. Look at the speedometer an' see what the mileage record is of the last trip taken. Cole, you go to this address. That's where my cousin lives. Find out at what garage he keeps his car. If they don't know, go to all the garages within several blocks of the place. See if it's a closed car. Get the make an' the number an' the last trip mileage. Meet me here at twelve o'clock, say. Both of you."

"Suits me," said Cole. "But wise me up. What's the idea in the mileage?"

"Just this. James was outa town last night probably. We couldn't find him anywhere. My notion is that he's taken Esther somewhere into the mountains. If we can get the mileage of the last trip, all we have to do is to divide it by two to know how far away Esther is. Then we'll draw a circle round Denver at that distance an'--"

Cole slapped his thigh with his hat. "Bully! You're sure the white-haired lad in this deteckative game."

"Maybe he didn't set the speedometer for the trip," suggested Rose.

"Possible. Then again more likely he did. James is a methodical chap. Another thing, while you're at the private hotel where he lives, Cole. Find out if you can where James goes when he fishes or drives into the mountains. Perhaps he's got a cottage of his own or some favorite spot."

"I'm on my way, old-timer!" Cole announced with enthusiasm.

At luncheon the committee reported progress. Cole had seen James Cunningham's car. It was a sedan. He had had it out of the garage all afternoon and evening and had brought it back just before midnight. The trip record on the speedometer registered ninety-two miles.

From his pocket Kirby drew an automobile map and a pencil. He notched on the pencil a mark to represent forty-six miles from the point, based on the scale of miles shown at the foot of the map. With the pencil as a radius he drew a semicircle from Denver as the center. The curved line passed through Loveland, Long's Peak, and across the Snow Range to Tabernash. It included Georgetown, Gray's Peak, Mount Evans, and Cassell's. From there it swept on to Palmer Lake.

"I'm not includin' the plains country to the east," Kirby explained. "You'll have enough territory to cover as it is, Cole. By the way, did you find anything about where James goes into the hills?"

"No."

"Well, we'll make some more inquiries. Perhaps the best thing for you to do would be to go out to the small towns around Denver an' find out if any of the garage people noticed a car of that description passin' through. That would help a lot. It would give us a line on whether he went up Bear Cañon, Platte Cañon, into Northern Colorado, or south toward the Palmer Lake country."

"You've allowed forty-six miles by an air line," Rose pointed out. "He couldn't have gone as far as Long's Peak or Evans--nowhere nearly as far, because the roads are so winding when you get in the hills. He could hardly have reached Estes Park."

"Right. You'll have to check up the road distances from Denver, Cole. Your job's like lookin' for a needle in a haystack. I'll put a detective agency on James. He might take a notion to run out to the cache any fine evenin'. He likely will, to make sure Esther is contented."

"Or he'll send Jack," Rose added.

"We'll try to keep an eye on him, too."

"This is my job, is it?" Cole asked, rising.

"You an' Rose can work together on it. My job's here in town on the murder mystery."

"If we work both of them out---finding Esther and proving who killed your uncle--I think we'll learn that it's all the same mystery, anyhow," Rose said, drawing on her gloves.

Cole nodded sagely. "You've said somethin', Rose."

"Say when, not if, we work 'em out. We'll be cuttin' hot trail poco tempo," Kirby prophesied, smiling up at them.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE DETECTIVE GETS TWO SURPRISES

Kirby stared down at the document in front of him. He could scarcely believe the evidence flashed by his eyes to his brain. It was the document he had asked the county recorder at Golden to send him--and it certified that, on July 21, James Cunningham and Phyllis Harriman had been united in marriage at Golden by the Reverend Nicodemus Rankin.

This knocked the props from under the whole theory he had built up to account for the disappearance of Esther McLean. If Esther were not the widow of his uncle, then the motive of James in helping her to vanish was not apparent. Perhaps he told the truth and knew nothing about the affair whatever.

But Kirby was puzzled. Why had his uncle, who was openly engaged to Phyllis Harriman, married her surreptitiously and kept that marriage a secret? It was not in character, and he could see no reason for it. Foster had sent him to Golden on the tacit hint that there was some clue in the license register to the mystery of James Cunningham's death. What bearing had this marriage on it, if any?

It explained, of course, the visit of Miss Harriman to his uncle's apartments on the night he was murdered. She had an entire right to go there at any time, and if they were keeping their relation a secret would naturally go at night when she could slip in unobserved.

But Kirby's mind wandered up and down blind alleys. The discovery of this secret seemed only to make the tangle more difficult.

He had a hunch that there was a clue at Golden he had somehow missed, and that feeling took him back there within three hours of the receipt of the certificate.

The clerk in the recorder's office could tell him nothing new except that he had called up Mrs. Rankin by telephone and she had brought up the delayed certificate at once. Kirby lost no time among the records. He walked to the Rankin house and introduced himself to an old lady sunning herself on the porch. She was a plump, brisk little person with snapping eyes younger than her years.

"I'm sorry I wasn't at home when you called. Can I help you now?" she asked.

"I don't know. James Cunningham was my uncle. We thought he had married a girl who is a sister of the friend with me the day I called. But it seems we were mistaken. He married Phyllis Harriman, the young woman to whom he was engaged."

Mrs. Rankin smiled, the placid, motherly smile of experience. "I've noticed that men sometimes do marry the girls to whom they are engaged."

"Yes, but--" Kirby broke off and tried another tack. "How old was the lady? And was she dark or fair?"

"Miss Harriman? I should think she may be twenty-five. She is dark, slender, and beautifully dressed. Rather an--an expensive sort of young lady, perhaps."

"Did she act as though she were much--well, in love with--Mr. Cunningham?"

The bright eyes twinkled. "She's not a young woman who wears her heart on her sleeve, I judge. I can't answer that question. My opinion is that he was very much in love with her. Why do you ask?"

"You have read about his death since, of course," he said.

"Is he dead? No, I didn't know it." The birdlike eyes opened wider. "That's strange too."

"It's on account of the mystery of his death that I'm troubling you, Mrs. Rankin. We want it cleared up, of course."

"But--two James Cunninghams haven't died mysteriously, have they?" she asked. "The nephew isn't killed, too, is he?"

"Oh, no. Just my uncle."

"Then we're mixed up somewhere. How old was your uncle?"

"He was past fifty-six--just past."

"That's not the man my husband married."

"Not the man! Oh, aren't you mistaken, Mrs. Rankin? My uncle was strong and rugged. He did not look his age."

The old lady got up swiftly. "Please excuse me a minute." She moved with extraordinary agility into the house. It was scarcely a minute before she was with him again, a newspaper in her hand. In connection with the Cunningham murder mystery several pictures were shown. Among them were photographs of his uncle and two cousins.

"This is the man whose marriage to Miss Harriman I witnessed," she said.

Her finger was pointing to the likeness of his cousin James Cunningham.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE FINGER OF SUSPICION POINTS

The words of the preacher's little wife were like a bolt from a sunny heaven. Kirby could not accept them without reiteration. Never in the wildest dreams of the too vivid imagination of which his cousin had accused him had this possibility occurred to him.

"Do you mean that this man--the younger one--is the husband of Phyllis Harriman?" His finger touched the reproduction of his cousin's photograph.

"Yes. He's the man my husband married her to on the twenty-first of July."

"You're quite sure of that?"

"I ought to be," she answered rather dryly. "I was a witness."

A young woman came up the walk from the street. She was a younger and more modern replica of Mrs. Rankin. The older lady introduced her.

"Daughter, this is Mr. Lane, the gentleman who called on Father the other day while we were away. Mr. Lane, my daughter Ellen." Briskly she continued, showing her daughter the picture of James Cunningham, Junior. "Did you ever see this man, dear?"

Ellen took one glance at it. "He's the man Father married the other day."

"When?" the mother asked.

"It was--let me see--about the last week in July. Why?"

"Married to who?" asked Mrs. Rankin colloquially.

"To that lovely Miss Harriman, of course."

The old lady wheeled on Kirby triumphantly. "Are you satisfied now that I'm in my right mind?" she demanded smilingly.

"Have to ask your pardon if I was rude," he said, meeting her smile. "But the fact is it was such a surprise I couldn't take it in."

"This gentleman is the nephew of the Mr. Cunningham who was killed. He thought it was his uncle who had married Miss Harriman," the mother explained to Ellen.

The girl turned to Kirby. "You know I've wondered about that myself. The society columns of the papers said it was the older Mr. Cunningham that was going to marry her. And I've seen, since your uncle's death, notices in the paper about his engagement to Miss Harriman. But I thought it must have been a mistake, since it was the younger Mr. Cunningham she did marry. Maybe the reporters got the two mixed. They do sometimes get things wrong in the papers, you know."

This explanation was plausible, but Kirby happened to have inside information. He remembered the lovely photograph of the young woman in his uncle's rooms and the "Always, Phyllis" written across the lower part of it. He recalled the evasive comments of both James and his brother whenever any reference had been made to the relation between Miss Harriman and their uncle. No, Phyllis Harriman had been engaged to marry James Cunningham, Senior. He was sure enough of that. In point of fact he had seen at the district attorney's office a letter written by her to the older man, a letter which acknowledged that they were to be married in October. It had been one of a dozen papers turned over to the prosecutor's office for examination. Then she had jilted the land promoter for his nephew.

Did his uncle know of the marriage of his nephew? That was something Kirby meant to find out if he could. The news he had just heard lit up avenues of thought as a searchlight throws a shaft into the darkness. It brought a new factor into the problem at which he was working. Roughly speaking, the cattleman knew his uncle, the habits of mind that guided him, the savage and relentless passions that swayed him. If the old man knew his favorite nephew and his fiancée had made a mock of him, he would move swiftly to a revenge that would hurt. The first impulse of his mind would be to strike James from his will.

And even if his uncle had not yet discovered the secret marriage, he would soon have done so. It could not have been much longer concealed. This thing was as sure as any contingency in human life can be: if Cunningham had lived, his nephew James would never have inherited a cent of his millions. The older man had died in the nick of time for James.

Already Kirby had heard a hint to this effect. It had been at a restaurant much affected by the business men of the city during the lunch hour. Two men had been passing his table on their way out. One, lowering his voice, had said to the other: "James Cunningham ought to give a medal to the fellow that shot his uncle. Didn't come a day too soon for him. Between you and me, J. C. has been speculating heavy and has been hit hard. He was about due to throw up the sponge. Luck for him, I'll say."

It was on the way back from Golden, while he was being rushed through the golden fields of summer, that suspicion of his cousin hit Kirby like a blow in the face. Facts began to marshal themselves in his mind, an irresistible phalanx of them. James was the only man, except his brother, who benefited greatly by the death of his uncle. Not only was this true; the land promoter had to die soon to help James, just how soon Kirby meant to find out. Phyllis and a companion had been in the victim's apartment either at the time of his death or immediately afterward. That companion might have been James and not Jack. James had lost the sheets with the writing left by the Japanese valet Horikawa. The rage he had vented on his clerk might easily have been a blind. When James knew he was going to Golden to look up the marriage register, he had at once tried to forestall him by destroying the information.

Kirby tried to fight off his suspicions. He wanted to believe in his cousin. In his own way he had been kind to him. He had gone on his bond to keep him out of prison after he had tried to conceal the fact of his existence at the coroner's inquest. But doubts began to gnaw at the Wyoming man's confidence in him. Had James befriended him merely to be in a position to keep closer tab on anything he discovered? Had he wanted to be close enough to throw him off the track with the wrong suggestions?

The young cattleman was ashamed of himself for his doubts. But he could not down them. His discovery of the marriage changed the situation. It put his cousin James definitely into the list of the suspects.

As soon as he reached town he called at the law offices of Irwin, Foster & Warren. The member of the firm he wanted to see was in.

"I've been to Golden, Mr. Foster," he said, when he was alone with that gentleman. "Now I want to ask you a question."

The lawyer looked at him, smiling warily. Both of the James Cunninghams had been clients of his.

"I make my living giving legal advice," he said.

"I don't want legal advice just now," Kirby answered. "I want to ask you if you know whether my uncle knew that James and Miss Harriman were married."

Foster looked out of the window and drummed with his finger-tips on the desk. "Yes," he said at last.

"He knew?"

"Yes."

"Do you know when he found out?"

"I can answer that, too. He found out on the evening of the twenty-first--two days before his death. I told him--after dinner at the City Club."

"You had just found it out yourself?"

"That afternoon."

"How did you decide that the James Cunningham mentioned in the license you saw was the younger one?"

"By the age given."

"How did my uncle take the news when you told him?"

"He took it standing," the lawyer said. "Didn't make any fuss, but looked like the Day of Judgment for the man who had betrayed him."

"What did he do?"

"Wrote a note and called for a messenger to deliver it."

"Who to?" Kirby asked colloquially.

"I don't know. Probably the company has a record of all calls. If so, you can find the boy who delivered the message."

"I'll get busy right away."

Foster hesitated, then volunteered another piece of information. "I don't suppose you know that your uncle sent for me next day and told me to draft a new will for him and get it ready for his signature."

"Did you do it?"

"Yes. I handed it to him the afternoon of the day he was killed. It was found unsigned among his papers after his death. The old will still stands."

"Leaving the property to James and Jack?"

"Yes."

"And the new will?"

"Except for some bequests and ten thousand for a fountain at the city park, the whole fortune was to go to Jack."

"So that if he had lived twenty-four hours longer James would have been disinherited."

Foster looked at him out of eyes that told nothing of what he was thinking. "That's the situation exactly."

Kirby made no further comment, nor did the lawyer.

Within two hours the man from Twin Buttes had talked with the messenger boy, refreshed his memory with a tip, and learned that the message Cunningham had sent from the City Club had been addressed to his nephew Jack.

CHAPTER XXIX

"COME CLEAN, JACK"

Jack Cunningham, co-heir with James of his uncle's estate, was busy in the office he had inherited settling up one of the hundred details that had been left at loose ends by the promoter's sudden death. He looked up at the entrance of Lane.

"What do you want?" he asked sharply.

"Want a talk with you."

"Well, I don't care to talk with you. What are you doing here anyhow. I told the boy to tell you I was too busy to see you."

"That's what he said." Kirby opened his slow, whimsical smile on Jack. "But I'm right busy, too. So I brushed him aside an' walked in."

In dealing with this forceful cousin of his, Jack had long since lost his indolent insolence of manner. "You can walk out again, then. I'll not talk," he snapped.

Kirby drew up a chair and seated himself. "When Uncle James sent a messenger for you to come to his rooms at once on the evening of the twenty-first, what did he want to tell you?" The steady eyes of the cattleman bored straight into those of Cunningham.

"Who said he sent a messenger for me?"

"It doesn't matter who just now. There are two witnesses. What did he want?"

"That's my business."

"So you say. I'm beginnin' to wonder if it isn't the business of the State of Colorado, too."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that Uncle sent for you because he had just found out your brother and Miss Harriman were married."

Jack flashed a startled look at him. It seemed to him his cousin showed an uncanny knowledge at times. "You think so."

"He wanted to tell you that he was goin' to cut your brother out of his will an' leave you sole heir. An' he wanted you to let James know it right away."

Kirby was guessing, but he judged he had scored. Jack got up and began to pace the room. He was plainly agitated.

"Look here. Why don't you go back to Wyoming and mind your own business? You're not in this. It's none of your affair. What are you staying here for hounding the life out of James and me?"

"None of my business! That's good, Jack. An' me out on bond charged with the murder of Uncle James. I'd say it was quite some of my business. I'm gonna stick to the job. Make up your mind to that."

"Then leave us alone," retorted Jack irritably. "You act as though you thought we were a pair of murderers."

"If you have nothin' to conceal, why do you block anyway? Why aren't you frank an' open? Why did you steal that record at Golden? Why did James lose the Jap's confession--if it was a confession? Why did he get Miss McLean to disappear? Answer those questions to my satisfaction before you talk about me buttin' in with suspicions against you."

Jack slammed a fist down on the corner of the desk. "I'm not going to answer any questions! I'll say you've got a nerve! You're the man charged with this crime--the man that's liable to be tried for it. You've got a rope round your neck right this minute--and you go around high and mighty trying to throw suspicion on men that there's no evidence against."

"You said you had a quarrel with your uncle that night--no, I believe you called it a difference of opinion, at the inquest. What was that disagreement about?"

"Find out! I'll never tell you."

"Was it because you tried to defend James to him--tried to get him to forgive the treachery of his fiancée and his nephew?"

Again Jack shot at him a look of perplexed and baffled wonder. That brown, indomitable face, back of which was so much strength of purpose and so much keenness of apprehension, began to fill him with alarm. This man let no obstacles stop him. He would go on till he had uncovered the whole tangle they were trying to keep hidden.

"For God's sake, man, stop this snooping around! You'll get off. We'll back you. There's nowhere nearly enough evidence to convict you. Let it go at that," implored Jack.

"I can't do that. I've got to clear my name. Do you think I'm willin' to go back to my friends with a Scotch verdict hangin' over me? 'He did it, but we haven't evidence enough to prove it.' Come clean, Jack! Are you and James in this thing? Is that why you want me to drop my investigations?"

"No, of course we're not! But--damn it, do you think we want the name of my brother's wife dragged through the mud?"

"Why should it be dragged through the mud--if you're all innocent?"

"Because gossips cackle--and people never forget. If there was some evidence against her and against James--no matter how little--twenty years from now people would still whisper that they had killed his uncle for the fortune, though it couldn't be proved. You know that."

"Just as they're goin' to whisper about Rose McLean if I don't clear things up. No, Jack. You've got the wrong idea. What we want to do is for us all to jump in an' find the man who did it. Then all gossip against us stops."

"That's easy to say. How're you going to find the guilty man?" asked Jack sulkily.

"If you'd tell what you know we'd find him fast enough. How can I get to the bottom of the thing when you an' James won't give me the facts?"

Jack looked across at him doggedly. "I've told all I'm going to tell."

The long, lithe body of the man from the Wyoming hills leaned forward ever so slightly. "Don't you think it! Don't you think it for a minute! You'll come clean whether you want to or not--or I'll put that rope you mentioned round your brother's throat."

Jack looked at this man with the nerves of chilled steel and shivered. What could he do against a single-track mind with such driving force back of it? Had Kirby got anything of importance on James? Or was he bluffing?

"Talk 's cheap," he sneered uneasily.

"You'll find how cheap it is. James had been speculatin'. He was down an' out. Another week, an' he'd have been a bankrupt. Uncle discovers how he's been tricked by him an' Miss Harriman. He serves notice that he's cuttin' James out of his will an' he sends for a lawyer to draw up a new one. James an' his wife go to the old man's rooms to beg off. There's a quarrel, maybe. Anyhow, this point sticks up like a sore thumb: if uncle hadn't died that night your brother would 'a' been a beggar. Now he's a millionaire. And James was in his room the very hour in which he was killed."

"You can't prove that!" Jack cried, his voice low and hoarse. "How do you know he was there? What evidence have you?"

Kirby smiled, easily and confidently. "The evidence will be produced at the right time." He rose and turned to go.

Jack also got up, white to the lips. "Hold on! Don't--don't do anything in a hurry! I'll--talk with you to-morrow--here--in the forenoon. Or say in a day or two. I'll let you know then."

His cousin nodded grimly.

The hard look passed from his eyes as he reached the corridor. "Had to throw a scare into him to make him come through," he murmured in apology to himself.

CHAPTER XXX

KIRBY MAKES A CALL

Kirby had been bluffing when he said he had evidence to prove that James was in his uncle's rooms the very hour of the murder. But he was now convinced that he had told the truth. James had been there, and his brother Jack knew it. The confession had been written in his shocked face when Kirby flung out the charge.

But James might have been there and still be innocent, just as was the case with him and Rose. The cattleman wanted to find the murderer, but he wanted almost as much to find that James had nothing to do with the crime. He eliminated Jack, except perhaps as an accessory after the fact. Jack had a telltale face, but he might be cognizant of guilt without being deeply a party to it. He could be insolent, but faults of manner are not a crime. Besides, all Jack's interests lay in the other direction. If his uncle had lived a day longer, he would have been sole heir to the estate.

As he wandered through the streets Kirby's mind was busy with the problem. Automatically his legs carried him to the Paradox Apartments. He found himself there before he even knew he had been heading in that direction. Mrs. Hull came out and passed him. She was without a hat, and probably was going to the corner grocery on Fifteenth.

"I've been neglecting friend Hull," he murmured to himself. "I reckon I'll just drop in an' ask him how his health is."

He was not sorry that Mrs. Hull was out. She was easily, he judged, the dominant member of the firm. If he could catch the fat man alone he might gather something of importance.

Hull opened the door of the apartment to his knock. He stood glaring at the young man, his prominent eyes projecting, the red capillaries in his beefy face filling.

"Whadjawant?" he demanded.

"A few words with you, Mr. Hull." Kirby pushed past him into the room, much as an impudent agent does.

"Well, I don't aim to have no truck with you at all," blustered the fat man. "You've just naturally wore out yore welcome with me before ever you set down. I'll ask you to go right now."

"Here's your hat. What's your hurry?" murmured Kirby, by way of quotation. "Sure I'll go. But don't get on the prod, Hull. I came to make some remarks an' to ask a question. I'll not hurt you any. Haven't got smallpox or anything."

"I don't want you here. If the police knew you was here, they'd be liable to think we was talkin' about--about what happened upstairs."

"Then they would be right. That's exactly what we're gonna talk about."

"No, sir! I ain't got a word to say--not a word!" The big man showed signs of panic.

"Then I'll say it." The dancing light died out of Kirby's eyes. They became hard and steady as agates. "Who killed Cunningham, Hull?"

The fishy eyes of the man dodged. A startled oath escaped him. "How do I know?"

"Didn't you kill him?"

"Goddlemighty, no!" Hull dragged out the red bandanna and gave his apoplectic face first aid. He mopped perspiration from the overlapping roll of fat above his collar. "I dunno a thing about it. Honest, I don't. You got no right to talk to me thataway."

"You're a tub of iniquity, Hull. Also, you're a right poor liar. You know a lot about it. You were in my uncle's rooms just before I saw you on the night of his death. You were seen there."

"W-w-who says so?" quavered the wretched man.

"You'll know who at the proper time. I'll tell you one thing. It won't look good for you that you held out all you know till it was a showdown."

"I ain't holdin' out, I tell you. What business you got to come here devilin' me, I'd like for to know?"

"I'm not devilin' you. I'm tellin' you to come through with what you know, or you'll sure get in trouble. There's a witness against you. When he tells what he saw--"

"Shibo?" The word burst from the man's lips in spite of him.

Kirby did not bat a surprised eye. He went on quietly. "I'll not say who. Except this. Shibo is not the only one who can tell enough to put you on trial for your life. If you didn't kill my uncle you'd better take my tip, Hull. Tell what you know. It'll be better for you."

Mrs. Hull stood in the doorway, thin and sinister. The eyes in her yellow face took in the cattleman and passed to her husband. "What's he doing here?" she asked, biting off her words sharply.

"I was askin' Mr. Hull if he knew who killed my uncle," explained Kirby.

Her eyes narrowed. "Maybe you know," she retorted.

"Not yet. I'm tryin' to find out. Can you give me any help, Mrs. Hull?"

Their eyes crossed and fought it out.

"What do you want to know?" she demanded.

"I'd like to know what happened in my uncle's rooms when Mr. Hull was up there--say about half-past nine, mebbe a little before or a little after."

"He claims to have a witness," Hull managed to get out from a dry throat.

"A witness of what?" snapped the woman.

"That--that I--was in Cunningham's rooms."

For an instant the woman quailed. A spasm of fear flashed over her face and was gone.

"He'll claim anything to get outa the hole he's in," she said dryly. Then, swiftly, her anger pounced on the Wyoming man. "You get outa my house. We don't have to stand yore impudence--an' what's more, we won't. Do you hear? Get out, or I'll send for the police. I ain't scared any of you."

The amateur detective got out. He had had the worst of the bout. But he had discovered one or two things. If he could get Olson to talk, and could separate the fat, flabby man from his flinty wife, it would not be hard to frighten a confession from Hull of all he knew. Moreover, in his fear Hull had let slip one admission. Shibo, the little janitor, had some evidence against him. Hull knew it. Why was Shibo holding it back? The fat man had practically said that Shibo had seen him come out of Cunningham's rooms, or at least that he was a witness he had been in the apartment. Yet he had withheld the fact when he had been questioned by the police. Had Hull bribed him to keep quiet?

The cattleman found Shibo watering the lawn of the parking in front of the Paradox. According to his custom, he plunged abruptly into what he wanted to say. He had discovered that if a man is not given time to frame a defense, he is likely to give away something he had intended to conceal.

"Shibo, why did you hide from the police that Mr. Hull was in my uncle's rooms the night he was killed?"

The janitor shot one slant, startled glance at Kirby before the mask of impassivity wiped out expression from his eyes.

"You know heap lot about everything. You busy busy all like honey-bee. Me, I just janitor--mind own business."

"I wonder, now." Kirby's level gaze took the man in carefully. Was he as simple as he wanted to appear?

"No talk when not have anything to tell." Shibo moved the sprinkler to another part of the lawn.

Kirby followed him. He had a capacity for patience.

"Did Mr. Hull ask you not to tell about him?"

Shibo said nothing, but he said it with indignant eloquence.

"Did he give you money not to tell? I don't want to go to the police with this if I can help it, Shibo. Better come through to me."

"You go police an' say I know who make Mr. Cunningham dead?"

"If I have to."

The janitor had no more remarks to make. He lapsed into an angry, stubborn silence. For nearly half an hour Kirby stayed by his side. The cattleman asked questions. He suggested that, of course, the police would soon find out the facts after he went to them. He even went beyond his brief and implied that shortly Shibo would be occupying a barred cell.

But the man from the Orient contributed no more to the talk.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE MASK OF THE RED BANDANNA

It had come by special delivery, an ill-written little note scrawled on cheap ruled paper torn from a tablet.

If you want to know who killed Cuningham i can tell you. Meet me at the Denmark Bilding, room 419, at eleven tonight. Come alone.

One who knows.

Kirby studied the invitation carefully. Was it genuine? Or was it a plant? He was no handwriting expert, but he had a feeling that it was a disguised script. There is an inimitable looseness of design in the chirography of an illiterate person. He did not find here the awkwardness of the inexpert; rather the elaborate imitation of an amateur ignoramus. Yet he was not sure. He could give no definite reason for this fancy.

And in the end he tossed it overboard. He would keep the appointment and see what came of it. Moreover, he would keep it alone--except for a friend hanging under the left arm at his side. Kirby had brought no revolver with him to Denver. Occasionally he carried one on the range to frighten coyotes and to kill rattlers. But he knew where he could borrow one, and he proceeded to do so.

Not that there was any danger in meeting the unknown correspondent. Kirby did not admit that for a moment. There are people so constituted that they revel in the mysterious. They wrap their most common actions in hints of reserve and weighty silence. Perhaps this man was one of them. There was no danger whatever. Nobody had any reason to wish him serious ill. Yet Kirby took a .45 with him when he set out for the Denmark Building. He did it because that strange sixth sense of his had warned him to do so.

During the day he had examined the setting for the night's adventure. He had been to the Denmark Building and scanned it inside and out. He had gone up to the fourth floor and looked at the exterior of Room 419. The office door had printed on it this design:

THE GOLD HILL MILLING & MINING COMPANY

But when Kirby tried the door he found it locked.

The Denmark Building is a little out of the heart of the Denver business district. It was built far uptown at a time when real estate was booming. Adjoining it is the Rockford Building. The two dominate a neighborhood of squat two-story stores and rooming-houses. In dull seasons the offices in the two big landmarks are not always filled with tenants.

The elevators in the Denmark had ceased running hours since. Kirby took the narrow stairs which wound round the elevator shaft. He trod the iron treads very slowly, very softly. He had no wish to advertise his presence. If there was to be any explosive surprise, he did not want to be at the receiving end of it.

He reached the second story, crossed the landing, and began the next flight. The place was dark as a midnight pit. At the third floor its blackness was relieved slightly by a ray of light from a transom far down the corridor.

Kirby waited to listen. He heard no faintest sound to break the stillness. Again his foot found the lowest tread and he crept upward. In the daytime he had laughed at the caution which had led him to borrow a weapon from an acquaintance at the stockyards. But now every sense shouted danger. He would not go back, but each forward step was taken with infinite care.

And his care availed him nothing. A lifted foot struck an empty soap box with a clatter to wake the seven sleepers. Instantly he knew it had been put there for him to stumble over. A strong searchlight flooded the stairs and focused on him. He caught a momentary glimpse of a featureless face standing out above the light--a face that was nothing but a red bandanna handkerchief with slits in it for eyes--and of a pair of feet below at the top of the stairway.

The searchlight winked out. There was a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder. A second time the pocket flash found Kirby. It found him crouched low and reaching for the .45 under his arm. The booming of the revolver above reverberated down the pit of the stairway.

Arrow-swift, with the lithe ease of a wild thing from the forest, Kirby ducked round the corner for safety. He did not wait there, but took the stairs down three at a stride. Not till he had reached the ground floor did he stop to listen for the pursuit.

No sound of following footsteps came to him. By some miracle of good luck he had escaped the ambush. It was characteristic of him that he did not fly wildly into the night. His brain functioned normally, coolly. Whoever it was had led him into the trap had lost his chance. Kirby reasoned that the assassin's mind would be bent on making his own safe escape before the police arrived.

The cattleman waited, crouched behind an out-jutting pillar in the wall of the entrance. Every minute he expected to see a furtive figure sneak past him into the street. His hopes were disappointed. It was nearly midnight when two men, talking cheerfully of the last gusher in, the Buckburnett field, emerged from the stairway and passed into the street. They were tenants who had stayed late to do some unfinished business.

There was a drug-store in the building, cornering on two streets. Kirby stepped into it and asked a question of the clerk at the prescription desk.

"Is there more than one entrance to the Denmark Building?"

"No, sir." The clerk corrected himself. "Well, there's another way out. The Producers & Developers Shale and Oil Company have a suite of offices that run into the Rockford Building. They've built an alley to connect between the two buildings. It's on the fifth floor."

"Is it open? Could a man get out of the Denmark Building now by way of the Rockford entrance?"

"Easiest in the world. All he'd have to do would be to cross the alley bridge, go down the Rockford stairs, and walk into the street."

Kirby wasted no more time. He knew that the man who had tried to murder him had long since made good his getaway by means of the fifth-story bridge between the buildings.

As he walked back to the hotel where he was stopping his eyes and ears were busy. He took no dark-alley chances, but headed for the bright lights of the main streets where he would be safe from any possibility of a second ambush.

His brain was as busy as his eyes. Who had planned this attempt on his life and so nearly carried it to success? Of one thing he was sure. The assassin who had flung the shots at him down the narrow stairway of the Denmark was the one who had murdered his uncle. The motive for the ambuscade was fear. Kirby was too hot on the trail that might send him to the gallows. The man had decided to play safe by following the old theory that dead men tell no tales.

CHAPTER XXXII

JACK TAKES OFF HIS COAT

Afterward, when Kirby Lane looked back upon the weeks spent in Denver trying to clear up the mysteries which surrounded the whole affair of his uncle's death, it seemed to him that he had been at times incredibly stupid. Nowhere did this accent itself so much as in that part of the tangle which related to Esther McLean.

From time to time Kirby saw Cole. He was in and out of town. Most of his time was spent running down faint trails which spun themselves out and became lost in the hills. The champion rough rider was indomitably resolute in his intention of finding her. There were times when Rose began to fear that her little sister was lost to her for always. But Sanborn never shared this feeling.

"You wait. I'll find her," he promised. "An' if I can lay my hands on the man that's done her a meanness, I'll certainly give them hospital sharks a job patchin' him up." His gentle eyes had frozen, and the cold, hard light in them was almost deadly.

Kirby could not get it out of his head that James was responsible for the disappearance of the girl. Yet he could not find a motive that would justify so much trouble on his cousin's part.

He was at a moving-picture house on Curtis Street with Rose when the explanation popped into his mind. They were watching an old-fashioned melodrama in which the villain's letter is laid at the door of the unfortunate hero.

Kirby leaned toward Rose in the darkness and whispered, "Let's go."

"Go where?" she wanted to know in surprise. They had seated themselves not five minutes before.

"I've got a hunch. Come."

She rose, and on the way to the aisle brushed past several irritated ladies. Not till they were standing on the sidewalk outside did he tell her what was on his mind.

"I want to see that note from my uncle you found in your sister's desk," he said.

She looked at him and laughed a little. "You certainly want what you want when you want it! Do your hunches often take you like that--right out of a perfectly good show you've paid your money to see?"

"We've made a mistake. It was seein' that fellow in the play that put me wise. Have you got the note with you?"

"No. It's at home. If you like we'll go and get it."

They walked up to the Pioneers' Monument and from there over to her boarding-place.

Kirby looked the little note over carefully. "What a chump I was not to look at this before," he said. "My uncle never wrote it."

"Never wrote it?"

"Not his writin' a-tall."

"Then whose is it?"

"I can make a darn good guess. Can't you?"

She looked at him, eyes dilated, on the verge of a discovery. "You mean--?"

"I mean that J. C. might stand for at least two other men we know."

"Your cousin James?"

"More likely Jack."

His mind beat back to fugitive memories of Jack's embarrassment when Esther's name had been mentioned in connection with his uncle. Swiftly his brain began to piece the bits of evidence he had not understood the meaning of before.

"Jack's the man. You may depend on it. My uncle hadn't anything to do with it. We jumped at that conclusion too quick," he went on.

"You think that she's . . . with him?"

"No. She's likely out in the country or in some small town. He's havin' her looked after. Probably an attack of conscience. Even if he's selfish as the devil, he isn't heartless."

"If we could be sure she's all right. But we can't." Rose turned on him a wistful face, twisted by emotion. "I want to find her, Kirby. I'm her sister. She's all I've got. Can't you do something?"

"I'll try."

She noticed the hardening of the lean jaw, the tightening of the muscles as the back teeth clenched.

"Don't--don't do anything--rash," she begged.

Her hand rested lightly on his arm. Their eyes met. He smiled grimly.

"Don't worry. Mebbe I'll call you up later tonight and report progress."

He walked to the nearest drug-store and used the telephone freely. At the end of fifteen minutes he stepped out of the booth. His cousin Jack was doing some evening work at the offices where he was now in charge of settling up his uncle's affairs.

Kirby found him there. A man stenographer was putting on his coat to leave, but Jack was still at his desk. He looked up, annoyed.

"Was that you telephoned me?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I told you I'd let you know when I wanted to see you."

"So you did. But you didn't let me know. The shoe's on the other foot now. I want to see you."

"I'm not interested in anything you have to say."

The stenographer had gone. Kirby could hear his footsteps echoing down the corridor. He threw the catch of the lock and closed the door.

"I can promise to keep you interested," he said, very quietly.

Jack rose. He wore white shoes, duck trousers, a white pique shirt, and a blue serge coat that fitted his graceful figure perfectly. "What did you do that for?" he demanded. "Open that door!"

"Not just yet, Jack. I've come for a settlement. It's up to you to say what kind of a one it'll be."

Cunningham's dark eyes glittered. He was no physical coward. Moreover, he was a trained athlete, not long out of college. He had been the middle-weight champion boxer of the university. If this tough brown cousin wanted a set-to, he would not have to ask twice for it.

"Suits me fine," he said. "What's your proposition?"

"I've been a blind idiot. Didn't see what was right before my eyes. I reckon you've had some laughs at me. Well, I hope you enjoyed 'em. There aren't any more grins comin' to you." Kirby spoke coldly, implacably, his voice grating like steel on steel.

"Meaning, in plain English?"

"That you've let a dead man's shoulders carry your sins. You heard us blame Uncle James for Esther McLean's trouble. An' you never said a word to set us right. Yet you're the man, you damned scoundrel!"

Jack went white to the lips, then flushed angrily. "You can't ever mind your own business, can you?"

"I want just two things from you. The first is, to know where you've taken her; the second, to tell you that you're goin' to make this right an' see that you do it."

"When you talk to me like that I've nothing to say. No man living can bully me."

"You won't come through. Is that it?"

"You may go to the devil for all of me."

Their stormy eyes clashed.

"The girl you took advantage of hasn't any brother," the Wyoming man said. "I'm electin' myself to that job for a while. If I can I'm goin' to whale the life outa you."

Jack slipped out of his coat and tossed it on the desk. Even in that moment, while Kirby was concentrating for the attack, the rough rider found time to regret that so good-looking a youth, one so gallantly poised and so gracefully graceless, should be a black-hearted scamp.

"Hop to it!" invited the college man. Under thick dark lashes his black eyes danced with excitement.

Kirby lashed out with his right, hard and straight. His cousin ducked with the easy grace of a man who has spent many hours on a ballroom floor. The cattleman struck again. Jack caught the blow and deflected it, at the same time uppercutting swiftly for the chin. The counter landed flush on Kirby's cheek and flung him back to the wall.

He grinned, and plunged again. A driving left caught him off balance and flung him from his feet. He was up again instantly, shaking his head to clear it of the dizziness that sang there.

It came to him that he must use his brains against this expert boxer or suffer a knockout. He must wear Jack out, let him spend his strength in attack, watch for the chance that was bound to come if he could weather the storm long enough.

Not at all loath, Jack took the offensive. He went to work coolly to put out his foe. He landed three for one, timing and placing his blows carefully to get the maximum effect. A second time Kirby hit the floor.

Jack hoped he would stay down. The clubman was a little out of condition. He was beginning to breathe fast. His cousin had landed hard two or three times on the body. Back of each of these blows there had been a punishing force. Cunningham knew he had to win soon if at all.

But Kirby had not the least intention of quitting. He was the tough product of wind and sun and hard work. He bored in and asked for more, still playing for his opponent's wind. Kirby knew he was the stronger man, in far better condition. He could afford to wait--and Jack could not. He killed the boxer's attacks with deadly counter-blows, moving in and out lithely as a cat.

The rough rider landed close to the solar plexus. Jack winced and gave ground. Kirby's fist got home again. He crowded Jack, feeling that his man was weakening.

Jack rallied for one last desperate set-to, hoping for a chance blow to knock Kirby out. He scored a dozen times. Lane gave ground, slowly, watchfully, guarding as best he could.

Then his brown fist shot out and up. It moved scarcely six inches, straight for the college boxer's chin. Jack's knees sagged. He went down, rolled over, and lay still.

Kirby found water and brought it back. Jack was sitting up, his back propped against the wall. He swallowed a gulp or two and splashed the rest on his face.

"I'll say you can hit like the kick of a mule," he said. "If you'd been a reasonable human, I ought to have got you, at that. Don't you ever stay down?"

Kirby could not repress a little smile. In spite of himself he felt a sneaking admiration for this insouciant youth who could take a beating like a sportsman.

"You're some little mixer yourself," he said.

"Thought I was, before I bumped into you. Say, gimme a hand up. I'm a bit groggy yet."

Kirby helped him to his feet. The immaculate shirt and trousers were spattered with blood, mostly Kirby's. The young dandy looked at himself, and a humorous quirk twitched at the corner of his mouth.

"Some scrap. Let's go into the lavatory and do some reconstruction work," he said.

Side by side at adjoining washbowls, perfectly amicably, they repaired as far as possible the damages of war. Not till they had put on again their coats did Kirby hark back to the purpose of the meeting.

"You haven't told me yet what I want to know."

Out of a damaged eye Jack looked at him evenly. "And that's only part of it. I'm not going to, either."

He had said the last word. Kirby could not begin all over again to thrash him. It was not reasonable. And if he did, he knew quite well he would get nothing out of the man. If he would not talk, he would not.

The bronco buster walked back to his hotel. A special-delivery letter was in his box. It was postmarked Golden. As he handed it to him the clerk looked him over curiously. It had been some time since he had seen a face so badly cut up and swollen.

"You ought to see the other fellow," Kirby told him with a lopsided grin as he ripped open the envelope.

Before his eyes had traveled halfway down the sheet the cowman gave a modulated whoop of joy.

"Good news?" asked the clerk.

Kirby did not answer. His eyes were staring in blank astonishment at one sentence in the letter. The note was from Cole Sanborn. This is what Kirby read in it:

Well, old-timer, there aint no trail so blamed long but what its got a turn in it somewheres. I done found Esther up Platte Cañon and everythings OK as you might say. I reckon you are wondering howcome this to be postmarked Golden. Well, old pardner, Im sure enough married at last but I had a great time getting Esther to see this my way. Shes one swell little girl and theres only one thing I hate. Before she would marry me I had to swear up and down I wouldnt touch the yellow wolf who got her into trouble. But she didnt say nothing about you so I will just slip you his name. It wasnt your uncle at all but that crooked oil broker nephew of his James Cunningham. If you can muss him up proper for me youll sure be doing a favor to

yours respectably

COLE SANBORN

P.S. Esther sends bushels of love to Rose and will write to-morrow. I'll say Im going to make her one happy kid.

COLE

Kirby laughed in sardonic mirth. He had fought the wrong man.

It was James Cunningham, not Jack. And, of course, Jack had known it all the time and been embarrassed by it. He had stuck loyally to his brother and had taken the whaling of his life rather than betray him.

Kirby took off his hat to Jack. He had stood pat to a fighting finish. He was one good square sport.

Even as he was thinking this, Kirby was moving toward the telephone booth. He had promised to report progress. For once he had considerable to report.

CHAPTER XXXIII

OLSON TELLS A STORY

When Rose heard from Esther next day she and Kirby took the Interurban for Golden. Esther had written that she wanted to see her sister because Cole was going to take her back to Wyoming at once.

The sisters wept in each other's arms and then passed together into Esther's bedroom for an intimate talk. The younger sister was still happy only in moments of forgetfulness, though she had been rescued from death in life. Cole had found her comfortably situated at a farmhouse a mile or two back from the cañon. She had gone there under the urge of her need, at the instigation of James Cunningham, who could not afford to have the scandal of his relations with her become public at the same time as the announcement of his marriage to Phyllis Harriman. The girl loved Cole and trusted him. Her heart went out to him in a warm glow of gratitude. But the shadow of her fault was a barrier in her mind between them, and would be long after his kindness had melted the ice in her bosom.

"We've got it all fixed up to tell how we was married when I come down to Denver last April only we kep' it quiet because she wanted to hold her job awhile," Cole explained to his friend. "Onct I get her back there in God's hills she'll sure enough forget all about this trouble. The way I look at it she was jus' like a li'l' kid that takes a mis-step in the dark an' falls an' hurts itself. You know how a wounded deer can look at a fellow so sorrowful an' hurt. Well, that's how her brown eyes looked at me when I come round the corner o' the house up Platte Cañon an' seen her sittin' there starin' at hell."

Kirby shook hands with him in a sudden stress of emotion. "You'll do to take along, old alkali, you sure enough will."

"Oh, shucks!" retorted Cole, between disgust and embarrassment. "I always claimed to be a white man, didn't I? You can't give a fellow credit for doin' the thing he'd rather do than anything else. But prod a peg in this. I'm gonna make that li'l' girl plumb happy. She thinks she won't be, that she's lost the right to be. She's 'way off, I can see her perkin' up already. I got a real honest-to-God laugh outa her this mo'nin'."

Kirby knew the patience, the steadiness, and the kindliness of his friend. Esther had fallen into the best of hands. She would find again the joy of life. He had no doubt of that. Gayety and laughter were of her heritage.

He said as much to Rose on the way home. She agreed. For the first time since she left Cheyenne the girl was her old self. Esther's problem had been solved far more happily than she had dared to hope.

"I'm goin' to have a gay time apologizin' to Jack," said Kirby, his eyes dancing. "It's not so blamed funny at that, but I can't help laughin' every time I think of how he must 'a' been grinnin' up his sleeve at me for my fool mistake. I'll say he brought it on himself, though. He was feelin' guilty on his brother's account, an' I didn't get his embarrassment right. James is a pretty cool customer. From first to last he never turned a hair when the subject was mentioned."

"What about him?" Rose asked.

The cattleman pretended alarm. "Now, don't you," he remonstrated. "Don't you expect me to manhandle James, too. I'm like Napoleon. Another victory like the battle of last night would sure put me in the hospital. I'm a peaceable citizen, a poor, lone cowboy far away from home. Where I come from it's as quiet as a peace conference. This wildest-Denver stuff gets my nerve."

She smiled into his battered face. A dimple nestled in her soft, warm cheek. "I see it does. It's a pity about you. I didn't suppose your cousin Jack had it in him to spoil your beauty like that."

"Neither did I," he said, answering her smile. "I sure picked on the wrong man. He's one handy lad with his dibs--put me down twice before we decided to call it off. I like that young fellow."

"Better not like him too much. You may have to work against him yet."

"True enough," he admitted, falling grave again. "As to James, we'll ride close herd on him for a while, but we'll ride wide. Looks to me like he may have to face a jury an' fight for his life right soon."

"Do you think he killed your uncle?"

"I don't want to think so. He's a bad egg, I'm afraid. But my father's sister was his mother. I'd hate to have to believe it."

"But in your heart you do believe it," she said gently.

He looked at her. "I'm afraid so. But that's a long way from knowing it."

They parted at her boarding-house.

A man rose to meet Kirby when he stepped into the rotunda of his hotel. He was a gaunt, broad-shouldered man with ragged eyebrows.

"Well, I came," he said, and his voice was harsh.

"Glad to see you, Mr. Olson. Come up to my room. We can talk there more freely."

The Scandinavian rancher followed him to the elevator and from there to his room.

"Why don't they arrest Hull?" he demanded as soon as the door was closed.

"Not evidence enough."

"Suppose I can give evidence. Say I practically saw Hull do it. Would they arrest him--or me?"

"They'd arrest him," Kirby answered. "They don't know you're the man who wrote the threatening letter."

"Hmp!" grunted the rancher suspiciously. "That's what you say, but you're not the whole works."

Kirby offered a chair and a cigar. He sat down on the bed himself. "Better spill your story to me, Olson. Two heads are better than one," he said carelessly.

The Swede's sullen eyes bored into him. Before that frank and engaging smile his doubts lost force. "I got to take a chance. Might as well be with you as any one."

The Wyoming man struck a match, held it for the use of his guest, then lit his own cigar. For a few moments they smoked in silence. Kirby leaned back easily against the head of the bed. He did not intend to frighten the rancher by hurrying him.

"When Cunningham worked that crooked irrigation scheme of his on Dry Valley, I reckon I was one of them that hollered the loudest. Prob'ly I talked foolish about what all I was gonna do about it. I wasn't blowin' off hot air either. If I'd got a good chance at him, or at Hull either, I would surely have called for a showdown an' gunned him if I could. But that wasn't what I came to Denver for. I had to arrange about gettin' my mortgage renewed."

He stopped and took a nervous puff or two at the cigar. Kirby nodded in a friendly fashion without speaking. He did not want by anything he might say to divert the man's mind from the track it was following.

"I took a room at the Wyndham because the place had been recommended to me by a neighbor of mine who knew the landlady. When I went there I didn't know that either Cunningham or Hull lived next door. That's a God's truth. I didn't. Well, I saw Hull go in there the very day I got to town, but the first I knew yore uncle lived there was ten or maybe fifteen minutes before he was killed. I wouldn't say but what it was twenty minutes, come to that. I wasn't payin' no attention to time."

Olson's eyes challenged those of his host. His suspicion was still smoldering. An unhappy remark, a look of distrust, might still have dried up the stream of his story. But he found in that steady regard nothing more damnatory than a keen, boyish interest.

"Maybe you recollect how hot those days were. Well, in my cheap, stuffy room, openin' on an air-shaft, it was hotter 'n hell with the lid on. When I couldn't stand it any longer, I went out into the corridor an' down it to the fire escape outside the window. It was a lot cooler there. I lit a stogie an' sat on the railin' smokin', maybe for a quarter of an hour. By-an'-by some one come into the apartment right acrost the alley from me. I could see the lights come on. It was a man. I saw him step into what must be the bedroom. He moved around there some. I couldn't tell what he was doin' because he didn't switch on the light, but he must 'a' been changin' to his easy coat an' his slippers. I know that because he came into the room just opposite the fire escape where I was sittin' on the rail. He threw on the lights, an' I saw him plain. It was Cunningham, the old crook who had beat me outa fifteen hundred dollars."

Kirby smoked steadily, evenly. Not a flicker of the eyelids showed the excitement racing through his blood. At last he was coming close to the heart of the mystery that surrounded the deaths of his uncle and his valet.

"I reckon I saw red for a minute," Olson continued. "If I'd been carryin' a gun I might 'a' used it right there an' then. But I hadn't one, lucky for me. He sat down in a big easy-chair an' took a paper from his pocket. It looked like some kind of a legal document. He read it through, then stuck it in one o' the cubby-holes of his desk. I forgot to say he was smokin', an' not a stogie like I was, but a big cigar he'd unwrapped from silver paper after takin' it from a boxful."

"He lighted the cigar after coming into the small room," Kirby said, in the voice of a question.

"Yes. Didn't I say so? Took it from a box on a stand near the chair. Well, when he got through with the paper he leaned back an' kinda shut his eyes like he was thinkin' somethin' over. All of a sudden I saw him straighten up an' get rigid. Before he could rise from the chair a woman came into the room an' after her a man.

"The man was Cass Hull."

CHAPTER XXXIV

FROM THE FIRE ESCAPE

"The woman--what was she like?"

"She was tall an' thin an' flat-chested. I didn't know her at the time, but it must 'a' been Hull's wife."

"You said you didn't know what time this was," Kirby said.

"No. My old watch had quit doin' business an' I hated to spend the money to get it fixed. The mainspring was busted, a jeweler told me."

"Who spoke first after they came into the room?"

"Yore uncle. He laid the cigar down on the stand an' asked them what they wanted. He didn't rise from the chair, but his voice rasped when he spoke. It was the woman answered. She took the lead all through. 'We've come for a settlement,' she said. 'An' we're goin' to have it right now.' He stiffened up at that. He come back at her with, 'You can't get no shot-gun settlement outa me.' Words just poured from that woman's mouth. She roasted him to a turn, told how he was crooked as a dog's hind leg an' every deal he touched was dirty. Said he couldn't even be square to his own pardners, that he couldn't get a man, woman, or child in Colorado to say he'd ever done a good act. Believe me, she laid him out proper, an' every word of it was true, 'far as I know.

"Well, sir, that old reprobate uncle of yours never batted an eye. He slid down in his chair a little so's he could be comfortable while he listened. He grinned up at her like she was some kind of specimen had broke loose from a circus an' he was interested in the way it acted. That didn't calm her down none. She rip-r'ared right along, with a steady flow of words, mostly adjectives. Finally she quit, an' she was plumb white with anger. 'Quite through?' yore uncle asked with that ice-cold voice of his. She asked him what he intended to do about a settlement. 'Not a thing,' he told her. 'I did aim to give Hull two thousand to get rid of him. But I've changed my mind, ma'am. You can go whistle for it.'"

"Two thousand! Did he say two thousand?"

Kirby leaned forward eagerly.

"That's what he said. Two thousand," answered Olson.

"Then that explains why he drew so much from the bank that day."

"I had it figured out so. If the woman hadn't come at him with that acid tongue of hers he'd intended to buy Hull off cheap. But she got his gorge up. He wouldn't stand for her line of talk."

"What took place then?" the cattleman questioned.

"Still without rising from the chair, Cunningham ordered them to get out. Hull was standin' kinda close to him. He had his back to me. Cunningham reached out an' opened a drawer of the stand beside him. The fat man took a step forward. I could see his gun flash in the light. He swung it down on yore uncle's head an' the old man crumpled up."

"So it was Hull killed him, after all," Kirby said, drawing a long breath of relief.

Then, to his surprise when he thought about it later, a glitter of malicious cunning lit the eyes of the rancher.

"That's what I'm tellin' you. It was Hull. I stood there an' saw just what I've been givin' you."

"Was my uncle senseless then?"

"You bet he was. His head sagged clear over against the back of the chair."

"What did they do then?"

"That's where I drop out. Mrs. Hull stepped straight to the window. I crouched down back of the railin'. It was dark an' she didn't see me. She pulled the blind down. I waited there awhile an' afterward there was the sound of a shot. That would be when they sent the bullet through the old man's brain."

"What did you do?"

"I didn't know what to do. I'd talked a lot of wild talk about how Cunningham ought to be shot or strung up to a pole. If I went to the police with my story, like enough they 'd light on me as the killer. I milled the whole thing over. After a while I went into a public booth downtown an' 'phoned to the police. You recollect maybe the papers spoke about the man who called up headquarters with the news of Cunningham's death."

"Yes, I recollect that all right."

Kirby did not smile. He did not explain that he was the man. But he resolved to find out whether two men had notified the police of his uncle's death. If not, Olson was lying in at least one detail. He had a suspicion that the man had not given him the whole truth. He was telling part of it, but he was holding back something. A sly and furtive look in his eyes helped to build this impression in the mind of the man who listened to the story.

"You didn't actually see Hull fire the shot that killed my uncle, then?"

Olson hesitated, a fraction of a second. "No."

"You don't know that it was he that fired it."

"No, it might 'a' been the woman. But it ain't likely he handed her the gun to do it with, is it? For that matter I don't know that the crack over the head didn't kill Cunningham. Maybe it did."

"That's all you saw?"

Again the almost imperceptible hesitation. Then, "That's all," the Dry Valley rancher said sullenly.

"What kind of a gun was it?" Kirby asked.

"Too far away. Couldn't be sure."

"Big as a.45?"

"Couldn't 'a' been. The evidence was that it was done with an automatic."

"The evidence was that the wound in the head was probably made by a bullet from an automatic. We're talkin' now about the blow on the head."

"What are you drivin' at?" the rancher asked, scowling. "He wouldn't bring two different kinds of gun with him. That's a cinch."

"No; but we haven't proved yet he fired the shot you heard later. The chances are all that he did, but legally we have no evidence that somebody else didn't do it."

"I guess a jury would be satisfied he fired it all right."

"Probably. It looks bad for Hull. Don't you think you ought to go to the police with your story? Then we can have Hull arrested. They'll give him the third degree. My opinion is he'll break down under it and confess."

Olson consented with obvious reluctance, but he made a condition precedent to his acceptance. "Le' 's see Hull first, just you 'n' me. I ain't strong for the police. We'll go to them when we've got an open an' shut case."

Kirby considered. This story didn't wholly fit the facts as he knew them. For instance, there was no explanation in it of how the room where Cunningham was found murdered had become saturated with the odor of chloroform. Nor was it in character that Hull should risk firing a gun, the sound of which might bring detection on him, while his victim lay helpless before him. Another blow or two on the skull would have served his purpose noiselessly. The cattleman knew from his observation of this case that the authorities had a way of muddling things. Perhaps it would be better to wait until the difficulties had been smoothed out before going to them.

"That suits me," he said. "We'll tackle Hull when his wife isn't with him. He goes downtown every day about ten o'clock. We'll pick him up in a taxi, run him out into the country somewhere, an' put him over the jumps. The sooner the quicker. How about to-morrow morning?"

"Suits me, too. But will he go with us?"

"He'll go with us," Kirby said quietly.

CHAPTER XXXV

LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT

From ten thousand bulbs the moving-picture houses of Curtis Street were flinging a glow upon the packed sidewalks when Kirby came out of the hotel and started uptown.

He walked to the Wyndham, entered, and slipped up the stairs of the rooming-house unnoticed. From the third story he ascended by a ladder to the flat roof. He knew exactly what he had come to investigate. From one of the windows of the fourth floor at the Paradox he had noticed the clothes-line which stretched across the Wyndham roof from one corner to another. He went straight to one of the posts which supported the rope. He made a careful study of this, then walked to the other upright support and examined the knots which held the line fast here.

"I'm some good little guesser," he murmured to himself as he turned back to the ladder and descended to the floor below.

He moved quietly along the corridor to the fire escape and stepped out upon it. Then, very quickly and expertly, he coiled a rope which he took from a paper parcel that had been under his arm. At one end of the coil was a loop. He swung this lightly round his head once or twice to feel the weight of it. The rope snaked forward and up. Its loop dropped upon the stone abutment he had noticed when he had been examining the exteriors of the buildings with Cole Sanborn. It tightened when he gave a jerk.

Kirby climbed over the railing and swung himself lightly out into space. A moment, and he was swaying beside the fire escape of the Paradox. He caught the iron rail and pulled himself to the platform.

By chance the blind was down. There was no light within, but after his eyes had become used to the darkness he tried to take a squint at the room from the sides of the blind. The shade hung an inch or two from the window frame, so that by holding his eye close he could get more than a glimpse of the interior.

He tapped gently on the glass. The lights inside flashed on. From one viewpoint he could see almost half the room. He could go to the other side of the blind and see most of the other half.

A man sat down in a chair close to the opposite wall, letting his hands fall on the arms. A girl stood in front of him and pointed a paper-knife at his head, holding it as though it were a revolver. The head of the man fell sideways.

Kirby tapped on the window pane again. He edged up the sash and stepped into the room.

The young woman turned to him eagerly, a warm glow in her shell-pink cheeks. "Well?" she inquired.

"Worked out fine, Rose," Kirby said. "I could see the whole thing."

"Still, that don't prove anything," the other man put in. He belonged to the staff of the private detective agency with which Kirby was dealing.

The Wyoming man smiled. "It proves my theory is possible. Knowing Olson, I'm willin' to gamble he didn't sit still on the fire escape an' let that drawn blind shut him off from what was goin' on inside. He was one mighty interested observer. Now he must 'a' known there was a clothes-line on the roof. From the street you can see a washin' hangin' out there any old time. In his place I'd 'a' bopped up to the roof an' got that line. Which is exactly what he did, I'll bet. The line had been tied to the posts with a lot of knots. He hadn't time to untie it. So he cut the rope. It's been spliced out since by a piece of rope of a different kind."

"How do you know that's been done since?" the detective asked.

"A fair question," Kirby nodded. "I don't. I'll find out about that when I talk with the landlady of the Wyndham. If I'm right you can bet that cut rope has puzzled her some. She can't figure out why any one would cut her rope down an' then leave it there."

"If you can show me her rope was cut that night, I'll say you're right," the detective admitted. "And if you are right, then the Swede must 'a' been right here when your uncle was killed."

"May have been," Kirby corrected. "We haven't any authentic evidence yet as to exactly when my uncle was killed. We're gettin' the time narrowed down. It was between 9.30 and 9.50. We know that."

"How do you know that?" the professional sleuth asked. "Accordin' to your story you didn't get into the apartment until after ten o'clock. It might 'a' been done any time up till then."

The eyes of Kirby and Rose met. They had private information about who was in the rooms from about 9.55 till 10.10.

The cattleman corrected his statement. "All right, say between 9.30 and 10.05. During that time Hull may have shot my uncle. Or Olson may have opened the window while my uncle lay there helpless, killed him, stepped outa the window again, an' slipped down by the fire escape. All he'd have to do then would be to walk into the Wyndham, replace the rope on the roof, an' next mornin' leave for Dry Valley."

The detective nodded. "If he cut the rope. Lemme find out from the landlady whether it was cut that night."

"Good. We'll wait for you at the corner."

Ten minutes later the detective joined them in front of the drug-store where they were standing. The hard eyes in his cold gambler's face were lit up for once.

"I'll say the man from Missouri has been shown," he said. "I let on to the dame at the Wyndham that I was after a gang of young sneak thieves in the neighborhood. Pretty soon I drifted her to the night of the twenty-third--said they 'd been especially active that night and had used a rope to get into a second story of a building. She woke up. Her clothesline on the roof had been cut that very night. She remembered the night on account of its being the one when Mr. Cunningham was killed. Could the boys have used it to get into the store an' then brought it back? I thought likely."

"Bully! We're one step nearer than we were. We know Olson was lookin' in the window from the fire escape just outside."

The detective slapped his thigh. "It lies between Hull and the Swede. That's a cinch."

"I believe it does," agreed Rose.

Kirby made no comment. He seemed to be absorbed in speculations of his own. The detective was reasoning from a very partial knowledge of the facts. He knew nothing about the relations of James Cunningham to his uncle, nor even that the younger Cunninghams--or at least one of them--had been in his uncle's apartment the evening of his death. He did not know that Rose had been there. Wherefore his deductions, even though they had the benefit of being trained ones, were of slight value in this case.

"Will you take the key back to the Chief of Police?" Kirby asked him as they separated. "Better not tell him who was with you or what we were doin'."

"I'm liable to tell him a whole lot," the detective answered with heavy irony. "I'm figurin' on runnin' down this murderer myself if any one asks you."

"Wish you luck," Kirby said with perfect gravity.

CHAPTER XXXVI

A RIDE IN A TAXI

Kirby was quite right when he said that Hull would go with them. He was on his way downtown when the taxi caught him at Fourteenth and Welton. The cattleman jumped out from the machine and touched the fat man on the arm as he was waddling past.

"We want you, Hull," he said.

A shadow of fear flitted over the shallow eyes of the land agent, but he attempted at once to bluster. "Who wants me? Whadjawant me for?"

"I want you--in that cab. The man who saw you in my uncle's room the night he was killed is with me. You can either come with us now an' talk this thing over quietly or I'll hang on to you an' call for a policeman. It's up to you. Either way is agreeable to me."

Beads of perspiration broke out on the fat man's forehead. He dragged from his left hip pocket the familiar bandanna handkerchief. With it he dabbed softly at his mottled face. There was a faint, a very faint, note of defiance in his voice as he answered.

"I dunno as I've got any call to go with you. I wasn't in Cunningham's rooms. You can't touch me--can't prove a thing on me."

"It won't cost you anything to make sure of that," Kirby suggested in his low, even tones. "I'm payin' for the ride."

"If you got anything to say to me, right here's a good place to onload it."

The man's will was wobbling. The cattleman could see that.

"Can't talk here, with a hundred people passin'. What's the matter, man? What are you afraid of? We're not goin' to hit you over the head with the butt of a six-shooter."

Hull flung at him a look of startled terror. What did he mean? Or was there anything significant in the last sentence? Was it just a shot in the dark?

"I'll go on back to the Paradox. If you want to see me, why, there's as good a place as any."

"We're choosin' the place, Hull, not you. You'll either step into that cab or into a patrol wagon."

Their eyes met and fought. The shallow, protuberant ones wavered. "Oh, well, it ain't worth chewin' the rag over. I reckon I'll go with you."

He stepped into the cab. At sight of Olson he showed both dismay and surprise. He had heard of the threats the Dry Valley man had been making. Was he starting on a journey the end of which would be summary vengeance? A glance at Lane's face reassured him. This young fellow would be no accomplice at murder. Yet the chill at his heart told him he was in for serious trouble.

He tried to placate Olson with a smile and made a motion to offer his hand. The Scandinavian glared at him.

The taxicab swung down Fourteenth, across the viaduct to Lake Place, and from it to Federal Boulevard.

Hull moistened his lips with his tongue and broke the silence. "Where we goin'?" he asked at last.

"Where we can talk without bein' overheard," Kirby answered.

The cab ran up the steep slope to Inspiration Point and stopped there. The men got out.

"Come back for us in half an hour," the cattleman told the driver.

In front and below them lay the beautiful valley of Clear Creek. Beyond it were the foothills, and back of them the line of the Front Range stretching from Pike's Peak at the south up to the Wyoming line. Grey's and Long's and Mount Evans stood out like giant sentinels in the clear sunshine.

Hull looked across the valley nervously and brought his eyes back with a jerk. "Well, what's it all about? Whadjawant?"

"I know now why you lied at the inquest about the time you saw me on the night my uncle was killed," Kirby told him.

"I didn't lie. Maybe I was mistaken. Any man's liable to make a mistake."

"You didn't make a mistake. You deliberately twisted your story so as to get me into my uncle's apartment forty minutes or so earlier than I was. Your reason was a good one. If I was in his rooms at the time he was shot, that let you out completely. So you tried to lie me into the death cell at Cañon City."

Hull's bandanna was busy. "Nothin' like that. I wouldn't play no such a trick on any man. No, sir."

"You wouldn't, but you did. Don't stall, Hull. We've got you right."

The rancher from Dry Valley broke in venomously. "You bet we have, you rotten crook. I'll pay you back proper for that deal you an' Cunningham slipped over on me. I'm gonna put a rope round yore neck for it. I sure am. Why, you big fat stiff, I was standin' watchin' you when you knocked out Cunningham with the butt of yore gun."

From Hull's red face the color fled. He teetered for a moment on the balls of his feet, then sank limply to the cement bench in front of him. He tried to gasp out a denial, but the words would not come. In his throat there was only a dry rattle.

He heard, as from a long distance, Lane's voice addressing him.

"We've got it on you, Hull. Come through an' come clean."

"I--I--I swear to God I didn't do it--didn't kill him," he gasped at last.

"Then who did--yore wife?" demanded Olson.

"Neither of us. I--I'll tell you-all the whole story."

"Do you know who did kill him?" Kirby persisted.

"I come pretty near knowing but I didn't see it done."

"Who, then?"

"Yore cousin--James Cunningham."

CHAPTER XXXVII

ON THE GRILL

In spite of the fact that his mind had at times moved toward his cousin James as the murderer, Kirby experienced a shock at this accusation. He happened to glance at Olson, perhaps to see the effect of it upon him.

The effect was slight, but it startled Kirby. For just an instant the Dry Valley farmer's eyes told the truth--shouted it as plainly as words could have done. He had expected that answer from Hull. He had expected it because he, too, had reason to believe it the truth. Then the lids narrowed, and the man's lip lifted in a sneer of rejection. He was covering up.

"Pretty near up to you to find some one else to pass the buck to, ain't it?" he taunted.

"Suppose you tell us the whole story, Hull," the Wyoming man said.

The fat man had one last flare of resistance. "Olson here says he seen me crack Cunningham with the butt of my gun. How did he see me? Where does he claim he was when he seen it?"

"I was standin' on the fire escape of the Wyndham across the alley--about ten or fifteen feet away. I heard every word that was said by Cunningham an' yore wife. Oh, I've got you good."

Hull threw up the sponge. He was caught and realized it. His only chance now was to make a clean breast of what he knew.

"Where shall I begin?" he asked weakly, his voice quavering.

"At the beginning. We've got plenty of time," Kirby replied.

"Well, you know how yore uncle beat me in that Dry Valley scheme of his. First place, I didn't know he couldn't get water enough. If he give the farmers a crooked deal, I hadn't a thing to do with that. When I talked up the idea to them I was actin' in good faith."

"Lie number one," interrupted Olson bitterly.

"Hadn't we better let him tell his story in his own way?" Kirby suggested. "If we don't start any arguments he ain't so liable to get mixed up in his facts."

"By my way of figurin' he owed me about four to six thousand dollars he wouldn't pay," Hull went on. "I tried to get him to see it right, thinkin' at first he was just bull-headed. But pretty soon I got wise to it that he plain intended to do me. O' course I wasn't goin' to stand for that, an' I told him so."

"What do you mean when you say you weren't goin' to stand for it. My uncle told a witness that you said you'd give him two days, then you'd come at him with a gun."

The fat man mopped a perspiring face with his bandanna. His eyes dodged. "Maybe I told him so. I don't recollect. When he's sore a fellow talks a heap o' foolishness. I wasn't lookin' for trouble, though."

"Not even after he threw you downstairs?"

"No, sir. He didn't exactly throw me down. I kinda slipped. If I'd been expectin' trouble would I have let Mrs. Hull go up to his rooms with me?"

Kirby had his own view on that point, but he did not express it. He rather thought that Mrs. Hull had driven her husband upstairs and had gone along to see that he stood to his guns. Once in the presence of Cunningham, she had taken the bit in her own teeth, driven to it by temper. This was his guess. He knew he might be wrong.

"But I knew how violent he was," the fat man went on. "So I slipped my six-gun into my pocket before we started."

"What kind of a gun?" Kirby asked.

"A sawed-off .38."

"Do you own an automatic?"

"No, sir. Wouldn't know how to work one. Never had one in my hands."

"You'll get a chance to prove that," Olson jeered.

"He doesn't have to prove it. His statement is assumed to be true until it is proved false," Kirby answered.

Hull's eyes signaled gratitude. He was where he needed a friend badly. He would be willing to pay almost any price for Lane's help.

"Cunningham had left the door open, I reckon because it was hot. I started to push the bell, but Mrs. Hull she walked right in an' of course then I followed. He wasn't in the sittin'-room, but we seen him smokin' in the small room off'n the parlor. So we just went in on him.

"He acted mean right from the start--hollered at Mrs. Hull what was we doin' there. She up an' told him, real civil, that we wanted to talk the business over an' see if we couldn't come to some agreement about it. He kep' right on insultin' her, an' one thing led to another. Mrs. Hull she didn't get mad, but she told him where he'd have to head in at. Fact is, we'd about made up our minds to sue him. Well, he went clean off the handle then, an' said he wouldn't do a thing for us, an' how we was to get right out."

Hull paused to wipe the small sweat beads from his forehead. He was not enjoying himself. A cold terror constricted his heart. Was he slipping a noose over his own head? Was he telling more than he should? He wished his wife were here to give him a hint. She had the brains as well as the courage and audacity of the family.

"Well, sir, I claim self-defense," Hull went on presently. "A man's got no call to stand by an' see his wife shot down. Cunningham reached for a drawer an' started to pull out an automatic gun. Knowin' him, I was scared. I beat him to it an' lammed him one over the head with my gun. My idea was to head him off from drawin' on Mrs. Hull, but I reckon I hit him harder than I'd aimed to. It knocked him senseless."

"And then?" Kirby said, when he paused.

"I was struck all of a heap, but Mrs. Hull she didn't lose her presence of mind. She went to the window an' pulled down the curtain. Then we figured, seein' as how we'd got in bad so far, we might as well try a bluff. We tied yore uncle to the chair, intendin' for to make him sign a check before we turned him loose. Right at that time the telephone rang."

"Did you answer the call?"

"Yes, sir. It kept ringing. Finally the wife said to answer it, pretendin' I was Cunningham. We was kinda scared some one might butt in on us. Yore uncle had said he was expectin' some folks."

"What did you do?"

"I took up the receiver an' listened. Then I said, 'Hello!' Fellow at the other end said, 'This you, Uncle James?' Kinda grufflike, I said, 'Yes.' Then, 'James talkin',' he said. 'We're on our way over now.' I was struck all of a heap, not knowin' what to say. So I called back, 'Who?' He came back with, 'Phyllis an' I.' I hung up."

"And then?"

"We talked it over, the wife an' me. We didn't know how close James, as he called himself, was when he was talkin'. He might be at the drug-store on the next corner for all we knew. We were in one hell of a hole, an' it didn't look like there was any way out. We decided to beat it right then. That's what we did."

"You left the apartment?"

"Yes, sir."

"With my uncle still tied up?"

Hull nodded. "We got panicky an' cut our stick."

"Did anybody see you go?"

"The Jap janitor was in the hall fixin' one of the windows that was stuck."

"Did he say anything?"

"Not then."

"Afterward?"

"He come to me after the murder was discovered--next day, I reckon it was, in the afternoon, just before the inquest--and said could I lend him five hundred dollars. Well, I knew right away it was a hold-up, but I couldn't do a thing. I dug up the money an' let him have it."

"Has he bothered you since?"

Hull hesitated. "Well--no."

"Meanin' that he has?"

Hull flew the usual flag of distress, a red bandanna mopping a perspiring, apoplectic face. "He kinda hinted he wanted more money."

"Did you give it to him?"

"I didn't have it right handy. I stalled."

"That's the trouble with a blackmailer. Give way to him once an' he's got you in his power," Kirby said. "The thing to do is to tell him right off the reel to go to Halifax."

"If a fellow can afford to," Olson put in significantly. "When you've just got through a little private murder of yore own, you ain't exactly free to tell one of the witnesses against you to go very far."

"Tell you I didn't kill Cunningham," Hull retorted sullenly. "Some one else must 'a' come in an' did that after I left."

"Sounds reasonable," Olson murmured with heavy sarcasm.

"Was the hall lit when you came out of my uncle's rooms?" Kirby asked suddenly.

"Yes. I told you Shibo was workin' at one of the windows."

"So Shibo saw you and Mrs. Hull plainly?"

"I ain't denyin' he saw us," Hull replied testily.

"No, you don't deny anything we can prove on you," the Dry Valley man jeered.

"And Shibo didn't let up on you. He kept annoyin' you afterward," the cattleman persisted.

"Well, he--I reckon he aims to be reasonable now," Hull said uneasily.

"Why now? What's changed his views?"

The fat man looked again at this brown-faced youngster with the single-track mind who never quit till he got what he wanted. Why was he shaking the bones of Shibo's blackmailing. Did he know more than he had told? It was on the tip of Hull's tongue to tell something more, a damnatory fact against himself. But he stopped in time. He was in deep enough water already. He could not afford to tell the dynamic cattleman anything that would make an enemy of him.

"Well, I reckon he can't get blood from a turnip, as the old sayin' is," the land agent returned.

Kirby knew that Hull was concealing something material, but he saw he could not at the present moment wring it from him. He had not, in point of fact, the faintest idea of what it was. Therefore he could not lay 'hold of any lever with which to pry it loose. He harked back to another point.

"Do you know that my cousin and Miss Harriman came to see my uncle that night? I mean do you know of your own eyesight that they ever reached his apartment?"

"Well, we know they reached the Paradox an' went up in the elevator. Me an' the wife watched at the window. Yore cousin James wasn't with Miss Harriman. The dude one was with her."

"Jack!" exclaimed Kirby, astonished.

"Yep."

"How do you know? How did you recognize them?"

"Saw 'em as they passed under the street light about twenty feet from our window. We couldn't 'a' been mistook as to the dude fellow. O' course we don't know Miss Harriman, but the woman walkin' beside the young fellow surely looked like the one that fainted at the inquest when you was testifyin' how you found yore uncle dead in the chair. I reckon when you said it she got to seein' a picture of one of the young fellows gunnin' their uncle."

"One of them. You just said James wasn't with her."

"No, he come first. Maybe three-four minutes before the others."

"What time did he reach the Paradox?"

"It might 'a' been ten or maybe only five minutes after we left yore uncle's room. The wife an' me was talkin' it over whether I hadn't ought to slip back upstairs and untie yore uncle before they got here. Then he come an' that settled it. I couldn't go."

"Can you give me the exact time he reached the apartment house?"

"Well, I'll say it was a quarter to ten."

"Do you know or are you guessin'?"

"I know. Our clock struck the quarter to whilst we looked at them comin' down the street."

"At them or at him?"

"At him, I mean."

"Can't stick to his own story," Olson grunted.

"A slip of the tongue. I meant him."

"And Jack and the lady were three or four minutes behind him?" Kirby reiterated.

"Yes."

"Was your clock exactly right?"

"May be five minutes fast. It gains."

"You know they turned in at the Paradox?"

"All three of 'em. Mrs. Hull she opened the door a mite an' saw 'em go up in the elevator. It moves kinda slow, you know. The heavy-set young fellow went up first. Then two-three minutes later the elevator went down an' the dude an' the young lady went up."

Kirby put his foot on the cement bench and rested his forearm on his knee. The cattleman's steady eyes were level with those of the unhappy man making the confession.

"Did you at any time hear the sound of a shot?"

"Well, I--I heard somethin'. At the time I thought maybe it was a tire in the street blowin' out. But come to think of it later we figured it was a shot."

"You don't know for sure."

"Well, come to that I--I don't reckon I do. Not to say for certain sure."

A tense litheness had passed into the rough rider's figure. It was as though every sense were alert to catch and register impressions.

"At what time was it you thought you heard this shot?"

"I dunno, to the minute."

"Was it before James Cunningham went up in the elevator? Was it between the time he went up an' the other two went up? Or was it after Jack Cunningham an' Miss Harriman passed on the way up?"

"Seems to me it was--"

"Hold on." Kirby raised a hand in protest. "I don't want any guesses. You know or you don't. Which is it?"

"I reckon it was between the time yore cousin James went up an' the others followed."

"You reckon? I'm askin' for definite information. A man's life may hang on this." The cattleman's eyes were ice-cold.

Hull swallowed a lump in his fat throat before he committed himself. "Well, it was."

"Was between the two trips of the elevator, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Your wife heard this sound, too?"

"Yep. We spoke of it afterward."

"Do you know anything else that could possibly have had any bearing on my uncle's death?"

"No, sir. Honest I don't."

Olson shot a question at the man on the grill. "Did you kill the Jap servant, too, as well as his boss?"

"I didn't kill either the one or the other, so help me."

"Do you know anything at all about the Jap's death? Did you see anything suspicious going on at any time?" Kirby asked.

"No, sir. Nothin' a-tall."

The rough rider signaled the taxicab, which was circling the lake at the foot of the hill. Presently it came up the incline and took on its passengers.

"Drive to the Paradox Apartments," Kirby directed.

He left Hull outside in the cab while he went in to interview his wife. The lean woman with the forbidding countenance opened the door.

Metaphorically speaking, Kirby landed his knockout instantly. "I've come to see you on serious business, Mrs. Hull. Your husband has confessed how he did for my uncle. Unless you tell the whole truth he's likely to go to the death cell."

She gasped, her fear-filled eyes fastened on him. Her hand moved blindly to the side of the door for support.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

A FULL MORNING

But only for an instant. A faint color dribbled back into her yellow cheeks. He could almost see courage flowing again into her veins.

"That's a lie," she said flatly.

"I don't expect you to take my word. Hull is in front of the house here under guard. Come an' see if you doubt it."

She took him promptly at his suggestion. One look at her husband's fat, huddled figure and stricken face was enough.

"You chicken-hearted louse," she spat at him scornfully.

"They had evidence. A man saw us," he pleaded.

"What man?"

"This man." His trembling hand indicated Olson. "He was standin' on the fire escape acrost the alley."

She had nothing to say. The wind had died out of the sails of her anger.

"We're not goin' to arrest Hull yet--not technically," Kirby explained to her. "I'm arrangin' to hire a private detective to be with him all the time. He'll keep him in sight from mornin' till night. Is that satisfactory, Hull? Or do you prefer to be arrested?"

The wretched man murmured that he would leave it to Lane.

"Good. Then that's the way it'll be." Kirby turned to the woman. "Mrs. Hull, I want to ask you a few questions. If you'll kindly walk into the house, please."

She moved beside him. The shock of the surprise still palsied her will.

In the main her story corroborated that of Hull. She was not quite sure when she had heard the shot in its relation to the trips of the elevator up and down. The door was closed at the time. They had heard it while standing at the window. Her impression was that the sound had come after James Cunningham had ascended to the floor above.

Kirby put one question to the woman innocently that sent the color washing out of her cheeks.

"Which of you went back upstairs to untie my uncle after you had run away in a fright?"

"N-neither of us," she answered, teeth chattering from sheer funk.

"I understood Mr. Hull to say--"

"He never said that. Y-you must be mistaken."

"Mebbeso. You didn't go back, then?"

The monosyllable "No" came quavering from her yellow throat.

"I don't want you to feel that I'm here to take an advantage of you, Mrs. Hull," Kirby said. "A good many have been suspected of these murders. Your husband is one of these suspects. I'm another. I mean to find out who killed Cunningham an' Horikawa. I think I know already. In my judgment your husband didn't do it. If he did, so much the worse for him. No innocent person has anything to fear from me. But this is the point I'm makin' now. If you like I'll leave a statement here signed by me to the effect that neither you nor your husband has confessed killing James Cunningham. It might make your mind a little easier to have it."

She hesitated. "Well, if you like."

He stepped to a desk and found paper and pen. "I'll dictate it if you'll write it, Mrs. Hull."

Not quite easy in her mind, the woman sat down and took the pen he offered.

"This is to certify--" Kirby began, and dictated a few sentences slowly.

She wrote the statement, word for word as he gave it, using her left hand. The cattleman signed it. He left the paper with her.

After the arrangement for the private detective to watch Hull had been made, Olson and Lane walked together to the hotel of the latter.

"Come up to my room a minute and let's talk things over," Kirby suggested.

As soon as the door was closed, the man from Twin Buttes turned on the farmer and flung a swift demand at him.

"Now, Olson, I'll hear the rest of your story."

The eyes of the Swede grew hard and narrow. "What's bitin' you? I've told you my story."

"Some of it. Not all of it."

"Whadjamean?"

"You told me what you saw from the fire escape of the Wyndham, but you didn't tell what you saw from the fire escape of the Paradox."

"Who says I saw anything from there?"

"I say so."

"You tryin' to hang this killin' on me?" demanded Olson angrily.

"Not if you didn't do it." Kirby looked at him quietly, speculatively, undisturbed by the heaviness of his frown. "But you come to me an' tell the story of what you saw. So you say. Yet all the time you're holdin' back. Why? What's your reason?"

"How do you know I'm holdin' back?" the ranchman asked sulkily.

Kirby knew that in his mind suspicion, dread, fear, hatred, and the desire for revenge were once more at open war.

"I'll tell you what you did that night," answered Kirby, without the least trace of doubt in voice or manner. "When Mrs. Hull pulled down the blind, you ran up to the roof an' cut down the clothes-line. You went back to the fire escape, fixed up some kind of a lariat, an' flung the loop over an abutment stickin' from the wall of the Paradox. You swung across to the fire escape of the Paradox. There you could see into the room where Cunningham was tied to the chair."

"How could I if the blind was down?"

"The blind doesn't fit close to the woodwork of the window. Lookin' in from the right, you can see the left half of the room. If you look in from the other side, you see the other part of it. That's just what you did."

For the moment Olson was struck dumb. How could this man know exactly what he had done unless some one had seen him?

"You know so much I reckon I'll let you tell the rest," the Scandinavian said with uneasy sarcasm.

"Afraid you'll have to talk, Olson. Either to me or to the Chief at headquarters. You've become a live suspect. Figure it out yourself. You threaten Cunningham by mail. You make threats before people orally. You come to Denver an' take a room in the next house to where he lives. On the night he's killed, by your own admission, you stand on the platform a few feet away an' raise no alarm while you see him slugged. Later, you hear the shot that kills him an' still you don't call the officers. Yet you're so interested in the crime that you run upstairs, cut down the clothes-line, an' at some danger swing over to the Paradox. The question the police will want to know is whether the man who does this an' then keeps it secret may not have the best reason in the world for not wanting it known."

"What you mean--the best reason in the world?"

"They'll ask what's to have prevented you from openin' the window an' steppin' in while my uncle was tied up, from shootin' him an' slippin' down the fire escape, an' from walkin' back upstairs to your own room at the Wyndham."

"Are you claimin' that I killed him?" Olson wanted to know.

"I'm tellin' you that the police will surely raise the question."

"If they do I'll tell 'em who did," the rancher blurted out wildly.

"I'd tell 'em first, it I were in your place. It'll have a lot more weight than if you keep still until your back's against the wall."

"When I do you'll sit up an' take notice. The man who shot Cunningham is yore own cousin," the Dry Valley man flung out vindictively.

"Which one?"

"The smug one--James."

"You saw him do it?"

"I heard the shot while I was on the roof. When I looked round the edge of the blind five minutes later, he was goin' over the papers in the desk--and an automatic pistol was there right by his hand."

"He was alone?"

"At first he was. In about a minute his brother an' Miss Harriman came into the room. She screamed when she saw yore uncle an' most fainted. The other brother, the young one, kinda caught her an' steadied her. He was struck all of a heap himself. You could see that. He looked at James, an' he said, 'My God, you didn't--' That was all. No need to finish. O' course James denied it. He'd jumped up to help support Miss Harriman outa the room. Maybe a coupla minutes later he came back alone. He went right straight back to the desk, found inside of three seconds the legal document I told you I'd seen his uncle reading glanced it over, turned to the back page, jammed the paper back in the cubby-hole, an' then switched off the light. A minute later the light was switched off in the big room, too. Then I reckoned it was time to beat it down the fire escape. I did. I went back into the Wyndham carryin' the clothes-line under my coat, walked upstairs without meetin' anybody, left the rope on the roof, an' got outa the house without being seen."

"That's the whole story?" Kirby said.

"The whole story. I'd swear it on a stack of Bibles."

"Did you fix the rope for a lariat up on the roof or wait till you came back to the fire escape?"

"I fixed it on the roof--made the loop an' all there. Figured I might be seen if I stood around too long on the platform."

"So that you must 'a' been away quite a little while."

"I reckon so. Prob'ly a quarter of an hour or more."

"Can you locate more definitely the exact time you heard the shot?"

"No, I don't reckon I can."

Kirby asked only one more question.

"You left next mornin' for Dry Valley, didn't you?"

"Yes. None o' my business if they stuck Hull for it. He was guilty as sin, anyhow. If he didn't kill the old man, it wasn't because he didn't want to. Maybe he did. The testimony at the inquest, as I read the papers, left it that maybe the blow on the head had killed Cunningham. Anyhow, I wasn't gonna mix myself in it."

Kirby said nothing. He looked out of the window of his room without seeing anything. His thoughts were focused on the problem before him.

The other man stirred uneasily. "Think I did it?" he asked.

The cattleman brought his gaze back to the Dry Valley settler. "You? Oh, no! You didn't do it."

There was such quiet certainty in his manner that Olson drew a deep breath of relief. "By Jupiter, I'm glad to hear you say so. What made you change yore mind?"

"Haven't changed it. Knew that all the time--well, not all the time. I was millin' you over in my mind quite a bit while you were holdin' out on me. Couldn't be dead sure whether you were hidin' what you knew just to hurt Hull or because of your own guilt."

"Still, I don't see how you're sure yet. I might 'a' gone in by the window an' gunned Cunningham like you said."

"Yes, you might have, but you didn't. I'm not goin' to have you arrested, Olson, but I want you to stay in Denver for a day or two until this is settled. We may need you as a witness. It won't be long. I'll see your expenses are paid while you're here."

"I'm free to come an' go as I please?"

"Absolutely." Kirby looked at him with level eyes. He spoke quite as a matter of course. "You're no fool, Olson. You wouldn't stir up suspicion against yourself again by runnin' away now, after I tell you that my eye is on the one that did it."

The Swede started. "You mean--now?"

"Not this very minute," Kirby laughed. "I mean I've got the person spotted, at least I think I have. I've made a lot of mistakes since I started roundin' up this fellow with the brand of Cain. Maybe I'm makin' another. But I've a hunch that I'm ridin' herd on the right one this time."

He rose. Olson took the hint. He would have liked to ask some questions, for his mind was filled with a burning curiosity. But his host's manner did not invite them. The rancher left.

Up and down his room Kirby paced a beat from the window to the door and back again. His mind was busy dissecting, analyzing, classifying. Some one had once remarked that he had a single-track mind. In one sense he had. The habit of it was to follow a train of thought to its logical conclusion. He did not hop from one thing to another inconsequently.

Just now his brain was working on his cousin James. He went back to the first day of his arrival in Denver and sifted the evidence for and against him. A stream of details, fugitive impressions, and mental reactions flooded through.

For one of so cold a temperament James had been distinctly friendly to him. He had gone out of his way to find bond for him when he had been arrested. He had tried to smooth over difficulties between him and Jack. But Kirby, against his desire, found practical reasons of policy to explain these overtures. James had known he would soon be released through the efforts of other cattlemen. He had stepped in to win the Wyoming cousin's confidence in order that he might prove an asset rather than a liability to his cause. The oil broker had readily agreed to protect Esther McLean from publicity, but the reason for his forbearance was quite plain now. He had been protecting himself, not her.

The man's relation to Esther proved him selfish and without principle. He had been willing to let his dead uncle bear the odium of his misdeed. Yet beneath the surface of his cold manner James was probably swept by heady passions. His love for Phyllis Harriman had carried him beyond prudence, beyond honor. He had duped the uncle whose good-will he had carefully fostered for many years, and at the hour of his uncle's death he had been due to reap the whirlwind.

The problem sifted down to two factors. One was the time element. The other was the temperament of James. A man may be unprincipled and yet draw the line at murder. He may be a seducer and still lack the courage and the cowardice for a cold-blooded killing. Kirby had studied his cousin, but the man was more or less of a sphinx to him. Behind those cold, calculating eyes what was he thinking?

Only once had he seen him thrown off his poise. That was when Kirby and Rose had met him coming out of the Paradox white and shaken, his arm wrenched and strained. He had been nonplussed at sight of them. For a moment he had let his eyes mirror the dismay of his soul. The explanation he had given was quite inadequate as a cause.

Twenty-four hours later Kirby had discovered the dead body of the Japanese valet Horikawa. The man had been dead perhaps a day. More hours than one had been spent by Kirby pondering on the possible connection of his cousin's momentary breakdown and the servant's death. Had James come fresh from the murder of Horikawa?

It was possible that the Oriental might have held evidence against him and threatened to divulge it. James, with the fear of death in his heart, might have gone each day into the apartment where the man was lurking, taking to him food and newspapers. They might have quarreled. The strained tendons of Cunningham's arm could be accounted for a good deal more readily on the hypothesis of a bit of expert jiu-jitsu than on that of a fall downstairs. There were pieces in the puzzle Kirby could not fit into place. One of them was to find a sufficient cause for driving Horikawa to conceal himself when there was no evidence against him of the crime.

The time element was tremendously important in the solution of the mystery of Cunningham's death. Kirby had studied this a hundred times. On the back of an envelope he jotted down once more such memoranda as he knew or could safely guess at. Some of these he had to change slightly as to time to make them dovetail into each other.

8.45. Uncle J. leaves City Club. 8.55. Uncle J. reaches rooms. 8.55- 9.10. Gets slippers, etc. Smokes. 8.55- 9.20. Olson watching from W. fire escape. 9.10- 9.30. Hulls in Apt. 9.30- 9.40. X. 9.37- 9.42. Approximately time Olson heard shot. 9.20- 9.42. Olson busy on roof, with rope, etc. Then at window till 9.53. 9.40- 9.53. James in Apt. 9.44- 9.50. Jack and Phyllis in Apt. 9.55-10.05. Wild Rose in rooms. 10.00. I reach rooms. 10.20. Meet Ellis. 10.25. Call police.

That was the time schedule as well as he had been able to work it out. It was incomplete. For instance, he had not been able to account for Horikawa in it at all unless he represented X in that ten minutes of time unaccounted for. It was inaccurate. Olson was entirely vague as to time, but he could be checked up pretty well by the others. Hull was not quite sure of his clock, and Rose could only say that she had reached the Paradox "quite a little after a quarter to ten." Fortunately his own arrival checked up hers pretty closely, since she could not have been in the room much more than five minutes before him. Probably she had been even less than that. James could not have left the apartment more than a minute or so before Rose arrived. It was quite possible that her coming had frightened him out.

So far as the dovetailing of time went, there was only the ten minutes or less between the leaving of the Hulls and the appearance of James left unexplained. If some one other than those mentioned on his penciled memoranda had killed Cunningham, it must have been between half-past nine and twenty minutes to ten. The X he had written in there was the only possible unknown quantity. By the use of hard work and common sense he had eliminated the rest of the time so far as outsiders were concerned.

Kirby put the envelope in his pocket and went out to get some luncheon.

"I'll call it a mornin'," he told himself with a smile.

CHAPTER XXXIX

KIRBY INVITES HIMSELF TO A RIDE

The Twin Buttes man had said he would call it a morning, but he carried with him to the restaurant the problem that had become the pivot of all his waking thoughts. He had an appointment to meet a man for lunch, and he found his guest waiting for him inside the door.

The restaurant was an inconspicuous one on a side street. Kirby had chosen it for that reason. The man who stepped into the booth with him and sat down on the opposite seat was Hudson, the clerk whom James had accused of losing the sheets of paper with the Japanese writing.

"I've got it at last," he said as soon as he was alone. "Thought he never would go out and leave the key to the private drawer inside the safe. But he left the key in the lock--for just five minutes--while Miss Harriman came to see him about something this morning. He walked out with her to the elevator. I ducked into his office. There was the key in the drawer, and in the drawer, right at the bottom under some papers, I found what I wanted."

He handed to Kirby the sheets of paper found in the living-room of the apartment where Horikawa had been found dead.

The cattleman looked them over and put them in his pocket. "Thought he wouldn't destroy them. He daren't. There might come a time when the translation of this writing would save his life. He couldn't tell what the Jap had written, but there might be a twist to it favorable to him. At the same time he daren't give it out and let any one translate it. So he'd keep it handy where nobody could get at it but himself."

"I reckon that just about evens the score between me and Mr. James Cunningham," the clerk said vindictively. "He bawled me out before a whole roomful of people when he knew all the time I hadn't lost the papers. I stood it, because right then I had to. But I've dug up a better job and start in on it Monday. He's been claiming he was so anxious to get these sheets back to you. Well, I hope he's satisfied now."

"He had no right to keep 'em. They weren't his. I'll have 'em translated, then turn the sheets over to the police if they have any bearing on the case. Of course they may be just a private letter or something of that sort."

The clerk went on to defend himself for what he had done. Cunningham had treated him outrageously. Besides, they weren't his papers. He had no business to hold back evidence in a murder case because it did not suit him to have it made public. Didn't Mr. Lane think he had done right in taking the papers from the safe when he had a chance?

Mr. Lane rather dodged the ethics of the case of Hudson. He had, of course, instigated the theft of the papers. He was entitled to them. James had appropriated them by a trick. Besides, it was a matter of public and private justice that the whole Cunningham mystery be cleared up as soon as possible. But he was not prepared to pass on Hudson's right to be the instrument in the case. The man was, of course, a confidential employee of the oil broker. There was one thing to be said in his favor. Kirby had not offered him anything for what he had done nor did he want anything in payment. It was wholly a gratuitous service.

The cattleman had made inquiries. He knew of a Japanese interpreter used in the courts. Foster had recommended him as entirely reliable. To this man Kirby went. He explained what he wanted. While the Japanese clerk read in English the writing to him and afterward wrote out on a typewriter the translation of it, Kirby sat opposite him at the table to make sure that there was no juggling with the original document.

The affair was moving to its climax. Within a few hours now Kirby expected to see the murderer of his uncle put under arrest. It was time to take the Chief of Police into his confidence. He walked down Sixteenth toward the City Hall.

At Curtis Street the traffic officer was semaphoring with energetic gesture the east and west bound vehicles to be on their way. Kirby jaywalked across the street diagonally and passed in front of an electric headed south. He caught one glimpse of the driver and stood smiling at the door with his hat off.

"I want to see you just a minute, Miss Harriman. May I come in?"

Her long, dark eyes flashed at him. The first swift impulse was to refuse. But she knew he was dangerous. He knew much that it was vital to her social standing must not be published. She sparred for time.

"What do you want?"

He took this as an invitation and whipped open the door.

"Better get out of the traffic," he told her. "Where we can talk without being disturbed."

She turned up Fifteenth. "If you have anything to say," she suggested, and swept her long-lashed eyes round at him with the manner of delicate disdain she held at command.

"I've been wonderin' about somethin'," he said. "When James telephoned my uncle, on the evenin' he was killed, that you an' he were on the way to his rooms, he said you were together; but James reached there alone, you an' Jack arrivin' a few minutes later. Did James propose that he go first?"

The young woman did not answer. But there was no longer disdain in her fear-filled eyes. She swung the car, as though by a sudden impulse, to the left and drove to the building where the older James Cunningham had had his offices.

"If you want to ask me questions you'd better ask them before Jack," she said as she stepped out.

"Suits me exactly," he agreed.

Her lithe, long body moved beside him gracefully, its every motion perfectly synchronized. In her close-fitting, stylish gown she was extremely handsome. There was a kind of proud defiance in the set of her oval jaw, as though even in the trouble that involved her she was a creature set apart from others.

"Mr. Lane has a question he wants to ask you, Jack," she said when they were in the inner office.

Kirby smiled, and in his smile there were friendliness and admiration. "First off, I have to apologize for some things I said two days ago. I'll eat humble pie. I accused you of somethin'. You're not the man, I've found out."

"Yes?" Jack, standing behind his desk in the slim grace of well-dressed youth, watched him warily.

"We've found out at last who the man is."

"Indeed!" Jack knew that Esther McLean had been found by her friends and taken away. No doubt she had told them her story. Did the cattleman mean to expose James before the woman he knew to be his wife? That wouldn't be quite what he would expect of Lane.

"Incidentally, I have some news for you. One of your uncle's stenographers, a Miss McLean, has just been married to a friend of mine, the champion rough rider. Perhaps you may have heard of him. His name is Cole Sanborn."

Jack did not show the great relief he felt. "Glad to hear it," he said simply.

"Did we come here to discuss stenographers?" asked the young woman with a little curl of the lip. "You mentioned a question, Mr. Lane. Hadn't we better get that out of the way?"

Kirby put to Jack the same query he had addressed to her.

"What's the drift of this? What do you want to prove?" Jack asked curtly.

The eyes in the brown face plunged deep into those of Jack Cunningham. "Not a thing. I've finished my case, except for a detail or two. Within two hours the murderer of Uncle James will be arrested. I'm offerin' you a chance to come through with what you know before it's too late. You can kick in if you want to. You can stay out if you don't. But don't say afterward I didn't give you a chance."

"What kind of a chance are you giving me? Let's get clear on that. Are you proposing I turn state's evidence on James? Is that what you're driving at?"

"Did James kill Uncle James?"

"Of course he didn't, but you may have it in that warped mind of yours that he did."

"What I think doesn't matter. All that will count is the truth. It's bound to come out. There are witnesses that saw you come to the Paradox, a witness that actually saw you in uncle's rooms. If you don't believe me, I'll tell you somethin'. When you an' Miss Harriman came into the room where my uncle had been killed, James was sittin' at the desk lookin' over papers. A gun was lyin' close by his hand. Miss Harriman nearly fainted an' you steadied her."

Miss Harriman, or rather Mrs. James Cunningham, nearly fainted again. She caught at the back of a chair and stood rigid, looking at Kirby with dilated, horror-filled eyes.

"He knows everything--everything. I think he must be the devil," she murmured from bloodless lips.

Jack, too, was shaken, badly. "For God's sake, man, what do you know?" he asked hoarsely.

"I know so much that you can't safely keep quiet any longer. The whole matter is goin' to the police. It's goin' to them this afternoon. What are you goin' to do? If you refuse to talk, then it will be taken to mean guilt."

"Why should it go to the police? Be reasonable, man. James didn't do it, but he's in an awful hole. No jury on earth would refuse to convict him with the evidence you've piled up. Can't you see that?"

Kirby smiled. This time his smile was grim. "I ought to know that better than you. I'll give you two hours to decide. Meet you at James's office then. There are some things we want to talk over alone, but I think Miss Harriman had better be there ready to join us when we send for her."

"Going through with this, are you?"

"I'm goin' through in spite of hell and high water."

Jack strode up and down the room in a stress of emotion. "You're going to ruin three lives because you're so pigheaded or because you want your name in the papers as a great detective. Is there anything in the world we can do to head you off?"

"Nothin'. And if lives are ruined it's not my fault. I'll promise this: The man or woman I point to as the one who killed Uncle James will be the one that did it. If James is innocent, as you claim he is, he won't have it saddled on him. Shall I tell you the thing that's got you worried? Down in the bottom of your heart you're not dead sure he didn't do it--either one of you."

The young woman took a step toward Kirby, hands outstretched in dumb pleading. She gave him her soft, appealing eyes, a light of proud humility in them.

"Don't do it!" she begged. "He's your own cousin--and my husband. I love him. Perhaps there's some woman that loves you. If there is, remember her and be merciful."

His eyes softened. It was the first time he had seen her taken out of her selfishness. She was one of those modern young women who take, but do not give. At least that had been his impression of her. She had specialized, he judged, in graceful and lovely self-indulgence. A part of her code had been to get the best possible bargain for her charm and beauty, and as a result of her philosophy of life time had already begun to enamel on her a slight hardness of finish. Yet she had married James instead of his uncle. She had risked the loss of a large fortune to follow her heart. Perhaps, if children came, she might still escape into the thoughts and actions that give life its true value.

A faint, sphinxlike smile touched his face. "No use worryin'. That doesn't help any. I'll go as easy as I can. We'll meet in two hours at James's office."

He turned and left the room.

CHAPTER XL

THE MILLS OF THE GODS

Kirby Lane did not waste the two hours that lay before the appointment he had made for a meeting at the office of his cousin James. He had a talk with the Hulls and another with the Chief of Police. He saw Olson and Rose McLean. He even found the time to forge two initials at the foot of a typewritten note on the stationery of James Cunningham, and to send the note to its destination by a messenger.

Rose met him by appointment at the entrance to the Equitable Building and they rode up in the elevator together to the office of his cousin. Miss Harriman, as she still called herself in public, was there with Jack and her husband.

James was ice-cold. He bowed very slightly to Rose. Chairs were already placed.

For a moment Kirby was embarrassed. He drew James aside. Cunningham murmured an exchange of sentences with his wife, then escorted her to the door. Rose was left with the three cousins.

"I suppose Jack has told you of the marriage of Esther McLean," Kirby said as soon as the door had been closed.

James bowed, still very stiffly.

Kirby met him, eye to eye. He spoke very quietly and clearly. "I want to open the meetin' by tellin' you on behalf of this young woman an' myself that we think you an unmitigated cur. We are debarred from sayin' so before your wife, but it's a pleasure to tell you so in private. Is that quite clear?"

The oil broker flushed darkly. He made no answer. "You not only took advantage of a young woman's tender heart. You were willin' our dead uncle should bear the blame for it. Have you any other word than the one I have used to suggest as a more fittin' one?" the Wyoming man asked bitingly.

Jack answered for his brother. "Suppose we pass that count of the indictment, unless you have a practical measure to suggest in connection with it. We plead guilty."

There wag a little gleam of mirth in Kirby's eyes. "You an' I have discussed the matter already, Jack. I regret I expressed my opinion so vigorously then. We have nothin' practical to suggest, if you are referrin' to any form of compensation. Esther is happily married, thank God. All we want is to make it perfectly plain what we think of Mr. James Cunningham."

James acknowledged this and answered. "That is quite clear. I may say that I entirely concur in your estimate of my conduct. I might make explanations, but I can make none that justify me to myself."

"In that case we may consider the subject closed, unless Miss McLean has something to say."

Kirby turned to Rose. She looked at James Cunningham, and he might have been the dirt under her feet. "I have nothing whatever to say, Kirby. You express my sentiments exactly."

"Very well. Then we might open the door and invite in Miss Harriman. There are others who should be along soon that have a claim also to be present."

"What others?" asked Jack Cunningham.

"The other suspects in the case. I prefer to have them all here."

"Any one else?"

"The Chief of Police."

James looked at him hard. "This is not a private conference, then?"

"That's a matter of definitions. I have invited only those who have a claim to be present," Kirby answered.

"To my office, I think."

"If you prefer the Chief's office we'll adjourn an' go there."

The broker shrugged. "Oh, very well."

Kirby stepped to the door connecting with an outer office and threw it open. Mr. and Mrs. Hull, Olson, and the Chief of Police followed Phyllis Harriman into the room. More chairs were brought in.

The Chief sat nearest the door, one leg thrown lazily across the other. He had a fat brown cigar in his hand. Sometimes he chewed on the end of it, but he was not smoking. He was an Irishman, and as it happened open-minded. He liked this brown-faced young fellow from Wyoming--never had believed him guilty from the first. Moreover, he was willing his detective bureau should get a jolt from an outsider. It might spur them up in future.

"Chief, is there anything you want to say?" Kirby asked.

"Not a wor-rd. I'm sittin' in a parquet seat. It's your show, son."

Kirby's disarming smile won the Chief's heart. "I want to say now that I've talked with the Chief several times. He's given me a lot of good tips an' I've worked under his direction."

The head of the police force grinned. The tips he had given Lane had been of no value, but he was quite willing to take any public credit there might be. He sat back and listened now while Kirby told his story.

"Outside of the Chief every one here is connected closely with this case an' is involved in it. It happens that every man an' woman of us were in my uncle's apartments either at the time of his death or just before or after." Kirby raised a hand to meet Olson's protest. "Oh, I know. You weren't in the rooms, but you were on the fire escape outside. From the angle of the police you may have been in. All you had to do was to pass through an open window."

There was a moment's silence, while Kirby hesitated in what order to tell his facts. Hull mopped the back of his overflowing neck. Phyllis Cunningham moistened her dry lips. A chord in her throat ached tensely.

"Suspicion fell first on me an' on Hull," Kirby went on. "You've seen it all thrashed out in the papers. I had been unfriendly to my uncle for years, an' I was seen goin' to his rooms an' leavin' them that evening. My own suspicion was directed to Hull, especially when he an' Mrs. Hull at the coroner's inquest changed the time so as to get me into my uncle's apartment half an hour earlier than I had been there. I'd caught them in a panic of terror when I knocked on their door. They'd lied to get me into trouble. Hull had quarreled with Uncle James an' had threatened to go after him with a gun in two days after that time--and it was just forty-eight hours later he was killed. It looked a lot like Hull to me.

"I had one big advantage, Chief, a lot of inside facts not open to you," the cattleman explained. "I knew, for instance, that Miss McLean here had been in the rooms just before me. She was the young woman my uncle had the appointment to meet there before ten o'clock. You will remember Mr. Blanton's testimony. Miss McLean an' I compared notes, so we were able to shave down the time during which the murder must have taken place. We worked together. She gave me other important data. Perhaps she had better tell in her own words about the clue she found that we followed."

Rose turned to the Chief. Her young face flew a charming flag of color. Her hair, in crisp tendrils beneath the edge of the small hat she wore, was the ripe gold of wheat-tips in the shock. The tender blue of violets was in her eyes.

"I told you about how I found Mr. Cunningham tied to his chair, Chief. I forgot to say that in the living-room there was a faint odor of perfume. On my way upstairs I passed in the dark a man and a woman. I had got a whiff of the same perfume then. It was violet. So I knew they had been in the apartment just before me. Mr. Lane discovered later that Miss Harriman used that scent."

"Which opened up a new field of speculation," Kirby went on. "We began to run down facts an' learned that my cousin James had secretly married Miss Harriman at Golden a month before. My uncle had just learned the news. He had a new will made by his lawyer, one that cut James off without a cent an' left his property to Jack Cunningham."

"That will was never signed," Jack broke in quickly.

Kirby looked at Jack and smiled cynically. "No, it was never signed. Your brother discovered that when he looked the will over at Uncle's desk a few minutes after his death."

James did not wink an eye in distress. The hand of the woman sitting beside him went out instantly to his in a warm, swift pressure. She was white to the lips, but her thought was for the man she loved and not for herself. Kirby scored another mark to her credit.

"Cumulative evidence pointed to James Cunningham," continued Kirby. "He tried to destroy the proof of his marriage to Miss Harriman. He later pretended to lose an important paper that might have cleared up the case. He tried to get me to drop the matter an' go back to Wyoming. The coil wound closer round him.

"About this time another factor attracted my attention. I had the good luck to unearth at Dry Valley the man who had written threatenin' letters to my uncle an' to discover that he was stayin' next door to the Paradox the very night of the murder. More, my friend Sanborn an' I guessed he had actually been on the fire escape of the Wyndham an' seen somethin' of importance through the window. Later I forced a statement from Olson. He told all he had seen that night."

Kirby turned to the rancher from Dry Valley and had him tell his story. When he had finished, the cattleman made comment.

"On the face of it Olson's story leaves in doubt the question of who actually killed my uncle. If he was tellin' the whole truth, his evidence points either to the Hulls or my cousin James. But it was quite possible he had seen my uncle tied up an' helpless, an' had himself stepped through the window an' shot him. Am I right, Chief?"

The Chief nodded grimly. "Right, son."

"You told me you didn't think I did it," Olson burst out bitterly.

"An' I tell you so again," Kirby answered, smiling. "I was mentionin' possibilities. On your evidence it lies between my cousin James an' the Hulls. It was the Hulls that had tied him up after Cass Hull knocked him senseless. It was Hull who had given him two days more to live. And that's not all. Not an hour an' a half ago I had a talk with Mrs. Hull. She admitted, under pressure, that she returned to my uncle's apartment again to release him from the chair. She was alone with him, an' he was wholly in her power. She is a woman with a passionate sense of injury. What happened then nobody else saw."

Mrs. Hull opened her yellow, wrinkled lips to speak, but Kirby checked her. "Not yet, Mrs. Hull. I'll return to the subject. If you wish you can defend yourself then."

He stopped a second time to find the logical way of proceeding with his story. The silence in the room was tense. The proverbial pin could have been heard. Only one person in the room except Kirby knew where the lightning was going to strike. That person sat by the door chewing the end of a cigar impassively. A woman gave a strangled little sob of pent emotion.

"I've been leaving Horikawa out of the story," the cattleman went on. "I've got to bring him in now. He's the hinge on which it all swings. The man or woman that killed my uncle killed Horikawa too."

James Cunningham, sitting opposite Kirby with his cold eyes steadily fixed on him, for the first time gave visible sign of his anxiety. It came in the form of a little gulping sound in his throat.

"Cole Sanborn and I found Horikawa in the room where he had been killed. The doctors thought he must have been dead about a day. Just a day before this time Miss McLean an' I met James Cunningham comin' out of the Paragon. He was white an' shaking. He was sufferin' from nausea, an' his arm was badly strained. He explained it by sayin' he had fallen downstairs. Later, I wondered about that fall. I'm still wonderin'. Had he just come out of the apartment where Horikawa was hidin'? Had the tendons of that arm been strained by a jiu-jitsu twist? And had he left Horikawa behind him dead on the bed?"

James, white to the lips, looked steadily at his cousin. "A very ingenious theory. I've always complimented you on your imagination," he said, a little hoarsely, as though from a parched throat.

"You do not desire to make any explanation?" Kirby asked.

"Thanks, no. I'm not on trial for my life here, am I?" answered the oil broker quietly, with obvious irony.

His wife was sobbing softly. The man's arm went round her and tightened in wordless comfort.

From his pocket Kirby drew the envelope upon which he had a few hours earlier penciled the time schedule relating to his uncle's death.

"One of the points that struck me earliest about this mystery was that the man who solved it would have to work out pretty closely the time element. Inside of an hour ten people beside Uncle James were in his rooms. They must 'a' trod on each other's heels right fast, I figured. So I checked up the time as carefully as I could. Here's the schedule I made out. Mebbe you'd like to see it." He handed the envelope to James.

Jack rose and looked over his brother's shoulder. His quick eye ran down the list. "I get the rest of it," he said. "But what does X mean?"

"X is the ten minutes of Uncle's time I can't account for. Some of us were with him practically every other minute. X is the whole unknown quantity. It is the time in which he was prob'ly actually killed. It is the man who may, by some thousandth chance, have stepped into the room an' killed him while none of us were present," explained Kirby.

"If there is such an unknown man you can cut the time down to five minutes instead of ten, providing your schedule is correct," James cut in. "For according to it I was there part of the time and Mrs. Hull part of the rest of it."

"Yes," agreed his cousin.

"But you may have decided that Mrs. Hull is X or that I am," jeered James. "If so, of course that ends it. No need for a judge or jury."

Kirby turned to the man by the door. "Chief, one of the queer things about this mystery is that all the witnesses had somethin' to conceal. Go right through the list, an' it's true of every one of us. I'm talkin' about the important witnesses, of course. Well, Cole an' I found a paper in the living-room of the apartment where Horikawa was killed. It was in Japanese. I ought to have turned it over to you, but I didn't. I was kinda playin' a lone hand. At that time I didn't suspect my cousin James at all. We were workin' together on this thing. At least I thought so. I found out better later. I took the paper to him to get it translated, thinkin' maybe Horikawa might have written some kind of a confession. James lost that paper. Anyhow, he claimed he did. My theory is that Horikawa had some evidence against him. He was afraid of what that paper would tell."

"Unfortunately for your theory it was a clerk of mine who lost the paper. I had nothing to do with it," James retorted coldly. "No doubt the paper has been destroyed, but not by me. Quite by accident, I judge."

His cousin let off a bomb beneath the broker's feet. "You'll be glad to know that the paper wasn't destroyed," he said. "I have it, with a translation, in my pocket at the present moment."

James clutched the arms of his chair. His knuckles grew white with the strain. "Where--where did you find it?" he managed to say.

"In the most private drawer of your safe, where you hid it," Kirby replied quietly.

Cunningham visibly fought for his composure. He did not speak until he had perfect self-control. Then it was with a sneer.

"And this paper which you allege you found in my safe--after a burglary which, no doubt, you know is very much against the law--does it convict me of the murder of my uncle?"

The tension in the room was nerve-shattering. Men and women suspended breathing while they waited for an answer.

"On the contrary, it acquits you of any guilt whatever in the matter."

Phyllis Cunningham gave a broken little sob and collapsed into her husband's arms. Jack rose, his face working, and caught his brother by the shoulder. These two had suffered greatly, not only because of their fear for him, but because of the fear of his guilt that had poisoned their peace.

James, too, was moved, as much by their love for him as by the sudden relief that had lifted from his heart. But his pride held him outwardly cold.

"Since you've decided I didn't do it, Mr. Lane, perhaps you'll tell us then who did," he suggested presently.

There came a knock at the door.

A whimsical smile twitched at the corners of Kirby's mouth. He did not often have a chance for dramatics like this.

"Why, yes, that seems fair enough," he answered.

"He's knockin' at the door now. Enter X."

CHAPTER XLI

ENTER X

Shibo stood on the threshold and sent a swift glance around the room. He had expected to meet James alone. That first slant look of the long eyes forewarned him that Nemesis was at hand. But he faced without a flicker of the lids the destiny he had prepared for himself.

"You write me note come see you now," he said to Cunningham.

James showed surprise. "No, I think not."

"You no want me?"

The Chief's hand fell on the shoulder of the janitor. "I want you, Shibo."

"You write me note come here now?"

"No, I reckon Mr. Lane wrote that."

"I plenty busy. What you want me for?"

"For the murders of James Cunningham and Horikawa." Before the words were out of his mouth the Chief had his prisoner handcuffed.

Shibo turned to Kirby. "You tellum police I killum Mr. Cunnin'lam and Horikawa?"

"Yes."

"I plenty sorry I no kill you."

"You did your best, Shibo. Took three shots at ten feet. Rotten shooting."

"Do you mean that he actually tried to kill you?" James asked in surprise.

"In the Denmark Building, the other night, at eleven o'clock. And I'll say he made a bad mistake when he tried an' didn't get away with it. For I knew that the man who was aimin' to gun me was the same one that had killed Uncle James. He'd got to worryin' for fear I was followin' too hot a trail."

"Did you recognize him?" Jack said.

"Not right then. I was too busy duckin' for cover. Safety first was my motto right then. No, when I first had time to figure on who could be the gentleman that was so eager to make me among those absent, I rather laid it to Cousin James, with Mr. Cass Hull second on my list of suspects. The fellow had a searchlight an' he flashed it on me. I could see above it a bandanna handkerchief over the face. I'd seen a bandanna like it in Hull's hands. But I had to eliminate Hull. The gunman on the stairs had small, neat feet, no larger than a woman's. Hull's feet are--well, sizable."

They were. Huge was not too much to call them.

As a dozen eyes focused on his boots the fat man drew them back of the rungs of his chair. This attention to personal details of his conformation was embarrassing.

"Those small feet stuck in my mind," Kirby went on. "Couldn't seem to get rid of the idea. They put James out of consideration, unless, of course, he had hired a killer, an' that didn't look reasonable to me. I'll tell the truth. I thought of Mrs. Hull dressed as a man--an' then I thought of Shibo."

"Had you suspected him before?" This from Olson.

"Not of the murders. I had learned that he had seen the Hulls come from my uncle's rooms an' had kept quiet. Hull admitted that he had been forced to bribe him. I tackled Shibo with it an' threatened to tell the police. Evidently he became frightened an' tried to murder me. I got a note makin' an appointment at the Denmark Building at eleven in the night. The writer promised to tell me who killed my uncle. I took a chance an' went." The cattleman turned to Mrs. Hull. "Will you explain about the note, please?"

The gaunt, tight-lipped woman rose, as though she had been called on at school to recite. "I wrote the note," she said. "Shibo made me. I didn't know he meant to kill Mr. Lane. He said he'd tell everything if I didn't."

She sat down. She had finished her little piece.

"So I began to focus on Shibo. He might be playin' a lone hand, or he might be a tool of my cousin James. A detective hired by me saw him leave James's office. That didn't absolutely settle the point. He might have seen somethin' an' be blackmailin' him too. That was the way of it, wasn't it?" He turned point-blank to Cunningham.

"Yes," the broker said. "He had us right--not only me, but Jack and Phyllis, too. I couldn't let him drag her into it. The day you saw me with the strained tendon I had been with him and Horikawa in the apartment next to the one Uncle James rented. We quarreled. I got furious and caught Shibo by the throat to shake the little scoundrel. He gave my arm some kind of a jiu-jitsu twist. He was at me every day. He never let up. He meant to bleed me heavily. We couldn't come to terms. I hated to yield to him."

"And did you?"

"I promised him an answer soon."

"No doubt he came to-day thinkin' he was goin' to get it." Kirby went back to the previous question. "Next time I saw Shibo I took a look at his feet. He was wearin' a pair o' shoes that looked to me mighty like those worn by the man that ambushed me. They didn't have any cap pieces across the toes. I'd noticed that even while he was shootin' at me. It struck me that it would be a good idea to look over his quarters in the basement. Shibo has one human weakness. He's a devotee of the moving pictures. Nearly every night he takes in a show on Curtis Street. The Chief lent me a man, an' last night we went through his room at the Paradox. We found there a flashlight, a bandanna handkerchief with holes cut in it for the eyes, an' in the mattress two thousand dollars in big bills. We left them where we found them, for we didn't want to alarm Shibo."

The janitor looked at him without emotion. "You plenty devil man," he said.

"We hadn't proved yet that Shibo was goin' it alone," Kirby went on, paying no attention to the interruption. "Some one might be usin' him as a tool. Horikawa's confession clears that up."

Kirby handed to the Chief of Police the sheets of paper found in the apartment where the valet was killed. Attached to these by a clip was the translation. The Chief read this last aloud.

Horikawa, according to the confession, had been in Cunningham's rooms sponging and pressing a suit of clothes when the promoter came home on the afternoon of the day of his death. Through a half-open door he had seen his master open his pocket-book and count a big roll of bills. The figures on the outside one showed that it was a treasury note for fifty dollars. The valet had told Shibo later and they had talked it over, but with no thought in Horikawa's mind of robbery.

He was helping Shibo fix a window screen at the end of the hall that evening when they saw the Hulls come out of Cunningham's apartment. Something furtive in their manner struck the valet's attention. It was in the line of his duties to drop in and ask whether the promoter's clothes needed any attention for the next day. He discovered after he was in the living-room that Shibo was at his heels. They found Cunningham trussed up to a chair in the smaller room. He was unconscious, evidently from a blow in the head.

The first impulse of Horikawa had been to free him and carry him to the bedroom. But Shibo interfered. He pushed his hand into the pocket of the smoking-jacket and drew out a pocket-book. It bulged with bills. In two sentences Shibo sketched a plan of operations. They would steal the money and lay the blame for it on the Hulls. Cunningham's own testimony would convict the fat man and his wife. The evidence of the two Japanese would corroborate his.

Cunningham's eyelids flickered. There was a bottle of chloroform on the desk. The promoter had recently suffered pleurisy pains and had been advised by his doctor to hold a little of the drug against the place where they caught him most sharply. Shibo snatched up the bottle, drenched a handkerchief with some of its contents, and dropped the handkerchief over the wounded man's face.

A drawer was open within reach of Cunningham's hand. In it lay an automatic pistol The two men were about to hurry away. Shibo turned at the door. To his dismay he saw that the handkerchief had slipped from Cunningham's face and the man was looking at him. He had recovered consciousness.

Cunningham's eyes condemned him to death. In their steely depths there was a gleam of triumph. He was about to call for help. Shibo knew what that meant. He and Horikawa were in a strange land. They would be sent to prison, an example made of them because they were foreigners. Automatically, without an instant of delay, he acted to protect himself.

Two strides took him back to Cunningham. He reached across his body for the automatic and sent a bullet into the brain of the man bound to the chair.

Horikawa, to judge by his confession, was thunderstruck. He was an amiable little fellow who never had stepped outside the law. Now he was caught in the horrible meshes of a murder. He went to pieces and began to sob. Shibo stopped him sharply.

Then they heard some one coming. It was too late to get away by the door. They slipped through the window to the fire escape and from it to the window of the adjoining apartment. Horikawa, still sick with fear, stumbled against the rail as he clambered over it and cut his face badly.

Shibo volunteered to go downstairs and get him some sticking plaster. On the way down Shibo had met the younger James Cunningham as he came out of the elevator. Returning with first-aid supplies a few minutes later, he saw Jack and Phyllis.

It was easy to read between the lines that Shibo's will had dominated Horikawa. He had been afraid that his companion's wounded face would lead to his arrest. If so, he knew it would be followed by a confession. He forced Horikawa to hide in the vacant apartment till the wound should heal. Meanwhile he fed him and brought him newspapers.

There were battles of will between the two. Horikawa was terribly frightened when he read that his flight had brought suspicion on him. He wanted to give himself up at once to the police. They quarreled. Shibo always gained the temporary advantage, but he saw that under a grilling third degree his countryman would break down. He killed Horikawa because he knew he could not trust him.

This last fact was not, of course, in Horikawa's confession. But the dread of it was there. The valet had come to fear Shibo. He was convinced in his shrinking heart that the man meant to get rid of him. It was under some impulse of self-protection that he had written the statement.

Shibo heard the confession read without the twitching of a facial muscle. He shrugged his shoulders, accepting the inevitable with the fatalism of his race.

"He weak. He no good. He got yellow streak. I bossum," was his comment.

"Did you kill him?" asked the Chief.

"I killum both--Cunnin'lam and Horikawa. You kill me now maybe yes."

Officers led him away.

Phyllis Cunningham came up to Kirby and offered him her hand. "You're hard on James. I don't know why you're so hard. But you've cleared us all. I say thanks awf'ly for that. I've been horribly frightened. That's the truth. It seemed as though there wasn't any way out for us. Come and see us and let's all make up, Cousin Kirby."

Kirby did not say he would. But he gave her his strong grip and friendly smile. Just then his face did not look hard. He could not tell her why he had held his cousin on the grill so long, that it had been in punishment for what he had done to a defenseless friend of his in the name of love. What he did say suited her perhaps as well.

"I like you better right now than I ever did before, Cousin Phyllis. You're a good little sport an' you'll do to ride the river with."

Jack could not quite let matters stand as they did. He called on Kirby that evening at his hotel.

"It's about James I want to see you," he said, then stuck for lack of words with which to clothe his idea. He prodded at the rug with the point of his cane.

"Yes, about James," Kirby presently reminded him, smiling.

"He's not so bad as you think he is," Jack blurted out.

"He's as selfish as the devil, isn't he?"

"Well, he is, and he isn't. He's got a generous streak in him. You may not believe it, but he went on your bond because he liked you."

"Come, Jack, you're tryin' to seduce my judgment by the personal appeal," Kirby answered, laughing.

"I know I am. What I want to say is this. I believe he would have married Esther McLean if it hadn't been for one thing. He fell desperately in love with Phyllis afterward. The odd thing is that she loves him, too. They didn't dare to be above-board about it on account of Uncle James. They treated him shabbily, of course. I don't deny that."

"You can hardly deny that," Kirby agreed.

"But, damn it, one swallow doesn't make a summer. You've seen the worst side of him all the way through."

"I dare say I have." Kirby let his hand fall on the well-tailored shoulder of his cousin. "But I haven't seen the worst side of his brother Jack. He's a good scout. Come up to Wyoming this fall an' we'll go huntin' up in the Jackson Hole country. What say?"

"Nothing I'd like better," answered Jack promptly.

"We'll arrange a date later. Just now I've got to beat it. Goin' drivin' with a lady."

Jack scored for once. "She's a good scout, too."

"If she isn't, I'll say there never was one," his cousin assented.

CHAPTER XLII

THE NEW WORLD

Kirby took his lady love driving in a rented flivver. It was a Colorado night, with a young moon looking down through the cool, rare atmosphere found only in the Rockies. He drove her through the city to Berkeley and up the hill to Inspiration Point.

They talked only in intermittent snatches. Rose had the gift of comradeship. Her tongue never rattled. With Kirby she did not need to make talk. They had always understood each other without words.

But to-night their silences were filled with new and awkward significances. She guessed that an emotional crisis was at hand. With all her heart she welcomed and shrank from it. For she knew that after to-night life could never be the same to her. It might be fuller, deeper, happier, but it could not hold for her the freedom she had guarded and cherished.

At the summit he killed the engine. They looked across the valley to the hills dimmed by night's velvet dusk.

"We're through with all that back there," he said, and she knew he meant the tangled trails of the past weeks into which their fate had led them. "We don't have to keep our minds full of suspicions an' try to find out things in mean, secret ways. There, in front of us, is God's world, waitin' for you an' me, Rose."

Though she had expected it, she could not escape a sense of suddenly stilled pulses followed by a clamor of beating blood. She quivered, vibrating, trembling. She was listening to the call of mate to mate sounding clear above all the voices of the world.

A flash of soft eyes darted at him. He was to be her man, and the maiden heart thrilled at the thought. She loved all of him she knew--his fine, clean thoughts, his brave and virile life, the splendid body that was the expression of his personality. There was a line of golden down on his cheek just above where he had shaved. Her warm eyes dared to linger fondly there, for he was still gazing at the mountains.

His eyes came home to her, and as he looked he knew he longed for her in every fiber of his being.

He asked no formal question. She answered none. Under the steady regard of his eyes she made a small, rustling movement toward him. Her young and lissom body was in his arms, a warm and palpitating thing of life and joy. He held her close. Her eyelashes swept his cheek and sent a strange, delightful tingle through his blood.

Kirby held her head back and looked into her eyes again. Under the starlight their lips slowly met.

The road lay clear before them after many tangled trails.

Contents

MAN-SIZE

BY WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

CHAPTER I

IN THE DANGER ZONE

She stood on the crown of the hill, silhouetted against a sky-line of deepest blue. Already the sun was sinking in a crotch of the plains which rolled to the horizon edge like waves of a great land sea. Its reflected fires were in her dark, stormy eyes. Its long, slanted rays were a spotlight for the tall, slim figure, straight as that of a boy.

The girl's gaze was fastened on a wisp of smoke rising lazily from a hollow of the crumpled hills. That floating film told of a camp-fire of buffalo chips. There was a little knitted frown of worry on her forehead, for imagination could fill in details of what the coulée held: the white canvas tops of prairie schooners, some spans of oxen grazing near, a group of blatant, profane whiskey-smugglers from Montana, and in the wagons a cargo of liquor to debauch the Bloods and Piegans near Fort Whoop-Up.

Sleeping Dawn was a child of impulse. She had all youth's capacity for passionate indignation and none of the wisdom of age which tempers the eager desire of the hour. These whiskey-traders were ruining her people. More than threescore Blackfeet braves had been killed within the year in drunken brawls among themselves. The plains Indians would sell their souls for fire-water. When the craze was on them, they would exchange furs, buffalo robes, ponies, even their wives and daughters for a bottle of the poison.

In the sunset glow she stood rigid and resentful, one small fist clenched, the other fast to the barrel of the rifle she carried. The evils of the trade came close to her. Fergus McRae still carried the gash from a knife thrust earned in a drunken brawl. It was likely that to-morrow he would cut the trail of the wagon wheels and again make a bee-line for liquor and trouble. The swift blaze of revolt found expression in the stamp of her moccasined foot.

As dusk fell over the plains, Sleeping Dawn moved forward lightly, swiftly, toward the camp in the hollow of the hills. She had no definite purpose except to spy the lay-out, to make sure that her fears were justified. But through the hinterland of her consciousness rebellious thoughts were racing. These smugglers were wholly outside the law. It was her right to frustrate them if she could.

Noiselessly she skirted the ridge above the coulée, moving through the bunch grass with the wary care she had learned as a child in the lodges of the tribe.

Three men crouched on their heels in the glow of a camp-fire well up the draw. A fourth sat at a little distance from them riveting a stirrup leather with two stones. The wagons had been left near the entrance of the valley pocket some sixty or seventy yards from the fire. Probably the drivers, after they had unhitched the teams, had been drawn deeper into the draw to a spot more fully protected from the wind.

While darkness gathered, Sleeping Dawn lay in the bunch grass with her eyes focused on the camp below. Her untaught soul struggled with the problem that began to shape itself. These men were wolfers, desperate men engaged in a nefarious business. They paid no duty to the British Government. She had heard her father say so. Contrary to law, they brought in their vile stuff and sold it both to breeds and tribesmen. They had no regard whatever for the terrible injury they did the natives. Their one intent was to get rich as soon as possible, so they plied their business openly and defiantly. For the Great Lone Land was still a wilderness where every man was a law to himself.

The blood of the girl beat fast with the racing pulse of excitement. A resolution was forming in her mind. She realized the risks and estimated chances coolly. These men would fire to kill on any skulker near the camp. They would take no needless hazard of being surprised by a band of stray Indians. But the night would befriend her. She believed she could do what she had in mind and easily get away to the shelter of the hill creases before they could kill or capture her.

A shadowy dog on the outskirt of the camp rose and barked. The girl waited, motionless, tense, but the men paid little heed to the warning. The man working at the stirrup leather got to his feet, indeed, carelessly, rifle in hand, and stared into the gloom; but presently he turned on his heel and sauntered back to his job of saddlery. Evidently the hound was used to voicing false alarms whenever a coyote slipped past or a skunk nosed inquisitively near.

Sleeping Dawn followed the crest of the ridge till it fell away to the mouth of the coulée. She crept up behind the white-topped wagon nearest the entrance.

An axe lay against the tongue. She picked it up, glancing at the same time toward the camp-fire. So far she had quite escaped notice. The hound lay blinking into the flames, its nose resting on crossed paws.

With her hunting-knife the girl ripped the canvas from the side of the top. She stood poised, one foot on a spoke, the other on the axle. The axe-head swung in a half-circle. There was a crash of wood, a swift jet of spouting liquor. Again the axe swung gleaming above her head. A third and a fourth time it crashed against the staves.

A man by the camp-fire leaped to his feet with a startled oath. "What's that?" he demanded sharply.

From the shadows of the wagons a light figure darted. The man snatched up a rifle and fired. A second time, aimlessly, he sent a bullet into the darkness.

The silent night was suddenly alive with noises. Shots, shouts, the barking of the dog, the slap of running feet, all came in a confused medley to Sleeping Dawn.

She gained a moment's respite from pursuit when the traders stopped at the wagons to get their bearings. The first of the white-topped schooners was untouched. The one nearest the entrance to the coulée held four whiskey-casks with staves crushed in and contents seeping into the dry ground.

Against one of the wheels a rifle rested. The girl flying in a panic had forgotten it till too late.

The vandalism of the attack amazed the men. They could have understood readily enough some shots out of the shadows or a swoop down upon the camp to stampede and run off the saddle horses. Even a serious attempt to wipe out the party by a stray band of Blackfeet or Crees was an undertaking that would need no explaining. But why should any one do such a foolish, wasteful thing as this, one to so little purpose in its destructiveness?

They lost no time in speculation, but plunged into the darkness in pursuit.

CHAPTER II

THE AMAZON

The dog darted into the bunch grass and turned sharply to the right. One of the men followed it, the others took different directions.

Up a gully the hound ran, nosed the ground in a circle of sniffs, and dipped down into a dry watercourse. Tom Morse was at heel scarcely a dozen strides behind.

The yelping of the dog told Morse they were close on their quarry. Once or twice he thought he made out the vague outline of a flying figure, but in the night shadows it was lost again almost at once.

They breasted the long slope of a low hill and took the decline beyond. The young plainsman had the legs and the wind of a Marathon runner. His was the perfect physical fitness of one who lives a clean, hard life in the dry air of the high lands. The swiftness and the endurance of the fugitive told him that he was in the wake of youth trained to a fine edge.

Unexpectedly, in the deeper darkness of a small ravine below the hill spur, the hunted turned upon the hunter. Morse caught the gleam of a knife thrust as he plunged. It was too late to check his dive. A flame of fire scorched through his forearm. The two went down together, rolling over and over as they struggled.

Startled, Morse loosened his grip. He had discovered by the feel of the flesh he was handling so roughly that it was a woman with whom he was fighting.

She took advantage of his hesitation to shake free and roll away.

They faced each other on their feet. The man was amazed at the young Amazon's fury. Her eyes were like live coals, flashing at him hatred and defiance. Beneath the skin smock she wore, her breath came raggedly and deeply. Neither of them spoke, but her gaze did not yield a thousandth part of an inch to his.

The girl darted for the knife she had dropped. Morse was upon her instantly. She tried to trip him, but when they struck the ground she was underneath.

He struggled to pin down her arms, but she fought with a barbaric fury. Her hard little fist beat upon his face a dozen times before he pegged it down.

Lithe as a panther, her body twisted beneath his. Too late the flash of white teeth warned him. She bit into his arm with the abandon of a savage.

"You little devil!" he cried between set teeth.

He flung away any scruples he might have had and pinned fast her flying arms. The slim, muscular body still writhed in vain contortions till he clamped it fast between knees from which not even an untamed cayuse could free itself.

She gave up struggling. They glared at each other, panting from their exertions. Her eyes still flamed defiance, but back of it he read fear, a horrified and paralyzing terror. To the white traders along the border a half-breed girl was a squaw, and a squaw was property just as a horse or a dog was.

For the first time she spoke, and in English. Her voice came bell-clear and not in the guttural of the tribes.

"Let me up!" It was an imperative, urgent, threatening.

He still held her in the vice, his face close to her flaming eyes. "You little devil," he said again.

"Let me up!" she repeated wildly. "Let me up, I tell you."

"Like blazes I will. You're through biting and knifing me for one night." He had tasted no liquor all day, but there was the note of drunkenness in his voice.

The terror in her grew. "If you don't let me up--"

"You'll do what?" he jeered.

Her furious upheaval took him by surprise. She had unseated him and was scrambling to her feet before he had her by the shoulders.

The girl ducked her head in an effort to wrench free. She could as easily have escaped from steel cuffs as from the grip of his brown fingers.

"You'd better let me go!" she cried. "You don't know who I am."

"Nor care," he flung back. "You're a nitchie, and you smashed our kegs. That's enough for me."

"I'm no such thing a nitchie[1]," she denied indignantly.

[Footnote 1: In the vernacular of the Northwest Indians were "nitchies." (W.M.R.)]

The instinct of self-preservation was moving in her. She had played into the hands of this man and his companions. The traders made their own laws and set their own standards. The value of a squaw of the Blackfeet was no more than that of the liquor she had destroyed. It would be in character for them to keep her as a chattel captured in war.

"The daughter of a squaw-man then," he said, and there was in his voice the contempt of the white man for the half-breed.

"I'm Jessie McRae," she said proudly.

Among the Indians she went by her tribal name of Sleeping Dawn, but always with the whites she used the one her adopted father had given her. It increased their respect for her. Just now she was in desperate need of every ounce that would weigh in the scales.

"Daughter of Angus McRae?" he asked, astonished.

"Yes."

"His woman's a Cree?"

"His wife is," the girl corrected.

"What you doin' here?"

"Father's camp is near. He's hunting hides."

"Did he send you to smash our whiskey-barrels?"

"Angus McRae never hides behind a woman," she said, her chin up.

That was true. Morse knew it, though he had never met McRae. His reputation had gone all over the Northland as a fearless fighting man honest as daylight and stern as the Day of Judgment. If this girl was a daughter of the old Scot, not even a whiskey-trader could safely lay hands on her. For back of Angus was a group of buffalo-hunters related to him by blood over whom he held half-patriarchal sway.

"Why did you do it?" Morse demanded.

The question struck a spark of spirit from her. "Because you're ruining my people--destroying them with your fire-water."

He was taken wholly by surprise. "Do you mean you destroyed our property for that reason?"

She nodded, sullenly.

"But we don't trade with the Crees," he persisted.

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she was of the Blackfoot tribe and not of the Crees, but again for reasons of policy she was less than candid. Till she was safely out of the woods, it was better this man should not know she was only an adopted daughter of Angus McRae. She offered another reason, and with a flare of passion which he was to learn as a characteristic of her.

"You make trouble for my brother Fergus. He shot Akokotos (Many Horses) in the leg when the fire-water burned in him. He was stabbed by a Piegan brave who did not know what he was doing. Fergus is good. He minds his own business. But you steal away his brains. Then he runs wild. It was you, not Fergus, that shot Akokotos. The Great Spirit knows you whiskey-traders, and not my poor people who destroy each other, are the real murderers."

Her logic was feminine and personal, from his viewpoint wholly unfair. Moreover, one of her charges did not happen to be literally true.

"We never sold whiskey to your brother--not our outfit. It was Jackson's, maybe. Anyhow, nobody made him buy it. He was free to take it or leave it."

"A wolf doesn't have to eat the poisoned meat in a trap, but it eats and dies," she retorted swiftly and bitterly.

Adroitly she had put him on the defensive. Her words had the sting of barbed darts.

"We're not talking of wolves."

"No, but of Blackfeet and Bloods and Sarcees," she burst out, again with that flare of feminine ferocity so out of character in an Indian woman or the daughter of one. "D'you think I don't know how you Americans talk? A good Indian is a dead Indian. No wonder we hate you all. No wonder the tribes fight you to the death."

He had no answer for this. It was true. He had been brought up in a land of Indian wars and he had accepted without question the common view that the Sioux, the Crows, and the Cheyennes, with all their blood brothers, were menaces to civilization. The case for the natives he had never studied. How great a part broken pledges and callous injustice had done to drive the tribes to the war-path he did not know. Few of the actual frontiersmen were aware of the wrongs of the red men.

The young man's hands fell from her arms. Hard-eyed and grim, he looked her over from head to foot. The short skirt and smock of buckskin, the moccasins of buffalo hide, all dusty and travel-stained, told of life in a primitive country under the simplest and hardest conditions.

Yet the voice was clear and vibrant, the words well enunciated. She bloomed like a desert rose, had some quality of vital life that struck a spark from his imagination.

What manner of girl was she? Not by any possibility would she fit into the specifications of the cubby-hole his mind had built for Indian women. The daughters even of the boisbrulés had much of the heaviness and stolidity of their native mothers. Jessie McRae was graceful as a fawn. Every turn of the dark head, every lift of the hand, expressed spirit and verve. She must, he thought, have inherited almost wholly from her father, though in her lissom youth he could find little of McRae's heavy solidity of mind and body.

"Your brother is of the métis[2]. He's not a tribesman. And he's no child. He can look out for himself," Morse said at last.

[Footnote 2: The half-breeds were known as "métis." The word means, of course, mongrel. (W.M.R.)]

His choice of a word was unfortunate. It applied as much to her as to Fergus. Often it was used contemptuously.

"Yes, and the métis doesn't matter," she cried, with the note of bitterness that sat so strangely on her hot-blooded, vital youth. "You can ride over him as though you're lords of the barren lands. You can ruin him for the money you make, even if he's a subject of the Great Mother and not of your country. He's only a breed--a mongrel."

He was a man of action. He brushed aside discussion. "We'll be movin' back to camp."

Instantly her eyes betrayed the fear she would not put into words. "No--no! I won't go."

His lids narrowed. The outthrust of his lean jaw left no room for argument. "You'll go where I say."

She knew it would be that way, if he dragged her by the hair of the head. Because she was in such evil case she tamed her pride to sullen pleading.

"Don't take me there! Let me go to father. He'll horsewhip me. I'll have him do it for you. Isn't that enough? Won't that satisfy you?"

Red spots smoldered like fire in his brown eyes. If he took her back to the traders' camp, he would have to fight Bully West for her. That was certain. All sorts of complications would rise. There would be trouble with McRae. The trade with the Indians of his uncle's firm, of which he was soon to be a partner, would be wrecked by the Scotchman. No, he couldn't take her back to the camp in the coulée. There was too much at stake.

"Suits me. I'll take you up on that. He's to horsewhip you for that fool trick you played on us and to make good our loss. Where's his camp?"

From the distance of a stone-throw a heavy, raucous voice called, "'Lo, Morse!"

The young man turned to the girl, his lips set in a thin, hard line. "Bully West. The dog's gone back and is bringin' him here, I reckon. Like to meet him?"

She knew the reputation of Bully West, notorious as a brawler and a libertine. Who in all the North did not know of it? Her heart fluttered a signal of despair.

"I--I can get away yet--up the valley," she said in a whisper, eyes quick with fear.

He smiled grimly. "You mean we can."

"Yes."

"Hit the trail."

She turned and led the way into the darkness.

CHAPTER III

ANGUS McRAE DOES HIS DUTY

The harsh shout came to them again, and with it a volley of oaths that polluted the night.

Sleeping Dawn quickened her pace. The character of Bully West was sufficiently advertised in that single outburst. She conceived him bloated, wolfish, malignant, a man whose mind traveled through filthy green swamps breeding fever and disease. Hard though this young man was, in spite of her hatred of him, of her doubt as to what lay behind those inscrutable, reddish-brown eyes of his, she would a hundred times rather take chances with him than with Bully West. He was at least a youth. There was always the possibility that he might not yet have escaped entirely from the tenderness of boyhood.

Morse followed her silently with long, tireless, strides. The girl continued to puzzle him. Even her manner of walking expressed personality. There was none of the flat-footed Indian shuffle about her gait. She moved lightly, springily, as one does who finds in it the joy of calling upon abundant strength.

She was half Scotch, of course. That helped to explain her. The words of an old song hummed themselves through his mind.

"Yestreen I met a winsome lass, a bonny lass was she, As ever climbed the mountain-side, or tripped aboon the lea; She wore nae gold, nae jewels bright, nor silk nor satin rare, But just the plaidie that a queen might well be proud to wear."

Jessie McRae wore nothing half so picturesque as the tartan. Her clothes were dingy and dust-stained. But they could not eclipse the divine, dusky youth of her. She was slender, as a panther is, and her movements had more than a suggestion of the same sinuous grace.

Of the absurdity of such thoughts he was quite aware. She was a good-looking breed. Let it go at that. In story-books there were Indian princesses, but in real life there were only squaws.

Not till they were out of the danger zone did he speak. "Where's your father's camp?"

She pointed toward the northwest. "You don't need to be afraid. He'll pay you for the damage I did."

He looked at her in the steady, appraising way she was to learn as a peculiarity of his.

"I'm not afraid," he drawled. "I'll get my pay--and you'll get yours."

Color flamed into her dusky face. When she spoke there was the throb of contemptuous anger in her voice. "It's a great thing to be a man."

"Like to crawfish, would you?"

She swung on him, eyes blazing. "No. I don't ask any favors of a wolfer."

She spat the word at him as though it were a missile. The term was one of scorn, used only in speaking of the worst of the whiskey-traders. He took it coolly, his strong white teeth flashing in a derisive smile.

"Then this wolfer won't offer any, Miss McRae."

It was the last word that passed between them till they reached the buffalo-hunter's camp. If he felt any compunctions, she read nothing of the kind in his brown face and the steady stride carrying her straight to punishment. She wondered if he knew how mercilessly twenty-year-old Fergus had been thrashed after his drunken spree among the Indians, how sternly Angus dispensed justice in the clan over which he ruled. Did he think she was an ordinary squaw, one to be whipped as a matter of discipline by her owner?

They climbed a hill and looked down on a camp of many fires in the hollow below.

"Is it you, lass?" a voice called.

Out of the shadows thrown by the tents a big bearded man came to meet them. He stood six feet in his woolen socks. His chest was deep and his shoulders tremendously broad. Few in the Lone Lands had the physical strength of Angus McRae.

His big hand caught the girl by the shoulder with a grip that was half a caress. He had been a little anxious about her and this found expression in a reproach.

"You shouldna go out by your lane for so lang after dark, Jess. Weel you ken that."

"I know, Father."

The blue eyes beneath the grizzled brows of the hunter turned upon Morse. They asked what he was doing with his daughter at that time and place.

The Montana trader answered the unspoken question, an edge of irony in his voice. "I found Miss McRae wanderin' around, so I brought her home where she would be safe and well taken care of."

There was something about this Angus did not understand. At night in the Lone Lands, among a thousand hill pockets and shoestring draws, it would be only a millionth chance that would bring a man and woman together unexpectedly. He pushed home questions, for he was not one to slough any of the responsibilities that belonged to him as father of his family.

A fat and waistless Indian woman appeared in the tent flap as the three approached the light. She gave a grunt of surprise and pointed first at Morse and then at the girl.

The trader's hands were covered with blood, his shirt-sleeve soaked in it. Stains of it were spattered over the girl's clothes and face.

The Scotchman looked at them, and his clean-shaven upper lip grew straight, his whole face stern. "What'll be the meanin' o' this?" he asked.

Morse turned to the girl, fastened his eyes on her steadily, and waited.

"Nae lees. I'll hae the truth," Angus added harshly.

"I did it--with my hunting-knife," the daughter said, looking straight at her father.

"What's that? Are ye talkin' havers, lass?"

"It's the truth, Father."

The Scotchman swung on the trader with a swift question, at the end of it a threat. "Why would she do that? Why? If you said one word to my lass--"

"No, Father. You don't understand. I found a camp of whiskey-traders, and I stole up and smashed four-five kegs. I meant to slip away, but this man caught me. When he rushed at me I was afraid--so I slashed at him with my knife. We fought."

"You fought," her father repeated.

"He didn't know I was a girl--not at first."

The buffalo-hunter passed that point. "You went to this trader's camp and ruined his goods?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

The slim girl faced her judge steadily with eyes full of apprehension. "Fergus," she said in a low voice, "and my people."

"What aboot them?"

"These traders break the law. They sell liquor to Fergus and to--"

"Gin that's true, is it your business to ram-stam in an' destroy ither folks' property? Did I bring you up i' the fear o' the Lord to slash at men wi' your dirk an' fight wi' them like a wild limmer? I've been ower-easy wi' you. Weel, I'll do my painfu' duty the nicht, lass." The Scotchman's eyes were as hard and as inexorable as those of a hanging judge.

"Yes," the girl answered in a small voice. "That's why he brought me home instead of taking me to his own camp. You're to whip me."

Angus McRae was not used to having the law and the judgment taken out of his own hands. He frowned at the young man beneath heavy grizzled eyebrows drawn sternly together. "An' who are you to tell me how to govern my ain hoose?" he demanded.

"My name's Morse--Tom Morse, Fort Benton, Montana, when my hat's hangin' up. I took up your girl's proposition, that if I didn't head in at our camp, but brought her here, you were to whip her and pay me damages for what she'd done. Me, I didn't propose it. She did."

"You gave him your word on that, Jess?" her father asked.

"Yes." She dragged out, reluctantly, after a moment: "With a horsewhip."

"Then that's the way it'll be. The McRaes don't cry back on a bargain," the dour old buffalo-hunter said. "But first we'll look at this young man's arm. Get water and clean rags, Jess."

Morse flushed beneath the dark tan of his cheeks. "My arm's all right. It'll keep till I get back to camp."

"No such thing, my lad. We'll tie it up here and now. If my lass cut your arm, she'll bandage the wound."

"She'll not. I'm runnin' this arm."

McRae slammed a heavy fist down into the palm of his hand. "I'll be showin' you aboot that, mannie."

"Hell, what's the use o' jawin'? I'm goin' to wait, I tell you."

"Don't curse in my camp, Mr. Morse, or whatever your name is." The Scotchman's blue eyes flashed. "It's a thing I do not permeet. Nor do I let beardless lads tell me what they will or won't do here. Your wound will be washed and tied up if I have to order you hogtied first. So mak the best o' that."

Morse measured eyes with him a moment, then gave way with a sardonic laugh. McRae had a full share of the obstinacy of his race.

"All right. I'm to be done good to whether I like it or not. Go to it." The trader pulled back the sleeve of his shirt and stretched out a muscular, blood-stained arm. An ugly flesh wound stretched halfway from elbow to wrist.

Jessie brought a basin, water, a towel, and clean rags. By the light of a lantern in the hands of her father, she washed and tied up the wound. Her lips trembled. Strange little rivers of fire ran through her veins when her finger-tips touched his flesh. Once, when she lifted her eyes, they met his. He read in them a concentrated passion of hatred.

Not even when she had tied the last knot in the bandage did any of them speak. She carried away the towel and the basin while McRae hung the lantern to a nail in the tent pole and brought from inside a silver-mounted riding-whip. It was one he had bought as a present for his daughter last time he had been at Fort Benton.

The girl came back and stood before him. A pulse beat fast in her brown throat. The eyes betrayed the dread of her soul, but they met without flinching those of the buffalo-hunter.

The Indian woman at the tent entrance made no motion to interfere. The lord of her life had spoken. So it would be.

With a strained little laugh Morse took a step forward. "I reckon I'll not stand out for my pound of flesh, Mr. McRae. Settle the damages for the lost liquor and I'll call it quits."

The upper lip of the Scotchman was a straight line of resolution. "I'm not thrashing the lass to please you, but because it's in the bond and because she's earned it. Stand back, sir."

The whip swung up and down. The girl gasped and shivered. A flame of fiery pain ran through her body to the toes. She set her teeth to bite back a scream. Before the agony had passed, the whip was winding round her slender body again like a red-hot snake. It fell with implacable rhythmic regularity.

Her pride and courage collapsed. She sank to her knees with a wild burst of wailing and entreaties. At last McRae stopped.

Except for the irregular sobbing breaths of the girl there was silence. The Indian woman crouched beside the tortured young thing and rocked the dark head, held close against her bosom, while she crooned a lullaby in the native tongue.

McRae, white to the lips, turned upon his unwelcome guest. "You're nae doot wearyin' to tak the road, man. Bring your boss the morn an' I'll mak a settlement."

Morse knew he was dismissed. He turned and walked into the darkness beyond the camp-fires. Unnoticed, he waited there in a hollow and listened. For along time there came to him the soft sound of weeping, and afterward the murmur of voices. He knew that the fat and shapeless squaw was pouring mother love from her own heart to the bleeding one of the girl.

Somehow that brought him comfort. He had a queer feeling that he had been a party to some horrible outrage. Yet all that had taken place was the whipping of an Indian girl. He tried to laugh away the weak sympathy in his heart.

But the truth was that inside he was a wild river of woe for her.

CHAPTER IV

THE WOLFERS

When Tom Morse reached camp he found Bully West stamping about in a heady rage. The fellow was a giant of a man, almost muscle-bound in his huge solidity. His shoulders were rounded with the heavy pack of knotted sinews they carried. His legs were bowed from much riding. It was his boast that he could bend a silver dollar double in the palm of his hand. Men had seen him twist the tail rod of a wagon into a knot. Sober, he was a sulky, domineering brute with the instincts of a bully. In liquor, the least difference of opinion became for him a cause of quarrel.

Most men gave him a wide berth, and for the sake of peace accepted sneers and insults that made the blood boil.

"Where you been all this time?" he growled.

"Ploughin' around over the plains."

"Didn't you hear me callin'?"

"D'you call? I've been quite a ways from camp. Bumped into Angus McRae's buffalo-hunting outfit. He wants to see us to-morrow."

"What for?"

"Something about to-night's business. Seems he knows who did it. Offers to settle for what we lost."

Bully West stopped in his stride, feet straddled, head thrust forward. "What's that?"

"Like I say. We're to call on him to-morrow for a settlement, you 'n' me."

"Did McRae bust our barrels?"

"He knows something about it. Didn't have time to talk long with him. I hustled right back to tell you."

"He can come here if he wants to see me," West announced.

This called for no answer and Tom gave it none. He moved across to the spot where the oxen were picketed and made sure the pins were still fast. Presently he rolled his blanket round him and looked up into a sky all stars. Usually he dropped asleep as soon as his head touched the seat of the saddle he used as a pillow. But to-night he lay awake for hours. He could not get out of his mind the girl he had met and taken to punishment. A dozen pictures of her rose before him, all of them mental snapshots snatched from his experience of the night. Now he was struggling to hold her down, his knees clamped to her writhing, muscular torso. Again he held her by the strong, velvet-smooth arms while her eyes blazed fury and defiance at him. Or her stinging words pelted him as she breasted the hill slopes with supple ease. Most vivid of all were the ones at her father's camp, especially those when she was under the torture of the whip.

No wonder she hated him for what he had done to her.

He shook himself into a more comfortable position and began to count stars.... Ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven.... What was the use of stressing the affair, anyhow? She was only a half-breed. In ten years she would be fat, shapeless, dirty, and repellent. Her conversation would be reduced to grunts. The glance he had had at her mother was illuminating.

Where was he?... One hundred eleven, twelve, thirteen.... Women had not obtruded much into his life. He had lived in the wind and the sun of the outdoors, much of the time in the saddle. Lawless he was, but there was a clean strain in his blood. He had always felt an indifferent contempt for a squaw-man. An American declassed himself when he went in for that sort of thing, even if he legalized the union by some form of marriage. In spite of her magnificent physical inheritance of health and vitality, in spite of the quick and passionate spirit that informed her, she would be the product of her environment and ancestry, held close to barbarism all her life. The man who mated with her would be dragged down to her level.

Two hundred three, four, five.... How game she had been! She had played it out like a thoroughbred, even to telling her father that he was to use the horsewhip in punishing her. He had never before seen a creature so splendid or so spirited. Squaw or no squaw, he took off his hat to her.

The sun had climbed the hilltop when Morse wakened.

"Come an' get it!" Barney the cook was yelling at him.

Bully West had changed his mind about not going to the buffalo-hunter's camp.

"You 'n' Brad'll stay here, Barney, while me 'n' Tom are gone," he gave orders. "And you'll keep a sharp lookout for raiders. If any one shows up that you're dubious of, plug him and ask questions afterward. Un'erstand?"

"I hear ye," replied Barney, a small cock-eyed man with a malevolent grin. "An' we'll do just that, boss."

Long before the traders reached it, the camp of the buffalo-hunters advertised its presence by the stench of decaying animal matter. Hundreds of hides were pegged to the ground. Men and women, squatting on their heels, scraped bits of fat from the drying skins. Already a train of fifty Red River carts[3] stood ready for the homeward start, loaded with robes tied down by means of rawhide strips to stand the jolting across the plains. Not far away other women were making pemmican of fried buffalo meat and fat, pounded together and packed with hot grease in skin bags. This food was a staple winter diet and had too a market value for trade to the Hudson's Bay Company, which shipped thousands of sacks yearly to its northern posts on the Peace and the Mackenzie Rivers.

[Footnote 3: The Red River cart was a primitive two-wheeled affair, made entirely of wood, without nails or metal tires. It was usually drawn by an ox. (W.M.R.)]

The children and the sound of their laughter gave the camp a domestic touch. Some of the brown, half-naked youngsters, their skins glistening in the warm sun, were at work doing odd jobs. Others, too young to fetch and carry, played with a litter of puppies or with a wolf cub that had been caught and tamed.

The whole bustling scene was characteristic of time and place. A score of such outfits, each with its Red River carts and its oxen, its dogs, its women and children, traveled to the plains each spring to hunt the bison. They killed thousands upon thousands of them, for it took several animals to make a sack of pemmican weighing one hundred fifty pounds. The waste was enormous, since only the choicest cuts of meat were used.

Already the buffalo were diminishing in numbers. Vast hordes still roamed the plains. They could be killed by scores and hundreds. But the end was near. It had been several years since Colonel Dodge reported that he had halted his party of railroad builders two days to let a herd of over half a million bison pass. Such a sight was no longer possible. The pressure of the hunters had divided the game into the northern and the southern herds. Within four or five years the slaughter was to be so great that only a few groups of buffalo would be left.

The significance of this extermination lay largely in its application to the Indians. The plains tribes were fed and clothed and armed and housed by means of the buffalo. Even the canoes of the lake Indians were made from buffalo skins. The failure of the supply reduced the natives from warriors to beggars.

McRae came forward to meet the traders, the sleeves of his shirt rolled to the elbows of his muscular brown arms. He stroked a great red beard and nodded gruffly. It was not in his dour honest nature to pretend that he was glad to see them when he was not.

"Well, I'm here," growled West, interlarding a few oaths as a necessary corollary of his speech. "What's it all about, McRae? What do you know about the smashing of our barrels?"

"I'll settle any reasonable damage," the hunter said.

Bully West frowned. He spread his legs deliberately, folded his arms, and spat tobacco juice upon a clean hide drying in the sun. "Hold yore hawsses a minute. The damage'll be enough. Don't you worry about that. But first off, I aim to know who raided our camp. Then I reckon I'll whop him till he's wore to a frazzle."

Under heavy, grizzled brows McRae looked long at him. Both were outstanding figures by reason of personality and physique. One was a constructive force, the other destructive. There was a suggestion of the gorilla in West's long arms matted with hair, in the muscles of back and shoulders so gnarled and knotted that they gave him almost a deformed appearance. Big and broad though he was, the Scot was the smaller. But power harnessed and controlled expressed itself in every motion of the body. Moreover, the blue eyes that looked straight and hard out of the ruddy face told of coordination between mind and matter.

Angus McRae was that rare product, an honest, outspoken man. He sought to do justice to all with whom he had dealings. Part of West's demand was fair, he reflected. The trader had a right to know all the facts in the case. But the old Hudson's Bay trapper had a great reluctance to tell them. His instinct to protect Jessie was strong.

"I've saved ye the trouble, Mr. West. The guilty yin was o' my ain family. Your young man will tell ye I've done a' the horsewhippin' that's necessary."

The big trail boss looked blackly at his helper. He would settle with Morse at the proper time. Now he had other business on hand.

"Come clean, McRae. Who was it? There'll be nothin' doin' till I know that," he growled.

"My daughter."

West glared at him, for once astonished out of profanity.

"What?"

"My daughter Jessie."

"Goddlemighty, d'ja mean to tell me a girl did it?" He threw back his head in a roar of Homeric laughter. "Ever hear the beat of that? A damn li'l' Injun squaw playin' her tricks on Bully West! If she was mine I'd tickle her back for it."

The eyes in the Scotchman's granite face flashed. "Man, can you never say twa-three words withoot profanity? This is a God-fearin' camp. There's nae place here for those who tak His name in vain."

"Smashed 'em with her own hands--is that what you mean? I'll give it to her that she's a plucky li'l' devil, even if she is a nitchie."

McRae reproved him stiffly. "You'll please to remember that you're talking of my daughter, Mr. West. I'll allow no such language aboot her. You're here to settle a business matter. What do ye put the damage at?"

They agreed on a price, to be paid in hides delivered at Whoop-Up. West turned and went straddling to the place where he and Morse had left their horses. On the way he came face to face with a girl, a lithe, dusky young creature, Indian brown, the tan of a hundred summer suns and winds painted on the oval of her lifted chin. She was carrying a package of sacks to the place where the pemmican was being made.

West's eyes narrowed. They traveled up and down her slender body. They gloated on her.

After one scornful glance which swept over and ignored Morse, the girl looked angrily at the man barring her way. Slowly the blood burned into her cheeks. For there was that in the trader's smoldering eyes that would have insulted any modest maiden.

"You Jessie McRae?" he demanded, struck of a sudden with an idea.

"Yes."

"You smashed my whiskey-barrels?"

"My father has told you. If he says so, isn't that enough?"

He slapped an immense hand on his thigh, hugely diverted. "You damn li'l' high-steppin' filly! Why? What in hell 'd I ever do to you?"

Angus McRae strode forward, eyes blazing. He had married a Cree woman, had paid for her to her father seven ponies, a yard of tobacco, and a bottle of whiskey. His own two-fisted sons were métis. The Indian in them showed more plainly than the Celt. Their father accepted the fact without resentment. But there was in his heart a queer feeling about the little lass he had adopted. Her light, springing step, the lift of the throat and the fearlessness of the eye, the instinct in her for cleanliness of mind and body, carried him back forty years to the land of heather, to a memory of the laird's daughter whom he had worshiped with the hopeless adoration of a red-headed gillie. It had been the one romance of his life, and somehow it had reincarnated itself in his love for the half-breed girl. To him it seemed a contradiction of nature that Jessie should be related to the flat-footed squaws who were slaves to their lords. He could not reconcile his heart to the knowledge that she was of mixed blood. She was too fine, too dainty, of too free and imperious a spirit.

"Your horses are up the hill, Mr. West," he said pointedly.

It is doubtful whether the trader heard. He could not keep his desirous eyes from the girl.

"Is she a half or a quarter-breed?" he asked McRae.

"That'll be her business and mine, sir. Will you please tak the road?" The hunter spoke quietly, restraining himself from an outbreak. But his voice carried an edge.

"By Gad, she's some clipper," West said, aloud to himself, just as though the girl had not been present.

"Will you leave my daughter oot o' your talk, man?" warned the Scotchman.

"What's ailin' you?" West's sulky, insolent eyes turned on the buffalo-hunter. "A nitchie's a nitchie. Me, I talk straight. But I aim to be reasonable too. I don't like a woman less because she's got the devil in her. Bully West knows how to tame 'em so they'll eat outa his hand. I've took a fancy to yore girl. Tha's right, McRae."

"You may go to the tent, Jessie," the girl's father told her. He was holding his temper in leash with difficulty.

"Wait a mo." The big trader held out his arm to bar the way. "Don't push on yore reins, McRae. I'm makin' you a proposition. Me, I'm lookin' for a wife, an' this here breed girl of yours suits me. Give her to me an' I'll call the whole thing square. Couldn't say fairer than that, could I?"

The rugged hunter looked at the big malformed border ruffian with repulsion. "Man, you gi'e me a scunner," he said. "Have done wi' this foolishness an' be gone. The lass is no' for you or the like o' you."

"Hell's hinges, you ain't standin' there tellin' me that a Cree breed is too good for Bully West, are you?" roared the big whiskey-runner.

"A hundred times too good for you. I'd rather see the lass dead in her coffin than have her life ruined by you," McRae answered in dead earnest.

"You don't get me right, Mac," answered the smuggler, swallowing his rage. "I know yore religious notions. We'll stand up before a sky pilot and have this done right. I aim to treat this girl handsome."

Jessie had turned away at her father's command. Now she turned swiftly upon the trader, eyes flashing. "I'd rather Father would drive a knife in my heart than let me be married to a wolfer!" she cried passionately.

His eyes, untrammeled by decency, narrowed to feast on the brown immature beauty of her youth.

"Tha' so?" he jeered. "Well, the time's comin' when you'll go down on yore pretty knees an' beg me not to leave you. It'll be me 'n' you one o' these days. Make up yore mind to that."

"Never! Never! I'd die first!" she exploded.

Bully West showed his broken, tobacco-stained teeth in a mirthless grin. "We'll see about that, dearie."

"March, lass. Your mother'll be needin' you," McRae said sharply.

The girl looked at West, then at Morse. From the scorn of that glance she might have been a queen and they the riffraff of the land. She walked to the tent. Not once did she look back.

"You've had your answer both from her and me. Let that be an end o' it," McRae said with finality.

The trader's anger ripped out in a crackle of obscene oaths. They garnished the questions that he snarled. "Wha's the matter with me? Why ain't I good enough for yore half-breed litter?"

It was a spark to gunpowder. The oaths, the insult, the whole degrading episode, combined to drive McRae out of the self-restraint he had imposed on himself. He took one step forward. With a wide sweep of the clenched fist he buffeted the smuggler on the ear. Taken by surprise, West went spinning against the wheel of a cart.

The man's head sank between his shoulders and thrust forward. A sound that might have come from an infuriated grizzly rumbled from the hairy throat. His hand reached for a revolver.

Morse leaped like a crouched cat. Both hands caught at West's arm. The old hunter was scarcely an instant behind him. His fingers closed on the wrist just above the weapon.

"Hands off," he ordered Morse. "This is no' your quarrel."

The youngster's eyes met the blazing blue ones of the Scot. His fingers loosened their hold. He stepped back.

The two big men strained. One fought with every ounce of power in him to twist the arm from him till the cords and sinews strained; the other to prevent this and to free the wrist. It was a test of sheer strength.

Each labored, breathing deep, his whole energy centered on coördinated effort of every muscle. They struggled in silence except for the snarling grunts of the whiskey-runner.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the wrist began to turn from McRae. Sweat beads gathered on West's face. He fought furiously to hold his own. But the arm turned inexorably.

The trader groaned. As the cords tightened and shoots of torturing pain ran up the arm, the huge body of the man writhed. The revolver fell from his paralyzed fingers. His wobbling knees sagged and collapsed.

McRae's fingers loosened as the man slid down and caught the bull-like throat. His grip tightened. West fought savagely to break it. He could as soon have freed himself from the clamp of a vice.

The Scotchman shook him till he was black in the face, then flung him reeling away.

"Get oot, ye yellow wolf!" he roared. "Or fegs! I'll break every bone in your hulkin' body. Oot o' my camp, the pair o' you!"

West, strangling, gasped for air, as does a catfish on the bank. He leaned on the cart wheel until he was able to stand. The help of Morse he brushed aside with a sputtered oath. His eyes never left the man who had beaten him. He snarled hike a whipped wolf. The hunter's metaphor had been an apt one. The horrible lust to kill was stamped on his distorted, grinning face, but for the present the will alone was not enough.

McRae's foot was on the revolver. His son Fergus, a swarthy, good-looking youngster, had come up and was standing quietly behind his father. Other hunters were converging toward their chief.

The Indian trader swore a furious oath of vengeance. Morse tried to lead him away.

"Some day I'll get yore squaw girl right, McRae, an' then God help her," he threatened.

The bully lurched straddling away.

Morse, a sardonic grin on his lean face, followed him over the hill.

CHAPTER V

MORSE JUMPS UP TROUBLE

"Threw me down, didn't you?" snarled West out of the corner of his mouth. "Knew all the time she did it an' never let on to me. A hell of a way to treat a friend."

Tom Morse said nothing. He made mental reservations about the word friend, but did not care to express them. His somber eyes watched the big man jerk the spade bit cruelly and rowel the bronco when it went into the air. It was a pleasure to West to torture an animal when no human was handy, though he preferred women and even men as victims.

"Whad he mean when he said you could tell me how he'd settled with her?" he growled.

"He whipped her last night when I took her back to camp."

"Took her back to camp, did you? Why didn't you bring her to me? Who's in charge of this outfit, anyhow, young fellow, me lad?"

"McRae's too big a man for us to buck. Too influential with the half-breeds. I figured it was safer to get her right home to him." The voice of the younger man was mild and conciliatory.

"You figured!" West's profanity polluted the clear, crisp morning air. "I got to have a run in with you right soon. I can see that. Think because you're C.N. Morse's nephew, you can slip yore funny business over on me. I'll show you."

The reddish light glinted for a moment in the eyes of Morse, but he said nothing. Young though he was, he had a capacity for silence. West was not sensitive to atmospheres, but he felt the force of this young man. It was not really in his mind to quarrel with him. For one thing he would soon be a partner in the firm of C.N. Morse & Company, of Fort Benton, one of the biggest trading outfits in the country. West could not afford to break with the Morse interests.

With their diminished cargo the traders pushed north. Their destination was Whoop-Up, at the junction of the Belly and the St. Mary's Rivers. This fort had become a rendezvous for all the traders within hundreds of miles, a point of supply for many small posts scattered along the rivers of the North.

Twelve oxen were hitched to each three-wagon load. Four teams had left Fort Benton together, but two of them had turned east toward Wood Mountain before the party was out of the Assiniboine country. West had pushed across Lonesome Prairie to the Sweet Grass Hills and from there over the line into Canada.

Under the best of conditions West was no pleasant traveling companion. Now he was in a state of continual sullen ill-temper. For the first time in his life he had been publicly worsted. Practically he had been kicked out of the buffalo camp, just as though he were a drunken half-breed and not one whose barroom brawls were sagas of the frontier.

His vanity was notorious, and it had been flagrantly outraged. He would never be satisfied until he had found a way to get his revenge. More than once his simmering anger leaped out at the young fellow who had been a witness of his defeat. In the main he kept his rage sulkily repressed. If Tom Morse wanted to tell of the affair with McRae, he could lessen the big man's prestige. West did not want that.

The outfit crossed the Milk River, skirted Pakoghkee Lake, and swung westward in the direction of the Porcupine Hills. Barney had been a trapper in the country and knew where the best grass was to be found. In many places the feed was scant. It had been cropped close by the great herds of buffalo roaming the plains. Most of the lakes were polluted by the bison, so that whenever possible their guide found camps by running water. The teams moved along the Belly River through the sand hills.

Tom Morse was a crack shot and did the hunting for the party. The evening before the train reached Whoop-Up, he walked out from camp to try for an antelope, since they were short of fresh meat. He climbed a small butte overlooking the stream. His keen eyes swept the panorama and came to rest on a sight he had never before seen and would never forget.

A large herd of buffalo had come down to the river crossing. They were swimming the stream against a strong current, their bodies low in the water and so closely packed that he could almost have stepped from one shaggy head to another. Not fifty yards from him they scrambled ashore and went lumbering into the hazy dusk. Something had frightened them and they were on a stampede. Even the river had not stopped their flight. The earth shook with their tread as they found their stride.

That wild flight into the gathering darkness was symbolic, Morse fancied. The vast herds were vanishing never to return. Were they galloping into the Happy Hunting Ground the Indians prayed for? What would come of their flight? When the plains knew them no more, how would the Sioux and the Blackfeet and the Piegans live? Would the Lonesome Lands become even more desolate than they were now?

"I wonder," he murmured aloud.

It is certain that he could have had no vision of the empire soon to be built out of the desert by himself and men of his stamp. Not even dimly could he have conceived a picture of the endless wheat-fields that would stretch across the plains, of the farmers who would pour into the North by hundreds of thousands, of the cities which would rise in the sand hills as a monument to man's restless push of progress and his indomitable hope. No living man's imagination had yet dreamed of the transformation of this terra incognita into one of the world's great granaries.

The smoke of the traders' camp-fire was curling up and drifting away into thin veils of film before the sun showed over the horizon hills. The bull-teams had taken up their steady forward push while the quails were still flying to and from their morning water-holes.

"Whoop-Up by noon," Barney predicted.

"Yes, by noon," Tom Morse agreed. "In time for a real sure-enough dinner with potatoes and beans and green stuff."

"Y' bet yore boots, an' honest to gosh gravy," added Brad Stearns, a thin and wrinkled little man whose leathery face and bright eyes defied the encroachment of time. He was bald, except for a fringe of grayish hair above the temples and a few long locks carefully disposed over his shiny crown. But nobody could have looked at him and called him old.

They were to be disappointed.

The teams struck the dusty road that terminated at the fort and were plodding along it to the crackling accompaniment of the long bull-whips.

"Soon now," Morse shouted to Stearns.

The little man nodded. "Mebbe they'll have green corn on the cob. Betcha the price of the dinner they do."

"You've made a bet, dad."

Stearns halted the leaders. "What's that? Listen."

The sound of shots drifted to them punctuated by faint, far yells. The shots did not come in a fusillade. They were intermittent, died down, popped out again, yielded to whoops in distant crescendo.

"Injuns," said Stearns. "On the peck, looks like. Crees and Blackfeet, maybe, but you never can tell. Better throw off the trail and dig in."

West had ridden up. He nodded. "Till we know where we're at. Get busy, boys."

They drew up the wagons in a semicircle, end to end, the oxen bunched inside, partially protected by a small cottonwood grove in the rear.

This done, West gave further orders. "We gotta find out what's doin'. Chances are it's nothin' but a coupla bunches of braves with a cargo of redeye aboard, Tom, you an' Brad scout out an' take a look-see. Don't be too venturesome. Soon's you find out what the rumpus is, hot-foot it back and report, y' understand." The big wolfer snapped out directions curtly. There was no more competent wagon boss in the border-land than he.

Stearns and Morse rode toward the fort. They deflected from the road and followed the river-bank to take advantage of such shrubbery as grew there. They moved slowly and cautiously, for in the Indian country one took no unnecessary chances. From the top of a small rise, shielded by a clump of willows, the two looked down on a field of battle already decided. Bullets and arrows were still flying, but the defiant, triumphant war-whoops of a band of painted warriors slowly moving toward them showed that the day was won and lost. A smaller group of Indians was retreating toward the swamp on the left-hand side of the road. Two or three dead braves lay in the grassy swale between the foes.

"I done guessed it, first crack," Brad said. "Crees and Blackfeet. They sure enough do mix it whenever they get together. The Crees ce'tainly got the jump on 'em this time."

It was an old story. From the northern woods the Crees had come down to trade at the fort. They had met a band of Blackfeet who had traveled up from the plains for the same purpose. Filled with bad liquor, the hereditary enemies had as usual adjourned to the ground outside for a settlement while the traders at the fort had locked the gates and watched the battle from the loopholes of the stockade.

"Reckon we better blow back to camp," suggested the old plainsman. "Mr. Cree may be feelin' his oats heap much. White man look all same Blackfeet to him like as not."

"Look." Morse pointed to a dip in the swale.

An Indian was limping through the brush, taking advantage of such cover as he could find. He was wounded. His leg dragged and he moved with difficulty.

"He'll be a good Injun mighty soon," Stearns said, rubbing his bald head as it shone in the sun. "Not a chance in the world for him. They'll git him soon as they reach the coulée. See. They're stoppin' to collect that other fellow's scalp."

At a glance Morse had seen the situation. This was none of his affair. It was tacitly understood that the traders should not interfere in the intertribal quarrels of the natives. But old Brad's words, "good Injun," had carried him back to a picture of a brown, slim girl flashing indignation because Americans treated her race as though only dead Indians were good ones. He could never tell afterward what was the rational spring of his impulse.

At the touch of the rein laid flat against its neck, the cow-pony he rode laid back its ears, turned like a streak of light, and leaped to a hand gallop. It swept down the slope and along the draw, gathering speed with every jump.

The rider let out a "Hi-yi-yi" to attract the attention of the wounded brave. Simultaneously the limping fugitive and the Crees caught sight of the flying horseman who had obtruded himself into the fire zone.

An arrow whistled past Morse. He saw a bullet throw up a spurt of dirt beneath the belly of his horse. The Crees were close to their quarry. They closed in with a run. Tom knew it would be a near thing. He slackened speed slightly and freed a foot from the stirrup, stiffening it to carry weight.

The wounded Indian crouched, began to run parallel with the horse, and leaped at exactly the right instant. His hand caught the sleeve of his rescuer at the same time that the flat of his foot dropped upon the white man's boot. A moment, and his leg had swung across the rump of the pony and he had settled to the animal's back.

So close was it that a running Cree snatched at the bronco's tail and was jerked from his feet before he could release his hold.

As the cow-pony went plunging up the slope, Morse saw Brad Stearns silhouetted against the sky-line at the summit. His hat was gone and his bald head was shining in the sun. He was pumping bullets from his rifle at the Crees surging up the hill after his companion.

Stearns swung his horse and jumped it to a lope. Side by side with Morse he went over the brow in a shower of arrows and slugs.

"Holy mackerel, boy! What's eatin' you?" he yelled. "Ain't you got any sense a-tall? Don't you know better 'n to jump up trouble thataway?"

"We're all right now," the younger man said. "They can't catch us."

The Crees were on foot and would be out of range by the time they reached the hilltop.

"Hmp! They'll come to our camp an' raise Cain. Why not? What business we got monkeyin' with their scalping sociables? It ain't neighborly."

"West won't like it," admitted Morse.

"He'll throw a cat fit. What do you aim to do with yore friend Mighty-Nigh-Lose-His-Scalp? If I know Bully--and you can bet a silver fox fur ag'in' a yard o' tobacco that I do--he won't give no glad hand to him. Not none."

Morse did not know what he meant to do with him. He had let an impulse carry him to quixotic action. Already he was half-sorry for it, but he was obstinate enough to go through now he had started.

When he realized the situation, Bully West exploded in language sulphurous. He announced his determination to turn the wounded man over to the Crees as soon as they arrived.

"No," said Morse quietly.

"No what?"

"I won't stand for that. They'd murder him."

"That any o' my business--or yours?"

"I'm makin' it mine."

The eyes of the two men crossed, as rapiers do, feeling out the strength back of them. The wounded Indian, tall and slender, stood straight as an arrow, his gaze now on one, now on the other. His face was immobile and expressionless. It betrayed no sign of the emotions within.

"Show yore cards, Morse," said West. "What's yore play? I'm goin' to tell the Crees to take him if they want him. You'll go it alone if you go to foggin' with a six-shooter."

The young man turned to the Indian he had rescued. He waved a hand toward the horse from which they had just dismounted. "Up!" he ordered.

The Indian youth caught the point instantly. Without using the stirrups he vaulted to the saddle, light as a mountain lion. His bare heels dug into the sides of the animal, which was off as though shot out of a gun.

Horse and rider skirted the cottonwoods and disappeared in a depression beyond.

CHAPTER VI

"SOMETHING ABOUT THESE GUYS"

West glared at Morse, his heavy chin outthrust, his bowed legs wide apart. "You've done run on the rope long enough with me, young feller. Here's where you take a fall hard."

The younger man said nothing. He watched, warily. Was it to be a gun-play? Or did the big bully mean to manhandle him? Probably the latter. West was vain of his reputation as a two-fisted fighter.

"I'm gonna beat you up, then turn you over to the Crees," the infuriated man announced.

"You can't do that, West. He's a white man same as you," protested Stearns.

"This yore put-in, Brad?" West, beside himself with rage, swung on the little man and straddled forward a step or two threateningly.

"You done said it," answered the old-timer, falling back. "An' don't you come closter. I'm liable to get scared, an' you'd ought not to forget I'm as big as you behind a six-shooter."

"Here they come--like a swarm o' bees!" yelled Barney.

The traders forgot, for the moment, their quarrel in the need of common action. West snatched up a rifle and dropped a bullet in front of the nearest Indian. The warning brought the Crees up short. They held a long consultation and one of them came forward making the peace sign.

In pigeon English he expressed their demands.

"He's gone--lit right out--stole one of our broncs. You can search the camp if you've a mind to," West replied.

The envoy reported. There was another long pow-wow.

Brad, chewing tobacco complacently behind a wagon wheel, commented aloud. "Can't make up their minds whether to come on an' massacree us or not. They got a right healthy fear of our guns. Don't blame 'em a bit."

Some of the Crees were armed with bows and arrows, others with rifles. But the trade guns sold the Indians of the Northern tribes were of the poorest quality.[4]

[Footnote 4: These flintlock muskets were inaccurate. They would not carry far. Their owners were in constant danger of having fingers or a hand blown off in explosions. The price paid for these cheap firearms was based on the length of them. The butt was put on the floor and the gun held upright. Skins laid flat were piled beside it till they reached the muzzle. The trader exchanged the rifle for the furs. (W.M.R.)]

The whites, to the contrary, were armed with the latest repeating Winchesters. In a fight with them the natives were at a terrible disadvantage.

The Crees realized this. A delegation of two came forward to search the camp. West pointed out the tracks of the horse upon which their tribal enemy had ridden away.

They grunted, "Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!"

Overbearing though he was, West was an embryonic diplomat. He filled a water-bucket with whiskey and handed it, with a tin cup, to the wrinkled old brave nearest him.

"For our friends the Crees," he said. "Tell your chief my young man didn't understand. He thought he was rescuing a Cree from the Blackfeet."

"Ugh! Ugh!" The Indians shuffled away with their booty.

There was more talk, but the guttural protests died away before the temptation of the liquor. The braves drank, flung a few shots in bravado toward the wagons, and presently took themselves off.

The traders did not renew their quarrel. West's reasons for not antagonizing the Morse family were still powerful as ever. He subdued his desire to punish the young man and sullenly gave orders to hitch up the teams.

It was mid-afternoon when the oxen jogged into Whoop-Up. The post was a stockade fort, built in a square about two hundred yards long, of cottonwood logs dovetailed together. The buildings on each side of the plaza faced inward. Loopholes had been cut in the bastions as a protection against Indians.

In the big stores was a large supply of blankets, beads, provisions, rifles, and clothing. The adjacent rooms were half-empty now, but in the spring they would be packed to the eaves with thousands of buffalo robes and furs brought in from outlying settlements by hunters. Later these would be hauled to Fort Benton and from there sent down the Missouri to St. Louis and other points.

Morse, looking round, missed a familiar feature.

"Where's the liquor?" he asked.

"S-sh!" warned the clerk with whom he was talking. "Haven't you heard? There's a bunch of police come into the country from Winnipeg. The lid's on tight." His far eye drooped to the cheek in a wise wink. "If you've brought in whiskey, you'd better get it out of the fort and bury it."

"That's up to West. I wouldn't advise any police to monkey with a cargo of his."

"You don't say." The clerk's voice was heavy with sarcasm. "Well, I'll just make a li'l' bet with you. If the North-West Mounted start to arrest Bully West or to empty his liquor-kegs, they'll go right through with the job. They're go-getters, these red-coats are."

"Red-coats? Not soldiers, are they?"

"Well, they are and they ain't. They're drilled an' in companies. But they can arrest any one they've a mind to, and their officers can try and sentence folks. They don't play no favorites either. Soon as they hear of this mix-up between the Crees and the Blackfeet they'll be right over askin' whyfors, and if they find who gave 'em the booze some one will be up to the neck in trouble and squawkin' for help."

West had been talking in whispers with Reddy Madden, the owner of the place. He stepped to the door.

"Don't onhook, Brad. We're travelin' some more first," he called to Stearns.

The oxen plodded out of the stockade and swung to the left. A guide rode beside West and Morse. He was Harvey Gosse, a whiskey-runner known to both of them. The man was a long, loose-limbed fellow with a shrewd eye and the full, drooping lower lip of irresolution. It had been a year since either of the Fort Benton men had been in the country. Gosse told them of the change that was taking place in it.

"Business ain't what it was, an' that ain't but half of it," the lank rider complained regretfully. "It ain't ever gonna be any more. These here red-coats are plumb ruinin' trade. Squint at a buck cross-eyed, whisper rum to him, an' one o' these guys jumps a-straddle o' yore neck right away."

"How many of these--what is it you call 'em, Mounted Police?--well, how many of 'em are there in the country?" asked West.

"Not so many. I reckon a hundred or so, far as I've heard tell."

West snorted scornfully. "And you're lettin' this handful of tenderfeet buffalo you! Hell's hinges! Ain't none of you got any guts?"

Gosse dragged slowly a brown hand across an unshaven chin. "I reckon you wouldn't call 'em tenderfeet if you met up with 'em, Bully. There's something about these guys--I dunno what it is exactly--but there's sure something that tells a fellow not to prod 'em overly much."

"Quick on the shoot?" the big trader wanted to know.

"No, it ain't that. They don't hardly ever draw a gun. They jest walk in kinda quiet an' easy, an' tell you it'll be thisaway. And tha's the way it is every crack outa the box."

"Hmp!" West exuded boastful incredulity. "I reckon they haven't bumped into any one man-size yet."

The lank whiskey-runner guided the train, by winding draws, into the hills back of the post. Above a small gulch, at the head of it, the teams were stopped and unloaded. The barrels were rolled downhill into the underbrush where they lay cached out of sight. From here they would be distributed as needed.

"You boys'll take turn an' turn about watching till I've sold the cargo," West announced. "Arrange that among yoreselves. Tom, I'll let you fix up how you'll spell each other. Only thing is, one of you has to be here all the time, y' understand."

Morse took the first watch and was followed by Stearns, who in turn gave place to Barney. The days grew to a week. Sometimes West appeared with a buyer in a cart or leading a pack-horse. Then the cached fire-water would be diminished by a keg or two.

It was a lazy, sleepy life. There was no need for a close guard. Nobody knew where the whiskey was except themselves and a few tight-mouthed traders. Morse discovered in himself an inordinate capacity for sleep. He would throw himself down on the warm, sundried grass and fall into a doze almost instantly. When the rays of the sun grew too hot, it was easy to roll over into the shade of the draw. He could lie for hours on his back after he wakened and watch cloud-skeins elongate and float away, thinking of nothing or letting thoughts happen in sheer idle content.

He had never had a girl, to use the word current among his fellows. His scheme of life would, he supposed, include women by and by, but hitherto he had dwelt in a man's world, in a universe of space and sunshine and blowing wind, under primitive conditions that made for tough muscles and a clean mind trained to meet frontier emergencies. But now, to his disgust, he found slipping into his reveries pictures of a slim, dark girl, arrow-straight, with eyes that held for him only scorn and loathing. The odd thing about it was that when his brain was busy with her a strange exultant excitement tingled through his veins.

One day a queer thing happened. He had never heard of psychic phenomena or telepathy, but he opened his eyes from a day-dream of her to see Jessie McRae looking down at him.

She was on an Indian cayuse, round-bellied and rough. Very erect she sat, and on her face was the exact expression of scornful hatred he had seen in his vision of her.

He jumped to his feet. "You--here!"

A hot color flooded her face with anger to the roots of the hair. Without a word, without another glance at him, she laid the bridle rein to the pony's neck and swung away.

Unprotesting, he let her go. The situation had jumped at him too unexpectedly for him to know how to meet it. He stood, motionless, the red light in his eyes burning like distant camp-fires in the night. For the first time in his life he had been given the cut direct by a woman.

Yet she wasn't a woman after all. She was a maid, with that passionate sense of tragedy which comes only to the very young.

It was in his mind to slap a saddle on his bronco and ride after her. But why? Could he by sheer dominance of will change her opinion of him? She had grounded it on good and sufficient reasons. He was associated in her mind with the greatest humiliation of her life, with the stinging lash that had cut into her young pride and her buoyant courage as cruelly as it had into her smooth, satiny flesh. Was it likely she would listen to any regrets, any explanations? Her hatred of him was not a matter for argument. It was burnt into her soul as with a red-hot brand. He could not talk away what he had done or the thing that he was.

She had come upon him by chance while he was asleep. He guessed that Angus McRae's party had reached Whoop-Up and had stopped to buy supplies and perhaps to sell hides and pemmican. The girl had probably ridden out from the stockade to the open prairie because she loved to ride. The rest needed no conjecture. In that lone land of vast spaces travelers always exchanged greetings. She had discovered him lying in the grass. He might be sick or wounded or dead. The custom of the country would bring her straight across the swales toward him to find out whether he needed help.

Then she had seen who he was--and had ridden away.

A sardonic smile of self-mockery stamped for a moment on his brown boyish face the weariness of the years.

CHAPTER VII

THE MAN IN THE SCARLET JACKET

Morse ambled out at a road gait to take his turn at guard duty. He was following the principle that the longest way round is the shortest road to a given place. The reason for this was to ward off any suspicion that might have arisen if the watchers had always come and gone by the same trail. Therefore they started for any point of the compass, swung round in a wide détour, and in course of time arrived at the cache.

There wasn't any hurry anyhow. Each day had twenty-four hours, and a fellow lived just as long if he didn't break his neck galloping along with his tail up like a hill steer on a stampede.

To-day Morse dropped in toward the cache from due west. His eyes were open, even if the warmth of the midday sun did make him sleepy. Something he saw made him slip from the saddle, lead his horse into a draw, and move forward very carefully through the bunch grass.

What he had seen was a man crouched behind some brush, looking down into the little gorge where the whiskey cache was--a man in leather boots, tight riding-breeches, scarlet jacket, and jaunty forage cap. It needed no second glance to tell Tom Morse that the police had run down the place where they had hidden their cargo.

From out of the little cañon a man appeared. He was carrying a keg of whiskey. The man was Barney. West had no doubt sent word to him that he would shortly bring a buyer with him to the rendezvous.

The man in the scarlet jacket rose and stepped out into the open. He was a few feet from Barney. In his belt there was a revolver, but he did not draw it.

Barney stopped and stared at him, his mouth open, eyes bulging. "Where in Heligoland you come from?" he asked.

"From Sarnia, Ontario," the red-coat answered. "Glad to meet you, friend. I've been looking for you several days."

"For me!" said Barney blankly.

"For you--and for that keg of forty-rod you're carrying. No, don't drop it. We can talk more comfortably while both your hands are busy." The constable stepped forward and picked from the ground a rifle. "I've been lying in the brush two hours waiting for you to get separated from this. Didn't want you making any mistakes in your excitement."

"Mistakes!" repeated Barney.

"Yes. You're under arrest, you know, for whiskey-smuggling."

"You're one of these here border police." Barney used the rising inflection in making his statement.

"Constable Winthrop Beresford, North-West Mounted, at your service," replied the officer jauntily. He was a trim, well-set-up youth, quick of step and crisp of speech.

"What you gonna do with me?"

"Take you to Fort Macleod."

It was perhaps because his eyes were set at not quite the right angles and because they were so small and wolfish that Barney usually aroused distrust. He suggested now, with an ingratiating whine in his voice, that he would like to see a man at Whoop-Up first.

"Jes' a li'l' matter of business," he added by way of explanation.

The constable guessed at his business. The man wanted to let his boss know what had taken place and to give him a chance to rescue him if he would. Beresford's duty was to find out who was back of this liquor running. It would be worth while knowing what man Barney wanted to talk with. He could afford to take a chance on the rescue.

"Righto," he agreed. "You may put that barrel down now."

Barney laid it down, end up. With one sharp drive of the rifle butt the officer broke in the top of the keg, He kicked the barrel over with his foot.

This was the moment Morse chose for putting in an appearance.

"Hello! What's doin'?" he asked casually.

Beresford, cool and quiet, looked straight at him. "I'll ask you that."

"Kinda expensive to irrigate the prairie that way, ain't it?"

"Doesn't cost me anything. How about you?"

Morse laughed at the question fired back at him so promptly. This young man was very much on the job. "Not a bean," the Montanan said.

"Good. Then you'll enjoy the little show I'm putting on--five thousand dollars' worth of liquor spilt all at one time."

"Holy Moses! Where is this blind tiger you're raidin'?"

"Down in the gully. Lucky you happened along just by chance. You'll be able to carry the good news to Whoop-Up and adjacent points."

"You're not really aimin' to spill all that whiskey."

"That's my intention. Any objections?" The scarlet-coated officer spoke softly, without any edge to his voice. But Tom began to understand why the clerk at the trading-post had called the Mounted Police go-getters. This smooth-shaven lad, so easy and carefree of manner, had a gleam in his eye that meant business. His very gentleness was ominous.

Tom Morse reflected swiftly. His uncle's firm had taken a chance of this very finale when it had sent a convoy of liquor into forbidden territory. Better to lose the stock than to be barred by the Canadian Government from trading with the Indians at all. This officer was not one to be bribed or bullied. He would go through with the thing he had started.

"Why, no! How could I have any objections?" Morse said.

He shot a swift, slant look at Barney, a look that told the Irishman to say nothing and know nothing, and that he would be protected against the law.

"Glad you haven't," Constable Beresford replied cheerfully--so very cheerfully in fact that Morse suspected he would not have been much daunted if objections had been mentioned. "Perhaps you'll help me with my little job, then."

The trader grinned. He might as well go the limit with the bluff he was playing. "Sure. I'll help you make a fourth o' July outa the kegs. Lead me to 'em."

"You don't know where they are, of course?"

"In the gully, you said," Morse replied innocently

"So I did. Righto. Down you go, then." The constable turned to Barney. "You next, friend."

A well-defined trail led down the steep side of the gulch. It ended in a thick growth of willow saplings. Underneath the roof of this foliage were more than a score of whiskey-casks.

After ten minutes with the rifle butt there was nothing to show for the cache but broken barrels and a trough of wet sand where the liquor had run down the bed of the dry gully.

It was time, Morse thought, to play his own small part in the entertainment.

"After you, gentlemen," Beresford said, stepping aside to let them take the trail up.

Morse too moved back to let Barney pass. The eyes of the two men met for a fraction of a second. Tom's lips framed silently one word. In that time a message was given and received.

The young man followed Barney, the constable at his heels. Morse stumbled, slipped to all fours, and slid back. He flung out his arms to steady himself and careened back against the constable. His flying hands caught at the scarlet coat. His bent head and shoulders thrust Beresford back and down.

Barney started to run.

The officer struggled to hold his footing against the awkward incubus, to throw the man off so that he could pursue Barney. His efforts were vain. Morse, evidently trying to regain his equilibrium, plunged wildly at him and sent him ploughing into the willows. The Montanan landed heavily on top, pinned him down, and smothered him.

The scarlet coat was a center of barrel hoops, bushes, staves, and wildly jerking arms and legs.

Morse made heroic efforts to untangle himself from the clutter. Once or twice he extricated himself almost, only to lose his balance on the slippery bushes and come skating down again on the officer just as he was trying to rise.

It was a scene for a moving-picture comedy, if the screen had been a feature of that day.

When at last the two men emerged from the gulch, Barney was nowhere to be seen. With him had vanished the mount of Beresford.

The constable laughed nonchalantly. He had just lost a prisoner, which was against the unwritten law of the Force, but he had gained another in his place. It would not be long till he had Barney too.

"Pretty work," he said appreciatively. "You couldn't have done it better if you'd done it on purpose, could you?"

"Done what?" asked Morse, with bland naïveté.

"Made a pillow and a bed of me, skated on me, bowled me over like a tenpin."

"I ce'tainly was awkward. Couldn't get my footin' at all, seemed like. Why, where's Barney?" Apparently the trader had just made a discovery.

"Ask of the winds, 'Oh, where?'" Beresford dusted off his coat, his trousers, and his cap. When he had removed the evidence of the battle of the gulch, he set his cap at the proper angle and cocked an inquiring eye at the other. "I suppose you know you're under arrest."

"Why, no! Am I? What for? Which of the statues, laws, and ordinances of Queen Vic have I been bustin' without knowin' of them?"

"For aiding and abetting the escape of a prisoner."

"Did I do all that? And when did I do it?"

"While you were doing that war-dance on what was left of my manhandled geography."

"Can you arrest a fellow for slippin'?"

"Depends on how badly he slips. I'm going to take a chance on arresting you, anyhow."

"Gonna take away my six-shooter and handcuff me?"

"I'll take your revolver. If necessary, I'll put on the cuffs."

Morse looked at him, not without admiration. The man in the scarlet jacket wasted nothing. There was about him no superfluity of build, of gesture, of voice. Beneath the close-fitting uniform the muscles rippled and played when he moved. His shoulders and arms were those of a college oarsman. Lean-flanked and clean-limbed, he was in the hey-day of a splendid youth. It showed in the steady eyes set wide in the tanned face, in the carriage of the close-cropped, curly head, in the spring of the step. The Montanan recognized in him a kinship of dynamic force.

"Just what would I be doing?" the whiskey-runner asked, smiling.

Beresford met his smile. "I fancy I'll find that out pretty soon. Your revolver, please." He held out his hand, palm up.

"Let's get this straight. We're man to man. What'll you do if I find I've got no time to go to Fort Macleod with you?"

"Take you with me."

"Dead or alive?"

"No, alive."

"And if I won't go?" asked Morse.

"Oh, you'll go." The officer's bearing radiated a quiet, imperturbable confidence. His hand was still extended, "If you please."

"No hurry. Do you know what you're up against? When I draw this gun I can put a bullet through your head and ride away?"

"Yes."

"Unless, of course, you plug me first."

"Can't do that. Against the regulations."

"Much obliged for that information. You've got only a dead man's chance then--if I show fight."

"Better not. Game hardly worth the candle. My pals would run you down," the constable advised coolly.

"You still intend to arrest me?"

"Oh, yes."

As Morse looked at him, patient as an animal of prey, steady, fearless, an undramatic Anglo-Saxon who meant to go through with the day's work, he began to understand the power that was to make the North-West Mounted Police such a force in the land. The only way he could prevent this man from arresting him was to kill the constable; and if he killed him, other jaunty red-coated youths would come to kill or be killed. It came to him that he was up against a new order which would wipe Bully West and his kind from the land.

He handed his revolver to Beresford. "I'll ride with you."

"Good. Have to borrow your horse till we reach Whoop-Up. You won't mind walking?"

"Not at all. Some folks think that's what legs were made for," answered Morse, grinning.

As he strode across the prairie beside the horse, Morse was still puzzling over the situation. He perceived that the strength of the officer's position was wholly a moral one. A lawbreaker was confronted with an ugly alternative. The only way to escape arrest was to commit murder. Most men would not go that far, and of those who would the great majority would be deterred because eventually punishment was sure. The slightest hesitation, the least apparent doubt, a flicker of fear on the officer's face, would be fatal to success. He won because he serenely expected to win, and because there was back of him a silent, impalpable force as irresistible as the movement of a glacier.

Beresford must have known that the men who lived at Whoop-Up were unfriendly to the North-West Mounted. Some of them had been put out of business. Their property had been destroyed and confiscated. Fines had been imposed on them. The current whisper was that the whiskey-smugglers would retaliate against the constables in person whenever there was a chance to do so with impunity. Some day a debonair wearer of the scarlet coat would ride out gayly from one of the forts and a riderless horse would return at dusk. There were outlaws who would ask nothing better than a chance to dry-gulch one of these inquisitive riders of the plains.

But Beresford rode into the stockade and swung from the saddle with smiling confidence. He nodded here and there casually to dark, sullen men who watched his movements with implacably hostile eyes.

His words were addressed to Reddy Madden. "Can you let me have a horse for a few days and charge it to the Force? I've lost mine."

Some one sniggered offensively. Barney had evidently reached Whoop-Up and was in hiding.

"Your horse came in a while ago, constable," Madden said civilly. "It's in the corral back of the store."

"Did it come in without a rider?" Beresford asked.

The question was unnecessary. The horse would have gone to Fort Macleod and not have come to Whoop-Up unless a rider had guided it here. But sometimes one found out things from unwilling witnesses if one asked questions.

"Didn't notice. I was in the store myself."

"Thought perhaps you hadn't noticed," the officer said. "None of you other gentlemen noticed either, did you?"

The "other gentlemen" held a dogged, sulky silence. A girl cantered through the gate of the stockade and up to the store. At sight of Morse her eyes passed swiftly to Beresford. His answered smilingly what she had asked. It was all over in a flash, but it told the man from Montana who the informer was that had betrayed to the police the place of the whiskey cache.

To the best of her limited chance, Jessie McRae was paying an installment on the debt she owed Bully West and Tom Morse.

CHAPTER VIII

AT SWEET WATER CREEK

Before a fire of buffalo chips Constable Beresford and his prisoner smoked the pipe of peace. Morse sat on his heels, legs crossed, after the manner of the camper. The officer lounged at full length, an elbow dug into the sand as a support for his head. The Montanan was on parole, so that for the moment at least their relations were forgotten.

"After the buffalo--what?" asked the American. "The end of the Indian--is that what it means? And desolation on the plains. Nobody left but the Hudson's Bay Company trappers, d'you reckon?"

The Canadian answered in one word. "Cattle."

"Some, maybe," Morse assented. "But, holy Moses, think of the millions it would take to stock this country."

"Bet you the country's stocked inside of five years of the time the buffalo are cleared out. Look at what the big Texas drives are doing in Colorado and Wyoming and Montana. Get over the idea that this land up here is a desert. That's a fool notion our school geographies are responsible for. Great American Desert? Great American fiddlesticks! It's a man's country, if you like; but I've yet to see the beat of it."

Morse had ceased to pay attention. His head was tilted, and he was listening.

"Some one ridin' this way," he said presently. "Hear the hoofs click on the shale. Who is it? I wonder. An' what do they want? When folks' intentions hasn't been declared it's a good notion to hold a hand you can raise on."

Without haste and without delay Beresford got to his feet. "We'll step back into the shadow," he announced.

"Looks reasonable to me," agreed the smuggler.

They waited in the semi-darkness back of the camp-fire.

Some one shouted. "Hello, the camp!" At the sound of that clear, bell-like voice Morse lifted his head to listen better.

The constable answered the call.

Two riders came into the light. One was a girl, the other a slim, straight young Indian in deerskin shirt and trousers. The girl swung from the saddle and came forward to the camp-fire. The companion of her ride shadowed her.

Beresford and his prisoner advanced from the darkness.

"Bully West's after you. He's sworn to kill you," the girl called to the constable.

"How do you know?"

"Onistah heard him." She indicated with a wave of her hand the lithe-limbed youth beside her. "Onistah was passing the stable--behind it, back of the corral. This West was gathering a mob to follow you--said he was going to hang you for destroying his whiskey."

"He is, eh?" Beresford's salient jaw set. His light blue eyes gleamed hard and chill. He would see about that.

"They'll be here soon. This West was sure you'd camp here at Sweet Water Creek, close to the ford." A note of excitement pulsed in the girl's voice. "We heard 'em once behind us on the road. You'd better hurry."

The constable swung toward the Montanan. His eyes bored into those of the prisoner. Would this man keep his parole or not? He would find out pretty soon.

"Saddle up, Morse. I'll pack my kit. We'll hit the trail."

"Listen." Jessie stood a moment, head lifted. "What's that?"

Onistah moved a step forward, so that for a moment the firelight flickered over the copper-colored face. Tom Morse made a discovery. This man was the Blackfoot he had rescued from the Crees.

"Horses," the Indian said, and held up the fingers of both hands to indicate the numbers. "Coming up creek. Here soon."

"We'll move back to the big rocks and I'll make a stand there," the officer told the whiskey-runner. "Slap the saddles on without cinching. We've got no time to lose." His voice lost its curtness as he turned to the girl. "Miss McRae, I'll not forget this. Very likely you've saved my life. Now you and Onistah had better slip away quietly. You mustn't be seen here."

"Why mustn't I?" she asked quickly. "I don't care who sees me."

She looked at Morse as she spoke, head up, with that little touch of scornful defiance in the quivering nostrils that seemed to express a spirit free and unafraid. The sense of superiority is generally not a lovely manifestation in any human being, but there are moments when it tells of something fine, a disdain of actions low and mean.

Morse strode away to the place where the horses were picketed. He could hear voices farther down the creek, caught once a snatch of words.

"... must be somewheres near, I tell you."

Noiselessly he slipped on the saddles, pulled the picket-pins, and moved toward the big rocks.

The place was a landmark. The erosion of the ages had played strange tricks with the sandstone. The rocks rose like huge red toadstools or like prehistoric animals of vast size. One of them was known as the Three Bears, another as the Elephant.

Among these boulders Morse found the party he had just left. The officer was still trying to persuade Jessie McRae to attempt escape. She refused, stubbornly.

"There are three of us here. Onistah is a good shot. So am I. For that matter, if anybody is going to escape, it had better be you," she said.

"Too late now," Morse said. "See, they've found the camp-fire."

Nine or ten riders had come out of the darkness and were approaching the camping-ground. West was in the lead. Morse recognized Barney and Brad Stearns. Two of the others were half-breeds, one an Indian trailer of the Piegan tribe.

"He must 'a' heard us comin' and pulled out," Barney said.

"Then he's back in the red rocks," boomed West triumphantly.

"Soon find out." Brad Stearns turned the head of his horse toward the rocks and shouted. "Hello, Tom! You there?"

No answer came from the rocks.

"Don't prove a thing," West broke out impatiently. "This fellow's got Tom buffaloed. Didn't he make him smash the barrels? Didn't he take away his six-gun from him and bring him along like he hadn't any mind of his own? Tom's yellow. Got a streak a foot wide."

"Nothin' of the kind," denied Stearns, indignation in his voice. "I done brought up that boy by hand--learned him all he knows about ridin' and ropin'. He'll do to take along."

"Hmp! He always fooled you, Brad. Different here. I'm aimin' to give him the wallopin' of his life when I meet up with him. And that'll be soon, if he's up there in the rocks. I'm goin' a-shootin'." Bully West drew his revolver and rode forward.

The constable had disposed of his forces so that behind the cover of the sandstone boulders they commanded the approach. He had tried to persuade Jessie that this was not her fight, but a question from her had silenced him.

"If that Bully West finds me here, after he's killed you, d' you think I can get him to let me go because it wasn't my fight?"

She had asked it with flashing eyes, in which for an instant he had seen the savagery of fear leap out. Beresford was troubled. The girl was right enough. If West went the length of murder, he would be an outlaw. Sleeping Dawn would not be safe with him after she had ridden out to warn his enemy that he was coming. The fellow was a primeval brute. His reputation had run over the whole border country of Rupert's Land.

Now he appealed to Morse. "If they get me, will you try to save Miss McRae? This fellow West is a devil, I hear."

The officer caught a gleam of hot red eyes. "I'll 'tend to that. We'll mix first, him 'n' me. Question now is, do I get a gun?"

"What for?"

"Didn't you hear him make his brags about what he was gonna do to me? If there's shootin' I'm in on it, ain't I?"

"No. You're a prisoner. I can't arm you unless your life is in danger."

West pulled up his horse about sixty yards from the rocks. He shouted a profane order. The purport of it was that Beresford had better come out with his hands up if he didn't want to be dragged out by a rope around his neck. The man's speech crackled with oaths and obscenity.

The constable stepped into the open a few yards. "What do you want?" he asked.

"You." The whiskey-runner screamed it in a sudden gust of passion. "Think you can make a fool of Bully West? Think you can bust up our cargo an' get away with it? I'll show you where you head in at."

"Don't make any mistake, West," advised the officer, his voice cold as the splash of ice-water. "Three of us are here, all with rifles, all dead shots. If you attack us, some of you are going to get killed."

"Tha's a lie. You're alone--except for Tom Morse, an' he ain't fool enough to fight to go to jail. I've got you where I want you." West swung from the saddle and came straddling forward. In the uncertain light he looked more like some misbegotten ogre than a human being.

"That's far enough," warned Beresford, not a trace of excitement in manner or speech. His hands hung by his sides. He gave no sign of knowing that he had a revolver strapped to his hip ready for action.

The liquor smuggler stopped to pour out abuse. He was working himself up to a passion that would justify murder. The weapon in his hand swept wildly back and forth. Presently it would focus down to a deadly concentration in which all motion would cease.

The torrent of vilification died on the man's lips. He stared past the constable with bulging eyes. From the rocks three figures had come. Two of them carried rifles. All three of them he recognized. His astonishment paralyzed the scurrilous tongue. What was McRae's girl doing at the camp of the officer?

It was characteristic of him that he suspected the worst of her. Either Tom Morse or this red-coat had beaten him to his prey. Jealousy and outraged vanity flared up in him so that discretion vanished.

The barrel of his revolver came down and began to spit flame.

Beresford gave orders. "Back to the rocks." He retreated, backward, firing as he moved.

The companions of West surged forward. Shots, shouts, the shifting blur of moving figures, filled the night. Under cover of the darkness the defenders reached again the big rocks.

The constable counted noses. "Everybody all right?" he asked. Then, abruptly, he snapped out: "Who was responsible for that crazy business of you coming out into the open?"

"Me," said the girl. "I wanted that West to know you weren't alone."

"Didn't you know better than to let her do it?" the officer demanded of Morse.

"He couldn't help it. He tried to keep me back. What right has he to interfere with me?" she wanted to know, stiffening.

"You'll do as I say now," the constable said crisply. "Get back of that rock there, Miss McRae, and stay there. Don't move from cover unless I tell you to."

Her dark, stormy eyes challenged his, but she moved sullenly to obey. Rebel though she was, the code of the frontier claimed and held her respect. She had learned of life that there were times when her will must be subordinated for the general good.

CHAPTER IX

TOM MAKES A COLLECTION

The attackers drew back and gathered together for consultation. West's anger had stirred their own smoldering resentment at the police, had dominated them, and had brought them on a journey of vengeance. But they had not come out with any intention of storming a defended fortress. The enthusiasm of the small mob ebbed.

"I reckon we done bit off more'n we can chaw," Harvey Gosse murmured, rubbing his bristly chin. "I ain't what you might call noways anxious to have them fellows spill lead into me."

"Ten of us here. One man, an Injun, an' a breed girl over there. You lookin' for better odds, Harv?" jeered the leader of the party.

"I never heard that a feller was any less dead because an Injun or a girl shot him," the lank smuggler retorted.

"Be reasonable, Bully," urged Barney with his ingratiating whine. "We come out to fix the red-coat. We figured he was alone except for Tom, an' o' course Tom's with us. But this here's a different proposition. Too many witnesses ag'in' us. I reckon you ain't tellin' us it's safe to shoot up Angus McRae's daughter even if she is a métis."

"Forget her," the big whiskey-runner snarled. "She won't be a witness against us."

"Why won't she?"

"Hell's hinges! Do I have to tell you all my plans? I'm sayin' she won't. That goes." He flung out a gesture of scarcely restrained rage. He was not one who could reason away opposition with any patience. It was his temperament to override it.

Brad Stearns rubbed his bald head. He always did when he was working out a mental problem. West's declaration could mean only one of two things. Either the girl would not be alive to give witness or she would be silent because she had thrown in her lot with the big trader.

The old-timer knew West's vanity and his weakness for women. From Tom Morse he had heard of his offer to McRae for the girl. Now he had no doubt what the man intended.

But what of her? What of the girl he had seen at her father's camp, the heart's desire of the rugged old Scotchman? In the lightness of her step, in the lift of her head, in speech and gesture and expression of face, she was of the white race, an inheritor of its civilization and of its traditions. Only her dusky color and a certain wild shyness seemed born of the native blood in her. She was proud, passionate, high-spirited. Would she tamely accept Bully West for her master and go to his tent as his squaw? Brad didn't believe it. She would fight--fight desperately, with barbaric savagery.

Her fight would avail her nothing. If driven to it, West would take her with him into the fastnesses of the Lone Lands. They would disappear from the sight of men for months. He would travel swiftly with her to the great river. Every sweep of his canoe paddle would carry them deeper into that virgin North where they could live on what his rifle and rod won for the pot. A little salt, pemmican, and flour would be all the supplies he needed to take with them.

Brad had no intention of being a cat's-paw for him. The older man had come along to save Tom Morse from prison and for no other reason. He did not intend to be swept into indiscriminate crime.

"Don't go with me, Bully," Stearns said. "Count me out. Right here's where I head for Whoop-Up."

He turned his horse's head and rode into the darkness.

West looked after him, cursing. "We're better off without the white-livered coyote," he said at last.

"Brad ain't so fur off at that. I'd like blame well to be moseyin' to Whoop-Up my own self," Gosse said uneasily.

"You'll stay right here an' go through with this job, Harv," West told him flatly. "All you boys'll do just that. If any of you's got a different notion we'll settle that here an' now. How about it?" He straddled up and down in front of his men, menacing them with knotted fists and sulky eyes.

Nobody cared to argue the matter with him. He showed his broken teeth in a sour grin.

"Tha's settled, then," he went on. "It's my say-so. My orders go--if there's no objections."

His outthrust head, set low on the hunched shoulders, moved from right to left threateningly as his gaze passed from one to another. If there were any objections they were not mentioned aloud.

"Now we know where we're at," he continued. "It'll be thisaway. Most of us will scatter out an' fire at the rocks from the front here; the others'll sneak round an' come up from behind--get right into the rocks before this bully-puss fellow knows it. If you get a chance, plug him in the back, but don't hurt the Injun girl. Y' understand? I want her alive an' not wounded. If she gets shot up, some one's liable to get his head knocked off."

But it did not, after all, turn out quite the way West had planned it. He left out of account one factor--a man among the rocks who had been denied a weapon and any part in the fighting.

The feint from the front was animated enough. The attackers scattered and from behind clumps of brush grass and bushes poured in a fire that kept the defenders busy. Barney, with the half-breeds and the Indian at heel, made a wide circle and crept up to the red sandstone outcroppings. He did not relish the job any more than those behind him did, but he was a creature of West and usually did as he was told after a bit of grumbling. It was not safe for him to refuse.

To Tom Morse, used to Bully West and his ways, the frontal attack did not seem quite genuine. It was desultory and ineffective. Why? What trick did Bully have up his sleeve? Tom put himself in his place to see what he would do.

And instantly he knew. The real attack would come from the rear. With the firing of the first shot back there, Bully West would charge. Taken on both sides the garrison would fall easy victims.

The constable and Onistah were busy answering the fire of the smugglers. Sleeping Dawn was crouched down behind two rocks, the barrel of her rifle gleaming through a slit of open space between them. She was compromising between the orders given her and the anxiety in her to fight back Bully West. As much as she could she kept under cover, while at the same time firing into the darkness whenever she thought she saw a movement.

Morse slipped rearward on a tour of investigation. The ground here fell away rather sharply, so that one coming from behind would have to climb over a boulder field rising to the big rocks. It took Tom only a casual examination to see that a surprise would have to be launched by way of a sort of rough natural stairway.

A flat shoulder of sandstone dominated the stairway from above. Upon this Morse crouched, every sense alert to detect the presence of any one stealing up the pass. He waited, eager and yet patient. What he was going to attempt had its risk, but the danger whipped the blood in his veins to a still excitement.

Occasionally, at intervals, the rifles cracked. Except for that no other sound came to him. He could keep no count of time. It seemed to him that hours slipped away. In reality it could have been only a few minutes.

Below, from the foot of the winding stairway, there was a sound, such a one as might come from the grinding of loose rubble beneath the sole of a boot. Presently the man on the ledge heard it again, this time more distinctly. Some one was crawling up the rocks.

Tom peered into the darkness intently. He could see nothing except the flat rocks disappearing vaguely in the gloom. Nor could he hear again the crunch of a footstep on disintegrated sandstone. His nerves grew taut. Could he have made a mistake? Was there another way up from behind?

Then, at the turn of the stairway, a few feet below him, a figure rose in silhouette. It appeared with extraordinary caution, first a head, then the barrel of a rifle, finally a crouched body followed by bowed legs. On hands and knees it crept forward, hitching the weapon along beside it. Exactly opposite Morse, under the very shadow of the sloping ledge on which he lay, the figure rose and straightened.

The man stood there for a second, making up his mind to move on. He was one of the half-breeds West had brought with him. Almost into his ear came a stern whisper.

"Hands up! I've got you covered. Don't move. Don't say a word."

Two arms shot skyward. In the fingers of one hand a rifle was clenched.

Morse leaned forward and caught hold of it. "I'll take this," he said. The brown fingers relaxed. "Skirt round the edge of the rock there. Lie face down in that hollow. Got a six-shooter."

He had. Morse took it from him.

"If you move or speak one word, I'll pump lead into you," the Montanan cautioned.

The half-breed looked into his chill eyes and decided to take no chances. He lay down on his face with hands stretched out exactly as ordered.

His captor returned to the shoulder of rock above the trail. Presently another head projected itself out of the darkness. A man crept up, and like the first stopped to take stock of his surroundings.

Against the back of his neck something cold pressed.

"Stick up your hands, Barney," a voice ordered.

The little man let out a yelp. "Mother o' Moses, don't shoot."

"How many more of you?" asked Morse sharply.

"One more."

The man behind the rifle collected his weapons and put Barney alongside his companion. Within five minutes he had added a third man to the collection.

With a sardonic grin he drove them before him to Beresford.

"I'm a prisoner an' not in this show, you was careful to explain to me, Mr. Constable, but I busted the rules an' regulations to collect a few specimens of my own," he drawled by way of explanation.

Beresford's eyes gleamed. The debonair impudence of the procedure appealed mightily to him. He did not know how this young fellow had done it, but he must have acted with cool nerve and superb daring.

"Where were they? And how did you get 'em without a six-shooter?"

"They was driftin' up the pass to say 'How-d'you-do?' from the back stairway. I borrowed a gun from one o' them. I asked 'em to come along with me and they reckoned they would."

The booming of a rifle echoed in the rocks to the left. From out of them Jessie McRae came flying, something akin to terror in her face.

"I've shot that West. He tried to run in on me and--and--I shot him." Her voice broke into an hysterical sob.

"Thought I told you to keep out of this," the constable said. "I seem to have a lot of valuable volunteer help. What with you and friend Morse here--" He broke off, touched at her distress. "Never mind about that, Miss McRae. He had it coming to him. I'll go out and size up the damage to him, if his friends have had enough--and chances are they have."

They had. Gosse advanced waving a red bandanna handkerchief as a flag of truce.

"We got a plenty," he said frankly. "West's down, an' another of the boys got winged. No use us goin' on with this darned foolishness. We're ready to call it off if you'll turn Morse loose."

Beresford had walked out to meet him. He answered, curtly. "No."

The long, lank whiskey-runner rubbed his chin bristles awkwardly. "We 'lowed maybe--"

"I keep my prisoners, both Morse and Barney."

"Barney!" repeated Gosse, surprised.

"Yes, we've got him and two others. I don't want them. I'll turn 'em over to you. But not Morse and Barney. They're going to the post with me for whiskey-running."

Gosse went back to the camp-fire, where the Whoop-Up men had carried their wounded leader. Except West, they were all glad to drop the battle. The big smuggler, lying on the ground with a bullet in his thigh, cursed them for a group of chicken-hearted quitters. His anger could not shake their decision. They knew when they had had enough.

The armistice concluded, Beresford and Morse walked over to the camp-fire to find out how badly West was hurt.

"Sorry I had to hit you, but you would have it, you know," the constable told him grimly.

The man snapped his teeth at him like a wolf in a trap. "You didn't hit me, you liar. It was that li'l' hell-cat of McRae. You tell her for me I'll get her right for this, sure as my name's Bully West."

There was something horribly menacing in his rage. In the jumping light of the flames the face was that of a demon, a countenance twisted and tortured by the impotent lust to destroy.

Morse spoke, looking steadily at him in his quiet way. "I'm servin' notice, West, that you're to let that girl alone."

There was a sound in the big whiskey-runner's throat like that of an infuriated wild animal. He glared at Morse, a torrent of abuse struggling for utterance. All that he could say was, "You damned traitor."

The eyes of the younger man did not waver. "It goes. I'll see you're shot like a wolf if you harm her."

The wounded smuggler's fury outleaped prudence. In a surge of momentary insanity he saw red. The barrel of his revolver rose swiftly. A bullet sang past Morse's ear. Before he could fire again, Harvey Gosse had flung himself on the man and wrested the weapon from his hand.

Hard-eyed and motionless, Morse looked down at the madman without saying a word. It was Beresford who said ironically, "Talking about those who keep faith."

"You hadn't oughta of done that, Bully," Gosse expostulated. "We'd done agreed this feud was off for to-night."

"Get your horses and clear out of here," the constable ordered. "If this man's able to fight he's able to travel. You can make camp farther down the creek."

A few minutes later the clatter of horse-hoofs died away. Beresford was alone with his prisoners and his guests.

Those who were still among the big rocks came forward to the camp-fire. Jessie arrived before the others. She had crept to the camp on the heels of Beresford and Morse, driven by her great anxiety to find out how badly West was hurt.

From the shadows of a buffalo wallow she had seen and heard what had taken place.

One glance of troubled curiosity she flashed at Morse. What sort of man was this quiet, brown-faced American who smuggled whiskey in to ruin the tribes, who could ruthlessly hold a girl to a bargain that included horsewhipping for her, who for some reason of his own fought beside the man taking him to imprisonment, and who had flung defiance at the terrible Bully West on her behalf? She hated him. She always would. But with her dislike of him ran another feeling now, born of the knowledge of new angles in him.

He was hard as nails, but he would do to ride the river with.

CHAPTER X

A CAMP-FIRE TALE

Another surprise was waiting for Jessie. As soon as Onistah came into the circle of light, he walked straight to the whiskey-smuggler.

"You save my life from Crees. Thanks," he said in English.

Onistah offered his hand.

The white man took it. He was embarrassed. "Oh, well, I kinda took a hand."

The Indian was not through. "Onistah never forget. He pay some day."

Tom waved this aside. "How's the leg? Seems to be all right now."

Swiftly Jessie turned to the Indian and asked him a question in the native tongue. He answered. They exchanged another sentence or two.

The girl spoke to Morse. "Onistah is my brother. I too thank you," she said stiffly.

"Your brother! He's not Angus McRae's son, is he?"

"No. And I'm not his daughter--really. I'll tell you about that," she said with a touch of the defensive defiance that always came into her manner when the subject of her birth was referred to.

She did, later, over the camp-fire.

It is fortunate that desire and opportunity do not always march together. The constable and Morse had both been dead men if Bully West could have killed with a wish. Sleeping Dawn would have been on the road to an existence worse than death. Instead, they sat in front of the coals of buffalo chips while the big smuggler and his companions rode away from an ignominious field of battle.

When the constable and his prisoner had first struck camp, there had been two of them. Now there were six. For in addition to Jessie McRae, the Blackfoot, and Barney, another had come out of the night and hailed them with a "Hello, the camp!" This last self-invited guest was Brad Stearns, who had not ridden to Whoop-Up as he had announced, but had watched events from a distance on the chance that he might be of help to Tom Morse.

Jessie agreed with Beresford that she must stay in camp till morning. There was nothing else for her to do. She could not very well ride the night out with Onistah on the road back to the fort. But she stayed with great reluctance.

Her modesty was in arms. Never before had she, a girl alone, been forced to make camp with five men as companions, all but one of them almost strangers to her. The experience was one that shocked her sense of fitness.

She was troubled and distressed, and she showed it. Her impulsiveness had swept her into an adventure that might have been tragic, that still held potentialities of disaster. For she could not forget the look on West's face when he had sworn to get even with her. This man was a terrible enemy, because of his boldness, his evil mind, and his lack of restraining conscience.

Yet even now she could not blame herself for what she had done. The constable's life was at stake. It had been necessary to move swiftly and decisively.

Sitting before the fire, Sleeping Dawn began to tell her story. She told it to Beresford as an apology for having ridden forty miles with Onistah to save his life. It was, if he chose so to accept it, an explanation of how she came to do so unwomanly a thing.

"Onistah's mother is my mother," she said. "When I was a baby my own mother died. Stokimatis is her sister. I do not know who my father was, but I have heard he was an American. Stokimatis took me to her tepee and I lived there with her and Onistah till I was five or six. Then Angus McRae saw me one day. He liked me, so he bought me for three yards of tobacco, a looking-glass, and five wolf pelts."

It may perhaps have been by chance that the girl's eyes met those of Morse. The blood burned beneath the tan of her dusky cheeks, but her proud eyes did not flinch while she told the damning facts about her parentage and life. She was of the métis, the child of an unknown father. So far as she knew her mother had never been married. She had been bought and sold like a negro slave in the South. Let any one that wanted to despise her make the most of all this.

So far as any expression went Tom Morse looked hard as pig iron. He did not want to blunder, so he said nothing. But the girl would have been amazed if she could have read his thoughts. She seemed to him a rare flower that has blossomed in a foul swamp.

"If Angus McRae took you for his daughter, it was because he loved you," Beresford said gently.

"Yes." The mobile face was suddenly tender with emotion. "What can any father do more than he has done for me? I learned to read and write at his knee. He taught me the old songs of Scotland that he's so fond of. He tried to make me good and true. Afterward he sent me to Winnipeg to school for two years."

"Good for Angus McRae," the young soldier said.

She smiled, a little wistfully. "He wants me to be Scotch, but of course I can't be that even though I sing 'Should auld acquaintance' to him. I'm what I am."

Ever since she had learned to think for herself, she had struggled against the sense of racial inferiority. Even in the Lone Lands men of education had crossed her path. There was Father Giguère, tall and austere and filled with the wisdom of years, a scholar who had left his dear France to serve on the outposts of civilization. And there was the old priest's devoted friend Philip Muir, of whom the story ran that he was heir to a vast estate across the seas. Others she had seen at Winnipeg. And now this scarlet-coated soldier Beresford.

Instinctively she recognized the difference between them and the trappers and traders who frequented the North woods. In her bed at night she had more than once wept herself to sleep because life had built an impassable barrier between what she was and what she wanted to be.

"To the Scot nobody is quite like a Scot," Beresford admitted with a smile. "When he wants to make you one, Mr. McRae pays you a great compliment"

The girl flashed a look of gratitude at him and went on with her story. "Whenever we are near Stokimatis, I go to see her. She has always been very fond of me. It wasn't really for money she sold me, but because she knew Angus McRae could bring me up better than she could. I was with her to-day when Onistah came in and told us what this West was going to do. There wasn't time for me to reach Father. I couldn't trust anybody at Whoop-Up, and I was afraid if Onistah came alone, you wouldn't believe him. You know how people are about--about Indians. So I saddled a horse and rode with him."

"That was fine of you. I'll never forget it, Miss McRae," the young soldier said quietly, his eyes for an instant full on hers. "I don't think I've ever met another girl who would have had the good sense and the courage to do it."

Her eyes fell from his. She felt a queer delightful thrill run through her blood. He still respected her, was even grateful to her for what she had done. No experience in the ways of men and maids warned her that there was another cause for the quickened pulse. Youth had looked into the eyes of youth and made the world-old call of sex to sex.

In a little pocket opening from the draw Morse arranged blankets for the girl's bed. He left Beresford to explain to her that she could sleep there alone without fear, since a guard would keep watch against any possible surprise attack.

When the soldier did tell her this, Jessie smiled back her reassurance. "I'm not afraid--not the least littlest bit," she said buoyantly. "I'll sleep right away."

But she did not. Jessie was awake to the finger-tips, her veins apulse with the flow of rushing rivers of life. Her chaotic thoughts centered about two men. One had followed crooked trails for his own profit. There was something in him hard and unyielding as flint. He would go to his chosen end, whatever that might be, over and through any obstacles that might rise. But to-night, on her behalf, he had thrown down the gauntlet to Bully West, the most dreaded desperado on the border. Why had he done it? Was he sorry because he had forced her father to horsewhip her? Or was his warning merely the snarl of one wolf at another?

The other man was of a different stamp. He had brought with him from the world whence he had come a debonair friendliness, an ease of manner, a smile very boyish and charming. In his jaunty forage cap and scarlet jacket he was one to catch and hold the eye by reason of his engaging personality. He too had fought her battle. She had heard him, in that casually careless way of his, try to take the blame of having wounded West. Her happy thoughts went running out to him gratefully.

Not the least cause of her gratitude was that there had not been the remotest hint in his manner that there was any difference between her and any white girl he might meet.

CHAPTER XI

C.N. MORSE TURNS OVER A LEAF

The North-West Mounted Police had authority not only to arrest, but to try and to sentence prisoners. The soldierly inspector who sat in judgment on Morse at Fort Macleod heard the evidence and stroked an iron-gray mustache reflectively. As he understood it, his business was to stop whiskey-running rather than to send men to jail. Beresford's report on this young man was in his favor. The inspector adventured into psychology.

"Studied the Indians any--the effect of alcohol on them?" he asked Morse.

"Some," the prisoner answered.

"Don't you think it bad for them?"

"Yes, sir."

"Perhaps you've been here longer than I. Isn't this whiskey-smuggling bad business all round?"

"Not for the smuggler. Speakin' as an outsider, I reckon he does it because he makes money," Morse answered impersonally.

"For the country, I mean. For the trapper, for the breeds, for the Indians."

"No doubt about that."

"You're a nephew of C.N. Morse, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Wish you'd take him a message from me. Tell him that it's bad business for a big trading firm like his to be smuggling whiskey." The officer raised a hand to stop the young man's protest. "Yes, I know you're going to tell me that we haven't proved he's been smuggling. We'll pass that point. Carry him my message. Just say it's bad business. You can tell him if you want to that we're here to put an end to it and we're going to do it. But stress the fact that it isn't good business. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Very well, sir." A glint of a smile showed in the inspector's eyes. "I'll give you a Scotch verdict, young man. Not guilty, but don't do it again. You're discharged."

"Barney, too?"

"Hmp! He's a horse of another color. Think we'll send him over the plains."

"Why make two bites of a cherry, sir? He can't be guilty if I'm not," the released prisoner said.

"Did I say you weren't?" Inspector MacLean countered.

"Not worth the powder, is he, sir?" Tom insinuated nonchalantly. "Rather a fathead, Barney is. If he's guilty, it's not as a principal. You'd much better send me up."

The officer laughed behind the hand that stroked the mustache. "Do you want to be judge and jury as well as prisoner, my lad?"

"Thought perhaps my uncle would understand the spirit of your message better if Barney went along with me, Inspector." The brown eyes were open and guileless.

MacLean studied the Montanan deliberately. He began to recognize unusual qualities in this youth.

"Can't say I care for your friend Barney. He's a bad egg, or I miss my guess."

"Not much taken with him myself. Thought if I'd get him to travel south with me it might save you some trouble."

"It might," the Inspector agreed. "It's his first offense so far as I know." Under bristling eyebrows he shot a swift look at this self-assured youngster. He had noticed that men matured at an early age on the frontier. The school of emergency developed them fast. But Morse struck him as more competent even than the other boyish plainsmen he had met. "Will you be responsible for him?"

The Montanan came to scratch reluctantly. He had no desire to be bear leader for such a doubtful specimen as Barney.

"Yes," he said, after a pause.

"Keep him in the States, will you?"

"Yes."

"Take him along, then. Wish you luck of him."

As soon as he reached Fort Benton, Tom reported to his uncle. He told the story of the whiskey cargo and its fate, together with his own adventures subsequent to that time.

The head of the trading firm was a long, loose-jointed Yankee who had drifted West in his youth. Since then he had acquired gray hairs and large business interests. At Inspector MacLean's message he grinned.

"Thinks it's bad business, does he?"

"Told me to tell you so," Tom answered.

"Didn't say why, I guess."

"No."

The old New Englander fished from a hip pocket a plug of tobacco, cut off a liberal chew, and stowed this in his cheek. Then, lounging back in the chair, he cocked a shrewd eye at his nephew.

"Wonder what he meant."

Tom volunteered no opinion. He recognized his uncle's canny habit of fishing in other people's minds for confirmation of what was in his own.

"Got any idee what he was drivin' at?" the old pioneer went on.

"Sorta."

C.N. Morse chuckled. "Got a notion myself. Let's hear yours."

"The trade with the North-West Mounted is gonna be big for a while. The Force needs all kinds of supplies. It'll have to deal through some firm in Benton as a clearin' house. He's servin' notice that unless C.N. Morse & Company mends its ways, it can't do business with the N.W.M.P."

"That all?" asked the head of the firm.

"That's only half of it. The other half is that no firm of whiskey-runners will be allowed to trade across the line."

C.N. gave another little chirrup of mirth. "Keep your brains whittled up, don't you? Any advice you'd like to give?"

Tom was not to be drawn. "None, sir."

"No comments, son? Passin' it up to Uncle Newt, eh?"

"You're the head of the firm. I'm hired to do as I'm told."

"You figure on obeyin' orders and lettin' it go at that?"

"Not quite." The young fellow's square chin jutted out. "For instance, I'm not gonna smuggle liquor through any more. I had my eyes opened this trip. You haven't been on the ground like I have. If you want a plain word for it, Uncle Newt--"

"Speak right out in meetin', Tom. Shouldn't wonder but what I can stand it." The transplanted Yankee slanted at his nephew a quizzical smile. "I been hearin' more or less plain language for quite a spell, son."

Tom gave it to him straight from the shoulder, quietly but without apology. "Sellin' whiskey to the tribes results in wholesale murder, sir."

"Strong talk, boy," his uncle drawled.

"Not too strong. You know I don't mean anything personal, Uncle Newt. To understand this thing you've got to go up there an' see it. The plains tribes up there go crazy over fire-water an' start killin' each other. It's a crime to let 'em have it."

Young Morse began to tell stories of instances that had come under his own observation, of others that he had heard from reliable sources. Presently he found himself embarked on the tale of his adventures with Sleeping Dawn.

The fur-trader heard him patiently. The dusty wrinkled boots of the merchant rested on the desk. His chair was tilted back in such a way that the weight of his body was distributed between the back of his neck, the lower end of the spine, and his heels. He looked a picture of sleepy, indolent ease, but Tom knew he was not missing the least detail.

A shadow darkened the doorway of the office. Behind it straddled a huge, ungainly figure.

"'Lo, West! How're tricks?" C.N. Morse asked in his lazy way. He did not rise from the chair or offer to shake hands, but that might be because it was not his custom to exert himself.

West stopped in his stride, choking with wrath. He had caught sight of Tom and was glaring at him. "You're here, eh? Sneaked home to try to square yourself with the old man, did ya?" The trail foreman turned to the uncle. "I wanta tell you he double-crossed you for fair, C.N. He's got a heluva nerve to come back here after playin' in with the police the way he done up there."

"I've heard something about that," the fur-trader admitted cautiously. "You told me Tom an' you didn't exactly gee."

"He'll never drive another bull-team for me again." West tacked to his pronouncement a curdling oath.

"We'll call that settled, then. You're through bull-whackin', Tom." There was a little twitch of whimsical mirth at the corners of the old man's mouth.

"Now you're shoutin, C.N. Threw me down from start to finish, he did. First off, when the breed girl busted the casks, he took her home 'stead of bringin' her to me. Then at old McRae's camp when I was defendin' myself, he jumped me too. My notion is from the way he acted that he let on to the red-coat where the cache was. Finally when I rode out to rescue him, he sided in with the other fellow. Hadn't been for him I'd never 'a' had this slug in my leg." The big smuggler spoke with extraordinary vehemence, spicing his speech liberally with sulphurous language.

The grizzled Yankee accepted the foreman's attitude with a wave of the hand that dismissed any counterargument. But there was an ironic gleam in his eye.

"'Nough said, West. If you're that sot on it, the boy quits the company pay-roll as an employee right now. I won't have him annoyin' you another hour. He becomes a member of the firm to-day."

The big bully's jaw sagged. He stared at his lean employer as though a small bomb had exploded at his feet and numbed his brains. But he was no more surprised than Tom, whose wooden face was expressionless.

"Goddlemighty! Ain't I jus' been tellin' you how he wrecked the whole show--how he sold out to that bunch of spies the Canadian Gov'ment has done sent up there?" exploded West.

"Oh, I don't guess he did that," Morse, Senior, said lightly. "We got to remember that times are changin', West. Law's comin' into the country an' we old-timers oughta meet it halfway with the glad hand. You can't buck the Union Jack any more than you could Uncle Sam. I figure I've sent my last shipment of liquor across the line."

"Scared, are you?" sneered the trail boss.

"Maybe I am. Reckon I'm too old to play the smuggler's game. And I've got a hankerin' for respectability--want the firm to stand well with the new settlers. Legitimate business from now on. That's our motto, boys."

"What church you been j'inin', C.N.?"

"Well, maybe it'll come to that too. Think I'd make a good deacon?" the merchant asked amiably, untwining his legs and rising to stretch.

West slammed a big fist on the table so that the inkwell and the pens jumped. "All I got to say is that this new Sunday-school outfit you aim to run won't have no use for a he-man. I'm quittin' you right now."

The foreman made the threat as a bluff. He was the most surprised man in Montana when his employer called it quietly, speaking still in the slow, nasal voice of perfect good-nature.

"Maybe you're right, West. That's for you to say, of course. You know your own business best. Figure out your time an' I'll have Benson write you a check. Hope you find a good job."

The sense of baffled anger in West foamed up. His head dropped down and forward threateningly.

"You do, eh? Lemme tell you this, C.N. I don't ask no odds of you or any other guy. Jes' because you're the head of a big outfit you can't run on me. I won't stand for it a minute."

"Of course not. I'd know better'n to try that with you. No hard feelings even if you quit us." It was a characteristic of the New Englander that while he was a forceful figure in this man's country, he rarely quarreled with any one.

"That so? Well, you listen here. I been layin' off that new pardner of yours because he's yore kin. Not anymore. Different now. He's liable to have a heluva time an' don't you forget it for a minute."

The fur-trader chewed his cud imperturbably. When he spoke it Was still without a trace of acrimony.

"Guess you'll think better of that maybe, West. Guess you're a little hot under the collar, ain't you? Don't hardly pay to hold grudges, does it? There was Rhinegoldt now. Kept nursin' his wrongs an' finally landed in the pen. Bad medicine, looks like to me."

West was no imbecile. He understood the threat underneath the suave words of the storekeeper. Rhinegoldt had gone to the penitentiary because C.N. Morse had willed it so. The inference was that another lawbreaker might go for the same reason. The trail boss knew that this was no idle threat. Morse could put him behind the bars any time he chose. The evidence was in his hands.

The bully glared at him. "You try that, C.N. Jus' try it once. There'll be a sudden death in the Morse family if you do. Mebbe two. Me, I'd gun you both for a copper cent. Don't fool yourself a minute."

"Kinda foolish talk, West. Don't buy you anything. Guess you better go home an' cool off, hadn't you? I'll have your time made up to-day, unless you want your check right now."

The broken teeth of the desperado clicked as his jaw clamped. He looked from the smiling, steady-eyed trader to the brown-faced youth who watched the scene with such cool, alert attention. He fought with a wild, furious impulse in himself to go through with his threat, to clean up and head out into the wilds. But some saving sense of prudence held his hand. C.N. Morse was too big game for him.

"To hell with the check," he snarled, and swinging on his heel jingled out of the office.

The nephew spoke first. "You got rid of him on purpose."

"Looked that way to you, did it?" the uncle asked in his usual indirect way.

"Why?"

"Guess you'd say it was because he won't fit into the new policy of the firm. Guess you'd say he'd always be gettin' us into trouble with his overbearin' and crooked ways."

"That's true. He would."

"Maybe it would be a good idee to watch him mighty close. They say he's a bad hombre. Might be unlucky for any one he got the drop on."

Tom knew he was being warned. "I'll look out for him," he promised.

The older man changed the subject smilingly. "Here's where C.N. Morse & Company turns over a leaf, son. No more business gambles. Legitimate trade only. That the idee you're figurin' on makin' me live up to?"

"Suits me if it does you," Tom answered cheerfully, "But where do I come in? What's my job in the firm? You'll notice I haven't said 'Thanks' yet."

"You?" C.N. gave him a sly, dry smile. "Oh, all you have to do is to handle our business north of the line--buy, sell, trade, build up friendly relations with the Indians and trappers, keep friendly with the police, and a few little things like that."

Tom grinned.

"Won't have a thing to do, will I?"

CHAPTER XII

TOM DUCKS TROUBLE

To Tom Morse, sitting within the railed space that served for an office in the company store at Faraway, came a light-stepping youth in trim boots, scarlet jacket, and forage cap set at a jaunty angle.

"'Lo, Uncle Sam," he said, saluting gayly.

"'Lo, Johnnie Canuck. Where you been for a year and heaven knows how many months?"

"Up Peace River, after Pierre Poulette, fellow who killed Buckskin Jerry."

Tom took in Beresford's lean body, a gauntness of the boyish face, hollows under the eyes that had not been there when first they had met. There had come to him whispers of the long trek into the frozen Lone Lands made by the officer and his Indian guide. He could guess the dark and dismal winter spent by the two alone, without books, without the comforts of life, far from any other human being. It must have been an experience to try the soul. But it had not shaken the Canadian's blithe joy in living.

"Get him?" the Montanan asked.

The answer he could guess. The North-West Mounted always brought back those they were sent for. Already the Force was building up the tradition that made them for a generation rulers of half a continent.

"Got him." Thus briefly the red-coat dismissed an experience that had taken toll of his vitality greater than five years of civilized existence. "Been back a week. Inspector Crouch sent me here to have a look-see."

"At what? He ain't suspectin' any one at Faraway of stretchin', bendin', or bustin' the laws."

Tom cocked a merry eye at his visitor. Rumor had it that Faraway was a cesspool of iniquity. It was far from the border. When sheriffs of Montana became too active, there was usually an influx of population at the post, of rough, hard-eyed men who crossed the line and pushed north to safety.

"Seems to be. You're not by any chance lookin' for trouble?"

"Duckin' it," answered Tom promptly.

The officer smiled genially. "It's knocking at your door." His knuckles rapped on the desk.

"If I ever bumped into a Santa Claus of joy--"

"Oh, thanks!" Beresford murmured.

"--you certainly ain't him. Onload your grief."

"The theme of my discourse is aborigines, their dispositions, animadversions, and propensities," explained the constable. "According to the latest scientific hypotheses, the metempsychosis--"

Tom threw up his hands. "Help! Help! I never studied geology none. Don't know this hypotenuse you're pow-wowin' about any more'n my paint hawss does. Come again in one syllables."

"Noticed any trouble among the Crees lately--that is, any more than usual?"

The junior partner of C.N. Morse & Company considered. "Why, yes, seems to me I have--heap much swagger and noise, plenty rag-chewin' and tomahawk swingin'."

"Why?"

"Whiskey, likely."

"Where do they get it?"

Tom looked at the soldier quizzically. "Your guess is good as mine," he drawled.

"I'm guessing West and Whaley."

Morse made no comment. Bully West had thrown in his fortune with Dug Whaley, a gambler who had drifted from one mining camp to another and been washed by the tide of circumstance into the Northwest. Ostensibly they supplied blankets, guns, food, and other necessities to the tribes, but there was a strong suspicion that they made their profit in whiskey smuggled across the plains.

"But to guess it and to prove it are different propositions. How am I going to hang it on them? I can't make a bally fool of myself by prodding around in their bales and boxes. If I didn't find anything--and it'd be a long shot against me--West and his gang would stick their tongues in their cheeks and N.W.M.P. stock would shoot down. No, I've got to make sure, jump 'em, and tie 'em up by finding the goods on the wagons."

"Fat chance," speculated Tom.

"That's where you come in."

"Oh, I come in there, do I? I begin to hear Old Man Trouble knockin' at my door like you promised. Break it kinda easy. Am I to go up an' ask Bully West where he keeps his fire-water cached? Or what?"

"Yes. Only don't mention to him that you're asking. Your firm and his trade back and forth, don't they?"

"Forth, but not back. When they've got to have some goods--if it's neck or nothing with them--they buy from us. We don't buy from them. You couldn't exactly call us neighborly."

Beresford explained. "West's just freighted in a cargo of goods. I can guarantee that if he brought any liquor with him--and I've good reason to think he did--it hasn't been unloaded yet. To-morrow the wagons will scatter. I can't follow all of 'em. If I cinch Mr. West, it's got to be to-night."

"I see. You want me to give you my blessin'. I'll come through with a fine big large one. Go to it, constable. Hogtie West with proof. Soak him good. Send him up for 'steen years. You got my sympathy an' approval, one for the grief you're liable to bump into, the other for your good intentions."

The officer's grin had a touch of the proverbial Cheshire cat's malice. "Glad you approve. But you keep that sympathy for yourself. I'm asking you to pull the chestnut out of the fire for me. You'd better look out or you'll burn your paw."

"Just remember I ain't promisin' a thing. I'm a respectable business man now, and, as I said, duckin' trouble."

"Find out for me in which wagon the liquor is. That's all I ask."

"How can I find out? I'm no mind reader."

"Drift over casually and offer to buy goods. Poke around a bit. Keep cases on 'em. Notice the wagons they steer you away from."

Tom thought it over and shook his head. "No, I don't reckon I will."

"Any particular reason?"

"Don't look to me hardly like playin' the game. I'm ferninst West every turn of the road. He's crooked as a dog's hind laig. But it wouldn't be right square for me to spy on him. Different with you. That's what you're paid for. You're out to run him down any way you can. He knows that. It's a game of hide an' go seek between you an' him. Best man wins."

The red-coat assented at once. "Right you are, I'll get some one else." He rose to go. "See you later maybe."

Tom nodded. "Sorry I can't oblige, but you see how it is."

"Quite. I oughtn't to have asked you."

Beresford strode briskly out of the store.

Through the window Morse saw him a moment later in whispered conversation with Onistah. They were standing back of an outlying shed, in such a position that they could not be seen from the road.

CHAPTER XIII

THE CONSTABLE BORES THROUGH DIFFICULTIES

The early Northern dusk was falling when Beresford dropped into the store again. Except for two half-breeds and the clerk dickering at the far end of the building over half a dozen silver fox furs Morse had the place to himself.

Yet the officer took the precaution to lower his voice. "I want an auger and a wooden plug the same size. Get 'em to me without anybody knowing it."

The manager of the C.N. Morse & Company Northern Stores presently shoved across the counter to him a gunny-sack with a feed of oats. "Want it charged to the Force, I reckon?"

"Yes."

"Say, constable, I wancha to look at these moccasins I'm orderin' for the Inspector. Is this what he wants? Or isn't it?"

Tom led the way into his office. He handed the shoe to Beresford. "What's doin'?" he asked swiftly, between sentences.

The soldier inspected the footwear. "About right, I'd say. Thought you'd find what you were looking for. A fellow usually does when he goes at it real earnest."

The eyes in the brown face were twinkling merrily.

"Findin' the goods is one thing. Gettin' 'em's quite another," Tom suggested.

The voice of one of the trappers rose in protest. "By gar, it iss what you call dirt cheap. I make you a present. V'la!"

"Got to bore through difficulties," Beresford said. "Then you're liable to bump into disappointment. But you can't ever tell till you try."

His friend began to catch the drift of the officer's purpose. He was looking for a liquor shipment, and he had bought an auger to bore through difficulties.

Tom's eyes glowed. "Come over to the storeroom an' take a look at my stock. Want you to see I'm gonna have these moccasins made from good material."

They kept step across the corral, gay, light-hearted sons of the frontier, both hard as nails, packed muscles rippling like those of forest panthers. Their years added would not total more than twoscore and five, but life had taken hold of them young and trained them to its purposes, had shot them through and through with hardihood and endurance and the cool prevision that forestalls disaster.

"I'm in on this," the Montanan said.

"Meaning?"

"That I buy chips, take a hand, sit in, deal cards."

The level gaze of the police officer studied him speculatively. "Now why this change of heart?"

"You get me wrong. I'm with you to a finish in puttin' West and Whaley out of business. They're a hell-raisin' outfit, an' this country'll be well rid of 'em. Only thing is I wanta play my cards above the table. I couldn't spy on these men. Leastways, it didn't look quite square to me. But this is a bronc of another color. Lead me to that trouble you was promisin' a while ago."

Beresford led him to it, by way of a rain-washed gully, up which they trod their devious path slowly and without noise. From the gully they snaked through the dry grass to a small ditch that had been built to drain the camping-ground during spring freshets. This wound into the midst of the wagon train encampment.

The plainsmen crept along the dry ditch with laborious care. They advanced no single inch without first taking care to move aside any twig the snapping of which might betray them.

From the beginning of the adventure until its climax no word was spoken. Beresford led, the trader followed at his heels.

The voices of men drifted to them from a camp-fire in the shelter of the wagons. There were, Tom guessed, about four of them. Their words came clear through the velvet night. They talked the casual elemental topics common to their kind.

There was a moonlit open space to be crossed. The constable took it swiftly with long strides, reached a wagon, and dodged under it. His companion held to the cover of the ditch. He was not needed closer.

The officer lay flat on his back, set the point of the auger to the woodwork of the bed, and began to turn. Circles and half-circles of shavings flaked out and fell upon him. He worked steadily. Presently the resistance of the wood ceased. The bit had eaten its way through.

Beresford withdrew the tool and tried again, this time a few inches from the hole he had made. The pressure lessened as before, but in a second or two the steel took a fresh hold. The handle moved slowly and steadily.

A few drops of moisture dripped down, then a small stream. The constable held his hand under this and tasted the flow. It was rum.

Swiftly he withdrew the bit, fitted the plug into the hole, and pushed it home.

He crawled from under the wagon, skirted along the far side of it, ran to the next white-topped vehicle, and plumped out upon the campers with a short, sharp word of command.

"Up with your hands! Quick!"

For a moment the surprised quartette were too amazed to obey.

"What in Halifax--?"

"Shove 'em up!" came the crisp, peremptory order.

Eight hands wavered skyward.

"Is this a hold-up--or what?" one of the teamsters wanted to know sulkily.

"Call it whatever you like. You with the fur cap hitch up the mules to the second wagon. Don't make a mistake and try for a getaway. You'll be a dead smuggler."

The man hesitated. Was this red-coat alone?

Tom strolled out of the ditch, a sawed-off shotgun under his arm. "I judge you bored through your difficulties, constable," he said cheerfully.

"Through the bed of the wagon and the end of a rum keg. Stir your stumps, gentlemen of the whiskey-running brigade. We're on the way to Fort Edmonton if it suits you."

If it did not suit them, they made no audible protest of disagreement. Growls were their only comment when, under direction of Beresford, the Montanan stripped them of their weapons and kept guard on the fur-capped man--his name appeared to be Lemoine--while the latter brought the mules to the wagon pointed out by the officer.

"Hook 'em," ordered Morse curtly.

The French-Indian trapper hitched the team to the wagon. Presently it moved beyond the circle of firelight into the darkness. Morse sat beside the driver, the short-barreled weapon across his knees. Three men walked behind the wagon. A fourth, in the uniform of the North-West Mounted, brought up the rear on horseback.

CHAPTER XIV

SCARLET-COATS IN ACTION

When Bully West discovered that such part of the cargo of wet goods as was in wagon number two had disappeared and along with it the four mule-skinners, his mind jumped to an instant conclusion. That it happened to be the wrong one was natural enough to his sulky, suspicious mind.

"Goddlemighty, they've double-crossed us," he swore to his partner, with an explosion of accompanying profanity. "Figure on cleanin' up on the goods an' cuttin' back to the States. Tha's what they aim to do. Before I can head 'em off. Me, I'll show 'em they can't play monkey tricks on Bully West."

This explanation did not satisfy Whaley. The straight black line of the brows above the cold eyes met in frowning thought.

"I've got a hunch you're barkin' up the wrong tree," he lisped with a shrug of shoulders.

Voice and gesture were surprising in that they were expressions of this personality totally unexpected. Both were almost womanlike in their delicacy. They suggested the purr and soft padding of a cat, an odd contradiction to the white, bloodless face with the inky brows. The eyes of "Poker" Whaley could throw fear into the most reckless bull-whacker on the border. They held fascinating and sinister possibilities of evil.

"Soon see. We'll hit the trail right away after them," Bully replied.

Whaley's thin lip curled. He looked at West as though he read to the bottom of that shallow mind and meant to make the most of his knowledge.

"Yes," he murmured, as though to himself. "Some one ought to stay with the rest of the outfit, but I reckon I'd better go along. Likely you couldn't handle all of 'em if they showed fight."

West's answer was a roar of outraged vanity. "Me! Not round up them tame sheep. I'll drive 'em back with their tongues hangin' out. Understand?"

At break of day he was in the saddle. An experienced trailer, West found no difficulty in following the wagon tracks. No attempt had been made to cover the flight. The whiskey-runner could trace at a road gait the narrow tracks along the winding road.

The country through which he traveled was the border-land between the plains and the great forests that rolled in unbroken stretch to the frozen North. Sometimes he rode over undulating prairie. Again he moved through strips of woodland or skirted beautiful lakes from the reedy edges of which ducks or geese rose whirring at his approach. A pair of coyotes took one long look at him and skulked into a ravine. Once a great moose started from a thicket of willows and galloped over a hill.

West heeded none of this. No joy touched him as he breasted summits and looked down on wide sweeps of forest and rippling water. The tracks of the wheel rims engaged entirely his sulky, lowering gaze. If the brutish face reflected his thoughts, they must have been far from pleasant ones.

The sun flooded the landscape, climbed the sky vault, slid toward the horizon. Dusk found him at the edge of a wooded lake.

He looked across and gave a subdued whoop of triumph. From the timber on the opposite shore came a tenuous smoke skein. A man came to the water with a bucket, filled it, and disappeared in the woods. Bully West knew he had caught up with those he was tracking.

The smuggler circled the lower end of the lake and rode through the timber toward the smoke. At a safe distance he dismounted, tied the horse to a young pine, and carefully examined his rifle. Very cautiously he stalked the camp, moving toward it with the skill and the stealth of a Sarcee scout.

Camp had been pitched in a small open space surrounded by bushes. Through the thicket, on the south side, he picked a way, pushing away each sapling and weed noiselessly to make room for the passage of his huge body. For such a bulk of a figure he moved lightly. Twice he stopped by reason of the crackle of a snapping twig, but no sign of alarm came from his prey.

They sat hunched--the four of them--before a blazing log fire, squatting on their heels in the comfortable fashion of the outdoors man the world over. Their talk was fragmentary. None gave any sign of alertness toward any possible approaching danger.

No longer wary, West broke through the last of the bushes and straddled into the open.

"Well, boys, hope you got some grub left for yore boss," he jeered, triumph riding voice and manner heavily.

He waited for the startled dismay he expected. None came. The drama of the moment did not meet his expectation. The teamsters looked at him, sullenly, without visible fear or amazement. None of them rose or spoke.

Sultry anger began to burn in West's eyes. "Thought you'd slip one over on the old man, eh? Thought you could put over a raw steal an' get away with it. Well, lemme tell you where you get off at. I'm gonna whale every last one of you to a frazzle. With a big club. An' I'm gonna drive you back to Faraway like a bunch of whipped curs. Understand?"

Still they said nothing. It began to penetrate the thick skull of the trader that there was something unnatural about their crouched silence. Why didn't they try to explain? Or make a break for a getaway?

He could think of nothing better to say, after a volley of curses, than to repeat his threat. "A thunderin' good wallopin', first off. Then we hit the trail together, you-all an' me."

From out of the bushes behind him a voice came. "That last's a good prophecy, Mr. West. It'll be just as you say."

The big fellow wheeled, the rifle jumping to his shoulder. Instantly he knew he had been tricked, led into a trap. They must have heard him coming, whoever they were, and left his own men for bait.

From the other side two streaks of scarlet launched themselves at him. West turned to meet them. A third flash of red dived for his knees. He went down as though hit by a battering-ram.

But not to stay down. The huge gorilla-shaped figure struggled to its feet, fighting desperately to throw off the three red-coats long enough to drag out a revolver. He was like a bear surrounded by leaping dogs. No sooner had he buffeted one away than the others were dragging him down. Try as he would, he could not get set. The attackers always staggered him before he could quite free himself for action. They swarmed all over him, fought close to avoid his sweeping lunges, hauled him to his knees by sheer weight of the pack.

Lemoine flung one swift look around and saw that his captors were very busy. Now if ever was the time to take a hand in the mêlée. Swiftly he rose. He spoke a hurried word in French.

"One moment, s'il vous plaît." From the bushes another man had emerged, one not in uniform. Lemoine had forgotten him. "Not your fight. Better keep out," he advised, and pointed the suggestion with a short-barreled shotgun.

The trapper looked at him. "Is it that this iss your fight, Mistair Morse?" he demanded.

"Fair enough. I'll keep out too."

The soldiers had West down by this time. They were struggling to handcuff him. He fought furiously, his great arms and legs threshing about like flails. Not till he had worn himself out could they pinion him.

Beresford rose at last, the job done. His coat was ripped almost from one shoulder. "My word, he's a whale of an animal," he panted. "If I hadn't chanced to meet you boys he'd have eaten me alive."

The big smuggler struggled for breath. When at last he found words, it was for furious and horrible curses.

Not till hours later did he get as far as a plain question. "What does this mean? Where are you taking me, you damned spies?" he roared.

Beresford politely gave him information. "To the penitentiary, I hope, Mr. West, for breaking Her Majesty's revenue laws."

CHAPTER XV

KISSING DAY

All week Jessie and her foster-mother Matapi-Koma had been busy cooking and baking for the great occasion. Fergus had brought in a sack full of cottontails and two skunks. To these his father had added the smoked hindquarters of a young buffalo, half a barrel of dried fish, and fifty pounds of pemmican. For Angus liked to dispense hospitality in feudal fashion.

Ever since Jessie had opened her eyes at the sound of Matapi-Koma's "Koos koos kwa" (Wake up!), in the pre-dawn darkness of the wintry Northern morn, she had heard the crunch of snow beneath the webs of the footmen and the runners of the sleds. For both full-blood Crees and half-breeds were pouring into Faraway to take part in the festivities of Ooche-me-gou-kesigow (Kissing Day).

The traders at the post and their families would join in the revels. With the exception of Morse, they had all taken Indian wives, in the loose marriage of the country, and for both business and family reasons they maintained a close relationship with the natives. Most of their children used the mother tongue, though they could make shift to express themselves in English. In this respect as in others the younger McRaes were superior. They talked English well. They could read and write. Their father had instilled in them a reverence for the Scriptures and some knowledge of both the Old and New Testaments. It was his habit to hold family prayers every evening. Usually half a dozen guests were present at these services in addition to his immediate household.

With the Indians came their dogs, wolfish creatures, prick-eared and sharp-muzzled, with straight, bristling hair. It was twenty below zero, but the gaunt animals neither sought nor were given shelter. They roamed about in front of the fort stockade, snapping at each other or galloping off on rabbit hunts through the timber.

The custom was that on this day the braves of the tribe kissed every woman they met in token of friendship and good-will. To fail of saluting one, young or old, was a breach of good manners. Since daybreak they had been marching in to Angus McRae's house and gravely kissing his wife and daughter.

Jessie did not like it. She was a fastidious young person. But she could not escape without mortally offending the solemn-eyed warriors who offered this evidence of their esteem. As much as possible she contrived to be busy upstairs, but at least a dozen times she was fairly cornered and made the best of it.

At dinner she and the other women of the fort waited on their guests and watched prodigious quantities of food disappear rapidly. When the meal was ended, the dancing began. The Crees shuffled around in a circle, hopping from one foot to the other in time to the beating of a skin drum. The half-breeds and whites danced the jigs and reels the former had brought with them from the Red River country. They took the floor in couples. The men did double-shuffles and cut pigeon wings, moving faster and faster as the fiddler quickened the tune till they gave up at last exhausted. Their partners performed as vigorously, the moccasined feet twinkling in and out so fast that the beads flashed.

Because it was the largest building in the place, the dance was held in the C.N. Morse & Company store. From behind the counter Jessie applauded the performers. She did not care to take part herself. The years she had spent at school had given her a certain dignity.

A flash of scarlet caught her eye. Two troopers of the Mounted Police had come into the room and one of them was taking off his fur overcoat. The trim, lean-flanked figure and close-cropped, curly head she recognized at once with quickened pulse. When Winthrop Beresford came into her neighborhood, Jessie McRae's cheek always flew a flag of greeting.

A squaw came up to the young soldier and offered innocently her face for a kiss.

Beresford knew the tribal custom. It was his business to help establish friendly relations between the Mounted and the natives. He kissed the wrinkled cheek gallantly. A second dusky lady shuffled forward, and after her a third. The constable did his duty.

His roving eye caught Jessie's, and found an imp of mischief dancing there. She was enjoying the predicament in which he found himself. Out of the tail of that same eye he discovered that two more flat-footed squaws were headed in his direction.

He moved briskly across the floor to the counter, vaulted it, and stood beside Jessie. She was still laughing at him.

"You're afraid," she challenged. "You ran away."

A little devil of adventurous mirth was blown to flame in him. "I saw another lady, lonely and unkissed. The Force answers every call of distress."

Her chin tilted ever so little as she answered swiftly.

"He who will not when he may, When he will he shall have nay."

Before she had more than time to guess that he would really dare, the officer leaned forward and kissed the girl's dusky cheek.

The color flamed into it. Jessie flung a quick, startled look at him.

"Kissing Day, Sleeping Dawn," he said, smiling.

Instantly she followed his lead. "Sleeping Dawn hopes that the Great Spirit will give to the soldier of the Great Mother across the seas many happy kissing days in his life."

"And to you. Will you dance with me?"

"Not to-day, thank you. I don't jig in public."

"I was speaking to Miss McRae and not to Sleeping Dawn, and I was asking her to waltz with me."

She accepted him as a partner and they took the floor. The other dancers by tacit consent stepped back to watch this new step, so rhythmic, light, and graceful. It shocked a little their sense of fitness that the man's arm should enfold the maiden, but they were full of lively curiosity to see how the dance was done.

A novel excitement pulsed through the girl's veins. It was not the kiss alone, though that had something to do with the exhilaration that flooded her. Formally his kiss had meant only a recognition of the day. Actually it had held for both of them a more personal significance, the swift outreach of youth to youth. But the dance was an escape. She had learned at Winnipeg the waltz of the white race. No other girl at Faraway knew the step. She chose to think that the constable had asked her because this stressed the predominance of her father's blood in her. It was a symbol to all present that the ways of the Anglo-Saxon were her ways.

She had the light, straight figure, the sense of rhythm, the instinctively instant response of the born waltzer. As she glided over the floor in the arms of Beresford, the girl knew pure happiness. Not till he was leading her back to the counter did she wake from the spell the music and motion had woven over her.

A pair of cold eyes in a white, bloodless face watched her beneath thin black brows. A shock ran through her, as though she had been drenched with icy water. She shivered. There was a sinister menace in that steady, level gaze. More than once she had felt it. Deep in her heart she knew, from the world-old experience of her sex, that the man desired her, that he was biding his time with the patience and the ruthlessness of a panther. "Poker" Whaley had in him a power of dangerous evil notable in a country where bad men were not scarce.

The officer whispered news to Jessie. "Bully West broke jail two weeks ago. He killed a guard. We're here looking for him."

"He hasn't been here. At least I haven't heard it," she answered hurriedly.

For Whaley, in his slow, feline fashion, was moving toward them.

Bluntly the gambler claimed his right. "Ooche-me-gou-kesigow," he said.

The girl shook her head. "Are you a Cree, Mr. Whaley?"

For that he had an answer. "Is Beresford?"

"Mr. Beresford is a stranger. He didn't know the custom--that it doesn't apply to me except with Indians. I was taken by surprise."

Whaley was a man of parts. He had been educated for a priest, but had kicked over the traces. There was in him too much of the Lucifer for the narrow trail the father of a parish must follow.

He bowed. "Then I must content myself with a dance."

Jessie hesitated. It was known that he was a libertine. The devotion of his young Cree wife was repaid with sneers and the whiplash. But he was an ill man to make an enemy of. For her family's sake rather than her own she yielded reluctantly.

Though a heavy-set man, he was an excellent waltzer. He moved evenly and powerfully. But in the girl's heart resentment flamed. She knew he was holding her too close to him, taking advantage of her modesty in a way she could not escape without public protest.

"I'm faint," she told him after they had danced a few minutes.

"Oh, you'll be all right," he said, still swinging her to the music.

She stopped. "No, I've had enough." Jessie had caught sight of her brother Fergus at the other end of the room. She joined him. Tom Morse was standing by his side.

Whaley nodded indifferently toward the men and smiled at Jessie, but that cold lip smile showed neither warmth nor friendliness. "We'll dance again--many times," he said.

The girl's eyes flashed. "We'll have to ask Mrs. Whaley about that. I don't see her here to-night. I hope she's quite well."

It was impossible to tell from the chill, expressionless face of the squaw-man whether her barb had stung or not. "She's where she belongs, at home in the kitchen. It's her business to be well. I reckon she is. I don't ask her."

"You're not a demonstrative husband, then?"

"Husband!" He shrugged his shoulders insolently. "Oh, well! What's in a name?"

She knew the convenient code of his kind. They took to themselves Indian wives, with or without some form of marriage ceremony, and flung them aside when they grew tired of the tie or found it galling. There was another kind of squaw-man, the type represented by her father. He had joined his life to that of Matapi-Koma for better or worse until such time as death should separate them.

In Jessie's bosom a generous indignation burned. There was a reason why just now Whaley should give his wife much care and affection. She turned her shoulder and began to talk with Fergus and Tom Morse, definitely excluding the gambler from the conversation.

He was not one to be embarrassed by a snub. He held his ground, narrowed eyes watching her with the vigilant patience of the panther he sometimes made her think of. Presently he forced a reëntry.

"What's this I hear about Bully West escaping from jail?"

Fergus answered. "Two-three weeks ago. Killed a guard, they say. He was headin' west an' north last word they had of him."

All of them were thinking the same thing, that the man would reach Faraway if he could, lie hidden till he had rustled an outfit, then strike out with a dog team deeper into the Lone Lands.

"Here's wishin' him luck," his partner said coolly.

"All the luck he deserves," amended Morse quietly.

"You can't keep a good man down," Whaley boasted, looking straight at the other Indian trader. "I wouldn't wonder but what he'll pay a few debts when he gets here."

Tom smiled and offered another suggestion. "If he gets here and has time. He'll have to hurry."

His gaze shifted across the room to Beresford, alert, gay, indomitable, and as implacable as fate.

CHAPTER XVI

A BUSINESS DEAL

It was thirty below zero. The packed snow crunched under the feet of Morse as he moved down what served Faraway for a main street. The clock in the store registered mid-afternoon, but within a few minutes the sub-Arctic sun would set, night would fall, and aurora lights would glow in the west.

Four false suns were visible around the true one, the whole forming a cross of five orbs. Each of these swam in perpendicular segments of a circle of prismatic colors. Even as the young man looked, the lowest of the cluster lights plunged out of sight. By the time he had reached the McRae house, darkness hung over the white and frozen land.

Jessie opened the door to his knock and led him into the living-room of the family, where also the trapper's household ate and Fergus slept. It was a rough enough place, with its mud-chinked log walls and its floor of whipsawed lumber. But directly opposite the door was a log-piled hearth that radiated comfort and cheerfulness. Buffalo robes served as rugs and upon the walls had been hung furs of silver fox, timber wolves, mink, and beaver. On a shelf was a small library of not more than twenty-five books, but they were ones that only a lover of good reading would have chosen. Shakespeare and Burns held honored places there. Scott's poems and three or four of his novels were in the collection. In worn leather bindings were "Tristram Shandy," and Smollett's "Complete History of England." Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" shouldered Butler's "Hudibras" and Baxter's "The Saint's Everlasting Rest." Into this choice company one frivolous modern novel had stolen its way. "Nicholas Nickleby" had been brought from Winnipeg by Jessie when she returned from school. The girl had read them all from cover to cover, most of them many times. Angus too knew them all, with the exception of the upstart "storybook" written by a London newspaper man of whom he had never before heard.

"I'm alone," Jessie explained. "Father and Fergus have gone out to the traps. They'll not be back till to-morrow. Mother's with Mrs. Whaley."

Tom knew that the trader's wife was not well. She was expecting to be confined in a few weeks.

He was embarrassed at being alone with the girl inside the walls of a house. His relations with Angus McRae reached civility, but not cordiality. The stern old Scotchman had never invited him to drop in and call. He resented the fact that through the instrumentality of Morse he had been forced to horsewhip the lass he loved, and the trader knew he was not forgiven his share in the episode and probably never would be. Now Tom had come only because a matter of business had to be settled one way or the other at once.

"Blandoine is leavin' for Whoop-Up in the mornin'. I came to see your father about those robes. If we buy, it'll have to be now. I can send 'em down with Blandoine," he explained.

She nodded, briskly. "Father said you could have them at your price if you'll pay what he asked for those not split. They're good hides--cows and young bulls."[5]

[Footnote 5: A split robe was one cut down the middle and sewn together with sinews. The ones skinned from the animal in a single piece were much more valuable, but the native women usually prepared the hides the other way because of the weight in handling. One of the reasons the Indians gave the missionaries in favor of polygamy was that one wife could not dress a buffalo robe without assistance. The braves themselves did not condescend to menial labor of this kind. (W.M.R.)]

"It's a deal," the fur-trader said promptly. "Glad to get 'em, though I'm payin' all I can afford for the split ones."

"I'll get the key to the storehouse," Jessie said.

She walked out of the room with the springy, feather-footed step that distinguished her among all the women that he knew. In a few moments she was back. Instead of giving him the key, she put it down on the table near his hand.

Beneath the tan the dark blood beat into his face. He knew she had done this in order not to run the risk of touching him.

For a long moment his gaze gripped and held her. Between them passed speech without words. His eyes asked if he were outside the pale completely, if he could never wipe out the memory of that first cruel meeting. Hers answered proudly that, half-breed though she was, he was to her only a wolfer, of less interest than Black, the leader of her father's dog train.

He picked up the key and left, wild thoughts whirling through his mind. He loved her. Of what use was it trying longer to disguise it from himself. Of the inferior blood she might be, yet his whole being went out to her in deep desire. He wanted her for his mate. He craved her in every fiber of his clean, passionate manhood, as he had never before longed for a woman in his life. And she hated him--hated him with all the blazing scorn of a young proud soul whose fine body had endured degradation on his account. He was a leper, to be classed with Bully West.

Nor did he blame her. How could she feel otherwise and hold her self-respect. The irony of it brought a bitter smile to his lips. If she only knew it, the years would avenge her a hundredfold. For he had cut himself off from even the chance of the joy that might have been his.

In the sky an aurora flashed with scintillating splendor. The heavens were aglow with ever-changing bars and columns of colored fire.

Morse did not know it. Not till he had passed a dozen steps beyond a man in heavy furs did his mind register recognition of him as Whaley. He did not even wonder what business was taking the gambler toward Angus McRae's house.

Business obtruded its claims. He arranged with Blandoine to take the robes out with him and walked back to the McRae storehouse. It adjoined the large log cabin where the Scotchman and his family lived.

Blandoine and he went over the robes carefully in order that there should be no mistake as to which ones the trainmaster took. This done, Morse locked the door and handed the key to his companion.

To him there was borne the sound of voices--one low and deep, the other swift and high. He caught no words, but he became aware that a queer excitement tingled through his veins. At the roots of his hair there was an odd, prickling sensation. He could give himself no reason, but some instinct of danger rang in him like a bell. The low bass and the light high treble--they reached him alternately, cutting into each other, overriding each other, clashing in agitated dissent.

Then--a shrill scream for help!

Morse could never afterward remember opening the door of the log house. It seemed to him that he burst through it like a battering-ram, took the kitchen in two strides, and hurled himself against the sturdy home-made door which led into the living-room.

This checked him, for some one had slid into its socket the bar used as a bolt. He looked around the kitchen and found in one swift glance what he wanted. It was a large back log for the fireplace.

With this held at full length under his arm he crashed forward. The wood splintered. He charged again, incited by a second call for succor. This time his attack dashed the bolt and socket from their place. Morse stumbled into the room like a drunken man.

CHAPTER XVII

A BOARD CREAKS

After Morse had closed the door, Jessie listened until the crisp crunch of his footsteps had died away. She subdued an impulse to call him back and put into words her quarrel against him.

From the table she picked up a gun-cover of moose leather she was making and moved to the fireplace. Automatically her fingers fitted into place a fringe of red cloth. (This had been cut from an old petticoat, but the source of the decoration would remain a secret, not on any account to be made known to him who was to receive the gift.) Usually her hands were busy ones, but now they fell away from the work listlessly.

The pine logs crackled, lighting one end of the room and filling the air with aromatic pungency. As she gazed into the red coals her mind was active.

She knew that her scorn of the fur-trader was a fraud. Into her hatred of him she threw an energy always primitive and sometimes savage. But he held her entire respect. It was not pleasant to admit this. Her mind clung to the shadowy excuse that he had been a wolfer, although the Indians looked on him now as a good friend and a trader who would not take advantage of them. Angus McRae himself had said there was no better citizen in the Northland.

No, she could not hold Tom Morse in contempt as she would have liked. But she could cherish her animosity and feed it on memories that scorched her as the whiplash had her smooth and tender flesh. She would never forgive him--never. Not if he humbled himself in the dust.

Toward Angus McRae she held no grudge whatever. He had done only his duty as he saw it. The circumstances had forced his hand, for her word had pledged him to punishment. But this man who had walked into her life so roughly, mastered her by physical force, dragged her to the ignominy of the whip, and afterward had dared to do her a service--when she woke at night and thought of him she still burned with shame and anger. He had been both author and witness of her humiliation.

The girl's reverie stirred reflection of other men, for already she had suitors in plenty. Upon one of them her musing lingered. He had brought to her gifts of the friendly smile, of comradeship, of youth's debonair give-and-take. She did not try to analyze her feeling for Winthrop Beresford. It was enough to know that he had brought into her existence the sparkle of joy.

For life had stalked before her with an altogether too tragic mien. In this somber land men did not laugh much. Their smiles held a background of gravity. Icy winter reigned two thirds of the year and summer was a brief hot blaze following no spring. Nature demanded of those who lived here that they struggle to find subsistence. In that conflict human beings forgot that they had been brought into the world to enjoy it with careless rapture.

Somewhere in the house a board, creaked. Jessie heard it inattentively, for in the bitter cold woodwork was always snapping and cracking.

Beresford had offered her a new philosophy of life. She did not quite accept it, yet it fascinated. He believed that the duty of happiness was laid on people as certainly as the duty of honesty. She remembered that once he had said....

There had come to her no sound, but Jessie knew that some one had opened the door and was standing on the threshold watching her. She turned her head. Her self-invited guest was Whaley.

Jessie rose. "What do you want?"

She was startled at the man's silent entry, ready to be alarmed if necessary, but not yet afraid. It was as though her thoughts waited for the cue he would presently give. Some instinct for safety made her cautious. She did not tell the free trader that her father and Fergus were from home.

He looked at her, appraisingly, from head to foot, in such a way that she felt his gaze had stripped her.

"You know what I want. You know what I'm going to get ... some day," he purred in his slow, feline way.

She pushed from her mind a growing apprehension.

"Father and Fergus--if you want them--"

"Have I said I wanted them?" he asked. "They're out in the woods trappin'. I'm not lookin' for them. The two of us'll be company for each other."

"Go," she said, anger flaring at his insolence. "Go. You've no business here."

"I'm not here for business, but for pleasure, my dear."

The cold, fishy eyes in his white face gloated. Suddenly she wanted to scream and pushed back the desire scornfully. If she did, nobody would hear her. This had to be fought out one to one.

"Why didn't you knock?" she demanded.

"We'll say I did and that you didn't hear me," he answered suavely. "What's it matter among friends anyhow?"

"What do you want?" By sheer will power she kept her voice low.

"Your mother's over at the house. I dropped in to say she'll probably stay all night."

"Is your wife worse?"

He lifted the black brows that contrasted so sharply with the pallor of the face. "Really you get ahead of me, my dear. I don't recall ever getting married."

"That's a hateful thing to say," she flamed, and bit her lower lip with small white teeth to keep from telling the squaw-man what she thought of him. The Cree girl he had taken to wife was going down into the Valley of the Shadow to bear him a child while he callously repudiated her.

He opened his fur coat and came to the fireplace. "I can say nicer things--to the right girl," he said, and looked meaningly at her.

"I'll have to go get Susie Lemoine to stay with me," Jessie said hurriedly. "I didn't know Mother wasn't coming home."

She made a move toward a fur lying across the back of a chair.

He laid a hand upon her arm. "What's your rush? What are you dodgin' for, girl? I'm good as Susie to keep the goblins from gettin you."

"Don't touch me." Her eyes sparked fire.

"You're mighty high-heeled for a nitchie. I reckon you forget you're Sleeping Dawn, daughter of a Blackfoot squaw."

"I'm Jessie McRae, daughter of Angus, and if you insult me, you'll have to settle with him."

He gave a short snort of laughter. "Wake up, girl. What's the use of foolin' yourself? You're a breed. McRae's tried to forget it and so have you. But all the time you know damn well you're half Injun."

Jessie looked at him with angry contempt, then wheeled for the door.

Whaley had anticipated that and was there before her. His narrowed, covetous eyes held her while one hand behind his back slid the bolt into place.

"Let me out!" she cried.

"Be reasonable. I'm not aimin' to hurt you."

"Stand aside and let me through."

He managed another insinuating laugh. "Have some sense. Quit ridin' that high horse and listen while I talk to you."

But she was frightened by this time as much as she was incensed. A drum of dread was beating in her panicky heart. She saw in his eyes what she had never before seen on a face that looked into hers--though she was to note it often in the dreadful days that followed--the ruthless appetite of a wild beast crouching for its kill."

"Let me go! Let me go!" Her voice was shrilly out of control. "Unbar the door, I tell you!"

"I'm a big man in this country. Before I'm through. I'll be head chief among the trappers for hundreds of miles. I'm offerin' you the chance of a lifetime. Throw in with me and you'll ride in your coach at Winnipeg some day." Voice and words were soft and smooth, but back of them Jessie felt the panther couched for its spring.

She could only repeat her demand, in a cry that reached its ictus in a sob.

"If you're dreamin' about that red-coat spy--hopin' he'll marry you after he's played fast and loose with you--why, forget such foolishness. I know his kind. When he's had his fling, he'll go back to his own people and settle down. He's lookin' for a woman, not a wife."

"That's a lie!" she flung out, rage for the moment in ascendent. "Open that door or I'll--"

Swiftly his hand shot forward and caught her wrist. "What'll you do?" he asked, and triumph rode in his eyes.

She screamed. One of his hands clamped down over her mouth, the other went round her waist and drew the slim body to him. She fought, straining from him, throwing back her head in another lifted shriek for help.

As well she might have matched her strength with a buffalo bull. He was still under forty, heavy-set, bones packed with heavy muscles. It seemed to her that all the power of her vital youth vanished and left only limp and flaccid weakness. He snatched her close and kissed the dusky eyes, the soft cheeks, the colorful lips....

She became aware that he was holding her from him, listening. There was a crash of wood.

Again her call for help rang out.

Whaley flung her from him. He crouched, every nerve and muscle tense, lips drawn back in a snarl. She saw that in his hand there was a revolver.

Against the door a heavy weight was hurled. The wood burst into splinters as the bolt shot from the socket. Drunkenly a man plunged across the threshold, staggering from the impact of the shock.

CHAPTER XVIII

A GUN ROARS

The two men glared at each other, silently, their faces distorted to gargoyles in the leaping and uncertain light. Wary, vigilant, tense, they faced each other as might jungle tigers waiting for the best moment to attack.

There was a chance for the situation to adjust itself without bloodshed. Whaley could not afford to kill and Morse had no desire to force his hand.

Jessie's fear outran her judgment. She saw the menace of the revolver trained on her rescuer and thought the gambler was about to fire. She leaped for the weapon, and so precipitated what she dreaded.

The gun roared. A bullet flew past Morse and buried itself in a log. Next instant, clinging with both hands to Whaley's wrist, Jessie found herself being tossed to and fro as the man struggled to free his arm. Flung at a tangent against the wall, she fell at the foot of the couch where Fergus slept.

Again the blaze and roar of the revolver filled the room. Morse plunged head down at his enemy, still carrying the log he had used as a battering-ram. It caught the gambler at that point of the stomach known as the solar plexus. Whaley went down and out of consciousness like an ox that has been pole-axed.

Tom picked up the revolver and dropped it into the pocket of his fur coat. He stooped to make sure that his foe was beyond the power of doing damage. Then he lifted Jessie from the corner where she lay huddled.

"Hurt?" he asked.

The girl shuddered. "No. Is he--is he killed?"

"Wind knocked out of him. Nothing more."

"He didn't hit you?"

There was the ghost of a smile in his eyes. "No, I hit him."

"He was horrid. I--I--" Again a little shiver ran through her body. She felt very weak at the knees and caught for a moment at the lapel of his coat to steady herself. Neither of them was conscious of the fact that she was in his arms, clinging to him while she won back self-control.

"It's all right now. Don't worry. Lucky I came back to show Blandoine which furs to take."

"If you hadn't--" She drew a ragged breath that was half a sob.

Morse loved her the more for the strain of feminine hysteria that made her for the moment a soft and tender child to be comforted. He had known her competent, savage, disdainful, one in whom vital and passionate life flowed quick. He had never before seen the weakness in her reaching out to strength. That by sheer luck it was his power to which she clung filled him with deep delight.

He began to discount his joy lest she do it instead. His arm fell away from her waist.

"I 'most wrecked the house," he said with a humorous glance at the door. "I don't always bring one o' the walls with me when I come into a room."

"He bolted the door," she explained rather needlessly. "He wouldn't let me out."

"I heard you call," he answered, without much more point.

She glanced at the man lying on the floor. "You don't think he might be--" She stopped, unwilling to use the word.

Tom knelt beside him and felt his heart.

"It's beating," he said. And added quickly, "His eyes are open."

It was true. The cold, fishy eyes had flickered open and were taking stock of the situation. The gambler instantly chose his line of defense. He spoke, presently.

"What in the devil was bitin' you, Morse? Just because I was jokin' the girl, you come rampagin' in and knock me galley west with a big club. I'll not stand for that. Soon as I'm fit to handle myself, you and I'll have a settlement."

"Get up and get out," ordered the younger man.

"When I get good and ready. Don't try to run on me, young fellow. Some other fools have found that dangerous."

Whaley sat up, groaned, and pressed his hands upon the abdomen at the point where he had been struck.

The reddish-brown glint in the eyes of Morse advertised the cold rage of the Montanan. He caught the gambler by the collar and pulled him to his feet.

"Get out, you yellow wolf!" he repeated in a low, savage voice.

The white-faced trader was still wobbly on his feet. He felt both sore and sick at the pit of his stomach, in no mood for any further altercation with this hard-hitting athlete. But he would not go without saving his face.

"I don't know what business you've got to order me out--unless--" His gaze included the girl for a moment, and the insult of his leer was unmistakable.

Morse caught him by the scruff of the neck, ran him out of the room, and flung him down the steps into the road. The gambler tripped on the long buffalo coat he was wearing and rolled over in the snow. Slowly he got to his feet and locked eyes with the other.

Rage almost choked his words. "You'll be sorry for this one o' these days, Morse. I'll get you right. Nobody has ever put one over on Poker Whaley and nobody ever will. Don't forget that."

Tom Morse wasted no words. He stood silently on the steps, a splendid, supple figure of menacing power, and watched his foe pass down the road. There was in him a cruel and passionate desire to take the gambler and break him with his hands, to beat him till he crawled away a weak and wounded creature fit for a hospital. He clamped his teeth hard and fought down the impulse.

Presently he turned and walked slowly back into the house. His face was still set and his hands clenched. He knew that if Whaley had hurt Jessie, he would have killed him with his naked fingers.

"You can't stay here. Where do you want me to take you?" he asked, and his cold hardness reminded her of the Tom Morse who had led her to the whip one other night.

She did not know that inside he was a caldron of emotion and that it was only by freezing himself he could keep down the volcanic eruption.

"I'll go to Susie Lemoine's," she said in a small, obedient voice.

With his hands in his pockets he stood and let he find a fur coat and slip into it. He had a sense of frustration. He wanted to let go of himself and tell all that was in his torrid heart. Instead, he encased himself in ice and drove her farther from him.

They walked down the road side by side, neither of them speaking. She too was a victim of chaotic feeling. It would be long before she could forget how he had broken through the door and saved her.

But she could not find the words to tell him so. They parted at the door of Lemoine's cabin with a chill "Good-night" that left them both unhappy and dissatisfied.

CHAPTER XIX

"D'YOU WONDER SHE HATES ME?"

To Morse came Angus McRae with the right hand of friendship the day after the battle in the log house.

Eyes blue as Highland lochs fastened to those of the fur-trader. "Lad, I canna tell ye what's in my heart. 'The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.'"

Tom, embarrassed, made light of the affair. "Lucky I was Johnnie-on-the-Spot."

The old Scot shook his head. "No luck sent ye back to hear the skreigh o' the lass, but the whisper of the guid Father withoot whose permission not even a sparrow falls to the ground. He chose you as the instrument. I'll never be forgettin' what you did for my dawtie, Tom Morse. Jess will have thankit you, but I add mine to hers."

In point of fact Jessie had not thanked him in set words. She had been in too great an agitation of spirit to think of it. But Morse did not say so.

"Oh, that's all right. Any one would have done it. Mighty glad I was near enough. Hope she doesn't feel any worse for the shock."

"Not a bit. I'm here to ask ye to let bygones be bygones. I've nursed a grudge, but, man, it's clean, washed oot o' my heart. Here's my hand, if you'll tak it."

Tom did, gladly. He discovered at the same moment that the sun was striking sparks of light from a thousand snow crystals. It was a good world, if one only looked for the evidence of it.

"The latchstring is always oot for you at the hame of Angus McRae. Will you no' drap in for a crack the nicht?" asked the trapper.

"Not to-night. Sometime. I'll see." Tom found himself in the position of one who finds open to him a long-desired pleasure and is too shy to avail himself of it immediately. "Have you seen Whaley yet to-day?" he asked, to turn the subject.

The hunter's lip grew straight and grim. "I have not. He's no' at the store. The clerk says a messenger called for him early this mornin' and he left the clachan at once. Will he be hidin' oot, do you think?"

Tom shook his head. "Not Whaley. He'll bluff it through. The fellow's not yellow. Probably he'll laugh it off and say he was only stealin' a kiss an' that Miss Jessie was silly to make a fuss about it."

"We'll let it go at that--after I've told him publicly what I think o' him."

Where Whaley had been nobody in Faraway knew. When he returned at sunset, he went direct to the store and took off his snowshoes. He was knocking the packed and frozen slush from them at the moment Angus McRae confronted him.

The trader laughed, from the lips, just as Tom had prophesied he would do. "I reckon I owe you an apology, McRae," he said. "That li'l' wild-cat of yours lost her head when I jollied her and Morse broke the door down like the jackass he is."

The dressing-down that Angus McRae gave Whaley is still remembered by one or two old-timers in the Northwest. In crisp, biting words he freed his mind without once lapsing into profanity. He finished with a warning. "Tak tent you never speak to the lass again, or you an' me'll come to grips."

The storekeeper heard him out, a sneering smile on his white face. Inside, he raged with furious anger, but he did not let his feelings come to the surface. He was a man who had the patience to wait for his vengeance. The longer it was delayed, the heavier would it be. A characteristic of his cold, callous temperament was that he took fire slowly, but, once lit, his hate endured like peat coals in a grate. A vain man, his dignity was precious to him. He writhed at the defeat Morse had put upon him, at his failure with Jessie, at the scornful public rebuke of her father. Upon all three of these some day he would work a sweet revenge. Like all gamblers, he followed hunches. Soon, one of these told him, his chance would come. When it did he would make all three of them sweat blood.

Beresford met Tom Morse later in the day. He cocked a whimsical eye at the fur-trader.

"I hear McRae's going to sue you for damages to his house," he said.

"Where did you hear all that?" asked his friend, apparently busy inspecting a half-dozen beaver furs.

"And Whaley, for damages to his internal machinery. Don't you know you can't catapult through a man's tummy with a young pine tree and not injure his physical geography?" the constable reproached.

"When you're through spoofin' me, as you subjects of the Queen call it," suggested Tom.

"Why, then, I'll tell you to keep an eye on Whaley. He doesn't love you a whole lot for what you did, and he's liable to do you up first chance he gets."

"I'm not lookin' for trouble, but if Whaley wants a fight--"

"He doesn't--not your kind of a fight. His idea will be to have you foul before he strikes. Walk with an eye in the back of your head. Sleep with it open, Don't sit at windows after lamps are lit--not without curtains all down. Play all your cards close." The red-coat spoke casually, slapping his boot with a small riding-switch. He was smiling. None the less Tom knew he was in dead earnest.

"Sounds like good advice. I'll take it," the trader said easily. "Anything more on your chest?"

"Why, yes. Where did Whaley go to-day? What called him out of town on a hurry-up trip of a few hours?"

"Don't know. Do you?"

"No, but I'm a good guesser."

"Meanin'?"

"Bully West. Holed up somewhere out in the woods. A fellow came in this morning and got Whaley, who snowshoed back with him at once."

Tom nodded agreement. "Maybeso. Whaley was away five or six hours. That means he probably traveled from eight to ten miles out."

"Question is, in what direction? Nobody saw him go or come--at least, so as to know that he didn't circle round the town and come in from the other side."

"He'll go again, with supplies for West. Watch him."

"I'll do just that."

"He might send some one with them."

"Yes, he might do that," admitted Beresford. "I'll keep an eye on the store and see what goes out. We want West. He's a cowardly murderer--killed the man who trusted him--shot him in the back. This country will be well rid of him when he's hanged for what he did to poor Tim Kelly."

"He's a rotten bad lot, but he's dangerous. Never forget that," warned the fur-buyer. "If he ever gets the drop on you for a moment, you're gone."

"Of course we may be barking up the wrong tree," the officer reflected aloud. "Maybe West isn't within five hundred miles of here. Maybe he headed off another way. But I don't think it. He had to get back to where he was known so as to get an outfit. That meant either this country or Montana. And the word is that he was seen coming this way both at Slide Out and crossing Old Man's River after he made his getaway."

"He's likely figurin' on losin' himself in the North woods."

"My notion, too. Say, Tom, I have an invitation from a young lady for you and me. I'm to bring you to supper, Jessie McRae says. To-night. Venison and sheep pemmican--and real plum pudding, son. You're to smoke the pipe of peace with Angus and warm yourself in the smiles of Miss Jessie and Matapi-Koma. How's the programme suit you?"

Tom flushed. "I don't reckon I'll go," he said after a moment's deliberation.

His friend clapped an affectionate hand on his shoulder. "Cards down, old fellow. Spill the story of this deadly feud between you and Jessie and I'll give you an outside opinion on it."

The Montanan looked at him bleakly. "Haven't you heard? If you haven't, you're the only man in this country that hasn't."

"You mean--about the whipping?" Beresford asked gently.

"That's all," Morse answered bitterly. "Nothing a-tall. I merely had her horsewhipped. You wouldn't think any girl would object to that, would you?"

"I'd like to hear the right of it. How did it happen?"

"The devil was in me, I reckon. We were runnin' across the line that consignment of whiskey you found and destroyed near Whoop-Up. She came on our camp one night, crept up, and smashed some barrels. I caught her. She fought like a wild-cat." Morse pulled up the sleeve of his coat and showed a long, ragged scar on the arm. "Gave me that as a lil' souvenir to remember her by. You see, she was afraid I'd take her back to camp. So she fought. You know West. I wouldn't have taken her to him."

"What did you do?"

"After I got her down, we came to terms. I was to take her to McRae's camp and she was to be horsewhipped by him. My arm was hurtin' like sin, and I was thinkin' her only a wild young Injun."

"So you took her home?"

"And McRae flogged her. You know him. He's Scotch--and thorough. It was a sickening business. When he got through, he was white as snow. I felt like a murderer. D'you wonder she hates me?"

Beresford's smile was winning. "Is it because she hates you that she wants you to come to supper to-night?"

"It's because she's in debt to me--or thinks she is, for of course she isn't--and wants to pay it and get rid of it as soon as she can. I tell you, Win, she couldn't bear to touch my hand when she gave me the key to the storehouse the other night--laid it down on the table for me to pick up. It has actually become physical with her. She'd shudder if I touched her. I'm not going to supper there. Why should I take advantage of a hold I have on her generosity? No, I'll not go."

And from that position Beresford could not move him.

After supper the constable found a chance to see Jessie alone. She was working over the last touches of the gun-case.

"When it's finished who gets it?" he asked, sitting down gracefully on the arm of a big chair.

She flashed a teasing glance at him. "Who do you think deserves it?"

"I deserve it," he assured her at once. "But it isn't the deserving always who get the rewards in this world. Very likely you'll give it to some chap like Tom Morse."

"Who wouldn't come to supper when we asked him." She lifted steady, inquiring eyes. "What was the real reason he didn't come?"

"Said he couldn't get away from the store because--"

"Yes, I heard that. I'm asking for the real reason, Win."

He gave it. "Tom thinks you hate him and he won't force himself on your generosity."

"Oh!" She seemed to be considering that.

"Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Hate him."

She felt a flush burning beneath the dusky brown of her cheeks. "If you knew what he'd done to me--"

"Perhaps I do," he said, very gently.

Her dark eyes studied him intently. "He told you?"

"No, one hears gossip. He hates himself because of it. Tom's white, Jessie."

"And I'm Indian. Of course that does make a difference. If he'd had a white girl whipped, you couldn't defend him," she flamed.

"You know I didn't mean that, little pal." His sunny smile was disarming. "What I mean is that he's sorry for what he did. Why not give him a chance to be friends?"

"Well, we gave him a chance to-night, didn't we? And he chose not to take it. What do you want me to do--go and thank him kindly for having me whipped?"

Beresford gave up with a shrug. He knew when he had said enough. Some day the seed he had dropped might germinate.

"Wouldn't it be a good idea to work a W.B. on that case?" he asked with friendly impudence. "Then if I lost it, whoever found it could return it."

"I don't give presents to people who lose them," she parried.

Her dancing eyes were very bright as they met his. She loved the trim lines of his clean beautiful youth and the soul expressed by them.

Matapi-Koma waddled into the room and the Mounted Policeman transferred his attention to her. She weighed two hundred twelve pounds, but was not sensitive on the subject. Beresford claimed anxiously that she was growing thin.

The Indian woman merely smiled on him benignantly. She liked him, as all women did. And she hoped that he would stay in the country and marry Sleeping Dawn.

CHAPTER XX

ONISTAH READS SIGN

McRae fitted Jessie's snowshoes.

"You'll be hame before the dark, lass," he said, a little anxiously.

"Yes, Father."

The hunter turned to Onistah. "She's in your care, lad. Gin the weather changes, or threatens to, let the traps go and strike for the toon. You're no' to tak chances."

"Back assam weputch (very early)," promised the Blackfoot.

He was proud of the trust confided to him. To him McRae was a great man. Among many of the trappers and the free traders the old Scot's word was law. They came to him with their disputes for settlement and abided by his decisions. For Angus was not only the patriarch of the clan, if such a loose confederation of followers could be called a clan; he was esteemed for his goodness and practical common sense.

Onistah's heart swelled with an emotion that was more than vanity. His heart filled with gladness that Jessie should choose him as guide and companion to snowshoe with her out into the white forests where her traps were set. For the young Indian loved her dumbly, without any hope of reward, in much the same way that some of her rough soldiers must have loved Joan of Arc. Jessie was a mistress whose least whim he felt it a duty to obey. He had worshiped her ever since he had seen her, a little eager warm-hearted child, playing in his mother's wigwam. She was as much beyond his reach as the North Star. Yet her swift tender smile was for him just as it was for Fergus.

They shuffled out of the village into the forest that crept up to the settlement on all sides. Soon they were deep in its shadows, pushing along the edge of a muskeg which they skirted carefully in order not to be hampered by its treacherous boggy footing.

Jessie wore a caribou-skin capote with the fur on as a protection against the cold wind. Her moccasins were of smoked moose-skin decorated with the flower-pattern bead embroidery so much in use among the French half-breeds of the North. The socks inside them were of duffle and the leggings of strouds, both materials manufactured for the Hudson's Bay Company for its trappers.

The day was comparatively warm, but the snow was not slushy nor very deep. None the less she was glad when they reached the trapping ground and Onistah called a halt for dinner. She was tired, from the weight of the snow on her shoes, and her feet were blistered by reason of the lacings which cut into the duffle and the tender flesh inside.

Onistah built a fire of poplar, which presently crackled like a battle front and shot red-hot coals at them in an irregular fusillade. Upon this they made tea, heated pemmican and bannocks, and thawed a jar of preserves Jessie had made the previous summer of service berries and wild raspberries. Before it they dried their moccasins, socks, and leggings.

Afterward they separated to make a round of the traps, agreeing to meet an hour and a half later at the place of their dinner camp.

The Blackfoot found one of the small traps torn to pieces, probably by a bear, for he saw its tracks in the snow. He rebuilt the snare and baited it with parts of a rabbit he had shot. In one trap he discovered a skunk and in another a timber wolf. When he came in sight of the rendezvous, he was late.

Jessie was not there. He waited half an hour in growing anxiety before he went to meet her. Night would fall soon. He must find her while it was still light enough to follow her tracks. The disasters that might have fallen upon her crowded his mind. A bear might have attacked her. She might be lost or tangled in the swampy muskeg. Perhaps she had accidentally shot herself.

As swiftly as he could he snowshoed through the forest, following the plain trail she had left. It carried him to a trap from which she had taken prey, for it was newly baited and the snow was sprinkled with blood. Before he reached the second gin, the excitement in him quickened. Some one in snowshoes had cut her path and had deflected to pursue. Onistah knew that the one following was a white man. The points of the shoes toed out. Crees toed in, just the same on webs as in moccasins.

His imagination was active. What white man had any business in these woods? Why should he leave that business to overtake Jessie McRae? Onistah did not quite know why he was worried, but involuntarily he quickened his pace.

Less than a quarter of a mile farther on, he read another chapter of the story written in the trampled snow. There had been a struggle. His mistress had been overpowered. He could see where she had been flung into a white bank and dragged out of it. She had tried to run and had got hardly a dozen yards before recapture. From that point the tracks moved forward in a straight line, those of the smaller webs blotted out by the ones made by the larger. The man was driving the girl before him.

Who was he? Where was he taking her? For what purpose? Onistah could not guess. He knew that McRae had made enemies, as any forceful character on the frontier must. The Scotchman had kicked out lazy ne'er-do-wells from his camp. As a free trader he had matched himself against the Hudson's Bay Company. But of those at war with him few would stoop to revenge themselves on his daughter. The Blackfoot had not heard of the recent trouble between Whaley and the McRaes, nor had the word reached him that Bully West was free again. Wherefore he was puzzled at what the signs on the snow told him.

Yet he knew he had read them correctly. The final proof of it to him was that Jessie broke trail and not the man. If he were a friend he would lead the way. He was at her heels because he wanted to make sure that she did not try to escape or to attack him.

The tracks led down into the muskeg. It was spitting snow, but he had no difficulty in seeing where the trail led from hummock to hummock in the miry earth. The going here was difficult, for the thick moss was full of short, stiff brush that caught the webbed shoes and tripped the traveler. It was hard to find level footing. The mounds were uneven, and more than once Onistah plunged knee-deep from one into the swamp.

He crossed the muskeg and climbed an ascent into the woods, swinging sharply to the right. There was no uncertainty as to the direction of the tracks in the snow. If they veered for a few yards, it was only to miss a tree or to circle down timber. Whoever he might be, the man who had taken Jessie prisoner knew exactly where he was going.

The Blackfoot knew by the impressions of the webs that he was a large, heavy man. Once or twice he saw stains of tobacco juice on the snow. The broken bits of a whiskey-bottle flung against a tree did not tend to reassure him.

He saw smoke. It came from a tangle of undergrowth in a depression of the forest. Very cautiously, with the patience of his race, he circled round the cabin through the timber and crept up to it on hands and knees. Every foot of the way he took advantage of such cover as was to be had.

The window was a small, single-paned affair built in the end opposite the door. Onistah edged close to it and listened. He heard the drone of voices, one heavy and snarling, another low and persuasive.

His heart jumped at the sound of a third voice, a high-pitched treble. He would have known it among a thousand. It had called to him in the swirl of many a wind-swept storm. He had heard it on the long traverse, in the stillness of the lone night, at lakeside camps built far from any other human being. His imagination had heard it on the summer breeze as he paddled across a sun-drenched lake in his birch-bark canoe.

The Blackfoot raised his head till he could look through the window.

Jessie McRae sat on a stool facing him. Two men were in the room. One strode heavily up and down while the other watched him warily.

CHAPTER XXI

ON THE FRONTIER OF DESPAIR

The compulsion of life had denied Jessie the niceness given girls by the complexities of modern civilization. She had been brought up close to raw stark nature. The habits of animals were familiar to her and the vices of the biped man.

A traveler in the sub-Arctic is forced by the deadly cold of the North into a near intimacy of living with his fellows. Jessie had more than once taken a long sled journey with her father. On one occasion she had slept in a filthy Indian wigwam with a dozen natives all breathing the same foul, unventilated air. Again she had huddled up against the dogs, with her father and two French half-breeds, to keep in her the spark of life a blizzard's breath was trying to blow out.

On such a trip some of the common decencies of existence are dropped. The extreme low temperature makes it impossible for one to wash either face or hands without the skin chapping and breaking. Food at which one would revolt under other circumstances is devoured eagerly.

Jessie was the kind of girl such a life had made her, with modifications in the direction of fineness induced by McRae's sturdy character, her schooling at Winnipeg, and the higher plane of the family standard. As might have been expected, she had courage, energy, and that quality of decisive action bred by primitive conditions.

But she had retained, too, a cleanness of spirit hardly to be looked for in such a primeval daughter of Eve. Her imagination and her reading had saved the girl's sweet modesty. A certain detachment made it possible for her to ignore the squalor of the actual and see it only as a surface triviality, to let her mind dwell in inner concepts of goodness and beauty while bestiality crossed the path she trod.

So when she found in one of the gins a lynx savage with the pain of bruised flesh and broken bone snapped by the jaws of the trap, the girl did what needed to be done swiftly and with a minimum of reluctance.

She was close to the second trap when the sound of webs slithering along the snow brought her up short. Her first thought was that Onistah had changed his mind and followed her, but as soon as the snowshoer came out of the thick timber, she saw that he was not an Indian.

He was a huge man, and he bulked larger by reason of the heavy furs that enveloped him. His rate of travel was rapid enough, but there was about the gait an awkward slouch that reminded her of a grizzly. Some sullenness of temperament seemed to find expression in the fellow's movements.

The hood of his fur was drawn well forward over the face. He wore blue glasses, as a protection against snow-blindness apparently. Jessie smiled, judging him a tenderfoot; for except in March and April there is small danger of the sun glare which destroys sight. Yet he hardly looked like a newcomer to the North. For one thing he used the web shoes as an expert does. Before he stopped beside her, she was prepared to revise a too hasty opinion.

Jessie recoiled at the last moment, even before she recognized him. It was too late to take precautions now. He caught her by the wrist and tore off his glasses, at the same time shaking back the hood.

"Glad to death to meet up with you, missie," he grinned evilly through broken, tobacco-stained teeth.

The blood drenched out of her heart. She looked at the man, silent and despairing. His presence here could mean to her nothing less than disaster. The girl's white lips tried to frame words they could not utter.

"Took by surprise, ain't you?" he jeered. "But plumb pleased to see old Bully West again, eh? It's a damn long lane that ain't got a crook in it somewheres. An' here we are at the turn together, jus' you'n' me, comfy, like I done promised it would be when I last seen you."

She writhed in a swift, abortive attempt to break his hold.

He threw back his head in a roar of laughter, then with a twist of his fingers brought his captive to the knees.

Sharp teeth flashed in a gleam of white. He gave a roar of pain and tore away his hand. She had bit him savagely in the wrist, as she had once done with another man on a memorable occasion.

"Goddlemighty!" he bellowed. "You damn li'l' hell-cat!"

She was on her feet and away instantly. But one of the snowshoes had come off in the struggle. At each step she took the left foot plunged through the white crust and impeded progress.

In a dozen strides he had reached her. A great arm swung round and buffeted the runner on the side of the head. The blow lifted the girl from her feet and flung her into a drift two yards away.

She looked up, dazed from the shock. The man was standing over her, a huge, threatening, ill-shaped Colossus.

"Get up!" he ordered harshly, and seized her by the shoulder.

She found herself on her feet, either because she had risen or because he had jerked her up. A ringing in the head and a nausea made for dizziness.

"I'll learn you!" he exploded with curses. "Try that again an' I'll beat yore head off. You're Bully West's woman, un'erstand? When I say 'Come!' step lively. When I say 'Go!' get a move on you."

"I'll not." Despite her fear she faced him with spirit. "My friends are near. They'll come and settle, with you for this."

He put a check on his temper. Very likely what she said was true. It was not reasonable to suppose that she was alone in the forest many miles from Faraway. She had come, of course, to look at the traps, but some one must have accompanied her. Who? And how many? The skulking caution of his wild-beast nature asserted itself. He had better play safe. Time enough to tame the girl when he had her deep in the Lone Lands far from any other human being except himself. Just now the first need was to put many miles between them and the inevitable pursuit.

"Come," he said. "We'll go."

She started back for the snowshoe that had been torn off. Beside it lay her rifle. If she could get hold of it again--

The great hulk moved beside her, his thumb and fingers round the back of her neck. Before they reached the weapon, he twisted her aside so cruelly that a flame of pain ran down her spine. She cried out.

He laughed as he stooped for the gun and the web. "Don' play none o' yore monkey tricks on Bully West. He knew it all 'fore you was born."

The pressure of his grip swung Jessie to the left. He gave her a push that sent her reeling and flung at her the snowshoe.

"Hump yoreself now."

She knelt and adjusted the web. She would have fought if there had been the least chance of success. But there was none. Nor could she run away. The fellow was a callous, black-hearted ruffian. He would shoot her down rather than see her escape. If she became stubborn and refused to move, he would cheerfully torture her until she screamed with agony. There was nothing he would like better. No, for the present she must take orders.

"Hit the trail, missie. Down past that big tree," he snapped.

"Where are you taking me?"

"Don't ask me questions. Do like I tell you."

The girl took one look at his heavy, brutal face and did as she was told. Onistah would find her. When she did not show up at the rendezvous, he would follow her trail and discover that something was amiss. Good old Onistah never had failed her. He was true as tried steel and in all the North woods there was no better tracker.

There would be a fight. If West saw him first, he would shoot the Blackfoot at sight. She did not need to guess that. He would do it for two reasons. The first was the general one that he did not want any of her friends to know where he was. The more specific one was that he already had a grudge against the young Indian that he would be glad to pay once for all.

Jessie's one hope was that Onistah would hasten to the rescue. Yet she dreaded the moment of his coming. He was a gentle soul, one of Father Giguère's converts. It was altogether likely that he would walk into the camp of the escaped convict openly and become a victim of the murderer's guile. Onistah did not lack courage. He would fight if he had to do so. Indeed, she knew that he would go through fire to save her. But bravery was not enough. She could almost have wished that her foster-brother was as full of devilish treachery as the huge ape-man slouching at her heels. Then the chances of the battle would be more even.

The desperado drove her down into the muskeg, directing the girl's course with a flow of obscene and ribald profanity.

It is doubtful if she heard him. As her lithe, supple limbs carried her from one moss hump to another, she was busy with the problem of escape. She must get away soon. Every hour increased the danger. The sun would sink shortly. If she were still this ruffian's prisoner when the long Arctic night fell, she would suffer the tortures of the damned. She faced the fact squarely, though her cheeks blanched at the prospect and the heart inside her withered.

From the sloping side of a hummock her foot slipped and she slid into the icy bog to her knees. Within a few minutes duffles and leggings were frozen and she was suffering at each step.

Out of the muskeg they came into the woods. A flake of snow fell on Jessie's cheek and chilled her blood. For she knew that if it came on to snow before Onistah took the trail or even before he reached the place to which West was taking her, the chances of a rescue would be very much diminished. A storm would wipe out the tracks they had made.

"Swing back o' the rock and into the brush," West growled. Then, as she took the narrow trail through the brush that had grown up among half a dozen small down trees, he barked a question: "Whadjasay yore Injun name was?"

"My name is Jessie McRae," she answered with a flash of angry pride. "You know who I am--the daughter of Angus McRae. And if you do me any harm, he'll hunt you down and kill you like a wolf."

He caught her by the arm and whirled the girl round. His big yellow canines snapped like tusks and he snarled at her through clenched jaws. "Did you hear yore master's voice? I said, what was yore squaw name?"

She almost shrieked from the pain of his fingers' savage clutch into her flesh. The courage died out of her arteries.

"Sleeping Dawn they called me."

"Too long," he pronounced. "I'll call you Dawn." The sight of her terror of him, the foretaste of the triumph he was to enjoy, restored him for a moment to a brutal good-humor. "An' when I yell 'Dawn' at you o' mornin's, it'll be for you to hump yoreself an' git up to build the fires and rustle breakfast. I'll treat you fine if you behave, but if you git sulky, you'll taste the dog-whip. I'm boss. You'll have a heluva time if you don't come runnin' when I snap my fingers. Un'erstand?"

She broke down in a wailing appeal to whatever good there was in him. "Let me go back to Father! I know you've broke prison. If you're good to me, he'll help you escape. You know he has friends everywhere. They'll hide you from the red-coats. He'll give you an outfit to get away--money--anything you want. Oh, let me go, and--and--"

He grinned, and the sight of his evil mirth told her she had failed.

"Didn't I tell you I'd git you right some day? Didn't I promise Angus McRae I'd pay him back aplenty for kickin' me outa his hide camp? Ain't you the lil' hell-cat that busted my whiskey-kegs, that ran to the red-coat spy an' told him where the cache was, that shot me up when I set out to dry-gulch him, as you might say? Where do you figure you got a license to expect Bully West to listen to Sunday-school pap about being good to you? You're my squaw, an' lucky at that you got a real two-fisted man. Hell's hinges! What's eatin' you?"

"Never!" she cried. "It's true what I told you once. I'd rather die. Oh, if you've got a spark of manhood in you, don't make me kill myself. I'm just a girl. If I ever did you wrong, I'm sorry. I'll make it right. My father--"

"Listen." His raucous voice cut through her entreaties. "I've heard more'n plenty about McRae. All I want o' him is to get a bead on him once with a rifle. Get me? Now this other talk--about killin' yoreself--nothin' to it a-tall. Go to it if tha's how you feel. Yore huntin'-knife's right there in yore belt." He reached forward and plucked it from its sheath, then handed it to her blade first, stepping back a pace at once to make sure she did not use it on him. "You got yore chance now. Kill away. I'll stand right here an' see nobody interferes with you."

She shifted the knife and gripped the handle. A tumult seethed in her brain. She saw nothing but that evil, grinning face, hideous and menacing. For a moment murder boiled up in her, red-hot and sinister. If she could kill him now as he stood jeering at her--drive the blade into that thick bull neck....

The madness passed. She could not do it even if it were within her power. The urge to kill was not strong enough. It was not overwhelming. And in the next thought she knew, too, that she could not kill herself either. The blind need to live, the animal impulse of self-preservation, at whatever cost, whatever shame, was as yet more powerful than the horror of the fate impending.

She flung the knife down into the snow in a fury of disgust and self-contempt.

His head went back in a characteristic roar of revolting mirth. He had won. Bully West knew how to conquer 'em, no matter how wild they were.

With feet dragging, head drooped, and spirits at the zero hour, Jessie moved down a ravine into sight of a cabin. Smoke rose from the chimney languidly.

"Home," announced West.

To the girl, at the edge of desperation, that log house appeared as the grave of her youth. All the pride and glory and joy that had made life so vital a thing were to be buried here. When next she came out into the sunlight she would be a broken creature--the property of this horrible caricature of a man.

Her captor opened the door and pushed the girl inside.

She stood on the threshold, eyes dilating, heart suddenly athrob with hope.

A man sitting on a stool before the open fire turned his head to see who had come in.

CHAPTER XXII

"MY DAMN PRETTY LI'L' HIGH-STEPPIN' SQUAW"

The man on the stool was Whaley.

One glance at the girl and one at West's triumphant gargoyle grin was enough. He understood the situation better than words could tell it.

To Jessie, at this critical moment of her life, even Whaley seemed a God-send. She pushed across the room awkwardly, not waiting to free herself of the webs packed with snow. In the dusky eyes there was a cry for help.

"Save me from him!" she cried simply, as a child might have done. "You will, won't you?"

The black eyebrows in the cold, white face drew to a line. The gambler's gaze, expressionless as a blank wall, met hers steadily.

"Why don't you send for your friend Morse?" he asked. "He's in that business. I ain't."

It was as though he had struck her in the face. The eyes that clung to his we're horror-filled. Did there really live men so heartless that they would not lift a hand to snatch a child from a ferocious wolf?

West's laughter barked out, rapacious and savage. "She's mine, jus' like I said she'd be. My damn pretty li'l' high-steppin' squaw."

His partner looked at him bleakly. "Oh, she's yours, is she?"

"You bet yore boots. I'll show her--make her eat outa my hand," boasted the convict.

"Will you show McRae too--and all his friends, as well as the North-West Mounted? Will you make 'em all eat out of your hands?"

"Whadjamean?"

"Why, I had a notion you were loaded up with trouble and didn't need to hunt more," sneered the gambler. "I had a notion the red-coats were on your heels to take you across the plains to hang you."

"I'll learn 'em about that," the huge fugitive bragged. "They say I'm a killer. Let it ride. I'll sure enough let 'em see they're good guessers."

Whaley shrugged his shoulders and looked at him with cold contempt. "You've got a bare chance for a getaway if you travel light and fast. I'd want long odds to back it," he said coolly.

"Tha's a heluva thing to tell a friend," West snarled.

"It's the truth. Take it or leave it. But if you try to bull this through your own way and don't let me run it, you're done for."

"How done for?"

The gambler did not answer. He turned to Jessie. "Unless you want your feet to freeze, you'd better get those duffles off."

The girl took off her mits and tried to unfasten the leggings after she had kicked the snowshoes from her feet. But her stiff fingers could not loosen the knots.

The free trader stooped and did it for her while West watched him sulkily. Jessie unwound the cloth and removed moccasins and duffles. She sat barefooted before the fire, but not too close.

"If they're frozen I'll get snow," Whaley offered.

"They're not frozen, thank you," she answered.

"Whadjamean done for?" repeated West.

His partner's derisive, scornful eye rested on him. "Use your brains, man. The Mounted are after you hot and heavy. You know their record. They get the man they go after. Take this fellow Beresford, the one that jugged you."

The big ruffian shook a furious fist in the air. "Curse him!" he shouted, and added a dozen crackling oaths.

"Curse him and welcome," Whaley replied. "But don't fool yourself about him. He's a go-getter. Didn't he go up Peace River after Pierre Poulette? Didn't he drag him back with cuffs on 'most a year later? That's what you've got against you, three hundred red-coats like him."

"You tryin' to scare me?" demanded West sullenly.

"I'm trying to hammer some common sense into your head. Your chance for a safe getaway rests on one thing. You've got to have friends in the Lone Lands who'll hide you till you can slip out of the country. Can you do that if the trappers--friends of McRae, nearly all of 'em--carry the word of what you did to this girl?"

"I'm gonna take her with me." West stuck doggedly to his idea. He knew what he wanted. His life was forfeit, anyhow. He might as well go through to a finish.

From where she sat before the great fire Jessie's whisper reached Whaley. "Don't let him, please." It was an ineffective little wail straight from the heart.

Whaley went on, as though he had not heard. "It's your deal, not mine. I'm just telling you. Take this girl along, and your life's not worth a plugged nickel."

"Hell's hinges! In two days she'll be crazy about me. Tha's how I am with women."

"In two days she'll hate the ground you walk on, if she hasn't killed herself or you by that time."

Waves of acute pain were pricking into Jessie's legs from the pink toes to the calves. She was massaging them to restore circulation and had to set her teeth to keep from crying.

But her subconscious mind was wholly on what passed between the men. She knew that Whaley was trying to reëstablish over the other the mental dominance he had always held. It was a frail enough tenure, no doubt, likely to be upset at any moment by vanity, suspicion, or heady gusts of passion. In it, such as it was, lay a hope. Watching the gambler's cold, impassive face, the stony look in the poker eyes, she judged him tenacious and strong-willed. For reasons of his own he was fighting her battle. He had no intention of letting West take her with him.

Why? What was the motive in the back of his mind? She acquitted the man of benevolence. If his wishes chanced to march with hers, it was because of no altruism. He held a bitter grudge against Angus McRae and incidentally against her for the humiliation of his defeat at the hands of Morse. To satisfy this he had only to walk out of the house and leave her to an ugly fate. Why did he not do this? Was he playing a deep game of his own in which she was merely a pawn?

She turned the steaming duffles over on the mud hearth to dry the other side. She drew back the moccasins and the leggings that the heat might not scorch them. The sharp pain waves still beat into her feet and up her limbs. To change her position she drew up a stool and sat on it. This she had pushed back to a corner of the fireplace.

For Bully West was straddling up and down the room, a pent volcano ready to explode. He knew Whaley's advice was good. It would be suicide to encumber himself with this girl in his flight. But he had never disciplined his desires. He wanted her. He meant to take her. Passion, the lust for revenge, the bully streak in him that gloated at the sight of some one young and fine trembling before him: all these were factors contributing to the same end. By gar, he would have what he had set his mind on, no matter what Whaley said.

Jessie knew the fellow was dangerous as a wounded buffalo bull in a corral. He would have his way if he had to smash and trample down any one that opposed him. Her eyes moved to Whaley's black-browed, bloodless face. How far would the gambler go in opposition to the other?

As her glance shifted back to West, it was arrested at the window. The girl's heart lost a beat, then sang a paean of joy. For the copper-colored face of Onistah was framed in the pane.

CHAPTER XXIII

A FORETASTE OF HELL

Jessie's eyes flew to West and to Whaley. As yet neither of them had seen the Blackfoot. She raised a hand and pretended to brush back a lock of hair.

The Indian recognized it as a signal that she had seen him. His head disappeared.

Thoughts in the girl's mind raced. If Winthrop Beresford or Tom Morse had been outside instead of Onistah, she would not have attempted to give directions. Either of them would have been more competent than she to work out the problem. But the Blackfoot lacked initiative. He would do faithfully whatever he was told to do, but any independent action attempted by him was likely to be indecisive. She could not conceive of Onistah holding his own against two such men as these except by slaughtering them from the window before they knew he was there. He had not in him sufficient dominating ego.

Whaley was an unknown quantity. It was impossible to foresee how he would accept the intrusion of Onistah. Since he was playing his own game, the chances are that he would resent it. In West's case there could be no doubt. If it was necessary to his plans, he would not hesitate an instant to kill the Indian.

Reluctantly, she made up her mind to send him back to Faraway for help. He would travel fast. Within five hours at the outside he ought to be back with her father or Beresford. Surely, with Whaley on her side, she ought to be safe till then.

She caught sight of Onistah again, his eyes level with the window-sill. He was waiting for instructions.

Jessie gave them to him straight and plain. She spoke to Whaley, but for the Blackfoot's ear.

"Bring my father here. At once. I want him. Won't you, please?"

Whaley's blank poker stare focused on her. "The last word I had from Angus McRae was to keep out of your affairs. I can take a hint without waiting for a church to fall on me. Get some one else to take your messages."

"If you're going back to town I thought--perhaps--you'd tell him how much I need him," she pleaded. "Then he'd come--right away."

Onistah's head vanished. He knew what he had to do and no doubt was already on the trail. Outside it was dark. She could hear the swirling of the wind and the beat of sleet against the window-pane. A storm was rising. She prayed it might not be a blizzard. Weather permitting, her father should be here by eight or nine o'clock.

West, straddling past, snarled at her. "Get Angus McRae outa yore head. Him an' you's come to the partin' o' the ways. You're travelin' with me now. Un'erstand?"

His partner, sneering coldly, offered a suggestion. "If you expect to travel far you'd better get your webs to hitting snow. This girl wasn't out looking at the traps all by herself. Her trail leads straight here. Her friends are probably headed this way right now."

"Tha's right." West stopped in his stride. His slow brain stalled. "What d' you reckon I better do? If there's only one or two we might--"

"No," vetoed Whaley. "Nothing like that. Your play is to get out. And keep getting out when they crowd you. No killing."

"Goddlemighty, I'm a wolf, not a rabbit. If they crowd me, I'll sure pump lead," the desperado growled. Then, "D' you mean light out to-night?"

"To-night."

"Where'll I go?"

"Porcupine Creek, I'd say. There's an old cabin there Jacques Perritot used to live in. The snow'll blot out our tracks."

"You goin' too?"

"I'll see you that far," Whaley answered briefly.

"Better bring down the dogs from the coulée, then."

The gambler looked at him with the cool insolence that characterized him. "When did I hire out as your flunkey, West?"

The outlaw's head was thrust forward and down. He glared at his partner, who met this manifestation of anger with hard eyes into which no expression crept. West was not insane enough to alienate his last ally. He drew back sullenly.

"All right. I'll go, since you're so particular." As his heavy body swung round awkwardly, the man's eyes fell on Jessie. She had lifted one small foot and was starting to pull on one of the duffle stockings. He stood a moment, gloating over the beautifully shaped ankle and lower limb, then slouched forward and snatched her up from the stool into his arms.

His savage, desirous eyes had given her an instant's warning. She was half up before his arms, massive as young trees, dragged her into his embrace.

"But before I go I'll have a kiss from my squaw," he roared. "Just to show her that Bully West has branded her and claims ownership."

She fought, fiercely, desperately, pushing against his rough bearded face and big barrel chest with all the force in her lithe young body. She was as a child to him. His triumphant laughter pealed as he crushed her warm soft trunk against his own and buried her in his opened coat. With an ungentle hand he forced round the averted head till the fear-filled eyes met his.

"Kiss yore man," he ordered.

The girl said nothing. She still struggled to escape, using every ounce of strength she possessed.

The fury of her resistance amused him. He laughed again, throwing back the heavy bristling jaw in a roar of mirth.

"Yore man--yore master," he amended.

He smothered her with his foul kisses, ravished her lips, her eyes, the soft hot cheeks, the oval of the chin, and the lovely curve of the throat. She was physically nauseated when he flung her from him against the wall and strode from the room with another horrible whoop of exultation.

She clung to the wall, panting, eyes closed. A shocking sense of degradation flooded her soul. She felt as though she were drowning in it, fathoms deep. Her lids fluttered open and she saw the gambler. He was still sitting on the stool. A mocking, cynical smile was in the eyes that met Jessie's.

"And Tom Morse--where, oh, where is he?" the man jeered.

A chill shook her. Dry sobs welled up in her throat. She was lost. For the first time she knew the cold clutch of despair at her heart. Whaley did not intend to lift a hand for her. He had sat there and let West work his will.

"Angus McRae gave me instructions aplenty," he explained maliciously. "I was to keep my hands off you. I was to mind my own business. When you see him again--if you ever do--will you tell him I did exactly as he said?"

She did not answer. What was there to say? In the cabin was no sound except that of her dry, sobbing breath.

Whaley rose and came across the room. He had thrown aside the gambler's mask of impassivity. His eyes were shining strangely.

"I'm going--now--out into the storm. What about you? If you're here when West comes back, you know what it means. Make your choice. Will you go with me or stay with him?"

"You're going home?"

"Yes." His smile was enigmatic. It carried neither warmth nor conviction.

The man had played his cards well. He had let West give her a foretaste of the hell in store for her. Anything rather than that, she thought. And surely Whaley would take her home. He was no outlaw, but a responsible citizen who must go back to Faraway to live. He had to face her father and Winthrop Beresford of the Mounted--and Tom Morse. He would not harm her. He dared not.

But she took one vain precaution. "You promise to take me to my father. You'll not--be like him." A lift of the head indicated the man who had just gone out.

"He's a fool. I'm not. That's the difference." He shrugged his shoulders. "Make your own choice. If you'd rather stay here--"

But she had made it. She was getting hurriedly into her furs and was putting on her mittens. Already she had adjusted the snowshoes.

"We'd better hurry," she urged. "He might come back."

"It'll be bad luck for him if he does," the gambler said coolly. "You ready?"

She nodded that she was.

In another moment they were out of the warm room and into the storm. The wind was coming in whistling gusts, carrying with it a fine sleet that whipped the face and stung the eyeballs. Before she had been out in the storm five minutes, Jessie had lost all sense of direction.

Whaley was an expert woodsman. He plunged into the forest, without hesitation, so surely that she felt he must know where he was going. The girl followed at his heels, head down against the blast.

Before this day she had not for months taken a long trip on webs. Leg muscles, called into use without training, were sore and stiff. In the darkness the soft snow piled up on the shoes. Each step became a drag. The lacings and straps lacerated her tender flesh till she knew her duffles were soaked with blood. More than once she dropped back so far that she lost sight of Whaley. Each time he came back with words of encouragement and good cheer.

"Not far now," he would promise. "Across a little bog and then camp. Keep coming."

Once he found her sitting on the snow, her back to a tree.

"You'd better go on alone. I'm done," she told him drearily.

He was not angry at her. Nor did he bully or browbeat.

"Tough sledding," he said gently. "But we're 'most there. Got to keep going. Can't quit now."

He helped Jessie to her feet and led the way down into a spongy morass. The brush slapped her face. It caught in the meshes of her shoes and flung her down. The miry earth, oozing over the edges of the frames, clogged her feet and clung to them like pitch.

Whaley did his best to help, but when at last she crept up to the higher ground beyond the bog every muscle ached with fatigue.

They were almost upon it before she saw a log cabin looming out of the darkness.

She sank on the floor exhausted. Whaley disappeared into the storm again. Sleepily she wondered where he was going. She must have dozed, for when her eyes next reported to the brain, there was a brisk fire of birch bark burning and her companion was dragging broken bits of dead and down timber into the house.

"Looks like she's getting her back up for a blizzard. Better have plenty of fuel in," he explained.

"Where are we?" she asked drowsily.

"Cabin on Bull Creek," he answered. "Better get off your footwear."

While she did this her mind woke to activity. Why had he brought her here? They had no food. How would they live if a blizzard blew up and snowed them in? And even if they had supplies, how could she live alone for days with this man in a cabin eight by ten?

As though he guessed what was in her mind, he answered plausibly enough one of the questions.

"No chance to reach Faraway. Too stormy. It was neck or nothing. Had to take what we could get."

"What'll we do if--if there's a blizzard?" she asked timidly.

"Sit tight."

"Without food?"

"If it lasts too long, I'll have to wait for a lull and make a try for Faraway. No use worrying. We can't help what's coming. Got to face the music."

Her eyes swept the empty cabin. No bed. No table. One home-made three-legged stool. A battered kettle. It was an uninviting prospect, even if she had not had to face possible starvation while she was caged with a stranger who might any minute develop wolfish hunger for her as he had done only forty-eight hours before.

He did not look at her steadily. His gaze was in the red glow of the fire a good deal. She talked, and he answered in monosyllables. When he looked at her, his eyes glowed with the hot red light reflected from the fire, Live coals seemed to burn in them.

In spite of the heat a little shiver ran down her spine.

Silence became too significant. She was afraid of it. So she talked, persistently, at times a little hysterically. Her memory was good. If she liked a piece of poetry, she could learn it by reading it over a few times. So, in her desperation, she "spoke pieces" to this man whose face was a gray mask, just as the girls had done at her school in Winnipeg.

Often, at night camps, she had recited for her father. If she had no dramatic talent, at least she had a sweet, clear voice, an earnestness that never ranted, and some native or acquired skill in handling inflections.

"Do you like Shakespeare?" she asked. "My father's very fond of him. I know parts of several of the plays. 'Henry V' now. That's good. There's a bit where he's talking to his soldiers before they fight the French. Would you like that?"

"Go on," he said gruffly, sultry eyes on the fire.

With a good deal of spirit she flung out the gallant lines. He began to watch her, vivid, eager, so pathetically anxious to entertain him with her small stock of wares.

"But, if it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul alive."

There was about her a quality very fine and taking. He caught it first in those two lines, and again when her full young voice swelled to English Harry's prophecy.

"And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers: For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England now abed Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

As he watched her, old memories stirred in him. He had come from a good family in the Western Reserve, where he had rough-and-tumbled up through the grades into High School. After a year here he had gone to a Catholic School, Sacred Heart College, and had studied for the priesthood. He recalled his mother, a gentle, white-haired old lady, with fond pride in him; his father, who had been the soul of honor. By some queer chance she had lit on the very lines that he had learned from the old school reader and recited before an audience the last day prior to vacation.

He woke from his reveries to discover that she was giving him Tennyson, that fragment from "Guinevere" when Arthur tells her of the dream her guilt has tarnished. And as she spoke there stirred in him the long-forgotten aspirations of his youth.

"... for indeed I knew Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden passion for a maid, Not only to keep down the base in man, But teach high thought and amiable words And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man."

His eyes were no longer impassive. There was in them, for the moment at least, a hunted, haggard look. He saw himself as he was, in a blaze of light that burned down to his very soul.

And he saw her too transformed--not a half-breed, the fair prey of any man's passion, but a clean, proud, high-spirited white girl who lived in the spirit as well as the flesh.

"You're tired. Better lie down and sleep," he told her, very gently.

Jessie looked at him, and she knew she was safe. She might sleep without fear. This man would not harm her any more than Beresford or Morse would have done. Some chemical change had occurred in his thoughts that protected her. She did not know what it was, but her paean of prayer went up to heaven in a little rush of thanksgiving.

She did not voice her gratitude to him. But the look she gave him was more expressive than words.

Out of the storm a voice raucous and profane came to them faintly.

"Ah, crapaud Wulf, pren' garde. Yeu-oh! (To the right!) Git down to it, Fox. Sacre demon! Cha! Cha! (To the left!)"

Then the crack of a whip and a volley of oaths.

The two in the cabin looked at each other. One was white to the lips. The other smiled grimly. It was the gambler that spoke their common thought.

"Bully West, by all that's holy!"

CHAPTER XXIV

WEST MAKES A DECISION

Came to those in the cabin a string of oaths, the crack of a whip lashing out savagely, and the yelps of dogs from a crouching, cowering team.

Whaley slipped a revolver from his belt to the right-hand pocket of his fur coat.

The door burst open. A man stood on the threshold, a huge figure crusted with snow, beard and eyebrows ice-matted. He looked like the storm king who had ridden the gale out of the north. This on the outside, at a first glance only. For the black scowl he flung at his partner was so deadly that it seemed to come red-hot from a furnace of hate and evil passion.

"Run to earth!" he roared. "Thought you'd hole up, you damned fox, where I wouldn't find you. Thought you'd give Bully West the slip, you'n' that li'l' hell-cat. Talk about Porcupine Creek, eh? Tried to send me mushin' over there while you'n' her--"

What the fellow said sent a hot wave creeping over the girl's face to the roots of her hair. The gambler did not speak, but his eyes, filmed and wary, never lifted from the other's bloated face.

"Figured I'd forget the ol' whiskey cache, eh? Figured you could gimme the double-cross an' git away with it? Hell's hinges, Bully West's no fool! He's forgot more'n you ever knew."

The man swaggered forward, the lash of the whip trailing across the puncheon floor. Triumph rode in his voice and straddled in his gait. He stood with his back to the fireplace absorbing heat, hands behind him and feet set wide. His eyes gloated over the victims he had trapped. Presently he would settle with both of them.

"Not a word to say for yoreselves, either one o' you," he jeered. "Good enough. I'll do what talkin' 's needed, then I'll strip the hide off'n both o' you." With a flirt of the arm he sent the lash of the dog-whip snaking out toward Jessie.

She shrank back against the wall, needlessly. It was a threat, not an attack; a promise of what was to come.

"Let her alone." They were the first words Whaley had spoken. In his soft, purring voice they carried out the suggestion of his crouched tenseness. If West was the grizzly bear, the other was the forest panther, more feline, but just as dangerous.

The convict looked at him, eyes narrowed, head thrust forward and down. "What's that?"

"I said to let her alone."

West's face heliographed amazement. "Meanin'--?"

"Meaning exactly what I say. You'll not touch her."

It was a moment before this flat defiance reached the brain of the big man through the penumbra of his mental fog. When it did, he strode across the room with the roar of a wild animal and snatched the girl to him. He would show whether any one could come between him and his woman.

In three long steps Whaley padded across the floor. Something cold and round pressed against the back of the outlaw's tough red neck.

"Drop that whip."

The order came in a low-voiced imperative. West hesitated. This man--his partner--would surely never shoot him about such a trifle. Still--

"What's eatin' you?" he growled. "Put up that gun. You ain't fool enough to shoot."

"Think that hard enough and you'll never live to know better. Hands off the girl."

The slow brain of West functioned. He had been taken wholly by surprise, but as his cunning mind Worked the situation out, he saw how much it would be to Whaley's profit to get rid of him. The gambler would get the girl and the reward for West's destruction. He would inherit his share of their joint business and would reinstate himself as a good citizen with the Mounted and with McRae's friends.

Surlily the desperado yielded. "All right, if you're so set on it."

"Drop the whip."

The fingers of West opened and the handle fell to the floor. Deftly the other removed a revolver from its place under the outlaw's left armpit.

West glared at him. That moment the fugitive made up his mind that he would kill Whaley at the first good opportunity. A tide of poisonous hatred raced through his veins. Its expression but not its virulence was temporarily checked by wholesome fear. He must be careful that the gambler did not get him first.

His voice took on a whine intended for good-fellowship. "I reckon I was too pre-emtory. O' course I was sore the way you two left me holdin' the sack. Any one would 'a' been now, wouldn't they? But no use friends fallin' out. We got to make the best of things."

Whaley's chill face did not warm. He knew the man with whom he was dealing. When he began to butter his phrases, it was time to look out for him. He would forget that his partner had brought him from Faraway a dog-team with which to escape, that he was supplying him with funds to carry him through the winter. He would remember only that he had balked and humiliated him.

"Better get into the house the stuff from the sled," the gambler said. "And we'll rustle wood. No telling how long this storm'll last."

"Tha's right," agreed West. "When I saw them sun dogs to-day I figured we was in for a blizzard. Too bad you didn't outfit me for a longer trip."

A gale was blowing from the north, carrying on its whistling breath a fine hard sleet that cut the eyeballs like powdered glass. The men fought their way to the sled and wrestled with the knots of the frozen ropes that bound the load. The lumps of ice that had gathered round these had to be knocked off with hammers before they could be freed. When they staggered into the house with their packs, both men were half-frozen. Their hands were so stiff that the fingers were jointless.

They stopped only long enough to limber up the muscles. Whaley handed to Jessie the revolver he had taken from West.

"Keep this," he said. His look was significant. It told her that in the hunt for wood he might be blinded by the blizzard and lost. If he failed to return and West came back alone, she would know what to do with it.

Into the storm the two plunged a second time. They carried ropes and an axe. Since West had arrived, the gale had greatly increased. The wind now was booming in deep, sullen roars and the temperature had fallen twenty degrees already. The sled dogs were nowhere to be seen or heard. They had burrowed down into the snow where the house would shelter them from the hurricane as much as possible.

The men reached the edge of the creek. They struggled in the frozen drifts with such small dead trees as they could find. In the darkness Whaley used the axe as best he could at imminent risk to his legs. Though they worked only a few feet apart, they had to shout to make their voices carry.

"We better be movin' back," West called through his open palms. "We got all we can haul."

They roped the wood and dragged it over the snow in the direction they knew the house to be. Presently they found the sled and from it deflected toward the house.

Jessie had hot tea waiting for them. They kicked off their webs and piled the salvaged wood into the other end of the cabin, after which they hunkered down before the fire to drink tea and eat pemmican and bannocks.

They had with them about fifty pounds of frozen fish for the dogs and provisions enough to last the three of them four or five meals. Whaley had brought West supplies enough to carry him only to Lookout, where he was to stock for a long traverse into the wilds.

As the hours passed there grew up between the gambler and the girl a tacit partnership of mutual defense. No word was spoken of it, but each knew that the sulky brute in the chimney corner was dangerous. He would be held by no scruples of conscience, no laws of friendship or decency. If the chance came he would strike.

The storm raged and howled. It flung itself at the cabin with what seemed a ravenous and implacable fury. The shriek of it was now like the skirling of a thousand bagpipes, again like the wailing of numberless lost souls.

Inside, West snored heavily, his ill-shaped head drooping on the big barrel chest of the man. Jessie slept while Whaley kept guard. Later she would watch in her turn.

There were moments when the gale died down, but only to roar again with a frenzy of increased violence.

The gray day broke and found the blizzard at its height.

CHAPTER XXV

FOR THE WEE LAMB LOST

Beresford, in front of the C.N. Morse & Company trading-post, watched his horse paw at the snow in search of grass underneath. It was a sign that the animal was prairie-bred. On the plains near the border grass cures as it stands, retaining its nutriment as hay. The native pony pushes the snow aside with its forefoot and finds its feed. But in the timber country of the North grass grows long and coarse. When its sap dries out, it rots.

The officer was thinking that he had better put both horse and cariole up for the winter. It was time now for dogs and sled. Even in summer this was not a country for horses. There were so many lakes that a birch-bark canoe covered the miles faster.

Darkness was sweeping down over the land, and with it the first flakes of a coming storm. Beresford had expected this, for earlier in the day he had seen two bright mock suns in the sky. The Indians had told him that these sun dogs were warnings of severe cold and probably a blizzard.

Out of the edge of the forest a man on snowshoes came. He was moving fast. Beresford, watching him idly, noticed that he toed in. Therefore he was probably a Cree trapper. But the Crees were usually indolent travelers. They did not cover ground as this man was doing.

The man was an Indian. The soldier presently certified his first guess as to that. But not until the native was almost at the store did he recognize him as Onistah.

The Blackfoot wasted no time in leading up to what he had to say. "Sleeping Dawn she prisoner of Bully West and Whaley. She say bring her father. She tell me bring him quick"

Beresford's body lost its easy grace instantly and became rigid. His voice rang with sharp authority.

"Where is she?"

"She at Jasper's cabin on Cache Creek. She frightened."

As though the mention of Sleeping Dawn's name had reached him by some process of telepathy, Tom Morse had come out and stood in the door of the store. The trooper wheeled to him.

"Get me a dog-team, Tom. That fellow West has got Jessie McRae with him on Cache Creek. We've got to move quick."

The storekeeper felt as though the bottom had dropped out of his heart. He glanced up at the lowering night. "Storm brewing. We'll get started right away." Without a moment's delay he disappeared inside the store to make his preparations.

Onistah carried the news to McRae.

The blood washed out of the ruddy-whiskered face of the Scot, but his sole comment was a Scriptural phrase of faith. "I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken..."

It was less than half an hour later that four men and a dog-train moved up the main street of Faraway and disappeared in the forest. Morse broke trail and McRae drove the tandem. Onistah, who had already traveled many miles, brought up the rear. The trooper exchanged places with Morse after an hour's travel.

They were taking a short-cut and it led them through dead and down timber that delayed the party. Tom was a good axeman, and more than once he had to chop away obstructing logs. At other times by main strength the men lifted or dragged the sled over bad places.

The swirling storm made it difficult to know where they were going or to choose the best way. They floundered through deep snow and heavy underbrush, faces bleeding from the whip of willow switches suddenly released and feet so torn by the straps of the snowshoes that the trail showed stains of blood which had soaked from the moccasins.

Onistah, already weary, began to lag. They dared not wait for him. There was, they felt, not a moment to be lost. McRae's clean-shaven upper lip was a straight, grim surface. He voiced no fears, no doubts, but the others knew from their own anxiety how much he must be suffering.

The gale increased. It drove in bitter blasts of fine stinging sleet. When for a few hundred yards they drew out of the thick forest into an open grove, it lashed them so furiously they could scarcely move in the teeth of it.

The dogs were whimpering at their task. More than once they stopped, exhausted by the wind against which they were battling. Their eyes turned dumbly to McRae for instructions. He could only drive them back to the trail Morse was breaking.

The train was one of the best in the North. The leader was a large St. Bernard, weighing about one hundred sixty pounds, intelligent, faithful, and full of courage. He stood thirty-four inches high at his fore shoulder. Not once did Cuffy falter. Even when the others quit, he was ready to put his weight to the load.

Through the howling of the wind Beresford shouted into the ear of Morse. "Can't be far now. Question is can we find Jasper's in this blizzard."

Morse shook his head. It did not seem likely. Far and near were words which had no meaning. A white, shrieking monster seemed to be hemming them in. Their world diminished to the space their outstretched arms could reach. The only guide they had was Cache Creek, along the bank of which they were traveling. Jasper's deserted cabin lay back from it a few hundred yards, but Tom had not any data to tell him when he ought to leave the creek.

Cuffy solved the problem for him. The St. Bernard stopped, refused the trail Beresford and Morse were beating down in the deep snow. He raised his head, seemed to scent a haven, whined, and tried to plunge to the left.

McRae came forward and shouted to his friends. "We'll gi'e Cuffy his head. He'll maybe ken mair than we do the nicht."

The trail-breakers turned from the creek, occasionally stopping to make sure Cuffy was satisfied. Through heavy brush they forced a way into a coulée. The St. Bernard led them plump against the wall of a cabin.

There was a light inside, the fitful, leaping glow of fire flames. The men stumbled through drifts to the door, McRae in the lead. The Scotchman found the latch and flung open the door. The other two followed him inside.

The room was empty.

At first they could not believe their eyes. It was not reasonable to suppose that any sane human beings would have left a comfortable house to face such a storm. But this was just what they must have done. The state of the fire, which was dying down to hot coals, told them it had not been replenished for hours. West and Whaley clearly had decided they were not safe here and had set out for another hiding-place.

The men looked at each other in blank silence. The same thought was in the mind of all. For the present they must give up the pursuit. It would not be possible to try to carry on any farther in such a blizzard. Yet the younger men waited for McRae to come to his decision. If he called on them to do more, they would make a try with him.

"We'll stay here," Angus said quietly. "Build up the fire, lads, and we'll cast back for Onistah."

Neither of the others spoke. They knew it must have cost the Scotchman a pang to give up even for the night. He had done it only because he recognized that he had no right to sacrifice all their lives in vain.

The dogs took the back trail reluctantly. The sled had been unloaded and was lighter. Moreover, they followed a trail already broken except where the sweep of the wind had filled it up. McRae cheered them to their work.

"Up wi' ye, Koona! Guid dog. Cha, cha! You'll be doin' gran' work, Cuffy. Marché!"

Morse stumbled over Onistah where he lay in the trail. The Blackfoot was still conscious, though he was drowsing into that sleep which is fatal to Arctic travelers caught in a blizzard. He had crawled on hands and feet through the snow after his knees failed him. It must have been only a few minutes after he completely collapsed that they found him.

He was given a gulp or two of whiskey and put on the sled. Again the dogs buckled to the pull. A quarter of an hour later the party reached the cabin.

Onistah was given first aid. Feet and face were rubbed with snow to restore circulation and to prevent frost-bite. He had been rescued in time to save him from any permanent ill effects.

In the back of all their minds lay a haunting fear. What had become of Jessie? There was a chance that the blizzard had caught the party before it reached its destination. Neither West nor Whaley was an inexperienced musher. They knew the difficulties of sub-Arctic travel and how to cope with them. But the storm had blown up with unusual swiftness.

Even if the party had reached safety, the girl's troubles were not ended. With the coming of darkness her peril would increase. As long as Whaley was with West there was hope. The gambler was cold-blooded as a fish, but he had the saving sense of sanity. If he meant to return to Faraway--and there was no reason why he should not--he dared not let any harm befall the girl. But West was a ruffian unmitigated. His ruthless passion might drive him to any evil.

In front of the fire they discussed probabilities. Where had the two free traders taken the girl? Not far, in the face of such a storm. They canvassed places likely to serve as retreats for West.

Once McRae, speaking out of his tortured heart, made an indirect reference to what all of them were thinking. He was looking somberly into the fire as he spoke.

"Yea, the darkness hideth not from Thee, but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to Thee."

He found in his religion a stay and comfort. If he knew that under cover of darkness evil men do evil deeds, he could reassure himself with the promise that the hairs of his daughter's head were numbered and that she was under divine protection.

From a pocket next his shirt he drew a small package in oilskin. It was a Bible he had carried many years. By the light of the leaping flames he read a chapter from the New Testament and the twenty-third Psalm, after which the storm-bound men knelt while he prayed that God would guard and keep safe "the wee lamb lost in the tempest far frae the fold."

Morse and Beresford were tough as hickory withes. None in the North woods had more iron in the blood than they. Emergencies had tested them time and again. But neither of them was ashamed to kneel with the big rugged Scotchman while he poured his heart out in a petition for his lass. The security of the girl whom all four loved each in his own way was out of the hands of her friends. To know that McRae had found a sure rock upon which to lean brought the younger men too some measure of peace.

CHAPTER XXVI

A RESCUE

The gray day wore itself away into the deeper darkness of early dusk. Like a wild beast attacking its prey, the hurricane still leaped with deep and sullen roars at the little cabin on Bull Creek. It beat upon it in wild, swirling gusts. It flung blasts of wind, laden with snow and sleet, against the log walls and piled drifts round them almost to the eaves.

Long since Whaley had been forced to take the dogs into the cabin to save them from freezing to death. It was impossible for any of the three human beings to venture out for more than a few minutes at a time. Even then they had to keep close to the walls in order not to lose contact with the house.

When feeding-time came the dogs made pandemonium. They were half-famished, as teams in the Lone Lands usually are, and the smell of the frozen fish thawing before the fire set them frantic. West and Whaley protected Jessie while she turned the fish. This was not easy. The plunging animals almost rushed the men off their feet. They had to be beaten back cruelly with the whip-stocks, for they were wild as wolves and only the sharpest pain would restrain them.

The half-thawed fish were flung to them in turn. There was a snarl, a snap of the jaws, a gulp, and the fish was gone. Over one or two that fell in the pack the train worried and fought, with sharp yelps and growls, until the last fragment had been torn to pieces and disappeared.

Afterward the storm-bound trio drank tea and ate pemmican, still fighting back the pack. West laid open the nose of one in an ugly cut with the iron-bound end of his whip-butt. Perhaps he was not wholly to blame. Many of the dog-trains of the North are taught to understand nothing but the sting of the whip and will respond only to brutal treatment.

The second night was a repetition of the first. The three were divided into two camps. Whaley or Jessie McRae watched West every minute. There was a look in his eye they distrusted, a sulky malice back of which seemed to smoke banked fires of murderous desire. He lay on the floor and slept a good deal in short cat-naps. Apparently his dreams were not pleasant. He would growl incoherently through set teeth and clench great hairy fists in spasms of rage. Out of these he wakened with a start to glare around suspiciously at the others. It was clear the thought was in the back of his mind that they might destroy him while he was asleep.

Throughout the third day the storm continued unabated. Whaley and West discussed the situation. Except for a few pounds of fish, their provisions were gone. If the blizzard did not moderate, they would soon face starvation.

During the night the wind died down. Day broke clear, a faint and wintry sun in the sky.

To West the other man made a proposal. "Have to get out and hunt food. We'll find caribou in some of the coulées along the creek. What say?"

The convict looked at him with sly cunning. "How about this girl? Think I'm gonna leave her to mush out an' put the police on my trail? No, sir. I'll take her snowshoes with me."

Whaley shrugged his shoulders. "She couldn't find her way home if she had shoes. But please yourself about that."

West's shifty gaze slid over him. The proposal of a hunt suited him. He must have a supply of food to carry him to Lookout. Whaley was a good shot and an expert trailer. If there were caribou or moose in the vicinity, he was likely to make a kill. In any event there would be hundreds of white rabbits scurrying through the woods. He decided craftily to make use of the gambler, and after he was through with him--

The men took with them part of the tea and enough fish to feed the dogs once. They expected to find game sufficient to supply themselves and stock up for a few days. Whaley insisted on leaving Jessie her rifle, in order that she might shoot a rabbit or two if any ventured near the cabin. She had three frozen fish and a handful of tea.

Before they started Whaley drew Jessie aside. "Can't say how long we'll be gone. Maybe two days--or three. You'll have to make out with what you've got till we get back." He hesitated a moment, then his cold, hard eyes held fast to hers. "Maybe only one of us will come back. Keep your eyes open. If there's only one of us--and it's West--don't let him get into the house. Shoot him down. Take his snowshoes and the team. Follow the creek down about five miles, then strike southwest till you come to Clear Lake. You know your way home from there."

Her dark eyes dilated. "Do you think he means to--to--?"

The man nodded. "He's afraid of me--thinks I mean to set the police on his trail. If he can he'll get rid of me. But not yet--not till we've got a couple of caribou. I'll be watching him all the time."

"How can you watch him while you're hunting?"

He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. It was quite true that West could shoot him in the back during the hunt. But Whaley knew the man pretty well. He would make sure of meat before he struck. After the sled was loaded, Whaley did not intend to turn his back on the fellow.

Jessie had not been brought up in the North woods for nothing. She had seen her brother Fergus make many a rabbit snare. Now she contrived to fashion one out of some old strips of skin she found in the cabin. After she had bent down a young sapling and fastened it to a fallen log, she busied herself making a second one.

Without snowshoes she did not find it possible to travel far, but she managed to shoot a fox that adventured near the hut in the hope of finding something to fill its lean and empty paunch.

Before leaving, Whaley had brought into the house a supply of wood, but Jessie added to this during the day by hauling birch poles from the edge of the creek.

Darkness fell early. The girl built up a roaring fire piled the wood up against the door so that nobody could get in without waking her. The rifle lay close at hand. She slept long and soundly. When she shook the drowsiness from her eyes, the sun was shining through the window.

She breakfasted on stew made from a hindquarter of fox. After she had visited her snares and reset one that had been sprung, she gathered balsam boughs for a bed and carried them to the house to dry before the fire. Whaley had left her a small hatchet, and with this she began to shape a snowshoe from a piece of the puncheon floor. All day she worked at this, and by night had a rough sort of wooden ski that might serve at need. With red-hot coals, during the long evening, she burned holes in it through which to put the straps. The skin of the fox, cut into long strips, would do for thongs. It would be a crude, primitive device, but she thought that at a pinch she might travel a few miles on it. To-morrow she would make a mate for it, she decided.

Except for the bed of balsam boughs, her arrangements for the night were just as they had been the first day. Again she built up a big fire, piled the wood in front of the door, and put the rifle within reach. Again she was asleep almost at once, within a minute of the time when she nestled down to find a soft spot in the springy mattress she had made.

Jessie worked hard on the second ski. By noon she had it pretty well shaped. Unfortunately a small split in the wood developed into a larger one. She was forced to throw it aside and begin on another piece.

A hundred times her eyes had lifted to sweep the snow field for any sign of the hunters' return. Now, looking out of the window without much expectation of seeing them, her glance fell on a traveler, a speck of black on a sea of white. Her heart began to beat a drum of excitement. She waited, eyes riveted, expecting to see a second figure and a dog-team top the rise and show in silhouette.

None appeared. The man advanced steadily. He did not look backward. Evidently he had no companion. Was this lone traveler West?

Jessie picked up the rifle and made sure that it was in good working order. A tumultuous river seemed to beat through her temples. The pulses in her finger-tips were athrob.

Could she do this dreadful thing, even to save honor and life, though she knew the man must be twice a murderer? Once she had tried and failed, while he stood taunting her with his horrible, broken-toothed grin. And once, in the stress of battle, she had wounded him while he was attacking.

The moving black speck became larger. It came to her presently with certainty that this was not West. He moved more gracefully, more lightly, without the heavy slouching roll.... And then she knew he was not Whaley either. One of her friends! A little burst of prayer welled out of her heart.

She left the cabin and went toward the man. He waved a hand to her and she flung up a joyful gesture in answer. For her rescuer was Onistah.

Jessie found herself with both hands in his, biting her lower lip to keep back tears. She could not speak for the emotion that welled up in her.

"You--all well?" he asked, with the imperturbable facial mask of his race that concealed all emotion.

She nodded.

"Good," he went on. "Your father pray the Great Spirit keep you safe."

"Where is Father?"

He looked in the direction from which he had come. "We go Jasper's cabin--your father, red soldier, American trader, Onistah. You gone. Big storm--snow--sleet. No can go farther. Then your father he pray. We wait till Great Spirit he say, 'No more wind, snow,' Then we move camp. All search--go out find you." He pointed north, south, east, and west. "The Great Spirit tell me to come here. I say, 'Sleeping Dawn she with God, for Jesus' sake, Amen.'"

"You dear, dear boy," she sobbed.

"So I find you. Hungry?"

"No. I shot a fox."

"Then we go now." He looked at her feet. "Where your snowshoes?"

"West took them to keep me here. I'm making a pair. Come. We'll finish them."

They moved toward the house. Onistah stopped. The girl followed his eyes. They were fastened on a laden dog-train with two men moving across a lake near the shore of which the cabin had been built.

Her fear-filled gaze came back to the Indian. "It's West and Mr. Whaley. What'll we do?"

Already he was kneeling, fumbling with the straps of his snowshoes. "You go find your father. Follow trail to camp. Then you send him here. I hide in woods."

"No--no. They'll find you, and that West would shoot you."

"Onistah know tricks. They no find him."

He fastened the snow-webs on her feet while she was still protesting. She glanced again at the dog-train jogging steadily forward. If she was going, it must be at once. Soon it would be too late for either of them to escape.

"You will hide in the woods, won't you, so they can't find you?" she implored.

He smiled reassurance. "Go," he said.

Another moment, and she was pushing over the crust along the trail by which the Blackfoot had come.

CHAPTER XXVII

APACHE STUFF

The hunters brought back three caribou and two sacks of rabbits, supplies enough to enable West to reach Lookout. The dogs were stronger than when they had set out, for they had gorged themselves on the parts of the game unfit for human use.

Nothing had been said by either of the men as to what was to be done with Jessie McRae, but the question was in the background of both their thoughts, just as was the growing anger toward each other that consumed them. They rarely spoke. Neither of them let the other drop behind him. Neither had slept a wink the previous night. Instead, they had kept themselves awake with hot tea. Fagged out after a day of hard hunting, each was convinced his life depended on wakefulness. West's iron strength had stood the strain without any outward signs of collapse, but Whaley was stumbling with fatigue as he dragged himself along beside the sled.

The bad feeling between the partners was near the explosion point. It was bound to come before the fugitive started on his long trip north. The fellow had a single-track mind. He still intended to take the girl with him. When Whaley interfered, there would be a fight. It could not come too soon to suit West. His brooding had reached the point where he was morally certain that the gambler meant to betray him to the police and set them on his track.

Smoke was rising from the chimney of the hut. No doubt the McRae girl was inside, waiting for them with a heart of fear fluttering in her bosom. Whaley's thin lips set grimly. Soon now it would be a show-down.

There was a moment's delay at the door, each hanging back under pretense of working at the sled. There was always the chance that the one who went first might get a shot in the back.

West glanced at the big mittens on the other's hands, laughed hardily, and pushed into the cabin. A startled grunt escaped him.

"She's gone," he called out.

"Probably in the woods back here--rabbit-shooting likely. She can't have gone far without snowshoes," Whaley said.

The big man picked up the ski Jessie had made. "Looky here."

Whaley examined it. "She might have made a pair of 'em and got away. Hope so."

The yellow teeth of the convict showed in a snarl. "Think I don't see yore game? Playin' up to McRae an' the red-coats. I wouldn't put it by you to sell me out."

The gambler's ice-cold eyes bored into West. Was it to be now?

West was not quite ready. His hands were cold and stiff. Besides, the other was on guard and the fugitive was not looking for an even break.

"Oh, well, no use rowin' about that. I ain't gonna chew the rag with you. It'll be you one way an' me another pretty soon," he continued, shifty eyes dodging.

"About the girl--easy to find out, I say. She sure didn't fly away. Must 'a' left tracks. We'll take a look-see."

Again Whaley waited deferentially, with a sardonic and mirthless grin, to let the other pass first. There were many tracks close to the cabin where they themselves, as well as the girl, had moved to and fro. Their roving glances went farther afield.

Plain as the swirling waters in the wake of a boat stretched the tracks of a snowshoer across the lower end of the lake.

They pushed across to examine them closer, following them a dozen yards to the edge of the ice-field. The sign written there on that white page told a tale to both of the observers, but it said more to one than to the other.

"Some one's been here," West cried with a startled oath.

"Yes," agreed Whaley. He did not intend to give any unnecessary information.

"An' lit out again. Must 'a' gone to git help for the girl."

"Yes," assented the gambler, and meant "No."

What he read from the writing on the snow was this: Some one had come and some one had gone. But the one who had come was not the one who had gone. An Indian had made the first tracks. He could tell it by the shape of the webs and by the way the traveler had toed in. The outward-bound trail was different. Some one lighter of build was wearing the snowshoes, some one who took shorter steps and toed out.

"See. She run out to meet him. Here's where her feet kept sinkin' in," West said.

The other nodded. Yes, she had hurried to meet him but that was not all he saw. There was the impression of a knee in the snow. It was an easy guess that the man had knelt to take off the shoes and adjust them to the girl's feet.

"An' here's where she cut off into the woods," the convict went on. "She's hidin' up there now. I'm hittin' the trail after her hot-foot."

Whaley's derisive smile vanished almost before it appeared. What he knew was his own business. If West wanted to take a walk in the woods, it was not necessary to tell him that a man was waiting for him there behind some tree.

"Think I'll follow this fellow," Whaley said, with a lift of the hand toward the tracks that led across the lake. "We've got to find out where he went. If the Mounted are hot on our trail, we want to know it."

"Sure." West assented craftily, eyes narrowed to conceal the thoughts that crawled through his murderous brain. "We gotta know that."

He believed Whaley was playing into his hands. The man meant to betray him to the police. He would never reach them. And he, Bully West, would at last be alone with the girl, nobody to interfere with him.

The gambler was used to taking chances. He took one now and made his first mistake in the long duel he had been playing with West. The eagerness of the fellow to have him gone was apparent. The convict wanted him out of the way so that he could go find the girl. Evidently he thought that Whaley was backing down as gracefully as he could.

"I'll start right after him. Back soon," the gambler said casually.

"Yes, soon," agreed West.

Their masked eyes still clung to each other, wary and watchful. As though without intent Whaley backed away, still talking to the other. He wanted to be out of revolver range before he turned. West also was backing clumsily, moving toward the sled. The convict wheeled and slid rapidly to it.

Whaley knew his mistake now. West's rifle lay on the sled and the man was reaching for it.

The man on the ice-field did the only thing possible. He bent low and traveled fast. When the first shot rang out he was nearly a hundred fifty yards away. He crumpled down into the snow and lay still.

West's hands were cold, his fingers stiff. He had not been sure of his aim. Now he gave a whoop of triumph. That was what happened to any one who interfered with Bully West. He fired again at the still huddled heap on the lake.

Presently he would go out there and make sure the man was dead. Just now he had more important business, an engagement to meet a girl in the woods back of the house.

"Got him good," he told himself aloud. "He sure had it comin' to him, the damned traitor."

To find the McRae girl could not be difficult. She had left tracks as she waded away in the deep snow. There was no chance for her to hide. Nor could she have gone far without webs. The little catamount might, of course, shoot him. He had to move carefully, not to give her an opportunity.

As he went forward he watched every tree, every stick of timber behind which she might find cover to ambush him. He was not of a patient temperament, but life in the wilds had taught him to subdue when he must his gusty restlessness. Now he took plenty of time. He was in a hurry to hit the trail with his train and be off, but he could not afford to be in such great haste as to stop a bullet with his body.

He called to her. "Where you at, Dawn? I ain't aimin' to hurt you none. Come out an' quit devilin' me."

Then, when his wheedling brought no answer, he made the forest ring with threats of what he would do to her when he caught her unless she came to him at once.

Moving slowly forward, he came to the end of the tracks that had been made in the snow. They ended abruptly, in a thicket of underbrush. His first thought was that she must be hidden here, but when he had beat through it half a dozen times, he knew this was impossible. Then where was she?

He had told Whaley that she could not fly away. But if she hadn't flown, what had become of her? There were no trees near enough to climb without showing the impressions of her feet in the snow as she moved to the trunk. He had an uneasy sense that she was watching him all the time from some hidden place near at hand. He looked up into the branches of the trees. They were heavy with snow which had not been shaken from them.

West smothered a laugh and an oath. He saw the trick now. She must have back-tracked carefully, at each step putting her feet in exactly the same place as when she had moved forward. Of course! The tracks showed where she had brushed the deep drifts occasionally when the moccasin went in the second time.

It was slow business, for while he studied the sign he must keep a keen eye cocked against the chance of a shot from his hidden prey.

Twice he quartered over the ground before he knew he had reached the place where the back-tracking ceased. Close to the spot was a pine. A pile of snow showed where a small avalanche had plunged down. That must have been when she disturbed it on the branches in climbing.

His glance swept up the trunk and came to a halt. With his rifle he covered the figure crouching close to it on the far side.

"Come down," he ordered.

He was due for one of the surprises of his life. The tree-dweller slid down and stood before him. It was not Jessie McRae, but a man, an Indian, the Blackfoot who had ridden out with the girl once to spoil his triumph over the red-coat Beresford.

For a moment he stood, stupefied, jaw fallen and mouth open. "Whad you doin' here?" he asked at last.

"No food my camp. I hunt," Onistah said.

"Tha's a lie. Where's the McRae girl?"

The slim Indian said nothing. His face was expressionless as a blank wall.

West repeated the question. He might have been talking to a block of wood for all the answer he received. His crafty, cruel mind churned over the situation.

"Won't talk, eh? We'll see about that. You got her hid somewheres an' I'm gonna find where. I'll not stand for yore Injun tricks. Drop that gun an' marchê-back to the cabin. Un'erstand?"

Onistah did as he was told.

They reached the cabin. There was one thing West did not get hold of in his mind. Why had not the Blackfoot shot him from the tree? He had had a score of chances. The reason was not one the white man would be likely to fathom. Onistah had not killed him because the Indian was a Christian. He had learned from Father Giguère that he must turn the other cheek.

West, revolver close at hand, cut thongs from the caribou skins. He tied his captive hand and foot, then removed his moccasins and duffles. From the fire he raked out a live coal and put it on a flat chip. This he brought across the room.

"Changed yore mind any? Where's the girl?" he demanded.

Onistah looked at him, impassive as only an Indian can be.

"Still sulky, eh? We'll see about that."

The convict knelt on the man's ankles and pushed the coal against the naked sole of the brown foot.

An involuntary deep shudder went through the Blackfoot's body. The foot twitched. An acrid odor of burning flesh filled the room. No sound came from the locked lips.

The tormentor removed the coal. "I ain't begun to play with you yet. I'm gonna give you some real Apache stuff 'fore I'm through. Where's the girl? I'm gonna find out if I have to boil you in grease."

Still Onistah said nothing.

West brought another coal. "We'll try the other foot," he said.

Again the pungent acrid odor rose to the nostrils.

"How about it now?" the convict questioned.

No answer came. This time Onistah had fainted.

CHAPTER XXVIII

"IS A' WELL WI' YOU, LASS?"

Jessie's shoes crunched on the snow-crust. She traveled fast. In spite of Onistah's assurance her heart was troubled for him. West and Whaley would study the tracks and come to at least an approximation of the truth. She did not dare think of what the gorilla-man would do to her friend if they captured him.

And how was it possible that they would not find him? His footsteps would be stamped deep in the snow. He could not travel fast. Since he had become a Christian, the Blackfoot, with the simplicity of a mind not used to the complexities of modern life, accepted the words of Jesus literally. He would not take a human life to save his own.

She blamed herself for escaping at his expense. The right thing would have been to send him back again for her father. But West had become such a horrible obsession with her that the sight of him even at a distance had put her in a panic.

From the end of the lake she followed the trail Onistah had made. It took into the woods, veering sharply to the right. The timber was open. Even where the snow was deep, the crust was firm enough to hold.

In her anxiety it seemed that hours passed. The sun was still fairly high, but she knew how quickly it sank these winter days.

She skirted a morass, climbed a long hill, and saw before her another lake. On the shore was a camp. A fire was burning, and over this a man stooping.

At the sound of her call, the man looked up. He rose and began to run toward her. She snowshoed down the hill, a little blindly, for the mist of glad tears brimmed her eyes.

Straight into Beresford's arms she went. Safe at last, she began to cry. The soldier petted her, with gentle words of comfort.

"It's all right now, little girl. All over with. Your father's here. See! He's coming. We'll not let anything harm you."

McRae took the girl into his arms and held her tight. His rugged face was twisted with emotion. A dam of ice melted in his heart. The voice with which he spoke, broken with feeling, betrayed how greatly he was shaken.

"My bairn! My wee dawtie! To God be the thanks."

She clung to him, trying to control her sobs. He stroked her hair and kissed her, murmuring Gaelic words of endearment. A thought pierced him, like a sword-thrust.

He held her at arm's length, a fierce anxiety in his haggard face. "Is a' well wi' you, lass?" he asked, almost harshly.

She understood his question. Her level eyes met his. They held no reservations of shame. "All's well with me, Father. Mr. Whaley was there the whole time. He stood out against West. He was my friend." She stopped, enough said.

"The Lord be thankit," he repeated again, devoutly.

Tom Morse, rifle in hand, had come from the edge of the woods and was standing near. He had heard her first call, had seen her go to the arms of Beresford direct as a hurt child to those of its mother, and he had drawn reasonable conclusions from that. For under stress the heart reveals itself, he argued, and she had turned simply and instinctively to the man she loved. He stood now outside the group, silent. Inside him too a river of ice had melted. His haunted, sunken eyes told the suffering he had endured. The feeling that flooded him was deeper than joy. She had been dead and was alive again. She had been lost and was found.

"Where have you been?" asked Beresford. "We've been looking for days."

"In a cabin on Bull Creek. Mr. Whaley took me there, but West followed."

"How did you get away?"

"We were out of food. They went hunting. West took my snowshoes. Onistah came. He saw them coming back and gave me his shoes. He went and hid in the woods. But they'll see his tracks. They'll find him. We must hurry back."

"Yes," agreed McRae. "I'm thinkin' if West finds the lad, he'll do him ill."

Morse spoke for the first time, his voice dry as a chip. "We'd better hurry on, Beresford and I. You and Miss McRae can bring the sled."

McRae hesitated, but assented. There might be desperate need of haste. "That'll be the best way. But you'll be carefu', lad. Yon West's a wolf. He'd as lief kill ye baith as look at ye."

The younger men were out of sight over the brow of the hill long before McRae and Jessie had the dogs harnessed.

"You'll ride, lass," the father announced.

She demurred. "We can go faster if I walk. Let me drive. Then you can break trail where the snow's soft."

"No. You'll ride, my dear. There's nae sic a hurry. The lads'll do what's to be done. On wi' ye."

Jessie got into the cariole and was bundled up to the tip of the nose with buffalo robes, the capote of her own fur being drawn over the head and face. For riding in the sub-Arctic winter is a freezing business.

"Marché,"[6] ordered McRae.

[Footnote: Most of the dogs of the North were trained by trappers who talked French and gave commands in that language. Hence even the Anglo-Saxon drivers used in driving a good many words of that language. (W.M.R.)]

Cuffy led the dogs up the hill, following the trail already broken. The train made good time, but to Jessie it seemed to crawl. She was tortured with anxiety for Onistah. An express could not have carried her fast enough. It was small comfort to tell herself that Onistah was a Blackfoot and knew every ruse of the woods. His tracks would lead straight to him and the veriest child could follow them. Nor could she persuade herself that Whaley would stand between him and West's anger. To the gambler Onistah was only a nitchie.

The train passed out of the woods to the shore of the lake. Here the going was better. The sun was down and the snow-crust held dogs and sled. A hundred fifty yards from the cabin McRae pulled up the team. He moved forward and examined the snow.

With a heave Jessie flung aside the robes that wrapped her and jumped from the cariole. An invisible hand seemed to clutch tightly at her throat. For what she and her father had seen were crimson splashes in the white. Some one or something had been killed or wounded here. Onistah, of course! He must have changed his mind, tried to follow her, and been shot by West as he was crossing the lake.

She groaned, her heart heavy.

McRae offered comfort. "He'll likely be only wounded. The lads wouldna hae moved him yet if he'd no' been livin'."

The train moved forward, Jessie running beside Angus.

Morse came to the door. He closed it behind him.

"Onistah?" cried Jessie.

"He's been--hurt. But we were in time. He'll get well."

"West shot him? We saw stains in the snow."

"No. He shot Whaley."

"Whaley?" echoed McRae.

"Yes. Wanted to get rid of him. Thought your daughter was hidden in the woods here. Afraid, too, that Whaley would give him up to the North-West Mounted."

"Then Whaley's dead?" the Scotchman asked.

"No. West hadn't time right then to finish the job. Pretty badly hurt, though. Shot in the side and in the thigh."

"And West?"

"We came too soon. He couldn't finish his deviltry. He lit out over the hill soon as he saw us."

They went into the house.

Jessie walked straight to where Onistah lay on the balsam boughs and knelt beside him. Beresford was putting on one of his feet a cloth soaked in caribou oil.

"What did he do to you?" she cried, a constriction of dread at her heart.

A ghost of a smile touched the immobile face of the native. "Apache stuff, he called it."

"But--"

"West burned his feet to make him tell where you were," Beresford told her gently.

"Oh!" she cried, in horror.

"Good old Onistah. He gamed it out. Wouldn't say a word. West saw us coming and hit the trail."

"Is he--is he--?"

"He's gone."

"I mean Onistah."

"Suffering to beat the band, but not a whimper out of him. He's not permanently hurt--be walking around in a week or two."

"You poor boy!" the girl cried softly, and she put her arm under the Indian's head to lift it to an easier position.

The dumb lips of the Blackfoot did not thank her, but the dark eyes gave her the gratitude of a heart wholly hers.

All that night the house was a hospital. The country was one where men had learned to look after hurts without much professional aid. In a rough way Angus McRae was something of a doctor. He dressed the wounds of both the injured, using the small medical kit he had brought with him.

Whaley was a bit of a stoic himself. The philosophy of his class was to take good fortune or ill undemonstratively. He was lucky to be alive. Why whine about what must be?

But as the fever grew on him with the lengthening hours, he passed into delirium. Sometimes he groaned with pain. Again he fell into disconnected babble of early days. He was back again with his father and mother, living over his wild and erring youth.

"... Don't tell Mother. I'll square it all right if you keep it from her.... Rotten run of cards. Ninety-seven dollars. You'll have to wait, I tell you.... Mother, Mother, if you won't cry like that ..."

McRae used the simple remedies he had. In themselves they were, he knew, of little value. He must rely on good nursing and the man's hardy constitution to pull him through.

With Morse and Beresford he discussed the best course to follow. It was decided that Morse should take Onistah and Jessie back to Faraway next day and return with a load of provisions. Whaley's fever must run its period. It was impossible to tell yet whether he would live or die, but for some days at least it would not be safe to move him.

CHAPTER XXIX

NOT GOING ALONE

"Morse, I've watched ye through four-five days of near-hell. I ken nane I'd rather tak wi' me as a lone companion on the long traverse. You're canny an' you're bold. That's why I'm trustin' my lass to your care. It's a short bit of a trip, an' far as I can see there's nae danger. But the fear's in me. That's the truth, man. Gie me your word you'll no' let her oot o' your sight till ye hand her ower to my wife at Faraway."

Angus clamped a heavy hand on the young man's shoulder. His blue eyes searched steadily those of the trader.

"I'll not let her twenty yards from me any time. That's a promise, McRae," the trader said quietly.

Well wrapped from the wind, Onistah sat in the cariole.

Jessie kissed the Scotchman fondly, laughing at him the while. "You're a goose, Father. I'm all right. You take good care of yourself. That West might come back here."

"No chance of that. West will never come back except at the end of a rope. He's headed for the edge of the Barrens, or up that way somewhere," Beresford said. "And inside of a week I'll be north-bound on his trail myself."

Jessie was startled, a good deal distressed. "I'd let him go. He'll meet a bad end somewhere. If he never comes back, as you say he won't, then he'll not trouble us."

The soldier smiled grimly. "That's not the way of the Mounted. Get the fellow you're sent after. That's our motto. I've been assigned the job of bringing in West and I've got to get him."

"You don't mean you're going up there alone to bring back that--that wolf-man?"

"Oh, no," the trooper answered lightly. "I'll have a Cree along as a guide."

"A Cree," she scoffed. "What good will he be if you find West? He'll not help you against him at all."

"Not what he's with me for. I'm not supposed to need any help to bring back one man."

"It's--it's just suicide to go after him alone," she persisted. "Look what he did to the guard at the prison, to Mr. Whaley, to Onistah! He's just awful--hardly human."

"The lad's under orders, lass," McRae told her. "Gin they send him into the North after West, he'll just have to go. He canna argy-bargy aboot it."

Jessie gave up, reluctantly.

The little cavalcade started. Morse drove. The girl brought up the rear.

Her mind was still on the hazard of the journey Beresford must take. When Morse stopped to rest the dogs for a few moments, she tucked up Onistah again and recurred to the subject.

"I don't think Win Beresford should go after West alone except for a Cree guide. The Inspector ought to send another constable with him. Or two more. If he knew that man--how cruel and savage he is--"

Tom Morse spoke quietly. "He's not going alone. I'll be with him."

She stared. "You?"

"Yes. Sworn in as a deputy constable."

"But--he didn't say you were going when I spoke to him about it a little while ago."

"He didn't know. I've made up my mind since."

In point of fact he had come to a decision three seconds before he announced it.

Her soft eyes applauded him. "That'll be fine. His friends won't worry so much if you're with him. But--of course you know it'll be a horrible trip--and dangerous."

"No picnic," he admitted.

She continued to look at him, her cheeks flushed and her face vivid. "You must like Win a lot. Not many men would go."

"We're good friends," Morse answered dryly. "Anyhow, I owe West something on my own account."

The real reason why he was going he had not given. During the days she had been lost he had been on the rack of torture. He did not want her to suffer months of such mental distress while the man she loved was facing alone the peril of his grim work in the white Arctic desert.

They resumed the journey.

Jessie said no more. She would not mention the subject again probably. But it would be a great deal in her thoughts. She lived much of the time inside herself with her own imagination. This had the generosity and the enthusiasm of youth. She wanted to believe people fine and good and true. It warmed her to discover unexpected virtues in them.

Mid-afternoon brought them to Faraway. They drove down the main street of the village to McRae's house while the half-breeds cheered from the door of the Morse store.

Jessie burst into the big family room where Matapi-Koma sat bulging out from the only rocking-chair in the North woods.

"Oh, Mother--Mother!" the girl cried, and hugged the Cree woman with all the ardent young savagery of her nature.

The Indian woman's fat face crinkled to an expansive smile. She had stalwart sons of her own, but no daughters except this adopted child. Jessie was very dear to her.

In a dozen sentences the girl poured out her story, the words tumbling pell-mell over each other in headlong haste.

Matapi-Koma waddled out to the sled. "Onistah stay here," she said, and beamed on him. "Blackfoot all same Cree to Matapi-Koma when he friend Jessie. Angus send word nurse him till he well again."

Tom carried the Indian into the house so that his feet would not touch the ground. Jessie had stayed in to arrange the couch where Fergus usually slept.

She followed Morse to the door when he left. "We'll have some things to send back to Father when you go. I'll bring them down to the store to-morrow morning," she said. "And Mother wants you to come to supper to-night. Don't you dare say you're too busy."

He smiled at the intimate feminine fierceness of the injunction. The last few hours had put them on a somewhat different footing. He would accept such largesse as she was willing to offer. He recognized the spirit in which it was given. She wanted to show her appreciation of what he had done for her and was about to do for the man she loved. Nor would Morse meet her generosity in a churlish spirit.

"I'll be here when the gong rings," he told her heartily.

"Let's see. It's nearly three now. Say five o'clock," she decided.

"At five I'll be knockin' on the door."

She flashed at him a glance both shy and daring. "And I'll open it before you break through and bring it with you."

The trader went away with a queer warmth in his heart he had not known for many a day. The facts did not justify this elation, this swift exhilaration of blood, but to one who has starved for long any food is grateful.

Jessie flew back into the house. She had a busy two hours before her. "Mother, Mr. Morse is coming to dinner. What's in the house?"

"Fergus brought a black-tail in yesterday."

"Good. I know what I'll have. But first off, I want a bath. Lots of hot water, and all foamy with soap. I've got to hurry. You can peel the potatoes if you like. And fix some of those young onions. They're nice. And Mother--I'll let you make the biscuits. That's all. I'll do the rest."

The girl touched a match to the fire that was set in her room. She brought a tin tub and hot water and towels. Slim and naked she stood before the roaring logs and reveled in her bath. The sense of cleanliness was a luxury delicious. When she had dressed herself from the soles of her feet up in clean clothes, she felt a new and self-respecting woman.

She did not pay much attention to the psychology of dress, but she knew that when she had on the pretty plaid that had come from Fort Benton, and when her heavy black hair was done up just right, she had twice the sex confidence she felt in old togs. Jessie would have denied indignantly that she was a coquette. None the less she was intent on conquest. She wanted this quiet, self-contained American to like her.

The look she had seen in his red-brown eyes at times tantalized her. She could not read it. That some current of feeling about her raced deep in him she divined, but she did not know what it was. He had a way of letting his steady gaze rest on her disturbingly. What was he thinking? Did he despise her? Was he, away down out of sight, the kind of man toward women that West and Whaley were? She wouldn't believe it. He had never taken an Indian woman to live with him. There was not even a rumor that he had ever taken an interest in any Cree girl. Of course she did not like him--not the way she did Win Beresford or even Onistah--but she was glad he held himself aloof. It would have greatly disappointed her to learn of any sordid intrigue involving him.

Jessie rolled up her sleeves and put on a big apron. She saw that the onions and the potatoes were started and the venison ready for broiling. From a chest of drawers she brought one of the new white linen tablecloths of which she was inordinately proud. She would not trust any one but herself to set the table. Morse had come from a good family. He knew about such things. She was not going to let him go away thinking Angus McRae's family were barbarians, even though his wife was a Cree and his children of the half-blood.

On the table she put a glass dish of wild-strawberry jam. In the summer she had picked the fruit herself, just as she had gathered the saskatoon berries sprinkled through the pemmican she was going to use for the rubaboo.

CHAPTER XXX

"M" FOR MORSE

Two in the village bathed that day. The other was Tom Morse. He discarded his serviceable moccasins, his caribou-skin capote with the fur on, his moose-skin trousers, and his picturesque blanket shirt. For these he substituted the ungainly clothes of civilization, a pair of square-toed boots, a store suit, a white shirt.

This was not the way Faraway dressed for gala occasions, but in several respects the trader did not choose to follow the habits of the North. At times he liked to remind himself that he was an American and not a French half-breed born in the woods.

As he had promised, he was at the McRaes' by the appointed hour. Jessie opened to his knock.

The girl almost took his breath. He had not realized how attractive she was. In her rough outdoor costumes she had a certain naïve boyishness, a very taking quality of vital energy that was sexless. But in the house dress she was wearing now, Jessie was wholly feminine. The little face, cameo-fine and clear-cut, the slender body, willow-straight, had the soft rounded curves that were a joy to the eye. He had always thought of her as dark, but to his surprise he found her amazingly fair for one of the métis blood.

A dimpled smile flashed him welcome. "You did come, then?"

"Is it the wrong night? Weren't you expectin' me?" he asked in pretended alarm.

"I was and I wasn't. It wouldn't have surprised me if you had decided you were too busy to come."

"Not when Miss Jessie McRae invites me."

"She invited you once before," the girl reminded him.

"Then she asked me because she thought she ought. Is that why I'm asked this time?"

She laughed. "You mustn't look a gift dinner in the mouth."

They were by this time in the big family room. She relieved him of his coat. He walked over to the couch upon which Onistah lay.

"How goes it? Tough sleddin'?" he asked.

The bronze face of the Blackfoot was immobile. He must still have been in great pain from the burnt feet, but he gave no sign of it.

"Onistah find good friends," he answered simply.

Tom looked round the room, and again there came to him the sense of home. Logs roared and snapped in the great fireplace. The table, set with the dishes and the plated silver McRae had imported from the States, stirred in him a pleasure that was almost poignant. The books, the organ, the quaint old engravings Angus had brought with him when he crossed the ocean: all of these touched the trader nearly. He was in exile, living a bachelor life under the most primitive conditions. The atmosphere of this house penetrated to every fiber of his being. It filled him with an acute hunger. Here were love and friendly intercourse and all the daily, homely routine that made life beautiful.

And here was the girl that he loved, vivid, vital, full of charm. The swift deftness and grace of her movements enticed him. The inflections of her warm, young voice set his pulses throbbing as music sometimes did. An ardent desire of her flooded him. She was the most winsome creature under heaven--but she was not for him.

Matapi-Koma sat at the head of the table, a smiling and benignant matron finished in copper. She had on her best dress, a beaded silk with purple satin trimmings, brought by a Red River cart from Winnipeg, accompanied with a guarantee from the trader that Queen Victoria had none better. The guarantee was worth what it was worth, but Matapi-Koma was satisfied. Never had she seen anything so grand. That Angus McRae could afford to buy it for her proved him a great chief.

Jessie waited on the table herself. She set upon it such a dinner as neither of her guests had eaten in years. Venison broiled to a turn, juicy, succulent mallard ducks from the cold storage of their larder, mashed potatoes with gravy, young boiled onions from Whoop-Up, home-made rubaboo of delicious flavor, hot biscuits and wild-strawberry jam! And finally, with the tea, a brandy-flavored plum pudding that an old English lady at Winnipeg had taught Jessie how to make.

Onistah ate lying on the couch. Afterward, filled to repletion, with the sense of perfect contentment a good dinner brings, the two young men stuffed their pipes and puffed strata of smoke toward the log rafters of the room. Jessie cleared the table, then sat down and put the last stitches in the gun-case she had been working at intermittently for a month. It was finished, but she had not till now stitched the initials into the cloth.

As the swift fingers of the girl flashed back and forth, both men watched, not too obviously, the profile shadowed by the dark, abundant, shining hair. The picture of her was an intimate one, but Tom's tricky imagination tormented him with one of still nearer personal association. He saw her in his own house, before his own fireside, a baby clinging to her skirt. Then, resolutely, he put the mental etching behind him. She loved his friend Beresford, a man out of a thousand, and of course he loved her. Had he not seen her go straight to his arms after her horrible experience with West?

Matapi-Koma presently waddled out of the room and they could hear the clatter of dishes.

"I told her I'd help her wash them if she'd wait," explained Jessie. "But she'd rather do them now and go to bed. My conscience is clear, anyhow." She added with a little bubble of laughter, "And I don't have to do the work. Is that the kind of a conscience you have, Mr. Morse?"

"If I were you my conscience would tell me that I couldn't go and leave my guests," he answered.

She raked him with a glance of merry derision. "Oh, I know how yours works. I wouldn't have it for anything. It's an awf'lly bossy one. It's sending you out to the Barrens with Win Beresford just because he's your friend."

"Not quite. I have another reason too," he replied.

"Yes, I know. You don't like West. Nobody does. My father doesn't--or Fergus--or Mr. Whaley--but they're not taking the long trail after him as you are. You can't get out of it that way."

She had not, of course, hit on the real reason for going that supplemented his friendship for the constable and he did not intend that she should.

"It doesn't matter much why I'm going. Anyhow, it'll be good for me. I'm gettin' soft and fat. After I've been out in the deep snows a month or so, I'll have taken up my belt a notch or two. It's time I wrestled with a blizzard an' tried livin' on lean rabbit.[7]"

[Footnote 7: Rabbit is about the poorest meat in the North. It is lean and stringy, furnishes very little nourishment and not much fat, and is not a muscle-builder. In a country where, oil and grease are essentials, such food is not desirable. The Indians ate great quantities of them. (W.M.R.)]

Her gaze swept his lean, hard, compact body. "Yes, you look soft," she mocked. "Father said something of that sort when he looked at that door there you came through."

Tom had been watching her stitching. He offered a comment now, perhaps, to change the subject. It is embarrassing for a modest man to talk about himself.

"You're workin' that 'W' upside down," he said.

"Am I? Who said, it was a 'W'?"

"I guessed it might be."

"You're a bad guesser. It's an 'M.' 'M' stands for McRae, doesn't it?"

"Yes, and 'W' for Winthrop," he said with a little flare of boldness.

A touch of soft color flagged her cheeks. "And 'I' for impudence," she retorted with a smile that robbed the words of offense.

He was careful not to risk outstaying his welcome. After an hour he rose to go. His good-bye to Matapi-Koma and Onistah was made in the large living-room.

Jessie followed him to the outside door.

He gave her a word of comfort as he buttoned his coat, "Don't you worry about Win. I'll keep an eye on him."

"Thank you. And he'll keep one on you, I suppose."

He laughed. That reversal of the case was a new idea to him. The prettiest girl in the North was not holding her breath till he returned safely. "I reckon," he said. "We'll team together fine."

"Don't be foolhardy, either of you," she cautioned.

"No," he promised, and held out his hand. "Good-bye, if I don't see you in the mornin'."

He did not know she was screwing up her courage and had been for half an hour to do something she had never done before. She plunged at it, a tide of warm blood beating into her face beneath the tan.

"'M' is for Morse too, and 'T' for Tom," she said.

With the same motion she thrust the gun-case into his hand and him out of the door.

He stood outside, facing a closed door, the bit of fancy-work in his mittens. An exultant electric tingle raced through his veins. She had given him a token of friendship he would cherish all his life.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE LONG TRAIL

For four days Whaley lay between life and death. There were hours when the vital current in him ebbed so low that McRae thought it was the beginning of the end. But after the fifth day he began definitely to mend. His appetite increased. The fever in him abated. The delirium passed away. Just a week from the time he had been wounded, McRae put him on the cariole and took him to town over the hard crust of the snow.

Beresford returned from Fort Edmonton a few hours later, carrying with him an appointment for Morse as guide and deputy constable.

"Maintiens le droit," said the officer, clapping his friend on the shoulder. "You're one of us now. A great chance for a short life you've got. Time for the insurance companies to cancel any policies they may have on you."

Morse smiled. He was only a deputy, appointed temporarily, but it pleased him to be chosen even in this capacity as a member of the most efficient police force in the world. "Maintiens le droit" was the motto of the Mounted. Tom did not intend that the morale of that body should suffer through him if he could help it.

Angus McRae had offered his dog-train for the pursuit and Beresford had promptly accepted. The four dogs of the Scotch trapper were far and away better than any others that could be picked up in a hurry. They had stamina, and they were not savage and wolfish like most of those belonging to the Indians and even to the Hudson's Bay Company.

Supplies for the trip had been gathered by Morse. From the Crees he had bought two hundred pounds of dried fish for the dogs. Their own provisions consisted of pemmican, dried caribou meat, flour, salt, tea, and tobacco.

All Faraway was out to see the start. The travelers would certainly cover hundreds and perhaps thousands of miles before their return. Even in that country of wide spaces, where men mushed far when the rivers and lakes were closed, this was likely to prove an epic trip.

Beresford cracked the long lash and Cuffy leaned forward in the traces. The tangle of dogs straightened out and began to move. A French voyageur lifted his throat in a peculiar shout that was half a bark. Indians and half-breeds snowshoed down the street beside the sled. At the door of the McRae house stood Angus, his wife, and daughter.

"God wi' you haith," the trapper called.

Jessie waved a scarf, and Beresford, who had spent the previous evening with her, threw up a hand in gay greeting.

The calvacade drew to the edge of the woods. Morse looked back. A slim figure, hardly distinguishable in the distance, still stood in front of the McRae house fluttering the scarf.

A turn in the trail hid her. Faraway was shut out of view.

For four or five miles the trappers stayed with them. It was rather a custom of the North to speed travelers on their way in this fashion. At the edge of the first lake the Indians and half-breeds said good-bye and turned back.

Morse moved onto the ice and broke trail. The dogs followed in tandem--Cuffy, Koona, Bull, and Caesar. They traveled fast over the ice and reached the woods beyond. The timber was not thick. Beyond this was a second lake, a larger one. By the time they had crossed this, the sun was going down.

The men watched for a sheltered place to camp and as soon as they found one, they threw off the trail to the edge of the woods, drawing up the sledge back of them as a wind-break. They gathered pine for fuel and cut balsam boughs for beds. It had come on to snow, and they ate supper with their backs to the drive of the flakes, the hoods of their furs drawn over their heads.

The dogs sat round in a half-circle watching them and the frozen fish thawing before the fire. Their faces, tilted a little sideways, ears cocked and eyes bright, looked anxiously expectant. When the fish were half-thawed, Morse tossed them by turn to the waiting animals, who managed to get rid of their supper with a snap and a gulp. Afterward they burrowed down in the snow and fell asleep.

On the blazing logs Beresford had put two kettles filled with snow. These he refilled after the snow melted, until enough water was in them. Into one kettle he put a piece of fat caribou meat. The other was to make tea.

Using their snowshoes as shovels, they scraped a place clear and scattered balsam boughs on it. On this they spread an empty flour sack, cut open at the side. Tin plates and cups served as dish.

Their supper consisted of soggy bannocks, fat meat, and tea. While they ate, the snow continued to fall. It was not unwelcome, for so long as this lasted the cold could not be intolerable. Moreover, snow makes a good white blanket and protects against sudden drops in temperature.

They changed their moccasins and duffles and pulled on as night-wear long buffalo-skin boots, hood, mufflers, and fur mits. A heavy fur robe and a blanket were added. Into these last they snuggled down, wrapping themselves up so completely that a tenderfoot would have smothered for lack of air.

Before they retired, they could hear the ice on the lake cracking like distant thunder. The trees back of them occasionally snapped from the cold with reports that sounded like pistol shots.

In five minutes both men were asleep. They lay with their heads entirely covered, as the Indians did. Not once during the night did they stir. To disarrange their bedding and expose the nose or the hands to the air would be to risk being frozen.

Morse woke first. He soon had a roaring fire. Again there were two kettles on it, one for fat meat and the other for strong tea. No fish were thawing before the heat, for dogs are fed only once a day. Otherwise they get sleepy and sluggish, losing the edge of their keenness.

They were off to an early start. There was a cold head wind that was uncomfortable. For hours they held to the slow, swinging stride of the webs. Sometimes the trail was through the forest, sometimes in and out of brush and small timber. Twice during the day they crossed lakes and hit up a lively pace. Once they came to a muskeg, four miles across, and had to plough over the moss hags while brush tangled their feet and slapped their faces.

Cuffy was a prince of leaders. He seemed to know by some sixth sense the best way to wind through underbrush and over swamps. He was master of the train and ruled by strength and courage as well as intelligence. Bull had ideas of his own, but after one sharp brush with Cuffy, from which he had emerged ruffled and bleeding, the native dog relinquished claim to dominance.

The travelers made about fifteen miles before noon. They came to a solitary tepee, built on the edge of a lake with a background of snow-burdened spruce. This lodge was constructed of poles arranged cone-shaped side by side, the chinks between plastered with moss wedged in to fill every crevice. A thin wisp of smoke rose from an open space in the top.

At the sound of the yelping dogs a man lifted the moose-skin curtain that served as a door. He was an old and wrinkled Cree. His face was so brown and tough and netted with seams that it resembled a piece of alligator leather. From out of it peered two very small bright eyes.

"Ugh! Ugh!" he grunted.

This appeared to be all the English that he knew. Beresford tried him in French and discovered he had a smattering of it. After a good many attempts, the soldier found that he had seen no white man with a dog-train in many moons. The Cree lived there alone, it appeared, and trapped for a living. Why he was separated from all his kin and tribal relations the young Canadian could not find out at the time. Later he learned that the old fellow was an outcast because he had once shown the white feather in a battle with Blackfeet fifty years earlier.

Before they left, the travelers discovered that he knew two more words of English. One was rum, the other tobacco. He begged for both. They left him a half-foot of tobacco. The scant supply of whiskey they had brought was for an emergency.

Just before night fell, Morse shot two ptarmigan in the woods. These made a welcome addition to their usual fare.

Though both the men were experienced in the use of snowshoes, their feet were raw from the chafing of the thongs. Before the camp-fire they greased the sore places with tallow. In a few days the irritation due to the webs would disappear and the leg muscles brought into service by this new and steady shuffle would harden and grow fit.

They had built a wind-break of brush beside the sled and covered the ground with spruce boughs after clearing away the snow. Here they rested after supper, drying socks, duffles, and moccasins, which were wet with perspiration, before the popping fire.

Beresford pulled out his English briar pipe and Tom one picked from the Company stock. Smoke wreathed their heads while they lounged indolently on the spruce bed and occasionally exchanged a remark. They knew each other well enough for long silences. When they talked, it was because they had something to say.

The Canadian looked at his friend's new gun-case and remarked with a gleam in his eye:

"I spoke for that first, Tom. Had miners on it, I thought."

The American laughed sardonically. "It was a present for a good boy," he explained. "I've a notion somebody was glad I was mushin' with you on this trip. Maybe you can guess why. Anyhow, I drew a present out of it."

"I see you did," Beresford answered, grinning.

"I'm to look after you proper an' see you're tucked up."

"Oh, that's it?"

"That's just it."

The constable looked at him queerly, started to say something, then changed his mind.

CHAPTER XXXII

A PICTURE IN A LOCKET

It was characteristic of McRae that he had insisted on bringing Whaley to his own home to recuperate. "It's nursin' you need, man, an' guid food. Ye'll get baith at the hoose."

The trader protested, and was overruled. His Cree wife was not just now able to look after him. McRae's wife and daughter made good his promise, and the wounded man thrived under their care.

On an afternoon Whaley lay on the bed in his room smoking. Beside him sat Lemoine, also puffing at a pipe. The trapper had brought to the ex-gambler a strange tale of a locket and a ring he had seen bought by a half-breed from a Blackfoot squaw who claimed to have had it eighteen years. He had just finished telling of it when Jessie knocked at the door and came into the room with a bowl of caribou broth.

Whaley pretended to resent this solicitude, but his objection was a fraud. He liked this girl fussing over him. His attitude toward her was wholly changed. Thinking of her as a white girl, he looked at her with respect.

"No more slops," he said. "Bring me a good caribou steak and I'll say thank you."

"You're to eat what Mother sends," she told him.

Lemoine had risen from the chair on which he had been sitting. He stared at her, a queer look of puzzled astonishment in his eyes. Jessie became aware of his gaze and flashed on him a look of annoyance.

"Have you seen a ghost, Mr. Lemoine?" she asked.

"By gar, maybeso, Miss Jessie. The picture in the locket, it jus' lak you--same hair, same eyes, same smile."

"What picture in what locket?"

"The locket I see at Whoop-Up, the one Pierre Roubideaux buy from old Makoye-kin's squaw."

"A picture of a Blackfoot?"

"No-o. Maybe French--maybe from the 'Merican country. I do not know."

Whaley took the pipe from his mouth and sat up, the chill eyes in his white face fixed and intent. "Go back to Whoop-Up, Lemoine. Buy that locket and that ring for me from Pierre Roubideaux. See Makoye-kin--and his squaw. Find out where she got it--and when. Run down the whole story."

The trapper took off a fur cap and scratched his curly poll. "Mais--pourquois? All that will take money, is it not so?"

"I'll let you have the money. Spend what you need, but account for it to me afterward."

Jessie felt the irregular beat of a hammer inside her bosom. "What is it you think, Mr. Whaley?" she cried softly.

"I don't know what I think. Probably nothing to it. But there's a locket. We know that. With a picture that looks like you, Lemoine here thinks. We'd better find out whose picture it is, hadn't we?"

"Yes, but--Do you mean that maybe it has something to do with me? How can it? The sister of Stokimatis was my mother. Onistah is my cousin. Ask Stokimatis. She knows. What could this woman of the picture be to me?"

Jessie could not understand the fluttering pulse in her throat. She had not doubted that her mother was a Blackfoot. All the romance of her clouded birth centered around the unknown father who had died when she was a baby. Stokimatis had not been very clear about that. She had never met the man, according to the story she had told Sleeping Dawn. Neither she nor those of her tribal group knew anything of him. Was there a mystery about his life? In her childish dreams Jessie had woven one. He was to her everything desirable, for he was the tie that bound her to all the higher standards of life she craved.

"I don't know. Likely it's all a mare's nest. Find Stokimatis, Lemoine, and bring her back with you. Well see what she can tell us. And get the locket and the ring, with the story back of them."

Again Lemoine referred to the cost. He would have to take his dog-train to Whoop-Up, and from there out to the creek where Pierre Roubideaux was living. Makoye-kin and his family might be wintering anywhere within a radius of a hundred miles. Was there any use in going out on such a wild-hare chase?

Whaley thought there was and said so with finality. He did not give his real reason, which was that he wanted to pay back to McRae and his daughter the debt he owed. They had undoubtedly saved his life after he had treated her outrageously. There was already one score to his credit, of course. He had saved her from West. But he felt the balance still tipped heavily against him. And he was a man who paid his debts.

It was this factor of his make-up--the obligation of old associations laid upon him--that had taken him out to West with money, supplies, and a dog-train to help his escape.

Jessie went out to find her father. Her eagerness to see him outflew her steps. This was not a subject she could discuss with Matapi-Koma. The Cree woman would not understand what a tremendous difference it made if she could prove her blood was wholly of the superior race. Nor could Jessie with tact raise such a point. It involved not only the standing of Matapi-Koma herself, but also of her sons.

The girl found McRae in the storeroom looking over a bundle of assorted pelts--marten, fox, mink, and beaver. The news tumbled from her lips in excited exclamations.

"Oh, Father, guess! Mr. Lemoine saw a picture--a Blackfoot woman had it--old Makoye-kin's wife--and she sold it. And he says it was like me--exactly. Maybe it was my aunt--or some one. My father's sister! Don't you think?"

"I'll ken what I think better gin ye'll just quiet doon an' tell me a' aboot it, lass."

She told him. The Scotchman took what she had to say with no outward sign of excitement. None the less his blood moved faster. He wanted no change in the relations between them that would interfere with the love she felt for him. To him it did not matter whether she was of the pure blood or of the métis. He had always ignored the Indian in her. She was a precious wildling of beauty and delight. By nature she was of the ruling race. There was in her nothing servile or dependent, none of the inertia that was so marked a mental characteristic of the Blackfoot and the Cree. Her slender body was compact of fire and spirit. She was alive to her finger-tips.

None the less he was glad on her account. Since it mattered to her that she was a half-blood, he would rejoice, too, if she could prove the contrary. Or, if she could trace her own father's family, he would try to be glad for her.

With his rough forefinger he touched gently the tender curve of the girl's cheek. "I'm thinkin' that gin ye find relatives across the line, auld Angus McRae will be losin' his dawtie."

She flew into his arms, her warm, young face pressed against his seamed cheek.

"Never--never! You're my father--always that no matter what I find. You taught me to read and nursed me when I was sick. Always you've cared for me and been good to me. I'll never have any real father but you," she cried passionately.

He stroked her dark, abundant hair fondly. "My lass, I've gi'en ye all the love any yin could gi'e his ain bairn. I doot I've been hard on ye at times, but I'm a dour auld man an' fine ye ken my heart was woe for ye when I was the strictest."

She could count on the fingers of one hand the times when he had said as much. Of nature he was a bit of Scotch granite externally. He was sentimental. Most of his race are. But he guarded the expression of it as though it were a vice.

"Maybe Onistah has heard his mother say something about it," Jessie suggested.

"Like enough. There'll be nae harm in askin' the lad."

But the Blackfoot had little to tell. He had been told by Stokimatis that Sleeping Dawn was his cousin, but he had never quite believed it. Once, when he had pressed his mother with questions, she had smiled deeply and changed the subject. His feeling was, and had always been, that there was some mystery about the girl's birth. Stokimatis either knew what it was or had some hint of it.

His testimony at least tended to support the wild hopes flaming in the girl's heart.

Lemoine started south for Whoop-Up at break of day.

CHAPTER XXXIII

INTO THE LONE LAND

Into Northern Lights the pursuers drove after a four-day traverse. Manders, of the Mounted, welcomed them with the best he had. No news had come to him from the outside for more than two months, and after his visitors were fed and warmed, they lounged in front of a roaring log fire while he flung questions at them of what the world and its neighbor were doing.

Manders was a dark-bearded man, big for the North-West Police. He had two hobbies. One was trouble in the Balkans, which he was always prophesying. The other was a passion for Sophocles, which he read in the original from a pocket edition. Start him on the chariot race in "Elektra" and he would spout it while he paced the cabin and gestured with flashing eyes. For he was a Rugby and an Oxford man, though born with the wanderlust in his heart. Some day he would fall heir to a great estate in England, an old baronetcy which carried with it manors and deer parks and shaven lawns that had taken a hundred years to grow. Meanwhile he lived on pemmican and sour bannocks. Sometimes he grumbled, but his grumbling was a fraud. He was here of choice, because he was a wild ass of the desert and his ears heard only the call of adventure. Of such was the North-West Mounted.

Presently, when the stream of his curiosity as to the outside began to dry, Beresford put a few questions of his own. Manders could give him no information. He was in touch with the trappers for a radius of a hundred miles of which Northern Lights was the center, but no word had come to him of a lone traveler with a dog-train passing north.

"Probably striking west of here," the big black Englishman suggested.

Beresford's face twisted to a wry, humorous grimace. East, west, or north, they would have to find the fellow and bring him back.

The man-hunters spent a day at Northern Lights to rest the dogs and restock their supplies. They overhauled their dunnage carefully, mended the broken moose-skin harness, and looked after one of the animals that had gone a little lame from a sore pad. From a French half-breed they bought additional equipment much needed for the trail. He was a gay, good-looking youth in new fringed leather hunting-shirt, blue Saskatchewan cap trimmed with ribbons, and cross belt of scarlet cloth. His stock in trade was dog-shoes, made of caribou-skin by his wife, and while in process of tanning soaked in some kind of liquid that would prevent the canines from eating them off their feet.

The temperature was thirty-five below zero when they left the post and there were sun dogs in the sky. Manders had suggested that they had better wait a day or two, but the man-hunters were anxious to be on the trail. They had a dangerous, unpleasant job on hand. Both of them wanted it over with as soon as possible.

They headed into the wilds. The road they made was a crooked path through the white, unbroken forest. They saw many traces of fur-bearing animals, but did not stop to do any hunting. The intense cold and the appearance of the sky were whips to drive them fast. In the next two or three days they passed fifteen or twenty lakes. Over these they traveled rapidly, but in the portages and the woods they had to pack the snow, sometimes cut out obstructing brush, and again help the dogs over rough or heavy places.

The blizzard caught them the third day. They fought their way through the gathering storm across a rather large lake to the timber's edge. Here they cleared away a space about nine feet square and cut evergreen boughs from the trees to cover it. At one side of this, Morse built the fire while Beresford unharnessed the dogs and thawed out a mess of frozen fish for them. Presently the kettles were bubbling on the fire. The men ate supper and drew the sled up as a barricade against the wind.

The cold had moderated somewhat and it had come on to snow. All night a sleety, wind-driven drizzle beat upon them. They rose from an uncomfortable night to a gloomy day.

They consulted about what was best to do. Their camp was in a poor place, among a few water-logged trees that made a poor, smoky fire. It had little shelter from the storm, and there was no evidence of fair weather at hand.

"Better tackle the next traverse," Morse advised. "Once we get across the lake we can't be worse off than we are here."

"Righto!" assented Beresford.

They packed their supplies, harnessed the dogs, and were off. Into the storm they drove, head down, buffeted by a screaming wind laden with stinging sleet that swept howling across the lake. All about them they heard the sharp reports of cracking ice. At any moment a fissure might open, and its width might be an inch or several yards. In the blinding gale they could see nothing. Literally, they had to feel their way.

Morse went ahead to test the ice, Cuffy following close at his heels. The water rushes up after a fissure and soon freezes over. The danger is that one may come to it too soon.

This was what happened. Morse, on his snowshoes, crossed the thinly frozen ice safely. Cuffy, a step or two behind the trail-breaker, plunged through into the water. The prompt energy of Beresford saved the other dogs. He stopped them instantly and threw his whole weight back to hold the sled. The St. Bernard floundered in the water for a few moments and tried to reach Morse. The harness held Cuffy back. Beresford ran to the edge of the break and called him. A second or two later he was helping to drag the dog back upon the firm ice.

In the bitter cold the matted coat of the St. Bernard, froze stiff. Cuffy knew his danger. The instant the sled, was across the crack, he plunged at the load and went forward with such speed that he seemed almost to drag the other dogs with him.

Fortunately the shore was near, not more than three or four miles away. Within half an hour land was reached. A forest came down to the edge of the lake. From the nearer trees Morse sliced birch bark. An abundance of fairly dry wood was at hand. Before a roaring fire Cuffy lay on a buffalo robe and steamed. Within an hour he was snuggling a contented nose up to Beresford's caressing hand.

Fagged out, the travelers went to bed early. Long before daybreak they were up. The blizzard had died down during the night. It left behind a crusted trail over which the dogs moved fast. The thermometer had again dropped sharply and the weather was bitter cold. Before the lights of an Indian village winked at them through the trees, they had covered nearly forty miles. In the wintry afternoon darkness they drove up.

The native dogs were barking a welcome long before they came jingling into the midst of the tepees. Bucks, squaws, and papooses tumbled out to see them with guttural exclamations of greeting. Some of the youngsters and one or two of the maidens had never before seen a white man.

A fast and furious mêlée interrupted conversation. The wolfish dogs of the village were trying out the mettle of the four strangers. The snarling and yelping drowned all other sounds until the gaunt horde of sharp-muzzled; stiff-haired brutes had been beaten back by savage blows from the whip and by quick thrusts of a rifle butt.

The head man of the group invited the two whites into the largest hut. Morse and Beresford sat down before a smoky fire and carried on a difficult dialogue. They divided half a yard of tobacco among the men present and gave each of the women a small handful of various-colored beads.

They ate sparingly of a stew made of fish, the gift of their hosts. In turn the officers had added to the menu a large piece of fat moose which was devoured with voracity.

The Indians, questioned, had heard a story of a white man traveling alone through the Lone Lands with a dog-train. He was a giant of a fellow and surly, the word had gone out. Who he was or where he was going they did not know, but he seemed to be making for the great river in the north. That was the sum and substance of what Beresford learned from them about West by persistent inquiry.

After supper, since it was so bitterly cold outside, the man-hunters slept in the tepee of the chief. Thirteen Indians too slept there. Two of them were the head man's wives, six were his children, one was a grandchild. Who the rest of the party were or what relation they bore to him, the guests did not learn.

The place was filthy and the air was vile. Before morning both the young whites regretted they had not taken chances outside.

"Not ever again," Beresford said with frank disgust after they had set out next day. "I'll starve if I have to. I'll freeze if I must. But, by Jove! I'll not eat Injun stew or sleep in a pot-pourri of nitchies. Not good enough."

Tom grinned. "While I was eatin' the stew, I thought I could stand sleepin' there even if I gagged at the eats, and while I was tryin' to sleep, I made up my mind if I had to choose one it would be the stew. Next time we're wrastlin' with a blizzard, we'll know enough to be thankful for our mercies. We'll be able to figure it might be a lot worse."

That afternoon they killed a caribou and got much-needed fresh meat for themselves and the dogs. Unfortunately, while carrying the hind-quarters to the sled, Beresford slipped and strained a tendon in the left leg. He did not notice it much at the time, but after an hour's travel the pain increased. He found it difficult to keep pace with the dogs.

They were traversing a ten-mile lake. Morse proposed that they camp as soon as they reached the edge of it.

"Better get on the sled and ride till then," he added.

Beresford shook his head. "No, I'll carry on all right. Got to grin and bear it. The sled's overloaded anyhow. You trot along and I'll tag. Time you've got the fires built and all the work done, I'll loaf into camp."

Tom made no further protest. "All right. Take it easy. I'll unload and run back for you."

The Montanan found a good camp-site, dumped the supplies, and left Cuffy as a guard. With the other dogs he drove back and met the officer. Beresford was still limping doggedly forward. Every step sent a shoot of pain through him, but he set his teeth and kept moving.

None the less he was glad to see the empty sled. He tumbled on and let the others do the work.

At camp he scraped the snow away with a shoe while Morse cut spruce boughs and chopped wood for the fire.

Beresford suffered a good deal from his knee that night. He did not sleep much, and when day came it was plain he could not travel. The camp-site was a good one. There was plenty of wood, and the shape of the draw in which they were located was a protection from the cold wind. The dogs would be no worse for a day or two of rest. The travelers decided to remain here as long as might be necessary.

Tom went hunting. He brought back a bag of four ptarmigan late in the afternoon. Fried, they were delicious. The dogs stood round in a half-circle and caught the bones tossed to them. Crunch-- crunch--crunch. The bones no longer were. The dogs, heads cocked on one side, waited expectantly for more tender tidbits.

"Saw deer tracks. To-morrow I'll have a try for one," Morse said.

The lame man hobbled down to the lake next day, broke the ice, and fished for jack pike. He took back to camp with him all he could carry.

On the fourth day his knee was so much improved that he was able to travel slowly. They were glad to see that night the lights of Fort Desolation, as one of the Mounted had dubbed the post on account of its loneliness.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE MAN-HUNTERS READ SIGN

In the white North travelers are few and far. It is impossible for one to pass through the country without leaving a record of his progress written on the terrain and in the minds of the natives. The fugitive did not attempt concealment. He had with him now an Indian guide and was pushing into the Barren Lands. There was no uncertainty about his movements. From Fort Chippewayan he had swung to the northwest in the line of the great frozen lakes, skirting Athabasca and following the Great Slave River to the lake of the same name. This he crossed at the narrowest point, about where the river empties into it, and headed for the eastern extremity of Lake La Martre.

On his heels, still far behind, trod the two pursuers, patient, dogged, and inexorable. They had left far in the rear the out-forts of the Mounted and the little settlements of the free traders. Already they were deep in the Hudson's Bay Company trapping-grounds. Ahead of them lay the Barrens, stretching to the inlets of the Arctic Ocean.

The days were drawing out and the nights getting shorter. The untempered sun of the Northland beat down on the cold snow crystals and reflected a million sparks of light. In that white field the glare was almost unbearable. Both of them wore smoked glasses, but even with these their eyes continually smarted. They grew red and swollen. If time had not been so great an element in their journey, they would have tried to travel only after sunset. But they could not afford this. West would keep going as long and as fast as he could.

Each of them dreaded snow-blindness. They knew the sign of it--a dreadful pain, a smarting of the eyeballs as though hot burning sand were being flung against them. In camp at night they bathed their swollen lids and applied a cool and healing salve.

Meanwhile the weeks slipped into months and still they held like bulldogs to the trail of the man they were after.

The silence of the wide, empty white wastes surrounded them, except for an occasional word, the whine of a dog, and the slithering crunch of the sled-runners. From unfriendly frozen deserts they passed, through eternal stillness, into the snow wilderness that seemed to stretch forever. When they came to forests, now thinner, smaller, and less frequent, they welcomed them as they would an old friend.

"He's headin' for Great Bear, looks like," Morse suggested one morning after an hour in which neither of them had spoken.

"I was wondering when you'd chirp up, Tom," Beresford grinned cheerfully. "Sometimes I think I'm fed up for life on the hissing of snowshoe runners. The human voice sure sounds good up here. Yes, Great Bear Lake. And after that, where?"

"Up the lake, across to the Mackenzie, and down it to the ocean, I'd say. He's makin' for the whaling waters. Herschel Island maybe. He's hoping to bump into a whaler and get down on it to 'Frisco."

"Your guess is just as good as any," the Canadian admitted. "He's cut out a man-sized job for himself. I'll say that for him. It's a five-to-one bet he never gets through alive, even if we don't nab him."

"What else can he do? He's got to keep going or be dragged back to be hanged. I'd travel too if I were in his place."

"So would I. He's certainly hitting her up. Wish he'd break his leg for a week or two," the constable said airily.

They swung into a dense spruce swamp and jumped up a half-grown bear. He was so close to them that Tom, who was breaking trail, could see his little shining eyes. Morse was carrying his rifle, in the hope that he might see a lynx or a moose. The bear turned to scamper away, but the intention never became a fact. A bullet crashed through the head and brought the animal down.

An hour later they reached an Indian camp on the edge of a lake. On stages, built well up from the ground, drying fish were hanging out of reach of the dogs. These animals came charging toward the travelers as usual, lean, bristling, wolfish creatures that never had been half-tamed.

Beresford lashed them back with the whip. Indians came out from the huts, matted hair hanging over their eyes. After the usual greetings and small presents had been made, the man-hunters asked questions.

"Great Bear Lake--wah-he-o-che (how far)?"

The head man opened his eyes. Nobody in his right mind went to the great water at this time of year. It was maybe fifteen, maybe twenty days' travel. Who could tell? Were all the fair skins mad? Only three days since another dog-train had passed through driven by a big shaggy man who had left them no presents after he had bought fish. Three whites in as many days, and before that none but voyageur half-breeds in twice that number of years.

The trooper let out a boyish whoop. "Gaining fast. Only three days behind him, Tom. If our luck stands up, he'll never reach the Great Bear."

There was reason back of Beresford's exultant shout. At least one of West's dogs had bleeding feet. This the stained snow on the trail told them. Either the big man had no shoes for the animals or was too careless to use them when needed, the constable had suggested to his friend.

"It's not carelessness," Morse said. "It's his bullying nature. Likely he's got the shoes, only he won't put 'em on. He'll beat the poor brute over the head instead and curse his luck when he breaks down. He's too bull-headed to be a good driver."

On the fourth day after this they came upon one of the minor tragedies of sub-Arctic travel. The skeleton of a dog lay beside the trail. Its bones had been picked clean by its ravenous cannibal companions.

"Three left," Beresford commented. "He'll be figuring on picking up another when he meets any Indians or Eskimos."

"If he does it won't be any good to work with his train. I believe we've got him. He isn't twenty-five miles ahead of us right now."

"I'd put it at twenty. In about three days now the fireworks will begin."

It was the second day after this that they began to notice something peculiar about the trail they were following. Hitherto it had taken a straight line, except when the bad terrain had made a détour advisable. Now it swayed uncertainly, much as a drunken man staggers down a street.

"What's wrong with him? It can't be liquor. Yet if he's not drunk, what's got into him?" the soldier asked aloud, expecting no answer that explained this phenomenon.

Tom shook his head. "See. The Indian's drivin' now. He follows a straight enough line. You can tell he's at the tail line by the shape of the webs. And West's still lurchin' along in a crazy way. He fell down here. Is he sick, d' you reckon?"

"Give it up. Anyhow, he's in trouble. We'll know soon enough what it is. Before night now we'll maybe see them."

Before they had gone another mile, the trail in the snow showed another peculiarity. It made a wide half-circle and was heading south again.

"He's given up. What's that mean? Out of grub, d' you think?" Beresford asked.

"No. If they had been, he'd have made camp and gone hunting. We crossed musk-ox sign to-day, you know."

"Righto. Can't be that. He must be sick."

They kept their eyes open. At any moment now they were likely to make a discovery. Since they were in a country of scrubby brush they moved cautiously to prevent an ambush. There was just a possibility that the fugitive might have caught sight of them and be preparing an unwelcome surprise. But it was a possibility that did not look like a probability.

"Something gone 'way off in his plans," Morse said after they had mushed on the south trail for an hour. "Looks like he don't know what he's doing. Has he gone crazy?"

"Might be that. Men do in this country a lot. We don't know what a tough time he's been through."

"I'll bet he's bucked blizzards aplenty in the last two months. Notice one thing. West's trailin' after the guide like a lamb. He's makin' a sure-enough drunk track. See how the point of his shoe caught the snow there an' flung him down. The Cree stopped the sled right away so West could get up. Why did he do that? And why don't West ever stray a foot outa the path that's broke? That's not like him. He's always boss o' the outfit--always leadin'."

Beresford was puzzled, too. "I don't get the situation. It's been pretty nearly a thousand miles that we've been following this trail--eight hundred, anyhow. All the way Bully West has stamped his big foot on it as boss. Now he takes second place. The reason's beyond me."

His friend's mind jumped at a conclusion. "I reckon I know why he's followin' the straight and narrow path. The guide's got a line round his waist and West's tied to it."

"Why?"

The sun's rays, reflected from the snow in a blinding, brilliant glare, smote Morse full in the eyes. For days the white fields had been very trying to the sight. There had been moments when black spots had flickered before him, when red-hot sand had been flung against his eyeballs if he could judge by the burning sensation.

He knew now, in a flash, what was wrong with West.

To Beresford he told it in two words.

The constable slapped his thigh. "Of course. That's the answer."

Night fell, the fugitives still not in sight. The country was so rough that they might be within a mile or two and yet not be seen.

"Better camp, I reckon," Morse suggested.

"Yes. Here. We'll come up with them to-morrow."

They were treated that evening to an indescribably brilliant pyrotechnic display in the heavens. An aurora flashed across the sky such as neither of them had ever seen before. The vault was aglow with waves of red, violet, and purple that danced and whirled, with fickle, inconstant flashes of gold and green and yellow bars. A radiant incandescence of great power lit the arch and flooded it with light that poured through the cathedral windows of the Most High.

At daybreak they were up. Quickly they breakfasted and loaded. The trail they followed was before noon a rotten one, due to a sudden rise in the temperature, but it still bore south steadily.

They reached the camp where West and his guide had spent the night. Another chapter of the long story of the trail was written here. The sled and the guide had gone on south, but West had not been with them. His webs went wandering off at an angle, hesitant and uncertain. Sometimes they doubled across the track he had already made.

Beresford was breaking trail. His hand shot straight out. In the distance there was a tiny black speck in the waste of white. It moved.

Even yet the men who had come to bring the law into the Lone Lands did not relax their vigilance. They knew West's crafty, cunning mind. This might be a ruse to trap them. When they left the sled and moved forward, it was with rules ready. The hunters stalked their prey as they would have done a musk ox. Slowly, noiselessly, they approached.

The figure was that of a huge man. He sat huddled in the snow, his back to them. Despair was in the droop of the head and the set of the bowed shoulders.

One of the dogs howled. The big torso straightened instantly. The shaggy head came up. Bully West was listening intently. He turned and looked straight at them, but he gave no sign of knowing they were there. The constable took a step and the hissing of the shoe-runner sounded.

"I'm watchin' you, Stomak-o-sox," the heavy voice of the convict growled. "Can't fool me. I see every step you're takin'."

It was an empty boast, almost pathetic in its futility. Morse and Beresford moved closer, still without speech.

West broke into violent, impotent cursing. "You're there, you damned wood Cree! Think I don't know? Think I can't see you? Well, I can. Plain as you can see me. You come here an' get me, or I'll skin you alive like I done last week. Hear me?"

The voice rose to a scream. It betrayed terror--the horrible deadly fear of being left alone to perish in the icy wastes of the North.

Beresford crept close and waved a hand in front of the big man's eyes. West did not know it. He babbled vain and foolish threats at his guide.

The convict had gone blind--snow-blind, and Stomak-o-sox had left him alone to make a push for his own life while there was still time.

CHAPTER XXXV

SNOW-BLIND

West grinned up at the officer, his yellow canines showing like tusks. His matted face was an unlovely sight. In it stark, naked fear struggled with craftiness and cruelty.

"Good you came back--good for you. I ain't blind. I been foolin' you all along. Wanted, to try you out. Now we'll mush. Straight for the big lake. North by west like we been going. Un'erstand, Stomak-o-sox? I'll not beat yore head off this time, but if you ever try any monkey tricks with Bully West again--" He let the threat die out in a sound of grinding teeth.

Beresford spoke. His voice was gentle. Vile though this murderer was, there was something pitiable in his condition. One cannot see a Colossus of strength and energy stricken to helplessness without some sense of compassion.

"It's not Stomak-o-sox. We're two of the North-West Mounted. You're under arrest for breaking prison and for killing Tim Kelly."

The information stunned West. He stared up out of sightless eyes. So far as he had known, no member of the Mounted was within five hundred miles of him. Yet the law had stretched out its long arm to snatch him back from this Arctic waste after he had traveled nearly fifteen hundred miles. It was incredible that there could exist such a police force on earth.

"Got me, did you?" he growled. He added the boast that he could not keep back. "Well, you'd never 'a' got me if I hadn't gone blind--never in this world. There ain't any two of yore damned spies could land Bully West when he's at himself."

"Had breakfast?"

He broke into a string of curses. "No, our grub's runnin' low. That wood Cree slipped away with all we had. Wish I'd killed him last week when I skinned him with the dog-whip."

"How long have you been blind?"

"It's been comin' on two-three days. This damned burnin' glare from the snow. Yesterday they give out completely. I tied myself by a line to the Injun. Knew I couldn't trust him. After all I done for him too."

"Did you know he was traveling south with you--had been since yesterday afternoon?"

"No, was he?" Again West fell into his natural speech of invective. "When I meet up with him, I'll sure enough fill him full o' slugs," he concluded savagely.

"You're not likely to meet him again. We've come to take you back to prison."

Morse brought the train up and the hungry man was fed. They treated his eyes with the simple remedies the North knows and bound them with a handkerchief to keep out the fierce light reflected from the snow.

Afterward, they attached him by a line to the driver. He stumbled along behind. Sometimes he caught his foot or slipped and plunged down into the snow. Nobody had ever called him a patient man. Whenever any mishap occurred, he polluted the air with his vile speech.

They made slow progress, for the pace had to be regulated to suit the prisoner.

Day succeeded day, each with its routine much the same as the one before. They made breakfast, broke camp, packed, and mushed. The swish of the runners sounded from morning till night fell. Food began to run scarce. Once they left the blind man at the camp while they hunted wood buffalo. It was a long, hard business. They came back empty-handed after a two-day chase, but less than a mile from camp they sighted a half-grown polar bear and dropped it before the animal had a chance to move.

One happy hour they got through the Land of Little Sticks and struck the forests again.

They had a blazing fire again for the first time in six weeks. Brush and sticks and logs went into it till it roared furiously.

Morse turned from replenishing it to notice that West had removed the bandage from his eyes.

"Better keep it on," the young man advised.

"I was changin' it. Too tight. Gives me a headache," the convict answered sulkily.

"Can you see anything at all yet?"

"Not a thing. Looks to me like I never would."

Tom turned his head for him, so that he faced the blaze squarely. "No light at all?"

"Nope. Don't reckon I ever will see."

"Maybe you will. I've known' cases of snow-blindness where they couldn't see for a month an' came out all right."

"Hurts like blazes," growled the big fellow.

"I know. But not as bad as it did, does it? That salve has helped some."

The two young fellows took care of the man as though he had been a brother. They bathed his eyes, fed him, guided him, encouraged him. He was a bad lot--the worst that either of them had known. But he was in trouble and filled with self-pity. Never ill before, a giant of strength and energy, his condition now apparently filled him with despair.

He would sit hunched down before the fire, head bowed in his hands, a mountain of dole and woe. Sometimes he talked, and he blamed every one but himself for his condition. He never had had a square deal. Every one was against him. It was a rotten world. Then he would fall to cursing God and man.

In some ways he was less trouble than if he had been able to see. He was helpless and had to trust to them. His safety depended on their safety. He could not strike at them without injuring himself. No matter how much he cringed at the thought of being dragged back to punishment, he shrank still more from the prospect of death in the snow wastes. The situation galled him. Every decent word he gave them came grudgingly, and he still snarled and complained and occasionally bullied as though he had the whip hand.

"A nice specimen of ursus horribilis," Beresford murmured to his companion one day. "Thought he was game, anyhow, but he's a yellow quitter. Acts as though we were to blame for his blindness and for what's waiting for him at the end of the journey. I like a man to stand the gaff when it's prodding him."

Morse nodded. "Look out for him. I've got a notion in the back o' my head that he's beginning to see again. He'd kill us in a holy minute if he dared. Only his blindness keeps him from it. What do you say? Shall we handcuff him nights?"

"Not necessary," the constable said. "He can't see a thing. Watch him groping for that stick."

"All his brains run to cunning. Don't forget that. Why should he have to feel so long for that stick? He laid it down himself a minute ago. Tryin' to slip one over on us maybe."

The Canadian looked at the lean, brown face of his friend and grinned. "I've a notion our imaginations too are getting a bit jumpy. We've had one bully time on this trip--with the reverse English. It's all in the day's work to buck blizzards and starve and freeze, though I wouldn't be surprised if our systems were pretty well fed up with grief before we caught Mr. Bully West. Since then--well, you couldn't call him a cheerful traveling companion, could you? A dozen times a day I want to rip loose and tell him how much I don't think of him."

"Still--"

"We'll keep an eye on him. If necessary, it'll be the bracelets for him. I'd hate to have the Inspector send in a report to headquarters, 'Constable Beresford missing in the line of duty.' I've a prejudice against being shot in the back."

"That's one of the reasons I'm here--to see you're not if I can help it."

Beresford's boyish face lit up. He understood what his friend meant. "Say, Faraway isn't New York or London or even Toronto. But how'd you like to be sitting down to one of Jessie McRae's suppers? A bit of broiled venison done to a juicy turn, potatoes, turnips, hot biscuits spread with raspberry jam. By jove, it makes the mouth water."

"And a slice of plum puddin' to top off with," suggested Morse, bringing his own memory into play. "Don't ask me how I'd like it. That's a justifiable excuse for murder. Get busy on that rubaboo. Our guest's howlin' for his dinner."

The faint suspicions of Morse made the officers more wary. They watched their prisoner a little closer. Neither of them quite believed that he was recovering his sight. It was merely a possibility to be guarded against.

But the guess of Morse had been true. It had been a week since flashes of light had first come to West faintly. He began to distinguish objects in a hazy way. Every day he could see better. Now he could tell Morse from Beresford, one dog from another. Give him a few more days and he would have as good vision as before he had gone blind.

All this he hid cunningly, as a miser does his gold. For his warped, cruel brain was planning death to these two men. After that, another plunge into the North for life and freedom.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE WILD BEAST LEAPS

Tom Morse was chopping wood. He knew how to handle an axe. His strokes fell sure and strong, with the full circling sweep of the expert.

The young tree crashed down and he began to lop off its branches. Halfway up the trunk he stopped and raised his head to listen.

No sound had come to him. None came now. But dear as a bell he heard the voice of Win Beresford calling.

"Help! Help!"

It was not a cry that had issued from his friend's throat. Tom knew that. But it was real. It had sprung out of his dire need from the heart, perhaps in the one instant of time left him, and it had leaped silently across space straight to the heart of his friend.

Tom kicked into his snowshoes and began to run. He held the axe in his hand, gripped near the haft. A couple of hundred yards, perhaps, lay between him and camp, which was just over the brow of a small hill. The bushes flew past as he swung to his stride. Never had he skimmed the crust faster, but his feet seemed to be weighted with lead. Then, as he topped the rise, he saw the disaster he had dreaded.

The constable was crumpling to the ground, his body slack and inert, while the giant slashed at him with a dub of firewood he had snatched from the ground. The upraised arm of the soldier broke the force of the blow, but Morse guessed by the way the arm fell that the bone had snapped.

At the sound of the scraping runners, West whirled. He lunged savagely. Even as Tom ducked, a sharp pain shot through his leg from the force of the glancing blow. The axe-head swung like a circle of steel. It struck the convict's fur cap. The fellow went down like an ox in a slaughter-house.

Tom took one look at him and ran to his friend. Beresford was a sorry sight. He lay unconscious, head and face battered, the blood from his wounds staining the snow.

The man-hunters had come into the wilderness prepared for emergencies. Jessie McRae had prepared a small medicine case as a present for the constable. Morse ran to the sled and found this. He unrolled bandages and after he had washed the wounds bound them. As he was about to examine the arm, he glanced up.

For a fraction of a second West's wolfish eyes glared at him before they took on again the stare of blindness. The man had moved. He had hitched himself several yards nearer a rifle which stood propped against a balsam.

The revolver of the deputy constable came to light. "Stop right where you're at. Don't take another step."

The convict snarled rage, but he did not move. Some sure instinct warned him what the cold light in the eyes of his captor meant, that if he crept one inch farther toward the weapon he would die in his tracks.

"He--he jumped me," the murderer said hoarsely.

"Liar! You've been shammin' for a week to get a chance at us. I'd like to gun you now and be done with it."

"Don't." West moistened dry lips. "Honest to God he jumped me. Got mad at somethin' I said. I wouldn't lie to you, Tom."

Morse kept him covered, circled round him to the rifle, and from there to the sled. One eye still on the desperado, he searched for the steel handcuffs. They were gone. He knew instantly that some time within the past day or two West had got a chance to drop them in the snow.

He found rawhide thongs.

"Lie in the snow, face down," he ordered. "Hands behind you and crossed at the wrists."

Presently the prisoner was securely tied. Morse fastened him to the sled and returned to Beresford.

The arm was broken above the wrist, just as he had feared. He set it as best he could, binding it with splints.

The young officer groaned and opened his eyes. He made a motion to rise.

"Don't get up," said Morse. "You've been hurt."

"Hurt?" Beresford's puzzled gaze wandered to the prisoner. A flash of understanding lit it. "He asked me--to light--his pipe--and when I--turned--he hit--me--with a club," the battered man whispered.

"About how I figured it."

"Afraid--I'm--done--in."

"Not yet, old pal. We'll make a fight for it," the Montanan answered.

"I'm sick." The soldier's head sank down. His eyes closed.

All the splendid, lithe strength of his athletic youth had been beaten out of him. To Morse it looked as though he were done for. Was it possible for one to take such a terrific mauling and not succumb? If he were at a hospital, under the care of expert surgeons and nurses, with proper food and attention, he might have a chance in a hundred. But in this Arctic waste, many hundred miles from the nearest doctor, no food but the coarsest to eat, it would be a miracle if he survived.

The bitter night was drawing in. Morse drove West in front of him to bring back the wood he had been cutting. He made the man prepare the rubaboo for their supper. After the convict had eaten, he bound his hands again and let him lie down in his blankets beside the fire.

Morse did not sleep. He sat beside his friend and watched the fever mount in him till he was wildly delirious. Such nursing as was possible he gave.

The prisoner, like a chained wild beast, glowered at him hungrily. Tom knew that if West found a chance to kill, he would strike. No scruple would deter him. The fellow was without conscience, driven by the fear of the fate that drew nearer with every step southward. His safety and the desire of revenge marched together. Beresford was out of the way. It would be his companion's turn next.

After a time the great hulk of a man fell asleep and snored stertorously. But Tom did not sleep. He dared not. He had to keep vigilant guard to save both his friend's life and his own. For though West's hands were tied, it would be the work of only a minute to burn away with a live coal the thongs that bound them.

The night wore away. There was no question of travel. Beresford was in the grip of a raging fever and could not be moved. Morse made West chop wood while he stood over him, rifle in hand. They were short of food and had expected to go hunting next day. The supplies might last at best six or seven more meals. What was to be done then? Morse could not go and leave West where he could get at the man who had put him in prison and with a dog-train to carry him north. Nor could he let West have a rifle with which to go in search of game.

There were other problems that made the situation impossible. Another night was at hand, and again Tom must keep awake to save himself and his friend from the gorilla-man who watched him, gloated over him, waited for the moment to come when he could safely strike. And after that there would be other nights--many of them.

What should he do? What could he do? While he sat beside the delirious officer, Tom pondered that question. On the other side of the fire lay the prisoner. Triumph--a horrible, cruel, menacing triumph--rode in his eye and strutted in his straddling walk when he got up. His hour was coming. It was coming fast.

Once Tom fell asleep for a cat-nap. He caught himself nodding, and with a jerk flung back his head and himself to wakefulness. In the air was a burning odor.

Instinct told him what it was. West had been tampering with the rawhide thongs round his wrists, had been trying to burn them away.

He made sure that the fellow was still fast, then drank a tin cup of strong tea. After he had fed the sick man a little caribou broth, persuading him with infinite patience to take it, a spoonful at a time, Morse sat down again to wear out the hours of darkness.

The problem that pressed on him could no longer be evaded. A stark decision lay before him. To postpone it was to choose one of the alternatives. He knew now, almost beyond any possibility of doubt, that either West must die or else he and his friend. If he had not snatched himself awake so promptly an hour ago, Win and he would already be dead men. It might be that the constable was going to die, anyhow, but he had a right to his chance of life.

On the other hand there was one rigid rule of the North-West Mounted. The Force prided itself on living up to it literally. When a man was sent out to get a prisoner, he brought him in alive. It was a tradition. The Mounted did not choose the easy way of killing lawbreakers because of the difficulty of capturing them. They walked through danger, usually with aplomb, got their man, and brought him in.

That was what Beresford had done with Pierre Poulette after the Frenchman had killed Buckskin Jerry. He had followed the man for months, captured him, lived with him alone for a fourth of a year in the deep snows, and brought him back to punishment. It was easy enough to plead that this situation was a wholly different one. Pierre Poulette was no such dangerous wild beast as Bully West. Win did not have with him a companion wounded almost to death who had to be nursed back to health, one struck down by the prisoner treacherously. There was just a fighting chance for the officers to get back to Desolation if West was eliminated from the equation. Tom knew he would have a man's work cut out for him to win through--without the handicap of the prisoner.

Deep in his heart he believed that it was West's life or theirs. It wasn't humanly possible, in addition to all the other difficulties that pressed on him, to guard this murderer and bring him back for punishment. There was no alternative, it seemed to Tom. Thinking could not change the conditions. It might be sooner, it might be later, but under existing circumstances the desperado would find his chance to attack, if he were alive to take it.

The fellow's life was forfeit. As soon as he was turned over to the State, it would be exacted of him. Since his assault on Beresford, surely he had lost all claim to consideration as a human being.

Just now there were only three men in the world so far as they were concerned. These three constituted society. Beresford, his mind still wandering with incoherent mutterings, was a non-voting member. He, Tom Morse, must be judge and jury. He must, if the prisoner were convicted, play a much more horrible role. In the silence of the cold sub-Arctic night he fought the battle out while automatically he waited on his friend.

West snored on the other side of the fire.

CHAPTER XXXVII

NEAR THE END OF A LONG CROOKED TRAIL

When West awoke, Morse was whittling on a piece of wood with his sharp hunting-knife. It was a flat section from a spruce, and it had been trimmed with an axe till it resembled a shake in shape.

The outlaw's curiosity overcame his sullenness at last. It made him jumpy, anyhow, to sit there in silence except for the muttering of the sick man.

"Whajamakin'?" he demanded.

Morse said nothing. He smoothed the board to his satisfaction, then began lettering on it with a pencil.

"I said whajadoin'," growled West, after another silence.

The special constable looked at him, and in the young man's eyes there was something that made the murderer shiver.

"I'm making a tombstone."

"What?" West felt a drench of ice at his heart.

"A marker for a grave."

"For--for him? Maybe he won't die. Looks better to me. Fever ain't so high."

"It's not for him."

West moistened his dry lips with his tongue. "You will have yore li'l joke, eh? Who's it for?"

"For you."

"For me?" The man's fear burst from him in a shriek. "Whajamean for me?"

From the lettering Morse read aloud. "'Bully West, Executed, Some Time late in March, 1875.'" And beneath it, "'May God Have Mercy on His Soul.'"

Tiny beads of sweat gathered on the convict's clammy forehead. "You aimin' to--to murder me?" he asked hoarsely.

"To execute you."

"With--without a trial? My God, you can't do that! I got a right to a trial."

"You've been tried--and condemned. I settled all that in the night."

"But--it ain't legal. Goddlemighty, you got no right to act thataway. All you can do is to take me back to the courts." The heavy voice broke again to a scream.

Morse slipped the hunting-knife back into its case. He looked steadily at the prisoner. In his eyes there was no anger, no hatred. But back of the sadness in them was an implacable resolution.

"Courts and the law are a thousand miles away," he said. "You know your crimes. You murdered Tim Kelly treacherously. You planned to spoil an innocent girl's life by driving her to worse than death. You shot your partner in the back after he did his best to help you escape. You tortured Onistah and would have killed him if we hadn't come in time. You assaulted my friend here and he'll probably die from his wounds. It's the end of the long trail for you, Bully West. Inside of half an hour you will be dead. If you've anything to say--if you can make your peace with heaven--don't waste a moment."

The face of West went gray. He stared at the other man, the horror-filled eyes held fascinated. "You--you're tryin' to scare me," he faltered. "You wouldn't do that. You couldn't. It ain't allowed by the Commissioner." One of the bound arms twitched involuntarily. The convict knew that he was lost. He had a horrible conviction that this man meant to do as he had said.

The face of Morse was inexorable as fate itself, but inside he was a river of rushing sympathy. This man was bad. He himself had forced the circumstances that made it impossible to let him live. None the less Tom felt like a murderer. The thing he had to do was so horribly cold-blooded. If this had been a matter between the two of them, he could at least have given the fellow a chance for his life. But not now--not with Win Beresford in the condition he was. If he were going to save his friend, he could not take the chances of a duel.

"Ten minutes now," Morse said. His voice was hoarse and low. He felt his nerves twitching, a tense aching in the throat.

"I always liked you fine, Tom," the convict pleaded desperately. "Me 'n' you was always good pals. You wouldn't do me dirt thataway now. If you knew the right o' things--how that Kelly kep' a-devilin' me, how Whaley was layin' to gun me when he got a chanct, how I stood up for the McRae girl an' protected her against him. Goddlemighty, man, you ain't aimin' to kill me like a wolf!" The shriek of uncontrollable terror lifted into his voice once more. "I ain't ready to die. Gimme a chance, Tom. I'll change my ways. I swear I will. I'll do like you say every minute. I'll nurse Beresford. Me, I'm a fine nurse. If you'll gimme a week--jus' one more week. That ain't much to ask. So's I can git ready."

The man slipped to his knees and began to crawl toward Morse. The young man got up, his teeth set. He could not stand much of this sort of thing without collapsing himself.

"Get up," he said. "We're going over the hill there."

"No--no--no!"

It took Morse five minutes to get the condemned man to his feet. The fellow's face was ashen. His knees shook.

Tom was in almost as bad a condition himself.

Beresford's high voice cut in. In his delirium he was perhaps living over again his experience with Pierre Poulette.

"Maintiens le droit. Get your man and bring him in. Tough sledding. Never mind. Go through, old fellow. Bring him in. That's what you're sent for. Hogtie him. Drag him with a rope around his neck. Get him back somehow."

The words struck Tom motionless. It was as though some voice were speaking to him through the sick man's lips. He waited.

"Righto, sir," the soldier droned on. "See what I can do, sir. Have a try at it, anyhow." And again he murmured the motto of the Mounted Police.

Tom had excused himself for what he thought it was his duty to do on the ground that it was not humanly possible to save his friend and bring West back. It came to him in a flash that the Mounted Police were becoming so potent a power for law and order because they never asked whether the job assigned them was possible. They went ahead and did it or died trying to do it. It did not matter primarily whether Beresford and he got back alive or not. If West murdered them, other red-coats would take the trail and get him.

What he, Tom Morse, had to do was to carry on. He could not choose the easy way, even though it was a desperately hard one for him. He could not make himself a judge over this murderer, with power of life and death. The thing that had been given him to do was to bring West to Faraway. He had no choice in the matter. Win or lose, he had to play the hand out as it was dealt him.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

OVER A ROTTING TRAIL

Tom believed that Beresford's delirious words had condemned them both to death. He could not nurse his friend, watch West night and day, keep the camp supplied with food, and cover the hundreds of miles of bleak snow fields which stretched between them and the nearest settlement. He did not think that any one man lived who was capable of succeeding in such a task.

Yet his first feeling was of immediate relief. The horrible duty that had seemed to be laid upon him was not a duty at all. He saw his course quite simply. All he had to do was to achieve the impossible. If he failed in it, he would go down like a soldier in the day's work. He would have, anyhow, no torturings of conscience, no blight resting upon him till the day of his death.

"You're reprieved, West," he announced simply.

The desperado staggered to the sled and leaned against it faintly. His huge body swayed. The revulsion was almost too much for him.

"I--I--knowed you couldn't treat an old pardner thataway, Tom," he murmured.

Morse took the man out to a fir tree. He carried with him a blanket, a buffalo robe, and a part of the dog harness.

"Whad you aimin' to do?" asked West uneasily. He was not sure yet that he was out of the woods.

"Roll up in the blankets," ordered Morse.

The fellow looked at his grim face and did as he was told. Tom tied him to the tree, after making sure that his hands were fast behind him.

"I'll freeze here," the convict complained.

The two officers were lean and gaunt from hard work and insufficient nourishment, but West was still sleek and well padded with flesh. He had not missed a meal, and during the past weeks he had been a passenger. All the hard work, the packing at portages, the making of camp, the long, wearing days of hunting, had fallen upon the two whose prisoner he was. He could stand a bit of hardship, Tom decided.

"No such luck," he said brusquely. "And I wouldn't try to break away if I were you. I can't kill you, but I'll thrash you with the dog-whip if you make me any trouble."

Morse called Cuffy and set the dog to watch the bound man. He did not know whether the St. Bernard would do this, but he was glad to see that the leader of the train understood at once and settled down in the snow to sleep with one eye watchful of West.

Tom returned to his friend. He knew he must concentrate his efforts to keep life in the battered body of the soldier. He must nurse and feed him judiciously until the fever wore itself out.

While he was feeding Win broth, he fell asleep with the spoon in his hand. He jerkily flung back his head and opened his eyes. Cuffy still lay close to the prisoner, evidently prepared for an all-night vigil with short light naps from which the least movement would instantly arouse him.

"I'm all in. Got to get some sleep," Morse said to himself, half aloud.

He wrapped in his blankets. When his eyes opened, the sun was beating down from high in the heavens. He had slept from one day into the next. Even in his sleep he had been conscious of some sound drumming at his ears. It was the voice of West.

"You gonna sleep all day? Don't we get any grub? Have I gotta starve while you pound yore ear?"

Hurriedly Tom flung aside his wraps. He leaped to his feet, a new man, his confidence and vitality all restored.

The fire had died to ashes. He could hear the yelping of the dogs in the distance. They were on a private rabbit hunt of their own, all of them but Cuffy. The St. Bernard still lay in the snow watching West.

Beresford's delirium was gone and his fever was less. He was very weak, but Tom thought he saw a ghost of the old boyish grin flicker indomitably into his eyes. As Tom looked at the swathed and bandaged head, for the first time since the murderous attack he allowed himself to hope. The never-say-die spirit of the man and the splendid constitution built up by a clean outdoor life might pull him through yet.

"West was afraid you never were going to wake up, Tom. It worried him. You know how fond of you he is," the constable said weakly.

Morse was penitent. "Why didn't you wake me, Win? You must be dying of thirst."

"I could do with a drink," he admitted. "But you needed that sleep. Every minute of it."

Tom built up the fire and thawed snow. He gave Beresford a drink and then fed more of the broth to him. He made breakfast for the prisoner and himself.

Afterward, he took stock of their larder. It was almost empty. "Enough flour and pemmican for another mess of rubaboo. Got to restock right away or our stomachs will be flat as a buffalo bull's after a long stampede."

He spoke cheerfully, yet he and Beresford both knew a hunt for game might be unsuccessful. Rabbits would not do. He had to provide enough to feed the dogs as well as themselves. If he did not get a moose, a bear, or caribou, they would face starvation.

Tom redressed the wounds of the trooper and examined the splints on the arm to make sure they had not become disarranged during the night in the delirium of the sick man.

"Got to leave you, Win. Maybe for a day or more. I'll have plenty of wood piled handy for the fire--and broth all ready to heat. Think you can make out?"

The prospect could not have been an inviting one for the wounded man, but he nodded quite as a matter of course.

"I'll be all right. Take your time. Don't spoil your hunt worrying about me."

Yet it was with extreme reluctance Tom had made up his mind to go. He would take the dog-train with him--and West, unarmed, of course. He had to take him on Beresford's account, because he dared not leave him. But as he looked at his friend, all the supple strength stricken out of him, weak and helpless as a sick child, he felt a queer tug at the heart. What assurance had he that he would find him still alive on his return?

Beresford knew what he was thinking. He smiled, the gentle, affectionate smile of the very ill. "It's all right, old fellow. Got to buck up and carry on, you know. Look out--for West. Don't give him any show at you. Never trust him--not for a minute. Remember he's--a wolf." His weak hand gripped Tom's in farewell.

The American turned away hurriedly, not to show the tears that unexpectedly brimmed his lids. Though he wore the hard surface of the frontier, his was a sensitive soul. He was very fond of this gay, gallant youth who went out to meet adventure as though it were a lover with whom he had an appointment. They had gone through hell together, and the fires of the furnace had proved the Canadian true gold. After all, Tom was himself scarcely more than a boy in years. He cherished, deep hidden in him, the dreams and illusions that long contact with the world is likely to dispel. At New Haven and Cambridge lads of his age were larking beneath the elms and playing childish pranks on each other.

West drove the team. Tom either broke trail or followed. He came across plenty of tracks, but most of them were old ones. He recognized the spoor of deer, bear, and innumerable rabbits. Toward noon fresh caribou tracks crossed their path. The slot pointed south. Over a soft and rotting trail Morse swung round in pursuit.

They made heavy going of it. He had to break trail through slushy snow. His shoes broke through the crust and clogged with the sludgy stuff so that his feet were greatly weighted. Fatigue pressed like a load on his shoulders. The dogs and West wallowed behind.

By night probably the trail would be much better, but they dared not wait till then. The caribou would not stop to suit the convenience of the hunters. This might be the last shot in the locker. Every dragging lift of the webs carried Morse farther from camp, but food had to be found and in quantity.

It was close to dusk when Tom guessed they were getting near the herd. He tied the train to a tree and pushed on with West. Just before nightfall he sighted the herd grazing on muskeg moss. There were about a dozen in all. The wind was fortunately right.

Tom motioned to West not to follow him. On hands and knees the hunter crept forward, taking advantage of such cover as he could find. It was a slow, cold business, but he was not here for pleasure. A mistake might mean the difference between life and death for him and Win Beresford.

For a stalker to determine the precise moment when to shoot is usually a nice decision. Perhaps he can gain another dozen yards on his prey. On the other hand, by moving closer he may startle them and lose his chance. With so much at stake Tom felt for the second time in his life the palsy that goes with buck fever.

A buck flung up his head and sniffed toward the hidden danger. Tom knew the sign of startled doubt. Instantly his trembling ceased. He aimed carefully and fired. The deer dropped in its tracks. Again he fired--twice--three times. The last shot was a wild one, sent on a hundredth chance. The herd vanished in the gathering darkness.

Tom swung forward exultant, his webs swishing swiftly over the snow. He had dropped two. A second buck had fallen, risen, run fifty yards, and come to earth again. The hunter's rifle was ready in case either of the caribou sprang up. He found the first one dead, the other badly wounded. At once he put the buck out of its pain.

West came slouching out of the woods at Tom's signal. Directed by the officer, he made a fire and prepared for business. The stars were out as they dressed the meat and cooked a large steak on the coals. Afterward they hung the caribou from the limb of a spruce, drawing them high enough so that no prowling wolves could reach the game.

With the coming of night the temperature had fallen and the snow hardened. The crust held beneath their webs as they returned to the sled. West wanted to camp where the deer had been killed. He protested, with oaths, in his usual savage growl, that he was dead tired and could not travel another step.

But he did. Beneath the stars the hunters mushed twenty miles back to camp. They made much better progress by reason of the frozen trail and the good meal they had eaten.

It was daybreak when Morse sighted the camp-fire smoke. His heart leaped. Beresford must have been able to keep it alive with fuel. Therefore he had been alive an hour or two ago at most.

Dogs and men trudged into camp ready to drop with fatigue.

Beresford, from where he lay, waved a hand at Tom. "Any luck?" he asked.

"Two caribou."

"Good. I'll be ready for a steak to-morrow."

Morse looked at him anxiously. The glaze had left his eyes. He was no longer burning up with fever. Both voice and movements seemed stronger than they had been twenty-four hours earlier.

"Bully for you, Win," he answered.

CHAPTER XXXIX

A CREE RUNNER BRINGS NEWS

"Don't you worry about that lad, Jessie. He's got as many lives as a cat--and then some. I've knew him ever since he was knee-high to a grasshopper."

Brad Stearns was talking. He sat in the big family room at the McRae house and puffed clouds of tobacco, smoke to the rafters.

"Meaning Mr. Beresford?" asked Jessie demurely. She was patching a pair of leather trousers for Fergus and she did not raise her eyes from the work.

"Meanin' Tom Morse," the old-timer said. "Not but what Beresford's a good lad too. Sand in his craw an' a kick like a mule in his fist. But he was brought up somewheres in the East, an' o' course he's a leetle mite less tough than Tom. No, sir. Tom'll bob up one o' these here days good as ever. Don't you worry none about that. Why, he ain't been gone but--lemme see, a week or so better'n four months. When a man's got to go to the North Pole an' back, four months--"

Beneath her long lashes the girl slanted a swift look at Brad. "That makes twice you've told me in two minutes not to worry about Mr. Morse. Do I look peaked? Am I lying awake nights thinking about him, do you think?" She held up the renewed trousers and surveyed her handiwork critically.

Brad gazed at her through narrowed lids. "I'll be doggoned if I know whether you are or you ain't. I'd bet a pair o' red-topped boots it's one of them lads. 'Course Beresford's got a red coat an' spurs that jingle an' a fine line o' talk. Tom he ain't got ary one o' the three. But if it's a man you're lookin' for, a two-fisted man who--"

A wave of mirth crossed Jessie's face like a ripple on still water. Her voice mimicked his. "Why do you want to saw off an old maid on that two-fisted man you've knew ever since he was knee-high to a grasshopper? What did he ever do to you that was so doggoned mean?"

"Now looky here, you can laugh at me all you've a mind to. All I'm sayin' is--"

"Oh, I'm not laughing at you," she interposed hurriedly with an assumption of anxiety her bubbling eyes belied. "If you could show me how to get your two-fisted man when he comes back--or even the one with the red coat and the spurs and the fine line of talk--"

"I ain't sayin' he ain't a man from the ground up too," Brad broke in. "Considerin' his opportunities he's a right hefty young fellow. But Tom Morse he--"

"That's it exactly. Tom Morse he--"

"Keep right on makin' fun o' me. Tom Morse he's a man outa ten thousand, an' I don't know as I'm coverin' enough population at that."

"And you're willing to make a squaw-man of him. Oh, Mr. Stearns!"

He looked at her severely. "You got no license to talk thataway, Jessie McRae. You're Angus McRae's daughter an' you been to Winnipeg to school. Anyways, after what Lemoine found out--"

"What did he find out? Pierre Roubideaux couldn't tell him anything about the locket and the ring. Makoye-kin said he got it from his brother who was one of a party that massacred an American outfit of trappers headed for Peace River. He doesn't know whether the picture of the woman in the locket was that of one of the women in the camp. All we've learned is that I look like a picture of a white woman found in a locket nearly twenty years ago. That doesn't take us very far, does it?"

"Well, Stokimatis may know something. When Onistah comes back with her, we'll get the facts straight."

McRae came into the room. "News, lass," he cried, and his voice rang. "A Cree runner's just down frae Northern Lights. He says the lads were picked up by some trappers near Desolation. One o' them's been badly hurt, but he's on the mend. Which yin I dinna ken. What wi' starvation an' blizzards an' battles they've had a tough time. But the word is they're doing fine noo."

"West?" asked Brad. "Did they get him?"

"They got him. Dragged him back to Desolation with a rope round his neck. Hung on to him while they were slam-bangin' through blizzards an' runnin' a race wi' death to get back before they starved. Found him up i' the Barrens somewhere, the story is. He'll be hangit at the proper time an' place. It's in the Word. 'They that take the sword shall perish with the sword.' Matthew 26:52."

Brad let out the exultant rebel yell he had learned years before in the Confederate army. "What'd I tell you about that boy? Ain't I knowed him since he was a li'l' bit of a tad? He's a go-getter, Tom is. Y'betcha!"

Jessie's heart was singing too, but she could not forbear a friendly gibe at him. "I suppose Win Beresford wasn't there at all. He hadn't a thing to do with it, had he?"

The old cowpuncher raised a protesting hand. "I ain't said a word against him. Now have I, McRae? Nothin' a-tall. All I done said was that I been tellin' everybody Tom would sure enough bring back Bully West with him."

The girl laughed. "You're daffy about that boy you brought up by hand. I'll not argue with you."

"They're both good lads," the Scotchman summed up, and passed to his second bit of news. "Onistah and Stokimatis are in frae the Blackfoot country. They stoppit at the store, but they'll be alang presently. I had a word wi' Onistah. We'll wait for him here."

"Did he say what he'd found out?" Jessie cried.

"Only that he had brought back the truth. That'll be the lad knockin' at the door."

Jessie opened, to let in Onistah and his mother. Stokimatis and the girl gravitated into each other's arms, as is the way with women who are fond of each other. The Indian is stolid, but Jessie had the habit of impetuosity, of letting her feelings sweep her into demonstration. Even the native women she loved were not proof against it.

McRae questioned Stokimatis.

Without waste of words the mother of Onistah told the story she had traveled hundreds of miles to tell.

Sleeping Dawn was not the child of her sister. When the attack had been made on the white trappers bound for Peace River, the mother of a baby had slipped the infant under an iron kettle. After the massacre her sister had found the wailing little atom of humanity. The Indian woman had recently lost her own child. She hid the babe and afterward was permitted to adopt it. When a few months later she died of smallpox, Stokimatis had inherited the care of the little one. She had named it Sleeping Dawn. Later, when the famine year came, she had sold the child to Angus McRae.

That was all she knew. But it was enough for Jessie. She did not know who her parents had been. She never would know, beyond the fact that they were Americans and that her mother had been a beautiful girl whose eyes laughed and danced. But this knowledge made a tremendous difference to her. She belonged to the ruling race and not to the métis, just as much as Win Beresford and Tom Morse did.

She tried to hide her joy, was indeed ashamed of it. For any expression of it seemed like a reproach to Matapi-Koma and Onistah and Stokimatis, to her brother Fergus and in a sense even to her father. None the less her blood beat fast. What she had just found out meant that she could aspire to the civilization of the whites, that she had before her an outlook, was not to be hampered by the limitations imposed upon her by race.

The heart in the girl sang a song of sunshine dancing on grass, of meadowlarks flinging out their carefree notes of joy. Through it like a golden thread ran for a motif little melodies that had to do with a man who had staggered into Fort Desolation out of the frozen North, sick and starved and perhaps wounded, but still indomitably captain of his soul.

CHAPTER XL

"MALBROUCK S'EN VA-T-EN GUERRE"

Inspector MacLean was present in person when the two man-hunters of the North-West Mounted returned to Faraway. Their reception was in the nature of a pageant. Gayly dressed voyageurs and trappers, singing old river songs that had been handed down to them from their fathers, unharnessed the dogs and dragged the cariole into town. In it sat Beresford, still unfit for long and heavy mushing. Beside it slouched West, head down, hands tied behind his back, the eyes from the matted face sending sidling messages of hate at the capering crowd. At his heels moved Morse, grim and tireless, an unromantic figure of dominant efficiency.

Long before the worn travelers and their escort reached the village, Jessie could hear the gay lilt of the chantey that heralded their coming:

"Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre, Mironton-ton-ton, mirontaine."

The girl hummed it herself, heart athrob with excitement. She found herself joining in the cheer of welcome that rose joyously when the cavalcade drew into sight. In her cheeks fluttered eager flags of greeting. Tears brimmed the soft eyes, so that she could hardly distinguish Tom Morse and Win Beresford, the one lean and gaunt and grim, the other pale and hollow-eyed from illness, but scattering smiles of largesse. For her heart was crying, in a paraphrase of the great parable, "He was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."

Beresford caught sight of the Inspector's face and chuckled like a schoolboy caught in mischief. This gay procession, with its half-breeds in tri-colored woolen coats, its gay-plumed voyageurs suggesting gallant troubadours of old in slashed belts and tassels, was not quite the sort of return to set Inspector MacLean cheering. Externally, at least, he was a piece of military machinery. A trooper did his work, and that ended it. In the North-West Mounted it was not necessary to make a gala day of it because a constable brought in his man. If he didn't bring him in--well, that would be another and a sadder story for the officer who fell down on the assignment.

As soon as Beresford and Morse had disposed of their prisoner and shaken off their exuberant friends, they reported to the Inspector. He sat at a desk and listened dryly to their story. Not till they had finished did he make any comment.

"You'll have a week's furlough to recuperate, Constable Beresford. After that report to the Writing-on-Stone detachment for orders. Here's a voucher for your pay, Special Constable Morse. I'll say to you both that it was a difficult job well done." He hesitated a moment, then proceeded to free his mind. "As for this Roman triumph business--victory procession with prisoners chained to your chariot wheels--quite unnecessary, I call it."

Beresford explained, smilingly. "We really couldn't help it, sir. They were bound to make a Roman holiday out of us whether we wanted to or not. You know how excitable the French are. Had to have their little frolic out of it."

"Not the way the Mounted does business. You know that, Beresford. We don't want any fuss and feathers--any fol-de-rol--this mironton-ton-ton stuff. Damn it, sir, you liked it. I could see you eat it up. D'you s'pose I haven't eyes in my head?"

The veneer of sobriety Beresford imposed on his countenance refused to stay put.

MacLean fumed on. "Hmp! Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre, eh? Very pretty. Very romantic, no doubt. But damned sentimental tommyrot, just the same."

"Yes, sir," agreed the constable, barking into a cough just in time to cut off a laugh.

"Get out!" ordered the Inspector, and there was the glimmer of a friendly smile in his own eyes. "And I'll expect you both to dine with me to-night. Six o'clock sharp. I'll hear that wonderful story in more detail. And take care of yourself, Beresford. You don't look strong yet. I'll make that week two or three if necessary."

"Thank you, sir."

"Hmp! Don't thank me. Earned it, didn't you? What are you hanging around for? Get out!"

Constable Beresford had his revenge. As he passed the window, Inspector MacLean heard him singing. The words that drifted to the commissioned office! were familiar.

"Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre, Mironton-ton-ton, mirontaine."

MacLean smiled at the irrepressible youngster. Like most people, he responded to the charm of Winthrop Beresford. He could forgive him a touch of debonair impudence if necessary.

It happened that his heart was just now very warm toward both these young fellows. They had come through hell and had upheld the best traditions of the Force. Between the lines of the story they had told he gathered that they had shaved the edge of disaster a dozen times. But they had stuck to their guns like soldiers. They had fought it out week after week, hanging to their man with bulldog pluck. And when at last they were found almost starving in camp, they were dividing their last rabbit with the fellow they were bringing out to be hanged.

The Inspector walked to the window and looked down the street after them. His lips moved, but no sound came from them. The rhythmic motion of them might have suggested, if there had been anybody present to observe, that his mind was running on the old river song.

"Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre, Mironton-ton-ton, mirontaine."

CHAPTER XLI

SENSE AND NONSENSE

Beresford speaking, to an audience of one, who listened with soft dark eyes aglow and sparkling.

"He's the best scout ever came over the border, Jessie. Trusty as steel, stands the gaff without whining, backs his friends to the limit, and plays the game out till the last card's dealt and the last trick lost. Tom Morse is a man in fifty thousand."

"I know another," she murmured. "Every word you've said is true for him too."

"He's a wonder, that other." admitted the soldier dryly. "But we're talking about Tom now. I tell you that iron man dragged West and me out of the Barrens by the scruff of our necks. Wouldn't give up. Wouldn't quit. The yellow in West came out half a dozen times. When the ten-day blizzard caught us, he lay down and yelped like a cur. I wouldn't have given a plugged six-pence for our chances. But Tom went out into it, during a little lull, and brought back with him a timber wolf. How he found it, how he killed it, Heaven alone knows. He was coated with ice from head to foot. That wolf kept us and the dogs alive for a week. Each day, when the howling of the blizzard died down a bit, Tom made West go down with him to the creek and get wood. It must have been a terrible hour. They'd come back so done up, so frozen, they could hardly stagger in with their jags of pine for the fire. I never heard the man complain--not once. He stood up to it the way Tom Sayers used to."

The girl felt a warm current of life prickling swiftly through her. "I love to hear you talk so generously of him."

"Of my rival?" he said, smiling. "How else can I talk? The scoundrel has been heaping on me those coals of fire we read about. I haven't told you half of it--how he nursed me like a woman and looked after me so that I wouldn't take cold, how he used to tuck me up in the sled with a hot stone at my feet and make short days' runs in order not to wear out my strength. By Jove, it was a deucedly unfair advantage he took of me."

"Is he your rival?" she asked.

"Isn't he?"

"In business?"

"How demure Miss McRae is," he commented. "Observe those long eyelashes flutter down to the soft cheeks."

"In what book did you read that?" she wanted to know.

"In that book of suffering known as experience," he sighed, eyes dancing.

"If you're trying to tell me that you're in love with some girl--"

"Haven't I been trying to tell you for a year?"

Her eyes flashed a challenge at him. "Take care, sir. First thing you know you'll be on thin ice. You might break through."

"And if I did--"

"Of course I'd snap you up before you could bat an eye. Is there a girl living that wouldn't? And I'm almost an old maid. Don't forget that. I'm to gather rosebuds while I may, because time's flying so fast, some poet says."

"Time stands still for you, my dear," he bowed, with a gay imitation of the grand manner.

"Thank you." Her smile mocked him. She had flirted a good deal with this young man and understood him very well. He had no intention whatever of giving up the gay hazards of life for any adventure so enduring as matrimony. Moreover, he knew she knew it. "But let's stick to the subject. While you're proposing--"

"How you help a fellow along!" he laughed. "Am I proposing?"

"Of course you are. But I haven't found out yet whether it's for yourself or Mr. Morse."

"A good suggestion--novel, too. For us both, let's say. You take your choice." He flung out a hand in a gay debonair gesture.

"You've told his merits, but I don't think I ever heard yours mentioned," she countered. "If you'd recite them, please."

"It's a subject I can do only slight justice." He bowed again. "Sergeant Beresford, at your service, of the North-West Mounted."

"Sergeant! Since when?"

"Since yesterday. Promoted for meritorious conduct in the line of duty. My pay is increased to one dollar and a quarter a day. In case happily your choice falls on me, don't squander it on silks and satins, on trips to Paris and London--"

"If I choose you, it won't be for your wealth," she assured him.

"Reassured, fair lady. I proceed with the inventory of Sergeant Beresford's equipment as a future husband. Fond, but, alas! fickle. A family black sheep, or if not black, at least striped. Likely not to plague you long, if he's sent on many more jobs like the last. Said to be good-tempered, but not docile. Kind, as men go, but a ne'er-do-well, a prodigal, a waster. Something whispers in my ear that he'll make a better friend than a husband."

"A twin fairy is whispering the same in my ear," the girl nodded. "At least a better friend to Jessie McRae. But I think he has a poor advocate in you. The description is not a flattering one. I don't even recognize the portrait."

"But Tom Morse--"

"Exactly, Tom Morse. Haven't you rather taken the poor fellow for granted?" She felt an unexpected blush burn into her cheek. It stained the soft flesh to her throat. For she was discovering that the nonsense begun so lightly was embarrassing. She did not want to talk about the feelings of Tom Morse toward her. "It's all very well to joke, but--"

"Shall I ask him?" he teased.

She flew into a mild near-panic. "If you dare, Win Beresford!" The flash in her eyes was no longer mirth. "We'll talk about something else. I don't think it's very nice of us to--to--"

"Tom retired from conversational circulation," he announced. "Shall we talk of cats or kings?"

"Tell me your plans, now you've been promoted."

"Plans? Better men make 'em. I touch my hat, say, 'Yes, sir,' and help work 'em out. Coming back to Tom for a minute, have you heard that the Colonel has written him a letter of thanks for the distinguished service rendered by him to the Mounted and suggesting that a permanent place of importance can be found for him on the Force if he'll take it?"

"No. Did he? Isn't that just fine?" The soft glow had danced into her eyes again. "He won't take it, will he?"

"What do you think?" His eyes challenged hers coolly. He was willing, if he could, to discover whether Jessie was in love with his friend.

"Oh, I don't think he should," she said quickly. "He has a good business. It's getting better all the time. He's a coming man. And of course he'd get hard jobs in the Mounted, the way you do."

"That's a compliment, if it's true," he grinned.

"I dare say, but that doesn't make it any safer."

"They couldn't give him a harder one than you did when you sent him into the Barrens to bring back West." His eyes, touched with humor and yet disconcertingly intent on information, were fixed steadily on hers.

The girl's cheeks flew color signals. "Why do you say that? I didn't ask him to go. He volunteered."

"Wasn't it because you wanted him to?"

"I should think you'd be the last man to say that," she protested indignantly. "He was your friend, and he didn't want you to run so great a risk alone."

"Then you didn't want him to go?"

"If I did, it was for you. Maybe he blames me for it, but I don't see how you can. You've just finished telling me he saved your life a dozen times."

"Did I say I was blaming you?" His warm, affectionate smile begged pardon if he had given offense. "I was just trying to get it straight. You wanted him to go that time, but you wouldn't want him to go again. Is that it?"

"I wouldn't want either of you to go again. What are you driving at, Win Beresford?"

"Oh, nothing!" He laughed. "But if you think Tom's too good to waste on the Mounted, you'd better tell him so while there's still time. He'll make up his mind within a day or two."

"I don't see him. He never comes here."

"I wonder why."

Jessie sometimes wondered why herself.

CHAPTER XLII

THE IMPERATIVE URGE

The reason why Tom did not go to see Jessie was that he longed to do so in every fiber of his being. His mind was never freed for a moment from the routine of the day's work that it did not automatically turn toward her. If he saw a woman coming down the street with the free light step only one person in Faraway possessed, his heart would begin to beat faster. In short, he suffered that torment known as being in love.

He dared not go to see her for fear she might discover it. She was the sweetheart of his friend. It was as natural as the light of day that she turn to Win Beresford with the gift of her love. Nobody like him had ever come into her life. His gay courage, his debonair grace, the good manners of that outer world such a girl must crave, the affectionate touch of friendliness in his smile: how could any woman on this forsaken edge of the Arctic resist them?

She could not, of course, let alone one so full of the passionate longing for life as Jessie McRae.

If Tom could have looked on her unmoved, if he could have subdued or concealed the ardent fire inside him, he would have gone to call occasionally as though casually. But he could not trust himself. He was like a volcano ready for eruption. Already he was arranging with his uncle to put a subordinate here and let him return to Benton. Until that could be accomplished, he tried to see her as little as possible.

But Jessie was a child of the imperative urge. She told herself fifty times that it was none of her business if he did accept the offer of a place in the North-West Mounted. He could do as he pleased. Why should she interfere? And yet--and yet--

She found a shadow of excuse for herself in the fact that it had been through her that he had offered himself as a special constable. He might think she wanted him to enlist permanently. So many girls were foolish about the red coats of soldiers. She had noticed that among her school-girl friends at Winnipeg. If she had any influence with him at all, she did not want it thrown on that side of the scale.

But of course he probably did not care what she thought. Very likely it was her vanity that whispered to her he had gone North with Win Beresford partly to please her. Still, since she was his friend, ought she not to just drop an offhand hint that he was a more useful citizen where he was than in the Mounted? He couldn't very well resent that, could he? Or think her officious? Or forward?

She contrived little plans to meet him when he would be alone and she could talk with him, but she rejected these because she was afraid he would see through them. It had become of first importance to her that Tom Morse should not think she had any but a superficial interest in him.

When at last she did meet him, it was by pure chance. Dusk was falling. She was passing the yard where his storehouse was. He wheeled out and came on her plumply face to face. Both were taken by surprise completely. Out of it neither could emerge instantly with casual words of greeting.

Jessie felt her pulses throb. A queer consternation paralyzed the faculties that ought to have come alertly to her rescue. She stood, awkwardly silent, in a shy panic to her pulsing finger-tips. Later she would flog herself scornfully for her folly, but this did not help in the least now.

"I--I was just going to Mr. Whaley's with a little dress Mother made for the baby," she said at last.

"It's a nice baby," was the best he could do.

"Yes. It's funny. You know Mr. Whaley didn't care anything about it before--while it was very little. But now he thinks it's wonderful. I'm so glad he does."

She was beginning to get hold of herself, to emerge from the emotional crisis into which this meeting had plunged her. It had come to her consciousness that he was as perturbed as she, and a discovery of this nature always brings a woman composure.

"He treats his wife a lot better too."

"There was room for it," he said dryly.

"She's a nice little thing."

"Yes."

Conversation, which had been momentarily brisk, threatened to die out for lack of fuel. Anything was better than significant silences in which she could almost hear the hammering of her heart.

"Win Beresford told me about the offer you had to go into the Mounted," she said, plunging.

"Yes?"

"Will you accept?"

He looked at her, surprised. "Didn't Win tell you? I said right away I couldn't accept. He knew that."

"Oh! I don't believe he did tell me. Perhaps you hadn't decided then." Privately she was determining to settle some day with Winthrop Beresford for leading her into this. He had purposely kept silent, she knew now, in the hope that she would talk to Tom Morse about it. "But I'm glad you've decided against going in."

"Why?"

"It's dangerous, and I don't think it has much future."

"Win likes it."

"Yes, Win does. He'll get a commission one of these days."

"He deserves one. I--I hope you'll both be very happy."

He was walking beside her. Quickly her glance flashed up at him. Was that the reason he had held himself so aloof from her?

"I think we shall, very likely, if you mean Win and I. He's always happy, isn't he? And I try to be. I'm sorry he's leaving this part of the country. Writing-on-Stone is a long way from here. He may never get back. I'll miss him a good deal. Of course you will too."

This was plain enough, but Tom could not accept it at face value. Perhaps she meant that she would miss him until Win got ready to send for her. An idea lodged firmly in the mind cannot be ejected at an instant's notice.

"Yes, I'll miss him. He's a splendid fellow. I've never met one like him, so staunch and cheerful and game. Sometime I'd like to tell you about that trip we took. You'd be proud of him."

"I'm sure all his friends are," she said, smiling a queer little smile that was lost in the darkness.

"He was a very sick man, in a great deal of pain, and we had a rather dreadful time of it. Of course it hit him far harder than it did either West or me. But never a whimper out of him from first to last. Always cheerful, always hopeful, with a little joke or a snatch of a song, even when it looked as though we couldn't go on another day. He's one out of ten thousand."

"I heard him say that about another man--only I think he said one in fifty thousand," she made comment, almost in a murmur.

"Any girl would be lucky to have such a man for a husband," he added fatuously.

"Yes. I hope he'll find some nice one who will appreciate him."

This left no room for misunderstanding. Tom's brain whirled. "You--you and he haven't had any--quarrel?"

"No. What made you think so?"

"I don't know. I suppose I'm an idiot. But I thought--"

He stopped. She took up his unfinished sentence.

"You thought wrong."

Contents

THE FIGHTING EDGE

By WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

CHAPTER I

PETE'S GIRL

She stood in the doorway, a patched and ragged Cinderella of the desert. Upon her slim, ill-poised figure the descending sun slanted a shaft of glory. It caught in a spotlight the cheap, dingy gown, the coarse stockings through the holes of which white flesh peeped, the heavy, broken brogans that disfigured the feet. It beat upon a small head with a mass of black, wild-flying hair, on red lips curved with discontent, into dark eyes passionate and resentful at what fate had made of her young life. A silent, sullen lass, one might have guessed, and the judgment would have been true as most first impressions.

The girl watched her father drive half a dozen dogies into the mountain corral perched precariously on the hillside. Soon now it would be dusk. She went back into the cabin and began to prepare supper.

In the rickety stove she made a fire of cottonwood. There was a business-like efficiency in the way she peeled potatoes, prepared the venison for the frying-pan, and mixed the biscuit dough.

June Tolliver and her father lived alone on Piceance[1] Creek. Their nearest neighbor was a trapper on Eighteen-Mile Hill. From one month's end to another she did not see a woman. The still repression in the girl's face was due not wholly to loneliness. She lived on the edge of a secret she intuitively felt was shameful. It colored her thoughts and feelings, set her apart from the rest of the world. Her physical reactions were dominated by it. Yet what this secret was she could only guess at.

A knock sounded on the door.

June brushed back a rebellious lock of hair from her eyes with the wrist above a flour-whitened hand. "Come in."

A big dark man stood on the threshold. His glance swept the girl, searched the room, and came back to her.

"Pete Tolliver live here?"

"Yes. He's lookin' after the stock. Be in soon, likely."

The man closed the door. June dragged a chair from a corner and returned to her cooking.

From his seat the man watched her. His regard was disturbing. It had a quality of insistence. His eyes were cold yet devouring. They were possessive, not clear but opaque. They did not look at her as other eyes did. She felt the blood burning in her cheeks.

Presently, as she passed from the table to the stove to look at the sputtering venison, she flashed a resentful glance at him. It did not touch his effrontery.

"You Pete's girl?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You've grown. Knew you when you was learnin' to crawl."

"In Brown's Park?" The words were out before she could stop them.

"You done said it." He smiled, not pleasantly, she thought. "I'm a real old friend of yore father."

Curiosity touched with apprehension began to stir in her. For those early years she had only memory to rely upon. Tolliver never referred to them. On that subject the barriers were up between the two. Fugitive flashes of that first home came back to June. She remembered a sweet, dark-eyed woman nuzzling her little body with kisses after the bath, an hour when that mother wept as though her heart would break and she had put little baby arms in tight embrace round her neck by way of comfort. That dear woman was not in any of the later pictures. A pile of stones on a hillside in Brown's Park marked the grave.

Between the day of 'Lindy Tolliver's outburst of grief and the child's next recollection was a gap. The setting of the succeeding memories was a frame house on a dusty road at the edge of a frontier town. In front of it jolted big freight wagons, three of them fastened together and drawn by a double row of oxen so long she could not count them. The place was Rawlins, Wyoming, and it was an outfitting point for a back country in Colorado hundreds of miles from the railroad. The chief figure in June's horizon was a stern-eyed, angular aunt who took the place of both father and mother and did her duty implacably. The two lived together forever, it seemed to the child.

June wakened one night from the light of a lamp in her aunt's hand. A man was standing beside her. He was gaunt and pallid, in his eyes a look of hunger that reminded her of a hunted coyote. When he took her tightly in his arms she began to cry. He had murmured, "My li'l' baby, don't you be scared of yore paw." As mysteriously as he had come to life, so Pete Tolliver disappeared again.

Afterward there was a journey with a freight outfit which lasted days and days. June was in charge of a bullwhacker. All she remembered about him was that he had been kind to her and had expended a crackling vocabulary on his oxen. The end of the trek brought her to Piceance Creek and a father now heavily bearded and with long, unkempt hair. They had lived here ever since.

Did this big man by the window belong to her father's covered past? Was there menace in his coming? Vaguely June felt that there was.

The door opened and Tolliver stepped in. He was rather under middle-size, dressed in down-at-the-heel boots, butternut jeans, cotton shirt, and dusty, ragged slouch hat. The grizzled beard hid the weak mouth, but the skim-milk eyes, the expression of the small-featured face, betrayed the man's lack of force. You may meet ten thousand like him west of the Mississippi. He lives in every village, up every creek, in every valley, and always he is the cat's-paw of stronger men who use him for good or ill to serve their ends.

The nester stopped in his tracks. It was impossible for June to miss the dismay that found outlet in the fallen jaw and startled eyes.

In the stranger's grin was triumphant malice. "You sure look glad to see me, Pete, and us such old friends too. Le's see, I ain't seen you since--since--" He stopped, as though his memory were at fault, but June sensed the hint of a threat in the uncompleted sentence.

Reluctantly Tolliver took the offered hand. His consternation seemed to have stricken him dumb.

"Ain't you going to introduce yore old pal to the girl?" the big man asked.

Not willingly, the rancher found the necessary words. "June, meet Mr. Houck."

June was putting the biscuits in the oven. She nodded an acknowledgment of the introduction. Back of the resentful eyes the girl's brain was busy.

"Old side pardners, ain't we, Pete?" Houck was jeering at him almost openly.

The older man mumbled what might be taken for an assent.

"Branded a heap of cattle, you 'n' me. Eh, Pete?" The stranger settled deeper in the chair. "Jake Houck an' you could talk over old times all night. We was frolicsome colts."

Tolliver felt his hand forced. "Put off yore hat and wash up, Jake. You'll stay to-night, o' course."

"Don't mind if I do. I'm headed for Glenwood. Reckon I'd better put the horse up first."

The two men left the cabin. When they returned half an hour later, the supper was on the table. June sat on the side nearest the stove and supplied the needs of the men. Coffee, hot biscuits, more venison, a second dish of gravy: no trained waiter could have anticipated their wants any better. If she was a bit sulky, she had reason for it. Houck's gaze followed her like a searchlight. It noted the dark good looks of her tousled head, the slimness of the figure which moved so awkwardly, a certain flash of spirit in the undisciplined young face.

"How old's yore girl?" the man asked his host.

Tolliver hesitated, trying to remember. "How old are you, June?"

"Going on sixteen," she answered, eyes smouldering angrily.

This man's cool, impudent appraisal of her was hateful, she felt.

He laughed at her manner, easily, insolently, for he was of the type that finds pleasure in the umbrage of women annoyed by his effrontery. Of the three the guest was the only one quite at his ease. Tolliver's ingratiating jokes and the heartiness of his voice rang false. He was troubled, uncertain how to face the situation that had arisen.

His daughter reflected this constraint. Why did her father fear this big dominating fellow? What was the relation between them? Why did his very presence bring with it a message of alarm?

She left them before the stove as soon as the dishes were washed, retiring to the bedroom at the other end of the log cabin. Far into the night she heard them talking, in low voices that made an indistinct murmur. To the sound of them she fell asleep.

-----

[1] Pronounced Pee-ance.

CHAPTER II

"A SPUNKY LI'L' DEVIL"

Houck rode away next morning after breakfast, but not before he had made a promise June construed as a threat.

"Be back soon, girl."

Her eyes were on the corral, from which her father was driving the dogies. "What's it to me?" she said with sullen resentment.

"More'n you think. I've took a fancy to you. When I come back I'll talk business."

The girl's eyes did not turn toward him, but the color flooded the dark cheeks. "With Father maybe. Not with me. You've got no business to talk over with me."

"Think so? Different here. Take a good look at me, June Tolliver."

"What for?" Her glance traveled over him disdainfully to the hound puppy chasing its tail. She felt a strange excitement drumming in her veins. "I've seen folks a heap better worth lookin' at."

"Because I'm tellin' you to." His big hand caught her chin and swung it back. "Because I'm figurin' on marryin' you right soon."

Her dark eyes blazed. They looked at him straight enough now. "Take yore hand off'n me. D'you hear?"

He laughed, slowly, delightedly. "You're a spunky li'l' devil. Suits me fine. Jake Houck never did like jog-trotters in harness."

"Lemme go," she ordered, and a small brown fist clenched.

"Not now, nor ever. You're due to wear the Houck brand, girl."

She struck, hard, with all the strength of her lithe and supple body. Above his cheek-bone a red streak leaped out where the sharp knuckles had crushed the flesh.

A second time he laughed, harshly. Her chin was still clamped in a vice-like grip that hurt. "I get a kiss for that, you vixen." With a sweeping gesture he imprisoned both of the girl's arms and drew the slim body to him. He kissed her, full on the lips, not once but half a dozen times, while she fought like a fury without the least avail.

Presently the man released her hands and chin.

"Hit me again if you like, and I'll c'lect my pay prompt," he jeered.

She was in a passionate flame of impotent anger. He had insulted her, trampled down the pride of her untamed youth, brushed away the bloom of her maiden modesty. And there was nothing she could do to make him pay. He was too insensitive to be reached by words, no matter how she pelted them at him.

A sob welled up from her heart. She turned and ran into the house.

Houck grinned, swung to the saddle, and rode up the valley. June would hate him good and plenty, he thought. That was all right. He had her in the hollow of his hand. All her thoughts would be full of him. After she quit struggling to escape she would come snuggling up to him with a girl's shy blandishments. It was his boast that he knew all about women and their ways.

June was not given to tears. There was in her the stark pioneer blood that wrested the West in two generations from unfriendly nature. But the young virgin soul had been outraged. She lay on the bed of her room, face down, the nails of her fingers biting into the palms of the hands, a lump in the full brown throat choking her.

She was a wild, free thing of the hills, undisciplined by life. Back of June's anger and offended pride lurked dread, as yet indefinite and formless. Who was this stranger who had swaggered into her life and announced himself its lord and master? She would show him his place, would teach him how ridiculous his pretensions were. But even as she clenched her teeth on that promise there rose before her a picture of the fellow's straddling stride, of the fleering face with its intrepid eyes and jutting, square-cut jaw. He was stronger than she. No scruples would hold him back from the possession of his desires. She knew she would fight savagely, but a chill premonition of failure drenched the girl's heart.

Later, she went out to the stable where Tolliver was riveting a broken tug. It was characteristic of the man that all his tools, harness, and machinery were worn out or fractured. He never brought a plough in out of the winter storms or mended a leak in the roof until the need was insistent. Yet he was not lazy. He merely did not know how to order affairs with any system.

"Who is that man?" June demanded.

He looked up, mildly surprised and disturbed at the imperative in the girl's voice. "Why, didn't I tell you, honey--Jake Houck?"

"I don't want to know his name. I want to know who he is--all about him."

Tolliver drove home a rivet before he answered. "Jake's a cowman." His voice was apologetic. "I seen you didn't like him. He's biggity, Jake is."

"He's the most hateful man I ever saw," she burst out.

Pete lifted thin, straw-colored eyebrows in questioning, but June had no intention of telling what had taken place. She would fight her own battles.

"Well, he's a sure enough toughfoot," admitted the rancher.

"When did you know him?"

"We was ridin' together, a right long time ago."

"Where?"

"Up around Rawlins--thataway."

"He said he knew you in Brown's Park."

The man flashed a quick, uncertain look at his daughter. It appeared to ask how much Houck had told. "I might 'a' knowed him there too. Come to think of it, I did. Punchers drift around a heap. Say, how about dinner? You got it started? I'm gettin' powerful hungry."

June knew the subject was closed. She might have pushed deeper into her father's reticence, but some instinct shrank from what she might uncover. There could be only pain in learning the secret he so carefully hid.

There had been no discussion of it between them, nor had it been necessary to have any. It was tacitly understood that they would have little traffic with their neighbors, that only at rare intervals would Pete drive to Meeker, Glenwood Springs, or Bear Cat to dispose of furs he had trapped and to buy supplies. The girl's thoughts and emotions were the product largely of this isolation. She brooded over the mystery of her father's past till it became an obsession in her life. To be brought into close contact with dishonor makes one either unduly sensitive or callously indifferent. Upon June it had the former effect.

The sense of inferiority was branded upon her. She had seen girls giggling at the shapeless sacks she had stitched together for clothes with which to dress herself. She was uncouth, awkward, a thin black thing ugly as sin. It had never dawned on her that she possessed rare potentialities of beauty, that there was coming a time when she would bloom gloriously as a cactus in a sand waste.

After dinner June went down to the creek and followed a path along its edge. She started up a buck lying in the grass and watched it go crashing through the brush. It was a big-game country. The settlers lived largely on venison during the fall and winter. She had killed dozens of blacktail, an elk or two, and more than once a bear. With a rifle she was a crack shot.

But to-day she was not hunting. She moved steadily along the winding creek till she came to a bend in its course. Beyond this a fishing-rod lay in the path. On a flat rock near it a boy was stretched, face up, looking into the blue, unflecked sky.

CHAPTER III

PALS

He was a red-headed, stringy boy between eighteen and nineteen years old. His hands were laced back of the head, but he waggled a foot by way of greeting.

"'Lo, June," he called.

"What you doin'?" she demanded.

"Oh, jes' watchin' the grass grow."

She sat down beside him, drawing up her feet beneath the skirt and gathering the knees between laced fingers. Moodily, she looked down at the water swirling round the rocks.

Bob Dillon said nothing. He had a capacity for silence that was not uncompanionable. They could sit by the hour, these two, quite content, without exchanging a dozen sentences. The odd thing about it was that they were not old friends. Three weeks ago they had met for the first time. He was flunkeying for a telephone outfit building a line to Bear Cat.

"A man stayed up to the house last night," she said at last.

He leaned his head on a hand, turning toward her. The light blue eyes in the freckled face rested on those of the girl.

Presently she added, with a flare of surging anger, "I hate him."

"Why?"

The blood burned beneath the tan of the brown cheeks. "'Cause."

"Shucks! That don't do any good. It don't buy you anything."

She swung upon him abruptly. "Don't you hate the men at the camp when they knock you around?"

"What'd be the use? I duck outa the way next time."

Two savage little demons glared at him out of her dark eyes. "Ain't you got any sand in yore craw, Bob Dillon? Do you aim to let folks run on you all yore life? I'd fight 'em if 't was the last thing I ever did."

"Different here. I'd get my block knocked off about twice a week. You don't see me in any scraps where I ain't got a look-in. I'd rather let 'em boot me a few," he said philosophically.

She frowned at him, in a kind of puzzled wonderment. "You're right queer. If I was a man--"

The sentence died out. She was not a man. The limitations of sex encompassed her. In Jake Houck's arms she had been no more than an infant. He would crush her resistance--no matter whether it was physical or mental--and fling out at her the cruel jeering laughter of one who could win without even exerting his strength. She would never marry him--never, never in the world. But--

A chill dread drenched her heart.

Young Dillon was sensitive to impressions. His eyes, fixed on the girl's face, read something of her fears.

"This man--who is he?" he asked.

"Jake Houck. I never saw him till last night. My father knew him when--when he was young."

"What's the matter with this Houck? Why don't you like him?"

"If you'd see him--how he looks at me." She flashed to anger. "As if I was something he owned and meant to tame."

"Oh, well, you know the old sayin', a cat may look at a king. He can't harm you."

"Can't he? How do you know he can't?" she challenged.

"How can he, come to that?"

"I don't say he can." Looked at in cold blood, through the eyes of another, the near-panic that had seized her a few hours earlier appeared ridiculous. "But I don't have to like him, do I? He acted--hateful--if you want to know."

"How d'you mean--hateful?"

A wave of color swept through her cheeks to the brown throat. How could she tell him that there was something in the man's look that had disrobed her, something in his ribald laugh that had made her feel unclean? Or that the fellow had brushed aside the pride and dignity that fenced her and ravished kisses from her lips while he mocked? She could not have put her feeling into words if she had tried, and she had no intention of trying.

"Mean," she said. "A low-down, mean bully."

The freckled boy watched her with a curious interest. She made no more sex appeal to him than he did to her, and that was none at all. The first thing that had moved him in the child was the friendlessness back of her spitfire offense. She knew no women, no other girls. The conditions of life kept her aloof from the ones she met casually once or twice a year. She suspected their laughter, their whispers about the wild girl on Piceance Creek. The pride with which she ignored them was stimulated by her sense of inferiority. June had read books. She felt the clothes she made were hideous, the conditions of her existence squalid; and back of these externals was the shame she knew because they must hide themselves from the world on account of the secret.

Bob did not know all that, but he guessed some of it. He had not gone very far in experience himself, but he suspected that this wild creature of the hills was likely to have a turbulent and perhaps tragic time of it. She was very much a child of impulse. Thirstily she had drunk in all he could tell her of the world beyond the hills that hemmed them in. He had known her frank, grateful, dreamy, shy, defiant, and once, for no apparent reason, a flaming little fury who had rushed to eager repentance when she discovered no offense was meant. He had seen her face bubbling with mirth at the antics of a chipmunk, had looked into the dark eyes when they were like hill fires blazing through mist because of the sunset light in the crotch of the range.

"I reckon Mr. Tolliver won't let this Houck bully you none," the boy said.

"I ain't scared of him," she answered.

But June knew there would be small comfort for her in the thought of her father's protection. She divined intuitively that he would be a liability rather than an asset in any conflict that might arise between her and Jake Houck.

"If there was anything I could do--but o' course there ain't."

"No," she agreed. "Oh, well, I'm not worryin'. I'll show him when he comes back. I'm as big as he is behind a gun."

Bob looked at her, startled. He saw she was whistling to keep up her courage. "Are you sure enough afraid of him?"

Her eyes met his. She nodded. "He said he was coming back to marry me--good as said I could like it or lump it, he didn't care which."

"Sho! Tha's jus' talk. No girl has to marry a man if she don't want to. You don't need any gun-play. He can't make his brags good if you won't have him. It's a free country."

"If he told you to do something--this Jake Houck--you wouldn't think it was so free," the girl retorted without any life in her voice.

He jumped up, laughing. "Well, I don't expect he's liable to tell me to do anything. He ain't ever met up with me. I gotta go peel the spuds for supper. Don't you worry, June. He's bluffin'."

"I reckon," she said, and nodded a careless good-bye.

CHAPTER IV

CLIPPED WINGS

The Cinderella of Piceance Creek was scrupulously clean even though ragged and unkempt. Every Saturday night she shooed Pete Tolliver out of the house and took a bath in the tub which usually hung suspended from a wooden peg driven into the outer wall of the log cabin. Regularly as Monday came wash day.

On a windy autumn day, with the golden flames of fall burning the foliage of the hill woods, June built a fire of cottonwood branches near the brook and plunged with fierce energy into the week's washing. She was a strong, lithe young thing and worked rapidly. Her methods might not be the latest or the best, but they won results. Before the sun had climbed halfway to its zenith she had the clothes on the line.

Since she had good soapy suds and plenty of hot water left in the iron kettle, June decided to scrub the bed covers. Twenty minutes later, barefooted and barelegged, her skirts tucked up above the knees, the young washwoman was trampling blankets in the tub. She had no reason to suppose that anybody was within a mile of her. Wherefore, since the world was beautiful and mere life a joy, she improvised a child's song of thanksgiving.

It was a foolish little thing without rhyme or reason. It began nowhere and finished at the same place. But it lifted straight from the heart and perhaps it traveled as far heavenward as most prayers. She danced among the suds as she sang it, brown arms, bare to the elbows, stretched to the sunlit hills.

Wings--wings--wings! I can fly, 'way 'way 'way off, Over the creek, over the piñons. Goodness, yes! Like a meadow-lark. Over the hills, clear to Denver, Where the trains are. And it's lovely--lovely--lovely.

It was an unschooled, impulsive cry of the heart to the great soul of life and beauty that lies back of nature. No human eyes or ears were meant to see or hear the outburst. A shy girl's first day-dreams of her lover ought no more to be dragged out to the public gaze than this.

Through the quaking asps by the creek narrowed eyes gloated. Out of the thicket Jake Houck strode with a ribald laugh.

"Right pretty, my dear, but don't you spread them wings an' leave yore man alone."

The dancing spirit fled her flying feet. She was no longer a daughter of the skies, attuned to sunshine and laughter and the golden harmony of the hills. Joy and life were stricken out of her.

He had heard. He had seen. A poignant shame enveloped and scorched the girl's body. She was a wild thing who lived within herself. It was easy to put her in the wrong. She felt the mortification of one who has been caught in some indecent exhibition.

The humiliation was at first for the song and dance. Not till another moment did she think of the bare legs rising out of the soapsuds. His smouldering gaze brought them to mind.

Instantly she leaped from the tub, shook down the skirts, snatched up shoes and stockings, and fled barefooted to the house. A brogan dropped a few steps from the start. She stopped, as though to pick it up. But Houck was following. The girl turned and ran like a deer.

Houck retrieved the brogan and followed slowly. He smiled. His close-set eyes were gleaming. This was an adventure just to his taste.

The door of the cabin was bolted. He knocked.

"Here's yore shoe, sweetheart," he called.

No answer came. He tried the back door. It, too, had the bolt driven home.

"All right. If it ain't yore shoe I'll take it along with me. So long."

He walked away and waited in the bushes. His expectation was that this might draw her from cover. It did not.

Half an hour later Tolliver rode across the mesa. He found Houck waiting for him at the entrance to the corral. Pete nodded a rather surly greeting. He could not afford to quarrel with the man, but he was one of the last persons in the world he wanted to see.

"'Lo, Jake," he said. "Back again, eh?"

"Yep. Finished my business. I got to have a talk with you, Pete."

Tolliver slid a troubled gaze at him. What did Jake want? Was it money--hush money? The trapper did not have fifty dollars to his name, nor for that matter twenty.

"'S all right, Jake. If there's anything I can do for you--why, all you got to do's to let me know," he said uneasily.

Houck laughed, derisively. "Sure. I know how fond you are of me, Pete. You're plumb glad to see me again, ain't you? Jes' a-honin' to talk over old times, I'll bet."

"I'd as lief forget them days, Jake," Tolliver confessed. "I done turned over another chapter, as you might say. No need rakin' them up, looks like."

The big man's grin mocked him. "Tha's up to you, Pete. Me, I aim to be reasonable. I ain't throwin' off on my friends. All I want's to make sure they are my friends. Pete, I've took a fancy to yore June. I reckon I'll fix it up an' marry her."

His cold eyes bored into Tolliver. They held the man's startled, wavering gaze fixed.

"Why, Jake, you're old enough to be her father," he presently faltered.

"Maybe I am. But if there's a better man anywheres about I'd like to meet up with him an' have him show me. I ain't but forty-two, Pete, an' I can whip my weight in wild cats."

The father's heart sank. He knew Houck. The man would get by hook or crook what he wanted. He could even foretell what his next move would be.

"She's only a kid, Jake, not thinkin' none about gettin' married. In a year or two, maybe--"

"I'm talkin' about now, Pete--this week."

Tolliver wriggled, like a trout on the hook. "What does she say? You spoke of it to her?"

"Sure. She'll like it fine when she gets her mind used to it. I know how to handle women, Pete. I'm mentionin' this to you because I want you to use yore influence. See?"

Pete saw, too well. He moistened his lips with the tip of the tongue. "Why, I don't reckon I could very well do that. A girl's got to make up her own mind. She's too young to be figurin' on marryin'. Better give her time."

"No." Houck flung the word out like an oath. "Now. Right away."

The trapper's voice took on a plaintive note, almost a whine. "You was sayin' yoreself, Jake, that she'd have to get used to it. Looks like it wouldn't be good to rush--"

"She can get used to it after we're married."

"O' course I want to do what's right by my li'l' June. You do too for that matter. We wouldn't either one of us do her a meanness."

"I'm going to marry her," Houck insisted harshly.

"When a girl loses her mother she's sure lost her best friend. It's up to her paw to see she gets a square deal." There was a quaver of emotion in Tolliver's voice. "I don't reckon he can make up to her--"

A sound came from Houck's throat like a snarl. "Are you tryin' to tell me that Pete Tolliver's girl is too good for me? Is that where you're driftin'?"

"Now don't you get mad, Jake," the older man pleaded. "These here are different times. I don't want my June mixed up with--with them Brown's Park days an' all."

"Meanin' me?"

"You're twistin' my words, Jake," the father went on, an anxious desire to propitiate frowning out of the wrinkled face. "I ain't sayin' a word against you. I'm explainin' howcome I to feel like I do. Since I--bumped into that accident in the Park--"

Houck's ill-natured laugh cut the sentence. It was a jangled dissonance without mirth. "What accident?" he jeered.

"Why--when I got into the trouble--"

"You mean when Jas Stuart caught you rustlin' an' you murdered him an' went to the pen. That what you mean?" he demanded loudly.

Tolliver caught his sleeve. "S-sh! She don't know a thing about it. You recollect I told you that."

The other nodded, hard eyes gloating over the rancher's distress. "An' o' course she don't know you broke jail at Cañon City an' are liable to be dragged back if any one should happen to whisper to the sheriff."

"Not a thing about all that. I wouldn't holler it out thataway if I was you, Jake," Tolliver suggested, glancing nervously toward the house. "Maybe I ought to 'a' told her, but I never did. Her maw died of it, an' I jes' couldn't make out to tell June. You see yoreself how it would be, Pete. Her a li'l' trick with nobody but me. I ain't no great shakes, but at that I'm all she's got. I figured that 'way off here, under another name, they prob'ly never would find me."

"Pretty good guess, Pete Purdy."

"Don' call me that," begged Tolliver.

Houck showed his teeth in an evil grin. "I forgot. What I was sayin' was that nobody knows you're here but me. Most folks have forgot all about you. You can fix things so 's to be safe enough."

"You wouldn't give me away, Jake. You was in on the rustlin' too. We was pals. It was jes' my bad luck I met up with Jas that day. I didn't begin the shooting. You know that."

"I ain't likely to give away my own father-in-law, am I?"

Again the close-set, hard eyes clamped fast to the wavering ones of the tortured outlaw. In them Tolliver read an ultimatum. Notice was being served on him that there was only one way to seal Houck's lips.

That way he did not want to follow. Pete was a weak father, an ineffective one, wholly unable to give expression to the feeling that at times welled up in him. But June was all his life now held. He suffered because of the loneliness their circumstances forced upon her. The best was what he craved for her.

And Jake Houck was a long way from the best. He had followed rough and evil trails all his life. As a boy, in his cowpuncher days, he had been hard and callous. Time had not improved him.

June came to the door of the cabin and called.

"What is it, honey?" Tolliver asked.

"He's got my shoe. I want it."

Pete looked at the brogan sticking out of Jake's pocket. The big fellow forestalled a question.

"I'll take it to her," he said.

Houck strode to the house.

"So it's yore shoe after all," he grinned.

"Give it here," June demanded.

"Say pretty please."

She flashed to anger. "You're the meanest man I ever did meet."

"An' you're the prettiest barelegged dancer on the Creek," he countered.

June stamped the one shoe she was wearing. "Are you going to give me that brogan or not?"

"If you'll let me put it on for you."

Furious, she flung round and went back into the house.

He laughed delightedly, then tossed the heavy shoe into the room after her. "Here's yore shoe, girl. I was only foolin'," he explained.

June snatched up the brogan, stooped, and fastened it.

CHAPTER V

JUNE ASKS QUESTIONS

Houck, an unwelcome guest, stayed at the cabin on Piceance nearly two weeks. His wooing was surely one of the strangest known. He fleered at June, taunted her, rode over the girl's pride and sense of decorum, beat down the defenses she set up, and filled her bosom with apprehension. It was impossible to score an advantage over his stolid strength and pachydermous insensibility.

The trapper sweated blood. He neither liked nor trusted his guest, but he was bound hand and foot. He must sit and watch the fellow moving to his end, see the gains he made day by day, and offer no effective protest. For Houck at a word could send him back to the penitentiary and leave June alone in a world to which her life had been alien.

Pete knew that the cowman was winning the campaign. His assumption that he was an accepted suitor of June began to find its basis of fact. The truth could be read in the child's hunted eyes. She was still fighting, but the battle was a losing one.

Perhaps this was the best way out of a bad situation, Tolliver found himself thinking. In his rough way Houck was fond of June. A blind man could see that. Even though he was a wolf, there were moments when his eyes were tender for her. He would provide well for a wife. If his little Cinderella could bring herself to like the man, there was always a chance that love would follow. Jake always had the knack of fascinating women. He could be very attractive when he wished.

On a happy morning not long since June had sung of her wings. She was a meadow-lark swooping over the hills to freedom, her throat throbbing with songs of joy. Sometimes Pete, too, thought of her as a bird, but through many hours of anguished brooding he had come to know she was a fledgling with broken wings. The penalty for the father's sins had fallen upon the child. All her life she must be hampered by the environment his wrongdoing had built up around them.

Since the beginning of the world masterful men have drawn to them the eyes and thoughts of women. June was no exception. Among the hours when she hated Houck were increasing moments during which a naïve wonder and admiration filled her mind. She was primitive, elemental. A little tingle of delight thrilled her to know that this strong man wanted her and would fight to win what his heart craved. After all he was her first lover. A queer shame distressed the girl at the memory of his kisses, for through all the anger, chagrin, and wounded pride had come to her the first direct realization of what sex meant. Her alarmed innocence pushed this from her.

Without scruple Houck used all the weapons at hand. There came a day when he skirted the edges of the secret.

"What do you mean?" she demanded. "What is it you claim to know about Dad all so big?"

He could see that June's eyes were not so bold as the words. They winced from his even as she put the question.

"Ask him."

"What'll I ask? I wouldn't believe anything you told me about him. He's not like you. He's good."

"You don't have to believe me. Ask him if he ever knew any one called Pete Purdy. Ask him who Jasper Stuart was. An' where he lived whilst you was stayin' with yore aunt at Rawlins."

"I ain't afraid to," she retorted. "I'll do it right now."

Houck was sprawled on a bench in front of the cabin. He grinned impudently. His manner was an exasperating challenge. Evidently he did not believe she would.

June turned and walked to the stable. The heavy brogans weighted down the lightness of her step. The shapeless clothes concealed the grace of the slim figure. But even so there was a vital energy in the way she moved.

Tolliver was mending the broken teeth of a hay-rake and making a poor job of it.

June made a direct frontal attack. "Dad, did you ever know a man named Pete Purdy?"

The rancher's lank, unshaven jaw fell. The blow had fallen at last. In a way he had expected it. Yet his mind was too stunned to find any road of escape.

"Why, yes--yes, I--yes, honey," he faltered.

"Who was he?"

"Well, he was a--a cowpuncher, I reckon."

"Who was Jasper Stuart, then?"

An explanation could no longer be dodged or avoided. Houck had talked too much. Tolliver knew he must make a clean breast of it, and that his own daughter would sit in judgment on him. Yet he hung back. The years of furtive silence still held him.

"He was a fellow lived in Brown's Park."

"What had you to do with him? Why did Jake Houck tell me to ask you about him?"

"Oh, I reckon--"

"And about where you lived while I was with Aunt Molly at Rawlins?" she rushed on.

The poor fellow moistened his dry lips. "I--I'll tell you the whole story, honey. Mebbe I'd ought to 'a' told you long ago. But someways--" He stopped, trying for a fresh start. "You'll despise yore old daddy. You sure will. Well, you got a right to. I been a mighty bad father to you, June. Tha's a fact."

She waited, dread-filled eyes on his.

"Prob'ly I'd better start at the beginnin', don't you reckon? I never did have any people to brag about. Father and mother died while I was a li'l' grasshopper. I was kinda farmed around, as you might say. Then I come West an' got to punchin' cows. Seems like, I got into a bad crowd. They was wild, an' they rustled more or less. In them days there was a good many sleepers an' mavericks on the range. I expect we used a running-iron right smart when we wasn't sure whose calf it was."

He was trying to put the best face on the story. June could see that, and her heart hardened toward him. She ignored the hungry appeal for mercy in his eyes.

"You mean you stole cattle. Is that it?" She was willing to hurt herself if she could give him pain. Had he not ruined her life?

"Well, I--I--Yes, I reckon that's it. Our crowd picked up calves that belonged to the big outfits like the Diamond Slash. We drove 'em up to Brown's Park, an' later acrost the line to Wyoming or Utah."

"Was Jake Houck one of your crowd?"

Pete hesitated.

She cut in, with a flare of childish ferocity. "I'm gonna know the truth. He's not protecting you any."

"Yes. Jake was one of us. I met up with him right soon after I come to Colorado."

"And Purdy?"

"Tha's the name I was passin' under. I'd worked back in Missouri for a fellow of that name. They got to callin' me Pete Purdy, so I kinda let it go. My father's name was Tolliver, though. I took it--after the trouble."

"What trouble?"

"It come after I was married. I met yore maw at Rawlins. She was workin' at the railroad restaurant waitin' on table. For a coupla years we lived there, an' I wish to God we'd never left. But Jake persuaded 'Lindy I'd ought to take up land, so we moved back to the Park an' I preëmpted. Everything was all right at first. You was born, an' we was right happy. But Jake kep' a-pesterin' me to go in with him an' do some cattle runnin' on the quiet. There was money in it--pretty good money--an' yore maw was sick an' needed to go to Denver. Jake, he advanced the money, an' o' course I had to work in with him to pay it back. I was sorta driven to it, looks like."

He stopped to mop a perspiring face with a bandanna. Tolliver was not enjoying himself.

"You haven't told me yet what the trouble was," June said.

"Well, this fellow Jas Stuart was a stock detective. He come down for the Cattlemen's Association to find out who was doing the rustlin' in Brown's Park. You see, the Park was a kind of a place where we holed up. There was timbered gulches in there where we could drift cattle in an' hide 'em. Then there was the Hole-in-the-Wall. I expect you've heard of that too."

"Did this Stuart find out who was doing the rustlin'?"

"He was right smart an' overbearin'. Too much so for his own good. Some of the boys served notice on him he was liable to get dry-gulched if he didn't take the trail back where he come from. But Jas was right obstinate an' he had sand in his craw. I'll say that for him. Well, one day he got word of a drive we was makin'. Him an' his deputies laid in wait for us. There was shooting an' my horse got killed. The others escaped, but they nailed me. In the rookus Stuart had got killed. They laid it on me. Mebbe I did it. I was shooting like the rest. Anyhow, I was convicted an' got twenty years in the pen."

"Twenty years," June echoed.

"Three--four years later there was a jail break. I got into the hills an' made my getaway. Travelin' by night, I reached Rawlins. From there I came down here with a freight outfit, an' I been here ever since."

He stopped. His story was ended. June looked at the slouchy little man with the weak mouth and the skim-milk, lost-dog eyes. He was so palpably wretched, so plainly the victim rather than the builder of his own misfortunes, that her generous heart went out warmly to him.

With a little rush she had him in her arms. They wept together, his head held tight against her immature bosom. It was the first time she had ever known him to break down, and she mothered him as women have from the beginning of time.

"You poor Daddy. Don't I know how it was? That Jake Houck was to blame. He led you into it an' left you to bear the blame," she crooned.

"It ain't me. It's you I'm thinkin' of, honey. I done ruined yore life, looks like. I shut you off from meeting decent folks like other girls do. You ain't had no show."

"Don't you worry about me, Dad. I'll be all right. What we've got to think about is not to let it get out who you are. If it wasn't for that big bully up at the house--"

She stopped, hopelessly unable to cope with the situation. Whenever she thought of Houck her mind came to an impasse. Every road of escape it traveled was blocked by his jeering face, with the jutting jaw set in implacable resolution.

"It don't look like Jake would throw me down thataway," he bewailed. "I never done him a meanness. I kep' my mouth shut when they got me an' wouldn't tell who was in with me. Tha's one reason they soaked me with so long a sentence. They was after Jake. They kep' at me to turn state's evidence an' get a short term. But o' course I couldn't do that."

"'Course not. An' now he turns on you like a coyote--after you stood by him." A surge of indignation boiled up in her. "He's the very worst man ever I knew--an' if he tries to do you any harm I'll--I'll settle with him."

Her father shook his unkempt head. "No, honey. I been learnin' for twelve years that a man can't do wrong for to get out of a hole he's in. If Jake's mean enough to give me up, why, I reckon I'll have to stand the gaff."

"No," denied June, a spark of flaming resolution in her shining eyes.

CHAPTER VI

"DON'T YOU TOUCH HIM!"

Inside the big chuck tent of the construction camp the cook was busy forking steak to tin plates and ladling potatoes into deep dishes.

"Git a move on you, Red Haid," he ordered.

Bob Dillon distributed the food at intervals along the table which ran nearly the whole length of the canvas top. From an immense coffee pot he poured the clear brown liquid into tin cups set beside each plate. This done, he passed out into the sunshine and beat the triangle.

From every tent men poured like seeds squirted from a squeezed lemon. They were all in a hurry and they jostled each other in their eagerness to get through the open flap. Straw boss, wood walkers, and ground men, they were all hungry. They ate swiftly and largely. The cook and his flunkey were kept busy.

"More spuds!" called one.

"Coming up!" Dillon flung back cheerfully.

"Shoot along more biscuits!" a second ordered.

"On the way!" Bob announced.

The boss of the outfit came in leisurely after the rush. He brought a guest with him and they sat down at the end of the table.

"Beans!" demanded a line man, his mouth full.

"Headed for you!" promised the flunkey.

The guest of the boss was a big rangy fellow in the early forties. Bob heard the boss call him "Jake," and later "Houck." As soon as the boy had a moment to spare he took a good look at the man. He did not like what he saw. Was it the cold, close-set eyes, the crook of the large nose, or the tight-lipped mouth gave the fellow that semblance to a rapacious wolf?

As soon as Bob had cleaned up the dishes he set off up the creek to meet June. The boy was an orphan and had been brought up in a home with two hundred others. His life had been a friendless one, which may have been the reason that he felt a strong bond of sympathy for the lonely girl on Piceance. He would have liked to be an Aladdin with a wonder lamp by means of which he could magically transform her affairs to good fortune. Since this could not be, he gave her what he had--a warm fellow-feeling because of the troubles that worried her.

He found June waiting at their usual place of meeting. Pete Tolliver's forty-four hung in a scabbard along the girl's thigh. Bob remembered that she had spoken of seeing a rattlesnake on the trail yesterday.

"'Lo, boy," she called.

"'Lo, June. I met yore friend."

"What friend?"

"Jake Houck. He was down at the camp for dinner to-day--came in with the boss."

"He's no friend of mine," she said sulkily.

"Don't blame you a bit. Mr. Houck looks like one hard citizen. I'd hate to cross him."

"He's as tough as an old range bull. No matter what you say or do you can't faze him," she replied wearily.

"You still hate him?"

"More 'n ever. Most o' the time. He just laughs. He's bound an' determined to marry me whether or not. He will, too."

Bob looked at her, surprised. It was the first time she had ever admitted as much. June's slim body was packed with a pantherish resilience. Her spirit bristled with courage. What had come over her?

"He won't if you don't want him to."

"Won't he?" June was lying on a warm flat rock. She had been digging up dirt at the edge of it with a bit of broken stick. Now she looked up at him with the scorn of an experience she felt to be infinitely more extensive than his. "A lot you know about it."

"How can he? If you an' Mr. Tolliver don't want him to."

"He just will."

"But, June, that don't listen reasonable to me. He's got you buffaloed. If you make up yore mind not to have him--"

"I didn't say I'd made up my mind not to have him. I said I hated him," she corrected.

"Well, you wouldn't marry a fellow you hated," he argued.

"How do you know so much about it, Bob Dillon?" she flared.

"I use what brains I've got. Women don't do things like that. There wouldn't be any sense in it."

"Well, I'll prob'ly do it. Then you'll know I haven't got a lick o' sense," she retorted sullenly.

"You ce'tainly beat my time," he said, puzzled. "I've heard you say more mean things about him than everybody else put together, an' now you're talkin' about marryin' him. Why? What's yore reason?"

She looked up. For a moment the morose eyes met his. They told nothing except a dogged intention not to tell anything.

But the boy was no fool. He had thought a good deal about the lonely life she and her father led. Many men came into this country three jumps ahead of the law. It was not good form to ask where any one came from unless he volunteered information about antecedent conditions. Was it possible that Jake Houck had something on Tolliver, that he was using his knowledge to force June into a marriage with him? Otherwise there would be no necessity for her to marry him. As he had told her, it was a free land. But if Houck was coercing her because of her fears for Tolliver, it was possible this might be a factor in determining June to marry him.

"Don't you do it, June. Don't you marry him. He didn't look good to me, Houck didn't," Dillon went on. He was a little excited, and his voice had lifted.

A man who came at this moment round the bend of the creek was grinning unpleasantly. His eyes focused on Dillon.

"So I don't look good to you. Tha's too bad. If you'll tell me what you don't like about me I'll make myself over," jeered Houck.

Bob was struck dumb. The crooked smile and the stab of the eyes that went with it were menacing. He felt goose quills running up and down his spine. This man was one out of a thousand for physical prowess.

"I didn't know you was near," the boy murmured.

"I'll bet you didn't, but you'll know it now." Houck moved toward Dillon slowly.

"Don't you, Jake Houck! Don't you touch him!" June shrilled.

"I got to beat him up, June. It's comin' to him. D'you reckon I'll let the flunkey of a telephone camp interfere in my business? Why, he ain't half man-size."

Bob backed away warily. This Colossus straddling toward him would thrash him within an inch of his life. The boy was white to the lips.

"Stop! Right now!" June faced Houck resolutely, standing between him and his victim.

The big fellow looked at the girl, a slim, fearless little figure with undaunted eyes flinging out a challenge. He laughed, delightedly, then brushed her aside with a sweep of his arm.

Her eyes blazed. The smouldering passion that had been accumulating for weeks boiled up. She dragged out the six-shooter from its holster.

"I won't have you touch him! I won't! If you do I'll--I'll--"

Houck stopped in his stride, held fast by sheer amazement. The revolver pointed straight at him. It did not waver a hair's breadth. He knew how well she could shoot. Only the day before she had killed a circling hawk with a rifle. The bird had dropped like a plummet, dead before it struck the ground. Now, as his gaze took in the pantherish ferocity of her tense pose, he knew that she was keyed up for tragedy. She meant to defend the boy from him if it resulted in homicide.

It did not occur to him to be afraid. He laughed aloud, half in admiration, half in derision.

"I b'lieve you would, you spunky li'l wild cat," he told her in great good humor.

"Run, Bob," called June to the boy.

He stood, hesitating. His impulse was to turn and fly, but he could not quite make up his mind to leave her alone with Houck.

The cowman swung toward the girl.

"Keep back!" she ordered.

Her spurt of defiance tickled him immensely. He went directly to her, his stride unfaltering.

"Want to shoot up poor Jake, do you? An' you an' him all set for a honeymoon. Well, go to it, June. You can't miss now."

He stood a yard or so from her, easy and undisturbed, laughing in genuine enjoyment. He liked the child's pluck. The situation, with its salty tang of danger, was wholly to his taste.

But he had disarmed the edge of June's anger and apprehension. His amusement was too real. It carried the scene from tragedy to farce.

June's outburst had not been entirely for the sake of Bob. Back of the immediate cause was the desire to break away from this man's dominance. She had rebelled in the hope of establishing her individual freedom. Now she knew this was vain. What was the use of opposing one who laughed at her heroics and ignored the peril of his position? There was not any way to beat him.

She pushed the six-shooter back into its holster and cried out at him bitterly. "I think you're the devil or one of his fiends."

"An' I think you're an angel--sometimes," he mocked.

"I hate you!" she said, and two rows of strong little white teeth snapped tight.

"Sho! Tha's just a notion you got. You like me fine, if you only knew it, girl."

She was still shaken with the emotion through which she had passed. "You never were nearer death, Jake Houck, than right now a minute ago."

His back to Dillon, the cowman gave a curt command. "Hit the trail, boy--sudden."

Bob looked at June, whose sullen eyes were fighting those of her father's guest. She had forgotten he was there. Without a word Bob vanished.

"So you love me well enough to shoot me, do you?" Houck jeered.

"I wish I could!" she cried furiously.

"But you can't. You had yore chance, an' you couldn't. What you need is a master, some one you'll have to honor an' obey, some one who'll look after you an' take the devil outa you. Meanin' me--Jake Houck. Understand?"

"I won't! I won't!" she cried. "You come here an' bully me because--because of what you know about Father. If you were half a man--if you were white, you wouldn't try to use that against me like you do."

"I'm using it for you. Why, you li'l' spitfire, can't you see as Jake Houck's wife you get a chance to live? You'll have clothes an' shoes an' pretties like other folks instead o' them rags you wear now. I aim to be good to you, June."

"You say that. Don't I know you? I'd 'most rather be dead than married to you. But you keep pesterin' me. I--I--" Her voice broke.

"If you don' know what's best for you, I do. To-morrow I got to go to Meeker. I'll be back Thursday. We'll ride over to Bear Cat Friday an' be married. Tha's how we'll fix it."

He did not take her in his arms or try to kiss her. The man was wise in his generation. Cheerfully, as a matter of course, he continued:

"We'll go up to the house an' tell Tolliver it's all settled."

She lagged back, sulkily, still protesting. "It's not settled, either. You don't run everything."

But in her heart she was afraid he had stormed the last trench of her resistance.

CHAPTER VII

AN ELOPEMENT

Bob Dillon was peeling potatoes outside the chuck tent when he heard a whistle he recognized instantly. It was a very good imitation of a meadow-lark's joyous lilt. He answered it, put down the pan and knife, and rose.

"Where you going?" demanded the cook.

"Back in a minute, Lon," the flunkey told him, and followed a cow trail that took him up the hill through the sage.

"I never did see a fellow like him," the cook communed aloud to himself. "A bird calls, an' he's got to quit work to find out what it wants. Kinda nice kid, too, if he is queer."

Among the piñons at the rock rim above Bob found June. He had not seen her since the day when she had saved him from a thrashing. The boy was not very proud of the way he had behaved. If he had not shown the white feather, he had come dangerously close to it.

"How are cases, June?"

His eyes, which had been rather dodging hers, came to rest on the girl at last. One glance told him that she was in trouble.

"I don' know what to do, Bob," she broke out. "Jake will be back to-day--by dinner-time, I reckon. He says I've got to go with him to Bear Cat an' be married to-morrow."

Dillon opened his lips to speak, but he said nothing. He remembered how he had counseled her to boldness before and failed at the pinch. What advice could he give? What could he say to comfort his friend?

"Haven't you got any folks you could go to--some one who would tell Houck where to head in at?"

She shook her head. "My father's all I've got."

"Won't he help you?"

"He would, but--I can't ask him. I got to pretend to him I'd just as lief marry Jake."

"Why have you?"

"I can't tell you why, Bob. But that's how it is."

"And you still hate Houck?"

"Ump-ha. Except--sometimes." She did not explain that elusive answer. "But it don't matter about how I feel. When he comes back I've got to do like he says."

June broke down and began to weep. The boy's tender heart melted within him.

"Don't you. Don't you," he begged. "We'll find a way, li'l' pardner. We sure will."

"How?" she asked, between sobs. "There ain't--any way--except to--to marry Jake."

"You could run away--and work," he suggested.

"Who'd give me work? And where could I go that he wouldn't find me?"

Practical details stumped him. Her objections were valid enough. With her inexperience she could never face the world alone.

"Well, le's see. You've got friends. Somewhere that you could kinda hide for a while."

"Not a friend. We--we don't make friends," she said in a small, forlorn voice with a catch in it.

"You got one," he said stoutly. "Maybe he don't amount to much, but--" He broke off, struck by an idea. "Say, June, why couldn't you run off with me? We'd go clear away, where he wouldn't find us."

"How could I run off with you?" A pink flood poured into her face. "You're not my brother. You're no kin."

"No, but--" He frowned at the ground, kicking at a piece of moss with his toe to help him concentrate. Again he found an idea. "We could get married."

This left her staring at him, speechless.

He began to dress his proposal with arguments. He was a humble enough youth who had played a trifling part in life. But his imagination soared at seeing himself a rescuer of distressed maidens. He was a dreamer of dreams. In them he bulked large and filled heroic rôles amply.

June was a practical young person. "What d' you want to marry me for?" she demanded.

He came to earth. He did not want to marry her. At least he had not wanted to until the moment before. If he had been able to give the reason for his suggestion, it would probably have been that her complete isolation and helplessness appealed to the same conditions in himself and to a certain youthful chivalry.

"We're good pals, ain't we?" was the best he could do by way of answer.

"Yes, but you don't--you don't--"

Beneath the tan of her dark cheeks the blood poured in again. It was as hard for her to talk about love as for him. She felt the same shy, uneasy embarrassment, as though it were some subject taboo, not to be discussed by sane-minded people.

His freckled face matched hers in color. "You don't have to be thataway. If we like each other, an' if it looks like the best thing to do--why--"

"I couldn't leave Dad," she said.

"You'll have to leave him if you marry Jake Houck."

That brought her to another aspect of the situation. If she ran away with Bob and married him, what would Houck do in regard to her father? Some deep instinct told her that he would not punish Tolliver for it if she went without his knowledge. The man was ruthless, but he was not needlessly cruel.

"What would we do? Where would we go--afterward?" she asked.

He waved a hand largely into space. "Anywhere. Denver, maybe. Or Cheyenne. Or Salt Lake."

"How'd we live?"

"I'd get work. No trouble about that."

She considered the matter, at first unsentimentally, as a workable proposition. In spite of herself she could not hold quite to that aspect of the case. Her blood began to beat faster. She would escape Houck. That was the fundamental advantage of the plan. But she would see the world. She would meet people. Perhaps for the first time she would ride on a train. Wonderful stories had been told her by Dillon, of how colored men cooked and served meals on a train rushing along forty miles an hour, of how they pulled beds down from the roof and folks went to sleep in little rooms just as though they were at home. She would see all the lovely things he had described to her. There was a court-house in Denver where you got into a small room and it traveled up with you till you got out and looked down four stories from a window.

"If we go it'll have to be right away," she said. "Without tellin' anybody."

"Yes," he agreed.

"I could go back to the house an' get my things."

"While I'm gettin' mine. There's nobody at the camp but Lon, an' he always sleeps after he gets through work. But how'll we get to Bear Cat?"

"I'll bring the buckboard. Dad's away. I'll leave him a note. Meet you in half an hour on Twelve-Mile Hill," she added.

It was so arranged.

June ran back to the house, hitched the horses to the buckboard, and changed to her best dress. She made a little bundle of her other clothes and tied them in a bandanna handkerchief.

On a scrap of coarse brown wrapping-paper she wrote a short note:

Dear Dad,

I'm going away with Bob Dillon. We're going to be married. Don't blame me too much. Jake Houck drove me to it. I'll write you soon. Don't forget to take the cough medicine when you need it.

June

She added a postscript.

I'll leave the team at Kilburn's Corral.

Unexpectedly, she found herself crying. Tears splashed on the writing. She folded the note, put it in the empty coffee pot, and left this on the table.

June had no time just now for doubts. The horses were half-broken broncos. They traveled the first hundred yards tied in a knot, the buckboard sometimes on four wheels, but more often on two.

At the top of the hill she managed to slacken them enough for Bob to jump in. They were off again as though shot from a bow. June wound the reins round her hands and leaned back, arms and strong thin wrists taut. The colts flew over the ground at a gallop.

There was no chance for conversation. Bob watched the girl drive. He offered no advice. She was, he knew, a better teamster than himself. Her eyes and mind were wholly on the business in hand.

A flush of excitement burned in June's cheeks. Tolliver never would let her drive the colts because of the danger. She loved the stimulation of rapid travel, the rush of the wind past her ears, the sense of responsibility at holding the lines.

Bob clung to the seat and braced himself. He knew that all June could do was to steady the team enough to keep the horses in the road. Every moment he expected a smash, but it did not come. The colts reached the foot of Twelve-Mile safely and swept up the slope beyond. The driver took a new grip on the lines and put her weight on them. It was a long hill. By the time they reached the top the colts were under control and ready to behave for the rest of the day.

The sparkling eyes of June met those of Bob. "Great, ain't it?"

He nodded, but it had not been fun for him. He had been distinctly frightened. He felt for June the reluctant admiration gameness compels from those who are constitutionally timid. What manner of girl was this who could shave disaster in such a reckless fashion and actually enjoy it?

At the edge of the town they exchanged seats at June's suggestion and Bob drove in. It was mid-afternoon by the sun as he tied the horses to the rack in front of the larger of the two general stores.

"You stay here," the boy advised. "I'll get things fixed, then come back an' let you know."

He had only a hazy idea of the business details of getting married, but he knew a justice of the peace could tell him. He wandered down the street in search of one.

Half a dozen cowpunchers bent on sport drifted in his direction. One of them was riding down the dusty road. To the horn of his saddle a rope was tied. The other end of it was attached to a green hide of a steer dragging after him.

The punchers made a half-circle round Bob.

One grinned and made comment. "Here's one looks ripe, fellows. Jes' a-honin' for a ride, looks like."

"Betcha he don't last ten jumps," another said.

Before Bob could offer any resistance or make any protest he had been jubilantly seized and dumped down on the hide.

"Let 'er go," some one shouted.

The horse, at the touch of the spur, jumped to a gallop. Bob felt a sudden sick sense of helplessness. The earth was cut out from under him. He crouched low and tried to cling to the slippery hide as it bounced forward. Each leap of the bronco upset him. Within three seconds he had ridden on his head, his back, and his stomach. Wildly he clawed at the rope as he rolled over.

With a yell the rider swung a corner. Bob went off the hide at a tangent, rolling over and over in the yellow four-inch-deep dust.

He got up, dizzy and perplexed. His best suit looked as though it had been through a long and severe war.

A boyish puncher came up and grinned at him in the friendliest way. "Hello, fellow! Have a good ride?"

Bob smiled through the dust he had accumulated. "It didn't last long."

"Most generally it don't. Come in to Dolan's an' have a drink." He mentioned his name. It was Dud Hollister.

"Can't." Bob followed an impulse. "Say, how do you get married?" he asked, lowering his voice.

"I don't," Dud answered promptly. "Not so long as I'm in my right mind."

"I mean, how do I?" He added sheepishly, "She's in the buckboard."

"Oh!" Dud fell to sudden sobriety. This was serious business. "I'd get a license at the cou't-house. Then go see Blister Haines. He's the J. P."

Bob equipped himself with a license, returned to June, and reported progress.

The bride-to-be was simmering with indignation. In those days she had not yet cultivated a sense of humor.

"I saw what they did to you--the brutes," she snapped.

"Sho! That wasn't nothin', June. The boys was only funnin'. Well, I got things fixed. We gotta go to the J. P."

The justice was having forty winks when they entered his office. He was enormously fat, a fact notable in a country of lean men. Moreover, he had neither eyebrows nor hair, though his face announced him not more than thirty in spite of its triple chin. Mr. Haines was slumped far down in a big armchair out of which he overflowed prodigally. His feet were on a second chair.

Bob wakened him ruthlessly. He sat up blinking. Bob started to speak. He stopped him with a fat uplifted hand.

"I r-reckon I know what you want, y-young man," he said.

CHAPTER VIII

BLISTER GIVES ADVICE

Blister Haines, J. P., was by way of being a character. His waggish viewpoint was emphasized by a slight stutter.

"S-so you want to h-hitch up to double trouble, do you?" he asked.

"We want to get married," Bob said.

"S-same thing," the fat man wheezed, grinning. "C-come right in an' I'll tie you tighter 'n a d-drum."

"I've only got six dollars," the bridegroom explained.

"No matter a-tall. My f-fee is jus' six d-dollars," the justice announced promptly.

Bob hesitated. June nudged him and whispered. The husband-elect listened, nodded, and spoke up.

"I'll pay you two dollars."

Blister looked at the bride reproachfully. "L-lady, if you ain't worth s-six dollars to him you ain't worth a c-cent. But I'll show you how good a sport I am. I'll m-make you a wedding present of the j-job. Got any witnesses?"

"Do we have to have witnesses?" asked Bob helplessly. Getting married was a more formidable and formal affair than he had supposed.

"Sure. I'll dig 'em up."

The justice waddled to the door of the saloon adjoining and stuck his head inside. A row of cowpunchers were lined up in front of the bar.

"Y-you, Dud Hollister an' Tom Reeves, I'm servin' a subpoena on you lads as w-witnesses at a w-weddin'," he said in the high wheeze that sounded so funny coming from his immense bulk.

"Whose wedding?" demanded Reeves, a lank youth with a brick-red face, the nose of which had been broken.

"N-none of yore darned business."

"Do we get to kiss the bride?"

"You h-hotfoot it right to my office or I'll throw you in the c-calaboose for c-contempt of court, Tom Reeves."

The puncher turned to Hollister, grinning. "Come along, Dud. Might 's well learn how it's done, ol' Sure-Shot."

The range-riders jingled into the office at the heels of the justice. Blister inquired for the names of the principals and introduced the witnesses to them. The gayety and the audacity of the punchers had vanished. They ducked their heads and drew back a foot each in a scrape that was meant to be a bow. They were almost as embarrassed as June and Bob. Which is saying a good deal.

June had not realized what an ordeal it would be to stand up before strangers in her dingy dress and heavy cracked brogans while she promised to love, honor, and obey. She was acutely conscious of her awkwardness, of the flying, rebellious hair, of a hole in a stocking she tried to keep concealed. And for the first time, too, she became aware of the solemnity of what she was doing. The replies she gave were low and confused.

Before she knew it the ceremony was over.

Blister closed the book and dropped it on a chair.

"Kiss yore wife, man," he admonished, chuckling.

Bob flushed to the roots of his hair. He slid a look at June, not sure whether she would want him to do that. Her long dark lashes had fallen to the dusky cheeks and hid the downcast eyes.

His awkward peck caught her just below the ear.

The bridegroom offered the justice two dollars. Blister took it and handed it to June.

"You keep it, ma'am, an' buy yorese'f somethin' for a p-pretty. I'd jes' b-blow it anyhow. Hope you'll be r-real happy. If this yere young s-scalawag don't treat you h-handsome, Tom an' Dud'll be glad to ride over an' beat him up proper 'most any time you give 'em the high sign. Am I right, boys?"

"Sure are," they said, grinning bashfully.

"As j-justice of the peace for Garfield County, S-state of C-colorado, I'm entitled to k-kiss the bride, but mos' generally I give her one o' these heart-to-heart talks instead, onloadin' from my chest some f-free gratis g-good advice," the fat man explained in his hoarse wheeze. "You got to r-remember, ma'am, that m-marriage ain't duck soup for n-neither the one nor the other of the h-high contractin' parties thereto. It's a g-game of give an' take, an' at that a h-heap more give than take."

"Yes, sir," murmured June tremulously, looking down at the hole in her stocking.

"Whilst I n-never yet c-committed matrimony in my own p-person, me being ample provided with t-trouble an' satisfied with what griefs I already got, yet I've run cows off an' on, an' so have had workin' for me several of this sex you've now got tangled up with, ma'am," Blister sailed on cheerfully. "I'll say the best way to keep 'em contented is to feed 'em good, treat 'em as if they was human, an' in general give 'em a more or less free rein, dependin' on their g-general habits an' cussedness. If that don't suit a p-puncher I most usually h-hand him his hat an' say, 'So long, son, you 'n' me ain't c-consanguineously constructed to ride the same range; no hard feelin's, but if you're w-wishful to jog on to another outfit I'll say adios without no tears.' You can't g-get rid of yore husband that easy, ma'am, so I'll recommend the g-good grub, s-seventy-five s-smiles per diem, an' the aforesaid more or less f-free rein."

Again June whispered, "Yes, sir," but this time her honest eyes lifted and went straight into his.

"An' you." The justice turned his batteries on the groom. "You w-wanta recollect that this r-road you've done chose ain't no easy one to t-travel. Tenderfoot come in the other day an' w-wanted to know what kind of a road it was to S-stinking Creek. I tell him it's a g-good road. Yesterday he come rarin' in to f-find out what I told him that for. 'Fellow,' I says, 'Fellow, any r-road you can g-get over is a good road in this country.' It's t-thataway with marriage, son, an' don't you forget it a h-holy minute. Another thing, this being u-united in wedlock ain't no sinecure."

"Ain't no which kind of a sin?" inquired Reeves.

Dud Hollister grinned admiringly. "Blister sure ropes an' hogties a heap of longhorn words."

The justice scratched his bald poll and elucidated. "A s-sinecure, boys, is when a f-fellow rides the g-grub line habitual an' don't rope no d-dogies for his stack o' wheats an' c-coffee." He wagged a fat forefinger at Bob. "You gotta quit hellin' around now an' behave yorese'f like a respectable m-married man. You gotta dig in an' work. At that you 'n' the little lady will have yore flareups. When you do, give her the best of it an' you'll never be sorry. Tha's all."

Blister slid a hand furtively into a drawer of the desk, groped for a moment, then flung a handful of rice over bride and groom.

The newly married couple left the office hurriedly. They did not look at each other. An acute shyness had swept over both of them. They walked to the buckboard, still without speaking.

June opened a perspiring little brown palm in which lay two warm silver dollars. "Here's yore money," she said.

"It's yours. He gave it to you," Bob answered, swallowing hard. "For a weddin' present."

"Well, I ain't no pockets. You keep it for me."

The transfer was accomplished, neither of them looking into the eyes of the other.

Blister Haines, flanked on each side by one of the witnesses, rolled past on his way to the bar of the Bear Cat House. His throat was dry and he proposed to liquidate his unusual exertion. He always celebrated a wedding by taking a few drinks. Any excuse was a good excuse for that. He waved a hand toward the newlyweds in greeting.

Bob answered by lifting his own. He had not taken three drinks in his life, but he felt that he would like one now. It might cheer him up a little.

What in the world was he to do with June? Where could he take her for the night? And after that what would they do? He had not money enough to pay stage fare to get them away. He did not know anybody from whom he could borrow any. Yet even if he found work in Bear Cat, they dared not stay here. Houck would come "rip-raring" down from the hills and probably murder him.

Anyhow, it would not do for him to act as though he were stumped. He managed a smile.

"We'd better take the team to the corral, then go get something to eat, June. I'm sure enough hungry. Ain't you?"

She nodded. Even to go to the hotel or a restaurant for dinner was an adventure for her, so little of experience had her life offered.

As they walked from the barn to the Bear Cat House, the girl-bride was still dumb. The marriage ceremony had brought home to her the solemnity of what she had done. She had promised to love, honor, and obey this boy, to care for him in sickness and in health, till death came to part them.

What did she know about him? What manner of man had she married? The consequences of the step they had taken began to appall her. She would have to live with him in all the intimacies of married life, cook for him, wash his clothes, sit opposite him at the table three times a day for fifty years. He was to be the father of her children, and she knew nothing whatever about him except that he was gentle and friendly.

From under long curving lashes she stole a shy look at him. He was her husband, this stranger. Would she be able to please him? June thought of what Blister Haines had said. She was a pretty good cook. That was one thing. And she would try not to let herself sulk or be a spitfire. Maybe he would not get tired of her if she worked real hard to suit him.

The hotel was an adobe building. In the doorway stood a woman leaning against the jamb. She was smoking a cigar. June looked twice at her before she believed her eyes.

The woman took the cigar from between her lips. "Are you the children Blister Haines just married?" she asked bluntly.

"We--we've just been married by Mr. Haines," Bob replied with an attempt at dignity.

The blue eyes of the woman softened as she looked at June--softened indescribably. They read instantly the doubt and loneliness of the child. She threw the cigar into the street and moved swiftly toward the bride. A moment before she had been hard and sexless, in June's virgin eyes almost a monstrosity. Now she was all mother, filled with the protective instinct.

"I'm Mollie Gillespie--keep the hotel here," she explained. "You come right in an' I'll fix up a nice room for you, my dearie. You can wash up after yore ride and you'll feel a lot better. I'll have Chung Lung cook you both a bit of supper soon as he comes back to the kitchen. A good steak an' some nice French frys, say. With some of the mince pie left from dinner and a good cup of coffee." Mollie's arm was round June, petting and comforting her.

June felt and repressed an impulse to tears. "You're mighty good," she gulped.

The landlady of the Bear Cat House bustled the girl into a room and began to mother her. Bob hung around the door. He did not know whether he was expected to come in or stay out, though he knew which he wanted to do.

Mollie sent him about his business. "Scat!" she snapped. "Get outa here, Mr. Husband, an' don't you show up till five o'clock prompt. Hear me?"

Bob heard and vanished like a tin-canned pup. He was the most relieved youth in Bear Cat. At least he had a reprieve. Mrs. Gillespie would know what to do and how to do it.

If being a married man was like this, he did not wonder that Dud Hollister and Blister Haines felt the way they did toward that holy estate.

CHAPTER IX

THE WHITE FEATHER

At the appointed time Bob sneaked back to the hotel. He hung around the lobby for a minute or two, drifted into the saloon and gambling annex, and presently found himself hanging over the bar because he did not know what else to do with himself.

Was he to go to the room after June and bring her to supper? Or was he to wait until she came out? He wished he knew.

Mollie caught sight of him and put a flea in his ear. "What d' you think you're doing here, young fellow, me lad? Get outa this den of iniquity an' hustle back to the room where the little lady is waitin' for you. Hear me?" she snorted.

A minute later Bob was knocking timidly on the door of room 9. A small voice told him to come in. He opened the door.

June shyly met the eyes of her husband. "Mrs. Gillespie said maybe you'd want to wash up before supper."

"I reckon that'd be a good idee," he said, shifting from one foot to the other.

Did she expect him to wash here? Or what?

June poured water into the basin and found a towel.

Not for a five-dollar bill would Bob have removed his coat, though there had never been a time in his young life when he would have welcomed more a greenback. He did not intend to be indelicate while alone with a young woman in a bedroom. The very thought of it made him scarlet to the roots of his red hair.

After he had scrubbed himself till his face was like a shining apple, June lent him a comb. She stole a furtive look at him while he was standing before the small cracked mirror. For better or worse he was her man. She had to make the best of him. A sense of proprietorship that was almost pride glowed faintly in her. He was a nice boy, even if he was so thin and red and freckled. Bob would be good to her. She was sure of that.

"Mrs. Gillespie said she reckoned she could fix you up a job to help the cook," the bride said.

"You mean--to-night or for good?"

"Right along, she said."

Bob did not welcome the suggestion. There was an imperative urge within him to get away from Bear Cat before Jake Houck arrived. There was no use dodging it. He was afraid of the fellow's vengeance. This was a country where men used firearms freely. The big man from Brown's Park might shoot him down at sight.

"I don't reckon we'd better stay here," he answered uneasily. "In a bigger town I can get a better job likely."

"But we haven't money enough to go on the stage, have we?"

"If there was a bull team going out mebbe I could work my way."

"W-e-ll." She considered this dubiously. "If we stayed here Mrs. Gillespie would let me wash dishes an' all. She said she'd give me two dollars a week an' my board. Tha's a lot of money, Bob."

He looked out of the window. "I don't want trouble with Jake Houck. It--it would worry you."

"Yes, but--" June did not quite know how to say what was in her mind. She had an instinctive feeling that the way to meet trouble was to face it unafraid and not to run away from it. "I don't reckon we'd better show Jake we're scared of him--now. O' course he'll be mad at first, but he's got no right to be. Jes' 'cause he kep' a-pesterin' me don't give him no claim on me."

"No, but you know what he is an' how he acts."

"I'll go where you want to go. I jes' thought, seein' how good to us Mrs. Gillespie has been, that maybe--"

"Well, we'll talk it over after supper," Bob said. "I'm for lighting out myself. To Laramie or Cheyenne, say."

As they had not eaten since breakfast they were a pair of hungry young animals. They did full justice to the steak, French frys, mince pie, and coffee Mrs. Gillespie had promised.

They hung for a moment awkwardly outside the dining-room. Both of them were looking for an excuse to avoid returning to their room yet.

"Like to look the town over?" Bob asked.

June accepted eagerly.

They walked up the single business street and looked in the windows. The young husband bought his bride a paper sack of chocolates and they ate them as they strolled. Somehow they did not feel half as shy of each other in the open as when shut up together between the walls of a bedroom.

Dusk was beginning to fall. It veiled the crude and callow aspects of the frontier town and filled the hollows of the surrounding hills with a soft violet haze.

Bob's eyes met the dark orbs of June. Between them some communication flashed. For the first time a queer emotion clutched at the boy's heart. An intoxicating thrill pulsed through his veins. She was his wife, this shy girl so flushed and tender.

His hand caught hers and gave it a little comforting pressure. It was his first love gesture and it warmed her like wine.

"You're right good to me," she murmured.

She was grateful for so little. All her life she had been starved for love and friendship just as he had. Bob resolved to give them to her in a flood. A great tide of sympathy flowed out from him to her. He would be good to her. He wished she knew now how well he meant to look after her. But he could not tell her. A queer shame tied his tongue.

From a blacksmith shop a man stepped.

"Say, fellow, can I see you a minute?" he asked.

It was Dud Hollister. He drew Bob back into the smithy.

"Big guy in town lookin' for you. He's tankin' up. You heeled?"

Bob felt as though his heart had been drenched with ice water. Houck was here then. Already.

"No, I--I don't carry a gun," he replied, weakly.

"Here's mine. Shoots just a mite high, but she's a good old friend." Dud pressed a six-shooter on Dillon.

The boy took it reluctantly. The blood in his veins ran cold. "I dunno. I reckon mebbe I better not. If I talked to him, don't you think--?"

"Talk, hell! He's out for blood, that guy is. He's made his brags right over the bar at Dolan's what all he's gonna do to you. I'm no gunman, understand. But a fellow's got to look out for number one. I'd let him have it soon as I seen him. Right off the reel."

"Would you?"

"Surest thing you know. He's a bad actor, that fellow is."

"If I went to the marshal--"

Dud's eye held derision. "What good'd that do? Simp ain't gonna draw cards till after some one's been gunned. He don't claim to be no mind-reader, Simp don't."

"I'm not lookin' for trouble," Bob began to explain.

"Fellow, it's lookin' for you," cut in Dud. "You hold that gun right under yore coat, an' when you meet up with Mr. Hook or whoever he is, don't you wait to ask 'What for?' Go to fannin'."

Bob rejoined June. His lips were bloodless. He felt a queer weakness in the knees.

"What did he want?" asked June.

"Houck's here--lookin' for me," the wretched boy explained.

"What's that you've got under yore coat?" she demanded quickly.

"It's a--a gun. He made me take it. Said Houck was tellin' how he'd--do for me."

The fear-filled eyes of the boy met the stricken ones of his bride. She knew now what she had before suspected and would not let herself believe.

If it was possible she must help him to avoid a meeting with Houck. She could not have him shamed. Her savage young pride would not permit the girl to mate with one who proved himself a coward at a crisis of his life. It was necessary to her self-respect that she save his.

"We'd better go back to the hotel," she said. "You can stay in our room, and I'll send for Jake an' talk with him downstairs."

"I don't reckon I'd better do that," Bob protested feebly. "He might--hurt you. No tellin'."

June ignored this. "Did you hear whether Dad's with him?" she asked.

"No."

"Where is Jake?"

"He was at Dolan's drinking when that Dud Hollister seen him."

"I'll have him come right away--before he's had too much. Dad says he used to be mean when he was drinkin'."

The hotel was in the same block as Dolan's, a hundred feet beyond it. They were passing the saloon when the door was pushed open and a man came out. At sight of them he gave a triumphant whoop.

"Got ya!" he cried.

The look on his face daunted Bob. The boy felt the courage dry up within him. Mouth and throat parched. He tried to speak and found he could not.

June took up the gage, instantly, defiantly. "You've got nothing to do with us, Jake Houck. We're married."

The news had reached him. He looked at her blackly. "Married or single, you're mine, girl, an' you're going with me."

"My husband will have a word to say about that," June boasted bravely.

Houck looked at his rival, and a sinister, mocking smile creased the hard face. "I'm plumb scared of him," he jeered.

"We g-got a right to get married, Mr. Houck," Bob said, teeth chattering. "You hadn't ought to make us trouble."

"Speaks up right brave, don't he?"

"He's as brave as you are, Jake Houck, even if he ain't a bully," the bride flamed.

"So?" Houck moved a step or two toward Dillon.

The hand under the coat shook as though the boy had a chill.

"What you got there--in yore hand?" demanded Houck.

The revolver came to light.

Houck stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, straddled out his feet, and laughed derisively. "Allowin' for to kill me, eh?"

"No, sir." The voice was a dry whisper. "I'd like to talk this over reasonable, Mr. Houck, an' fix it up so's bygones would be bygones. I ain't lookin' for trouble."

"I sure believe that." Houck turned to June. "It wouldn't be safe for me to leave you with this desperate character who goes around with a six-shooter not lookin' for trouble. I'm aimin' to take you with me, like I said."

Her eyes clashed with his and gave way at last. "You always act like you're God Almighty," she cried passionately. "Are you hard o' hearing? I'm married to Bob Dillon here."

"I ain't heard him raise any objections to yore goin'," Houck taunted. "Tolliver said for me to bring you, an' I'll do it."

June spoke to Bob, her voice trembling. "Tell him where to get off at," she begged.

"Mr. Houck, June's my wife. She's made her choice. That ends it," Bob said unsteadily.

The cold, cruel eyes of the ex-rustler gripped those of Dillon and held them. "End it, does it? Listen. If you're any kind of a man a-tall you'd better shoot me right now. I'm gonna take her from you, an' you're goin' to tell her to go with me. Understand?"

"He'll not tell me any such a thing," June protested. But her heart sank. She was not sure whether her husband would grovel. If he did--if he did--

The jeering voice went on taunting its victim. "If I was you I'd use that gun or I'd crawl into a hole. Ain't you got any spunk a-tall? I'm tellin' you that June's goin' with me instead o' you, an' that you're goin' to tell her to go. Tha's the kind of a man she married."

"No, Mr. Houck, I don't reckon--"

Houck moved forward, evenly, without haste, eyes cold as chilled steel and as unyielding. "Gimme that gun, if you ain't goin' to use it." He held out a hand.

"Don't, Bob," begged June, in a panic of dismay.

While his heart fluttered with apprehension Bob told himself, over and over, that he would not hand the revolver to Houck. He was still saying it when his right arm began to move slowly forward. The weapon passed from one to the other.

June gave a sobbing sound of shame and despair. She felt like a swimmer in a swift current when the deep waters are closing over his head.

"Now tell her you ain't good enough for her, that you've got no sand in yore craw, and she's to go with me," ordered Houck.

"No." Young Dillon's voice came dry from a throat like cotton.

The big man caught Bob's wrist and slowly twisted. The boy gave an agonized howl of pain. June was white to the lips, but she made no attempt to interfere. It was too late. Bob must show the stuff that was in him. He must go through to a fighting finish or he must prove himself a weakling.

"If you give her up now, you're a yellow dog, Dillon," his tormentor sneered. "Stick it out. Tell me to go to red-hot blazes."

He took an extra turn on the wrist. Bob writhed and shrieked. Tiny beads of perspiration stood on his forehead. "You're killin' me!" he screamed.

"Wish you'd gunned me when you had a chance, don't you?" Houck spat at him. "Too late now. Well, what's it to be?" Again he applied the torture.

The boy begged, pleaded, then surrendered. "I can't stand it! I'll do anything you say."

"Well, you know yore li'l' piece. Speak it right up," ordered the cattleman.

Bob said it, with his eyes on the ground, feeling and looking like a whipped cur. "You better go with him, June. I--I'm no good." A sob choked him. He buried his face in his hands.

Houck laughed harshly. "You hear him, June."

In a small dead voice June asked a question. "Do you mean that, Bob--that I'm to go with him--that you give me up?"

Her husband nodded, without looking up.

No man can sacrifice his mate to save his own hide and still hold her respect. June looked at him in a nausea of sick scorn. She turned from him, wasting no more words.

She and Houck vanished into the gathering darkness.

CHAPTER X

IN THE IMAGE OF GOD

Houck's jeering laugh of triumph came back to the humiliated boy. He noticed for the first time that two or three men were watching him from the door of the saloon. Ashamed to the depths of his being, he hung his head dejectedly. All his life he would be a marked figure because Jake had stamped the manhood out of him, had walked off with his bride of an hour.

In the country of the open spaces a man must have sand. Courage is the basis upon which the other virtues are built, the fundamental upon which he is most searchingly judged. Let a man tell the truth, stick to his pal, and fight when trouble is forced on him, and he will do to ride the river with, in the phrase of the plains.

Bob had lost June. She would, of course, never look at him again. To have failed her so miserably cut deep into his pride and self-respect. With her he had lost, too, the esteem of all those who lived within a radius of fifty miles. For the story would go out to every ranch and cow-camp. Worst of all he had blown out the dynamic spark within himself that is the source of life and hope.

He did not deceive himself. Houck had said he was going to take June to her father. But he had said it with a cynical sneer on his lips. For the girl to be Jake's wife would have been bad enough, but to be his victim without the protection of legality would be infinitely worse. And that was the lot to which June was destined. She had fought, but she could fight no longer.

Fate had played her a scurvy trick in the man she had chosen. Another husband--Dud Hollister, for instance--would have battled it out for her to a finish, till he had been beaten so badly he could no longer crawl to his feet. If Bob had done that, even though he had been hopelessly overmatched, he would have broken Houck's power over June. All the wild, brave spirit of her would have gone out to her husband in a rush of feeling. The battle would have been won for them both. The thing that had stung her pride and crushed her spirit was that he had not struck a blow for her. His cowardice had driven her to Jake Houck's arms because there was no other place for her to go.

Their adventure had ended in tragedy both for her and for him. Bob sank down on a dry-goods box and put his twitching face in his hands. He had flung away both his own chance for happiness and hers. So far as he was concerned he was done for. He could never live down the horrible thing he had done.

He had been rather a frail youth, with very little confidence in himself. Above all else he had always admired strength and courage, the qualities in which he was most lacking. He had lived on the defensive, oppressed by a subconscious sense of inferiority. His actions had been conditioned by fear. Life at the charitable institution where he had been sent as a small child fostered this depression of the ego and its subjection to external circumstances. The manager of the home ruled by the rod. Bob had always lived in a sick dread of it. Only within the past few months had he begun to come into his own, a heritage of health and happiness.

Dud Hollister came to him out of Dolan's saloon. "Say, fellow, where's my gun?" he asked.

Bob looked up. "He--took it."

"Do I lose my six-shooter?"

"I'll fix it with you when I get the money to buy one."

The boy looked so haggard, his face so filled with despair, that Dud was touched in spite of himself.

"Why in Mexico didn't you give that bird a pill outa the gun?" he asked.

"I don't know. I'm--no good," Bob wailed.

"You said it right that time. I'll be doggoned if I ever saw such a thing as a fellow lettin' another guy walk off with his wife--when he ain't been married hardly two hours yet. Say, what's the matter with you anyhow? Why didn't you take a fall outa him? All he could 'a' done was beat you to death."

"He hurt me," Bob confessed miserably. "I--was afraid."

"Hurt you? Great jumpin' Jupiter. Say, fellows, listen to Miss--Miss Roberta here. He hurt him, so he quit on the job--this guy here did. I never heard the beat o' that."

"If you'll borrow one of yore friends' guns an' blow my brains out you'll do me a favor," the harried youth told Hollister in a low voice.

Hollister looked at him searchingly. "I might, at that," agreed the puncher. "But I'm not doin' that kind of favor to-day. I'll give you a piece of advice. This ain't no country for you. Hop a train for Boston, Mass., or one o' them places where you can take yore troubles to a fellow with a blue coat. Tha's where you belong."

Up the street rolled Blister Haines, in time to hear the cowpuncher's suggestion. Already the news had reached the justice of what had taken place. He was one of those amiable busybodies who take care of other people's troubles for them. Sometimes his efforts came to grief and sometimes they did not.

"Hit the trail, you lads," he ordered. "I'll l-look out for this b-business. The exc-c-citement's all over anyhow. Drift."

The range-riders disappeared. At best the situation was an embarrassing one. It is not pleasant to be in the company of one who has just shown himself a poltroon and is acutely aware of it.

Blister took Dillon into his office. He lowered himself into the biggest chair carefully, rolled a cigarette, and lit up.

"Tell me about it," he ordered.

"Nothin' to tell." Bob leaned against the table and looked drearily at the floor. The world had come to an end for him. That was all. "He showed up an' took June from me--made me tell her to go along with him."

"How did he do that? Did he cover you with a gun?"

"No. I had the gun--till he took it from me." He gave the explanation he had used twice already within the hour. "I'm no good."

Blister heaved himself up from the chair and waddled closer to the boy. He shook a fat forefinger in his face. He glared at him fiercely.

"Say, where you from?"

"Austin, Texas, when I was a kid."

"Well, damn you, Texas man, I w-want to t-tell you right now that you're talkin' blasphemy when you say you're n-no good. The good Lord made you, didn't He? D-d' you reckon I'm goin' to let you stand up there an' claim He did a pore job? No, sir. Trouble with you is you go an' bury yore talent instead of w-whalin' the stuffin' outa that Jake Houck fellow."

"I wish I was dead," Bob groaned, drooping in every line of his figure. "I wish I'd never been born."

"Blasphemy number two. Didn't He make you in His image? What right you got wishin' He hadn't created you? Why, you pore w-worm, you're only a mite lower than the angels an' yore red haid's covered with glory." Blister's whisper of a voice took unexpectedly a sharp edge. "Snap it up! That red haid o' yours. Hear me?"

Bob's head came up as though a spring had been released.

"B-better. K-keep it up where it belongs. Now, then, w-what are you aimin' for to do?"

Bob shook his head. "Get outa this country, like Hollister said. Find a hole somewheres an' pull it in after me."

"No, sir. Not none. You're gonna stay right here--in the country round Bear Cat--where every last man, woman, an' k-kid will know how you ate d-dirt when Houck told you to."

"I couldn't do that," the boy pleaded. "Why, I wouldn't have a chance. I'd know what they were sayin' all the time."

"Sure you'd know it. Tha's the price you g-gotta pay for g-grovelin'. Don't you see yore only chance is to go out an' make good before the folks who know how you've acted? Sneak off an' keep still about what you did, amongst s-strangers, an' where do you get off? You know all yore life you're only a worm. The best you can be is a bluff. You'd be d-duckin' outa makin' the fight you've gotta make. That don't get you anywhere a-tall. No, sir. Go out an' reverse the verdict of the court. Make good, right amongst the people who're keepin' tabs on yore record. You can do it, if you c-clamp yore j-jaw an' remember that yore red haid is c-covered with g-glory an' you been given dominion."

"But--"

"S-snap it up!" squeaked Blister.

The red head came up again with a jerk.

"Keep it up."

"What'll I do? Where'll I find work?"

"Out on the range. At the K Bar T, or the Keystone, or the Slash Lazy D. It don't m-matter where."

"I can't ride."

"Hmp! Learn, can't you? Dud Hollister an' Tom Reeves wasn't neither one of them born on a bronc's back. They climbed up there. So can you. You'll take the dust forty times. You'll get yore bones busted an' yore red haid cut open. But if you got the guts to stick, you'll be ridin' 'em slick one o' these here days. An' you'll come out a m-man."

A faint glow began to stir in the boy's heart. Was there really a chance for him to reverse the verdict? Could he still turn over a leaf and make another start?

"You'll have one heluva time for a while," Blister prophesied. "Take 'em by an' large an' these lads chasin' cows' tails are the salt o' the earth. They'll go farther with you an' stick longer than anybody else you ever met up with. Once they know you an' like you. But they'll be right offish with you for a while. Kinda polite an' distant, I expect. S-some overbearin' g-guy will start runnin' on you, knowin' it'll be safe. It'll be up to you to m-make it mighty onsafe for him. Go through to a finish that once an' the boys will begin sizin' you up an' wonderin' about you. Those show-me lads will have to get evidence about 'steen times before they'll believe."

"I'll never be able to stick it. I'm such a--so timid," Dillon groaned.

The justice bristled. "H-hell's bells! What's ailin' you, Texas man? I tell you that you're made in His image. Bite on that thought hard whenever you're up against it an' want to hide yorese'f in a hole. Every time you get too s-scared to play yore hand out, you're playin' it low down on yore C-creator."

Bob came to another phase of the situation. "What about--June?"

"Well, what about her?"

"She's gone with Houck. He'll not take her home."

"What d' you m-mean not take her home? Where'll he take her?"

"I don't know. That's it. I'm responsible for her. I brought her here. He means to--to make her live with him."

"Keep her by force--that what you're drivin' at?"

"No-o. Not exactly. He's got a hold over her father somehow. She's worn out fightin' him. When she ran away with me she played her last card. She'll have to give up now. He's so big an' strong, such a bulldog for gettin' his way, that she can't hold him off. June ain't seventeen yet. She's gettin' a mighty rotten deal, looks like. First off, livin' alone the way she an' Tolliver do, then Houck, then me, an' finally Houck again."

"I'll notify Tolliver how things are," Blister said. "Get word to him right away. We'll have to take a lead from him about June."

"I was thinkin'--"

"Onload it."

"Mrs. Gillespie was so kind to her. Maybe she could talk to June an' take her at the hotel--if June an' Houck haven't gone yet."

"You said something then, boy. I'll see Mollie right away. She'll sure fix it."

They were too late. The wrangler at Kilburn's corral had already seen Houck hitch up and drive away with June, they presently learned.

CHAPTER XI

JUNE PRAYS

When June turned away from her husband of an hour she abandoned hope. She had been like a child lost in the forest. A gleam of light from a window had cheered her for a moment, but it had flickered out and left her in the darkness.

In one sense June was innocent as an infant. She knew nothing of feminine blandishments, of the coquetry which has become so effective a weapon in the hands of modern woman when she is not hampered by scruples. But she had lived too close to nature not to be aware of carnal appetite.

It is a characteristic of frontier life that one learns to face facts. June looked at them now, clear-eyed, despair in her heart. As she walked beside Jake to the corral, as she waited for him to hitch up the broncos, as she rode beside him silently through the gathering night, the girl's mind dwelt on that future which was closing in on her like prison walls.

Not for an instant did she deceive herself. Houck did not mean to take her to Tolliver. She knew that his conscience would acquit him of blame for what he meant to do. He had given her a chance to marry him, and she had made it impossible. That was not his fault. He would take her to Brown's Park with him when he returned. Probably they were on the way there now.

After the plunging broncos had steadied down, Jake spoke. "You're well shet of him. He's no good, like he said himself. A man's got to have guts. You'd 'a' had to wear the breeches, June." The long whip curved out inexorably. "Git over there, Buckskin."

Houck drove like a master. After one wild bolt the dancing ponies had sensed that a strong hand was at the reins. They accepted the fact placidly. June watched his handling of the lines sullenly, a dull resentment and horror in her heart. He would subdue her as easily as he had the half-broken colts, sometimes bullying, sometimes mocking, sometimes making love to her with barbaric ardor. There were times when his strength and ruthlessness had fascinated June, but just now she felt only horror weighted by a dull, dead despair.

No use to fight longer. In a world filled with Jake Houck there was no free will. She was helpless as a wolf in a trap.

They drove through a country of sagebrush hills. The moon came out and carpeted the slopes with silver lace. Deep within June was a born love of beauty as it found expression in this land of the Rockies. But to-night she did not taste the scent of the sage or see the veil of mist that had transformed the draws magically to fairy dells.

"Where you goin'?" she asked at last. "You said you'd take me to Dad."

He laughed, slipped a strong arm round her shoulders, and drew her closer. "Found yore tongue at last, June girl, eh? We're going home--to my place up in Brown's Park."

She made a perfunctory protest. It was, she knew, quite useless, and her heart was not in it. No words she used, no appeal she could make, would touch this man or change his intentions.

"You got no right to take me there. I'm not yore slave. I want to go to Dad."

"Tha's right," he mocked. "I'm yore slave, June. What's the use of fighting? I'm so set on you that one way or another I'm bound to have you."

She bit her lip, to keep from weeping. In the silvery night, alone with him, miles from any other human being, she felt woefully helpless and forlorn. The years slipped away. She was a little child, and her heart was wailing for the mother whose body lay on the hillside near the deserted cabin in Brown's Park. What could she do? How could she save herself from the evil shadow that would blot the sunshine from her life?

Somewhere, in that night of stars and scudding clouds, was God, she thought. He could save her if He would. But would He? Miracles did not happen nowadays. And why would He bother about her? She was such a trifle in the great scheme of things, only a poor ragged girl from the back country, the daughter of a convict, poor hill trash, as she had once heard a woman at Glenwood whisper. She was not of any account.

Yet prayers welled out in soundless sobs from a panic-stricken heart. "O God, I'm only a li'l' girl, an' I growed up without a mother. I'm right mean an' sulky, but if you'll save me this time from Jake Houck, I'll make out to say my prayers regular an' get religion first chance comes along," she explained and promised, her small white face lifted to the vault where the God she knew about lived.

Drifts floated across the sky blown by currents from the northwest. They came in billows, one on top of another, till they had obscured most of the stars. The moon went into eclipse, reappeared, vanished behind the storm scud, and showed again.

The climate of the Rockies, year in, year out, is the most stimulating on earth. Its summer breezes fill the lungs with wine. Its autumns are incomparable, a golden glow in which valley and hill bask lazily. Its winters are warm with sunshine and cold with the crisp crackle of frost. Its springs--they might be worse. Any Coloradoan will admit the climate is superlative. But there is one slight rift in the lute, hardly to be mentioned as a discord in the universal harmony. Sudden weather changes do occur. A shining summer sun vanishes and in a twinkling of an eye the wind is whistling snell.

Now one of these swept over the Rio Blanco Valley. The clouds thickened, the air grew chill. The thermometer was falling fast.

Houck swung the team up from the valley road to the mesa. Along this they traveled, close to the sage-covered foothills. At a point where a draw dipped down to the road, Houck pulled up and dismounted. A gate made of three strands of barbed wire and two poles barred the wagon trail. For already the nester was fencing the open range.

As Houck moved forward to the gate the moon disappeared back of the banked clouds. June's eye swept the landscape and brightened. The sage and the brush were very thick here. A grove of close-packed quaking asps filled the draw. She glanced at Jake. He was busy wrestling with the loop of wire that fastened the gate.

God helps those that help themselves, June remembered. She put down the lines Houck had handed her, stepped softly from the buckboard, and slipped into the quaking asps.

A moment later she heard Jake's startled oath. It was certain that he would plunge into the thicket of saplings in pursuit. She crept to one side of the draw and crouched low.

He did not at once dive in. From where she lay hidden, June could hear the sound of his footsteps as he moved to and fro.

"Don't you try to make a fool of Jake Houck, girl," he called to her angrily. "I ain't standin' for any nonsense now. We got to be movin' right along. Come outa there."

Her heart was thumping so that she was afraid he might hear it. She held herself tense, not daring to move a finger lest she make a rustling of leaves.

"Hear me, June! Git a move on you. If you don't--" He broke off, with another oath. "I'll mark yore back for you sure enough with my whip when I find you."

She heard him crashing into the thicket. He passed her not ten feet away, so close that she made out the vague lines of his big body. A few paces farther he stopped.

"I see you, girl. You ain't foolin' me any. Tell you what I'll do. You come right along back to the buckboard an' I'll let you off the lickin' this time."

She trembled, violently. It seemed that he did see her, for he moved a step or two in her direction. Then he stopped, to curse, and the rage that leaped into the heavy voice betrayed the bluff.

Evidently he made up his mind that she was higher up the draw. He went thrashing up the arroyo, ploughing through the young aspens with a great crackle of breaking branches.

June took advantage of this to creep up the side of the draw and out of the grove. The sage offered poorer cover in which to hide, but her knowledge of Houck told her that he would not readily give up the idea that she was in the asps. He was a one-idea man, obstinate even to pigheadedness. So long as there was a chance she might be in the grove he would not stop searching there. He would reason that the draw was so close to the buckboard she must have slipped into it. Once there, she would stay because in it she could lie concealed.

Her knowledge of the habits of wild animals served June well now. The first instinct was to get back to the road and run down it at full speed, taking to the brush only when she heard the pursuit. But this would not do. The sage here was much heavier and thicker than it was nearer Bear Cat. She would find a place to hide in it till he left to drive back and cut her off from town. There was one wild moment when she thought of slipping down to the buckboard and trying to escape in it. June gave this up because she would have to back it along the narrow road for fifteen or twenty yards before she could find a place to turn.

On hands and knees she wound deeper into the sage, always moving toward the rim-rock at the top of the hill. She was still perilously close to Houck. His muffled oaths, the thrashing of the bushes, the threats and promises he stopped occasionally to make; all of these came clear to her in spite of the whistling wind.

It had come on to rain mistily. June was glad of that. She would have welcomed a heavy downpour out of a black night. The rim-rock was close above. She edged along it till she came to a scar where the sandstone had broken off and scorched a path down the slope. Into the hollow formed by two boulders resting against each other she crawled.

For hours she heard Jake moving about, first among the aspens and later on the sage hill. The savage oaths that reached her now and again were evidence enough that the fellow was in a vile temper. If he should find her now, she felt sure he would carry out his vow as to the horsewhip.

The night was cold. June shivered where she lay close to the ground. The rain beat in uncomfortably. But she did not move till Houck drove away.

Even then she descended to the road cautiously. He might have laid a trap for her by returning on foot in the darkness. But she had to take a chance. What she meant to do was clear in her mind. It would require all her wits and strength to get safely back to town.

She plodded along the road for perhaps a mile, then swung down from the mesa to the river. The ford where Jake had driven across was farther down, but she could not risk the crossing. Very likely he was lying in wait there.

June took off her brogans and tied them round her neck. She would have undressed, but she was afraid of losing the clothes while in the stream.

It was dark. She did not know the river, how deep it was or how strong the current. As she waded slowly in, her courage began to fail. She might never reach the other shore. The black night and the rain made it seem very far away.

She stopped, thigh deep, to breathe another prayer to the far-away God of her imagination, who sat on a throne in the skies, an arbitrary emperor of the universe. He had helped her once to-night. Maybe He would again.

"O God, don't please lemme drown," she said aloud, in order to be quite sure her petition would be heard.

Deeper into the current she moved. The water reached her waist. Presently its sweep lifted her from the bottom. She threw herself forward and began to swim. It did not seem to her that she was making any headway. The heavy skirts dragged down her feet and obstructed free movement of them. Not an expert swimmer, she was soon weary. Weights pulled at the arms as they swept back the water in the breast-stroke. It flashed through her mind that she could not last much longer. Almost at the same instant she discovered the bank. Her feet touched bottom. She shuffled heavily through the shallows and sank down on the shore completely exhausted.

Later, it was in June's mind that she must have been unconscious. When she took note of her surroundings she was lying on a dry pebbly wash which the stream probably covered in high water. Snowflakes fell on her cheek and melted there. She rose, stiff and shivering. In crossing the river the brogans had washed from her neck. She moved forward in her stocking feet. For a time she followed the Rio Blanco, then struck abruptly to the right through the sagebrush and made a wide circuit.

It was definitely snowing now and the air was colder. June's feet were bleeding, though she picked a way in the grama-grass and the tumbleweed to save them as much as possible. Once she stepped into a badger hole covered with long buffalo grass and strained a tendon.

She had plenty of pluck. The hardships of the frontier had instilled into her endurance. Though she had pitied herself when she was riding beside Jake Houck to moral disaster, she did not waste any now because she was limping painfully through the snow with the clothes freezing on her body. She had learned to stand the gaff, in the phrase of the old bullwhacker who had brought her down from Rawlins. It was a part of her code that physical pain and discomfort must be trodden under foot and disregarded.

A long détour brought her back to the river. She plodded on through the storm, her leg paining at every step. She was chilled to the marrow and very tired. But she clamped her small strong teeth and kept going.

The temptation to give up and lie down assailed her. She fought against it, shuffling forward, stumbling as her dragging feet caught in the snow. She must be near Bear Cat now. Surely it could not be far away. If it was not very close, she knew she was beaten.

After what seemed an eternity of travel a light gleamed through the snow. She saw another--a third.

She zigzagged down the road like a drunkard.

CHAPTER XII

MOLLIE TAKES CHARGE

Bear Cat was a cow-town, still in its frankest, most exuberant youth. Big cattle outfits had settled on the river and ran stock almost to the Utah line. Every night the saloons and gambling-houses were filled with punchers from the Diamond K, the Cross Bar J, the Half Circle Dot, or any one of a dozen other brands up or down the Rio Blanco. They came from Williams's Fork, Squaw, Salt, Beaver, or Piney Creeks. And usually they came the last mile or two on the dead run, eager to slake a thirst as urgent as their high spirits.

They were young fellows most of them, just out of their boyhood, keen to spend their money and have a good time when off duty. Always they made straight for Dolan's or the Bear Cat House. First they downed a drink or two, then they washed off the dust of travel. This done, each followed his own inclination. He gambled, drank, or frolicked around, according to the desire of the moment.

Dud Hollister and Tom Reeves, with Blister Haines rolling between them, impartially sampled the goods at Dolan's and at Mollie Gillespie's. They had tried their hand at faro, with unfortunate results, and they had sat in for a short session at a poker game where Dud had put too much faith in a queen full.

"I sure let my foot slip that time," Dud admitted. "I'd been playin' plumb outa luck. Couldn't fill a hand, an' when I did, couldn't get it to stand up. That last queen looked like money from home. I reckon I overplayed it," he ruminated aloud, while he waited for Mike Moran to give him another of the same.

Tom hooked his heel on the rail in front of the bar. "I ain't made up my mind yet that game was on the level. That tinhorn who claimed he was from Cheyenne ce'tainly had a mighty funny run o' luck. D' you notice how his hands jes' topped ours? Kinda queer, I got to thinkin'. He didn't hold any more'n he had to for to rake the chips in. I'd sorta like a look-see at the deck we was playin' with."

Blister laughed wheezily. "You w-won't get it. N-never heard of a hold-up gettin' up a petition for better street lights, did you? No, an' you n-never will. An' you never n-noticed a guy who was aimin' to bushwhack another from the brush go to clearin' off the sage first. He ain't l-lookin' for no open arguments on the m-merits of his shootin'. Not none. Same with that Cheyenne bird an' his stocky pal acrost the table. They're f-figurin' that dead decks tell no tales. The one you played with is sure enough s-scattered every which way all over the floor along with seve-real others." The fat justice of the peace murmured "How!" and tilted his glass.

If Blister did not say "I told you so," it was not because he might not have done it fairly. He had made one comment when Dud had proposed sitting in to the game of draw.

"H-how much m-mazuma you got?"

"Twenty-five bucks left."

"If you s-stay outa that game you'll earn t-twenty-five bucks the quickest you ever did in yore life."

Youth likes to buy its experience and not borrow it. Dud knew now that Blister had been a wise prophet in his generation.

The bar at Gillespie's was at the front of the house. In the rear were the faro and poker tables, the roulette wheels, and the other conveniences for separating hurried patrons from their money. The Bear Cat House did its gambling strictly on the level, but there was the usual percentage in favor of the proprietor.

Mollie was sitting in an armchair on a small raised platform about halfway back. She kept a brisk and business-like eye on proceedings. No puncher who had gone broke, no tenderfoot out of luck, could go hungry in Bear Cat if she knew it. The restaurant and the bar were at their service just as though they had come off the range with a pay-check intact. They could pay when they had the money. No books were kept. Their memories were the only ledgers. Few of these debts of honor went unpaid in the end.

But Mollie, though tender-hearted, knew how to run the place. Her brusque, curt manner suited Bear Cat. She could be hail-fellow or hard as flint, depending on circumstances. The patrons at Gillespie's remembered her sex and yet forgot it. They guarded their speech, but they drank with her at the bar or sat across a poker table from her on equal terms. She was a good sport and could lose or win large sums imperturbably.

Below her now there floated past a tide of hot-blooded youth eager to make the most of the few hours left before the dusty trails called. Most of these punchers would go back penniless to another month or two of hard and reckless riding. But they would go gayly, without regret, the sunshine of irrepressible boyhood in their hearts. The rattle of chips, the sound of laughter, the murmur of conversation, the even voice of the croupier at the roulette table, filled the hall.

Jim Larson, a cowman from down the river, sat on the edge of the platform.

"The Boot brand's puttin' a thousand head in the upper country this fall, Mollie. Looks to me like bad business, but there's a chance I'm wrong at that. My bet is you can't run cows there without winter feed. There won't many of 'em rough through."

"Some'll drift down to the river," Mollie said, her preoccupied eyes on the stud table where a slight altercation seemed to be under way. Her method of dealing with quarrels was simple. The first rule was based on one of Blister Haines's paradoxes. "The best way to settle trouble is not to have it." She tried to stop difficulties before they became acute. If this failed, she walked between the angry youths and read the riot act to them.

"Some will," admitted Larson. "More of 'em won't."

Mollie rose, to step down from the platform. She did not reach the stud table. A commotion at the front door drew her attention. Mrs. Gillespie was a solid, heavy-set woman, but she moved with an energy that carried her swiftly. She reached the bar before any of the men from the gambling-tables.

A girl was leaning weakly against the door-jamb. Hat and shoes were gone. The hair was a great black mop framing a small face white to the lips. The stocking soles were worn through. When one foot shifted to get a better purchase for support, a bloodstained track was left on the floor. The short dress was frozen stiff.

The dark, haunted eyes moved uncertainly round the circle of faces staring at her. The lips opened and made the motions of speech, but no sound came from them. Without any warning the girl collapsed.

Dud Hollister's arm was under the ice-coated head in an instant. He looked up at Mollie Gillespie, who had been only a fraction of a second behind him.

"It's the li'l' bride," he said.

She nodded. "Brandy an' water, Mike. Quick! She's only fainted. Head not so high, Dud. Tha's right. We'll get a few drops of this between her teeth.... She's comin' to."

June opened her eyes and looked at Mollie. Presently she looked round and a slow wonder grew in them. "Where am I?" she murmured.

"You're at the hotel--where you'll be looked after right, dearie." Mrs. Gillespie looked up. "Some one get Doc Tuckerman. An' you, Tom, hustle Peggie and Chung Lung outa their beds if they're not up. There's a fire in my room. Tell her to take the blankets from the bed an' warm 'em. Tell Chung to heat several kettles o' water fast as he can. Dud, you come along an' carry her to the stove in the lobby. The rest o' you'll stay right here."

Mollie did not ask any questions or seek explanation. That could wait. The child had been through a terrible experience and must be looked after first.

From the lobby Dud presently carried June into the bedroom and departed. A roaring fire was in the stove. Blankets and a flannel nightgown were hanging over the backs of chairs to warm. With the help of the chambermaid Peggie, the landlady stripped from the girl the frozen dress and the wet underclothes. Over the thin, shivering body she slipped the nightgown, then tucked her up in the blankets. As soon as Chung brought the hot-water jugs she put one at June's feet and another close to the stomach where the cold hands could rest upon it.

June was still shaking as though she never would get warm. A faint mist of tears obscured her sight. "Y-you're awful good to me," she whispered, teeth chattering.

The doctor approved of what had been done. He left medicine for the patient. "Be back in five minutes," he told Mrs. Gillespie outside the room. "Want some stuff I've got at the office. Think I'll stay for a few hours and see how the case develops. Afraid she's in for a bad spell of pneumonia."

He did not leave the sick-room after his return until morning. Mollie stayed there, too. It was nearly one o'clock when Blister Haines knocked gently at the door.

"How's the li'l' lady?" he asked in his high falsetto, after Mollie had walked down the passage with him.

"She's a mighty sick girl. Pneumonia, likely."

"Tell doc not to let her die. If he needs another doctor some of us'll h-hustle over to Glenwood an' g-get one. Say, Mrs. Gillespie, I reckon there's gonna be trouble in town to-night."

She said nothing, but her blue eyes questioned him.

Blister's next sentence sent her moving toward the saloon.

CHAPTER XIII

BEAR CAT ASKS QUESTIONS

A man bow-legged into Gillespie's and went straight to the bar. "Gimme a drink--something damned hot," he growled.

He was a big, broad-shouldered fellow, hook-nosed, with cold eyes set close. Hair and eyebrows were matted with ice and a coat of sleet covered his clothes. Judging from voice and manner, he was in a vile humor.

A young fellow standing near was leaning with his back against the bar, elbows resting on it. One heel was hooked casually over the rail.

"Anything been seen of a strange girl in town to-night?" the newcomer asked. "She ain't right in her head an' I was takin' her to her dad's place when she slipped away. I'm worried about her, out in this storm."

The cowpuncher looked at him coldly, eye to eye. "I'd say you got a license to be. If she's lost out to-night she's liable to be frozen to death before mo'ning."

"Yes," agreed Houck, and his lids narrowed. What did this young fellow mean? There was something about his manner both strange and challenging. If he was looking for a fight, Houck knew just where he could be accommodated.

"In which case--"

The puncher stopped significantly.

"In which case--?" Houck prompted.

"--it might be unlucky for the guy that took her out an' lost her."

"What's yore name, fellow?" Jake demanded.

"Fellow, my name's Dud Hollister," promptly answered the other. "D'you like it?"

"Not much. Neither it nor you."

Houck turned insolently back to the bar for his drink.

Mike was stirring into the glass of liquor cayenne pepper which he was shaking from a paper. He was using as a mixer the barrel of a forty-five.

The salient jaw of Houck jutted out. "What monkey trick are you tryin' to play on me?" he asked angrily.

"You wanted it hot," Mike replied, and the bartender's gaze too was cold and level.

It seemed to the former rustler that here was a second man ready to fasten a quarrel on him. What was the matter with these fellows anyhow?

Another puncher ranged himself beside Hollister. "Who did this bird claim he was, Dud?" he asked out loud, offensively.

"Didn't say. Took that li'l' bride out in this storm an' left her there. Expect he'll be right popular in Bear Cat."

Houck smothered his rage. This was too serious to be settled by an explosion of anger and an appeal to arms.

"I tell you she hid whilst I was openin' a gate. I been lookin' for her six hours. Thought maybe she'd come to town. My idee is to organize a search party an' go out after her. Quick as we can slap saddles on broncs an' hit the trail."

Fragments of the facts had drifted out to the boys from the sick-room.

Dud tried an experiment. "Where'll we hunt for her--up toward Piceance?"

Houck deliberated before answering. If he were to tell the truth--that she had escaped from him in the hills nine miles down the river--these men would know he had been lying when he said he was taking June to her father. If he let the search party head toward Piceance, there would be no chance for it to save the girl. The man was no coward. To his credit, he told the truth.

A half-circle of hostile faces hemmed him in, for the word had spread that this was the man who had carried off June Tolliver. He was the focus of a dozen pairs of eyes. Among the cattlemen of the Old West you will still look into many such eyes, but never among city dwellers will you find them. Blue they are for the most part or gray-blue, level, direct, unfearing; quiet and steady as steel, flinging no flags of flurry, tremendously sure of themselves. They can be very likable eyes, frank and kind, with innumerable little lines of humor radiating from the corners; or they can be stern and chill as the Day of Judgment.

Jake Houck found in them no gentleness. They judged him, inexorably, while he explained.

"Where was you takin' her?" asked Larson, of the Wagon Rod outfit.

In spite of his boldness, of the dominating imperiousness by means of which he had been used to ride roughshod over lesser men, Houck felt a chill sensation at his heart. They were too quiet--too quiet by half.

"We was to have been married to-day," he said surlily. "This Dillon boy got her to run off with him. He was no good. I rode hell-for-leather into town to head 'em off."

Blister brought him back to the question of the moment. "An' you were t-takin' her--?"

"To Brown's Park."

"Forcin' her to go. Was that it?" Hollister broke in.

"No, sir. She went of her own accord."

"Asked you to take her there, mebbe?"

"None o' yore damn business."

"How old is she, Mr. Houck?" Larson questioned.

"I dunno."

"I do. Sixteen coming Christmas," said Dud. "Dillon told me."

"An' how old are you, Mr. Houck?" the quiet, even voice of the owner of the Wagon Rod pursued.

"I d'no as that's got anything to do with it, but I'm forty-three," Jake retorted defiantly.

"You meant to live with her?"

"I meant to treat her right," was the sullen reply.

"But livin' with her, an' her another man's wife."

"No, sir. That fake marriage with Dillon don't go. She was promised to me." He broke out suddenly in anger: "What's eatin' you all? Why don't you go out an' help me find the girl? These whatfors an' whyfors can wait, I reckon."

Blister dropped a bomb. "She's found."

"Found!" Houck stared at the fat man. "Who found her? Where? When?"

"Coupla hours ago. Here in this r-room. Kinda funny how she'd swim the river a night like this an' walk eight-ten miles barefoot in the snow, all to get away from you, an' her goin' with you of her own accord."

"It wasn't eight miles--more like six."

"Call it six, then. Fact is, Mr. Houck, she was mighty scared of you--in a panic of terror, I'd say."

"She had no call to be," the Brown's Park settler replied, his voice heavy with repressed rage. "I'm tellin' you she wasn't right in her head."

"An' you was takin' advantage of that to make this li'l' girl yore--to ruin her life for her," Hollister flung back.

In all his wild and turbulent lifetime Jake Houck had never before been brought to task like this. He resented the words, the manner, the quiet insistence of these range men. An unease that was not quite fear, but was very close to it, had made him hold his temper in leash. Now the savage in him broke through.

"You're a bunch of fool meddlers, an' I'm through explainin'. You can go to hell 'n' back for me," he cried, and followed with a string of crackling oaths.

The eyes of the punchers and cattlemen met one another. No word was spoken, but the same message passed back and forth a score of times.

"I expect you don't quite understand where you're at, Mr. Houck," Larson said evenly. "This is mighty serious business for you. We aim to give you a chance to tell yore story complete before we take action."

"Action?" repeated Houck, startled.

"You're up against it for fair," Reeves told him. "If you figure on gettin' away with a thing like that in a white man's country you've sure got another guess comin'. I don't know where you're from or who you are, but I know where you're going."

"D-don't push on the reins, Tom," the justice said. "We aim to be reasonable about this, I reckon."

"Sure we do." Dud countered with one of Blister's own homely apothegms. "What's the use of chewin' tobacco if you spit out the juice? Go through, I say. There's a cottonwood back of the kitchen."

"You're fixin' for to hang me?" Houck asked, his throat and palate gone suddenly dry.

"You done guessed it first crack," Tom nodded.

"Not yet, boys," protested Haines in his whispering falsetto. "I reckon we'd ought to wait an' see how the girl comes out."

"Why had we?" demanded a squat puncher from the Keystone. "What difference does it make? If ever any one needed stringin' up, it's the guy here. He's worse than Douglas or any other Injun ever was. Is it yore notion we'd oughta sit around with our hands in our pockets, Blister, while reptiles like this Houck make our girls swim the river at night an' plough barefoot through snowstorms? I ain't that easy-dispositioned myself."

"Shorty's sure whistlin'. Same here," another chap-clad rider chipped in.

"An' here."

Blister dropped into the background inconspicuously and vanished. He appeared to be in a minority of one, not counting Houck, and he needed reënforcements.

"We'll hear what Mr. Houck has to say before we pass judgment," Larson said.

But Houck, looking into the circle of grim faces that surrounded him, knew that he was condemned. Nothing that he could say would make any difference. He shrugged his heavy shoulders.

"What's the use? You've done made up yore minds."

He noticed that the younger fellows were pressing closer to him. Pretty soon they would disarm him. If he was going to make a fight for his life, it had to be now. His arm dropped to his side, close to the butt of the revolver he carried.

He was too late. Hollister jumped for his wrist and at the same time Mike flung himself across the bar and garroted him. He struggled fiercely to free himself, but was dragged down to the floor and pinioned. Before he was lifted up his hands were tied behind him.

Unobserved, the front door of the barroom had opened. An ice-coated figure was standing on the threshold.

Houck laughed harshly. "Come right in, Tolliver. You'll be in time to take a hand in the show."

The little trapper's haggard eyes went round in perplexity. "What's the trouble?" he asked mildly.

"No trouble a-tall," answered the big prisoner hardily. "The boys are hangin' me. That's all."

CHAPTER XIV

HOUCK TAKES A RIDE

Tolliver rubbed a hand uncertainly over a bristly chin. "Why, what are they doin' that for, Jake?"

"Are you the Tolliver girl's father?" asked Larson.

"Yes, sir."

"Then we got bad news for you. She's sick."

"Sick?" the trapper's lips trembled.

"A mighty sick girl. This man here--this Houck, if that's what he calls himself--took her away from the young fellow she'd married and started up to Brown's Park with her. Somehow she gave him the slip, swam the river, an' came back to town barefoot through the snow. Seems she lost her shoes while she was crossin' the Blanco."

The color washed away beneath the tan of the father's face. "Where's she at?"

"Here--at the hotel. Mrs. Gillespie an' Doc Tuckerman are lookin' after her."

"I'd like to go to her right away."

"Sure. Dud, you know where the room is. Take Mr. Tolliver there."

"Pete." Houck's voice was hoarse, but no longer defiant. In this little man, whom he had always bullied and dominated, whose evil genius he had been, lay his hope of life. "Pete, you ain't a-going to leave yore old pardner to be hanged."

Tolliver looked bleakly at him. The spell this man had woven over him twenty-odd years ago was broken forever. "I'm through with you, Jake," he said.

"You ain't intendin' to lift a hand for me?"

"Not a finger."

"Won't you tell these men howcome it I rode down to Bear Cat after June?"

The Piceance Creek man's jaw tightened. His small eyes flashed hate. "Sure, I'll tell 'em that. About two-three weeks ago Houck showed up at my place an' stayed overnight. I knew him when we was both younger, but I hadn't seen him for a long time. He took a notion to my June. She didn't want to have a thing to do with him, but he bullied her, same as he did me. June she found out he knew something about me, an' she was afraid to make him mad. I reckon finally he got some kinda promise outa her. He had some business at Meeker, an' he was comin' back to the ranch yestiddy. Then he aimed to bring her here to get married."

He was looking steadily at Houck. Pete had found at last the courage to defy him. He could tell anything he liked about the escape from Cañon City.

"I was away all day lookin' over my traps an' fixin' them up. When I reached home I found two notes. I got 'em here somewheres." Tolliver fumbled in his coat pockets, but did not find them. "One was from June. She said she was runnin' away to marry the Dillon boy. The other was from Jake Houck. He'd got to the house before I did, found her note to me, an' lit out after her. Soon's I could run up a horse I hit the trail too."

"Threw me down, eh, Pete?" Houck said bitterly. "Well, there's two can play at that."

Tolliver did not flinch. "Go to it, soon as you've a mind to. I don't owe you a thing except misery. You wrecked my life. I suffered for you an' kept my mouth padlocked. I was coyote enough to sit back an' let you torment my li'l' girl because I was afraid for to have the truth come out an' hurt her. I'd ought to have gone after you with a forty-five. I'm through. They can't hang you any too soon to suit me. If they don't--an' if my June don't get well--I'll gun you sure as God made li'l' apples."

He turned and walked out of the room with Dud Hollister.

In the passage they met Mollie Gillespie and Blister Haines. The first words the landlady heard were from Houck.

"No, sir, I've got nothing to say. What'd be the use? You've made up yore minds to go through with this thing. A fool could see that. Far as Tolliver goes, I reckon I'll go it alone an' not do any beefin' about him. He threw me down hard, but he was considerable strung up about June. Wouldn't do any good for me to tell what I know."

"Not a bit," assented Reeves. "Might as well game it out."

Houck's hard, cold eye looked at him steadily. "Who said anything about not gaming it out? If you're expectin' me to beg an' crawl you've got hold of the wrong man. I'm a damned tough nut an' don't you forget it. Whenever you're ready, gents."

From the door Mrs. Gillespie spoke. "What's all this?"

She became at once the center of attention. The punchers grouped around Houck were taken by surprise. They were disconcerted by this unexpected addition to the party. For though Mrs. Gillespie led an irregular life, no woman on the river was so widely loved as she. The mother of Bear Cat, the boys called her. They could instance a hundred examples of the goodness of her heart. She never tired of waiting on the sick, of giving to those who were needy. It was more than possible she would not approve the summary vengeance about to be executed upon the Brown's Park man.

The prisoner was the first to answer. "Just in time, ma'am. The boys are stagin' an entertainment. They're fixin' to hang me. If you'll accept an invite from the hangee I'll be glad to have you stay an'--"

"Hanging him? What for? What's he done?"

Tom Reeves found his voice. "He's the fellow done dirt to the li'l' Tolliver girl, ma'am. We've had a kinda trial an'--"

"Fiddlesticks!" interrupted the woman. She swept the group with an appraising eye. "I'm surprised to see you in this, Larson. Thought you had more sense. Nobody would expect anything better of these flyaway boys."

The owner of the Wagon Rod brand attempted defense, a little sheepishly. "What would you want us to do, Mollie? This fellow treated the girl outrageous. She's liable to die because--"

"Die! Nonsense! She's not going to die any more than this Houck is." She looked the Brown's Park man over contemptuously with chill, steady eyes. "He's a bad egg. It wouldn't hurt my feelings any if you rode him outa town on a rail, but I'm not going to have you-all mixed up in a lynching when there's no need for it."

Larson stole a look around the circle of faces. On the whole he was glad Mrs. Gillespie had come. It took only a few minutes to choke the life out of a man, but there were many years left in which one might regret it.

"O' course, if you say Miss Tolliver ain't dangerous sick, that makes a difference," he said.

"Don't see it," Tom Reeves differed. "We know what this fellow aimed to do, an' how he drove her to the river to escape him. If you ask me, I'll say--"

"But nobody's askin' you, Tom," Mollie cut into his sentence sharply. "You're just a fool boy chasin' cows' tails for thirty dollars a month. I'm not going to have any of this nonsense. Bear Cat's a law-abidin' place. We're all proud of it. We don't let bad-men strut around an' shoot up our citizens, an' we don't let half-grown punchers go crazy an' start hangin' folks without reason. Now do we?" A persuasive smile broke out on the harsh face and transformed it. Every waif, every under-dog, every sick woman and child within fifty miles had met that smile and warmed to it.

Reeves gave up, grinning. "I ain't such a kid either, Mrs. Gillespie, but o' course you got to have yore way. We all know that. What d' you want us to do with this bird?"

"Turn him over to Simp an' let him put the fellow in the jail. There's just as good law right here as there is anywhere. I'd hate to have it go out from here that Bear Cat can't trust the officers it elects to see justice done. Don't you boys feel that way too?"

"Can't we even ride him outa town on a rail? You done said we might."

Mrs. Gillespie hesitated. Why not? It was a crude and primitive punishment, but it would take drastic treatment to get under the hide of this sneering bully who had come within an ace of ruining the life of June Tolliver. The law could not touch him. He had not abducted her. She had gone of her own volition. Unfulfilled intentions are not criminal without an overt act. Was he to escape scot free? She had scoffed at the idea that June might die. But in her heart she was not so sure. The fever was growing on her. It would be days before the crisis was reached.

"Will you promise, honest injun, not to kill or maim him, not to do anything that will injure him permanent?"

"Yes, ma'am. We'll jes' jounce him up some."

"All agree to that?"

They did.

"Will you go along with the boys, Jim?" She smiled. "Just to see they're not too--enthusiastic."

The owner of the Wagon Rod said he would.

Mollie nodded. "All right, boys. The quicker the sooner."

Fifteen minutes later Jake Houck went out of town on a rail.

CHAPTER XV

A SCANDAL SCOTCHED

Before the door of the room opened Tolliver heard the high-pitched voice of his daughter.

"If you'd only stood up to him, Bob--if you'd shot him or fought him ... lemme go, Jake. You got no right to take me with you. Tell you I'm married.... Yes, sir, I'll love, honor, an' obey. I sure will--in sickness an' health--yes, sir, I do...."

The father's heart sank. He knew nothing about illness. A fear racked him that she might be dying. Piteously he turned to the doctor, after one look at June's flushed face.

"Is she--is she--?"

"Out of her head, Mr. Tolliver."

"I mean--will she--?"

"Can't promise you a thing yet. All we can do is look after her and hope for the best. She's young and strong. It's pretty hard to kill anybody born an' bred in these hills. They've got tough constitutions. Better take a chair."

Tolliver sat down on the edge of a chair, nursing his hat. His leathery face worked. If he could only take her place, go through this fight instead of her. It was characteristic of his nature that he feared and expected the worst. He was going to lose her. Of that he had no doubt. It would be his fault. He was being punished for the crimes of his youth and for the poltroonery that had kept him from turning Jake out of the house.

June sat up excitedly in bed and pointed to a corner of the room. "There he is, in the quaking asps, grinnin' at me! Don't you come nearer, Jake Houck! Don't you! If you do I'll--I'll--"

Dr. Tuckerman put his hand gently on her shoulder. "It's all right, June. Here's your father. We won't let Houck near you. Better lie down now and rest."

"Why must I lie down?" she asked belligerently. "Who are you anyhow, mister?"

"I'm the doctor. You're not quite well. We're looking after you."

Tolliver came forward timorously. "Tha's right, June. You do like the doctor says, honey."

"I'd just as lief, Dad," she answered, and lay down obediently.

When she was out of her head, at the height of the fever, Mrs. Gillespie could always get her to take the medicine and could soothe her fears and alarms. Mollie was chief nurse. If she was not in the room, after June had begun to mend, she was usually in the kitchen cooking broths or custards for the sick girl.

June's starved heart had gone out to her in passionate loyalty and affection. No woman had ever been good to her before, not since the death of her aunt, at least. And Mollie's goodness had the quality of sympathy. It held no room for criticism or the sense of superiority. She was a sinner herself, and it was in her to be tender to others who had fallen from grace.

To Mollie this child's innocent trust in her was exquisitely touching. June was probably the only person in the world except small children who believed in her in just this way. It was not possible that this faith could continue after June became strong enough to move around and talk with the women of Bear Cat. Though she had outraged public opinion all her life, Mollie Gillespie found herself tugged at by recurring impulses to align herself as far as possible with respectability.

For a week she fought against the new point of view. Grimly she scoffed at what she chose to consider a weakness.

"This is a nice time o' day for you to try to turn proper, Mollie Gillespie," she told herself plainly. "Just because a chit of a girl goes daffy over you, is that any reason to change yore ways? You'd ought to have a lick o' sense or two at yore age."

But her derision was a fraud. She was tired of being whispered about. The independent isolation of which she had been proud had become of a sudden a thing hateful to her.

She went to Larson as he was leaving the hotel dining-room on his next visit to town.

"Want to talk with you. Come outside a minute."

The owner of the Wagon Rod followed.

"Jim," she said, turning on him abruptly, "you've always claimed you wanted to marry me." Her blue eyes searched deep into his. "Do you mean that? Or is it just talk?"

"You know I mean it, Mollie," he answered quietly.

"Well, I'm tired of being a scandal to Bear Cat. I've always said I'd never get married again since my bad luck with Hank Gillespie. But I don't know. If you really want to get married, Jim."

"I've always thought it would be better."

"I'm not going to quit runnin' this hotel, you understand. You're in town two-three days a week anyhow. If you like you can build a house here an' we'll move into it."

"I'll get busy pronto. I expect you want a quiet wedding, don't you?"

"Sure. We can go over to Blister's office this afternoon. You see him an' make arrangements. Tell him I don't want the boys to know anything about it till afterward."

An hour later they stood before Justice Haines. Mollie thought she detected a faint glimmer of mirth in his eye after the ceremony. She quelled it promptly.

"If you get gay with me, Blister--"

The fat man's impulse to smile fled. "Honest to goodness, Mrs. Gillespie--"

"Larson," she corrected.

"Larson," he accepted. "I w-wish you m-many happy returns."

She looked at him suspiciously and grunted "Hmp!"

CHAPTER XVI

BLISTER AS DEUS EX MACHINA

Blister Haines found an old pair of chaps for Bob Dillon and lent him a buckskin bronco. Also, he wrote a note addressed to Harshaw, of the Slash Lazy D, and gave it to the boy.

"He'll put you to ridin', Ed will. The rest's up to you. D-don't you forget you're made in the l-likeness of God. When you feel like crawlin' into a hole s-snap that red haid up an' keep it up."

Bob grew very busy extricating a cockle burr from the mane of the buckskin. "I'll never forget what you've done for me, Mr. Haines," he murmured, beet red.

"Sho! Nothin' a-tall. I'm always lookin' for to get a chance to onload advice on some one. Prob'ly I was meant to be a grandma an' got mixed in the shuffle. Well, boy, don't weaken. When in doubt, hop to it."

"Yes, sir. I'll try."

"Don't w-worry about things beforehand. Nothin's ever as bad as you figure it's goin' to be. A lickin' don't last but a few minutes, an' if you get b-busy enough it's the other fellow that's liable to absorb it. Watch that r-rampageous scalawag Dud Hollister an' do like he does."

"Yes, sir."

"An' don't forget that every m-mornin' begins a new day. Tha's all, son."

Bob jogged down the road on this hazard of new fortune.

It chanced that Dud was still in town. Blister found him and half a dozen other punchers in front of the hotel.

"Betcha! Drinks for the crowd," the justice heard him say.

"Go you," Reeves answered, eyes dancing. "But no monkey business. It's to be a straight-away race from the front of the hotel clear to the blacksmith shop."

"To-day. Inside of ten minutes, you said," Shorty of the Keystone reminded Hollister. "An' this Sunday, you recollect."

Dud's gaze rested on a figure of a horseman moving slowly up the road toward them. The approaching rider was the Reverend Melanchthon T. Browning, late of Providence, Rhode Island. He had come to the frontier to teach it the error of its ways and bring a message of sweetness and light to the unwashed barbarians of the Rockies. He was not popular. This was due, perhaps, to an unfortunate manner. The pompous little man strutted and oozed condescension.

"W-what's up?" asked Blister.

"Dud's bettin' he'll get the sky pilot to race him from here to Monty's place," explained Reeves. "Stick around. He'll want to borrow a coupla dollars from you to buy the drinks."

It was Sunday afternoon. The missionary was returning from South Park, where he had been conducting a morning service. He was riding Tex Lindsay's Blue Streak, borrowed for the occasion.

"What deviltry you up to now, Dud?" Blister inquired.

"Me?" The young puncher looked at him with a bland face of innocence. "Why, Blister, you sure do me wrong."

Dud sauntered to the hitching-rack, easy, careless, graceful. He selected a horse and threw the rein over its head. The preacher was just abreast of the hotel.

The puncher swung to the saddle and brought the pony round. A wild whoop came from his throat. The roan, touched by a spur, leaped to a canter. For an instant it was side by side with Blue Streak. Then it shot down the road.

Blue Streak was off in an eyeflash. It jumped to a gallop and pounded after the roan. The Reverend Melancthon T. Browning was no rider. His feet lost the stirrups. A hymn-book went off at a wild tangent. Coat-tails flew into the air. The exponent of sweetness and light leaned forward and clung desperately to the mane, crying, "Whoa! Stop! Desist!"

But Blue Streak had no intention of desisting as long as the roan was in front. Tex Lindsay's horse was a racer. No other animal was going to pass it. The legs of the dark horse stretched for the road. It flew past the cowpony as though the latter had been trotting. The Reverend Melancthon stuck to the saddle for dear life.

At the blacksmith shop Dud pulled up. He rode back at a road gait to the hotel. His companions greeted him with shouts of gayety.

"Where's the parson?" some one asked.

"Between here an' 'Frisco somewheres. He was travelin' like he was in a hurry when I saw him last. Who pays for the drinks?"

"I do, you darned ol' Piute," shouted Reeves joyously. "I never will forget how the sky pilot's coat-tails spread. You could 'a' played checkers on 'em. D'you reckon we'd ought to send a wreckin' crew after Melancthon T. Browning?"

"Why, no. The way he was clamped to that Blue Streak's back you couldn't pry him loose with a crowbar."

"Here he c-comes now," Blister announced.

When the home missionary reached the hotel he found a grave and decorous group of sympathizers.

"I was surely right careless, sir, to start thataway so onexpected," Dud apologized. "I hope you didn't get jounced up much."

"Some one had ought to work you over for bein' so plumb wooden-haided, Dud," the puncher from the Keystone reproved him. "Here was Mr. Browning ridin' along quiet an' peaceable, figurin' out how he could improve us Rio Blanco savages, an' you come rip-rarin' along an' jar up all his geography by startin' that fool horse of his'n."

Dud hung his head. "Tha's right. It was sure enough thoughtless of me," he murmured.

The preacher looked at the offender severely. He did not yet feel quite equal to a fitting reprimand. "You see the evil effects of letting that vile stuff pass your lips. I hope this will be a lesson to you, young man. If I had not kept my presence of mind I might have been thrown and severely injured."

"Yes, sir," agreed Dud in a small, contrite voice.

"Makin' the preacher race on Sunday, too," chided Reeves. "Why, I shouldn't wonder but what it might get out an' spread scandalous. We'll all have to tell folks about it so's they'll get the right of it."

Melancthon squirmed. He could guess how the story would be told. "We'll say no more about it, if you please. The young man is sorry. I forgive him. His offense was inadvertent even though vexatious. If he will profit by this experience I will gladly suffer the incommodious ride."

After the missionary had gone and the bet been liquidated, Blister drew Hollister to one side. "I'm guessin' that when you get back to the ranch you'll find a new rider in the bunkhouse, Dud."

The puncher waited. He knew this was preliminary matter.

"That young fellow Bob Dillon," explained the fat man.

"If you're expectin' me to throw up my hat an' shout, Blister, I got to disappoint you," Dud replied. "I like 'em man-size."

"I'm p-puttin' him in yore charge."

"You ain't either," the range-rider repudiated indignantly.

"To m-make a man of him."

"Hell's bells! I'm no dry nurse to fellows shy of sand. He can travel a lone trail for all of me."

"Keep him kinda encouraged."

"Why pick on me, Blister? I don't want the job. He ain't there, I tell you. Any fellow that would let another guy take his wife away from him an' not hang his hide up to dry--No, sir, I got no manner o' use for him. You can't onload him on me."

"I've been thinkin' that when you are alone with him some t-time you'd better devil him into a fight, then let him whale the stuffin' outa you. That'll do him a l-lot of good--give him confidence."

Hollister stared. His face broke slowly to a grin. "I got to give it to you, Blister. I'll bet there ain't any more like you at home. Let him lick me, eh? So's to give him confidence. Wallop me good an' plenty, you said, didn't you? By gum, you sure enough take the cake."

"Won't hurt you any. You've give an' took plenty of 'em. Think of him."

"Think of me, come to that."

"L-listen, Dud. That boy's what they call c-c-constitutionally timid. There's folks that way, born so a shadow scares 'em. But he's s-s-sensitive as a g-girl. Don't you make any mistake, son. He's been eatin' his h-heart out ever since he crawled before Houck. I like that boy. There's good s-stuff in him. At least I'm makin' a bet there is. Question is, will it ever get a chance to show? Inside of three months he'll either win out or he'll be headed for hell, an' he won't be travelin' at no drift-herd gait neither."

"Every man's got to stand on his own hind laigs, ain't he?" Hollister grunted. He was weakening, and he knew it.

"He needs a friend, worst way," Blister wheezed. "'Course, if you'd rather not--"

"Doggone yore hide, you're always stickin' me somehow," stormed the cowboy. "Trouble with me is I'm so soft I'm always gettin' imposed on. I done told you I didn't like this guy a-tall. That don't make no more impression on you than a cold runnin'-iron would on a cow."

"M-much obliged, Dud. I knew you'd do it."

"I ain't said I'd do it."

"S-some of the boys are liable to get on the prod with him. He'll have to play his own hand. Tha's reasonable. But kinda back him up when you get a chance. That notion of lettin' him lick you is a humdinger. Glad you thought of it."

"I didn't think of it, an' I ain't thinkin' of it now," Dud retorted. "You blamed old fat skeezicks, you lay around figurin' out ways to make me trouble. You're worse than Mrs. Gillespie for gettin' yore own way. Hmp! Devil him into a fight an' then let him hand me a lacin'. I reckon not."

"He'll figure that since he can lick you, he can make out to look after himself with the other boys."

"He ain't licked me yet, an' that's only half of it. He ain't a-goin' to."

Fuming at this outrageous proposition put up to him, the puncher jingled away and left his triple-chinned friend.

Blister grinned. The seed he had scattered might have fallen among the rocks and the thorns, but he was willing to make a small bet with himself that some of it had lit on good ground and would bear fruit.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BACK OF A BRONC

The bunkhouse of the Slash Lazy D received Bob Dillon gravely and with chill civility. He sat on his bunk that first evening, close enough to touch a neighbor on either hand, and was left as completely out of the conversation as though he were a thousand miles away. With each other the riders were jocular and familiar. They "rode" one another with familiar jokes. The new puncher they let alone.

Bob had brought some cigars with him. He offered them eagerly to the chap-clad youth on his right. "Take one, won't you? An' pass the others round."

The name of the cowboy was Hawks. He looked at the cigars with disfavor. "I reckon I'll not be carin' for a cigar to-night, thank you," he said slowly.

"Perhaps the others--if you'll pass them."

Hawks handed the cigars to a brick-red Hercules patching his overalls. From him they went to his neighbor. Presently the cheroots came back to their owner. They had been offered to every man in the room and not one had been taken.

Bob's cheeks burned. Notice was being served on him that the pleasant give-and-take of comradeship was not for him. The lights went out early, but long into the night the boy lay awake in torment. If he had been a leper the line could scarcely have been drawn more plainly. These men would eat with him because they must. They would sleep in the same room. They would answer a question if he put it directly. But they would neither give nor accept favors. He was not to be one of them.

Many times in the months that were to follow he was to know the sting of shame that burned him now at memory of the scene between him and Jake Houck at Bear Cat. He tossed on the bunk, burying his face in the blankets in a vain effort to blot out the picture. Why had he not shot the fellow? Why, at least, had he not fought? If he had done anything, but what he did do? If he had even stuck it out and endured the pain without yielding.

In the darkness he lived over every little incident of the evening. When Hawks had met him he had grinned and hoped he would like the Slash Lazy D. There had been friendliness in the crinkled, leathery face. But when he passed Bob ten minutes later the blue eyes had frozen. He had heard who the new rider was.

He would not stand it. He could not. In the morning he would pack up his roll and ride back to Bear Cat. It was all very well for Blister Haines to talk about standing the gaff, but he did not have to put up with such treatment.

But when morning came Bob set his teeth and resolved to go through with it for a while anyhow. He could quit at any time. He wanted to be able to tell the justice that he had given his plan a fair trial.

In silence Bob ate his breakfast. This finished, the riders moved across to the corral.

"Better rope and saddle you a mount," Harshaw told his new man curtly. "Buck, you show him the ones he can choose from."

Hawks led the way to a smaller corral. "Any one o' these except the roan with the white stockings an' the pinto," he said.

Dillon walked through the gate of the enclosure and closed it. He adjusted the rope, selected the bronco that looked to him the meekest, and moved toward it. The ponies began to circle close to the fence. The one he wanted was racing behind the white-stockinged roan. For a moment it appeared in front. The rope snaked out and slid down its side. Bob gathered in the lariat, wound it, waited for a chance, and tried again. The meek bronco shook its head as the rope fell and caught on one ear. A second time the loop went down into the dust.

Some one laughed, an unpleasant, sarcastic cackle. Bob turned. Four or five of the punchers, mounted and ready for the day's work, were sitting at ease in their saddles enjoying the performance.

Bob gave himself to the job in hand, though his ears burned. As a youngster he had practiced roping. It was a pastime of the boys among whom he grew up. But he had never been an expert, and now such skill as he had acquired deserted him. The loop sailed out half a dozen times before it dropped over the head of the sorrel.

The new rider for the Slash Lazy D saddled and cinched a bronco which no longer took an interest in the proceedings. Out of the corner of his eye, without once looking their way, Bob was aware of subdued hilarity among the bronzed wearers of chaps. He attended strictly to business.

Just before he pulled himself to the saddle Bob felt a momentary qualm at the solar plexus. He did not give this time to let it deter him. His feet settled into the stirrups. An instant violent earthquake disturbed his equilibrium. A shock jarred him from the base of the spine to the neck. Urgently he flew through space.

Details of the landscape gathered themselves together again. From a corner of the corral Bob looked out upon a world full of grinning faces. A sick dismay rose in him and began to submerge his heart. They were glad he had been thrown. The earth was inhabited by a race of brutal and truculent savages. What was the use of trying? He could never hold out against them.

Out of the mists of memory he heard a wheezy voice issuing from a great bulk of a man--"... yore red haid's covered with glory. Snap it up!" The words came so clear that for an instant he was startled. He looked round half expecting to see Blister.

Stiffly he gathered himself out of the snow slush. A pain jumped in the left shoulder. He limped to the rope and coiled it. The first cast captured the sorrel.

His limbs were trembling when he dropped into the saddle. With both hands he clung to the horn. Up went the bronco on its hind legs. It pitched, bucked, sun-fished. In sheer terror Bob clung like a leech. The animal left the ground and jolted down stiff-legged on all fours. The impact was terrific. He felt as though a piledriver had fallen on his head and propelled his vital organs together like a concertina. Before he could set himself the sorrel went up again with a weaving, humpbacked twist. The rider shot from the saddle.

When the scenery had steadied itself for Dillon he noticed languidly a change in one aspect of it. The faces turned toward him were no longer grinning. They were watching him expectantly. What would he do now?

They need not look at him like that. He was through. If he got on the back of that brute again it would kill him. Already he was bleeding at the nose and ears. Sometimes men died just from the shock of being tossed about so furiously.

The sorrel was standing by itself at the other end of the corral. Its head was drooping languidly. The bronco was a picture of injured innocence.

Bob discovered that he hated it with an impotent lust to destroy. If he had a gun with him--Out of the air a squeaky voice came to him: "C-clamp yore jaw, you worm! You been given dominion." And after that, a moment later, "... made in the image of God."

Unsteadily he rose. The eyes of the Slash Lazy D riders watched him relentlessly and yet curiously. Would he quit? Or would he go through?

He had an odd feeling that his body was a thing detached from himself. It was full of aches and pains. Its legs wobbled as he moved. Its head seemed swollen to twice the normal size. He had strangely small control over it. When he walked, it was jerkily, as a drunk man sometimes does. His hand caught at the fence to steady himself. He swayed dizzily. A surge of sickness swept through his organs. After this he felt better. He had not consciously made up his mind to try again, but he found himself moving toward the sorrel. This time he could hardly drag his weight into the saddle.

The mind of a bronco is unfathomable. This one now pitched weakly once or twice, then gave up in unconditional surrender. Bob's surprise was complete. He had expected, after being shaken violently, to be flung into the mire again. The reaction was instantaneous and exhilarating. He forgot that he was covered with mud and bruises, that every inch of him cried aloud with aches. He had won, had mastered a wild outlaw horse as he had seen busters do. For the moment he saw the world at his feet. A little lower than the angels, he had been given dominion.

He rode to the gate and opened it. Hawks was looking at him, a puzzled look in his eyes. He had evidently seen something he had not expected to see.

Harshaw had ridden up during the bronco-busting. He spoke now to Bob. "You'll cover Beaver Creek to-day--you and Buck."

Something in the cattleman's eye, in the curtness of his speech, brought Dillon back to earth. He had divined that his boss did not like him, had employed him only because Blister Haines had made a personal point of it. Harshaw was a big weather-beaten man of forty, hard, keen-eyed, square as a die. Game himself, he had little patience with those who did not stand the acid test.

Bob felt himself shrinking up. He had not done anything after all, nothing that any one of these men could not do without half trying. There was no way to wipe out his failure when a real ordeal had confronted him. What was written in the book of life was written.

He turned his pony and followed Hawks across the mesa.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE FIRST DAY

In the wake of Hawks Bob rode through the buckbrush. There was small chance for conversation, and in any case neither of them was in the mood for talk. Bob's sensitive soul did not want to risk the likelihood of a rebuff. He was susceptible to atmospheres, and he knew that Buck was sulky at being saddled with him.

He was right. Buck did not see why Harshaw had put this outcast tenderfoot on him. He did not see why he had hired him at all. One thing was sure. He was not going to let the fellow get round him. No, sir. Not on his tintype he wasn't.

Since it was the only practical way at present to show his disgust and make the new puncher feel like a fool, Hawks led him through the roughest country he could find at the fastest feasible gait. Buck was a notably wild rider in a country of reckless horsemen. Like all punchers, he had been hurt time and again. He had taken dozens of falls. Two broncos had gone down under him with broken necks. A third had twisted its leg in a beaver burrow and later had to be shot. This day he outdid himself.

As young Dillon raced behind him along side hills after dogies fleet as blacktails, the heart fluttered in his bosom like a frightened bird in a cage. He did not pretend to keep up with Hawks. The best he could do was to come loping up after the excitement was over. The range-rider made no spoken comment whatever, but his scornful blue eyes said all that was necessary.

The day's work did not differ except in details from that of yesterday and to-morrow. They headed back two three-year-olds drifting too far north. They came on a Slash Lazy D cow with a young calf and moved it slowly down to better feed near the creek. In the afternoon they found a yearling sunk in a bog. After trying to pull it out by the ears, they roped its body and tugged together. Their efforts did not budge the animal. Hawks tied one end of the rope to the saddle-horn, swung up, and put the pony to the pull. The muscles of the bronco's legs stood out as it leaned forward and scratched for a foothold. The calf blatted with pain, but presently it was snaked out from the quagmire to the firm earth.

They crossed the creek and returned on the other side. Late in the afternoon they met half a dozen Utes riding their inferior ponies. They had evidently been hunting, for most of them carried deer. Old Colorow was at their head.

He grunted "How!" sulkily. The other braves passed without speaking. Something in their manner sent a shiver up Dillon's spine. He and Hawks were armed only with revolvers. It would be the easiest thing in the world for the Indians to kill them if they wished.

Hawks called a cheerful greeting. It suggested the friendliest of feeling. The instructions given to the punchers were to do nothing to irritate the Utes just now.

The mental attitude of the Indians toward the cattlemen and cowboys was a curious one. They were suspicious of them. They resented their presence in the country. But they felt a very wholesome respect for them. These leather-chapped youths could outride and outshoot them. With or without reason, the Utes felt only contempt for soldiers. They were so easily led into traps. They bunched together when under fire instead of scattering for cover. They did not know how to read sign on the warmest trail. These range-riders were different. If they were not as wary as the Utes, they made up for it by the dash and aplomb with which they broke through difficulties.

In Bear Cat the day before Bob had heard settlers discuss the unrest of the Indians. The rumor was that soon they meant to go on the warpath again. Colorow himself, with a specious air of good will, had warned a cattleman to leave the country while there was time.

"You mebbe go--mebbe not come back," he had suggested meaningly. "Mebbe better so. Colorow friend. He speak wise words."

Until the Utes were out of gunshot Bob felt very uneasy. It was not many years since the Meeker massacre and the ambushing of Major Thornburg's troops on Milk Creek.

Reeves and Hollister were in the bunkhouse when Bob entered it just before supper. He heard Dud's voice.

"... don't like a hair of his red haid, but that's how it'll be far as I'm concerned."

There was a moment's awkward silence. Dillon knew they had been talking about him. Beneath the deep gold of his blond skin Hollister flushed. Boy though he was, Dud usually had the self-possession of the Sphinx. But momentarily he was embarrassed.

"Hello, fellow!" he shouted across the room. "How'd she go?"

"All right, I reckon," Bob answered. "I wasn't much use."

He wanted to ask Dud a question, but he dared not ask it before anybody else. It hung in his mind all through supper. Afterward he found his chance. He did not look at Hollister while he spoke.

"Did--did you hear how--Miss Tolliver is?" he asked.

"Doc says he can't tell a thing yet. She's still mighty sick. But Blister he sent word to you that he'd let you know soon as there is a change."

"Much obliged."

Bob moved away. He did not want to annoy anybody by pressing his undesirable society upon him.

That night he slept like a hibernating bear. The dread of the morrow was no longer so heavy upon him. Drowsily, while his eyes were closing, he recalled the prediction of the fat justice that no experience is as bad as one's fears imagine it will be. That had been true to-day at least. Even his fight with the sorrel, the name of which he had later discovered to be Powder River, was now only a memory which warmed and cheered.

Cowpunchers usually rode in couples. Bob learned next morning that he was paired with Dud. They were to comb the Crooked Wash country.

CHAPTER XIX

DUD QUALIFIES AS COURT JESTER

It was still dark when Dud Hollister and Bob Dillon waded through the snow to the corral and saddled their horses.

They jogged across the mesa through the white drifts.

Bob's pony stumbled into a burrow, but pulled out again without damage.

In the years when cattle first came to the Rio Blanco the danger from falls was greater than it is now, even if the riding had not been harder. A long thick grass often covered the badger holes.

"How does a fellow look out for badger and prairie-dog holes?" Bob asked his companion as they jogged along at a road gait. "I mean when he's chasin' dogies across a hill on the jump."

"He don't," Dud answered ungrammatically but promptly. "His bronc 'tends to that. If you try to guide you're sure enough liable to take a fall."

"But when the hole's covered with grass?"

"You gotta take a chance," Dud said. "They're sure-footed, these cowponies are. A fellow gets to thinkin' they can't fall. Then down he goes. He jumps clear if he can an' lights loose."

"And if he can't?"

"He's liable to get stove up. I seen five waddies yesterday in Bear Cat with busted legs or arms. Doc's fixin' 'em up good as new. In a week or two they'll be ridin' again."

Bob had seen those same crippled cowboys and he could not quite get them out of his mind. He knew of two punchers killed within the year from falls.

"Ridin' for a dogie outfit ain't no sin-cure, as Blister told you while he was splicin' you 'n' Miss Tolliver," Dud went on. "It's a man-size job. There's ol' Charley Mason now. He's had his ribs stove in, busted an arm, shot hisself by accident, got rheumatism, had his nose bit off by a railroad guy while he was b'iled, an' finally married a female battle-axe, all inside o' two years. He's the hard luck champeen, though, Charley is."

It had snowed heavily during the night. The day was "soft," in the phrase of the pioneer. In places the ground was almost clear. In others the drifts were deep. From a hillside they looked down into a grove of cottonwoods that filled a small draw. Here the snow had blown in and was heavy. Three elk were floundering in the white banks.

Dud waded in and shot two with his revolver. The third was a doe. The cowponies snaked them out to the open.

"We'll take 'em with us to 'Leven Mile camp," Dud said. "Then we'll carry 'em back to the ranch to-morrow. The Slash Lazy D is needin' meat."

Harshaw had given orders that they were to spend the night at Eleven Mile camp. The place was a deserted log cabin built by a trapper. Supplies were kept there for the use of Slash Lazy D riders. Usually some of them were there at least two or three nights a week. Often punchers from other outfits put up at the shack. Range favors of this sort were taken as a matter of course. If the cabin was empty the visiting cowboy helped himself to food, fire, and shelter. It was expected of him that he would cut a fresh supply of fuel to take the place of that he had used.

It was getting on toward dusk when they reached Eleven Mile. Bob made a fire in the tin stove while Dud took care of the horses. He found flour and lard[2] hanging in pails from the rafters. Coffee was in a tin under the bunk.

Soon Dud joined him. They made their supper of venison, biscuits, and coffee. Hollister had just lit a pipe and stretched himself on the bed when the door opened and sixteen Ute bucks filed gravely in.

Colorow was the spokesman. "Hungry! Heap hungry!" he announced.

Hollister rolled out of the bunk promptly. "Here's where we go into the barbecue business an' the Slash ranch loses them elk," he told Bob under cover of replenishing the fire in the stove. "An' I can name two lads who'll be lucky if they don't lose their scalps. These birds have been drinkin'."

It took no wiseacre to divine the condition of the Indians. Their whiskey breaths polluted the air of the cabin. Some of them swayed as they stood or clutched at one another for support. Fortunately they were for the moment in a cheerful rather than a murderous frame of mind. They chanted what was gibberish to the two whites while the latter made their preparations swiftly. Dud took charge of affairs. He noticed that his companion was white to the lips.

"I'll knock together a batch of biscuits while you fry the steaks. Brace up, kid. Throw out yore chest. We better play we're drunk too," he said in a murmur that reached only Bob.

While Bob sliced the steaks from the elk hanging from pegs fastened in the mud mortar between the logs of the wall, Dud was busy whipping up a batch of biscuits. The Indians, packed tight as sardines in the room, crowded close to see how it was done. Hollister had two big frying-pans on the stove with lard heating in them. He slapped the dough in, spattering boiling grease right and left. One pockmarked brave gave an anguished howl of pain. A stream of sizzling lard had spurted into his face.

The other Utes roared with glee. The aboriginal sense of humor may not be highly developed, but it is easily aroused. The friends of the outraged brave stamped up and down the dirt floor in spasms of mirth. They clapped him on the back and jabbered ironic inquiries as to his well-being. For the moment, at least, Dud was as popular as a funny clown in a sawdust ring.

Colorow and his companions were fed. The stove roared. The frying-pans were kept full of meat and biscuits. The two white men discarded coats, vests, and almost their shirts. Sweat poured down their faces. They stood over the red-hot cook stove, hour after hour, while the Utes gorged. The steaks of the elk, the hind quarters, the fore quarters, all vanished into the sixteen distended stomachs. Still the Indians ate, voraciously, wolfishly, as though they could never get enough. It was not a meal but an endurance contest.

Occasionally some wag would push forward the pockmarked brave and demand of Dud that he baptize him again, and always the puncher made motions of going through the performance a second time. The joke never staled. It always got a hand, no matter how often it was repeated. At each encore the Utes stamped their flatfooted way round the room in a kind of impromptu and mirthful dance. The baptismal jest never ceased to be a scream.

Dud grinned at Dillon. "These wooden heads are so fond of chestnuts I'm figurin' on springin' on them the old one about why a hen crosses the road. Bet it would go big. If they got the point. But I don't reckon they would unless I had a hen here to show 'em."

The feast ended only when the supplies gave out. Two and a half sacks of flour disappeared. About fifteen pounds of potatoes went into the pot and from it into the openings of copper-colored faces. Nothing was left of the elk but the bones.

"The party's mighty nigh over," Dud murmured. "Wonder what our guests aim to do now."

"Can't we feed 'em anything more?" asked Bob anxiously.

"Not unless we finish cookin' the pockmarked gent for 'em. I'm kinda hopin' old Colorow will have sabe enough not to wear his welcome out. It'd make a ten-strike with me if he'd say 'Much obliged' an' hit the trail."

Bob had not the heart to jest about the subject, and his attempt to back up his companion's drunken playacting was a sad travesty. He did not know much about Indians anyhow, and he was sick through and through with apprehension. Would they finish by scalping their hosts, as Dud had suggested early in the evening?

It was close to midnight when the clown of Colorow's party invented a new and rib-tickling joke. Bob was stooping over the stove dishing up the last remnants of the potatoes when this buck slipped up behind with the carving-knife and gathered into his fist the boy's flaming topknot. He let out a horrifying yell and brandished the knife.

In a panic of terror Bob collapsed to the floor. There was a moment when the slapstick comedy grazed red tragedy. The pitiable condition of the boy startled the Ute, who still clutched his hair. An embryonic idea was finding birth in the drunken brain. In another moment it would have developed into a well-defined lust to kill.

With one sweeping gesture Dud lifted a frying-pan from the red-hot stove and clapped it against the rump of the jester. The redskin's head hit the roof. His shriek of agony could have been heard half a mile. He clapped hands to the afflicted part and did a humped-up dance of woe. The carving-knife lay forgotten on the floor. It was quite certain that he would take no pleasure in sitting down for some few days.

Again a series of spasms of turbulent mirth seized upon his friends. They doubled up with glee. They wept tears of joy. They howled down his anguish with approving acclaim while they did a double hop around him as a vent to their enthusiasm. The biter had been bit. The joke had been turned against the joker, and in the most primitive and direct way. This was the most humorous event in the history of the Rio Blanco Utes. It was destined to become the stock tribal joke.

Dud, now tremendously popular, joined in the dance. As he shuffled past Bob he growled an order at him.

"Get up on yore hind laigs an' dance. I got these guys going my way. Hop to it!"

Bob danced, at first feebly and with a heart of water. He need not have worried. If Dud had asked to be made a blood member of the tribe he would have been elected by fourteen out of the sixteen votes present.

The first faint streaks of day were in the sky when the Utes mounted their ponies and vanished over the hill. From the door Dud watched them go. It had been a strenuous night, and he was glad it was over. But he wouldn't have missed it for a thousand dollars. He would not have admitted it. Nevertheless he was immensely proud of himself in the rôle of court jester.

Bob sat down on the bunk. He was a limp rag of humanity. In the reaction from fear he was inclined to be hysterical.

"You saved my life--when--when that fellow--" He stopped, gulping down a lump in the throat.

The man leaning against the door-jamb stretched his arms and his mouth in a relaxing yawn. "Say, fellow, I wasn't worryin' none about yore life. I was plumb anxious for a moment about Dud Hollister's. If old Colorow's gang had begun on you they certainly wouldn't 'a' quit without takin' my topknot for a souvenir of an evenin' when a pleasant time was had by all." He yawned a second time. "What say? Let's hit the hay. I don't aim for to do no ridin' this mornin'."

A faint sniffling sound came from the bunk.

Dud turned. "What's ailin' you now?" he wanted to know.

Bob's face was buried in his hands. The slender body of the boy was shaken with sobs.

"I--I--"

"Cut out the weeps, Miss Roberta," snapped Hollister. "What in Mexico 's eatin' you anyhow?"

"I--I've had a horrible night."

"Don't I know it? Do you reckon it was a picnic for me?"

"You--laughed an' cut up."

"Some one had to throw a bluff. If they'd guessed we were scared stiff them b'iled Utes sure enough would have massacreed us. You got to learn to keep yore grin workin', fellow."

"I know, but--" Bob stopped. Dry sobs were still shaking him.

"Quit that," Dud commanded. "I'll be darned if I'll stand for it. You shut off the waterworks or I'll whale you proper."

He walked out to look at the horses. It had suddenly occurred to him that perhaps their guests might have found and taken them. The broncos were still grazing in the draw where he had left them the previous night.

When Dud returned to the cabin young Dillon had recovered his composure. He lay on the bunk, face to the wall, and pretended to be asleep.

-----

[2] The lard in the White River country was all made in those days of bear grease and deer tallow mixed.

CHAPTER XX

"THE BIGGER THE HAT THE SMALLER THE HERD"

Combing Crooked Wash that afternoon Bob rode with a heavy and despondent heart. It was with him while he and Dud jogged back to the ranch in the darkness. He had failed again. Another man had trodden down the fears to which he had afterward lightly confessed and had carried off the situation with a high hand. His admiration put Hollister on a pedestal. How had the blond puncher contrived to summon that reserve of audacity which had so captivated the Utes? Why was it that of two men one had stamina to go through regardless of the strain while another went to pieces and made a spectacle of himself?

Bob noticed that both in his report to Harshaw and later in the story he told at the Slash Lazy D bunkhouse, Dud shielded him completely. He gave not even a hint that Dillon had weakened under pressure. The boy was grateful beyond words, even while he was ashamed that he needed protection.

At the bunkhouse Dud's story was a great success. He had a knack of drawling out his climaxes with humorous effect.

"An' when I laid that red-hot skillet on the nearest area of Rumpty-Tumpty's geography he ce'tainly went up into the roof like he'd been fired out of a rocket. When he lit--gentlemen, when he lit he was the most restless Ute in western Colorado. He milled around the corral considerable. I got a kinda notion he'd sorta soured on the funny-boy business. Anyhow, he didn't cotton to my style o' humor. Different with old Colorow an' the others. They liked to 'a' hollered their fool haids off at the gent I'd put the new Slash Lazy D brand on. Then they did one o' them 'Wow-wow-wow' dances round Rumpty-Tumpty, who was still smokin' like he'd set fire to the cabin."

Cowpunchers are a paradox. They have the wisdom of the ages, yet they are only grown-up children. Now they filled the night with mirth. Hawks lay down on his bunk and kicked his feet into the air joyfully. Reeves fell upon Dud and beat him with profane gayety. Big Bill waltzed him over the floor, regardless of his good-humored protest.

"Tell us some more, Dud," demanded the cook. "Did yore friend Rumpty put hisse'f out by sittin' in a snowbank?"

"I don't rightly recollect. Me 'n' Bob here was elected to lead the grand march an' we had to leave Rumpty-Tumpty be his own fire department. But I did notice how tender he lowered himself to the back of his hawse when they lit out in the mawnin'."

Bob saw that Hollister made the whole affair one huge joke. He did not mention that there had been any chance of a tragic termination to the adventure. Nor did the other punchers refer to that, though they knew the strained relations between the whites and the Utes. Riding for a dogie outfit was a hard life, but one could always get a laugh out of it somehow. The philosophy of the range is to grin and bear it.

A few days later Bob rode into town with a pack-horse at heel. He was to bring back some supplies for the ranch. Harshaw had chosen him to go because he wanted to buy some things for himself. These would be charged against the Slash Lazy D account at Platt & Fortner's store. Bob would settle for them with the boss when his pay-check came due.

It was a warm sunny day with a touch of summer still in the air. The blue stem and the bunch grass were dry. Sage and greasewood had taken on the bare look of winter. But the pines were still green and the birds singing.

It was an ordeal for Bob to face Bear Cat. June was better, he had heard. But it was not his fault she had not died of the experience endured. He could expect no friendliness in the town. The best he could hope for was that it would let him alone.

He went straight to the office of Blister Haines. The justice took his fat legs down from the desk and waved him to a chair.

"How're cases?" he asked.

Bob told his story without sparing himself.

Blister listened and made no comment to the end.

"You're takin' that Ute business too s-serious," he said. "Gettin' s-scalped 's no picnic. You're entitled to feel some weak at the knees. I've heard from Dud. He says you stood up fine."

"He told you--?"

"N-no particulars. T-trouble with you is you've got too much imagination. From yore story I judge you weakened when the danger was over. You gotta learn to keep up that red haid like I said. When you're scared or all in, stretch yore grin another inch. You don't need to w-worry. You're doin' all right."

Bob shook his head. Blister's view encouraged him, though he could not agree with it.

"Keep yore eye on that Dud Hollister hombre," the justice went on. "He's one sure enough go-getter."

"Yes," agreed Bob. "He's there every jump of the road. An' he didn't tell on me either."

"You can tie to Dud," agreed Blister. "Here's the point, son. When you g-get that sinkin' feelin' in yore tummy it's notice for you to get up on yore hind laigs an' howl. Be a wolf for a change."

"But I can't. I seem to--to wilt all up."

"Son, you know the answer already. T-throw back yore haid an' remember you got dominion."

Dillon shifted the conversation, embarrassed eyes on the floor. "How's--Miss Tolliver?"

"G-gettin' well fast. On the porch yesterday. Everybody in town stopped to say how g-glad they was to see her out. Been havin' the time of her life, June has. Mollie's always right good to sick folks, but she c-ce'tainly makes a pet of June."

"I'm glad. She's through with me, o' course, but I hope her friends look out for that Jake Houck."

"You don't need to worry about him. He's learnt to keep hands off."

Bob was not quite satisfied to let the matter rest there. In spite of the fact that he had made an outcast of himself he wanted to reinstate himself with June.

Hesitantly Bob approached the subject. "Maybe I'd better send her word I'm glad she come through all right."

Blister's eyes were stony. "Maybe you'd better not. What claim you got to be remembered by that li'l' girl? You're outa her life, boy."

Bob winced. The harsh truth wounded his sensitive nature. She had been his friend once. It hurt him to lose her wholly and completely.

He rose. "Well, I gotta go an' get some goods for the ranch, Mr. Haines," he said.

"I reckon you'd like to s-slide back easy an' have folks forget," Blister said. "Natural enough. But it won't be thataway. You'll have to f-fight like a bulldog to travel back along that trail to a good name. You ain't really begun yet."

"See you again next time I get to town," Bob said.

He was sorry he had raised the point with Haines of a message to June. That the justice should reject the idea so promptly and vigorously hurt his pride and self-esteem.

At Platt & Fortner's he invested in a pair of spurs, a cheap saddle, and a bridle. The cowboy is vain of his equipment. He would spend in those days forty dollars for a saddle, ten for boots, twenty-five for a bridle and silver plated bit, fifteen for spurs, and ten or twelve for a hat. He owned his own horse and blankets, sometimes also a pack-animal. These were used to carry him from one job to another. He usually rode the ranch broncos on the range.

But even if he had been able to afford it Bob would not have bought expensive articles. He did not make any claim about his ability to punch cattle, and he knew instinctively that real riders would resent any attempt on his part to swagger as they did. A remark dropped by Blister came to mind.

"The b-bigger the hat the smaller the herd, son. Do all yore b-braggin' with yore actions."

It is often a characteristic of weakness that it clings to strength. Bob would have given much for the respect and friendship of these clear-eyed, weather-beaten men. To know that he had forfeited these cut deep into his soul. The clerk that waited on him at the store joked gayly with two cowboys lounging on the counter, but he was very distantly polite to Dillon. The citizens he met on the street looked at him with chill eyes. A group of schoolboys whispered and pointed toward him.

Bob had walked out from Haines's office in a huff, but as he rode back to the ranch he recognized the justice of his fat friend's decision. He had forfeited the right to take any interest in June Tolliver. His nature was to look always for the easiest way. He never wanted trouble with anybody. Essentially he was peace-loving even to the point of being spiritless. To try to slip back into people's good will by means of the less robust virtues would be just like him.

Probably Blister was right when he had told him to be a wolf. For him, anything was better than to be a sheep.

He clamped his teeth. He would show the Rio Blanco country whether he had a chicken heart. He would beat back somehow so that they would have to respect him whether they wanted to or not. If he made up his mind to it he could be just as game as Dud Hollister.

He would go through or he would die trying.

CHAPTER XXI

JUNE DISCOVERS A NEW WORLD

Blister had not overstated the case to Bob when he told him that June had been having the time of her life getting well. She had been a lonely little thing, of small importance in a country very busy on its own affairs. The sense of inferiority had oppressed her, due both to the secret of her father's past and the isolation in which she dwelt. This had stimulated a sullen resentment and a shy pride which held even friendly souls at arm's length.

Now she was being petted by everybody with whom she came into contact. She was pathetically grateful, and the big-hearted men and women of the frontier were worthy of the feeling. They gave her eager good will and generous sympathy. Into her room came soups and custards made by the best cooks on the river. When she was well enough to see visitors the mothers of Bear Cat came in person.

Through Melancthon Browning the landlady of the hotel shrewdly enlisted the aid of the most influential women in the community. June needed clothes. She had not a garment that was not worn out and ragged. But Mollie recognized the fact that more than these she was in need of the moral support of the settlers' wives. Mrs. Larson could give her work and a home, but she could not give her that bulwark of her sex, respectability. Mollie was an exception to an established rule. She was liked and respected by other women in spite of her peculiarities. But this would not be true of her protégée unless the girl was above criticism. June must never step inside the bar or the gambling-room. She must find friends among the other girls of the town and take part in their social activities.

Wherefore Mollie, by timely suggestion, put it into the mind of the preacher to propose a sewing-bee to his congregation. Tolliver, under supervision, bought the goods and the women sewed. They made underclothes, petticoats, nightgowns, and dresses. They selected from the stock of Platt & Fortner shoes, stockings, and a hat, charging them to the account of Pete.

It was on her sixteenth birthday that June was taken into an adjoining room and saw all these treasures laid upon the bed. She did not at first understand that the two pretty dresses and all the comfortable, well-made clothes were for her. When this was made clear to her the tears brimmed to the long-lashed eyes. The starved little Cinderella was greatly touched. She turned to Mollie and buried her twitching face in a friendly bosom.

"Now--now--now," Mollie reproved gently, stroking the dark crisp hair. "This is no way to act, dearie, an' all the ladies so kind to you. You want to thank 'em, don't you?"

"Yes, but--but--I--I--"

The smothered voice was tearful.

Mollie smiled at the committee. "I reckon she wants me to tell you for her that she's plumb outa words to let you know how good she thinks you-all are."

The black head nodded vigorously. "You're the best folks--"

Mrs. Platt, a large and comfortable mother of seven, answered placidly. "I expect you'll find, dearie, that most folks are good when you get on the right side of them. Now you try on them clothes an' see if they fit. We tried 'em on my Mary. She's about your size. You're comin' down to our house to supper to-night. I want you should get acquainted with the girls."

June looked at Mollie, who nodded smilingly.

"I'll be terrible glad to come, ma'am," June said.

"Then that's settled. They're nice girls, if I do say it myself that am their mother."

So June took her first timid steps into the social life of the frontier town. Shyly she made friends, and with them went to church, to Sunday School, and to picnics.

It had been definitely decided that she was to wait on table at the hotel restaurant and not return with her father to Piceance Creek. The plan had originated with Mollie, but Tolliver had acquiesced in it eagerly. If June went home with him Houck might reappear on the horizon, but if she stayed at Bear Cat, buttressed by the support of the town, the man from Brown's Park would not dare to urge his claim again.

June waited on table at the hotel, but this did not keep her from the dances that were held in the old army hospital building. There were no class distinctions in Bear Cat then. There are not many now. No paupers lived in the county. This still holds good. Except the owners of the big cattle companies there were no men of wealth. A man was not judged by what he had or by the kind of work he was doing. His neighbors looked through externals to see what he was, stripped of all adventitious circumstance. On that basis solely he was taken into fellowship or cast out from it.

The girl from Piceance Creek worked hard and was content, even if not quite happy. If she ever thought of the boy she had married, no reference to him ever crossed her lips. She was known simply as June by the town. Strangers called her Miss Tolliver.

There was about her a quiet self-possession that discouraged familiarity on the part of ambitious and amorous cowboys. Her history, with its thread of tragedy running through the warp and woof of it, set her apart from other girls of her age. Still almost a child in years, she had been caught in the cross-currents of life and beaten by its cold waves. Part of the heritage of youth--its gay and adventurous longing for experience--had been filched from her before she was old enough to know its value. In time she would perhaps recover her self-esteem, but she would never know in its fullness that divine right of American maidenhood to rule its environment and make demands of it.

CHAPTER XXII

AN ALTERNATIVE PROPOSED AND DECLINED

The prediction made by Blister Haines that some overbearing puncher would bully Bob because of his reputation as safe game did not long wait fulfillment. A new rider joined the Slash Lazy D outfit. He had been working for the K Bar T for a couple of months. Prior to that time he had not been seen on the river. The rumor was that he hailed from Wyoming. To ask for more specific information would not have been good form. More than one or two cowboys in the Rio Blanco country had left their former homes just ahead of a sheriff.

Bandy Walker knew how to rope and ride. That was the main consideration of Harshaw when he hired him. He guessed the fellow's name was not Walker any more than it was Bandy. One cognomen had been given him because he was so bow-legged; the other he had no doubt taken for purposes of non-identification.

Bandy was short, heavy-set, and muscular. At a glance one would have picked him out as dangerous. The expression on the face was sulky. The eyes were expressionless as jade.

He was given the bunk next Dillon and before twenty-four hours were past he had begun to bully him. It began with a surly request behind which Bob sensed a command.

"Fellow, get my bridle, won't you? I left it with my saddle somewheres close to the chuck house. Got to fix it to-night."

Dillon had taken off his high-heeled boots because they were hurting his feet. He observed that Walker, lying fully dressed on the blankets, was still wearing his.

"Why, sure," Bob said amiably, and he tugged on his boots.

Presently he returned with the bridle and handed it to Bandy.

That was the beginning of it. Before the week was out Bob was the man's flunkey, the butt of his ill-natured jokes, the helpless victim of his bad temper. Inside, he writhed. Another failure was being scored against him. But what could he do? This Bandy Walker was a gunman and a rough-and-tumble fighter. He boasted of it. Bob would be a child in his hands.

The other punchers watched the affair, drew deductions, but made no audible comments. The law of the outdoors is that every man must play his own hand. The Slash Lazy D resented Bandy. He was ugly in face, voice, and manner. His speech was offensive. He managed to convey insult by the curl of his lip. Yet he was cunning enough to keep within the bounds of safety. Nobody wanted to pick a quarrel with him, for it might turn out to be a serious business. The fellow looked rancorous. Moreover, the ranch riders had no use for Dillon. It would be a relief if Bandy drove him away. They felt disgraced when cowboys from the Circle Bar or the Quarter Circle Triangle inquired for the health of their new rider Miss Roberta.

Dud and Bob were riding Milk Creek one day about a week after Walker's arrival. They unsaddled at noon and lay down to loaf on a sunny bank close to the water's edge.

Hollister had been silent all morning, contrary to his usual custom. His good spirits usually radiated gayety.

"What's the matter? Ain't you feelin' good?" Bob asked.

"No, I ain't."

"Stomach?"

"Heart," returned Dud gloomily.

Bob sat up. "Why, I never heard there was anything the matter with yore heart. If there is, you hadn't ought to be ridin' these crazy colts you do."

"Nothin' the matter with my heart. It's yore's I'm worryin' about."

Bob flushed, but said nothing.

"I'm wonderin' how long you're aimin' to let that bully puss fellow Walker run over you."

"What can I do?" Bob did not look at his companion. He kept his eyes on the ground, where he was tracing figures with a broken stick.

"Well, there's seve-re-al things you could do. You might work the plug-ugly over. It couldn't hurt his looks none, an' it might improve 'em. That's one suggestion. I've got others where that come from."

"He's a bad actor. I expect he'd half kill me," Bob muttered.

"I reckon he would, onless you beat him to it. That's not the point. You got to fight him or admit you're yellow. No two ways about that."

"I can't fight. I never did," groaned Dillon.

"Then how do you know you can't? If you can't, take yore lickin'. But you be on top of him every minute of the time whilst you're gettin' it. Go to it like a wild cat. Pretty soon something'll drop, an' maybe it won't be you."

"I--can't."

Dud's blue eyes grew steely. "You can't, eh? Listen, fellow. I promised Blister to make a man outa you if I could. I aim to do it. You lick Bandy good to-night or I'll whale you to-morrow. That ain't all either. Every time you let him run on you I'll beat you up next day soon as I get you alone."

Bob looked at him, startled. "You wouldn't do that, Dud?"

"Wouldn't I? Don't you bet I wouldn't. I'm makin' that promise right now."

"I thought you were--my friend," Bob faltered.

"Don't you think it. I'm particular who I call by that name. I ain't a friend of any man without sand in his gizzard. But I done give my word to Old Blister an' I gotta come through. It'll hurt you more'n it will me, anyhow."

"I'll quit an' leave this part of the country," Bob said wretchedly.

"I'm not stoppin' you, but you won't go till I've whopped you once good. Will you take it now?"

"Let's talk it over reasonable," Bob pleaded.

Dud looked disgusted. "I never see such a fellow for thinkin' he could chin himself outa trouble. Nothin' doing."

"You've got no right to interfere in my affairs. It's not yore business," the worried victim of circumstances declared with an attempt at dignity.

"Say, don't I know it? If I hadn't promised Blister--But what's the use? I done said I would, an' I got to go through."

"I'll let you off yore promise."

Dud shook his head. "Wish you could, but you can't. It was to Blister I give my word. No, sir. You gotta take or give a lickin', looks like. Either me or Bandy, I ain't particular which."

"You lay off me, Dud Hollister."

"Honest, I hope you'll fix it so's I can. Well, you got till to-morrow to decide. Don't forget. Me or Bandy one. You take yore choice."

"I won't fight you."

"Then it's Bandy. Suits me fine. Say, Bob, I ain't so darned sure that fellow'll be there so big when it comes to a show-down. He looks to me tricky rather than game. Take him by surprise. Then crawl his hump sudden. With which few well-chosen words I close. Yores sincerely, Well-wisher, as these guys sign themselves when they write to the papers."

All through the rest of the day Bob was depressed. He felt as cheerful as a man about to be hanged. Why couldn't they let him alone? He never in his life went looking for trouble and it seemed to hunt him out if he was anywhere in reach. It was not fair. What claim had Dud to mix into his difficulties with Bandy? Absolutely none.

He made up his mind to slip away in the night, ride to Glenwood, and take the train for Denver. There a fellow could live in peace.

CHAPTER XXIII

BOB CRAWLS HIS HUMP SUDDEN

There was a game of stud after supper in the bunkhouse. Bob lay on his bed, a prey to wretched dread. He had made up his mind to have it out with Bandy, but his heart was pumping water instead of blood. When he looked at the squat puncher, thick-necked and leather-faced, an ugly sneer on his lips, the courage died out of his breast.

Dud was sitting with his back to the wall. His attention was ostensibly on the game, but Bob knew he was waiting for developments.

Bandy sat next Dud. "Raise you once," he snarled. His card-playing was like everything else he did, offensive by reason of the spirit back of it. He was a bad loser and a worse winner.

"And another blue," said Hollister easily when it came his turn again. "Got to treat an ace in the hole with respect."

The other two players dropped out, leaving only Bandy to contest the pot with Dud.

"Once more," retorted the bow-legged puncher, shoving in chips.

"And again."

"Hmp! Claim an ace in the hole, do you? Well, I'll jes' give it one more li'l' kick."

Hollister had showing a deuce of hearts, a trey of clubs, an ace of spades, and a four of hearts. He might have a five in the hole or an ace. Bandy had a pair of jacks in sight.

Dud called.

"You see it," growled Bandy. "One pair."

His opponent flipped over an ace of diamonds. "One pair here--aces."

"Knew it all the time. Yore play gave it away," jeered Bandy with obvious ill-temper.

"I reckon that's why you kept raisin'," Dud suggested, raking in the pot.

"All I needed was to hook a jack or another pair to beat you."

"If I didn't catch another ace or a small pair."

The game was breaking up.

"Hell! I was playin' poker before you could navigate, young fellow," Bandy boasted. He had lost four dollars and was annoyed.

"An' you're still an optimist about hookin' another pair when you need 'em." Dud was counting his winnings placidly. "Six-fifty--seven--seven and two bits. Wish I had yore confidence in the music of the spears workin' out so harmonious."

This last was a reference to a book left at the ranch recently by the Reverend Melancthon Browning, the title of which was, "The Music of the Spheres." Its philosophy was that every man makes his own world by the way he thinks about it.

Bandy jingled back to his bunk. He unstrapped his spurs, hooked one foot behind the knee of the other leg, and tried to work the wet boot off. The slippery leather stuck.

He called to Bob. "Come here, fellow, an' yank this boot off for me."

Dillon did not move. His heart stood still, then began to race. A choking filled his throat. The hour was striking for him. It was to be now or never.

The bow-legged puncher slewed his head. "I'm talkin' to you."

Slowly, reluctantly, Bob rose. He did not want to move. Something stronger than his will lifted him out of the bed and dragged him across the floor. He knew his hands were trembling.

Malignant triumph rode in Bandy's eye. It was always safe to bully this timid youth. Dud Hollister had a "No Trespass" sign displayed in his quiet, cool manner. Very well. He would take it out of his riding mate. That was one way of getting at him.

"What's ailin' you? Git a move on. You act like you'd like to tell me to go take a walk. I'll bet you would, too, if you wasn't such a rabbit heart."

Bob stooped and picked up the dirty boot. He zigzagged it from the foot. As he straightened again his eyes met those of Dud. He felt a roaring in the temples.

"O' course any one that'd let another fellow take his wife from him--an' him not married more'n an hour or two--"

The young fellow did not hear the end of the cruel gibe. The sound of rushing waters filled his ears. He pulled off the second boot.

Again his gaze met that of Hollister. He remembered Dud's words. "Crawl his hump sudden. Go to it like a wild cat." The trouble was he couldn't. His muscles would not obey the flaccid will.

The flood of waters died down. The roaring ceased. The puncher's words came to him clear.

"... not but what she was likely glad enough to go with Jake. She was out with him four-five hours. Where was they, I ask? What was they doing? You can't tell me she couldn't 'a' got away sooner if she'd wanted to so darned bad. No, sir, I'm no chicken right out of a shell. When it comes to a woman I say, Where's the man?"

A surge of anger welled up in Dillon and overflowed. He forgot about Dud and his threats. He forgot about his trepidation. This hound was talking of June, lying about her out of his foul throat.

One of the boots was still in his hand. He swung it round and brought the heel hard against the fellow's mouth. The blood gushed from the crushed lips. Bob dropped the boot and jolted his left to the cheek. He followed with a smashing right to the eye.

Taken at disadvantage, Bandy tried to struggle to his feet. He ran into one straight from the shoulder that caught the bridge of his nose and flung him back upon the bunk.

His hand reached under the pillow. Bob guessed what was there and dropped hard with both knees on his stomach.

The breath went out of Bandy suddenly. He lay still for a moment. When he began to struggle again he had forgotten the revolver under the pillow. With a sweeping gesture Bob brushed pillow and gun to the floor.

The man underneath twisted his red, wrinkled neck and bit Bob's forearm savagely. The boy's fingers closed like a vice on the hairy throat and tightened. His other fist beat a merciless tattoo on the bruised and bleeding face.

"Take him off!" Bandy presently gasped.

Dud appointed himself referee. With difficulty he unloosed the fingers embedded in the flesh of the throat.

"Had enough, Bandy? You licked?" he asked.

"Take him off, I tell you!" the man managed to scream.

"Not unless you're whipped. How about it?"

"'Nough," the bully groaned.

Bob observed that Hawks had taken charge of the revolver. He released Walker.

The bow-legged puncher sat at the side of the bed and coughed. The blood was streaming from a face bruised and cut in a dozen places.

"He--he--jumped me--when I wasn't lookin'," the cowboy spat out, a word at a time.

"Don't pull an alibi, Bandy. You had it comin'," Dud said with a grin. He was more pleased than he could tell.

Dillon felt as though something not himself had taken control of him. He was in a cold fury, ready to fight again at the drop of a hat.

"He said she--she--" The sentence broke, but Bob rushed into another. "He's got to take it back or I'll kill him."

"Only the first round ended, looks like, Bandy," Dud said genially. "You better be lookin' this time when he comes at you, or he'll sure eat you alive."

"I'm not lookin' for no fight," Bandy said sulkily, dabbing at his face with the bandanna round his neck.

"I'll bet you ain't--not with a catamount like Miss Roberta here," Tom Reeves said, chuckling with delight.

One idea still obsessed Bob's consciousness. "What he said about June--I'll not let him get away with it. He's got to tell you-all he was lyin'."

"You hear yore boss speak, Bandy," drawled Dud. "How about it? Do we get to see you massacreed again? Or do you stand up an' admit you're a dirty liar for talkin' thataway?"

Bandy Walker looked round on a circle of faces all unfriendly to him. He had broken the code, and he knew it. In the outdoor West a man does not slander a good woman without the chance of having to pay for it. The puncher had let his bad bullying temper run away with him. He had done it because he had supposed Dillon harmless, to vent on him the spleen he could not safely empty upon Dud Hollister's blond head.

If Bob had been alone the bow-legged man might have taken a chance--though it is doubtful whether he would have invited that whirlwind attack again, unless he had had a revolver close at hand--but he knew public sentiment was wholly against him. There was nothing to do but to swallow his words.

That he did this in the most ungracious way possible was like him. "Since you're runnin' a Sunday School outfit I'll pack my roll an' move on to-morrow to where there's some he-men," he sneered. "I never met this girl, so I don't know a thing about her. All I did was to make a general remark about women. Which same I know to be true. But since you're a bunch of sky pilots at the Slash Lazy D, I'll withdraw anything that hurts yore tender feelin's."

"Are you takin' back what you said--about--about her?" Bob demanded harshly.

Bandy's smouldering, sullen eyes slid round. "I'm takin' it back. Didn't you hear me say I don' know a thing about her? I know Houck, though. So I judged--" He spat a loose tooth out on the floor venomously. It would perhaps not be wise to put into words what he had deduced from his knowledge of Jake Houck.

"The incident is now clo-o-sed if Miss Roberta is satisfied," Dud announced to the public at large.

His riding mate looked at Hollister. "Don't call me that," he said.

For a moment Dud was puzzled. "Don't call you what?"

"What you just called me."

Dud broke into a grin of delight. He wondered if it would not be a good idea to make Bob give him a licking, too. But he decided to let good enough alone. He judged that Blister would be satisfied without any more gore. Anyhow, Bob might weaken and spoil it.

"Boy, I'll never call you Miss--what I called you--long as I live exceptin' when I'm meanin' to compliment you special." Dud slapped him hard between the shoulder blades. "You're a young cyclone, but you can't get a chance to muss Dud Hollister up to-night. You work too rapid. Doggone my hide, if I ever did see a faster or a better piece o' work. How about it, Tom?"

Reeves, too, pounded Dillon in token of friendship. If Bob had not wiped the slate clean he had made a start in that direction.

"You're some scrapper when you get started. Bandy looks like he's been through a railroad wreck," he said.

Bandy was by this time at the wash-basin repairing damages. "Tell you he jumped me when I wasn't lookin'," he growled sulkily. "Fine business. You-all stood by an' watched him do it."

"After you'd deviled him for a week," amended Big Bill. "Mebbe in that outfit of he-men you're expectin' to hit the trail for to-morrow they'll wrop you up in cotton an' not let a hundred-an'-thirty-pound giant jump you."

"I ain't askin' it of 'em," Bandy retorted. "I can look out for myself an' then some. As for this sprout who thinks he's so gosh-mighty, I'll jus' say one thing. Some o' these days I'll settle with him proper."

He turned as he spoke. The look on his battered face was venomous.

CHAPTER XXIV

IN THE SADDLE

White winter covered the sage hills and gave the country a bleak and desolate look. The Slash Lazy D riders wrapped up and went out over the wind-swept mesas to look after the cattle cowering in draws or drifting with the storm. When Bob could sleep snugly in the bunkhouse he was lucky. There were nights when he shivered over a pine-knot fire in the shelter of a cutbank with the temperature fifteen degrees below zero.

At this work he won the respect of his fellows. He could set his teeth and endure discomfort with any of them. It was at sharp danger crises that he had always quailed. He never shirked work or hardship, and he never lied to make the way easier or more comfortable. Harshaw watched him with increasing approval. In Dillon he found all but one of the essential virtues of the cowboy--good humor, fidelity, truth, tenacity, and industry. If he lacked courage in the face of peril the reason was no doubt a constitutional one.

A heavy storm in February tried the riders to capacity. They were in the saddle day and night. For weeks they appeared at the ranch only at odd intervals, haggard, unshaven, hungry as wolves. They ate, saddled fresh mounts, and went out into the drifts again tireless and indomitable.

Except for such food as they could carry in a sack they lived on elk trapped in the deep snow. The White River country was one of the two or three best big game districts in the United States.[3] The early settlers could get a deer whenever they wanted one. Many were shot from the doors of their cabins.

While Harshaw, Dud, and Bob were working Wolf Creek another heavy snow fell. A high wind swept the white blanket into deep drifts. All day the riders ploughed through these to rescue gaunt and hungry cattle. Night caught them far from the cabin where they had been staying.

They held a consultation. It was bitter weather, the wind still blowing.

"Have to camp, looks like," Harshaw said.

"We'll have a mighty tough night without grub and blankets," Dud said doubtfully. "She's gettin' colder every minute."

"There's a sheltered draw below here. We'll get a good fire going anyhow."

In the gulch they found a band of elk.

"Here's our supper an' our beds," Dud said.

They killed three.

While Bob gathered and chopped up a down and dead tree the others skinned the game. There was dry wood in Harshaw's saddle-bags with which to start a fire. Soon Dillon had a blaze going which became a crackling, roaring furnace. They ate a supper of broiled venison without trimmings.

"Might be a heap worse," Dud said while he was smoking afterward before the glowing pine knots. "I'm plenty warm in front even if I'm about twenty below up an' down my spine."

Presently they rolled up in the green hides and fell asleep.

None of them slept very comfortably. The night was bitter, and they found it impossible to keep warm.

Bob woke first. He decided to get up and replenish with fuel the fire. He could not rise. The hide had frozen stiff about him. He shouted to the others.

They, too, were helpless in the embrace of their improvised sleeping-bags.

"Have to roll to the fire an' thaw out," Harshaw suggested.

This turned out to be a ticklish job. They had to get close enough to scorch their faces and yet not near enough to set fire to the robes. More than once Bob rolled over swiftly to put out a blaze in the snow.

Dud was the first to step out of his blanket. In a minute or two he had peeled the hides from the others.

An hour later they were floundering through the drifts toward the cabin on Wolf Creek. Behind each rider was strapped the carcass of an elk.

"Reminds me of the time Blister went snow blind," Harshaw said. "Up around Badger Bend it was. He got lost an' wandered around for a coupla days blind as a bat. Finally old Clint Frazer's wife seen him wallowin' in the drifts an' the old man brought him in. They was outa grub an' had to hoof it to town. Clint yoked his bull team an' had it break trail. He an' the wife followed. But Blister he couldn't see, so he had to hang on to one o' the bulls by the tail. The boys joshed him about that quite a while. He ce'tainly was a sight rollin' down Main Street anchored to that critter's tail."

"I'll bet Blister was glad to put his foot on the rail at Dolan's," Dud murmured. "I'd be kinda glad to do that same my own se'f right now."

"Blister went to bed and stayed there for a spell. He was a sick man." Harshaw's eye caught sight of some black specks on a distant hillside. "Cattle. We'll come back after we've onloaded at the cabin."

They did. It was long after dark before they reached shelter again.

The riders of the Slash Lazy D were glad to see spring come, though it brought troubles of its own. The weather turned warm and stayed so. The snow melted faster than the streams could take care of it. There was high water all over the Blanco country. The swollen creeks poured down into the overflowing river. Three punchers in the valley were drowned inside of a week, for that was before the bridges had been built.

While the water was still high Harshaw started a trail herd to Utah.

-----

[3] According to old-timers the automobile is responsible for the extermination of the game supply going on so rapidly. The pioneers at certain seasons provided for their needs by killing blacktail and salting down the meat. But they were dead shots and expert hunters. The automobile tourists with high-power rifles rush into the hills during the open season and kill male and female without distinction. For every deer killed outright three or four crawl away to die later from wounds. One ranchman reports finding fifteen dead deer on one day's travel through the sage.

CHAPTER XXV

THE RIO BLANCO PUTS IN A CLAIM

Preparations for the drive occupied several days. The cattle were rounded up and carefully worked. Many of those that had roughed through the hard winter were still weak. Some of these would yet succumb and would increase the thirty per cent of losses already counted. Only those able to stand inspection were thrown into the trail herd. Afterward, a second cut was made and any doubtful ones culled from the bunch.

Word had come from Rangely that all the streams were high as far as and beyond the Utah line. But the owner of the Slash Lazy D was under contract to deliver and he could not wait for the water to go down.

When the road herd had been selected and the mavericks in the round-up branded with the Slash Lazy D or whatever other brand seemed fair considering the physical characteristics of the animal and the group with which it was ranging, Harshaw had the cattle moved up the river a couple of miles to a valley of good grass. Here they were held while the ranch hands busied themselves with preparations for the journey. A wagon and harness were oiled, a chuck-box built, and a supply of groceries packed. Bridles and cinches were gone over carefully, ropes examined, and hobbles prepared.

The remuda for the trail outfit was chosen by Harshaw himself. He knew his horses as he knew the trail to Bear Cat. No galled back or lame leg could escape his keen eye. No half-tamed outlaw could slip into the cavvy. Every horse chosen was of proved stamina. Any known to be afraid of water remained at the ranch. Every rider would have to swim streams a dozen times and his safety would depend upon his mount. Tails were thinned, hoofs trimmed, manes cleared of witches' bridles, and ears swabbed to free them of ticks.

The start was made before dawn. Stars were shining by thousands when the chuck-wagon rolled down the road. The blatting of cows could be heard as the riders moved the phantom cattle from their bedding-ground.

The dogies were long-legged and shaggy, agile and wild as deer. They were small-boned animals, not fit for market until they were four-year-olds. On their gaunt frames was little meat, but they were fairly strong and very voracious. If not driven too hard these horned jackrabbits, as some wag had dubbed them, would take on flesh rapidly.

Harshaw chose five punchers to go with him--Dud, Big Bill, Tom Reeves, Hawks, and Bob. A light mess-wagon went with the outfit. Before noon the herd had grazed five miles down the river.

The young grass matted the ground. Back of the valley could be seen the greenclad mesas stretching to the foothills which hemmed in the Rio Blanco. The timber and the mesquite were in leaf. Wild roses and occasionally bluebells bloomed. The hillsides were white with the blossoms of service berries.

In the early afternoon they reached the ford. Harshaw trailed the cattle across in a long file. He watched the herd anxiously, for the stream was running strong from the freshet. After a short, hard swim the animals made the landing.

The mess-wagon rattled down to the ford as the last of the herd scrambled ashore.

"Think I'll put you at the reins, Dud," the cattleman said. "Head the horses upstream a little and keep 'em going."

All the other punchers except Bob were across the river with the herd.

Dud relieved the previous driver, gathered up reins and whip with competent hands, and put the horses at the river. They waded in through the shallows, breasted the deep water, and began to swim. Before they had gone three yards they were in difficulties. The force of the current carried the light wagon downstream. The whiplash cracked around the ears of the horses, but they could not make headway. Team, wagon, and driver began to drift down the river. Supplies, floating from the top of the load, were scattered in all directions.

Instantly six men became very busy. Rope loops flew out and tightened around the bed of the wagon. Others circled the necks of the horses. Dud dived into the river to lighten the load. Harshaw, Bob, and the cook rode into the shallow water and salvaged escaping food, while the riders on the other bank guided wagon and team ashore.

Dud, dripping like a mermaid, came to land with a grin. Under one arm a pasty sack of flour was tucked, under the other a smoked venison haunch. "An' I took a bath only yesterday," he lamented.

The food was sun-dried and the wagon repacked.

At Dry Creek, which was now a rushing torrent, Harshaw threw the cattle into a draw green with young grass and made camp for the night.

"We got neighbors," announced Big Bill, watching a thin column of smoke rising from the mesa back of them.

"Guess I'll drift over after supper," Harshaw said. "Maybe they can give me the latest news about high water down the river."

Hawks had just come in from the remuda. He gave information.

"I drifted over to their camp. An old friend, one of 'em. Gent by the name of Bandy Walker. He's found that outfit of he-men he was lookin' for."

"Yes," said the cattleman non-committally.

"One's a stranger. The other's another old friend of some o' the boys. Jake Houck he calls hisself."

Bob's heart shriveled within him. Two enemies scarcely a stone's throw away, and probably both of them knew he was here. Had they come to settle with him?

He dismissed this last fear. In Jake Houck's scheme of things he was not important enough to call for a special trip of vengeance.

"We'll leave 'em alone," Harshaw decided. "If any of them drop over we'll be civil. No trouble, boys, you understand."

But Houck's party did not show up, and before break of day the camp of the trail herd outfit was broken. The riders moved the herd up the creek to an open place where it could be easily crossed. From here the cattle drifted back toward the river. Dud was riding on the point, Hawks and Dillon on the drag.

In the late afternoon a gulch obstructed their path. It ran down at right angles to the Rio Blanco. Along the edge of this Harshaw rode till he found an easier descent. He drove the leaders into the ravine and started them up the other side of the trough to the mesa beyond. The cattle crowded so close that some of them were forced down the bed of the gorge instead of up the opposite bank.

Bob galloped along the edge and tried to head the animals back by firing his revolver in front from above. In this he was not successful. The gulch was narrow, and the pressure behind drove the foremost cattle on to the river.

The dogies waded in to drink. The push of the rear still impelled the ones in advance to move deeper into the water. Presently the leaders were swimming out into the stream. Those behind followed at heel.

Dillon flung his horse down into the ravine in the headlong fashion he had learned from months of hill riding. He cantered along it, splashing through shallow pools and ploughing into tangled brush. When he came within sight of the river the cattle were emerging from it upon a sandy bar that formed an island in midstream.

He kicked off his chaps, remounted, and headed into the water. The current was strong and Powder River already tired. But the bronco breasted the rushing waters gamely. It was swept downstream, fighting every inch of the way. When at last the Wyoming horse touched bottom, it was at the lower edge of the long bar.

Bob swung down into the water and led his mount ashore.

From the bank he had just left, Hawks called to him. "Want I should come over, or can you handle 'em?"

"Better stay there till I see if I can start 'em back," Bob shouted.

On Powder River he rounded up the cattle, a score or more of them, and drove them back into the stream. They went reluctantly, for they too were tired and the swim across had been a hard one. But after one or two had started the others followed.

The young cowpuncher did not like the look of the black rushing waters. He had known one horrible moment of terror while he was crossing, that moment during which he had been afraid Powder River would be swept beyond the point of the sand spit. Now he cringed at the thought of venturing into that flood again. He postponed the hazard, trying two or three starting-places tentatively before he selected one at the extreme upper point of the island.

His choice was a bad one. The bronco was carried down into a swirl of deep, angry water. So swift was the undertow that Powder River was dragged from beneath its rider. Bob caught at the mane of the horse and clung desperately to it with one hand. A second or two, and this was torn from his clutch.

Dillon was washed downstream. He went under, tried to cry for help, and swallowed several gulps of water. When he came to the surface again he was still close to the island, buffeted by the boiling torrent. It swept him to a bar of willow bushes. To these he clung with the frenzy of a drowning man.

After a time he let go one hand-hold and found another. Gradually he worked into the shallows and to land. He could see Powder River, far downstream, still fighting impotently against the pressure of the current.

Bob shuddered. If he lived a hundred years he would never have a closer escape from drowning. It gave him a dreadful sinking at the stomach even to look at the plunging Blanco. The river was like some fearful monster furiously seeking to devour.

The voice of Hawks came to him. "Stay there while I get the boss."

The dismounted cowboy watched Hawks ride away, then lay down in the hot sand and let the sun bake him. He felt sick and weak, as helpless as a blind and wobbly pup.

It may have been an hour later that he heard voices and looked across to the mouth of the ravine. Harshaw and Big Bill and Dud were there with Hawks. They were in a group working with ropes.

Harshaw rode into the river. He carried a coil of rope. Evidently two or more lariats had been tied together.

"Come out far as you can and catch this rope when I throw it," Harshaw told the marooned cowboy.

Bob ventured out among the willows, wading very carefully to make sure of his footing. The current swirled around his thighs and tugged at him.

The cattleman flung the rope. It fell short. He pulled it in and rewound the coil. This time he drove his horse into deeper water. The animal was swimming when the loop sailed across to the willows.

Dillon caught it, slipped it over his body, and drew the noose tight. A moment later he was being tossed about by the cross-currents. The lariat tightened. He was dragged under as the force of the torrent flung him into midstream. His body was racked by conflicting forces tugging at it. He was being torn in two, the victim of a raging battle going on to possess him. Now he was on his face, now on his back. For an instant he caught a glimpse of blue sunlit sky before he plunged down again into the black waters and was engulfed by them....

He opened his eyes. Dud's voice came from a long way.

"Comin' to all right. Didn't I tell you this bird couldn't drown?"

The mists cleared. Bob saw Dud's cheerful smile, and back of it the faces of Harshaw, Hawks, and Big Bill.

"You got me out," he murmured.

"Sure did, Bob. You're some drookit, but I reckon we can dry you like we did the grub," his riding mate said.

"Who got me?"

"Blame the boss."

"We all took a hand, boy," Harshaw explained. "It was quite some job. You were headed for Utah right swift. The boys rode in and claimed ownership. How you feelin'?"

"Fine," Bob answered, and he tried to demonstrate by rising.

"Hold on. What's yore rush?" Harshaw interrupted. "You're right dizzy, I expect. A fellow can't swallow the Blanco and feel like kickin' a hole in the sky right away. Take yore time, boy."

Bob remembered his mount. "Powder River got away from me--in the water." He said it apologetically.

"I'm not blamin' you for that," the boss said, and laid a kindly hand on Dillon's shoulder.

"Was it drowned?"

"I reckon we'll find that out later. Lucky you wasn't. That's a heap more important."

Bob was riding behind Dud fifteen minutes later in the wake of the herd. Hawks had gone back to learn what had become of Powder River.

Supper was ready when Buck reached camp. He was just in time to hear the cook's "Come an' get it." He reported to Harshaw.

"Horse got outa the river about a mile below the island. I scouted around some for it, but couldn't trail in the dark."

"All right, Buck. To-morrow Dud and Bob can ride back and get the bronc. We'll loaf along the trail and make a short day of it."

He sat down on his heels, reached for a tin plate and cup, and began one of the important duties of the day.

CHAPTER XXVI

CUTTING SIGN

Dud's observation, when he and Bob took the back trail along the river to find the missing bronco, confirmed that of Buck Hawks. He found the place where a horse had clawed its way out of the stream to the clay bank. From here it had wandered into the sage and turned toward the home ranch. The tracks showed that Powder River was moving slowly, grazing as it went.

"I reckon by noon we can say 'Hello!' to yore bronc," Dud prophesied. "No need to trail it. All we got to do is follow the river."

An hour later he drew up and swung from the saddle. "Now I wonder who we've had with us this glad mawnin'."

Dud stooped and examined carefully tracks in the mud. Bob joined him.

"Powder River ain't so lonesome now. Met up with friends, looks like. Takin' a li'l' journey north." The cowpuncher's blue eyes sparkled. The prosaic pursuit of a stray mount had of a sudden become Adventure.

"You mean--?"

"What do you read from this sign we've cut?"

Bob told his deductions. "Powder River met some one on horseback. The man got off. Here's his tracks."

"Fellow, use yore haid," admonished his friend. "Likewise yore eyes. You wouldn't say this track was made by the same man as this one, would you?"

"No. It's bigger."

"An' here's another, all wore off at the heel. We got three men anyhow. Which means also three horses. Point of fact there are four mounts, one to carry the pack."

"How do you know there are four?"

"They had four when they camped close to us night 'fore last."

Dillon felt a sinking at the pit of his stomach. "You think this is Houck's outfit?"

"That'd be my guess."

"An' that they've taken Powder River with them?"

"I'm doing better than guessin' about that. One of the party saw a bronc with an empty saddle an' tried to rope it. First time he missed, but he made good when he tried again."

"If I had yore imagination, Dud--"

"Straight goods. See here where the loop of the rope dragged along the top of the mud after the fellow missed his throw."

Bob saw the evidence after it had been pointed out to him. "But that don't prove he got Powder River next time he threw," he protested.

"Here's where that's proved." Dud showed him the impressions of two hoofs dug deep into the ground. "Powder River bucked after he was roped an' tried to break away. The other horse, like any good cowpony does, leaned back on the rope an' dug a toe-hold."

"Where's Houck going?"

"Brown's Park likely, from the way they're headed."

"What'll we do?"

"Why, drap in on them to-night kinda casual an' say 'Much obliged for roundin' up our stray bronc for us.'"

This programme did not appeal to Bob. In that camp were two enemies of his. Both of them also hated Dud. Houck and Walker were vindictive. It was not likely either of them would forget what they owed these two young fellows.

"Maybe we'd better ride back an' tell the boss first," he suggested.

"Maybe we'd better not," Hollister dissented. "By that time they'd be so far ahead we'd never catch 'em. No, sir. We'll leave a note here for the boss. Tack it to this cottonwood. If we don't show up in a reasonable time he'll trail back an' find out what for not."

"That'd do us a lot of good if Houck had dry-gulched us."

Dud laughed. "You're the lad with the imagination. Far as Houck goes, an' Bandy Walker, too, for that matter, I'll make you a present of the pair of 'em as two sure-enough bad eggs. But they've got to play the hands dealt 'em without knowin' what we're holdin'."

"They've prob'ly got rifles, an' we haven't."

"It's a cinch they've got rifles. But they won't dare use 'em. How do they know we're playin' this alone? First off, I'll mention that I sent Buck back to tell the boss we'd taken the trail after them. That puts it up to them to act reasonable whether they want to or not. Another thing. We surprise 'em. Give the birds no chance to talk it over. Not knowin' what to do, they do nothing. Ain't that good psycho-ology, as Blister says when he calls a busted flush?"

"Trouble is we're holdin' the busted flush."

"Sure, an' Houck'll figure we wouldn't 'a' trailed him unless we'd fixed the play right beforehand. His horse sense will tell him we wouldn't go that strong unless our cards was all blue. We're sittin' in the golden chair. O' course we'll give the birds a chance to save their faces--make it plain that we're a whole lot obliged to 'em for lookin' after Powder River for us."

Bob's sagging head went up. He had remembered Blister's injunction. "All right, Dud. Turn yore wolf loose. I'll ride along an' back the bluff."

They left the river and climbed to the mesa. The trail took them through a rough country of sagebrush into the hills of greasewood and piñon. In mid-afternoon they shot a couple of grouse scuttling through the bunch grass. Now and again they started deer, but they were not looking for meat. A brown bear peered at them from a thicket and went crashing away with an awkward gait that carried it over the ground fast.

From a summit they saw before them a thin spiral of smoke rising out of an arroyo.

"I reckon that's the end of the trail," Dud drawled. "We're real pleased to meet up with you, Mr. Houck. Last time I had the pleasure was a sorta special picnic in yore honor. You was ridin' a rail outa Bear Cat an' being jounced up considerable."

"If he thinks of that--"

"He'll think of it," Dud cut in cheerfully. "He's gritted his teeth a lot of times over that happenstance, Mr. Houck has. It tastes right bitter in his mouth every time he recollects it. First off, soon as he sees us, he'll figure that his enemies have been delivered into his hand. It'll be up to us to change his mind. If you're all set, Sure-Shot, we'll drift down an' start the peace talk."

Bob moistened his dry lips. "All set."

They rode down the hillside, topped another rise, and descended into the draw where a camp was pitched.

A young fellow chopping firewood moved forward to meet them.

"There's Powder River with the broncs," Bob said in a low voice to his friend.

"Yes," said Dud, and he swung from the saddle.

"'Lo, fellows. Where you headed for?" the wood-chopper asked amiably.

Two men were sitting by the fire. They waited, in an attitude of listening. Dusk had fallen. The glow of the fire lighted their faces, but the men who had just ridden up were in the gathering darkness beyond the circle lit by the flames.

"We came to get Powder River, the bronc you rounded up for us," Hollister said evenly. "Harshaw sent us ahead. We're sure much obliged to you for yore trouble."

The larger of the two men by the fire rose and straddled forward. He looked at Dud and he looked at Bob. His face was a map of conflicting emotions.

"Harshaw sent you, did he?"

"Yes, sir. Bob had bad luck in the river an' the horse got away from him. I reckon the pony was lightin' out for home when yore rope stopped the journey." The voice of Dud was cheerful and genial. It ignored any little differences of the past with this hook-nosed individual whose eyes were so sultry and passionate.

"So he sent you two fellows, did he? I'll say he's a good picker. I been wantin' to meet you," he said harshly.

"Same here, Houck." Bandy Walker pushed to the front, jerking a forty-five from its scabbard.

Houck's hand shot forward and caught the cowpuncher by the wrist. "What's bitin' you, Bandy? Time enough for that when I give the word."

The yellow teeth of the bow-legged man showed in a snarl of rage and pain. "I'd 'a' got Dillon if you'd let me be."

"Didn't you hear this guy say Harshaw sent them here? Use yore horse sense, man." Houck turned to Hollister. "Yore bronc's with the others. The saddle's over by that rock. Take 'em an' hit the trail."

In sullen rage Houck watched Dud saddle and cinch. Not till the Slash Lazy D riders were ready to go did he speak again.

"Tell you what I'll do," he proposed. "Get down off'n yore horses, both o' you, an' I'll whale the daylight outa the pair of you. Bandy'll stay where he's at an' not mix in."

Hollister looked at Bandy, and he knew the fellow's trigger finger itched. There was not a chance in the world that he would stand back and play fair. But that was not the reason why Dud declined the invitation. He had not come to get into trouble. He meant to keep out of it if he could.

"Last fellow that licked me hauled me down off'n my bronc, Mr. Houck," Dud answered, laughing. "No, sir. We got to turn down that invite to a whalin'. The boss gave us our orders straight. No trouble a-tall. I expect if it was our own say-so we might accommodate you. But not the way things are."

"No guts, either of you. Ain't two to one good enough?" jeered Houck angrily.

"Not good enough right now. Maybe some other time, Mr. Houck," Dud replied, his temper unruffled.

"You want it to be twelve to one, like it was last time, eh?"

"Harshaw will be lookin' for us, so we'll be sayin' good-evenin'," the rider for the Slash Lazy D said quietly.

He turned his horse to go, as did his companion. Houck cursed them both bitterly. While they rode into the gloom Bob's heart lifted to his throat. Goosequills ran up and down his spine. Would one of his enemies shoot him in the back? He could hardly keep from swinging his head to make sure they were not aiming at him. He wanted to touch his mount with a spur to quicken the pace.

But Dud, riding by his side, held his bronco to the slow even road gait of the traveler who has many miles to cover. Apparently he had forgotten the existence of the furious, bitter men who were watching their exit from the scene. Bob set his teeth and jogged along beside him.

Not till they were over the hill did either of them speak.

"Wow!" grunted Dud as he wiped the sweat from his face. "I'm sure enough glad to have that job done with. My back aches right between the shoulder blades where a bullet might 'a' hit it."

Bob relaxed in the saddle. He felt suddenly faint. Even now he found himself looking round apprehensively to make sure that a man carrying a rifle was not silhouetted on the hilltop against the sky-line.

CHAPTER XXVII

PARTNERS IN PERIL

Into the office of Blister Haines, J. P., a young man walked. He was a berry-brown youth, in the trappings of the range-rider, a little thin and stringy, perhaps, but well-poised and light-stepping.

With one swift glance the fat man swept his visitor from head to foot and liked what he saw. The lean face was tanned, the jaw firm, the eye direct and steady. There was no need to tell this man to snap up his head. Eight months astride a saddle in the sun and wind had wrought a change in Robert Dillon.

"'Lo, Red Haid," the justice sang out squeakily. "How's yore good health? I heerd you was d-drowned. Is you is, or is you ain't? Sit down an' rest yore weary bones."

"I took a swim," admitted Bob. "The boys fished me out while I was still kickin'."

"Rivers all high?"

"Not so high as they were. We noticed quite a difference on the way back."

"Well, s-sit down an' tell me all about it. How do you like ridin', Texas man?"

"Like it fine."

"All yore troubles blown away?"

"Most of 'em. I'm a long way from being a wolf yet, though."

"So? B-by the way, there's a friend of yours in town--Jake Houck."

There was a moment's pause. "Did he say he was my friend?" asked Bob.

"Didn't mention it. Thought maybe you'd like to know he's here. It's not likely he'll trouble you."

"I'd be glad to be sure of that. Dud an' I had a little run-in with him last month. He wasn't hardly in a position then to rip loose, seein' as he had my horse an' saddle in his camp an' didn't want Harshaw in his wool. So he cussed us out an' let it go at that. Different now. I'm playin' a lone hand--haven't got the boss back of me."

"F-fellow drifted in from Vernal yesterday," the justice piped, easing himself in his chair. "Told a s-story might interest you. Said Jake Houck had some trouble with a y-young Ute buck over a hawss. Houck had been drinkin', I reckon. Anyhow he let the Injun have it in the stomach. Two-three shots outa his six-gun. The Utes claimed it was murder. Jake he didn't wait to adjust no claims, but lit out on the jump."

"Won't the Government get him?"

The fat man shrugged. "Oh, well, a Ute's a Ute. Point is that Houck, who always was a t-tough nut, has gone bad since the boys rode him on a rail. He's proud as Lucifer, an' it got under his hide. He's kinda cuttin' loose an' givin' the devil in him free rein. Wouldn't surprise me if he turned into a killer of the worst kind."

Bob's eyes fastened to his uneasily. "You think he's--after me?"

"I think he'll d-do to watch."

"Yes, but--"

Blister rolled a cigarette and lit it before he asked casually, "Stayin' long in town?"

"Leavin' to-day for the ranch."

"What size gun you carry for rattlesnakes?"

"Mine's a forty-five." Bob took it out, examined it, and thrust the weapon between his trousers and his shirt. If he felt any mental disturbance he did not show it except in the anxious eyes.

Blister changed the subject lightly. "Hear anything ab-b-bout the Utes risin'? Any talk of it down the river?"

"Some. The same old stuff. I've been hearin' it for a year."

"About ripe, looks like. This business of Houck ain't gonna help any. There's a big bunch of 'em over there in the hills now. They've been runnin' off stock from outlying ranches."

"Sho! The Indians are tamed. They'll never go on the warpath again, Blister."

"J-just once more, an' right soon now."

The justice gave his reasons for thinking so, while Bob listened rather inattentively. The boy wanted to ask him about June, but he remembered what his fat friend had told him last time he mentioned her to him. He was still extremely sensitive about his failure to protect his girl-wife and he did not want to lay himself open to snubs.

Bob sauntered from the office, and before he had walked a dozen steps came face to face with June. She was coming out of a grocery with some packages in her arms. The color flooded her dusky cheeks. She looked at him, startled, like a fawn poised for flight.

During the half-year since he had seen her June had been transformed. She had learned the value of clothes. No longer did she wear a shapeless sack for a dress. Her shoes were small and shapely, her black hair neatly brushed and coiffed. The months had softened and developed the lines of the girlish figure. Kindness and friendliness had vitalized the expression of the face and banished its sullenness. The dark eyes, with just a hint of wistful appeal, were very lovely.

Both of them were taken unawares. Neither knew what to do or say. After the first instant of awkwardness June moved forward and passed him silently.

Bob went down the street, seeing nothing. His pulses trembled with excitement. This charming girl was his wife, or at least she once had been for an hour. She had sworn to love, honor, and obey him. There had been a moment in the twilight when they had come together to the verge of something divinely sweet and wonderful, when they had gazed into each other's eyes and had looked across the boundary of the promised land.

If he had only kept the faith with her! If he had stood by her in the hour of her great need! The bitterness of his failure ate into the soul of the range-rider as it had done already a thousand times. It did not matter what he did. He could never atone for the desertion on their wedding day. The horrible fact was written in blood. It could not be erased. Forever it would have to stand between them. An unbridgeable gulf separated them, created by his shameless weakness.

When Bob came to earth he found himself clumping down the river road miles from town. He turned and walked back to Bear Cat. His cowpony was at the corral and he was due at the ranch by night.

Young Dillon's thoughts had been so full of June and his relation to her that it was with a shock of surprise he saw Jake Houck swing out from the hotel porch and bar the way.

"Here's where you 'n' me have a settlement," the Brown's Park man announced.

"I'm not lookin' for trouble," Bob said, and again he was aware of a heavy sinking at the stomach.

"You never are," jeered Houck. "But it's right here waitin' for you, Mr. Rabbit Heart."

Bob heard the voices of children coming down the road on their way from school. He knew that two or three loungers were watching him and Houck from the doors of adjacent buildings. He was aware of a shouting and commotion farther up the street. But these details reached him only through some subconscious sense of absorption. His whole attention was concentrated on the man in front of him who was lashing himself into a fighting rage.

What did Houck mean to do? Would he throw down on him and kill? Or would he attack with his bare hands? Fury and hatred boiled into the big man's face. His day had come. He would have his revenge no matter what it cost. Bob could guess what hours of seething rage had filled Houck's world. The freckle-faced camp flunkey had interfered with his plans, snatched from him the bride he had chosen, brought upon him a humiliation that must be gall to his proud spirit whenever he thought of Bear Cat's primitive justice. He would pay his debt in full.

The disturbance up the street localized itself. A woman picked up her skirts and flew wildly into a store. A man went over the park fence almost as though he had been shot out of a catapult. Came the crack of a revolver. Some one shouted explanation. "Mad dog!"

A brindle bull terrier swung round the corner and plunged forward. With bristling hair and foaming mouth, it was a creature of horrible menace.

Houck leaped for the door of the hotel. Bob was at his heels, in a panic to reach safety.

A child's scream rang out. Dillon turned. The school children were in wild flight, but one fair-haired little girl stood as though paralyzed in the middle of the road. She could not move out of the path of the wild beast bearing down upon her.

Instinctively Bob's mind functioned. The day was warm and his coat hung over an arm. He stepped into the road as the brindle bull came opposite the hotel. The coat was swung out expertly and dropped over the animal's head. The cowpuncher slipped to his knees, arms tightening and fingers feeling for the throat of the writhing brute struggling blindly.

Its snapping jaws just missed his hand. Man and dog rolled over into the dust together. Its hot breath fanned Bob's face. Again he was astride of the dog. His fingers had found its throat at last. They tightened, in spite of its horrible muscular contortions to get free.

There came a swish of skirts, the soft pad of running feet. A girl's voice asked, "What shall I do?"

It did not at that moment seem strange to Dillon that June was beside him, her face quick with tremulous anxiety. He spoke curtly, as one who gives orders, panting under the strain of the effort to hold the dog.

"My gun."

She picked the forty-five up from where it had fallen. Their eyes met. The girl did swiftly what had to be done. It was not until she was alone in her room half an hour later that the thought of it made her sick.

Bob rose, breathing deep. For an instant their eyes held fast. She handed him the smoking revolver. Neither of them spoke.

From every door, so it seemed, people poured and converged toward them. Excited voices took up the tale, disputed, explained, offered excuses. Everybody talked except June and Bob.

Blister rolled into the picture. "Dawg-gone my hide if I ever see anything to b-beat that. He was q-quick as c-chain lightnin', the boy was. Johnny on the spot. Jumped the critter s-slick as a whistle." His fat hand slapped Bob's shoulder. "The boy was sure there with both hands and feet."

"What about June?" demanded Mollie. "Seems to me she wasn't more'n a mile away while you men-folks were skedaddlin' for cover."

The fat man's body shook with laughter. "The boys didn't s-stop to make any farewell speeches, tha's a fact. I traveled some my own self, but I hadn't hardly got started before Houck was outa sight, an' him claimin' he was lookin' for trouble too."

"Not that kind of trouble," grinned Mike the bartender. He could afford to laugh, for since he had been busy inside he had not been one of the vanishing heroes. "Don't blame him a mite either. If it comes to that I'm givin' the right of way to a mad dog every time."

"Hmp!" snorted Mollie. "What would 'a' happened to little Maggie Wiggins if Dillon here had felt that way?"

Bob touched Blister on the arm and whispered in his ear. "Get me to the doc. I gotta have a bite cauterized."

It was hardly more than a scratch, but while the doctor was making his preparations the puncher went pale as service-berry blossoms. He sat down, grown suddenly faint. The bite of a mad dog held sinister possibilities.

Blister fussed around cheerfully until the doctor had finished. "Every silver l-lining has got its cloud, don't you r-reckon? Here's Jake Houck now, all s-set for a massacree. He's a wolf, an' it's his night to howl. Don't care who knows it, by gum. Hands still red from one killin'. A rip-snortin' he-wolf from the bad lands! Along comes Mr. Mad Dog, an' Jake he hunts his hole with his tail hangin'. Kinda takes the tuck outa him. Bear Cat wouldn't hardly stand for him gunnin' you now, Bob. Not after you tacklin' that crazy bull terrier to save the kids. He'll have to postpone that settlement he was promisin' you so big."

The puncher voiced the fear in his mind. "Do folks always go mad when they're bit by a mad dog, doctor?"

"Not a chance hardly," Dr. Tuckerman reassured. "First place, the dog probably wasn't mad. Second place, 't wa'n't but a scratch and we got at it right away. No, sir. You don't need to worry a-tall."

Outside the doctor's office Blister and Bob met Houck. The Brown's Park man scowled at the puncher. "I'm not through with you. Don't you think it! Jus' because you had a lucky fluke escape--"

"Tacklin' a crazy wild beast whilst you an' me were holin' up," Blister interjected.

Houck looked at the fat man bleakly. "You in this, Mr. Meddler? If you're not declarin' yoreself in, I'd advise you to keep out."

Blister Haines laughed amiably with intent to conciliate. "What's the use of nursin' a grudge against the boy, Houck? He never did you any harm. S-shake hands an' call it off."

"You manage yore business if you've got any. I'll run mine," retorted Houck. To Bob he said meaningly as he turned away, "One o' these days, young fellow."

The threat chilled Dillon, but it was impossible just now to remain depressed. He rode back to the ranch in a glow of pleasure. Thoughts of June filled every crevice of his mind. They had shared an adventure together, had been partners in a moment of peril. She could not wholly despise him now. He was willing to admit that Houck had been right when he called it a fluke. The chance might not have come to him, or he might not have taken it. The scream of little Maggie Wiggins had saved the day for him. If he had had time to think--but fortunately impulse had swept him into action before he could let discretion stop him.

He lived over again joyfully that happy moment when June had stood before him pulsing with life, eager, fear-filled, tremulous. He had taken the upper hand and she had accepted his leadership. The thing his eyes had told her to do she had done. He would remember that--he would remember it always.

Nor did it dim his joy that he felt himself to be a fraud. It had taken no pluck to do what he did, since he had only obeyed a swift dominating mental reaction to the situation. The real courage had been hers.

He knew now that he would have to take her with him in his thoughts on many a long ride whether he wanted to or not.

CHAPTER XXVIII

JUNE IS GLAD

June turned away from the crowd surrounding the dead mad dog and walked into the hotel. The eyes of more than one man followed the slim, graceful figure admiringly. Much water had run down the Rio Blanco since the days when she had been the Cinderella of Piceance Creek. The dress she wore was simple, but through it a vivid personality found expression. No longer was she a fiery little rebel struggling passionately against a sense of inferiority. She had come down from the hills to a country filled with laughter and the ripple of brooks.

The desire to be alone was strong upon her--alone with the happy thoughts that pushed themselves turbulently through her mind. She was tremulous with excitement. For she hoped that she had found a dear friend who had been lost.

Once, on that dreadful day she would never forget, June had told Jake Houck that Bob Dillon was as brave as he. It had been the forlorn cry of a heart close to despair. But the words were true. She hugged that knowledge to her bosom. Jake had run away while Bob had stayed to face the mad dog. And not Jake alone! Blister Haines had run, with others of tested courage. Bob had outgamed him. He admitted it cheerfully.

Maybe the others had not seen little Maggie Wiggins. But Bob had seen her. The child's cry had carried him back into the path of the brindle terrier. June was proud, not only of what he had done, but of the way he had done it. His brain had functioned swiftly, his motions been timed exactly. Only coördination of all his muscles had enabled him to down the dog so expertly and render the animal harmless.

During the months since she had seen him June had thought often of the man whose name she legally bore. After the first few hours there had been no harshness in her memories of him. He was good. She had always felt that. There was something fine and sweet and generous in his nature. Without being able to reason it out, she was sure that no fair judgment would condemn him wholly because at a crisis he had failed to exhibit a quality the West holds in high esteem and considers fundamental. Into her heart there had come a tender pity for him, a maternal sympathy that flowed out whenever he came into her musings.

Poor boy! She had learned to know him so well. He would whip himself with his own scorn. This misadventure that had overwhelmed him might frustrate all the promise of his life. He was too sensitive. If he lost heart--if he gave up--

She had longed to send a message of hope to him, but she had been afraid that he might misunderstand it. Her position was ambiguous. She was his wife. The law said so. But of course she was not his wife at all except in name. They were joint victims of evil circumstance, a boy and a girl who had rushed to a foolish extreme. Some day one or the other of them would ask the law to free them of the tie that technically bound them together.

Now she need not worry about him any longer. He had proved his mettle publicly. The court of common opinion would reverse the verdict it had passed upon him. He would go out of her life and she need no longer feel responsible for the shadow that had fallen over his.

So she reasoned consistently, but something warm within her gave the lie to this cold disposition of their friendship. She did not want to let him go his way. She had no intention of letting him go. She could not express it, but in some intangible way he belonged to her. As a brother might, she told herself; not because Blister Haines had married them when they had gone to him in their hurry to solve a difficulty. Not for that reason at all, but because from the first hour of meeting, their spirits had gone out to each other in companionship. Bob had understood her. He had been the only person to whom she could confide her troubles, the only pal she had ever known.

Standing before the glass in her small bedroom, June saw that her eyes were shining, the blood glowing through the dusky cheeks. Joy had vitalized her whole being, had made her beautiful as a wild rose. For the moment at least she was lyrically happy.

This ardor still possessed June when she went into the dining-room to make the set-ups for supper. She sang snatches of "Dixie" and "My Old Kentucky Home" as she moved about her work. She hummed the chorus of "Juanita." From that she drifted to the old spiritual "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."

A man was washing his hands in the tin basin provided outside for guests of the hotel. Through the window came to him the lilt of the fresh young voice.

"Swing low, sweet chariot, Comin' fo' to carry me home."

The look of sullen, baffled rage on the man's dark face did not lighten. He had been beaten again. His revenge had been snatched from him almost at the moment of triumph. If that mad dog had not come round the corner just when it did, he would have evened the score between him and Dillon. June had seen the whole thing. She had been a partner in the red-headed boy's ovation. Houck ground his teeth in futile anger.

Presently he slouched into the dining-room.

Mollie saw him and walked across the room to June. "I'll wait on him if you don't want to."

The waitress shook her head. "No, I don't want him to think I'm afraid of him. I'm not, either. I'll wait on him."

June took Houck's order and presently served it.

His opaque eyes watched her in the way she remembered of old. They were still bold and possessive, still curtained windows through which she glimpsed volcanic passion.

"You can tell that squirt Dillon I ain't through with him yet, not by a jugful," he growled.

"If you have anything to tell Bob Dillon, say it to him," June answered, looking at him with fearless, level eyes of scorn.

"An' I ain't through with you, I'd have you know."

June finished putting his order on the table. "But I'm through with you, Jake Houck," she said, very quietly.

"Don't think it. Don't you think it for a minute," he snarled. "I'm gonna--"

He stopped, sputtering with fury. June had turned and walked into the kitchen. He rose, evidently intending to follow her.

Mollie Larson barred the way, a grim, square figure with the air of a brigadier-general.

"Sit down, Jake Houck," she ordered. "Or get out. I don't care which. But don't you think I'll set by an' let you pester that girl. If you had a lick o' sense you'd know it ain't safe."

There was nothing soft about Houck. He was a hard and callous citizen, and he lived largely outside the law and other people's standards of conduct. But he knew when he had run up against a brick wall. Mrs. Larson had only to lift her voice and half a dozen men would come running. He was in the country of the enemy, so to say.

"Am I pesterin' her?" he demanded. "Can't I talk to a girl I knew when she was a baby? Have I got to get an O.K. from you before I say 'Good-mawnin' to her?"

"Her father left June in my charge. I'm intendin' to see you let her alone. Get that straight."

Houck gave up with a shrug of his big shoulders. He sat down and attacked the steak on his plate.

CHAPTER XXIX

"INJUNS"

Bob swung down from the saddle in front of the bunkhouse.

Reeves came to the door and waved a hand. "'Lo, Sure-Shot! What's new in Bear Cat?"

"Fellow thinkin' of startin' a drug-store. Jim Weaver is the happy dad of twins. Mad dog shot on Main Street. New stage-line for Marvine planned. Mr. Jake Houck is enjoyin' a pleasant visit to our little city. I reckon that's about all."

Dud had joined Tom in the doorway. "Meet up with Mr. Houck?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Have any talk?"

"He had some, but he hadn't hardly got to goin' good when the mad dog sashayed up the street. Mr. Houck he adjourned the meetin' immediate."

"More important business, I reckon," Dud grinned.

"He didn't mention it, but all those present were in a kinda hurry."

"So's some one else." Reeves nodded his head toward a small cloud of dust approaching the ranch.

A rider galloped up and dragged his mount to a halt. "Utes have broke out! Killed a trapper on Squaw Creek! Burned two nesters' houses!" His voice was high and excited.

"Rumor?" asked Dud.

"No, sir. I talked with a fellow that seen the body. Met two families that had lit out from Squaw Creek. They're sure enough on the warpath."

Harshaw took the matter seriously. He gave crisp orders to his riders to cover the creeks and warn all settlers to leave for Bear Cat or Meeker. Dud and Bob were assigned Milk Creek.

It was hard for the young fellows, as they rode through a land of warm sunshine, to believe that there actually was another Indian outbreak. It had been ten years since the Meeker massacre and the defeat of Major Thornburg's troops. The country had begun to settle up. The Utes knew that their day was done, though they still came up occasionally from the reservation on illicit hunting trips.

This very country over which they were riding was the scene of the Thornburg battle-field. The Indians had lain in ambush and waited for the troops to come over the brow of the rise. At the first volley the commander of the soldiers had fallen mortally wounded. The whites, taken by surprise, fell back in disorder. The Utes moved up on them from both sides and the trapped men fled.

"Must 'a' been right about here Thornburg was shot," explained Dud. "Charley Mason was one o' the soldiers an' he told me all about it. Captain Jack was in charge of this bunch of Utes. Seems he had signal fires arranged with those at the agency an' they began their attacks at the same time. Charley claimed they didn't know there was Injuns within twenty miles when the bullets began to sing. Says he ran five miles before he took a breath."

Bob looked around apprehensively. History might repeat itself. At this very moment the Utes might be lying in the draw ready to fire on them. He was filled with a sudden urgent desire to get through with their job and turn the heads of their ponies toward Bear Cat.

"Makes a fellow feel kinda squeamish," Dud said. "Let's move, Bob."

They carried the word to the settlers on the creek and turned in the direction of Bear Cat. They reached town late and found the place bustling with excitement. Families of settlers were arriving in wagons and on horseback from all directions. There were rumors that the Indians were marching on the town. A company of militia had been ordered to the scene by the Governor of the State and was expected to arrive on the second day from this.

Camp-fires were burning in the park plaza and round them were grouped men, women, and children in from the ranches. On all the roads leading to town sentries were stationed. Others walked a patrol along the riverbank and along the skirts of the foothills.

Three or four cowpunchers had been celebrating the declaration of war. In the community was a general feeling that the Utes must be put down once for all. In spite of the alarm many were glad that the unrest had come to an issue at last.

Bob and Dud tied their horses to a hitching-rack and climbed the fence into the park. Blister came out of the shadows to meet them.

"W-whad I tell you, Texas man?" he asked of Bob. "Show-down at last, like I said."

Into the night lifted a startled yell. "Here come the Injuns!"

Taut nerves snapped. Wails of terror rose here and there. A woman fainted. The sound of a revolver shot rang out.

One of the roisterers, who had been loud in his threats of what he meant to do to the Indians, lost his braggadocio instantly. He leaped for the saddle of the nearest horse and dug his spurs home. In his fuddled condition he made a mistake. He had chosen, as a mount upon which to escape, the fence that encircled the park.

"Gid ap! Gid ap!" he screamed.

"Yore bronc is some balky, ain't it, Jud?" Hollister asked. He had already discovered that the panic had been caused by a false cry of "Wolf" raised by one of the fence rider's companions.

"S-some one hitched it to a post," Blister suggested.

"Ride him, puncher," urged Bob. "Stick to yore saddle if he does buck."

Jud came off the fence sheepishly. "I was aimin' to go get help," he explained.

"Where was you going for it--to Denver?" asked Blister.

The night wore itself out. With the coming of day the spirits of the less hardy revived. The ranchers on the plaza breakfasted in groups, after which their children were bundled off to school. Scouts rode out to learn the whereabouts of the Utes and others to establish contact with the approaching militia.

Harshaw organized a company of rangers made up mostly of cowpunchers from the river ranches. During the day more of these drifted in. By dusk he had a group of forty hard-riding young fellows who could shoot straight and were acquainted with the country over which they would have to operate. Blister was second in command. All of the Slash Lazy D riders had enlisted except one who had recently broken a leg.

Scouts brought in word that the Utes had swung round Bear Cat and were camped about thirty miles up the river. Harshaw moved out to meet them. He suspected the Indians of planning to ambush the militia before the soldiers could join forces with the rangers.

Bob had joined the rangers with no enthusiasm. He had enlisted because of pressure both within and without. He would have been ashamed not to offer himself. Moreover, everybody seemed to assume he would go. But he would much rather have stayed at Bear Cat with the home guards. From what he had picked up, he was far from sure that the Utes were to blame this time. The Houck killing, for instance. And that was not the only outrage they had endured. It struck him more like a rising of the whites. They had provoked the young bucks a good deal, and a sheriff's posse had arrested some of them for being off the reservation hunting. Wise diplomacy might at least have deferred the conflict.

During the bustle of preparing to leave, Bob's spirits were normal even though his nerves were a little fluttery. As they rode out of town he caught sight for a moment of a slim, dark girl in a blue gingham at the door of the hotel. She waved a hand toward the group of horsemen. It was Dud who answered the good-bye. He had already, Bob guessed, said a private farewell of his own to June. At any rate, his friend had met Hollister coming out of the hotel a few minutes before. The cowpuncher's eyes were shining and a blue skirt was vanishing down the passage. There had been a queer ache in Bob Dillon's heart. He did not blame either of them. Of course June would prefer Dud to him. Any girl in her senses would. He had all the charm of gay and gallant youth walking in the sunshine.

None the less it hurt and depressed him that there should be a private understanding between his friend and June. A poignant jealousy stabbed him. There was nothing in his character to attract a girl like June of swift and pouncing passion. He was too tame, too fearful. Dud had a spice of the devil in him. It flamed out unexpectedly. Yet he was reliable too. This clean, brown man, fair-haired and steady-eyed, riding with such incomparable ease, would do to tie to, in the phrase of the country. Small wonder a girl's heart turned to him.

CHAPTER XXX

A RECRUIT JOINS THE RANGERS

Harshaw did not, during the first forty-eight hours after leaving Bear Cat, make contact with either the Indians or the militia. He moved warily, throwing out scouts as his party advanced. At night he posted sentries carefully to guard against a surprise attack. It was not the habit of the tribes to assault in the darkness, but he was taking no chances. It would be easy to fall into an ambush, but he had no intention of letting the rangers become the victims of carelessness.

At the mouth of Wolf Creek a recruit joined the company. He rode up after camp had been made for the night.

"Jake Houck," Bob whispered to Dud.

"Who's boss of this outfit?" the big man demanded of Blister after he had swung from the saddle.

"Harshaw. You'll find him over there with the cavvy."

Houck straddled across to the remuda.

"Lookin' for men to fight the Utes?" he asked brusquely of the owner of the Slash Lazy D brand.

"Yes, sir."

"If you mean business an' ain't bully-pussin' I'll take a hand," the Brown's Park man said, and both voice and manner were offensive.

The captain of the rangers met him eye to eye. He did not like this fellow. His reputation was bad. In the old days he had been a rustler, rumor said. Since the affair of the Tolliver girl he had been very sulky and morose. This had culminated in the killing of the Ute. What the facts were about this Harshaw did not know. The man might be enlisting to satisfy a grudge or to make himself safe against counter-attack by helping to drive the Indians back to the reservation. The point that stood out was that Houck was a first-class fighting man. That was enough.

"We mean business, Houck. Glad to have you join us. But get this straight. I'll not have you startin' trouble in camp. If you've got a private quarrel against any of the boys it will have to wait."

"I ain't aimin' to start anything," growled Houck. "Not till this job's finished."

"Good enough. Hear or see anything of the Utes as you came?"

"No."

"Which way you come?"

Houck told him. Presently the two men walked back toward the chuck-wagon.

"Meet Mr. Houck, boys, any of you that ain't already met him," said Harshaw by way of introduction. "He's going to trail along with us for a while."

The situation was awkward. Several of those present had met Houck only as the victim of their rude justice the night that June Tolliver had swum the river to escape him. Fortunately the cook at that moment bawled out that supper was ready.

Afterward Blister had a word with Bob and Dud while he was arranging sentry duty with them.

"Wish that b-bird hadn't come. He's here because he wants to drive the Utes outa the country before they get him. The way I heard it he had no business to kill that b-buck. Throwed down on him an' killed him onexpected. I didn't c-come to pull Jake Houck's chestnuts outa the fire for him. Not none. He ain't lookin' for to round up the Injuns and herd 'em back to the reservation. He's allowin' to kill as many as he can."

"Did anybody see him shoot the Ute?" asked Bob.

"Seems not. They was back of a stable. When folks got there the Ute was down, but still alive. He claimed he never made a move to draw. Houck's story was that he shot in self-defense. Looked fishy. The Injun's gun wasn't in s-sight anywheres."

"Houck's a bad actor," Dud said.

"Yes." Blister came back to the order of the day. "All right, boys. Shifts of three hours each, then. T-turn an' turn about. You two take this knoll here. If you see anything movin' that looks suspicious, blaze away. We'll c-come a-runnin'."

Bob had drunk at supper two cups of strong coffee instead of his usual one. His thought had been that the stimulant would tend to keep him awake on duty. The effect the coffee had on him was to make his nerves jumpy. He lay on the knoll, rifle clutched fast in his hands, acutely sensitive to every sound, to every hazy shadow of the night. The very silence was sinister. His imagination peopled the sage with Utes, creeping toward him with a horrible and deadly patience. Chills tattooed up and down his spine.

He pulled out the old silver watch he carried and looked at the time. It lacked five minutes of ten o'clock. The watch must have stopped. He held it to his ear and was surprised at the ticking. Was it possible that he had been on sentry duty only twelve minutes? To his highly strung nerves it had seemed like hours.

A twig snapped. His muscles jumped. He waited, gun ready for action, eyes straining into the gloom. Something rustled and sped away swiftly. It must have been a rabbit or perhaps a skunk. But for a moment his heart had been in his throat.

Again he consulted the watch. Five minutes past ten! Impossible, yet true. In that eternity of time only a few minutes had slipped away.

He resolved not to look at his watch again till after eleven. Meanwhile he invented games to divert his mind from the numbing fear that filled him. He counted the definite objects that stood out of the darkness--the clumps of sage, the greasewood bushes, the cottonwood trees by the river. It was his duty to patrol the distance between the knoll and those trees at intervals. Each time he crept to the river with a thumping heart. Those bushes--were they really willows or Indians waiting to slay him when he got closer?

Fear is paralyzing. It pushes into the background all the moral obligations. Half a dozen times the young ranger was on the point of waking Dud to tell him that he could not stand it alone. He recalled Blister's injunctions. But what was the use of throwing back his head and telling himself he was made in the image of God when his fluttering pulses screamed denial, when his heart pumped water instead of blood?

He stuck it out. How he never knew. But somehow he clamped his teeth and went through. As he grew used to it, his imagination became less active and tricky. There were moments, toward the end of his vigil, when he could smile grimly at the terror that had obsessed him. He was a born coward, but he did not need to let anybody know it. It would always be within his power to act game whether he was or not.

At one o'clock he woke Dud. That young man rolled out of his blanket grumbling amiably. "Fine business! Why don't a fellow ever know when he's well off? Me, I might be hittin' the hay at Bear Cat or Meeker instead of rollin' out to watch for Utes that ain't within thirty or forty miles of here likely. Fellow, next war I stay at home."

Bob slipped into his friend's warm blanket. He had no expectation of sleeping, but inside of five minutes his eyes had closed and he was off.

The sound of voices wakened him. Dud was talking to the jingler who had just come off duty. The sunlight was pouring upon him. He jumped up in consternation.

"I musta overslept," Bob said.

Dud grinned. "Some. Fact is, I hadn't the heart to waken you when you was poundin' yore ear so peaceful an' tuneful."

"You stood my turn, too."

"Oh, well. It was only three hours. That's no way to divide the night anyhow."

They were eating breakfast when a messenger rode into camp. He was from Major Sheahan of the militia. That officer sent word that the Indians were in Box Cañon. He had closed one end and suggested that the rangers move into the other and bottle the Utes.

Harshaw broke camp at once and started for the cañon. A storm blew up, a fierce and pelting hail. The company took refuge in a cottonwood grove. The stones were as large as good-sized plums, and in three minutes the ground was covered. Under the stinging ice bullets the horses grew very restless. More than one went plunging out into the open and had to be forced back to shelter by the rider. Fortunately the storm passed as quickly as it had come up. The sun broke through the clouds and shone warmly upon rivulets of melted ice pouring down to the Blanco.

Scouts were thrown forward once more and the rangers swung into the hills toward Box Cañon.

"How far?" Bob asked Tom Reeves.

"'Bout half an hour now, I reckon. Hope we get there before the Injuns have lit out."

Privately Bob hoped they would not. He had never been under fire and his throat dried at the anticipation.

"Sure," he answered. "We're humpin' along right lively. Be there in time, I expect. Too bad if we have to chase 'em again all over the map."

Box Cañon is a sword slash cut through the hills. From wall to wall it is scarcely forty feet across. One looks up to a slit of blue sky above.

Harshaw halted close to the entrance. "Let's make sure where Mr. Ute is before we ride in, boys. He might be up on the bluffs layin' for us. Dud, you an' Tom an' Big Bill go take a look-see an' make sure. We'll come a-runnin' if we hear yore guns pop."

Two men in uniform rode out of the gulch. At the sight of the rangers they cantered forward. One was a sergeant.

"Too late," said he. "They done slipped away from us. We took shelter from the hail under a cutbank where the cañon widens. They musta slipped by us then. We found their tracks in the wet ground. They're headin' west again, looks like."

"We've got a warm trail," Harshaw said to Blister Haines. "We better go right after 'em."

"Hot foot," agreed Blister.

"Major Sheahan's followin' them now. He said for you to come right along."

The cavalcade moved at once.

CHAPTER XXXI

"DON'T YOU LIKE ME ANY MORE?"

Harshaw's rangers caught up with the militia an hour later. The valley men were big, tanned, outdoor fellows, whereas the militia company was composed of young lads from Colorado towns, most of them slight and not yet fully developed. The state troopers were, however, brisk, alert, and soldierly. Some of them were not used to riding, but they made the best of it with the cheerful adaptability of American youth.

The trail of the Indians cut back across the mesa toward Utah. Evidently they were making for their home country again. Bob began to hope that the Utes would reach the reservation without a fight. In this desire the owner of the Slash Lazy D heartily joined. He had no impulses toward the slaughter of the tribal remnants.

Others of the party did not share this feeling. Without going into the causes of the Indian troubles, it can safely be said that the frontiersmen generally believed that the tribes were dangerous and not to be trusted. In any difficulty between a white and a red man they assumed the latter was to blame. Many old-timers held that the only way to settle the Indian question was to exterminate the tribes or at least reduce them to impotence.

The pursuers followed a hot trail. Twice they had a brush with the rear guard of the flying Utes, during which Bob heard bullets singing above his head. He felt a very unpleasant sinking in the pit of his stomach, and could hardly resist the temptation to slip out of the saddle and take refuge behind the horse he was riding.

The rangers and the soldiers reached Bear Cat long after dark. Dud and Reeves had ridden into town ahead of their companions, so that when the rest came in they found a hot supper waiting for them on the plaza.

June helped serve the weary men. Big fires had been built on the square and by the light of the flames Bob could see her slim figure flitting to and fro. Afterward, when the meal was at an end, he saw Dud Hollister walking beside her to the hotel. The cowpuncher was carrying a load of dishes and supplies. It would have surprised Bob to learn that he was the subject of their conversation.

For the first time Dud had heard that day from Blister the story of the mad dog episode. He made June tell it to him again from her viewpoint. When she had finished he asked her a question.

"Anybody ever tell you about the fight Bob had with Bandy Walker?"

The light in her dark eyes quickened. "Did they have a fight?" she asked evenly, with not too great a show of interest.

"I dunno as you could rightly call it a fight," Dud drawled. "Bob he hammered Bandy, tromped on him, chewed him up, an' spit him out. He was plumb active for about five minutes."

"What was the trouble?"

"Bandy's one o' these mean bullies. He figured he could run on Bob. The boy took it meek an' humble for a week or so before he settled with Bandy generous an' handsome. The bow-legged guy might have got away with it if he hadn't made a mistake."

"A mistake?" repeated June.

"He had a few remarks to make about a young lady Bob knew."

June said nothing. In the darkness Dud made out only the dusky outline of her profile. He could not tell what she was thinking, had no guess that her blood was racing tumultuously, that a lump was swelling in the soft round throat.

Presently she asked her companion a question as to how Jake Houck came to be with the rangers. Dud understood that the subject was changed.

The soldiers found beds wherever they could. Some rolled up in their blankets near the fires. Others burrowed into haystacks on the meadow. Before daybreak they expected to be on the march again.

The bugle wakened them at dawn, but a good many of the cowpunchers were already up. Big Bill went to one of the haystacks to get feed for his horse. He gathered a great armful of hay and started away with it. A muffled voice inside wailed protest.

"Lemme out, doggone it."

Bill dropped the hay, and from it emerged a short and slender youth in uniform. He bristled up to the huge puncher.

"What d'you think you're doing, fellow?"

The cowpuncher sat down on a feed-rack and laughed till he was weak. "Drinks are on me, son," he gasped at last. "I 'most fed you to my hawss."

"Mebbe you think because I ain't as big as a house you can sit there an' laugh at me. I'll have you know you can't," the boy snapped.

"Fellow, I'm not laughin' at you. Napoleon was a runt, I've heard tell. But it was comical, you stickin' yore head up through the hay thataway. I'll stand pat on that, an' I ain't a-going to fight about it either."

The soldier's dignity melted to a grin. "Did you say drinks was on you, Jumbo?"

After Big Bill had fed his horse they went away arm in arm to see what Dolan could do for them in the way of liquid refreshment.

Just before the rangers and soldiers saddled for the start, Dud jingled over to his friend who was helping to pack the supply-wagons.

"Lady wants to see you, Bob. I'll take yore place here," Dud said.

Dillon lifted a barrel half full of flour into the nearest wagon and straightened a body cramped from stooping. "What lady?" he asked.

"Listen to the fellow," derided Hollister. "How many ladies has he got on the string, do you reckon?" The fair-haired cowpuncher grinned. "You meander round to the back of the hotel an' I expect you'll meet up with the lady. Mollie Larson she--"

"Oh, Mrs. Larson." For a moment a wild hope had flamed in Bob's heart. His thoughts had flashed to another woman in the hotel.

"Why, yes. Mollie runs the hotel, don't she? Was you lookin' for some other lady to send for you?" Dud asked innocently.

Bob did not answer this. He was already striding toward the hotel.

Out of the darkness of the adobe wall shadow a slim figure moved to meet the ranger. The young fellow's heart lost a beat.

"I--wanted to see you before you left," a low voice said.

A kind of palsy came over Dillon. He stood motionless, no life in him except for the eloquent eyes. No words came to help him.

"I thought--maybe--" June stopped, hesitated, and came out impetuously with what was in her mind. "Aren't we ever going to be friends again, Bob?"

A warm glow suffused him. The back of his eyes smarted with tears. He started to speak, but stopped. For he was boyishly ashamed to discover that he could not trust his voice.

"Don't you like me any more?" she asked. "Have I done something to make you mad?"

"No, you haven't." There was a rough edge to the words, put there by suppressed emotion. "You know better 'n that. I keep away from you because--because I acted like a yellow dog."

"When you fought Bandy Walker to keep clean my good name?" she asked in a murmur.

"Oh, that!" He waved her question aside as of no importance.

"Or when you fought the mad dog in the street with yore bare hands?"

"You know when, June," he answered bitterly. "When I let Jake Houck walk off with you to save my worthless hide."

"I've forgotten that, Bob," she said gently. "So much has happened since. That was foolishness anyhow, what--what we did in Blister's office. But I hate to give up the boy on Piceance Creek who was kinda like a brother to me. Do I have to lose him?"

There was no need for her big dark eyes to plead with him. His face was working. He bit his lip to keep from breaking down. This was what he wanted more than anything else in the world, but he was embarrassed and irritated at the display of emotion he could not wholly control.

"'S all right with me," he said gruffly.

"Then we'll be friends again, won't we?"

"Ump-ha!" he grunted. "I--I'd just as lief." He recognized this as cavalier and added: "I mean it's awful good of you."

"When you come back you won't forget to ask for me if I'm not where you see me. I'll want to hear all about what you do."

"Yes," he promised; and in a burst of gratitude cried: "You're a dandy girl, June. If you treated me like I deserved you'd never speak to me again."

She flushed. "That's silly. I never did feel thataway. Lots of times I've wanted to tell you that--that it needn't make any difference. But I couldn't, 'count of--what we did in Blister's office. A girl has to be awful careful, you know. If we hadn't done that foolish thing--"

"A judge'll fix you up with papers settin' you free, June," he told her. "I'll do anything to help that you want."

"Well, when you come back," she postponed. Talk on that subject distressed and humiliated her.

"I got to go," he said. "Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

She gave him her hand shyly. Their eyes met and fell away.

He stood a moment, trying to find an effective line of exit. He had missed his cue to leave, as thousands of lovers have before and since.

"Got to hit the trail," he murmured in anticlimax.

"Yes," she agreed.

Bob drew back one foot and ducked his head in a bow. A moment later he was hurrying toward the remuda.

CHAPTER XXXII

A CUP OF COLD WATER

The pursuers caught up with the Utes the third day out from Bear Cat. It was in the morning, shortly after they had broken camp, that Houck and Big Bill while scouting in advance of the troop jumped up an Indian out of the sagebrush.

He made across the mesa toward the river. Houck fired at him twice as he ran, but the sentinel disappeared from sight apparently unhit. The sound of the firing brought up rapidly the main body of the troopers. Before Major Sheahan and Harshaw could work out a programme another Indian sentry could be seen running through the sage.

The sight of him was like that of a red rag to a bull. Not waiting for orders, a dozen punchers instantly gave chase. The rest of the party followed. Houck was in the lead. Not far behind was Bob Dillon.

The mesa bench dropped sharply down a bare shale scarp to the willows growing near the river. The Indian camp below could be seen from the edge of the bluff. But the rush to cut off the Ute was so impetuous that the first riders could not check their horses. They plunged down the bare slope at a headlong gallop.

Bob heard the ping of bullets as they sang past him. He saw little spatters of sand flung up where they struck. As his horse slithered down on its haunches through the rubble, the man just in front of him dived headlong from his horse. Bob caught one horrified glimpse of him rolling over and clutching at his breast. Next moment Dillon, too, was down. His mount had been shot under him.

He jumped up and ran for the willows, crouching low as he sped through the sage. Into the bushes he flung himself and lay panting. He quaked with fear. Every instant he expected to see the Utes rushing toward him. His rifle was gone, lost in the fall. The hand that drew the revolver from his belt trembled as with an ague.

Only a few of the riders had been unable to check themselves on the edge of the bluff. The others had now drawn back out of sight. A wounded horse lay kicking on the slope. It was the one upon which Bob had been mounted. The huddled figure of a man, with head grotesquely twisted, sat astride a clump of brush. Another sprawled on the hillside, arms and legs outflung.

Below, in the sage not far from the willows, another body lay in the sand. This one moved. Bob could see the man trying to hitch himself toward the shelter of the river bushes. Evidently he was badly wounded, for he made practically no progress. For a few minutes he would lie still, then try once more to crawl forward.

The popping of guns had shifted farther to the right. Bob judged that the rangers and soldiers were engaged with the Indians somewhere on the ridge. Only a few desultory shots came from the camp. But he knew it would be only a question of time till some Ute caught sight of the wounded man and picked him off as he lay helpless in the open.

Bob did not know who the wounded man was. He might be Dud Hollister or Tom Reeves. Or perhaps Blister Haines. Young Dillon sweated in agony. His throat was parched. He felt horribly sick and weak, was still shaking in a palsy of fear.

It was every man for himself now, he reasoned in his terror. Perhaps he could creep through the willows and escape up the river without being seen. He began to edge slowly back.

But that man crouched in the sunshine, tied by his wound to a spot where the Utes would certainly find him sooner or later, fascinated Bob's eyes and thoughts. Suppose he left him there--and found out too late that he had deserted Dud, abandoning him to almost certain death. He could not do that. It would not be human. What Dud would do in his place was not open to question. He would go out and get the man and drag him to the willows. But the danger of this appalled the cowpuncher. The Utes would get him sure if he did. Even if they did not hit him, he would be seen and later stalked by the redskins.

After all there was no sense in throwing away another life. Probably the wounded man would die anyhow. Every fellow had to think of himself at a time like this. It was not his fault the ranger was cut off and helpless. He was no more responsible for him than were any of the rest of the boys.

But it would not do. Bob could not by any sophistry escape the duty thrust on him. The other boys were not here. He was.

He groaned in desperation of spirit. He had to go and get the ranger who had been shot. That was all there was to it. If he did not, he would be a yellow coyote.

Out of the precarious safety of the willows he crept on hands and knees, still shaking in an ague of trepidation. Of such cover as there was he availed himself. From one sagebush to another he ran, head and body crouched low. His last halt was back of some greasewood a dozen yards from the ranger.

"I'll get you into the willows if I can," he called in a sibilant whisper. "You bad hurt?"

The wounded man turned. "My laig's busted--two places. Plugged in the side too."

Bob's heart sank. The face into which he looked was that of Jake Houck. If he had only known in time! But it was too late now. He had to finish what he had begun. He could not leave the fellow lying there.

He crawled to Houck. The big man gave directions. "Better drag me, I reckon. Go as easy as you can on that busted laig."

Dillon took him beneath the arms and hauled him through the sand. The wounded man set his teeth to keep back a groan. Very slowly and carefully, an inch here, a foot there, Bob worked Houck's heavy body backward. It was a long business. A dozen times he stopped to select the next leg of the journey.

Beads of perspiration stood on Houck's forehead. He was in great pain, but he clenched his teeth and said nothing. Bob could not deny him gameness. Not a sound escaped his lips. He clung to his rifle even though a free hand would greatly ease the jarring of the hurt leg.

Back of a scrub cottonwood Bob rested for a moment. "Not far now," he said.

Houck's eyes measured the distance to the willows. "No," he agreed. "Not far."

"Think maybe I could carry you," Bob suggested. "Get you on my shoulder."

"Might try," the wounded man assented. "Laig hurts like sixty."

Bob helped him to his feet and from there to his shoulder. He staggered over the rough ground to the willows. Into these he pushed, still carrying Houck. As gently as he could he lowered the big fellow.

"Got me as I came over the bluff," the Brown's Park man explained. "I was lucky at that. The Utes made a good gather that time. Outa four of us they collected two an' put me out of business. Howcome they not to get you?"

"Shot my horse," explained Bob. "I ducked into the willows."

It was hot in the willows. They were a young growth and the trees were close. The sun beat down on the thicket of saplings and no breeze penetrated it.

Houck panted. Already fever was beginning to burn him up.

"Hotter'n hell with the lid on," he grumbled. "Wisht I had some water." He drew out a flask that still had two fingers of whiskey in it, but he had resolution enough not to drink. This would not help him. "Reckon I better not take it," he said regretfully.

Bob took the bandanna handkerchief from his throat and soaked one end of it in the liquor. "Bathe yore head," he advised. "It'll cool it fine."

As the day grew older and the sun climbed the sky vault the heat increased. No breath of air stirred. The wounded man had moments of delirium in which he moaned for water.

There was water, cool and fresh, not fifty yards from them. He could hear the rushing river plunging toward the Pacific, the gurgling of the stream as it dashed against boulders and swept into whirlpools. But between Bob and that precious water lay a stretch of sandy wash which the Blanco covered when it was high. One venturing to cross this would be an easy mark for sharpshooters from the camp.

It seemed to him that the firing was now more distant. There was a chance that none of the Utes were still in the camp. Fever was mounting in Houck. He was in much distress both from thirst and from the pain of the wounds. Bob shrank from the pitiful appeals of his high-pitched, delirious voice. The big fellow could stand what he must with set jaws when he was sentient. His craving found voice in irrational moments while he had no control over his will. These were increasing in frequency and duration.

Dillon picked up the flask. "Got to leave you a while," he said. "Back soon."

The glassy eyes of Houck glared at him. His mind was wandering. "Torturin' me. Tha's what you're doin', you damned redskin," he muttered.

"Going to get water," explained Bob.

"Tha's a lie. You got water there--in that bottle. Think I don't know yore Apache ways?"

Bob crept to the edge of the willows. From the foliage he peered out. Nobody was in sight. He could still see a faint smoke rising from the Indian camp. But the firing was a quarter of a mile away, at least. The bend of the river was between him and the combatants.

Bob took his courage by the throat, drew a long breath, and ran for the river. Just as he reached it a bullet splashed in the current almost within hand's reach. The cowpuncher stooped and took two hasty swallows into his dry mouth. He filled the bottle and soaked the bandanna in the cold water. A slug of lead spat at the sand close to his feet. A panic rose within him. He got up and turned to go. Another bullet struck a big rock four paces from where he was standing. Bob scudded for the willows, his heart thumping wildly with terror.

He plunged into the thicket, whipping himself with the bending saplings in his headlong flight. Now that they had discovered him, would the Indians follow him to his hiding-place? Or would they wait till dusk and creep up on him unseen? He wished he knew.

The water and the cool, wet bandanna alleviated the misery of the wounded man. He shut his eyes, muttering incoherently.

There was no longer any sound of firing. The long silence alarmed Bob. Was it possible that his friends had been driven off? Or that they had retired from the field under the impression that all of the riders who had plunged over the bluff had been killed?

This fear obsessed him. It rode him like an old man of the sea. He could not wait here till the Utes came to murder him and Houck. Down in the bottom of his heart he knew that he could not leave this enemy of his to the fate that would befall him. The only thing to do was to go for help at once.

He took off his coat and put it under Houck's head. He moistened the hot bandanna for the burning forehead and poured the rest of the water down the throat of the sick man. The rifle he left with Houck. It would only impede him while he was crossing the mesa.

None of us know what we can do till the test comes. Bob felt it was physically impossible for him to venture into the open again and try to reach his friends. He might at any instant run plumb into the Utes. Nevertheless he crept out from the willows into the sage desert.

The popping of the guns had begun again. The battle seemed to be close to the edge of the mesa round the bend of the river. Bob swung wide, climbing the bluff from the farther skirt of the willows. He reached the mesa.

From where he lay he could see that the whites held a ridge two hundred yards away. The Utes were apparently in the river valley.

He moved forward warily, every sense abnormally keyed to service. A clump of wild blackberries grew on the rim of the bluff. From this smoke billowed. Bullets began to zip past Bob. He legged it for the ridge, blind to everything but his desperate need to escape.

CHAPTER XXXIII

"KEEP A-COMIN', RED HAID"

When the rangers and the militia stampeded after the Indian scout, Dud Hollister was examining the hoof of his mount. He swung instantly to the saddle and touched his pony with the spur. It shot across the mesa on the outskirts of the troop. Not impeded by riders in front, Dud reached the bluff above the river valley on the heels of the advance guard. He pulled up just in time to keep from plunging over.

The Utes, under cover of the willow saplings, were concentrating a very heavy fire on the bluff and slope below. Dud's first thought was that the troops had been drawn into a trap. Every man who had been carried over the edge of the mesa by the impetus of the charge was already unhorsed. Several were apparently dead. One was scudding for cover.

Dud drew back promptly. He did not care to stand silhouetted against the sky-line for sharpshooters. Nobody had ever accused the Utes of being good shots, but at that distance they could hardly miss him if he stayed.

The soldiers and rangers gathered in a small clump of cottonwoods. Harshaw read his boys the riot act.

"Fine business," he told them bitterly. "Every last one of you acted like he was a tenderfoot. Ain't you ever seen a Ute before? Tryin' to collect him so anxious, an' him only bait to lead you on. I reckon we better go home an' let Major Sheahan's boys do this job. I'm plumb disgusted with you."

The range-riders looked at each other out of the corners of meek eyes. This rebuke was due them. They had been warned against letting themselves be drawn on without orders.

"That fellow Houck he started it," Big Bill suggested humbly by way of defense.

"Were you drug into it? Did he rope you off yore horse an' take you along with him?" demanded Harshaw sarcastically. "Well, I hope you got yore lesson. How many did we lose?"

A roll-call showed four missing. Hollister felt a catch at the throat when his riding partner failed to report. Bob must be one of those who had gone over the ledge.

One of Sheahan's troopers on scout duty reported. "Indians making for a gulch at the end of the willows, sir. Others swarming up into the bushes at the edge of the mesa."

A cowpuncher familiar with the country volunteered information. "Gulch leads to that ridge over there. It's the highest point around here."

"Then we'd better take the ridge," Harshaw suggested to Sheahan. "Right quick, too."

The major agreed.

They put the troop in motion. Another scout rode in. The Utes were hurrying as fast as they could to the rock-rim. Major Sheahan quickened the pace to a gallop. The Indians lying in the bushes fired at them as they went.

Tom Reeves went down, his horse shot under him. Dud pulled up, a hundred yards away. Out of the bushes braves poured like buzzing bees. The dismounted man would be cut off.

Hollister wheeled his cowpony in its tracks and went back. He slipped a foot from the stirrup and held it out as a foot-rest for Reeves. The Utes whooped as they came on. The firing was very heavy. The pony, a young one, danced wildly and made it impossible for Tom to swing up.

Dud dismounted. The panicky horse backed away, eyes filled with terror. It rose into the air, trembling. Dud tried to coax it to good behavior.

The moments were flying, bringing the Utes nearer every instant.

"We gotta make a run for it, Dud," his companion said hurriedly. "To the willows over there."

There was no choice. Hollister let go the bridle and ran. Scarcely fifty yards behind them came the Utes.

Even in their high-heeled boots the cowpunchers ran fast. Once within the shelter of the willows they turned and opened fire. This quite altered the situation. The foremost brave faltered in his pigeon-toed stride, stopped abruptly, and dived for the shelter of a sagebush. The others veered off to the right. They disappeared into some blackberry bushes on the edge of the mesa. Whether from here they continued to the valley the punchers in the willows could not tell.

"Some lucky getaway," Dud panted.

"Thought I was a goner sure when they plugged my bronc," said Reeves.

He took a careful shot at the sagebush behind which the Indian had taken refuge. The Ute ran away limping.

"Anyhow, that guy's got a souvenir to remember me by. Compliments of Tom Reeves," grinned the owner of that name.

"We've got to get back to the boys somehow. I reckon they're havin' quite a party on the ridge," Dud said.

The sound of brisk firing came across the mesa to them. It was evident that the whites and redskins had met on the ridge and were disputing for possession of it.

"My notion is we'd better stick around here for a while," Reeves demurred. "I kinda hate to hoof it acrost the flat an' be a target the whole darned way."

This seemed good to Hollister. The troopers seemed to be holding their own. They had not been driven back. The smoke of their rifles showed along the very summit of the rock-rim. The inference was that the Utes had been forced to fall back.

The two rangers lay in the willows for hours. The firing had died down, recommenced, and again ceased. Once there came the sound of shots from the right, down in the valley close by the river.

"They're likely gettin' the fellow that wasn't killed when he went over the bluff," Dud suggested. "There ain't a thing we can do to help him either."

"That's it, I reckon. They're collectin' him now. Wonder which of the boys it is."

Dud felt a twinge of conscience. There was nothing he could do to help the man hemmed in on the riverbank, but it hurt him to lie there without attempting aid. The ranger making the lone fight might be Bob Dillon, poor Bob who had to whip his courage to keep himself from playing the weakling. Dud hoped not. He did not like to think of his riding mate in such desperate straits with no hope of escape.

The battle on the ridge had begun again. Hollister and Reeves decided to try to rejoin their friends. From the north end of the willows they crept into a small draw that led away from the river toward the hills beyond the mesa. Both of them were experienced plainsmen. They knew how to make the most of such cover as there was. As they moved through the sage, behind hillocks and along washes, they detoured to put as much distance as possible between them and the Utes at the edge of the bench.

But the last hundred yards had to be taken in the open. They did it under fire, on the run, with a dozen riflemen aiming at them from the fringe of blackberry bushes that bordered the mesa. Up the ridge they went pell-mell, Reeves limping the last fifty feet of the way. An almost spent bullet had struck him in the fleshy part of the lower leg.

Hawks let out a cowboy yell at sight of them, jumped up, and pulled Dud down beside him among the boulders.

"Never expected to see you lads again alive an' kickin' after you an' the Utes started that footrace. I'll bet neither one of you throwed down on yoreself when you was headin' for the willows. Gee, I'm plumb glad to see you."

"We're right glad to be here, Buck," acknowledged Dud. "What's new?"

"We got these birds goin', looks like. In about an hour now we're allowin' to hop down into the gulch real sudden an' give 'em merry hell."

Dud reported to Harshaw. The cattleman dropped a hand on his rider's shoulder with a touch of affection. He was very fond of the gay young fellow.

"Thought they'd bumped you off, boy. Heap much glad to see you. What do you know?"

"I reckon nothing that you don't. There was firin' down by the river. Looks like they found one o' the boys who went over the bluff."

"An' there's a bunch of 'em strung out among the bushes close to the edge of the mesa. Fifteen or twenty, would you think?"

"Must be that many, the way their bullets dropped round Tom an' me just now."

"Tom much hurt?"

"Flesh wound only--in the laig."

Harshaw nodded. His mind was preoccupied with the problem before them. "The bulk of 'em are down in this gulch back of the ridge. We met 'em on the summit and drove 'em back. I judge they've had a-plenty. We'll rout 'em out soon now."

A brisk fire went on steadily between the Utes in the gulch and the whites on the ridge. Every man had found such cover as he could, but the numbers on both sides made it impossible for all to remain wholly hidden. The casualties among the troopers had been, however, very light since the first disastrous rush over the bluff.

Dud caught Harshaw's arm. "Look!" he cried, keenly excited.

A man had emerged from the bushes and was running across the flat toward the ridge. Dud and Tom had kept well away toward the foothills, not out of range of the Utes, but far enough distant to offer poor targets. But this man was running the gauntlet of a heavy fire close enough to be an easy mark. Blanco valley settlers, expert marksmen from much big-game hunting, would have dropped the runner before he had covered thirty yards. But the Indians were armed with cheap trade guns and were at best poor shots. The runner kept coming.

Those on the ridge watched him, their pulses quick, their nerves taut. For he was running a race with death. Every instant they expected to see him fall. From the bushes jets of smoke puffed like toy balloons continuously.

"Fire where you see the smoke, boys," Harshaw shouted.

The rangers and militia concentrated on the fringe of shrubbery. At least they could make it hot enough for the Indians to disturb their aims.

"He's down!" groaned Hollister.

He was, but in a second he was up once more, still running strong. He had stumbled over a root. The sage was heavy here. This served as a partial screen for the swiftly moving man. Every step now was carrying him farther from the sharpshooters, bringing him closer to the ridge.

"By Godfrey, he'll make it!" Harshaw cried.

It began to look that way. The bullets were still falling all around him, but he was close to the foot of the ridge.

Dud made a discovery. "It's Bob Dillon!" he shouted. Then, to the runner, with all his voice, "Keep a-comin', Red Haid!"

The hat had gone from the red head. As he climbed the slope the runner was laboring heavily. Dud ran down the hill to meet him, half a dozen others at his heels, among them Blister. They caught the spent youth under the arms and round the body. So he reached the crest.

Blister's fat arms supported him as his body swayed. The wheezy voice of the justice trembled. "G-glory be, son. I 'most had heart f-failure whilst you was hoofin' it over the mesa. Oh, boy! I'm g-glad to see you."

Bob sat down and panted for breath. "I got to go--back again," he whispered from a dry throat.

"What's that?" demanded Harshaw. "Back where?"

"To--to the river. I came to get help--for Houck."

"Houck?"

"He's down there in the willows wounded."

CHAPTER XXXIV

AN OBSTINATE MAN STANDS PAT

A moment of blank silence fell on the little group crouched among the boulders. Bob's statement that he had to go back through the fire zone--to Houck--had fallen among them like a mental bombshell.

Blister was the first to find his voice. "You been down there l-lookin' after him?"

"Yes. They hit him in the leg--twice. An' once in the side. He's outa his head. I got him water from the river."

"Was that when I heard shootin' down there?" Dud asked.

"I reckon."

"Well, I'll be d-dawg-goned!" Blister exclaimed.

Of life's little ironies he had never seen a stranger example than this. It had fallen to Bob Dillon to look after his bitter enemy, to risk his life for him, to traverse a battle-field under heavy fire in order to get help for him. His mind flashed back to the boy he had met less than a year ago, a pallid, trembling weakling who had shriveled under the acid test of danger. He had traveled a long way since then in self-conquest.

"Houck was down in the open last I seen him," Hawks said. "Did he crawl to the willows?"

"I kinda helped him," Bob said, a little ashamed.

"Hmp! An' now you think we'd ought to let two-three men get shot going after him across the mesa," Harshaw said. "Nothin' doing. Not right away anyhow. Houck's foolishness got him into the hole where he is. He'll have to wait till we clean out this nest in the gulch. Soon as we've done that we'll go after him."

"But the Utes will rush the willows," Bob protested mildly.

"Sorry, but he'll have to take his chance of that. Any of the rest of us would in his place. You've done what you could, son. That lets you out."

"No, I'm going back," Bob said quietly. "I told him I would. I got to go."

"That wouldn't be r-right sensible, would it?" asked Blister. "N-not right away anyhow. After we get those b-birds outa the blackberry bushes, time enough then for you to h-hit the back trail."

"No, I promised." There was in Bob's face a look Blister had never seen there before, something hard and dogged and implacable. "My notion is for half a dozen of us to go on horses--swing round by the far edge of the mesa. We can drop down into the valley an' pick Houck up if we're lucky."

"And if you're not lucky?" Harshaw demanded.

"Why, o' course we might have trouble. Got to take our chances on that."

"They might wipe the whole bunch of you out. No, sir. I need my men right here. This whole thing's comin' to a show-down right soon. Houck will have to wait."

"I got to go back, Mr. Harshaw," Bob insisted. "I done promised him I would."

"Looky here, boy. You'll do as you please, of course. But there's no sense in being bull-haided. How much do you figure you owe this Jake Houck? I never heard tell he was yore best friend. You got him into the willows. You went to the river and brought him water. You ran a big risk comin' here to get help for him. We'll go to him just as soon as it's safe. That ought to content you."

Before Bob's mental vision there flashed a picture of a man in fever burning up for lack of water. He could not understand it himself. It was not reasonable, of course. But somehow Jake Houck had become his charge. He had to go through with the job.

"I'm going back to him," he said stubbornly.

"Then you're a darn fool. He wouldn't go a step of the way for you."

"Maybe not. That ain't the point. He needs me. Do I get a horse?"

"Yes, if you're bound an' determined to go," Harshaw said. After a momentary hesitation he added: "And if any of the boys want to go along they can. I'm not hinderin' them. But my advice is for them to stick right here."

Bob's eyes swept the little group round him. "Any one want to take a chance? We'll snake Houck outa the willows an' make a getaway sure."

"Or else you'll stay there with him permanent," Harshaw contributed. "It's plumb foolishness, boys. Houck had his orders an' he broke away from them deliberate. He'd ought to take what's comin'."

Dud pleaded with Dillon. "If it was anybody but Houck, Bob, I'd trail along with you. I sure would. But I can't see as there's any call for us to take such a big risk for him. He's got it in for us both. Said himself he was layin' for us. You stood by him to a fare-you-well. Ain't that enough?"

Bob did not attempt to reason. He simply stated facts. "No, I got to go back, Dud. He's a mighty sick man, an' he needs me. The Utes are liable to find him any time. Maybe I could stand 'em off."

"An' maybe you couldn't," Blister said. "It's plumb s-suicide."

Dillon looked at his fat friend with a faint, dreary smile. He did not himself relish the task before him. "Thought you told me to be a wolf, to hop to it every chance I got to do some crazy thing."

Blister hedged. "Oh, well, a f-fellow wants to have some sense. I never see a good thing that couldn't be r-run into the ground. Far as I know, I never told you to stand on the D. & R. G. tracks an' try to stop the express with yore head."

"I'll have to be going now," Bob said. He turned to Harshaw. "Where's that bronc I get to carry me back?"

"Up there in the piñons. Dud, you see he gets a good one. I'm wishin' you luck, son. An' I'll say one thing right out in meetin'. You're a better man than Lou Harshaw." The cattleman's hand gripped that of Dillon firmly.

"Shucks! Tha's foolishness," Bob murmured, embarrassed. "I'm scared stiff if you want to know."

"I reckon that's why you're aimin' for to make a target of yorese'f again," Hawks suggested ironically. "Damn 'f I'd do it for the best man alive, let alone Jake Houck. No, sir. I'll go a reasonable way, but I quit this side of suicide. I sure do."

Over to the left rifles were still popping, but at this point of the ridge the firing had temporarily died down. Bob Dillon was the center of interest.

A second time his eye traveled over the group about him. "Last call for volunteers, boys. Anybody want to take a ride?"

Blister found in that eye some compelling quality of leadership. "Dawg-gone you, I'll go," his high falsetto piped.

Bob shook his head. "Not you, Blister. You're too fat. We're liable to have to travel fast."

Nobody else offered himself as a sacrifice. There were men present who would have taken a chance for a friend, but they would not do it for Houck.

Dud went with Bob to the piñons. While Dillon saddled one horse, Hollister put the bridle on a second.

"What's that for?" Bob asked.

"Oh, I'm soft in the haid," Dud grunted. "Gonna trail along. I'll tell you right now I ain't lost Houck any, but if you're set on this fool business, why, I'll take a whirl with you."

"Good old Dud," Bob beamed. "I'll bet we get away with it fine."

"Crazy old Dud," the owner of the name grumbled. "I'll bet we get our topknots scalped."

They rode down from the rim-rock, bearing to the right, as far away from the river as possible. The Utes in the blackberry fringe caught sight of them and concentrated their fire on the galloping horsemen. Presently the riders dipped for a minute behind a swell of ground.

"A heap more comfortable ridin' here," Dud said, easing his horse for a few moments to a slower pace. "I never did know before why the good Lord made so much of this country stand up on end, but if I get outa this hole I'll not kick at travelin' over hills so frequent. They sure got their uses when Injuns are pluggin' at you."

They made as wide a circuit as the foothills would allow. At times they were under a brisk fire as they cantered through the sage. This increased when they swung across the mesa toward the river. Fortunately they were now almost out of range.

Riding along the edge of the bluff, they found a place where their sure-footed cowponies could slide and scramble down. In the valley, as they dashed across to the willows where Bob had left Houck, they were again under fire. Even after they had plunged into the thicket of saplings they could hear bullets zipping through the foliage to right and left.

The glazed eyes in Houck's flushed face did not recognize the punchers. Defiance glowered in his stare.

"Where'd you get the notion, you red devils, that Jake Houck is a quitter? Torment me, will you? Burn me up with thirst, eh? Go to it an' see."

Bob took a step or two toward the wounded man. "Don't you know me, Houck? We've come to look after you. This is Dud Hollister. You know him."

"What if I did gun him?" the high-pitched voice maundered on. "Tried to steal my bronc, he did, an' I wouldn't stand for it a minute.... All right. Light yore fires. Burn me up, you hounds of Hades. I'm not askin' no favors. Not none a-tall."

The big man's hand groped at his belt. Brown fingers closed on the butt of a forty-five. Instantly both rescuers were galvanized to life. Dud's foot scraped into the air a cloud of sand and dust as Bob dived forward. He plunged at Houck a fraction of a second behind his friend.

Into the blue sky a bullet went singing. Bob had been in time to knock the barrel of the revolver up with his outflung hand.

CHAPTER XXXV

THREE IN A PIT

Wounded though he was, Houck managed to make a good deal of trouble for the punchers before they pinned him down and took the forty-five from him. His great strength was still at command, and he had the advantage that neither of his rescuers wanted to injure him during the struggle. They thrashed over the ground, arms and legs outflung wildly. Houck gave up only when his vigor collapsed.

His surrender was complete. He lay weak and panting, bleeding from reopened wounds, for the time as helpless and submissive as a child.

From a canteen they gave him water. Afterward they washed and tied up the wounds, bathed the fevered face, and kept the mosquitoes from him by fanning them away.

"Expect I'd better take a pasear an' see where Mr. Ute's at," Dud said. "He's liable to drap in onexpected while we're not lookin'--several of him, huntin' for souvenirs in the scalp line for to decorate his belt with."

From the little opening he crept into the thicket of saplings and disappeared. Bob waited beside the delirious man. His nerves were keyed to a high tension. For all he knew the beadlike eyes of four or five sharpshooters might be peering at him from the jungle.

The sound of a shot startled him. It came from the direction in which Dud had gone. Had he been killed? Or wounded? Bob could not remain longer where he was. He too crept into the willows, following as well as he could the path of Hollister.

There came to him presently the faint crackle of twigs. Some one or something was moving in the bosk. He lay still, heart thumping violently. The sound ceased, began again.

Bob's trembling hand held a revolver pointed in the direction of the snapping branches. The willows moved, opened up, and a blond, curly head appeared.

Bob's breath was expelled in a long sigh of relief. "Wow! I'm glad to see you. Heard that shot an' thought maybe they'd got you."

"Not so you can notice it," Dud replied cheerfully. "But they're all round us. I took a crack at one inquisitive buck who had notions of collectin' me. He ce'tainly hit the dust sudden as he vamosed."

"What'll we do?"

"I found a kinda buffalo wallow in the willows. We'll move in on a lease an' sit tight till Harshaw an' the boys show up."

They carried and dragged Houck through the thicket to the saucer-shaped opening Hollister had discovered. The edges of this rose somewhat above the surrounding ground. Using their spurs to dig with, the cowpunchers deepened the hollow and packed the loose dirt around the rim in order to heighten the rampart.

From a distance came the sound of heavy, rapid firing, of far, faint yells.

"The boys are attackin' the gulch," Dud guessed. "Sounds like they might be makin' a clean-up too."

It was three o'clock by Bob's big silver watch. Heat waves were shimmering in the hollow and mosquitoes singing. Occasionally Houck's voice rose in delirious excitement. Sometimes he thought the Utes were torturing him. Again he lived over scenes in the past. Snatches of babble carried back to the days of his turbulent youth when all men's cattle were his. In the mutterings born of a sick brain Bob heard presently the name of June.

"... Tell you I've took a fancy to you. Tell you Jake Houck gets what he wants. No sense you rarin' around, June. I'm yore man.... Mine, girl. Don't you ever forget it. Mine for keeps.... Use that gun, damn you, or crawl into a hole. I'm takin' yore wife from you. Speak yore piece. Tell her to go with me. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

The firing came nearer.

Again Dud guessed what was taking place. "They've got the Utes outa the gulch an' are drivin' them down the valley. Right soon they're liable to light on us hard. Depends on how much the boys are pressin' them."

They had two rifles and four revolvers, for Houck had lately become a two-gun man. These they examined carefully to make sure they were in order. The defenders crouched back to back in the pit, each of them searching the thicket for an angle of one hundred and eighty degrees.

The sound of the battle died down. Evidently the pursuers were out of contact with the natives.

"Don't like that," Dud said. "If the Utes have time they'll try to pick us up as they're passin'."

Bob fired.

"See one?" asked his friend.

"Think so. Something moved. Down in that hollow. He's outa sight now."

"They've got us located, then. Old Man Trouble headed this way. Something liable to start. Soon now."

The minutes dragged. Bob's eyes blurred from the intensity with which he watched.

A bullet struck the edge of the pit. Bob ducked involuntarily. Presently there was a second shot--and a third.

"They're gettin' warm," Dud said.

He and Bob fired at the smoke puffs, growing now more frequent. Both of them knew it would be only a short time till one of them was hit unless their friends came to the rescue. Spurts of sand flew every few moments.

There was another undesirable prospect. The Utes might charge and capture the pit, wiping out the defenders. To prevent this the cowpunchers kept up as lively a fire as possible.

From down the valley came the sound of scattered shots and yells. Dud swung his hat in glee.

"Good boys! They're comin' in on the rear. Hi yi yippy yi!"

Firing began again on the other side. The Utes were caught between the rangers to the left and the soldiers to the right. Bob could see them breaking through the willows toward the river. It was an easy guess that their horses were bunched here and that they would be forced to cross the stream to escape.

Five minutes later Harshaw broke through the saplings to the pit. "Either of you boys hurt?" he demanded anxiously.

"Not a scratch on either of us," Dud reported.

The boss of the Slash Lazy D wrung their hands. "By Godfrey! I'm plumb pleased. Couldn't get it outa my head that they'd got you lads. How's Houck?"

"He's right sick. Doc had ought to look after him soon. He's had one mighty bad day of it."

Houck was carried on a blanket to the riverbank, where camp was being made for the night. The Utes had been routed. It was estimated that ten or twelve of them had been killed, though the number could not be verified, as Indians always if possible carry away their dead. For the present, at least, no further pursuit of them was feasible.

Dr. Tuckerman dressed the wounds of the Brown's Park man and looked after the others who had been hurt. All told, the whites had lost four killed. Five were wounded more or less seriously.

The wagons had been left on the mesa three miles away. Houck was taken here next day on a stretcher made of a blanket tied to willow poles. The bodies of the dead were also removed.

Two days later the rangers reached Bear Cat. They had left the soldiers to complete the task of rounding up the Utes and taking them back to the reservation.

CHAPTER XXXVI

A HERO IS EMBARRASSED

Following the Ute War, as it came to be called, there was a period of readjustment on the Rio Blanco. The whites had driven off the horses and the stock of the Indians. Two half-grown boys appropriated a flock of several thousand sheep belonging to the Indians and took them to Glenwood Springs. On the way they sold the sheep right and left. The asking price was a dollar. The selling price was twenty-five cents, a watermelon, a slice of pie, or a jack-knife with a broken blade.

The difficulties that ensued had to be settled. To get a better understanding of the situation the Governor of the State and a general of the United States Army with their staffs visited the White River country. While in Bear Cat they put up at the hotel.

Mollie did a land-office business, but she had no time to rest day or night. Passing through the office during the rush of the dinner hour, she caught sight of Blister Haines sprawled on two chairs. He was talking with Bob Dillon.

"Hear you done quit the Slash Lazy D outfit. What's the idee?" he said.

"Nothin' in ridin'," Bob told him. "A fellow had ought to get a piece of land on the river an' run some cattle of his own. Me an' Dud aim to do that."

"Hmp! An' meanwhile?"

"We're rip-rappin' the river for old man Wilson."[4]

Blister was pleased, but he did not say so. "Takes a good man to start on a s-shoestring an' make it go with cattle."

"That's why we're going into it," Bob modestly explained.

Mollie broke in. "What are you boys loafin' here for when I need help in the dining-room? Can either of you sling hash?"

The fat man derricked himself out of the chairs. "We can. L-lead us to the job, ma'am."

So it happened that Blister, in a white apron, presently stood before the Governor ready to take orders. The table was strewn with used dishes and food, débris left there by previous diners. The amateur waiter was not sure whether the Governor and his staff had eaten or were ready to eat.

"D-do you want a r-reloadin' outfit?" he asked.

The general, seated beside the Governor, had lived his life in the East. He stared at Blister in surprise, for at a council held only an hour before this ample waiter had been the chief spokesman in behalf of fair play to the Indians. He decided that the dignified thing to do was to fail to recognize the man.

Blister leaned toward the Governor and whispered confidentially. "Say, Gov, take my tip an' try one o' these here steaks. They ain't from dogy stock."

The Governor had been a cattleman himself. The free-and-easy ways of the West did not disturb him. "Go you once, Blister," he assented.

The waiter turned beaming on the officer. His fat hand rested on the braided shoulder. "How about you, Gen? Does that go d-double?"

Upon Blister was turned the cold, hard eye of West Point. "I'll take a tenderloin steak, sir, done medium."

"You'll sure find it'll s-stick to yore ribs," Blister said cheerfully.

Carrying a tray full of dishes, Bob went into the kitchen choking down his mirth.

"Blister's liable to be shot at daybreak. He's lessie-majesting the U.S. Army."

Chung Lung shuffled to the door and peered through. Internal mirth struggled with his habitual gravity. "Gleat smoke, Blister spill cup cloffee on general."

This fortunately turned out to be an exaggeration. Blister, in earnest conversation with himself, had merely overturned a half-filled cup on the table in the course of one of his gestures.

Mollie retired him from service.

Alone with Bob for a moment in the kitchen, June whispered to him hurriedly. "Before you an' Dud go away I want to see you a minute."

"Want to see me an' Dud?" he asked.

She flashed a look of shy reproach at him. "No, not Dud--you."

Bob stayed to help wipe the dishes. It was a job at which he had been adept in the old days when he flunkied for the telephone outfit. Afterward he and June slipped out of the back door and walked down to the river.

June had rehearsed exactly what she meant to say to him, but now that the moment had arrived it did not seem so easy. He might mistake her friendliness. He might think there was some unexpressed motive in the back of her mind, that she was trying to hold him to the compact made in Blister Haines's office a year ago. It would be hateful if he thought that. But she had to risk it if their comradeship was going to mean anything. When folks were friends they helped each other, didn't they? Told each other how glad they were when any piece of good luck came. And what had come to Bob Dillon was more than good luck. It was a bit of splendid achievement that made her generous blood sing.

This was all very well, but as they moved under the cottonwoods across the grass tessellated with sunshine and shadow, the fact of sex thrust itself up and embarrassed her. She resented this, was impatient at it, yet could not escape it. Beneath the dusky eyes a wave of color crept into the dark cheeks.

Though they walked in silence, Bob did not guess her discomposure. As clean of line as a boy, she carried herself resiliently. He thought her beautiful as a wild flower. The lift and tender curve of the chin, the swell of the forearms above the small brown hands that had done so much hard work so competently, filled him with a strange delight. She had emerged from the awkwardness and heaviness of the hoydenish age. It was difficult for him to identify her with the Cinderella of Piceance Creek except by the eager flash of the eyes in those moments when her spirit seemed to be rushing toward him.

They stood on the bank above the edge of the ford. June looked down into the tumbling water. Bob waited for her to speak. He had achieved a capacity for silence and had learned the strength of it.

Presently June lifted her eyes to his. "Dud says you an' he are going to take up preëmptions and run cattle of your own," she began.

"Yes. Harshaw's going to stake us. We'll divide the increase."

"I'm glad. Dud ought to quit going rippity-cut every which way. No use his wastin' five or six years before he gets started for himself."

"No," Bob assented.

"You're steadier than he is. You'll hold him down."

Bob came to time loyally. "Dud's all right. You'll find him there like a rock when you need him. Best fellow in all this White River country."

Her shining eyes sent a stab of pain through his heart. She was smiling at him queerly. "One of the best," she said.

"Stay with you to a fare-you-well," he went on. "If I knew a girl--if I had a sister--well, I'd sure trust her to Dud Hollister. All wool an' a yard wide that boy is."

"Yes," June murmured.

"Game as they make 'em. Know where he's at every turn of the road. I'd ce'tainly back his play to a finish."

"I know you would."

"Best old pal a fellow ever had."

"It's really a pity you haven't a sister," she teased.

Bob guessed that June had brought him here to talk about Dud. He did, to the exclusion of all other topics. The girl listened gravely and patiently, but imps of mischief were kicking up their heels in her eyes.

"You give him a good recommendation," she said at last. "How about his friend?"

"Tom Reeves?"

"No, Bob Dillon." Her dark eyes met his fairly. "Oh, Bob, I'm so glad."

He was suddenly flooded with self-consciousness. "About us preëmptin'?" he asked.

"No. About you being the hero of the campaign."

The ranger was miserably happy. He was ashamed to have the thing he had done dragged into the light, embarrassed to hear her use so casually a word that made him acutely uncomfortable. Yet he would not for the world have missed the queer little thrills that raced through him.

"That's plumb foolishness," he said.

"Yes, it is--not. Think I haven't heard all about it? How you dragged Jake Houck into the willows right spang from among the Utes? How you went to the river an' got him water? How you went for help when everybody thought you'd be killed? An' how you shamed Dud into going back with you? I made Mr. Harshaw tell me all he knew--and Dud too. He said--Mr. Harshaw said--"

Bob interrupted this eager attack. "I'll tell you how it was, June. When I saw Houck lying out there with a busted leg I didn't know who he was--thought maybe it was Dud. So I had to go an' get him. If I'd known it was Houck--"

"You knew it was Houck before you dragged him back, didn't you?" she charged. "You knew it when you went to the river to get him water?"

"Truth is, I was scared so I shook," he confessed humbly. "But when a fellow's sufferin' like Jake Houck was--"

"Even your enemy."

"Oh, well, enemies don't count when you're fightin' Utes together. I had to look after him--couldn't duck it. Different with Dud when he rode back to get Tom Reeves. Did you hear about that?"

She put a damper on the sudden enthusiasm that lilted into his voice. "Yes, I heard about that," she said dryly. "But we're talking of another man now. You've got to stand there an' take it, Bob. It won't last but a minute anyhow. I never was so tickled in my life before. When I thought of all you've suffered an' gone through, an' how now you've stopped the tongues of all the folks who jeered at you, I went to my room and cried like a little girl. You'll understand, won't you? I had to tell you this because we've promised to be friends. Oh, I am so glad for you, Bob."

He swallowed a lump in his throat and nodded. "Yes, I'll understand, June. It--it was awful nice of you to tell me. I reckon you ought to hate me, the way I treated you. Most girls would."

She flashed a quick look at his flaming face. His embarrassment relieved hers.

"As if you knew what most girls would think," she derided. Nevertheless she shifted the conversation to grounds less personal and dangerous. "Now you can tell me some more about that Dud you're always braggin' of."

Bob did not know as he talked of his friend that June found what he said an interpretation of Robert Dillon rather than Dudley Hollister.

-----

[4] Piling up brush to protect the bank from being washed away.

CHAPTER XXXVII

A RESPONSIBLE CITIZEN

Dillon and Hollister were lounging on the bank of Elk Creek through the heat of the day. They had been chasing a jack-rabbit across the mesa for sport. Their broncos were now grazing close at hand.

"Ever notice how a jack-rabbit jumps high when it's crowded?" Dud asked idly.

Bob nodded. "Like a deer. Crowd one an' he gets to jumpin' high. 'D you see that jack turn a somersault just as I threw my rope the last time?"

Dud's keen eyes ranged the landscape. They were on the edge of the mesa where it dipped down into the valley. Since he and Bob had decided to preëmpt a quarter-section each, it had become a habit of his to study the localities over which they rode.

"Country looks good round here," he suggested.

"Yes," agreed his friend.

"What we lookin' for anyhow, Bob?"

"Wood, grass, and water."

"Well, they're right here, ain't they?"

Bob had been thinking the same thing himself. They saddled and quartered over the ground carefully. There was a wide stretch of meadow close to the junction of Elk Creek and the river. Upon part of it a growth of young willow had sprung up. But he judged that there was nearly one hundred and fifty acres of prairie. This would need no clearing. Rich wild grass already covered it luxuriously. For their first crop they could cut the native hay. Then they could sow timothy. There would be no need to plough the meadow. The seed could be disked in. Probably the land never would need ploughing, for it was a soft black loam.

"How about roads?" Bob asked. "The old-timers claim we'll never get roads here."

"Some one's going to take up all this river land mighty soon. That's a cinch. An' the roads will come right soon after the settlers. Fact is, we've got to jump if we're going to take up land on the river an' get a choice location."

"My notion too," agreed Bob. "We'd better get a surveyor out here this week."

They did. Inside of a month they had filed papers at the land office, built cabins, and moved their few possessions to the claims. Their houses were made of logs mud-chinked, with dirt floors and shake roofs instead of the usual flat dirt ones. They expected later to whipsaw lumber for the floors. A huge fireplace in one end of each cabin was used for cooking as well as for heat until such time as they could get stoves. Already they planned a garden, and in the evenings were as likely to talk of turnips, beets, peas, beans, and potatoes as of the new Hereford bulls Larson and Harshaw were importing from Denver.

For the handwriting was on the wall. Cattlemen must breed up or go out of business. The old dogy would not do any longer. Already Utah stock was displacing the poor southern longhorns. Soon these, too, would belong to the past. Dud and Bob had vision enough to see this and they were making plans to get a near-pedigreed bull.

Dud sighed in reminiscent appreciation of the old days that were vanishing. He might have been seventy-two instead of twenty-two coming February. Behind him lay apparently all his golden youth.

"We got to adopt ourselves to new ways, old Sure-Shot," he ruminated aloud. "Got to quit hellin' around an' raisin' Cain. Leastways I have. You never did do any o' that. Yes, sir, I got to be a responsible citizen."

The partner of the responsible citizen leaned back in a reclining chair which he had made from a plank sawed into five parts that were nailed together at angles.

"You'll be raisin' little towheads right soon," he said through a cloud of smoke.

"No, sir. Not me. Not Dud Hollister. I can boss my own se'f for a spell yet," the fair-haired youth protested vehemently. "When I said we got to adopt ourselves, I was thinkin' of barb-wire fences an' timothy hay. 'S all right to let the dogies rough through the winter an' hunt the gulches when the storms come. But it won't do with stock that's bred up. Harshaw lost close to forty per cent of his cattle three years ago. It sure put some crimp in him. He was hit hard again last winter. You know that. Say he'd had valuable stock. Why, it would put him outa business. Sure would."

"Yes," admitted Bob. "There's a schoolmarm down at Meeker was askin' me about you. You know her--that snappin'-eyed brunette. Wanted to know all about yore claim, an' was it a good one, an' didn't I think Mr. Hollister a perfect gentleman, an'--"

Dud snatched a blanket from the bunk and smothered the red head. They clinched, rolled on the floor, and kicked over the chair and stool. Presently they emerged from battle feeling happier.

"No, we got to feed. Tha's the new law an' the gospel of the range," Dud continued. "Got to keep our cattle under fence in winter an' look after 'em right. Cattle-raisin' as a gamble will be a losing bet right soon. It's a business now. Am I right?"

"Sounds reasonable to me, Dud."

Bob's face was grave, but he smiled inwardly. The doctrine that his friend had just been expounding was not new to him. He had urged it on Dud during many a ride and at more than one night camp, had pointed to the examples of Larson, Harshaw, and the other old-timers. Hollister was a happy-go-lucky youth. The old hard-riding cattle days suited him better. But he, too, had been forced at last to see the logic of the situation. Now, with all the ardor of a convert, he was urging his view on a partner who did not need to be convinced.

Dillon knew that stock-raising was entering upon a new phase, that the old loose range system must give way to better care, attention to breeding, and close business judgment. The cattleman who stuck to the old ways would not survive.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

BEAR CAT ASLEEP

Bear Cat basked in the mellow warmth of Indian summer. Peace brooded over the valley, a slumberous and placid drowsiness. Outside Platt & Fortner's store big freight wagons stood close to the sidewalk. They had just come in from their long overland journey and had not yet been unloaded. A Concord stage went its dusty way down the street headed for Newcastle. Otherwise there was little evidence of activity.

It was about ten o'clock in the morning. The saloons and gambling-houses were almost deserted. The brisk business of the night had died down. Even a poker player and a faro dealer must sleep.

Main Street was in a coma. A dog lazily poked a none too inquisitive nose into its epidermis in a languid search for fleas. Past the dog went a barefoot urchin into a store for two pounds of eight-penny nails.

Three horsemen appeared at the end of the street and moved down it at the jog-trot which is the road gait of the cowpuncher. They dismounted near the back door of Platt & Fortner's and flung the bridle reins over the wheel spokes of the big freight wagons with the high sides. They did not tie the reins even in slip knots.

The riders stood for a moment talking in low voices before they separated. One went into Dolan's. He was a good-looking young fellow about twenty. A second wandered into the hotel saloon. He was not good-looking and was twice twenty. The third strolled past the bank, glanced in, turned, and walked past it a second time. He straddled, with jingling spurs, into the big store.

Tom Platt nodded casually to him. "Anything I can do for you, Houck?"

"I reckon," Houck grunted.

Platt noticed that he limped slightly. He had no feeling of friendliness toward Houck, but common civility made him inquire how the wounded leg was doing. After the Indian campaign the Brown's Park man had gone to Meeker for his convalescence. That had been two months since.

"'S all right," growled the big fellow.

"Good. Thought you kinda favored it a little when you walked."

The Brown's Park man bought a plug of chewing tobacco and a shirt.

"Guess the soldiers got the Utes corralled all right by this time. Hear anything new about that?" Platt asked by way of making conversation.

"No," Houck replied shortly. "Got an empty gunnysack I could have?"

"Sure." The storekeeper found one and a string with which to tie it.

"I'll take a slab of side meat an' a pound of ground coffee," the big man growled.

He made other purchases,--flour, corn meal, beans, and canned tomatoes. These he put in the gunnysack, tying the open end. Out of the side door he went to the horses standing by the big freight wagons. The contents of the sack he transferred to saddle-bags.

Then, without any apparent doubt as to what he was going to do next, he dropped into another store, one which specialized in guns and ammunition, though it, too, sold general supplies. He bought cartridges, both for the two forty-fives and for the rifle he carried. These he actually tested in his weapons, to make sure they fitted easily.

The proprietor attempted a pleasantry. "You're kinda garnished with weapons, stranger. Not aimin' to hold up the town, are you?"

The amiable laugh died away. The wall-eyed stranger was looking at him in bleak silence. Not an especially timid man, the owner of the place felt a chill run down his spine. That stare carried defiance, an unvoiced threat. Later, the storekeeper made of it a stock part of his story of the day's events.

"When the stranger gave me that look of his I knew right away something was doing. 'Course I didn't know what. I'll not claim I did, but I was sure there'd be a job for the coroner before night. Blister come into the store just after he left. I said to him, 'Who's that big black guy?' He says, 'Jake Houck.' 'Well,' I says, 'Jake Houck is sure up to some deviltry.'"

It is easy to be a prophet after the event. When Houck jingled out of the store and along the sidewalk to the hotel, none of the peaceful citizens he met guessed what he had in mind. None of them saw the signal which passed between him and the young fellow who had just come out of Dolan's. This was not a gesture. No words were spoken, but a message went from one to the other and back. The young puncher disappeared again into Dolan's.

Afterward, when Bear Cat began to assemble its recollections of the events prior to the dramatic climax, it was surprising how little that was authentic could be recalled. Probably a score of people noted casually the three strangers. Houck was recognized by three or four, Bandy Walker by at least one. The six-foot youngster with them was known by nobody who saw him. It was learned later that he had never been in the town before. The accounts of how the three spent the hour between ten and eleven are confusing. If they met during that time it was only for a moment or two while passing. But it is certain that Bandy Walker could not have been both in the blacksmith shop and at Platt & Fortner's five minutes before eleven. The chances are that some of the town people, anxious to have even a small part in the drama, mixed in their minds these strangers with others who had ridden in.

Bob Dillon and Dud Hollister dropped from their saddles in front of the hotel at just eleven o'clock. They had ridden thirty miles and stood for a moment stretching the cramp out of their muscles.

Dud spoke, nodding his head to the right. "Look what's here, Sure-Shot. Yore friend Bandy--old, tried, an' true."

Walker was trailing his high-heeled boots through the dust across the street from Dolan's toward the big store. If he saw Bob he gave no sign of knowing him.

The two friends passed into the hotel. They performed the usual rites of internal and external ablutions. They returned to the bar, hooked their heels, and swapped with Mike the news of the day.

"Hear Larson's bought the K T brand. Anything to it?" asked Dud.

"Paid seven thousand down, time on the balance," Mike said. "How you lads makin' it on Elk?"

"Fine. We got the best preëmptions on the river. Plenty of good grass, wood an' water handy, a first-class summer range. It's an A1 layout, looks like."

"At the end of nowhere, I reckon," Mike grinned.

"The best steers are on the edge of the herd," Dud retorted cheerfully. "It's that way with ranches too. A fellow couldn't raise much of a herd in Denver, could he?"

A sound like the explosion of a distant firecracker reached them. It was followed by a second.

It is strange what a difference there is between the report of one shot and another. A riotous cowpuncher bangs away into the air to stress the fact that he is a live one on the howl. Nobody pays the least attention. A bullet flies from a revolver barrel winged with death. Men at the roulette wheel straighten up to listen. The poker game is automatically suspended, a hand half dealt. By some kind of telepathy the players know that explosion carries deadly menace.

So now the conversation died. No other sound came, but the two cattlemen and the bartender were keyed to tense alertness. They had sloughed instantly the easy indolence of casual talk.

There came the slap of running footsteps on the sidewalk. A voice called in excitement, "They've killed Ferril."

The eyes of the Elk Creek ranchers met. They knew now what was taking place. Ferril was cashier of the Bear Cat bank.

CHAPTER XXXIX

BEAR CAT AWAKE

At exactly eleven o'clock Houck, Bandy Walker, and the big young cowpuncher who had ridden into town with them met at the corner of one of the freight wagons. Houck talked, the others listened, except for a comment or two. A cattleman passing them on his way to the bank recalled afterward that the low voice of the Brown's Park man was deadly serious.

The two big men walked into the bank. Bandy stayed with the horses. In the building, not counting the cashier and his assistant, were two or three patrons of the institution. One was Sturgis, a round little man who had recently started a drug-store in Bear Cat. He was talking to the assistant cashier. The cattleman was arranging with Ferril for a loan.

The attention of the cattleman drifted from the business in hand. "Carryin' a good deal of hardware, ain't they, Gus?"

Ferril smiled. "Most of the boys are quittin' that foolishness, but some of 'em can't get it out of their heads that they look big when they're gun-toters. Kind of a kid business, looks to me."

The eyes of the cattleman rested on Houck. "I wouldn't call that big black fellow a kid. Who is he?"

"Don't know. Reckon we're due to find out. He's breakin' away from the other fellow and movin' this way."

Houck observed that the big cowpuncher was nervous. The hand hitched in the sagging belt was trembling.

"Don't weaken, Dave," he said in a whisper out of the corner of his mouth. "We'll be outa town in ten minutes."

"Sure," agreed the other in a hoarse murmur.

Houck sauntered to the cage. This was a recent importation from Denver. Bear Cat was proud of it as an evidence of progress. It gave the bank quite a metropolitan air.

He stood behind the cattleman, the wall at his back so that his broad shoulders brushed it. Jake had no intention of letting any one get in his rear.

"Stick yore hands up!" he ordered roughly.

The cattleman did not turn. His hands went up instantly. A half a second later those of the startled cashier lifted toward the ceiling.

The assistant made a bad mistake. He dived for the revolver in the desk close at hand.

Houck fired. The bank clerk dropped.

That shot sent panic through the heart of Sturgis. He bolted for the side door. A second shot from Houck's weapon did not stop him. A moment more, and he was on the street racing to spread the alarm.

The leader of the bank robbers swung round on Ferril. His voice was harsh, menacing. He knew that every moment now counted. From under his coat he had drawn a gunnysack.

"The bank money--quick. No silver--gold an' any bills you've got."

Ferril opened the safe. He stuffed into the sack both loose and packed gold. He had a few bills, not many, for in the West paper money was then used very little.

"No monkey business," snarled Houck after he had stood up against the opposite wall the cattleman and the depositor who chanced to be in the bank. "This all you got? Speak up, or I'll drill you."

The cashier hesitated, but the ominous hollow eye into which he looked was persuasive. He opened an inner compartment lined with bags of gold. These he thrust into the gunnysack.

The robber named Dave tied with shaking fingers the loose end of the sack.

"Time to go," announced Houck grimly. "You're goin' with us far as our horses--all of you. We ain't lookin' for to be bushwhacked."

He lined up the bodyguard in front and on each side of himself and his accomplice. Against the back of the cattleman he pushed the end of the revolver barrel.

"Lead the way," he ordered with an oath.

Houck had heard the sound of running feet along the street. He knew it was more than likely that there would be a fight before he and his men got out of town. This was not in his reckoning. The shots fired inside the bank had been outside his calculations. They had been made necessary only by the action of the teller. Jake's plan had been to do the job swiftly and silently, to get out of town before word of what had taken place reached the citizens. He had chosen Bear Cat as the scene of the robbery because there was always plenty of money in the bank, because he owed its people a grudge, and because it was so far from a railroad.

As he had outlined the hold-up to his fellows in crime, it had looked like a moderately safe enterprise. But he realized now that he had probably led them into a trap. Nearly every man in Bear Cat was a big-game hunter. This meant that they were dead shots.

Houck knew that it would be a near thing if his party got away in time. A less resolute man would have dropped the whole thing after the alarm had been given and ridden away at once. But he was no quitter. So he was seeing it out.

The cattleman led the procession through the side door into the street.

Sunshine warm and mellow still bathed the street, just as it had done ten minutes earlier. But there was a difference. Dave felt a shiver run down his spine.

From the horses Bandy barked a warning. "Hurry, Jake, for God's sake. They're all round us."

CHAPTER XL

BIG-GAME HUNTERS AT WORK

Bob and his partner did not rush out of the hotel instantly to get into the fray. They did what a score of other able-bodied men of Bear Cat were doing--went in search of adequate weapons with which to oppose the bank robbers. Bear Cat was probably the best-equipped town in the country to meet a sudden emergency of this kind. In every house, behind the door or hanging on the wall, was a rifle used to kill big game. In every house was at least one man who knew how to handle that rifle. All he had to do was to pick up the weapon, load it, and step into the street.

June was in the kitchen with Chung Lung. The Reverend Melancthon Browning had just collected two dollars from Chung for the foreign missionary fund. Usually the cook was a cheerful giver, but this morning he was grumbling a little. He had been a loser at hop toy the night before.

"Mister Blowning he keep busy asking for dollars. He tell me givee to the Lord. Gleat smoke, Lord allee timee bloke?"

The girl laughed. The Oriental's quaint irreverence was of the letter and not of the spirit.

Through the swing door burst Bob Dillon. "Know where there's a rifle, June?"

She looked at him, big-eyed. "Not the Utes again?" she gasped.

"Bank robbers. I want a gun."

Without a word she turned and led him swiftly down the passage to a bedroom. In one corner of it was a belt. Bob loaded the gun.

June's heart beat fast. "You'll--be careful?" she cautioned.

He nodded as he ran out of the door and into the alley behind.

Platt & Fortner's was erecting a brick store building, the first of its kind in Bear Cat. The walls were up to the second story and the window frames were in. Through the litter of rubbish left by the workmen Bob picked a hurried way to one of the window spaces. Two men were crouched in another of these openings not fifteen feet from him.

"How many of 'em?" he asked in a loud whisper.

Blister answered from the embrasure opposite. "D-don't know."

"Still in the bank, are they?"

"Yes."

Some one peered out of Dolan's through the crack of a partly opened door. Bob caught the gleam of the sun upon the barrel of a gun. A hat with a pair of eyes beneath the rim of it showed above the sill of a window in the blacksmith shop opposite. Bear Cat was all set for action.

A man was standing beside some horses near the back door of Platt & Fortner's. He was partially screened from Bob's view by one of the broncos and by a freight wagon, but the young cattleman had a fleeting impression that he was Bandy Walker. Was he, too, waiting to get a shot at the bandits? Probably so. He had a rifle in his hands. But it struck Dillon he was taking chances. When the robbers came out of the bank they would be within thirty feet of him.

Out of the front door of the bank a little group of men filed. Two of them were armed. The others flanked them on every side. Ferril the cashier carried a gunnysack heavily loaded.

A man stepped out upon the platform in front of Platt & Fortner's. From his position he looked down on the little bunch of men moving toward the horses. Bandy Walker, beside the horses, called on Houck to hurry, that they were being surrounded.

"I've got you covered. Throw down yore guns," the man on the platform shouted to the outlaws, rifle at shoulder.

Houck's revolver flashed into the air. He fired across the shoulder of the man whom he was using as a screen. The rifleman on the store porch sat down suddenly, his weapon clattering to the ground.

"Another of 'em," Houck said aloud with a savage oath. "Any one else lookin' for it?"

Walker moved forward with the horses. Afraid that general firing would begin at any moment, Ferril dropped the sack and ran for the shelter of the wagons. His flight was a signal for the others who had been marshaled out of the bank. They scattered in a rush for cover.

Instantly Houck guessed what would follow. From every side a volley of bullets would be concentrated on him and his men. He too ran, dodging back into the bank.

He was not a tenth part of a second too soon. A fusillade of shots poured down. It seemed that men were firing from every door, window, and street corner. Bandy Walker fell as he started to run. Two bullets tore through his heart, one from each side. The big cowpuncher never stirred from his tracks. He went down at the first volley. Five wounds, any one of which would have been mortal, were later found in his body and head.

All told, the firing had not lasted as long as it would take a man to run across a street. Bear Cat had functioned. The bank robbers were out of business.

The news spread quicker than the tongue could tell it. From all directions men, women, and children converged toward the bank. In the excitement the leader of the bandits was forgotten for a minute or two.

"What about the third fellow?" a voice asked.

The question came from Dud Hollister. He had reached the scene too late to take any part in the battle, much to his chagrin.

"Went into the bank," Blister said. "I s-saw him duck in just before the shooting began."

The building was surrounded and rushed. Houck was not inside. Evidently he had run out of the back door and made for the willows by the river. A boy claimed that he had seen a man running in that direction.

A crowd of armed men beat the willows on both banks for a distance of a mile both up and down the stream wherever there was cover. No trace of the outlaw could be found. Posses on horseback took up the search. These posses not only rode up and down the river. They scoured the mesa on the other bank all day. When night fell Houck was still at large.

CHAPTER XLI

IN A LADY'S CHAMBER

The drama of the hold-up and of the retribution that had fallen upon the bandits had moved as swiftly as though it had been rehearsed. There had been no wasted words, no delay in the action. But in life the curtain does not always drop at the right moment. There was anticlimax in Bear Cat after the guns had ceased to boom. In the reaction after the strain the tongues of men and women were loosened. Relief expressed itself in chatter. Everybody had some contributing incident to tell.

Into the clatter Dud Hollister's voice cut sharply. "Some one get Doc Tuckerman, quick."

He was bending over the wounded man on the platform, trying to stop the flow of blood from a little hole in the side.

Mollie stepped toward him. "Carry Art into the hotel. I'll have a bed ready for him time you get there. Anybody else hurt?"

"Some one said Ferril was shot."

"No. He's all right. There he is over there by the wagons. See? Lookin' after the gold in the sack."

Blister came to the door of the bank in time to hear Mollie's question. "McCray's been s-shot--here in the bank."

"Bring him in too," ordered Mollie.

The wounded men were given first aid and carried into the hotel. There their wounds were dressed by the doctor.

In the corridor outside Bob and his partner met June coming out of one of the rooms where the invalids had been taken. She was carrying a towel and some bandages.

"Got to get a move on me," Dud said. "I got in after the fireworks were over. Want to join Blister's posse now. You comin', Bob?"

"Not now," Dillon answered.

He was white to the lips. There was a fear in his mind that he might be going to disgrace himself by getting sick. The nausea had not attacked him until the shooting was over. He was much annoyed at himself, but the picture of the lusty outlaws lying in the dust with the life stricken out of them had been too much.

"All right. I'll be hustlin' along," Dud said, and went.

Bob leaned against the wall.

June looked at him with wise, understanding mother-eyes. "It was kinda awful, wasn't it? Gave me a turn when I saw them lying there. Must have been worse for you. Did you--hit ..?"

"No." He was humiliated at the confession. "I didn't fire a shot. Couldn't, somehow. Everybody was blazin' away at 'em. That's the kind of nerve I've got," he told her bitterly.

In her eyes the starlight flashed. "An' that's the kind I love. Oh, Bob, I wouldn't want to think you'd killed either of those poor men, an' one of them just a boy."

"Some one had to do it."

"Yes, but not you. And they didn't have to brag afterward about it, did they? That's horrible. Everybody going around telling how they shot them. As if it was something to be proud of. I'm so glad you're not in it. Let the others have the glory if they want it."

He tried to be honest about it. "That's all very well, but they were a bad lot. They didn't hesitate to kill. The town had to defend itself. No, it was just that I'm such a--baby."

"You're not!" she protested indignantly. "I won't have you say it, either."

His hungry eyes could not leave her, so slim and ardent, all fire and flame. The sweetness of her energy, the grace of the delicate lifted throat curve, the warmth and color of life in her, expressed a spirit generous and fine. His heart sang within him. Out of a world of women she was the one he wanted, the lance-straight mate his soul leaped out to meet.

"There's no one like you in the world, June," he cried. "Nobody in all the world."

She flashed at him eyes of alarm. A faint pink, such as flushes the sea at dawn, waved into her cheeks and throat.

"I've got to go," she said hurriedly. "Mollie'll be expectin' me."

She was off, light-footed as Daphne, the rhythm of morning in her step.

All day she carried with her the treasure of his words and the look that had gone with them. Did he think it? Did he really and truly believe it? Her exaltation stayed with her while she waited on table, while she nursed the wounded men, while she helped Chung wash the dishes. It went singing with her into her little bedroom when she retired for the night.

June sat down before the small glass and looked at the image she saw there. What was it he liked about her? She studied the black crisp hair, the dark eager eyes with the dusky shadows under them in the slight hollows beneath, the glow of red that stained the cheeks below the pigment of the complexion. She tried looking at the reflection from different angles to get various effects. It was impossible for her not to know that she was good to look at, but she had very little vanity about it. None the less it pleased her because it pleased others.

She let down her long thick hair and combed it. The tresses still had the old tendency of her childhood to snarl unless she took good care of them. From being on her feet all day the shoes she was wearing were uncomfortable. She slipped them off and returned to the brushing of the hair.

While craning her neck for a side view June saw in the glass that which drained the blood from her heart. Under the bed the fingers of a hand projected into view. It was like her that in spite of the shock she neither screamed nor ran to the door and cried for help. She went on looking at her counterfeit in the glass, thoughts racing furiously. The hand belonged to a man. She could see that now plainly, could even make out a section of the gauntlet on his wrist. Who was he? What was he doing here in her room?

She turned in the chair, deliberately, steadying her voice.

"Better come out from there. I see you," she said quietly.

From under the bed Jake Houck crawled.

CHAPTER XLII

A WALK IN THE PARK

June was the first to speak. "So you're here. You didn't get away."

"I'm here," Houck growled. "No chance for a getaway. I ran out the back door of the bank an' ducked into the hotel. This was the first door I come to, an' I headed in."

She was not afraid of him. The power he had once held over her was gone forever. The girl had found resources within herself that refused him dominance. He was what he always had been, but she had changed. Her vision was clearer. A game and resourceful bully he might be, but she knew one quiet youth of a far finer courage.

"They're lookin' for you along the river," she said.

The muscles of his jaw hardened. "They'd better hope they don't find me, some of 'em," he bragged.

"So had you," she said significantly.

He took her meaning instantly. The temper of Bear Cat was on edge for a lynching. "Did they die, either o' those fellows I shot?" the bandit demanded.

"Not yet."

"Fools, the pair of 'em. If that bank teller hadn't grabbed for his gun we'd 'a' got away with it fine."

She looked at him with disgust, not untouched with self-scorn because she had ever let him become an overpowering influence in her life. He could no more help boasting than he could breathing.

"As it is, you've reached the end of your rope," the girl said steadily.

"Don't you think I'm at the end of a rope. I'm a long ways from there."

"And the men with you are gone."

"How gone? Did they get 'em?"

"Neither of them ever moved out of his tracks."

"When I heard the shootin' I figured it would be thataway," Houck said callously.

She could see in him no evidence whatever of regret or remorse for what he had done. This raid, she guessed, was of his planning. He had brought the others into it, and they had paid the penalty of their folly. The responsibility for their deaths lay at his door. He was not apparently giving a thought to that.

"You can't stay here," she told him coldly. "You'll have to go."

"Go where? Can you get me a horse?"

"I won't," June answered.

"I got to have a horse, girl," he wheedled. "Can't travel without one."

"I don't care how far you travel or what becomes of you. I want you out of here. That's all."

"You wouldn't want me shootin' up some o' yore friends, would you? Well, then. If they find me here there'll be some funerals in Bear Cat. You can bet heavy on that."

She spoke more confidently than she felt. "They can take care of themselves. I won't have you here. I'll not protect you."

The outlaw's eyes narrowed to slits. "Throw me down, would you? Tell 'em I'm here, mebbe?" His face was a menace, his voice a snarl.

June looked at him steadily, unafraid. "You needn't try to bully me. It's not worth wasting your time."

To look at her was to know the truth of what she said, but he could not help trying to dominate the girl, both because it was his nature and because he needed so badly her help.

"Sho! You're not so goshalmighty. You're jes' June Tolliver. I'm the same Jake Houck you once promised to marry. Don't forget that, girl. I took you from that white-livered fellow you married--"

"Who saved you from the Utes when nobody else would lift a finger for you. That comes well from you of all men," she flung out.

"That ain't the point. What I'm sayin' is that I'll not stand for you throwin' me down."

"What can you do?" She stood before him in her stockings, the heavy black hair waving down to her hips, a slim girl whose wiry strength he could crush with one hand.

Her question stopped him. What could he do if she wanted to give him up? If he made a move toward her she would scream, and that would bring his enemies upon him. He could shoot her afterward, but that would do no good. His account was heavy enough as it stood without piling up surplusage.

"You aimin' for to sell me out?" he asked hoarsely.

"No. I won't be responsible for your death." June might have added another reason, a more potent one. She knew Jake Houck, what a game and desperate villain he was. They could not capture him alive. It was not likely he could be killed without one or two men at least being shot by him. Driven into a corner, he would fight like a wild wolf.

"Tha's the way to talk, June. Help me outa this hole. You can if you're a mind to. Have they got patrols out everywhere?"

"Only on the river side of the town. They think you escaped that way."

"Well, if you'll get me a horse--"

"I'll not do it." She reflected a moment, thinking out the situation. "If you can reach the foothills you'll have a chance."

He grinned, wolfishly. "I'll reach 'em. You can gamble on that, if I have to drop a coupla guys like I did this mornin'."

That was just the trouble. If any one interfered with him, or even recognized him, he would shoot instantly. He would be a deadly menace until he was out of Bear Cat.

"I'll go with you," June said impulsively.

"Go with me?" he repeated.

"Across the park. If they see me with you, nobody'll pay any attention to you. Pull your hat down over your eyes."

He did as she told him.

"Better leave your guns here. If anyone sees them--"

"Nothin' doing. My guns go right with me. What are you trying to pull off?" He shot a lowering, suspicious look at her.

"Keep them under your coat, then. We don't want folks looking at us too curiously. We'll stroll along as if we were interested in our talk. When we meet any one, if we do, you can look down at me. That'll hide your face."

"You going with me clear to the edge of town?"

"No. Just across the square, where it's light an' there are liable to be people. You'll have to look out for yourself after that. It's not more than two hundred yards to the sagebrush."

"I'm ready whenever you are," he said.

June put on her shoes and did up her hair.

She made him wait there while she scouted to make sure nobody was in the corridor outside the room.

They passed out of the back door of the hotel.

Chung met them. He grunted "Glood-eveling" with a grin at June, but he did not glance twice at her companion.

The two passed across a vacant lot and into the park. They saw one or two people--a woman with a basket of eggs, a barefoot boy returning home from after-supper play. June carried the burden of the talk because she was quicker-witted than Houck. Its purpose was to deceive anybody who might happen to be looking at them.

It chanced that some one was looking at them. He was a young man who had been lying on the grass stargazing. They passed close to him and he recognized June by her walk. That was not what brought him to his feet a moment later with a gasp of amazement. He had recognized her companion, too, or he thought he had. It was not credible, of course. He must be mistaken. And yet--if that was not Jake Houck's straddling slouch his eyes were playing tricks. The fellow limped, too, just a trifle, as he had heard the Brown's Park man did from the effects of his wounds in the Ute campaign.

But how could Houck be with June, strolling across the park in intimate talk with her, leaning toward her in that confidential, lover-like attitude--Jake Houck, who had robbed the bank a few hours earlier and was being hunted up and down the river by armed posses ready to shoot him like a wolf? June was a good hater. She had no use whatever for this fellow. Why, then, would she be with him, laughing lightly and talking with animation?

Bob followed them, as noiselessly as possible. And momentarily the conviction grew in him that this was Houck. It was puzzling, but he could not escape the conclusion. There was a trick in the fellow's stride, a peculiarity of the swinging shoulders that made for identification of the man.

If he could have heard the talk between them, Bob would have better understood the situation.

Ever since that memorable evening when Bear Cat had driven him away in disgrace, Houck had let loose the worse impulses of his nature. He had gone bad, to use the phrase of the West. Something in him had snapped that hitherto had made him value the opinions of men. In the old days he had been a rustler and worse, but no crime had ever been proved against him. He could hold his head up, and he did. But the shock to his pride and self-esteem that night had produced in him a species of disintegration. He had drunk heavily and almost constantly. It had been during the sour temper following such a bout that he had quarreled with and shot the Ute. From that hour his declension had been swift. How far he had gone was shown by the way he had taken Dillon's great service to him. The thing rankled in his mind, filled him with surging rage whenever he thought of it. He hated the young fellow more than ever.

But as he walked with June, slender, light-swinging, warm with young, sensuous life, the sultry passion of the man mounted to his brain and overpowered caution. His vanity whispered to him. No woman saved a man from death unless she loved him. She might give other reasons, but that one only counted. It was easy for him to persuade himself that she always had been fond of him at heart. There had been moments when the quality of her opposition to him had taken on the color of adventure.

"I'll leave you at the corner," she said. "Go back of that house and through the barbed-wire fence. You'll be in the sage then."

"Come with me to the fence," he whispered. "I got something to tell you."

She looked at him, sharply, coldly. "You've got nothing to tell me that I want to hear. I'm not doing this for you, but to save the lives of my friends. Understand that."

They were for the moment in the shadow of a great cottonwood. Houck stopped, devouring her with his hungry eyes. Bad as the man was, he had the human craving of his sex. The slim grace of her, the fundamental courage, the lift of the oval chin, touched a chord that went vibrating through him. He snatched her to him, crushing his kisses upon the disturbing mouth, upon the color spots that warmed her cheeks.

She was too smothered to cry out at first. Later, she repressed the impulse. With all her strength she fought to push him from her.

A step sounded, a cry, the sound of a smashing blow going home. Houck staggered back. He reached for a revolver.

June heard herself scream. A shot rang out. The man who had rescued her crumpled up and went down. In that horrified moment she knew he was Bob Dillon.

CHAPTER XLIII

NOT EVEN POWDER-BURNT

Houck stood over the prostrate man, the smoking revolver in his hand, on his lips a cruel twist and in his throat a wolfish snarl.

June, watching him with eyes held in a fascination of terror, felt that at any moment he might begin pumping shots into the supine body. She shook off the palsy that held her and almost hurled her soft young body at him.

"Don't!" she begged. "Don't!" Cold fingers clutched at his wrist, dragged down the barrel of the forty-five.

"He had it comin'. He was askin' for it," the outlaw said. He spoke huskily, still looking down at the crumpled figure.

The girl felt in him the slackness of indecision. Should he shoot again and make sure? Or let the thing go as it was? In an instant he would have made up his mind.

She spoke quickly, words tumbling out pell-mell. "You must hurry--hurry! When they heard that shot--Listen! There's some one coming. Oh, run, run!"

Her staccato warning deflected his mind from the course toward which it might have turned. He held up his head, listening. The slap of footsteps on a board walk could be plainly heard. A voice lifted itself in question into the night. The door of Dolan's opened and let out a fan-shaped shaft of light. The figures of men could be seen as they surged across the lit space into the darkness. June had spoken the truth. He must hurry if he was to escape. To shoot again now would be to advertise the spot where he was.

He wrenched his arm from her fingers and ran. He moved as awkwardly as a bear, but he covered ground swiftly. In a few seconds the night had swallowed him.

Instantly the girl was beside Dillon, on her knees, lifting his head into her arms. "Oh, Bob--Bob!" she wailed.

He opened his eyes.

"Where did he hit you?" she cried softly.

His face was puzzled. He did not yet realize what had taken place. "Hit me--who?"

"That Houck. He shot you. Oh, Bob, are you much hurt?"

Dillon was recalled to a pain in his intestines. He pressed his hand against the cartridge belt.

"It's here," he said weakly.

He could feel the wet blood soaking through the shirt. The thought of it almost made him lose consciousness again.

"L-let's have a look," a squeaky voice said.

June looked up. Blister had arrived panting on the scene. Larson was on his heels.

"We better carry him to the hotel," the cattleman said to the justice. "Who did it?"

"Houck," June sobbed. She was not weeping, but her breath was catching.

Bob tried to rise, but firm hands held him down. "I can walk," he protested. "Lemme try, anyhow."

"No," insisted June.

Blister knelt beside Dillon. "Where's the wound at?" he asked.

The young fellow showed him.

"J-June, you go get Doc T-Tuckerman," Blister ordered.

She flew to obey.

The fat man opened the shirt.

"Look out for the blood," Bob said, still faintly. "Ouch!"

Blister's hand was traveling slowly next to the flesh. "N-no blood here," he said.

"Why, I felt it."

"R-reckon not, son." Blister exposed his hand in the moonlight.

The evidence bore out what he said.

"Maybe it's bleeding internally," Bob said.

Larson had picked up the belt they had unstrapped from Dillon's waist. He was examining it closely. His keen eyes found a dent in the buckle. The buckle had been just above the spot where Bob complained of the pain.

"Maybe it ain't," Larson said. "Looks like he hit yore belt an' the bullet went flyin' wild."

A closer examination showed that this must be what had taken place. There was no wound on Bob's body. He had been stunned by the shock and his active imagination had at once accepted the assumption that he had been wounded.

Bob rose with a shamefaced laugh. The incident seemed to him very characteristic. He was always making a fool of himself by getting frightened when there was no need of it. One could not imagine Dud Hollister lying down and talking faintly about an internal bleeding when there was not a scratch on his body, nor fancying that he could feel blood soaking through his shirt because somebody had shot at him.

As the three men walked back toward the hotel, they met June and Dud. The girl cried out at sight of Bob.

"I'm a false alarm," he told her bitterly. "He didn't hit me a-tall."

"Hit his b-belt buckle. If this here T-Texas man lives to be a hundred he'll never have a closer call. Think of a fellow whangin' away with a forty-five right close to him, hitting him where he was aimin' for, and not even scratching Bob. O' course the shock of it knocked him cold. Naturally it would. But I'll go on record that our friend here was born lucky. I'd ought by rights to be holdin' an inquest on the remains," Blister burbled cheerfully.

June said nothing. She drew a long sigh of relief and looked at Bob to make sure that they were concealing nothing from her.

He met her look in a kind of dogged despair. On this one subject he was so sensitive that he found criticisms where none were intended. Blister was making excuses for him, he felt, was preparing a way of escape from his chicken-hearted weakness. And he did not want the failure palliated.

"What's the use of all that explainin', Blister?" he said bluntly. "Fact is, I got scared an' quit cold. Thought I was shot up when I wasn't even powder-burnt."

He turned on his heel and walked away.

Dud's white teeth showed in his friendly, affectionate grin. "Never did see such a fellow for backin' hisself into a corner an' allowin' that he's a plumb quitter. I'll bet, if the facts were known, he come through all right."

June decided to tell her story. "Yes, Dud. He must have seen Jake Houck with me, and when Jake--annoyed me--Bob jumped at him and hit him. Then Jake shot."

"Lucky he didn't shoot again after Bob was down," ventured Dud on a search for information.

In the darkness none of them could see the warm glow that swept across the cheeks of the girl. "I kinda got in his way--and told him he'd better hurry," she explained.

"Yes, but--Where did you meet Houck? How did he happen to be with you?" asked Larson. "To be on this side of town he must 'a' slipped through the guards."

"He never went to the river. I found him under the bed in my room a few minutes ago. Said he ran in there after he left the bank. He wanted me to get him a horse. I wouldn't. But I knew if he was found cornered he would kill somebody before he was taken. Maybe two or three. I didn't know. And of course he wouldn't 'a' let me leave the room alone anyhow. So I said I'd walk across the park with him and let him slip into the sage. I thought it would be better."

Dud nodded. "We'd better get the boys on his trail immediate."

They separated, with that end in view.

CHAPTER XLIV

BOB HOLDS HIS RED HAID HIGH

At the corner of the street Bob came upon Tom Reeves and an old Leadville miner in argument. Tom made the high sign to Dillon.

"What's all the rumpus about?" he wanted to know.

"Jake Houck was seen crossin' the park. He got into the sage."

"Sho! I'll bet the hole of a doughnut he ain't been seen. If you was to ask me I'd say he was twenty-five miles from here right now, an' not lettin' no grass grow under his feet neither. I been talkin' to old wooden head here about the railroad comin' in." Tom's eyes twinkled. His friend guessed that he was trying to get a rise out of the old-timer. "He's sure some mossback. I been tellin' him the railroad's comin' through here an' Meeker right soon, but he can't see it. I reckon the toot of an engine would scare him 'most to death."

"Don't get excited about that railroad, son," drawled the former hard-rock driller, chewing his cud equably. "I rode a horse to death fifteen years ago to beat the choo-choo train in here, an' I notice it ain't arriv yet."

Bob left them to their argument. He was not just now in a mood for badinage. He moved up the street past the scattered suburbs of the little frontier town. Under the cool stars he wanted to think out what had just taken place.

Had he fainted from sheer fright when the gun blazed at him? Or was Blister's explanation a genuine one? He had read of men being thrown down and knocked senseless by the atmospheric shock of shells exploding near them in battle. But this would not come in that class. He had been actually struck. The belt buckle had been driven against his flesh. Had this hit him with force enough actually to drive the breath out of him? Or had he thought himself wounded and collapsed because of the thought?

It made a great deal of difference to him which of these was true, more than it did to the little world in which he moved. Some of the boys might guy him good-naturedly, but nobody was likely to take the matter seriously except himself. Bob had begun to learn that a man ought to be his own most severe critic. He had set out to cure himself of cowardice. He would not be easy in mind so long as he still suspected himself of showing the white feather.

He leaned on a fence and looked across the silvery sage to a grove of quaking asp beyond. How long he stood there, letting thoughts drift through his mind, he did not know. A sound startled him, the faint swish of something stirring. He turned.

Out of the night shadows a nymph seemed to be floating toward him. For a moment he had a sense of unreality, that the flow and rhythm of her movement were born of the imagination. But almost at once he knew that this was June in the flesh.

The moonlight haloed the girl, lent her the touch of magic that transformed her from a creature not too good for human nature's daily food into an ethereal daughter of romance. Her eyes were dark pools of loveliness in a white face.

"June!" he cried, excitement drumming in his blood.

Why had she come to find him? What impulse or purpose had brought her out into the night in his wake? Desire of her, tender, poignant, absorbing, pricked through him like an ache. He wanted her. Soul and body reached out to her, though both found expression only in that first cry.

Her mouth quivered. "Oh, Bob, you silly boy! As if--as if it matters why you were stunned. You were. That's enough. I'm so glad--so glad you're not hurt. It's 'most a miracle. He might have killed you."

She did not tell him that he would have done it if she had not flung her weight on his arm and dragged the weapon down, nor how in that dreadful moment her wits had worked to save him from the homicidal mania of the killer.

Bob's heart thumped against his ribs like a caged bird. Her dear concern was for him. It was so she construed friendship--to give herself generously without any mock modesty or prudery. She had come without thought of herself because her heart had sent her.

"What matters is that when I called you came," she went on. "You weren't afraid then, were you?"

"Hadn't time. That's why. I just jumped."

"Yes." The expression in her soft eyes was veiled, like autumn fires in the hills blazing through mists. "You just jumped to help me. You forgot he carried two forty-fives and would use them, didn't you?"

"Yes," he admitted. "I reckon if I'd thought of that--"

Even as the laughter rippled from her throat she gave a gesture of impatience. There were times when self-depreciation ceased to be a virtue. She remembered a confidence Blister had once made to her.

"T-Texas man," she squeaked, stuttering a little in mimicry, "throw up that red haid an' stick out yore chin."

Up jerked the head. Bob began to grin in spite of himself.

"Whose image are you m-made in?" she demanded.

"You know," he answered.

"What have you got over all the world?"

"Dominion, ma'am, but not over all of it, I reckon."

"All of it," she insisted, standing clean of line and straight as a boy soldier.

"Right smart of it," he compromised.

"Every teeny bit of it," she flung back.

"Have yore own way. I know you will anyhow," he conceded.

"An' what are you a little lower than?"

"I'm a heap lower than one angel I know."

She stamped her foot. "You're no such thing. You're as good as any one--and better."

"I wouldn't say better," he murmured ironically. None the less he was feeling quite cheerful again. He enjoyed being put through his catechism by her.

"Trouble with you is you're so meek," she stormed. "You let anybody run it over you till they go too far. What's the use of crying your own goods down? Tell the world you're Bob Dillon and for it to watch your dust."

"You want me to brag an' strut like Jake Houck?"

"No-o, not like that. But Blister's right. You've got to know your worth. When you're sure of it you don't have to tell other people about it. They know."

He considered this. "Tha's correct," he said.

"Well, then."

Bob had an inspiration. It was born out of moonshine, her urging, and the hunger of his heart. His spurs trailed across the grass.

"Is my red haid high enough now?" he asked, smiling.

Panic touched her pulse. "Yes, Bob."

"What have I got over all the world?" he quizzed.

"Dominion," she said obediently in a small voice.

"Over all of it?"

"I--don't--know."

His brown hands fastened on her shoulders. He waited till at last her eyes came up to meet his. "Every teeny bit of it."

"Have your own way," she replied, trying feebly to escape an emotional climax by repeating the words he had used. "I know you will anyhow."

He felt himself floating on a wave of audacious self-confidence. "Say it, then. Every teeny bit of it."

"Every teeny bit of it," she whispered.

"That means June Tolliver too." The look in his eyes flooded her with love.

"June Dillon," the girl corrected in a voice so soft and low he scarcely made out the words.

He caught her in his arms. "You precious lamb!"

They forgot the rest of the catechism. She nestled against his shoulder while they told each other in voiceless ways what has been in the hearts of lovers ever since the first ones walked in Eden.

CHAPTER XLV

THE OUTLAW GETS A BAD BREAK

Houck crawled through the barbed-wire fence and looked back into the park from which he had just fled. June was kneeling beside the man he had shot. Some one was running across the grass toward her. Soon the pursuit would be at his heels. He dared not lose a second.

He plunged into the sage, making for the hills which rose like a saw-toothed wall on the horizon. If he could reach them he might find there a precarious safety. Some wooded pocket would give him shelter until the pursuit had swept past. He was hungry, but if he must he could do without food for a day.

The bandit was filled with a furious, impotent rage at the way fortune had tricked him. Thirty-five miles from Bear Cat, well back from the river, three horses were waiting for him and his dead companions in a draw. Unless somebody found them they would wait a long time. The way that led to them was barred for him. He would have to try to reach Glenwood or Rifle. From there he could perhaps catch a freight east or west. His one chance was to get clear out of the country. After this day's work it would be too small to hold him.

Nothing had come out as he had planned it. The farthest thing from his hopes had been that he would have to fight his way out. He had not killed that fool Dillon of set purpose. He knew now that if his anger had not blazed out he might have made his getaway and left the fellow alive. But he had been given no time to think. It was a bad break of the luck. The White River settlers would not forgive him that. They would remember that Dillon had saved him from the Indians in the Ute campaign, and they would reason--the thickheaded idiots--that the least he could have done was to let the boy go.

He plunged through the sand of the sage hills at a gait that was half a run and half a walk. In his high-heeled boots fast travel was difficult. The footgear of the cattleman is not made for walking. The hill riders do most of their travel in a saddle. Houck's feet hurt. His toes were driven forward in the boots until each step became torture. From his heels the skin peeled from sliding up and down against the hard leather.

But he dared not stop. Already he could hear the pursuers. In the still night there came to him the shout of one calling to another, the ring of a horse's hoof striking on a stone. They were combing the mesa behind him.

Houck stumbled forward. Vaguely there rose before him a boulder-strewn slope that marked the limit of the valley. Up this he scrambled in a desperate hurry to reach the rocks. For the pursuit was almost upon him now.

Two outcroppings of sandstone barred the way. They leaned against each other, leaving a small cave beneath. Into this Houck crawled on hands and knees.

He lay crouched there, weapon in hand, like a cornered wolf, while the riders swept up and past. He knew one palpitating moment when he thought himself about to be discovered. Two of the posse stopped close to his hiding-place.

"Must be close to him," one said. "Got the makin's, Jim?"

"Sure." Evidently the tobacco pouch was passed from one to the other. "Right in these rocks somewhere, I shouldn't wonder."

"Mebbeso. Mebbe still hot-footin' it for the hills. He's in one heluva hurry if you ask me."

"Killed Bob Dillon in the park, I heard."

"If he did he'll sure hang for it, after what Dillon did for him."

There came the faint sound of creaking leather as their horses moved up the hill.

The outlaw waited till they were out of hearing before he crept into the open. Across the face of the slope he cut obliquely, working always toward higher ground. His lips were drawn back so that the tobacco-stained teeth showed in a snarl of savage rage. It would go ill with any of the posse if they should stumble on him. He would have no more mercy than a hunted wild beast.

With every minute now his chances of safety increased. The riders were far above him and to the left. With luck he should reach Piceance Creek by morning. He would travel up it till he came to Pete Tolliver's place. He would make the old man give him a horse. Not since the night he had been ridden out of Bear Cat on a rail had he seen the nester. But Pete always had been putty in his hands. It would be easy enough to bully him into letting him have whatever he wanted. All he needed was a saddled mount and provisions.

Houck was on unfamiliar ground. If there were settlers in these hills he did not know where they were. Across the divide somewhere ran Piceance Creek, but except in a vague way he was not sure of the direction it took. It was possible he might lay hold of a horse this side of Tolliver's. If so, he would not for a moment hesitate to take it.

All night he traveled. Once he thought he heard a distant dog, but though he moved in the direction from which the barking had come he did not find any ranch. The first faint glimmer of gray dawn had begun to lighten the sky when he reached the watershed of Piceance.

It had been seventeen hours since he had tasted water and that had been as a chaser after a large drink of whiskey. He was thirsty, and he hastened his pace to reach the creek. Moving down the slope, he pulled up abruptly. He had run into a cavvy grazing on the hill.

A thick growth of pine and piñon ran up to the ridge above. Back of a scrub evergreen Houck dropped to consider a plan of action. He meant to get one of these horses, and to do this he must have it and be gone before dawn. This was probably some round-up. If he could drift around close to the camp and find a saddle, there would likely be a rope attached to it. He might, of course, be seen, but he would have to take a chance on that.

Chance befriended him to his undoing. As he crept through the brush something caught his ankle and he stumbled. His groping fingers found a rope. One end of the rope was attached to a stake driven into the ground. The other led to a horse, a pinto, built for spirit and for speed, his trained eye could tell.

He pulled up the stake and wound up the rope, moving toward the pinto as he did so. He decided it would be better not to try to get a saddle till he reached Tolliver's place. The rope would do for a bridle at a pinch.

The horse backed away from him, frightened at this stranger who had appeared from nowhere. He followed, trying in a whisper to soothe the animal. It backed into a small piñon, snapping dry branches with its weight.

Houck cursed softly. He did not want to arouse anybody in the camp or to call the attention of the night jinglers to his presence. He tried to lead the pinto away, but it balked and dug its forefeet into the ground, leaning back on the rope.

The outlaw murmured encouragement to the horse. Reluctantly it yielded to the steady pull on its neck. Man and beast began to move back up the hill. As soon as he was a safe distance from the camp, Houck meant to make of the rope a bridle.

In the pre-dawn darkness he could see little and that only as vague outlines rather than definite shapes. But some instinct warned the hunted man that this was no round-up camp. He did not quite know what it was. Yet he felt as though he were on the verge of a discovery, as though an unknown but terrible danger surrounded him. Unimaginative he was, but something that was almost panic flooded up in him.

He could not wait to mount the horse until he had reached the brow of the hill. Drawing the rope close, he caught at the mane of the horse and bent his knees for the spring.

Houck had an instant's warning, and his revolver was half out of its scabbard when the rush of the attack flung him against the startled animal. He fought like a baited bear, exerting all his great strength to fling back the figures that surged up at him out of the darkness. From all sides they came at him, with guttural throat cries, swarming over each other as he beat them down.

The struggling mass quartered over the ground like some unwieldy prehistoric reptile. Houck knew that if he lost his footing he was done for. Once, as the cluster of fighters swung downhill, the outlaw found himself close to the edge of the group. He got his arms free and tried to beat off those clinging to him. Out of the mêlée he staggered, a pair of arms locked tightly round his thighs. Before he could free himself another body flung itself at his shoulder and hurled him from his feet.

His foes piled on him as ants do on a captured insect. His arms were tied behind him with rawhide thongs, his feet fastened together rather loosely.

He was pulled to a sitting posture. In the east the sky had lightened with the promise of the coming day.

His clothes torn from arms and body, his face bleeding from random blows, Houck looked round on the circle of his captors defiantly. In his glaring eyes and close-clamped, salient jaw no evidence was written of the despair that swept over him in a wave and drowned hope. He had in this bleak hour of reckoning the virtue of indomitable gameness.

"All right. You got me. Go to it, you red devils," he growled.

The Utes gloated over him in a silence more deadly than any verbal threats. Their enemy had been delivered into their hands.

CHAPTER XLVI

THE END OF A CROOKED TRAIL

In the grim faces of the Utes Houck read his doom. He had not the least doubt of it. His trail ended here.

The terror in his heart rose less out of the fact itself than the circumstances which surrounded it. The gray dawn, the grim, copper-colored faces, the unknown torment waiting for him, stimulated his imagination. He could have faced his own kind, the cattlemen of the Rio Blanco, without this clutching horror that gripped him. They would have done what they thought necessary, but without any unnecessary cruelty. What the Utes would do he did not know. They would make sure of their vengeance, but they would not be merciful about it.

He repressed a shudder and showed his yellow teeth in a grin of defiance. "I reckon you're right glad to see me," he jeered.

Still they said nothing, only looked at their captive with an aspect that daunted him.

"Not dumb, are you? Speak up, some of you," Houck snarled, fighting down the panic within him.

A wrinkled old Ute spoke quietly. "Man-with-loud-tongue die. He kill Indian--give him no chance. Indians kill him now."

Houck nodded his head. "Sure I killed him. He'd stolen my horse, hadn't he?"

The old fellow touched his chest. "Black Arrow my son. You kill him. He take your horse mebbe. You take Ute horse." He pointed to the pinto. "Ute kill Man-with-loud-tongue."

"Black Arrow reached for his gun. I had to shoot. It was an even break." Houck's voice pleaded in spite of his resolution not to weaken.

The spokesman for the Indians still showed an impassive face, but his voice was scornful. "Is Man-with-loud-tongue a yellow coyote? Does he carry the heart of a squaw? Will he cry like a pappoose?"

Houck's salient jaw jutted out. The man was a mass of vanity. Moreover, he was game. "Who told you I was yellow? Where did you get that? I ain't scared of all the damned Utes that ever came outa hell."

And to prove it--perhaps, too, by way of bolstering up his courage--he cursed the redskins with a string of blistering oaths till he was out of breath.

The captive needed no explanation of the situation. He knew that the soldiers had failed to round up and drive back to the reservation a band of the Utes that had split from the main body and taken to the hills. By some unlucky chance or evil fate he had come straight from Bear Cat to their night camp.

The Utes left Houck pegged out to the ground while they sat at a little distance and held a pow-wow. The outlaw knew they were deciding his fate. He knew them better than to expect anything less than death. What shook his nerve was the uncertainty as to the form it would take. Like all frontiersmen, he had heard horrible stories of Apache torture. In general the Utes did not do much of that sort of thing. But they had a special grudge against him. What he had done to one of them had been at least a contributory cause of the outbreak that had resulted so disastrously for them. He would have to pay the debt he owed. But how? He sweated blood while the Indians squatted before the fire and came to a decision.

The council did not last long. When it broke up Houck braced his will to face what he must. It would not be long now. Soon he would know the worst.

Two of the braves went up the hill toward the cavvy. The rest came back to their captive.

They stood beside him in silence. Houck scowled up at them, still defiant.

"Well?" he demanded.

The Utes said nothing. They stood there stolid. Their victim read in that voiceless condemnation an awful menace.

"Onload it," he jeered. "I'm no squaw. Shoot it at me. Jake Houck ain't scared."

Still they waited, the father of Black Arrow with folded arms, a sultry fire burning in his dark eyes.

The two men who had gone to the cavvy returned. They were leading a horse with a rope around its neck. Houck recognized the animal with a thrill of superstitious terror. It was the one about the possession of which he had shot Black Arrow.

The old chief spoke again. "Man-with-loud-tongue claim this horse. Utes give it him. Horse his. Man-with-loud-tongue satisfied then maybe."

"What are you aimin' to do, you red devils?" Houck shouted.

Already he guessed vaguely at the truth. Men were arranging a kind of harness of rope and rawhide on the animal.

Others stooped to drag the captive forward. He set his teeth to keep back the shriek of terror that rose to his throat.

He knew now what form the vengeance of the savages was to take.

CHAPTER XLVII

THE KINGDOM OF JOY

A prince of the Kingdom of Joy rode the Piceance trail on a morning glad with the song of birds and the rippling of brooks. Knee to knee with him rode his princess, slim and straight, the pink in her soft smooth cheeks, a shy and eager light in the velvet-dark eyes. They were starting together on the long, long trail, and the poor young things could vision it only as strewn with sunbathed columbines and goldenrods.

The princess was a bride, had been one for all of twelve hours. It was her present conviction that she lived in a world wonderful, and that the most amazingly radiant thing in it was what had happened to her and Bob Dillon. She pitied everybody else in the universe. They were so blind! They looked, but they did not see what was so clear to eyes from which the veil had been stripped. They went about their humdrum way without emotion. Their hearts did not sing exultant pæans that throbbed out of them like joy-notes from a meadow-lark's throat. Only those who had come happily to love's fruition understood the meaning of life. June was not only happy; she was this morning wise, heiress of that sure wisdom which comes only to the young when they discover just why they have been born into the world.

How many joys there were for those attuned to receive them! Her fingers laced with Bob's, and from the contact a warm, ecstatic glow flooded both their bodies. She looked at his clean brown face, with its line of golden down above where the razor had traveled, with its tousled, reddish hair falling into the smiling eyes, and a queer little lump surged into the girl's throat. Her husband! This boy was the mate heaven had sent her to repay for years of unhappiness.

"My wife!" It was all still so new and unbelievable that Bob's voice shook a little.

"Are you sorry?" she asked.

Her shy smile teased. She did not ask because she needed information, but because she could not hear too often the answer.

"You know whether I am. Oh, June girl, I didn't know it would be like this," he cried.

"Nor I, Bob."

Their lithe bodies leaned from the saddles. They held each other close while their lips met.

They were on their way to Pete Tolliver's to tell him the great news. Soon now the old cabin and its outbuildings would break into view. They had only to climb Twelve-Mile Hill.

Out of a draw to the right a horse moved. Through the brush something dragged behind it.

"What's that?" asked June.

"Don't know. Looks kinda queer. It's got some sort of harness on."

They rode to the draw. June gave a small cry of distress.

"Oh, Bob, it's a man."

He dismounted. The horse with the dragging load backed away, but it was too tired to show much energy. Bob moved forward, soothing the animal with gentle sounds. He went slowly, with no sudden gestures. Presently he was patting the neck of the horse. With his hunting-knife he cut the rawhide thongs that served as a harness.

"It's a Ute pony," he said, after he had looked it over carefully. He knew this because the Indians earmarked their mounts.

June was still in the saddle. Some instinct warned her not to look too closely at the load behind that was so horribly twisted.

"Better go back to the road, June," her husband advised. "It's too late to do anything for this poor fellow."

She did as he said, without another look at the broken body.

When she had gone, Bob went close and turned over the huddled figure. Torn though it was, he recognized the face of Jake Houck. To construct the main features of the tragedy was not difficult.

While escaping from Bear Cat after the fiasco of the bank robbery, Houck must have stumbled somehow into the hands of the Ute band still at large. They had passed judgment on him and executed it. No doubt the wretched man had been tied at the heels of a horse which had been lashed into a frenzied gallop by the Indians in its rear. He had been dragged or kicked to death by the frightened horse.

As Bob looked down into that still, disfigured face, there came to him vividly a sense of the weakness and frailty of human nature. Not long since this bit of lifeless clay had straddled his world like a Colossus. To the young cowpuncher he had been a superman, terrible in his power and capacity to do harm. Now all that vanity and egoism had vanished, blown away as though it had never been.

Where was Jake Houck? What had become of him? The shell that had been his was here. But where was the roaring bully that had shaken his fist blasphemously at God and man?

It came to him, with a queer tug at the heartstrings, that Houck had once been a dimpled baby in a mother's arms, a chirruping little fat-legged fellow who tottered across the floor to her with outstretched fingers. Had that innocent child disappeared forever? Or in that other world to which Jake had so violently gone would he meet again the better self his evil life had smothered?

Bob loosened the bandanna from his throat and with it covered the face of the outlaw. He straightened the body and folded the hands across the breast. It was not in his power to obliterate from the face the look of ghastly, rigid terror stamped on it during the last terrible moments.

The young husband went back to his waiting wife. He stood by her stirrup while she looked down at him, white-faced.

"Who was it?" she whispered.

"Jake Houck," he told her gravely. "The Utes did it--because he killed Black Arrow, I reckon."

She shuddered. A cloud had come over the beautiful world.

"We'll go on now," he said gently. "I'll come back later with your father."

They rode in silence up the long hill. At the top of it he drew rein and smiled at his bride.

"You'll not let that spoil the day, will you, June? He had it coming, you know. Houck had gone bad. If it hadn't been the Utes, it would have been the law a little later."

"Yes, but--" She tried to answer his smile, not very successfully. "It's rather--awful, isn't it?"

He nodded. "Let's walk over to the cabin, dear."

She swung down, into his arms. There she found comfort that dissipated the cloud from her mind. When she ran into the house to throw her arms around Pete Tolliver's neck, she was again radiant.

"Guess! Guess what!" she ordered her father.

Pete looked at his daughter and at the bashful, smiling boy.

"I reckon I done guessed, honeybug," he answered, stroking her rebellious hair.

"You're to come and live with us. Isn't he, Bob?"

The young husband nodded sheepishly. He felt that it was a brutal thing to take a daughter from her father. It had not occurred to him before, but old Pete would feel rather out of it now.

Tolliver looked at Bob over the shoulder of his daughter.

"You be good to her or I'll--" His voice broke.

"I sure will," the husband promised.

June laughed. "He's the one ought to worry, Dad. I'm the flyaway on this team."

Bob looked at her, gifts in his eyes. "I'm worryin' a heap," he said, smiling.

THE END

Table of Contents

Wyoming

Brand Blotters

Ridgway of Montana

A Texas Ranger

Bucky O’Connor

Mavericks

Crooked Trails and Straight

The Vision Splendid

The Pirate of Panama

A Daughter of the Dons

Steve Yeager

The Highgrader

The Yukon Trail

The Sheriff’s Son

A Man Four-Square

Oh You Tex!

The Big Town Round-Up

Gunsight Pass

Tangled Trails

Man Size

The Fighting Edge

Contents